On the Study of Words Part 5

i. p. 106, sqq.] would prove the truth of the a.s.sertion. Let us take 'sacrament'; its history, while it carries us far, will yet carry us by ways full of instruction; and these not the less instructive, while we restrict our inquiries to the external history of the word. We find ourselves first among the forms of Roman law. The 'sacramentum' appears there as the deposit or pledge, which in certain suits plaintiff and defendant were alike bound to make, and whereby they engaged themselves to one another; the loser of the suit forfeiting his pledge to sacred temple uses, from which fact the name 'sacramentum,' or thing consecrated, was first derived. The word, as next employed, plants us amidst the military affairs of Rome, designating the military oath by which the Roman soldiers mutually engaged themselves at the first enlisting never to desert their standards, or turn their backs upon the enemy, or abandon their general,--this employment teaching us the sacredness which the Romans attached to their military engagements, and going far to account for their victories. The word was then transferred from this military oath to any solemn oath whatsoever. These three stages 'sacramentum' had already pa.s.sed through, before the Church claimed it for her own, or indeed herself existed at all. Her early writers, out of a sense of the sacredness and solemnity of the oath, transferred this name to almost any act of special solemnity or sanct.i.ty, above all to such mysteries as intended more than met eye or ear. For them the Incarnation was a 'sacrament,' the lifting up of the brazen serpent was a 'sacrament,' the giving of the manna, and many things more. It is well to be acquainted with this phase of the word's history, depriving as it does of all convincing power those pa.s.sages quoted by Roman Catholic controversialists from early church-writers in proof of their seven sacraments. It is quite true that these may have called marriage a 'sacrament' and confirmation a 'sacrament,' and we may reach the Roman seven without difficulty; but then they called many things more, which even the theologians of Rome do not include in the 'sacraments' properly so called, by the same name; and this evidence, proving too much, in fact proves nothing at all. One other stage in the word's history remains; its limitation, namely, to the two 'sacraments,' properly so called, of the Christian Church. A reminiscence of the employment of 'sacrament,' an employment which still survived, to signify the plighted troth of the Roman soldier to his captain and commander, was that which had most to do with the transfer of the word to Baptism; wherein we, with more than one allusion to this oath of theirs, pledge ourselves to fight manfully under Christ's banner, and to continue his faithful soldiers and servants to our life's end; while the _mysterious_ character of the Holy Eucharist was mainly that which earned for it this name.

We have already found history imbedded in the word 'frank'; but I must bring forward the Franks again, to account for the fact with which we are all familiar, that in the East not Frenchmen alone, but _all_ Europeans, are so called. Why, it may be asked, should this be? This wide use of 'Frank' dates from the Crusades; Michaud, the chief French historian of these, finding evidence here that his countrymen took a decided lead, as their gallantry well fitted them to do, in these romantic enterprises of the Middle Ages; impressed themselves so strongly on the imagination of the East as _the_ crusading nation of Europe, that their name was extended to all the warriors of Christendom.

He is not here s.n.a.t.c.hing for them more than the honour which is justly theirs. A very large proportion of the n.o.blest Crusaders, from G.o.dfrey of Bouillon to St. Lewis, as of others who did most to bring these enterprises about, as Pope Urban II., as St. Bernard, were French, and thus gave, in a way sufficiently easy to explain, an appellation to all.

[Footnote: See Fuller, _Holy War_, b. i. c. 13.]

To the Crusades also, and to the intense hatred which they roused throughout Christendom against the Mahomedan infidels, we owe 'miscreant,' as designating one to whom the vilest principles and practices are ascribed. A 'miscreant,' at the first, meant simply a misbeliever. The name would have been applied as freely, and with as little sense of injustice, to the royal-hearted Saladin as to the vilest wretch that fought in his armies. By degrees, however, those who employed it tinged it more and more with their feeling and pa.s.sion, more and more lost sight of its primary use, until they used it of any whom they regarded with feelings of abhorrence, such as those which they entertained for an infidel; just as 'Samaritan' was employed by the Jews simply as a term of reproach, and with no thought whether he on whom it was fastened was in fact one of that detested race or not; where indeed they were quite sure that he was not (John viii. 48).

'a.s.sa.s.sin' also, an Arabic word whose story you will find no difficulty in obtaining,--you may read it in Gibbon, [Footnote: Decline and Fall, c.

64.]--connects itself with a romantic chapter in the history of the Crusades.

Various explanations of 'cardinal' have been proposed, which should account for the appropriation of this name to the parochial clergy of the city of Rome with the subordinate bishops of that diocese. This appropriation is an outgrowth, and a standing testimony, of the measureless a.s.sumptions of the Roman See. One of the favourite comparisons by which that See was wont to set out its relation of superiority to all other Churches of Christendom was this; it was the hinge, or 'cardo,' on which all the rest of the Church, as the door, at once depended and turned. It followed presently upon this that the clergy of Rome were 'cardinales,' as nearest to, and most closely connected with, him who was thus the hinge, or 'cardo,' of all.

[Footnote: Thus a letter professing to be of Pope Anacletus the First in the first century, but really belonging to the ninth: Apostolica Sedes _cardo_ et caput omnium Ecclesiarum a Domino est const.i.tuta; et sicut _cardine_ ostium regitur, sic hujus S. Sedis auctoritate omnes Ecclesiae reguntur. And we have 'cardinal' put in relation with this 'cardo' in a genuine letter of Pope Leo IX.: Clerici summae Sedis _Cardinales_ dic.u.n.tur, _cardini_ utique illi quo cetera moventur, vicinius adhaerentes.]

