that it has been used freely by good writers for nearly a century, and that it was current English as early as 1624 at least. The tirade against this long-established word appears to have been begun by some uninformed writer in Punch about 1861, who, ignorant of the fact that it had been freely used by Coleridge, Martineau, Gladstone, Newman, Mill, Mansel, Peel, Rawlinson, Dickens, Charles Reade, and scores beside, feebly tried to brand it as “this American solecism.” When its American origin was disproved, another writer audaciously asserted that it had been invented by the newspapers during the Crimean War! Well might Mr. Fitzedward Hall say, in the work already cited, “With nine in ten of the occasional critics of words who contribute their superficial views to newspapers and magazines, a declaration of personal approval or disapproval, generally accompanied by some audacious historical invention, is propounded as if it ought to be received as conclusive.” There is no particular objection to the sciolist railing at reliable as vulgar, absurd, low, outrageous, malformed, stupid, ungentlemanly; these are expressions of his own good taste; but when he proceeds to invent a history of its origin and use, it is time to protest in the interest of historical truth. As to the form of reliable, it is quite as good as that of accountable, unaccountable, laughable (Shakspere, Dryden, Pope), and a score of other words in -able.
It may be added that residential has been good English at least since 1690, and that residence, resident, residential, are as good a series as confidence, confident, confidential. Of regrettable good English examples can be quoted from 1632 onwards. When will people learn that the history of words, as of anything else, can be learned only by putting oneself in the position of a learner, and ought not to be invented to give support to pet prejudices or aversions? Let a man who has a chronic antipathy to reliable say frankly, “I know nothing about the history of this word, and I care less; but its colour irritates me and drives me furious.” We should then know where we were, and keep out of his way, recognizing that the case was one not for the etymologist or lexicographer, but for the pathologist.
Oxford.
Cemetery Guides (7th S. vii. 508).—There is a ‘Handbook for Visitors to the Kensal Green Cemetery,’ by Benjamin Clark. The preface of the copy which I have has “July, 1843.” The book of 108 pages is s.a. There have been issues from time to time, I think.
Keats: the Grave of Keats (7th S. viii. 45).—While professing entire sympathy with the note at this reference, permit me to make three remarks thereon for the sake of exactness. 1. The beautiful old Protestant burying-ground was inside, not outside Porta San Paolo. 2. There is really no growing demand for house accommodation to justify the desecration. Rome has long been overstocked with new tenements, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of half-built houses falling to decay for want of tenants. 3. The arrangement to which the German Government has delivered us is a perfect satire on compromise. The reason why we pleaded that Keats’s grave might be left undisturbed was out of love for the solitude of the site—a miniature solitude, indeed, but endeared to us by its appropriateness and by the prescriptive sympathy with which the pilgrimages of tens of thousands of our countrymen had surrounded it, as with a halo. The road would in no way have suffered by being carried past this enceinte along the old line. But to make of this tranquil site a mere street-refuge, closed round with the clatter of business traffic and the hideous erections of modern Rome, is simply adding insult to injury. Far better to have removed the lonely grave to the remotest part of the Campagna, the Pontine Marshes, or the Maremma; any desolation of nature would have suited it better than the desolation of vulgarity.
Eliana. (7th S. viii. 81).—In the ‘Life of Charles James Mathews,’ edited by Charles Dickens, vol. i. pp. 49–54, Mr. Dobell will find a perfect copy of the playbill mentioned by him (Theatre Royal, English Opera House, Strand, April 26, 1822), with remarks on the several actors who took part in the performance. Mr. Mathews says, “I am enabled to give the playbill in full, thanks to my friend E. L. Blanchard.” Mr. Mathews was responsible for the getting up of the several pieces; and on p. 54 he says, “So pleased was my father with my performance that he seriously urged me to adopt the stage as a profession.” No mention is made of the playbill or the writer of it. If I might offer an opinion, I should say Mathews wrote it. It requires a practical man, well up in theatrical matters, to form a playbill, however easy it seems. I was well known to Mr. Mathews, and I remember once he remarked to me, about posters and playbills, the necessity of making them striking. He finished by saying, “He found a great difference in drawing up a bill and in paying one.” Poor fellow! he paid dearly for the lesson.
13, Doughty Street, W.C.
Mr. Dobell will find all the information he seeks concerning the performance of Lamb’s ‘Mr. H.’ by the younger Charles Mathews and his friends in so easily accessible a book as the ‘Life of C. J. Mathews,’ by Mr. Charles Dickens, the younger. It is absolutely certain that Charles Lamb had nothing whatever to do with it; and the humour of the playbill (such as it is) savours of the Theodore Hook style of comicality, and not at all of Elia. I may add that the imitations of
