22 AUGUST 1885, Page 26

Depositio Cornuti Typographici. Edited by William Blades. (Trfibner and Co.)—Mr.

Blades makes here a curious and valuable addition to the literature of printing. The -" Depositio " was a sort of matrieulation.of prhitess. A yaw man wag apprentioed for fear.or five years ; these ended,'hedid-nOtst once take phis se a workman, but was called " Cornutta," i.e., a horned beast, supposed to be in a condition of wickedness from which he could be delivered only by the process of " depoaitio." This process was done by the representation of what Mr. Blades calls a "miracle play," which seems to have been a sufficiently coarse piece of humour. Mr. Blades speaks of other analogous ceremonies, such as that called by the same name that was practised at the Universities. We may add, perhaps, that which Antony Wood so graphically describes as the conversion of a fresh- man into a senior as practised in the hall of his College, Merton. The ceremony, at least in its integrity, seems to have been extinct for more than a century.