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skittles. Scroll is also of the same family, exactly answering to Latin volumen. Compare troll, stroll, &c.

DEARTH.-Tooke, in his antipathy to abstracts, explains dearth into dereth, Anglo-Saxon derian, nocere. This we hold to be just as felicitous as the Bishop of Winchester's guess that a lugg meant a cathedral.* It is a noun formed from the adjective dear, like caritas from carus, and, etymologically speaking, neither denotes suffering nor scarcity, but simply costliness, high price-Old German, tiur, precious, tiuran, to hold dear, glorify. The German equivalent for derian is derjan or daron, lædere-as distinct from tiur and dear as light is from darkness.

EXCEPT.-It has been the fashion since the appearance of the Diversions of Purley to call except, save, and similar expressions, verbs in the imperative mood. Dr. Webster, though he professes o have made no use of Tooke's writings, frequently advances the same doctrines in nearly the same words, and is very severe on grammarians who regard such words as conjunctions. In the examples, ‘Israel burned none of them save Hazor only '—' I would that all were as I am, except these bonds'-he considers it as certain that save and except are transitive verbs with an object following them. We hesitate not to say that they cannot be verbs, imperative or indicative, because they have no subject, and that a verb could not be employed in any language that distinguishes the different persons without a gross violation of idiom. This will clearly appear if, in the vulgar Latin version of the latter sentence, Opto omnes fieri tales, qualis et ego sum, exceptis vinculis his,' we substitute excipe vincula hæc,' or any other person of excipio. The fact is, that in the above instances save is an adjective with the force of a participle (Latin, salvus), and except an abbreviated participle; in short, these and many similar forms were originally ablatives absolute, a construction as familiar in Anglo-Saxon, Old German, and Icelandic, as in Latin, but necessarily less apparent in modern languages, in which the distinctions of case are obliterated. The following examples, all taken from existing versions of the New Testament, show the progress of the ablative participle to an indeclinable word. Icelandic undanteknum thessum böndum,' exactly equivalent to exceptis vinculis his—Italian, eccettuate queste catene, preserving the number and gender, but losing the case; Spanish, salvo estas prisiones; Portuguese, excepto estas prizoens; German, ausgenommen diese bände, where all distinction of number, case, and gender is lost. Such phrases as demus ita esse, French supposons qu'il vienne, sometimes rendered in English by verbs and sometimes by conjunctions, are different constructions, totally unconnected with the point in debate.

* Vide Fortunes of Nigel, vol. iii. c. 9, p. 250.

HAGGLE.

HAGGLE. Mr. Todd refers this word to the French harceler; and Dr. Webster tries to connect it through the medium of higgle with the Danish hykle, to play the hypocrite. Hykle is borrowed from the German heucheln, and neither agrees with our English word in form nor meaning. A derivation furnished by Schmeller is somewhat curious. Häkeln, literally to hook, also applied to a sort of boys'-play, in which each inserts his hooked forefinger into that of his opponent, and tries to drag him from his standingwhence metaphorically to strive, wrangle. According to this etymon, haggling is playing at finger-hookey.'

LOUD.-Mr. Tooke confidently refers this word to the AngloSaxon hlowan, to low, and exults greatly at the discovery that some of our old writers, wrote it lowd. They who are acquainted with the capricious orthography of the middle ages will be able to appreciate this sort of evidence at its real worth. Until it is shown by what process hlud can be extracted from hlowan, which we do not think a very easy task, we shall prefer believing that loud does not mean what is lowed or bellowed, but what is heard. We do not, indeed, find any simple verb, hluan, or hluen, to hear; but there are the following traces of one- -Gothic hliuma, the ear, evidently a verbal noun-Old German, hliumunt, hearsay, report; hlosen, to listen;-and many others. On this supposition, the Anglo-Saxon hlud, Old German, hlut, Modern German laut, loud, also, sound, will denote quod aure percipitur. It is, at least, certain that a similar verb has nearly gone the round of the European languages :-Greek xλów, Latin cluo, clueo, inclytus, Lithuanian klausyti, Irish cluinim, Welsh clywed, besides several Sclavonic words. The root of all is to be found in the Sanscrit sru, to hear, in which the s is palatal, consequently organically allied to the initial consonant of xλów and its fellows.

