London: Barthès et Lowell.

Readers acquainted with the literature of the Middle Ages, know what a taste prevailed at that time for applying to all kinds of subjects, physical and moral, intellectual and spiritual, the laws of heraldic science. There were Blasons Anatomiques, Blasons Domestiques, and Blasons Hérétiques; the various parts of the human body had their blason, and it would have been difficult to find in the whole range of creation a substance which was not amenable to the rules and precepts so curiously explained by Gwyllim. Amongst the various works relating to heraldry, the Blason des Couleurs was for a long time one of the most celebrated; edition after edition, published in rapid succession, could not satisfy the curiosity of the public; and now the few copies, which from time to time appear at book-sales, fetch the most extraordinary prices. In a very suggestive Preface to this elegant edition, M. Cocheris proves sufficiently that the rarity of the Blason des Couleurs is not the only merit it possesses. Whilst descanting on the significance of the several heraldic colours, and illustrating them by constant reference to the topics of ordinary life, the writer has unconsciously explained many social and domestic details of his own times, and contributed to give us a more accurate knowledge of the manners of our forefathers. The Blason des Couleurs is composed of two distinct treatises: the first being entitled De la Manière de Blasonner les Couleurs en Armoirie, is the work of a pseudonymous author who, like most heralds, adopted a kind of styled himself, accordingly, Sicille, hérault à très puissant de guerre; and roy Alphonse d'Aragon. This part is decidedly the less valuable of the two; it is, as M. Cocheris remarks, a mere translation of certain passages from Pliny, interlarded with quotations from the Bible, from Isidorus Hispalensis, Thomas Aquinas, &c., &c. However, it would be unfair to look for much in an author who frankly acknowledges that "sa plume est trop mal stillée de bon sens et non arrousée du jus de loquence." Sicille confines his attention merely to the qualities of our nature, and he assigns them severally to the seven different colours recognised in heraldry: gold, for instance, is the correlative of nobility and riches; its cognate jewel is the topaz; it is the colour of youth, of the sun, of faith, and of Sunday.

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M. Cocheris is inclined to believe that the second treatise contained in this volume, and entitled La Manière de Blasonner toutes Couleurs, tant en Livrées, Devises, qu'en aultre Manière, is not from the pen of the King of Ara

[2nd S. XI. FEB. 9. '61.

gon's herald. The author, whosoever he may be, has very wisely avoided the common-place remarks which disamusing and interesting particulars on the fashions figure Sicille's pamphlet, and given us instead some adopted during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for apparel. Thus, talking of the blue colour, he says: the decoration of houses and the adjustment of wearing bleu est une couleur naturelle dont on use et principalle"Le ment les paintres. On en faict les voultes et embriseures figure du ciel." des logis, palays, chasteaux et salles; elle demonstre la

the Journal des Modes. Of the same colour blue, or pers, Some of our author's pages read like an extract from as it was then designated, applied to dresses, he remarks: "Le bleu, couleur communément portée par les Angloys comme leur propre livrée, se porte par les filles en sainctures et cordons, et voulentiers par gens de villaige, comme en chapeaulx, robes, pourpoins et chausses. Et tend-on de pers en la maison d'ung trespassé." The Blason de Couleurs is the eighteenth volume of M. Aubry's Trésor des Pièces Rares ou Inédites-a collection which we have cuts, a portrait of Sicille, &c., &c., the reprint just noticed had already the opportunity of recommending to our readers. Published in the most elegant style, with woodreally deserves a place in every scholar's library, because it is a specimen of a style of literature which formerly was exceedingly fashionable. It is impossible to ascertain in a positive manner the date of the Blason des Couleurs; M. Cocheris thinks it must have been composed between the years 1435 and 1458. The fact that the name of the historian Robert Gaguin is mentioned, proves that the original text has been modified by some unknown editor after its first publication.

Harrow-on-the-Hill.

GUSTAVE MASSON.

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES

WANTED TO PURCHASE.

2. Sent another letter to Mr. Anstis, accepting his invitation to Mortlake, promising to be with him next Wednesday. Mr. Booth, when he called yesterday, said he had manuscripts enough to supply several British Librarians, and that he would bring me the old Record relating, as I remember, to the Forest of Delamere, when Mr. Holmes 6 of the Tower had transcribed it.

