On the Study of Words by Richard Chenevix Trench (great book club books .TXT) 📖

strength or power or beauty as the Greek language. [Footnote: On the Greek language and its merits, as compared with the other Indo-European languages, see Curtius, History of Greece, English translation, vol. i. pp. 18-28.] Paradise Lost is a noble possession for a people to have inherited, but the English tongue is a nobler heritage yet. [Footnote: Gerber (Sprache als Kunst, vol. i. p. 274): Es ist ein bedeutender Fortschritt in der Erkenntniss des Menschen dass man jetzt Sprachen lernt nicht bloss, um sich den Gedankeninhalt, den sie offenbaren, anzueignen, sondern zugleich um sie selbst als herrliche, architektonische Geisteswerke kennen zu lernen, und sich an ihrer Kunstschönheit zu erfreuen.]

And imperfectly as we may apprehend all this, there is an obscure sense, or instinct I might call it, in every one of us, of this truth. We all, whether we have given a distinct account of the matter to ourselves or not, believe that words which we use are not arbitrary and capricious signs, affixed at random to the things which they designate, for which any other might have been substituted as well, but that they stand in a real relation to these. And this sense of the significance of names, that they are, or ought to be,—that in a world of absolute truth they ever would be,—the expression of the innermost character and qualities of the things or persons that bear them, speaks out in various ways, It is reported of Boiardo, author of a poem without which we should probably have never seen the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto, that he was out hunting, when the name Rodomonte presented itself to him as exactly fitting a foremost person of the epic he was composing; and that instantly returning home, he caused all the joy-bells of the village to be rung, to celebrate the happy invention. This story may remind us of another which is told of the greatest French novelist of modern times. A friend of Balzac's, who has written some Recollections of him, tells us that he would sometimes wander for days through the streets of Paris, studying the names over the shops, as being sure that there was a name more appropriate than any other to some character which he had conceived, and hoping to light on it there.

You must all have remarked the amusement and interest which children find in any notable agreement between a name and the person who owns that name, as, for instance, if Mr. Long is tall—or, which naturally takes a still stronger hold upon them, in any manifest contradiction between the name and the name-bearer; if Mr. Strongitharm is a weakling, or Mr. Black an albino: the former striking from a sense of fitness, the latter from one of incongruity. Nor is this a mere childish entertainment. It continues with us through life; and that its roots lie deep is attested by the earnest use which is often made, and that at the most earnest moments of men's lives, of such agreements or disagreements as these. Such use is not un-frequent in Scripture, though it is seldom possible to reproduce it in English, as for instance in the comment of Abigail on her husband Nabal's name: 'As his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him' (i Sam. xxv. 25). And again, 'Call me not Naomi,' exclaims the desolate widow— 'call me not Naomi [or pleasantness]; call me Marah [or bitterness], for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.' She cannot endure that the name she bears should so strangely contradict the thing she is. Shakespeare, in like manner, reveals his own profound knowledge of the human heart, when he makes old John of Gaunt, worn with long sickness, and now ready to depart, play with his name, and dwell upon the consent between it and his condition; so that when his royal nephew asks him, 'How is it with aged Gaunt?' he answers,

'Oh, how that name befits my composition, Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old— Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as the grave—' [Footnote: Ajax, or [Greek: Aias], in the play of Sophocles, which bears his name, does the same with the [Greek: aiai] which lies in that name (422, 423); just as in the Bacchae of Euripides, not Pentheus himself, but others for him, indicate the prophecy of a mighty [Greek: penthos] or grief, which is shut up in his name (367). A tragic writer, less known than Euripides, does the same: [Greek: Pentheus, esomenes sumphoras eponymos]. Eteocles in the Phoenissae of Euripides makes a play of the same kind on the name of Polynices.] with much more in the same fashion; while it is into the mouth of the slight and frivolous king that Shakespeare puts the exclamation of wonder,

'Can sick men play so nicely with their names?' [Footnote: 'Hus' is Bohemian for 'goose' [the two words being in fact cognate forms]; and here we have the explanation of the prophetic utterance of Hus, namely, that in place of one goose, tame and weak of wing, God would send falcons and eagles before long.]

Mark too how, if one is engaged in a controversy or quarrel, and his name imports something good, his adversary will lay hold of the name, will seek to bring out a real contradiction between the name and the bearer of the name, so that he shall appear as one presenting himself under false colours, affecting a merit which he does not really possess. Examples of this abound. There was one Vigilantius in the early Church;—his name might be interpreted 'The Watchful.' He was at issue with St. Jerome about certain vigils; these he thought perilous to Christian morality, while Jerome was a very eager promoter of them; who instantly gave a turn to his name, and proclaimed that he, the enemy of these watches, the partisan of slumber and sloth, should have been not Vigilantius or The Watcher, but 'Dormitantius' or The Sleeper rather. Felix, Bishop of Urgel, a chief champion in the eighth century of the Adoptianist heresy, is constantly 'Infelix' in the writings of his adversary Alcuin. The Spanish peasantry during the Peninsular War would not hear of Bonaparte, but changed the name to 'Malaparte,' as designating far better the perfidious kidnapper of their king and enemy of their independence. It will be seen then that Aeschylus is most true to nature, when in his Prometheus Bound he makes Strength tauntingly to remind Prometheus, or The Prudent, how ill his name and the lot which he has made for himself agreed, bound as he is with adamantine chains to his rock, and bound, as it might seem, for ever. When Napoleon said of Count Lobau, whose proper name was Mouton, 'Mon mouton c'est un lion,' it was the same instinct at work, though working from an opposite point. It made itself felt no less in the bitter irony which gave to the second of the Ptolemies, the brother-murdering king, the title of Philadelphus.

