Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/291

 9*8. XT. APRIL 11, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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buyer ; but De Renty was secured by one named Butler ; from the number of pur- chases they respectively made I assume they were booksellers. This memoir of De Renty is a curious work, and as a psychological study very interesting. The subject of it was an amiable French nobleman who for- sook the world and its pleasures to give him- self up entirely to acts of devotion and works of charity. He died in 1649, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

I shall now refer to another Frenchman, whose name belongs to every country where matchless wit and eloquence find a home, I mean Blaise Pascal. His immortal ' Pro- vincial Letters,' as is well known, were a notable feature in the reign of Louis XIV. The first letter appeared in Paris in January, 1656, and the last is dated " March 24, 1657." It must have been some months after the latter date that an English translation appeared with the following title :

<; Les Provinciates : Or, The Mysterie of Jesv- itisme, discover'd in certain Letters, Written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne, between the Jansenists and the Molinists, from January 1656, to March 1657. S.N. Displaying the corrupt Maximes and Politicks of that Society. Faithfully rendred into English. Sicut Serpentes London, Printed by J. G. for R. Royeton at the Angel in Ivie-lane, 1657."

Preceding this printed title-page there is an engraved one by Robert Vaughan. On this page the author's assumed name is given, "Louis de Montalte," and within a floral scroll a so-called portrait of him it looks for all the _ world like the effigy of some Anglican divine of the period. It is a matter of history that these ' Letters ' on their appearance set the heather on fire in France ; and evidently the interest there excited found its way, if in a modified form, to the English capital. I may say that the first edition of this English translation bears all the marks of extreme haste in its production, as if to meet an immediate and clamorous demand : bad type, indifferent paper, besides being carelessly read for press, duplicated words and misprints being not uncommon. It is a remarkably rare little book, and excepting the one now before me, I have seen only two in booksellers' catalogues in something like thirty years. I have always been of opinion that Royston, the publisher, failed to appreciate the public attitude to the book, and, either from timidity or ignorance, restricted the first edition to a very limited number of copies. The second edition was set up afresh, with this revised advertisement at the foot of the title- page ;

" London, Printed for Richard Royston, and are to be sold by Robert Clavell, at the Stags-Head neer St. Gregories Church in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1658."

In this catalogue I find : " Mystery of Jesuit- ism discovered in certain Letters, &c., in 3 vol. 1658-64," the lot realizing 5s. 2d. From being the possessor of a copy of more than one edition, the collector, I infer, held the book in great esteem ; and if he had been able to procure a copy of the edition of 1657, it would, no doubt, have appeared in his sale along with the others. The edition of 1658, as well as the subsequent editions, is not un- common. I may further add that Vaughan's engraved title-page, with its very curious portrait, never appeared again, so far as I am aware.

The works of Shakespeare and the Eng- lish dramatists, not to speak of the number- less books in poetical literature which ap- peared in the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor, are here conspicuous by their absence, the collector, probably, ranking such productions as little better than " idle toys," and unworthy of his serious considera- tion. It is, however, something to chronicle in the sale a copy of " Haward's (Lord Hen.) Songs and Sonnets," 1585, which was pur- chased by Lord Peterborough for 2s Id.

Of the English books only ten iots, so far as I can make out, realized two pounds and upwards, the highest being " Hollingshed's Chronicle of Engl., with the Addi. of many sheets that were Castrated (being not thought fit, and so not allowed to be Printed in the second Impression), in 2 vol.," 1587. which was bought by one George Stevens for 71.

In applying the foregoing prices the rela- tive value of money then and now must always be taken into consideration. A. S.

ORIEL COLLEGE.

WITH the completion of Dr. C. L. Shad- well's valuable * Registrum Orielerise,' in 2 vols., for the years 1500-1900, it may, perhaps, be worth recording in the hospitable columns of * N. & Q.' the names of those mentioned in connexion with Oriel from the earliest extant Register of Congregation. This mutilated fragment, which contains entries from 4 Dec., 1448, to 19 Nov., 1463, was edited in 1885 for the Oxford Historical Society by the Rev. C. W. Boase, sometime Fellow of Exeter College.

1449. Thomas Hawkyns or Haukyn. (?) Sarum Fellow, Exeter Coll., 21 or 22 Oct., 1442, to summer, 1448 ; lie. for M.A. 21 June, 1449, inc. 1449 ; Principal Peter Hall (Wood's