l resemblances and trifling obligations have been pointed
out by the commentators in their notes to the WINTER'S TALE. One of the
principal instances occurs in Act IV. Sc. 3., where Florizel says:

"'The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter
Became a bull and bellow'd; the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire-rob'd god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now. Their transformations
Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,
Nor in a way so chaste.'

"'This,' says Malone, 'is taken almost literally from the novel'--when,
in fact, the resemblance merely consists in the adoption by Shakspeare
of part of the mythological knowledge supplied by Greene. 'The gods
above disdaine not to love women beneath. Phoebus liked Daphne; Jupiter
Io; and why not I then Fawnia?' The resemblance is anything but
literal."

It would appear, however, that the passage cited by MR. COLLIER is not the
one referred to by Malone. MR. COLLIER's passage is at p. 34. of his
edition of the novel; the one Malone evidently had in view is at p. 40.,
and is as follows:--

"And yet, Dorastus, shame not at thy shepheard's weede: the heavenly
godes have sometime earthly thoughtes. Neptune became a ram, Jupiter a
bul, Apollo a shepheard: they Gods, and yet in love; and thou a man,
appointed to love."

E. L. N.

_Inscribed Alms-dish._--There is an alms-dish (?) {102} in the possession
of a clergyman near Rotherham, in this county, with the following
inscription:--

"VREEST . GODT . ONDERHOVEDT . SYN . GEBOEDT . ANNO . 1634."

[Fear God (and?) keep his commandments.]

Having so lately been so justly reproved by your correspondent, MR. JANUS
DOUSA, for judging of Vondel's _Lucifer_ by an apparently unjust review
rather than by perusal,--and his beautiful chorus having so fully
"established his case,"--I am rather shy of making any remarks upon this
inscription: otherwise I would venture (errors excepted) to observe that
there _may_ be a mistake in the position of the last three letters of the
third word.

If MR. DOUSA would kindly inform a _very_ imperfect Dutch scholar whether
this sentence is intended as a quotation from Ecclesiastes xii., 13th
verse,--

"Vreest Godt ende hout syne geboden;"

or whether the third word is from the verb "_onder houden_,