te further that this 'nuntion'
may possibly put us on the right track for arriving at the
etymology of the word. Richardson has called attention to the fact
that it is spelt "noon-shun" in Browne's _Pastorals_, which must
at least suggest as possible and plausible that the 'nuntion' was
originally applied to the labourer's slight meal, to which he
withdrew for the _shunning_ of the heat of the middle _noon_:
especially when in Lancashire we find a word of similar formation,
'noon-scape', and in Norfolk 'noon-miss', for the time when
labourers rest after dinner. [It really stands for the older
English _none-schenche_, i.e. 'noon-skink' or noon-drink (see
Skeat, _Etym. Dict._, _s.v._), correlative to 'noon-meat' or
'nam-met'.] It is at any rate certain that the dignity to which
'lunch' or 'luncheon' has now arrived, as when we read in the
newspapers of a "magnificent _luncheon_", is altogether modern;
the word belonged a century ago to rustic life, and in literature
had not travelled beyond the "hobnailed pastorals" which professed
to describe that life.

{144} See it so written, Holland's _Pliny_, vol. ii. p. 428, and often.

{145} As a proof of the excellent service which an accurate acquaintance
with provincial usages may render in the investigation of the
innumerable perplexing phenomena of the English language, I would
refer to the admirable article _On English Pronouns Personal_ in
_Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. i. p. 277.

{146} [We now have the good fortune to possess a complete collection of
this valuable class of words in the splendid "English Dialect
Dictionary", edited by Professor Joseph Wright of Oxford, which is
an essential supplement to all existing dictionaries of our
language.]

{147} This last very curious usage, which served as a kind of
stepping-stone to 'its', and of which another example occurs in
the Geneva Version (Acts xii. 10), and three or four in
Shakespeare, has been abundantly illustrated by those who have
lately written on the early history of the word 'its'; thus see
Craik, _On the English of Shakespeare_, p. 91; Marsh, _Manual of
the English Language_ (Eng. Edit.), p. 278; _Transactions of the
Philological Society_, vol. 1. p. 280; and my book _On the
Authorized Version o