OBSOLETISMS.

The late Bishop of Ossory (Dr. Kearney), so distinguished by his literary attainments, who, though a bishop, was not ashamed to express his enthusiastic admiration of Shakspeare, frequently told me, that he thought the best commentators on that immortal genius would be found in the upper gallery of an Irish theatre. How many words, that have puzzled the learned for the last century, could find a ready explanation among the catholic gentry, and even lower orders in Connaught and Munster! Language in Ireland stopped short, with every other improvement, at the revolution; and the penal statutes had an equal effect on the liberties and the philology of the people.

Speaking of Anthony (in Anthony and Cleopatra), Philo says,

The word “renege,” a poser to the English reader, is used nightly at every catholic card table in the Irish provinces; where at the old fashioned Irish game of five and forty, an old lady “reneges” a card (imprudently played) by the licence of the game. In Queen Elizabeth’s time every one wrote hir for her; in Ireland it is still pronounced so. Not a phrase, not an idiom, is now in use among the common Irish down to the lowest classes, that may not be found in the most classic authors of Elizabeth’s and James the first’s day.

“Plaze your honour,” an address of courtesy now confined to the Irish spalpeen or cottier, after having passed through the hands of the upper servants and tradesmen of fifty years back, was once an address of respect from lord keepers to lord chamberlains, and from noble to noble, down to the time of Charles the First. The Earl of Middlesex begins all his letters to the Duke of Buckingham (James the First’s favourite) with “My most honoured Lord.” Lord Chancellor Bacon addresses with “If it may please your lordship,” and even in colloquial familiarity, “your honour” was a phrase of courtesy, addressed to both sexes. But obsoletisms are constantly mistaken for vulgarisms. In as much, indeed, as they are exploded forms, which have fallen to the exclusive use of the vulgar, they are so: for the vulgar of all ages are those who stand still, and make no progress either in language or in its source, ideas. The vulgar tongue, is the tongue spoken by the people. Dante and Petrarch were said to write in the vulgar tongue; it is now erudition to be able to read and understand them.

To begin letters with a long, formal, and ceremonious address, was the fashion in England up to the time of Charles the Second, whose court introduced the more refined simplicity of French forms and manners. “Right honourable!” “My singular good lord!” “My right worthy!” and “May it please your grace,” “honour,” “worship,” or “lordship,” were all swept away with stiff stays and cumbrous fardingales; and the letters from “yours, faithfully, Charles Rex,” to Harry Bennet, on the serious subject of Courants, Sarabands, and “small fiddlers that do not play ill on the fiddle,” exhibit a very different formula, from the letters of the discreet and well affected persons of quality of the preceding reign. They, in fact, have all the ease, familiarity, and equality of the charming letters of the Sévigné’s, Coulanges, and De Retz, if not their wit, elegance, or good taste.

I have frequently observed, in the late Marquis of A—— and many of his noble contemporaries, a tendency to pronounce after the old manner, as “hull,” for whole; “marchant,” for merchant; “cheney,” for china; “showlder,” for shoulder; “buzzoms,” for bosoms, &c.; and this pronunciation answers to the orthography of the great lords and ladies of Whitehall after the restoration, who being “un peu brouillés avec l’alphabet,” endeavoured to spell as near to the sounds of words as they could. The Duchess of Cleveland, writing to the king, says, “I never was so surprized in my hulle life,” &c. &c. &c. Jonathan Wild quizzes the ordinary of Newgate for falling into this jacobite pronunciation, by spelling whole, hull.

Many forms of courtesy, rites of hospitality, and traits of habits, manners, and customs, to be found in the old comedies, from the time of Elizabeth to Anne, are still observable in the remote parts of Ireland; a country which, like an old coffer in the country mansion of an old fashioned family, is the exchequer of all the odds and ends and relics of modes long passed, and exploded in modern life.

I remember, in my childhood, dining at the country house of an old catholic family, where, after the chaplain had pronounced an interminable grace, the lady of the mansion rose, and bowing round graciously to her company, pronounced, “much good may it do ye,” which was always followed, at the end of the dinner, by the observation that none of her guests had eaten any thing; indicating the delicacy of their appetites, and the unworthiness of her table.

A few months back, having stopped to change horses at a road-side inn, and the horses having to be sent for to the field, we alighted, and found the family at dinner in the reception room, which was also the kitchen. A wretched man, begging his way to Dublin, half-naked, and half starved, and so faint from want, cold, and exhaustion, as to be scarcely articulate, paused at the threshold, and moving the crown of a leafless hat, said, “Much good may it do ye, genteels!” This form of courtesy, in practice among the gentry not many years back, has now fallen to the very lowest classes of society; and this is the history of manners, as well as of phraseology. In Shakspeare’s time the salutation of the modern Irish beggar to the peasant, was deemed a trait of royal courtesy.

The modern house-maid, who accompanies her lover, the footman, to the upper gallery, flushes at the coarseness of the fine ladies of Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar; and feels her own superiority in modesty and gentility to the lovely Lady Lurewell, or even to the prudent Angelica of Sir Harry Wildair.

