If he were a lover also of wine, he would of course pay his addresses to a lady with a long name, What a train of admirers would the Wilhelmina's and the Theodosia's have in these our days! Nævia sex cyathis, septem Justina bibatur; Et, quia nulla venit, tu mihi, Somne, veni. Some of the commentators, on the word Somne, tell us it was the custom of the poets to invoke sleep, and instance Ovid and Statius. What of it? there seems no particular point in that, or at least a very blunt one. The Delphin editor says, that to propitiate sleep, they tossed off the last cup to Mercury, as the god presiding over that blessing, which Sancho characterises as wrapping a man round like a blanket. But this was not a case of the last cup. The meaning of the poet seems to be, that having no mistress, he will regulate his drinking to five cups, the number of letters in the word Somne. By this he purposes to declare his moderation; the number being exactly a mean between the shortest and the tallest lady toasted by the rest of the party. It may also be considered, that if any one at table were to attempt to force him beyond his stint, and to drink the president of sleep by his proper and longer name of Mercurius, he would tell them plainly, he had rather go to sleep than drink any more. But not of his opinion was a modern humourist. In a company where the guests took it into their heads to revive this ancient custom, he, like Martial, having no lady to toast, declared that he would drink to Somnus in the nominative case; and filled six successive bumpers accordingly. Eubulus, in Athenæus, screws down the jollity of the wise man at the sticking-place of three glasses: Τρεῖς γὰρ μόνους κρατῆρας ἐγκεραννύω A Greek proverb fixes, not the stirrup cup, but the dozing cup, at either three or five: Η πέντε πῖν, ἤ τρία πίν, ἢ μὴ τέτταρα. For this alternative, and the accompanying prohibition, the long established good luck of odd, and the bad luck of even numbers, will account. Plutarch also discusses this important question. MISCELLANEOUS ETYMOLOGIES, AND PECULIAR MEANINGS AND USAGES OF WORDS. THE word prologium is defined in Festus, principium, proloquium. Pacuvius is given as the authority. "Quid est? nam me examinasti prologio tuo.” Προλόγιον is the diminutive of προλό yos, as ódiov of todos. Prologium has been supposed to be the argument, prologus the spoken introduction to a play: but the fact seems to be, that the former was the old word, indicating brevity, in time superseded by the latter, generally applied without reference to length. We use the words Prologue and Preface as the Romans did, in modern English: the former for a poetical, the latter for a prose introduction: but Shakspeare and his contemporaries used Prologue in both senses, and for introduction in general. The surname of Brutus, which signifies senseless or void of reason, was first assumed by the deliverer of Rome, as a shift of policy to cover his patriotic design. Barbatus signifies bearded. It afterwards obtained the secondary meaning of simple or silly, in reference to the dotage of grey-beards; and the less offensive sense of old-fashioned, as when the kings who governed Rome, as well as their people, wore their beards unshorn. "Incredibile prope dictu est," says Freigius in the life of Ramus," sed tamen verum, et editis libris proditum, in Parisiensi Academia doctores extitisse, qui mordicus tuerentur ac defenderent, Ego amat, tam commodam orationem esse, quam Ego amo, ad eamque pertinaciam comprimendam consilio publico opus fuisse." The Sorbonne and the Faculty of Theology at Oxford joined in levelling their ecclesiastical thunders against such a grammatical heresy. This absurdity, as a general doctrine, took its rise from two passages in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, in the prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi, where the Deity is made to speak of himself by the pronoun of the first person singular, joined to the verb of the third singular, and by the pronoun of the first person singular with a noun in the plural number in apposition. Our translators have wisely not attempted to inoculate this Hebraism on English idiom, if indeed it be a Hebraism. May it not be considered as a usage confined to that Being in which all persons and all things are comprehended, and in reference to human powers of discrimination, confounded? On grounds somewhat similar, the compilers of our Liturgy have chosen to commence the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father, which art in heaven," rather than who: a point on which there has been much controversy; but, in my opinion, the rendering of the Liturgy has sound judgment on its side. Ego addet, the Latin translation of the Hebrew, may be reduced to common grammar by considering the phrase as strongly elliptical: Ego sum ille; then, qui addam, or, qui addet, will be rendered equally amenable to general syntax. Domini ego is rather more stub born, and hardly borne out by the resource of an ellipse: but obscurity on an incomprehensible subject is not only excusable, but a mode of the sublime; and however difficult, or even impossible it may be to construe the expression without a solecism, its spirit seems tantamount to the assertion, "There are none other gods but me." The phrase, verba dare, is used in a peculiar sense, refining on the first and obvious bearing of the words, as in the following line of Ovid : Verba dat omnis amor, reperitque alimenta morando. The following passage of Ausonius refers to the historical origin of the epithet tacitæ, applied by Virgil to Amyclæ. It reminds one of the fable and the proverb about calling wolf. The city had been so often and so causelessly alarmed by the cry, "The enemy is coming," that any such announcement was constituted a high crime and misdemeanor. The enemy did come; the law was duly obeyed, and the city taken: Ac velut Ebaliis habites taciturnus Amyclis, In the second line Harpocrates is meant, the name being etymological, from σıyάw and àÿ. He is mentioned as a god in connection with Isis and Osiris, and was worshipped among the Lares, to inculcate the moral, that family secrets ought to be kept. Macrobius, on Scipio's Dream, lib. ii. cap. 1., endeavours to explain the doctrine of Pythagoras |