chapter xxxvii
. verse 36, is the following confusion of ideas:—
Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and _when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses_.
WIT AND HUMOR IN THE BIBLE.
“Shocking!” many a good old saint will cry, at the very thought of it. “The Bible a jest-book! What godless folly shall we have up next?” No, the Bible is not a jest-book. But there is wit in it of the first quality; and a good reason why it should be there. Take a few specimens.
Job, in his thirtieth chapter, is telling how he scorned the low-lived fellows, who pretend to look down on him in his adversities. They are fools. They belong to the long-eared fraternity. Anybody, with less wit, might come out bluntly and call them asses. But Job puts it more deftly (xxx. 7): “Among the bushes they _brayed_; under the _nettles_ they were gathered together.” If that is not wit, there is no such thing as wit. And yet the commentators don’t see it, or won’t see it. They are perfectly wooden when they come to any such gleam of humor.
Take another instance—Elijah’s ridicule of the prophets of Baal. They are clamoring to their god, to help them out of a very awkward predicament. And, while they are at it, the prophet shows them up in a way that must have made the people roar with laughter. The stiff, antiquated style of our English Bible tames down his sallies. Take them in modern phrase. These quack prophets have worked themselves into a perfect desperation, and are capering about on the altar as if they had the St. Vitus’s dance. The scene (I. Kings xviii. 26, 27) wakes up all Elijah’s sense of the ridiculous. “Shout louder! He is a god, you know. Make him hear! Perhaps he is chatting with somebody, or he is off on a hunt, or gone traveling. Or maybe he is taking a nap. Shout away! Wake him up!” Imagine the priests going through their antics on the altar, while Elijah bombards them in this style, at his leisure.
Paul shows a dry humor more than once, as in II. Cor. xii. 13: “Why haven’t you fared as well as the other churches? Ah! there is one grievance—that you haven’t had _me to support_. Pray do not lay it up against me!”
These instances might be multiplied from the Old and New Testaments both. What do they show? That the Bible is, on the whole, a humorous book? Far from it. That religion is a humorous subject—that we are to throw all the wit we can into the treatment of it? No. But they show that the sense of the ludicrous is put into a man by his Maker; that it has its uses, and that we are not to be ashamed of it, or to roll up our eyes in a holy horror of it.
THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT.
The name Old Testament was applied to the books of Moses by St. Paul (II. Cor. iii. 14), inasmuch as the former covenant comprised the whole scheme of the Mosaic revelation, and the history of this is contained in them. The phrase “book of the covenant,” taken from Exod. xxiv. 7, was transferred in the course of time by metonymy to signify the writings themselves. The term New Testament has been in common use since the third century, and was employed by Eusebius in the sense in which it is now applied.
A SCRIPTURAL SUM.
Add to your faith, virtue; And to virtue, knowledge; And to knowledge, temperance: And to temperance, patience; And to patience, godliness; And to godliness, brotherly kindness; And to brotherly kindness, charity.
_The Answer_:—For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.—2 Peter i. 5, 8.
BIBLIOMANCY.
Bibliomancy, or divination by the Bible, had become so common in the fifth century, that several councils were obliged expressly to forbid it, as injurious to religion, and savoring of idolatry.
This kind of divination was named _Sortes Sanctorum_, or _Sortes Sacræ_, Lots of the Saints, or Sacred Lots, and consisted in suddenly opening, or dipping into, the Bible, and regarding the passage that first presented itself to the eye as predicting the future lot of the inquirer. The _Sortes Sanctorum_ had succeeded the _Sortes Homericæ_ and _Sortes Virgilianæ_ of the Pagans; among whom it was customary to take the work of some famous poet, as Homer or Virgil, and write out different verses on separate scrolls, and afterwards draw one of them, or else, opening the book suddenly, consider the first verse that presented itself as a prognostication of future events. Even the vagrant fortune-tellers, like some of the gypsies of our own times, adopted this method of imposing upon the credulity of the ignorant. The nations of the East retain the practice to the present day. The famous usurper, Nadir Shah, twice decided upon besieging cities, by opening at random upon verses of the celebrated poet Hafiz.
This abuse, which was first introduced into the church about the third century, by the superstition of the people, afterwards gained ground through the ignorance of some of the clergy, who permitted prayers to be read in the churches for this very purpose. It was therefore found necessary to ordain in the Council of Vannes, held §A.D.§ 465, “That whoever of the clergy or laity should be detected in the practice of this art should be cast out of the communion of the church.” In 506, the Council of Agde renewed the decree; and in 578, the Council of Auxerre, amongst other kinds of divination, forbade the Lots of the Saints, as they were called, adding, “Let all things be done in the name of the Lord;” but these ordinances did not effectually suppress them, for we find them again noticed and condemned in a capitulary or edict of Charlemagne, in 793. Indeed, all endeavors to banish them from the Christian church appear to have been in vain for ages.
The Name of God.
Tell them I AM, §Jehovah§ said To Moses, while earth heard in dread; And, smitten to the heart, At once, above, beneath, around, All nature, without voice or sound, Replied, O §Lord§! THOU ART! _Christopher Smart, an English Lunatic._
It is singular that the _name of God_ should be spelled with _four letters_ in almost every known language. It is in Latin, Deus; Greek, Zeus; Hebrew, Adon; Syrian, Adad; Arabian, Alla; Persian, Syra; Tartarian, Idga; Egyptian, Aumn, or Zeut; East Indian, Esgi, or Zenl; Japanese, Zain; Turkish, Addi; Scandinavian, Odin; Wallachian, Zenc; Croatian, Doga; Dalmatian, Rogt; Tyrrhenian, Eher; Etrurian, Chur; Margarian, Oese; Swedish, Codd; Irish, Dich; German, Gott; French, Dieu; Spanish, Dios; Peruvian, Lian.
The name _God_ in the Anglo-Saxon language means _good_, and this signification affords singular testimony of the Anglo-Saxon conception of the essence of the Divine Being. He is goodness itself, and the Author of all goodness. Yet the idea of denoting the Deity by a term equivalent to abstract and absolute perfection, striking as it may appear, is perhaps less remarkable than the fact that the word _Man_, used to designate a human being, formerly signified _wickedness_; showing how well aware were its originators that our fallen nature had become identified with sin.
JEHOVAH.
The word _Elohim_, as an appellation of Deity, appears to have been in use before the Hebrews had attained a national existence. That _Jehovah_ is specifically the God of the Hebrews is clear, from the fact that the heathen deities never receive this name; they are always spoken of as _Elohim_. Both the pronunciation and the etymological derivation of the word _Jehovah_ are matters of critical controversy. The Jews of later periods from religious awe abstained from pronouncing it, and whenever it occurred in reading, substituted the word _Adonai_ (my Lord); and it is now generally believed that the sublinear vowel signs attached to the Hebrew tetragrammaton _Jhvh_ belong to the substituted word. Many believe Jahveh to be the original pronunciation. The Hebrew root of the word is believed to be the verb _havah_ or _hayah_, to be; hence its meaning throughout the Scriptures, “the Being,” or “the Everlasting.”
GOD IN SHAKSPEARE.
Michelet (_Jeanne d’Arc_,) speaking of English literature, says that it is “_Sceptique, judaique, satanique_.” In a note he says, “I do not recollect to have seen the word §God§ in Shakspeare. If it is there at all, it is there very rarely, by chance, and without a shadow of religious sentiment.” Mrs. Cowden Clarke, by means of her admirable _Concordance to Shakspeare_, enables us to weigh the truth of this eminent French writer’s remark. The word §God§ occurs in Shakspeare upwards of _one thousand times_, and the word heaven, which is so frequently substituted for the word §God§—more especially in the historical plays—occurs about _eight hundred times_. In the Holy Scriptures, according to Cruden, it occurs about eight hundred times. It is true that the word often occurs in Shakspeare without a reverential sentiment; but M. Michelet says it never occurs with a religious feeling (_un sentiment religieux_.) This statement is almost as erroneous as that regarding the absence of the word. It would be easy for an English scholar to produce from Shakspeare more passages indicative of deep religious feeling than are to be found in any French writer whatever.
THE PARSEE, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN.
A Jew entered a Parsee temple, and beheld the sacred fire. “What!” said he to the priest, “do you worship the fire?”
“Not the fire,” answered the priest: “it is to us an emblem of the sun, and of his genial heat.”
“Do you then worship the sun as your god?” asked the Jew. “Know ye not that this luminary also is but a work of that Almighty Creator?”
“We know it,” replied the priest: “but the uncultivated man requires a sensible sign, in order to form a conception of the Most High. And is not the sun the incomprehensible source of light, an image of that invisible being who blesses and preserves all things?”
“Do your people, then,” rejoined the Israelite, “distinguish the type from the original? They call the sun their god, and, descending even from this to a baser object, they kneel before an earthly flame! Ye amuse the outward but blind the inward eye; and while ye hold to them the earthly, ye draw from them the heavenly light! ‘Thou shalt not make unto thyself any image or any likeness.’”
“How do you name the Supreme Being?” asked the Parsee.
“We call him Jehovah Adonai, that is, the Lord who is, who was, and who will be,” answered the Jew.
“Your appellation is grand and sublime,” said the Parsee; “but it is awful too.”
A Christian then drew nigh, and said,—
“We call him §Father§.”
The Pagan and the Jew looked at each other, and said,—
“Here is at once an image and a reality: it is a word of the heart.”
Therefore they all raised their eyes to heaven, and said, with reverence and love, “§Our Father!§” and they took each by the hand, and all three called one another _brothers_!
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[Illustration: IHS]
§De Nomine Jesu.§
=I= n rebus tantis trina conjunctio mund =I= =E= rigit humanum sensum, laudare venust =E= =S= ola salus nobis, et mundi summa, potesta =S= =V= enit peccati nodum dissolvere fruct =V= =S= umma salus cunctas nituit per secula terra =S=.[9]
Footnote 9:
I n times momentous appeared the world’s triple conjunction, E ncouraging human hearts to shout melodious praises. S ole salvation for us, that power exalted ’bove measure, U nloosed the bonds of sin through the precious atonement. S alvation illumines all earth through ages unceasing.
The letters I. H. S. so conspicuously appended to different portions of Catholic churches, are said to have been designed by St. Bernardine of Sienna, to denote the name and mission of the Saviour. They are to be found in a circle above the principal door of the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross, (_Santa Croce_,) in Florence, and are said to have been put there by the saint on the termination of the plague of 1347, after which they were commonly introduced into churches. The letters have assigned to them the following signification:—
Jesus hominum Salvator—Jesus, the Saviour of men. In hoc salus—In him is salvation.
A maker of playing-cards, which, like missels, were illuminated in those times, was one day remonstrated with by St. Bernardine, upon the sinfulness of his business. The card-maker pleaded the needs of his family. “Well, I will help you,” said the saint, and wrote the letters I. H. S., which he advised the card-maker to paint and gild. The new card “took,” and the saint himself travelled about the country as a poster of these little sacred handbills of the Church.
THE FLOWER OF JESSE.
1520.
There is a flower sprung of a tree, The root of it is called Jesse, A flower of price,— There is none such in Paradise.
Of Lily white and Rose of Ryse, Of Primrose and of Flower-de-Lyse, Of all flowers in my devyce, The flower of Jesse beareth the prize, For most of all To help our souls both great and small.
I praise the flower of good Jesse, Of all the flowers that ever shall be, Uphold the flower of good Jesse, And worship it for aye beautee; For best of all That ever was or ever be shall.
BEAUTIFUL LEGEND.
One day Rabbi Judah and his brethren, the seven pillars of Wisdom, sat in the Court of the Temple, on feast-day, disputing about §REST§. One said that it was to have attained sufficient wealth, yet without sin. The second, that it was fame and praise of all men. The third, that it was the possession of power to rule the State. The fourth, that it consisted only in a happy home. The fifth, that it must be in the old age of one who is rich, powerful, famous, surrounded by children and children’s children. The sixth said that all that were vain, unless a man keep all the ritual law of Moses. And Rabbi Judah, the venerable, the tallest of the brothers, said, “Ye have spoken wisely; but one thing more is necessary. He only can find rest, who to all things addeth this, that he keepeth the tradition of the elders.”
There sat in the Court a fair-haired boy, playing with some lilies in his lap, and, hearing the talk, he dropped them with astonishment from his hands, and looked up—that boy of twelve—and said, “Nay, nay, fathers: he only findeth rest, who loveth his brother as himself, and God with his whole heart and soul. He is greater than fame, and wealth, and power, happier than a happy home, happy without it, better than honored age; he is a law to himself, and above all tradition.” The doctors were astonished. They said, “When Christ cometh, shall He tell us greater things?” And they thanked God, for they said, “The old men are not always wise, yet God be praised, that out of the mouth of this young suckling has His praise become perfect.”
PERSIAN APOLOGUE.
In Sir William Jones’s Persian Grammar may be found the following beautiful story from §Nisami§. Mr. Alger gives a metrical translation in his _Poetry of the East_.
One evening Jesus arrived at the gates of a certain city, and sent his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market-place.
And he saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together, looking at an object on the ground; and he drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter around his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man.
And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence.
“Faugh!” said one, stopping his nose: “it pollutes the air.” “How long,” said another, “shall this foul beast offend our sight?” “Look at his torn hide,” said a third: “one could not even cut a shoe out of it.” “And his ears,” said a fourth, “all draggled and bleeding.” “No doubt,” said a fifth, “he has been hanged for thieving.”
And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, he said, “Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!”
Then the people turned towards him with amazement, and said among themselves, “Who is this? It must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only §HE§ could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog.” And being ashamed, they bowed their heads before him and went each on his way.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
The following description is alleged to be derived from an ancient manuscript sent by Publius Lentulus, President of Judea, to the Senate of Rome:—
“There lives at this time in Judea, a man of singular character, whose name is Jesus Christ. The barbarians esteem him as their prophet; but his followers adore him as the immediate offspring of the immortal God. He is endowed with such unparalleled virtue as to call back the dead from their graves and to heal every kind of disease with a word or a touch. His person is tall and elegantly shaped; his aspect, amiable and reverend; his hair flows in those beauteous shades which no united colors can match, falling in graceful curls below his ears, agreeably couching on his shoulders, and parting on the crown of his head; his dress, that of the sect of Nazarites; his forehead is smooth and large; his cheeks without blemish, and of roseate hue; his nose and mouth are formed with exquisite symmetry; his beard is thick and suitable to the hair of his head, reaching a little below his chin, and parting in the middle below; his eyes are clear, bright, and serene.
“He rebukes with mildness, and invokes with the most tender and persuasive language,—his whole address, whether in word or deed, being elegantly grave, and strictly characteristic of so exalted a being. No man has seen him laugh, but the whole world beholds him weep frequently, and so persuasive are his tears that the whole multitude cannot withhold their tears from joining in sympathy with him. He is moderate, temperate, and wise: in short, whatever the phenomenon may turn out in the end, he seems at present to be a man of excellent beauty and divine perfection, every way surpassing man.”
DEATH-WARRANT OF JESUS CHRIST.
Of the many interesting relics and fragments brought to light by the persevering researches of antiquarians, none could be more interesting to the philanthropist and believer than the following,—to Christians, the most imposing judicial document ever recorded in human annals. It has been thus faithfully transcribed:—
Sentence rendered by Pontius Pilate, acting Governor of Lower Galilee, stating that Jesus of Nazareth shall suffer death on the cross.
In the year seventeen of the Emperor Tiberius Cæsar, and the 27th day of March, the city of the holy Jerusalem—Annas and Caiaphas being priests, sacrificators of the people of God—Pontius Pilate, Governor of Lower Galilee, sitting in the presidential chair of the prætory, condemns Jesus of Nazareth to die on the cross between two thieves, the great and notorious evidence of the people saying:
1. Jesus is a seducer.
2. He is seditious.
3. He is the enemy of the law.
4. He calls himself falsely the Son of God.
5. He calls himself falsely the King of Israel.
6. He entered into the temple followed by a multitude bearing palm branches in their hands.
Orders the first centurion, Quilius Cornelius, to lead him to the place of execution.
Forbids any person whomsoever, either poor or rich, to oppose the death of Jesus Christ.
The witnesses who signed the condemnation of Jesus are—
1. Daniel Robani, a Pharisee.
2. Joannus Robani.
3. Raphael Robani.
4. Capet, a citizen.
Jesus shall go out of the city of Jerusalem by the gate of Struenus.
The foregoing is engraved on a copper plate, on the reverse of which is written, “A similar plate is sent to each tribe.” It was found in an antique marble vase, while excavating in the ancient city of Aquilla, in the kingdom of Naples, in the year 1810, and was discovered by the Commissioners of Arts of the French army. At the expedition of Naples, it was enclosed in a box of ebony and preserved in the sacristy of the Carthusians. The French translation was made by the Commissioners of Arts. The original is in the Hebrew language.
DOUBLE HEXAMETER.
{ nescis } { discis; Si Christum { } nihil est si cætera { { discis } { nescis.
ANTICIPATORY USE OF THE CROSS.
Madame Calderon de la Barca, in her _Life in Mexico_ (_pub. 1843_), says that the symbol of the Cross was known to the Indians before the arrival of Cortez. In the island of Cozumel, near Yucatan, there were several; and in Yucatan[10] itself there was a stone cross. And there an Indian, considered a prophet among his countrymen, had declared that a nation bearing the same as a symbol should arrive from a distant country. More extraordinary still was a temple dedicated to the Holy Cross by the Toltec nation in the city of Cholula. Near Tulansingo there is also a cross engraved on a rock with various characters. In Oajaca there was a cross which the Indians from time immemorial had been accustomed to consider as a divine symbol. By order of Bishop Cervantes it was placed in a chapel in the cathedral. Information concerning its discovery, together with a small cup, cut out of its wood, was sent to Rome to Paul V., who received it on his knees, singing the hymn _Vexilla regis. etc._
Footnote 10:
See also Prescott’s _Conquest of Mexico_, Vol. I. Bk. II. Chap. 4; and Stephens’ _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, Vol. II. Chap. 20.
The Lord’s Prayer.
_The Lord’s Prayer alone is an evidence of the truth of Christianity,—so admirably is that prayer accommodated to all our wants._—§Lord Wellington.§
THY AND US.
The two divisions of the Lord’s Prayer—the former relating to the glory of God, the latter to the wants of man—appear very evident on a slight transposition of the personal pronouns:—
_Thy_ name be hallowed. _Thy_ kingdom come. _Thy_ will be done, &c. _Us_ give this day our daily bread. _Us_ forgive our debts, &c. _Us_ lead not into temptation. _Us_ deliver from evil.
SPIRIT OF THE LORD’S PRAYER.
The spirit of the Lord’s Prayer is beautiful. This form of petition breathes:—
A _filial_ spirit—Father. A _catholic_ spirit—Our Father. A _reverential_ spirit—Hallowed be Thy name. A _missionary_ spirit—Thy kingdom come. An _obedient_ spirit—Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A _dependent_ spirit—Give us this day our daily bread. A _forgiving spirit_—And forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. A _cautious_ spirit—And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. A _confidential_ and _adoring_ spirit—For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
GOTHIC VERSION.
Ulphilas, who lived between the years 310 and 388, was bishop of the Western Goths, and translated the greater part of the Scriptures into the Gothic language. The following is his rendering of the Lord’s Prayer:—
Atta unsar thu in himinam. Weihnai namo thein. Quimai thiudinassus sijaima, swaswe jah weis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim. Jah ni briggais uns in fraistubujai. Ak lausei uns af thamma ubilin, unte theina ist thiudangardi, jah maths, jah wulthus in aiwins. Amen.
METRICAL VERSIONS.
Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come: thy will be done the same In earth and heaven. Give us daily bread; Forgive our sins as others we forgive. Into temptation let us not be led; Deliver us from evil while we live. For kingdom, power, and glory must remain For ever and for ever thine: Amen.
Here the sixty-six words of the original, according to the authorized translation of St. Matthew’s version, are reduced to fifty-nine, though the latter is fully implied in all points except two. “This day” is omitted; but, if anything, the Greek is slightly approached, for ἐπιούσιον refers rather to _to-morrow_ than to _to-day_. The antithesis in “_But_ deliver us” does not appear: if the word deliver be sacrificed, we may read, “But keep us safe.”
The subjoined metrical version of the Prayer is at least two and a half centuries old, and was written for adaptation to music in public worship:—
Our Father which in heaven art, All hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come, On earth thy will be done, Even as the same in heaven is. Give us, O Lord, our daily bread this day: As we forgive our debtors, So forgive our debts, we pray. Into temptation lead us not, From evil make us free: The kingdom, power, and glory thine, Both now and ever be.
The Prayer is commended for its authorship, its efficacy, its perfection, the order of its parts, its brevity, and its necessity.
The following paraphrase, which has been set to music as a duet, is of more recent origin:—
Our Heavenly Father, hear our prayer: Thy name be hallowed everywhere; Thy kingdom come; on earth, thy will, E’en as in heaven, let all fulfill; Give this day’s bread, that we may live; Forgive our sins as we forgive; Help us temptation to withstand; From evil shield us by Thy hand; Now and forever, unto Thee, The kingdom, power, and glory be. Amen.
THE PRAYER ILLUSTRATED.
_Our Father._—Isaiah lxiii. 16.
1. By right of creation. Malachi ii. 10. 2. By bountiful provision. Psalm cxlv. 16. 3. By gracious adoption. Ephesians i. 5.
_Who art in Heaven._—1 Kings viii. 43.
1. The throne of thy glory. Isaiah lxvi. 1. 2. The portion of thy children. 1 Peter i. 4. 3. The temple of thy angels. Isaiah vi. 1.
Hallowed be thy Name.—Psalm cxv. 1.
1. By the thoughts of our hearts. Psalm lxxxvi. 11. 2. By the words of our lips. Psalm li. 15. 3. By the works of our hands. 1 Corinthians x. 31.
_Thy Kingdom come._—Psalm cx. 2.
1. Of Providence to defend us. Psalm xvii. 8. 2. Of grace to refine us. 1 Thessalonians v. 23. 3. Of glory to crown us. Colossians iii. 4.
_Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven._—Acts xxxi. 14.
1. Towards us, without resistance. 1 Samuel iii. 18. 2. By us, without compulsion. Psalm cxix. 36. 3. Universally, without exception. Luke i. 6. 4. Eternally, without declension. Psalm cxix. 93.
_Give us this day our daily bread._
1. Of necessity, for our bodies. Proverbs xxx. 8. 2. Of eternal life, for our souls. John vi. 34.
_And forgive us our trespasses._—Psalm xxv. 11.
1. Against the commands of thy law. 1 John iii. 4. 2. Against the grace of thy gospel. 1 Timothy i. 13.
_As we forgive them that trespass against us._—Matthew vi. 15.
1. By defaming our characters. Matthew v. 11. 2. By embezzling our property. Philemon 18. 3. By abusing our persons. Acts vii. 60.
_And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil._—Matthew xxvi. 41.
1. Of overwhelming afflictions. Psalm cxxx. 1. 2. Of worldly enticements. 1 John ii. 16. 3. Of Satan’s devices. 1 Timothy iii. 7. 4. Of error’s seduction. 1 Timothy vi. 10. 5. Of sinful affections. Romans i. 26.
_For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever._—Jude 25.
1. Thy kingdom governs all. Psalm ciii. 19. 2. Thy power subdues all. Philippians iii. 20, 21. 3. Thy glory is above all. Psalm cxlviii. 13.
_Amen._—Ephesians i. 11.
1. As it is in thy purposes. Isaiah xiv. 27. 2. So is it in thy promises. 2 Corinthians i. 20. 3. So be it in our prayers. Revelation xxii. 20. 4. So shall it be to thy praise. Revelation xix. 4.
ACROSTICAL PARAPHRASE.
§Our§ Lord and King, Who reign’st enthroned on high, §Father§ of Light! mysterious Deity! §Who§ art the great I AM, the last, the first, §Art§ righteous, holy, merciful, and just. §In§ realms of glory, scenes where angels sing, §Heaven§ is the dwelling-place of God our King. §Hallowed§ Thy name, which doth all names transcend, §Be§ Thou adored, our great Almighty Friend; §Thy§ glory shines beyond creation’s bound; §Name§ us ’mong those Thy choicest gifts surround. §Thy§ kingdom towers beyond Thy starry skies; §Kingdom§ Satanic falls, but Thine shall rise. §Come§ let Thine empire, O Thou Holy One, §Thy§ great and everlasting will be done. §Will§ God make known his will, his power display? §Be§ it the work of mortals to obey. §Done§ is the great, the wondrous work of love; §On§ Calvary’s cross he died, but reigns above; §Earth§ bears the record in Thy holy word. §As§ heaven adores Thy love, let earth, O Lord; §It§ shines transcendent in the eternal skies, §Is§ praised in heaven—for man, the Saviour dies. §In§ songs immortal, angels laud his name; §Heaven§ shouts with joy, and saints his love proclaim §Give§ us, O Lord, our food, nor cease to give §Us§ needful food on which our souls may live! §This§ be our boon to-day and days to come, §Day§ without end in our eternal home. §Our§ needy souls supply from day to day; §Daily§ assist and aid us when we pray; §Bread§ though we ask, yet, Lord, Thy blessings lend. §And§ make us grateful when Thy gifts descend. §Forgive§ our sins, which in destruction place §Us§, the vile rebels of a rebel race; §Our§ follies, faults, and trespasses forgive, §Debts§ which we ne’er can pay, nor Thou receive. §As§ we, O Lord, our neighbor’s faults o’erlook, §We§ beg Thou ’d’st blot ours from Thy memory’s book. §Forgive§ our enemies, extend Thy grace §Our§ souls to save, e’en Adam’s guilty race. §Debtors§ to Thee in gratitude and love, §And§ in that duty paid by saints above, §Lead§ us from sin, and in thy mercy raise §Us§ from the tempter and his hellish ways. §Not§ in our own, but in His name who bled, §Into§ Thine ear we pour our every need. §Temptation’s§ fatal charm help us to shun, §But§ may we conquer through Thy conquering Son; §Deliver§ us from all that can annoy §Us§ in this world, and may our souls destroy. §From§ all calamities that man betide, §Evil§ and death, O turn our feet aside,— §For§ we are mortal worms, and cleave to clay,— §Thine§ ’tis to rule, and mortals to obey. §Is§ not thy mercy, Lord, forever free? §The§ whole creation knows no God but Thee. §Kingdom§ and empire in Thy presence fall; §The§ King eternal reigns the King of all. §Power§ is Thine—to Thee be glory given, §And§ be thy name adored by earth and heaven. §The§ praise of saints and angels is Thy own; §Glory§ to Thee, the Everlasting One. §Forever§ be Thy holy name adored. AMEN! Hosannah! blessed be the Lord.
