the assistance they render is both obvious and vulgar. The delicate perceptions of the poet demand the gratification more frequently than it is supplied by the ordinary resources of language. It is by the command which he possesses over this noblest of all gifts (after reason) that he seeks to obtain it.

In the next section we shall trace some of the artifices which have been adopted to arrive at these imitative sounds; and afterwards enquire how far the peculiarities which attend the formation of our letters, as regards the disposition and action of the organs, can assist us in the fit and suitable expression of the thought.

IMITATIVE SOUNDS.

"There is found," says Bacon, "a similitude between the sound, that is made by inanimate bodies, or by animate bodies that have no voice articulate, and divers letters of articulate voices; and commonly men have given such names to those sounds as do allude unto the articulate letters; as trembling of water hath resemblance to the letter ; quenching of hot metals to the letter z; snarling of dogs with the letter r; the noise of screech owls with the letter sh, voice of cats with the dipthong eu, voice of cuckoos with the dipthong ou, sounds of strings with the dipthong ng."-Century I.

When we pronounce the letter 7, the breath in escaping under the side teeth presses against the yielding tongue, which may be considered as fixed at its root and tip. The tongue, like other flaccid bodies in similar circumstances, vibrates with a slow and uncertain trembling. This strongly resembles the motion of water. "Running waters," Bacon elsewhere observes, " represent to the ear a trembling noise, and in regals, where they have a pipe they call the nightingale pipe, which containeth water, the sound hath a continual trembling; and children have also little things they call cocks, which have

water in them, and when they blow or whistle in them they yield a trembling noise." It is in this inequality of trepidation, that the resemblance above alluded to seems chiefly to consist. Our great poets afford us many beautiful examples; in the Witches' song we almost hear the bubbling of the cauldron;

For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell broth boil and bubble.

ALL. Double, double toil and trouble

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Not less happy are the following passages,

Gloster stumbled, and in falling

fantastic! Damn Rih!!

Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

Fountains, and ye that warble as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.

The hypothesis that has been ventured as to the origin of the resemblance, thus noticed by Bacon, is strengthened by observing, that our poets always affect this letter, whenever they have to describe a yielding wavy motion. The tye, which links such an association with the letter l, is obvious.

R, though a trembling letter, has a character of sound differing in many particulars from that of 7. In the first place it has a narrow sound, not unlike e, while that of

has a decidedly broad one. In the second place the vibrations, instead of being slow and uncertain like those of 1, are quick and decided. Its sound was likened, even by Roman critics, to the snarling of the dog; but it has a resemblance to any narrow sound, which is broken in upon by short quick interruptions. Hence its power in expressing harsh, grating, and rattling noises.

In the two first of the following examples, the roll of a liquid mass is beautifully contrasted with the harsh rattle of rock or shingle, on which it is supposed to act.

As burning Ætna from his boiling stew

Doth belch out flames, and rocks in pieces broke,

And ragged ribs of mountains molten new,

Enwrapt in cole-black clouds.

F. Q. 1. 11. 44.

As raging seas are wont to roar,

When wintry storm his wrathful wreck does threat,

The rolling billows beat the ragged shore.

F. Q. 1. 11. 21.

With clamour thence the rapid currents drive
Tow'rds the retreating sea their furious tide.

As an aged tree

Whose heart-strings with keen steel nigh hewen be,
The mighty trunk, half rent with ragged rift,
Doth roll adown the rocks and fall with fearful drift.

And she whom once the semblance of a scar
Appall'd, an owlet's larum chill'd with dread,
Now views the column-scatt'ring bay'net jar.

On a sudden open fly

P. L.

F. Q.

Childe Harold, 1.

With impetuous recoil, and jarring sound

Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.

P. L. 2.

The brazen throat of war had ceas'd to roar,
All now was turn'd to jollity and game.

P. L. 11.

The raven himself is hoarse,

That croaks the fatalenterance of Duncan

Under my battlements.

Such bursts of horrid thunder,

Macbeth.

Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never

Remember to have heard.

Lear.

The sounds represented in the three last examples are not only harsh and grating, but deep and full; the narrow sound of the r is therefore corrected by the broad vowels in roar, hoarse, groans, &c.

Bacon likens the sound of z to the quenching of hot metals, and that of sh to the noise of screech owls. The fact is that the sounds represented by z, zh, s, sh, are all more or less sibilant, and accordingly have a greater or less affinity to any sound of the like character. Now there are a variety of noises, which though not absolutely hisses, yet approach near to them in the sharpness and shrillness of their sound, as shrieks, screeches, the whistling of man or other animals. All these resemble more or less the hissing sound of the sibilants.

They saw-but, other sight instead! a crowd
Of ugly serpents; horror on them fell

And horrid sympathy; for what they saw

They felt themselves now changing; down their arms

Down fell both spear and shield, down they as fast,
And the dire hiss renew'd.

Dreadful was the din

Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion and asp, and amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horn'd, hydras and elops drear,

And dipsas, not so thick swarm'd once the soil,
Bedropt with blood of gorgon.

The hoarse night-raven, trump of doleful drere,
The leather-winged bat, day's enemy,
The rueful strich still waiting on the bier,

The whistler shrill that whoso hears doth die.

P. L. 10.

P. L. 10.

F. Q. 2. 12. 36.

good

By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep.

L'Allegro.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from her straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

And with sharp shrilling shrieks do bootless cry.

Gray.

F. Q. 2. 12. 36.

Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-ey'd bat,
With short shrill shriek flies by on leathern wing.
Collins's Evening.

It will be observed that in several of these examples the sharp sound of the sibilant is strengthened by that of the narrow vowels, long (e and short i. These vowels are sometimes used with effect even by themselves.

The clouds were fled,

Driv'n by a keen north wind, that blowing dry
Wrinkled the face of deluge.

The threaden sails,

Borne with th' invisible and creeping wind,

P. L. 10.

Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea.

H 5. 3. Chorus.

The broad vowel sounds on the contrary, long a, au, long and short o, together with the broad dipthong ou, are used to express deep and hollow sounds;

A dreadful sound,

Which through the wood loud bellowing did rebound.

F. Q. 1. 7. 7.

His thunders now had ceas'd

To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
All these and thousand thousands many more,
And more deformed monsters thousand fold,
With dreadful noise and hollow rombling sound
Came rushing.-

P. L.

F. Q. 2. 12. 25.