over, as it almost surpasses any verse of the entire poem; and besides would have saved it from the imputation of having been written as a heathen poet would have written it), the words "sacred calm" occur, which are not unfrequent in Cowley:

Again, does not Mr. Gray's Ode to Spring—

remind one a little of Cowley's "Anacreontic to the Grasshopper?"

or the following lines

In his notes to "Spring," Wakefield gets quite pathetic at the words—

I have always believed that Gray was imitating Bishop Jeremy Taylor:

"Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity."—Sermon XVII. The Marriage Ring, Part I.

If these random notes be interesting to any of your readers, they are only a portion out of many I could send; and any one who doubts Gray's partiality for Cowley may compare his second verse of the "Ode to Spring" with Cowley's lines on "Solitude," found amongst his Essays, especially verses 4. and 5.:

And—

Or let him compare Gray's Latin and English verses upon the death of his friend Mr. West with Cowley's upon the death of Mr. William Harvey and Mr. Crashaw:

To these lines on Crashaw Pope is indebted for a sentiment which in his hands assumes a very infidel form:

Crashaw had become a Roman Catholic, and was a canon of Loretto when he died; but Cowley's Protestant feelings could not blind him to his worth, and he says:

How much the two last-mentioned poems of Gray's owe to Milton's "Lines to Mansus" and his "Epitaphium Damonis," any one acquainted with them may remember. I have only been alluding to Gray's reproductions of Cowley.

RT.

Warmington.

Minor Notes.

Remains of Sir Hugh Montgomery (Vol. iv., p. 206.).

—Allusion has been made to the following stanza from "Chevy Chase:"—

Having lately visited the sea-bathing town of Largs, my attention was attracted to a building in the churchyard forming the present burying ground. In this building, bearing date of erection 1636 by Sir Robert Montgomery (ancestor of the present Earl of Eglinton), there is an elaborately carved tomb of mason work, beneath which is a strongly arched stone vault, where, besides the founder and others, tradition has placed the remains of the brave Sir Hugh Montgomery. It is difficult to reconcile this with the long prior date of the battle of Chevy Chase, unless the vault, which has certainly a very ancient look, can be substantiated to have existed before the above building. Taking matters as they go, the remains of the warrior now appear in the most humiliating condition—reduced to a hard, dry bony skeleton deprived of legs and thighs, with the singular appearance of the skull having been cloven (most likely) by a battle-axe, the skull being held together by some plate or substance and rude stitching. The body is said to have been originally embalmed, and enclosed in a lead coffin, which was barbarously torn off some forty years ago, as sinks for fishing nets. The building, tomb, and vault, taken altogether, present perhaps one of the finest specimens of this species of architecture in Scotland, and are additionally curious from the cone roof of the building being highly ornamented with descriptive paintings in a tolerable state of preservation. It is understood that some historical notices of the whole have been privately printed by a Scotch antiquarian, of which some of your learned readers may be aware, and may furnish more ample details than the foregoing.

G.

Glasgow, Sept. 23, 1851.

Westminster Hall.

—The following extract from the Issue Roll of Michaelmas Term, 9 Hen. VII. 1493, may be interesting to some of your readers, and will perhaps lead to a speculation on the nature of "the disguisyings" alluded to:—

"To Richard Daland, for providing certain spectacles, or theatres, commonly called scaffolds, in the great hall at Westminster, for performance of 'the disguisyings,' exhibited to the people on the night of the Epiphany, as appears by a book of particulars; paid to his own hands, £28, 3s. 5-3/4d."—Devon's Issue Roll, 516.

Possibly the next