“King Charles’s statues, pictures, jewels, and curiosities, were sold and dispersed by the regicide powers; from this fate, happily, the royal collection of manuscripts and books was preserved; neither was it, like the archiepiscopal library at Lambeth, doled out piecemeal to Hugh Peters and his brother fanatics.  This good service was mainly owing to Bolstrode Whitelocke.  When the British Museum was founded, King George II. presented to it the whole of the royal library; and Ferrar’s Concordance, with another similarly illustrated compilation by him, is there preserved in safety.  The Rev. Thomas Bowdler of Sydenham, the representative of the last baronet of the Cotton family, the founders of the Cottonian Library, possesses another of the Ferrar volumes.  Of those which were presented by Ferrar to George Herbert and Dr. Jackson, no record remains.”

JOHN I. DREDGE.

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Cardinal Erskine (Vol. ii., p. 406.) flourished later than your correspondent G.W. supposes.  He was in communication with Mr. Pitt about 1799-1800.  Query, was he then in England?

W.H.C.

The Author of Peter Wilkins (Vol. ii., p. 480.).—­An advertisement prefixed to the edition of this remarkable work in Smith’s Standard Library, 1839, gives the following information respecting the author:—­

“In the year 1835, Mr. Nicol the printer sold by auction a number of books and manuscripts in his possession, which had formerly belonged to the well-known publisher Dodsley; and in arranging them for sale, the original agreement for the sale of the manuscript of ‘Peter Wilkins,’ by the author, ‘Robert Pultock of Clement’s Inn’ to Dodsley, was discovered.  From this document it appears that Mr. Pultock received twenty pounds, twelve copies of the work, and ’the cuts of the first impression,’ that is, a set of proof impressions of the fanciful engravings that professed to illustrate the first edition, as the price of the entire copyright.  This curious document was sold to John Wilks, Esq., M.P. on the 17th December, 1835.”

Mr. Leigh Hunt, in his Book for a Corner, remarks upon this,—­

    “The reader will observe that the words ‘by the author,’ in this
    extract, are not accompanied by marks of quotation.  The fact, however,
    is stated as if he knew it for such, by the quoter of the document.”

The difference mentioned by DR. RIMBAULT between the initials in the title-page and those appended to the dedication, occurs also in Mr. Smith’s edition.  But the dedication to which the initials R.P. are affixed, speaks of the book as the work of the writer in the most unmistakeable terms.  Was the S. in the place of the P. a typographical error, perpetuated by carelessness and oversight; or a mystification of the author, adopted when the success of the book was uncertain, and continued after the dedication had contradicted it, by that want of attention to minutiae which was more frequently manifest in former times than at present?