TRIFLING OF BIBLE COMMENTATORS.
Dr. Gill, in his Expository, seriously tells us that the word ABBA read backwards or forwards being the same, may teach us that God is the father of his people in adversity as well as in prosperity.
THE PRAYER ECHOED.
If any be distressed, and fain would gather Some comfort, let him haste unto Our Father. For we of hope and help are quite bereaven Except Thou succor us Who art in heaven. Thou showest mercy, therefore for the same We praise Thee, singing, Hallowed be Thy name. Of all our miseries cast up the sum; Show us thy joys, and let Thy kingdom come. We mortal are, and alter from our birth; Thou constant art; Thy will be done on earth. Thou madest the earth, as well as planets seven, Thy name be blessed here As ’tis in heaven. Nothing we have to use, or debts to pay, Except Thou give it us. Give us this day Wherewith to clothe us, wherewith to be fed, For without Thee we want Our daily bread. We want, but want no faults, for no day passes But we do sin. Forgive us our trespasses. No man from sinning ever free did live Forgive us, Lord, our sins, As we forgive. If we repent our faults, Thou ne’er disdain’st us; We pardon them That trespass against us; Forgive us that is past, a new path tread us; Direct us always in Thy faith, And lead us— Us, Thine own people and Thy chosen nation, Into all truth, but Not into temptation. Thou that of all good graces art the Giver, Suffer us not to wander, But deliver Us from the fierce assaults of world and devil And flesh; so shalt Thou free us From all evil. To these petitions let both church and laymen With one consent of heart and voice, say, Amen.
THE PRAYER IN AN ACROSTIC.
In the following curious composition the initial capitals spell, “My boast is in the glorious Cross of Christ.” The words in _italics_, when read from top to bottom and bottom to top, form the Lord’s Prayer complete:—
Make known the Gospel truths, _Our_ Father King; Yield up thy grace, dear _Father_ from above; Bless us with hearts _which_ feelingly can sing, “Our life thou _art_ for _ever_, God of Love!” Assuage our grief in love _for_ Christ, we pray, Since the bright prince of _Heaven_ and _glory_ died, Took all our sins and _hallowed_ the display, Infinite _be_-ing—first man, and then the crucified. Stupendous God! _thy_ grace and _power_ make known; In Jesus’ _name_ let all _the_ world rejoice. Now all the world _thy_ heavenly _kingdom_ own, The blessed _kingdom_ for thy saints _the_ choice. How vile to _come_ to thee _is_ all our cry, Enemies to _thy_ self and all that’s _thine_, Graceless our _will_, we live _for_ vanity, Lending to sin our _be_-ing, _evil_ in our design. O God, thy will be _done_ _from_ earth to Heaven; Reclining _on_ the Gospel let _us_ live, In _earth_ from sin _deliver_-ed and forgiven, Oh! _as_ thyself _but_ teach us to forgive. Unless _it_’s power _temptation_ doth destroy, Sure _is_ our fall _into_ the depths of woe, Carnal _in_ mind, we’ve _not_ a glimpse of joy Raised against _Heaven_; in _us_ no hope can flow. O _give_ us grace and _lead_ us on thy way; Shine on _us_ with thy love and give _us_ peace; Self and _this_ sin that rise _against_ us slay; Oh! grant each _day_ our _trespass_-es may cease. Forgive _our_ evil deeds _that_ oft we do; Convince us _daily_ of _them_ to our shame; Help us with heavenly _bread_, _forgive_ us, too, Recurrent lusts, _and_ _we_’ll adore thy name. In thy _forgive_-ness we _as_ saints can die, Since for _us_ and our _trespasses_ so high, Thy son, _our_ Saviour, bled on Calvary.
Ecclesiasticæ.
EXCESSIVE CIVILITY.
Tom Brown, in his _Laconics_, says that in the reign of Charles II. a certain worthy divine at Whitehall thus addressed himself to the auditory at the conclusion of his sermon: “In short, if you don’t live up to the precepts of the gospel, but abandon yourselves to your irregular appetites, you must expect to receive your reward in a certain place, which ’tis not good manners to mention here.” This suggested to Pope the couplet,
“To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite.”
SHORT SERMONS.
Dean Swift, having been solicited to preach a charity sermon, mounted the pulpit, and after announcing his text, “He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,” simply said, “Now, my brethren, if you are satisfied with the security, down with the dust.” He then took his seat, and there was an unusually large collection.
* * * * *
The following abridgment contains the pith and marrow, sum and substance, of a sermon which occupied an hour in delivery:—
“Man is born to trouble.” This subject, my hearers, is naturally divisible into four heads:— 1. Man’s entrance into the world; 2. His progress through the world; 3. His exit from the world; and 4. Practical reflections from what may be said. First, then:— 1. Man’s ingress in life is naked and bare, 2. His progress through life is trouble and care, 3. His egress from it, none can tell where, 4. But doing well here, he will be well there. Now, on this subject, my brethren dear, I could not tell more by preaching a year.
A SERMON ON MALT.
The Rev. Dr. Dodd lived within a few miles of Cambridge, (England,) and had offended several students by preaching a sermon on temperance. One day some of them met him. They said one to another,—
“Here’s Father Dodd: he shall preach us a sermon.” Accosting him with,—
“Your servants.”
“Sirs! yours, gentlemen!” replied the Doctor.
They said, “We have a favor to ask of you, which _must_ be granted.” The divine asked what it was.
“To preach a sermon,” was the reply.
“Well,” said he, “appoint the time and place, and I will.”
“The time, the present; the place, that hollow tree,” (pointing to it,) said the students.
“’Tis an imposition!” said the Doctor: “there ought to be consideration before preaching.”
“If you refuse,” responded they, “we will put you into the tree!” Whereupon the Doctor acquiesced, and asked them for a text.
“Malt!” said they.
The reverend gentleman commenced:—
“Let me crave your attention, my beloved!
“I am a little man, come at a short warning, to preach a short sermon, upon a short subject, to a thin congregation, in an unworthy pulpit. Beloved! my text is ‘§Malt§.’ I cannot divide it into syllables, it being but a monosyllable: therefore I must divide it into letters, which I find in my text to be four:—§M-a-l-t.§ M, my beloved, is _moral_—A, is _allegorical_—L, is _literal_—T, is _theological_.
“1st. The moral teaches such as you drunkards good manners; therefore M, my masters—A, all of you—L, leave off—T, tippling.
“2d. The allegorical is, when one thing is spoken and another meant; the thing here spoken is Malt, the thing meant the oil of malt, which _you_ rustics make M, your masters—A, your apparel—L, your liberty—T, your trusts.
“3d. The theological is according to the effects it works, which are of two kinds—the first in this world, the second in the world to come. The effects it works in this world are, _in some_, M, murder—in others, A, adultery—_in all_, L, looseness of life—and _particularly in some_, T, treason. In the world to come, the effects of it are, M, misery—A, anguish—L, lamentation—T, torment—and thus much for my text, ‘Malt.’
“Infer 1st: As words of exhortation: M, my masters—A, all of you—L, leave off—T, tippling.
“2d. A word for conviction: M, my masters—A, all of you—L, look for—T, torment.
“3d. A word for caution, take this: A drunkard is the annoyance of modesty—the spoiler of civility—the destroyer of reason—the brewer’s agent—the alewife’s benefactor—his wife’s sorrow—his children’s trouble—his neighbor’s scoff—a walking swill-tub—a picture of a beast—a monster of a man.”
The youngsters found the truth so unpalatable, that they soon deserted their preacher, glad to get beyond the reach of his voice.
ELOQUENCE OF BASCOM.
The following passages will serve to illustrate the peculiar oratorical style of Rev. Henry B. Bascom, the distinguished Kentucky preacher:—
“Chemistry, with its fire-tongs of the galvanic battery, teaches that the starry diamond in the crown of kings, and the black carbon which the peasant treads beneath his feet, are both composed of the same identical elements; analysis also proves that a chief ingredient in limestone is carbon. Then let the burning breath of God pass over all the limestone of the earth, and bid its old mossy layers crystalize into new beauty; and lo! at the Almighty _fiat_ the mountain ranges flash into living gems with a lustre that renders midnight noon, and eclipses all the stars!”
He urged the same view by another example, still better adapted to popular apprehension:—
“Look yonder,” said the impassioned orator, pointing a motionless finger towards the lofty ceiling, as if it were the sky. “See that wrathful thunder-cloud—the fiery bed of the lightnings and hissing hail—the cradle of tempests and floods!—What can be more dark, more dreary, more dreadful? Say, scoffing skeptic, is it capable of any beauty? You pronounce, ‘no.’ Well, very well; but behold, while the sneering denial curls your proud lips, the sun with its sword of light shears through the sea of vapors in the west, and laughs in your incredulous face with his fine golden eye. Now, look again at the thunder-cloud! See! where it was blackest and fullest of gloom, the sunbeams have kissed its hideous cheek; and where the kiss fell there is now a blush, brighter than ever mantled on the brow of mortal maiden—the rich blush of crimson and gold, of purple and vermilion—a pictured blush, fit for the gaze of angels—the flower-work of pencils of fire and light, wrought at a dash by one stroke of the right hand of God! Ay, the ugly cloud hath given birth to the rainbow, that perfection and symbol of unspeakable beauty!”
THE LORD BISHOP.
The following incident is said to have occurred in the parish church of Bradford, England, during a special service, on the occasion of a visit from the bishop of the diocese:—
The clerk, before the sermon, gave out the psalm in broad Wiltshire dialect, namely:—“Let us zing to the praayze an’ glawry o’ God, three varsses o’ the hundred and vourteen zaam—a varsion ’specially ’dapted to the ’caasion,—by meself:”—
Why hop ye zo, ye little hills, An’ what var de’e skip? Is it ’cas you’m proud to see His grace the Lard Bish_ip_?
Why skip ye zo, ye little hills, An’ what var de’e hop? Is it ’cas to preach to we Is com’d the Lard Bish_op_!
Eese;—he is com’d to preach to we: Then let us aul strick up, An’ zing a glawrious zong of praayze, An’ bless the Lard Bish_up_!
THE PREACHERS OF CROMWELL’S TIME.
Dr. Echard says of the preachers who lived in the time of Cromwell,—“Coiners of new phrases, drawers-out of long godly words, thick pourers-out of texts of Scripture, mimical squeakers and bellowers, vain-glorious admirers only of themselves, and those of their own fashioned face and gesture; such as these shall be followed, shall have their bushels of China oranges, shall be solaced with all manner of cordial essences, and shall be rubbed down with Holland of ten shillings an ell.”
One of the singular fashions that prevailed among the preachers of those days was that of coughing or hemming in the middle of a sentence, as an ornament of speech; and when their sermons were printed, the place where the preacher coughed or hemmed was always noted in the margin. This practice was not confined to England, for Olivier Maillard, a Cordelier, and famous preacher, printed a sermon at Brussels in the year 1500, and marked in the margin where the preacher hemmed once or twice, or coughed.
ORIGIN OF TEXTS.
The custom of taking a text as the basis of a sermon originated with Ezra, who, we are told, accompanied by several Levites in a public congregation of men and women, ascended a pulpit, opened the book of the law, and after addressing a prayer to the Deity, to which the people said Amen, “read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” (Nehemiah viii. 8.)
Previous to the time of Ezra, the Patriarchs delivered, in public assemblies, either prophecies or moral instructions for the edification of the people; and it was not until the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, during which time they had almost lost the language in which the Pentateuch was written, that it became necessary to explain, as well as to read, the Scriptures to them. In later times, the book of Moses was thus read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. (Acts xv. 21.) To this custom our Saviour conformed: in the synagogue at Nazareth he read a passage from the prophet Isaiah, then closing the book, returned it to the priest, and preached from the text.
CLERICAL BLUNDERS.
In an old book of Sermons by a divine named Milsom, we are told that it is one among many proofs of the wisdom and benevolence of Providence that the world was not created in the midst of winter, when Adam and Eve could have found nothing to eat, but in harvest-time, when there was fruit on every tree and shrub to tempt the willing hand.
Another commentator praises Divine Goodness for always making the largest rivers flow close by the most populous towns.
St. Austin undertook to prove that the ten plagues of Egypt were punishments adapted to the breach of the ten commandments,—forgetting that the law was given to the Jews, and that the plagues were inflicted on the Egyptians, and also that the law was not given in the form of commandments until nearly three months after the plagues had been sent.
PROVING AN ALIBI.
A clergyman at Cambridge preached a sermon which one of his auditors commended. “Yes,” said a gentleman to whom it was mentioned, “it was a good sermon, but he stole it.” This was told to the preacher. He resented it, and called on the gentleman to retract what he had said. “I am not,” replied the aggressor, “very apt to retract my words, but in this instance I will. I said, you had stolen the sermon; I find I was wrong; for on returning home, and referring to the book whence I thought it was taken, I found it there.”
WHITEFIELD AND THE SAILORS.
Mr. Whitefield, whose gestures and play of features were so full of dramatic power, once preached before the seamen at New York, and, in the course of his sermon, introduced the following bold apostrophe:—
“Well, my boys, we have a clear sky, and are making fine headway over a smooth sea before a light breeze, and we shall soon lose sight of land. But what means this sudden lowering of the heavens, and that dark cloud arising from the western horizon? Hark! Don’t you hear the distant thunder? Don’t you see those flashes of lightning? There is a storm gathering! Every man to his duty. How the waves rise and dash against the ship! The air is dark! The tempest rages! Our masts are gone. The ship is on her beam ends! What next?” The unsuspecting tars, reminded of former perils on the deep, as if struck by the power of magic, arose and exclaimed, “Take to the long boat.”
PROTESTANT EXCOMMUNICATION.
John Knox, in his Liturgy for Scotch Presbyterians, sets forth the following form for the exercise of such an attribute of ecclesiastical authority in Protestant communities as excommunication:—
“O Lord Jesus Christ, thy expressed word is our assurance, and therefore, in boldness of the same, here in thy name, and at the commandment of this thy present congregation, we cut off, seclude, and excommunicate from thy body, and from our society, N. as a pround contemner, and slanderous person, and a member for the present altogether corrupted, and pernicious to the body. And this his sin (albeit with sorrow of our hearts) by virtue of our ministry, we bind and pronounce the same to be bound in heaven and earth. We further give over, into the hands and power of the devil, the said N. to the destruction of his flesh; straitly charging all that profess the Lord Jesus, to whose knowledge this our sentence shall come, to repute and hold the said N. accursed and unworthy of the familiar society of Christians; declaring unto all men that such as hereafter (before his repentance) shall haunt, or familiarly accompany him, are partakers of his impiety, and subject to the like condemnation.
“This our sentence, O Lord Jesus, pronounced in thy name, and at thy commandment, we humbly beseech thee to ratify even according to thy promise.”
Puritan Peculiarities.
BAPTISMAL NAMES.
A Puritan maiden, who was asked for her baptismal name, replied, “‘Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-kingdom-of-Heaven,’ but for short they call me ‘Tribby.’”
* * * * *
The following names will be found in _Lower’s English Sirnames_, and in the _Lansdowne Collection_. Most of them are taken from a jury-list of Sussex County, 1658. The favorite female baptismal names among the Puritans were Mercy, Faith, Fortune, Honor, Virtue; but there were among them those who preferred such high-flown names as Alethe, Prothesa, Euphrosyne, Kezia, Keturah, Malvina, Melinda, Sabrina, Alpina, Oriana.
The-gift-of-God Stringer, Repentant Hazel, Zealous King, Be-thankful Playnard, Live-in-peace Hillary, Obediencia Cruttenden, Goodgift Noake, The-work-of-God Farmer, More-tryal Goodwin, Faithful Long, Joy-from-above Brown, Be-of-good-comfort Small, Godward Freeman, Thunder Goldsmith. Faint-not Hewett, Redeemed Compton, God-reward Smart, Earth Adams, Meek Brewer, Repentance Avis, Kill-sin Pimple, Be-faithful Joiner, More-fruit Flower, Grace-ful Harding, Seek-wisdom Wood, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith White, Accepted Trevor, Make-peace Heaton, Stand-fast-on-high Stringer, Called Lower, Be-courteous Cole, Search-the-scriptures Moreton, Return Spelman, Fly-debate Roberts, Hope-for Bending, Weep-not Billing, Elected Mitchell, The-peace-of-God Knight
SIMILES.
Prayer is Faith’s pump, where’t works till the water come; If’t comes not free at first, Faith puts in some. Prayer is the sacred bellows; when these blow, How doth that live-coal from God’s altar glow! _Faithful Teate’s Ter. Tria._, 1658.
Walking in the streets, I met a cart that came near the wall; so I stepped aside, to avoid it, into a place where I was secure enough. _Reflection_: Lord, sin is that great evil of which thou complainest that thou art pressed as a cart is pressed: how can it then but bruise me to powder?—_Caleb Trenchfield’s Chris. Chymestree._
EARLY PUNISHMENTS IN MASSACHUSETTS.
From the early records of Massachusetts we learn that the following singular punishments were inflicted in that colony two hundred years ago:—
Sir Richard Salstonstall, fined four bushels of malt for his absence from the court.
Josias Plaistowe, for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, to return them eight baskets again, to be fined £5, and hereafter to be called Josias, not Mr. as he used to be.
Thomas Peter, for suspicions of slander, idleness, and stubbornness, is to be severely whipped and kept in hold.
Capt. Stone, for abusing Mr. Ludlow by calling him _justass_, fined £100, and prohibited coming within the patent.
Joyce Dradwick to give unto Alexander Becks 20_s._, for promising him marriage without her friends’ consent, and now refusing to perform the same.
Richard Turner, for being notoriously drunk, fined £2.
Edward Palmer, for his extortion in taking 32_s._ 7_d._ for the plank and work of Boston stocks, fined £5, and sentenced to sit one hour in the stocks.
John White bound in £10 to good behavior, and not come into the company of his neighbor Thomas Bell’s wife alone.
VIRGINIA PENALTIES IN THE OLDEN TIME.
From the old records in the Court House of Warwick County, Virginia, we extract some entries of decisions by the court under date of October 21, 1663. It may be worth while to remark that at that early period tobacco was not only a staple commodity but a substitute for currency.
“Mr. John Harlow, and Alice his wife, being by the grand inquest presented for absenting themselves from church, are, according to the act, fined each of them fifty pounds of tobacco; and the said Mr. John Harlow ordered forthwith to pay one hundred pounds of tobacco to the sheriff, otherwise the said sheriff to levy by way of distress.”
“Jane Harde, the wife of Henry Harde, being presented for not ’tending church, is, according to act, fined fifty pounds of tobacco; and the sheriff is ordered to collect the same from her, and, in case of non-payment, to distress.”
“John Lewis, his wife this day refusing to take the oath of allegiance, being ordered her, is committed into the sheriff’s custody, to remain until she take the said oath, or until further ordered to the contrary.”
“John Lewis, his wife for absenting herself from church, is fined fifty pounds of tobacco, to be collected by the sheriff from her husband; and upon non-payment, the said sheriff to distress.”
“George Harwood, being prosecuted for his absenting himself from church, is fined fifty pounds of tobacco, to be levied by way of distress by the sheriff upon his non-payment thereof.”
“Peter White and his wife, being presented for common swearing, are fined fifty pounds of tobacco, both of them; to be collected by the sheriff from the said White, and, upon non-payment of the same, to distress.”
“Richard King, being presented as a common swearer, is fined fifty pounds of tobacco, to be levied by the sheriff, by way of distress, upon his non-payment.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE CONNECTICUT BLUE LAWS.
When these free states were colonies Unto the mother nation, And in Connecticut the good Old Blue Laws were in fashion.
The following extracts from the laws ordained by the people of New Haven, previous to their incorporation with the Saybrook and Hartford colonies, afford an idea of the strange character of their prohibitions. As the substance only is given in the transcription, the language is necessarily modernized:—
No quaker or dissenter from the established worship of the dominion shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates, or any officer.
No food or lodging shall be afforded to a quaker, adamite, or other heretic.
If any person turns quaker, he shall be banished, and not suffered to return, but upon pain of death.
No priest shall abide in the dominion: he shall be banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one without a warrant.
No man to cross a river but with an authorized ferryman.
No one shall run on the sabbath-day, or walk in his garden, or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair or shave, on the sabbath-day.
No woman shall kiss her child on the sabbath or fasting-day.
The sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday.
To pick an ear of corn growing in a neighbor’s garden shall be deemed theft.
A person accused of trespass in the night shall be judged guilty, unless he clear himself by oath.
When it appears that an accused has confederates, and he refuses to discover them, he may be racked.
No one shall buy or sell lands without permission of the selectmen.
A drunkard shall have a master appointed by the selectmen, who are to debar him the liberty of buying and selling.
Whoever publishes a lie to the prejudice of his neighbor, shall sit in the stocks or be whipped fifteen stripes.
No minister shall keep a school.
Men-stealers shall suffer death.
Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the offender at £300 estate.
A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be let out, and sold to make satisfaction.
Whoever sets a fire in the woods, and it burns a house, shall suffer death; and persons suspected of this crime shall be imprisoned without benefit of bail.
Whoever brings cards or dice into this dominion shall pay a fine of £5.
No one shall read common-prayer, keep Christmas or saint-days, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the drum, trumpet, and Jews-harp.
No gospel minister shall join people in marriage; the magistrates only shall join in marriage, as they may do it with less scandal to Christ’s church.
When parents refuse their children convenient marriages, the magistrate shall determine the point.
The selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them away from their parents, and put them into better hands, at the expense of their parents.
A man that strikes his wife shall pay a fine of £10; a woman that strikes her husband shall be punished as the court directs.
A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband.
Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.
No man shall court a maid in person, or by letter, without first obtaining consent of her parents: £5 penalty for the first offence; £10 for the second; and for the third, imprisonment during the pleasure of the court.
Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.
Paronomasia.
Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun; A _pun-job_ dangerous as the Indian one.—§Holmes.§
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and _verbicide_—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden. _Manslaughter_, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man’s laughter, which is the end of the other.—§Ibid.§
The quaint Cardan thus defineth:—“Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears and falling upon the diaphragma, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart.”
“He who would make a pun would pick a pocket,” is the stereotyped dogma fulminated by laugh-lynchers from time immemorial; or, as the _Autocrat_ hath it, “To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion.” The “inanities of this working-day world” cannot perceive any wittiness or grace in punning; and yet, according to the comprehensive definition of wit by Dr. Barrow, the eminent divine, it occupies a very considerable portion of the realm of wit. He says, “Wit is a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in _pat allusions to a known story_, or in _seasonable application of a trivial saying_, or in feigning an apposite tale; sometimes it _playeth in words and phrases_, taking advantage of the _ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound_; sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression, sometimes it lurketh under _an odd similitude_; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a _quirkish_ reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly, divertingly, or cleverly retorting an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a _plausible reconciling of contradictions_, or in _acute nonsense_; sometimes a scenic representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimic look or gesture, passeth for it. Sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being. Sometimes it riseth only from _a lucky hitting upon what is strange_; sometimes from _a crafty wresting of obvious matter to the purpose_. Often it consisteth of one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language.”
If this definition be true, there is truth as well as wit in the punster’s reply to the taunt of the rhetorician that “punning is the _lowest species_ of wit.” “Yes,” said he, “for it is the _foundation_ of all wit.” But, whatever may be said of the practice by those who affect to despise it, it has been much in vogue in all ages. Horne, in his _Introduction to the Critical Study of the Holy Scriptures_, tells us that it was a very favorite figure of rhetoric among the Hebrews, and is yet common among most of the Oriental nations. Professor Stuart, in his Hebrew grammar, gives numerous examples of it in the Old Testament, and Winer and Horne point out others in the New Testament, especially in the writings of St. Paul. These cannot, of course, be equivalently expressed in English.
Many of the Greek authors exhibit a fondness for this rhetorical figure, and some of the most excellent puns extant are to be found in the Greek Anthologies. As a specimen, the following is given from Wesseling’s Diodorus Siculus:—
Dioscurus, an Egyptian bishop, before he began the service, had the common custom of saying ειρηνη πασιν, (irene pasin,) _peace be to all_. It was notorious that the pious churchman had at home a favorite mistress, whose name was Irene, which incident produced the following smart epigram:—
Ειρηνη παντεσσιν επισκοπος ειπεν εχελθων Πως δυναται πασιν, ἡν μονος ενδον εχει;
(The good bishop wishes peace—Irene—to all; But how can he give that to all, which he keeps to himself at home?)
A PUN-GENT CHAPTER.
At one time there was a general strike among the workingmen of Paris, and Theodore Hook gave the following amusing account of the affair:—“The bakers, being ambitious to extend their _do_-mains, declared that a revolution was _needed_, and, though not exactly _bred_ up to arms, soon reduced their _crusty_ masters to terms. The tailors called a council of the _board_, to see what _measures_ should be taken, and, looking upon the bakers as the _flower_ of chivalry, decided to follow _suit_; the consequence of which was, that a _cereous_ insurrection was _lighted up_ among the candle-makers, which, however _wick_-ed it might appear in the eyes of some persons, developed traits of character not unworthy of ancient _Greece_.”
Why should no man starve on the deserts of Arabia? Because of the _sand which_ is there. How came the sandwiches there? The tribe of _Ham_ was _bred_ there, and _mustered_.
A clergyman who had united in marriage a couple whose Christian names were Benjamin and Annie, on being asked by a mutual friend how they appeared during the ceremony, replied that they appeared both _annie_-mated and _bene_-fitted.
Mr. Manners, who had but lately been created Earl of Rutland, said to Sir Thomas More, just made Lord Chancellor,—
“You are so much elated with your preferment that you verify the old proverb,—
_Honores mutant_ §Mores§.”
