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l^OEDS

THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF "GETTING ON IN THE WORLD," AND "THE GREAT C0NVER8ER3

AND OTHER ESSAYS."

Die Sprache ist nichts anderes ala der in die Erscheinung tretende Gedanke
«nd beide sind innerlich nur eins und dasselbe. -Becker.

ROSE-BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY.

MDCCCLXXX.

169685

•■« ,

PREFACE.

I HE origin of this book is as follows : — Some twenty
years ago, the author, having considerable leisure,
wrote a lecture on " Words — their Significance, Use and
Abuse," which he delivered before a number of Literary
Societies and Lecture Associations. Being very much
interested in the subject, he continued from time to time
to make notes of his thoughts and readings upon it, tjll
at length the lecture grew into a volume.

The author is well aware that in his criticisms on the
misuses and abuses of words, he has exposed himself to
criticism ; and it may be that he has been guilty of some
of the very sins which he has condemned. If so, he sins
in good company, since nearly all of his predecessors, who
liave written on the same theme, have been found guilty
of a similar inconsistency, from Lindley Murray down to
Dean Alford, Moon, Marsh, and Fowler. If the public
is to hear no philological sermons till the preachers are
faultless, it will have to wait forever. " The only im-
peccable authors," says Hazlitt, " are those that never
wrote." Any just, well-meant criticism, however severe,
the author will gratefully welcome ; to that which springs
from an instinctive love of fault-finding, he is apt to be
thick-skinned. In the words of Erasmus: " Nos ad

PREFACFJ.

utrumquc juxtaparati sumus, ut vel rationem reddamus, si
quid rect^ monuimus, vel ingenub confiteamur errorem,
sicubi lapsi deprehendimur."

It is hardly necessary to add that the work is designed
for popular reading, rather than for scholars. How much
the author is indebted to others, he cannot say. He has
been travelling, in his own way, over old and well-woni
ground, and has picked up his materials freely from all
the sources within his reach. Non nova aed nov^, has
been his aim ; he regrets that he has not accomplished it
more to his satisfaction. The world, it has been truly
said, does not need new thoughts so much as it needs
that old thoughts be recast. There are some writers,
however, to whom he has been particularly indebted ; and
therefore a list of their names, with the books consulted,
has been appended at the end of the volume.

CONTENTS.

- — <•■»»

CHAPTER I. p^oB

The Skjni FRANCE OF Words <^

CHAPTER II.
The Morality in Words ^

CHAPTER III.
Grand Words ^^

CHAPTER IV.
Small Words m

CHAPTER V.
Words without Meaninij I^g

CHAPTER VI.

Some Abuses of Words . . . . . , ^ jgi

CHAPTER VII.
Saxon Words, or Romanic ?...... 134

CHAPTER VIII.
The Secret of Apt Words .... ,- . 145

^* CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX. PAGE

The Sbcrbt of Apt VioKDH—Continued . . . .159

CHAPTER X.

The Fallacies in Words . . i/,q

_^« t . loo

CHAPTER XI.
The Fallacies in Words— Continued igg

CHAPTER XII.
Nicknames . . ' . ... . . . g^

CHAPTER XIII.
Curiosities of Language 223

CHAPTER XIV.
Common Improprieties of Speech 261>

^^^"^ 297

Words are lighter than the cloud foam

Of the restless ocean spray ;
Vainer than the trembling sli'adoHr

That the next hour steals away ;
By the fall of summer rain-drops '

Is the air as deeply stirred ;
And the rose leaf that we tread on

Will outlive a word.

Yet on the dull silence breaking

With a lightning flash, a word,
Bearing endless desolation

On its blighting wings, I heard.
±.arth can forge no keener weapon,

Dealing surer death and pain.
And the cruel echo answered

Through long years again.

I have known one word hang star-like

O er a dreary waste of years.
And it only shone the brighter'

Looked at through a mist of tears
AVhUe a weary wanderer gathered

Hope and heart on life's dark way
By Its faithful promise shining

Clearer day by day.

I have known a spirit calmer

Than the calmest lake, and clear
As the heavens that gazed upon it,

With no wave of hope or fear ;
But a storm had swept across it,'

And its deepest depths were stirred
J^iever, never more to slumber,

Only by a word.

AdelAIDB A. rROCTKK.

Language and thought are inseparable. ^ WurdH withuut thought are dead
Houndtt ; thoup^hts without words are nothing. T«> think is to 8peak low ; to
speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate.— Max Muller.

A winged word hath struck ineradicabl jr in a million hearts, and envenomed
every hour throughout their hard [mlaation. On a winged word hath hung
the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing
to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its futmre happi-
ness. ~W. S. Landoh.

Words are things ; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought,
produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.— Bykon.

A dead language is full of all monumental remembrances of the people who
spoke it. Their swords and their shields are in it ; their faces are pictured un
its walls ; and their very voices ring still through its recesses. -B. W. D wight.

Every sentence of the great writer is like an autograph. . . If Milton had
endorsed a bill of exchange with half-a-dozen blank verse lines, it would be as
good as his name, and would be accepted as good evidence in court. -Alex-
ander Smith.

If there be a human talent, let it get into the tongue, and make melody
with that organ. ITie talent that can say nothing for itself, what is it ? No-
tiiing ; or a thing that can do mere drudgeries, and at best make money by
railways.— Caulyle.

Human language may be polite apd pf>werles8 in itself, uplifted with diffi-
culty into expression by the high thoughts it utters, or it may in itself be-
come so saturated with warm life and delicious association that every sentence
shall palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination of the syllables. -T. W-

HlOOINSON.

Six little words do claim me every day,

siiall, must, and can, with ivill and ought and may.

Shall is the law within inscribed by heaven,

The goal to which I by myself am (Lriven.

Must is the bound not to be overpast.

Where by the world and nature I'm held fast.

Can is the measure of my personal dower

Of deed and art, science and practised power.

Will is my noblest crown, my brightest, best,

Freedom's my own seal upon m> soul imprest ;

Ought the inscription on the seal set fair

On Freedom's open door, a bolt 'tis there.

And lastly, may, 'mong many courses mixed,

The vaguely podsible by the moment fixed.

Shall, must and can, with will and ought and may,

These are the six that claim me every day.

Only when God doth teach, do I know what each day,

I shall, I must, I can, I will, I ought, I may.

Tramlated from the German for the N. Y. School Journal.

WORDS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

CHAPTER I.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

" Speech is morning to the mind ;
It Hpreads the beauteous images abroad,
Which else lie dark and buried in the soul."

La parole, cette main de Tesprit.— Charbon.

Syllables govern the world.— Coke.

[0 the thoughtful man, who has reflected on the common
operations of life, which, but for their commonness, would
be deemed full of marvel, few things are more wonder-
ful than the origin, structure, history and significance of words.
The tongue is the glory of man ; for though animals have
memory, will, and intellect, yet language, which gives us a dup-
licate and multipliable existence, — enabling mind to communi-
cate with mind, — is the Rubicon which they never have dared
to cross. The dog barks as it barked at the creation, and the
crow of the cock is the same to-day as when it startled the ear
of repentant Peter. The song of the lark and the howl of the
leopard have continued as unchangeable as the concentric cir-
cles of the spider and the waxen hexagon of the bee ; and even
the stoutest champion of the ourang-outang theory of man's
origin will admit that no process of natural selection has yet
distilled significant words out of the cries of beasts or the notes
of birds. Speech is a divine gift. It is the last seal of dignity
stamped by God upon His intelligent oflspring, and proves,
more conclusively than his upright form, or his looks '* com-
mercing with the skies/' that he was made in the image of God«
2

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSM.

Without this crowning gift to man, even reason would have been
comparatively valueless ; for he would have felt himself to be
imprisoned even when at large, solitary in the midst of a crowd ;
and the society of the wisest of his race would have been as
uninstructive as that of barbarians and savages. The rude
tongue of a Patagonian or Australian is full of wonders to the
philosopher : but as we ascend in the scale of being from the
uncouth sounds which express the desires of a savage to the
lofty periods of a Cicero or a Chatham, the power of words ex-
pands until it attains to regions far above the utmost range of
our capacity. It designates, as Novalis has said, God with
three letters, and the infinite with as many syllables, though
the ideas conveyed by these words are immeasurably beyond
the utmost grasp of man. In every relation of life, at every
moment of our active being, in every thing we think or do, it
is on the meaning and inflection of a uord that the direction of
our thoughts, and the expression of our will, mrn. Tiie sound-
ness of our reasonings, the clearness of our belief and of our
judgment, the influence we exert upon others, and the manner
in which we are impressed by our fellow-men, — all depend upon
a knowledge of the value of words. It is in language that the
treasures of human knowledge, the discoveries of Science, and
the achievements of Art are chiefly preserved ; it is language
that furnishes the poet -"vith the airy vehicle for his most deli-
cate fancies, the orator with the elements of his electrifying
eloquence, the savant with the record of his classification, the
metaphysician with the means of his sharp distinction, the
statesman with the drapery of his vast design, and the philoso-
pher with the earthly instrument of his heaven-reaching in-
duction.

" Words," said the fierce Mirabeau, in reply to an opponent
in the National Assembly, " are things ; " and truly they were
such when he thundered them forth from the Tribune, full of life,
meaning, and power. Words are always things, when coming
from the lips of a master-spirit, and instinct with his own in-
dividuality. Especially is this true of so impassioned orators
as Mirabeau, who have thoughts impatient for words, not words
starving for thoughts, and who but give utterance to the spirit
breathed by the whole Third Estate of a nation. Their words

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

are not merely things, but living things, endowed with power
not only to communicate ideas, but to convey, as by spiritual
conductors, the shock and thrill which attended their birth.
Look at the " winged words " of old Homer, into which he
breathed the breath of his own spiritual life, — how long have
they kept on the wing ! For twenty five or thirty centuries
they have maintained their flight across gulfs of time in which
empires have suff'ered shipwreck and the languages of common
life have sunk into oblivion ; and they are still full of the life-
blood of immortal youth.

" How forcible," said Job, " are right words ! " "A word
fitly spoken," says Solomon, " is like apples of gold in pictures
of silver." Few persons have duly estimated the power of
words. In anatomical museums one will sometimes see the
analysis of a man, — that is, the mere chemical constituents,
so much lime, so much albumen, so much phosphorus, etc.
These doad substances fail not more utterly in representing a
living man, with his mental and moral force, than do the long
rows of words in the lexicon of exhibiting the power with which,
as signs of ideas, they may be endowed. Language has been
truly pronounced the armoury of the human mind, which con-
tains at once the trophies of its past and the weapons of its
future conquests. Look at a Webster or a Calhoun, when his
mighty enginery of thought is in full operation ; how lus words
tell upon his adversary, battering down the intrenchments of
sophistry like shot from heavy ordnance ! Cannon-shot are
very harmless things when piled up for show ; so are words
when tiered up in the pages of a dictionary, with no mind to
select and send them home to the mark. But let them receive
the vitalizing touch of genins, and how they leap with life ;
with what tremendous energy are they endowed ! When the
little Corsican bombarded Cadiz at the distance of five miles,
it was deemed the very triumph of engineering ; but what was
his paltry range to that of words, which bombard the ages yet
to come 1 •' Scholars," says Sir Thomas Browne, " are men of
peace. They carry no arms, but their tongues are sharper than
Actus his razors ; their pens carry further and make a louder
report than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basa-
lisco than the fury of a merciless pen."

■ •'a

lil

1 VI

WORDS' THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

Il '!

The words which a man of genius selects are as much his
own as his thoughts. They are not the dress, but the incarna-
tion, of his thought, as the body contains the soul. Analyize
a speech by either of the great orators we have just named,
and a critical study will satisfy you that the crushing force of
his arguments lies not less in the nicety and skill with which
the words are chosen, than in the granite-like strength of
thought. Attempt to substitute other words for those that are
used, and you will find that the latter are part and parcel of
the author's mind and conception ; that every word is accom-
modated with marvellous exactness to all the sinuosities of the
thought ; that not the least of them can be changed without
marring the completeness and beauty of the author's idea. If
any other words can be used than those which a writer does
use, he is a bungling rhetorician, and skims only the surface of
his theme. True as this is of the best prose, it is doubly true
of the best poetry ; it is a linked strain throughout. It has
been said by one who was himself a consummate master of
language, that if, in the recollection of any passage of Shakes-
peare, a word shall escape your memory, you may hunt through
the forty thousand words in the language, and not one shall
fit the vacant place but that which the poet put there. Though
he uses only the simplest and homeliest terms, yet " you might
as well think," says Coleridge, " of pushing a brick out of a
wall with your forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of
any of the finished passages of Shakespeare." Who needs to
be told how much the wizard sorcery of Milton depends on the
words he uses ? It is not in what he directly tells us that his
spell lies, but in the immense suggestiveness of his verse.

In Homer, it has been justly said, there are no hidden mean-
ings, no deeps of thought into which the soul descends for linger-
ing contemplation ; no words which are key-notes, awakening
the spirit's melodies, —

" Untwisting all the links that tie
The hidden soul of liarmony."

But here is the realm of Milton's mastery. He electrifies the
mind through conductors. His words, as Macaulay declares,
are charmed. Their meaning bears no proportion to their effect.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

" No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and
the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into ex-
istence, and all the burial places of the memory give up their
dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one
synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The
spell loses its power ; and he who should then hope to conjure
with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the
Arabian tale, when he stood crying ' Open Wheat,' ' Open
Barley,' to the door which obeyed no sound but • Open Sesame.' "
The force and significance which Milton can infuse into the
simplest word are strikingly shown in his description of the
largest of land animals in " Paradise Lost." In a single line
the unwieldy monster is so represented as coming from the
ground, that we almost involuntarily start aside from fear of
being crushed by the living mass : —

" Bthemoth, biggest born of eai-th, upheaved
His vastness.

It is the necromantic power over language, — this skill in
striking " the electric chain with which we are darkly bound,"
till its vibrations thrill along the chords of the heart, and its
echoes ring in all the secret chambers of the soul, — which blinds
us to the absurdities of " Paradise Lost." While following
this mighty magician of language through

" many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out,"

we overlook the incongruity with which he makes angels fight
with ** villainous saltpetre " and divinities talk Calvinis ;i, puts
the subtleties of Greek syntax into the mouth of Eve, and ex-
hibits the Omnipotent Father arguing like a school divine. As
with Milton, so with his great predecessor, Dante. Wondrous
as is his power of creating pictures in a few lines, he owes it
mainly to the directness, simplicity, and intensity of his lan-
guage. In him " the invisible becomes visible ; darkness be-
comes palpable ; silence describes a character ; a word acts as a
Hash of lightning, which displays some gloomy neighbourhood
where a tower is standing, with dreadful faces at the window,"

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

The difference in the use of words by different writers is as
great as that iu the use of paints by great and poor artists ;
and there is as great a difference in the effect upon the under-
standing and the sensibilities of their readers. Who that is
familiar with Bacon's writing can ever fail to recognize one of
his sentences, so dense with pith, and going to the mark as if
from a gun ? In him, it has been remarked, language was
al'Tiys the flexible and obedient instrument of the thought ;
not, as in the production of a lower order of mind, its rebel-
lious and recalcitrant slave. " All authors below the highest
seem to use the mighty gift of expression with a certain secret
timidity, lest the lever should prove too ponderous for the
hand that essays to wield it ; or rather, they esemble the
rash student in the old legend, who was overmastered by the
demons which he had unguardedly provoked." Emerson, in
speaking of the intense vitality of Montaigne's words, says
that if you cut them, they would bleed. Joubert, in revealing
the secret of Rousseau's charm, says : " He imparted, if I may
so speak, bowels of feeling to the words he used {donna des
entrailles h tous les mots)^ and poured into them such a charm,
sweetness so penetrating, energy so puissant, that his writings
have an effect upon the soul something like that of those illicit
pleasures which steal away our taste and intoxicate our
rexson."

How much is the magic of Tennyson's verse due to " the
fitting of aptest words to things," which we find on every
page of his poetry ! He has not only the vision, but the
faculty divine, and no secret of his art is hid from him. Foot
and pause, rhyme and rhythm, alliteration ; subtle, penetrative
words that touch the very quick of the truth ; cunning words
that have a spell in them for the memory and the imagina-
tion ; old words, with their weird influence,

" Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years,"

and words used for the occasion in their primary sense, are all
his ministers, and obedient to his will. An American writer,
Mr. E. C. Stedman, in speaking of Swinburne's marvellous
gift of melody, asks : " Who taught him all the hidden springs

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

"the

every

lut the

Foot
rative
words
lagina-

of melody 1 He was born a tamer of words, a subduer of this
most stubborn, yet most copious of the literary tongues. In
his poetry we discover qualities we did not know were in the
language — a softness that seemed Italian, a rugged strength
we thought was German, a blithe and debonair lightness we
despaired of capturing from the French. He has added a
score of new stops and pedals to the instrument. He has intro-
duced, partly from other tongues, stanzaic forms, measures
and effects untried before, and has brought out the swiftness
and force of metres like the anapestic, carrying each to per-
fection at a single trial. Words in his hands are like the
ivory balls of a juggler, and all words seem to be in his
hands."

Words, with such men, are " nimble and airy servitors," not
masters, and from the exquisite skill with which they are
chosen, and the firmness with which they are knit together, are
sometimes "half battles, stronger than most men's deeds."
What is the secret of the weird-like power of Da Quincey ? Is
it not that, of all late English writers, he has the most im-
perial dominion over the resources of expression, — that he has
weighed, as in a hair-balance, the precise significance of every
word he uses ; that he has conquered so completely the stub-
bornness of our vernacular as to render it a willing slave to all
the whims and caprices, the ever-shifting, kaleidoscopic varia-
tions of his thought ? Turn to whatever page you will of his
writings, and it is not the thorough grasp of his subject, the
enormous erudition, the extraordinary breadth and piercing
acuteness of intellect which he displays, that excite your
greatest surprise ; but you feel that here is a man who has
gauged the potentiality of every word he uses ; who has ana-
lyzed the simples of his every compound phrase. In his
hands our stiff Saxon language becomes almost as ductile as
the Greek. Ideas that seem to defy expression, — ideas so
subtle, or so vague and shifting, that most thinkers find it
diflBcult to contemplate them at all, — are conveyed on his page
with a nicety, a felicity of phrase, that might almost provoke
the envy of Shakespeare. In the hands of a great sculptor,
marble and bronze become as soft and elastic as living flesh,
»nd not unlike this is the dominion which the great writers

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

I m8

possess over Ian$2ruage. In their verse our rugged but pithy
and expressive English breathes all sounds, all melodies :

" And now 'tis like all instruments.
Now like a lonely flute,
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute."

The superiority of the writers of the seventeenth century to
those of our own day is due not less to their choice and collo-
cation of words than to their weight of thought. There was
no writing public nor reading populace in that age ; the writers
were few and intellectual, and they addressed themselves to
learned, or, at least, to studious and thorghtful readers. "The
structure of their language," says Henrj Taylor, " is itself an
evidence that they counted upon another frame of mind, and a
different pace and speed in reading, from that which can alone
be looked to by the writers of these days. Their books were
not written to be snatched up, run through, talked over, and
forgotten ; and their diction, therefore, was n- t such as lent
wings to haste and impatience, making everything so clear that
he who ran or flew might read. Rather was it so constructed
as to detain the reader over what was pregnant and profound,
and compel him to that brooding and prolific^posture of mind
by which, if he had wings, they might help him to some more
genial and profitable employment than that of running like an
ostrich through a desert. And hence those characteristics of
diction by which these writers are made more fit than those
'yho have followed them to train the ear and utterance of a
poet. For if we look at the long-suspended sentences of those
days, with all their convolutions and intertextures, — the many

parts waiting for t ■ e ultimate wholeness, — we shall perceive
that without distinctive movement and rhythmical significance
of a very high order, it would be impossible that they could be
sustained in any sort of clearness. One of these writers' sen-
tences is often in itself a work of art, having its strophes and
antistrophes, its winding changes and recalls, by which the
reader, though conscious of plural voices and running divisions
of thought, is not, however, permitted to dissociate them from
their mutual concert and dependency, but required, on the con-
trary, to give them entrance into his mind, opening it wide

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

enough for the purpose, as one compact and harmonious fabric.
Sentences thus elaborately constructed, and complex, though
musical, are not easy to a remiss reader, but they are clear and
delightful to an intent reader."

Few persons are aware how much knowledge is sometimes
necessary to give the etymology and definition of a word. It
is easy to define words, as certain persons satirized by Pascii
have defined light : " A luminary movement of luminous
bodies ;" or as a Western judge once defined murder to a jury :
" Murder, gentlemen, is when a man is murderously killed. It
is the murdering that constitutes murder in the eye of the law.
Murder, in short, is — murder." We have all smiled at John-
son's definition of network: "Network — anything reticulated
or decussed at equal distances, with interstices between the
intersections." Many of the definitions in our dictionaries
remind one of Bardolph's attempt to analyze the term accom-
modation: " Accommodation, —that is, when a man is, as they
say, accommodated ; or when a man is being whereby he may
be thought to be accommodated, which is an excellent thing."
Brimstone, for example, the lexicographer defines by telling us
that it is s-ulphur ; and then rewards us for the trouble we have
had in turning to sulphur, by telling us that it is brim^'itone.
The eccentric Davy Crockett, whose exterior roughness veiled
a great deal of mother wit, happily characterized this whole
tribe of lexicographers by a remark he once made to a Western
member of Congress. When the latter, in a speech on a bill
for increasing the number of hospitals, wearied his hearers by
incessant repetition — " Sit down," whispered Crockett, " you
are coming out of the same hole you went in at." There is a
mythical story that the forty members of the French Academy
once undertook to define the word crab, and hit upon this,
which they deemed quite satisfactory : " Crab, — a small red
fish, which walks backward." "Perfect, gentlemen," said
Cuvier, when interrogated touching the correctness of the
definition ; " perfect, — only I will make one small observation
in natural history. The crab is not a fish, it is not red, and it
does not walk backward. With these exceptions, your defini-
tion is admirable." Too many easily-made definitions are
liable to similar damaging exceptions.

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

The truth is, no word can be truly defined until the exact
idea is understood, in all its relations which the word is de-
signed to represent. Let a man undertake to define the word
" alkali " or ** acid," for instance, and he will have to encounter
some pretty hard problems in chemistry. Lavoisier, the author
of the terminology of modern chemistry, tells us that when he
undertook to form a nomenclature of that science, and while he
proposed to himself nothing more than to improve the chemi-
cal language, his work transformed itself by degrees, and with-
out his being able to prevent it, into a treatise upon the
elements of chemistry. A similar experience was that of
Samuel Bailey, who held a derivative opinion in favour of
Berkeley's " Theory of Vision" ; but having, in the course of a
philosophical discussion, occasion to explain it, he found, on
attempting to state in his owi language the grounds on which
it rested, that they no longer appeared to him to be so clear
and conclusive as he had fancied them to be. He determined,
therefore, to make them the subject of a patient and dis-
passionate examination ; and the result was a clear conviction
of the erroneousness of Berkeley's theory, the philosophical
grounds for which conviction he has so ably and luminously set
forth in his book on the subject. The truth is, accurate defi-
nitions of the terms of any science can only follow accurat*} and
sharply-defined notions of the science itself. Try to define the
words matter, substance, idea, will, cause, conscience, virtue, right,
and you will soon ascertain whether you have grappled with
the grand problems or only skimmed the superficies of meta-
physics and ethics.

Let no one, then, underrate the importance of the study of
words. Daniel Webster was often seen absorbed in the study
of an English Dictionary. Lord Chatham read the folio dic-
tionary of Bailey twice through, examining each word attentive-
ly, dwelling upon its peculiar import and modes of construction,
and thus endeavouring to bring the whole range of our lan-
guage completely under his control. One of the most distin-
guished American authors is said to be in the habit of reading
the dictionary through about once a year. His choice of fresh and
forcible terms has provoked at times the charge of pedantry ;
but, in fact, he has but fearlessly used the wealth of the la^-

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

guage that lies buried in the pages of Noah Webster. It is only
by thus working in the mines of language that one can fill his
storehouses of expression, so as to be above the necessity of
using cheap and common words, or even using these with no sub-
tle discrimination of their meanings. Rufus Coate once said to
one of his students : " You don't want a diction gathered from
the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive ;
but you want one whose every word is full-freighted with sug-
gestion and association, with beauty and power." The leading
languages of the world are full of such words, " opulent, mi-
crocosmic, in which histories are imaged, which record civiliza-
tions. Others recall to us great passages of eloquence, or of
noble poetry, and bring in their train the whole splendour of
such passages, when they are uttered."

Mr. Disraeli says of Canning, that he had at command the
largest possible number of terms, both " rich and rare,"
words most vivid and eflFective, — really spirit-stirring words ;
for words there are, as every poet knows, whose sound is an
echo to the sense, — words which, while by their literal mean-
ing they convey an idea to the mind, have also a sound and
association which are like music to the ear, and a picture to the
eye, — vivid, graphic, and picturesque words that make you
almost see the thing described. It is said of Keats, that when
reading Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, he became a critic of
their thoughts, their words, their rhymes, and their cadences.
He brooded over fine phrases like a lover ; and often, when he
met a quaint or delicious word in the course of his reading, he
would take pains to make it his own by using it, as speedily as
possible, in some poem he was writing. Upon expressions like
" the sea shouldering whale " of Spenser, he would dwell with
an ecstasy of delight.

The question has been often discussed whether, if man were
deprived of articulate speech, he would still be able to think.
The example of the deaf and dumb, who evidently think, not
by associations of sound, but of touch, — using combinations of
finger-speech, instead of words, as the symbols of their thought,
— appears to show that he might find an efiicient substitute for
his present means of reflection. The telegraph and railway
sij^nals, are, in fact, new modes of speech, which are (][uickly

WORDS: THEIR US£ AND ABUSE.

familiarized by practice. The engine driver shuts off the steam
at the warning signal, without thinking of the words to which
it is equivalent ; a particular signal becomes associated with a
particular act, and the interposition of words becomes useless.
It is well known that persons skilled in gesticulation can com-
municate by it a long series of facts and even complicated trains
of thought. Roscius, the Koman actor, claimed that he could
express a sentiment in a greater variety of ways by significant
gestures than Cicero could by language. During the reign of
Augustus, both tragedies and comedies were acted, with power-
ful effect, by pantoraine alone. When the Megarians wanted
help from the Spartans, and threw down an empty meal-bag
before the assembly, declaring that " it lacked meal," these
verbal economists said that " the mention of the sack was super-
fluous." When the Scythian ambassadors wished to convince
Darius of the hopelessness of invading their country, they made
no long harangue, but ai'gued with far more cogency by merely
bringing him a bird, a mouse, a frog, and two arrows, to imply
that unless he could soar like a bird, burrow like a mouse, and
hide in the marshes like a frog, he would never be able to es-
cape their shafts.

Facts like these tend to show that man might still have been,
as the root of the word " man " implies in Sanskrit, " a think-
ing being," though he had never been a "speech-dividing"
being ; but, it is evident that his range of thought would have
been exceedingly narrow, and that his mightiest triumphs over
nature would have been impossible. While it may be true, as
Tennyson says, that

" Thought leapt out to wed with thought,
Ere thought could wed itself to speech,"

yet there is an intimate relation between " ratio " and " oratio,"
and it may be doubted whether, without some signs, verbal, or
of another sort, thought, except of the simplest kind, would
not have been beyond man's power. Long use has so familiar-
ized us with language, we employ it so readily, and without
conscious effort, that we are apt to regard it as a matter of
course, and become blind to its mystery and deep significance,

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

We rarely think of the long and changeful history through
which each word we utter has passed, — of the many changes
in form and changes in signification it has undergone, — and of
the time and toil spent in its invention and elaboration by suc-
cessive generations of thinkers and speakers. Still less do we
think how different man's history would have been, how com-
paratively useless would have been all his other endowments,
had God not given him the faculties " which, out of the shrieks
of birds in the forest, the roar of beasts, the murmur of rushing
waters, the sighing of the wind, and his own impulsive ejacula-
tions, have constructed the great instrument that Demosthenes,
and Shakespeare, and Massillon wielded, the instrument by
which the laws of the universe are unfolded, and the subtle
workings of the human heart brought to light." Language is
not only a means of communication between man and man, but
it has other functions hardly less important. It is only by its
aid that we are able to analyze our complex impressions, to
preserve the results of the analysis, and to abbreviate the pro-
cesses of thought.

Were we content with the bare reception of visible im-
pressions, we could to some extent dispense with words ; but
as the mind does not receive its impressions passively, but re-
flects upon them, decomposes them into their parts, and com-
pares them with notions already stored up, it becomes necessary
to give to each of these elements a name. By virtue of these
names we are able to keep them apart in the mind, and to re-
call them with precision and facility, just as the chemist by the
labels on his jars, or the gardener by those on his flower-pots,
is enabled to identify the substances these vessels contain.*
Thus reflections which when passed might have been dissipated
forever, are by their connection with language brought always
within reach. Who can estimate the amount of investigation
and thought which are represented by such words as gravita-
tioHy chemical ajffinityt atomic weight, capital, inverse proportion,
polarity, and inertia, — words which are each the quintessence
and final result of an infinite number of anterior mental pro-
cesses, and which may be compared to the paper money, or

" Outline of the Laws of Thought," by William Thomson, D.D. p. 52.

r T

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABITSE.

bills of exchange by which the world's wealth may be inclosed
in envelopes and sent swiftly to the farthest centres of com-
merce 1 Who can estimate the inconvenience that would result
and the degree in which mental activity would be arrested,
were we compelled to do without these comprehensive words,
which epitomize theories, sum up the labouis of the past, and
facilitate ind abridge future mental processes 1 The effect, as
Archbishop Trench has observed, would bo to restrict all
scientific discovery as effectually as commerce and exchange
would be restricted, if all transactions had to be carried on with
iron or copper as the sole medium of mercantile intercourse.

Language has thus an educational value, for in learning words
we are learning to discriminate things. " As the distinctions
between the relations of objects grow more numerous, involved,
and subtle, it becomes more analytic, to be able to express
them ; and, inversely, those who are born to be the heirs of a
highly analj'tic language, must needs learn to think upio it, to ob-
serve and distinguish all the relations of objects, for which they
find the expressions already formed ; so that we have an instruc-
tor for the thinking powers in that speech which we are apt to
deem no more than their handmaid and minister." No two
things, indeed, are more closely connected than poverty of lan-
guage and poverty of thought. Language is, on one side, as truly
the limit and restraint of thought, as on the other that which
feeds and sustains it. When an illiterate person sits down to
write, his fund of words being small, the paucity of his thoughts
is sure to correspond to it. Though he may have made the
circuit of the globe, and gazed on the main wonders of Nature
and of Art, yet he has hardly more to write to his friends at home
than the old pleonastic phrases, " I am well, and I hope you are
well, and enjoying the same blessing." In bridging the chasm
between such a man and one of high culture, the acquisition of
words plays as important a part as the acquisition of ideas.

It has been justly said that no man can learn from or com-
municate to another more than the words they are familiar with
either express or can be made to express. The deep degradation
of the savage is due as much to the brutal poverty of his lan-
guage as to other causes. Hence the knowledge of words is not
an elegant accomplishment only, not a luxury, but a positive

fHE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

necessity of the civilized and ctiltivated man. It is necessary
not only to him who would express himself, but to him who
would think, with precision and effect. There is, indeed, no
higher proof of thorough and accurate culture than the fact
that a writer, instead of employing words loosely and at hap-
hazard, chooses only those which are the exact vesture of
his thought. As he only can be called a well-dressed man whose
clothes exactly fit him, being neither small nor shrunken, nor
loose and baggy, so it is the first characteristic of a good style
that the words fit close to the ideas. They will be neither too
big here, hanging like a giant's robe on the limbs of a dwarf,
nor too small there, like a boy's garments into which a man has
painfully squeezed himself ; but will be the exact corres-
pondents and perfect exponents of his thought. Between the
most synonymous words a careful writer will have a choice ;
for, strictly speaking, there are no synonyms in a language, the
most closely resembling and apparently equivalent terms hav-
ing some nice shade of distinction, — a fine illustration of which
is found in Ben Jonson's line, " Men may scarcely sin, but
safely never ;" and again, in the reply with which Sydney Smith
used to meet the cant about popular education in England :
" Pooh, pooh ! it is the worst educated country in the world,
I grant you ; but it is the best instructed" William Pitt was
a remarkable example of this precision of style. Fox said of
him : " Though I am myself never at a loss for a word, Pitt
not only has a word, but the word, — the very word, — to express
his meaning." Robert Hall chose his words with a still more
fastidious nicety, and he gave as one reason for his writing so
little, that he could so rarely approach the realization of his
own beau-ideal of a perfect style. It is related of him that, when
he was correcting the proofs of the sermon on " Modern In-
fidelity," on coming to the famous passage : " Eternal God, on
what are thine enemies intent ? What are those enterprises of
guilt and horror, that, for the safety of their performers, require
to be enveloped in a darkness which the eye of Heaven roust
not penetrate ? " — he exclaimed to his friend, Dr. Gregory :
" Penetrate ! did I say 'penetrate, sir, when I preached it 1 "
" Yes." " Do you think, sir, I may venture to alter it ? for no
man who considers the force of the English language would use

mmmm

WORDS: THEIB IJSE AND ABlfSE.

>/..

a word of tliree syllables there but from absolute necessity. For
penetrate but pierce : pierce is the word, sir, and the only word,
to be used there."

John Foster was a yet more striking example of this con-
scientiousness and severity in discriminating words. Never,
perhaps, was there a writer the electric action of whose mind,
telegraphing with all nature's works, was so in contrast with
its action in writing. Here it was almost painfully slow, like
tho expression of some costly oil, drop by drop. He would
spend whole days on a few short sentences, passing each word
under his concentrated scrutiny, so that each, challenged and
examined, took its place in the structure like an inspected soldier
in the rank?. When Chalmers, after a visit to London, was
asked what Foster was about, he replied : " Hard at it, at
the rate of a line a week." Read a page of the essay on " De-
cision of Character " and you will feel that this is scarcely an
exaggeration, — that he stood by the ringing auvil till every
word was forged into a bolt. Few persons know how hard
easy writing is. Who that reads the light, sparkling verse of
Thomas Moore, dreams of the mental pangs, the long and
anxious thought, which a single word often cost him 1 Irving
tells us that he was once riding with the Irish poet in the streets
of Paris, when the hackney-coach went suddenly into a deep
rut, out of which it came with such a jolt as to send their pates
bump against the roof. " By Jove I've got it / " cried Moore,
clapping his hands with great glee. *' Got what 1 " said Irving.
" Why," said the poet, " that word I've been hunting for six
weeks, to complete my last song. That rascally driver has
jolted it out of me."

The ancient writers and speakers were even more nice and
fastidious than the moderns, in their choice and arrangement
of their words. Virgil, after having spent eleven years in the
composition of the ^neid, intended to devote three years to
its revision ; but, being prevented by his last sickness from
giving it the finishing touches which his exquisite judgment
deemed necessary, he directed his friends to burn it. The
great orator of Athens, to form his style, transcribed Thucy-
dides again and again. He insisted that it was not enough
that the orator, in order to prepare for delivery in public, shoulci

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

write down his thoughts,— he must, as it were, sculpture them
in brass. He must not content himself with that loose use of
language which characterizes a thoughtless fluency, but his
words must have a precise and exact look, like newly-minted
coin, with shapely-cut edges and devices. That Demosthenes
himself " recked his own rede " in this matter we have abun-
dant proof, in almost every page of his great speeches. In
his masterpieces we are introduced to mysteries of prose com-
position of which the moderns know nothing. We find him,
as a German critic has remarked, bestowing incredible pains,
not only upon the choice of words, but upon the sequence of
long and short syllables, not in order to produce a regularly
recurring metre, but to express the most various emotions of
the mind by a suitable and ever-changing rythm. It is in this
art of ordering words with reference to their effect, even more,
perhaps, than in the action for which his name is a synonyme,
that he exhibits his consummate dexterity as an orator. Change
their order, and you at once break the charm. The rythm, in
fact, 18 the sense. You destroy the significance of the sentence
as well as its ring ; you lessen the intensity of the meaning as
well as the verbal force. "At his pleasure," says Professor
Marsh, " he separates his lightning and his thunder by an in-
terval that allows his hearer half to forget the coming detona-
tion, or he instantaneously follows up the dazzling flash with
a pealing explosion that stuns, prostrates and crushes the
stoutest opponent."

Not less did the Roman orators consult the laws of euphonic
sequence or metrical convenience, and arrange their words in
such a succession of articulate sounds as would fall most pleas-
ing on the ear. The wonderful eff'ects which sometimes at-
tended their elocution were, in all probability, chiefly owing to
their exquisite choice of words and their skill in musical con-
cords, it was by the charm of numbers, as well as by the
strength of reason, that Cicero confounded Catiline and silenced
the eloquent Hortensius. It was this that deprived Curio of
all power of recollection when he rose to oppose that great
master of enchanting rhetoric ; it was this that made even
Cajsar himself, tremble, and at last change his determined pur-
pose, and acquit the man he had resolved to condemn. When

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

the Roman orator, Carbo, pronounced, on a certain occasion,
the sentence, " Patris dictum sapiens temeritas Jilii comprohavit"
it was astonishing, says Cicero, to observe the general applause
which followed that harmonious close. Doubtless we are igno-
rant of the art of pronouncing that period with its genuine
emphasis ; but Cicero assures us that had the final measure, —
what is technically called a dichoree, — been changed, and the
words placed in a different order, their whole effect would
have been absolutely destroyed. With the oame exquisite
sensibility to numbers, an ancient writer says that a similar
result would follow, if, in reading the first line of the ^Eneid,

" Arma virumque cano, Troja; qui primus ab oris,"

instead o^ primus we were to pronounce it primis {is being long,
and us short).

It is this cunning choice, along with the skilful arrangement
of words, that, even more than the thought, eternizes the name
of an author. Style is, and ever has been, the most vital ele-
ment of literary immortalities. More than any other quality
it is a writer's own property ; and no one, not time itself, can
rob him of it, or even diminish its value. Facts may be for-
gotten, learning grow commonplace, startling truths dwindle
into mere truisms ; but a grand or beautiful style can never
lose its freshness or its charm. For his gorgeous style, even
more than for his colossal erudition, is Gibbon admired ; it is
" the ordered march of his lordly prose " that is the secret of
Macaulay's charm ; and it is the unstudied grace of Hume's
periods which renders him, in spite of his imperfect learning,
in spite of his wilful perversions of truth, in spite of his infi-
delity and his toryism, the popular historian of England.

From all this it will be seen how absurd it is to suppose that
one can adequately enjoy the masterpieces of literature by
means of translations. Among the arguments against the study
of the dead languages, none is more pertinaciously urged by the
educational red republicans of the day than this, — that the
study is useless, because all the great works, the masterpieces
of antiquity, have been translated. The man, we are told, who
cannot enjoy Carlyle's version of Wilhelm Meister, Melmoth's

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

Cicero, Morris's Virgil, Martin's Horace, or Carter's Epictetus,
must be either a prodigious scholar or a prodigious dunce.
Sometimes, it is urged, a translator even improves upon the
original, as did Coleridge, in the opinion of many, upon Schil-
ler's " Wallenstein." Ail this seems plausible enough, but the
Greek and Latin scholar knows it to be fallacious and false.
He knows that the finest passages in an author, — the exquisite
thoughts, the curious, verbal felicities, — are precisely those
which defy reproduction in another tongue. The most masterly
translations of them are no more like the original than a
walking stick is like a tree in full bloom. The quintessence of
a writer, — the life and spirit, — all that is idiomatic, peculiar, or
characteristic, — all that is Homerian in Homer, or Horatian in
Horace, — evaporates in a translation.

It is true that, judging by dictionaries only, almost every
word in one language has equivalents in every other ; but a
critical study of language shows, that, with the exception of
terms denoting sensible objects and acts, there is rarely a pre-
cise coincidence in meaning between any two words in differ-
ent tongues. Compare any two languages, and you will find
that there are, as the mathematicians would say, many incom-
mensurable quantities, many words in each untranslatable into
the other, and that it is often impossible, by a paraphrase, to
supply an equivalent. To use De Quincey's happy image from
the language of eclipses, the correspondence between the disk
of the original word and its translated representative, is, in
thousands of instances, not annular ; the centres do not coin-
cide ; the words overlap.

Above all does poetry defy translation. It is too subtle an
essence to be poured from one vessel into another without loss.
Of Cicero's elegant and copious rhetoric, of the sententious wis-
dom of Tacitus, of the keen philosophic penetration and mas-
terly narrative talent of Thucydides, of the thunderous elo-
quence of Demosthenes, and even of Martial's jokes, it may bo
possible to give some inkling through an English medium ; but
of the beauties and splendours of the Greek and Latin poets,
— never. As soon will another Homer appear on earth, as a
translator echo the marvellous music of his lyre. Imitations of
the " Iliad," more or less accurate, may be given, or nnolher

'" ''I

WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

iiii

f I i !

; 1

'I'

poem may be substituted in its place ; but a perfect transfusion
into English is impossible. For, as Goethe somewhere says,
Art depends on Form, and you cannot preserve the form in alter-
ing the form. Language is a strangely suggestive medium, and
it is through the reflex and vague operation of words upon the
mind that the translator finds himself baffled. Words, especi-
ally in poetry, have a potency of association — a kind of necro-
mantic power — aside from their significance as representative
'signs. There is a mingling of sound and sense, a delicacy of
shades of meaning, and a power of awakening associations, to
which the instinct of the poet is the key, and which cannot be
passed into a foreign language if the meaning be also preserved.
You may as easily make lace ruffles out of hemp. Language,
it cannot be too often repeated, is not the dress of thought ; it
is its living expression, and controls both the physiognomy and
the organization of the idea it utters.

How many abortive attempts have been made to translate
the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey " into English verse ! What
havoc have even Pope and Cowper made of some of the grand-
est passages in the old bard ! The onej it has been well said,
turned his lines into a series of brilliant epigrams, sparkling and
cold as the Heroic Epistles of Ovid ; the other chilled the
warmth and toned down the colours of Homer into a sober,
drab-tinted hue, through which gods and men loom feebly, and
the camp of the Achjoans, the synod of the Trojans, and the
deities in council, have much of the air of a Quaker meeting-
house. Regarded as an English poem, Pope's translation of
the " Iliad " is unquestionably a brillant and exquisitely versi-
sified production ; but viewed as a transfusion of the old bard
into another language, it is but a cajmt mortimm, containing
but little more of Homer than the names and events. The fer-
vid and romantic tone, the patriarchal simplicity, the mythologic
colouring, the unspeakable audacity and freshness of the im-
ages — all that breathes of an earlier world, and of the sunny
shores, and laughing waves, and blue sky, of the old ^-Egean, —
all this, as a critic has observed, " is vanished and obliterated,
as is the very swell and fall of the versification, regular in its
very irregularity, like the roll of the ocean. Instead of the
burning, picture-like words of the old Greek, we have the dainty

« !■

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

the
ting-
of

Ining

fer-

logic

diction of a literary artist ; instead of the ever-varied, resound-
ing swell of the hexameter, the neat, elegant, nicely-balanced
modern couplet. In short, the old bard is stripped of his flow-
ing chlamys and his fillets, and is imprisoned in the high-heeled
shoes, the laced velvet coat, and flowing periwig, of the eight-
eenth century." Chapman, who has more of the spirit of
Homer, occasionallv catches a note or two from the Ionian
trumpet ; but presently blows so discordant a blast that it
would have grated on the ear of Stentor himself. Lord Derby
and William C. Bryant have been more successful in many re-
spects than Pope or Cowper : but each has gained some advan-
tages by compensating defects.

Did Dryden succeed better when he put the "^neid" into
verse 1 Did he give us that for which Virgil toiled during
eleven long years ? Did he give us the embodiment of those
vulgar impressions which, when the Latin was read, made the
Koman soldier shiver in all his manly limbs ? All persons who
are familiar with English literature know what liavoc Dryden
made of " Paradise Lost," when he attempted, even in the
same language, to put it into rhyme, — a proposal to do which
drew from Milton the contemptuous remark : " Ay, young
man ; you can tag my rhymes." A man of genius never made
a more signal failure. He could not draw the bow of Ulysses.
His rhyming, rhetorical manner, splendid and powerful as it
confessedly is, proved an utterly inadequate vehicle for the
high argument of the great Puritan. So with his moderniza-
tions of Chaucer. His reproductions of " the first finder of our
faire langage" contain much admirable verse; but it is not
Chaucer's. They are simply elaborate paraphrases, in which
the idiomatic colour^' and forms, the distinctive beauties of the
old poet, — above rJl, the simplicity and sly grace of his lan-
guage, the exquisite tone of na'ivetd, which, like the lispings of
infancy, give such a charifa to his verse, — utterly vanish.
Dryden failed, not from lack of genius, but simply because
failure was inevitable, — because this aroma of antiquity, in the
process of transfusion into modern language, is sure to evaporate.

All such changes involve a loss of some subtle trait of ex-
pression, or some complexional peculiarity, essential to the
truthful exhibition of the original. The outline, the story, the

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WORDS: TIIETR USE AND ABUSE.

bones remain, but the soul is gone ; the essence, the ethereal
light, the periume is vanished. As well might a painter hope,
by using a different kind of tint, to give the expression of one
of Raphael's or Titian's masterpieces, as any man expect, by
any other words than those which a great poet has used, to
convey the same meaning. Even the humblest writer haa an
idiosyncrasy, a manner of his own, without which the identity
and truth of his work are lost. If, then, the meaning and
spirit of a poem cannot be transferred from one place to another,
so to speak, under the roof of a common language, must it not
a fortiori be impossible to transport them faithfully across the
barriers which divide one language from another, and antiquity
from modern times ?

How many ineffectual attempts have been made to translate
Horace into English and French ! It is easy to give the right
meaning, or something like the meaning, of his lyrics ; but they
are cast in a mould of such exquisite delicacy that their ease
and elegance defy imitation. All experience shows that the
tradittore must necessarily be traduttore — the translator, a
traducer of the Sabine bard. As well might you put a violet
into a crucible, and expect to reproduce its beauty and per-
fume, as expect to reproduce in another tongue the mysterious
synthesis of sound and sense, of meaning and suggested associ-
ation, which constitutes the vital beauty of a lyric. The special
imagination of the poet, it has been well said, is an imagination
inseparably bound up with language ; possessed by the infinite
btiauty and the deepest, subtlest meanings of words ; skilled in
their finest sympathies ; powerful to make them yield a mean-
i ig which another never could have extracted from them. It
IS of the very essence of the poet's art, so that, in the highest
exercise of that art, there is no such thing as the rendering of
an idea in appropriate language ; but the conception, and the
v-'-r-'' >\ which it is conveyed, are a simultaneous creation, and
iK i < " "^brings forth full-grown, in its panoply of radiant

1' ..J J of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe,
txist iu tlii words as the mind in conjunction with the body.
Separation is death. Alter the melody ever so skilfully, and
you change the effect. You cannot translate a sound; you

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

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cannot give an elegant version of a melody. Prose, indeed,
suffers less from paraphrase than poetry ; but even in trans-
lating a prose work, unless one containing facts or reasoning
merely, the most skilful linguist can be sure of hardly more
than of transferring the raw material of the original sentiment
into his own tongue. The bullion may be there, but its shape
is altered ; the flower is preserved, but the aroma is gone ;
there, to be sure, is the arras, with its Gobelin figures, but it is
the wrong side out. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that
there is as much contrast between the best translation and the
original of a great author, as between a wintry landscape, with
its dead grass and withered foliage, and the same landscape
arrayed in the green robes of summer. Nay, we prefer the
humblest original painting to a feeble copy of a great picture, —
a barely "good" original book to any lifeless translation. A
living dog is better than a dead lion ; for the external attri-
butes of the latter are nothing without the spirit that makes
them terrible.

The difficulty of translating from a dead language, of whose
onomatopceia we are ignorant, will appear still more clearly,
when we consider what gross and ludicrous blunders are made
in translating even from one living language into another. It
has been well said that few English-speaking persons can
understand the audacity of Racine, so highly applauded by the
French, in introducing the word chien and sel into poetry;
" dog" and " salt" may be used by us without danger ; but, on
the other hand, we may not talk of entrails in the way the
French do. Everyone has heard of the Frenchman, who trans-
lated the majestic exclamation of Milton's Satan, " Hail !
horrors, hail!" by ^^ Comment vous portez-vous, Messieurs les
Horreurs, comment vousportez-vous?" " How do you do, horrors,
how do you do 1" Another Frenchman, in reproducing the
following passage from Shakespeare in his own tongue,

" Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless.
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-^f^/one/'

translated the italicized words thus : *' So, grief, be off with
you !" Hardly less ridiculous is the blunder made by a trans-
lator of Alexander Smith's •' Life-Drama," who metamorphoses

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

the expression, " clothes me with kingdoms," into me fait un
vHiment de royaumes, — " makes me a garment of kingdoms.
What can be more expressive than one of the lines in which
Milton describes the lost angels crowding into Pandemonium,
where, he says, the air was

•" Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings,"

a line which it is impossible to translate into words that will
convey precisely the same emotions and suggestions that are
roused by a perusal of the original. Suppose the translator to
hit so near to the original as to write

" Stirred with the noise of quivering wings,"

will not the line affect you altogether differently 1 Let one
translate into another language the following line of Shakes-

peare,

The Lamed pate ducks to the golden fool,"

and is it at all likely that the quaint, comic effect of the words
we have italicized would be reproduced 1

The inadequacy of translations will be more strikingly ex-
emplified by comparing the following exquisite lines of Shakes-
peare with such a version as we might expect in another lan-
guage :—

" How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank !
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears ; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony."

A foreign translator, says Leigh Hunt, would dilute and take
all taste and freshness out of this draught of poetry, after some
such fashion as the following : —

" With what a charm the moon serene and bright
Lends on the bank its soft reflected light !
Sit we, I pray, and let us sweetly hear
The strains melodious, with a raptured ear ;
For soft retreats, and night's impressive hour.
To harmony impart divineat power."

In view of all these considerations, what can be more untrue
than the statement so often made, that to be capable of easy

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

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translation is a test of the excellence of a composition 1 This
doctrine, it has been well observed, goes upon the assumption
that one language is just like another language, — that every
language has all the ideas, turns of thought, delicacies of ex-
pression, figures, associations, abstractions, points of view which
every other language has. " Now, as far as regards Science, it
is true that all languages are pretty much alike for the pur-
poses of Science ; but even in this respect some are more suit-
able than others, which have to coin words or to borrow them,
in order to express scientific ideas. But if languages are not
equally adapted even to furnish symbols for those universal
and eternal truths in which Science consists, how can they be
reasonably expected to be all equally rich, equally forcible,
equally musical, equally exact, equally happy, in expressing the
idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought of some original and fer-
tile mind, who has availed himself of one of them % A great
author takes his native language, masters it, partly throws him-
self into it, partly moulds and partly adapts it, and pours out
his multitude of ideas through the variously ramified and de-
licately minute channels of expression which he has found or
framed : does it follow that this his personal presence (as it
may be called) can forthwith be transferred to every other
language under the sun ? Then we may reasonably maintain
that Beethoven's lyiano music is not really beautiful, because it
cannot be played on the hurdy-gurdy.

*' It seems that a really great author must admit of transla-
tion, and that we have a test of his excellence when he reads to
advantage in a foreign language as well as in his own. Then
Shakespeare is a genius because he can be translated into Ger-
man, and not a genius because he cannot be translated into
French. The multiplication-table is the most gifted of all con-
ceivable compositions, because it loses nothing by translation,
and can hardly be said to belong to any one language what-
ever. Whereas I should rather have conceived that, in pro-
portion as ideas are novel and recondite, they would be difficult
to put into words, and that the very fact of their having insin-
uated themselves into one language would diminish the chance
of that happy accident being repeated in another. In the lan-
guage of savages you can hardly express any idea or act of the

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

intellect at all. Is the tongue of the Hottentot or Esquimaux
to be made the measure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus,
St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes 1 "*

The truth is, music written for one instrument cannot bo
played upon another. To the most cunning writer that ever
tried to translate the beauties of an author into a foreign tongue
we may say in the language of a French critic : *' You are that
ignorant musician who plays his part exactly, not skipping a
single note, nor neglecting a rest,— only what is written in the
key of /a, he plays in the key of sol. Faithful translator ! "

When we think of the marvellous moral influence which
words have exercised in all ages, we cannot wonder that the
ancients believed there was a subtle sorcery in them, " a cer-
tain bewitchery or fascination," indicating that language is of
mystic origin. The Gothic nations supposed that even their
mysterious alphabetical characters, called " Runes," possessed
magical powers ; that they could stop a sailing vessel or a fly-
ing arrow j that they could excite love or hate, or even raise
the dead. The Romans, in their levies, took care to enrol
first names of good omen, such as Victor, Valerius, Salvias,
Felix, and Faustus. Caesar gave a command in Spain to an
obscure Scipio, merely for the omen which his name involved.
When an expedition had been planned under the leadership of
Atrius Niger, the soldiers absolutely refused to proceed under a
commander of so ill-omened a name, — dux abominandi nomin-
18— it being, as De Quincey says, "a pleonasm of darkness."
The same deep conviction that words are powers is seen in the
/avete Unguis and bona verba qimso of the Romans, by which
they endeavoured to repress the utterance of any word sugges-
tive of ill-fortune, lest the event so suggested to the imagination
should actually occur. So they were careful to avoid, by eu-
phemisms, the utterance of any word directly expressive of
death or other calamity, saying vixit instead of mortuus est, and
" be the event fortunate or otherwise," instead of adverse. The
name Egesta they changed into Segesta, Maluentum into Bcne-
ventum, Axeinos into Euxine, and Epidamus into Dyrrhachium,
to escape the perils of a word suggestive of damnum, or detri-

* J. H. Newman.

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TffE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

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ment. Even in later times the same feeling has prevailed, an
illustration of which we have in the life of Pope Adrian VI.,
who, when elected, dared not retain his own name, as he wished,
because he was told by his cardinals that every Pope who had
done so had died in the first year of his reign.

That there is a secret instinct which leads even the most il-
literate peoples to recognize the potency of words, is illustrated
by the use made of names, in the East, in " the black art." In
the island of Java, a fearful influence, it is said, attaches to
names, and it is believed that demons, invoked in the name of
a living individual, can be made to appear. One of the magic
arts practised there is to write a man's name on a skull, a bone,
a shroud, a bier, an image made of paste, and then put it in a
place where two roads meet, when a fearful enchantment, it is
believed, will be wrought against the person whose name is so
inscribed.

But we need not go to antiqiiity or to barbarous nations to
learn the mystic power of words. There is not a day, hardly
an hour of our lives, which does not furnish examples of their
ominous force. Shakspeare makes one of his characters say of
another, " She speaks poniards, and every word stabs " ; and
there are, indeed, words which are sharper than drawn swords,
which give more pain than a score of blows ; and, again, there
are words by which pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief re-
moved, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, and courage in-
fused. How often has a word of recognition to the struggling
confirmed a sublime yet undecided purpose, — a word of sym-
pathy opened a new vista to the desolate, that let in a prospect
of heaven, — a word of truth fired a man of action to do a deed
which has saved a nation or a cause, or a genius to write words
which have gone ringing down the ages !

* ' I have known a word more gentle

Than the breath of summer air ;
In a listening heart it nestled,

And it lived forever there.
Not the beating? of its prison

Stirred it ever, night or day ;
Only with the heart's last throbbing

Could it ever fade away."

A late writer has truly said that " there may be phrases which

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shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure-houses to explore ; a single
word may be a window from which one may perceive all the
kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Oftentimes a
word shall speak what accumulated volumes have laboured in
vain to utter ; there may be years of crowded passion in a word,
and half a life in a sentence."

** Nothing," says Hawthorne, "is more unaccountable than
the spell that often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may
be present to the mind so distinctly that no utterance could
make it more so ; and two minds may be conscious of the same
thought, in which one or both take the profoundest interest ;
but as long as it remains unspoken, their familiar talk flows
quietly over the hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle and
dimple over something sunken in its bed. But speak the word
and it is like bringing up a drowned body out of the deepest
pool of the rivulet, which has been aware of the horrible se-
cret all along, in spite of its smiling surface.''

The significance of words is illustrated by nothing, perhaps,
more strikingly than by the fact that unity of speech is essen-
tial to the unity of a people. Community of language is a
stronger bond than identity of religion, government or inter-
ests ; and nations of one speech, though separated by broad
oceans and by creeds yet more widely divorced, are one in cul-
ture, one in feeling. Prof. Marsh has well observed that the
fine patriotic effusion of Arndt, " Was ist des Deutschen Vater-
land," was founded upon the idea that the oneness of the
Deutsche Zunge, the German speech, implied a oneness of spirit,
of aims and of duties ; and the universal acceptance with which
the song was received, showed that the poet had struck a chord
to which every Teutonic heart responded. When a nation is
conquered by another, which would hold it in subjection, it has
to be again conquered, especially if its character is essentially
opposed to that of its conqueror, and the second conquest is
often the more difficult of the two. To kill it effectually, its
nationality must be killed, and this can be done only by killing
its language ; for it is through its language that its national
prejudices, its loves and hates, and passions live. When this
is not done, the old language, slowly dying out, — if, indeed, it
dies at all, — has time to convey the national traditions into the

THE ^JGNrFICANCE OF frORDS.

jia

new language, thus perpetuatini; the enmities that keep the
two nations asunder. We see tins illustrated in the Irish lan-
guage, which, with alF the ideas and feelings of which that
language is the representative and the vehicle, has been per-
mitted by the English government to die a lingering death of
seven or eight centuries. The co -existence of two languages in
a State, is one of the greatest misFortunes that can befall it.
The settlement of townships and counties in our country, by
distinct bodies of foreigners, is, therefore, a great evil ; and a
daily newspaper, with an Irish, German, or French prefix, or
in a foreign language, is a perpetual breeder of national ani-
mosities, and an effectual bar to the Americanization of our
foreign population.

The languages of conquered peoples, like the serfs of the
middle ages, appear to be glebre. adscriptitm, and to extirpate
them, except by extirpating the native race itself, is an almost
impossible task. Eome, though she conquered Greece could
not plant her language there. The barbarians who overran the
Roman ^iimpire, adopted the languages of their new subjects ;
the Avars and Slaves who settled in Greece became Hellenized
in language ; the Northmen in France adopted a Romanic
tongue ; and the Germans in France and Northern Italy, as
well as the Goths in Spain, conformed to the speech of the
tribes they had vanquished. It is asserted, on not very
good authority, that William the C onq ueror fatigued his _ear
and exhausted his patie nce, tluring th e first ye ars of jivis,spye:^
reignty^in trying to~Iearn the Saxon language ] but, failing,
jiroered the Saxons to speak Norman-French. He might as
well have ordered his new subjects to walk on their heads.
Charles the Fifth, in all the plenitude of his power, could not
have compelled all his subjects, Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian,
Spanish, etc., to learn his language ; he had to learn theirs,
though a score in number, as had Charlemagne before him.

England has maintained her dominion in the East for more
than a hundred and fifty years, yet the mass of Hindoos know
no more of her language than of Greek. In the last century,
Joseph II. of Austria, issued an edict that all his subjects,
German, Slavonic, or Magyar, should speak and write one lan-
guage — German ; but the people recked his decree as little as

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

did the sea that of Canute. Many of the provinces broke out
into open rebellion ; and the project was finally abandoned.
The Venetians were for a long period under the Austrian yoke ;
but they spoke as pure Italian as did any of their independent
countrymen, and they never detested their rulers more heartily
than at the time of their deliverance. Were different languages
spoken in the different sections of the United States, the task
cf allaying the bitter feeling of hostility at the South, which
led to the late outbreak, and of fusing the citizens of the North
and of the South into one homogeneous people, would be al-
most hopeless.

A volume might bc» filled with illustrations of the power of
words ; but, great as is their power, and though, when nicely
chosen, they have an intrinsic force, it is, after all, the man
who makes them potent. As it was not the famous needle-gun,
destructive as it is, which won the late Prussian victories, but
the intelligence and discipline of the Prussian soldier, the man
behind the gun, educated in the best common schools in the
world, — so it is the latent heat of character, the cit' behind
the words, that gives them momentum and project^uf 'orce.
The same words, coming from one person, are as the idle wind
that kisses the cheek ; coming from another, they are the can-
non-shot that pierces the target in the buU's-eyt^ The thing
said is the same in each case ; the enormous difference lies in
the man who says it. The man fills out, crowds his words
with meaning, and sends them out to do a giant's work ; or he
makes then; void and nugatory, impotent to reach their desti-
nation, or to do any execution should they hit the mark. The
weight and value of opinions and sentiments depend often-
times less upon their intrinsic worth than upon the degree in
which they have been organized into the nature of the person
who utters them ; their force, less upon their inherent power
than upon the latent heat stored away in their formation, which
is liberated in their publication.

There is in character a force which is felt as deeply, and
which is as irresistible, as the mightiest physical force, and
which makes the plainest expressions of some men like con-
suming fire. Their words, instead of being the barren signs
of abstract ideas, are the media through which the life of one

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THE SiGXIFWAJSrCE OF WORDS.

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mind is radiated into other minds. They inspire, as well as
inform; electrify, as well as enlighten. Even truisms from
their lips have the effect of original perceptions ; and old saws
and proverbs, worn to shreds by constant repetition, startle the
ear like brilliant fancies. Some of the greatest effects re-
corded in the history of eloquence have been produced by
words which, when read, strike us as tame and commonplace.
Whitefield could thrill an audience by saying *' Mesopotamia ! "
Even his interjections — his Ah ! of pity and his Oh ! of en-
couragement for the sinner — were words of tremendous
power, and formed a most potent engine in his pulpit artillery.
Garrick used to say that he would give a hundred guineas if
he could say Oh ! as Whitefield did.

Grattan said of the eloquence of Charles James Fox, that
" every sentence came rolling like a wave of the Atlantic,
three thousand miles long." Willis says that every word of
Webster weighs a pound. College sophomores, newly-fledged
lawyers, and representatives from Bunkumville, often display
more fluency than tlie New Hampshire giant ; but his words
are to theirs as the roll of thunder to the patter of rain.
What makes his argument so ponderous and destructive to his
opponents, is not its own weight alone, but in a great degree
the added weight of his temper and constitution, the trip-
hammer momentum with which he makes it fall upon the
theory he means to crush. Even the vast mass of the man
helped, too, to make his words impressive. " He carried
men's minds, and overwhelmingly pressed his thought upon
them, with the immense current of his physical energy."
When the great champion of New England said, in the
United States Senate, "There are Lexington and Concord and
Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever," it was the
weight of gharacter, and of all the associations connected with
it, which changed that which, uttered by another, would have
been the merest truism, into a lofty and memorable sentiment.
The majesty of the utterance, which is said to have quickened
the pulse of " the great Nullitier," Calhoun, is due to the fact
that it came from a mighty nature, which had weighed and
felt all the meaning which those three spots represent in the
stormy history of the world. It was this which gave such

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

prodigious power to the words of Chatham, and made them
smite his adversaries like an electric battery. It was the
haughty assumption of superiority, the scowl of his imperial
brow, the ominous growl of his voice, ** like thunder heard
remote," the impending lightnings which seemed ready to
dart from his eyes, and, above all, the evidence which these
furnished of au imperious and overwhelming will, that abased
the proudest peers in the House of Lords, and made his words
perform the office of stabs and blows. The same words,
issuing from other lips, would have been as harmless as pop-
guns.

In reading the quotations from Chalmers, which are reported
to have so overwhelmingly oppressed those who heard them,
almost everyone is disappointed. It is the creative individual-
ity projected into the words that makes the entire difference
between Kean or Kemble and the poorest stroller that murders
Shakespeare. It is said that Macready never produced a more
thrilling etfect than by the simple words, " IV^io said that ? "
An acute American writer observes that when Sir Edward Coke,
a man essentially commonplace in his intellect and prejudices,
though of vast acquirement and giant force of character, calls
Sir Walter Raleigh " a spider of hell," the metaphor may not
seem remarkable ; but it has a terrible significance when we
see the whole roused might of Sir Edward Coke glaring through
it.* What can be more effective than the speech of Thersites
in the first book of the " Iliad " ? Yet the only effect was to
bring down upon the speaker's shoulders the staff of Ulysses.
Pope well observes that, had Ulysses made the same speech,
the troops would have sailed for Greece that very night. The
world considers not merely what is said, but who speaks, and
whence he says it.

" Let but a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens, how the stj'le refines I/'

says the same poet of a servile race ; and Euripides expresses
the same belief in the efficacy of position and character when
he makes Hecuba entreat Ulysses to intercede for her ; " for

" liiterature and life," by Edwin V. Whipple.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

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the arguments," says she, " which are uttered by men of repute,
are very different in strength from those uttered by men un-
known."

The significance of the simplest epithet depends upon the
character of the man that uses it. Let two men of different
education, tastes, and habits of thought, utter the word " grand,"
and our sense of the word is modified according to our know-
ledge of the men.

Mr. Whipple says truly that " there are no more simple
words than ' green,' * sweetness,' and * rest,' yet what depth and
intensity of significance shines in Chaucer's ' green ' — what a
still ecstacy of religious bliss irradiates 'sweetness,' as it drops
from the pen of Jonathan Edwards ; what celestial repose beams
from ' rest ' as it lies on the page of Barrow ! The moods seem
to transcend the resources of language ; yet they are expressed
in common words, transfigured, sanctified, imparadised by the
spiritual vitality which streams through them." The same
critic, in speaking of style as the measure of a writer's power,
observes that " the marvel of Shakespeare's diction is its im-
mense suggestiveness, — his power of radiating through new
verbal combinations, or through single expressions, a life and
meaning which they do not retain in their removal to diction-
aries. When £he thought is so subtle, or the emotion so evan-
escent, or the imagination so remote, that it cannot be flashed
upon the * inward eye,' it is hinted to the inward ear by some
exquisite variation of tone. An American essayist on Shake-
speare, Mr. Emerson, in speaking of the impossibility of acting
or reciting his plays, refers to this magical suggestiveness in a
sentence almost as remarkable as the thing it describes. * The
recitation,' he says, * begins ; one golden word leaps out immor-
tal from all this painted pedantry, and awedly torments zis with
inuitations to its own inaccessible homes ! ' He who has not felt
this witchery in Shakespeare's style has never read him. He
may have looked at the words, but has never looked into
them."

The fact that words are never taken absolutely — that they
are expressions, not simply of thoughts or feelings, but of
natures ; that they are media for the emission and transpira-
tion of character — is one tiiat cannot bu too deeply pondered

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

by young speakers and writers. Fluent young men who wonder
that the words which they utter with such glibness and em-
phasis have so little weight with their hearers, should ask them-
selves whether their characters are such as to give weight to
their words. As in engineering it is a rule that a cannon should
be at least one hundred times heavier than its shot, so a man's
character should be a hundred times heavier than what he says.
When a La Place or a Humboldt talks of the " universe," the
word has qnite another meaning than when it is used by plain
John Smitii, whose ideas have never extended beyond the town
of Hull. So, when a man's friend gives him religious advice,
and talks of " the solemn responsibilities of life," it makes a
vast difference in the weight of the words whether they come
from one who has been tried and proved in the world's fiery
furnace, and whose whole life has been a trip-hammer to drive
home what he says, or from a callow youth who piates of that
which he feels not, and testifies to things which are not realities
to his own consciousness. There is a hollow ring in the words
of the cleverest man who talks of "trials and tribulations "
which he has never felt. " Words," says the learned Selden,
" must be fitted to a man's mouth. 'Twas well said by the
fellow who was to make a speech for my Lord Mayor, that he
desired first to take measure of his Lordship's mouth."

We are accustomed to go to the dictionary for the meaning
of words ; but it is life that discloses to us their significance in
all the vivid realities of experience. It is the actual world,
with its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, that reveals
to us their joyous or terrible meanings — meanings not to be
found in Worcester or Webster, Does the yout»g and light-
hearted maiden know the meaning of " sorrow," or the youth
just entering on a business career understand the significance
of the words " failure " and " protest 1 " Go to the hod-carrier,
climbing the many-storied building under a July sun, for the
meaning of " toil ; " and, for a definition of ** overwork," go to
the pale seamstress who

" In midnight's chill and murk
Stitclies her life into her work ;
Bending backwards from her toil,
Lest her tears the silk might soil ;

IfHS SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS.

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Shaping from her bitter thought
Heart'8-ease and forget-me not ;
Satirizing her despair
With the emblems woven there ! "

Ask the hoary-headed debauchee, bankrupt in purse, friends,
and reputation — with disease racking every limb — for the
definition of " remorse ; " and go to the bedside of the invalid
for the proper understanding of " healtli." Life, with its inner
experience, reveals to us the tremendous force of words, and
writes upon our hearts the ineffaceable records of their mean-
ings. Man is a dictionary, and human experience the great
lexicographer. Hundreds of human beings pass from their
cradles to their graves who know not the force of the com-
monest terms ; while to others their terrible significance comes
home like an electric flash, and sends a thrill to the innermost
fibres of their being.

To conclude, — it is one of the marvels of language, that out
of the twenty plain elementary sounds of which the human
voice is capable, have been formed all the articulate voices
which, for six thousand or more years, have sufficed to express
all the sentiments of the human race. Few as are these sounds,
it has been calculated that one thousand million writers, in one
thousand years, could not write out .all the combinations of the
twenty-four letters of the alphabet, if each writer were daily to
write out forty pages of them, and if each page should contain
different orders of the twenty-four letters. Another remark-
able fact is that the vocal organs are so constructed as to be
exactly adapted to the properties of the atmosphere which
conveys their sounds, while at the same time the organs of
hearing are fitted to receive with pleasure the sounds conveyed.
Who can estimate the misery that man would experience were
his sense of hearing so acute that the faintest whisper would
give him pain, and a peal of thunder strike him deaf or dead ]

"If Nature thunder'd in liis opening ears,
And Htunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heaven had left him still,
The whispering zephyr and the purling rill I "'

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CHAPTER II.

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

Genus dicendi imitivtur j ublicos mores,
genio, alius aniiuo colo- '■'y' -^4.

The world is satisiie.A
-Pascal.

Non potest alius esse in
vv ^s ; few care to dive beneath the surface.

Words are the signs n, '' symbols of things ; and as in accounts, ciphers
and symbols pass for rate smr . so, ; i ' ^ course of human affairs, words
and names pass for things tiieniBt: .es, — >' 'D'^j.'^ South.

Woe to them that call evil good, and t,'Ood evil.— Isaiah v. 20.

J HE fact that a man's language is a part of his character —
that the words he uses are an index to his mind and heart
— must have been noted long before language was made
a subject of investigation. " Discourse," says Quintilian, " re-
veals character, and discloses the secret disposition and temper ;
and not without reason did the Greeks teach that as a man
lived so would he speak." Profert enim mores plerumque oratio,
tt animi secreta detegit. Nee sine caicsa Grmci prodiderunt, ut
vivat, quemque etiam dicere. When a clock is foul and dis-
ordered, its wheels warped or cogs broken, the bell-hammer
and the hands will proclaim the fact ; instead of being a guide,
it will mislead, and, while the disorder continues, will con-
tinually betray its own infirmity. So when a man's mind is
disordered or his heart corrupted, there will gather on his face
and in his language an expression corresponding to the irregu-
larities within. There is, indeed, a physiognomy in the speech
as well as in the face. As physicians judge of the state of the
body, so may we judge of the mind, by the tongue. Except
under peculiar circumstances, where prudence, shame, or delicacy,
seals the mouth, the objects dearest to the heart — the pet words,
phrases, or shibboleths, the terms expressing our strongest
appetencies and antipathies — will rise most fre(][uently to the

^fe.;

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

lips ; and Ben Jonson, therefore, did not exaggerate in saying
that no glass renders a man's form and likeness so true as his
speech. " As a man speaks, so he thinks ; and as he thinketh
in his heart, so is he."

If a man is clear-headed, noble-minded, sincere, just, and
pure in thought and feeling, those qualities will be symbolized
in his words ; and, on the other hand, if he has a confused
habit of thought, is mean, grovelling, and hypocritical, these
characteristics will reveal themselves in his speech. The
door-keeper of an alien household said to Peter, "Thou art
surely a Galilean ; thy speech bewrayeth thee ; " and so, in
spite of all masks and professions, in spite of his reputation,
the essential nature of every person will stamp itself on his
language. How often do the words and tones of a professedly
religious man, who gives liberally to the church, prays long
and loud in public, and attends rigidly to every outward ob-
servance, betray in some mysterious way the utter worldliness
of his character ! How frequently do words uttered volubly,
and with a pleasing elocution, affect us as mere sounds, sug-
gesting only the hollowness and unreality of the speaker's
character! How often does the use of a single word flash
more light upon a man's motives and principles of action, give
a deeper insight into his habits of thought and feeling, than
an entire biography ! How often, when a secret sorrow preys
upon the heart, which we would fain hide from the world by
a smiling face, do we betray it unconsciously by a trivial or
parenthetical word ! Fast locked do we deem our Bluebeard
chamber to be, the key and the secret of which we have in our
own possession ; yet all the time a crimson stream is flowing
across the door sill, telling of murdered hopes within.

