were tricks," &c.?

W. FRASER.

Tor-Mohun.

[These lines occur in the Dean's verses "On the Death of Dr. Swift,"
and refer to Thomas Woolston, the celebrated heterodox divine, who, as
stated in a note quoted in Scott's edition, "for want of bread hath, in
several treatises, in the most blasphemous manner, attempted to turn
our Saviour's miracles in ridicule."]

_Boom._--Is there an English verb active _to boom_, and what is the precise
meaning of it? Sir Walter Scott uses the participle:

"The bittern _booming_ from the sedgy shallow."
_Lady of the Lake_, canto i. 31.

VOGEL.

[Richardson defines BOOM, v., applied as _bumble_ by Chaucer, and
_bump_ by Dryden, to the noise of the bittern, and quotes from Cotton's
_Night's Quatrains_,--

"Philomel chants it whilst it bleeds,
The bittern _booms_ it in the reeds," &c.]

"_A Letter to a Member of Parliament._"--Who was the author of _A Letter to
a Member of Parliament_, occasioned by _A Letter to a Convocation Man_: W.
Rogers, London, 1697?

W. FRASER.

Tor-Mohun.

[Attributed to Mr. Wright, a gentleman of the Bar, who maintains the
same opinions with Dr. Wake.]

_Ancient Chessmen._--I should be glad to learn, through the medium of "N. &
Q.," some particulars relative to the sixty-four chessmen and fourteen
draughtsmen, made of walrus tusk, found in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland,
and now in case 94. Mediaeval Collection of the British Museum?

HORNOWAY.

[See _Archaeologia_, vol. xxiv. p. 203., for a valuable article,
entitled "Historical Remarks on the introduction of the Game of Chess
into Europe, and on the ancient Chessmen discovered in the Isle of
Lewis, by Frederick Madden, Esq., F.R.S., in a Letter addressed to
Henry Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., Secretary."]

_Guthryisms._--In a work entitled _Select Trials at the Old Bailey_ is an
account of the trial and execution of Robert Hallam, for murder, in the
year 1731. Narrating the execution of the criminal, and mentioning some
papers which he had prepared, the writer says: "We will not tire the
reader's patience with transcribing these prayers, in which we can see
nothing more than commonplace phrases and unmeaning _Guthryisms_." What
{621} is the meaning of this last word, and to whom does it refer?

S. S. S.

[James Guthrie was chaplain of Newgate in 1731; and the phrase
_Guthryisms_, we conjecture, agrees