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DEBATE-DEBONAIRE.

with Viola at the Coast of Illyria? There was pleasure in eating strawberries then, and the first dish of peas while they were yet dear, to have them for a treat. What treat can we have now ?-

C. LAMB.

Debate. Angry contention.

Queen Elizabeth de

scribed Mary Stuart as a 'daughter of debate and strife.'

Gan highly to commend that happy life,

Which shepherds lead, without debate or strife.

God save the King, and bless the land

SPENSER.

In plenty, joy, and peace;

And grant henceforth, that foul debate

'Twixt noblemen may cease.-Chevy Chase.

It is singular, that in the art of debate, Pitt, a man of splendid talents, of great fluency, and great boldness, should never have attained to high excellence. He did not succeed either in refutation or in exposition, but his speeches abounded with lively illustrations, striking apothegms, well-told anecdotes, happy allusions, passionate appeals. His invective and sarcasm were tremendous. Perhaps no English orator was ever more feared.-MACAULAY.

Debonaire. Once, gracious, mild, gentle: now, good-natured, light-hearted.

Glorious Virgine, of alle flouris floure,
To thee I flee, confounded in errour.

Help and relieve, almighty Debonaire.

CHAUCER, Hymn to the Virgin.

When Dame Prudence ful debonerely and with great patience, had heard all that her husband liked for to speke.-GOWER.

For the winds of the south

Ben most of them debonaire.-Id.

Trajan, the worthy debonaire

By whom that Rome stood govern'd.—Id.

DECK-DECLARE.

O Gracious Jhesu! benign and debonaire

Have mercy upon all who bend to thee their knee.

LYDGATE.

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I have no poulterer's nose; but your apparel sits about you most debonairely.-FORD, Love's Sacrifice, ii. I.

The Queen (Anne Boleyn) remembering how her predecessor lost the king's love with her over-austerity, turned herself to a more open and debonaire behaviour.-FULLER.

The Frenchman, easy, debonaire and brisk,
Pleased with his lass, his fiddle and his frisk,

Is always happy, reign whoever may,

And laughs the sense of misery away.-CowPER.

Deck. Used by some old writers for a pack of cards.

But whiles he thought to steal the single ten,
The King was slily finger'd from the deck.

SHAKSPEARE, 3 Henry VI, v. 1.

Well, if I chance but once to get the deck
To deal about and shuffle as I would.

Solimus, Emperor of the Turks, 1638.

Glorious days, when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, Burleigh on the Council, Raleigh on the Deck, Bacon on the Woolsack, and Shakspeare on the Stage.-FROUDE.

Declare. This word has lost the sense of 'distinguishing,' in which it occurs in the following passage.

And thus in povertie is indeed

Truth declared from falsehood.-CHAUCER.

We ought gratefully to remember that we possess a noble sample of so much of the complex being of great men as is capable of an earthly permanence, for intellect alone can put on a semblance of earthly immortality. Neither poets, nor painters, nor even historians can erect living monuments to any but themselves. The exactest copy of the fairest face becomes in a few years a mere ideal only commendable as it declares universal beauty.-H. COLERIDGE.

G

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DECLINE-DEDUCT.

Decline. No longer used in the sense of 'averting.'

Since injustice

In your Duke meets this correction, can you press us
In foolish pity to decline his dangers,

To draw them on ourselves?-MASSINGER.

Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity, but the republic of Venice was modern compared with the Papacy, and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains, not in decline, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the furthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin.--MACAULAY.

I divided the whole History into two Comedies, for that decorum used that it could not be contained in one.-WHIT

STONE.

Dr. Young as a Christian and Divine has been reckoned an example of primeval piety. The following incident does honour to his feelings. When preaching in his turn at St. James', finding that he could not gain the attention of his audience his pity for their folly got the better of all decorum: he sat back in the pulpit and burst into a flood of tears.—Life of Dr. Young.

Deduct. No longer used as 'to reduce.'

"Tis but so many months, so many weeks, so many-do not deduct it to days; 'twill be the more tedious, and to measure by hour glasses were intolerable.-MASSINGER.

This uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which are 30 capriciously pronounced, and so differently modified by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shown in the deduction of one language from another.-JOHNSON, Preface to English Dictionary.

A famous critic, says Boccalini, having gathered together all the faults of an eminent poet made a present of them to Apollo, who received them very graciously and resolved to make the author a suitable return for the trouble he had been at in collecting them. In order to this he set before him a sack of wheat as it had been just threshed out of the sheaf. He then bid him pick the chaff out of the corn and lay it aside by itself. The critic applied himself to the task with great industry and pleasure, and having made the separation Apollo deducted the corn and made the critic a present of the chaff for his pains.Spectator.

Defend. Formerly, like the French défendre, to prohibit.

When can you say in any manner age,

That ever God defended marriage.—CHAUCER.

Prudence answered: certes wel I wote, attempre weeping is nothing defended to him that sorrowful is, among folke in sorwe, but is rather granted him to wepe.-Id., Tale of Melibeus.

To know both good and evil since the taste

Of that defended fruit.-MILTON, Paradise Lost.

Defence, in its true legal sense, signifies not a justification, protection, or guard, which is now its popular signification, but merely an opposing or denial (from the French verb, defender) of the truth or validity of the complaint.-BLACKSTONE, Commentaries, Bk. iii. c. 20.

As nothing is more laudable than an enquiry after truth, so nothing is less to be defended than to pass away our whole lives without determining ourselves one way or other on those points which are of the last importance to us. The first rule therefore which I shall lay down is this, that when by reading or discourse we find ourselves thoroughly convinced of the truth of any article, and of the reasonableness of our belief in it, we should never suffer ourselves after to call it in question.-ADDISON.

Defy. Originally to renounce faith or allegiance, to reject; and thence to challenge,

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DELAY-DELICIOUSNESS.

Not for the world: since I have lost my sons,
All outward joys are from my heart removed:
Vain pleasures I abhor, all things I defy,

That teach not to despair, or how to die.

HEYWOOD, The Four Prentices of London.

Par. I do defy thy commiseration,

And apprehend thee for a felon here.

SHAKSPEARE, Romeo and Juliet, v. 3.

An armoury to which we can at all times resort to find weapons with which to defy the evils and the griefs of life.WASHINGTON IRVING, on Scott's Novels.

Delay.

Used by some old writers as to allay, or alleviate, like the French délayer.

As for the leafe of the herb (amethyst), it hath no fresh and lively hew, but resembleth a wineless, weak wine, as one may say, as one that drinketh flat, or else is much delayed with water.-HOLLAND, Plutarch.

These are they who keep no appointments, who are seldom true to their hour, who make their friends wait for them on all occasions, who often create uneasiness to all the company, and put a whole family out of order. What an unbecoming behaviour is this! What an ill aspect it bears! Especially if these delayers are in any degree inferior, or the younger parts of a house.-WATTS.

Deliciousness. No longer used in the bad sense of luxury, effeminacy.

He thought with himself to banish out of the city all insolency, envy, covetousness and deliciousness.-NORTH.

In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle under a Ducal canopy, at noonday, fast asleep, was discovered a lost chimneysweep. The little creature having somehow confounded his passage among the intricacies of the lordly chimnies had alighted upon this magnificent chamber, and tired with his tedious explorations was unable to resist the delicious invitation to sleep which he saw there exhibited. So creeping between the sheets,