Chapter XXXIV: Consultations and Confidences (7)

But I hardly dare attempt to tell you of the glory of the great Titian, who seems almost newly revealed, in many _perfect_ works. Nothing can equal the superb style of a portrait of Alfonso of Ferrara; it is like nothing but Nature,--a splendid, dark, manly face and figure, standing and looking thoughtfully at you, or rather, beyond you, caressing in an absent way a little silky dog who puts his paw up to attract his master's notice. The glowing flesh, the superbly painted dress of deep blue with fine arabesques of gold,--the delicate hand lying on the soft, silky hair of the dog, with its turquoise ring on the second joint of one of the fingers,--you can imagine it, can you not? Next him stands Philip II., pale, elegant, and repulsive, in gorgeous armor worn over festal, glittering white satin. Charles V. is on the other side; and I hardly know which of these portraits is the finest as a work of Art, for all are _perfect_. Charles is standing, with a noble dog leaning up against his hand; there is something _simpática_ in his gray eyes, his worn face, and even in his protruding jaw, it is so admirably rendered, and gives such a firm character to the face. His costume is _elegantísimo_, white satin and gold,--with a tissue-of-gold doublet, and a cassock of silver-damask, with great black fur collar and lining, against which is relieved the under-dress; he wears his velvet cap and plume, and a deep emerald satin curtain hangs on his right hand. These portraits are just about as wonderful as any you may remember,--in his best style and in capital condition. But I know you would say that the great portrait of Charles on horseback is more grand. It is a sort of heroic poem; he looks like Sir Galahad, or Chivalry itself, going forth to conquer wrong and violence. His eager, worn face looks out from the helmet so calmly and so steadily, the flash of his armor, which gleams like real metal, the coal-black horse, which comes forward out of the landscape shaking his head-piece of blood-red plumes against the golden sunset sky and champing the golden bit, the grasp of the lance by the noble rider: well, painting can do no more than that. It is history, poetry, and the beauty of Nature recreated by the grand master. An entirely different phase of his character is seen in his Ariadne Asleep surrounded by the Bacchanals. This is full of antique Grecian feeling; and such a subtile, delicious piece of painting! Ariadne is in the foreground, full of warm, breathing life, her arm thrown over her lovely head, and her golden hair falling over the vase of gold and onyx on which she rests; a river of red wine runs through the emerald grass; two beautiful girls have just put by their music and instruments, and one turns her exquisite face toward us to speak to the other reclining on the grass. The one who turns to us is the beauty of the Louvre, or some one very like her, in full Venetian loveliness. In her bosom are one or two violets and a paper with _Titianus_ written on it. The bit of music on the grass has Greek letters. Dancing figures are in the middle of the picture. The fauns stagger under the dark trees, carrying great sumptuous vases of agate and gold. Silenus is asleep on a sunny hill at a distance, and the white sails of the ship with Theseus gleam on the deep-blue sea. There is another called an Offering to Fecundity. It is a crowd of most lovely baby boys, wonderfully painted, frolicking on the green among flowers and fruits. A figure full of action and passion holds up a glass to the statue of the goddess in one corner. The children are kissing each other and carrying about baskets of fruit; these baskets are hung with rich pearls and rubies and gems of all kinds. The green, fresh trees wave against a summer sky, and the work is full of tender, sensitive elegance and love. It shows to me an entirely new side of Titian in its extreme delicacy and sweetness. Nobody can ever speak of a "want of refinement" in Titian, if they thought so before, after seeing these pictures. Then there is the Herodias, the same as the girl in Dresden who holds up the casket,--wonderfully delicate and beautiful; and several other portraits and pictures, which I cannot tell you of, even if you are not already tired. I ought, however, to say that Paul Veronese has a very fine Venus and Adonis here, full of sunlight and summer beauty, and Christ Teaching the Doctors, nobly serious in character and admirable in treatment; also two sketches of Cain and of Vice and Virtue, very full of feeling for his subject. The Cain has his back toward you. His wife and child look up at him entreatingly. There is a fine, solemn horizon with a gleam of twilight. There are several Tintorets, but no favorable specimens,--a portrait is the best. There is also a Giovanni Bellini, which brings back the Venetian altar-pieces, quiet and lovely; and a Giorgione, like the large one in the Louvre, in many ways; a Madonna and Infant, with a fine female Saint and a noble Saint George.

These are some of the glorious treasures which the Spaniards own. If we could only have some of these! or if, while we or our country are committing the sin of coveting the Spanish possessions, we would only covet something worth the having! I confess, I should delight to take away one or two fine jewels of pictures that nobody here would miss.

I had almost forgotten to mention the great Raphael, the "Spasimo." It is in his Roman style, with much that is, to me, forced in the action and expression. The head of Christ, however, is beautiful, and exquisitely drawn. Beside the Spasimo, there is a little picture of the Virgin and Child, with Saint Joseph, in Raphael's early manner, very lovely, and reminding one of the "Staffa" Madonna, at Perugia. It is faint in color, and most charming in careful execution.

