John I. Dredge.
I have a copy of the Essay for a New Translation of the Bible, second edition, 1727 (not 1717), which your correspondent W. W. T. inquires about (Vol. vii., p. 40.). It is the translation of a work of the Huguenot refugee, Charles Le Cene, Projet d'une nouvelle version françoise de la Bible. H. R., who signs the dedication, was Hugh Ross, according to a note in my copy, which my father made on the authority of one of the clergy of Norwich about twenty years ago, I believe of Dr. Charles Sutton. I have been unable to ascertain anything about him, his name not appearing in any biographical dictionary I have seen, and the book not being in the Museum library. The Biog. Universelle charges Le Cene with a tendency to Pelagian or Socinian errors, both in his Projet, and in the Version he actually made, and which was printed at Amsterdam. This was a great curiosity in its way, the ancient Oriental titles, &c. being rendered in their corresponding modern analogues.
B. B. Woodward.
Touchstone (Vol. vii., p. 82.).—I think your correspondent Alphage is mistaken in alleging that the word touchstone is so called because it "gives a musical sound when touched with a stick."
The touchstone is the dark-coloured flinty slate or schistus (the Lapis Lydius of the ancients), which has been used from the remotest ages, down even to our own days, for testing gold. By touching the black stone with the metal, it leaves behind a clear mark, the colour of which indicates the distinction between the pure and alloyed. Pliny describes it (lib. xxxiii. cap. 43.):
"Auri argentique mentionem comitatur lapis quem coticulam appellant, quondam non solitus inveniri, nisi in flumine Tmolo, ut auctor est Theophrastus: nunc vero passim; quem alii Heraclium, alii Lydium vocant. His coticulis periti, cum e vena ut lima rapuerint experimentum, protinus dicunt quantum auri sit in ea, quantum argenti vel æris, scripulari differentia, mirabili ratione, non fallente."
This is the substance referred to in the apothegms of Lord Bacon, that "gold is tried by the touchstone, and men by gold."
The French, from the same practice, know the same substance by the name of Pierre de touche. The use of the touchstone, at the present day, is thus described by Ure in his Dictionary of Arts and Mines, under the head of "Assay:"
"In such small work as cannot be assayed, by scraping off a part and cupelling it, the assayers endeavor to ascertain its fineness or quality by the touch. This is a method of comparing the colour and other properties of a minute portion of the metal, with those of small bars, the composition of which is known. These bars are called touch needles, and they are rubbed upon a smooth piece of black basaltes, or pottery, which for this reason is called the touchstone."
W. W. E. T.