is saying I conceive
to have arisen from the custom prevalent in olden times, when every Baron
was supreme in his own castle, of extracting money from the unfortunate
Jews who happened to fall into his power, by means of torture. The most
usual _modus operandi_ seems to have been roasting the victims over a slow
fire. Every one remembers the treatment of Isaac of York by Front-de-Boeuf,
so vividly described in Sir Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_. Although the practice
has long been numbered amongst the things that were, the fact of its having
once obtained is handed down to posterity in this saying, as when any one
is taken to task for his shortcomings he is _hauled over the coals_.

JOHN P. STILWELL.

Dorking.

_The Words "Cash" and "Mob"_ (Vol. viii., p. 386.).--MR. FOX was right:
_mob_ is not genuine English--teste Dean Swift! A lady who was well known
to Swift used to say that the greatest scrape she ever got into with him
was by using the word _mob_. "Why do you say that?" he exclaimed in a
passion; "never let me hear you say that again!" "Why, sir," she asked,
"what am I to say?" "The rabble, to be sure," answered he. (Sir W. Scott's
_Works of Swift_, vol. ix.) The word appears to have been introduced about
the commencement of the eighteenth century, by a process to which we owe
many other and similar barbarisms--"beauties introduced to supply the want
of wit, sense, humour, and learning." In a paper of _The Tatler_, No. 230.,
much in the spirit, and possibly from the pen, of Swift, complaint is made
of the "abbreviations and elisions" which had recently been introduced, and
a humorous example of them is given. By these, the author adds,

"Consonants of most obdurate sound are joined together without one
softening vowel to intervene; and all this only to make one syllable of
two, directly contrary to the example of the Greeks and Romans, and a
natural tendency towards relapsing into barbarity. And this is still
more visible in the next refinement, which consists in pronouncing the
first syllable in a word that has many, and dismissing the rest. Thus
we cram one syllable and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened her mice
after she had bit off their legs to prevent their running away; and if
ours be the same reason for maiming our words, it will certainly answer
the end, for I am sure no other nation will desire to borrow them."

I have only to add (see _Blackwood's Magazine_, vol