the worlde, A.D. 1481, I observe the figures 74 rather conspicuously placed, and perhaps the device was then first adopted.

BOLTON CORNEY.

Minor Notes.

"They that touch pitch," &c.

—A few Sundays since the clergyman that I "sit under," quoting in his discourse the words "they that touch pitch will be defiled," ascribed them to "the wisest of men." A lady of his congregation (who was, I fear, more critical than devout) pounced upon her pastor's mistake, and asked me on the following Monday if I also had noticed it. I denied that it was one; but she laughed at my ignorance, produced a Shakspeare, and showed me the words in the mouth of Dogberry (Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Sc. 3.). However, by the help of a "Cruden," I was able to find the same expression, not indeed in Solomon, but in the son of Sirach (ch. xiii. v. 1.).

If Shakspeare's appropriation of this passage has not been noticed before, may I request the insertion of this note? It may possibly prevent other learned divines from falling into the common (?) mistake of thus quoting Dogberry as "the wisest of men."

E. J. G.

Preston.

Pasquinade.

—In May last was placed on Pasquin's statue in Rome the following triglot epigram, of which the original Latin was borrowed from "NOTES AND QUERIES." As it is not probable that the Papal police allowed it to remain long before the eyes of the lieges of his Holiness, allow me to lay up in your pages this memorial of a visit to Rome during the "Aggression" summer.

The Italian version will of course be put down as English-Italian, and therefore worse than mediocre; but I wished to perpetuate, along with the sense of the Latin couplet, a little jeu d'esprit which I saw half obliterated on a wall at Rovigo, in the Lombardo-Venetian territory; being a play on the family name and character of Pius IX.:

which may be read,

A. B. R.

Two Attempts to show the Sound of "ough" final.—

W. J. T.

Queries.

CAN BISHOPS VACATE THEIR SEES?

In Lord Dover's note on one of Walpole's Letters to Sir H. Mann (1st series, vol. iii. p 424.), I find it stated that Dr. Pearce, the well-known Bishop of Rochester, was not allowed to vacate his see, when in consequence of age and infirmity he wished to do so, on the plea that a bishopric as being a peerage is inalienable. The Deanery of Westminster, which he also held, he was allowed to resign, and did so.

Now my impression has always been, that a bishop, as far as his peerage is concerned, is much on the same footing as a representative peer of Scotland or Ireland; I mean that his peerage is resignable at will. Of course the representative peers are peers of Scotland or Ireland respectively; but by being elected representative peers they acquire a pro-tempore peerage of the realm coincident with the duration of the parliament, and at a dissolution require re-election, when of course any such peer need not be reappointed.

Now the clergy, says your correspondent CANONICUS EBORACENSIS (Vol. iv., p. 197.), are represented by the bishops. Although, therefore, whilst they are so representative, they are peers of the realm just as much as the lay members of the Upper House, I can see no reason why any bishop, who, like Dr. Pearce, feels old age and infirmity coming on, should not resign this representation, i.e. his peerage, or the temporal station which in England, owing to the existing connexion between church and state, attaches to the spiritual office of a bishop.

Of course, ecclesiastically speaking, there is no doubt at all that a bishop may resign his spiritual functions, i.e. the overlooking of his diocese, for any meet cause. Our colonial bishops, for instance, do so. The late warden of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, Bishop Coleridge, had been Bishop of Barbadoes. So that if Lord Dover's theory be correct, a purely secular reason, arising from the peculiar position of the English church, would prevent any conscientious bishop from resigning duties, to the discharge of which, from old age, bodily infirmity, or impaired mental organs, he felt himself unfit.

Perhaps some of your correspondents will give me some information on this matter.

K. S.

SANDERSON AND TAYLOR.

I shall be much obliged if any of your readers can explain the following coincidence between Sanderson and Jeremy Taylor. Taylor, in the beginning of the Ductor Dubitantium, says:

"It was well said of St. Bernard, 'Conscientia candor est lucis æternæ, et speculum sine macula Dei majestatis, et imago bonitatis illius;' 'Conscience is the brightness and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine Majesty, and the image of the goodness of God.' It is higher which Tatianus said of conscience, Μόνον εἶναι συνείδησιν Θεὸν, 'Conscience is God unto us,' which saying he had from Menander,

"God is in our hearts by his laws; he rules in us by his substitute, our conscience; God sits there and gives us laws; and as God said unto Moses, 'I have made thee a God to Pharaoh,' that is, to give him laws, and to minister in the execution of those laws, and to inflict angry sentences upon him, so hath God done to us."

In the beginning of Sanderson's second lecture, De Obligatione Conscientiæ, he says:

"Hine illud ejusdem Menandri. Βροτοῖς ἅπασιν ἡ συνείδησις Θεὸς; Mortalibus sum cuique Conscientia Deus est, Quo nimirum sensu dixit Dominus se constituisse Mosen Deum Pharaoni; quod seis Pharaoni voluntatem Dei subinde inculcaret, ad cum