Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/301

 12 s. ix. SEPT. 24, io2L] NOTES AND QUERIES. 243 eluding Dr. Johnson ! says a critic now (Wordsworth compensated, "Excursion,' iii. 793 ; so did Browning, in ' JBishop Blougram,' 298 : " For nothing can compensate his mistake"), who himself says peremptory though Ben Jonson already (1610) said, " This peremptory face " (' Alchemist,' V. ii.) and who puts decadent as " uneducated," though an old peer retorts, that he cannot and will not say he is decadent ; and the younger man, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, supports him. Decadent is true Oxford, maintains a member of Christ Church. Decadence, at least, is by the ' N.E.D.' " held now to be more scholarly " ; while it allows that decadence is general. Will you comment or comment ? Both, speare, comment. Comment is common in Ireland and in Scotland now. Let us contemplate ; or contemplate ; which latter begins to have the flavour of age ; and therefore the more do some cling to it in England, who say that contemplate makes them feel americanized though contemplate was already what Wordsworth <b. 1770) and Shelley (b. 1792) heard. How- ever, Tennyson's ' In Memoriam ' (74) in, or but a few years before, 1850, has: When I contemplate all alone The life that had been thine below. It must be said that Henry VI. (' 3 Henry To mark Shelley's West Wind ' : " The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull'd by the ceil of his crystalline heavens." as crystalline, were unfeeling. So, less surely, in " Caverns on crystalline caverns poised." (' Prometheus, iv. 282.) Shelley uses the word (like Izaak Walton his frog, for bait), " as though he loved him " ; and he is not balancing it even, against his slightly more common crystalline. Nor is he, as say some painful (in old and new sense) pro- fessors, concerning Shelley's " poet-legislators," just cutting syllables short or long, marking them up or down, to force and fit them in. However, maybe, Ben Jonson has no hovering accent in his forcing, in " Nor can this remote matter suddenly." (' Alchemist,' II. i.) But Swinburne's ' Atalanta ' had " To the clear seat and remote throne of souls." And Massinger had (' Virgin Martyr,' III. i.) " That can do me no harm nor protect you." < Viiainly Massinger had often no verse ear. But a Sir Henry Taylor is free thus with protect. There is Dante Rossetti's (not altogether beautifully unforced) in ' Ave ' " That He was thine and thou wast His Who feeds among the field lilies.' 1 VI.,' II. v. 33), has " So many hours must contemplate " Shakespeare's (if Shake- speare's) only use of the word. Though Ben Jonson (' Alchemist,' III. ii.) : Whole with these studies that contemplate nature. Many in Ireland, with less calculation or onscious reverence for old fashions, con- tinue to say " Let us contemplate in this Mystery." Consistory and consistory are both allowed, say modern dictionaries ; but already Shake- speare : By commission from the consistory, Yea, the whole consistory of Rome. (' Henry VIII.,' II. iv. 92.) and Ben Jonson : Flee, mischief ; had your holy consistory. (Alchemist, II. i.) Are your years climacteric or climac- teric ? Most poets say the formei. But the earlier -in -the -word stress occurs in the seventeenth century. Dictionaries vary. Will you give utterance to condolence, or vote condolence ? It is recondite, as in Johnson, and in some And Tennyson's in ' Maud ' " Thy great Forefathers of the garden." As in Morris's * Jason,' i. 367 : " And tales of thy forefathers shalt thou hear." And his : " And in no flowery stead Had bone to hear love songs, or laid On any trembling lover's heaving breast." (iii. 141.) To-day, Bridges' ' Later Poems ' have " In still midsummer night." And Seumas O'Sullivan's ' The Rosses and Other Poems ' (1918) have The dreams a sailor dreams, and all around you Infinite the blue waters that you loved." And Dora Sigerson's ' The Sad Years ' (1918) : " They left for thee their earthly krves, these heroes of thy race, And died as all must die, Kathleen, who once have seen thy face." Then Pearse himself, in a ' Lullaby of a Woman of the Mountains ' : " Little gold head, my house's candle, You will guide all wayfarers that walk this mountain." And Rupert Brooke's ' Clouds ' (1913) : " And turn with profound gesture vague and slow " ; recalling " There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves." (' Hamlet,' IV. i. 1.) though elsewhere Shakespeare has the fixed accent, as in ' Hamlet ' II. i. 94 : " He raised a sigh so piteous and profound."
 * N.E.D.' Spenser had comment ? Shake-