"We may wonder," says Mr. Dyce, in his Account of Marlowe and his Writings, p. xxxviii, ed. 1865, " at the inconsistency of the book-inquisitors of those days, who condemned to the flames Marlowe's Ovid's Elegies, Marston's Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image, nay, even Hall's Satires, and yet spared Harington's Orlando Furioso, which equals the original in licentiousness, and is occasionally so gross in expression that it would have shocked Ariosto. The truth may be, that the authorities' did not choose to meddle with a translation which was not only dedicated to the Virgin Queen, but had CHARLES EDMONDS.

been executed at her desire."

136, Strand.

COLBERT, BISHOP OF RODÈZ.

(3rd S. xii. 226, 272, 317, 397.)

ANGLO-SCOTUS is mistaken in stating that an attestation of the descent of Colbert Marquis de Seignelay was ratified by a Scottish Act of Parliament in 1686. The document to which Mr. Riddell refers does appear in the proceedings of the Parliament of that year (Act Parl. Scot. vol. viii. p. 611), but there is no Act ratifying it. This is clear when its terms are compared with the next entry, which is a ratification in favour of George Duke of Gordone. In fact, it is neither more nor less than a petition, which the Parliament had the courtesy to permit their clerk to insert in the minutes in the same way as petitions are now occasionally printed with the votes of the House of Commons; but they took no further action in the matter, and expressed no opinion on its allegations. Its conclusion shows that this is its proper description:

"All these premises we know to be most true Therefore most humbly beseech His Ma'tie and the right honourable the Estates mett in this Parliament, That they wold be pleased by their Act to command the directors of his

"Willobie his Avisa, or the true Picture of a modest Maide and of a chast and constant Wife"; first printed in 1594, 4to. According to the last edition of Lowndes' Bibl. Man. it was reprinted in 1596, 1605, 1609, and 1635. The edition of 1605, London, by John Windet, 4to, purports to be "the fourth time corrected and amended"; and that of 1635, 4to, "the fifth time corrected." This enumeration leaves one edition unaccounted for, which may be one printed in this same year, 1599, and before publication ordered, as we find above, "to bee called in." Extracts from the fourth edition are given by Haslewood in Brydges' British Bibliographer, iv. 241-259.

Ma'ties Chancellary to make and write a bore briefe to pass his Ma'ties great seall according to the tenor of the premises whereby that illustrious and most noble family of Colberts may be restored to us their friends and to their own native countrey. And that envious and malignant fame may be silenced and posterity better informed, and that no doubt or debate may arise concerning these our Lines of attestation, we have putt thereto our subscriptiones manuall freely and unanimously as follows."

Unfortunately nothing follows, and consequently we are left in ignorance as to who the petitioners

were.

The document is headed, "Warrand for a Bore Brieve to Charles Colbert, Marques of Seignelay." It may be supposed that the word warrand indicates that an authority was granted for issuing this brief; but this is not the case, as that phrase in Scotland at the time meant no more than what we now convey by the expression, "The grounds or reasons for." A bore briefe is a very obsolete chancellary writ,--so obsolete indeed that it is not mentioned by either Stair or Erskine. Its meaning is, however, evident. It was a statement of the various maternal descents of the person referred to, and would be an authority for quartering the arms of these ladies on his shield, a matter at that time of some importance abroad, where the right to use at least sixteen of such quarterings was the test of the importance and rank of the person.

The Colbert pedigree, as stated in the petition, has enough of grandiloquence, and, I suspect, also of fable; but it would take a long time to examine the truth of its numerous links.

GEORGE VERE IRVING.

There is no doubt of the Scottish descent of the Bishop of Rodèz. He was descended from George Cuthbert, of Castle Hill; who, in con

sideration of his valour at the battle of Harlaw in 1411, had an addition granted to his arms, as may be seen in the Heralds' College in Scotland. John Cuthbert, Baron of Castle Hill, married Jean Hay, heiress of Dalgethy, of which marriage there was issue four sons: George, the eldest, Baron of Castle Hill; Lachlam, the second son, a majorgeneral in the French service; Alexander, the third son, naturalised in France; and James, the fourth son, who settled in Carolina. George, the eldest son, married Mary MacIntosh of Holm, and there was issue of such marriage four sons: James, who settled in Georgia, North America; Seignelay, Bishop of Rodèz; Lewis; and George, who settled in Jamaica. Lewis, by some family arrangement, acquired the Castle Hill property, but afterwards sold it. He was the father of Seignelay Thos. Cuthbert, now living in Caledonia Place, Clifton, and has a son in orders, curate of Newton Abbots, Devon. Alexander, the third son of John Cuthbert and Jean Hay, presented a

memorial to the Lord Lyon King at Arms in Scotland about the year 1771; who, on Aug. 1, 1771, granted a certificate and testimonial of the Cuthbert descent, from a copy of which the greater part of the foregoing is taken. The original, no doubt, is in the Heralds' Office in Scotland; and a Note sur la famille Colbert was published at Paris, in 1863, by Didot Frères, Fils et Cie., 56, Rue Jacob, setting forth all the charters and documents establishing the descent. T. P. Clifton.

THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD HOUSE.
(3rd S. xii. 269, 351.)

I think I have said enough to prove, to any reasonable person, that Holyrood House was "burnt to the ground on all the parts thereof" in 1650; and was rebuilt by Cromwell in 1659. Why Cromwell rebuilt "an exact facsimile of these rooms," I am not supposed to know, but I know that he did so to the full integrity." Nor do I know why Sir W. Bruce retained those Cromwell-built towers in his design of 1674. I do not think it was แ to cram the public with the notion that they were the identical old rooms." Any person, unblinded by prejudice, would see in a moment that the architect saved the northwest towers to form a part of his new design, as he built other towers, at the opposite end of the building, to correspond with them. The cramming has been a subsequent idea, and I must say that it has been very well and industriously carried out; but I for one, at least, choose to reject it.

I am sorry to perceive that G., for lack of argument, has been culpable of another misrepresentation. I neither said, nor hinted, that the Bannatyne Club "were guilty of an unauthorised interpolation." I never was simple enough to suppose that "the élite of the literati of Scotland" collated Nicoll's manuscript. The editor of the printed book, however, may have interpolated the words "except a lytill," as from his own showing they are not in the text; and though I would be most sorry to accuse any gentleman of such a crime, yet I am justified in doing so when, in the first volume of the Miscellany, I find the words quoted as if they were in the text, and rendered as the "small part"; and also, in the same Miscellany, a disingenuous claim for part of the building after the fire still being habitable, as it was a prison; though it is well known that the prison was in, and for the dwellers in, the sanctuary of the abbey and not in the palace. Nicoll expressly says, "the whole royal part of that palace.

I shall not further notice G.'s misrepresentations, but I throw the words "except a little" out of the argument altogether; if they are in the manuscript, they cannot relate to the

towers on the north-west, which comprise, according to the engraving, almost one-third of the whole building, and could not by any perversion of language be called a little or a small part. The rest of what I said bore upon the many other shams of Edinburgh; and I gave the story I was told by a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, about the Town-guard, merely as an instance of Edinburgh credulity, G. having stated that Arnot was "by no means a credulous writer," and I understood very well what he referred to, and what he meant. I do not know whether Sir Walter Scott believed the story or not, there are exceptions to all general rules; but I know that he told, and I suppose that he believed, stories the apartments that Queen Mary dwelt in, when equally as incredible. What did he say about she was a prisoner in Lochleven Castle! He said, in the introduction to The Abbot, that he would give a more minute account than is to be found in the histories of the period-and he certainly did so. He represents the garden of the castle as ornamented with statues, and an artificial fountain in the centre!—

"Her apartments," he says, "were ascended by a winding stair as high as the second story, which was in a great measure occupied by a suite of three rooms, opening into each other, and assigned as the dwelling of the captive princess. The outermost was a small hall or ante-room, within which opened a large parlour, and from that again the queen's bed-room. Another small apartment, which opened into the same parlour, contained the beds of the gentlewomen in waiting."

Now I will consider the garden, and the fountain, and the statues, as simply the romancist's embellishments of the story; like the page finding fault with the knight of Avenel's laundress, "if there be but a speck of soot upon his band collar,"-fifty years before soap was made (A.D. 1619), or probably used, in Scotland. But the "large donjon-keep," as Scott calls it, on a story of which he says Mary was confined, its whole internal space is about twenty feet square. This is Dr. Chambers's measurement; but I, from my experience of the castle, think it less. A small space, truly, for a large parlour and three other rooms. But the truth is, that Mary was not confined in the "donjon-keep" at all; but in a round turret, on the opposite side of the court-yard. Froude describes it as something like a lime-kiln : "from seven to eight feet in diameter, the walls were five feet thick, formed of rough-hewn stone rudely plastered, and pierced with long narrow slits for windows, through admitted daylight and glimpses of the lakes and hills. which nothing larger than a cat could pass, but which

"The turret was divided into three rooms, one above the other; the height of each may have been six feet: in the lowest there was a fire-place, and the windows show

marks of grooves, which it is to be hoped were fitted with glass. The communication from room to room must have was no staircase outside, and no space for one within. been by ladders through holes in the floors; for there Decency must have been difficult in such a place, and

That fight took place at Chichester on June 8, 1824, for 1000l. Spring defeated Langan, after a terrific struggle of one hour and forty-nine minutes. He then retired from the ring, that being his last battle. Spring was certainly one of the most respectable members of the prize-ring, if the term "respectable" can in any way be associated with such a ruffianly calling as that of a prizefighter.

