2''4 S. VII. Feb. 12. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



121 



LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12. 1859. 



CONTENTS. 



Pace 

 - 121 



125 



126 

 127 



- 133 



135 



NoTFs: — 

 Ussher's " Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates " - 



Shakspeariana ! — Shakspearc's Will _ Who was J. M. S. of 

 Shakspeare's Second Folio? — Portraita and Busts of Shakspeare— 

 " Baccare:"" Soud! Soud! " Was Shakspeare ever in Italy? &c. 

 Curious Inaccuracy: De Quincy and Coleridge — Pythagoras on 

 Beans, bv Archdeacon Rowan . - . - - 



Psalm CXXX VII. By the Earl of Bristol - - 



King Henry Stewart .-...-- 



Minor Notes : — Best mode of repairing fractured Sepulchral Urns 



— Painless Operations without Chloroform — Scribbling on 

 Tombstones —Epigram on Dr. Willis, &c. . . - 



Ql-ERIES: — 



Burt (Capt.). Author of" Letters from the North of Scotland " 

 JI iNOR Queries : — Words used by Milton — The Pof-ocke Family 



— Cursitors in Chancery — The Ascension — Sir Richard Fry, 

 Knt., temp. Hen. VII.— .Red Coats — Constable of England, &c. 



Minor Qceuies with Answers : — Francis Sanders, Confessor of 

 James II. — Circumcision— Bonaparte Family — Pronunciation 

 of Turquoise — Ovid , 1502-3 — " Tlic Gentoos," &c. 



Bkoliks : — 

 The Elephant, by Sir J. Emerson Tennent. &c. 

 Consecration of Bishop Barlow, by Alfred T. I>ee, &c. 

 Fish mentioned by " Ilavelok the Dane :" " Stull " and " Schulle," 

 &c.,by Rev. T. Boys, &c. .-.--- 



Replies to MiNon Ouebibs: — Precedency in Scotland — Deriva- 

 tion of Pickle — The Holy Coat of Treves — Quotation wanted 

 — , Supposed Quotation from Swift — Life of De Lolme — Compo- 

 sition during Sleep — Bishop Hurd — Separation of Sexes in 

 Churches — Halsham of Sussex, temp. Henry IV. and VI., &c. - 135 



Notes on Books, &c. - - - - - - -139 



TJSSHER's " BRITANNICARUM ECCLESIARUM 

 ANTIQUITATES." 



Archbishop Usslier's work on the introduction and 

 early progress of Christianity in both Great Britain 

 and Ireland, is well known as an almost inexhaus- 

 tible repertory of information on that interesting 

 part of our history, but as it was written in Latin, 

 conformably to the commendable custom of his 

 age, it has been a treasure inaccessible to the mere 

 English reader. Lloyd and Stillingfleet, writing 

 on nearly connected subjects of British Church 

 History, both wrote in the English language, 

 which has also been adopted by our subsequent 

 writers, though greatly to the inconvenience of 

 continental scholars. It appears surprising that 

 although Ussher's book has been three times 

 printed in its original Latin, no one had ventured 

 on publishing it in English. It had the extraor- 

 dinary good fortune of being commended both by 

 Catholics and Protestants for its great learning 

 and fidelity of quotation, though there was much 

 diversity of opinion as to the conclusions which 

 were to be deduced and regarded as established. 

 " To panegyrise this extraordinary monument of 

 learning," says the late Rev. Dr. Elrington in his 

 Life of Vssjier (Dublin, 1847, p. 205. sq.) "is 

 unnecessary, to detail its contents impossible. 

 The author, commencing with the first introduc- 

 tion of Christianity into the British isles, continues 

 his laborious researches to the close of the seventh 

 century. He commences his history with the va- 

 rious fabulous narratives respecting the introduc- 

 tion of Christianity into Britain, through which he 

 steers his course with great caution. He thence 

 proceeds to the formation of the different British 



sees, and the first notices of British bishops in 

 Ecclesiastical History with the accounts of the 

 Diocletian {Diocletianean] Persecution, and the 

 early events of the life of Constantine. Upon the 

 introduction of the Pelagian Heresy he dwells 

 more fully, and gives a minute and detailed ac- 

 count of its various forms and various authors, 

 down to the arrival of Augustine in England. 

 The learned author then turns his attention to 

 another part of the country, and traces the colo- 

 nies of the PIcts and Scots in their various move- 

 ments. He concludes with their conversion to 

 Christianity, and a full account of St. Patrick and 

 other Irish saints. The first edition of this work 

 was printed in quarto [DmWik], 1639. The author 

 prepared numerous additions for another edition, but 

 did not live to publish it. It was printed long after 

 his death, at London in folio, in the year 1677." 



Dr. Elrington, however, was mistaken in giving 

 1677 as the date of the second edition, which was 

 not printed until ten years later. It bears dis- 

 tinctly the date In Roman numerals mdclxxxvii., 

 but the reverend biographer was evidently misled 

 by his taking the date, not from the book itself, 

 but from the notice of it given by the learned Dr. 

 Thomas Smith in his Vitce quorundam eruditissi- 

 morum et illustrium Virorum, London, 1707, in 

 which, by a typographical error, the date is wrongly 

 given, 1677. In Dr. Elrington's work this is not 

 by any means a solitary instance of mistake that 

 could and ought to have been avoided by careful 

 examination of authorities. In at least one in- 

 stance that I am acquainted with, subsequent wri- 

 ters have been misled by depending too implicitly 

 on Dr. Elrington's accuracy in a statement re- 

 specting a matter of history unnecessarily intro- 

 duced into his Life of Ussher, and which, if at all 

 permitted to find a place there, should have been 

 correct. Of this, as having some literary import- 

 ance, I intend to send the particulars to " N. & 

 Q." The third edition of Ussher's Antiquities, is 

 that included in Dr. Elrington's collected edition 

 of Ussher's' Works, printed at the Dublin Univer- 

 sity press in 8vo., constituting the fifth and sixth 

 volumes, but of which I am unable to give the 

 date, as no title-pages have been supplied to any 

 of the fourteen volumes which have as yet been 

 issued of that long since printed, yet still incom- 

 plete edition. 



The laborious task of translating the Britanni- 

 carum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates into English did 

 not remain unaccomplished. But whether it were 

 intended for publication, or only for private use, I 

 have no means of determining. I have now in my 

 possession the manuscript, which, from the style of 

 both language and writing, I would refer, if not 

 to Ussher's time, to a period very little later. 

 (For the satisfaction of the Editor of " N. & Q." 

 I enclose a tracing of a specimen.) It is in folio, 

 on paper of two sizes, closely written on both 



