“I was once well acquainted with you on earth, and had almost
    persuaded you to be of my opinion.  I am the author of that
    celebrated book, so well known by the title of Leviathan!

    “‘What! the great Hobbes,’ said I, ’are you come hither? Your voice
    is so much changed, I did not know it.’”

The dialogue which ensues is not worth quoting, as it is from our purpose.  But I would ask when was the time when Bunyan “was nearly persuaded to be of Hobbes’ opinion?” If he is the author and speaks the truth (and he is notoriously truthful), it must have been in early youth; but surely the philosopher of Malmesbury could not know an obscure tinker.  Bunyan cannot speak metaphorically, for he had not read the Leviathan, since he mentions that his only reading in early life, i.e. when he was likely to have embraced freethinking, was the Practice of Piety, and the Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, his wife’s dowry. {519} Moreover, he notes particularly the change of voice, a curious circumstance, which testifies personal acquaintance.  Hobbes died in 1679; Bunyan in 1688.  Were they intimate?

JAS. H. FRISWELL.

* * * * *

Minor Queries.

Boiling to Death.—­Some of your correspondents have communicated instances where burning to death was inflicted as a punishment; and MR. GATTY suggests that it would prove an interesting subject for inquiry, at what period such barbarous inflictions ceased.  In Howe’s Chronicle I find the two following notices: 

“The 5th of Aprill (1532) one Richard Rose, a cooke, was boiled in Smithfielde, for poisoning of divers persons, to the number of sixteen or more, at ye Bishop of Rochester’s place, amongst the which Benet Curwine, gentleman, was one, and hee intended to have poisoned the bishop himselfe, but hee eate no potage that day, whereby hee escaped.  Marie the poore people that eate of them, many of them died.”—­Howe’s Chronicle, p. 559.

    “The 17th March (1542) Margaret Dany, a maid, was boiled in
    Smithfield for poisoning of three households that shee had dwelled
    in.”—­Howe’s Chronicle, p. 583.

Query, was this punishment peculiar to cooks guilty of poisoning?  And when did the latest instance occur?

L.H.K.

Meaning of “Mocker."—­To-day I went into the cottage of an old man, in the village of which I am curate, and finding him about to cut up some wood, and he being very infirm, I undertook the task for him, and chopped up a fagot for his fire.

During the progress of my work, the old fellow made the following observation:—­

    “Old Nannie Hawkins have got a big stick o’ wood, and she says as I
    shall have him for eight pence.  If I could get him, I’d soon
    mocker him.”

Upon my asking him the meaning of the word mocker, he informed me it meant to divide or cleave in pieces; but, not being “a scholar” as he termed it, he could not tell me how to spell it, so I know not whether the orthography I have adopted is correct or not.