"The more we love good liquor, the merrier we shall be?"
I think the first line is—
"You friend drink to me friend, and I friend drink to thee."
AN M. D.
39. The Latin Termination "aster."
—Can any of your correspondents tell me why the termination aster is used in a depreciatory sense in Latin, as poetaster, a bad poet; oleaster, the wild olive; pinaster, the wild pine? With regard to this latter substantive, I have seen the mistake made in a descriptive catalogue of the pine species, of calling this the star pine; but I have no doubt that it was named pinaster, as inferior to the stone pine, or Pinus pinea, which embellishes the Italian gardens, while the pinaster flourishes on the mountains and the sea-coast.
Probably other examples may be found where the terminal aster is used in a similar sense.
A BORDERER.
40. Portrait of Dryden.
—Can any of your correspondents or readers inform me where any undoubted original portrait of John Dryden is to be found? Malone, Dryden's biographer, enumerates seven or eight portraits, and he states where they were in 1800. I am aware that two are in the Bodleian Gallery at Oxford, the one stated by Malone "painter unknown;" and the other alleged to be by Kneller; but I do not consider the latter to be an original. I wish more particularly to know who has a half-length original portrait. Dryden was painted by Kneller, Closterman, and Riley.