1.Dictionary of Americanisms. A Glossary of Words and Phrases usually regarded as peculiar to the United States. By JOHN RUSSELL BARTLETT. Second Edition, greatly improved and enlarged. Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1859. pp. xxxii., 524.
2.A Glossarial Index to the Printed English Literature of the Thirteenth Century. By HERBERT COLERIDGE. London: Trübner & Company. 1859. pp. iv., 104.
3.Outlines of the History of the English Language, for the Use of the Junior Classes in Colleges and the Higher Classes in Schools. By GEORGE L. CRAIK, Professor of History and of English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. Third Edition, revised and improved. London: Chapman & Hall. 1859. pp. xii., 148.
4.The Vulgar Tongue. A Glossary of Slang, Cant, and Flash Phrases, used in London from 1839 to 1859; Flash Songs, Essays on Flash, and a Bibliography of Canting and Slang Literature. By DUCANGE ANGLICUS. Second Edition, improved and much enlarged. London: Bernard Quaritch. 1859. pp. 80.
5.A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, etc., etc. By a London Antiquary. London: John Camden Holten. 1859. pp. lxxxviii., 160.
6.On the English Language, Past and Present. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New Edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Blakeman & Mason. 1859. pp. 238.
7.A Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in Senses different from their present. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. New York: Redfield. 1859. pp. xi., 218.
8.Rambles among Words; their Poetry, History, Wisdom. By WILLIAM SWINTON. New York. Scribner. 1859. pp. 302.
The first allusion we know of to an Americanism is that of Gill, in 1621,—"Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur, utMAIZetKANOA." Since then, English literature, not without many previous wry faces, has adopted or taken back many words from this side of the water. The more the matter is looked into, the more it appears that we have no peculiar dialect of our own, and that men here, as elsewhere, have modified language or invented phrases to suit their needs. When Dante wrote his "De Vulgari Eloquio," he reckoned nearly a thousand distinct dialects in the Italian peninsula, and, after more than five hundred years, it is said that by far the greater part survive. In England, eighty years ago, the county of every member of Parliament was to be known by his speech; but in "both Englands," as they used to be called, the tendency is toward uniformity.
In spite of the mingling of races and languages in the United States, the speech of the people is more uniform than that of any European nation. This would inevitably follow from our system of common-schools, and the universal reading of newspapers. This has tended to make the common language of talk more bookish, and has thus reacted unfavorably on our literature, giving it sometimes the air of being composed in a dead tongue rather than written from a living one. It gladdens us, we confess, to see how goodly a volume ofAmericanismsMr. Bartlett has been enabled to gather, for it shows that our language is alive. It is only from the roots that a language can be refreshed; a dialect that is taught grows more and more pedantic, and becomes at last as unfit a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. This is the danger which our literature has to guard against from the universal Schoolmaster, who wars upon home-bred phrases, and enslaves the mind and memory of his victims, as far as may be, to the best models of English composition,—that is to say, to the writers whose style is faultlessly correct, but has no blood in it. No language, after it has faded intodiction, none that cannot suck up feeding juices from the mother-earth of a rich common-folk-talk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor of expression does not pass from page to page, but from man to man, where the brain is kindled and the lips are limbered by downright living interests and by passions in the very throe. Language is the soil of thought; and our own especially is a rich leaf-mould, the slow growth of ages, the shed foliage of feeling, fancy, and imagination, which has suffered an earth-change, that the vocal forest, as Howell called it, may clothe itself anew with living green. There is death in the Dictionary; and where language is limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is straitened also, and we get apottedliterature, Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees.
We are thankful to Mr. Bartlett for the onslaught he makes in his Introduction upon thehighfalutingstyle so common among us. But we are rather amused to find him falling so easily into thatAnglo-Saxontrap which is the common pitfall of those half-learned men among whom we should be slow to rank him.[A] He says, "Theunfortunate tendencytofavorthe Latin at theexpenseof the Saxonelementof ourlanguage, whichsocialandeducational causeshave longtendedto foster in the mothercountry, has with usreceivedanadditionalimpulsefrom the greatadmixtureofforeignersin ourpopulation." (p. xxxii.) We have underscored the words of Latin origin, and find that they includeallthe nouns, all the adjectives but two, and three out of five verbs,—one of these last (the auxiliaryhave) being the same in both Latin and Saxon. Speaking of the Bostonians, Mr. Bartlett says, "The greatextentto which thescholarsof New England have carried thestudyof theGerman languageandliteraturefor some years back,addedto thevery general neglectof the oldmaster-piecesof Englishcomposition, have [has] had theeffectof giving to the writings of many of them anartificial, unidiomatic character, which has aninexpressibly unpleasant effectto those who are nothabituatedto it." (p. xxv. We again underscore the un-Saxon words.) Now if there be any short cut to the Anglo-Saxon, it is through the German; and how far the Bostonians deserve the reproach of a neglect of old English masterpieces we do not pretend to say, but the first modern reprint of the best works of Latimer, More, Sidney, Fuller, Selden, Browne, and Feltham was made in Boston, under the care of the late Dr. Alexander Young. We have no wish to defend Boston; we mean only to call Mr. Bartlett's attention to the folly of asking people to write in a dialect which no longer exists. No man can write off-hand a page of Saxon English; no man with pains can write one and hope to be commonly understood. At least let Mr. Bartlett practise what he preaches. When a deputation of wig-makers waited on George III. to protest against the hair-powder-tax, the mob, seeing that one of them wore his own hair, ducked him forthwith in Tower-Ditch,—a very Anglo-Saxon comment on his inconsistency. We should not have noticed these passages in Mr. Bartlett's Introduction, had he not, after eleven years' time to weigh them in, let them remain as they stood in his former edition, of 1848.
In other respects the volume before us greatly betters its forerunner. That contained many words which were rather vulgarisms than provincialisms, and more properly English than American. Almost all these Mr. Bartlett has left out in revising his book. Once or twice, however, he has retained as Americanisms phrases which are proverbial, such as "born in the woods to be scared of an owl," "to carry the foot in the hand," and "hallooing before you're out of the woods." But it will be easier to follow the alphabetical order in our short list ofadversariaand comments.
