Part 6 (1/2)

as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star, and of happiest augury of all: [Footnote: 'Jovial' in Shakespeare's time (see _Cymbeline_, act 5, sc. 4) had not forgotten its connexion with Jove.] a gloomy severe person is said to be 'saturnine,' born, that is, under the planet Saturn, who makes those that own his influence, having been born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself: another we call 'mercurial,' or light- hearted, as those born under the planet Mercury were accounted to be.

The same faith in the influence of the stars survives in 'disastrous,'

'ill-starred,' 'ascendancy,' 'lord of the ascendant,' and, indeed, in 'influence' itself. What a record of old speculations, old certainly as Aristotle, and not yet exploded in the time of Milton, [Footnote: See _Paradise Lost_, iii. 714-719.] does the word 'quintessence' contain; and 'a.r.s.enic' the same; no other namely than this that metals are of different s.e.xes, some male ([Greek: a.r.s.enika]), and some female. Again, what curious legends belong to the 'sardonic' [Footnote: See an excellent history of this word, in Rost and Palm's _Greek Lexicon_, s.

v. [Greek: sardonios].] or Sardinian, laugh; a laugh caused, as was supposed, by a plant growing in Sardinia, of which they who ate, died laughing; to the 'barnacle' goose, [Footnote: For a full and most interesting study on this very curious legend, see Max Muller's _Lectures on Language_, vol. ii. pp. 533-551; [for the etymology of the word _barnacle_ in this connexion see the _New English Dictionary_ (s.

v.).]] to the 'amethyst' esteemed, as the word implies, a preventive or antidote of drunkenness; and to other words not a few, which are employed by us still.

A question presents itself here, and one not merely speculative; for it has before now become a veritable case of conscience with some whether they ought to use words which originally rested on, and so seem still to affirm, some superst.i.tion or untruth. This question has practically settled itself; the words will keep their ground: but further, they have a right to do this; for no word need be considered so to root itself in its etymology, and to draw its sap and strength from thence, that it cannot detach itself from this, and acquire the rights of an independent existence. And thus our _weekly_ newspapers commit no absurdity in calling themselves 'journals,' or 'diurnals'; and we as little when we name that a 'journey' which occupies not one, but several days. We involve ourselves in no real contradiction, speaking of a 'quarantine' of five, ten, or any number of days more or fewer than _forty_; or of a population 'decimated' by a plague, though exactly a tenth of it has not perished. A stone coffin may be still a 'sarcophagus,' without thereby implying that it has any special property of consuming the flesh of bodies which are laid within it. [Footnote: See Pliny, _H. N._ ii. 96; x.x.xvi. 17.] In like manner the wax of our 'candles' ('candela,' from 'candeo') is not necessarily _white_; our 'rubrics' retain their name, though seldom printed in _red_ ink; neither need our 'miniatures' abandon theirs, though no longer painted with _minium_ or carmine; our 'surplice' is not usually worn over an undergarment of skins; our 'stirrups' are not ropes by whose aid we climb upon our horses; nor are 'haversacks' sacks for the carrying of oats; it is not barley or bere only which we store up in our 'barns,' nor hogs' fat in our 'larders'; a monody need not be sung by a single voice; and our lucubrations are not always by candlelight; a 'costermonger' or 'costardmonger' does not of necessity sell costards or apples; there are 'palaces' which are not built on the Palatine Hill; and 'nausea' [Footnote: [From _nausea_ through the French comes our English _noise_; see Bartsch and Horning, Section 90.]] which is not sea-sickness. I remember once asking a cla.s.s of school-children, whether an announcement which during one very hard winter appeared in the papers, of a '_white_ _black_bird' having been shot, might be possibly correct, or was on the face of it self-contradictory and absurd. The less thoughtful members of the cla.s.s instantly p.r.o.nounced against it; while after a little consideration, two or three made answer that it might very well be, that, while without doubt the bird had originally obtained this name from its blackness, yet 'blackbird'

was now the name of a species, and a name so cleaving to it, as not to be forfeited, even when the blackness had quite disappeared. We do not question the right of the '_New_ Forest' to retain this t.i.tle of New, though it has now stood for eight hundred years; nor of 'Naples' to be _New_ City (Neapolis) still, after an existence three or four times as long.

