being its subduers. According to Bilderdijk, this is not the only term incorporated with the low Saxon language, which testifies the conversionary visits of the English missionaries among the people to whom it belongs. JOHNSON perceived the absurdity of the etymologies of this term, as given by JUNIUS and others, and wisely rejects them all, while he merely tells us it is the Anglo-Saxon idel, which is no more than saying idle is idle. HORNE TOOKE sagaciously informs us, he is persuaded the word (as well as to ail,) is grounded in the AngloSaxon adlian, adilian, grotare, exaninire, corrumpere, irritum facere; but adlian is simply the dialectically diversified Dutch ijdelen [to empty, to exhaust, to make useless, to take away from, to take out] and formed from ijdel as above explained; and thus like all reference to the Anglo-Saxon dialect as a source of our terms, either a putting the cart before the horse or else an ignorant tit for tat. It is probable our to addle may belong here; but of this in another article. An addled egg is a useless egg; an addled head, an empty or useless head, a head in vain; i. e. the same as none. CHAUCER occasionally spells idel, idil, for idle, and so nearer the true word. But I suspect to ail is from quite another source, and that HORNE TOOKE is wrong in regard to this word every way, as will be explained under to ail.

"Eternalle God that through thy purveyaunce,

Ledist the world by certaine governaunce,

In idle *, as men saine, ye nothing make."--CHAUCER. "God saieth, thou shalte not take the name of thy Lorde God in vaine or in IDELL *."-APUD EUNDEM.

"I praie you let me be all still,
For ye maie well, if that you will,
Your wordis waste in IDILNESSE,
For uttirly withoutin gesse,

All that ye saine, is but in vain."—IDEM.

* In vain, uselessly, on an unsuitable occasion.

Behold and se that in the first table

Of hie God, is hestis honourable,

How that the seconde hest of him is this,

Take not my name in IDELNESS amiss."-IDEM.

OBS. The word idole [idol] is found in some of the old French writers under the form of the Dutch ijdel. The following extract is from an old translation of the Bible into French. Si importerent l' YDLE en la statue Baal hors de son temple, si l'astrent* è tut le temple detruiserent, sien firent lungaigne et despit Baal.

WHAT IS BRED IN THE BONE WILL COME OUT IN THE FLESH.

That, the source of which is inscrutable, is not easily prevented coming out [appearing] at one time or other [upon some occasion or other]; that which takes its course from an impenetrable recess, is not to be effectually arrested. Wo haet is breed in de bonne, wel kum houdt in de veel lesche; q. e. where mutual malice is rife in a quarter, however frequent the palliatives, it cannot be prevented from breaking out at times; where secret jealousy is mixed up in the society of a certain portion of the community, however frequent the attempts [pains taken] to extinguish or allay it, it is difficult to keep it under [to stifle it]. And thus resolves into a meaning analogous with that of the travesty; but by another direction of sense and form of words, which are however similar in sound, omitting the aspirate in houdt, which then has that of out. Haet, hate, secret, untractable malice, dissimulated desire of revenge. Breed, broad, extended in each direction, wide-spread. Bonne, a street, a particular

* Burnt, from ardoir, the Latin ardere, [ars el feu, the fire burns].

+ Dung, a heap of dung or rubbish, from lun, lum, whence the Latin limus, mud, filth.

VOL. II.

E

division of a city; and possibly the origin of bone in Marie-le-bone [Marybonne], as the well-known London district so called. Wel kum, with difficulty hardly, scarcely. Inhouden, houden in, to keep within, to contain, to restrain. Veel, much, frequent. Lessche, as the contracted participle present of lesschen, to quench, to allay, to extinguish, to appease, to repress, to make to leave off or go away; and seems to be connected with the Latin laxare, and lassare, and of course with the French lascher and laisser, and Italian lasciare and lassare, in the ground sense of to set free, to loosen, and to let go; and thus to leave, to leave off, to tire of.

A TOAST.

