I have also another tract on the same subject, which has not been noticed by Defoe's biographers, but which I have no hesitation in ascribing to him. It is curious enough, but not of equal value with the last. The title is—
"Street Robberies considered. The reason of their being so frequent, with probable Means to prevent 'em. To which is added, three short Treatises: 1. A Warning for Travellers; with Rules to know a Highwayman and Instructions how to behave upon the occasion. 2. Observations on Housebreakers. How to prevent a Tenement from being broke open. With a Word of Advice concerning Servants. 3. A Caveat for Shopkeepers: with a Description of Shoplifts, how to know 'em, and how to prevent 'em: also a Caution of delivering Goods: with the Relation of several Cheats practised lately upon the Publick. Written by a converted Thief. To which is prefix'd some Memoirs of his Life. Set a Thief to catch a Thief. London: Printed for J. Roberts, in Warwick Lane. Price 1s. (No date, but circ. 1726.) 8vo., pages 72."
James Crossley.
Meaning of Waste-book (Vol. iii., p. 118.).—The waste-book in a counting-house is that in which all the transactions of the day, receipts, payments, &c., are entered miscellaneously as they occur, and of which no account is immediately taken, no value immediately found; whence, so to speak, the mass of affairs is undigested, and the wilderness or waste is uncultivated, and without result until entries are methodically made in the day-book and ledger; without which latter appliances there would, in book-keeping, be waste indeed, in the worst sense of the term. The word day-book explains itself. The word ledger is explained in Johnson's and in Ash's Dictionary, from the Dutch, as signifying a book that lies in the counting-house permanently in one place. The etymology there given also explains why certain lines used in fishing-tackle, by old Isaak Walton, and by his disciples at the present day, are called ledger-lines. It, however, does not seem to explain the phrase ledger-lines, used in music; namely, the term applied to those short lines added above or below the staff of five lines, when the notes run very high or very low, and which are exactly those which are not permanent. Here the French word léger tempts the etymologist a little.
Robert Snow.
Deus Justificatus (Vol. ii., p. 441.).—There is no doubt that this work was written by Henry Hallywell, and not by Cudworth. Dr. Worthington, whose intercourse with the latter was of the most intimate kind, and who would have been fully aware of the fact had he been the author, observes, in a letter not dated, but written circ. September, 1668, addressed to Dr. More, and of which I have a copy now before me:
"I bought at London Mr. Hallywell's Deus Justificatus. Methinks it is better written than his former Letter. He will write better and better."
In a short account of Hallywell, who was of the school of Cudworth and More, and whose MS. correspondence with the latter is now in my possession, in Wood's Fasti, vol. ii. p. 187. Edit. Bliss, Wood, "amongst several things that he hath published," enumerates five only, but does not give the Deus Justificatus amongst them. It
appears (Wood's Athenæ, vol. iv. p. 230.) that he was ignorant who the author of this tract was.
It is somewhat singular that the mistake in ascribing Deus Justificatus to Cudworth should have been continued in Kippis's edition of the Biographia Britannica. It was so ascribed to him, first, as far as I can find, by a writer of the name of Fancourt, in the preface to his Free Agency of Accountable Creatures Examined, London, 1733, 8vo. On his authority it was included in the list of Cudworth's works in the General Dictionary, 1736, folio, vol. iv. p. 487., and in the Biographia Britannica, 1750, vol. iii. p. 1581., and in the last edition by Kippis. Birch, in the mean time, finding, no doubt, on inquiry, that there was no ground for ascribing it to Cudworth, made no mention of it in his accurate life prefixed to the edition of the Intellectual System in 1742.