ALEWIFE. We doubt if Mr. Bartlett is right in deriving this from a supposed Indian wordaloof. At least, Hakluyt speaks of a fish called "old-wives"; and in some other old book of travels we have seen the name derived from the likeness of the fish, with its good, round belly, to the mistress of an alehouse.
BANK-BILL. Is not an Americanism. It is used by Swift, Pope, andFielding.
BOGUS. Mr. Bartlett quotes a derivation of this word from the name of a certainBorghese, said to have been a notorious counterfeiter of bank-notes. But is it not more probably a corruption ofbagasse, which, as applied to the pressed sugarcane, means simply something worthless? The word originally meant a worthless woman, whence our "baggage" in the same sense.
[Footnote A: This, perhaps, was to be expected; for he calls Dr. Latham'sEnglish Language"unquestionably the most valuable work on English philology and grammar—which has yet appeared," (p. xxx., note,) and refers to the first edition of 1841. If Mr. Bartlett must allude at all to Dr. Latham, (who is reckoned a great blunderer among English philologers,) he should at least have referred to the second edition of his work, in two volumes, 1855.]
CHAINED-LIGHTNING. More commonly chain-lightning, and certainly not aWestern phrase exclusively.
CHEBACCO-BOAT. Mr. Bartlett says, "This word is doubtless a corruption ofChedabucto, the name of a bay in Nova Scotia, from which vessels are fitted out for fishing." This is going a great way down East for what could be found nearer.Chebaccois (or was, a century since) the name of a part of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
TO FALL a tree Mr. Bartlett considers a corruption of tofell. But, as we have commonly heard the words used, tofellmeans merely to cut down, while to fall means to make it fall in a given direction.
TO GO UNDER. "To perish. An expression adopted from the figurative language of the Indians by the Western trappers and residents of the prairies." Not the first time that the Indians have had undue credit for poetry. The phrase is undoubtedly a translation of the Germanuntergehen(fig.), to perish.
HAT. "Our Northern women have almost discarded the wordbonnet, except insun-bonnet, and use the termhatinstead. A like fate has befallen the wordgown, for which both they and their Southern sisters commonly usefrockordress." We do not know where Mr. Bartlett draws his Northern line; but in Massachusetts we never heard the wordhatorfrockused in this sense. They are so used in England, andhatis certainly,frockprobably, nearer Anglo-Saxon thanbonnetandgown.
IMPROVE. Mr. Bartlett quotes Dr. Franklin as saying in 1789, "When I left New England in the year 1723, this word had never been used among us, as far as I know, but in the sense ofamelioratedormade better, except once in a very old book of Dr. Mather's, entitledRemarkable Providences." Dr. Increase Mather'sProvidenceswas published in 1684. In 1679 a synod assembled at Boston, and the result of its labors was published in the same year by John Foster, under the title,Necessity of a Reformation. On the sixth page we find, "Taverns being for the entertainment of strangers, which, if they wereimprovedto that end only," etc. Oddly enough, our copy of this tract has Dr. Mather's autograph on the title-page. But Mr. Bartlett should have referred to Richardson, who shows that the word had been in use long before with the same meaning.
To INHEAVEN. "A word invented by the Boston transcendentalists." And Mr. Bartlett quotes from Judd'sMargaret. Mr. Judd was a good scholar, and the word is legitimately compounded, likeensphereandimparadise; but he did not invent it. Dante uses the word:—
"Perfetta vita ed alto mertoincielaDonna piú su."
LADIES' TRESSES. "The popular name, in the Southern States, for an herb," etc. In the Northern States also. SometimesLadies' Traces.
LIEFER. "A colloquialism, also used in England." Excellent Anglo-Saxon, and used wherever English is spoken.
LOAFER. We think there can be no doubt that this word is German.Laufenin some parts of Germany is pronouncedlofen, and we once heard a German student say to his friend,Ich lauf'(lofe)hier bis du wiederkehrst: and he began accordingly to saunter up and down,—in short, toloafabout.
TO MULL. "To soften, to dispirit." Mr. Bartlett quotesMargaret,—"There has been a pretty considerablemullingoing on among the doctors." Butmullinhere means stirring, bustling in an underhand way, and is a metaphor derived frommulling wine.Mull, in this sense, is probably a corruption ofmell, from Old Fr.mesler, to mix.
TO BE NOWHERE (in the sense of failure) is not an Americanism, butTurf-Slang.
SALLY-LUN, a kind of cake, is English.
TO SAVE, meaning to kill game so as to get it, is not confined to theFar West, but is common to hunters in all parts of the country.
SHEW, forshowed. Mr. Bartlett calls this the "shibboleth of Bostonians." However this may be, it is simply an archaism, not a vulgarism.Show, likeblow, crow, grow,seems formerly to have had what is called a strong preterite.Shewis used by Lord Cromwell and Hector Boece.
SLASHES. "Swampy or wet lands overgrown with bushes. Southern andWestern." Used also in New York.
SPAN of horses is Dutch (High or Low).
TO WALK SPANISH; to "walk" a boy out of any place by the waistband of his trousers, or by any lower part easily prehensible. N.E. This is, perhaps, as old as Philip and Mary.
TO SPREAD ONE'S SELF is defined by Mr. Bartlett "to exert one's self." It means rather to exert one's self ostentatiously. It is a capital metaphor, derived, we fancy, from the turkey-cock or peacock,—like the Italianpavoneggiarsi. We find in theTatler"spreading her graces in assemblies." This last, however, may be a Gallicism, frométaler.
STRAW BAIL. "Worthless bail, bail given by 'men of straw.'" This is surely no Americanism, and we have seen its origin very differently explained, namely, that men willing for a fee to become bail walked in the neighborhood of the courts with straws stuck in their shoes,—though Mr. Bartlett's explanation is ingenious.
