On the Study of Words Part 10

[In the form _poids_ we have a striking example of a wretchedly bad spelling which is due to an attempt to make the spelling etymological.

Unfortunately the etymology is erroneous: the French word for weight has nothing in the world to do with Latin _pondus_; it is the phonetic representative of the Latin _pensum_, and should be spelt _pois_.]]

From the results of various approximations to phonetic spelling, which at different times have been made, and the losses thereon ensuing, we may guess what the loss would be were the system fully carried out. Of those fairly acquainted with Latin, it would be curious to know how many have seen 'silva' in 'savage,' since it has been so written, and not 'salvage,' as of old? or have been reminded of the hindrances to a civilized and human society which the indomitable forest, more perhaps than any other obstacle, presents. When 'fancy' was spelt 'phant'sy,'

as by Sylvester in his translation of Du Bartas, and other scholarly writers of the seventeenth century, no one could doubt of its ident.i.ty with 'phantasy,' as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with phantasia. Spell 'a.n.a.lyse' as I have sometimes seen it, and as phonetically it ought to be, 'annalize,' and the tap-root of the word is cut. How many readers will recognize in it then the image of dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a more or less conscious reference to this? It may be urged that few do so even now. The more need they should not be fewer; for these few do in fact retain the word in its place, from which else it might gradually drift; they preserve its vitality, and the propriety of its use, not merely for themselves, but also for the others that have not this knowledge. In phonetic spelling is, in fact, the proposal that the learned and the educated should of free choice place themselves under the disadvantages of the ignorant and uneducated, instead of seeking to elevate these last to their own more favoured condition.

On this subject one observation more. The mult.i.tude of difficulties of every sort and size which would beset the period of transition, and that no brief period, from our present spelling to the very easiest form of phonetic, seem to me to be almost wholly overlooked by those who are the most eager to press forward this scheme: while yet it is very noticeable that so soon as ever the 'Spelling Reform' approaches, however remotely, a practical shape, the Reformers, who up to this time were at issue with all the rest of the world, are at once at issue among themselves. At once the question comes to the front, Shall the labour-pangs of this immense new-birth or transformation of English be encountered all at once? or shall they be spread over years, and little by little the necessary changes introduced? It would not be easy to bring together two scholars who have bestowed more thought and the results of more laborious study on the whole subject of phonetic spelling than Mr. Ellis and Dr. Murray have done, while yet at the last annual meeting of the Philological Society (May 20, 1881) these two distinguished scholars, with mutual respect undiminished, had no choice but to acknowledge that, while they were seeking the same objects, the means by which they sought to attain them were altogether different, and that, in the judgment of each, all which the other was doing in setting forward results equally dear to both was only tending to put hindrances in the way, and to make the attainment of those results remoter than ever. [Footnote: [For arguments in defence of phonetic spelling the student is referred to Sweet's _Handbook of Phonetics_ (Appendix); Skeat's _Principles of English Etymology_, p. 294; Max Muller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_, ii. 108.]]

But to return. Even now the relations.h.i.+ps of words, so important for our right understanding of them, are continually overlooked; a very little matter serving to conceal from us the family to which they pertain. Thus how many of our nouns are indeed unsuspected participles, or are otherwise most closely connected with verbs, with which we probably never think of putting them in relation. And yet with how lively an interest shall we discover those to be of closest kin, which we had never considered but as entire strangers to one another; what increased mastery over our mother tongue shall we through such discoveries obtain. Thus 'wrong' is the perfect participle of 'to wring' that which has been 'wrung' or wrested from the right; as in French 'tort,' from 'torqueo,' is the twisted. The 'brunt' of the battle is its heat, where it 'burns' the most fiercely; [Footnote: The word _brunt_ is a somewhat difficult form to explain. It is probably of Scandinavian origin; compare Danish _brynde_, heat. For the dental suffix -_t_, see Douse, _Gothic_, p. 101. The suffix is not participial.] the 'haft' of a knife, that whereby you 'have' or hold it.