There is no record to show that Spring rose to any eminence in the days of the Regency: in fact, it is abundantly clear he did not, unless at the very fag end of it. It must be, therefore, quite improbable that the Regent, in his own carriage, would drive a pugilist through the streets of London, who had achieved but little fame, even in the annals of that disreputable field the prize-ring. It is still more improbable, after he became George IV., he would either secretly or "openly patronise pugilism."

Doncaster.

H. M.

George IV. in his younger days, together with his brothers the Duke of York and the Duke of Clarence, patronised the ring. Some of his family in the middle of last century had done the same, the Dukes of York and Cumberland, the latter of whom was a patron of the celebrated Broughton, but turned his back on him when he was beaten by Slack in April, 1750, fancying that he had sold the fight. George IV., when Prince of Wales, was present, with the Duke of York and many of the nobility, when Humphries beat Martin at Newmarket in May, 1786, where tens of thousands of pounds changed hands. He attended also a battle on the Brighton race-course on August 6, 1788, between two men named Tyne and Earl, where the latter was killed by an unfortunate blow on the temple; and the Prince then declared that he would never attend another prize-fight, and settled an annuity on the widow and family. He continued to notice the distinguished pugilist Jackson to a late period, and he was one of the pages at the time of his

coronation.

It is most improbable that he should ever have noticed Tom Spring (whose real name was Winter), as his first battle was with Paynter in April, 1818, when the Prince Regent was an elderly man, and not at all likely to regard anything connected with the fancy. Spring did not assume the title of Champion until after he had conquered Neate, on May 20, 1823, when Cribb resigned it to him. At this time George IV. had been king for about three years.

The fight in Sir J. Sebright's park was in May, 1808, between Gully (afterwards Member of Parliament) and Gregson, where the former was the conqueror.

W. S.

"Mr. Jackson's first contest in public, under the patronage of the Honourable Harvey Aston, was with Fewterel, a Birmingham hero, on June 9, 1788, in a roped ring, near Brighton, which was honoured by the presence of the Prince of Wales .. Under his majesty's sanction, it was determined to employ eighteen of the most distinguished prize-fighters of the day, who stood in the dresses of pages at the different entrances of Westminster Hall, at the coronation of George IV."-Blaine, Rural Sports, vol. ii. p. 1224.

I have always heard that the Prince Regent ceased to be present at prize-fights after that in which one of the combatants was killed in his presence. He is said to have pensioned the widow. J. WILKINS, B.C.L.

MONSIEUR DE JOUX. (3rd S. xii. 346.)

The name of the gentleman inquired for was Pierre De Joux. The title of his work is: Lettres sur l'Italie, considérée sous le rapport de la Religion, par M. Pierre De Joux, membre de plusieurs sociétés savantes. 2 vols. Paris, 1825. The author, when he published this work, was in his seventy-fourth year, having been born in 1752, in a small town at the foot of the Alps. At the age of eighteen, he was invited by the Marquis of Abercorn into England, where he studied theology under learned professors of the church of England. He remained in England three years, and then went to Bâle, where he studied Hebrew and the Oriental languages under Buxtorf and Herzog, and was admitted to the ministry at the age of twentythree. After having for five years assisted the celebrated Count de Gébelin in his grand work, the Monde primitif, and composed, under his direction, the Dictionnaire des Origines latines, he worked with him at his Origines grecques, and Histoire de la Parole. Then for fourteen years he was the chief director of the second college of the Department of Leman; and next president "du consistoire réuni de la Loire Inférieure et de la Vendée," for eleven years and a half. He was then rector of the university of Bremen, during which presidentship he published, in 1803, his Prédication du Christianisme.

When France lost the Hanseatic towns in 1813, he was deprived of his rectorship of the university of Bremen. At the end of 1815 he went to Italy, and thence he came to Scotland, and became professor of ancient languages in the academy of Dollar, near Stirling. It would be out of place in these pages to give his observations upon the Scotch and their religion, or the motives which led the author finally to become a Catholic on October 11, 1825. But he published his Lettres sur l'Italie, which were written for a young English nobleman, preceded by, as he describes it, "un précis apologétique des motifs qui en ont déterminé la publication, et qui expliquent mon re