Q. "How came the famous Buchanan off, when travelling into Italy, he was, for the freeness of his writing, suspected of his religion, and taken hold of by some of the Pope's Inquisitors?" A. "By writing to his Holiness this distich: 'Laus tua, non tua fraus, virtus, non copia rerum, Scandere te fecit hoc decus eximium.'" For which encomium he was set at liberty; and being gone out of the Pope's jurisdiction, he sent to his Holiness, and desired, according to his own true meaning, to read the self-same verses backward. If George Buchanan, born 1506, was indeed the author of them, it is certain that no Pope Alexander could have been the subject of them, when written, I presume, in 1551, that being the year in which he obtained his liberty. And now to J. F. M.'s Query p. 290.--If he has transcribed Puttenham aright, he might justly condemn them as very bad "verse Lyon," if that be Leonine; but I take it that he has condemned what is worthy of some praise, and of being "called verse Lyon," for Lyric. It would lose nothing of the lyrical by translation, but your readers being all classical I forbear. BLOWEN. _Francis Moore_ (Vol. iii., pp. 263. 381.).--Francis Moore, physician, was one of the many quack doctors who duped the credulous at the latter period of the seventeenth century; he practised in Westminster: in all probability then, as in our own time, the publication of the almanac was to act as an advertisement of his healing powers, &c. Cookson, Salmon, Gadbury, Andrewes, Tanner, Coley, Partridge, &c. &c., were all his predecessors, and were students in physic and astrology. Moore's _Almanac_ appears to be a perfect copy of Tanner's, which was first published in 1656, forty-two years prior to the appearance of Moore's. The portrait in Knight's _London_ is certainly imaginary. There is a genuine and very characteristic portrait, _now of considerable rarity_, representing him as a fat-faced man in a wig and large neck-cloth, inscribed "Francis Moore, born in Bridgnorth, in the county of Salop, the 29th of January, 1656-7.--JOHN DRAPENTIER, delin. et sculp." I may mention it as a curious fact, that the portraits of these quack doctors, when in a good state, are frequently of great rarity. I possess one which was in the Stow collection, being a fine impression of the following print by Drapentier, for which the sum of five guineas had been paid: "The effigies of George Jones, whom God hath blessed with greate success in healing."--"Student in the art of physick and chirurgery for about thirty years in the Upper More Fields, two golden balls on the tops of the two posts of the portel before my door." W. W. C.