4. Dined with Mr. Vertue, and went with him to Mr. Ámes in the afternoon. Returned Mr. Thompson's Caxton, and borrowed Sir Thomas Elyot's Governour.8

6. Mr. Vertue shewed me two curious limnings by old Isaac Oliver and his son Peter. The first was of Sir Philip Sidney, in a small oval in a blue ground. His hair light brown, pretty full and dark shaded; his face pale or somewhat wan, perhaps the colours only somewhat faded; his eyes gray, very lively and sharp; his nose gently rising; his beard thin; his dress a falling laced band, with a scollop edging; his vest, or doublet, white sattin corded, and laid along crossways very thickly with silver-lace, with this mark on the right hand 4.10 The other, by Peter Oliver, is of Sir Edward Harley, Knight of the Bath, grandfather to the Earl of Oxford. 'Tis somewhat larger than the other, set in gold, painted on a brown ground, as I remember, black short hair, roundish face, black eyes, picked beard; dressed in a ruff, close jacket or doublet, blue or greyish coloured, and flowered with black, and a red ribbon about his neck. This motto to the right, Ter et amplius, and this mark to the left, PO, both in gold letters. They are both delicate pieces, but

6 George Holmes, Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London: born in 1662, and died 16th Feb. 1748-9.

7 Joseph Ames, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries, was originally a ship-chandler in Wapping. Late in life he took to the study of antiquities; and besides his Typographical Antiquities, 4to. 1749, he published a Catalogue of English Heads, 8vo. 1748, being the first attempt at giving a list of portraits, since followed up by Granger, Noble, Bromley, Walpole, &c. He died in 1759. His library and prints were sold by auction in the following year. Oldys, in his British Librarian, acknowledges his obligations to Mr. Ames, whom he styles " a worthy preserver of antiquities," and returns him many thanks "for the use of one ancient relique of the famous Wicliffe." This was an illuminated MS. on vellum, called "Wicliffe's Pore Caitiff."

8 This work is noticed by Oldys in The British Librarian, p. 261. It is entitled "The Boke named the GOVERNOUR; devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, Knyght. Imprinted at London, in Flete-strete, in the House of Thos. Berthelet, cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum,” 8vo. 1553: 216 leaves, besides Tables, &c.

9 Vide Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. 1849, i. 176. 221., for notices of these two miniature painters.

10 The celebrated work of Isaac Oliver, formerly at Cowdray, had this same mark. It was a picture of three sons of Viscount Montague. (Walpole, Anec., ed. Dallaway, i. 297.) A miniature of Sir Philip Sydney by the same artist was purchased by Horace Walpole at West's sale for 167. 58. (Ibid. 299.)

the former has the hair more finely laboured, and the skin more tenderly stippled. The latter is freer, bolder, fresher. M. Vertue is graving them both one for the publick, the other for the Earl of Oxford. He shewed me several other miniatures, many of them his own painting. His Queen of Scots, a full-length, seems to have most engaged his pains; and his miniature of Sir Walter Ralegh, in the silver armour, has a nearer approach to the beauty of the original than his print before my Life of him, which makes the face longer, and less graceful.

7. Dined with Mr. Anstis at his seat near Mortlake. Saw the Duke of Montague's letter to him, by which it appears the old heraldical manuscript before-mentioned was his Grace's, and that the gentleman lately dead, a Mr. Grimes, among whose books it was bought, had borrowed it of him. It was the handwriting of Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who died about 26 Henry VIII., in which the statutes of the Order appear at the beginning of that book, who signs at the end his initial letters, Th. Wr. A. R. Greck, that is, Grekelade. All the old illuminations of the Order of the Bath were graved in small compartments in one sheet in Sir Edward Bysse's Upton De Studio militari [fol. 1654]. And the Duke has graved the portraits at length of the old Earls of Salisbury, &c., in this book, which, with some others from other illuminations, make up seventeen plates; and Mr. Anstis has copied much of the arms and badges, &c., of the Knights of the Garter in it, so that the book has now been almost totally ransacked. Saw several curious books, &c., in his library, and his own book of the Order of the Garter, with many manuscript additions interleaved, and written on the margins. Some talk with Mr. Haslin about the Librarian, and his taste is for only old things, and collating editions, distinguishing omissions, alterations, &c.; but I made an objection they could not except against about Dr. Drake's edition of Archbishop Parker's Lives of the Archbishops, wherein is received all the author's rejections, for which indiscrete labour he could con the said editor no thanks. Saw the pictures of Robert Earl of Leicester in a close reddish doublet, half-length, and his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, in the dining-room. Heard that the Yelverton library now is in the possession of the Earl of Sussex 1, wherein are many volumes of Sir Francis Walsingham's State Papers.

23. Dr. Pepusch offer'd me any intelligence or assistance from his antient collections of musick, for a history of that art and its professors in England.

1 The Yelverton MSS. were all given by the Earl of Sussex to Lord Calthorpe, whose mother was of the Yelverton family, and at his death had not been opened. (Gough MS. quoted in Nichols's Lit. Anec. iii. 622.) A catalogue of them is printed in the Cat. Manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ, tom. ii., part. i., pp. 113-174.

27. Mr. Coxeter told me that the Queen's1 collection of Plays were offered by Mr. Cooke, who first collected them, for fourscore guineas, and were, as his, thought too dear; but after Mrs. Oldfield 3 the actress died, and they were reported to be her collection, then the Queen would have them at any rate; and was reported, I think, in the newspapers to have given 2007. for them; but, as he tells me, she had them for six score guineas. And it is not improbable but that volume of ten of Massinger's Plays, which was about three or four months since sold by Cock the auctioneer (in the sale of Sclater Bacon's Books 1), to the Countess of Pomfret's footman for 31. 10s. 5, was bought to add to that collection. He also said that Weaver, the dancing-master's collection of plays, was more complete, which sold to Chitty the merchant for 187., and that Sir Thomas Hanmer is preparing an edition of Shakespeare.