This exercise of putting words in their true relation and connexion with one another might be carried much further. Of whole groups of words, which may seem to acknowledge no kins.h.i.+p with one another, it will not be difficult to show that they had the same parentage, or, if not this, a cousins.h.i.+p in common. For instance, here are 'sh.o.r.e,'

'share,' 'shears'; 'shred,' 'sherd'; all most closely connected with the verb 'to sheer.' 'Share' is a portion of anything divided off; 'shears' are instruments effecting this process of separation; the 'sh.o.r.e' is the place where the continuity of the land is interrupted by the sea; a 'shred' is that which is shorn from the main piece; a 'sherd,' as a pot-'sherd,' (also 'pot-share,' Spenser,) that which is broken off and thus divided from the vessel; these not all exhausting this group or family of words, though it would occupy more time than we can spare to put some other words in their relation with it.

But this a.n.a.lysing of groups of words for the detecting of the bond of relations.h.i.+p between them, and their common root, may require more etymological knowledge than you possess, and more helps from books than you can always command. There is another process, and one which may prove no less useful to yourselves and to others, which will lie more certainly within your reach. You will meet in books, sometimes in the same book, and perhaps in the same page of this book, a word used in senses so far apart from one another that at first it will seem to you absurd to suppose any bond of connexion between them. Now when you thus fall in with a word employed in these two or more senses so far removed from one another, accustom yourselves to seek out the bond which there certainly is between these several uses. This tracing of that which is common to and connects all its meanings can only be done by getting to its centre and heart, to the seminal meaning, from which, as from a fruitful seed, all the others unfold themselves; to the first link in the chain, from which every later one, in a direct line or a lateral, depends. We may proceed in this investigation, certain that we shall find such, or at least that such there is to be found. For nothing can be more certain than this (and the non-recognition of it is a serious blemish in Johnson's _Dictionary_), that a word has originally but one meaning, that all other uses, however widely they may diverge from one another and recede from this one, may yet be affiliated to it, brought back to the one central meaning, which grasps and knits them all together; just as the several races of men, black, white, and yellow and red, despite of all their present diversity and dispersion, have a central point of unity in that one pair from which they all have descended.

Let me ill.u.s.trate this by two or three familiar examples. How various are the senses in which 'post' is used; as 'post'-office; 'post'-haste; a 'post' standing in the ground; a military 'post'; an official 'post'; 'to post' a ledger. Is it possible to find anything which is common to all these uses of 'post'? When once we are on the right track, nothing is easier. 'Post' is the Latin 'positus,' that which is _placed_; the piece of timber is 'placed' in the ground, and so a 'post'; a military station is a 'post,' for a man is 'placed' in it, and must not quit it without orders; to travel 'post,' is to have certain relays of horses "placed' at intervals, that so no delay on the road may occur; the 'post '-office avails itself of this mode of communication; to 'post' a ledger is to 'place' or register its several items.

Once more, in what an almost infinite number of senses 'stock' is employed; we have live 'stock,' 'stock' in trade or on the farm, the village 'stocks,' the 'stock' of a gun, the 'stock'-dove, the 'stocks,'

on which s.h.i.+ps are built, the 'stock' which goes round the neck, the family 'stock,' the 'stocks,' or public funds, in which money is invested, with other 'stocks' besides these. What point in common can we find between them all? This, that being all derived from one verb, they cohere in the idea of _fixedness_ which is common to them all.

Thus, the 'stock' of a gun is that in which the barrel is fixed; the village 'stocks' are those in which the feet are fastened; the 'stock'

in trade is the fixed capital; and so too, the 'stock' on the farm, although the fixed capital has there taken the shape of horses and cattle; in the 'stocks' or public funds, money sticks fast, inasmuch as those who place it there cannot withdraw or demand the capital, but receive only the interest; the 'stock' of a tree is fast set in the ground; and from this use of the word it is transferred to a family; the 'stock' is that from which it grows, and out of which it unfolds itself. And here we may bring in the 'stock'-dove, as being the 'stock'

or stirps of the domestic kinds. I might group with these, 'stake' in both its spellings; a 'stake' is stuck in the hedge and there remains; the 'stakes' which men wager against the issue of a race are paid down, and thus fixed or deposited to answer the event; a beef-'steak' is a portion so small that it can be stuck on the point of a fork; and so forward. [Footnote: See the _Instructions for Parish Priests_, p. 69, published by the _Early English Texts Society_.] When we thus affirm that the divergent meanings of a word can all be brought back to some one point from which, immediately or mediately, they every one proceed, that none has primarily more than one meaning, it must be remembered that there may very well be two words, or, as it will sometimes happen, more, spelt as well as p.r.o.nounced alike, which yet are wholly different in their derivation and primary usage; and that, of course, between such h.o.m.onyms or h.o.m.ographs as these no bond of union on the score of this ident.i.ty is to be sought. Neither does this fact in the least invalidate our a.s.sertion. We have in them, as Cobbett expresses it well, the same combination of letters, but not the same word. Thus we have 'page,' the side of a leaf, from 'pagina,' and 'page,' a small boy; 'league,' a treaty (F. ligue), from 'ligare,' to bind, and 'league' (O.

