from time to time I have spoken or corresponded on the subject, I have received warning that by delaying to give the result of my researches to the public I was putting to hazard an honourable opportunity of securing to myself some literary reputation. The truth is, I have in the long interval been much and actively engaged in matters more immediately important. I have been occupied too in following out my discovery to its wide and various consequences. I have been desirous to explore deeply rather than solicitous to appropriate early, and latterly my materials have so overwhelmed me that I have become fastidious and irresolute as to mode, composition, and arrangement.

Under these circumstances, and before J. B. actually announces his discovery, I thus put in my claim. I readily acknowledge that he who unnecessarily hoards information of any kind rightly loses the privilege of first communicating it, and I anticipate with my best philosophy the interesting conclusion of J. B.'s very excellent and original paper. When I can again apply myself to the subject, I will come before the public as his fellow-labourer, and it shall be in the spirit of one who, while he feels (alas! for human nature!) somewhat jealously of his own long-treasured discovery, recollects that the claim he is now preferring may be the cause of similar feelings in another, who has much more justly appreciated what is due to himself, and what the interests of literature demand from all its worshippers.

P. 242. PRIVATE BOXES. There really were boxes in the old theatres in which persons might sit retired and behold the performance. This appears by a poem preserved in the Harl. MS. 1836.

Rufus the courtier, at the Theatre,

Leaving the best and most conspicuous place,
Doth either to the stage himself transfer,

Or through a grate doth shew his doubtful face;
For that the clamorous cry of th' Inns of Court
Fills up the private rooms of greater price,
And such a place where all men may resort
He in his singularity doth despise, &c.

P. 286. In the Note, for 1831 read 1833. The same volume which contains the treatise of Allatius on the Superstitions of the Greek Islands contains another treatise on the structure of the ancient Christian churches, which appears not to have been used by the writers who in our time have treated on this now very favourite subject.

P. 307. That "Shylock" was a form of "Scialac" had been remarked long ago by Upton. See his Critical Observations on Shakespeare, 8vo., 1746, p. 286.

P. 317. Since writing what is here said of the line

Such harmony is in immortal souls!

I have met with proof that the harmony in human souls of which Hooker speaks was no very uncommon subject of discussion among scholars at the time when this play was written. This appears to leave no doubt that Shakespeare wrote in allusion to this opinion. Thomas Weelks the musician, who was organist of the College of Winchester, dedicates his book of Madrigals of Five and Six Parts, 4to., 1600, to Henry, Lord Windsor, Baron of Bradenham, and compliments him in the following terms :-"My Lord, in the College of Winchester where I live, I have heard learned men say, that some philosophers have mistaken the soul of man for an harmony. Let the president of their error be a privilege for mine. I see not, if souls do not partly consist of music, how it should come to pass that so noble a spirit as yours, so perfectly tuned to so perpetual a tenor of excellencies as it is, should descend to the notice of a quality lying single in so low a personage as myself."

P. 318. "Pattents is wholly inadmissible." This is too strongly put. Pattent and Patten were used indifferently to express the small metal dishes used in the service of the Mass, described in Latin by the word Patina. Thus in an inventory of the church-goods belonging to the parish of St. Peter per Mountergate, in the city of Norwich, in 2 and 3 Philip and Mary-" Imprimis one challes of sylver holle gylte with a pattent, weighing xiiii ounces, valued at vs. iiiid. le ounce, lxxivs. viiid:" and in the same manner it occurs in the inventories of the goods of other churches in that city,

and elsewhere, as in a similar inventory of church goods at Calais.

P. 325. THE VENETIAN DUCAT. The actual weight of this coin was very nearly fifty-four grains of pure gold, as I was informed in the numismatic department of the British Museum.

P. 327. THE RACK. Sir Thomas Smith, in his Commonwealth of England, speaks contemptuously of this mode of extorting confessions, and argues against the practice as a lawyer, but he does not by any means rise to the assertion of its folly and wickedness in the broad manner of Shakespeare. "Confession by torment is esteemed for nothing, for if he confess at the judgment, the trial of the twelve goeth not upon him; if he deny the fact, that which he said before hindereth him not." This is far short of the bold language of the Poet. How often is it found that the wits see the truth before the philosophers.

P. 332. For "Saint Herbert " read "Saint Hubert."

P. 366. The lines quoted at the foot of this page are inadvertently attributed to Bishop Hall. They are really taken from the Prologue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Custom of the Country.

So free this work is, gentlemen, from offence
That we are confident it needs no defence
From us, or from the poets; we dare look
On any man that brings his table-book
To write down what again he may repeat
At some great table to deserve his meat.

P. 416. It is probable that Sir George Buck acted for Tylney from the time when he obtained the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels, 1603. In 1604 Tylney was living at Letherhead in Surrey.

Mr. Collier has added a Master of the Revels, Thomas

Blagrave, to the list of persons who held that office formed by Chalmers and Malone. Blagrave was descended of a family in Staffordshire. He married a daughter of William Bellamy, and had a son and daughter. The son was John Blagrave, and the daughter Mary married William Lodge, the son of Sir Thomas Lodge, the Lord Mayor. The Master of the Revels died January 18, 1590, and was buried in Clerkenwell Church. See Harl. MS. 1551, f. 59.

P. 416. Note. For "Reviewers" read "Believers."
P. 419. For "Poeta " read "Porta."

VOLUME II.

P. 41. COMPARE what is here said of Charles Aleyne with p. 308 of this volume.

P. 54. John Melton is one of the many deserving English authors of whom there is no account to be found in any of the books to which we might go for information of this kind. His Astrologaster is now a very curious book, and in its day no doubt it was a very useful book, guarding people against the artifices of the professors of what were called the occult sciences, who abounded in those days. I conjecture that he was the same John Melton, who was afterwards secretary to the Council of the North, or keeper of the great seal for the North of England, who died in 1640, and was buried at Tottenham, with a monument to his memory.

P. 77, 1. 16, for "has " read "had."

P. 125. The name of the artist here particularly referred to is William Torell, he who cast the exquisite statue of Queen Eleanor in the chapel of the Kings at Westminster, a work which has probably nothing superior to it in the works of its class in the thirteenth century.

It is a proud distinction for England that she produced so eminent an artist; and I feel great satisfaction in the thought that I was the first person who drew attention to this circumstance; and the rather because in Mr. Botfield's contribution to the Roxburghe Club, in which this artist and his works occur, England is deprived of the honour of having produced him, and an Italian is invented for the occasion, to whom the name Torelli is given.

Torell was a well established and wide-spread surname in England in the thirteenth century. Two William Torells,