This book belonged to, and is marked with the autograph of D. Hughes, 1730; but the MS. note was written by another hand.

P.H.F.

Umbrellas (Vol. ii., pp. 491. 523., &c.).—­I have talked with an old lady who remembered the first umbrella used in Oxford, and with another who described the surprise elicited by the first in Birmingham.  An aunt of mine, born 1754, could not remember when the house was without one, though in her youth they were little used.  May not the word umbrella have been applied to various sorts of impluvia?  Swift, in his “Description of a City Shower,” says:—­

  “Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
  Threatening with deluge this devoted town. 
  To shops in crowds the dangled females fly,
  Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. 
  The Templar spruce, while every spout’s abroach,
  Stays till ’tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. 
  The tuck’d-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
  While streams run down her oil’d umbrella’s sides.”

          Tatler, No. 238.  Oct. 17. 1710.

This might be applied to an oiled cape, but I think the passage quoted by MR. CORNEY (Vol. ii., p. 523.) signifies something carried over the head.

By the way, the “Description of a City Shower” contains one of the latest examples of ache as a dissyllable:—­

  “A coming shower your shooting corns presage,
  Old aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage.”

H.B.C.

U.U.  Club, Jan.

* * * * *

QUERIES.

SONNET (QUERY, BY MILTON) ON THE LIBRARY AT CAMBRIDGE.

In a Collection of Recente and Witty Pieces by several eminente hands, London, printed by W.S. for Simon Waterfou, 1628, p. 109., is the following sonnet, far the best thing in the book:—­

  “ON THE LIBRARIE AT CAMBRIDGE.

  “In that great maze of books I sighed and said,—­
    It is a grave-yard, and each tome a tombe;
    Shrouded in hempen rags, behold the dead,
    Coffined and ranged in crypts of dismal gloom,
    Food for the worm and redolent of mold,
    Traced with brief epitaph in tarnished gold—­
    Ah, golden lettered hope!—­ah, dolorous doom! 
    Yet mid the common death, where all is cold,
    And mildewed pride in desolation dwells,
    A few great immortalities of old
    Stand brightly forth—­not tombes but living shrines,
    Where from high sainte or martyr virtue wells,
    Which on the living yet work miracles,
  Spreading a relic wealth richer than golden mines.

  “J.M. 1627.”

Attached to it, it will be seen, are the initials J.M. and the date 1627.  Is it possible that this may be an early and neglected sonnet of Milton? and yet, could Milton have seriously perpetrated the pun in the second line?