THE MIGHT AND MIRTH OF LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. FIGURES OF ETYMOLOGY. PART FIRST. FIGURES are of three kinds: Figures of Spelling or Etymology, alterations of the original spelling of words; figures of Syntax, alterations of the original construction of words; figures of Rhetoric, deviations from the original application of words, the moulding of them into those forms which the more energetic moods of the mind require. Figures of Etymology are lowest in importance, but they come first to be considered. We are thus constrained to begin with the least interesting part of our subject. We can not put our best foot foremost. However, these chapters will and must, on this very account, rise in interest as we proceed. Yet even of Etymological figures admirable use can be made: even they can impart an inexpressible charm and delicacy to language. I. Front-cut, or Aphæresis, very common in Allan Ramsay, Burns, Tannahill, and other Scottish bards, is the cutting off one or more letters from the beginning of a word: as 'ghast for aghast, 'mazed for amazed, 'fore for before, 'feeble for enfeeble; as in Douglas Jerrold's description of a scoundrel: "That scoundrel, sir! why, he'd sharpen a knife upon his father's tombstone to kill his mother." So there is 'dures for endures, 'front for confront, 'venge for avenge, 'danger for endanger, 'tend for attend, 'larms for alarms, 'scapes for escapes, 'proaches for approaches, 'Nelope for Penelope, 'sdeigned for disdained, while speculation would thus be an honester word, for then it would be peculation. Bret Harte tells us of what goes on "down in 'Frisco." Blind Harry is a name well remembered in Scotland. He wrote "Sir William Wallace," a poetical biography of the national chieftain of North Britain. We have from him this line: "Wham Thou's thou, Scot? In faith thou 'serves a blow." In the old form of the immortal ballad of "Chevy Chace," written some time between 1422 and 1461, is this line, very statuesque: "The Piercie leaned on his brand, And saw the Douglas dee: He took the dead man by the hand, We carry you back to old John Gower, a contemporary of the great English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, though much Chaucer's inferior, at least so far as the narrative in the Canterbury Tales is concerned. Some of Chaucer's pieces are as heavy as Gower's. Gower died seven years later than Chaucer. We quote from the "Confessio Amantis"-the Lover's Confession-an exceedingly long poem in English, with the scantiest possible supply of poesy in it, but very valuable from the light it throws on the history of the language. This mass of lifeless doggrel has the conscience to inflict eight books on us. Considering that Parliament was opened by a speech in English for the first time in 1362, and that in the beginning of the fourteenth century, 1300, the national language was not as yet more than new-born to the Normans, it is astonishing that this author's pen gives us such good English, which it costs so little trouble to read. The poem was completed about 1392; Gower died in 1408. This, his bulkiest work, was edited in 1857, by Dr. Reinhold Pauli, in three volumes. In 1300, at which time English must have been current among the common people, the Court and the Law Courts used French; the Church, in any written documents it issued, used Latin; Gower himself wrote several of his works in Latin, and several in French. We quote from his Fifth Book: "Thus it befell upon a night Whan there was nought but sterre light, She (Medea, the Witch) was vanisshed right as her list, With open She glode forth as an adder doth." Francis Quarles, whose great vigor was often overgrown by oddities, is the writer of a book called "Quarles's Emblems," once in great repute. In the following significant stanza you can detect the Front-cuts: "So rich is man, that all his debts being paid His wealth's his winding-sheet wherein he's laid; From an epigram by Sir John Harrington, we take the following, a favorable specimen of the writer's ability: "Treason doth never prosper! What's the reason? For, if it prosper, none dare call it treason." In the subjoined, the author of this volume concludes. with 'suage for assuage: "Let Nature lead thee with her sister hand Ah! sights and sounds of youth Eld's load can 'suage, Ann Collins gives us 'dure for endure: "O if we could with patience We might refreshing find, So might we gain by losses, And Sharp would Sweet procure." On a certain occasion a miscreant threw a stone at the head of George III. of England, more famous for his sound moral life than for his brilliant intellect. His head was popularly considered one of the thickest in Europe. Dr. Wolcott (Peter Pindar, his "Pen-name") wrote the following, on the idea that the head would have cracked the stone: "Talk no more of the lucky escape of the head I think very different, with thousands indeed- Might and Mirth of Literature. 59 George P. Morris ranks as one of the best song-writers of America. Take from him a stanza of his far-famed song-a close copy, as to its idea, of Thomas Campbell's "Beechen Tree's Petition :" "Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough! Thy axe shall harm it not." A pleasant touch of bolder apheresis is presented by Michael Drayton, in his lengthy geographical poem, the Polyolbion." Of Robin Hood he speaks, England's famous forest outlaw: "Then, 'taking them to rest, his merry men and he Slept many a summer night under the greenwood tree." We next select lines by Proctor, who has written much and well under the name of Barry Cornwall. These lines. you will find in "Without and Within, a Lyric of London"-a contrast very powerfully drawn: "WITHOUT. "The outcast's fame was her doom to-day— She's gone! Poor life and its fever o'er! So let her in dark oblivion lie, While the world runs merry as before. "WITHIN. "The skies are wild and the blast is cold; The insolent nod of a leader of sin. |