3 JULY 1909, Page 23

" AB OUND."

• [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIE,—In this interesting correspondence no one has so far gone to the very simple root of the matter. "Abound in his own sense" is the true form. It is not a " but a Latinism, or rather a 'tag" from the Vulgate of Romans xiv. 5, unusquisque in suo sensu abundet. The original verb is rXwochopeio-Oco (as to which see Lightfoot's note on Colossians iv. 12); the verb, and its cognate substantive nAnpecpopia, occur frequently in the New Testament, but nowhere else does the Vulgate render either by abundare or any connected word. From the Vulgate the phrase became part of the vocabulary of ecclesiastical Latin, and so found its way into French and into some of our ecclesiastical writers. Abundare in the sense of "to be fully persuaded" is not recognised by Facciolati; this use apparently originated in the peculiar rendering of the above passage. To speak of "abounding" in some other person's "sense" is, I think, to miss something of the shade of suggestion of the Vulgate, and perhaps also of that of the