The old English has _fote_, _fode_, _loke_, _coke_, _roke_, etc., for _foot_, etc. And _above_ rhymes in Chaucer to _remove_. Suspecting that the broader sounds are the older, we may surmise that _remove_ and _food_ have retained their old sounds, and that _cook_, once _coke_, would have rhymed to our _Luke_, the vowel being brought a little nearer, perhaps, to the _o_ in our present _coke_, the fuel, probably so called as used by cooks. If this be so, the Chief Justice _Cook_[614] of our lawyers, and the _Coke_ (pronounced like the fuel) of the greater part of the world, are equally wrong. The lawyer has no right whatever to fasten his pronunciation upon us: even leaving aside the general custom, he cannot prove himself right, and is probably wrong. Those who {332} know the village of Rokeby (pronounced Rookby) despise the world for not knowing how to name Walter Scott's poem: that same world never asked a question about the matter, and the reception of the parody of _Jokeby_, which soon appeared, was a sufficient indication of their notion. Those who would fasten the hodiernal sound upon us may be reminded that the question is, not what they call it now, but what it was called in Cromwell's time. Throw away general usage as a lawgiver, and this is the point which emerges. Probably _R[=u]ke-by_ would be right, with a little turning of the Italian [=u] towards [=o] of modern English. [Some of the above is from an old review. I do not always notice such insertions: I take nothing but my own writings. A friend once said to me, "Ah! you got that out of the _Athenaeum_!" "Excuse me," said I. "the _Athenaeum_ got that out of me!"] APOLOGIES TO CLUVIER.