A friend, who was about to marry the natural daughter of the Duc de — was expatiating at great length on the virtues, good qualities, and talents of his future wife, but without making allusion to her birth. "A t'entendre," observed Montrond, "on dirait que tu épouses une fille surnaturelle" ("To hear you, one would imagine you were going to marry a supernatural daughter").-GRONOW: Recollections.

This

Nature. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. famous line from "Troilus and Cressida," Act iii., Sc. 3, is popularly misapprehended to mean, Once touch the feelings and the whole world is with you. It is really a cynical expression, meaning that the love of novelty, whether worthy of love or not, is common to all mankind. Ulysses is railing at the Greeks for that they have well-nigh forgotten their former idol Achilles and are now worshipping Ajax. Virtue, he says, need not seek

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,-
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

Nature the art of God. "In brief," says Sir Thomas Browne, in his 'Religio Medici," "all things are artificial, for Nature is the Art of God,”— words which Hobbes has adopted unaltered in the first line of his introduction to "Leviathan." But, indeed, the definition is as old as Plato, who says, "Those things which are said to be done by Nature are indeed done by Divine Art."

Young borrowed the phrase, and spoiled it :

The course of Nature is the art of God.

Night Thoughts, xi., l. 1267.

It is curious to compare these aphorisms with the converse statement of Burke," Art is man's nature." The two views which make nature the divine art, or art human nature, are philosophically combined in the well-known passage in the "Winter's Tale," where Shakespeare substantially explains that the difference between them is ultimately arbitrary. Perdita has bestowed on the disguised visitors Polixenes and Camillo rosemary and rue, for that they "keep seeming and savor all the winter long." Whereupon Polixenes playfully remonstrates :

Perdita.

Shepherdess,

A fair one are you,-well you fit our ages

With flowers of winter.

Sir, the year growing ancient-
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter-the fairest flowers o' the season
Are our carnations and streaked gillyvors,
Which some call Nature's bastards. Of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.

Polixenes.

Wherefore, gentle maiden,

For I have heard it said,
There is an art, which in their piedness shares
With great creating Nature.

Say there be;

Yet Nature is made better by no mean,

But Nature makes that mean; so o'er that art,

Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art

That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend Nature-change it rather; but
The art itself is Nature.

Polixenes. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
Act iv., Sc. 4.

Ne plus ultra (also written "non plus ultra" and "nec plus ultra"), a Latin phrase used to indicate the highest excellence, the remotest limit or boundary. Probably it comes from Job xxxviii. 11: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

Ne quid nimis, the Latin and more familiar form of the famous maxim úpioτov μÉтpov ("Nothing to excess," or, less literally, "Moderation in all things"), which is attributed to Cleobulus, to Chilo, or to Solon, and with the equally famous "Know Thyself" (q. v.) was inscribed over the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Many classical and modern poets and thinkers have repeated the idea, if not the phrase. In "Medea" we have Euripides calling moderation "the noblest gift of heaven,"-not half as fine a phrase as the Oriental "Moderation is the silken thread running through all the virtues." In Roman literature we have the 46 Medio tutissimus ibis" ("You will travel safest in the middle") of Ovid (Metamorphoses, ii. 137), and the "aurea mediocritas," or "golden mean," of Horace,

In French we have La Fontaine translating the maxim almost literally in the well-known line,

and Ronsard applying the idea to literature,

Ni trop haut, ni trop bas; c'est le souverain style;

and Molière in "The Misanthrope,"—

La parfaite raison fuit toute extrémité Et veut que l'on soit sage avec sobriété, ("Perfect reason avoids all extremes,

And directs one to be wise with sobriety;")

and Quinault in "Armide,”—

Ce n'est pas être sage

D'être plus sage qu'il ne le faut,

("It is not wise to be wiser than is necessary;"')—

and the comic dramatist Monvel, in a refrain which Desaugiers was fond of quoting,

Faut d'la vertu, pas trop n'en faut :

L'excès en tout est un défaut,

("Some virtue is needed, but not too much of it. Excess in anything is a defect,")which reads as if it might be a reminiscence of the Vulgate's translation of Paul's advice in the twelfth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans: "Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere, sed sapere ad sobrietatem." Again, we have

Talleyrand, in a similar vein, advising the beginner in diplomacy, "Pas trop de zèle" ("Not too much zeal"), while Louis Philippe hits upon the best laconic equivalent in his "juste milieu."

