New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1892-06-14
A SHELLEY CONCORDANCE.
UNNECESSARY MINUTENESS IN THE CLASH
FTCATION OF WORDS.

A kEXIcM ooNG9RDANcE TO TIE TIE, PQ pT AL
attemSs to of classify every word found an &C
cordlng to its qualification. Compiled ana d or,
onaritch.
Readers Of Shelleys works will certainly De
gratiHed to have At hand book of reference as
convenient as the one which Mr.. Ellis has pre-
pared. The pcculiaritics limited at by the ad-
jectve "lexica may cause delay of second or
two in tracing given line or phrase az hrst' ou'
this will doubtless be Obviated rs soon as 'he
peculiarities cease to lie novel MI. Eils re-
marks in his preface that he was eneageo uPoh
the task for six years, and adds: ITO those VINO
would induce Time to spread wide bis WINGS ana
who would drive from their spirits the ci"uu oi
minor vexations with which life Is besct can
heartily recommend the making of a concordance
It is merely an accidental coincidence, he assures
us, that the volume Is published IN the ceh'eharS
year of the poets birth
II would, Of course, require the test OF con-
adorable service to ascertain the correctness of
all the lines quoted, and the references by which
they are TO be found. Trials at random from vari-
Gus pages here and there were found, however, to
be invariably satisfactory. The question that re-
mains relates the merits Of the lcXical features
which Mr. Ellis has added to the ordinary plan
of concordance. Here there is room for wide
diversity of opinion The compiler has not
merly defined the words used by Shelley IN the
various senses in which lie supposed them to have
been used, but he has given dates with the proper
names of persons mentioned in the poems, inter-
preted names used allcgorically; and by means OF
asterisks, daggers and double-daggers, as marks
Of annexation. has indicated words used by Shelley
that were not used by Shakespeare-words that
were not used by the dramatst in TIC sense that
Shelley gives them, words that were used only
oroe by Shakespeare. The difference in time be-
tween the two poets, and the vast number OF
words created in the interval, gives almost
ludicrous aspect to these marks in many cases
The dulest reader of Shakespeare would hardly
need to be told that the word gin" could not
have occurred in his dramas since Geneva liquor
was a hated novelty in England when the almost
prohibitory law against intoxicating drinks was
passed by Parliament in 1876. The same objec-
ton from the point of time holds good in the
case of phrases like the Bank lof England Bank
notina, Shelley's own coinage brandy-devls,
which is hardly better than recent
slang for delrium :remens, and Others
which dt is needless to enumrrate. The star is
equally out of place before the names of men
who belonged TO an age after that of Shakespeare
Thus we are gravey informed that the dramatist
never mentioned Archibald Armstrong. the court
Jester of James l and Charles l. 1t is true that
Armstrong was in existence before Shakespeare
died but il folklore is to Be trusted, he was
mere sheep-thief on the Scottish border when
Shakespeare was Londoncr, and though he be-
came well known by the time the last Of the
plays written, mention of him in any of
them would have been gross anachronism. 1t
seems needless also to mark not used by Shake
speare names like Cosimo, that belong to charac-
tiers of Shelley's own creation; or designations
of tribes whom Shakespeare could have known
nothing about, for example. the Arnauts Of mod
ern Greece.
The definitions Of words are not always happy.
reader will hardly consent to supply in the
phrase A victim of my bafled rage the words
"inHatiable desire" as equivalent to rage, nor To
accept the barbarism progressed as explanatory
of the verb to walk The description of mag
nolia as "conifcrous shrub is misleading for
though it bears a one-shaped fruit, it is not TO
lie counted among the plants scientifically known
as confers. Again, TO translate time-destroying
by "incalcuable' is certainly prosaic This
emphatic compound was better than many in
which Shelley INDUCED. There is thought
deeply poetic in the obliteraton of time by the
mere contrast with infnty. But when the poet
speaks Of door waylaying thief" one feels
like putting the matter-offact question, How can
a thief any one else waylay door? This book
furnishes an admirable opportunity for the study
in cool blood Of the great number Of hyphenated
words which Shelley invented appropriated
1t Is possible that this sort of study may diminish
rather than increase his fame.
An amusing instance of the way feeling may
be expressed in definition is found in the ex-
PLANTATION of Laureate" as IAN absurd court
official" One has a suspicion also that Mr.. Ellis
was expressing narrower idea Of religion than
that of Shelley when he defined it as the feeling
which man entertain toward the unknowable,
formulated into o system This statement, he
sides being narrow is ambiguous. One cannot
get much religion under it, but he can cover
with it a good many things foreign to religion.
When Jules Verne sends an impossible hero on
an impossible journey among the planets. he is
formulating feelings about the unknowable into
q system When "Niels kim tumbled through
a hole into the hollow of the earth, where h.
expected TO find Hades, but really fohhd
something quite different, he is said 10 have
formulated his feelings about the unknowable into
a system But there little or no religion
in the system so far as his veracious chronicler
made 1t known TO u.s. When comes to apply
this definition TO line, for example such as
THE bloodhound of religions hungry zeal, one
concludes that Shelley, right or wrong, did not
imagine that he was dealing with the unknow-
able.
Sometimes the comments words necessarily
obscure or reconcile are almost too m, agre TO be
of service. In /" Peter Bell the Third" 1T is said
of the hero:
Furious he rode whore late Re ran,
Lashng and squirting his tame hobby.
Turned q formal Puritan
A solemn and unseXUal man.
He half believed White obi
Upon white Obi, Mr.. Ellis vouchsafes merely
the words "a negro fetch" But that Is a
secondary and less portentous use of the word
Obi familiar as the negro name in the West
Indies for the mingled practice of veneiice and
magic It does not seem clear that Shelley had in
mind the less important thought to the exclusion
of the other. Again, Mr.. Ellis defines Chmaera as
"a tabled trip]e-headed monster This would be