122 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 68. 



.intlered skulls of this animal. Shoulil W. E,. C. 

 or any other reader of "Notes and Queries," 

 desire further information on this subject, I will 



ffladlv, if in my power, afford it. 



S. P. 11. T. (a M. R. D. S 



Hrjjlics to iHinor caurn'riS. 



Coverdalc Bible (Vol. iii., p. 54.). — Your cor- 

 respondent Echo is quite right in declaring Sir. 

 Granville Penn's statement, that Coverdale used 

 Tyndale's New Test, in liis Eible of 1535, to he 

 quite wrong. Mr. Penn very probably took his 

 statement from the Preface to D'Oyley and IMant's 

 }3ible, as published by the Christian Knowledge 

 Society, which contains a very erroneous account 

 of the earliest English versions. 



Tyndale's version of the New Testament was 

 not incorporated in any version of the whole Bible 

 till the jiublication of what is called Matthewe's 

 Bible in 1537. 



For more particular statements confirmed by 

 proofs, your correspondent may consult Ander- 

 son's Annals of the English Bible, under the dates 

 of the respective editions, or his appendix to 

 vol. ii., pp. viii., ix. ; or Mr. Pearson's biograjjhicai 

 notice of Covenhdc, prefixed to the Parker Soc. 

 edit, of his Remains; or the biographical notice of 

 Tyndale, prefixed to the Parker Soc. edit, of his 

 Works, pp. Ixxiv., Ixxv. ; or Two Letters to Bishop 

 Marsh on the Independence of the Authorised Ver- 

 sion, Tpuhlished for me by Ilatchard in 1S27 and 

 1828. Henry Walter. 



Epitaph (Vol. iii., p. 57.)- — The name of the 

 "worthie knyght" is Sir Thomas Gravener^ as 

 A. B. R. might have seen in the printed Catalogue 

 of the IlarTeian MSS. AVho he was, is a more 

 difficult question to answer; but there was a 

 family of that name settled in Staffordshire, as 

 appears from MS. Harl. 1476. fol. 250. The 

 epitaph in question (at fol. 28 b of the old num- 

 bering, or 24 b of the new, not fol. 25 b.) is inserted 

 among several short poems wiitten by Sir Thomas 

 Wyatl; and the epitaph itself has a capital^ W 

 affixed to it, as if it were also of his conqiosition : 

 but I do not find it inserted in Dr. Nott's edition 

 of his poetical works, in 1816 ; nor does this MS. 

 appear to have been consulted by Dr. Nott. And 

 here I may take the liberty of remarking, how de- 

 sirable it is that your correspondents, in sending 

 any extracts from old English MSS. to the "Notes 

 AND Queries," should adhere strictly to the ori- 

 ginal orthogr:iYjhy, or else modernise it altogether. 

 A. B. R. evidently intends to retain the ancient 

 spelling; yet, from baste or inadvertence, he has 

 committed no less than forty-four literal errors in 

 transcribing this short epitaph, and three verbal 

 ones, namely, itt for that (1. 11.), Hys for The 

 (1. 14.), and or for and (1. 17.). Another curious 



source of error may Iicre be pointed out. Nearly 

 all the MSS. contained in the British Museum 

 collections are not only distinguished by a number, 

 but have a. press-mark stamped on the back, wliich 

 is denoted by Phtt. (an abbreviation of PhUeits, 

 press), with the number and shelf. Thus the 

 Ilarleian MS. 78., referred to by A. B. R., stands 

 in pi-ess (Pint.) LXIll. shelf E. Inconsequence 

 of the Cottonian collection having been originally 

 designated after the names of the twelve Caesars 

 (whose busts, together with those of Cleopatra and 

 Faustina, stood above the presses), it appears to 

 have been supposed that other classical names 

 served as references to the remaining portions of 

 the manuscript department. In A. B. R.'s com- 

 munication, Pint, is expressed by the name of 

 Pluto ; in a volume of Miss Strickland's Lives of 

 the Queens of Scotland, lately publislied, it is meta- 

 morphosed into Plutus; and the late Dr. Adam 

 Clarke refers to some of Dr. Dee's MSS. in the 

 Sloane (more correctly, Cottonian') library, under 

 Plutarch xvi. G! (See Catalogue of his i\iSS., 8vo., 

 1835, p. 62.) The same anuising error is more 

 formally repeated by Dr. J. F. Payen, in a recent 

 pamphlet, entitled Nonveaux Docuuwids inedits on 

 pen connus sur Montaigne, 8vo., 1850, at p. 24. of 

 which he lefcrs to " Bibl. Eserton, vol. 23., PZi<- 

 tarch, f. 167.," \_Plut. CLXVil. F.], and adds in a 

 note : 



" On salt que dans nos bibliothetjiies les grandes 

 divisions sont mai quies par Ics Icttres dc I'alpluibct ; au 

 MuseK Britannique cent pur dcs tioins de pirsonnages 

 celebres iju'un les desit/ne." fi, 



Probdbilisni (Vol. iii., p. 61.). — Probabilism, so 

 fiir as it means the principle of reasoning or acting 

 ujion tlie opinion of eminent teachers or writers, 

 was the principle of the Pythagoreans, whose ipse 

 dixit, speaking of their master, is proverbial ; and 

 of Aristotle, in his Topics. 



But probabilism, in its strict sense, I presume, 

 means the doctrine so common among the Jesuits, 

 200 years ago, and so well stated by Pascal, that 

 it is lawful to act upon an opinion expressed by a 

 single writer of weiglit, though contra''y to one's 

 own opinion, and entirely overbalanced, either in 

 weight or numbers, by the opinion of other writers. 



Jeremy Taylor, in his Ductor Bubilantinm, tells 

 us that this doctrine, though very prevalent, was 

 c[uite modern; and that the old Casuists, according 

 to the plain suggestions of common sense, held 

 ilirectly the contrary, namely, that tlic less pro- 

 bable opinion must give way to the more probable. 



All this may be no answer to the deeper re- 

 search, perhaps, of your enquirer, — but it may 

 possibly be interesting to general readers, as 

 well as the following refined and ingenious 

 sophism which was used in its support : — They 

 said that all agreed that you could not be wrong 

 in using the more probable, best supported, opi- 



