Part 2
“We approached the church through the avenue of limes, and entered by a gothic porch, highly ornamented, with carved doors of massive oak. The interior is spacious, and the architecture and embellishments superior to those of most country churches. There are several ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakspeare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the spot where the bard is buried. There are four lines inscribed on it, said to have been written by himself, and which have in them something extremely awful. If they are indeed his own, they show that solicitude about the quiet of the grave, which seems natural to fine sensibilities and thoughtful minds:--
‘Good friend, for Jesus’ sake, forbeare To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be he that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones.’
“Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of Shakspeare, put up shortly after his death, and considered as a resemblance. The aspect is pleasant and serene, with a finely arched forehead; and I thought I could read in it clear indications of that cheerful, social disposition, by which he was as much characterized among his contemporaries as by the vastness of his genius. The inscription mentions his age at the time of his decease--fifty-three years; an untimely death for the world: for what fruit might not have been expected from the golden autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was from the stormy vicissitudes of life, and flourishing in the sunshine of popular and royal favour.
[Illustration: The bust of Shakespeare in its memorial niche.]
“The inscription on the tomb-stone has not been without its effect. It has prevented the removal of his remains from the bosom of his native place to Westminster Abbey, which was at one time contemplated. A few years since also, as some labourers were digging to make an adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to leave a vacant space almost like an arch, through which one might have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with his remains, so awfully guarded by a malediction; and lest any of the idle or the curious, or any collector of relics, should be tempted to commit depredations, the old sexton kept watch over the place for two days, until the vault was finished and the aperture closed again. He told me that he had made bold to look in at the hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones; nothing but dust. It was something, I thought, to have seen the dust of Shakspeare.
[Illustration: Shakspeare.]
“Next to his grave are those of his wife, his favourite daughter Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a full-length effigy of his old friend John Combe, of usurious memory; on whom he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There are other monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected with Shakspeare. His idea pervades the place: the whole pile seems but as his mausoleum. The feelings, no longer checked and thwarted by doubt, here indulge in perfect confidence; other traces of him may be false or dubious, but here is palpable evidence and absolute certainty. As I trod the sounding pavement, there was something intense and thrilling in the idea, that, in very truth, the remains of Shakspeare were mouldering beneath my feet. It was a long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place; and as I passed through the church-yard I plucked a branch from one of the yew-trees, the only relic that I have brought from Stratford.”
Mr. Irving’s paper continues in a very pretty description of his visit to the old family seat of the Lucys at Charlecot, whose park was the scene of the hair-brained exploits of which Shakspeare’s boyhood has been accused. Our limits will not allow us to dwell longer on this subject, except to give the concluding paragraph of Mr. Irving’s reflections on Stratford-on-Avon:--
“He who has sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full harvest of worldly favour, will find, after all, that there is no love, no admiration, no applause, so sweet to the soul as that which springs up in his native place. It is there that he seeks to be gathered in peace and honour among his kindred and his early friends. And when the weary heart and failing head begin to warn him that the evening of life is drawing on, he turns as fondly as does the infant to the mother’s arms, to sink to sleep in the bosom of the scene of his childhood. How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard, when, wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast back a heavy look upon his paternal home; could he have foreseen that, before many years, he should return to it covered with renown; that his name should become the boast and glory of his native place; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day become the beacon, towering amidst the gentle landscape, to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb!”
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MEANINGS OF WORDS.--No. 6.
Words in _ly_ (German, _lich_).
These words are sometimes adjectives, as in the following examples:--
Man-ly. Good-ly. Home-ly. God-ly. Good-like, (provincial):
or they are used as adverbs, of which the following are a few samples:--
Wise-ly. Third-ly. Truly. First-ly. Last-ly. Sick-ly, (adjective and adverb).
The word _man-ly_ means _like a man_, and we believe that all such words were once written with the termination _lic_, or _like_, which means _resemblance_, or, in some cases, _equality_. As a proof of this position, we may observe, without quoting the authority of old printed books, that we still use several words in both forms: thus we have _death-like_, _death-ly_; _god-like_, _god-ly_; while in some instances we have retained the original termination _like_, without shortening it into _ly_, as in _war-like_. Custom has now assigned different meanings to such words as _god-like_ and _god-ly_,--the former, a poetical kind of word, being used to signify resemblance to a god in actions, and the latter being applied to express the feeling of piety and devotion. In our older language a _good-ly man_ signified _handsome personage_, and in some parts of this island the original phrase of a _good-like man_ may be often heard in the mouths of the rustics. The word _home-ly_ is now generally used in the sense of _common_, _ordinary_, as when we speak of _homely fare_ or _homely food_; or it is applied to express our opinion of a person’s face, when we wish to say that it is rather ugly, without using so ugly a word. Milton explains this usage of the word in his Comus:--
“It is for homely features to keep home, They had their name thence.”
