Chapter II: Part 2

And imperfectly as we may apprehend all this, there is an obscure sense, or instinct I might call it, in every one of us, of this truth. We all, whether we have given a distinct account of the matter to ourselves or not, believe that words which we use are not arbitrary and capricious signs, affixed at random to the things which they designate, for which any other might have been substituted as well, but that they stand in a real relation to these. And this sense of the significance of names, that they are, or ought to be,--that in a world of absolute truth they ever would be,--the expression of the innermost character and qualities of the things or persons that bear them, speaks out in various ways, It is reported of Boiardo, author of a poem without which we should probably have never seen the _Orlando Furioso_ of Ariosto, that he was out hunting, when the name Rodomonte presented itself to him as exactly fitting a foremost person of the epic he was composing; and that instantly returning home, he caused all the joy-bells of the village to be rung, to celebrate the happy invention. This story may remind us of another which is told of the greatest French novelist of modern times. A friend of Balzac's, who has written some _Recollections_ of him, tells us that he would sometimes wander for days through the streets of Paris, studying the names over the shops, as being sure that there was a name more appropriate than any other to some character which he had conceived, and hoping to light on it there.

You must all have remarked the amusement and interest which children find in any notable agreement between a name and the person who owns that name, as, for instance, if Mr. Long is tall--or, which naturally takes a still stronger hold upon them, in any manifest contradiction between the name and the name-bearer; if Mr. Strongitharm is a weakling, or Mr. Black an albino: the former striking from a sense of fitness, the latter from one of incongruity. Nor is this a mere childish entertainment. It continues with us through life; and that its roots lie deep is attested by the earnest use which is often made, and that at the most earnest moments of men's lives, of such agreements or disagreements as these. Such use is not un-frequent in Scripture, though it is seldom possible to reproduce it in English, as for instance in the comment of Abigail on her husband Nabal's name: 'As his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him' (i Sam. xxv. 25). And again, 'Call me not Naomi,' exclaims the desolate widow-- 'call me not Naomi [or _pleasantness_]; call me Marah [or _bitterness_], for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.' She cannot endure that the name she bears should so strangely contradict the thing she is. Shakespeare, in like manner, reveals his own profound knowledge of the human heart, when he makes old John of Gaunt, worn with long sickness, and now ready to depart, play with his name, and dwell upon the consent between it and his condition; so that when his royal nephew asks him, 'How is it with aged Gaunt?' he answers,

'Oh, how that name befits my composition, Old _Gaunt_ indeed, and _gaunt_ in being old-- _Gaunt_ am I for the grave, _gaunt_ as the grave--' [Footnote: Ajax, or [Greek: Aias], in the play of Sophocles, which bears his name, does the same with the [Greek: aiai] which lies in that name (422, 423); just as in the _Bacchae_ of Euripides, not Pentheus himself, but others for him, indicate the prophecy of a mighty [Greek: penthos] or grief, which is shut up in his name (367). A tragic writer, less known than Euripides, does the same: [Greek: Pentheus, esomenes sumphoras eponymos]. Eteocles in the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides makes a play of the same kind on the name of Polynices.] with much more in the same fashion; while it is into the mouth of the slight and frivolous king that Shakespeare puts the exclamation of wonder,

'Can sick men play so nicely with their names?' [Footnote: 'Hus' is Bohemian for 'goose' [the two words being in fact cognate forms]; and here we have the explanation of the prophetic utterance of Hus, namely, that in place of one goose, tame and weak of wing, God would send falcons and eagles before long.]

Mark too how, if one is engaged in a controversy or quarrel, and his name imports something good, his adversary will lay hold of the name, will seek to bring out a real contradiction between the name and the bearer of the name, so that he shall appear as one presenting himself under false colours, affecting a merit which he does not really possess. Examples of this abound. There was one Vigilantius in the early Church;--his name might be interpreted 'The Watchful.' He was at issue with St. Jerome about certain vigils; these he thought perilous to Christian morality, while Jerome was a very eager promoter of them; who instantly gave a turn to his name, and proclaimed that he, the enemy of these watches, the partisan of slumber and sloth, should have been not Vigilantius or The Watcher, but 'Dormitantius' or The Sleeper rather. Felix, Bishop of Urgel, a chief champion in the eighth century of the Adoptianist heresy, is constantly 'Infelix' in the writings of his adversary Alcuin. The Spanish peasantry during the Peninsular War would not hear of Bonaparte, but changed the name to 'Malaparte,' as designating far better the perfidious kidnapper of their king and enemy of their independence. It will be seen then that Aeschylus is most true to nature, when in his _Prometheus Bound_ he makes Strength tauntingly to remind Prometheus, or The Prudent, how ill his name and the lot which he has made for himself agreed, bound as he is with adamantine chains to his rock, and bound, as it might seem, for ever. When Napoleon said of Count Lobau, whose proper name was Mouton, 'Mon mouton c'est un lion,' it was the same instinct at work, though working from an opposite point. It made itself felt no less in the bitter irony which gave to the second of the Ptolemies, the brother-murdering king, the title of Philadelphus.

But more frequent still is this hostile use of names, this attempt to place them and their owners in the most intimate connexion, to make, so to speak, the man answerable for his name, where the name does not thus need to be reversed; but may be made as it now is, or with very slightest change, to contain a confession of the ignorance, worthlessness, or futility of the bearer. If it implies, or can be made to imply, anything bad, it is instantly laid hold of as expressing the very truth about him. You know the story of Helen of Greece, whom in two of his 'mighty lines' Marlowe's Faust so magnificently apostrophizes:

'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?'

