Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI., act v. sc. 2.
The consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honourably restored without ransom; and the emperor’s generosity to the miscreant was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. 58.
| Miser, | } |
| Misery, | |
| Miserable. |
We may notice a curious shifting of parts in ‘miser,’ ‘misery,’ ‘miserable.’ There was a time when the ‘miser’ was the wretched man, he is now the covetous; at the same time ‘misery,’ which is now wretchedness, and ‘miserable,’ which is now wretched, were severally covetousness and covetous. They have in fact exactly reversed their uses. Men still express by some words of this group, although not by the same, by ‘miser’ (and ‘miserly’), not as once by ‘misery’ and ‘miserable,’ their deep moral conviction that the avaricious man is his own tormentor, and bears his punishment involved in his sin. A passage, too long to quote, in Gascoigne’s Fruits of War, st. 72-74, is very instructive on the different uses of the word ‘miser’ even in his time, and on the manner in which it was even then hovering between the two meanings.
Because thou sayest, ‘That I am rich and enriched and lack nothing;’ and knowest not that thou art a miser [et nescis quia tu es miser, Vulg.] and miserable and poor and blind and naked.—Rev. iii. 17. Rhemish Version.
Vouchsafe to stay your steed for humble miser’s sake.
Spenser, Fairy Queen, ii. 1, 8.
He [Perseus] returned again to his old humour which was born and bred with him, and that was avarice and misery.—North, Plutarch’s Lives, p. 215.
But Brutus, scorning his [Octavius Cæsar’s] misery and niggardliness, gave unto every band a number of wethers to sacrifice, and fifty silver drachmas to every soldier.—Id., ib., p. 830.
If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment; miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto themselves, and merciless unto their own bowels.—Sir T. Browne, Letter to a Friend.