for the Camden Society, was printed by Lady Chatterton in her Rambles in the South of Ireland."

Can you tell me where these MSS. are at present? and whether there is any likelihood of their publication by the Camden Society? They would prove, I think, an acceptable addition to Irish

literature.

Авива.

[A portion of the Crosbie MSS. is in the British Museum, Additional MS. 20,715, purchased at the sale of

Thomas Crofton Croker on December 18, 1854. We are

inclined to think that the bulk of them are still in the

library of Richard Sainthill, Esq.]

HERESY.-Where can be found the best account of the origin and progress of the laws for the punishment of heresy in England? W. P. P. [For a succinct account of the laws for the punishment of heresy, our correspondent cannot do better than consult

Tomlins's Law Dictionary. s. v. ed. 1835; and for a more extended statement, James Baldwin Brown's Historical Account of the Laws enacted against the Catholics; to which is added, a Short Account of the Laws for the

Punishment of Heresy in General, and Copious Notes.

Lond. 1813, 8vo.

Replies.

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS. (3rd S. viii. 308, 444; xi. 408; and Gent. Mag., N. S. xiv. 212, 360.)

So much light has already been thrown on the pseudonyms of Sir R. Phillips by readers in "N. & Q.," that I have little to add; though I have regularly worked at the matter, and examined heaps of his school-books. But when books get to their 468th edition, it becomes a difficult matter to examine them, and there are few of Sir R. Phillips's that had not a great number of editions. Blair and Goldsmith were the most popular: then, probably, Mrs. or Miss M. Pelham (I do not think the author ever determined in his own mind whether she was married or not) and the Rev. S. (not J.) Barrow, dubbed "Vicar of Newton" by the Dict. of Living Authors, 1816, which discovers in the supplement that it is "a fictitious name, fabricated to give some degree of credit to three very indifferent though inoffensive compilations." Our gallant knight was not very particular about that, and there can be little doubt that the "Rev." did give his very useful publications a great deal more credit, than his own name would have given. Take the already quoted dictionary for an example. It abuses Sir R. Phillips when they know him, but they praise him under his pseudonyms.

He was a most industrious writer; for, besides many publications under his own name, including his chef d'ouvre--A Million of Facts-he was author of pseudonymous elementary school works,

whose numbers could have been counted by hundreds of thousands; and hence, I believe, the difficulty of obtaining them in the present day. If anyone were to ask me the way to make books of this kind scarce in the course of years, I should say print off hundreds of thousands of copies.

It may seem curious that I should have been baulked in my inquiry upon Sir R. Phillips's pseudonyms, by the want of books at the British Museum. Nevertheless, it is a fact. There is scarcely an original edition of his books there, and many not in any edition. As I have before hinted, the 468th edition is of little use in an inquiry of this nature. The rubbish heap of the library wants increasing. Above I have mentioned all Sir R. Phillips's pseudonyms hitherto known in "N. & Q.," except Bossut, or "M. l'Abbé Bossut, Professor of Languages." This he, no doubt, intended for the Abbé Ch. Bossut, the celebrated mathematician, who died in 1814,

and not the celebrated Abbé Bossuet. There is a great deficiency at the British Museum of these books, more especially his Little French Grammar, 1805. This Abbé Bossut, unlike most Frenchmen of his time, was master of German and Italian, and published in both those languages as well as the French and Latin.

"Common Sense" was another of his disguises, used chiefly in the Monthly Magazine.

I have not a doubt that "James Adair" is another of his masks. The advantage is very obvious: e. g. in "Adair's 500 Questions reduced from J. Goldsmith's History," Adair can praise Goldsmith, and per contra Goldsmith can recommend Adair, which Sir R. Phillips invariably did.

Perhaps, however, your bibliographical readers would like something more to show "Adair" to be fictitious. I think this quotation will be sufficient:

"The author [James Adair pseud. Sir R. Phillips] long meditated to write a new History of England, in

which more anecdote, and more information relative to manners and social improvements, should have had place believes is generally adopted, because there is no other in than are to be found in Goldsmith's. . . . . which he the same compact form [this is frank-of his own book] (as that) which passes under the name of the late Dr. Goldsmith."

of two books: Le Buffon des Ecoles and The English Spelling Book. I think he is at fault here in both instances; but query, where did he get the hint?

