_(To the Editor of the Mirror.)_
No part of the history of civilized nations is involved in such deep
obscurity as the origin and progress of their names. I do not mean their
names of men and women, the etymology of which are easy; for any stupid
fellow can see with half an eye that Xisuthrus and Noah are one and the
same person; and that Thoth can only be Hermes; nor is there any
discernable difference between Pelagius and Morgan; _tout celà va sans se
dire_, but when we come to account for the names of places or of signs,
then indeed are we lost in a vast field of metaphysical disquisition and
conjectural criticism. The _Spectator_, your worthy predecessor, threw
much light upon the science, but still he left it in its infancy. To be
sure, he traced the Bull and Mouth to the Boulogne Mouth, but I don't
remember that he made many other discoveries in this _terrâ incognitâ_.
However, he hinted that the roots of most of these old saws were to be
found in the French language, or rather in the jargon spoken by the
would-be-fine people, in imitation of the court, and by them called
French. Neither the _Spectator_, however, nor any of his periodical
imitators have ever found out why a certain headland, bare as the
back of my hand, should be dignified with the appellation of Beechey
Head; unless indeed, according to the Eton grammar, our ancestors used
the rule of _lucus a non lucendo_. The reason, however, is to be found in
the French language, and Beechey Head is the present guide of the old
_beau chef_, whereby this point was once known. The _Spectator_ also, if
I remember right, declared the old sign of the _Cat and the Fiddle_ to be
quite beyond his comprehension. In truth, no two objects in the world
have less to do with each other than a cat and a violin, and the only
explanation ever given of this wonderful union, appears to be, that once
upon a time, a gentleman kept a house with the sign of a Cat, and a lady
one, with the sign of a Fiddle, or _vice versâ_. That these two persons
fell in love, married, and set up an Inn, which to commemorate their
early loves, they called the Cat and the Fiddle. Such reasoning is
exceedingly poetical, and also (mind, _also_, not _therefore_)
exceedingly nonsensical. No, Sir, the Cat and the Fiddle is of greater
antiquity. Did you ever read the History of Rome? Of Rome! yes, of Rome.
Thence comes the Cat and the Fiddle, in somewhat a roundabout way
perhaps, but so it is:
Vixtrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.
Cato was faithful to the sacred cause of liberty, and disdained to
survive it; and now for the fiddle. In the days of good Queen Bess, when
those who had borne the iron yoke of Mary, ventured forth and gloried in
that freedom of conscience which had lately been denied them, a jolly
innkeeper having lately cast off the shackles of the old religion,
likened himself to the old Roman, and wrote over his door _l'Hostelle du
Caton fidelle_. The hostelle and its sign lasted longer than the worthy
gentleman, and having gone shockingly to decay, was many years after
re-established. But alas! the numerous French words once mixed with our
language had vanished, barbarized, and ground down into a heterogeneous
mass of sounds; and _le Caton fidelle_ was no longer known to his best
friends when resuscitated under the anomalous title of the Cat and
Fiddle!!