The list of words in _ly_, which are used as adverbs, is rather numerous; very few of the class, we believe, are used both as adjectives and adverbs. We have, however, marked _sick-ly_ as one instance of this double usage. Many of these adverbs in _ly_ are derived from secondary forms, and from that class of words in _ing_ commonly called participles; thus we have--
Play-ful-ly. Deceit-ful-ly. Know-ing-ly. Will-ing-ly.
The mention of the words _play-ful-ly_, _deceit-ful-ly_, leads us to speak of the termination _ful_ (German, _voll_).
Play-ful. Joy-ful. Care-ful. Aw-ful. Cheer-ful. Wil-ful.
These words might perhaps be more properly called compound words, because they are compounded or made up of two distinct words. _Play-ful_ is formed of _play_ and _full_: one of the _l_’s in the compound word being now generally dropped in writing. It may be well to explain how the _compound_ word _health-ful_ differs from the _derived_ word _health-y_. The former is, as we have remarked, made up of two distinct words, _health_ and _full_, both of which are still in common use; while _health-y_ is, made up of the same word _health_ and a _termination y_, or _suffix_, as it is sometimes called, which may once have been a real word, but it is so no longer; and we can only form a kind of guess at its meaning, by comparing a number of words in which it occurs one with another, and by observing what kind of ideas these words are used to convey. Thus the word _wil-ful_ appears to signify _full of will_; and when we speak of a _wilful murder_, we mean the death of one man caused by another with _full will_ and _intention_. This is quite intelligible; but this word _wilful_ is often used very vaguely and in various senses that we have tried to understand, but hitherto without success.
Words in _less_ (German, _los_).
Care-less. Penni-less. Boot-less. Cheer-less. Tooth-less. Worth-less.
These words, also, ought perhaps to be classed under the head of compounds, as the termination _less_ is a real word in familiar use. _Care-less_, _cheer-less_, signify exactly the reverse of _care-ful_, _cheer-ful_, being used to express the _absence_ or _want_ of the thing signified by the noun prefixed. The word _boot-less_ means without _prey_, _booty_, or _profit_; it has furnished occasion for one of Shakspeare’s worst puns, if we can venture to say which is the worst of the innumerable samples which that fertile brain produced. Glendower (Henry IV. Part 1st, Act iii. I) is telling Hotspur of his valorous exploits against Henry Bolingbroke, when he says--
⸻“Thrice from the banks of Wye, And sandy-bottomed Severn, have I sent him Bootless home, and weather-beaten back.
_Hotspur_. Home without boots and in foul weather too! How ’scapes he agues, in the devil’s name?”
The German word _los_ is attached to many words like the English termination _less_, and appears to have exactly the same signification, as, for example, _schlaf-los_ means _sleep-less_, and _macht-los_ (_might-less_), _without power_ or _strength_. Indeed the two terminations appear to be the same, both signifying to _loose_ or _take away_: the German _los_ is often _prefixed_ to verbs, as well as put after nouns.
In our list of nouns we omitted to mention those in _rick_ and _wick_, which ought to have been classed with nouns in _dom_. Their number is not large.
Nouns in _ric_ and _wick_, such as--
Bishop-ric. Baili-wick.
_Ric_, the same as the German _reich_, means _possession_, _wealth_, _dominion_. The Germans call France, _Frankreich_,--the kingdom or dominion of the Franks. The old Saxon word for kingdom is _rice_, which frequently occurs in the Anglo-Saxon laws.[2] _Bailiwick_ is, properly, the space over which the jurisdiction of a bailiff extends. We do not mean to say the jurisdiction of a bailiff as known in ordinary practice, but according to the more creditable and proper import of the word, which means a _deputy_ or _agent_ who manages the affairs of a superior, or superintendent.
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Footnote 2:
See Lambard’s Anglo-Saxon laws.
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THE WEEK.
