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then becoming the Spanish filibote, or pirate-ship, next getting naturalised on the Vly, a small river in Holland, and then invading Cuba under Lopez in 1851, and in the form of filibosters appearing as the designation of his followers.

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In all countries there is a large literature clustering around the name, history, character, and qualities of his Satanic Majesty, the Prince of Darkness. One of his synonyms is Old Harry, which, Mr. Oliphant says, may be a corruption of the Scandinavian Hari, one of the names of Odin, or another form of Old Hairy. Old Nick is derived from the name of the river-god Nick or Neck, though Butler, the author of 'Hudibras,' says that it comes from Niccolo Machiavelli! And Old Scratch must be taken to be derived from Scrat, a house or wood demon of the ancient North.' M. Rozan is strong on all diabolical points; 'diable à quatre,' he says, has come down from the old Miracle Plays in which, at first, one demon was enough; but enterprising managers soon added a second, and finally some Irving or Harris of the day crowded his stage with four devils. Sainte-Beuve calls Henry IV. 'ce diableà-quatre.' The French kings were choice in their oaths; each had his own. We remember how, in Quentin Durward,' Louis XI. iterates Pasques Dieu!' even to weariness. Henry IV. took a certain portion of the person of St. Gris under his special protection. Who St. Gris was appears very doubtful: perhaps St. Francis, founder of the Grey Friars; perhaps an imaginary saint invented as the patron of drunkards, as St. Lâche was invented for the lazy, and Ste. Nitouche for hypocrites. Had Henry IV. been an Italian, he would have invoked the corpo di Bacco rather than the ventre St. Gris. To swear by some portion of the Deity or of a saint was the fashionable and æsthetic thing in the Middle Ages; true, our forefathers said pardy, which was par Dieu, but they also said tudieu (which is tête-Dieu), corbleu (corps-de-Dieu), ventre-bleu (ventre de Dieu), sam-bleu (sang-de-Dieu), and morbleu (morte-de-Dieu). So in English they said Zounds (God's wounds), 'Sblood and 'Sdeath (God's blood and God's death). Henry IV. of France is said to have introduced the curious oath jarnicoton! into polite conversation; he had been in the habit of saying je renie Dieu (I deny or blaspheme God); his confessor, the Father Coton, a Jesuit, who refused a cardinal's hat, expostulated with the royal penitent and begged him rather to use the words je renie Coton; hence arose the new expression. M. Rozan tells this story, and many others, with a delightful touch of

humour, which, strange to say, is totally wanting in the American books. The transition of Mort-Dieu into Morbleu is seen in the following epitaph by Benserade, a wit and poet much esteemed in his own day at the court of Louis XIV., but whose works have long been justly consigned to oblivion; the exception may be this stanza :

Ci-gît, oui, par la morbieu !
Le Cardinal de Richelieu;
Et ce qui cause mon ennui,
Ma pension gît avec lui.

M. Rozan also gives another short poem called the 'Epithéton des quatre rois:'

Quand la Pasque Dieu decéda,
Le Bon Jour Dieu lui succéda;

Au Bon Jour Dieu deffunct et mort
Succéda le Dyable m'emport.

Luy decéda, nous voyons comme

Nous duist la Foi de Gentil Homme.

(Louis XI.)
(Charles VIII.)

(Louis XII.)

(François I.)

(The word duist is part of duire, an obsolete verb, meaning to suit.) We say deuce as a mild form of devil, and the French say diantre as a mild form of diable. But not even M. Rozan can explain why the lovely freshness of early girlhood is called the beauté de diable. One would naturally suppose that the innocence of youth was utterly unlike any beauty which the author of evil could impart, and to him one would rather attribute the charms, if any, of rouged cheeks, dyed hair, stuffed bust, and self-possessed manners. There is an old French proverb, Le diable était beau quand il était jeune, which may be in some way connected with this curious phrase, but I hardly see in what the link can consist.

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One of Mr. Oliphant's Queer Questions' is this: What was the origin of the expression "Printer's Devil"?' He answers it thus: Aldus Manutius (1440-1515), the celebrated Venetian printer and publisher, had a small black slave whom the superstitious believed to be an emissary of Satan. To satisfy the curious, one day he said publicly in church, "I, Aldus Manutius, printer to the Holy Church, have this day made public exposure of the printer's devil. All who think he is not flesh and blood, come and pinch him." Hence in Venice arose the somewhat curious sobriquet "Printer's Devil."

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I must remark, en passant, that 1549 is more probably the year of the birth of Aldus Manutius the elder. If Venice saw the

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first Printer's Devil, it also saw the first modern newspaper, which was published in that city; a 'gazetta,' a small coin worth one farthing, was paid for the privilege of reading it. The name of this ancestor of journals was the Notizie Scritte,' and it appeared about 1536. The 'Gazette de France' came into being in 1631, but had a forerunner, the 'Mercure Français;' the 'London Gazette' dates from 1666, and followed on the 'Public Intelligencer.' The 'Acta Diurna' of Rome were first published about the year B.C. 623 (Mr. Southwick says 691). They were hung up in some public place, and must have been rallying points for the quidnuncs of the city. They contained the political speeches of the day, the law reports, police news, lists of births, marriages, divorces, and funerals, and advertisements of the public games. Private persons made copies of these 'Acts' to send to their friends in the country. We can hardly call such a news-sheet by the name of newspaper, but there is in existence a weekly journal of great antiquity. It is said to have first appeared in A.D. 911, and is called the 'King Pau,' or chief-sheet, and is published at Pekin. In its early days it was irregular in its dates of publication, but in 1351 became hebdomadal, and in 1882 assumed a new shape. Three editions are published in the day, containing matter of different kinds, and are called respectively the 'Business,' the 'Official,' and the 'Country' sheets. Their combined circulation amounts to about fourteen thousand. M. Rozan, in one of his sly notes, quotes Eugène Hattins' opinion that 'gazette' as the name of a newspaper is derived from gazza, a magpie.

