Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/347

 9*s. ii. OCT. 22, -98.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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vocabulary." We come across many articles of great interest. Bethinking us of a familiar quotation, which should always when possible be given, we turned to yait in search of the well-known line of James and Horace Smith

Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait. This we failed to trace under gait, but found under potter. This search drew attention to the fact that gaiter, French guJetre, is of unknown origin. LittrtS points out resemblances. The 'H.E.D.' indicates Romance synonyms without r. Concerning gait we are told that that, now the only surviving spelling, was rare until the seventeenth century. Barclay in ' The Shyp of Folys ' has

Their gate and looke proude arid abhominable. Some curious instances are given of the use in the plural of gates or gaits to indicate the paces of a horse. No earlier use of gala is found than the middle of the sixteenth century. Gale= strong wind is the subject of an excellent article, showing the difference between nautical and popular use. Its origin is declared obscure. Warmly to be commended is the very interesting disquisition upon gallant. A close study of the word shows how curiously the modern English signification of the word has diverged from that now all but universal in France. Of gallipot the history is given for the first time in English, the information supplied in the great Dutch dictionary being utilized. Spenser's affirma- tion in his ' State of Ireland ' concerning the origin of galloglas is said to seem doubtful. Yet one more article of great interest is that on gallows, the use of which word, like that of the thing it denotes, goes back to the earliest times. We find noted the dialectal use, still current, of galloivs, common in the North for braces, suspenders, though no instance of use earlier than 1730-6 is advanced. Gallows-tree is of formidable antiquity. The earliest reference to galvanic, it is interesting to see, is 1797. Gamble, gambler, &c., are not met with until the middle of the eighteenth century, gamester being of much earlier date. Game is the subject of a long and very erudite article ; the same may be said of garb &na.^garble. Very picturesque is the history of these. Special attention is directed by the editor to the word gas, the exact origin of which, resting on the statement of the inventor, the Dutch chemist J. B. van Helmont (1577-1644), has not previously been given in England. This has been supposed to be based on the Dutch geest, spirit. It is, however, according to Van Helmont's own statement, sug- gested by the Greek \do^. Van Helmont also in- vented a word bias, which has not survived. Gauze, first recorded in the sixteenth century, spelt gain and afterwards gadza (!), is of uncertain origin. Much curious antiquarian information will be found under gavel, gavelhtnd, &c. It is impossible to pro- ceed with an investigation of this kind, since there is scarcely a word in this section that will not repay study. We content ourselves accordingly, follow- ing in this the editor, by commending to special attention such words as gaud, gaudy, gaunt, general, genius, gentle, gentleman, and german or germane. For the origin of gaunt no tenable hypothesis seems forthcoming.

The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart., First Marquis of Halifax. By H. C. Foxcroft. 2 vols. (Longmans & Co.)

How stalwart a champion is Miss Foxcroft of the man whose life she has written and whose works

she has edited is shown in the noble lines from 1 ennyson which appear upon her title-page : Turning to scorn, with lips divine,

The falsehood of extremes.

That her work is not so wholly adulatory as this selection of a motto appears to indicate must be conceded. Weakness in her hero is acknowledged and there are times when Miss Foxcroft suggests to others the possibility of framing an adverse verdict which she personally is loath to express. There is in the case of Savile every excuse for zeal and tenderness on the part of a biographer. High as is the estimate that has been formed concerning Savile, both as writer and statesman, by the esoteric, knowledge of him is all but confined to such. With most of us, however, as seemed to be the case with Gertrude of Denmark, " increase of appetite" has "grown by what it fed on," and a reperusal of Savile's works is a fortifying and an invigorating, as well as an agreeable, occupation. The position of Savile is in its way almost unique. A philosopher among men of action, and a man of action among philosophers, he occupied a place in the world less prominent than is assigned to men of lesser ability and mark, and went so far ahead of most of his competitors as to " dwarf himself by the distance." While he was the most potent in- fluence in the revolution that replaced James II. by William and Mary, the credit for it is assigned others rather than himself, and his shadow looms large in the sight of those only who have studied so closely and so long the fight as to be familiar with every episode, and to have grasped the disposition of the forces and the development of the battle. Miss Foxcroft is naturally of these. She has studied closely the character and proceedings of Savile, and she has written a life which is monumental in industry, and in which the scales are held with as much justice as was to be hoped. If the result of her labours is to keep Savile pretty much where he was before, and to leave almost undisturbed the estimates of Burnet and Macaulay, the fault is not hers. There is, indeed, no fault in the case. Whatever motives Burnet may have had to denigrate the character of a man who, after passing for years as his friend and ally, applied to his back the lash with a vigour the more painful since he knew every sensitive point, the picture presented is too lifelike, as well as too consonant with what is known from other sources not to win acceptance, while Macaulay has rarely displayed more penetrative insight than in dealing with the career and character of "the White Marquis." In itself the word " trimmer," the appli- cation of which to himself Savile accepted, and in vindication of which he wrote one of the best-known and most characteristic of his works, is not a term of reproach. Savile, however, was something more or less. His unconquerable infirmity was his dis- position to run with the hare and to hunt with the hounds, while his general attitude, like that of his family in the eighteenth century, was summed up in the saying of Maurice, that they " thought it

very absurd to kill for a faith but quite as

absurd to die for one." The latitude Savile allowed himself in matters of religious belief led to the charge being brought against him of atheism. No charge could be more absurd or unjust. He belonged to the school of descendants of Montaigne and Gassendi known in France, and occasionally spoken of in England, as " libertins," a school which in Eng-