Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/203

128. 1. MAR. 4, 1916. J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

197 (12 S. i. 127).—This has been already dealt with at 10 S. ix. 10, by an American. It is desirable to copy out what is there stated:—

"On p. 176 of 'The Recollections of Abraham Lincoln,' by Ward H. Lamon, edited by Dorothy Lamon, Chicago (McClurg, 1895), is this:—

In the preface to the old Wycliffe Bible published 1324 [sic] is the following declaration: "This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, and for the people," which language is identical with that employed by Mr. Lincoln in his Gettysburg speech.

The writer of this requested to have the quotation from the Bible verified, but I believe it has not been verified in 'N. & Q.'

It is as well to give the exact words used by Mr. Lincoln in the speech referred to, delivered at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863, as it will be seen that the language is not identical, and also that the heading of the query is not correct: "That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I have taken this from a most useful little book called 'Who Said That'; and in the new edition of Bartlett's 'Familiar Quotations,' tenth edition, 1914, p. 532, the quotation from the speech is given in exactly the same words.

It is not without interest, I think, to note what Daniel Webster said in addressing the Senate on Jan. 25, 1830, when, in speaking of the United States Government, he used this language:—

"It is, sir, the people's constitution, the people's government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this constitution shall be the supreme law."—'Webster's Speeches,' vol. i. p. 410, eighth edition, Boston, 1848.

The noble oration which Abraham Lincoln delivered on Nov. 19, 1863, when dedicating the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, ends with the words : " Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." There was no novelty in the idea, which only expressed the natural aspiration of a democracy, but it had never before been expressed with such force and conciseness. I do not think that it is likely to be found in Wyclif, because, although he anticipated some of the doctrines of the Reformation, he was hardly likely to have anticipated those of the French Revolution. DAVID SALMON.

Swansea.

This is a modern saying of which Abraham Lincoln was the author. It occurs in the famous speech which he made on Nov. 19, 1863, on the occasion of the consecration of part of the Gettysburg battlefield as a burial- ground for those who had fallen in the fight. This was the conclusion of the speech :

" It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve tha t the dead shall not have died in vain that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The sister nations that constitute the British Empire may well resolve, at this critical moment, to go forward animated by the spirit of the Gettysburg speech.

G. L. APPERSON.

THE EMERALD AND CHASTITY (12 S. i. 125). - The Euphuists made play with the steadfastness of the emerald. Robert Greene, in his * Orpharion,' 1599, says of certain women :

"These had.... their eares open to vertue, their harts subiect to loue, but onely stamped with one Carracter, resembling the Emeraulde, that neuer looseth the first impression nor admitteth any other." ' Works,' ed. Grosart, vol. xii. p. 12.

This character of steadfastness naturally associated it with chastity. In ; Mamillia!,' pt. i., 1583, Greene wrote t " that as there is a chagable Polipe, so there is a sted fast Emerauld, that there was as well a Lucreece, as a Lais " (' Works,' ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p. 17). G. L. APPERSON.

"POPINJAY": "PAPAGEI" (11 S. xii. 440, 509 ; 12 S. i. 53). The Continental term papagei became converted into the English " popinjay " by popular etymology, through confusion with the jay, a talkative bird ; while the letter n seems to have crept in, as in " nightingale " (A.-S. nihtegale), " messenger," and other words, by virtue of what is known as " nunnation " in Middle English substantives. Papagei, in mediaeval Latin papagallus, is not believed to be derived from either the Arabic babagha or the Persian bapgha, a parrot ; on the contrary, these forms are apparently loan-words to those languages from the Spanish papagoyo, which, like other European types, harks back to some primitive African root, the precise origin of which it would be unprofit- able to seek, inasmuch as it is almost cer- tainly of onomatopoeic birth.