Chapter II: Part 2

Being lately with some honourable persons, I told them it had been
reported that some of Mr. C.'s MSS. were fallen into the hands of
strangers, and that I should be glad to receive from you such
information as might enable me to disprove that report. What
occasioned this surmise, or what particular MSS. were meant, I was
not able to discover; so I was left to my own conjectures, which,
upon a serious consideration, induced me to believe that it might
relate to the MSS. in eight volumes in 8vo, of which there is a
transcript. But as the original and the transcript are in your
possession, if you please, madam, to compare them together, you may
easily see whether they be both entire and perfect, or whether there
be anything wanting in either of them. By this means you will assure
yourself, and satisfy your friends, that several important pieces are
safe in your hands, and that the report is false and groundless. All
this I take the liberty to offer out of the singular respect I always
professed for you, and for the memory of Mr. Collins, to whom I have
endeavoured to do justice on all occasions, and particularly in the
memoirs that have been made use of in the General Dictionary; and I
hope my tender concern for his reputation will further appear when I
publish his life.

SIR, _April 6, 1737_.

My ill state of health has hindered me from acknowledging sooner the
receipt of yours, from which I hoped for some satisfaction in
relation to your charge, in which I cannot but think myself very
deeply concerned. You tell me now, that you was left to your own
conjectures what particular MSS. were reported to have fallen into
the hands of strangers, and that upon a serious consideration you was
induced to believe that it might relate to the MSS. in eight vols.
8vo, of which there was a transcript.

I must beg of you to satisfy me very explicitly who were the persons
that reported this to you, and from whom did you receive this
information? You know that Mr. Collins left several MSS. behind him;
what grounds had you for your conjecture that it related to the MSS.
in eight vols., rather than to any other MSS. of which there was a
transcript? I beg that you will be very plain, and tell me what
strangers were named to you; and why you said the Bishop of London,
if your informer said stranger to you. I am so much concerned in
this, that I must repeat it, if you have the singular respect for Mr.
Collins which you profess, that you would help me to trace out this
reproach, which is so abusive to, Sir,

Your servant,

ELIZ. COLLINS.

TO MRS. COLLINS.

I flattered myself that my last letter would have satisfied you, but
I have the mortification to see that my hopes were vain. Therefore I
beg leave once more to set this matter right. When I told you what
had been reported, I acted, as I thought, the part of a true friend,
by acquainting you that some of your MSS. had been purloined, in
order that you might examine a fact which to me appeared of the last
consequence; and I verily believe that everybody in my case would
have expected thanks for such a friendly information. But instead of
that I find myself represented as an enemy, and challenged to produce
proofs and witnesses of a thing dropt in conversation, a hearsay, as
if in those cases people kept a register of what they hear, and
entered the names of the persons who spoke, the time, place, &c., and
had with them persons ready to witness the whole, &c. I did own I
never thought of such a thing, and whenever I happened to hear that
some of my friends had some loss, I thought it my duty to acquaint
them with such report, that they might inquire into the matter, and
see whether there was any ground for it. But I never troubled myself
with the names of the persons who spoke, as being a thing entirely
needless and unprofitable.

Give me leave further to observe, that you are in no ways _concerned_
in the matter, as you seem to be apprehensive you are. Suppose some
MSS. have been taken out of your library, who will say you ought to
bear the guilt of it? What man in his senses, who has the honour to
know you, will say you gave your consent to such thing--that you was
privy to it? How can you then take upon yourself an action to which
you was neither privy and consenting? Do not such things happen every
day, and do the losers think themselves injured or _abused_ when they
are talked of? Is it impossible to be betrayed by a person we
confided in?

You call what I told you was a report, a surmise; you call it, I say,
an _information_, and speak of _informers_ as if there was a plot
laid wherein I received the information: I thought I had the honour
to be better known to you. Mr. Collins loved me and esteemed me for
my integrity and sincerity, of which he had several proofs; how I
have been drawn in to injure him, to forfeit the good opinion he had
of me, and which, were he now alive, would deservedly expose me to
his utmost contempt, is a grief which I shall carry to the grave. It
would be a sort of comfort to me, if those who have consented I
should be drawn in were in some measure sensible of the guilt towards
so good, kind, and generous a man.

Thus we find that, _seven years_ after Des Maizeaux had inconsiderately betrayed his sacred trust, his remorse was still awake; and the sincerity of his grief is attested by the affecting style which describes it: the spirit of his departed friend seemed to be hovering about him, and, in his imagination, would haunt him to the grave.

The nature of these manuscripts; the cause of the earnest desire of retaining them by the widow; the evident unfriendliness of her conduct to Des Maizeaux; and whether these manuscripts, consisting of eight octavo volumes with their transcripts, were destroyed, or are still existing, are all circumstances which my researches have hitherto not ascertained.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Van Effen_ was a Dutch writer of some merit, and one of a
literary knot of ingenious men, consisting of Sallengre, St.
Hyacinthe, Prosper Marchand, &c., who carried on a smart review for
those days, published at the Hague under the title of "Journal
Litteraire." They all composed in French; and Van Effen gave the
first translations of our "Guardian," "Robinson Crusoe," and the
"Tale of a Tub," &c. He did something more, but not better; he
attempted to imitate the "Spectator," in his "Le Misanthrope," 1726,
which exhibits a picture of the uninteresting manners of a nation
whom he could not make very lively.

_De Limiers_ has had his name slipped into our biographical
dictionaries. An author cannot escape the fatality of the alphabet;
his numerous misdeeds are registered. It is said, that if he had not
been so hungry, he would have given proofs of possessing some
talent.

