When I was hunting up the antiquities of the Cambridge comitia, and especially particulars relating to the B.A. disputant ‘Mr Tripos’ and the M.A. Praevaricator or Varier, which are printed in my University Life, pp. 207—307, I mentioned, on dean Peacock's authority, what he called ‘a beautiful specimen’ of a praevaricator's speech by Dr James Duport.

I felt no doubt that it was a well-known MS., but to my surprise on enquiry no tidings of its habitat could 1 find, until after a lapse of two years my eye was attracted by a record of it in the Donation-book in the library of Gonville and Caius. Through the kindness of the past and the present librarians, E. J. Gross, Esq. and the Rev. H. B. Swete, I am able to print the production; but in what sense the former dean of Ely called it a beautiful specimen the reader (if there be one sufficiently gentle and patient) will judge.

It is certainly curious as the somewhat juvenile production (as M.A. of the first year) of one who was, as I have elsewhere described him, ‘Greek professor (1639—54), vice-master of Trinity (1655), prebendary of Langford Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral, archdeacon of Stow and dean of Peterborough.