On the Study of Words Part 2

[Footnote: The etymology of _caprice_ has not been discovered yet; the derivation from _capra_ is unsatisfactory, as it does not account for the latter part of the word.] If ever you have watched a goat, you will have observed how sudden, how unexpected, how unaccountable, are the leaps and springs, now forward, now sideward, now upward, in which it indulges. A 'caprice' then is a movement of the mind as unaccountable, as little to be calculated on beforehand, as the springs and bounds of a goat. Is not the word so understood a far more picturesque one than it was before? and is there not some real gain in the vigour and vividness of impression which is in this way obtained? 'Pavaner' is the French equivalent for our verb 'to strut,' 'fourmiller' for our verb 'to swarm.' But is it not a real gain to know further that the one is to strut _as the peac.o.c.k does_, the other to swarm _as do ants_? There are at the same time, as must be freely owned, investigations, moral no less than material, in which the nearer the words employed approach to an algebraic notation, and the less disturbed or coloured they are by any reminiscences of the ultimate grounds on which they rest, the better they are likely to fulfil the duties a.s.signed to them; but these are exceptions. [Footnote: A French writer, Adanson, in his _Natural History of Senegal_ complains of the misleading character which names so often have, and urges that the only safety is to give to things names which have and can have no meaning at all. His words are worth quoting as a curiosity, if nothing else: L'experience nous apprend, que la plupart des noms significatifs qu'on a voulu donner a differens objets d'histoire naturelle, sont devenus faux a mesure qu'on a decouvert des qualites, des proprietes nouvelles ou contraires a celles qui avaient fait donner ces noms: il faut donc, pour se mettre a l'abri des contradictions, eviter les termes figures, et meme faire en sorte qu'on ne puisse les rapporter a quelque etymologie, a fin que ceux, qui ont la fureur des etymologies, ne soient pas tenus de leur attribuer une idee fausse. II en doit etre des noms, comme des coups des jeux de hazard, qui n'ont pour l'ordinaire aucune liaison entre eux: ils seraient d'autant meilleurs qu'ils seraient moins significatifs, moins relatifs a d'autres noms, ou a des choses connues, par ce que l'idee ne se fixant qu'a un seul objet, le saisit beaucoup plus nettement, que lorsqu'elle se lie avec d'autres objets qui y ont du rapport. There is truth in what he says, but the remedy he proposes is worse than the disease.]

The poetry which has been embodied in the names of places, in those names which designate the leading features of outward nature, promontories, mountains, capes, and the like, is very worthy of being elicited and evoked anew, latent as it now has oftentimes become.

Nowhere do we so easily forget that names had once a peculiar fitness, which was the occasion of their giving. Colour has often suggested the name, as in the well-known instance of our own 'Albion,'--'the silver- coasted isle,' as Tennyson so beautifully has called it,--which had this name from the white line of cliffs presented by it to those approaching it by the narrow seas. [Footnote: The derivation of the name _Albion_ has not been discovered yet; it is even uncertain whether the word is Indo-European; see Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, p. 200.]

'Himalaya' is 'the abode of snow.' Often, too, shape and configuiation are incorporated in the name, as in 'Trinacria' or 'the three- promontoried land,' which was the Greek name of Sicily; in 'Drepanum'

or 'the sickle,' the name which a town on the north-west promontory of the island bore, from the sickle-shaped tongue of land on which it was built. But more striking, as the embodiment of a poetical feeling, is the modern name of the great southern peninsula of Greece. We are all aware that it is called the 'Morea'; but we may not be so well aware from whence that name is derived. It had long been the fas.h.i.+on among ancient geographers to compare the shape of this region to a platane leaf; [Footnote: Strabo, viii. 2; Pliny, H.N. iv. 5; Agathemerus, I.i.

p. 15; echein de omoion schaema phullps platanan] and a glance at the map will show that the general outline of that leaf, with its sharply- incised edges, justified the comparison. This, however, had remained merely as a comparison; but at the s.h.i.+fting and changing of names, that went with the breaking up of the old Greek and Roman civilization, the resemblance of this region to a leaf, not now any longer a platane, but a mulberry leaf, appeared so strong, that it exchanged its cla.s.sic name of Peloponnesus for 'Morea' which embodied men's sense of this resemblance, _morus_ being a mulberry tree in Latin, and _morea_ in Greek. This etymology of 'Morea' has been called in question; [Footnote: By Fallmerayer, _Gesck. der Halbinsel Morea,_ p. 240, sqq.