“No, my lord,” said Sir Thomas: “the pun will do much better in English:—
_Honors change_ §Manners§.”
An old writer said that when _cannons_ were introduced as negotiators, the _canons_ of the church were useless; that the world was governed first by _mitrum_, and then by _nitrum_,—first by _St. Peter_, and then by _saltpetre_.
Column, the dramatist, on being asked whether he knew Theodore Hook, replied, “Oh, yes: _Hook_ and _Eye_ are old associates.”
Punch says, “the milk of human kindness is not to be found in the _pail_ of society.” If so, we think it is time for all hands to “_kick the bucket_.”
Judge Peters, formerly of the Philadelphia Bench, observed to a friend, during a trial that was going on, that one of the witnesses had a _vegetable_ head. “How so?” was the inquiry. “He has _carroty_ hair, _reddish_ cheeks, a _turnup_ nose, and a _sage_ look.”
Tom Hood, seeing over the shop-door of a beer-vendor,—
_Bear_ Sold Here,
said it was spelled right, because it was his own _Bruin_.
Charles Mathews, the comedian, was served by a green-grocer, named Berry, and generally settled his bill once a quarter. At one time the account was sent in before it was due, and Mathews, laboring under an idea that his credit was doubted, said, “Here’s a pretty _mull_, Berry. You have sent in your _bill_, Berry, before it is _due_, Berry. Your father, the _elder_ Berry, would not have been such a _goose_, Berry; but you need not look so _black_, Berry, for I don’t care a _straw_, Berry, and sha’n’t pay you till _Christmas_, Berry.”
Sheridan, being dunned by a tailor to pay at least the interest on his bill, answered that it was not his interest to pay the principal, nor his principle to pay the interest.
In the “Old India House” may still be seen a quarto volume of _Interest Tables_, on the fly-leaf of which is written, in Charles Lamb’s round, clerkly hand,—
“A book of much interest.”—_Edinburgh Review._
“A work in which the interest never flags.”—_Quarterly Review._
“We may say of this volume, that the interest increases from the beginning to the end.”—_Monthly Review._
Turner, the painter, was at a dinner where several artists, amateurs, and literary men were convened. A poet, by way of being facetious, proposed as a toast, “_The Painters and Glaziers of England_.” The toast was drunk; and Turner, after returning thanks for it, proposed “_Success to the Paper-Stainers_,” and called on the poet to respond.
SHORT ROAD TO WEALTH.
I’ll tell you a plan for gaining wealth, Better than banking, trade, or leases; Take a bank-note and fold it across, And then you will find your money §IN-CREASES§!
This wonderful plan, without danger or loss, Keeps your cash in your hands, and with nothing to trouble it; And every time that you fold it across, ’Tis plain as the light of the day that you §DOUBLE IT§!
“I cannot move,” the plaintive invalid cries, “Nor sit, nor stand.”—If he says true, he _lies_.
Dr. Johnson having freely expressed his aversion to punning, Boswell hinted that his illustrious friend’s dislike to this species of small wit might arise from his inability to play upon words. “Sir”, roared Johnson, “if I were punish-ed for every pun I shed, there would not be left a puny shed of my punnish head.” Once, by accident, he made a singular pun. A person who affected to live after the Greek manner, and to anoint himself with oil, was one day mentioned to him. Johnson, in the course of conversation on the singularity of his practice, gave him the denomination of _this man of Grease_.
Sydney Smith—so Lord Houghton in his _Monographs_ tells us—has written depreciatingly of all playing upon words; but his rapid apprehension could not altogether exclude a kind of wit which, in its best forms, takes fast hold of the memory, besides the momentary amusement it excites. His objection to the superiority of a city feast: “I cannot wholly value a dinner by the test you do (_testudo_);”—his proposal to settle the question of the wood pavement around St. Paul’s: “Let the Canons once lay their heads together and the thing will be done;”—his pretty compliment to his friends, Mrs. Tighe and Mrs. Cuffe: “Ah! there you are: the cuff that every one would wear, the tie that no one would loose”—may be cited as perfect in their way.
Admiral Duncan’s address to the officers who came on board his ship for instructions, previous to the engagement with Admiral de Winter, was laconic and humorous: “Gentlemen, you see a severe Winter approaching; I have only to advise you to keep up a good fire.”
Theodore Hook plays thus on the same name:—
Here comes Mr. Winter, inspector of taxes; I advise you to give him whatever he axes; I advise you to give him without any flummery, For though his name’s Winter his actions are _summary_.
Henry Erskine’s toast to the mine-owners of Lancashire:—
Sink your pits, blast your mines, dam your rivers, consume your manufactures, disperse your commerce, and may your labors be in _vein_.
TOM MOORE.
When Limerick, in idle whim, Moore as her member lately courted, ’The boys,’ for form’s sake, asked of him To state what party he supported.
When thus his answer promptly ran, (Now give the wit his meed of glory:) “I’m of no party as a man, But as a poet _am-a-tory_.”
TOP AND BOTTOM.
The following playful colloquy in verse took place at a dinner-table, between Sir George Rose and James Smith, in allusion to Craven street, Strand, where the latter resided:—
J. S.—At the top of my street the attorneys abound, And down at the bottom the barges are found: Fly, honesty, fly to some safer retreat, For there’s _craft_ in the river, and _craft_ in the street.
Sir G. R.—Why should honesty fly to some safer retreat, From attorneys, and barges, od-rot ’em? For the lawyers are _just_ at the top of the street, And the barges are _just_ at the bottom.
OLD JOKE VERSIFIED.
Says Tom to Bill, pray tell me, sir, Why is it that the devil, In spite of all his naughty ways, Can never be uncivil?
Says Bill to Tom, the answer’s plain To any mind that’s bright: Because the imp of darkness, sir, Can ne’er be _imp o’ light_.
A PRINTER’S EPITAPH.
Here lies a _form_—place no _imposing stone_ To mark the _head_, where weary it is lain; ’Tis _matter dead_!—its mission being done, To be _distributed_ to dust again. The _body’s_ but the _type_, at best, of man, Whose _impress_ is the spirit’s deathless _page_; _Worn out_, the _type_ is thrown to _pi_ again, The _impression_ lives through an eternal age.
STICKY.
I want to seal a letter, Dick, Some wax pray give to me.— I have not got a single _stick_, Or _whacks_ I’d give to thee.
WOMEN.
When Eve brought _woe_ to all mankind, Old Adam called her _wo-man_; But when she _woo’d_ with love so kind, He then pronounced her _woo-man_.
But now with folly and with pride, Their husbands’ pockets trimming, The ladies are so full of _whims_, The people call them _whim-men_.
BEN, THE SAILOR.
His _death_, which happened in his _berth_, At forty odd befell: They went and _told_ the sexton, and The sexton _tolled_ the bell.—§Hood’s§ _Faithless Sally Brown_.
WHISKERS VERSUS RAZOR.
With whiskers thick upon my face I went my fair to see; She told me she could never love A _bear-faced_ chap like me.
I shaved then clean, and called again, And thought my troubles o’er; She laughed outright, and said I was More _bare-faced_ than before!
COMPLIMENT OF SHERIDAN TO MISS PAYNE.
’Tis true I am ill; but I cannot complain, For he never knew pleasure who never knew Payne.
FROM DR. HOLMES’ “MODEST REQUEST.”
Thus great Achilles, who had shown his zeal In §HEALING WOUNDS§, died of a §WOUNDED HEEL§; Unhappy chief, who, when in childhood doused, Had saved his §BACON§ had his feet been §SOUSED§! Accursed heel, that killed a hero stout! Oh, had your mother known that you were out, Death had not entered at the trifling part That still defies the small chirurgeon’s art With corn and §BUNIONS§,—not the glorious §John§ Who wrote the book we all have pondered on,— But other §BUNIONS§, bound in fleecy hose, To “§Pilgrim’s Progress§” unrelenting foes!
PLAINT OF THE OLD PAUPER.
Some boast of their §FORE§-fathers—I— I have not §ONE§! I am, I think, like Joshua, The son of §NONE§!
Heedless in youth, we little note How quick time passes, For then flows ruby wine, not sand, In §OUR§ glasses!
Rich friends (most pure in honor) all have fled Sooner or later; Pshaw! had they India’s spices, they’d not be A nutmeg-§GRATER§!
I’ve neither chick nor child; as I have nothing, Why, ’tis lucky rather; Yet who that hears a squalling baby wishes Not to be §FATHER§?
Some few years back my spirits and my youth Were quite amazin’; Brisk as a pony, or a lawyer’s clerk, Just fresh from §Gray’s Inn§!
What am I now? weak, old, and poor, and by The parish found; Their §PENCE§ keeps me, while many an ass Enjoys the parish §POUND§!
TO MY NOSE.
Knows he that never took a pinch, Nosey! the pleasure thence which flows? Knows he the titillating joy Which my nose knows?
Oh, nose! I am as fond of thee As any mountain of its snows! I gaze on thee, and feel that pride A Roman knows!
BOOK-LARCENY.
Sir Walter Scott said that some of his friends were bad _accountants_, but excellent _book-keepers_.
How hard, when those who do not wish To lend—that’s lose—their books, Are snared by anglers—folks that fish With literary hooks;
Who call and take some favorite tome, But never read it through; They thus complete their sett at home, By making one of you.
I, of my Spenser quite bereft, Last winter sore was shaken; Of Lamb I’ve but a quarter left, Nor could I save my Bacon.
They picked my Locke, to me far more Than Bramah’s patent worth; And now my losses I deplore, Without a Home on earth.
Even Glover’s works I cannot put My frozen hands upon; Though ever since I lost my Foote, My Bunyan has been gone.
My life is wasting fast away; I suffer from these shocks; And though I’ve fixed a lock on Gray, There’s gray upon my locks.
They still have made me slight returns, And thus my grief divide; For oh! they’ve cured me of my Burns, And eased my Akenside.
But all I think I shall not say, Nor let my anger burn; For as they have not found me Gay, They have not left me Sterne.
THE VEGETABLE GIRL.
Behind a market stall installed, I mark it every day, Stands at her stand the fairest girl I’ve met with in the bay; Her two lips are of cherry red, Her hands a pretty pair, With such a pretty turn-up nose, And lovely reddish hair.
’Tis there she stands from morn till night Her customers to please, And to appease their appetite She sells them beans and peas. Attracted by the glances from The apple of her eye, And by her Chili apples, too, Each passer-by will buy.
She stands upon her little feet, Throughout the livelong day, And sells her celery and things,— A big feat, by the way. She changes off her stock for change, Attending to each call; And when she has but one beet left, She says, “Now that beats all.”
EPITAPH ON AN OLD HORSE.
Here lies a faithful steed, A stanch, uncompromising “silver gray;” Who ran the race of life with sprightly speed, Yet never ran—away.
Wild oats he never sowed, Yet masticated tame ones with much zest: Cheerful he bore each light allotted load, As cheerfully took rest.
Bright were his eyes, yet soft, And in the main his tail was white and flowing; And though he never sketched a single draught, He showed great taste for drawing.
Lithe were his limbs, and clean, Fitted alike for buggy or for dray, And like Napoleon the Great, I ween, He had a _martial neigh_.
Oft have I watched him grace His favorite stall, well littered, warm, and fair, With such contentment shining from his face, And such a stable air!
With here and there a speck Of roan diversifying his broad back, And, martyr-like, a halter round his neck, Which bound him to the rack.
Mors omnibus! at length The hay-day of his life was damped by death; So, summoning all his late remaining strength, He drew his—final breath.
GRAND SCHEME OF EMIGRATION.
The Brewers should to _Malt-a_ go, The Loggerheads to _Scilly_, The Quakers to the _Friendly Isles_, The Furriers all to _Chili_.
The little squalling, brawling brats, That break our nightly rest, Should be packed off to _Baby-lon_, To _Lap-land_, or to _Brest_.
From _Spit-head_ Cooks go o’er to _Greece_; And while the Miser waits His passage to the _Guinea_ coast, Spendthrifts are in the _Straits_.
Spinsters should to the _Needles_ go, Wine-bibbers to _Burgundy_; Gourmands should lunch at _Sandwich Isles_, Wags in the _Bay of Fun-dy_.
Musicians hasten to the _Sound_, The surpliced Priest to _Rome_; While still the race of Hypocrites At _Cant-on_ are at home.
Lovers should hasten to _Good Hope_; To some _Cape Horn_ is pain; Debtors should go to _Oh-i-o_, And Sailors to the _Main-e_.
Hie, Bachelors, to the _United States_! Maids, to the _Isle of Man_; Let Gardeners go to _Botany Bay_, And Shoeblacks to _Japan_.
Thus, emigrants and misplaced men Will then no longer vex us; And all that a’n’t provided for Had better go to _Texas_.
THE PERILOUS PRACTICE OF PUNNING.
Theodore Hook thus cautions young people to resist provocation to the habit of punning:—
My little dears, who learn to read, pray early learn to shun That very silly thing indeed which people call a pun. Read Entick’s rules, and ’twill be found how simple an offence It is to make the self-same sound afford a double sense. For instance, _ale_ may make you _ail_, your _aunt_ an _ant_ may kill, You in a _vale_ may buy a _vail_, and _Bill_ may pay the _bill_, Or if to France your bark you steer, at Dover it may be, A _peer_ _appears_ upon the _pier_, who, blind, still goes to _sea_. Thus one might say when to a treat good friends accept our greeting, ’Tis _meet_ that men who _meet_ to eat, should eat their _meat_ when _meeting_. Brawn on the board’s no _bore_ indeed, although from _boar_ prepared; Nor can the _fowl_ on which we feed _foul_ feeding be declared. Thus _one_ ripe fruit may be a _pear_, and yet be _pared_ again, And still be _one_, which seemeth rare, until we do explain. It therefore should be all your aim to speak with ample care; For who, however fond of _game_, would choose to swallow _hair_? A fat man’s _gait_ may make us smile, who has no _gate_ to close; The farmer sitting on his _stile_ no _stylish_ person knows; Perfumers men of _scents_ must be; some Scilly men are bright; A _brown_ man oft _deep read_ we see—a _black_ a wicked _wight_. Most wealthy men good manners have, however vulgar they, And actors still the harder _slave_ the oftener they _play_; So poets can’t the _baize_ obtain unless their tailors choose, While grooms and coachmen not in vain each evening seek the _mews_. The _dyer_ who by dying _lives_, a _dire_ life maintains; The glazier, it is known, receives his _profits_ from his _panes_; By gardeners _thyme_ is _tied_, ’tis true, when Spring is in its prime, But _time_ or _tide_ won’t wait for you, if you are _tied_ for _time_. There now you see, my little dears, the way to make a pun; A trick which you, through coming years, should sedulously shun. The fault admits of no defense, for wheresoe’er ’tis found, You sacrifice the _sound_ for _sense_, the _sense_ is never _sound_. So let your words and actions too, one single meaning prove, And, just in all you say or do, you’ll gain esteem and love: In mirth and play no harm you’ll know, when duty’s task is done; But parents ne’er should let you go un_pun_ished for a _pun_.
The motto of the Pilotage Commission of the river Tyne:—
In portu salus. In port you sail us.
SONNET
_On a youth who died from a surfeit of fruit._
Currants have checked the current of my blood, And berries brought me to be buried here; Pears have pared off my body’s hardihood, And plums and plumbers spare not one so spare: Fain would I feign my fall; so fair a fare Lessens not fate, but ’tis a lesson good: Gilt will not long hide guilt; such thin-washed ware Wears quickly, and its rude touch soon is rued. Grave on my grave some sentence grave and terse, That lies not, as it lies upon my clay; But, in a gentle strain of unstrained verse, Prays all to pity a poor patty’s prey; Rehearses I was fruit-full to my hearse, Tells that my days are told, and soon I’m toll’d away!
Previous to the battle of Culloden, when Marshal Wade and Generals Cope and Hawley were prevented by the severity of the weather from advancing as far into Scotland as they intended, the following lines were circulated among their opposers:—
Cope could not cope, nor Wade wade through the snow, Nor Hawley haul his cannon to the foe.
When Mrs. Norton was called on to subscribe to a fund for the relief of Thomas Hood’s widow, which had been headed by Sir Robert Peel, she sent a liberal donation with these lines:—
To cheer the widow’s heart in her distress, To make provision for the fatherless, Is but a Christian’s duty, and none should Resist the heart-appeal of _widow-Hood_.
M. Mario’s visit to this country recalls to mind the sharpest witticism of Madame Grisi, at the time his wife, and one of the best bits of repartee on record. Louis Phillippe, passing through a room where Grisi stood, holding two of her young children by the hand, said gaily: “Ah! Madame, are those, then, some of your little _Grisettes_?” “No, Sire,” was the quick reply, perfect in every requirement of the pun, “No, Sire, these are my little _Marionettes_.”
A learned judge, of facetious memory, is reported to have said, in an argument in arrest of the judgment of death, “I think we had better let the subject drop.”
SWIFT’S LATIN PUNS.
Among the _nugæ_ of Dean Swift are his celebrated Latin puns, some of which are well known, having been frequently copied, and having never been excelled. The following selections will serve as specimens. They consist entirely of Latin words; but, by allowing for false spelling, and running the words into each other, the sentences make good sense in English:—
Mollis abuti, (Moll is a beauty, Has an acuti, Has an acute eye, No lasso finis, No lass so fine is, Molli divinis. Molly divine is. Omi de armis tres, O my dear mistress, Imi na dis tres, I’m in a distress, Cantu disco ver Can’t you discover Meas alo ver? Me as a lover?)
In a subsequent epistolary allusion to this, he says:—
I ritu a verse o na molli o mi ne, Asta lassa me pole, a lædis o fine; I ne ver neu a niso ne at in mi ni is; A manat a glans ora sito fer diis. De armo lis abuti hos face an hos nos is, As fer a sal illi, as reddas aro sis; Ac is o mi molli is almi de lite; Illo verbi de, an illo verbi nite.
(I writ you a verse on a Molly o’ mine, As tall as a may pole, a lady so fine; I never knew any so neat in mine eyes; A man, at a glance or a sight of her, dies. Dear Molly’s a beauty, whose face and whose nose is As fair as a lily, as red as a rose is; A kiss o’ my Molly is all my delight; I love her by day, and I love her by night.)
_Extract from the consultation of four physicians on a lord that was dying_
_1st Doctor._ Is his honor sic? Præ lætus felis pulse. It do es beat veris loto de.
_2d Doctor._ No notis as qui cassi e ver fel tu metri it. Inde edit is as fastas an alarum, ora fire bellat nite.
_3d Doctor._ It is veri hei!
_4th Doctor._ Noto contra dictu in my juge mentitis veri loto de. It is as orto maladi, sum callet. [Here e ver id octo reti resto a par lori na mel an coli post ure.]
_1st D._ It is a me gri mas I opi ne.
_2d D._ No docto rite quit fora quin si. Heris a plane sim tomo fit. Sorites Paracelsus. Præ re adit.
_1st D._ Nono, Doctor, I ne ver quo te aqua casu do.
_2d D._ Sum arso; mi autoris no ne.
_3d D._ No quare lingat præ senti de si re. His honor is sic offa colli casure as I sit here.
_4th D._ It is æther an atro phi ora colli casu sed: Ire membri re ad it in Doctor me ades esse, here it is.
_3d D._ I ne ver re ad apage in it, no re ver in tendit.
_2d D._ Fer ne is offa qui te di ferent noti o nas i here.
_1st D._ It me bea pluri si; avo metis veri pro perfor a man at his age.
* * * * *
_1st D._ Is his honor sick? Pray let us feel his pulse. It does beat very slow to-day.
_2d D._ No, no, ’tis as quick as ever I felt; you may try it. Indeed, it is as fast as an alarum, or a fire-bell at night.
_3d D._ It is very high.
_4th D._ Not to contradict you, in my judgment it is very slow to day. It is a sort of malady, some call it. (Here every doctor retires to a parlor in a melancholy posture.)
_1st D._ It is a megrim, as I opine.
_2d D._ No, doctor, I take it for a quinsy. Here is a plain symptom of it. So writes Paracelsus. Pray read it.
_1st D._ No, no, doctor, I never quote a quack as you do.
_2d D._ Some are so; my author is none.
_3d D._ No quarrelling at present, I desire. His honor is sick of a colic as sure as I sit here.
_4th D._ It is either an atrophy, or a colic, as you said. I remember I read it in Dr. Mead’s Essay: here it is.
_3d D._ I never read a page in it, nor ever intend it.
_2d D._ Ferne is of a quite different notion, as I hear.
_1st D._ It may be a pleurisy; a vomit is very proper for a man at his age.
_2d D._ Ure par donat præsanti des ire; His dis eas is a cata ride clare it.
_3d D._ Atlas tume findit as tone in his quid ni es.
_4th D._ Itis ale pro si fora uti se. Ab lis ter me bene cessa risum de cens. Itis as ure medi in manicas es.
_3d D._ I findit isto late tot hinc offa reme di; fori here his honor is de ad.
_2d D._ His ti meis cum.
_1st D._ Is it trudo ut hinc?
_4th D._ It is veri certa in. His Paris his belli sto ringo ut foris de partu re.
_3d D._ Næ i fis ecce lens is de ad lætus en dum apri esto præ foris sole.
_2d D._ Your pardon at present I desire. His disease is a catarrh, I declare it.
_3d D._ At last you may find it a stone in his kidneys.
_4th D._ It is a leprosy for aught I see. A blister may be necessary some days hence. It is a sure remedy in many cases.
_3d D._ I find it is too late to think of a remedy; for I hear his honor is dead.
_2d D._ His time is come.
_1st D._ Is it true, do you think?
_4th D._ It is very certain. His parish bell is to ring out for his departure.
_3d D._ Nay, if his excellency’s dead, let us send ’em a priest to pray for his soul.
UNCONSCIOUS OR UNINTENTIONAL PUNS.
Elizabeth’s _sylvan dress_ was therefore well suited at once to her height and to the dignity of her mein, which her conscious rank and _long habits_ of authority had rendered in some degree too masculine to be seen to the best advantage in ordinary _female weeds_.—_Kenilworth_, iii. 9.
I’ll _gild_ the faces of the grooms withal That it may seem their _guilt_.—_Macbeth._
While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling, As if to show their sunny backs And _twit_ me with the spring.—_Song of the Shirt._
RUSSIAN DOUBLE ENTENDRE.
The following message was sent to the Emperor Nicholas by one of his generals:—
Voliā Vāschā, ā Varschāvoo vsi’at nemogoo.
{ Volia is yours, } } but Warsaw I cannot take. { Your will is all-powerful, }
CLASSICAL PUNS AND MOTTOES.
Sydney Smith proposed as a motto for Bishop Burgess, brother to the well-known fish-sauce purveyor, the following Virgilian pun (Æn. iv. 1),—
_Gravi_ jamdudum _saucia_ curâ.
A London tobacconist, who had become wealthy, and determined to set up his carriage, applied to a learned gentleman for a motto. The scholar gave him the Horatian question,—
QUID RIDES?
(Why do you laugh?—_Sat. I._ 69)—
which was accordingly adopted, and painted on the panel.
* * * * *
A pedantic bachelor had the following inscription on his tea-caddy:—
TU DOCES.
(Thou Tea-chest.)
_Epitaph on a Cat_, ascribed to Dr. Johnson (Hor. lib. i., c. 12):—
MI-CAT INTER OMNES.
Two gentlemen about to enter an unoccupied pew in a church, the foremost found it locked. His companion, not perceiving it at the moment, inquired why he retreated. “_Pudor vetat_” said he. (Modesty forbids.)
* * * * *
A gentleman at dinner requested a friend to help him to a potato, which he did, saying, “I think you will find that a good mealy one.” “Thank you,” quoth the other: “it could not be _melior_” (better).
* * * * *
A student of Latin, being confined to his room by illness, was called upon by a friend. “What, John,” said the visitor, “sick, eh?” “Yes,” replied John, “_sic sum_” (so I am).
* * * * *
In King’s College were two delinquents named respectively Payne and Culpepper. Payne was expelled, but Culpepper escaped punishment. Upon this, a wit wrote the following apt line:—
_Pœna_ perire potest; _Culpa per_ennis est.
Andrew Borde, author of the _Breviary of Health_, called himself in Latin Andreas Perforatus. This translation of a proper name was according to the fashion of the time, but in this instance includes a pun,—perforatus, _bored_ or pierced.
* * * * *
Joseph II., Emperor of Germany, during a visit to Rome, went to see the princess Santacroce, a young lady of singular beauty, who had an evening _conversazione_. Next morning appeared the following pasquinade. “Pasquin asks, ‘What is the Emperor Joseph come to Rome for?’ Marforio answers, ‘Abaciar la Santa Croce’”—to kiss the Holy Cross.
* * * * *
On the trial of Garnett, the Superior of the Jesuits, for his
## participation in the Gunpowder Plot, Coke, then Attorney-General,
concluded his speech thus:—_Qui cum Jesu itis, non itis cum Jesuitis_.
* * * * *
A few years ago, several Jesuits came into the lecture-room of an Italian professor in the University of Pisa, believing he was about to assail a favorite dogma of theirs. He commenced his lecture with the following words,—
“Quanti Gesuiti sono all’ inferno!”
(How many Jesuits there are in hell!)
When remonstrated with, he said that his words were—
“Quanti—Gesu!—iti sono all’ inferno!”
(How many people, O Jesus! there are in hell!)
* * * * *
D’Israeli says that Bossuet would not join his young companions, and flew to his solitary tasks, while the classical boys avenged themselves by a schoolboy’s pun; applying to _Bossuet_ Virgil’s _bos suet-us aratro_—the ox daily toiling in the plough.
* * * * *
John Randolph of Virginia, and Mr. Dana of Connecticut, while fellow-members of Congress, belonged to different political parties. On one occasion Mr. Dana paid some handsome compliments to Mr. Randolph. When the latter spoke in reply, he quoted from Virgil (Æn. ii.):—
Timeo _Danaos_ et dona ferentes.
A lady having accidentally thrown down a Cremona fiddle with her mantua, Dean Swift instantly remarked,—
“_Mantua_ væ miseræ nimium vicina _Cremonæ_.”
Ah, Mantua, too near the wretched Cremona. (Virg. Ecl. ix. 28.)