F. legue), from leuca, a Celtic measure of distance; 'host' (hostis), an army, 'host' (O. F. hoste), from the Latin hospitem, and 'host'

(hostia), in the Roman Catholic sacrifice of the ma.s.s. We have two 'ounces' (uncia and Pers. yuz); two 'seals' (sigillum and seolh); two 'moods' (modus and mod); two 'sacks' (saccus and sec); two 'sounds'

(sonus and sund); two 'lakes' (lacus and lacca); two 'kennels' (ca.n.a.lis and canile); two 'partisans' (partisan and partegiana); two 'quires'

(choeur and cahier); two 'corns' (corn and cornu); two 'ears' (ohr and ahre); two 'doles' (deuil and theil); two 'perches' (pertica and perca); two 'races' (raes and the French race); two 'rocks,' two 'rooks,' two 'sprays,' two 'saws,' two 'strains,' two 'trunks,' two 'burrows,' two 'helms,' two 'quarries'; three 'moles,' three 'rapes'

(as the 'rape' of Proserpine, the 'rape' of Bramber, 'rape'-seed); four 'ports,' three 'vans,' three 'smacks.' Other h.o.m.onyms in the language are the following: 'ash,' 'barb,' 'bark,' 'barnacle,' 'bat,' 'beam,'

'beetle,' 'bill,' 'bottle,' 'bound,' 'breeze,' 'bugle,' 'bull,' 'cape,'

'caper,' 'chap,' 'cleave,' 'club,' 'cob,' 'crab,' 'cricket,' 'crop,'

'crowd,' 'culver,' 'dam,' 'elder,' 'flag,' 'fog,' 'fold,' 'font,'

'fount,' 'gin,' 'gore,' 'grain,' 'grin,' 'gulf,' 'gum,' 'gust,' 'herd,'

'hind,' 'hip,' 'jade,' 'jar,' 'jet,' 'junk,' 'lawn,' 'lime,' 'link,'

'mace,' 'main,' 'ma.s.s,' 'mast,' 'match,' 'meal,' 'mint,' 'moor,'

'paddock,' 'painter,' 'pernicious,' 'plot,' 'pulse,' 'punch,' 'rush,'

'scale,' 'scrip,' 's.h.i.+ngle,' 'shock,' 'shrub,' 'smack,' 'soil,' 'stud,'

'swallow,' 'tap,' 'tent,' 'toil,' 'trinket,' 'turtle.' You will find it profitable to follow these up at home, to trace out the two or more words which have clothed themselves in exactly the same outward garb, and on what etymologies they severally repose; so too, as often as you suspect the existence of h.o.m.onyms, to make proof of the matter for yourselves, gradually forming as complete a list of these as you can. [Footnote: For a nearly complete list of h.o.m.onyms in English see List of h.o.m.onyms at the end of Skeat's _Etym. Dict._; k.o.c.k's _Historical Grammar of the English Language_, vol. i. p. 223; Matzner's _Engl. Grammatik_, vol. i. pp. 187-204; and compare Dwight's _Modern Philology_, vol. ii. p. 311.] You may usefully do the same in any other language which you study, for they exist in all. In them the ident.i.ty is merely on the surface and in sound, and it would, of course, be lost labour to seek for a point of contact between meanings which have no closer connexion with one another in reality than they have in appearance.