The island of Ceylon, known to the Greeks as Taprobane, and to Milton as well (_P. L._ iv. 75), owed this name to a resemblance which in outline it bore to the leaf of the betel tree. [This is very doubtful.]] but, as it seems to me, on no sufficient grounds. Deducing, as one objector does, 'Morea' from a Slavonic word 'more,' the sea, he finds in this derivation a support for his favourite notion that the modern population of Greece is not descended from the ancient, but consists in far the larger proportion of intrusive Slavonic races. Two mountains near Dublin, which we, keeping in the grocery line, have called the Great and the Little Sugarloaf, are named in Irish 'the Golden Spears.'

In other ways also the names of places will oftentimes embody some poetical aspect under which now or at some former period men learned to regard them. Oftentimes when discoverers come upon a new land they will seize with a firm grasp of the imagination the most striking feature which it presents to their eyes, and permanently embody this in a word.

Thus the island of Madeira is now, I believe, nearly bare of wood; but its sides were covered with forests at the time when it was first discovered, and hence the name, 'madeira' in Portuguese having this meaning of wood. [Footnote: [Port. _madeira,_ 'wood,' is the same word as the Lat. _materia_.]] Some have said that the first Spanish discoverers of Florida gave it this name from the rich carpeting of flowers which, at the time when first their eyes beheld it, everywhere covered the soil. [Footnote: The Spanish historian Herrera says that Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida, gave that name to the country for two reasons: first, because it was a land of flowers, secondly, because it was discovered by him on March 27, 1513, Easter Day, which festival was called by the Spaniards, 'Pascua Florida,' or 'Pascua de Flores,' see Herrera's _History_, tr. by Stevens, ii. p. 33, and the _Discovery of Florida_ by R. Hakluyt, ed. by W. B. Rye for the Hakluyt Soc., 1851, introd. p. x.; cp. Larousse (s.v.), and Pierer's _Conversations Lexicon_. It is stated by some authorities that Florida was so called because it was discovered on Palm Sunday; this is due to a mistaken inference from the names for that Sunday--Pascha Florum, Pascha Floridum (Ducange), Pasque Fleurie (Cotgrave); see _Dict. Geog.

Univ_., 1884, and Brockhaus.] Surely Florida, as the name pa.s.ses under our eye, or from our lips, is something more than it was before, when we may thus think of it as the land of flowers. [Footnote: An Italian poet, Fazio degli Uberti, tells us that Florence has its appellation from the same cause:

Poiche era posta in un prato di fiori, Le denno il nome bello, oude s' ingloria.

It would be instructive to draw together a collection of etymologies which have been woven into verse. These are so little felt to be alien to the spirit of poetry, that they exist in large numbers, and often lend to the poem in which they find a place a charm and interest of their own. In five lines of _Paradise Lost_ Milton introduces four such etymologies, namely, those of the four fabled rivers of h.e.l.l, though this will sometimes escape the notice of the English reader:

'Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly _hate_, Sad Acheron of _sorrow_, black and deep, Cocytus, named of _lamentation_ loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, Whose waves of torrent _fire_ inflame with rage.'

'Virgil, that great master of the proprieties,' as Bishop Pearson has so happily called him, does not shun, but rather loves to introduce them, as witness his etymology of 'Byrsa,' _Aen_. i. 367, 368; v. 59, 63 [but the etymology here is imaginative, the name _Byrsa_ being of Punic, that is of Semitic, origin, and meaning 'a fortress'; compare Heb. _Bozrah_]; of 'Silvius,' _Aen_. vi. 763, 765; of 'Argiletum,'

where he is certainly wrong (_Aen_. viii. 345); of 'Latium,' with reference to Saturn having remained _latent_ there (_Aen_. viii. 322; of. Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 238); of 'Laurens' (_Aen_. vii. 63):

Latiumque vocari Maluit, his quoniam _latuisset_ tutus in oris:

and again of 'Avernus' (=[Greek: aornos], _Aen_. vi. 243); being indeed in this antic.i.p.ated by Lucretius (vi. 741):

quia sunt avibus contraria cunctis.

