Among artificial substances, the ship (vaûs, "navis") is feminine, as being so eminently a receiver and container of various things, of men, arms, provisions, goods, &c. Hence sailors, speaking of their vessel, say always, "she rides at anchor," "she is under sail." A city (mós, "civitas") and a country (Taтρis, “patria ") are feminine also, by being (like the ship) containers and receivers; and further by being, as it were, the mothers and nurses of their respective inhabitants. Thus Virgil: Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia Tellus, Georg. ii. 173. So, in that heroic epigram on those brave Greeks who fell at Chæronea: Γαῖα δὲ πάτρις ἔχει κόλποις τῶν πλεῖστα καμόντων Σώματα. "Their parent country in her bosom holds So Milton: The city, which thou seest, no other deem Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth. Par. Reg. b. iv. As to the ocean, though from its being the receiver of all rivers, as well as the container and productress of so many vegetables and animals, it might justly have been made (like the earth) feminine; yet its deep voice and boisterous nature have, in spite of these reasons, prevailed to make it male. Indeed, the very sound of Homer's Μέγα σθένος Ωκεανοίο, would suggest to a hearer, even ignorant of its meaning, that the subject was incompatible with female delicacy and softness. Time, (xpóvos,) from his mighty efficacy upon every thing around us, is by the Greeks and English justly considered as masculine. Thus in that elegant distich, spoken by a decrepit old man: * Ο γὰρ χρόνος μ' ἔκαμψε, τέκτων οὐ σοφὸς, & Паμμnтoр yn xaîpe. Græc. Anth. p. 281. * Διὸ καὶ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ τὴν γῆς φύσιν, ὡς θηλὺ καὶ μητέρα νομίζουσιν· οὐρανὸν δὲ καὶ ἡλίου, καὶ εἴ τι τῶν ἄλλων τῶν τοιούτων, ὡς γενώντας καὶ πατέρας προσαγο pevovat. Arist. de Gener. Anim. i. c. 2. i Demost, in Orat. de Corona. Κ Ω Χρόνε, παντοίων θνητῶν πανεπί σкоTE Aаîμov. Græc. Anth. p. 290. 1 Stob. Ecl. p. 591. "Me time hath bent, that sorry artist, he So, too, Shakspeare, speaking likewise of time: ORL. Whom doth he gallop withal? As you like it. The Greek Oávatos or aidŋs, and the English death, seem, from the same irresistible power, to have been considered as masculine. Even the vulgar with us are so accustomed to this notion, that a female death they would treat as ridiculous." Take a few examples of the masculine death. Αἱ δὲ τεαὶ ζώουσιν ἀήδονες ᾗσιν ὁ πάντων "Yet thy sweet warbling strains Still live immortal, nor on them shall death In the Alcestis of Euripides, ávaTos, or "Death," is one of the persons of the drama: the beginning of the play is made up of dialogue between him and Apollo; and toward its end there is a fight between him and Hercules, in which Hercules is conqueror, and rescues Alcestis from his hands. It is well known, too, that sleep and death are made brothers by Homer. It was to this old Gorgias elegantly alluded, when, at the extremity of a long life, he lay slumbering on his deathbed. A friend asked him, "How he did?" "Sleep (replied the old man) is just upon delivering me over to the care of his brother."" Thus Shakspeare, speaking of life : So Milton: Merely thou art Death's fool; Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; Despair Meas, for Meas. Par. Lost, xi. 489. The Supreme Being (God, eòs, Deus, Dieu, &c.) is in all languages masculine, inasmuch as the masculine sex is the superior and more excellent; and as he is the Creator of all, the Father of gods and men. Sometimes, indeed, we meet with such words as Tò IIρ@тov, Tò Ocîov, Numen, Deity, (which last we English join to a neuter, saying Deity itself;) sometimes, m Well, therefore, did Milton, in his Paradise Lost, not only adopt death as a person, but consider him as masculine: in which he was so far from introducing a phantom of his own, or from giving it a gender not supported by custom, that perhaps he had as much the sanction of national opinion for his masculine death, as the ancient poets had for many of their deities. n η Ηδη με ὁ ὕπνος ἄρχεται παρακατατίθεσθαι τ' Αδελφῷ. Stob. Εcl. p. 600. Suppose in any one of these examples we introduce a female death; suppose we read, And over them triumphant Death her dart What a falling off! How are the nerves I say, we meet with these neuters. The reason in these in stances seems to be, that as God is prior to