Let me suggest some further exercises in this region of words. There are some which at once provoke and promise to reward inquiry, by the evident readiness with which they will yield up the secret, if duly interrogated by us. Many, as we have seen, have defied, and will probably defy to the end, all efforts to dissipate the mystery which hangs over them; and these we must be content to leave; but many announce that their explanations cannot be very far to seek. Let me instance 'candidate.' Does it not argue an incurious spirit to be content that this word should be given and received by us a hundred times, as at a contested election it is, and we never ask ourselves, What does it mean? why is one offering himself to the choice of his fellows called a 'candidate'? If the word lay evidently beyond our horizon, we might acquiesce in our ignorance; but resting, as manifestly it does, upon the Latin 'candidus,' it challenges inquiry, and a very little of this would at once put us in possession of the Roman custom for which it witnesses--namely, that such as intended to claim the suffrages of the people for any of the chief offices of the State, presented themselves beforehand to them in a _white_ toga, being therefore called 'candidati.' And as it so often happens that in seeking information upon one subject we obtain it upon another, so will it probably be here; for in fully learning what this custom was, you will hardly fail to learn how we obtained 'ambition,' what originally it meant, and how Milton should have written--

'To reign is worth ambition, though in h.e.l.l.

Or again, any one who knows so much as that 'verb.u.m' means a word, might well be struck by the fact (and if he followed it up would be led far into the relation of the parts of speech to one another), that in grammar it is not employed to signify any word whatsoever, but restricted to the verb alone; 'verb.u.m' is the verb. Surely here is matter for reflection. What gives to the verb the right to monopolize the dignity of being 'the word'? Is it because the verb is the animating power, the vital principle of every sentence, and that without which understood or uttered, no sentence can exist? or can you offer any other reason? I leave this to your own consideration.

We call certain books 'cla.s.sics.' We have indeed a double use of the word, for we speak of the Greek and Latin as the 'cla.s.sical' languages, and the great writers in these as '_the_ cla.s.sics'; while at other times you hear of a 'cla.s.sical' English style, or of English 'cla.s.sics.' Now 'cla.s.sic' is connected plainly with 'cla.s.sis.' What then does it mean in itself, and how has it arrived at this double use?

'The term is drawn from the political economy of Rome. Such a man was rated as to his income in the third cla.s.s, such another in the fourth, and so on; but he who was in the highest was emphatically said to be of _the_ cla.s.s, "cla.s.sicus"--a cla.s.s man, without adding the number, as in that case superfluous; while all others were infra cla.s.sem. Hence, by an obvious a.n.a.logy, the best authors were rated as "cla.s.sici," or men of the highest cla.s.s; just as in English we say "men of rank"

absolutely, for men who are in the highest ranks of the state.' The mental process by which this t.i.tle, which would apply rightly to the best authors in _all_ languages, came to be restricted to those only in two, and these two to be claimed, to the seeming exclusion of all others, as _the_ cla.s.sical languages, is one constantly recurring, making itself felt in all regions of human thought; to which therefore I would in pa.s.sing call your attention, though I cannot now do more.

There is one circ.u.mstance which you must by no means suffer to escape your own notice, nor that of your pupils--namely, that words out of number, which are now employed only in a figurative sense, did yet originally rest on some fact of the outward world, vividly presenting itself to the imagination; which fact the word has incorporated and knit up with itself for ever. If I may judge from my own experience, few intelligent boys would not feel that they had gained something, when made to understand that 'to insult' means properly to leap as on the prostrate body of a foe; 'to affront,' to strike him on the face; that 'to succour' means by running to place oneself under one that is falling; 'to relent,' (connected with 'lentus,') to slacken the swiftness of one's pursuit; [Footnote: 'But nothing might _relent_ his hasty flight,' Spenser _F. Q._ iii. 4.] 'to reprehend,' to lay hold of one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back; 'to exonerate,' to discharge of a burden, s.h.i.+ps being exonerated once; that 'to be examined' means to be weighed. They would be pleased to learn that a man is called 'supercilious,' because haughtiness with contempt of others expresses itself by the raising of the eyebrows or 'supercilium'; that 'subtle' (subtilis for subtexilis) is literally 'fine-spun'; that 'astonished' (attonitus) is properly thunderstruck; that 'sincere' is without wax, (sine cera,) as the best and finest honey should be; that a 'companion,' probably at least, is one with whom we share our bread, a messmate; that a 'sarcasm' is properly such a lash inflicted by the 'scourge of the tongue' as brings away the _flesh_ after it; with much more in the same kind.

