Great disputes have been raised what the fish was. As it is called a whale in the Septuagint, and in St. Matthew, xii. 40., one can hardly call it a vulgar error to speak of it commonly as a whale.
C. B.
Book Plates (Vol. iii., p. 495.).
—Your correspondent inquiring about book plates mentions, that 1698 is the earliest date he has heard of. In a sale at Sotheby's, commencing on the 21st inst., there is a copy of Evelyn's Silva, presented by him to Sir Robert Clayton, Lord Mayor of London, with his book plate in it, date 1679.
E. N. W.
Southwark, July, 1851.
Miscellaneous.
NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.
The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, with a Supplement, containing the Condemnations of the Early Reformers, and other matters relating to the Council. Literally translated into English by Theodore Alois Buckley, B.A., of Christ Church, Oxford, is the title of a volume which has just been issued; and which many of our readers will probably consider a very well-timed volume. It is not, however, because we admit with Mr. Buckley that "to try Rome fairly we must hear her plead her own cause" (for with polemics we have nothing to do), that we direct their attention to it; but because we agree with him that the Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent are documents as valuable in a legal and historical, as in a religious point of view, and because there must be many who would gladly learn what these Canons and Decrees were, yet are not acquainted with the language in which they were originally recorded. By such persons Mr. Buckley's name on the title-page may be received as a sufficient guarantee of the accuracy of the present translation.
The first volume of a history of the book-trade in Germany, containing notices of some booksellers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, has just been published at Leipsic, under the title of Beitrage zur Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels. The author is Albrecht Kirchhoff, and the work, short as it is, will be found very useful to parties engaged in bibliographical investigations.