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! I :-s3i' il? I ill I -T if. WILLIAM D. COOKE, EDITOR & PROPRIETOR. A FAMILY NEWSPAPER FEUTRAL IN POLITICS. TERMS, TWO DOLLARS PER AKUM jGjrtwtdr to all fye 3n (crests of Efje South., giteratui, 6fout atton, multut, fyc Warftets, &c. VOL. Ill XO. 43. RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1854. WHOLE -NO. 147. . ' . - - - i ' , . i MISCELLANEOUS. From the University Magazine. A LECTURE On the English Language Its History Its Exrelkiieitt and Defects lis Curiositi's and Colloquial abus s And its Future Destiny. Delivered, at the Theatre in Newborn, North Carolina, May, 1854. BY REV. WILLIAM HOOPER. ' That saying of Hobbes, one of the greatest metaphvsici.kns of England : "That" words are the counters' of wise men, but the money of (fools," lias been often quoted, aud is much cele brated for its wisdom. It is indeed true, and disserving of fame, in p certain sense. For we do. find that the weaker in mind people are, the more easily they are deceived by handsome language, and thus often admire andy praise speeches and arguments which have very little force in them, while wiser and more judicious heads see thro' this gaudy but flimsy disguise, and pronounce these lauded effusions1 to be merely "sound and fury signifying nothing." And it must be admitted-that many compositi ons which delighted t.s in our youth, sink in ; our estimation as we grow older, for this very '.reason: that as judgment and good sense as sume the ascendancy over ignorance and false taste, we care more for sou::d thought and severe truth than for an ornamental dress. IJut not-'.--withstanding this, lie would be a shallow phi ; losopher who should deny the importance of lan guage because it is often made the instrument of passing off nonsense for sense, and captivating thousands by melodious sounds and rhetorical decorations. T!i '" ' ' ! wise should pay "vent folly aud sij poly f so power deniable that it l at is the very reason why the attention to language:, to pre piiisti y from having the mono t'ul an auxiliary. . For it is un s the lyiture of man to be much 'afY'cted bv thenar's of speech to " be moved wkh the concord of sweet sounds" to be much alive to the beauties of composition, to the emlwllishmcntsof fancy, to striking pictures que illustrations-of moral truth, drawn from na tural objects around us(. Audit is the part of wisdom therefore, to watch, to seize upon, and use efficaciously, whatever is found to 'operate powerfully on the human mind. For the pow er, of language may be employed just as success fully to make truth attractive and victorious as to palm off error and conceal folly. So in ar chitecture; a man might he foolish enough to adorn the facade of a wooden building with a costly display of statues, and alto-relievos, cut out of the perishable wood. This would not prevent such costly and elaborate figures from being very appropriate ornaments of an edifice of solid stone. And there is no stronger evi dence of the importance of cultivating style than the fact, that a large number of English wri ters of the 17th century are now scarcely kr.own, and are read by very few, because tliejr style is homely, and their sentences ill-constructed ; tho' they contain mines of .precious thought and valuable sentiment. Tp single out but one instance from a thousand : -Sir Har- - ry Vane, who made such a figure in the times of Cromwell; not one of us, perhaps, ever saw or -end a line he wrote. Many of us never heard that he wrote, at all ; and yet it is.' said by the best judges that his writings display an as tonishing degree of acuteness and mental pow er; and that great man, Sir James Mcintosh, j places him almost on a level with Lord Bacon. Yet, all this rich magazine of thought is buried under an uncouth phraseology known only to s antiquaries. All of you who have read Wash ington Irving's amusing account of the art of book-making as he saw it in the British muse um, well know that much of what is now cur .. rent and fashionable literature, is nothing but -. the solid masses of these old sages, ground down, and- sharpened, and polished to suit the mo dern taste. So much by way of introduction to. the subject of language generally; and by .way of apology for inviting you to study the genius and characteristics and powers f your own - vernacular tongue, that you may learn to use it with more intelligence and precision, and to wield it with skill and success in the cause of truth' and virtue. HISTORY. The English language, you know, is built up on the foundation of the Anglo Saxon, upon which, after the Norman conquest, was reared the huge superstructure of ithe Nornian French. ; These two compose the main body of our words. .'" 