Part 2 (1/2)

[Footnote: The etymology of _caprice_ has not been discovered yet; the derivation from _capra_ is unsatisfactory, as it does not account for the latter part of the word.] If ever you have watched a goat, you will have observed how sudden, how unexpected, how unaccountable, are the leaps and springs, now forward, now sideward, now upward, in which it indulges. A 'caprice' then is a movement of the mind as unaccountable, as little to be calculated on beforehand, as the springs and bounds of a goat. Is not the word so understood a far more picturesque one than it was before? and is there not some real gain in the vigour and vividness of impression which is in this way obtained? 'Pavaner' is the French equivalent for our verb 'to strut,' 'fourmiller' for our verb 'to swarm.' But is it not a real gain to know further that the one is to strut _as the peac.o.c.k does_, the other to swarm _as do ants_? There are at the same time, as must be freely owned, investigations, moral no less than material, in which the nearer the words employed approach to an algebraic notation, and the less disturbed or coloured they are by any reminiscences of the ultimate grounds on which they rest, the better they are likely to fulfil the duties a.s.signed to them; but these are exceptions. [Footnote: A French writer, Adanson, in his _Natural History of Senegal_ complains of the misleading character which names so often have, and urges that the only safety is to give to things names which have and can have no meaning at all. His words are worth quoting as a curiosity, if nothing else: L'experience nous apprend, que la plupart des noms significatifs qu'on a voulu donner a differens objets d'histoire naturelle, sont devenus faux a mesure qu'on a decouvert des qualites, des proprietes nouvelles ou contraires a celles qui avaient fait donner ces noms: il faut donc, pour se mettre a l'abri des contradictions, eviter les termes figures, et meme faire en sorte qu'on ne puisse les rapporter a quelque etymologie, a fin que ceux, qui ont la fureur des etymologies, ne soient pas tenus de leur attribuer une idee fausse. II en doit etre des noms, comme des coups des jeux de hazard, qui n'ont pour l'ordinaire aucune liaison entre eux: ils seraient d'autant meilleurs qu'ils seraient moins significatifs, moins relatifs a d'autres noms, ou a des choses connues, par ce que l'idee ne se fixant qu'a un seul objet, le saisit beaucoup plus nettement, que lorsqu'elle se lie avec d'autres objets qui y ont du rapport. There is truth in what he says, but the remedy he proposes is worse than the disease.]

The poetry which has been embodied in the names of places, in those names which designate the leading features of outward nature, promontories, mountains, capes, and the like, is very worthy of being elicited and evoked anew, latent as it now has oftentimes become.

Nowhere do we so easily forget that names had once a peculiar fitness, which was the occasion of their giving. Colour has often suggested the name, as in the well-known instance of our own 'Albion,'--'the silver- coasted isle,' as Tennyson so beautifully has called it,--which had this name from the white line of cliffs presented by it to those approaching it by the narrow seas. [Footnote: The derivation of the name _Albion_ has not been discovered yet; it is even uncertain whether the word is Indo-European; see Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, p. 200.]

'Himalaya' is 'the abode of snow.' Often, too, shape and configuiation are incorporated in the name, as in 'Trinacria' or 'the three- promontoried land,' which was the Greek name of Sicily; in 'Drepanum'

or 'the sickle,' the name which a town on the north-west promontory of the island bore, from the sickle-shaped tongue of land on which it was built. But more striking, as the embodiment of a poetical feeling, is the modern name of the great southern peninsula of Greece. We are all aware that it is called the 'Morea'; but we may not be so well aware from whence that name is derived. It had long been the fas.h.i.+on among ancient geographers to compare the shape of this region to a platane leaf; [Footnote: Strabo, viii. 2; Pliny, H.N. iv. 5; Agathemerus, I.i.

p. 15; echein de omoion schaema phullps platanan] and a glance at the map will show that the general outline of that leaf, with its sharply- incised edges, justified the comparison. This, however, had remained merely as a comparison; but at the s.h.i.+fting and changing of names, that went with the breaking up of the old Greek and Roman civilization, the resemblance of this region to a leaf, not now any longer a platane, but a mulberry leaf, appeared so strong, that it exchanged its cla.s.sic name of Peloponnesus for 'Morea' which embodied men's sense of this resemblance, _morus_ being a mulberry tree in Latin, and _morea_ in Greek. This etymology of 'Morea' has been called in question; [Footnote: By Fallmerayer, _Gesck. der Halbinsel Morea,_ p. 240, sqq.