'Legend' is a word with an instructive history. We all have some notion of what at this day a 'legend' means. It is a tale which is _not_ true, which, however historic in form, is not historic in fact, claims no serious belief for itself. It was quite otherwise once. By this name of 'legends' the annual commemorations of the faith and patience of G.o.d's saints in persecution and death were originally called; these legends in this t.i.tle which they bore proclaiming that they were worthy to be read, and from this worthiness deriving their name. At a later day, as corruptions spread through the Church, these 'legends' grew, in Hooker's words, 'to be nothing else but heaps of frivolous and scandalous vanities,' having been 'even with disdain thrown out, the very nests which bred them abhorring them.' How steeped in falsehood, and to what an extent, according to Luther's indignant turn of the word, the 'legends' (legende) must have become 'lyings' (lugende), we can best guess, when we measure the moral forces which must have been at work, before that which was accepted at the first as 'worthy to be read,' should have been felt by this very name to announce itself as most unworthy, as belonging at best to the region of fable, if not to that of actual untruth.

An inquiry into the pedigree of 'dunce' lays open to us an important page in the intellectual history of Europe. Certain theologians in the Middle Ages were termed Schoolmen; having been formed and trained in the cloister and cathedral _schools_ which Charlemagne and his immediate successors had founded. These were men not to be lightly spoken of, as they often are by those who never read a line of their works, and have not a thousandth part of their wit; who moreover little guess how many of the most familiar words which they employ, or misemploy, have descended to them from these. 'Real,' 'virtual,'

'ent.i.ty,' 'nonent.i.ty,' 'equivocation,' 'objective,' 'subjective,' with many more unknown to cla.s.sical Latin, but now almost necessities to us, were first coined by the Schoolmen; and, pa.s.sing over from them into the speech of others more or less interested in their speculations, have gradually filtered through the successive strata of society, till now some of them have reached to quite the lowest. At the Revival of Learning, however, their works fell out of favour: they were not written in cla.s.sical Latin: the forms into which their speculations were thrown were often unattractive; it was mainly in their authority that the Roman Church found support for her perilled dogmas. On all these accounts it was esteemed a mark of intellectual progress to have broken with them, and thrown off their yoke. Some, however, still clung to these Schoolmen, and to one in particular, John _Duns_ Scotus, the most ill.u.s.trious teacher of the Franciscan Order. Thus it came to pa.s.s that many times an adherent of the old learning would seek to strengthen his position by an appeal to its famous doctor, familiarly called Duns; while those of the new learning would contemptuously rejoin, 'Oh, you are a _Dunsman_' or more briefly, 'You are a _Duns_,'

--or, 'This is a piece of _duncery_'; and inasmuch as the new learning was ever enlisting more and more of the genius and scholarship of the age on its side, the t.i.tle became more and more a term of scorn.

'Remember ye not,' says Tyndal, 'how within this thirty years and far less, 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?' And thus from that conflict long ago extinct between the old and the new learning, that strife between the medieval and the modern theology, we inherit 'dunce' and 'duncery.' The lot of Duns, it must be confessed, has been a hard one, who, whatever his merits as a teacher of Christian truth, was a.s.suredly one of the keenest and most subtle-witted of men. He, the 'subtle Doctor' by pre- eminence, for so his admirers called him, 'the wittiest of the school- divines,' as Hooker does not scruple to style him, could scarcely have antic.i.p.ated, and did not at all deserve, that his name should be turned into a by-word for invincible stupidity.

This is but one example of the singular fortune waiting upon words. We have another of a parallel injustice, in the use which 'mammetry,' a contraction of 'Mahometry,' obtained in our early English. Mahomedanism being the most prominent form of false religion with which our ancestors came in contact, 'mammetry' was used, up to and beyond the Reformation, to designate first any false religion, and then the worship of idols; idolatry being proper to, and a leading feature of, most of the false religions of the world. Men did not pause to remember that Mahomedanism is the great exception, being as it is a protest against all idol-worship whatsoever; so that it was a signal injustice to call an idol a 'mawmet' or a Mahomet, and idolatry 'mammetry.'

A misnomer such as this may remind us of the immense importance of possessing such names for things as shall not involve or suggest an error. We have already seen this in the province of the moral life; but in other regions also it nearly concerns us. Resuming, as words do, the past, shaping the future, how important it is that significant facts or tendencies in the world's history should receive their right names. It is a corrupting of the very springs and sources of knowledge, when we bind up not a truth, but an error, in the very nomenclature which we use. It is the putting of an obstacle in the way, which, however imperceptibly, is yet ever at work, hindering any right apprehension of the thing which has been thus erroneously noted.

Out of a sense of this, an eminent German scholar of the last century, writing _On the Influence of Opinions on Language_, did not stop here, nor make this the entire t.i.tle of his book, but added another and further clause--_and on the Influence of Language on Opinions_; [Footnote: _Von dem Einfluss der Meinungen in die Sprache, und der Sprache in die Meinungen_, von J, D. Michaelis, Berlin, 1760.] the matter which fulfils the promise of this latter clause const.i.tuting by far the most interesting and original portion of his work: for while the influence of opinions on words is so little called in question, that the a.s.sertion of it sounds almost like a truism, this, on the contrary, of words on opinions, would doubtless present itself as a novelty to many. And yet it is an influence which has been powerfully felt in every region of human knowledge, in science, in art, in morals, in theology. The reactive energy of words, not merely on the pa.s.sions of men (for that of course), but on their opinions calmly and deliberately formed, would furnish a very curious chapter in the history of human knowledge and human ignorance.

