which seems to have borrowed its beauty from the address of Brutus to his wife, in Shakspeare's "Julius Cæsar" : "You are my true and honourable wife, As dear to me as are the ruddy drops THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Tennyson appears to have borrowed the style of his famous " Charge of the Light Brigade,” "Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell, Rode the Six Hundred,-" from Drayton's poem on " Agincourt":— In Pope's "Essay on Criticism" the following simile occurs :"True expression, like the unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects, but it alters none." Heber, in one of his majestic lyrics, applies the same simile to the Sacred Volume : "A glory gilds the sacred page, It gives a light to every age,- TREADING ON FLOWERS. The ancient Greek poet, Hesiod, in his beautiful description of the rise of Aphrodite from the sea, has the following highly poetical expression (according to Mr. Hookham Frere's translation) :— "Where her delicate feet Had pressed the sands, green herbage flowering sprang." This pretty expression finds parallels in the writings of several of our modern poets. Thus Scott: "A foot more light, a step more true, Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the dew ; Elastic from her airy tread.”—Lady of the Lake. And Tennyson :— "But light as any wind that blows, So fleetly did she stir, The flower she touched on dipt and rose, And turned to look at her." Still more to the point, which is the charm to create verdure and flower growth which pertains to Aphrodite's feet, are the following citations from Ben Jonson and Wordsworth :— "Here she was wont to go, and here, and here, And where she went the flowers took thickest root. Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd." "Flowers laugh before thee in their beds, Wordsworth's" Ode to Duty." THE EPITHET, "TERMAGANT.” TERMAGAUNT is the name given in the old romances to the god of the Saracens, in which he is constantly linked with Mahound, or Mahomet. Thus in the legend of Syr Guy, the Soudan (sultan) swears, "So helpe me Mahoune of might, And Termagaunt, my god so bright." This word is said to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon tyr, very, and magan, mighty. As the word had so sublime a derivation, and was so applicable to the true God, how shall we account for its being so degraded? Perhaps Tyr Magan, or Termagant, had been a name originally given to some Saxon idol, before our ancestors were converted to Christianity; or had been the peculiar attribute of one of their false deities; and therefore the first Christian missionaries rejected it as profane, and improper to be applied to the true God. Afterwards, when the irruptions of the Saracens into Europe, and the Crusades into the East, had brought them acquainted with a new species of un believers, our ignorant ancestors, who thought all who did not receive the Christian law were necessarily pagans and idolaters, supposed the Mohammedan creed was in all respects the same with that of their pagan forefathers, and therefore made no scruple to give the ancient name of Termagant to the god of the Saracens ; just in the same manner as they afterwards used the name of Saracen to express any kind of pagan or idolater. In the ancient romance of Merlin, the Saxons themselves that came over with Hengist, because they were not Christians, are constantly called Saracens. However that be, it is certain that after the times of the Crusades, both Mahound and Termagaunt made their frequent appearance in the pageants and religious interludes of the barbarous ages, in which they were exhibited with gestures so frantic as to become proverbial. Thus Skelton speaks of Wolsey : "Like Mahound in a play, No man dare him withsay." In like manner, Bale, describing the threats used by some papist magistrates to his wife, speaks of them as "grennyng upon her like Termagauntes in a playe." Accordingly, in a letter of Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, to his wife, who, it seems, with all her fellows (the players), had been "by my Lord Mayor's officers, made to ride in a cart," he expresses his concern that she should "fall into the hands of such termagants." Hence we may conceive the force of Hamlet's expression in Shakspeare, where, condemning a ranting player, he says, "I could have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod." By degrees the word came to be applied to an outrageous, turbulent person, and especially to a violent, brawling woman, to whom alone it is now confined; and this the rather, as, I suppose, the character of Termagant was anciently represented on the stage after the Eastern mode, with long robes or petticoats.— Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. BIBLICAL CURIOSITY. THE 21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra contains every letter of the alphabet, and is the only one thus distinguished: "And I, even I, Artaxerxes the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers which are beyond the river, that whatsoever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done speedily." THE ORTHOGRAPHY OF SHAKSPEARE'S NAME. THERE are but five authenticated signatures of the poet now in existence; three of which are attached to his will in Doctors' Commons, and two others to a document connected with a purchase in Blackfriars; but so indistinctly are they written, that it has been for a long time a vexed question as to how he spelt his name. The clerks spell it Shackspeare, which was probably the common pro nunciation, and it has been suggested that there may have been two modes, Mr. Shackspeare in the country, and in polished circles the more stately Mr. Shakespeare. There is in the British Museum a copy of Florio's Montaigne, 1609, which bears the poet's name on a blank leaf, and in this instance the spelling is clearly Shakspere, but doubts are entertained as to the genuineness of the signature. "Venus and Adonis" and "Tarquin"-the only works published by the poet himself-have the name printed "Shake-speare.' But it seems pretty certain that Sir Frederick Madden is right in stating, as he does in a letter to the Society of Antiquaries, that the poet's own signature was Shakspere. The orthography of proper names, and indeed of words in general, was very loose in Shakspeare's time, and his name is spelt in every possible way in the records of Warwickshire-such as Shaxpere, Shagspere, Shakespeare, Shakspere, etc., etc. The poet's name in the inscription in Stratford Church is spelt Shakspeare, and this circumstance no doubt led Rowe and other early editors to adopt this mode of spelling in preference to any other. In almost all important Encyclopædias and Biographical Dictionaries, the name will be found thus written, and in the town of Stratford it is the most usual variety to be met with. When the poet's birthplace was used as a butcher's shop, a board, which is still preserved, was suspended over the door with this inscription : "William Shakspeare born in this house. TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE. THE translation of the Bible was begun very early in this kingdom. Some part of it was done by King Alfred. Adelmus translated the Psalms into Saxon in 709; other parts were done by Edfrid, or Egbert, in 750; the whole, by Bede. In 1357, Trevisa published the whole in English. Tindal's translation appeared in 1334; was revised and altered in 1538; published with a preface of Cranmer's in 1549, and allowed to be read in churches. In 1551 another translation was published, which, being revised by several bishops, was printed with their alterations in 1560. In 1613 a new translation was published by authority, which is that in present use. There was not any translation of it into the Irish language till 1685. The pope did not give his permission for the translation of the Bible into any language until the year 1759. CHANGES IN THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS. IT is curious to observe the changes of meaning which some of our words have undergone since the days of Shakspeare. In certain instances, the modern signification is precisely the reverse of the original meaning. The word wretch, for example, was not formerly employed to denote a miserable or extremely vicious person, but was used as a term of soft endearment,— ‚—as will be seen from the following passage from Pepys' Diary, under date February 23, 1668 :-"This evening my wife did with great pleasure show me her stock of jewels, increased by the ring she hath made lately as my valentine's gift this year, a Turkey stone set with diamonds; and with this, and what she had, she reckons that she hath above 150 worth of jewels of one kind or other, and I am glad of it, for it is fit the wretch should have something to content herself with." Shakspeare makes Othello speak fondly of Desdemona as excellent wretch." The word knave did not originally signify anything disreputable, as a scoundrel or blackguard, but was merely the common term for a man-servant. In this sense it is employed in an early translation of the New Testament, where we read," Paul, the knave of Jesus Christ ;" and in the fine old ballad of "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" "But now I have slain the master, he says, Let me go strike the knave." The word companion, on the other hand, had formerly the meaning which we now attach to the term fellow, in its abusive sense; thus, in the play of Othello, we find Emilia, on discovering that some scoundrel had secretly aspersed the character of Desdemona, bitterly exclaims "O Heaven! that such companions thou'dst unfold; And put in every honest hand a whip, To lash the rascal naked through the world." The term wench had not originally its modern low and vulgar signification, but was the appellation of young women, as damsel was of young ladies of quality. CURIOSITIES OF LEGEND AND CATS. THE question why the chariot of Freyja was drawn by cats, and why Holda was attended by maidens riding on cats, or themselves disguised in feline form, is easily solved. Like the lynx, and the owl of Pallas Athene, the cat owes its celestial honours above all to its eyes, that gleam in the dark like fire; but the belief in its supernatural powers may very probably have been corroborated by the common observation that the cat, like the stormy boar, is a weatherwise animal. Pigs, as |