Before concluding, I will add a query on a very different subject.

3.  Many of your readers have, doubtless, seen the large marble tablet erected by the Vallaisians in honour of Napoleon, in the Convent of the Great St. Bernard.  A recent traveller in Switzerland (Dr. Forbes) has, I find, noticed the inscription, and questioned, as I had done, both its meaning and Latinity.  I extract this author’s note as expressing exactly the point on which I desiderate information:—­

“Having doubts both as to the precise meaning and lingual purity of the compound epithet Bis Italicus, here applied to Napoleon, I subjoin the passage in which it occurs, for the judgement of the learned:—­

    ’NAPOLEONI ...  AEGYPTIACO BIS ITALICO SEMPER INVICTO ...  GRATA
    RESPUBLICA.’”—­A Physician’s Holiday, p. 468.

EMDEE.

Athenaeum, January 26. 1850.

* * * * *

MINOR QUERIES.

Howkey or Horkey.—­ Can anybody explain the etymology of the word Howkey or Horkey, generally used to denote a harvest-home merriment in our eastern counties?  Forbes speaks of it as an intractable word, and neither he nor Sir J. Cullum have succeeded in explaining it satisfactorily.

BRAYBROOKE.

Audley End, Feb. 16.

Lord Bacon’s Metrical Version of the Psalms.—­The answer in No. 15. p. 235. to A CORNISHMAN’S Query (No. 13. p. 202) respecting “Bacon’s Metrical Version of the Psalms,” suggests another query.  The work in question was a mere “exercise of sickness;” it contains only seven psalms (the 1st, 12th, 90th, 104th, 126th, 137th, and 149th), and is, without pretension of any kind, a very proper diversion for a mind that could not be inactive and yet required rest; and very good verses for a man unpractised in metrical composition.  The Collection of Apophthegms (also a recreation in sickness), though considerably larger and altogether weightier, was considered so trifling a work that Dr. Rawley, in his “perfect list of his Lordship’s true works, &c.,” appended to the first edition of the Resuscitatio (1657), either forgot or did not think fit to mention it.  Yet both these trifles were not only written but published, by Bacon himself the year before his death—­a thing quite contrary to his practice; for though he had written and carefully preserved and circulated in manuscript so much, he had till then published nothing that was not of the weightiest and most solid kind.  Can any of your correspondents inform me how much two such books may possibly have been worth to a publisher in the year 1625; being works of low price and popular character, proceeding from an author of great name?  How much is it reasonable to suppose that a publisher may have given for the copyright? or how far may it have gone towards the payment of a bookseller’s bill?

J.S.