BREWERY, Burton-on-Trent; and at the under-mentioned Branch Establishments:

MESSRS. ALLSOPP & SONS take the opportunity of announcing to PRIVATE FAMILIES that their ALES, so strongly recommended by the Medical Profession, may be procured in DRAUGHT and BOTTLES GENUINE from all the most RESPECTABLE LICENSED VICTUALLERS, on "ALLSOPP'S PALE ALE" being specially asked for.

When in bottle, the genuineness of the label can be ascertained by its having "ALLSOPP & SONS" written across it.

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1854.

Notes.

CURIOUS OLD PAMPHLET.

Grubbing among old pamphlets, the following has turned up:

"A Fragment of an Essay towards the most ancient Histories of the Old and New Worlds, connected. Intended to be carried on in four Parts or Æras. That is, from the Creation of all Things to the Time of the Deluge: thence to the Birth of Abraham: from that Period to the Descent of Jacob and his Family into Egypt: and, lastly, to the Time of the Birth of Moses. Attempted to be executed in Blank Verse, 8vo. pp. 59. Printed in the year 1765."

This Miltonic rhapsody supposes Adam, when verging on his nine hundreth year, to have assembled his descendants to a kind of jubilee, when sacrifices, and other antediluvian solemnities, being observed, "Seth, the pious son of his comfort, gravely arose, and, after due obedience to the first of men, humbly beseeched the favour to have their memories refreshed by a short history of the marvellous things in the beginning." Then Adam thus:—Hereupon the anonymous author puts into the mouth of the great progenitor of the human race a history of the Creation, in blank verse, in accordance with the Mosaic and orthodox account. Concluding his revelations without reference to the Fall, Seth would interrogate their aged sire upon what followed thence, when Adam excuses himself from the painful recital by predicting the special advent in after times of a mind equal to that task:

This curious production is avowedly from the other side of the Tweed, and I would ask if its paternity is known to any of your antiquarian correspondents there or here.

The Fragment is preceded by a very remarkable Preface, containing "some reasons why this little piece has thus been thrown off in such a loose and disorderly manner;" among which figure the desire "to disperse a parcel of them gratis,—because they are, perhaps, worth nothing; that nobody may pay for his folly but himself; that, if his Fragment is damned, which it probably may be, he will thenceforth drop any farther correspondence with Adam, Noah, Abraham, &c.; and, lastly, that he may be benefited by the criticisms upon its faults and failings, while he himself lurks cunningly behind the curtain. But if, after all," says the facetious author, "this little northern urchin shall chance to spring forward under the influence of a more southern and warmer sun, the author will then endeavour to bring his goods to market as plump, fresh, and fair as the soil will admit."

I presume, however, the public did not call for any of the farther instalments promised in the title.

J. O.

ERRATA IN PRINTED BIBLES.

Mr. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, has an article entitled "The Pearl Bibles and Six Thousand Errata," in which he gives some notable specimens of the blunders perpetrated in the printing of Bibles in earlier times. The great demand for them prompted unscrupulous persons to supply it without much regard to carefulness or accuracy; and, besides, printers were not so expert as at the present day.

"The learned Ussher," Mr. D'Israeli tells us, "one day hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, entered the shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and his horror he discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first occasion of complaint to the king, of the insufferable negligence and incapacity of the London press; and first bred that great contest which followed between the University of Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of printing Bibles."

Even during the reign of Charles I., and in the time of the Commonwealth, the manufacture of spurious Bibles was carried on to an alarming extent. English Bibles were fabricated in Holland for cheapness, without any regard to accuracy. Twelve thousand of these (12mo.) Bibles, with notes, were seized by the King's printers as being contrary to the statute; and a large impression of these Dutch-English Bibles were burned, by order of the Assembly of Divines, for certain errors. The Pearl (24mo.) Bible, printed by Field, in 1653, contains some scandalous blunders;—for instance, Romans, vi. 13.: "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin"—for unrighteousness. 1 Cor. vi. 9.: "Know ye not that

the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?"—for shall not inherit.

The printer of Miles Coverdale's Bible, which was finished in 1535, and of which only two perfect copies, I believe, are known to exist—one in the British Museum, the other in the library of the Earl of Jersey—deserves some commendation for his accuracy. At the end of the New Testament is the following solitary erratum:

"A faute escaped in pryntyng the New Testament. Upon the fourth leafe, the first syde in the sixth chapter of S. Mathew, 'Seke ye first the kingdome of heaven,' read, 'Seke ye first the kingdome of God.'"

Abhba.

IMPOSSIBILITIES OF HISTORY.

"That unworthy hand."

I am not aware that the fact of Cranmer's holding his right hand in the flames till it was consumed has been questioned. Fox says:

"He stretched forth his right hand into the flames, and there held it so stedfast that all the people might see it burnt to a coal before his body was touched."—P. 927. ed. Milner, London, 1837, 8vo.

Or, as the passage is given in the last edition,—

"And when the wood was kindled, and the fire began to burn near him, he put his right hand into the flame, which he held so stedfast and immovable (saving that