Ovid's taste is far from faultless, and his example cannot go for much; but he is always a graceful versifier, and his _Fasti_ swarms with etymologies, correct and incorrect; as of 'Agonalis' (i. 322), of 'Aprilis' (iv. 89), of 'Augustus' (i. 609-614), of 'Februarius' (ii.

19-22), of 'hostia' (i. 336), of 'Ja.n.u.s' (i. 120-127), of 'Junius' (vi.

26), of 'Lemures' (v. 479-484), of 'Lucina' (ii. 449), of 'majestas' (v.

26), of 'Orion' (v. 535), of 'pecunia' (v. 280, 281), of 'senatus' (v.

64), of 'Sulmo'(iv. 79; cf. Silius Italicus, ix. 70); of 'Vesta' (vi.

299), of 'victima' (i. 335); of 'Trinacris' (iv. 420). He has them also elsewhere, as of 'Tomi' (_Trist._ iii. 9, 33). Lucilius, in like manner, gives us the etymology of 'iners': Ut perhibetur iners, _ars_ in quo non erit ulla; Propertius (iv. 2, 3) of 'Vertumnus'; and Lucretius of 'Magnes' (vi. 909).]

The name of Port Natal also embodies a fact which must be of interest to its inhabitants, namely, that this port was discovered on Christmas Day, the _dies natalis_ of our Lord.

Then again what poetry is there, as indeed there ought to be, in the names of flowers! I do not speak of those, the exquisite grace and beauty of whose names is so forced on us that we cannot miss it, such as 'Aaron's rod,' 'angel's eyes,' 'b.l.o.o.d.y warrior,' 'blue-bell, 'crown imperial,' 'cuckoo-flower,' blossoming as this orchis does when the cuckoo is first heard, [Footnote: In a catalogue of _English Plant Names_ I count thirty in which 'cuckoo' formed a component part.] 'eye- bright,' 'forget-me-not,' 'gilt-cup' (a local name for the b.u.t.ter-cup, drawn from the golden gloss of its petals), 'hearts-ease,' 'herb-of- grace,' 'Jacob's ladder,' 'king-cup,' 'lady's fingers,' 'Lady's smock,'

'Lady's tresses,' 'larkspur,' 'Lent lily,' 'loose-strife,' 'love-in- idleness,' 'Love lies bleeding,' 'maiden-blush,' 'maiden-hair,'

'meadow-sweet,' 'Our Lady's mantle,' 'Our Lady's slipper,' 'queen-of- the-meadows,' 'reine-marguerite,' 'rosemary,' 'snow-flake,' 'Solomon's seal,' 'star of Bethlehem,' 'sun-dew,' 'sweet Alison,' 'sweet Cicely,'

'sweet William,' 'Traveller's joy,' 'Venus' looking-gla.s.s,' 'Virgin's bower,' and the like; but take 'daisy'; surely this charming little English flower, which has stirred the peculiar affection of English poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth, and received the tribute of their song, [Footnote: 'Fair fall that gentle flower, A golden tuft set in a silver crown,' as Brown exclaims, whose singularly graceful _Pastorals_ should not be suffered to fall altogether to oblivion. In Ward's recent _English Poets_, vol. ii. p.

65, justice has been done to them, and to their rare beauty.] becomes more charming yet, when we know, as Chaucer long ago has told us, that 'daisy' is day's eye, or in its early spelling 'daieseighe,' the eye of day; these are his words:

'That men by reson well it calle may The _daisie_, or elles the ye of day.'

_Chaucer_, ed. Morris, vol. v. p. 281.

For only consider how much is implied here. To the sun in the heavens this name, eye of day, was naturally first given, and those who transferred the t.i.tle to our little field flower meant no doubt to liken its inner yellow disk, or s.h.i.+eld, to the great golden orb of the sun, and the white florets which encircle this disk to the rays which the sun spreads on all sides around him. What imagination was here, to suggest a comparison such as this, binding together as this does the smallest and the greatest! what a travelling of the poet's eye, with the power which is the privilege of that eye, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, and of linking both together. So too, call up before your mind's eye the 'lavish gold' of the drooping laburnum when in flower, and you will recognize the poetry of the t.i.tle, 'the golden rain,' which in German it bears. 'Celandine' does not so clearly tell its own tale; and it is only when you have followed up the [Greek: chelidonion], (swallow-wort), of which 'celandin' is the English representative, that the word will yield up the poetry which is concealed in it.

