  Mutilating Books.—Swift, in a letter to Stella, Jan. 16, 1711, says, "I went to Bateman's the bookseller, and laid out eight-and-forty shillings for books. I bought three little volumes of Lucian in French, for our Stella." This Bateman would never allow any one to look into a book in his shop; and when asked the reason, he would say, "I suppose you may be a physician, or an author, and want some recipe or quotation; and if you buy it I will engage it to be perfect before you leave me, but not after; as I have suffered by leaves being torn out, and the books returned, to my very great loss and prejudice. The Plymouth Calendar.—To your collection of verses (Vol. vii. passim) illustrative of local circumstances, incidents, &c., allow me to add the following: "The West wind always brings wet weather, The East wind wet and cold together; The South wind surely brings us rain, The North wind blows it back again. If the Sun in red should set, The next day surely will be wet; If the Sun should set in grey, The next will be a rainy day." Divinity Professorships.—In the last number of The Journal of Sacred Literature (April, 1854), there is a well-deserved eulogium on the biblical labours of Dr. Kitto; who, though in the enjoyment of the title of D.D. (conferred on him some years ago by a Continental University), is nevertheless a layman, and not, as is very commonly imagined, in orders. The article, however, to which I refer, contains a curious mistake. Michaelis is cited (p. 122.) as an instance of a layman being able, on the Continent, to hold a professorship relating to theology and biblical science, in contrast to what is assumed to be the invariable system at the English Universities. It is true, indeed, that for the most part such professorships are here held by clergymen; but from several of them laymen are not excluded by any law. At Cambridge, the Norrisian Professor of Divinity, for example, may be a layman. With respect to the degree of D.D., it is observed by the Writer of the article, p. 127.:
[We have frequently seen the celebrated Nonjuror Henry Dodwell noticed as in orders, perhaps from his portrait exhibiting him in gown and bands as Camden Professor of History at Oxford. Miss Strickland, too, in her Lives of the Queens of England, vol. vii. p. 202., and vol. viii. p. 352., edit. 1853, speaks of that worthy layman, Robert Nelson, both as a Doctor and a clergyman!—Ed.] |
|
