My inquiry is after _Serius Seriades_que Nymphæ. Where is the Serius? What is the Italian name for this (I presume) tributary of the Po? F. W. F. _Hollander's Austerity, &c._--Will you, or some one of your readers, kindly explain the allusions in the following passage?-- "Mr. Secretary Winwood is dead, whereby you see _Death expects no Complement_, otherwise he would certainly have _kept it at the Staff's End_, with a kind of _Hollander's austerity_." [Sir Th. Wentworth to Sir H. Wotton, Nov. 8. 1617, _Strafford's Letters and Despatches_, vol. i. p. 5.] C. P. PH***. _Brother Jonathan._--Why is, and when first was, this fraternal cognomen bestowed upon the United States of America? Is it strictly applicable to the whole of the Union, or only to those states which were settled and peopled by the Puritan fathers? HENRY CAMPKIN. _Authorship of the "Groves of Blarney."_--Can any one inform me when, and by whom, the ludicrous ballad, entitled the Groves of Blarney, was composed, and where it may be found. Everybody knows the lines which describe "Cupid and Venus and old Nicodemus, all standing out in the open air." E. V. _Carnaby._--What is the derivation and meaning of this word, as the name of a square or street? ARUN. _Death of Death's Painter._--Most persons have heard of the story of an Italian painter who embodied the idea of Death on the canvass so truthfully, that the contemplation of it caused his own death. I always thought it was fabulous, till I met with it in the translation of Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_, vol. ii. p. 305., now being published in Bohn's _Standard Library_. The name of Fivizzano is there given to the painter, and the following epigram is said to have been inscribed beneath the picture:-- "Me veram pictor divinus mente recepit. Admota est operi deinde perita manus. Dumque opere in facto defigit lumina pictor, Intentus nimium, palluit et moritur. Viva igitur sum mors, non mortua mortis imago Si fungor, quo mors fungitur officio." Which may be thus translated:-- Me with such truth the painter's mind discerned, While with such skilful hand the work he plied, That when to view his finished work he turned, With horror stricken, he grew pale, and died. Sure I am living Death, not Death's dead shade, That do Death's work, and am like Death obeyed. Can you refer me to any authority for the story? J. C. H. Finsbury.