SUNFISH. Mr. Bartlett thinks this a corruption; but the resemblance of the fish, as seen in the water, to the ordinary portraits of the sun in almanacs and on tavern-signs seems to us enough to account for the name.
A few phrases occur to us that have escaped Mr. Bartlett.
A CARRY: portage.Passim.
CAT-NAP: a short doze. New England.
CHOWDER-HEAD: muddle-brain. New England.
COHEES (accent on the last syllable): term applied to the people of certain settlements in Western Pennsylvania, from their use of the archaic form,Quo' he.
DON' KNOW AS I KNOW: the nearest your true Yankee ever comes to acknowledging ignorance.
GANDER-PARTY: a social gathering of men only. New England.
LAP-TEA: where the guests are too many to sit at table. Massachusetts.
LAST OF PEA-TIME: day after fair.
LOSE-LAID (loose-laid): weaver's term, and probably English; means weak-willed. Massachusetts.
MOONGLADE: a beautiful word for the track of moonlight on the water.Massachusetts.
OFF-OX: an unmanageable fellow. New England.
OLD DRIVER: } euphemistic for theOLD SPLIT-FOOT: } Devil.
ONHITCH (unhitch): to pull trigger.
ROTE: sound of the surf before a storm. Used also in England. NewEngland.
SEEM: I can'tseemto see, for I can't see. She couldn'tseemto be suited, for couldn't be suited.
STATE-HOUSE. This seems an Americanism. Did we invent it, or borrow it from theStad-huys(town-hall) of New Amsterdam? As an instance of the tendency to uniformity in American usage, we notice that in Massachusetts what has always been theState-Houseis beginning to be called theCapitol. We are sorry for it.
STRIKE: } terms of the game of STRING: } nine-pins.
SWALE: a hollow. New England. English also; see Forby.
TORMENTED: euphemistic, as "not atormentedcent." New England.
We have gone through Mr. Bartlett's book with the attention which a work so well done deserves, and are thoroughly impressed with the amount of care and labor to which it bears witness. We have quarrelled with it wherever we could, because it cannot fail to become the standard authority in its department. Its value will increase from year to year. For instance, the Spanish words, in which it is especially rich, are doomed to undergo strange metamorphoses on Anglo-Saxon lips; for it is the instinct of the unlearned to naturalize words as fast as possible, and to compel them to homebred shapes and sounds. There is often an unwitting humor in these perversions,[A] and they are always interesting as showing that it is the nature of man to use words with understanding, however appearances might lead us to an opposite conclusion.
[Footnote A: We remember once hearing a man say of something, that it was written in a "very grand delinquent [grandiloquent] style,"—a phrase certainly not without modern application. We have heard also Angola-Saxons and Angular-Saxons,—the latter, at least, not an unhappy perversion.]
The least satisfactory part of Mr. Bartlett's book is the Appendix, in which he has got together a few proverbs and similes, which, it seems to us, do no kind of justice to the humor and invention of the people. Most of them have no characteristic at all, except coarseness. We hope there is nothing peculiarly American in such examples as these:—"Evil actions, like crushed rotten eggs, stink in the nostrils of all"; and "Vice is a skunk that smells awfully rank when stirred up by the pole of misfortune." These have, beside, an artificial air, and are quite too long-skirted for working proverbs, in which language always "takes off its coat to it," if we may use a proverbial phrase, left out by Mr. Bartlett. We confess, we looked for something racier and of a morepuckeryflavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the West,—like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my teabar-foot," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons are good,—but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket in a shirt" (ironical). Almost every county has some good die sinker in language, who mints phrases that pass into the currency of a whole neighborhood. We picked up two such the other day, both of the same coinage. The county-jail (the only stone building where all the dwellings were of wood) was described as "the house whose underpinning comes up to the eaves"; while the place unmentionable to ears polite was "where they don't rake up the fires at night." A man, speaking to us once of a very rocky clearing, said, "Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that farm"; and another, wishing to give us a notion of the thievishness common in a certain village, capped his climax thus:—"Dishonest! why, they have to take in their stone walls o' nights." Any one who has driven over a mountain-stream by one of those bridges made ofslabswill feel the force of a term we once heard applied to a parson so shaky in character that no dependence could be placed on him,—"A slab-bridged kind o' feller!" During some very cold weather, a few years ago, we picked a notable saying or two. "The fire don't seem to git no kind o'purchaseon the cold." "They say Cap'n M'Clure's gone through the Northwest Passage." "Has? Think likely, and left the door open, too!" Elder Knapp, the once noted itinerant preacher, had a kind of unwashed poetry in him. We heard him say once,—"Do you want to know when a Unitarian" (we think it was) "will get into heaven? When hell's froze over, and he can skate in!" We quote merely for illustration, and do not mean to compare the Elder with Taylor or South.
The element of exaggeration has often been remarked on as typical of American humor. In Dr. Petri's "Compact Handbook of Foreign Words,"[A] (from which Mr. Bartlett will be surprised to learn thatHoco-pocosis a nickname for the Whig party in the United States,) we are told that the wordhumbug"is commonly used for the exaggerations of the North-Americans." One would think the dream of Columbus half-fulfilled, and that Europe had found in the West the near way to Orientalism, at least of diction. But it seems to us that a great deal of what is set down as mere exaggeration is more fitly to be called intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms of the imaginative faculty in full health and strength, though producing, as yet, only the raw material.[B] By-and-by, perhaps, the world will see it worked up into poem and picture, and Europe, which will be hard-pushed for originality ere long, may thank us for a new sensation. The French continue to find Shakspeare exaggerated, because he treated English just as our folk do when they speak of "a steep price," or say that they "freeze to" a thing. The first postulate of an original literature is, that a people use their language as if they owned it. Even Burns contrived to write very poor English. Vulgarisms are often only poetry in the egg. The late Horace Mann, in one of his Addresses, commented at some length on the beauty of the French phrases'orienter, and called on his young hearers to practise it in life. There was not a Yankee in his audience whose problem had not always been to find out what was "about east" and shape his course accordingly. The Germans have a striking proverb;Was die Gans gedacht, das der Schwan vollbracht; What the goose but thought, that the swan fullbrought; or, to de-Saxonize it a little,paceMr. Bartlett, What the goose conceived, that the swan achieved;—and we cannot help thinking, that the life, invention, and vigor shown in our popular speech, and the freedom with which it is shaped to the need of those who wield it, are of the best omen for our having a swan at last.
