_Private Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth._--The curious little volume mentioned by MR. ROPER (Vol. iii., p. 45.), is most probably the book alluded to by J. E. C., p. 23. I possess a copy of much later date (1767). It is worthy of note, that the narrative is headed _The Earl of Essex; or, the Amours of Queen Elizabeth_; while the title-page states, _The secret History of the most Renown'd Q. Elizabeth and Earl of Essex_.
I think it can scarcely be said to be _corroborative_ of the "scandal" contained in Mr. Ives's MS. note, or that in Burton's _Parliamentary Diary_, cited by P. T., Vol. ii. p. 393. Whitaker, in his _Vindication of Mary Q. of Scots_, has displayed immense industry and research in his collection of charges against the private life of Elizabeth, but makes no mention of these reports.
_Bibliographical Queries_ (No. 39.), _Monarchia Solipsorum_ (Vol. iii., p. 138.).--Your correspondent asks, Can there be the smallest doubt that the veritable inventor of this satire upon the Jesuits was their former associate, Jules-Clement Scotti? Having paid considerable attention to the writings of Scotti, Inchofer, and Scioppius, and to the evidence as to the authorship of this work, I should, notwithstanding Niceron's authority, on which your correspondent seems to rely, venture to assert that the claim made for Scotti, as well as that for Scioppius, may be at once put aside. No two authors ever more carefully protected their literary offspring, numerous as they were, by the catalogues and lists of them which they published or dispersed from time to time, than these two writers. In them every tract is claimed, however short, which they had written. Scotti published one in 1650, five years after the publication of the _Monarchia Solipsorum_; and I have a letter of his, of the same period, containing a list of his writings. Scioppius left one, dated 1647, now in MS. in the Laurentian Library with his other MSS., and which carefully mentions every tract he had written against the Jesuits. The _Monarchia Solipsorum_ does not appear in the lists of these two writers; and no good reason can be assigned why it should not, on the supposition of its being written by either of them. If not in those which were published, it certainly would not have been omitted in those communicated to their friends, not Jesuits, or which were found amongst their own MSS. Then, nothing can be more distinct than the style of Scotti, of Scioppius, and that of the author, whoever he was, of the _Monarchia_. The much-vexed spirit of the bitterest of critics would have been still more indignant if one or two of the passages in this work could ever, in his contemplation, have been imputed to his pen.