Sometimes words with no fault of theirs, for they did not originally involve any error, will yet draw some error in their train; and of that error will afterwards prove the most effectual bulwark and shield. Let me instance--the author just referred to supplies the example--the word 'crystal.' The strange notion concerning the origin of the thing, current among the natural philosophers of antiquity, and which only two centuries ago Sir Thomas Browne thought it worth while to place first and foremost among the _Vulgar Errors_ that he undertook to refute, was plainly traceable to a confusion occasioned by the name. Crystal, as men supposed, was ice or snow which had undergone such a process of induration as wholly and for ever to have lost its fluidity: [Footnote: Augustine: Quid est crystallum? Nix est glacie durata per multos annos, ita ut a sole vel igne facile dissolvi non possit. So too in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy of _Valentinian_, a chaste matron is said to be 'cold as crystal _never to be thawed again_.'] and Pliny, backing up one mistake by another, affirmed that it was only found in regions of extreme cold. The fact is, that the Greek word for crystal originally signified ice; but after a while was also imparted to that diaphanous quartz which has so much the look of ice, and which alone _we_ call by this name; and then in a little while it was taken for granted that the two, having the same name, were in fact the same substance; and this mistake it took ages to correct.

Natural history abounds in legends. In the word 'leopard' one of these has been permanently bound up; the error, having first given birth to the name, being afterwards itself maintained and propagated by it. The leopard, as is well known, was not for the Greek and Latin zoologists a species by itself, but a mongrel birth of the male panther or pard and the lioness; and in 'leopard' or 'lion-pard' this fabled double descent is expressed. [Footnote: This error lasted into modern times; thus Fuller (_A Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, vol. i. p. 195): 'Leopards and mules are properly no creatures.'] 'c.o.c.katrice' embodies a somewhat similar fable; the fable however in this case having been invented to account for the name. [Footnote: See Wright, _The Bible Word Book_, s.

v. [The word _c.o.c.katrice_ is a corrupt form of Late Latin _cocodrillus_, which again is a corruption of Latin _crocodilus_, Gr. [Greek: krokodeilos], a crocodile.]]

It was Eichhorn who first suggested the calling of a certain group of languages, which stand in a marked contradistinction to the Indo- European or Aryan family, by the common name of 'Semitic.' A word which should include all these was wanting, and this one was handy and has made its fortune; at the same time implying, as 'Semitic' does, that these are all languages spoken by races which are descended from Shem, it is eminently calculated to mislead. There are non-Semitic races, the Phoenicians for example, which have spoken a Semitic language; there are Semitic races which have not spoken one. Against 'Indo-European'

the same objection may be urged; seeing that several languages are European, that is, spoken within the limits of Europe, as the Maltese, the Finnish, the Hungarian, the Basque, the Turkish, which lie altogether outside of this group.

'Gothic' is plainly a misnomer, and has often proved a misleader as well, when applied to a style of architecture which belongs not to one, but to all the Germanic tribes; which, moreover, did not come into existence till many centuries after any people called Goths had ceased from the earth. Those, indeed, who first called this medieval architecture 'Gothic,' had no intention of ascribing to the Goths the first invention of it, however this language may seem now to bind up in itself an a.s.sertion of the kind. 'Gothic' was at first a mere random name of contempt. The Goths, with the Vandals, being the standing representatives of the rude in manners and barbarous in taste, the critics who would fain throw scorn on this architecture as compared with that cla.s.sical Italian which alone seemed worthy of their admiration, [Footnote: The name, as the designation of a style of architecture, came to us from Italy. Thus Fuller in his _Worthies_: 'Let the Italians deride our English and condemn them for _Gothish_ buildings.' See too a very curious expression of men's sentiments about Gothic architecture as simply equivalent to barbarous, in Phillips's _New World of Words_, 1706, s.v. 'Gothick.'] called it 'Gothic,'

meaning rude and barbarous thereby. We who recognize in this Gothic architecture the most wondrous and consummate birth of genius in one region of art, find it hard to believe that this was once a mere t.i.tle of slight and scorn, and sometimes wrongly a.s.sume a reference in the word to the people among whom first it arose.

'Cla.s.sical' and 'romantic,' names given to opposing schools of literature and art, contain an absurd ant.i.thesis; and either say nothing at all, or say something erroneous. 'Revival of Learning' is a phrase only partially true when applied to that mighty intellectual movement in Western Europe which marked the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. A revival there might be, and indeed there was, of _Greek_ learning at that time; but there could not be properly affirmed a revival of Latin, inasmuch as it had never been dead; or, even as those who dissent from this statement must own, had revived nearly two centuries before. 'Renaissance,' applied in France to the new direction which art took about the age of Francis the First, is another question-begging word. Very many would entirely deny that the bringing back of an antique pagan spirit, and of pagan forms as the utterance of this, into Christian art was a 'renaissance' or new birth of it at all.

But inaccuracy in naming may draw after it more serious mischief in regions more important. Nowhere is accuracy more vital than in words having to do with the chief facts and objects of our faith; for such words, as Coleridge has observed, are never inert, but constantly exercise an immense reactive influence, whether men know it or not, on such as use them, or often hear them used by others. The so-called 'Unitarians,' claiming by this name of theirs to be a.s.serters of the unity of the G.o.dhead, claim that which belongs to us by far better right than to them; which, indeed, belonging of fullest right to us, does not properly belong to them at all. I should, therefore, without any intention of offence, refuse the name to them; just as I should decline, by calling those of the Roman Obedience 'Catholics,' to give up the whole question at issue between them and us. So, also, were I one of them, I should never, however convenient it might sometimes prove, consent to call the great religious movement of Europe in the sixteenth century the 'Reformation.' Such in _our_ esteem it was, and in the deepest, truest sense; a shaping anew of things that were amiss in the Church. But how any who esteem it a disastrous, and, on their parts who brought it about, a most guilty schism, can consent to call it by this name, has always surprised me.

