(even in those whose decided character gives them the aspect of parent dialects) is well known to bear a very small proportion to the wealth of its vocabulary; and at some stage of human existence, even these elementary terms must have been sufficient to express the wants, and effect an interchange of thought, between the several members of the community. As fresh necessities arose, and the bounds of knowledge became extended, the original types in their simple import would be unequal to the demands of every new occasion; and hence the introduction of a long roll of meanings to the primitives, and all the intricacies of analysis and synthesis, which have given wealth, dignity, and expression to language. There is however no fact more certain, within our knowledge of the past and our experience of the present, than that words neither have been nor are now invented; but that they always have been compounded from existing roots in the dialect requiring them, or borrowed from some collateral source; and for this very obvious reason, that any other mode of proceeding would wholly defeat the only end for which language was intended, the communication of our wishes, feelings and opinions. That the progress of popular fiction has followed a nearly similar course, a slight consideration of the subject will tend to assure us. The extraordinary process already alluded to, which, by endowing inanimate objects with sense, feeling, and spirituality, robs man of his proudest distinction, is no new creation of elementary forms previously unknown, but a simple transference of peculiar properties, the characteristics of a more perfect class of beings, to others less perfectly constituted. The prophetic ship, the grateful ant, the courteous tree, et hoc genus omne, are none of them subjected to any mutation in their physical qualities; they merely receive an additional grant of certain

* See Grimm's Kinder- und Haus-Märchen and Müller's Saga-Bibliothek, passim.

ethical attributes, which, like secondary meanings in language, enlarge their power without varying their natural appearance. Even the personification of immaterial things, though approaching nearest to the plastic nature of a really creative power, is but an extension of the same principle. For though in these the external forms be wholly supplied by the fancy, the inherent qualities of the thing personified furnish the outline of all its moral endowments; and the contrast between the abstract property in its original state, and the living image representing it, is not more striking than between the different objects which are expressed in language by one common symbol". The wildest efforts of the imagination can only exhibit to us a fresh combination of well-known types drawn from the store-house of nature; and it is the propriety of the new arrangement, the felicitous juxtaposition of the stranger elements in their novel relation to each other, which marks the genius of the artist, which fixes the distance between a Boccacio and a Troveur, a Shakespeare and a Brooke. The same chaste economy which has regulated the development of language, is equally conspicuous in the history of popular fiction; and, like the vocabulary of a nation once supplied with a stock of appropriate imagery, all its subsequent additions seem to have arisen in very slow progression. For this we must again refer to the prevailing state of society and the condition of those common agents by whom both subjects have been fostered. The more degraded the intellectual culture of a nation upon its first appearance in history, the poorer will be found its vocabulary, with reference to the innate resources of the language; and the subsequent wealth of every dialect will be discovered to have been attendant upon the pro

The burning lava of Ætna was made the type of Typhæus's fury; but the contrast here is not greater, than between those objects of domestic use which are named after animals, such as

a cat, dog, horse, &c.

85 See Brooke's poem on the subject of Romeo and Juliet in Malone's Shakespeare.

บ

gress of civilization, and the acquisition of new ideas. The patrons of popular fiction, as the very name implies, belong to that class of the community which, amid all the changes and revolutions that are operating around it, always retains a considerable portion of its primitive characteristics. Among these may be reckoned the narrow circle of its necessities in the use of language and expression, and the modest demands of its intellectual tastes, so opposite to that later epicurism of the mind, a refined and learned taste, which is only to be appeased by an unceasing round of novelties. Unacquainted with the feverish joys occasioned by the use of strong and fresh excitements, popular taste only asks for a repetition of its favourite themes; and, blest with the pure and limited wants of infancy, it listens to the "twice-told tale" with the eagerness and simplicity of a child. It is on this principle that every country in Europe has invested its popular fictions with the same common marvels; that all acknowledge the agency of the lifeless productions of nature; the intervention of the same supernatural machinery; the existence of elves, fairies, dwarfs, giants, witches and enchanters; the use of spells, charms and amulets; and all those highly-gifted objects, of whatever form or name, whose attributes refute every principle of human experience, which are to conceal the possessor's person, annihilate the bounds of space, or command a gratification of all our wishes. These are the constantly-recurring types which embellish the popular tale, which hence have been transferred to the more laboured pages of romance; and which, far from owing their first appearance in Europe to the Arabic conquest of Spain, or the migration of Odin to Scandinavia, are known to have been current on its eastern verge long anterior to the

38

"J'ai eu des idées nouvelles; il a tions," says Montesquieu in the Adverbien fallu trouver des nouveaux mots, ou tisement to his Esprit des Loix. donner aux anciens de nouvelles accep

38

æra of legitimate history. The Nereids of antiquity, the daughters of the "sea-born seer," are evidently the same with the Mermaids of the British and Northern shores; the habitations of both are fixed in crystal caves, or coral palaces, beneath the waters of the ocean; and they are alike distinguished for their partialities to the human race, and their prophetic powers in disclosing the events of futurity. The Naiads only differ in name from the Nixen of Germany and Scandinavia (Nisser), or the Water-Elves of our countryman Ælfric; and the Nornæ, who wove the web of life and sang the fortunes of the illustrious Helga, are but the same companions who attended Ilithyia at the births of Iamos and Hercules". Indeed so striking is the resemblance between these divinities and the Grecian Moræ, that we not only find them officiating at the birth of a hero, conferring upon him an amulet which is to endow him with a charmed existence, or cutting short the thread of his being, but, like their prototype or parallel, varying in their number-from three to nine,-as they figure in their various avocations, of Nornæ or Valkyriar, as Parcæ or Muses. In the Highland Urisks", the Russian Le

"It will be felt, that this intricate and copious subject could only be generally noticed here. More ample sources of information are to be found in the preface and notes to the Kinder- und HausMärchen of Messrs. Jacob and William Grimm, Sir W. Scott's Essay on the Faeries of Popular Superstition, (Minstrelsy, vol. ii.) and some useful collections in Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. A further consideration of the subject is reserved for another occasion; when the authorities for some opinions, which may appear either too bold or paradoxical, and which could not be introduced here, will be given at length.

The Russian Rusalkis belong to the same family. They are represented as a race of beautiful virgins, with long green hair, living in lakes and rivers, and who were generally seen swinging on the branches of trees, bathing in the

flood, or dressing their hair in the meads beside a running stream. Mone's continuation of Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. i. p. 145.

* Compare Helga quitha hin fyrsta, in Sæmund's Edda, with Pindar Öl. vi. 72. and Anton. Liberalis, c. 29.

40 A further illustration of this subject must also be reserved for a future publication.

"The Urisk has a figure between a goat and a man; in short, precisely that of a Grecian Satyr.-Notes to the Lady of the Lake, p. 356. There are few antiquarian subjects requiring more revision than the modern nomenclature of this sylvan family. This confusion of character and name is no where more appa. rent than in the account of the ancient monuments in the British Museum. The Grecian Satyr is perfectly human in the lower extremities of his person; but the

schies, and the Pomeranian or Wendish Berstucs, we perceive the same sylvan family, who, under the name of Panes and Panisci, presided over the fields and forests of Arcadia. The general meetings of the first were held on Ben-Venew, like the biennial assembly of the Fauns on mount Parnassus; and the Sclavonian hunter invoked the assistance of his Zlebog", the Finn of his Wäinämöinen 45, and the Laplander of his Storjunkare, with the same solemnity as that with which the Greek