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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 iv 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. H I 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 91 10 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSM. y 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. 11 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 Im lil 1 VI 12 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. 13 " 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," u 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. 16 "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 16 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. IT 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. r 18 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. 19 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 20 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. 21 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 33 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 m mmmm u WORDS: THEIB IJSE AND ABlfSE. >/.. W' r 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. 25 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 a %m 26 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. 27 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 u in r 28 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. 29 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 M' i- '\V^ > 30 WORDS: TIIETR USE AND ABUSE. i 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. 31 |the, )dy. land lyou 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 I'll I i; ,' • .■ a if IV r ml ' d2 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 ]i THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS. 33 ■v\ 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 '■^i'i 14 11 ■4i:f 'km Mi Am -'■■rrm m m w 34 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. r j 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. ( C t > I f c F V V i '1 TffE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS. 35 1< !■ 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 I 1 1' »i 'I * iBl V^Hi ;i|!u: !i:l '•a !vt:fi: 36 f FORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 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. 37 jia ti 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 I j rij M i'y . I' ^■uU m '' 38 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 !■ I' J THE SiGXIFWAJSrCE OF WORDS. 39 Is n h [S e 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 '■> ^1 ' \^ r, ■% m m f\ 40 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. 41 '-1 .(! ■ J lor 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 i -If % il lili i'lili f:i:| ■t ./\ V. '' * ■ 4 ■ '.^i '•1 42 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. 45 , I' t^ 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 "' 1 '•- ■' '"1 fi: i ! n % l!i 44 WORDS: TlIEtR USE AND ABUSE. I CHAPTER II. THE MORALITY IN WORDS. J 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. 45 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 m ! : % sm m ! iii! ^1 \^. i si 46 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. 47 1/ (A 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 1 1 "^ PI I'r- m * " lianguage and the Study of Language," by W. D. Whitney. 48 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. i>; I; I i: 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 w THE MORALITY IN WORDS. 49 ii'-i' 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." ■I'i *'' Ij'fe 1 HI:, 50 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. 51 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 ii: i hii: m ;1P f;' 1 % 1 V 1 1 ;*, . i P iA i .-^ (»•! -■ %w| l:M| Im II H 52 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE, i ;r 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. 53 !•; 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 m i 'H y 1 (;? U1 il.l '«■ ■I I : ' '.if S'* •!>! 54 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, 55 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 i 1 j ( f , .'!- % .-,.< ■^i ' • .LI I ■■■'' l\ 'm:; li!< 'J "^J 'lllll: iM 56 WORDS: THEIR VSE AND ABUSE. i! 11 h 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. 57 W |, .,,,,. 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- 3 I V ' ' 5 ■\.mt 't;|r :i 58 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. M ; i^il 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. 69 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 : '!■•(':! !!• U m 1 !! 1* M\ ;:.?•! !'i '•ft i ■ ; i i'i •1 m ! 'if M--^ 60 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. \ s \ 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 lliiu THE MORALITY IN WORDS. 61 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 " Ui ' ' 1 i it 1 'U 62 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, iii ML, THE MORALITY IN fFORDS. G3 i 1 I f : t 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 : iiin ym I •ijrrri 1 f;|t M'i *! " 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. V: ! ■■Tl 'I 64 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, II I I I THE MOllALITV IN WORDS. 65 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. fSr ( ! V <| s'- * :* ^ i ! ■ k II '?' M'4 '\'U'' n 66 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. i I! 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. U . e I 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. $ igp'-^ li 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- \ I GRAND WORDS, 77 ( ' 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 |i:i:i : I i '. J •1' . ' 'li A TT 78 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE I ( t 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. 79 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 ' I 1 I, '^''i!: m liiiil ( ' I , I !:■ »i 1- 1 i 80 JVOUDS: TIJEin USE AND ABUSE. if n \ * 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. 8i 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 saiing 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 84 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. S5 if 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 ■f i4 86 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 'ii im. m 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. 87 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 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. 89 m 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." 7 V 1 S'\i \\m m 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. 91 I 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 M ^ \ ^.JV C^ Aj ^ % & 92 WORDS: THEIR VSE AND ABUSE. \ 1; It If i ' si 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. 93 we 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 94 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. 95 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 96 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. 97 •I CHAPTER IV. SMALL WORDS. If .w 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 98 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. 99 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 mn 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, Colerii il . -1*: > ,1 I m il m 108 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." !l -M>^, ; I 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, ' J' (,t j'l I m ' 1 1'l 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 ' I I m i'i ''if] uun 112 WORDS: TEtlltt USE AND AWSS. !i 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 he 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." r < ! Kl ■)i h ^M ■■m r.m i'i H Jii; I Hi lU 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 ; so 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 (■!, u u 116 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. S |: r- 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." ilH] ■■■Wh ' ■ ' 1 -1* ^ it 11 u MM ' ii ■ '.■ -i ^wlfi 118 WOEDS: THEIR USB AND ABUSE. 'I J 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. 119 »'; 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- . 1 ,: \M ! ;■ 1 I \l wm ]*•' •Sermons by Rev, F. W. Robertson. Dll ! 120 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 9 3 !:: m--H I ] h \n 122 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 is . fl t; 1^ ,i i^ ! •i.il ; ■ *■ 1 I l24 WORDS: THEIR tJSE AND ABUSE. : C"'l i' 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, m «iil!: vF^-l if:*"!r* IBirr" 126 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," as 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 i , 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 i t '\'A ■5" % i\ J 4: ■li; I' M m 1 1( 136 JFORDS : THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 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 n 'i I )ney- lot as lirer ^olu- ad- Ihout lie of lof- meat 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," 10 it njl 4 'I' 1 111 i^^i-'l 138 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 H! 1 'i , l^^ > L> -15 n \ 140 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 * Faber, H I ^ M H\ u IS 'ill *' I It T, T ' l.'l ' 111 1 , n l!l> li 142 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. I'i SAXON- WORDS, OB ROMANIC? 