PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

THESE pages present some fifteen hundred illustrations of the Poetry, History and Wisdom of Words. For it has dawned on the thought of modern times that Language, too, is a living organism. Language is indeed the grand spiritual fact of humanity. In speech man incarnates himself. It paints-as I have elsewhere said—humanity, its thoughts, struggles, longings: paints them on a canvas of breath, in the colors of life.

Of the themes around which I clustered my illustrations, those on the WORDS OF THE SENSES, the IDEALISM OF WORDS, WORDS OF ABUSE, and the FANCIFUL AND FANTASTIC IN WORDS, will be found new constructions of the philosophy of the English Language. Finally, in the explorations of regions already in a measure entered on, as in the Historical and Ethical elements in words-I have directed my researches into new fields; and of the fifteen hundred Words which the Rambles illustrate, the vast majority have never before been used in the way of etymologic illustration.

RAMBLE FIRST.

PREMONITORY.

JOHN STERLING records that when about nine years old he was struck that the word sincere was derived from the practice of filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence sine cera came to mean pure, not vamped up. This explanation he says gave him great pleasure and abode in his memory as having first shown him that there is a reason in Words as well as in things.

I suppose many of us are conscious of having made similar pleasurable discoveries. With what exultation have I many a time welcomed the flashing across my mind of the interior import of a word, revealing some deep analogy or subtle beauty or furnishing a new and pungent pointing to some old moral. Nor can I imagine it possible to awaken without a thrill of delight to the first consciousness of such meanings as are wrapt up in 'WRONG,' which is just something

wrung or distorted from the right-'HEAVEN,' the firmament heaved or heaven up over us-'SUBTLE,' whose primary meaning is fine spun-'MISER,' which is just miserable; or learn without a glow of lively satisfaction that 'ABSURD' implies a malappropriate reply such as might come from a surdus or deaf man, who, knowing nothing of the antecedents of the conversation, would of course be apt to answer absurdly; that a 'CLOWN' is simply a colonus or tiller of the ground; that 'SCOUNDREL' conceals in its composition a soldier who absconds at muster-roll; that 'RIVALS' are, etymologically, dwellers on the banks of the same rivulet or stream—a circumstance so apt to give rise to quarrels and bickerings; or that 'SYCOPHANT' shuts up a curious piece of Greek history and alludes to persons informing on individuals exporting figssyca-from Attica.

The copiousness of meaning which Words enwrap is indeed more than all that was said or thought. Children of the mind, they reflect the manifold richness of man's faculties and affections. In language is incarnated man's unconscious passionate creative energy. There is an endless, indefinable, tantalizing charm in Words. They bring the eternal provocations of personality. They come back to us with that alienated majesty which a great writer ascribes to our own thoughts.