Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/521

 12 S. X. JUNES. 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 427 the church : thus the ten fine old granite columns supporting the roof at the juncture of the nave and aisles have been cleaned of their coat of plaster, the box pews have been exchanged for low modern pews, and a new altar and pulpit have been provided. In 1917 the raised wooden floor beneath the choir was torn out and replaced by a new flooring of wood, stone and tile. In the process two stone slabs were dis- covered beneath the choir, concealed by a few inches of earth. They proved to be the covers of two coffins. An inscription on one of the stones showed that John Furse, a gentleman-farmer of Dean Prior, had been buried there in 1609. The name on the other stone was gone, but enough of the inscription remained to indicate, that another gentleman- farmer had been buried there in 159( ?) ; this grave has been identified as that of Robert Furse, the father of John Furse. These stones were removed and laid as a part of the new floor. The work- men so I was assured by the sexton, Richard Churchward, and by others were aware of one or more similar slabs in close proximity to those removed ; but partly on account of the choking dust from the disturbed earth, chiefly, how r ever, from anxiety to complete their work as quickly as possible, they did not make further investigations, but built the new floor of the choir over what lay below. Does not the discovery of these two graves, together with the fact that there are still, close by, one or more other unidentified graves, tempt one to believe that Herrick, whose grave has never been discovered in the churchyard (in fairness it should be stated that there are a number of graves there from which the stones have disappeared), may also have been buried within the church ? Professor Floris Delattre, Herrick's most able critic, to whom I communicated what I had learned, wonders whether Herrick, since he was doubtless no great personage in the eyes of his country parishioners, would have been honoured with burial under the choir. II devait etre [writes Professor Delattre], pour tous ces paysans qui 1'entouraient, et qu'il tenait lui-meme en assez pietre estime, un pas specialement ze!6 sans doute, et, comme son ouvrage, The Hesperides, y 6tait certainement, sauf a Dean Court, inconnu, on ne voit guere les raisons qui auraient merite pour lui 1'honneur d'une inhumation dans le chceur m6me de Teglisc. Yet it seems as though to the Lord of the Manor and to other more cultivated members of the community, such as the Northleighs and the Lowmans, for several of whom Herrick composed occasional verses, burial within the church would not have appeared inappropriate. Possibly one can of course, do no more than speculate the very stone of whose presence the workmen were aware was Herrick's. It is to be regretted that those charged with the rebuilding of the floor were not endowed with a little more curiosity, and it is certainly to be hoped that we shall not have to wait till the present floor is worn out before the mystery may be solved. It would be interesting indeed if Herrick, whose distrust of monuments of brass and stone has seemed to be abundantly justified, should after all be found to possess a monument of stone, possibly inscribed with one of his own charming epitaphs. A. C. JUDSON. The University of Texas, Austin, Texas. JOTTINGS ON SOME EARLY EDITIONS OF THE BIBLE IN LATIN. IN the first editions of the Latin Bible, the Liber Regum quartus, 2 Kings xix. 28 reads thus : Insanisti in me, et superbia tua ascendit in aures meas : ponam itaque circulum in auribus tuis, et frenum in labiis tuis, et reducem te in viam per quam venisti ; and in Isaiah xxxvii. 29 : Cum furores adversus me, superbia tua ascendit in aures meas : ponam ergo circulum in auribus tuis, et frenum in labiis tuis, et reducem te in viam per quam venisti. In these verses the early printers used auribus, not naribus as at present, up to the year 1472. Here are the editions : the forty-two line Bible ; the thirty-six line Bible ; Johann Meiitelin's edition, S trass - burg, c. 1461 ; Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, Mainz, 1462 ; several editions by Heinrich Eggesteyn, Strassburg ; Bertoldus Ruppel, Basel ; Bernhard Richel, Basel ; and also in editions printed in Italy, as Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pamxart's, Rome, 1471, &c. Now in 1472 Schoeffer, after the death of Fust, who had died of the plague in Paris, printed a new edition of the Bible, in which, for the first time, appeared the word naribus in place of auribus, and he was followed by other printers, viz., the R. printer, c. 1472 ; Konrad Winters de Homborch, Koln, c.
 * ' Vicar " un peu Strange, un peufantasque meme,