Builer — Household ^Yords: Their Etymology, 381 



"We should profane the service of the dead 

 To sing a requiem and such rest to her 

 As to peace-parted souls.'' v. 1, 260. 



Here, as oftentimes, Shakespeare is his o^vn best interpreter, 

 following a hard word with an easy one which illuminates it, 

 as rest here after requiem is an excellent epexegesis. 



Tomb, cognat-e with tumulus, is a burial-mound, though it is 

 held bv some scholars to mean cremation. At all events, the ter- 

 mination taph comes from the same source with typhus and ty- 

 phoid wihich define burning fevers. Taph in a secondary sense 

 means tomb or place of burial as we see in epitaph, the writing 

 at a tomb, and cenotaph, an empty tomb. Sepulchei', derived 

 from a root meaning to honor, shows not merely memory but re- 

 spect, — a feeling to which the history of mausoleum gives the 

 most intense expression. The widovv^ of M'ausolus built his tomb 

 so well that she made his name immortal, while the Mausoleum, 

 classed among the seven wonders of the ancient world, now gives 

 name to every modern tomb which can boast any resemblance 

 to its nature. 



Scripture, a Latin word for writing, we limit by way of emi- 

 nence to sacred writing, as in the phrase sacred scripture, for 

 Holy Writ. Chart, charta (in Magna Charta), card, all essen- 

 tially one, have been traced by some to an Eg;}q)tian source. It 

 is more probable that we owe. them to a Greek word which means 

 to scratch. They all form a basis on which we scratch or write. 

 The same root branches out in the word character which is made 

 up of the scratches Avhich life leaves on our natures — the tabu- 

 la rasa or blank tablet with which each of us was born. Bible 

 and paper are ^\iords of supreme interest. Etymologically they 

 are two Egyptian names of the plant out of which the first writ- 

 ing material was manufactured ; adopted by Greeks when they 

 imported the material, they have spread over the whole earth, 

 paper in a secular and Bible in a religious sense. They show 

 that words called by HomBr winged as if fugitive and dying as 

 soon as born, in truth are supreme monuments. Older than the 

 pyramids they shall outlive them, and fly through all space no 

 less than through all time. They are of the grand humanities, 



