Vertue's Manuscripts.—The MS. quoted under this title by Malone is printed entire, or rather all of it which refers to plays, by Mr. Peter Cunningham, in the Papers of the Shakspeare Society, vol. ii. p. 123., from an interleaved copy of Langbaine. Since the publication of that paper, the entries relating to Shakspeare's plays have been given from the original MS. in the Bodleian Library, in Halliwell's Life of Shakspeare, p. 272.
S.L.
Vertue's MSS. (No. 20. p. 319.) were in Horace Walpole's possession, bought by him, I think, of Vertue's widow; and his Anecdotes of Painting were chiefly composed from them, as he states, with great modesty, in his dedication and his preface. I do not see in the Strawberry-Hill Catalogue any notice of "Vertue's MSS.," though some vols. of his collection of engravings were sold.
C.
Lines attributed to Tom Brown.—In a book entitled Liber Facetiarum, being a Collection of curious and interesting Anecdotes, published at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by D. Akenhead & Sons, 1809, the passage attributed to Tom Brown by your correspondent "J.T." is given to Zacharias Boyd.
The only reference given as authority for the account is the initials H.B.
"Zacharias Boyd, whose bust is to be seen over the entrance to the Royal College in Glasgow, while Professor in that university, translated the Old and New Testament into Scotch Metre; and, from a laudable zeal to disseminate religious knowledge among the lower classes of the community, is said to have left a very considerable sum to defray the expense of the said work, which, however, his executors never printed."
After a few specimens, the account goes on
"But the highest flight of his Muse appears in the following beautiful Alexandrine:
"And was not Pharaoh a saucy rascal?