"He was as pale as a pelet, In the palsy he semed And clothed in a _kaurymaury_, I kouthe it nought diseryve." W.C. Jun. * * * * * MISCELLANIES _Bishop Burnet as an Historian._--Dr. Joseph Warton told my father that "Old Lord Barthurst," Pope's friend, had cautioned him against relying implicitly on all Burnet's statements; observing that the good bishop was so given to gossiping and anecdote hunting, that the wags about court used often to tell him idle tales, for the mischievous pleasure of seeing him make note on them. Lord Bathurst did not, I believe, charge Burnet with deliberate misrepresentation, but considered some of his presumed facts _questionable_, for the reason stated. ELIJAH WARING. _Dance Thumbkin._--In the _Book of Nursery Rhymes_, published by the Percy Society, there is a small error of importance, involving no less that the learned would call "a non sequitur," and which, if my correct-and-almost-unequalled nurse, Betty Richins, was alive, she would have noticed much sooner that the nurseling who now addresses you. (She died about the year 1796.) In the valuable and still popular nursery classical song, "Dance Thumbkin, dance," it is not only an error to say "Thumbkin _he can_ dance alone" (let any one reader of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," male or female, _only try_), but it is not the correct text. Betty Richins has "borne me on her knee a hundred times" and sung it thus:-- Thumbkin _cannot_ dance alone. So[1] dance ye merry men, every one." I scarcely need add, that if this be true of Thumbkin, it is _truer_ of Foreman, Longman, Middleman, and Littleman. R.S.S. [Footnote 1: Or _then_, meaning "for that reason."] _King's Coffee-house, Covent Garden._--As an addition to "Mr. RIMBAULT's" Notes on Cunningham's _Handbook_, the following extract from Harwood's _Alumni Etonenses_, p. 293., in the recount of the boys elected for Eton to King's College may be interesting:-- "A.D. 1713, 12." "Thomas King born at West Ashton in Wiltshire; went away scholar, in apprehension that his fellowship {494} would be denied him, and afterwards kept that coffee-house in Covent Garden which was called by his own name." J.H.L. _Spur Money_ (No. 23. p. 374, and No 28. p. 462.).--In a curious tract, published in 1598, under the title of _The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt_, we have the following passage:-- "Wee think it very necessarye that every quorister sholde bringe with him to churche a Testament in Englishe, and turne to everie chapter as it is daily read, or som other good and godly prayer-booke, rather than spend their tyme in talk and hunting after _spur-money_, whereon they set their whole mindes, and do often abuse dyvers if they doe not bestowe somewhat on them." In 1622, the dean of the Chapel Royal issued an order by which it was decreed--