patronage of ‘Ginx’s Baby,’ to be found for the future in a new and more quaint dress than it has hitherto worn. Besides several of the above, it is to the Welsh, also, we owe our ‘Ivens,’ ‘Evans,’ and ‘Bevans’ (_i.e._ Ap-Evan), which are but sprung from the same name. The Flemings, too, have not suffered their form of it to die out for lack of support; for it is with the settlement of ‘Hans,’[30] a mere abbreviation of ‘Johannes,’ we are to date the rise of our familiar ‘Hansons,’ ‘Hankins,’ ‘Hankinsons,’ and ‘Hancocks,’ or ‘Handcocks.’ Nor is this all. ‘John’ enjoyed the peculiar prerogative of being able to attach to itself adjectives of a flattering, or at least harmless nature, and issuing forth and becoming accepted by the world therewith. Thus—though we shall have to notice it again—from the praiseworthy effort to distinguish the many ‘Johns’ each community possessed, we have still in our midst such names as ‘Prujean’ and ‘Grosjean,’ ‘Micklejohn’ and ‘Littlejohn,’ ‘Properjohn’ and ‘Brownjohn,’ and last, but not least, the estimable ‘Bonjohn.’ Do we need to go on to prove ‘Jack’s’ popularity, or rather universality?[31] Every stranger was ‘Jack’ till he was found to be somebody else; so that ‘every man Jack of them’ has been a kind of general lay-baptism for ages. Every young supernumerary, whose position and age gave the licence, was in the eye of his superiors simply ‘Jack.’ As one instrument after another, however, was brought into use, by which manual service was rendered unnecessary and ‘Jack’ unneeded, instead of superannuating him he was quietly thrust into the new and inanimate office, and what with ‘boot-jacks’ and ‘black-jacks,’ ‘jack-towels’ and ‘smoke-jacks,’ ‘jacks’ for this and ‘jacks’ for that, no wonder people have begun to speak unkindly of him as ‘Jack-of-all-trades and master of none.’ Still, with this uncomplimentary tone, there was a smack of praise. A notion, at any rate, got abroad that ‘Jack’ must be a knowing, clever, sharp-witted sort of fellow, one who has his eyes open. So we got into the way of associating him with the more lively of the birds, beasts, and fishes; such, for instance, as the ‘jack-daw,’ the ‘jack-an-apes,’ and the ‘jack-pike.’ But ‘familiarity,’ as our copybooks long ago informed us, ‘breeds contempt;’ and so was it with ‘Jack’—he became a mark for ridicule. Even in Chaucer’s day ‘jack-fool’ or ‘jack-pudding’ was the synonym for a buffoon, and ‘jackass’ for a dolt; and here it but nationalises the ‘zany,’ a corruption of the Italian ‘Giovanni,’ or ‘merry-John,’ corresponding to our ‘merry-Andrew.’ ‘Jack of Dover’ also existed at the same period as a cant term for a clever knave, and that it still lived in the seventeenth century is clear from Taylor’s rhyme, where he says:—