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Page 4
"Excepting that he lived and wrote, none of those industrious
antiquaries have pointed out any particulars respecting Rowland[s]. It
has been remarked that his muse is seldom found in the best company;
and to have become so well acquainted with the bullies, drunkards,
gamesters, and cheats, whom he describes, he must have frequented the
haunts of dissipation in which such characters are to be found. But the
humorous descriptions of low-life exhibited in his satires are more
precious to antiquaries than more grave works, and those who make the
manners of Shakspeare's {420} age the subject their study may better
spare a better author than Samuel Rowlands."
The opinions of both these writers are entitled to some respect, but
they certainly looked upon two very different sides of the question.
Gilchrist's conjecture that he was an ecclesiastic is quite untenable,
and I am fully inclined to agree with Sir Walter Scott, that Rowlands'
company was not of the most _select_ order, and that he must often have
frequented those "haunts of dissipation" which he so well describes in
those works which are the _known_ production of his muse.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
* * * * *
"APRICOT," "PEACH," AND "NECTARINE," ETYMOLOGY OF.
There is something curious in the etymology of the words "apricot,"
"peach," and "nectarine," and in their equivalents in several languages,
which may amuse your readers.
The apricot is an Armenian or Persian fruit, and was known to the Romans
later than the peach. It is spoken of by Pliny and by Martial.
Plin. N.H., lib. xv. c. 12.:
"Post autumnum maturescunt Persica, �state _pr�cocia_, intra xxx annos
reperta."
Martial, lib. xiii. Epig. 46.:
"Vilia maternis fueramus _pr�coqua_ ramis,
Nunc in adaptivis Persica care sumus."
Its only name was given from its ripening earlier than the peach.
The words used in Galen for the same fruit (evidently Gr�cised Latin), are
[Greek: prokokkia] and [Greek: prekokkia]. Elsewhere he says of this fruit,
[Greek: taut�s ekleleiphthai to palaion onoma]. Dioscorides, with a nearer
approach to the Latin, calls apricots [Greek: praikokia.]
From _pr�cox_, though not immediately, _apricot_ seems to be derived.
Johnson, unable to account for the initial _a_, derives it from _apricus_.
The American lexicographer Webster gives, strangely enough _albus coccus_
as its derivation.
The progress of the word from west to east, and then from east to
south-west, and from thence northwards, and its various changes in that
progress, are rather strange.
One would have supposed that the Arabs, living near the region of which the
fruit was a native, might have either had a name of their own for it, or at
least have borrowed one from Armenia. But they apparently adopted a slight
variation of the Latin, [Greek: to palaion onoma], as Galen says, [Greek:
exeleleipt�].
The Arabs called it [Arabic: brqwq] or, with the article, [Arabic:
albrqwq].
The Spaniards must have had the fruit in Martial's time, but they do not
take the name immediately from the Latin, but through the Arabic, and call
it _albaricoque_. The Italians, again, copy the Spanish, not the Latin, and
call it _albicocco_. The French, from them, have _abricot_. The English,
though they take their word from the French, at first called it _abricock_,
then _apricock_ (restoring the _p_), and lastly, with the French
termination, _apricot_.
From _malum persicum_ was derived the German _Pfirsiche_, and _Pfirsche_,
whence come the French _p�che_, and our _peach_. But in this instance also,
the Spaniards follow the Arabic [Arabic: bryshan], or, with the article
[Arabic: albryshan], in their word _alberchigo_. The Arabic seems to be
derived from the Latin, and the Persians, though the fruit was their own,
give it the same name.
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