The Portland daily press., 1873-01-24

There is very plessll paper in the Ne,1
Highlander for JAM by Professor j. S.
Sewall, of Brunswick, Maine, on the subject
of ''Name Words in the Vernacular," in
which the origin, changes and perversions of
lish language from sources the most various,
are discussed with abundant intelligence and
very agreeable results. Conceiving the Ian
guage to be gallery Of art, Professor Sewall
takes the name-words for the busts and
statues and portraits contained in it, and goes
on to speak of them individually. This, and
two other passages, We transfer to the col
umns of the Erening Post.
THE ART GALLERY OF NAMES.
Let us examine its treasures. The first
sample we should come to would be those In
which the name is directly affixed to the
object without change; as the Armstrong
gun, Remington rife, Mimic ball, Argand
burner, Drummond light, Mansard roof, Bah
bitt metal, Baldwin apple, Graham bread.
Prominent natural objects are often so dis
tinguished as Hudson River, Bunker Hill,
Delaware Bay-even to the stars, as Herschel
and Leverrier. 1t is common to call mans
work by his name, whether hand work or
head work. Thus we 90 not read the plays
the essays of Carlyle-we read Shakespeare,
Wordworth, Carlyle. We call a violin gen.
uine Amati. A painting is Rubens, a
Titan, Turner, Vandyke, a Murillo. The
temperature is so many degrees Fahrenheit.
A monstrous lie is Munchausen. Such as
these are in common use and greatly enrich
| the defining power of the language. In
many instances of this direct application the
| thing which takes the name goes off with it,
and leaves the man who furnished it forgot
| ten. Joseph Ignace Guillotine has disap-
| peared behind the terrible machine he in
| troduced. The droll "silhouettes'' in our
| magazines never remind us of the French
| minister of finance whose dogged economy
doomed his name to be affixed derisively to
| the cheapest of all portraits. We read of
'Lazaretto" without thinking of Lazarus.
| 'Music" does not recall the muses., nor does
museum" nor "mosaic." There are even
traditions that the word derrick is all that
| now remains OF one Theodorick, hangman
at Tyburn, who long since vanished from his
| ghastly stage.
Another class is made up of that immense
number of names which have received ter
mination and now do duty as adjectives !;
Darwinian, Baconian, Machiavellian, Calvin
istic, Copernican, Homeric, Mosaic, Pauline,
Mohammedan, &C. Carlyle speaks of Brum-
melian politeness. James Russell Lowell
says Wordsworthian, Lockist, Kantist, and
even Popist. The only requisites for attain
ing to this much of fame are, first, to bring
on some new thing in art, religion, philoso-
ply, literature or state: and secondly, to pear
a name which win make pronounceable ad-
jective. We can call stanza Spenserian,
Tennysonian, Anacreonic; but euPnony
would go mad over such terminals as Iooio-
| an, Keats-y, Southey-istic, GGtne-an, Lons
fellow-ine, Thackeray-ic; however Wo,.ny Vi
tbe honor those eminent names might be.
Somo of these name-adjectives have become
snan;fca,Iv appropriated to particular fact,
ornJ have no other application; as
Fabian policy, Torricellian vacuum, Eliza
ho.hon ace Cesarean sction, Fallopian tubes
Gnrdian knot, Justipian code, Napoleonic
| ideas. This is a common usage among pro-
fessional men, and for the description of
scientific facts. The same is true of the nos
sessive; for example: .Napier's locarithms
Archimedes's screw, Halley's comet. Clan
ber's salt, Bright's disease-eacb of which
contains whole chapter of history in itself:
to say nothing of such current phrases as
| Hobson's choice, Pandora's box, and such pet
pseudonyms as Mother Carey's chickens.
The most interesting class of these person.
al words is that in which the name lies un-
suspected until driven from its covert. 1t Is
easy to recognize Mesmer in ''mesmerism,"
Galvani in ''galvanism," Daguerre in the
"daguerreotype." We can readily gusss why
those irreverent iron-smelters should call a
mass of metal which will not yield to the hot
| test blast ''shadrach." King Mausolus af
fords us convenient term for our most