THE

ETYMOLOGICAL

Compendium.

"To be in the daily habit of speaking of matters, of which we know not the derivation, or origin, is to be in a state of ignorance.”—Locke. "The pictures drawn in our minds, are laid in fading colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear."-Ibid.

SECTION I.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, MUSIC, ENGRAVING, GOVERNMENT, &c.

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

If we suppose, says BLAIR, a period before any words were invented, or known, it is clear that men could have no other method of communicating to others what they felt, than by the cries of passion; accompanied with such motions and gestures as were further expressive of passion; for these are the only signs which Nature teaches to all men, and which are understood by all.

One who saw another going into a place where he himself had been frightened, or exposed to danger, and who sought to warn his neighbour of that danger, could contrive no other way of doing so, than by uttering those cries, and making those gestures, which are the signs of fear; just as two men at this day, would endeavour to make themselves understood by each other, who should be thrown together on a desolate island, ignorant of each others language. Those exclamations, therefore, which by grammarians, are called interjections, uttered in a strong and impassioned manner, were beyond doubt the first elements or beginning of speech.

Interjections, would be followed by names of objects, or nouns, these by names of actions, or verbs; these by qualities of nouns and actions, as adjectives and adverbs; and these would be successively followed by prepositions, pronouns, articles, and conjunctions.

When more enlarged communication became necessary, and names began to be assigned to objects, in what manner can we suppose men to have proceeded in this assignation of names, or invention of words? Undoubtedly, by imitating as much as they could the nature of the object which they named, by the sound of the name which they gave to it. Whenever objects were to be named, in which sound, noise, or motion, were concerned, the imitation by words was abundantly obvious. Nothing was more natural than to imitate by

B

the sound of the voice, the quality of the sound or noise, which any external object made, and to form its name accordingly. Thus in all language we find a multitude of words that are evidently constructed upon this principle. A certain bird is termed a cuckoo, from the sound which it emits; when one sort of wind is said to whistle, and another to roar; when a serpent is said to hiss, a fly to buzz, and falling timber to crash; when a stream is said to flow, and hail to rattle; the analogy between the word, and the thing signified, is plainly discernable.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The English language, or rather, the ancient language of Britain, says the Encyclopedist, or Circle of the Sciences, is generally allowed to have been the same with the Gaulic, or French, (this island in all probability, having been first peopled from Gallia), as both Cæsar and Tacitus affirm, and prove by many strong and conclusive arguments, as by their religion, manners, customs, and the nearness of their situation. But now we have very small remains of the ancient British tongue, except in Wales, Cornwall, the Islands and Highlands of Scotland, part of Ireland, and some provinces of France; which will not appear strange, when the following historical events, elucidating the rise and progress of the English language, are taken into consideration.

Julius Cæsar, some time before the birth of our Saviour, made a descent upon Britain, though he may be said rather to have discovered than conquered it ;* but about the year of Christ forty-five, in the time of Claudius, Aulus Plautius was sent over with some Roman forces, by whom two kings of the Britons, Codigunus and Caractacus, were both overcome in battle; whereupon a Roman colony was planted at Malden, in Essex, and the southern parts of the island were reduced to the form of a Roman province; after that, the island was conquered as far North as the Firths of Dumbarton and Edinburgh, by Agricola, in the time of Domitian; whereupon, a great number of the Britons, in the conquered part of the island, retired to the West part, called Wales, carrying their language with them.

The greatest part of Britain being thus become a Roman province, the Roman legions, who resided in Britain for above 200 years, undoubtedly disseminated the Latin tongue; and the people being afterwards governed by laws written in Latin, must necessarily make a mixture of languages. This seems to have been the first mutation the language of Britain suffered.

Thus the British tongue continued, for some time, mixed with the provincial Latin, till the Roman legions being called home, the Scots and Picts took the opportunity to attack and harass England; upon which, king Vortigern, about the year 440, called the Saxons to his assistance, who came over with several of their neighbours, and having repulsed the Scots and Picts, were rewarded for their services with the Isle of Thanet, and the whole county of Kent: but growing too powerful, and not being contented with their allotment, dispossessed the inhabitants of all the country on this side of the Severn; thus the British tongue was in a great measure destroyed,

* It has been lately proved by astronomical demonstration, that Cæsar arrived for the first time in front of the cliffs of Dover, on the 23d of August, B. C. 55, at ten in the morning, and finally effected his landing at 3 o'clock of the same day in the Downs, 8 miles from Dover, between the South Foreland and Deal.

and the Saxon introduced in its stead. What the Saxon tongue was, long before the conquest, about the year 700, we may observe in the most ancient manuscripts of that language, which is a gloss on the Evangelists, by Bishop Edfrid, in which the three first articles on the Lord's Prayer run thus:

"Uren Fader thic arth in heofnas, sic gehalgud thin noma, so cymeth thin ric. Sic thin willa sue is heofnas, and in eortho," &c. In the beginning of the ninth century, the Danes invaded England, and getting a footing in the eastern and northern parts of the country, their power gradually increased, and they became sole masters of it in 200 years. By this means, the ancient British gained a tincture of the Danish language; but their government being of no long continuance, did not make so great an alteration in the Anglo-Saxon, as the next revolution, when the whole land, A. D. 1067, was subdued by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, in France; for the Normans, as a monument of their conquest, endeavoured to make their language as generally received as their commands, and thereby rendered the British language an entire medley.

About the year 900, the Lord's Prayer in the ancient Anglo-Saxon ran thus:

"Thu ure Fader the eart on heofenum, si thin nama gehalgod; cume thin rice si thin willa on eorthon swa, swa on heofenum," &c. It will now clearly be seen, that the English Language had its origin in a compound of others.

"Great, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of our tongue, before the Norman Conquest, in this, that the old English could express, most aptly, all the conceptions of the mind in their own tongue, without borrowing from any."

That the English language, although of an heterogenous origin, possesses more poetical capabilities, than any other, at the present day, there can be no question. Dr. Johnson says, in speaking of languages, the Spanish for love, the French for gallantry, the Italian for music, and the English for poetry."

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BURLESQUE.

F. Vavassor mentions, in his book De Ludicra Dictione, that burlesque was altogether unknown to the ancients; but others are of a different opinion. We even find that one Raintovious, in the time of Ptolemy Lagus, turned the serious subject of tragedy into ridicule, which is, perhaps, a better plea for the antiquity of farce than of burlesque. The Italians seem to have the justest claim to the invention of burlesque; the first of this kind was Bernio, who was followed by Lalli, Caporali, &c. From Italy it passed into France, and became there so much the mode, that in 1649, there appeared a book under the title of "The Passion of our Saviour," in burlesque verse. From thence it passed into England, where some have excelled therein.

ON THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY. The distinction between the origin of Government and the origin of Political Society, is thus defined in Cooper's Letters on the Irish Nation, 1799:

From the writings of Aristotle, we are taught to consider the origin of Government not as a work of art, or of intellect, much less as the result of contract; but as the consequence of a natural instinctive impulse towards comfort, convenience, and security. Government was not made, created, or covenanted; but arose out of human