“Who was the Vicar of Bray? I have had a long chase after him,” said Mr. Brome to Mr. Rawlins, in 1735. “Simon Aleyn, or Allen, was his name; he was Vicar of Bray about 1540 and died in 1588; so he held the living near fifty years. You now partake of the sport that has cost me some pains to take. And if the pursuit after such game seems mean, one Mr. Vernon followed a butterfly nine miles before he could catch him.” Reader, do not refuse your belief of this fact, when I can state to you on my own recollection that the late Dr. Shaw, the celebrated Naturalist, a librarian of the British Museum and known by the name of the learned Shavius, from the facility and abundance of his Latin compositions, pointed out to my notice there many years ago two volumes written by a Dutchman upon the wings of a butterfly. “The dissertation is rather voluminous Sir, perhaps you will think,” said the Doctor, with somewhat of that apologetic air, which modest science is wont occasionally to assume in her communications with ignorance, “but it is immensely important.” Good natured, excellent enthusiast! fully didst thou appreciate the Book, the Dutchman, and above all the Butterfly. “I have known a great man,” says Taylor the Water-Poet, “very expert on the Jews-harp; a rich heir excellent at Noddy; a Justice of the Peace skilful at Quoytes; a Merchant's Wife a quick gamester at Irish, especially when she came to bearing of men, that she would seldom miss entering.” Injurious John Taylor! thus to defraud thy friends of their fame, and leave in irremediable oblivion the proper name of that expert Jews-Harper, that person excellent at Noddy, that great Quoytes-man, and that Mistress who played so masterly a game at Irish!—But I thank thee for this, good John the Water-Poet; thou hast told us that Monsieur La Ferr, a Frenchman, was the first inventor of the admirable game of Double-hand, Hot Cockles, &c., and that Gregory Dawson, an Englishman, devised the unmatchable mystery of Blind-man's-buff. But who can tell me what the game of Carps was, the _Ludus Carparum_, which Hearne says was used in Oxford much, and being joined with cards, and reckoned as a kind of _alea_, is prohibited in some statutes. When Thomas Hearne, who learned whatever Time forgot, was uncertain what game or play it really was, and could only conjecture that perhaps it might be a sort of Back-gammon, what antiquary can hope to ascertain it? “Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires the Gipsey, and Miss Blandy,” says one who remembered their days of celebrity, “were such universal topics in 1752, that you would have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled to answer.” Who now knows the steps of that dance, or has heard the name of its author, of which in our father's days it was said in verse that