TERMS USED TO DENOTE COLOUR. 31 



Tempestivius in domo 



Paulli, purpureis ales oloribus, 

 Comissabere Maximi, 



Si torrere jecur quaeris idoneum. 



Another author says : — 



Purpurea sub nive terra latet. 

 Brachia purpurea candidiora nive. 



We are told by scholars that in these cases purpureas 

 means bright, shining ; but it still remains to be explained 

 why a word which generally denotes a positive colour, 

 whatever that colour may have been, comes in a few in- 

 stances to be applied to white objects such as swans and 

 snow. Of course the definition of a word may be so ex- 

 tended as to include any number of widely different 

 meanings, some of these meanings being perhaps due to 

 its mistaken use by authors. It would probably not be 

 difficult to find passages in modern authors in which the 

 word blue sometimes means green, sometimes violet. I 

 met with a case in point recently on reading again Goethe's 

 delightful autobiography ( Wahrheit und Dichtung/ The 

 author, when a young man, was skating on the river on a 

 bitterly cold winter's day. u I had been on the ice," says 

 he, " since early morning, and was therefore, when my 

 mother later in the day drove up to admire the scene, 

 being only lightly clad, almost frozen. She sat in her 

 carriage wrapped in a red velvet fur mantle, which, held 

 together in front with thick gold lace and tassels, looked 

 magnificent. ' Give me, dear mother, your fur cloak/ 

 said I without much consideration, f I am fearfully cold/ 

 She, too, did not consider long, and the next moment I 

 had put on the cloak, which reaching nearly to my feet, 

 being of a purple colour, trimmed with sable and orna- 

 mented with gold, suited very well the brown fur cap 

 which I wore." Here it is evident that Goethe calls the 



