The above conjecture was made long ago by Bentley in his edition of Paradise Lost, and in confirmation of it he adduced from the second book of that poem, “nigh-founder'd on he fares," v. 940. But a passage in Milton's Comus, v. 483, seems to prove that no alteration is necessary :— “Either some one, like us, night-founder'd here, Or else some neighbour woodman," &c. which passage Johnson cites in his Dictionary as affording an example of night-foundered in the sense of "lost or distressed in the night." The same reviewer, in an article on Cary's Lives of English Poets, Gent. Mag. for October last, p. 350, remarks, "Mr. Cary has praised Miss Jane Warton's Verses to her father's memory, printed at the end of the volume, with an ode on the same subject by Joseph War. ton; but we cannot understand the commencing lines "Accept, O sacred shade, this artless verse, "To tear, disdaining, from his decent hearse ex Bond Street-a house long since pulled See Wooll's Memoirs of J. Warton, in turning him out of Wright's house p. 169. Yours, &c. ALEX. DYCE. WRIGHT, DEBrett, and STOCKDALE, THE POLITICAL PUBLISHERS. THE following anecdotes, written by the late Mr. Upcott, will be interesting as fragments of literary history. The paper is in his own handwriting, and originally was a list made when a boy of the books which he read while an apprentice in Wright's shop, extending from March 1, 1797, to August 1799. The volumes amount to sixtyfour of various sizes, and of all kinds, history, travels, poetry, and romance, such as his master's shop might afford. Of this locality he has appended, at a recent period, the following gossiping memoranda : "This trifling List of my boyish reading was written during my apprenticeship with John Wright the political publisher, 169, Piccadilly, facing Old after Mr. Gifford had struck him a violent blow on the forehead with his own club-stick. Here, too, I saw W. Seward, Dr. John Moore, father of General Moore, Arthur Murphy, George Rose, William Coombe (Dr. Syntax), Abbé Delille, who usually called with Mr. Canning, Mallet du Pau, the French political writer, Mons. Lally Tollendal, Archdeacon Coxe, Mons. Calonne, and the most considerable of the French emigrants; Lord Nelson, Lord St. Vincent, Gen. Moore, Earl Spencer, Duke of Roxburghe, the distinguished book collector, Earl Moira, Joseph Ritson, George Chalmers, T. J. Mathias, Dr. Charles Burney, Dr. Parr, Bishop Porteus, Bishop Watson, Mrs. Montagu, and a variety of literary ladies. WILLIAM UPCOTT. "Islington, January, 1845." * Mr. Frere (as well as the writer) is deceased in the present year.Edit. UPTON CHURCH, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. THIS structure is particularly interesting, at once from its antiquity and its present deserted state. In consequence, ostensibly, of the increased population of the road-side town of Slough, which is situated in the parish of Upton, a new church was erected in the year 1839 upon a fresh site, when the ancient church was dismantled, and it now remains in a condition approximating to ruin, except that the walls and roofs are still in a substantial state. Whether the further increase of the town of Slough, which is constantly proceeding, may not eventually lead to its restoration and repair, is a question which must be left to the course of events to determine. We know that Upton church has many old friends, who would rejoice in its renovation; and to the new residents in the eastern part of Slough and Upton Park (a group of very handsome villas in the immediate vicinity) it would be particularly convenient. It may surprise some that in the present churchextension days the old church should have been deserted; and others, that such a scarecrow as the new church of Slough could have been erected; but the hope may still be entertained that the old church of Upton, though somewhat weather-worn with the storms of centuries, may even yet survive that red-brick deformity. Not that the question of the inelegance of the new church need be mixed with that of the maintenance of the old, for we believe that Slough already requires two churches. Upton Church has been but little altered from its original Norman state, except by the insertion of windows. It consists of a nave without aisles, a flattopped tower, and a chancel. The tower, which stands between the nave and chancel, is not quite so wide as either of them; its interior width is 12 feet 5 inc. that of the chancel 15 feet 7 inc. and that of the nave 19 feet 9 inc. The total length of the church is about ninety feet, of which the length of the nave is 55 feet 6 inc. Except a low wooden screen yet in the chancel, but from which the carving has been torn off, and the font, bells, and pulpit, which have been removed to the new structure, the whole remaining furniture was sold by the parish for the paltry sum of ten pounds, whereas it certainly should have been preserved, for the more decent performance of the burial service, which still occasionally takes place within this time-hallowed fane. The walls, about three feet thick, and built throughout of flint and chalk, are still perfectly upright, although without bonding or other support except four slender buttresses at the sides and west angles of the chancel. The quoins and dressings are apparently of Caen stone, but not of "long and short work,” and some of the internal mouldings are of hard chalk. The nave and chancel roofs are now loftily pitched and of tiles; but, as there is no sign of the nave having originally had any other than a flat ceiling of wood, its roof was probably once lower, and of lead or shingle. Of the original windows not blocked up, four are in the chancel, four in the nave, and two in the lower part of the tower: those blocked up being, one in the east gable of the chancel, and a circular one, or "bull's-eye," in the west gable of the nave. But the windows which no doubt formerly existed at the east and west ends of this church have been replaced by windows of the fifteenth century, and of which period there are also four in the nave. The original windows, and especially the bull's-eye, have, interiorly, wide splays, but plain, except those in the chancel, all of which have moulded edges, and one a zigzagged soffit. Their glazing is of small lozengy panes set into, and almost flush with, the outer face of the walls. The windows of the upper stages of the tower, although squareheaded, are also probably of Norman date. But this it is difficult to ascertain, because, internally, the towerfloors have been removed, and, externally, these windows are mostly enveloped with ivy, growing from a trunk nearly three feet thick, at the northeastern angle of the nave. From this ivy we may be allowed perhaps to conjecture