Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/495

 s. xii. DEC. 19, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

487

Sion College, London," and adds that in re- turning the volume he charged the deputy- librarian "to hand it to his principal as a book of great rarity, and as such to be taken great care of." A third regrets that he has not been able to consult the edition of 1724 ; .a fourth announces that he possesses two copies of that edition, and would be glad to place them at the disposal of students.

The discussion seems to have evolved some interest among your readers, but it elicited no trace of a second copy of the issue of 1722. The first published edition, that of 1724, is not, I think, very rare. Besides the two copies above mentioned, I know of a third in the library of the University of Pennsylvania, and have seen two others sold in this country within the year. But it is probable that the issue of ^1722 is very rare indeed. Only a few were printed, and, as it is apparent from the .preface to the edition of 1724 that Wollaston was much annoyed by the fact that a few- copies had strayed beyond the circle for which they were intended, it is likely that he suppressed the edition as far as it was in his power to do so.

A copy of this issue is in my possession. I should like to know of the existence of other copies, and shall be obliged to any of your readers who may be able to throw light on the question. It is hardly necessary to add that my copy may be examined by any one who wishes to see the earliest draft of the book. WM. ROMAINE NEWBOLD.

603, South Forty-second Street, Philadelphia.

COL. STANHOPE COTTON commanded the 'Gibraltar garrison in 1717. Was he of the family of Charles Cotton, the angler, whose mother was Olive Stanhope, of Elvaston ? S. B. BERESFORD.

Seven Kings, Essex.

" MOLUBDINOUS SLOWBELLY." The Rev. Compton Reade, rector of Kenchester, Here- ford, a well-known journalist, in a letter in the Saturday Review declared :

" The Cabinet has sacrificed its mainspring to

a combination consisting of the Nonconformist conscience, Welsh imbecility, Irish insanity, and the molubdinous slowbelly of Scotland."

Without entering into the political question involved in this assertion, I should like to know what is the meaning of "the molub- dinous slowbelly of Scotland," which is to me an entirely new expression. " Slowbelly " occurs as a quotation from Callimachus, an Alexandrian poet of the time of the Ptolemies, in Paul's pastoral epistle to Titus, and is rendered in the Unrevised Version, " The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow

bellies," and in the Revised Version, "Cretans are alway liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons," the word " bellies " being in the margin. In the Vulgate it is "Cretenses semper mendaces, malse bestise, ventres pigri." The late Bishop of London, in Cook's ' Commentary on the Bible' (1881), remarks with regard to this description of the Cretans :

"13. This witness. Rather testimony is true. And such was the general opinion as collected from Polybius, Livy, Strabo, Plutarch, and others. The three worst Kappas or Ks, according to the Greek proverb, were the Kretans, Kappadocians, and Kilicians ; and ' to cretize,' according to Suidas, meant ' to lie.' "

This explains " slowbelljV but what is "molubdinous"? JOHN HEBB.

["Leaden": juo/\v/3Sos=lead.]

Rous OR ROWSE FAMILY. Can any one give me particulars of this family other than the following 1 About 1440 there appears to have been a Reginald Rows (' Paston Letters, 1 i. 42,^ referring to Blomefield's ' Hist, of Nor- folk,' ix. 441), and he is mentioned again in 1454 ('Paston Letters,' i. 277, quoting from Brit. Mus. Add. Ch. 16,545). In vol. ii. p. 79 of the same ' Letters ' reference is made to Edmund Rous, who was second son of Henry Rous, of Dennington, in Suffolk, the ancestor of the present Earl of Strad broke (cf. iii. 91, 273, 310, 455, the last of these pages con- taining a mention of Eustace Rows). In 1464 a Reginald Rous, Esq., of Dennington, in Suffolk, died, and he is also stated to have been an ancestor of the Earl of Stradbroke, but it does not appear whether he is the same person as Reginald Rows mentioned above.

A list of Suffolk knights created by James I. at the Charterhouse, London, has for its third entry " Thomas Rowse chevalier port de sable a une viuure mise en fesse cTor entre trois croissante d 'argent" (p. 70, 'Suffolk in the Seventeenth Century, the Breviary of Suffolk,' by Robert Reyce, 1618, now pub- lished for the first time from th^ MS. in the British Museum, with Notes by Lord Francis Hervey, 1902).

There is mention of Francis Rous (A.D. 1637) at p. 200 of F. Madan's 'The Early Oxford Press' (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), 1895, quoting Wood's ' Ath. Oxon.,' ed. Bliss, iii. 104.

H. W. L^NDERDOWN.

REV. JAMES BECK. This gentleman ex- hibited a number of antiquities found in Sussex to the Society of Antiquaries on 17 February, 1870. He is then described as F.S.A. A Rev. James Beck (not F.S.A.) was subsequently local secretary for Suffolk. Are