In pious sympathy with this wish, I more than thirty years since wrote a letter, addressed to "---- Bever, Esq., Mortimer, near Reading, Berks," offering to give up the volume to any one entitled to it under the above description; but my letter was returned from the post office with the announcement "Not found" upon it. I make this other attempt, if you are pleased to admit it, through you; and immediate attention will be paid to any claim which may appear in your pages.
Can any of your readers inform me who was the author of _The Valley of Vision_, published in 1651 as the work of Dr. Richard Holsworth, the Master of Emmanuel College, and Dean of Worcester. In a preface to the reader, Fuller laments "that so worthy a man should dye issulesse without leaving any books behind him for the benefit of learning and religion." He adds that the private notes which he had left behind him were dark and obscure; his hand being legible only to himself, and almost useless for any other. The sermon published as _The Valley of Vision_ appears to have been prepared for publication from the notes of a short-hand writer. When Fuller published, about eleven years afterwards, his _Worthies of England_, he wrote thus:--
"Pity it is so learned a person left no monuments (save a sermon) to posterity; for _I behold that posthume work as none of his, named by the transcriber The Valley of Vision_, a Scripture expression, but here misplaced.... This I conceived myself in credit and conscience concerned to observe, because I was surprised at the _preface_ to the book, and will take the blame rather than clear myself, when my innocency is complicated with the accusing of others."
If, as is probable, Dr. Holsworth, in this instance, preached other men's sermons, which the short-hand writer afterwards gave to the world as his, it is a singular fact, that in the preface of this supposititious volume, Fuller speaks of the abuse of printed sermons by some--
"Who lazily imp their wings with other men's plumes, wherewith they soar high in common esteeme, yet have not the ingenuity with that son of the Prophet to confesse, Alasse! it was borrowed."
QUERIES UPON CUNNINGHAM'S HANDBOOK OF LONDON.
We promised to make a few QUERIES on this amusing volume, and thus redeem our promise.