"Le Compère Mathieu" (Vol. vi., pp. 11. 111. 181.).—On the fly-leaf of my copy (three vols. 12mo., Londres, 1766) of this amusing work, variously attributed by your correspondents to Mathurin Laurent and the Abbé du Laurens, is written the following note, in the hand of its former possessor, Joseph Whateley:
"Ecrit par Diderot, fils d'un Coutelier: un homme très licentieux, qui écrit encore plusieurs autres Ouvrages, comme La Religieuse, Les Bijoux méchant (sic), &c. Il jouit un grand rôle après dans la Révolution.
"J. W."
By the way, A. N. styles it "a not altogether undull work." May I ask him to elucidate this phrase, as I am totally at a loss to comprehend its meaning. "Not undull" must surely mean dull, if anything. The work, however, is the reverse of dull.
William Bates.
Birmingham.
Etymology of "Awkward" (Vol. viii., p. 310.—H. C. K. has probably given the true derivation of this word, but he might have noticed the
singularity of one Anglo-Saxon word branching off into two forms, signifying different ways of acting wrong; one, awkward, implying ignorance and clumsiness; the other, wayward, perverseness and obstinacy. That the latter word is derived from the source from which he deduces awkward, can, as I conceive, admit of no doubt.
J. S. Warden.
Life and Death (Vol. ix., p. 296.).—What is death but a sleep? We shall awake refreshed in the morning. Thus Psalm xvii. 15.; Rom. vi. 5. For the full meanings, see these passages in the original tongues. Sir Thomas Browne, whose Hydriotaphia abounds with quaint and beautiful allusions to this subject, says, in one place, "Sleep is so like death, that I dare not trust him without my prayers:" and he closes his learned treatise with the following sentence: