The Greek and Latin languages abound with interjections, which are used by the orators and poets with great effect. To gratify the Athenians, as they behold their once proud enemy humbled to the dust, and draining the cup of affliction to the very last dregs, Eschylus, in his 'Persai," employs almost every form of ejaculation in which abject misery can be expressed. The English language is preeminently a language of small words. It has more monosyllables than any other modern tongue, a peculiarity which gives it a strikingly direct and straightforward character, equally removed from the indirect French and the intricate, lumbering German. Its fondness for this class of words is even greater than that of the Anglo-Saxon. Not a few of our present monosyllables, such as the verbs "to love," "bake," "beat," "slide," "swim," "bind," "blow," "brew," were, in the Anglo-Saxon, dissyllables. The English language, impatient of all superfluities, cuts down its words to the narrowest possible limits,-lopping and condensing, never expanding. Sometimes it cuts off an initial syllable, as in gin" for "engine," van for "caravan," "prentice for "apprentice," "'bus" for "omnibus," "wig" for "periwig "; sometimes it cuts off a final syllable or syllables, as in "aid" for "aidedecamp," "prim" for "primitive,” “cit" for "citizen," "grog" for "grogram," "pants" for "pantaloons," "tick" for (pawnbroker's) "ticket"; sometimes it strikes out a letter, or letters,' from the middle of a word, or otherwise contracts it, as in "last" for "latest," "lark" for "laverock," "since' 66 sithence," fortnight" for "fourteen nights," "lord " for "hlaford," morning' for "morrowning," "sent" for for "sended," "chirp" for "chirrup" or "cheer up," "fag" for "fa 66 66 66 for 99. "consols for "consolidated annuities." tigue," The same abbreviating processes are followed, when English words are borrowed from the Latin. Thus we have the monosyllable "strange" from the trisyllable extraneus; "spend" from expendo; "scour" from exscorio; "stop" from obstipo; "funnel" from infundibulum; "ply" from plico; "jetty" from projectum; "dean" dean" from decanus; "count" from computo; "stray from extravagus; "proxy" from procurator; "spell" from syllabare, etc. Not only are single Latin words thus maimed when converted into English, and their letters changed, transposed, or omitted, but often two English words are clipped and squeezed into one word. Thus from "proud" and "dance" we have " prance"; from " "grave" and "rough" we have "gruff"; from "scrip" and "roll" comes "scroll"; from "tread," or "trot," and "drudge," we have "trudge." Even in the construction of its primitive monosyllables the English language manifests the same economy, and forms words of a totally different meaning by the simple change of a vowel; as, bag, beg, big, bog, bug; bat, bet, bit, bot, but; ball, bell, bill, boll, bull; or, again, by the change of the first letter; as, fight, light, might, night, right, tight,— dash, hash, lash, gash, rash, sash, wash. The final "ed" of our participles is rapidly disappearing, as a distinct syllable. Not content with suppressing half the letters of our syllables, and half the syllables of our words, we clip our vowels, in speaking, shorter than any other people, so that our language threatens to become a kind of stenology, or algebraic condensation of thought,—a pemmican of ideas. Voltaire said that the English gained two hours a day by clipping their words. The same love of brevity has shown itself in rendering the final e in English always mute. In Chaucer the final e must often be sounded as a separate syllable, or the verse will limp. To the same cause we owe such expressions as "ten o'clock," instead of "of the clock," or "on the clock," and the hissing s, so offensive to foreign ears. The old termination of the verb, th, has given Iway to s in the third person singular, and en to a single letter in the third person plural. The Anglo-Saxon, the substratum of our modern English, is emphatically monosyllabic; yet many of the grandest passages in our literature are made up almost exclusively of Saxon words. The English Bible abounds in grand, sublime, and tender passages, couched almost entirely in words of one syllable. The passage in Ezekiel, which Coleridge is said to have considered the sublimest in the whole Bible: "And he said unto me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest," contains seventeen monosyllables to three others. What passage in Holy Writ surpasses in energetic brevity that which describes the death of Sisera,"At her feet he bowed, he fell; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; where he bowed, there he fell down dead"? Here are twenty-two monosyllables to one dissyllable thrice repeated, and that a word which is usually pronounced as a monosyllable. The lament of David over Saul and Jonathan is not surpassed in pathos by any similar passage in the whole range of literature; yet a very large proportion of these touching words are of one or two syllables:-"The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how are the mighty fallen! . . Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings. . Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided. They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. . . How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women." Occasionally a long word is used in the current version, where a more vivid or picturesque short one might have been employed, as where our Saviour exclaims: "Oh, ye generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" In one of the older versions "brood" is used in place of "generation," with far greater effect. The early writers, the "pure wells of English undefiled," abound in small words. Shakespeare employs them in his finest passages, especially when he would paint a scene with a few masterly touches. Hear Macbeth: "Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in Nature Are monosyllables passionless? Listen, again, to the "Thane of Cawdor": "That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, Two dissyllables only among fifty-two words! Bishop Hall, in one of his most powerful satires, speak ing of the vanity of "adding house to house and field to field," has these beautiful lines: 66 "Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store, And he that cares for most shall find no more." 'What harmonious monosyllables!" exclaims the critic, Gifford; yet they may be paralleled by others in the same writer, equally musical and equally expressive. Was Milton tame? He knew when to use polysyllables of "learned length and thundering sound"; but he knew also when to produce the grandest effects by the small words despised by inferior artists. Read his account of the journey of the fallen angels: "Through many a dark and dreary vale They passed, and many a region dolorous, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,- In what other language shall we find in the same number of words a more vivid picture of desolation than this? Hear, again, the lost archangel calling upon hell to receive its new possessor: "One who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. Here for His envy; will not drive us hence; Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven." Did Collins lack lyric beauty, grace, or power? Read the following exquisite lines, in which the truth of the sentiment that "poetry is the short-hand of thought" is strikingly illustrated: |