September 7.--The birth-day of Dr. Samuel Johnson. He was born in 1709, in the city of Litchfield, where his father was a bookseller. Having received the elements of a classical education principally at the grammar school of his native place, he was sent at the age of nineteen to Pembroke College, Oxford, by a gentleman who engaged to maintain him there as a companion to his son. After some time, however, this person withdrew his aid; and Johnson, having made an ineffectual attempt to subsist on his own resources, found himself obliged to discontinue his residence before obtaining a degree. He had already, however, during the period he spent at the university, obtained a high reputation for scholarship and abilities. For many succeeding years the life of this distinguished luminary of English literature was one of those hard struggles with poverty which learning and genius have so often been called on to sustain. About the time that he left college, namely, in 1731, his father died, leaving scarcely twenty pounds behind him. Thus situated, Johnson was constrained to accept the office of usher at the grammar-school of Market Bosworth. But the treatment to which he was subjected soon forced him to give up this appointment. He now attempted in succession various projects of a literary nature, in order to escape from the extremest indigence. In 1735 he married a Mrs. Porter, the widow of a mercer, who brought him a fortune of about 800_l._; and with this money he opened a boarding-school at Edial. But the scheme met with no success. He then determined to set out for London; and here accordingly he arrived in March, 1737, accompanied by a young friend, who had been one of his pupils, David Garrick, who afterwards became the greatest actor that the modern world had seen. The first employment which he obtained was from the proprietors of the Gentleman’s Magazine. But the emoluments he derived from this source were very insufficient to afford him a respectable subsistence; and he was often without a shilling to procure him bread during the day, or a lodging wherein to lay his head at night. These difficulties clung to him for a long while, but they did not prevent him from gradually working his way to literary distinction. His reports of parliamentary debates, inserted in the Gentleman’s Magazine, which were often almost entirely original compositions of his own, attracted a great deal of notice; but it was not till long afterwards that their authorship was generally known. The year after his arrival in the metropolis, he published his poem, entitled ‘London’, in imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal. This production had the honour of being commended in very warm terms by Pope. In 1744 appeared his eloquent and striking life of his friend Savage. Three years after he was engaged by an association of booksellers to prepare a new Dictionary of the English Language. This celebrated work occupied the greater part of his time for seven years, and at last appeared in 1755, after the money, 1500 guineas, which it had been agreed he should receive for his labour, was all spent. It brought him, however, a large share of public applause, and at once placed his name among the first of the living cultivators of English literature. Meanwhile, even before the appearance of his Dictionary, he had by various occasional productions been steadily advancing himself in reputation, although not in wealth. In 1749 he gave to the world his imitation of Juvenal’s tenth Satire, under the title of ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes.’ The same year his tragedy of Irene, which he had brought with him when he first came to town, was produced at Drury Lane by his friend Garrick. In March, 1750, he commenced the publication of ‘The Rambler,’ which he continued for two years at the rate of two papers every week, the whole, with the exception of only five numbers, being the production of his own pen. These, and other works, however, failed in relieving him from the pressure of great pecuniary difficulties, as is proved by the fact, that in 1756 he was arrested for a debt of about five pounds, and only obtained his liberty by borrowing the money from a friend. In 1758 he began a new periodical publication, to which he gave the name of ‘The Idler,’ and which, like the ‘Rambler,’ he carried on for about two years. In 1759 his mother, to whom he was tenderly attached, died at an advanced age; and having gone down to Litchfield to superintend her funeral, he there wrote his beautiful romance of Rasselas in a single week, while his parent lay unburied, in order to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of her interment. This may well be characterised as the finest anecdote that is to be told of Dr. Johnson; for the whole range of biography scarcely records anything more noble or affecting. At last, in 1762, the Crown was advised to bestow upon him a pension of 300_l._ per annum; an act of bounty which placed him for the rest of his life in ease and affluence. After this he distinguished himself as much by the brilliancy and power of his conversation in the literary circles and general society which he frequented, as by his labours with his pen; but still he was far from relinquishing authorship. In 1765 appeared a new edition of Shakspeare, in the superintendence of which he had been long engaged, and the splendid preface to which is one of the most celebrated of his productions. In 1773 he published the well-known account of his ‘Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland,’ which he had just accomplished in company with his friend Boswell. In 1775 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of Oxford; and in 1781 he brought to a close the last, and perhaps, upon the whole, the greatest of his works, his ‘Lives of the Poets,’ in four volumes octavo. He survived this publication only a few years, and having died on the 13th of December, 1784, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, he was interred with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey, in