English translations for which a school-boy should be flogged *— and the Percy Society, which prints books it cannot circulate, as being contra bonos mores. The Society for the Suppression of Vice does not appear in the list. By another rule, all Periodical Publications' are to appear under that head, and all almanacs, calendars, &c. under Ephemerides.' This exemplifies the difficulty which we mentioned: it is classification in an alphabetical arrangement. We confess that it is easier to raise the objection than to point out a way by which the fault may be avoided.

It was natural that, when observing these difficulties and compiling these observations, we should open the catalogues of some of those institutions and societies in whose learning the world reposes confidence, and whose names we are accustomed to consider as carrying authority with them; we can disguise neither our surprise nor our regret at the result of our researches. We turned to the law; we took up the catalogue of the Lincoln's Inn Library:—it is alphabetical, and we find in it King James I.'s works under King; in fact, he appears as James King. Another entry is in these words, Museo Britannico Librorum, 8 vols.' In the catalogue of the MSS. belonging to the same learned body, drawn up by Mr. Hunter, a Unitarian minister, two Latin Bibles are described, one of them of the fourteenth century, as 'probably the Vulgate;' the other of later date, as Jerome's version.' It is quite clear that the compiler did not know whether or not the two were the same, nor wherein the difference between them consists. Charles Butler's 'Hora Biblica' might have informed him; and the Hora Juridicæ' of the same member of Lincoln's Inn might also have spared the benchers the disgrace of finding the work of our great English canonist set down in their catalogue

A manuscript on vellum, of the fifteenth century, in small quarto, lettered Lindwood.' It would seem as if the dissenting minister supplied the legal knowledge, the lawyers the theology. Yet this catalogue is embodied in a report to the king in council, from the Commissioners of Records, and the author is so pleased with the performance that he has published it in a separate form. There is no disputing about tastes. The catalogue of the library of the Hon. Society of the Inner Temple is on a par with that of

and thus translated,-"Yet I will fulfil all characters in turn.' A poem beginning with the line :

:

'Calamus velociter scribæ sit scribentis,'

being a slight alteration of the text (Ps. xliv. 1), ‘Lingua mea calamus scribæ velociter scribentis,' is thus read:

'Calamus velociter scribe sic scribentis,'

and thus translated ?—' Write quickly, o pen of one who writing such things as follow!'

Lincoln's

Lincoln's Inn. From the inns of court we pass to Somerset House, where the Royal, and Antiquarian, and Geological Societies hold their (Temperance) symposia. It is a singular performance, perhaps of purposed quaintness, that of the Society of Antiquaries: it is not, we suppose, without a reason that by this learned body the editor of a book is preferred before the author, but we in our ignorance cannot divine why Selden's works should appear under the name of Wilkins, nor Camden's Britannia under Gibson and Gough. But we must be gentle.

Besides the frequent solecisms which are found in alphabetical catalogues, arising from the compiler's misapprehension of the meaning of a title, such as the Relatio felicis agonis' of certain martyrs being entered as a work by Felix Ago, various difficulties are caused by the fond fancies of authors in translating or euphonising their names. The more common of these may be found in the different biographical dictionaries, and a vast number in the works of Placcius, Barbier, Lancetti, and others.*

The real names of many writers are oftentimes unknown, even to those who may be tolerably well acquainted with their works; nor, did the evil rest here, would its amount be great: it might not be always necessary to know an author's history in order to quote his works with advantage. But the second race of writers become, in their turn, authorities for others, who know neither the names nor the works of the original writers; it then becomes very difficult to trace up information to its source, a procedure of vital importance, to historical accuracy especially. When to this are added the crude attempts at explanation of an incompetent editor, it necessarily follows that every error is magnified into distortion. The case of Foxe, and the recent editors of his Acts and Monuments,' forms an excellent illustration of what we have said. The masterly and merciless exposure of the inaccuracies of Foxe and the Cattleyisms' of his editor or editors, by Mr. Maitland, the Archbishop's librarian,† has given a fatal blow to the illfounded reputation of the Book of Martyrs.'

The variety of modes by which names are altered and disguised is great; those which sound harsh or too familiar in their vernacular form are often euphonised by being turned into well-sounding Greek: thus Melancthon, Capnio, Xylander, Ecolampadius, Metastasio, represent Schwartzerd, Reuchlin, Holtzman, Hausschein, and Trapassi; Sophocardius is Wishart, or Wiseheart;

*Mr. Melzi, a distinguished bibliographer of Milan, and the possessor of a fine library, is engaged on an account of the anonymous literature of Italy; and Mr. Glover, Her Majesty's librarian, has large collections for a similar work on the anonymous and pseudonymous writers of England.

