200 HARD WORDS. 



Shakspeare, whose acquirements must have been very limited, 

 was, notwithstanding, a profound English linguist. What a just 



and thumb : give it breath with your mouth and it will discourse most elo- 

 quentmusic : look you, these are the stops.' — ' But these cannot I command to 



any utterance of harmony ; I have not the skill,' replies Guildenstern It is a 



small thing, the fiddle is a genuine Cremona and the warranted workmanship 

 of Straduarius ; every hand that draws a bow across it will produce every 

 note unlike every other performer according to his skill in fingering, and 

 the ' music in his soul' — from the harsh scraping of some blind crowder in 

 the streets to the tones of anguish or extacy which Paganini, with touches 

 like the first beams of sunlight on the statue of Memnon, elicits from the 

 strings ; or extorts when he strikes and they shriek as though he were putting 

 live sufferers to the sword."* — What the pipe and the viol are to the min- 

 strel, language is to the poet. With the thousand varied tones which the 

 '* great masters of the art" have scattered with profusion before us — either 

 in the sweet Eden of verse or the wide universe of prose — there are thou- 

 sands of modulations yet unproduced. What great master shall next bring 

 a few more of them forth with equal conspicuity. But why should a pri- 

 vilege belong to an individual which is accessible to every one who can and 

 will learn to appreciate its value. What is worth doing is worth doing well. 

 Language is at once the rule of gradation in society, and which asserts its 

 claim to equality ; and if all cannot create, all can acquire and apply ; a word 

 is the portraiture of thought, and like the offspring in whom we behold the 

 features of the parent. No one, perhaps, possessed such a despotic sway 

 over language as Byron, who multiplied thoughts by words which to him 

 were the hieroglyphics of nature, and represented every object in the sound 

 rather than in the thought. In the storm on the lake of Geneva he thus 



breaks out — 



" Sky, mountains, rivers, winds, lake, lightnings ! ye 



With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul 



To make these felt and feeling ;— the far roll 



Of your departing voices is the kuell 



Of what in me is sleepless— if I rest. 



Could I embody and unbosom now 



That which is most within me— could I wreak 



My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw 



Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings strong or weak, 



All that I would have sought and all I seek, 



Bear, know, feel and yet breathe,— into one word — 



And that one word were lightning, I would speak ! 



But as it is I live and die unheard 



With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword." 



This multitude of words are individually personifications that crowd on each 

 other with such a startling rapidity that they leave nothing distinctive in the 

 mind but the charm of the sensation. With all his power of expression his 

 " thought was voiceless," and so will be the thoughts of others until they 

 strike the chords with a master hand. Pygmalion long gazed on the marble 

 before it suspired — moulded into beauty, it quickened into life. Language 

 is the body and statue of thought, the wings of the soul ; and while some 

 ascend with an eagle's flight, others pursue their middle and lower course. 



* Montgomery. 