It is no frigid conceit of the Greek poet, when one passionately denouncing the ruin which she wrought, finds that ruin couched and fore-announced in her name; [Footnote: [Greek: Helenas [=helenaos], helandros, heleptolis], Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 636.] as in English it might be, and has been, reproduced--

'_Hell_ in her name, and heaven in her looks.'

Or take other illustrations. Pope Hildebrand in one of our _Homilies_ is styled 'Brand of Hell,' as setting the world in a blaze; as 'Höllenbrand' he appears constantly in German. Tott and Teuffel were two officers of high rank in the army which Gustavus Adolphus brought with him into Germany. You may imagine how soon those of the other side declared that he had brought 'death' and 'hell' in his train. There were two not inconsiderable persons in the time of our Civil Wars, Vane (not the 'young Vane' of Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets), and Sterry; and one of these, Sterry, was chaplain to the other. Baxter, having occasion to mention them in his profoundly instructive _Narrative of his Life and Times_, and liking neither, cannot forbear to observe, that '_vanity_ and _sterility_ were never more fitly joined together;' and speaks elsewhere of 'the vanity of Vane, and the sterility of Sterry.' This last, let me observe, is an eminently unjust charge, as Baxter himself in a later volume [Footnote: Catholic Theology, pt, 3, p. 107.] has very handsomely acknowledged. [Footnote: A few more examples, in a note, of this contumely of names. Antiochus Epiphanes, or 'the Illustrious,' is for the Jews, whom he so madly attempted to hellenize, Antiochus Epimanes, or 'the Insane.' Cicero, denouncing Verres, the infamous praetor of Sicily, is too skilful a master of the passions to allow the name of the arch-criminal to escape unused. He was indeed Verres, for he _swept_ the province; he was a _sweep-net_ for it (everriculum in provincia); and then presently, giving altogether another turn to his name, Others, he says, might be partial to 'jus verrinum' (which might mean either Verrine law or boar- sauce), but not he. Tiberius Claudius Nero, charged with being a drunkard, becomes in the popular language 'Biberius Caldius Mero.' The controversies of the Church with heretics yield only too abundant a supply, and that upon both sides, of examples of this kind. The 'royal- hearted' Athanasius is 'Satanasius' for the Arians; and some of St. Cyprian's adversaries did not shrink from so foul a perversion of his name as to call him Koprianos, or 'the Dungy.' But then how often is Pelagius declared by the Church Fathers to be a pelagus, a very _ocean_ of wickedness. It was in vain that the Manichaeans changed their master's name from Manes to Manichaeus, that so it might not so nearly resemble the word signifying madness in the Greek (devitantes nomen insaniae, Augustine, _De Haer_. 46); it did not thereby escape. The Waldenses, or Wallenses, were declared by Roman controversialists to be justly so called, as dwelling 'in valle densa,' in the thick valley of darkness and ignorance. Cardinal Clesel was active in setting forward the Roman Catholic reaction in Bohemia with which the dismal tragedy of the Thirty Years' War began. It was a far-fetched and not very happy piece of revenge, when they of the other side took pleasure in spelling his name 'CLesel,' as much as to say, He of the 150 ass-power. Berengar of Tours calls a Pope who had taken sides against him not pontifex, but 'pompifex.' Metrophanes, Patriarch of Constantinople, being counted to have betrayed the interests of the Greek Church, his spiritual mother, at the Council of Florence, saw his name changed by popular hate into 'Metrophonos,' or the 'Matricide.' In the same way of more than one Pope Urbanus it was declared that he would have been better named 'Turbanus' (quasi _turbans_ Ecclesiam). Mahomet appears as 'Bafomet,' influenced perhaps by 'bafa,' a lie, in Provençal. Shechem, a chief city of the heretical Samaritans, becomes 'Sychar,' or city of lies (see John iv. 5), so at least some will have it, on the lips of the hostile Jews; while Toulouse, a very seedplot of heresies, Albigensian and other, in the Middle Ages, is declared by writers of those times to have prophesied no less by its name (Tolosa = tota dolosa). In the same way adversaries of Wiclif traced in his name an abridgement of 'wicked- belief.' Metternich was 'Mitternacht,' or Midnight, for the political reformers of Germany in the last generation. It would be curious to know how often the Sorbonne has been likened to a 'Serbonian' bog; some 'privilegium' declared to be not such indeed, but a 'pravilegium' rather. Baxter complains that the Independents called presbyters 'priestbiters,' Presbyterian ministers not 'divines' but 'dry vines,' and their Assembly men 'Dissembly men.']

Where, on the other hand, it is desired to do a man honour, how gladly, in like manner, is his name seized on, if it in any way bears an honourable significance, or is capable of an honourable interpretation --men finding in that name a presage and prophecy of that which was actually in its bearer. A multitude of examples, many of them very beautiful, might be brought together in this kind. How often, for instance, and with what effect, the name of Stephen, the proto-martyr, that name signifying in Greek 'the Crown,' was taken as a prophetic intimation of the martyr-crown, which it should be given to him, the first in that noble army, to wear. [Footnote: Thus in a sublime Latin hymn by Adam of St. Victor:

Nomen habes _Coronati_;
Te tormenta decet pati
Pro _corona_ gloriae.

