Note 1 — LETTER XV.

The relation of the baron to the peasant, however, is all that I can touch upon to-day; and first, note that this word ‘baron’ is the purest English you can use to denote the soldier, soldato, or ‘fighter, hired with pence, or soldi,’ as such. Originally it meant the servant of a soldier, or, as a Roman clerk of Nero’s time1 tells us, (the literary antipathy thus early developing itself in its future nest,) “the extreme fool, who is a fool’s servant;” but soon it came to be associated with a Greek word meaning ‘heavy;’ and so got to signify heavy-handed, or heavy-armed, or generally prevailing in manhood. For some time it was used to signify the authority of a husband; a woman called herself her husband’s2 ‘ancilla,’ (handmaid), and him her ‘baron.’ Finally the word got settled in the meaning of a strong fighter receiving regular pay. “Mercenaries are persons who serve for a regularly received pay; the same are called ‘Barones’ from the Greek, because they are strong in labours.” This is the definition given by an excellent clerk of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and I wish you to recollect it, because it perfectly unites the economical idea of a Baron, as a person paid for fighting, with the physical idea of one, as prevailing in battle by weight; not without some attached idea of slight stupidity;—the notion holding so distinctly even to this day that Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks the entire class aptly describable under the term ‘barbarians.’