At first I thought it must be Thomas Clark, the writer of a New System of Arithmetic, 1812. And on seeing a summary of it in that witty work of Prof. de Morgan's, Arithmetical Books, I concluded that it was Sir R. Phillips's, as the summary is what I conceive to be a reflex of Sir R. Phillips's mind, as expressed in all his writings; but an examination of the book itself makes me believe otherwise, and I now have no doubt that the Rev. C. C. Clarke is one of Sir R. Phillips's pseudonyms.

George Hamilton, drawing master. The Elements of Drawing, 1812. I fancy this is one of his, but I have not seen the book.

The Rev. John Robinson, Master of the Free Grammar School at Ravenstondale, in Westmoreland, author of An Easy Grammar of History, &c., seems to me somewhat mythical; and before I give it up, I should like his identity proved.

In the New English Spelling Book, by John Robinson (7th edit. 1826), the preface of the first edition is dated from 38, Norfolk Street, Strand, Dec. 1799.

Hume and Smollet's History, abdg., &c. to 1815, by D. Robinson. Who was D. Robinson? Was this work published by Sir R. Phillips ?

Sir R. Phillips's life must have been one full of anecdote and chapters of accidents. His relations with printing and the manufacture of books must alone, I should think, be of the greatest interest; but he appears to have left scarcely a scrap of information on any point, except what is indirectly to be gathered from his works. Are there any notices or allusions to him anywhere? I think it would be worth while to note anything in reference to him in "N. & Q." His habits were peculiar perhaps on this point the following quotations will be interesting:

·

"Nor have even the Pythagoreans a much better battery against us. Sir R. Phillips, who once rang a peal in my ears against shooting and hunting, does indeed eat neither flesh, fish, nor fowl. His abstinence surpasses that of a Carmelite, while his bulk would not disgrace a Benedictine monk. But he forgets that his shoes, and breeches, and gloves are made of the skins of animals. He forgets that he writes, and very eloquently too (0, Cobbett, this is much even from you!), with what has been cruelly taken from a fowl; and that, in order to cover the books which he has made and sold, hundreds of flocks and scores of droves must have perished. even he [Ben Ley], like Sir R. Phillips, eats milk, butter, &c., cheese and eggs."-Blackwood's Magazine, 1823, xiv. 324.

But

"North. I have some thought, James, of relinquishing animal food, and confining myself, like Sir Richard Phillips, to vegetable matter." [After some talk:] "Shepherd. I agree wi' him in thinking Sir Isaac Newton out o' his reckonin' entirely about gravitation. There's nae sic

thing as a law o' gravitation! What would be the use o't?" &c.-Ib. 1827, xxii. 125.

It seems to me most strange that apparently so little should be recorded of this bookseller, journalist, printer, hosier, republican, and knight.

No doubt the editor's encyclopaedic store of information, which is continually astonishing me, -or some of his octogenarian readers,-can supply some interesting notes. OLPHAR HAMST, Bibliophile.

LATTEN OR BRASS.

(3rd S. xii. 301.)

I am sorry to say that I know of no recorded analysis of the former of these metals, but certainly this is not caused by its being taken for granted that it was identical with brass; on the contrary, they were known to be of different composition. A great number of vessels of the former metal have been dug up in Lanarkshire, and other parts of the South of Scotland; and formerly it was the custom to describe them as Roman camp kettles, but this was evidently erroneous. well known that a gipsy tinker purchased many of these vessels from the peasantry, and sold them to clockmakers, who formed them into the wheels of their horologes, finding the metal superior and much more durable than the ordinary brass of

commerce.

It is

From the accounts of an Aberdeen merchant which have been published, it would appear that these vessels were imported from the continent. I have often discussed with brother antiquaries in Scotland the advisability of having the metal of these vessels analyzed, but the following difficulties stand in the way:

1. The examination of a single specimen, which might probably be sacrificed for the purpose, would not be satisfactory or decisive.

2. Collectors would object to have their specimens disfigured by removing any large portion of them.

3. Although they might not demur from filings or scrapings being taken from their examples in such a way as not to injure the general appearance, the quantity so obtained would be so small as to render a quantitative analysis, which would alone be of any value, impossible, except in the hands of This of course a first-rate analytical chemist. would entail no small expense, and hence the entire difficulty in the matter, which however may be obviated by a more general ventilation of the subject.

A kindred question, which it would be most interesting to investigate, arises from a statement I have seen made that bronzes of the Roman period manufactured in Britain may be distinguished from those of the continent by containing a minute portion of gold.

