[240] Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vol. IV, p. 130. "Dissertation on Letter Founders," by Edward Rowe Mores.

[241] Mr. Rowe Mores, in Dissertation on Letter Founders, says of Miss Elstob: "In her latter years she was tutoress in the family of the Duke of Portland, where we have visited her in her sleeping-room at Bulstrode, surrounded with books and dirtiness, the usual appendages of the folks of learning. But if any one wishes to see her as she was when she was the favorite of Dr. Hudson and the Oxonians, they may view her portraiture in the initial G of The English Saxon homily on the birthday of St. Gregory." This portrait is repeated in his Grammar.

[242] In the "G" of Gregorium is a portrait of Mr. Thwaites as St. Gregory. (Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. IV, p. 131.)

[243] Letters of Eminent Men addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S.

[244] A new edition of this Homily was brought out by William Pickering, Leicester, 1839.

[245] Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory, p. ii.

[246] This Grammar is "remarkable for being the first effort to present the study of Old English through the medium of modern English." (Adams, Eleanor N.: Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800, p. 92.)

[247] July 31, 1715, Mr. Hearne wrote to Mr. Hickes thanking him for his "excellently learned Thesaurus," and for Mrs. Elstob's Grammar. He comments on her Preface as "judicious, learned, and elegant." He is particularly pleased with her remarks on the author of the "Dissertation on reading the Classicks, and forming a just stile." This gentleman was of St. Edmund's Hall and was always looked upon as a vain, flashy person. "I look'd upon him as the most unfit Person I knew of a Scholar to write upon this Subject.... His book hath been sufficiently ridiculed & condemned her by ye best Judges." (Hearne's Collections, vol. IV, p. 83.)

[248] An interesting fact in connection with the publication of the Grammar has to do with the type. Some years after the printing of the Homily the house of the printer, Mr. Bowyer, was burned and all the Anglo-Saxon type was destroyed. They could not have printed the Grammar had not Lord Chief Justice Parker provided the funds for cutting new type. In 1753 Mr. N. Bowyer, son of the printer of the Grammar, sent this type, as a curiosity, to Mr. Edward Rowe Mores with this letter: "I make bold to transmit to Oxford, through your hands, the Saxon punches and matrices, which you were pleased to intimate would not be unacceptable to that learned Body. It would be a great satisfaction to me if I could by this means perpetuate the munificence of the noble Donor, to whom I am originally indebted for them, the late Lord Chief Justice Parker, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield, who, among the numerous Benefactors which my father met with, after his house was burnt in 1712-13, was so good as to procure those types to be cut, to enable him to print Mrs. Elstob's Saxon Grammar. England had not then the advantage of such an Artist in Lettercutting as has since arisen: and that as my father received them from a great Patron of Learning, his son consigns them to the greatest Seminary of it." (Nichols: Literary Anecdotes, vol. II, pp. 355-59.) In 1768 Mr. Edward Rowe Mores presented these punches and matrices to the Society of Antiquaries, and the Reverend Mr. Pegge at that time communicated to the Society some account of William and Elizabeth Elstob. (Archæologia, 1804, vol. I, p. xxv.) The difficulty in getting good type is shown by the following letters: May 19, 1713, Mr. Robert Nelson wrote to Mr. Wanley: "Pray do me the favor to write out the Saxon characters for Mr. Bowyer, as you have kindly promised; despatch in this affair is of great consequence because my Lord Chief Justice Parker does intend to assist towards repairing this misfortune by giving him a set of press letters, and is very uneasy that he is not ready to begin his friend's book which requires these characters to perfect it." (Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 493.) Mr. Wanley said that he wrote out the letters in the most exact and able manner that he could "But it signified little; for when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but unlike those that I drew. This appears by Mrs. Elstob's Saxon Grammar being the book mentioned by Mr. Nelson." (Ibid., p. 498.)

[249] Nichols: Illustrations of Literary History, vol. I, p. 804.