Met fierce, encountering every sconce,
And cover'd o'er with knobs and pains,
Each void receptacle for brains."
J. D.
Abigail (Vol. iv., p. 424.; Vol. v., pp. 38. 94. 450., Vol. viii., p. 42.).—Not having my "N. & Q." at hand, I cannot say what may have been already told on this subject, but I think I can answer the Queries of your last correspondent, H. T. Ryley. There can be, I think, no doubt that the familiar use of the name Abigail, for the genus "lady's maid," is derived from one whom I may call Abigail the Great; who, before she ascended King David's bed and throne, introduced herself under the oft-reiterated description of a "hand-maid." (See 1 Sam. xxv. 24, 25, 27, 28, 31.) I have no Concordance at hand, but I suspect there is no passage in Scripture where the word hand-maid is more prominent; and so the idea became associated with the name Abigail. An Abigail for a hand-maid is therefore merely analogous to a Goliath for a giant; a Job for a patient man; a Samson for a strong one; a Jezebel for a shrew, &c. I need hardly add, that H. T. Ryley's conjecture, that this use of the term Abigail had any relation to the Lady Masham, is, therefore, quite supererogative—but I may go farther. The old Duchess of Marlborough's Apology, which first told the world that Lady Masham's Christian name was Abigail, and that she was a poor cousin of her own, was not published till 1742, when all feeling about "Abigail Hill and her brother Jack" was extinct. In fine, it will be found that the use of the term Abigail for a lady's maid was much more frequent before the change of Queen Anne's Whig ministry than after.
C.
Honorary Degrees (Vol. viii, p. 8.).—Honorary degrees give no corporate rights. Johnson never himself assumed the title of Doctor; conferred on him first by the University of Dublin in 1765, and afterwards in 1775 by that of Oxford. See Croker's Boswell, p. 168. n. 5., for the probable motives of Johnson's never having called himself Doctor.
C.
Red Hair (Vol. vii., p. 616.).—The Danes are said to have been (and to be even now) a red-haired race.
They were long the scourge of England, and to this possibly may be attributed in some degree the prejudice against people having hair of that colour.