Notes and Comment 139 



the attraction of two bodies varies inversely as the square of 

 the distance. 



56, 7. The hundred: a division of the county, not very dif- 

 ferent from our township. 



56, 22. Falstaff s bill. See / Henry IV, II, iv, 550. 



57, 20-21. "Circumbendibus": a humorous formation from 

 circum -f- bend with the ending of a Latin ablative plural and 

 meaning circumlocution. The word seems to have been coined 

 by Dryden in 1681. As here used " a thief with a circum- 

 bendibus " is equivalent to " another name for thief." 



60, 8. Euclid. The Elements of Geometry by Euclid (about 

 300 B.C.) is still used as a text-book and the name of Euclid 

 has become a synonym for geometry. 



60, 31-32. Chaucer, Shakespeare . . . Schiller. Geoffrey 

 Chaucer (1340-1400), the first great English poet and the au- 

 thor of many books, is best known through The Canterbury 

 Tales, the supreme masterpiece of Middle English. William 

 Shakespeare (1564-1616) needs no comment. For Milton, see 

 note on line 6, page 30. Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire 

 (1694-1778), the last being an assumed name of unknown 

 origin, was the most versatile, prolific, and influential writer 

 that France has produced, the best edition of his works num- 

 bering seventy-two volumes. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

 (1749-1832) and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller 

 (1759-1805) are the two greatest names in German literature, 

 Goethe being probably the most fruitful thinker of modern 

 times. 



61, 4. The few righteous. See Genesis xviii, 23-32. 



62, 7-8. Tasmania . . . New South Wales. The first, 

 discovered by Tasman in 1642, is an island and British colony 

 in Australasia. It was a dependency of New South Wales 

 until 1825. The second, named from a fancied resemblance 

 to the northern shores of the Bristol Channel, is a British 

 colony in Australia. Huxley spent several years in Sydney, 

 the capital of this colony. 



62, 17. Croesus: a Lydian king who lived about 550 B.C., 

 and whose name has become a synonym for boundless wealth. 



64, 3. A Niebuhr, a Gibbon, or a Grote? Paleontology is 

 a branch of biology, both dealing constructively with the former 

 life of the globe. In each of these great paleontologists, there- 

 fore, Huxley hails a kindred spirit. Barthold Georg Niebuhr 



