I not only challenge MR. P. COLLIER'S hearty approval of those magnificent lines, but I would venture the expression of a doubt whether anything finer can be produced of the same date and character. Now take a spice of Bastard's quality as a humorist; not failing to mark again the solemn flow and well-balanced cadence of the lines: "You who have sorrow's hidden bottom sounded, And felt the ground of teares and bitter moane, You may conceive how Gilloes heart is wounded, And judge of his deep feeling by your owne. His toothlesse wife, when she was left for dead, When grave and all was made--_Recovered!_" I have other evidence as strongly favourable, but I shall not adduce it, lest after all it be wasted on unwilling ears. But if it be the verdict of your readers that Thomas Bastard has been unjustly forgotten, he shall live again in your pages. R. C. C. INUNDATIONS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. The remarkable inundations that have recently taken place (I do not, of course, allude to the accident at Holmesfirth) in various parts of the country, without any such very long-continued and violent storms of rain as one would naturally look to as their cause, have called to my recollection some remarks in the "Notices Scientifiques" of M. Arago, attached to the _Annuaire pour l'An 1838_, published by the Bureau des Longitudes at Paris. I beg to transcribe them: "Des historiens, les météorologistes citent des inondations locales dont les effets ont semblé bien supérieures à ce que pouvoit faire craindre la médiocre quantité de pluie provenante des nuages et tombée dans un certain rayon. Il est rarement arrivé qu'alors _on n'ait pas vu_, pendant un temps plus ou moins long, d'immense masses d'eau surgir des entrailles de la terre par des ouvertures jusque là inconnues, et aussi, _qu'un violent orage n'ait pas été la précurseur du phénomène et probablement sa cause première_. Telles furent, du point en point, par example, en juin, 1686, les circonstances de l'inondation qui détruisit presque en totalité les deux villages de _Ketlevell_ et de _Starbottom_, dans le comté d'York. Pendant l'orage une immense crevasse se forma dans la montagne voisine, et, au dire des témoins oculaires, la masse fluide qui s'en échappa avec impétuosité contribua au moins tout autant que la pluie, aux malheurs qu'on eut à déplores." P. 361. 1. Is there any reason to suppose that a subterranean outburst of this nature accompanied any of the recent inundations? 2. Does the "immense crevice" alluded to by M. Arago still exist? and does water continue to proceed from it? SYDNEY SMIRKE. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL QUERY. In the year 1704 was published anonymously: