Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/53

 s. N 3., JAN. 19. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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common phrase, though of a meaning difficult to be traced, is found, " The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose ; thafs flat." See also 1 Hen. IV., Act I. Sc/3., and Act IV. Sc. 2.

3. Fast and loose will also be found in Shak- speare, see Love's Labour Lost, Act III. Sc. 1 . : " As cunning as fast and loose."

4. Pumping a man, i. e. seeking to get informa- tion from him indirectly, may be traced to Otway's Venice Preserved, Act II. Sc. 1., where Pierre says to Aquilina :

" Go to your senator; ask him what passes Amongst his brethren ; he'll hide nothing from you : But pump not me for politics."

5. To go snacks is in Pope's Prologue to the Satire, 65. :

" All my demurs but double his attacks : At last he whispers, ' Do ; and we go snacks.' "

6. Cowper has the worse for wear in John Gilpin.

7. He has also to dash through thick and thin in the same.

8. Hobson's choice is as old as the days of Milton, his younger days in fact, but its meaning lias become perverted in course of use. Its origin is given in one of Steele's contributions to the Spectator, No. 509.

9. To be in the wrong box has a home in Fox's Martyrs, book vi.

10. The slang verb to lamm, i. e. to beat, was certainly current about the close of the sixteenth century, for it occurs in King and no King, Act V. Sc. 3., by Beaumont and Fletcher.

It was originally, and may be yet for aught I know, a technical expression used by armourers or workers in metal, and is so found in the writings of Florio, tutor to Prince Henry, eldest son of James I., who was a contemporary of Beaumont and Fletcher.

1 1 . Scripture even furnishes some of the phrases under discussion. In the twinkling of an eye is at 1 Corinthians, xv. 52.

12. " Veels within veels" said Mr. Samuel Weller of the birdcap in the Fleet Prison, and the verbal idea is in Ezekiel, i. 16., and x. 10.

13. But the last I propose to trouble you with is an expression borrowed by us directly from the United States of America, " This child feels like eating," i. e. " I feel," &c. ; the third person for the first. See Rux ton's Life in the Far West.

This idiom is ancient, as all will recollect who have read the Greek tragedians. Sec, one passage of many, Sophocles, (Ed. Tyr., 815.:

Tiy roiiSe y' apSpds <rriv aSXiwrepo? ; "

" Oh, who can be more woe-begone than I! " literally, " than this man."

The scholiast explains it as said SeiKrfoau, the speaker pointing to himself.

Perhaps some of your readers will increase this random list. W. T. M.

Hong Kong.

A MONSTER DICTIONARY.

Among the resuscitated poets of late years are Alexander Gardyne and John Lundie, contempo- raries, whose works have been edited for the Ab- botsford Club. These worthies were in the habit of complimenting and interchanging poetical civilities with each other ; and it is recorded by the latter that,

" On New Tier's Day I gave ane Dictionar of 400 lan- guages to M. Al. Gardyn, vith this inscription :

" Vnto the father of the Muse's songs I give this treasure of four hundreth tongs."

adding divers other extravagant encomiums, which the receiver pays back in poetry of corresponding calibre.

Were it not that we have the fact of this won- drous polyglot both in prose and verse, numerals and words at length, we might venture to knock away the two nothings ; as it stands, how are we to comprehend it ?

The rare book in which this is recorded, is en- titled :

"A Garden of Grave snl Godlie Flowres, Sonets, Elegies, and Epitaphes. Planted, Polished, and Per- fected by Mr. .Alexander Gardyne. Reprinted in Edin., 1845, from the Unique original. Quarto. Edin., by T. Finlaison, 1609."

The industrious editors, Messrs. Turnbull and Laing, have thrown together a few conjectural items regarding Gardyne, or Garden ; but looking at the contemporary fame the author enjoyed, they are very meagre and unsatisfactory :

" So gratious Gardyne (says P. G.), wonder of tin' age,

Thou gains a world of praise for eucrie verse ; Thy countries honour thus thou dost egraige,

All nations thy inuentions sail rehearse : Poor pettie poems now your heads go hide, While greater light here strains your glistering pride." *

It i?, however, evident that neither Gardyne or his eulogist knew what posterity would value, and instead of all nations rehearsing the Crudities of "Mr. Alexander Gardyne," he has only of late been dug out of his obscurity by the accidental discovery of a single copy of his Garden.

Do any of your readers, by chance, know more of this author than what is set forth in the re- print ? J. O.

served Tom Coriat, it might be suspected that Patrick Gordon was here quizzing his friend Gardyne; not so, however, for we find that the latter returned it in the same strain in his encomiastick verses befove Gordon's famous History e of Pe.na.rdo and Luissa, Dort, 115, wherein the author is thus apostrophized :
 * Remembering how the English wits of this period

" thou, the new adorner of our clayes."