* * * * *
To an old gentleman who had lost his spectacles one rainy evening, the Dean said, “If this rain continues all night, you will certainly recover them in the morning betimes:
“Nocte pluit tota—redeunt _spectacula_ mane.” (Virgil.)
Quid facies facies veneris si veneris ante? Ne pereas pereas, ne sedeas, sedeas.
(What will you do if you shall come before the face of Venus? Lest you should perish through them, do not sit down, but go away.)
* * * * *
Sir William Dawes, Archbishop of York, was very fond of a pun. His clergy dining with him for the first time after he had lost his wife, he told them he feared they did not find things in so good order as they used to be in the time of poor Mary; and, looking extremely sorrowful, added with a deep sigh, “she was indeed _mare pacificum_.” A curate who knew pretty well what her temper had been, said, “Yes, my lord, but she was _mare mortuum_ first.”
That Homer should a bankrupt be, Is not so very §ODD D’YE SEE§, If it be true as I’m instructed, So §ILL HE HAD§ his books conducted.
PUNNING MOTTOES OF THE ENGLISH PEERAGE.
_Ne vile_ §Fano§—Disgrace not the altar. Motto of the §Fanes§.
§Ne vile§ _velis_—Form no mean wish. The §Nevilles§.
§Cavendo§ _tutus_—Secure by caution. The §Cavendishes§.
§Forte scu§_tum, salus ducum_—A strong shield the safety of leaders. Lord §Fortescue§.
§Ver non§ _semper viret_—The spring is not always green. Lord §Vernon§.
§Vero§ _nihil verius_—Nothing truer than truth. Lord §Vere§.
§Templa§ _quam delecta_—Temples how beloved. Lord §Temple§.
JEUX-DE-MOTS.
SPIRITUAL.
A wag decides—
That whiskey is the key by which many gain an entrance into our prisons and almshouses.
That brandy brands the noses of all who cannot govern their appetites.
That wine causes many a man to take a winding way home.
That punch is the cause of many unfriendly punches.
That ale causes many ailings, while beer brings many to the bier.
That champagne is the source of many a real pain.
That gin-slings have “slewed” more than the slings of old.
That the reputation of being fond of cock-tails is not a feather in any man’s cap.
That the money spent for port that is supplied by portly gents would support many a poor family.
That porter is a weak supporter for those who are weak in body.
ANAGRAMMATIC.
The following sentence is said to be taken from a volume of sermons published during the reign of James I.:—
This _dial_ shows that we must _die all_; yet notwithstanding, _all houses_ are turned into _ale houses_; our _cares_ into _cates_; our _paradise_ into a _pair o’ dice_; _matrimony_ into a _matter of money_, and _marriage_ into a _merry age_; our _divines_ have become _dry vines_: it was not so in the days of _Noah_,—_ah! no_.
ITERATIVE.
A clerical gentleman of Hartford, who once attended the House of Representatives to read prayers, being politely requested to remain seated near the speaker during the debate, found himself the spectator of an _unmarrying_ process, so alien to his own vocation, and so characteristic of the readiness of the Legislature of Connecticut to grant divorces, that the result was the following _impromptu_:—
For _cut_-ting all _connect_-ions famed, _Connect-i-cut_ is fairly named; I twain _connect_ in one, but you _Cut_ those whom _I connect_ in two. Each legislator seems to say, What you _Connect I cut_ away.
Finn, the comedian, issued the following morceau upon the announcement of his benefit at the Tremont Theatre, Boston:—
Like a _grate full_ of coals I burn, A _great, full_ house to see; And if I should not _grateful_ prove, A _great fool_ I should be.
A FAIR LETTER.
The following letter was received by a young lady at the post-office of a Fair held for the benefit of a church:—
_Fairest of the Fair._ When such _fair_ beings as you have the _fair_-ness to honor our _Fair_ with your _fair_ presence, it is perfectly _fair_ that you should receive good _fare_ from the _fair_ conductors of this _Fair_, and indeed it would be very un-_fair_ if you should not _fare_ well, since it is the endeavor of those whose wel-_fare_ depends upon the success of this _Fair_, to treat all who come _fair_-ly, but to treat with especial _fair_-ness those who are as _fair_ as yourself. We are engaged in a _fair_ cause, a sacred war-_fare_; that is, to speak without un-_fair_-ness, a war-_fare_, not against the _fair_ sex, but against the pockets of their beaux. We therefore hope, gentle reader, “still _fair_est found where all is _fair_,” that you will use all _fair_ exertions in behalf of the praiseworthy af-_fair_ which we have _fair_-ly undertaken. If you take sufficient interest in our wel-_fare_ to lend your _fair_ aid, you will appear _fair_-er than ever in our sight; we will never treat you un-_fair_-ly, and when you withdraw the light of your _fair_ countenance from our _Fair_, we will bid you a kind _Fare_-well.
The following was written on the occasion of a duel in Philadelphia, several years ago:—
Schott and Willing did engage In duel fierce and hot; Schott shot Willing willingly, And Willing he shot Schott.
The shot Schott shot made Willing quite A spectacle to see; While Willing’s willing shot went right Through Schott’s anatomy.
WRITE WRITTEN RIGHT.
_Write_ we know is written right, When we see it written _write_; But when we see it written wright, We know it is not written right: For write, to have it written right, Must not be written right or wright, Nor yet should it be written rite; But _write_, for so ’tis written right.
TURN TO THE LEFT AS THE (ENGLISH) LAW DIRECTS.
The laws of the Road are a paradox quite: For when you are travelling along, If you keep to the §LEFT§ you’re sure to be §RIGHT§, If you keep to the §RIGHT§ you’ll be §WRONG§.
I cannot bear to see a bear, bear down upon a hare, When bare of hair he strips the hare, for hare I cry, “forbear!”
ON THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF KILDARE.
Who _killed Kildare_? Who _dared Kildare_ to _kill_?
Death answers,—
I _killed Kildare_, and _dare kill_ whom I will.
§A§ _Cat_§ALECTIC MONODY§.
A _cat_ I sing of famous memory, Though _cat_achrestical my song may be: In a small garden _cat_acomb she lies, And _cat_aclysms fill her comrades’ eyes; Borne on the air, the _cat_acoustic song Swells with her virtues’ _cat_alogue along; No _cat_aplasm could lengthen out her years, Though mourning friends shed _cat_aracts of tears. Once loud and strong her _cat_echist-like voice. It dwindled to a _cat_call’s squeaking noise; Most _cat_egorical her virtues shone, By _cat_enation joined each one to one;— But a vile _cat_chpoll dog, with cruel bite, Like _cat_ling’s cut, her strength disabled quite; Her _cat_erwauling pierced the heavy air, As _cat_aphracts their arms through legions bear; ’Tis vain! as _cat_erpillars drag away Their lengths, like _cat_tle after busy day, She lingering died, nor left in kit _kat_ the Embodiment of this _cat_astrophe.
NOVEMBER.
(The humorous lines of Hood are only applicable to the English climate, where the closing month of autumn is synonymous with fogs, long visages, and suicides.)
No sun—no moon! No morn—no noon— No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day— No sky—no earthly view— No distance looking blue— No roads—no streets—no t’other side the way— No end to any row— No indication where the crescents go— No tops to any steeple— No recognition of familiar people— No courtesies for showing ’em— No knowing ’em— No travellers at all—no locomotion— No inkling of the way—no motion— ‘No go’ by land or ocean— No mail—no post— No news from any foreign coast— No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility— No company—no nobility— No warmth—no cheerfulness—no healthful ease— No comfortable feel in any member— No shade—no shine—no butterflies—no bees— No fruits—no flowers—no leaves—no birds— §No-vember§!
* * * * *
The name of that monster of brutality, _Caliban_, in Shakspeare’s Tempest, is supposed to be anagrammatic of _Canibal_, the old mode of spelling Cannibal.
A SWARM OF BEES.
B patient, B prayerful, B humble, B mild, B wise as a Solon, B meek as a child; B studious, B thoughtful, B loving, B kind; B sure you make matter subservient to mind. B cautious, B prudent, B trustful, B true, B courteous to all men, B friendly with few. B temperate in argument, pleasure, and wine, B careful of conduct, of money, of time. B cheerful, B grateful, B hopeful, B firm, B peaceful, _be_nevolent, willing to learn; B courageous, B gentle, B liberal, B just, B aspiring, B humble, _be_cause thou art dust; B penitent, circumspect, sound in the faith, B active, devoted; B faithful till death. B honest, B holy, transparent, and pure; B dependent, B Christ-like, and you’ll B secure.
THE BEES OF THE BIBLE.
Be kindly affectioned one to another. Be sober, and watch unto prayer. Be content with such things as ye have. Be strong in the Lord. Be courteous. Be not wise in your own conceits. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. Be not children in understanding. Be followers of God, as dear children. Be not weary in well-doing. Be holy in all manner of conversation. Be patient unto the coming of the Lord. Be clothed with humility.
FRANKLIN’S “RE’S.”
Dr. Franklin, in England in the year 1775, was asked by a nobleman what would satisfy the Americans. He answered that it might easily be comprised in a few “Re’s,” which he immediately wrote on a piece of paper, thus:—
Re-call your forces. Re-store Castle William. Re-pair the damage done to Boston. Re-peal your unconstitutional acts. Re-nounce your pretensions to taxes. Re-fund the duties you have extorted.
After this—
Re-quire, and Re-ceive payment for the destroyed tea, with the voluntary grants of the Colonies; and then Re-joice in a happy Re-conciliation.
THE MISS-NOMERS.
_After the manner of Horace Smith’s “Surnames ever go by contraries.”_
Miss Brown is exceedingly fair, Miss White is as brown as a berry; Miss Black has a gray head of hair, Miss Graves is a flirt ever merry; Miss Lightbody weighs sixteen stone, Miss Rich scarce can muster a guinea; Miss Hare wears a wig, and has none, And Miss Solomon is a sad ninny!
Miss Mildmay’s a terrible scold, Miss Dove’s ever cross and contrary; Miss Young is now grown very old, And Miss Heavyside’s light as a fairy! Miss Short is at least five feet ten, Miss Noble’s of humble extraction; Miss Love has a hatred towards men, Whilst Miss Still is forever in action.
Miss Green is a regular _blue_, Miss Scarlet looks pale as a lily; Miss Violet ne’er shrinks from our view, And Miss Wiseman thinks all the men silly! Miss Goodchild’s a naughty young elf, Miss Lyon’s from terror a fool; Miss Mee’s not at all like _myself_, Miss Carpenter no one can rule.
Miss Sadler ne’er mounted a horse, While Miss Groom from the stable will run; Miss Kilmore can’t look on a corse, And Miss Aimwell ne’er levelled a gun; Miss Greathead has no brains at all, Miss Heartwell is ever complaining; Miss Dance has ne’er been at a ball, Over hearts Miss Fairweather likes _reigning_!
Miss Wright, she is constantly wrong, Miss Tickell, alas! is not funny; Miss Singer ne’er warbled a song, And alas! poor Miss Cash has no money; Miss Hateman would give all she’s worth, To purchase a man to her liking; Miss Merry is shocked at all mirth, Miss Boxer the men don’t find _striking_!
Miss Bliss does with sorrow o’erflow, Miss Hope in despair seeks the tomb; Miss Joy still anticipates wo, And Miss Charity’s never “at home!” Miss Hamlet resides in the city, The nerves of Miss Standfast are shaken; Miss Prettyman’s beau is not pretty, And Miss Faithful her love has forsaken!
Miss Porter despises all froth, Miss Scales they’ll make _wait_, I am thinking; Miss Meekly is apt to be wroth, Miss Lofty to meanness is sinking; Miss Seymore’s as blind as a bat, Miss Last at a party is first; Miss Brindle dislikes a striped cat, And Miss Waters has always a thirst!
Miss Knight is now changed into Day, Miss Day wants to marry a Knight; Miss Prudence has just run away, And Miss Steady assisted her flight; But success to the fair,—one and all! No miss-apprehensions be making;— Though wrong the dear sex to _miss-call_, There’s no harm, I should hope, in §MISS-TAKING§.
CROOKED COINCIDENCES.
A pamphlet published in the year 1703 has the following strange title: “The _Deformity_ of Sin cured; a Sermon preached at St. Michael’s, _Crooked_-lane, before the Prince of Orange, by the Rev. J. _Crookshanks_. Sold by Matthew Denton, at the _Crooked_ Billet near _Cripple_-gate, and by all other booksellers.” The words of the text are, “_Every crooked path shall be made straight_;” and the prince before whom it was preached was _deformed_ in person.
THE COURT-FOOL’S PUN ON ARCHBISHOP LAUD.
Great praise to God, and _little Laud_ to the devil.
English Words and Forms of Expression.
Dictionary English is something very different not only from common colloquial English, but even from that of ordinary written composition. Instead of about forty thousand words, there is probably no single author in the language from whose works, however voluminous, so many as ten thousand words could be collected. Of the forty thousand words there are certainly many more than one-half that are only employed, if they are ever employed at all, on the rarest occasions. We should be surprised to find, if we counted them, with how small a number of words we manage to express all that we have to say, either with our lips or with the pen. Our common literary English probably hardly amounts to ten thousand words; our common spoken English hardly to five thousand.
Odd words are to be found in the dictionaries. Why they are kept there no one knows; but what man in his senses would use such words as zythepsary for a brewhouse, and zymologist for a brewer; would talk of a stormy day as procellous and himself as madefied; of his long-legged son as increasing in procerity but sadly marcid; of having met with such procacity from such a one; of a bore as a macrologist; of an aged horse as macrobiotic; of important business as moliminous, and his daughter’s necklace as moniliform; of some one’s talk as meracious, and lament his last night’s nimiety of wine at that dapatical feast, whence he was taken by ereption? Open the dictionary at any page, and you will find a host of these words.
By a too ready adoption of foreign words into the currency of the English language, we are in danger of losing much of its radical strength and historical significance. Marsh has compared the parable of the man who built his house upon the sand, as given by Matthew and Luke. Matthew uses the plain Saxon English. The learned Evangelist, Luke, employed a Latinized dictionary. “Now,” he says, “compare the two passages and say which to every English ear, is the most impressive:”
“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”—_Matthew._
“Against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.”—_Luke._
There can scarcely be a difference of opinion as to the relative force and beauty of the two versions, and consequently we find, that while that of Matthew has become proverbial, the narrative of Luke is seldom or never quoted.
Trench says that the Anglo-Saxon is not so much one element of the English language, as the foundation of it—the basis. All its joints, its whole _articulation_, its sinews and its ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all smaller words which serve to knit together and bind the larger into sentences, these—not to speak of the grammatical structure of the language—are exclusively Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, yea, of goodly and polished hewn stones to the spiritual building, but the mortar, with all that holds and binds these together, and constitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. As proof positive of the soundness of the above affirmation, the test is submitted that—“you _can_ write a sentence without Latin, but you _cannot_ without Saxon.” The words of the Lord’s Prayer are almost all Saxon. Our good old family Bible is a capital standard of it, and has done more than any other book for the conservation of the purity of our language. Our best writers, particularly those of Queen Anne’s time,—Addison, Steele, Swift, &c.,—were distinguished by their use of simple Saxon.
SOURCES OF THE LANGUAGE.
Some years ago, a gentleman, after carefully examining the folio edition of Johnson’s Dictionary, formed the following table of English words derived from other languages:—
Latin 6,732 French 4,812 Saxon 1,665 Greek 1,148 Dutch 691 Italian 211 German 116 Welsh 95 Danish 75 Spanish 56 Icelandic 50 Swedish 34 Gothic 31 Hebrew 16 Teutonic 15 Arabic 13 Irish 6 Runic 4 Flemish 4 Erse 4 Syriac 3 Scottish 3 Irish and Erse 2 Turkish 2 Irish and Scottish 1 Portuguese 1 Persian 1 Frisi 1 Persic 1 Uncertain 1 ——— Total 15,784
NOUNS OF MULTITUDE.
A foreigner looking at a picture of a number of vessels, said, “See what a flock of ships.” He was told that a flock of ships was called a fleet, and that a fleet of sheep was called a flock. And it was added, for his guidance, in mastering the intricacies of our language, that a flock of girls is called a bevy, that a bevy of wolves is called a pack, and a pack of thieves is called a gang, and that a gang of angels is called a host, and that a host of porpoises is called a shoal, and a shoal of buffaloes is called a herd, and a herd of children is called a troop, and a troop of partridges is called a covey, and a covey of beauties is called a galaxy, and a galaxy of ruffians is called a horde, and a horde of rubbish is called a heap, and a heap of oxen is called a drove, and a drove of blackguards is called a mob, and a mob of whales is called a school, and a school of worshippers is called a congregation, and a congregation of engineers is called a corps, and a corps of robbers is called a band, and a band of locusts is called a swarm, and a swarm of people is called a crowd.
DISRAELIAN ENGLISH.
Mr. Disraeli gives us some queer English in his novel of _Lothair_, as may be seen in the following examples:—“He guarded over Lothair’s vast inheritance;” “Lothair observed on” a lady’s singing; “of simple but distinguished mien, with a countenance naturally pale, though somewhat bronzed by a life of air and exercise, and a profusion of dark, auburn hair;” “he engaged a vehicle and ordered to be driven to Leicester Square;” “he pointed to an individual seated in the centre of the table;” “their mutual ancestors;” “Is there anything in the _Tenebræ_ why I ought not to be present?”; “_thoughts which made him unconscious_ how long had elapsed;” “with no companions than the wounded near them;” “The surgeon was sitting by her side, occasionally wiping the slight foam from her brow.” We have heard of people foaming at the mouth, but never before of a lady foaming at the brow.
“YE” FOR “THE.”
_Ye_ is sometimes used for _the_ in old books wherein _the_ is the more usual form, on account of the difficulties experienced by the printers in “spacing out.” When pressed for room they put _ye_; when they had plenty of room they put _the_. Many people in reading old books pronounce the abbreviation _ye_. But the proper pronunciation is _the_, for the _y_ is only a corruption of the old _thorn-letter_, or symbol for _th_.
ITS.
_His_ is the genitive (or as we say, possessive) of _he_, (_he’s_,—_his_,) and _it_ or _hit_, as it was long written, is the neuter of _he_, the final _t_ being the sign of the neuter. The introduction of _its_, as the neuter genitive instead of _his_, arose from a misconception, similar to that which would have arisen had the Romans introduced _illudius_ as the neuter genitive of _ille_, instead of _illius_. _Its_ very rarely occurs in our authorized version of the Bible, _his_ or _her_ being used instead—occurs but a few times in all Shakspeare—was unknown to Ben Jonson—was not admitted into his poems by Milton—and did not come into common use until sanctioned by Dryden.
THAT.
The use of the word _That_ in the following examples is strictly in accordance with grammatical rules:—
The gentleman said, in speaking of the word _that_, _that that that that that_ lady parsed, was not _that that that that_ gentleman requested her to analyze.
Now, _that_ is a word that may often be joined, For _that that_ may be doubled is clear to the mind; And _that that that_ is right, is as plain to the view, As _that that that that_ we use, is rightly used too, And _that that that that that_ line has in it, is right— In accordance with grammar—is plain in our sight.
I SAY.
A gentleman who was in the habit of interlarding his discourse with the expression “I say,” having been informed by a friend that a certain individual had made some ill-natured remarks upon this peculiarity, took the opportunity of addressing him in the following amusing style of rebuke:—“I say, sir, I hear say you say I say ‘I say’ at every word I say. Now, sir, although I know I say ‘I say’ at every word I say, still I say, sir, it is not for you to say I say ‘I say’ at every word I say.”
PATH-OLOGY.
There once resided in Ayrshire a man who, like Leman, proposed to write an Etymological Dictionary of the English language. Being asked what he understood the word _pathology_ to mean, he answered, with great readiness and confidence, “Why, the art of _road-making_, to be sure.”
THE PRONUNCIATION OF OUGH.
The difficulty of applying rules to the pronunciation of our language may be illustrated in two lines, where the combination of the letters _ough_ is pronounced in no less than seven different ways, viz.: as _o_, _uff_, _off_, _up_, _ow_, _oo_, and _ock_:—
§Though§ the §TOUGH COUGH§ and §HICCOUGH PLOUGH§ me §THROUGH§, O’er life’s dark §LOUGH§ my course I still pursue.
The following attempts to show the sound of _ough_, final, are ingenious:—
_Though_ from _rough cough_ or _hiccough_ free, That man has pain _enough_ Whose wounds _through plough_, sunk in a _slough_, Or _lough_ begin to _slough_.
’Tis not an easy task to show, How o, u, g, h, sound; since _though_, An Irish _lough_, an English _slough_, And _cough_, and _hiccough_, all allow Differ as much as _tough_ and _through_, There seems no reason why they do.
“Husband,” says Joan, “’tis plain enough That Roger loves our daughter; And Betty loves him too, although She treats his suit with laughter.
“For Roger always hems and coughs, While on the field he’s ploughing; Then strives to see between the boughs, If Betty heeds his coughing.”
The following _jeu d’esprit_, entitled “A Literary Squabble on the pronunciation of Monckton Milnes’s Title,” is stated to have been the production of Lord Palmerston:—
The Alphabet rejoiced to hear, That Monckton Milnes was made a peer; For in the present world of letters, But few, if any, were his betters. So an address, by acclamation, They voted, of congratulation. And O U G H T and N Were chosen to take up the pen, Possessing each an interest vital In the new Peer’s baronial title. ’Twas done in language terse and telling, Perfect in grammar and in spelling. But when ’twas read aloud—oh, mercy! There sprung up such a controversy About the true pronunciation Of said baronial appellation. The vowels O and U averred They were entitled to be heard. The consonants denied the claim, Insisting that they mute became. Johnson and Walker were applied to, Sheridan, Bailey, Webster, tried too; But all in vain—for each picked out A word that left the case in doubt. O, looking round upon them all, Cried, “If it be correct to call T H R O U G H _throo_, H O U G H must be _Hoo_; Therefore there must be no dispute on The question, we should say Lord _Hooton_.” U then did speak, and sought to show He should be doubled, and not O, For sure if _ought_ and _awt_, then nought on Earth could the title be but _Hawton_. H, on the other hand, said he, In _cough_ and _trough_, stood next to G, And like an F was then looked oft on, Which made him think it should be _Hofton_. But G corrected H, and drew Attention other cases to: _Lough_, _Rough_ and _Chough_, more than enough To prove O U G H spelled _uff_, And growled out in a sort of gruff tone They must pronounce the title _Hufton_. N said emphatically No; For D O U G H is _Doh_, And though (look there again) that stuff At sea for fun, they nickname _Duff_, He should propose they took a vote on The question should it not be _Hoton_? Besides, in French ’twould have such force, A Lord must be _haut ton_, of course. High and more high contention rose, From words they almost came to blows, Till S, as yet, who had not spoke, And dearly loved a little joke, Put in _his_ word, and said, “Look here, _Plough_ in this row must have a _share_.” At this atrocious pun, each page Of Johnson whiter grew with rage. Bailey looked desperately cut up, And Sheridan completely shut up. Webster, who is no idle talker, Made a sign signifying _Walker_. While Walker, who had been used badly, Shook his old dirty dog-ears sadly. But as we find in prose or rhyme, A joke, made happily in time, However poor, will often tend The hottest argument to end, And smother anger in a laugh, So S succeeded with his _chaff_, Containing, as it did, some wheat, In calming this fierce verbal heat. Authorities were all conflicting, And S there was no contradicting. P L O U G H was _Plow_ Even _enough_ was called _enow_, And no one who preferred _enough_ Would dream of saying “Speed the _Pluff_.” So they considered it was wise With S to make a compromise, To leave no loop to hang a doubt on By giving three cheers for Lord Houghton (_Howton_).
EXCISE.
The following curious document gives the opinion of Lord Mansfield, when Attorney-General, upon Dr. Johnson’s definition of the word Excise:—
_Case._
Mr. Samuel Johnson has lately published a book, entitled _A Dictionary of the English Language, in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers. To which are prefixed a history of the Language, and an English grammar._
Under the title “Excise” are the following words:—
Excise, n. s. (_accijs_ Dutch; _excisum_, Latin,) a hateful tax levied upon commodities and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but _wretches_ hired by those to whom _Excise_ is paid.
The people should pay a ratable tax for their sheep, and an _Excise_ for every thing which they should eat.—§Hayward.§
Ambitious now to take _excise_ Of a more fragrant paradise.—§Cleveland.§
EXCISE.
With hundred rows of teeth the shark exceeds, And on all trades, like Cassowar, she feeds.—§Marvel.§
Can hire large houses and oppress the poor By farmed Excise.—§Dryden§, _Juvenal, Sat. 3_.
The author’s definition being observed by the Commissioners of Excise, they desire the favor of your opinion:
_Qu._—Whether it will not be considered as a libel; and, if so, whether it is not proper to proceed against the author, printers, and publishers thereof, or any and which of them, by information or how otherwise?
_Opinion._
I am of opinion that it is a libel; but, under all the circumstances, I should think it better to give him an opportunity of altering his definition; and, in case he don’t, threaten him with an information.
§W. Murray.§
29th Nov. 1755.
PONTIFF.
Mr. Longfellow, in his _Golden Legend_, thus refers to the derivation of this word from _pons_ (a bridge) and _facere_ (to make):—
Well has the name of Pontifex been given Unto the Church’s head, as the chief builder And architect of the invisible bridge That leads from earth to heaven.
ROUGH.
Mr. Motley, in his _History of the United Netherlands_, IV. 138, thus ascribes the use of this word to Queen Elizabeth, of England, in her last illness:—
The great queen, moody, despairing, dying, wrapt in profoundest thought, with eyes fixed upon the ground or already gazing into infinity was besought by the counsellors around her to name the man to whom she chose that the crown should devolve.
“Not to a Rough,” said Elizabeth, sententiously and grimly.
These particulars are apparently given on the authority of the Italian Secretary, Scaramelli, whose language is quoted in a foot-note, and who says that the word _Rough_ “in lingua inglese significa persona bassa e vile.”
