Minor Notes.
The Formation of the Woman, Gen. ii. 21, 22.—The terms of Matthew Henry on this subject, in his learned Commentary, have become quite commonplace with divines, when speaking of the ordinance of marriage:
"The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam: not made out of his head, to top him; nor out of his feet, to be trampled upon by him; but out of his side, to be equal with him; under his arm, to be protected; and near his heart, to be beloved."
Like many other things in his Exposition, this is not original with Henry. It is here traced to the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis of the earliest and rarest printed works. Some of your readers can probably trace it to the Fathers. The verses which follow are engraven in block characters in the first edition of the work named, and are copied from the fifth plate of specimens of early typography in Meerman's Origines Typographicæ: Hague, mdcclxv.:
"Mulier autem in paradiso est formata
De costis viri dormientis est parata
Deus autem ipsam super virum honestavit
Quoniam Evam in loco voluptatis plasmavit,
Non facit eam sicut virum de limo terræ