102 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°i S. VII. Feb. 5. '59, 



" IF. Why, did they agaynst hym conspyre ? 

 "J. By my trothe they sett hym a fyre 

 Openly in London cit^," &c. 



Allusion, moreover, is made to the famous ser- 

 mon preached by Fisher, before Wolsey and the 

 other distinguished ecclesiastics present on that 

 occasion : — 



" For all that he saj'de in his sermone, 

 Rather then the Gospell sholde be comone, 



Bryngne people into erroure ; 

 He -wokle gladl\' soffre marterdome, 

 To uphold the devyls fredome, 



Of whome he is confessoure," &c. 



The Burying of the Mass (the title by which the 

 Satire was originally known) is mentioned for the 

 first time, I believe, by More in his Dialogue, 

 which was written in 1528, but not published till 

 the following year. By comparing the above date 

 of More's composition with another passage in 

 Tyndale's preface to The Parable of the Wicked 

 Mammon (8vo. Malborow, 1528), there will be 

 little difficulty in determining the exact period 

 when the two friars executed their metrical col- 

 loquy. In reference to his translation of the New 

 Testament, Tyndale adds : — 



"When that Avas ended [i.e. 1525] I took my leave, and 

 bade him [lloye] farewell for our two lives, and (as men 

 saj') a day longer. After we were departed, he went and 

 gat liim new friends ; which thing to do he passeth all that 

 ever I yet knew. And there, when he had stored him of 

 money, he gat him to Argentine [Strasbourg] .... A 

 year after that, and now twelve months before the print- 

 ing of this work, came one Jerome, a brother of Green- 

 wich also, through AVornis to Argentine which 



Jerome with all diligence I warned of Eoye's boldness, 

 and exhorted him to be ware of him .... Nevertheless, 

 when he was come to Argentine, William Roye .... set 

 him a work to make rhymes," &c. 



From the above quotation, it appears that upon 

 quitting Tyndale's service, at the close of 1525, 

 Koye betook himself to Strasbourg ; where, twelve 

 months afterwards, he came in contact with Je- 

 rome, newly arrived from England, and bearing, 

 no doubt, intelligence of Wolsey's extraordinary 

 proceedings at St. Paul's. The Satire, therefore, 

 cannot be dated earlier than 1526, or later than 

 1528. My presumption is, that it was both com- 

 posed and published in the intermediate year. 



The book has been twice exhibited to the So- 

 ciety of Antiquaries in London, and on each 

 occasion, strange to say, attributed to Skelton ; 

 upon the authority, I presume, of Anstis, who 

 confounded it with Why come ye not to Court? 

 It is reprinted, with a few notes, by Park, in the 

 first of his supplementary volumes of the Harleian 

 Miscellany. ^, 



P.S. Since penning the above Note, my atten- 

 tion has been directed to a passage in Mr. Ander- 

 son's Annals of the English Bible (vol. i. 205.), 

 where that gentleman has anticipated me in the 

 discovery of the printer of the Satire. 



THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND ITS DICTIONARIES. 



I think, Mr. Editor, I am paying no more than 

 a just tribute to " N. & Q." when I say that no 

 publication has ever so widely and so successfully 

 promoted what may be termed the courtesies of 

 literature. Your pages exhibit to us an increas- 

 ing friendly disposition amongst literary men, and 

 a willingness to impart their stored knowledge. I 

 trust that you may be the happy means of entirely 

 dispelling that selfishness which has too frequently 

 been displayed by men of letters : for, surely, it is 

 a "quality" of literary "intercommunication," 

 akin to that of Mercy, that 



" It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes." 



Permit me, then, to call your attention to a 

 species of literary selfishness, which, when once 

 "a note of" has been made in your journal, I 

 hope will be discontinued. Mr. Payne Knight 

 observed that "a dictionary was the remem- 

 brancer of a scholar, and the oracle of a dunce." 

 Though I cannot lay much claim to the former 

 title, I hope I am not obnoxious to the latter. 

 When working in the Reading Room of the British 

 Museum, like many others, I have occasion to re- 

 fer to the "Dictionary" depai'traent for authori- 

 ties, &c. Invariably, however, do I find that the 

 chief books of reference are removed. Todd's 

 Johnson, Richardson, French, German, Greek, 

 Latin, &c.. Dictionaries are taken away, and 

 placed beside readers in different parts of the 

 room ; and a reference which would have only 

 occupied a minute, is delayed for hours, and some- 

 times lost altogether. Surely this inconvenience 

 might be remedied by a request that such volumes 

 should not be removed beyond the table close at 

 hand to the shelves on which they are placed ? If 

 students require them all day, let them write for 

 another copy. Or, again, as the number of readers 

 in the new room has so greatly increased, surely 

 the authorities might give us a few additional 

 copies of the works most needed. 



Just one word more. In the case of your own 

 excellent publication, I wished to refer to your 

 General Index, and examine a particular volume 

 for an important purpose; but, to my intense 

 disgust, I found some "literary" gentleman had 

 removed the whole series to his own seat, and was . 

 amusing himself by a desultory perusal ! Will 

 you, then, good Mr. Editor (for your literary 

 courtesy is well known), kindly permit me to 

 make this Note ? and then, perhaps, measures may 

 be adopted by the authorities, or the hint taken 

 by some who have, probably inadvertently, caused 

 much inconvenience to myself and others, whose 

 time is limited, and who frequently come some 

 thirty or forty miles from the country. R. H. 



