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DERIVATION OF "NEWS" AND "NOISE."

I hasten to repudiate a title to which I have no claim; a compliment towards the close of the letter of your correspondent "CH." (Vol. i., p. 487.) being evidently intended for a gentleman whose christian name, only, differs from mine. The compliment in his case is well-deserved; and it will not lower him in your correspondent's opinion, to know that he is not answerable for the sins laid to my charge. And now for a word in my own behalf.

Indeed, CH. is rather hard upon me, I must confess. In using the simple form of assertion as more convenient,—although I intended thereby merely to express that such was my opinion, and not dreaming of myself as an authority,—I have undoubtedly erred. In the single instance in which I used it, instead of saying "it is," I should have said "I think it is." Throughout the rest of my argument I think the terms made use of are perfectly allowable as expressions of opinion. Your correspondent has been good enough to give "the whole" of my "argument" in recapitulating my "assertions." Singular dogmatism that in laying down the law should condescend to give reasons for it! On the other hand, when I turn to the letter of my friendly censor, I find assertion without argument, which, to my simple apprehension, is of much nearer kin to dogmatism than is the sin with which I am charged.

I cannot help thinking that your correspondent, from his dislike "to be puzzled on so plain a subject," has a misapprehension as to the uses of etymology. I, too, am no etymologist; I am a simple inquirer, anxious for information; frequently, without doubt, "most ignorant" of what I am "most assured;" yet I feel that to treat the subject scientifically it is not enough to guess at the origin of a word, not enough even to know it; that it is important to know not only whence it came, but how it came, what were its relations, by what road it travelled; and treated thus, etymology is of importance, as a branch of a larger science, to the history of the progress of the human race.

Descending now to particulars, let your correspondent show me how "news" was made out of "new." I have shown him how I think it was made; but I am open to conviction.

I repeat my opinion that "news is a noun singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily into the language;" and if it were a "noun of plural form and plural meaning," I still think that the singular form must have preceded it. The two instances CH. gives, "goods" and "riches," are more in point than he appears to suppose, although in support of my argument, and not his. The first is from the Gothic, and is substantially a word implying "possessions," older than the oldest European living languages. "Riches" is most unquestionably in its original acceptation in our language a noun singular, being identically the French "richesse," in which manner it is spelt in our early writers. From the form coinciding with that of our plural, it has acquired also a plural signification. But both words "have been adopted bodily into the language," and thus strengthen my argument that the process of manufacture is with us unknown.

Your correspondent is not quite correct in describing me as putting forward as instances of the early communication between the English and the German languages the derivation of "news" from "Neues," and the similarity between two poems. The first I adduced as an instance of the importance of the inquiry: with regard to the second, I admitted all that your correspondent now says; but with the remark, that the mode of treatment and the measure approaching so near to each other in England and Germany within one half century (and, I may add, at no other period in either of the two nations is the same mode or measure to be found), there was reasonable ground for suspicion of direct or indirect communication. On this subject I asked for information.

In conclusion, I think I observe something of a sarcastic tone in reference to my "novelty." I shall advocate nothing that I do not believe to be true, "whether it be old or new;" but I have found that our authorities are sometimes careless, sometimes unfaithful, and are so given to run in a groove, that when I am in quest of truth I generally discard them altogether, and explore, however laboriously, by myself.

Samuel Hickson.

St. John's Wood, May 27. 1850.

I do not know the reason for the rule your correspondent Mr. S. HICKSON lays down, that such a noun as "news" could not be formed according to English analogy. Why not as well as "goods, the shallows, blacks, for mourning, greens?" There is no singular to any of these as nouns.

Noise is a French word, upon which Menage has an article. There can be no doubt that he and others whom he quotes are right, that it is derived from noxa or noxia in Latin, meaning "strife." They quote:—

"Sæpe in conjugiis fit noxia, cum nimia est dos."

Ausonius.

"In mediam noxiam perfertur."

Petronius.

"Diligerent alia, et noxas bellumque moverent."

Manilius.

It is a great pity that we have no book of reference for English analogy of language.

C.B.