[Footnote A:Gedrängtes Handbuch der Fremdwörter, etc., etc.,Leipzig, 1852.]
[Footnote B: Take, for instance, the "negro so black that charcoal made a chalk-mark on him," or the "shingle painted to look so like stone that it sank in water,"—itself overpersuaded by the skill of the painter. We overheard the following dialogue last winter. (Thermometer,—12°.) "Cold, this morning."—"That'sso. Hear what happened to Joe?"—"No, I didn't."—"Well, the doctors had ben givin' him one thing another with merc'ry in't, and he walked out down to the Post-Office and back, and when he come home he kind o' felt somethin' hard in his boots. Come to pull 'em off, they found a lump o' quicksilver in both on 'em."—"Sho!"—"Fact; it had shrunk clean down through him with the cold." This rapid power of dramatizing a dry fact, of putting it into flesh and blood, and the instantaneous conception of Joe as a human thermometer, seem to us more like the poetical faculty than anything else. It is, at any rate, humor, and not mere quickness of wit,—the deeper, and not the shallower quality. Humor tends always to overplus of expression; wit is mathematically precise. Captain Basil Hall denied that our people had humor; but did he possess it himself? for, if not, he would never find it. Did he always feel the point of what was said to himself? We doubt, because we happen to know a chance he once had given him in vain. The Captain was walking up and down thepiazzaof a country tavern while the couch changed horses. A thunderstorm was going on, and, with that pleasant European air of indirect self-compliment in condescending to American merit, which is so conciliating, he said to a countryman lounging near, "Pretty heavy thunder, you have here." The other, who had taken his measure at a glance, drawled gravely, "Waal, wedu, considerin' the number of inhabitants."]
Even persons not otherwise interested in the study of provincialisms will find Mr. Bartlett's book an entertaining one. The passages he quotes in illustration are sometimes strangely comic. Here is one: "To SAVE. To make sure, i.e., to kill game, or an enemy, whether man or beast.To getconveys the same meaning…. The notorious Judge W—— of Texas … once said in a speech at a barbecue, (after his political opponent had been apologizing for taking a man's life in a duel,)—
"'The gentleman need not make such a fuss aboutgettingsuch a rascal; everybody knows that I have shot three, and two of them Isaved.'"
We have but one fault to find with Mr. Bartlett's Dictionary, and that it shares with all other provincial glossaries. No accents are given. No stranger could tell, for example, whetherhacmatackshould be pronounced hac'matack, hacma'tack, or hacmatack'. The value of Mr. Wright's otherwise excellent dictionary is very much impaired by this neglect. Ignorance of the pronunciation enhances tenfold the difficulty of tracing analogies or detecting corruptions. The title of Mr. Coleridge's volume (the second on our list) is enough to give scholars a notion of its worth. It is the first instalment of the proposed comprehensive English Dictionary of the Philological Society, a work which, when finished, will be beyond measure precious to all students of their mother-tongue. At the end of the volume will be found the Plan of the Society, with minute directions for all those who wish to give their help. Cooperation on this side the water will be gladly welcomed.
Of Dean Trench's two volumes, one is new, and the other a revised edition. No one has done more than he to popularize the study of words, which is only another name for the study of thought. His new book has the same agreeable qualities which marked its forerunners, maintaining an easy conversational level of scholarly gossip and reflection, the middle ground between learning and information for the million. Without great philological attainments, and without any pretence of such, he gives the results of much good reading.
Mr. Craik's book is a compact and handy manual.
The SLANG Dictionaries are both as ill-done as possible, and the author of the smaller one deserves to be put under the pump for taking the name of the illustrious Ducange, one of those megatheria of erudition and industry that we should look on as an extinct species, but for such men as the brothers Grimm. The larger book has the merit of including a bibliography of the subject, for which the author deserves our thanks, though in other respects showing no least qualification for the task he has undertaken. We trust there are not many "London Antiquaries" so ignorant as he. One curious fact we glean from his volume, namely, the currency among the London populace of certain Italian words, chiefly for the smaller pieces of money. What a strident invasion of organ-grinders does this seem to indicate! The author gives them thus: "Oney saltec, a penny; Dooe saltee, twopence; Tray saltee, threepence," etc., and adds, "These numerals, as will be seen, are of mongrel origin,—the French, perhaps, predominating."! He must be the gentleman who, during the Exhibition of 1851, wrote on his door, "No French spoken here."Dooe salteeandtray salteediffer little but in spelling from their Italian originals,due soldiandtre soldi. On another page we findmolto cattivotransmogrified into "multee kertever, very had." Very bad, indeed! For one more good thing beside the Bibliography, we are indebted to the "London Antiquary." In his Introduction he has reprinted the earliest list ofcantwords in the language, that made by Thomas Harman in Elizabeth's time. We wish we could only feel sure of the accuracy of the reprint. In this list we find already the adjectiverummeaninggood, fine,—a word that has crept into general use among the lower classes in London, without ever gaining promotion. The fate of new words in this respect is curious. Often, if they are convenient, or have knack of lodging easily in the memory, they work slowly upward. The Scotch wordflunkyis a case in point. Our first knowledge of it in print is from Fergusson's Poems. Burns advertised it more widely, and Carlyle seems fairly to have transplanted it into the English of the day. As we believe its origin is still obscure, we venture on a guess at it. French allies brought some words into Scotland that have rooted themselves, like the Edinburghgardyloo.Flunkyis defined in Fergusson's glossary as "a better kind of servant." This is an exact definition of the Scotchhench-man, the most probable original of which ishaunch-manor body-guard. Turn haunch-man into French and you getflanquier; corrupt it back into Scotch and you haveflunky. Whatever liberties we take with French words, the Gauls have their revenge when they take possession of an English one. We once saw an Avis of the police in Paris, regulatingles chiens et les boule dogues, dogs and bull-dogs.