The modern familiar compliment, as a call to share in the circulating glass; but formerly the jealous challenge of amity and faithful hospitality between the ruder members of a then insecure and precarious state of society. Er toetst; q.e. that tries; this proves; that [this] is by way of seeing whether he will accept or not my call on him for his friendship, or giving me safe hospitality while at his board. But the ground sense is the fact of touching [bringing into contact] as the best proof or the surest mode of ascertainment; and of which the mutual touching of the glasses, that was made at the time between the challenger and challenged, was the conventional sign; in those days accompanied by a jealous symptom of security from treachery by the act of holding the unoccupied hand, while they lifted the other to empty the glass. Hence the now familiar and mechanical shake by the hand in sign of either intimate acquaintance, or conclusive affirmative of a bargain or word given. The familiar phrase of to challenge a man, as the festive eall for him to fill a bumper to the toast in question, has still survived that state of society, when it carried a truer import of the rough form of which it

remains an uncouth sample. So that a toast is simply a surviving remnant of a form by which safety from the host was demanded by the guest, in days when no better pledge for it could be obtained. Toetst, sounds toast, and is the third person singular of the present tense of toetsen, to bring to the touch, to put to the test, to try, to prove, to feel, to try by the feel; and implies rather the evident result, than the actual and material contact of the things in question; and when we say to touch the heart, to touch is then as the travesty of toetsen, in the sense of to try, to prove; for in a literal import it would be nonsense, nay death. But toetssteen [touchstone], though apparently as that which tries by contact, is in its true sense, as that which proves by a natural and peculiar quality, inherent in such kind of stone, and is test-stone. Toetsen

is not the source of our to touch, as has been already said in the second preface to this essay, but rather of our to taste, as a modification of to touch, and formerly used directly in that import, as tastare now is by the Italians, and taster [tâter] by the French. The Latin testare in the sense of to prove, to show, to attest, is evidently of a same stock, and so is the term testes, as proving the sex of the species which bears them. JOHNSON, by the place he gives to the term in his dictionary, leaves us in doubt whether he does not impute its source to the Latin tostus [parched, roasted], most probably the real one of toast, as roasted bread; but certainly not of a toast, as that which has been explained above. I am not aware of any other attempt at an etymology for this term, except that made by MR. THOMPSON in his ETYMONS, who brings it out of the Anglo-Saxon agettan [to dedicate, to institute, to consecrate], from which he supposes the form of toasett; but why it should mean toast, or how it came into that shape, he has left us to find out if we can.

2

That is a stone, that men may well aspien,
That ilke stone, a God thou wolt it call,

*

I rede the let thine honde upon it fall
And TAST† it well and stone thou shalt it finde,
Sens that thou seest not with thin eyin blinde.'
CHAUCER.

TO STALK.

As to walk in an affectedly [unnaturally] upright posture, slowly, stiffly, and gradually, to march with an assumed stateliness, has, I believe, its source in the term stalk, formerly used for the stem of a ladder, when that utensil had but one, across which the steps were fastened, so as to project on each side to serve the mounter of it, and subsequently transferred to the plural number when that was parted into two, between which the steps were then placed athwart. The stalk was used for the ladder itself, and to stalk, to climb [ascend], and so put in use the ladder, the mounting of which necessarily implies an upright, slow, formal, step-bystep manner of going or walking; which manner, when used unnecessarily on ordinary occasions, is evidently an affected and ridiculous manner of ceeding, and in this sense the verb is used.

"With his own hand he made them ladders thre,
To climbin by the ronges and by the STALKES ‡,
Into the tubbis hanging by the balkes."-CHAUCer,
"I STALKID even unto his backe,

And there I stode as still as ought."-IDEM.

STALK.

pro

The noun, in the direct sense, as that which supports the fruit or foliage, either in a general or

*Advise, counsell.

Touch, feel, try.

The sides or holdings; not as HORNE TOOKE, in his Diversions of Purley, and Mr. Urry, in his Glossary, explain it, the steps, which are the ronges.