Out of the immense magazine of words furnished by our
English vocabulary — embracing over a hundred thousand dis-
tinct terms — each man selects his own favourite expressions,
his own forms of syntax, by a peculiar law which is part of
the essential difference between him and all other men ; and in the
verbal stock-in-trade of each individual we should find, could
it once be laid open to us, a key that would unlock many of
the deepest mysteries of his humanity — many of the pro-
foundest secrets of his private history I How often is a man's

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

character revealed by the adjectives he uses ! Like the in-
scriptions on a thermometer, these words of themselves reveal
the temperament. The conscientious man weighs his words
as in a hair-balance ; the boaster and the enthusiast employ
extreme phrases, as if there were no degree but the super-
lative. The cautious man uses words as the rifleman does
bullets ; he utters but few words, but they go to the mark
like a gunshot, and then he is silent again, as if he were re-
loading. The dogmatist is known by his sweeping, emphatic
language, and the absence of all qualifying terms, such as
"perhaps" and "it may be." The fact that the word
" glory " predominates in all of Bonaparte's dispatches, while
in those of his great adversary, Wellington, which fill twelve
enormous volumes, it never once occurs — not even after the
hardest won victory — but *•' duty," "duty," is invariably
named as the motive for every action, speaks volumes touching
their respective characters. It was to work out the problem
of self-aggrandizement that Napoleon devoted all his colossal
powers, and conscience, resfonsihility, and kindred terms, seem
never to have found their way into his vocabulary. Men,
with their physical and moral force, their bodily energies, and
their passions, prejudices, delusions, and enthusiasms, were to
him but as fuel to swell the blaze on the altar of that am-
bition of which he was at once the priest and deity. Of
duties to them he never for a moment dreamed ; for, from the
hot May-day of Lodi to the autumnal night of Moscow, when
he fled the flaming Kremlin, he seemed unconscious that he
was himself a created and responsible being.

Dr. Arnold has strikingly shown how we may judge of a his-
torian by his style, his language being an infallible index to his
character. " If it is very heavy and cumbrous, it indicates
either a dull man or a pompous man, or at least a slow and
awkward man ; if it be tawdry and full of commonplaces enun-
ciated with great solemnity, the writer is most likely a silly
man ; if it be highly antithetical and full of unusual expres-
sions, or artificial ways of stating a plain thing, the writer is
clearly an affected man. If it be plain and simple, always
clear, but never eloquent, the writer may be a very sensible
pian, but is too hard and dry to be a very great man. If, on

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

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the other hand, it is always elegant, rich in illustrations, and
without the relief of simple and great passages, we must ad-
miio the writer's genius in a very high degree, but we may fear
that he is too continually excited to have attained to the high-
est wisdom, for that is necessarily calm. In this manner the
mere language of a historian will furnish us with something of
a key to his mind, and will tell us, or at least give us cause to
presume, in what his main strength lies, and in what he is de-
ficient."

As with individuals, so with nations : the language of a peo-
ple is often a moral barometer, which marks with marvellous
precision the rise or fall of the national life. The stock of
words composing any language corresponds to the knowledge
of the community that speaks it, and shows with what objects
it is familiar, what generalizations it has made, what distinc-
tions it has drawn, — all its cognitions and reasonings, in the
worlds of matter and of mind. " As our material condition
varies, as our ways of life, our institutions, public and private,
become other than tr.ey have been, all is necessarily reflected
in our language. In these days of railroads, steamboats
and telegraphs, of sun pictures, of chemistry and geology, of
improved wearing stuffs, furniture, styles of building, articles
of food and luxury of every description, how many words and
phrases are in everyone's mouth which would be utterly unin-
telligible to the most learned man of a century ago, were lie to
rise from his grave and walk our streets ! . . . . Language is ex-
panded and contracted in precise adaptation to the circumstances
and needs of those who use it ; it is enriched or impoverished,
in every part, along with the enrichment or impoverishment of
their minds."* Every race has its own organic growth, its own
characteristic ideas and opinions, which are impressed on its
political constitution, its legislation, its manners and its customs,
its modes of religious worship ; and the expression of all these
peculiarities is found in its speech. If a people is, as Milton
said of the English, a noble and a puissant nation, of a quick,
ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent and subtle to dis-
course, its language will exhibit all these qualities ; while, on

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* " lianguage and the Study of Language," by W. D. Whitney.

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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the other hand, if it is frivolous and low-thoughted — if it is
morally bankrupt and dead to all lofty sentiments — its mockery
of virtue, its inability to comprehend the true dignity and
meaning of life, the feebleness of its moral indignation, will
all inevitably betray themselves in its speeeh, as truly as would
the opposite qualities of spirituality of thought and exaltation
of soul. These discreditable qualities will find an utterance
" in the use of solemn and earnest words in senses compara-
tively trivial or even ridiculous ; in the squandering of such as
ought to have been reserved for the highest mysteries of the
spiritual life ; on slight and secular objects, and in the employ-
ment, almost in jest and play, of words implying the deepest
moral guilt"

Could anything be more significant of the profotuid degrada-
tion of a people than the abject character of the complimentary
and social dialect of the Italians, and the pompous appellations
with which they dignify things in themselves insignificant, as
well as their constant use of intensives and superlatives on the
most trivial occasions % Is it not a notable fact that they, who
for so long a time had no country, — on whose altars the fires
of patriotism have, till of late, burned so feebly — use the word
pellegrino (foreign), as a synonyme for "excellent?" Might
we not almost infer d p'iori the servile condition to which,
previous to their late uprising, centuries of tyranny had re-
duced them, from the fact that with the same people, so many
of whom are clothed in rags, a man of honour is "a well-
dressed man ;" that a virtuoso, or virtuous man, is one who is
accomplished in music, painting, and sculpture — arts which
should be the mere embroidery, and not the web and woof, of
a nation's life ; that, in their magnificent indigence, they call a
cottage with three or four acres of land "a power;" that they
term every house with a large door un pahzzo (a palace), a
lamb's fry una cosa Uupenda (a stupendous thing), and that a
message sent by a footman to his tailor through a scullion is
"an embassy? "

Let us not, however, infer the hopeless depravity of any
people from the baseness of the tongue they have inherited, not
chosen. It makes a vast difference, as Prof. Marsh justly
observes, whether words expressive of noble thoughts and

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

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mighty truths do not exist in a language, or whether ages of
soul-crushing tyranny have compelled their disuse and the
enaployment of the baser part of the national vocabulary. The
mighty events that have lately taken place in Italy " show that
a tone of hypocrisy may cling to the tongue long after the
spirit of a nation is emancipated, and that where grand words
are found in a speech, there grand thoughts, noble purposes,
high resolves exist also, or, at least, the spark slumbers which
a favouring breath may at any moment kindle into a cherish-
ing and devouring flame."*

A late writer calls attention to the fact that the French
language, while it has such positive expressions as "drunk"
and " tipsy," conveyed by ime and gris, contains no such nega-
tive term as "sober." Sobre means always "temperate" or
"abstemious," never the opposite condition to intoxication.
The English, it is argued, drink enough to need a special illus-
trative title for a man who has not drunk; but though the
Parisians began to drink alcohol freely during the sieges, the
French " have never yet felt the necessity of forming any such
curious subjective appellation, consequently they have not got
it." Again, the French boast that they have no such word as
bribe, as if this implied their exemption from that sin ; and
such, indeed, may be the fact. But may not the absence of
this word from their vocabulary prove, on the contrary, their
lack of sensibility to the heinous nature of the offence, just as
the lack of the word humility in the language of the Greeks,
usually so rich in terms, proves that they lacked the thing
itself, or as the fact that the same people had no word corres-
ponding to the Latin ineptas, argues, as Cicero thought, not
that the character designated by the word was wanting among
them, but that the fault was so universal with them that they
failed to recognise it as such 1 Is it not a great defect in a
language that it lacks the words by which certain forms of base-
ness or sinfulness, in those who speak it, may be brought home
to their consciousness 1 Can we properly hate or abhor any
wicked act till we have given it a specific objective existence
by giving it a name whicTi shall at once designate and condemn

* " Lectures ou the EpgUsb Langui^e."

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fVORDS: TIIEIli USE AND ABUSE.

it 1 The pot-de-vin, and other jesting phrases which the French
have coined to denote bribery, can have no effect but to
encourage this wrong.

What shall we think of the fact that the French language
has no word equivalent to " listener V Is it not a noteworthy
circumstance, shedding light upon national character, that
among thirty-seven million of talkers, no provision, except the
awkward paraphrase celui qui ecoute (he who hears), should
have been made for hearers f Is there any other explanation
of this blank than the supposition that every Frenchman talks
from the pure love of talking, and not to be heard ; that, re-
versing the proverb, he believes that "silence is silver, but
talking is golden f and that, not caring whether he is listened
to or not, he has never recognised that he has no name for the
person to whom he chatters ] Again, is it not remarkable that,
among the French, bonhomme (a good man) is a term of con-
tempt; that the fearful Hebrew word, " gehenna," has been
condensed into gene, and means only a petty annoyance ; and
that hcmniteiS, which once meant honesty, now means only
civility 1 It was in the latter half of the reign of Louis XIV.
that the word honnete exchanged its primitive for its present
meaning. Till then, according to good authority, when a man's
descent was said to be honnete, he was complimented on the
virtuousness of his progenitors, not reminded of the mediocrity
of their condition ; and when the same term was applied to his
family, it was an acknowledgment that they belonged to the
middle ranks of society, not a suggestion that they were
plebeians. Again : how significant is the fact that the French
have no such words as " home," " comfort," "spiritual," and
but one word for " love" and " like," compelling them to put
Heaven's last gift to man on a par with an article of diet ; as
" I love Julia," — " I love a leg of mutton" ? Couple with these
peculiarities of the language the circumstance that the French
term spirituel means simply witty, with a certain quickness,
delicacy, and versatility of mind, and have you not a real
insight into the national character?

It is said that the word oftenest on a Frenchman's lips is la
gloire, and next to that, perhaps, is brilliant — brilliant. The
utility of a feat or achievement in literature or science, in war

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

m^i

or politics, surgery or mechanics, is of little moment in his eyes
unless it also dazzles and excites surprise. It is said that Sir
Astley Cooper, the great British surgeon, on visiting the French
capital, was asked by the surgeon en chef of the empire how
many times he had performed some feat of surgery that re-
quired a rare union of dexterity and nerve. Ho replied that
he had performed the operation thirteen times. " Ah ! but,
Monsieur, I have performed him one hundred and sixty time.
How many time did you save his life ]" continued the curious
-Frenchman, as he saw the blank amazement of Sir Astley's
face. " I," said the Englishman," saved eleven out of the
thirteen. How many did you save out of a hundred and sixty?"
'* Ah ! Monsieur, I lose dem all ; — but do operation was very
hrilliantV^

The author of "Pickwick " tells us that in America the sign
vocal for starting a coach, steamer, railway train, etc., is
" Go Ahead ! " while with John Bull the ritual form is " All
ilight ! " — and he adds thau these two expressions are perfect
embodiments of the respective moods of the two nations.
There is some exaggeration in this ; yet the two phrases are,
on the whole, vivid miniatures of John JJull and his restless
brother, who sits on the safety-valve that he may travel faster,
pours oil and rosin into his steam-furnaces, leaps from the cars
before they have entered the depot, and who would hardly ob-
ject to being fired off from a cannon or in a bombshell, pro-
vided there were one chance in fifty of getting sooner to the
end of his journey. Let us hope that the day may yet come
M'hen our " two-forty " people will exchange a little of their
fiery activity for a bit of Bull's caution, and when our Yankee
Herald's College, if we ever have one, may declare "All Right ! "
to be the motto of our political escutcheon, with as much pro-
priety as it might now inscribe " Go Ahead ! " beneath that
fast fowl, the annexing and screaming eagle, that hovers over
the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, dips its wings in two oceans,
and has one eye on Cuba and the other on Quebec.

A volume might be filled with illustrations of the truth that
the language of nations is a mirror, in which may be seen re-
flected with unerring accuracy all the elements of their intel-
lectual as well as of their moral character, What scholar that

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE,

is familiar with Greek and Latin has failed to remark how in-
delibly the contrariety of character in the two most civilized
nations of antiquity is impressed on their languages, distin-
guished as is the one by exuberant originality, the other by
ii.nate poverty of thought ? In the Greek, that most perfect
and flexible of all the European tongues, the thought controls
and shapes the language ; while the tyrannous objectivity of
the Latin, rigid and almost cruel, like the nation whose voice
it is, coerces rather than simply syllables the thought. The
words of the latter, as Prof. Marsh remarks, are always

" Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas ; "

and " it is almost as much by the imperatorial character of the
language itself— the speech of masters, not of men — as by the
commanding position of the people to whom it was vernacular,
and of the Church which sagaciously adopted it, that it has so
powerfully influenced the development and the existing tenden-
cies of all modern European tongues, even of those who have
borrowed the fewest words from it."

It is a noteworthy fact that, as the Romans were the most
majestic of nations, so theirs is the only ancient language that
contains the word majesty, the Greek having nothing that ex-
actly corresponds to it ; and the Latin language is as majestic
as were the Eomans themselves. While the Romans retained
their early simplicity and nobility of soul, their language was
full of power and truth j but when they became luxurious, sen-
sual, and corrupt, their words degenerated into miserable and
meaningless counters, without intrinsic value, and serving only
as a conventional medium of exchange. ** In the pedantry of
Statins, in the puerility of Martial, in the conceits of Seneca,
in the poets who would go into emulous raptures on the beauty
of a lap-dog and the apotheosis of a eunuch's hair, we read the
hand-writing of an empire's condemnation."

Both the climate of a country and the mind of its people are
revealed in its speech. " The mountain Greek has no tone of
the Soft Ionic. The Anglo-Saxon casts abroad in its short,
stern, and solemn words, the awfulness of the forests where it
grew." It is said that in the South Sea Islands' version of the
New Testament, there are whole chapters with no words ending

TtlE MORALITY IN WORDS.

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in consonants, except the proper names of the original. Italian
has been called the love-talk of the Roman without his armour.
Fuller, contrasting the Italians and the Swiss, quaintly remarks
that the former, " whose country is called the country ':f good
ivords, love the circuits of courtesy, that an ambassador should
not, as a sparrow-hawk, fly outright to his prey, and meddle
presently with the matter in hand ; but, with the noble falcon,
mount in language, soar high, fetch compasses of compliment,
and then in due time stoop to game, and seize on the business
propounded. Clean contrary, the Switzers (who sent word to
the king of France not to send them an ambassador with store
of words, but a treasurer with plenty of money) count all
words quite out which are not straight on, have an antipathy
against eloquent language, the flowers of rhetoric being as of-
fensive to them as sweet perfume to such as are troubled with
the mother ; yea, generally, great soldiers have their stomachs
sharp set to feed on the matter ; loathing long speeches, as
wherein they conceive themselves to lose time, in which they
could conquer half a country ; and, counting bluntness their
best eloquence, love to be accosted in their own kind."

It is in the idioms of a people, its peculiar turns of expres-

sion, and the modifications of

meaning

which its borrowed

words have undergone, that its distinctive genius is most strik-
ingly seen. The forms of salutation used by different nations
are saturated with their idiosyncrasies, and of themselves alone
essentially reveal their respective characters. How clearly is
the innermost distinction between the Greek mind and the
Hebrew brought out in the "Rejoice" of the one and the
*' Peace " of the other ! How vividly are contrasted in the two
salutations, the sunny world-enjoying temper of the one poople
with the profound religious feeling of the other. The formula
of the robust, energetic, valiant Roman, with whom health was
another name for happiness, was " Salve ! " that is, *' Be well,"
'* Be strong." In the expression, " If God wills it you are well,"
is betrayed the fatalism of the Arab ; while the greeting of the
Turk, " May your shadow never be less ! " speaks of a sunny
clime. In the hot, oppressive climate of Egypt, perspiration is
necessary to health, and you are asked, " How do you per-
spire? " The Italian asks, *• Come sta ? " literally, " How does

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WORDS: THEin USE AND ABUSE.

he stand 1 " an expression originally referring to the standing
of the Lombard merchants in the market-place, and which
seems to indicate hat one's well-being or health depends on
his business prosperity. The dreamy, meditative German,
dwelling among abstractions, salutes you with the vague, im-
personal, metaphysical, " Wie gehts 1 " — " How goes it 1 " An-
other salutation which he uses is " Wie befindin sie sich 1 " —
literally, "How do they find themselves?" A born philoso-
pher, he is so absent-minded, so lost in thought, that he thinks
you cannot tell him of the state of your health till you have
searched for and found it.

The trading Hollander, who scours the world, a?ks, "How
do you go 1 " Tiie thoughtful Swede inquires, " How do you
think 1 " The Frenchman, who lives in others' eyes, and is
more anxious about appearances than lealities — who has
never to hunt hihiself up like the German, and desires less to
do, like tile Anglo-Saxon, than to be lively, to show himself —
says frankly, " Comment vous portez-vous ? " — *' How do you
carry yourself?" It has been said that a man would be owl-
blind, who, in the " Hoo's a' wi' ye ? " of the kindly Scot,
could not perceive the mixture of national pavvkiness with
hospitable cordiality. " One sees, in the mind's eye, the canny
chield, who would invite you to dinner tliree days in the week,
but who would look twice at your bill before he discounted
it." What can be more unmistakably characteristic than the
Irish peasant's *' Long life to your honour ; may you make
your bed in glory ! " After such a grandiose salute, we need
no mouser among the records of antiquity to certify to us
that the Hibernian is of Oriental origin, nor do we need any
other key to his peculiar vivacity and impressionableness of
feeling, his rollicking, daredevil, hyperbole loving enthusiasm.
Finally, of all the national forms of salutation, the most sig-
nally characteristic — the one wliich reveals the very core, the
inmost "heart of heart" of a people — is the Englishman's
•' How do you do?" In these four little monosyllables the
activity, the intense practicality of the Englishman, the very
quintessence of his character, are revealed as by a lightning's
flash. To do ! Not to think, to stand, to carry yourself, but
to do ; and this doing is so universal among the English — its

Vkkm

THE MORALiTY IN WORDS,

necessity is so completely recognised — that no one dreams of
asking whether you are doing, or what you are doing, but all
demand, " How do you do ? "

It has been well observed by the learned German writer,
J. D. Michaelis, that " some virtues are more sedulously culti-
vated by moralists, when the language has fit names for indi-
cating them ; whereas they are but superficially treated of, or
rather neglected, in nations where such virtues have not so
much as a name. Languages may obviously do injury to
morals and religion by their equivocation ; by false accessories,
inseparable from the principal idea ; and by their poverty."
It is a striking fact, noted by an English traveller, that the
native language of Van Diemen's Land has four words to ex-
press the idea of taking life, not one of which indicates the
deep-lying distinction between to kill and to murder ; while
any word for love is wanting to it .altogether. One of the
most formidable obstacles which Christian missionaries have
encountered in teaching the doctrines and precepts of the Gos-
pel to the heathen, has been the absence from their language
of a spiritual and ethical nomenclature. It is in vain that the
religious teachers of a people present to them a doctrinal or
ethical system inculcating virtues and addressed to faculties,
whose very existence their language, and consequently the
conscious self-knowledge of the people, do not recognise. The
Greeks and Romans, for example, had a clear conception of a
moral ideal, but the Christian idea of sin was utterly unknown
to the Pagan mind. Vice they regarded as simply a relaxed
energy of the will, by which it yielded to the allurements of
sensual pleasure ; and I'j'rtue, literally *' manliness," was the
determined spirit, the courage and vigour with whicli it re-
sisted such temptations. But the idea of holiness and the anti-
thetic idea of sin were such utter strangers to the Pagan
mind that it would have been impossible to express them in
either of the classical tongues of antiquity. As De Maistre
has strikingly observed, man knew well that he could irritate
God or a god, but not that he could offend him. The words
crime and criminal belong to all languages : those of sin and
sinner belong only to the Christian tongue. For a similar
reason man could always call God father, which expresses only

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WORDS: THEIR VSE AND ABUSE.

a relation of creation and of power ; but no man, of his own
strength, could say my father t for this is a relation of love,
foreign even to Mount Sinai, and which belongs only to Calvary.

Again, the Greek language, as we have already seen, had no
term for the Christian virtue of humility ; and when the apostle
Paul coined one for it, he had to employ a root conveying the
idea, not of self-abasement before a just and holy God, but of
positive debasement and meanness of spirit. On the other
hand, there is a word in our own language which, as De Quincey
observes, cannot be rendered adequately either by German or
Greek, the two richest of human languages, and without which
we should all be disarmed for one great case, continually recur-
rent, of social enormity. It is the word humbug. " A vast
mass of villainy, that cannot otherwise be readied by legal pen-
alties, or brought within the rhetoric of scorn, would go at large
with absolute impunity, were it not through the stern Rhada-
manthian aid of this virtuous and inexorable word."

There is no way in which men so often become the victims
of error as by an imperfect understanding of certain words
which are artfully used by their superiors. Cynicism is seldom
shallower than when it sneers at what it contemptuously calls
the power of words over the popular imagination. If men are
agreed about things, what, it is asked, can be more foolish than
to dispute about names ? But while it is true that in the phy-
sical world, things dominate over names, and are not at the
mercy of a shifting vocabulary, yet in the world of ideas — of
history, philosophy, ethics, and poetry — words triumph over
things, are even equivalent to things, and are as truly the living
organism of thought as the eyes, lips, and entire physiognomy
of a man, are the media of the soul's expression. Hence words
are the only certain test of thought ; so much so, that, as one
has well said, we often stop short in the midst of an assertion,
an exclamation, or a request, startled by the form it assumes
in words. Thus, in Shakspeare, King John says to Hubert,
who pleaded his sovereign's order for putting the young prince
to death, that, if instead of receiving the order in signs,

" Thou
Hadst bill me tell my tale in cxprcas nwUe,
Deep shame had Htruck me dumb."

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

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Words are often not only the vehicle of thought, but the very
mirror in which we see our ideas, and behold the beauty or
ugliness of our inner selves.

A volume might be written on the mutual influence of lan-
guage and opinion, showing that the opinion we entertain of
an object does not more powerfully influence the mind in ap-
plying to it a name or epithet, than the epithet or name influ-
ences the opinion. Call thunder " the bolt of God's wrath,"
and you awaken a feeling of terror ; call it, with the German
peasant, das liehe gewitter (the dear thunder), and you excite a
different emotion. As the forms in which we clothe the out-
ward expression of our feelings react with mighty force upon
the heart, so our speculative opinions are greatly confirmed or
invalidated by the technical terms we employ. Fiery words,
it has been truly remarked, are the hot blast that inflames the
fuel of our passionate nature, and formulated doctrine a hedge
that confines the discursive wanderings of the thoughts. The
words that have helped us to conquer the truth, often become
the very tyrants of our convictions ; and phrases once big with
meaning are repeated till they " ossify the very organs of in-
telligence." False or partial definitions often lead into dan-
gerous errors ; an impassioned polemic falls a victim to his own
logic, and a wily advocate becomes the dupe of his own rhetoric.

Words, in short, are excellent servants, but the most tyran-
nical of masters. Some men command them, but a vast ma-
jority are commanded by them. There are words which have
exercised a mere iron rule, swayed with a more despotic power,
than Cajsar or the Kussian Czar. Often an idle word has con-
quered a host of facts ; and a mistaken theory, embalmed in a
widely-received word, has retarded for centuries the progress of
knowledge. Thus the protracted opposition in France to the
Newtonian theory arose chiefly from the influence of the word
"attraction;" the contemptuous misnomer, " Gothic," applied
to northern mediaeval architecture, perpetuated the dislike with
whichit was regarded; and the introduction of the term '* landed
proprietor " into Bengal, caused a disorganization of society
which had never been caused by its most barbarous invaders.

Maoaulay, in his •* History of England," mentions a circum.
stance strikingly illustrative of the connection between Ian-

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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guage and opinion — that no large society of which the language
is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that wherever
a language derived from ancient Rome is spoken, the religion
of modern Rome to this day prevails. "Men believe," says
Bacon, " that their reason is lord over their words, but it hap-
pens, too, that words exercise a reciprocal and reactionary power

over the intellect Words, as a Tartar's bow, do shoot back

upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle
and pervert the judgment." Not only every language, but
every age, has its charmed words, its necromantic terms, which
give to the cunning speaker who knows how to ring the changes
upon them, instant access to the hearts of men, as at " Open
Sesame " the doors of the cave flung themselves open to the
thieves in the Arabian tale. "There are words," says Balzac,
"which, like the trumpets, cymbals, and bass-drums of mounte-
banks, attract the public ; the words ' beauty,' ' glory,' * poetry,*
have witcheries that seduce the grossest minds." At the utter-
ance of the magic names of Austerlitz and Marengo, thousands
have rushed to a forlorn hope, and met death at the cannon's
mouth.

South, in his eloquent sermons on " The Fatal Imposture and
Force of Words," observes that anyone who wishes to manage
"the rabble," need never inquire, so long as they have ears to
hear, whether they have any understanding whereby to judge.
With two or three popular, empty words, well-tuned and hu-
moured, he may whistle them backward or forward, upward
and downward, till he is weary ; and get upon their backs when
he is so. When Cspsar's army mutinied, no argument from in-
terest or reason could persuade them ; but upon his addressing
them as Quirites, the tumult was instantly hushed, and they took
that word in payment of all. " In the thirtieth chapter of
Isaiah we find some arrived at that j)itch of sottishness, and so
much in love with their own ruin, as to own roundly and plainly
say what they would be at. In the tenth verse, * Prophesy not
unto us,' they say, * riglit things, but prophesy to us smooth
things.' As if they had said, * Do but oil the razor for us, and
let us alone to cut our own throats.' Such an enchantment is
there in words ; and so fine a thing does it seem to some to be
ruined plausibly, and to be ushered to destruction with pane-

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

gyric and acclamation : a shameful, though irrefragible argu-
ment of the absurd empire and usurpation of words over things ;
and that the greatest affairs and most important interests of
the world are carried on by things, not as they are, but as they
are called."

The Romans, after the expulsion of Tarquin, could not
brook the idea of being governed by a king ; yet they submit-
ted to the most abject slavery under an emperor. Cromwell
was too sagacious to disgust the republicans by calling himself
King, though he doubtless laughed grimly in his sleeve as,
under the title of Lord Protector, he exercised all the regal
functions. We are told by Saint Simon that, at the court of
the grand monarch, Louis XIV., gambling was so common that
even the ladies took part in it. The gentlemen did not scruple
to cheat at cards, but the ladies had a peculiar tenderness ou
the subject. No lady could for a moment think of retaining
such unrighteous gains ; the moment they were touched, they
were religiously given away. But then, we must add, the gift
was always made to some other winner of her own sex. By
carefully avoiding the words " interchange of winnings," the
charming casuists avoided all self-reproach, and all sharp cen-
sure by their discreet and lenient confessors. There are sects
of Christians at the present day that protest vehemently
against a hired ministry ; yet their preachers must be warmed,
fed, and clothed by " donation parties," — like the snob-gentle-
man in Moliere, whose father was no shop-keeper, but kindly
ch')se goods for his friends, which he let them have for —
money.

Party and sectarian leaders know that the great secret of the
art of swaying the people is to invent a good shibboleth or
battle-cry, to be dinned continually in their ears. Persons
familiar with British history will remember certain talismanic
vocables^ such as " Wilkes and Liberty," the bare utterance of
which has been sufficient at times to set a whole population in
a flame ; while the solemn and sepulchral cadences in which
Pitt repeated the cuckoo song of " thrones and altars," were
more potent arguments against revolution than the most per-
fect syllogism that was ever constructed in mood and figure.
So in our own country this verbal magic has been found more

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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convincing

than arguments in " Barbara" or " Baralipton."
Patriots and demagogues alike have found that it was only
necessary, in South's phrase, to take any passion of the people,
when it was predominant and just at the critical height of it,
" and nick it with some lucky or unlucky word," and they
might " as certainly overrule it to their own purpose as a spark
of fire, falling upon gunpowder, will infallibly blow it up."
" Free Trade and Sailor's Rights," " No More Compromise,"
"The Higher Law," "The Irrepressible Conflict," " Squatter
Sovereignty," and other similar phrases, have roused and moved
the public mind as much as the pulpit and the press.

Gouverneur Morris, in his Parisian journal of 1789, tells an
anecdote which strikingly illustrates this influence of catch-
words upon the popuhir mind. A gentleman, in walking, came
near to a knot of people whom a street orator was haranguing
on the power of a qualified veto {veto suspensif) which the con-
stituent assembly had just granted to the king. "Messieurs,"
said the orator, " we have not a supply of bread. Let me tell
you the reason. It has been but three days since the king ob-
tained this qualified veto, and during that time the aristocrats
have bought up some of these suspensions, and carried the grain
out of the kingdom." To this profound discourse the people
assented by loud cheers. Not only shibboleths, but epithets,
are often more convincing than syllogisms. The term Utopian
or Quixotic, associated in the minds of the people with any
measure, even the wisest and most practicable, is as fatal to it
as what some one calls the poisonous sting of the American
hu7)ibug.

So in theology ; false doctrines and true doctrines have
owed their currency or non-currency, in a great measure, to
the coinage of happy terms, by which they have been summed
up and made attractive or offensive. Trench observes that
*' the entire secret of ^uddhism is in the ' Nirvana.' Take
away the word, and it is not too much to say that the key-
stone to the whole arch is gone." When the Roman Catholic
church coined the term "transubstantiation," the error which
had so long been held in solution was precipitated, and became
henceforth a fixed and influential dogma. What a potent
watchword was the term " Reformation," in the fifteenth and

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THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

sixteenth centuries ! Who can estimate the influence of the
phrases "Broad Church," " Liberal Church," " Close Commu-
nion," in advancing or retarding the growth of certain relig-
ious sects at this day 1 Even the most " advanced thinkers,"
who reject the supernatural element of the Bible, put all reli-
gions upon the same level, and deem Shakespeare as truly in-
spired as the Apostles, style themselves " Christians."

Even in science happy names have had much to do with the
general reception of truth. ** Hardly any original thoughts on
mental or social subjects," says a writer, " ever make their way
among mankind, or assume their proper proportions even in the
minds of their inventors, until aptly selected words or phrases
have, as it were, nailed them down and held them fast." How
much is the study of the beautiful science of botany hindered by
such ''lexical superfetations" as "chrysanthemum leukanthe-
mum," "Myosotis scorpioeides" (scorpion-shaped mouse's ear);
and how much is that of astronomy promoted by such popular
terms as " the bear," " the serpent," " the milky way !" How
much knowledge is gathered up in the compact and easily re-
membered phrase, " correlation of forces;" and to what an ex-
tent the wide diflfusion of Darwin's speculations is owing to
two or three felicitous and comprehensive terms, such as " the
struggle for existence," *' survival of the fittest," " the process
of natural selection !" Who that has felt the painfulness of
doubt has not desired to know something of ** the positive phi-
losophy" of Comte 1 On the other hand, the well-known ana
tomist, Professor Owen, complains with just reason of the em-
barrassments produced in his science by having to use a long
description instead of a name. Thus a particalar bone is called
by Soemmering, " pars occipitalis stricte sic dicta partis
occipitalis ossis spheno-occipitalis," a description so clumsy
that only the direst necessity would lead one to use it.

Even great authors who are supposed to have "sovereign
sway and masterdom" over words^ are often bewitched and led
captive by them. Thus Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth
were bent on establishing their Fantesocracy on the banks of
the Susquehanna,, not because they knew anything of that local-
ity, but because Susquehanna was " such a pretty name"
Again, to point an epigram or give edge to a sarcasm, a writer

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rVORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

will stab a rising reputation as with a poniard ; and even when
convicted of misrepresentation, will sooner stick to the lie than
part with a jeu d'esprit, or forego a verbal felicity. Thus
Byron, alluding to Keats's death, which was supposed to have
been caused by Gifford's savage criticism in the " Quarterly,"
said :

" Strange that the houI, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article."

Though he was afterwards informed of the untruth of these
lines, Byron, plethoric as he was with poetic wealth and wit,
could not willingly let them die ; and so the witticism yet
remains to mislead and provoke the laughter of his readers.

Again : there are authors who, to meet the necessities of
rhyme, or to give music to a period, will pad out their sen-
tences with meaningless expletives. They employ words as
carpenters put false windows into houses ; not to let in light
upon their meaning, but for symmetry. Or, perhaps, they im-
agine that a certain degree of distension of the intellectual
stomach is required to enable it to act with its full powers, —
just as some of the Russian peasants mix sawdust with the
train-oil they drink, or as hay and straw are given to horses, as
well as corn, to supply the necessary bulk. Thus Dr. Johnson,
imitating Juvenal, says :

" Let observation, with extensive view.
Survey mankind from China to Peru."

This, a lynx-eyed critic contended,was equivalent to saying :
" Let observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind
extensively." If the Spartans, as we are told, fined a citizen
because he used three words where two would have done as
well, how would they have punished such prodigality of lan-
guage ?

It is an impressive truth which has often been noticed by
moralists that indulgence in verbal vice speedily leads to corr
responding vices in conduct. If a man talk of any mean, sen-
sual, or criminal practice in a familiar or flippant tone, the
delicacy of his moral sense is almost sure to be lessened, he
loses his horror of the vice, and, when tempted to do the deed,

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THE MORALITY IN fFORDS.

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he is far more likely to yield. Many a man, without dreaming
of such a result, has thus talked himself into vice, into sensual-
ity, and even into ruin. " Bad language," says an able divine,
" easily runs into bad deeds. Select any iniquity you please ;
suffer yourself to converse in its dialect, to use its slang, to
speak in the character of one who approves or relishes it, and
I need not tell you how soon your moral sense may lower down
its level." The apostle James was so impressed with the sig-
nificance of speech that he regarded it as an unerring sign of
character. " If any man offend not in word," he declares, "the
same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body."
Again he declares that *' the tongue is an unruly evil, full of
deadly poison;" commenting upon which Rev. F. W. Robert-
son observes : " The deadliest poisons are those for which no
test is known : there are poisons so destructive that a single
drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds.
In that drop of venom which distils from the sting of the
smallest insect or the spikes of the nettle leaf, there is concen-
trated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the micro-
scope cannot distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can in-
flame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert
night and day into restless misery." So, he adds, there are
words of calumny and slander, apparently insignificant, yet so
venomous and deadly that they not only inflame hearts and
fever human existence, but poison human society at the very
fountain springs of life. It was said with the deepest feeling
of the utterers of such words, by one who had smarted under
their sting : " Adder's poison is under their lips."

Who can estimate the amount of misery which has been pro-
duced in society by merely idle words, uttered without malice,
and by words uttered in jest ? A poet, whose name is unknown
to us, has vividly painted the effects of such utterances :

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" A frivolous word^ a sharp retort,

A flash from a passing cloud,
Two hearts are scathed to their utmost corj,
Are ashes and dust for evermore ;

Two faces turn to the crowd,
Masked by pride with a lifelong lie,
To hide the scars of that agony.

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WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

•' A frivolous word, a sharp retort,
A narrow at random sped ;
It has cut in twain the mystic tie
That had bound two snuls in harmony.

Sweet love lies bleedinj,' or dead.
A poisoned shaft with scarce an aim,
Has done a mischief sad as shj-me."

■F1!

It was one of the virtues of George Washington that he
knew how to be silent. John Adams said he had the most re-
markable mouth he had ever seen ; for he had the art of con-
trolling his lips. One of the rules of conduct to which David
Hume inflexibly adhered, was never to reply to any attack on
him or his writings. It was creditable to him that he had
no anxiety to have '* the last word," — that which in family
circles has been pronounced to be " the most dangerous of in-
fernal machines."

It is not, however, in the realm of literature and morals only
that the power of words is seen. Who is ignorant of their sway
in the world of politics 1 Is not fluency of speech, in many
communities, more than statesmanship ? Are not brains, with
a little tongue, often far less potent than tongue " with a gar-
nish of brains ] " Need any be told that a talent for speech-
making has stood in place of all other acquirements ; that it is
this which has made judges without law, and diplomatists
without French ; which has sent to the army brigadiers who
knew not a cannon from a mortar, and to the legislature men
who could not tell a bank-note from a bill of exchange ; which,
according to Macaulay, made a Foreign Minister of Mr. Pitt,
who never opened Vattel, and which was near making a Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Sheridan, who could not work
a sum in long division 1 " To be a man of the world," says
Corporal Bunting, a character in one of Bulwer's novels, " you
must know all the ins and outs of speechifying. It's words that
make another man's mare go your road. Augh ! that must have
been a clever man as invented language. It is a marvel to think
how much a man does in the way of cheating, if he only has
the gift of the gab ; wants a missus, — talks her over ; wants
your horse, — talks you out of it ; wants a place, — talks himself
into it. . . Words make even them 'ere authors, poor creatures,

THE MOllALITV IN WORDS.

in every man's mouth. Augh ! sir, take note of the words, and
the things will take care of themselves."

It is true that " lying words " are not always responsible for
the mischief they do ; that they often rebel and growl audibly
against the service into which they are pressed, and testify
against their task-masters. The latent nature of a man strug-
gles often through his own words, so that even truth itself
comes blasted from his lips, and vulgarity, malignity, and little-
ness of soul, however anxiously cloaked, are betrayed by the
very phrases and images of their opposites. " A satanic drop
in the blood," it has been said, " makes a clergyman preach
diabolism from scriptural texts, and a philanthropist thunder
hate from the rostrum of reform."* But though the truth
often leaks out through the most hypocritical words, it is yet
true that they are successfully employed, as decoy-ducks, to de-
ceive, and the dupes who are cheated by them are legion. There
are men fond of abstractions, whom words seem to enter and
take possession of, as their lords and owners. Blind to every
shape but a shadow, deaf to every sound but an echo, they in-
vert the legitimate order, and regard things as the symbols of
words, not words as the symbols of things. There is, in short,
*' a besotting intoxication which this verbal magic, if I may so
call it, brings upon the mind of man. . . Words are able to
persuade men out of what they find and feel, to reverse the
very impressions of sense, and to amuse men with fancies and
paradoxes, even in spite of nature and experience. "t

All who are familiar with Dickens will recollect the reply of
the shrewd Samuel Weller, when asked the meaning of the
word monomaina : " When a poor fellow takes a piece of goods
from a shop, it is called theft, but, if a wealthy lady does the
same thing, it is called monomania.'^ There is biting satire as
»vell as naivete and dry humor in the reply, and it strikingly
shows the moral power of language ; how the same act may be
made to appear in wholly different lights, according to the
phraseolo'^v used to describe it. The same character may be
made to look as spotless as an angel, or as black as " the sooty
spirits that troop under Acheron's flag," through the lubricity

*" Literature and Life," by Edwin P. Whipple. t South 's Sermons.

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

of language. " Timidus," says Seneca, " se cautum vocat ; sordl-
dus, parcum.'^ Thousands who would shrink back with disgust
or horror from a vice v.'hioh has an ugly name, are led " first
to endure, then pity, then embrace," when men have thrown
over it the mantle of an honorable appellation, A singular
but most instructive dictionary might be compiled by taking
one after another the honorable and the sacred words of a
language, and showing for what infamies, baseness, crimes, or
follies, cjach has been made a pretext. Is there no meaning in
the fact that, among the ancient Romans, the same word was
employed to designate a crime and a great action, and that a
softened expression for *' a thief " was " a man of three letters "
(f. u. r.) 1 Does it make no difference in our estimate of the
gambler and his profession, Avhether we call him by the plain,
unvarnished Saxon " blackleg," or by the French epithet, "In-
dustrious chevalier l " Can any one doubt that in Italy, when
poisoning was rifest, the crime was fearfully increased by the
fact that, in place of this term, not to be breathed 11 ears polite,
the death of some one was said to be " assisted 1 " Or can any-
one doubt the moral effect of a similar perveision of words, in
France, when a subtb poison, by which impatient heirs deli-
vered themselves from persons who stood between them and
the inheritance, they coveted, was called " succession powder f
Juvenal indignantly denounces the polished Romans for re-
lieving the consciences of rich criminals by softening tiie names
of their crimes ; and Thucydides, in a woll-known passage of
his history, tells how the morals of the Greeks of his day were
sapped, and how thoy concealed the national deterioration, by
perversions of the customary meanings of words. Uni'cason-
i!ig rashness, he says, passed as " manliness " and '* esprit de
corps," and prudent caution for specious cowardice ; sober-
mindedness was a mere " cloak for effeminacy," and general
prudence was " inefficient inertness." The Athenians, at one
time, were adepts in the art of coining agreeable names for
disagreeable things. *' Taxes " they called " subscriptions" or
" contributions ; " the prison was " the house ; " tluj executioner
a " public servunt ; " and a general abolition of debt was *' a
disburdening ordinance." Devices like these are common to
all cou/itries ; and in our own, especially, one is startled to see

THE MOLALITY IN WORDS.

. e

what an amount of ingenuity has been expended in perfecting
this " devil's vocabulary," and how successful the press has been
in its efforts to transmute acts of wickedness into mere peccadil-
loes, and to em])ty words employed in the condemnation of evil, of
the depth and earnestin^ss of the moral reprobation they convey.

Some time ago a Wisconsin clergyman, being detected in
stealing books from a bookstore, confessed the truth, and added
that he left his former home in New Jersey under disiTace for
a similar theft. This fact a New York paper noted under the
head of *' A Peculiar Misfortune." About the same time a
clerk in Richmond, Va., being sent to deposit several hundreds
of dollars in a bank, ran away with the money to the North.
Having been pursued, overtaken, and compelled to return the
money, he was spoken of by " the chivalry " as the young man
*• who had lately imt with an accident." Is it not an alarming
sign of the times, when, in the Legislature of one of our
Eastern States, a member declares that he has been asked by
another member for his vote, and told that he would get " five
hundred reasons for giving it ; " thus making the highest word
in our language, that which signifies divinely-given power of
discrimination and choice, the synonyme of bribery 1

Perhaps no honourable term in the language has been more
debased than " gentleman." Originally the word meant a man
born of a noble family, or (jcns, as the Romans called it ; but
as such persons were usually possessed of wealth and leisure,
they were generally distinguished by : greater refinement of
manners than the working classes, and a more tasteful dress.
As in the course of ages their riches and legal privileges di-
minished, and the gulf which sei);nated them from the citizens
of the trading towns was bridged by the increasing wealth and
power of the latter, the term " gentleman " came at last to
denote indiscriminately all ])ersons who l\ei)t up the state and
observed t)ie social forms which hail once characterized men
of rank. To-day the term has sunk so low that the acutest
lexicographer wouhl be puzzled to tell its meaning. Not ojdy
does every person of decent exterior and (lej)ortment assume
to be a gentleman, but the term is anplicul to the vilest crimin-
als and the most contemptible mis'cniants, as well as to the
poorest and most illiterate persons in the community.

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IFORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

In aristocratic England the artificial distinctions of society-
have so far disappeared that even the porter who lounges in
his big chair, and condescends to show you out, is " the gentle-
man in the hall ;" Jeamsis the " gentleman in uniform ;" while
the valet is the " gentleman's gentleman." Even half a century
ago, George IV., who was so ignorant that he could hardly spell,
and who in heart and soul was a thorough snob, was pronounced,
upon the ground of his grand and suave manners," the first
gentleman of Europe." But in the United States the term has
been so emptied of its original meaning, — esotcially in some of
the Southern States, where society has hardly emerged from a
feudal state, and where men who shoot each other in a street
fray still babble of being " born gentlemen," — and of dying
like " gentlemtn" that most persons will think it is quite time
lor the abolition of that heartless conventionality, that absurd
humbug and barbarian, '* the gentleman." Cowper declared, a
hundred years ago, in regard to duelling :

"A gentleman
Will not [insult me, and no other can."

A Southern newspaper stated some yerrs ago that a " gentle-
man" was praising the town of Woodville, Mississippi, and re-
marked that *' It was the most quiet, peaceable place he ever
saw ; there was no quarrelling or rowdyism, no fighting about the
streets. If a r/enfleman insulted another he was quietli/ shot down,
and there was the last of it." The gentle Isiaah Rynders, who
acted as marshal at the time the pirate Hicks was executed in
New York, had doubtU-ss similar notions of gentility ; for, after
conversing a moment with the culprit, he said to the by-stan-
ders : " I asked the gentleman if he <lesired to address the audi-
ence, but he declined." In a similar spirit Booth, the assassin,
when he was surrounded iti the barn, where he was shot like a
beast, oftered to ])ledge his word, "as a gentle man ^^^ to come
out and try to shoot one or two of his captors." The Duke of
Saxe-Weimar states that when he visited the United States
about fifty years ago, be was asked by a hacknian : " Are you
the man that's going to ride with me ; for I am the gentleman
that's to drive 1 "

When a young man becomes a reckless spendthrift, how easy

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

it is to gloss over his folly by talking of his " generosity," his
" big heartedness" and " contempt for trifles ;" or, if he runs in-
to the opposite vice of miserly niggardliness, how convenient to
dignify it by the terms " economy" and " wise forecast of the
future ! " A man with a good income becomes extravagant in
his expenditures, and contracts hundreds of debts, which he fails
to liquidate, for fine furniture and clothes, fast horses and
champagne suppers ; or, perhaps, he deliberately fails in busi-
ness, and swindles his victims out of fifty or a hundred thousand
dollars : who, even of the sufferers, can be so cruel as to pro
nonnce him a " scoundrel," when he was manifestly only " a
little fast," or there was merely " a confusion in his affiiirs ? "

Many a man has blown out another's brains in " an affair of
honour," who, if accused of murder, would have started back
with iiorror. Many a person stakes Lis all on a public stock,
or sells wheat or corn which he does not possess, in expectation
of a speedy fall, who would be thunderstruck if told that, while
considering himself only a shrewd speculator, he was, in every-
thing save decency of appearance, on a par with the haunter of
a " hell," and as much a gambler as if he were staking his
money on a *' rouge-et-noir" or " roulette." Hundreds of officials
have been tempted to defraud the Government by the fact that
the harshest term applied to the offence is the rose-water one,
•' defaulting ;" and men have plotted without compunction the
downfall of tiie Government, and plundered its treasury, as
" sessionists," who would have expected to dangle at the rope's
end, or be shot down like dogs, had they regarded themselves as
rebels or traitors. So Pistol objected to the odious word stexd —
" coiivey, the wise it call." Tliere are multitudes of persons who
can sit for hours at a festive table, gorging themselves, Gargan-
tna-like, *' with links and chitterlings," and guzzling whole
bottles of champagne, under the impression that they are "jolly
fellows," " true epicureans," and " connoisseurs in good living,"
whose cheeks would tingle with indignation and shame if they
were accused, in point-blank terms, of vices so disgusting as
intemperance or gluttony. " I am not a slut," boasts Audrey,
in " As You like it," '• though I thank the gods I am foul."

Of all classes of men whose calling tempts them to juggle
with words, none better tha:i auctioneers understand how much

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70 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

significance lies in certain shades of expression. It is told of
Kobins, the famous London auctioneer, who in selling his wares
revelled in an oriental luxury of expression, that in puifing an
estate he described a certain ancient gallows as " a hanging
wood." At another time, having made the beauties of the
earthly paradise which he was commissioned to sell too gorge-
ously enchanting, and finding it necessary to blur it by a fault
or two, lest it should prove " too good for human nature's
daily food," the Hafiz of the mart paused a moment, and reluct-
antly added : " But candour compels me to add, gentlemen, that
there are two drawbacks to this splendid property, — the Utter
of the rose leaves and the noise of the nightingales^

It is hardly possible to estimate the mischief which is done
to society by the debasement of its language in the various ways
we have indicated. When the only words we have by which
to designate the personifications of noblene?3s, manliness, court-
esy and truth are systematically applied to all that is contempt-
ible and vile, who can doubt that these high qualities them-
selves will ultimately share in the debasement to which their
proper names are subjected ? Who does not see how vast a
difference it must make in our estimate of any species of wicked-
ness, whether we are wont to designate it, and to hear it de-
signated, by some word which brings out its hatefulness, or by
one which palliates and glosses over its foulness and deformity ?
How much better to characterize an ugly thing by an ugly
word, that expresses moral condemnation and disgug^t, even at
the expense of some coarseness, than to call evil good and good
evil, to put darkness for light, and light for darkness, by the
use of a term that throws a veil of sentiment over a sin 1 In
reading the literature of former days, we are shocked occasion-
ally by the bluntness and plain-s})eakii of our fathers ; but
even their coarsest terms, — the " naked words, stript from their
shirts," — in which they «lenounced libertinism, were far less hurt-
ful than the ceremonious delicacy which has taught men to ab-
use each other witli the utmost politeness, to hide the loath-
someness of vice, and to express the most indecent ideas in the
most modest terms.

It has been justly said that the corrupter of a language stabs
straight at the very heart of his country. He commits a crime

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THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

against every individual of a nation, for he poisons a stream
from which all must drink ; and the poison is more subtle and
more dangerous, because more likely to escape detection, than
the deadliest venom wiih which the destructive philosophy of
our day is assailing the moral or the religious interests of hu-
manity, *' Let the words of a country," says Milton in a letter
to an Italian scholar, " be in part unhandsome and offePx-
sive in themselves, in part debased by wear and wrongly
uttered, and what do they declare but, by no light indica-
tion, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idiy-
yawiiing race, with minds already long prepared for any amount
of servility ?"

Sometimes the spirit which governs employers or employed,
and other classes of men, in their mutual relations, is indicated by
the names they give each other. Some years ago the Legisla-
ture of Massacliusetts made a law requiring that children of a
certain age employed in the factories of that State, should be
sent to school a certain number of weeks in the year. While
visiting the factories to ascertain whether this wise provision
of the State government was complied with, an officer of the
State inquired of the agent of one of the principal factories at
New Bedford, whether it was the custom to do anything for
the physical, intellectual, or moral welfare of the work-people.
The answer would not have been out of place in the master of
a plantation, or the captain of a coolie ship : " We never do ;
as for myself, I regard my work-people as I regard /«// machine-
rii. . . They must look out for t/iemselves, as I do for mi/self.
AVhen my machinery gets old and useless, I reject it and get
new ; and these people are a part of my machinery." Another
agent in another part of the State replied to a similar question :
" That he used his mill-hands a^' he used his horse ; as long as he
was in good condition and rcuidered good service, he treated
him well ; otherwise he got rid of him as soon as he could, and
wiiat became of him afterward was no atlair of his."

Ijut we need not multiply illustrations to show the moral
power of words. As the eloquent James Martineau says :
" Power they certainly have. Tiiey are alive with sweetness,
with terror, with pity. They have eyes to look at you with

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WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

strangeness or with response. They are even creative, and can
wrap a world in darkness for us, or flood it with light. But in
all this, they are not signs of the weakness of humanity ; they
are the very crown and blossom of its supreme strength ; and
the poet whom this faith possesses will, to the end of time, be
master of the critic whom it deserts. The whole inner life of
men moulds the forms of language, and is moulded by them in
turn ; and as surely pines when they are rudely treated as the
plant whose vessels you bruise or try to replace with artificial
tubes. The grouping of thought, the musical scale of feeling,
the shading and harmonies of colour in the spectrum of imagina-
tion, have all been building, as it were, the molecules of speech
into their service ; and if you heedlessly alter its dispositions,
pulverize its crystals, fix its elastic media, and turn its trans-
parent into opaque, you not only disturb expression, you dis-
lodge the very things to be expressed. And in proportion as
the idea of sentiment thus turned adrift is less of a mere per-
sonal characteristic, and has been gathering and shaping its
elements from ages of various affection and experience, does it
become less possible to replace it by any equivalents, or dispense
with its function by any act of will."

To conclude : there is one startling fact connected with
words, which should make all men ponder what they utter.
Not only is every wise and every idle word recorded in the
book of divine remembrance, but modern science has shown
that they produce an abiding impression on the globe we
inhabit. The pulsations of the air, once set in motion, never
cease ; its waves, raised by each sound, travel the entire round
of earth's and ocean's surface ; and, in less than twenty-four
hours, every atom of atmosphere takes up the altered move-
ment resulting from that sound. The air itself is one vast
library, on whose pages are written in imperishable characters
all that man has spoken^ or even whispered. Not a word that
goes from the lips into the air can ever die, until the atmon
sphere which wraps our huge globe in its embrace has passed
away forever, and the heavens are no more. There, till the
heavens are rolled together as a scroll, will still live the jests of
the profane, the curses of the ungodly, the scoffs of the atheist,

THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

** keeping company with the hours," and circling the earth with
the song of Miriam, the wailing of Jeremiah, the low prayer of
Stephen, the thunders of Demosthenes, and the denunciations
of Burke.

"Words are mi,£?hty, words are living;

Serpents, with their venomous stings,
Or, bright angels, crowding round us

With heaven's light upon their wings ;
Every word has its own spirit.

True or false, that never dies ;
Every word man's lips have uttered

Echoes in God's skies."

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

CHAPTER III.

GRAND WORDS.

The fool hath planted his memory with an army of words. — Shakspeare.

In the commerce of speech use only coin of gold and silver. . . Be
profound with clear terms, and not with obscure terms. — Joubert.

I observe that all distinguished poetry is written in the oldest and
simplest English words. There is a ])oint, above coarseness and below re-
finement, where propriety abides- -EiiERsoN-

Never be grandilocpient when you want to drive jme a searching truth.
Don't whij) witli a switch that has the leaves on, if you want to tingle.— H.
W. Beecher.

Let, then, clerks enditen in Latin, for they have the proi)erty of science
and the knowledge in that faculty ; and let Frenchnitu, in their French,
also, enditi'n theii- quaint terms, for it is kindly to their mouths ; and let us
show our fantasies in such words as we leurneden of our dame's tongue. —
Chaucer.

T is a trite remark that words are the representatives of
things and thoughts, as coin represents wealth. You
carry in j'^our pocket a doubloon or a dollar, stamped by
the king or state, and you are the virtual ownar of whatever it
will purchase. But who affixes the stamp upon a word 1 No
prince or potentate was ever strong enough to make or unmake
a single word. Caesar confessed that with all his power he
could not do it, and Claudius could not introduce even a new
letter. Cicero tried his hand at it ; but though he proved him-
self a skilful mint-master, and struck some admirable trial-
pieces, which were absolutely needed to facilitate mental
exchanges, yet they did not gain circulation, and were thrown
back upon his hands. But that which defied the power of
Caesar and of Cicero does not transcend the ability of many
writers of our own day, some of whom are adepts in the art of
word-coining, and are daily minting terms and phrases which

GRAND WORDS.

must make even Noah Webster, boundless as was his charity
for new words, turn in his grave. It is doubtful, however,
whether these persons do so much damage to our noble
English language as those who vulgarize it by the use of penny-
a-liner phrases. TherQ is a large and growing class of speakers
and writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who, apparently
despising the homely but terse and telling words of their
mother tongue, never use a Saxon term, if they can find what
Lord Brougham calls a " long-tailed word in 'osity or 'ation'* to
do its work.

What is the cause of this ? Is it the extraordinary, not to
say excessive, attention now given by persons of all ages to
foreign languages, to the neglect of our own ? Is it the com-
parative inattention given to correct diction by the teachers in
the schools of to day ; or is it because the favourite books of
the young are sensational stories, made pungent, and, in a sense,
natural, through the lavish use of all the colloquiaUsms and
vulgarisms of low life 1 Shall we believe that it is because
there is little individuality and independence in these days,
that the words of so few persons are flavoured with their
idiosyncrasies ; that it is from conscious poverty of thought,
that they try to trick out their ideas in glittering words and
phrases, just as by means of high-heeled boots, a laced coat, and
a long feather, a fellow with a little soul and a weak body
might try to pass muster as a bold grenadier ? Or, again, is it
because of the prevalent mania for the sensational, — the crav-
ing for novelty and excitement, which is almost universal in
these days, — that so many persons make sense subservient to
sound, and avoid calling things by their proper names 1 Was
Talleyrand wrong when he said that language was given to man
to conceal his thought ; and was it really given to hide his want
of thought ] Is it, indeed, the main object of expression to
convey the smallest possible amount of meaning with the great-
est possible amount of appearance of meaning ; and since no-
body can be " so wise as Thurlow looked, '^ to look as wise as
Thurlow while uttering the veriest truisms ]

Be this all as it may, in nothing else is the lack of simplicity,
which is so characteristic of our times, more marked than in
the prevailing forms of expression. " The curse and the peril

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(FORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

of Language in our day, and particularly in this country," says
an American critic, who may, perhaps, croak at times, but who
has done mucli good service as a literary policeman in the re-
pression of verbal licentiousness, — " is that it is at the mercy
of mcin, who, instead of being content to use it well, according
to their honest ignorance, use it ill according to their affected
knowledge ; who, being vulgar, would seem elegant ; who, be-
ing emi)ty, would seem full ; who make up in pretence what
they lack in reality ; and whose little thoughts let off in enor-
mous phrases, sound like fire-crackers in an empty barrel." In
the estimation of many writers of the present day, the great,
crowning vice in the use of words is, apparently, to employ
plain, straightforward English. The simple Saxon is not good
enough for their purposes, and so they array their ideas in " big,
dictionary words," derived from the Latin, and load their style
with expletives as tasteless as the streamers of tattered finery
that flutter about the person of a dilapidated belle. The " high-
polite," in short, is their favourite style, and the good old
Spartan rule of calling a spade a spade, they hold in thorough
contemi>t. Their great recipe for elegant or powerful writing,
is to call the most common things V)y the most uncommon names.
Provided that a word is out-of-the way, unusual, or far-fetched,
— and especially if it is one of many syllables, — they care little
wl'.ether it is a[)t and fit or not.

With them afire is always "the devouring element ;" it never
burns a house, but it always " consumes an edifice," unless it is
got under, iti which case " its progress is arrested." A railroad
accident is always " a holocaust," and its victims are named
under the " death roll." A man who is the first to do a thing
"takes the initiative." Instead of loving a woman, a man
"becomes attached" to her; instead of losing his mother by
death, he " sustains a bereavement of his maternal relative."
A dog's tail, in the pages of these writers, is his " caudal ap-
pendage ;" a dog breaker, "a kunopaidist ;" and a fish-pond
they call by no less lofty title than "piscine preserve." Ladies,
in their classic pages, have ceased to be married, like those
poor, vulgar creatures, their grandmothers, — they are *' led to
the hymeneal altar." Of the existence of such persons as a man,
a woman, a boy or a girl, these writers are profoundly ignor-

GRAND WORDS,

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ant ; though they often speak of " individuals," " gentlemen,"
'* characters," and " parties," and often recognise the existence
of "juveniles" and "juvenile members of the community."
" Individual" is another piece of ** pompous inanity" which is
very common now. In " Guesses at Truth" m(uition is made
of a celebrated preacher, who was so destitute of all feeling for
decorum in language, as to call our Saviour " thi« eminent
indiridiy'jy " Individual" is a good Latin word, and serves a
good purpose when it distinguishes a person from a people or
class, as it served a good purpose in the scholastic philosophy ;
but would Cicero or Duns Scotus have called a great man an
emiuens itvHridaum I These " individuals," strange to say, are
never dressed, but always " attired ;" they never take off their
ch)the8, but " divest themselves of their habiliments," which is
so much grander.

Again : the Anti-Saxons, if we may so call them, never tell
us that a man was asleep, but says tliat he was " locked in
shimber ;" they deem it vulgar, and perhaps cruel, to say that
a criminal was hanged ; but very elegant to say that he was
'• launched into eternity." A person of their acquaintance
never does so low a thin^ as to break his le^ ; he " fractures
his limb. ' They never see a man fall ; but sometimes see " an
individual precipitated." Our Latin friends — fortunate souls,
— never have their feelings hurt, though it must be confessed
that their " sensibilities" are sometimes dreadfully "lacerated."
Above the necessities of their poor fellow-creatures, they never
do so vulgar a thing as to eat a meal; they always "par-
take of a repast," which is so much more elegant. They
never do so commonplace a thing as to take a walk \ they
" make a pedestrian excursion." A conjurer with them is a
"prestidigitator;" a fortune-teller, a " vaticinator." As Pas-
cal says, they mask all nature. There is with tliem no king,
but an " august monarch ;" no Paris, but a " capital of a king-
dom." Even our barbers have got upon stilts. They no longer
sell tooth-power and shaving soap, like the old fogies, their
fathers, but " odonto," and "dentifrice," and " rypophagon ;"
and they themselves, from the barber-ous persons they once
were, have been tranformed into " artists in hair." The medi-
cal faculty, too, have caught the spirit of the age. Who would

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suspect that " epistaxis" means simply bleeding at the nose, and
" emollient cataplasm" only a poultice 1 Fancy one school-boy
doubling up his fist at another, and telling him to look out for
epistaxis ? Who would dream that " anheidro-hepseterion"
(advertised in the London " Times") means only a saucepan, or
" taxidermist" a bird-stutter 1 Is it not remarkable that trades-
men have ceased " sending in" their ** little bills," and now
only " render their accounts ? "

•' Tliere are people," says Landor, " who think they write
and speak finely, merely because they have forgotten the
language in which their fathers and mothers used to talk to
them." As in dress, deportment, etc., so in language, the
dread of vulgarity, as Whately has suggested, constantly be-
setting those who are half conscious that they are in danger of
it, drives them into the opposite extreme of afiected finery.
They act upon the advice of Boileau :

*' Qiiolque vous ecriviez, evitez la bassosse ;
Le Htyle le moius noble a pourtant sa iioblesse ; "

and, to avoid the undignified, according to them, it is only
necessary not to call things by their right names.

Such persons forget that glass will obstruct the light quite
as much when beautifully painted as when discolored with
dirt ; and that a style studded with far-fetched epithets and
high-sounding phrases may be as dark as one abounding in
colloquial vulgarisms. Who does not sympathize with the
indignation of Dr. Johnson, when, taking up at the house of a
country friend a so-called "Liberal Translation of the New
Testament," he read, in the eleventh chapter of John, instead
of the simple and touching words, "Jesus wept," — "Jesus,
the Saviour of the world, overcome with grief, burst into a
flood of tears" 1 " Puppij f" exclaimed the critic, as he threw
down the book in a rage ; and had the author been present,
Johnson would doubtless have thrown it at his head. Yet
the great literary bashaw, while he had an eagle's eye for the
fail Its of others, was unconscious of his own sin against sim-
plicity, and, though he spoke like a wit, too often wrote like a
pedant. He had, in fact, a dialect of his own, which had been
wittily styled Johnsonese. Goldsmith hit him in a vulnerable

GRAND WORDS.

spot when he said : " Doctor, if you were to write a fable
al)out little fishes, you woukl make them talk like whales."

The faults of his pompous,

swelling

diction, in which the

frivolity of a coxcomb is described in the same rolling periods
and with the same gravity of antithesis with which he would
thunder against rebellion and fanaticism, are hardly exagge-
rated by a wit of his own time who calls it

" a turi,nil style,
Which ffives to an inch tlie iinportauce of a mile ;
Uplifts the club of Hercules for what ?
To crush a butterfly, or brain aj:nat ;
Bids oceans labour with treinentlous roar,
To heave a cockle shell upon the shore ;
Sets wheels on wheels in motion, -what a clatter !
To force up one poor nipperkin (tf water ;
Alike in every theme his pompous art,
Heaven's awful thunder, or a rumblinj,' cart."

One of the latest " modern improvements" in speech is the .
substitution of " lady" and " female" for the good old English
" woman." On the front of Cooper's Heading-Room, in the
city of New York, is the sign in golden letters, " Male and
Female Keading-Uooms." Suppose Scott, in his noble tribute
to women for their devotion and tenderness to men in the
hour of suffering, had sung

*' Oh, LADIES, in onr hours of ease," etc.,'

would not the lines have been far more touching 1 An
English writer says truly that the law of euphemisms is some-
what capricious ; '* one cannot always tell which words are
decent rnd which are not. . . It really seems as if the old-
fashioned feminine of * man ' were fast getting proscribed.
We, undiscerning male creatures that we are, might have
thought that ' woman' was a more elegant and more distinctive
title than * female.' We read only the other day a report of a
lecture on the poet Crabbe, in which she who was afterwards
Mrs. Crabbe was spoken of as ' a female to whom he had
formed an attachment.' To us, indeed, it seems that a man's
wife should be spoken of in some way which is not equally
applicable to a ewe lamb or a favourite mare. But it was a

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* femalp' who delivered the lecture, and we suppose the females
know best about their own aflairs."

Can any person account for the apparent antipathy which
many writers and speakers have to the L^ood Saxon verb ''to
begin 1 " Ninety-nine out of every Inindred persons one talks
with are sure to prefer the French words "to commence" and
" to essay/' and the tendency is strong to prefer " to i laugurate"
to either. Nothing in our day is begun, not even dinner ; it is
" inaugurated with soup." In their fomlness for the French
words, many persons are betrayed into solecisms. F(ngetting,
or not knowing, that, while " to begin" may l)e followed by an
infinitive or a gerund, " to commence" is transitive, and nnist
be followed by a noun or its e^juivalent, they talk of "com-
mencing to do" a thing, " essaying to do well," etc. Persons
who think that " begin" is not stately enough, or that it is even
vulgar, would do well to look into the pages of JMilton and
, Shakespeare. With all his fondness for Koraanic words the
former hardly once uses " commence" and " commencement ;"
and the latter is not only content with the idiomatic word, but
even shortens it, as in the well-known line that depicts so
vividly the guilt-wasted soul of Macbeth :

" I 'gin to );row a-woary of the sua.''

What a shock would every right-mind.'d reader rcceiv", if, upon
opeinng his Bible, he should find, in place of the old familiar
words, the following: "In the commcnceiaent '^■od created the
heaven., and the earth," — " The fear of the Lord is the cum-
vicncement of wisdom." Well did Coleridge sav : " Intense
study Oi' the Bib'ti will keep any writer from being vulgar in
point of style." " Commence" is a good word enough, but,
being of outlandish origin, should never take the place of
" begin,' except for the sake of rhythm or variety.

Another of these grand wonls is "imbroglio." It is from
the Italian, and means an intricate or ';omj)licated plot. V\ hy,
then, should a cpiarrel in the Cabinet at Washington, or a
prospective quarrel with France or Fngland, be called an " im-
broglio"' 1 Again, will any (tne explain to us the meaning of
'* interpellation," so often used by the correspondent-' ot our

«5l^

GKAND WORDS.

daily newspapers ? The word properly means an interruption;
yet when an opposition meml)er of the French or Italian
Parliament asks a ({uestion of a minister, he is said " to put an
interjiellation." Why should an army be said to Ix^ " deci-
mated," without regard to the number or nature of its losses'?
^^'J'y, Ai^iim, should "donate" be ))referred to " give] " Does it
show a larger soul, a more magnificent liberality, to "donate"
than to give 1 Must we ^Jonitfc. '' the devil his due," when we
would be unusually charitable '] Why should "elect" be pre-
ferred to " choose," when there is no election whatever ; or
why is '"balance" pn^ferable to " remainder T' As a writer
has well said ; " Woni-l any man in his senses dare to ([uote
King David as saying : ' '["hey are full of children, aiul have
the hdlance of their 'substance unto their balies' i or read,
' Surely the wrath of man shall jjraise thee : the hidano' of
wrath thou sh;dt restrain/ wheie the translators of our l^»ible
wrote 'the remainder' / And if any one went into the nursery,
and telling that tale of pere/niial interest of the little uoys that
a slidi-ig went, a-sliding went, a-sliding went, all on a summer's
day, should., after recount itig how they all fell in, they all fell
in, they all fell in, add ' the Ixdanrx ran away,' would there not
go up a chorus of tii.y but indignan: protests against this muti-
lation, which would enlist a far wider sympathy than some of
the proposed changes in the toxts of classic authors which have
r-fet editors and commentators at loggerheads f"

Again: why should one say "rendition" for performance,
"enactment' for acting, or " nude" for naked 1 In the seven-
teenth century, certain fanatics in Hngland ran about without
clothes, crying: "We an; the naked Truth." Had they lived
in this age of refinement, insteiid of shocking their country-
men with such indelicate expressions, they would have sai<l,
'' We are Verity in a nude C(»ii(liti(<n ;" and had any person
clothed them, he. would have; Lmeii s;ii<l to have " ivliabjliiattMl "
them. More offensive than any of these grand'i)se words is
"intoxicated" in place of drunk, which it has nearly banished.
A man can be intoxicated only when he has lost his wits, not
by ({uantity, but by quality, — by drinking li()iior that has been
drugj^ed. •' Intoxicated," however, has five syllables; drunk
has Out one ; so the <'jrmer carries the day by five to one. No

p .'■:

m
"1

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11!

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

\\\

I i

doubt nine-tenths of those who drink to excess in this country
are, in ftvct, intoxicated or poisoned ; still, the two words should
not be confounded.

Solomon tells us that there is nothing new under the sun ;
and this itching for pompous forms of expression, — this con-
tempt for plainness and simplicity of style, — is as old as Aris-
totle. In the third book of his Rhetoric, discussing the causes
of frigidity of style, he speaks of one Alcidaraas, a writer of
ihat time, as " employing ornaments, not as seasonings to dis-
course, but as if they were the only food to live upon. He
does not say ' sweat,* but ' the humid sweat ;' a man goes not
to the Isthmian games, but to 'the collected assembly of the
Isthmian solemnity ;' laws are ' the legitimate kings of common-
wealths ;' and a race, ' the incursive impulse of the soul.' A
rich man is not bountiful, but the ' artificer of universal
largess.' " Is it not curious that our modern refiners of lan-
guage, who often pride themselves upon their taste for swelling
words and phrases, and their skill in using them, should have
been anticipated by Alcidamas two thousand years ago '\

The abuse of the Queen's English to which we have called
attention, did not begin with Americans. It began with our
trans-Atlantic cousins, who employed " ink-horn" terms and
outlandish phrases at a very orly period. In " Harrison's
Chronicle" we are told that after the Norman Con(|uest " tlie
J-iUglish tongue grew into such contempt at court that most
men thought it no small dishonour to speak any English there ;
which bravery took his hold at the last likewise in the country
with every plowman, that even the very carters began to wax
weary ^f their mother-tongue, and laboured to speak French,
which was- then counted no small toknii of gentility."

The English people of today are (juite as much addicted to
the grandiose style as the Americans. Gough, in one of his
lectures, speaks of a card which he saw in London, in which a
man called himself " Illuminating artist to Her Majesty ," the
tact being tliat i.** lighted the gas-lamps near the palace. Mr,
£. A. Freeman, the English historian, complained in a recent
lecture that our language had hvf fri^-nds and many foes, its
only friends being plougii-boys and a few scholars. The pleasant
old " inns" of England, he aaid, had disappeared, their places

GBAiVD TORDS.

being supplied by " hotels," or " establishments ;" while the
landlord had made way for the "lessee of the establishment."
A gentleman s?<>ing into a shop in Regent street to buy half-
mourniuir i''">.ls was referred by the shopman to " the miti-
gated tiKKiion dcpartm-nt." The besetting sin of some of
the abk'st British writers of this century is their lack of
si" M.licity of language. Sydney Smith said of Sir James
Mackintosh, th^>t if he were asked for a definition of " pepper,"
he would reply thus : " Pepper may philosoi)hically be des-
cribed ;.s a dusty and highly pulverized seed of an oriental
fruit .u' rticle rather of condiment than diet, which, dis-
persed ligiitly over the surface of food, with no other rule than
the caprice of the consumer, communicates pleasure, rather than
affords nutrition ; and by adding a tropical flavour to the gross
an/! ;-> culent viands of the north, apjiroximates the different
re,L HM' of the earth, <'xj)lains the o])jects of commerce, and
justilies the industry of man."

Francis Jeffrey, the ceh!l)rated critic, had, even in conversa-
tion, an artificial style and language, which were fit only for
books and a small circle of learned friends. His diction and
pronunciation, it is said, were unintelligible to the mass of
his countrymen, and in the House of Commons offensive and
ridiculous. An anecdote told in illustration of this peculiarity
strikingly shows the superiority of simple to high-flown
language in the practical business of life. In a trial, which
turned upon the intellectual competency of a testator, Jeffrey
asked a witness, a plain countryman, whether the testator was
"a man of intellectual capacity,' — "an intelligent, shrewd
'-■an," — "a man of capacity?" "Had he ordinary mental
endowments!" " Wiiat d'ye mean, sir 1" asked the witness.
"I mean," replied -leffrey, testily, "was the man of sufficient
ordinary intelligence to qualify hiin to manage his own
affairs]" " 1 «iiniia ken," replied the chafed and mystified
witness, — "Wad ye say the (piestion ower again, sir?"
Jelfrey being baffled, Cockburn took uj) the e.xamination. He

said : " Ye kenned Tammas ?" " On, ay ; I kenned

'I'annnas weel ; mo and him herded together when we were
laddies (boys)." 'Was there onything in the cretur ] "
" De'il a thing but what the spuue (spoon) put into him."

liJ

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

%
A

*.i'

J !

ri II

"Would you have trusted him to sell a cow for you ? " "A
cow! I wadna lippened (trusted) him to sell a calf." Had
Jeffrey devoted a review article to the suVjject, he could not
have given a more vivid idea of the testator's incapacity to
manage his own affixirs.