Let me urge on you here the importance of seeking in every case to acquaint yourselves with the circ.u.mstances under which any body of men who have played an important part in history, above all in the history of your own land, obtained the name by which they were afterwards themselves willing to be known, or which was used for their designation by others. This you may do as a matter of historical inquiry, and keeping entirely aloof in spirit from the bitterness, the contempt, the calumny, out of which very frequently these names were first imposed.

Whatever of scorn or wrong may have been at work in them who coined or gave currency to the name, the name itself can never without serious loss be neglected by any who would truly understand the moral significance of the thing; for always something, oftentimes much, may be learned from it. Learn, then, about each one of these names which you meet in your studies, whether it was one that men gave to themselves; or one imposed on them by others, but never recognized by them; or one that, first imposed by others, was yet in course of time admitted and allowed by themselves. We have examples in all these kinds.

Thus the 'Gnostics' call _themselves_ such; the name was of their own devising, and declared that whereof they made their boast; it was the same with the 'Cavaliers' of our Civil War. 'Quaker,' 'Puritan,'

'Roundhead,' were all, on the contrary, names devised by others, and never accepted by those to whom they were attached. To the third cla.s.s 'Whig' and 'Tory' belong. These were nicknames originally of bitterest party hate, withdrawn from their earlier use, and fastened by two political bodies in England each on the other, [Footnote: In North's _Examen_. p. 321, is a very lively, though not a very impartial, account of the rise of these names.] the 'Whig' being properly a Scottish covenanter, [Footnote: [For a full account of the name see Nares, and Todd's _Johnson_.]] the 'Tory' an Irish bog-trotting freebooter; while yet these nicknames in tract of time so lost and let go what was offensive about them, that in the end they were adopted by the very parties themselves. Not otherwise the German 'Lutherans' were originally so called by their antagonists. [Footnote: Dr. Eck, one of the earliest who wrote against the Reformation, first called the Reformed 'Lutherani.'] 'Methodist,' in like manner, was a t.i.tle not first taken by the followers of Wesley, but fastened on them by others, while yet they have been subsequently willing, though with a certain reserve, to accept and to be known by it. 'Momiers' or 'Mummers,' a name in itself of far greater offence, has obtained in Switzerland something of the same allowance. Exactly in the same way 'Capuchin' was at first a jesting nickname, given by the gamins in the streets to that reformed branch of the Franciscans which afterwards accepted it as their proper designation. It was provoked by the peaked and pointed hood ('cappuccio,' 'cappucino') which they wore. The story of the 'Gueux,' or 'Beggars,' of Holland, and how they appropriated their name, is familiar, as I doubt not, to many. [Footnote: [See chapter on Political Nicknames in D'Israeli's _Curiosities of Literature_.]]

A 'Premier' or 'Prime Minister,' though unknown to the law of England, is at present one of the inst.i.tutions of the country. The acknowledged leadership of one member in the Government is a fact of only gradual growth in our const.i.tutional history, but one in which the nation has entirely acquiesced,--nor is there anything invidious now in the t.i.tle.

But in what spirit the Parliamentary Opposition, having coined the term, applied it first to Sir Robert Walpole, is plain from some words of his spoken in the House of Commons, Feb. 11, 1742: 'Having invested me with a kind of mock dignity, and styled me a _Prime Minister_, they [the Opposition] impute to me an unpardonable abuse of the chimerical authority which they only created and conferred.'

Now of these t.i.tles some undoubtedly, like 'Capuchin' instanced just now, stand in no very intimate connexion with those who bear them; and such names, though seldom without their instruction, yet plainly are not so instructive as others, in which the innermost heart of the thing named so utters itself, that, having mastered the name, we have placed ourselves at the central point, from whence best to master everything besides. It is thus with 'Gnostic' and 'Gnosticism'; in the prominence given to _gnosis_ or knowledge, as opposed to faith, lies the key to the whole system. The Greek Church has loved ever to style itself the Holy 'Orthodox' Church, the Latin, the Holy 'Catholic' Church. Follow up the thoughts which these words suggest. What a world of teaching they contain; above all when brought into direct comparison and opposition one with the other. How does all which is innermost in the Greek and Roman mind unconsciously reveal itself here; the Greek Church regarding as its chief blazon that its speculation is right, the Latin that its empire is universal. Nor indeed is it merely the Greek and Latin Churches which utter themselves here, but Greece and Rome in their deepest distinctions, as these existed from their earliest times.

The key to the whole history, Pagan as well as Christian, of each is in these words. We can understand how the one established a dominion in the region of the mind which shall never be overthrown, the other founded an empire in the world whose visible effects shall never be done away. This is an ill.u.s.trious example; but I am bold to affirm that, in their degree, all parties, religious and political, are known by names that will repay study; by names, to understand which will bring us far to an understanding of their strength and their weakness, their truth and their error, the idea and intention according to which they wrought. Thus run over in thought a few of those which have risen up in England. 'Puritans,' 'Fifth-Monarchy men,' 'Seekers,' 'Levellers,'

'Independents,' 'Friends,' 'Rationalists,' 'Lat.i.tudnarians,'

'Freethinkers,' these t.i.tles, with many more, have each its significance; and would you get to the heart of things, and thoroughly understand what any of these schools and parties intended, you must first understand what they were called. From this as from a central point you must start; even as you must bring back to this whatever further knowledge you may acquire; putting your later gains, if possible, in subordination to the name; at all events in connexion and relation with it.