Then there are the finest Hemmlings I have ever seen,--finer than those at Munich: lovely Madonnas, meek and saintly; superb adoring Kings, all glowing with cloth-of-gold and velvets and splendid jewels; beautiful quiet landscapes, seen through the arches of the stable; and angels, with wings of dazzling green and crimson. The real love with which these wonderful pictures are caressed by the careful, thoughtful artist makes them most precious. Every little flower is delicately and artistically done, and everything is invested with a sort of sacred reverence by this earnest Pre-Raphaelite. One or two Van Eycks have the same splendor and depth of feeling. These pictures look as if they were painted yesterday, so clear and brilliant are their colors.

It is a pleasant circumstance, that some of the great Venetian pictures in the gallery here were gained for Spain by the judgment and taste of Velasquez. When he went to Italy with a commission from Philip IV., which it must have delighted him to execute, "to buy whatever pictures were for sale that he thought worth purchasing," he spent some time in Venice, and there bought, among other things, the Venus and Adonis of Paul Veronese, and several of the works of Tintoretto. The Titians had come to Spain before, and it was from the study of them, perhaps, that Velasquez learned to paint so well. At any rate, we know what he thought of Titian; for Mr. Sterling gives an extract from a poem by a Venetian, Marco Boschini, which was published not long after Velasquez's journey to Italy, in which part of a conversation is given between him and Salvator Rosa, who asked him what he thought of Raphael. You will like to see it, if you have not Sterling by you.

"Lu storse el cao cirimoniosamente, E disse: 'Rafael (a dirve el vero, Piasendome esser libero e sinciero) Stago per dir che nol me piase niente.'

"'Tanto che,' replichè quela persona, 'Co' no ve piase questo gran Pitor, In Italia nissun ve dà in l' umor, Perche nu ghe donemo la corona.'

"Don Diego replichè con tal maniera: 'A Venetia se trova el bon e 'l belo; Mi dago el primo luogo a quel penelo; Tician xè quel che porta la bandiera.'"

Here is a translation:--

The master, with a ceremonious air, Bowed, and then said, "Raphael, truth to tell, For to be free and honest suits me well, Pleases me not at all, I must declare."

"Since, then," replied the other, "you so frown On this great painter, in Italy is none By whom, indeed, your favor can be won; For upon him we all bestow the crown."

Don Diego thereupon to him replies, "At Venice may be found the good and fair; I give the first place to the pencil there; Titian is he who carries off the prize."

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

1. _Dictionary of Americanisms_. A Glossary of Words and Phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States. By JOHN RUSSELL BARTLETT. Second Edition, greatly improved and enlarged. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1859. pp. xxxii., 524.

2. _A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth Century_. By HERBERT COLERIDGE. London: Trübner & Company. 1859. pp. iv., 104.

3. _Outlines of the History of the English Language_, for the Use of the Junior Classes in Colleges and the Higher Classes in Schools. By GEORGE L. CRAIK, Professor of History and of English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. Third Edition, revised and improved. London: Chapman & Hall. 1859. pp. xii., 148.

4. _The Vulgar Tongue_. A Glossary of Slang, Cant, and Flash Phrases, used in London from 1839 to 1859; Flash Songs, Essays on Flash, and a Bibliography of Canting and Slang Literature. By DUCANGE ANGLICUS. Second Edition, improved and much enlarged. London: Bernard Quaritch. 1859. pp. 80.

5. _A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words_, etc., etc. By a London Antiquary. London: John Camden Holten. 1859. pp. lxxxviii., 160.

6. _On the English Language, Past and Present_. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New Edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Blakeman & Mason. 1859. pp. 238.

7. _A Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in Senses different from their present_. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New York: Redfield. 1859. pp. xi., 218.

8. _Rambles among Words; their Poetry, History, Wisdom_. By WILLIAM SWINTON. New York. Scribner. 1859. pp. 302.

The first allusion we know of to an Americanism is that of Gill, in 1621,--"_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur, ut_ MAIZ _et_ KANOA." Since then, English literature, not without many previous wry faces, has adopted or taken back many words from this side of the water. The more the matter is looked into, the more it appears that we have no peculiar dialect of our own, and that men here, as elsewhere, have modified language or invented phrases to suit their needs. When Dante wrote his "De Vulgari Eloquio," he reckoned nearly a thousand distinct dialects in the Italian peninsula, and, after more than five hundred years, it is said that by far the greater part survive. In England, eighty years ago, the county of every member of Parliament was to be known by his speech; but in "both Englands," as they used to be called, the tendency is toward uniformity.

In spite of the mingling of races and languages in the United States, the speech of the people is more uniform than that of any European nation. This would inevitably follow from our system of common-schools, and the universal reading of newspapers. This has tended to make the common language of talk more bookish, and has thus reacted unfavorably on our literature, giving it sometimes the air of being composed in a dead tongue rather than written from a living one. It gladdens us, we confess, to see how goodly a volume of _Americanisms_ Mr. Bartlett has been enabled to gather, for it shows that our language is alive. It is only from the roots that a language can be refreshed; a dialect that is taught grows more and more pedantic, and becomes at last as unfit a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. This is the danger which our literature has to guard against from the universal Schoolmaster, who wars upon home-bred phrases, and enslaves the mind and memory of his victims, as far as may be, to the best models of English composition,--that is to say, to the writers whose style is faultlessly correct, but has no blood in it. No language, after it has faded into _diction_, none that cannot suck up feeding juices from the mother-earth of a rich common-folk-talk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor of expression does not pass from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips are limbered by downright living interests and by passions in the very throe. Language is the soil of thought; and our own especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow growth of ages, the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living green. There is death in the Dictionary; and where language is limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is straitened also, and we get a _potted_ literature, Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees.

