designated the SS. Zero, and a larger and newer twoengined class aptly styled the SS. Twin. So far as appearances go, the Blimp is scarcely a very formidablelooking craft. Most people who have seen one have been more amused than impressed. In consequence the magnitude of the Blimp's achievements seem all the more astonishing.

Blimp is an irresistible word, and it inspired some excellent verses in Punch (Jan. 29), from which I quote this stanza :

Who gave it its title, and why?

Was it old Edward Lear from the grave?
Since Jumblies in Blimps would be certain to fly
When for air they abandon the wave.

Was it dear Lewis Carroll perhaps

Sent his phantom to christen the barque,
Since a Blimp is the obvious vessel for chaps
When hunting a snark?

Who gave it its title and why? I expect it is useless to ask. An airman would reply with such racy emphasis as might occur to him, "What else could it be called?" or, if he liked Lewis Carroll, "The Blimp is a boojum, you see.” But what fun it must be! The Latin poet pictured himself as putting on his wings:

No vulgar wing, nor weakly plied,

Shall bear me through the liquid sky.

E'en now a rougher skin expands

Along my legs; above I change

To a white bird; and o'er my hands
And shoulders grows a plumage strange;
Fleeter than Icarus, see me float

O'er Bosporus, singing as I go.1

The young airmen of to-day coin words as they fly, and it will require much alertness in the dictionary-makers to keep pace with them.

E. T. C.

May 12, 1919.

1 Horace, Odes, ii. 20 (Conington's translation).

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. A LIST OF TRANSLATIONS

IN ENGLISH FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

INDEX

357

UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA

I

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

Je ne voyage sans livres, n'y en paix, n'y en guerre. C'est la meilleure munition j'aye trouvé à cet humain voyage.-Montaigne.

THE acid test of what is readable is to be found, I suppose, in prison. Certainly there is nothing like enforced seclusion from one's own library for discovering else unimaginable possibilities of reading printed matter. At an inn on a wet day one may find it possible to read the advertisements in a fashion paper, the list of names in a local directory, the Book of Leviticus, or the novels of (The reader will kindly fill in the blank according to his own distaste.) I have read somewhere that Tennyson was once caught in such case, and became so much absorbed that he regretted having to leave before learning where the youngest of the girls in the story had been confirmed. Charles Lamb might have relented even towards "Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, and Statutes at Large" had he done six months in gaol with no other literary pabulum. On the