You will often be able to glean information from names, such as, if not always important, will yet rarely fail to be interesting and instructive in its way. Thus what a record of inventions, how much of the past history of commerce do they embody and preserve. The 'magnet'

has its name from Magnesia, a district of Thessaly; this same Magnesia, or else another like-named district in Asia Minor, yielding the medicinal earth so called. 'Artesian' wells are from the province of Artois in France, where they were long in use before introduced elsewhere. The 'baldachin' or 'baudekin' is from Baldacco, the Italian form of the name of the city of Bagdad, from whence the costly silk of this canopy originally came. [Footnote: [See Devic's Supplement to Littre; the Italian _l_ is an attempt to p.r.o.nounce the Arabic guttural Ghain. In the Middle Ages _Baldacco_ was often supposed to be the same as 'Babylon'; see Florio's _Ital. Dict._ (s.v. _baldacca_).]] The'

bayonet' suggests concerning itself, though perhaps wrongly, that it was first made at Bayonne--the 'bilbo,' a finely tempered Spanish blade, at Bilbao--the 'carronade' at the Carron Ironworks in Scotland-- 'worsted' that it was spun at a village not far from Norwich-- 'sarcenet' that it is a Saracen manufacture--'cambric' that it reached us from Cambray--'copper' that it drew its name from Cyprus, so richly furnished with mines of this metal--'fustian' from Fostat, a suburb of Cairo--'frieze' from Friesland--'silk' or 'seric.u.m' from the land of the Seres or Chinese--'damask' from Damascus--'ca.s.simere' or 'kersemere' from Cashmere--'arras' from a town like-named--'duffel,'

too, from a town near Antwerp so called, which Wordsworth has immortalized--'shalloon' from Chalons--'jane' from Genoa--'gauze' from Gaza. The fashion of the 'cravat' was borrowed from the Croats, or Crabats, as this wild irregular soldiery of the Thirty Years' War used to be called. The 'biggen,' a plain cap often mentioned by our early writers, was first worn by the Beguines, communities of pietist women in the Low Countries in the twelfth century. The 'dalmatic' was a garment whose fashion was taken to be borrowed from Dalmatia. (_See_ Marriott.) England now sends her calicoes and muslins to India and the East; yet these words give standing witness that we once imported them from thence; for 'calico' is from Calicut, a town on the coast of Malabar, and 'muslin' from Mossul, a city in Asiatic Turkey. 'Cordwain'

or 'cordovan' is from Cordova--'delf' from Delft--'indigo' (indic.u.m) from India--'gamboge' from Cambodia--the 'agate' from a Sicilian river, Achates--the 'turquoise' from Turkey--the 'chalcedony' or onyx from Chalcedon--'jet' from the river Gages in Lycia, where this black stone is found. [Footnote: In Holland's _Pliny_, the Greek form 'gagates' is still retained, though he oftener calls it 'jeat' or 'geat.'] 'Rhubarb'

is a corruption of Rha barbarum, the root from the savage banks of the Rha or Volga--'jalap' is from Jalapa, a town in Mexico--'tobacco' from the island Tobago--'malmsey' from Malvasia, for long a flourishing city in the Morea--'sherry,' or 'sherris' as Shakespeare wrote it, is from Xeres--'maca.s.sar' oil from a small Malay kingdom so named in the Eastern Archipelago--'dittany' from the mountain Dicte, in Crete-- 'parchment' from Pergamum--'majolica' from Majorca--'faience' from the town named in Italian Faenza. A little town in Ess.e.x gave its name to the 'tilbury'; another, in Bavaria, to the 'landau.' The 'bezant' is a coin of Byzantium; the 'guinea' was originally coined (in 1663) of gold brought from the African coast so called; the pound 'sterling' was a certain weight of bullion according to the standard of the Easterlings, or Eastern merchants from the Hanse Towns on the Baltic. The 'spaniel'

is from Spain; the 'barb' is a steed from Barbary; the pony called a 'galloway' from the county of Galloway in Scotland; the 'tarantula' is a poisonous spider, common in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. The 'pheasant' reached us from the banks of the Phasis; the 'bantam' from a Dutch settlement in Java so called; the 'canary' bird and wine, both from the island so named; the 'peach' (persica) declares itself a Persian fruit; 'currants' derived their name from Corinth, whence they were mostly shipped; the 'damson' is the 'damascene' or plum of Damascus; the 'bergamot' pear is named from Bergamo in Italy; the 'quince' has undergone so many changes in its progress through Italian and French to us, that it hardly retains any trace of Cydon (malum Cydonium), a town of Crete, from which it was supposed to proceed.

'Solecisms,' if I may find room for them here, are from Soloe, an Athenian colony in Cilicia, whose members soon forgot the Attic refinement of speech, and became notorious for the ungrammatical Greek which they talked.

And as things thus keep record in the names which they bear of the quarters from which they reached us, so also will they often do of the persons who, as authors, inventors, or discoverers, or in some other way, stood in near connexion with them. A collection in any language of all the names of persons which have since become names of things--from nomina _apellativa_ have become nomina _realia_--would be very curious and interesting, I will enumerate a few. Where the matter is not familiar to you, it will not be unprofitable to work back from the word or thing to the person, and to learn more accurately the connexion between them.

To begin with mythical antiquity--the Chimaera has given us 'chimerical,' Hermes 'hermetic,' Pan 'panic,' Paean, being a name of Apollo, the 'peony,' Tantalus 'to tantalize,' Hercules 'herculean,'

Proteus 'protean,' Vulcan 'volcano' and 'volcanic,' and Daedalus 'dedal,' if this word, for which Spenser, Wordsworth, and Sh.e.l.ley have all stood G.o.dfathers, may find allowance with us. The demi-G.o.d Atlas figures with a world upon his shoulders in the t.i.tle-page of some early works on geography; and has probably in this way lent to our map-books their name. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied the famous 'gordian'

knot which Alexander cut, will supply a natural transition from mythical to historical. The 'daric,' a Persian gold coin, very much of the same value as our own rose n.o.ble, had its name from Darius.