Our readers need not be told how much Carlyle has done to
Teutonize our language with his "yardlongtailed" German com-
pounds. It was a just stroke of criticism when a Ne\v York
auctioneer introduced a miscellaneous lot of books to a crowd
with the remark : " Gentlemen, of this lot I need only say, six
volumes are by Thomas Carlyle; the seventh is written in the
Eygllsh language." Some years ago, a learned doctor of
divinity and university ])rofessor in Canada wrote a work in
which, wishing to state the simple fact that the " rude Indian"
had learned the use of firing, he delivered himself as follows :
" He had made slave of the heaven-born element, the brother
of the lightning, the grand alchemist and artificer of all times,
though as yet lie knew not all the worth or magical power that
was in him. By his means the sturdy oak, which flung abroad
its stalwart arms and waved its leafy honours defiant in the
foi-est, was made to bow to the behest of the simple aborigines."
As the ])lain Scotchwoman said of De Qiiincey, " the bodie has
an awfu' sicht o' words ! " This style of speaking and writing
has become so common that it can no longer )>e considered
wholly vulgar. It is gradually working upward ; it is making
its way into official writings and grave octavos ; and is even
spoken with unction in })ulpits and senates. Metaphysicians
are wont to define words as the signs of ideas ; but, with many
persons, they appear to be, not so much the signs of their
thought, as the signs of the signs of their thought. Such,
doubtless, was the case with the Scotch clergyman, whom a
b()nn('tt('(l abhorrer of legal })reaching was overheard eulogizing :
" Man, John, wasna yon preachin' ! — yon's something for a
body to come awa wi'. The way that he smashed down his
text into so mony heads and particulars, just a' to Hinders I Nine
heads and twtnit}'^ particulars in ilka head — and sic moathfus t>'
yrimd iconU ! — an' every ane o' them fu' o' meaning, if we but
kent them. We hae ill imi)roved our opportunities ; — man, if
we could just mind ony thing he said, it would do us guid."

i'lu_

ailANI) WOIWS.

The whole literature of notices, handbills, and advertisements,
in our day, has apparently declared " war to the knife," against
every trace of the Angh^s, Jutes, and Saxons. We have no
schoolmasters now ; they are all " principals of collegiate
institutes ;" no copy books, but " s[)eciinens of caligraphy ;" no
ink, but " writing Hiiid ;" no }»hysical exercises, but Calisthen-
ics or Cyinnastics. A man who opens agroggery at sonie cor-
ner for tlie gratilication of drunkards, instead of announcing
his enterprise by its real name, modestly proclaims through the
daily papers that his saho)i has been fitted up for the reception
of customers. Even the learned architects of log-cabins and
})i(jneer cottages can find names for them oidy in the sonorous
dialects of oriental climes. Time was when a farm-house was
a farm- house and a porch a porch ; but now the one is a
Villa or hdcimdali, and the other nothing less than a verandah.
In short, this genteel slang pursues us all from the cradle to
the grave. In old times, when our fathers and mothers died,
they were placed in colFins, and buried in the graveyard or
burying-ground ; now, when an unfortunate "party" or "in-
dividual" " deceases" or " becomes defunct," he is deposited in
a " burial-casket" and " interred in a cemetery." It matters
not that the good old words r/ravi' and gravei/ard have been set
in the pure amber of the English classics—that the Bible says,
" There is no wisdom in the grave," "Cruel as the grave," etc.
How much more pompous and magnilo(pient the Greek:
" There is no wisdom in tlie cemetery," " Cruel as the ceme-
tery !"

Seriously, let us eschew all these vulgar fineries of style, as
we would (!scliew the fineries of a dandy. Their legitimate
effect is to barbarize our language, and to destroy all the pecu-
liar ))0uer, distinctiveness, aud apj)i'opri itenoss of ith terms.
Words that are rarely used will at last inevitably disappear;
and, thus, if not speedily checked, this giandihxiuence of ex-
pression will do an irreparable injury to our dear old English
Irgue. Poetry may for a wlule escape the effects of this
vulgar coxcombry, because it is the ftuthest out of the reach of
such contagion ; but, as prose sinks, so must poetry, too, be
ultimately dragged down into the general gulf of feebleness and
inanition.

if
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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

'ii

im.

It was a saying of John Foster that " eloquence resides in the
thought, and no words, therefore, can make that eloquent which
will not be so in the plainest that could possibly express the
same." Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd than the no-
tion that the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of pompous
and sonorous language are necessary to the expression of the
sublime and powerful in eloquence and poetry. So far is this
from being true, that the finest, noblest, and most spirit-stirring
sentiments ever uttered, have been couched, not in sounding
polysyllables from the Greek or Latin, but in the simplest Sax-
on> — in the language we hear hourly in the streets and by our
firesides. Dr. Johnson once said that " big thinkers require
big words." He did not think so at the time of the great
Methodist movement in the last century, when " the ice period
of the establishment was breaking up." He attributes the Wes-
leys' success to their plain, familiar way of preaching, " which,"
he says, " clergymen of genius and learning ought to do from a
principle of duty." Arthur Helps tells a story of an illiterate
soldier at the chapel of Lord Morpeth's castle in Ireland.
Whenever Archbishop Whately came to preach, it was observed
that this rough private was always in his place, mouth o))en, as
if in sympathy with his ears. Some of the gentlemen playfully
took him to task for it, supposing it was due to the usual vulgar
admiration of a celebrated man. But the man had a better rea-
son, and was able to give it. He said, "That isn't it at all.
The Archbishop is easy to understand. There are no tine words
in him. A fellow like me, now, can follow along and take every
bit of it in." '' Whately's simplicity," observes a writer to
whom we are indebted for this illustration, " meant no lack of
pith or power. The whole momentum of his large and healthy
t)r!un went into those homely sentences, rousing and feeding
the rude and the cultured hearer's hunger alike, as sweet bread
and juicy meat satisfy a natural ai)petite."

Emerson observes that as any orator at the bar or the senate
rises in his thought, he descends in his language ; that is, when
he rises to any height of thought or of passion, he comes down
to a level with the ear of all his aiulience. '" It is the oratory
of John Brown and of Abraham Lincoln, the one at Charltis-
town, the other at Gettysburg, in the two best specimens of ora-

IfL

GRAND WORDS.

nate
hell
i\vn

ora-

tory we have had in this country." Daniel Webster, in his
youth, was a little bombastic in his speeches ; but he very soon
discovered that the force of a sentence depends chiefly on its
meaning];, and that great writing is that in which much is said
in few words, and those the simplest that will answer the pur-
pose. Having made this discovery, he became " a great eraser
of adjectives ;" and whether convincing juries, or thundering in
the senate, — whether demolishing Hayne, or measuring swords
with Calhoun, — on all occasions used the plainest words. '* You
will find," said he to a friend, " in my speeches to juries, no
hard words, no Latin phrases, no fieri facias ; and tliat is the
secret of my style, if I have any,"

What can be simpler and yet more sublime than the " Let
there be light, and there was light ! " of Moses, which Longinus
so admired ] Would it be an improvement to say, *' Let there
be light, and there was a solar illumination ! " "I am like a
child picking up pebbles on the sea shore," said Newton. Had he
said he was like an awe-struck votary lying prostrate before the
stupendous majesty of the cosmical universe, and the mighty
and incomprehensible Ourgos which had created all things, we
might think it very fine, but should not carry in our memories
such a luggage of words. The fiery eloquence of the field and
the forum springs upon the vulgar idiom as a soldier leaps upon
his horse. " Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry,"
said Cromwell to his soldiers on the eve of a battle, " Silence,
you thirty voices ! " roars Mirabeau to a knot of opposers
around the tribune. " I'd sell the shirt off my back to support
the war ! " cries Lord Chatham ; and again, " Conquer the
Americans ! I might as well think of driving them before me
with this crutch." " I know," says Kossuth, speaking of the
march of intelligence, " that the light has sprea<l, and that even,
(hehat/oirets t/ii/ik." " You may shake mo, if you ph'ase," said
a little Yankee constable to a stout, hurley culprit whoi»i he had
come to arrest, and who threatened violence, " but recollect, if
you do it, you don't shake a chap of fivo-feet-six ; you've (jot to
»h(ik'e theiohole State of Massachusetts / '' When a Hoosier was
asked by a Yankee how much he weighed, — '' Well," said he,
" commonly I weigh about one hundred and eighty; but when
Vm mad I weigh a ton ! " " Were I to die at this moment,"

'1:

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i< (I

JFORDS: THEIR USK AND ABUSE.

wrote Nelson after the battle of the Xile, " more frigates would
he found written on my heart." Tiie " Don't give up the ship ! "
of our memorable sea-captain, stirs the heart like the sound of
a trumpet. Had he exhorted tlie men to fight to the last gasp
in defence of their imperilled liberties, their altars, and the glory
of America, the words might have been historic, but they never
would have been quoted vernacularly.

There is another phase of the popular leaning to the
grandiose style, which is not less reprehensible than that which
we have noticed ; we mean the affectation of foreign words
and phrases. Many persons scarcely deign to call anything by
its proper English name, but, as if they believed with Butler,
that

" he tliat's but able to express
No sen.se at all in several lant,'uages,
Will pa.ss for learneder tlian he that's known
To speak stron;> est reason in hia own." —

they apply to it some German, French or Italian word. In
their dialect people are Muses, p::isses, or have un air distingue ;
in petto, do/ce far nievfe, are among their pet phrases; and not
infrequently they betray their ignorance by some ludicrous
bhinder, as when they use hoquet for bouquet, soubriquet for
sobriquet, and talk of "a sous,^' instead of ''a sou,^^ a mistake as
laughable as the Frenchman's " un pence." In striking con-
trast to this taste for exotics, is the rooted dislike which the
French have to foreign words and idioms. It is only in cases
of tiie direst necessity that they consent to borrow from their
neighbours, whether in j^Grfide Angleterre or elsewhere. Even
when they deign to adopt a new word, they so disguise it that
the parent language would not know it again. They strip it
gradually of its foreign dress, and make it assume the costume
of the country. " Beefsteak" is turned into bifteck ; " plum-
pudding is metamorphosed into pouding de plomb ; " partner"
hecom^i^ partenaire ; "riding-coat" becomes redingote ; and now
fashionable English tailors advertise these " redingotes," never
for a moment dreaming that they are borrowing an expression
which the French stole from the English.

It is said that the Spaniards, in all ages, have been distin-
guished for their love of long and high-flown names, — the
sounding brass and tinkling symbol of appellative glory and

GRAND WORDS.

honour. In looking at the long string of titles fastened like the
tail of a kite to the name of some Don or other grandee, one
is puzzled to tell whether it is the man that belongs to the
name or the name to the man. There is nothing odd, there-
fore, in the conduct of that Spaniard, who, whenever his name
was mentionf3d, always took off' his hat in token of respect to
himself, — that is, as the possessor of so many appellations. A
person of high diplomatic talent, with the unpretending and
rather plebiati name of " liubb," was once nominated to repre
sent Great Britain at JMadrid. Lord Chesterfield was then a
Minister of State, and on seeing the newly appointed minister
remarked, — " jVIy dear fellow, your name will damff you with
the Spaniards ; a one-syllable patronymic will infallibly dis-
gust the grandees of that hyperbolic nation." *' What shall I
do ?" said Bubb. " Oh ! that is easily managed," rejoined the
peer : " get yourself dubbed, before you start on your mission,
as Don Vaco y Ilijo Hermoso y toro y Sill y Bubb, and on
your arrival you will have all the Spanish Court at your feet."
The eff'ort of the Spaniards to support their dignity by long
and sounding titles is repeated daily, in a slightly different
form, by many democratic Americans. Writers and speakers
are constantly striving to compensate for poverty of thought
by a multitude of words. Magniloquent terms, sounding sen-
tences, unexpected and startling phrases, are dropped from pen
and tongue, as gaudy and high-coloured goods are displayed
in shop windows, to attract attention. " Ruskin," says an in-
telligent writer, " long ago cried out against the stuccoed lies
which rear their unblushing fronts on so many street-corners,
shaming our civilization, and exerting their whole influence to
make us false and pretentious. IVIrs. Stowe and others have
warned us against the silken lies that, frizzled, flounced, padded,
compressed, lily-whitened and rouged, flit about our drawing-
rooms by gas-light, making us familiar with sham and shoddy,
and luring us away from real and modest worth. Let there be
added to these complaints the strongest denunciation of the
kindred literary lies which hum about our ears and glitter be-
fore our eyes, which corrupt the language, and wrong every
man and woman who speaks it by robbing it of some portion of
its beauty and power."

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IFORDS: THEIR USE A^D ABUSE.

1 I

Whon shall we learn that the secret of beauty and of force,
in speaking and in writing, is not to say simple things lint^ly,
but to say fine things as sim[)ly as possible 'J "To clothe,"
says Fuller, "low creeping matter with high-flown language is
not fine fancy, but flat foohsry. It ratlusr loads than raises a
wren to fasten tin; feathers of an ostrich to her wings." It is
a significant fact that the books over which g(!neration after
g(meration of read<;rs have hung with the de(!pest dcdight, —
which have retaiticMl their hold, amid all the fluctuations of
taste, upon all classes, — have Ix.'en writtcji in the siin[)lest and
most idi(y;natic English, tliatKnglish for wliii'h the " fine school"
of writers would sul)stitutt; a verbose and all'i'CLcd phiasciology.
Such books are " Robinson Crusoe," ** Gulliver's Travels," ami
" Pilgrim's Progress," wdiich Macauhiy has justly characterized
as treasures of pure English. Fitzdi'eeni' llalleck tells us that
some years ago a letter fell into his hands which a Scotch ser-
vant-girl had written to her lover. 'i'he style charmed him,
and his literary friends agreed that it was fairly inimitable.
Anxious to clear up tln^ myst<'ry of its beauty, and even ele-
gance, he searched for its author, wdio thus solvi^d the enigma :
*' Sir, I came to this country four years ago. Then I did not
know how to read or write. Sinc(ithen 1 have h^arned to read
and write, but I have not yet learned how to spell ; so always
when I sit down to write a letter, I choose those words which
are so short and simple that I ani sure to know how to spell
them." This was the whole secret. The simi)le-minded Scotch
girl knew more of rhetoric than Blair or Campbell. As llalleck
forcibly says : " Simplicity is beauty. Sin)plicity is power."

It is through the arts and sciences, whose progress is so
rapid, that many Avords of " learned length and thundering
sound" force their way in these days into the language. The
vocabulary of science is so repugnant to the ear and so hard to
the tongue, that it is a long while before its terms becomo
popularized. We may be sure that many years will elapse
before aristoJochiold, iiirr/alosanrius, aaDit/iojiier/if/ian, notlwd'PJia-
trichomanoides, moniyplturo-hrdjic'uian, anonawo - hi/drurharideo-
iiymplio'vid, and other such " hvige verbal blocks, masses of
syllabic aggregations, which botli the tongue and the taste find
it difficult to surmount," will establish themselves in the lan-

[iu.

GRAXD WORDS.

not
leiul
ways

lich
spell
cotcli

l(!ck

The
nl to
como

ipse
i'pjia-
rideo-
es of
itind

lan-

guage of literaturo and common life. Still, while the lover of
Anglo-Saxon sim[)licity is rarely shoeke'l by such terms, there
are hundreds of others, l(!ss stupendous, such as ]>/i('ii()ni('non,
dcmon.'ilrdf.in;, iiivursc. pruportinii^ fninsrcii'/i'iifdf, cd/rf/or)/, jn'c-
dicami'vt, e/orJiifanf, which, once heard only in scientific lecture
rooms or in schools, are now the common currency of the
educated ; and it is said that, in one of our Kastern c()lleg(^s,
the learned mathematical professor, on whom the duty devolved
one morning of making the chapel prayer, startled iiis hearers
hy asking Divine Goodness "to eiuible tlunn to know its length,
its breadth, and its superficial contents." Should pojjular
enlightenment go on for some ages with the prodigious strides
it has lately made, a futun; gcMieration may hear lovers address-
ing their mistresses in the terms predicte*! l)y Punch :

" I love th«t\ Mary, and tlmu Invest iik;.
Our iinitual tliiiiK! is likr tin? alliiiity
'I'liiit <lotli exist l)nt\vi,'cn two siiiii)li' bodies.
I am I'otaHsiuin to tliinc Oxygen.
. . . Sweet, thy name is liri;,'L;s,
Axu\ luiiie is Joliiisoii. Wlierefctre should not we
Aj,'ree to form a ./ii/nixoiKitr of /Irii/f/x/
We will. 'I'iie (hiy, the happy (hiy is ni^di,
When Johnson shall with l)eaiiteoiis J)rii^'i,'s eonihine.'"

Indispensable as the technical terms of science unquestionably
are, tluire is no doubt they are ohc.n employed where simpler
and plainer words would do as well or bett(;r. To express the
results of science without the ostentation of its terms, is an
admirable art, known, unfortunately, to but few. How few
surgeons can communicate in simple, intelligible language to a
jury, in a law-case, the results of a post-morh/in examination!
Almost invariably the learned witn(;ss finds a wound "in the;
parieties of the abdomen, opening the peritoneal cavity;" or
an injury of some " vertebra in the dorsal or lumber region ;"
or something else equally frightful. Some years ago, in one of
the English courts, a judge rebuked a witness of this kinrl by
saying, '* You mean so and so, do you not, sir V^ — at the same
time translating his scientific barbarisms into a {(t\y words of
simple English. "I do, my Lord." "Then why can't you
my so ]" He had said so, but in a foreign tongue.
To all the writers and speakers who needlessly employ

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WORDS: THEIR VSE AND ABUSE.

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grandiose or abstract terms, instead of plain Saxon ones, we
would say, as Falstaff said to Pistol : " If thou hast any
tidings whatever to deliver, prithee deliver them like a man of
this world ! " Some years ago a white minister preached in a
plain, direct style to a church of negroes in the South, whose
"coloured" pastor was greatly addicted to the use of high-flown
language in his sermons. In the season of exhortation and
prayer that followed, an old negro thanked the Lord for the
various blessings of the Sabbath and the Sanctuary, and es-
pecially, he added, " we thank Thee that to-day we have been
fed from a low crib." Would it not be well for preachers
generally to remember that many of Christ's flock are " little
ones," whose necks are short, and that they may consequently
starve, if their food, however nutritious, is placed in too lofty a
crib 1 Never, perhaps, did a college professor give a better
lesson in rhetoric than was gii'en by a plain farmer in Kenne-
bec county, Maine, to a schoolmaster. '* You are excavating a
subterranean channel," it seems, said the pedagogue, as he saw
a farmer at work near his house. " No, sir," was the reply,
*'I am only digging a ditch." A similar rebuke was once
administered by the witty Governor Corwin, of Ohio, to a
youjg lady who addressed him in high-flown terms. Being
on a political tour through the State with the Hon. Thomas
Ewing, they stopped at night at the house of a leading poli-
tician, but found no one at home except his niece, who pre-
sided at the tea table. Having never conversed with " great
men" before, she supposed she must talk to them in elephan-
tine language. *' Mr. Ewing, will you take condiments in your
tea, sir 1 " inquired the young lady. " Yes, Miss, if you
please," replied the Senator. Corwin's eye twinkled. Here
was a temptation that could not be resisted. Gratified at the
apparent success of her trial in talking to the United States
Senator, the young lady addressed Mr. Corwin in the same
manner — "Will you take condiments in your tea, sir?"
" Pepper and salt, but no mustard," was the promp; reply,
which the lady, it is said, never forgave, declaring that the
Governor was " horridly vulgar."

The faults of all those who thus barbarize our tongue would
be comparatively excusable, were it so barren of resources that

GRAND WORDS.

to a

same
sir]
reply,
at the

any man whose conceptions are clear need find difficulty in
wreaking them upon expressions. But Shakespeare and
Milton, Bacon and Locke, have shown that, whether we look
to its flexibility and harmony, or to its gigantic strength, its
exquisite delicacy and wondrous wealth of words, it is rich
enough for all the exigencies oi the human mind ; that it can
express the loftiest conceptions of the poet, portray the deep-
est emotions of the human heart ; that it can convey, if not
the fripperies, at least the manly courtesies of polite life, and
make palpable the profoundest researches of the philosopher.
It is not, therefore, because of the poverty of our vocabulary
that so many writers Gallicize and Germanize our tongue ;
the real cause is hinted at in the answer of Handel to an
ambitious musician who attributed the hisses of his hearers to
a defect in the instrument on which he was playing : <' The
tault is not there, my friend," said the composer, jealous of
the honour of the organ, on which he himself performed : " The
tact is, you have no music in your soul"

We are aware that the English tongue, — our own cartilagin-
ous tongue, as some one has quaintly styled it — has been de-
cried, even by poets who have made it discourse the sweetest
music, for its lack of expressive terms, and for its excess in con-
sonants, — guttural, sibilant, or mute. It was this latter peculi-
anty, doubtless, which led Charles V., three centuries ago, to
compare it to the whistling of the birds ; and even Lord Byron,
whose own burning verse, distinguished not less by its melody
than by its incomparable energy, has signally revealed the
hidden harmony that lies in our short Saxon words, — turns
traitor to his native language, and in a moment of caprice de-
nounces it as

" Our harsb, northern frrunting'gutt' ral,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and pit, and splutter out,"

not thinking that in this very selection of condemnatory wo;ds
he has strikingly shown the wondrous expressiveness of the
tongue. Even Addison, who wrote so musical English, con-
trasting our own tongue with the vocal beauty of the Greek,
and forgetting that the latter is the very lowest merit of a lan-
guage, being merely its sensuous merit, calls it brick as against

WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

■ i

marble. Waller, too, ungrateful to the tongue that has pre-
served his name, declares that,

" Poetfl that iMting marble fieek,
Muat carve in Latin or in Greek."

Because smoothness is one of the requisites of verse, it has been
hastily concluded that language in which vowels and liquids
predominate must be better adapted to poetry, and that the
most mellifluous must also be most melodious. But so far is
this from being true, that, as Henry Taylor has remarked, in
dramatic verso our English combinations of consonants are in-
valuable, both in giving expression to the harsher passions, and
in imparting keenness and significancy to the language of dis-
criminaMon, and especially to that of scorn.

The truth is, our language, so far from being harsh, or poor
and limited in its vocabulary, is the richest and most copious
now spoken on the gloV)e. As Sir Thomas More long ago de-
clared : " It is plentuous to express our myndes in anythinge
whereof one man hath used to speak with another." Owing to
its composite character, it has a choice of terms expressive of
every shade of difference in the idea, compared with which the
vocabulary of many other modern tongues is poverty itself.
But for the impiety of the act, those who speak it might well
raise a monument to the madcaps who undertook the tower of
Babel ; for, as the mixture of many bloods has made them the
most vigorous of modern races, so has the mingling of divers
tongues given them a language which is the noblest vehicle of
thought ever vouchsafed to man. This very mingling of tongues
in our language has been made the ground of an accusation
against it ; and the Anglo-Saxon is sometimes told by foreigners
that he " has been at a great feast of languages and stolen the
scraps ;" that his dialect is " the alms-basket of wit," made up
of beggarly borrowings, and is wholly lacking in originality.

It is true that the Anglo-Saxon has pillaged largely from the
speech of other ^^eoples : that he has a craving desire to annex,
not only states and provinces, even whole empires, to his own,
but even the best parts of their languages ; that there is scarce
a tongue on the globe which his absorbing genius has not laid
upder contribvition to enrich the exchequer of his all-conq^uering

■I . .1

GRAND WORDS.

speech. Strip him of his borrowings — or " annexation," if you
■will — and he would neither have a foot of soil to stand upon,
nor a rag of language in which to clothe his shivering ideas.
To say nothing of the Greek, Latin and French which enter so
largely into the woof of the tongue, we are indebted to the
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindoo,
and even the North American Indian dialects, for many words
which we cannot do without. The word-barks of our language
are daily increasing in size, and terms that sprang up at Delhi
and Benares four thousand years ago are to-day scaling the cliffs
of the Rocky Mountains. But while the English has thus
borrowed largely from other tongues, and the multifarious ety-
mology of " its Babylonish vocabulary," as its enemies are
pleased to call it, renders it, of all modern languages, one of the
most difficult to master in all its wealth and power, yet it makes
up in eclecticism, vigour, and abundance, far more than it loses
in apparent originality. Mosaic-like and heterogeneous as are
its materials, it is yet no mingle-mangle or patchwork, but is as
individual as the French or the German. Though the rough
materials are gathered from a hundred sources, yet such is its
digestive and assimilative energy that the most discordant ali-
ments, passing through its anaconda-like stomach, are as speedily
identified with its own independent existence as the beefsteak
which yesterday gave roundess to the hinder symmetry of a
prize ox, becomes to-morrov. part and parcel of the proper sub-
stance— the bre.ast, leg, or arm — of an Illinois farmer.

In fact, the very caprices and irregularities of our idiom,
orthography, and pronunciation, which make foreigners
* stare and gasp," and are ridiculed by our own philological
ultraists, are the strongest proofs of the nobleness and perfec-
tion of our language. It is the very extent to which these
caprices, peculiar idioms, and exceptions prevail in any tongue,
that forms the true scale of its worth and beauty ; and hence
we find them more numerous in Greek than in Latin, — in
French or Italian than in Irish or Indian. There is less sym-
metry in the rugged, gnarled oak, with the grotesque contor-
tions of its branches, which has defied the storms of a thou-
sand years, than in the smoothly clipped Dutch yew tree ; but
it is from the former that we hew out the knees of mighty

WORVS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

line-of-battle ships, while a vessel built of the latter would go to
pieces in the first storm. It was our own English that sus-
tained him who soared *•' above all Greek, above all Koman
fame ;" and the same " well of English undefiled" did not fail
the myriad- minded dramatist, when

" Each sense of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new."

Nor have even these great writers, marvellous and varied as is
their excellence, fathomed the powers of the language for
grand and harmonious expression, or used them to the full.
It has " combinations of sound grander than ever rolled
through the mind of Milton ; more awful than the mad gasps
of Lear ; sweeter than the sighs of Desdemona ; more stirring
than the speech of Antony ; sadder than the plaints of
Hamlet ; merrier than the mocks of Falstaff." To those,
therefore, who complain of the poverty or harshness of our
tongue, we may say in the words of George Herbert :

" Let foreign nations of their language boast.
What fine variety each tongue affords ;
I like our language, as our men and coast ; —
Who'^annot dress it well, wantyfiT, not words."

SMALL WORDS.

•I

CHAPTER IV.

SMALL WORDS.

It is with words as with sunbeams,- the more they are condensed, the
deeper they burn.— Southey.

The pompous march of blank verse admits the accompaniment of rolling
and diffusive expressions ; but energy, and condensation, and tenderness,
must be sought for in the pithy, monosyllabic Saxon of our fathers.— Rev.
Mattuew Harrison.

m
m

MONG the various forms of ingratitude, one of the
^ commonest is that of kicking down the ladder by which
one has climbed ine steps of celebrity ; and a good
illustration of this is the conduct of the author of the following
lines, who, though indebted in no small degree for his fame to
the small words, the monosyllabic, of our tongue, sneers at
them as low :

" While feeble expletives their aid do join, _
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line."

How ingenious ! how felicitous ! the reader exclaims ; and,
truly, Pope has shown himself wonderfully adroit in ridiculing
the Saxon part of the language with words borrowed from its
own vocabulary. But lot no man despise little words, even
though he echo the little wasp of Twickenham. Alexander
Pope is a high authority in English literature ; but it is long
since he was regarded as having the infallibility of a Pope
Alexander. The multitude of passages in his works, in which
the small words form not only the bolts, pins and hinges, but
the chief material in the structure of his verse, show that he
knew well enough their value ; but it was hard to avoid the
temptation of such a line as that quoted. " Small words," he
elsewhere says, " are generaU^r stiff and languishing, but they

'.ft 1

WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

li!

may be beautiful to express melancholy." It is the old story
of

-the ladder

Whereto the climber upward turns his face.
But when he once attains the utmost rouna,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorninjf the base degrees
By which he did ascend."

The truth is, the words most potent in life and literature —
in the mart, in the Senate, in the forum, and fit the fireside —
are small words, the monosyllables which the half educated
speaker and writer despises. All passionate expression — the
outpouring of the soul when moved to its depths — is, for the
most part, in monosyllables. They are the heart-beats, the
very throbs of the brain, made visible by utterance. The will
makes its giant victory strokes in little monosyllables, deciding
for the right and against the wrong. In the hour of fierce
temptation, at the ballot-box, in the court-room, in all the crises
of life, how potent for good or evil are the little monosyllables,
Yes and No ! '* Yes is the Olympian nod of approval which
fills heaven with ambrosia and light ; wo is the stamp of Jupiter
which shakes heaven and darkens the faces of the gods. Yes :
how it trembles from the maiden's lips, the broken utterance,
the key-syllable of a divine song which her heart only sings ;
how it echoes in the ecstatic pulses of the doubtful lover, and
makes Paradise open its gates for the royal entry of the triumph-
ing conqueror. Love. A'o, — well might Miles Standish say that
he could not stand fire if No should come ' point-blank from
the mouth of a woman' ; what * captain, colonel or knight-at-
arms ' could 1 Bo : 'tis the impregnable fortress, — the very
Malakoff of the will ; it is the breastwork and barrier thrown
up which the charge must be fierce indeed to batter down or
overleap. It is the grand and guarded tower against tempta-
tion ; it is the fierce and sudden arrow through all the rings,
that dismays the suitors of the dear and long-cherished and
faithful Penelope, and makes the unforgotten king start from
the disguise of a beggar."

Again : there is a whole class of words, and those among the
most expressive in the language, of which the great majority
^e monosyllables, We refer to the interjections. We {^re

SMALL WORDS.

aware that some philologists deny that interjections are lan-
guage. Home Tooke sneers at this whole class of words as
" brutish and inarticulate," as " the miserable refuge of the
speechles?," and complains that, " because beautiful and gaudy,"
they have been suffered to usurp a place among words. " Where
will you look for it " (the interjection), he triumphantly asks :
" will you find it among laws, or in books of civil institutions,
in history, or in any treatise of useful arts or sciences ? No :
you must seek for it in rhetoric and poetry, in novels, plays and
romances." This acute writer has forgotten one book in which
interjections abound, and awaken in the mind emotions of the
highest grandeur and pathos, — namely, the Bible. But the use
of this part of speech is not confined to books. It is heard
wherever men interchange thought and feeling, whether on the
gravest or the most trivial themes ; in tones of the tenderest
love and of the deadliest hate ; in shouts of joy and ecstacies of
rapture, and in the expression of deep anguish, remorse, and de •
spair j in short, in the outburst of every human feeling. More
than this, not only is it heard in daily life, but we are told by
the highest authority, that it is heard in the hallelujahs of an-
gels, and in the continual Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! of the cherubim.
What word in the English language is fuller of significance,
has a greater variety of meanings, than the diminutive Oh ?
Uttered by the infant to express surprise or delight, it is used
by the man to indicate fear, aspiration, or appeal, and, indeed,
according to the tone in which it is uttered, may voice almost any
one of the emotions of which he is capable. What a volume
of meaning is condensed in the derisive " Oh ! oh ! " which
greets a silly utterance in the House of Commons ! In no other
assembly, perhaps, are the powers of human speech more fully
exhibited ; yet it was in that body that one of the most famous
of interjections originated, — we mean the cry of" Hear ! hear !"
which, though at first an imperative verb, is now " nothing
more or less than a great historical interjection," indicating,
according to the tone in which it is uttered, admiration, acqui-
escence, indignation or derision. It has been truly said that
when a large assembly is animated by a common sentiment
which demands instantaneous utterance, it can find that utter-
ance only through interjections.

100

irORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE,

Again, what depth of meaning in this little word, as an ex-
pression of grief, in the following lines by Wordsworth :

" She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceaned to be ;
Now she is in her grave, — and oh !
The difference tu me."

What possible combination of words could be more significant
than the reply, " Pooh ! pooh ! " to a controversialist's theory,
or the contemptuous " Fudge 1 " with which Mr. Churchill, in
" The Vicar of Wakefield," sums up the pretensions of the lan-
guishing Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeegs :

" Virtue, my dear Lady Blarney, virtue is worth any price ; but where
is that to be found ?"
" Fudge ! "

What volumes of meaning are sometimes condensed into the
little word psha ! " Doubt," says Thackeray, " is always cry-
ing psha and sneering." How expressive are those almost
infinitesimal words which epitomize the alternations of human
life, ahf&ndhaf as Fuller beautifully moralizes: " Ha f is
the interjection of laughter ; ah ! is an interjection of sorrow.
The difference between them is very small, as consisting only
in the transposition of what is no substantial letter, but a bare
aspiration. How quickly, in the age of a minute, in the very
turning of our breath, is our mirth changed to mourning ! "

The truth is that, so far is this class of words from being, as
Max Miiller contends, the mere outskirts of language, they are
more truly words than any others. These little words, so ex-
pressive of joy, of hope, of doubt, of fear, which leap from the
heart like fiery jets from volcanic isles, — these surviving par-
ticles of the ante-Babel tongues, which spring with the flush
or blanching of the face to all lips, and are understood by all
men, — these " silver fragments of a broken voice," to use an
expression of Tennyson's, " the only remains of the Eden
lexicon in the dictionaries of all races," —

" The only words
Of Paradise that have survived the fall,"-

are emphatically and pre-eminently language. It is doubtless
true that civilization, with its freezing formalities, tends to

SMALL WORDS.

101

diminish the use of interjections, as well as their natural ac-
companiments, gesture and gesticulation ; but on the other
hand, it should be noted, that there are " certain interjections
which are the fruits of, and only fit to find a place in, the
highest and most mature forms of human culture." Interjec-
tions, in truth, are not so much " parts of speech" as entire
expressions of feeling or thought They are pre-eminently
pictorial. If I pronounce the words homty strike, black, beauti-
fully, without other words or explanatory gestures, I say
nothing distinctly ; I may mean any one of a hundred things ;
but if I utter an interjectioual exclamation, denoting joy or
sorrow, surprise or fear, every person who hears me knows at
once by what aifection I am moved. I communicate a fact by
a single syllable. Max MUller admits that interjections, to-
gether with gestures, the movements of the muscles of the
mouth and the eye, would be quite sufficient for all the pur-
poses which language answers with the majority of mankind.
It is said that a late king of Naples once entertained his
inflammable subjects from his balcony by a speech consisting of
nothing but gestures and a few interjections, and sent them
away contented. Coming from the lips of a great orator,
these little words, so despised by grammarians, may be more
powerful, more to the point, more eloquent, than a long .speech.
Their inherent expressiveness entitles them to be regarded as
the appropriate language, the mother -tongue of passion ; and
hence the effect of good acting depends largely on the proper
introduction and just articulation of this class of words.

Shakespeare's interjections exact a rare command of modula-
tion, and cannot be rendered with any truth except by one
who has mastered the whole play. What a profound insight
of the masterpiece of the poet is required of him who would
adequately utter the word indeed in the following passage of
Othello ! " It contains in it," says an English writer, " the
gist of the chief action of the play, and it implies all that the
plot develops. It ought to be spoken with such intonation as
to suggest the diabolic scheme of lago's conduct. There is no
thought of the grammatical structure of the compound, con-
sisting of the preposition in and the substantive deed, which is
equivalent to act, fact, or reality. All this vanishes and is lost

; ! f '^

i r

y-m

I 1

103

Pf^OIiDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSlS.

in the mere iambic dissyllable which is employed as a vehicle
for the feigned tones of surprise."

" loffo. I did not think he had been acquainted with her>
(Mh. O yes, and went between uh very oft.
Jojfo. Indkkh !

0th. Indeed? ay, indeed. DiHuern'Ht thou aught in that? Is he not
honeHt ?

Ia{/o. Honest, my lord ?
0th. HoneHt 1 ay, honest !"

The English language is preeminently a language of small
words. Its fondness for monosyll.ables is even stronger than
that of the Anglo-Saxon. Not a few words of this class, such
as the verbs to love, bake, brnt, slUle, swim, bind, blow, brew, were,
in the Anglo-Saxon, dissyllables. The English language cuts
down its words to the narrowest possible limits, — lopping and
condensing, never expanding. Sometimes it cuts off an initial
syllable, as in " 'gin" for "engine," " 'van" for "carryvan,"
" 'bus" for " omnibus," " 'wig" for " periwig •" sometimes it cuts

ofl a final syllable, or syllables, as in "aid" for ''aid-de camp,"
" prim " for " primitive," " grog" for "grogram," " pants" for
" pantaloons," " tick" for (pawnbroker's) " ticket ;" sometimes
it strikes out a letter, or letters, from the middle of a wordj as
" last" for " latest," " lark" for " laverock," " since" for " sith-
enco." Again, it contracts a word, as in ** sent" for ** sended,"
" built" for " builded," " chirp" for " chirrup" or " cheer up,"
" fag" for " fatigue," "consols" for "consolidated annuities," etc.
In speaking, we clip our vowels shorter than any other people,
Voltaire said that the English gained two hours a day by clip-
ping their words. The same love of brevity has shown itself
in rendering the final e in English always mute. In Chaucer
the final e must often be sounded as a separate syllable, or the
verse will limp. To the same cause we owe the hissing «, so
offensive to foreign ears, and which has been compared to the
sound of red-hot iron plunged in water. The old termination
of the verb, th, has given way to 5 in the third person singular,
and en to « in the third person plural.

The Anglo-Saxon, the substratum of our modern English, is
emphatically monosyllabic ; yet many of the grandest passages
in our literature are made up almost exclusively of Saxon

SMALL WORDS.

103

words. The English Bible abounds in grand, sublime, and
tender passages, couched almost entirely in words of one syl-
lable. The passage in Ezekiel, Coleri<lge is said to have con-
sidered the sublimest in the whole Bible : " A.nd he said unto
me, son of man, can these bones live ? And I answered,
Lord God, thou knowest," — contains seventeen monosyllables
to three others. What passage in Holy Writ surpjisses in ener-
getic brevity that whicii describes the death of Sisera, — " At
her feet he bowed, he fell ; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he
lay down ; where he bowed, there he fell <lown dead*' ] Here
are twenty-two monosyllables, to one dissyllable thrice re-
peated, and that a word whicli is usually pronounced as a
monosyllable. The lament of David over Saul and Jonathan is
not surpassed in pathos by any similar passage in the whole
range of literature ; yet a very large proportion of tliese touch-
ing words are of one or two syllables : — " The beauty of Israel
is slain upon the high places ; how are the mighty fallen ! . .
Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there no dew, neither let there be
rain upon you, nor fields of offerings. . . Saul and Jonathan
were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they
were not divided. . . They were swifter than eagles, they
were stronger than lions. . . How are the mighty fallen in
the midst of the battle ! Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine
high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan ;
very pleasant hast thou been unto me ; thy love to me was
wonderful, passing the love of "women."

The early writers, the '' pure wells of English undefiled,"
abound in small words. Shakespeare employs them in his tinest
passages, especially when he would paint a scene with a few
masterly touches. Hear Macbeth :

" Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with liia golden blood ;
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in Nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance. There the murderers,
Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech'd with gore."

Are monosyllables passionless ? Listen, again, to the " Thane
of Cawdor : "

"That is a step
On which I must fall down, or elae o'erleap,

!!-:.

: 'I

104

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your firea,
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
Theeve winks at the hand. Yet, let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."

Two dissyllables only among fifty-two words !

Bishop Hall, in one of his most powerful satires, speaking of
the vanity of •' adding house to house and field to field," has
these beautiful lines :

" Fond fool ! six feet shall serve for all thy store,
And he that cares for most shall find no more."

" What harmonious monosyllables ! " exclaims the critic,
Gifford ; yet they may be paralleled by others in the same
writer, equally musical and equally expressive.

Was Milton tame ? He knew when to use polysyllables of
" learned length and thundering sound ;" but he knew also
when to produce the grandest eff'ects by the small words de-
spised by inferior artists. Read his account of the journey of
the fallen angels :

" Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous, ;

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, —
A universe of death."

In what other language shall we find in the same number of
words a more vivid picture of desolation than this 1 Hear, again,
the lost archangel calling upon hell to receive its new possessor :

" One who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same.
And what I should be— all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here, at least,
We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built
Here for His envy ; will not drive us hence ;
Here we may reign secure, and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell ;
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven."

Did Byron lack force of fire ? His skilful use of monosylla-
bles is often the very secret of his charm. Listen to the words
in which he describes the destruction of Sennacherib :

SMALL WORDS.

105

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" For the Ansjel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe a* he passed ;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts beat but once, and forever lay still."

Here, out of forty-three words, all but three are mono-
syllables ; and yet how exquisitely are all these monosyllables
linked into the majestic and animated movement of the ana-
pestie measure ! Again, what can be more musical and more
melancholy than the opening verse of the lines in which the
same poet bids adieu to his native land 1

" Adieu ! adieu ! my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue.
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.

*' Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight ;
Farewell awhile to him and thee.
My native land, good night !

*' With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go
Athwart the foaming brine ;
Nor care what land thou bear'st me to.
So not again to mine.

" Welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves !
And when you fail my sight.
Welcome, ye deserts and ye caves !
My native land, good night ! "

Two Latin words, native and desert ; one French, adieu ; the
rest, English purely. The third and fourth lines paint the
scene to the life ; yet all the words but one are monosyllables.

The following brief passage from one of Landor's poems
strikingly illustrates the metrical effect of simple words of one
syllable :

"She was sent forth
To bring that light which never wintry blast
Blows out, nor rain, nor snow extinguishes —
The light that shines with loving eyes upon
Eyes that love back, till they can see no more."

Here, out of thirty different words, but one is a long one ;
nearly all the rest are monosyllables.

Herbert Spencer, in an able paper on the " Philosophy of
Style/' has pointed out the superior forcibleness of Saxon-
8

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

English to Latin-English, and shown that it is due largely to
the comparative brevity of the Saxon. If a thought gains in
energy in proportion as it is expressed in fewer words, it must
also gain in energy in proportion as the words in which it is
expressed have fewer syllables. If surplus articulation fatigue
the hearer, distract his attention, and diminish the strength of
the impression niade upon him, it matters not whether they
consist of entire words or of parts of words. *' Formerly," says
an able writer, " when armies engaged in battle, they were
drawn up in one long line, fighting from flank to flank ; but a
great general broke up this heavy mass into several files, so
that he could bend his front at will, bring any troops he chose
into action, and, even after the first onslaught, change the
whole order of the field ; and though such a broken line might
not have pleased an old soldier's eye, as having a look of weak-
ness about it, still it carried the day, and is everywhere now
the arrangement. There will thus be an advantage, the ad-
vantage of suppleness, in having the parts of a word to a cer-
tain degree kept by themselves ; this, indeed, is the way with
all languages as they become more refined ; and so far are
monosyllabic languages from being lame and ungainly, that
such are the sweetest and gracefullest, as those of Asia ; and
the most rough and untamed (those of North America) abound
in huge unkempt words, — yardlongtailed, like fiends."

We have already spoken of Johnson's fondness for big,
swelling words, the leviathans of the lexicon, whatever the
theme upon which he was writing ; and also of certain speakers
and writers in our own day, who have an equal contempt for
small words, and never use one when they can find a pom-
pous polysyllable to take its place. It is evident, however,
from the passages we have cited, that these Liliputians — these
Tom Thumbs of the dictionary — play as important a part in
our literature as their bigger and more magniloquent brethren.
Like the infusoria of our globe, so long unnoticed, which are
now known to have raised whole continents from the depths of
the ocean, these words, once so despised, are no wr rising in
importance, and are admitted by scholars to form an important
class in the great family of words. In some kinds of writing
their almost exclusive use is indispensable. What would have

big,

SMALL WORDS.

107

been the fate of Bunyan's immortal book had he told the story
of the Pilgrim's journey in the ponderous, elephantine " osities"
and " ations " of Johnson, or the gorgeous Latinity of Taylor ?
It would have been like building a boat out of timbers cut out
for a ship. It is owing to this grandiose style, as much as to
any other cause, that the author of the " Rambler," in spite of
his sturdy strength and grasp of mind, " lies like an Egyptian
king, buried and forgotten in the pyramid of his fame." When
we remember that the Saxon language, the soul of the English,
is essentially monosyllabic ; that our language contains, of
monosyllables formed by the vowel a alone, more than five
hundred, — by the vowel e, some four hundred and fifty ; by
the vowel i, about four hundred ; by the vowel o, over four
hundred; and by the vowel u, more than two hundred and
fifty ; we must admit that these seemingly petty and insignifi-
cant words, even the microscopic particles, so far from meriting
to be treated as " creepers," are of high importance, and that
to know when and how to use them is of no less moment to
the speaker or writer than to know when to use the grandilo
quent expressions which we have borrowed from the language
of Greece and Kome. To every man who has occasion to teach
or move his fellow-men by tongue or pen, we would say in the
words of Dr. Addison Alexander, — themselves a happy example
of the thing he commends :

" Think not that strength lies in the big round word,

Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak,
To whom can this be true who once has heJird

The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak.
When want or woe or fear is in the throat,

So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note

Sung by some fay or fiend. There is a strength
Which dies if stretched too far or spun too tine,

Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,

And he that will may take the sleek, fat phrase.
Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shine, —

Light, but no heat— a flash, but not a blaze !
Nor 18 it mere strength that the short word boasts ;

It serves of more than fight or storm to tell,
The roar of waves that clash on rock-bound coasts.

The crash of tall trees when th<i wild winds swell,

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

The roar of guns, the groans of men that die

On blood-stained fields. It has a voice as well
For them that far off on their sick-beds lie ;

For them that weep, for them that mourn the dead ;
For them that laugh, and dance, and clap the hand ;

To joy's quick step, as well as grief's slow tread,
The sweet, plain words we learned at first keep time.

And, though the theme be sad, or gay, or grand,
With each, with all, these may be made to chime,

In thought, or speech, or song, in prose or rhyme."

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WORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

109

CHAPTER V.

WORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

PoLONics. What do you read, my lord ?
Hamlet. Words, words, words.— Shakespeare.

Is not cant the materia prima of the Devil, from which all falsehoods, im-
becilities, abominations, body themselves ; from which no true thing can
come ? For cant is itself i)roperly a double-distilled lie ; the second power
of alie.— Caruyle.

That virtue of originality that men so strain after is not newness, aa they
vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only genuineness ; it all depends on
this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things, and working
out from that ; it is the coolness and clearness and deliciousness of the water
fresh from the fountain head, opposed to the thick, hot, unrefreshing drain-
a^je from other men's meadows. ^-Ruskin.

OME years ago the author of the " Biographical History
of Philosophy," in a criticism of a certain public per-
former in London, observed that one of his most marked
qualities was the priceless one of frankness. '* He accepts no
sham. He pretends to admire nothing he does not in his soul
admire. He pretends to he nothing that he is not. Beethoven
bores him, and he says so ; how many are as wearied as he,
but dare not confess it ! Oh, if men would but recognise the
virtue of intrepidity ! If men would but cease lying in tradi-
tionary formulas, — pretending to admire, pretending to believe,
and all in sheer respectability ! "

Who does not admire the quality here commended, and yet
what quality, in this age of self-assertion, of sounding brass
and tinkling cymbal, is more rare 1 What an amount of in-
sincerity there is in human speech ! In how few persons is the
tongue an index to the heart ! What a meaningless conven-
tionality pervades all the forms of social intercourse ! Every-
body knows that " How d'ye do ? " and " Good morning ! " are
parrotted in most cases without a thought of their meaning, or,

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110 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE,

at least, without any positive interest in the health or prosperity
of the person addressed ; we begin a letter to one whom we
secretly detest with " My dear sir," and at the end subscribe
ourselves his " obedient servant," though we should resent a
single word from him which implied a belief in our sincerity,
or bear the slightest appearance of a command. But not to
dwell upon these phrases, the hoUowness of which may be ex-
cused on the ground that they sweeten human intercourse, and
prevent the roughest men from degenerating into absolute boors,
it is yet startling to reflect how large a proportion of human
speech is the veriest cant. That men should use words the
meaning of which they have never weighed or discriminated,
is bad enough ; but that they should habitually use words as
mere counters or forms, is certainly wor^^e, There is hardly a
class, a society, or a relation in which man can be placed toward
man, that does not call into play more or less of language with-
out meaning. The ** damnable iteration " of tho lawyer in a
declaration of assault and battery is not more a hing of form
than is the asseveration of one petitioner that he " will ever
pray," etc., and of another that he " will be a thousand times
obliged," if you will grant his request. Who does not know
to what an amount of flummery the most trifling kindness done
by one person to another often gives occasion on both sides ?
The one racks the vocabulary for words and phrases in which
to express his pretended gratitude, while in fact, he is only
keenly humiliated by having to accept a favour, and the other
as eloquently disclaims any merit in the grant, which he really
grudged, and will never think of without feeling that he made
a great sacrifice.

The secret feeling of many a " public benefactor " loudly
praised by the newspapers, was finely let out by Lord Byron
when he sent four thousand pounds to the Greeks, and privately
informed a friend that he did not think he could icell get off for
less. How many wedding and other presents, and subscriptions
to testimonials and to public enterprises, are made by those
who secretly curse the occasion that exacts them 1 With the
stereotyped " thanks " and " grateful acknowledgments " of the
shop-keeper all are familiar, as they are with " the last," the
" positively the last," and the " most positively the very last "

words: without meaning.

Ill

appearances of the dramatic stars, that shine for five hundred
or a thousand dollars a night. As nobody is deceived by these
phrases, it seems hypercritical to complain of them, and yet one
can hardly help sympathizing with the country editor who
scolds a celebrated musician because he is now making farewell
tours " once a year," whereas formerly he made them '* only
once in five years." Considering the sameness of shopkeeper'**
acknowledgments, one cannot help admiring the daring or'giia-
ality of the Dutch commercial house of which the poet Moore
tells, that concluded a letter thus : " Sugars are falling more
and more every day ; not so the respect and esteem with which
we are your obedient servants." The cant of public speakers
is so familiar to the public that it is looked for as a matter of
course. When a man is called on to address a public meeting,
it is understood that the apology for his '* lack of preparation "
to meet the demand so " unexpectedly " made upon him, will
preface the " impromptu " which he has spent weeks in elabora-
ting, as surely as the inevitable " This is so unexpected " pre-
faces the reply of a maiden to the long-waited proposal of mar-
riage from her lover.

Literary men are so wont to weigh their words that cant in
them seems inexcusable ; yet where shall we find more of it
than in books, magazines, and newspapers 1 How many reas-
ons are assigned by authors for inflicting their works on the
public, other than the true one, namely, the pleasure of writing,
the hope of a little distinction, or of a little money ! How many
writers profess to welcome criticism, which they nevertheless
ascribe to spite, envy, jealousy, if it is unfavourable ! What
is intrinsically more deceptive than the multitudinous " WE " in
which every writer, great and small, hides his individuality, —
whether his object be, as Archdeacon Hare says, " to pass him-
self off unnoticed, like the Irishman's bad guinea in a handful
of halfpence," or to give to the opinions of a humble individual

the weight and gravity of a council ] " Who the is We ? "

exclaimed the elder Kean on reading a scathing criticism upon
his " Hamlet ;" and the question might be pertinently asked of
many other nominis umbrce who deliver their literary judgments
as oracularly as if they were lineal descendants of Minos or
Rhadamanthus. Who can estimate the diminution of power

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WORDS: TEtlltt USE AND AWSS.

and influence that would result, should the ten thousand edi-
tors in the land, who now speak with a voice of authority, as
the organs of the public or a party, come down from their
thrones, and exchange the regal " we " for the plebeian and
egotistic "II" Who is "I?" the reader might exclaim, in
tones even more contemptuous than Kean's. The truth is, "I "
is a nobody. He represents only himself. He may be Smith
or Jones, — the merest cipher. He may weigh but a hundred
pounds, and still less morally and intellectually. He may be dim-
inutive in stature, and in intellect a Tom Thumb. Who cares
what such a pygmy thinks 1 But " we " represents a multitude,
an imposing crowd, a mighty assembly, a congress, or a jury of
sages ; and we all quail before the opinions of the great " we,"
as a writer has well said : " * We have every reason to believe
that beef will rise to starvation prices' is a sentiment which,
when read in a newspaper, will make the stoutest stomach trem-
ble ; but substitute a n 'I' for the 'we,' and nobody cares a copper
for the opinion. It has been well said that what terrified Bel-
shazzar was the hand on the wall, because he couldn't see to
whom it belonged ; and the same may be said of the editorial
' we.' It is the mystery in which it is involved that invests it
with potency."

The history of literature abounds with examples of words
used almost without meaning by whole classes of writers.
Who does not know how feeble and hollow British poetry had
become in the eighteenth century, just before the appearance
of Cowper? Compelled to appear in the costume of the
court, it had acquired its artificiality ; and dealing with the
conventional manners and outside aspects of men, it had
almost forsaken the human heart, the proper haunt and main
region of song. Instead of being the vehicle of lofty and
noble sentiments, it had degenerated into a mere trick of art,
— a hand-organ operation, in which one man could grind out
tunes nearly as well as another. A certain monotonous
smoothness, a perpetually recurring assortment of images, had
become so much the traditional property of the versifiers, that
one could set himself up in the business as a shopkeeper might
supply himself with his stock-in-trade. The style that pre-
vailed has been aptly termed by the poet Lowell " the Dick

I»

PFORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

113

Swiveller style." As Dick always called the wine "rosy,"
sleep " balmy," so did these correct gentlemen always employ
a glib epithet or a diffuse periphrasis to express the commonest
ideas. The sun was never called by his plain, almanac name,
but always ** Phoebus," or " the orb of day." The moon was
known only as "Cynthia," "Diana," or "the refulgent lamp
of night." Naiads were as plenty in every stream as trout or
pickerel. If these poets wished to say tea, they would write

" Of China's herb the infusion hot and mild."

Coffee would be nothing less than

" The fragrant juice of Mocha's keniel gray."

A boot would be raised to

" The shining leather and the leg encased."

All women in the golden age were *' nymphs ;" " dryads" were
as common as birds ; carriages were " harnessed pomps ;"
houses, humble or stately, "piles;" and not a wind could
blow, whether the sweet South, or " Boreas, Cecias, or
Argestes loud," but it was " a gentle zephyr." Pope satirized
this conventional language in the well-known lines :

'* While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returas of still expected rhymes :
Where'er you find * the cooling western breeze,'
In the next line ' it whispers through the trees ; '
If crystal streams * with pleasing murmurs creep,'
The reader's threatened, not in vain, with ' sleep.' '

Yet Pope himself was addicted to these circumlocutions and
to threadbare mythological allusions, quite as much as the
small wits whom he ridiculed. The manly genius of Cowper
broke through these traditionary fetters, and relieved poetry
from the spell in which Pope and his imitators had bound its
phraseology and rhythm. Expressing his con tempt for the " creamy
smoothness" of such verse, in which sentiment was so often

'• sacrificed to sound,
And truth cut short to make a period round,"

he cried

" Give me the line that ploughs its stately course.

Like a proud swan, conquering the stream by force ;
That, like some cottage beauty, strikes the heart,
Quite unindebted to the tricks of art."

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f FORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

The charm of Cowper's letters, acknowledged by all com-
petent judges to be the best in the English language, lies in the
simplicity and naturalness — the freedom from affectation — by
which they are uniformly characterized. Contrasting them
with those of Wilberforce, Dr. Andrew Combe observes in a
letter to a friend : " Cowper's letters, to my mind, do far more
to excite a deep sense of religion, than all the laboured efforts of
Wilberforce. The one gives expression simply and naturally
to the thoughts and feelings which spring up spontaneously as
he writes. The other forces in the one topic in all his letters, and
lashes himself up to a due fervour of expression, whether the
mind wills or not. On one occasion Wilberforce dispatched a
very hurried letter on Saturday night, without any religious
expressions in it. lu the night time his conscience troubled
him so much for the omission, that he could not rest till he sat
down next morning and wrote a second with the piety, and
apologizing for his invduntary departure from this rule ! Only
think what a perversion of a good principle this was !"

It is in the conduct of political affairs that the class of words
of which we have spoken are used most frequently. Sir Henry
Wotton long since defined an ambassador as a gentleman sent
abroad to lie for the benefit of his country. In Europe, so
indissolubly has diplomacy been associated with trickery, that
it is said Talleyrand's wonderful success with the representa-
tives of foreign courts was owing largely to his frankness and
fair dealing —nobody believing it possible that he was striving
for that for Tvhich he seemed to be striving. The plain, open,
straightforward way in which he spoke of and dealt with all
public matters, completely puzzled the vulgar minds, that
could not dissociate from diplomacy the mysterious devices
that distinguish the hack from the true diplomatist. In the
titles and styles of address used by Kings and Emperors, we
have examples of cant in its most meaningless forms. One
sovereign is his Most Christian Majesty, another Defender of
the Faith, etc. A monarch, forced by public opinion to issue
a commission of inquiry, addresses all the members of it as his
well-beloved, though in his heart he detests them.

Everybody knows that George I. of England obtained his
crown, not by hereditary title, but by an act of Parliament ;

PFORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

115

yet, in his very first speech to that body, he had the effrontery
to speak of ascending " the throne of his ancestors." Well
might Henry Luttrell exclaim :

" O that in England there might be
A duty on hypcicrisy !
A tax on humbug, an excise
On Holemn plauHibilitieH,
A Btamp on everything that canted !
No millionH more, if these were granted,
Henceforward would be raised or wanted."

So an American politician, who, by caucus-packing, " wire-
pulling," and perhaps bribery, has contrived to get elected to a
State legislature or to Congress, will publicly thank his fellow-
citizens for having sent him there '* by their voluntary, un-
biased suffrages." When the patriot, Patkul, was surrendered
to the vengeance of Charles XII. of Sweden, the following
sentence was read over to him : " It is hereby made known to
be the order of his Majesty, our most merciful sovereign, that
this man, who is a traitor to his country, be broken on the
wheel and quartered," etc. "What mercy!" exclaimed the
poor criminal. It was with the same mockery of benevolence
that the Holy Inquisition was wont, when condemning a heretic
to the torture, to express the tenderest concern for his temporal
and eternal welfare. One of the most offensive forms of cant
is the profession of extreme humility by men who are full of
pride and arrogance. The haughtiest of all the Roman Pontiffs
styled himself "the servant of the servants of God," at the
very time when he humiliated the Emperor of Germany by
making him wait five days barefoot in his ante-chamber in the
depth of winter, and expected all the Kings of Europe, when
in his presence, to kiss his toe or hold his stirrup. Catherine
of Russia was always mouthing the language of piety and bene-
volence, especially when about to wage war or do some rascally
deed. Louis the Fourteenth's paroxysms of repentance and
devotion were always the occasion for fresh outrages upon the
Huguenots ; and Napoleon was always prating of his love of
peace, and of being compelled to fight by his quarrelsome
neighbours. While the French revolutionists were shouting
" Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity 1" men were executed in
Paris without law and against law, and heads fell by cart-loads

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

from the knife of the guillotine. The favourite amusement of
Couthon, one of the deadliest of Robespierre's fellow cut-throats,
was the rearing of doves. The contemplation of their inno-
cence, he said, made the charm of his existence in consoling
him for the wickedness of men. Even when he had reached
the height of his "bad preeminence" as a terrorist, he was
carried to the National Assembly or Jacobin Club fondling
little lapUogs, which he nestled in his bosom. It is told of one
of his bloody compatriots, who was as fatal to men and as fond
of dogs as himself, that when a distracted wife, who had pleaded
to him in vain for her husband's life, in retiring from his pre-
sence, chanced to tread on his favorite spaniel's tail, cried out,
" Good heavens, Madame ! have you no humanity? "

"My children," said Dr. Johnson, "clear your minds of
cant." If professional politicians should follow this advice,
many of them would be likely to find their occupation clean
gone.. At elections they are so wont to simulate the sen-
timents and language of patriotism, — to pretend a zeal for
this, an indignation for that, and a horror for another thing,
about which they are known to be comparatively indiflFerent,
as if any flummery might be crammed down the throats of the
people, — that the voters whom the old party hacks fancy they
are gulling are simply laughing in their sleeves at their trans-
parent attempts at deception. Daniel O'Connell, the popular
Irish orator, is said to have had a large vocabulary of stock
political phrases, upon which he rang the changes with
magical effect. He could whine, and wheedle, and wink with
one eye, while he wept with the other ; and if his flow of
oratory was ever in danger of halting, he had always at hand
certain stereotyped catchwords, such as his " own green isle,"
his " Irish heart," his " head upon a block," his " hereditary
bondsmen, know ye not," etc., which never failed him in any
emergency.

Common, however, as are meaningless phrases on the stump
and the platform, it is to be feared that they are hardly less so
in the meeting-house, and there they are doubly offensive, if
not unpardonable. It is a striking remark of Coleridge, that
truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too
often considered so true that they lose all the power of truth.

WORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

117

and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side
with the most despised and exploded errors. Continual
handling wears off the beauty and significance of words, and it
is only by a distinct effort of the mind that we can restore
their full meaning. " Hence it is that the traditional maxims
of old experience, though seldom questioned, have often so
little effect on the conduct of life, because their meaning is
never, by most persons, really felt, until personal experience
has brought it home. And thus, also, it is that so many
doctrines of religion, ethics, and even politics, so full of mean-
ing and reality to first converts, have manifested a tendency to
degenerate rapidly into lifeless dogmas, which tendency all the
efforts of an education expressly and skilfully directed to
keeping the meaning alive are barely found sufficient to
counteract."*

There can be little doubt that many a man whose life is
thoroughly selfish cheats himself into the belief that he is pious
because he parrots with ease the phrases of piety and ortho-
doxy. Who is not familiar with scores of such pet phrases
and cant terms, which are repeated at this day apparently
without a thought of their meaning % Who ever attended a
missionary meeting without hearing " the Macedonian cry,"
and an account of some " little interest," and " fields white for
the harvest ?" Who is not weary of the ding dong of " our
Zion" and the soleci3m of " in our midst ;" and who does not
long for a verbal millennium when Christians shall no longer

" feel to take" and " grant to give 1 " " How much I regret,*
says Coleridge, " that so many religious persons of the present
day think it necessary to adopt a certain cant of manner and
phraseology as a token to each other ! They must improve
this and that text, and they must do so and so in a prayerful
way ; and so on. A young lady urged upon me, the other
day, that such and such feelings were the marrow of all
religion ; upon which I recommended her to try to walk to
London on her marrow-bones only." Mr. Spurgeon, in his
" Lectures to Students," remarks that " * the poor unworthy
dust ' is an epithet generally applied to themselves by the

• Mill's " Logic."

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WOEDS: THEIR USB AND ABUSE.

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proudest men in the congregation, and not seldom by the most
moneyed and grovelling ; in which case the last words are not
so very inappropriate. We have heard of a good man who, in
pleading for his children and grandchildren, was so completely
beclouded in the blinding influence of this expression, that he
exclaimed, ' Lord save thy dust, and thy dust's dust, and thy
dust's dust's dust.' When Abraham said, ' I have taken upon
ma to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes,' the
utterance was forcible and expressive ; but in its misquoted,
perverted, and abused furm, the sooner it is consigned to its
own element the better." Many persons have very erroneous
ideas of what constitutes religious conversation. That is not
necessarily religious talk which is interlarded with religious
phrases, or which is solely about divine things; but that
which is permeated with religious feeling, which is full of
truth, reverence, and love, whatever the theme may be. Who
has not heard some men talk of the most worldly things in a
way that made the hearer feel the electric current of spiritu-
ality playing through their words, and uplifting his whole
spiritual being ? And who has not heard other persons talk
about the divinest things in so dry, formal, and soulless a way
that their words seemed a profanation, and chilled him to the
core ? It is almost a justification of slang that it is generally
an eli'ort to obtain relief from words worn bare by the use of
persons who put neither knowledge nor feeling into them,
and which seem incapable of expressing anything real.

When Lady Townsend was asked if Whitefield had recanted,
she replied, "No ; he has only canted.^* Often, when there is
no deliberate hypocrisy, good men use language so exaggerated
and unreal as to do more harm than the grossest worldliness.
We have often, in thinking upon this subject, called to mind a
saying of Dr. Sharp, of Boston, a Baptist preacher, who was a

hater of all cant and shams. "There's Dr. ," said he,

about the time of the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance,
" who went all the way to Europe to talk up brotherly love.
If he should meet a poor Baptist minister in the street, he
wouldn't speak to him." Nothing is cheaper than pious or
benevolent talk. A great many men would be positive forces
of goodness in the world, if they did not let all their principles

WORDS WITHOUT MEANING.

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and enthusiasm escape in words. They are like locomotives
which let off so much steam through the escape valves, that,
thouf^h they fill the air with noise, they have not power enough,
left to move the train. There is hardly anything which so
fritters spiritual energy as talk without deeds. " The fluent
boaster is not the man who is steadiest before the enemy ; it is
well said to him that his courage is better kept till it is wanted.
Loud utterances of virtuous indignation against evil from the
platform, or in the drawing-room, do not characterize the spiri-
tual giant ; so much indignation as is expressed, has found vent ;
it is wasted ; is taken away from the work of coping with evil ;
the man has so much less left. And hence he who restrains
that love of talk, lays up a fund of spiritual strength."*

It is said that Pambos, an illiterate saint of the middle ages,
being unable to read, came to some one to be taught a psalm.
Having learned the simple verse, " I said, I will take heed to
my ways, that I offend not with my tongue," he went away,
saying that was enough if it was practically acquired. When
asked six months, and again many years after, why he did not
come to learn another verse, he answered that he had never
been able truly to master this. A man may have a heart over-
flowing with love and sympathy, even though he is not in the
habit of exhibiting on his cards '* J. Good Soul, Philanthropist,"
and was never known to unfold his cambric handkerchief with
the words, " Let us weep." On the other hand, nothing is
easier than to use a set phraseology without attaching to it any
clear and definite meaning, — to cheat one's self with the sem-
blance of thought or feeling, when no thought or feeling exists.
It has been truly said that when good men who have no deep
religious fervo.;r use fervent language, which they have caught
from others, or which was the natural expression of what they
felt in other and better years, — above all, when they employ on
mean and trivial occasions expressions which have been forged
in the fires of affliction and hammered out in the shock of con-
flict, — they cannot easily imagine what a disastrous impression
they produce on keen and discriminating minds. The cheat is
at once detected, and the hasty inference is drawn that all ex-

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

pressions of religions earnestness are affected and artificial.
The honest and irrepressible utterance of strong conviction
and deep emotion commands respect ; but intense words should
never be used when the religious life is not intense. " Costing
little, words are given prodigally, and. sacrificial acts must toil
for years to cover the space which a single fervid promise has
stretched itself over. No wonder that the slow acts are super-
seded by the available words, the weighty bullion by the current
paper- money. If I have conveyed all I feel by language, I am
tempted to fancy by the relief experienced, that feeling has at-
tained its end and realized itself. Farewell, then, to the toil
of the * daily sacrifice ! ' Devotion has found for itself a vent
in words."*

Art, as well as literature, politics, and religion, has its cant,
which is as offensive as any of its other forms. When Rossini was
asked why he had ceased attending the opera in Paris, he replied,
" I am embarrassed at listening to music with Frenchmen. In
Italy or Germany, I am sitting quietly in the pit, and on each
side of me is a man shabbily dressed, but who feels the music
as I do ; in Paris I have on each side of me a fine gentleman in
straw-coloured gloves, who explains to me all I feel, but who
feels nothing. All he says is very clever, indeed, and it is often
very true ; but it takes the gloss ofi* my own impression, — if I

have any.

* Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson.

SOME ABUSES OF WORDS.

121

CHAPTER VI.

SOME ABUSES OF WORDS.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words. — Proverbs xvii.

Learn the value of a man's words and expressions, and you know him. . .
He who has a superlative for everything, wants a measure for the great or
small. — Lavater.

Words are women ; deeds are men.— George Herbert.

He that uses many words for the explaining of any subject, doth, like
the cuttle-fish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. — Kay.

[HE old Roman poet Ennius was so proud of knowing three
languages that he used to declare that ho had three
hearts. The Emperor Charles V. expressed himself still
more strongly, and declared that in proportion to the number of
languages a man knows, is he more of a man. According to
tliis theory, Cardinal Mezzofanti, who understood one hundred
and fourteen languages, and spoke thirty with rare excellence,
must have been many men condensed into one. Of all the hu-
man polyglots in ancient or modern times, he had perhaps the
greatest knowledge of words. Yet, with all his marvellous lin-
guistic knowledge, he was a mere prodigy or freak of nature,
and, it has been well observed, scarcely deserves a higher place
in the Pantheon of intellect than a blindfold chess-player or a
calculating boy. Talking foreign languages with a fluency and
accuracy which caused strangers to mistake him for a compa-
triot, he attempted no work of utility — left no trace of his colos-
sal powers ; and therefore, in contemplating them, we can but
wonder at his gifts, as we wonder at the Belgian giant or a five
legged lamb. In allusion to his hyperbolical acquisitions, De
Quincey suggests that the following would be an appropriate
epitaph for his eminence : •* Here lies a man who, in the act of
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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

dying, committed a robbery, — absconding from his fellow-crea-
tures with a valuable polyglot dictionary." Enormous, how-
ever, as were the linguistic acquisitions of Mezzofanti, no man
was ever less vain of his acquirements, — priding himself, as he
did, less upon his attainments than most persons upon a smatter-
ing of a single tongue. •' What am I," said he toa visitor, " but an
illbound dictionary ? " The sayiiig of Catherine de Medicis is too
often suggested by such prodigies of linguistic acquisition.
When told that Scaliger understood twenty different languages
— " That's twenty words for one idea," said she ; *' I had rather
have twenty ideas for one word." In this reply she forshad-
owed tiie great error of modern scholarship, which is too often
made the be all and the end-all of life, when its only relation to
it should be that of a graceful handmaid. The story of the
scholar who, dying, regretted at the end of his career that he
had not concentrated all his energies upon the dative case, only
burlesques an actual fact. The educated man is too often one
who knows more of language than of idea, — more of the husk
than of the kernel — more of the vehicle than of the substance
it bears. He has got together a heap of symbols — of mere
counters — with which he feels himself to be an intellectual
Rothschild ; but of the substance of these shadows, the sterling
gold of intellect, coin current throughout the realm, he has not
an eagle. All his wealth is in paper — paper like bad scrip,
marked with high nominal amount, but useless in exchange and
repudiated in real traffic. The great scholar is? often an intellect-
ual raiser, who expends the spiritual energy that might make
him a hero, upon the detection of a wrong dot, a false syllable, or
an inaccurate word.

In this country, where fluency of speech is vouchsafed in so
large a measure to the people, and every third man is an orator,
It is easier to find persons with the twenty words for one idea,
than persons with twenty ideas for one word. Of all the peo-
ples on the globe, except perhaps the Irish, Americans are
the most spendthrift of language. Not only in our court-houses
and representative halls, but everywhere, we are literally de-
luged with words, — words, — words. Everybody seems born to
make long speeches, as the sparks to fly upward. The Aristo-
telian theory that Nature abhors a vacuum appears to be a uni-

SOM^ ABltSES OF fTORDS.

123

versal belief, and all are labouring to fill up the realms of space
with " mouthfuls of spoken wind." The quantity of breath that
is wasted at our public meetings — religious, political, philan-
thropic, and literary — is incalculable. Hardly a railroad or a
canal is opened, but the occasion is seized on as a chance for
speeches of " learned length and thundering sound ;" and even
a new hotel cannot throw open its doors without an amount of
breath being expended, sufficient, if economically used, to waft
a boat across a small lake.

One is struck in reading the " thrilling" addresses on var-
ious occasions, which are said to have " chained as with hooks
of steel the attention of thousands," and which confer on their
authors " immortal reputations " that die within a year, to see
what tasteless word-piling passes with many for eloquence. The
advice given in Racine's " Plaideurs,'* by an ear-tortured judge
to a long-winded lawyer, " to skip to the deluge," might wisely
be repeated to our thousand Ciceros and Chathams. The Ba-
conian art of condensation seems nearly obsolete. Many of
our orators are forever breaking butterflies on a wheel, — rais-
ing oceans to drown a fly, — loading cannon to shoot at hum-
ming-birds. Thought and expression are supplanted by lungs
and the dictionary. Instead of great thoughts couched in a
few close, home, significant sentences, — the value of a thousand
pounds sterling of sense concentrated into a polished diamond,
we have a mass of verbiage, delivered with a pompous elocu-
tion. Instead of ideas brought before us, as South expresses it,
like water in a well, where you have fulness in a little compass,
we have the same " carried out into many pretty, creeping
rivulets, with length and shallowness together."

