"I chiefly who enjoy
So far the happier lot, enjoying thee
Pre-eminent by so much odds."

Then with respect to "noise," MR. HICKSON scouts the idea of its being
the same word with the French "noise." Here again he is at odds with
Doctor Johnson, although I doubt very much that he has the odds of him.
MR. HICKSON rejects altogether the _quasi_ mode of derivation, nor will
he allow that the same word may (even in different languages) deviate
from its original meaning. But, most unfortunately for MR. HICKSON, the
obsolete French signification of "noise" was precisely the present
English one! A French writer thus refers to it:--

"A une époque plus reculée ce mot avait un sens différent: il
signifiait _bruit, cries de joie_, &c. Joinville dit dans son
_Histoire de Louis IX_.,--'La noise que ils (les Sarrazins)
menoient de leurs cors sarrazinnoiz estoit espouvantable à
escouter.' Les Anglais nous ont emprunté cette expression et
l'emploient _dans sa première acception_."

MR. HICKSON also lays great stress upon the absence, in English, of "the
new" as a singular of "the news." In the French, however, "_la
nouvelle_" is common enough in the exact sense of news. Will he allow
nothing for the caprice of idiom?

A.E.B.

Leeds, July 8. 1850.