Vocabularies of vulgarisms are of interest for the archaisms both of language and pronunciation which we find in them. The dictionaries saycoverlet, as if the word were a diminutive; the rustic persists in the terminationlid, which points to the Frenchlit, bed. On the other hand, he still sayshankercher, having been taught so by his betters, though they have taken up the finalfagain. Sewel, in the Introduction to his Dutch Dictionary, 1691, giveshenketsjer, and Voltaire, forty years later,hankercher, as the received pronunciation. Sewel tells us also that the significantlwas still sounded inwouldandshould, as it still is by the peasantry in many parts of England.
Mr. Swinton's book, the last on our list, is an entertaining one, and gives proof of thought, though sometimes smothered in fine writing. It is written altogether too loosely for a work on philology, one of the exactest of sciences. But we have a graver fault to find with Mr. Swinton, and that is for his neglect to give credit where he is indebted. He seems even desirous to conceal his obligations. The general acknowledgment of his Preface is by no means enough, where the debt is so large. The great merit of Dr. Richardson's Dictionary being the number of illustrative passages he has brought together, it is hardly fair in Mr. Swinton so often to make a show of learning with what he has got at second hand from the lexicographer. Dr. Trench could also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says thatpaganusmeans village, who makesoculathe plural ofoculus, and who supposes thatin pettomeansin little, is not qualified to settle Dr. Webster's claims as a philologer, much less to treat him with contempt. The first two blunders we have cited may be slips of the pen or the press, but this cannot be true of the many wrong etymologies into which Mr. Swinton has fallen. We hope that in another edition he will correct these faults, for he shows a power to appreciate ideas which is worth more than mere scholarship, vastly more than the reputation of it among the unscholarly.
A History and Description of New England, General and Local.By A. J.COOLIDGE and J. B. MANSFIELD. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings. InTwo Volumes. Vol. I. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Boston: AustinJ. Coolidge, 1859. pp. xxv., 1023.
This is a book of great labor, being nothing less in plan than a condensed town-history of New England. In spite of all efforts to the contrary, one is forced to admit that there is very little poetry in American history. It is a record of advances in material prosperity, and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are theIdeawhich the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales," for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall be convinced that the American Dryasdust suffers from poverty of material. There is no need to remind us of Hawthorne; but he is such a genius as is rare everywhere, and could conjure poetry out of a country meeting-house.
In books of this kind we see evidence of what is called the "enterprise" of our people on every page,—one almost hears the hum of the factory-wheels, as he reads,—but that is all. It is not to be wondered at that foreigners fail to find our country interesting, and that the only good book of American travels is that of De Tocqueville, who deals chiefly with abstract ideas. It is possible to conceive minds so constituted that they may reach before long the end of their interest in the number of shoes, yards of cotton, and the like, which we produce in a year. The only immortal Greek shoemaker is he who had the good luck to be snubbed by Apelles, and Penelope is the only manufacturer in antiquity whose name has come down to us.
One thing in the narrative part of this volume is striking,—the continual recurrence of massacre by the French and Indians. This is something to be borne in mind always by those who would understand the politics of our New England ancestors. We confess that we were surprised, the other day, to see a journal so able and generally so philosophical as the London "Saturday Review" joining in the outcry about the treatment of the Acadians. If our forefathers were ever wise and foreseeing, if they ever showed a capacity for large political views, it is proved by their early perception that the first question to be settled on this continent was, whether its destiny should be shaped by English or Keltic, by Romish or Protestant ideas. By what means they attempted to realize their thought is quite another question. Great events are not settled by sentimentalists, nor history written in milk-and-water. Uninteresting in many ways the Puritans doubtless were, but not in the leastspoony.
The volume before us contains a vast amount of matter and fulfils honestly what it promises. It tells all that is to be told in the way of fact and statistics. The first settlers, the clergymen, the enterprising citizens, the men of mark,—all their names and dates are to be found here. Of the literary execution of the book we cannot speak highly. The style is of the worst. If a meeting-house is spoken of, it is a "church edifice"; if the Indians set a house on fire, they "apply the torch"; if a man takes to drink, he is seduced by "the intoxicating cup"; even mountains are "located." On page 68, we read that "the pent-up rage that had long heaved the savage bosom, and which had only beensmouldering under the pacific policy of Shurt, now knew no bounds, and burst forth like the fiery torrent of the volcano"; on the same page, "the impending doom which, like a storm-cloud in the heavens, had overhung with its sable drapery the settlements along the coast,and Pemaquid in particular." Of a certain tavern we are told that the daughters of the landlord were "genteel, sprightly, intelligent young ladies, ambitious of display and of setting a rich and elegant table." This is no doubt true, but surely History should sift her tacts with a coarser sieve.
In spite of these faults, the book is one which all New Englanders will find interesting, and we hope that in their second volume the authors will balance their commendable profusion of industry with a corresponding economy of fine writing.
An Oration, delivered before the Municipal Authorities of the City of Boston, July4, 1850. By GEORGE SUMNER, etc, etc, Boston. 1859. pp. 125.
The opposition in the Common Council to the order (usual on such occasions in Boston) to print the oration of Mr. Sumner, and the series of assaults it has encountered front the administration press, have given it a considerable, though secondary, importance. Intrinsically a performance of great merit, those on whom the weight of his arguments and learning fell disclosed their sense of its power by the anger of their debate and their efforts to repel it.
Its value, as containing a fresh and instructive contribution to the knowledge of our Revolutionary history, derived from original sources of inquiry, explored by Mr. Sumner in person, would alone have rescued from neglect any ordinary Fourth-of-July oration.