We are thankful to Mr. Bartlett for the onslaught he makes in his Introduction upon the _highfaluting_ style so common among us. But we are rather amused to find him falling so easily into that _Anglo-Saxon_ trap which is the common pitfall of those half-learned men among whom we should be slow to rank him.[A] He says, "The _unfortunate tendency_ to _favor_ the Latin at the _expense_ of the Saxon _element_ of our _language_, which _social_ and _educational causes_ have long _tended_ to foster in the mother _country_, has with us _received_ an _additional_ _impulse_ from the great _admixture_ of _foreigners_ in our _population_." (p. xxxii.) We have underscored the words of Latin origin, and find that they include _all_ the nouns, all the adjectives but two, and three out of five verbs,--one of these last (the auxiliary _have_) being the same in both Latin and Saxon. Speaking of the Bostonians, Mr. Bartlett says, "The great _extent_ to which the _scholars_ of New England have carried the _study_ of the _German language_ and _literature_ for some years back, _added_ to the _very general neglect_ of the old _master-pieces_ of English _composition_, have [has] had the _effect_ of giving to the writings of many of them an _artificial, unidiomatic character_, which has an _inexpressibly unpleasant effect_ to those who are not _habituated_ to it." (p. xxv. We again underscore the un-Saxon words.) Now if there be any short cut to the Anglo-Saxon, it is through the German; and how far the Bostonians deserve the reproach of a neglect of old English masterpieces we do not pretend to say, but the first modern reprint of the best works of Latimer, More, Sidney, Fuller, Selden, Browne, and Feltham was made in Boston, under the care of the late Dr. Alexander Young. We have no wish to defend Boston; we mean only to call Mr. Bartlett's attention to the folly of asking people to write in a dialect which no longer exists. No man can write off-hand a page of Saxon English; no man with pains can write one and hope to be commonly understood. At least let Mr. Bartlett practise what he preaches. When a deputation of wig-makers waited on George III. to protest against the hair-powder-tax, the mob, seeing that one of them wore his own hair, ducked him forthwith in Tower-Ditch,--a very Anglo-Saxon comment on his inconsistency. We should not have noticed these passages in Mr. Bartlett's Introduction, had he not, after eleven years' time to weigh them in, let them remain as they stood in his former edition, of 1848.

In other respects the volume before us greatly betters its forerunner. That contained many words which were rather vulgarisms than provincialisms, and more properly English than American. Almost all these Mr. Bartlett has left out in revising his book. Once or twice, however, he has retained as Americanisms phrases which are proverbial, such as "born in the woods to be scared of an owl," "to carry the foot in the hand," and "hallooing before you're out of the woods." But it will be easier to follow the alphabetical order in our short list of _adversaria_ and comments.

ALEWIFE. We doubt if Mr. Bartlett is right in deriving this from a supposed Indian word _aloof_. At least, Hakluyt speaks of a fish called "old-wives"; and in some other old book of travels we have seen the name derived from the likeness of the fish, with its good, round belly, to the mistress of an alehouse.

BANK-BILL. Is not an Americanism. It is used by Swift, Pope, and Fielding.

BOGUS. Mr. Bartlett quotes a derivation of this word from the name of a certain _Borghese_, said to have been a notorious counterfeiter of bank-notes. But is it not more probably a corruption of _bagasse_, which, as applied to the pressed sugarcane, means simply something worthless? The word originally meant a worthless woman, whence our "baggage" in the same sense.

[Footnote A: This, perhaps, was to be expected; for he calls Dr. Latham's _English Language_ "unquestionably the most valuable work on English philology and grammar--which has yet appeared," (p. xxx., note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second edition of his work, in two volumes, 1855.]

CHAINED-LIGHTNING. More commonly chain-lightning, and certainly not a Western phrase exclusively.

CHEBACCO-BOAT. Mr. Bartlett says, "This word is doubtless a corruption of _Chedabucto_, the name of a bay in Nova Scotia, from which vessels are fitted out for fishing." This is going a great way down East for what could be found nearer. _Chebacco_ is (or was, a century since) the name of a part of Ipswich, Massachusetts.

TO FALL a tree Mr. Bartlett considers a corruption of to _fell_. But, as we have commonly heard the words used, to _fell_ means merely to cut down, while to fall means to make it fall in a given direction.

TO GO UNDER. "To perish. An expression adopted from the figurative language of the Indians by the Western trappers and residents of the prairies." Not the first time that the Indians have had undue credit for poetry. The phrase is undoubtedly a translation of the German _untergehen_ (fig.), to perish.

HAT. "Our Northern women have almost discarded the word _bonnet_, except in _sun-bonnet_, and use the term _hat_ instead. A like fate has befallen the word _gown_, for which both they and their Southern sisters commonly use _frock_ or _dress_." We do not know where Mr. Bartlett draws his Northern line; but in Massachusetts we never heard the word _hat_ or _frock_ used in this sense. They are so used in England, and _hat_ is certainly, _frock_ probably, nearer Anglo-Saxon than _bonnet_ and _gown_.