[15] I find that the nominal pension was 3_s._ 6_d._ per diem on the
Irish civil list, which amounts to above 63_l._ per annum. If a
pension be granted for reward, it seems a mockery that the income
should be so grievously reduced, which cruel custom still prevails.

[16] This letter, or petition, was written in 1732. In 1743 he
procured his pension to be placed on his wife's life, and he died in
1745.

He was sworn in as gentleman of his majesty's privy chamber in
1722--_Sloane MSS._ 4289.

[17] There is a printed catalogue of his library.

[18] This information is from a note found among Des Maizeaux's
papers; but its truth I have no means to ascertain.

HISTORY OF NEW WORDS.

Neology, or the novelty of words and phrases, is an innovation, which, with the opulence of our present language, the English philologer is most jealous to allow; but we have puritans or precisians of English, superstitiously nice! The fantastic coinage of affectation or caprice will cease to circulate from its own alloy; but shall we reject the ore of fine workmanship and solid weight? There is no government mint of words, and it is no statutable offence to invent a felicitous or daring expression unauthorised by Mr. Todd! When a man of genius, in the heat of his pursuits or his feelings, has thrown out a peculiar word, it probably conveyed more precision or energy than any other established word, otherwise he is but an ignorant pretender!

Julius Caesar, who, unlike other great captains, is authority on words as well as about blows, wrote a large treatise on "Analogy," in which that fine genius counselled to "avoid every unusual word as a rock!"[19] The cautious Quintilian, as might be expected, opposes all innovation in language. "If the new word is well received, small is the glory; if rejected, it raises laughter."[20] This only marks the penury of his feelings in this species of adventure. The great legislator of words, who lived when his own language was at its acme, seems undecided, yet pleaded for this liberty. "Shall that which the Romans allowed to Caecilius and to Plautus be refused to Virgil and Varius?" The answer to the question might not be favourable to the inquirer. While a language is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when established, for restricting themselves to them. But this is to imagine that a perfect language can exist! The good sense and observation of Horace perceived that there may be occasions where necessity must become the mother of invented words:--

----Si forte necesse est
Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum.

If you write of things abstruse or new,
Some of your own inventing may be used,
So it be seldom and discreetly done.

ROSCOMMON.

But Horace's canon for deciding on the legality of the new invention, or the standard by which it is to be tried, will not serve to assist the inventor of words:--

----licuit, semperque licebit,
Signatum praesente nota procudere nummum.[21]

This _praesens nota_, or public stamp, can never be affixed to any new coinage of words: for many received at a season have perished with it.[22] The privilege of stamping words is reserved for their greatest enemy--Time itself! and the inventor of a new word must never flatter himself that he has secured the public adoption, for he must lie in his grave before he can enter the dictionary.

In Willes' address to the reader, prefixed to the collection of Voyages published in 1577, he finds fault with Eden's translation from Peter Martyr, for using words that "smelt too much of the Latine." We should scarcely have expected to find among them _ponderouse_, _portentouse_, _despicable_, _obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_, _prodigious_. The only words he quotes, not thoroughly naturalised, are _dominators_, _ditionaries_, (subjects), _solicitute_ (careful).

The Tatler, No. 230, introduces several polysyllables introduced by military narrations, "which (he says), if they attack us too frequently, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear;" every one of them still keep their ground.

Half the French words used affectedly by Melantha, in Dryden's _Marriage a-la-Mode_, as innovations in our language, are now in common use, _naivete_, _foible_, _chagrin_, _grimace_, _embarras_, _double entendre_, _equivoque_, _eclaircissement_, _ridicule_, all these words, which she learns by heart to use occasionally, are now in common use. A Dr. Russel called Psalm-singers _Ballad-singers_, having found the Song of Solomon in an old translation, the _Ballad of Ballads_, for which he is reproached by his antagonist for not knowing that the signification of words alters with time; should I call him _knave_, he ought not to be concerned at it, for the Apostle Paul is also called a _knave of Jesus Christ_.[23]

Unquestionably, NEOLOGY opens a wide door to innovation; scarcely has a century passed since our language was patched up with Gallic idioms, as in the preceding century it was piebald with Spanish, and with Italian, and even with Dutch. The political intercourse of islanders with their neighbours has ever influenced their language. In Elizabeth's reign Italian phrases[24] and Netherland words were imported; in James and Charles the Spanish framed the style of courtesy; in Charles the Second the nation and the language were equally Frenchified. Yet such are the sources from whence we have often derived some of the wealth of our language!

There are three foul corruptors of a language: caprice, affectation, and ignorance! Such fashionable cant terms as "theatricals," and "musicals," invented by the flippant Topham, still survive among his confraternity of frivolity. A lady eminent for the elegance of her taste, and of whom one of the best judges, the celebrated Miss Edgeworth, observed to me, that she spoke the purest and most idiomatic English she had ever heard, threw out an observation which might be extended to a great deal of our present fashionable vocabulary. She is now old enough, she said, to have lived to hear the vulgarisms of her youth adopted in drawing-room circles.[25] To _lunch_, now so familiar from the fairest lips, in her youth was only known in the servants' hall. An expression very rife of late among our young ladies, _a nice man_, whatever it may mean, whether that the man resemble a pudding or something more nice, conveys the offensive notion that they are ready to eat him up! When I was a boy, it was an age of _bon ton_; this _good tone_ mysteriously conveyed a sublime idea of fashion; the term, imported late in the eighteenth century, closed with it. _Twaddle_ for a while succeeded _bore_; but _bore_ has recovered the supremacy. We want another Swift to give a new edition of his "Polite Conversation." A dictionary of barbarisms too might be collected from some wretched neologists, whose pens are now at work! Lord Chesterfield, in his exhortations to conform to Johnson's Dictionary, was desirous, however, that the great lexicographer should add as an appendix, "_A neological dictionary_, containing those polite, though perhaps not strictly grammatical, words and phrases commonly used, and sometimes understood by the _beau-monde_."[26] This last phrase was doubtless a contribution! Such a dictionary had already appeared in the French language, drawn up by two caustic critics, who in the _Dictionnaire neologique a l'usage des beaux Esprits du Siecle_ collected together the numerous unlucky inventions of affectation, with their modern authorities! A collection of the fine words and phrases, culled from some very modern poetry, might show the real amount of the favours bestowed on us.