'Trivial' is a word borrowed from the life. Mark three or four persons standing idly at the point where one street bisects at right angles another, and discussing there the idle nothings of the day; there you have the living explanation of 'trivial,' 'trivialities,' such as no explanation not rooting itself in the etymology would ever give you, or enable you to give to others. You have there the 'tres viae,' the 'trivium'; and 'trivialities' properly mean such talk as is holden by those idle loiterers that gather at this meeting of three roads. [Footnote: But 'trivial' may be from 'trivium' in another sense; that is, from the 'trivium,' or three preparatory disciplines,--grammar, arithmetic, and geometry,--as distinguished from the four more advanced, or 'quadrivium'; these and those together being esteemed in the Middle Ages to const.i.tute a complete liberal education. Preparatory schools were often called '_trivial_ schools,' as occupying themselves with the 'trivium.'] 'Rivals' properly are those who dwell on the banks of the same river. But as all experience shows, there is no such fruitful source of contention as a water-right, and these would be often at strife with one another in regard of the periods during which they severally had a right to the use of the stream, turning it off into their own fields before the time, or leaving open the sluices beyond the time, or in other ways interfering, or being counted to interfere, with the rights of their neighbours. And in this way 'rivals' came to be applied to any who were on any grounds in unfriendly compet.i.tion with one another.

By such teaching as this you may often improve, and that without turning play-time into lesson-time, the hours of relaxation and amus.e.m.e.nt. But 'relaxation,' on which we have just lighted as by chance, must not escape us. How can the bow be 'relaxed' or slackened (for this is the image), which has not been bent, whose string has never been drawn tight? Having drawn tight the bow of our mind by earnest toil, we may then claim to have it from time to time 'relaxed.' Having been attentive and a.s.siduous then, but not otherwise, we may claim 'relaxation' and amus.e.m.e.nt. But 'attentive' and 'a.s.siduous' are themselves words which will repay us to understand exactly what they mean. He is 'a.s.siduous' who sits close to his work; he is 'attentive,'

who, being taught, stretches out his neck that so he may not lose a word. 'Diligence' too has its lesson. Derived from 'diligo,' to love, it reminds us that the secret of true industry in our work is love of that work. And as truth is wrapped up in 'diligence,' what a lie, on the other hand, lurks in 'indolence,' or, to speak more accurately, in our present employment of it! This, from 'in' and 'doleo,' not to grieve, is properly a state in which we have no grief or pain; and employed as we now employ it, suggests to us that indulgence in sloth const.i.tutes for us the truest negation of pain. Now no one would wish to deny that 'pain' and 'pains' are often nearly allied; but yet these pains hand us over to true pleasures; while indolence is so far from yielding that good which it is so forward to promise, that Cowper spoke only truth, when, perhaps meaning to witness against the falsehood I have just denounced, he spoke of

'Lives spent in _indolence_, and therefore _sad_,'

not 'therefore _glad_,' as the word 'indolence' would fain have us to believe.

There is another way in which these studies I have been urging may be turned to account. Doubtless you will seek to cherish in your scholars, to keep lively in yourselves, that spirit and temper which find a special interest in all relating to the land of our birth, that land which the providence of G.o.d has a.s.signed as the sphere of our life's task and of theirs. Our schools are called 'national,' [Footnote: This was written in England, and in the year 1851.] and if we would have them such in reality, we must neglect nothing that will foster a national spirit in them. I know not whether this is sufficiently considered among us; yet certainly we cannot have Church-schools worthy the name, least of all in England, unless they are truly national as well. It is the anti-national character of the Roman Catholic system which perhaps more than all else offends Englishmen; and if their sense of this should ever grow weak, their protest against that system would soon lose much of its energy and strength. But here, as everywhere else, knowledge must be the food of love. Your pupils must know something about England, if they are to love it; they must see some connexion of its past with its present, of what it has been with what it is, if they are to feel that past as anything to them.

And as no impresses of the past are so abiding, so none, when once attention has been awakened to them, are so self-evident as those which names preserve; although, without this calling of the attention to them, the most broad and obvious of these foot-prints which the past time has left may continue to escape our observation to the end of our lives.