Twelve Letters on the New Edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. By the Rev. S. R. Maitland. 8vo. Rivingtons.

and

and Hylacomylus, who first gave the name of AMERICA to the then newly-discovered continent, is only Martin Waldseemüller, a schoolmaster at the little town of Saint Dié, in the department of the Vosges. But one version does not always suffice: Giovanni Vittorio de' Rossi, Johannes Victorius de Rubeis, and Janus Nicius Erythræus, are all one and the same person, who writes under the three names. Sometimes a Latin form is taken, or an equivalent, it may be: thus Bevilacqua, or Drinkwater, is Abstemius, Bridgewater is Aquepontanus, Torquemada is Turrecremata, Smidt is Vulcanius, Leger Duchesne is Leodegarius. à Quercu, or Quercetanus, and Vander Bycken is Torrentius. If without meaning, or almost incapable of being tortured into meaning, the cacophonous name is made to sound like Latin: Van der Does is Dousa, Roscoe is Roscius, Owen is Audoenus, and Wilson Volusenus.* In English a somewhat similar process is adopted in order to get rid of an objectionable name: for instance, Abraham is made Braham, Israel D'Israeli, Bernales Bernal and a total change of name is not unfrequently resorted to for the same purpose. A dissenting author of the name of Cloutt has taken the civil-and-religious-liberty' name of Russell; but alas! in vain: for, having published under both names, he will, in obedience to the eleventh of the ninety-one rules which we have quoted, be handed down to posterity under the copronymic Cloutt. The number of writers of one and the same name

* There is great good sense in the following remarks by Roscoe :-'Whoever is conversant with history must frequently have observed the difficulties which arise from the wanton alterations in the names of both persons and places by authors of different countries, and particularly by the French, who, without hesitation, accommodate everything to the genius of their own language. Hence the names of all the eminent men of Greece, of Rome, or of Italy, are melted down, and appear again in such a form as would not in all probability have been recognised by their proper owners: Dionysius is Denys, Titus Livius Tite Live, Horatius Horace, Petrarca Petrarque, and Pico of Mirandola Pic de Mirandole. As the literature which this country derived from Italy was first obtained through the medium of the French, our early authors followed them in this respect, and thereby sanctioned those innovations which the nature of our own language did not require. It is still more to be regretted that we are not uniform even in our abuse. The name of Horace is familiar to the English reader, but if he were told of the three Horaces, he would probably be at a loss to discover the persons meant, the authors of our country having commonly given them the appellation of the Horatii. In the instance of such names as are familiar to our early literature, we adopt, with the French, the abbreviated appellation; but in latter times we usually employ proper national distinctions, and instead of Arioste, or Metastase, we write, without hesitation, Ariosto or Metastasio. This inconsistency is more sensibly felt when the abbreviated appellation of one scholar is contrasted with the national distinction of another, as when a letter is addressed by Petrarch to Coluccio Salutati, or by Politian to Ermolao Barbaro, or Baccio Ugolini. For the sake of uniformity, it is surely desirable that every writer should conform as much as possible to some general rule, which can only be found by a reference of every proper name to the standard of its proper country. This method would not only avoid the incongruities before mentioned, but would be productive of positive advantages, as it would in general point out the nation of the person spoken of without the necessity of further indication.—Preface to Life of Leo X.

is another source of error: it would be no easy task to discriminate accurately between all the John Smiths, the Thomas Browns, and the William Allens. These difficulties have caused some writers, such as Fabricius and Nicolas Antonio, who have cast their works into an alphabetical form, to arrange their matter under Christian or first names; but here a new class of obstacles arises, whether John shall be Johannes, Heri-Gratia, Theocharis, Giovanni, Jean, Johann, Juan, Joao, Ivan, Jonas, or Hanswhether we shall say Ægidius or Giles, Ludovicus or Lewis or Louis, Elizabetha or Isabella, Wilbolt or Bilibaldus.* Another source of discrepancy springs from the ever-varying modes of reducing Oriental names to European orthography. Scarcely can any writers be found to agree in this; each of every nation has his pet form; and this obtains not in names only, but in all the words of the Lord Byron's Giaour' is spelt in sixteen different ways; Mahomet, or Mahammud, in perhaps as many; and who would recognise the Prince Camaralzaman of our early acquaintance with the Arabian Nights' in the more correct, perhaps, but queer Китmeer-ool-Zummaun of Lumsden? We doubt if Ridley's beautiful Tales of the Genii' would ever have enjoyed their well-merited popularity, had they been entitled-according to the orthography imagined or adopted by Mr. Lane in his translation of the Thousand and One Nights'-the Tales of the Jinn !'

