io" s. ii. NOV. 12, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
399
It is not wholly satisfactory to learn that the wine
and the beer at Queens' College were undrinkable,
and to find Erasmus supplicating Ammonius for a
skin of Greek wine, and meaning by a skin a largish
cask, " utrem majusoulum." He defers returning
this, in order that he may still delectate on the
smell of the Greek wine. From London, after
dedicating to Colet his * Copia Verborum ac Rerum,'
he sends to Archbishop Warham some ' Dialogues of
Lucian,' adding, " ' Trifles,' you will say. Yes, but
learned trifles, which may serve to make you laugh."
Writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he attri
butes a severe attack of stone from which he suffers
to the badness of the Cambridge wine and the
consequent necessity to drink beer. In Ant-
werp in 1516 he is still pleading poverty, and
complaining that he must sell his horses or dispense
with clothing. The last letter in the volume-
addressed to John Caesarius from Antwerp, and
dated 16 Aug., 1517, the latter part of Erasmus's
fifty-first year has literary interest, since it ex-
presses his disapproval of the once - celebrated
- Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum.' Something more
than a boon to the scholar is the completed book. It is a work in which such will revel, as does a poet in 'The Fairy Queen,' turning to it and finding in it a species of second ' Consolations of Philosophy.'
The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Edited, with Ad- ditions, by Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. In 8 vols. -Vols. I. and II. (Bell & Sons.) IN reissuing in a cheaper and more popular form Mr. Wheatley's definite and delightful edition of Pepys's immortal ' Diary ' Messrs. Bell & Sons are conceding to the scholar and the reader of moderate means one of the greatest boons within reach. Dur- ing the last decade of the past century (1893-9) this edition of Pepys was first given to the world, and it has since, we are told, been frequently reprinted. Testimony to its transcendent merits was afforded in our columns on the appearance of each successive volume (see General Indexes to Eighth and Ninth Series passim), and since that time all previous editions have gone out of favour and almost out of date. The work remained, however, inaccessible, except in a public library, to those of exiguous means, and those in the habit, like ourselves, of picking it up at odd moments and referring con- stantly to its excellent index were necessarily the few. Its price is now reduced by much more than one-half, and though it cannot yet be said to be within reach of all book-lovers, yet the purchaser cannot charge himself with special extravagance. Besides Mr. Wheatley's admirable and authori- tative life of Pepys and some other preliminary matter, the two volumes now issued contain the
- Diary ' from the outset, 1 January, 1659/60, until
31 December, 1662. As frontispiece to the first volume appears an admirable reproduction of the portrait of Samuel Pepys by Sir Godfrey Kneller in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge. We cannot fancy any book-lover resting without this work in its new and attractive shape.
Christian Morals. By Sir Thomas Browne. (Cam- bridge, University Press.)
To the previous volumes issued in a quarto edition de luxe from the Cambridge University Press has been added Sir Thomas Browne's 'Christian Morals,' a work less known than the ' Religio Medici' and the 'Hydriotaphia'of the same author, but not less worthy of study or remunerative in
perusal. Earlier works of the same series are
Earle's ' Microcosmographie ' and Sidney's ' Defence
of Poesie ' : a succeeding volume will consist of Ben
Jonson's 'Underwoods. The appearance of this
volume of the Norwich knight was over seventy
years later than that of the 4 Religio Medici,' the
first edition having been issued in 1716 from the same
press from which it reappears. It was edited by John
Jeffery, D D., Arch-Deacon of Norwich, the attribu-
tion of authorship being justified by Elizabeth Littel-
ton, Browne's daughter, in a dedication to the Earl
of Buchan, as well as by the archdeacon's own
testimony. It consists of a series of fragmentary
observations, and may well have been intended as
material for an enlarged edition of the ' Religio
Medici.' Thoroughly characteristic in all respects,
it displays a remarkable amount of erudition, and
has a style which, charged as it is with Latinisms >
rises to much eloquence. Like other works of its
author, it shows the influence of a study of Mon-
taigne. In the third part we find in altered phrase a
repetition of the famous condemnation of the men-
tion of sins heteroclitical : " things which should
never have been or never have been known," and
a statement that " Trismegistus his. Circle, whose
center is everywhere and circumference nowhere,
was no Hyperbole." We may not, however, dis-
cuss the merits of a book which is, or should be,
well known, or dispute as to evidences of an author-
ship which no one contests. Like its predecessors,
the book is issued in an edition exquisite in all
typographical respects, and limited virtually to
225 copies for England and America. No change
is made in the spelling or pronunciation of the
original, and the whole is calculated to delight.
equally the scholar and the bibliophile. We know
not what is to be the extent of the series, but it ia
sure to prove a good investment as well as an
eminently enviable possession.
Birmingham Midland Institute [and] Birmingham Archaeological Society. Transactions,
and Report for the Year 1903. (Walsall, printed
for Subscribers only by W. H. Robinson.)
THIS is an excellent issue. It contains nothing
whatever that we could have wished to be omitted.
Several of the papers are very interesting, and are
especially valuable from the wide range of subjects,
that are discussed. We have been much pleased
by the account of the excursions taken oy the
members to places seldom visited by the outside
world, though it is painful to read of the way old
churches have been overhauled by those whom it
is still the fashion to dub church restorers. In one
place we read of a very fine late Norman chancel
arch being pulled down to make way for a modern
pointed arch.
Mr. Arthur Westwood contributes an excellent account of wrought plate in Birmingham, with notes on the old silversmiths who carried on their business in that great centre of industry. It was not till the year 1773 that Birmingham had an assay jffice, at which hall-marks, as they are called, could t>e impressed on the works of the local manu- facturers. Before that time all silver goods, with the exception of small objects, had to be sent to one of the assay offices which had been previously founded. London and Chester were the two places to which the Birmingham workers in the precious metals commonly resorted. This was found a very great hardship. The roads were bad far worse. than most of us moderns can conceive and what
