"¶ A breefe Directory and playne way how to say the Rosary of our blessed Lady: with Meditations for such as are not exercised therein. Whereunto are adioyned the prayers of S. Bryget with others. Bruges Flandrorum, excudebat Hu. Holost. 1576."
At the end (beginning with fresh signature A i.) are—
"¶ Fifteene Prayers, righte good and vertuous, vsually called the XV Oos, and of diuers called S. Briget's prayers, because the holye and blessed Virgin vsed dayly to say them before the Image of the Crucifix in S. Paules Church in Rome."
Of this diminutive volume I never saw another copy. It was published by J. M., who dates his dedication to his dear sister A. M., "from the Englishe Charter House in Bridges (sic), the vigil of the Assumption of Our Lady, 1576." It seems that the sister was resident in England, and had, previously to her brother's departure for Bruges, requested him to send her a translation of the Rosary, which having obtained, his cousin and friend J. Noel procured it to be printed. J. M. willingly confessing "for that I know there be many good women in Englande that honour Our Lady, but good bookes to stirre vp deuotion in them are scarse." Would not a list of English books printed abroad be an interesting subject for some bibliographical antiquary, and an acceptable addition to our literary antiquities?
P. B.
Bunyan and the Visions of Heaven and Hell (Vol. iii., p. 89.).
—MR. OFFOR has very satisfactorily shown that Bunyan could not, from its grandiloquent style, have been the author of the Visions of Heaven and Hell, attributed to him in an edition of that work published in the reign of George I., entitled, The Visions of John Bunyan, being his last Remains.
This title must have been a surreptitious one, for, since MR. OFFOR made the above communication, I have obtained a copy of this scarce book published in the previous reign, under its legitimate title (as in the Sunderland copy of 1771, mentioned at p. 70. supra), and said to be "By G. L. φιλανθρωπο London, printed for John Gwillim, against Crossby Square in Bishopsgate-street, 1711."
In his address "To the Reader" (also signed G. L.), the author even makes the following direct allusion to Bunyan's allegory:
"And since the Way to Heaven has been so taking under the similitude of a dream, why should not the Journey's End be as acceptable under the similitude of a vision? Nay, why should it not be more acceptable, since the end is preferable to the means, and Heaven to the Way that brings us thither? The Pilgrim met with many difficulties; but here they are all over. All storms and tempests here are hush'd in silence and serenity."