a grave near to that of his friend Garrick. Notwithstanding considerable heat of temper and arrogance of manner, as well as some weak prejudices and singularities by which he was marked, it is impossible to deny that the moral character of Dr. Johnson abounded in noble points, or to regard it upon the whole with other feelings than those of admiration and reverence. A scrupulous respect for virtue, evinced both by the language and scope of all his writings and by the unvarying tenor of his conduct, a lofty scorn of injustice and baseness, a spirit of independence and self-reliance which no trials and sufferings could tame down either to despair or servility, a warm sympathy with human sorrow wheresoever found or howsoever caused, the intrepidity to do a good action in the face even of the world’s laugh, and charity in relieving the unfortunate to the utmost verge of his means, and even to his own painful inconvenience,--all these dispositions, based on religious principle, and adorned and crowded by the most fervid piety, are sufficient to cast into the shade far deeper traits of frailty than any with which his nature can fairly be said to have been marked. The question of the intellectual rank properly belonging to Dr. Johnson has given rise to more difference of opinion. He was certainly neither a very original nor a very subtle thinker; and his eminence, indeed, will probably be maintained even by his warmest admirers on the ground rather of his powers of expression than of thought. His poetry rarely ascends beyond the height of rhetoric in rhyme; and his metaphysical and philosophical speculations are throughout extremely common-place and unrefined. But in what may be called the _art_ of criticism, the detection of conventional beauties and defects, and the delineation of the merely _literary_ character of a writer’s productions, he is a great master. His style is undoubtedly a bad one in the main; for, to say nothing of its being more Latin than English, and so studiously regulated on the principle of mere sonorousness that it almost entirely wants picturesqueness and the other higher qualities which contribute to effective expression, it is suited at the best to only one kind of writing, the grave didactic. Still, with all its faults, even this style has great qualities. Its dignity is often very imposing, and its inventor is certainly entitled to the praise of having set the example of a grammatical accuracy and general finish of composition not to be found in the works of our best authors before his time, but which have since been copied by all.
[Illustration: Johnson.]
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_The Firemen’s Dog._--A gentleman connected with one of the principal London fire-insurance offices has sent us the following account of the dog whose singular propensities we described in Number 23. Our correspondent has been induced to make particular inquiries in consequence of our notice:--“His home, if it can be called so, is in one of the recesses of Blackfriars Bridge; and it is supposed he has acquired his taste for blazes in consequence of being noticed by the firemen who so frequently pass over that bridge. It has been remarked that he invariably follows close upon the heels of every fireman he sees until driven away. This induces me to believe that it is for the men and not for the fires that he entertains so strong a regard. On one occasion he followed the engines to a fire at Greenwich, and remained there until the last of the engines had packed up its apparatus to depart. On another occasion (the fire at Mr. Tyler’s premises, in Warwick Lane) he remained with the men sixteen days, during which they were employed in rescuing property from the smouldering ruins. He is perfectly well known to every fireman in London. He is called ‘Tyke,’ and is exceedingly ugly in his appearance, being one of the worst formed specimens of the turnspit breed.”
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_Division of Time used by the Inhabitants of the Feroe Islands._--They have one method of dividing time peculiar to themselves: they reckon the day and night by eight _ökter_ of three hours each; the _ökters_ again are reduced into halves, and they are named according to the point of the compass where the sun is at the time: for example, East-North-East is half past four in the morning; East is six; East-South-East, half past seven.--_Landt’s Description._
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THE HOLLY TREE.
O Reader! hast thou ever stood to see The holly tree? The eye that contemplates it well perceives Its glossy leaves Order’d by an intelligence so wise, As might confound the Atheist’s sophistries.
Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen Wrinkled and keen; No grazing cattle through their prickly round Can reach to wound; But as they grow where nothing is to fear, Smooth and unarm’d the pointless leaves appear.
I love to view these things with curious eyes, And moralize; And in this wisdom of the holly tree Can emblems see Wherewith perchance to make a pleasant rhyme, One which may profit in the after-time.
Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear Harsh and austere, To those who on my leisure would intrude Reserved and rude, Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be, Like the high leaves upon the holly tree
And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know Some harshness show, All vain asperities I day by day Would wear away, Till the smooth temper of my age should be Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.
And as when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The holly leaves their fadeless hues display Less bright than they; But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the holly tree?
So serious should my youth appear among The thoughtless throng, So would I seem amid the young and gay More grave than they, That in my age as cheerful I might be As the green winter of the holly tree.
SOUTHEY.
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