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MUCH, MORE.—According to Tooke, more, most, are from the Anglo-Saxon mowe, a mow, or heap, q. d. mower, mowest. Much is abbreviated from mokel, mykel, mochel, muchel, a diminutive of mo.'

More strange, we fear, than true! We know the Greeks had their Soukórepos, and similar words, but nobis non licet esse tam disertis. We affirm, without fear of contradiction, that there is not an instance of a substantive in the comparative or superlative degree, in a single Germanic dialect of which we have any knowledge. The remainder of the statement is equally incredible. It would be difficult to show how the Gothic mikils, a word known to be more than fourteen hundred years old, was manufactured from either mo or mow; and such phrases as se mycel Atlas, that is, according to our oracle, Atlas the little mow, sound as odd to us, as meritorious, respectable, worthy of the gallows, did to Golownin's Japanese

VOL. LIV. NO. CVIII.

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Japanese pupils. The real positive of more must be sought in a very different quarter. Sanscrit, maha, great, a present participle of mah, to grow, increase; Persian mih; Greek μéyas, péyahos; Gothic, mikils; Old German, mihhil; Icelandic, mikill; AngloSaxon, micel; Latin, magnus. For the comparative, we have Greek, wv; Gothic, maiza; Latin, major; Icelandic, meiri; Old German, mero; Anglo-Saxon, mara-cum multis aliis. If these comparatives are not from a more simple and primitive form than the positives now extant, the medial consonant may be dropped euphonice gratiâ. It re-appears in μévotos, and maximus, i. e., mag-simus, but not in Gothic, maists, nor any of its Germanic brethren. This example may direct us where to look for the verbal roots of many of our simple adjectives.

ODD. Owed, wanted to make up another pair.' 'ORT, ORTS, from Anglo-Saxon, orettan, deturpare, i. e., made vile or worthless.'-Tooke.

Just as much as Cinderella's cock-tailed mice were identical with the coctiles muri of Semiramis. Odd does not signify deficiency but surplus; ort has not the least connexion with orettan; and both are, in fact, different forms of the same word. In Icelandic, oddr, is a point, cuspis; Danish, odd, the same; Swedish, udd, a point, also add in the English sense. In German, the primary meaning of ort is also point. To establish a connexion between the two, we must have recourse to the Bavarian dialect. In this, ort not only denotes point, but also beginning, the end of a thread or skein—and what is most to our purpose, ort oder eben, is exactly our odd or even. In odd, the idea is that of unity, a single point, hence one over; orts are waste or superfluous ends, leavings. The latter is the German form, the former the Scandinavian, in which the r is assimilated to the following consonant, by a very common process in Icelandic-e. gr., broddr, a sting, AngloSaxon, brord; rödd, voice, Anglo-Saxon, reord.

SPICK and SPAN.-These words have been sadly tortured by our etymologists-we shall, therefore, do our best to deliver them from further persecution. Tooke is here more than usually abusive of his predecessors; however, Nemesis, always on the watch, has permitted him to give a lumbering, half Dutch, half German, etymology, of shining new from the warehouse'-as if such simple colloquial terms were formed in this clumsy round-about way. Spick-new is simply nail-new, and span-new, chip-new. Many similar expressions are current in the north of Europe; fire-new, spark-new, splinter-new, also used in Cumberland; High German, nagelneu, equivalent to the Lower Saxon spiker-neu, and various others. The leading idea is that of something quickly produced or used only once. The Icelandic spann signifies not only chip, but

spoon,

spoon, whence we may infer, that as the Latin cochlear denotes the employment of a shell to convey pottage to the mouth, our unsophisticated ancestors once used a chip for the same important purpose. We hope none of our exclusives' will quarrel with the word or the thing on this account; for our part, we think that those little disclosures of ancient manners are not the least interesting part of etymology.

