hin and the Gills fair without,"
meaning the leathern jacks clean within, and the metal gills
polished without.]

[Footnote 2: His character has suffered by antiquarian
research, which tells us that the song was made on a Colonel
Horner, intrusted by the last Abbot of Wells with a pie,
containing the title-deeds of the abbey, which he was to
deliver to Henry VIII., and that he abstracted one for his own
purposes, whereupon the abbot was hanged.]

[Footnote 3: The old name for pancakes. Slap-_jacks_ is their
present name in America.]

[Footnote 4: The figure which struck the hour, as on the old
clocks of St. Dunstan's, and of Carfax in Oxford.]

* * * * *

MYTHE VERSUS MYTH.

When I first began to write on Mythology, I followed the Germans in
using _mythus_ for the Greek ~mythos~. I afterwards thought it
would be better to Anglicise it, and, strange to say, I actually found
that there was a rule in the English language without an exception. It
was this: Words formed from Greek disyllables in ~os~, whether
the penultimate vowel be long or short, are monosyllables made long by
_e_ final. Thus, not only does ~bolos~ make _bole_, but ~polos~ _pole_,
~poros~ _pore_, ~skopos~ _scope_, ~tonos~ _tone_, &c.; so also ~gyros~,
_gyre_; ~thymos~, _thyme_; ~stylos~, _style_; ~kybos~, _cube_, &c.: I
therefore, without hesitation, made an English word _m[=y]the_. Mr.
Grote, in his _History of Greece_, has done the very same thing, and
probably on the same principles, quite independently of me; for, as I am
informed, he has never condescended to read my _Mythology of Greece and
Italy_, perhaps because it was not written in German. We have had no
followers, as far as I am aware, but Miss Lynn, in her classical novels,
and Mr. J. E. Taylor, in his translation of the _Pentamerone_, &c.

Meantime the English language had got another form of ~mythos~,
namely, _m[)y]th_, which I believe made its first appearance in Mr.
Cooley's _Maritime and Inland Discovery_, and so has the claim of
priority, if not of correctness. This form has been so generally
adopted, that it seems likely ere long to become a mere slang term. It
is used for every kind of fiction whatever; indeed, I have seen it
employed where the proper word would be _hoax_. Nay, to make matters
worse, it is actually used of persons. Mrs. Harris, for instance, has
been termed a _myth_, as