Why should Mr. Hickson (Vol. i., p. 428.) attempt to derive "news" indirectly from a German adjective, when it is so directly attributable to an English one; and that too without departing from a practice almost indigenous in the language?

Have we not in English many similar adjective substantives? Are we not continually slipping into our shorts, or sporting our tights, or parading our heavies, or counter-marching our lights, or commiserating blacks, or leaving whites to starve; or calculating the odds, or making expositions for goods?

Oh! but, says Mr. Hickson, "in that case the 's' would be the sign of the plural." Not necessarily so, no more than an "s" to "mean" furnishes a "means" of proving the same thing. But granting that it were so, what then? The word "news" is undoubtedly plural, and has been so used from the earliest times; as (in the example I sent for publication last week, of so early a date as the commencement of Henry VIII.'s reign) may be seen in "thies newes."

But a flight still more eccentric would be the identification of "noise" with "news!" "There is no process," Mr. Hickson says, "by which noise could be manufactured without making a plural noun of it!"

Is not Mr. Hickson aware that la noise is a French noun-singular signifying a contention or dispute? and that the same word exists in the Latin nisus, a struggle?

If mere plausibility be sufficient ground to justify a derivation, where is there a more plausible one than that "news," intelligence, ought to be derived from νους, understanding or common sense?

A.E.B.

Leeds, May 5th.

Further evidence (see Vol. i., p. 369.) of the existence and common use of the word "newes" in its present signification but ancient orthography anterior to the introduction of newspapers.

In a letter from the Cardinal of York (Bainbridge) to Henry VIII. (Rymer's Fœdera, vol. vi. p. 50.),

"After that thies Newes afforesaide ware dyvulgate in the Citie here."

Dated from Rome, September, 1513.

The Newes was of the victory just gained by Henry over the French, commonly known as "The Battle of the Spurs."

A.E.B.

THE DODO QUERIES

I beg to thank Mr. S.W. Singer for the further notices he has given (Vol. i., p. 485.) in connection with this subject. I was well acquainted with the passage which he quotes from Osorio, a passage which some writers have very inconsiderately connected with the Dodo history. In reply to Mr. Singer's Queries, I need only make the following extract from the Dodo and its Kindred, p. 8.:—

"The statement that Vasco de Gama, in 1497, discovered, sixty leagues beyond the Cape of Good Hope, a bay called after San Blaz, near an island full of birds with wings like bats, which the sailors called solitaries (De Blainville, Nouv. Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat., and Penny Cyclopædia, DODO, p. 47.), is wholly irrelevant. The birds are evidently penguins, and their wings were compared to those of bats, from being without developed feathers. De Gama never went near Mauritius, but hugged the African coast as far as Melinda, and then crossed to India, returning by the same route. This small island inhabited by penguins, near the Cape of Good Hope, has been gratuitously confounded with Mauritius. Dr. Hamel, in a memoir in the Bulletin de la Classe Physico-Mathématique de l'Académie de St. Petersbourg, vol. iv. p. 53., has devoted an unnecessary amount of erudition to the refutation of this obvious mistake. He shows that the name solitaires, as applied to penguins by De Gama's companions, [I should have said, 'by later compilers,'] is corrupted from sotilicairos, which appears to be a Hottentot word."

I may add, that Dr. Hamel shows Osorio's statement to be taken from Castanheda, who is the earliest authority for the account of De Gama's voyage.

H.E. Strickland.

BOHN'S EDITION OF MILTON

Mr. Editor,—I have just seen an article in your "Notes and Queries" referring to my edition of Milton's prose works. It is stated that, in my latest catalogue, the book is announced as complete in 3 vols., although the contrary appears to be the case, judging by the way in which the third volume ends, the absence of an index, &c.

In reply, I beg to say that the insertion of the word "complete," in some of my catalogues, has taken place without my privity, and is now expunged. The fourth volume has long been in preparation, but the time of its appearance depends on the health and leisure of a prelate, whose name I have no right to announce. Those gentlemen who have taken the trouble to make direct inquiries on the subject, have always, I believe, received an explicit answer.