The services and aids of Spain, material and moral, pecuniary and diplomatic, to the American Revolutionary cause,—the introduction, through the fortunes of Captain John Lee of Marblehead, of the American question into the policy and polities of Spain,—the effect of the arrival of our National Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, on the fate of that gallant New England cruiser, then detained as a pirate, for his heroic exploits under our infant and unknown flag,—the incidents of vast and varied labor and accomplishment in our behalf, connected with the name and administration of the eminent Spanish minister and statesman, Florida Blanca,—the weaving and spreading out of that network of influences and circumstances, in the toils of which France and Spain entangled Great Britain, until she found herself confronted by much of the physical and all the moral power of the Continent, and from which all extrication was made hopeless, until the American Colonies should be free,—the origin of "the armed neutrality," and the shock it gave to the naval power of England, in the very crisis of the hopes of American liberty,—are presented in a narrative, clear, condensed, and original.
From the aspect of peace and freedom in which our country so happily reposes, going on prospering and increasing, "by confidence in democratic principles, by faith in the people, and by the spirit of mutual forbearance and charity," the orator turns to that Europe to which our fathers there looked for succor, now "echoing to the clang of arms, and hostile legions arrayed for combat."
A tribute to Italy, for the gifts, poured out from her treasures of art, science, medical skill, and political knowledge, of literature and philosophy, to all the uses and adornments of human life, introduces a reference to the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages, which are shown to have been based on these great principles:—That all authority over the people emanates from the people,—should return to them at stated intervals,—and that its holders should be accountable to the people for its use. "To those Republics," it is added, "we also owe the practical demonstration of the great truth, that no state can long prosper or exist where intelligent labor is not held in honor, and that labor cannot be honorable where it is not free."
Mr. Sumner's defence of democratic republican ideas,—of the fitness of the European peoples for self-government,—his repulse of those unbelieving theorists who would consign the French and the Italians to the eternal doom of oppression,—are manly, powerful, and unanswerable. His hearty love of genuine democratic principles, as taught by the old republican school of statesmen and philosophers, and his zealous pride of country, which always made him one of the most intensely American, in thought, word, and deed, of all the Americans who have ever sojourned in the Old World, shine forth from every page of the Oration. And in the honest ardor of his defence of the natural and political rights of man, as they were taught by Turgot, by Montesquieu, by Jefferson, not content with declamation or rhetoric, he ploughs deep into the reasoning by which they were demonstrated or defended, and ranges wide over the fields of learning by which they were illustrated. Careful for nothing but for the truth itself, he refutes the errors of a French writer who had charged practical ingratitude on the part of America towards de Beaumarchais, the agent of the first benefactions of France to these Colonies, and arraigns and exposes the historical mistakes of Lord Brougham and of President Fillmore, unfavorable to Republican France and to Continental liberty.
The crimes of Austria are shown to have been made possible by the moral support Austria has received from the government of England. The fruits of the reverses suffered by Hungary, and by other nationalities struggling for independence and popular liberty, are exhibited in the sacrifices since endured by England in the war in the Crimea, and in the embarrassments of the present hour.
Among our own duties and responsibilities to the great and world-wide cause of liberty,—discussed thus far in its relations to Europe,—Mr. Sumner proceeds to present the grand duty we owe, not less to ourselves than to Europe, of giving to the struggling nations an example of government true to the memories of our National Anniversary, and to the fundamental ideas of civil freedom "implied in an independent, but rigidly responsible judiciary, and a complete separation of the legislative and judicial functions."
From Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Marshall, and Story,—to say nothing of English and French jurists,—Mr. Sumner brings authority to define and illustrate the true place of the judicial office in the political system of a free government. And here, fidelity to those principles of liberty he had explained and defended, fidelity to the "good old cause" itself, at home and in the grand forum of the nations, demanded and received the frank avowal, that "a recent scene in the Supreme Court of the United States has shown that Jefferson was no false prophet, and has furnished at the same time a serious warning to all who prefer a government based upon law to either despotism or anarchy."
The clear and sharp, merciless and logical veracity with which he discriminates between the solemn judgment of a tribunal and a stump speech from the bench,—the startling narration of decisions and statutes, practice and precedent, condensed into a few of the closing pages of the Oration, with which the discussion read by Chief Justice Taney in the famous case of Dred Scott is confronted and exposed,—are among the greater merits of this elaborate and able discourse. It must have required of one not in the arena of political strife, who for a large part of his manhood has occupied himself abroad in the studies of an intelligent scholar and a patriotic American, somewhat of self-denial, to throw away the certainty of almost universal cheers for his performance, by incurring the displeasure of some of his audience and many of his countrymen.
It was not, however, in the interest of any opinion of African slavery that the case of Scott was here referred to. It was in the interest of republican liberty everywhere, endangered by all departures in the model republic of the world from fundamental principles of good government, and all the more perilled in proportion to the station, quality, and character of the active offender.
And Mr. Sumner was right. The truth of history, the law of this land, and of all lands where there is any law which marks a boundary between legal right and despotic usurpation, unite to denounce, and will forever condemn, the judicial magistrate whose great name is tarnished and whose "great office" is degraded by this politicalpronunciamento, uttered from the loftiest judicial place in America.
Stripped of verbiage and technicalities, the case is within the humblest comprehension. The chief justice and a majority of his associates held that Dred Scott, who sued his master for his freedom in the Federal court, had been already legally declared to be the slave of that same master by the highest court of the State of Missouri, in which State Scott resided at the time. They held that this decision of the Missouri court was binding on all other tribunals; and that the Federal court had no authority to reverse it, even if wrong.
