(Vol. iv., p. 367.)
Your correspondent J. M. G., whose letter is inserted in your 106th
Number, labours under various mistakes relating to this small volume.
The first edition was not printed in 1684, but more than sixty years
earlier. Moreover, that edition, or at least what the Rev. C. H.
Craufurd appended to his Sermons in 1840 as a reprint, is not a genuine
or faithful republication of the original work. I have for several years
possessed a copy of _the third impression_, Printed at "London, by _Iohn
Hauiland_, for _Hanna Barres_, 1625;" and of this third impression a
_fac-simile_ reprint has passed through the press of Messrs. Blackwood
in Edinburgh, which new edition corresponds _literatim et verbatim_
(line for line and page for page) with the earliest impression known to
exist, which differs materially in several passages from the reprint
published by Mr. Craufurd. This new edition is accompanied by a long
preface or dissertation containing many particulars relating to the
authoress and her relatives, and to a number of ladies of high station
and polished education, who during the period intervening between the
Reformation in England and the Revolution in 1688, distinguished
themselves by publishing works characterized by exalted piety and
refined taste. With regard to Mrs. Joceline, no printed work appears to
have preserved correct information. Genealogists seem to have conspired
to change her Christian name from Elizabeth to Mary or Jane. The husband
is supposed to have sprung from an old Cambridgeshire family, the
Joscelyns of Hogington, now called Oakington, the name of a parish
adjoining to Cottenham. The writer of the preface seems rather disposed
to trace his parentage to John Joscelyn (Archbishop Parker's chaplain),
who, according to Strype, was _an Essex man_.
But I have probably exceeded the bounds allotted to an answer to a
Query.