"The world is made for the bold impious man,
Who stops at nothing, seizes all he can."
And Pope, in one of his letters, has the expression "stick at nothing," where he says:
"The three chief qualifications of party-writers are, to stick at nothing, to delight in flinging dirt, and to slander in the dark by guess."
Can any of your correspondents explain the origin of the word "stick" in the sense in which it is used by Pope; and how it came to supplant altogether the more intelligible word "stop," as employed by Dryden?
Henry H. Breen.
St. Lucia, January, 1851.
"Ejusdem Farinæ."—Your readers are acquainted with the expression "ejusdem farinæ," and the derogatory sense in which it is employed to describe things or characters of the same calibre. It was in common use among clerical disputants after the Reformation; and Leland has it in the following remarks respecting certain fabulous interpolations in the Black Book at Cambridge:
"Centum sunt ibi, præterea, ejusdem farinæ fabulæ."
I have no doubt, however, that the origin of the expression may be traced to the scholastic doctors and casuists of the Middle Ages.