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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io< s. i. JAN. so, 100*.

an oven. It was much recommended in the last century by Dr. Percival, partly as con- taining the largest portion of nutritious matter in the smallest space. John Timbs, F.S.A., the author of 'Something for Every- body ' (q.v. p. 200), remembered many saloop- stalls in our streets. The date of that work

is 1861. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

MR. CLARK will find a good deal about this concoction in the new edition of Yule's 4 Anglo-Indian Glossary,' s.v. ' Saleb,' where references are given to articles in ' N. & Q.' on its modern use. W. CROOKE.

"LOST IN A CONVENT'S SOLITARY GLOOM" (10 th S. i. 67) is to be found in Pope's ' Eloisa to Abelard,' 1. 38. B. ENGLISH.

[MR. YARDLEY also refers to Pope.]

BIRCH-SAP WINE (9 th S. xi. 467; xii. 50, 296; 10 th S. i. 18). William Simpson, of Wakefield, in his ' Hydrologia Chymica,' 1669, p. 328, writes :

" If you wound a branch of the birch tree, or lop the bole thereof, in March, if it be done below, near the ground, the latex thence issuing is a mere insipid water ; but if a branch of about 3 fingers thickness be wounded to the semidiameter thereof, and fill'd with wooll, it weeps forth a subacid liquor in great abundance, insomuch that in one day such a wounded branch may give 8 or 10 pound of that liquor : concerning the vertue whereof Helmont saith, Qui in ipso lithiasis tormento solatur afflictos, tribus quatuorye cochlearibus assumptis, viz. that it gives help, in the torments of the stone, being taken to the quantity of three or four spoonfulls : which he saith is balsamus lithiasis merus."

W. C. B.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist, Cambridge. Part III. 1715-67. Edited, with Notes, by Robert F. Scott. (Cambridge, Deighton, Bell & Co.)

THE Senior Bursar of St. John's has here continued the work which Prof. J. E. B. Mayor began in a manner worthy of his predecessor, and of a splendid foundation. We cannot speak, in fact, too highly of the great care and research which have gone to the elucidation of details in the careers of Johnians. The Register is one of bare names, but by the aid of various sources, including our own columns. parish registers, the Gentleman's Magazine, ana other collections known to specialists, a large mass of illuminating detail has been secured. When we add that the indexes are wonderfully complete, in- cluding one of counties, another of schools, and two of trades, in English and Latin respectively, it will be seen that the volume is a model of what such a thing should be.

This was an infructuous time in Cambridge his- tory, and these admissions include no names of the highest mark ; still they do not fail to interest

us a good deal. Looking for men associated with Johnson, we come across "Demosthenes" Taylor, the most silent man that the Doctor ever saw, yet one who could change, in the right company, from the laborious student to the festive companion with wonderful rapidity, left forty volumes of common- place books, played cards well, and was an elegant carver. Soame Jenyns, a review of whose book on ' The Nature and Origin of Evil ' brought Johnson repute, also wrote an ' Essay on Dancing," famous in its day, and was by no means such a fool as the Doctor and Boswell made out. Johnson's "most exquisite critical essay " anywhere, as Boswell calls it, its victim and subject never forgave, writing a scurrilous epitaph on his reviewer many years later. Johnians of this time also were Dr. Heberden, who attended Johnson on his deathbed, and the satirist Churchill, whom Boswell defended against the charge of being a blockhead.

Many singular characters appear in these pages, and no one can fail to be struck with the cheerful- ness and hilarity which is so frequently noted as a characteristic of these university men. From our own columns is quoted a curious account of the marriage of Robert Lamb, who wrote books on chess and the battle of Flodden, and selected a carrier's daughter he had not seen for many years as his spouse. She was to make herself known to him by walking down the street with a tea-caddy under her arm. She did so, but he was too absent- minded to be there, though he met and married her in due course through the intervention of an old Customs- House officer.

An odd forgotten worthy is Dr. John Brown, the author of ' Barbarossa,' a play for which Garrick wrote Prologue and Epilogue, and a book on the manners of the times which in 1757 went through seven editions. His reputation for organizing edu- cation was such that he was engaged to go to Russia by the Empress, and given 1,0001. for the journey, which his ill-health prevented. There were very serious people about in these days, too, such as the Hulse of various theological benefac- tions to the University, who left a will of nearly four hundred pages of closely written manuscript !

Next to Home Tooke, on whom there are three pages of excellent notes, comes Stephen Fovargue, who in 1770 horsewhipped and kicked a " Jip," as Cole spells it. The Jip died, and Fovargue ab- sconded to France, and played the violin in the streets of Paris as a beggar. Finally, in 1774 he returned "to Cambridge in long dirty ruffles, his hair tied up with a piece of pack-thread, and in a sailor's jacket, and yellow trousers," and was ac- quitted on the deposition of various doctors, as the college servant had been in ill-health for some time before being maltreated. What romance and adventure such careers, illuminated by the ad- mirable collections of Cole, Nichols, and others, and the exemplary research of the editor of this Register, afford may be guessed from our quotations.

We wish that other great foundations of Oxford and Cambridge would imitate that of St. John the Evangelist in the zealous collection of materials growing every day harder to find.

Songs of the Vine, with a Medley for Maltwprms* Selected and edited by William G. Hutchinson. (Bullen.)

THE parentage of this volume constitutes a voucher for its merits. Selected by Mr. Hutchinson, and published by Mr. Bullen, taste and judgment have