ig loutish man to an overgrown Gourd has
not been lost in the English language, for "bumpkin" is only another
form of "Pumpkin," and Mr. Fox Talbot, in his "English Etymologies," has
a very curious account of the antiquity of the nickname. "The Greeks,"
he says, "called a very weak and soft-headed person a Pumpion, whence
the proverb +peponos malakoteros+, softer than a Pumpion; and even one
of Homer's heroes, incensed at the timidity of his soldiers, exclaims +o
pepones+, you Pumpions! So also _cornichon_ (Cucumber) is a term of
derision in French."

Yet the Pumpion or Gourd had its uses, moral uses. Modern critics have
decided that Jonah's Gourd, "which came up in a night and perished in a
night," was not a Gourd, but the Palma Christi, or Castor-oil tree. But
our forefathers called it a Gourd, and believing that it was so, they
used the Gourd to point many a moral and illustrate many a religious
emblem. Thus viewed it was the standing emblem of the rapid growth and
quick decay of evil-doers and their evil deeds. "Cito nata, cito
pereunt," was the history of the evil deeds, while the doers of them
could only say--

"Quasi solstitialis herba fui,
Repente exortus sum, repente occidi."

PLAUTUS.

QUINCE.

_Nurse._

They call for Dates and Quinces in the pastry.

_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 4 (2).

Quince is also the name of one of the "homespun actors" in "Midsummer
Night's Dream," and is no doubt there used as a ludicrous name. The name
was anciently spelt "coynes"--

"And many homely trees ther were
That Peches, Coynes, and Apples bere,
Medlers, Plommes, Perys, Chesteyns,
Cherys, of which many oon fayne is."

_Romaunt of the Rose._

The same name occurs in the old English vocabularies, as in a Nominale
of the fifteenth century, "haec cocianus, a coventre;" in an English
vocabulary of the fourteenth century, "Hoc coccinum, a quoyne," and in
the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth, in the thirteenth century--

"Issi troverez en ce verger
Estang un sek Coigner (a Coyn-tre, Quince-tre)."

And there is little doubt that "Quince" is a corruption of "coynes"
which again is a corruption, not difficult to trace, of Cydonia, one of
the most ancient cities of Crete, where the Quince tree is indigenous,
and whence it derived