Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/87

 9- s. xii. JULY 25, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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gone in advance of Christians. Little is known concerning the worship of Dagpri. In the important article on 'David' attention is drawn to the part the monarch plays in Mohammedan history. Rab- binical legends concerning death are numerous and significant. Matter of high interest may also be found under ' Divination ' and ' Demonology.' The volume closes with an article on the Dreyfus case, one of the longest in the work.

THE Burlington Magazine, Vol. II. No. V., gives ' The Italian Pictures of the Fourteenth Century in the Collection of Sir Hubert Parry,' and a description of ' Mussulman MSS. and Miniatures,' ' The Pictures in the Collection of Lord Normanton,' 'The Plate of Winchester College,' 'The Dutch Exhibition at the Guildhall,' &c. The illustrations are of remarkable beauty, and the work retains its value and interest. A process reproduction of Sir Joshua's ' Lady Betty Hamilton ' is the gern of the number. There are also some admirable plates from the South Kensington Museum, including a superb Queen Elizabeth, a view of the Hotel de Ville at Louvain, and a continuation of ' French Furniture in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.'

THE Congregational Historical Society, noticed in N. & Q.' August 23rd of last year, have reprinted the tract A Treatise of Reformation without Tary- ing for Anie, by Robert Browne, to which the Rev. T. G. Crippen has written a biographical introduc- tion. The original edition was printed in Holland in 1582, and is extremely rare, only three copies being known. A few years ago it was published in a cheap form in America from an original at Yale College, and the present edition is from the Ame- rican reprint, carefully collated with an original in the British Museum. Browne, among other appointments, was in November, 1586, master of St. Olave's Grammar School. In 1591 he resigned, and was presented by Burghley to the rectory of Achurch-with-Thorpe, a Northamptonshire village of which the population can scarcely have exceeded a hundred, but which afforded a comfortable in- come. He was there for forty years, and there are upwards of five hundred entries in the parish register, mostly in his very clear handwriting. Mr. Crippen claims for Browne that he established the first really Congregational church known to history, and for him " there is the lasting honour of having first enunciated the principle of ' A Free Church in a Free State.'"

WE have received the Transactions of the Glasgow Archaeological Society r, New Series, Vol. IV. Part III. (Glasgow, MacLehose & Sons). It contains, as well as the table of contents, the report of the Council, a list of members, and the treasurer's statement of the accounts. We are glad to find that the finances of the Society are in a satisfactory condition, for it is a learned body in the true sense of a term which we have sometimes heard used incor- rectly. The contributors to the Transactions are all men of wide historical knowledge. It has already done much for the archaeology of Scotland, and there is promise of far more good work in the near future. No papers have been issued in the part before us.

WE have received also Alfred the Great, a paper read to the Hull Literary Club, 9 March, by S. Harris (Hull, Brown & Sons), which we esteem highly. We need not say that it is almost impossible to add new facts to the life of our great Saxon patriot-

king. Unknown coins, or even charters, may turn up, but such good fortune cannot often be looked for ; but as to historic evidence of a literary kind, it is safe to assume that we shall never possess more than we have before us at present, though it may, and we trust will, be better interpreted as time goes on. Mr. Harris has, we believe, gone through nearly everything relating to Alfred, and has used the right he possesses of selection very reasonably. Much far too much, indeed has been said of Alfred in recent days. Speeches without number some of which, we are constrained to say, are the veriest babble have been delivered by persons to whom the history of pre - Norman times was, before they looked into a few books of reference, as complete a blank as the lives of the men who built the pyramids. Others were the work of authorities who knew the time and its environments, and produced excellent work. It is on these latter only that Mr. Harris has relied. He has, in consequence, produced a sketch which we are sure must have been hearkened to with profit as well as pleasure.

BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES.

ME. THOMAS THORP, well known in Reading, has taken the business of Mrs. Charles Hindley, at 100, St. Martin's Lane, whence he issues his earliest catalogue as a London bookseller. The first item in this is ' The Charters and Records of Cluni ' of our old friend the late Sir George Duckett. A collection of tracts by Albertus Magnus, 1507, not mentioned by Brunet and in neither the British Museum nor the Bodleian, follows. It is the second part, and is in black-letter with coloured capitals. Miss Burney's novels, early editions, are marked at considerable prices, and a 1598 Chaucer is fetching a price asked a dozen years ago for one of 1561. Cruikshank's 'English Spy'; Cosway's 'Temple of Flora,' coloured illustrations ; Croke's * Croke Family'; a scrapbook of Crpme drawings; a 'Gesta Romanorum,' 1494, with MS. notes;

Dodoens ' Herball,' translated by Lyte, 1568; 15 vols. of the Ibis, coloured plates ; a Kelmscott Chaucer (60 guineas) ; a Pyne's ' Royal Residences,' J819; Richardson's 'Clarissa'; Ruskin's 'Seven Lamps ' ; Wayerley Novels, first and early editions ; Swift's 'Gulliver,' 3 vols., first and early editions ; and a collection of Doran's works are among the gems.

In the monthly catalogue of Messrs. Sotheran appear the ' Anatomy and Physiology ' of Hofmann and Schwalbe ; the Villon Society 'Arabian Nights' ; Gould's ' Mammals of Australia ' ; Baxter's ' Saints' Everlasting Rest ' ; Haslewood's reprint of Juliana Berners's treatises of hawking, hunting, &c. ; a large-paper Centenary Edition of Burns by Henley and Henderson; Child's 'English and Scottish Ballads,' an American edition de luxe ; Racinet's ' Costume Historique,' on large paper (rare) ; and the large-paper ' Monasticon Anglicanum ' of Dug- dale and Dodsworth, price 551. Under drama are extra - illustrated copies of 'Table Talk' and * Memoirs of Perdita Robinson,' with an original Garrick MS. Horsley's 'Britannia Romana ' has MS. additions by Sir R. Colt Hoare. ' Le Rom- mant de la Rose ' of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, 1538, is priced 8 guineas. Some Ethiopia and Egyptian works of Mr. Wallis Budge arrest attention. One, a MS., No. 384 in the catalogue,

very curious. A set of ' N. & Q.,' with seven