progenitors (audacious individuals!) approximated to their reliable auxiliaries, and were ovated with empressement; indoctrinated by a preliminary contretemps, they inaugurated hostilities in that locality, and demonstrated themselves as unintimidated by minatory vaticinations of catastrophe.1 These three sentences at once carry the mind to Hengist, to William the Conqueror, and to the Victorian penny-a-liner. Of the three, the first is made up of good Teutonic words that are among our choicest heirlooms; some of them have been in our mouths for thousands of years, ever since we dwelt on the Oxus. The second sentence is made up of French words, many of which, so far back as the Thirteenth Century, had the right of citizenship in England; they are not indeed to be ranked with the Teutonic words already given, yet are often most helpful. The third sentence is made up of Latin words, mostly not brought in until after 1740; 2 wholly unneeded in England, they are at once the laughingstock of scholars and the idols of penny-a-liners.3 The first sentence is like a Highland burn; the second is like the Thames at Hampton Court; the third is like London 'Mr. Soule, of Boston, furnished me with many of the words of Number III., grand rolling words far above my poor brain. Number III. differs from Number I. as Horace's meretrix from matrona, scurra from amicus; his lines on the difference are well known. As to Mr. Soule and his synonyms-haud equidem invideo; miror magis. 2 There are two Greek words and two French words among them; I have shown the Victorian penny-a-liner at his very best. 3 Bishop Hall says in his Satires, I. 6 :— 'Fie on the forged mint that did create New coin of words never articulate.' sewage. Or, to borrow another illustration, the first sentence is like Scott's Jeanie Deans; the second is like the average young lady of our day; the third is like Fielding's loathsome Bellaston woman. Something has been said earlier of the merits of stone, brick, and stucco.2 I will end with a parable:-A maiden of Eastern birth came over the sea, and by sheer force installed herself in a Welshman's house. Her roughness was much abated after her baptism: some say the priest who christened her was an Italian, others will have it that he was an Irishman. Her garments were afterwards somewhat rumpled and torn in a struggle with a Danish rover, her own kinsman, who long worried her sorely. A French knight proved a still shrewder foe; he became lord of her house, settled himself in her parlour, and thrust her down into the scullery. There she abode many days, taking little thought for her dress, though she had once given the greatest heed to it. A begging friar now came in, who was listened to by knight and maiden alike; he persuaded the latter to throw away certain articles of her homespun raiment, brought by her from the East, and to replace these (a work of time) by an imitation of part of the knight's fine French apparel. What was worse, she became too proud to spin new garments, as she wanted them, out of her home materials. All this was wrong; her weeds now became parti-coloured, unlike those of her kinsmen on the mainland. Not long after this great change in her attire, 1 A London journal or two, that might well stand for the Cloaca Maxima, will readily occur to my readers. 2 I have spoken of gold and brass; but I know of no combination of metals vile enough to be likened to Number III. she found herself once more mistress in all her rooms, equally at home in parlour and in scullery. She again and again took the law of the Frenchman, thus handsomely requiting him for his burglary; and as to the government of her own household, she laid down rules that have since been copied far and wide. But she herself followed foreign fashions in dress still further as she grew older, especially about the time that she turned Protestant. Soon after changing her creed, she is thought to have looked her very best. We must take her as we find her; it is hopeless to expect her to wear those articles that she long ago flung away at the friar's behest; but all lovers of good taste will be sorry, if she hide the goodly old homespun weeds that still remain to her, under a heap of new-fangled Italian gewgaws. She is sometimes to be met with abroad, dight in comely apparel; plain in her neatness, she seems fondest of the attire she brought with her from over the sea, though she shrinks not from wearing a fair proportion of the French gear which she cannot now do without, thanks to her unwisdom when she lived in the scullery. Arrayed on this wise, she can hold her own, so skilful judges say, against all comers; she need not fear the rivalry of the proudest ladies ever bred in Greece or Italy. But sometimes the silly wench seems to be given over to the Foul Fiend of bad taste; she comes out in whimsical garments that she never knew until the other day; she decks herself in outlandish ware of all the colours of the rainbow, hues that she has not the wit to combine; heartily ashamed of her own home, The word penology, to wit. she takes it into her head to ape foreign fashions, like the vulgarest of the pretenders upon whom Thackeray loved to bring down his whip. In these fits, she resembles nothing so much as some purse-proud upstart's wife, blest with more wealth than brains, who thinks that she can take rank among Duchesses and Countesses by putting on her back the gaudiest refuse of a milliner's shop. Let us hope that these odd fits may soon become things of the past; and that the fair lady, whom each true knight is bound to champion against besetting clowns, may hold up before English scholars, preachers, and pressmen alike that brightest of all her jewels, simplicity. Your termes, your coloures, and your figures, 1 Chaucer, the Clerkes Prologue. |