Elsewhere the same illustrious hymnologist plays in like manner on the name of St. Vincentius:

Qui _vincentis_ habet nomen
Ex re probat dignum omen
Sui fore nominis;
_Vincens_ terra, _vincens_ mari
Quidquid potest irrogari
Poenae vel formidinis.

In the Bull for the canonization of Sta. Clara, the canonizing Pope does not disdain a similar play upon her name: Clara Claris praeclara meritis, magnae in caelo claritate gloriae, ac in terrâ miraculorum sublimium, clare claret. On these 'prophetic' names in the heathen world see Pott, _Wurzel-Wörterbuch_, vol. ii. part 2, p. 522.]

Irenaeus means in Greek 'the Peaceable'; and early Church writers love to remark how fitly the illustrious Bishop of Lyons bore this name, setting forward as he so earnestly did the peace of the Church, resolved as he was, so far as in him lay, to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. [Footnote: We cannot adduce St. Columba as another example in the same kind, seeing that this name was not his birthright, but one given to him by his scholars for the dove-like gentleness of his character. So indeed we are told; though it must be owned that some of the traits recorded of him in _The Monks of the West_ are not _columbine_ at all.] The Dominicans were well pleased when their name was resolved into 'Domini canes'--the Lord's watchdogs; who, as such, allowed no heresy to appear without at once giving the alarm, and seeking to chase it away. When Ben Jonson praises Shakespeare's 'well-filed lines'--

'In each of which he seems to _shake a lance_
As brandished in the eyes of ignorance'

--he is manifestly playing with his name. Fuller, too, our own Church historian, who played so often upon the names of others, has a play made upon his own in some commendatory verses prefixed to one of his books:

'Thy style is clear and white; thy very name
Speaks pureness, and adds lustre to the frame.'

He plays himself upon it in an epigram which takes the form of a prayer:

'My soul is stainèd with a dusky colour:
Let thy Son be the soap; I'll be the fuller.'

John Careless, whose letters are among the most beautiful in Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, writing to Philpot, exclaims, 'Oh good master Philpot, which art a principal pot indeed, filled with much precious liquor,--oh pot most happy! of the High Potter ordained to honour.'

Herein, in this faith that men's names were true and would come true, in this, and not in any altogether unreasoning superstition, lay the root of the carefulness of the Romans that in the enlisting of soldiers names of good omen, such as Valerius, Salvius, Secundus, should be the first called. Scipio Africanus, reproaching his soldiers after a mutiny, finds an aggravation of their crime in the fact that one with so ill- omened a name as Atrius Umber should have seduced them, and persuaded them to take him for their leader. So strong is the conviction of men that names are powers. Nay, it must have been sometimes thought that the good name might so react on the evil nature that it should not remain evil altogether, but might be induced, in part at least, to conform itself to the designation which it bore. Here we have an explanation of the title Eumenides, or the Well-minded, given to the Furies; of Euxine, or the kind to strangers, to the inhospitable Black Sea, 'stepmother of ships,' as the Greek poet called it; the explanation too of other similar transformations, of the Greek Egesta transformed by the Romans into 'Segesta,' that it might not suggest 'egestas' or penury; [Footnote: [But the form _Segesta_ is probably older than _Egesta_, the Romans here, as in other cases, retaining the original initial _s_, which in Greek is represented generally by the rough, sometimes by the smooth breathing.]] of Epidamnus, which, in like manner seeming too suggestive of 'damnum,' or loss, was changed into 'Dyrrachium'; of Maleventum, which became 'Beneventum'; of Cape Tormentoso, or Stormy Cape, changed into 'Cape of Good Hope'; of the fairies being always respectfully spoken of as 'the good people' in Ireland, even while they are accredited with any amount of mischief; of the dead spoken of alike in Greek and in Latin simply as 'the majority'; of the dying, in Greek liturgies remembered as 'those about to set forward upon a journey'[Footnote: [Greek: oi exodeuontes]]; of the slain in battle designated in German as 'those who remain,' that is, on the field of battle; of [Greek: eulogia], or 'the blessing,' as a name given in modern Greek to the smallpox! We may compare as an example of this same euphemism the famous 'Vixerunt' with which Cicero announced that the conspirators against the Roman State had paid the full penalty of their treason.

Let me observe, before leaving this subject, that not in one passage only, but in passages innumerable, Scripture sets its seal to this significance of names, to the fact that the seeking and the finding of this significance is not a mere play upon the surface of things: it everywhere recognizes the inner band, which ought to connect, and in a world of truth would connect, together the name and the person or thing bearing the name. Scripture sets its seal to this by the weight and solemnity which it everywhere attaches to the imposing of names; this in many instances not being left to hazard, but assumed by God as his own peculiar care. 'Thou shalt call his name Jesus' (Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 31) is of course the most illustrious instance of all; but there is a multitude of other cases in point; names given by God, as that of John to the Baptist; or changed by Him, as Abram's to Abraham (Gen. xvii. 3), Sarai's to Sarah, Hoshea's to Joshua; or new names added by Him to the old, when by some mighty act of faith the man had been lifted out of his old life into a new; as Israel added to Jacob, and Peter to Simon, and Boanerges or Sons of thunder to the two sons of Zebedee (Mark iii. 17). The same feeling is at work elsewhere. A Pope on his election always takes a new name. Or when it is intended to make, for good or for ill, an entire breach with the past, this is one of the means by which it is sought to effect as much (2 Chr. xxxvi. 4; Dan. i. 7). How far this custom reaches, how deep the roots which it casts, is exemplified well in the fact that the West Indian buccaneer makes a like change of name on entering that society of blood. It is in both cases a sort of token that old things have passed away, that all have become new to him.

