THE BARK. 119 



CHAPTER X. 



THE BAKK. 



1. PHILOLOGISTS are continually collecting instances, like our 

 friend the French critic of Virgil, of the beauty of finished 

 language, or the origin of unfinished, in the imitation of nat- 

 ural sounds. But such collections give an entirely false idea 

 of the real power of language, unless they are balanced by an 

 opponent list of the words which signally fail of any such imi- 

 tative virtue, and whose sound, if one dwelt upon it, is de- 

 structive of their meaning. 



2. For instance. Few sounds are more distinct in their 

 kind, or one would think more likely to be vocally reproduced 

 in the word which signified them, than that of a swift rent in 

 strongly woven cloth ; and the English Words ' rag ' and rag- 

 ged, with the Greek p^yw/xt, do indeed in a measure recall the 

 tormenting effect upon the ear. But it is curious that the 

 verb which is meant to express the actual origination of rags, 

 should rhyme with two words entirely musical and. peaceful 

 words, indeed, which I always reserve for final resource in pas- 

 sages which I want to be soothing as well as pretty, * fair,' 

 and * air ; ' while, in its orthography, it is identical with the 

 word representing the bodily sign of tenderest passion, and 

 grouped with a multitude of others,* in which the mere inser- 

 tion of a consonant makes such wide difference of sentiment 

 as between 'dear' and 'drear,' or 'pear 'and 'spear.' The 

 Greek root, on the other hand, has persisted in retaining some 

 vestige of its excellent dissonance, even where, it has parted 

 with the last vestige of the idea it was meant to convey ; and 

 when Burns did his best, and his best was above most men's 



* It is one of the three cadences, (the others being of the words rhym- 

 ing to ' mind ' and * way,') used by Sir Philip Sidney in his marvellous 

 paraphrase of the 55th Psalm. 