Charles Dickens said, “I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of _ruffian_ into _rough_, which has lately become popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this paper.” (_The Ruffian, by the Uncommercial Traveler, All the Year Round._) “Lately popular” does not mean popular for two hundred and eighty years past. A word that has escaped the notice of the Glossarists cannot have been in use early in the seventeenth century. That it should have been used in its modern sense by Queen Elizabeth, passes all bounds of belief. With all her faults she did not make silly unmeaning remarks; and it would have been extremely silly in her to say she did not wish a low ruffian to succeed her on the throne. If she uttered a word having the same sound, it might possibly have been _ruff_. The “ruff,” though worn by men of the upper class, was in Queen Elizabeth’s time an especially female article of dress, and the queen might have said, “I will have no ruff to succeed me,” just as now-a-days one might say, “I will have no petticoat government.” We want better authority than that of Scaramelli before we can believe that Elizabeth used either the word _rough_ or _ruff_, when consulted as to her wishes respecting her successor.
NOT AMERICANISMS.
In Bartlett’s Dictionary the term “_stocking-feet_” is given as an Americanism. But the following quotation from Thackeray’s _Newcomes_ (vol. i. ch. viii.) shows that this is an error:—
“Binnie found the Colonel in his sitting-room arrayed in what are called in Scotland his stocking-feet.”
Professor Tyndall, at the farewell banquet given in his honor by the citizens of New York, prior to his departure, in referring to his successful lecture-course in the United States, said he had had—to quote his words—“what you Americans call ‘_a good time_.’”
But this expression is not an Americanism. It is used by Dean Swift in his letter to Stella, (Feb. 24, 1710–11); “I hope Mrs. Wells had a good time.”
That not very elegant adjective _bully_, though found in Bartlett, and used by Washington Irving cannot be claimed as an Americanism. Friar Tuck sings, in Scott’s _Ivanhoe_:—
“Come troll the brown bowl to me, bully boy, Come troll the brown bowl to me.”
But to go further back, we find it in the burden of an old three-part song, “We be three poor Mariners,” in Ravenscroft’s _Deuteromelia_, 1609:
“Shall we go dance the round, the round, Shall we go dance the round; And he that is a bully boy, Come pledge me on the ground.”
One of the words which the English used to class among Americanisms—ignorant that it was older and better English than their own usage—was _Fall_, used as the name of the third of the seasons. The English, corrupted by the Johnsonese of the Hanoverian reigns, call it by the Latinism, Autumn. But the other term, in general use on this side of the Atlantic, is the word by which all the old writers of the language know it. “The hole yere,” says scholarly Roger Ascham in his _Toxophilus_, “is divided into iiii. partes, Spring tyme, Sommer, Faule of the leafe, & Winter, whereof the hole winter for the roughnesse of it, is cleane taken away from shoting: except it be one day amonges xx., or one yeare amonges xi.”
This statement, by the way, that exceptionally mild winters were in the ratio of one to eleven, is worth noting with reference to the recent announcement of science that the spots on the sun have an eleven-year period of maximum frequency.
NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN THEM.
In the ordinary acceptation of the words, “No love was lost between the two,” we are led to infer that the two were on very unfriendly terms. But in the ballad of _The Babes in the Wood_, as given in Percy’s _Reliques_, occur the following lines, which convey the contrary idea:—
No love between this two was lost, Each was to other kind: In love they lived, in love they died, And left two babes behind.
THE FORLORN HOPE.
Military and civil writers of the present day seem quite ignorant of the true meaning of the words _forlorn hope_. The adjective has nothing to do with despair, nor the substantive with the “charmer which lingers still behind;” there was no such poetical depth in the words as originally used. Every corps marching in an enemy’s country had a small body of men at the head (_haupt_ or _hope_) of the advanced guard; and which was termed the _forlorne hope_ (_lorn_ being here but a termination similar to _ward_ in _forward_,) while another small body at the head of the read-guard was called the _rere-lorn hope_. A reference to Johnson’s Dictionary shows that civilians were misled as early as the time of Dryden by the mere sound of a technical military phrase; and, in process of time, even military men forgot the true meaning of the words. And thus we easily trace the foundation of an error to which we are indebted for Byron’s beautiful line:—
The full of hope, misnamed _forlorn_.
QUIZ.
This word, which is only in vulgar or colloquial use, and which some of the lexicographers have attempted to trace to learned roots, originated in a joke. Daly, the manager of a Dublin play-house, wagered that a word of no meaning should be the common talk and puzzle of the city in twenty-four hours. In the course of that time the letters _q u i z_ were chalked on all the walls of Dublin with an effect that won the wager.
TENNYSON’S ENGLISH.
Probably no poet ever more thoroughly comprehended the value of words in metrical composition than Mr. Tennyson, but he has issued a new coinage which is not pure. Compound epithets are modelled after the Greek or revived from the uncritical Elizabethan era. Thus, where we should naturally say “The bee is cradled in the lily,” Mr. Tennyson writes, “The bee is lily-cradled.” When a man’s nose is broken at the bridge or a lady’s turns up at the tip, the one is said to be “a nose bridge-broken,” and the other (with much gallantry) to be “tip-tilted, like the petal of a flower.”
The movement of the metre again is very peculiar. Discarding Milton’s long and complex periods, Mr. Tennyson has restored blank verse to an apparently simple rhythm. But this simplicity is in fact the result of artifice, and, under every variety of movement, the ear detects the recurrence of a set type. One of the poet’s favorite devices is to pause on a monosyllable at the beginning of a line, and this affect is repeated so often as to remind the reader of Euripides and his unhappy “oil flask” in _The Frogs_. Take the following instances:—
And the strange sound of an adulterous race, Against the iron grating of her cell Beat.
A sound As of a silver horn across the hills Blown. And then the music faded, and the Grail Passed. His eyes became so like her own they seemed Hers.
“THAT MINE ADVERSARY HAD WRITTEN A BOOK.”
This passage from Job xxxi. 35, is frequently misapplied, being interpreted as if it had reference to a book or writing as commonly understood. It means rather, according to Gesenius, a charge or accusation. Pierius makes it “libellum accusationis,” and Grotius, “scriptam accusationem” Scott expresses this in his _Commentary_:—
“Job challenged his adversary, or accuser, to produce a libel or written indictment against him: he was confident that it would prove no disgrace to him, but an honor; as every article would be disproved, and the reverse be manifested.”
Other commentators understand it as meaning a record of Job’s life, or of his sufferings. Coverdale translates:—“And let him that my contrary party sue me with a lybell.” In the Genevan version it is, “Though mine adversarie should write a book _against me_.” In the Bishop’s Bible, 1595, “Though mine adversarie write a book _against me_.” The meaning seems to have become obscured in our version by retaining the English
## book instead of the Latin _libel_, but omitting the words in italics,
“against me.”
ECCENTRIC ETYMOLOGIES.
To trace the changes of form and meaning which many of the words of our language have undergone is no easy task. There are words as current with us as with our forefathers, the significance of which, as we use them, is very different from that of their primitive use. And, in many instances, they have wandered, by courses more or less tortuous, so far from their original meaning as to make it almost impossible to follow the track of divergence. Hence, it is easy to understand why it has been said that the etymologist, to be successful, must have “an instinct like the special capabilities of the pointer.” But there are derivations which are only revealed by accident, or stumbled upon in unexpected ways, and which, in the regular course of patient search, would never have been elicited. The following illustrative selections will interest the general reader.
* * * * *
_Bombastic._—This adjective has an odd derivation. Originally bombast (from the Latin bombax, cotton) meant nothing but cotton wadding, used for filling or stuffing. Shakspeare employs it in this sense in _Love’s Labor Lost_, v. 2.
As bombast and as living to the time.
Decker, in his _Satyromastix_, says, “You shall swear not to bombast out a new play with the old linings of jests.” And Guazzo, _Civile Conversation_, 1591,—“Studie should rather make him leane and thinne, and pull out the bombast of his corpulent doublet.”
Hence, by easy transition from the falseness of padding or puffing out a figure, bombast came to signify swelling pretentiousness of speech and conduct as an adapted meaning; and gradually this became the primary and only sense.
* * * * *
_Buxom._—This word is simply bow-some or bough-some, _i.e._, that which readily bows, or bends, or yields like the boughs of a tree. No longer ago than when Milton wrote _boughsome_, which as _gh_ in English began to lose its guttural sound,—that of the letter _chi_ in Greek,—came to be written _buxom_, meant simply yielding, and was of general application.
——“and, this once known, shall soon return, And bring ye to the place where thou and Death Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen Wing silently the buxom air.”—_Paradise Lost_, II. 840.
But aided, doubtless, as Dr. Johnson suggests, by a too liberal construction of the bride’s promise in the old English marriage ceremony, to be “obedient and buxom in bed and board,” it came to be applied to women who were erroneously thought likely to be thus yielding; and hence it now means plump, rosy, alluring, and is applied only to women who combine those qualities of figure, face and expression.
* * * * *
_Cadaver._—An abbot of Cirencester, about 1216, conceived himself an etymologist, and, as a specimen of his powers, has left us the Latin word cadaver, a corpse, thus dissected:—“Ca,” quoth he, is abbreviated for caro; “da” for data; “ver” for vermibus. Hence we have “caro data vermibus,” flesh given to the worms.
Yet while the reader smiles at this curious absurdity, it is worth while to note that the word _alms_ is constructed upon a similar principle, being formed (according to the best authority) of letters, taken from successive syllables of the cumbrous Latinized Greek word _eleemosyna_.
* * * * *
_Canard._—This is the French for duck, and the origin of its application to hoaxing is said to be as follows:—To ridicule a growing extravagance in story-telling a clever journalist stated that an interesting experiment had just been made, calculated to prove the extraordinary voracity of ducks. Twenty of these animals had been placed together, and one of them having been killed and cut up into the smallest possible pieces, feathers and all, and thrown to the other nineteen, had been gluttonously gobbled up in an exceedingly brief space of time. Another was taken from the remaining nineteen, and being chopped small like its predecessor, was served up to the eighteen, and at once devoured like the other; and so on to the last, which was thus placed in the remarkable position of having eaten his nineteen companions in a wonderfully short space of time! All this, most pleasantly narrated, obtained a success which the writer was far from anticipating, for the story ran the rounds of all the journals in Europe. It then became almost forgotten for about a score of years, when it came back from America, with an amplification which it did not boast of at the commencement, and with a regular certificate of the autopsy of the body of the surviving animal, whose esophagus was declared to have been seriously injured! Since then fabrications of this character have been called _canards_.
* * * * *
_Chum._—A schoolboy’s letter, written two centuries ago, has lately revealed that chum is a contraction from “chamber-fellow.” Two students dwelling together found the word unwieldly, and, led by another universal law of language, they shortened it in the most obvious way.
* * * * *
_Dandy._—Bishop Fleetwood says that “dandy” is derived from a silver coin of small value, circulated in the reign of Henry VIII., and called a “dandy-prat.”
* * * * *
_Dunce._—This word comes to us from the celebrated Duns Scotus, chief of the Schoolmen of his time. He was “the subtle doctor by preëminence;” and it certainly is a strange perversion that a scholar of his great ability should give name to a class who hate all scholarship. When at the Reformation and revival of learning the works of the Schoolmen fell into extreme disfavor with the Reformers and the votaries of the new learning, Duns, the standard-bearer of the former, was so often referred to with scorn and contempt by the latter that his name gradually became the by-word it now is for hopeless ignorance and invincible stupidity. The errors and follies of a set were fastened upon their distinguished head. Says Tyndale, 1575,—
“Remember ye not how within this thirty years, and far less, and yet dureth unto this day, the old barking curs, _Dunce’s_ disciples, and like draff called Scotists, the children of darkness, raged in every pulpit against Greek, Latin and Hebrew?”
* * * * *
_Eating humble-pie._—The phrase “eating humble-pie” is traced to the obsolete French word “_ombles_,” entrails; pies for the household servants being formerly made of the entrails of animals. Hence, to take low or humble ground, to submit one’s self, came familiarly to be called eating “humble” or rather “umble” pie. The word “umbles” came to us from the Norman conquest, and though now obsolete, retains its place in the lexicons of Worcester and Webster, who, however, explain the entrails to be those of the deer only.
* * * * *
_Fiasco._—A German, one day, seeing a glassblower at his occupation, thought nothing could be easier than glassblowing, and that he could soon learn to blow as well as the workman. He accordingly commenced operations by blowing vigorously, but could only produce a sort of pear-shaped balloon or little flask (fiasco). The second attempt had a similar result, and so on, until _fiasco_ after _fiasco_ had been made. Hence arose the expression which we not infrequently have occasion to use when describing the result of our undertakings.
* * * * *
_Fudge._—This is a curious word, having a positive personality underlying it. Such at least it is, if Disraeli’s account thereof be authentic. He quotes from a very old pamphlet entitled _Remarks upon the Navy_, wherein the author says, “There was in our time one _Captain Fudge_, commander of a merchantman, who upon his return from a voyage, how ill fraught soever his ship was, always brought home his owners a good crop of lies; so much that now, aboard ship, the sailors when they hear a great lie told, cry out, ‘You fudge it’.” The ship was the Black Eagle, and the time, Charles II.; and thence the monosyllabic name of its untruthful captain comes to us for exclamation when we have reason to believe assertions ill-founded.
* * * * *
_Gossip._—This is another of that class of words which by the system of moral decadence that Trench has so ably illustrated as influencing human language, has come to be a term of unpleasant reproach. In some parts of the country, by the “gossips” of a child are meant his god-parents, who take vows for him at his baptism. The connection between these two actual uses of the word is not so far to seek as one might suppose. Chaucer shows us that those who stood sponsors for an infant were considered “_sib_,” or kin, to each other in _God_: thus the double syllables were compounded. Verstigan says:—
“Our Christian ancestors understanding a spirituall affinitie for to grow between the parents, and such as undertooke for the childe at baptisme, called each other by the name of _God-sib_, which is as much as to say as that they were _sib_ together, i.e. of kin together, through God.”
The Roman church forbids marriage between persons so united in a common vow, as she believes they have contracted an essential spiritual relationship. But from their affinity in the interests of the child they were brought into much converse with one another; and as much talk almost always degenerates into idle talk, and personalities concerning one’s neighbors, and the like, so “gossips” finally came to signify the latter, when the former use of it was nearly forgotten. It is remarkable that the French “commérage” has passed through identically the same perversion.
* * * * *
_Grog._—Admiral Vernon, whose ardent devotion to his profession had endeared him to the British naval service, was in the habit of walking the deck, in bad weather, in a rough _grogram_ cloak, and thence had obtained the nickname of _Old Grog_. Whilst in command of the West India station, and at the height of his popularity on account of his reduction of Porto Bello with six men-of-war only, he introduced the use of rum and water among the ship’s company. When served out, the new beverage proved most palatable, and speedily grew into such favor that it became as popular as the brave admiral himself, and in honor of him was surnamed by acclamation “Grog.”
* * * * *
_Hocus-pocus._—According to Tillotson, this singular expression is believed to be a corruption of the transubstantiating formula, _Hoc est corpus meum_, used by the priest on the elevation of the host. Turner, in his history of the Anglo-Saxons, traces it to Ochus Bochus, a magician and demon of the northern mythology. We should certainly prefer the latter as the source of this conjurer’s catch-word, which the usage of ordinary life connects with jugglery or unfair dealing, but preponderant evidence is in favor of the former.
* * * * *
_Malingerer._—This word, brought much into use by the exigencies of our civil war, is from the French “malin gré,” and signifies a soldier who from “evil will” shirks his duty by feigning sickness, or otherwise rendering himself incapable: in plain words, a poltroon.
* * * * *
_Mustard._—Etymologists have fought vigorously over the derivation of this word. “Multum ardet,” says one, or in old French, “moult arde,” it burns much. “Mustum ardens, hot must,” says another, referring to the former custom of preparing French mustard for the table with the sweet must of new wine. A picturesque story about the name is thus told:—Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, granted to Dijon certain armorial bearings, with the motto “Moult me tarde”—I long or wish ardently. This was sculptured over the principal gate. In the course of years, by some accident, the central word was effaced. The manufacturers of sinapi or senévé (such were the former names of mustard), wishing to label their pots of condiment with the city arms, copied the mutilated motto; and the unlearned, seeing continually the inscription of “moult-tarde,” fell into the habit of calling the contents by this title.
* * * * *
_Navvy._—Many persons have been puzzled by the application of this word, abbreviated from navigator, to laborers. Why should earth-workers be called navigators? They whose business is with an element antipodean to water, why receive a title as of seafaring men? At the period when inland navigation was the national rage, and canals were considered to involve the essentials of prosperity, as railways are now, the workmen employed on them were called “navigators,” as cutting the way for navigation. And when railways superseded canals, the name of the laborers, withdrawn from one work to the other, was unchanged, and merely contracted, according to the dislike of our Anglo-Saxon tongues to use four syllables where a less number will suffice.
* * * * *
_Neighbor._—Formerly this familiar word was employed to signify “the boor who lives nigh to us.” And just here is another of those words which have been degraded from their original sense; for boor did not then represent a stupid, ignorant lout, but simply a farmer, as in Dutch now.
* * * * *
_Poltroon._—In the olden days the Norman-French “poltroon” had a significance obsolete now: days when Strongbow was a noble surname, and the yew-trees of England were of importance as an arm of national defence; then the coward or malingerer had but to cut off the thumb (“pollice truncus” in Latin)—the thumb which drew the bow, and he was unfit for service, and must be discharged.
* * * * *
_Porpoise._—The common creature of the sea, whose gambols have passed into a jest and a proverb, the porpoise, is so named because of his resemblance to a hog when in sportive mood. “Porc-poisson,” said somebody who watched a herd of them tumbling about, for all the world like swine, except for the sharp dorsal fin; and the epithet adhered.
* * * * *
_Scrape._—Long ago roamed through the forests the red and fallow deer, which had a habit of scraping up the earth with their fore-feet to the depth of several inches, sometimes even of half a yard. A wayfaring man through the olden woods was frequently exposed to the danger of tumbling into one of these hollows, when he might truly be said to be “in a scrape.” Cambridge students in their little difficulties picked up and applied the phrase to other perplexing matters which had brought a man morally into a fix.
* * * * *
_Sterling._—This word was originally applied to the metal rather than to a coin. The following extract from Camden points out its origin as applied to money:—
In the time of his sonne King Richard the First, monie coined in the east parts of Germanie began to be of especiall request in England for the puritie thereof, and was called _Easterling_ monie, as all the inhabitants of those parts were called _Easterlings_, and shortly after some of that countrie, skilful in mint matters and alloies, were sent for into this realme to bring the coins to perfection, which, since that time, was called of them _sterling_ for _Easterlings_.
* * * * *
_Surplice._—That scholastic and ministerial badge, the surplice, is said to derive its name from the Latin “superpelliceum,” because anciently worn over leathern coats made of hides of beasts; with the idea of representing how the sin of our first parents is now covered by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we are entitled to wear the emblem of innocence.
* * * * *
_Sycophant._—The original etymology of the word sycophant is curious. The word συχοφαντέω (from σῦχον, a fig, and φαίνω, to show,) in its primary signification, means to inform against or expose those who exported figs from Athens to other places without paying duty, hence it came to signify _calumnior_, to accuse falsely, to be a tale-bearer, an evil speaker of others. The word _sycophanta_ means, in its first sense, no more than this. We now apply it to any flatterer, or other abject dependant, who, to serve his own purposes, slanders and detracts from others.
* * * * *
_Tariff._—Because payment of a fixed scale of duties was demanded by the Moorish occupants of a fortress on Tarifa promontory, which overlooked the entrance to the Mediterranean, all taxes on imports came to be called a tariff.
* * * * *
_Treacle._—A remarkable curiosity in the way of derivations is one traced by that indefatigable explorer, Archbishop Trench, which connects treacle with vipers. The syrup of molasses with the poison of snakes! Never was an odder relationship; yet it is a case of genuine fatherhood, and embodies a singular superstition. The ancients believed that the best antidote to the bite of the viper was a confection of its own flesh. The Greek word θηρταχή, flesh of the viper, was given first to such a sweetmeat, and then to any antidote of poison, and lastly to any syrup; and easily corrupted into our present word. Chaucer has a line—
Christ, which that is to every harm triacle.
Milton speaks of the “sovran treacle of sound doctrine.” A stuff called Venice Treacle was considered antidote to all poisons. “Vipers treacle yield,” says Edmund Waller, in a verse which has puzzled many a modern reader, and yet brings one close to the truth of the etymology, and shows that treacle is only a popular corruption of _theriac_.
* * * * *
_Wig._—This word may be cited as a good example to show how interesting and profitable it is to trace words through their etymological windings to their original source. Wig is abridged from _periwig_, which comes from the Low Dutch _peruik_, which has the same meaning. When first introduced into the English language, it was written and pronounced _perwick_, the _u_ being changed into _w_, as may still be seen in old English books. Afterwards the _i_ was introduced for euphony, and it became _periwick_; and finally the _ck_ was changed into _g_, making it _periwig_, and by contraction _wig_.
The Dutch word _peruik_ was borrowed from the French _perruque_. The termination _uik_ is a favorite one with that nation, and is generally substituted in borrowed words for the French _uque_ and the German _auch_. The French word _perruque_ comes from the Spanish _peluca_, and this last from _pelo_, hair, which is derived from the Latin _pilus_. Hence the Latin word _pilus_, hair, through successive transformations, has produced the English word _wig_.
* * * * *
_Windfall._—Centuries ago a clause was extant in the tenure of many English estates, to the effect that the owners might not fell the trees, as the best timber was reserved for the Royal Navy; but any trees that came down without cutting were the property of the tenant. Hence was a storm a joyful and a lucrative event in proportion to its intensity, and the larger the number of forest patriarchs it laid low the richer was the lord of the land. He had received a veritable “windfall.” Ours in the nineteenth century come in the shape of any unexpected profit; and those of us who own estates rather quake in sympathy with our trembling trees on windy nights.
ODD CHANGES OF SIGNIFICATION.
The first verse of Dean Whittingham’s version of the 114th Psalm may be quoted as a curious instance of a phrase originally grave in its meaning become strangely incongruous:—
When Israel by God’s address From Pharaoh’s land was bent, And Jacob’s house the strangers left And _in the same train_ went.
Since the completion of the Pacific Railway, some introductory lines in Southey’s _Thalaba_ require correction:—
Who at this untimely hour Wander o’er the _desert sands_? No _station_ is in view.
If the author would revisit the earth, he would find numerous “stations” on the railway route across the Great American Desert.
* * * * *
Among funny instances of wresting from a text a meaning to suit a
## particular purpose, is that of the classical scholar who undertook to
prove that the word “smile” was used as a euphemism for a drink in ancient times, by quoting from Horace’s _Odes_:—
Amara lento temperat risu.
Which is rendered by Martin:—
Meets life’s _bitters_ with a jest, And _smiles_ them down.
By _lento risu_, it was argued, is clearly meant a _slow_ smile, or one taken through a straw!
The meaning of the word _Wretch_ is one not generally understood. It was originally, and is now, in some parts of England, used as a term of the softest and fondest tenderness. This is not the only instance in which words in their present general acceptation bear a very opposite meaning to what they did in Shakspeare’s time. The word _Wench_, formerly, was not used in the low and vulgar acceptation that it is at present. _Damsel_ was the appellation of young ladies of quality, and _Dame_ a title of distinction. _Knave_ once signified a servant; and in an early translation of the New Testament, instead of “Paul, the Servant,” we read “Paul, the Knave of Jesus Christ,” or, Paul, a rascal of Jesus Christ. _Varlet_ was formerly used in the same sense as valet. On the other hand, the word _Companion_, instead of being the honorable synonym of Associate, occurs in the play of Othello with the same contemptuous meaning which we now affix, in its abusive sense, to the word “Fellow;” for Emilia, perceiving that some secret villain had aspersed the character of the virtuous Desdemona, thus indignantly exclaims:—
O Heaven! that such _Companions_ thou’dst unfold, And put in every honest hand a whip, To lash the rascal naked through the world.—iv. 2.
_Villain_ formerly meant a bondman. In feudal law, according to Blackstone, the term was applied to those who held lands and tenements in _villenage_,—a tenure by base services.
Pedant formerly meant a schoolmaster. Shakspeare says in his _Twelfth Night_,—
A pedant that keeps a school in the church.—iii. 2.
Bacon, in his _Pathway unto Prayer_, thus uses the word Imp: “Let us pray for the preservation of the King’s most excellent Majesty, and for the prosperous success of his entirely beloved son Edward our Prince, that most _angelic imp_.”
The word _brat_ is not considered very elegant now, but a few years ago it had a different signification from its present one. An old hymn or _De profundis_, by Gascoine, contains the lines,—
“O Israel, O household of the Lord, O Abraham’s brats, O brood of blessed seed, O chosen sheep that loved the Lord indeed.”
It is a somewhat noticeable fact, that the changes in the signification of words have generally been to their deterioration; that is, words that heretofore had no sinister meaning have acquired it. The word _cunning_, for example, formerly meant nothing sinister or underhanded; and in Thrope’s confession in Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” is the sentence, “I believe that all these three persons [in the Godhead] are even in power, and in cunning, and in might, full of grace and of all goodness.” _Demure_ is another of this class. It was used by earlier writers without the insinuation which is now almost latent in it, that the external shows of modesty and sobriety rest on no corresponding realities. _Explode_ formerly meant to drive off the stage with loud clappings of the hands, but gradually became exaggerated into its present signification. _Facetious_, too, originally meant urbane, but now has so degenerated as to have acquired the sense of buffoonery; and Mr. Trench sees indications that it will ere long acquire the sense of indecent buffoonery.
_Frippery_ now means trumpery and odds and ends of cheap finery; but once it meant old clothes of value, and not worthless, as the term at present implies. The word _Gossip_ formerly meant only a sponsor in baptism. Sponsors were supposed to become acquainted at the baptismal font, and by their sponsorial act to establish an indefinite affinity towards each other and the child. Thus the word was applied to all who were familiar and intimate, and finally obtained the meaning which is now predominant in it.
_Homely_ once meant secret and familiar, though in the time of Milton it had acquired the same sense as at present. _Idiot_, from the Greek, originally signified only a private man as distinguished from one in public office, and from that it has degenerated till it has come to designate a person of defective mental powers. _Incense_ once meant to kindle not only anger, but good passions as well; Fuller uses it in the sense of “to incite.” _Indolence_ originally signified a freedom from passion or pain, but now implies a condition of languid non-exertion. _Insolent_ was once only “unusual.”
