Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/36

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. JULY 9, wot

name in a famous trial. When he terms th word prefixed to this note a " vile and bar barous vocable," and connects " talent " with English coins, one cannot help thinking that his listener has very imperfectly reported what was said on that particular occasion He was no Boswell, as any one knows who has read the volume from which I have quoted. Surely Coleridge must have addec some remarks about the origin of the expres- sion which he condemns, and of which he could scarcely be ignorant. We have had no parable of ' The Shillings,' or ' The Far- things,' or * The Tenpences,' delivered to us, but more than eighteen hundred years ago the parable of ' The Talents ' was spoken far away from our island, and is recorded in St. Matthew's Gospel, ch. xxv. 14-30. By constant repetition during this long lapse of time from innumerable pulpits throughout all Christian lands, the word "talent" has lost its original meaning of a sum of money, and come to signify some special aptitude or faculty granted to men who have not been endowed with genius. This distinction was so happily expressed in a poem written by Owen Meredith (the second Lord Lytton), and printed in one of the early numbers of the Cornhill Magazine, that I have never forgotten this couplet :

Talk not of genius baffled; genius is master of man; Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.

The ministry of "All the Talents" in Cole- ridge's early manhood (1806) was, as its nick- name implies, conspicuous for its want of a man of genius, and therefore did what it could, which was very little. Had there been one at the head of it who was possessed of that supreme gift which, as Coleridge else- where says, " must have talent as its comple- ment and implement, because the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower," the his- tory of that administration might have been famous.

The use of the word " talent," as the equivalent of intellectual ability, being thus clearly deduced from the parable in the New Testament, we can easily understand how " talented " came into existence, which hap- pened long before the time of Coleridge, who was, moreover, forestalled in his condemna- tion, as we learn from a letter written by Macaulay to his sister on 30 May, 1831. "In the drawing-room/' he says,

" I had a long talk with Lady Holland about the antiquities of the house, and about the purity of the English language, wherein she thinks herself a critic. I happened, in speaking about the Reform Bill, to say that I wished that it had been possible to form a few

commercial constituencies, if the word constituency were admissible. ' I am glad you put that in,' said her ladyship. * I was just going to give it you. It is an odious word. Then there is talented, and influential, and gentlemanly. I never could break Sheridan of gentlemanly, though he allowed it to be wrong.' We talked about the word talents and its history. I said that it had first appeared in theo- logical writing, that it was a metaphor taken from the parable in the New Testament, and that it had gradually passed from the vocabulary of divinity into common use. I challenged her to find it in any classical writer on general subjects before the Restoration, * or even before the year 1700. I be- lieve that I might safely have gone down later. She seemed surprised by this theory, never having, so far as I could judge, heard of the parable of the talents. I did not tell her, though I might have done so, that a person who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of the English language ought to have the Bible at his fingers' ends."

And then he oddly adds :

'' She is certainly a woman of considerable talents and great literary acquirements." 'Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay,' popular edit., pp. 150-1.

If Lady Holland had turned to Johnson's Dictionary ' she would have seen under the word 'Talent' what follows: "Faculty; power ; gift of nature. A metaphor bor- rowed from the talents mentioned in the holy writ," and would also have found examples of its use by Clarendon and Dryden, which would have disproved the too-confident assertion of her guest. We must, however, remember that this letter was written without any thought of publica- ion.

In another, addressed to Macvey Napier, "lad criticized some of the words employed n his article on Frederic the Great, and, apparently, the one at the head of this note, which, however, does not appear in the corrected edition of the ' Essays,' Macaulay writes on 18 April, 1842 : * Such a word as talented ' it is proper to avoid : first, be- cause it is not wanted ; secondly, because you never hear it from those who speak very good English " (p. 416). Verily, if they who ?peak good English employ it, I do not see vhy it should be banned arid banished from .he language ; and I think it is wanted, and ts rejection would be "a mere throwing away of power," for what the same author
 * hen editor of the Edinburgh Review, who

ounded to the bottom by one of the greatest and most knowing kings of his time, viz.. King James f England ; who had a particular talent and mar- railous sagacity to discusse natural things, and )enetrate them to the very marrow." ' Of the >ympathetick Powder. A Discourse in a Solemn Assembly at Montpellier. Made in French by Sir tenelm Digby, Knight, 1657. London, Printed for fohn Williams, 1669.
 * "All the circumstances were examined and