C. de D.
Abigail (Vol. iv., pp. 424., &c.; Vol. viii., p. 653.).—Your recent correspondents on this subject do not appear to have met with the passage in which I mentioned, that since putting the question, I had found that a waiting-maid in Beaumont and Fletcher's comedy of The Scornful Lady was named Abigail; and that, as the play appeared to have been a favourite one, the application of the name to the class generally was probably owing to it. In the absence of any proof of its having been previously used in this sense, I still continue to think that this conjecture was well founded. Considering the terms on which Dean Swift was with the Mashams, he was the last person in the world to have used such a term, unless it had been so long in familiar use as to be deprived of all appearance of personal allusion to them.
J. S. Warden.
"Begging the question" (Vol. viii., p. 640.).—This phrase is identical with that of "petitio principii," a figure of speech well known both to logicians and mathematicians, i. e. assuming a point as proved, and reasoning upon it as such, which has in fact not been proved.
J. S. Warden.
Russian Emperors (Vol. ix., p. 222.).—I am informed by a late resident in Russia that the rumour to which Mr. Crosfield refers has no foundation. I am farther informed, however, that after a twenty-five years' reign the monarch has even more absolute and despotic authority than before the lapse of that time. I hope this subject may be well ventilated, as considerable misapprehension exists about it.
John Scribe.
Garble (Vol. ix., p. 243.).—Your correspondent E. S. T. T. was mistaken when he said that the "corrupt" meaning of the word garble is now the only one ever used. In proof of this I would give one instance, familiar to me, in which it still retains its "good" signification. In "working" cochineal, spices, and other similar merchandise at the warehouse in which they are stored upon their arrival in this country, the operation of
sifting and separating the good from the bad is termed garbling: the word being here employed in the very same sense as in the examples quoted by E. S. T. T., illustrative of its original meaning, and which sense he erroneously stated it no longer possessed.
R. V. T.