and §, No3,, Jan. 19. °56.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES, 
51 
councell-men, recorder, and other officers, whose 
appointments were vested in the corporation : 
“The form here directed to be used in choosing the 
Mayor, is still punctually observed (says Mr. Gribble, ¢. e. 
in 1830); but although the ceremony of ballotting is 
kept up, such an occurrence as a contest at the election 
of a Mayor is, I believe, never known; it is always equally 
well understood, both before and after the ballot, who is 
to fill the office.” — P. 333. 
“The cups (it is added, p.27%) are of wood, and are 
furnished with shallow brass pans, in which are holes 
through which the balls drop. One of them bears this 
inscription: ‘POTTS AND- BALLS, MDLVI.’” 
Whether, so far back as 1690, municipal bodies 
were, or were not, “ Normal schools of agitation,” 
I cannot determine; but some very prudent regu- 
lations are laid down in bye-laws 39. and 40., which 
intimate that occasional improprieties of speech 
and conduet broke out in the deliberations of the 
worshipful corporation of Barnstaple. In these 
bye-laws — 
“Tt is ordained and established, that there shall not be 
spoken or used by the said Common Councell, or any of 
them, any unseemly, irreverent, or reproachful words, one 
to the other of them; but that every of them shall, in 
decent, comely, and quiet manner, speak and answer uato 
the matter propounded ; and if any of them demean him- 
self otherwise, and be faulty and offend therein, the party 
so misdemeaning himself and offending to be fined 3s. 4d. 
. . . Also, for avoiding of confusion, and disorderly and 
superfluous speeches and talk in the assemblies of the 
said Common Councell, it is ordered and established, that 
none shall speak or talk while another is speaking, neither 
talk one with another after silence is commanded to be 
kept by Mr. Mayor; but that every one shall give atten- 
tive ear to him that speaketh, untill he hath ended his 
speech, who shall direct all his speech to the Mayor, if 
present, and if absent, to the Alderman, and that to the 
matter propounded and‘then in question, upon paine of 
paying for every such offence 12d.”—P. 366. 
These specimens of “the wisdom of our ances- 
tors,’ may not be uninteresting to some of your 
readers, G. 
Barum. 
‘BEZALEEL MORRICE. 
Miscellanies, or Amusements in Prose and Verse, 
8vo., 1712; An Essay on the Poets (in verse), 
8vo,, 1712. The first of these bears upon the 
title “ by Mr. Bezaleel Morrice ;” and the second, 
although anonymous, being from the same press, 
in the same vein, and forming part of the same 
volume, may also be ascribed to this mysterious 
hero of The Dunciad : 
“ Weay’n rings with laughter: of the laughter vain, 
Dulness, good queen, repeats the jest again; 
Three wicked imps, of her own Grub Street choir, 
She deck’d like Congreve, Addison, and Prior; 
Mears, Warner, Wilkins, run; delusive thought! 
Breval, Bond, Bezaleel, the varlets caught.” 
Book ii. 1. 121., &e. 
- Scrrerervs would lead us to believe that the 
2nd $, No 3,] 
name. is fictitious; remarking upon the pas- 
sage: 
“ As for Bezaleel, it carries forgery in the very name; 
nor is it, as the others are, a surname. Thou may’st de- 
pend upon it no such authors ever lived; all phantoias.” 
And having no annotated edition of Pope to 
turn to, Lam unable to say if modern researches 
into the heroes of The Dunciad have thrown more 
light upon.this “ spiflicated poet.” 
Looking over the above-noted pieces by Be- 
zaleel Morrice, for the provocation he had given 
the waspish Pope, I find, in the Miscellanies, the 
“ Complaint of Melpomene to Jupiter on behalf of 
herself and Sister Muses against the Criticks;” 
which looks like a Grub Street growl at such 
literary scalpers as Pope and Swift. Again, in 
his Hssay, Belzaleel starts off with a shy at the 
Mohawks of literature : 
“ Ye bards of small desert, but vast conceit!” 
and takes offensively high eround, when he thus 
dictates to the poets of the Augustan age: 
“ With due submission, thus receive your law, 
And rules to frame your future conduct draw ; 
Pass mighty Homer and the Mantuan by, 
*Tis much too rash to dare to climb so high!” 
Tf it was then known that Pope was engaged 
upon a translation of the “mighty Homer,” here 
was sufficient offence to secure the unhappy Be- 
zaleel a niche in The Dunciad. J. 
P.S. Since writing the above, I have seen An 
Epistle to Mr. Welsted, and a Satyre on the English 
Translations of Homer, Bickerton, 1721; in which 
Bezaleel Morrice follows up the preceding ad- 
monition by an attack upon thé published work. 
‘The passage in The Dunciad is, indeed, a parody 
upon another in this pamphlet. 
Minar Mates, 
Columbus's Signature. —W. Irving, in the Ap- 
pendix to his History of the Life and Voyages of 
Columbus, No. 35., has given a confused account 
of a Signor Spatorna’s explanation of Columbus’s 
signature, which leaves the difficulty somewhat 
darker than before. 
Would you think it worth while to lay before 
your readers my method of deciphering this sig- 
nature, which Mr. Irving states has been a matter 
of some discussion? It might call forth a re- 
joinder, such as would set this question at rest. 
The signature runs thus: 
Ss 
s A s 
x MW Bs 
Xpo ferens 
FE] Almirante. 
From the fact of Xpo (Xpy, I should conjec- 
ture,) being written in Greek letters, and from 