Leibnitz tells us, and one can quite understand, the delight with which a great German Emperor, Maximilian I., discovered that 'Habsburg,' or 'Hapsburg,' the ancestral name of his house, really had a meaning, one moreover full of vigour and poetry. This he did, when he heard it by accident on the lips of a Swiss peasant, no longer cut short and thus disguised, but in its original fulness, 'Hab.i.+.c.htsburg,' or 'Hawk's- Tower,' being no doubt the name of the castle which was the cradle of his race. [Footnote: _Opp._ vol. vi. pt. 2. p. 20.] Of all the thousands of Englishmen who are aware that Angles and Saxons established themselves in this island, and that we are in the main descended from them, it would be curious to know how many have realized to themselves a fact so obvious as that this 'England' means 'Angle-land,' or that in the names 'Ess.e.x,' 'Suss.e.x,' and 'Middles.e.x,' we preserve a record of East Saxons, South Saxons, and Middle Saxons, who occupied those several portions of the land; or that 'Norfolk' and 'Suffolk' are two broad divisions of 'northern' and 'southern folk,' into which the East Anglian kingdom was divided. 'Cornwall' does not bear its origin quite so plainly upon its front, or tell its story so that every one who runs may read. At the same time its secret is not hard to attain to. As the Teutonic immigrants advanced, such of the British population as were not either destroyed or absorbed by them retreated, as we all have learned, into Wales and Cornwall, that is, till they could retreat no further. The fact is evidently preserved in the name of 'Wales', which means properly 'The foreigners,'--the nations of Teutonic blood calling all bordering tribes by this name. But though not quite so apparent on the surface, this fact is also preserved in 'Cornwall', written formerly 'Cornwales', or the land inhabited by the Welsh of the Corn or Horn. The chroniclers uniformly speak of North Wales and Corn-Wales.

[Footnote: See _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, year 997, where mention is made of the _Cornwealas_, the Cornish people.] These Angles, Saxons, and Britons or Welshmen, about whom our pupils may be reading, will be to them more like actual men of flesh and blood, who indeed trod this same soil which we are treading now, when we can thus point to traces surviving to the present day, which they have left behind them, and which England, as long as it is England, will retain.

The Danes too have left their marks on the land. We all probably, more or less, are aware how much Danish blood runs in English veins; what large colonies from Scandinavia (for as many may have come from Norway as from modern Denmark), settled in some parts of this island. It will be interesting to show that the limits of this Danish settlement and occupation may even now be confidently traced by the constant recurrence in all such districts of the names of towns and villages ending in 'by,' which signified in their language a dwelling or single village; as Nether_by_, Apple_by_, Der_by_, Whit_by_, Rug_by_. Thus if you examine closely a map of Lincolns.h.i.+re, one of the chief seats of the Danish settlement, you will find one hundred, or well nigh a fourth part, of the towns and villages to have this ending, the whole coast being studded with them--they lie nearly as close to one another as in Sleswick itself; [Footnote: Pott, _Etym. Forsch._ vol. ii. pt. 2, p.1172] while here in Hamps.h.i.+re 'by' as such a termination, is utterly unknown. Or again, draw a line transversely through England from Canterbury by London to Chester, the line, that is, of the great Roman road, called Watling Street, and north of this six hundred instances of the occurrence of the same termination may be found, while to the south there are almost none. 'Thorpe,' equivalent to the German 'dorf' as Bishops_thorpe_, Al_thorp_, tells the same tale of a Norse occupation of the soil; and the terminations, somewhat rarer, of 'thwaite,'

'haugh,' 'garth,' 'ness,' do the same no less. On the other hand, where, as in this south of England, the 'hams' abound (the word is identical with our 'home'), as Bucking_ham_, Eg_ham_, Sh.o.r.e_ham_, there you may be sure that not Nors.e.m.e.n but West Germans took possession of the soil.

'Worth,' or 'worthy,' tells the same story, as Bos_worth_, Kings_worthy_; [Footnote: See Sweet's _Oldest English Texts_ (index).]

the 'stokes' in like manner, as Basing_stoke_, Itchen_stoke_, are Saxon, being (as some suppose) places _stock_aded, with stocks or piles for defence. You are yourselves learning, or hereafter you may be teaching others, the names and number of the English counties or s.h.i.+res. What a dull routine task for them and for you this may be, supplying no food for the intellect, no points of attachment for any of its higher powers to take hold of! And yet in these two little words, 's.h.i.+re' and 'county,' if you would make them render up even a small part of their treasure, what lessons of English history are contained! One who knows the origin of these names, and how we come to possess such a double nomenclature, looks far into the social condition of England in that period when the strong foundations of all that has since made England glorious and great were being laid; by aid of these words may detect links which bind its present to its remotest past; for of lands as of persons it may be said, 'the child is father of the man,' 's.h.i.+re' is connected with 'shear,' 'share,' and is properly a portion 'shered' or 'shorn' off. [Footnote: It must be confessed that there are insuperable difficulties in the way of connecting Anglo-Saxon _scir_ with the verb _sceron_, to shear, and of explaining it as equivalent to 'shorn off.'

