t to a _horseman_, _knight_, or
_thane_. What is meant by the Anglo-Saxon text is, certainly, anything but
clear, as it stands in Barrington's edition; and he himself confesses this,
and does not admit it into his English translation.

Dr. Bosworth seems to have wisely omitted the word in the second edition of
his dictionary; and Thorpe confesses he can make nothing of it, in his
_Analecta_. We find no such word in Caedmon, Beowulf, or the _Saxon
Chronicle_; and the only reference made by Dr. Bosworth, in his first
edition, is to this very place in Alfred's _Orosius_, in which he seems to
have followed Lye.

May it not have been an error in the earlier transcribers of the MS., and
the real word have been _twentigum_, _i. e._ he ordered his thane to pass
over the river _with twenty men_, since the thane, by himself, could have
been but of little use on the other side the river? However this may be,
the fact is not historical at all, and therefore, as respects history, is
of little consequence.

JOHN ORMAN, M.A.

Cambridge.

_Pugna Porcorum_ (Vol. vii., p. 528.).--The author of this poem, as is
generally believed (though its production has also been assigned to
Gilbertus Cognatus or Cousin), was Joannes Leo Placentius, or Placentinus,
of whom the following account is given in the _Biographie Universelle_:

"Jean-Leo Placentius ou Le Plaisant, n'est connu que comme l'auteur
d'un petit poeme _tautogramme_, genre de composition qui ne peut offrir
que le frivole merite de la difficulte vaincue. Ne a Saint Trond, au
pays de Liege, il fit ses etudes a Bois-le-Duc, dans l'ecole des
Hieronomytes; embrassa la vie religieuse, au commencement du seizieme
siecle, dans l'ordre des Dominicains, et fut envoye a Louvain pour y
faire son cours de theologie. Les autres circonstances de sa vie sont
ignorees; et ce n'est que par conjecture qu'on place sa mort a l'annee
1548. On peut consulter sur cet ecrivain, la _Bibl. Belgica_ de
Foppens, et les _Scriptores ordin. Praedicator._ des PP. Quetif et
Echard."

[Greek: Alieus].

Dublin.

This production appears to have been merely designed as a display of the
writer's skill. Dr. Brown notices it in his _Philosophy of the Mind_, lect.
36; and Ebert: "PORCIUS, _Pugna Porcorum_, per P. Porcium, Poetam (J.
Leonem), without {607} place, 1530, 8vo., 8 leaves. Printed in Italics, and
probably at Cologne or in Holland." He enumerates several other e