t me mad. I read myself nearly blind.'

"I inquired if the books were rare or curious. He replied in the
negative. There were excellent editions of the principal historical
writers, and an extensive collection of travels. The most valuable work
was an edition of _Eustathius_; there was also a MS. or two. All the
books were in excellent condition; in number, considerably above six
thousand, near seven perhaps. He should have read himself mad if there
had been novelty enough, and he had stayed much longer.

"'I broke away, and dashed among the mountains. There is excellent
reading there, too, equally to my taste. Did you ever travel alone
among mountains?'

"I replied that I had, and been fully sensible of their mighty
impressions. 'Do you retain Gibbon's library?'

"'It is now dispersed, I believe. I made it a present to my excellent
physician, Dr. Schall or Scholl (I am not certain of the name). I never
saw it after turning hermit there.'"

WILLIAM BATES.

Birmingham.

_St. Paul's Epistles to Seneca_ (Vol. vii., pp. 500. 583.).--The
affirmation so frequently made and alluded to by J. M. S. of Hull, that
Seneca became, in the last year of his life, a convert to Christianity, is
an old tradition, which has just been revived by a French author, M. Amedee
Fleury, and is discussed and attempted to be established by him at great
length in two octavo volumes. I have not read the book, but a learned
reviewer of it, M. S. De Sacy, shows, with the greatest appearance of
reason and authority, that the tradition, instead of being strengthened, is
weakened by all that M. Fleury has said about it. M. De Sacy's review is
contained in the _Journal des Debats_ of June 30, in which excellent paper
he is a frequent and delightful writer on literary subjects. In the hope
that it may interest and gratify J. M. S. to be informed of M. Fleury's new
work, I send this scrap of information to the "N. & Q."

JOHN MACRAY.

Oxford.

_"Hip, Hip, Hurrah!"_ (Vol. vii., pp. 595. 633).--The reply suggested by
your correspondent R. S. F., that the above exclamation originated in the
Crusades, and is a corruption of the initial letters of "Hierosolyma est
perdita," never appeared to me to be very apposite.

In _A Collection of National English Ballads_, edited and published by W.
Chapple, 1838, in a description of the song "Old Simon, the King," the
favourite of Squire Western in _To