Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/14

 exceptions, the scholars who have possessed the philological knowledge requisite for the scientific treatment of the subject have been so conscious of its difficulties that they have preferred to leave it alone. It has therefore fallen into the hands of unqualified persons, for many of whom it seems to have an unaccountable attraction. Their usual procedure is to ransack the dictionaries of Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Welsh, and other languages, and if they can find words in any of these which bear some resemblance to the syllables of the name to be explained, and which, when joined together without the slightest regard to grammatical rules, can be made to yield something like a plausible sense, they imagine that they have solved the problem of its etymology.

It must be admitted that the explanations arrived at in this haphazard fashion are often much more interesting than those which are the result of methodical research. And no wonder! An etymologist who can operate at will with the words of half a dozen languages, and has no inconvenient grammatical knowledge to hamper him in putting them together, is able to make a name mean almost anything he likes; and if he is a person of taste he will of course choose to find in it some bit of picturesque description, a reference to ancient beliefs or superstitions, or a memorial of some historical event. Fact is usually less entertaining than fiction, and for this reason false etymologies are to most people more attractive than true ones. An opinion which is