"Tuch rhyming to much, from the German tuch, cloth: I never met with it before as an English word. So I find platt, for foliage, in Stanley's Hist. of Philosophy, p. 22."
Whether Coleridge rightly appreciated Stanley's use of the word platt, I shall not determine; but with regard to touch, it is evident that he went (it was the tendency of his mind) to Germany for error, when truth might have been discovered nearer home. The context shows that cloth could not have been intended, for who ever heard of a table or altar made of cloth? The truth is that the poet meant touchstone, which the author of the Glossary of Architecture (3rd edit., text and appendix) rightly explains to be "the dark-coloured stone or marble, anciently used for tombstones. A musical sound" (it is added) "may be produced by touching it sharply with a stick." And this is in fact the reason for its name. The author of the Glossary of Architecture cites Ben Jonson by Gifford, viii. 251., and Archæol., xvi. 84.
Alphage.
Lincoln's Inn.
The Dodo.—Among the seals, or rather sulphur casts, in the British Museum, is one of Nicholas Saumares, anno 1400. It represents an esquire's helmet, from which depends obliquely a shield with the arms—supporters—dexter a unicorn, sinister a greyhound; crest, a bird, which from its unwieldy body and disproportionate wings I take to be a Dodo: and the more probability attaches itself to this conjecture, since Dodo seems to have been the surname of the Counts de Somery, or Somerie (query Saumarez), as mentioned in p. 2. of Add. MSS. 17,455. in the British Museum, and alluded to in a former No. of "N. & Q." This seal, like many others, is not in such a state of preservation as to warrant the assertion that we have found a veritable Dodo. I only offer it as a hint to Mr. Strickland and others, that have written so learnedly on this head. Burke gives a falcon for the crest of Saumarez; but the clumsy form and figure of this bird does not in any way assimilate with any of the falcon tribe.
Dodo seems also to have been used as a Christian name, as in the same volume of MSS. quoted above we find Dodo de Cisuris, &c.
Clarence Hopper.
Francis I.—Mention has been made in "N. & Q." of Francis I.'s celebrated "Tout est perdu hormis l'honneur!" but the beauty of that phrase is lost in its real position,—a long letter to Louisa of Savoy, his mother. The letter is given at full length in Sismondi's Histoire des Français.
M—a L.