The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 34, August, 1860

But the same subtilty of mind, which sometimes seduces Mr. Wedgwood into making distinctions without a difference and preferring an impalpable relation of idea to a plain derivative affinity, is of great advantage to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we are speaking of, it is practically useful to have the German gift of summoning a thing up from the depths of one's inward consciousness. It is when Mr. Wedgwood would reverse the order of Nature, and proceed from the tropical to the direct and simple, that we are at issue with him. For it is not philosophers who make language, though they often unmake it.

Mr. Wedgwood's most successful application of his system may be found, as we think, under the words, dim, dumb, deaf, and death. He might have confirmed the relation between dumbness and darkness from the acutest metaphysician among poets, in Dante's ove il sol tace. We have not left ourselves room enough to illustrate Mr. Wedgwood's handling of these etymologies by extracts; we must refer our readers to the book itself. Apart from its value as suggesting thought, or quickening our perception of shades of meaning, and so freshening our feeling of the intimate harmony of sense and spirit in language, and of the thousand ways in which the soul assumes the material world into her own heaven and transfigures it there, the volume will be found practically the most thorough contribution yet made to English etymology. We are glad to hear that we are to have an American edition of it under the able supervision of Mr. Marsh. Etymology becomes of practical importance, when, as the newspapers inform us, two members of a New York club have been fighting a duel because one of them doubted whether Garry Baldy were of Irish descent. Any student of language could have told them that Garibaldi is only the plural form (common in Italian family names) of Garibaldo, the Teutonic Heribald, whose meaning, appropriate enough in this case, would be nearly equivalent to Bold Leader.

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1

See Number XXIII., September, 1859.

2

Demeter is [Greek Gae-mhaetaer], Mother Earth.

3

The same as Iacchus and the Latin Bacchus.

4

This connection of Diana with Apollo has led some to the hasty inference, that the sun and moon—not the sun and earth—were the primitive centres of mythological symbolism. But it is plain that the sun and moon, as _active _forces referable to a single centre, stood over against the earth as passive.

5

Odyssey, xii., 4.

6

Counterblast to Tobacco.

7

The e in Rex is here rendered by the Greek eta,—a proof that the pronunciation of that letter was similar to that of our long a, and not like our double ee; although the modern Greeks support the latter pronunciation.

8

P. 484, Engl. ed. In the new American edition, (Vide Supplement, pp. 431, 432,) the principal analogies which suggest the extreme view are referred to, and the remark is appended,—"But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy, and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. The case is different with the members of each great class, as the Vertebrata or Articulata; for here we have in the laws of homology, embryology, etc., some distinct evidence that all have descended from a single primordial parent."

9

In Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève, Mars, 1860.

10

This we learn from his very interesting article, De la Question de l'Homme Fossile, in the same (March) number of the Bibliothèque Universelle.

11

In Comptes Rendus, Acad. des Sciences, Févr. 2, 1857.

12

Agassiz, Contributions: Essay on Classification, p. 117, where, we may be permitted to note, the word "Crustacea" is by a typographical error printed in place of Cetacea.

13

: An etymology of this kind would have been particularly interesting in the hands of so learned and acute a man as Mr. Wedgwood. It would have afforded him a capital example of the fact that considerable differences in the form and sound of words meaning the same thing prove nothing against the onomatopoeic theory, but merely that the same sound represents a different thing to different ears. L. Boare, mugire, E. moo; F. beugler, E. bellow; G. leuen, L. lugere, E. low, are all attempts at the same sound, or, which would not affect the question, variations of an original radical gô or gu. For a full discussion of the matter, admirable for its thorough learning, see Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Européennes, Vol. I. Section 86.

14

The German pfau retains the imitative sound which the English pea-cock has lost, and of which our system of pronunciation robs the Latin.

15

And to worm, (another word for dragon,) if, as has been conjectured, there be any radical affinity between that and schwärmen, whose primitive sense of crawl or creep is seen in the swarming of bees, and swarming up a tree.

16

That is, unless he takes the rag in dragan to be the same thing, which he might support with several plausible analogies, such as E. rake, It. recare, etc.