," was the final protest of the
traveller.

"I wish I was," murmured the young fellow, with a side-glance at his
fair neighbor, who immediately removed to another part of the room.

GEORGE J. VARNEY.

THE "_???? ??G?????_ IN SHAKESPEARE.

When we examine the vocabulary of Shakespeare, what first strikes us is
its copiousness. His characters are countless, and each one speaks his
own dialect. His little fishes never talk like whales, nor do his whales
talk like little fishes. Those curious in such matters have detected in
his works quotations from seven foreign tongues, and those from Latin
alone amount to one hundred and thirty-two.

Our first impression, that the Shakespearian variety of words is
multitudinous, is confirmed by statistics. Mrs. Cowden Clarke has
counted those words one by one, and ascertained their sum to be not less
than fifteen thousand. The total vocabulary of Milton's poetical remains
is no more than eight thousand, and that of Homer, including the _Hymns_
as well as both _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, is about nine thousand. In the
English Bible the different words are reckoned by Mr. G.P. Marsh in his
lectures on the English language at rather fewer than six thousand.
Those in the Greek Testament I have learned by actual count to be not
far from five thousand five hundred.

Some German writers on Greek grammar maintain that they could teach
Plato and Demosthenes useful lessons concerning Greek moods and tenses,
even as the ancient Athenians, according to the fable of Phaedrus,
contended that they understood squealing better than a pig. However this
may be, any one of us to-day, thanks to the Concordance of Mrs. Clarke
and the Lexicon of Alexander Schmidt, may know much in regard to
Shakespeare's use of language which Shakespeare himself cannot have
known. One particular as to which he must have been ignorant, while we
may have knowledge, is concerning his employment of terms denominated
_apa? ?e?? mue?a_.

The phrase _apa? ?e?? mue?a_--literally, _once spoken_--may be traced
back, I think, to the Alexandrian grammarians, centuries before our era,
who invented it to describe those words which they observed to occur
once, and _only once_, in any author or literature. It is so convenient
an expression for statistical commentators on the Bible, and on the
classics as well, that they will not willingly let it die.

The list of _apa? ?e?? mue?a_--that is, words used once and _only
once_--in Sh