The attempts of neologists are, however, not necessarily to be condemned; and we may join with the commentators of Aulus Gellius, who have lamented the loss of a chapter of which the title only has descended to us. That chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were imagined to have debased.

The true history of men's minds is found in their actions; their wants are indicated by their contrivances; and certain it is that in highly cultivated ages we discover the most refined intellects attempting NEOLOGISMS.[27] It would be a subject of great curiosity to trace the origin of many happy expressions, when, and by whom created. Plato substituted the term _Providence_ for _fate_; and a new system of human affairs arose from a single word. Cicero invented several; to this philosopher we owe the term of _moral_ philosophy, which before his time was called the philosophy of _manners_. But on this subject we are perhaps more interested by the modern than by the ancient languages. Richardson, the painter of the human heart, has coined some expressions to indicate its little secret movements, which are admirable: that great genius merited a higher education and more literary leisure than the life of a printer could afford. Montaigne created some bold expressions, many of which have not survived him; his _incuriosite_, so opposite to curiosity, well describes that state of negligence where we will not learn that of which we are ignorant. With us the word _incurious_ was described by Heylin, 1656, as an unusual word; it has been appropriately adopted by our best writers, although we still want _incuriosity_. Charron invented _etrangete_ unsuccessfully, but which, says a French critic, would be the true substantive of the word _etrange_; our Locke is the solitary instance produced for "foreignness" for "remoteness or want of relation to something." Malherbe borrowed from the Latin, _insidieux_, _securite_, which have been received; but a bolder word, _devouloir_, by which he proposed to express _cesser de vouloir_, has not. A term, however, expressive and precise. Corneille happily introduced _invaincu_ in a verse in the Cid,

Vous etes _invaincu_, mais non pas _invincible_.

Yet this created word by their great poet has not sanctioned this fine distinction among the French, for we are told that it is almost a solitary instance. Balzac was a great inventor of neologisms. _Urbanite_ and _feliciter_ were struck in his mint. "Si le mot _feliciter_ n'est pas francaise, il le sera l'annee qui vient;" so confidently proud was the neologist, and it prospered as well as _urbanite_, of which he says, "Quand l'usage aura muri parmi nous un mot de si mauvais gout, et corrige _l'amertume de la nouveaute_ qui s'y peut trouver, nous nous y accoutumerons comme aux autres que nous avons emprunte de la meme langue." Balzac was, however, too sanguine in some other words; for his _delecter_, his _seriosite_, &c. still retain their "bitterness of novelty."

Menage invented a term of which an equivalent is wanting in our language; "J'ai fait _prosateur_ a l'imitation de l'italien _prosatore_, pour dire un homme qui ecrit en prose." To distinguish a prose from a verse writer, we _once_ had "a proser." Drayton uses it; but this useful distinction has unluckily degenerated, and the current sense is so daily urgent, that the purer sense is irrecoverable.

When D'Albancourt was translating Lucian, he invented in French the words _indolence_ and _indolent_, to describe a momentary languor, rather than that habitual indolence in which sense they are now accepted; and in translating Tacitus, he created the word _turbulemment_; but it did not prosper any more than that of _temporisement_. Segrais invented the word _impardonnable_, which, after having been rejected, was revived, and is equivalent to our expressive _unpardonable_. Moliere ridiculed some neologisms of the _Precieuses_ of his day; but we are too apt to ridicule that which is new, and which we often adopt when it becomes old. Moliere laughed at the term _s'encanailler_, to describe one who assumed the manners of a blackguard; the expressive word has remained in the language. The meaning is disputed as well as the origin is lost of some novel terms. This has happened to a word in daily use--_Fudge_! It is a cant term not in Grose, and only traced by Todd not higher than to Goldsmith. It is, however, no invention of his. In a pamphlet, entitled "Remarks upon the Navy," 1700, the term is declared to have been the name of a certain nautical personage who had lived in the lifetime of the writer. "There was, sir, in our time, one _Captain Fudge_, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill-fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors, when they hear a great lie told, cry out, 'You _fudge_ it!'" It is singular that such an obscure byword among sailors should have become one of the most popular in our familiar style; and not less, that recently at the bar, in a court of law, its precise meaning perplexed plaintiff and defendant and their counsel. I think it does not signify mere lies, but bouncing lies, or rhodomontades.