It must, then, be esteemed a piece of ethical prudery, and an ignorance of the laws which languages obey, when the early Quakers refused to employ the names commonly given to the days of the week, and subst.i.tuted for these, 'first day,' 'second day,' and so on. This they did, as is well known, on the ground that it became not Christian men to give that sanction to idolatry which was involved in the ordinary style--as though every time they spoke of Wednesday they were rendering homage to Woden, of Thursday to Thor, of Friday to Friga, and thus with the rest; [ Footnote: It is curious to find Fuller prophesying, a very few years before, that at some future day such a protest as theirs might actually be raised (_Church History_, b. ii. cent. 6): 'Thus we see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan G.o.ds were the G.o.dfathers of the days, and gave them their names. This some zealot may behold as the object of a necessary reformation, desiring to have the days of the week new dipt, and called after other names. Though, indeed, this supposed scandal will not offend the wise, as beneath their notice; and cannot offend the ignorant, as above their knowledge.'] or at all events recognizing their existence. Now it is quite intelligible that the early Christians, living in the midst of a still rampant heathenism, should have objected, as we know they did, to 'dies _Solis_,' or Sunday, to express the first day of the week, their Lord's-Day. But when the later Friends raised _their_ protest, the case was altogether different. The false G.o.ds whose names were bound up in these words had ceased to be wors.h.i.+pped in England for about a thousand years; the words had wholly disengaged themselves from their etymologies, of which probably not one in a thousand had the slightest suspicion. Moreover, had these precisians in speech been consistent, they could not have stopped where they did. Every new acquaintance with the etymology or primary use of words would have entangled them in some new embarra.s.sment, would have required a new purging of their vocabulary. 'To charm,' 'to bewitch,' 'to fascinate,' 'to enchant,'

would have been no longer lawful words for those who had outlived the belief in magic, and in the power of the evil eye; nor 'lunacy,' nor 'lunatic,' for such as did not count the moon to have anything to do with mental unsoundness; nor 'panic' fear, for those who believed that the great G.o.d Pan was indeed dead; nor 'auguries,' nor 'auspices,' for those to whom divination was nothing; while to speak of 'initiating' a person into the 'mysteries' of an art, would have been utterly heathenish language. Nay, they must have found fault with the language of Holy Scripture itself; for a word of honourable use in the New Testament expressing the function of an interpreter, and reappearing in our 'hermeneutics,' is directly derived from and embodies the name of Hermes, a heathen deity, and one who did not, like Woden, Thor, and Friga, pertain to a long extinct mythology, but to one existing in its strength at the very time when he wrote. And how was it, as might have been fairly asked, that St. Paul did not protest against a Christian woman retaining the name of Phoebe (Rom. xvi. I), a G.o.ddess of the same mythology?

The rise and fall of words, the honour which in tract of time they exchanged for dishonour, and the dishonour for honour--all which in my last lecture I contemplated mainly from an ethical point of view--is in a merely historic aspect scarcely less remarkable. Very curious is it to watch the varying fortune of words--the extent to which it has fared with them, as with persons and families; some having improved their position in the world, and attained to far higher dignity than seemed destined for them at the beginning, while others in a manner quite as notable have lost caste, have descended from their high estate to common and even ign.o.ble uses. t.i.tles of dignity and honour have naturally a peculiar liability to be some lifted up, and some cast down.

Of words which have risen in the world, the French 'marechal' affords us an excellent example. 'Marechal,' as Howell has said, 'at first was the name of a smith-farrier, or one that dressed horses'--which indeed it is still--'but it climbed by degrees to that height that the chiefest commanders of the gendarmery are come to be called marshals.'

But if this has risen, our 'alderman' has fallen. Whatever the civic dignity of an alderman may now be, still it must be owned that the word has lost much since the time that the 'alderman' was only second in rank and position to the king. Sometimes a word will keep or even improve its place in one language, while at the same time it declines from it in another. Thus 'demoiselle' (dominicella) cannot be said to have lost ground in French, however 'donzelle' may; while 'damhele,'

being the same word, designates in Walloon the farm-girl who minds the cows. [Footnote: See Littre, _Etudes et Glanures_, p. 16; compare p. 30.

Elsewhere he says: Les mots ont leurs decheances comme les families.]