But we must draw to a close. Enough has been said to attest and to justify the wide-spread faith of men that names are significant, and that things and persons correspond, or ought to correspond, to them. You will not, then, find it a laborious task to persuade your pupils to admit as much. They are prepared to accept, they will be prompt to believe it. And great indeed will be our gains, their gains and ours,-- for teacher and taught will for the most part enrich themselves together,--if, having these treasures of wisdom and knowledge lying round about us, so far more precious than mines of Californian gold, we determine that we will make what portion of them we can our own, that we will ask the words which we use to give an account of themselves, to say whence they are, and whither they tend. Then shall we often rub off the dust and rust from what seemed to us but a common token, which as such we had taken and given a thousand times; but which now we shall perceive to be a precious coin, bearing the 'image and superscription' of the great King: then shall we often stand in surprise and in something of shame, while we behold the great spiritual realities which underlie our common speech, the marvellous truths which we have been witnessing _for_ in our words, but, it may be, witnessing _against_ in our lives. And as you will not find, for so I venture to promise, that this study of words will be a dull one when you undertake it yourselves, as little need you fear that it will prove dull and unattractive, when you seek to make your own gains herein the gains also of those who may be hereafter committed to your charge. Only try your pupils, and mark the kindling of the eye, the lighting up of the countenance, the revival of the flagging attention, with which the humblest lecture upon words, and on the words especially which they are daily using, which are familiar to them in their play or at their church, will be welcomed by them. There is a sense of reality about children which makes them rejoice to discover that there is also a reality about words, that they are not merely arbitrary signs, but living powers; that, to reverse the saying of one of England's 'false prophets,' they may be the fool's counters, but are the wise man's money; not, like the sands of the sea, innumerable disconnected atoms, but growing out of roots, clustering in families, connecting and intertwining themselves with all that men have been doing and thinking and feeling from the beginning of the world till now.

And it is of course our English tongue, out of which mainly we should seek to draw some of the hid treasures which it contains, from which we should endeavour to remove the veil which custom and familiarity have thrown over it. We cannot employ ourselves better. There is nothing that will more help than will this to form an English heart in ourselves and in others. We could scarcely have a single lesson on the growth of our English tongue, we could scarcely follow up one of its significant words, without having unawares a lesson in English history as well, without not merely falling on some curious fact illustrative of our national life, but learning also how the great heart which is beating at the centre of that life was gradually shaped and moulded. We should thus grow too in our sense of connexion with the past, of gratitude and reverence to it; we should rate more highly and thus more truly all which it has bequeathed to us, all that it has made ready to our hands. It was not a small matter for the children of Israel, when they came into Canaan, to enter upon wells which they digged not, and vineyards which they had not planted, and houses which they had not built; but how much vaster a boon, how much more glorious a prerogative, for any one generation to enter upon the inheritance of a language which other generations by their truth and toil have made already a receptacle of choicest treasures, a storehouse of so much unconscious wisdom, a fit organ for expressing the subtlest distinctions, the tenderest sentiments, the largest thoughts, and the loftiest imaginations, which the heart of man has at any time conceived. And that those who have preceded us have gone far to accomplish this for us, I shall rejoice if I am able in any degree to make you feel in the lectures which will follow the present.

LECTURE II.

ON THE POETRY IN WORDS.

I said in my last lecture, or rather I quoted another who had said, that language is fossil poetry. It is true that for us very often this poetry which is bound up in words has in great part or altogether disappeared. We fail to recognize it, partly from long familiarity with it, partly from insufficient knowledge, partly, it may be, from never having had our attention called to it. None have pointed it out to us; we may not ourselves have possessed the means of detecting it; and thus it has come to pass that we have been in close vicinity to this wealth, which yet has not been ours. Margaret has not been for us 'the Pearl,' nor Esther 'the Star,' nor Susanna 'the Lily,' [Footnote: See Jacob Grimm, _Ueber Frauennamen aus Blumen_, in his _Kleinere Schriften_, vol. ii. pp. 366-401; and on the subject of this paragraph more generally, Schleicher, _Die Deutsche Sprache_, p. 115 sqq.] nor Stephen 'the Crown,' nor Albert 'the illustrious in birth.' 'In our ordinary language,' as Montaigne has said, 'there are several excellent phrases and metaphors to be met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is sullied by too common handling; but that takes nothing from the relish to an understanding man, neither does it derogate from the glory of those ancient authors, who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.' We read in one of Molière's most famous comedies of one who was surprised to discover that he had been talking prose all his life without being aware of it. If we knew all, we might be much more surprised to find that we had been talking poetry, without ever having so much as suspected this. For indeed poetry and passion seek to insinuate, and do insinuate themselves everywhere in language; they preside continually at the giving of names; they enshrine and incarnate themselves in these: for 'poetry is the mother tongue of the human race,' as a great German writer has said. My present lecture shall contain a few examples and illustrations, by which I would make the truth of this appear.