It is ill our legislative bodies that this evil has reached the
highest climax, A member may have a thought or a fact which
may settle a question ; but if it may be couched in a sentence
or two, he thinks it not worth delivering. Unless he can wire-
draw it in a two-hours speech, or at least accompany it with
some needless verbiage to plump it out in the report, he will
sit stock-still, and leave the floor to men who have fewer ideas
and more words at command. The public mind, too, revolts
sometimes against nourishment in highly concentrated forms ;
— it requires bulk as well as nutriment, just "as hay is given

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to horses as well as corn, to distend the stomach, and enable
it to act with its full powers." Then, again — and this,
perhaps, is one of the main causes of long-winded speeches
— there is a sort of reverence entertained for a man who can
" spout " two or three hours on the stretch ; and the wonder is
heightened, if he does it without making a fool of himself.
Nothing, however, can be more absurd, than to regard mere
volubility as a proof of intellectual power. So far is this from
being the case that it may be doubted whether any large-
thoughted man, who was accustomed to grapple with the great
problems of life and society, ever found it easy upon the ros-
trum to deliver his thoughts with fluency and grace.

Bruce, the traveller, long ago remarked of the Abyssinians,
that " they are all orators, as," he adds, " are most barbarians."
It is often said of such tonguey men that they have " a great
command of language," when the simple fact is that language
has a great command of them. As Whately says, they have
the same command of language that a man has of a horse that
runs away with him. The greatest orators of ancient and
modern times have been remarkable for their economy of words.
Demosthenes, when he

" Shook the arsenal, and fulniined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne,"

rarely spoke over thirty minutes, and Cicero took even less
time to blast Cataline with his lightnings. There are some of
the Greek orator's speeches which were spoken, as they may
now be read, with sufficient slowness and distinctness, in less
than half an hour ; yet they are the effusions of that rapid and
mighty genius the effect of whose words the ancients exhausted
their la^iguage in describing ; which they could adequately de-
■:-'•■ '\\ii only by comparing it to the workings of the most subtle
ill'. , - >; erful agents of nature,— the ungovernable torrent, the
r s^ ^h! thunder. Chatham was often briefer still, and Mira-
i>i^v. .. '• ; master-spirit of the French tribune, condensed his
Uiur- ' !! into twenty minutes.

It is said that not one of the three leading members of the
convention that formed the Constitution of the United States,
spoke, in the debates upon it, over twenty mil. ites. Alexander

SOME ABUSES OF WORDS.

125

Hamilton was reckoned one of the most diffuse speakers of his
day ; yet he did not occupy more than two hours and a half in
his longest arguments at the bar, nor did his rival, Aaron Burr,
occupy over half that time. A judge who was intimately
acquainted with Burr and his practice, declares that he repeat-
edly and successfully disposed of cases involving a large amount
of property in half an hour. " Indeed," says he, " on one occa-
sion he talked to the jury seven minutes in such a manner,
that it took me, on the bench, half an hour to straighten them
out." He adds : " I once asked him, * Colonel Burr, why can-
not lawyers always save the time and spare the patience of the
court and jury by dwelling only on the important points in
their cases V to which Burr replied, ' Sir, you demand the
greatest faculty of the human mind, selection.'" To these
examples we may add that of a great English advocate. " I
asked Sir James Scarlett," says Buxton, " what was the secret
of his pre-eminent success as an advocate. He replied that he
took care to press home the one principal point of the case,
without paying much regard to the others. He also said that
he knew the secret of being short. * I find,' said he, * that
when I exceed half an hour, 1 am always doing mischief to my
client. If I drive into the heads of the jury unimportant
matter, I drive out matter more important that I had previously
lodged there.' "

Joubert, a French author, cultivated verbal economy to such
an extreme that he tried almost to do without words. *' If
there is a man on earth," said he, " tormented by the cursed
desire to get a whole book into a page, a whole page into a
phrase, and this phrase into a word — that man is myself"
The ambition of many American speakers, and not a few
writers, is apparently the reverse of this. We do not seem to
know that in many cases, as Hesiod says, a half is more than
tlie whole ; and that a speech or a treatise hammered out pain-
fully in every part, is often of less value than a few bright
links, suggestive of the entire chain of thought. Who wants
to swallow a whole ox, in order to get at the tenderloin 1

Prolixity, it has been well said, is more offensive now than it
once was, because men think more rapidly. They are not more
thoughtful than their ancestors, but thev are more vivid, direct,

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

and animated in their thinking. They are more impatient,
therefore, of longwindedness — of a loose arrangement — and of
a heavy, dragging movement in the presentation of truth. " A
century ago men would listen to speeches and sermons — to
divisions and subdivisions — that now would be regarded as
utterly intolerable. As the human body is whisked through
space at the rate of a mile a minute, so the human mind travels
with an equally accelerated pace. Mental operations are on
straight lines, and are far more rapid than they once were. The
public audience now craves a short method, a distinct sharp
statement, and a rapid and accelerating movement, upon the
part of its teachers." * It is, in short, an age of steam and
electricity that we live in, not of slow coaches ; an age of loco-
motives, electric telegraphs and phonography ; and hence it is
the cream of a speaker's thoughts that men want — the wheat,
and not the chaff — the kernel, and not the shell — the strong
pungent essence, and not the thin, diluted mixture. The model
discourse to-day is that which gives, not all that can be said,
even well said, on a subject, but the very aspices rerum, the tops
and sums of things reduced to their simplest expression — the
drop of oil extracted from thousands of roses, and condensing
all their odours — the healing power of a hundred weight of bark
in a few grains of quinine.

" Certainly the greatest and wisest conceptions that ever
issued from the mind of man," says South, "have been couched
under, and delivered in, a few, close, home, and significant
words. . . Was not the work of all the six days (of creation)
transacted in so many words ? . . . Heaven, and earth, and all
the host of both, as it were, dropped from God's mouth, and
nature itself was but the product of a word. . . The seven wise
men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over,
acquired all that fame, each of them by a single sentence, con-
sisting of two or three words. And yvio6L a-cavrov still lives
and flourishes in the mouths of all, while many vast volumes
are extinct, and sunk into dust and utter oblivion."

Akin to the prolixity of style which weakens so many speeches,
is the habitual exaggeration of language which deforms both

*She.ld'H •'Homiletics,"

SOME ABUSES OF WORDS

127

our public and our private discourse. The most unmanageable
of all parts of speech, with many persons, is the adjective.
Voltaire has justly said that the adjectives are often the great-
est enemies of the substantives, though they may agree in gen-
der, number, and case. An adjective is, indeed, an addition ;
but " an addition may be an incumbrance, as even a dog finds
out when a kettle is tied to his tail." Generally the weakness
of a composition is just in proportion to the frequency with
■which this abused class of words is introduced. As in gunnery
the force of the charge is proportioned, not to the amount of
powder thatcan be used, but to the amount that can be thorough-
ly ignited, so it is not the multitude of words, but the exact
number fired by the thought, that gives energy to expression.
There are some writers and speakers who seem to have for-
gotten that there are three degrees of comparison. The only
adjectives they ever use are the superlative, and even these
are raised to the third power. With them there is no gradation,
no lights and shadows. Every hill is Alpine, every valley Tar-
tarean ; every virtue is Godlike, every fault a felony ; every
breeze a tempest, and every molehill a mountain. Praise or
blame beggars their vocabulary ; epithets are heightened into
superlatives ; superlatives stretch themselves into hyperboles ;
and hyperboles themsel ves get out of breath, and die asthmatically
of exhaustion.

Of all the civilized people on the face of the globe, our Hi-
bernian friends excepted, Americans are probably the most ad-
dicted to this exaggeration of speech. As our mountains, lakes,
and rivers are all on a gigantic scale, we seem to think our speech
must be framed after the same pattern. Even our jokes are of the
most stupendous kind ; they set one to thinking of the AUeg-
hanies, or suggest the immensity of the prairies. A Western
orator, in portraying the most trivial incident, rolls along a
Mississippian flood of eloquence, and the vastness of his metaphors
makes you think you are living in the age of the megatheriums
and saurians, and listening to one of a pre-Adamite race. In
ordinary conversation, such is our enthusiasm or our poverty of
expression, that we cannot talk upon the most ordinary themes,
except in the most extravagant and enraptured terms. Every-
thing that pleases us is positively "delicious," '< nice," or

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WORDS: THEIR I'SE AND ABUSE.

"charming;" everything handsome is " elegant," or "splendid ;"
everything that we dislike is "hateful," "dreadful," "horrible,"
or " shocking." Listen to a circle of lively young ladies for a
few minutes, and you will learn that, within the compass of a
dozen hours, they have met with more marvellous adventures
and hair-breadth escapes — passed through more thrilling experi-
ences, and seen more gorgeous spectacles, endured more fright,
and enjoyed more rapture — than could be crowded into a whole
life-time, even if spun out to threescore and ten.

Ask a person what he thinks of the weather in a rainy season,
and he will tell you that " it rains cats and dogs," or that
" it beats all the storms since the flood." If his clothes get
sprinkled in crossing the street, he has been " drenched to the
skin." The days are " as dark as Egypt," and the mud in the
streets is everywhere " up to one's knees." If a Yankee makes
a shrewd or lucky speculation, he is said to have cleared " heaps
of money," and everybody envies him "the pile of greenbacks
he has bagged." All our winds blow a hurricane ; all our fires
are conflagrations, — even though only a hencoop is burned ; all
our fogs can be cut with a knife. Nobody fails in the country ;
he " bursts up." All our orators rival Demosthenes in elo-
quence ; they beat Chillingworth in logic ; and their sarcasm is
more " withering " than that of Junius himself. Who ever heard
of a public meeting in this country that was not " an immense
demonstration ; " of an actor's benefit at which the house was
not " crowded from pit to dome ;" of a political nomination
that was not " sweeping the country like wild-fire ? " Where
is the rich man who does not " roll in wealth," — or the poor
man who is " worth the first red cent ? " All our good men
are paragons of virtue, — our villains, monsters of iniquity.

Many of our public speakers seem incapable of expressing
themselves in a plain, calm, truthful manner on any subject
whatever. A great deal of our writing, too, is pitched on an
unnatural, falsetto key. Quiet ease of style, like that of Cow-
ley's "Essays," Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," or White's
" Natural History of Selborne," is almost a lost art. Our news-
paper literature is becoming more and more sensational ; and
it seems sometimes as if it would come to consist of head-lines
and exclamation points. Some of the most popular correspon-

SOME ABUSES OF WORDS.

129

dents are those whose communications are a perfect Jiorilegium
of fine words. They rival the "tulipomania " in their love of
gaudy and glaring colours, and apparently care little how trite
or feeble their thoughts may be, provided they have dragon-
wings, all green and gold. It was said of Rufus Choate, whose
brain teemed with a marvellous wealth of words, and who was
very prodigal of adjectives, that he " drove a substantive-and
six " whenever he spoke in public, and that he would be as pa-
thetic as the grand lamentations in " Samson Agonistes " on
the obstruction of fishways, and rise to the cathedral music of
the universe on the right to manufacture India-rubbia suspend-
ers. When Chief-Justice Shaw, before whom he had often
pleaded, heard that there was a new edition of " Worcester's
Dictionary," containing two thousand five hundred new words,
he exclaimed, " For heaven's sake, don't let Choate get hold of
it ! "

Even scientific writers, who might be expected to aim at
some exactness, often caricature truth with equal grossness, —
describing things the most Liliputian by Brobdignagian meta-
phors. Thus a French naturalist represents the blood of a
louse as " rushing through his veins like a torrent ! " Even in
treating of this very subject of exaggeration, a writer in an
English periodical, after rebuking sharply this American fault,
himself outrages truth by declaring that " he would walk fifty
miles on foot to see the man that never caricatures the subject
on which he speaks ! " To a critic who thus fails to reck his
own rede, we would say with Sir Thomas Browne ; " Thou
who so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not thyself guilty of dia-
bolism."

Seriously, when shall we have done with this habit of
amplification and exaggeration, — of blowing up molehills into
Himalayas and Chimborazos ? Can anything be more obvious
than the dangers of such a practice 1 Is it not evident that
by applying super-superlatives to things petty or common-
place, we must exhaust our vocabulary, so that when a really
great thing is to be described, we shall be bankrupt of
adjectives 1 It is true there is no more unpardonable sin than
dullness ; but, to avoid being drowsy, it is not necessary that
our " good Homers" should be always electrifying us with a

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE,

savage intensity of expression. There is nothing of which a
reader tires so soon as of a continual blaze of brilliant periods,
— a style in which a " qiCil mourut" and a "let there be light"
are crowded into every line. On the other hand there is
nothing which adds so much to the beauty of style as contrast.
Where all men are giants, there are no giants ; where all is
emphatic in style, there is no emphasis. Travel a few months
among the mountains, and you will grow as sick of the ever-
lasting monotony of grandeur, of beetling cliffs and yawning
chasms, as of an eternal succession of plains. Yet in defiance
of this obvious truth, the sensational writer thinks the reader
will deem him dull unless every sentence blazes with meaning,
and every paragraph is crammed with power. His intellect is
always armed cap a pie, and every passage is an improved
attitude of mental carte and tierce. If he were able to create
a world, there would probably be no latent heat in it, and no
twilight ; and should he drop his pen and turn painter, his
pictures would all be foreground, with no more perspective
than those of the Chinese.

It is a law of oratory, and indeed of all discourse, whether
oral or written, that it is the subdued expression of conviction
and feeling, when the speaker or writer, instead of giving vent
to his emotions, veils them in part, and suffers only glimpses
of them to be seen, that is the most powerful. It is the man
who is all but mastered by his excitement, but who, at the very
point of being mastered, masters himself, — apparently cool
when at white heat, — whose eloquence is most conquering.
When the speaker, using a gentler mode of expression than
the case might warrant, appears to stifle his feelings and
studiously to keep them within bounds, a reaction is produced
in the hearer's mind, and, rushing into the opposite extreme,
he is moved more deeply than by the most vehement and
passionate declamation. The jets of flame that escape now
and then — the suppressed bursts of feeling, — the partial
eruptions of passion — are regarded as but hints or faint imita-
tions of the volcano within. Balzac, in one of his tales, tells
of an artist, who, by a few touches of his pencil, could give to
a most commonplace scene an air of overpowering horror, and
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^OME ABUSES OF WORDS

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air of crime and blood. Through a haK-opened door you see a
bed with the cloth«»8 confuf;e<lly heaped, as in some death-
struggle, over an undefended object which fancy whispers
must be a bleeding corpse ; on the floor you see a slipper, an
upset candlestick, and a knife perhaps ; and these hints tell
the story of blood more significantly and more powerfully than
the n-.ost elaborate detail, because the imagination of man is
more powerful than art itself. So with Hood's description of
the Haunted House : —

" Over all there hun^ a cloud of fear,

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as \Aa\n. as whisper to the ear.
The place is haunted !"

Thoreau, describing an interview he had at Concord with
John Brown, notices as one of the latter's marked peculiarities,
that he did not overstate anything, but spoke within bounds.
*' He referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas, with
out ever giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. It was a
volccno ivith an ordinary chimney Jlue.^^ In one of the published
letters of the late Rev. F. W. Robertson, there are some admir-
able comments on a letter, full of strongly-expressed religious
sentiments, pious resolutions, etc., which he had received from
a fashionable lady. The letter, he says, " is in earnest so far
as it goes ; only that fatal facility of strong words expresses feel-
ing which will seek for itself no other expression. She believes
or means what she says, but the very vehemence of the expres-
sion injures her, for really it expresses the penitence of a St.
Peter, and would not be below the mark if it were meant to
describe the bitter tears with which he bewailed his crime ;
but when such language is used for trifles, there remains nothing
stronger for the awful crises of human life. It is like Draco's
code — death for larceny, and there remains for parricide or
treason only death."

Let us, then, be as chary of our superlatives as of our Sunday
suit. Hardly a greater mistake can be made in regard to ex-
pression, than to suppose that a uniform intensity of style is a
proof of mental power. So far is this from being true, that it
may safely be said that such intensity not only implies a want
of truthfulness and simplicity, but even of earnestness and real

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force. Intensity is not a characteristic of nature, in spirit or in
matter. The surface of the earth is not made up of mountains
and valleys, but, for the most part, of gentle undulations. The
ocean is not always in a rage, but, if not calm, its waves rise
and fail with gentle fluctuation. Hurricanes and tempests are
the extraordinary, not the usual, conditions of our atmosphere.
Not only the strongest thinkers, but the most powerful orators,
have been distinguished rather for moderation than for exag-
geration in expression. The gief»t secret of Daniel Webster's
strength as a speaker lay in the fact that he made it a practice
to understate rather than to overstate his confidence in the
force of his own arguments, and in the logical necessity of his
conclusions. The sober and solid tramp of his style reflected
the movements of an intellect that palpably respected the rela-
tions and dimensions of things, and to which exaggeration
would have been an immorality. Holding that violence of
language is evidence of feebleness of thought and lack of reason-
ing power, he kept his auditor constantly in t-^vance of him,
by suggestion rather than by strong asseveratici , ai<u oy calmly
stating the facts that ought to move the heare., mstead of by
tearing passion to tatters, the man being always felt to be
greater than the man's feelings. Such has been the method of
all great rhetoricians of ancient and modern times.

The most effective speakers are not those who tell all they
think or feel, but those who, by maintaining an austere con-
scientiousness of phrase, leave on their hearers the impression
of reserved power. On the other hand, if we do the work of
a pistol with a twenty-four pounder, or kill cock robins with
Paixhans, — and, when anything more formidable is to be
destroyed, touch off the fusee of a volcano, — we shall find,
when we come to tlie real tug of war, that our instruments of
offence are weak, worn out, and wortliless. Great bastions of
military strength must lie at rest in time of peace, that they
may be able to execute their destructive agencies in times of
war ; and so let it be with the superlatives of our tongue.
Never call on the ** tenth legion," or the " old guard," except
on occasions corresponding to the dignity and weight of those
tremendous forces. Say plain things in a plain way, and then,
when you have occasion to send a sharp arrow at ^our enemv,

SOME ABUSES OF JfORDS.

133

you will not find your quiver empty
wasted before they were wanted.

of shafts which you

" You should not ppeak to think, nor think to speak ;
But words and thoughts should of themselves outwell
From inner fulness : chest and heart should swell
To give them birth. Better be dumb a week
Than idly prattle ; better in leisure sleek
Lie fallow-minded, than a brain compel
To wasting plenty that hath yielded well,
Or strive to crop a soil too thin and lileak.
One true thought, from the deepest heart up-springing,
May from within a whole life fertilize ;
One true word, like the lightning sudden gleaming,
May rend the night of a whole world of lies.
Much speech, much thought, may often be but seeming,
But in one truth might boundless ever lies."

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CHAPTER VII.

SAXON WORDS, OR ROMANIC?

Spartavi nactuses ; hanc exorna, — should be our motto regarding both otir
country and our country's tongue. — Hake.

When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the comnaonest, the
most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge ; love simple ones
as you would native roses on your cheek.— Ib.

Were I master of fifty languages, I would think in the deep German, con-
verse in the gay French, write in the copious English, sing in the majestic
Spanish, deliver in the noble Greek, and make love in the soft Italian. —
Madame de Stael.

Words have their proper places, just like men ;
We listen to, not venture to reprove,
Large language :welling under gilded domes,
Byzantine, Syrian, Persefiolitan. — Landob.

"~ T is a (luestion of deep interest to all public speakers and
writers, and one which has provoked not a little discus-
sion of late years, whether the Saxon or the Romanic
part of our language should be preferred by those who would
employ " the Queen's English" with potency and effect. Of
late it has been the fashion to cry up the native element at the
expense of the foreign ; and among tb j champions of the
former we may name Dr. Whewell, of Cambridge, and a
modern Rector of the University of Glasgow, whom De
Quincey censures for an erroneous direction to the students to
that effect. We may also add Lord Stanley, — one of the most
brilliant and polished speakers in the British Parliament, — >
who in an address some years ago to the students of the same
University, after expressing his surprise that so few persons,
comparatively, in Great Britain, have acquainted themselves
with the origin, the history and the gradual development of that
mother tongue which is already spoken over half the world,
which is destined to yet further geographical extension, and

SAXON WORDS, OR ROMANIC ?

135

which embodies many of the noblest thoughts that have ever
issued from the brain of man, — adds : " Depend upon it, it is
the plain Saxon phrase, not the term borrowed from Greek or
Roman literature, that, whether in speech or writing, goes

straightest and strongest to men's heads and hearts." On the
other hand " the Opium-Eater," commenting on a remark of
Coleridge that Wordsworth's "Excursion" bristles beyond
most poems with polysyllabic words of Greek or Latin origin,
asserts that so must it ever be in meditative poetry upon
solemn, philosophic themes. The gamut of ideas needs a cor-
responding gamut of expressions ; the scale of the thinking,
which ranges through every key, exacts from the artist an
unlimited command over the entire scale of the instrument
he employs.

It has been computed, he adds, that the Italian opera has not
above six hundred words in the whole vocabulary : so narrow
is the range of its emotions, and so little are these emotions dis-
posed to expand themselves into any variety of thinking. The
same remark applies to that class of simple, household, homely
passion, which belongs to the early ballad poetry. " Pass from
these narrow fields of the intellect, where the relations of its
objects are so few and simple, and the whole prospect so bounded,
to the immeasurable and sea-like arena upon which Shake-
speare careers — co-infinite with life itself — yes, and with some-
thing more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite ex-
treme. And what is the choice of diction 1 What is the lexis f
Is it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon by preference 1 So far
from that, the Latinity is intense — not, indeed, in his construc-
tion, but in his choice of words ; and so continually are these
Latin words used, with a critical respect to their earliest (and,
where that happens to have existed, to their unfigurative) mean-
ing, that, upon this one argument I would rely for upsetting
the else impregnable thesis of Dr. Farmer as to Shakespeare's
learning. . . These * dictionary' words are indispensable to a
writer, not only in the proportion by which he transcends other
writers as to extent and as to siibtility of thinking, but also as
to elevation and sublimity. Milton was not an extensive or
discursive thinker, as Shakespeare was ; for the motions of his
mind were slow, solemn, sequacious, like those of planets ; not

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agile and assimilative ; not attracting all things into its sphere;
not multiform : repulsion was the law of his intellect — he
moved in solitary grandeur. Yet, merely from his quality of
grandeur — unapproachable grandeur — his intellect demanded a
larger infusion of Latinity into his diction." De Quincey con-
cludes, therefore, that the true scholar will manifest a true par-
tiality for neither part of the language, but will be governed in
his choice of words by the theme he is handling.

This we believe to be the true answer to the question. The
English has a special dowry of power in its double-headed ori-
gin ; the Saxon part of the language fulfils one set of functions ;
the Latin, another. Neither is good or bad absolutely, but only
in its relation to its subject, and according to the treatment
which the subject is meant to receive. The Saxon has nerve,
terseness and simplicity ; it smacks of life and experience, and
" puts small and convenient handles to things — handles that
are easy to grasp j" but it has neither height nor breadth for
every theme. To confine ourselves to it would be, therefore, a
most egregious error. The truth is, it is no one element which
constitutes the power and efficiency of our noble and express-
ive tongue, but the great multitude and the rich variety of ele-
ments which enter into its composition. Its architectural order
is neither Doric, Ionic, nur Corinthian, but essentially compos-
ite ; a splendid mosaic, to the formation of which many ancient
and modern languages have contributed ; defective in unity
and symmetrical grace of proportion, but of vast resources and
of immense power. With such a wealth of words at our com-
mand, to confine ourselves to the pithy but limited Saxon, or
to employ it chiefly, would be to practise a foolish economy —
to be poor in the midst of plenty, like the miser amid his money-
bags. All experiments of this kind will fail as truly, if not as
signally, as that of Charles James Fox, who, an intense admirer
of the Saxon, attempted to portray in that dialect the Revolu-
tion of 1688, and produced a book which his warmest ad-
mirers admitted to be meagre, dry, and spiritless — without
picturesqueness, colour, or cadence.

It is true that within a certain limited and narrow circle of
ideas, we can get along with Saxon words very well. The lof-
tiest poetry, the most fervent devotion, even the most earnest

SAXON WORDS, OR ROMANIC?

137

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and impassioned oratory, may all be expressed in words almost
purely Teutonic ; but the moment we come to the abstract and
the technical — to discussion and speculation — we cannot stir a
step without drawing on foreign sources. Simple narrative — a
pathos resting upon artless circumstances — elementary feelings
— homely and household aflFections — these are all most happily
expressed by the old Saxon vocabulary ; but a passion which
rises into grandeur, which is complex, elaborate, and inter-
veined with high meditative feelings, would languish or abso-
lutely halt, without aid from the Romanic part of the vocabu-
lary. If Anglo-Saxon is the frame-work or skeleton of our lan-
guage, the spine on which the structure of our speech is hung — if
it is the indispensable medium of familiar converse and the busi-
ness of life — it no more tills out the full rounded outline of our
language, that the skeleton, nerves, and sinews form the whole
of the human body. It is the classical contributions, the hun-
dreds and thousands of Romanic words which during and since
the sixteenth century have found a home in our English speech,
that have furnished its spiritual conceptions, and endowed the
material body with a living soul.

These words would never have been adopted, had they not
been absolutely necessary to express new modes and combina-
tions of thought. The language has gained immensely by the
infusion, not only in richness of synonyme and the power of
expressing nice shades of thought and feeling, but more than
all, in light-footed polysyllables that trip singing to the music of
verse. If the saying of Shakespeare, that

" The learned pate ducks to the golden fool,"

is more expressive than it would be if couched in Latin words,
would not the fine thought that

•'Nice customs courtesy to kings,''

be greatly injured by substituting any other words for nice and
courtesy? It has been observed that Wordsworth's famous ode,
*' Intimations of Immortality," translated into Hinta of Dealh-
lessneaa, would hiss^ like an angry gander. Instead of Shake-
speare's

" Age cannot wither her,
Nor custom stale her infimte rariety,"
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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

say " her boundless manifoldness," and would not the senti-
ment suflFer in exact proportion with the music 1 With what
equally expressive Saxon terms would you supply the place of
such words as the long ones blended with the short in the
exclamation of the horror-stricken Macbeth :

" Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand ? No ! this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
"^ Making the green one red."

As the pc i . V i justly asks, could anything be more ex-
pressive than t lu illing epithet which here implies the
tempest-tossed 8oul oi the speaker, and at the same time pic-
tures the wallo -inp; wapte of ocean more vividly. than does
^schylus its rippln.: sui. iin"? "'Multitudinous seas,* —
what an expression I You leei the wide weltering waste of
confused and tumbling waves around you in that single word.
What beauty and wealth of colour too in incarnadine, a word
capable of dyeing an ocean ! and then, after these grand poly-
syllables, how terse and stern comes in the solid Saxon, as if a
vast cloud had condensed into great heavy drops — the deep
one red." * Is it not plain that if you substitute any less
massive words for the sesquipedalia verba, the sonorous terms
♦' multitudinous" and " incarnadine," the whole grandeur of the
passage would collapse at once 1 *

Among the British orators of this century few have had a
greater command of language, or used it with nicer discrimina-
tion, than Canning. What can be happier than the blending
of the native and the foreign elements in the following eloquent
passage 1 Most of the italicized words are Saxon :

" Our present repose is no more a proof of our inability to act than the
state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty ma$8e»
that float in the loaterg aboie pour town is a proof that they are devoid of
strength or incapable of being fitted for action. You well know, gentlemen,
how soon one of those stupendous masses now reposing on their shadows in
perfect stiflness— how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it
would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion
■ — how soon it would rvffle, as it were, its swelling plumage— how> quickly it
would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of

* W. W. Storey.

SAXON WORDS. OR ROMANIC /

139

strength, and awake its dormant thunders. Such as is one of those magnifi-
cent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its strength,
such is England itself, while, apparently passive and motionless, she silently
causes her power to be x>ut forth on an aaequate occasion."

In the famous passage in Sterne's " Tristam Shandy," which
has been pronounced the most musical in our language, nearly
all the words are Saxon :

I >;!(

" The accusing spirit that liew up to Heaven's chancery with the oath,
blushed as he gave it in, and the recording angel, as he wrote it down,
dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out forever."

It is true, as we have already said, that the Saxon has the
advantage of being the aboriginal element, the basis and not
the superstructure, of the language; it is the dialect of the
nursery, and its words therefore, being consecrated to the feel-
ings by early use, are full of secret suggestions and echoes,
which greatly multiply their power. Its words, though not
intrinsically, yet to us, from association, are more concrete and
pictorial than those derived from the Latin ; and this is par-
ticularly true of many beautiful words we have lost. How
m'-.ch more expressive to us is "sea-robber" than "pirate";
"sand-waste" than "desert"; "eye-bite" than "fascinate";
"mill-race" than "channel"; "water-fright" than "hydro-
phobia" ; " moonling" than " lunatic" ; " show-holiness" than
" hypocrisy" ; " in-wit" than " conscience"; " gold-hoard" than
"treasure"! Therefore, as De Quiricey says, "wherever the
passion of a poem is of that sort which uses, presumes or postulates
the ideas, without seeking to extend them, Saxon will be the
'cocoon' (to speak by the language applied to silk-worms)
which the poem spins for itself. But on the other hand where
the motion of the feeling is hy and through the ideas, where (as
in religious or meditative poetry — Young's, for instance, or
Cowper's), the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very
tissues of the thinking, there the Latin will predominate; and
so much so that, whilst the flesh, the blood, and the muscle will
be often almost exclusively Latin, the articulations only, or
hinges of connection, will be Anglo-Saxon."

Let us be thankful, then, that our language has other
elements than the Saxon, admirable as that is. Let us be

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

grateful for that inheritance of collateral wealth, which, by
engrafting our Anglo-Saxon stem with the mixed dialect of
Normandy, caused ultimately the whole opulence of Boman,
and even of Grecian, thought to play freely through the pulses
of our native tongue. No doubt the immediate result was
anything but pleasant. For a long time after the language
was thrown again into the crucible, Britons, Saxons, and
Normans talked a jargon fit for neither gods nor men. It was
a chaos of language, hissing, sputtering, bubbling like a
witch's caldron. But luckily the Saxon element was yet
plastic and unfrozen, so that the new elements could fuse with
its own, thus forming that wondrous instrument of expression
which we now enjoy, fitted fully to reflect the thoughts of the
myriad-minded Shakespeare, yet, at the same time, with
enough remaining of its old forest stamina for imparting a
masculine depth to the sublimities of Milton or the Hebrew
prophets, and to the Historic Scriptures that patriarchal sim-
plicity which is one of their greatest charms.

We are aware that, in reply to all this, it may be asked, Are
not ninety-three words out of every hundred in the Bible
Anglo-Saxon : and where are the life, beauty, and freshness of
our language to be found in so heaped a measure as in that
pure well of English, the Bible 1 Nothing can be plainer or
simpler than its vocabulary, yet how rich is it in all that
concerns the moral, the spiritual, and even the intellectual
interests of humanity ! Is it logic that we ask ? What a
range of abstract thought, what an armoury of dialectic weapons,
what an enginery of vocal implements for moving the soul, do
we find in the epistles of St. Paul ! Is it rhetoric that we
require ? " Where," in the language of South, " do we find
such a natural prevailing pathos as in the lamentations of
Jeremiah? One would think that every letter was written
with a tear, every word was the noise of a breaking heart ; that
the author was a man compacted of sorrow, disciplined to grief
from his infancy, one who never breathed but in siglis, nor
spoke but in a groan." Yet, while our translation owes much
of its beauty to the Saxon, there are passages the grandeur of
which would be greatly diminished by the substitution of
Saxon words for the Latin ooes. In the following the Latin

SAXON WORDS, OR ROMANIC?

141

\*]

words italicized are absolutely necessary to preserve one of the
sublimest rhythms of the Bible. " And I heard, as it were,
the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters,
and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, * Alleluia, for
the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.^ "

The truth is, the translators of the Bible, while they have
employed a large percentage of Saxon words, have hit the
golden mean in their version, never hesitating to use a Latin
word when the sense of the rhythm demanded it ; and hence
we have the entire volume of revelation in the happiest form
in which human wit and learning have ever made it accessible
to man. This an English Catholic writer, a convert from the
Anglican Church, has mournfully acknowledged in the follow-
ing touching passage :—" Who will not say that the uncom-
mon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible
is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country 1
It lives on the ear, like a music that can never be forgotten,
like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows
how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost
things rather than mere words. Tt is part of the national
mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory
of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood
are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and
trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the repre-
sentative of his best moments, and all that there has been
about him of soft and gentle, and pure and penitent and good,
speaks to him out of his English Bible. . . It is his sacred
thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never
soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a
Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose
spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible." *

It is a very striking and suggestive fact that those very
writers who award the palm for expressiveness to the Saxon
part of our language, cannot extol the Saxon without the help
of Latin words. Dr. Gregory tells us that when, in the com-
pany of Robert Hall, he chanced to use the term " felicity,"
three or four times in rather quick succession, the latter asked

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

him : '• Why do you say felicity 1 Happiness is a better word,
more musical, and genuine English, coming from the Saxon."
" Not more musical," said Dr. Gregory. " Yes, more musical,
— and so are all words derived from the Saxon, generally.
Listen, sir : ' My heart is smitten, and withered like grass.'
There is plaintive music. Listen again, sir : * Under the
shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.' There is cheerful music."
" Yes, but rejoice is French." *" True, but all the rest is Saxon,
and rejoice is almost out of time with the other words. Listen
again : ' Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my eyes
from tears, and my feet from falling.' All Saxon, sir, except
delivered. I could think of the word tear till I wept." But
whence did Robert Hall get the words " musical," and " plain-
tive music" 1 Are they not from the Greek and the French 1
Is not this stabbing a man with his own weapons ? It is a
curious fact, that, in spite of this eulogy on Saxon words, a
more than ordinary percentage of the words used in Mr. Hall's
writings are of Romanic origin. Again, even Macaulay, one of
the most brilliant and powerful of all English writers, finds it
impossible to laud the Saxon part of the language without
borrowing nearly half the words of his famous panegyric from
the Romanic part of the vocabulary. In his article on Bunyan,
in a passage written in studied commendation of the " pure old
Saxon" English, we find, omitting the particles and wheelwork,
one hundred and twenty-one words, of which fifty-one, or over
forty-two per cent., are classical or alien. In other words, this
great English writer, than whom few have a more imperial
command over all the resources of expression, finds the Saxon
insufficient for his eloquent eulogy on Saxon, and is obliged to
borrow four-tenths of his words, and those the most emphatic
ones, from the imported stock !

It is an important fact, that while we can readily frame a
sentence wholly of Anglo-Saxon, we cannot do so with W0k''^s
entirely Latin, because the determinative particles, — the bolts,
pins, and hinges of the structure, — must be Saxon. Macaulay,
in his famous contrast of Dr. Johnson's conversational language
with that of his writings, has vividly illustrated the superiority
of a Saxon-English to a highly Latinized diction. " The ex-
pressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic.

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143

and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his
sentences out of English into Johnsonese. * When we were
taken up stairs,' says he in one of his letters from the Hebrides,

* a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one of us was
to lie.' This incident is recorded in his published Journey as
follows : * Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose,
started up, at our entrance, a man as black as a Cyclops from the
forge.' Sometimes," Macaulay adds, " Johnson translated aloud.

* The Rehearsal,' he said, * has not wit enough to keep it sweet;'
then, after a pause, ' It has not vitality enough to preserve it from
putrefaction.' " Doubtless Johnson, like Robertson, Hume,
Gibbon, thought that he was refining the language by straining
it through the lees of Latin and Greek, so as to imbue it with
the tone and colour of the learned tongues, and clear it of the
barbarous Saxon ; while real purity rather springs from such
words as are our own, and peculiar to our fatherland. Never-
theless, the elephantine diction of the Doctor proved, in the
end, a positive blessing to the language ; for, by pushing the
artificial or classic system to an extreme, it brought it into dis-
repute, and led men to cultivate again the native idiom.

In conclusion, to sum up our views of the matter, we would
say to every young writer, — give no fantastic preference to
either Saxon or Latin, the two great wings on which our mag-
nificent English soars and sings, for you can spare neither.
The union of the two gives us an affluence of synonymes and a
nicety of discrimination which no homogeneous tongue can
boast. Never use a Romanic word when a Teutonic one will
do as well ; for the former carries a comparatively cold and
conventional signification to an English ear. Between the
sounding Latin and the homely, idiomatic Saxon, there is often
as much difference in respect to a power of awakening associa-
tions, as between a gong and a peal of village bells. Pleasant
though it be to read the pages of one who writes in a foreign
tongue, as it is pleasant to visit distant lands, yet there is
always the charm of home, with all its witchery, in the good
old Anglo-Saxon of our fathers. Of the words that we heard
in our childhood, there are some which have stored up in them
an ineffable sweetness and flavour which make them precious
ever after ; there are others which are words of might, of

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

power, — old, brawny, large-meaning words, heavily laden with
associations, — which, when they strike the imagination, awaken
tender and tremulous memories, obscure, subtle, and yet most
powerful. Our language is essentially Teutoaic ; the whole
skeleton of it is thoroughly so ; all its grammatical forms, all
its most common and necessary words, are still identical with
that old mother tongue whose varying forms lived on the lips
of Arminius and of Hengest, of Harold of Norway, and of
Harold of England, of Alaric, of Albion, and of Charles the
Great. On the other hand, never scruple to use a Romanic
word when the Saxon will not do as well ; that is, do not over-
Teutonize from any archaic pedantry, but use the strongest,
the most picturesque, or the most beautiful word, from what-
ever source it may come. The Latin words, though less home-
like, must nevertheless be deemed as truly denizen in the
language as the Saxon — as being no alien interlopers, but
possessing the full right of citizenship. Perhaps of all our
writers Shakespeare may be deemed in this matter the student's
best friend. No one better knows how far the Saxon can go,
or so often taxes its utmost resources -, yet no one better knows
its poverty and weakness ; and, therefore, while in treating
homely and familiar themes he uses simple words, and shows
by his total abstinence from Latin words in some of his most
beautiful passages, that he understands the monosyllabic music
of our tongue, yet in his loftiest flights it is on the broad
pinions of the Roman eagle that he soars, and, we shall find, if
we regard him closely, that every feather is plucked from its
wing.

THE SECUET Of APT WORDS.

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CHAPTER VIII.

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THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

Le style c'est de 1' homme.— Buffon.

Altogether the style of a writer ia a faithful representative of his mind ;
therefore, if any man wish to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his
thoughts ; and if he should write in a noble style, let him first possess a
noble soul. — Goethe.

So long as no words are uttered but in faithfulness, so long the art of lan-
guage goes on exalting itself ; but the moment it in shaped and chiselled on
external principles, it falls into frivolity, and perishes. . . No noble or
right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart. — Ruskin.

T was a saying of the wily diplomatist, Talleyrand, that
language was given to man to conceal his thought.
There is a class of writers at the present day who seem to
be of the same opinion, — sham philosophers for the most part,
who have an ambition to be original without the capacity, and
seek to gain the credit of soaring to the clouds by shrouding
familiar objects in mist. As all objects look larger in a fog, so
their thoughts " loom up through the haze of their style with
a sort of dusky magnificence that is mistaken for sublimity."
This style is sometimes called " transcendental ;" and if by
this it is meant that it transcends all the established laws of
rhetoric, and ail ordinary powers of comprehension, the name
is certainly a happy one. It is a remark often made touching
these shallow-profound authors, " What a pity that So-and-so
does not express thoughts so admirable in intelligible English !"
— whereas, in fact, but for the strangeness and obscurity of the
style, which fills the ear while it famishes the mind, the
matter would seem commonplace. The simple truth is, that the
profoundest authors are always the clearest, and the chiaro-
oscuro which the transcendentalists affect, instead of shroud-
ing thoughts which mankind cannot well afford to lose, is but
a cloak for their intellectual nakedness, — the convenient

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146 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

shelter for meagreness of thought and poverty of expression.
As the banks and shoals of the sea are the ordinary resting-
place of fogs, so is it with thought and language ; the cloud
almost invariably indicates the shallow.

But, whether language be or be not fitted to cloak our ideas,
as Talleyrand and Goldsmith before him supposed, there are
few persons to whom it has not seemed at times inadequate to
eor^ress them. How many ideas occur to us in our daily re-
flections, which, though we toil after them for hours, baffle all
our attempts to seize them and render them comprehensible 1
Who has not felt, a thousand times, the brushing wings of
great thought, as, like startled birds, they have swept by him
— though so swift and so many-hued that any attempt to
arrest or describe them seemed like mockery 1 How common
it is, after reflecting on some subject in one's study, or a lonely
walk, till the whole mind has become heated and filled with
the ideas it suggests, to feel a descent into the veriest tameness
when attempting to embody those ideas in written or spoken
words ! A thousand bright images lie scattered in the fancy,
but we cannot picture them ; glimpses of glorious visions
appear to us, but we cannot arrest them ; questionable shapes
float by us, but, when we question them, they will not answer.
Even Byron, one of the greatest masters of eloquent expres-
sion, who was able to condense into one word, that fell like
a thunderbolt, the power and anguish of emotion, experienced
the same difficulty, and tells us in lines of splendid declama-
tion :

" Could I embody and unbosom now
That which is most within me — could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek.
Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe- -into one word.
And that one word were lightning, I would speak ;
But, as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword."

So, too, that great verbal artist, Tennyson, complains :

" I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel ;
For words, like Nature, half reveal,
And half conceal the soul within.''

THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

De Quincey truly remarks that all our thoughts have not
words corresponding to them in our yet imperfectly developed
nature, nor can ever express themselves in acts, out must lie
appreciable by God only, li'ie the silent melodies in a great
musician's heart, never to roll forth from harp or organ.

" The sea of thought is a boundless sea,
Its brightest gems are not thrown on the beach ;
The waves that would tell of the mystery
Die and fall on the shore of speech."

The Germans have coined a phrase to characterize a class of
persons who have conception without expression, — gifted,
thoughtful men, lovers of goodness and truth, who have no
lack of ideas, but who hesitate and stammer when they put
them into language. Such men they term as " passive genius."
Their minds are like black glass, absorbing all the rays of
light, but unable to give out any for the benefit of others.
Jean Paul calls them " the dumb ones of earth," for, like
Zachariah, they have visions of high import, but are speechless
when they would tell them. The infirmity of these dumb
ones, is, however, the infirmity, in a less degree, of all ro.en,
even the most fluent ; for there are thoughts which mock at
all attempts to express them, however " well-languaged" the
thinker may be.

It is not true, then, that language is, as Vinet characterizes
it, " la pensee devenue matihre ;" for the very expression involves
a contradiction. Words are nothing but symbols, — imperfect,
too, at best,— and to make tlie symbol in any way a measure of
the thought is to bring down the infinite to the measure *f
the finite. It is true that our words mean more than it is in
their power to express, — shadow forth far more than they can
define ; yet, when their capacity has been exhausted, there is
much which they fail, not only to express, but even to hint.
There are abysses of thought which the plummet of language
can never fathom. Like the line in mathematics, which con-
tinually approaches to a curve, but, though produced forever,
does not cut it, language can never be more than an asymptote
to thought. Expression, even in Shakespeare, has its limits.
No power of language enables man to reveal the features of the

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mystic Isis, on whose statue was inscribed : " I am all which
hath been, whLh is, and shall be, and no mortal hath ever
lifted my veil."

"Full oft
Our thoughts drown speech, like to a foaming force
Which thunders down the echo it creates ;
Words are like the sea shells on the shore ; they show
Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been."

Notwithstanding all this, however, there is truth in the lines
of Boileau :

' ' Selon que notre idt^s est plus ou moins obscure,
L'expression la suit, oxi moins nette, ou plus pure ;
Ce que Ton concoit bien s'dnonce clairement,
lilt les mots pour le dire arrivent aisement."

In spite of the complaints of those who, like the great poets
we have quoted, have expressed in language of wondrous force
and felicity their feeling of the inadequacy of language, it is
doubtless true, as a general thing, that impression and expres-
sion are relative ideas ; that what we clearly conceive we can
clearly convey ; and that the failure to embody our thoughts is
less the fault of our mother tongue than of our own deficient
genius. What subject, indeed, is there in the whole boundless
range of imagination, which some English author has not treated
in his mother tongue with a nicety of definition, an accuracy
of portraiture, a gorgeousness of colouring, a delicacy of dis-
crimination, and a strength and force of expression which fall
scarcely short of perfection itself ? Is there not something al-
most like sorcery in the potent spell which some of these mighty
magicians of language are able to exercise over the soul 1 Yet
the right arrangement of the right words is the whole secret of
the witchery, — a charm within the reach of any one of equal
genius. Possess yourself of the necessary ideas and feel thenr
deeply, and you will not often complain of the barrenness of
language. You will find it abounding in riches — exuberant
beyond the demand of your intensest thought. '* The statue is
not more surely included in the block of marble, than is all
conceivable splendour of utterance in * Webster's Unabridged.' "
As Goethe says :

THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

149

" Be thine to seek the honest gain,

No shallow sounding fool ;
Sound sense finds utterance for itself,

Without the critic's rule ;
If to your heart your tongue be true,

Why hunt for words with much ado ? "

But we hear some one say — is this the only secret of apt
words 1 Is nothing more necessary to be done by one who
would obtain a command of language ? Does not Dr. Blair tell
us to study the " Spectator," if we would learn to write well ;
and does not Dr. Johnson, too, declare that " whoever wishes
to obtain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant
but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the vol-
umes of Addison 1 " Yes, and it is a pity that Johnson did not
act upon his own advice. That it is well for- a writer to famili-
arize himself with the best models of style (models sufficiently
numerous to prevent that mannerism which is apt to result from
unconscious imitation, when he is familiar with but one), no-
body can doubt. A man's vocabulary depends largely on the
company he keeps ; and without a proper vocabulary no man
can be a good writer. Words are the material that the author
works in, and he must use as much care in their selection as
the sculptor in choosing his marble or the painter in choosing
his colours. By profound study of the masterpieces of litera-
ture he may not only enrich his vocabulary, but learn in some
degree the secret of their charm, detect his own deficiencies,
and elevate and refine his taste to a degree that can be reached
in no other way. But to suppose that a good style can be
acquired by imitating any one writer, or any set of writers, is
one of the greatest follies that can be imagined.

Such a supposition is based on the notion that fine writing is
an addition from without to the matter treated of, — a kind of
ornament superinduced, or luxury indulged in, by one who has
sufficient genius ; whereas the brilliant or powerful writer is not
one who has merely a copious vocabulary, and can turn on at
will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences,
but he is one who has something to say, and knows how to say
it. Whether he dashes otf his compositions at a heat, or elab-
orates them with fastidious nicety and care, he has but one aim,
which he keeps steadily before him, and that is to give forth

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what is in him. From this very earnestness it follows that
whatever be the brilliancy of his diction or the harmony of his
periods, — whether it blaze with the splendours of a gorgeous
rhetoric, or take the ear prisoner with its musical surprises, —
he never makes these an end, but has always the charm of an
incommunicable simplicity.

Such a person '* writes passionately because he feels keenly ;
forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to
be vague ; he is too serious to be otiose ; he can analyze his
subject, and therefore he is rich ; he embraces it as a whole
and in parts, and therefore he is consistent ; he has a firm hold
of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his imagination
wells up, it overflows in ornament ; when his heart is touched,
it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for
the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is
because few words suffice ; when he is lavish of them, still each
word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous
march of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but what
all cannot say, and his sayings pass into proverbs among the
people, and his phrases become household words and idioms of
their daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich fragments
of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of
Koman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of
modern palaces. " *

It follows from this that there is no model style, and that
kind of style demanded in any composition depends upon the
man and his theme. The first law of good writing is that it
should be an expression of a man's self — a reflected image of
his own character. If we know what the man is, we know
what his style should be. If it mirrors his individuality, it is,
relatively, good ; if it is not a self-portraiture, it is bad, how-
ever polished its periods, or rhythmical its cadences. The
graces and witcheries of expression which charm us in an
original writer, offend us in a copyist. Style is sometimes,
though not very happily, termed the dress of thought. It is
really, as Wordsworth long ago declared, the incirnation of
thought. In Greek, the same word. Logos, stands for reason

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The Idea of a University," by J. H, Newman.

THE SECRET OF AFT WORDS.

151

and speech, — and why ? Because they cannot be divided ;
because thought and expression are one. They each co-exist ;
not one with the other, but in and through the other. Not till
we can separate the soul and the body, life and motion, the
convex and concave of a curve, shall we be able to divorce
thought from the language which only can embody it. But
allowing, for the moment, that style is the verbal clothing of
ideas, who but the most poverty-stricken person would think
of wearing the clothes of another i It is true that there are
certain general qualities, such as clearness, flexibility, simpli-
city, variety, which all good styles will alike possess, just as all
good clothing will have certain qualities in common. But for
all men to clothe their thoughts in the same manner would be
as foolish as for a giant to array himself in the garments of a
dwarf, a stout man in those of a thin, or a brunette in those of
a blonde. Robert Hall, when preaching in early life at Cam-
bridge, England, for a short time aped Dr. Johnson ; but he
soon saw the folly of it. " I might as well have attempted,"
said he, " to dance a hornpipe in the cumbrous costume of Gog
and Magog. My puny thoughts could not sustain the load of
words in which I tried to clothe them."

It is with varieties of style as with the varieties of the human
face, or of the leaves of the forest ; while they are obvious in
their general resemblance, yet there are never two indistin-
guishably alike. Sometimes the differences are very slight, —
so minute and subtle, as almost to defy characterization ; yet,
like the differences in musical styles which closely resemble
each other, they are felt by the discerning reader,and so strongly
that he will scarcely mistake the authorship, even on a single
reading. Men of similar natures will have similar styles ; but
think of Waller aping the gait of Wordsworth, or Leigh Hunt
that of Milton ! Can any one conceive Hooker's style as slip-
shod, — of Dryden's as feeble and obscure, — of Gibbon's as mean
and vulgar, — of Burke's as timid and creeping, — of Carlyle's
as dainty and mincing, — of Emerson's as diffuse and pointless,
— or of Napier's as lacking picturesqueness, verve, and fire ?

There are some writers of a quiet, eveu temperament, whose
sentences flow gently along like a stream through a level coun-
try, that hardly diijturbs the stillness of the air by a sound ;,

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there are others vehement, rapid, redundant, that roll on like
a mountain torrent forcing its way over all obstacles, and fill-
ing the valleys and woods with the echoes of its roar. One
author, deep in one place and shallow in another, reminds you
of the Ohio, here unfordable, and there full of sand bars, —
now hurrying on with rapid current, and now expanding into
lovely lakes, fringed with forests and overhung with hills ;
another, always brimming with thought, reminds you of the
Mississippi, which rolls onward the same vast volume, with no
apparent diminution, from Cairo to New Orleans. " Sydney
Smith, concise, brisk, and brillant, has a manner of composi-
tion which exactly corresponds to those qualities ; but how
would Lord Bacon look in Smith's sentences 1 How grandly
the soul of Milton rolls and winds through the arches and
labyrinths of his involved and magnificent diction, waking
musical efforts at every new turn and variation of its progress ;
but how could the thought of such a light trifler as Gibber
travel through so glorious a maze, without being lost or crushed
in the journey "? The plain, manly language of John Locke
could hardly bo translated into the terminology of Kant, —
would look out of place in the rapid and sparkling movement of
Cousin's periods, — and would appear mean in the cadences of
Dugald Stewart."*

Not only has every original writer his own style, which
mirrors his individuality, but the writers of every age differ
from those of every other age. Joubert has well said that if
the French authors of to-day were to write as men wrote in the
time of Louis XIV., their style would lack truthfulness, for the
French of to-day have not the same dispositions, the same
opinions, the same manners. A woman who should write like
Madame de S^vign6 would be ridiculous, because she is not
Madame de S6vign6. The more one's writing smacks of his own
character and of the manners of his time, the more widely
must his style diverge from that of the writers who were models
only because they excelled in manifesting in their works either
the manners of their own age or their own character. Who
would tolerate to-day a writer who should reproduce, however

"Essays and Reviews," by Edwin P. Whipple.

THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

153

successfully, the stately periods of Johnson, the mellifluous
lines of Pope, or the faultless but nerveless periods of Addison ?
The style that is to please to-day must be dense with meaning
and full of colour ; it must be suggestive, sharp, and incisive.
So far is imitation of the old masterpieces from being commend-
able, that, as Joubert says, good taste itself, permits one to
avoid imitating the best styles, for taste, even good taste,
changes with manners. — " Le bon gotit lui-m6rae, en ce cas,
permet qu'on s'6carte du meilleur gout, car le goftt change avec
les moeurs, m«me le bon gout."

Let no man, then, aim at the cultivation of style for style's
sake, independently of ideas, for all such aims will result in
failure. To suppose that noble or impressive language is a com-
municable trick of rhetoric and accent, is one of the most mis-
chievous of fallacies. Every writer has his own ideas and
feelings — his own conceptions, judgments, discriminations, and
comparisons — which are personal, proper to himself, in the
same sense that his looks, his voice, his air, his gait, and his
action are personal. If he has a vulgar mind, he will write
vulgarly ; if he has a noble nature, he will write nobly ; in
every case, the beauty or ugliness of his moral countenance, the
force and keenness or the feebleness of his logic, will be imaged
in his language. It follows, therefore, as Ruskin says, that all
the virtues of language are, in their roots, moral ; it becomes
accurate, if the writer desires to be true ; clear, if he write with
sympathy and a desire to be intelligible ; powerful, if he has
earnestness ; pleasant, if he has a sense of rythm and order.

This sensibility of language to the impulses and qualities of
him who uses it ; its flexibility in accommodating itself to all
the thoughts, feelings, imaginations, and aspirations which pass
within him, so as to become the faithful expression of his per-
sonality, indicating the very pulsation and throbbing of his
intellect, attending on his own inward world of thought as its
very shadow ; and, strangest, perhaps, the magical power it has
to suggest the idea or mood it cannot directly convey, and to
give forth an aroma which no analysis of word or expression
reveals — is one of the marvels of human speech. The writer,
therefore, who is so magnetized by another's genius that he
cannot say anything in his own way, but is perpetually imitat-
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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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ing the other's structure of sentence and turns of expression,
confesses his barrenness. The only way to make another's
style one's own is to possess one's self of his mind and soul.
If we would reproduce his peculiarities of diction, we must
first acquire the qualities that produced them. " Language,"
says Goldwin Smith, " is not a musical instrument into which,
if a fool breathe, it will make melody. Its tones are evoked
only by the spirit of high or tender thought; and though truth
is not always eloquent, real eloquence is always the glow of
truth." As Sainte-Beuve says of the plainness and brevity of
Napoleon's style — Pr^tendre imiter le proc6d6 de diction du
h^ros qui sut abr^ger Ca3sar lui-meme . . . il convient d'avoir
fait d'aussi grandes cJwses pour avoir le droit d'etre aussi nu."

It is not imitation, but general culture — as another has said,
the constant submission of a teachable apprehensive mind to
the influence of minds of the highest order, in daily life and
books — that brings out upon style its daintiest bloom and its
richest fruitage. " So in the making of a fine singer, after the
voice has been developed, and the rudiments of vocalization
have been learned, farther instruction is almost of no avail.
But the frequent hearing of the best music given by the uc»^t
singers and instrumentalists — the living in an atmosphere of art
and literature — will develop and perfect a vocal style in one
who has the gift of song ; and, for another, all the instruction
of all the musical professors that ever came out of Italy will do
no more than teach an avoidance of positive errors in musical
grammar." *

The Cabalists believed that whoever found the mystic word
for anything, attained to as absolute mastery over that thing as
did the robbors over the door of their cave in the Arabian tale.
The converse is true of expression ; for he who is thoroughly
possessed of his thought becomes master of the word fitted to
express it, while he who has but a half-possession of it vainly
seeks to torture out of language the secret of that inspiration
which should be in himself. The secret of force in writing or
speaking lies not in Blair's " Rhetoric" or Roget's " Thesaurus"
— not in having a copious vocabulary, or a dozen words for

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Words and their Ubbb," by Eichurd Grant White,

THE SECnET OF APT WORDS.

155

every idea — but in having something that you earnestly wish
to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it.
Phidias, the great Athenian sculptor, said of one of his pupils
that he had an inspired thumb, b*»pause the modelling clay yield-
ed to its careless touch a grace of sweep which it refused to the
utmost pains of others. So he who has thoroughly possessed
himself of his thought, will not have to hunt through his dic-
tionary for apt and expressive words, — a method which is but
an outside remedy for an inward defect, — but will find language
eagerly obedient to him, as if every word should say.

" Bil me discourse ; I will enchant thine ear ;"

and fit expressions, as Milton says, " like so many nimble
and airy servitors, will trip about him at command, and, in
well-ordered files, fall aptly irtto their own places." It was the
boast of Dante that no word had ever forced him to say what
he would not, though he had forced many a word to say what
it would not ; and so will every writer, who as vividly conceives
and as deeply feels his theme, be able to conjure out of words
their uttermost secret of power or pathos.

The question has been sometimes discussed whether the best
style is a colourless medium, which, like good glass, only lets
the thought be distinctly seen, or whether it imparts a pleasure
apart from the ideas it conveys. There are those who hold
that when language is simply transparent — when it comes to
us so refined of all its dross, so spiritualized in its substance,
that we lose sight of it as a vehicle, and the thought stands
out with clearness in all its proportions — we are at the very
summit of the literary art. This is the character of Southey's
best prose, and of Paley's writing, whose statement of a false
theory is so lucid that it becomes a refutation. There are
writers, however, who charm us by their language, apart from
the idea it conveys. There is a kind of mysterious perfume
about it, a delicious aroma, which we keenly enjoy, but for
which we cannot account. Poetry often possesses a beauty
wholly unconnected with its meaning. Who has not admired,
independently of the sense, its " jewels, five words long, that,
on the stretched forefinger of all time, sparkle forever 1" There
are passages in which the mere cadence of the words is by it-

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self delicious to a delicate ear, though we cannot tell how and
why. We are conscious of a strange, dreamy sense of enjoy-
ment, such as one feels when lying upon the grass in a June
evening, while a brook tinkles over stones among the sedges
and trees. Sir Philip Sidney could not hear the old ballad of
Chevy Chase without his blood being stirred as by the sound of
a trumpet. Boyle felt a tremor at the utterance of two verses
of Lucan ; and Spencer declares that he never repeated particu-
lar lines of delicate modulation without a shiver in his blood,
tiot to be expressed. Who is not sensible of certain magical
effects, altogether distinct from the thoughts, in some of
Coleridge's weird verse, in Keats' " Nightingale," and in the
grand harmonies of Sir Thomas Brown, Jeremy Taylor, Ruskin,
and De Quincey 1

Perspicuity, or transparency of style, is, undoubtedly, the
first law of all composition ; but it may be doubted whether
vividness, which was the ruling conception of the Greeks with
regard to this propriety of style, is not quite as essential.
Style, it has been well said, is not only a medium ; it is also a
form. It is not enough that the thoughts be seen through a
clear medium ; they must be seen in a distinct shape. It is
not enough that truth be visible in a clear, pure air ; the atmos-
phere must not only be crystalline and sparkling, but the things
in it must be bounded and defined by sharply-cut lines.*

A style may be as transparent as rock-water, and yet the
thoughts be destitute of boldness and originality. The highest
degree of transparency, however, can be attained only by the
writer who has thoroughly mastered his theme, and whose
whole nature is stirred .by it. As that exquisite material
through which we gaze from our windows on the beauties of
nature, obtains its crystalline beauty after undergoing the
furnace — as it was melted by fire before the rough particles of
sand disappeared — so it is with language. It is only a burning
invention that can make it transparent. A powerful imagina-
tion must fuse the harsh elements of composition until all
foreign substances have disappeared, and every coarse, shape-
less word has been absorbed by the heat, and then the language

• " Homiletics and Pastoral Theology," by W. G. Shedd, D.D.

TUB SECRET OF APT WORDS.

157

will brighten into that clear and unclouded style through which
the most delicate conceptions of the mind and the faintest
emotions of the heart are visible.

How many human thoughts have baffled for generations every
attempt to give them expression ! How many ideas and opin-
ions are there, which form the basis of our daily reflections,
the matter for the ordinary operations of our minds, which were
toiled after perhaps for ages, before they were seized and ren-
dered comprehensible ! How many subjects are there which
wo ourselves have grasped at, as if we saw them floating in an
atmosphere just above us, and found the arm of our intellect
I just to short to reach them ; and then comes a happier genius,
/ who, in a lucky moment, and from some vantage ground, ar-
rests the meteor in its flight, and, grasping the floating phantom,
drags it from the skies to earth ; condenses that which was but
an impalpable correscation of spirit ; fetters that which was but
the lightning-glance of thought; and, having so mastered it,
bestows it as a perpetual possession and heritage on mankind !
The arrangement of words by great writers on the printed
page has sometimes been compared to the arrangement of sol-
diers on the field ; and if it is interesting to see how a great gen-
eral marshals his regiments, it is certainly not less so to see
how the Alexanders and Napoleons of letters marshal their ver-
bal battalions on the battle-fields of thought. Foremost among
those who wield despotic sway over the domain of letters, is my
lord Bacon, whose words are like a Spartan phalanx, closely
compacted — almost crowding each other, so close are their files
— and all moving in irresistible array, without confusion or
chasm, now holding some Thermopyhe of new truth against
some scholastic Xerxes, now storming some ancient Malakoff'of
error, but always with *' victory sitting eagle-winged on their
crests." A strain of music bursts on your ear, sweet as is
Apollo's lute, and lo ! Milton's dazzling files, clad in celestial
panoply, lifting high their gorgeous ensign, which ** shines like
a meteor, streaming to the wind," — " breathing united force and
fixed thought," — come moving on '* in perfect phalanx, to the
Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders." Next comes Chilling-
worth, with his glittering rapier, all rhetorical rule and flour-
ish, according to the schools— jpas5a<?o, montanso, staccato, — one,

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WORDS.' THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

two, three, — the third in your bosom. Then stalks along
Chatham, with his two-handed sword, striking with the edge,
while he pierces with the point, and stuns with the hilt, and
wielding the ponderous weapon as easily as you would a flail.
Next strides Johnson, with elephantine tread, with a club of
logic in one hand and a revolver in the other, hitting right and
left with antithetical blows, and, '^ when his pistol misses fire,
knocking you down with the but end of it." Burke, with light-
ed linstock in hand, stands by a Lancaster gun ; he touches it,
and forth there burst, with loud and ringing roar, missiles of
every conceivable description — chain-shot, stones, iron-darts,
spikes, shells, grenadoes, torpedoes, and l3alls, that cut down
everything before them. Close after him steals Jeffrey, armed
cap-a-pie — carrying a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping-
knife in the other — steeped to the eye in fight, cunning of fence,
master of his weapon and merciless in its use, and " playing it
like a tongue of flame " before his trembling victims. There is
Brougham, slaying half-a-dozen enemies at once with a tremen-
dous Scotch claymore ; Macaulay, running under his opponent's
guard, and stabbing him to the heart with the heavy dagger of
a short, epigrammatic sentence ; Hugh Elliot, cracking his en-
emies' skulls with a sledge-hammer, or pounding them to jelly
with his huge fists ; Sydney Smith, firing his arrows, feathered
with fancy and pointed with the steel of the keenest wit ; Dis-
raeli, armed with an oriental scimitar, which dazzles while it
kills ; Emerson, transfixing his adversaries with a blade of
transcendental temper, snatched from the scabbard of Plato ;
and Carlyle, relentless iconoclast of shams, who " gangs his
ain gait," armed with an antique stone axe, with which he
smashes solemn humbugs as you would drugs with a pestle
and mortar.

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159

CHAPTER IX.

THE SECRET OF APT WORH^— (Continued).

" To acquire a few tongues," says a French writer, " is the task of a few
years ; but to be eUxiuent in one is the labour of a life." — Colton.

When words are restrained by common usage to a particular sense, to run
up to etymology, and construe them by a dictionary, is wretchedly ridicu-
lous.— Jeremy Collier.

Where do the words of Greece and Rome excel,

That England may not please the ear as well ?

What mighty magic's in the place or air,

That all perfection must needs centre there ? — Churchill.

T is an interresting question connected with the subject of
style, whether a knowledge of other languages is neces-
sary to give an English writer a full command of his own.
Among the arguments urged in behalf of the study of Greek
and Latin in our colleges, one of the commonest is the sup-
posed absolute necessity of a knowledge of those tongues to
one who would speak and write his own language effectively.
The English language, we are reminded, is a composite one, of
whose words thirty per cent, are of Roman origin, and nearly
five per cent, of Greek ; and is it not an immense help, we are
asked, to a full and accurate knowledge of the meanings of the
words we use, to know their entire history, including their
origin ] Is not the many-sided Goethe an authority on this
subject, and does he not tell us that " wer fremde sprache
nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seinen eigenen," — " He who is
acquainted with no foreign tongues, knows nothing of his
own ? " Have we not the authority of one of the earliest of
English schoolmasters, Roger Ascham, for the opinion that,
" evf a hawke fleeth not hie with one wing, even so a man
reacheth not to excellency with one tongue ? "

In answering the general question in the negative, we do not
mean to question the value or profound interest of philological

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studies, or to express any doubt concerning their utility as a
means of mental discipline. The value of classical literature as
an instrument of education has been decided by an overwhelm-
ing majority of persons of culture. We cannot, without pre-
judice to humanity, separate the present from the past. The
nineteenth century strikes its roots into the centuries gone by,
and draws nutriment from them. Our whole literature is
closely connected with that of the ancients, draws its inspira-
tion from it, and can be understood only by constant reference
to it. As a means of that encyclopedic culture, of that thorough
intellectual equipment, which is one of the most imperious de-
mands of modern society, an acquaintance with foreign, and es-
pecially with classic, literature is absolutely indispensable ; for
the records of knowledge and of thought are many-tongued, and
even if a great writer could have wreaked his thoughts upon ex-
pression in another language, it is certain that another mind
can only in a few cases adequately translate them. It is only
by the study of different languages and different literatures,
ancient as well as modern, that we can escape that narrowness
of thought, that Chinese cast of mind, which characterizes those
persons who know no language but their own, and learn to diss
tinguisjh what is essentially, universally and eternally good and
true from what is the result of accident, local circumstances, or
the fleeing circumstances of the time. It is useless to say that
we know human nature thoroughly, if we know nothing of an-
tiquity ; that we can know antiquity only by study of the
originals. Mitford, Grote and Mommsen differ, and the reader
who consults tnem with no knowledge of Greek or Latin is at
the mercy of the last author he has perused. It has been fre-
quently remarked that every school of thinksrs has its manner-
ism and its mania, for which there is no cure but intercourse
with iihose who are free from them, and constant access to the
models of perfect and immutable excellence which other ages
have produced and all ages have acknowledged

The question, however, is not about the j^ericral educational
value of classical studies, but whether they are indispensable
to him who would write or speak English with the highest force,
elegance, and accuracy. We think they are not. In the first
place, we deny that a knowledge of the etymologies of worda —

lal

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THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

161

of tlieir meanings a hundred or five hundred years ago — is es-
sential to their proper use now. How am I aided in the use
of the word " villain" by knowing that it once meant pleasant —
in the use of" wince" by kno\»ing that it meant kick — in the
use of " brat," " beldam," and " pedant," by knowing that they
meant, respectively, child, fine lady, and tutor— in the use of
" meddle," by knowing that formerly it had no offensive mean-
ing, and that one could meddle even with his own affairs ? Am
I more or less likely to use " ringleader" correctly today, from
learning that Christ is correctly spoken of by an old divine as
" the ringleader of our salvation 'J " Shall I be helped in the
employment of the word musket by knowing that it was once
the name of a small hawk, or in the use of the word tragedy hy
knowing that it is connected in some way with the Greek word
for " a goat % " Facts like these are of deep interest to all, and
of high value to the scholar ; but how is the knowledge of them
necessary than one may speak or write well ?

The question with the man who addresses his fellow man by
tongue or pen to-day, is not what ought to be, or formerly was,
the meaning of a word, but, what is it now i Indeed, it may
be doubted whether a reference to the old, obsolete meanings —
the roots and derivations — of words, does not, as Archbishop
Whatley insists, tend to confusion, and prove rather a hindrance
than a help to the correct use of our tongue. Words not oniy,
for the most part, ride very slackly at anchor on their etymolo-
gies, borne, as they are, hither and thither by the shifting tides
and currents of usage, but they often break away from their
moorings altogether. The knowledge of a man's antecedents
may help us sometimes to estimate his present self; but the
knowledge of what a word meant three or twenty centuries ago
may only mislead us as to its meaning now. " Hypostasis,"
" substance," and " understanding," are words that etyraologi-
cally have precisely the same signification ; yet have they, as
they are now used, the least similarity of meaning % Will
it be said that words become more vivid and picturesque, — that
we get a firmer and more vigorous grasp of their meaning, —
when, as Coleridge advises, we present to our minds the visual
images that form their primary meanings ? The reply is, that
long use deadens us to the susceptibility of such images, and

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in not one case in a thousand, probably, are they noticed. How-
many college graduates think of a miser as being etymologically
a " miserable" man, of a savage, as one living in " a wood," or
of a desultory reader as one who leaps from one study to another,
as a circus rider leaps from horse to horse 1 A distinguished
poet once confessed that the Latin imago first suggested itself
to him as the root of the English word " imagination" when,
after having been ten years a versifier, he was asked by a friend
to define this most important term m the critical vocabulary
of his art. " We have had to notice over and over again," says
Mr. Whitney in his late work on " The Life and Growth of
Language," " the readiness on the part of language-users to
forget origins, to cast aside as cumbrous rubbish the etymolo-
gical si ggestiveness of a term, and concentrate force upon the
new and more adventitious tie. This is one of the most funda-
mental and valuable tendencies in name-making ; it constitutes
an essential part of the practical availability of language."

If a knowledge of Greek and Latin is necessary to him who
would command all the resources of our tongue, how comes
it that the most consummate mastery of the English language
is exhibited by Shakespeare 1 Will it be said that his writings
prove him to have been a classical scholar ; that they abound
in facts and allusions which imply an intimate acquaintance
with the masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature ? We
answer that this is a palpable begging of the question. By the
same reasoning we can prove that scores of English authors,
who, we know positively, never read a page of Latin or Greek,
were, nevertheless, classical scholars. By similar logic we can
prove that Shakespeare followed every calling in lift^ Lawyers
vouch for his acquaintance with law ; physicians for his skill in
medicine ; mad-doctors for his knowledge of the phenomena
of mental disease ; naturalists assert positively, from the inter-
nal evidence of his works, that he was a botanist and au ento-
mologist ; bishops, that he was a theologian ; and claims have
been put forth for his dexterity in cutting up sheep and
bullocks. Ben Jonson tells us that he had " small Latin and
less Greek ;" another cotemporary, that he had " little Latin
and no Greek." " Small Latin," indeed, it must have been,
which a youth could have acquired in his position, who married

THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

163

and entered upon the duties of active life at eighteen. The fact
that translations were abundant in the poet's time,and thatall the
literature of that day was steeped in classicism,will fully account
for Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek and Roman history, as
well as for the classical turns of expression which we find in
his plays.

But it may be said that Shakespeare, the oceanic, the many-
souled, was phenomenal, and that no rule can be based on the
miracles of a cometary genius who has had no peer in the ages.
What shall we say, then, to Izaak Walton. Can purer, more
idiomatic, or more attractive English be found within the covers
of any book than that of " The Complete Angler" ? Among
all the controversialists of England, is there one whose words
hit harder — are more like cannon-^alls — than those of Cobbett ?
By universal concession he was master of the whole vocabulary
of invective, and in narration his pen is pregnant with the
freshness of green fields and woods ; yet neither he, nor '* honest
Izaak," ever dug up a Greek root, or unearthed a I^atin deriva-
tion. Again, what shall we say of Keats, who could not read
a line of Greek, yet who was the most thoroughly classical of
all English authors — whose soul was so saturated with the
Greek spirit, that Byron said " he was a Greek himself." Or
what will the classicists do with Lord Erskine, confessedly the
greatest forensic orator since Demosthenes ] He learned but
the elements of Latin, and in Greek went scarcely beyond the
alphabet ; but he devoted himself in youth with intense ardour
to the study of Milton and Shakespeare, committing whole
pages of the former to memory, and so familiarizing himself
with the latter that he could almost, like Porson, have held
conversations on all subjects for days together in the phrases
of the great English dramatist. It was here that he ac([uired
that fine choice of words, that richness of thought, and gorgeous-
ness of expression, that beautiful rhythmus of his sentences,
which charmed all who heard him.

