Part 5 (2/2)

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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+pped; 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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,'

<script>