And then again, what poetry is there often in the names of birds and beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe, long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining, though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even the proportions of the _camel_ with the spotted skin of the _pard_, by a name which should incorporate both these its most prominent features, [Footnote: Varro: Quod erat figura ut camelus, maculis ut panthera; and Horace (Ep. ii. I, 196): Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo.] calling it the 'camelopard.' Nor can we, I think, hesitate to accept that account as the true one, which describes the word as no artificial creation of scientific naturalists, but as bursting extempore from the lips of the common people, who after all are the truest namers, at the first moment when the novel creature was presented to their gaze. 'Cerf-volant,' a name which the French have so happily given to the horned scarabeus, the same which we somewhat less poetically call the 'stag-beetle,' is another example of what may be effected with the old materials, by merely bringing them into new and happy combinations.

You know the appearance of the lizard, and the _star_-like shape of the spots which are sown over its back. Well, in Latin it is called 'stellio,' from _stella_, a star; just as the basilisk had in Greek this name of 'little king' because of the shape as of a _kingly_ crown which the spots on its head might be made by the fancy to a.s.sume.

Follow up the etymology of 'squirrel,' and you will find that the graceful creature which bears this name has obtained it as being wont to sit under the shadow of its own tail. [Footnote: [The word _squirrel_ is a diminutive of the Greek word for squirrel, [Greek: skiouros], literally 'shadow-tail.']] Need I remind you of our 'goldfinch,' evidently so called from that bright patch of yellow on its wing; our 'kingfisher,' having its name from the royal beauty, the kingly splendour of the plumage with which it is adorned? Some might ask why the stormy petrel, a bird which just skims and floats on the topmost wave, should bear this name? No doubt we have here the French 'petrel,' or little Peter, and the bird has in its name an allusion to the Apostle Peter, who at his Master's bidding walked for a while on the unquiet surface of an agitated sea. The 'lady-bird' or 'lady-cow'

is prettily named, as indeed the whole legend about it is full of grace and fancy [Footnote: [For other names for the 'lady-bird,' and the reference in many of them to G.o.d and the Virgin Mary, see Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, p. 694.]]; but a common name which in many of our country parts this creature bears, the 'golden k.n.o.b,' is prettier still.

And indeed in our country dialects there is a wide poetical nomenclature which is well worthy of recognition; thus the shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancas.h.i.+re 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fas.h.i.+on are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' or sometimes 'windfanner,' which it popularly bears. [Footnote: In Wallace's _Tropical Nature_ there is a beautiful chapter on humming birds, and the names which in various languages these exquisite little creatures bear.] The amount is very large of curious legendary lore which is everywhere bound up in words, and which they, if duly solicited, will give back to us again. For example, the Greek 'halcyon,' which we have adopted without change, has reference, and wraps up in itself an allusion, to one of the most beautiful and significant legends of heathen antiquity; according to which the sea preserved a perfect calmness for all the period, the fourteen 'halcyon days,' during which this bird was brooding over her nest. The poetry of the name survives, whether the name suggested the legend, or the legend the name. Take again the names of some of our precious stones, as of the topaz, so called, as some said, because men were only able to _conjecture_ ([Greek: topazein]) the position of the cloud-concealed island from which it was brought. [Footnote: Pliny, _H.

N._ x.x.xvii. 32. [But this is only popular etymology: the word can hardly be of Greek origin; see A. S. Palmer, _Folk-Etymology_, p.

589.]]

Very curious is the determination which some words, indeed many, seem to manifest, that their poetry shall not die; or, if it dies in one form, that it shall revive in another. Thus if there is danger that, transferred from one language to another, they shall no longer speak to the imagination of men as they did of old, they will make to themselves a new life, they will acquire a new soul in the room of that which has ceased to quicken and inform them any more. Let me make clear what I mean by two or three examples. The Germans, knowing nothing of carbuncles, had naturally no word of their own for them; and when they first found it necessary to name them, as naturally borrowed the Latin 'carbunculus,' which originally had meant 'a little live coal,' to designate these precious stones of a fiery red. But 'carbunculus,' word full of poetry and life for Latin-speaking men, would have been only an arbitrary sign for as many as were ignorant of that language. What then did these, or what, rather, did the working genius of the language, do?