IMPROVE. Mr. Bartlett quotes Dr. Franklin as saying in 1789, "When I left New England in the year 1723, this word had never been used among us, as far as I know, but in the sense of _ameliorated_ or _made better_, except once in a very old book of Dr. Mather's, entitled _Remarkable Providences_." Dr. Increase Mather's _Providences_ was published in 1684. In 1679 a synod assembled at Boston, and the result of its labors was published in the same year by John Foster, under the title, _Necessity of a Reformation_. On the sixth page we find, "Taverns being for the entertainment of strangers, which, if they were _improved_ to that end only," etc. Oddly enough, our copy of this tract has Dr. Mather's autograph on the title-page. But Mr. Bartlett should have referred to Richardson, who shows that the word had been in use long before with the same meaning.

To INHEAVEN. "A word invented by the Boston transcendentalists." And Mr. Bartlett quotes from Judd's _Margaret_. Mr. Judd was a good scholar, and the word is legitimately compounded, like _ensphere_ and _imparadise_; but he did not invent it. Dante uses the word:--

"Perfetta vita ed alto merto _inciela_
Donna piú su."

LADIES' TRESSES. "The popular name, in the Southern States, for an herb," etc. In the Northern States also. Sometimes _Ladies' Traces_.

LIEFER. "A colloquialism, also used in England." Excellent Anglo-Saxon, and used wherever English is spoken.

LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German. _Laufen_ in some parts of Germany is pronounced _lofen_, and we once heard a German student say to his friend, _Ich lauf'_ (lofe) _hier bis du wiederkehrst_: and he began accordingly to saunter up and down,--in short, to _loaf_ about.

TO MULL. "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotes _Margaret_,--"There has been a pretty considerable _mullin_ going on among the doctors." But _mullin_ here means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived from _mulling wine_. _Mull_, in this sense, is probably a corruption of _mell_, from Old Fr. _mesler_, to mix.

TO BE NOWHERE (in the sense of failure) is not an Americanism, but _Turf_-Slang.

SALLY-LUN, a kind of cake, is English.

TO SAVE, meaning to kill game so as to get it, is not confined to the Far West, but is common to hunters in all parts of the country.

SHEW, for _showed_. Mr. Bartlett calls this the "shibboleth of Bostonians." However this may be, it is simply an archaism, not a vulgarism. _Show_, like _blow, crow, grow,_ seems formerly to have had what is called a strong preterite. _Shew_ is used by Lord Cromwell and Hector Boece.

SLASHES. "Swampy or wet lands overgrown with bushes. Southern and Western." Used also in New York.

SPAN of horses is Dutch (High or Low).

TO WALK SPANISH; to "walk" a boy out of any place by the waistband of his trousers, or by any lower part easily prehensible. N.E. This is, perhaps, as old as Philip and Mary.

TO SPREAD ONE'S SELF is defined by Mr. Bartlett "to exert one's self." It means rather to exert one's self ostentatiously. It is a capital metaphor, derived, we fancy, from the turkey-cock or peacock,--like the Italian _pavoneggiarsi_. We find in the _Tatler_ "spreading her graces in assemblies." This last, however, may be a Gallicism, from _étaler_.

STRAW BAIL. "Worthless bail, bail given by 'men of straw.'" This is surely no Americanism, and we have seen its origin very differently explained, namely, that men willing for a fee to become bail walked in the neighborhood of the courts with straws stuck in their shoes,--though Mr. Bartlett's explanation is ingenious.

SUNFISH. Mr. Bartlett thinks this a corruption; but the resemblance of the fish, as seen in the water, to the ordinary portraits of the sun in almanacs and on tavern-signs seems to us enough to account for the name.

A few phrases occur to us that have escaped Mr. Bartlett.

A CARRY: portage. _Passim_.

CAT-NAP: a short doze. New England.

CHOWDER-HEAD: muddle-brain. New England.

COHEES (accent on the last syllable): term applied to the people of certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the archaic form, _Quo' he_.

TO COTTON TO.

DON' KNOW AS I KNOW: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to acknowledging ignorance.

GANDER-PARTY: a social gathering of men only. New England.

LAP-TEA: where the guests are too many to sit at table. Massachusetts.

LAST OF PEA-TIME: day after fair.

LOSE-LAID (loose-laid): weaver's term, and probably English; means weak-willed. Massachusetts.

MOONGLADE: a beautiful word for the track of moonlight on the water. Massachusetts.

OFF-OX: an unmanageable fellow. New England.

OLD DRIVER: } euphemistic for the OLD SPLIT-FOOT: } Devil.

ONHITCH (unhitch): to pull trigger.

ROTE: sound of the surf before a storm. Used also in England. New England.

SEEM: I can't _seem_ to see, for I can't see. She couldn't _seem_ to be suited, for couldn't be suited.

STATE-HOUSE. This seems an Americanism. Did we invent it, or borrow it from the _Stad-huys_ (town-hall) of New Amsterdam? As an instance of the tendency to uniformity in American usage, we notice that in Massachusetts what has always been the _State-House_ is beginning to be called the _Capitol_. We are sorry for it.

STRIKE: } terms of the game of STRING: } nine-pins.

SWALE: a hollow. New England. English also; see Forby.

TORMENTED: euphemistic, as "not a _tormented_ cent." New England.

