as to the Poor, by having these heavy Grievances taken off_: London, printed and sold by Brotherton: Meadows and Roberts, 1717, 8vo., pp. 79. This is one of the pamphlets which, though it has been sometimes erroneously assigned to Paterson, both on external and internal evidence may be confidently attributed to Defoe, but which has unaccountably escaped the notice of all his biographers. JAMES CROSSLEY. * * * * * UNPUBLISHED EPIGRAM BY SIR W. SCOTT (?). (Vol. vii., p. 498.) The lines which your correspondent R. VINCENT attributes to Sir Walter Scott are part of an old English inscription which Longfellow quotes in _Outremer_, p. 66., and thus describes in a note: "I subjoin this relic of old English verse entire.... It is copied from a book whose title I have forgotten, and of which I have but a single leaf, containing the poem. In describing the antiquities of the church of Stratford-upon-Avon, the writer gives the following account of a very old painting upon the wall, and of the poem which served as its motto. The painting is no longer visible, having been effaced in repairing the church: "'Against the west wall of the nave, on the south side of the arch, was painted the martyrdom of Thomas a Becket, while kneeling at the altar of St. Benedict, in Canterbury Cathedral. Below this was the figure of an angel, probably St. Michael, supporting a long scroll, upon which were seven stanzas in old English, being an allegory of mortality.'" The lines given at p. 498. of "N. & Q." seem to be taken from the two following stanzas, which stand third and fourth in the old inscription: "_Erth apon erth wynnys castellys and towrys,_ _Then seth erth unto erth thys ys all owrys._ When erth apon erth hath bylde hys bowrys, Then schall erth for erth suffur many hard schowrys. "Erth goth apon erth as man apon mowld, Lyke as erth apon erth never goo schold, _Erth goth apon erth as gelsteryng gold,_ _And yet schall erth unto erth rather than he wold._" {577} Dugdale, in his _Antiquities of Warwickshire_, p. 517., tells us that John de Stratford, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Edward III., built a chapel on the south side of the church, "to the honour of God and of St. Thomas the Martyr;" and as at p. 521. he describes it as "in the south ile of the said church," the west wall of this chapel answers very well the description of the position of the painting, and inscription. But in _The Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. xv. p. 238., _the chapel of the gild of the Holy Cross_, in the centre of the town, is mentioned as the place in which the pictures were discovered, during some repairs which it underwent in the year 1804. I have since ascertained that the work to which Longfellow refers is Weaver's _Account of Stratford-upon-Avon_. ERICA.