It adopted, but, in adopting, modified slightly yet effectually the word, changing it into 'Karfunkel,' thus retaining the framework of the original, yet at the same time, inasmuch as 'funkeln' signifies 'to sparkle,' reproducing now in an entirely novel manner the image of the bright sparkling of the stone, for every knower of the German tongue.

'Margarita,' or pearl, belongs to the earliest group of Latin words adopted into English. The word, however, told nothing about itself to those who adopted it. But the pearl might be poetically contemplated as the sea-stone; and so our fathers presently transformed 'margarita'

into 'mere-grot,' which means nothing less. [Footnote: Such is the A.S.

form of _margarita_ in three versions of the parable of the Pearl of Great Price, St. Matt. xiii. 45; _see Anglo-Saxon Gospels_, ed. Skeat, 1887.] Take another ill.u.s.tration of this from another quarter. The French 'rossignol,' a nightingale, is undoubtedly the Latin 'lusciniola,' the diminutive of 'luscinia,' with the alteration, so frequent in the Romance languages, of the commencing 'l' into 'r.'

Whatever may be the etymology of 'luscinia,' it is plain that for Frenchmen in general the word would no longer suggest any meaning at all, hardly even for French scholars, after the serious transformations which it had undergone; while yet, at the same time, in the exquisitely musical 'rossignol,' and still more perhaps in the Italian 'usignuolo,'

there is an evident intention and endeavour to express something of the music of the bird's song in the liquid melody of the imitative name which it bears; and thus to put a new soul into the word, in lieu of that other which had escaped. Or again--whatever may be the meaning of Senlac, the name of that field where the ever-memorable battle, now better known as the Battle of Hastings, was fought, it certainly was not 'Sanglac,' or Lake of Blood; the word only shaping itself into this significant form subsequently to the battle, and in consequence of it.

One or two examples more of the peris.h.i.+ng of the old life in a word, and the birth of a new in its stead, may be added. The old name of Athens, 'Athaevai,' was closely linked with the fact that the G.o.ddess Pallas Athene was the guardian deity of the city. The reason of the name, with other facts of the old mythology, faded away from the memory of the peasantry of modern Greece; but Athens is a name which must still mean something for them. Accordingly it is not 'Athaevai now, but 'Avthaevai, or the Blooming, on the lips of the peasantry round about; so Mr. Sayce a.s.sures us. The same process everywhere meets us. Thus no one who has visited Lucerne can fail to remember the rugged mountain called 'Pilatus' or 'Mont Pilate,' which stands opposite to him; while if he has been among the few who have cared to climb it, he will have been shown by his guide the lake at its summit in which Pontius Pilate in his despair drowned himself, with an a.s.surance that from this suicide of his the mountain obtained its name. Nothing of the kind.

'Mont Pilate' stands for 'Mons _Pileatus_,' the '_capped_ hill'; the clouds, as one so often sees, gathering round its summit, and forming the shape or appearance of a cap or hat. When this true derivation was forgotten or misunderstood, the other explanation was invented and imposed. [Footnote: [The old name of Pilatus was _Fractus Mons_, 'broken mountain' from its rugged cliffs and precipices. _Pilatus_ did not become general till the close of the last century.]] An instructive example this, let me observe by the way, of that which has happened continually in the case of far older legends; I mean that the name has suggested the legend, and not the legend the name. We have an apt ill.u.s.tration of this in the old notion that the crocodile ([Greek: krokodeilos]) could not endure saffron.

I have said that poetry and imagination seek to penetrate everywhere; and this is literally true; for even the hardest, austerest studies cannot escape their influence; they will put something of their own life into the dry bones of a nomenclature which seems the remotest from them, the most opposed to them. Thus in Danish the male and female lines of descent and inheritance are called respectively the sword-side and the spindle-side. [Footnote: [In the same way the Germans used to employ _schwert_ and _kunkel_; compare the use of the phrases _on a sperehealfe_, and _on a spinlhealfe_ in King Alfred's will; see Kemble, _Codex Diplomaticus_, No. 314 (ii. 116), Pauli's _Life of Alfred_, p.

