ON METONYMS. 45 



The familiar name of Columbus is the pure Latin form of the old 

 North Italian and old French Colon, which in the latter language is 

 also Coulon. Both are corruptions of Columbus, the masculine form 

 of Cohxmba, Dove. Peter Martyr looks as if it were a name belonging 

 to our list of metonyms, but deceptively so. There are two Peter 

 Martyrs. One the author of an Enchiridion de Nuper sub Carolo 

 repertis Insulis, printed at Bale in 1521, and of the De Orbe Novo 

 Decades octo, printed at Alcala in 1530: works of interest, both of 

 them, to us on this continent. On the title page of the old translation 

 of the first-mentioned little tractate his name figures as Pierre Martyre 

 de Millan : and in a copy of the work, now lying before us, he is styled 

 Petrus Martyr, ab AngleriR, Mediolanensis. The other Peter Martyr 

 is the reformer so called, who was a native of Florence and professor 

 of Divinity at Oxford in the reign of Edward VI. His family-name 

 was Vermigllo or Vermeille, Latinised into Vermilius. Petrus Martyr 

 was the name under which a church hard by his father's house was 

 dedicated. This suggested a baptismal name for the child. 



Dante's name is an abbreviation of Durante; and Durante, as an 

 Italian family-name, is Latinised into Durandus. lu the case of the 

 poet, however, it assumes a kind of Greek form, Dantes, when meto- 

 nymised. In Keble's Pr^lectiones de Poeticae Vi Medica he appears 

 as Dantes Aligherus (to express Allighieri) ; and in the Poemata et 

 Inscriptiones of Landor we have 



Danten sajcula quina transienmt 

 Cum Florentia fnnebres honores 

 Solvit manibus optimi poatce. 



In the church of St. Onofrio at Rome is to be seen the brief inscrip- 

 tion over the remains of Tasso : Torquati Tassi Ossa. Tasso we 

 thus learn became Tassus, just as Bembo became Bembus. Paolo 

 Sarpi, better known as Era Paolo and Father Paul, historian of the 

 Council of Trent, is Paulus Sarpus. But his name is often concealed 

 under the anagram Pietro Soave Polano, formed from the words Paolo 

 Sarpi Venetlano. (There is a writer on German Typography, named 

 Paul Pater.) Aldo Pio Manuzio, the father of the Alduses, each, like 

 himself, a learned printer either at Venice or Rome, is Aldus Pius 

 Manutius. Aldo itself is said to have been Theobaldo abbreviated. 



The name of Tin Odassi, a writer of Macaronic verse in the 15th 

 century, has, like that of the artist Taddeo Gaddi, when uttered by 

 Italian lips, an Hibernian ring. In Latin it is dignified into Typhys 



