A quotation or two from that delightful old gossip, Mr. Pepys, will show its use in the middle of the seventeenth century:
"Lord's Day. With my wife to church. At noon dined nobly, ourselves alone. After dinner, my wife and Mercer by coach to Greenwich, to be gossip to Mrs. Daniel's child. My wife much pleased with the reception she had, and she was godmother, and did hold the child at the font, and it is called John."—Diary, May 20, 1666.
"Lord's Day. My wife and I to Mr. Martin's, where I find the company almost all come to the christening of Mrs. Martin's child, a girl. After sitting long, till the church was done, the parson comes, and then we to christen the child. I was godfather, and Mrs. Holder (her husband, a good man, I know well) and a pretty lady that waits, it seems, on my Lady Bath at Whitehall, her name Mrs. Noble, were godmothers. After the christening comes in the wine and sweetmeats, and then to prate and tattle, and then very good company they were, and I among them. Here was Mrs. Burroughs and Mrs. Bales (the young widow whom I led home); and having staid till the moon was up, I took my pretty gossip to Whitehall with us, and I saw her in her lodging."—Ibid., Dec. 2, 1666.]
Humphry Repton.—To snatch from utter oblivion the once highly reputed Humphry, the king of landscape gardeners, to whom many of our baronial parks owe much of their picturesque beauty, and who, by the side of Sir Joseph Paxton, would now most duly have taken knightful station in these go-ahead days, I ask, in what publication was it, that in 1780, or thereabouts, being an indefatigable attendant at all exhibitions and sales of art, he, the said Humphry, was accustomed (as well able he was) to enlighten the public upon what was passing in matters of art now nearly three quarters of a century ago? Was it the Bee? Again, did he not, at his death, leave two large volumes for publication, entitled Recollections of my Past Life? Where are these?
Inquest.
[The MS. collection of the late Humphry Repton, containing interesting details of his public and private life, has been used by Mr. Loudon in his biographical notice of Repton prefixed to the last edition of The Landscape Gardening, 8vo., 1840. Mr. Loudon states that 'these papers were left as a valued memorial for his children: it may be imagined, therefore, that they contain details of a private nature, which would be found devoid of interest to the world. Mr. Repton, indeed, possessed a mind as keenly alive to the ludicrous, as it was open to all that was excellent, in the variety of characters with whom his extensive professional connexions brought him acquainted; and he did not fail to observe and note down many curious circumstances and traits of character, in themselves highly amusing, but, for obvious reasons, unfit subjects for publication. Not one taint of satire or ill-nature, however, ever sullied the wit which flowed spontaneously from a mind sportive sometimes even to exuberance." His artistic critiques will be found in the following works: The Bee: or, a Critique on the Exhibition of Paintings at Somerset House, 1788, 8vo. Variety: a Collection of Essays, 1788, 12mo. The Bee: a Critique on the Shakspeare Gallery, 1789, 8vo. Odd Whims: being a republication of some papers in Variety, with a Comedy and other Poems, 2 vols. 12mo., 1804.]
"Oriel."—I should be glad if any of your correspondents could inform me of the origin of the term oriel, as applied to a window? It is not, I believe, necessarily to the East.
T. L. N.
Jamaica.
[Oriol, or Oriel, is a portico or court; also a small room near the hall in monasteries, where particular persons dined. (Blount's Glossog.) Du Cange says, "Oriolum, porticus, atrium;" and quotes Matthew Paris for it. Supposed by some to be a diminutive from area or areola. "In modern writings," says Nares, "we meet with mention of Oriel windows. I doubt the propriety of the expression; but, if right, they must mean those windows that project like a porch, or small room. At St. Albans was an oriel, or apartment for persons not so sick as to retire to the infirmary. (Fosbroke's Brit. Monachism, vol. ii. p. 160.) I may be wrong in my notion of oriel window, but I have not met with ancient authority for that expression. Cowel conjectured that Oriel College, in Oxford, took its name from some such room or portico. There is a remarkable portico, in the farther side of the first quadrangle, but not old enough to have given the name. It might, however, be only the successor of one more ancient, and more exactly an oriel." For articles on the disputed derivation of this term, which seems involved in obscurity, see Parker's Glossary of Architecture; a curious paper by Mr. Hamper, in Archæologia, vol. xxiii.; and Gentleman's Magazine for Nov. 1823, p. 424., and March, 1824, p. 229.]
"Orchard."—Professor Martyn, in his Notes on Virgil's Georgics, seems to be of opinion that the English word "orchard" is derived from the Greek ορχατος, which Homer uses to express the garden of Alcinous; and he observes that Milton writes it orchat, thereby corroborating this impression. Is the word spelt according to Milton's form by any other writers?