has thus spoken of a quarto
treatise, _De autoritate, officio, et potestate Pastorum
ecclesiasticorum_:--

"This very scarce book is anonymous, and has neither date, printer's
name, nor place; but being bound up with two other tracts of
Berthelet's printing _are my reasons_ for giving it a place here."

The argument and the language in this sentence are pretty nearly on a par;
for as misery makes men acquainted with dissimilar companions, why may not
parsimony conglutinate heterogeneous compositions? I venture to deny
altogether that the engraved border on the title-page was executed by an
English artist. It seems rather to be an original imitation of Holbein's
design: and as regards the date, can we not perceive what was meant for a
modest "1530" on a standard borne by one of the boys in procession? In
Simler's Gesnerian _Bibliotheca_ SIMON HESS (let me reiterate the question,
Who was he?) is registered as the author; and of his work we read, "Liber
impressus in Germania." This observation will determine its locality to a
certain extent; and the tractate may be instantly distinguished from all
others on the same subject by the presence of the following alliterative
frontispiece:--

"Primus Papa, potens Pastor, pietate paterna,
Petrus, perfectam plebem pascendo paravit.
Posthabito plures populo, privata petentes,
Pinguia Pontifices, perdunt proh pascua plebis."

R. G.

* * * * *

ENIGMATICAL EPITAPH.

In the church of Middleton Tyas, in the North Riding of the county, there
is the following extraordinary inscription on the monument of a learned
incumbent of that parish:--

"This Monument rescues from oblivion the Remains of the Rev. John
Mawer, D.D., late Vicar of this Parish, who died Nov. 18th, 1763, aged
60. The doctor was descended from the royal family of Mawer, and was
inferior to none of his illustrious ancestors in personal merit, being
the greatest linguist this nation ever produced. He was able to write
and speak twenty-two languages, and particularly excelled in the
Eastern tongues, in which he proposed to his Royal Highness Frederick
Prince of Wales, to whom he was firmly attached, to propagate the
Christian religion in the Abyssinian empire,--a great and noble design,
which was frustrated by the death of that amiable prince."

Whitaker, after giving the epitaph verbatim in his _History of
Richmondshire_, v