“Morn broaden’d on the borders of the dark,
  Ere I saw her, who clasp’d in her last trance
  Her murder’d father’s head.”

It occurs in the Dream of Fair Women, st. 67.

W.M.C.

Cambridge.

Sauenap, Meaning of.—­In the will of Jane Heryng, of Bury, 1419, occurs this bequest:—­

“To Alyson my dowter, xl s. and ij pottys of bras neste the beste, and a peyr bedys of blak get, and a grene hod, and a red hod, and a gowne of violet, and another of tanne, and a towayll of diaper werk, and a sauenap; also a cloke and rownd table.”

What was the sauenap?

BURIENSIS.

Hoods worn by Doctors of the University of Cambridge.—­Pray permit me to inquire, through your agency, what is the proper lining of the scarlet cloth hoods worn by doctors in the three faculties of the university of Cambridge?  The robe-makers of Cambridge have determined upon a pink or rose-coloured silk for all; the London artists adopt a shot silk (light blue and crimson) sometimes for all faculties, at others for Doctors in Divinity only.  On ancient monuments (there is one in Canterbury Cathedral) I find that the hoods were lined with ermine; and this is the material of those attached to the full-dress robes of doctors on the occasion of their creation, and in the schools, and at congregations.  I cannot find the statutes bearing upon the subject.

As the Oxford statutes have recently been published, the matter is not so much in the dark,—­black silk being the material prescribed for the lining of hoods of Doctors in Divinity, and those of the doctors in the other faculties being prescribed to be of silk of any intermediate colour, which the Oxford doctors understand to mean a deep rose-colour.

D.C.L.

U. University Club, Dec. 4. 1850.

Euclid and Aristotle.—­The ordinary chronologies place Aristotle as nearly a century anterior to Euclid; but Professor De Morgan ("Eucleides,” in Dr. Smith’s Biographical Dictionary) considers them as contemporary.  Any of your readers conversant with the subject will oblige me by saying which is right, and likewise why so.

GEOMETRICUS.

Ventriloquism.  Fanningus the King’s Whisperer.—­To the Query respecting Brandon the juggler (Vol. ii., p. 424.), I beg leave to add another somewhat similar.  Where is any information to be obtained of “The King’s Whisperer, [Greek:  engastrimythos], nomine Fanningus, who resided at Oxford in 1643?”

T.J.

{480}

Frances Lady Norton.—­Can any of your readers give me an account of the life of Frances Lady Norton, who wrote a work, entitled The Applause of Virtue, in Four Parts, consisting of Divine and Moral Essays towards the obtaining of True Virtue, 4to. 1705?  It is a very delightful book, full of patristic learning.  I am aware she was the daughter of Ralph Freke, Esq., of Hannington, and married Sir George Norton, Knt. of Abbot’s Leigh, in the county of Somerset.  I wish to know what other books she wrote, if any, and where her life may be found?  Perhaps the Freke family could furnish an account of this learned lady.  The work I believe to be extremely scarce.