The great Earl of Whitfield he loves me not,
For nae gear fra me he could keep.
Scotch Ballad.
Duke. One of Shakespeare’s commentators charges him with an anachronism, the incongruous transfer of a modern title to an ancient condition of society, when he styles Theseus ‘Duke of Athens.’ It would be of very little consequence if the charge was a true one; but it is not, as his English Bible might have sufficiently taught him; Gen. xxxvi. 15-19. ‘Duke’ has indeed since Shakespeare’s time become that which this objector supposed it to have been always; but all were ‘dukes’ once who were ‘duces,’ captains and leaders of their people.
He [St. Peter] techith christen men to be suget to kyngis and dukis, and to ech man for God.—Wiclif, Prologe on the first Pistel of Peter.
Hannibal, duke of Carthage.—Sir T. Elyot, The Governor, b. i. c. 10.
These were the dukes and princes of avail
That came from Greece.
Chapman, Homer’s Iliad, b. ii.
Dunce. I have sought elsewhere (Study of Words, 20th edit. p. 143) to trace at some length the curious history of this word. Sufficient here to say that Duns Scotus, whom Hooker styles ‘the wittiest of the school divines,’ has given us this name, which now ascribes hopeless ignorance, invincible stupidity, to him on whom it is affixed. The course by which this came to pass was as follows. When at the Reformation and Revival of Learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavour, alike with the Reformers and with the votaries of the new learning, Duns, a standard-bearer among those, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by these, that his name gradually became that byeword which ever since it has been. See the quotation from Stanyhurst, s. v. ‘Trivial.’