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much information equally curious and valuable is supplied. Special attention is rewarded by what is said concerning the manner in which after the Norman Conquest k, till then a supplemental symbol, occasionally used instead of c for the guttural sound, was substituted for c before e, i, and y, and later before n words, such as knight, knave, &c. It is curious to note that while the unstressed suffix ick in words such as traffick, musick, is now changed to ic, when a suffix in e or i follows, as in trafficker, the deleted k reappears. It is obviously impossible to condense into a space capable of being given in our columns information that has already been compressed as closely as was reconcilable with the preservation of lucidity. It is with the j words, however, that the part is principally concerned. Very many of these belong, as is pointed out, to the colloquial rather than to the literary stratum of the language. Such words are jig, job, jog, jolt, jiffy, jigger, jumble, and the like, many of which are onomatopoeic. Jewel, in its various senses, is the first word treated wholly in the part. Many quotations from Shakespeare are given. We should like to have seen the lines of Helena in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (IV. i.),

And I haue found Demetrius, like a iewell, Mine owne, and not mine owne, since some dispute has been raised as to its exact meaning. The matter has, however, more concern for commentators than for philologists. Whence Jew's harps, first called Jew's trumps, got their name is doubtful. Reference is, however, made to the article in N. & Q.' by the REV. C. B. MOUNT, 8th S. xii. 322. Jib as a verb when applied to a horse is said to be of recent date and uncertain derivation. Jig, a dance, is much earlier, but not less uncertain in origin. Jig supplies us with some of the senses of jigger, others of which are obscure. It is, of course, natural that in words of this stamp, known principally in popular speech, no certain derivation should be obtainable. Jimiam, among the slang meanings of which in the plural is delirium tremens, is described as "a reduplicated term of which the elements are unexplained; perhaps only whimsical." Jimp slender reached our literature from Scotland in the last century. Of jingle it is said that there does not seem to be any original association with iangle. The connexion seems nearer with tinkle. Jobation a lecture is earlier than we should have supposed, an instance of use in 1689 being furnished. A very interesting account appears of jockey. It is naturally a diminutive, kindred to Jacky. Jucund, from jucundus, is the etymological form of jocund, which is said now to be exclusively a literary word. A Celtic origin for jog to shake up has been put forward, but is said to be not tenable, the origin remaining unascertained. The modern use of Johnny is mentioned as "chiefly denoting a fashionable young man of idle habits." This description seems due to the Daily News, which among the morning papers enjoys a practical supremacy or poly of quotation, to some extent shared by the Westminster Gazette among evening papers. We should not personally assume idleness as being indispensably involved in a term which we have heard applied to an assemblage including one of the editors of one of the periodicals in question as well as other hardworking men. No instance of joke is given earlier than 1670. Under jolly we find

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Coverdale in 1549 using what seems a quite modern form of expression, "I thought my selfe a iolye fortunate man.' Jolly-boat is of uncertain origin. Extracts illustrative of journalese are given from the Athenæum and the Pall Mall Gazette. Journalist in the form jurnalist is found in 1693; journalism does not appear before 1833. Carlyle is responsible for journalistic. The origin of juggins a simpleton cannot be settled. It is first traced in Disraeli in 1845. Of junket the history is said to be "somewhat obscure in respect both of form and sense." Under this word we do not trace Milton's

How faery Mab the junkets eat.
Another word the origin of which is said to be
unknown is jury-mast. Just, in its many senses
and with its numerous derivatives, occupies many
interesting columns. Kaffir is the word of most
interest under K we have so far reached.

S. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines. A
History of the only English Monastic Order. By
Rose Graham. (Stock.)

ST. GILBERT of Sempringham was born about
twenty-three years after the Norman Conquest,
and is said to have lived to attain his hundredth
year. Sempringham is a Lincolnshire village near
Bourne. It is now a fertile place, but it must have
been a lonely and depressing spot when he knew
it, as it was on the edge of that great stretch of
fenland which extended to the Wash. St. Gilbert
came of the race of the invaders, and the time
had not arrived when the conquerors and the
conquered blended into one people. His father
Jocelin was a Norman knight, holding his lands
under Gilbert de Gant, of Falkingham, a mighty
potentate in Lincolnshire, whose father Baldwin
of Flanders was brother of Matilda, wife of King
William. It is possible, though we know no evi-
dence whatever for our surmise, that this Gilbert
may have been the godfather of the future saint, and
that the latter was, according to a custom prevalent
in those days, named after him. Gilbert's father
married a lady of Saxon lineage, and this may have
been a reason why their son, apart from his own
virtues, became popular with the servile classes,
with whom in after days he was in such intimate
relation. He grew up a pious and innocent lad,
but won the contempt of the retainers from a
physical defect from which he suffered. He could
not engage in knightly exercises on account of his
infirmity; his father therefore determined to give
him a clerkly education; but this also seemed out
of the poor boy's reach, for he was considered to be
dull of intellect. For this offence, as it was regarded
it was, we may assume, a sign of slow develop-
ment rather than of idleness he fell into dis-
grace with his parents. This the tender-hearted
fad felt so hard to bear that he fled to France.
Perhaps he may there have met with kinder treat-
ment than at home, or it may be that change of
environment awoke his slumbering faculties, for he
seems to have at once turned his attention to
scholarship. When he returned home he was found
to be a well-educated and refined young man,
according to the standards of that rough time.
His mind had widened, and he had become bent
upon doing good to those around him, though at
first it does not appear that he had any fixed idea
as to the direction which his energies should take.
He began by what we may in a loose manner call
keeping a school; that is, instructing the young of
both sexes. We have reason to believe he did this