Could not the School of Mines in Jermyn Street undertake the investigation of these points? They are very interesting, and quite in their way. GEORGE VERE IRVING.

Your correspondent is mistaken in supposing that no analysis of the medieval composition of this metal has been published. In the introduction to Waller's magnificent work on Monumental Brasses, the analysis of Flemish brass, now preserved in the Museum of Practical Science in Jermyn Street, is thus given:-"Copper 64; zinc 29.5; lead 3·5; tin 3=100."

Flanders was early celebrated for the manufacture of plates of latten called "cullen" plate, from Ceulon or Cologne, where such plates were principally made. Waller says the sheets of metal were cast to near the size required, in a mould formed of two cakes of loam; there was no hammering except by wooden mallets-an operation known as "planishing," the object of which is to get rid of any twist or bend. The average size of the sheets is generally from two feet six inches to two feet eight inches, but there is one at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, somewhat over three feet; and the Flemish brass just alluded to has plates measuring three feet two inches by one foot ten and a half inches. The thickness or gauge is about one-eighth of an inch, but, being always unequal, varies much in the same plate. The mode of manufacture was not calculated to produce a substance of homogeneous structure. Thus it is often found full of air-bubbles and flaws, and a brass much worn will show a number of small holes upon its surface.

Many persons consider that France is the country in which the monumental brass originated, for the enamelled metal work of Limoges is of early date, and of great celebrity. As early as 1150 an enamelled plate was placed in the church of St. Julien at Le Mans, to the memory of Geoffrey Plantagenet. This is now preserved in the museum of that town, and is engraved in Stothard's Monumental Effigies. It must, however, be remembered that these were all of small size, not laid upon the floor; and of copper, not brass, the latter not bearing the heat required for fusing

the metallic oxides.

The manufacture of brass was not introduced into England till the latter half of the sixteenth century. Queen Elizabeth granted a patent (Sept. 17, 1565) to William Humfrey, Assay Master of the Mint, and Christopher Shutz, "an Almain," to search and mine for calamine, and to have the use of it for making all sorts of battery wares, cast works, and wire of latten. In 1584 a lease of works at Isleworth was granted to John Brode. In the Introduction to Norden's Description of Essex (p. xiii. London Camden Society), the mill

is described as follows:

"Thistleworth or Isleworth, a place scituate upon the Thamise. Not farr from whence betwene it and Worton is a copper and brass myll wher it is wrought out of the oar, melted, and forged. The oar or earth wherof it is contryved is browght out of Somersetshire from Mendipp, the most from a place called Worley Hill. The carriage is by wayne, which can not but be very chardgeable. The workemen make plates both of copper and brasse of all scyces, little and great, thick and thyn, for all purposes. They make also kyttles. Their furnase and forge are blown with great bellowes, raysed with the force of the water, and suppressed agayne with a great poyes and weyght. And the hammers wherwith they work their plates are very great and weightie, some of them of wrought and beaten iron, some of cast iron of 200, 300, some 400 weight, which hammers so massye are lifted up by an artificiall engine, by the force of the water, in that altogeather semblable to the iron myll hammers. They have snippers wherwith they snyppe and pare their plates, which snippers being also of a huge greatnes, farr beyond the powr of man to use, are so artificially placed and such ingenious devises therunto added, that by the mocon of the water also the snippers open and shut, and performe that with great facilitye which ells were very harde to be done." JOHN PIGGOT, Jun.

ANCIENT CANALS AT SUEZ.

(2nd S. iii. 464.)

In a map of Egypt given in the Travels of Linschooten, A.D. 1576, two canals from Suez connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean are given, one of which, running in a straight line northwards to the Mediterranean, is marked “a Dyche begonne in Ancient tyme, and somewhat attempted of late by Sinan, the Bassa, to ioyne both Seas together;" while the other, running in a westerly direction into the Nile, is marked "a Dyche called Fossa Traiana," the Fossa Trajani of Wilkinson's Map of Egyptus Antiqua.

Tytler in his Elements of History, not at hand to refer to, says that in 1497 the Venetians, after an ineffectual project of cutting through the Isthmus of Suez, failed in an attempt to interrupt the Portuguese fleet at the mouths of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf; and in p. 356, History of the Ottoman Empire," Encyclopedia Metropolitana, it is stated that Selim, the second emperor of the Turks, 1566-1574, projected the important enterprise of cutting a ship canal through the Isthmus

of Suez.