The Bishop of Amiens was an adept in conveying a moral lesson under the guise of a jest or a witty remark. To a lady who consulted him about the use of paint, which some allowed but others forbade her, he replied, "As for myself, I always like people to observe a happy medium juste milieu] in everything; therefore I will allow you to use it on one side of your face."-La Famille, Paris.

In English the same lesson is
Be valyaunt, but not too venturous.

taught in many ways:

Let thy attyre bee comely, but not costly.
LYLY: Euphues, 1579 (Arber's reprint), p. 39.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy.

SHAKESPEARE: Hamlet, Act i., Sc. 3.

I have often advised you to strike the senses of everybody, that is, their eyes and their ears, and their hearts will follow, for who is guided by mere reason? Learn to distinguish between trifles and trifles; some are necessary, some agreeable, and some utterly despicable in the common intercourse of life. For instance, dress is undoubtedly a trifle in itself, too great accuracy in that trifle forms a fop, too much negligence a sloven; bad extremes both, but in medio tutissimus ibis. Conform to the common fashion, which is in general equidistant from each.-CHESTERFIELD: Letters to his Godson, p. 275.

But there is modus in rebus; there are certain lines which must be drawn; and I am only half pleased, for my part, when Bob Bowstreet, whose connection with letters is through policemen X and Y, and Tom Garbage, who is an esteemed contributor to the Kennel Miscellany, propose to join fellowship as brother literary men, slap me on the back, and call me old boy or by my Christian name.-THACKERAY: The Virginians, vol. i. ch. xliii. See also quotations grouped under MAN WANTS BUT LITTLE HERE BELOW. Ne sutor ultra crepidam (L., "Let not the cobbler go beyond his last"), a proverbial expression applied to one who exceeds the proper functions of criticism or meddles in matters with which he is not acquainted. Pliny the Elder, in his "Natural History," Book xxxv., Sec. 84, tells the story of its origin. "It was a practice," he says, "of Apelles, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in some exposed place, while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms. It was under these circumstances, they say, that he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the shoes with one latchet too few. The next day, the shoemaker, proud at seeing the former error corrected, thanks to his advice, began to criticise the leg; whereupon Apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out and reminded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion above the shoes ["ne supra crepidam sutor judicaret"],—a piece of advice which has passed into a proverbial saying."

Irving, in his "Knickerbocker's New York," thus refers to the habit of criticising and complaining in the time of William the Testy: "Cobblers abandoned their stalls to give lessons on political economy; blacksmiths suffered their fires to go out while they stirred up the fires of faction; and even tailors, though said to be the ninth parts of humanity, neglected their own measures to criticise the measures of government. Strange! that the science of government, which seems to be so generally understood, should invariably be denied to the only ones called upon to exercise it. Not one of the politicians in question but, take his word for it, could have administered affairs ten times better than William the Testy."

Socrates used to say that although no man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest, yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades,-that of government.

A shoemaker was arrested for bigamy and brought before the magistrate. "Which wife," asked a by-stander, "will he be obliged to take?" Smith, always ready at a joke, replied, "He is a cobbler, and of course must stick to his last."-MARSHALL BROWNE: Wit and Humor.

Necessity is the mother of invention, a proverb common to most modern nations, and based on the Latin "Mater artium necessitas." In St. Gregory Nazianzen it appears in the form, "For there is nothing more inventive than suffering.' A cognate phrase is, "Needs must when the devil

drives" (q. v.).

Sheil had learnt and forgotten the exordium of a speech which began with the word "Necessity." This word he had repeated three times, when Sir Robert Peel broke in, “is not always the mother of invention.”—ABRAHAM HAYWARD: Essays.

"Necessity knows no law," is a well-known axiom. Among the ancients Publius Syrus said, “A wise man never refuses anything to necessity" (Maxim 540), explaining his meaning more fully in Maxim 553: "Necessity knows no law except to conquer." In the translation of "Don Quixote" it appears, Necessity has no law." Shakespeare says, in "Julius Cæsar," Activ., Sc. 3,— The deep of night is crept upon our talk,

And nature must obey necessity.

An anonymous couplet finds a facile jest in the phrase:

Why is Necessity like Lord Anstruther's brother?
Necessity knows no Law, no more does Anstruther.

But necessity is often the plea of the tyrant, as well as of the distressed:
And with necessity,

The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.

MILTON: Paradise Lost, Book iv., 1. 393. Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.-WILLIAM PITT: Speech on the India Bill, November, 1783.

