CHAPTER XXVI.

THE FUNERAL GAMES.

'Now then,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, entering the Double-barrelled Gun with his friend,--'Now, waiter, let us have Rhenish and Champagne, and all other good things with which your Gun is charged: fire off both barrels upon us: Come, you dog, make ready--present; for we solemnise a funeral to-day:' and, at the same time, he flung down the purchase-money of Juno upon the table. The waiter hastened to obey his orders.

The longer the two masters of Juno drank together, the more did they convince themselves that her death was a real blessing to herself, who had thus obviously escaped a life of severe cudgelling, which her voracity would have entailed upon her: 'yes,' they both exclaimed; 'a blessing to herself--to her friends in particular--and to the public in general.'

To conclude, the price of Juno was honourably drunk up to the last farthing, in celebration of her obsequies at this one sitting.

[Greek: Hôs hoi g'amphiepon taphon Hektoros hippodamoio.]

END OF 'MR. SCHNACKENBERGER.'

ANGLO-GERMAN DICTIONARIES.

The German dictionaries, compiled for the use of Englishmen studying that language, are all bad enough, I doubt not, even in this year 1823; but those of a century back are the most ludicrous books that ever mortal read: _read_, I say, for they are well worth reading, being often as good as a jest book. In some instances, I am convinced that the compilers (Germans living in Germany) had a downright hoax put upon them by some facetious Briton whom they had consulted; what is given as the English equivalent for the German word being not seldom a pure coinage that never had any existence out of Germany. Other instances there are, in which the words, though not of foreign manufacture, are almost as useless to the English student as if they were; slang-words, I mean, from the slang vocabulary, current about the latter end of the seventeenth century. These must have been laboriously culled from the works of Tom Brown, Sir Roger L'Estrange, Echard, Jeremy Collier, and others, from 1660 to 1700, who were the great masters of this _vernacular_ English (as it might emphatically be called, with a reference to the primary[27] meaning of the word _vernacular_): and I verily believe, that, if any part of this slang has become, or ever should become a dead language to the English critic, his best guide to the recovery of its true meaning will be the German dictionaries of Bailey, Arnold, &c. in their earliest editions. By one of these, the word _Potztausend_ (a common German oath) is translated, to the best of my remembrance, thus:--'Udzooks, Udswiggers, Udswoggers, Bublikins, Boblikins, Splitterkins,' &c. and so on, with a large choice of other elegant varieties. Here, I take it, our friend the hoaxer had been at work: but the drollest example I have met with of their slang is in the following story told to me by Mr. Coleridge. About the year 1794, a German, recently imported into Bristol, had happened to hear of Mrs. X., a wealthy widow. He thought it would be a good speculation to offer himself to the lady's notice as well qualified to 'succeed' to the late Mr. X.; and accordingly waited on the lady with that intention. Having no great familiarity with English, he provided himself with a copy of one of the dictionaries I have mentioned; and, on being announced to the lady, he determined to open his proposal with this introductory sentence--Madam, having heard that Mr. X., late your husband, is dead: but coming to the last word 'gestorben' (dead), he was at a loss for the English equivalent; so, hastily pulling out his dictionary (a huge 8vo.), he turned to the word 'sterben,' (to die),--and there found----; but what he found will be best collected from the dialogue which followed, as reported by the lady:--

_German._ Madam, hahfing heard that Mein Herr X., late your man, is----(these words he kept chiming over as if to himself, until he arrived at No. 1 of the interpretations of 'sterben,'--when he roared out, in high glee at his discovery)----is, dat is--has, _kicked de bucket_.

_Widow._ (With astonishment.)--'Kicked the bucket,' Sir!--what--

_German._ Ah! mein Gott!--Alway Ich make mistake: I vou'd have said--(beginning again with the same solemnity of tone)--since dat Mein Herr X., late your man, hav--_hopped de twig_--(which words he screamed out with delight, certain that he had now hit the nail upon the head).

_Widow._ Upon my word, Sir, I am at a loss to understand you: 'Kicked the bucket,' and 'hopped the twig----!'

_German._ (Perspiring with panic.) Ah, Madam! von--two--tree--ten tousand pardon: vat sad, wicket dictionary I haaf, dat alway bring me in trouble: but now you shall hear--(and then, recomposing himself solemnly for a third effort, he began as before)--Madam, since I did hear, or wash hearing, dat Mein Herr X., late your man, haaf--(with a triumphant shout) haaf, I say, _gone to Davy's locker_----

[27] What I mean is this. Vernacular (from _verna_, a slave born in his master's house). 1. The homely idiomatic language in opposition to any mixed jargon, or lingua franca, spoken by an imported slave:--2. Hence, generally, the pure mother-tongue as opposed to the same tongue corrupted by false refinement. By vernacular English, therefore, in the primary sense, and I mean, such homely English as is banished from books and polite conversation to Billingsgate and Wapping.

Further he would have gone; but the widow could stand no more: this nautical phrase, familiar to the streets of Bristol, allowed her no longer to misunderstand his meaning; and she quitted the room in a tumult of laughter, sending a servant to show her unfortunate suitor out of the house, with his false friend the dictionary; whose help he might, perhaps, invoke for the last time, on making his exit, in the curses--'Udswoggers, Boblikins, Bublikins, Splitterkins!'

N.B. As test words for trying a _modern_ German dictionary, I will advise the student to look for the words--_Beschwichtigen Kulisse_, and _Mansarde_. The last is originally French, but the first is a true German word; and, on a question arising about its etymology, at the house of a gentleman in Edinburgh, could not be found in any one, out of five or six modern Anglo-German dictionaries.

THE END.

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

LONDON & BUNGAY.