424
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. NOV. 2.5, 1011.
withdrawals by 344,689Z. The interest
credited to depositors was 3, 949,46 II.,
and the total amount standing to the
credit of depositors on Savings Bank
accounts on the 31st of December last
was 168,890,2152. an excess of 4,294,1507.
over the balance due at the end of
the previous year. True, indeed, was Mr.
Samuel's statement as to the far-seeing
men who " came forward and provided
what might be called the State stocking."
Sir Charles W. Sikes (who, as stated in
the 'D.N.B.,' first broached the scheme
in an anonymous letter to The Leeds
Mercury in 1850), Mr. George Chetwynd,
Lord Stanley, and Mr. Gladstone theirs
was the glory of having foreseen the need
and utility of such an institution, and so
wisely framed was the Savings Bank at its
outset that the general principles and the
-chief regulations which were established
fifty years ago still prevail in the manage-
ment of the Bank to-day. It is satisfactory
to find from the Report that there was a
decrease of 1,500Z. in the management
expenses ; that the amount to be voted
by Parliament to make good the deficit
of the year's working is 18,649Z., as com-
pared with 5p,481Z. for the year 1909; and
that " there is ground for hoping that the
Post Office Savings Bank is once more about
to show an annual surplus. The net surplus
which the institution has yielded to the Ex-
chequer since its foundation in 1861 is now
885.383Z." JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS.
SHAKESPEARIAN.
SHAKESPEARE'S " QUIDDITS " AND " QUIL- LETS." These words occur in several of the plays, the first sometimes taking the form of " quiddity," thus :
How now, how now, mad wag ! What ? in thy quips and thy quiddities ?
' 1 Henry IV.,' I. ii. 51.
Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer ? Where be his quiddities noAV, his quillets ?
' Hamlet,' V. i. 105.
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith 1 I am no wiser than a daw.
' 1 Henry VI.,' II. iv. 17. Crack the lawyer's voice, That he may never more false title plead Nor sound his quillets shrilly.
' Timon of Athens,' IV. iii. 156. Some quillets how to cheat the devil.
' Love's Labour 's Lost,' IV. iii. 287. Glossaries give the following : Globe Edition :
" Quiddit, quiddity, a subtle question." ' ' Quillet, quidlibet, a subtle^case in law."
Clarendon Press:
" Quiddity, subtlety."
" Quillets, cavilling, chicanery, ' Quidlibets.' "
Webster's 'Dictionary 5 says:
" Quiddity, a barbarous term used in school philosophy for essence."
" Quillet [Lat, Quidlibet, what you please], subtlety, nicety, fraudulent distinction, petty cant."
If we turn to a good English-German dictionary, we find "quiddity" translated by Wesen, the German philosophical term for pure being, and here we have, I think, the clue to the origin of the word. Those who know something of the older logic are aware that "quiddity" ("that which answers to the question quid ? what ? ") is the English equivalent to the first of the Aristotelian categories or universal predicables, ovo-ia, and signifies " substance." The word " quillet " does not at first sight suggest anything of this kind, but the analogy of " quiddit " may lead us to look a little further, and find in it " qualitas " or quality, the third of the categories, TTOIOV. This, at any rate, seems a more reasonable ety- mology than " quidlibet," to which Webster, the Globe Edition, the Clarendon Shake- speare, and the German lexicon all commit themselves. If this view is correct, and these are indeed travesties of terms occurring in the formal logic of the schools, the ques- tion arises, how do they come to bear the opprobrious meaning rightly attributed to them in the glossaries ? To understand this, we must, I think, consider the pro- minent position held by logic in the older learning ; it touched with one hand the common affairs of men, and reached with the other high into the realms of religion and philosophy ; its phraseology found its way into literature and into all documents, including those of the law. It will bs noticed that in three of the quotations given there is a direct allusion to the law or lawyers, and we can picture to ourselves a lawyer of the fifteenth or early sixteenth century defining some subject of litigation hy means of the categories, thus : Quidditas, ager. Quantitas, jugera quinque. Qualitas, fertilis.
Nothing could be more natural than the use, by the uneducated, of a corruption of such terms a* these which, being quite unintelligible to them, would be stigmatized as legal jargon to throw ridicule upon a profession which has always been credited by the masses, however unjustly, with a willingness to take advantage of any subtlety which may tell in favour of a client.
