[Footnote 1: 3d ed. of Dawes's _Mis. Critic_, p. xviii, note x.]
_Daniel's Irish New Testament._--F.G.X. will be much obliged for
information on the following points:--
1. Which is the most correct edition, as to printing and orthography, of
Daniel's Irish New Testament?
2. Does the edition now on sale by the Bible Society bear the character
for incorrectness as to these points, which, judged by itself, it
appears to deserve, or is it really, though "bad, the best?"
3. F.G.X. is far advanced with an Irish Testament Concordance. Can any
one possessed of the requisite information give him hope of the
acceptableness of such a publication? He should expect it to be chiefly
useful to clerical Irish students in acquiring a knowledge of words and
construction; but the lists of Irish Bibles disposed of of late years
would lead to the supposition of its being desirable also as pointing
out the place of passages to the native reader.
4. Does the Cambridge University Library contain a copy of the first
edition of Daniel's translation?
_Ale Draper--Eugene Aram._--In Hargrove's well-known history of Eugene
Aram, the hero of Bulwer's still better known novel, one of the guilty
associates of the Knaresborough murderer is designated as an "Ale
Draper." As this epithet never presented itself in my reading, and as I
am not aware that _draper_ properly admits of any other definition than
that given by Johnson, "one who deals in cloth," may I ask whether the
word was ever in "good use" in the above sense?
My main purpose in writing, is to propound the foregoing Query; but
while I have the pen in hand permit me to ask,--
1. Whether it be possible to read the celebrated "defence," so called,
which was delivered by Aram on his trial at York, without concurring
with the jury in their verdict, and with the judge in his sentence? In
short, without a strong feeling that the prisoner would not have been
hanged, but for that over-ingenious, and obviously evasive, address, in
which the plain averment of "not guilty" does not occur.
2. Has not the literary character, especially the philological
attainments, of this noted malefactor been vastly over-rated? And
3. Ought not the "memoirs" of "this great man" by Mr. Scatcherd to be
ranked among the most remarkable attempts ever made, and surely made
"--in vain,
To wash the murderer from blood-guilty stain?"