The great queen, moody, despairing, dying, wrapt in profoundest thought, with eyes fixed upon the ground or already gazing into infinity was besought by the counsellors around her to name the man to whom she chose that the crown should devolve.

"Not to a Rough," said Elizabeth, sententiously and grimly.

These particulars are apparently given on the authority of the Italian Secretary, Scaramelli, whose language is quoted in a foot-note, and who says that the word Rough "in lingua inglese significa persona bassa e vile.”

Charles Dickens said, "I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of ruffian into rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this paper." (The Ruffian, by the Uncommercial Traveler, All the Year Round.) "Lately popular" does not mean popular for two hundred and eighty years past. A word that has escaped the notice of the Glossarists cannot have been in use early in the seventeenth century. That it should have been used in its modern sense by Queen Elizabeth, passes all bounds of belief. With all her faults she did not make silly unmeaning remarks; and it would have been extremely silly in her to say she did not wish a low ruffian to succeed her on the throne. If she uttered a word having the same sound, it might possibly have been ruff. The "ruff," though worn by men of the upper class, was in Queen Elizabeth's time an especially female article of dress, and the queen might have said, "I will have no ruff to succeed me," just as now-a-days one might say, "I will have no petticoat. government." We want better authority than that of Scaramelli before we can believe that Elizabeth used either the word rough or ruff, when consulted as to her wishes respecting her

successor.

NOT AMERICANISMS.

In Bartlett's Dictionary the term "stocking-feet” is given as an Americanism. But the following quotation from Thackeray's Newcomes (vol. i. ch. viii.) shows that this is an error:—

"Binnie found the Colonel in his sitting-room arrayed in what are called in Scotland his stocking-feet."

Professor Tyndall, at the farewell banquet given in his honor by the citizens of New York, prior to his departure, in referring to his successful lecture-course in the United States, said he had had to quote his words-" what you Americans call a good time.""

But this expression is not an Americanism. It is used by Dean Swift in his letter to Stella, (Feb. 24, 1710-11); "I hope Mrs. Wells had a good time."

That not very elegant adjective bully, though found in Bartlett, and used by Washington Irving cannot be claimed as an Americanism. Friar Tuck sings, in Scott's Ivanhoe :—

"Come troll the brown bowl to me, bully boy,

Come troll the brown bowl to me."

But to go further back, we find it in the burden of an old three-part song, "We be three poor Mariners," in Ravenscroft's Deuteromelia, 1609:

"Shall we go dance the round, the round,

Shall we go dance the round;

And he that is a bully boy,

Come pledge me on the ground."

One of the words which the English used to class among Americanisms-ignorant that it was older and better English than their own usage-was Full, used as the name of the third of the seasons. The English, corrupted by the Johnsonese of the Hanoverian reigns, call it by the Latinism, Autumn. But the other term, in general use on this side of the Atlantic, is the word by which all the old writers of the language know it. "The hole yere," says scholarly Roger Ascham in his Torophilus, "is divided into iiii. partes, Spring tyme, Sommer, Faule of the leafe, & Winter, whereof the hole winter for the roughnesse of it, is cleane taken away from shoting: except it be one day amonges xx., or one yeare amonges xi."

This statement, by the way, that exceptionally mild winters were in the ratio of one to eleven, is worth noting with reference to the recent announcement of science that the spots on the sun have an eleven-year period of maximum frequency.

NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN THEM.

In the ordinary acceptation of the words, "No love was lost between the two," we are led to infer that the two were on very unfriendly terms, But in the ballad of The Babes in the Wood, as given in Percy's Reliques, occur the following lines, which convey the contrary idea:

No love between this two was lost,

Each was to other kind:

In love they lived, in love they died,
And left two babes behind.

THE FORLORN HOPE.

Military and civil writers of the present day seem quite ignorant of the true meaning of the words forlorn hope. The adjective has nothing to do with despair, nor the substantive with the "charmer which lingers still behind;" there was no such poetical depth in the words as originally used. Every corps marching in an enemy's country had a small body of men at the head (haupt or hope) of the advanced guard; and which was termed the forlorne hope (lorn being here but a termination similar to ward in forward,) while another small body at the head of the read-guard was called the rere-lorn hope. A reference to Johnson's Dictionary shows that civilians were misled as early as the time of Dryden by the mere sound of a technical military phrase; and, in process of time, even military men forgot the true meaning of the words. And thus we easily trace the foundation of an error to which we are indebted for Byron's beautiful line:

The full of hope, misnamed forlorn.

QUIZ.

This word, which is only in vulgar or colloquial use, and which some of the lexicographers have attemped to trace to learned roots, originated in a joke. Daly, the manager of a Dublin play-house, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours. In the course of that time the letters q u iz were chalked on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.

TENNYSON'S ENGLISH.

Probably no poet ever more thoroughly comprehended the value of words in metrical composition than Mr. Tennyson, but he has issued a new coinage which is not pure. Compound epithets are modelled after the Greek or revived from the uncritical Elizabethan era. Thus, where we should naturally say "The bee is cradled in the lily," Mr. Tennyson writes, "The bee is lily-cradled." When a man's nose is broken at the bridge or a lady's turns up at the tip, the one is said to be "a nose bridge-broken," and the other (with much gallantry) to be "tiptilted, like the petal of a flower."

The movement of the metre again is very peculiar. Discarding Milton's long and complex periods, Mr. Tennyson has restored blank verse to an apparently simple rhythm. But this simplicity is in fact the result of artifice, and, under every variety of movement, the ear detects the recurrence of a set type. One of the poet's favorite devices is to pause on a monosyllable at the beginning of a line, and this affect is repeated so often as to remind the reader of Euripides and his unhappy “oil flask" in The Frogs. Take the following instances:

And the strange sound of an adulterous race,

Against the iron grating of her cell

Beat.

A sound

As of a silver horn across the hills

Blown.

And then the music faded, and the Grail
Passed.

His eyes became so like her own they seemed
Hers.

"THAT MINE ADVERSARY HAD WRITTEN A BOOK."

This passage from Job xxxi. 35, is frequently misapplied, being interpreted as if it had reference to a book or writing as commonly understood. It means rather, according to Gesenius, a charge or accusation. Pierius makes it "libellum accusationis," and Grotius, "scriptam accusationem" Scott expresses this in his Commentary :—

"Job challenged his adversary, or accuser, to produce a libel or written indictment against him he was confident that it would prove no disgrace to him, but an honor; as every article would be disproved, and the reverse be manifested.".

Other commentators understand it as meaning a record of Job's life, or of his sufferings. Coverdale translates :—“ And let him that my contrary party sue me with a lybell." In the Genevan version it is, "Though mine adversarie should write a book against me." In the Bishop's Bible, 1595, "Though mine adversarie write a book against me." The meaning seems to have become obscured in our version by retaining the English book instead of the Latin libel, but omitting the words in italics, "against me."

ECCENTRIC ETYMOLOGIES.

To trace the changes of form and meaning which many of the words of our language have undergone is no easy task. There are words as current with us as with our forefathers, the significance of which, as we use them, is very different from that of their primitive use. And, in many instances, they have wandered, by courses more or less tortuous, so far from their original meaning as to make it almost impossible to follow the track of divergence. Hence, it is easy to understand why it has been said that the etymologist, to be successful, must have "an instinct like the special capabilities of the pointer." But there are derivations which are only revealed by accident, or. stumbled upon in unexpected ways, and which, in the regular