225, Lappenberg's _Anglo-Saxon Kings_, ii. 99 (1881).]] He who in prosody called a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short (-..) a 'dactyle' or a finger, with allusion to the long first joint of the finger, and the two shorter which follow, whoever he may have been, and some one was the first to do it, must be allowed to have brought a certain amount of imagination into a study so alien to it as prosody very well might appear.

He did the same in another not very poetical region who invented the Latin law-term, 'stellionatus.' The word includes all such legally punishable acts of swindling or injurious fraud committed on the property of another as are not specified in any more precise enactment; being drawn and derived from a practice attributed, I suppose without any foundation, to the lizard or 'stellio' we spoke of just now. Having cast its winter skin, it is reported to swallow it at once, and this out of a malignant grudge lest any should profit by that which, if not now, was of old accounted a specific in certain diseases. The term was then transferred to any malicious wrong whatever done by one person to another.

In other regions it was only to be expected that we should find poetry.

Thus it is nothing strange that architecture, which has been called frozen music, and which is poetry embodied in material forms, should have a language of its own, not dry nor hard, not of the mere intellect alone, but one in the forming of which it is evident that the imaginative faculties were at work. To take only one example--this, however, from Gothic art, which naturally yields the most remarkable-- what exquisite poetry in the name of 'the rose window' or better still, 'the rose,' given to the rich circular aperture of stained gla.s.s, with its leaf-like compartments, in the transepts of a Gothic cathedral!

Here indeed we may note an exception from that which usually finds place; for usually art borrows beauty from nature, and very faintly, if at all, reflects back beauty upon her. In this present instance, however, art is so beautiful, has reached so glorious and perfect a development, that if the a.s.sociations which the rose supplies lend to that window some hues of beauty and a glory which otherwise it would not have, the latter abundantly repays the obligation; and even the rose itself may become lovelier still, a.s.sociated with those shapes of grace, those rich gorgeous tints, and all the religious symbolism of that in art which has borrowed and bears its name. After this it were little to note the imagination, although that was most real, which dictated the term 'flamboyant' to express the wavy flame-like outline, which, at a particular period of art, the tracery in the Gothic window a.s.sumed.

'G.o.dsacre' or 'G.o.dsfield,' is the German name for a burial-ground, and once was our own, though we unfortunately have nearly, if not quite, let it go. What a hope full of immortality does this little word proclaim! how rich is it in all the highest elements of poetry, and of poetry in its n.o.blest alliance, that is, in its alliance with faith-- able as it is to cause all loathsome images of death and decay to disappear, not denying them, but suspending, losing, absorbing them in the sublimer thought of the victory over death, of that harvest of life which G.o.d shall one day so gloriously reap even there where now seems the very triumphing place of death. Many will not need to be reminded how fine a poem in Longfellow's hands unfolds itself out of this word.

Lastly let me note the pathos of poetry which lies often in the mere tracing of the succession of changes in meaning which certain words have undergone. Thus 'elend' in German, a beautiful word, now signifies wretchedness, but at first it signified exile or banishment. [Footnote: On this word there is an interesting discussion in Weigand's _Etym.

Dict._, and compare Pott, _Etym. Forsch._ i. 302. _Ellinge_, an English provincial word of infinite pathos, still common in the south of England, and signifying at once lonely and sad, is not connected, as has been sometimes supposed, with the German _elend_, but represents Anglo-Saxon _ae-lenge_, protracted, tedious; see the _New English Dictionary_ (s.v. _alange_)] The sense of this separation from the native land and from all home delights, as being the woe of all woes, the crown of all sorrows, little by little so penetrated the word, that what at first expressed only one form of misery, has ended by signifying all. It is not a little notable, as showing the same feeling elsewhere at work, that 'essil' (= exilium) in old French signified, not only banishment, but ruin, destruction, misery. In the same manner [Greek: nostimos] meaning at first no more than having to do with a return, comes in the end to signify almost anything which is favourable and auspicious.