There are two remarkable French words created by the Abbe de Saint Pierre, who passed his meritorious life in the contemplation of political morality and universal benevolence--_bienfaisance_ and _gloriole_. He invented _gloriole_ as a contemptuous diminutive of _glorie_; to describe that vanity of some egotists, so proud of the small talents which they may have received from nature or from accident. _Bienfaisance_ first appeared in this sentence: "L'Esprit de la vraie religion et le principal but de l'evangile c'est _la bienfaisance_, c'est-a-dire la pratique de la charite envers le prochain." This word was so new, that in the moment of its creation this good man explained its necessity and origin. Complaining that "the word 'charity' is abused by all sorts of Christians in the persecution of their enemies, and even heretics affirm that they are practising Christian charity in persecuting other heretics, I have sought for a term which might convey to us a precise idea of doing good to our neighbours, and I can form none more proper to make myself understood than the term of _bienfaisance_, good-doing. Let those who like, use it; I would only be understood, and it is not equivocal." The happy word was at first criticised, but at length every kind heart found it responded to its own feeling. Some verses from Voltaire, alluding to the political reveries of the good abbe, notice the critical opposition; yet the new word answered to the great rule of Horace.

Certain legislateur, dont la plume feconde
Fit tant de vains projets pour le bien du monde,
Et qui depuis trente ans ecrit pour des ingrats,
Vient de creer un mot qui manque a Vaugelas:
Ce mot est BIENFAISANCE; il me plait, il rassemble
Si le coeur en est cru, bien des vertus ensemble.
Petits grammairiens, grands precepteurs de sots,
Qui pesez la parole et mesurez les mots,
Pareille expression vous semble hazardee,
Mais l'univers entier doit en cherir l'idee!

The French revolutionists, in their rage for innovation, almost barbarised the pure French of the Augustan age of their literature, as they did many things which never before occurred; and sometimes experienced feelings as transitory as they were strange. Their nomenclature was copious; but the revolutionary jargon often shows the danger and the necessity of neologisms. They form an appendix to the Academy Dictionary. Our plain English has served to enrich this odd mixture of philology and politics: _Club_, _clubiste_, _comite_, _jure_, _juge de paix_, blend with their _terrorisme_, _lanterner_, a verb active, _levee en masse_, _noyades_, and the other verb active, _septembriser_, &c. The barbarous term _demoralisation_ is said to have been the invention of the horrid capuchin Chabot; and the remarkable expression of _arriere pensee_ belonged exclusively in its birth to the jesuitic astuteness of the Abbe Sieyes, that political actor, who, in changing sides, never required prompting in his new part!

A new word, the result of much consideration with its author, or a term which, though unknown to the language, conveys a collective assemblage of ideas by a fortunate designation, is a precious contribution of genius; new words should convey new ideas. Swift, living amidst a civil war of pamphlets, when certain writers were regularly employed by one party to draw up replies to the other, created a term not to be found in our dictionaries, but which, by a single stroke, characterises these hirelings; he called them _answer-jobbers_. We have not dropped the fortunate expression from any want of its use, but of perception in our lexicographers. The celebrated Marquis of Lansdowne introduced a useful word, which has of late been warmly adopted in France as well as in England--_to liberalise_; the noun has been drawn out of the verb--for in the marquis's time that was only an abstract conception which is now a sect; and to _liberalise_ was theoretically introduced before the _liberals_ arose.[28] It is curious to observe that as an adjective it had formerly in our language a very opposite meaning to its recent one. It was synonymous with "libertine or licentious;" we have "a _liberal_ villain" and "a most profane and _liberal_ counsellor;" we find one declaring "I have spoken _too liberally_." This is unlucky for the _liberals_, who will not--

Give allowance to our _liberal_ jests
Upon their persons--

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Dr. Priestley employed a forcible, but not an elegant term, to mark the general information which had begun in his day; this he frequently calls "the _spread_ of knowledge." Burke attempted to brand with a new name that set of pert, petulant, sophistical sciolists, whose philosophy the French, since their revolutionary period, have distinguished as _philosophism_, and the philosophers themselves as _philosophistes_. He would have designated them as _literators_, but few exotic words will circulate; new words must be the coinage of our own language to blend with the vernacular idiom. Many new words are still wanted. We have no word by which we could translate the _otium_ of the Latins, the _dillettante_ of the Italians, the _alembique_ of the French, as an epithet to describe that sublimated ingenuity which exhausts the mind, till, like the fusion of the diamond, the intellect itself disappears. A philosopher, in an extensive view of a subject in all its bearings, may convey to us the result of his last considerations by the coinage of a novel and significant expression, as this of Professor Dugald Stewart--_political religionism_. Let me claim the honour of one pure neologism. I ventured to introduce the term of FATHER-LAND to describe our _natale solum_; I have lived to see it adopted by Lord Byron and by Mr. Southey, and the word is now common. A lady has even composed both the words and the air of a song on "Father-land." This energetic expression may therefore be considered as authenticated; and patriotism may stamp it with its glory and its affection. FATHER-LAND is congenial with the language in which we find that other fine expression MOTHER-TONGUE. The patriotic neologism originated with me in Holland, when, in early life, it was my daily pursuit to turn over the glorious history of its independence under the title of _Vaderlandsche Historie_--the history of FATHER-LAND!

If we acknowledge that the creation of some neologisms may sometimes produce the beautiful, the revival of the dead is the more authentic miracle; for a new word must long remain doubtful, but an ancient word happily recovered rests on a basis of permanent strength; it has both novelty and authority. A collection of _picturesque words_, found among our ancient writers, would constitute a precious supplement to the history of our language. Far more expressive than our term of _executioner_ is their solemn one of the _deathsman_; than our _vagabond_, their _scatterling_; than our _idiot_ or _lunatic_, their _moonling_,--a word which, Mr. Gifford observes, should not have been suffered to grow obsolete. Herrick finely describes by the term _pittering_ the peculiar shrill and short cry of the grasshopper: the cry of the grasshopper is pit! pit! pit! quickly repeated. Envy "_dusking_ the lustre" of genius is a verb lost for us, but which gives a more precise expression to the feeling than any other words which we could use.

