Of the first separate edition I am so fortunate as to possess a copy.  It is thus entitled:—­

    “An elegy wrote in a country church-yard.  LONDON:  printed for
    R. Dodsley in Pal-mall; and sold by M. Cooper in
    Pater-noster-row, 1751.  Price six-pense. 4o six leaves.

    “Advertisement.

“The following POEM came into my hands by accident, if the general approbation with which this little piece has been spread, may be call’d by so slight a term as accident.  It is this approbation which makes it unnecessary for me to make any apology but to the author:  as he cannot but feel some satisfaction in having pleas’d so many readers already, I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that pleasure to many more.

    “The EDITOR.”

The history of this publication is given by Gray himself, in a letter to Walpole, dated in 1751, and needs no repetition; but I must observe, as a remarkable circumstance, that the poem was reprinted anonymously, in its separate form, as late as 1763.

I have collated the editions of 1751 and 1770, and find variations in stanzas 1, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 23, 24, and 27.  All the amendments, however, were adopted as early as 1753, except the correction of a grammatical peccadillo in the ninth stanza.

I make this communication in the shape of a note, as it may interest men of the world not less than certain hermits.

BOLTON CORNEY.

* * * * *

GRAY’S ELEGY IN PORTUGUESE.

In several numbers of the “NOTES AND QUERIES” mention is made of various translations into foreign languages of GRAY’S Elegy in a Country Church-yard.  P.C.S.S. begs leave to add to the list a very elegant translation into Portuguese, by the Chevalier Antonio de Aracejo (afterwards Minister of Foreign Affairs at Lisbon and at Rio de Janeiro), to whose friendship he was indebted many years ago for a copy of it.  It was privately printed at Lisbon towards the close of the last century, and was subsequently reprinted at Paris in 1802, in a work called Traductions interlineaires, en six Langues, by A.M.H.  Boulard.

P.C.S.S.

* * * * *

FURTHER NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKSPEARE’S HENRY VIII.

The Gentleman’s Magazine for the present month contains a letter from Mr. Spedding, the author of the essay which appeared in the August {307} number of that magazine on the authorship of Henry VIII. After expressing himself “gratified but not surprised” by the coincidence between his views and those of Mr. Hickson in “NOTES AND QUERIES” (Vol. ii., p. 198.), Mr. Spedding proceeds: