Ceyrep.
Early Use of Tin.—Derivation of the Name of Britain (Vol. viii., pp. 290. 344. 445.).—Your correspondent G. W. having been unable to inform Dr. Hincks who first suggested the derivation of Britannia from Baratanac or Bratanac, I have the pleasure to satisfy him on this point by referring him to Bochart's Geographia Sacra, lib. I. c. xxxix. In that great storehouse of historical information, the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, there are some profound researches by Melot and others, in which may be found answers to all the Queries proposed by G. W.
The islands, rivers, mountains, cities, and remarkable places of Phœnician colonies, had even in the time of the habitation of the Greeks and Romans Phœnician names, which, according to the spirit of the ancient languages of the East, indicated clearly the properties of the places which bore those names. See instances in Bochart, ubi supra; Sammes's Britannia Antiqua Illustrata, or the Antiquities of Ancient Britain derived from the Phœnicians; and D'Hancarville's Preface to Hamilton's Etruscan, &c. Antiquities.
Bibliothecar. Chetham.
Unpublished Epigram by Sir Walter Scott (Vol. vii., pp. 498. 576.).—The following extract is from the Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1824, p. 194.:
"Mr. J. Lawrence of Somers Town observes: 'In the summer of the year 1770 I was on a visit at Beaumont Hall on the coast of Essex, a few miles distant from Harwich. It was then the residence of Mr. Canham.... I was invited to ascend the attics in order to read some lines, imprinted by a cowboy of precocious intellect. I found these in handsome, neatly executed letters, printed and burnished with leaf-gold, on the wall of his sleeping-room. They were really golden verses, and may well be styled Pythagorean from their point, to wit:
'Earth goes upon the earth, glittering like gold;
Earth goes to the earth sooner than 'twould;
Earth built upon the earth castles and towers;
Earth said to the Earth, All shall be ours.'