Ebenezer Cobham Brewer

“ King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. John, being jealous of the state kept by the abbot, declared he should be put to death unless he answered three questions. The first question was, how much the king was worth; the second, how long it would take to ride round the world; and the third, what the king was thinking of. ”

“ In the interval much new information has been unearthed on the subjects treated of in the Dictionary, many errors of philology have been exposed, and an exactitude has been reached which was almost impossible when the book was first undertaken more than fifty years ago. During this length of time the book or its manuscript has been always at the author's elbow, that new matter might be laid in store, errors corrected, and suggestions utilized, to render the work more generally useful, and more thoroughly to be depended on. ”

“ The dog is placed at the feet of women in monuments to symbolise affection and fidelity, as a lion is placed at the feet of men to signify courage and magnanimity. Many of the Crusaders are represented with their feet on a dog, to show that they followed the standard of the Lord as faithfully as a dog follows the footsteps of his master.
(8) Dog in proverbs, fables, and proverbial phrases:
Barking dogs seldom bite. (See Barking.)
Dog don't eat dog. Ecclesia ecclesiam non decimat; government letters are not taxed; church lands pay no tithes to the church. ”

“ Icarios was slain by some drunken peasants, who buried the body under a tree. His daughter Erig′onē, searching for her father, was directed to the spot by the howling of Mæra, and when she discovered the body she hung herself for grief. Icarios became the constellation Boötēs, Erig′one the constellation Virgo, and Mæra the star Pro′cyon, which rises in July, a little before the Dog-star. ”

“ John the Evangelist is represented writing his gospel; or bearing a chalice, from which a serpent issues, in allusion to his driving the poison from a cup presented to him to drink. He is sometimes represented in a cauldron of boiling oil, in allusion to the tradition of his being plunged into such a cauldron before his banishment to the isle of Patmos. ”

“ This has enabled the author to make additions and corrections, and to substitute new articles for less useful ones ad libitum; so that this "New and Enlarged Edition" is virtually a new work on the old lines.
The last ten years of this Nineteenth Century has been pre-eminently distinguished for researches in English philology. More dictionaries on our gigantic and magnificent language have been published in this decade than in any preceding one, and thousands of ripe scholars in Great Britain and America have "contributed to improve their character ”

“ Jog. Jog away; jog off; jog on. Get away; be off; keep moving. Shakespeare uses the word shog in the same sense—as, "Will you shog off?" (Henry V., ii. 1) ; and again in the same play, "Shall we shog?" (ii. 3) . Beaumont and Fletcher use the same expression in The Coxcomb—"Come, prithee, let us shog off?" and again, in Pasquill and Katharine—"Thus it shogges" [goes] . In the Morte d'Arthur we have another variety—"He shokkes in sharpely" [rushes in] . ”

“ Royal Krueger (a beagle) ; Scottish Leader (a smooth-coated St. Bernard) ; Sensation (a pointer) ; Sir Bedivere (a rough-coated St. Bernard) ; Spinaway (a grey-hound) ; Toledo Blade (an English setter) ”

“ Of these last, especial mention should be made of the Rev. Arthur M. Rendell, M. A., of Coston Rectory, Melton Mowbray, of Dr. Huxley of Bath, Mr. J. Edward Cooper, Stapleford, (a most judicious and painstaking critic) , of Geo. ”