156
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL FEB. 20, im
Rouen in 1197, a post of great responsibility
and trust, not likely to have been given to
a young man.
If these Nevills were descended from Richard de Neuville, one of the sons of Baldric the Teuton mentioned by Ordericus Vitalis, they would have been cousins of the family of Fitzherneis. " Hacvisa " (Hawise), wife of Erneis fitz Radulf of 1055, is especially described as sister of Fulk de Annou the elder, who was another of the sons of Baldric.
The " possible " origin of this name I have suggested is, of course, very much less pro- bable than ernes, the presumed Celtic word for a " pledge," which survives in Welsh (and Breton ?), also in our phrase " earnest penny." This word is quite distinct from earnest, i.e. earnest, which is found in Anglo-Saxon as well as German and was always spelt with the t, which ernes never was (see Prof. Skeat's ' Etymological Diet.'). A. S. ELLIS.
Westminster.
I should say that there is little doubt of Ernest being the translation of Ernisius. There is a village which I know well, some five miles from Bedford, called Milton Ernest, from a family of Erneys or Ernest which possessed the manor from the four- teenth century to the sixteenth ; and if I may trust my memory, there is the tomb of one of them in the church. Murray's ' Handbook of Herts, Beds, and Hunts ' says : "In the wall of the N. aisle is the arched canopy of a founder's tomb richly foliated, and beneath it a coffin slab of Pur- beck on which is a cross of somewhat unusual design." JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.
Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.
JOHN OWEN THE EPIGRAMMATIST (10 S. xi. 21 ). I should be glad to make a correction in the name of the German translator of Owen given ante, p. 22, 1. 37. It should be Lober. " Lobern " on the title-page is the accusative case after the preposition durch. EDWARD BENSLY.
Aberystwyth.
NYM AND "HUMOUR" (10 S. xi. 27). Mr. H. B. Wheatley, in his edition of ' The Merry Wives' (1886), founded upon the collections of Mr. J. F. Stanford, F.R.S. says on p. xlv :
" The word humour was one which Nym, in common with a large number of his contem poraries, misused most egregiously. The four humours of the body described by the old physi cians as phlegm, blood, choler, and melancholy were supposed, as they predominated, to deter
mine the bent of the mind, and the mind as welE
as the body was credited with its own particular
lumours. A humour was therefore a predominant
mental characteristic, as Shadwell says in the
ipilogue to his play ' The Humourists ' :
A humour is the bias of the mind,
By which with violence 'tis one way inclined ;
It makes our notions lean on one side still,
And in all changes that may bend the will.
J*epys writes : ' I see that religion, be it what it
will, is but a humour.' Ben Jonson, who set
limself up as a protector of the word, complained
- hat it ' is rack'd and tortured ' so that
Now if an idiot
Have but an apish or fantastic strain, It is his humour.
[n his Introduction to ' The Magnetic Lady ' Jonson writes : ' The author, beginning his studies of this kind with ' Every Man in his Humour,' and after ' Every Man out of his Humour ' ; and since continuing in all his plays, specially those of the comic thread whereof The New Inn ' was the last, some recent humours still or manners of men that went along with. !;he times ; finding himself now near the close or shutting up of his circle, hath fancied to himself an idea, this Magnetic Mistress : a lady, a brave bountiful house-keeper and a virtuous widow ; who, having a young niece, ripe for a man and marriageable, he makes that his centre attractive bo draw thither a diversity of guests, all of persons of different humours to make up his perimeter. And this he hath called Humours Reconciled."
The word is used at least 35 times in the two plays ' Henry V.' and ' The Merry Wives.' ' A. R. BAYLEY.
Under " humour," 6 b, the * N.E.D.' has- the following :
" An inclination or disposition for some specified- action, etc. ; a fancy (to do something) ; a mood or state of mind characterized by such inclination.
With illustrative quotations from Shake- speare ('Mids. N.,' I. ii. 30; 'Merry W.,' II. i. 133-4, &c.) and from various other writers down to 1863. It appears that Nym was only peculiar, if at all, in an unusually frequent use of the term a part, I suppose, of the " drawling, affected " speech Page noted in him. C. C. B.
In Isaac Reed's Variorum Edition of Shakspeare (1813) there is a Jong note by Steevens on the passage quoted by ST. SWTTHIN ; but the note merely gives an extract from ' Humor's Ordinarie, \vhere a Man may be verie merrie and exceeding well used for his sixpence ' (1607), and is in no way explanatory.
May it not be that in this play Shakspere was, by the reiteration of the word humour in Nym's mouth, making fun of the title of Ben Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour ' ? This play of Jonson's was first acted in 1590 : the ' Merry Wives ' some two or three years later.
