ly found in No. 3. of _The Bee_, by Goldsmith, and no
doubt Talleyrand acted upon the principle of dissimulation there
enunciated; but the idea is much older than either of those individuals,
as we learn from a note in p. 113. of vol. lxvii. _Quart. Rev._ quoting
two lines written by Young (nearly one hundred years before), in
allusion to courts:--

"Where Nature's end of language is declined,
And men talk only to conceal their mind."

Voltaire has used the same expression so long ago as 1763, in his little
satiric dialogue _La Chapon et la Poularde_, where the former,
complaining of the treachery of men says, "Ils n'emploient les paroles
que pour deguiser leurs pensees." (see xxix. tom. _Oeuvres Completes_,
pp. 83, 84. ed. Paris, 1822.)

The germ of the idea is also to be found in Lloyd's _State Worthies_,
where speaking of Roger Ascham, he is characterised as "an honest
man,--none being more able for, yet none more averse to, that
circumlocution and contrivance wherewith some men shadow their main
drift and purpose. Speech was made to open man to man, and not to hide
him; to promote commerce, and not betray it."

Lloyd's book first appeared in 1665, but I use the ed. by Whitworth,
vol. i. p. 503.

F.R.A.

Oak House, Nov. 21. 1849.

[The further communications proposed to us by F.R.A. will be
very acceptable.]

* * * * *

ANCIENT LIBRARIES--LIBRARY OF THE AUGUSTINIAN EREMITES OF YORK.

Mr. Editor,--I have been greatly interested by the two numbers of the
"NOTES AND QUERIES" which you have sent me. The work promises to be
eminently useful, and if furnished with a good index at the end of each
yearly volume, will become a book indispensable to all literary men, and
especially to those who, like myself, are in charge of large public
libraries.

To testify my good will to the work, and to follow up Mr. Burtt's
remarks on ancient libraries published in your second number, I venture
to send you the following account of a MS. Catalogue of the Library of
the Monastery of the Friars Eremites of the Order of St. Augustine in
the City of York.

This MS. is now preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin,
amongst the MSS. formerly belonging to the celebrated Archbishop Ussher.
It is on vellum, written in the 14th century, and begins thus:--

"Inventarium omnium librorum pertinentium ad commune armariole
domus Ebor. ordinis fratrum heremitarum Sancti Augu