'Iliads without a Homer,' some one has called, with a little exaggeration, the beautiful but anonymous ballad poetry of Spain. One may be permitted, perhaps, to push the exaggeration a little further in the same direction, and to apply the same language not merely to a ballad but to a word. For poetry, which is passion and imagination embodying themselves in words, does not necessarily demand a _combination_ of words for this. Of this passion and imagination a single word may be the vehicle. As the sun can image itself alike in a tiny dew-drop or in the mighty ocean, and can do it, though on a different scale, as perfectly in the one as in the other, so the spirit of poetry can dwell in and glorify alike a word and an Iliad. Nothing in language is too small, as nothing is too great, for it to fill with its presence. Everywhere it can find, or, not finding, can make, a shrine for itself, which afterwards it can render translucent and transparent with its own indwelling glory. On every side we are beset with poetry. Popular language is full of it, of words used in an imaginative sense, of things called--and not merely in transient moments of high passion, and in the transfer which at such moments finds place of the image to the thing imaged, but permanently,--by names having immediate reference not to what they are, but to what they are like. All language is in some sort, as one has said, a collection of faded metaphors. [Footnote: Jean Paul: Ist jede Sprache in Rücksicht geistiger Beziehungen ein Wörterbuch erblasster Metaphern. We regret this, while yet it is not wholly matter of regret. Gerber (_Sprache als Kunst_, vol. i. p. 387) urges that language would be quite unmanageable, that the words which we use would be continually clashing with and contradicting one another, if every one of them retained a lively impress of the image on which it originally rested, and recalled this to our mind. His words, somewhat too strongly put, are these: Für den Usus der Sprache, für ihren Verstand und ihre Verständlichkeit ist allerdings das Erblassen ihrer Lautbilder, so dass sie allmählig als blosse Zeichen für Begriffe fungiren, nothwendig. Die Ueberzahl der Bilder würde, wenn sie alle als solche wirkten, nur verwirren und jede klarere Auffassung, wie sie die praktischen Zwecke der Gegenwart fordern, unmöglich machen. Die Bilder würden ausserdem einander zum Theil zerstören, indem sie die Farben verschiedener Sphären zusammenfliessenlassen, und damit für den Verstand nur Unsinn bedeuten.]

Sometimes, indeed, they have not faded at all. Thus at Naples it is the ordinary language to call the lesser storm-waves 'pecore,' or sheep; the larger 'cavalloni,' or big horses. Who that has watched the foaming crests, the white manes, as it were, of the larger billows as they advance in measured order, and rank on rank, into the bay, but will own not merely the fitness, but the grandeur, of this last image? Let me illustrate my meaning more at length by the word 'tribulation.' We all know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know _how_ it means this, and to question 'tribulation' a little closer. It is derived from the Latin 'tribulum,' which was the threshing instrument or harrow, whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks; and 'tribulatio' in its primary signification was the act of this separation. But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat, [Footnote: Triticum itself may be connected with tero, tritus; [so Curtius, _Greek Etym._ No. 239].] he therefore called these sorrows and trials 'tribulations,' threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner. Now in proof of my assertion that a single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf, I will quote, in reference to this very word 'tribulation,' a graceful composition by George Wither, a prolific versifier, and occasionally a poet, of the seventeenth century. You will at once perceive that it is all wrapped up in this word, being from first to last only the explicit unfolding of the image and thought which this word has implicitly given; it is as follows:--

'Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat,
Until the chaff be purgèd from the wheat,
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear.
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth be found, their worth is not so much,
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections
Have threshèd out of us our vain affections;
Till those corruptions which do misbecome us
Are by Thy sacred Spirit winnowed from us;
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures,
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures,
Yea, till His flail upon us He doth lay,
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away;
And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more,
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire;
But then we shall; and that is my desire.'

This deeper religious use of the word 'tribulation' was unknown to classical antiquity, belonging exclusively to the Christian writers; and the fact that the same deepening and elevating of the use of words recurs in a multitude of other, and many of them far more signal, instances, is one well deserving to be followed up. Nothing, I am persuaded, would more mightily convince us of the new power which Christianity proved in the world than to compare the meaning which so many words possessed before its rise, and the deeper meaning which they obtained, so soon as they were assumed as the vehicles of its life, the new thought and feeling enlarging, purifying, and ennobling the very words which they employed. This is a subject which I shall have occasion to touch on more than once in these lectures, but is itself well worthy of, as it would afford ample material for, a volume.

