Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/51

 ii B. vi. JULY 13, i9i2.j NOTES AND QUERIES.

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but this cannot be connected with the odd word in question. The real Yankees have long been noted for their inquisitiveness." Gordon in his 'History of the American Revolution ' states this, and attributes the origin of the word to Jonathan Hastings of Cambridge, Mass., about 1713. Mr. Thornton says that the following from The Massa- chusetts Spy of June 6th, 1827, is "specially valuable as showing the varying use of the word within the borders of the U.S.": "Who is a Yankee? Let a man north of New York visit that city, and they call him Yankee, to dis- tinguish him from a New Yorker. Let a man from New York visit Philadelphia, and he will be called a Yankee, to distinguish him from a Phila- delphian. Let a man from Philadelphia go no further south than Baltimore, and he will be nick- named Yankee, to distinguish him from a Balti- morean. Let a man from the north of the Potomac visit Virginia, and he is immediately dubbed with the title of Yankee, to distinguish him from a pure Virginian. Let a man from Virginia visit Charles- ton, and he is supposed to have strong claims to the appellation of Yankee. Let a man from Charleston visit New Orleans, and there are ten chances to one he will get the nickname of Yankee. Let a man from any part of Jonathan's dominions visit the kingdom of John Bull, and he will forthwith receive the appellation of Yankee."

The opinions quoted in reference to the Yankee are as varied as they are amusing. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee said in the House of Representatives that he did not consider it "exactly right to damn evsry Yankee, because they disliked some whom they had met " : and then he had the condescension to remark, " There were some very clever gentle- men among them." Crockett in his 'Sketches,' published in 1833, refers to them as being "generally well educated." We had no idea that the term Yankee had been applied to a European, but we find that Mr. Dix in his speech delivered in the Senate on the 23rd of January, 1849, styled the Northern Germans "the Yankees of the continent in bar- gaining."

Many of the Americanisms it is impossible to comprehend without explanation. We cite a few. " Whole cloth " is a lie from beginning to end. " Whole soul " offers a warning to editors : " When an editor marries, he is no longer the 'wAoZe- xoid'd pleasant chap ' he once was." "Ripstaver" is a first-rate person or thing. The Lone Star State is Texas, and the Banner State " the one which rolls up the greatest vote in an election." Space will not permit, or we could add hundreds of specially interesting examples. All we can do is to advise our readers to get the book for themselves. For public libraries, both in Britain and America, it is indispensable.

Mr. Thornton refers so handsomely to previous workers in the same field that we feel it is due to him to state this. He records that " the principal dictionary of Americanisms hitherto published is that of Bartlett," whose " painstaking and valuable work has furnished considerable material for the 'New English Dictionary '"; and Mr. Thornton remarks that " it is no discredit to him that he lived before the method of arranging and dating citations came into vogue ; and unfortunately only a few of his references can be verified." Mr. Farmer's 'Dictionary' is mentioned as being " valuable in another way, as illustrating the great

j vitality of American modes of speech, for about nine-tenths of his citations come from publications of the year 1888." A "tribute of respect" is also rendered to our valued contributor Mr. Albert Matthews of Boston, whom Mr. Thornton describes as " probably the highest living authority on the present topic." He adds that the " production of an American Glossary should have come from his hands, if circumstances had not prevented it," and gracefully acknowledges how much he has been indebted to Mr. Matthews.

We congratulate Mr. Thornton upon the com- pletion of his Glossary, which is entirely due to the enthusiasm with which he has worked upon it for many years. To readers of ' N, & Q. ; the volumes will have personal interest, as being the work of one of our ' ' band of brothers " whose name has long, been familiar in our pages.

I>" The Burlington Magazine for this month Mr. O; M. Dalton brings an interesting account of Mr. Pierpont Morgan's Byzantine Enamels to a conclusion with a description of the two reliquaries of the Holy Cross in the Stavelot triptych, and a concise discussion of the merits and characteristics of Byzantine enamel in general. Mr. Lewis Eck- stein's ' Notes on Chinese Painting ' abound in pleasant and instructive detail, and the illustrations belonging to them, though the reproduction seems hardly to do them justice, are well worth looking at carefully. Other good articles are Mr. Hobson's ' Chinese Cloisonne Enamel,' and ' FraLippo Lippi's Portrait ' by Mr. Montgomery Carmichael. Mr. Roger Fry pays graceful tribute to the services of Sir Sidney Colvin at the Print-Room in the British Museum, and Mr. Hermann VOPS con- tributes a paper on 'A Lpst "Crucifixion" by Albrecht Dxirer.'

Ix The Nineteenth Century we have a rambling and but little convincing discussion of the present position of Art in Mr. Robert Fowler's ' Is Art a Failure ?' a charming article on 'Some Foreigners in Shakespeare's England,' by Mr. E. S. Bates; and Mr. Wilfrid Ward on ' The Edinburgh Review on Cardinal Newman.' The last makes good, we think, its contention that the reviewer in The Edinburgh had no adequate understanding of Newman's mind, nor of his purpose a_nd method in writing. In 'Capt. Syuge's Experiences at Salamanca' Lieut. - Col. Tottenham has revived for us an account of sufferings on the battlefield, and afterwards in the surgeon's hands, which in these days of X-rays and anaesthetics have come to seem at once incredible and intolerable. Another paper worth mentioning is that by Mr. E. B. Osborn on ' Olympic Athens.'

THE July Xational Renew is chiefly given up to polities, and offers us no article of a literary character since Mr. Rudyard Kipling's ' The Benefactors ' (an allegory to point a fairly obvious social moral) can hardly be accounted as such. In ' Episodes of the Month ' Sir Sidney Lee's biography of King Edward VII. comes in for some severe criticism. Mr. J. O. P. Bland, comparing Young China and Young Turkey, augurs little good for the fortunes of the former. Miss Frances Pitt contributes another pleasant study of animal life -this time ' The Brown Rat.' Her writing would be more effective if it were both more terse and more grammatical.