The Quaintness of "The Judicious Hooker"
OF course, in a certain sense, Richard Hooker needs no formal introduction to people of culture, who know him as they know any other great writer of his day. His life was uneventful, to be sure, and placid like his disposition, but, after all, in many respects unusual. Stormy times circled about him, raging wars of religious thought were in progress, yet from out his quiet soul comes not a word of harshness, no bitter reproaches, scarcely even a well-deserved reproof. His selfcontrol is one of the most beautiful features of a beautiful character. In that turbulent age, wealth and dignities, bishoprics and honors ecclesiastical, were freely showered on others, but he sought none of them. Living above them all, he was, most exceptionally, a man “ in the world, but not of the world.”
He was born within the precincts of Exeter, in 1553. His parents, though industrious, were in straitened circumstances, hardly above the level of poverty. As a lad his modest intelligence won the good-will of the school-master who had him in charge. This worthy man persuaded the boy’s uncle, John Hooker, then chamberlain of Exeter, to maintain him for one year in the university. At the end of this time, John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, became his patron, sending him to Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
We have one bright glimpse of his college life, an account of a journey which he took on foot, with one of his fellow-students, from Oxford to Exeter, taking Salisbury in his way purposely to see the good bishop, who made them both dine with him at his own table. “ At parting with Mr. Hooker,” says the narrative, “ the bishop gave him good counsel and his benediction, but forgot to give him money; which when the bishop had considered, he sent a servant in all haste to call Richard back to him; and on Richard’s return, the bishop said to him, ' Richard, I sent for you back to lend you a horse which hath carried me for many a mile, and, I thank God, with much ease; ’ and presently delivered into his hand a walking-staff, with which he professed he had traveled through many parts of Germany. And he said, ‘ Richard, I do not give, but lend you my horse; be sure you be honest and bring my horse back to me at your return this way to Oxford. And I do now give you ten groats to bear your charges to Exeter; and here is ten groats more which I charge you to deliver to your mother, and tell her I send her a bishop’s benediction with it and beg the continuance of her prayers for me. And if you bring my horse back to me, I will give you ten groats more, to carry you on foot to the college; and so God bless you, good Richard.’ And this, you may believe, was performed by both parties.”
In September, 1571, Bishop Jewel died, but the lad found another friend in Edwin Sandys, Bishop of London, and, later, Archbishop of York. As a student, young Hooker made his mark at once. He appears to have been a profound Hebraist, besides standing high in general scholarship. Moreover, his biographer makes pointed mention of his eminent modesty and piety, qualities which seem to have recommended a collegian in those days. In his nineteenth year he was admitted to be one of the twenty scholars of the foundation, and was thus perfectly incorporated into Corpus Christi, then noted for a large library, strict students, and remarkable scholars. In 1577, four years after, he took his degree and became a fellow of the college.
For most of these facts we are indebted to Walton’s Life of Hooker, which is by far the best extant. It rambles, to be sure, yet every page has graphic touches. Honest Isaac, angling in many brooks besides the one he sets out to follow, contrives to bring in an excellent basket of fish. His anecdotes are entertaining, in particular those touching the good bishops who were Hooker’s patrons. Their money was certainly well expended; and we can see how the influences thus early brought to bear made Hooker, in after life, a staunch supporter of Prelacy, as against Romanism on the one hand and Independency on the other.
After three years more of college life, he received holy orders in the Church of England, and was appointed to preach in London for the first time, at St. Paul’s Cross. Going thither, he took lodgings at the Shunamite’s House, “which,” says Walton, “is so called for that, besides the stipend paid the preacher, there is provision made also for his lodging and diet for two days before and one day after his sermon. ” To this hostelry, then kept by a certain John Churchman, our good man came in an evil hour, and from henceforth we behold him in affliction. He had made the wearisome journey in a fierce storm, arriving, at last, worn and weather-beaten. Moreover, “such a faintness and fear possessed him,” says the chronicler, “ that he would not be persuaded two days’ rest and quietness, or any other means, could be used to make him able to preach his Sunday’s sermon; but a warm bed, rest, and drink proper for a cold, given him by Mrs. Churchman, and her diligent attendance added unto it, enabled him to perform the office for the day, which was in or about the year 1581.”