On the suggestion of this word 'tribulation', I will quote two or three words from Coleridge, bearing on the matter in hand. He has said, 'In order to get the full sense of a word, we should first present to our minds the visual image that forms its primary meaning.' What admirable counsel is here! If we would but accustom ourselves to the doing of this, what a vast increase of precision and force would all the language which we speak, and which others speak to us, obtain; how often would that which is now obscure at once become clear; how distinct the limits and boundaries of that which is often now confused and confounded! It is difficult to measure the amount of food for the imagination, as well as gains for the intellect, which the observing of this single rule would afford us. Let me illustrate this by one or two examples. We say of such a man that he is 'desultory.' Do we attach any very distinct meaning to the word? Perhaps not. But get at the image on which 'desultory' rests; take the word to pieces; learn that it is from 'desultor,' [Footnote: Lat. _desultor_ is from _desult_-, the stem of _desultus_, past part, of _desilire_, to leap down.] one who rides two or three horses at once, leaps from one to the other, being never on the back of any one of them long; take, I say, the word thus to pieces, and put it together again, and what a firm and vigorous grasp will you have now of its meaning! A 'desultory' man is one who jumps from one study to another, and never continues for any length of time in one. Again, you speak of a person as 'capricious,' or as full of 'caprices.' But what exactly are caprices? 'Caprice' is from _capra_, a goat. [Footnote: The etymology of _caprice_ has not been discovered yet; the derivation from _capra_ is unsatisfactory, as it does not account for the latter part of the word.] If ever you have watched a goat, you will have observed how sudden, how unexpected, how unaccountable, are the leaps and springs, now forward, now sideward, now upward, in which it indulges. A 'caprice' then is a movement of the mind as unaccountable, as little to be calculated on beforehand, as the springs and bounds of a goat. Is not the word so understood a far more picturesque one than it was before? and is there not some real gain in the vigour and vividness of impression which is in this way obtained? 'Pavaner' is the French equivalent for our verb 'to strut,' 'fourmiller' for our verb 'to swarm.' But is it not a real gain to know further that the one is to strut _as the peacock does_, the other to swarm _as do ants_? There are at the same time, as must be freely owned, investigations, moral no less than material, in which the nearer the words employed approach to an algebraic notation, and the less disturbed or coloured they are by any reminiscences of the ultimate grounds on which they rest, the better they are likely to fulfil the duties assigned to them; but these are exceptions. [Footnote: A French writer, Adanson, in his _Natural History of Senegal_ complains of the misleading character which names so often have, and urges that the only safety is to give to things names which have and can have no meaning at all. His words are worth quoting as a curiosity, if nothing else: L'expérience nous apprend, que la plupart des noms significatifs qu'on a voulu donner à différens objets d'histoire naturelle, sont devenus faux à mesure qu'on a découvert des qualités, des propriétés nouvelles ou contraires à celles qui avaient fait donner ces noms: il faut donc, pour se mettre à l'abri des contradictions, éviter les termes figurés, et même faire en sorte qu'on ne puisse les rapporter à quelque étymologie, a fin que ceux, qui ont la fureur des étymologies, ne soient pas tenus de leur attribuer une idée fausse. II en doit être des noms, comme des coups des jeux de hazard, qui n'ont pour l'ordinaire aucune liaison entre eux: ils seraient d'autant meilleurs qu'ils seraient moins significatifs, moins relatifs à d'autres noms, ou à des choses connues, par ce que l'idée ne se fixant qu'à un seul objet, le saisit beaucoup plus nettement, que lorsqu'elle se lie avec d'autres objets qui y ont du rapport. There is truth in what he says, but the remedy he proposes is worse than the disease.]

The poetry which has been embodied in the names of places, in those names which designate the leading features of outward nature, promontories, mountains, capes, and the like, is very worthy of being elicited and evoked anew, latent as it now has oftentimes become. Nowhere do we so easily forget that names had once a peculiar fitness, which was the occasion of their giving. Colour has often suggested the name, as in the well-known instance of our own 'Albion,'--'the silver- coasted isle,' as Tennyson so beautifully has called it,--which had this name from the white line of cliffs presented by it to those approaching it by the narrow seas. [Footnote: The derivation of the name _Albion_ has not been discovered yet; it is even uncertain whether the word is Indo-European; see Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, p. 200.] 'Himalaya' is 'the abode of snow.' Often, too, shape and configuiation are incorporated in the name, as in 'Trinacria' or 'the three- promontoried land,' which was the Greek name of Sicily; in 'Drepanum' or 'the sickle,' the name which a town on the north-west promontory of the island bore, from the sickle-shaped tongue of land on which it was built. But more striking, as the embodiment of a poetical feeling, is the modern name of the great southern peninsula of Greece. We are all aware that it is called the 'Morea'; but we may not be so well aware from whence that name is derived. It had long been the fashion among ancient geographers to compare the shape of this region to a platane leaf; [Footnote: Strabo, viii. 2; Pliny, H.N. iv. 5; Agathemerus, I.i. p. 15; echein de omoion schaema phullps platanan] and a glance at the map will show that the general outline of that leaf, with its sharply- incised edges, justified the comparison. This, however, had remained merely as a comparison; but at the shifting and changing of names, that went with the breaking up of the old Greek and Roman civilization, the resemblance of this region to a leaf, not now any longer a platane, but a mulberry leaf, appeared so strong, that it exchanged its classic name of Peloponnesus for 'Morea' which embodied men's sense of this resemblance, _morus_ being a mulberry tree in Latin, and _morea_ in Greek. This etymology of 'Morea' has been called in question; [Footnote: By Fallmerayer, _Gesck. der Halbinsel Morea,_ p. 240, sqq. The island of Ceylon, known to the Greeks as Taprobane, and to Milton as well (_P. L._ iv. 75), owed this name to a resemblance which in outline it bore to the leaf of the betel tree. [This is very doubtful.]] but, as it seems to me, on no sufficient grounds. Deducing, as one objector does, 'Morea' from a Slavonic word 'more,' the sea, he finds in this derivation a support for his favourite notion that the modern population of Greece is not descended from the ancient, but consists in far the larger proportion of intrusive Slavonic races. Two mountains near Dublin, which we, keeping in the grocery line, have called the Great and the Little Sugarloaf, are named in Irish 'the Golden Spears.'

