Notes and Queries, Number 50, October 12, 1850

Оглавление

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

NOTES

A NOTE ON "SMALL WORDS."

ON GRAY'S ELEGY

GRAY'S ELEGY IN PORTUGUESE

FURTHER NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKSPEARE'S HENRY VIII

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND SIR HENRY NEVILL

MINOR NOTES

QUERIES

BLACK ROOD OF SCOTLAND

MINOR QUERIES

REPLIES

CURFEW

ENGELMANNS BIBLIOTHECA SCRIPTORUM CLASSICORUM

CROZIER AND PASTORAL STAFF

PARSONS, THE STAFFORDSHIRE GIANT

EISELL AND WORMWOOD WINE

REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES

MISCELLANEOUS

NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS

Отрывок из книги

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:—

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"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:—

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

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