In this his first public appearance, his sermon held the following point of doctrine, which roused some opposition : “ That in God there were two wills; an antecedent and consequent will: his first will, that, all mankind should be saved; but his second will was that those only should be saved that did live answerable to that degree of grace which he had offered or afforded them.” “But the justifying of this doctrine,” adds our historian, gliding from one point to another in the soberest way, “ did not prove of so bad consequence as the kindness of Mrs. Churchman’s curing him of his late distemper and cold; for that was so gratefully apprehended by Mr. Hooker that he thought himself bound in conscience to believe all she said: so that the good man came to be persuaded by her ' that it was best for him to have a wife, that might prove a nurse to him, to prolong his life and make it more comfortable; and such a one she could and would provide for him, if he thought fit to marry.’ And he, not considering that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light, . . . trusted her to choose for him, promising on a fair summons to return to London and accept of her choice ; and he did so in that or about the year following. Now the wife provided for him was her daughter Joan, who brought him neither beauty nor portion; and for her conditions they were too like that wife’s which is by Solomon compared to a dripping house.”
By this marriage he was drawn from his college, and became the unlucky occupant of a country parsonage. His parish was Drayton Beauchamp, in Buckinghamshire, not far from Aylesbury in the diocese of Lincoln.
About a year later, his two former pupils, Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, paid him a visit. “ They found him with a book in his hand,” tending a few sheep in a common field, which he told them he was forced to do because his servant had gone home to assist his wife about some necessary household concerns. After his servant returned to release him, they went into the house, “ where their best entertainment was his quiet company, which was presently denied them ; for Richard was called to rock the cradle; ’ and the rest of their welcome was so like this,” that they took leave early next morning. At parting, Mr. Cranmer said, “ Good tutor, I am sorry that your lot is fallen in no better ground as to your parsonage, and more sorry that your wife proves not a more comfortable companion after you have wearied your thoughts in your restless studies.” And the good man replied, “ My dear George, if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath appointed for me, but labor (as indeed I do daily) to submit to his will, and possess my soul in patience and peace.”
In experimental philosophy of this practical kind Richard Hooker was certainly in advance of Lord Bacon. It is hard to imagine our judicious divine tending sheep and rocking the cradle, with the English Polity Ecclesiastical sandwiched in between these weighty duties, by way of light, incidental thinking. His visitors failed to see the beauties of this arrangement, and went home with piteous tales of Hooker’s condition.
A good bishop came to his aid in this strait also. The mastership of the Temple was then vacant through the death of Dr. Alvie, who had held it acceptably for years. John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, was anxious that Richard Hooker should have the place ; but the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burleigh seem to have set their hearts on having it given to one Travers, a preacher of doubtful ordination, imbued with the doctrines of Geneva, and far from sound in the established faith. It is pleasant to see how the schemes of these wily statesmen, who had an eye to certain church lands, were brought to nought by the queen’s shrewdness and the archbishop’s integrity. This John Whitgift was a man of solid piety. He built a large almshouse near his own palace at Croydon in Surrey, not forgetting to endow it amply. He would call its poor inmates brothers and sisters; and whenever the queen condescended to dine with him at his palace, he would usually go, the day after, to dine with his poor friends at the hospital; “ at which time,” says the narrator, “ you may believe, there was joy at the table.” He also built a free school at Croydon, which gave Boyse Sisi, then ambassador for the King of France, occasion to say that “the bishop had published many learned books; but a free school to train up youth, and an hospital to maintain aged and poor people, were the best evidences of Christian learning that a bishop could leave to posterity.”
The queen regarded him with unusual favor, calling him “ her little black husband,” and his servants “ her servants,” and would often declare “ she pitied him because she trusted him, and had laid all the burden of her clergy-cares on his shoulders, which he managed with prudence and piety.”
Such was the man who now took Hooker under his protection; no wonder that the two agreed excellently. Through his influence the queen was led to thwart the unscrupulous plans of her statesmen, bestowing Father Alvie’s place on quiet Richard Hooker, who had not sought the position, to the exclusion of Travers and one Dr. Bond, who had. Hooker accepted it somewhat reluctantly, and was made Master of the Temple by patent for life, March 17, 1585.
He found his opponent, Walter Travers, already installed there as preacher of the evening sermons; and, having no good reason for setting him aside, Travers being a man of blameless life, he soon found himself engaged in controversies of the tedious kind, “ many of which,” we are told, “were concerning the doctrines and ceremonies of this church; in so much that as St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face, so did they withstand each other in their sermons; for as one hath pleasantly expressed it, ‘ The forenoon sermon spake Canterbury, and the afternoon Geneva.’ ”
The religious dissensions of Queen Elizabeth’s reign were extremely bitter. Plots against church and state fomented by the Romanists, scurrilous pamphlets on prelacy disseminated by non-conformists and other restless men of no peculiar tenets, yet bold in asserting that “papists could not be .saved,” fanatical preaching filling ignorant minds with discontent and sedition, venomous attacks on the church and personal abuse of the men who held her bishoprics, — all this and much more of the same sort formed the moral atmosphere of the times.
But Hooker’s controversies were conducted in the right spirit. To sundry exceptions made against him by Mr. Travers his answer is, “ Tour next argument consists of railing and reasons. To your railing I say nothing; to your reasons I say what follows.” And so we come to his groat work on Ecclesiastical Polity, which was commenced here and grew out of these disputations with Travers. It opens with a dedication to the primate, and a preface addressed to “ them that seek (as they term it) the reformation of the laws and orders ecclesiastical in the Church of England.” Then come the eight books of actual argument, the first dealing with the principles of law in general, and those following with church canons and special laws ecclesiastical; the whole forming a sober, deliberate treatise on the polity of the English Church.
Meanwhile the strife in the Temple continued to vex the soul of its peaceable master. Many of his trials proceeded from the Earl of Leicester, who still defended Travers. The following letter to the archbishop speaks for itself in a tone of genuine pathos : “ My lord, when I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage; but I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place, and indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. My lord, my particular contests with Mr. Travers here have proved the more unpleasant to me because I believe him to be a good man; and that belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions; and to satisfy that, I have consulted the Scripture, and other laws both human and divine, whether the conscience of him and others of his judgment ought to be so far complied with as to alter our frame of church government, our manner of God’s worship, our praising and praying to him, and our established ceremonies, as often as his and others’ tender consciences shall require us; and, in this examination, I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun a treatise in which I intend a justification of the laws of our ecclesiastical polity; in which design God and his holy angels shall at the last great day bear me that witness which my conscience now does, that my meaning is not to provoke any, but rather to satisfy all tender consciences. And I shall never be able to do this, but where I may study and pray for God’s blessing upon my endeavors and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God’s blessing spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without oppositions; and therefore, if your Grace can judge me worthy of such a favor, let me beg it, that I may perfect what I have begun.”
In response to this appeal, the archbishop secured for him the living of Boscum, a small country town, where he remained till 1595, when he was transferred to the better parish of Bishopsbourne, in the county of Kent. During his residence at Boscum, he published the first four books of his treatise. The fifth appeared separately in 1597. On the remaining three he spent the last years of his life. The rural quiet of Boscum and Bishopsbourue seems to have suited him, enabling him to maintain the inner calm essential to the preparation of his work. He died at the latter place, in the year 1600, after a somewhat lingering illness, during which his chief anxiety was for the completion of his books.
Soon after his death the archbishop sent by one of his chaplains to ask Mrs. Hooker about the remainder of the great treatise, which the world was now eagerly awaiting. Judge of their indignation when she said that “ one Mr. Chark and another minister that dwelt near Canterbury came to her and desired that they might go into her husband’s study and look upon some of his writings; that there they two burnt and tore many of them, assuring her they were writings not fit to be seen; and that she knew nothing more concerning them.” As a final outburst of spite, a last touch of her quality, Madam Hooker could have devised nothing better than this! Nor could the world ask better proof of the venom and cowardice of Hooker’s adversaries. The last three books of the eight we now possess were completed from rough drafts and imperfect copies which escaped destruction. The treatise found a welcome both in England and on the Continent. We are told that an Englishman, the learned Dr. Stapleton, who was in Italy at the time with some friends, boasted to Pope Clement “that, though he had lately said he had never met with an English book whose writer deserved the name of an author, yet there now appeared a wonder to them, and it would be so to his Holiness, if it were in Latin; for a poor, obscure English priest had writ four such books of laws and church polity, and in a style that expressed so grave and so humble a majesty, with such clear demonstration of reason, that in all their readings they had not met with any that exceeded him.” Upon this, the pope requested Dr. Stapleton to bring the books and read a part of them to him in Latin. The Englishman did so, and, at the close of Book First, the pope said to him, “ There is no learning this man hath not searched into — nothing too hard for his understanding; this man, in deed, deserves the name of an author _ his books will get reverence by age, for there is in them such seeds of eternity that, if the rest be like this, they shall last till the last fire shall consume all learning.”
