340 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 128, 



may seem, the acute mind of Coleridge has seized, 

 and analysed, and exhibited in its legitimate deve- 

 lopment. Whether the propensity, thus delicately 

 described, be really innocent in itself, or whether 

 it be only the TraptKjSamc, or excess, which the poet 

 held to be the guilty state, it is hardly worth while 

 stopping to inquire ; still we cannot avoid his own 

 startling suggestion, 



" What, if in a world of sin 

 (O sorrow and shame should this be true !) 

 Such giddiness of heart and brain " 



springs generally from some evil source, implies 

 the existence of some evil principle. Familiar as 

 this habit, this instance of " giddiness of heart and 

 brain," is to most of us, I am not aware that it has 

 ever been expressed in poetry, or even in prose, 

 by any other writer ; if so, this passage is a rarity, 

 similar to those four stanzas in Gray's Elegy, be- 

 ginning, " Yet e'en these bones," &c., of which Dr. 

 Johnson says, " they are to me original ; I have 

 never seen the notions in any other place ; yet he 

 that reads them here persuades himself that he has 

 always I'elt them." 



The author then endeavours to offer some ex- 

 planation of this phenomenon, and carries out the 

 germ of ill to its full extent, as exemplified in Sir 

 Leoline : 



" Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together 



Thoughts so all unlike each other ; 



To mutter and mock a broken charm, 



To dally with wrong that does no harm ; 



Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty, 



jit each wild word to feel within 



A sweet recoil of love and pity." 



It appears to me that the third line in this pas- 

 sage, from its being introduced too early (if I may 

 venture to say so), on this account unnecessarily 

 increases the difficulty ; it occurs before the idea 

 has been sufficiently developed ; while it belongs 

 rather to the result of this evil leaven than to the 

 explanation of it, with which the poet is here en- 

 gaged. The " charm" to which he alludes is, of 

 course, the tie that binds us to the object of affec- 

 tion, and which forbids us to speak any but words 

 of love and tenderness. 



The poet, then, from the aspect of this strange 

 anomaly, as exemplified in Sir Leoline, is forced to 

 the following conclusion : 



" And what, if in a world of sin 



(O sorrow and shame should this be true !) 



Such giddiness of heart and brain 



Comes seldom save from rage and pain, 



So talks as it's most used to do." 



If we turn now to the last two paragraphs of the 

 poem, we find all this illustrated ; in these two 

 paragraphs the poet has 



" Forced together 

 Thoughts so all unlike each other." 



In the former are enumerated all those memorials 



which could move the Baron to " love and pity ;" 

 in the latter we are told of the " rage and pain " of 

 his heart ; and on this strange union the poet soli- 

 loquises in the conclusion. 



A full discussion of this subject would be perhaps 

 unsuited to the pages of " N. & Q. ;" for, various 

 as are the subjects to which they are open, ethics 

 can hardly be reckoned one of them. I will con- 

 clude, therefore, with the following suggestion, 

 viz. that the delicacy, the acuteness, and the truth 

 evinced in this last scene of Christabel and its 

 conclusion, tell of a deeper mind than has, perhaps, 

 fallen to the lot of any English poet since the days 

 of William Shakspeare. H. C. K. 



Rectory, Hereford. 



CONVEBTIBIUTY OF THE WORDS " GKIN AND 

 '■'■ GIN." 



Will some more learned readers than your pre- 

 sent querist be so good as to tell us how it came 

 to pass that the word grin became changed in our 

 modern Bibles for gin (sometimes spelled ginn), 

 with which it would seem there can be no cogna- 

 tion ? In the sense of a trap or snare grin occurs 

 in Job xviii. 9., Ps. cxl. 5., and Ps. cxli. 9., in two 

 Bibles which I have, viz., one " printed at London 

 by Robert Barker, printer to the King's most 

 excellent Majestic, 1640," and the other " printed 

 by John Hayes, printer to the University of Cam- 

 bridge, 1677." 



In Cruden's Concordance, 1737, 1761, and 1769, 

 it is given as grin in these instances ; neither in 

 the modern editions of that valuable book have 

 they noticed the word gin as now used in the said 

 three texts which would indicate that it is only 

 within some eighty years, at any rate, that the 

 change was adopted by the king's printer, and 

 Oxford and Cambridge. Singularly enough, in 

 these old editions of 1640 and 1677, while grin is 

 used in Job and Psalms, gin is given in the side- 

 note of Job xl. 24., in the text of Isa. viii. 14., and 

 Amos iii. 5. 



Now to grin (from the Saxon spmian) means, 

 according to philologists, to show the teeth set 

 together ; the act of closing the teeth ; so that 

 we may suppose an allusion to the barbarous in- 

 strument called a man-trap, unless the idea is 

 negatived by the side- note Job xl. 24., on the 

 impossibility of boring Behemoth's nose with a 

 gin, which would hardly be the word adopted to 

 convey the idea of boring; an awl or gimlet 

 better suiting the conditions of the case. Some 

 commentators read ring — this may be illustrated 

 by the ring we see even now frequently in the 

 noses of our bulls. Be this as it may, the reason- 

 able conjecture is, that the same word, conveying 

 the same meaning, is appropriate in all the six 

 places quoted. 



