Io6 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



roasted in hot ashes. As soon as his cooks heard he was come 

 home to dinner or supper, they called aloud to their under-servants 

 " All eggs under the grate." This being repeated every day at noon 

 and evening, made strangers think that the prince's name really 

 was that heard in the command, and posterity " hath been 

 under the same delusion," adds the Dean. 



These " etymologies " are quite as probable as many of the 

 popular " origins " so often gravely quoted by contributors to daily 

 papers and weekly magazines, and which the average reader 

 revels in. 



In concluding this aspect of the question, to which more atten- 

 tion has been given than the importance of the matter dernands, it 

 may well be asked, would not a complete etymological dictionary to 

 which interested persons might refer, much more fully and satisfac- 

 torily realize the requirements of the student in search of the deriva- 

 tion of words ? How many of the most ardent admirers of popular 

 etymology would risk defining the history of numerous words with- 

 out first referring to some reliable work on the subject ? Each 

 word, like each individual ot the human family, has its own particu- 

 lar history, a history which does not concern the every-day use of 

 that word, and it is quite as reasonable to expect to know the his- 

 tory of every man with whom you do business as to insist on the 

 parading of so-called indicators of derivation in words. At the same 

 time be it understood that I do not for one moment confess that 

 phonetic spelling would obscure such etymologies as are at present 

 discernible in our spelling, .but would rather assist true etymol- 

 ogy. What I desire to state is that etymology is, and should be, 

 a distinct department of study, and ought not to be dragged on all 

 possible occasions into the practical aifairs of life, and be unwillingly 

 employed as an enemy to progress and convenience. " Philology," 

 says the learned Dr. Murray, " has long since penetrated the mere 

 drapery, and grappled with the study of words, not as dead marks, 

 but as living realities, and for these hving realities it first of all de- 

 mands — ' Write them as they are ; give us facts and not fictions to 

 handle.' " 



Inconsistencies. — That our present mode of spelling is unsys- 

 tematic, uncertain, and exceedingly difficult of acquirement must be 

 conceded by even its most zealous champion. What Lord Lytton 

 has said regarding the subject might be considered as bordering 



