Minor Queries with Answers.

Goldsmith's "Haunch of Venison."—What is the name in this poem beginning with H, which Goldsmith makes to rhyme with "beef?" The metre requires it to be a monosyllable, but there is no name that I have ever heard of that would answer in this place. Is the H a mistake for K, which would give a well-known Irish name?

J. S. Warden.

[A variation in the Aldine edition gives the line—

"There's Coley and Williams, and Howard and Hiff."

Mr. Bolton Corney, in his unrivalled edition of Goldsmith's Poetical Works, 1846, has furnished the following note:—"Howard=H. Howard? author of The Choice Spirits Museum, 1765; Coley=Colman, says Horace Walpole; H—rth=Hogarth? a surgeon of Golden Square; Hiff=Paul Hiffernan, M.D., author of Dramatic Genius, &c." Mr. Peter Cunningham, in his forthcoming edition of Goldsmith, will probably tell us more.