that Upton church tower was the "ivy-mantled tower" of Gray's "Elegy in a country churchyard;" situated, as it is, within a poet's ramble either from Eton college, where he was at school, or from his occasional residence with his mother and aunt at Stoke-Pogeis, and which latter circumstance is the only one warranting the supposition that Stoke churchyard is the scene of this elegy. But Stoke church, we beg to say, is a spired church, and (as its last worthy vicar proved to us by the churchwardens' account book) the yew-trees there had been but very recently planted when the elegy was written. Whereas at Upton, not only have we a very re markable ivied tower; but also the shade of a widely-spreading ancient yew, and "rugged elms:" not to mention that the curfew bell of Windsor Castle, yet regularly tolled, would be much more audible at Upton than at Stoke. The three Doorways of Upton church have all Norman portions. That for the priest on the south side of the tower, and which measures 6 ft. 2 inc. by 2 ft. 2 inc. although it has had its external heading altered into Tudor form, still retains its original moulded inner head and its oaken door, as shown in our plate. The doorways of the nave are 3 ft. 5 inc. in width, and are situated directly opposite each other in its north and south walls, and nearly equidistant from its east and west ends. The southern doorway is concealed by a modern brick porch; but the northern one, now internally blocked up, is adorned with the columns and zigzag mouldings of the middle of the twelfth century, and, as well as the priest's doorway, still retains a contemporary oaken door and its hinges, as shown in the wood-cut at the head of this article. From the external plainness of this church, its interior would not be thought likely to afford so good an example of ecclesiastical architecture as its Chancel, especially, does; and we shall therefore describe this portion somewhat in detail. Its ceiling consists of two groined quadripartite vaults, transversely divided by a plain broad flat rib springing from a columnar pier half-engaged in the north and south walls. These columns have thrice-cleft capitals, and the intervals between each cleft are studded with the pearl ornament. The capitals are flanked by corbels of the same size and fashion as the capitals themselves, from which corbels, and similar, though smaller, corbels in the four corners of the chancel, spring the diagonal ribs of the vault these ribs consisting of a bold torus applied to a flat rib of the same breadth as the transverse rib first mentioned. At 5 ft. 6 inc. from the floor, along the northern, eastern, and southern walls-but not passing over the piers-is a bold and broad chamfered fillet, bounding the sill of the windows and supporting the corner corbels before mentioned. The interior of the Tower has nothing remarkable that has not been already mentioned, except a small and very plain holy-water stoup in the south wall, and a similar plain aumbry, or credence recess, in the north pilaster of the chancel arch. We may however here remark that in the upper part of the west wall of the tower is a window, now closed, precisely like those in the other walls which open to the air; and as this window, if unclosed, would open under the roof of the nave, we therefore infer, as before conjectured, that originally the nave had a flatter roof than the present one. The Nave, now that the font has been taken to the new church, contains nothing of Norman times except the windows and doorways already noticed. But at its east end, which is 3 feet thick, and is in fact the west wall of the tower, are three arches of some interest. The central one is quite plain, if not rude, and semicircularly headed, 12 ft. high, by 4 ft. 3 inc. in width; and has ever been, no doubt, a way between the nave and tower. The arch on the north flank is pointed, and has been long filled up. It is 12 feet high and 6 wide. But this seems rather to have been a hagioscope, or aperture by which persons in the nave might see through the tower into the chancel, than a way or passage-its sill being 4 feet from the ground. It is also remarkable, and perhaps unique, on account of its mouldingswhich are in the style of the 13th century-being made of wood. These mouldings are alternately dog-tooth mouldings and small tori-all springing from clustered columns, with bell-bases and capitals, adorned with upright-flat and knobbed foliage, painted red, while the columns are embellished with spiral red stripes and dots. An arch, also now filled up, on the south flank of the central archway, is more lofty, and of later date perhaps than that last described. Its mouldings are of chalk, and simple, but deeply undercut, and, having its sill almost as low as the ground, it once probably served as a passage into the tower, as well as for seeing the high altar in the chancel. There is another pointed arch in the south wall, close to the east end of the nave, of nearly similar character to that just described, except that its sill is 4 feet from the ground; and from this circumstance we are inclined to think that this arch was the heading of an altar-place or small chantry. We have yet to mention that the arch, or recess as it now is, which contains the interesting wooden mouldings before noticed, has behind some compa ratively modern plaster, and inscribed on a more ancient plastering, the Creed, in characters painted apparently soon after the Reformation, but now, in great measure, hidden by a Bulstrode monument, erected in the time of Charles the First. It may here be noticed that, in various parts of the church, relics of ancient paintings and inscriptions have been discovered beneath the whitewash. The only intelligible fragment, however, is a representation on the north wall, near the east end of the nave, of an angel carrying to heaven the human soul, in the form of a naked kneeling figure, and a scroll beneath inscribed (the initial letter in red)— (D'ne . . . . . tuas adīplebo.) Several of the sepulchral memorials are left, both in the nave and chancel. Under the tower (as seen in our Plate) is the gravestone of the illustrious astronomer Sir William Herschel, thus inscribed : H. S. E. GULIELMUS HERSCHEL, Eq. Guelp. natus die 15 Nov. 1738, obiit 25 Aug. 1822. A marble tablet on the north wall near the grave has this inscription :* H. S. E. GULIELMUS HERSCHEL, Eques Guelphicus, nam, ut læviora sileantur inventa, novis artis adjumentis innixus et remotiora penetrans et explorans spatia radios solis analysi prismaticâ nebularum et phantasmatum morte suis et bonis omnibus deflendâ die xxv. Augusti, A. S. MDCCCXXII. suæ vero lxxxiv. * Having in our possession a copy of the Epitaph in the Church at Newbury, |