From the foregoing specimen, I think your readers will agree with me that a Catalogue of such antiquity and interest is well worthy of publication.

But we have another ancient Catalogue of a monastic library equally curious, and even more important from its magnitude, and the numerous works it contains on English history, early romances, &c.  I remain, &c.

JAMES H. TODD.

Trin.  Coll.  Dublin, Nov. 27. 1849.

    [Footnote 1:  Sic perhaps a mistake for et.]

* * * * *

DEFENCE OF A BALD HEAD—­THE STATIONERS’ REGISTERS.

I am about to supply a deficiency in my last volume of Extracts from the Register of the Stationers’ Company (printed for the Shakespeare Society, 1849), and thereby set an example that I hope will be followed, in order that various works, regarding which I could give no, or only incomplete, information, may be duly illustrated.  It is impossible to expect that any one individual could thoroughly accomplish such an undertaking; and, by means of your excellent periodical, it will be easy for literary men, who possess scarce or unique books, mentioned in the Registers and in my quotations from them, to furnish such brief descriptions as will be highly curious and very useful.

A tract of this description has just fallen in my way, and it relates to the subsequent entry on p. 97. of vol. ii. of my Extracts:  the date is 22nd September, 1579.

    “H.  Denham.  Lycensed unto him, &c.  A Paradox, provinge by reason
    and example that baldnes is much better than bushie heare. vj’d”

When I wrote the comment on this registration I was only acquainted with the clever MS. ballad in Defence of a Bald Head, which I quoted; but I hardly supposed it to be the production intended.  It turns out that it was not, for I have that production now before me.  My belief is that it is entirely unique; and the only reason for a contrary opinion, that I am acquainted with, is that there is an incorrect mention of it in Warton, H.E.P. iv. 229.; but there is not a hint of its existence in Ritson, although it ought to have found a place in his Bibliographia Poetica; neither do I find it noticed in later authorities; if it be, they have escaped my researches.  You will not blame me, then, for indulging my usual wish to quote the title-page at length, which exactly agrees with the terms of the entry in the books of the Stationers’ Company.  It runs literatim thus:—­

“A Paradoxe, proving by reason and example, that baldnesse is much better than bushie haire, &c.  Written by that excellent philosopher Synesius, Bishop of Thebes, or (as some say) Cyren.  A prettie pamphlet to pervse, and relenished with recreation.—­Englished {85} by Abraham Fleming.—­Herevnto is annexed the pleasant tale of Hemetes the Heremite, pronounced before the Queenes Maiestie.  Newly recognised both in