38 ON METONTMS. 



Charlemagne laad saluted liis Cliancellor Angelbert as Homer, and 

 Alcuin, the head of the Palace-school, as Flaccus. (It was character- 

 istic of the age in which this earlier revival had happened, that Charle- 

 maone himself was styled by a name not taken from Greek or Eoman 

 annals, but from the records of Holy Writ; — he was academically, so 

 to speak, King David ; while his superintendent of public works, and 

 subsequent biographer, Eginhart, was addressed by the name of the 

 ino'enious nephew of Moses, Beseleel.) These are examples of pseudo- 

 nyms, not metonyms: conceits playfully indulged in by great men, but 

 not worthy of much attention. It was quite another thing to Latinise 

 or Grecise a name that had become barbarised : or, when harsh and 

 uncouth-looking from its Teutonic or other foreign constitution, to 

 translate it, according to received analogies, into a corresponding 

 equivalent term, in communications by writing or word of mouth, car- 

 ried on between literary men. 



The learned Greeks who found their way from Constantinople to 

 Italy in the fourteenth and two following centuries, would readily shew 

 their pupils how to transmute conveniently names that seemed uncouth; 

 and to construct out of them others that would resemble those borne by 

 themselves and by the Byzantine writers with whose works they were 

 f:imiliar. Here are the names of some of these literary emigrants: 

 Johannes Argyropylus, John Silvergate; Antonius Eparchus, Antony 

 le Prefet; Nicolaus and Zachariab Calliergus, Nicholas and Zachary 

 Fairwork; Georgius Gomistus or Pletho, George Fulman. Any one of 

 these might be a metonym from the Teutonic or some other "Western 

 dialect, similar to those which we are about to enumerate. The names 

 of the Byzantine writers are of a similar stamp : Johannes Stobseus, 

 Johnof Stobi; Photius, Bright or Manly ; Maximus Planudes, Astray; 

 Thomas Magister, the Teacher; Georgius Chosroboscus, Swineherd; 

 Demetrius Triclinius, Butler, BufFetier; Theodorus Prodromus, Scout 5 

 Manuel Holobolus, Alclod; Georgius Syncellus, Fellowfriar, Confiture, 

 Chum ; Constantinus Psellus, Stammerer ; Georgius Pachymeres, 

 Clumsy; Theodorus Anagnostes, the Reader; Johannes Philoponus, 

 Lovework, — to say nothing of earlier and more venerable names, Latin 

 as well as Greek, simple and compound, all possessing visible vernacu- 

 lar significations. 



Almost as familiar as the instances of Erasmus and Melanehthon, are 

 those of Gllcolampadius, professor of Divinity at Bale in 1528; Bucer, 

 professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 15-49; and Capnio, the very* 



