In short, an exquisite and instinctive taste can only decide on the extent to which this figure may be consciously used. We feel that Virgil was right in rejecting Ennius’s
At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dicit,
as the imitation of a trumpet-blast; and none but a comic poet (like Swift) would use rub-a-dub, dub-a-dub in English to express the beating of a drum: and yet who was ever otherwise than delighted with the word τήνελλα, in which Archilochus imitated the twang of a harp-string, and which the Greeks used ever afterwards as an expression of joyous triumph? Again, none but a comedian could have ventured on so direct an imitation of sounds as βρεκεκεκέξ κοάξ κοάξ, and yet no one could object to the pretty line in which Ovid tries to produce the same impression:—
Quamquam sunt sub aquâ, sub aquâ maledicere tentant.
The misuse of language fails to produce the echo which its simple and natural use would not have failed to awake. In short, it is in many cases impossible to use language which shall be at once specific and appropriate without being forced to adopt imitative words. There is no style required in order to speak of the booming of the cannon, the twang of the bowstring, the hurtling of the arrow, the tolling or pealing of the bell, the rolling or throbbing of the drum, the sough or whisper of the breeze, because in each case the proper word is ready for us at once in the language which we speak, and if we are to speak naturally we can use no other. The harmonies of language arise mainly from this power of imitation, and a sensuous language is always energetic, poetic, passionate.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROOTS.
Language is like the minim immortal among the infusoria, which keeps splitting itself into halves.—Coleridge.
The most brilliant of modern philosophers, M. Victor Cousin, in endeavouring to refute the conclusion of Locke that all words draw their first origin from sensible ideas, adduces the pronoun “I” and the verb “to be” as words which are primitive, indecomposible, and irreducible in every language with which he is acquainted—as words which are pure signs, representing nothing whatever except the meaning conventionally attached to them, and having no connection with sensible ideas.