My idea is, that the ballad (for Mr. Collier thinks that both entries relate to one production) was merely one of those metrical ditties sung about the streets of London depicting the woes and sufferings of some unfortunate lady. The question is, who was this "unfortunate lady?" She was the wife of Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, who was attainted about the year 1570, and died in Flanders anno 1584. I learn this from a MS. of the period, now before me, entitled Some Account of the Sufferinges of the Ladye Jane of Westmorlande, who dyed in Exile. By T.C. Perhaps at some future time I may trouble your readers with an account of this highly interesting MS.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
Gray and Dodsley.—As the HERMIT OF HOLYPORT has repeated his Queries on Gray and Dodsley, I must make a second attempt to answer them with due precision, assured that no man is more disposed than himself to communicate information for the satisfaction of others.
1. Gray: In the first edition of the Elegy the epithet in question is droning; and so it stands in the Poems of Gray, as edited by himself, in 1753, 1768, &c.
2. Dodsley: The first edition of the important poetical miscellany which bears his name was published in 1748, in three volumes, 12mo.
BOLTON CORNEY.
MISCELLANEOUS.
NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.
The New Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology, and History, may be considered as the third in that important series of Classical Dictionaries for which the world is indebted to the learning of Dr. Smith. As the present work is distinguished by the same excellencies which have won for the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, and the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, the widely-spread reputation they enjoy, we shall content ourselves with a few words explanatory of the arrangement of a work which, it requires no great gift of prophecy to foretell, must ere long push Lemprière from its stool. The present Dictionary may be divided into three portions. The Biographical, which includes all the historical names of importance which occur in the Greek and Roman writers, from the earliest times down to the extinction of the Western Empire; those of all Greek and Roman writers, whose works are either extant or known to have exercised an influence upon their respective literatures; and, lastly, those of all the more important artists of antiquity. In the Mythological division may be noticed first, the discrimination, hitherto not sufficiently attended to, between the Greek and Roman mythology, and which in this volume is shown by giving an account of the Greek divinities under their Greek names, and the Roman divinities under their Latin names; and, secondly, what is of still more consequence, the care to avoid as far as possible all indelicate allusions in the respective histories of such divinities. Lastly, in the Geographical portion of the work, and which will probably be found the most important one, very few omissions will be discovered of names occurring in the chief classical writers. This brief sketch of the contents of this New Classical Dictionary will satisfy our readers that Dr. Smith has produced a volume, not only of immense value to those who are entering upon their classical studies, but one which will be found a most useful handbook to the scholar and the more advanced student.