Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/44

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. JULY 9, '98.

paged sheet of fairly stout blue paper, measuring 15 inches long by 11 J inches wide. On p. 1 I write the name, &c., in both top corners. On p. 2 I insert the best portrait I can find. I do not paste in, but cut slits in the paper to receive the corners of the picture. I use a sharp-pointed knife and cut on a thick sheet of glass. Round the picture thus inserted I rule lines according to fancy. On

F. 3 I insert the letter. Never paste it on. take a strip of thin white paper the length of the letter and half an inch wide. Down one side (for clearness, call this the under side) I run an edging of stickphast paste, say 4- inch wide, and paste on to the left- hand edge of the letter. I use a thin strip of copper 12 inches long to cover the $ of the thin paper and to get an even % pasted. Then on the top side of the paper paste the , and attach that to a slip of thin cardboard 14 inches longer than the letter. When dry the cardboard forms a hinge, which folds under the letter. Then on p. 3 cut slits, the width of the cardboard and level with the top of the letter, to receive the top f inch and ditto for the bottom f inch. By this method a two, three, or four page letter may be securely kept, easily turned, and easily slipped out if required. On thinner and slightly smaller paper of t\vo pages only I insert in the same manner extra letters, por- traits, engravings, pictures, cuttings, &c., illustrative of the life, works, &c., of the writer of the letter, and keep these inside the four-page sheets. Only in the case of small cuttings do I paste them down by the end edges. In other cases I use the slits, as also I do with one-page letters. I hope I have made my method clear. If MR. PAGE, MR. ROBINSON, or any other collector cares to write direct, I will gladly send samples of the papers re- ferred to. I keep the whole in bags made of black glazed cloth. A flap may be used, and forms a better protection against dust than covers or boxes. CLIO.

33, Chorley Old Road, Bolton.

^ FELLOWS " (9 th S. i. 489). Halliwell's ' Diet, of Archaic and Provincial Words ' says : " Nice = foolish, stupid, dull, strange." The same word had the first meaning in French, but is now obsolete. Nicetee is given by Halliwell as folly. In ' 2 Henry IV.,' IV. i., Mowbray uses the expression "every idle, nice, and wanton reason." There are also other instances of a similar use of the word in Shakespeare. ARTHUR MAYALL.

Nice appears to have had formerly the meanings of " effeminate " and " wanton "; the 'Encyclopaedic Dictionary' contains ex-

amples, to which may be added Sir T. More's expression "nice and wanton words "(' Workes,' p. 306). "A nice person" is the rendering by Cooper of homo niollis (' Thesaurus,' 1565, v. 'Mollis'), and by Coles ('Engl.-Lat. Diet.,' 1677, v. 'Nice') of seplasiarius, a word given in Holyoke's 'Diet.' (1640, v. 'Nice') as the Latin for "a nice fellow." "An effeminate person," " a nice person," and " a nice fellow " are only different expressions for the same object. Seplasiarius denoted, says Littleton, " a gallant who goes powdered and perfumed " a masher of an exaggerated type, if only the meaning were innocent. The "corpore infames" of Tacitus, however, is identical with the " molles viri " of Livy, xxxiii. 28 ; and Oberlin, in his annotations to the ' Ger- mania,' indignantly repels the foul blot cast on his barbaric ancestors, and pleads for the reading " torpore " in place of " corpore " (see his note ad loc.). But the subject is too un- wholesome to discuss. F. ADAMS. 106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.

The text of Tacitus has " corpore infames." The French version, rendered in English by " nice fellows," was probably some phrase of Paris slang, " bons enfans," or the like ; but there the matter had better rest.

C. B. MOUNT.

Another passage of Tacitus, " scelus ostendi ut puniatur, flagitium occultari debet," will supply the reason for leaving the epithet without explanation. ED. MARSHALL.

[Many other replies are acknowledged.]

" CROSS " VICE " KRIS " (9 th S. i. 85, 317, 458). PALAMEDES is quite right, MR. CURRY quite wrong, as to the history of the gutturals g,j, x. MR. CURRY seems to think that because he can trace the present guttural sound back to the last century it must have existed always; but if he will consult Monlau ('Spanish Etymological Dictionary') he will find that so late as the reign of Philip IV. (1621) these three letters were pronounced in Castilian much as they still are in Portuguese, Galician, Asturian, Valencian, Catalan, and other Peninsular dialects. He is unfortunate in the examples he has selected to bolster up his lost cause. The French Don Quichotte and Italian Don Chisciotte preserve the old Spanish pronunciation of one of them, the pronunciation, be it observed, used by Cer- vantes himself ; and our own Sherris repre- sents the old Spanish pronunciation of Xeres. I should be interested in knowing whether PROF. SKEAT adheres to the opinion once expressed in these columns (8 th S. viii. 93) that the change from sibilant to guttural