Its popularity is evinced by the numerous editions; and, as the commentary was intended for the instruction of youth in the niceties of the Latin language, it was used as a school-book; the copies shared the fate of such books, and hence its rarity.  It is perhaps the earliest comic drama of the German stage, having been performed before Dalberg, Bishop of Worms (at Heidelberg in 1497), to whom it is also inscribed by Reuchlin.  It seems to have given the good bishop great pleasure, and he requited each of the performers with a gold ring and some gold coin.  Their names are recorded at the end of the drama.

Melchior Adam gives the following account:—­

“Ibi Comoediam scripsit, Capitis Caput plenam nigri salis & acerbitatis adversus Monachum, qui ejus vitae insidiatus erat.  Ibi & alteram Comoediam edidit fabulam Gallicam, plenam candidi salis; in qua forensia sophismata praecipue taxat.  Hanc narrabat hac occasione scriptam & actam esse.  Cum alteram de Monacho scipsisset, fama sparsa est de agenda Comoedia, quod illo tempore inusitatum erat.  Dalburgius lecta, illius Monachi insectatione, dissuasit editionem & actionem, quod eodem tempore & apud Philipum Palatinum Franciscanus erat Capellus, propter potentiam & malas artes invisus nobilibus & sapientibus viris in aula.  Intellexit periculum Capnio & hanc Comoediam occultavit.  Interea tamen, quia flagitabatur actio, alteram dulcem fabellam edit, & repraesentari ab ingeniosis adolescentibus, quorum ibi extant nomina, curat.”

Mr. Hallam (Literat. of Europe, vol. i. p. 292., {90} 1st ed.), misled by Warton and others, gives a very defective and erroneous account of the Progymnasmata Scaenica, which he supposed to contain several dramas; but he concludes by saying, “the book is very scarce, and I have never seen it.”  Gottsched, in his History of the German Drama, merely says he had seen some notice of a Latin drama by Reuchlin.  Hans Sachs translated it into German, after his manner, and printed it in 1531 under the title of Henno.

S.W.S.

Mickleham, Dec. 1. 1849.

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MYLES BLOMEFYLDE—­ORTUS VOCABULORUM.

Sir,—­In reference to the Query of BURIENSIS in No. 4. of your periodical, as to the parentage of Myles Blomefylde, of Bury St. Edmund’s, I beg to contribute the following information.  In the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge, is a volume containing an unique copy of “the boke called the Informacyon for pylgrymes vnto the holy lande,” printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1524, at the end of which occurs the following manuscript note:—­