WELL-SWEEP.

We have gone through Mr. Bartlett's book with the attention which a work so well done deserves, and are thoroughly impressed with the amount of care and labor to which it bears witness. We have quarrelled with it wherever we could, because it cannot fail to become the standard authority in its department. Its value will increase from year to year. For instance, the Spanish words, in which it is especially rich, are doomed to undergo strange metamorphoses on Anglo-Saxon lips; for it is the instinct of the unlearned to naturalize words as fast as possible, and to compel them to homebred shapes and sounds. There is often an unwitting humor in these perversions,[A] and they are always interesting as showing that it is the nature of man to use words with understanding, however appearances might lead us to an opposite conclusion.

[Footnote A: We remember once hearing a man say of something, that it was written in a "very grand delinquent [grandiloquent] style,"--a phrase certainly not without modern application. We have heard also Angola-Saxons and Angular-Saxons,--the latter, at least, not an unhappy perversion.]

The least satisfactory part of Mr. Bartlett's book is the Appendix, in which he has got together a few proverbs and similes, which, it seems to us, do no kind of justice to the humor and invention of the people. Most of them have no characteristic at all, except coarseness. We hope there is nothing peculiarly American in such examples as these:--"Evil actions, like crushed rotten eggs, stink in the nostrils of all"; and "Vice is a skunk that smells awfully rank when stirred up by the pole of misfortune." These have, beside, an artificial air, and are quite too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always "takes off its coat to it," if we may use a proverbial phrase, left out by Mr. Bartlett. We confess, we looked for something racier and of a more _puckery_ flavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the West,--like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my tea _bar-foot_," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons are good,--but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket in a shirt" (ironical). Almost every county has some good die sinker in language, who mints phrases that pass into the currency of a whole neighborhood. We picked up two such the other day, both of the same coinage. The county-jail (the only stone building where all the dwellings were of wood) was described as "the house whose underpinning comes up to the eaves"; while the place unmentionable to ears polite was "where they don't rake up the fires at night." A man, speaking to us once of a very rocky clearing, said, "Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that farm"; and another, wishing to give us a notion of the thievishness common in a certain village, capped his climax thus:--"Dishonest! why, they have to take in their stone walls o' nights." Any one who has driven over a mountain-stream by one of those bridges made of _slabs_ will feel the force of a term we once heard applied to a parson so shaky in character that no dependence could be placed on him,--"A slab-bridged kind o' feller!" During some very cold weather, a few years ago, we picked a notable saying or two. "The fire don't seem to git no kind o' _purchase_ on the cold." "They say Cap'n M'Clure's gone through the Northwest Passage." "Has? Think likely, and left the door open, too!" Elder Knapp, the once noted itinerant preacher, had a kind of unwashed poetry in him. We heard him say once,--"Do you want to know when a Unitarian" (we think it was) "will get into heaven? When hell's froze over, and he can skate in!" We quote merely for illustration, and do not mean to compare the Elder with Taylor or South.

The element of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of American humor. In Dr. Petri's "Compact Handbook of Foreign Words,"[A] (from which Mr. Bartlett will be surprised to learn that _Hoco-pocos_ is a nickname for the Whig party in the United States,) we are told that the word _humbug_ "is commonly used for the exaggerations of the North-Americans." One would think the dream of Columbus half-fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West the near way to Orientalism, at least of diction. But it seems to us that a great deal of what is set down as mere exaggeration is more fitly to be called intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty in full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw material.[B] By-and-by, perhaps, the world will see it worked up into poem and picture, and Europe, which will be hard-pushed for originality ere long, may thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find Shakspeare exaggerated, because he treated English just as our folk do when they speak of "a steep price," or say that they "freeze to" a thing. The first postulate of an original literature is, that a people use their language as if they owned it. Even Burns contrived to write very poor English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Horace Mann, in one of his Addresses, commented at some length on the beauty of the French phrase _s'orienter_, and called on his young hearers to practise it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out what was "_about east_" and shape his course accordingly. The Germans have a striking proverb; _Was die Gans gedacht, das der Schwan vollbracht_; What the goose but thought, that the swan fullbrought; or, to de-Saxonize it a little, _pace_ Mr. Bartlett, What the goose conceived, that the swan achieved;--and we cannot help thinking, that the life, invention, and vigor shown in our popular speech, and the freedom with which it is shaped to the need of those who wield it, are of the best omen for our having a swan at last.

[Footnote A: _Gedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter_, etc., etc., Leipzig, 1852.]

[Footnote B: Take, for instance, the "negro so black that charcoal made a chalk-mark on him," or the "shingle painted to look so like stone that it sank in water,"--itself overpersuaded by the skill of the painter. We overheard the following dialogue last winter. (Thermometer,--12°.) "Cold, this morning."--"That's _so_. Hear what happened to Joe?"--"No, I didn't."--"Well, the doctors had ben givin' him one thing another with merc'ry in't, and he walked out down to the Post-Office and back, and when he come home he kind o' felt somethin' hard in his boots. Come to pull 'em off, they found a lump o' quicksilver in both on 'em."--"Sho!"--"Fact; it had shrunk clean down through him with the cold." This rapid power of dramatizing a dry fact, of putting it into flesh and blood, and the instantaneous conception of Joe as a human thermometer, seem to us more like the poetical faculty than anything else. It is, at any rate, humor, and not mere quickness of wit,--the deeper, and not the shallower quality. Humor tends always to overplus of expression; wit is mathematically precise. Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had humor; but did he possess it himself? for, if not, he would never find it. Did he always feel the point of what was said to himself? We doubt, because we happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The Captain was walking up and down the _piazza_ of a country tavern while the couch changed horses. A thunderstorm was going on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in condescending to American merit, which is so conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging near, "Pretty heavy thunder, you have here." The other, who had taken his measure at a glance, drawled gravely, "Waal, we _du_, considerin' the number of inhabitants."]

