if any of your correspondents find an earlier use of the word;
and can it be gifted with a probable paternity?

The tracing of the earliest known mention of disputed words is a task
capable of being finished, and might perhaps be attended, in many cases,
with happy results. It would rid us probably of many puerilities which
degrade our current dictionaries.

M. C. E.

_Jennings Family._--Some time since I requested as a great favour that your
correspondent PERCURIOSUS would kindly inform me where I could get a sight
of the Spoure MSS. I repeat that I should feel greatly obliged if he would
do so: and as this is of no public interest, I send postage envelope, in
the event of PERCURIOSUS obliging me with the desired information.

J. JENNINGS-G.

_Latimer's Brothers-in-Law._--In Bishop Latimer's first sermon, preached
before King Edward VI., we find the quaint martyr-bishop magnifying the
paternal prudence for having suitably "married his sisters with five
pounds, or twenty nobles, apiece;" but neither the editors of the sermon,
nor the writers of several biographical notices of Latimer consulted by me,
and in which the extract appears, give any account of the fortunate
gentlemen whom the generous parent thus doubly blessed with his twofold
treasure.

Can you, or any of your readers, oblige by furnishing the _names_ of Bishop
Latimer's brothers-in-law, or by giving some references or brief account of
them?

* *

_Autobiographical Sketch._--A fragment came into my possession some time
ago, among a quantity of waste paper in which books were wrapped, which,
from the singularity of its contents, I felt desirous to trace to the book
of which it forms a part, but my research has hitherto proved unsuccessful.
It consists of two leaves of a large octavo sheet, probably published some
twenty years back, and is headed "Autobiographical Sketch of the Editor."
It commences with the words: "The Commissioners of the Poor Laws will
understand me, when I say, that I was born at Putney, in Surrey." The pages
are of course not consecutive: so after an allusion to the wanderings of
the writer, I have nothing more up to p. 7., at which is an account of a
supposed plot against the lord mayor and sheriffs, concocted by him with
the assistance of some school-boy coadjutors; the object of which appears
to have been, to overturn the state-coach of the civic functionary, as it
ascended Holborn Hill, by charging it with a hackney coach, i