Fabricius' Hippolytus) I discovered a fine copy of Badius Ascensius' editio princeps, bound up with Aulus Gellius and Macrobius, but utterly ignored in the Christ Church catalogue.

This instance shows the necessity of carefully examining the insides of books, as well as the backs and title-pages, during the operation of cataloguing. Our public libraries are rich in instances of a similar oversight, and many an important and recherché work is unknown, or acquires a conventional rarity, through its concealment at the end of a less valuable, but more bulky, treatise.

I have been aroused to the propriety of publishing this suggestion, by purchasing, "dog cheap", a volume labelled Petrus Crinitus, but containing Hegesippus (i.e. the pseudo-Ambrosian translation from Josephus) and the Latin grammarians at the end, all by the afore-mentioned printer.

THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY.

Virgil and Goldsmith.

—The same beautiful thought is traceable in both Virgil and Goldsmith. In book iii. of the Æneid, lines 495-6. we read:

In the Traveller these lines occur:

ALFRED GATTY.

Mental Almanac (Vol. iv., p. 203.).

—MEM. The additive number for this present November is 1. Hence next Wednesday is 4 + 1, that is, the 5th. The Sunday following, is 1 + 1 + 7, that is, the 9th. And similarly for any other day or week in this month.

A. E. B

Leeds, Nov. 1. 1851.

Merlin and the Electric Telegraph.

—The following extract from the prophecy of Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth's British History, book vii. ch. 4., reads rather curiously in these days of railways and of electric telegraph communication between France and England:—

"Eric shall hide his apples within it, and shall make subterraneous passages. At that time shall the stones speak, and the sea towards the Gallic Coast be contracted into a narrow space. On each bank shall one man hear another, and the soil of the isle shall be enlarged. The secrets of the deep shall be revealed, and Gaul shall tremble for fear."

I should like to be informed if there have ever been any detailed and systematic attempts made at interpreting the whole of this curious prophecy of Merlin's.

W. FRASER.

Queries.

BISHOP BRAMHALL AND MILTON.

Perhaps I am convicting myself of the most benighted ignorance by asking some of your learned correspondents to elucidate for me a letter of Bramhall's, which I extract from his works. It was written to his son from Antwerp, and relates to the early years of our great Milton at Cambridge, dated:

"Antwerpe, May. 9/19, 1654.

"That lying abusive book [viz., the Def. Pop. Ang.] was written by Milton himself, one who was sometime Bishopp Chappell's pupil in Christ Church in Cambridge, but turned away by him, as he well deserved to have been, out of the University, and out of the society of men. If Salmasius his friends knew as much of him as I, they would make him go near to hang himself. But I desire not to wound the nation through his sides, yet I have written to him long since about it roundly. It seems he desires not to touch upon this subject."—Works, vol. i. p. 94, Oxford, 1842.

That Milton was rusticated from Cambridge, and besides flogged by Dr. Chappell, there seems little reason to doubt, but it is equally clear that the punishment was only a temporary one, as he again went into residence, and took the degrees of bachelor and master of arts in due course. Whence, then, this sweeping accusation of the great and good Bramhall's, whose character is a sufficient safeguard that he at all events believed what he said? Aubrey relates the story of Milton's being whipped by Dr. Chappell, and afterwards being "transferred to the tuition of one Dr. Tovell, who dyed parson of Lutterworth."[2] Milton himself (Elegiarum Liber, Eleg. I. ad Carolum Deodatum) speaks of his residence in London, and alludes, rather gratefully, to his "exilium" from Cambridge, which he heartily disliked. He also alludes to his being flogged, as there seems a whole world of meaning in Cæteraque:

[2] Dr. Warton has given a long note on the word Cæteraque in his edition of Milton's Poems, 1791, p. 421. He suggests that probably "Dr. Tovell" should read "Dr. Tovey, parson of Kegworth, in Leicestershire."

We then get a short sketch of his employments and amusements in London; and his return to Cambridge is mentioned in the palinode to the last of his elegies:

Having now cleared my way in as brief a manner as possible, I must profess my utter disbelief in the enormities of Milton's life at Cambridge. He was certainly flogged, but then he was only eighteen years old at the time, and we know that flogging was permitted by the statutes of many colleges, and was a favorite recreation amongst the deans, tutors, and censors of the day. Bramhall's letter has indeed been a marvellous stumbling-block in my way, ever since the appearance of the last edition of his works; but I do hope that some of your learned correspondents will dispel the clouds and shadows that surround me, and prove that, at all events, Milton was not worse than his neighbours.

Dr. South and Cowley were never flogged at college, but certainly they were often flogged at school, or they could not speak so feelingly on the subject:

"Those 'plagosi Orbilii' (writes South), those executioners, rather than instructors of youth; persons fitted to lay about them in a coach or cart, or to discipline boys before a Spartan altar, or rather upon it, than to have anything to do in a Christian school. I would give these pedagogical Jehus, those furious school-drivers, the same advice which the poet says Phœbus gave his son