Punning or Allusive Phrases in English. 69 hop: Mr. Hopkins; a ludicrous address to ἃ lame or limping man, being a pun on the word hop‘. Grose, Vulg. humble: to eat ħumble-pie means '’to be very submissive; to apologize humbly; to submit to humiliation‘ (N. E. D.) Thus Uriah Heep says (Dickens, Dav. Copperf. p. 535, M‘Millan’s ed.) ”I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it I ate umble pie with an appetite‘. But umble pie is a real dish, made of the umbles (or numbles), i. e. the inwards of a deer (OFrench nombles, from Lat. lumbulos). — The ἢ of humble was generally mute till about the middle of the nineteenth century. jakkes: instead of this old word, meaning a privy and occurring in King Lear II. 2. 72 (F: daube the wall of a Iakes, Q: daube the walles of a iaques,) the name of the Greek hero Ajaz was sometimes used. Ajax was pronounced with long a in the last syllable; Sir John Harrington (1596) says that it agrees fully in pronunciation with age akes, and Ben Jonson rhymes Ajax: sakes (quoted by Furness, Var. ed. Lear p. 128). In Love's Lab. L. V. 2. 581 we have a quibble: your Lion that holds his Pollax sitting on a close stoole, will be giuen to Aiax‘, and Cotgrave (1611) expressly explains the French Retraict by ’'an Aiax, Priuie, house of Office‘ (NED.) But commentators haye not seen that the same allusion is necessary to understand King Lear 11. 2. 132, where Kent says (Folio spelling) None of these Rogues, and Cowards But Aiax is there Foole‘, Neither Malone's explanation, "These rogues and fools talk in such a boasting strain that, it we were to credit their account of themselves, Ajax would appear a fool as compared with them‘, nor Verity’s, "These clever rogues never fail to make a dupe of Ajax — ἃ type of the slow-witted warrior, as in 7roius and Cressida, where he is contrasted with the clever rogue Thersites‘ — will account for the sudden outburst of Cornwall’s anger, Fetch forth the Stocks. You stubborne ancient Knaue, you reuerent Bragart, Wee'l teach you‘, Cornwall having beeu up to this point calm and impartial. But if Kent in applying the name of Ajax to Cornwall alludes to a jakes, we can easily understand Cornwall’s rage. This explanation is supported by the spelling of the quartos A'Iazx, especially if we remember that the first quarto was probably brought about by some stenographer taking notes during a performance: he would hear Ajax as two words, a + jax, as his spelling seems to indicate. liberty: Pray be under no constraint in this house. This