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 M^ <■,■■'■ ^: ■ffi ■■ <.'.l !■: ! ' 144 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. 145 CHAPTER VIII. ';*: 'Mm 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 '■'M m ■ ' ■■ ..8 « ■ s| li i : II i p 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. U7 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 I. ! ■ V ■ t, i ■fit !, f 1 I 'I M 148 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 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 : la 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 M ". 1 i ' ; ' iiiji !'• '* II ^ ! hi; S:ii 160 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. i 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 • «♦ 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 ;, Ml ft ; ( , • i U % I m !h» :;;! 1 ' % TIT ''I li 152 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 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. mn 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- 11 •Hf ■111 -( ♦fill i ^ Mil, 154 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. ,iiji m\- m i 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 tt << 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- WM-i .1 f- '!■; % . * 1 ; , . 1, 'il I'M ' I' ^^■fjhf 'I *i< '>! 156 WORDS. ^ THEIR USE AND ABtfSE. Hi' m 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— jpas5an 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 m 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 / m 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■{ 1^11 i, •.11 178 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 m 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 I s ■ -i\ •.--<. -^- i I m 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, ;l 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- m I i' \ 15 ; 1: 4; t! ■ % i '1h i^ ,1 184 WORDS: TllEIlt USE AND ABUSE. h 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, 13 i 'ill IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A Us (/j, ^ 1.0 I.I 1.25 li^lM 112.5 12.0 1.8 1-4 IIIIII.6 V] 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\\ w 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. I 1 ri f < (I m m m 192 WORDS- THEIR USE AND ABUSE. m 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 ! il 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((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 ill. 'Ji •I 1 i i M ■ .1 ■ i* " .\ ' ■i ' (^ \t ' 1 " Easaj'H, Cotton's edition. TT 200 WORVS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. ,1 i> i fi.- :! 11 b ' ! 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 14 . IT li> I m 1 .1 w \ 202 WOIWS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. I 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 a *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 h\ 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," r 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; 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 u '<■ liil 8 ; 204 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. tWK. i I i I '^ \ ( ! 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 m ' 'I it! > i ■ M ■ is 5 Xi I :(■!• 206 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. Hi i J III ! 1 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 •e abso- med to lor can 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 ! ' "* ^1 ■'i .1. >!C1 *^ •. f : «l .1 ■ ■' i 1 !*■ "*' " Chapters on Language," by F. W. Farrar. t*»-' 208 WORDS: TUEIR USE AND ABUSE. 'i i 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. 7 ,:»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 ;,t i V 1, '■^ ,p i ■ 1 ■ I 1 ■'. \ ''■■'"' ■; 1 .5« Ui 13* 'I Hi HI ii 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 I person y of the asked, ' delin- of our littered, cannot ard the ;s mean- 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." I 1, ■4 't [ ^^ 1 ' It ; ■J i V 1'^ tit > ■ 212 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. I lili I! 'li J 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- H' i,^V- ill HI m % ■• \ n» i i: 114 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. jlfii ' ; i)< .. , 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 ^(1 J-: I n-s), and ," given r patron d unex- aid that Erskine, d by his is often [id inca- bly due, )f which English they, by " but it as called French > origin, race, — so well, try musical )uii both known king t'a- [ices are It. comes possible ion. In uhert or lated to k like a irces ut- lips, but [inionest ?regious who de- nus," is r a glar- 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, m m f,' nil I 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 Ik, which n of the 729, first of their idies and in other •, " Chris- en by the 3nes were inventing ' received tagonists. ^^s in the le peaked Domini- resolved proud to ;h-dogs," id strove 5 humili- lich was >hilip II. ds, being y, when minister, red from ill," says Berlay- band of ir veins, assured )rtunate. ne. We 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 15 M ^M ii -' tj m^i II ji 218 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. I y¥J 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 :•'■ \M % i 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 ^1 V] i ;. j Mil 1 frl w ,»- ■ 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." w 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 i ! ■ ■1] 1 ■ ;| ' 1 \ m ■; . -^i 1 ; I . : ' ' /I 1[ : I 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.'"** i if " The Origin of Languajje," by F. W, Farrar, 226 WOBDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. '4 Sil f .:...,. \ 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 M 228 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. U 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 ■4 m i I "?V''j| 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. n\ in 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'! i ;i m ! ' I if, I' ■■. ill f-1 iil ii :: 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), 16 »,, ;' \ «* ■I it 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 m ^ ■ 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- m 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 II I; :k. M Hi '!'■ k W '' ' 1 k It' 1 i i 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- m m il 240 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. \i ' K 11 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 I: 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 ; I 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 m 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 fi ■V 24G JFORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. l\ 'X: I I. II 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 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, rse which es of the s of form, ascertain originally which are »y the sea uperscrip- • that one One of by vhich m 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 li ; I w^ 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. 1: ^ 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 m 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. VM 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 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- %i 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 ¥ m 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 ; anss 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 stanression 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. " Lhidoubtequus 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 * ■ ^ ': ■'! Ill Va ^ 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. ^f I ■ lift ill 286 WORDS: THEIR USE AND ABUSE. An 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 ^ f 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:' I 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, n 1 if •^- m 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). ti 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. 20 At, 275. At all, 274. Atom, 207. Attraction, .57. Avocation, 274. B. 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. O. 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. Corporeal. 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. D. 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. E. 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. G. 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. H. 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. I. 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:)0. wimplidty, ■eness, 140 ; )cation, 20.i. 134. >eecheB, 12'. foreign lan- l 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. 21 Stranger, 249. Style, characteristics of goo