1. The certificate of Dr. Farmer's character for learning and ability is unnecessary, because neither was impugned; nor does an allegation of atrocity in taste and judgment necessarily imply deficiency in mere book-learning. 2. As for Isaac Reed's opinion in favour of Farmer's Essay, it might be met by many of directly opposite tendency, and of at least equal weight. 3. In the only point really in question, BOLTON CORNEY "cannot deny that Farmer related the anecdote of the _wool-man_" (that being the reputed trade of Shakspeare's father); but to what end was it related, if not to suggest an application of which Steevens was only the interpreter? But BOLTON CORNEY thinks the character of the witness suspicious; he forgets that only just before he had stated that the anecdote and its application had been repeated in three editions, extending over thirteen years, all within the lifetime of Dr. Farmer! A. E. B. Leeds. _Earwig_ (Vol. iv., pp. 274. 411.).--The correspondent who asserts the _curious fact_ that Johnson, Richardson, and Webster do not notice the word _earwig_ must have consulted some expurgated editions of the works of those celebrated lexicographers--or else we must consider his assertion as a _curious fact_ in the history of literary oversights. BOLTON CORNEY. Miscellaneous. NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC. Although there are few books which have proved of greater utility to inquirers into the more recent history of England than Beatson's _Political Index_, yet it is also true that there are few which have more frequently or more justly caused the reader to feel the want of a new and improved edition. A very short examination, however, of Mr. Haydn's recently published Beatson's _Political Index Modernised, The Book of Dignities, containing Rolls of the Official Personages of the British Empire, Civil, Ecclesiastical, Judicial, Military, Naval, and Municipal, &c._, will satisfy the reader that such want has at length been supplied in a manner the most ample and the most satisfactory. For though we have referred to Beatson's well-known work for the purpose of furnishing a better idea of the _Book of Dignities_, we are bound to acknowledge that Mr. Haydn is justified in stating, that in the work in question he owes little more than the plan to Beatson. Mr. Haydn's volume not only contains many lists (among them the "Administrations of England, and the Judges of the Ecclesiastical Courts") not to be found in the _Political Index_, but the author has had the advantage of being permitted to search the various official records with the view of enabling him to give complete and accurate information. The result, of course, is obvious; namely, that just in the same proportion that our author surpasses Beatson in the extent and accuracy of his various lists, does the _Book of Dignities_ exceed its predecessor in usefulness to the official man, the historian, and the scholar.