The names Sinan and Osman, both of whom held office as pasha successively during the reign of Amurath III., the successor of Selim, nearly correspond with Sinan, the Bassa, referred to by Linschooten, but no mention whatever of this very important undertaking is given in either Knolles, or Cantemir's History of the Turks.

Queries:-Are the two separate canals given by Linschooten to be found in other maps of the period referred to; and does M. Lessep's canal, now being cut, follow in any part the course of either?

In what works are accounts of the attempt

made by the Venetians to reopen the canal in 1487, and the subsequent one, near a century afterwards, by Sinan, Bassa, to be found? and was the canal running in a straight line from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean at any time navigated by the Venetians? R. R. W. ELLIS.

Starcross, near Exeter.

COLBERT, BISHOP OF RODÈZ. (3rd S. xii. 226, 272, 317.) While the bishop was clearly a Cuthbert of Castlehill, Inverness, it by no means follows that he belonged to the family of "Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay," of which A. S. A. thinks "there can hardly be a doubt." It does not appear whether he bore the titular name "De Seignelay" during life, or if it was given to him after death. In the former case, it may have been complaisance on the good bishop's part towards his supposed French cousins; if the latter, then the assumption by the De Seignelays of the bishop as a relative was in perfect accordance with the proceedings of their great ancestor. M. Michel devotes a page or two to a most amusing account of "les efforts puérils," which the Financier made " pour se rattacher à la noblesse," and of their total discomfiture. Though quite a man of the people, being the son of a wine-merchant at Rheims, Colbert pretended descent from the kings of Scotland through a fictitious Richard Colbert, a "preux chivalier," said to have been buried at Rheims in 1300, with this inscription on his tomb:

"En Ecosse j'eus le berceau,

Et Rheims m'a donné le tombeau."

He also made his master write to Charles II. to cause inquiries to be made in Scotland about his supposed ancestors. Charles replied to Louis that nothing had been found except a name resembling that of Colbert among very small people ("le plus petit peuple"), and that the minister was deceived by his pride (Les Ecossais, i. p. 36, note). This rebuff, said to have been due to the influence of Lauderdale, was got over after Colbert's death, and his family in 1686 obtained an attestation of their descent from the Cuthberts of Castlehill (ratified by a Scottish Act of Parliament), which is said on high authority to be " tissue of fable and grandiloquence (Riddell's Reply to the Partition of the Lennox, 1835, pp. 73-4.)

a

Colbert's weak point, or "manie," as M. Michel styles it, was a frequent subject of raillery on the part of Louis XIV. It was shared by another great man of the era preceding-Sully, the minister of Henry IV., who claimed descent from the Scottish Bethunes, and relationship to James Beaton, the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, who died in France in 1603. On this Michel remarks (ii. pp. 140-1), "Pour mon compte,

j'y crois peu," and proceeds to show how Sully's father was શૈ mere adventurer, who said he came from Scotland, and obtained, not in the most honourable way, the heiress of Rosny. The Sullys, however, bribed the eminent genealogist, André du Chesne, to attach them to the Bethunes of Flanders, the root of the Scottish Beatons.

M. Michel, besides these, has collected many instances showing the curious fashion among his countrymen, both high and low, of commencing their pedigrees with a Scottish ancestor. The kindred practice is notorious in our own country of commencing a "doubtful" pedigree either with a Norman who 66 'came in" with the Conqueror, or with a Saxon who was "at home" at the time. ANGLO-SCOTUS.

HOMERIC TRADITIONS AND LANGUAGE.

(3rd S. xii. 245, 354.)

I beg MR. NICHOLSON'S acceptance of my sincere reciprocation of regret that I misunderstood what I considered the slighting personalities of his letter. Indeed I felt them so strongly, that I would not have replied at all were it not that his and my letters appeared in a public English journal; and I was afraid that if I did not reply, your nation, so famous for the noble art of selfdefence, might think I was a man who wrote about what he did not understand, and that I fled when I met my match. I shall not absolutely deny MR. NICHOLSON's charge of my being "ungenerous," but I assure you that several of your readers (utter strangers to me, and, from their style and address, I presume them to be Englishmen,) took the same meaning from MR. NICHOLSON's letter that I did. I say this to show merely that my error did not arise from an obliquity exclusively Irish.

I have received no information from your correspondents on the subjects of my five questions regarding Homeric traditions and language. The matter remains exactly as I found it; and the cause is only too plain, namely, except MR. NICHOLSON, none of your correspondents have read Mr. Paley's Introduction. I beg leave to conclude this matter with five observations which will answer MR. NICHOLSON, and justify my having asked the questions.

