are emphatically and preëminently language. It is doubtless true that civilization, with its freezing formalities, tends to diminish the use of interjections, as well as their natural accompaniments, gesture and gesticulation; but on the other hand, it should be noted, that there are certain interjections which are the fruits of the highest and most mature forms of human culture. Interjections, in truth, are not so much “parts of speech” as entire expressions of feeling or thought. They are preëminently pictorial. If I pronounce the words “house,” “strike,” “black,” “beautifully,” without other words or explanatory gestures, I say nothing distinctly; I may mean any one of a hundred things; but if I utter an interjectional exclamation, denoting joy or sorrow, surprise or fear, every person who hears me knows at once by what affection I am moved. I communicate a fact by a single syllable. Instead of ranking below other words, the interjection stands on a higher plane, because its significance is more absolute and immediate. Moreover, from these despised parts of speech has been derived a whole class of words; as, for example, in the natural interjection “ah”! ach! we have the root of a large class of words in the Aryan languages, such as ἄχος, achen! “ache,” “anguish,” “anxious,” angustus, and the word “agony” itself. Many words are used interjectionally which are not interjections, such as “Farewell!” “Adieu!” “Welcome!” which are to be looked upon as elliptical forms of expression. They are, in fact, abbreviated sentences, resembling the Ο for οὐ, “not,” with which the poet Philoxenus is said to have replied in writing to the tyrant Dionysius who had invited him to the court of Syracuse. The true interjection is an apostrophe, condensed into a syllable. It is the effort of Nature to unburden herself of some intense, pressing emotion. It is the sigh of humanity for what it cannot have or hope for; for what it has lost; for what it did not value till it lost it. George Eliot thus defines it when she speaks of certain deeds as “little more than interjections, which give vent to the long passion of a life.” In oratory, poetry, and the drama, the interjection plays an important part. Public speakers, especially, find it indispensable to their success. “As the most eloquent men are apt to find their language inadequate to their needs,—as still, after they have exhausted their vocabulary of other words,
‘There hover in these restless heads
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the best,
Which into words no virtue can digest,’
they find great need of the interjection. In their hands it deepens all assertions, gives utterance to intense longings, carries the hearer away into ultimate possibilities, and expresses the most passionate emotions in the instant of their most overwhelming power.” Who that is familiar with the history of oratory, does not remember instances when these little words, so despised by grammarians, have been more impressive, more to the point, more eloquent than a long speech? The interjections of Whitefield,—his “Ah!” of pity for the unrepentant sinner, and his “Oh!” of encouragement and persuasion for the almost converted listener,—were words of tremendous power, and formed a most potent engine in his pulpit artillery.[11] Garrick used to say that he would give a hundred guineas if he could say “Oh!” as Whitefield did. The condensed force of interjections,—their inherent expressiveness,—entitles them, therefore, to be regarded as the appropriate language, the mother-tongue of passion; and hence the effect of good acting depends largely on the proper introduction and just articulation of this class of words.
Shakespeare’s interjections exact a rare command of modulation, and cannot be rendered with any truth except by one who has mastered the whole play. What a profound insight of the masterpiece of the poet is required of him who would adequately utter the word “indeed” in the following passage of Othello! “It contains in it,” says an English writer, “the gist of the chief action of the play, and it implies all that the plot develops. It ought to be spoken with such an intonation as to suggest the diabolic scheme of Iago’s conduct. There is no thought of the grammatical structure of the compound, consisting of the preposition ‘in’ and the substantive ‘deed,’ which is equivalent to ‘act,’ ‘fact,’ or ‘reality.’ All this vanishes and is lost in the mere iambic dissyllable which is employed as a vehicle for the feigned tones of surprise.”
“Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.
Oth. O, yes, and went between us very oft.
Iago. Indeed!
Oth. Indeed? ay, indeed. Discern’st thou aught in that? Is he not honest?