uel, xvii. 18. where David is fent to the camp to fee how his brethren fared, and to take their ony [arrabon] pledge. The Greek word agga¤wv, a pledge, or furety, occurs 2 Cor. i. 22. v. 5. and Ephes. i. 14. It is, also, used in the Septuagint version of Gen. xxxvii. 17, 18, 20, where it answers ערבון to the Hebrew IN the Frontifpiece D, d. is copied, from a plate of curious articles, an antique, which from its form, and the clafped hands engraved upon it, will be readily understood to belong to this clafs of teffera: and may be confidered as corroborative proof that the cuftom we are elucidating came originally from the Hebrews. CHAP. III. OF THE BACILLUS. THE bacillus was a love-token entirely refembling the teffera hofpitalis. It is thus defcribed by Olaus Wormius: "Bacillus eft quadratus trium pollicum longitudine; latitudine tertia parte pollicis ; latera quatuor characteribus infignita habens; expruno fylveftri, ut videtur, fabricatus." A FIGURE of one he has given may be feen in the plate, F, f. He supposes the letters to be amatorial, and fo written as to convey in an intricate, or anagrammatic, manner the name of the lover, in a fentiment of attachment intelligible to all. THE words on the teffera amatoria or bacillus, which he has described are: Bynaffa vuet kierefta mina aff Thenkeftol inde Landum. «Nomen meum novit amiciffima mea Ex amoris hac teffera Landum." Monumenta Danicorum lib. xvii. "Bleft be the pledge, whofe kind enchantment gives To wounded love the food on which it lives! |