102
NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. AUG. s, im
ferred to the Art Gallery or other parts
of the building.
The portraits of the judges who settled the claims of property owners after the Great Fire, that were on the walls of the old Council Chamber until its demolition, are of some interest. These twenty-three full- length canvases representing the judges in their robes, their arms painted on the frames, were commissioned of Michael Wright "in testimony of the City's gratitude in having settled (without expense of lawsuit) the properties of the citizens after the fire in 1666, pursuant to an Act of Parliament for establishing a court of judica- ture for that purpose." Nichols, p. 32. They cost 60Z. each, and were hung in the Guildhall about 1671. About 1816 they were removed to make room for the monu- mental memorials ; and soon after 1823 they were divided between the Courts of Queen's Bench and Common Pleas. They are now scattered throughout the building, six being in the lobby of the Lord Mayor's Court,
The City Press of 22 February and The Daily Graphic of 7 April had illustrations and brief notes on this fine old chamber, the loss of which is generally regretted. This and other changes that have been made are apparently prompted more by a super- fluity of means than actual necessity. It is a complaint made by users of the Library that its equipment is subordinated to the needs of the receptions, &c., for which it is too frequently required.
ALECK ABRAHAMS.
" HAZE " : " HAZY."
(See 10 S. vii. 108, 213, 273.)
No addition is made at these references to the material collected by Sir J. Murray exemplifying the use of this word in English. For convenience I subjoin the early evidence :
1706, Phillips (eel. Kersey) : " Haze, a Rime, a thick Fog."
1721, Bailey, : "A Hase, a thick Fog or Rime."
1755, Johnson: "Haze, fog; mist."
1795, Burke, 'Regie Peace,' iv., 'Wks.,'IX. 4: "To trust ourselves to. the haze and mist and doubtful lights of that changeable week."
I would point out that the first literary use of the word is in a book printed exactly a century ago from the MS. of an intimate of the third lexicographer. Lexicographers have a sheeplike quality ; and Bailey ob- viously stole from Phillips with guileful inversion of his words ; and it is well known that the foundation of Johnson's * Dic- tionary ' was an interleaved copy of Bailey,
The " neglected English dictionary," as
Prof. Skeat truly calls it, says that haze
is " not known till nearly a century after
Hazy, a., so that it may be a back formation
from that word." The line of reasoning
by which a dictionary-maker would arrive
at that conclusion may be illustrated.
In the Salon of 1882 Frank Scheidecker
exhibited a picture of a tramcar in a thick
mist, which he entitled * Un Brouillard a
Neuilly.' E. Bernard in his illustrated
catalogue (' Le Salon') kindly translates
this : ' A foggy to Neuilly.' Now it is
obvious to a person with even a slight
knowledge of English that this phrase is
impossible, and ought to be emended.
" Foggy " is a noun, either substantive
or adjective. Most nouns ending in y are
adjective : this is especially the case where
the y follows a doubled letter. Ergo
fog" is the substantive, and "foggy"
the correlative adjective.
It is all natural enough. The dictionary- maker, brought up on the classics, finds the word " hazy " in the strange jargon of men of the sea ; and assumes a noun " haze " from which it springs. What, then, is the evidence as to " hazy " ?
At 9 S. vi. 87 I gave a quotation from Capt. Wyatt's ' Narrative of Sir Robert Dudley's Voyage to the West Indies, 1594-5 * (ed. 1900, p. 40) : " And withall the weather provinge hasey and wett .... the companie went on shore to make readie their victuall." It is to be observed that " hazy " appears, in the earliest instance given in 'N.E.D.,'* in the form hawsey and that " heysey weather " is fully defined in the context of the quotation from Ligon, which may reasonably be dated 1 653 :
" Before we came neere this Hand, we perceiv'd a, kind of weather, which is neither raine nor mist, and continued with us sometimes four or five dayea together, which the seamen call a Heysey weather, and rises to such a height, as though the sunne- shine out bright, yet we cannot see his body, till nine a clock in the morning, nor after three in the afternoone. And we see the skie over our heads cleare : a close and very unhealthull [sic] weather, and no pleasure at all in it." 'Barbadoes' (1657), 27.
Among the material for the ' New English- Dictionary ' (vainly searched on my behalf by Sir J. Murray's kindness) lies a quotation from one of the earlier logs in Hakluyt, in which " hawsey " appears clearly as a substantive, preceded by the indefinite
- 1625, ' Impeachm. Dk. Buckhm.' (Camden), 9 :
"The weather beeing thicke and hawsey. the winde highe and in our teethe, wee were forced backe into Plymouthe."