1. If any of your readers will refer to Dr. Donaldson's admirable edition of Pindar, he will find that the words Aéyew and ypάpew never mean "to read" or "to write" in Pindar. For all I know, the arts of reading and writing may have been known in Egypt or Peru B.c. 900; but those arts cannot have been known in Greece at that date: for Pindar, who flourished B.C. 490, was not acquainted with them.

2. That the traditions contained in Pindar, the

Tragics and the Cyclis, are older than those contained in our Iliad and Odyssey, is evident; because those contained in the former are more cruel, indecent, and uncouth than those contained in the latter.

3. That our Iliad and Odyssey were preserved merely by means of human memory, is a thing unparalleled; and David Hume has proved, more than a century ago, that a singular phenomenon can neither be argued from nor assumed.

4. The stories narrated in our Iliad and Odyssey are ignored by Pindar and the Tragics, who probably never saw those poems; and, more extraordinary still, those stories are almost ignored by Lucilius, Ovid, and Virgil, who must have seen those poems.

5. Our Iliad abounds with incongruities of language and tradition. I shall give one instance of each.

(A.) At so early a stage as lines 105, 106, and 107, of the first book, we have·

Μάντι κακῶν, οὐ πώ ποτέ μοι τὸ κρήγυον εἶπας.
Αἰεί τοι τὰ κακ ̓ ἐστὶ φίλα φρεσὶ μαντεύεσθαι
Εσθλὸν δ ̓ οὔτε τί πω εἶπας ἔπος οὔτε τέλεσσας.

In the first of these lines we have (i.) the Attic use of the article, (ii.) the unusual word κphyvov, never again repeated in our Iliad or Odyssey; and I am not acquainted with it elsewhere, except in Theocritus, Id. xx. 19, (iii.) elmas, not requiring the digamma; in the second line we have (iv.) the article again, and (v.) in the third line we have the same elmas, requiring the digamma!

(B.) The compiler of our Iliad and Odyssey ascribes to the heroes their Homeric character, but essentially alters their characters and actions to suit his own dramatic purposes. In Eschylus' Myrmidons, Sophocles' Ajax, and the Scholiast on the Philoctetes, the character of Achilles is described as inhumanly abominable; and, accordingly, the compiler of our Iliad (xx. 467-8) thus characterises Achilles:

Οὐ γάρ τι γλυκύθυμος ἀνὴρ ἦν, οὐδ ̓ ἀγανύφρων,
̓Αλλὰ μάλ' ἐμμεμαώς.

But, according to the compiler of our Iliad (xxiv. 157-8), Achilles.

Οὔτε γὰρ ἐστ ̓ ἄφρων οὔτ ̓ ἄσκοπος οὔτ ̓ ἀλιτήμων, ̓Αλλὰ μάλ ̓ ἐνδυκέως ἱκέτεω πεφιδήσεται ἀνδρός. In short, according to the compiler, after burying Patroclus, Achilles embraced the Quaker per

suasion!

I assert fearlessly that these two incongruities (A. and B.) are too grotesque, and are utterly unHomeric. I could furnish a vast number of similar incongruities, but "N. & Q." should not be turned into a Clavis Homerica.

One word of explanation, to prevent misunderstanding. Let none of your readers suppose that I wish to disparage the genius who compiled our

LATIN POEM (3rd S. xii. 308.)-I have much pleasure in directing the attention of J. B. W. to Crofton Croker's Killarney Legends, edition of 1831, p. 57. The poem in question runs as follows: "Quam pulchra sunt ova, Cum alba et nova

In stabulo scite leguntur,

Et a Margery bella-
Quæ festiva puella!—

Pinguis lardi cum frustis coquuntur.
"Ut belles in prato
Aprico et lato

Sub sole, tam læte renident
Ova tosta in mensa,
Mappa bene extensa,

Nitidissima lance consident."

The following is the rendering into English:"O'tis eggs are a treat

When, so white and so sweet,
From under the manger they're taken,
And by fair Margery,

Och! 'tis she's full of glee,
They are fried with fat rashers of bacon.
"Just like daisies all spread

O'er a broad sunny mead,

In the sunbeams so beauteously shining,
Are fried eggs well displayed
On a dish, when we've laid

The cloth, and are thinking of dining."

LIOM F.