The derivation of _lumber_ is peculiar. As the Lombards were the bankers, so they were also the pawnbrokers, of the Middle Ages. The “lumber-room” was then the place where the Lombard banker and broker stored his pledges, and _lumber_ gradually came to mean the pledges themselves. As these naturally accumulated till they got out of date or became unserviceable, it is easy to trace the steps by which the word descended to its present meaning.
_Obsequious_ implies an unmanly readiness to fall in with the will of another; but in the original obsequium, or in the English word as employed two centuries ago, there was nothing of this: it rather meant obedience and mildness. Shakspeare, speaking of a deceased person, says,—
“How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye, As interest of the dead.”
_Property_ and _propriety_ were once synonymous, both referring to material things, as the French word _propriété_ does now. Foreigners do not often catch the distinction at present made in English between the two words; and we know a French gentleman who, recently meeting with some pecuniary reverses, astonished his friends by telling them that he had lost all his “propriety.”
A poet is a person who writes poetry, and, according to the good old customs, a proser was a person who wrote prose, and simply the antithesis of poet. The word has now a sadly different signification; and it would not be considered very respectable to term Addison, Irving, Bancroft, or Everett “prosers.”
INFLUENCE OF NAMES.
The Romans, from the time they expelled their kings, could never endure the idea of being governed by a _king_. But they submitted to the most abject slavery under an _emperor_. And Oliver Cromwell did not venture to risk disgusting the republicans by calling himself king, though under the title of Protector he exercised regal functions.
The American colonies submitted to have their commerce and their manufactures crippled by restrictions avowedly for the benefit of the mother-country, and were thus virtually _taxed_ to the amount of all that they in any instance lost by paying more for some article than it would cost to make it themselves, or to buy it of foreigners. But as soon as _a tax_ was imposed _under that name_, they broke out into rebellion.
It is a marvel to many, and seems to them nearly incredible, that the Israelites should have gone after other gods; and yet the vulgar in most parts of Christendom are actually serving the gods of their heathen ancestors. But then they do not _call_ them _gods_, but fairies or bogles, etc., and they do not apply the word _worship_ to their veneration of them, nor _sacrifice_ to their offerings. And this slight change of name keeps most people in ignorance of a fact that is before their eyes.
Others, professed Christians, are believed, both by others and by themselves, to be worshippers of the true God, though they invest him with the _attributes_ of one of the evil demons worshipped by the heathen. There is hardly any professed Christian who would not be shocked at the application of the word _caprice_ to the acts of the Most High. And yet his choosing to inflict suffering on his creatures “_for no cause_” (as some theologians maintain) “except that _such is his will_,” is the very definition of caprice.
But when Lord Byron published his poem of “Cain,” which contains substantially the _very same_ doctrine, there was a great outcry among pious people, including, no doubt, many who were of the theological school which teaches the same, under other _names_.
Why and how any evil comes to exist in the universe, reason cannot explain, and revelation does not tell us. But it does show us what is _not_ the cause. That it cannot be from _ill will_ or _indifference_, is proved by the sufferings undergone by the _beloved_ Son.
Many probably would have hesitated if it had been proposed to them to join a new _Church_ under that _name_, who yet eagerly enrolled themselves in the Evangelical _Alliance_,—which is in fact a church, with meetings for worship, and _sermons_ under the _name_ of _speeches_, and a _creed_ consisting of sundry _Articles of Faith_ to be subscribed; only not called by those _names_.
Mrs. B. expressed to a friend her great dread of such a medicine as tartar-emetic. She always, she said, gave her children _antimonial_ wine. He explained to her that this is tartar-emetic dissolved in wine; but she remained unchanged.
Mrs. H. did not like that her daughters should be novel-readers; and _all novels_ in _prose_ were indiscriminately prohibited; but _any_ thing in _verse_ was as indiscriminately allowed.
Probably a Quaker would be startled at any one’s using the very _words_ of the prophets, “Thus saith the Lord:” yet he says the same things in the words, “The Spirit moveth me to say so and so.” And some, again, who would be shocked at _this_, speak of a person,—adult or _child_,—who addresses a congregation in extempore prayers and discourses, as being under the _influence of the Holy Spirit_; though in neither case is there any miraculous _proof_ given. And they abhor a claim to _infallibility_; only they are _quite certain_ of being under the guidance of the Spirit in whatever they say or do.
Quakers, again, and some other dissenters, object to a _hired_ ministry, (in reality, an _un_hired;) but their preachers are to be _supplied_ with all they need; like the father of Molière’s Bourgeois, who was no _shopkeeper_, but kindly chose _goods_ for his friends, which he let them have for money.
COMPOUND EPITHETS.
The custom of using hard compounds furnished Ben Jonson opportunities of showing his learning as well as his satire. He used to call them “words un-in-one-breath-utterable.” Redi mentions an epigram against the sophists, made up of compounds “a mile long.” Joseph Scaliger left a curious example in Latin, part of which may be thus rendered into English:—
Loftybrowflourishers, Noseinbeardwallowers, Brigandbeardnourishers, Dishandallswallowers, Oldcloakinvestitors, Barefootlookfashioners, Nightprivatefeasteaters, Craftlucubrationers; Youthcheaters, Wordcatchers, Vaingloryosophers, Such are your seekersofvirtue philosophers.
The old naturalist Lovell published a book at Oxford, in 1661, entitled _Panzoologicomineralogia_. Rabelais proposed the following title for a book:—_Antipericatametaparhengedamphicribrationes_. The reader of Shakspeare will remember Costard’s _honorificabilitudinitatibus_, in Love’s Labor Lost, v. 1. There was recently in the British army a major named _Teyoninhokarawen_. In the island of Mull, Scotland, is a locality named _Drimtaidhorickhillichattan_. The original Mexican for country curates is _Notlazomahnitzteopixcatatzins_. The longest Nipmuck word in Eliot’s Indian Bible is in St. Mark i. 40, _Wutteppesittukqussunnoowehtunkquoh_, and signifies “kneeling down to him.”
OUR VERNACULAR IN CHAUCER’S TIME.
But rede that boweth down for every blaste Ful lyghtly cesse wynde, it wol aryse But so nyle not an oke, when it is caste It nedeth me nought longe the forvyse Men shall reioysen of a great emprise Atchewed wel and stant withouten dout Al haue men ben the longer there about.—_Troylus_, ii.
Tall Writing.
DEFINITION OF TRANSCENDENTALISM.
The spiritual cognoscence of psychological irrefragibility connected with concutient ademption of incolumnient spirituality and etherialized contention of subsultory concretion.
Translated by a New York lawyer, it stands thus:—
Transcendentalism is two holes in a sand-bank: a storm washes away the sand-bank without disturbing the holes.
THE DOMICILE ERECTED BY JOHN.
_Translated from the Vulgate._
Behold the Mansion reared by dædal Jack.
See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack, In the proud cirque of Ivan’s bivouac.
Mark how the Rat’s felonious fangs invade The golden stores in John’s pavilion laid.
Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides, Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides,— Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce _rodent_ Whose tooth insidious Johann’s sackcloth rent.
Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe’s assault, That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt, Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall That rose complete at Jack’s creative call.
Here stalks the impetuous Cow with crumpled horn, Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn, Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew The Rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through The textile fibers that involved the grain Which lay in Hans’ inviolate domain.
Here walks forlorn the Damsel crowned with rue, Lactiferous spoils from vaccine dugs, who drew, Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn Tossed to the clouds, in fierce vindictive scorn, The harrowing hound, whose braggart bark and stir Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur Of Puss, that with verminicidal claw Struck the weird rat in whose insatiate maw Lay reeking malt that erst in Juan’s courts we saw, Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth Too long a prey to Chronos’ iron tooth.
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline, Full with young Eros’ osculative sign, To the lorn maiden whose lact-albic hands Drew albu-lactic wealth from lacteal glands Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn Distort, to realm ethereal was borne The beast catulean, vexer of that sly Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die The old mordacious Rat that dared devour Antecedaneous Ale in John’s domestic bower.
Lo, here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct Of saponaceous locks, the Priest who linked In Hymen’s golden bands the torn unthrift, Whose means exiguous stared from many a rift, Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn, Who milked the cow with implicated horn, Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied, That dared to vex the insidious muricide, Who let auroral effluence through the pelt Of the sly Rat that robbed the palace Jack had built.
The loud cantankerous Shanghae comes at last, Whose shouts arouse the shorn ecclesiast, Who sealed the vows of Hymen’s sacrament, To him who, robed in garments indigent, Exosculates the damsel lachrymose, The emulgator of that horned brute morose, That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that _kilt_ The rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built.
FROM THE CURIOSITIES OF ADVERTISING.
TO BE LET,
To an Oppidan, a Ruricolist, or a Cosmopolitan, and may be entered upon immediately:
The House in §Stone Row§, lately possessed by §Capt. Siree§. To avoid Verbosity, the Proprietor with Compendiosity will give a Perfunctory description of the Premises, in the Compagination of which he has Sedulously studied the convenience of the Occupant. It is free from Opacity, Tenebrosity, Fumidity, and Injucundity, and no building can have greater Pellucidity or Translucency—in short, its Diaphaneity even in the Crepuscle makes it like a Pharos, and without laud, for its Agglutination and Amenity, it is a most Delectable Commorance; and whoever lives in it will find that the Neighbors have none of the Truculence, the Immanity, the Torvity, the Spinosity, the Putidness, the Pugnacity, nor the Fugacity observable in other parts of the town, but their Propinquity and Consanguinity occasion Jocundity and Pudicity—from which, and the Redolence of the place (even in the dog-days), they are remarkable for Longevity. For terms and particulars apply to §James Hutchinson§, opposite the §Market-House§.—_Dub. News._
FROM THE CURIOSITIES OF THE POST-OFFICE.
The following is a genuine epistle, sent by an emigrant country schoolmaster to a friend at home:—
§Mr M. Connors§
With congruous gratitude and decorum I accost to you this debonnaire communication. And announce to you with amicable Complacency that we continually enjoy competent laudable good health, thanks to our omnipotent Father for it. We are endowed with the momentous prerogatives of respectable operations of a supplement concuity of having a fine brave and gallant youthful daughter the pendicity ladies age is four months at this date, we denominated her Margaret Connolly.
I have to respond to the Communication and accost and remit a Convoy revealing with your identity candor and sincerity. If your brother who had been pristinely located and stationed in England whether he has induced himself with ecstasy to be in preparation to progress with you. I am paid by the respectable potent loyal nobleman that I work for one dollar per day. Announce to us in what Concuity the crops and the products of husbandry dignify, also predict how is John Carroll and his wife and family. My brother and Myself are continually employed and occupied in similar work. Living and doing good. Dictate how John Mahony wife and family is.
Don’t you permit oblivion to obstruct you from inserting this. Prognosticate how Mrs Harrington is and if she accept my intelligence or any convoy from either of Her 2 progenies since their embarkation for this nation. If she has please specify with congruous and elysian gratitude with validity and veracity to my magnanimous self.
I remit my respects to my former friends and acquaintances.
I remain
§D. Connolly§.
P.S. Direct your Epistle to Pembroke, State of Maine.
Dear brother-in-law
I am determined and candidly arrive at Corolary, as I am fully resolved to transfer a sufficient portion of money to you to recompense your liabilities from thence to hence. I hope your similar operations will not impede any occurrence that might obstruct your progression on or at the specified time the 17 of March next.
SPANISH PLAY-BILL,
_Exhibited at Seville, 1762._
To the Sovereign of Heaven—to the Mother of the Eternal World—to the Polar Star of Spain—to the Comforter of all Spain—to the faithful Protectress of the Spanish nation—to the Honor and Glory of the Most Holy Virgin Mary—for her benefit and for the Propagation of her Worship—the Company of Comedians will this day give a representation of the Comic Piece called—
NANINE.
The celebrated Italian will also dance the Fandango, and the Theatre will be respectably illuminated.
* * * * *
In a medical work entitled The _Breviarie of Health_, published in 1547, by Andrew Borde, a physician of that period, is a prologue addressed to physicians, beginning thus:—
Egregious doctors and masters of the eximious and arcane science of physic, of your urbanity exasperate not yourselves against me for making this little volume.
THE MAD POET.
McDonald Clarke, commonly called the _mad poet_, died a few years ago in the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, New York. He wrote those oft-quoted lines,—
Now twilight lets her curtain down, And pins it with a star.
In his wilder moments he set all rules at defiance, and mingled the startlingly sublime and the laughably ridiculous in the oddest confusion. He talks thus madly of Washington:—
Eternity—give him elbow room; A spirit like his is large; Earth, fence with artillery his tomb, And fire a double charge To the memory of America’s greatest man: Match him, posterity, if you can.
In the following lines, he sketches, with a few bold touches, a well-known place, sometimes called a _rum-hole_:—
Ha! see where the wild-blazing grogshop appears, As the red waves of wretchedness swell; How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years, The horrible light-house of hell!
FOOTE’S FARRAGO.
The following droll nonsense was written by Foote, the dramatist, for the purpose of trying the memory of Macklin, who boasted that he could learn any thing by heart on hearing it once:—
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie; and, at the same time, a great she-bear coming up the street pops its head into the shop—What! no soap? So he died; and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblilies, and the Garyulies, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top. And they all fell to playing the game of “catch as catch can,” till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots!
BURLESQUE OF THE STYLE OF DR. JOHNSON.
While I was admiring the fantastical ramifications of some umbelliferous plants that hung over the margin of the Liffey, the fallacious bank, imperceptibly corroded by the moist tooth of the fluid, gave way beneath my feet, and I was suddenly submerged to some fathoms of profundity. Presence of mind, in constitutions not naturally timid, is generally in proportion to the imminence of the peril. Having never learned to move through the water in horizontal progression, had I desponded, I had perished; but, being for a moment raised above the element by my struggles, or by some felicitous casualty, I was sensible of the danger, and immediately embraced the means of extrication. A cow, at the moment of my lapse, had entered the stream, within the distance of a protruded arm; and being in the act of transverse navigation to seek the pasture of the opposite bank, I laid hold on that part of the animal which is loosely pendent behind, and is formed by the continuation of the vertebræ. In this manner I was safely conveyed to a fordable passage, not without some delectation from the sense of the progress without effort on my part, and the exhilarating approximation of more than problematical deliverance. Though in some respects I resembled the pilot of Gyas, _Jam senior madidaque fluens in veste_, yet my companions, unlike the barbarous Phrygian spectators, forbore to acerbitate the uncouthness of embarrassment by the insults of derision. Shrieks of complorance testified sorrow for my submersion, and safety was rendered more pleasant by the felicitations of sympathy. As the danger was over, I took no umbrage at a little risibility excited by the feculence of my visage, upon which the cow had discharged her gramineous digestion in a very ludicrous abundance. About this time the bell summoned us to dinner; and, as the cutaneous contact of irrigated garments is neither pleasant nor salubrious, I was easily persuaded by the ladies to divest myself of mine. Colonel Manly obligingly accommodated me with a covering of camlet. I found it commodious, and more agreeable than the many compressive ligaments of modern drapery. That there might be no violation of decorum, I took care to have the loose robe fastened before with small cylindrical wires, which the dainty fingers of the ladies easily removed from their dresses and inserted into mine, at such proper intervals as to leave no aperture that could awaken the susceptibility of temperament, or provoke the cachinnations of levity.[11]
Footnote 11:
The peculiar stateliness and dignity of Johnston’s style, when applied to the smaller concerns of life, makes, as will be seen from the above caricature, a very ludicrous appearance. A judicious imitation of his phraseology on trifling subjects was a favorite manner of attack among the critics. Erskine’s account of the Buxton baths is one of the most amusing. When several examples of this sort were shown to Johnson, at Edinburgh, he pronounced that of Lord Dreghorn the best: “but,” said he, “I could caricature my own style much better myself.”
NEWSPAPER EULOGY.
The following alliterative eulogy on a young lady appeared, many years ago, in a newspaper:—
If _b_oundless _b_enevolence _b_e the _b_asis of _b_eatitude, and _h_armless _h_umanity a _h_arbinger of _h_allowed _h_eart, these _C_hristian _c_oncomitants _c_omposed her _c_haracteristics, and _c_onciliated the esteem of her _c_otemporary a_c_quaintances, who _m_ean to _m_odel their _m_anners in the _m_ould of their _m_eritorious _m_onitor.
CLEAR AS MUD.
In a series of _Philosophical Essays_ published many years ago, the author[12] gives some definitions of human knowledge, the following of which he considers “least obnoxious to comprehension:”—
Footnote 12:
Ogilvie.
A coincidence between the association of ideas, and the order or succession of events or phenomena, according to the relation of cause and effect, and in whatever is subsidiary, or necessary to realize, approximate and extend such coincidence; understanding, by the relation of cause and effect, that order or succession, the discovery or development of which empowers an intelligent being, by means of one event or phenomenon, or by a series of given events or phenomena, to anticipate the recurrence of another event or phenomenon, or of a required series of events or phenomena, and to summon them into existence, and employ their instrumentality in the gratification of his wishes, or in the accomplishment of his purposes.
INDIGNANT LETTER.
Addressed to a Louisiana clergyman by a Virginia correspondent.
§Sir§:—You have behaved like an impetiginous acroyli—like those inquinate orosscrolest who envious of my moral celsitude carry their mugacity to the height of creating symposically the fecund words which my polymathic genius uses with uberity to abligate the tongues of the weightless. Sir, you have corassly parodied my own pet words, as though they were tangrams. I will not conceroate reproaches. I would obduce a veil over the atramental ingratitude which has chamiered even my undisceptible heart. I am silent on the foscillation which my coadful fancy must have given you when I offered to become your fanton and adminicle. I will not speak of the liptitude, the ablepsy you have shown in exacerbating me; one whose genius you should have approached with mental discalceation. So, I tell you, Sir, syncophically and without supervacaneous words, nothing will render ignoscible your conduct to me. I warn you that I will vellicate your nose if I thought your moral diathesis could be thereby performed. If I thought that I should not impigorate my reputation by such a degladiation. Go tagygraphic; your oness inquinate draws oblectation from the greatest poet since Milton, and draws upon your head this letter, which will drive you to Webster, and send you to sleep over it.
“Knowledge is power,” and power is mercy; so I wish you no rovose that it may prove an external hypnotic.
INTRAMURAL ÆSTIVATION.
In candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!
To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool’s conferva-scum; No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,— Depart,—be off,—excede,—evade,—erump! _Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table._
A CHEMICAL VALENTINE.
I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me, Our mutual flame is like the affinity That doth exist between two simple bodies. I am Potassium to thy Oxygen; ’Tis little that the holy marriage vow Shall shortly make us one. That unity Is, after all, but metaphysical. Oh! would that I, my Mary, were an Acid— A living Acid; thou an Alkali Endowed with human sense; that, brought together, We both might coalesce into one Salt, One homogeneous crystal. Oh that thou Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen! We would unite to form olefiant gas, Or common coal, or naphtha. Would to heaven That I were Phosphorus, and thou wert Lime, And we of Lime composed a Phosphuret! I’d be content to be Sulphuric Acid, So that thou mightst be Soda. In that case, We should be Glauber’s Salt. Wert thou Magnesia Instead, we’d form the salt that’s named from Epsom. Couldst thou Potassa be, I Aquafortis, Our happy union should that compound form, Nitrate of Potash—otherwise Saltpetre. And thus, our several natures sweetly blent We’d live and love together, until death Should decompose this fleshly Tertium Quid, Leaving our souls to all eternity Amalgamated! Sweet, thy name is Briggs, And mine is Johnson. Wherefore should not we Agree to form a Johnsonate of Briggs? We will! the day, the happy day is nigh, When Johnson shall with beauteous Briggs combine.
THE ANATOMIST TO HIS DULCINEA.
I list as thy heart and ascending aorta Their volumes of valvular harmony pour; And my soul from that muscular music has caught a New life ’mid its dry anatomical lore.
Oh, rare is the sound when thy ventricles throb In a systolic symphony measured and slow, When the auricles answer with rhythmical sob, As they murmur a melody wondrously low!
Oh, thy cornea, love, has the radiant light Of the sparkle that laughs in the icicle’s sheen; And thy crystalline lens, like a diamond bright, Through the quivering frame of thine iris is seen!
And thy retina, spreading its lustre of pearl, Like the far-away nebula, distantly gleams From a vault of black cellular mirrors that hurl From their hexagon angles the silvery beams.
Ah! the flash of those orbs is enslaving me still, As they roll ’neath the palpebræ, dimly translucent, Obeying in silence the magical will Of the oculo-motor—pathetic—abducent.
Oh, sweet is thy voice, as it sighingly swells From the daintily quivering chordæ vocales, Or rings in clear tones through the echoing cells Of the antrum, the ethmoid, and sinus frontales!
ODE TO SPRING.
WRITTEN IN A LAWYER’S OFFICE.
Whereas on sundry boughs and sprays Now divers birds are heard to sing, And sundry flowers their heads upraise— Hail to the coming on of Spring!
The birds aforesaid, happy pairs! Love midst the aforesaid boughs enshrines In household nests, themselves, their heirs, Administrators, and assigns.
The songs of the said birds arouse The memory of our youthful hours. As young and green as the said boughs, As fresh and fair as the said flowers.
O busiest term of Cupid’s court! When tender plaintiffs actions bring; Season of frolic and of sport, Hail, as aforesaid, coming Spring!
PRISTINE PROVERBS PREPARED FOR PRECOCIOUS PUPILS.
Observe yon plumed biped fine! To effect his captivation, Deposit particles saline Upon his termination.
Cryptogamous concretion never grows On mineral fragments that decline repose.
Whilst self-inspection it neglects, Nor its own foul condition sees, The kettle to the pot objects Its sordid superficies.
Decortications of the golden grain Are set to allure the aged fowl, in vain.
Teach not a parent’s mother to extract The embryo juices of an egg by suction: That good old lady can the feat enact, Quite irrespective of your kind instruction.
Pecuniary agencies have force To stimulate to speed the female horse.
Bear not to yon famed city upon Tyne The carbonaceous product of the mine.
The mendicant, once from his indigence freed, And mounted aloft on the generous steed, Down the precipice soon will infallibly go, And conclude his career in the regions below.
It is permitted to the feline race To contemplate even a regal face.
Metric Prose.
_Quid tentabam scribere versus erat._—§Ovid.§
COWPER’S LETTER TO NEWTON.
The following letter was written to Rev. John Newton, by William Cowper, in reference to a poem _On Charity_, by the latter:—
My very dear friend, I am going to send, what when you have read, you may scratch your head, and say I suppose, there’s nobody knows, whether what I have got, be verse or not;—by the tune and the time, it ought to be rhyme; but if it be, did ever you see, of late or of yore, such a ditty before?
I have writ “Charity,” not for popularity, but as well as I could, in hopes to do good; and if the “Reviewer” should say to be sure, the gentleman’s muse wears Methodist shoes, you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, that she and her bard have little regard for the tastes and fashions, and ruling passions, and hoydening play, of the modern day; and though she assume a borrowed plume, and now and then wear a tittering air, ’tis only her plan, to catch if she can, the giddy and gay, as they go that way, by a production of a new construction; she has baited her trap, in the hope to snap all that may come, with a sugar-plum. His opinion in this will not be amiss; ’tis what I intend, my principal end; and if I succeed, and folks should read, till a few are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I am paid for all I have said, and all I have done, although I have run, many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from hence to the end of my sense, and by hook or by crook, write another book, if I live and am here another year.
I have heard before of a room with a floor, laid upon springs, and suchlike things, with so much art in every part, that when you went in, you were forced to begin a minuet pace, with an air and a grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with a deal of a state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and, as you advance, will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end of what I have penned, which that you may do, ere madam and you are quite worn out with jigging about, I take my leave, and here you receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from you humble me—W. C.
EXAMPLE IN IRVING’S NEW YORK.
The following remarkable instance of involuntary poetic prose occurs in Knickerbocker’s humorous history of New York, near the commencement of the Sixth Book:—
The gallant warrior starts from soft repose, from golden visions and voluptuous ease; where, in the dulcet “piping time of peace,” he sought sweet solace after all his toils. No more in beauty’s siren lap reclined, he weaves fair garlands for his lady’s brows; no more entwines with flowers his shining sword, nor through the livelong summer’s day chants forth his love-sick soul in madrigals. To manhood roused, he spurns the amorous flute, doffs from his brawny back the robe of peace, and clothes his pampered limbs in panoply of steel. O’er his dark brow, where late the myrtle waved, where wanton roses breathed enervate love, he rears the beaming casque and nodding plume; grasps the bright shield and ponderous lance, or mounts with eager pride his fiery steed, and burns for deeds of glorious chivalry.
In D’Israeli’s _Wondrous Tale of Alroy_, are remarkable specimens of prose poetry. For example:—
Why am I here? are you not here? and need I urge a stronger plea? Oh, brother dear, I pray you come and mingle in our festival! Our walls are hung with flowers you love; I culled them by the fountain’s side; the holy lamps are trimmed and set, and you must raise their earliest flame. Without the gate my maidens wait to offer you a robe of state. Then, brother dear, I pray you come and mingle in our festival.
NELLY’S FUNERAL.
In Horne’s _New Spirit of the Age_,—a series of criticisms on eminent living authors,—we find an admirable example of prose poetry thus noticed:—
A curious circumstance is observable in a great portion of the scenes of tragic power, pathos, and tenderness contained in various parts of Mr. Dickens’s works, which it is possible may have been the result of harmonious accident, and the author not even subsequently conscious of it. It is that they are written in blank verse, of irregular metre and rhythms, which Southey, and Shelley, and some other poets, have occasionally adopted. Witness the following description from _The Old Curiosity Shop_.
And now the bell—the bell She had so often heard by night and day And listened to with solid pleasure, E’en as a living voice— Rung its remorseless toll for her, So young, so beautiful, so good.