If one must learn Englisli through the Greek and Latin, how
shall we account for the admirable — we had almost said inimit-
able — style of Franklin ? Before he knew anything of foreign
languages he had formed his style, and gained a wide command
of words by the stud^ of the best English models. Is the

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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essayist, Edwin P. Whipple, a master of the English language 1
He was not, we believe, classically educated, yet it would be
hard to name an American author who has a greater command
of all the resources of expression. His style varies in excellence,
— sometimes, perhaps, lacks simplicity ; but, as a rule, it is
singularly copious, nervous, and suggestive, and clear as a
pebbled rill. What is the secret of this command of our
tongue 1 It is his familiarity with our English literature. His
sleepless intellect has fed and fattened on the whole race of
English authors, from Chaucer to Currer Bell. The profound,
sagacious wiadom of Bacon, and the nimble, brilliant wit of
Sydney Smith ; the sublime mysticism of Sir Thomas Browne,
and the rich, mellow, tranquil beauty of Taylor ; Jonson's
learned sock and Hey wood's ease; the gorgeous, organ toned
eloquence of Milton, and the close, bayonet-like logic of Chil-
lingworth ; the sweet-blooded wit of Fuller, and Butler's
rattling fire of fun ; Spenser's voluptuous beauty, and the lofty
rhetoric, scorching wit, and crushing argument of South ; Pope's
neatness, brilliancy, and epigrammatic point, and Dry den's
energy and "full-resounding line"; Byron's sublime unrest and
bursts of misanthropy, and Wordsworth's deep sentiment and
sweet humanities ; Shelley's wild imaginative melody, and
Scott's picturesque imagery and antiquarian lore ; the polished
witticisms of Sheridan, and the gorgeous periods of Burke, —
with all these writers, and every other of greater or lesser note,
even those in the hidden nooks and crannies of our literature,
he has held converse, and drawn from them expressions for
every exigency of his thought.

To all these examples we may add one, if possible, still more
convincing, that of the late HutH Miller, who, as Professor
Marsh justly remarks, had few coi. emporaneous superiors as a
clear, forcible, accurate and eloquent writer, and who uses the
most cumbrous Greek compounds as freely as monosyllabic English
particles. His style is literally the despair of all other English
scientific writers ; yet it is positively certain that he was wholly
ignorant of all languages but that in which he wrote, and its
Northern provincial dialects.

As to the off-quoted saying of Goethe, to which the objector
is so fond of referring, we may say with Professor Marsh, that,

THE SECRET OF APT WORDS.

165

" if by knowledge of a language is meant the power of expressing
or conceiving the laws of a language in formal rules, the opin-
ion may be well founded ; but, if it refers to the capacity of un-
derstanding, and skill in properly using our own tongue, all
observation shows it to be very wide of the truth." Goethe
himself, the same authority declares, was an indifferent lin-
guist ; he apparently knew little of the remoter etymological
sources of his own tongue, or the special pliilologies of the cog-
nate languages ; and "it is difficult to trace any of the excel-
lencies of his marvellously felicitous style to the direct imita-
tion, or even the unconscious influence, of foreign models." *
But he was a profound student of the great German writers of
the sixteenth century ; and hence his works are a test example in
refutation of the theory that ascribes so exaggerated a value to
classical studies.

It is a remarkable fact, which throws a flood of light upon
this subject, that the greatest masters of style in all the ages
were the Greeks, who yet knew no word of any language but their
own. In the most flourishing period of their literature, they
had no grammatical system, nor did they ever make any but
the most trivial researches in etymology. The wise and learn-
ed nations among the ancients, says Locke, " made it a part of
educatici to cultivate their own, not foreign languages. The
Greeks counted all other nations barbarous, and had a contempt
for their languages. And though the Greek learning grew in
credic amongst the Romans. . . . yet it was the Roman tongue
that made the study of their youth ; their own language they
were to make use of, and therefore it was their own language
they were instructed and exercised in." Demosthenes, the
greatest master of the Greek language, and one of the mightiest
masters of expression the world has seen, knew no other tongue
than his own. He modelled his style after that of Thucydides,
whose wonderful compactness, terseness, and strength of diction
were derived from no study of oldPelasgic, Ph(enician, Persian, or
other primitive etymologies of the Attic speech — of which he
knew nothing — but the product of his own marvellous genius
wreaking itself upon expression.

hfl

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♦ *' Lectures on the English Language."

166

WORDS: ^HEIR USE AND ABUSE.

No riches are without inconvenience. The men of many
tongues almost inevitably lose their peculiar raciness ot home-
bred utterance, and their style, like their words, has a certain
polyglot character. It has been observed by an acute Oxford
professor, that the Romans, in exact proportion to their study
of Greek, paralyzed some of the finest powers of their own
language. Schiller tells us that he was in the habit of reading
as little as possible in foreign languages, because it was his
business to write German, and he thought that, by reading
other languages, he should lose his nicer perceptions of what
belonged to his own. Dryden attributed most of Cowley's
defects to his continental associations, and said that his losses
at home overbalanced his gains from abroad. Thomas Moore,
who was a fine classical scholar, tells us that the perfect purity
with which the Greeks wrote their own language, was justly
attributed to their entire abstinence from every other. It is a
saying as old as Cicero, that Avomen, being accustomed solely
to their native tongue, usually speak and write it with a grace
and purity surpassing those of men. " A man who thinks the
knowledge of Latin essential to the purity of English diction,"
says Macaulay, " either has never conversed with an accom-
plished woman, or does not deserve to have conversed with
her. We are sure that all persons who are in the habit of
hearing public speaking must have observed, that the orators
v/ho are fondest of quoting Latin are by no means the most
scrupulous about marring their native tongue. We could
mention several members of Parliament, who never fail to
usher in their scraps of Horace and Juvenal with half a dozen
false concords."

Mr. Buckle, in his " History of Civilization in England,"
does not hesitate to express the opinion that " our great
English scholars have corrupted the English language by
jargon so uncouth that a plain man can hardly discern the
real lack of ideas which their barbarous and mottled dialect
strives to hide." He then adds that the principal reason why
well-educated women write and converse in a purer style than
well-educated men, is " because they have not formed their
taste according to those ancient classical standards, which,
admirable aa they are in themselves, should never be intro-

mt: SECRET OF APT WORDS.

16?

duced into a state of society unfitted for them." To nearly the
same effect is the declaration of that most acute judge of style,
Thomas De Quincey, who says that if you would read our
noble language in its native beauty, picturesque form, idio-
matic propriety, racy in its phraseology, delicate yet sinewy in
its composition, — you must steal the mail bags, and break open
the women's letters. On the other hand, who has forgotten
what havoc Bentley made when he laid his classic hand on
" Paradise Lost 1" What prose style, always excepting
that of the Areopagitica, is worse for imitation than that of
Milton, with its long, involved, half-rhythmical periods,
" dragging, like a wounded snake, their slow length along 1 "
Yet Bentley and Milton, whose minds were imbued, saturated
with Greek literature through and through, were probably the
profoundest classical scholars that England can boast.

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168

WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

CHAPTER X.

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

Gardons-nous cle I'equivoque !— Paul Louis Courier.

Words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.—
Shakespeare.

The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is
the mother of all error.— Hooker.

One vague inflection spoils tl whole with doubt ;

One trivial letter ruins all, le'- out ;

A knot can choke a felon into clay ;

A knot will save him, spelt without the k ;

The smallest word has some unguarded spot.

And danger lurks in i without a dot.— O. W. Holmeh.

N some of the great American rivers, where lumbering
operations are carried on, the logs, in floating down,

'often get jammed up here and there, and it becomes neces-
sary to find the timber which is a kind of keystone and stops
all the rest. Once detach this, and away dash the giant trunks
thundering headlong, helter-skelter down the rapids. It is just
this office which he who defines his terms accurately, performs
for the dead-locked questions of the day. Half the controver-
sies of the world are disputes about words. How often do we
see two persons engaged in what Cowper calls " a duel in the
form of a debate," — tilting furiously at each other for hours —
slashing with syllogisms, stabbing with enthymemes, hooking
with dilemmas, and riddling with sorites — with no apparent
prospect of ever ending the fray, till suddenly it occurs to one
of them to define precisely what he means by a term on which
the discussion hinges ; when it is found that the combatants
had no cause for quarrel, having agreed in opinion from the be-
ginning The juggle of all sophistry lies in employing equivocal
expressions — that is, such as may be taken in two diff'erent

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

169

meanings, using a word in one sense in the premises, and in an-
other sense in the conclusion. Frequently the word on which
a controversy turns is unconsciously made to do double duty,
and under a seeming unity there lurks a real dualism of mean-
ing, from which endless confusions arise. Accurately to define
such a term is to provide one's self with a master-key which un-
locks the whole dispute.

Who is not familiar with the fierce contests of the Nominal-
ists and Realists, which raged so long in the Middle Ages, and
which, beginning with words, came at last to blows ? Yet,
properly understood, they maintained only opposite poles of the
same truth ; and were, therefore, both right, and both wrong.
The Nominalists, it has been said, only denied what no one in
his senses would affirm, and the Realists only contended for
what no one in his senses would deny ; a hair's breadth parted
those who, had they understood each other's language, would
have had no altercation. Again, who can tell how far the clash
of opinions among political economists has been owing to the
use in opposite senses of a very few words 1 Had Smith, Say,
Ricardo, Malthus, M'Culloch, Mill, began framing their systems
by defining carefully the meanings attached by them to certain
terms used on every page of their writings — such as Wealth,
Labour, Capital, Value, Supply and Demand, Over- trading — it
may be doubted whether they would not, to some extent, have
harmonized in opinion, instead of giving us theories as opposite
as the poles.

How many fallacies have grown out of the ambiguity of the
word money, which, instead of being a simple and indivisible
term, has at least half-a-dozen different meanings ! Money
may be either specie, bank-notes, or both together, or credit, or
capital, or capital offered for loan. A merchant is said to fail
"for lack of money," when, in fact, he fails because he lacks
credit, capital, or merchandise, money having no more to do
with the matter than the carts or railway waggons by which the
merchandise is transported. Again : money is spoken of as
yielding interest, which it cannot do, since wherever it is, whe-
ther in a bank, in one's pocket, or in a safe, it is dead capital.
The confusion of the terms wealth and money gave birth to
" the mercantile system," one of the greatest curses that ever
12

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befel Europe. As in popular language to grow rich is to accu-
mulate money, and to grow poor is to lose moneij, this term
became a synonyme for wexUth ; and, till recently, at least, all
the nations of Europe studied every means of accumulating
gold and silver in their respective countries. To accomplish
this they prohibited the exportation of money, gave bounties
on the importation, and restricted the importation of other
commodities, expecting thus to produce "a favourable balance
of trade," — a conduct as wise as that of a shop-keeper who
should sell his goods only for money, and hoard every dollar,
instead of replacing and increasing his stock, or putting his
surplus capital at interest. France, under Colbert, acted upon
this principle, and Voltaire extolled his wisdom in thus prefer-
ring the accumulation of imperishable bullion to the exchange
of it for articles which must, sooner or later, weri/r out. The
effect of this fallacy has been to make the nations regard the
wealth of their customers as a source of loss instead of profit,
and an advantageous market as a curse instead of a blessing,
by which the improvement of Europe has been more retarded
than by all other causes put together.

So with the mortal theological wars in which so much ink
has been shed. The shelves of our public libraries groan under
the weight of huge folios and quartos once hurled at each other
by the giants of divinity, which never would have been pub-
lished but for their confused notions, or failure to discriminate
the meaning of certain technical and oft-recurring terms. Be-
ginning with discordant ideas of what is meant by the words
Will, Necessity, Unity, Law, Person, — terms vital in theology,
— the more they argued, the farther they were apart, and wliile
fancying they were battling with real adversaries, were, Quix-
ote-like, tilting at windmills, or fighting with shadows, till at
last utter .

' ' Confusion umpii-e sat,
And by deciding worse embroiled the fray."

The whole vast science of casuistry, which once occupied the
brains and tongues of the Schoolmen, turned upon nice, hair-
splitting verbal distinctions, as ridiculous as the disputes of the
orthodox Liliputians and the heretical Blefuscudians about the
big ends and the little ends of the eggs. The readers of Pascal

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ich ink
under
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eology,

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Pascal

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

171

will remember the fierce wars in the Sorbonne between the
Jesuits and tlie Jansenists, touching the doctrine of " effica-
cious " and *' sufficient " grace. The question was, " Whether
all men received from God sujficicnt grace for their conversion 1
The Jesuits maintained the atfirmative ; the Jansenists insisted
this syj/icient grace would never be efficac'ums^ unless accom-
panied by special grace. " Then the siij/kient grace, which is
not fjftcacious, is a contradiction in terms," cried the Jesuits ;
" and besides, it is a heresy ! " We need not trace the history
of the logomachy that followed, which Pascal has immortalized
in his " Provincial Letters," — letters whicii De Maistre de-
nounces as "Les Menteurs," but which the Jesuits found to be
both " sufficient " and " efficacious " for their utter discomfi-
ture. The theological student will recall the microscopic dis-
tinctions ; the fine-spun attenuations ; the spider-like threads
of meaning ; the delicate, infinitesunal verbal shavings of the
grave and angelic doctors ; how one subtle disputant, with syl-
labical penetration, would discover a heresy in his opponent's
monosyllables, while the other would detect a schism in the
former's conjunctions, till finally, after having filled volumes
enough with the controversy to form a library, the microscopic
point at issue, which had long been invisible, was whittled
down to nothing.

A controversy not less memorable was that which raged in
the Church in the third and fourth centuries between the
*' Homoousians" and the *' Homoiusians" concerning the nature
of Christ. The former maintained that Christ was of the sa7ne
essence with the Father ; the latter that he was of like essence
— a dispute which lioileau has satirized in these witty lines :

" D'une sjiUdhe impie un saint mot au<j:meiite
Remplit tons len e«prits d'.iiyreurs si iiieurtrit'.res -
Tu tis, dans uiie guerre et si triste et si longiie,
Peril- tant de Chretiens, martyrs d'uuc diphthoiKjue .'"

The determination of the controversy depended on the reten-
tion or rejection of the diphthong o<, or rather upon the change
of the letter o into i; and hence it has been asserted that for
centuries Christians fought like tigers, and tore each other to
pieces, on account of a single letter. It must be admitted, how-

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172

jrOBDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

ever, that the dispute, though it related to a mystery above
human comprehension, was something more than a verbal one ;
and though it is easy to ridicule " microscopic theology," yet it
is evident that if error employs it, truth must do the same, even
if the distinction be as small as the difference between two
animalcules fighting each other among a billion of fellows in a
drop of water.

Disraeli remarks, in his " Curiosities of Literature," that
there have been few councils or synods where the addition or
omission of a word or a phrase might not have terminated an
interminable logomachy. " At the Council of Basle, for the
convenience of the disputants, John de Secubia drew up a
treatise of undecUned tvurdSf chiefly to determine the signifi-
cations of the particles //YWi, by, hut, and except, which it seems
were perpetually occasioning fresh disputes among the Hussites
and Bohemians. . . In modern times the popes have more
skilfully freed the Church from this 'confusion of words.' His
H'v liness on one occasion, standing in equal terror of the Court
of France, who protected the Jesuits, and of the Court of Spain,
who maintained the cause of the Doniinicians, contrived a
phrase, where a comma or a full stop, placed at the beginning
or the end, purported that His Holiness tolerated the opinions
which he condemned ; and when the rival parties dispatched
deputations to the Court of Rome to plead for the period, or
advocate the comma. His Holiness, in this ' confusion of words,'
flung an unpunctuated copy to the parties ; nor was it his fault,
but that of the spirit of party, if the rage of the one could
not subside into a comma, nor that of the other close by a full
period!"

The art of treaty-making appears once to have consisted in a
kind of verbal sleight of hand ; and the most dexterous diplo-
matist was he who had always "an arrihre pensee, which might
fasten or loosen the ambiguous expression he had so cautiously
and so finely inlaid in his mosaic of treachery." When the
American Colonies refused to be taxed by Great Britain, on the
ground that they were not represented in the House of Com-
mons, a new term ^^ virtual representation," was invented to
silence their clamours. The sophism was an ingenious one ;
but it cost the mother country a hundred millions sterling,

THE FALLACIES IN^ WOIiDS.

173

)iuions
tched
iod, or
words,'
fault,
could
a full

d in a
diplo-
might
biously
len the
on the
' Corn-
ted to

forty thousand lives, and the most valuable of her colonial
possessions.

Hume's famous argument against miracles is based entirely
upon a, pi'titio jriinripii, or begging of the question, artfully con-
cealed in an ambiguous use of the word "experience." Jn all
our experience, he argues, we have never known the laws of na-
ture to be violated ; on the other hand, we have had experience,
again and again, of the falsity of testimony ; consequently we
ought to believe that any amount of testimony is false rather
than admit the occurrence of a miracle. But vhose experience
does Hume mean 1 Does he mean the experience of all the
men that ever lived ? Does he mean that a miracle is contrary
to the experience of each individual who has never seen one 1
This, as Whateiy shows in his " Logic," would lead to the ab-
surdest consequences. Not only was tlie King of Bantam justified
in listening to no evidence for the existence of ice, but no man
would be authorized, on this principle, to expect his own death.
His experience informs him directly, only that others have died ;
and, as he has invariably recovered from disease himself, why,
judging by his experience, should he expect any future sickness
to be mortal 1 If, again, Hume means oidy that a miracle is
contrary to the experience of men generalli/, as to what is com-
mon and of ordinary occurrence, the maxim will only amount
to this, that false testimony is a thing of common occurrence,
and that miracles are not. This is true enough ; but " too
general to authorize of itself a conclusion in any particular case.
In any other individual question as to the admissibility of evi-
dence, it would be reckoned absurd to consider merely the
average chances for the truth of testimony in the abstract, with-
out inquiring what the testimony is, in the particular instance
before us. As if, e. g., any one had maintained that no testi-
mony could establish Columbus's account of the discovery of
America, because it is more common for travellers to lie than
for new continents to be discovered."

Again, the terms "experience" and " contrary to experience,"
imply a contradiction fatal to the whole argument. It is clear
that a revelation cannot be founded, as regards the external
proof of its reality, upon anything else than miracles ; and these
events must be, in a sense, contrary to nature, by the very

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171

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

definition of the word. If tliey entered into the ordinary op^^r-
ations of nature, — that is, were subjects of experience, — they
would no longer be miracles.

In the very phrase " a violation of nature," so cunningly used
by sceptics, there hirks a sophism. The expression seems to
imply that they are effects that have no cause ; or, at least,
effects whose cause is foreign to the universe. But if miracles
disturb or interrupt the established order of things, they do so
only in the same way that the will of man continually breaks in
upon the order of nature. There is not a day, an hour, nor a
minute, in which man, in his contact with the material world,
does not divert its course, or give a new direction to its order.
The order of nature allows an apple-tree to produce fruit ; but
man can girdle the tree, and prevent it from bearing apples.
The order of nature allows a bird to wing its flight from tree
to tree ; but the sportsman's rifle ])rings tlie bird to the dust.
Yet, in spite of this, it is asserted that the smallest conceivable
intervention, disturbing the fated order of nature, linked as are
its parts intlissolubly from eternity in one chain, must break u|<
the entire system of tlie universe I " If only the free will ct
nn>n be acknowledgei!, then," as an able writer says, " this en-
tire sophism com's down in worthless fragments. So long as
we allow curselvec vo speak as theists, the.n miracles which we
attribute to the vhl, the imrpose, the iioit'P.r of God, are not in
any sense violations of nature ; or they are so in the same sense
in v\'liich the entireness of our huma:. existence, — our active
converse with the material world fr^m morning to night of
every day — is also a violation of nature."

A further and not less fatal objection to Hume's argument
is that it confounds the distincticni between testimony and au-
thority, V»etween the veracity of a witness and his competency,
Tlie miraculous character of an event is not a matter of intui-
tion or observation, but of inference, atid cannot be decided by
testimony, but only hy rea,soi,ing from the probabilities of the
crise. TIh^ testimony relates only to the fitippcaing of tlie event ;
the question concerning the naiura of this event, wiiether it is,
or is not, a violation of physical law, can only be determined by
the judg'nent, after weighing all the circumstuices of the jase.
No event whatever, viewed simply as an event, as an external

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

175

h we

lot in

sense

active

;ht of

iiment
lul au-
tency.
inUii-
n»l by
>f th'e
evcmt ;
r it is,
ned by
e 3ase.
Ltcrnal

phenomenon, can be so marvellous that sufficient testimony will
not convince ns that it has really occurred. A thousand years
ago the conversion of five loaves of bread into as many hun-
dred, or the raising of a dead man to life, would not have ap-
peared more incredible than the transmission of a written
message five thousand miles, without error, within a minute of
time, or from Europe to America, under the waters of the At-
lantic; yet these feats, miraculous as they would once have
seemed, have been accomplisl.ed by the electric telegraph.
Hume's argument against miracles, therefore, which is based
entirely uj)(>n an apj)eal to experience and testimony, without
reference to the competency of the conclusion t)r t the events
testified to were supernatural, is altogether inapplicable.*

Hume's argument reminds us of another verbal fallacy, —
that which lurks in the phra ) Lan- of Nature, which is some-
times used as if it were equiv^alent to r^icieni caiin'c There are
persons who attempt to account for the plienomena of the uni-
verse by the mere agency of physical laws, when there is no
such agency, except as a figure of speech. A " Law of Nature "
is only a general statement concerning ? large number of
simila- individudl facts, which it simply describes, but in no
way accounts for or explains. It is not the liaw of Gravitation
which cduaes a stone thrown into the air to fall to tlie earth ;
but the fact that the stone so falls, is classed with many other
fiets, which are comprehended under the general statement
called tiie Lav: of Gravitation. " Second causes," as physical
laws are sometimes called, " are no causes at all ; they are mere
fictions of the intellect, and exist only in thought. A ca.usc, in
the pro})er sense of the word, that is, an ifficicnt cause, as origi-
nal and direct in its action, must be a First cause, that through
which its action is transmitted is not a cause, but a portion of
the t'ljvct, — as it does not act but is acted upon '"

The changes of meaning which words un lergo in the lapse
of time, and the different senses in which the same word is
Used in different countries, are a fruitful source of misunder-
standing and orroi'. Hence in reading an old author it is
necessary to be corstantly on our guard lest our interpretations

I' .<■

* 3ee Bowen's " Logic," p, 432.

176

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

of his words involve a gross anachronism, because his " pure
ideas" have become our " mixed modes." The titles of
" tyrant," '* sophist," "parasite," were originally honourable dis-
tinctions; and to attach to them their modern significations
would give us wholly false ideas of ancient history. When
Bishop Watson, in defending Christianity and the JBible from
the attacks of Gibbon and Thomas Paine, entitled his books
"An Apology for Christianity" and "An Apology for the
Bible," he used the word "apology" in its primitive sense, and
was probably understood by many of his readers to be offering
an excimt for the faults of the Scriptures and of the Christian
system, instead of a vindication of their truth. When we find
an old English writer characterizing his opponent's argument
as impertinent, we are apt to attach to the word the idea of
insolence or rudeness ; whereas the meaning is simply 7Lot
pertinent to the question. So a magistrate who " indijf'erently
administers justice" meant formerly a magistrate who adminis-
tered justice impartially.

\\ ere we to use the word graritati'm in translating certain
passages of ancient authors, we should assert that the great
discovery of Newton had been anticipated by hundreds of
years, tiiough we know tlmt these authors had never dreamed
of the law which that word recalls to our minds. Most of the
terminology of the Christian church is made up of words that
once had a more general meaning. Bishop meant originally
Overseer ; Priest, or Presbyter, meant Elder ; Deacon meant
Administrator ; and Sacrament, a vow of allegiance. In read-
ing the history of France, an American or Englishman is con-
stantly in danger of misapprehension hy associating with
certain words common to the French and English languages
similar idea«. When hp reads of Parliaments or the JVohksse,
he is apt to suppose that they resembled the Parliaments and
Nobility of England, when their constitution was altogether
different.

Mr. J. S. Mill observes that historians, travellers, and all
who write or speak concerning moral and social phenomena
with which they are unacquainted, are apt to confound in
their descriptions things wholly diverse. Having but a
scanty vocabulary of words relating to such phenomena, and

THE FALLACIES TK WORDS.

177

never having analyzed the facts to which these words corres-
pond in their own country, they apply them to other facts to
which they are more or less inapphcable. Thus, as ve have
W^H\j briefly stated, the first English conquerors of Bengal
carried with them the phrase landed proprietor into a country
where the rights of individuals over the soil were extremely
different \n degree, and even in nature, from tliose recognised
in England. Applying the term with all its English associa-
ti<ins in such a state of things, — to one who had only a limited
riyht they gave au absolute right; from another, because he
liad not an absolute right, they took away all right ; drove
whole classes of men to ruin and despair ; filled the country
with banditti ; created a feeling that nothing was secure ; and
r«roduced, with the best intentions, a disorganization which
uad not been produced in that country by the most ruthless of
its barbarian invaders.*

How often, in reading ancient history, are we misled by the
application of modern terms to past institutions and events !
Guizot, in speaking of the tov/ns of Europe between the fifth
and tenth centuries, cautions his readers against concluding
that their state was one either of positive servitude or of posi-
tive freedom. He observes that when a society and its
language have lasted a considerable time, its words acquire a
complete, determinate, and precise meaning, — a kind of le^^al
official signification. Time has introduced into the signification
of every term a thousand ideas, which are suggested to us
every time we hear it pronounced, but which, as they do not
all bear the same date, are not all suitable at the same time.
Thus the terra " servitude" and " freedom" recall to our minds
ideas far more precise and definite than the facts of the eighth,
ninth, or tenth centuries, to which they relate. Whether we
say that the towns in the ei;,ditii century were in a state of
" freedom" or in a state of "servitude," we say, in either case,
too much ; for they were a prey to the rapacity of the strong,
and yet maintained a certain degree of independence and
importance.

So, again, as the same writer shows, the term " civilization,"

V Logic," Book TV., Chai). 'y.

m '}

^«

' ' . >■{

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178

IVORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

Mil

comprises more or fewer ideas, according to the sense, popular
or scientific, in which it is used. " The popular signification of
a word is formed by degrees, and while all the facts it repre-
sents are present. As often as a fact comes before us which
seems to answer to the signification of a known term, this term
is naturally applied to it, and thus its signification goes on
broadening and deepening, till, at last, all the various facts and
ideas which, from the nature of things, ought to be brought to-
gether and embodied in the term, are collected and embodied
in it. When, on the contrary, the signification of a word is
determined by science, it is usually done by one or a very few
individuals, who, at the time, are under the influence of some
particular fact, which has taken possession of their imagination.
Thus it cemes to pass that scientific definitions are, in general,
much narrower, and, on that very account, much less correct,
than the popular significations given to words."

It is this continual incorporation of new facts and ideas, —
circumstances originally accidental, — into the permanent signi-
fications of words, which makes the dictionary definition of a
word so poor an exponent of its real meaning. For a time this
definition suffices ; but in the lapse of time many nice distinc-
tions and subtle shades of meaning adhere to the word, which
whoever attempts to use it with no other guide than the dic-
tionary is sure to confound. Hence the ludicrous blunders made
by foreigners, whose knowledge of a language is gained only
from books ; and hence the reason why, in any language, there
are so few exact synonymes.

How many persons who oppose compulsory education have
been frightened by the word "compulsory," attaching to it
ideas of tyranny and degradation ! How many persons are
there in every community, who, in the language of Milton,

' ' Bawl for freedom in their senseless mood ,
And still revolt when truth would make them free ;
License they mean when they (uy libertii,
For who love that, must first be wise and good."

Who can estimate the amount of mischief which has been done
to society by such phrases as " Liberty, Equality and Frater-
nity," and other such " rabble-charming words," as South calls

THE FALLACIES IiV WORDS.

170

them, " which have so much wildfire wrapped up in them ? "
How many persons who declaim passionately about '* the ma-
jesty of the people," *' the sovereignty of the people," have ever
formed for themselves any definite conceptions of what they
mean by these expressions 1 Locke has well said of those who
have the words " Wisdom," " Glory," '*Grace,"constantly at their
tongue's end, that if they should be asked what they mean by
them, they would be at a stand and know not what to answer.^
Even Locke himself, who has written so ably on the abuse of
words, has used some of the cardinal and vital terms in his
philosophy in different senses. La Ilarpesays that the express
object of the entire " Essay on the Human Understanding " is
to demonstrate rigorously that I'mtendement est esprit et d'tine
nature essentiellemmt distinde de la matiere; yet the a>ithor has
used the words reflection, mind, sjnrit, so vaguely that he has
been accused of holding doctrines subversive of all moral dis-
tinctions. Even the eagle eye of Newton could not penetrate
the obscurity of Locke's language, on reading the " Essay " he
took its author for a Hobbist. De Maistre declar«'S the title
a misnomer ; instead of being called an " Essay on the Human
Understanding," it should be entitled, he thinks, an " Essay on
the understanding of Locke."

In treating of the diff'erence between the disgraceful and the
indecent, Archbishop Whately observes that the Greeks and
Romans, unfortunately, had not, like ourselves, a separate word
for each ; turpe and ato-^po? served to express both. Upon this
ambiguity some of the ancient philosophers, especially the
Cynics, founded paradoxes, by which they bewildered them-
selves and their hearers. It is an interesting fact that the
•Saxon part of our language, containing a smaller percentage ot
synonymous words that are liable to i)e confounded, is much
freer from equivocation than the Romanic. Of four huiulred
and fifty words discriminated by Whately, in his treatise on
synonynies, less than ninety are Anglo-Saxon. On tlie other
hand, it has been noted by the same writer that the double
origin of our language, from Saxon and Norman, often enables
a sophist to seem to render a reason, when he is only repenting
the assertion in synonymous words of a different family : e. g.,
'* To allow every man an unbounded freedom of speech, must

III!

It V

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iM*i

180

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

i»

be always on the whole highly advantageous to the State ; for,
it is extremely conducive to the interests of the community
that each individual should enjoy a liberty perfectly unlimited
of expressing liis sentiments." So the physician in Moliere
accounted for opium producing sleep by saying that it had a
soporific virtue. Again there is a large class of words employed
indiscriminately, neither because they express precisely the
same ideas, nor because they enable the sophist to confound
things that are es£>entially different, but because they convey
no distinct ideas, whatever, except of the moral character of
him who uses them. " II m'appelle," says Paul Louis Courier,
speaking of an opponent, " jacobin, r^volutionnaire, plagiaire,
voleur, empoisonneur, faussaire, pestifere ou pestift^re, enrage,
imposteur, calomniateur, libelliste, homme horrible, ordurier,
grimacier, cliilFonnier, . . Je vois ce qu'il veut dire ; il entend
que lui et moi sommes d'avis different."

It is an old trick of controversialists, of which we have al-
ready spoken, to employ "question begging" words that de-
termine disputes summarily without facts or arguments. Thus
political parties and religious sects quicHJy beg the (juestions at
issue between them by dubbing themselves 'Hhe Democrats"
and " the Republicans," or " the Orthodox " and the " Liber-
als ;" though the orthodoxy of the one may consist only in op-
position to somebody else's doxy, and the liberality of the other
may differ from bigotry only in the fact that the bigots are
liberal only to one set of opinions, while the liberals are bigoted
against all. So with the argument of what is called the Selfish
School of Moral Philosophers, who deny that man ever acts
from purely disinterested motives. The whole superstruc-
ture of their deirrading tiieory rests upon a confounding of
of the term self-love with fitlfishncsfi. If I go out to walk, and,
being overtaken ])y a shower, spread my uml>rella to save my-
self from a wetting, never once, all the while, thinking of my
friendr;, my country, or of anybody, in sliort, but mys^^lf, will
it be pretended that this act, ihougii performed exclusively for
self, was in any sense selfish 1 As well nii^ht you say that the
cultivation of an art makes a man artful . tiiat one who gets his
living by any rraft is necessarily a crafti/ man ; that a man
skilled iu design is a deshjning man ; or that a man who forms

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS,

181

^PH

Ifl!

\-i'V

di project is therefore a projector. Derivatives do not always re-
tain the force of their piiniitives. Wearing woollen clothes
does not make a man sheepish. A representative does not, and
ought not, always to represent the will of his constituents,
(that is, in the sense of voting as they wish, or being their
mere spokeainav) ; for they may clamour for measures opposed
to the Constitution, which he has sworn to support. Self-love,
in the highest degree, implies no disregard of the rights of
others : whereas Selfishness is alvvavs sacrificing others to it-
self, — it contains the germ of .every crime, and fires its neigh-
bour's house to roast its own eggs.

"What towering structures of fallacy conservatives have built
upon the twofold meaning of the word old ! Strictly, it
denotes the lengtlt of time that any object has existed ; but it is
often employed, instead of " ancient," to denote distance of
time. Because old men are generally the wisest and most ex-
perienced, opinions and practices handed down to us from the
" old times " of ignorance and superstition, when the world
was comparatively in its youth, it is thought, must be entitled
to the highest respect. The truth is, as Sydney Smith says,
" of living men the oldest has, ceteris paribus, the most experi-
ence ; of generations, the oldest has the least experience. Our
ancestors, up to the Conquest, were children in arms ; chubby
boys in the time of Edward the First ; striplings under Eliza-
beth ; men in the reign of Queen Anne ; and we only are the
white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up,
and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which human
life can supply." Again : how many tedious books, pamphlets,
and newspaper articles have been written to prove that educa-
tion should consist of mental discipline, — founded on an erron-
eous derivation of the word from edwere, — "to draw out."
Does education, it is asked, consist in filling the child's mind
as a cistern is filled with water brought in buckets from some
other sources, or in the opening up of its own fountains % The
fact is education conies not from (duccrc, but from cdaaire, which
means " to nourish," "to foster," to do just what the nurse
does. Educit obMetrix, says Cicero, educit niUrlx, inditult pmda-
fjomis. It is foo«l, above all things, which the growing mind
craves ; and the mind's food is knowledge. Discipline, training,

iiil!

182

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

i I

healthful development is, indeed, necessary, but it should form
a part only, not usurp the lion's share, of education. In an ideal
system this and the nourishing of the mind by wholesome
knowledge would proceed simultaneously. The school lesson
would feed the mind, while the thorough, patient, and con-
scientious acquisition of it would gymnaze the intellect and
(Strengthen the moral force. Whv have one class of studies for
discipline only, and another class for nourishment only, when
there are studies which at once fill the mind with the materials
of thinking and develop the power of thought — which, at the
same time, impart useful knowledge, and atlord an intellectual
gymnastic ? Is a merchant, whose business compels him to
walk a dozen miles a day, to be told that he must walk another
dozen for the sake of exercise, and for that alone ? Yet not
less preposterous, it seems to us, is the reasoning of a class of
educators who would range on one side the practically useful,
and on the other the educational, and build high between them
a partition wall.

If a man by mastering Chillingworth, learns how to reason
logically at the same time that he learns the principles of Pro-
testantism, must he study logic in Whately or Jevens ? One
of the disadvantages of an education of which discipline, pure
and simple, is made the end, is that the discipline, being dis'
agreeable, too often ends with the school days ; whereas the
discipline gained agreeably, instead of being associated with
disgust, would be continued through life. It is possible that
the muscular discipline which the gymnasium gives is greater
while it lasts than that which is gained by a blacksmith or
other labourer in his daily work ; but whose muscles are more
developed, the man's who practises a few months or years in
a gymnasium, or the man whose calling compels him to use
his muscles all his life 1 What would the graduate of a gym-
nasium do if hugged by a London coal-heaver ?

Again the readers of Macaulay's " History of England " will
recollect the hot and long-protracted debates in Parliament
in 169(5, upon the question whether James 11. had " abdicated "
or " deserted " the Crown, — the Lords insisting upon the for-
mer, the Commons upon the latter, term. He will also recall
the eloquent and fierce debate by the Lords upon the motion

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

183

that they should subscribe an instrument that the Commons
had subscribed, recognising William as " rightful and lawful
king of England." This they refused to do, but voted to
declare that he had the right by law to the English crown,
and that no other person had any right to that crown. The
distinction between the two propositions, observes Macaulay,
a Whig, may, without any painful sense of shame, acknow-
ledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to be
discussed by High Churchmen. The distinction between " abdi-
cate" and "desert," however, is an important one, obvious
almost at a glance. Had Parliament declared that James had
" deserted " the throne, they would have admitted that it was
not only his right, but his duty to return, as in the case of
a husband who had deserted his wife, or a soldier who had
deserted his post. By declaring that he had " abdicated " the
throne, they virtually asserted that he had voluntarily relin-
quished the crown, and forfeited all right to it forever.

Among the ambiguous words which at this day lead to con-
fusion of thought, one of the most prominent is the word
unity. There are not a few Christians who confound what the
Apostles say, concerning " unity of spirit," faith, etc., with
unity of church government, and infer, because the Church —
that is the church universal — is owe, as having one common
Head, one Spirit, one Father, it must therefore, be one as a
society. " Church unity " is a good thing, so long as it does
not involve the sacrifice of a denomination's life or principles ;
but there are cases where it amounts to absorption. It some-
times resembles too closely that union which the boa constrictor
is fond of consummating between itself and the goat. It is
exceedingly fond of goats ; but when the union is complete
there is not a trace of the goat, — it is all boa-constrictor.

Again, how many systems of error in metaphysics and ethics
have been based upon the etymologies of words, the sophist as-
suming that the meaning of a word must always be that which
it, or its root, originally bore ! Thus Home Tooke tries to
prov<^ by a wide induction that since all particles — that is, ad-
verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions — were originally nouns
and verbs, they must be so still ; a species of logic which would
prove that man, if the Darwinian theory be true, is still a rep-

I i'

\ 15

; 1: 4; t!

■ %

i '1h

i^ ,1

184

WORDS: TllEIlt USE AND ABUSE.

tile. In a similar way the same writer has reached the conclu-
sion that there is no eternal truth, since truth, according to its
etymology, is simply what one " troweth," that is what one
thinks or believes. This theory, it is thought, was suggested
to Tooke by a conjecture tliat " if" is equivalent to " git','' an
imperative of the verb " to give"; but as it has been shown,
from conjugate forms in other languages, that this particle has
no connection with the verb " to give," or any other verb,
"any system founded on this basis is a mere castle in the air."
Truth, argues Tooke, supposes mankind ; for whom, and hij
whom alone the word is formed, and to whom alone it is ap-
plicable. " If no man, then no truth. There is no such thing
as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, such
as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlast-
ing. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both
speak truth, for the truth of one person may be opposite to the
truth of the other."

Even if we admit this derivation of " truth," the conclusion
does not follow ; for whatever the word once meant, it now
means that which is certain, whether we think it or not. But^
this etymology has been disputed by the very highest authority.
According to Mr. Garnett, an acute English philologist, " truth "
is derived " from the Sanscrit dhru, to be established, — Jixum
esse ; whence dhruwa, certain, i. e. established ; German, trauen,
to rely, trust ; treu faithful, true ; Anglo-Saxon, treow-iveovfth.
{fides) ; English, true, truth. To these we may add Gothic,
triggons ; Icelandic, trygge ; (fidus, securus, tutus) : all from
the same root, and all conveying the same idea of stability or
security. Truth, therefore, neither means what is thought nor
what is said, but that which is permanent, stable, and is and
ought to be relied upon, because, upon sufficient data, it is cap-
able of being demonstrated or shown to exist. If we admit
this explanation, Tooke's assertions . . . become Fox et preierea
nihil."

Some years ago a bulky volume of seven hundred pages oc-
tavo was written by Dr. Johnson, a London physician, to prove
that "might makes right.' — that justice is the result, not of
divine instinct, but purely and simply of arbitrary decree. The
foundation for this eo[ually fallacious and dangerous theory was

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

185

I'-

ses oc-

prove

not of

The

ry was

the fact that " right " is derived from the Latin, rego, to rule ;
therefore whatever the rex or ruler, authorizes or decrees, is
right ! As well might he argue that only courtiers can be
polite, because " courtesy " is borrowed from palaces, or that
there can be no " heaven " or " hell " in the scriptural sense
because it is etymological, the one is the canopy heaved over
our heads, and the other is the hoUoio space beneath our feet.
Indeed, we have seen an argument, founded on the etymology
of the latter word, to prove that there is no " hell beyond a
hole in the ground." In the same way because our primitive
vocabulary is derived solely from sensible images, it has been
assumed that the mind has no ideas except those derived
through the senses, and that therefore thought is only sensation.
But neither idealism nor materialism can derive any support
from the phenomena of language, for the names we give either
to outward objects or to our conceptions of immaterial entities
can give us no conception of the things themselves. It is true
that in every-day language we talk of colour, smell, thickness,
shape, etc., not only as sensations within us, but as qualities
inherent in the things themselves ; but it has long liince been
shown that they are only modifications of our consciousness.
'' Things and the senses can no more transmit cognitions to the
mind, than a man can transmit to a beggar a guin«a that he
has not got." If, then, our conception of an object in no way
resembles the object — if heat, for example, can be, in no sense,
like a live coal, nor pain like the pricking of a pin — much less
can the word by which we denote an object be other than a
mere hieroglyphic, or teach us a jot or tittle about the world of
sense or thought. Again : the fact that spirit once signified
breath, and animus, ave/xos, air, lends no countenance to mater-
ialism. " When we impose on a phenomenon of the physical
order a moral denomination, we do not thereby spiritualize
matter ; and because we assign a physical denomination to a
moral phenomenon, we do not materialize spirit." Even if the
words by which we designate mental conceptions are derived
from material analogies, it does not follow that our conceptions
were themselves originally material ; and we shall in vain try to
account by any external sourco for the relations of words among
themselves. It is told of the metaphysician, Cudworth, that,
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trORDS: THETR USE AND ABUSE.

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in reply to a person who ridiculed the doctrine of innate ideas,
he told him to take down the first book that came to hand in his
library, open at random, and read. The latter opened Cicero's
"Offices," and began reading the first sentence, " Quamquam — "
" Stop ! " cried Cudworth, " it is enough. Tell me how through
the senses you acquire the idea of quamquam."

Jt is a mistake to suppose that a language is no more than a
mere collection of words. The terms we employ are symbols
only, which can never fully express our thought, but shadow
forth far more than it is in their power distinctly to impart.
Lastly, there are in every language, as another has truly said,
a vast number of words, such as sacrifice, sacrament, mystery,
eternity, which may be explained by the idea, though the idea
cannot be discovered by the word, as is the case with whatever
belongs to the mystery of the mind ; and thisof itself is enough
to disprove the conclusion which nominalists would draw from
the origin of words, and to prove that, whatever the derivation
of " truth," its etymology can establish nothing concerning its
es8» nee, and that we are still at liberty to regard it as indepen-
dent, immutable, and eternal, having its archetype in the Divine
mind.

Among the terms used in literary criticism, few are more
loosely em^)loyed than the word creative, as applied to men of
genius. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, are said to have "creative
power ;" and, as a figure of speech, the remark is true enough ,
hut strictly speaking, only ()mnipotence can create ; man can
only combine. The exhaustless imagination of Raphael could
fill his gallery with fantastic representations, but every piece of
which his paintings are composed exists in nature. To make a
modern statue there is a great melting down of old bronze.
The essence of the originality is not that it creates new material,
or even necessarily invents new combinations of material,
but that it imparts new life to whatever it discovers or com-
bines, whether of new or old. Shakespeare's genius is at no
other time so incontestably sovereign as wh«^n he borrows most,
when he adapts or moulds, — in a manner so perfect as to re-
semble a new creation, — the old chronicles and " Italian origin-
als," which have been awaiting the vivida vis that makes them
live and move. Non nova, sed nori, sums up the whole philoso-

fJTE FALTACIES IN WORDS.

18;

1 in his
;!icero'8
jm —
lirough

than a
ymbols
shadow
impart,
ly said,
tysteryy
,he idea
hatever
enough
]yf from
rivation
ning its
ndepen-
Divine

phy of the subject. *' Originality," says an able writer, " never
works more fruitfully than in a soil rich and deep with the
foliage of ages."

The word .same is often used in a way that leads to error
Persons say the same, when they mean similar. It has been
asked whether the ship Argo, in which Jason sought the Golden
Fleece, and whose decaying timbers, as she lay on the Greek
shore, a grateful and reverent nation had patched up, till, in
process of time, not a plank of the, original ship was left, — was
still the same ship as of old. The question presents no difficulty,
if we remember that sameness, that is, identity, is an absolute
term, and can be affirmed or denied only in an absolute sense.
No man is the same man to-day that he was yesterday, though
he may be very similar to his yesterday's self.

re more
men of
creative
nough ,
Inan can

could
piece of
make a
bronze,
naterial,
nateria!,
or com-

at no
rtrs most,
kS to re-
11 origin-
es them
philosQ-

188

jrORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSS.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FALLACIES IN \\o\\m—{conlimie(i).

■A rA

I never learned rhetorike certain ;

Thinys that I spake, it mote be bare and plain. — Chaucer.

Here la onr great infelicity, that, wlien single words signify complex
ideas, one word can never distinctly manifest all the parts of a complex iilea.
— I»AAC Watts.

niceties

If reputation attend these contjuests which depenc
ties of words, it is no wonder if the wit of men so c

plex and subtilize the signihcation of sounds. - Locke.

il on the fineness and
enijiloyed should ptr-

Qbi

|T has been remarked by Archbishop Whately that "the
words whose ambiguity is the most frequently over-
looked, and produces the greatest amount of confusion
of thought and fallacy are the commonest," — the very ones
whose meaning is supposed to bo best understood. " Familiar
acquaintance is perpetually mistaken for accurate knowledge."
Such a word is luxury.

A favourite theme for newspaper declamations in these days
is the luxury and extravagance of the American people, especi-
ally of the nouveaax riches whose fortunes have been of mushroom
growth. It is easy to declaim thus against luxury, — that is,
against the use of things which, at any particular period, are
not deemed indispensable to life, health, and comfort; but what
do those who indulge in this cheap denunciation mean by the
term ] Is not luxury a purely relatice term 1 Is there a single
article of dress, food or furniture which can be pronounced an
absolute luxury, without regard to the wealth or poverty of him
who enjoys it ] Are not the luxuries of one generation or
coun.ry the necessaries of another ] Persons who are familiar
with history know that Alfred the Great had not a chair to sit
down upon, nor a chimney to carry oflf his smoke ; that William
the Conqueror was unacquainted with the mxury of a feather

' CDinplex
plex idea.

eness and
liould i>ti-

at "the
y over-
anfiision
ry ones
amiliar
vleiige."

ese days

especi-

shroom

that is,

iod, are

)Ut what

ti by the

a single

need ail

of him
ation or
familiar
lir to sit
William

feather

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

180

bed, if it can be called one ; that the early aristocracy of Eng-
land lived on the ground-floor, without drainage ; that in the
Middle Ages shirts were deemed a useless superfluity, and men
were even put in the pillory for wearing them ; that night
shirts were esteemed a still more needless luxury, and persons
of all ranks and classes slept in the first costume of Adam ;
that travelling carriages are an ingenious invention of modern
effeminacy ; that the men who first carried umbrellas in the
streets, even in the severest rain-stOrms, were hooted at as dan-
dies and coxcombs ; that the nobles and dames of the most
brilliant epochs of England's annals ate with their fingers, gen-
erally in couples, out of one trencher on a bare table ; and that
when forks were introduced, they were long hotly opposed as
an extravagance, and even deiiounced by many as a device of
Satan, to offer an affront to Providence, who had provided man
with fingers to convey his food to his mouth. In the intro-
duction to Hollinshed's *' Chronicles," published in 1577, there
is a bitter complaint of the multitude of chimneys lately
erected, of the exchange of straw pallets for mattrasses or flock
beds, and of wooden platters for earthenware and pewter. In
another place, the writer laments that oak only is used for build-
ing, instead of willow as heretofore: adding, that "formerly
our houses indeed were of willow, but our men were of oak ; but
now t'lat our houses are of oak, our men are not only of willow,
but some altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration."

Erasmus tells us that salt beef and strong ale constituted the
chief part of Queen Elizabeth's breakfast, and that similar re-
freshments were served to her in bed for supper. There is not
a single able-bodied workingman in Chicago who does not enjoy
fare which would have been deemed luxurious by mtn of high
station in the iron reign of the Tudors ; hardly a thriving shop-
keeper who does not occupy a house which English nobles in
lGf)0 would have envied ; hardly a domestic servant or factory
girl who does not on Sundays adcrn herself with apparel which
wxiuld have excited the admiration of the duchesses in Queen
P^lizabeth's ante-rooms. Xenojjhcn accounts for the degeneracy
of the Persians by their luxury, which, he says, was carried to
such a pitch that they used gloves to protect their hands. Tea
and coffee were once denounced as idle and injurious luxuries ;

■l\\

ill

190

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

and throughout the larger part of the world tooth-brushes, nap-
kins, suspenders, bathing-tubs, and a hundred other things now
deemed indispensable to the health or comfort of civilized man,
would be regarded as proofs of effeminacy and extravagance.

Luxury has been a favourite theme of satire and denuncia-
tion by poets and moralists from time immemorial. But it
may be doubted whether in nations or individuals its effects,
even when it rages most fiercely, are half so pernicious as those
springing from that indifference to comforts and luxuries which
is sometimes dignified with tlie name of contentment, but
which is only another name for sheer laziness. While thou-
sands are ruined by prodigality and extravagance, tens of
thousands are kept in poverty by indifference te the comforts
and ornaments of life, — by a too feeble development of those
desires to gratify which the mass of men are striving. It is a
bad sign when a man is content with tlie bare necessaries of
life, and aspiring to nothing higher ; and equally ominous is it
when a nation, however rich or powerful, is satisfied with the
capital and glories it has already accumulated. Cry up as we
may the virtues of simplicity and frugality, it is yet quite cer-
tain that a people content to live upon garlic, macaroni, or rice,
are at the very lowest point in the scale both of intellect and
morality. A civilized man differs from a savage principally in
the multiplicity of his wants. The truth is, man is a constitu-
tionally lazy being, and requires some stimulus to prick him
into industry. He must have many difficulties to contend with,
— many clamorous appetites and tastes to gratify, — if you
would bring out his energies and virtues ; and it is because they
are always grumbling, — because, dissatisfied amid the most en-
viable enjoyments, they clamour and strive for more and more
of what Voltaire calls ks sttperflues choseSyni necessaires, — that the
English people have reached their present pinnacle of prosi)erity,
and accumulated a wealth which almost enables them to defy
a hostile world.

Among the familiar words that we employ few have been
more frequently made the instrument of sophistry than nature
and art. There are many persons who oppose the teaching of
elocution, because they like a natural and artless eloquence, to
)vhich, they thiuk, all elaborate training is opposed. Yet

es, nap-
igs now
eil mau,
^ance.
iimncia-
But it
5 effects,
as those
BS which
iiit, but
lie thou-
tens of
comforts
of those
It is a
saries of
nous is it
with the
up as we
^uite cer-
, or rice,
lect and
ipally in
constitu-
rick him
jud with,
— if you
ause they
most en-
uid more
-tljat the
■osperity,
n to defy

ave been
au nature
aching of
uence, to
led. Yet

nothing is more certain than that Nature and Art, between
which there is supposed to be an irreconcilable antagonism, are
uften the very same thing. What is more natural than that a
man who lacks vocal power should cultivate and develop his
voice by vocal exercises ; or that, if he is conscious of faults in
hi« manner of speaking — his articulation, gestures, etc. — he
should try, by the help of a good teacher, to overcome them I
So with the style of a writer ; what is more natural than for
one who feels that he has not adequately expressed his thought,
to blot the words first suggested and try others, and yet others,
till he despairs of further improvement ? A conscientious
writer is continually transposing clauses, reconstructing sen-
tences, substituting words, polishing and repolishing para-
graphs ; and this, unquestionably is art, or the application of
means to an end. But is this art inconsistent with nature 1

Similar to the fallacy which lurks in the words " nature" and
" natural," as thus employed, is that which lurks in a popular
use of the word simplicity. It has been happily said that while
some men talk as if to speak naturally were to speak like a
Natural, others talk as if to speak with simplicity meant to
speak like a simpleton. But what is true " simplicity," as
applied to literary composition 1 Is it old, worn-out common-
place — " straw that has been thrashed a hundred times without
wiieat," as Carlyle says — the shallowest ideas expressed in tame
and insipid language ] Or is it not rather

'* Nature to advantage dreHsed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er ho well expressed,"

— in other words, a just and striking thought expressed in the
aptest and most impressive language 'i Those persons who de-
claim against the employment of art in speaking and writing,
forget that we are all exceedingly artificial, conventional beings.
Without training, a speaker is almost sure to be awkward in
gesture and unnatural in utterance. The very preacher who in
the street forgets himself and uses the most natural gesticu-
lation and tones, will become self-conscious the moment he
ascends the pulpit, and speak in a falsetto key. It is to get
rid of these artificial habits that art (which is the employment
of proper means) is needed.

ri f

< (I

192

WORDS- THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

How many controversies about the "transmutation of
Species,^' and the "Jiaiti/ of Species ^^ would have been avoided,
had the scientists who use these phrases fully pondered their
meaning, or rather no-meaning ! Some writers have tried to
explain the law of constancy in transmission, and its indepen-
dence of the law of variation, by maintaining that it is the
Species only, not the Individual, which is reproduced.
" Species," says Buffon, "are the only beings in nature." A
sheep, it is said, is always and everywhere a sheep, and a man
a man, reproducing the specific type, but not necessarily repro-
ducing any individual peculiaiities. This hypothesis is a
striking example of the confusion which results from the intro-
duction of old metaphysical ideas into science. It is evident,
as a late writer has clearly shown, that Species cannot repro-
duce itself, for Species does not exist. It is an entity, an
abstract idea, not a concrete fact.

The thing Species no more exists than the thing Goodness
or the thing Whiteness. " Nature only knows individuals.
A collection of individuals so closely resembling each other as
all sheep resemble each other, are conveniently classed under
one general term. Species ; but this general term has no
objective existence ; the abstract or typical sheep, apart from
all concrete individuals, has no existence out of our systems.
Whenever an individual sheep is born, it is the offspring of
two individual sheep, whose structures and dispositions it
reproduces ; it is not the offspring of an abstract idea ; it does
not come into being at the bidding of a type, which, as a
Species, sits apart, regulating ovine phenomena. . . If, there-
fore, * transmutation of Species' is absurd, * fixity of Species' is
not a whit less so. That which does not exist can neither be
transmuted nor maintained in fixity. Only individuals exist ;
they resemble their parents, and they differ from their parents.
Out of these resemblances we create Species j out of these
differences we create Varieties ; we do so as conveniences of
classification, and then believe in the reality of our own
figments."*

A popular fallacy, which is partly verbal, is the notion, so

'* Westminster Review," September, 1856.

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

193

tions it
it does
b, as a

there-
ecies' is
ther be

exist ;
arents.
■ these
inces of

bion, so

tenaciously held by many, that exposure to hardship, and even
want, in youth, is the cause of the bodily vigour of those men
who have lived to a good age in countries with a rocky soil
and a bleak climate. What is more natural, it is argued, than
that hanhhipa should harden the constitution ] Look at the
Indians ; how many of them live till eighty or ninety ! Yet
no person who reasons thus would think, if engaged in cattle-
breeding, of neglecting to feed and shelter his animals in their
youth ; nor if a dozen men, out oC a hundred who had faced a
battery, should survive and live to a good age, would he think
of regarding the facing of batteries as conducive to longevity.
Tl:e truth is, that early hardships, by destroying all the weak,
merely prove the hardiness of the survivors — which latter is
the cause, not the effect, of their having lived through such a
training. So " loading a gun-barrel to the muzzle, and firing
it oft", does not give it strength ; though it proves, if it escape,
that it was strong."

The revelations of travellers have dissipated the illusions
which once prevailed concerning the hardiness and health of
the Indians and other savages. The savage, it is nov/ known,
lives in a condition but one degree above starvation. If he
sinks below it, he disappears instantaneously, as if he had
never been. A certain amount of hardship he can endure ;
but it has limits, which if he passes, he sinks unnoticed and
unknown. There is no registrar or newspaper to record that
a unit has been subtracted from the amount of human exis-
tence. It is true that severe diseases are rarely seen by casual
visitors of savage tribes, — and why 1 Because death is their
doctor, and the grave their hospital. When patients are left
wholly to nature, nature presses very hard for an immediate
payment of her debt.

An ambiguous word, which has been a .source of not a little
error, is the adjective light, which^is used sometimes in a literal,
sometimes in a figurative, sense. When writers on Agricultural
Chemistry declare that what are called heari/ soils are always
.specifically the lightest, the statement looks like a paradox.
By " heavy " soils are meant, of course, not those which are
the weightiest, but those which are ploughed with difficulty, —
the effect being like that of dragging a heavy weight. So some

I|i

194

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

articles of food are supposed to be Uyht of digestion because they
are specijiralli/ Uyht. Again, there is a popular notion that
strong drink must make men stiong ; which is a double fallacy,
since the word " strong " is applied to alcoholic liquors and to
the human body in entirely different senses, and it is assumed
that an effect must be like its cause, which is not true.

Another ambiguous terra, at least as popularly used, is
murder. There are persons who assert that the coup d'dat of
Louis Napoleon, in 1851, was murder in the strictest sense of
the term. To send out into the streets of a peaceful town a
party of men dressed in uniform, with muskets and bayonets in
their hands, and with orders to kill and plunder, is just as es-
sentially murder and robbery, it is said, as to break into a
house with half-a-dozen companions out of uniform, and do the
same things. Was not Orsini's crime, they ask, as truly a
murder as when a burglar kills a man with a revolver in order
to rob him ? So, again, there are Christian moralists, who,
when asked for proof that suicide is sinful, adduce the Scriptu-
ral injunction, " Thou shalt do no murder," assuming that
suicide, because it is called seU-murder, is a species of murder in
the primary sense of the word. It is evident, however, that
most, if not all, of these assertions are founded on palpable
fallacies. " Murder " is a technical term, and means the wil-
ful, deliberate killing, without just cause, and without certain
specified excuses, of a man who belongs to a settled state of
society, in which security is afibrded to life and property. In
all that is said about the atrocity of murder, there is a latent
reference to this dtate of things. Were the " Vigilance Com-
mittee " of San Francisco murderers, when they executed
criminals illegally 1 Are the men who ** lynch " horse-thieves
on our western frontiers, murderers 1 Were the rebels who,
in our late Civil War, shot down Union soldiers, murderers ]

The common sentiment of the civilized world recognizes a
vast difference between the rights and duties of sovereign and
subjects, and the relations of nations to each other, on the one
hand, and the rights and duties of private individuals on the
other ; and hence the rules of public and those of private
morality must be essentially different. According to legal au-
thority, it is not murder to kill an alien enemy in time of war ;

■*1!

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

195

use they
ion that
1 fallacy,
» and to
Ei8sumed

used, is
d'diit of
sense of
I town a
'onets in
ist as es-
k into a
d do the
1 truly a
in order
sts, who,
Scriptu-
ing that
lurder in
ver, that
palpable
the wil-
> certain
state of
rty. In
a latent
ce Com-
jxecuted
j-thieves
els who,
erers ?
gnizes a
sign and
the one
s on the
private
legal au-
of war :

nor is it murder to take a man's life by perjury. Kevolutions
and "coups d'6tat " most persons will admit to be sometimes
justifiable; and both, when justifiable, justify a certain degree
of violence to person, to property, or to previous engagements.
The diflficulty is to tell just when, and how far, violence may
justify and be justified. It has been well said by an acute and
original writer that '* it is by no means the same thing whether
a man is plundered and wounded by burglars, or by the soldiers
of an absolute king who is trying to maintain his authority.
The sack of Perugia shocked the sensibilities of a great part of
Europe ; but, if the Poi)e had privately poisoned one of his
friends or servants from any purely personal motive, even the
blindest religious isenl would have denounced him as a criminal
unfit to live. A man must be a very bitter Liberal indeed,
who really maintains that the violation by a Sovereign of his
promissory oath of office stands on precisely the same footing
as deliberate perjury in an ordinary court of justice. Suicide,
it is evident, lacks the most essential characteristic of murder,
namely, its inhumanity, — the injury done to one's n(;ighbour,
and to others, by the ittsecurity they are made to feel. Can a
man rob himself ] If not, how can he, in the proper sense of
the word, murder himself ?

There is hardly any word which is oftener turned into an
instrument of the fallacy of ambiguity than theory. There is
a class of men in every community of limited education and
narrow observation, who, because they have mingled in the
world and dealt with affairs, claim to be preeminently practical
men, and ridicule the opinions of thinkers in their closets as
the speculations of " mere theorists" In their estimation all
theorizing is synonymous with visionary speculation ; while
that which they call " practical knowledge,'" and which they
fancy to be wholly devoid of supposition or guesswork, but
which is nothing else than a heap of hasty deductions from
scanty and inaccurately observed phenomena, they deem more
trustworthy than the discoveries of science an<l the conclusions
of reason. Yet, when correctly defined, this very practical
knowledge, so boastfully opposed to theory, in reality presup-
poses it. True practical knowledge is simply a ready discern-
ment of the proper modes and seasons of applying to the com-

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

mon affairs of life those general truths and principles which
are deduced from an extensive and accurate observation of
facts, by minds stored with various knowledge, accustomed to
investigation, and trained to the art of reasoning ; or, in other
words, by theorists. Every man who attempts to trace the
causes or effects of an occurrence that falls under his personal
observation, theorizes. The only essential distinction, in most
cases, between " practical " men and those whom they de-
nounce as visionary, is, not that the latter alone indulge in
speculation, but that the theories of the former are based on
the facts of their own experience, — those that happen within
a narrow sphere, and in a single age ; while the conclusions of
the latter are deduced from the fads of all ages and countries,
minutely analyzed and compared.

Thus the " practical " farmer does not hesitate to consult
the neighbouring farmers, and to make use of their experience
concerning the best soils for certain crops, the best manures
for those soils, etc. ; yet if another farmer, instead of availing
himself of his neighbours' experiences only, consults a book or
books containing the digested and classified results of a thou-
sand farmers' experiences touching the same points, he is called,
by a strange inconsistency, " a book-furmer," ** a mere theor-
ist." The truth is, the " practical " man, so called, extends his
views no farther than the fact before him. Even when he is
so fortunate as to learn its cause, the discovery is comparatively
useless, since it affords no light in new and more complex
cases. The scientific man, unsatisfied with the observation of
one fact, collects many, and by tracing the points of resem-
blance, deduces a comprehensive truth of universal application.
" Practical" men conduct the details of ordinary business with
a masterly hand. As Burke said to George Grenville, they do
admirably well so long as things move on in the accustomed
channel, and a n'^w troubled scene is not opened ; but they
are not fitted to contend successfully with the difficulties of an
untried and hazardous situation. When " the high roads are
broken up, and the waters are out," when a new state of things
is presented, and " the line affords no precedent," then it is
that they show a mind trained in a subordinate sphere, formed
for servile imitation^ and destined to borrow its lights of an-

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

197

other. " Expert men," says Bacon, " can execute, and per-
haps judge of particulars, one by one ; but the general coun-
sels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from
those that are learned. "

Among the current phrases of the day, by which men are
led into error, one of the commonest is the expression doing
good. Properly understood, " to do good " is to do right ; but
the phrase has acquired a technical sense which is much nar-
rower. It means, not discharging faithfully the duties of
one's calling, but stepping aside from its routine to relieve the
poor, the distressed, and the ignorant, or to reform the sinful.
The lawyer who, for a fee, conscientiously gives advice, or
pleads in the courts, is not thought to be doing good ; but
he is so regarded if he gratuitously defends a poor man or
widow. A merchant who sells good articles at fair prices, and
pays his notes punctually, is not doing good ; but he is doing
good, if he carries broth and blankets to beggars, teaches in a
Sunday School, supports a Young Men's Christian Association,
or distributes tracts to the irreligious. Charitable and philan-
thropic societies of every kind are all recognized as organs for
doing good ; but the common pursuits of life, — law, medicine,
agriculture, manufacturing, trading, etc. — are not.

The incorrectness of this view will be seen if we for a mo-
ment reflect what would become of society, including its chari-
table institutions and philanthropists, should its different mem-
bers refuse to perform their respective functions. Society is a
body corporate, which can exist — at least, in a healthy state
— only on condition that each man performs the specific work
which Providence, or his own sense of his fitness for it, has
assigned to him. Thus one man tills the ground ; another en-
gages in manufacturing ; a third gathers and distributes the
produce of labour in its various forms ; a forth loans or ex-
changes money ; a fifth makes or executes the general laws ;
and each of these persons, as he is contributing to the general
good, is doing good as truly as the most devoted clergyman
who labours in the cure of souls, or philanthropist who carries
loaves of bread to hovels. To deny this, it has been well
said, is to say that a commissariat or transport corps has no-
thing to do with carrying on a war, and that this business ia

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198

ironns: their use and abuse.

discharged entirely by the men who stand in line of battle or
mount the breach.

The popular theory proceeds upon two assumptions, both of
which are false ; first, that the motives which urge men to
diligence in their callings are mean and paltry, — that selfish-
ness is the mainspring which causes all the wheels in the great
machine of society to revolve; and, secondly, that pursuits
which benefit those who prosecute them are necessarily selfish.
The truth is, the best work, and a very large part of tlie work,
done in every calling:, is done not from a mean and sordid hun-
ger for its emoluments, whether of money, rank, or fame, but
from a sincere love for it, and pride in performing its duties
well and creditably. The moment a man begins to lose this
esprit de corps, this high-minded professional pride, and to find
his reward in his pay, and not in his work, that moment his
work begins to deteriorate, and he ceases to meet with the
highest success. If pursuits which benefit those who follow ihem
are necessarily selfish, then philanthropy itself is selfish, for its
rewards, in popular estimation, are of the noblest kind. No sane
man Avill dejjreciate the blessings that result from the labours of
the Howards, the Frys, and the Nightingales ; but they bear
the same relation to the ordinary pursuits of life that medicine
bears to food. Doctors and surgeons are useful members of
society ; but their services are less needed than those of butch-
ers and bakers. Let the farmer cease to sow and reap, let the
loom and the anvil be forsaken, and the courts of justice be
closed, and not only will the philanthropist starve but society
will speedily become a den of robbers, if it does not utterly
cease to exist.

Mr. Mill notices an ambiguity in the word right, which has
been made the occasion of an ingenious sophism. A man
asserts that he has a right to publish his opinions, which may
be true in one sense, namely, that it would be wrong in any
other person to hinder or prevent their publication ; but it does
not follow that, in publishing his opinions, he is doing right,
for this is an entirely distinct proposition from the other. Jts
truth depends on two things ; first, whether he has taken due
pains to ascertain that the opinions are true, and second,
whether their publication in this manner, and at this time, will

fnE FALLACIES IX WORDS.

190

probably be beneficial to tlie interests of truth on tlie whole.
Another sophism, based on the ambiguity of tlie same word, is
that of coiifoundin^j a right of any kind with a right to enforce
that right by resisting or punishing any violation of it, as in the
case of a people whose right to good government is ignored by
tyrannical rulers. The right or liberty of the people to turn
out their rulers, is so far from being the same thing as the
other, that " it depends upon an immense inimber of varying
circumstances, and is altogether one of the knottiest (piestions
in practical ethics."

No two terms are more frequently confounded in these days
than jo/>((i/ and religion. Not a few persons think they are re-
ligious because they have pious inclinations, which no more
necessarily follows than that a man has learning or money be-
cause he has a desire for learning or money. It has been well
said that a man has not a religion simply by having pious
inclinations, any more than he has a country simply by having
philanthropy. A man has not a country until he is a citizen of
the State, until he undertakes to follow and uphold certain
laws; to obey certain magistrates, and to adopt certain ways
of acting and living.

Montaigne complains with good reason that too many defi-
nitions, explanations, and replies to difficult questions, are
purely verbal. " 1 demand what nature is, M^hat pleasure,
circle, and substitution are ? The question is about words, and
is answered accordingly. A stone is a body ; but if a man
should further urge, and what is body ! Substance; and what
is substance] ami so on, he wouhl drive the respondent to the
end of his calepin. We exchange one word for another, and oft-
times for one less understood. I better know what man is, than
I know what animal is, or mortal, or rational. To satisfy one
doubt they pop me in the mouth with three; 'tis the Hydra's
head."*

From all this it will be seen that our words are, to a large
extent, carelessly employed, — the signs of crude and indefinite
generalizations. Hut even when the greatest care in taken in
the employment of words, it is nearly impossible to choose and

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200

WORVS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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put them together so exquisitely that a sophist may not wrest
and pervert their meaning. Those persons who have ever had
a law suit need not be told how much ingenious argument may
hang on a shade of meaning, to be determined objectively with-
out reference to the fancied intentions of the legislator or the
writer. If, in ordinary life, words represent impressions and
ideas, in legal instruments they are things ; they dispose of pro-
perty, liberty, and life ; they express the will of the law-giver,
and become the masters of our social being. Yet so carelessly
are they used by lawyers and legislators, that half the money
spent in litigation goes to determine the meanings of words and
phrases. O'Connell used to assert that he could drive a coach-
and-six through an Act of Parliament. Many of our American
enactments yawn with chasms wide enough for a whole railway
train. But even when laws have been framed with the most
consummate skill, the subtlety of a Choate or FuUett may twist
what appears to be the plainest and most unmistakable lan-
guage into a meaning the very opposite to that which the com-
mon sense of mankind would give it.

We have heard Judge Story make the following statement
to show the extreme difficulty of framing a statute so as to
avoid all ambiguity in its language. Being once employed by
Congress to draft an important law, he spent six months in try-
ing to perfect its phraseology, so that its sense would be clear
beyond a shadow of doubt, leaving not the smallest loophole
for a lawyer to creep through. Yet, in less than a year, after
having heard the arguments of two able attorneys, in a suit
which came before him as a Judge of the United States Su-
preme Court, he was utterly at a loss to decide upon the statute's

meaning!

A signal illustration of the ambiguity that lurks in the most
familiar words, is furnished by a legal question that was fruit-
ful of controversy and " costs" not \ )ng ago in England. An
English nobleman. Lord Henry Seymour, who lived in Paris
many years, executed a will in 1856, wherein he made a bequest
of property worth seventy thousand pounds to the hospitals of
London and Paris. No sooner was it known that he was dead,
than the question was raised, what does " London" mean ?
Where are its limits, and what is its area ? What does it con*

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

201

tain, and what does it exclude"? Four groups of claimants
appeared, each to some extent opposed by the other three.
Group the first said, " The gift is obviously confined to the
City proper of London," — that is, " London within the walls,"
comprising little more than half of a square mile. " Not so,"
protested group the second ; " it extends to all the hospitals
within the old bills of mortality," — that is, London, W^estmin-
ster, Southwark, and about thirty out-parishes, but excluding
Marylebone, St. Pancras, Paddington, Chelsea, and everything
beyond. Group the third insisted that " London" included
" AH the area within the metropolitan boroughs ;" while group
the fourth, for cogent reasons of their own, were positive that
the testator meant, and the true construction was, nothing less
than the whole area included within the Registrar General's
and the Census Commissioner's interpretation of the word
" Metropolis." The Master of the Rolls decided that the tes-
tator meant to use the word " London" in its full, complete,
popular sense, as including all the busily-occupied districts of
what is usually called the Metropolis, as it existed in the year
when the will was made. No sooner, however, was this vexed
question settled, than another, hardly less puzzling, arose, —
namely, What is a *• Hospital ] " Nearly every kind of charit-
able institution put in its claim ; but it was finally decided that
only such charities should share in the bequest as fell within
the definition of the French word Jiospke used in the will.

Another perplexing question which came before the English
courts some years ago, and which not less vividly shows the
importance of attention to the words we use, related to the
meaning of the word team, as used by writers generally, and
used in a written agreement. A certain noble duke made an
agreement with one of his tenants in Oxfordshire concerning
the occupancy of a farm, and a portion of the agreement was
couched in the following terms : " The tenant to perform each
year for the Duke of , at the rate of one day's team-
work, with two horses and one proper person, for every fifty
pounds of rent, when required (except at hay or corn harvest),
without being paid for the same." In other words, the rent of
the farm was made up of two portions, the larger being a
money payment, and the former a certain amount of farm
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WOIWS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

service. All went on quietly and smoothly in reference to this
agreement, until one particular day, when the duke's agent or
bailiff desired the farmer to send a cart to fetch coals from a
railway station to the ducal mansion. "Certainly nut," said
the farmer. " I'll send the horses and a man, but you must
lind the cart." " Pooh, pooh ! what do you mean? Does not
your agreement bind you to do team-work occasionally for his
Grace?" "Yes, and here's the team ; two horses and a care-
ful man to drive them." " But there can't be a team without
cart or wauuon." "0 yes, tiiere can, the horses are the

*oo

team." " No, the horses and cart together are the team."

