Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/18

 10 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vra. JAN. i, 1921. HOOK : OXENBRIDGE : MORTON : POR- TRAITS WANTED. Can any of your readers give me information about portraits of three prominent seventeenth- century divines, two of whom graduated at Oxford and one at Cambridge ? They were all identified with America at one time or another. These are the Rev. William Hook, a Hampshire man born in 1601 ; the Rev. John Oxenbridge of the same county, born in 1609 ; and the Rev. Charles Morton, perhaps born in Wales in 1626. They are all mentioned in the ' Dictionary of National Biography. ' I think there must be portraits of these men, and I should like to know of them. C. K. BOLTON. G. PYE, BOOK-PLATE DESIGNER. I should feel grateful for particulars about this designer who nourished between 1790 and 1810, making a speciality of pictorial and armorial plates. He is believed to have had business establishments in Birmingham and Manchester. ANEURIN WILLIAMS. Menai View, North Road, Carnarvon. COLLECTIONS SOLD BY AUCTION, LONDON, 1714. Can any reader of 'N. & Q.' tell me what collections of pictures and sculptures were sold by auction in London in 1714 old or new style ? I should be very grateful for information. (Mrs.) RACHAEL POOLE. The Museum House, Oxford. WHO WAS JOHNSON'S " PRETTY VOLUM- INOUS AUTHOUR " ? Boswell, under 1769, (near the end) says : " Johnson spoke unfavourably of a certain pretty voluminous authour, saying : ' He used to write anonymous books, and then other books commending those books, in which there was something of rascality.' " It seems to me that, whoever this may be, a little humour must be allowed for in the word "rascality." Was this Swedenborg ? The ' Arcana Caelestia ' (London, 1749-56) were anony- mous, and in later and smaller works ('Heaven and Hell,' 1758, &c.) Swedenborg gives long quotations from the ' Arcana ' ; in 'Heaven and Hell,' two-thirds of the pages quote the 'Arcana.' Moreover, all his religious works were anonymous until 1768, when his name appeared on the title- page of the 'De Amore Conjugali.' This work, published at Amsterdam in that year, would be a natural topic in London in the next. Boswell would obviously feel a delicacy about mentioning Johnson's hostile remark with the name of Swedenborg attached, as he was already attracting influential fol- lowers who were busy translating his Latin when Boswell was writing. ALBERT J. EDMUNDS. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. J. E. GORDON, ETCHER. In. 1848 Joseph Candall, 12 Old Bond Street, issued an album of 38 little etchings, mostly of Ger- many and the Isle of Wight, by J. E. Gordon. What is known of him or her ? J. M. BULLOCH. 37 Bedford Square, W.C. THE BRITISH IN CORSICA. Who were the officers and what were the regiments and ships engaged in the three occupations by the British of Bastia, San Fiorenzo and Calvi in Corsica in the years 1745, 1794, and 1814 ? Bastia was in 1814 captured by the insurgents, I think, and handed over by them to the British. Did the latter invade Calvi ? There was a General Dundas engaged in the operations in 1794, and he was succeeded by General D'Aubant and, in 1814, General Montresor, but beyond these surnames I can find no particulars of them and the 'D.N.B..' is in Corsica not available. PENRY LEWIS. Ajaccio. "BELIEVE." I shall be glad to know whether any new material is available since the publication of the 'Oxford English Dictionary ' as to this verb, in particular as to its use in sense 3: "Believe in (a person or thing), i.e., in its actual existence or occurrence " at an earlier date than the quotation of 1716 from Lady Mary Wortley Montague's 'Letters,' ix. 1. 29. ^ Q. V. ALIUSTREL BRONZE TABLES. In 1876 an ancient bronze table was discovered in the copper and silver mine at Aliustrel in Por- tugal, both sides of which were covered with a Latin text. A second such table was dis- covered in the same mine in May, 1906, inscribed with ancient mining regulations. The text of the first table was dealt with by M. Mispoulet in an article entitled regime des mines a 1'epoque romaine et au Moyen-Age, d'apres la table d' Aliustrel in the Nouvelle Revue historique du Droit fran^ais et etranger for 1907. The text of