The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-27 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

---
DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF MSS. AND
SCAIWE BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY OF
SAINT JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

Deighton, Cambridge, 1844. •
It would be unjust to the merits of a skilful and
erudite work to confound this Catalogue with the
generality of such productions ; it is no mere mecha-
nical enumeration of the manuscripts and scarce books
contained in the library of St. John's, such as any
one can draw up who can count ten on his fingers,
and has sufficient. patience for the task ; but the au-
thor, the Rev. Mr. Cowie, attaches to the name of
each work such biographical particulars as it was
possible to obtain respecting its writer, together with
information concerning the period at which it was
composed, or supposed to be composed. Great labour
and extensive research were, of course, necessary in
order to enable Mr. Cowie to amass these various
facts—more especially as many of the writers in ques-
tion have been forgotten centuries since—but he has
not been startled by the difficulties of his task, but has
executed it with a diligence, an ingenuity, and a zeal,
that we fear never will be appreciated as they deserve
to be. We would gladly see a gentlemen of his in-
dustrious habits and scholarly acquirements, engaged
on a more original work, for knowledge such as he
evidently possesses ought not to be restricted to the
compilation of catalogues. We subjoin a few of his
notes, and comments. Referring to a curious old
folio vellum MSS. presented by Dr. Home to the
College, he furnishes us with the following brief par-
ticulars respecting the donor :—" This was Dr. Horne,
Bishop of Winchester, from 1560 to 1579. Wharton
mentions an instance of his zeal for learning. In 1570
he enjoined the minor canons of his cathedral to get
by memory every week one chapter of St. Paul's
Epistles in Latin; and this formidable task was actu-
ally repeated by some of them before the Bishop,
Dean, and Prebendaries, at a public episcopal visita-
tion of the Church." Attached to a small MSS. by
Anthony Fitzherbert, " De Naturet Brevium," we
find this interesting note :—" Anthony Fitzherbert,
in the reign of Henry VIII., born at Norbury, in
Derbyshire. He was at Oxford, but it is not known
at what College, nor at what Inn of Court he re-
sided. He was a Sergeant in 1511. In 1523 he be-
came a Judge of the Common Pleas. A remarkable
thing is told of him, that, foreseeing the distribution
of Church lands among the laity, he made his chil-
dren promise that they, would neither accept grants,
nor make purchases of, abbey lands. He wrote man?
other works besides the present. He died in 1538.'
We subjoin one more note, which is affixed to a
" vellum MSS., beautifully written, with illumina-
tions," and which once belonged to Bishop Nykke :
—" The Bishop's name mentioned as on the fly-leaf,
is most probably Richard Nix, of Norwich, who died
in 1536. He was the Bishop that punished the poet
Skelton, for his buffooneries in the pulpit, and his
satirical' ballads against the mendicants. Anthony
Hood says, Skelton was punished by the Bishop for
having been guilty of crime's, as most poets are. If
Library Catalogues were drawn up in the manner in
which Mr. Cowie has drawn up the one before us,
they might be rendered very amusing and instructive
works.

CORONER'S INQUEST.
Mr. Baker, the coroner, and a jury assembled at the
New Globe Tavern, Mile-end-road, to inquire into the
circumstances attendant on the death of George Purley,
aged one year and ten months, who was drowned by its
wretched mother on Sunday night, in the Regent's Ca-
nal, and for which offence she now stands charged.
The first witness called was Mr. Thomas Gardener,
who had acted with such promptitude and humanity in
receiving the mother, and endeavouring to resuscitate
the deceased; but his evidence scarcely differed from
that given by him before the magistrate at Lambeth-
street on the day before, and which appeared in
The Sun of yesterday. The next witness was
Henry Cotton, K 361, and his evidence was also similar
to that which has appeared.
Sergeant Harrison, K 15, deposed that he was at the
station-house on Sunday evening, when the mother of
the deceased had been brought there, and she then coin -
plained of great distress of mind. He then cautioned
her against saying anything in his presence which might
have a tendency to injure her, as he should have to re-
peat it in another place, and it would be used in evidence
against her. She replied that she might as well tell him
as anybody else, and then proceeded to state that her
distress was brought on by the ill-usage she and her
children had received at Bethnal-green Union; that her
child was all over sores, and that his head had been
shaved as often as five times, and that sooner than re-
turn to the workhouse she would rather die, or remain
in a prison. She also said that she had thrown herself
into the water, and that she wished they had left her
alone to go with her child, for that in that case her suf-
ferings would be at an end. She said the child's name
was George; and that his father, who was a hair dyer,
was dead about two years. She further admitted that
she had been a married woman, but that her husband
had been transported, fifteen years ago, for " defacing
(1. e. sweating) the current coin, and that she subse-
quently resided with the father of her two children.
Mary Bullen the wife of a sailor residing at No. 2,
Bath-street, Spitalfields, deposed that she had known
the mother of the deceased for some years, from her
living with a man named Charles Blackett, who was
the father of her two children. On Wednesday last
she came to her (witness's) house with her two chil-
dren, and remained there until Sunday morning, when
she went out, taking the deceased with her. She com•
plained of the treatment she experienced at the Bethnal-
green Union-house, and frequently declared that rather
than return there both herself and her children should
have a watery grave. She (the mother of the deceased)
admitted having received a trifle from the guardians at
the workhouse, but said she had been robbed of it soon
after. On Sunday morning she (witness) gave Mrs.
Purley a cup of coffee, she herself being without the
means of getting anything for breakfast, and she then
talked about drowning herself and her baby, and soon
after left the house with the deceased in her arms. The
witness in conclusion said that the second child, which
was in an adjoining room, was in a very bad state, having
a great number of sores on its head and different parts
of its body.
Mr. New, a surgeon, gave it as his decided opinion
that the deceased had died from drowning.
The CORONER was here about to sum up the evidence,
when the master of Bethnal-green Workhouse requested
to make a few remarks. He said that the mother of the
deceased and her two illegitimate children had been
admitted into the workhouse on February, 1843, and
remained there until last Wednesday, when she was
discharged, at her own request. He was, he said, pre-
pared with ample proof that, while in the workhouse,
she and her children had been treated with the greatest
kindness • that the guardians, on her leaving, had given
her all she requested ; and that, in fact, there was not a
word of truth in what she had stated. He also said he
would be able to prove, by several witnesses, that the
mother of the deceased had frequently expressed her
fixed determination to destroy this child.
The CORONER, in summing up, clearly defined the
case, and the jury, without hesitation, returned a verdict
of Wilful Murder against the mother.