Accepting this judgment of their general merits, as a careful examination of the books themselves will force us to do, their peculiarities of style remain to be considered. Let us look at these with our own eyes.
Much of the quaintness so prominent in Hooker’s English depends upon words of his own coinage, words expressing his thought at once so fully and so concisely as to bear the unmistakable mintmark of his personality. They are found in the dictionaries, marked “ Hooker,” and rarely occur elsewhere. Take, for instance, the adjective “ unemptiable,” a most ungainly combination. Yet how excellent as the old sermonizer created it and set it in the heart of his sentence: “ Whatsoever either man on earth or angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountain of Wisdom.”
The quaintness, however, often arises from the use of words now obsolete or employed in a new sense. A mere glance at these, in the surface-fashion of amateur philology, will show the changes going on in our mother-tongue and may even lead to some perception of their meaning.
In a masterly statement concerning the Law of Nature, at the beginning of Book First, our author has the following sentence: “ If the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loose and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as might happen, what would become of man himself, whom these things now serve? ” Here the word “volubility” is used in its primary sense of revolution or rotation, and it has a strange classical sound. We have learned to think of the term “ voluble ” as it occurs in Keats’s beautiful line, —
or as we find it in Shakespeare, —
“ So sweet and voluble was his discourse.”
How the word has contrived to stray, both in Latin and in English, from the starry spheres to the chatter of the fireside; whether the motions of the tongue have some affinity with those of the planets as being equally continuous, unwearied, and in most cases past finding out; whether certain gossips are possessed of a talent only to be described as “ irregular volubility ” somewhat on the comet order,— all this would be an investigation more amusing than profitable.
Returning to the Ecclesiastical Polity, we come almost at once upon a word whose changes mark a process of deterioration. “Jerome and Chrysostom,” declares Hooker, “both speak of the clergy and their weed at the same time, when they administer the blessed sacrament; and of the self-same kind of weed, a white garment, so far as we have wit to conceive.” The epithet “weed,” applied to a surplice, would puzzle one unfamiliar with the history of the word. It originally signified a garment, as in Spenser’s line,— “ A goodly lady, clad in hunter’s weed.”
Later it came to mean an outer garment, and is here so used by Hooker of the white surplice. Now, it indicates black worn as mourning. Thus it has not only changed meaning, but has changed color as well, and is become a sort of “ white blackbird.” Yet love, dashing rose-color on all things, contrives to hit even this funereal word. Sir Philip Sidney, distressed at a sudden pallor on the countenance of his lady-love, gives us the following bit of daintiness: —
Who hath the crimson weeds stol'n from my morning skies ? ”
In some cases a word has lost an intensive syllable in coming down to us. The forcible noun “ exulceration ” shows such a change. “Which exulceration of mind made him apt to take all occasions of contradiction,” says Hooker, speaking of an Opponent. What could better depict the state of mind he seeks to indicate? We see before us at once that hand-to-hand struggle of controversy, not speculative as in our own day, but intensely practical, the flames of actual martyrdom so closely of the past that their embers were still smoking far and near, and the peaceable master of the Temple striving to quench the smoldering fires and to pacify those “ froward, exulcerated, and seditious spirits.”
Sometimes the last syllable has fallen from the end of the word, as in the term “sophister,” which we make simply “sophist.” In the Defense of Poesy it retains the old form. “ Truly,” says Sir Philip, “ they have made me think of the sophister that with too much subtlety would prove two eggs three — and, though he might be Counted a sophister, had none for his labor.”
Three hundred years ago, the term “ speculation ” carried none of the money ideas now connected with it. “ In prayer we behold God by speculation,” says our pious author, quite as if the statement were in no wise remarkable. And he continues, “ The mind delighted with that contemplative sight of God taketh everywhere new inflammations to pray; the riches of the mysteries of heavenly wisdom continually stirring up in us correspondent desires towards them.” Note the wording of this excellent passage. Understood as the writer would have it, “ new inflammations to pray ” conveys a beautiful thought.
