2-<iS.vi.i38.,AuG.2i.'58.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



145 



Wiltshire 



Worcestershire 

 Yorkshire 



R. Cold Harbour, Trowbridge. 



R. „ Warminster. 



R. „ Westbury. 



R. „ West Lavington. 



R. „ Droitwich. 



R. „ Bishop's Burton. 



„ „ Lessay. 



„ Cold Arbor, Cottingham. 



Those who examine the list of names here given, 

 and apply Sir Richard Hoare's rule of identifica- 

 tion, will find significant hints of Roman localities 

 in Chester, Wich or AVick, Ford, Borough, Ridge, 

 Street, Stone, Wool, Wye, Hunger, Ware, Hare, 

 &c. Hyde Clarke. 



42. Basinghall Street. 



TEETOTALISM. 



I know not whether any notice has ever been 

 taken in " N". & Q." of a passage in vol. vii. 

 p. 202. contributed by " Robert Smart, Sunder- 

 land," where, instancing some " erroneous forms 

 of speech," he observes : — 



" The much used word Teetotal ought to be written 

 Tea-total ; it implies the use of tea instead of intoxicating 

 liquors; that was its original meaning. Let us return to 

 the proper spelling; better late than never." 



The late Rev. W. J. Conybeare, in an article on 

 " Teatotalism and the Maine Law," which ap- 

 peared in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1854, 

 and was republished in his volume of Contribu- 

 tions to the JEdinburgh, makes substantially the 

 same assertions : — 



" The name Teatotal is said to have originated in the 

 .stammering of a speaker at a temperance meeting, who 

 declared that nothing would satisfy him but tea-total 

 abstinence. The audience eagerlj' caught up the pun, 

 and the name was adopted by the^ champions of the 

 cause. We observe that they have now taken to spell it 

 Tee-total instead of Tea-total ; but they had fiu- better 

 give up the name altogether. The pun no doubt is poor 

 enough, but the new spelling makes the adoption of the 

 term seem like absolute imbecility." 



Now, what will your readers think when I 

 assure them that not one of the above statements 

 is correct ? 1st. That the word in question was 

 never spelt tea-total ; 2d. That it never had the 

 slightest reference to tea; 3d. That, consequently, 

 it was never intended or accepted as a pun ; and 

 4th. That the spelling has remained the same 

 from the beginning. As to the use of tea, it is 

 notorious that some persons having abandoned the 

 use of intoxicating liquors, have also renounced 

 the use of tea, believing that, though not com- 

 parable in mischievousness to alcoholic drinks, it 

 18 not so innocuous as cocoa, milk, or water. In 

 Webster's Dictionary another set of errors makes 

 its appearance. The first edition is without the 

 word; but that of 1854, revised by the learned 

 professors of Yale College, has " Teetotaler " with 

 the following definition : " One who is pledged to 



abstain from all intoxicating liquors. A cant 

 word, formed by the initial letter of temperance 

 and the adjective total." We should have ex- 

 pected in that case that as total-temperance was 

 meant, the word would have been " totaltee," 

 and not " teetotal." The simple facts are, that 

 when the question of revising the old temper- 

 ance pledge, so as to exclude all intoxicating 

 liquors, was under consideration in Preston, a 

 working man of the name of Richard Turner 

 applied to the proposal, not a cant word, but one 

 long in use as an idiomatic local expression, — the 

 term " teetotal." He had probably heard and 

 uttered it hundreds of times before, in the sense 

 of " completely," " absolutely without any ex- 

 ception," or, as we sometimes say, " out-and-out." 

 The formation of the word is clear enough, the 

 first syllable " tee" being the mere duplication of 

 the initial " t" of total, for the sake of greater 

 emphasis and force. Its application to total ab- 

 stinence from inebriating liquors was accidental, 

 and the use of it by Richard Turner would pro- 

 bably have escaped observation bad he not, 

 through a habit of stammering, drawn the atten- 

 tion of the people to the distinction he was wishing 

 to convey. No one would have been more sur- 

 prised than he to learn that he was perpetrating 

 a pun. If the origination of this term with its 

 present meaning was strange, it is not less strange 

 that it should have been so grossly misunderstood. 

 When men of learning stumble in open day over 

 a word which is the badge of millions of indi- 

 viduals, and of one of the greatest moral move- 

 ments of the age, — a word which has always been 

 spelt in one way, and the proper meaning of 

 which has been explained in hundreds of speeches 

 and scores of pamphlets, — are we not cautioned 

 against a hasty confidence in the conclusions of 

 even the ablest scholars on subjects confessedly 

 recondite and obscure ? Dawson Burns. 



Minor 3att^. 



" The Florence Miscellany, 1785." — Amongst 

 the books sold in the library of the late JMrs. 

 Mostyn at Brighton (who had sate on Dr. Samuel 

 Johnson's knee as the daughter of Mrs. Thrale, 

 afterwards Piozzi), is an 8vo. volume bearing the 

 above title, and containing verses by Mrs. Piozzi, 

 Bertie Greathead, Robert Merry, William Parsons, 

 Esq., printed at Florence for G. Cam, printer to 

 his Royal Highness by permission. It is on very 

 thick paper, and evidently intended for private 

 distribution only. As everything connected, how- 

 ever remotely, with " surly Sam," is interesting to 

 most English people, some account of this volume 

 may be considered worth preservation in your 

 pages. Mrs. Piozzi'* contributions to the volume 

 are nine : one stanza, in her translation of the 



