We are aware that the English tongue,—our own cartilaginous tongue, as some one has quaintly styled it,—has been decried, even by poets who have made it discourse the sweetest music, for its lack of expressive terms, and for its excess in consonants, guttural, sibilant, or mute. It was this latter peculiarity, doubtless, which led Charles V, three centuries ago, to compare it to the whistling of birds; and others since, from the predominance of the s, to the continued hissing of red-hot iron in water. Madame de Stael likens it to the monotonous sound of the surge breaking on the sea-shore; and even Lord Byron,—whose own burning verse, distinguished not less by its melody than by its incomparable energy, has signally revealed the hidden harmony that lies in our short Saxon words,—turns traitor to his native language, and in a moment of caprice denounces it for its harshness:
“I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables that breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids, gliding all so pat in,
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh, Northern, whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we’re obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.”
It is strange that the poet could not see that, in this very selection of condemnatory terms, he has strikingly shown the wondrous expressiveness of the tongue he censures. What can be softer, more musical, or more beautifully descriptive, than the “gentle liquids gliding,” and the words “breathe of the sweet South”; and where among all the languages of the “sweet South” would he have found words so well fitted to point his sarcasm, so saturated with harshness, as the terms “harsh,” “uncouth,” “northern,” “whistling,” “grunting,” “guttural,” “hiss,” “spit,” and “sputter?” It has been well said that “the hand that possesses strength and power may have as delicate a touch, when needed, as the hand of nervous debility. The English language can drop the honeyed words of peace and gentleness, and it can visit with its withering, scathing, burning, blasting curse.” Again, even Addison, who wrote so musical English, contrasting our own tongue with the vocal beauty of the Greek, and forgetting that the latter is the very lowest merit of a language, being merely its sensuous merit, calls it brick as against marble. Waller, too, ungrateful to the noble tongue that has preserved his name, declares that