32 ། །ཤ་ -། corner, to devote to her every moment was to give to Rintoul's candidateship anon die off, and they would be left again The Lindores family had come out in force to grace John's entertainment. Even the earl himself had come, which was so unusual. He had made up his mind so strenuously as to the support which John There was a brief pause in the gaiety, and of a sudden, as will sometimes happen, the murmur of talk in all the different groups, the hum of the multitude at its pleasantest and lightest, was pended. When such a pause occurs it will frequently be filled and taken posses sus. sion of for the moment by some louder or more persistent scrap of conversation from an individual group, which suddenly seems to become the chief thing in the crowd, listened to by all. Ordinarily it is the most trivial chit-chat, but now and then the ranks will open, as it were, to let something of vital importance, some revelation, some germ of quarrel, some fatal hint or suggestion, be heard. This time it was Torrance, always loud - voiced, whose words suddenly came out in the hearing of the entire company. He happened at the moment to be standing with John Erskine contemplating the assembly in general. Rintoul was close by, lingering for a moment to address a passing civility to the matron whose daughter he had just brought back to her side. Torrance had been in the supper-room, and was charged with champagne. He was not a drunkard, but he habitually took a great deal of wine, the result of which was only to make him a little more himself than usual, touching all his qualities into exaggeration a little louder, a little more rude, cynical, and domineering. He was surveying the company with his big, staring eyes. "This makes me think,” he said, "of the time when I was a wanter, as they say. Take the good of your opportunities, John Erskine. Take your chance, man, while ye have it. When a man's married he's done for; nobody cares a fig for him more. But before he's fixed his choice, the whole world is at his call. Then's the time to be petted and made of - everybody smiling upon you, instead of sitting with one peevish face on the other side of the fire at home." He ended this speech with one of his huge rude laughs; and there are a great many such speeches permitted in society, laughed at even by those who are themselves the point of the moral. But Rintoul was in an excited condition of mind; contradictory to all his own tenets; going in his heart against his own code; kicking against the pricks. He turned round sharply with a certain pleasure in finding somebody upon whom to let forth an illhumor which had been growing in him. "You forget, Torrance, who I am, when you speak of this peevish face before me.' "You!troth I forgot your existence altogether," said Torrance, after a pause of astonishment, and a prolonged stare ending in another laugh. Rintoul flushed a furious red. He was excited by the rising of a love which he meant to get the better of, but which for | the moment had got the better of him; and by all the restraints he had put upon himself, and which public opinion required should be put upon him. He flashed upon his brother-in-law an angry glance, which in its way was like the drawing of a sword. "You had better," he said, "recall my existence as quickly as you can, Torrance - for it may be necessary to remind you of it very sharply one of these days, from all I hear." Torrance replied by another loud, insulting laugh. "I mind you well enough when I hear you crow, my little cock-o'the walk," he said. The conversation had got thus far during the pause which has been described. But now the whole assembly rushed into talk with a general tremor, the band struck up, the dancers flew off with an energy which was heightened by a little panic. Everybody dislikes a family quar rel: the first beginnings of it may excite curiosity, but at a certain point it alarms the most dauntless gossip. To get out of the way of it, the world in general will take any trouble. Accordingly the ranks closed with the eagerness of fear, to con. tinue the metaphor, and the two belliger ents were hidden at once from sight and hearing. Men began to talk in their deepest basses, women in their shrillest trebles, and how it ended nobody knew. There were a great many whispered questions and remarks made afterwards when the crisis was over. "Young Erskine had all the trouble in the world to smooth it over." "One doesn't know what would have happened if old Sir James had not got hold of Lord Rintoul." "Half-adozen men got round Pat Torrance. They made believe to question him about some racing and that quieted him," cried one and another, each into the nearest ear; and the whole assembly with