Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/589

 io*s.m.jrxE24,i905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

485

" thei may see what it hath brought, and what it ia like to bring, namely, thesubuersion of the whole state of the realme, the ouerronning thereof with a strange nacion and such a nacion as is the most Vyle and godles nacion vp on earth."

He exhorts them to repentance, and the fruit of it is to be the driving of Papists and aliens out of the country, so that " where thei sought but one waye to come in thei shall seke x. to flee owt of it agayne." Re- sistance is advocated :

" No man minister any aide or obedience to such tyrannes as bend themselues aganst god and his word and to the subversion of their natural contry. In which case it is not only vnlawful to obey them or in any wyse to consent vnto them, but also most lawfull to stand in the defence of goddes religion and of the lawdable and awncient state of their co'try aganst such vncircumcised tyrannes (thei shall neuer be called magistrates of me til thei shewe themselues worthy of that name) as goo abowt such deuillissh enterprises."

The choice of the pseudonym Eusebius Paraphilus seems to point to John Foxe as the translator and putter-forth of this book. He had already written part of that which subsequently grew to be the mighty folio of the 'Acts and Monuments,' and might there- fore think the name of the early Church historian a suitable disguise. Amongst his books, as enumerated by Bale and Tanner, is ' Persecutiones Ecclesise a Luthero,' lib. i., a vague title which might apply to the ' Warnung' as to many other writings of the German Reformer. The translation is not always very close, and the translator has before his eyes the case of England and not of Germany as was natural.

But was this book issued at Greenwich in May, 1554] It appears to be the only one with Conrade Freeman's name as printer. The type seems to me more continental than English. Perhaps it was printed abroad for secret circulation in this country.

Since writing the foregoing it has come to my knowledge that Mr. C. E. Sayle, in his 'Early English Printed Books in Cam- bridge University Library' (ii. 1306; iii. 1412), catalogues the 'Faythfuil Admonycion ' under Luther's name, and says that the type is the same as that of the 'Zurich Bible printed by Froschauer. Three other English works are mentioned by him as from the same press. This might lead us to look for the translator of the 'Warnung' amongst the^ group of Reformers who found refuge at Zurich. There were twelve of them in Froschauer's house in 1554. But of course the MS. may have been sent to Zurich, if that place is definitely accepted as the place of printing. WlLLIAM E- A, Axox.

Manchester.

" BOAST " : ITS ETYMOLOGY." Boast " is one- of the few English words the ultimate origin* of which is still a matter of doubt. Prof. Skeat connects it tentatively with the Aryan, root pus, to blow, as if inflated language. The- 'N.E.D.' leaves the matter undecided, bufc gives fourteenth-century quotations of bost$ meaning talking big, vaunting, and instances- of an old phrase, " to blow a boast," meaningr to brag or vaunt. The idea of something blown up or inflated, like a bladder, may very probably be the root idea. A common* form of the word in sixteenth-century Scotch was boist, and if this can be brought into- connexion with boist, a still older word, which- is used for a flask, a vessel of glass blown owb- into a bellied or globular form, a cupping- glass, we may be on the right scent. As a- matter of fact, lost or boist is frequently used* to translate ampulla, a flask or globular- bottle, especially that used for holding holy oil (see ' Promptorium Parvulorum ' and' 'Catholicon Anglicum,' with the notes). Now ampulla had the secondary meaning in Latin* of inflated, vaunting language, bombast, just as in Greek Ary/<v$os meant both a blown- out bottle and great swelling words of vanity ; while XrjKvdifav was to speak bombastically. Thus Horace says that in second-rate tragedies a character "projicit ampullas" ('Ars Poetica,' 1. 97), or spouts bombast, and "deseevit et amvndlatur" or raves bom- bastically ('Ep.,'i. 3, 14).

Accordingly we find in the ' Catholicon Anglicum ' ( 1483 ) " a Boste, ampulla, iactancia, pompa, magnificencia ; ampullosu* participium" (i.e., boastful), as well as " to- Boste, ampullare, ascribere, iactare, iactitare."" It would seem that the figurative use of boast, " to talk flasks " (bostes, boists], or inflated language, was modelled on the Latin am- pullari, to utter ampullce. We may compare Jiasco, a vain or abortive attempt, originally a flask, a puffed-out thing which easily col- lapses, and Ital. "sacco di venlo, a bag of: winde, also an idle boaster " (Florio).

Boste or boist, an oil-flask, was originally box to hold ointment, Old Fr. boiste, from a Low Lat. biistia, buxida, a box, borrowed from the Greek pyxida. In Old English to box meant to use the bw/ste or cupping-glass, a globular vessel, and is virtually the same: word, if my conjecture is correct.

A. SMYTHE PALMED

S. Woodford.

JAMES GLEN. There is a brief and charac- teristically inaccurate account of this colonial governor in Appleton's ' Cyclopaedia of American Biography,' s.v. Glenn (sic) ; also in Dr. Charles Rogers's privately printed