"There is a pleasure, sure,
In being mad, which none but madmen know!"
This is inference, not assertion. Whether it be natural or not, I will not say, but I can see no blunder.
S. H.
Derivation of Yankee (Vol. iii., p. 461.).
—Washington Irving, in his Knickerbocker's History of New York, gives the same derivation of "Yankee" that is quoted from Dr. Turnbull and from Mr. Richmond. Irving's authority is, I believe, earlier than both these. Is the derivation his? and if his, is he in earnest in giving it? I ask this, not because I have reason to doubt in this instance either his seriousness or his philological accuracy, but by way of inserting a caution on behalf of the unwary. I have read or heard of a learned German who quoted that book as veritable history. The philology may be as baseless as the narrative. It is a happy suggestion of a derivation at all events, be it in jest or in earnest.
E. J. S.
Ferrante Pallavicino (Vol. iii., pp. 478. 523.).
—Your correspondent CHARLES O'SOULEY will find some account of Ferrante Pallavicino in Chalmers, or any other biographical dictionary; and a very complete one in the Dictionnaire Historique of Prosper Marchand. The manuscript he possesses has been printed more than once; it first appeared in the Opere Scelte di Ferrante Pallavicino printed at Geneva, but with the imprint Villafranca, 1660, 12mo., of which there are several reimpressions. It is there entitled La Disgratia del Conte D'Olivares, and bears the fictitious subscription of "Madrid li 28 Gennaro, 1643," at the end. If the MS. was written at Genoa, it is most probably only a transcript; for Pallavicino was resident at Venice when it appears to have been written, and was soon after trepanned by a vile caitiff named Charles de Bresche alias De Morfu, a Frenchman employed by the Pope's nuncio Vitellio, into the power of those whom his writings had incensed, and was by them put to death at Avignon in 1644.
S. W. SINGER.