Mausolus, a king of Caria, has left us 'mausoleum,' Academus 'academy,'

Epicurus 'epicure,' Philip of Macedon a 'philippic,' being such a discourse as Demosthenes once launched against the enemy of Greece, and Cicero 'cicerone.' Mithridates, who had made himself poison-proof, gave us the now forgotten 'mithridate' (Dryden) for antidote; as from Hippocrates we derived 'hipocras,' or 'ypocras,' often occurring in our early poets, being a wine supposed to be mingled after the great physician's receipt. Gentius, a king of Illyria, gave his name to the plant 'gentian,' having been, it is said, the first to discover its virtues. [Footnote: Pliny, _H. N._ xxv. 34.] Glaubers, who has bequeathed his salts to us, was a Dutch chemist of the seventeenth century. A grammar used to be called a 'donat' or 'donet' (Chaucer), from Donatus, a Roman grammarian of the fourth century, whose Latin grammar held its place as a school-book during a large part of the Middle Ages. Othman, more than any other the grounder of the Turkish dominion in Europe, reappears in our 'Ottoman'; and Tertullian, strangely enough, in the Spanish 'tertulia.' The beggar Lazarus has given us 'lazar' and 'lazaretto'; Veronica and the legend connected with her name, a 'vernicle,' being a napkin with the Saviour's face impressed upon it. Simon Magus gave us 'simony'; this, however, as we understand it now, is not a precise reproduction of his sin as recorded in Scripture. A common fossil sh.e.l.l is called an 'ammonite' from the fanciful resemblance to the twisted horns of Jupiter Ammon which was traced in it; Ammon again appearing in 'ammonia.' Our 'pantaloons' are from St. Pantaleone; he was the patron saint of the Venetians, who therefore very commonly received Pantaleon as their Christian name; it was from them transferred to a garment which they much affected.

'Dunce,' as we have seen, is derived from Duns Scotus. To come to more modern times, and not pausing at Ben Jonson's 'chaucerisms,' Bishop Hall's 'scoganisms,' from Scogan, Edward the Fourth's jester, or his 'aretinisms,' from Aretin; these being probably not intended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the 'pasquil' or 'pasquinade.' Derrick was the common hangman in the time of Charles II.; he bequeathed his name to the crane used for the lifting and moving of heavy weights. [Footnote: [But _derick_ in the sense of 'gallows' occurs as early as 1606 in Dekker's _Seven Deadly Sins of London_, ed. Arber, p. 17; see Skeat's _Etym. Dict._, ed. 2, p.

799.]] 'Patch,' a name of contempt not unfrequent in Shakespeare, was, it is said, the proper name of a favourite fool of Cardinal Wolsey's.

[Footnote: [The Cardinal's two fools were occasionally called _patch_, a term for a 'domestic fool,' from the patchy, parti-coloured dress; see Skeat (s. v.).]] Colonel Negus in Queen Anne's time is reported to have first mixed the beverage which goes by his name. Lord Orrery was the first for whom an 'orrery' was constructed; Lord Spencer first wore, or first brought into fashion, a 'spencer'; and the Duke of Roquelaure the cloak which still bears his name. Dahl, a Swede, introduced from Mexico the cultivation of the 'dahlia'; the 'fuchsia' is named after Fuchs, a German botanist of the sixteenth century; the 'magnolia' after Magnol, a distinguished French botanist of the beginning of the eighteenth; while the 'camelia' was introduced into Europe from j.a.pan in 1731 by Camel, a member of the Society of Jesus; the 'shaddock' by Captain Shaddock, who first transplanted this fruit from the West Indies. In 'qua.s.sia' we have the name of a negro sorcerer of Surinam, who in 1730 discovered its properties, and after whom it was called. An unsavoury jest of Vespasian has attached his name in French to an unsavoury spot. 'Nicotine,' the poison recently drawn from tobacco, goes back for its designation to Nicot, a physician, who first introduced the tobacco-plant to the general notice of Europe. The Gobelins were a family so highly esteemed in France that the manufactory of tapestry which they had established in Paris did not drop their name, even after it had been purchased and was conducted by the State. A French Protestant refugee, Tabinet, first made 'tabinet'

in Dublin; another Frenchman, Goulard, a physician of Montpellier, gave his to the soothing lotion, not unknown in our nurseries. The 'tontine'

was conceived by Tonti, an Italian; another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena of animal electricity or 'galvanism'; while a third, Volta, lent a t.i.tle to the 'voltaic' battery. Dolomieu, a French geologist, first called attention to a peculiar formation of rocks in Eastern Tyrol, called 'dolomites' after him. Colonel Martinet was a French officer appointed by Louvois as an army inspector; one who did his work excellently well, but has left a name bestowed often since on mere military pedants. 'Macintosh,' 'doyly,' 'brougham,' 'hansom,' 'to mesmerize,' 'to macadamize,' 'to burke,' 'to boycott,' are all names of persons or words formed from their names, and then transferred to things or actions, on the ground of some sort of connexion between the one and the other. [Footnote: Several other such words we have in common with the French. Of their own they have 'sardanapalisme,' any piece of profuse luxury, from Sardanapalus. For 'lambiner,' to dally or loiter over a task, they are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth century, but accused of sluggish movement and wearisome diffuseness in style. Every reader of Pascal's _Provincial Letters_ will remember Escobar, the famous casuist of the Jesuits, whose convenient devices for the relaxation of the moral law have there been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired, he owes his introduction into the French language; where 'escobarder' is used in the sense of to equivocate, and 'escobarderie' of subterfuge or equivocation. A pale green colour is in French called 'celadon' from a personage of this name, of a feeble and _fade_ tenderness, who figures in _Astree_, a popular romance of the seventeenth century. An unpopular minister of finance, M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unnecessary expenses in the State, saw his name transferred to the slight and thus cheap black outline portrait called a 'silhouette'

(Sismondi, _Hist, des Francais_, vol. xix, pp. 94, 95). In the 'mansarde' roof we are reminded of Mansart, the architect who introduced it. In 'marivaudage' the name of Marivaux is bound up, who was noted for the affected euphuism which goes by this name; very much as the sophist Gorgias gave [Greek: gorgiazein] to the Greek. The point of contact between the 'fiacre' and St. Fiacre is well known: hackney carriages, when first established in Paris, waited for their hiring in the court of an hotel which was adorned with an image of the Scottish saint.] To these I may add 'guillotine,' though Dr. Guillotin did not invent this instrument of death, even as it is a baseless legend that he died by it. Some improvements in it he made, and it thus happened that it was called after him.