The late Dr. Boucher, in the prospectus of his proposed Dictionary, did me the honour, then a young writer, to quote an opinion I had formed early in life of the purest source of neology, which is in the _revival of old words_.

Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake!

We have lost many exquisite and picturesque expressions through the dulness of our lexicographers, or by the deficiency in that profounder study of our writers which their labours require far more than they themselves know. The natural graces of our language have been impoverished. The genius that throws its prophetic eye over the language, and the taste that must come from Heaven, no lexicographer imagines are required to accompany him amidst a library of old books!

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Aulus Gellius, lib. i. c. 10.

[20] Instit. lib. i. c. 5.

[21] This verse was corrected by Bentley _procudere nummum_, instead
of _producere nomen_, which the critics agree is one of his happy
conjectures.

[22] Henry Cockeram's curious little "English Dictionarie, or an
Interpretation of hard English words", 12mo, 1631, professes to give
in its first book "the choicest words themselves now in use,
wherewith our language is inriched and become so copious." Many have
not survived, such as the following:--

Acyrologicall An improper speech.
Adacted Driven in by force.
Blandiloquy Flattering speech.
Compaginate To set together that which is broken.
Concessation Loytering.
Delitigate To scold, or chide vehemently.
Depalmate To give one a box on the ear.
Esuriate To hunger.
Strenuitie Activity.

Curiously enough, this author notes some words as those "now out of
use, and onely used of some ancient writers," but which we now
commonly use. Such are the following:--

Abandon To forsake or cast off.
Abate To make lesse, diminish, or take from.

[23] A most striking instance of the change of meaning in a word is
in the old law-term _let_--"without _let_ or hindrance;" meaning
void of all opposition. Hence, "I will _let_ you," meant "I will
hinder you;" and not as we should now think, "I will give you free
leave."

[24] Shakspeare makes "Ancient Pistol" use a new-coined Italian
word, when he speaks of being "better accommodated;" to the great
delight of Justice Shallow, who exclaims, "It comes from
_accommodo_--a good phrase!" And Ben Jonson, in his "Tale of a Tub,"
ridicules Inigo Jones's love of two words he often used:--

----If it _conduce_
To the design, whate'er is _feasible_,
I can express.

[25] The term _pluck_, once only known to the prize-ring, has now
got into use in general conversation, and also into literature, as a
term indicative of ready courage.

[26] Such terms as "_patent_ to the public"--"_normal_
condition"--"_crass_ behaviour," are the inventions of the last few
years.

[27] Shakspeare has a powerfully-composed line in the speech of the
Duke of Burgundy, (_Henry V._ Act v. Sc. 2), when, describing the
fields overgrown with weeds, he exclaims--

----The coulter rusts,
That should _deracinate_ such _savagery_.

[28] The "Quarterly Review" recently marked the word _liberalise_ in
italics as a strange word, undoubtedly not aware of its origin. It
has been lately used by Mr. Dugald Stewart, "to _liberalise_ the
views."--Dissert. 2nd part, p. 138.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS.

In antique furniture we sometimes discover a convenience which long disuse had made us unacquainted with, and are surprised by the aptness which we did not suspect was concealed in its solid forms. We have found the labour of the workmen to have been as admirable as the material itself, which is still resisting the mouldering touch of time among those modern inventions, elegant and unsubstantial, which, often put together with unseasoned wood, are apt to warp and fly into pieces when brought into use. We have found how strength consists in the selection of materials, and that, whenever the substitute is not better than the original, we are losing something in that test of experience, which all things derive from duration.

Be this as it may! I shall not unreasonably await for the artists of our novelties to retrograde into massive greatness, although I cannot avoid reminding them how often they revive the forgotten things of past times! It is well known that many of our novelties were in use by our ancestors! In the history of the human mind there is, indeed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity! and the utility and delightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any of our patent inventions.

By the title of the present article the reader has anticipated the nature of the old furniture to which I allude. I propose to give what, in the style of our times, may be called the Philosophy of Proverbs--a topic which seems virgin. The art of reading proverbs has not, indeed, always been acquired even by some of their admirers; but my observations, like their subject, must be versatile and unconnected; and I must bespeak indulgence for an attempt to illustrate a very curious branch of literature, rather not understood than quite forgotten.

Proverbs have long been in disuse. "A man of fashion," observes Lord Chesterfield, "never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms;" and, since the time his lordship so solemnly interdicted their use, they appear to have withered away under the ban of his anathema. His lordship was little conversant with the history of proverbs, and would unquestionably have smiled on those "men of fashion" of another stamp, who, in the days of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, were great collectors of them; would appeal to them in their conversations, and enforce them in their learned or their statesmanlike correspondence. Few, perhaps, even now, suspect that these neglected fragments of wisdom, which exist among all nations, still offer many interesting objects for the studies of the philosopher and the historian; and for men of the world still open an extensive school of human life and manners.

The home-spun adages, and the rusty "sayed-saws," which remain in the mouths of the people, are adapted to their capacities and their humours. Easily remembered, and readily applied, these are the philosophy of the vulgar, and often more sound than that of their masters! whoever would learn what the people think, and how they feel, must not reject even these as insignificant. The proverbs of the street and of the market, true to nature, and lasting only because they are true, are records that the populace at Athens and at Rome were the same people as at Paris and at London, and as they had before been in the city of Jerusalem!

