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

its bearer. A multitude of examples, many of them very beautiful, might be brought together in this kind. How often, for instance, and with what effect, the name of Stephen, the proto-martyr, that name signifying in Greek 'the Crown,' was taken as a prophetic intimation of the martyr-crown, which it should be given to him, the first in that noble army, to wear. [Footnote: Thus in a sublime Latin hymn by Adam of St. Victor:

     Nomen habes Coronati;
     Te tormenta decet pati
     Pro corona gloriae.

Elsewhere the same illustrious hymnologist plays in like manner on the name of St. Vincentius:

     Qui vincentis habet nomen
     Ex re probat dignum omen
     Sui fore nominis;
     Vincens terra, vincens mari
     Quidquid potest irrogari
     Poenae vel formidinis.

In the Bull for the canonization of Sta. Clara, the canonizing Pope does not disdain a similar play upon her name: Clara Claris praeclara meritis, magnae in caelo claritate gloriae, ac in terrâ miraculorum sublimium, clare claret. On these 'prophetic' names in the heathen world see Pott, Wurzel-Wörterbuch, vol. ii. part 2, p. 522.]

Irenaeus means in Greek 'the Peaceable'; and early Church writers love to remark how fitly the illustrious Bishop of Lyons bore this name, setting forward as he so earnestly did the peace of the Church, resolved as he was, so far as in him lay, to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. [Footnote: We cannot adduce St. Columba as another example in the same kind, seeing that this name was not his birthright, but one given to him by his scholars for the dove-like gentleness of his character. So indeed we are told; though it must be owned that some of the traits recorded of him in The Monks of the West are not columbine at all.] The Dominicans were well pleased when their name was resolved into 'Domini canes'—the Lord's watchdogs; who, as such, allowed no heresy to appear without at once giving the alarm, and seeking to chase it away. When Ben Jonson praises Shakespeare's 'well-filed lines'—

     'In each of which he seems to shake a lance
      As brandished in the eyes of ignorance'

—he is manifestly playing with his name. Fuller, too, our own Church historian, who played so often upon the names of others, has a play made upon his own in some commendatory verses prefixed to one of his books:

     'Thy style is clear and white; thy very name
      Speaks pureness, and adds lustre to the frame.'

He plays himself upon it in an epigram which takes the form of a prayer:

     'My soul is stainèd with a dusky colour:
      Let thy Son be the soap; I'll be the fuller.'

John Careless, whose letters are among the most beautiful in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, writing to Philpot, exclaims, 'Oh good master Philpot, which art a principal pot indeed, filled with much precious liquor,—oh pot most happy! of the High Potter ordained to honour.'

Herein, in this faith that men's names were true and would come true, in this, and not in any altogether unreasoning superstition, lay the root of the carefulness of the Romans that in the enlisting of soldiers names of good omen, such as Valerius, Salvius, Secundus, should be the first called. Scipio Africanus, reproaching his soldiers after a mutiny, finds an aggravation of their crime in the fact that one with so ill- omened a name as Atrius Umber should have seduced them, and persuaded them to take him for their leader. So strong is the conviction of men that names are powers. Nay, it must have been sometimes thought that the good name might so react on the evil nature that it should not remain evil altogether, but might be induced, in part at least, to conform itself to the designation which it bore. Here we have an explanation of the title Eumenides, or the Well-minded, given to the Furies; of Euxine, or the kind to strangers, to the inhospitable Black Sea, 'stepmother of ships,' as the Greek poet called it; the explanation too of other similar transformations, of the Greek Egesta transformed by the Romans into 'Segesta,' that it might not suggest 'egestas' or penury; [Footnote: [But the form Segesta is probably older than Egesta, the Romans here, as in other cases, retaining the original initial s, which in Greek is represented generally by the rough, sometimes by the smooth breathing.]] of Epidamnus, which, in like manner seeming too suggestive of 'damnum,' or loss, was changed into 'Dyrrachium'; of Maleventum, which became 'Beneventum'; of Cape Tormentoso, or Stormy Cape, changed into 'Cape of Good Hope'; of the fairies being always respectfully spoken of as 'the good people' in Ireland, even while they are accredited with any amount of mischief; of the dead spoken of alike in Greek and in Latin simply as 'the majority'; of the dying, in Greek liturgies remembered as 'those about to set forward upon a journey'[Footnote: [Greek: oi exodeuontes]]; of the slain in battle designated in German as 'those who remain,' that is, on the field of battle; of [Greek: eulogia], or 'the blessing,' as a name given in modern Greek to the smallpox! We may compare as an example of this same euphemism the famous 'Vixerunt' with which Cicero announced that the conspirators against the Roman State had paid the full penalty of their treason.

