Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 | Page 2

Let two
instances here suffice: When the Roman Church, about the middle of
the eleventh century, was endeavouring to insure the celibacy of its
priesthood, the married clergy, who braved its censures and contemned
its authority, became known as Nicolaites; which name, grave writers
assure us, was given them in consequence of the active share Pope
Nicholas II. had taken in punishing their contumacy and effecting their
suppression. The notion that any sect or class of religionists should
have borrowed its name from that of its most zealous opponent and
indefatigable persecutor, is worthy only of those critics, so severely
reprehended by Quintilian, who professed to discover the etymon of the
Latin word lucus, a grove, in the substantive lux, light; and vindicated
the derivation on the ground, that in groves darkness usually prevailed.
The familiar expression of lucus à non lucendo, owes its birth to this
striking manifestation of critical sagacity.
Again: a certain portion of the eastern and southern coast of England
was, in early times, denominated 'the Saxon Shore'--Littus
Saxonicum--and was, during the days of Roman supremacy, under the
government of a military court enjoying the appellative of Comes
Littoris Saxonici. Acute historical critics inform us, that this tract was
so denominated in consequence of its being open to the aggressions of
the Saxons; that, in short, it received its name from its occasional
invaders, and not from its permanent inhabitants. The absurdity of this
explanation is the greater, inasmuch as, on the other side of the Channel,
there was a large district bearing precisely the same name, and settled
entirely by adventurers, Saxon in birth or by descent. This, one would
have thought, would have suggested to our English antiquaries a more
probable explanation of the name than that they adopted. The people of
Genoa have, or had, in speaking, a peculiar way of clipping or cutting
short their syllables. Their Italian has never been considered pure. You
must not go to maritime towns for purity of language, especially to
such as have been long and extensively engaged in commercial pursuits.
Labat, however, gives a special and peculiar reason for the fashion of
mutilated speech in which, he declares, the Genoese indulge, telling us
they call their superb city Gena, and not Genoa. He refers their

'chopping' pronunciation to their habitual economy--an economy
distinctly traceable to their mercantile habits. 'Telle est leur économie,'
he says, 'ils rognent tout jusqu'aux paroles.'
The old English law-writer, Bracton, desiring to account for the ancient
doctrine of English law, that inheritances shall lineally descend, and
never lineally ascend, finds a reason in the fact, that a bowl being
trundled, runs down a hill and never up a hill; and Littleton, the first
great writer on English real property-law, traces the origin of the phrase
'hotchpot'--a familiar legal term--to the archaic denomination of a
pudding, in our English tongue. 'It seemeth,'he says, 'that this word,
hotchpot, is in English a pudding; for in this pudding is not commonly
put one thing alone, and therefore it behoveth, in this case, to put the
lands given in frank-marriage,' &c. Erasmus used to say of lawyers,
that of ignorant people, they were the most learned. Questionless they
are not always sound logicians. When the clown in Hamlet disserts so
learnedly on 'crowner's quest-law,' he is only parodying, and that
closely, a scarcely less ludicrous judgment which had actually been
pronounced, not long before, in the Court of Queen's Bench. Dr Clarke,
the traveller, tells an amusing story to the purpose. According to him,
the Turkish lawyers recognise as an offence what they style 'homicide
by an intermediate cause'--an instance of which offence our traveller
details in these words: 'A young man, desperately in love with a girl of
Stanchio--the ancient Cos, the birthplace of Hippocrates and Apelles,
the lovely isle renowned for its lettuces and turpentine--eagerly sought
to marry her. But his proposals were rejected. In consequence, he
destroyed himself by poison. The Turkish police arrested the father of
the obdurate fairy, and tried him for culpable homicide. "If the
accused," they argued, with becoming gravity, "had not had a daughter,
the deceased would not have fallen in love; consequently, he would not
have been disappointed; consequently, he would not have died: but he
(the accused) had a daughter, and the deceased had fallen in love," &c.
&c. Upon all these counts he was called upon to pay the price of the
young man's life; and this, being eighty piastres, was accordingly
exacted.' When the amiable and gentle John Evelyn was in the
Netherlands, a woman was pointed out to him who had had twenty-five
husbands, and was then a widow; 'yet it could not be proved,' he says,

that 'she had made any of her husbands away, though the suspicion had
brought her several times