The question wliich the court was called on to decide in the
lawsuit which followed, was, — what is a /mm / The case was
at first tried at Oxford, before a common jury, who gave a
verdict substantially for the duke. A rule was afterwards
obtained, with a view to bring the question of definition before
the judges at the Court of Queen's Bench. The counsel for
the duke contended that as team-work cannot be done by
horses without a cart or waggon, it is obvious that a team must
include a veliicle as well as the horses by which it is to be
drawn. Mr. Justice A. said that, in the course of his reading,
he had met with some lines which tend to show that the team
is separate from the cart, —

" (riles Jelt was sleepinEr, in his cart he lay ;
Some Bwaf,'gi.sh pilf'reis wtole his team away.
Giles wakes and cries, ' Ods Bodikins, what's here ?
Why, how now ; am I Giles or not ?
If he, I've lost six geldings to my smart ;
If not, Ods Bodikins, I've found a cart.' "

Mr. Justice B. quoted a line from Wordsworth, —

" My jolly team will work alone for me."

as proving the farmer's interpretation, seeing that, though
horses might possibly be jolly, a cart cannot. The counsel for
his Grace urged that the dictionaries of Johnson and Walker
both speak of a team as " a number of horses drawing the
same carriage." " True," said Justice A, ** do not these cita-
tions prove that the team and the carriage are distinct things ? "
" No," replied the counsel on the duke's side ; " because a team

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

203

without a cart would }>e of no use." He cited the description
given by Caisar of the mode of fighting in chariots adopted by
the ancient Britons, and of the particular use and meaning of
the word temanem. From Cac sar he came down to Gray, the
English poet, and cited the lines, —

" Oft dill the harvest to their sickle yieM,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe luith broke ;
How jocuiul (lid they drive their team afield,
How bowed the wood beneath their sturdy stroke,"

and from Gray he came down to the far-famed " Bull Kun "
atfiiir in the recent American Civil War, a graphic account of
which told that " the teamsters cut the tr;<ces of the horses."

The counsel for the farmer, on the other hand, referred to
Kichardson's English dictionary, and to Bosworth's Anglo-
JSaxon dictionary, for support to the assertion that a team im-
plies only the horses, nut the veiiicle also ; and he then gave
the following citations to the same etfect from Spenser :

" Thee a jilouKhman all iinmeeting found,
As he his toilsome team I lat way did guide,
And brouj ht the« un a ploii::,'hman's state to bide."

From Shakespeare, —

'• We fairies that do run,
By the triple Hecat's t^am,
l*'rt)m the presence t)f the sen,
■ *> Following ilarkness like a dream. "

Again from Shakespeare, —

" I am in love, but a team of horse shall
Not pluck that from me, nor who 't is I love."

From Dryden,-

" He heaved with more than human force to move
A weighty straw, the labour of a team."

Again from I)ryden, —

" Any number, and passing in a line :
Like a long team of snowy swans on high.
Which clap their wings and cleave the licjuid sky."

Spenser, Roscommon, Martineau, and other authorities, were
also cited to the same purport, and all the light which English

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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literature could throw upon the point was converged upon it.
The learned judges were divided in their opinions, one deciding
that the word ** team " clearly implied the cart as well as the
horses, two other judges deciding that it was enouijjh if the
farmer sent the horse and the driver to be put to such service
as the duke's agent might please. The arguments by which
each supported his conclusion were so acute, cogent, and
weighty, that their disagreement seems to have been inevitable.

Hobbes, in a memorable passage in the " Leviathan," from
which we have already quoted, says : " Seeing that truth con-
sisteth in the proper ordering of names in our affirmations,
a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember
what every name he useth stands for, and to place it accord-
ingly ; or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a
bird in limetwigs, — the more he struggles the more belimed.
Words are wise men's counters, — they do not reckon by them ;
but they are the money of fools, that value them by the au-
thority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Thomas, or any other doctor
whatsoever." Fuller quaintly sugg' Jts that the reason why the
Schoolmen wrote in so bald a style was, '* that the vermin of
equivocation might not hide themselves in the nap of their
words." The definition of words has been often regarded as a
mere pedagogue's exercise ; but when we call to mind the per-
secutions, proscriptions, tortures, and even massacres, which
have resulted from mistakes about the meaning of certain
words, the office of the lexicographer assumes a grave and dig-
nified aspect. It is not enough, however, in guarding against
error, to discriminate our words, so as to understand their ex-
act force. We must also keep constantly in mind the fact that
language, when used with the utmost precision, is at best but
an imp rfect representation of thought. Words are properly
neither the " names of things," as modern writers have de-
fined them, nor, as the ancients viewed them, the " pictures of
ideas." The most they can do is to express the relations of
things ; they are, as Hobbes said, " the signs of our concep-
tions," serving as a mark to recall to ourselves the likeness of
a former thought, and as a sign to make it known to others.

Even as the signs of our conceptions, they are at best imper-
fect and unsatisfactory, representing only approximately what

THE FALLACIES IN WORDS.

205

we think, and never coordinating with the conceptions they are
used to represent. " Seizing on some characteristic mark of
the conception, they always express too little or too much.
They are sometimes distinctly metaphorical, sometimes indefi-
nitely assertive ; sometimes too concrete, sometimes too ab-
stract." Our sentences are not i^nagesof thought, :ei1ected in a
perfect mirror, nor photographs which lack colouring only ; they
are but the merest skeleton of expression, hints of meaning,
tentative signs, which can put another only into a partial pos-
session of our consciousness. To apprehend perfectly the
thought of another man, even one who uses language with the
utmost nicety and accuracy, we need to know his individu-
ality, his entire past history ; we must interpret and supple-
ment his meaning by all that we know of his intellectual and
moral constitution, his ways of thinking, feeling, and speaking ;
we must be en rapport with him ; and even then we may fail
to penetrate to the central meaning of his words, the very core
of his thoughts.

The soul of every man is a mystery which no other man can
fathom ; we are, as one has said, spirits in prison, able only to
make signals to each other, but with a world of) things to
think and say which our signals cannot describe at all. There
is hardly an abstract term in any language which conveys pre-
cisely the same meaning to two different minds ; every word is
sure to awaken in one mind more or less different associations
from those it awakens in another. Words mean the Scime
thing only to persons who are psychologically the same, and
who have had the same experiences. It is obvious that no
word can explain any sensation, pleasant or painful, to one
who has never felt the sensation. When Saunderson, who was
born blind, tried to define red, he compared that colour to the
blowing of a trumpet, or the crowing of a cock. In like manner,
a deaf man in England, in trying to describe the sound of a
trumpet, said that it was red. The statement that words have
to two persons a common meaning only when they suggest
ideas of a common experience, is true even of the terms we
stop to ponder ; how much more true, then, of words whose
full and exact meaning we no more pause to consider, than we
reflect that the gold eagle which passes through our hands is a

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

III

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thousand cents. Try to ascertain the meaninfr of the most fa-
miliar words which are dropping from men's lips, and you find
that each has its history, and that many are an epitome of the
thoughts and observations of ages.

What two persons, for example, attach the same meaning to
the words democracy/, coiiservatinm, raJiralism^ educntion i
What is the meaning of (jeritfeman, com/or f(d)fe, competence?
De Quincey says tivat he knew several persons in England
with annual incomes bordering on twenty thousand pounds,
who spoke of themselves, and seemed seriously to think them-
selves, " unhai)py paupers." Lady Hester Stanhope, with an
income of two thousand seven hundred pounds a year, thought
herself an absolute pauper in London, and went to live in the
mountains of Syria; "for how, you know," she would say
pathetically, *• could the humblest of spinsters live decently on
that pittance]" Do the amiable and the revengeful, the
chaste and the licentious, mean the same thing when they
speak of love or hate ? With what precious meaning are the
words home and heaven flooded to some persons, and with
what icy indiffeience are they heard by others 1

So impejfect is language that it is doubtful whether such a
thing as a self-evident verbal proposition, the absolute truth of
which can never be contested, is possible ; for it can never be
absolutely cf rtain what is the meaning of the words in which
the proposition is expressed, and the assertion that it is
founded on partial observation, or that the wc rds imperfectly
express the observation on which it is founded, or are incom-
plete metaphors, or are defective in some oth(r respect, must
always be open to proof. Thus, for example, a late writer,
criticising Mr. Mansel's doctrine of consciousness, in his
" Metaphysics," asks : ** What is meant by any one of the
words which enter into the propositions asserted by Mr.
Mansel to be absolutely and eternally true 1 Consciousness,
he says, assures me of my own existence. But no one, as Mr.
Mansel would say, is 'presentatively' or directly conscious of a
proposition. No one feels that the words ' I exist' are abso-
lutely true, but because we have always been accustomed to
hear them. Our direct consciousness neither does nor can
decide whether any and what ambiguities and mysteries lurk

such a
ruth of
^'er be
which
it is
rfectly
incom-
t, must
writer,
in his
of the
13 V Mr.
)usness,
as Mr.
us of a
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med to
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es lurk

THE FALLACIES IN IFOPiDS.

207

in the two Avorrls, ' I* and * exist,' any more tlian that part
of our consciousness to which we jjive the name of a peicept^on
of water tells us whether water is or is not composed of
oxygen and liydnipen. What that is to wliich the word ' 1' is
affixed, is a boundless que;ilion. The word 'exist* is a mere
metaphor. No one could say that he was conscious of the
proposition * I stand out ;' and who can say what is the exact
distance from its original meaning to which the word has
travelled ? "

Even words that designate outward, material objects,
cognizable by the senses, do not always call up similar
thoughts in different minds. The meaning they convey de-
pends often upon the mental qualities of the hearer. Thus the
word sun uttered to an ujdettered man of feeble mental
powers, conveys simply the idea of a ball of light and heat,
which rises in the sky in the morning, and goes down at even-
ing ; but, to the man of vivid imagination, who is ffimiliar with
modern scientific discoveries, it suggests, more or less dis-
tinctly, all that science has revealed concerning that luminary.
If we estimate words according to their etymological meaning,
we shall still more clearly see how inadequate they are in
themselves to involve the mass of facts which they connote, —
" as inadequate as is a thin and worthless bit of paper which
may yet represent a thousand pounds. . . Take a word
expressive of the smallest possible modification of matter, — a
Word invented in the most expressive language in the world,
and invented by a no less eminent a philosopiier than Demo-
critus, and that, too, with great applause — the word atom,
meaning that which cannot be cut. Yet simple as is the
notion to be expressed, and great as were the resources at
command, what a failure the mere umrd is ! It expresses too
much and too little, too much as being applicable to other
things, and consequently ambiguous; too little, because it does
not express all the properties even of an atom. Its inade-
quacy cannot be more forcibly illustrated than by the fact that
its precise Latin equivalent is by us confined to the single
acceptation ' insect ! ' "*

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" Chapters on Language," by F. W. Farrar.

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But, if words are but imperfect symbols for designating ma-
terial objects, how much mure unequal must they be to the task
of expressing that which lies above and behind matter and sensa-
tion — especially as all abstract terms are metaphors taken from
sensible objects ! How many feelings do we have, in the course
of our lives, which beggar description ! How many apprehen-
sions, limitations, opinions are clearly present, at times, to our
consciousness, which elude every attempt to give them verbal
expression ! Even the profoundest thinkers and the most ac-
curate, hair-splitting writers, who weigh and test to the bottom
every term they use, are baffled in the effort so to convey their
conclusions as to defy all misapprehension or successful refuta-
tion. Beginning with definitions, they find that the definitions
themselves need defining ; and just at the triumphant moment
when the structure of argument seems complete and logic-proof,
some lynx-eyed adversary detects an inaccuracy or a contradic-
tion in the use of some keystone term, and the whole magnifi-
cent pile, so painfully reared, tumbles into ruins.

The history of controversy, in short, in all ages and nations,
is a history of disputes about words. The hardest problems,
the keenest negotiations, the most momentous decisions, have
turned on the meaning of a phrase, a term, or even a particle.
A misapplied or sophistical expression has provoked the fiercest
and most interminable quarrels. Misnomers have turned the
tide of public opinion ; verbal fallacies have filled men's souls
with prejudice, rage, and hate ; and " the sparks of artful watch-
words, thrown among combustible materials, have kindled the
fllames of deadly war and changed the destiny of empires."

NICKNAMES.

20«

CHAPTER XII.

NICKNAMES.

,:»i-

The word nick in nickname is co>,iiat» with the German word nerken, to
mock, to quiz, and the English word nag, to tease, or provoke.— W. L.
Blackl&y, Wwrd-Gomp.

A good name will wear out, a bad one may be turned ; a nickname lasts
for ever.— Zimmerman.

J'ai 6i6 toujours t^tonnd, que les families qui portent un nom odieux ou
ridicule, ne le ({uittent pas.— Bayle.

MONG the books that need to be written, one of the
most instructive would be a treatise on the history and
influence of nicknames. Philosophers who study the
great events in the world's history, are too apt, in their eager-
ness to discover adequate causes, to overlook the apparently
trifling means by which mankind are influenced. They are
eloquent enough upon the dawning of a new idea in the world
when its effects are set forth in all the pomp of elaborate his-
tories and disquisitions ; but they would do a greater service
by showing how and when, by being condensed into a pithy
word or phrase, it wins the acceptance of mankind. The
influence of songs upon a people in times of excitement and
revolution is familiar to all. *' When the French mob began to
sing the Marseillaise, they had evidently caught the spirit of
the Revolution ; and what a song is to a political essay, a nick-
name is to a song." In itself such a means of influence may
seem trivial ; and yet history shows that it is no easy thing to
estimate the force of these ingenious appellations.

In politics, it has long been observed that no orator can com-
pare for a moment in effect with him who can give apt and
telling nicknames. Brevity is the soul of wit, and of all elo-
quence a nickname is the most concise and irresistible. It is a
terse, pointed, short-hand mode of reasoning, condensing a

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210

WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

volume of meaning into an epithet, and i8 especially popular in
these days of steam and electric tele^Taphs, because it saves the
trouble of thinking. There is a deep instinct in man which
prompts him, when engaged in any controversy, whether of
tongue or pen, to assume to himself some honourable name
which begs the whole matter in dispute, and at the same time
to fasten on his adversary a name whicii shall render him
ridiculous, odious, or contemptible. By facts and logic you
may command the assent of the few ; but by nicknames you
may enlist the passions of the million on your side. Who can
doubt that when, in the English civil wars, the Parliamentary
party styled themselves " the Godly" and their opponents " the
Malignants," the question at issue, wherever entrance could be
gained for these words, was already decided ? Who can esti-
mate how much the Whig party in thii? country was damaged
by the derisive sarcasm, " All the decency," or its opponents
by the appellation of " Locofocos ? " Is it not certain that the
odious name, *' Copperheads," which was so early in our late
Civil War affixed to tiie Northern sympathizers witli the South,
had an incalculable influence in gagging their mouths, and in
preventing their numbers from multiplying?

It has been truly said that in the distracted times of early
revolution, any nickname, however vague, will fully answer a
purpose, though neither those who are blackened by the odium,
nor those who cast it, can define the hateful appellative.
When the term "delinquents" came into vogue in England,
" it expressed a degree and species of guilt," says Hume, " not
easily known or ascertained. It served, however, the end of
those revolutionists who had coined it, by involving any person
in, or colouring any action by, 'delinquency'; and many of the
nobility and gentry were, without any questions being asked,
suddenly discovered to have committed the crime of * delin-
quency.' " The degree in which the political opinions of our
countrymen were influenced, and their feelings embittered,
some forty years ago by the appellation " Federalist" cannot
be easily estimated. The fact that many who heard the
derisive title knew not its origin, and some not even its mean-
ing, did not lessen its influence — as an incident related by
Judge Gaston of North Carolina well illustrates. In travelling

pillar in
aves the
1 which
ether of
le name
me time
Jer him
>f];ic you
nes you
Vho can
mentary
Its '• the
could be
can esti-
lamaged
)ponents
that the
our late
e South,
}, and in

of early

nswer a

odium,

lellative.

ngland,

i, "not

end of

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ated by

avelling

NICKNAMES.

211

on his circuit through the backu'oods of that State, he learned
that the people of that town had elected a Democrat, in place
of a Whig, to serve them in the legislature. When asked the
reasc>n of this change, his informant, an honest, rough-looking
citizen, replied : ** Oh, we didn't rci-lect Mr. A, because he is a
fdheraiy "A fetheral !" exclaimed the judge, "what is a
fetheral ? " "I don't know," was the reply, " but it ain't a
human."

There is no man so insignificant that he may not blast the
reputation of another by fastening upon him an odious or ludi-
crous nickname. Even the most shining character may thus be
dragged down by the very reptiles of the race to the depths of
infamy. A parrot may be taught to call names, and, if you
have a spite against your neighbour, may be made to give him
a deal of annoyance, without much wit either in the employer
or the puppet. Hotspur woidd have had a starling taught to
speak nothing but Mortimer in the ears of his enemy. An in-
sulting or degrading epithet will stick to a man long after it
has been proved malicious or false. Who could dissociate with
the name of Van Buren the id^a of craft or cunning, after he
had become known as the " Kinderhook Fox," or who ever
venerated John Tyler as the Chief Magistrate of the nation,
after he had been politicallv baptized a^ " His Accidency ? "
Who can tell how hr Gen. Scott's prospects for the Presidency
were damaged by the contemptuous nickname of " Old Fuss
and Feathers," — especially after he had nearly signed his own
political death-warrant by that fatal allusion to " a hasty plate
of soup," which convulsed the nation with laughter from the
St. Croix to the Rio Grande 1 The hero of Chippewa found it
hard to breast the torrent of ridicule which this derisive title
brought down upon him. It would have been easier far to
stand up against the iron shock of the battle-field. Who, again,
has forgotten how a would-be naval bard of America was
" damned to everlasting fame " by a verbal tin-pail attached to
his name in the form of one of his own verses ? * "I have
heard an eminent character boast," says Hazlitt, " that he did
more to produce the war with Bonaparte by nicknaming him

* "The sun has gone down with his battle -stained eye."

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212

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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The Corsican, than all the state papers and documents on the

subject put together." Give a dog a bad name, says the pro-
verb, and you hang him. It was only necessary to nickname
Burke The Dinner Bell to make even his rising to speak a signal
for a general emptying of the house. ^

The first step in overthrowing any great social wrong is to
fix upon it a name which expresses its character. From the
hour when "taxation without representation " came to be re-
garded by our fathers as a synonyme for tyranny, the cajse of
the colonies was safe. Had the Southern slaves been called by
no other name than that used by their masters, — namely, ser-
vants, — they would have continued in bondage till they had won
their freedom by the sword.

The French Kevolution of 1789 was fruitful of examples,
showing the ease with which ignorant men are led and excited
by words whose real import and tendency they do not under-
stand, and illustrating the truth of ^.louth's remark, that a plau-
sible and insignificant word in the mouth of an expert dema-
gogue is a dangerous and destructive weapon. Napolt^on was
aware of this, when he declared that " it is by epithets that you
govern mankind." Destroy man's reverence for the names of
institutions hoary with age, and you destroy the institutions
themselves. " Pull down the nests," John Knox used to say,
" and the rooks will fly away." The people of Versailles in-
sulted with impunity in the streets, and at the gates of the As-
sembly, those whom tiiey called Aristocrats; and the magic power
of the word was doubled, when aided by the further device of
calling the usurping Commons the Natiomd Assemhhj, When

the title of Frondeurs, or " the Slingers," was given to Car-
dinal de Ketz's party, he encouraged its application, " for we
observed," says he, "that the distinction of a name healed
the minds of the people." The French showman, who, when
royalty and its forms were abolished in France, changed the
name of his ** Kot/al Tiger," so called — the pride of his mena-
gerie — to " iV^tt^wma^ Tiger," showed a profound knowledge of
his countrymen and of the catchwords by which to win their
patronage.

A nickname is the most stinging of all species of satire,
because it gives no chance of reply. Attack a man with specific,

NICKNAMES.

213

mena-

point-blank charges, and he can meet and repel them ; hut a
nickname baffles reply by its very vagueness ; it presents no
tangible or definite idea to the mind, no horn of a dilemma
with which the victim can grapple. The very attempt to de-
fend himself only renders him the more ridiculous ; it looks like
raising an ocean to drown a fly, or discharging a cannon at a
wasp, to meet a petty gibe with formal testimony or elaborate
argument. Or, if your defence is listened to without jeers, it
avails you nothing. It has no effect, — does not tell, — excites
no sensation. The laugh is against you, and all your protests
come like the physician's prescription at the funeral, too late.

The significance of nicknames is strikingly illustrated by the
fact that, as a late writer suggests, you cannot properly hate a
man of different opinions from your own till you have labelled
him with some unpleasant epithet. In theological debates, a
heretic may be defined as a man with a nickname. Till we
have succeeded in listening a name upon him, he is confounded
among the general mass of the orthodox ; his peculiarities are
presumably not sulKcient to constitute him into a separate
species. But let the name come to us by a flash of inspiration,
and how it sticks to the victim through his whole life ! There
is a refinement of cruelty in some nicknames which resembles
the barbarity of the old heathen persecutors, who wrapped up
Christians in the sikina of wild beasts, so that they might be
worried and torn in pieces by dogs. " Do but paint an angel
black," says an old divine, "and that is enough to make him
pass for a devil." On the other hand, there are loving nick-
names which are given to men by their friends, — especially to
those who are of a frank, genial, companionable nature. The
name of Charles Lamb was ingeniously transformed into the
Latin diminutive ChdrhufnuJus : and the friends of Keats, in
allusion to his occasional excess of fan and animal spirits,
punned upon his name, shortening it from John Keats into
" Junkets."

The prince of polemics, Cobbett, was a masterly inventor of
nicknames, and £;ome of his felicitous epithets will not be for-
gotten for many years to come. Among the witty labels with
which he tickled his enemies were *' Scorpion Stanley," " Spin-
ning Jenny Peel," " the pink-nosed Liverpool," " the unbap-

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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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tized, buttonless blackguards " (applied to the Quakers), and
" Prosperity Robinson." The nickname, '• Old Glory," given
by him, stuck for life to Sir Francis Burdett, his former patron
and life-long creditor. " j^ Aus, Canning " provoked unex-
tinguishable laughter among high and low ; and it is said that
of all the devices to annoy the brilliant but vain lord Erskine,
none was more teasing than being constantly addressed by his
second title of " Baron Cladcmaimon."

The meaning of nicknames, as of many other words, is often
a mystery. Often they are apparently meaningless, and inca-
pable of any rational explanation ; yet they are probably due,
in such cases, to some subtle, imperci^ptible analogy, of which
even their authors were hardly ci>nscious. When the English
and French armies were encamped in the Crimea, tliey, by
common consent, called, the Turks " Bono Johnny ;" but it
would not be easy to tell why. A late French prince was called
'• Flom-plom ; " yet there is no such word in the French
language, and different accounts have been given of its origin.
To explain, again, why nicknames have such an intluence, — so
magical an effect, — is equally difficult ; one might as well, try
to explain why certain combinations of colours or musical
sounds impart an exquisite pleasure. All we know, upon both
these points, is, that certain persons are doomed to be known
by a nickname; at the time of life when the word-making fa-
culty is in the highest activity, all their acquaintances are
long in labour to hit off the fit appellation ; suddenly it conges
like an electric-spark, and it is felt by everybody to be impossible
to think of the victim without his appropriate designation. In
vain have his godfathers and godmothers called him liobert or
Thomas ; " Bob," or '"Tom," or something wholly unrelated to
these, he is fated to be to the end of his days.

Many of the hap[)iest of these head marks, which stick like a
burr from the moment they are invented, are from sources ut-
terly unknown ; they appear, they are on everybody's lips, but
whence they came nobody can tell. One of tliQ commonest
ways in which nicktuimes are suggested is by some egregious
blunder which one makes. Thus a schoolboy is asked who de-
molished Carthage, and answering " Scorpio Africanus," is
promptly nicknamed " Old Scorp." Another way is by a glar-

NICKNAMES.

215

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ing contradiction between a man's name and his character, —
when he is ridiculed as sailing under false colours, or claiming
a merit which does not belong to him. There is in all men,
as Trench has observed, a sense of the significance of names, —
a feeling that they ougiit to be, and in a world of absolute
truth would be, the utterance of the innermost character or
qualities of the persons tiiat bear them ; and hence nothing is
more telling in a personal controversy than the exposure of a
striking incongruity between a name and the person who owns
it. We have been told that the late President Lincoln, on be-
ing introduced to a very stout person by the name of Small, re-
marked, " Small, Small ! Well, what strange names they do
give men, to be sure ! Why they've got a fellow down in Vir-
ginia whom they call IVise /" In the same spirit, Jerome, one
of the Fathers of the Church, being engaged in controversy
with one Vigilantius, i. e., " the Watchful," about certain vigils
which the latter opposed, stigmatized him as " Dormitantius,"
or " the Sleeper." But more frequently the nickname is sug-
gested by the real name where there is no such antagonism be-
tween them, — where the latter, as it is, or by a slight change,
can be made to contain a confession of the ignorance or folly of
the bearer. Thus Til)erius Claudius Nero, in allusion to his
drunkenness, was called *' Biberius Caldius Mero;" and thH
Arians were nicknamed " Ariomanites." What can be happier
in this way than the " Brand of Hell," applied to Pope Hilde-
brand ; the title of " Slanders," affixed by Fuller to Sanders,
the foul-mouthed libeller of Queen Elizabeth ; the " Vanity "
and " Sterility," which Baxter coined from the names of Vane
and Sterry ; and the term " Sweepnet," which that skilful
master of the passions, Cicero, gave to the infamous Prictor of
Sicily, whose name, Verres (verro), was prophetic of his sweep-
ing the province, — declaring that others might be partial to
they'^.s vcrriiium (which might mean verrinelaw or boar sauce),
but not he ]

There is probably no country, unless it be our own, in
which nicknames have flourished more than in England.
Every party there has had its watchwords with which to rally
its members, or to set on its own band( gs t-o worry and tear
those of another faction ; and what is quite extraordinary is,

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216

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

that many of the names of political parties and religious sects
were originally nicknames given in the bitterest scorn and
party, hate, yet ultimately accepted by the party themselves.
Thus " Tory" originally meant an Irish freebooting bog-trotter
— an outlaw who favoured the cause of James II. ; and
" Whig" is derived from the Scotch name for sour milk, which
was supposed aptly to characterize the disposition of the
Republicans. "Methodists" was a name given in 1729, first
to John and Charles Wesley at Oxford, on account of their
close observance of system and method in their studies and
worship, and afterwards to their followers. So in other
countries : the highest name which any man can bear, " Chris-
tian," was originally a nickname, or little better, given by the
idle and witty inhabitants of Antioch. The Antiochenes were
famous in all antiquity for their nicknames, for inventing
which they had a positive genius. The " Lutherans" received
their name, in which they now glory, from their antagonists.
" Capuchin" was a jesting name given by the boys in the
streets to certain Franciscan monks, on account of the peaked
and pointed hood (capuccio) which they wore. The Domini-
cans gloried all the more in their name when it was resolved
by their enemies into '* Domini canes ;" they were proud to
acknowledge that they were, indeed, "the Lord's watch-dogs,"
who barked at the slightest appearance of heresy, and strove
to drive it away.

The Dutch people long prided themselves on the humili-
ating nickname of " Les Gueulx,^' " the Beggars," which was
given in 15G6 to the revolters against the rule of Philip II.
Margaret of Parma, then governor of the Netherlands, being
somewhat disconcerted at the numbers of that party, when
they presented a petition to her, was reassured by her minister,
who remarked to her that there was nothing to be feared from
a crowd of beggars. " Great was the indignation of all," says
Motley, " that the State councillor (the Seigneur de Berlay-
mont) should have dared to stigmatize as beggars a band of

gentlemen with the best blood of the land in their veins.

Brederode, on the contrary, smoothing tbeir anger, assured

them with good humour that nothing could be more fortunate.

* They call us beggars f said he ; * let us accept the name. We

ious sects
corn and
emselves.
og-trotter
II. ; and
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729, first
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NICKNAMES.

217

will contend with the Inquisition, but remain loyal to the
king, till compelled to wear the beggar's sack.' . . ' Long live
the beggars ! ' he cried, as he wiped his beard and set the bowl
down : ' Vivent les gueulx ." Then, for the first time, from the
lips of those reckless nobles rose the famous cry, which was so
often to ring over land and sea, amid blazing cities, on blood-
stained decks, through the smoke and carnage of many a
stricken field. The humour of Brederodewas hailed with deaf-
ening shouts of applause. The shibboleth was invented. The
conjuration which they had been anxiously seeking was found.
Their enemies had provided them with a spell, which was to
prove, in after days, potent enough to start a spirit from palace
or hovel, as the deeds of the * wild beggars,' the ' wood beg-
gars,' and the 'beggars of the sea,' taught Philip at last to
understand the nation which he had driven to madness."

Ill like manner the French Protestants accepted and gloried
in the scornful nickname of the " Huguenots," as did the two
fierce Italian factions in those of " Guelphs " and "Gliibbel-
lines." Even the title of the British " Premier," or " Prime
Minister," now one of the higiiest dignity, was at first a nick-
name, given in pure mockery, — the statesman to whom it was
applied being Sir Robert VValpole, as will be seen by the fol-
lowing words spoken by him in the House of Commons in
1742 : " Having invested me with a kind of mock dignity, and
styled me a Prime Miniskr, they (the opposition) impute tome
an unpardonable abuse of the chimerical authority which they
only created and conferred." It is remarkable that the nick-
name Capsar has given the title to the heads of two great na-
tions, Germany and Russia (kaiser, czar).

It is a fortunate thing when men who have been branded
witii names intended to make tliem hateful or ridiculous, can
thus turn the tallies on their deni(jreurs, by acceptirig and glory-
ing in their new titles. It was this which Lord Halifax did
when he was called "a trimmer." Instead of quarrelling with
the nickname, he exulted in it as a title of honour. Everything
good, ho said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone
trims between the climate in which men are roasted, and the
climate in which men are frozen. The English Church trims
between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. Thq
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WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

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English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and
Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between
propensities, any one of which, indulged to excess, becomes vice.
Nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in
the exact equilibrium of attributes, none of which could pre-
ponderate without disturbing the whole moral and physical
order of the world.*

The nicknames "Quaker," " Puritan," " Roundhead," unlike
those we have just named, were never accepted by those
to whom they were given. *' Puritan " was first heard in the
reign ol Queen Elizabeth, and was given to a party of purists
who would have reformed the Reformation. They were also
ridiculed, from their fastidiousness about trivial matters, as
" Precisians ; " Drayton characterizes them as persons that for
a painted glass window would pull down the whole church.
The distinction between " Roundhead " and " Cavalier " first
appeared during the civil war between Charles I. and his Par-
liament. A foe to all outward ornament, the *' Roundhead "
wore his hair cropped close, while the ** Cavalier " was contra-
distinguished by his chivalrous tone, his romantic spirit, and his
flowing locks.

All readers of history are famili^.r with " The Rump," — the
contemptuous nickname given to the Long Parliament at the
close of its career. The " Rump," Mr. Disraeli remarks, be-
came a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits, till at length its
former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country,
vied with each other in *' burning rumps " of beef, which were
hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and
proved how the people, like children, come at length to make
a plaything of that which was once their bugbear.

Ben Junson, the sturdy old dramatist, was nicknamed " The
Limestone and Mortar Poet," in allusion to his having begun
life as a bricklayer. A member of the British Parliament in
the reign of George III. is known as '* Single Speech Hamil-
ton," and is referied to by that designation as invariably as if
it were his baptismal name. He made one, and but one, good
speech during his parliamentary career. " Boot jack Robinson "

* Macaulay's " History of England," Vol. I.

; •

NICKNAMES.

210

' '1 1

tism and
' between
imes vice,
insists in
iould pre-
l physical

I," unlike
by those
trd in the
>f purists
were also
atters, as
s that for
e church.
ier " first
1 his Par-
mdhead "
IS contra-
t, and his

»p,"— the
nt at the
arks, be-
ength its
country,
ich were
ath, and
to make

ed " The
begun
iment in
Hamil-
bly as if
ne, good
binson "

was the derisive title given to a mediocre-politician, who, during
a crisis in the ministry of the Duke of Newcastle, was made
Home Secretary and ministerial leader of the House of Com-
mons. " Sir Thomas Robinson lead us ! " indignantly ex-
claimed Pitt to Fox ; " the duke might as well send his boot-
jack to lead us !" It is said that Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord
Melville, got his nickname from a new word which he intro-
duced in a speech in the House of Commons, in 1775, on the
American War, He was the first to use the word " starva-
tion" (a hybrid formation, in which a Saxon root was united
with a Latin ending), and was ever afterwards called by his ac-
quaintances, " Starvation Dundas." " Chicken Taylor " was
the name which, in the early part of <'he century, long stuck to
Mr. M. A. Taylor ; he contended against a great lawyer in the
House, and then apologized that " he, a chicken in the law,
should venture on a fight with the cock of Westminster."
" Adullamites," the name given by Mr, Bright to Mr. Lowe
and some of his Liberal friends, — a name derived from the
Scripture story of David and his followers retiring to a cave, —
will probably long continue to be applied to the members of
a discontented faction.

Everybody has heard of " Ditto to Mr. Burke ; " the victim
of this title was a Mr. Conger, who was elected with Burke to
represent the city of Bristol. Utterly bewildered how to thank
the electors, after his associate's splendid speech, he condensed
his own address into these significant words : " Gentlemen, I
say ditto to Mr. Burke, ditto to Mr. Burke ! " Among the
other memorable English nicknames, that of " Jemmy Twit-
cher," taken from the chief of Macheath's gang in " Xhe Beg-
gar's Opera," and applied to Lord Sandwich, — that of " Orange
Peel," given to Sir Robert Peel by the Irish, the inveterate foes
of the House of Orange, — " the stormy Petrel of debate," given
to Mr. Bernal Osborne, — •'* Finality Russell," fastened upon
Lord John Russell because he wished a certain Reform measure
to be final, — and the unique " Dizzy," into which his enemies
have condensed the name of the celebrated Jewish premier, —
are preeminently significant and telling. Among the hundreds
of American political nicknames, there are many which are
not remarkaby expressive ; others, like " Old Bullion " and

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220

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

Old Hickory," are steeped in " the very brine of conceit," and
sum up a character as if by inspiration.

It is a curious fact that some of the most damaging nick-
names have been terms or epithets which were originally com-
plimentary, but which, used sarcastically, have been associated
with more ridicule or odium than the most opprobrious epi-
thets. Men hate to be continually reminded of any one virtue
of a fellow man, — to hear the changes rung continually upon
some one great action or daring feat he has performed. It
seems, indeed, as if a man whose name is continually dinned
in our ears, coupled with some complimentary epithet, some
allusion to a praiseworthy deed which he once did, or some ex-
cellent trait of character, — must be distinguished for nothing
else. Unless this is his only virtue, why all t.his fuss and po-
ther about it ? The Athenians banished Aristides, because they
Were tired of hearing him called " the Just."

Some parents have so great . dread of nicknames that they
tax their ingenuity to inv 3nt for their children a Christian
1 ame that may defy nicking or abbreviation. With Southey's
Doctor Dove, they think " it is not a good thing to be Tom'd
or Bob'd, Jack'd or Jim'd, Sam'd or Beii'd, Natty'd or Batty'd,
Neddy'd or Teddy'd, Will'd or Bill'd, Dick'd or Nick'd, Joe'd
or Jerry'd, as you go through the world." The good doctor,
however, had no such antipathy to the shortening of female
names. " He never called any woman Mary, though Mare, he
said, being the sea, was in many respects too emblematic of the
sex. It was better to use a synonym of better omen, and
Molly was therefore preferred as being soft. If he accosted a
vixen of that name in her worst temper, he Molbjfied her !
On the contrary he never could be induced to substitute
Sally for Sarah. Sally, he said, had a salacious sound, and
moreover, it reminded him of rovers, which women ought not
to be. Martha he called Patty, because it came pat to the
tongue. Dorothy remained Dorothy, because it was neither
fitting that women should be made Dolls, nor I-dols ! Susan
with him was always Sue, because women were to be SueA,
and Winnifred, Wiii-ny, because they were to be won."*

"The Doctor," Vol. VII.

NICKNAMES.

221

eit," and

ng nick-
lUy com-
isociated
ious epi-
le virtue
lly upon
tied. It
' dinned
et, some
jome ex-
nothing
and po-
,use they

bat they

Ihristian

outhey's

Tora'd

Batty'd,

i, Joe'd

doctor,

female

lare, he

c of the

en, and

osted a

d her !

3stitute

d, and

ht not

to the

neither

Susan

A^we-d,

The annoyance which may be given to a man, even by an
apparently meaningless nickname, which sticks to him wher-
ever he goes, is well illustrated by a story told by Hazlitt, in
his " Conversations with Northcote," the painter. A village
baker got, he knew not how, the name of "Tiddy-doll." He
was teased and worried by it till it almost drove him crazy.
The boys hallooed it after him in the streets, and poked their
faces into the shop windows ; the parrots echoed the name as
he passed their cages ; and even, the soldiers took it up (for
the place was a military station), and marched to parade, beat-
inf, time with their feet and singing Tiddy-doll, Tiddy-doll, as
they passed by his door. He flew out upon them at the sound
with inextinguishable fury, was knocked down and rolled into
the kennel, and got up in an agony of rage, his white clothes
drabbled and bespattered with mud. A respectable and friendly
gentleman in the neighbourhood, who pitied his weakness,
called him into his house one day and remonstrated with him
on the suV)ject. He advised him to take no notice of his per-
secutors. " What," said he, " does it signify ] Suppose they
do call you Tiddydoll ? What harm ? " " There, there it is
again/ " burst forth the infuriated baker ; "you've called me so
yourself. You called me in on purpose to insult me !" And,
saying this, he vented his rage in a torrent of abusive epithets,
and darted out of the house in a tempeft of passion.

The readers of Boswell will remember, in connection with
this subject, an amusing anecdote told by Dr. Johnson. Being
rudely jostled and profanely addressed by a stout fish-woman,
as he was passing through Billingsgate, he looked straight at
her, and said deliberately, " You are a triangle ! " which made
her swear louder than before. He then called her " a rectangle !
a parallelogram !" but she was more voluble still. At last he
screamed out, " You are a miserable, wicked hypothenuse ! "
and she was struck dumb. Curran had a similar ludicrous
encounter with a fish-woman at Cork. Taking up the gauntlet,
when assailed by her on the quay, he speedily found that he
was over-matched, and that he had nothing to do but to beat a
retreat. " This, however, was to be done with dignity ; so,
drawing myself up disdainfully, I said,' Madam, I scorn all further
diecourse with such an individual ! ' She did not understand

i ;. j

Mil

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,»- ■ I

222

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

the word, and thought it, iio doubt, the very hyperbole of op-
probrium. * Individual, you vagabone ! ' she screamed, ' what do
you mean by that ? I'm no more an individual than your mother
was! * Never was victory more complete. The whole sister-
hood did homage to me, and I left the quay at Cork covered
with glory."

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

223

CHAPTER XIII.

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

.' ; M

Language is the depository of the accumulated body of experience, to
which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inherit-
ance of all yet to come. — J. S. Mill.

Often in words contemplated singly there are boundless stores of moral
and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid up.— Tuench.

THOUGHTFUL English writer tells us that, when
about nine years old, he learned with much surprise that
the word " sincere" was derived from the practice of
filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence sine cera came to
mean pure, not vamped up or adulterated. This explanation
gave him great pleasure, and abode in his memory as having
first shown him that there is a reason in words as well as
things. There are few cultivated persons who have not felt,
at some time in their lives, a thrill of surprise and delight like
that of this writer. Throughout our whole lives, from the
cradle to the grave, the stream of our history, inner and outer,
runs wonderfully blended with the texture of the words we use.
Dive into what subject we will, we never reach the bottom.
The simplest prattle of a child is but the light surface of a deep
sea containing many treasures. It would be hard, therefore, to
find in the whole range of inquiry another study which at
once is so fascinating, and so richly repays the labour,as that of
the etymology or primitive signification of words.

It is an epoch in one's intellectual history when he first learns
that words are living and not dead things, — that in these
children of the mind are incarnated the wit and wisdom, the
poetic fancies and the deep intuitions, the passionate longings
and the happy or sad experiences of many generations. The
discovery is " like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the
acquiring of another sense, or the introduction into a new

■^.i

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1 ■ ;|

' 1

\ m

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: ' ' /I

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:

224

WOliDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

world : " he never ceases wondering at the marvels that every
where reveal themselves to his gaze. To eyes thus opened, dic-
tionaries,instead of seeming huge masses of word-lumber,become
vast store-houses of historical memorials, than which none are
more vital in spirit or more pregnant with meaning. It is not
in oriental fairy-tales only that persons drop pearls every time
they open their mouths, — like Aloli^re's Bourgeois Gentil-
homme,who had been speaking prose all his life without knowing
it, we are dropping gems from our lips almost every hour of the
day. Not a thought or feeling or wish can we utter without
recalling, by an unconscious sign or symbol, some historic fact,
some memory of ** auld lang syne," some by-gone custom, some
vanished superstition, some exploded prejudice, or some ethical
divination that has lost its charm. Even the homeliest and
most familiar words, the most hackneyed phrases, are connected
by imperceptible ties with the hopes and fears, the reasonings
and reflections, of bygone men and times.

Every generation of men inherits and uses all the scientific
wealth of the past. ** It is not merely the great and rich in
the intellectual world who are thus blessed, but the humblest
inquirer, while he puts his reasonings into words, benefits by
the labours of the greatest. When he counts his little wealth,
he finds he has in his hands coins which bear the image and
superscription of ancient and modern intellectual dynasties,
and that in virtue of this possession acquisitions are in his power,
solid knowledge within his reach, which none could ever have
attained to, if it were not that the gold of truth once dug out
of the mine circulates more widely among mankind." Emerson
beautifully calls language "fossil poetry." The etymologist, he
adds, finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant pic-
ture. " As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite
masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of
images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long
since ceased to remind us of their poetic origin."

Not only is this true, but many a single word, as Archbishop
Trench remarks, is itself a concentrated poem, in which are
treasured stores of poetical thought and imagery. Examine it
closely, and it will be found to rest upon some palpable or sub-
tle analogy of things material and spiritual, showing that, how-

CUUWSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

225

at ever)^
ned, dic-
r,become
none are

It is not

ery time

Gentil-

knowing

(urof the

without
oric fact,
m, some
le ethical
liest and
jiinected
asonings

scientific
d rich in
nimblest
[lefits by
wealth,
lage and
^rnasties,
s power,
^er have
dug out
merson
)gist, he
aut pic-
infinite
le up of
ive long

hbishop
lich are
,mine it
or sub-
it, how-

ever trite the image now, the mrui who first coined the word
was a poet. The older the word, tiie profounder and more
beautiful the meanings it will often be found to enclose ; for
words of late growth speak to the head, not to the heart;
thoughts and feelings are too subtle for new words. It is the
use of words when new and fresh from the lips of their inven-
tors, before their vivid and picturesque meanings have faded
out or been obscured by their many secondary significations,
that gives such pictorial beauty, pith, and raciness, to the early
writers ; " and hence to recall language, to restore its early
meanings, to re-mint it in novel forms, is the secret of all effect-
ive writing and speaking, — of all verbal expression which is to
leave, as was said of the eloquence of Pericles, stings in the
minds and memories of the hearers."

Language is not only "fossil poetry," but it is also fossil
philoso{)liy, fossil ethics, and fossil history. As in the pre-
Adamite rock are bound up and preserved the vegetable and
animal forms of ages long gone by, so in words are locked up
truths once known but not forgotten, — the thoughts and feel-
ings, the habits, customs, opinions, virtues and vices of men
long since in their graves. Compared with these memorials of
the past, these records of ancient and modern intellectual dyn-
asties, how poor are all other monuments of human power, per-
severance, skill, or genius ! Unlike the works of individual
genius, or the cuneiform inscriptions which are found in orien-
tal countries on the crumbling of half calcined stone, language
gives us the history not only of individuals, but of nations ; not
only of nations, but of mankind. It is, indeed, " an admirable
poem on the history of all ages ; a living monument on which
is written the genesis of human thought. Thus * the ground
on which our civilization stands is a sacred one, for it is the
deposit of thought. For language, as it is the n»irror, so it is
the product of reason, and, as it embodies thought, so it is the
child of thought. In it are embodied the sparks of that celes-
tial fire which, from a once bright centre of civilization, has
streamed forth over the inhabited eaith, and which now already,
after less than three myriads of years, forms a galaxy round the
globe, a chain of light from pole to pole.'"**

" The Origin of Languajje," by F. W, Farrar,

226

WOBDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

Sil

.:...,. \

How pregnant with instruction is often the history of a single
word ! Coleridge, who keenly appreciated the significance of
words, says that there fire cases where more knowledge of more
value may be conveyed by the history of a word than by the
history of a campaign. Sometimes the germ of a nation's life,
— the philosophy of some political, moral, or intellectual move-
ment in a country, — will be found coiled up in a single word,
just as the oak is found in an acorn. The fact that the Arabs
were the arithmeticians, the astronomers, the chemists, and the
merchants of the Middle Ages, is shown by the words we have
borrowed from them, — algeljra, almanac, cypher, zero, zenith,
alkali, alcohol, alchemy, alembic, magazine, tariff, cotton, elixir ;
and so that the monastic system originated in the Greek, and
not in the Latin church, is shown by the fact that the words
expressing the chief elements of the system, as monk, monastery,
anchorite, cenobite, ascetic, hermit, are Greek, not Latin.
What an amount of history is wrapped up in the word Pagan !
The term, we learn from Gibbon, is remotely derived from nay>/,
in the Doric dialect, signifying a fountain ; and the rural neigh-
bourhood which frequented the ^•^''\< de ivedthe common appel-
lation of Pagus and Pagans. Soot. Pagan and rural became
nearly synonymous, and the meaner peasants acquired that
name which has been corrupted into peasant in the modern
languages of Europe. All non-military people soon came to be
branded as Pagans. The Christians were the soldiers of Christ ;
their adversaries, who refused i\\& sacrament, or military oath of
baptism, might deserve the metaphorical name of Pagans.
Christianity gradually filled the cities of the empire ; the old
religion retired and languished, in the time of Prudentius, in
obscure villages. From Pagus, as a root, comes pagius, first a
villager, then a rural labourer, then a servant, lastly a page.
Pagina, first the enclosed square of cultivated land near a vil-
lage, graduated into the page of a book. Pagare, from denot-
ing the Jield-service that compensated the provider of food and
raiment, was applied eventually to every form in which the
changes of society required the benefited to pai/ for what they
received.

Often where history is utterly dumb concerning the past,
language speaks. The discovery of the foot-print on the sand

ji i u

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

227

did not more certainly prove to Robinson Crusoe that the
island of which he had fancied himself the sole inhabitant con-
tained a brother man, than the similarity of the inflections in
the speech of diff'erent peoples proves their brotherhood. Were
all the histories of England swept from existence, the study of
its language — developing the fact that the basis of the language
is Saxon, that the names of the prominent objects of nature
are Celtic, the terms of war and government Norman-French,
the ecclesiastical terms Latin — would enable us to reconstruct a
large part of the story o£ the past, as it even now enables us to
verify many of the statements of the chroniclers. Humboldt,
in his *' Cosmos," eulogizes the study of words as one of the
richest sources of historical knowledge ; and it is probable that
what comparative philology, yet in its infancy, has already dis-
covered, will compel a rewriting of the history of the world.
Even now it has thrown light on many of the most perplexing
problems of religion, history, and ethnography ; and it seems
destined to triumphs of which we can but dimly apprehend the
consequences. On the stone tablets of the universe God's own
finger has written the changes which millions of years have
wrought on the mountain and the plain ; and in the fluid air,
which he coins into spoken words, man has preserved forever
the grand facts of his past history and the grand processes of
his inmost soul. " Nations and languages against dynasties and
treaties," is the cry which is remodelling the map of Europe ;
and in our country, comparative philologists — to their shame
be it said — have laboured with satanic zeal to prove the impossi-
bility of a common origin of languages and races, in order to
justify, by scientific arguments, the theory of slavery. It has
iDeen said t!iat the interpretation of one word in the Vedas fifty
years earlier would have savfd many Hindoo widows from
being burned alive ; and the ])lul()logists of England and Ger-
many yet expect to prove to the Brahmins that cask is not a
religious institution, and has no authority in their sacred writ-
ings — the eff'ect of which will V)e to enable the British Govern-
ment to inflict penalties for the observance of the rules of caste^
without violating its j^romise to respect the religion of the
natives, and thus to relieve India from the greatest incubus
and clog on its progress.

?ii

^:l

228

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF WORDS.

Language, as it daguerreotj'pes human thought, shares, as we
have seen, in all the vicissitudes of man. It mirrors all the
changes in the character, tastes, customs, and opinions of a
people, and shows with unerring faithfulness whether and in
what degree they advance or recede in culture or morality. As
new ideas germinate in the mind of a nation, it will demand
new forms of expression ; on the other hand, a petrified and
mechanical national mind will as surelv betray itself in a petri-
fied and mechanical language. It is by no accident or caprice
that

■words, whilom flouriHhinf:

Pass now no more, but banished from the court,
Dwell with disgrace among the vulgar sort ;
And those, which eld's strict doom did disallow
And damn for bullion, go for current now."

Often with the lapse of time the meaning of a word changes
imperceptibly, until after some centuries it becomes the very
opposite of what it once was. To disinter these old meanings
out of the alluvium and drift of ages, affords as much pleasure
to the linguist as to disinter a fossil does to the geologist.

An exact knowledge of the changes of signification which
words have undergone is not merely a source of pleasure ; it is
absolutely indispensable to the full understanding of old
authors. Thus, for example, Milton and Thomson use
" horrent" and "horrid" for bristling, e. g.,

" With dangling ice all horrid.''''

Milton speaks of a ** savage" (meaning woody, silva) hill, and
of "amiable" (meaning lovely) fruit. Again, in the well-
known lines of the "Allegro," where Milton says, amongst the
cheerful sights of rural morn,

" And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the vale," —

the words "telling his tale"?lo not mean that he is romancing
or making love to the milk maid, but that he is counting his
sheep as they pass the hawthorn, — a natural and familiar occu-
pation of shepherds on a summer's morning. The primary

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

meaning of "tale" is to count or number, as in German
"zahlen." It is thus used in the book of Exodus, which
states that the Israelites were compelled to deliver their tale of
bricks. In the English tale and in the French conte the second-
ary meaning has supplanted the first, though we still speak of
"keeping tally," of "untold gold," and say, "Here is the sum
twice-told."

It has been said that one of the arts of a great poet or prose-
writer, who wishes to add emphasis to his style, — to bring out
all the latent forces of his native'tongue, — will often consist in
reconnecting a word with its original derivation, in not suffer-
ing it to forget itself and its father's house, though it would.
This Milton does with signal effect, and so frequently that we
must often interpret his words rather by their classical mean-
ings than by their English use. Thus in " Paradise Lost,"
when Satan speaks of his having been pursued by " Heaven's
afflicting thunder," the poet uses the word " afflicting" in its
original primary sense of striking down bodily. Properly the
word denotes a state of mind or feeling only, and is not used
to-day in a concrete sense. So when Milton, at the opening of
the same poem, speaks of

"The ge.crci top
Of Oreb or of Sinai,"

the meaning of the word " secret" is not that of the English
adjective, but is remote, apart, lonely, as in Virgil's " secre-
tosque pios." The absurdity of supposing the word to be the
same as our ordinary adjective led Bentley, among many
ridiculous " improvements" of Milton's language to change it
to " sacred."

Shakespeare, also, not unfrequently uses words in their
classical sense. Tims when Cleopatra speaks of

"Such gifts as we greet modern friends withal,"

"modern" is used in the sense of modil (from modus, a fashion
or manner) ; a modern friend, compared with a true friend,
being what the fashion of a thing is, compared with the sub-
stance. So — as De Quiucey, to whom we owe this explanation,

'■" \Xk

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230

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

has shown — when in the famous picture of life, "All the
World's a Stage," the justice is described as

" Full of wise saws and modem instances,"

the meaning is not, " full of wise sayings and modern illustra-
tions," but full of proverbial maxims of conduct and of trivial
arguments ; i. e., of petty distinctions that never touch the
point at issue. Instances is from instantla, which the monkish
and scholastic writers always used in the sense of an argument.
Mystery is derived from " rau," the imitation of closing the
lips. Courage is "good heart." Anecdote, — from the Greek
av (not), €K (out), and hova (given), — meant once a fact not
given out or published ; now it means a short, amusing story.
Procopius, a Greek historian in the reign of Justinian, is said
to have coined the word. Not daring, for fear of torture and
death, to speak of some living persons as they deserved, he
wrote a work which he called " Anecdotes," or a " Secret His-
tory." The instant an anecdote is published, it belies its title ]
it is no longer an anecdote. Allowance formerly was used
to denote praise or approval ; as when Shakespeare says, in
" Troilus and Cressida,"

" A stirring dwarf we do allowance give,
Before a sleeinng giant. "

To prevent, wliich now means to hinder or obstruct, signified,
in its Latin etymology, to anticipate, to get the start of, and is
thus used in the Old Testament. Girl once designated a young
person of either sex. JVidow was applied to men as well as
women. Astonished literally means thunderstruck, as its deri-
vation from " attonare " shows. Holland, in his translation of
Livy, speaks of a knave who threw some heavy stones upon a
certain king, *' whereof the one smote the king upon his head,
the other astonished his shoulder." Sagacious once meant
quick-smelling, as in the line,

" The hound sagacious of the tainted prey."

Rascal, according to Verstigan, primarily meant an "ill-favoured,
lean, and wortlilesse deer." Thus Shakespeare ,'

"Horns I the noblest deer hath them as huge as t\w rascal."

VURtOStTIES OF LANGUAGM.

Afterwards it denoted the common people, the plebs as .listin-
guished from the populus. A naturalist was once a person who
rejected revealed truth, and believed only in natural religion.
He is now an investigator of nature and her laws, and often a
believer in Christianity. Blackguards were formerly the scul-
lions, turnspits, and other meaner retainers in a great house,
who, when a change was made from one residence to another,
accompanied and took care of the pots, pans, and other kitchen
utensils, by which they were smutted. Webster, in his play
of " The White Devil," speaks oi " a lousy knave, that within
these twenty years rode with the black guard in the Duke's
carriage, amongst spits and dripping-pans." Artillery, which
to-day means the heavy ordnance of modern warfare, was two
or three centuries ago applied to any engines for throwing
missiles, even to the bow and arrow. Punctual, which now
denotes exactness in keeping engagements, formerly applied to
space as well as to time. Sir Thomas Browne speaks of '* a
punctual truth ; " and we read in other writers of "a punctual
relation " or " description," meaning a particular or circum-
stantial relation or description.

Bombast, now swelling talk, inflated diction without sub-
stance, was originally cotton padding. It is .derived from the
Low Latin, bombox, cotton. Chemist once meant the same as
alchemist. Polite originally meant polished. Cudvvorth speaks
of " polite bodies, as looking-glasses." Tidy, which now means
neat, well arranged, is derived from the old English word
" tide," meaning time, as in eventide. Tidy (German, zcitig,)
is timely, seasonable. As things in right time are apt to be in
the right place, the transition in the meaning of the word is
a natural one. Caitiff, formerly meant captive, being derived
from captivus through the Norman-French. The change of
signification points to the tendency of slavery utterly to debase
the character, — to transform the man into a cowardly mis-
creant. In like manner miscreant, once simply a misbeliever,
and applied to the most virtuous as well as to the vilest, points
to the deep-felt conviction that a wrong belief leads to wrong
living. Thus Gibbon : " The emperor's generosity to the mis-
creant (Soliman) was interpreted as treason to the Christian
cause." Thought, in early English, was anxious care; e.g..

It'!

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232

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

"Take no thought for your life." (Matt. vi. 25). Thing prima-
rily meant discourse, then solemn discussion, council, court of
justice, cause, matter or subject of discourse. The husting was
originally the house-thing, or domestic court.

Coquets were once male as well as female. Usurp, which
now means taking illegal or excessive interest, denoted, at first,
the taking of any interest, however small. A tobacconist was
formerly a smoker, not a seller, of tobacco. Corpse, now a body
from which the breath of life has departed, once denoted the
body of '-he living also ; as in Surrey,

" * valiant corpse, where force and beauty met."

Incomprekens'hle has undergone a striking change of meaning
withi i,he lasi ♦' -ee centuries. In the Athanasian creed the
Father, Sol, and .u h Ghost are spoken of as imniense. In
translating the cr^ed from the Latin, in which it was first
penned, the word inimensus was rendered " incomprehensible,"
a word which, at that time, was not limited to its present sense,
that is, inconceivable, or beyond, or above our understanding,
but meant "not comprehended within any limits," and answered
to the original expression and notion of immensity.

fFit, now used in a more limited sense, at first signified the
mental powers collectively; e. g., " Will puts in practice what
the wit deviseth." Later it came to denote quickness of appre-
hension, beauty or elegance in composition, and Pope defines
it us

nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

Another meaning was a man of talents or genius. The word
parts, a hundred years ago was used to denote genius or talents.
Horace Walpole, in one of his letters, says of Goldsmith that
** he was an idiot, with once or twice a fit oi parish The word
loyalty has undergone a marked change within a few centuries.
Originally it meant in English, as in French, fair dealing, fidelity
to the throne, and, in the United States, to the Union or the>
Constitution. Relevant, which formerly meant relieving or as-
sisting, is now used in the sense of relative or relating to, with
which, from a similarity of sound, though without the least

with
least

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

233

etymological coDnection, it appears to have been confounded.
The word exorbitant once meant deviating from a track or orbit ;
it is now used exclusively in the sense of excessive.

The word coincide was primarily a mathematial term. If one
mathematical point be superposed upon another, or one straight
line upon another between the same two points, the two points
in the first case and the two lines in the latter, are said to
coincide. The word was soon applied figuratively to identity
of opinion, but, according to Prof. Marsh, was not fully popu-
larized, at least in America, till 1826. On the Fourth of
July in that year, the semi-centennial jubilee of the Declara-
tion of Independence, Thomas Jeff'erson, the author of that
manifesto, and John Adams, its principal champion on the floor
of Congress, both also Ex-Presidents, died ; and this fact was
noticed all over the world, and especially in the United States,
as a remarkable coincidence. The death of Ex-President Monroe,
also, on the Fourth of July five years after, gave increased cur-
rency to the word. Our late Civil War has led to some strik-
ing mutations in the meaning of words. Contraband, from its
general signification of any article whose importation or expec-
tation is prohibited by law, became limited to a fugitive slave
within the United States' military lines. Secede and secession,
confederate and confederacy, have also acquired a new special
meaning.

DEGRADATION OF WORDS.

Another striking characteristic of words is their tendency to
contract in form and degenerate in meaning. Sometimes they
are ennobled and purified in signification ; but more frequently
they deteriorate, and from an honourable fall into a dishonour-
able meaning. We will first note a few examples of the for-
mer ; — Humility, with the Greeks and Romans, meant meanness
of spirit ; Paradise, in oriental tongues, meant only a royal
park ; regeneration was spoken by the Greeks only of the earth
in the springtime, and of the recollection of forgotten know-
ledge j sacrament and mystery are words " fetched from the
very dregs of paganism " to set forth the great truths of our
redemption. On the other hand, thief (Anglo-Saxon, thoew),

»,,

;' \ «*

■I

I -''"'a
i

|U H

1>34

WORT)S: TTIFAR USE AND ABUSE.

ill

formerly signified only one of tlie servile classes ; and villain,
or villein, meant peasant, — the serf, who, under the feudal sys-
tem, was adscriptus glehm, — the scorn of the landholders, the
half-barbarouft aristocracy, for these persons, led them to ascribe
to them the most hateful qualities, some of which their depjrad-
ing situation doubtless tended to foster. Thus the word villein
became gradually associated with ideas of crime and guilt, till
at length it became a synonyme for knaves of every class in
society. A menial was one of the many ; insolent meant un-
usual ; silly, blessed, — the infant Jesus being termed by an old
English poet " that harmless silly babe ; " officious signified
ready to do kindly offices. Demure was used once in a good
sense, without the insinuation which is now almost latent in it,
that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest on no cor-
responding realities. Facetious, which now has the sense of
buffoonish, originally meant urbane. Idiot, from the Greek,
originally signified only a private man, as distinguished from
an office-holder. Homely formerly meant secret and familiar ;
a^d brat, now a vulgar and contemptuous word, had anciently
a very different signification, as in the following lines from an
old hymn by Gascoigne :

" O Israel, O household of the Lord,
O Abraham's Ijrats, O brood of blessed seed,
O chosen sheep that loved the Lord indeed."

Imp once meant graft ; Bacon speaks of " those most virtu-
ous and goodly young imps, the Duke of Sussex and his bro-
ther." A boor was once only a farmer ; a scamp, a camp-de-
serter. Speculation first meant the sense of sight ; as in Shake-
speare,

" Thou hast no speculation in those eyes."

Next it was metaphorically transferred to mental vision, and
finally denoted, without a metaphor, the reflections and theories
of philosophers. From the domain of philosophy it has finally
travelled downwards to the offices of stock-jobbers, share-
brokers, and all men who get their living by their wits, instead
of by the sweat of their brows. So craft at first meant ability,
skill, or dexterity. The origin of the term, according to Wedg-
wood, is seen in the notion of seizing, expressed by the Italian,

d villain,
idal sys-
lers, the

ascribe
degrad-

rd villein
;uilt, till
class in
eant un-
y an old
signified

1 a good
ent in it,
Q no cor-
se nse of
s Greek,
ed from
amiliar ;
.nciently
from an

it virtu-
his bro-
amp-de-
Shake-

on, and
theories
3 finally
share-
instead
ability,
) Wedg-
ItaliaO;

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

235

grajiare, Welsh, craff, a hook, brace, holdfast. The term is
then applied to seizing with the mind, as in the Latin terms
apprehend, comprehend, from prehendere, to seize in a material
way. Gunning once conveyed no idea of sinister or crooked
wisdom. " The three Persons of the Trinity," says a rev. writer
of the fifteenth century, " are of equal cunning." Bacon, a
century later, uses the word in its present sense of fox-like
wisdom ; and Locke calls it " the ape of wisdom." Vagabond
is a word whose etymology conveys no reproach. It denoted
at first only a wanderer. But as men who have no homes are
apt to become loose, unsteady, and reckless in their habits, the
term has degenerated into its present signification.

Paramour meant originally only lover j a minion was a fa-
vourite ; and knave, the^lowest and most contemptuous term we
can use when insulting another, signified originally, as knabe
still does in German, a " boy." Subsequently, it meant ser-
vant ; thus Paul, in Wycliffe's version of the New Testament,
reverently terms himself "a knave of Jesus Christ." A simi-
lar paralibl to this is the word varlet, which is the same as
valet. Retaliate, from the Latin " re " (back) and " talis "
(such), naturally means to pay back in kind, or such as we have
received. But as, according to Sir Thomas More, men write
their injuries in marble, the kindnesses done them in sand, the
word ** retaliate " is applied only to offences or indignities, and
never to favours. The word resent, to feel in return, has under-
gone a similar deterioration. A Frenchman would say, " II
ressentit une vive douleur," for " He felt acute pain ; " whereas
we use the word only to express the sentiment of anger.

So animosity, which etymologically means only spiritedness,
is now applied to only one kind of vigour and activity, that
displayed in enmity and hate. Defalcation, from the Latin,
falx, a sickle or scythe, is properly a cutting off or down, a
pruning or retrenchment. Thus Addison : " The tea-table is
set forth with its usual bill of fare, and without any defalcation."
To-day we read of a " defalcation in the revenue," or " in a
treasurer's accounts," by which is meant a decrease in the
ampunt of the revenue, or in the moneys unaccounted for irre-
spective of the cause, — a falling off. This erroneous use of the
word is probably due to a confusion of it with the expression

^ ■ I

1.1. fP

ill

236

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABCSE.

fall awai/, and with the noun defaulter. Between the first word
and either of the last two, however, there is not the slightest
etymological relationship. Chaffer, to talk much and idly, pri-
marily meant to buy, to make a bargain, to higgle or dispute
about a bargain. Gossip (God-akin) once meant a sponsor in
baptism. Simple and simplicity have sadly degenerated in
meaning. A " simple " fellow, once a man sine plica (without
fold, free from duplicity), is now one who lacks shrewdness,
and is easily cheated or duped.

There are some words which though not used in an abso-
lutely unfavourable sense, yet require a qualifying adjective, to
be understood favourably. Thus, if a man is said to be noted
for his curiosity/, a prying, impertinent, not a legitimate, curi-
osity is supposed to be meant. So critic and criticise are com-
monly associated with a carping, fault-finding spirit. Parson
(persona ecclesice) had originally no undertone of contempt. In
the eighteenth century it had become a nickname of scorn ;
and it was at a party of a dozen parsons that the Earl of Sand-
wich won his wager that no one among them had brought his
prayer-book or forgotten his corkscrew. Fellow was originally
a term of respect, — at least there was in it no subaudition of
contempt ; now it is suggestive of worthlessness, if not of pos-
itively bad morals. Shakespeare did not mean to disparage
Yorick the jester when he said that "he was a. fellow of infi-
nite jest." Pope, on the other hand, tells us, a centiryor
more later, that

" Worth makes the man, want of it the fellow."

" By a. fast man, I presume you mean a loose one," said Sir
Robert Inglis to one who was describing a rake. Of all the
words which have degenerated from their original meaning,
the most remarkable is the term dunce, of the history of which
Archbishop Trench has given a striking account in his work
on " The Study of Words." In the Middle Ages certain theo-
logians, educated in the cathedral and cloister schools founded
by Charlemagne and his successors, were called Schoolmen.
Though they were men of great acuteness and subtlety of intel-
lect, their works, at the revival of learning, ceased to be popu-

CURIOSITTKS OF LANGUAGE,

237

ll^

first word
) slightest

idly, pri-
r dispute
iponsor in
erated in

(without
rewdness,

I an abso-
jective, to
» be noted
aate, curi-
3 are com-
. Parson
;empt. In
of scorn ;
'1 of Sand-
'ought his
originally
udition of
ot of pos-
disparage
)w of inti-
enti ry or

," said Sir
3f all the

meaning,
^ of which
I his work
tain theo-
} founded
choolmen.
;y of intel-

be popu-

lar, and it was considered a mark of intellectual progress and
advance to have thrown oft' their yoke. Some persons, however,
still clung to these Schoolmen, especially to Duns Scotus, the
great teacher of the Franciscan order ; and many times an ad-
herent of the old learning would seek to strengthen his position
by an appeal to its great doctor, familiarly called Duns ; while
his opponents would contemptuously rejoin, " Oh, you are a
Duns-man,'* or more briefly, " You are a Duns." As the new
learning was enlisting more and more of the scholarship of the
age on its side, the title became more and more a term of scorn ;
and thus, from that long extinct conflict between the old and
the new learning, the mediaeval and the modern theology, we
inherit the words " dunce " and " duncery." The lot of poor
Duns, as the Archbishop observes, was certainly a hard one.
That the name of " the Subtle Doctor," as he was called, one
of the keenest and most subtle-witted of men, — according to
Hooker, " the wittiest of the school divines," — should become
a synonyme for stupidity and obstinate dulness, was a fate of
which even his bitterest enemies could never have dreamed.

COMMON WORDS WITH CURIOUS DERIVATIONS.

Saunterers were once pilgrims to the Holy Land {la Sainte
Terre), who, it was found, took their own time to go there.
£it is that which has been bit off", and exactly corresponds to
the word " morsel," used in the same sense, and derived from
the Latin, mordere, to bite. Banhiipt means literally broken
bench. It was the custom in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies for the Lombard merchants to expose their wares for
sale in the market-place on benches. When one of their number
failed, all the other merchants set upon him, drove him from
the market, and broke his beiich to pieces. Banco rotto, the
Italian for bench-broken, becomes hanquerouie in French, and
in English bankrupt. Alligator is from the Spanish, el lagarto,
" the lizard," being the largest of the lizard species. Stipulation
is from stipulum, a straw, which the Romans broke when they
made a mutual engagement. Drxterity is simply right-handed-
ness. Mountebank means a quack-medicine vendor — from the
Italian, montare, to mount, and banco, a bench. Literally, one

I; :k.

'!'■

W '' '

1 k

It'

lit '<

!j i-i

238

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

who mounts a bench to boast of his infallible skill in curing
diseases. Quandary is a corruption of the French, qiCen dirai
(jej? " What shall I say of it? " and expresses that feelinej of
uncertainty which would naturally prompt such a que
Faint is from the French, se feindre, to pretend ; ; > v.iat
originally fainting was a pretended weakness or inability. We
have an example of the thing originally indicated by the word,
in the French theatres, where professional fainters are
employed, whose business it is to be overcome and sink to the
floor under the powerful acting of the tragedians.

Topsy-turvey is said to be a contraction or corruption of
" top-side t'other way," just as helter-skelter is from hilariter
et celeriter, " gaily and quickly." Hip ! hip ! hurrah ! is said to
have been originally a war-cry adopted by the stormers of a
German town, wherein a great many Jews had taken refuge.
The place being sacked, the Jews were all put to the sword,
amid the shouts of *^ Hiersolyma est pe.rditay From the ^rst
letters of these words (h. e. p.) an exclamation was cont: \
When the wine sparkles in the cup, and patriotic or
soul-thrilling sentiments are greeted with a " Hip ! hip !
hurrah I " it is well enough to remember the origin of a cry
which reminds us of the cruelty of Christians towards God's
chosen people. Sexton is a corruption of " sacristan," which is
from sacra, the sacred things of a church. The sacristan's
office was to take care of the vessels of the service and the
vestments of the clergy. Since the Reformation his duties in
this respect have been considerably lessened, and he has dug
the graves — so that the term now commonly means grave-
digger, though it still retains somewhat of its old meaning.

Toad-eater is a metaphor supposed to be taken from a
mountebank's boy eating toads, in order to show his master's
skill in expelling poison. It is more probable, however, that
the phrase is a version of the French, avaler des couleiivres,
which means putting up with all sorts of indignities without
showing resentment. The propriety of the term rests on the
fact that dependent persons are often forced to do the most
nauseous things to please their patrons. The same trick of
pretending to eat reptiles, such as toads, is held by some
etymologist? to be the origin of the term bvj^oon, bvffoonery,

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

230

in curing
xCm. dirai
foelinej of
que

lity. We
he word,
ters are
ik to the

ption of
I hilariter
is said to
ers of a
ti refuge,
e sword,

the ^rst
)nt' I
or
a! hip!

of a cry
is God's
which is
cristan's

and the
duties in
has dug
grave-
ping.

from a
master's
'^er, that
ukuvres,
without

on the
le most

rick of
►y some
p'oo7iery,

from the Latin, bufo, a toad. Wedgwood derives it from the
French, bouffm, a jester, from the Italian, bujf'a, a puff, a blast
or a blurt with the mouth made at one in scorn. A puff with
the mouth indicates contempt ; it is emblematically niakinq
light oi an object. In "David Copperfield" we read; "And
who minds Dick \ Dick's nobody ! Whoo ! He blew a slight,
contemptuous breath, as if he blew himself away."

Cant (Gaelic, cainnt, speech,) is properly the language
spoken by thieves and beggars among themselves, when they
do not wish to be understood by' bystanders. Subsequently it
came to mean the peculiar terms used by any other profession
or community. Some etymologists derive the word from the
Latin, caatare, to sing, and suppose it to signify the whining
cry of professional beggars, though it may have obtained
its beggar sense from some instinctive notion of its quasi-
religious one. It has been noted tha the whole class of words
comprising enchant, incantation, etc., were primarily referable
to religious ceremonies of some kind ; and, as once an import-
ant part of a beggar's daily labour was invoking, or seeming
to invoke, blessings on those who gave him alms, this, with
the natural tendency to utter any oft-repeated phrases in a
sing-song, rhymical tone, gave to the word cant its present sig-
nification. In Scotland the word .has a peculiar meaning.
About the middle of the seventeenth century, Andrew and
Alexander Cant, of Edinburgh, maintained that all refusers of
the covenant ought to be excommunicated, and that all excom-
municated might lawfully be killed ; and in their grace after
meat they " praid for those phanaticques and seditious minis-
ters" who had been arrested and imprisoned, that the Lord
would pity and deliver them. From these two Cants, Andrew
and Alexander, it is said, all seditious praying and preaching
in Scotland is called " Canting."

The tendency to regard money as the source of true happiness
is strikingly illustrated in the word wealth, which is connected
with weal, just as in Latin beatus meant both blessed and rich,
and oX/?ios the same in Greek. Property and propriety come
from the same French word propriiti ; so that the Frenchman
in New York was not far ©ut of the way, when in the panic of
i857 he said he " should lose all hh propriety." The term blue-

240

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

\i '

i . !

stocking, applied to literary ladies, has a curious origin. Orig-
inally, in England in 1760, it was conferred on a society of
literary persons of both sexes. The society derived its name
from the blue worsted stockings always worn by Benjamin
Stillingfleet, a distinguished writer, who was one of the most
active promoters of this association. This term was subse-
quently conferred on literary ladies, from the fact that the
accomplished and fascinating Mrs. Jerningham wore blue stock-
ings at the social and literary entertainments given by Lady
Montague. Woman is the wij or weh-moxi, who stays at home
to spin, as distinguished from the weap-man, who goes abroad
to use the weapon of war. The term "man" is, of course,
generic, including both male and female. Lady primarily sig-
nifies bread-keeper. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon,
hlafdie, i. e. hlafweardige, bread-keeper, from hlaf, bread, loaf,
and weardian, to keep, look after. Waist is the same as waste ;
that part of the figure which wastes — that is, diminishes.

