356 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



bird, alone among fowls, is distinguished by a windpipe 5 

 The name is merely another form of 0. F. oisil, and was 

 usurped naturally enough by one of the commonest 

 birds, just as pajaro (L. passer) in Spanish, by a similar 

 process in the opposite direction, came to mean bird in 

 general. On the very next page he speaks of "the Ro 

 mance which is vulgarly entitled Lybeaus Disconus, i. e. 

 Le Beau Disconnu." If he had corrected Disconus to 

 Desconus, all had been well ; but Disconnu neither is nor 

 ever was French at all. Where there is blundering to 

 be done, one stone often serves Mr. Hazlitt for two birds. 

 Ly beaus Disconus is perfectly correct old French, and 

 another form of the adjective (bius) perhaps explains the 

 sound we give to the first syllable of beauty and Beau 

 fort. A barrister at law, as Mr. Hazlitt is, may not be 

 called on to know anything about old English or modern 

 French, but we might fairly expect him to have at least 

 a smattering of Law French ! In volume fourth, page 

 129, a goodman trying his wife, 



" Bad her take the pot that sod ouer the fire 

 And set it abooue vpon the astire." 



Mr. Hazlitt's note iipon astire is " hearth, i. q. astre." 

 Knowing that the modern French was atre, he too 

 rashly inferred a form which never existed except in 

 Italian. The old French word is aistre or estre, but Mr. 

 Hazlitt, as usual, prefers something that is neither old 

 French nor new. We do not pretend to know what 

 astire means, but a hearth that should be abooue the pot 

 seething over the fire would be unusual, to say the least, 

 in our semi-civilized country. 



In the "Lyfe of Roberte the Deuill" (Vol. I. p. 232), 

 Mr. Hazlitt twice makes a knight sentre his lance, and 

 tells us in a note that the "Ed. 1798 has /entered," a 

 very easy misprint for the right word /entered. What 

 Mr. Hazlitt supposed to be the meaning of sentre he has 



