_Dissimulate._--Where is the earliest use of this word to be found? It is to be met with in Bernard Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, 1723; but is not to be found, I think, in any dictionary. I was once heavily censured at school for using it in my theme; but I have more than once of late seen it used in a leading article of _The Times_. H. T. RILEY. [_Dissimulate_ occurs in Richardson's Dictionary, with the two following examples: "Under smiling she was _dissimulate_, Prouocatiue with blinkes amorous." Chaucer, _The Testament of Creseide_. "We commaunde as kynges, and pray as men, that al thyng be forgiuen to theim that be olde and broken, and to theim that be yonge and lusty, to _dissimulate_ for a time, and nothyng to be forgiuen to very yong children."--_Golden Boke_, c. ix. * * * * * Replies. BISHOP KEN. (Vol. vii., p. 526.) By converting a noun into a surname, Dodsley has led J. J. J. into a natural, but somewhat amusing mistake. The lines quoted are in Horace Walpole's well-known epistle, from Florence, addressed to his college friend T[homas] A[shton,] tutor of the Earl of P[lymouth]. In Walpole's _Fugitive Pieces_, printed at Strawberry Hill, 1758 (the copy of which, now before me, was given by Walpole to Cole in 1762, and contains several notes by the latter), the passage stands correctly thus: "Or, with wise ken, judiciously define, When Pius marks the honorary coin, Of Carnealla, or of Antonine." Your correspondent refers to an edition of the _Collection of Poems_ of 1758. In a much later edition of that work, viz. 1782, the line is again printed-- "Or with wise KEN," &c. It is strange that the mistake was not corrected, at the instance of Walpole himself, during this long interval. Turning to Bishop Ken, I would observe that in his excellent Life of this prelate, Mr. Anderdon has given the three well-known hymns "word for word," as first penned. These, Mr. A. tells us, are found, for the first time, in a copy of the _Manual of Prayers For the Use of the Winchester Scholars_, printed in 1700. The bishop's versions vary so very materially from those to which we have been accustomed from childhood, that these original copies are very interesting. Indeed, within five years after their first appearance, and during the author's life, material changes were made, several of which are retained to the present hour. It must be admitted that some of the stanzas, as they first came from the bishop's pen, are singularly rugged and inharmonious, almost justifying the request made by the lady to Byrom (as I have stated elsewhere[1]), "to revise and polish the bishop's poems." How came these hymns, so far the most popular of his poetical works, to be omitted by Hawkins in the collected edition of the poems, printed in 4 vols., 1721?