his novelty. Can any thing be more dogmatic than his assertions? which I
will recapitulate as much as possible in his own words, before I proceed
to deal with them.

1. "I have never had the least doubt that this word is derived
immediately from the German."

2. "It is, in fact, 'das Neue' in the genitive case;" and "Mr. H."
proceeds to mention the German phrase, "Was giebt's Neues?" as giving
the exact sense of our "What is the news?" [which cannot be gainsaid;
but I shall have a word to say presently about _neues_ in that phrase
being the genitive case.]

3. "That the word is not derived from the English adjective 'new,'--that
it is not of English manufacture at all--I feel well assured."

4. "In that case '_s_' would be the sign of the plural; and we should
have, as the Germans have, either extant or obsolete, also 'the new.'"
[I do not see the _sequitur_.]

5 "'News' is a noun singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily
into the language."

Such are "Mr. HICKSON's" principal assertions: and when I add, that he
has found out that the German "neu" was in olden time spelt "new," so
that the genitive, "newes," was identical with the old form of the
English word "news;" and that he explains the transformation of a
genitive case of a German adjective into an English substantive by
English ignorance, which he further thinks is exemplified by the Koran
having been called "the Alkoran," in ignorance of "_Al_" meaning "the,"