Neck-verse, a verse from the Psalter, which a prisoner who claimed benefit of clergy (q. v.) was obliged to read, and by his ability to do so he literally "saved his neck." The magistrate might open the book at random and test him. But it was more common for the bishop's ordinary, appointed for the purpose at each prison, to give some particular verse, which at Newgate was usually Psalm li. 1, known as David's prayer for remission of sin : Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam; et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam" ("Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions"). If the ordinary said, "Legit ut clericus" (" He reads like a clerk"), the offender was only burned in the hand; otherwise he suffered death (3 Edw. I., 1274). There are many allusions in the old dramatists to this custom, as, Within forty feet of the gallows, conning his neck-verse.

DODSLEY: The Jew of Malla, viii. 368. Twang it perfectly,

As you would read your neck-verse.

An old song has the following:

MASSINGER: The Guardian, iv. 1.

If a monk had been taken

For stealing of bacon,

For burglary, murder, or rape,

If he could but rehearse

(Well prompt) his neck-verse,
He never could fail to escape.

The British Apollo (1710).

Needs must when the devil drives, an old English proverb, quoted both by Shakespeare (All's Well that Ends Well, Act i., Sc. 3) and Marlowe (Doctor Faustus, Act iv., Sc. 2), in the less elliptic form, "He must needs go that the devil drives." But half a century before Marlowe's great play John Heywood had said,

There is a proverb which trewe now preveth,
He must needs go that the dyvell dryveth.

Johan Johan the Husband (1533).

Other English variants of the proverb are, "They run fast whom the devil drives," and "He that the devil drives feels no lead at his heels." Analogous expressions abound in the proverbial literature of other countries.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (It., "Midway in the journey of our life"), a famous line in Dante's "Inferno," Canto i. Cary thus translates the passage:

In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray,
Gone from the path direct.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. This line, with which Dante begins the first canto of the "Divine Comedy," occurs to me this evening for the hundredth time perhaps. But it is the first time that it touches me. With what interest do I reflect upon it, and how serious and significant do I find it! It is because at this moment I can apply it to myself. I am in my turn at the point where Dante was when the old sun marked the first year of the fourteenth century. I am midway in the path of life, if we suppose that path equal for all and leading to old age.-ANATOLE FRANCE.

Nem. con., a contraction for nemine contradicente, which in its turn is bad Latin for nullo contradicente,-i.e., no one contradicting. It would be interesting to know how the generally tabooed ablative of nemo has worked itself into popular favor. Even so correct a writer as Schopenhauer uses the kindred barbarism nemine dissentiente.

Nemo repente fuit turpissimus (L., "No one ever became very wicked all at once"), a passage in Juvenal's Satires, II., 66, which may be taken as an offset to Virgil's phrase in the "Eneid" (Book vi, l. 126), "Facilis descensus Averni" (or, as some texts read, "Averno"), "The descent to Avernus [hell] is easy." Easy it may be, but the journey is accomplished by gradual approaches.

Nessus, Shirt of, a figure used oftener by Continental writers and speakers than by English: thus, Renan alludes to the "Nessus shirt of ridicule." It is used in speech generally as a simile for a source of misfortune, a fatal gift, or, less often, anything that indelibly wounds the susceptibilities, and it is borrowed from the fable of Hercules and the centaur Nessus, who was ordered by the former to carry his wife Dejanira across a river. Arrived on the other side, the monster offered to do violence to the woman, which seeing, Hercules shot and killed him with a poisoned arrow. In revenge, the dying centaur gave to Dejanira his tunic, saying that he to whom she should give it would love her exclusively. Dejanira gave it to her husband, who as soon as he put it on was devoured by the poison with which it was steeped. It clung fast and could not be taken off, and after unutterable agonies Hercules jumped into a blazing funeral pyre which he caused to be prepared, and was consumed.

New and True. A correspondent of Notes and Queries (seventh series, iv. 477) says that Lessing wrote of Voltaire, "Voltaire writes much that is good, much that is new, but what is good is not new, and what is new is not good." Unfortunately, he gives this on the authority of a third party, and is unable to supply chapter and verse. The phrase, however originated, has now become a favorite form of condemnatory criticism,-the adjective true being usually substituted for good. Daniel Webster, in his attack on the platform of the American Free-Soil party (September 1, 1848), said, "I see nothing in it both new and valuable. What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.'" But even in this form he puts the saying in quota