In fact, these cumbrous nouns work in admirably. They give a peculiar music of their own to passages where the thought is simply argumentative. “ Admit this,” reasons Hooker, very earnestly, “ and what shall the Scripture be but a snare and torment to weak consciences: filling them with infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and extreme despairs.” It would be hard to find a better example of rhythmical prose than the last clause in the foregoing sentence; yet its delicately balanced modulations drop in one by one, easily, unconsciously, as if the aim of the writer had been far above and beyond niceties like these.
It is impossible to overestimate the closeness of thought behind these graceful combinations, a closeness largely due to the connectives. “ Sithhence,” Anglo - Saxon “ siththan,” “ whereas,” “ howbeit,” “ hereof,” “ whereby,” “sith,” “ hereat,” “ whereunto,” “out of which premises,” “ wherein whatsoever,” “ in which kind notwithstanding,” are all unwieldy forms, scarcely intelligible. Yet the substitution of everyday words for these obsolete ones certainly weakens the context. This is true of substantives as well as of prepositions and conjunctions. But the latter fare worst. Like clumsy but massive bolts, the old connectives hold that grand machinery together, and are more than strong enough to do it. No rivets of modern manufacture are equal to the task. If any one is inclined to question this, let him try the experiment of such substitution, as I have done.
Yet why should this be? In regard to nouns, the homely associations wont to cluster round familiar words may explain our more favorable impressions of the stately old ones. Substitute “ornament” for “ exornation,” and we have a vision of jewelry and gewgaws. Something of dignity has been lost, The whole phrase is cheapened.
The other side of the case cannot be so readily explained. The difficulty with the connectives points to a radical change in certain mental processes. As thinkers of the nineteenth century, we are apt to let our ideas float along loosely; we are not given, generally speaking, to inferential deductions, to the close, logical reasoning which makes the solidity of work like Hooker’s. The language of our day conforms to this mode of thought, and our really accurate connectives are given over to the lawyer’s clerk.
But let us examine a few more of these quaint substantives. How many of us would venture a guess at the meaning of the word “loover”? Our author is quoting from one of his adversaries: “ Albeit the loover of antichristian building were not, ye say, as then set up, yet the foundations thereof were secretly and under the ground laid in the Apostle’s times.” This is a corruption of Norman French l'ouvert, the opening or aperture. Spenser gives the French, correctly spelled. “ The ancient manner of building in Cornwall was to set hearths in the midst of rooms, which vented the smoke at a louver (or opening) in the top.” (Carew, Survey of Cornwall.) Thus we get a glimpse of the primitive simplicity which antedated the era of chimneys.
The old-fashioned feminine recurs in many words which have now lost it: “ To prescribe the order of doing in all things is a peculiar prerogative which Wisdom hath, as a queen or sovereign commandress over other virtues.” So far Hooker. Sir Philip Sidney uses an expression equally quaint, in the following line from the eighty-eighth sonnet:
“ From my dear captainess to run away.”
The proper noun “ admonitioners ” is worthy of note. Trench has a few words on titles of this kind which are to the point. He thinks that “almost all the sects and parties, religious and political, which have risen up in times past in England, are known by names which will repay study. ‘ Puritans,’ ' fifthmonarchy men,’ ‘ seekers,’ ‘ independents,’ ' friends,’ ‘ latitudinarians,’ these titles, with many more, have each its significance; and would you understand what they meant, you must first understand what they were called.” Hooker’s explanation of the name admonitioners is definite. “ Under the happy reign of her Majesty that now is, the greatest matter awhile contended for was the wearing of the cap and surplice, till there came admonitions directed unto the high court of Parliament by men who, concealing their names, thought it glory enough to discover their minds and affections, which now were universally bent against all the orders and laws wherein this church is found unconformable to the platform of Geneva.” The men issuing this remarkable paper were styled admonitioners. In the course of years these proper nouns meet with eccentric transformations, especially those which have been names of places. Any one in the habit of using Worcestershire sauce on his table will have learned from the red label on every bottle that it is kept for sale in St. Paul’s Churchyard.
