It will be found, however, that no clear-cut and simple definition of, for example, the word labyrinth itself is to be found in any dictionary, and that with regard to its derivation authorities are not even yet in complete agreement. With the facts recounted in the preceding chapters at his disposal the reader may possibly find a little informal discussion of these points more intelligible and interesting than the more rigid presentment afforded by even the best dictionaries. Moreover, most dictionaries have little or nothing to say about Julian's bowers or Troy-towns. On the other hand, of course, this chapter could not have been written without free recourse to Murray, Skeat, Webster, Wright, and other monuments of the lexicographer's toil.
We will consider such words as seem worth discussing in their alphabetical order, commencing with one which was prominent in our last chapter, viz., "bower."
We have here a word of which the early connotation has been rather obscured by poetical insistence upon one of its extensions. As a convenient rhyme for "flower" and "shower" it has become one of the mainstays of the vernal poetaster, a circumstance which evoked one of the gems of Calverley's gentle satire:
"Bowers of flowers encountered showers
In William's carol—(O love my Willie!);
Then he bade sorrow borrow from blithe tomorrow
I quite forget what—say a daffodilly."
(Lovers, and a Reflection.)
The word has thus come to be chiefly employed to signify a leafy or shady arbour or a recess in a garden, a use quite consistent with, but narrower than, the principal and much older meaning, which was that of a dwelling, with particular reference to the character of privacy.
The common modern usage seems to have been first adopted by the Elizabethan poets. Hero, in "Much Ado about Nothing" (Act III, Sc. 1), sends by her attendant a message to her cousin Beatrice, bidding her
"... steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter."
The Saxon form of the word was búr or bure, related to búan, meaning "to dwell," and it was always used to denote something of the nature of an inner chamber or sanctum.
In Chaucer's works (late fourteenth century) it has the same force, e.g., in the "Wife of Bath's Tale":