Authors themselves frequently delight to conceal their names in acrostics, as Jean Mansel, the author of the Fleur des Histoires;* in sentences formed by the initial letters of chapters, as in the Hypnerotomachia' of Poliphilo, written by Francesco Colonna, whose name appears in the sentence Poliam frater Franciscus Columna peramavit:' the romance of Palmerin of England,' and the Liber Insularum' of Buondelmonti;-in anagrams, as 'Divi Leschi genus amo'-which, after a friend of ours had with some labour interpreted into Michael Sendivogius, he found, on reference, had been interpreted before him: or in some indescribable form,-for example, 'Th-sCls: Midras Iaoeus.' This might have puzzled Edipus himself, had the

*The daughters of Wilbolt Pirckheimer are the Bilibaldica of Erasmus.

We borrow the following from a note of that eminent amateur bibliographer, Mr. Grenville :

In the Prologo of the first volume will be found thirty-two verses, containing the following acrostic,-"Luis Hurtado Autor al lector." There is, therefore, an end of Mr. Southey's ingenious reasonings, attributing this work to Moraes, in the Portuguese language; an opinion in which he was confirmed by Antonio, and by the editor of the Portuguese edition of 1785. The present Spanish edition, however, of 1547, with the name of its Spanish author, is prior by ten years to that of Moraes, which puts the question at rest. Cervantes, knowing nothing of this Spanish edition, attributed the work, according to Faria de Sousa, to John II., of Portugal.'-Grenville, Cat., vol. ii. p. 519.

author

author not furnished the key to his meaning. The word Midras, he says, is to be read by the word Iaoeus: then, as i is the third vowel, a the first, o the fourth, e the second, and u the fifth, M. i. d. r. a. s. will be transposed into I. R. M. D. A. S.; which initials stand for Johannes Robertson, Medicinæ Doctor, Abredonensis Scotus! -the Th-s Cls being not Thomas Clowes, nor any relative of our printer, but Theocharis Cleobulides, which purports to be a translation of John Robertson. One of the blasphemous fanatics of Cromwell's time, who calls himself Thaw Ram Tanjah, Theauraviohn, and other names, in which 'Tan' is always a part, would have escaped all identification-had not the arms of Tany, his real name, been engraved as part of his title-page: the Roundhead did not forget his gentility. There are other instances of coats of armss-of Wyvill, for instance-standing in place of a name.

Some writers have called themselves, or have been called by others, by the name of their fatherland: thus, Bugenhagen is called Pomeranus; Carlo Marsuppini, Francesco Accolti, Leonardo Bruni, Pietro Bacci (if such were his name)-all natives of Arezzo, in Tuscany - are each of them known as Aretinus. Regiomontanus is the well-known epithet, we cannot call it name, of the great astronomer Müller, who was born at Unfind, near Königsberg, and calls himself Johannes Germanus de Regiomonte; and we have met with Otto Guericke, the inventor of the air-pump, described as M. Magdebourg, he being a native of that place.

The ideal names which have sprung from the mistakes of editors and bibliographers are often ludicrous. Moréri, out of the title of King James's little work, styled, with that monarch's usual pedantry, Awpov Baoiλinov, has created an author, Dorus Basilicus. That learned man, Bishop Walton, the editor of the Polyglott Bible, makes out of the title of the great Arabic Dictionary, the Kamoos, or Ocean,' an author whom he calls Camus.' The Centones Virgiliani' of Proba Falconia were printed in 1509, at Paris, as by Proba Falconia Centona; and the catalogue of the Barberini Library turns the German adverb weiland into an author of that ilk. In the Greek version of the Institutes of Justinian, the heading of the title De Actionibus was not translated, but written in Greek letters, Ae AxTIONßous, which Nessel, in his catalogue of the MSS. in the Imperial Library at Vienna, supposes to designate a learned jurist whom he calls Datianebis. About the year 1460 a Benedictine monk of Reichenbach, called Dom Nicholas, designed some maps to suit the geographical system of Ptolemy: his title of Dominus, Domnus, or Donnus, was soon changed by ignorant editors into Donis, which again changed places with Nicholas; and Nicholas Donis therefore appears in

many