tered above the knee, all fresh in a velvet cap, flourishing with his ton-sword, and another fence-master with him. A valiant captain of great prowess, as fierce as a fox assaulting a goose, was so hardy to give the first stroke." Then follows a description of the battle. The Coventry corporation had been accustomed to appoint four aletasters in every ward annually to visit brewers' houses, and, as there were ten wards, the captain could have raised a company of forty of his rubi cund brethren. In 1626 the Kenilworth pageants were again revived before Charles I. and for this occasion Ben Jonson wrote the Monologue, or "Masque of Owls," which commenced with the ghost of Captain Cox appearing on his hobbyhorse. "This Captain Cox, by Saint Mary, Was at Boulogne with King Ha-ry; Captain Cox's Library at Coventry, 1575. King Arthur's Book.-Published by Hazlewood. Referred to by Dr. Dibdin in his Typographical Antiquities, vol. iii. Huon of Bourdeaux.-In Mr. Douce's collection in the Bodleian Library, 3rd edition, 4to. London, 1601. The Four Sons of Aymon.-Printed by W. Copland; Harleian MSS. vol. iii, Bevis of Hampton.-Printed from the Auchinleck MSS. for the Maitland Club; The Knight of Courtesy and the Lady Faguell.-Bodleian Library, c. 39, art. Sir Eglamour of Artoys.-Cotton MSS. in British Museum, Tib. A. 1. fol, 3; Bodleian Library; Cambridge Public Library; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii.; printed by Copland; Garrick's Old Plays, vol. x. Sir Tryamour.-Cambridge Library, 690, 29; Bodleian Lib.; Garrick's Old Plays. Sir Lambwell.-Cotton Library, Calig. A. 1. fol. 33. Sir Isenbras.-Cotton Lib. Calig. A. xII. fol. 128; Garrick's Plays; Caius College, Cambridge, class A. IX.; printed by Copland; and by the Camden Society, 1844. Sir Gawain.-Edited by Sir F. Madden. Oliver of the Castle-viz. Olivaires of Castile, a Spanish romance, frequently published in English; a late edition, 8vo. London, 1695. In a catalogue published this year by Mr. Smith, Old Compton Street, the original is thus described: "Historia de los muy nobles y valientes cavalleros Oliveros de Castilla y Artus de Algarve, y de sus marvaïllosas y grandes hazanas, 12mo. Madrid." Virgil's Life. Edited by Mr. Thoms, 1827; Garrick's Plays; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii. The Widow Edyth.-Harleian Lib. vol. iii. No. 3508; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii.; printed by John Rastell. The King and the Tanner.-Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Friar Rush. In the late Mr. Heber's library, and also in the Marquess of Stafford's [see Scott's Notes on Marmion]. In Mr. Smith's catalogue, Sept. 1839, "Historie of Friar Rush, being full of pleasant mirth and delight for young people, 1620." See also Mr. T. Wright's Essays on Popular Superstitions. Howleglas.-Garrick's Old Plays in British Museum; Dramatic Stories, 1832. Robin Hood.-Cambridge Library. Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley.-Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. The Churl and the Bird.-By John Lydgate, 4to.; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vols. ii. iii.; printed by Caxton, W. de Worde, and Copland; and by the Roxburghe Club. The Seven Wise Masters.-Printed by Copland; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii. ; Ritson. The Wife lapt in a Morel's Skin.-Printed in Amyot's Taming of the Shrew, for the Shakespeare Society. The Serjeant that became a Friar.-See the works of Sir T. More. Scogan.-Scogan's Jests, gathered by Andrew Boord, 4to. London, n. d. Elynour Rummyng (The Tunning of). John Skelton's Works, by Rev. A. The Nut-Brown Maid.-Arnold's Chronicles, 1521, 4to. edited by Douce; Wright's Early English Poetry, 1836; Percy's Reliques. The Shepherd's Kalendar.-Magdalen College, Oxford; Douce; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. ii.; printed by W. de Worde. The Ship of Fools (Alexander Barclay's).-St. John's College, Oxford; Douce; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. ii.; printed by W. de Worde and Richard Pynson. The Book of Fortune. Stans Puer ad Mensam.-See Lydgate's Works. The Highway to the Spittle-House.-Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii.; printed by Robert Copland. Julian of Brentford's Testament.-Bodleian Library; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii. The Castle of Love.-By Hawes. The Hundred Merry Tales.-Published in 1831 by Chidley, Goswell Street (see Boswell's Malone); printed by Rastell. The Book of Riddles. The Seven Sorrows of Women. The Proud Wives' Paternoster.-Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iv. Youth and Charity. Hickskorner.-Garrick's Old Plays; Hawkins's Origin of English Drama, vol. i.; printed by Wynkyn de Worde. Doctor Boord's Breviary of Health.-Printed at London, 1598, 4to. but there was an earlier edition. Broom, Broom on Hill.-Ritson's Ancient Songs. So Woe is me begone, trolly lo. Over a Whinny Meg. Hey ding a ding.-Ritson, "Old Simon the King." Bonny Lass upon a Green. My Bonny One gave me a Beck. By a Bank as I lay.-A love song, in King's MSS. 17 B. 43. Brit. Mus. John Securiz of Salisbury.-Ashmolean Museum. Nostradamus of France.-Probably his prophecies, supposed to be lost. In Smith's Catal. 