6. "En rem indignam! nos qui jam tot annos sumus doctores S. Theologiæ, denuo cogimur adire ludos literarios." Spoken by the adversaries of Erasmus.
What is the earliest authority for the story of St. John and his partridge?
Will Mr. Bolton Corney be kind enough to explain the occasion of Porson's notable speech recorded on the last page of his Curiosities Illustrated?
His sagacity was not at fault in suspecting a French origin for D'Israeli's story, p. 89. See Bassompière, in Retrospective Review, xiii. 346.
S. Z. Z. S.
Tea-marks.—Accident threw in my way lately a catalogue of a large sale of teas in Mincing Lane; and my attention was drawn to certain marks against the several lots, which appeared to indicate particular qualities, but to me, as uninitiated, perfectly incomprehensible. In this dilemma I asked one of our principal brokers the meaning of all this, and I was informed that teas are sampled and tasted by the brokers, and divided in the main into seven classes, distinguished as follows:
Can any of your correspondents tell us when this classification was first introduced, or the origin of the first two characters? Can they be Chinese, and the names given from some fancied resemblance to the gallows, or the letter T turned sideways? My friend the broker, though a very intelligent man, could give me no information whatever on these points.
W. T.
42. Lowndes Square.