The derivation of 's.h.i.+re' has not yet been ascertained.] When a Saxon king would create an earl, it did not lie in men's thoughts, accustomed as they were to deal with realities, that such could be a merely t.i.tular creation, or exist without territorial jurisdiction; and a 'share' or 's.h.i.+re' was a.s.signed him to govern, which also gave him his t.i.tle. But at the Conquest this Saxon officer was displaced by a Norman, the 'earl' by the 'count'--this t.i.tle of 'count,' borrowed from the later Roman empire, meaning originally 'companion' (comes), one who had the honour of being closest companion to his leader; and the 's.h.i.+re'

was now the 'county' (comitatus), as governed by this 'comes.' In that singular and inexplicable fortune of words, which causes some to disappear and die out under the circ.u.mstances apparently most favourable for life, others to hold their ground when all seemed against them, 'count' has disappeared from the t.i.tles of English n.o.bility, while 'earl' has recovered its place; although in evidence of the essential ident.i.ty of the two t.i.tles, or offices rather, the wife of the earl is ent.i.tled a 'countess'; and in further memorial of these great changes that so long ago came over our land, the two names 's.h.i.+re' and 'county' equally survive as in the main interchangeable words in our mouths.

A large part of England, all that portion of it which the Saxons occupied, is divided into 'hundreds'. Have you ever asked yourselves what this division means, for something it must mean? The 'hundred' is supposed to have been originally a group or settlement of one hundred free families of Saxon incomers. If this was so, we have at once an explanation of the strange disproportion between the area of the 'hundred' in the southern and in the more northern counties--the average number of square miles in a 'hundred' of Suss.e.x or Kent being about four and twenty; of Lancas.h.i.+re more than three hundred. The Saxon population would naturally be far the densest in the earlier settlements of the east and south, while more to west and north their tenure would be one rather of conquest than of colonization, and the free families much fewer and more scattered. [Footnote: Kemble, _The Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 420; Stubbs, _Const.i.tutional History of England,_ p. 98.] But further you have noticed, I dare say, the exceptional fact that the county of Suss.e.x, besides the division into hundreds, is divided also into six 'rapes'; thus the 'rape' of Bramber and so on. [This 'rape' is connected by Lappenberg, ii. 405 (1881), with the Icel. _hreppr_, which according to the Gragas was a district in which twenty or more peasants maintained one poor person].

Let us a little consider, in conclusion, how we may usefully bring our etymologies and other notices of words to bear on the religious teaching which we would impart in our schools. To do this with much profit we must often deal with words as the Queen does with the gold and silver coin of the realm. When this has been current long, and by often pa.s.sing from man to man, with perhaps occasional clipping in dishonest hands, has lost not only the clear brightness, the well- defined sharpness of outline, but much of the weight and intrinsic value which it had when first issued from the royal mint, it is the sovereign's prerogative to recall it, and issue it anew, with the royal image stamped on it afresh, bright and sharp, weighty and full, as at first. Now to a process such as this the true mint-masters of language, and all of us may be such, will often submit the words which they use.

Where use and custom have worn away their significance, we too may recall and issue them afresh. With how many it has thus fared!--for example, with one which will be often in your mouths. You speak of the 'lessons' of the day; but what is 'lessons' here for most of us save a lazy synonym for the morning and evening chapters appointed to be read in church? But realize what the Church intended in calling these chapters by this name; namely, that they should be the daily instruction of her children; listen to them yourselves as such; lead your scholars to regard them as such, and in this use of 'lessons' what a lesson for every one of us there may be! [Footnote: [Still etymologically _lessons_ mean simply 'readings, the word representing French _lecons_ = Latin _lectiones_.]] 'Bible' itself, while we not irreverently use it, may yet be no more to us than the verbal sign by which we designate the written Word of G.o.d. Keep in mind that it properly means 'the book' and nothing more; that once it could be employed of any book (in Chaucer it is so), and what matter of thought and reflection lies in this our present restriction of 'bible' to one book, to the exclusion of all others! So strong has been the sense of Holy Scripture being '_the_ Book,' the worthiest and best, that book which explains all other books, standing up in their midst,--like Joseph's kingly sheaf, to which all the other sheaves did obeisance,-- that this name of 'Bible' or 'Book' has been restrained to it alone: just as 'Scripture' means no more than 'writing'; but this inspired Writing has been acknowledged so far above all other writings, that this name also it has obtained as exclusively its own.