'Pope' is the highest ecclesiastical dignitary in the Latin Church; every parish priest is a 'pope' in the Greek. 'Queen' (gunae) has had a double fortune. Spelt as above it has more than kept the dignity with which it started, being the t.i.tle given to the lady of the kingdom; while spelt as 'quean' it is a designation not untinged with contempt. [Footnote: [_Queen_ and _quean_ are not merely different spellings of the same Old English word; for _queen_ represents Anglo- Saxon _cwe:n_, Gothic _qens_, whereas _quean_ is the phonetic equivalent of Anglo-Saxon _cwene_ Gothic _qino_]] 'Squatter' remains for us in England very much where it always was; in Australia it is now the name by which the landed aristocracy are willing to be known. [Footnote: Dilke, _Greater Britain_, vol. ii. p. 40]

After all which has thus been adduced, you will scarcely deny that we have a right to speak of a history in words. Now suppose that the pieces of money which in the intercourse and traffic of daily life are pa.s.sing through our hands continually, had each one something of its own that made it more or less worthy of note; if on one was stamped some striking maxim, on another some important fact, on the third a memorable date; if others were works of finest art, graven with rare and beautiful devices, or bearing the head of some ancient sage or hero king; while others, again, were the sole surviving monuments of mighty nations that once filled the world with their fame; what a careless indifference to our own improvement--to all which men hitherto had felt or wrought--would it argue in us, if we were content that these should come and go, should stay by us or pa.s.s from us, without our vouchsafing to them so much as one serious regard. Such a currency there is, a currency intellectual and spiritual of no meaner worth, and one with which we have to transact so much of the higher business of our lives.

Let us take care that we come not in this matter under the condemnation of any such incurious indifference as that which I have imagined.

LECTURE V.

ON THE RISE OF NEW WORDS.

If I do not much mistake, you will find it not a little interesting to follow great and significant words to the time and place of their birth.

And not these alone. The same interest, though perhaps not in so high a degree, will cleave to the upcoming of words not a few that have never played a part so important in the world's story. A volume might be written such as few would rival in curious interest, which should do no more than indicate the occasion upon which new words, or old words employed in a new sense--being such words as the world subsequently heard much of--first appeared; with quotation, where advisable, of the pa.s.sages in proof. A great English poet, too early lost, 'the young Marcellus of our tongue,' as Dryden so finely calls him, has very grandly described the emotion of

'some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken.'

Not very different will be our feeling, as we watch, at the moment of its rising above the horizon, some word destined, it may be, to play its part in the world's story, to take its place for ever among the luminaries in the moral and intellectual firmament above us.

But a caution is necessary here. We must not regard as certain in every case, or indeed in most cases, that the first rise of a word will have exactly consented in time with its first appearance within the range of our vision. Such ident.i.ty will sometimes exist; and we may watch i the actual birth of some word, and may affirm with confidence that at such a time and on such an occasion it first saw the light--in this book, or from the lips of that man. Of another we can only say, About this time and near about this spot it first came into being, for we first meet it in such an author and under such and such conditions. So mere a fragment of ancient literature has come down to us, that, while the earliest appearance there of a word is still most instructive to note, it cannot in all or in nearly all cases be affirmed to mark the exact moment of its nativity. And even in the modern world we must in most instances be content to fix a period, we may perhaps add a local habitation, within the limits of which the term must have been born, either in legitimate scientific travail, or the child of some flash of genius, or the product of some _generatio aequivoca_, the necessary result of exciting predisposing causes; at the same time seeking by further research ever to narrow more and more the limits within which this must have happened.

To speak first of words religious and ecclesiastical. Very noteworthy, and in some sort epoch-making, must be regarded the first appearance of the following:--'Christian'; [Footnote: Acts xi. 26.] 'Trinity'; [Footnote: Tertullian, _Adv. Prax._ 3.] 'Catholic,' as applied to the Church; [Footnote: Ignatius, _Ad Smyrn_. 8.] 'canonical,' as a distinctive t.i.tle of the received Scriptures; [Footnote: Origen, _Opp_.

vol. iii. p. 36 (ed. De la Rue).] 'New Testament,' as describing the complex of the sacred books of the New Covenant; [Footnote: Tertullian, _Adv. Marc._ iv. I; _Adv. Prax._ xv. 20.] 'Gospels,' as applied to the four inspired records of the life and ministry of our Lord. [Footnote: Justin Martyr, _Apol_. i. 66.] We notice, too, with interest, the first coming up of 'monk' and 'nun,' [Footnote: 'Nun' (nonna) first appears in Jerome (_Ad Eustoch. Ep._ 22); 'monk' (monachus) a little earlier: Rutilius, a Latin versifier of the fifth century, who still clung to the old Paganism, gives the derivation: Ipsi se _monachos_ Graio cognomine dic.u.n.t, Quod _soli_ nullo vivere teste volunt.] marking as they do the beginnings of the monastic system;--of 'transubstantiation,' [Footnote: Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (d. 1134), is the first to use it (_Serm_. 93).] of 'concomitance,' [Footnote: Thomas Aquinas is reported to have been the first to use this word.] expressing as does this word the grounds on which the medieval Church defended communion in one kind only for the laity; of 'limbo' in its theological sense; [Footnote: Thomas Aquinas first employs 'limbus' in this sense.]

witnessing as these do to the _consolidation_ of errors which had long been floating in the Church.

