Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/163

 9-s.viiLAuG.i7.i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

155

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Notes on English Etymology. By the Rev. W. W.

Skeat, Litt.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) PROF. SKEAT has judged rightly in believing that a collection of his papers on etymological subjects, which are scattered through various publications, would be welcome to all who are interested in the study of English. Most of the ' Notes ' included in the present volume have appeared in the Transactions of the Philological Society during the last twenty years, and a few in the more recent numbers of ' N. & Q.' The papers on words imported from South America and the West Indies are complete monographs on the subjects with which they deal, and a copious hand -list of early Anglo-French words will be found convenient and useful for reference. The chief value, however, of the book lies in the series of detached notes in which points of un- settled etymology are submitted to a fuller and more complete discussion than was possible even in the author's large dictionary. These, as embody- ing the final conclusions, retractations, and amend- ments of a scholar in a field where he is facile princeps, carry the utmost weight and importance. Indeed, to our thinking, no fairy tale can compare in interest with these fossilized histories, as they yield up their secret meaning and origin under the magic wand of the analytical etymologist. In many instances stubborn vocables now reveal them- selves for the first time in their true colours, and with surprising results e.g., calf, crease, darn, gallop, &c. In other instances Prof. Skeat's dis- coveries have been more or less anticipated by other investigators. A very similar account of bronze, e.g., will be found in Schrader's 'Prehistoric Anti- quities of the Aryan Peoples,' p. 200, the English translation of which appeared in 1890. We notice also some cases where etymologies advanced in Dr. Palmer's ' Folk - Etymology,' 1883, are now adopted. The account of scour, to traverse hastily, there given (p. 648), separating it from scour, to cleanse, and deriving it through the Old French from Lat. excurrere, is thus accepted by Prof. Skeat. His note on ' Glory, Hand of,' agrees closely with Palmer's 'Hand of Glory' (p. 161). Unconscious cerebration will no doubt often reproduce in this way what one has formerly read and forgotten. Similarly the explanation of the Shakespearian crux, " We may deliver our supplications in the quill" ('2 Hen. VI.,' I. iii. 4), as meaning "col- lectedly," "all together" (=Fr. en cueill-ette), had already been given in the ' Folk-Etymology,' p. 310, though spoilt there by an alternative suggestion nihil ad rem.

The origin of blot is not a little curious, coming as it does from p'lpt, pelote (O.F. blote)=a, pellet or ball of earth or dirt. The similar contraction in platoon from peloton might have been referred to. A parallel is afforded also by the surname Pratt (formerly Prott), which, if we mistake not, is a contraction of Perrot.

The explanation of the word Esquimaux, which Prof. Skeat takes from Tylor (given also in Taylor's ' Names and Places '), has been discredited by more recent writers. Our most learned authority on res Americana*, Mr. E. J. Payne, shows that the name is taken from the Algonquin askik-amo, which

means "seal-eater" (' History of the New World.' ii. 350).

An excellent reproduction of the presentation portrait of the author which belongs to Christ's College, Cambridge, forms a pleasing frontispiece to the volume. We learn with satisfaction that he has material in hand which will furnish forth a similar issue, and can assure him that all lovers of their mother tongue will be prepared to give it a hearty reception. There is no writer of the day to whom they are under deeper obligations.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Edited by W. Rhys

Roberts. (Cambridge, University Press.) PROF. ROBERTS has edited the Greek text of the three critical letters of Dionysius, and provided an English translation of them, a glossary of rhetorical terms, and ample introductory matter. The book is a companion volume to his edition of ' Longinus on the Sublime ' in 1899, and is one which deserves a warm meed of praise. We are always glad to see such thorough, well -equipped editions as this pro- ceeding from the University Presses : they do not come too often, and the outside world is apt to be scornful about the amount of work in the shape of solid contributions to thought and the literature of learning which has been given to us of late by our greater universities. There is perhaps some reason for these complaints, crude as they are. Dionysius as a literary critic cannot compare in ability or originality with the author of the treatise on the sublime, be he Longinus or another, but his remarks are always worth reading. He belongs to the careful rather than the original type of scholar, and the merits of the first class are apt to be under- estimated to-day. He is happiest in his estimates of authors who show elaboration of style, though he appreciates Lysias, a model of lucidity whom Thucydidean students do not read sufficiently. Vexing to the modern reader is his depreciation of the style of Plato, the divine master of grace and ease in language. This same ease is more the gift of Oxford than Cambridge, but it is pleasant to find that Prof. Roberts's translation is not lacking in so essential a quality, and not shackled by the claims of those who want a mere "crib." Some- times we differ from him as to the best rendering of a word, but always he seems to have thought over the solution of the difficulty and found a way out of it. Thus tvvoia of a patriot is better rendered, we think, by "partiality" than "enthu- siasm," and tieivbe of Thucydides is more Qofiipbq than "clever." We do not hold with such a phrase as " when he elects to write." It is surely recent, Transatlantic, undesirable English. Despite his pedantry, Dionysius has some or the supreme Greek talent for seeing the right thing. A criticism of his on Thucydides we saw echoed the other day by the latest of critics on the newest of Greek histories. " Of all literary virtues, the most impor- tant is propriety." We fancy moderns without the Greek will imagine that this refers to what is called " unexceptionable morality," whereas " propriety " is only TO rrpkirov. The whole discussion on Thucy- dides is interesting, more arresting than we had thought it ; but we still lack an adequate reason for his extraordinary style a better reason than that he invented it to give Greek grammarians a living. There is something pleasing in the serene spectacle of Dionysius criticizing his Plato and Demosthenes in letters to a friend in an age when