Nor less shall we find history, at all events literary history, in the noting of the popular characters in books, who have supplied words that have pa.s.sed into common speech. Thus from Homer we have 'mentor' for a monitor; 'stentorian' for loud-voiced; and inasmuch as, with all of Hector's n.o.bleness, there is a certain amount of big talk about him, he has given us 'to hector'; [Footnote: See Col. Mure, _Language and Literature of Ancient Greece_, vol. i. p. 350.] while the medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to Pandarus that shameful traffic out of which his name has pa.s.sed into the words 'to pander' and 'pandarism.' 'Rodomontade' is from Rodomonte, a hero of Boiardo; who yet, it must be owned, does not bl.u.s.ter and boast, as the word founded on his name seems to imply; adopted by Ariosto, it was by him changed into Rodamonte. 'Thrasonical' is from Thraso, the braggart of Roman comedy. Cervantes has given us 'quixotic'; Swift 'lilliputian'; to Moliere the French language owes 'tartuffe' and 'tartufferie.'

'Reynard' with us is a sort of duplicate for fox, while in French 'renard' has quite excluded the old 'volpils' being originally no more than the proper name of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous beast-epic of the Middle Ages, _Reineke Fuchs_. The immense popularity of this poem we gather from many evidences--from none more clearly than from this. 'Chanticleer' is the name of the c.o.c.k, and 'Bruin' of the bear in the same poem. [Footnote: See Genin, _Des Variations du Langage Francais_, p.12] These have not made fortune to the same extent of actually putting out of use names which before existed, but contest the right of existence with them.

Occasionally a name will embody and give permanence to an error; as when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no t.i.tle to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this (_Kosmos_, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The subject has also been very carefully treated by Major, _Life of Prince Henry the Navigator_, 1868. pp. 382-388] Our 'turkeys' are not from Turkey, as was a.s.sumed by those who so called them, but from that New World where alone they are native. This error the French in another shape repeat with their 'dinde' originally 'poulet _d'Inde_,' or Indian fowl. There lies in 'gipsy' or Egyptian, the a.s.sumption that Egypt was the original home of this strange people; as was widely believed when they made their first appearance in Europe early in the fifteenth century. That this, however, was a mistake, their language leaves no doubt; proclaiming as it does that they are wanderers from a more distant East, an outcast tribe from Hindostan. 'Bohemians' as they are called by the French, testifies to a similar error, to the fact that at their first apparition in Western Europe they were supposed by the common people in France to be the expelled Hussites of Bohemia.

Where words have not embodied an error, it will yet sometimes happen that the sound or spelling will _to us_ suggest one. Against such in these studies it will be well to be on our guard. Thus many of us have been tempted to put 'domus' and 'dominus' into a connexion which really does not exist. There has been a stage in most boys' geographical knowledge, when they have taken for granted that 'Jutland' was so called, not because it was the land of the Jutes, but on account of its _jutting_ out into the sea in so remarkable a manner. At a much later period of their education, 'Aborigines,' being the proper name of an Italian tribe, might very easily lead astray. [Footnote: See Pauly, _Encyclop._ s. v. Latium.] Who is there that has not mentally put the Gulf of Lyons in some connexion with the city of the same name? We may be surprised that the Gulf should have drawn its t.i.tle from a city so remote and so far inland, but we accept the fact notwithstanding: the river Rhone, flowing by the one, and disemboguing in the other, seems to offer to us a certain link of connexion. There is indeed no true connexion at all between the two. In old texts this Gulf is generally called _Sinus Gallicus_; in the fourteenth century a few writers began to call it _Sinus Leonis_, the Gulf of the Lion, possibly from the fierceness of its winds and waves, but at any rate by a name having nothing to do with Lyons on the Rhone. The oak, in Greek [Greek: drys], plays no inconsiderable part in the Ritual of the Druids; it is not therefore wonderful if most students at one time of their lives have put the two in etymological relation. The Greeks, who with so characteristic a vanity a.s.sumed that the key to the meaning of words in all languages was to be found in their own, did this of course. So, too, there have not been wanting those who have traced in the name 'Jove' a heathen reminiscence of the awful name of Jehovah; while yet, however specious this may seem, on closer scrutiny the words declare that they have no connexion with one another, any more than 'Iapetus' and 'j.a.pheth,' or, I may add, than 'G.o.d' and 'good,' which yet by an honourable moral instinct men can hardly refrain from putting into an etymological relation with each other.

Sometimes a falsely-a.s.sumed derivation of a word has reacted upon and modified its spelling. Thus it may have been with 'hurricane.' In the tearing up and _hurrying_ away of the _canes_ in the sugar plantations by this West-Indian tornado, many have seen an explanation of the name; just in the same way as the Latin 'calamitas' has been derived from 'calamus,' the stalk of the corn. In both cases the etymology is faulty; 'hurricane,' originally a Carib word, is only a transplanting into our tongue of the Spanish 'huracan.'