Not of so profound an interest, but still very instructive to note, is the earliest apparition of names historical and geographical, above all of such as have since been often on the lips of men; as the first mention in books of 'Asia'; [Footnote: Aeschylus, _Prometheus Vinctus_, 412.] of 'India'; [Footnote: Id. _Suppl_. 282.] of 'Europe'; [Footnote: Herodotus, iv. 36.] of 'Macedonia'; [Footnote: Id. v. 17.] of 'Greeks'; [Footnote: Aristotle, _Meteor_, i. 14. But his _Graikoi_ are only an insignificant tribe, near Dodona. How it came to pa.s.s that Graeci, or Graii, was the Latin name by which all the h.e.l.lenes were known, must always remain a mystery.] of 'Germans' and 'Germany'; [Footnote: Probably first in the _Commentaries_ of Caesar; see Grimm, _Gesch. d.

Deutschen Sprache_, p. 773.] of 'Alemanni'; [Footnote: Spartian, _Caracalla_, c. 9.] of 'Franks'; [Footnote: Vopiscus, _Aurel_. 7; about A.D. 240.] of 'Prussia' and 'Prussians'; [Footnote: 'Pruzia' and 'Pruzzi' first appear in the _Life of S. Adalbert_, written by his fellow-labourer Gaudentius, between 997-1006.] of 'Normans'; [Footnote: The _Geographer of Ravenna_.] the earliest notice by any Greek author of Rome; [Footnote: Probably in h.e.l.lanicus, a contemporary of Herodotus.]

the first use of 'Italy' as comprehending the entire Hesperian peninsula; [Footnote: In the time of Augustus Caesar; see Niebuhr, _History of Rome_, Engl. Translation, vol. i. p. 12.] of 'Asia Minor' to designate Asia on this side Taurus. [Footnote: Orosius, i. 2: in the fifth century of our era.] 'Madagascar' may hereafter have a history, which will make it interesting to know that this name was first given, so far as we can trace, by Marco Polo to the huge African island. Neither can we regard with indifference the first giving to the newly-discovered continent in the West the name of 'America'; and still less should we Englishmen fail to take note of the date when this island exchanged its earlier name of Britain for 'England'; or again, when it resumed 'Great Britain' as its official designation. So also, to confirm our a.s.sertion by examples from another quarter, it cannot be unprofitable to mark the exact moment at which 'tyrant' and 'tyranny,' forming so distinct an epoch as this did in the political history of Greece, first appeared; [Footnote: In the writings of Archilochus, about 700 B.C. A 'tyrant'

was not for Greeks a bad king, who abused a rightful position to purposes of l.u.s.t or cruelty or other wrong. It was of the essence of a 'tyrant' that he had attained supreme dominion through a violation of the laws and liberties of the state; having done which, whatever the moderation of his after-rule, he would not escape the name. Thus the mild and bounteous Pisistratus was 'tyrant' of Athens, while a Christian II. of Denmark, 'the Nero of the North,' would not in Greek eyes have been one. It was to their honour that they did not allow the course of the word to be arrested or turned aside by occasional or partial exceptions in the manner of the exercise of this ill-gotten dominion; but in the hateful secondary sense which 'tyrant' with them acquired, and which has pa.s.sed over to us, the moral conviction, justified by all experience, spake out, that the ill-gotten would be ill-kept; that the 'tyrant' in the earlier sense of the word, dogged by suspicion, fear, and an evil conscience, must, by an almost inevitable law, become a 'tyrant' in our later sense of the word.] or again, when, and from whom, the fabric of the external universe first received the t.i.tle of 'cosmos,' or beautiful order; [ Footnote: Pythagoras, born B.C.

570, is said to have been the first who made this application of the word. For much of interest on its history see Humboldt, _Kosmos_, 1846, English edit., vol. i. p. 371.] a name not new in itself, but new in this application of it; with much more of the same kind.