'Britain was originally peopled by colonies from I, - Gaul, who spoke the Celtic language. But when the Saxons invaded England, about the middle of the fifth century, the original Celts (or Kelts ; as it has become fashionable to spell and pro nounce t)they were either destroyed or driven bv the invaders into the mountains of Wales; and we find the ancient British language still a - living tongue in the mouths of the Welsh, the Highlanders of Scotland, and the native Ca thohc Irish. I have compared the translations of the Bible in those several languages, and been struck' with the similitude and almost iden- tity erf two of them. But besides the twi great parent stocks of our language, the baxon and i Norman French, as soon as the revival ot let ters and commerce brought on a frequent inter course of Britain with the other nations of Eu rope rapid additions were made to her vocabu lary from the learned tongues of Greece and Rome, as well as from the modern languages. And by these various contributions from the literary wealth of all the world, our English Dictionary now sums up the amount of 38,000 words, enough in all conscience to satisfy the demands of sober folk; though sometimes an exquisiteor a belle will complain grievously of the insuffici ency of our vocabulary, exclaiming: "I want words to express mti. admiration, my delight, my indignation, my scorn and contempt, my horror," &c. It is easy for a scholar to trace our present words to their parent source. Almost all our short words and monosyllables are Saxon. So are those with harsh cambinations of conso nants. This is what we Would expect. Bar baric nations won't take the trouble to form or use long words for the common occasions of life. The various languages of which ours is compo sed, have given our language, in some measure, the excellencies of them all. We combine the strength of the Northern Dialects with the soft voluptuous sounds of the South of Europe. It is true our language retains much of the harsh ness of its Teutonic origin, but not hear so'much as it would possess, had it been more coy and jealous of these foreign admixtures. Let me detain you then, a moment, on the sound of our language. - ' SOUND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The euphony or agreeable sound of a language depends on the judicious intermixture of vowels and consonants. If th consonants predomi nate, it makes aflanguage harsh and difficult of uUerance ; if the vowels superabound, it dege nerates into languid effeminacy and unconnec ted laxity. If you compare the tongues of Northern with these of Southern Europe, and still more with those of the South-Sea Islands, you will be struck with these characteristic pe culiarities. The very looks of a Russian or Po lish word is enough to make even us rude mouthed Saxons shrug our shoulders, and the utterance of it would cause, I should think, the musical Italian to stop his ears, lest it should crack the tympanum. Even the boasted Ger man tongue, rich as it is in literature and philo sophy, is as formidable to our ears as its strange looking type is tiying to our eyes. But we must Confess that we have little o brag of, in melody, over our German ancestors. We have got rid to be sure of the gutteral sounds which render the pronunciation of that tongue so grating and cacophonous to our organs ; but there are still harsh syllables enough to remind us of our Gothic origin. Take, for instance, a verse in one of the Psalms, in our common' version : "In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul." It would be difficult to find a word more tortur ing to mouth or ear than that 2d persons sin gular of the past tense of i- ur verb strengthen. We have all heard of words that are called jaio-crak-ers and if any jaw ever suffered fracture, or teeth wtre ever loosened in enunciating ha,rsh sounds, surely it must hav been in the passage of such words through the organs of speech. Indeed that same 2d person of our verbs in general, is so unmusical, and so intractable to the Poets that they are obliged to mutilate it of its last letters. For example, even Pope, that great mas ter of melodious versification (if there ever was one) see what a scrape he got into when he at tempted to brinjj under the laws of his art, one of those monsters of our language, the 2d per son singular of the verb, touch. " Oh thou my voice inspire ' Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire." Now to get out, unharmed by teeth or lips, the word touched, in one syllable, was no smalt achievement; but to send it forth with all its skirts sticking to it touchedst was beyond the reach of art, and therefore the unfortunate word lost its tail in its passage. He might, to be sure, have let the word retain its extremities, had he been at liberty to say louch-edst,h two sylla bles, but the misery was, his verse required a monosyllable, and, gentlemen and ladies, if any of you will utter those four consonants ch'dst to gether, without the interposition of a vowel, your jaws are sate from ever being cracked by any word that has come dowji from the tower of Babel, or from being hurt even by the forceps of the dentist. And yet this is a difficulty which lies perpetually