Let me observe, before leaving this subject, that not in one passage only, but in passages innumerable, Scripture sets its seal to this significance of names, to the fact that the seeking and the finding of this significance is not a mere play upon the surface of things: it everywhere recognizes the inner band, which ought to connect, and in a world of truth would connect, together the name and the person or thing bearing the name. Scripture sets its seal to this by the weight and solemnity which it everywhere attaches to the imposing of names; this in many instances not being left to hazard, but assumed by God as his own peculiar care. 'Thou shalt call his name Jesus' (Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 31) is of course the most illustrious instance of all; but there is a multitude of other cases in point; names given by God, as that of John to the Baptist; or changed by Him, as Abram's to Abraham (Gen. xvii. 3), Sarai's to Sarah, Hoshea's to Joshua; or new names added by Him to the old, when by some mighty act of faith the man had been lifted out of his old life into a new; as Israel added to Jacob, and Peter to Simon, and Boanerges or Sons of thunder to the two sons of Zebedee (Mark iii. 17). The same feeling is at work elsewhere. A Pope on his election always takes a new name. Or when it is intended to make, for good or for ill, an entire breach with the past, this is one of the means by which it is sought to effect as much (2 Chr. xxxvi. 4; Dan. i. 7). How far this custom reaches, how deep the roots which it casts, is exemplified well in the fact that the West Indian buccaneer makes a like change of name on entering that society of blood. It is in both cases a sort of token that old things have passed away, that all have become new to him.

But we must draw to a close. Enough has been said to attest and to justify the wide-spread faith of men that names are significant, and that things and persons correspond, or ought to correspond, to them. You will not, then, find it a laborious task to persuade your pupils to admit as much. They are prepared to accept, they will be prompt to believe it. And great indeed will be our gains, their gains and ours,— for teacher and taught will for the most part enrich themselves together,—if, having these treasures of wisdom and knowledge lying round about us, so far more precious than mines of Californian gold, we determine that we will make what portion of them we can our own, that we will ask the words which we use to give an account of themselves, to say whence they are, and whither they tend. Then shall we often rub off the dust and rust from what seemed to us but a common token, which as such we had taken and given a thousand times; but which now we shall perceive to be a precious coin, bearing the 'image and superscription' of the great King: then shall we often stand in surprise and in something of shame, while we behold the great spiritual realities which underlie our common speech, the marvellous truths which we have been witnessing for in our words, but, it may be, witnessing against in our lives. And as you will not find, for so I venture to promise, that this study of words will be a dull one when you undertake it yourselves, as little need you fear that it will prove dull and unattractive, when you seek to make your own gains herein the gains also of those who may be hereafter committed to your charge. Only try your pupils, and mark the kindling of the eye, the lighting up of the countenance, the revival of the flagging attention, with which the humblest lecture upon words, and on the words especially which they are daily using, which are familiar to them in their play or at their church, will be welcomed by them. There is a sense of reality about children which makes them rejoice to discover that there is also a reality about words, that they are not merely arbitrary signs, but living powers; that, to reverse the saying of one of England's 'false prophets,' they may be the fool's counters, but are the wise man's money; not, like the sands of the sea, innumerable disconnected atoms, but growing out of roots, clustering in families, connecting and intertwining themselves with all that men have been doing and thinking and feeling from the beginning of the world till now.

And it is of course our English tongue, out of which mainly we should seek to draw some of the hid treasures which it contains, from which we should endeavour to remove the veil which custom and familiarity have thrown over it. We cannot employ ourselves better. There is nothing that will more help than will this to form an English heart in ourselves and in others. We could scarcely have a single lesson on the growth of our English tongue, we could scarcely follow up one of its significant words, without having unawares a lesson in English history as well, without not merely falling on some curious fact illustrative of our national life, but learning also how the great heart which is beating at the centre of that life was gradually shaped and moulded. We should thus grow too in our sense of connexion with the past, of gratitude and reverence to it; we should rate more highly and thus more truly all which it has bequeathed to us, all that it has made ready to our hands. It was not a small matter for the children of Israel, when they came into Canaan, to enter upon wells which they digged not, and vineyards which they had not planted, and houses which they had not built; but how much vaster a boon, how much more glorious a prerogative, for any one generation to enter upon the inheritance of a language which other generations by their truth and toil have made already a receptacle of choicest treasures, a storehouse of so much unconscious wisdom, a fit organ for expressing the subtlest distinctions, the tenderest sentiments, the largest thoughts, and the loftiest imaginations, which the heart of man has at any time conceived. And that those who have preceded us have gone far to accomplish this for us, I shall rejoice if I am able in any degree to make you feel in the lectures which will follow the present.

LECTURE II. ON THE POETRY IN WORDS.

I said in my last lecture, or rather I quoted another who had said, that language is fossil poetry. It is true that for us very often this poetry which is bound up in words has in great part or altogether disappeared. We fail to recognize it, partly from long familiarity with it, partly from insufficient knowledge, partly, it may be, from never having had our attention called to it. None have pointed it out to us; we may not ourselves have possessed the means of detecting it; and thus it has come to pass that we have been in close vicinity to this wealth, which yet has not been ours. Margaret has not been for us 'the Pearl,' nor Esther 'the Star,' nor Susanna 'the Lily,' [Footnote: See Jacob Grimm, Ueber Frauennamen aus Blumen, in his Kleinere Schriften, vol. ii. pp. 366-401; and on