Even persons not otherwise interested in the study of provincialisms will find Mr. Bartlett's book an entertaining one. The passages he quotes in illustration are sometimes strangely comic. Here is one: "To SAVE. To make sure, i.e., to kill game, or an enemy, whether man or beast. _To get_ conveys the same meaning.... The notorious Judge W---- of Texas ... once said in a speech at a barbecue, (after his political opponent had been apologizing for taking a man's life in a duel,)--

"'The gentleman need not make such a fuss about _getting_ such a rascal; everybody knows that I have shot three, and two of them I _saved_.'"

We have but one fault to find with Mr. Bartlett's Dictionary, and that it shares with all other provincial glossaries. No accents are given. No stranger could tell, for example, whether _hacmatack_ should be pronounced hac'matack, hacma'tack, or hacmatack'. The value of Mr. Wright's otherwise excellent dictionary is very much impaired by this neglect. Ignorance of the pronunciation enhances tenfold the difficulty of tracing analogies or detecting corruptions. The title of Mr. Coleridge's volume (the second on our list) is enough to give scholars a notion of its worth. It is the first instalment of the proposed comprehensive English Dictionary of the Philological Society, a work which, when finished, will be beyond measure precious to all students of their mother-tongue. At the end of the volume will be found the Plan of the Society, with minute directions for all those who wish to give their help. Cooperation on this side the water will be gladly welcomed.

Of Dean Trench's two volumes, one is new, and the other a revised edition. No one has done more than he to popularize the study of words, which is only another name for the study of thought. His new book has the same agreeable qualities which marked its forerunners, maintaining an easy conversational level of scholarly gossip and reflection, the middle ground between learning and information for the million. Without great philological attainments, and without any pretence of such, he gives the results of much good reading.

Mr. Craik's book is a compact and handy manual.

The SLANG Dictionaries are both as ill-done as possible, and the author of the smaller one deserves to be put under the pump for taking the name of the illustrious Ducange, one of those megatheria of erudition and industry that we should look on as an extinct species, but for such men as the brothers Grimm. The larger book has the merit of including a bibliography of the subject, for which the author deserves our thanks, though in other respects showing no least qualification for the task he has undertaken. We trust there are not many "London Antiquaries" so ignorant as he. One curious fact we glean from his volume, namely, the currency among the London populace of certain Italian words, chiefly for the smaller pieces of money. What a strident invasion of organ-grinders does this seem to indicate! The author gives them thus: "Oney saltec, a penny; Dooe saltee, twopence; Tray saltee, threepence," etc., and adds, "These numerals, as will be seen, are of mongrel origin,--the French, perhaps, predominating."! He must be the gentleman who, during the Exhibition of 1851, wrote on his door, "No French spoken here." _Dooe saltee_ and _tray saltee_ differ little but in spelling from their Italian originals, _due soldi_ and _tre soldi_. On another page we find _molto cattivo_ transmogrified into "_multee kertever_, very had." Very bad, indeed! For one more good thing beside the Bibliography, we are indebted to the "London Antiquary." In his Introduction he has reprinted the earliest list of _cant_ words in the language, that made by Thomas Harman in Elizabeth's time. We wish we could only feel sure of the accuracy of the reprint. In this list we find already the adjective _rum_ meaning _good, fine_,--a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch word _flunky_ is a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted it into the English of the day. As we believe its origin is still obscure, we venture on a guess at it. French allies brought some words into Scotland that have rooted themselves, like the Edinburgh _gardyloo_. _Flunky_ is defined in Fergusson's glossary as "a better kind of servant." This is an exact definition of the Scotch _hench-man_, the most probable original of which is _haunch-man_ or body-guard. Turn haunch-man into French and you get _flanquier_; corrupt it back into Scotch and you have _flunky_. Whatever liberties we take with French words, the Gauls have their revenge when they take possession of an English one. We once saw an Avis of the police in Paris, regulating _les chiens et les boule dogues_, dogs and bull-dogs.

Vocabularies of vulgarisms are of interest for the archaisms both of language and pronunciation which we find in them. The dictionaries say _coverlet_, as if the word were a diminutive; the rustic persists in the termination _lid_, which points to the French _lit_, bed. On the other hand, he still says _hankercher_, having been taught so by his betters, though they have taken up the final _f_ again. Sewel, in the Introduction to his Dutch Dictionary, 1691, gives _henketsjer_, and Voltaire, forty years later, _hankercher_, as the received pronunciation. Sewel tells us also that the significant _l_ was still sounded in _would_ and _should_, as it still is by the peasantry in many parts of England.

