Most of the words formed with t as the initial derive from it no very marked force, and depend for that quality on the same terminations which have been noticed as giving force to others. The t need not, therefore, occupy our space. The w is also weak alone, but forms terms of some initial pith with the aspirate h as wheel, whiff, whelm, whip, whirl, whisk, and whoop. There is a sort of sense of circuitous motion given by the wh; and, with their well-discriminated terminations, the verbs of action which it opens are very expressive. When wr was pronounced uurr, the words, wrangle, wrestle, wreath, wring, wrench, and wrath were words of potency, twisting and convulsive. But the w is now mute, and their might has departed.
It is because much, very much, of the power, the majesty, and the beauty of English Poetry, as left to us by our fathers, is traceable to the liberal use of the Anglo-Saxon elements of our national language, that the subject has been treated of here so lengthily. Moreover, there has been evinced of late, it is painful to add, a growing tendency on the part of many writers to cultivate Gallicisms, as words of Roman derivation are rightly named, to a still greater extent than has yet been done amongst us, and to the repression of our true native vocabulary. A gain may be made in this way in respect of general harmony, as before observed, but it is a gain which never can counterbalance the loss in point of pith and picturesqueness. It is not said here, that our greater recent poets have been the chief deserters of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. On the contrary, many of them have shown a full sense of its merits, and have used it finely. It is a remarkable corroboration, indeed, of the present argument, that in all their best passages, they almost uniformly employ the said tongue, whether consciously or unconsciously. Look at the following passage of Burns. It has been pronounced by critics to embody the most powerful picture in modern poetry.
"Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantrip sleight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light,
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table
A murderer's banes in gibbet-airns;
Twa span-lang, wee unchristen'd bairns;