in the way of our poets; for as long as the pronoun thou is used in addresses to the Deity, and aposthrophes and elevated strains of composition, the corresponding 2d ers. of the verb will be required. Poor Pollok! iu his "Courseof Time," did not pretend to strug gle with the difficulty, but has every where cut off the st from the 2d pers. of his verbs, and sa crificed his grammar to his melody. But this harshness of our language fits it admirably for the purposes of awful rebuke, fierce vitupera tion, indignant menace, and terrible denunciati on; as well as for expressive imitation of all the loud, blustering, roaring, crashing, whistling, shattering, rustling, hissing sounds of natural objects. Certainly if old Homer had had our language at command, he would have put all Juno's scoldings of Jupiter in good Anglo- Saxon; and we, of the piesent age, know with what beautiful success Mrs. Caudle has employed it in her "Curtain Lectures.' "A word to the wise," &c. Pope, so dexterous an artist in adapting words to express the sounds of things, has applied the resources of his mo ther tongue in both ways : to convey ideas of smoothness and sojtness as well as of roughness and storminess. It is easy to see that he has succeeded better in the harsh than in the soft. Judge for yourselves : " Soft ia the strain when Zeyhyr gently blows. And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; But when loud surges lash the sounding 6hore, The hoarse, rongh verse, should like the torrent roar ; When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The tine, too, labors, and the words move slow." The reader will perceive how easily the poet can muster together hosts of loud sounding vowels, and a bristling phalanx of harsh con Sonants, to stun your ears and to retard and impede the utterance, when he wishes to imi tate rough-sounding objects or to express la borious effort. But perhaps my youthful hear ers will think our language sufficiently soft and mellifluous in the plastic hands of the same marvellous artist when, at the soft age of 16, he wrote his pastorals and thus describes the soft charms of Delia: " Go, gentle gales and bear my sighs away. To Delia's ear the teuder notes convey ; As some soft turtle his lost love deplores. And with deep murmurs fills the sounding shores; Thus far from Delia to the winds I mourn, Alike unheard, unpitied, and forlorn ! Go gentle gales and bear my sighs away where'er my Delia flies. Let spring attend and sudden flowers arise1. Let opening roses knotted oaks adorn, And liquid amber drop from every thorn." But doubtless the worst feature in our lan guage, as regards its sound, and what detracts most from its euphony in the ears of foreigners, is the perpetual recurrence of the sibilant sound of not only when that one letter occurs -but when the same sound is given in soft c and in sh, ch, &c. so that the English has got the name with the continentals of the hissing language. I hope this does not imply that we are the descendants of the dragon, whose teeth were sown by Cadmus, in old times, and pro duced a' crop of men ! To let your ears jude of this hissing character of our spoken tongue, you have only to repeat over some of the ver ses I have quoted, and notice how ofteri the sibilant susurration recurs. ' Again : among the defects of our language, so far as regards its sound, may be mentioned the want of euphonic links, or artifices to soften the junction of words. Now the French excel us far in this; for they prevent hiatus constant ly, by sounding their mute consonants at the end of words when the :iext word begins with a vowel sound, and sometimes by even insert ing a consonant as y a-t il &c. and again by softening the sound of their 5 into z between vowels; as champs Elysees, etc. Contrivances like these may be compared to the oil in wheels, to prevent friction. Our lantniao-e however, is lot altogether destitute of contrivances for sweet ening sound, by little soft letters interjected be- ween the . main syllables. There is a delicate beauty of this kind of which our poets avail themselves a beauty felt by our ears, but per haps few of us have attended to the art and taste which have directed the poet to the use of one word rather than another. Thus Gray, a poet remarkably studious of euphony: Full many a gem of purest ray serene, Full many a flower -is born to blush unseen; So Milton a still mightier master of music : " O'er many a frozen many a fiery Alp." In each of these lines, the last syllable of many is over and above the complement of the measure ; but that letter; y slides so gracefully nto the next word, and so easily coalesces with it, that the ear is rather pleased than of fended with the supernumerary syllable. I will quote another example of this melodious nicety from Pope's description of a lady's toilet : From each she nicely culls with curious toil, And decks the goddess with the glittering spoil. Notice those beautiful words curious, glit- tcrina, and