I must beg to differ in opinion from your correspondent, even with his epicene restriction, who states "that varium et mutabile semper femina only means that whatever reads backwards and forwards, the same is always feminine."
If M. will take the trouble to look in Boyle's Court Guide for 1845, p. 358., he will find the name of a late very distinguished general officer, Sir Burges Camac. A wealthy branch of this family is now established in the United States, and one of its members bears the name of Camac Camac.
I am unable to give M. another instance, and doubt if one can be easily found where the Christian and surnames of a gentleman are alike, and both reversible.
W. W.
Malta.
Etymology of Eve.—Only one instance of a reversible name seems to me at present among the propria quæ maribus, and that is Bob. As, however, the name of our universal mother has been brought forward, you will, perhaps, allow me to transcribe the following remarkable etymology:
"Omnes nascimur ejulantes, ut nostram miseriam exprimamus. Masculus enim recenter natus dicit A; fœmina vero E; dicentes E vel A quotquot nascuntur ab Eva. Quid est igitur Eva nisi heu ha? Utrumque dolentis est interjectio doloris exprimens magnitudinem. Hinc enim ante peccatum virago, post peccatum Era meruit appellari.... Mulier autem ut naufragus, cum parit tristitiam habet," &c.—De Contemptu Mundi, lib. i. c. 6., à Lothario, diacono cardinali, S.S. Sergii et Bacchi, editus, qui postea Innocentius Papa III. appellatus est.
Balliolensis.
Manifesto of the Emperor Nicholas (Vol. viii., p. 585.).—Allow me to correct a gross error into which I have been led, by an imperfect concordance, in hastily concluding that the words "In te Domine speravi, non confundar in æternum," were not in the Psalms, as I have found them in the Vulgate, Psalms xxxi. 1. and lxxi. 1.
T. J. Buckton.