SIR,--With regard to your query in No. 1, as to who was the author of _Specimens of Macaronic Poetry_, I think I can supply the answer. After reading your paragraph on the subject I took down the book from its shelf and found that my father, the late Dr. Henry B. Wheatley, had pencilled on the title-page the name of Sandys. I then turned to Lowndes and found the book under the name of William Sandys. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ states that the author was born in 1792 and died in 1874, and that he is best remembered for his share in Sandys' and Forster's _History of the Violin_, 1864. The _Specimens_, published in 1831, was his second venture in authorship. My father evidently bought the book when he was engaged in writing his own first book _Of Anagrams_, containing in the introduction (I quote from the title-page) "numerous specimens of Macaronic poetry, Punning Mottoes, Rhopalic, Shaped, Equivocal, Lyon, and Echo Verses, Alliteration, Acrostics, Lipograms, Chronograms, Logograms, Palindromes, and Bouls' Rimes." To any one interested in queer forms of verse this book is full of entertainment. It was published in 1872, and is now out of print.
In the first of your Bibliographical Notes, in which you notice Mr. Percy Simpson's edition of _Every Man in His Humour_, you say, "A new edition of Ben Jonson's work is certainly needed: Gifford's, re-edited by Cunningham, is sadly inadequate." I have not yet had the pleasure of reading Mr. Simpson's book, but I would point out that Gifford's edition was not the only predecessor. An edition of Ben Jonson's play was edited, with an introduction and critical apparatus, by my father in 1877, for the "London Series of English Classics," edited by J. W. Hales, M.A., and J. S. Jerram, M.A., and published by Longmans, Green & Co. The excellent introduction contains, besides the facts of Jonson's life, a lucid explanation and examination of the Comedy of Humours, together with a critical comparison of the various editions. The notes are adequate, and placed at the end of the book. It was a labour of love, and, although doubtless scholarship has advanced since it was published, my filial partiality compels me to think that it still ranks as a worthy edition of this classic of our literature.--Yours, etc.,