well, for we have evidence that his girl pupils spoke Latin fluently. It was natural in the twelfth century for the mind of a man such as Gilbert to tend toward the monastic life. At what period this thought took form in his mind we do not know; and what is of far more importance in judging the man and his time, we have little or nothing beyond speculation to help us in determining how it was that it occurred to him to form a mixed order of men and women. In the East institutions of this kind had been well known, and similar houses had flourished in this country in earlier days, but they had all been swept away by the Danes. The history of the order of Sempringham has an especial interest on account of this recurrence to a custom so venerable; one, too, concerning which, we may assume, the founder had but slight knowledge, even if he were aware that such double houses had ever existed before his own time. It is also noteworthy as being the only religious order founded in this country. It never spread elsewhere, not even into Scotland, and as a consequence, when the order fell here, it, unlike the others, having no branches in foreign countries to carry on the tradition, became extinct.

Miss Rose Graham has done well the work she has undertaken. She has, it is plain, an accurate as well as a full knowledge of her subject. She understands, too, many of those conditions of medieval life without a due knowledge of which any rational appreciation of the monastic orders is impossible. The details of the life of St. Gilbert are unhappily very scanty. Miss Graham has avoided the error, into which many well-intentioned writers have fallen, of eking out by pietistic verbiage the deficiencies of her authorities.

The accounts of the various Gilbertine houses are good. That they are scanty is no fault of the writer. She seems to have consulted every source of information that was open to her, and we fear that there is not much reason to hope that new facts will come to light, though we still cling fondly to the hope that a MS. of Capgrave's English 'Life of St. Gilbert' may be found. There was one in the Cotton Library, but it perished in the disastrous fire of 1731.

The Roll of Alumni in Arts of the University and King's College of Aberdeen, 1596-1860. Edited by Peter J. Anderson. (Aberdeen, printed for the University.)

THE subject of Scotch graduates is familiar to 'N. & Q.,' and of great interest. Aberdeen has justly a very high reputation as a nursing-mother of men, and the work of the University Librarian, which in many points corrects less careful sources, is invaluable. Mr. Anderson's lists are admirably produced in every way, the index in particular being most excellent. It shows the persistency of certain families: Andersons, Barclays, Camerons, Campbells, Clarks, Cummings, and Gordons, to mention no other names, are very plentiful, while Forbes and Fraser are each good for a whole page of the index. On the other hand, there is only a solitary instance of Con, Don, Duke, Hart, and Fisher, the last two being very common names in England. The lists are so beautifully printed that they are a pleasure to the eye. Looking over them, one comes across many notable persons, though the frequency of the same names may be a trap to the unwarymay make one think for a moment, for instance, that the economist Adam Smith was an Aberdeen

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man. It would be instructive to have details of the 'complexe misbehaviour" for which John Coutts was expelled in 1720, but allowed to return in two months' time. Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides' is recalled by Thomas Gordon, one of his first entertainers, Regent, 1773-7, and Waller, "inclyti poetæ E. W. abnepos," whose appearance so far north interested the sage. Mr. Anderson has also included in an appendix some M.A.s who were not Aberdeen alumni, among whom was Mallet, the poet, recommended by "his good Letters and bright qualifications otherways." Aberdeen may say,

Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? and many students will thank the University Librarian for his painstaking work.

WE ought to have noticed before the Bibliography of Coleridge (Hollings), which was originally published in N. & Q., and in its enlarged form is due to the care and taste of Col. W. F. Prideaux. We say "taste" because it is just the literary quality, the judgment of the scholar, and the writing of the man who reads as well as collects or chronicles which are often wanting in bibliographers; but yet it needs such qualities to make their work of interest to a wider circle than that of the mere seekers after "first states" and "rarities." Col. Prideaux shows his capabilities in the notes he has added, for instance, to such a masterpiece as 'Christabel,' and the thoroughness of his research is evident everywhere. Briefly, we may say that his bibliography is what a good performance of the kind should be, something like a literary history of its subject in skeleton form.

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