Decrepit age, and vigorous life, And blooming youth, and helpless infancy, Poured forth—on crutches, in the pride of strength And health, in the full blush Of promise—the mere dawn of life— To gather round her tomb. Old men were there Whose eyes were dim And senses failing— Granddames, who might have died ten years ago, And still been old—the deaf, the blind, the lame, The palsied, The living dead in many shapes and forms, To see the closing of this early grave! What was the death it would shut in, To that which still would crawl and creep above it!
Along the crowded path they bore her now; Pale as the new-fallen snow That covered it; whose day on earth Had been so fleeting. Under that porch where she had sat when Heaven In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot, She passed again, and the old church Received her in its quiet shade.
Throughout the whole of the above, only two unimportant words have been omitted—_in_ and _its_; “granddames” has been substituted for “grandmothers,” and “e’en” for “almost.” All that remains is exactly as in the original, not a single word transposed, and the punctuation the same to a comma. The brief homily that concludes the funeral is profoundly beautiful.
Oh! it is hard to take The lesson that such deaths will teach, But let no man reject it, For it is one that all must learn And is a mighty universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and young, For every fragile form from which he lets The parting spirit free, A hundred virtues rise, In shapes of mercy, charity, and love, To walk the world and bless it. Of every tear That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, Some good is born, some gentler nature comes.
Not a word of the original is changed in the above quotation, which is worthy of the best passages in Wordsworth, and thus, meeting on the common ground of a deeply truthful sentiment, the two most unlike men in the literature of the country are brought into close proximation.
The following similar passage is from the concluding paragraph of _Nicholas Nickleby_:—
The grass was green above the dead boy’s grave, Trodden by feet so small and light, That not a daisy drooped its head Beneath their pressure. Through all the spring and summer time Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, Rested upon the stone.
NIAGARA.
The same rhythmic cadence is observable in the following passage, copied verbatim from the _American Notes_:—
I think in every quiet season now, Still do those waters roll, and leap, and roar, And tumble all day long; Still are the rainbows spanning them A hundred feet below. Still when the sun is on them, do they shine And glow like molten gold. Still when the day is gloomy do they fall Like snow, or seem to crumble away, Like the front of a great chalk cliff, Or roll adown the rock like dense white smoke.
But always does this mighty stream appear To die as it comes down. And always from the unfathomable grave Arises that tremendous ghost of spray And mist which is never laid: Which has haunted this place With the same dread solemnity, Since darkness brooded on the deep And that first flood before the Deluge—Light Came rushing on Creation at the word of God.
To any one who reads this we need not say that but three lines in it vary at all from the closest requisitions of an iambic movement. The measure is precisely of the kind which Mr. Southey so often used. For the reader’s convenience, we copy from _Thalaba_ his well remembered lines on Night, as an instance:—
How beautiful is Night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air, No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain Breaks the serene of heaven. In full orbed glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is Night!
INVOLUNTARY VERSIFICATION IN THE SCRIPTURES.
The hexametric cadence in the authorized translation of the Bible has been pointed out in another portion of this volume. It is very noticeable in such passages as these, for example, from the Second Psalm:—
Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? Kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together.
The anapæstic cadence prevalent in the Psalms is also very remarkable:—
That will bring forth his fruit in due season.—v. 6.
Whatsoever he doth it shall prosper.—v. 4.
Away from the face of the earth.—v. 5.
Be able to stand in the judgment.—v. 6.
The way of th’ ungodly shall perish.—v. 7.
Couplets may be drawn from the same inspired source, as follows:—
Great peace have they that love thy law: And nothing shall offend them.—Psalm, cxix. 165.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace Whose mind is stayed on thee.—Isaiah, xxvi. 3.
When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, Ye know that the summer is nigh.—Matthew, xxiv. 32.
UNINTENTIONAL RHYMES OF PROSERS.
The delicate ear of Addison, who would stop the press to add a conjunction, or erase a comma, allowed this inelegant jingle to escape his detection:—
What I am going to _mention_, will perhaps deserve your _attention_.
Dr. Whewell, when Master of Trinity College, fell into a similar trap, to the great amusement of his readers. In his work on _Mechanics_, he happened to write _literatim_ and _verbatim_, though not _lincatim_, the following tetrastich:—
There is no force, however great, Can stretch a cord, however fine, Into a horizontal line, Which is accurately straight.
A curious instance of involuntary rhythm occurs in President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:—
Fondly do we hope, Fervently do we pray, That this mighty scourge of war May speedily pass away: Yet if be God’s will That it continue until—
but here the strain abruptly ceases, and the President relapses into prose.
In the course of a discussion upon the involuntary metre into which Shakspeare so frequently fell, when he intended his minor characters to speak prose, Dr. Johnson observed;
“Such verse we make when we are writing prose; We make such verse in common conversation.”
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, from their habit of committing to memory and reciting dramatic blank verse, unconsciously made their most ordinary observations in that measure. Kemble, for instance, on giving a shilling to a beggar, thus answered the surprised look of his companion:—
“It is not often that I do these things, But _when_ I do, I do them handsomely.”
And once when, in a walk with Walter Scott on the banks of the Tweed, a dangerous looking bull made his appearance, Scott took the water, Kemble exclaimed:—
“Sheriff, I’ll get me up in yonder tree.”
The presence of danger usually makes a man speak naturally, if anything will. If a reciter of blank verse, then, fall unconsciously into the rhythm of it when intending to speak prose, much more may an habitual writer of it be expected to do so. Instances of the kind from the table-talk of both Kemble and his sister might be multiplied. This of Mrs. Siddons,—
“I asked for water, boy; you’ve brought me beer,——”
is one of the best known.
The Humors of Versification.
THE LOVERS.
IN DIFFERENT MOODS AND TENSES.
Sally Salter, she was a young teacher who taught, And her friend, Charley Church, was a preacher, who praught! Though his enemies called him a screecher, who scraught.
His heart, when he saw her, kept sinking, and sunk; And his eye, meeting hers, began winking, and wunk; While she, in her turn, fell to thinking, and thunk.
He hastened to woo her, and sweetly he wooed, For his love grew until to a mountain it grewed, And what he was longing to do, then he doed.
In secret he wanted to speak, and he spoke, To seek with his lips what his heart long had soke; So he managed to let the truth leak, and it loke.
He asked her to ride to the church, and they rode, They so sweetly did glide, that they both thought they glode, And they came to the place to be tied, and were tode.
Then homeward he said let us drive, and they drove, And soon as they wished to arrive, they arrove; For whatever he couldn’t contrive, she controve.
The kiss he was dying to steal, then he stole; At the feet where he wanted to kneel, then he knole; And he said, “I feel better than ever I fole.”
So they to each other kept clinging, and clung, While Time his swift circuit was winging, and wung; And this was the thing he was bringing and brung:
The man Sally wanted to catch, and had caught— That she wanted from others to snatch, and had snaught— Was the one she now liked to scratch, and she scraught.
And Charley’s warm love began freezing and froze, While he took to teasing, and cruelly toze The girl he had wished to be squeezing, and squoze.
“Wretch!” he cried, when she threatened to leave him, and left, “How could you deceive, as you have deceft?” And she answered, “I promised to cleave, and I’ve cleft.”
A STAMMERING WIFE.
When deeply in love with Miss Emily Pryne, I vowed if the lady would only be mine, I would always be ready to please her; She blushed her consent, though the stuttering lass Said never a word except “You’re an ass— An ass—an ass—iduous teazer!”
But when we were married, I found to my ruth The stammering lady had spoken the truth; For often, in obvious dudgeon, She’d say—if I ventured to give her a jog In the way of reproof—“You’re a dog—dog—dog— A dog—a dog—matic curmudgeon!”
And once, when I said, “We can hardly afford This immoderate style with our moderate board,” And hinted we ought to be wiser, She looked, I assure you, exceedingly blue, And fretfully cried, “You’re a Jew—Jew—Jew— A very ju-dicious adviser!”
Again, when it happened that, wishing to shirk Some rather unpleasant and arduous work, I begged her to go to a neighbor, She wanted to know why I made such a fuss, And saucily said, “You’re a cuss—cuss—cuss— You were always ac—cus—tomed to labor!”
Out of temper at last with the insolent dame, And feeling the woman was greatly to blame, To scold me instead of caressing, I mimicked her speech, like a churl as I am, And angrily said, “You’re a dam—dam—dam— A dam-age instead of a blessing.”
A SONG WITH VARIATIONS.
[§Scene.§—Wife at the piano; brute of a husband, who has no more soul for music than his boot, in an adjoining apartment, making his toilet.]
Oh! do not chide me if I weep!— Come, wife, and sew this button on. Such pain as mine can never sleep!— Zounds! as I live, another’s gone! For unrequited love brings grief,— A needle, wife, and bring your scissors. And Pity’s voice gives no relief— The child! good Lord! he’s at my razors! No balm to case the troubled heart,— Who starched this bosom? I declare That writhes from hate’s envenomed dart!— It’s enough to make a parson swear! When faith in man is given up— How plaguey shiftless are some women! Then sorrow fills her bitter cup— I’ll have to get my other linen. And to its lees the white lips quaff— Smith says he’s coming in to-night, While Malice yields her mocking laugh!— With Mrs. S., and Jones and Wright. Oh! could I stifle in my breast— And Jones will bring some prime old sherry. This aching heart, and give it rest,— We’ll want some eggs for Tom-and-Jerry Could Lethe’s waters o’er me roll,— These stockings would look better mended! And bring oblivion to my soul,— When-will-you-have-that-ditty-ended? Then haply I, in other skies,— We’d better have the oysters fried. Might find the love that earth denies! There! now at last my dickey’s tied!
THOUGHTS WHILE SHE ROCKS THE CRADLE.
What is the little one thinking about? Very wonderful thing, no doubt, Unwritten history! Unfathomable mystery! But he laughs and cries, and eats and drinks, And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks, As if his head were as full of kinks, And curious riddles, as any sphinx! Warped by colic and wet by tears, Punctured by pins, and tortured by fears, Our little nephew will lose two years; And he’ll never know Where the summers go: He need not laugh, for he’ll find it so!
Who can tell what the baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links By which the manikin feels his way Out from the shores of the great unknown, Blind, and wailing, and alone, Into the light of day? Out from the shores of the unknown sea, Tossing in pitiful agony! Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, Specked with the barks of little souls— Barks that were launched on the other side, And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide! And what does he think of his mother’s eyes? What does he think of his mother’s hair? What of the cradle roof that flies Forward and backward through the air? What does he think of his mother’s breast— Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, Seeking it ever with fresh delight— Cup of his joy and couch of his rest? What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words Of all the birds— Words she has learned to murmur well? Now he thinks he’ll go to sleep! I can see the shadow creep Over his eyes, in soft eclipse, Over his brow, and over his lips, Out to his little finger tips, Softly sinking, down he goes! Down he goes! down he goes! [_Rising and carefully retreating to her seat._] See! he is hushed in sweet repose!
A SERIO-COMIC ELEGY.
WHATELY ON BUCKLAND.
In his “Common-Place Book,” the late Archbishop Whately records the following Elegy on the late geologist, Dr. Buckland:
Where shall we our great professor inter, That in peace may rest his bones? If we hew him a rocky sepulchre He’ll rise and break the stones, And examine each stratum which lies around, For he’s quite in his element underground.
If with mattock and spade his body we lay In the common alluvial soil, He’ll start up and snatch these tools away Of his own geological toil; In a stratum so young the professor disdains That embedded should lie his organic remains.
Then exposed to the drip of some case-hardening spring, His carcase let stalactite cover, And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring, When he is encrusted all over; There, ’mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on a shelf, Let him stand as a monument raised to himself.
A REMINISCENCE OF TROY.
FROM THE SCHOLIAST.
It was the ninth year of the Trojan war— A tedious pull at best: A lot of us were sitting by the shore— Tydides, Phocas, Castor, and the rest— Some whittling shingles and some stringing bows, And cutting up our friends, and cutting up our foes.
Down from the tents above there came a man, Who took a camp-stool by Tydides’ side, He joined our talk, and, pointing to the pan Upon the embers where our pork was fried, Said he would eat the onions and the leeks, But that fried pork was food not fit for Greeks.
“Look at the men of Thebes,” he said, “and then Look at those cowards in the plains below: You see how ox-like are the ox-fed men; You see how sheepish mutton-eaters grow. Stick to this vegetable food of mine: Men who eat pork grunt, root and sleep like swine.”
Some laughed, and some grew mad, and some grew red: The pork was hissing; but his point was clear. Still no one answered him, till Nestor said, “One inference that I would draw is here: You vegetarians, who thus educate us, Thus far have turned out very small potatoes.”
THE POET BRYANT AS A HUMORIST.
Those who are familiar with Mr. Lowell’s _Fable for Critics_, will remember the lines:—
There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, Save when by reflection ’tis kindled ’o nights With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation; (There’s no doubt he stands in supreme ice-olation,) Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on— He’s too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on; Unqualified merits, I’ll grant, if you choose, he has ’em, But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up by the very North Pole.
The Cambridge wit has either misjudged the character of Bryant’s genius, or he has sacrificed a man to an epigram, and subordinated fact to a _jeu d’esprit_. Though “quiet and dignified,” Mr. Bryant possesses a rare vein of humor, but its bubbling fancies are not generally known or suspected for the reason that he unbends anonymously. Only one of the diversions of his muse appears in his published works—and that is his invocation “To a Mosquito,” which begins thus:—
Fair insect! that with thread-like legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail’st about, In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins would bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.
One day, when Mr. Bryant discovered in a fresh number of the _Atlantic Monthly_ a so-called poem, which struck him as uncommonly absurd, he sat down and produced a travesty of it, which was much more effective in its ridicule than any sharper criticism could have been made. Here are the two in conjunction:—
THE “ATLANTIC” POEM.
Bellying earth no anchor throws Stouter than the breath that blows; Night and sorrow cling in vain; It must toss in day again.
Hospital and battle-field, Myriad spots where fate is sealed, Brinks that crumble, sins that urge, Plunge again into the surge.
How the purple breakers throw Round me their insatiate glow. Sweep my deck of hideous freight, Pour through fastening and grate.
BRYANT’S TRAVESTY.
Squint-eyed bacchanals at play, Keep a Lybian holiday, Leading trains of solemn apes, Tipsy with the blood of grapes.
Forty furies—thirty more Than old Milton had before— Scattering sparkles from their hair, Swing their censers in the air.
Toss the flaming goblet off, Heed not ocean’s windy scoff; Let him dash against the shore, Gape and grin, and sweat and roar.
Since which time nothing has been heard of the Atlantic poet! Only those who were “behind the scenes,” in the office of the _Evening Post_, in the year 1863, knew the authorship of the burlesque—and the burlesque itself will never appear in the poet’s “collected works.”
ON RECEIPT OF A RARE PIPE.
I lifted off the lid with anxious care, Removed the wrappages, stripe after stripe, And when the hidden contents were laid bare, My first remark was: “Mercy, what a pipe!”
A pipe of symmetry that matched its size, Mounted with metal bright—a sight to see— With the rich umber hue that smokers prize, Attesting both its age and pedigree.
A pipe to make the Royal Friedrich jealous, Or the great Teufelsdröck with envy gripe! A man should hold some rank above his fellows To justify his smoking such a Pipe!
What country gave it birth? What blest of cities Saw it first kindle at the glowing coal? What happy artist murmured, “_Nunc dimittis_,” When he had fashioned this transcendent bowl?
Has it been hoarded in a monarch’s treasures? Was it a gift of peace, or prize of war? Did the great Khalif in his “House of Pleasures” Wager, and lose it to the good Zaafar?
It may have soothed mild Spenser’s melancholy, While musing o’er traditions of the past, Or graced the lips of brave Sir Walter Raleigh Ere sage King Jamie blew his _Counterblast_.
Did it, safe hidden in some secret cavern, Escape that monarch’s pipoclastic ken? Has Shakespeare smoked it at the Mermaid Tavern, Quaffing a cup of sack with rare old Ben?
Ay, Shakespeare might have watched his vast creations Loom through its smoke—the spectre-haunted Thane, The Sisters at their ghastly invocations, The jealous Moor and melancholy Dane.
’Round its orbed haze and through its mazy ringlets Titania may have led her elfin rout, Or Ariel fanned it with his gauzy winglets, Or Puck danced in the bowl to put it out.
Vain are all fancies—questions bring no answer; The smokers vanish, but the pipe remains; He were indeed a subtle necromancer Could read their records in its cloudy stains.
Nor this alone: its destiny may doom it To outlive e’en its use and history— Some plowman of the future may exhume it From soil now deep beneath the Eastern sea—
And, treasured by some antiquarian Stultus, It may to gaping visitors be shown, Labeled, “The symbol of some ancient Cultus, Conjecturally Phallic, but unknown.”
Why do I thus recall the ancient quarrel ’Twixt Man and Time, that marks all earthly things? Why labor to re-word the hackneyed moral, ὥς ψύλλων γενεή, as Homer sings?
For this: Some links we forge are never broken; Some feelings claim exemption from decay; And Love, of which this pipe was but the token, Shall last, though pipes and smokers pass away.
THE HUMAN EAR.
A sound came booming through the air— “What is that sound?” quoth I. My blue-eyed pet, with golden hair, Made answer presently, “Papa, you know it very well— That sound—it was Saint Pancras Bell.”
My own Louise, put down the cat, And come and stand by me; I’m sad to hear you talk like that, Where’s your philosophy? That sound—attend to what I tell— That sound was _not_ Saint Pancras Bell.
“Sound is the name the sage selects For the concluding term Of a long series of effects, Of which that blow’s the germ. The following brief analysis Shows the interpolations, Miss.
“The blow which, when the clapper slips, Falls on your friend the Bell, Changes its circle to ellipse, (A word you’d better spell), And then comes elasticity, Restoring what it used to be.
“Nay, making it a little more, The circle shifts about. As much as it shrunk in before The Bell, you see, swells out; And so a new ellipse is made, (You’re not attending, I’m afraid).
“This change of form disturbs the air, Which in its turn behaves In like elastic fashion there, Creating waves on waves; Which press each other onward, dear, Until the outmost finds your ear.
“Within that ear the surgeons find A _tympanum_, or drum, Which has a little bone behind,— _Malleus_, it’s called by some; But those not proud of Latin Grammar Humbly translate it as the hammer.
“The wave’s vibrations this transmits On to the _incus_ bone, (_Incus_ means anvil, which it hits), And this transfers the tone To the small _os orbiculure_, The tiniest bone that people carry.
“The _stapes_ next—the name recalls A stirrup’s form, my daughter— Joins three half-circular canals, Each filled with limpid water; Their curious lining, you’ll observe, Made of the auditory nerve.
“This vibrates next—and then we find The mystic work is crowned; For then my daughter’s gentle Mind First recognizes sound. See what a host of causes swell To make up what you call ‘the Bell.’”
Awhile she paused, my bright Louise, And pondered on the case; Then, settling that he meant to teaze, She slapped her father’s face. “You bad old man, to sit and tell Such gibberygosh about a Bell!’”
SIR TRAY: AN ARTHURIAN IDYL.
The widowed Dame of Hubbard’s ancient line Turned to her cupboard, cornered anglewise Betwixt this wall and that, in quest of aught To satisfy the craving of Sir Tray, Prick-eared companion of her solitude, Red-spotted, dirty white, and bare of rib, Who followed at her high and pattering heels, Prayer in his eye, prayer in his slinking gait, Prayer in his pendulous pulsating tail. Wide on its creaking jaws revolved the door, The cupboard yawned, deep-throated, thinly set For teeth, with bottles, ancient canisters, And plates of various pattern, blue or white; Deep in the void she thrust her hooked nose Peering near-sighted for the wished-for bone, Whiles her short robe of samite, tilted high, The thrifty darnings of her hose revealed;— The pointed feature travelled o’er the delf Greasing its tip, but bone or bread found none Wherefore Sir Tray abode still dinnerless, Licking his paws beneath the spinning-wheel, And meditating much on savoury meats.
Meanwhile the Dame in high-backed chair reposed Revolving many memories, for she gazed Down from her lattice on the self-same path Whereby Sir Lancelot ’mid the reapers rode When Arthur held his court in Camelot, And she was called the Lady of Shalott And, later, where Sir Hubbard, meekest knight Of all the Table Round, was wont to pass, And to her casement glint the glance of love. (For all the tale of how she floated dead Between the city walls, and how the Court Gazed on her corpse, was of illusion framed, And shadows raised by Merlin’s magic art, Ere Vivien shut him up within the oak.) There stood the wheel whereat she spun her thread; But of the magic mirror nought remained Save one small fragment on the mantelpiece, Reflecting her changed features night and morn.
But now the inward yearnings of Sir Tray Grew pressing, and in hollow rumblings spake, As in tempestuous nights the Northern seas Within their cavern cliffs reverberate. This touched her: “I have marked of yore,” she said, “When on my palfry I have paced along The streets of Camelot, while many a knight Ranged at my rein and thronged upon my steps, Wending in pride towards the tournament, A wight who many kinds of bread purveyed— Muffins, and crumpets, matutinal rolls, And buns which buttered, soothe at evensong; To him I’ll hie me ere my purpose cool, And swift returning, bear a loaf with me, And (for my teeth be tender grown, and like Celestial visits, few and far between) The crust shall be for Tray, the crumb for me.” This spake she; from their peg reached straightway down Her cloak of sanguine hue, and pointed hat From the flat brim upreared like pyramid On sands Egyptian where the Pharaohs sleep, Her ebon-handled staff (sole palfry now) Grasped firmly, and so issued swiftly forth; Yet ere she closed the latch her cat Elaine, The lily kitten reared at Astolat, Slipped through and mewing passed to greet Sir Tray.
Returning ere the shadows eastward fell, She placed a porringer upon the board, And shred the crackling crusts with liberal hand, Nor noted how Elaine did seem to wail, Rubbing against her hose, and mourning round Sir Tray, who lay all prone upon the hearth. Then on the bread she poured the mellow milk— “Sleep’st thou?” she said, and touched him with her staff; “What, ho! thy dinner waits thee!” But Sir Tray Stirred not nor breathed: thereat, alarmed, she seized And drew the hinder leg: the carcase moved All over wooden like a piece of wood— “Dead?” said the Dame, while louder wailed Elaine; “I see,” she said, “thy fasts were all too long, Thy commons all too short, which shortened thus Thy days, tho’ thou mightst still have cheered mine age Had I but timelier to the city wonned. Thither I must again, and that right soon, For now ’tis meet we lap thee in a shroud, And lay thee in the vault by Astolat, Where faithful Tray shall by Sir Hubbard lie.”
Up a by-lane the Undertaker dwelt; There day by day he plied his merry trade, And all his undertakings undertook: Erst knight of Arthur’s Court, Sir Waldgrave hight, A gruesome carle who hid his jests in gloom, And schooled his lid to counterfeit a tear. With cheerful hammer he a coffin tapt, While hollow, hollow, hollow, rang the wood, And, as he sawed and hammered, thus he sang:—
Wood, hammer, nails, ye build a house for him, Nails, hammer, wood, ye build a house for me, Paying the rent, the taxes, and the rates.
I plant a human acorn in the ground, And therefrom straightway springs a goodly tree, Budding for me in bread and beer and beef.
O Life, dost thou bring Death or Death bring thee? Which of the twain is bringer, which the brought? Since men must die that other men may live.
O Death, for me thou plump’st thine hollow cheeks, Mak’st of thine antic grin a pleasant smile, And prank’st full gaily in thy winding sheet.
This ditty sang he to a doleful tune To outer ears it sounded like a dirge, Or wind that wails across the fields of death. ’Ware of a visitor, he ceased his strain, But still did ply his saw industrious. With withered hand on ear, Dame Hubbard stood; “Vex not mine ears,” she grated, “with thine old And creaking saw!” “I deemed,” he said, and sighed, “Old saws might please thee, as they should the wise.” “Know,” said the Dame, “Sir Tray that with me dwelt Lies on my lonely hearthstone stark and stiff; Wagless the tail that waved to welcome me.”— Here Waldgrave interposed sepulchral tones, “Oft have I noted, when the jest went round, Sad ’twas to see the wag forget his tale— Sadder to see the tail forget its wag.” “Wherefore,” resumed she, “take of fitting stuff, And make therewith a narrow house for him.” Quoth he, “From yonder deal I’ll plane the bark, So ’twill of Tray be emblematical; For thou, ’tis plain, must lose a deal of bark, Since he nor bark nor bite shall practice more.” “And take thou, too,” she said, “a coffin-plate, And be his birth and years inscribed thereon With letters twain ‘S. T.’ to mark Sir Tray, So shall the tomb be known in after time.” “This, too,” quoth Waldgrave, “shall be deftly done; Oft hath the plate been freighted with his bones, But now his bones must lie beneath the plate.” “Jest’st thou?” Dame Hubbard said, and clutched her crutch, For ill she brooked light parlance of the dead; But when she saw Sir Waldgrave, how his face Was all drawn downward, till the curving mouth Seemed a horseshoe, while o’er the furrowed cheek A wandering tear stole on, like rivulet In dry ravine down mother Ida’s side, She changed her purpose, smote not, lowered the staff;— So parted, faring homeward with her grief.
Nearing her bower, it seemed a sepulchre Sacred to memory, and almost she thought A dolorous cry arose, as if Elaine Did sound a caterwauling requiem. With hesitating hand she raised the latch, And on the threshold with reluctant foot Lingered, as loath to face the scene of woe, When lo! the body lay not on the hearth, For there Elaine her flying tail pursued,— In the Dame’s chair Sir Tray alive did sit, A world of merry meaning in his eye, And all his face agrin from ear to ear.
Like one who late hath lost his dearest friend, And in his sleep doth see that friend again, And marvels scarce to see him, putting forth A clasping hand, and feels him warm with life, And so takes up his friendship’s broken thread— Thus stood the Dame, thus ran she, pattering o’er The sanded tiles, and clasped she thus Sir Tray, Unheeding of the grief his jest had wrought For joy he was not numbered with the dead.
Anon the Dame, her primal transports o’er, Bethought her of the wisdom of Sir Tray, And his fine wit, and then it shameful seemed That he bareheaded ’neath the sky should go While empty skulls of fools went thatched and roofed; “A hat,” she cried, “would better fit those brows Than many a courtier’s that I’ve wotted of; And thou shalt have one, an’ my tender toes On which the corns do shoot, and these my knees Wherethro’ rheumatic twinges swiftly dart, Will bear me to the city yet again, And thou shalt wear the hat as Arthur wore The Dragon of the great Pendragonship.” Whereat Sir Tray did seem to smile, and smote Upon the chair-back with approving tail.