Again, something may be learned from knowing that the 'surname,' as distinguished from the 'Christian' name, is the name over and above, not 'sire'-name, or name received from the father, as some explain, but 'sur'-name (super nomen). There was never, that is, a time when every baptized man had not a Christian name, the recognition of his personal standing before G.o.d; while the surname, the name expressing his relation, not to the kingdom of G.o.d, but to a worldly society, is of much later growth, super-added to the other, as the word itself declares. What a lesson at once in the growing up of a human society, and in the contrast between it and the heavenly Society of the Church, might be appended to this explanation! There was a period when only a few had surnames; had, that is, any significance in the order of things temporal; while the Christian name from the first was the possession of every baptized man. All this might be brought usefully to bear on your exposition of the first words in the Catechism.

There are long words from the Latin which, desire as we may to use all plainness of speech, we cannot do without, nor find their adequate subst.i.tutes in homelier parts of our language; words which must always remain the vehicles of much of that truth whereby we live. Now in explaining these, make it your rule always to start, where you can, from the derivation, and to return to that as often as you can. Thus you wish to explain 'revelation.' How much will be gained if you can attach some distinct image to the word, one to which your scholars, as often as they hear it, may mentally recur. Nor is this difficult. G.o.d's 'revelation' of Himself is a drawing back of the veil or curtain which concealed Him from men; not man finding out G.o.d, but G.o.d discovering Himself to man; all which is contained in the word. Or you wish to explain 'absolution.' Many will know that it has something to do with the pardon of sins; but how much more accurately will they know this, when they know that 'to absolve' means 'to loosen from': G.o.d's 'absolution' of men being his releasing of them from the bands of those sins with which they were bound. Here every one will connect a distinct image with the word, such as will always come to his help when he would realize what its precise meaning may be. That which was done for Lazarus naturally, the Lord exclaiming, 'Loose him, and let him go,'

the same is done spiritually for us, when we receive the 'absolution'

of our sins.

Tell your scholars that 'atonement' means 'at-one-ment'--the setting at one of those who were at twain before, namely G.o.d and man, and they will attach to 'atonement' a definite meaning, which perhaps in no way else it would have possessed for them; and, starting from this point, you may muster the pa.s.sages in Scripture which describe the sinner's state as one of separation, estrangement, alienation, from G.o.d, the Christian's state as one in which he walks together with G.o.d, because the two have been set 'at one.' Or you have to deal with the following, 'to redeem,' 'Redeemer,' 'redemption.' Lose not yourselves in vague generalities, but fasten on the central point of these, that they imply a 'buying,' and not this merely, but a 'buying back'; and then connect with them, so explained, the whole circle of statements in Scripture which rest on this image, which speak of sin as a slavery, of sinners as bondsmen of Satan, of Christ's blood as a ransom, of the Christian as one restored to his liberty.

Many words more suggest themselves; I will not urge more than one; but that one, because in it is a lesson more for ourselves than for others, and with such I would fain bring these lectures to a close. How solemn a truth we express when we name our work in this world our 'vocation,'

or, which is the same in homelier Anglo-Saxon, our 'calling.' What a calming, elevating, enn.o.bling view of the tasks appointed us in this world, this word gives us. We did not come to our work by accident; we did not choose it for ourselves; but, in the midst of much which may wear the appearance of accident and self-choosing, came to it by G.o.d's leading and appointment. How will this consideration help us to appreciate justly the dignity of our work, though it were far humbler work, even in the eyes of men, than that of any one of us here present!

What an a.s.sistance in calming unsettled thoughts and desires, such as would make us wish to be something else than that which we are! What a source of confidence, when we are tempted to lose heart, and to doubt whether we shall carry through our work with any blessing or profit to ourselves or to others! It is our 'vocation,' not our choosing but our 'calling'; and He who 'called' us to it, will, if only we will ask Him, fit us for it, and strengthen us in it.