198 HARD WORDS. 



the animi umbroe — shadows of the mind; deriving so many of our 

 words from the ancients may, in some manner, account for that re- 

 publican sternness of mind with which the English seem to be pos- 

 sessed ; but, leaving the examination of moral similitude, I shall 

 merely touch on the resemblance between us and the Pythia, 

 whom we find were systematic cheats cunningly reposing on the 

 credulity of a superstitious people rather than expose their prophe- 

 cies to too strict an examination. I know not from what particu- 

 lar cause it is that the same obscurity occurs with us of modern 

 times, not in our religious teachings, but in our most ordinary con- 

 versation. I can understand the merit of circumvention when ne- 

 cessary ; the counsellor who perplexes in the extreme, may be par- 

 doned — it is his vocation ; the shopkeeper may overreach you — it is 

 his interest ; sophistry may become a virtue, and cunning an ac- 

 complishment ; but why, in the name of common sense, our youth 

 should, at all times, exercise the same deception of speech, is to me 

 a matter of surprise. Is it that their thoughts are so misbegotten 

 that they are not worthy the dressing ? or is it the policy of the 

 courtier — qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare vel vivere — compels 

 them to practise cunning by a necessity ? Being in company with 

 several persons of good breeding and respectability, where the sub- 

 jects of politics, poetry, and religion, succeeded each other, but by 

 what connection I know not, I was both surprised and hurt to 

 hear the awful mysteries of ouy faith commented on in the same cant- 

 ing, frivolous style as politics, while poetry drew forth no higher 

 expressions than we might hear in Smithfield or on 'Change : there 

 was no warmth of feeling, no power of illustration, and yet, judg- 

 ing from the bright, quickening eyes of two or three of the party, 

 I could not but suspect and hope that there was a deep under-run- 

 ning current of poetic feeling, but which, with infinite zeal, they 

 kept down, and that the fire of the muses and the fire of the altar 

 equally burned in their bosoms, though extinguished by their weak 

 and deadening tones. Yet this was not the only peculiarity of their 

 conversation ; their ideas, though seemingly good, arrayed in a 

 congestion of vile monosyllabic words, and slurred out with the 

 most trifling indifference, brought them into such confusion and dis- 

 proportion that I was often puzzled to discover any meaning at all. 



" Sometimes to sense, sometimes to nonsense, leaning, 

 But always blundering round about their meaning." 



Though an old man, and — kind reader, excuse me — not altoge 