Tales, novels, and dramas, are the true sources from which the philosophy of manners can best be drawn, and are illustrative of the progress of society at various and successive epochs. History does nothing in this respect; and modern historians, in this point of view, are infinitely less valuable and useful, than the dryest chronicler of the middle ages. A page of Froissart is worth a volume of Hume, (who, as an historian, by the by, is daily losing ground in public estimation). The literary fiction, which gives cotemporary manners, modes, and prevailing phraseology, has a fair chance of surviving the tale which, placed in a remote epoch, creates a manner and a dialect neither illustrative of the times of which it treats, nor the times in which it is written. This is the fault of the beautiful romance of Ivanhoe, which is written with all the colouring and dialect of Queen Elizabeth’s day, copied, even to set idioms and phrases, from Shakspeare and the play-writers of his time.

English was not spoken in the time of King John; the people spoke Saxon, the upper classes Norman-French. When Shakspeare wrote his play of King John, he did not affect to go back to the style and language of Henry the Fifth, because he could not employ that which was in use when his scene was supposed to take place. He therefore wrote in the language of his own times; and among the many admirable qualities of his inspired authorship, not the least admirable is, that he has given in his dramas, the very tone, accent, idioms, and manner of colloquial communication, from the court to the peasant’s hut.

To know how exactly Shakspeare has copied existing forms, and to account for the rapidity with which he wrote, it is only necessary to read some of the memoirs and chronicles of Henry the Eighth’s and Elizabeth’s day, where dialogues on every state affair, carried on by ministers, secretaries, and Irish Lords Lieutenant, are given verbatim,—all ready to go upon the stage, and to pass for a scene of Shakspeare’s or Ben Jonson’s,—just as a group at the Hague or Cologne, still exhibits a high toned picture of Vandervelt or Rembrandt.

I open at random a volume from the shelf of the bookcase of the dressing-room in which I write, and copy literally a scene and dialogue, meant only to be a simple narrative. It is taken from Campion’s Historie of Ireland, written 1571;—the scene is a room at court,—several lords sitting in commission on Gerald Fitzgerald, Earle of Kildare, “a gentleman valiant and well spoken, yet in his latter time overtaken with vehement suspicion of sundrie treasons.” The Cardinal Chancellor Wolsey is his inveterate enemy and chief accuser. It requires no great effort of imagination to conceive the place and persons of this veracious drama. The gloomy gothic chamber, the ponderous costume of the lords, many of whom have been made familiar to posterity by the pencil of Vandyke, the sober splendour of Wolsey’s habit, his scarlet hat, and glittering crucifix, the picturesque habit, and more picturesque person of the Geraldine,—his gigantic form, and stern, bold bearing, waiting in indignant silence for the accusations to be made against him, by a powerful and interested enemy. After a solemn pause, the lords “being diversly affectioned,” the Cardinal Chancellor broke forth in these words:

“I wot well, my lord, that I am not the meetest man at this board to charge you with these treasons; because it hath pleased some of your pew-fellows to report that I am a professed enemy of the Geraldines. I must have leave, notwithstanding your stale slander, to be the mouth of these honourable persons at this time, and to trumpe your treasons in your way, howsoever you take me.

“First, You remember how the lewde Earle, your kinsman, who passeth not whom he serve, might he change his master, sent his confederates with letters of credence to Francis the French king. How many letters?—what precepts?—what threats have been sent you to apprehend him?—and yet not done; why so?—Forsooth, I could not catch him. Nay, nay, Earle, forsooth you would not nighly watch him. If he be justly suspected, why are you partial in so great a charge? If not, why are you fearful to have him tryed? Surely, this juggling and false play little became either an honest man called to such honour, or a nobleman put in such trust. Had you lossed but a cow or a garron of your owne, two hundred kyrneghis (kirns) would have come at your whistle, to rescue the prey from the uttermost edge of Ulster. All the Irish in Ireland must have given you way. But in persuing so weighty a matter as this, merciful God, how nice, how dangerous, how wayward have you bin? I wis, my lord, there be shrewde bogges in the borders, for the Earle of Kildare to fear.”

Whilst the Cardinal was speaking, the Earl chafed and changed colour, and sundry proffers made to answer every sentence as it came. At last he broke out, and interrupted them thus—

“My Lord Chancellor,—I beseech you pardon me. I am short witted, and you, I perceive, intend a long tale. If you proceede in this order, half my purgation wil be loste for lack of carryage. I have no schoole tricks, nor art of memory: except you hear me, while I remember your words, your second process will hammer out the former. What my cousin Desmond hath compassed, as I know not, so I beshrew his naked heart for holding out so long. Cannot the Earle of Desmond shift, but I must be of counsell?—Cannot hee bee hid, except I winke?—If hee bee close, am I his mate?—If hee bee friended, am I a traytour? This is a doughty kind of accusation which they urge against me, wherein they are stabled and mirde, at my first deniall. ‘You would not see him,’ say they;—‘who made them so familiar with mine eye-sight?—As touching my kingdom, my lord, I would that you and I had exchanged kingdoms, but for one moneth, I would trust to gather up more crummes in that space than twice the revenues of my poor earldome. But you are well and warm, and so hold you; and upbraide not me with such an odious storme. I sleep in a cabin, when you lie soft on a bed of downe. I serve under the cope of heaven, when you are served under a canopy. I drink water out of a scull, when you drinke out of golden cuppes. My courser is trained to the field, when your jennet is taught to amble. When you are begraced, and belorded, and crouched and kneeled unto, then I find small grace with our Irish borderers, except I cut them off by the knees.’”