nt knoweth not.

J. M. C.

_Jack and Gill_ (Vol. vii., p. 572.).--A somewhat earlier instance of the
occurrence of the expression "Jack and Gill" is to be found (with a slight
difference) in John Heywood's _Dialogue of Wit and Folly_, page 11. of the
Percy Society's reprint:

"No more hathe he in mynde, ether payne or care,
Than hathe other Cock my hors, or Gyll my mare!"

This is probably not more than twenty years earlier than your
correspondent's quotation from Tusser.

H. C. K.

_Simile of the Soul and the Magnetic Needle_ (Vol. vi. _passim_; Vol. vii.,
p. 508.).--Southey, in his _Omniana_ (vol. i. p. 210.), cites a passage
from the _Partidas_, in which the magnetic needle is used in illustration.
It is as follows:

"E bien assi como los marineros se guian en la noche escura por el
aguja, que les es medianera entre la piedra e la estrella, e les
muestra por de vayan, tambien en los malos tiempos, como en los buenos;
otrosi los que han de consejar al Rey, se deven siempre guiar por la
justicia; que es medianera entre Dios e el mundo, en todo tiempo, para
dar guardalon a los buenos, e pena a los malos, a cada uno segund su
merescimiento."--2 _Partida_, tit. ix. ley 28.

This passage is especially worthy of attention, as having been written half
a century before the supposed invention of the mariner's compass by Flavius
Gioias at Amalfi; and, as Southey {88} remarks, "it must have been well
known and in general use before it would thus be referred to as a familiar
illustration."

I do not think that any of your correspondents have quoted the halting
lines with which Byron mars the pathos of the Rousseau-like letter of Donna
Julia (_Don Juan_, canto I. stanza cxcvi.):

"My heart is feminine, nor can forget--
To all, except one image, madly blind;
So shakes the needle, and so stands the pole,
As vibrates my fond heart to my fix'd soul."

WILLIAM BATES.

Birmingham.

_Gibbon's Library_ (Vol. vii., pp. 407. 455. 535.).--The following
quotation from Cyrus Redding's "Recollections of the Author of Vathek"
(_New Monthly Magazine_, vol. lxxi. p. 308.) may interest J. H. M. and your
other correspondents under this head:

"'I bought it (says Beckford) to have something to read when I passed
through Lausanne. I have not been there since. I shut myself up for six
weeks, from early in the morning until night, only now and then taking
a ride. The people though