"COMPARISONS ARE ODIOUS" (6th S. iv. 327). -I know of no instance of the proverbial expression "Comparisons are odious" earlier than that referred to by MR. BIRKBECK TERRY; but I may mention an analogous expression in Lydgate's Bochas, fo. 80b, bk. iii. c. 8, ed. 1554:—

"Comparisons do ofttime great greuance."

XIT.

meek-eyed Master," and of the period of his earthly sojourn as "the grand old Galilean days," will certainly whom we are sure that it would be painful to Mr. be offensive to many good Christian men and women Jennings to annoy.

"Rustica gens est optima," &c.,

is quoted in The Present State of England, 1673. See "N. & Q.," 2rd S. vi. 10, 59. WILLIAM PLATT.

OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER. Will correspondents kindly intending to contribute to our Christmas Number be good enough to forward their communications, headed "Christmas," without delay?

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Curiosities of Criticism. By Henry J. Jennings. (Chatto & Windus.)

MR. JENNINGS has given us an amusing sketch of reviewing and reviewers. It has no pretension to be a history of criticism, or, indeed, to much depth of any kind. Taken as mere gossip of the gentler and wiser sort it is pleasant reading, as it brings to our mind controversies long forgotten or only retained in the memory as a dull haze. We think the author has more sympathy than they deserve with the very weak people who are seriously annoyed by printed criticism. No doubt it is an offence for which an author may be forgiven for taking strong measures when any one presumes to tell him, by word of mouth or by letter, that he thinks his style bad, that his verses will not scan, or that the plot of his last novel would be worthy of mere contempt if it were not that its wickedness makes it a public nuisance; but when these things are said in print a person must be very weak, or know very little of the world, who takes the matter seriously to heart. That strong language is sometimes used for slight offences, where a mild rebuke would answer the purpose equally well, we are certain; but if the writers in the periodical press did not often speak out harshly, the country would be more infested than it is even now by things that are books only in name. It is all very well for angry writers who have suffered just punishment to call the critics

"Overseers and reviewers

Of all the muses' sinks and sewers"; but if it were not for these said critics, who act as sanitary officers, the "sinks and sewers' of literature would become so pestilential that liberty of the press would run much danger of suffering legal restraints. However it may have been when party politics and literature were blended in a manner of which we have no experience, it is certain that an unfavourable review does little injury to any except those who deserve to suffer. Though Mr. Jennings is very kindly disposed to the living, he shows little mercy when speaking of the dead. "The truculent Gifford and his crew of butchers" is not language which it is pleasant to find applied to a late editor of the Quarterly Review and his staff of writers. There are a few errors of expression rather than of thought, which Mr. Jennings must pardon us for pointing out. To write of our blessed Lord as "the

plates, &c., a practice which, in this country, is known by the name of "Grangerism." So long as it is judiciously restricted, there is no great harm in the pursuit, which tends to preserve much that must otherwise be lost; but the danger is that, in the eagerness of pursuit, much will also be wantonly destroyed by the ardent collector, or perhaps we should say by the collector's unscrupulous purveyors. A case in point is recorded at p. 11, where the writer admits that he dismembered a rare quarto volume on the Natural History of New York, to illustrate an insignificant octavo on the Birds of Long Island. From the repentant tone of the narrative, we infer that this "piece of vandalism" was not often repeated; and the author is plainly a genuine bibliophilist.. He delights in rolling upon his palate such luxurious phrases as "ruby sealskin," "watered silk linings," "morocco joints," and the like; and in one passage almost rises to the prophetic enthusiasm of Richard of Bury :—“No greater inspiration is necessary to an unsullied moral life than a full and absolute companionship with an illustrated copy, full bound by Matthews in crushed levant [please observe this detail], of Boswell's Johnson, or of Walton's Complete Angler two books of noble moral repute, and which take to illustrations more naturally than any other two books in the English language." Among works almost as popular are Dibdin, Shakspeare, Cunningham's Nell Gwynne, Garrick's Life, Bray's Stothard, and Irving's Washington. We are sorry that we can give no longer account of these gossiping pages, which contain an immense quantity of information upon this branch of collecting, as well as particulars of many volumes hitherto undescribed. It is to be regretted that they are disfigured by several misprints. Bagnagge Wells, Haiday, Hayden, Faithhorne, "Oxford" for Orford, "Fernex for Ferncy Stocdale, Tattler, are grave errors in a book about books, which even a full index cannot wholly condone.

English Sonnets by Poets of the Past. Edited by George Waddington. (Bell & Sons.)

MR. WADDINGTON publishes this collection of sonnets as a companion volume to his English Sonnets by Living Writers, and expresses his hope that in the two anthologies the whole of our best sonnet literature will be found to be fairly represented. That the two volumes Mr. Waddington's task is exercised with taste and disconstitute a veritable treasure-house no one will deny. that is likely to appear. We would, however, have had crimination, and the present collection is as good as any it a trifle more nearly catholic. No sonnet of Watsonwho, according to Heywood,

"Wrote

Able to make Apollo's self to dote "—

is found in the volume. Percy's Celia is also unrepresented, as is Griffin's collection of sonnets called Fidessa. It is a little galling, moreover, to those with a faith in the author of Death's Jest-Book to hear of the rejection from a book which gives sonnets by Crocker, Hawker, Faber, Noel, Alford, and the like, of Beddoes as a minor poet. No collection is, however, likely to satisfy all tastes, and we willingly concede that the present is compre

hensive and excellent. It may be taken as supplemental to the previous collections of Dyce, Leigh Hunt, and others, and regarded in that light it deserves, and will doubtless receive, a warm welcome.

