seek to draw some of the hid treasures which it contains, from which we
should endeavour to remove the veil which custom and familiarity have
thrown over it. We cannot employ ourselves better. There is nothing
that will more help than will this to form an English heart in
ourselves and in others. We could scarcely have a single lesson on the
growth of our English tongue, we could scarcely follow up one of its
significant words, without having unawares a lesson in English history
as well, without not merely falling on some curious fact illustrative
of our national life, but learning also how the great heart which is
beating at the centre of that life was gradually shaped and moulded. We
should thus grow too in our sense of connexion with the past, of
gratitude and reverence to it; we should rate more highly and thus more
truly all which it has bequeathed to us, all that it has made ready to
our hands. It was not a small matter for the children of Israel, when
they came into Canaan, to enter upon wells which they digged not, and
vineyards which they had not planted, and houses which they had not
built; but how much vaster a boon, how much more glorious a prerogative,
for any one generation to enter upon the inheritance of a language
which other generations by their truth and toil have made already a
receptacle of choicest treasures, a storehouse of so much unconscious
wisdom, a fit organ for expressing the subtlest distinctions, the
tenderest sentiments, the largest thoughts, and the loftiest
imaginations, which the heart of man has at any time conceived. And
that those who have preceded us have gone far to accomplish this for us,
I shall rejoice if I am able in any degree to make you feel in the
lectures which will follow the present.
LECTURE II.
ON THE POETRY IN WORDS.
I said in my last lecture, or rather I quoted another who had said,
that language is fossil poetry. It is true that for us very often this
poetry which is bound up in words has in great part or altogether
disappeared. We fail to recognize it, partly from long familiarity with
it, partly from insufficient knowledge, partly, it may be, from never
having had our attention called to it. None have pointed it out to us;
we may not ourselves have possessed the means of detecting it; and thus
it has come to pass that we have been in close vicinity to this wealth,
which yet has not been ours. Margaret has not been for us 'the Pearl,'
nor Esther 'the Star,' nor Susanna 'the Lily,' [Footnote: See Jacob
Grimm, _Ueber Frauennamen aus Blumen_, in his _Kleinere Schriften_, vol.
ii. pp. 366-401; and on the subject of this paragraph more generally,
Schleicher, _Die Deutsche Sprache_, p. 115 sqq.] nor Stephen 'the
Crown,' nor Albert 'the illustrious in birth.' 'In our ordinary
language,' as Montaigne has said, 'there are several excellent phrases
and metaphors to be met with, of which the beauty is withered by age,
and the colour is sullied by too common handling; but that takes
nothing from the relish to an understanding man, neither does it
derogate from the glory of those ancient authors, who, 'tis likely,
first brought those words into that lustre.' We read in one of
Molière's most famous comedies of one who was surprised to discover
that he had been talking prose all his life without being aware of it.
If we knew all, we might be much more surprised to find that we had
been talking poetry, without ever having so much as suspected this. For
indeed poetry and passion seek to insinuate, and do insinuate
themselves everywhere in language; they preside continually at the
giving of names; they enshrine and incarnate themselves in these: for
'poetry is the mother tongue of the human race,' as a great German
writer has said. My present lecture shall contain a few examples and
illustrations, by which I would make the truth of this appear.
'Iliads without a Homer,' some one has called, with a little
exaggeration, the beautiful but anonymous ballad poetry of Spain. One
may be permitted, perhaps, to push the exaggeration a little further in
the same direction, and to apply the same language not merely to a
ballad but to a word. For poetry, which is passion and imagination
embodying themselves in words, does not necessarily demand a
_combination_ of words for this. Of this passion and imagination a
single word may be the vehicle. As the sun can image itself alike in a
tiny dew-drop or in the mighty ocean, and can do it, though on a
different scale, as perfectly in the one as in the other, so the spirit
of poetry can dwell in and glorify alike a word and an Iliad. Nothing
in language is too small, as nothing is too great, for it to fill with
its presence. Everywhere it can find, or, not finding, can make, a
shrine for itself, which afterwards it can render translucent and
transparent with its own indwelling glory. On every side we are beset
with poetry. Popular language is full of it, of words used in an
imaginative sense, of things called--and not merely in transient
moments of high passion, and in the transfer which at such moments
finds place of the image to the thing imaged, but permanently,--by
names having immediate reference not to what they are, but to what they
are like. All language is in some sort, as one has said, a collection
of faded metaphors. [Footnote: Jean Paul: Ist jede Sprache in Rücksicht
geistiger Beziehungen ein Wörterbuch erblasster Metaphern. We regret
this, while yet it is not wholly matter of regret. Gerber (_Sprache als
Kunst_, vol. i. p. 387) urges that language would be quite unmanageable,
that the words which we use would be continually clashing with and
contradicting one another, if every one of them retained a lively
impress of the image on which it originally rested, and recalled this
to our mind. His words, somewhat too strongly put, are these: Für den
Usus der Sprache, für ihren Verstand und ihre Verständlichkeit ist
allerdings das Erblassen ihrer Lautbilder, so dass sie allmählig als
blosse Zeichen für Begriffe fungiren, nothwendig. Die Ueberzahl der
Bilder würde, wenn sie alle als solche wirkten, nur verwirren und jede
klarere Auffassung, wie sie die praktischen Zwecke der Gegenwart
fordern, unmöglich machen. Die Bilder würden ausserdem einander zum
Theil zerstören, indem sie die Farben verschiedener Sphären
zusammenfliessenlassen, und damit für den Verstand nur Unsinn
bedeuten.]
