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And oh, be mine, when evening shades prevail,
Pensive to listen to his tragic tale.
And feed my soul (as tears spontaneous flow)
On all the poignant luxury of woe.

What may have been the prototype of all is to be found probably in Ovid's

Est qusedam flere voluptas.

Tristia, IV iii. 37.

Lying by the ■wall, a phrase which seems to be local to East Anglia, with the import that one is dead but not yet buried. The exact phrase in the mouth of a Suffolk peasant would be, " He lay by the walls," and it has been suggested that the expression is a corrupted form of one in which occurred the Anglo-Saxon word wael, "death" (genitive waeles), so meaning, " He is laid low by death." The earliest instance known of the occurrence of the phrase is,—

Thar was sorwe, wo so it sawe,
Hwan the children bith' waive
Ley en, and sprauleden in the blod.

Romance ofHavelock, vr 473.

In a ballad of the fourteenth century, printed by Ritson in his "Ancient Songs" (p. 46), the same expression is met with:

Whan that ur life his leve hath lauht,
Ur bodi lith bounden bi the wowe,
Ur richesses alle from us ben raft,
In clottes colde ur cors is throwe.

The Dutch phrase "aan de laager wal zyn" ("to be brought to a low ebb") seems to be somewhat akin, and is possibly the original of "going to the wall," unless the latter is a derivation from the Suffolk phrase.

Lying for the whetstone, a phrase used against one who is grossly exaggerating. A favorite Whitsuntide amusement in ancient days was the "lie-wage" or "lie-match:" the victor carried off a whetstone as his prize. The nature of these contests may be illustrated by this well-known extravaganza. One of the contestants would declare he could see a fly on the top of a church spire. The other would reply, " Oh, yes, I saw him wink his eye." To which the first would answer, "And I saw him shed one of his eyelashes as he winked," etc., etc.

Lynch Law, an American colloquialism for summary justice at the hands of a mob, the taking of life by an improvised tribunal without due process of law. The term is said to hark back to Revolutionary times, when Charles Lynch (1726-96), a Virginia planter, in conjunction with Robert Adams and Thomas Calloway, undertook to protect society and support the American cause by punishing outlaws and traitors. Desperadoes were arrested, and when this informal court was satisfied of their guilt were punished with stripes or banishment. Tories were hung up by their thumbs until they cried "Liberty forever I" But the death-penalty was never inflicted. Lynch, during the latter part of the Revolution, became a colonel in General Greene's army. His brother John was the founder of Lynchburg, Virginia. There is nothing in the familiar story which refers the expression to a much earlier origin,—1.*., to one James Fitz-Stephen Lynch, Mayor of Gal way, who, in M93i sentenced his own son to death for murder, and, fearing a rescue, had the culprit brought home and hanged before his own door. The thing may have occurred, it certainly exists as a tradition (Thackeray mentions it in his M Irish Sketch-Book"), but the phrase lynch law is of purely American origin •ad must seek an American original.

Lyon verses (so called, it is said, as having first been practised by Apollinaris Sidonius, a Gallic bishop and poet of the fifth century, born at Lyons) are verses the words of which are the same whether read backward or forward. Here is a memorable English specimen,—an epitaph, so it is said, from a church in Cornwall:

Shall we all diet

We shall die all.

All die shall we;

Die all we shall.

M.

M, the thirteenth letter and tenth consonant in the English alphabet, as in the Latin, and the twelfth letter in the Greek and in the Phoenician. This letter used to be branded on a criminal convicted of manslaughter and admitted to the benefit of the clergy. "To have an M under [or by] the girdle," a now obsolescent phrase, means to address one by the courtesytitles Mr., Mrs., or Miss.

Miss. The devil take you, Neverout! besides all small curses.

Lady A. Marry come up! What, plain Neverout 1 methinks you might have an M nnder your girdle, miss.—Swift: Polite Conversation, i.

