clumsily interpreted amity
or companionship), the word is used as synonymous with terms or conditions:

"Friends all but now,
In quarter and in terms like bride and groom
Divesting them for bed, and then but now
Swords out and tilting one at other's breast."

In the same sense Clarendon speaks of "offering them _quarter_ for their
lives if they would give up the castle," _i. e._ offering them conditions
for their lives on their performing their part of the bargain.

Again, in a passage of Swift, cited by Todd: "Mr. Wharton, who detected
some hundred of the bishop's mistakes, meets with very ill quarter from his
Lordship," _i. e._ meets with very ill conditions of treatment from him.
Finally, _to give quarter_ in the military sense is to give conditions
absolutely, as opposed to the unmitigated exercise of the victor's power,
and, as the most important of all conditions, to spare life.

H. W.

_Sheriffs of Glamorganshire_ (Vol. iii., p. 186.).--The list of the
Glamorganshire sheriffs here inquired for was not printed by Mr. Traherne,
but by the Rev. H. H. Knight, M.A., of Neath, and of Nottage Court, in
Glamorganshire: it is a little pamphlet in a paper cover.

TEWARS.

"_When the maggot bites_" (Vol. viii., p. 244.).--A correspondent asks why
a thing done on the spur of the moment is said to be done "when the maggot
bites." It signifies rather doing a thing when the fancy takes one. When a
person acts from no apparent motive in external circumstances, he is said
to have a maggot in his head, to have a bee in his bonnet or, in French,
"Avoir des rats dans la tete;" in Platt-Deutsch, to have a mouse-nest in
his head, the eccentric behaviour being attributed to the influence of the
internal irritation.

H. W.

_Connexion between the Celtic and Latin Languages_ (Vol. viii., p.
174.).--Your correspondent M. will find much valuable information on this
subject in a work entitled _Thoughts on the Origin and Descent of the
Gael_, by James Grant, Esq., Advocate: Edinburgh, Constable & Co., 1814.

FRANCIS JOHN SCOTT.

Tewkesbury.

_Bacon's Essays_ (Vol. viii., p. 143.).--Bacon's Essay VII.: "Optimum
elige," &c. Pythagoras, in _Plutarch de Exilio_.--Essay XV.: "Dolendi
modus," &c. Plin., lib. viii. ep. 17. fin.

C. P. E.

"_Exiguum est._" _&c._ (Vol. viii., p. 197.).--"Exiguum est ad legem bonum
esse." Vide _Senec. de Ira_, ii. 27.

C. P. E.

_Muffs worn by Military Men on a March_ (Vol. vii