FOOTNOTES:
[161] This and the next letter were written in answer to Mr. Furnivall, who, upon being questioned what appearance in the clouds was intended by the word "fret" in the above passage, referred the point to Mr. Ruskin, whose answers were subsequently read at the forty-fifth meeting of the Society, Oct. 11, 1878.
[162] In modern English "chasing" has got confused with it, but it should be separated again.
NOTES ON A WORD IN SHAKESPEARE.
II.
Edinburgh, 29th Sept., 1878.
Dear Furnivall: Your kind letter comes to me here, and I must answer on this paper, for, if that bit of note is really of any use to you, you must please add this word or two more in printing, as it wouldn't do to let it be such a mere fret on the vault of its subject. You say not one man in 150 knows what the line means: my dear Furnivall, not one man in 15,000, in the 19th century, knows, or ever can know, what any line—or any word means, used by a great writer. For most words stand for things that are seen, or things that are thought of; and in the 19th century there is certainly not one man in 15,000 who ever looks at anything, and not one in 15,000,000 capable of a thought. Take the intelligence of this word in this line for example—the root of the whole matter is, first, that the reader should have seen what he has often heard of, but probably not seen twice in his life—"Daybreak." Next, it is needful he should think what "break" means in that word—what is broken, namely, and by what. That is to say, the cloud of night is Broken up, as a city is broken up (Jerusalem, when Zedekiah fled), as a school breaks up, as a constitution, or a ship, is broken up; in every case with a not inconsiderable change of idea and addition to the central word. This breaking up is done by the Day, which breaks—out, as a man breaks, or bursts out, from his restraint in a passion; breaks down in tears; or breaks in, as from heaven to earth—with a breach in the cloud-wall of it; or breaks out, with a sense of outward—as the sun—out and out, farther and farther, after rain. Well; next, the thing that the day breaks up is partly a garment, rent, more than broken; a mantle, the day itself "in russet mantle clad"—the blanket of the dark, torn to be peeped through—whereon instantly you get into a whole host of new ideas; fretting as a moth frets a garment; unravelling at the edge, afterwards;—thence you get into fringe, which is an entirely double word, meaning partly a thing that guards, and partly a thing that is worn away on the ground; the French Frange has, I believe, a reminiscence of φρασσω in it—our "fringe" runs partly toward frico and friction—both are essentially connected with frango, and the fringe of "breakers" at the shores of all seas, and the breaking of the ripples and foam all over them—but this is wholly different in a northern mind, which has only seen the sea
Break, break, break, on its cold gray stones,—
and a southern, which has seen a hot sea on hot sand break into lightning of phosphor flame—half a mile of fire in an instant—following in time, like the flash of minute-guns. Then come the great new ideas of order and time, and
I did but tell her she mistook her frets,
And bowed her hand, etc.,
and so the timely succession of either ball, flower, or dentil, in architecture: but this, again, going off to a totally different and still lovely idea, the main one in the word aurifrigium—which rooted once in aurifex, went on in Etruscan work, followed in Florence into a much closer connection with frigidus—their style being always in frosted gold (see the dew on a cabbage-leaf or, better, on a gray lichen, in early sunshine)—going back, nobody knows how far, but to the Temple of the Dew of Athens, and gold of Mycenæ, anyhow; and in Etruria to the Deluge, I suppose. Well, then, the notion of the music of morning comes in—with strings of lyre (or frets of Katharine's instrument, whatever it was) and stops of various quills; which gets us into another group beginning with plectrum, going aside again into plico and plight, and Milton's
"Play in the plighted clouds"
(the quills on the fretful porcupine are all thought of, first, in their piped complexity like rushes, before the standing up in ill-temper), and so on into the plight of folded drapery, and round again to our blanket. I think that's enough to sketch out the compass of the word. Of course the real power of it in any place depends on the writer's grasp of it, and use of the facet he wants to cut with.
[From "The Theatre," March, 1880, p. 169.]
"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."[163]
6th Feb., 1880.
I have no doubt that whatever Mr. Irving has stated that I said, I did say. But in personal address to an artist, to whom one is introduced for the first time, one does not usually say all that may be in one's mind. And if expressions, limited, if not even somewhat exaggerated, by courtesy, be afterwards quoted as a total and carefully-expressed criticism, the general reader will be—or may be easily—much misled. I did and do much admire Mr. Irving's own acting of Shylock. But I entirely dissent (and indignantly as well as entirely) from his general reading and treatment of the play. And I think that a modern audience will invariably be not only wrong, but diametrically and with polar accuracy opposite to the real view of any great author in the moulding of his work. So far as I could in kindness venture, I expressed my feelings to that effect, in a letter which I wrote to Mr. Irving on the day after I saw the play; and I should be sincerely obliged to him, under the existing circumstances, if he would publish the whole of that letter.