Proverbs existed before books. The Spaniards date the origin of their _refranes que dicen las viejas tras el fuego_, "sayings of old wives by their firesides," before the existence of any writings in their language, from the circumstance that these are in the old romance or rudest vulgar idiom. The most ancient poem in the Edda, "the sublime speech of Odin," abounds with ancient proverbs, strikingly descriptive of the ancient Scandinavians. Undoubtedly proverbs in the earliest ages long served as the unwritten language of morality, and even of the useful arts; like the oral traditions of the Jews, they floated down from age to age on the lips of successive generations. The name of the first sage who sanctioned the saying would in time be forgotten, while the opinion, the metaphor, or the expression, remained, consecrated into a proverb! Such was the origin of those memorable sentences by which men learnt to think and to speak appositely; they were precepts which no man could contradict, at a time when authority was valued more than opinion, and experience preferred to novelty. The proverbs of a father became the inheritance of a son; the mistress of a family perpetuated hers through her household; the workman condensed some traditional secret of his craft into a proverbial expression. When countries are not yet populous, and property has not yet produced great inequalities in its ranks, every day will show them how "the drunkard and the glutton come to poverty, and drowsiness clothes a man with rags." At such a period he who gave counsel gave wealth.

It might therefore have been decided, _a priori_, that the most homely proverbs would abound in the most ancient writers--and such we find in Hesiod; a poet whose learning was not drawn from books. It could only have been in the agricultural state that this venerable bard could have indicated a state of repose by this rustic proverb:--

[Greek: Pedalion men uper kapnou katadeio]
Hang your plough-beam o'er the hearth!

The envy of rival workmen is as justly described by a reference to the humble manufacturers of earthenware as by the elevated jealousies of the literati and the artists of a more polished age. The famous proverbial verse in Hesiod's Works and Days--

[Greek: Kai kerameus keramei koteei],

is literally, "The potter is hostile to the potter!"

The admonition of the poet to his brother, to prefer a friendly accommodation to a litigious lawsuit, has fixed a paradoxical proverb often applied,--

[Greek: Pleon emisu pantos],
The half is better than the whole!

In the progress of time, the stock of popular proverbs received accessions from the highest sources of human intelligence; as the philosophers of antiquity formed their collections, they increased in "weight and number." Erasmus has pointed out some of these sources, in the responses of oracles; the allegorical symbols of Pythagoras; the verses of the poets; allusions to historical incidents; mythology and apologue; and other recondite origins. Such dissimilar matters, coming from all quarters, were melted down into this vast body of aphoristic knowledge. Those "WORDS OF THE WISE and their DARK SAYINGS," as they are distinguished in that large collection which bears the name of the great Hebrew monarch, at length seem to have required commentaries; for what else can we infer of the enigmatic wisdom of the sages, when the royal paroemiographer classes among their studies, that of "_understanding a proverb and the interpretation_?" This elevated notion of "the dark sayings of the wise" accords with the bold conjecture of their origin which the Stagyrite has thrown out, who considered them as the wrecks of an ancient philosophy which had been lost to mankind by the fatal revolutions of all human things, and that those had been saved from the general ruin by their pithy elegance and their diminutive form; like those marine shells found on the tops of mountains, the relics of the Deluge! Even at a later period, the sage of Cheronea prized them among the most solemn mysteries; and Plutarch has described them in a manner which proverbs may even still merit: "Under the veil of these curious sentences are hid those germs of morals which the masters of philosophy have afterwards developed into so many volumes."

At the highest period of Grecian genius, the tragic and the comic poets introduced into their dramas the proverbial style. St. Paul quotes a line which still remains among the first exercises of our school-pens:--

Evil communications corrupt good manners.

It is a verse found in a fragment of Menander the comic poet:

[Greek: Phtheirousin hethe chresth' homiliai kakai].

As this verse is a proverb, and the apostle, and indeed the highest authority, Jesus himself, consecrates the use of proverbs by their occasional application, it is uncertain whether St. Paul quotes the Grecian poet, or only repeats some popular adage. Proverbs were bright shafts in the Greek and Latin quivers; and when Bentley, by a league of superficial wits, was accused of pedantry for his use of some ancient proverbs, the sturdy critic vindicated his taste by showing that Cicero constantly introduced Greek proverbs into his writings,--that Scaliger and Erasmus loved them, and had formed collections drawn from the stores of antiquity.

Some difficulty has occurred in the definition. Proverbs must be distinguished from proverbial phrases, and from sententious maxims; but as proverbs have many faces, from their miscellaneous nature, the class itself scarcely admits of any definition. When Johnson defined a proverb to be "a short sentence frequently repeated by the people," this definition would not include the most curious ones, which have not always circulated among the populace, nor even belong to them; nor does it designate the vital qualities of a proverb. The pithy quaintness of old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of an exquisite proverb to be _sense, shortness, and salt_. A proverb is distinguished from a maxim or an apophthegm by that brevity which condenses a thought or a metaphor, where one thing is said and another is to be applied. This often produces wit, and that quick pungency which excites surprise, but strikes with conviction; this gives it an epigrammatic turn. George Herbert entitled the small collection which he formed "Jacula Prudentium," Darts or Javelins! something hurled and striking deeply; a characteristic of a proverb which possibly Herbert may have borrowed from a remarkable passage in Plato's dialogue of "Protagoras or the Sophists."

