The Camden Society, of which the fourteenth Annual Meeting on Monday
last passed off most successfully, has just issued to its Members _The
Chronicle of The Grey Friars of London_, edited from a MS. in the
Cottonian Library in the British Museum. This very interesting document,
which altogether escaped the research of the industrious and voluminous
Strype, though it had passed through the hands of Stowe, who had either
the possession or the loan of the original MS., was written by one of
the Grey Friars, who appears to have watched narrowly, and recorded
carefully, the religious changes of the times, more particularly, those
which occurred within the sphere of his personal observation in the city
of London, and the metropolitan church of St. Paul. As he retained
possession of his register, and continued his labours after the
dissolution of his house, and the dismissal of the rest of his
fraternity, he has preserved to us many particulars of great historical
value; and his work has this additional claim to attention, that,
whereas the majority of the existing documents are records of the
Reforming party, this comes from one of the Reformed, and presents us
accordingly with the other side of the case. The work is edited by Mr.
J. G. Nichols, whose name is a sufficient guarantee for the fidelity
with which the document is printed, and the learning and care bestowed
upon its illustration.
_The Publications of the Antiquarian Etching Club._--Part III., 1851,
presents us with no less than thirty-three etchings by Members of the
Club (of course of various degrees of merit), of objects of antiquarian
interest, comprising Ecclesiastical, Military, and Domestic Edifices,
Fonts, Sepulchral Monuments, Portraits, Fac-similes, copies of rare
prints, and numerous other vestiges of antiquity calculated at once to
instruct the archæologist, and preserve in a pictorial form a record of
much which, but for the _burins_ of the members of this useful little
Society, might have been lost for ever.
It is but a few weeks since we noticed the admirable second volume of
the _Catalogue of the London Library_, by Mr. J. G. Cochrane. We have
now to record the death of that gentleman on Tuesday last. He was a most
worthy man, and a good scholar; and possessed a vast fund of
bibliographical knowledge. His death therefore will be felt, not only by
his own immediate friends, but also by the institution which he had
served so ably and so zealously ever since its formation.
It would be treason to the Brothers Grimm, and to our own love of the
literature of the people, if we did not notice and (as it deserves it)
say a good word of a new and complete translation of the world-renowned
_Kinder und Haus Mährchen_, which Messrs. Addey have commenced
publishing under the title of Grimm's _Household Stories_. They are very
faithfully translated from the last edition; and we specify this because
the little _Almaine 4to._ first edition of 1819 has long been one of our
household books, and finding that the translation did not agree with the
versions there given, we have compared it with the edition of 1843, and
so discovered, first, that the translator has used the later edition;
and secondly, what we were not till now aware of, namely, that these
great scholars, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, amid their more learned
labours, have not disdained to revise and enlarge their collection of
nursery stories, which have been the delight of the children of all
Europe. What a justification is this for the attention which is bestowed
in "N. & Q." on our own English Folk Lore!