It is interesting to observe how nearly Theobald's plain, homely sense, led him to the necessity of the context. The real points of the allusion can scarcely be expressed in better words than his own: "Faulconbridge, in his resentment, would say this to Austria, 'That lion's skin which my great father, King Richard, once wore, looks as uncouthly on thy back, as that other noble hide, which was borne by Hercules, would look on the back of an ass!' A double allusion was intended: first, to the fable of the ass in the lion's skin; then Richard I. is finely set in competition with Alcides, as Austria is satirically coupled with the ass." One step farther, and Theobald would have discovered the true solution: he only required to know that _the shoes_, by a figure of rhetoric called synecdoche, may stand for the whole character and attributes of Hercules, to have saved himself the trouble of conjecturing an ingenious, though infinitely worse word, as a substitute. As for subsequent annotators, it must be from the mental preoccupation of this unlucky "ex pede Herculem," that _they_ have so often put their foot in it. They have worked up Alcides' shoe into a sort of antithesis to Cinderella's; and, like Procrustes, they are resolved to stretch everything to fit. A. E. B. Leeds. * * * * * GOETHE'S AUTHOR-REMUNERATION. The Note in your valuable Journal (Vol. vii., p. 591.) requires, I think, so far as it relates to Goethe, several corrections which I am in the position of making. The amount which that great man is said to have received for his "works (aggregate)" is "30,000 crowns." The person who _originally_ printed this statement must have been completely ignorant of Goethe's affairs, and even biography. Goethe had (unlike Byron) several publishers in his younger years. Subsequently he became closer connected with M. _J. G. Cotta_ of Stuttgardt, who, in succession, published almost all Goethe's works. Amongst them were _several_ editions of his complete works: for instance, that published conjointly at Vienna and Stuttgardt. Then came, in 1829, what was called the edition of the last hand (_Ausgabe letzter Hand_), as Goethe was then more than eighty years of age. During all the time these two editions were published, other detached new works of Goethe were also printed; as well as new editions of former books, &c. Who can now say that it was 20,000 crowns (_thalers?_) which the great poet received for each various performance?--_No one._ And this for many reasons. Goethe always remained with M. Cotta on terms of polite acquaintanceship, no more: there was no "My dear Murray" in their strictly business-like connexion. Goethe also never wrote on such things, even in his biography or diary. But some talk was going around in Germany, that for _one_ of the editions of his _complete_ works (there {30} appeared still many volumes of posthumous), he received the above sum. I can assert on