"It seems to have escaped the notice of all Pope's biographers, that when the Marquis Maffei visited Twickenham, in company with Lord Burlington and Dr. Mead, he found the English bard employed on a translation of his _Merope_: yet the public have been in possession of this anecdote about fifty years. The Marquis, in his answer to the celebrated letter addressed to him by Voltaire, says: 'Avendomi Mylord Conte di Burlington, e il Sig. Dottore Mead, l'uno e l'altro talenti rari, ed à quali quant' io debba non posso dire, condotto alla villa del Sig. Pope, ch' è il Voltaire dell Inghilterra, come voi siete il Pope della Francia, quel bravo Poeta mi fece vedere, che lavorava alla versione della mia Tragedia in versi Inglesi: se la terminasse, e che ne sia divenuto, non so.'--_La Merope_, ver. 1745, p. 180. With the fate of this version we are, and probably shall ever remain, unacquainted: it may, however, be safely presumed, that it was never finished to the satisfaction of the translator, and therefore committed to the flames." T. C. S. * * * * * THE CHURCH CATECHISM. Allow me to make the following inquiries through the pages of "N. & Q.," which may possibly elicit valuable information from some of your many correspondents. In the Archbishop of York's questions put to candidates for Holy Orders, Feb. 1850, occurred this Query: "The Church Catechism ... by whom was the latter part added and put into its present form; and whence is it chiefly derived?" The former part of this is readily answered; being, as any one at all read in the history of the Prayer-Book well knows, added at the Hampton Court Conference, 1603; and was drawn up by Bishop Overall, at that time Dean of St. Paul's: but _whence is it chiefly derived?_ That is the question for which I have hitherto sought in vain a satisfactory solution, and fear his grace, or his examining chaplain, must have looked in vain for a correct reply from any of his _quasi_ clergymen, college education though they may have had. It is a point which seems to be passed over entirely unnoticed by all of our liturgical writers and church historians, as I have been at no little pains in searching works at all likely to clear it up, but, hitherto, without success. It may be conjectured that the part referred to, viz., on the Sacraments, was taken from Dean Nowell's Catechism; or, at all events, that Overall borrowed some of the expressions while he changed its meaning, as Nowell's was purely Calvinistic in tendency. He may have had before him the fourth part of Peter Lombard's _Liber Sententiarum_, or some such work. But all this is mere supposition; and what I want to arrive at, is some correct data or authoritative statement which would settle the point. Another interesting matter upon which I am desirous of information, is, as to the protestation after the rubrics at the end of the Communion Service.