Macaroni, a wheaten paste, prepared in the form of hollow tubes of different diameters, is said to have originated in Sicily. And this is the legend. A wealthy nobleman of Palermo owned a cook of marvellous inventive genius. One day, in a rapture of culinary composition, this great artist devised the farinaceous tubes and served them up, with all the succulent accessories of rich sauce and grated Parmesan, in a mighty china bowl. The first mouthful elicited from the illustrious epicure the ejaculation, "Caril" or9 in idiomatic English, "The darlings J" With the second mouthful he emphasized the statement as "Ma cari!" or, in a very free translation, "Ah, but what darlings!" Presently, as the flavor of the toothsome mess grew upon him, his enthusiasm rose to even higher flights, and he cried out, in a voice tremulous with joyful emotion, "Ma caroni!"—" Ah, but dearest darlings 1" In paying this verbal tribute to the merits of his cook's discovery he unwittingly bestowed a name upon that admirable preparation which has stuck to it ever since. This derivation is probably the work of some amateur etymologist (though it may be a mere jest), but, if so, is worth quoting as an excellent specimen of his art of plausible narration.

Macaronic literature (an allusion to the miscellaneous nature of a dish of macaroni), in its larger sense, a name given to any jumble of two or more languages, though experts and purists would differentiate the true from the false macaronic by insisting that the former should be a mixture of Latin (or Greek) with the vernacular, in which the words of the living language are given the inflections of the dead. Thus, "lassas kissare boneas" seems to the initiated an exquisite macaronic metamorphosis of the plain English "to kiss the bonny lasses," and they can hardly contain their joy when they find lendibus rhyming with circumbendibus. But these refinements are of later growth. In its origin macaronic literature was meant as a burlesque on the corrupt Latinity of the monks of the Middle Ages, whose sermons were a strange hodgepodge of Latin and of the vulgar language. The originator of this form of humor, or at least its earliest known professor, was one Odaxius, or Odassi, of Padua, born about 1450. His efforts were bad enough, and on his death* bed he is said to have had the grace to ask that these early effusions should be destroyed. His most eminent disciple among his countrymen was Teofilo FolengOt an Italian Benedictine, who died in 1544. He wrote under the name of Merlinus Cocaiua, and he gave to this species of drollery a degree of poetic excellence which has secured for him a respectable place in unread and unreadable literature. Numerous macaronic writers carried on the same work in Italy, and were highly appreciated. Cardinal Mazarin used to amuse himself by reciting three or four hundred of these verses, one after another. In France and in Germany also the fashion spread apace. Indeed, the famous " Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum" is a sort of macaronic prose, burlesquing the logic and the pedantic Latin of the schoolmen. It is said that Erasmus, when he read this work, was so overcome with laughter that he burst an abscess in his face, and so saved the doctors an operation and himself a fee. Rabelais and Moliere occasionally indulge in the same form of composition.

Dunbar, a man of great but uncouth genius, is held to have introduced macaronic poetry into the literature of Great Britain in his "Testament of Andrew Kennedy," first printed in 1508. This is not the true macaronic, however, but consists of alternate lines of old Scotch and dog-Latin, mixed up with shreds from the Breviary. A sufficient idea of Dunbar's manner and method may be gained from these the concluding verses:

I will na pricstis for me sing,

Dies ilia, Dies irae,
Na yet na bell is for me ring,

Sicut semper solet fieri;

But a bagpipe to play a spring,

Et unum ailwisp ante me;
Instead of banners for to bring

Quatuor lagenas cervisiae:

Within the grave to set sic thing,

In modern crucis juxta me.
To flee the fiends, then hardily sing

De terra plasmati me.

Scattered about the "Colin Clout" and the "Philip Sparrow" of John Skelton (first published in 1512), a younger contemporary of Dunbar, and poetlaureate of England at the close of the fifteenth century, may be found the first examples of true macaronics in the English language. Like Dunbar, Skelton is expressly ridiculing the monkish Latinity of his time. A short specimen from "Colin Clout" must suffice:

Of suche vagabundus
Speaking totus mundus,
How some syng let abundus,
At euerye ale stake
With welcome hake and make,
By the bread that God brake,
I am sorry for your sake.
I speake not of the god wife,
But of their apostles' lyfe.
Cum ipsis vel illis
Qui manent in villis
Est uxor vel ancilla,
Welcome Jack and Gilla
My prety Petronilla
You shall haue your willa,
Of such pater noster pekes
All the world spekes.

The fashion, once started, spread apace. That period of intellectual demopnient had just begun when our British forefathers delighted in all sorts *f verbal quips and cranks, in distortions of language, in conceits and euphuisms. Macaronic poetry offered just the pedantic kind of ingenuity in which they revelled. In any account of this genre the following specimen cannot be overlooked. It has been preserved in the commonplace book of one Richard Hilles, who died in 1535. Whether he was the author is uncertain. While not perfect as a macaronic, it is better poetry than the average composition of this class.

