gad S, No 3., JAN, 19. °56.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
45 
common phrase, though of a meaning difficult to 
be traced, is found, “The boy hath sold him a 
bargain, a goose ; that’s flat.” See also 1 Hen. IV., 
Act I. Se. 3., and Act IV. Se. 2. 
3. Fast and loose will also be found in Shak- 
speare, see Love's Labour Lost, Act III. Se. 1.: 
As cunning as fast and loose.” 
4. Pumping a man, t.e. seeking to get informa- 
tion from him indirectly, may be traced to Otway’s 
Venice Preserved, Act Il. Sc. 1., where Pierre 
says to Aquilina : 
* Go to your senator; ask him what passes 
Amongst his brethren; he’ll hide nothing from you: 
But pump not me for politics.” 
5. Togo snacks is in Pope's Prologue to the 
Satires, 65. : 
« All my demurs but double his attacks: 
At last he whispers, ‘Do; and we go snacks.’” 
6. Cowper has the worse for wear in John 
Gilpin. 
7. He has also to dash through thick and thin in 
the same. 
8. Hobson's choice is as old as the days of 
Milton, his younger days in fact, but its meaning 
has become perverted in course of use. Its origin 
is given in one of Steele’s contributions to the 
Spectator, No. 509. 
9. To be in the wrong box has a home in Fox’s 
Martyrs, book vi. 
10. The slang verb to damm, i.e. to beat, was 
certainly current about the close of the sixteenth 
century, for it occurs in King and no King, Act VY. 
Sc. 3., by Beaumont and Fletcher. 
Tt was originally, and may be yet for aught I 
know, a technical expression used by armourers or 
workers in metal, and is so found in the writings 
of Florio, tutor to Prince Henry, eldest son of 
James I., who was a contemporary of Beaumont 
and Fletcher. 
11. Scripture even furnishes some of the phrases 
under discussion. Jn the twinkling of an eye is at 
1 Corinthians, xv. 52. 
12. “ Veels within veels,’ said Mr. Samuel 
Weller of the birdcap in the Fleet Prison, and the 
verbal idea is in Ezekiel, i. 16., and x. 10. 
13. But the last I propose to trouble you with 
is an expression borrowed by us directly from the 
United States of America, “ Z'his child feels like 
eating,” ze. “I feel,” &c.; the third person for 
the first, See Ruxton’s Life in the Fur West. 
This idiom is ancient, as all will recollect who 
have read the Greek tragedians. See, one passage 
of many, Sophocles, Gid. Tyr., 815.: 
x “ ris ro08E y' avEpds Eoriv aOALHTEpos 3” 
“Oh, who can be more woe-begone than I!” 
literally, “than this man.” ' 
The scholiast explains it as said deurikws, the 
speaker pointing to himself. — 
Perhaps some of your readers will increase 
this random list. : W.T. M. 
Hong Kong. 
A MONSTER DICTIONARY. 
Among the resuscitated poets of late years are 
Alexander Gardyne and John Lundie, contempo- 
raries, whose works have been edited for the Ab- 
botsford Club. These worthies were in the habit 
of complimenting and interchanging poetical 
civilities with each other; and it is recorded by 
the latter that, — 
“On New Yier’s Day I gave ane Dictionar of 400 Jan- 
guages to M. Al. Gardyn, vith this inscription : 
“Vnto the father of the Muse’s songs 
I give this treasure of four hundreth tongs.” 
adding divers other extravagant encomiums, which 
the receiver pays back in poetry of corresponding 
calibre. 
Were it not that we have the fact of this won- 
drous polyglot both in prose and verse, numerals 
and words at length, we might venture to knock 
away the two nothings ; as it stands, how are we 
to comprehend it ? 
The rare book in which this is recorded, is en- 
titled : 
“A Garden of Grave snl Godlie Flowres, Sonets, 
Elegies, and Epitaphes. Planted, Polished, and_Per- 
fected by Mr. Alexander Gardyne. Reprinted in Edin., 
1845, from the Unique original. Quarto. Edin., by T. 
Finlaison, 1609.” 
The industrious editors, Messrs. Turnbull and 
Laing, have thrown together a few conjectural 
items regarding Gardyne, or Garden; but looking 
at the contemporary fame the author enjoyed, 
they are very meagre and unsatisfactory : 
“So gratious Gardyne (says P. G.), wonder of thy age, 
Thou gains a world of praise for euerie verse ; 
Thy countries honour thus thou dost egraige, 
All nations thy inuentions sall rehearse : 
Poor pettie poems now your heads go hide, 
While greater light here strains your glistering pride.” * 
It is, however, evident that neither Gardyne or 
his eulogist knew what posterity would value, and 
instead of all nations rehearsing the Crudities of 
“Mr, Alexander Gardyne,” he has only of late 
been dug out of his obscurity by the accidental 
discovery of a single copy of his Garden. 
Do any of your readers, by chance, know more 
of this author than what is set forth in the re- 
print ? J. 0. 
* Remembering how the English wits of this period 
served Tom Coriat, it might be suspected that Patrick 
Gordon was here quizzing his friend Gardyne; not so, 
however, for we find that the latter returned it in the 
same strain in his encomiastick verses before Gordon’s 
Famous Historye of Penardo and Laissa, Dort, 161, 
wherein the author is thus apostrophized : 
“© thou, the new adorner of our dayes.” 