1846, is the following: "Nostradamus's Lives of the most celebrated Provençal Poets, written in the French language, but now translated into the Tuscan, by M. Crescimbeni, 4to. Rome, 1722. The Castle of Ladies; viz. "The Boke of the Cyte of Ladyes," 1521, translated GENT. MAG. VOL. XXVI. 4 H from the French by Brian Anslay, yeoman of the wine-cellar to Henry VIII. -Warton's English Poetry, vol. iii.; Dibdin's Typ. Antiq. vol. iii.; Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica. Gargantua [and Pantagruel].-Romance written in French by Dr. Francis Rabelais, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart, of Cromarty (new edition), edited, with an introductory notice and life of Rabelais, by Theodore Martin, 4to. frontispiece by C. K. Sharpe, 1838; Smith's Catalogue, May 1844. MR. URBAN, Manchester, Nov. 9. YOU were good enough to insert in your Magazine (vol. XIV. N. S. p. 142) a communication from me, in which I ventured to question the opinion of Mr. Hallam respecting the authorship of the Turkish Spy. That letter gave rise to several other articles, including one from Mr. Hallam, which seems to manifest that he is not an exception to the Hudibrastic truism, that A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still; for, in a note to the subsequent edition of his "Introduction to the Literature of Europe," vol. III. p. 563, he alludes to his hypothesis having been controverted in your pages, and reiterates his demand of proof of any edition in French anterior to that of our English Turkish Spy, the second volume of which, he says, appeared in 1691, with a preface, denying the existence of a French work. If I had been writing a history of literature, I should have considered it incumbent on me to take some pains to ascertain more particularly the dates of the numerous editions of this amusing and very popular work, and in what languages they had appeared. Whether Mr. Hallam has taken the trouble to do this I am not aware, but, as an opportunity recently presented itself of making some inquiry through the medium of a gentleman visiting Paris, I send you the information which I have received, and which may probably be considered at least some "shadow of evidence" that there are French editions anterior to that of the English Turkish Spy. In the "Bibliothèque Royale" there are, according to the minute I have received, the following editions of the work. 1. In Italian. Printed at Paris, without date, but probably 1684. By Marana. 2. French. Paris, 1684. 3. French. Paris, 1686. 4. French. Amsterdam. Translated from the Arabic by Marana, 1688. 5. French. Paris, 1689. It would seem, therefore, that there are at least five editions, Italian and French, prior to 1691; but, as the memorandum furnished to me does not, unfortunately, state the number of volumes of any of the editions, or give more of the titles than as above, wish. Some of your readers, however, it is not so satisfactory as I could having better means than I possess, will probably supply these deficiencies, which may clear hitherto involved in mystery. a literary question Yours, &c. MR. URBAN, up F. R. A. In your number for August last (p. 124) the reviewer of the Life and Correspondence of John Foster quotes the following lines from Milton's Paradise Lost, B. i. 203 :— "Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, Moors by his side under the lee, while night With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, Invests the sea, and wished morn delays." "Here," he observes, "is a picture sunk, being moored to an island; while, of a ship that has already foundered or night is twice mentioned in the same little passage, an unnecessary and most ungraceful repetition. Who, therefore, would hesitate to say, that the true reading must be, Some small nigh-founder'd skiff"?? As the skiff was nearly foundering, the pilot takes the advantage of mooring it for security to what he fancies an island, till the light of morning arrives. We pledge all our little reputation for criticism on this emendation." The above conjecture was made long ago by Bentley in his edition of Paradise Lost, and in confirmation of it he adduced from the second book of that poem, "nigh-founder'd on he fares," v. 940. But a passage in Milton's Comus, v. 483, seems to prove that no alteration is necessary :— "Either some one, like us, night-founder'd here, Or else some neighbour woodman," &c. which passage Johnson cites in his Dictionary as affording an example of night-foundered in the sense of "lost or distressed in the night." The same reviewer, in an article on Cary's Lives of English Poets, Gent. Mag. for October last, p. 350, remarks, "Mr. Cary has praised Miss Jane Warton's Verses to her father's memory, printed at the end of the volume, with an ode on the same subject by Joseph Warton; but we cannot understand the commencing lines "Accept, O sacred shade, this artless verse, And kindly, O ye mourning friends, forbear, To dear disdaining from his decent hearse, All I can give except the tender tear," &c. The right reading is, "To tear, disdaining, from his decent hearse All I can give," &c. See Wooll's Memoirs of J. Warton, WRIGHT, DEBRETT, AND STOCKDALE, THE POLITICAL PUBLISHERS. THE following anecdotes, written by the late Mr. Upcott, will be