On the Study of Words

by Richard Chenevix Trench

John Careless, whose letters are among the most beautiful in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, writing to Philpot, exclaims, 'Oh good master Philpot, which art a principal pot indeed, filled with much precious liquor,—oh pot most happy! of the High Potter ordained to honour.'

Herein, in this faith that men's names were true and would come true, in this, and not in any altogether unreasoning superstition, lay the root of the carefulness of the Romans that in the enlisting of soldiers names of good omen, such as Valerius, Salvius, Secundus, should be the first called. Scipio Africanus, reproaching his soldiers after a mutiny, finds an aggravation of their crime in the fact that one with so ill- omened a name as Atrius Umber should have seduced them, and persuaded them to take him for their leader. So strong is the conviction of men that names are powers. Nay, it must have been sometimes thought that the good name might so react on the evil nature that it should not remain evil altogether, but might be induced, in part at least, to conform itself to the designation which it bore. Here we have an explanation of the title Eumenides, or the Well-minded, given to the Furies; of Euxine, or the kind to strangers, to the inhospitable Black Sea, 'stepmother of ships,' as the Greek poet called it; the explanation too of other similar transformations, of the Greek Egesta transformed by the Romans into 'Segesta,' that it might not suggest 'egestas' or penury; [Footnote: [But the form Segesta is probably older than Egesta, the Romans here, as in other cases, retaining the original initial s, which in Greek is represented generally by the rough, sometimes by the smooth breathing.] of Epidamnus, which, in like manner seeming too suggestive of 'damnum,' or loss, was changed into 'Dyrrachium'; of Maleventum, which became 'Beneventum'; of Cape Tormentoso, or Stormy Cape, changed into 'Cape of Good Hope'; of the fairies being always respectfully spoken of as 'the good people' in Ireland, even while they are accredited with any amount of mischief; of the dead spoken of alike in Greek and in Latin simply as 'the majority'; of the dying, in Greek liturgies remembered as 'those about to set forward upon a journey'[Footnote: [Greek: oi exodeuontes]; of the slain in battle designated in German as 'those who remain,' that is, on the field of battle; of [Greek: eulogia], or 'the blessing,' as a name given in modern Greek to the smallpox! We may compare as an example of this same euphemism the famous 'Vixerunt' with which Cicero announced that the conspirators against the Roman State had paid the full penalty of their treason.

Let me observe, before leaving this subject, that not in one passage only, but in passages innumerable, Scripture sets its seal to this significance of names, to the fact that the seeking and the finding of this significance is not a mere play upon the surface of things: it everywhere recognizes the inner band, which ought to connect, and in a world of truth would connect, together the name and the person or thing bearing the name. Scripture sets its seal to this by the weight and solemnity which it everywhere attaches to the imposing of names; this in many instances not being left to hazard, but assumed by God as his own peculiar care. 'Thou shalt call his name Jesus' (Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 31) is of course the most illustrious instance of all; but there is a multitude of other cases in point; names given by God, as that of John to the Baptist; or changed by Him, as Abram's to Abraham (Gen. xvii. 3), Sarai's to Sarah, Hoshea's to Joshua; or new names added by Him to the old, when by some mighty act of faith the man had been lifted out of his old life into a new; as Israel added to Jacob, and Peter to Simon, and Boanerges or Sons of thunder to the two sons of Zebedee (Mark iii. 17). The same feeling is at work elsewhere. A Pope on his election always takes a new name. Or when it is intended to make, for good or for ill, an entire breach with the past, this is one of the means by which it is sought to effect as much (2 Chr. xxxvi. 4; Dan. i. 7). How far this custom reaches, how deep the roots which it casts, is exemplified well in the fact that the West Indian buccaneer makes a like change of name on entering that society of blood. It is in both cases a sort of token that old things have passed away, that all have become new to him.

But we must draw to a close. Enough has been said to attest and to justify the wide-spread faith of men that names are significant, and that things and persons correspond, or ought to correspond, to them. You will not, then, find it a laborious task to persuade your pupils to admit as much. They are prepared to accept, they will be prompt to believe it. And great indeed will be our gains, their gains and ours,— for teacher and taught will for the most part enrich themselves together,—if, having these treasures of wisdom and knowledge lying round about us, so far more precious than mines of Californian gold, we determine that we will make what portion of them we can our own, that we will ask the words which we use to give an account of themselves, to say whence they are, and whither they tend. Then shall we often rub off the dust and rust from what seemed to us but a common token, which as such we had taken and given a thousand times; but which now we shall perceive to be a precious coin, bearing the 'image and superscription' of the great King: then shall we often stand in surprise and in something of shame, while we behold the great spiritual realities which underlie our common speech, the marvellous truths which we have been witnessing for in our words, but, it may be, witnessing against in our lives. And as you will not find, for so I venture to promise, that this study of words will be a dull one when you undertake it yourselves, as little need you fear that it will prove dull and unattractive, when you seek to make your own gains herein the gains also of those who may be hereafter committed to your charge. Only try your pupils, and mark the kindling of the eye, the lighting up of the countenance, the revival of the flagging attention, with which the humblest lecture upon words, and on the words especially which they are daily using, which are familiar to them in their play or at their church, will be welcomed by them. There is a sense of reality about children which makes them rejoice to discover that there is also a reality about words, that they are not merely arbitrary signs, but living powers; that, to reverse the saying of one of England's 'false prophets,' they may be the fool's counters, but are the wise man's money; not, like the sands of the sea, innumerable disconnected atoms, but growing out of roots, clustering in families, connecting and intertwining themselves with all that men have been doing and thinking and feeling from the beginning of the world till now.

And it is of course our English tongue, out of which mainly we should 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:—