A sound As of a silver horn across the hills Blown. And then the music faded, and the Grail Passed. His eyes became so like her own they seemed Hers. “THAT MINE ADVERSARY HAD WRITTEN A BOOK.” This passage from Job xxxi. 35, is frequently misapplied, being interpreted as if it had reference to a book or writing as commonly understood. It means rather, according to Gesenius, a charge or accusation. Pierius makes it “libellum accusationis,” and Grotius, “scriptam accusationem” Scott expresses this in his _Commentary_:— “Job challenged his adversary, or accuser, to produce a libel or written indictment against him: he was confident that it would prove no disgrace to him, but an honor; as every article would be disproved, and the reverse be manifested.” Other commentators understand it as meaning a record of Job’s life, or of his sufferings. Coverdale translates:—“And let him that my contrary party sue me with a lybell.” In the Genevan version it is, “Though mine adversarie should write a book _against me_.” In the Bishop’s Bible, 1595, “Though mine adversarie write a book _against me_.” The meaning seems to have become obscured in our version by retaining the English book instead of the Latin _libel_, but omitting the words in italics, “against me.” ECCENTRIC ETYMOLOGIES. To trace the changes of form and meaning which many of the words of our language have undergone is no easy task. There are words as current with us as with our forefathers, the significance of which, as we use them, is very different from that of their primitive use. And, in many instances, they have wandered, by courses more or less tortuous, so far from their original meaning as to make it almost impossible to follow the track of divergence. Hence, it is easy to understand why it has been said that the etymologist, to be successful, must have “an instinct like the special capabilities of the pointer.” But there are derivations which are only revealed by accident, or stumbled upon in unexpected ways, and which, in the regular course of patient search, would never have been elicited. The following illustrative selections will interest the general reader. * * * * * _Bombastic._—This adjective has an odd derivation. Originally bombast (from the Latin bombax, cotton) meant nothing but cotton wadding, used for filling or stuffing. Shakspeare employs it in this sense in _Love’s Labor Lost_, v. 2. As bombast and as living to the time. Decker, in his _Satyromastix_, says, “You shall swear not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests.” And Guazzo, _Civile Conversation_, 1591,—“Studie should rather make him leane and thinne, and pull out the bombast of his corpulent doublet.”