In the Parish Register of Great Waldingfield is the following:—­

“Buried, 1570.  Mr. John Hopkins, 23rd Oct.”

D.

* * * * *

NOTES IN ANSWER TO MINOR QUERIES.

Genealogy of European Sovereigns.

Sir,—­Perhaps the following books will be of service to your correspondent Q.X.Z., viz.:—­

“A Genealogical History of the present Royal Families of Europe, the Stadtholders of the United States, and the Succession of the Popes from the 15th century, &c. &c., by the Rev. Mark Noble.”  London, 1781.

     “Historical and Genealogical, Chronological, and Geographical
     Atlas, exhibiting all the Royal families in Europe, their origin,
     Descent, &c., by M. Le Sage.”  London, 1813.

     “Complete Genealogical, Historical, Chronological, and Geographical
     Atlas, &c., by C.V.  Lavoisne.”  Philadelphia, 1821.

W.J.B.

Countess of Pembroke’s letter—­Drayton’s Poems—­A Flemish Account—­Bishop Burnet.

Your correspondent, at p. 28., asks whether there is any contemporary copy of the celebrated letter, said to have been written by Anne, Countess of Pembroke, to Sir Joseph Williamson?  I would refer him to Mr. Hartley Coleridge’s Lives of Distinguished Northerns, 1833, p. 290.  His arguments for considering the letter spurious, if not conclusive, are very forcible, but they are too copious for this paper.

Your readers, who may not be conversant with that undeservedly neglected volume, will confess their obligation, when they have consulted its pages, in having been directed to so valuable and so original a work.  It may be observed, that those letters of the Countess which are authentic, are certainly written in a very different style to the one in question; but this letter, if addressed by her to Sir Joseph Williamson, would be written under peculiar circumstances, and being in her 84th year, she might naturally have asked the assistance of the ablest pen within her reach.  I have the copy of an interesting letter, addressed by the late Mr. John Baynes to Ritson, in 1785, stating his admiration of the Countess’s “spirit and industry, having seen the collections made by her order relative to the Cliffords—­such as no other noble family in the world can show.”

I join in wishing that Mr. Pickering would add a judicious selection from Drayton’s poetical works to his Lives of Aldine Poets.  To the list given by your correspondent (p. 28.), may be added a work entitled Ideas Mirrour Amours in quatorzains (London, 1594, 4to. p. 51.), which was lent to me about forty years ago, but which I have not seen since.  Some notice of it, by myself, will be found in the Censura Literaria. with the following note by Sir C. Brydges:—­“The extreme rarity of this publication renders a farther account desirable, and also more copious extracts.  It appears wholly unknown to Herbert, and to all the biographers of Drayton.”  It is unnoticed by Ritson also.  Chalmers, in his Series of English Poets, has referred to this communication, but he has not printed the poem amongst Drayton’s works.