Note 312 — ANNALS OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY. (continued 5)

There is scarcely an imaginable subject in law, theology, or history, on which something may not be found in this vast collection. The something may often be meagre and superficial, but it is still oftener curious, and even in the former case it may be useful as pointing to sources of further information. In days of Ritual controversy, one party or another may be glad to know that in 1725, George Henry Goetz, D.D., wrote on the interesting question whether a clergyman might do duty in his dressing-gown,—Num Verbi ministro toga cubicularia (Schlaffpeltze) induto officio sacro defungi liceat? Those who know what curses were invoked of old upon the heads of stealers of books, may be interested in hearing what one Pipping had to say on the subject in 1721, in his Diss. de Imprecationibus libris ascriptis; while the title of Sam. Schelging's discourse in 1729, De Apparitionibus mortuorum vivis ex pacto factis, will have attraction for not a few. Sometimes the dryest subjects were lightened up at the close with ponderous jokes, or unexpected turns were given to the matter in hand; e.g. those worthy Germans who had gone to sleep at Jena, in 1660, during the reading of a dissertation De Jure et Potestate Parlamenti Britannici, by one J. A. Gerhard, (who must have taken unusual interest in the history of the English Rebellion,) were wakened up at the end by the discussion of the following novel questions in law:—'Casus ex jure privato.

'I. Titius ducit uxorem Caiam. Caia, elapso uno vel altero anno, transmutatur in virum. Q. an Caia hæc, soluto per hanc metamorphosin matrimonio, possit repetere dotem? Dist.

'II. Sempronia, defuncto marito Mævio, nubit Titio. Mævius divinâ potentiâ in vitam resuscitatur mortalem. Q. an Mævius hic, secundum vivus, uxorem Semproniam et bona sua repetere possit? Aff.'

It was usual for the friends of the candidate who defended the thesis of the Dissertation (generally written for him by the Præses) to attach some complimentary letters or verses. In the case of those published at Upsal, the zeal of the encomiasts frequently breaks out into wild compositions in Hebrew, Greek, French, German and English, affording in the latter instance (and it may be in others) very curious specimens of the language. A laborious trifler, named P. Wettersten, compliments a friend, who had read at Upsal, in 1742, a dissertation by Prof. Peter Ekerman on the antiquities of a small town called Norkoping, with a kind of acrostic in twenty-five lines on the verse, 'Nunc erit et seclis Norcopia clara futuris,' which, starting from the centre of the page, may be read upwards, downwards, and in every form of mazy irregularity; every way, in short, except the right.