observe how the voice slides over the middle syllable. Take that away, and the line is as legitimate as ever, but the ear has been cheated of some portion of melody. STYLES. But I must pass over the sound of our lan guage from its euphony and its cacophony, to its other excellencies and defects. The power of adaptation to all subjects, high and low, grave and gay, tragic and comic, is a distinguish- ug excellence of the English tongue. In what lepartment of composition has not our language its great masters, who have wielded this weapon with such might and dexterity that it seems as if no other could have suited them better ? What language could have suited Milton so well, to describe th sublime horrors of hell and the sublime glories of heaven aud the soft charms of Eden, as the one he learned on his mother's lap? And when we read one of Shaks peare's deep tragedies, it seems as if no other language could have answered better to express the strong emotions of love, hatred, revenge, remorse, jealousy, courage, pity, despair ! And on the other hand, when we .read one of his comedies, where Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight, provides such a fund of entertainment for the English nation, asv it is said, all other writers have not equaled why, it seems as if Sir John would not have been himself, in any other speech than his own racy Anglo-Saxon. It is true Shakspeare's humor is often low and vul gar, and consists too often in a quibble upon words. This, however, was not the fault of his mother tongue, but of the bad taste of his age, and some one has said, that his fondness for quibble or pun, was the cleopatra for which he lost the dominion of the world. I will presently mention some'of these puns, amoDg the curio sities of our language. Tho variety of styles of which the English tongue is susceptible in the same department of literature, is remarkable. Take, for instance the department of history. What a vast differ ence between the attic simplicity of Hume, and the asiatic pomp and luxuriance of Gibbon i Robertson tried the middle ground more orna mental than Hu.De, less turgid and grandilo quent than Gibbon. Each of these several styles has its admirers. I for one, think, that the increase f ornament in historical style is in bad taste, and foreign to th severe genius of the his- toric rouse. The obiect in history is to srive us naked truth and to fix attention upon the facts and the matter not upon the writer. If you in- troduce much coloring you disguise and mis represent the matters of fact, and draw off the reader's mind from them to the beauties of the composition, and this is too often the manifest object of the historian : to exhibit himself. Be sides, the employment of poetry and rhetoric immediately begets a suspicion of fiction that the historian is not elevated to that high seat and clear atmosphere of judicial dignity, which would qualify him to decide fairly on the merits of historic facts. That is just the suspicion you feel, upon taking up Walter Scott's life of Napo leon.. When the then unknown author of the " Waverly novels," first announced that he had undertaken- the biography of the greatest warri- or of the world, the public were on the tiptoe of expectation : the foremost in arms portrayed by the foremost in letters ! They could scarce- ly wait for its completion, and as soon as it appeared, seized upon and devoured it with the greatest avidity. But the sober reader immedi- power to elevate the style at will, must be men ately discerns the hand of the poet. The profu- tioned a peculiarity of our English tongue sionof similes and metaphors awaken a feeling in whieh it.has the advantageof almost all others, that you are on fairy and enchanted ground, Blair remarks that the English is perhaps and you withhold your confidence to say no- tne on'v lagage in the known world (except thing of the caution you think necessary against tue Chinese which is said to resemble it in this the national prejudices of aBiiton. These re- particular) where the distinction of gender is marks apply with still more force to a history confined, as it ought to be, to mark the real (shall I call it) or a historical declamation, in distinction of male and female." Since Dr. praise of Napoleon by the Reverend J. C. Ab- Blair wrote, Sir Wm. Jones, that great oriental bott, now beguiling the American public in the scholar, has told us that the Persic language re pages of a fashionable periodical. This military sembles the English in this; that in it, all inani parson, with cocked hat on his head and mate things are neuter." Now, see the advan epauletts on his shoulders and spurs on his heels, tae of this in raising the tone of composition who thinks it his mission to whitewash the char- immediately. Who can read, without a chill acter of a man who destroyed about five millions of his fellow-creatures, may figure for a year or two, with readers whose historical knowledge goes no deeper