There is another class of fantastics that also claims attention. I mean such as have been formed purely under the guidance of the ear-rhyming reduplicates, which have no meaning aside from what the mere sound carries with it. Such are 'bow-wow,' 'chitchat,' 'harum-scarum,' 'flim-flam,' 'helter-skelter,' 'higgledy-piggledy,' 'hodge-hodge,' 'hubbub,' 'hurlyburly,' 'rif-raff,' 'tip-top,' 'rub-a-dub,' 'slip-slop,' (exemplified in Mrs. Malaprop in the Rivals) 'tiptop!'* But I forget to mention the very term that most perfectly typifies many of the words of this Ramble. I mean 'GROTESQUE.' And indeed its origin is grotesque enough, being taken from certain whimsical figures found in the subterranean apartments-grottoes-in the ancient ruins at Rome, and thence extended to typify aught fantastic, ludicrous, or irregularly proportioned. Such is the derivation given by Benvenuto Cellini in his Memoirs; and as I have the passage at hand, I shall quote it: "These foliages have received the name of grotesque from the moderns because they are found in certain caverns in Rome, which in ancient days were chambers, baths, studies, halls and other places of the like nature. The curious happened to discover them in these subterranean caverns whose low situation is owing to the raising of the surface of the ground in a series of ages, and as these caverns in Rome are commonly called grottoes, they from them acquire the name of grotesque." * * Notes and Queries, vol. viii. And numerous are the other words of equal interest, in which the workings of fairy Fancy may be traced. It was a piece of phantasy, for instance, to call the Roman platform for orators the 'ROSTRUM,' from the fact of its having been adorned with the beaks (rostra) or heads of captured ships, and I remember years ago feeling great pleasure at the perception of the connection-fanciful and yet faithful-of 'INCULCATE' with calx, the heel (inculco, to tread over again, to heel-it over again and hence to impress by frequent admonitions). What is a 'brown study?' Is it a barren study, or is it allied to the word brow? Certainly 'etiquette' is just the ticket: it having been. once the custom to get out cards containing orders for regulating ceremonies on public occasions. And 'COCKADE,' 'tis said, arose during the wars of the Scotch covenanters, when the English to distinguish * Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine Artist, written by himself, vol. I. p. 65. them wore a black rosette, which from its position, shape, etc., the Scotch nicknamed cock'ade!* But, beneath the lowest depth of vulgarity, slang and Billingsgate a lower deep opens in the expressive power of speech. For without the pale of civilization, in depths where not even "The rarity Of Christian charity" penetrates, live brothers of ours, and children are born and live and die who speak not even the language of other men; but a speech of their own-dark and terrible and awfully significant. This Cant Language, or Argot we have, during the last few years, been made familiar with from the representations of popular novels. Eugene Sue, for example, has vividly portrayed the Parisian langue des escrocs -giving us an insight both into its dark and its bright side. For even it, 'twould seem, has its lights -its gleams of humanity-that manifest that its authors are still of our common kind, and that the germs of love and pity and hope are quite absent from no mortal breast. * "Cocarde, touffe de rubans que sous Louis XIII. on portait sur le feutre, et qui imitait la crête du coq." Roquefort, Dictionaire étymologique. Puns might form a characteristic and amusing topic for investigation under the Fantastic in Words, though it is entirely too ample a theme to admit of treatment here, approaching as I am towards the end of this Ramble. Did we enter into the subject in extenso we should assuredly begin with classic punsHomer and the sons of the Tragic Muse having not disdained to quip and quibble-lingering over the graves of some of Cicero's most successful sallies (witness that wicked one on the Senator who was a tailor's son, rem acu tetigisti-you have touched the matter sharply: or, with the point of a needle)!* The archæology of Puns would moreover lead us to penetrate into the witticisms of the severe Milton-for even in Paradise Lost it would seem he punned and that horribly enough too. And then we should dive into the abyss profound of modern puns bringing up what pearls might offer themselves: and so should we have a complete history and philosophy of Puns and Punsters. In the mean time I shall merely mention a few Etymologic or dead puns that occur to me, from. Shakespeare. * D'Israeli's "Curiosities." He cites Menage as saying: "I should have received great pleasure to have conversed with Cicero had I lived in his time. He must have been very agreeable in conversation, since even Cæsar carefully collected his bons mots." Johnson asserts that a quibble was to Shakespeare the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it. This, like the generality of Johnsoniana, has considerable truth, with a vast deal of mere burly assertion and paradox about it. And I believe the question of Shakespeare's quibbles is now pretty much at rest. In "As You Like It," Touchstone, the clown (and a very "material fool," by the way), says to Audrey: "I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths."As You Like It, III. 3. Here the play of words between Goats and Goths is apparent enough: but the real pith and marrow of it is lost unless we recognize the occult pun that lurks in the term 'CAPRICIOUS' - the etymon of it-Caper (whence, I suppose, we have our verb to 'caper 'signifying a he-goat. This seen, the allusion becomes luminous. Addison has announced that a pun cannot be translated. Literally, perhaps not. And yet skill and finesse can go wonderfully far towards a perfect rendering: for a proof of which we need go no farther than Schlegel's Translation of Shakespeare, wherein, though, |