a thrill watched the family of Lindores in all its movements, and saw significance in every one of these. This was the only contretemps that occurred in the whole programme of the festivities at Dalrulzian. It passed out of hearing of Lady Car, who sat the evening out, with that soft patience as of one whose day was the little smile, the little concealed yawn, the catch of conversation when any one who could talk drifted by her. Dr. Stirling and she discussed Wordsworth for a whole half-hour, which was the only part of the entertainment that withdrew her at all from herself. "And his noble philosophy of sorrow," she said, "which over is the finest of all. The part which he gives it in the world "I am not clear in my own mind," said the doctor, "that sorrow by itself does good to any body." "Stretch a hand through time to catch the far-off interest of tears," cried Lady Car with an unfathomable distance in her mild eyes, shaking her head at him and smiling. This was her point of enjoyment. When she thought the hour at which she might withdraw was coming, she sent to her husband to know if he was ready, still quite unaware of his utter ance about the peevish face. Poor Lady Car! her face was not peevish. It was somewhat paler than usual, so much as that was possible, as she watched him coming towards her. The more wine he took the less supportable he was. Alarm came into her gentle eyes. "Oh yes, I'm ready," he said; "I've been here long enough," in a tone which she understood well. She thought it was possibly John who had given him offence, and took leave of her host quickly, holding out her hand to him in passing with a word. "I must not stop to congratulate you now. I will tell how well it has gone off next time I see you," she said hastily. But her brother would not be shaken off so easily. He insisted on keeping by her side, and took a tender leave of her only at the carriage door, walking along with her as though determined to make a demonstration of his brotherly regard. "I shall see you again, Rintoul, before you go?" "No," he cried; "good-bye, Čar. I am not coming to Tinto again." What did it mean? But as they drove home through the dark, shut up together in that strict enclosure, her husband did not fail to make her acquainted with what had happened. "What's his business, I should like to know?" Torrance cried. "Of course it's your complaints, Lady Car. You set yourselves up as martyrs, you whitefaced women. You think it gives you a charm the more; but I'll charm them that venture to find fault with me," he cried, with his hot breath, like a strong gale of wine and fury, on her cheek. What disgust was in her breast along with the pain! "There's no duels now, more's the pity," said Torrance: "maybe you think it's as well for me, and could not escape, was never to escape all her wretched life. Poor Lady Car! with nothing but a little discussion about Wordsworth or Shelley to stand in place of happiness to her heart. "I have been quarrelling with that brother-in-law of mine," Rintoul said to Nora in the next dance, which he ought not to have had, he knew, and she knew, though she had been persuaded to throw off, for him, a lagging partner. He had not said a word about the quarrel to his mother or sister, but to Nora he could not help telling it. He broke even the strained decorum which he had been painfully keeping up for this cause. Already he had danced more than was usual with one partner, but this was too strong for him. He could not resist the temptation. Oh, Lord Rintoul!" Yes, I have quarrelled with him. To hear how he spoke of Carry was more than I could bear. Now you will never betray me; tell me, I daren't ask any one else. Is he supposed to be-Jove! I can't say the word - unkind to poor Car?" "He is very proud of her he thinks there is no one like her. I don't think he means it, Lord Rintoul." "Means it! - but he is so, because he is a brute, and doesn't know what he is doing." 66 They are not very like each other," said Nora, hesitating; "but everybody must have seen that before." From Fraser's Magazine. I. that your brother might have set you free, ENGLISH: ITS ANCESTORS, ITS PROGENY. my lady." "I have never given you any cause to say so," she cried from her corner, shrinking from him as far as possible. What a home-going that was! and the atmosphere of wine, and heat, and rude fury, and ruder affection, from which she THE BIOGRAPHY IN MEDITATION. THESE words of Caxton's are in his preface to Virgil's "Eneydos" — the Eneid: As to Some gentylmen... blamed me, saying of English was not creeping in, imperyt in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes, ceptibly (as now), by a scientific term, by which coude not be vnderstande of