It would lose nothing of the lyrical by translation, but your readers being all classical I forbear.
BLOWEN.
Francis Moore (Vol. iii., pp. 263. 381.).
—Francis Moore, physician, was one of the many quack doctors who duped the credulous at the latter period of the seventeenth century; he practised in Westminster: in all probability then, as in our own time, the publication of the almanac was to act as an advertisement of his healing powers, &c. Cookson, Salmon, Gadbury, Andrewes, Tanner, Coley, Partridge, &c. &c., were all his predecessors, and were students in physic and astrology. Moore's Almanac appears to be a perfect copy of Tanner's, which was first published in 1656, forty-two years prior to the appearance of Moore's. The portrait in Knight's London is certainly imaginary. There is a genuine and very characteristic portrait, now of considerable rarity, representing him as a fat-faced man in a wig and large neck-cloth, inscribed "Francis Moore, born in Bridgnorth, in the county of Salop, the 29th of January, 1656/7.—JOHN DRAPENTIER, delin. et sculp."
I may mention it as a curious fact, that the portraits of these quack doctors, when in a good state, are frequently of great rarity. I possess one which was in the Stow collection, being a fine impression of the following print by Drapentier, for which the sum of five guineas had been paid:
"The effigies of George Jones, whom God hath blessed with greate success in healing."—"Student in the art of physick and chirurgery for about thirty years in the Upper More Fields, two golden balls on the tops of the two posts of the portel before my door."
W. W. C.
National Debts (Vol. iii., p. 374.).
—A description of the foundation of a "national debt" in Florence in the years 1344-45 is to be found in the Florentine History, by Henry Edward Napier, R. N. (published by Edward Moxon, Dover Street), chap. xxi. p. 125.
FIRENEYE.