In other ways also the names of places will oftentimes embody some poetical aspect under which now or at some former period men learned to regard them. Oftentimes when discoverers come upon a new land they will seize with a firm grasp of the imagination the most striking feature which it presents to their eyes, and permanently embody this in a word. Thus the island of Madeira is now, I believe, nearly bare of wood; but its sides were covered with forests at the time when it was first discovered, and hence the name, 'madeira' in Portuguese having this meaning of wood. [Footnote: [Port. _madeira,_ 'wood,' is the same word as the Lat. _materia_.]] Some have said that the first Spanish discoverers of Florida gave it this name from the rich carpeting of flowers which, at the time when first their eyes beheld it, everywhere covered the soil. [Footnote: The Spanish historian Herrera says that Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida, gave that name to the country for two reasons: first, because it was a land of flowers, secondly, because it was discovered by him on March 27, 1513, Easter Day, which festival was called by the Spaniards, 'Pascua Florida,' or 'Pascua de Flores,' see Herrera's _History_, tr. by Stevens, ii. p. 33, and the _Discovery of Florida_ by R. Hakluyt, ed. by W. B. Rye for the Hakluyt Soc., 1851, introd. p. x.; cp. Larousse (s.v.), and Pierer's _Conversations Lexicon_. It is stated by some authorities that Florida was so called because it was discovered on Palm Sunday; this is due to a mistaken inference from the names for that Sunday--Pascha Florum, Pascha Floridum (Ducange), Pasque Fleurie (Cotgrave); see _Dict. Géog. Univ_., 1884, and Brockhaus.] Surely Florida, as the name passes under our eye, or from our lips, is something more than it was before, when we may thus think of it as the land of flowers. [Footnote: An Italian poet, Fazio degli Uberti, tells us that Florence has its appellation from the same cause:

Poichè era posta in un prato di fiori,
Le denno il nome bello, oude s' ingloria.

It would be instructive to draw together a collection of etymologies which have been woven into verse. These are so little felt to be alien to the spirit of poetry, that they exist in large numbers, and often lend to the poem in which they find a place a charm and interest of their own. In five lines of _Paradise Lost_ Milton introduces four such etymologies, namely, those of the four fabled rivers of hell, though this will sometimes escape the notice of the English reader:

'Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly _hate_,
Sad Acheron of _sorrow_, black and deep,
Cocytus, named of _lamentation_ loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent _fire_ inflame with rage.'

'Virgil, that great master of the proprieties,' as Bishop Pearson has so happily called him, does not shun, but rather loves to introduce them, as witness his etymology of 'Byrsa,' _Aen_. i. 367, 368; v. 59, 63 [but the etymology here is imaginative, the name _Byrsa_ being of Punic, that is of Semitic, origin, and meaning 'a fortress'; compare Heb. _Bozrah_]; of 'Silvius,' _Aen_. vi. 763, 765; of 'Argiletum,' where he is certainly wrong (_Aen_. viii. 345); of 'Latium,' with reference to Saturn having remained _latent_ there (_Aen_. viii. 322; of. Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 238); of 'Laurens' (_Aen_. vii. 63):

Latiumque vocari
Maluit, his quoniam _latuisset_ tutus in oris:

and again of 'Avernus' (=[Greek: aornos], _Aen_. vi. 243); being indeed in this anticipated by Lucretius (vi. 741):

quia sunt avibus contraria cunctis.

Ovid's taste is far from faultless, and his example cannot go for much; but he is always a graceful versifier, and his _Fasti_ swarms with etymologies, correct and incorrect; as of 'Agonalis' (i. 322), of 'Aprilis' (iv. 89), of 'Augustus' (i. 609-614), of 'Februarius' (ii. 19-22), of 'hostia' (i. 336), of 'Janus' (i. 120-127), of 'Junius' (vi. 26), of 'Lemures' (v. 479-484), of 'Lucina' (ii. 449), of 'majestas' (v. 26), of 'Orion' (v. 535), of 'pecunia' (v. 280, 281), of 'senatus' (v. 64), of 'Sulmo'(iv. 79; cf. Silius Italicus, ix. 70); of 'Vesta' (vi. 299), of 'victima' (i. 335); of 'Trinacris' (iv. 420). He has them also elsewhere, as of 'Tomi' (_Trist._ iii. 9, 33). Lucilius, in like manner, gives us the etymology of 'iners': Ut perhibetur iners, _ars_ in quo non erit ulla; Propertius (iv. 2, 3) of 'Vertumnus'; and Lucretius of 'Magnes' (vi. 909).]

The name of Port Natal also embodies a fact which must be of interest to its inhabitants, namely, that this port was discovered on Christmas Day, the _dies natalis_ of our Lord.