comyn some new social coinage; it was being [common] people. I toke an old boke, and brought about at the very root, in the redde therin; and certaynly ye Englysshe was so rude and brood that I coude not well vnder-gross, and by sweep and storm. stande it. And certaynly it was wreton in such the defined sort, or quality, of the change wyse that it was more lyke to dutche than enCaxton lived through-he being able to glysshe. I coude not reduce ne brynge it to enjoy a smile at the effects of it, and to be vnderstonden. And certaynly our langage let it bring him good philological interest now vsed varyeth ferre from that whiche was and wonderment it is to be measured vsed and spoken when I was borne. And som by just one specimen that he himself rehonest and grete clerkes have ben wyth me, lates. In Kent, "eggis" was scoffed at, and desired me to wryte the most curyous in his memory, as a French word. "Eytermes that I coude fynde. And thus, byren " was the invariable term used (lingertweene playn, rude, and curyous, I stande ing, till now, in "eyrie," a nest, the place where eggs are); eyren was so invariably the term, that a traveller, one day, calling for "eggis," could not get any. And eggless he would have had to have finished his meal-on failure, it may be presumed, to discover adequate pantomime for elucidation-only that a passerby, better instructed, interpreted the newfangled English as "eyren," enabling the Kentish housewife, with much show of Kentish contempt and flouting, to give her guest what he desired. abasshed. It is of four centuries back. It is in 1490. Yet when it is quoted by Dr. Murray, in 1876, in his remarkable and learned article on the English language, in the still progressing "Encyclopædia Britannica," it comes shaped so aptly, with so much of philological illustration, that it might have been written fresh today. Let it have analysis : Caxton was using "ouer curyous termes whiche coude not be vnderstande of the comyn people." 66 Again: Caxton "toke an old boke and redde therein; and, after having redde, bytweene playn, rude, and curyous, he stood abasshed." It is the same. Caxton could not help it. The language the English were speaking in his day was getting formed: was getting solidCaxton could not avoid ity; getting killed as to some of it, get it. To stand abashed, in 1490, was to be ting existence as to some more; was abased; was to have to cast down all, or being scorned, and patronized, and some part of, the body, and, by metaphor, scorned again, according to conquest, and the spirit, because of vanquishment and line of kings, and kingly marriages. The submission. Using the Old-French word common people, consequently-meaning, in its heraldic method, the vol, that is, here, the masses, the whole-had no power to keep pace, altogether currently, with every innovation, or caprice, as it rose and fell; and Caxton's "Translacyons "had no chance-and no need to be on the level with them. Next: Caxton had seen so much of this death of words, this birth of them, this varying "ferre" in daily usage, his testimony is equal to the testimony that he knew two Englishes: the English of his babyhood, the English of the days when he was a man. Caxton could not help that. There was the passage of eighty years between the first "langage " he listened to, and the last. Those eighty years touched seven reigns. They covered the most of that century of rapidest historical phantasmagoria, when Lancastrians supplanted Plantagenets, when Yorkists drove out Lancastrians, when a Tudor drove out a Yorkist in turn. In the midst of such events, the enlargement, the enrichment, the wing, of a bird, in Caxton's time, was abased, when it was bent down towards the shield; using it more generally, and in pure French, abaissement occurred when material collapsed, or sagged down, losing its comely and befitting shaping. And, in like manner, Caxton, in that sea of "Englysshe," found himself succumbing, flung with bewilderment and humility. It was inevitable. Because, as Caxton "redde," he was made aware, not only of two Englishes, but of three Englishes, four Englishes, - more. There were the Englishes of the boyhood, and the manhood, of the Caxtons who had preceded him- his father, his grandfather; there were the Englishes of the fathers of these, of the grandfathers of these; covering all that shifting time that they were settling themselves down in that rich and fruitful Weald of Kent they throve in, and that, in due time, gave the illustrious printer birth. And it was only written they were; whilst, through every momentous year of the time, so much new growth has spread over English, so much consequent tanglement has come about English, changes have come to it as