A Treatise On Wine.

The best tree, if ye take intent,

Inter ligna fructifera,
Is the vine tree by good argument,

Dulcia ferens pondera.

Saint Luke saith in his Gospel,

Arbor fructu noscitur,
The vine beareth wine as I you tell,

Hinc aliis praeponitur.

The first that planted the vineyard,

Manet in coeli gaudio,
His name was Noe, as I am learned,

Genesis testimonio.

God gave unto him knowledge and wit,

A quo procedunt omnia,
First of the grape wine for to get,

Propter magna mysteria.

The first miracle that Jesus did,

Erat in vino rubeo,
In Cana of Galilee it betide,

Testante Evangelic

He changed water into wine,

Aquae rubescunt hydriae,
And bade give it to Archetcline,

Ut gustet tunc primarie.

Like as the rose exceedeth all flowers,

Inter cuncta florigera,
So doth wine all other liquors,

Dans multa salutifera.

David, the prophet, saith that wine

Laetificat cor hominis,
It maketh men merry if it be fine,

Est ergo dignum nominis.

It nourisheth age if it be good,

Facit ut esset juvenis,
It gendereth in us gentle blood,

Nam venas purgat sanguinis.

By all these causes ye should think

Quae sunt rationabiles.
That good wine should be best of all drink

Inter potus potabiles.

Wine-drinkers all, with great honor,

Semper laudate Dominum,
The which sendeth the good liquor

Propter salutem hominum.

Plenty to all that love good wine

Donet Deus largius,
And bring them some when they go hence,

Ubi non sitient amplius.

A very famous carol "on bringing in the Boar's Head," still sung occasionally in England at the Christmas festivities, is certainly as old as 1521, for it may be found in a volume printed by Wynkyn de Worde in that year. Tl* version subjoined is from a collection of carols imprinted at London "in the Poultry, by Richard Kele, dwelling at the long shop under Saynt Myldrede's Chyrche," about 1546:

A Carol Bringing In The Bore's Head.

Caput apri defero.

Reddens laudes Domino.
The bore's heed in hande bring I,
With garlands gay and rosemary.
I pray you all synge merelye

Qui estis in convivio.

The bore's heed, I understande,
Is the chief service in this lande,
Look wherever it be fande,

Servite cum cantico.

Be gladde lordes both more and lasse,
For this hath ordeyned our stewarde,
To cheere you all this Christmasse,
The bore's heed with mustarde.

Caput apri defero.

Reddens laudes Domino.

Another version of the last verse is,—

Our steward hath provided this
In honour of the King of Bliss:
Which on this day to be served is
In Regis mensae atrio.

Caput apri defero,

Reddens laudes Domino.

But it was in the year 1616 that a sustained macaronic composition fulfilling all the rules of the game and satisfying the most pedantic requirements appeared in the poetical portions of the comedy entitled " Ignoramus." This was by a clergyman named Ruggle. In its entirety it is a burlesque on the Norman Law-Latin of the period,—a sort of Latin which burlesqued itself in such phrases as "a writ depipA vini carnandd^'1—*>., " for [negligently] carrying a pipe of wine,"—but which the ridicule of centuries only slowly eliminated from the pleadings of the British bar. It was three times performed before

iames I., to the great delight of that erudite and pedantic monarch, who withal ad wit enough to relish hugely the wit of the piece, the more so as he was attached to the simpler forms and terms of Scotch law. The dialogue, prose and poetry alike, is all carried on in legal hog-Latin. Here is one of the ■peeches of the titular hero, Ignoramus, a lawyer, in which he celebrates his passion for the lovely Rosabella and shows how richly he purposes to endow

Si posem vellem pro te, Rosa, ponere pellum
Quicquid tu queis crava, et habebis singula brava,
fct dabo, fee simple, si monstras Love's pretty dimple,
Gownos, silkcoatos, kirtellos, et petticoatos,
Farthingales biggos, stomacheros, et periwiggos,
— -cka

Buskos et soccos, tiffanas en cambricka smockos,
Pantofllos, cuffos, garteros, Spanica ruffos,
Wimpolos, pursos; ad ludos ibis et ursos.

Our next example goes back avowedly to the Skeltonic form. It was written to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and hence has an historic if not an intrinsic interest:

A Skeltonical salutation,

Or condign gratulation,

At the just vexation

Of the Spanish nation,

That in a bravado

Spent many a crusado

2D ss 57

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