Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/557

 i2S.vni.juxE4,io2i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 459 Gates about London did also change this, and called it Ludgate otherwise also written Leod- geat, Lud & Leod is all one, and in our ancient language folk or people, so is Ludgate, as- much to say as Porta populi : The gate or passage of the people, and if a man do observe it he shall find that of all the Gates of the City the greatest passage of the people is thorow, this Gate, and yet must it needs have bin much more in time past before Newgate, was builded, which as M. John Stow saith, was fhst builded about the raigne of King Henry the second : And therefore the name of Leod-gate was aptly give in respect of the great concourse of people thorow it. Is not this quaintly expressed and curiously punctuated explanation more probable than Geoffrey of Monmouth's I derivation from a British King Lud, or ! Sir L. Gomme's from a Celtic god of that name ? I shall be glad if any reader can help me to identify the book from which the above extract is taken. The author had been acquainted (p. 102) with Lewis | Guicciardin (Luigi Guicciardini, died 1589), and had had conference (p. 190) with Abra- ham Ortelius (who died in 1598). Is it a work of John Speed or C. Saxton's ' King- dom of England,' amended and published by Speed in 1610 (according to the 'D.N.B.') ? FREDERICK A. EDWARDS. 34, Old Park Avenue, Nightingale Lane, S.W. THE "DIEHARDS" (12 S. viii. 431). The following condensed extract made by me some years ago from Kinglake's ' Crimean War ' bears upon MR. DRUETT'S query. The allusion is to the Battle of Inkermann : The 57th Regiment or Diehards were there, who at Albuera, 45 years beiore, were thus ad- dressed by their Colonel, " 57th, die hard ! " Sorely beset at Inkermann their Colonel shouted " 57th, remember Albuera ! " Curiously enough the senior officer of the 57th left alive at the end of Inkermann was son of the very officer who used the words " die hard ' at Albuera. Kinglake thus proceeds : A regiment great in history bears so far a re- semblance to the immortal gods as to be old in power and glory, yet have always the freshness of youth. SURREY. " COMMON OR GARDEN " (12 S. viii. 392). Anent this expression, Country-Side for May has the following from a correspon- dent : COMMON OB GARDEN. The term " common or garden " was thirty years ago used ironically on the Stock Exchange and elsewhere, and had i< -i'crence to the saying of a horticulturist as qualifiying out-door plants which anybody could cultivate (I believe) as below the status of exotics and hothouse reared plants. CECIL CLARKE. Junior Athenaeum Club. on Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. By Ernest Weekley. (Murray. 2 2s. net.) UNDER the word monger Professor Weekley quotes a dictum of The Daily News to the effect that he is well known to the readers of that paper as the " most entertaining of living word- mongers." Without quite assenting to the expression em- ployed we heartily agree with its general sense. Few persons are without an interest in words, especially curious words, though the interest of the majority is fitful and easily discouraged by a heavy apparatus of philological learning. This universal rudimentary taste Professor Weekley meets cunningly, with the learning of a scholar carefully adjusted to, and set off by, the brevity, humorousness and avoidance of any superior tone which the average Englishman finds most to his liking when he wants an answer to a question. We will not disguise from our author our opinion that, in the course of some 1,700 pages, he now and again exaggerates these good qualities. Some of his indications of the meaning of a phrase are so very brief that they can serve as indications only to a person who already knows all about it e.g., the explana- tion of Monroe doctrine and this protest will not quite be met by a counter-protest that the dictionary expressly omits what everybody may be assumed to know. Professor Weekley disarms possible criticism of his jocularity by referring to circumstances amid which much of his material was shaped and arranged. From 1914 to 1918 jesting in unexpected places was meritorious, almost neces- sary. In an ordinary way we would certainly have had him prune somewhat the exuberance of his jokes ; and, in particular, we would have deprecated illustrating the meanings of words by a funny mistake and a " sic " ; e.g., galley. But, after all, the most that can be said in criticism of this occasional triviality counts for little in comparison with the advantages of the vivacity from which it springs. The relation of this dictionary to the ' N.E.D.' is of great interest. Professor Weekley occasionally dissents from the opinion of the compilers of that great work, and always on grounds worth considering. The body of modern words well established in tho language since the commencement of the ' N.E.D.' is, of course, large and important, and may be said to form the principal characteristic of this work. Pro- fessor Weekley has gathered a fair number of instances of the use of words earlier than the earliest given in the great dictionary, and he is able to point out many surnames which take the use of a word back beyond its occur- rence in literature or documents. This is a very useful line of suggestion. lie ha? brought the art of compression to perfection ;