But more frequent still is this hostile use of names, this attempt to place them and their owners in the most intimate connexion, to make, so to speak, the man answerable for his name, where the name does not thus need to be reversed; but may be made as it now is, or with very slightest change, to contain a confession of the ignorance, worthlessness, or futility of the bearer. If it implies, or can be made to imply, anything bad, it is instantly laid hold of as expressing the very truth about him. You know the story of Helen of Greece, whom in two of his 'mighty lines' Marlowe's Faust so magnificently apostrophizes:

     'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships,
      And burned the topless towers of Ilium?'

It is no frigid conceit of the Greek poet, when one passionately denouncing the ruin which she wrought, finds that ruin couched and fore-announced in her name; [Footnote: [Greek: Helenas [=helenaos], helandros, heleptolis], Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 636.] as in English it might be, and has been, reproduced—

'Hell in her name, and heaven in her looks.'

Or take other illustrations. Pope Hildebrand in one of our Homilies is styled 'Brand of Hell,' as setting the world in a blaze; as 'Höllenbrand' he appears constantly in German. Tott and Teuffel were two officers of high rank in the army which Gustavus Adolphus brought with him into Germany. You may imagine how soon those of the other side declared that he had brought 'death' and 'hell' in his train. There were two not inconsiderable persons in the time of our Civil Wars, Vane (not the 'young Vane' of Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets), and Sterry; and one of these, Sterry, was chaplain to the other. Baxter, having occasion to mention them in his profoundly instructive Narrative of his Life and Times, and liking neither, cannot forbear to observe, that 'vanity and sterility were never more fitly joined together;' and speaks elsewhere of 'the vanity of Vane, and the sterility of Sterry.' This last, let me observe, is an eminently unjust charge, as Baxter himself in a later volume [Footnote: Catholic Theology, pt, 3, p. 107.] has very handsomely acknowledged. [Footnote: A few more examples, in a note, of this contumely of names. Antiochus Epiphanes, or 'the Illustrious,' is for the Jews, whom he so madly attempted to hellenize, Antiochus Epimanes, or 'the Insane.' Cicero, denouncing Verres, the infamous praetor of Sicily, is too skilful a master of the passions to allow the name of the arch-criminal to escape unused. He was indeed Verres, for he swept the province; he was a sweep-net for it (everriculum in provincia); and then presently, giving altogether another turn to his name, Others, he says, might be partial to 'jus verrinum' (which might mean either Verrine law or boar- sauce), but not he. Tiberius Claudius Nero, charged with being a drunkard, becomes in the popular language 'Biberius Caldius Mero.' The controversies of the Church with heretics yield only too abundant a supply, and that upon both sides, of examples of this kind. The 'royal- hearted' Athanasius is 'Satanasius' for the Arians; and some of St. Cyprian's adversaries did not shrink from so foul a perversion of his name as to call him Koprianos, or 'the Dungy.' But then how often is Pelagius declared by the Church Fathers to be a pelagus, a very ocean of wickedness. It was in vain that the Manichaeans changed their master's name from Manes to Manichaeus, that so it might not so nearly resemble the word signifying madness in the Greek (devitantes nomen insaniae, Augustine, De Haer. 46); it did not thereby escape. The Waldenses, or Wallenses, were declared by Roman controversialists to be justly so called, as dwelling 'in valle densa,' in the thick valley of darkness and ignorance. Cardinal Clesel was active in setting forward the Roman Catholic reaction in Bohemia with which the dismal tragedy of the Thirty Years' War began. It was a far-fetched and not very happy piece of revenge, when they of the other side took pleasure in spelling his name 'CLesel,' as much as to say, He of the 150 ass-power. Berengar of Tours calls a Pope who had taken sides against him not pontifex, but 'pompifex.' Metrophanes, Patriarch of Constantinople, being counted to have betrayed the interests of the Greek Church, his spiritual mother, at the Council of Florence, saw his name changed by popular hate into 'Metrophonos,' or the 'Matricide.' In the same way of more than one Pope Urbanus it was declared that he would have been better named 'Turbanus' (quasi turbans Ecclesiam). Mahomet appears as 'Bafomet,' influenced perhaps by 'bafa,' a lie, in Provençal. Shechem, a chief city of the heretical Samaritans, becomes 'Sychar,' or city of lies (see John iv. 5), so at least some will have it, on the lips of the hostile Jews; while Toulouse, a very seedplot of heresies, Albigensian and other, in the Middle Ages, is declared by writers of those times to have prophesied no less by its name (Tolosa = tota dolosa). In the same way adversaries of Wiclif traced in his name an abridgement of 'wicked- belief.' Metternich was 'Mitternacht,' or Midnight, for the political reformers of Germany in the last generation. It would be curious to know how often the Sorbonne has been likened to a 'Serbonian' bog; some 'privilegium' declared to be not such indeed, but a 'pravilegium' rather. Baxter complains that the Independents called presbyters 'priestbiters,' Presbyterian ministers not 'divines' but 'dry vines,' and their Assembly men 'Dissembly men.']

Where, on the other hand, it is desired to do a man honour, how gladly, in like manner, is his name seized on, if it in any way bears an honourable significance, or is capable of an honourable interpretation —men finding in that name a presage and prophecy of that which was actually in