Arthur C. Wilson.
[We have not been able to find any account of the execution for burning coal noticed by Dr. Bachoffner, which probably took place during the reign of Edward I., when the use of coal was prohibited by proclamation at London in the year 1306. These proclamations are noticed in Prynne's Animadversions on the Fourth Part of Sir Edward Coke's Institutes, p. 182., where it is said, that "in the latter part of the reign of Edward I., when brewers, dyers, and other artificers using great fires, began to use sea-coals instead of dry wood and charcoal, in and near the city of London, the prelates, nobles, commons, and other people of the realm, resorting thither to parliaments, and upon other occasions, with the inhabitants of the city, Southwark, Wapping, and East Smithfield, complained thereof twice one after another to the king as a public nuisance, corrupting the air with its stink and smoke, to the great prejudice and detriment of their health. Whereupon the king first prohibited the burning of sea-coal by his proclamation; which being disobeyed by many for their private lucre, the king upon their second complaint issued a commission of Oyer and Terminer to inquire of all such who burned sea-coals against his proclamation within the city, or parts adjoining to it, and to punish them for their first offence by great fines and ransoms; and for the second offence to demolish their furnaces, kilns wherein they burnt sea-coals, and to see his proclamation strictly observed for times to come, as the Record of 35 Edw. I. informs us." On this subject our correspondent should consult Edington's Treatise on the Coal Trade; Ralph Gardiner's England's Grievance discovered in Relation to the Coal Trade; and Anderson's Origin of Commerce.]
Replies.
ADDISON AND HIS HYMNS.
(Vol. v., p. 439.)
Any attempt to divorce Addison from his hymns in the Spectator, and to ascribe them to any other writer, is so great a wrench to the feelings of a sexagenarian like myself, that the question must at once be set at rest.
In reply to J. G. F.'s inquiry, these hymns, or a portion of them, were claimed for Andrew Marvell by Captain Edward Thompson, the editor of Marvell's works; but a writer in Kippis's edition of the Biographia Britannica remarks:
"We shall content ourselves with observing, that any man who can suppose that the ease, eloquence, and harmony of the ode, 'The Spacious Firmament,' &c., could flow from Marvell's pen, must be very deficient in taste and judgment."
This claim on Captain Thompson's part was to have been considered under the article "Marvell," but the second edition of the Biographia did not, as we well know, extend beyond the letter F.