Strangely as names of things have come down to us, even more strangely have come names of persons. The Wandering Jew is one of those mysterious characters which never fail to interest us in whatever form they present themselves-history, romance, or opera. He is said to have been a Jew named Ahasuerus, who refused to allow the Lord Jesus Christ to rest before his house when carrying His cross to Calvary. In 1644, Michob Ader, a very extraordinary person, appeared in Paris and said that he was the Wandering Jew, having been usher of the Court of Judgment of Jerusalem when sentence was given against the Messiah. He was an astoundingly well-informed man, and no one convicted him of the imposture which all knew him to be practising. Eugène Sue founded, as is well known, a powerful romance on the story of 'Le Juif errant.'

John O'Groat is reported by Mr. Southwick to have been a

Dutchman who settled himself at the most northern point of Scotland in the reign of James IV. He had nine sons who strove for precedency, and to settle their dispute he made nine doors. to his house so that none should go out or come in before another.

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The Roi d'Yvetot' is another personage either historical or mythological, perhaps both, for there is no distinct line of demarcation between the two. M. Rozan says that the king and the kingdom of Yvetot have been matter of discussion since the time of Louis XI.; that François I. called the lady of that place 'reine;' that Henry IV. said, 'If I lose the kingdom of France, I will at least be king of Yvetot;' that Béranger made a pretty song on this subject; therefore certainly there must have been such a monarch. The story runs that the Lord of Yvetot, Walter or Gautier, was much loved by Clotaire, but whispering tongues can poison truth,' and they succeeded in depriving Walter of the affection of his sovereign. He was compelled to fly; but, having provided himself with letters from the Pope, he returned to Soissons, hoping to recover the good graces of his master. He presented himself before the king in the cathedral on Good Friday. Clotaire, forgetting day, place, and example, drew his sword and plunged it into the heart of Walter. Then remorse and the Pope, St. Agapet, together forced Clotaire to expiate his crime by raising the lordship of Yvetot into a kingdom for the heirs and successors of Walter. I may supplement M. Rozan's information by mentioning that the title 'roi' of Yvetot was not used until the fourteenth century, whereas Clotaire lived in the sixth; it was officially recognised by Louis XI., François I., and Henri II. When the estate passed by marriage into the Du Bellay family, the title 'roi' gave place to that of 'prince souverain,' which also died out in course of time.

Another Middle-Age expression is 'A Roland for an Oliver.' These two heroes were paladins of Charlemagne, who fought in single combat during five consecutive days on an island in the Rhine, without either gaining the least advantage. Again, who was Rodomont, who has bequeathed us his name in rodomontade? We are told by M. Rozan that he was a king of Algiers, brave, but haughty and insolent, whom the Count of Boiardo in Orlando Innamorato' and Ariosto in Orlando Furioso' have made popular. A man who talks much of his own daring is said in French 'faire le Rodomont;' and we English have made a substantive which

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we use in common parlance, knowing little of the hero of romance who uttered the first rodomontade.

- Roger Bontemps is a character often alluded to, but, I venture to say, little known in England. Ménage, as quoted by M. Rozan, thinks that the expression has come from some one named Roger who diverted himself, or, in fact, gave himself a good time.' This derivation is too simple and self-apparent to be quite satisfying, so we will seek for another. Jean Baillet, Bishop of Auxerre, had a secretary who was both priest and poet, whose name was Roger de Collerye, and who was surnamed from his merry disposition Bontemps. The partisans of this derivation quote a ballad which begins thus:

Ce qui m'aymera si me suyve!

Je suis Bon Temps, vous le voyez, &c.

On the other hand, the reverend fathers of Trévoux have exhumed a lord of the house of Bontemps which was very illustrious in the country of Vivarais, in Languedoc then, now in the department of the Ardèche; this family of Bontemps always gave the name of Roger to its senior member (a somewhat curious fact, as death must occasionally have carried off the chief; perhaps every Bontemps was christened Roger as every Count Reuss is christened Henry). There arose a Roger Bontemps whose gay humour, hospitality, valour, and other mediæval virtues were so well known that his name was the synonym for a good fellow, and afterwards became corrupted into meaning an idle and dissipated scamp. M. Rozan, with his knowing smile, adds that Le Duchat and Pasquier found yet other origins for the term; the one asserting that it comes from réjoui bontemps, the other deriving it from rouge bontemps, because, says Pasquier, red colour in the face denotes a certain quality of gaiety and light-heartedness.' 'The real Simon Pure' is a gentleman of whom we in these degenerate days know too little. Here is Mr. Oliphant's history of him: He was a Pennsylvanian Quaker in Mrs. Centlivre's comedy, "A Bold Stroke for a Wife." This worthy person "being about to visit London to attend the quarterly meeting of his sect, his friend, Aminadab Holdfast, sends a letter of recommendation and introduction to another Quaker, Obadiah Prim, a rigid and stern man, who is guardian of Anne Lovely, a young lady worth 30,000l. Colonel Feignwell, another character in the same play, who is enamoured of Miss Lovely and her handsome fortune, availing himself of an accidental discovery of Holdfast's letter and

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