STEP-FATHER.-Tooke refers this with great confidence to the Danish stedfader, q. d., pater vicarius; proving that he knew little either of the history or analogy of language. Stedfader is a corrupt word of yesterday: the genuine term stivfader is legitimately connected with all the older dialects; and we would sooner believe, on the authority of Mascarille, that the Armenians change nis into rin, than that our ancestors ever converted sted into step. We have no doubt that Junius is right in referring the word to steop, orphanus. The simplest, and consequently the original forms, Icelandic, stiupr, Old German, stiuf, do not denote step-father or mother, but step-child, orphan; and all doubt respecting the parent-verb is removed by the Carlsruhe glossary of the eighth century, in Graff's Dintiska, which gives us pim arstiuphit suniu ultra urbabor (orbabor) filio.-We take this opportunity of observing, that those who wish to investigate the original forms and significations of the Teutonic tongues, must seek them in the vocabularies of the eighth and ninth centuries, where they are sometimes more plainly developed than in the Gothic of Ulphilas. The mere English or Latin scholar, however, had better let them alone, as it requires considerable knowledge of languages, and a certain skill in conjectural criticism, to use them to any good purpose. For example, potho, apostolus, conveys no idea to those who do not know that bothe, in modern German, is a messenger; and lancnasech, aquilus,* has by some been interpreted eagle, and by others, dark-coloured, dusky; whereas, it means neither, but having a long (aquiline) nose. a very ancient glossary preserved at St. Gall, we find, singularis, epur-to understand which, we must remember the German eber, a boar, and the Italian cinghiale, or French sanglier, wild boar. This, which was written in the seventh century, illustrates the early formation of the rustic Roman; and the following specimens equally show the antiquity of some familiar terms in our own language:-Clausura; piunte (pound); scopa; pesamo (besom); pala; scufla (shovel); sublimitare; drisgusli (threshold) :—stool, thronus, seems to have lost a little of its pristine dignity.

In

Farmatia (pharmacia), poisun, seems to show that the compiler of this glossary was not an apothecary. The author of Douglas would have been delighted with "nectareus, van clarette," unless he had discovered that claret does not here mean Lafitte or Château Margaux, but sweetened wine, clary.

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WRITE.

WRITE. The Germans undoubtedly derived their verb schreiben, and probably the art of writing with pen and ink, from the Romans. But the existence of an older verb, rizan, originally, like the Anglo-Saxon writan, Icelandic rita, denoting sculpere, incidere, as well as the general diffusion of Runic characters among the various tribes, seem to imply that they were not wholly without letters before the Roman period. Otfried accurately discriminates between the two words. In the account of the woman taken in adultery, he says, 'Christ reiz mit demo fingero,'-digito exaravit; but Pilate's, What I have written, is, thaz ih scrib,'quod scripsi. Graben appears from the glossaries to have been similarly employed to denote literas incidere, also to write. The preterite of graben, gruob, grub, furnishes an etymology for Grub Street, which we would recommend the inmates of that classical region by all means to adopt.

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Sed manum de tabula-We have endeavoured to show that the field of English philology is far from being exhausted, and we should be glad to see it treated with something of the same rigorous and scientific application of principles and copious induction of particulars, that have been exercised upon some of the sister tongues. Much has been done and is still doing by the Germans and Danes, which ought to excite our emulation, and which we may turn to our own advantage.

ART. II.-The Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire: being. Lives of the most distinguished Persons that have been born in, or connected with, those Provinces. By Hartley Coleridge. Svo. Leeds, 1834.

THIS

HIS collection of lives is, in our judgment, a work of such unusual merit, that it seems equally an act of justice to the author and a service to sound literature to rescue it from the common mass of county histories and provincial biographies, with which, in consequence of its title and the place of its publication, it runs the risk of being confounded. Mr. Hartley Coleridge proved himself a genuine poet by the beautiful sonnets, &c. which we noticed some time ago in this Journal, and which we trust will not long remain unaccompanied by others of a similar strain. In this volume he has not only given us many very livelyand well stored narratives of the lives of eminent persons, but has contrived to interweave in them a series of literary and philosophical criticisms, which generally, for their truth and delicacy, and

always

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