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    Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850
    Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850
    Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850

    By Various Various

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850

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      Book preview

      Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850 - Various Various

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October

      12, 1850, by Various

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850

      A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists,

      Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc.

      Author: Various

      Release Date: September 28, 2004 [EBook #13551]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES & QUERIES, NO. 50. ***

      Produced by Jon Ingram, David King, the PG Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team, and The Internet Library of Early Journals

      NOTES AND QUERIES:

      A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

      When found, make a note of.—CAPTAIN CUTTLE.

      CONTENTS

      NOTES.

      A NOTE ON SMALL WORDS.

      And ten small words creep on in one dull line.

      Most ingenious! most felicitous! but let no man despise little words, despite of the little man of Twickenham. He himself knew better, but there was no resisting the temptation of such a line as that. Small words he says, in plain prosaic criticism, are generally stiff and languishing, but they may be beautiful to express melancholy.

      The English language is a language of small words. It is, says Swift, overstocked with monosyllables. It cuts down all its words to the shortest possible dimensions: a sort of half-Procrustes, which lops but never stretches. In one of the most magnificent passages in Holy Writ, that, namely, 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.

      There are twenty-two monosyllables to three of greater length, or rather to the same dissyllable thrice repeated; and that too in common parlance proncounced as a monosyllable. The passage in the Book of Ezekiel, which Coleride is said to have considered the most sublime in the whole Bible,—

      And He said unto me, son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, though knowest,—

      contains seventeen monosyllables to three others. And in the most grand passage which commences the Gospel of St. John, from the first to the fourteenth verses, inclusive, there are polysyllables twenty-eight, monosyllables two hundred and one. This it may be said is poetry, but not verse, and therefore makes but little against the critic. Well then, out of his own mouth shall he be confuted. In the fourth epistle of his Essay on Man, a specimen selected purely at random from his works, and extending altogether to three hundred and ninety-eight lines, there are no less than twenty-seven (that is, a trifle more than one out of every fifteen,) made up entirely of monosyllables: and over and above these, there are one hundred and fifteen which have in them only one word of greater length; and yet there are few dull creepers among the lines of Pope.

      The early writers, the pure wells of English undefiled, are full of small words.

      Hall, in one of the most exquisite of his satires, speaking of the vanity of adding house to house, and field to field, has these most beautiful lines,—

      "Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store,

      And he that cares for most shall find no more!"

      What harmonious monosyllables! says Mr. Gifford; and what critic will refuse to echo his exclamation? The same writer is full of monosyllabic lines, and he is among the most energetic of satirists. By the way, it is not a little curious, that in George Webster's White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, almost the same thought is also clothed in two monosyllabic lines:—

      "His wealth is summed, and this is all his store:

      This poor men get, and great men get no more."

      Was Young dull? Listen, for it is indeed a solemn sound:—

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