Canard has a very curious origin. M. Quetelet, a French
writer, in the " Annuaire de I'Acaddmie Fran(;^aise," attributes
the first application of this term to Norbert Cornelissen, who,
to give a sly hit at the ridiculous pieces of intelligence in the
public journals, stated that an interestijig experiment had just
been made calculated to prove the voracity of ducks. Twenty
were placed together ; and one of them having been killed and
cut up into the smallest possible pieces, feathers and all, was
thrown to the other nineteen, and most gluttonously gobbled
up. Another was then taken from the nineteen, and being
chopped small like its predecessor, was served up to the
eighteen, and at once devoured like the other ; and so on to
the last, who thus was placed in the position of having eaten
his nineteen companions. This story, most pleasantly narrated,
ran the round of all the journals of Europe. It then became
almost forgotten for about a score cf years, when it went back
from America with amplifications ; but the word remained in
its novel signification.

Abominable was once supposed to have been derived from the
Latin words ab (from) and Jwmo (a man), meaning repugnant to
humanity. It really comes from abominor, which again is from
ab and omen ; and it conveys the idea of what is in a religious

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE,

241

1. Orig-
Dciety of
ts name
lenjamin
he most
,8 subse-
that the
le stock-
by Lady
at home
s abroad
■ course,
arily sig-
oSaxon,
ad, loaf,
s waste ;
es.

, French
ttributes
en, who,
36 in the
had just
Twenty
lied and

all, was
gobbled
id being

to the
so on to
[ig eaten
larrated,

became
Bnt back
ained in

from the

;nant to

is from

eligious

sense profane and detestable — in short, of evil omen. Milton
always applies it to devilish, profane, or idolatrous objects.
Poltroon is pollice truncus, i. e., with the thumb cut off, — polleXy
Latin, meaning thumb, and trvncus, :.xaimed or mutilated.
When the Roman empire was about falling in pieces, the valour
of the citizens had so degenerated, that, to escape fighting,
many cut off their right thumbs, thus disabling themselves
from using the pike. Farce is derived from farcire, a Latin
word meaning to stuff as with flour, herbs, and other ingredients
in cooking. A farce is a comedy' with little plot, stuffed with
ludicrous incidents and expressions. Bacy is from "race,"
meaning family breed, and signifies having the characteristic
flavour of origin, savouring of the source.

Trivial may be from trivium, in the sense of tres vire, a place
where three roads meet, and thus indicate that which is commc^n
place, or of daily occurrence. But it is more probably from
trivium, in the sense in which the word was used in the Middle
Ages when it meant the course of three arts, grammar, logic,
and rhetoric, which formed the common curriculum of the uni-
versities, as distinguished from the quadrivium which embraced
four more, namely, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.
Trivial things in this sense may mean things that occur ordin-
arily, as distinguished from higher or more abstruse things.
The word quiz, has a remarkable origin, unless the etymologists
who gave its derivation are themselves quizzing their readers.
It is said that many years ago, when one Daly was patentee
of the Irish theatres, he spent the evening of a Saturday in
company with many of the wits and men of fashion of the day.
Gambling was introduced, when the manager staked a large
sum that he would have spoken, all through the pr- ucipal streets
of Dublin, by a certain hour next day, Sunday, a word having
no meaning, and being derived from no known language.
Wagers were laid, and stakes deposited. Daly repaired to the
theatre, and despatched all the servants and supernumeraries
with the word *' Quiz," which they chalked on every door and
every shop window in Town. Shops being all shut next day,
everybody going to and coming from the different places of
worship saw the word, and everybody repeated it, so that
"Quiz " was heard all through Dublin ; the circumstance of so

1.1 ;

iHfl

1 !

242

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

strange a word being on every door and window caused much
surprise, and ever since, should a strange story be ivfctempted to
be passed current, it draws forth the expression, — " You are
quizzing nie." Some person who has a just aversion to practi-
cal jokes, wittily defines a " quizzer " as "one who believes me
to be a fool because I will not believe him to be a liar."

Huguenot is a word whose origin is still a vexata qucestio of
etymology. Of the many derivations given, some of which are
ridiculously fanciful, " Eignots," which Voltaire and others give
from the German, Eidgenossen, confederates, — is the one gene-
rally received. A plausible derivation is from Huguenot, a small
piece of money, which, i" the time of Hugo Capet, was worth
less than a denier. At the time of Amboise's conspiracy, some
of the petitioners lied through fear ; whereupon some of the
countrymen said they were poor fellows, not worth a Hugue-
not, — whence the nickname in question. Pensive is a pictu-
resque word, h'om jiensare, the frequentative oi pendere, to weigh.
The French have pensde, a thought, the result of mental weigh-
ing. A pensive figure is that in which a person appears to be
holding an invisible balance of reflection. Bumper is a corrup-
tion of le hon phe, meaning, " the Holy Father," or Pope, who
was once the great toast of every feast. As this was commonly
the first toast, it was considered that the glasses would be dese-
crated by being again used.

Nice is derived by some etymologists from the Anglo-Saxon,
huesc, soft, effeminate ; but there is good reason for believing
that it is from the Latin, nescins, ignorant. " Wise, and no-
thing nice," says Chaucer ; that is, no wise ignorant. If so, it
is a curious instance of the extraordinary changes of meaning
which words undergo, that " nice " should come to signify ac-
curate or fastidious, which implies knowledge and taste rather
than ignorance. The explanation is, that the diffidence of
ignorance resembles the fastidious slowness of discernment.
Gibberish is from a famous sage, Giber, an Ara'j, who sought
for the philosopher's stone, and used, perhaps, senseless incanta-
tions. Alert is a pictures(|ue word from the Italian, aU'erte, —
on the mound or ram})art. The "alert" man is one who is
wide-awake and watchful, like the warder on the watch-tower
OV tlie sentinel upon the riunpart. Jitj-laws are not, etymologi-.

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

243

!^.

used much
tempted to
-" You are
to practi-
•elieves me
ir."

qucestio of

which are

>thers give

one gene-

lot, a small

was worth

"acy, some

»me of the

a Hugue-

is a pictu-

, to weigh.

tal weigh-

ears to be

a corrup-

*ope, who

ommonly

d be dese-

lo-Saxon,

believing

and no-

If so, it

meaning

ignify ac-

te rather

dence of

ernment.

sought

i mcanta-

ilf'erte, —

3 who is

ch-tower

ymologi-.

cally, laws of inferior importance, but the laws of " byes " or
towns, as distinguished from the general laws of a kingdom.
B// is Danish for town or village ; as " Whitby," White Town,
'* Derby," Deer Town, etc.

A writer in " Notes and Queries " suggests that the word
snobs may be of a classical origin, derived from sine obola, with-
out a penny. It is not probable, however, that it was meant
as a sneer at poverty only. A more ingenious suggestion is
that, as the higher classes were called "nobs," — i. e., nobilitas,
the nobility, — the " s-nobs " were' those si?ie nobilitate, without
any blue blood in their veins, or pure aristocratic breeding.
Humbug is an expressive word, about the origin of which etymo-
logists are disagreed. An ingenious explanation, not given in
the dictionaries, is, that it is derived from Hume of the Bog,
a Scotch laird, so called from his estate, who lived during the
reign of William and Anne. He was celebrated in Edinburgh
circles for his marvellous stories, which, in the exhausting
draughts they made on his hearer's credulity, out-Munchausened
Munchausen. Hence, any tough story was called " a regular
Hume of the Bog," or, by contraction, Humbug. Another
etymology of humbug is a piece of Elamburg news; i e., a Stock
Exchange canard. Webster derives the word from Jium, to im-
pose on, deceive, and bug, a frightful object, a bugbear, Wedg-
wood thinks it may come from the union of hum and buzz,
signifying sound without sense. He cites a catch, set by Dr.
Arne in " Notes and Queries ":

*' Bui, ijuoth the blue Hy,
Hum, fjuoth tho bee,
/i(/: and /(*oyi they cry,
And s(i do we."'

Imbecile is froTn the Latin, In and bacilluni, a walking-stick ;
one who through infirmity leans for support upon a stick.
Petrels are little Peters, because, like the apostle, they can
walk on the water. Hocus pocus is a corruption of Hoc est
corpus, " this is the body," words once used in necromancy or
jugglery. Chagrin is primarily a hard, granulated leather,
which chafes tlie limbs ; hence, secondarily, irritation or vexa-
tion, 6*«?ion is from a Greek word meaning 'cane;" first a

r: !

r I

ipi i

244

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

hollow rule or a cane used as a measure, then a law or rule.
The word is identical with " cannon," so called from its hollow
tube-like form. Hence it has been wittily said that the world
in the Middle Ages was governed first by canons, and then by
cannons, — first, by Saint Peter, then by saltpetre.

Boohy primarily denotes a person who gapes and stares about,
wondering at everything. From the syllable 6a, representing
the opening of the mouth, are formed the French words haie,i\
beer, to gape, and thence in the patois of the Hainault, haia, the
mouth, and figuratively one who stands staring with open
mouth, houhie. Webster thinks the word is derived from the
French houhie, a waterfowl. Pet, a darling, is from the French
petit, which comes from the Latin, petitus, sought after. " My
pet " means literally " my sought after or desired one." Petty
is also from fhe French, petit, little. Assassin is derived from
the Persian, hashish, an intoxicating opiate. " The Assassins "
were a tribe of fanatics, who lived in the mountains of Lebanon,
and executed with terror and subtlety every order entrusted to
them by their chief, the " Old Man of the Mountain." They
made a jest of torture when seized, and were the terror alike of
Turk and Christian. They resembled the Thugs of India.
Blunderbuss (properly thunder-buss) is from the German biichse,
applied to a rifle, a box ; hence " arquehuss " and " Brown Bess.'^
Bosh is derived, according to some etymologists, from a Turkish
word meaning " empty," — according to others, from the Ger-
man, hosse, a joke or trifle. Mr. Blackley, in his " Word-Gossip,"
says it is the pure gypsy word for " fiddle," which suggests the
semi-s&nction^d Jiddle-de dee ! Person primarily meant an actor.
The Koman theatres, which could hold thirty to forty thousand
spectators, were so large that the actors wore masks containing
a contrivance to render the voice louder. Such a mask was
called persona {per sonare, to sound through), because the voice
sounded through it. By a common figure of speech, the word
meaning "mask" (persona) was afterwards applied to its wearer;
so persona came to signify " actor.'' But as all men are actors,
playing each his part on the stage of life, the word " person "
came afterwards to signify a man or woman. Parson, the
" chief person " of a parish, is another form of the same word.
Cnrmudgeon is probably from corn-merchant, one who tries to

CURIOSITIES OP LANGVAGE.

245

w or rule,
its hollow
the world
d then by

ires about,
presenting
ords haii',i\
b, haia^ the
vith open
I from the
he French
er. " My
8." Petty
ived from
Lssassins"

Lebanon,
[trusted to
1." They
3r alike of

of India,
an biichse,
wn Bess."
a Turkish

the Ger-
i-Gossip,"
^gests the
t an actor.

thousand
containing
[nask was
! the voice

the word
bs wearer ;
ire actors,
' person "
usfm, the
mo word,
o tries to

enrich himself by hoarding grain and withholding it from
others ; or it may be from the French, cceur (the heart), and
meclumt (wicked). Haberdasher is from the German, HtM ihr
das hier ? i. e.. Have you this here ? Hoax is from the Anglo-
Saxon, husc, mockery or contempt ; or, perhaps it is from hocus-
pocus, which was at one time used to ridicule the Roman Cath-
olic doctrine of transubstantiation.

Eight is from the Latin, rectus, ruled, proceeding in a straight
line ; wromj is the perfect participle of " wring,^' that which has
been " wrung " or wrested from the right ; just as in French
tort is from torqueo, that which is twisted. Humble-pie is pro-
perly " umble-pie." The umbles were the entrails or coarser
parts of the deer, the perquisite of the keeper or huatsman.
Pantaloon is from the Italian, pia)de leone ( panta-leone, panta-
loon,) " the Planter of the Lion • " that is, the Standard-Bearer
of Venice. The Lion of St. Murk was the standard of Venice.
" Pantaloon " was a masked character in the Italian comedy,
the butt of the play, who w^ore breeches and stockings that
were all of one piece. The Spanish language has panalon, a
slovenly fellow whose shirt hangs out of his breeches. Cheat
is from the Latin, cadere, to fall. The word " escheats " first

denoted lands that fell to the crown by forfeiture. The *' es-
cheatours," who certified these to the Exchequer, practised so
much fraud, that, by a natural transition the exchequer " es-
cheatour " passed into " cheater " and " escheat " into "cheat."
Salary is from the Latin, sal (salt), which in the reign of the
Emperor Augustus comprised the provisions, as well as the ^jay,
of the Roman military officers. From " salary" came, prob-
ably, the expression, " He is not w^orth his salt,'* that is, his
pay, or wages. Kidnap is from the German, kind, or Provincial
English, kidf meaning ** child," and najJ or nab, " to steal," — to
steal children. Hawk, in Anglo-Saxon, hafoc, points to the
havoc which that bird makes among the smaller ones ; as ratten
expresses the greedy or "ravenous" disposition of the bird so
named. Oicl is said to be the past participle of "to yell" (as
in Latin ulula, the screech-owl, is from ululare), and differs from
" howl" only in its spelling." Solecism is from Soli, a town of
Cilicia, the people of which corrupted the pure Greek. Squirrel
is from two Greek words, a-Kia, a shade, and ovpd, a tail,

1 m

■V

24G

JFORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

l\ 'X:

I I.

Sycophant is primarily a " fig-shower f one who informed the
public officers of Attica that the law against the exportation of
figs had been violated. Hence the word came to mean a com-
mon informer, a mean parasite. Famsik, from the Greek irapd
beside and o-Itos, food, means literally one who eats at the table
of another — a privilege which is apt to be paid for by obsequi-
ousness and flattery.

Sarcasm^ from the Greek, o-ap^, flesh, Ka^w, I tear, is literally
a tearing of the flesh. Tribulation is from the Latin, tribuliim,
a kind of sledge or heavy roller, which did the work of the
English flail, by hard grinding and wearing, instead of by re-
peated light strokes. Troubles, afflictions and sorrows being
the divinely appointed means for separating the chaff" from the
wheat of men's natures — the light and trivial from the solid
and valuable — the early Christians, by a rustic but familiar
metaphor, called these sorrows and trials " tribulations," thresh-
ings of the inner spiritual man, by which only could he be
fitted for the heavenly garner. As Wither beautifully sings ;

" Till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear ;
So till men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth be found, their worth is not much ;
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value, which in threshing they may get. "

Tabby, a familiar name of cats, is the French tahiSj which
comes from the Persian reiahi, a rich watered silk, and denotes
the wavy bars upon their coats. Schooner has a curious deri-
vation. In 1713 Captain Andrew Eobinson launched the first
vessel of this kind, with gaff's instead of the lateen yards until
then in use, and the luff" of the sail bent to hoops on the mast.
As she slipped down the ways a bystander exclaimed, "Oh,
how she scoons /" — whereupon the builder, catching at the word,
replied, " A scooner let her be ! " Originally the word was
spelled without the h. Supercilious, from supercilium (the eye-
brow), is literally knitting the eyebrows in pride. Slave chron-
icles the contest between the Teutonic and Sclavonic or Slavonic
races. When a German captured a Russian or Bohemian, he
would call him a sclave or slave, whereby the word became
associated with the idea of servitude. In Oriental France, in

CURIOSITIES OF LANGVAGE.

24;

• .

rmed the
rtation of
an a com-
reek Trapd.
the table
' obsequi-

3 literally
trihulum,
■k of the
of by re-
ws being
from the
the solid
familiar
" thresh-
d he be
sings ;

which
denotes
us deri-
bhe first
is until
e mast.

"Oh,
e word,
rd was
he eye-
chron-
lavonic
ian, he
Decame
mce, in

the eighth century, princes and bishops were rich in these
captives.

Servant is from scrvus, which the Justinian code derives from
servare, to preserve, — because the victor preserved his captives
alive, instead of killing them.

Scrupulous is from the latin, scrupulus, a small, sharp stone,
such as might get into a Roman traveller's oi)en shoe and
distress him, whence the further meaning of doubt or a source
of doubt and hesitation. Afterwards the word came to
express a measure of weight, the twenty-fourth part of an
ounce, and hence to be scrupulous is to pay minute, nice
and exact attention to matters often in themselves of small'
weight. Plagiarism is literally man-stealing. As books are
one's mental offspring, the word came naturally to mean, first,
the stealing of a book or manuscript which the thief published
as his own ; secondly, quoting from another man's writings
without acknowledgment. Parlour, from ])arler, to speak, is
therefore the talking-room, as boudoir, from bouda', to pout, is
literally the pouting-room. Egrc<jions is from the Latin f.r,
from, and grege, flock or herd. An " egregious " lie is one dis-
tinguished from the common herd of lies, such as one meets
with in every patent-medicine advertisement and political
newspaper. Negotiate is from negotior, compounded of ne ego otior,
I am not idle.

The origin of the word caucus has long been a vexed ques-
tion with etymologists. Till recently it was supposed by many
to be a corruption of " caulkers," being derived from an asso-
ciation of these men in Boston, who met to organize resistance
to England just before the Revolutionary War. Dr. J. Ham-
mond Turnbull, of Hardford, Connecticut, has suggested a new
and ingenious derivation of the term, which is more satisfac-
tory, and probably correct. Strachey, in his " Historie of
Travaile into Virginia," 1610-12 (printed by the Hakluyt
Society, 1849), says that the Chechahamanias, a free people,
acknowledging the supremacy of Powhatan, were governed, not
by a werouncc, commander, sent by Powhatan, but by their
priests, with the assistance of their elders ; and this board was
called cawcaivicas. Captain John Smith writes cockerouse for
mwcau'was, in the sense of " captain ; " but the English gener-

^8! i

!. , t

) i

"i . S

^i iill

;■!

248

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

ally understood it in the sense of ** counsellor," and adopted
it from the Indians, as Beverley states that it designates " one
that has the honour to be of the king's or queen's council," a
provincial councillor, just as Northern politicians now use the
word sacJiem, and formerly used mugwomp. The verb from
which cawcawwas, or cockeroitse comes, means primarily " to talk
to," hence to " harangue," " advise," " encourage," and is found
in all Algonquin dialects, as Abnaki kakesoo, to incite, and
Chippeway gaganso (n nasal), to exhort, urge, counsel. Caw-
cawwas, representing the adjective form of this verb, is " one
who advises, promotes," — a caucuser. Manumit is from manus,
hand, and mittere, to dismiss, — to dismiss a slave with a slap of
the hand on setting him free. Hypocrite comes from two
Greek words signifying "under a mask." It meant first a
stage-player, and next any one who feigns or plays a part. The
ancient actors wore masks, and spoke through trumpets.
Kennel, a dog-house, is from the Italian, canile, and this is
from the Latin, canis, a dog. Kennel, in the sense of gutter,
with its kindred words, can, cane, and clmnnel, is derived from
canna, a cane, which is like a tube.

Apple-pie order is a popular phrase of which few persons
know the meaning. Does it signify in order, o»' in disorder 1
A writer in the "North British Review" favours the latter
interpretation. He thinks that it has nothing to do with apple
or pie, in the common sense of those words. He believes that
it is a typographical term, and that it was originally " Chapel
jne." A printing-house was and is to this day called a chapel,
— perhaps from the chapel at Westminster Abbey, in which
Caxton's earliest works are said to have been printed, and
"pie" is type after it is "distributed" or broken up, and
before it has been re-sorted. " ' Pie ' in this sense, came from
the confused and perplexing rules of the * Pie,^ that is the order for
finding the lessons in Catholic times, which those who have read
or care to read the Preface to the * Book of Common Prayer,'
will find there expressed and denounced. Here is the passage :
* Moreover the number and hardness of the rules called the
Pie, and the manifold changings of the service, was the cause
that to turn the book only was so hard and intricate a matter,
that many times there was more business to find out what

CURIOSITIES OF LAXGirAGE.

249

: il*:

I adopted
ites "one
louncil," a
w use the
rerb from
r " to talk
d is found
icite, and
;el. Caw-
), is "one
•m manus,
L a slap of
from two
nt first a
>art. The
trumpets,
id this is
of gutter,
ived from

V persons

disorder 1

the latter

v^ith apple

ieves that

" Chapel

a chapel,

in which

fited, and

up, and

ame from

order for

lave read

1 Prayer,'

passage :

called the

the cause

a matter,

out what

should be read than to read it when it was found out.' To
leave your type in * pie ' is to leave it unsorted and in confu-
sion, and ' apple-pie order,' which we take to be ' chapel-pie
order,' is to leave anything in a thorough mess. Those who
like to take the other side, and assert that ' apple-pie order '
means in perfect order, may still find their derivation in
* chapel pie ; ' for the ordering and sorting of the * pie ' or type
is enforced in every * chapel ' or printing-house by severe fines,
and so * chapel-pie order ' would be such order of the type as
the best friends of the chapel would wish to see." — The bitter end,
a phrase often heard during the late Civil War, has a remark-
able etymology. A ship's cable has always two ends. One
end is fastened to the anchor and the other to the bitSy or bltts,
a frame of two strong pieces of timber fixed perpendicularly in
the fore part of the ship, for the express purpose of holding
the cables. Hence the " bitter," or " bitter end," is the end
fastened to the bitts ; and when the cable is out to the " bitter
end," it is all out ; the extremity has come.

Few persons who utter the word stranger, suspect that it has
its root, as Dugald Stewart has noted, in the single vowel e,
the Latin preposition for " from." The links in the chain are,
— e, ex, extra, extraneous, <?tranger, stranger. AVhen a boy
answers a lady, " Fcs'm," he does not dream that his " 'm" is a
fragment of the five syllables, raea domina (madonna, madame,
madam, ma'am, 'm). The words thrall and thraldom have an
interesting history. They come to us from a period when it
was customary to thrill or drill the ear of a slave in token of
servitude ; and hence the significance of Sir Thomas Browne's
remark, " Bow not to the oranipotency of gold, nor bore thy
ear to its servitude." The expression " signing one's name"
takes us back to an age when most persons made their mark
or " sign." We must not suppose that this practice was then,
as now, a proof of the ignorance of the signer. Among the
Saxons, not only illiterate persons made this sign, but, as an
attestation of the good faith of the person signing, the mark of
the cross was required to be attached to the name of those who
could write. From its holy association, it was the symbol of
an oath ; and hence the expression " God save the mark !"
which 80 long puzzled the commentators of Shakespeare, is

M-.1

-i1? I

l:i

250

JFOEDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

now understood to be a form of ejaculation resembling an oath.
It is said that Charlemagne, being unable to write, was com-
pelled to dip the forefinger of his glove in ink, and smear it
over the parchment when it was necessary that the imperial
sign-manual should be fixed to an edict.

The language of savages teems with expressions of deep inter-
est both to the philologist and the student of human nature.
Speech with them is a perpetual creation of utterances to
image forth the total picture in their minds. The Indian
" does not analyze his thoughts or separate his utterances ; his
thoughts rush forth in a troop. His speech is as a kindling
cloud, not as radiant points of light." The Lenni Lenape
Indians express by one polysyllable what with us requires
seven monosyllables and three dissyllables, viz. : " Come with
the canoe and take us across the river." This polysyllable is
nadholineen, and it is formed by taking parts of several words
and cementing them into one. The natives of the Society
Isles have one word for the tail of a dog, another for the tail
of a bird, and a third for the tail of a sheep, while for tail
itself, tail in the abstract, they have no word whatever. The
Mohicans have words for wood-cutting, cutting the head, etc.,
yet no verb meaning simply to cut. Some Indian tribes call a
squirrel by a name signifying that " he can stick fast to a
tree ;" a mole, by a word signifying " carrying the right hand
on the left shoulder ;" and they have a name for a horse which
means " having only one toe." Among the savages of the
Pacific, to think is " to speak in the stomach."

WORDS OF ILLUSIVE ETYMOLOGY.

In the lapse of ages words undergo great changes of form,
so that it becomes at last difiicult or impossible to ascertain
their origin. Terms, of which the composition was originally
clear, are worn and rubbed by use like the pebbles which are
fretted and rounded into shape and smoothness by the sea
waves or by a rapid stream. Like the image and superscrip-
tion of a coin, their meaning is often so worn away that one
cannot make even a probable guess at their origin. One of
the commonest causes of the corruptions of words, by which

an oath.

was com-

smear it

imperial

eep inter-
,n nature,
ranees to
le Indian
nces ; his
b kindling
li Lenape
I requires
Jome with
syllable is
sral words
10 Society
or the tail
ile for tail
ver. The
head, etc.,
ibes call a
fast to a
ight hand
>rse which
es of the

s of form,
ascertain
originally
which are
»y the sea
uperscrip-
• that one
One of
by vhich

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

251

their source and original meanings are disguised, is the
instinctive dislike we feel to the use of a word that is wholly
new to us, and the consequent tendency to fasten upon it a
meaning which shall remove its seemingly arbitrary character.
Foreign words, therefore, when adopted into a language, are
especially liable to these changes, being corrupted both in pro-
nunciation and orthography. By thus Anglicising them, we
not only avoid the uncouth, barbarous sounds which are so
offensive to the ear, but we help the memory by associating the
words with others already known.

The mistakes which have been made in attempting to trace
the origin of words thus disguised, have done not a little, at
times, to bring philology into contempt. The philologist,
unless he has much native good sense, and rules his inclina-
tions with an iron rod, is apt to become a veibomaniac. There
is a strange fascination in word-hunting, and his hobby-horse,
it has been aptly said, is a strong-goer that trifles never balk.
" To him the British Channel is a surfa^se drain, the Alps and
Appenines mere posts and rails, the Mediterranean a simple
brook, and the Himalayas only an outlying cover." Cowper
justly ridicules those word-hunters who, in their eagerness to
make some startling discovery, never pause to consider
whether there is any historic connection between two
languages, which is supposed to have borrowed a word from
another, —

" learn'd philologists, who chase
A panting syllable through time aml'space,
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark.
To Gaul,— to Greece,- -and into Noah's ark."

A fundamental rule, to be kept constantly in sight by those
who would not etymologize at random, is, that no amount of
resemblance between words in difterent languages is sufficient
to prove their relationship, nor is any amount of seeming
unlikeness in sound or form sufficient to disprove their consan-
guinity. Many etymologies are true which appear impro-
bable, and many appear probable which are not true. As Max
Muller says : " Sound etymology has nothing to do with
sound. We know words to be of the same origin wliich have

; I

9ri«?

jrOlWS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as
much as black and white." Fuller amusingly says that " we
are not to infer the Hebrew and the English to be cognate
languages because one of the giants, son of Anak, was called
A-himan-^* yet some of his own etymologies, though witty and
ingenious, are hardly more correct than his punning deriva-
tions. Thus compliments, he says, is derived from (i complete
mentiri, because compliments are in general completely men-
dacious ; and he quotes approvingly Sir John Harrington's
derivation of the old English eff and goldin, from the names of
the two political factions of the Empire, the Guelphs and the
Ghibellines.

Archbishop Trench speaks of an eminent philologist who
deduced girl from (jarrula, girls being commonly talkative.
Frontispiece is usually regarded as a piece or picture in front of
a book ; whereas it means literally " a front view," being from
the Low Latin, frontispicium, the forefront of a house. The
true origin of many words is hidden by errors in spelling.
Bran-new is brandnew, i. e., *' burnt new." Grocer should bo
" grosser," (one who sells in the gross) ; piguiy is properly
" pygmy," as Worcester spells it, and means a thing the size
of one's fist (Trwy/xT^). Policy (state-craft) is rightly spelled ;
but " policies of insurance" ought to have the " 11," the word
being derived from poUiceor, to promise or assure. Island
looks as if it were compounded of isle and land ; but it is the
same word as the Anglo-Saxon ealand (water-land), "com-
pounded of aa (water) and land. So Jersey is literally Cccsars
island. Lieutenant has been pronounced leftenant, from a notion
that this oflicer holds the left of the line while the captain
holds the right. The word comes from the French, Uct liiu •
one holding the place of another.

Wiseacre has no connection with acre. Th
ruption, both in spelling and pronunciation.
weissager, a wise-sayer, or sayer of wise max in
Dr. Johnson explains as " a fruit eaten as a sauce fo; ijoose."
It is, however, a corruption of the German, kraussbeere— from
kraus or gorse, crisp ; and the fruit gets its name from the
upright hairs with which it is covered. Shame-faced does not
mean having a face denoting shame. It is from the Anglo-

i IS a cor-
Lhe Germaii

G(" ^eberry,

Baning as
that " we
cognate
ras called
vitty and
g deriva-
; complete
Ay men-
rington's
names of
3 and the

gist who
talkative.
[1 front of
)ing from
ise. The

spelling,
hould bo

properly
; the size

spelled ;
the word
Island

it is the

d), ^com-
Cccsars

a notion
cajitain

IS a cor-
Gtrmati

fl< '.^cherry,
:;()Ose."
c— from
rom the
does not
e Anglo-

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

•253

Saxon, sccamfaest, protected by shame. Surname is from the
French, snrnom, meaning additional name, and should not,
therefore, be spelled smiame, as if it meant the name of one's sire.
Freemason is not half Saxon, but is from the i'rench, frhr-
maron, brother mason. Foolscap is a corruption of the Italian,
foglio capo, a full-sized sheet of paper. Countri/Jfotce is a
corruption of the French contre-danse, in which the partners
stand in opposite lines.

Bishop, which looks like an Ailglo-Saxon word, is from the
Greek. It means primarily an overseer, in Latin, cpiscopus,
which the Saxons broke down into " biscop," and then soften-
ed into " bishop." There was formerly an adjective hishopli/ ;
but as, after the Norman Conquest, the bisliops, and those
who discussed their rights and duties, used French and Latin
rather than English, '* episcopal" has taken its place. Among
the foreign words most frequently corrupted are the names of
plants, which gardeners, not understanding, change into words
that sound like the true ones, and with which they are
familiar. In their new costume they often lose all their
original significance and beauty. To this source of corruption
we owe such words as dandelion, from the French dent de lion
(lion's tooth) ; rosemary, from ros marinus ; quarter-session rose,
the meaningless name of the beautiful rose des quatre saisons ;
Jerusalem artichoke, into which, with a ludicrous disregard for
geography, we have metamorphosed the sunflower artichoke,
articiocco (jirasole, which came to us from Pery through Italy ;
and sparroirgrass, which we have substituted for asparagus.

Animals have fared no better than plants ; the same dislike
of outlandish words, which are meaningless to them, leads
sailors to corrupt Bellerophon into Billy Ruffian, and hostlers
to convert Othello and Desdemona into " Oddfellow and
Thursday morning," and Lam.p'ocles into " Lamb and Pickles."
The souris dormeuse, or sleeping mouse, has been transformed
into a dormouse ; the hog-fish, or p)orcpisce, as Spenser terms
him, is disguised as a pmpoise ; and tiie French ecrevisse tutns
p a crayfish or cravJfish. The transformations of the latter
word, which has passed through three languages before attain-
ing its present form, are among the most surprising feats of
' High

verbal legerdemain.

Starting on its career as the old

P1 1

I *»

254

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

German krehiz, it next appears in the English as crab, and in
German an krebs, or "crab," from the grabbing or clutching
action of the animal. Next it crosses the Rhine, and becomes
the French 4crevisse ; then crosses the Channel, and takes the
name oikreiys; and, last of all, with a double effort at Angli-
cizing, it appears in the modern English as crawfish or crayfish.
The last two words noticed illustrate the tendency which is so
strong, in the corruption of words, to invent new forms which
shall be appropriate as well as significant, other examples of
which we have in wormwood from wermuth, lanthorn from
laterna, beefeater from buffetier, rakehell from racaille, caichrogue
from the Norman-French cachreau, a burn-bailiff, and shoot for
chute, a fall or rapid. So the French bejffroi, a stronghold or
tower — a movable tower of several stories used in besieging —
has been corrupted into helhy, though there is no such French
word as bell.

Often the corrupted form gives birth to a wholly false expla-
nation. Thus in the proverbial dormir comme une taupe, which
has been twisted into the phrase to derp like a top, there is no
trace of the mole ; nor in Penny-coine-q)iich, any hint of Penne,
Coombe, and Ick, the former name for Falmouth. The cor-
ruption of Chateau Vert into " Sliotover" has led to the legend
that Little John shot over the hill of that name near Oxford,
England ; and the corruption of acheter, to buy, into achat —
which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was in London
the word for trading, and was first pronounced and then
written acat — led to the story that Whittingtoii, the famous
lord mayor, obtained his wealth by selling and re selling a cat.
There is no hint in somerset of its derivation froni the Italian,
soprasalto, an overleap, through the French, soubresault, and the
early English, " to somersault ;" nor would the shreM'dest
guesser ever discover in faire un faux pas, to commit a blunder,
the provincial saying, to make afo/s iniio.

Among the most frequent corruptions arc tht; names of
places and persons. Boidoijru Moutlt has been converted by
the British sailors into *' Bull and Mouth ;" and Surajah
Dowlah, the name of the Bengal prince who figured in the
famous Black Hole atrocity, tlie British soldiers persisted in
Anglicizing into "Sir Roger Dowlas!" lieiUam is a con up-

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

255

;&, and in
clutching
becomes
takes the
at Angli-
r crayfish,
liich is so
tns which
amples of
orn from
caichrogue
[ shoot for
Qghold or
sieging—
jh French

Ise expia-
te, which
fiere is no
)f Penne,
The cor-
he legend

Oxford,
,0 achat —
1 London
and then
le famous
ing a cat.
>e Italian,

and the
ihrewdes*-.

blunder,

tion of BethleliMm, and gets its meaning from a London priory,
St. Mary's of Bethlehem, which was converted into a lunatic
asylum. Another striking illustration of the freaks of popular
usage by which the etymology of words is obscured, lis the
word causeway. Mr. W. W. Skeats, in a late number of "Notes
and Queries," states that the old spelling of the word was
calcies. The Latin was calceata via, a road made with lime ;
hence the Spanish, caizada, a paved way, and the modern
French, chauss6e. " The English word," Mr. Skeats says,
" used to be more often spelled causey, as for instance, by
Cotsgrave ; and popular etymology, always on the alert to
infuse some sort of meaning into a strange word, turned causey
into causeway, with the trifling drawback that, while we all
know what way means, no one can extract any sense out of
cause,"

Words from the dead languages have naturally undergone
the most signal corruptions, many of them completely disguis-
ing the derivation. Sometimes the word is condensed, as in
alms, from the Greek, kXe-qfioa-vvr), in early English, almese,
now cut down to four letters ; summons, a legal term, abbre-
viated (like the fi. fa. of the lawyers), from submoneas ; j^cj/sy,
an abridgment of paralysis, literally a relaxation ; quinsy, in
French, esqvinancie, which, strange to say, is the same word as
synagogue, coming, like this last, from a-vv, together, and dyw,
to draw. Megrim is a corruption of hemicrany, a pain affecting
half of the head. Treacle, now applied only to molasses or its
sirup, was originally viper's flesh made into a medicine for the
viper's bite. It is called in French, theriaque, from a corres-
ponding Greek word ; in early English, triads. Zero is a con-
traction of the Italian zephiro, a zephyr, a breath of the air, a
nothing. Another name for it is cipher^ from the Arabic, cifr,
empty.

^ I

names of
^erted by
Surajah
id in the
rsisted in
a coriup-

CONTRADICTORY MEANINGS.

Among the curious phenomena of language one of the most
singular is the use of the same word in two distinct senses,
directly opposed to each other. Ideas are associated in the
mind not only by resemblance but by contrast ; and thus the

' 'M

\l I

III

256

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

same root, slightly modified, may express the «most opposite
meanings. A striking example of this, is the word fast, which
is full of contradictory meanings. A clock is called " fast,"
when it goes too quickly ; but a man is told to stand " fast,"
when he is desired to stand still. Men " fast" when they have
nothing to eat ; and they eat '* fast" after a long abstinence.
" Fast" men, as we have already seen, are apt to be very
" loose" in their habits. When "fast" is used in the sense of
*' abstinence," the idea may be, as in the Latin, abstineo, hold-
ing back from food ; or the word may come from the Gothic,
fastan, " to keep" or " observe," — that is, the ordinance of the
church.

The word nervous may mean either possessing, or wanting
nerve. A '• nervous" writer is one who has force and energy ;
a nervous man is one who is weak, sensitive to trifles, easUy
excited. The word post, from the Latin positum, *' placed," is
used in the most various senses. We speak of a post-oi^ce,
of posi-hsLSte, of j3os/ horses, and of post-m<^ a ledger. The con-
tradiction in these meanings is more apparent than real. The
idea of placimj is common to them all. Before the invention
of railways, letters were transmitted from place to place (or
post to post) by relays of horses stationed at intervals, so that
no dela',

might occur.

The " post" office used this means of
communication, and the horses were said to travel " post"-
haste. To " post" a ledger is to place or register its several
items.

The word to let generally means to permit ; but in the Bible,
in Shakespeare, and in legal phraseology, it often has the" very
opposite meaning. Thus Hamlet says, " I'll make a ghost of
him that lets me," that is, interferes with or obstructs me ; and
in law-books " without let or hindrance " is a phrase of frequent
occurrence. It should be remarked, however, that to Id, in the
first sense, is from the Saxon, laetan ; in the second, from letjaii.
The word to cleave may mean either to adhere to closely, as
when Cowper says, " Sophistry cleaves close and protects sin's
rotten trunk : " or it may mean to split or to rend asunder, as
in the sentence, " He cleaved the stick at one blow." Accord-
ing to Matzner, the word in the first sense is from the Anglo-
Saxon, cleo/an, chifan ; in the last sense, it is from cli/an.

CURIOSITIES OF LANGUAGE.

257

opposite
]t, which
"fast,"
I « fast,"
ley have
stinence.
be very
sense of
eo, hold-
Gothic,
3e of the

wanting
energy ;
!s, easily
iced," is
9.s^office,
rhe con-
1,1. The
ivention
(lace (or

so that
leans of
" post"-

several

Bible,

he" very

host of

le ; and

requent

in the
1 letjan.
sely, as
its sin's
ider, as
\.ccord-
Anglo-

clifait,

clijian. The word dear has the two meanings of " prized " be-
cause you have it, and " expensive " because you want it. The
word lee has very different acceptations in /ft'-side and Z^^'-shore.
The word mistaken has quite opposite meanings. " You are
mistaken " may mean " You mistake," or " You are misunder-
stood," or " taken for somebody else." In the line

"ilftstoA'en souls that dream of heaven,"

in a popular hymn, the word is used, of course, in the former
sense. The adjective wor^a/ means both " deadly " and " liable
to death." Of the large number of adjectives ending in " able "
or " ible " some have a subjective and others an objective sense.
A " terrible " sight is one that is able to inspire terror ; but a
" readable " book is one which you can read. It is said that
the word unt is used in Pope's " p]ssay on Criticism " with at
least seven different meanings.

The prefixes iin and in are equivocal. Commonly thoy have
a negative force, as in "unnecessary," "incomplete." But
sometimes, both in verbs and adjectives, they have a positive
or intensive meaning, as in the words " /wtense," " //ifiituated,"
" ^valuable." To " invigorate " one's physical system by ex-
ercise, is not to lessen, but to increase one's energy. The verb
" unloose " should, by analogy, signify " to tie," just as untie
means " to loose." /^habitable should signify not habitable,
according to the most frequent sense of in. To unravel means
the same as to ravel : to unrip, the same as to rip. Johnson
sanctions the use of the negative prefix in these two words,
but Richardson and Webster condemn it as superfiuous. Walton,
in his " Angler," tells an amusing anecdote touching the two
words. " We heard," he says, " a high contention amongst the
beggars, whetlier it was easiest to rip a cloak or to iinrip a
cloak. One beggar affirmed that it was all one ; but that was
<lenie(l, by asking her, if doing and undoing were all one.
Then another said, 'twas easiest to unrip a cloak, for that was
to let it alone ; but she was answered by asking how she could
unrip it, if she lei it alone."

This opposition in the meanings of a word is a phenomenon
not altogether peculiar to the English language. In Greek,

; M ■

- 1»

i'l'

[ 1; I,

' 1- '

''■'■1 '^

|:| ■

258

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

1 1

XP«a means both " use " and " need," and kano means both " to
wish " and " to take; " in Latin, unicus implies singularity, —
unitas, association. Many other examples might be cited to
show that " as rays of light may be reflected and refracted in
all possible ways from their primary direction, so the meaning
of a word may be deflected from its original bearing in a
variety of manners ; and consequently we cannot well reach
the primitive force of the term unless we know the precise
gradations through which it has gone."

Several writers on our language have noticed a singular
tendency to limit or narrow the signification of certain words,
whose etymology would suggest a far wider application. Why
should we not retaliate (that is, pay back in kind, res talis,)
kindness as well as injuries 1 Why should we resent (feel
again) insults, and not aff'ectionate words and deeds? Why
should our hate, animosity, hostility, and other bad passions,
be inveterate (that is, gain strength by age), but our better
feelings, love, charity, kindness, never ? Byron showed a true
appreciation of the better uses to which the word might be
put, when he subscribed a letter to a friend, " Yours invete-
rately, Byron."

In some of our nouns there is a nice distinction of meaning
between the singular and the plural. A minute is a fraction of
time ; minutes are notes of a speech, conversation, etc. The
manner in which a man enters a drawing-room may be unex-
ceptionable, while his manners are very bad. When the
" Confederates" threatened to pull down the American colours
at New Orleans, they did it under co/ow of right. A person
was once asked whether a certain lawyer had got rich by his
practice 1 " No," was the sarcastic reply, " but by his prac-
tices."

both " to
alarity, —
; cited to
fracted in
I meaning
ring in a
veil reach
le precise

, singular
in words,
n. Why
res talis,)
sent (feel
8? Why
passions,
ur better
ed a true
might be
rs invete-

meaning
action of
tc. The
be unex-
hen the
m colours
A. person
;h by his
lis prac-

COMMOiV IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 259

CHAPTER XIV.

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH.

In words, as fashions, th^ same rule will hold,
Alike fantastic if too ne'V or old ;
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. - -Poi'E.

If a gentleman be to study any language, it ought to be that of his own
country. — Locke.

Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in language as
w«ll as in politics.— W. D. Whitney.

A tendency to slang, to colloquial inelegancies, and even vulgarities, is
the besetting sin against which we, as Americans, have especially to guard
and to struggle. — Ib.

NE of the most gratifying signs of the times is the deep
interest which both our scholars and our people are
beginning to manifest in the study of our noble English
tongue. Perhaps nothing has contributed more to awaken a
public interest in this matter, and to call attention to some of
the commonest improprieties of speech, than the publication of
" The Queen's English" and " The Dean's English," and tlie
various criticisms which have been provoked in England and
in the United States by the Moon-Alford controversy. Huti
dreds of persons who before felt a profound indifference to this
subject, have had occasion to thank the D«an for awakening
their curiosity in regard to it ; and hundreds more who other-
wise would have read his dog-matic small-talk, or Mr. JVIoon's
trenchant dissection of it, have suddenly found them.selves, in
consequence of the newspaper criticisms of the two books,
deeply interested in questions of grammar, and now, with
jheir appetites whetted, will continue the study of their own
language, till they have mastered all its difficulties, and famili-
arized themselves with all its idioms and idiotisms. Of such

^ ii

m.s\

2G0

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

li'.-i:

discussions we can hardly have too many, and just now they
are imperiously needed to check the deluge of barbarisms,
solecisms, and improprieties, with which our language is
threatened. Not only does political freedom make every man
in America an inventor, alike of labour-saving machines and
of labour-saving words, but the mixture of nationalities is con-
stantly coining and exchanging new forms of speech, of which
our busy Bartletts, in their lists of Americanisms, find it
impossible to keep account.

It is not merely our spoken language that is disfigured by
these blemishes ; but our written language — the prose of the
leading English authors — exhibits more slovenliness and loose-
ness of diction, than is found in any other literature. That
this is due in part to the very character of the language itself,
there can be no doubt. Its simplicity of structure and its
copiousness both tend to prevent its being used with accuracy
and care ; and it is so hospitable to alien words that it needs
more powerful securities against revolution than other languages
of less heterogeneous composition. But the chief cause must be
found in the character of the English-speaking race. There is
in our very blood a certain lawlessness, which makes us intol-
erant of syntactical rules, and restive under pedagogical re-
straints. " Our sturdy English ancestors," says Blackstone,
** held it beneath the condition of a freeman to appear, or to do
any other act, at the precise time appointed." The same proud,
independent spirit which made the Saxons of old rebel against
the servitude of punctuality, prompts their descendants to
spurn the yoke of grammar and purism. In America this
scorn of obedience, whether to political authority or philological,
is fostered and intensified by the very genius of our institutions.
We seem to doubt whether we are entirely free, unless we
apply the Declaration of Independence to our language, and
carry the Monroe doctrine even into our grammar.

The degree to which this lawlessness has been carried will bo
seen more strikingly if we compare our English literature with
the literature of France. It has been justly said that the
language of that country is a science in itself, and the labour
bestowed on the acquisition of it has the effect of vividly im-
pressing on the mind both the faults and the beauties of every

COMMON IMrUOrRIETlES OF SPEECH. 2(51

"wp

ow they
barisms,
!;uage is
ery man
nea and
s is con-
>f which
find it

iired by
B of the
d loose-
. That
;e itself,
and its
ccuracy
it needs
iguages
must be
?here is
s intol-
ical re-
kstone,
r to do
proud,
igainst
11 ts to
ca this
logical,
utions.
ess we
je, and

ivill be
e with
at the
labour
lly im*
every

writer's style. Method and perspicuity are its very essence ;
and there is hardly a writer of note who does not attend to
these requisites with scrupulous care. Let a French writer of
distinction violate any cardinal rule of grammar, and he is
pounced upon instantly by the critics, and laughed at from
Calais to Mai-seilles. When Boileau, who is a marvel of verbal
and grammatical correctness, made a slip in the first line of his
Ninth Satire,

"C'est a vous, mon Ertpritj'r't qui je veux parler,"

the grammatical sensibility of the French ear was shocked to a
degree that we, who tolerate the grossest solecisms, find it hard
to estimate. For two centuries the blunder has been (juoted
by every writer on grammar, and impressed on the memory of
every schoolboy. Indeed, such is the national fastidiousness on
this subject, that it has been doubted whether a single line in
Boileau has been so often quoted for its beauty, as this unfor-
tunate one for its lack of grammar. When did an English or
an American writer thus offend the critical ears of his country-
men, even though he were an Alison, sinning against Lindley
Murray on every page ?

We are no friend to hypercriticism, or to that financial nicc-
ness which cares more for the body than for the soul of language,
more for the outward expression tlmn for the thought which it
inca ates. It is, no doubt, possible to be so over-nice in the
use of words and the construction of sentences as to sap the vi-
tality of our speech. We may so refine our expression, by con-
tinual straining in our critical sieves, as to impair both the
strength and the flexibility of our noble Englisli tongue. Then;
are some verbal critics, who apparently go so far as to hold that
every word must have an invariable meaning, and that all re-
lations of thoughts must be indicated by absolute and invari-
able formulas, thus reducing verbal expression to the rigitl in-
flexibility of a mathematical equation. If we understand Mr.
Moon's censures of Murray and Alford, some are based on the
assumption that an ellipsis is rarely, if ever, permissible in English
speech. We have no sympathy with such extremists, nor with
the verbal purists who challenge all words and phrases that can-

262

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

■I'

not be found in the " wells of English undefiled" that have
been open for more than a hundred years. Language is a liv-
ing, organic thing, and by the very law of its life must always
be in a fluctuating state. To petrify it into immutable forms,
to preserve it as one preserves fruits and flowers in spirits of
wine and herbariums, is as impossible as it would be undesira-
ble, if we would have it a medium for the ever-changing thoughts
of man.

Language is a growing thing, as truly as a tree ; and as a
tree, while it casts off some leaves, will continually put forth
others, so a language will be perpetually growing and expand-
ing with the discoveries of science, the extension of commerce,
and the progress of thought. Every age will enrich it with
new accessions of beauty and strength. Not only will new
words be coined, but old ones will continually take on new
senses ; and it is only i. the transition period, before they have
established themselves r the general favour of goc»d speakers
and writers, that purity of style requires them to be shunned.
Those who are so ignorant of the laws of language as to resist
its expansion, who declare that it has attained at any time the
limit of its development, and seek by philological bulls to check
its growth — will find that, like a vigorous forest tree, it will
defy any shackles that men may bind about it ; that it will
reck as little of their decrees as did the advancing ocean of those
of Canute. The critics who made such attempts do not see that
the immobility of language would be the immobility of history.
They forget that many of the purest words in our language were
at one time startling novelties, and that even the dainty terms
in which they challenge each new-comer, though now natural-
ized, had once to fight their way inch by inch. Shakespeare
ridicules " element ;" Fulke, in the seventeenth century, objects
to such ink-horn terms as " rational," " scandal," " homicide,"
" ponderous," and " prodigious ;" Dryden censures " embar-
rass," " grimace," " repartee," " foible," " tour," and " rally ;"
Pope condemns " witless," " welkin," and " dulcet ;" and Frank-
lin, who could draw from the clouds the electric fluid, which
now carries language with the speed of lightning from land to
land, vainly struggledagainsttheintroductionof the verbs to "ad-
vocate" and " to notice." The little word " its" had to force

COMMON IMPROPrJETIES OF SPEECH. 2G3

"Wl

hat have
e is a liv-
st always
)le forms,
spirits of
uiidesira-
thoughts

and as a

put forth

I expand-

jmmerce,

1 it with

will new

on new

hey have

speakers

sliunned.

to resist

time the

to check

', it will

it will
of those
t see that
f history,
age were
ty terms
n.itural-
kespeare
f, objects
)micide,"

embar-
" rally ;"
d Frank-
d, which
n land to
sto "ad-
. to force

its way into the language against the opposition of " correct
speakers and writers, on the ground of its apparent analogy
with the other English possessives.

Dr. Johnson objected to the word dun in Lady Macbeth's fam-
ous soliloquy, declaring that " the efficacy of this invocation is
destroyed by the insertion of an epithet now seldom heard but
in the stable : — "

" Come, thick night
And pall thee in the dunpest smoke of hell."

It was a notion of the great critic and lexicographer, witli which
his mind was long haunted, that the language should be refined
and fixed so as finally to exclude all rustic and vulgar elements
from the authorized vocabulary of the lettered and polite.
Dryden had hinted at the establishment of an academy for this
purpose, and Swift thought the Government " should devise
some means for ascertaining Siud fixing the language forever," after
the necessary alterations should be made in it.

If it were possible to exclude needed new words from a lan-
guage, the French Academy would have succeeded in its at-
tempts to do so, consisting as it did of the chief scholars of
France. But in spite of all its efi'orts to exercise a despotic au-
thority over the French tongue, new words have continually
forced their way in, and so they will continue to do while the
French nation maintains its vitality, in spite of the protests of
all the purists and academicians in France. " They that will
fight custom with grammar," says Montaigne, " are fools ;" and,
with the limitations to be hereafter stated, the remark is just,
and still more true of those who triumphantly appeal against
custom to the dictionary.

Even slang words, after long knocking, will often gain ad-
mission into a language, like pardoned outlaws received into
the body of respectable citizens. We need not add to those words
coined in his lofty moods by the poet, who is a maker by the
very right of his name. That creative energy which distinguish-
es him, — " the high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet,"
— will, of course, display itself here, and the all-fusing imagi-
nation will at once, as Trench has remarked, suggest and justify
audacities in speech which would not be tolerated from creep-

Is ill

* i

! :i

204

frOEJJS: THE I It USE AND ABUSE.

ing prose-writers. Great liberties may be allowed, too, within
certain bounds, to the idiosyncracies of all great writers. We
love the rugged, gnarled oak, with the grotesque contortions
of its branches, better than the smoothly clipped uniformity of
the Dutch ewe tree. Carlyleisms may therefore be tolerated
from the master, though not from the itmbne that spaniel him
at the heels, and feebly echo his singularities and oddities. A
style that has no smack or flavour of the man that uses it, is a
tasteless style. But there is a limit even to the liberty of great
thinkers in coining words. It must not degenerate into license.
Coleridge was a skilful mint-master of words, yet not all his
genius can reconcile us to such expressions as the following in a
letter to Sir Humphrey Davy : " I was a w^ell-meaning sutor
who had ultra-crepidated with more zeal than wisdom."

No one would hesitate to place Isaac Barrow among the
greatest masters of the English tongue ; yet the weighty
thoughts which his words represented, did not prevent many
of the trial pieces which he coined in his verbal mint from be-
ing returned on his hands. Who knows the meaning of such
words as " avoce," " acquist," " extund ] " Sir Thomas Browne
abounds in such hyperlatinistic expressions as "bivious," " (juod
libetically," '•' cunctation,'* to
does not reconcile the

and " bourgeon." Sydney Smith was continually coining words,
some of them compounds from the homely Saxon idiom, others
big-wig classical epithets, devised with scholar-like precision,
and exceedingly ludicrous in their effect. Thus he speaks of
" frugiverous " children, of '* mastigophorous " schoolmasters,
of " fugacious " or " plumigerous " captains ; of" lachrymal and
suspirious clergymen;" of people who are *' sinious," and peo-
ple who are anserous ; " he enriches the language with the
expressive hybrid, " Foolometer ; " and he characterizes the
Septembers sins of the English by the awful name of *' perdri-
cide." In the early ages of our literature, when the language
was less fixed, and there were few recognised standards of ex-
pression, writers coined words without license, supplying the
place of correct terras, when they did not occur to their minds,
by analogy and invention. But a bill must not only be drawn
by the word-maker ; it must also be accepted. The Emperor

which even his gorgeous rhetoric
reader. Charles Lamb has " agnise "

COMMON IMPROPrdETlES OF SPEECH. 265

■"WIfT

Tiberius was very properly told that he might give citizenship
to men, but not to words. All innovations in speech, every
new term introduced, should harmonize with the general prin-
ciples of the language. No new phrase should be admitted
which is not consonant with its peculiar genius, or which does
violence to its fundamental integrity. Nor should any form of
expression be tolerated that violates tlie universal laws of lan-
guage.

Even good usage itself is but a proximate and strongly pre-
sumptive test of purity. Custom is not an absolute despotism,
though it approaches very nearly to that character. Its deci-
sions are generally authoritative ; but, as there are extreme
measures which even oriental despots cannot put into execution
without endangering the safety of their possessions, so there are
things which custom cannot do without endangering the fixity
and purity of language. If grammatical monstrosities exist in
a language, a correct taste will shun them, as it does physical
deformities in the arts of design. Dean Alford defends some
of his own indefensible expressions by citing the authority of
Scripture ; but authority for the most vicious forms of speech
can be found in all our writers, not excepting King James's
translators, — as Mr. Harrison has shown by hundreds of exam-
ples in his work on " The English Language." A writer in
" Blackwood " affirms that, "with the exception of Wordsworth,
there is not one celebrated author of this day who has written
two pages consecutively without some flagrant impropriety in
the grammar ; " and the statement, we believe, is undercharged.
The usuage, therefore, of a good writer is only jmma facie evi-
dence of the correctness of a disputed word or phrase ; for he
may have used the word carelessly or inadvertently, and it is
altogether probable that, were his attention called to it, he
would be prompt to admit his error. . It has been remarked
tfe&t " nowadays " and " had have " meet all the conditions of
good usage, being reputable, national, and present ; but one is
a solecism, the other a barbarism. Let the English language
be enriched in the spirit, and according to the principles of
which we have spoken, and it will be, as one has well said, a
living fountain, casting out everything effete and impure, re-
freshed by new sources of inspiration and wealth, keeping pace
18

266

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

t !

U. )|

with the stately march of the ages, and still retaining much of
its original sweetness, expression, and force.

It is our intention in this chapter, not to notice all the im-
proprieties of speech that merit censure, — to do which would
require volumes, — but to criticise some of those which most
frequently offend the ear of the scholar in this country. The
term impopriety we shall use, not merely in the strictly rhe-
torical sense of the word, but in the popular meaning, to include
in it all inaccuracies of speech, whether offences against ety-
mology, lexicography, or syntax. To pillory such oflences, to
point out the damage which they inflict upon our language,
and to expose the moral obliquity which often lurks beneath
them is, we believe, the duty of every scholar who knows how
closely purity of speech, like personal cleanliness, is allied to
purity of thought and rectitude of action. To say that every
person who aspires to be esteemed a gentleman should carefully
shun all barbarisms, solecisms, and other faults in his speech,
is to utter the merest truism. An accurate knowledge, and a
correct and felicitous use of words, are, of themselves, almost
sure proofs of good breeding. No doubt it marks a weak mind
to care more for the casket than for the jewel it contains — to
prefer elegantly turned sentences to sound sense j but sound
sense always acquires additional value when expressed in pure
English. Few things are more ludicrous than the blunders by
which even persons moving in refined society often betray the
grossest ignorance of very common words. There are hundreds
of educated people who speak of the banister of a staircase,
when they mean balustrade or baluster; there is no such word as
banister. There are hundreds of others who never eat anything,
not even an apple, but always partake, even though they con-
sume all the food before them ; and even the London " Times,"
in one of its issues, spoke of a jury *' immersing" a defendant in
damages. We once knew an old lady in a New England
village, quite aristocratic in her feelings and habits, who com-
plained to her physician that " her blood seemed to have all
stackfpoled;" and we have heard of another descendant of Mrs.
Malaprop, who, in answer to the question whether she would
be sure to keep an appointment, replied, " I will come — alluding
it does not rain."

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 2G7

; much of

11 the im-
ch would
bich most
ry. The
•ictly rhe-
,0 include
ainst ety-
fences, to
language,
I beneath
lows how
allied to
hat every
. carefully
is speech,
ge, and a
3s, almost
eak mind
tains — to
ut sound

in pure

mders by

etray the

lundreds

staircase,

word as
anything,
they con-
' Times,"
endant in

England
ivho com-

have all

of Mrs.
he w^ould

alluding

Goldsmith is one of the most charming writers in our lan-
guage ; yet in his " History of England," the following state-
ment occurs in a chapter on the reign of Elizabeth. Speaking
of a communication to Mary, Queen of Scots, he says : *' This
tiiey effected by conveying tlieir letters to her by means of a
brewer, that supplied the family with ale through a chink in the
ivall of her apartment." A queer brewer that, to supply his ale
through a chink in the wall ! Again, we read in Goldsmith's
" History of Greece" : " lie wrote-to that distinguished philoso-
pher in terms polite and flattering, begging of hirn to come and
undertake his education, and bestow on him those useful lessons
of magnanimity and virtue which every great man ought to
possess, and which his numerous avocations rendered impossible
for him." In this sentence the pronoun he is employed six
times, under different forms ; and as, in each case, it may refer
to either of two antecedents, the meaning, but for our know-
ledge of the facts, would be involved in hopeless confusion.
First, the pronoun stands for Philip, then for Aristotle, then
for Alexander, again for Alexander, and then twice for Philip.
A still greater offender against clearness in the use of pronouns
is Lord Clarendon; e.g., "On which, with the king's and
queen's so ample promises to him (the Treasurer) so few hours
before, conferring the place upon another, and the Duke of
York's manner of receiving him (the Treasurer) after he (the
Chancellor) had been shut up with him (the Duke), as he (the
Treasurer) was informed might very well .excuse him (the
Treasurer) from thinking he (the Chancellor) had some share
in the effront he (the Treasurer) had undergone." It would be
hard to match this passage even in the writings of the humblest
penny-a-liner; it is "confusion worse confounded."

Solecisms so glaring as these may not often disfigure men's
writing or speech ; and some of the faults we shall notice may
seem so petty and microscopic that the reader may deem us
" word-catchers that live on syllables." But it is the little foxes
that spoil the grapes, in the familiar speech of the people as
well as in Solomon's vineyards ; and, as a garment may be
honey-combed by moths, so the tine texture of a language may
be gradually destroyed, and its strength impaired, by numerous
and apparently insignificant solecisms and inaccuracies. Nicety

, ;..- ,

I I ■!

268

WORDS: TUElll USE AND ABUSE.

•iii

li ';

i> ; f

! !■

in the use of j)articles is one of the most decisive marks of skill
and scholarship in a writer ; an<l the accuracy, beauty, and force
of many a fine passage in English literature depend largely on
the use of the pronouns, prepositions, and articles. How em-
phatic and touching does the following enumeration become
^through the repetition of one petty word ! '' Bij thine agony
and bloody sweat ; hij thy cr(>ss and passion ; hj thy precious
death and burial ; hj thy glorious resurrection and ascension ;
and h)i the coming of the Holy (rliost." How much pathos is
added to the prayer of the publican by the proper translation
of the Greek article, — " God be merciful to me the sinner."

De Quincey strikingly observes : " People that have practised
composition as much, and with as vigilant an eye as myself,
know also, by thousands of cases, how infinite is the disturbance
caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word
as despicable as the word even. A mote that is in itself invis-
ible, shall darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye,
— the hejivens shall be hid by a wretched atom that dares not
show itself, — and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judg-
ment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling
to the right hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound
a system." It is a fact well known to lawy(!rs, that the omis-
sion or misplacement of a monosyllaV)le in a legal document has
rendoved many a man bankrupt. Four years ago an expensive
lawsuit arose in England, on tht meaning of two phrases in the
will of a deceased nobleman. In the one he gives his property
" to my brother and to \\v, children in succession ; " in the other,
" to my brother and his children in succession." This diversity
gives rise to quite different interpretations.

In language, as in the fine arts, there is but one way to attain
to excellence, and that is by study of the most faultless models.
As the air and manner of a gentleman can bo acquired only by
living constantly in good society, .so grace and purity of ex-
pression must be attained by a familiar acquaintance with the
stan<lard author. . It is aslonish'ng liow vapidly wi; may by
this practice enrich our vocabularies, and how speedily we im-
itate and unconsciously reproduce in our language the niceties
and delicacies of <'X|>ression which have charmed us in a favouritf,
author, fiike the siieri.T whom itufus Choatt satirized for hav

"^1

COMMON IMPBOrniETlES OF SPEECH.

2(19

ks of skill

anil force

argely on

How era-

1 become

ne agony

precious

scension ;

pathos is

•anslatioii

iner. "

practised

IS myself,

sturbance

of a word

self invis-

iman eye,

dares not

thejudg-

&is falling

confound

the omi.s-

ment has

xptnsive

jes in the

property

he other,

iliversity

to attain
s models.
1 only hy
ty of ex-
with the

may l)y
y we iin-

nicetics
favouritf^

for hav-

ing " overworked the participle," most persons make one word
act two, ten, or a dozen parts ; yet there is hardly any man who
may not, by moderate painstaking, learn to express himself in
terms as precise, if not as vivid, as those of Pitt, whom Fox so
praised for his accuracy.* The account which Lord Chester-
field gives of llic method by which he btx'ame one of th(^ most
elegant and polished talkers and orators of Europe, strikingly
shows what miracles may be achieved by care and practice.
Early in life he determined not to. speak one word in conversa-
tion which was not the fittest he could recall ; and he charged
his son never to deliver the commonest oi-der to a servant, " but
in the best language he could find, and with the best utterance."
For years he wrote down every brillian* passage he met with
in his reading, and translated it into French, or, if it was in a
foreign language, into Knglish. By this i>ractice a certain ele-
gance became hab!'Aial to him, and it would have given him
more troul)le, he says, to express himself inelegantly than he
had ever taken to avoid the defect. Lord Jjolingbroke, who
had an imperial dominion over all the resources of expression,
and could talk all day just as perfectly as he wrote, told Ches-
terfield that he owed the power to the same cause, — an early
and h**bitual attention to his style. When Boswell expressed
to Johnson his surprise at the constant force and })ropriety of
the Doctor's words, the latter replied that he had long bt^en
accustomed to clothe his thoughts in the fittest words h«! could
command, and thus a vivid and exact phraseology had become
habitual.

It has been nfhimed by a high authority that a knowledge of
English grammar is rather a matter of convenience as a nomen-
elatun.'! — a medium of tliought and discussion nhDid the
language — than a guide to the actual use of it ; and that it is
.OS impossible to acquire the complete command of our own
tongue by the study of granmiatical j.recept, as to leain to
walk or swim by attending a cour ,e of lectures on anatomy.
" Lhidoubte<lJy I have t'ouiid," says Sir Phili[) Sydney, 'in
divers smal learne<l courtiers a more sound style than in some
possessor;; of huarning ; of which 1 can ghesse no other cause,

Set' p.'ige 23.

■"-^

if .;

lii

1 fl)^IIi

^ii

' 1'^

] 'i^BI

jH^N

1 ;■

270

fFORDS: THEIR USB AND ABUSE.

but that the courtier following that which by practice he
findeth fittest to nature, therein (though he knew it not) doth
according to art, though not hy art ; where the other, using art
to shew art, and not to hide art, (as in these cases he should
doe,) flieth from nature, and indeed abusetii art."

Let it not be inferred, however, from all this that gram-
matical knowledge is unnecessary. A man of refined o
may detect many errors by the ear ; but there are errors,

equally gross, that have not a harsh sound, and cuubequently
cannot be detected without a knowledge of the rules that arc
violated. Besides, it often happens that even the purest writers
inadvertently allow some inaccuracies to creep into their pro-
ductions. The works of Addison, Swift, Bentley, Pope,
Young, Blair, Hume, Gibbon, and even Johnson, that leviatlian
of literature, are disfigured by numberless instances of slov-n
liness of .style. Cobbett, in his " Grammar of the Englith
Language," says that he noted down about two hundred
improprieties of language in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets"
alone and he points out as many more, at least,in the "Kambler,"
which the author sav-( he revised and corrected with extraor-
dmary care. Sydney Smith, one of the finest stylists of this
cent\iry, has not a few flagrant solecisms ; and, strange to say,
some of them occur in a pasisage in which he is trying to show
that the English language " may be learned, practically and
nncrriuf/fi/," without a knowledg«^ of grammatical rules.
*' When," he asks, " do we ever find a well-educated F^nglish-
man or Frenchman embarrassed by an ignorance of the gram-
mar of their respective languages 1 7%;// first learn it pi'acti
cally and unerringly ; and then if t/iei/ chose (choose 1) to look
back, and smile at tlu; idea of having proceeded by a number
of rule.s, without knowiii^c one of them bv heart, or being con-
.scious that they had any rule at all, this is a philosophical
amusement ; but who ever fhhiks of learning the grammar of
f/ii'lr own tongue, before^ thn/ are very good grammarians !"
The best refutation of the reasoning in this passage is found in
the Ijad grammar of the passage itself.

Evv.n the literary detectives, who spend their time in hunt-
ing down and showing up the mistakes of others, enjoy no im-
munity from error. Ilarrison, in his excellent work on " Tlie

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 271

English Language," written expressly to point some of the most
prevalent solecisms in its literature, has such solecisms as the
tollowing : " The authority of Addison, in matters of grammar ;
of Bendy, who never made the English grammar his study ; of
Bolingbroke, Pope, and others, are as nothing." Breen who in
his " Modern English Literature : its Blemishes and Defects,"
has shown uncommon critical acumen, writes thus ; " There is
no writer so addicted to this blunder as Isaac D'lsraeli." Again,
in criticising a faulty expression of Alison, he sins almost ds
grievously himself by saying : ** It would have been correct to
say : ' Suchet's administration was incomparably less oppress-
ive than that of amjof the French generals in the peninsula." '
This reminds one of the statement " Noah and his family out-
lived all who lived before the flood," that is, they oulived
themselves. Latham, in his profound treatise on " The
English Language," has such sentences as this: "The logical and
historical analyais of a language generally in some degree coin-
cides." Here the syntax is correct ; but the sense is sacrificed,
since a coincidence .'mplies, at least, two things. Blair's " Rhe-
toric" has been used as a text-book for half a century ; yet it
swarms with errors of grammar and rhetoric, against almost
every law of which he has sinned. Moon, in his review of Al-
ford, has pointed out hundreds of faults in *' The Dean's Eng-
lish" as censurable as any which he has cenaured ; and news-
paper critics, at home and abroad, have pointed out scores of
obscurations, as well as of glaring faults, in Moon.

We proceed to notice some of the common improprieties of
speech. Many of them are of recent origin, others are old offend-
ers that have been tried and condemned at the bar of criticism
again and again : —

But, for that, or if. Example : " I have no doubt but he will
come to-night." " I should not wonder but that wjis the case."

AyricuUuralist, for agriculturist, is an impropriety of the
grossest sort. Nine-tenths of our writers on agriculture use the
former expression. They might as well say geologicaiist, in-
stead of geologist, or chcmicalist, instead of chemist.

Deduction, for induction. Induction is the mental process by
which we ascend to the discovery of general truths ; deduction
is the process by which the law governing particulars is derived

272

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

u \i

from a knowledge of the law governing the class to which par-
ticulars belong.

Illy is a gross barbarism, quite common in these days, espe-
cially with newly fledged poets. There is no such word as Uly
in the language, and it is very dlly to use it. Tho noun, ad-
jective, and adverb, are ill.

Plenty, for plentiful. Stump politicians tell us that the
adoption of a certain measure " will make money plenty in
everyman's pocket.''

I have (jot, for I have. Hardly any otlier word in the lan-
guage is so abused as the word get. A man says, " I have got
a cold " ; he means simply, " 1 have a cold." Another says
that a certain lady " has got a tine head of hair," which may be
true if the hair is false, but is probably intended as a compli-
ment. A third says : " I have got to leave the city for New-
York this evening," meaning only that he has to leave the city,
etc. Nine out of ten ladies who enter a dry-goods store, ask,
" Have you got " such or such an article ? If such a phrase as
" I have possess " were used, all noses would turn up together ;
but "I have got," when used to signify " I have," is equally a
departure from ])ropriety. A man may say, *' I have got more
than my neighbour has, because 1 have been more industrious ; "
but he cannot with propriety say, " 1 have got .\ long nose,"
however long his nose may be, unless it be an artificial one.
Even so able a writer as Prof Whitney expresses himself thus :
" Who ever yet got through learning his mother tongue, and
could say, * The work is done ] ' "

Rerommc'iid. Tiiis word is used in a strange sense by many
persons. Political conventions often pass nisolutiona bejiinning
thus : "Jiesolved, that the ]iepul)licaiis (or lA-mocrats) of tliis
county be recommended to meet," etc.

DiJI'er with is often used, in public debate, instead of dijfh'
from. Example : " I differ with the learned gentleman, en-
tirely," — which is intended to mean,tliat the sjteakcr holds v'fv.s
different from those of the gentleman ; not that he agrees \ iti.
the gentleman in dillering from the views of a third person.
Different to is often spoken an<l written in England, and occa-
sionally in this country, instead of ilillncnt from. An example
of this occurs in Queen Victoria's book, edited by Mr. Helps.

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 273

and

|)S.

Corporetd, for corporal, is a gross vulj^'arism, the use of which
at this (lay should almost subject an educated man to the kind
of punishment which the latter adjective designates. Corporeal
means, having a body corporal, or belonging to a body.

Wearies, for is wearied. Example : " The reader soon wear-
ies of such stuff."

Any how is an exceedingly vulgar phrase, though used even
by so elegant a writer as Blair. Example : " If the damage
can be any how repaired," etc. The use of this expression, in,
any manner, by one who professes to write and speak the Eng-
lish tongue with purity, is unpardonable. '

It imre, for it is. Example : " It were a consummation de-
voutly to be wished for." Dr. Chalmers says : " It were an in-
tolerable spectacle, e\en in the inmates of a felon's cell, did
they behold one of their fellows in the agonies of death." For
were put v:ould he, and for did put should.

l)oid)t is a word much abused by a class of would-be laconic
speakers, who affect the Ahernethy-like brevity of language.
" I doubt such is the true meaning of the Constitution," say
our "great expounders," looking wondrous wise. "They
mean, " I doubt whether," etc.

Lie, lay. Gross blunders are committed in the use of these
words : e. (/., " He laid down on the grass," instead of
" he laid himself down," or, " he lay down." The verb to lie
(to be in a horizontal position) is lay in the preterite. The
book does not lay on the table ; it lies there. Some years ago
an old lady consulted an eccentric Boston ])hysician, and, in
de.scribing her disease, said : " The trouble. Doctor, is that I
can neither lay nor set." *' Then, Matlani," was the reply, *' 1
would respectfully suggest the ])r(tpiicty of roosting."