than the pages of a magazine ; but after having flourished his short day upon the stage, and done his best (under tho banner of the Prince of peace) to make "young Ame- rica" admire and bum to imitate the bloody race of conquerors, we can safely predict a speedy descent of his unclerical production, "to the fa- mily vault of all the capulets." I make these re- marks on Abbott's work merely in passing to caution my young hearers against forming their historical opinions merely from the hired writers for periodicals, who know that their contribu- tions will be more noticed the more they may startle by their audacity and paradox. Risin'tr to a higher srrade of historical nrodnn- tions, the histories of Bancroft, Prescott and Irving, who have done so much honor to their - i country, we may still be allowed to doubt whe ther they have not pushed ornament too far. You see the landscape (in their pages,) not through plain, clear glass, but through a paint ed window the objects are not seen merely in the common transparent light of the atmos phere, but gilded by the beams of the sun. The best illustration of a good style that was ever given was that of Robert Hall, applied to Miss Edgeworth. He said that a good style ought to resemble a transparent medium, through which you see the writer's thoughts clearly, without thinking of the medium itself; and such he said was Miss Edgeworth 's style. If this be a just remark on style in general, it holds with especial accuracy in regard to the style of his tory. But the subject is so expansive, and the time so short that I must contract my excursi- ons and hurry on to other proposed topics. Let me just remark here, however, that having prais ed Hume's style, I must not be considered as praising his history, for the main qualities of a good historian : fairness and fidelity. In that respect the decision of the world has accorded, I believe, with the sentence of Archbishop Ma- gee of Dublin, that, besides his too apparent prejudices against religion, his celebrated history is a labored apology for tyranny and arbitrary power. PERSONIFICATION. It is always a beauty and excellency in any lan- guage when it can elevate itself at pleasure above its ordinary level just as it is a great evidence of man's superiority to the animal tribes, that he has been able to add to his natu ral faculty of walking, the power of mounting on horseback ; thus giving to his motives a force and celerity far beyond the capacities of his own body. Now, poetry may be said to be pro$e on horseback. Hence the ane'rents gave the Muses the winged horse Pegasus, on which to mount their votaries. Well, our language pofe- sesses several characteristics fitting it for the purposes of poetry. One is, a store of poetical words, which are considered the peculium the professional property, of the tuneful nine, arid whose adoption by prce writers would be as bare-faced a use of stolen goods, as if :you wefe to see a young gentleman with tortoise shell combs, and wreaths of flowers in his hair. 4 Such words are mount,fount, for mountain, foun- tain ; stole for robe, lore for learning, fast for close by, theatrick for theatrical, rill for rivulet, pale for make pale ; such, contractions as 'scape for escape, ,gin and 'gan for begin and began o'er, e'er, e'en, oft, and various such like ; arid especially the revival of antique words; as nothless for nevertheless, whilome for formerly, aye for always, mote for might, holp for help, &c. This resuscitation of old words, covered with the rust andmould of antiquity, is a very politic ar tifice of the poets because it falls in with our passion for the antique, which is seen in otir fondness for Gothic edifices, castellated palaces, old ruins, and in our alarming imitations of mother Eve's toilet. This resort to old forms was common in the choruses of the Greek tra- gedies. It was there the Poet wished to dis- play his full poeticl talent, and there he intro- duced the old Doric diakct, with fine effect. Milton, with similar art, uses the antique forms Hhene, and the Danaw, for Rhine and Danube. So we can immediately give a solemn elevati on to our style, by dropping our familiar you and your, aud talking up thou, thee and thine. This is what gives a venerable grandeur to our common Bible, which we should be sorry to see lost in a modern version ; and this air of anti quity and solemnity is an argument for rend-erino-theBiblesoastomake a distinct syllable of the cd in the termination of our verbs. If we say : " His mercy endureth for ever," because it is solemn and antique, whir not : "His mercy endur-ed for ever," for the very same reason ? Walker tells us that in England the reading f l'ie Bible is thus distinguished from the rea- ding of every other book and it is a seemly dis- tinction, that the spoken antique may accord with the written antique. Under this head of a x - of horror, those awful words of the Bible where (iod confronts Cain with the crime of mur dering his