142 Additional Remarks on ill?

them among our Saxon anceftors ; but he was confident that they were in ufe on ordinary occafions before the middle of the twelfth century, from his having difcovered on a mantle-tree in the parlour of the rectory- houfe of Helmdon in Northamptonfhire, the year - 1 133 manifeftly carved. This being repeatedly averred by fo emi- nent a profeiTor on his own view, and he having prefented to the Royal Society, by way of illuftration, what he called an accurate drawing of the chimney taken by his own direction, it cannot be matter of furprife that a profeffor of a foreign univerfity mould have readily acceded to it, nor that other men of learning mould have implicitly adopted it. And as in the two editions of Chambers' s Dictionary, and in the Cyclopaedia Britannica, there is not any demur to the evidence produced, it may have been generally con- fidered as authentic and decifive. There have been, however, a few perfons to whom the notion has appeared queftionable ; and the firft and principal obje&or, as it is believed, was Dr. Ward, who laboured to Ihew, that the figure fuppofed by Dr.Wallis to be I was really 2, which would occafion an alteration to 1333. And fince I expreiTed my doubts upon thefe two readings in my letter to Mr. Gough, he has tranfmitted to me fome detached pages of Bibliotheca Literaria, N X. in which pe- riodical paper there is addreffed to the editor by an anonymous cor- refpondent the underwritten paragraph, p. 35. " The Colchefter infcription, as you print, {lands thus 1090; famfied with a vengeance, for I have feen it, and it was originally thus 1890; i.e. 1490; fome fantaftical knave, perhaps as late as the era of quakers, has diminimed the 8 of his lower parts, and left it thus p , for it plainly appears to any difcerning eye that the firft o of the pretended 1 090 is but half as big as the other. Being fure in the Colchefter infcription, I mall venture a fling at the chimney (at Helmdon), which though I never faw, I have vehemently fuf- 6 . peeked