Then up she rose, and to the Hatter’s went,— “Hat me,” quoth she, “your very newest hat;” And so they hatted her, and she returned Home through the darksome wold, and raised the latch, And marked, full lighted by the ingle-glow, Sir Tray, with spoon in hand, and cat on knee, Spattering the mess about the chaps of Puss.
THE OLOGIES.
We’re going to begin with an ample Apology; You’ll end, we are sure, by a hearty Doxology, If, all undeterred by our strange Phraseology, You chose to sit down to a dish of Tautology.
* * * * *
One’s pestered in these days by so many ’ologies, We thought we would fain see the tale of our foes; A niche of your own in the new Martyrologies You’d earn if you’d only go halves in our woes.
We’v counted some forty! but how many more there are, We’re even now wholly unable to say; We fear that at least the same number in store there are, You’ll say we have found quite enough for one day.
* * * * *
“So now for our Catalogue: first comes Anthology— A bouquet of flowers, a budget of rhymes; That’s pleasant—not so the next, called Anthropology, The science of man in all ages and climes.
“Then comes a most useful pursuit, Arachnology; They’re bipeds, the spiders who weave the worst webs; But when one is asked to go in for Astrology, And Zadkiel! one’s courage most rapidly ebbs.
“The next on our roster is old Archæology, A science that’s lately been much in repute; One can’t say as much for Electro-biology, Which now-o’-days no one seems ever to bruit.
“But none can afford to make light of Chronology, Tho’ ladies are apt to be dark upon dates; We most of us make rather light of Conchology Except when the oyster-shell gapes on our plates.
“The Devil’s deposed they say, and Demonology Would certainly seem to have gone to the De’il; Some savants, like Hooker, still swallow Dendrology, But tree-names are somewhat too tough for my meal.
“The parsons are great upon Ecclesiology, And prate about proper pyramidal piles; Few travelers care to neglect Entomology, Their wakefulness often its study beguiles.
“’Twould take you a life-time to learn Etymology, And dabblers get into most marvellous scrapes; And Huxley would tell you as much of Ethnology,— Who really believes we are cousins of apes?
“Dean Buckland it was who first started Geology, And traced the rock pedigrees, fixing their ranks; And Frank has of late taken up Ichthyology, The salmon already have voted him thanks.
“Von Humboldt had fairly exhausted Kosmology, But Nature’s a quite inexhaustible mine; Napoleon has fulfilled a new Martyrology, Imbrued with the purest blue-blood of the Rhine.
“We all of us thought we were deep in Mythology, Till Cox and Max Müller both deepened its well; Our sons may learn something of Meteorology— The weather our prophets all fail to foretell.
“The study of life is bound up with Necrology, And we shall have one day to enter its lists,— And furnish some specimens for Osteology, The science of bones, on which Owen exists.
“At breakfast we’re seldom averse to Oology, Or lunch, when the plovers are pleased to lay eggs; But then one would bar embryonic Ontology, Preferring fowls full-grown with breast, wings, and legs!
“For oh! we decidedly like Ornithology And chiefly the study of grouse on the wing; We’d leave it to doctors to study Pathology; The study of pain is a troublesome thing.
“We all of us need a small dose of Philology, If caring to make the best use of our tongues; A careful attention to strict Phraseology Involves a most notable saving of lungs.
“The study of heads has been christened Phrenology, Professors would call it the study of brain; But take my advice, and avoid Pneumatology, For spirits are apt to treat brains with disdain.
“For much the same reason, we’d banish Psychology,— What savant can give an account of his soul? And if we could only abolish Theology, The parsons alone would be hard to console!
“If ever you happened to study Splanchnology, You’d know what it is theologians lack,— Inquisitors never complain of Tautology, So long as rank heretics roar on the rack.
“And now is the time to strike up your Doxology, For we would no longer detain you, my friend;— On Sunday we all have a turn for Zoology, So here is our Catalogue come to an end.”
THE VARIATION HUMBUG.
The _London Charivari_ thinks that there is more humbug talked, printed, and practiced in reference to music than to anything else in the world, except politics. And of all the musical humbugs extant it occurs to Mr. Punch that the variation humbug is the greatest. This party has not even the sense to invent a tune for himself, but takes someone else’s, and starting therefrom, as an acrobat leaps from a spring-board, jumps himself into a musical reputation on the strength of the other party’s ideas. Mr. Punch wonders what would be thought of a poet who should try to make himself renown by this kind of thing—taking a well-known poem of a predecessor and doing variations on it after this fashion:—
BUGGINS’ VARIATIONS ON THE BUSY BEE.
How doth the Little Busy Bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower, From every opening flower, flower, flower, That sparkles in a breezy bower, And gives its sweetness to the shower, Exhaling scent of gentle power, That lasts on kerchief many an hour, And is a lady’s graceful dower, Endeared alike to cot and tower, Round which the Little Busy Bee Improves each shining hour, And gathers honey all the day From every opening flower, From every opening flower, flower, flower, From every opening flower.
How skillfully she builds her cell, How neat she spreads her wax, And labors hard to store it well, With the sweet food she makes, With the sweet food she makes, With the sweet food she makes, makes, makes, When rising just as morning breaks, The dewdrop from the leaf she shakes, And oft the sleeping moth she wakes, And diving through the flower she takes, The honey with her fairy rakes, And in her cell the same she cakes, Or sports across the silver lakes, Beside her children, for whose sakes How skillfully she builds her cell, How neat she spreads her wax, And labors hard to store it well, With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labor or of skill, I would be busy too, For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do, For idle hands to do, For idle hands to do, do, do. Things which thereafter they will rue, When Justice fiercely doth pursue, Or conscience raises cry and hue, And evil-doers look quite blue, When Peelers run with loud halloo, And magistrates put on the screw, And then the wretch exclaims, Boo-hoo, In works of labor or of skill I wish I’d busied too, For Satan’s found much mischief still, For my two hands to do.
There! Would a poet get much reputation for these variations, which are much better in their way than most of those built upon tunes? Would the poetical critics come out, as the musical critics do, with “Upon Watts’ marble foundation Buggins has raised a sparkling alabaster palace;” or, “The old-fashioned Watts has been brought into new honor by the _étincellant_ Buggins;” or “We love the old tune, but we have room in our hearts for the fairy-like fountains of bird-song which Buggins has bid start from it?” Mr. Punch has an idea that Buggins would have no such luck; the moral to be deduced from which fact is, that a musical prig is luckier than a poetical prig.
REITERATIVE VOCAL MUSIC.
A well-known reviewer, in an article on Hymnology, says:—
Who could endure to hear and sing hymns, the meaning and force of which he really felt—set, as they frequently have been, to melodies from the Opera, and even worse, or massacred by the repetition of the end of each stanza, no matter whether or not the grammar and sense were consistent with it. Take such memorable cases of incongruity as:—
“My poor pol— My pool pol— My poor polluted heart.”
To which he might have added from Dr. Watts:—
“And see Sal—see Sal—see Salvation nigh.”
Or this to the same common metre tune, “Miles’s Lane”:—
“Where my Sal—my Sal—my Salvation stands.”
Or this when sung to “Job”:—
“And love thee Bet— And love thee better than before.”
Or—
“Stir up this stu— Stir up this stupid heart to pray.”
Or this crowning absurdity:—
“And more _eggs_—more _eggs_—more exalts our joys.”
This to the tune of “Aaron” 7’s:—
“With thy Benny— With thy benediction seal.”
This has recently been added in a fashionable metropolitan church:—
“And take thy pil— And take thy pilgrim home.”
And further havoc is made with language and sense thus:—
“Before his throne we bow—wow—wow—ow—wow.”
And—
“I love to steal I love to steal—awhile away.”
And—
“O, for a man— O, for a mansion in the skies.”
To which we may add:—
“And we’ll catch the flea— And we’ll catch the flee—ee—eeting hour.”
Two trebles sing, “And learn to kiss”; two trebles and alto, “And learn to kiss”; two trebles, alto, and tenor, “And learn to kiss”; the bass, solus, “the rod.”
This is sung to a tune called “Boyce”:—
“Thou art my bull— Thou art my bulwark and defence.”
THE CURSE OF O’KELLY.
Carmac O’Kelly, the celebrated Irish harper, went to Doneraile, in the county of Cork, where his watch was pilfered from his fob. This so roused his ire that he celebrated the people in the following unexampled “string of curses:”—
Alas! how dismal is my tale, I lost my watch in Doneraile, My Dublin watch, my chain and seal, Pilfered at once in Doneraile. May fire and brimstone never fail To fall in showers on Doneraile; May all the leading fiends assail The thieving town of Doneraile. As lightnings flash across the vale, So down to hell with Doneraile; The fate of Pompey at Pharsale, Be that the curse of Doneraile. May beef or mutton, lamb or veal, Be never found in Doneraile, But garlic soup and scurvy kale, Be still the food for Doneraile, And forward as the creeping snail, Industry be at Doneraile. May Heaven a chosen curse entail, On ragged, rotten Doneraile. May sun and moon forever fail To beam their lights on Doneraile; May every pestilential gale Blast that cursed spot called Doneraile; May no sweet cuckoo, thrush or quail Be ever heard in Doneraile; May patriots, kings, and commonweal Despise and harass Doneraile; May every post, gazette and mail, Sad tidings bring of Doneraile; May vengeance fall on head and tail, From north to south of Doneraile May profit small, and tardy sale, Still damp the trade of Doneraile: May fame resound a dismal tale, Whene’er she lights on Doneraile; May Egypt’s plagues at once prevail, To thin the knaves at Doneraile; May frost and snow, and sleet and hail, Benumb each joint in Doneraile; May wolves and bloodhounds race and trail The cursed crew of Doneraile; May Oscar with his fiery flail To atoms thrash all Doneraile; May every mischief, fresh and stale, May all from Belfast to Kinsale, Scoff, curse and damn you, Doneraile. May neither flour nor oatmeal, Be found or known in Doneraile; May want and woe each joy curtail, That e’er was known in Doneraile; May no one coffin want a nail, That wraps a rogue in Doneraile; May all the thieves who rob and steal, The gallows meet in Doneraile; May all the sons of Gramaweal, Blush at the thieves of Doneraile; May mischief big as Norway whale, O’erwhelm the knaves of Doneraile; May curses whole and by retail, Pour with full force on Doneraile; May every transport wont to sail, A convict bring from Doneraile; May every churn and milking-pail Fall dry to staves in Doneraile; May cold and hunger still congeal, The stagnant blood of Doneraile; May every hour new woes reveal, That hell reserves for Doneraile; May every chosen ill prevail O’er all the imps of Doneraile; May th’ inquisition straight impale, The Rapparees of Doneraile; May curse of Sodom now prevail, And sink to ashes Doneraile; May Charon’s boat triumphant sail, Completely manned from Doneraile; Oh! may my couplet never fail To find new curse for Doneraile; And may grim Pluto’s inner jail Forever groan with Doneraile.
Hiberniana.
Maria Edgeworth, in her _Essay on Irish Bulls_, remarks that “the difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd a bull that shall be entitled to the prize, from the united merits of pre-eminent absurdity and indisputable originality, is greater than hasty judges may imagine.”
Very true; but if the prize were offered for a _batch_ of Irish diamonds, we think the following copy of a letter written during the Rebellion, by S——, an Irish member of Parliament, to his friend in London, would present the strongest claim:—
“My dear Sir:—Having now a little peace and quietness, I sit down to inform you of the dreadful bustle and confusion we are in from these blood-thirsty rebels, most of whom are (thank God!) killed and dispersed. We are in a pretty mess; can get nothing to eat, nor wine to drink, except whiskey; and when we sit down to dinner, we are obliged to keep both hands armed. Whilst I write this, I hold a pistol in each hand and a sword in the other. I concluded in the beginning that this would be the end of it; and I see I was right, for it is not half over yet. At present there are such goings on, that every thing is at a stand still. I should have answered your letter a fortnight ago, but I did not receive it till this morning. Indeed, hardly a mail arrives safe without being robbed. No longer ago than yesterday the coach with the mails from Dublin was robbed near this town: the bags had been judiciously left behind for fear of accident, and by good luck there was nobody in it but two outside passengers who had nothing for thieves to take. Last Thursday notice was given that a gang of rebels were advancing here under the French standard; but they had no colors, nor any drums except bagpipes. Immediately every man in the place, including women and children, ran out to meet them. We soon found our force much too little; and we were far too near to think of retreating. Death was in every face; but to it we went, and by the time half our little party were killed we began to be all alive again. Fortunately, the rebels had no guns, except pistols, cutlasses, and pikes; and as we had plenty of guns and ammunition, we put them all to the sword. Not a soul of them escaped, except some that were drowned in an adjacent bog; and in a very short time nothing was to be heard but silence. Their uniforms were all different colors, but mostly green. After the action, we went to rummage a sort of camp which they had left behind them. All we found was a few pikes without heads, a parcel of empty bottles full of water, and a bundle of French commissions filled up with Irish names. Troops are now stationed all around the country, which exactly squares with my ideas. I have only time to add that I am in great haste.
“Yours truly, ——.
“P. S.—If you do not receive this, of course it must have miscarried: therefore I beg you will write and let me know.”
Miss Edgeworth says, further, that “many bulls, reputed to be bred and born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and many more, supposed to be unrivalled in their kind, may be matched in all their capital points.” To prove this, she cites numerous examples of well-known bulls, with their foreign prototypes, not only English and Continental, but even Oriental and ancient. Among the parallels of familiar bulls to be found nearer our American home since the skillful defender of Erin’s naïveté wrote her Essay, one of the best is an economical method of erecting a new jail:—
The following resolutions were passed by the Board of Councilmen in Canton, Mississippi:—
1. Resolved, by this Council, that we build a new Jail.
2. Resolved, that the new Jail be built out of the materials of the old Jail.
3. Resolved, that the old Jail be used until the new Jail is finished.
It was a _Frenchman_ who, in making a classified catalogue of books, placed Miss Edgeworth’s Essay in the list of works on _Natural History_; and it was a _Scotchman_ who, having purchased a copy of it, pronounced her “a puir silly body, to write a book on bulls, and no ane word o’ horned cattle in it a’, forbye the bit beastie [the vignette] at the beginning.” Examples from the common walks of life and from periodical literature may readily be multiplied to show that these phraseological peculiarities are not to be exclusively attributed to Ireland. But if we adopt Coleridge’s definition, which is, that “a bull consists in a mental juxtaposition of incongruous ideas, with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection,” we shall find frequent instances of its occurrence among standard authors. Take the following blunders, for examples:—
Adam, the goodliest man of men _since born His sons_—the fairest of _her daughters_, Eve. _Milton’s Paradise Lost._
The loveliest pair That ever _since_ in love’s embraces met.—_Ib. B. iv._
Swift, being an Irishman, of course abounds in blunders, some of them of the most ludicrous character; but we should hardly expect to find in the elegant Addison, the model of classical English, such a singular inaccuracy as the following:—
So the _pure limpid_ stream, when _foul with stains_ Of rushing torrents and descending rains.—_Cato._
He must have _seen_ in a blaze of _blinding_ light (this is “ipsis Hibernis Hibernior”) the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested and Christian life.—_Gilfillan’s Bards of the Bible._
The real and peculiar magnificence of St. Petersburgh consists _in thus sailing apparently upon the bosom of the ocean, into a city of palaces_.—_Sedgwick’s Letters from the Baltic._
The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, a cigar, _with which he had filled all his pockets_.—_Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year._
The following specimens are from the works of Dr. Johnson:—
Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a _dead_ language, it will always _live_.
Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled, But still fought on, _nor knew that he was dead_.
Shakspeare has not only _shown_ human nature as it is, but as it would be found _in situations to which it cannot be exposed_.
Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye, Nor sell for gold _what gold can never buy_.
These observations were made _by favor of a contrary wind_.
The next two are from Pope:—
Eight callow _infants_ filled the mossy nest, _Herself the ninth_.
When first young Maro, in his noble mind, A work _t’ outlast immortal Rome designed_.
Shakspeare says,—
I will strive with things impossible, Yea, _get the better of them_.—_Julius Cæsar_, ii. 1.
A _horrid silence_ first _invades the ear_.—§Dryden.§
Beneath a mountain’s brow, the most remote And _inaccessible_ by _shepherds trod_.—§Home§: _Douglass_.
In the Irish Bank-bill passed by Parliament in June, 1808, is a clause providing that the profits shall be _equally_ divided and the _residue go to the Governor_.
Sir Richard Steele, being asked why his countrymen were so addicted to making bulls, said he believed there must be something in the air of Ireland, adding, “I dare say _if an Englishman were born there_ he would do the same.”
Mr. Cunningham, to whom we are indebted for the interesting notes to Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” pronounces his author _the most distinguished of his cotemporaries_.
Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels, in making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a seaport on the _eastern_ coast of Scotland.
The following occurs in Dr. Latham’s _English Language_. Speaking of the genitive or possessive case, he says,—
“In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does) there is no genitive.”
Byron says,—
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison _on each hand_.
(He meant a palace on one hand, and a prison on the other.)
Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a _garret_ as “a room on the highest floor in the house,” and a _cock-loft_ as “the room over the garret.”
For the sake of comparison, we recur to the favorite pasture of the genuine thorough-bred animal:—
An Irish member of Parliament, speaking of a certain minister’s well-known love of money, observed, “Let not the honorable member express a contempt for money,—for if there is any one office that glitters in the eyes of the honorable member, it is that of purse-bearer: a pension to him is a compendium of all the cardinal virtues. All his statesmanship is comprehended in the art of taxing; and for good, better, and best, in the scale of human nature, he invariably reads pence, shillings, and pounds. I verily believe,” continued the orator, rising to the height of his conception, “that if the honorable gentleman were an undertaker, it would be the delight of his heart to see all mankind seized with a common mortality, that he might have the benefit of the general burial, and provide scarfs and hat-bands for _the survivors_.”
The manager of a provincial theatre, finding upon one occasion but three persons in attendance, made the following address:—“Ladies and gentlemen—as there is nobody here, I’ll dismiss you all. The performances of this night will not be performed; but _they will be repeated_ to-morrow evening.”
A Hibernian gentleman, when told by his nephew that he had just entered college with a view to the church, said, “I hope that I may live to hear you preach my funeral sermon.”
An Irishman, quarrelling with an Englishman, told him if he didn’t hold his tongue, he would break his impenetrable head, and let the brains out of his empty skull.
“My dear, come in and go to bed,” said the wife of a jolly son of Erin, who had just returned from the fair in a decidedly how-come-you-so state: “you must be dreadful tired, sure, with your long walk of six miles.” “Arrah! get away with your nonsense,” said Pat: “it wasn’t the _length_ of the way, at all, that fatigued me: ’twas the _breadth_ of it.”
A poor Irishman offered an old saucepan for sale. His children gathered around him and inquired why he parted with it. “Ah, me honeys,” he answered, “I would not be afther parting with it but for a little money to buy something to put in it.”
A young Irishman who had married when about nineteen years of age, complaining of the difficulties to which his early marriage subjected him, said he would never marry so young again if he lived to be as ould as Methuselah.
In an Irish provincial paper is the following notice:—Whereas Patrick O’Connor lately left his lodgings, this is to give notice that if he does not return immediately and pay for the same, he will be advertised.
“Has your sister got a son or a daughter?” asked an Irishman of a friend. “Upon my life,” was the reply, “I don’t know yet whether I’m an _uncle_ or _aunt_.”
“I was going,” said an Irishman, “over Westminster Bridge the other day, and I met Pat Hewins. ‘Hewins,’ says I, ‘how are you?’ ‘Pretty well,’ says he, ‘thank you, Donnelly.’ ‘Donnelly!’ says I: ‘that’s not _my_ name.’ ‘Faith, no more is mine Hewins,’ says he. So we looked at each other again, and sure it turned out to be nayther of us; and where’s the bull of _that_, now?”
“India, my boy,” said an Irish officer to a friend on his arrival at Calcutta, “is the finest climate under the sun; but a lot of young fellows come out here and they drink and they eat, and they drink and they die: and then they write home to their parents a pack of lies, and say it’s the climate that has killed them.”
In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written by a native of that country, after a good deal of tedious and vexatious matter, the reader’s complacency is restored by an artless statement how an eminent person “abandoned the errors of the church of Rome, and adopted those of the church of England.”
Here is an American Hibernicism, which is entitled to full recognition:—Among the things that Wells & Fargo’s Express is not responsible for as carriers is one couched in the following language in their regulations: “Not for any loss or damage by fire, _the acts of God_, or of Indians, _or any other public enemies of the government_.”
George Selwyn once declared in company that a lady could not write a letter without adding a _postscript_. A lady present replied, “The next letter that you receive from _me_, Mr. Selwyn, will prove that you are wrong.” Accordingly he received one from her the next day, in which, after her signature was the following:—
“P. S. Who is right, now, you or I?”
The two subjoined parliamentary utterances are worthy to have emanated from Sir Boyle Roche:—
“Mr. Speaker, I boldly answer in the affirmative—No.”
“Mr. Speaker, if I have any prejudice against the honorable member, it is in his favor.”
A PAIR OF BULLS.
When my lord he came wooing to Miss Ann Thrope, He was then a “Childe” from school; He paid his addresses in a trope, And called her his sweet bul-bul: But she knew not, in the modern scale, That _a couple of bulls_ was a _nightingale_.
Blunders.
SLIPS OF THE PRESS.
Lord Brougham was fond of relating an instance which was no joke to the victim of it. A bishop, at one of his country visitations, found occasion to complain of the deplorable state of a certain church, the roof of which was evidently anything but water-tight; after rating those concerned for their neglect, his lordship finished by declaring emphatically that he would not visit the _damp old church_ again until it was put in decent order. His horror may be imagined when he discovered himself reported in the local journal as having declared: “I shall not visit this damned old church again.” The bishop lost no time in calling the editor’s attention to the mistake; whereupon that worthy set himself right with his readers by stating that he willingly gave publicity to his lordship’s explanation, but he had every confidence in the accuracy of his reporter. The editor of an evening paper could hardly have had similar confidence in his subordinate when the latter caused his journal to record that a prisoner had been sentenced to “four months imprisonment in the House of Commons!” In this case, we fancy the reporter must have been in the same exhilarated condition as his American brother, who ended his account of a city banquet with the frank admission: “It is not distinctly remembered by anybody present who made the last speech!”
In a poem on the “Milton Gallery,” by Amos Cottle, the poet, describing the pictures of Fuseli, says:—
“The lubber fiend outstretched the chimney near, Or sad Ulysses on the larboard Steer.”
Ulysses steered to the larboard to shun Charybdis, but the compositor makes him get upon the back of the bullock, the left one in the drove! After all, however, he only interprets the text literally. “Steer,” as a substantive, has no other meaning than bullock. The substantive of the verb “to steer” is steerage. “He that hath the steerage of my course,” says Shakspeare. The compositor evidently understood that Ulysses rode an ox; he would hardly else have spelt Steer with a capital S.
The following paragraphs, intended to have been printed separately, in a Paris evening paper, were by some blunder so arranged that they read consecutively:—
Doctor X. has been appointed head physician to the Hospital de la Charite. Orders have been issued by the authorities for the immediate extension of the Cemetery of Mont Parnasse. The works are being executed with the utmost dispatch.
The old story of Dr. Mudge furnishes one of the most curious cases of typographical accident on record. The Doctor had been presented with a gold-headed cane, and the same week a patent pig-killing and sausage-making machine had been tried at a factory in the place of which he was pastor. The writer of a report of the presentation, and a description of the machine, for the local paper, is thus made to “mix things miscellaneously:”—
“The inconsiderate Caxtonian who made up the forms of the paper, got the two locals mixed up in a frightful manner; and when we went to press, something like this was the appalling result: Several of the Rev. Dr. Mudge’s friends called upon him yesterday, and after a brief conversation, the unsuspicious pig was seized by the hind legs, and slid along a beam until he reached the hot water tank. His friends explained the object of their visit, and presented him with a very handsome gold-headed butcher, who grabbed him by the tail, swung him round, slit his throat from ear to ear, and in less than a minute the carcass was in the water. Thereupon he came forward, and said that there were times when the feelings overpowered one; and for that reason he would not attempt to do more than thank those around him for the manner in which such a huge animal was cut into fragments was simply astonishing. The Doctor concluded his remarks when the machine seized him, and in less time than it takes to write it, the pig was cut into fragments and worked up into delicious sausages. The occasion will long be remembered by the Doctor’s friends as one of the most delightful of their lives. The best pieces can be procured for tenpence a pound; and we are sure that those who have sat so long under his ministry will rejoice that he has been treated so handsomely.”
SLIPS OF THE TELEGRAPH.
The Prior of the Dominican Monastery of Voreppe, in France, recently received the following telegram:—“Father Ligier is dead (_est mort_); we shall arrive by train to-morrow, at three.—§Laboree§.” The ecclesiastic, being convinced that the deceased, who was highly esteemed in the locality, had selected it for his last resting-place, made every preparation. A grave was dug, a hearse provided, and with the monks, a sorrowing crowd waited at the station for the train. It arrived, and, to the astonishment of every one, the supposed defunct alighted, well and hearty. The matter was soon explained. The reverend father, returning from a visit to Rome, where he had been accompanied by the priest Laboree, stopped to visit some monks at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, and requested his companion to telegraph the return to his monastery. The message sent was: “Father Ligier and I (_et moi_) will arrive,” &c. The clerks inadvertently changed the _et moi_ into _est mort_, with what result has already been told.
A firm in Cincinnati telegraphed to a correspondent in Cleveland, as follows:—“Cranberries rising. Send immediately one hundred barrels _per_ Simmons.” Mr. Simmons was the agent of the Cincinnati house. The telegraph ran the last two words together, and shortly after, the firm were astonished to find delivered at their store one hundred barrels of persimmons.
“SERIAL” INCONSISTENCY.
In Mrs. Oliphant’s interesting story of “Ombra,” there is a curious contradiction between the end of Chapter XLV . and the beginning of
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