interesting as fragments of literary history. The paper is in his own handwriting, and originally was a list made when a boy of the books which he read while an apprentice in Wright's shop, extending from March 1, 1797, to August 1799. The volumes amount to sixtyfour of various sizes, and of all kinds, history, travels, poetry, and romance, such as his master's shop might afford. Of this locality he has appended, at a recent period, the following gossiping memoranda: "This trifling List of my boyish reading was written during my apprenticeship with John Wright the political publisher, 169, Piccadilly, facing Old Bond Street-a house long since pulled down, but where I daily saw the greatest literary and political characters of the time, who frequented that celebrated ministerial shop, not any of whom (John Hookham Frere* excepted) I believe are now living. At this house the Anti-Jacobin newspaper first appeared; at this house Bonaparte's intercepted correspondence from Egypt, captured by Lord Nelson, came out. The morning to booksellers was of publication a memorable day; a line of carriages reached from St. James's Park to purchase them, and the shop was crowded with customers from morn till evening. Was I to enumerate the names of those individuals whom I frequently have seen while residing under that roof, or at John Debrett's, the Opposition bookseller, or John Stockdale's, both houses being within a few doors of Wright's, I might mention a long list of Tory and Whig characters, including literary men of the highest order, viz. Burke, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Grattan, Canning, Hawkesbury, Lord Clare, chancellor of Ireland, Dr. Joseph Warton, George Steevens, Malone, W. Gifford (daily), and I witnessed the quarrel between him and Peter Pindar, and assisted in turning him out of Wright's house after Mr. Gifford had struck him a violent blow on the forehead with his own club-stick. Here, too, I saw W. Seward, Dr. John Moore, father of General Moore, Arthur Murphy, George Rose, William Coombe (Dr. Syntax), Abbé Delille, who usually called with Mr. Canning, Mallet du Pau, the French political writer, Mons. Lally Calonne, and the most considerable of Tollendal, Archdeacon Coxe, Mons. the French emigrants; Lord Nelson, Lord St. Vincent, Gen. Moore, Earl Spencer, Duke of Roxburghe, the distinguished book collector, Earl Moira, Joseph Ritson, George Chalmers, T. J. Mathias, Dr. Charles Burney, Dr. Parr, Bishop Porteus, Bishop Watson, Mrs. Montagu, and a variety of literary ladies. WILLIAM UPCOTT. "Islington, January, 1845." * Mr. Frere (as well as the writer) is deceased in the present year.-Edit. UPTON CHURCH, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. THIS structure is particularly interesting, at once from its antiquity and its present deserted state. In consequence, ostensibly, of the increased population of the road-side town of Slough, which is situated in the parish of Upton, a new church was erected in the year 1839 upon a fresh site, when the ancient church was dismantled, and it now remains in a condition approximating to ruin, except that the walls and roofs are still in a substantial state. Whether the further increase of the town of Slough, which is constantly proceeding, may not eventually lead to its restoration and repair, is a question which must be left to the course of events to determine. We know that Upton church has many old friends, who would rejoice in its renovation; and to the new residents in the eastern part of Slough and Upton Park (a group of very handsome villas in the immediate vicinity) it would be particularly convenient. It may surprise some that in the present churchextension days the old church should have been deserted; and others, that such a scarecrow as the new church of Slough could have been erected; but the hope may still be entertained that the old church of Upton, though somewhat weather-worn with the storms of centuries, may even yet survive that red-brick deformity. Not that the question of the inelegance of the new church need be mixed with that of the maintenance of the old, for we believe that Slough already requires two churches. Upton Church has been but little altered from its original Norman state, except by the insertion of windows. It consists of a nave without aisles, a flattopped tower, and a chancel. The tower, which stands between the nave and chancel, is not quite so wide as either of them; its interior width is 12 feet 5 inc. that of the chancel 15 feet 7 inc. and that of the nave 19 feet 9 inc. The total length of the church is about ninety feet, of which the length of the nave is 55 feet 6 inc. Except a low wooden screen yet in the chancel, but from which the carving has been torn off, and the font, bells, and pulpit, which have been removed to the new structure, the whole remaining furniture was sold by the parish for the paltry sum of ten pounds, whereas it certainly should have been preserved, for the more decent performance of the burial service, which still occasionally takes place within this time-hallowed fane. The walls, about three feet thick, and built throughout of flint and chalk, are still perfectly upright, although without bonding or other support except four slender buttresses at the |