The island of Ceylon, known to the Greeks as Taprobane, and to Milton as well (_P. L._ iv. 75), owed this name to a resemblance which in outline it bore to the leaf of the betel tree. [This is very doubtful.]] but, as it seems to me, on no sufficient grounds. Deducing, as one objector does, 'Morea' from a Slavonic word 'more,' the sea, he finds in this derivation a support for his favourite notion that the modern population of Greece is not descended from the ancient, but consists in far the larger proportion of intrusive Slavonic races. Two mountains near Dublin, which we, keeping in the grocery line, have called the Great and the Little Sugarloaf, are named in Irish 'the Golden Spears.'

In other ways also the names of places will oftentimes embody some poetical aspect under which now or at some former period men learned to regard them. Oftentimes when discoverers come upon a new land they will seize with a firm grasp of the imagination the most striking feature which it presents to their eyes, and permanently embody this in a word.

Thus the island of Madeira is now, I believe, nearly bare of wood; but its sides were covered with forests at the time when it was first discovered, and hence the name, 'madeira' in Portuguese having this meaning of wood. [Footnote: [Port. _madeira,_ 'wood,' is the same word as the Lat. _materia_.]] Some have said that the first Spanish discoverers of Florida gave it this name from the rich carpeting of flowers which, at the time when first their eyes beheld it, everywhere covered the soil. [Footnote: The Spanish historian Herrera says that Juan Ponce de Leon, the discoverer of Florida, gave that name to the country for two reasons: first, because it was a land of flowers, secondly, because it was discovered by him on March 27, 1513, Easter Day, which festival was called by the Spaniards, 'Pascua Florida,' or 'Pascua de Flores,' see Herrera's _History_, tr. by Stevens, ii. p. 33, and the _Discovery of Florida_ by R. Hakluyt, ed. by W. B. Rye for the Hakluyt Soc., 1851, introd. p. x.; cp. Larousse (s.v.), and Pierer's _Conversations Lexicon_. It is stated by some authorities that Florida was so called because it was discovered on Palm Sunday; this is due to a mistaken inference from the names for that Sunday--Pascha Florum, Pascha Floridum (Ducange), Pasque Fleurie (Cotgrave); see _Dict. Geog.

Univ_., 1884, and Brockhaus.] Surely Florida, as the name pa.s.ses under our eye, or from our lips, is something more than it was before, when we may thus think of it as the land of flowers. [Footnote: An Italian poet, Fazio degli Uberti, tells us that Florence has its appellation from the same cause:

Poiche era posta in un prato di fiori, Le denno il nome bello, oude s' ingloria.

It would be instructive to draw together a collection of etymologies which have been woven into verse. These are so little felt to be alien to the spirit of poetry, that they exist in large numbers, and often lend to the poem in which they find a place a charm and interest of their own. In five lines of _Paradise Lost_ Milton introduces four such etymologies, namely, those of the four fabled rivers of h.e.l.l, though this will sometimes escape the notice of the English reader:

'Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly _hate_, Sad Acheron of _sorrow_, black and deep, Cocytus, named of _lamentation_ loud Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, Whose waves of torrent _fire_ inflame with rage.'

'Virgil, that great master of the proprieties,' as Bishop Pearson has so happily called him, does not shun, but rather loves to introduce them, as witness his etymology of 'Byrsa,' _Aen_. i. 367, 368; v. 59, 63 [but the etymology here is imaginative, the name _Byrsa_ being of Punic, that is of Semitic, origin, and meaning 'a fortress'; compare Heb. _Bozrah_]; of 'Silvius,' _Aen_. vi. 763, 765; of 'Argiletum,'

where he is certainly wrong (_Aen_. viii. 345); of 'Latium,' with reference to Saturn having remained _latent_ there (_Aen_. viii. 322; of. Ovid, _Fasti_, i. 238); of 'Laurens' (_Aen_. vii. 63):

Latiumque vocari Maluit, his quoniam _latuisset_ tutus in oris:

and again of 'Avernus' (=[Greek: aornos], _Aen_. vi. 243); being indeed in this antic.i.p.ated by Lucretius (vi. 741):

quia sunt avibus contraria cunctis.

Ovid's taste is far from faultless, and his example cannot go for much; but he is always a graceful versifier, and his _Fasti_ swarms with etymologies, correct and incorrect; as of 'Agonalis' (i. 322), of 'Aprilis' (iv. 89), of 'Augustus' (i. 609-614), of 'Februarius' (ii.

19-22), of 'hostia' (i. 336), of 'Ja.n.u.s' (i. 120-127), of 'Junius' (vi.

26), of 'Lemures' (v. 479-484), of 'Lucina' (ii. 449), of 'majestas' (v.

26), of 'Orion' (v. 535), of 'pecunia' (v. 280, 281), of 'senatus' (v.

64), of 'Sulmo'(iv. 79; cf. Silius Italicus, ix. 70); of 'Vesta' (vi.