Mr. Swinton's book, the last on our list, is an entertaining one, and gives proof of thought, though sometimes smothered in fine writing. It is written altogether too loosely for a work on philology, one of the exactest of sciences. But we have a graver fault to find with Mr. Swinton, and that is for his neglect to give credit where he is indebted. He seems even desirous to conceal his obligations. The general acknowledgment of his Preface is by no means enough, where the debt is so large. The great merit of Dr. Richardson's Dictionary being the number of illustrative passages he has brought together, it is hardly fair in Mr. Swinton so often to make a show of learning with what he has got at second hand from the lexicographer. Dr. Trench could also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says that _paganus_ means village, who makes _ocula_ the plural of _oculus_, and who supposes that _in petto_ means _in little_, is not qualified to settle Dr. Webster's claims as a philologer, much less to treat him with contempt. The first two blunders we have cited may be slips of the pen or the press, but this cannot be true of the many wrong etymologies into which Mr. Swinton has fallen. We hope that in another edition he will correct these faults, for he shows a power to appreciate ideas which is worth more than mere scholarship, vastly more than the reputation of it among the unscholarly.

_A History and Description of New England, General and Local._ By A. J. COOLIDGE and J. B. MANSFIELD. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Boston: Austin J. Coolidge, 1859. pp. xxv., 1023.

This is a book of great labor, being nothing less in plan than a condensed town-history of New England. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, one is forced to admit that there is very little poetry in American history. It is a record of advances in material prosperity, and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are the _Idea_ which the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales," for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall be convinced that the American Dryasdust suffers from poverty of material. There is no need to remind us of Hawthorne; but he is such a genius as is rare everywhere, and could conjure poetry out of a country meeting-house.

In books of this kind we see evidence of what is called the "enterprise" of our people on every page,--one almost hears the hum of the factory-wheels, as he reads,--but that is all. It is not to be wondered at that foreigners fail to find our country interesting, and that the only good book of American travels is that of De Tocqueville, who deals chiefly with abstract ideas. It is possible to conceive minds so constituted that they may reach before long the end of their interest in the number of shoes, yards of cotton, and the like, which we produce in a year. The only immortal Greek shoemaker is he who had the good luck to be snubbed by Apelles, and Penelope is the only manufacturer in antiquity whose name has come down to us.

One thing in the narrative part of this volume is striking,--the continual recurrence of massacre by the French and Indians. This is something to be borne in mind always by those who would understand the politics of our New England ancestors. We confess that we were surprised, the other day, to see a journal so able and generally so philosophical as the London "Saturday Review" joining in the outcry about the treatment of the Acadians. If our forefathers were ever wise and foreseeing, if they ever showed a capacity for large political views, it is proved by their early perception that the first question to be settled on this continent was, whether its destiny should be shaped by English or Keltic, by Romish or Protestant ideas. By what means they attempted to realize their thought is quite another question. Great events are not settled by sentimentalists, nor history written in milk-and-water. Uninteresting in many ways the Puritans doubtless were, but not in the least _spoony_.

The volume before us contains a vast amount of matter and fulfils honestly what it promises. It tells all that is to be told in the way of fact and statistics. The first settlers, the clergymen, the enterprising citizens, the men of mark,--all their names and dates are to be found here. Of the literary execution of the book we cannot speak highly. The style is of the worst. If a meeting-house is spoken of, it is a "church edifice"; if the Indians set a house on fire, they "apply the torch"; if a man takes to drink, he is seduced by "the intoxicating cup"; even mountains are "located." On page 68, we read that "the pent-up rage that had long heaved the savage bosom, and which had only been _smouldering under the pacific policy of Shurt_, now knew no bounds, and burst forth like the fiery torrent of the volcano"; on the same page, "the impending doom which, like a storm-cloud in the heavens, had overhung with its sable drapery the settlements along the coast, _and Pemaquid in particular._" Of a certain tavern we are told that the daughters of the landlord were "genteel, sprightly, intelligent young ladies, ambitious of display and of setting a rich and elegant table." This is no doubt true, but surely History should sift her tacts with a coarser sieve.

In spite of these faults, the book is one which all New Englanders will find interesting, and we hope that in their second volume the authors will balance their commendable profusion of industry with a corresponding economy of fine writing.

_An Oration, delivered before the Municipal Authorities of the City of Boston, July_ 4, 1850. By GEORGE SUMNER, etc, etc, Boston. 1859. pp. 125.

The opposition in the Common Council to the order (usual on such occasions in Boston) to print the oration of Mr. Sumner, and the series of assaults it has encountered front the administration press, have given it a considerable, though secondary, importance. Intrinsically a performance of great merit, those on whom the weight of his arguments and learning fell disclosed their sense of its power by the anger of their debate and their efforts to repel it.

Its value, as containing a fresh and instructive contribution to the knowledge of our Revolutionary history, derived from original sources of inquiry, explored by Mr. Sumner in person, would alone have rescued from neglect any ordinary Fourth-of-July oration.

