Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 - Various - Страница 3

Our ancestors had three verbs and three corresponding substantives to express the growth of plants, namely, spring, shoot, and sprout,—all indicative of rapidity of growth; for sprout, (Germ. spriessen) is akin to spurt, and denotes quickness, suddenness. The only one of these which remains in general use is shoot: for sprout is now only appropriated to the young growth from cabbage-stalks; and spring is heard no more save in sprig, which is evidently a corruption of it, and which now denotes a small slip or twig as we say, sprigs of laurel, bay, thyme, mint, rosemary, &c.

Of the original meaning of spring, I have met but one clear instance; it is, however, an incontrovertible one, namely,

"Whoso spareth the spring (i. e. rod, switch), spilleth his children."—Visions of Piers Plowman, v. 2554., ed. Wright.

Perhaps this is also the meaning in—

and in "Time's Glory"—

Spring afterwards came to be used for underwood, &c. Perhaps it answered to the present coppice, which is composed of the springs or shoots of the growth which has been cut down:

It was also used as equivalent to grove:

where, however, it may be the coppice.

In the following place Fairfax uses spring to express the "salvatichi soggiorni," i. e. selva of his original:

and in

it answers to selva.

When Milton makes his Eve say—

he had probably in his mind the cespuglio in the first canto of the Orlando Furioso; for spring had not been used in the sense of thickets, clumps, by any previous English poet. I am of opinion that spring occurs for the last time in our poetry in the following lines of Pope:

Johnson renders the last line—

and this is probably the sense in which the place has generally been understood. But let any one read the preceding quotations, and reflect on what a diligent student Pope was of the works of his predecessors, and perhaps he will think with me.

Thomas Keightley.