Butler—The Vocabulary of Shakespeare. 45 
infantile impressions the words stand too far down in the criss¬ 
cross-row for H-E-D to see as yet. 
Half the words which are ever mastered by most people are 
acquired unawares before the end. of the first, seven year cli¬ 
macteric. He who gave us the phrase “parlous hoy” was one 
himself—and perhaps by heredity gained the gift of the gab 
from both parents. Even if Mary Arden was not talkative she 
must have been a good listener when babbling gossips came 
from far and near, came together for a long afternoon—bring¬ 
ing their work—that by making nether-stocks or mending them 
—no reproach might fall on their idle hands. Then surely 
tongues were not idle. Men, women and things were discussed 
with a zest which is only possible when cronies 1 after long iso¬ 
lation have free course in an exchange and interchange of con¬ 
fidences. Hot one was languageless like a fish on land. All 
shared in the sweet enlargement. 
But little pitchers have great ears. The curious child with 
open mouth, or certainly ears, among strange faces, devoured 
the chit chats which X-E-D shows that he was perhaps the first 
to call “vain bibble-babble” in 1601. Whether he would or 
not, he let no word fall to the ground. See such a, couplet as 
this: 
Yet that which seems a wound to kill 
Doth turn oh! oh! to ha! ha! he! 
(Troi. 3 1. 132.) 
The Ardens were of higher social standing than the Shakes- 
peares and the bride had raised the standard of speech, or at 
all events diversified it in the circle of her bridegroom. Among 
her associates' too there were members' of decadent families who 
had seen better days, and the most, long-lived relics of gentility 
may be detected in language. Many linguistic peculiarities or 
idioms were represented. The receptive urchin was not slow 
to divine the true inwardness of what in default of a better 
term) may be styled inarticulatives. That urchin is proved by 
H-E-D to have brought some of those interjectional words 
which are no words, before all other writers into the light of 
language. For instance he first wrote down “Hum” in three 
senses; the hum of either army that stilly sounded, the hum of 
the cloudy messenger—no where before called cloudy—wjhose 
