he had already translated. He has also translated Maria of Maria; Maximina; and Sister Saint Sulpice, from the Spanish of Valdés, and also various works from the German, French and Italian. In 1896 he edited a multi-variorum edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This work contained translations in English, French, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Danish, all carefully and studiously collected. THE CELTS. The ancient Britons are usually called Celts or Kelts, but the ancient Kelts probably never came into Britor at all. Their peculiar skulls are not found there either in river-bed or barrow. Northern Europe was represented by the ancients as occupied by the Celts - the Western people and the Scythians - the Eastern people. The Rhine came to be considered the eastern frontier of the Celts, and Celtica, in the time of Cæsar, was called Gaul. The British Islands were never included in the term, and were distinctly stated to be outside of and "opposite" Celtica. Cæsar refers to the Celtæ as a definite race occupying central France. Wherefore the term "Kelt" should be applied to the Britons, not as a distinct race, but as a people speaking one of the European languages which philologists have merely for convenience chosen to call Keltic. The Britons of pre-Roman and pre-Saxon times were not Kelts because they spoke Keltic, any more than an Indian is "Anglo-Saxon" because he speaks English. If language were a test of race, it would be quite allowable to class the Irish of Dublin and the Shetland folk as English.— Mistakes We Make. GRASS WIDOWS. A grass widow is generally regarded as a woman whose husband has gone to grass. Some writers try to find an explanation in the French grace, a widow by courtesy. As it is grass in the Scandinavian languages, others have conjectured that it comes from the word gradig (our greedy), signifying a woman who longs for her husband. Here one may have a wide choice. It is generally supposed that the word great in the expression "they are great friends" is almost slang, like "thick." But it is commonly used by early writers, often alone. Pepys' in his "Diary," says: "Lady Castlemare is still great with the king." Bishop Hall says: "Moses was great with God." It has been derived in this connection from the Irish gradh, dear; from the Anglo-Saxon grétan, to know familiarly, our greet. It is a mistake to suppose that the broad, short, crooked sword commonly used in the Middle Ages, and called hanger, was so called because it hung by the side. The name is a corruption of the Arabic and Persian khanjar, a sabre. In the French it also appears with the article al alfange. Neither has the word hangnail anything to do with hang; it is in Old English agnel, and may derive from ange, pain. Husband is not a house band, but simply the house master, band in the compound being the teller or owner. -Mistakes We Make. OMETT, ALFRED, an English poet; born at Camberwell Grove, Surrey, May 20, 1811; died at London, November 12, 1887. He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1829, but left without taking a degree. He traveled in America for a couple of years, returning to England in 1836, and subsequently resided in Italy and Switzerland. In 1841 he was called to the bar at Middle Temple. In 1842 he went to New Zealand, where he had purchased a large tract of land, being one of the earliest emigrants to those islands, where he resided until 1871; holding during those years several important civil positions. He is understood to be the hero of Robert Browning's poem Waring. He published several volumes of poems; the earliest appearing in 1832; then appeared Venice (1839). After his return from New Zealand he published Ranold and Amohia (1872), a poem descriptive of the scenery of New Zealand and its aboriginal inhabitants. In 1877 he made a collection of his poems under the title of Flotsam and Jetsam, Rhymes Old and New. His Christmas Hymn, the most admired of all his poems, appeared originally in Blackwood's Magazine in 1837. A CHRISTMAS HYMN. I. It was the calm and silent night! And now was queen of land and sea. Held undisturbed their ancient reign Centuries ago. II. 'Twas in the calm and silent night, His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; A paltry province far away, In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago? III. Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor: Fallen through a half-shut stable door V. It is the calm and silent night! A thousand bells ring out, and throw The darkness - charmed and holy now! The night that erst no name had wornTo it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful Prince of earth and Heaven, D ONALDSON, JOHN WILLIAM, an English phil ologist; born at London in 1811; died there February 10, 1861. He was educated at the University of London and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1834, becoming a Fellow in 1835. He subsequently took Orders and became Head Master of the Grammar School of Bury St. Edmunds. He resigned this position in 1855, and removed to Cambridge, where he occupied himself as a private tutor and in writing. In 1856 he was ap pointed one of the Classical Examiners of the University of London. His earliest work, The Theatre of the Greeks (1837) is still used as a college text-book. In 1839 he published The New Cratylus, being an effort to develop the principles of comparative philology as laid down by Bopp, Grimm, Pott, and other German scholars. In his Varronianus (1844) he attempted to do for Latin philology what he had done for Greek in The New Cratylus. In 1854 he published Jashar, an endeavor to restore the lost Hebrew book of that name. He also put forth grammars of the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages. The New Cratylus is his most important work ETYMOLOGICAL STUDIES. Many people entertain strong prejudices against everything in the shape of etymology — prejudices which would be not only just but inevitable if etymology, or the doctrine of words, were such a thing as they suppose it to be. They consider it as amounting to nothing more than the derivation of words from one another; and as the process is generally confined to a perception of some prima facie resemblance of two words, it seldom rises beyond the dignity of an ingenious pun; and, though amusing enough at times, is certainly neither an instruction nor an elevated employment of a rational being. The only real etymology is that which attempts a resolution of the words of a language into their ultimate elements by a comparison of the greatest possible number of languages of the same family. Derivation is, strictly speaking, inapplicable farther than as pointing out the manner in which certain constant syllables, belonging to the pronominal or formative element of inflected languages, may be prefixed or subjoined to a given form for the expression of some secondary or dependent relation. In order to arrive at the primary origin of a word or a form, we must get beyond the narrow limits of a single VOL. VIII.-14 |