these world-renowned Stories to the Parents and Children of Merrie England." He also completed an edition of Stow's 'Survey of London' and various other works, among these two volumes of 'Choice Notes from Notes and Queries: History and Folk-lore,' 1858 and 1859, long since out of print. Thoms also published three notelets on Shakespeare, articles from Notes and Queries, and a book on 'The Longevity of Man, its Facts and its Fictions.' In my much-valued copy the author has written, "With the writer's best regards."His friend F. Norgate. The publisher of this was his friend and an old contributor, Mr. F. Norgate.
A genuine centenarian Mrs. Coxeter.In Notes and Queries, February 20th, 1875, appeared, as I have already mentioned (p. 7), a note by my father on 'A Centenarian' known to him, Mrs. Coxeter, of Newbury, born at Witney February 1st, 1775, who had just celebrated her hundredth birthday. Her death is recorded in 'N. & Q.' of December 2nd in the following year, and Mr. Thoms acknowledges the claim to be "well authenticated." The two friends would now and then have some fun over this, when Mr. Thoms would put on his inimitable smile and say, "Ah! Mr. Francis, your friend must have been born in a Witney blanket."
Thoms's letter to Prof. Owen on 'Exceptional Longevity.'Mr. Thoms in a letter addressed to Prof. Owen, entitled 'Exceptional Longevity,' published in 1879, tells the origin of his investigations. For the first twelve months after he had started Notes and Queries he used to insert, without the slightest doubt as to their accuracy, all the various cases of exceptional longevity which were sent to him. Mr. Dilke would good-naturedly quiz him on his fondness "for the big-gooseberry style of communications," so that when Sir George Cornewall Lewis sent to him a paper on 'Centenarians ' (3 S. i. 281) his mind was prepared to go into the question.Dilke and Thoms "book stalling." Mr. Thoms was a great rambler among the London bookstalls, and in this "bookstalling " he and Mr. Dilke were friendly rivals. Mr. Dilke on one occasion wrote to him: "Chancery Lane is my own manor, regularly haunted every Friday, and it is not to be endured that a mere poacher shall shake my own property in my own face." The letter is signed "Yours as you behave yourself."
Mr. Thoms in his 'Gossip of an Old Book-worm,' which appeared in The Nineteenth Century in 1881, gives some interesting particulars as to his search for pamphlets and books among the bookstalls, when he would often meet Lord Macaulay on the same errand.
Thoms loves books but can "handle the gloves."Mr. Thoms tells us that he had a love for books from his earliest Thoms loves years, the taste for them being encouraged by his father, who was a books, but can diligent reader of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, his library containing a complete set of each. Being very short-sighted, he was not able to join in sports like other boys. "There was only one