all things, both in dignity and in time, this priority is better characterized and expressed by a negation, than by any of those distinctions which are co-ordinate with some opposite; as male, for example, is co-ordinate with female, right with left, &c. &c. P Virtue (aper, virtus) as well as most of its species, are all feminine, perhaps from their beauty and amiable appearance, which are not without effect even upon the most reprobate and corrupt. Abash'd the devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pin'd Par. Lost, iv. 846. This being allowed, vice (xaxía) becomes feminine of course, as being, in the σvoToixía, or "co-ordination of things," virtue's natural opposite. συστοιχία, The fancies, caprices, and fickle changes of fortune would appear but awkwardly under a character that was male: but taken together, they make a very natural female; which has no small resemblance to the coquette of a modern comedy, bestowing, withdrawing, and shifting her favours, as different beaus succeed to her good graces. Transmutat incertos honores, Hor. Why the furies were made female is not so easy to explain, unless it be that female passions of all kinds were considered as susceptible of greater excess than male passions, and that the furies were to be represented as things superlatively outrageous. Talibus Alecto dictis exarsit in iras. At Juveni oranti subitus tremor occupat artus: P Thus Ammonius, speaking on the same subject: Tò #рŵtov λéyoμev, è¢'un de τῶν διὰ μυθολογίας παραδόντων ἡμῖν τὰς θεολογίας ἐτόλμησέ τις ἢ ἀῤῥενωπὸν, ἢ θυληπρεπή (lege θηλυπρεπῆ) διαμόρφωσιν φέρειν· καὶ τοῦτο εἰκότως· τῷ μὲν γὰρ ἄρδενι τὸ θῆλυ σύστοικον· τὸ (lege τῷ δὲ πάντῃ, ἁπλῶς αἰτιῷ σύστοιχον οὐδὲν ἀλλὰ καὶ ὅταν ἀρσενικῶς τὸν Θεὸν ὀνομάζομεν, [πρὸς] τὸ σεμνότερον τῶν γενῶν τοῦ ὑφειμένου προτιμῶντες, οὕτως αὐτὸν προσαγοpevoμev. Primum dicimus, quod nemo etiam eorum, qui theologiam nobis fabularum integumentis obvolutam tradiderunt, vel maris vel fœminæ specie fingere ausus est: idque merito: conjugatum enim mari fœmininum est. Causæ autem omnino absolutæ ac simplici nihil est conjugatum. Æn. vii. 455. r Immo vero cum Deum masculino genere appellamus, ita ipsum nominamus, genus præstantius submisso atque humili præferentes. Ammon. in lib. de Interpr. p. 30. Β. Οὐ γὰρ ἐναντίον τῷ Πρώτῳ οὐδέν. Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 210. Sylb. 9 They are both represented as females by Xenophon, in the celebrated story of Hercules, taken from Prodicus. See Me morab. l. ii. c. 1. As to the συστοιχία here mentioned, thus Varro: Pythagoras Samius ait omnium rerum initia esse bina: ut finitum et infinitum, bonum et malum, vitam et mortem, diem et noctem. De. Ling. Lat. 1. iv. See also Arist. Metaph. 1. i. c. 5, and Ecclesiasticus, chap. lxii, ver. 24. The words above mentioned, time, death, He that would see more on this subject, may consult Ammonius the Peripatetic, in his Commentary on the treatise De Interpretatione, where the subject is treated at large with respect to the Greek tongue. We shall only observe, that as all such speculations are at best but conjectures, they should therefore be received with candour, rather than scrutinized with rigour. Varro's words, on a subject near akin, are for their aptness and elegance well worth attending. Non mediocres enim tenebræ in silva, ubi hæc captanda; neque eo, quo pervenire volumus, semitæ tritæ ; neque non in tramitibus quædam objecta, quæ euntem retinere possunt." To conclude this chapter. We may collect from what has been said, that both number and gender appertain to words, because, in the first place, they appertain to things; that is to say, because substances are many, and have either sex or no sex; therefore substantives have number, and are masculine, feminine, or neuter. There is, however, this difference between the two attributes: number in strictness descends no lower than to the last rank of species: gender, on the contrary, stops not fortune, virtue, &c. in Greek, Latin, French, and most modern languages, though they are diversified with genders in the manner described, yet never vary the gender which they have once acquired, except in a few instances where the gender is doubtful. We cannot say åpeтǹ or å åpeтǹ, "hæc virtus," or "hic virtus," "la vertu," or "le vertu," and so of the rest. But it is otherwise in English. We in our own language