"I was once well acquainted with you on earth, and had almost persuaded you to be of my opinion. I am the author of that celebrated book, so well known by the title of _Leviathan_!
"'What! the great Hobbes,' said I, 'are you come hither? _Your voice is so much changed, I did not know it._'"
The dialogue which ensues is not worth quoting, as it is from our purpose. But I would ask when was the time when Bunyan "was nearly persuaded to be of Hobbes' opinion?" If he is the author and speaks the truth (and he is notoriously truthful), it must have been in early youth; but surely the philosopher of Malmesbury could not know an obscure tinker. Bunyan cannot speak metaphorically, for he had not read the _Leviathan_, since he mentions that his only reading in early life, _i.e._ when he was likely to have embraced freethinking, was the _Practice of Piety_, and the _Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven_, his wife's dowry. { 519} Moreover, he notes particularly the _change of voice_, a curious circumstance, which testifies personal acquaintance. Hobbes died in 1679; Bunyan in 1688. Were they intimate?
_Boiling to Death._--Some of your correspondents have communicated instances where burning to death was inflicted as a punishment; and MR. GATTY suggests that it would prove an interesting subject for inquiry, at what period such barbarous inflictions ceased. In Howe's _Chronicle_ I find the two following notices:
"The 5th of Aprill (1532) one Richard Rose, a cooke, was boiled in Smithfielde, for poisoning of divers persons, to the number of sixteen or more, at ye Bishop of Rochester's place, amongst the which Benet Curwine, gentleman, was one, and hee intended to have poisoned the bishop himselfe, but hee eate no potage that day, whereby hee escaped. Marie the poore people that eate of them, many of them died."--Howe's _Chronicle_, p. 559.
"The 17th March (1542) Margaret Dany, a maid, was boiled in Smithfield for poisoning of three households that shee had dwelled in."--Howe's _Chronicle_, p. 583.
Query, was this punishment peculiar to cooks guilty of poisoning? And when did the latest instance occur?
_Meaning of "Mocker."_--To-day I went into the cottage of an old man, in the village of which I am curate, and finding him about to cut up some wood, and he being very infirm, I undertook the task for him, and chopped up a fagot for his fire.