It is a signal evidence of the conservative powers of language, that we may continually trace in speech the record of customs and states of society which have now pa.s.sed so entirely away as to survive in these words alone. For example, a 'stipulation' or agreement is so called, as many affirm, from 'stipula,' a straw; and tells of a Roman custom, that when two persons would make a mutual engagement with one another, [Footnote: See on this disputed point, and on the relation between the Latin 'stipulatio' and the old German custom not altogether dissimilar, J. Grimm, _Deutsche Rechtsalterthumer_, pp. 121, sqq. [This account of the derivation of 'stipulatio' is generally given up now; for Greek cognates of the word see Curtius, _Greek Etymology_, No. 224.]] they would break a straw between them. We all know what fact of English history is laid up in 'curfew,' or 'couvre-feu.' The 'limner,' or 'illuminer,' for so we find the word in Fuller, throws us back on a time when the _illumination_ of ma.n.u.scripts was a leading occupation of the painter. By 'lumber,' we are reminded that Lombards were the first p.a.w.nbrokers, even as they were the first bankers, in England: a 'lumber'-room being a 'lombard'-room, or a room where the p.a.w.nbroker stored his pledges. [Footnote: See my _Select Glossary_, s. v. Lumber.]

Nor need I do more than remind you that in our common phrase of '_signing_ our name,' we preserve a record of a time when such first rudiments of education as the power of writing, were the portion of so few, that it was not as now an exception, but the custom, of most persons to make their mark or 'sign'; great barons and kings themselves not being ashamed to set this _sign_ or cross to the weightiest doc.u.ments. To 'subscribe' the name would more accurately express what now we do. As often as we term arithmetic the science of calculation, we implicitly allude to that rudimental stage in this science, when pebbles (calculi) were used, as now among savage tribes they often are, to help the practice of counting; the Greeks made the same use of one word of theirs ([Greek: psephizein]); while in another ([Greek: pempazein]) they kept record of a period when the _five_ fingers were so employed. 'Expend,' 'expense,' tell us that money was once weighed out (Gen. xxiii. 16), not counted out as now; 'pecunia,' 'peculatus,'

'fee' (vieh) keep record all of a time when cattle were the main circulating medium. In 'library' we preserve the fact that books were once written on the bark (liber) of trees; in 'volume' that they were mostly rolls; in 'paper,' that the Egyptian papyrus, 'the paper-reeds by the brooks,' furnished at one time the ordinary material on which they were written.

Names thus so often surviving things, we have no right to turn an etymology into an argument. There was a notable attempt to do this in the controversy so earnestly carried on between the Greek and Latin Churches, concerning the bread, whether it should be leavened or unleavened, that was used at the Table of the Lord. Those of the Eastern Church constantly urged that the Greek word for bread (and in Greek was the authoritative record of the first inst.i.tution of this sacrament), implied, according to its root, that which was raised or lifted up; not, therefore, to use a modern term, 'sad' or set, or, in other words, unleavened bread; such rather as had undergone the process of fermentation. But even if the etymology on which they relied (artos from airo, to raise) had been as certain as it is questionable, they could draw no argument of the slightest worth from so remote an etymology, and one which had so long fallen out of the consciousness of those who employed the word.

Theories too, which long since were utterly renounced, have yet left their traces behind them. Thus 'good humour.' 'bad humour.' 'humours,'

and, strangest contradiction of all, '_dry_ humour,' rest altogether on a now exploded, but a very old and widely accepted, theory of medicine; according to which there were four princ.i.p.al moistures or 'humours' in the natural body, on the due proportion and combination of which the disposition alike of body and mind depended. [Footnote: See the _Prologue_ to Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of His Humour_.] Our present use of 'temper' has its origin in the same theory; the due admixture, or right tempering, of these humours gave what was called the happy temper, or mixture, which, thus existing inwardly, manifested itself also outwardly; while 'distemper,' which we still employ in the sense of sickness, was that evil frame either of a man's body or his mind (for it was used of both), which had its rise in an unsuitable mingling of these humours. In these instances, as in many more, the great streams of thought and feeling have changed their course, flowing now in quite other channels from those which once they filled, but have left these words as abiding memorials of the channels wherein once they ran. Thus 'extremes,' 'golden mean,' 'category,' 'predicament,'

'axiom,' 'habit'--what are these but a deposit in our ethical terminology which Aristotle has left behind him?

But we have not exhausted our examples of the way in which the record of old errors, themselves dismissed long ago, will yet survive in language--being bound up in words that grew into use when those errors found credit, and that maintain their currency still. The mythology which Saxon or Dane brought with them from their German or Scandinavian homes is as much extinct for us as are the Lares, Larvae, and Lemures of heathen Rome; yet the deposit it has permanently left behind it in the English language is not inconsiderable. 'Lubber,' 'dwarf,' 'oaf,'

'droll,' 'wight,' 'puck,' 'urchin,' 'hag,' 'night-mare,' 'gramary,'

'Old Nick,' 'changeling' (wechselkind), suggest themselves, as all bequeathed to us by that old Teutonic demonology. [Footnote: [But the words _puck_, _urchin_, _gramary_, are not of Teutonic origin. The etymology of _puck_ is unknown; _urchin_ means properly 'a hedgehog,'

being the old French _ericon_ (in modern French _herisson_), a derivative from the Latin _ericius_, 'a hedgehog'; _gramary_ is simply Old French _gramaire_, 'grammar' = Lat. _grammatica_ (_ars_), just as Old French _mire_, 'a medical man' = Lat. _medic.u.m_.]] Few now have any faith in astrology, or count that the planet under which a man is born will affect his temperament, make him for life of a disposition grave or gay, lively or severe. Yet our language affirms as much; for we speak of men as 'jovial' or 'saturnine,' or 'mercurial'--'jovial,'