brother : " The voice of thy broth er's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the Earth, which nath opened her mouth to receive thy brother': blood from thy hand." How woufd the style here sink immediately, if we substitute its for her let this personification is not perceived i" tne Hebrew original, nor in the other mod- ern versions of it, because in these, the Earth is always feminine, and therefore you cannot en ow 'l when you please, with new dignity and vivacuy oy caning it sne. t?o wtien you say Mn English: "Virtue charms us by her loveli- ness," we feel the beauty of the personification, an(l we picture to our minds a lovely woman, winning a11 hearts b)' lier charms ; but in French, Italian, German, and the rest, the goddess drops her divinity, and is transformed into a thing; and " virtue charms us by its loveliness," jast as a tree mirht ! I will give you another specimen from a poet w ho is, or ought to be, a favorite with you all: the author of the " Pleasures of Hope " a quotation the more appropriate now as brought to mind by the present portentous state of the world. And while I recite it, let mejust remind the juvenile part of my audience, that Sarmatia is the ancient name of modern Poland : ' Oh bloodiest picture in the book of time, Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime ; Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, Strength in Tier arms, nor mercy in her wo ; Dropp'd from her nerveless grasp the shatter'd spear, Closed her bright eye and curbed her high career." What reader of taivte would not feel a sensi ble fall in the thermometer of style if we here substitute its for her? CURIOSITIES OF THE ENGLISH LAN GUAGE. I must now briefly (ouch upon some of the curiosities of our language. And the first that I will mention is our surnames. The word surname is- spelled two ways. Formerly it was often written sirname on the supposition that it denoted the name we derive from our sire. But now it is always spelled surname a more correct etymology informing us that the word is from the French preposition sur over ; be cause men had at first but one name, and after wards the name of their estates was written over tli3 Christian name. For example de La Fay- ette was w ritten over Gilbert Mottkr, the first name, and was therefore the surname of that fa mily. Thus we can trace back one of the old est family names of this town, to the days of Julius Caesar. In Caesar's Commentaries there is mention of a tribe of Gauls named Ebcrovi ces, settled in what is now Normandy, the northern part of France. This name was corrupt ed into the modern Evereux, a town of which name now stands a little south of the Seine and serves to certify and locate its ancient inhabitants From this place doubtless came over with Wil Ham the Conqueror the ancestor ot Robert Deve reux, Earl of Essex, once the greatest favorite of Queen Elizabeth, who wrote his name Ro- bert T Evereux, tpat is : Robert of Evereux. In a similar manner we may gratify our curiosi- ty by tracing back the modern Orleans, to the Roman emperor Aurelian, Essex and Sussex to Est-Sexia, Sud-Sexia ; that is, East-Sax- ons, South-Saxons. A great many of our names are patronymics, formed by adding the word son, to the father's name, or prefixing in Scotch names the word mac, or in Irish names the letter O' which are equivalent to son. Thus a man whose father was named Neill, would in Scotland be called McNeill, in Ireland O'Neal, and in England, Neilson or Nelson. It is sufficient just to men tion the names of Johnson, Wilitanuon, Da vidson, Thomson, and a hundred others, to see how plainly they indicate some John, William, as the patriarch of the family. The name Thompson has acquired the p evidently by the necessary formation of that sound in openiug the lips after closing them in forming the m. Thu9 James town weed is corrupted into Jim-pson-weed. Many of these patronymics are shortened ; thus Davison is abridged into Davis, Dickson into Dix, Wclterson into Watson aud Watts, Johnson into Johns or Jones. But enough and more than enough of this. Among the curiosities of our language may be mentioned that numerous tribe of words endino in -fry as millinery, jewelry, saddlery, con fectionery, fec, without end. All these words owe their origin to the Greek and Latin termina tions erion and arium meaning at first, the place where things are kept,' but afterwards transferred to the articles kept or sold there. Thus herbary, apiary, aviary, the places where herbs, bees, birds are kept one of the most beautiful of these words is cemetery koim (terion meaning a sleeping place. How scrip tural tho idea ! how profitable the train of thought suggested by the term ! Have you friends in our cemetery ? They are only in their bed-chamber they are going to arise in the morninp;. That large and increasing class of words ending in ee are something of a curiosity. They are all formed after the analogy of the French passive participle ; thus oblige is the person to whom another is bound. Add an e to ac commodate it to English ears, and you have obligee ; and by analogy promisee, legatee, as signee, and others innumerable. The derivation of some of our words is deep historic interest. The word rival, contains in it volumes of painful history. The Latin term rivales, from which our term rivals comes down, merely meant River men, dwellers on different sides of a river. Rivers have been, from time immemorial the boundaries of nati ons; and how naturally and even necessarily River-men were rivals, I need not tell you. The banks of the Tweed, of the Rhine, of the Rubi con, have been fattened and their streams crimsoned with' the blood of rivals. Oh msy Heaven long postpone the day when the same story shall be told of the fraternal rivals on the shores of the Ohio and the Potomack. Many of our words are curious frag ments of longer words. For example; mob is a word of only three letters, but what force is in that little monofyllable ! It presents to the imagination a tremendous engine to de stroy men's lives or iroperty. All this is, of right, condensed into those three letters, when you learn that the word comes from mobile valgus the fickle crowd the easily agitated multitude. When you learn this, the little word mob puts you in mind of a little "heap of fulminating powder, which needs only to be in- famed, to burst a house into atoms. So the word Zounds! or By Zounds ! is a kind of soft oath or emphatic affirmation, which many people feel no scruple in using. Per haps they would not take it so fively in their mouths if they knew it was shortened from God's Wounds, meaning the wounds of Christ on the Cross. This was a favorite oath of Queen Elizabeth and made many of her boldest cour tiers tremble. Another curiosity : WTe say " one thing is not a whit better than another." A whit is con tracted from a white,thsit is, the white speck or eye in a colored bean ; so that it came to be used proverbially for the smallest particle. Our Translators have introduced this expression into the Bible. " Are you ancry at me because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sab bath day ?" The original merely has it ualtoge- therwhole. It is remarkable that this expres sion has come down to us from the Latins. The word annihilate is derived from Latin words expressive of this same idea. Hilum is the eye of.a bean ; adni-hilum, to a size not as large as a speck to a mere nothing hence anni- hilate. PAIONOMASEA OR PUN. This is a species of wit generally considered undignified and low; yet such a play upon words has been resorted to even by our greatest authors and therefore may be worthy of men tion among the curiosities of language. We quote examples from the prince of epic and the prince of dramatic poetry. In the "Para dise Lost" when the bad angels had surprised and discomfited the good angels, for the mo ment, by the discharge of their cannon, they amuse themselves by an abundance of puns on the fleets of their artillery. Belial thus addresses Satan : Leader ! the terms we eni were terms of weight Of hard contents and full of force urged home, Such as we might perceive amused them all, And stumbled many ; who receive them right, Had need from head to foot well understand ; Not understood, this gift they hare besides ; They show us when our friends walk not upright. I promised some specimens from Shakes peare, and I told you that this trifling play upon words was said to be the Cleopatra for which he had lost the world. With whatever justice this may be said in bis tragedies, we may fairly claim that his puns often give zest to his comic parts. I will just notice two instances. All readers of the immortal Dramatist will re member the ridiculous night-adventure of Fal staff", from which he came in, all puffing and blowing, cursing all cowards, and declaring that he and his companion had taken great spoil, but that three rogues, dressed in Kendal green had stolen up behind, surprised and robbed them ; for the night was so dark he could not see his hand. M Why, Jack," exclaimed prince lfal UL., J .M . ., j Liu wuiu jou ten uiai me men were dressed iu Kendal rrroan if tho ninht . dark Com - v u'i tt nm otf e, give your reasons, Sir, your reasons ?' Falstaff was cornered ; but with rea dy wit responds: "What! give reasons upon compulsion ? If raisins reasons wei e as plenty us blackberries, 1 would give no nun a reason Upon compulsion. Now, iu Shakes earY time, raisins were pronounced reasons. Of course, to-contrast them with blackberries, made a ca pital pun, which -having fired off, the old brag gadocio escaped under the smoke but the change of prounciation has spoiled the pun and now perhaps few notice that a pun is in tended, j Another pun of Shakespear's has been ruined by change of pronunciation. It occurs in the tragedy of Julius Csesar and of course -is a blem ish rather than a beauty Cassius isj instigating Brutus to join the conspiracy - against