Sometimes, indeed, they have not faded at all. Thus at Naples it is the
ordinary language to call the lesser storm-waves 'pecore,' or sheep;
the larger 'cavalloni,' or big horses. Who that has watched the foaming
crests, the white manes, as it were, of the larger billows as they
advance in measured order, and rank on rank, into the bay, but will own
not merely the fitness, but the grandeur, of this last image? Let me
illustrate my meaning more at length by the word 'tribulation.' We all
know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in
Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it
is quite worth our while to know _how_ it means this, and to question
'tribulation' a little closer. It is derived from the Latin 'tribulum,'
which was the threshing instrument or harrow, whereby the Roman
husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and 'tribulatio' in its
primary signification was the act of this separation. But some Latin
writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the
setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity
being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them
was light, trivial, and poor from the solid and the true, their chaff
from their wheat, [Footnote: Triticum itself may be connected with tero,
tritus; [so Curtius, _Greek Etym._ No. 239].] he therefore called these
sorrows and trials 'tribulations,' threshings, that is, of the inner
spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the
heavenly garner. Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is
often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold capable of being
beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in reference
to this very word 'tribulation,' a graceful composition by George
Wither, a prolific versifier, and occasionally a poet, of the
seventeenth century. You will at once perceive that it is all wrapped
up in this word, being from first to last only the explicit unfolding
of the image and thought which this word has implicitly given; it is as
follows:--
'Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat,
Until the chaff be purgèd from the wheat,
Yea, 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 so much,
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections
Have threshèd out of us our vain affections;
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us
Are by Thy sacred Spirit winnowed from us;
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures,
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures,
Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay,
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away;
And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more,
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire;
But then we shall; and that is my desire.'
This deeper religious use of the word 'tribulation' was unknown to
classical antiquity, belonging exclusively to the Christian writers;
and the fact that the same deepening and elevating of the use of words
recurs in a multitude of other, and many of them far more signal,
instances, is one well deserving to be followed up. Nothing, I am
persuaded, would more mightily convince us of the new power which
Christianity proved in the world than to compare the meaning which so
many words possessed before its rise, and the deeper meaning which they
obtained, so soon as they were assumed as the vehicles of its life, the
new thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, and ennobling the very
words which they employed. This is a subject which I shall have
occasion to touch on more than once in these lectures, but is itself
well worthy of, as it would afford ample material for, a volume.
On the suggestion of this word 'tribulation', I will quote two or three
words from Coleridge, bearing on the matter in hand. He has said, 'In
order to get the full sense of a word, we should first present to our
minds the visual image that forms its primary meaning.' What admirable
counsel is here! If we would but accustom ourselves to the doing of
this, what a vast increase of precision and force would all the
language which we speak, and which others speak to us, obtain; how
often would that which is now obscure at once become clear; how
distinct the limits and boundaries of that which is often now confused
and confounded! It is difficult to measure the amount of food for the
imagination, as well as gains for the intellect, which the observing of
this single rule would afford us. Let me illustrate this by one or two
examples. We say of such a man that he is 'desultory.' Do we attach any
very distinct meaning to the word? Perhaps not. But get at the image on
which 'desultory' rests; take the word to pieces; learn that it is from
'desultor,' [Footnote: Lat. _desultor_ is from _desult_-, the stem of
_desultus_, past part, of _desilire_, to leap down.] one who rides two
or three horses at once, leaps from one to the other, being never on
the back of any one of them long; take, I say, the word thus to pieces,
and put it together again, and what a firm and vigorous grasp will you
have now of its meaning! A 'desultory' man is one who jumps from one
study to another, and never continues for any length of time in one.
Again, you speak of a person as 'capricious,' or as full of 'caprices.'
But what exactly are caprices? 'Caprice' is from _capra_, a goat.
[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 peacock 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 assigned 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'expérience nous apprend, que
la plupart des noms significatifs qu'on a voulu donner à différens
objets d'histoire naturelle, sont devenus faux à mesure qu'on a
découvert des qualités, des propriétés nouvelles ou contraires à celles
qui avaient fait donner ces noms: il faut donc, pour se mettre à l'abri
des contradictions, éviter les termes figurés, et même faire en sorte
qu'on ne puisse les rapporter à quelque étymologie, a fin que ceux, qui
ont la fureur des étymologies, ne soient pas tenus de leur attribuer
une idée fausse. II en doit être 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 à d'autres noms, ou à des choses connues, par ce que l'idée ne
se fixant qu'à 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 fashion 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 shifting 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 classic 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. Géog.
Univ_., 1884, and Brockhaus.] Surely Florida, as the name passes 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:
Poichè 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 hell, 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 anticipated 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 'Janus' (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,' 'bloody 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 butter-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-glass,' '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 title to our little field flower meant no doubt to
liken its inner yellow disk, or shield, 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 title, '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.