Themeritsof the cause then before the court were thus conclusively disposed of, whether the decision be regarded as bearing on the main issue between the parties, or on the plea in abatement filed by the defendant, avowing that Scott was not acitizenof Missouri,—an averment, if true, fatal to his standing in the Federal court,—since its jurisdiction of the cause depended on the citizenship of the litigants. In a word, if he was aslave, he was nocitizen, If he was the slave of Sanford, his doom was fixed, his dream of rights dissolved. If the decision of the Missouri court was finally binding, the functions of the Federal tribunal were at an end.
What, then, was the pertinency of going on to argue the effect of the Ordinance of 1787 over Scott while a resident in Illinois, or of the Missouri Compromise on him during his residence in Wisconsin, or the effect of his color, race, or ancestral disabilities upon a cause controlled finally and beyond appeal by the authority of a decision already made and recorded?
Mr. Buchanan made hot haste to use thispronunciamentoof his chief justice, issued only a few hours after his inauguration as President, and withheld until after the election of 1856 had taken place. He proclaimed—on its authority as a judicial exposition of a point of constitutional law—the existence of slavery in the Territory of Kansas. And he endeavored to make it efficient and powerful by practical application in the administration of the government of the Territory, and by interpolating these bastard dogmas, dropped from the Federal bench, into the creed of the political party of which he was the official chief.
Thesedictaof Mr. Chief Justice Taney made Dred Scott neither more nor less aslave, neither more nor less acitizen, than he had been without their utterance. But they aided the purpose of subjugating Kansas, of opening all American territory to slavery, of Africanizing the continent by reopening the slave-trade, of breaking down barriers which State legislation has interposed against the introduction of slaves, and of putting the propagandists of slavery in full possession of every power.
We gladly record our sense of the skill, learning, and intrepidity with which Mr. Sumner fulfilled his task of presenting, defining, and defending, within the brief limits of a single oration, the cause of Liberty,—Liberty,—American, European, universal.
* * * * *
Out of the Depths.The Story of a Woman's Life. London: Macmillan & Co. 8vo. pp. 381.
The author of this book is like an awkward angler, who fails to take a trout himself, and spoils the water for the more skilful man who may follow him. Its object is the illustration of that subject which has been called "the greatest of our social evils," and which, in its present aspect, is certainly one of the saddest that the statesman or the moralist is called upon to contemplate, and yet one the duration of which seems to be inevitably coexistent with every form of civilized society yet known to the world. The author has sought his end by means of a fictitious autobiography. This was of course. No unusual faculty in the selection of methods was necessary to the choice; for only in the autobiographical form could the inner life of a courtesan be so revealed as to present a truthful and living picture of her soul's experience. A fine novel of this kind would be a great book, and one productive of much good; not, indeed, directly to the wretched class that would furnish studies for it, but to society at large, and so indirectly to the class in question, by providing a subject of this kind which could be studied and talked about. Dumasfils' "Dame aux Camelias" is a great melodramatic story; but it is so exceptional in its incidents and episodical in its character, that its heroine is quite worthless as a specimen for examination and analysis; and it is, beside, so very French as to be almost valueless in this regard, for that reason alone. What it would be well to have written is the story of an abandoned woman, told simply and without any reserve, except that of decency, and purely from a woman's point of view. But, except by a woman, and at the cost of the experience to be recounted, this is manifestly possible only to genius. The author of "Out of the Depths" has not attained thedesideratum; but has yet approached so near it, that we fear the right man, or, possibly, woman, may be deterred from the attempt to do better. If so, there is a good subject—good for the making of a grand psychological, physiological, and dramatic study—lost.
The subject of this professed autobiography, Mary Smith, is the daughter of a gardener on a large English estate. Her family is much noticed and favored by the ladies of the mansion, and she, who is handsome and intellectual, soon acquires tastes and an education above her position; and as she is vain and selfish and of a voluptuous temperament, the consequence seems inevitable. Her first fault, however, is committed with her betrothed husband, a young gentleman, destined for the Church, by whose sudden death, at a time when his life was more than ever essential to her happiness, she is left an outcast, a creature to be spurned from the door of those upon whose tender care Nature and themselves had given her unextinguishable claims. She finds shelter and kind treatment with two girls who belong, though not ostensibly, to the class into which she is about to fall, and soon she appears as the mistress of a foolish young nobleman, for whom she has not the least affection. At last he wearies of and parts with her, and she finds a second companion and protector in an eminent barrister, who takes pleasure in cultivating her literary tastes. Her unfaithfulness to him results in a separation, and she passes into the hands of a third keeper, who abandons her on occasion of his approaching marriage. Infuriated at his desertion, she intrudes upon him at a social party at his private chambers, and behaves so outrageously that she is handed over to the police, and her name appears in public as that of an infamous and disorderly woman. From this point she rapidly descends to the lowest rank of her unfortunate class. On her way, a strong hand is put out to save her. It is that of a gigantic young clergyman, who allows her to think that she has decoyed him to her room, but who really goes there to endeavor to turn her from her course of life. She scorns his exhortations, and attempts to browbeat him; but she finds him ready for a row upon the spot. He offers to fight her crowd of bullies singlehanded, and when she locks the door upon him, twists the lock off, hasp and all, with a turn of his wrist. Although they part,—he none the worse, she none the better, for the interview,—it is not without fruits; for he leaves her his address, and when, after being reduced to the lowest depths of degradation and brought to the last endurable pinch of suffering, she determines, at the death-bed of a repentant companion, to reform at any cost, and does set her face upward, and is beaten back and trodden under foot by the righteously uncharitable of her own sex, she thinks of her big clergyman, seeks him out, and by his instrumentality is taken into the country, and made the mistress of a school in his parish. Here the friends of her youth find her, forgive her, and cherish her; and she receives a proposal of marriage from an estimable and wealthy farmer, who persists in his suit, even after she has told him of her former life, and after the small-pox, caught on a ministration of mercy, has harrowed all the beauty from her face. But rapid consumption supervenes, and relieves the author from the embarrassing position into which he had brought himself.