say, Virtue is its own reward, or Virtue is her own reward; Time maintains its wonted pace, or Time maintains his wonted pace. There is a singular advantage in this liberty, as it enables us to mark, with a peculiar force, the distinction between the severe or logical style, and the ornamental or rhetorical. For thus, when we speak of the above words, and of all others naturally devoid of sex, as neuters, we speak of them as they are, and as becomes a logical inquiry. When we give them sex, by making them masculine or feminine, they are from thenceforth personified; are a kind of intelligent beings, and become, as such, the proper ornaments either of rhetoric or of poetry. Thus Milton: Par. Lost, i. 174. The poet, having just before called the hail and thunder, "God's ministers of vengeance," and so personified them, had he afterwards said its shafts for his shafts, would have destroyed his own image, and approached withal so much nearer to The following passage is from the same poem: In this place his hand is clearly preferable either to her's or it's, by immediately referring us to God himself, the avenger. I shall only give one instance more, and See also ver. 54, 55, of the same book. Here all things are personified; the hills hear, the valleys smile, and the face of heaven is renewed. Suppose, then, the poet had been necessitated by the laws of his language to have said, Each hill retir'd to its place, Heaven renew'd its wonted face; how prosaic and lifeless would these neuters have appeared; how detrimental to the prosopopeia which he was aiming to establish! In this, therefore, he was happy, that the language in which he wrote imposed no such necessity; and he was too wise a writer to impose it on himself. It were to be wished his correctors had been as wise on their parts. De Ling. Lat. 1. iv. The reason why number goes no lower is, that it does not naturally appertain to individuals; the cause of which see before, p. 128. here, but descends to every individual, however diversified. And so much for substantives, properly so called. CHAPTER V. CONCERNING SUBSTANTIVES OF THE SECONDARY ORDER. WE We are now to proceed to a secondary race of substantives, a race quite different from any already mentioned, and whose nature may be explained in the following manner. Every object which presents itself to the senses or the intellect, is either then perceived for the first time, or else is recognized as having been perceived before. In the former case it is called an object, TŶS πρWTNS YVWσews, "of the first knowledge, or acquaintance;" in the latter it is called an object, Tŷs devτépas yvoσews, "of the second knowledge," or acquaintance. Now as all conversation passes between particulars or individuals, these will often happen to be reciprocally objects Ts πρώτης γνώσεως, πрÓNS VσEWS, that is to say, "till that instant unacquainted with each other." What then is to be done? How shall the speaker address the other, when he knows not his name? or how explain himself by his own name, of which the other is wholly ignorant? Nouns, as they have been described, cannot answer the purpose. The first expedient upon this occasion seems to have been 4eîgis, that is, "pointing, or indication by the finger or hand," some traces of which are still to be observed, as a part of that action which naturally attends our speaking. But the authors of language were not content with this. They invented a race of words to supply this pointing; which words, as they always stood for substantives or nouns, were characterized by the name of arrwvupiai, or "pronouns." These, also, they distinguished by three several sorts, calling them pronouns of the first, the second, and the third person, with a view to certain distinctions, which may be explained as follows. Suppose the parties conversing to be wholly unacquainted, neither name nor countenance on either side known, and the See Apoll. de Syntaxi, 1. i. c. 16. p. 49; L ii. c. 3. p. 103. Thus Priscian: Interest autem inter demonstrationem et relationem hoc; quod demonstratio, interrogationi reddita, primam cognitionem ostendit; quis facit? Ego: relatio vero secundum cognitionem significat, ut, Is, de que jam dixit. Lib. xii. p. 936. edit. Putschii. ν Ἐκεῖνο οὖν ἀντωνυμία, τὸ μετὰ δεῖξεως ἢ ἀναφορᾶς ἀντονομαζομένον Apoll. de Synt. l. ii. c. 5. p. 106. Priscian seems to Pro |