The influence of proverbs over the minds and conversations of a whole people is strikingly illustrated by this philosopher's explanation of the term _to laconise_,--the mode of speech peculiar to the Lacedaemonians. This people affected to appear _unlearned_, and seemed only emulous to excel the rest of the Greeks in fortitude and in military skill. According to Plato's notion, this was really a political artifice, with a view to conceal their pre-eminent wisdom. With the jealousy of a petty state, they attempted to confine their renowned sagacity within themselves, and under their military to hide their contemplative character! The philosopher assures those who in other cities imagined they _laconised_, merely by imitating the severe exercises and the other warlike manners of the Lacedaemonians, that they were grossly deceived; and thus curiously describes the sort of wisdom which this singular people practised.

"If any one wish to converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him, for the most part, apparently despicable in conversation; but afterwards, when a proper opportunity presents itself, this same mean person, like a _skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence_, worthy of attention, _short and contorted_; so that he who converses with him will appear to be in no respect superior to a boy! That _to laconise_, therefore, consists much more in philosophising than in the love of exercise, is understood by some of the present age, and was known to the ancients, they being persuaded that the ability of _uttering such sentences_ as these is the province of a man perfectly learned. The seven sages were emulators, lovers, and disciples of the _Lacedaemonian erudition_. Their wisdom was a thing of this kind, viz. _short sentences uttered by each, and worthy to be remembered_. These men, assembling together, consecrated to Apollo the first fruits of their wisdom; writing in the Temple of Apollo, at Delphi, those sentences which are celebrated by all men, viz. _Know thyself!_ and _Nothing too much!_ But on what account do I mention these things? To show that _the mode of philosophy among the ancients was a certain laconic diction_."[29]

The "laconisms" of the Lacedaemonians evidently partook of the proverbial style: they were, no doubt, often proverbs themselves. The very instances which Plato supplies of this "laconising" are two most venerable proverbs.

All this elevates the science of PROVERBS, and indicates that these abridgments of knowledge convey great results, with a parsimony of words prodigal of sense. They have, therefore, preserved many "a short sentence, NOT repeated by the people."

It is evident, however, that the earliest writings of every people are marked by their most homely, or domestic proverbs; for these were more directly addressed to their wants. Franklin, who may be considered as the founder of a people who were suddenly placed in a stage of civil society which as yet could afford no literature, discovered the philosophical cast of his genius, when he filled his almanacs with proverbs, by the ingenious contrivance of framing them into a connected discourse, delivered by an old man attending an auction. "These proverbs," he tells us, "which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, when their scattered counsels were brought together, made a great impression. They were reprinted in Britain, in a large sheet of paper, and stuck up in houses: and were twice translated in France, and distributed among their poor parishioners." The same occurrence had happened with us ere we became a reading people. Sir Thomas Elyot, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, describing the ornaments of a nobleman's house, among his hangings, and plate, and pictures, notices the engraving of proverbs "on his plate and vessels, which served the guests with a most opportune counsel and comments." Later even than the reign of Elizabeth our ancestors had proverbs always before them, on everything that had room for a piece of advice on it; they had them painted in their tapestries, stamped on the most ordinary utensils, on the blades of their knives,[30] the borders of their plates,[31] and "conned them out of goldsmiths' rings."[32] The usurer, in Robert Greene's "Groat's worth of Wit," compressed all his philosophy into the circle of his ring, having learned sufficient Latin to understand the proverbial motto of "Tu tibi cura!" The husband was reminded of his lordly authority when he only looked into his trencher, one of its learned aphorisms having descended to us,--

The calmest husbands make the stormiest wives.

The English proverbs of the populace, most of which are still in circulation, were collected by old John Heywood.[33] They are arranged by Tusser for "the parlour--the guest's chamber--the hall--table-lessons," &c. Not a small portion of our ancient proverbs were adapted to rural life, when our ancestors lived more than ourselves amidst the works of God, and less among those of men.[34] At this time, one of our old statesmen, in commending the art of compressing a tedious discourse into a few significant phrases, suggested the use of proverbs in diplomatic intercourse, convinced of the great benefit which would result to the negotiators themselves, as well as to others! I give a literary curiosity of this kind. A member of the House of Commons, in the reign of Elizabeth, made a speech entirely composed of the most homely proverbs. The subject was a bill against double payments of book-debts. Knavish tradesmen were then in the habit of swelling out their book-debts with those who took credit, particularly to their younger customers. One of the members who began to speak "for very fear shook," and stood silent. The nervous orator was followed by a blunt and true representative of the famed governor of Barataria, delivering himself thus--"It is now my chance to speak something, and that without humming or hawing. I think this law is a good law. Even reckoning makes long friends. As far goes the penny as the penny's master. _Vigilantibus non dormientibus jura subveniunt._ Pay the reckoning overnight and ye shall not be troubled in the morning. If ready money be _mensura publica_, let every one cut his coat according to his cloth. When his old suit is in the wane, let him stay till that his money bring a new suit in the increase."[35]

Another instance of the use of proverbs among our statesmen occurs in a manuscript letter of Sir Dudley Carlton, written in 1632, on the impeachment of Lord Middlesex, who, he says, is "this day to plead his own cause in the Exchequer-chamber, about an account of four-score thousand pounds laid to his charge. How his lordship sped I know not, but do remember well the French proverb, _Qui mange de l'oy du Roy chiera une plume quarante ans apres_. 'Who eats of the king's goose, will void a feather forty years after!'"

