On the Study of Words | Page 2

ready to hand as are the
materials for such a book, I did not; while yet it seems to me that the
subject is one to which it is beyond measure desirable that their
attention, who are teaching, or shall have hereafter to teach, others
should be directed; so that they shall learn to regard language as one of

the chiefest organs of their own education and that of others. For I am
persuaded that I have used no exaggeration in saying, that for many a
young man 'his first discovery that words are living powers, has been
like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of another
sense, or the introduction into a new world,'--while yet all this may be
indefinitely deferred, may, indeed, never find place at all, unless there
is some one at hand to help for him, and to hasten the process; and he
who so does, will ever after be esteemed by him as one of his very
foremost benefactors. Whatever may be Horne Tooke's shortcomings
(and they are great), whether in details of etymology, or in the
philosophy of grammar, or in matters more serious still, yet, with all
this, what an epoch in many a student's intellectual life has been his
first acquaintance with The Diversions of Purley. And they were not
among the least of the obligations which the young men of our time
owed to Coleridge, that he so often himself weighed words in the
balances, and so earnestly pressed upon all with whom his voice went
for anything, the profit which they would find in so doing. Nor, with
the certainty that I am anticipating much in my little volume, can I
refrain from quoting some words which were not present with me
during its composition, although I must have been familiar with them
long ago; words which express excellently well why it is that these
studies profit so much, and which will also explain the motives which
induced me to add my little contribution to their furtherance:
'A language will often be wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even
than the wisest of those who speak it. Being like amber in its efficacy
to circulate the electric spirit of truth, it is also like amber in embalming
and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom, although one is not seldom
puzzled to decipher its contents. Sometimes it locks up truths, which
were once well known, but which, in the course of ages, have passed
out of sight and been forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of
truths, of which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius
of its framers caught a glimpse in a happy moment of divination. A
meditative man cannot refrain from wonder, when he digs down to the
deep thought lying at the root of many a metaphorical term, employed
for the designation of spiritual things, even of those with regard to
which professing philosophers have blundered grossly; and often it
would seem as though rays of truth, which were still below the

intellectual horizon, had dawned upon the imagination as it was
looking up to heaven. Hence they who feel an inward call to teach and
enlighten their countrymen, should deem it an important part of their
duty to draw out the stores of thought which are already latent in their
native language, to purify it from the corruptions which Time brings
upon all things, and from which language has no exemption, and to
endeavour to give distinctness and precision to whatever in it is
confused, or obscure, or dimly seen'--_Guesses at Truth, First Series_,
p. 295.
ITCHENSTOKE: Oct. 9, 1851.

CONTENTS.
LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
LECTURE II. ON THE POETRY IN WORDS
LECTURE III. ON THE MORALITY IN WORDS
LECTURE IV. ON THE HISTORY IN WORDS
LECTURE V. ON THE RISE OF NEW WORDS
LECTURE VI. ON THE DISTINCTION OF WORDS
LECTURE VII. THE SCHOOLMASTER'S USE OF WORDS
INDEX OF WORDS

ON THE STUDY OF WORDS
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE.
There are few who would not readily acknowledge that mainly in
worthy books are preserved and hoarded the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge which the world has accumulated; and that chiefly by aid of
books they are handed down from one generation to another. I shall
urge on you in these lectures something different from this; namely,
that not in books only, which all acknowledge, nor yet in connected
oral discourse, but often also in words contemplated singly, there are
boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and
imagination, laid up--that from these, lessons of infinite worth may be
derived, if only our attention is roused to their existence. I shall urge on
you how well it will repay you to study the words which