2»'i a VIII. Sept. 3. '59.] 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



181 



LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. 1859. 



No. 192. — CONTENTS. 



KOTES : — On the Date of Erasmus's First Visit to Oxford, by Rev. W. 

 J. Deane, 181 — Abel Uoper and George Kidpatli, by J. Yeowell, 1S2 _ 

 Old English Booksellers, by John Camden Hotten,/6. — The Badge 

 of Poverty, by W. J. Pinks, 181 —Leigh Hunt's Translation of Walter 

 Mapes's Drioking Song, 185. 



Minor Notes : — Birth-place of Sir Isaac Newton — Matriculation Lists 

 of Students of the Inns of Court — Sedan Chairs in Dublin — Petrarch 

 and Lord Falkland — Nugce — The late Duke of Wellington ,185. 



MiivoR Qderies : — Society for Assurance against Purgatory — Lord 

 Fane: Count De Sallis — Marriage Customs — Bartholomew-Cokes — 

 Side Saddles — Falston House, Wilts — Hampshire Arms — Edward 

 Underbill the "Hot Gospeller"— Albion Magazine —Dallaway's 

 "Constantinople"- Vanduiss —Polytheism — Sir Peter Gleane — 

 Corrected Printers' Proofs, 186. 



Minor Qderikswith Answers:— Sir Humphrey May, Chancellor of 

 the Duchy of Lancaster, teiap. Charles I.— William Wood — Sau 

 Giovanni Gualbcrto — " Merry Tricks " — Cantankerous, 188. 



REPLIES :— Junius and Henry Flood, 189 — Sundry Replies, by Pro- 

 fessor Do Morgan, 190 — Oriainal of the Faust Legends, by J. Macray, 

 191 — Tricolor, Origin of, as the Flag of France, 192 — Major Dimcan- 

 sonand the MassacreofGlencoe, 193— Origin of the Judges' Black Cap, 

 by Rev. T. Boys, 76. — St. Patrick's Ridges, 191 — Chatterton Manu- 

 script, by Hugh Owen, lb. 



REi>i.TBt TO Minor Queries: — James Moore— York House — Titles 

 conferred by Oliver Cromwell — Pishty, Cess-here — Christopher An- 

 stey — A Bear Hunt on the Thames — Family Herald Essayists — 

 — Shim — " Ligaturas facere"— Peter Gleane, &o., 195. 



ON THE DATE OP ERASMUS's FIRST VISIT TO OXFORD. 



Writers of the Life of Erasmus have always 

 found it a difficult matter to settle the*dates of 

 the chief occurrences in his history. The errone- 

 ous dates appended to many of the letters, the 

 diflferent modes of reckoning the year which .he 

 employed, and his ignorance of his own exact age, 

 have compelled biographers to resort to conjec- 

 ture in fixing the events of the first forty years of 

 his life. Perhaps the most difficult point of all to 

 settle, is the true date of his first visit to EnglanjJ 

 and Oxford. Almost all the earlier biographers — 

 as Gaudin, Knight, Hess, Le Clerc, Bayle, Bu- 

 rigni, and Jortin — place it in 1497 ; while Miiller 

 and the writers in Ersch & Gruber's Cydopcedia, 

 and the new Dictionnaire BiograpJiique, fix it in 

 the following year. There is no doubt that Eras- 

 mus was resident in England at the later date ; the 

 question is, had he paid a previous visit ? The 

 case stands thus : — Under the date 1497 we have 

 three letters written from Oxford ; one from Colet, 

 introducing himself to Erasmus, and congratulat- 

 ing him upon his arrival at the University ; one 

 from Sixtinus laudatory of some verses of Eras- 

 mus, which had been shown to him by Prior 

 Charnoct, and sending him in return an epigram 

 of his own ; and the third, a reply of our scholar 

 to this last, dated " Oxoniae, 28 Octobris, anno 

 1497." There is a fourth letter, written from 

 London, Dec. 5th of this same year, wherein men- 

 tion is made of his acquaintance with Colet, 

 Grocyn, and More. This is followed on the 14th 

 by one from Paris. On the other band, the an- 

 swer of Erasmus to Colet's address is dated 1498 ; 

 and as it must have been written immediately on 



the receipt of the latter (for there could have 

 been no delay in replying to so warm a greeting 

 from a resident in the same city), one of the two 

 dfctes is manifestly wrong. Thus far the rival 

 signatures destroy one another. But it is argued 

 that Colet did not reside in Oxford till 1498, the 

 assertion being sustained by a reference to Knight's 

 Life of Colet, where it is said that the future 

 Dean " returned from his travels on the Continent 

 in 1497, was ordained Deacon, Dec. 17th of the 

 same year, stayed some months with his parents, 

 and finally read his theological lectures at Oxford 

 in 1498," But Miillei', from whose work the 

 above argument is derived, has trusted too impli- 

 citly to the German translation of Knight's book. 

 The English expression is quite indefinite : " he 

 seems to have been travelling abroad till 1497, or 

 thereabouts." And there must be some remark- 

 able error in the date of his ordination, as Knight 

 mentions that he was admitted to the priesthood 

 " in festo S. Annas [July 26], 1497," nearly five 

 months before he was ordained Deacon. Certainly, 

 the documents from which Knight compiled his 

 biography may have reckoned the beginning of 

 the year from Advent Sunday, in which case 

 Colet would have been ordained Deacon in what 

 we should call 1496 ; but this would strengthen 

 the argument for his presence in Oxford in the 

 following year. It is, farther, nowhere said that 

 Colet's lectures commenced in 1498 ; indeed, 

 Wood* notices that he expounded S. Paul's 

 Epistles in 1497, 1498, 1499, &c. Another argu- 

 ment for the later of the two dates assigned to 

 Erasmus's visit must be mentioned. We know 

 that he spent the first nine months (with the ex- 

 ception of a week or two in January) of the year 

 .1497 at Cambrai and Tornhoens ; yet there are 

 many letters written from Paris, which city he is 

 supposed not to have reached till the middle of 

 December. Would he have had time to conduct 

 such a mass of correspondence in the short space 

 assigned to his sojourn there? The answer is 

 plain ; he was a very ready writer, and his year 

 often extended to March 25th, so that the time 

 allowed for the composition of these epistles must 

 be lengthened by three months. Again, one of 

 these letters t, dated December 14, speaks of his 

 having resided for some months at Paris. Now 

 is this consistent with his sojourn in England ? 

 But there is nothing in the letter which neces- 

 sarily implies that he is referring to the period 

 immediately preceding ; and farther, it contains a 

 distinct allusion to his visit to our island (" quod 

 apud Anglos, dum istinc abissem, parum sinceriter 

 egerit,") which indeed may suggest that the Epis- 

 tle, if wrongly dated, is dated too early, but which 

 completely refutes the notion of its being written 

 before any such visit had taken place. Once 



Athen. Oxon., vol. i. p. 12. 



t Ep. l^: 



