Fiacre is well known: hackney
carriages, when first established in Paris, waited for their hiring in
the court of an hotel which was adorned with an image of the Scottish
saint.] To these I may add 'guillotine,' though Dr. Guillotin did not
invent this instrument of death, even as it is a baseless legend that
he died by it. Some improvements in it he made, and it thus happened
that it was called after him.
Nor less shall we find history, at all events literary history, in the
noting of the popular characters in books, who have supplied words that
have passed into common speech. Thus from Homer we have 'mentor' for a
monitor; 'stentorian' for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as, with all of
Hector's nobleness, there is a certain amount of big talk about him, he
has given us 'to hector'; [Footnote: See Col. Mure, _Language and
Literature of Ancient Greece_, vol. i. p. 350.] while the medieval
romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful
traffic out of which his name has passed into the words 'to pander' and
'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomonte, a hero of Boiardo; who
yet, it must be owned, does not bluster and boast, as the word founded
on his name seems to imply; adopted by Ariosto, it was by him changed
into Rodamonte. 'Thrasonical' is from Thraso, the braggart of Roman
comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; to
Moliere the French language owes 'tartuffe' and 'tartufferie.'
'Reynard' with us is a sort of duplicate for fox, while in French
'renard' has quite excluded the old 'volpils' being originally no more
than the proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that
famous beast-epic of the Middle Ages, _Reineke Fuchs_.
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