This is all the story that Mary Smith has to tell; and it will be seen, that, so far as the incidents are concerned, it is commonplace enough. It is not distinguished by one novel incident, or one fresh character, except, perhaps, the muscular divine. Even in the grouping and narration of its old incidents it exhibits no dramatic power, and little skill of characterization in the portraiture of its personages. And not only does a matter-of-fact air pervade the narrative, but the tale is told with such reticence of fact as well as of feeling, that it reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he took up the book of what it is that makes the horror of such existence; all of which might have been imparted without any violation of the decorum proper to such a book, and which, therefore, should not have been withheld. The book, too, is much too goody-goody. There is too much preaching throughout it, and in certain parts a suddenness in the kneeling down to pray that is quite startling. This stupid sort of goodness helps much to defeat the purpose of the work. Even the strong minister, although his is not the old-fashioned way, seems to have more beef on his bones than brains in his head, or he would not answer to a desperate exclamation of Mary Smith,—"Don't say that. God only knows what is best for us all; even you, and all like you, may begin to live for the good of society, without being its bane." This is very true,—as true as Justice Shallow's original observation, that "we must all die." But the idea of attempting to impress a degraded woman of the town by telling her that she, and all like her, might be brought to livefor the good of society!
But in spite of these faults, the book has one great merit, which is not too common; it seems to be the truthful story of a real life. This impression is partly the result of a peculiarity of style which is very difficult to express otherwise than by saying that the use of language seems to indicate that the writer is of the condition of life in which Mary Smith professes to have been born, and has acquired a knowledge of language and literature in the manner in which she relates that she acquired hers. There is no vulgarity, but a certain air of constrained propriety, and an absence of any elegance, or grace, or indications of a slow and unconsciously acquired acquaintance with the phraseology of cultivated society. If this be really assumed, the author has exhibited a delicate refinement in the art of writing not surpassed in any work of imagination known to us. Another ground for the seeming actuality of the story, to those who have any knowledge of the class to which its heroine belongs, is the cause to which she attributes her fall. This was not seduction; for she confesses, what hardly one in a thousand of her sisters in shame will fail to confess, if they speak the truth, that she was not seduced;—and neither was it poverty; for her father was well-to-do, and she the petted attendant, almost the friend, of a young lady of wealth and station;—but it was her vanity and her unrestrained passion. She is represented, in the first place, as regarding a good match, a rich husband, as the great object of life; and to such a woman chastity is not a sentiment, but a dictate of prudence; just as to a man whose great purpose is the getting of money, honesty is but the best policy. After she has met the man who brings her fate with him, (it might as well have been any other of his class,) she writes,—"The one great pleasing and wretched hope of my mind was that I should see him again; for it is so pleasant to believe that any man in a higher station should take an interest in me." And again she speaks of "exultation at the prospect which opened before me of being raised out of the station in life from which I sprang by birth"; and again, of her "desire of being a lady." This vanity it is, this desire to dress and live like the women above them, and have intercourse with the men above them, which leads the greater number of our fallen women to their ruin, or, rather, sends them to it with their eyes open; and for the rest, when Mary Smith, living in her own fine house, the petted mistress of the wealthy Mr. Plowden, was unfaithful to him, it was not for love of fine clothes or fine society. It is not long since our whole country was shocked by the dire results of a similar abandonment to vanity and wantonness, about which the usual amount of commonplace and cant was uttered. It is time that the very truth was told about this matter, in sad earnestness and singleness of purpose. We hoped to find the whole truth in "Out of the Depths"; but, finding only a part of it, we can greet it only with a partial welcome.
Reply to the "Statement of the Trustees" of the Dudley Observatory.By BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD, JR. Albany: Printed by Charles Van Benthuysen. 1859. 8vo. pp. 366.
The question between Dr. Gould and the Trustees of the Albany Observatory was not one of merely private or passing interest. It concerned not only all men of science, but all men of honor. It concerned all who like pluck, and who, in a quarrel, instinctively take sides with one against many. It was of interest to men of science, because the question was between show and reality, between newspaper notoriety and the quiet advancement of real and enduring knowledge. It concerned men of honor, because it was of some consequence to know whether public sentiment in America would justify, nay, tolerate even, the printing of confidential letters, and not only the printing, but the garbling of them to suit the ends of personal spite. It concerned lovers of fair-play, because it was to be settled whether it is right to accuse a man of peculation whom you wish to convict of disagreeable manners.
Dr. Gould's pamphlet is a thorough vindication of himself. It is so not only as to graver charges, but incidentally, by its perfect quietness of tone, it answers the accusation of bad temper. The hitting is none the less severe that it is done with scientific precision, and the astronomer shows his ability to make his antagonists "see stars" in a less comfortable way than through a telescope. There is a grim humor, too, as well as dignity, in the Cool way in which Dr. Gould recapitulates all the charges made against him,—especially where he condenses them in the Index. Better pamphlet-fighting has not been seen since Bentley. The hardship of the matter is, that people are commonly more ready to believe slander than to trouble themselves with reading a refutation of it. It gave us particular satisfaction to see that the American Association for the Advancement of Science had shown its sense of the merits of the quarrel by electing Dr. Gould vice-president of their body.
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Almost a Heroine. By the Author of "Charles Auchester," "Counterparts," etc., etc. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. 399. $1.00.
Life in Tuscany. By Mabel Shaman Crawford. From the London Edition. NewYork. Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. 339. $1.00.
Germaine. By Edmond About. Boston. J. E. Tilton & Co. 12mo. pp. 341. $1.00.
The Puritans; or, the Church, Court, and Parliament of England, during the Reigns of Edward Sixth and Queen Elizabeth. By Samuel Hopkins. 3 vols. Vol. I. Boston. Gould & Lincoln. 8vo. pp. 549. $2.50.
The New American Cyclopaedia; a Popular Dictionary of GeneralKnowledge. Edited by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana. Volume VII.Edward—Fueros. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 786. $3.00.
The Poetical Works of Winthrop Mackworth Praed. New and enlargedEdition. 2 vols. New York. Redfield. 12mo. pp. 310, 304. $2.00.