This was the era of proverbs with us; for then they were _spoken_ by all ranks of society. The free use of trivial proverbs got them into disrepute; and as the abuse of a thing raises a just opposition to its practice, a slender wit affecting "a cross humour," published a little volume of "Crossing of Proverbs, Cross-answers, and Cross-humours." He pretends to contradict the most popular ones; but he has not always the genius to strike at amusing paradoxes.[36]

Proverbs were long the favourites of our neighbours; in the splendid and refined court of Louis the Fourteenth they gave rise to an odd invention. They plotted comedies and even fantastical ballets from their subjects. In these Curiosities of Literature I cannot pass by such eccentric inventions unnoticed.

A COMEDY _of proverbs_ is described by the Duke de la Valliere, which was performed in 1634 with prodigious success. He considers that this comedy ought to be ranked among farces; but it is gay, well-written, and curious for containing the best proverbs, which are happily introduced in the dialogue.

A more extraordinary attempt was a BALLET _of proverbs_. Before the opera was established in France, the ancient ballets formed the chief amusement of the court, and Louis the Fourteenth himself joined with the performers. The singular attempt of forming a pantomimical dance out of proverbs is quite French; we have a "ballet des proverbes, danse par le Roi, in 1654." At every proverb the scene changed, and adapted itself to the subject. I shall give two or three of the _entrees_ that we may form some notion of these _capriccios_.

The proverb was---

_Tel menace qui a grand peur._
He threatens who is afraid.

The scene was composed of swaggering scaramouches and some honest cits, who at length beat them off.

At another _entree_ the proverb was--

_L'occasion fait le larron._
Opportunity makes the thief.

Opportunity was acted by le Sieur Beaubrun, but it is difficult to conceive how the real could personify the abstract personage. The thieves were the Duke d'Amville and Monsieur de la Chesnaye.

Another _entree_ was the proverb of--

_Ce qui vient de la flute s'en va au tambour._
What comes by the pipe goes by the tabor.

A loose dissipated officer was performed by le Sieur l'Anglois; the _Pipe_ by St. Aignan, and the _Tabor_ by le Sieur le Comte! In this manner every proverb was _spoken in action_, the whole connected by dialogue. More must have depended on the actors than the poet.[37]

The French long retained this fondness for proverbs; for they still have dramatic compositions entitled _proverbes_, on a more refined plan. Their invention is so recent, that the term is not in their great dictionary of Trevoux. These _proverbes_ are dramas of a single act, invented by Carmontel, who possessed a peculiar vein of humour, but who designed them only for private theatricals. Each _proverb_ furnished a subject for a few scenes, and created a situation powerfully comic: it is a dramatic amusement which does not appear to have reached us, but one which the celebrated Catherine of Russia delighted to compose for her own society.

Among the middle classes of society to this day, we may observe that certain family proverbs are traditionally preserved: the favourite saying of a father is repeated by the sons; and frequently the conduct of a whole generation has been influenced by such domestic proverbs. This may be perceived in many of the mottos of our old nobility, which seem to have originated in some habitual proverb of the founder of the family. In ages when proverbs were most prevalent, such pithy sentences would admirably serve in the ordinary business of life, and lead on to decision, even in its greater exigencies. Orators, by some lucky proverb, without wearying their auditors, would bring conviction home to their bosoms: and great characters would appeal to a proverb, or deliver that which in time by its aptitude became one. When Nero was reproached for the ardour with which he gave himself up to the study of music, he replied to his censurers by the Greek proverb, "An artist lives everywhere." The emperor answered in the spirit of Rousseau's system, that every child should be taught some trade. When Caesar, after anxious deliberation, decided on the passage of the Rubicon (which very event has given rise to a proverb), rousing himself with a start of courage, he committed himself to Fortune, with that proverbial expression on his lips, used by gamesters in desperate play: having passed the Rubicon, he exclaimed, "The die is cast!" The answer of Paulus AEmilius to the relations of his wife, who had remonstrated with him on his determination to separate himself from her against whom no fault could be alleged, has become one of our most familiar proverbs. This hero acknowledged the excellences of his lady; but, requesting them to look on his shoe, which appeared to be well made, he observed, "None of you know where the shoe pinches!" He either used a proverbial phrase, or by its aptness it has become one of the most popular.

There are, indeed, proverbs connected with the characters of eminent men. They were either their favourite ones, or have originated with themselves. Such a collection would form a historical curiosity. To the celebrated Bayard are the French indebted for a military proverb, which some of them still repeat, "_Ce que le gantelet gagne le gorgerin le mange_"--"What the gauntlet gets, the gorget consumes." That reflecting soldier well calculated the profits of a military life, which consumes, in the pomp and waste which are necessary for its maintenance, the slender pay it receives, and even what its rapacity sometimes acquires. The favourite proverb of Erasmus was _Festina lente_!--"Hasten slowly!"[38] He wished it be inscribed wherever it could meet our eyes, on public buildings, and on our rings and seals. One of our own statesmen used a favourite sentence, which has enlarged our stock of national proverbs. Sir Amias Pawlet, when he perceived too much hurry in any business, was accustomed to say, "Stay awhile, to make an end the sooner." Oliver Cromwell's coarse but descriptive proverb conveys the contempt he felt for some of his mean and troublesome coadjutors: "Nits will be lice!" The Italians have a proverb, which has been occasionally applied to certain political personages:--

_Egli e quello che Dio vuole;
E sara quello che Dio vorra!_

He is what God pleases;
He shall be what God wills!