The Order of the Administration of the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion. (Reprinted by Robert Anderson, Glasgow.)

THIS beautiful reprint of the chief service of the Scottish Common Prayer Book of 1637 reminds one of nothing so much as that issue from the Plantin Press in 1677, which found its way to the London market a few years ago, namely, The Office of the B.V.M., in its primary and uncut state. But the book before us has higher merit than the mere beauty of print. The preface is very interesting, and the whole tone and purpose of the book good. It will be observed that in the great question of the Epiclesis, or Invocation of the Holy Spirit, the service here reprinted, that of 1637, agrees with the older English book of 1549. We may add that the last edition of Bright and Medd's Latin Prayer Book gives the Liturgical student a capital opportunity of comparing inter se the First English Communion Service (1549) and the American and Scottish of the present day. Pastimes and Players. By Robert Macgregor, F.S. A. Scot. "6 Mayfair Library." (Chatto & Windus.) MR. MACGREGOR has produced a very entertaining account of our pastimes and players. We do not suppose he claims to have embodied in his book the results of much original research or hitherto unpublished matter; but the number of authors he has laid under contribution is large, and his quotations range over the whole field of British literature. He gives us chapters on the best known national games, such as cricket and football, golf and curling, as well as on pastimes less familiar to the present generation, such as pall-mall, kayles, beltane, and the quintain. The book combines much solid information with entertainment; it is not too light for the antiquary nor too learned for the dilettante. It may be confidently recommended as calculated to while away the leisure hour without arousing the self-reproach of

wasted time.

The Lancashire and Cheshire Historical and Genealogical Notes (Leigh, Chronicle Office), vol. iii. pts. ix. and x., give evidence of much patient research. The proof from wills, offered by Mr. J. P. Rylands, of the use of the strictly patronymical form of surname in Lancashire as late as 1587-1609, is very interesting. But a parallel might have been found much nearer home than Russia. The custom has not yet quite died out in Wales, and the clan Donnachic, called in English Robertson, afford a conspicuous example of its persistency in the Highlands. We must protest against the dreadful plan adopted by our Lancashire friends of bringing their parts to a close which is no close at all. The issue now before us breaks off in the middle of a sentence. This is little short of vivisection of the eager antiquarian reader, who has thus to halt for an indefinite time at Meso- before he is comforted by reaching potamia.

Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, part xii. (Kent & Co.), contains a very good engraving of Gloucester Cathedral. It shares the defect we have noticed in the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical and Genealogical Notes, viz., of commencing or ending, as the case may be, irrespectively of the natural division. Thus part xii. opens in the course of an article belonging to part xi., which is not before us. So far as we can judge from the sporadic acquaintance we have been enabled to make with it, our Gloucestershire namesake is doing good work. Part xii. comprises, inter alia, a useful ist of Gloucestershire contributors to the fund raised for

the defence of the country at the time of the Spanish Armada. We wish the editor every success.

Ar the moment of going to press, a marvel of cheapness reaches us from Mr. Bentley-The People's Ingoldsby, for sixpence,

By a recent resolution of the Council of the Record Society for the publication of Original Documents relating to Lancashire and Cheshire, copies of the two volumes of the Index to the Wills at Chester, 1545 to 1620 and 1621 to 1650, will be sold to non-members at the price of 17. 1s. each volume.

WITH deep regret we announce the death, on Dec. 1, at Bingham's Melcombe, of the Rev. C. W. Bingham, a good antiquary and a frequent contributor to these columns since 1850. Endowed with a most genial and sunny disposition, he was endeared to a large circle of friends, who will long cherish the memory of an English gentleman of the best kind, a worthy scion of the ancient family established at Bingham's Melcombe, in Dorsetshire, since 1250.

Notices to Correspondents.

J. W.-The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M., which had been a constant source of controversy between the Franciscan and Dominican orders throughout the later Middle Ages, and had been left open by the Council of Trent, was defined and promulgated by the late Pope Pius IX., on Dec. 8, 1854, in the bull Ineffabilis Deus. The definition is contained in the following sentence: "Declaramus, pronunciamus et definimus, doctrinam quæ tenet Beatissimam Virginem Mariam in primo instanti suæ Conceptionis fuisse singulari Omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpæ labe præservatam immunem, esse à Deo revelatam, atque idcirco ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constanterque credendam." Reference may be made to Pareri dell' Episcopato Cattolico sulla Definizione Dogmatica dell' Immacolato Concepimento della Beata Vergine Maria; Narratio Actorum S. D. N. P IX. Pont. Max. super Argumento de Immaculato Deiparæ Virginis Conceptu (Roma); Dr. Pusey's Truth and Office of the English Church (Parker & Rivington, 1865), p. 351, note B, where will be found large extracts from the opinions of the bishops; Geffcken's Church and State, translated by E. Fairfax Taylor (Longmans, 1877), vol. ii. pp. 237-9; the Union Review (Hayes), Nov., 1868, &c.

J. R. C. should apply to some medical journal. No charge.

E. G., F.S.A.-The list shall appear. Many thanks.
W. S. S.-Yes.

W. E. A. A.-A proof will be sent shortly.
J. F. We have forwarded your letter to DRUID.
J. HATCHARDS.-With pleasure.

J. H. C.-The Tempest, IV. i. read Clearing out for Guam. CORRIGENDUM.-P. 447, for "Clearing out for Quam "

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