^^ Like I did^^ is a gross AN'estcrn and Southern vidgarism for
" as I did." " Vou will frci hke lightning ought to strike you,"
said a learned Doctor of Divinity at a nu-eting in the Kast.
Like'iH a preposition, and should not be used as a conjunction.
Less, for fewer. " Not h'ss than fifty persons." Less rclaU-s
to (juantity •,/eiiH'r, to numljcr.

Jialanre, for remainder. " I'll take; the balance of the goods."
Revolt, for are rev(»lting to. " Such doctrines revolt ur."
Alone, for only. Quack(!nboss, in his " Course of Composition

I. h

274

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

and Rhetoric," says, in violation of one of his own rules :
" This means of communication, as well as that which follows,
is employed by man alone." Only is often misplaced in a sen-
tence. Miss Braddon says, in the prospectus of " Belgravia,"
her English magazine, that " it will be written in good English.
In its pages papers of sterling merit will only appear." A poor
beginning this ! She means that " only papers of sterling merit
vill appear." Bolingbroke says : " Believe me, the providence
of God has established such an order in the world, that, of all
that b-ilongs to us, the least valuable parts can alone fall under
the will of others." The last clause should be, " only the least
valuable parts can fall under the will of others." The word
merely is misplaced in the following sentence from a collegiate
address on eloquence : " It is true of men as of God, that words
merely meet no response, — only such as are loaded with
thought."

Likewise, for also. Also classes together things or qualities,
whilst likewise couples actions or states of being. " He did it
likewise," means he did it in like manner. An English Quaker
was once asked by a lawyer whether he could tell the difference
between also and likewise. *' 0, yes," was the reply, ** Erskine
is a great lawyer ; his talents are universally admired. You
area lawyer also, but not like-w^se."

Avocation, for vocation, or calling. A man's avocations are
those pursuits or amusements which engage his attention when
he is *' called away from " his regular business or profession, —
as music, fishing, boating.

Crushed out, for crushed. " The rebellion has been crushed
out." Why out, rather than in .? If you tread on a worm, you
simply crush him, — that is all. It ought to satisfy the most
vengeful foe of " the rebels " that they have been crushed,
without adding the needless cruelty of crushing them w, which
is to be as vindictive as Alexander, of whom Dryden tells us
that

" Thrice he routed all his foes.
And thrice he slew the slain."

Of, for from. Example : " Received of John Smith fifty
dollars." Usage, perhaps, sanctions this.

At all is a needless expletive, which is employed by m.3.ny

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 275

writers of what may be called the forcible-feeble school. Foi
example : " The coach was upset, but, strange to say, not a
passenger received the slightest injury at all." " It is not at
all strange."

But that, for that. This error is quite common among those
who think themselves above learning anything more from the
dictionary or grammer. Trench says : " He never doubts but
that he knows their intention." A worse error is but what, as
in the reply of Mr. Jobling, of Bleak House : " Thank you,
Guppy, I don't know but what I will take a marrow pudding."
" He would not believe but what I was joking."

Convene is used by many persons in a strange sense. " This
road will convene the public."

Evidence is a word much abused by learned judges and at-
torneys, — being continually used for testimony. Evidence relates
to the convictive view of any one's mind ; testimony, to the
knowledge of another concerning some fact. The evidence in
a case is often the reverse of the testimony.

Had have. This is a very low vulgarism, notwithstanding
it has the authority of Addison. It is quite common to say,
" Had I have seen him," " Had you have known it," etc. We
can say, " I have been," " I had been," but what sort of a tense
is had have been 1

Had ought, had better, had rather. All these expressions are
absurdities, not less gross than h{s7i, tother, baint, theirn. No
doubt there is plenty of good authority for had better and had
ra titer ; but how can future action be expressed by a verb that
signifies past and completed possession ?

At, for by. E. g., ** Sales at auction." The word auction
signifies a manner of sale ; and this signification seems to require
the preposition by.

The alxjrc, as an adjective. " The above extract is sufiicient
to verify my assertion." "I fully concur in the above state-
ment " (the statement above, or the foregoing statement).
Charles Lamb speaks of " the above boys and the below boys.''

The7i, as an adjective. "The then king of Holland." This
error, to which even educated men are addicted, springs from
a desire of brevity ; but verbal economy is not commendable
when it violates the plainest rules of language.

270

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

h\\

y ■ ( !

Final completion. As every completion is final, the adjective
is superfluous. Similar to this superabundant form of expres-
sion is another, in which universal and all are brought into the
same construction. A man is said to be "universally esteemed
by all who know him." If all esteem him, he is, of course,
universally esteemed ; and the converse is equally true.

Party^ for man or woman. This error, so common in Eng-
land, is becoming more and more prevalent here. An English
witness once testified that he saw " a short party " (meaning
person) " go over the bridge." Another Englishman, who had
looked at a portrait of St. Paul in a gallery at Florence, being
asked his opinion of the picture, said that he thought " the
party was very well executed." It is hardly necessary to say
that it takes several persons to make a party.

CelehriUj is sometimes applied to celebrated persons, instead
of being used abstractly, e. ^., "Several celebrities are at the
Palmer House."

Equanimity of mind. As equanimity {a>quus animnn) means
evenness of mind, why should •' of mind " be repeated ;
" Anxiety of mind " is less objectionable, but the first word is
suflScient.

DonH, for doesn't, or does not. Even so scholarly a divine
as the Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York, employs this vulgarism
four times in an article in the "Independent." " A man," he
says, " who knows only his family and neighbours, don't know
them ; a man who only knows the present don't know that.
. . . Many a man, with a talent for making money, don't
know whether he is rich or poor, because he does not under-
stand bookkeeping," etc.

/Vec?tcrt<e, for found. E. g.^ "His argument was predicated
on the assumption," etc.

Try^ for make. E. g., "Try the experiment."

Superim', for able, virtuous, etc. E. g., "He is a superior
man." Not less vulgar is the expression, " an inferior man,"
for a man of small abilities.

Deceiving, for trying to deceive. E. g., n person says to an-
other, " You are deceiving me," when he means exactly the
opposite, namely, " You are trying to deceive me, but you can-
not succeed, for your trickery is transparent."

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 277

nieaninsi

The masses, for the people generally. " The masses must be
educated." The masses of what 1

In our midst. This vulgarism is continually heard in prayer-
meetings, and from the lips of Doctors of Divinity, though its
incorrectness has been exposed again and again. The second
chapter in Prof. Scheie De Vere's excellent " Studies in Eng-
lish " begins thus : '* When a man rises to eminence in our
midst," etc, — which is doubtless one of the few errors in his
book quas incuria fadit. The possessive pronoun can properly
be used only to indicate possession or appurtenance. " The
midst " of a company or society is not a thing belonging or ap-
purtenant to the company, or to the individuals composing it. It
is a mere term of relation of an adverbial, not of a substantive
character, and is an intensified form of expression for among.
Would any one say, " In our middle 1"

Excessively, for exceedingly. Ladies often complain that the
weather is '* excessively hot," thereby implying that they do
not object to the heat, but only to the excess of heat. They
mean simply that the weather is verij hot.

Eitfier is applicable only to two objects ; and the same remark
is true of neither and both. " Either of the three " is wrong, so is
this, — " Ten burglars broke into the house, but neither of them
could be recognised." Say " none of them," or " not one of them,
could be recognised." Either is sometimes improperly used for
each ; e. g., " On either side of the river was the tree of life." —
Kev. xxi. 2. Here it is not meant that, if you do not find that
the tree of life was on this side, it was on that ; but that the
tree of life was on each side, — on this side, and on that. In
Thomson's " Outlines of the Laws of Thought," page 53, we
read : " The names we employ in speech . . . are symbols
both to speaker and hearer, the full and exact mea..ing of which
neither of them stop to unfold," etc. The proper use of either
was vindicated some years ago in England, by the Court of
Chancery. A certain testator left property, the disposition of
which was affected by " the death of either " of two persons.
One learned counsel contended that the word " eitlier" meant
Vjoth ; in support of this view he quoted Richardson, Webster,
Chaucer, Dryden, Southey, the history of the crucifixion, and a
passage from the Revelation. The learned judge suggested

III

278

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. )

i ■

' I :

■A

t
' ' i 1

ill;

WW' ■

that there was an old song in the " Beggar's Opera," known to
all, which took the opposite view : •

" How happy could I be with either,
Were t'otaer dear cliarmer away."

In pronouncing judgment, the judge dissented entirely from
the argument of the learned counsel. " Either," he said,
" means one of two, and does not mean both." Though occa-
sionally, by poets and some other writers, the word was em-
ployed to signify hoth^ it did not in this case before the court.

Whether is a contraction of which of either, and therefore can-
not be correctly applied to more tha!i two objects.

Never, for ever. E. g., " Charm he never so wisely;" " Let
the offence be of never so high a nature." Many grammarians
approve of this use of never ; but its correctness, to say the
least, is doubtful. In such sentences as these, " He was deaf
to the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely," " Were
it ever so fine a day, I would not go out," the word ever is an
adverb of degree, and has nothing to do with time. " If I
take ever so little of this drug, it will kill me," is equivalent to
" however little," or " how little soever I take of this drug, it
will kill me." Harrison well says on this point: •' Let any
one translate one of these phrases into another language, and
he will find that ever presents itself as a term expressive of de-
gree, and not of time at all. * Charm he ever so wisely ' :
Quamvis incantandi ^itperitus, SiU.t peritissimus.'*

Seldom or never is a common vulgarism. Say, " seldom, if
ever."

Sit, sat, are much abused words.

It is said that the brilliant
Irish lawyer, Curran, once carelessly observed in court, " an
action lays," and the judge corrected him by remarking, " Lies,
Mr. Curran — hens lay" ; but subsequently the judge ordering
a counsellor to " set down," Curran retaliated, " Sit down, your
honour — hens set. " The retort was characterized by more wit
than truth. Hens do not set ; they sit. It is not unusual to
hear persons say, "The coat sets well ; " *' The wind sets fair."
Sits is the proper word. The preterite of sit is often incorrectly
used for that of set ; e. g., " He set off for Boston."
From thence, from whence. As the adverbs thence and tvhence

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 279

literally supply the place of a noun and preposition, there is
a solecism in employing a preposition in conjunction with
them.

Conduct. In conversation, this verb is frequently used with-
out the personal pronoun ; as, " he conducts well," for " he con-
ducts himself well."

Least, for less. " Of two evils, choose the least."
A confirmed invalid. Can weakness be strong ] If not, how
can a man be a confirmed, or strengthened, invalid 1

Proposition, for proposal. This is not a solecism, but, as a
univocal word is preferable to one that is equivocal, proposal,
for a thing offered or proposed, is better than proposition.
Strictly, a proposal is something offered to be done ; a propo-
sition is something submitted to one's consideration. E. g.,
" He rejected the proposal of his friend ;" " he demonstrated
the fifth proposition in Euclid."

Previous, for previously. " Previous to my leaving America."
App'cciates, for rises in value. " Gold appreciated yesterday."
Proven for proved, and plead for pleaded, are clearly vul-
garisms.

Bound, for ready or determined. " I am bound to do it."
We may say properly that a ship is " bound to Liverpool ;"
but in that case we do not employ, as many suppose, the past
participle of the verb to bind, but the old northern participial
adjective, buinn, from the verb, at bua, signifying " to make
ready or prepare." The term is strictly a nautical one, and to
employ it in a sense that unites the significations both of buinn
and the English participle bound from bind, is a plain abuse of
language.

No, for not. E. g., " Whether I am there or no." Cowper
writes :

*' I will not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau
Whether birds confabulate or no."

By supplying the ellipsis, we shall see that not is here the
proper word. " Whether birds confabulate, or do not confabu-
late ;" whether I am there, or not there." No never properly
qualifies a verb.

Such for so. E. g., I never saw such a high spire." This

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280

WORDS. THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

means, " I never saw a high spire of such a form," or " of such
architecture ; " whereas the speaker, in all probability, means
only that he never saw so high a spire.

Incorrect orthography. Orthography means " correct writ-
ing, or spelling." " Incorrect orthography" is therefore, equi-
valent to " incorrect correct writing."

How for that. " I have heard Iiow some critics have been
pacified with claret and a supper."

Directly, for as soon as. " Directly he came, I went away
with him."

Equally as well, for equally well. E. g., " It will do equally
as well."

Looks beautifully. In spite of the frequency with which this
impropriety has been censured, one hears it almost daily from
the lips of educated men and women. The error arises from
confounding look in the sense of to direct the eye, and look in
the sense of to seem, to appear. In English, many verbs take
an adjective with them to form the predicate, where in other
languages an adverb would be used ; e. g., " he fell ill ; " " he
fee's cold ;" " her smiles amid the blushes lovelier show." No
cultivated person would say, " she is beautifully," or " she
seems beautifully," yet these phrases are no more improper
than " she looks beautifully." We qualify what a person does
by an adverb ; what a person is, or seems to be, by an adjective ;
e. g., " she looks coldly on him ; " " she looks cold."

Leave, as an intransitive verb. E. g., " He left yesterday."
Many persons who use this phrase are misled by what they
deem the analagous expressions, to write, to read. These verbs
express an occupation, as truly as to run, to walk, to stand. In
answer to the question, " What is A. B. doing 1 " it is suffi-
cient to say," lie is reading." Here a complete idea is conveyed,
which is not true of the phrase, *' He left yesterday."

Myself, for I. E. g., " Mrs. Jones and myself will be happy
to dine with you ; " ** Prof. S. and myself have examined the
work." The proper use of myself is either as a reflective pro-
noun, or for the sake of distinction and emphasis ; as when
Juliet cries, " Komeo, doff thy name, and for that name, which
is no part of thee, take all myself ; " or in Milton's paradisiacal
hymn: "These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good,

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 281

{(

'e pro-

when

which

isiacal

Good,

((

" A quantity of books ; " "a
speaking of a coUectic/n or

Almighty ! thine this universal frame thus wondrous fair !
Thyself how wondrous then ! "

Restive. This word, which means inclined to rest, obstinate,
unwilling to go, is employed, almost constantly, in a sense directly
the reverse of this ; that is, for uneasy, restless.

Quantitj/, for number. E. g.
quantity of postage stamps." In

mass, it is proper to use quantity ; but in speaking of individual
objects, however many, we must use the word number. " A
quantity of meat " or " a quantity of iron " is good English,
but not " a quantity of bank-notes." We may say " a quantity
of wood," but we should say " a number of sticks."

Carnival. This word literally means " a farewell to meat,"
or, as some etymologists think, " flesh, be strong ! " In Catho-
lic countries it signifies a festival celebrated with merriment and
revelry during the week before Lent. In this country, especi-
ally in newspaper use, it is employed in the sense of fun, frolic,
spree, festival ; and that so universally as almost to have ban-
ished some of these words from the language. If many persons
are skating, that is a carnival ; so, if they take a sleigh-ride, or
if there is a rush to Long Branch in the summer. As wo have
a plenty of legitimate words to describe these festivities, the
use of this outlandish term has not a shadow of justification.

AU of tliem. As of here means out of, corresponding with
the Latin preposition e, or ex, it cannot be correct to say all of
them. We may say " take one of them " or " take two of them,"
or " take them all ; " but the phrase we are criticising is wholly
unjustiflable.

To allude. Among the improprieties of speech which even
those sharp-eyed literary detectives, Alford, Moon, and Gould
have failed to pounce upon and pillory, are the misuses of the
word that heads this rticle. Once the verb had a distinct,
well-defined meaning, but it is now rapidly losing its true sig-
nification. To allude to a thing, — what is iw 1 Is it not to
speak of it darkly, — to hint at it playfully (from ludo, Imlere, —
to play), without any direct mention ] Yet the word is used
in a sense directly opposite to this. Suppose you lose in the
street some package, and advertise its loss in the newspapers.
The person who finds the package is sure to reply to your ad*
1%

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282

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSS.

vertisement by speaking of " the package you alluded to in
your advertisement," though you have alluded to nothing, but
have told your story in the most distinct and straightforward
manner possible, without an approximation to a hint or innu-
endo. Nev'spaper reporters, by their abuse of this unhappy
word, will tr.^nsform a bold and daring speech in Congress, in
which a senator lias taken some bull by the horns, — in other
words, dealt openly and manfully with the subject discussed, —
into a heap of dark and mysterious innuendoes. The honour-
able gentleman alltuled to the currency — to the war — to Andrew
Johnson — to the New Orleans massacre ; he aUvded to the sym-
pathi lers with the South, though he denounced them in the
most caustic terms : he alluded to the tax-bill, and he alluded to
fifty other things, about every one of which he spoke out his
mind in emphatic and unequivocal terms. An English journal
tells a ludicrous story of an M. P. who, his health having been
drunk by name, rose on his legs, and spoke of *' the flattering
way in which he had been alluded to." Another public speaker
spoke of a book which had been alluded to by name. But the
climax of absurdity in the use of this word was attained by an
Irish M. P., who wrote a life of an Italian poet. Quoting By-
ron's lines about " the fatal gift of beauty," he then goes on
to talk about " the fatal gift which has been already alluded
to ! "

Either alternative. E. g., " You may take either alterna-
tive." " Two alternatives were presented to me." Alternative
evidently means a choice, — one choice, — between two things.
If there be only one offered, we say there is no alternative.
Two alternatives is, therefore, a palpable contradiction in terms ;
yet some speakers talk of " several alternatives " having been
presented to them.

Wiole, for all. The " Spectator " says : " The Red-Cross
Knight runs through the whole steps of the Christian life."
Alison, who is one of the loosest writers in our literature,"
declares in his " History of the French Revolution," that " the
"whMe Russians are inspired with the belief that their mis-
son is to conquer the world." This can only mean that those
Riussians who are entire, — who have not lost a leg, an arm, or
some other part of the body, — are inspired with the belief of

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 283

which he speaks. Whole refers to the component parts of a
single body, and is therefore singular in meaning.

Jeopardize. There is considerable authority for this word,
which is beginning to supplant the good old English word
jeopard. But why is it more needed than perilize, ftazardize ?

Preventative, for preventive ; conversationalist, for converser ;
underhanded, for underhand ; casuality, for casualty ; speciality^
for specialty ; leniency, for lenity ; Jirstly for first ; are all
base coinages, — barbarisms which should be excommunicated
by " bell, book, and candle."

Dangerous, for in danger. A leading Boston paper says of a
deceased minister : " His illness was only of a week's duration,
and was pleurisy and rheumatism. He was not supposed to be
dangerous."

Nice. One of the most offensive barbarisms now prevalent,
is the use of this as a pet word to express almost every kind of
approbation, and almost every quality. Strictly nice can be
used only in a subjective, not in an objective, sense ; though
both of our leading lexicographers approve of such expres-
sions as " a nice bit of cheese." Of the vulgarity of such ex-
pressions as " a nice man " (meaning a good or pleasing man),
"a nice day," "a nice party," etc., there cannot be a shadow
of doubt. " A nice man " means a fastidious man ; a " nice
letter " is a letter very delicate in its language. Some persons
are more nice Ihan wise. Archdeacon Hare complains that
" this characterless domino," as he stigmatizes the word nice, is
continually used by his countrymen, and that '' a universal del-
uge of niaiserie (for the word was originally niais) threatens to
whelm the whole island." The Latin word elegans seems to
have had a similar history ; being derived from elego, and
meaning primarily nice or choice, and subsequently elegant.

Mutual, for common or reciprocal. Dean Alford justly pro-
tests against the stereotyped vulgarism, "a mutual friend."
Mutual is applicable to sentiments and acts, but not to persons.
Two friends may have a mutual love, but for either to speak of
a third person as being " their mutual friend," is sheer non-
sense. Yet Dickens entitled one of his novels " Our Mutual
Friend."

Stoppi?ig, for staying. "The Hon. John Jones is stopping at

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284

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

the Sherman House." In reading such a statement as this, we
are tempted to ask, When will Mr. Jones stop stopping 1 A
man may stop a dozen times at a place, or on a journey, but he
cannot continue stopping. One may stop at a hotel without
becoming a guest. The true meaning of the word stop was
well understood by the man who did not invite his professed
friend to visit him : "If you come, at any time, within ten
miles of my house, just stop."

Trifling minutice. Archbishop Whately, in his " Rhetoric,"
speaks of " trifling minutiae of style." In like manner, Henry
Kirke White speaks of his poems as being " the juvenile efforts
of a youth," and Disraeli, the author of " The Curiosities of
Literature," speaks of "the battles of logomachy," and of "the
mysteries of the arcana of alchemy." The first of these phrases
may be less palpably tautological tham the other three ; yet as
minuti(e means nearly the same thing as trijles, a careful writer
would be as averse to using such an expression as Whately's,
as he would to talking, like Sir Archibald Alison, of represen-
tative institutions as having been " reestablished in our time by
the influence of Euglish AnglomsimsL."

Indices, for indexes. " We have examined our indices," etc.,
say the Chicago abstract-makers. Indices are algebraic signs ;
tables of contents are indexes.

Rendition^ for rendering. E. g., " Mr. Booth's rendition of
Hamlet was admirable." Rendition means surrender, giving up,
relinquishing to another ; as when we speak of the rendition
of a beleaguered town to the besieger, or of a pledge upon the
satisfaction of a debt.

Extend, for give. Lecture committees, instead of simply
inviting a public speaker, or giving him an invitation, almost
universally extend an invitation ; perhaps, because he is generally
at a considerable distance. Richard Grant White says pertin-
ently : " As extend (from ex and tendo) means merely to stretch
forth, it is much better to say that a man put out, offered, or
stretched forth his hand than that he extended it. Shakespeare
makes the pompous, pragmatical Malvolio say : ' I extend my
hand to him thus' ; but Paul < stretched forth the hand and
answered for himself.' This, however, is a question of taste,
not of correctness."

COMMON IMPROnUETIES OF SPEECH. 285

Except, for unless. E. g., " No one, except he has served an
apprenticeship, need apply." The former word is a preposition,
and must be followed by a noun or pronoun, and not by a pro-
position.

Coup/e, for pair or brace. When two persons or things are
joined or linked together, they form a couple. The number of
things that can be coupled, is comparatively small, yet the ex-
pression is in constant use ; as " a couple of books," " a couple
of partridges," " a couple of weeks," etc. One might as well
speak of " a pair of dollars."

Every. E. g., "I have every confidence in him " ; " they
rendered me every assistance." Every denotes all tlie indi-
viduals of a number greater than two, separately considered.
Derived from the Anglo-Saxon, aifer, ever, «?fc, each, it means
each of all, not all in mass. By " every confidence" is meant
simply perfect confidence ; by " every assistance," all possible
assistance.

Almost, as au adjective. Prof. Whitney, in his able work on
" Language, and the Study of Language," speaks of " the
almost universality of instruction among us."

Condign. E. g., " He does not deserve the condign punish-
ment he has received." As the meaning of condign is that
which is deserved, we have here a contradiction in terms, the
statement being equivalent to this : " He does not deserve the
deserved punishment he has received."

Paraphernalia. This is a big, sounding word from the Greek,
which some newspaper writers are constantly misusing. It is
strictly a law-term, and means whatever the wife brings with
her at marriage in addition to her dower. Her dress and her
ornaments are paraphernalia. To apply the term to an Irish-
man's sash on St. Patrick's day, or to a Freemason's hiero-
glyphic apron, it has been justly said, is not only an abuse of
language, but a clear invasion of woman's rights.

Setting-room, for sitting-room, is a gross vulgarism, which is
quite common, even with those who deem themselves nice
people. " I saw your children in the setting-room as I went
past," said a well-dressed woman in our hearing in a horse-car.
How could she go past ? It is not difficult to go by an object ;
but to go past is a contradiction in tenns.

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286

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

which is

innumerable number is an absurd expression,
used by some persons — not, it is to be hoped, " an innumer-
able number" of times.

Seraphim^ for seraph ; the plural for the singular. Even
Addison says : " The zeal of the seraphim breaks forth," etc.
This is as ludicrous as the language of the Indiana justice, who
spoke of " the first claw of the statute," or the answer of the
man who, when asked whether he had no politics, replied,
" Not a single politic."

People, for persons. "Many people think so." Better,
persons ; people means a body of persons regarded collectively,
a nation.

Off of, for off. Cut a yard off of the cloth."

More perfect, most perfect. What shall be said of these and
similar forms of expression? Doubtless they should be dis-
couraged, though used by Shakespeare and Milton. It may
be argued in their favour, that, though not logically correct,
yet they are rhetorically so. It is true that, as " twenty lions
cannot be more twenty than twenty flies," so nothing can be
more perfect than perfection. But we do not object to say
that one man is braver than another, or unser, though, if we
had an absolute standard of bravery or wisdom — that is, a
clear idea of them — we should pronounce either of the two
persons to be simply brave or not brave, wise or not wise.
We say that Smith is a better man than Jones, though no one
is absolutely good but God. These forms are used because
language is inadequate to express the intensity of the thought,
— as in Milton's " most wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,"
or the lines

" And in the lowest deep a lower deep.
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

Milton abounds in these illogical expressions, as do the best
Greek poets ; and one of £he happiest verses in the poems of
W. W. Story is a similar intentional contradiction, as

" Of every noMe work the silent part is best ;
Of all expression, that which cannot be expressed."

Ugly, for ill-tempered. A leading New York divine is

COMMON IMVROPRIETIES Ot SPEECH. 287

reported as saying of an ill-tempered child, that " he wants all
he sees, and screams if he does not get it ; ugly as he can be,
no matter who is disturbed by it."

/5, for are. One of the most frequent blemishes in English
prose is the indiscriminate use of singulars and plurals. E. g.,
Junius writes : both minister and magistrate is compelled to
choose between his duty and his reputation." Even Lindley
Murray writes : " Their general scope and tendency is not
remembered at all ; " and Milton sings :

" For their mind and spirit remaina invincible."

Some grammarians defend these forms of expression on the
ground that when two or more nouns singular represent a
single idea, the verb to which they are the nominative may be
put in the singular. The answer to this is, that if the nouns
express the same idea, one of them is superfluous ; if different
ideas, then they form a plural, and the verb should be plural
also. Another quibble employed to justify such expressions, is
that the verb, which is expressed after the last noun, is con-
sidered as understood after the first. But we are not told how
this process of subaudition can go on in the mind of the
reader, bejore he knows what the verb is to be; and while
ellipsis not only is in many cases permissible, but gives concise-
ness and energy to style, yet there is a limit beyond which it
cannot be pushed without leading to literary anarchy.

Caption, for heading. E. g., " The caption of this newspa-
per article." Caption means that part of a legal instrument
which shows where, when, and by what authority it was taken,
found, or executed.

To extremely maltreat. This phrase from Trench is an example
of a very common solecism. To, the sign of the infinitive,
should never be separated from the verb. Say, " to maltreat
extremely," or " extremely to maltreat."

Accord, for grant. "He accorded them (or to them) all they
asked for." To accord vnth, means properly to agree or to suit ;
as, " He accorded with ray views."

Enthuse, a word used by some clergymen, is not to be found
either in Worcester's Dictionary or in Webster's " Unabridged."

FersonaUy. This word is supposed by some persons to mean

288

WORDS. TUEIR USE AND ABUSE.

articles worn on one's person. Some years ago, a lady, in Eng-
land, who had madejthis mistake, and who wished to leave hor
servant her clothing, jewels, etc., described them as her persona/-
ty, and unwittingly included in her bequest ten thousand pounds.

Do. This verb is often used incorrectly as a substitute for
other verbs; as, "I did not say, as some have done." We
may properly say, " I did not say, as some do" {say) for here
the ellipsis of the preceding verb may be supplied.

On to, for on, or upon. " He got on to an omnibus ;" " He
jumped on to a chair." The preposition to is superfluous. Say,
" He got upon an omnibus," etc. Some persons speak of con-
tinuing on," which is as objectionable as *' He went to Boston
for to see the city."

Older, for elder. Older is properly applied to objects, ani-
mate and inanimate ; elder to rational beings.

Overflown, for overflowed. " The river has overflown."
Flowed is the participle of " to flow; " flown, of " to fly."

Spoonsful, for spoonfuls, and effluvia for effluvium, are very
common errors. " A disagreeable affluvia" is as gross a mistake
as " an inexplicable phenomena."

Scarcely, for hardly ; scarcely pertains to quantity ; hardly to
degree ; as, " There is scarcely a bushel ;" " I shall hardly
finish my job by night-fall."

Fare thee well, which has Byron's authority, is plainly wrong.

Community f for the community ; as, " Community will not
submit to such outrages." Prof. Marsh has justly censured
this vulgarism. Who would think of saying, "Public is inter-
ested in this question t " When we personify common nouns
used definitely in the singular number, we may omit the article,
as when we speak of the doings of Parliament, or of Holy
Church. " During the llevolution," says Professor M., " while
the federal government was a body of doubtful authority and
permanence, .... the phrase used was always ' tlie Congress,'
and such is the form of expression in the Constitution itself.
But when the Government became consolidated, and Congress
was recognised as the paramount legislative power of the
Union, ... it was personified, and the article dropped, and.

in like manner, the word Government is often used in the
same way."

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 289

FoUea, for folk. Aa folk implies plurality, the s is needless.

Musmhnen. Mussulman is not a compound of man, and
therefore, like German, it forms its plural by adding s.

Drive, for ride. A lady says that *' she is going to drive in
the park," when she intends that her servant shall drive (not
her, but) the horses.

Try and, for try to. E. g., *' Try and do it."

Whole, entire, complete, and total, are words which are used
almost indiscriminately by many persons. That is wfiole, from
which nothing has been taken ; that is entire, which has not
been divided ; that is complete, which has all its parts. Total
refers to the aggregate of the parts. Thus we say, a whole loaf
of bread ; an entire set of spoons ; a complete harness ; the total,
cost or expense.

Succeed, for give success to, or cause to succeed. E. gr., " If
Providence succeed us in this work." Both Webster and
Worcester justify this use oi succeed as a transitive verb ; but if
not now grammatically objectionable, as formerly, it is still to
be avoided on the ground of ambiguity. In the phrase quoted,
svtcceed may mean either cause to succeed, or follow.

Two good ones. " Among all the apples there were but two
good ones." Two ones ?

Raising the rent, for increasing the rent. A landlord notified
his tenant that he should raise his rent. " Thank you," was
the reply ; " I find it very hard to raise it myself."

Was, for is. " Two young men," says Sv/ift, " have made a
discovery, that there was a God." That there wa^ a God 1
When ? This year, or last year, or ages ago 1 All general
truths should be expressed by the use of \'erbs in the present
tense.

S/iall and tcill. There are, perhaps, no two words in the
language which are more frequently confounded or used inac-
curately than sfiall and mil. Certain it is, that of all the rocks
on which foreigners split in the use of the Queen's English,
there is none which so puzzles and perplexes them as the dis-
tinction between these little words. Originally both words
were employed for the same purpose in other languages of the
same stock with ours ; but their use has been worked out by
the descendants of the Anglo Saxons, until it has attained ^

290

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

degree of nicety remarkable in itself, and by no means easy of
acquisition even by the subjects of Victoria or by Americans.
Every one has heard of the Dutchman who, on falling into a
river, cried out, "I will drown and nobody shall help me."
The Irish are perpetually using shall for will, while the Scotch
use of unll for shall is equally inveterate and universal. Dr.
Chalmers says : " I am not able to devote as much time and
attention to other subjects as I will be under the necessity of
doing next winter." The use of shall for tmll, in the following
passage, has led some critics strongly to suspect that the author
of the anonymous work, "Vestiges of Creation," is a Scotch-
man : " I do not expect that any word of praise which this
work may elicit shall ever be responded to by me ; or that any
word of censure shall ever be parried or deprecated." This
awkward use of shall, we have seen, is not a Scotticism ; yet it
is curious to see how a writer who pertinaciously shrouds him-
self in mystery, may be detected by the blundering use of a
monosyllable. So the use of the possessive neuter pronoun its
in the poems which Chatterton wrote and palmed off as the
productions of one Rowlie, a monk in the fifteenth century, be-
trayed the forgery, — inasmuch as that little monosyllable, its,
now so common and convenient, did not find its way into the
language till about the time of Shakespeare. Milton never once
uses it, nor, except as a misprint, is it to be found anywhere in
the Bible.

Gilfillan, a Scotch writer, thus uses will for shall : " If we
look within the rough and awkward outside, we will be richly
rewarded by its perusal." So Alison, the historian : '* We
know to what causes our past reverses have been owing, and
we will have ourselves to blame if they are again incurred."
Macaulay observes that "not one Londoner in a thousand ever
misplaces his imll and shall. Doctor Robinson could, undoubt-
edly, have written a luminous dissertation on the use of those
words. Yet, even in his latest work, he sometimes misplaced
them ludicrously." But Dr. Johnson was a Londoner, and he
did not always use his shalls and wills correctly, as will be seen
by the following extract from a letter to Boswell in 1774 :
" You must make haste and gather me all you can, and do it
(juickly, or J will and shall do without it." In this anti-climax

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH. 291

Johnson meant to emphasize the latter of the auxiliaries. But
shall (Saxon, sceal=inecesse est,) in the first person, simply fore-
tells ; as, " I shall go to New York to-morrow." On the other
hand, mil, in the first person, not only foretells, but promises,
or declares the resolution to do a thing ; as " I will pay you
what I owe you." The Doctor should have said : " I shall and
will do without it," putting the strongest term last. The con-
fusion of the two words is steadily increasing in this country.
Formerly the only Americans who confounded them were
Southerners ; now, the misuse of the words is stealing through

the north. E. g., "I will go to town to-moq:ow, and shall
take an early opportunity of calling on your friend there."
" We will never look on his like again." A writeiwin a New
York paper says : " None of our coal mines are deep, but the
time is coming when we will have to dig deeper in search of
both coal and metallic ores." Again, we hear persons speak
thus : " Let us keep a sharp look-out, and we will avoid all
danger."

Shakespeare rarely confounded the two words ; for example,
in " Coriolanus" :

" Cor. Shall remain !

Hear you this Triton of the minnows ? mark you
His absolute shall /"

i .

1:'

V, 1

1 1

Again, in Antony and Cleopatra :

" Meno. Wilt thou be lord of the whole world ?
Senator. He shall to the market-place."

Wordsworth, too, who is one of the most accurate writers in
our literature, nicely discriminates in his use of shall and will:

** This child I to myself will take ;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her ; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wajrward round,
And beauty bom of murmuring sound
ShfUl pt^s iijto her fftc^."

i ■■.

'I'm:

i! : •

292

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

In the last passage determination is expressed, and there-
fore shall is properly used.

When the Bible was translated, the language was in a state
of transition ; hence we read in Kings ii. : " Ahab shall slay
me/' for will. In Genesis xliii. 3-5, the two words are nicely
discriminated.

The general rule to be followed in the use of the two words
is, that when the simple idea of future occurrence is to be
expressed, unconnected with the speaker's resolve, we must use
shall in the first person, and will in the second and third ; as,
" I shall die, you will die, he will die ; " but when the idea of
compulsion or necessity is to be conveyed — a futurity con-
nected with the will of the speaker — will must be employed in
the first person, and sJudl in the second and third j as, " I will
go, you shall go, he shall go." " I shall attain to thirty at my
next birthday" merely foretells the age to which the speaker
will have reached at his next birthday ; " I will attain to
thirty at my next birthday" would imply a determination to
be so old at the time mentioned. " You shall have some
money to-morrow" would imply a promise to pay it ; " you
will have some money to-morrow" would only imply an expec-
tation that the person addressed would receive some money.

Similar to the misuse of shall and will, is that of ivould for
should ; as, *' fou promised that it would be done ;" ** But for
reinforcements we would have been beaten." Mr. Brace, in
his work on Hungary, makes the people of that country say of
Kossuth : " He ought to have known that we would be ruined,"
— which can only mean " we wished to be ruined."

The importance of attending to the distinction of shall and
willy and to the nice distinctions of words generally, is strik-
ingly illustrated by an incident in Massachusetts. In 1844
Abner Rogers was tried in that State for the murder of the
warden of the penitentiary. The man who had been sent to
search the prisoner, said in evidence : "He (Rogers) said, * I
have fixed the warden, and I'll have a rope round my neck.'
On the strength of what he said, I took his suspenders from
him." Being cross-examined, the witness said his words were :
"I will have a rope," not "I shall have a rope." The coun-
sel against the prisoner argued that he declared an intention of

COMMON IMPROPRIETIES OF SPEECH, 293

some

suicide, to escape from the penalty of the law, which he knew
he had incurred. On the other hand, shall would, no doubt,
have been regarded as a betrayal of his consciousness of having
incurred a felon's doom. The prisoner was acquitted on the
ground of insanity. Strange that the fate of an alleged
murderer should turn upon the question which he used of two
little words that are so frequently confounded, and employed
one for the other ! It would be difficult to conceive of a more
pregnant comment on the importance of using words with dis-
crimination and accuracy.

It would be impossible, in the limits to which we are
restricted, to give all the nice distinctions to be observed in
the use of shall and loill. For a full explanation of the sub-
ject we must refer the unlearned reader to the various English
grammars, and such works as Sir E. W. Head's treatise on the
two words, and the works on synonymes by Graham, Crabb,
and Whately. Prof. Scheie DeVere, in his late " Studies in
Language," expresses the opinion that this double future is a
great beauty of the English language, but that it is impossible
to give any rule for its use, which will cover all cases, and that
the only sure guide is " that instinct which is given to all
who learn a language with their mother's lailk, or who acquire
it so successfully as to master its spirit as well as its form."
His use of will for sJiall, in this very work, verifies the latter
part of this statement, and shows that a foreigner may have a
profound knowledge of the genius and constitution of a
language, and yet be sorely puzzled by its niceties and subtle-
ties. '* If we go back," he says, " for the purpose of thus
tracing the history of nouns to the oldest forms of English, we
will there find the method of forming them from the first and
simplest elements" (page 140). The " Edinburgh Review"
denounces the distinction of shall and lo'ill, by their neglect of
which the Scotch are so often bewrayed, as one of the most
capricious and inconsistent of all imaginable irregularities,
and as at variance not less with original etymology than with
former usage. Prof Marsh regards it as a verbal quibble
which will soon disappear from our language. It is a
quibble just as any distinction is a quibble to persons who
are too dull, too lazy, or too careless to apprehend it,

•^-

WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE.

With as much propriety might the distinction between
the indicative and subjunctive forms of the verb, or the dis-
tinction between furtJier and farther^ strong and robust, empty
and vacant, be pronounced a verbal quibble. Sir Edmund W.
Head has shown that the difference is not one which has an
existence only in the pedagogue's brain, but that it is as real
and legitimate as that between he and am, and dates back as
far as Wickliffe and Chaucer, while it also has the authority of
Shakespeare*

PHllSrClPAL BOOKS CONSULTEt).

Angus. Hand-book of the English Tomjue. London, 1863.

Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by John Gillies. London, 1823.

Samuel Bailky. Discourses an Various Subjects. London, 1862.

Blackley. Word-Oossip. London, 1869. New York, 1867.

BoWEN. Treatise on Logic. Boston, 1874.

Br KEN. Modern English Literature. London.

M. ScHELE De Verb. Studies in English.

John Earle. Philology of the English Tongue. Oxford, 1871.

Fowler. English Orammar. New York, 1860.

P. W. Farrar. The Origin of Language. London, 1860.

" Chapters on Language. London, 1873.

Garnett. Philological Essays, edited by his Son. London, 1859.
Fleming. Analysis of the English Language. London, 1869.
Gould. Good English. New York, 1867.
G. F. Graham. A Book about Words. London, 1869.
Harrison. On the English Language. London, 1848.
Sir Edmund W. Head. "Shall" and " Will". London.
Latham. The English Language. 5th ed. London, 1873.
Marsh. Lectures on the English Language.

Max Muller. Lectures on the Science of Language. (First Series.)

New York, 1862.
Lectures on tfie Science of Language. (Second Series. )

New York, 1865.
System of Logic. New York, 1869.
The Idea tf a University. 3d ed. London, 1873.
Notes and Queries. London, 1852.

Shedd. Homiletics and Pastoral Theology. New York, 1867.
Thomson. Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought. New York.
Sir John Stoddart. The Phihiophy of Language. London, 1854.
Smith. Common Words with Curious Derivations. London, 1865.
Horn E Took E. Diversions of Purley. (Ed. Taylor.) London, 1860.
Trench. On the Study of Words. 13th ed. Ltadon, 1869.
" English, Past and Present. 6th ed. London, 1868.

Select Glossary of English Words. 3d. ed. London, 1865.
Elements of Logic. New York, 1865.
" Elements of Rhetoric. New York, 1866.

Hensleigh Wedovood. Etymological Dictionary. London, 1872.
W. D. Whitney. Language ami the Study of Languaric. New York,

1867.
*• The Life and Growth of Lanquage.

1875.
E, P. Whipple, Essays and Reviews. Boston, 1856.
*' Literature and Life. Boston, 1871.

£ii;sAYs £Y A Barrister. Loudon, 1862.

Mill, J. S. A
3. H. Newman.

Whately.

New York

:i|

■"1

3 '

INDEX

Abdicate, and desert, 182-3.

Aboniiuable, 240.

Academy, the French, 263.

Accord, 287.

Adjectives, reveal character, 45.

excessive use of, 12(5-128.
Afflicting', 22y.
A^friculturist, 271.
Ah and ha, 100.
Alert, 242.

Alexander, Dr. Addison, on mono-
syllables, 107.
Ahord, Dean, his improprieties of

speech, 205.
Alfred the Great, his style of living,

188.
Allowance, 230.
All of them, 281.
•' All right ! ' 51.
Allude, 266, 282.
Almost, 285.
Alms, 255.
Alone, 273.
Americans, their exaggeration, 127,

128.
Among one another, 289.
Anecdote, 230.

Animals, incapable of speech, 9, 10.
Animosity, 235.
Anyhow, 273.
Apology, 176.
Apple-pie order, 248.
Appreciate, 279.
Aristocrats, 212.
Aristotle, on grand words, 82.
Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, on the style

of historians, 46.
Artillery, 231.
Ascham, Roger, on the study of

forei^ tongues, 159.
Assassin, 244.
Astonished, 230.

At, 275.
At all, 274.
Atom, 207.
Attraction, .57.
Avocation, 274.

Bacon, Lord, his words, 14 ; on the
power of words, 58 ; on expert
men, 197.

Bailey, Samuel, on Berkeley's theory
of vision, 18.

Balance, 81,273.

Balzac, on charmed words, 58 ; anec-
dote by, 13U.

I^anister, 266.

Bankrupt, 237.

Barrow, Dr. Isaac, his word-coin-
ages, 264.

Bedlam, 254.

Beef-eater, 254.

Beggars, 216.

Beldam, 333.

Belfry, 2.54.

Ben Johnson, nicknamed, 218.

Bentley, Richard, as a stylist, 167.

Bible, the English, abounds in mono-
syllables, 103 ; beauty and i-ichness
of its vocabulary, 141 ; tribute to
by a Catholic, 141 .

" Billy Ruffian," 253.

Bishop, 176,253.

Bit, 237.

'* Bitter end," 249.

Blackguard, 231.

Blue-stocking, 239.

Blunderbuss, 244.

Boileau, on expression, 148 ; the
"Homoousian" controversy, 171;
his solecism, 261.

Bolingbroke, his attention to his
style, 271.

Bombast, 231.

Ill

298

INDEX.

Booby, 244.

Boor, 234.

Both, 244.

Boudoir, 247.

Bound, 279.

Boyle, Sir Richard, on Lucan, 156.

Bran-new, 252.

Brat, 161.

Brevity of speech, 126, 127.

Bribe, 49.

Brilliant, 50.

Brown, John, his moderation of lan-
guage, 1.31.

Browne, Sir Thomas, on scholars, 11 ;
his word- coinages, 264.

Buckle, on the style of English scho-
lars, 166,

Buffoon, 238.

Bulwer, Lytton, his " Corporal Bunt-
ing" on words, 64.

Burdett, Sir Francis, nicknamiid by
O'Connell, 214.

Burke, nicknanted *' The Dinner
Bell," 212; on George Grenville,
196.

Burr, Aaron, his brevity, 125.

But, 271.

But that, 275.

By-law, 242.

Byron, on the English language, 96 ;
his use of monosyllables, 104, 105 ;
his aid to Greece, 110; on the
poverty of language, 146.

Caesar, 217.

Caitiff, 231.

Canard, 240.

Canning, his command of language,

19, 138, 139.
Canon, ii'3.
Cant, 239.
Cant, 110, 112, 114, 120; political,

114, 117 ; in the meeting-house, 117 ;

religious, 116, 120.
Caption, 287.
Capuchin, 216.
Carbo, anecdote of, 26,
Carlyle, his Teutonic language, 84.
Carnival, 281.
Casuistry, 170.
Caucus, 247.
Causeway, 255.
Cavalier, 218.

Celebrity, 276.

Chaffer, 236.

Chagrin, 243.

Chalmers, his eloquence, 40.

Character, gives force to words, 38,

43.
Charles V., on the English language,

93 ; on the knowledge of languages ,^

121.
Chatham, his study of Bailey's Dic-
tionary, 18 ; his words, 40 ; his

speeches, 124.
Cheat, 24,5.
Chemist, 231.
Chesterfield, Lonl, anecdote of, 89;

his efforts to improve his language,

269.
Chevalier d'industrie, 66.
Choate, Ruf us, on the choice of words,.

19 ; his prodigality of words, 129.
Christian, 216.
Cicero, his choice of words, 25 ; his

speeches, 123.
CipVer, 255.
Civ ization, 177.

Cla.endon, Lord, his solecisms, 269.
Classical studies, value of, 160.
Cleave, 256.
Cobbett, his education and style,

163 ; his felicitous nicknames, 213.
Coincide, 233.
Coke, Sir Edward, his denunciation

of Raleigh, 40.
Coleridge, on Shakspeare's words, 12 ;

on bedridden truths, 117 ; on the

history in words, 226 ; his word-

coinages, 264.
Colour, 258.
Comfortable, 206.
Commence, 80.
Community, 288.
Competence, 206.
Compulsory, 178.
Condign, 285.
Conduct, 279.
Confederate, 233.
Confirmed invalid, 279.
Contraband, 233.
Contradictory meanings, 257.
Controversies, usually disputes about

words, 208.
Convene, 275.

Cooper, Sir Astley, anecdote of, 51.
Copperhead, 210.
Co<iuet, 232.

INDEX.

299

iinciatioii

C >rporeal. 273.

i'orpse, 232.

Corwin, Gov., aneccU^te of, i)2.

Coiintry-dance, 253.

€ouple, 28.5.

Courier, P. L., on abusive epithets,

180
Couthon, 116.
Cowley, bis style, 166.
Cowper, William, bis poetry and

letters, 114 ; on word-hunters, 2.51.
Craft, 2M.
Crawfish, 253.
Creative, 186.
Criticise, 236.

Crockett, David, on repetition, 17.
Crushed out, 274.
Cudworth, on quamquam, 185.
Cunning, 2So.

Curiosities of Language, 221-257.
Curiosity, 236.
Curmudgeon, 244.
Curran, anecdote of, 221.
Cuvier, anecdote of, 17.

DaTidelion, 253.

Dangerous, 283.

Dante, saying of, 156.

Deacon, 176.

Dear, 257.

Deceiving, 276.

Decimated, 81.

Deduction, 271.

Defalcation, 235.

Definition of words, 17 ; of " net-
work," by Johnson, 17 ; of '* crab "
by the French Academy, 17 ; scien-
tific and popular, 179 ; its imi)ort-
ance, 204 ; often needs defining,
208.

Degradation of words, 23.3-237.

Delinquents, 210.

De Maistre, on Locke, 179 , on Pagan
ideas and words, 55.

De Medicis, Catherine, on Scaliger's
linguistic acnuisitions, 122.

Demosthenes, nis choice of words,25;
his brevity of speech, 126 ; his ig-
norance of foreign tongues, 166.

Demure, 234.

De Quincev, Thomas, on Romanic
words, 136 ; on the inadequacy of
language, 147 ; on the Kterary style

of women, 167; on " paupers," 206;

on the miachiefs arismg from sole-
cisms, 270.
Desultory, 164.
De Vera, Scheie, on " shall " and

" will," 293.
Dexterity, 2.37.
Differ with, 272.

Diplomatists, their equivocation, 1V2.
Directly, 280.

Disgraceful and indecent, 179.
Disraeli, Benj., on the disputes of

synods, 172.
Do, 290.

Doing good, 197.
Dommican, 216.
Donate, 81.
Don't, 276.
Dormitantius, 215.
Dormouse, 2.53.
Doubt, 273.
Drive, 289.
Dryden, John, his translation of the

^neid, 29 ; his modemizations of

Milton and Chaucer, 29.
Dun, mS.
Dunce, 2.36.
Dundas, " Starvation," 219.

Education, 181.

Egregious, 247.

Either, 277.

Either alternative, 282.

Elizabeth, Queen, her diet, 189.

Eloquence, is in the thought, 186 ;
Emerson, on, 86 ; uses simple lan-
guage, 89 ; when most conquering,
131.

Emerson, R. W., on language, 224.

Emigrants, 291.

English language the, 94, 95, 102, 10-1,
105, 136, 140 ; new interests in its
study, 259.

Enthuse, 282.

Equally as well, 280.

Equanimity of mind, 276.

Erskine, his education and style, 163;
his nickname, 215.

Etymology, not a guide to present
meanings of wonts, 163, 184 ; its
fascination, 223 ; examples of illu-
sive, 250 ; rules of, 252.

300

INDEX.

Etymology, of phrases; "sleep like
a top," " Penny-come-quick,"
" Shotover," and "to make a fox's
paw," 254 ; " Boulogne mouth,"
254.

Every, 285.

Evidence, 275.

Exaggeration of language, 126-127.

Except, 285.

Excessively, 277.

Exist, 207.

Exorbitant, 233.

Expletives, fi3.

Expression, how to acquire grace and
purity of, 268.

Extend, 284.

Facetious, 234.

Faint, 238.

Fallacies^ in Words, 169-207.

Farce, 241.

Fare thee well, 288.

Fast, 236, 256.

Federalist, 210.

Fellow, 2Sfi.

Female, 79, 80.

Final completion, 276.

Folks, 389.

Foolscap, 253.

Foreign philologVj not indispensable
to mastery of English, 160, 168.

Foster, John, his choice of words,
24 ; on elociuence, 86.

Fox, C. J., his history of the Revo-
lution, 136.

Franklin, his education and style,
163.

Freedom, 179.

Freeman, E. A., on the use of grand
words in England, 82.

Freemason, 253.

French literature, its freedom from
solecisms, etc., 263.

French, the, their dislike for foreign
words, 88.

From thence, 278.

Frondeurs, 212.

Frontispiece, 252.

Fudge, 100.

Fuller, Thomas, on high-flown lan-
guage, 80 ; on the style of the school-
men, 205 ; on etymology, 252.

Gambling at the*court of LouisXI V.
59.

Gamett, on " truth," 184.

Gfine, 50.

Gentleman, 68.

George I., 114.

Gesticulation, as a vehicle of thought,
19.

Gibberish, 242.

Girl, 230.

Gloire, 50.

"Go ahead! "51.

Goethe, on the study of foreign lan-
guages, 159 ; a poor linguist, 165.

Goldsmith, Oliver, his solecisms, 267.

Gooseberry, 2.52.

Gossip, 236.

Got, for have, 272.

Gothic, 57.

Grammatical knowledge, whv neces-
cessary, 270; Sydney Smith, on,
270.

Grand words, 74; use of by the Eng-
lish, 82 ; of a Scotch preacher, 84 ;
effects of their use, 85.

Gravitation, 175.

Greeks, the ancient, their ignorance
of philology, 166.

Grocer, 252.

Guizot. on the significations of words
in different ages, 177.

Haberdasher, 245.

Had have, had rather, had ought and
had better, 275.

Halifax, on trimmers, 217.

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, his anecdote of
a Scotch girl, 90.

Hall, Robert, his choice of words, 23 ;
on Saxon words, 141, 142 : his ap-
ing of Johnson, 151.

Hamilton, Alexander, 125.

Hamilton, " Single-Speech, 218.

Hardships and harden, 193.

Hawk, 245.

Hawthorne, on the spells in words,
36.

Hazlitt, on Bonaparte's nickname ;
his story of " Tiddy-doll," 221.

Heaven, 185.

INDEX.

301

Higginson, T. W. , on the significance

of words, 36.
Hill, 185.

Hip ! hip ! hurrah ! 238.
Hoax, 245.

Hobbes, on words, 204.
Hociis-pocns, 243.
Homely, 234.
Homer, his words, 11.
" Homoosians " and " Hoyioiusians,"

their disputes, 171.
Honnetdtd, 50.
Horace, translations of, 30.
Horrent, 228.
Hospital, 201.
How, 280.
Huguenot, 217, 242.
Humboldt, on the study of words,

227.
Humble-pie, 245.
Humbug, 56, 243.
Hume, his style, 26; his silence when

attacked, 64 ; his arginnents against

miracles, 173, 175.
Humility, 56, 233.
Hypocrite, 248.
Hypostasis, 162.

Idealism and materialism, 185.

Idioms, 53.

Idiot, 234.

•• I exist," 206.

Iliad, the untranslatable, 28.

Illy, 272.

Imagination, 162.

Imbecile, 24.S.

Imbroglio, 80.

Imp, 234.

Impertinent, 176.

Improprieties of speech, 259-203 ;
tneir frequency in English writers,
259, 270, 271 ; the mischiefs they
caxise, 267.

Incomprehensible, 232.

Incorrect orthography, 278.

Indeed, 101.

Indian tongues, 250.

Indices, 284.

Indifferent, 176.

Individual, 77.

" In our midst," 117, 277.

Instances, 230.

Intensity, not a characteristic of na-
ture, 132.

Interjections, 98-99 ; Home Tooke
on, 99 ; Max Midler on, 100 ;
Shakspeare's, 103-104.

Intoxicated, 81.

Inveterate, 2.58.

Is for are, 287.

Island, 252.

Jtalians, their social dialect, 48.

Its, 290.

It were, 273.

Jansenists and Jesuits, their disputes.
171.

Jeopardize, 283.

Jeffrey, Francis, his artificial style^
83.

Jerusalem artichoke, 253.

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, anecdote of,
78 ; his " Johnsonece " dialect, 78,
106 ; on big words, 86 ; on cant,
116 ; his spoken an<l written dialects
contrasted, 143 ; his advice on the
formation of a good style, 149 ;
anecdote of, 221 ; on the word
" dun," 263 ; his attention to his
language, 270 ; his grammatical
blunders, 270.

Johnson, ildward, M. D., on right,
184.

Johnson, Ben., 153.

Joubert, on Rousseau's words, 14 ;
his economy of words, 125 ; on
style, 153.

Keats, his study of words, 19 ; his
education and style, 163 ; his nick-
name, 213.

Kennel, 248.

Kidnap, 245.

Knave, 2.S4.

Knox, John, saying of, 212.

Lady, 240.

Lamb, Charles, his nickname, 213 ;
" Lamb and Pickles," 2-53.

Landed proprietor, 57, 177.

Landor, W. S., his use of monosyl-
lables, 105.

^02

INDEX.

Langfiia^e, the armoury of the mind,
11 ; its varioiifl uses, 21 ; its
educational value, 22 ; the limit as
well as the feeder of thought, 22 ;
community of, essential to a peo-
ple's unity, 36 ; a conquered people's
not easily extirpated, 37; an index
to the mental and moral character,
42; a key to national character,
43 ; how enriched or impoverished,
48 ; peculiarities of the French, 49 ;
characteristics of the Greek and of
the Latin, 52 ; the Anglo-Saxon,
52 ; the Italian, 53 ; of Van Die-
man's land, 55 ; its influence upon
opinion, 55, 66 ; bad leads to bad
deeds, 63 ; jesting, 63 ; effects of its
debaRement,70, 71 ; the English after
the Norman conquest, 82 ; of art
and science, 90 ; excellence of the
English, 94, 96 ; th^ English large-
ly mononyllabic, 107; conventional,
110 ; excessive study of, 122 ; quali-
ties of the Saxon, 136, 144 ; the
English, composite, 136; obscure
caused by obscurity of thought,
146 ; inadequate to express exactly,
or all our thoughts, 147, 202 ; yet
not barren to deep thinkers, 148 ;
its magical effects, 155, 157 ; Gold-
win Smith on, 154 ; not a mere
collection of words, 188 ; curiosities
of, 223, 257 ; changes with the
change of ideas, 226, 262 ; charac-
ter of the French, 26^^ ; may be ex-
cessively refined, 262 ; constantly
growing, 262 ; how to improve in
its use, 268, 269.

Languages, defects of Pagan, 55 ;
superiority of mcmosyllabic, 105 ;
the study of foreign, 159 ; Indian,
250.

Lavoisier, his terminology, 18.

Law of nature, 175.

Least, 278.

Leave, 280.

Lee, 257.

Less, 273.

Let, 229, 256.

Lewes, G. H., on frankness, 109.

" Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,"
178.

Lie and lay, 273.

Lieutenant, 252.

Light, 194.

Like I did, 273.

Likewise, 274.

Lincoln, Abraham, anecdote of, 215.

Listener, 50.

Locke, on the philology of the Greeks
and the Komans, 166 ; his obscur-
ity, 179.

Locofoco, 209.

London, 201.

Looka beautifully, 280.

Loyalty, 232.

Lutheran, 216.

Luxury, 188, 190.

Macaulay, on Milton's words, 12 ;
his eulogy of Saxon words, 142 ; on
Johnson's language, 143 ; on purity
of style, 166.

Mackintosh, Sir James, Sydney
Smith on his lack of simplicity, 83.

Majesty, 52.

" Majesty of the people," 179.

Manner, 258.

M<tnsel, his doctrine of consciousness,
256.

Manumit, 247.

Marsh, Prof. G. P. , on Demosthenes,
25 ; on the study of English, 165 ;
on the Italian language, 48.

Martineau, James, on the power of
words, 71.

Masses, 277.

Meddle, 16L

Megrim, 355.

Menial, 234.

Methodist, 216.

Mezzofanti, Cardinal, 121.

Mill, J. S., on traditional maxims,
etc. , 117 ; on the misapplication of
words, 176 ; on right, 201.

Miller, Hugh, his education and
style, 164.

Milton, his words, 12, 13 ; on the de-
basement of language, 71 ; his use
of monosyllables, 104 ; his style,
151, 169.

Minion, 234.

Minute, 258.

Mirabeau on words, 10.

Miracles, Hume's argiunent against
them considered, 173.

Miscreant, 231.

Miser, 162.

INDEX.

30.^

Mistaken, 257.

Modern, 229.

Money, 170.

Monomania, 65.

Monosyllables, their expres^4ivenesH,
98, 103 ; in the Bible. 10:i

Montaigne, on verbal definitions, etc. ,
200 ; on usage, 263.

Moon-Alfre<l controversy, 259.

Moore, Thomas, anecdote of, 24 ; on
the purity of the Greek style, 166.

More i)erfect, 286.

More, Sir Thomas, on the English
tongue, 94.

Morris Gouverneur, anecdote by, 61.

Mortal, 257.

Motley, on the origin of " the Reg-
gars," 217.

Mountebank, 237. ^

Miiller, Max, on interjections, 100 ;
on etymology, 251.

Murder, 194.

Musket, 161.

Mussulman, 289.

Mutual, 28S.

Myself, 280.

Mystery, 230.

Names, their supposed mystic im-
port, 35 ; among the Romans, 34 ;
their effect on the reception of
scientific truth, 62 ; invented by
the Greeks and the Romans for
crimes, 67 ; given by employers to
employed, 71 ; give us no concep-
tions of things, 188 ; their signific-
ance, 214.

Napoleon I., his talk of " my glory,"
46 ; his style, 157 ; his nickname,
154 ; on epithets, 154.

Naturalist, 231.

Nature and art, 191.

Negotiate, 247.

Nervous, 256.

Never, 278.

Newman, J. H., on translation, 32.

Nice, 242, 283.

Nicknames, 209 ; political, 210. 215 ;
their force in controversy, 209-213 ;
why effective, 213; theological,
213 ; friendly, 213 ; their origin,
212 ; of Conger, Sandwich, Peel,
Russell, and Disraeli, 218 ; made of

complimentary epithets, 219 ; of
children and women, 220.

NirvAna, 60.

No, 98, 281.

Nominalists and Realists, their dis-
putes, 170.

Nowadays, 265.

Nude, 81.

O'Connell, Daniel, his (Militical
phrases, 116; on Acts of Parlia-
ment, 200.

Of, 274.

Officious, 234.

Off of, 286.

Oh, 99.

Old, 181.

Older, 288.

On to, 288.

Overflown, 288.

Owl, 245.

Pagan, 226.

Palsy, 255.

Pambos, story of, 119.

Pantaloon, 245.

Paradise, 233.

Paramour, 234.

Paraphernalia, 285.

Parasite, 176, 246.

Parliament. 176.

Parlour, 247.

Parson, 236, 244.

Parts, 231.

Party, 276.

Patkul, 116.

Pedaut, 161.

Pensive, 242.

People, 286.

Per.-^onality, 287.

Pet, 244.

Petrel, 243.

Petty, 244.

Phidias, saying of, 155.

Philologists, sometimes verbom vn-

iacs, 251.
Piety, 199.
Plagiarism, 247.
Poetry, artificiality of British in the

eighteenth century, 112.
Policy, 252.
Polite, 231.

304

INDEX.

Political economiHt<4, their diR))utes,

170.
Poltroon,i241.
Pope, Alexander^ on amall words,

97 ; on conventional langua^'e, 11:^.
Poues, the, their mana^jeiiieut uf

tneological controverHiee, 172.
Porpoise, 253.
Post, 256.
Practice, 196.
Practical, 258.
Preachint;. simplicity in, 92.
Premier, 217.
Prevent, 230.
Preventative, 283.
Previous, 279.
Priest, 176.
Prolixity, 126.
Property, 239.
Proposition, 279.
Proven, 279.
Psha, 100.
Punctual, 231.
Puritan, 218.

Quaker, 218.
Quandary, 281.
Quantity, 281.
Quarter-sessions rose, 253.
Quinsy, 2.55.

Quintilian, on iliscourse, 44.
Quiz, 241.

Racy, 241.

Kaising the rent, 289.

Rascal, 230.

Recommend, 272.

Regeneration, 233.

Relevant, 232.

Rendition, 284.

Representative, 181.

Resent, 235.

Restive, 281.

Retaliate, 2;J5, 258.

Revolt, 273.

Right, 185, 199, 245.

Ringleader, 161.

Rip, 257.

Robertson, F. W., on words of cal-
umny, 63 ; on talk without deeds,
120 ; onthe use of superlatives, 131.

Robinsen, " Bootjack," 218.
Romanic words, when preferable,

137, 142.
RosciuH, the actor, 20.
Rosemary, 253.
Rossini, anecdote of, 120.
Roundhead, 218.
Rump, 218.
Runes, their supposed magical power,

35.

Sacrament, 176, 233.

Saj^acintiH, 289.

Suuite-Beuve, on Nai)oleon's style,

154.
Salary, 245.

Salutation, national forms of, .53.
Same, 187.
Sarcasm, 246.
Saunterer, 2.S7.
Savajre, 162.

Savages, their language, 250.
Saxon, its brevity and simplieity,

107, 13G ; its suggestiveness, 140 ;

its freedom from equivocation, 203.
Saxon Words, or Romanic ? 134.
Scamp, 234.
Scarcely, 289.

Scarlett, Sir James, his speeches, 12;'.
Schiller, on the study of foreign lau-

gu.ages, 166.
Scholarship, modern, 123.
Schooner, 246.
Science, its language, 90, 91.
Scott, Gen. , his nickname, 211.
Scrupulous, 247.
Secede, 233.
Second causes, 175.
Secret, 229.

Selden, on the fitness of words, 42.
Seldom, or never, 278.
Self-love and selfishness, 181.
Self -Murder, 194.
Seraphim, 286.
Servant, 247.
Servitude, 177.
Setting-room, 285.
Sexton, 238.
Seymour, Lord Henry, dispute about

the words in bis will, 20 0.
Shakespeare, his wordB,12, 41; his use

of Saxon and Romanic words, 143 ;

his education, 163 ; his use of

"shall" and "will," 293.

msM

INDEX.

305

preferaUU",

jical power,

eon's style,
s of, 53.

>:)0.

wimplidty,
■eness, 140 ;
)cation, 20.i.

134.

>eecheB, 12'.
foreign lan-

91.
B, 211.

vords, 42.
181.

ispute about

00.

2,41; his use

words, 143 ;

his use of

)3,

Shall and will, 293.

Shamefaced, 252.

Shari), Dr., anecdote of, 118.

ShibbolethH, their influence, 60; re-
ligious, 60.

Sho<.t, 2.')4.

Sidney, Sir Philip, on the ballad of
Chevy Chase, 166 ; on style, 269.

Sign, 249.

Silly, 234.

Simple, 236.

Simplicity, 191.

Sin, sinner, 55.

Sincere, 223.

Sit, 278.

Slang, 263.

Slave, 246.

Small words, 100; Pope on, 123;
characteristic of the English
tongue, 102 ; Shakespeare's use of,
103 , Byron's use of, 104.

Smith, Sydney, his st^le, 152; on
the old times, 181 ; his word-coin-
age, 264 ; his solecisms, 270 ; on the
study of grammar, 270.

Snob, 243.

Solecism, 245.

Somerset, 254.

Sophist, 176.

South, Robert, on popular catch-
words, 59 ; on verbal magic, 65 ; on
brevity of speech, 126.

Southey, Robert, on nicknaming
children and women, 220.

Spaniards, their love of long names,
88.

Sparrowgrass, 253.

Species, 192.

Speculation, 234.

Spencer, Herbert, on the brevity of
Saxon words, 105.

Spirit, 185.

Spiritual, 50.

Spoonsful, 288.

Spurgeon, Charles H., on religious
cant, 119.

Squirrel, 245.

Stanhope, Lady Hester, on her
poverty, 256.

Stanley, Lord, on Saxon words, 134.

Stedman, E. C, on Swinboume's
words, 14.

Stopping, ?84.

Story, Judge, on the difficulty of
framing statutes clearly, 200.

Stranger, 249.

Style, characteristics of goo<l, 24 ; the
vital element uf literary immortal-
ity, 26 ; an index to a historian's
character, 46 ; simplicity of, 90,
132; sensationalism in, 129; the
transcendental, 145 ; how to ac-
quire a good, 15(i, 158 ; depends
on man and his theme, 151 ;
should be individual, 151 ; is the
incarnation of thought, 151 ; differ-
ences of, 1.52 ; every age has its
own, 152 ; the kind demanded to-
day, 153 ; should be vivid, 157.

Substance, 161.

Succeed, 289.

riuch, 279.

Summons, 255.

Sun, 207.

Supercilious, 246.

Superior J 276.

Superlative, 132.

Surname, 253.

Sycophant, 246.

Synonymes, 23.

Swiss, the, Fuller on language of, 53.

Tabby, 246.

Tale, 228.

Talleyrand, why successful as a
diplomatist, 114.

Taylor, " Chicken," 219.

Taylor, Henry, on writers of 17th
century, 16.

Team, 202.

The above, 275.

Then, 275.

Theological disputes, 171.

Theory, 195.

Thief, 233.

Thing, 232.

Thought, 231.

Thrall, 249.

Tidy, 23L

Toad-eater, 238.

Tobacconist, 232.

Tooke, Home, on interjections, 184 ;
on particles, 99 ; on truth, 184.

Topsy-turvey, 238.

Tory, 216.

To, sign of the infinitive, 287.

Townsend, Lady, concerning White-
field, 118.

306

INDEX.

Tragedy, 161.

Translations, necessarily imperfect,
25 ; of the Iliad, by Pope, Oowper,
Chapman, Lord Derby, and Bry-
ant, 29 ; of the /Eneid, by Dry-
den, 29.

Translators, their blunders, 31.

"Transmutation of species," 192.

Transubstantiation, 60.

Treacla, 255.

Trench, Archbishop, on the signifi-
cance of names, 215.

Tribulation, 246.

Trifling minuMde, 284.

Trimmer, 217.

Trivial, 241.

Truth, 184.

Try, 276.

Try and, 289.

Two good ones, 289.

Tyler, President, his nickname, 211.

Tyrant, 176.

Uglv, 286.

Understanding, 161.

Unity, 183.

Unloose, 257.

Unravel, 257.

Usage, only a presixmptive teat of

purity of speech, 265.
Usury, 23'i.

Vagabond, 235.

Variet, 235.

Verbal disputes, effects of, 208.

Verbal vice, its effects, 62.

Verbiage, American, 122.

Vigilantius, 215.

Villain, 161.

Villein, 234.

Violation of nature, 174.

Virgil, his attention to style, 24.

Virtual representation, 172.

Virtuoso, 48.

Voltaire, on English speech, 102.

VolubiUty, 125.

Walton, Izaak, education and style
of, 163 ; on the word "rip," 257.

Was, 290.

Washington, his silence, 64.

We, 111.

Wealth, 169, 239.

Wearies, 273.

Webster, Daniel, his study of the
Dictionary, 18 ; his weighty words,
39 ; his simplicity of speech, 87 ;
his avoidance of exaggeration, 132.

Wellington, his sense of duty, 46.

Whately, Archbishop, his simplicity
of language, 86 ; on experience,
173; his treatise on synonymes,
179 ; on ambiguous words, 188.

Whether, 278.

Whig, 216.

Whipple, Edwin P., on Coke's words,
40 ; on Chaucer's, Edwards', and
Barrow's words, 41 ; on the sug-
gestiveness of Shakspeare's diction,
41 ; his style, 165.

Whitefi«ld, his use of interjections,

3;;.

White, Richard (xrant, on style, 1.54.

Whittington and his cat, origin of the
story, 254.

Whole, 282.

Wilberforce, his letters contrpsted
with Cdwper's, 114.

William the Conqueror, his mode of
living, 189.

Wiseacre, 252.

Wit, 232, 257.

Woman, 240.

Women, their style as writers, 166.

Word -coining, 76, 263.

Word-hunters, 251.

Words, their significance, 9-43 ; No-
valis on, 10 ; Mirabeau on, 10 ;
Homer's, 11 ; Job on, 11 ; Solomon
on, 11 ; the incarnation of thought,
12; of men of genius, 12; Shake-
speare's, 12-40 ; Milton's, 12 ; Ba
con's, 14 ; Montaigne's, 14 ; Rous-
seau's 14; Tennyson's, 14; De
Quincey'i:, 15; Whitefield's, .39;
Fox's, 39; Daniel Webster's, 39;
Chatham's, 40 ; of writers of 17th
century, 16 ; knowledge recpiired
for their definition, 17 ; definition
of, 17, 204 ; Rufus Choate on the
choice of, 19 ; Canning's command
of, 19 ; how far necessary to thought,
19, 20 ; comprehensive, 20 ; syno-
nymous discriminated, 21 ; William

INDEX.

307

Pitt's command of, 23 ; Robert
Hall's choice of, 23 ; John Foster's,
24 ; Thomas Moore's, 24 ; choice of
by the Greek and Roman writers,
24 ; Cicero's use of, 25 ; rarely equi-
valent in diflferent tongues, 28 ;
their necromantic power, 35 ; their
supposed sorcery, 35 ; their mystic
power, 35; made potent by the
man behind them, 39 ; their signi-
ficance disclosed by the experiences
of life, 43 ; the morality in, 43, 75 ;
the only test of thought, 56 ; their
power, 58, 71 ; Bacon on their
power, 59 ; their influence upon
authors, 62 ; their sway in politics,
64 ; hypocr'tical, 65 ; use of by
auctioneers, 69, 70 ; they never di«,
72 ; grand, 75, 96; the use of foreign,
88 ; small, 98, 105 ; without mean-
ing, 109, 121 ; their meaning worn
off by handling, 117 ; some abuses
of, 121, 131 ; Saxon, when to be
used, 107, 136; when Romanic to
be used, 137 ; the secret of apt,
145, 168 ; are symbols only, 148 ;
their arrangement on the battle-
fields of thought, 157 ; fallacies in,
168, 208; dualism in, 169; their
changes of meaning, 177 ; question-
begging, 181; cannot inform us
about things, 186 ; hint more than
they express, 186 ; in legal instru-

ments are things, 200 ; used ambi-
guously in statutes, 200 ; imperfect
representations of thought, 202 ;
mean different things to different
persons, 203 ; their poetry, 223 ;
the history in, 225 ; changes in
their meaning, 228 ; their degra-
dation, 233 ; of iUusive etymology,
250 ; how corrupted, 250 ; with
con tra<iictory meanings, 255; nicety
in their use, 263; common, that
were once novelties, 262 ; a test of
good breeding, 266 ; effects of their
misuse, 269.

Wordsworth, his purity of language,
265; his use of " shall" and "will,"
293.

Wormwood, 254.

Would, 292.

Writer, a brilliant, described, 150.

Xenophon, on the luxury of the Per-
sians, 189.

Yes, 98.

Zero, 255.