Then again what poetry is there, as indeed there ought to be, in the names of flowers! I do not speak of those, the exquisite grace and beauty of whose names is so forced on us that we cannot miss it, such as 'Aaron's rod,' 'angel's eyes,' 'bloody warrior,' 'blue-bell, 'crown imperial,' 'cuckoo-flower,' blossoming as this orchis does when the cuckoo is first heard, [Footnote: In a catalogue of _English Plant Names_ I count thirty in which 'cuckoo' formed a component part.] 'eye- bright,' 'forget-me-not,' 'gilt-cup' (a local name for the butter-cup, drawn from the golden gloss of its petals), 'hearts-ease,' 'herb-of- grace,' 'Jacob's ladder,' 'king-cup,' 'lady's fingers,' 'Lady's smock,' 'Lady's tresses,' 'larkspur,' 'Lent lily,' 'loose-strife,' 'love-in- idleness,' 'Love lies bleeding,' 'maiden-blush,' 'maiden-hair,' 'meadow-sweet,' 'Our Lady's mantle,' 'Our Lady's slipper,' 'queen-of- the-meadows,' 'reine-marguerite,' 'rosemary,' 'snow-flake,' 'Solomon's seal,' 'star of Bethlehem,' 'sun-dew,' 'sweet Alison,' 'sweet Cicely,' 'sweet William,' 'Traveller's joy,' 'Venus' looking-glass,' 'Virgin's bower,' and the like; but take 'daisy'; surely this charming little English flower, which has stirred the peculiar affection of English poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth, and received the tribute of their song, [Footnote: 'Fair fall that gentle flower, A golden tuft set in a silver crown,' as Brown exclaims, whose singularly graceful _Pastorals_ should not be suffered to fall altogether to oblivion. In Ward's recent _English Poets_, vol. ii. p. 65, justice has been done to them, and to their rare beauty.] becomes more charming yet, when we know, as Chaucer long ago has told us, that 'daisy' is day's eye, or in its early spelling 'daieseighe,' the eye of day; these are his words:

'That men by reson well it calle may
The _daisie_, or elles the ye of day.'
_Chaucer_, ed. Morris, vol. v. p. 281.

For only consider how much is implied here. To the sun in the heavens this name, eye of day, was naturally first given, and those who transferred the title to our little field flower meant no doubt to liken its inner yellow disk, or shield, to the great golden orb of the sun, and the white florets which encircle this disk to the rays which the sun spreads on all sides around him. What imagination was here, to suggest a comparison such as this, binding together as this does the smallest and the greatest! what a travelling of the poet's eye, with the power which is the privilege of that eye, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, and of linking both together. So too, call up before your mind's eye the 'lavish gold' of the drooping laburnum when in flower, and you will recognize the poetry of the title, 'the golden rain,' which in German it bears. 'Celandine' does not so clearly tell its own tale; and it is only when you have followed up the [Greek: chelidonion], (swallow-wort), of which 'celandin' is the English representative, that the word will yield up the poetry which is concealed in it.

And then again, what poetry is there often in the names of birds and beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe, long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining, though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even the proportions of the _camel_ with the spotted skin of the _pard_, by a name which should incorporate both these its most prominent features, [Footnote: Varro: Quod erat figura ut camelus, maculis ut panthera; and Horace (Ep. ii. I, 196): Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo.] calling it the 'camelopard.' Nor can we, I think, hesitate to accept that account as the true one, which describes the word as no artificial creation of scientific naturalists, but as bursting extempore from the lips of the common people, who after all are the truest namers, at the first moment when the novel creature was presented to their gaze. 'Cerf-volant,' a name which the French have so happily given to the horned scarabeus, the same which we somewhat less poetically call the 'stag-beetle,' is another example of what may be effected with the old materials, by merely bringing them into new and happy combinations.

You know the appearance of the lizard, and the _star_-like shape of the spots which are sown over its back. Well, in Latin it is called 'stellio,' from _stella_, a star; just as the basilisk had in Greek this name of 'little king' because of the shape as of a _kingly_ crown which the spots on its head might be made by the fancy to assume. Follow up the etymology of 'squirrel,' and you will find that the graceful creature which bears this name has obtained it as being wont to sit under the shadow of its own tail. [Footnote: [The word _squirrel_ is a diminutive of the Greek word for squirrel, [Greek: skiouros], literally 'shadow-tail.']] Need I remind you of our 'goldfinch,' evidently so called from that bright patch of yellow on its wing; our 'kingfisher,' having its name from the royal beauty, the kingly splendour of the plumage with which it is adorned? Some might ask why the stormy petrel, a bird which just skims and floats on the topmost wave, should bear this name? No doubt we have here the French 'pétrel,' or little Peter, and the bird has in its name an allusion to the Apostle Peter, who at his Master's bidding walked for a while on the unquiet surface of an agitated sea. The 'lady-bird' or 'lady-cow' is prettily named, as indeed the whole legend about it is full of grace and fancy [Footnote: [For other names for the 'lady-bird,' and the reference in many of them to God and the Virgin Mary, see Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, p. 694.]]; but a common name which in many of our country parts this creature bears, the 'golden knob,' is prettier still. And indeed in our country dialects there is a wide poetical nomenclature which is well worthy of recognition; thus the shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' or sometimes 'windfanner,' which it popularly bears. [Footnote: In Wallace's _Tropical Nature_ there is a beautiful chapter on humming birds, and the names which in various languages these exquisite little creatures bear.] The amount is very large of curious legendary lore which is everywhere bound up in words, and which they, if duly solicited, will give back to us again. For example, the Greek 'halcyon,' which we have adopted without change, has reference, and wraps up in itself an allusion, to one of the most beautiful and significant legends of heathen antiquity; according to which the sea preserved a perfect calmness for all the period, the fourteen 'halcyon days,' during which this bird was brooding over her nest. The poetry of the name survives, whether the name suggested the legend, or the legend the name. Take again the names of some of our precious stones, as of the topaz, so called, as some said, because men were only able to _conjecture_ ([Greek: topazein]) the position of the cloud-concealed island from which it was brought. [Footnote: Pliny, _H. N._ xxxvii. 32. [But this is only popular etymology: the word can hardly be of Greek origin; see A. S. Palmer, _Folk-Etymology_, p. 589.]]