peare_, p. 218).]

{275} As 'orthography' itself means properly "_right_ spelling", it might
be a curious question whether it is permissible to speak of an
_incorrect_ _ortho_graphy, that is of a _wrong_ _right_-spelling.
The question which would be thus started is one of not unfrequent
recurrence, and it is very worthy of observation how often, so
soon as we take note of etymologies, this _contradictio in
adjecto_ is found to occur. I will here adduce a few examples
from the Greek, the Latin, the German, and from our own tongue.
Thus the Greeks having no convenient word to express a rider,
apart from a rider _on a horse_, did not scruple to speak of the
_horse_man ({Greek: hippeus}) upon an _elephant_. They often
allowed themselves in a like inaccuracy, where certainly there
was no necessity; as in using {Greek: andrias} of the statue of a
_woman_; where it would have been quite as easy to have used
{Greek: heiko:n} or {Greek: agalma}. So too their 'table'
({Greek: trapeza} = {Greek: tetrapeza}) involved probably the
_four_ feet which commonly support one; yet they did not shrink
from speaking of a _three_-footed table ({Greek: tripous
trapeza}), in other words, a "_three_-footed _four_-footed"; much
as though we should speak of a "_three_-footed _quadru_ped".
Homer writes of a 'hecatomb' not of a _hundred_, but of twelve,
oxen; and elsewhere of Hebe he says, in words not reproducible in
English, {Greek: nektar eo:nochoei}. 'Tetrarchs' were often
rulers of quite other than _fourth_ parts of a land. {Greek:
Akratos} had so come to stand for wine, without any thought more
of its signifying originally the _unmingled_, that St. John
speaks of {Greek: akratos kekerasmenos} (Rev. xiv. 10), or the
unmingled mingled. Boxes in which precious ointments were
contained were so commonly of alabaster, that the name came to be
applied to them whether they were so or not; and Theocritus
celebrates "_golden_ alabasters". Cicero having to mention a
water-clock is obliged to call it a _water_ _sun_dial (solarium
ex aqua). Columella speaks of a "_vintage_ of honey" (vindemia
mellis), and Horace invites his friend to im_pede_, not his
_foot_, but his head, with myrtle (_caput_ im_ped_ire myrto).
Thus too a German writer who desired t