196
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. MA*, n,
1722, and was succeeded on 26 July, 1725, by
John Pombret. An inquiry of the Registrar
at Heralds' College might elicit some personal
details. A. H.
"HELPMATE" (9 th S. ii. 105, 185, 310, 453, 496 ; iii. 50, 71). There is but little that need be said in reply to my numerous critics, and most of it is said for me in the recently published Heel-Hod section of the ' H.E.D.' We are there told that helpmeet is a compound absurdity formed by taking the two words help meet in Gen. ii. 18 as one word, and that helpmate was "probably influenced in origin" by helpmeet. The earliest quotation for help-meet is from Dryden (1673), for helpmate from M. Davies (1715). Quotations for the earlier form, with or without a hyphen, are also given from Feltham (1696), R. Bull (1739), Clough (1849), Freeman (1870), Smiles (1873), and other writers. Of both forms it is said that they are chiefly applied to a wife or husband ; but no instance of the application of helpmeet to a husband is given, and of helpmate only two one from Scott, and this very pertinent one from De Foe's ' Religious Courtship ' (1722), " A woman is to be a helpmate, and a man is to be the same." Can it be doubted that De Foe had Gen. ii. 18 in mind when he wrote that 1
ME. ADAMS suggests a connexion between helpmate and helpfellow, and says that the one is as intelligible as the other. The last known instance of helpfellow occurs in 1571 (see 'H.E.D.,; s.v.); the "variant" (as ME. ADAMS calls it) first occurs, as we have seen, in 1715, and meanwhile kelp-meet had appeared. As regards intelligibility, I venture to think that neither word is beyond reproach. Help- fellow had a very short life, and helpmate appears to have survived under false pretences only. Do they indicate reciprocal help, or help in common? Helpfellow, apparently, the latter; helpmate (at least as applied to husband and wife), the former. ME. ADAMS will probably admit that the two meanings are not quite the same. The great objection to helpmate, however, is that it is but another form of helpmeet. That there is a connexion between the two ME. ADAMS admits, and I suppose he no longer holds that helpmeet is a corruption of the other form now he knows it to be of earlier date. C. C. B.
In view of the comment upon the appli- cation of the word to the wife alone, it may be interesting to note John Wesley's possibly unique use of helpmeet. The quotation is taken from a newspaper account of some letters very lately sold at Messrs. Sotheby's.
Writing from Tetsworth under date of
27 March, 1751, to the wife who afterwards
proved so uncongenial, the famous preacher
exclaimed : " O, how can we praise God
enough for making us helpmeet for each
other." I cannot say whether or not the
word was hyphenized in the manuscript,
because in the printed account the exigencies
of type-setting divided the word at the end
of a line and made a hyphen needful.
M. C. L. New York.
CAPE TOWN IN 1844 (9 th S. ii. 489 ; iii. 96) Thanks to my friend Mr. Fred. C. Loney of the Pietermaritzburg Legislative Assembly, I am enabled to give further particulars as to the volume referred to in my note at the last reference. He writes :
" The title is ' The Kafirs Illustrated,' by George French Angas, and it was published in 1849 by J. Hogarth, 5, Haymarket, London. It contains thirty coloured illustrations and eleven engravings on wood. A few of them deal with Cape Town itself ; but, generally, the illustrations are of every- day South African life, flora, &c. It is a rare and costly work, our copy, I believe, costing about 20/. There was, however, a cheaper edition issued, in which the plates were not coloured, but I have never seen a copy of it."
HAEEY HEMS.
Fair Park, Exeter.
THACKERAY'S LATIN (9 th S. ii. 27, 218). Snugly stowed away (as students know) for the edification of ingenuous but inquisitive youth, in some * Body of the Latin Poets ' exact reference were bootless may be found, or, better, may be left to lie perdu, certain patchwork concoctions, by Low Latin poet- asters, in which selections of noble, or, at the least, innocuous lines and phrases from the illustrious classics are so artfully pieced together and dovetailed as to convey, in their new context, meanings quite different from their original ones, and to present complete descriptions of a very peculiar and improper character. In short, those literary hogs, with sacrilegious snouts, grubbed up and befouled the beautiful and fragrant flower-beds of their poetical masters, and turned them into reek- ing pigstyes. Thackeray* performs the exact converse of this unseemly operation, and with disinfection in his genial touch catches up on the spur of the moment the imperfect fragment of a gross line of scathing denuncia- tion from a satire of Juvenal, in which the ancient cynic surpasses even himself in frank outspokenness(in which the old Roman Cocka- lorum comes out "quite the Zola," as Capt. Dyngwell, of 'Happy Thoughts' memory,
- ' Vanity Fair,' vol. ii. ch, xviii.
