Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/204

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. xn. AUG. 28, im seems unaware that more than a century ago two leading littérateurs made it their business to identify the writer of this book. The authorship then was claimed, apparently on good authority, for Sir Grey Brydges, 6th Lord Chandos—by Thomas Park in his enlarged edition of Walpole's 'Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors' (5 vols., 1806, ii. 184), and by 'Sir S. Egerton Brydges in his 'Censura Literaria' (10 vols., 1805, vi. 192). This attribution has been accepted by the writer of the article on Sir Grey Brydges in the 'D.N.B.' Lowndes and Watt (who misprint the date as 1626 and 1720 respectively) enter it under Blount the publisher. Edward Blount, or Blunt, was rather fond of writing addresses "To the Reader" in books put forth anonymously, as witness Bishop Earle's 'Micro-cosmographie: Essayes and Characters,' 1286.

The seventeenth century saw two volumes bearing the title 'Horæ Subsecivæ,' the second being by D. W. (William Denton, M.D.), London, 1664.

It is well known that the earlier work suggested to Dr. John Brown, the author of 'Rab and his Friends,' the title for his collected writings. I once owned his copy, and have a note that on the title-page was written in an old hand "By yᵉ Lord Candish [i.e. Cavendish], after Earle of Devonshire." This was William Gilbert, eldest son of the first Earl. Anthony à Wood also says, "This Book was written by Gilbert Lord Cavendish, who died before his Father, William Earl of Devonshire." Whether Thomas Park and Sir S. Egerton Brydges considered the Cavendish claim I do not know, but it seems reasonable to assume that one or other of those noblemen wrote the book.

also ignores the fact that Sir William Cornwallis the younger adopted for his notable volume of 1600 the title 'Essays'—only three years after the editio princeps of Bacon's Essays, and twenty years before the 'Horæ Subsecivæ' of 1620 appeared; and in the Second Part, published tho year following (1601), he says in his forty-sixth essay, entitled 'Of Esaayes and Bookes':—

Before the middle of the seventeenth century the word "Essays" to designate those books of short dissertations in which a writer gives the cream of a variety of subjects, without exacting any very severe attention from the reader, had become popular, and in order to give some slight evidence of this I will merely select two titles from my own books in this department: 'Horæ Vacivæ, or Essayes,' by John Hall, London, 1646; and "Essayes and Observations, Theological and Moral, by a Student in Theologie," London, 1653.

continuation of my notes on the booksellers and printers of Huntingdonshire I now give those for the parish of St. Neots. The names and dates are gathered from the same sources as in my previous article (10 S. viii. 201).