We find other curious nouns in our treatise: such as “ well - willers ” for well-wishers, “ exornations,” which, freely rendered by modern irreverence, may be termed “ extra touches,” “ suppage,” “ deodate,” and “ cavillation,” which has now lost two syllables. Nearly all changes of form in the last century have been in the interests of brevity. Our forefathers lived more leisurely lives than we; and their dignified language had nothing in it of our fretful, impatient worry.
The Ecclesiastical Polity contains adjectives and adverbs as peculiar as its nouns. In the first book we find this queerly entangled passage: “In goodness, therefore, there is a latitude or extent whereby it cometh to pass that even of good actions some are better than other some; whereas otherwise one man could not excel another, but all should be either absolutely good, as hitting jump that indivisible point or centre wherein goodness consisteth ; or else, missing it, they should be excluded out of the number of well-doers.” Here “ jump ” must mean exactly or precisely as in Hamlet, “ Jump at this dead hour,”
but is quite comical in such connection.
Another sentence runs as follows: “ The law of angels we cannot judge altogether impertinent unto the church of God.” “ Impertinent,” which now denotes rude, officious intermeddling, is here used in its primary meaning, “ irre levant.”
Closely related to Hooker’s noun “sedulity ” (which, by the way, is preferable to our word “ sedulousness ”) is the adjective “ industrious.” Our author quotes a passage from some Greek poet, translating it thus: “ The fiery throne of God is attended on by those most industrious angels.” This adjective, industrious, strikes us as inappropriate. Yet without close analysis of the point it is difficult to tell why. Sedulity comes from assidere whence our words “assiduous,” “sedulous,” and “sedentary,” terms which express steady attention to an occupation or pursuit. Sedulous, however, implies that this attention has become habitual. “ Be sedulous to discharge thy trust,” says Bishop Taylor. “ Be zealous for souls and careless of money.” Now, coming to our term industrious, Barrow says, “ A scholar is industrious who doth assiduously bend his mind to study.” This idea of assiduity, of sedentary labor, of the weariness which nestles into an armchair, is not in keeping with a vision of angels. It belongs to our poor humanity; while the notion of pain and laborious toil, also involved in the term industrious, makes it a word dyed ingrain and tinct with earthliness. Ask any artist you meet for his idea of an industrious angel. Ten to one he will sketch a sweet young woman at her sewing !
Comparatives and superlatives condensed more closely than those now in use occur throughout our treatise. " Ancienter,” “ ancientest,” “ faithfuller,”
“ seemlier,” “ learnedest,” are exceptions to the modern rule of contraction. Instead of keeping the beautiful dactylic forms, we compare such adjectives by means of the adverbs “ more ” and “ most.” What we gain by so doing is hard to divine.
In the following sentence we come upon the word “ chiefest,” a sort of double superlative. It occurs in a discourse on the sumptuousness of churches. “ This kind of bounteous expenses serveth to the world for a witness of his almightiness whom we outwardly honor with the chiefest of outward things, as being of all things himself incomparably the greatest.” This is like the scriptural form “ Most Highest.” A similar expression occurs in the Prayer-Book version of the seventy-eighth Psalm: “ The most principal and mightiest in the dwellings of Ham.” These grand pleonasms are dignified and yet forcible; as if language in its utmost strength barely upheld the unsearchable thought.
The old verb “to meddle ” will repay examination. “ A medled estate of the orders of the gospel and the ceremonies of popery,” writes Hooker. This obsolete form of the verb “ to mingle ” still survives in our noun “medley.” Wickliffe’s translation of Matthew xxvii. 34 runs thus: “ They gave him to drink wine meddled with gall.”
The Anglo-Saxon verb “to bray ” has a double meaning, which leads to absurd results. “ The savor of the word is more sweet, being brayed,” says Hooker, “ and more able to nourish being divided by preaching than by only reading.” Here the sense is that of the proverb, “ though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar.” Yet the secondary meaning is the one naturally attached to the word, and conveys an insinuation rather severe on the preachers!
No less amusing is the queer statement we find farther on, that in his first epistle “ St. Paul pineheth the Corinths.”
The graceful and musical verb “ surcease ” is an old word revived by the poets. Hooker seems to favor its participial form. Edgar Poe makes it quite effective in The Raven: —
From my books surcease of sorrow.”
Our language incurs detriment when such words fall into disuse. This one deserves its new lease of life.
Caroline D. Swan.