Perhaps the Doctor remembered Smectymnuus at that time, and the notorious Cabal, and the fanciful etymology that because news comes from all parts, and the letters N. E. W. S. stand for North, East, West, and South—the word was thence compounded. Perhaps also, he called to mind that Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, the famous Maimonides, was called Rambam from the initials of his titles and his names; and that the great Gustavus Adolphus when he travelled incognito assumed the name of M. Gars, being the four initials of his name and title. He certainly did not remember that in the Dialogue of Solomon and Saturnus the name of Adam is said to have been in like manner derived from the four Angels Archox, Dux, Arocholem, and Minsymbrie. He did not remember this—because he never knew it; this very curious Anglo-Saxon poem existing hitherto only in manuscript, and no other portions or account of it having been printed than those brief ones for which we are indebted to Mr. Conybeare, a man upon whose like we of his generation shall not look again. CHAPTER CXLI. A SINGULAR ANECDOTE AND NOT MORE SAD THAN TRUE. Oh penny Pipers, and most painful penners Of bountiful new Ballads, what a subject, What a sweet subject for your silver sounds! BEAUMONT and FLETCHER. The chance of the Birmingham halfpenny was a rare one. I will not so far wrong the gentle Reader as to suppose that he will doubt the accuracy of any thing which is recorded in this true history; and I seriously assure him that such a halfpenny I have myself seen in those days when the most barefaced counterfeits were in full circulation,—a halfpenny which had a head on either side, and consequently was like the fox in the fable, or a certain noble Marquis, and now more noble Duke when embassador at Petersburg,—not as being double-faced, but as having lost its tail. A rare chance it was, and yet rarer ones have happened.—I remember one concerning a more serious appeal to fortune with the same instrument. An Organist not without some celebrity in his day, (Jeremiah Clark was his name), being hopelessly in love with a very beautiful lady, far above his station in life, determined upon suicide, and walked into the fields to accomplish his purpose. Coming to a retired spot where there was a convenient pond, surrounded with equally convenient trees, he hesitated which to prefer, whether to choose a dry death, or a watery one;—perhaps he had never heard of the old riddle concerning Ælia Lælia Crispis, which no Œdipus has yet solved. But that he might not continue like the Ass between two bundles of hay in the sophism, or Mahomet's coffin in the fable, he tossed a halfpenny in the air to decide whether he should hang or drown himself,—and the halfpenny stuck edgeways in the dirt.