Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/434

 420 THE HISTORY OF A believe not been noticed before, that Nichols was making use of the Stationers' Registers as long ago as the beginning of last century. It appears then that in 1632, the year in which Alabaster tells us he first conceived his scheme of prophetic writings, William Jones, who pub- lished Alabaster's ' Roxana ' in the same year, and his so-called c Ecce sponsus venit ' in the following year, entered under his name at Stationers' Hall a Lexicon by Thorndike. That in the following year, 1633, a prophetical work with the title ' Spiraculum Tubarum ' appeared under Alabaster's name, with a lexicon appended. That two years later, in 1635, this appendix was re-issued separ- ately (a) under a correct title, with prefatory note, (b) twice under Thorndike's name with a title bearing little or no relation to the work itself, but corresponding almost exactly to the entry of 1632. Three fairly plausible conjeftures have occurred to me as to Thorndike's share in the work. (i) Thorndike may have been engaged on a lexicon and may have abandoned it, or have handed over his material to Alabaster, when he found that the latter was hurrying through a similar work in connection with his prophetic writings. The main objections to this conjedture are that Thorn- dike never on any previous or subsequent occasion published anything with William Jones, so that it is unlikely that he should have entered upon negotiations with him independently of Alabaster, and further that, as I have shown above, there is no sign of the incorporation of previous indepen- dent research in the hastily compiled Epitome.