Let us go back to one of the words just named, and inquire what may be learned from acquaintance with the time and place of its first appearance. It is one the coming up of which has found special record in the Book of life: 'The disciples,' as St. Luke expressly tells us, 'were called Christians first in Antioch' (Acts xi. 26). That we have here a notice which we would not willingly have missed all will acknowledge, even as nothing can be otherwise than curious which relates to the infancy of the Church. But there is here much more than an interesting notice. Question it a little closer, and how much it will be found to contain, how much which it is waiting to yield up.

What light it throws on the whole story of the apostolic Church to know where and when this name of 'Christians' was first imposed on the faithful; for imposed by adversaries it certainly was, not devised by themselves, however afterwards they may have learned to glory in it as the name of highest dignity and honour. They did not call themselves, but, as is expressly recorded, they 'were called,' Christians first at Antioch; in agreement with which statement, the name occurs nowhere in Scripture, except on the lips of those alien from, or opposed to, the faith (Acts xxvi. 28; I Pet. iv. 16). And as it was a name imposed by adversaries, so among these adversaries it was plainly heathens, and not Jews, who were its authors; for Jews would never have called the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, 'Christians,' or those of Christ, the very point of their opposition to Him being, that He was _not_ the Christ, but a false pretender to the name. [Footnote: Compare Tacitus (_Annal_, xv. 24): Quos _vulgus_ ... Christianos appellabat. It is curious too that, although a Greek word and coined in a Greek city, the termination is Latin. Christianos is formed on the model of Roma.n.u.s, Alba.n.u.s, Pompeia.n.u.s, and the like.]

Starting then from this point, that 'Christians' was a t.i.tle given to the disciples by the heathen, what may we deduce from it further? At Antioch they first obtained this name--at the city, that is, which was the head-quarters of the Church's missions to the heathen, in the same sense as Jerusalem had been the head-quarters of the mission to the seed of Abraham. It was there, and among the faithful there, that a conviction of the world-wide destination of the Gospel arose; there it was first plainly seen as intended for all kindreds of the earth.

Hitherto the faithful in Christ had been called by their adversaries, and indeed often were still called, 'Galileans,' or 'Nazarenes,'--both names which indicated the Jewish cradle wherein the Church had been nursed, and that the world saw in the new Society no more than a Jewish sect. But it was plain that the Church had now, even in the world's eyes, chipped its Jewish sh.e.l.l. The name 'Christians,' or those of Christ, while it told that Christ and the confession of Him was felt even by the heathen to be the sum and centre of this new faith, showed also that they comprehended now, not all which the Church would be, but something of this; saw this much, namely, that it was no mere sect and variety of Judaism, but a Society with a mission and a destiny of its own. Nor will the thoughtful reader fail to observe that the coming up of this name is by closest juxtaposition connected in the sacred narrative, and still more closely in the Greek than in the English, with the arrival at Antioch, and with the preaching there, of that Apostle, who was G.o.d's appointed instrument for bringing the Church to a full sense that the message which it had, was not for some men only, but for all. As so often happens with the rise of new names, the rise of this one marked a new epoch in the Church's life, and that it was entering upon a new stage of its development. [Footnote: Renan (_Les Apotres_ pp. 233-236) has much instruction on this matter. I quote a few words; though even in them the spirit in which the whole book is conceived does not fail to make itself felt: L'heure ou une creation nouvelle recoit son nom est solennelle; car le nom est le signe definitif de l'existence. C'est par le nom qu'un etre individuel ou collectif devient lui-meme, et sort d'un autre. La formation du mot 'chretien' marque ainsi la date precise ou l'Eglise de Jesus se separa du judasme.... Le christianisme est completement detache du sein de sa mere; la vraie pensee de Jesus a triomphe de l'indecision de ses premiers disciples; l'Eglise de Jerusalem est depa.s.see; l'Arameen, la langue de Jesus, est inconnue a une partie de son ecole; le christianisme parle grec; il est lance definitivement dans le grand tourbillon du monde grec et romain; d'ou il ne sortira plus.] It is a small matter, yet not without its own significance, that the invention of this name is laid by St. Luke,--for so, I think, we may confidently say,--to the credit of the Antiochenes. Now the idle, frivolous, and witty inhabitants of the Syrian capital were noted in all antiquity for the invention of nicknames; it was a manufacture for which their city was famous. And thus it was exactly the place where beforehand we might have expected that such a t.i.tle, being a nickname or little better in their mouths who devised it should first come into being.