299), of 'victima' (i. 335); of 'Trinacris' (iv. 420). He has them also elsewhere, as of 'Tomi' (_Trist._ iii. 9, 33). Lucilius, in like manner, gives us the etymology of 'iners': Ut perhibetur iners, _ars_ in quo non erit ulla; Propertius (iv. 2, 3) of 'Vertumnus'; and Lucretius of 'Magnes' (vi. 909).]

The name of Port Natal also embodies a fact which must be of interest to its inhabitants, namely, that this port was discovered on Christmas Day, the _dies natalis_ of our Lord.

Then again what poetry is there, as indeed there ought to be, in the names of flowers! I do not speak of those, the exquisite grace and beauty of whose names is so forced on us that we cannot miss it, such as 'Aaron's rod,' 'angel's eyes,' 'b.l.o.o.d.y warrior,' 'blue-bell, 'crown imperial,' 'cuckoo-flower,' blossoming as this orchis does when the cuckoo is first heard, [Footnote: In a catalogue of _English Plant Names_ I count thirty in which 'cuckoo' formed a component part.] 'eye- bright,' 'forget-me-not,' 'gilt-cup' (a local name for the b.u.t.ter-cup, drawn from the golden gloss of its petals), 'hearts-ease,' 'herb-of- grace,' 'Jacob's ladder,' 'king-cup,' 'lady's fingers,' 'Lady's smock,'

'Lady's tresses,' 'larkspur,' 'Lent lily,' 'loose-strife,' 'love-in- idleness,' 'Love lies bleeding,' 'maiden-blush,' 'maiden-hair,'

'meadow-sweet,' 'Our Lady's mantle,' 'Our Lady's slipper,' 'queen-of- the-meadows,' 'reine-marguerite,' 'rosemary,' 'snow-flake,' 'Solomon's seal,' 'star of Bethlehem,' 'sun-dew,' 'sweet Alison,' 'sweet Cicely,'

'sweet William,' 'Traveller's joy,' 'Venus' looking-gla.s.s,' 'Virgin's bower,' and the like; but take 'daisy'; surely this charming little English flower, which has stirred the peculiar affection of English poets from Chaucer to Wordsworth, and received the tribute of their song, [Footnote: 'Fair fall that gentle flower, A golden tuft set in a silver crown,' as Brown exclaims, whose singularly graceful _Pastorals_ should not be suffered to fall altogether to oblivion. In Ward's recent _English Poets_, vol. ii. p.

65, justice has been done to them, and to their rare beauty.] becomes more charming yet, when we know, as Chaucer long ago has told us, that 'daisy' is day's eye, or in its early spelling 'daieseighe,' the eye of day; these are his words:

'That men by reson well it calle may The _daisie_, or elles the ye of day.'

_Chaucer_, ed. Morris, vol. v. p. 281.

For only consider how much is implied here. To the sun in the heavens this name, eye of day, was naturally first given, and those who transferred the t.i.tle to our little field flower meant no doubt to liken its inner yellow disk, or s.h.i.+eld, to the great golden orb of the sun, and the white florets which encircle this disk to the rays which the sun spreads on all sides around him. What imagination was here, to suggest a comparison such as this, binding together as this does the smallest and the greatest! what a travelling of the poet's eye, with the power which is the privilege of that eye, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, and of linking both together. So too, call up before your mind's eye the 'lavish gold' of the drooping laburnum when in flower, and you will recognize the poetry of the t.i.tle, 'the golden rain,' which in German it bears. 'Celandine' does not so clearly tell its own tale; and it is only when you have followed up the [Greek: chelidonion], (swallow-wort), of which 'celandin' is the English representative, that the word will yield up the poetry which is concealed in it.

And then again, what poetry is there often in the names of birds and beasts and fishes, and indeed of all the animated world around us; how marvellously are these names adapted often to bring out the most striking and characteristic features of the objects to which they are given. Thus when the Romans became acquainted with the stately giraffe, long concealed from them in the interior deserts of Africa, (which we learn from Pliny they first did in the shows exhibited by Julius Caesar,) it was happily imagined to designate a creature combining, though with infinitely more grace, something of the height and even the proportions of the _camel_ with the spotted skin of the _pard_, by a name which should incorporate both these its most prominent features, [Footnote: Varro: Quod erat figura ut camelus, maculis ut panthera; and Horace (Ep. ii. I, 196): Diversum confusa genus panthera camelo.] calling it the 'camelopard.' Nor can we, I think, hesitate to accept that account as the true one, which describes the word as no artificial creation of scientific naturalists, but as bursting extempore from the lips of the common people, who after all are the truest namers, at the first moment when the novel creature was presented to their gaze. 'Cerf-volant,' a name which the French have so happily given to the horned scarabeus, the same which we somewhat less poetically call the 'stag-beetle,' is another example of what may be effected with the old materials, by merely bringing them into new and happy combinations.