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the names of persons which have afterwards become names of things, from nomina appellativa have become nomina realia. Let me without confining myself to those of more recent introduction endeavour to enumerate as many as I can remember of the words which have by this method been introduced into our language. To begin with mythical antiquity-the Chimæra has given us chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,' and Dædalus 'dedal,' if this word may on Spenser's and Shelley's authority be allowed. Gordius, a Phrygian king who tied that famous 'gordian' knot which Alexander cut, will supply a natural transition from mythical to historical. Here Mausolus, a king of Caria, has left us 'mausoleum,' Academus 'academy,' Epicurus 'epicure,' Philip of Macedon a 'philippic,' being such a discourse as Demosthenes once hurled against him, the enemy of Greece, and Cicero 'cicerone;' Mithridates, who had made himself poison-proof, gave us the now forgotten word, 'mithridate,' for antidote; as from Hippocrates we derived 'hipocras,' a word often occurring in our early poets, being a wine supposed to be mingled according to his receipt. A grammar used to be called a 'donat' or 'donet' (Chaucer) from Donatus, a famous grammarian. Lazarus, perhaps an actual person, has given us 'lazar' and 'lazaretto;' and Simon Magus 'simony;' Mahomet a 'maumet' or 'mammet,' that is, an idol; and 'dunce' is from Duns Scotus. To come to more modern times, and not pausing at Ben Jonson's 'Chaucerisms,' Bishop Hall's 'Scoganisms' from Scogan, Edward the Fourth's Jester, or his 'aretinisms,'

from an infamous Italian named Aretine, these being probably not intended even by their authors to endure, a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the 'pasquil' or 'pasquinade;' Colonel Negus in Queen Anne's time first mixed the beverage which goes by his name; Lord Orrery was the first for whom an 'orrery' was made; and Lord Spencer first wore, or at least first brought into fashion, a 'spencer.' Dahl, a Swede, introIduced the cultivation of the 'dahlia.' The 'tontine' was conceived by an Italian, Tonti; and another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena of galvanism. 'Martinet,' 'mackintosh,' 'doyly,' 'to macadamize,' 'to burke,' are all names of persons or formed from persons, and then transferred to things, on the score of some connexion existing between the one and other.*

Again the names of popular characters in literature, such as have taken strong hold on the national mind, give birth to a number of new words. Thus from Homer we have 'mentor' for a monitor; 'stentorian'.

* Several of these we have in common with the French; of their own they have 'sardanapalisme,' any piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus; while for 'lambiner,' to dally or loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, whom his adversaries accused of sluggish movement, and wearisome diffuseness in style. The name of an unpopular French minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unnecessary expences in the state, was applied to whatever was cheap and, as was implied, unduly economical. It has survived in the black outline portrait which is now called a 'silhouette.' (Sismondi, Histoire des Français, t. 19, p. 94, 95.) I need hardly add' guillotine.'

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for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as with all of Hector's nobleness there is a certain amount of big talking about him, 'to hector' from him;* while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful ministry out of which his name has past into the words 'to pandar' and 'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomont, a blustering and boasting hero of Boiardo, and adopted by Ariosto; 'thrasonical' from Thraso, the braggart in the Latin comedies. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic;' Swift, 'liliputian;' to Moliere the French language owes 'tartuffe,' and tartufferie.' 'Reynard,' too, which with us is a duplicate for fox, while in the French 'renard' has quite excluded the older 'volpils,' was originally not the name of a kind, but the proper name of the fox hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous beast-epic of the middle ages, Reineke Fuchs; the immense popularity of which we gather from many evidences, from none more clearly than from this. Chanticleer' and 'Bruin' are in like manner the proper names of the cock and bear in the same poem; these have not made fortune to the same extent of actually putting out in any language the names which before existed, but still have become quite familiar to us all.

We must not count as new words properly so called, although they may delay us for a minute, those comic words, most often comic combinations formed at will, and sometimes of enormous length, in which, as plays

* See Mure's Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 350.

and displays of power, great writers ancient and modern have delighted. These for the most part are meant to do service for the moment, and then to pass away. The inventors of them had themselves no intention of fastening them permanently on the language. Thus among the Greeks Aristophanes coined μελλονι Kláw, to loiter like Nicias, with allusion to the delays with which this prudent commander sought to put off the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with not a few other familiar to every scholar. The humour of them sometimes consists in their enormous length, as in the dupπτολεμοπηδησίστρατος of Eupolis; sometimes in their mingled observance and transgression of the laws of the language, as in the 'oculissimus' of Plautus, a comic superlative of 'oculus;' as in the 'dosones,' dabones,' which in Greek and in medieval Latin were names given to those who were ever promising, ever saying, "I will give," but never performing their promise. Plautus with his exuberant wit, and out of his mas tery and command of the Latin language, will compose four or five lines consisting entirely of comic combinations thrown off for the occasion.* Of the same character is Butler's 'cynarctomachy,' or battle of a dog and bear. Nor do I suppose that Fuller, when he used to avunculize,' to imitate or follow in the steps of one's uncle, or Cowper, when he suggested 'extraforaneous' for 'out of doors,' in the least intended them as lasting additions to the language.

Sometimes a word springs up in a very curious way;

* Persa, 4, 6, 20-23.

ORIGIN OF CHOUSE.

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here is one, not having, I suppose, any great currency except among schoolboys; yet being no invention of theirs, but a genuine English word, though of somewhat late birth in the language, I mean 'to chouse.' It has a singular origin. The word is, as I have mentioned already, a Turkish one, and signifies 'interpreter.' Such an interpreter or 'chiaous' (written 'chaus' in Hakluyt, 'chiaus' in Massinger), being attached to the Turkish embassy in England, committed in the year 1609 an enormous fraud on the Turkish and Persian merchants resident in London. He succeeded in cheating them of a sum amounting to £4000

-a sum very much greater at that day than at the present. From the vast dimensions of the fraud, and the notoriety which attended it, any one who cheated or defrauded was said 'to chiaous,' 'chause,' or 'chouse;' to do, that is, as this 'chiaous' had done.*

There is another very fruitful source of new words in a language, or perhaps rather another way in which it increases its vocabulary, for a question might arise whether the words thus produced ought to be called new. I mean through the splitting of single words into two or even more. The impulse and suggestion to this is in general first given by varieties in spelling;

* It is curious that a correspondent of Skinner (Etymologia, 1671) although quite ignorant of this story, had suggested that 'chouse' might be thus connected with the Turkish 'chiaus.' I believe that Gifford, in his edition of Ben Jonson, has the honour of having first cleared up the matter. To this he was naturally led by a passage in the Alchemist, Act i. Sc. 1, which put him on the right track for the discovery.