Let us then acknowledge man a born poet; if not every man himself a 'maker' yet every one able to rejoice in what others have made, adopting it freely, moving gladly in it as his own most congenial element and sphere. For indeed, as man does not live by bread alone, as little is he content to find in language merely the instrument which shall enable him to buy and sell and get gain, or otherwise make provision for the lower necessities of his animal life. He demands to find in it as well what shall stand in a real relation and correspondence to the higher faculties of his being, shall feed, nourish, and sustain these, shall stir him with images of beauty and suggestions of greatness. Neither here nor anywhere else could he become the mere utilitarian, even if he would. Despite his utmost efforts, were he so far at enmity with his own good as to put them forth, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical element with which it is penetrated through and through; he could not succeed in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this; but it will only need for him to become a little better philologer, to go a little deeper into the story of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote as ever from such an unhappy consummation, from so disastrous a success.

For ourselves, let us desire and attempt nothing of the kind. Our life is not in other ways so full of imagination and poetry that we need give any diligence to empty it of that which it may possess of these.

It will always have for us all enough of dull and prosaic and commonplace. What profit can there be in seeking to extend the region of these? Profit there will be none, but on the contrary infinite loss.

It is _stagnant_ waters which corrupt themselves; not those in agitation and on which the winds are freely blowing. Words of pa.s.sion and imagination are, as one so grandly called them of old, 'winds of the soul' ([Greek: psyches anemoi]), to keep it in healthful motion and agitation, to lift it upward and to drive it onward, to preserve it from that unwholesome stagnation which const.i.tutes the fatal preparedness for so many other and worse evils.

LECTURE III.

ON THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

Is man of a divine birth and of the stock of heaven? coming from G.o.d, and, when he fulfils the law of his being, and the intention of his creation, returning to Him again? We need no more than the words he speaks to prove it; so much is there in them which could never have existed on any other supposition. How else could all those words which testify of his relation to G.o.d, and of his consciousness of this relation, and which ground themselves thereon, have found their way into his language, being as that is the veritable transcript of his innermost life, the genuine utterance of the faith and hope which is in him? In what other way can we explain that vast and preponderating weight thrown into the scale of goodness and truth, which, despite of all in the other scale, we must thankfully acknowledge that his language never is without? How else shall we account for that sympathy with the right, that testimony against the wrong, which, despite of all aberrations and perversions, is yet the prevailing ground-tone of all?

But has man fallen, and deeply fallen, from the heights of his original creation? We need no more than his language to prove it. Like everything else about him, it bears at once the stamp of his greatness and of his degradation, of his glory and of his shame. What dark and sombre threads he must have woven into the tissue of his life, before we could trace those threads of darkness which run through the tissue of his language! What facts of wickedness and woe must have existed in the one, ere such words could exist to designate these as are found in the other! There have never wanted those who would make light of the moral hurts which man has inflicted on himself, of the sickness with which he is sick; who would persuade themselves and others that moralists and divines, if they have not quite invented, have yet enormously exaggerated, these. But are statements of the depth of his fall, the malignity of the disease with which he is sick, found only in Scripture and in sermons? Are those who bring forward these statements libellers of human nature? Or are not mournful corroborations of the truth of these a.s.sertions imprinted deeply upon every province of man's natural and spiritual life, and on none more deeply than on his language? It needs but to open a dictionary, and to cast our eye thoughtfully down a few columns, and we shall find abundant confirmation of this sadder and sterner estimate of man's moral and spiritual condition. How else shall we explain this long catalogue of words, having all to do with sin or with sorrow, or with both? How came they there? We may be quite sure that they were not invented without being needed, and they have each a correlative in the world of realities. I open the first letter of the alphabet; what means this 'Ah,' this 'Alas,' these deep and long-drawn sighs of humanity, which at once encounter me there? And then presently there meet me such words as these, 'Affliction,' 'Agony,' 'Anguish,' 'a.s.sa.s.sin,' 'Atheist,'

'Avarice,' and a hundred more--words, you will observe, not laid up in the recesses of the language, to be drawn forth on rare occasions, but many of them such as must be continually on the lips of men. And indeed, in the matter of abundance, it is sad to note how much richer our vocabularies are in words that set forth sins, than in those that set forth graces. When St. Paul (Gal. v. 19-23) would range these over against those, 'the works of the flesh' against 'the fruit of the Spirit,' those are seventeen, these only nine; and where do we find in Scripture such lists of graces, as we do at 2 Tim. iii. 2, Rom. i. 29- 31, of their contraries? [Footnote: Of these last the most exhaustive collection which I know is in Philo, _De Merced. Meret._ Section 4.