Cajsar. lie exclaims : j : "When could theysuy, till now, that talked ofRome, That her wide walls encompassed but wjman ? Now is it A'cwie indeed, and room enough1 When there is in it but one only niau." - Shakespeare and his xon temporaries called the mistress of the world Room antjl this tempt ed to the (xjniroijue, which suited the taste both j of the author and his age. We will just no tice another instance of our author's unlucky propensity this way, and pass on. It occurs in the same play. Anthony is lamenting over the newly slain body of Ca?sar, and compares him to a stag or hart laid low by the Uunters ; and then plays upon the two words hai t and heart, one iu sound but diverse in meaninir. Pa don me Julius. Here wast thou bayej, brave hart ! O world ! thou wast the forest to this hart, And this indeed O world ! the heart of thee. It is no small part of the glorj' of Shakes peare that his transcendant genius las been able to lift him uj) unharmed by such b emishes : as the Sun's splendor conceals from ti e unassisted eye enormous caverns ou his disk, Urge enough to swallow up one or more of such globes as this, our dwelling place. His fame, too, has grown and is growing in an age whose taste strongly revolts against such verbs! quibbles, in" serious composition. Who would believe that even no farther back than Dryden' time. Ben Jonson, the contemporary and rival of Shakes- ' peare, had so nearly superceded him in the ge neral favor, that Dryden, in his Essay on dra- ! matic poetry, hardly ventured to qlaim even an equality for his beloved Shakespeare. Yet now, hardly any body hears of Ben Jonson, but as a learned pedant, while the wide wo -Id is still re echoing Milton's praises of "sweetest Shakes peare, Taney's child." EUPHEMISM. Among the curiosities of our hmguage may v be ranked our Euphemisms. This is a mode of speech by which we soften anything that is bad, painful, or indecorous, by giving it a more favorable name. Some euphemism,! are common ' to all nations ; such as to depart, to decease, to fall asleep, for the more sad word to -die. Others are peculiar to different nations. The nice taste of the French renders Euphemism a favorite figure with them. They ball the hang man whose office it is to suspend crminals on high : " Master of the high works : le maitre des hautes ozuvres. Among us, ?hen a young lady performs the cruel operation of hanging a young man, we try to soften th i act by bor rowing a euphemism from the proceedings of diplomacy. AVe say : " She h is given him his papers." But alas! the poor fellow does not find his sentence any easier to bear under a gentle name than a rough one, I or hanging is a cruel death, whether inflicted by a cord of sjlk or one of hemp. Euphemism is a favorite figi re of speech with young men, when they wish to soften the character of their vices. They tlen are fruitful in the most ingenious euphemisms. Is a youth riotous and dissipated? He is only & little wild, sometimes. Does he drink freely ? He is only diguised,. boozy, half shaved--has too much steam aboard, &c. I believe the fashionable phrase now is : " he is tight." T ii, last epithet is of all others the least appropriat i ; for a drunks en man is so limber that if he fell; from a horse he is like a bag of wool he comes down all in a heap, and seldom gets hurt. A:i excellent use of euphemism is when we speak f the faults of our friends or our enemies. Then gentle terms are safest and keep under instead of gratifying the malevolent affections. When a lady is not handsome we need not say she is i perfect fright when a man is rather economical we need not say he is a perfect skin-flint--when a com panion is not very interesting, we need not say : he is an insufferable bore. ALLITERATION. Another curiosity of language s what is call ed alliteration ; that is the stringing together of words beginning with the same letter or composed of similar sounds. Tjius: "for weal or for wo" " neck or nothing" "rule or ruin" "sink or swim" "no pains no gains" "many men many minds" "idoubly damn ed " "is it fiction or is it fact "4-" fat fair and forty." and a thousand! others. This is not a mere trifle or puerility, but founded in nature atfd therefore some of our best writers (both prose and poetical) have not disdained to em ploy it. It is found that expressions, thus con structed, make a pleasing impression, and are better remembered ; and therefor are the very kind of vehicle in which short aphorisms, and maxims ought to be couched. I The majestic Milton has not deemed this figure unworthy of his muse in some of his loftfiest strains, Satan thus salutes his new home in which tight initial h't are introduced in two lines : -: f If t V I 1 Pi V i $ 1.1 u it ir il -i -fV t s it! .M ;- ' i Is Hi tr! r M !;! . V: If v r - f ft hl- i f t r : s
Southern Weekly Post (Raleigh, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Sept. 30, 1854, edition 1
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