The services and aids of Spain, material and moral, pecuniary and diplomatic, to the American Revolutionary cause,--the introduction, through the fortunes of Captain John Lee of Marblehead, of the American question into the policy and polities of Spain,--the effect of the arrival of our National Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, on the fate of that gallant New England cruiser, then detained as a pirate, for his heroic exploits under our infant and unknown flag,--the incidents of vast and varied labor and accomplishment in our behalf, connected with the name and administration of the eminent Spanish minister and statesman, Florida Blanca,--the weaving and spreading out of that network of influences and circumstances, in the toils of which France and Spain entangled Great Britain, until she found herself confronted by much of the physical and all the moral power of the Continent, and from which all extrication was made hopeless, until the American Colonies should be free,--the origin of "the armed neutrality," and the shock it gave to the naval power of England, in the very crisis of the hopes of American liberty,--are presented in a narrative, clear, condensed, and original.

From the aspect of peace and freedom in which our country so happily reposes, going on prospering and increasing, "by confidence in democratic principles, by faith in the people, and by the spirit of mutual forbearance and charity," the orator turns to that Europe to which our fathers there looked for succor, now "echoing to the clang of arms, and hostile legions arrayed for combat."

A tribute to Italy, for the gifts, poured out from her treasures of art, science, medical skill, and political knowledge, of literature and philosophy, to all the uses and adornments of human life, introduces a reference to the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, which are shown to have been based on these great principles:--That all authority over the people emanates from the people,--should return to them at stated intervals,--and that its holders should be accountable to the people for its use. "To those Republics," it is added, "we also owe the practical demonstration of the great truth, that no state can long prosper or exist where intelligent labor is not held in honor, and that labor cannot be honorable where it is not free."

Mr. Sumner's defence of democratic republican ideas,--of the fitness of the European peoples for self-government,--his repulse of those unbelieving theorists who would consign the French and the Italians to the eternal doom of oppression,--are manly, powerful, and unanswerable. His hearty love of genuine democratic principles, as taught by the old republican school of statesmen and philosophers, and his zealous pride of country, which always made him one of the most intensely American, in thought, word, and deed, of all the Americans who have ever sojourned in the Old World, shine forth from every page of the Oration. And in the honest ardor of his defence of the natural and political rights of man, as they were taught by Turgot, by Montesquieu, by Jefferson, not content with declamation or rhetoric, he ploughs deep into the reasoning by which they were demonstrated or defended, and ranges wide over the fields of learning by which they were illustrated. Careful for nothing but for the truth itself, he refutes the errors of a French writer who had charged practical ingratitude on the part of America towards de Beaumarchais, the agent of the first benefactions of France to these Colonies, and arraigns and exposes the historical mistakes of Lord Brougham and of President Fillmore, unfavorable to Republican France and to Continental liberty.

The crimes of Austria are shown to have been made possible by the moral support Austria has received from the government of England. The fruits of the reverses suffered by Hungary, and by other nationalities struggling for independence and popular liberty, are exhibited in the sacrifices since endured by England in the war in the Crimea, and in the embarrassments of the present hour.

Among our own duties and responsibilities to the great and world-wide cause of liberty,--discussed thus far in its relations to Europe,--Mr. Sumner proceeds to present the grand duty we owe, not less to ourselves than to Europe, of giving to the struggling nations an example of government true to the memories of our National Anniversary, and to the fundamental ideas of civil freedom "implied in an independent, but rigidly responsible judiciary, and a complete separation of the legislative and judicial functions."

From Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Marshall, and Story,--to say nothing of English and French jurists,--Mr. Sumner brings authority to define and illustrate the true place of the judicial office in the political system of a free government. And here, fidelity to those principles of liberty he had explained and defended, fidelity to the "good old cause" itself, at home and in the grand forum of the nations, demanded and received the frank avowal, that "a recent scene in the Supreme Court of the United States has shown that Jefferson was no false prophet, and has furnished at the same time a serious warning to all who prefer a government based upon law to either despotism or anarchy."

The clear and sharp, merciless and logical veracity with which he discriminates between the solemn judgment of a tribunal and a stump speech from the bench,--the startling narration of decisions and statutes, practice and precedent, condensed into a few of the closing pages of the Oration, with which the discussion read by Chief Justice Taney in the famous case of Dred Scott is confronted and exposed,--are among the greater merits of this elaborate and able discourse. It must have required of one not in the arena of political strife, who for a large part of his manhood has occupied himself abroad in the studies of an intelligent scholar and a patriotic American, somewhat of self-denial, to throw away the certainty of almost universal cheers for his performance, by incurring the displeasure of some of his audience and many of his countrymen.

It was not, however, in the interest of any opinion of African slavery that the case of Scott was here referred to. It was in the interest of republican liberty everywhere, endangered by all departures in the model republic of the world from fundamental principles of good government, and all the more perilled in proportion to the station, quality, and character of the active offender.

And Mr. Sumner was right. The truth of history, the law of this land, and of all lands where there is any law which marks a boundary between legal right and despotic usurpation, unite to denounce, and will forever condemn, the judicial magistrate whose great name is tarnished and whose "great office" is degraded by this political _pronunciamento_, uttered from the loftiest judicial place in America.

Stripped of verbiage and technicalities, the case is within the humblest comprehension. The chief justice and a majority of his associates held that Dred Scott, who sued his master for his freedom in the Federal court, had been already legally declared to be the slave of that same master by the highest court of the State of Missouri, in which State Scott resided at the time. They held that this decision of the Missouri court was binding on all other tribunals; and that the Federal court had no authority to reverse it, even if wrong.