STUDIES IN MONASTICISM.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE '13PICTAT013..1 SIR,—The Spectator reaches me late, and the letter of Mr. J. M. Ludlow, which appeared in the issue of May 30th with the above title, may have been corrected before you receive this. Surely his friends have been tricking Mr. Ludlow in making him believe (1) that the playa of Hroswitha are a clever literary forgery by M. Charles Magnin; (2) that the nunnery of Ganderaheim had never any existence.
(1) M. Charles Magnin was born in 1793, he died October 8th, 1862. Fabricius, in his " Bibliothma Latina Mediae et Infima3.2Etatis," published in 1754, gives an account of the nun Hroswitha, distinguishing her from her namesakes, and mentions two editions of her works,—one at Nuremberg, 1501; another, which he describes at length, at Wittemberg, 1707. The description begins, " Comcedite Sex, in mania- tionem Terentii at soluto sermone scriptaa," then follow the titles and subjects of each comedy. I find, too, in a cata- logue of H. Wetter, Paris, " Hroswitha Gandeshemensis.
• Comcedia VI., ed. J. Bendixen, in 16, Lubeck, 1882." I have also before me "Po6sies Latines de Roavith, avec nue traduc- tion libre en vers Francais, par Vignon R6tif de In Bretonne, Paris, 1854." The author mentions being in correspondence with M. Magnin about a verse translation of the comedies as well as of the poems; he prints the Latin text which faces the translation apparently from the edition of 1707, which he mentions as well as that of 1501. How then could M. Charles Magnin forge comedies which existed in print (not to mention MS.) nearly three centuries before he was born P
(2) M. Vignon Ralf de In Bretonne describes the abbey and town of Gaadersheim exactly where I find it in Wiltsch's "Atlas Sacer sive Ecclesiasticus Gotba3, 1843," and in Stieler's Hand-Atlas, agreeing with all other descriptions of it that I have seen. How " had it never any existence but in M. Charles Magnin's volume " ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
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