---- How can style of each, and how they may be remedied. criticism be of any use except so far as in a kindly way it can aid in the perfecting of that on which it turns its scrutiny? And yet it is doubtful whether, amid all the eulogy and abuse which have greeted all the works of Robert Browning, any one, in private or in print, has ever told him plainly what those faults are all so easy to correct, but for which the man with the greatest poetic mind of the age would be-what now he is not-its greatest poet. And if criticism of this kind is needed by authors who have attained his rank, how much more by those who, with the imitative methods of inexperience, are always prone to copy unconsciously, and usually to exaggerate, the weak rather than the strong points of the masters! Many a young writer, doing this at that critical period of his life when a lack of stimulus and appreciation may wholly check one's career, has failed, notwithstanding great merits. All his ability in other directions has not compensated for his ignorance of the requirements of poetic technique. It was largely with a hope of aiding such, that this work was first conceived. The conclusions that have been reached thus far concur in serving to prove that poetry as an art must have form, the very sounds of the single and consecutive words of which must represent the phases and movements, physical, intellectual, or emotional, of which they are supposed to be significant; and it has been shown that great poets like Shakespear, Spenser, and Milton are great masters of representative expression in this sense. It follows from these facts that no poet is artistically justified in producing effects of sound through any insertion, transposition, alteration, omission, or other use of words, that by violating the laws of grammar or lexicography obscures the meaning. "Like the organs of seeing and hearing," says Veron, in his "Esthetics," "our intellectual powers are only able to expend a very limited amount of energy at one time. . . . If we be called upon to expend three quarters of our mental energy in disentangling and interpreting the symbols, it is obvious that we shall have but one quarter left for the appreciation of the ideas of the poet." This statement agrees not only with the most recent deductions of physiological æsthetics, but also with those of common-sense. The test of form in every case is its fitness to represent, at least clearly, if not, as it sometimes should, brilliantly, every line and color, every phase and movement, every fact and suggestion of the ideas to be expressed. If this test be borne in mind, there can still be plenty of poetic failures from lack of poetic ideas, but no failures from a mere lack of the very easily obtained knowledge of the rudimentary principles of poetic technique. CHAPTER XV. MEANINGS OF WORDS AS DEVELOPED BY ASSOCIATION AND COMPARISON. Instinctive Ejaculatory Sounds, and Reflective Imitative Sounds, becoming words by Agreement, in Fulfilment of the Principle of Association or Comparison, can represent but a few Ideas-Other needed Words may be due to Agreement in using Arbitrary Symbols; it is Philosophical to suppose them largely developed by Tendencies underlying the Formation of Primitive Words-How these Tendencies lead to the Use of the same Word in Different Senses-In the case of Words whose Meanings depend on Association-How what refers to the Material comes to refer to the Immaterial-Words whose Meanings depend on Comparison-What refers to the Material is by Comparison used for the Immaterial-Great Varieties of Meanings are developed from the same Word by Continued Processes of Association and Comparison-A Knowledge of this fact, and its Results are Necessary to an Intelligent Use of Language. IN N the former part of this work we have considered ejaculatory and imitative sounds and the influence of the methods of their formation and arrangement upon poetic form, so far as sounds determine this. We have found that it is reasonable to suppose that by associating certain utterances with certain circumstances in which they are used, or by comparing them with the sounds of objects to which they refer, men in primitive ages learn what the utterances mean, and, consciously or unconsciously, agree to accept them as representative of similar meanings whenever or wherever heard. How to produce at will these representative sounds solves the first problem of all language. But it requires no proof to show that no large number of the objects that engage our thoughts can be represented either by their own peculiar ejaculations or by imitative sounds. For this reason it is held by some that perhaps the majority of our words are merely arbitrary symbols, by which they mean that agreement which is undoubtedly a chief factor in giving definite meanings to sounds is also a chief factor in giving us the sounds themselves. While there are reasons for this theory, it may be pushed too far, and hardly seems to accord with what we know of the action of the mind with reference to other analogous matters. It seems more philosophical to attribute the enlargement of the primitive vocabulary mainly to further developments of mental processes in some way analogous to those to which the formation of the very earliest words is attributable. Facts, too, so far as they are known, sustain this view. To show that this is so, let us recall for a moment the methods of forming a word from an ejaculatory or imitative sound. This will start us in the right place from which to observe how continuous operations of the same method necessarily lead to the formation from the same sound, or the same slightly modified, of a multiplicity of words. Attention was directed in the former part of this work to the fact that the organs of speech are so constructed that usually the earliest articulated sounds made by the babe are mama and papa; and that the earliest persons to whom they are addressed are the mother and father; and that, for this reason, people speaking in scores of different languages have come to associate mama, which, as a rule, is uttered first, with an appeal to the mother; and papa with an appeal to the father. In a similar way, but attributed to comparison rather than association, it was said that imitative sounds become words. A man says whiz because the sound that he makes compares, at least sufficiently for his purpose, with one that he has heard; and when he and others have uttered it many times, it comes, by common consent, to mean what it does, and nothing else. Now, with these facts in view, can we not perceive that, after a few words have been formed, the formation of others from them is inevitable? It is so, in the first place, because of the tendency of the mind to carry further in the same direction the same processes of association and comparison that have led to the formation of these earliest words; and, in the second place, because of the mind's tendency to economize labor. After men have accumulated a stock of primitive words, and have begun to reflect upon them, and to perceive the relations which they sustain to other things, they seem to recognize, in some subtle way, that they can save themselves the trouble of originating new sounds by using the terms already in vogue in more than one sense. A word applying to one thing can be made to apply to an altogether different thing, if only the two are similar in certain of their features or relations. If the principle connecting the two is merely one of association, if they are merely allied, then the new term is produced by a continuation of the process underlying the formation of words from ejaculations. If the principle connecting the two is one of comparison, if they are really alike, then the process continues that of forming words from imitative sounds. Very often the two are only associated. Thus, a man is named after his employment, a Baker, a Smith, George a husbandman, Edward a protector of property; or after his country, York or Lancaster. Thus, a town or city is |