The square flat ornamental tiles of which it was composed (for it is now taken up, and the tiles in possession of different people at Exeter) are probably of Flemish origin, and imported perhaps about the year 1250, when the bath was repaired afresh by the monks, as it adjoins the ancient buildings of their college near the Conduit. The flue which heated this bath is in the wall to the left, proceeding no doubt, originally, from a hypocaust, stove, or furnace, outside; and close to it, directly under the wall, and on a level with the pavement, was found a coin of the Lower Empire, with the head of Philip the Elder, Radiant, and AVG. The walls are partly of Heavitree red stone, and partly of small red clinkers or bricks. Roman tesseræ were found in great abundance on the same spot, indicating the existence of a tessellated or chequered pavement; also fragments of Roman sepulchral urns of black sun-baked clay, intermixed with bones, cinders, and pieces of red pottery and glass, but none in a perfect state. On the interior of a small red terra cotta vessel from the same spot (unfortunately broken) the inscription REGINI. M. is perfectly legible, and GENT. MAG. VOL. II.

though unfortunately it is reversed in the engraving). The third tile represents the cross of the Knights Templars, or perhaps more probably the cross patée of de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle. The fourth appears to be the Royal Coat of Scotland; unless, instead of a tressure, the lion was intended to be surrounded with the bordure bezantée of the Earls of Cornwall. The sixth is evidently the spread eagle of Richard Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans. The eighth represents a fish within the holy symbol of the vesica piscis. The tenth appears to be an armorial coat of chevronels, probably Clare, and allusive to Margaret de Clare, wife of Edmund Earl of Cornwall.

QUESTIONES VENUSINE. No. IV.

Vindicia Lollianæ concluded.

FROM the natural desire to gain for my defence of the Lollius of Horace (4 C. ix.) a full and fair investigation, and in the feeling also that a sufficiently strong case is made out in his favor to justify the challenge, I have taken the liberty of calling the attention of several accomplished scholars to those points stated in Quæstiones Venusinæ, u. s. in the sincere hope to see and examine whatever was advanced against that side of the question which from conviction I had so earnestly espoused.

Let me now be allowed to exhibit the principal parts of six Letters which that invitation has produced, with such comments as may do justice to an overbrevity perhaps in the original article here referred to.

i. "I can find no historical evidence "on either side to which you have not "given its place. My only doubt "would be founded on Pliny, who was "hardly capable of writing so strongly "against a man who really deserved "Horace's praises. And then, con

sidering the profligate system of "flattery, which men of letters thought

allowable, I hardly know how on "Horace's sole evidence, for silence

by Velleius Paterculus: as evidence, except of traditional report in the fashionable circles, it has no claim to be admitted and the prevalence of that report also, besides that Lollia Paullina's case in itself was so particular, may on a general principle very well be accounted for.

Obtrectatio et livor pronis auribus accipiuntur. Histor. i. 1.

Any imputation of" profligate flattery" as bearing on my friend Horace 1 utterly defy, qualifying however that defiance in the terms of HORATIUS RESTITUTUS, Preface (iii).-" if his "words and his deeds be only traced, ever so severely, in the actual suc"cession of years.'

was not of the most reputable description.

"But, however this may be, you "have adduced sufficient proof that "Francis is not to be trusted, and that "the praises bestowed by Horace upon "Lollius may have been deserved at "the time they were written."—H. J.

iii. "I have gone carefully over your paper more than once, and am fully "convinced by it."-J. P. L.

My ingenious and acute correspondent is of opinion also, that a case might be especially made made out against Tiberius.

"From a passage in the Annals of "Tacitus, L. vi. Tiberius seems to

"have been well inclined to Phraates; " and the whole business in the East, I am well disposed to think, was managed by bim with the Parthian, "in order to get rid of Lollius."

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iv. "I cannot say how much you "have obliged me by your Lolliana Vindicia, which appear to me as satisfactory as with such elements of "reasoning could be hoped, and more "satisfactory than perhaps by any "other reasoner could have been ef"fected.-F. W.

v. "I beg to return you my thanks "for your Paper on the subject of Lol"lius. You have fully exposed the "carelessness, or the bad faith, of Francis; and have, I think, vindi"cated the character of Lollius.

"You justly observe, that Velleius is "not to be trusted, where Tiberius is "concerned. The particular which you quote from Tacitus-Caius tunc "forte Lollio offensior-can be no im

putation on Lollius; because from "the hints in Dio, lv. 9. we may col"lect, that Caius and Lucius were "not youths of very promising dispo"sitions. I suspect that it was no great disadvantage to the Roman "world that they both died in early youth."-H. F. C.

vi. “You had already told me, and “from his own authority, so much

more about Horace than I was be

“fore aware of, that I read with great eagerness your vindication of his friend Lollius. In default of direct "evidence, you certainly have done "your utmost, and I think with success, “to invalidate the positive testimony "against him. Whatever be one's judgment upon the facts, it is at least "refreshing to see so much learning employed for so good-natured a purpose, as vindicating the character of

a Poet's friend."-V. H.

Such is my case; and it is now finally submitted to the judgment of scholars. Historic doubts, at the lowest estimate, I have certainly raised; and to my view they still hold the same form and magnitude, as when first called from the deep, in which they had lain quiet so long.

11th June. HORATII RESTITUTOR.

LYDGATE'S

BYCORNE AND CHCIHEVACHE.
MR. URBAN,

If you think the following scrap of

information worth a place in your pages, it is quite at your service.

In Dodsley's collection of Old Plays there is printed from MS. Harl. 2251, a short poem of Lydgate's, entitled, "Of Bycorne and Chichevache," whose principal value is that it illustrates a passage in the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. Bycorne and Chichevache are two animals, one of which is represented as only living upon good wives, the other upon good and patient husbands; and the humour of the poem consists in making the latter fat and the former lean, insinuating thereby that the world is much more plentiful in good husbands than in good wives. This piece of Lydgate's was given among the old plays, on the supposition that it was a specimen of the rudest species of dramatical exhibitions, and Tyrwhit, on Cant. T. v. 9064, calls it

a kind of pageant," and thinks "it is not improbable that Lydgate translated the ballad now extant from some older French poem, to which Chaucer alludes." Ritson, on the other hand, denied that there was any thing dramatic about Lydgate's poem; and the following note which I have met with in an old MS. will prove that in this instance Ritson was right. There are two or three valuable MS. volumes of

Lydgate's poems, preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge; in two of which are found copies of the poem of Bycorne and Chichevache, and in one of them, to every poem in the volume is prefixed a brief introduction, generally setting forth its author, and sometimes also the purpose for which it was written. To the poem to which I have been alluding, this is the introduction-" Loo, sirs, the deuise of a peynted or desteyned clothe for an halle, a parlour, or a chaumbre, deuysed by Johan Lidegate, at the request of a worthy citesyn of London." (MSS. Trin. Coll. Cant. R. 3. 20. temp. Hen. V.) Any one of your readers, Mr. Urban, who may be desirous of seeing the design of such a " peynted or desteyned clothe," will find a fair specimen in a large wood-cut, covering a folio broadside, printed, if I remember right, in the reign of Elizabeth, and preserved among the volumes of proclamations in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries. It is entitled, "Fillgut, and Pinch-belly one being fat with eating good men, the other leane for want of good women.'

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Yours, T. W.