24 ACCOUNTS, ETC., OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 



at Paris about 1585 : " The Character of the Beaste," and 

 " The Difference of the Churches," by John Smyth, the 

 " Se-Baptist," printed in Holland about 1609, two of the 

 rarest and most singular specimens of Puritan divinity 

 printed abroad : Darcie, " A Monumentall Pyramid," an elegy 

 on the death of Lodovick, Duke of Richmond, 1624 : " The 

 Historic of Friar Rushe," 1620: Erondell, "The French 

 Garden," 1605 : " The Batchelor's Banquet, 1651 " : " Orders 

 taken and enacted for orphans and their portions," 1580 ; and 

 " Certaine articles concerning the statute lately made for 

 the relief of the poor," 1599 ; two books of which no other 

 copies are known to exist. 



The acquisitions of early Scotch books, besides " John 

 Knox's Liturgy," 1565, include five of extraordinary rarity : the 

 first Scotch edition of Calvin's Catechism, Edinburgh, 1564 : 

 George Hay, Confutation of the Abbot of Crossraguel, 1563 : 

 Sir David Lindsay, Dialogue between Experience and a 

 Courtier, London, 1566 : The Flytting betwixt Montgomerie 

 and Polwart, Edinburgh, 1629, an amazingly copious vocabu- 

 lary of abusive terms in Lowland Scotch : A proclamation of 

 James Douglas, Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland, May 31, 

 1575, " Anent the universall course of the new markit 

 money," in Lowland Scotch. 



Among more recent productions of English literature 

 acquired for the Museum is one of the highest interest, 

 the Poems of Arthur Eenry Hallam,. printed to accompany 

 Tennyson's own poems, but suppressed and apparently 

 inaccessible to the editors of Hallam's literary remains, since 

 it includes many pieces not to be found there. The acquisi- 

 tion has also been made of the fii'st American edition of 

 Tennyson, 1846 ; of Sheridan's presentation copy of his 

 " Monody on Garrick " to Boswell and of a copy of the 

 privately printed edition of T. L. Peacock's " Paper Money 

 Lyrics," 1837, which have not been completely reproduced in 

 his collected works. 



The principal collections obtained by purchase have been 

 one of 146 broadsides of the 16th and 17th centuries, and one 

 of tracts relating to the case of Governor Darling. 



Among curiosities may be especially mentioned a presenta- 

 tion copy, with autograph, of Voltaire's " Refutation d'un 

 ecrit anonime contre la memoire de feu M. Joseph Saurin," 

 1758, a remarkable tract whose existence as a separate 

 publication seems to have been unknown. Harris' Life of 

 Cromwell, 1772, with MS. notes by W. Squire, the fabricator 

 of the forged documents relating to Cromwell which imposed 

 upon Carlyle ; testimonials given to Robert Louis Stevenson 

 on his candidature for the professorship of modei'n history at 

 the University of Edinburgh and the late General Gordon's 

 memorandum on the Treaties of Berlin and San Stefano, 

 privately printed, 1880. 