radical as those observable between the days of Caxton's boyhood, and the days when Caxton was in his prime. books, let there be remembrance, that more and more "curyous." From time Caxton was able to handle and enjoyingly to time some choice antiquarian research open. They were parchment, or vellum, would rescue a few examples, would resbooks; weighty, with carved oak covers, cue a few more; but, as a mass, there with gilt and silver filagree covers; they were rich with initial letters, and geometric margining, and gilt and cobalt and vermilion embellishment, on title-page, on heading, and for finial. They were books that "honest and grete clerkes," that scriveners, writers, penmen, "scholars," had reproduced from copy, letter by letter, word by word; with infinite pains of But this matter now, at this present upstroke and downstroke, with laborious date, is undergoing alteration. Things concentration, with extreme delicacy of impossible for one man may yet be things touch. They were, thus, scarce, husband- not impossible for a group of men. What ed, accessible only to such as were hon- Caxton was compelled to reject, looked in ored and all-worthy. Or, from the other upon by his "Erle Ryvyres," by Gloucesside, the "bokes were matter of more ter, Buckingham, Hastings, Grey- the fugitive kind: they were records, inden- axe dripping blood, the pleasant meadowtures, assizes, psalters, epistles, ballads, | lands swept of their pleasantness and tragedies. But, in any form, they showed lying there cumbered with the slain language that grew more and more rude what Caxton could not so much as point and "curyous as there was passage back at, is not outside the grasp of an instituinto the dead centuries; they showed form tion with modern facilities and power and phrase that sounded more and more to-day; and it is of supreme import to foreign, uncouth, outlandish, "dutche; " English literature that this has happily they brought material to light, the master- come to be perceived. The Philological ing of which was bestrewn with every Society, "formed for the investigation of possible difficulty and dilemma, multiplied the structure, the affinities, and the hisoverwhelmingly by fading ink, by wither- tory of languages," is at this present time, ing page, by every drawback inseparable on this very subject, pledged to use every from far antiquity and a lost clue. particle and vestige of its powers. This Caxton had no power, therefore, to do society, brought by its constitution into what some. "grete and honest clerkes" the absolute presence of Caxton, into the desired, when they were with him. Cax-absolute audience of those "grete and ton could not, out of those "old bokes he honest clerkes" who spoke with him — of toke and redde," gather up and write "the those others, also, who spoke in the cenmost curyous termes that he coude fynde." turies before he was born has now The labor was colossal. The labor was taken the biography of English right into impossible, seeing that Caxton was draw-its grasp and heart, has resolved to carry ing to the end of his eighty years when it out earnestly to its full and most interthe idea first flashed itself into life, and esting end. Those "old bokes," through was enthusiastically suggested to him. the society, are being sedulously studied So he only made a record of the beautiful thought, deeming it a dream. He only left it, there in that preface; "setting it up" in quaint wooden type, in queer square commingling Gothic letter, from the priceless "copy" of his own masterly hand. And then, thick and fast upon it, there fell a sleep; a sleep that lasted on and on for a long four centuries. Each century passed; and in not one did there come a garnering of that Englysshe, rude and brood," that would have paid so well for garnering; did there come that garnering that would have produced a result so rich in value its full richness cannot be assessed. Instead, the "curyous termes" remained in those decaying MSS.; the " curyous termes " became at last. Every leaf of those "old bokes,” through the society, is passing under reverent survey. Moreover, every leaf is as fruitful as Caxton's patrons prognosti cated; every leaf is yielding some line, some distich, wherein words shine out with their author's signification, wherein words will never cease to shine out with their author's signification whilst words endure; since the Philological Society is not going to dissociate them from their immediate connection, but will quote them, embedded as they are, with the warm life of context round them, letting them be monuments of the service they have been put to, of their origin, and of their time. Thus the society is causing search to be made it is a matter of |