424 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



(•2nd g. No 48., Nov. 29. '56. 



tisan of the Bishop of Bangor, which was all we 

 were called upon to do. 



Connected with this very year 1718, however, 

 we have a story to relate of Curll and another 

 Bishop, which is, it must be confessed, more cha- 

 racteristic than creditable. Pope, in his True 

 Narrative of the Method by which Mr. Pope's Let- 

 ters have been published, refers to the matter in 

 these words : 



" jSIr. Pope's friends imagined that the whole design of 

 E. Curll was to get him to look on the edition of Crom- 

 well's Letters, and so to print it as revised by Mr. Pope, in 

 the same manner as he sent an obscene Book to a reverend 

 Bishop, and then advertised it as corrected and revised by 

 him." 



The book here referred to is an edition of Ro- 

 chester's Poems. Curll printed these poems se- 

 veral times. We have seen an edition published 

 by him, and professing to be the " third edition," 

 dated in 1709; but in 1718* was published an 

 edition " adorned with Cuts," and which, although 

 it does not bear Curll's name on the title-page, he 

 had clearly an interest in; for a note, p. vlii. 

 vol. ii., refers to " Mr. Pomfret's Poems printed by 

 E, Curll." There are two or three versions of the 

 story : the following is Curll's own, as told by him 

 in a note on Pope's Narrative, in the second vo- 

 lume of his (Curll's) edition of Pope's Literary 

 Correspondence : 



" Falsehood the Fourth," says Curll. " One hundred 

 guineas shall be paid to this Narrative writer, if he can 

 produce any such advertisement of Mr. Curll's. This 

 is founded on a merry story, and the fact as follows, viz. : 



" Mr. Henry Hoare, eldest son of Sir Richard Hoare, 

 came to Mr. Curll and told him, that Dr. Robinson, then 

 Bishop of London, heard he was concerned in an edition 

 of the Earl of Rochester's Poems. Mr. Curll told Mr. 

 Hoare that he was, among other booksellers and printers, 

 (viz. Mr. Darby in Bartholomew Close, Mr. Bettesworth 

 in Paternoster Row, Mr. Rivington in St. Paul's Church 

 Yard, Mr. Pemberton in Fleet Street, &c.) concerned in 

 an edition of that nobleman's Works. But likewise told 

 Mr. Hoare, that he would get a book interleaved for my 

 Lord Bishop, and whatever his Lordship saw amiss, if he 

 would, be pleased to strike out any lines or Poems therein, 

 such leaves should be reprinted, and rendered conform- 

 able to his Lordship's opinion. Away goes Mr. Hoare, 

 overjoyed with the message from Mr. Curll, with a tender 

 of his duty to the Bishop, and opens his credentials ; upon 

 hearing which the Bishop smiled, and made the following 

 reply to Mr. Hoare. 'Sir, I am told that Mr. Curll is a 

 shrewd man, and should I revise the book you have 

 brought me, he would publish it as approved by me.' 

 This, no doubt, Mr. Curll might justly have done, for 

 whatever is not condemned is approved : a standing 

 maxim this, in civil, canon, and common law." 



S. N. M. 



* The Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscommon, 

 Dorset, &c. In Two Vols. Adorn'd with Cuts. London : 

 Printed in the Year 1718. Price 5s. [No bookseller's or 

 printer's name. ] 



ETYMOLOGflES. 



Toad-eater. — In an article on Abp. Whately's 

 edition of Bacon's Essays in the last No. of the 

 Quarterly Review, the reviewer makes a digres- 

 sion on the origin of this word. The late Bp. 

 Copleston, he says, derived it from the Spanish, 

 supposing it to be todito, a diminutive of todo, 

 " all," and signifying /acfo^um; and this derivation 

 he very properly rejects, for there is in fact no 

 such word in any Spanish dictionary, and, even if 

 there were, it could not have that sense. He next 

 notices, and rejects also, the ingenious (the Abp. 

 is always so) etymon of Abp. Whately, who takes 

 it to be a mere refinement of a rather unseemly 

 phrase, akin to one of frequent occurrence in Ben 

 Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. He finally ^ves 

 what he regards as the true one, as contained in 

 the following passage of Sarah Fielding's David 

 Simple : " It is" a metaphor taken from a mounte- 

 bank's boy eating toads, in order to show his mas- 

 ter's skill in expelling poison." I doubt, how- 

 ever, if this practice was ever current, or was even 

 possible ; and, at all events, neither is this the true 

 solution. The truth I take to be as follows. 

 Toad-eat is an English adaptation of the French 

 avaler des couleuvres. Thus Boileau has in his 

 tenth Satire : 



" R^sous-toi, pauvre ^poux, k vivre de couleuvres : " — 



on which the note of Ldvizac is : 



" L'expression proverbiale avaler des couleuvres signifle 

 souffrir bien des chosea facheuses, que Ton nous dit ou que 

 I'on nous fait, sans que nous osions en temoigner le moindre 

 deplaisir." 



If this be not an accurate description of toad- 

 eating, I know not what is. English humour, to 

 add strength to the image, changed the poor harm- 

 less and handsome snake into the ugly and sup- 

 posed venomous toad. Finally, toad-eating and 

 toad-eater have become toady, and mean servile 

 adulation, a part of the business of the original 

 toad-eater, usually, if not exclusively, a lady's 

 companion. 



I must also demur to the aforesaid reviewer's 

 assertion that " conjectural etymology is little 

 better than juggling." I grant that we should 

 probably never arrive at the meaning of namby- 

 pamby, mob, and similar terms, if we had not their 

 history ; but there is another class which have 

 tlieir origin in nature, or in well-known opinions, 

 the derivation of which may be something better 

 than mere tours de passe-passe. As an instance, I 

 will name that of pismire, given by myself in a 

 former No. of " N. & Q." 



Saw. — This word, even in Shakspeare's time, 

 signified merely a saying, a proverb, " Full of wise 

 saws and modern instances ; " but I always had 

 an idea that it had been originally the same as the 

 northern saga, the German sage, a history, story, 

 tale, or tradition. I find this notion of mine con- 



