Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/169

 Rh shirk his share in military service;—in caitiff, one who suffers himself to be taken "captive," and craven, one who has "craved" his life at the enemies' hand, instead of resisting to the death;—in dunce, i. e, dunsman, from Duns Scotus (though he was "certainly one of the keenest and most subtle-witted of men");—in mammetry, from Mahometry (another curiously perverted usage);—in tariff, from the Moorish fortress Tarifa, from which all merchant ships passing the Straits of Gibraltar were watched, and taxed according to a fixed scale;—in bigot, from the Spanish "bigote," or mustachio—the Spaniard being in old times the standing representative, to English Protestantism, of the bigot and persecutor, as we see, for example, in the pictures of the early editions (of Fox's "Book of Martyrs," where "the pagan persecutors of the first Christians are usually arrayed in the armour of Spanish soldiers, and sometimes graced with tremendous bigotes," Trust Mr. Trench for a slap at Popery, whenever within reach.

In illustration of the truth that many a single word is in itself a concentrated poem, having stores of poetical thought and imagery laid up in it, Mr. Trench adduces the word "dilapidated;" observing that he who spake first of a dilapidated fortune, must have had before his mind's eye impressive imagery of some falling house or palace, stone detaching itself from stone, till all had gradually sunk into desolation and ruin. "Many a man had gazed, we may be sure, at the jagged and indented mountain ridges of Spain, before one called them 'sierras,' or saws, the name by which they are now known, as Sierra Morena, Sierra Nevada; but that man coined his imagination into a word which will endure as long as the everlasting hills which he named." There are some valuable hints, too, on the manner in which new words arise in a language—how the philosophic is superadded on the picturesque; with apt references to the philological contributions or expositions of such Students of Words as Horne Tooke, De Quincey, and Coleridge. The chapter on Synonyms, again, is rich with erudition, conveyed chiefly by hint and suggestion. When he does develop his meaning, it is with a felicitous completeness which leaves nothing to be desired, but more of the same kind. For example, turn to the distinction drawn between "invention" and "discovery"—between "opposite" and "contrary"—and between "abandon" and "desert"—which last diversity is memorably associated with Lord Somers' speech, that "masterly specimen of synonymous discrimination," on the abdication of James II.

Still better calculated for popular acceptance,, wide and hearty, was the little treatise on the "Lessons in Proverbs." What though Lord