Temple.
_"Thirty Days hath September," &c. (Antiquity of)._--Professor De
Morgan, in his useful List of Works on Arithmetic, published in 1847,
enters one, under the date 1596, with the following title: "_The Pathway
to Knowledge_, written in Dutch, and translated into English by W. P.,
4to." To this he notes:
"The translator gives the following verses, which are now well
known. I suspect he is the author of them, having never seen them
at an earlier date. Mr. Halliwell, who is more likely than myself
to have found them if they existed very early, names no version of
them earlier than 1635:--
"'Thirtie daies hath September, Aprill, June and November,
Febuarie eight and twentie alone, all the rest thirtie and one.'"
Now it seems to me noteworthy to be recorded in your pages, that these
lines, so familiar to us all from childhood, appear in a more complete
shape in Harrison's _Description of Britaine_ prefixed to the first
edition of Holinshed's _Chronicles of England, &c._, 1577, where at p.
119. the writer says:
"Agayne touching the number of dayes in every moneth:
"'_Junius, Aprilis, Septemq; Novemq; tricenos
Un[=u] plus reliqui, Februy tenet octo vicenos,
At si bissextus fuerit superadditur unus._'
"'Thirty dayes hath November,
Aprill, June and September,
Twentie and eyght hath February alone,
And all the rest thirty and one,
But in the leape you must adde one.'"