Oct. 5. Received the last sheet of the first volume of Mr. Hayward's British Muse; with him heard at his house the account of Austin, the ink powder man, noted for his fireworks; also the great pudding he made for his customers; but more especially the pudding which about twelve or thirteen years since he baked ten feet deep in the Thames near Rotherhithe for a wager, by enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a great sack of lime; and after in about two hours and a half it was taken up, and eaten with much liking, being only a little overbaked. There was above an 100l. won upon this experiment.

Dec. 22. Went in the evening to see Mr. Nickolls near Queen Hythe, and he shewed me his collection of Original Letters and Addresses to Oliver Cromwell, all pasted into a large volume, folio; in number about 130, and written to him while he was Lieutenant of Ireland, General of the army in Scotland, and Protector of England, from the year 1650 to 1654 the greatest part, but some down to 1658, ending with an address to Richard Cromwell, and a Commission signed by Prince Rupert. They had been the collection of Mr. John Milton, and were preserved by Thomas Elwood the Quaker, who had been his amanuensis, from whom they descended to the master with whom Mr. Nickolls served his time, and so they

2 Thomas Cooke, dramatist and miscellaneous writer. 3 Mrs. Oldfield died on Oct. 23, 1730.

4 Thomas Sclater Bacon, whose library was sold on March 14, and following days, 1736-7.

5 These ten plays by Massinger, 4to. (lot 720), sold for 31. 16s.

6 The name of John Weaver, that little dapper cheerful man, is not to be found in any biographical dictionary. He was buried in St. Chad's church, Shrewsbury, on 28th Sept. 1760. Vide "N. & Q.," 2nd Ser. iii. 89. 138. 297.

came to him. He says he has suffered half a dozen or half a score of them to be made use of by Mr. Birch in his Life of Oliver Cromwell inserted in the General Dictionary; and it is certain if those other letters, written by Oliver Cromwell himself, which are still in being, as Mr. Ames tells me, in Sir Hans Sloane's possession, and in Ashmole's Museum at Oxford, through the gift of Dr. Massey, they would give a more perfect idea of the man and his actions than all that has been said of him by the particular writers of his Life, as the author of Parallelum Olive [fol. 1656.], S. Carrington, 8vo. 1659, H. Dawbeny, James Heath, Slingsby Bethel, J. Shirley, Le Sieur du Galardi, Gregorio Leti, L'Abbee Raguenet, and Mr. Kimber, or what all the general historians have written of him put together.

Jan. 25, 1737-8. Mr. Twells town.

goes out of Feb. 20. At the sale of Mr. Sclater Bacon's library in the Piazza [Covent Garden], there arose one book called the Pastyme of People, a thin fol. volume, with wooden cuts of the English kings, from William the Conqueror to the slaughter of King Richard III., written the 21st of Hen. VIII. or 1530, and soon after printed. And nobody then present, of near thirty gentlemen and booksellers, &c., had discovered it to be John Rastell's Chronicles but myself, wherefore it stopped at ten shillings, the extent of Mr. West's commission to Noorthouck, the bookseller, for it; who, had he known what it was, would have raised it to 20., or he would have had it. But having apprised Mr. Ames of it, he got for the former sum one of the scarcest books in England. Two [five] nights after he bought at the same place Caxton's Game of Chesse, the second edition, with wooden cuts, with his Mirror of the World, and Chaucer's translation, Boetius de Consolatione Phi

7 These letters have since been printed, entitled, "Original Letters and Papers of State, addressed to Oliver Cromwell, concerning the Affairs of Great Britain, from the Year 1649 to 1658, found among the Political Collections of Mr. John Milton; now first published from the Originals, by John Nickolls, F.R. and A.S.S. fol. 1743." The originals of these Letters were long treasured up by Milton; from whom they came into the possession of Thomas Elwood. From Elwood they came to Joseph Wyeth, a merchant of London; from whose widow they were obtained by Mr. Nickolls, and eventually presented to the Society of Antiquaries. Mr. Nickolls was a Quaker, and his place of business as a mealman was in Trinity parish, near Queenhithe. He was a curious collector of antiquities, and chosen F.S.A. Jan. 17, 1740: ob. Jan. 11, 1745. - Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, ii. 159.

8 The Rev. Leonard Twells, M.A., Rector of the united parishes of St. Matthew, Friday Street, and St. Peter, Cheapside. At this time he was engaged on his great work, The Theological Works of Dr. Pocock, 2 vols. fol. 1740. He died 19th Feb. 1741-2.

9 Lot 1464. The Pasthyme of People, fol. No date, sold for 11s.