he showed that he spoke of only one person of the name; and that person Sir A. Alison should have searched for among his historical recollections, before he affixed to the whole race the brand of proverbial bloodthirstiness.

This misquotation and mistranslation of foreign words and idioms are not confined to the living languages: the Latin also comes in for a share of them. Southey, in one of his Letters, speaking of the gap which might be found in his posthumous works, has these words :

"I have planned more poems and more histories; so that, whenever I am removed to another state of existence, there will be some valde lacrymabile hiatus in some of my posthumous works."-Life and Correspondence.

In this passage Southey not only misquotes the Latin words, a not very creditable thing for one who is perpetually harping on his retentive memory; but in doing so he gives us a glaring sample of ungrammatical Latinity—a proceeding which speaks but little for his boasted classical attainments. It is obvious that, in the above quotation, he had in his eye Virgil's well-known hiatus valde deflendus; but his memory failing him as to the exact words, he supplies the loss by coupling an adjective of the neuter gender with a noun of the masculine.

Mrs. Sigourney's Latin is on a par with her French. Alluding to the equestrian statue of the Porte St. Denis, she says, "The only inscrip

tion upon it is 'Ludovico Magno;' adds with reference to Versailles :

and then she

"Here 'Ludovico Magno,' as he was fond of being styled, is multiplied by the pencil in the most imposing forms.”

These quotations from foreign languages are dangerous things in the hands of the uninitiated. For one instance in which the writer shows his dexterity in using them, hundreds might be quoted in which he has nothing to show but the folly of one who has been playing with edged tools. It is plain that Mrs. Sigourney was not aware that "Ludovico Magno" means " To Louis the Great." Otherwise, instead of the barbarism, "Ludovico Magno is multipled," she would have said: "Ludovicus Magnus is multiplied."

From Mrs. Sigourney I shall pass to her illustrious countryman, Benjamin Franklin. He He says in one of his letters:

"We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly called an ephemerae."

"But what will fame be to an ephemerae who no longer exists ? "

Had Franklin said that he had been shown the skeleton of an asses, or that an asses no longer exists, he would not have uttered a more glaring absurdity. And yet this great philosopher, who could not distinguish the singular from the plural in Latin, had the courage and the patriotism,

K

when speaking of his "dear country," to exclaim in that language: "Esto perpetua!"

Hallam, in his "Constitutional History of England," under date of 1687, mentions an address from the benchers of the Middle Temple to James II., in which he makes them say that they are resolved to defend with their lives and fortunes the divine maxim, à Deo rex, à lege rex.

The benchers of the Middle Temple, in 1687, were the strenuous assertors of prerogative, holding the opinion that, as the kingly office derives its authority from God, so the law derives its authority from the king. Their favourite maxim was à Deo rex, à rege lex, the reverse of which expresses the political creed of those who think that the kingly office derives its authority both from God and from the law. To understand how Hallam put one maxim instead of the other in the mouth of the benchers, we must suppose him to have been weighing the merits of the more liberal sentiment, and while in this mood to have let it slip from his pen in that form. The odd thing is that he should have preserved it in this preposterous form (preposterous' as regards the party to whom it is ascribed) through three editions of his work.

Sir Bulwer Lytton has the following:

"The Charter-House, Winchester, King's College, were all founded pro 'pauperes et indigentes scholares,' for poor and indigent scholars."-England and the English.

At first I was disposed to take the Latin words for a bona fide quotation; but the palpable blunder of the accusative case after the preposition "pro," precluded such a supposition. Sir Bulwer is descanting on the condition of the English universities; and he must have intended this gibberish as a sample of the "little Latin," which he says is acquired in our public schools. Sir A. Alison, in two places, employs the word phantasmagoria" as a plural :—

"He has not confined himself to English story, strikingly as its moving phantasmagoria come forth from his magic hand."Essay on the Historical Romance.

"Ainsworth, whose talents for description and the drawing of the horrible have led him to make his novels often little more than pictorial phantasmagoria."—Ibid.

The following are from Jerdan's "Autobiography:"

"Henry Erskine and Lady Wallace, and all the racy jests of their gay pastime, are as if they never had been: Sic transit facetia mundi."

Surely, Mr. Jerdan, whose reminiscences are so vivid upon other points, cannot have forgotten his Latin to the extent here displayed. If he bore in mind that there is such a phrase as Sic transit gloria mundi, he should have remembered that a parody of it, with the substitution of the plural facetiæ" for the singular "gloria," is alike opposed to grammar and sense, unless a corresponding change be made in the verb

transit.

"Her contributions to the Literary Gazette were a grateful reward; but I may, I am sure, dip, without offence, into less public litera scripta, to show how much the office of kindly, yet impartial, criticism is valued by the most deserving.

"Of the other luminary I have named, I have not so much to say, in consequence of such litera scripta of his as have escaped my confusion and destruction of MSS. being marked 'private.'"

In these sentences the writer uses the noun singular, litera, as a plural. According to him, therefore, the correct singular is literum! But the recollection of the proverb, "Litera scripta manet," should have opened his eyes to this absurdity. And yet here is a gentleman who has presided over the province of criticism for a quarter of a century, and who boasts of having conferred distinction and fame upon most of the writers that have adorned our literature during that period.

Looking at the numerous blunders, both in English and French, which have been cited from Isaac D'Israeli, the reader will not be surprised to learn that Latin and Greek come in for a share of ill-usage at his hands. Indeed, it is a question with me whether he possessed any knowledge whatsoever of those languages. He quotes from them occasionally, as any one may do who will be at the trouble of copying; but when he has to deal with expressions adopted or derived from them, the manner in which he couples with such expressions adjectives of the same import, plainly