Whatever opinion we have of the onomatopoeia theory of the origin of language, so ably advocated by Farrar, Wedgwood, and Whitney, and so keenly ridiculed by Max MÜller and others, it is impossible to deny that there is a natural relationship between thought and articulate sound,—in other words that certain sounds are the natural expression of certain sensations, and of mental states that are analogous to those sensations. All languages contain words which, in their very structure as composite sounds, more or less nearly resemble in quality, as soft or harsh, the sounds they designate. Such, in our language, are words representing animal sounds, as quack, cackle, roar, whinny, bellow, caw, croak, hiss, screech, etc.; words representing inarticulate human sounds, as laugh, cough, sob, shriek, whoop, etc.; sounds representing the collision of hard bodies, as clap, rap, tap, slap, etc.; sounds representing the collision of softer bodies, as dab, dub, thud, dub-a-dub; sounds representing motion through the air, as whizz, buzz, sough, etc.; sounds representing resonance, as clang, knell, ring, twang, etc.; and sounds representing the motion of liquids, as clash, splash, dash, etc.[27] Even the various degrees of intensity in sound are expressed by modifications of the vowels,—high notes being represented by i, low, broad sounds by a, and diminution by the change of a or o to i; while continuance is expressed by a reduplication of syllables, as in murmur, etc., and by the addition of r and l, as in grab, grapple, wrest, wrestle, crack, crackle, dab, dabble. Animals are often named, upon the same principle, from their cries, birds especially, as we see in whip-poor-will, cuckoo, crow, quail, curlew, chough, owl, peewit, turtle, and many others. Again, we find that, independently of all confusion between a word and its associations, words having a harsh signification generally have a rough, harsh form, while words that denote something soft and pleasing, or sweet and tender, seem to breathe the very sensation they describe. The various passions of men naturally find expression in different sounds. Anger, vehemence, gentleness, etc., have each a language, a style of utterance, peculiar to themselves. Love and sorrow prompt smooth, melodious expressions, while violent emotions express themselves in words that are hurried, abrupt and harsh.

Were further proof wanting of this connection between external sounds and the processes of the mind, it is supplied in the strongest form by the fact that the different languages of the earth are stamped with marks of predominant local influences,—of the climate, scenery, and other physical conditions amid which they have been evolved. Rousseau, a century ago, called attention to the fact that the languages of the rich and prodigal South, being the daughters of passion, are poetic and musical, while those of the North, the daughters of necessity, bear a trace of their hard origin, and express by rude sounds rude sensations. Who does not discern in the “soft and vowelled undersong” of the Italian the effect of a climate altogether different from that which has produced the stridulous, hirrient roughness of the German, the Dutch, and the Russian tongues? What but different geographical positions has made the language of the South-Sea Islanders so different from the dissonant clicks of the Hottentot, or the guttural polysyllables of the Cherokee? What other cause has made the language of the Tlascalans, the hardy and independent mountaineers dwelling in the high volcanic regions between Mexico and Vera Cruz, so much rougher than the polished Tezucan, or the popular dialect of the Aztecs, who are of the same family as the mountaineers? It is because the vocal organs, which are formed with exceeding delicacy, are affected by the most trifling physical influences, that English is spoken in Devonshire, England, with a splutter, and in Suffolk with an attenuated whine; that the language spoken in the northern counties is harsher than that spoken in the southern; and that in the mountainous regions we find a harsher dialect than we hear in the plains.

The manner in which words are formed by means of the imitations of natural sounds is illustrated by the word “cock” which is considered by etymologists to be an abbreviated imitation of chanticleer’s “cock-a-doodle-doo!” From the name of the animal, which is thus derived from its cry, and then generalized and made fruitful in derivatives, come, by allusion to the bird’s pride and strut, the words “coquette,” “cockade,” the “cock” of a gun, to “cock” one’s eye, to “cock” the head on one side, a “cocked” hat, a “cock” of hay, a “cock”-swain, a “cock”-boat, the “cock” of a balance, and so on. It is in all probability by this method more than by any other, that words were produced in all the earlier stages of language, while the interjectional or exclamatory principle was, doubtless, next in importance.

It is sometimes objected to the theory of the extensive use of onomatopoeia in the formation of language, that, were it true, we should find in the different languages of the earth a greater identity than actually exists in the terms expressive of physical facts. We should not find words so unlike as “bang” in English and pouf in French, employed to denote the sound of a gun; or ??????? in Greek, quirquirra in the Basque, and sirsor in Chinese, used as names for the grasshopper. Why, if the theory in question be true, do we find a clap of thunder called in Sanscrit vagragvala, in Gaelic tÀirneanach, in Bohemian hromobitz, in Icelandic thruma? Why does Coleridge sing of the nightingale’s “murmurs musical and sweet jug-jug,” while Tennyson says that “Whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me, chirrupt the nightingale”?

The answer to this is, that man in naming things does not attempt to reproduce the identical sound which he hears, but artistically to reproduce it, or rather the impression which it has made, just as a painter often deviates from the actual colors of nature, and paints a picture more or less ideal, to enhance the effect of his art. The imitation is not a dull, literal echo of the sound, but an echo of the impression produced by it on the human intelligence; not a mere spontaneous repercussion of the perception received, but a repercussion modified organically by the configurations of the mouth, and ideally by the nature of the analogy perceived between the sound and the object it expresses.[28] These repercussions, moreover, have been greatly blurred by the lapse of ages,—so much so, in many cases, as to be indistinguishable. Again, we must remember that the impressions made by the same sounds on different minds, and even on the same mind in different moods, will greatly vary; and that in naming objects from other characteristics than the sound, different characteristics are chosen by different peoples. According to the mental constitution, the preponderance of reason or imagination, for example, in the name-giver, or particular experiences in connection with the object, the designating quality which is deemed most fit to furnish the name for it will vary. Thus it happens that in Sanscrit there is a great variety of names for the elephant, such as the “hand-possessing” animal, the “toothed,” the “two-tusked,” the “great-toothed,” the “pounder,” the “roarer,” the “forest-roarer,” the “mailed,” the “twice-drinking,” the “mountain-born,” the “vagabond,” and many others. Thus it happens that in Arabic there are five hundred names for the lion, two hundred for the serpent, and not less than a thousand for the sword. The nightingale is said to have twenty distinct articulations; and if this is true, we should expect that in the different languages of Europe it would have different names. The old poets all speak of the nightingale’s song as “most melancholy,” but in modern verse we read of

So with thunder; the impression it makes upon hearers varies with the varying qualities of their minds. To one man it is a dull rumble, to another a crackling explosion, and to a third a sudden flashing of light. As Archdeacon Farrar finely says: “What the eye sees and the ear hears depends in no small measure on the brain and the heart. The hieroglyphics of nature, like the inscriptions on the swords of Vathek, vary with every eye that glances on them; her voices, like the voice of Helen to the ambushed Greeks, take not one tone of their own, but the tone that each hearer loves best to hear.”[29]

Though a large part of language has been formed in the way I have named, yet it must be admitted that few words, compared with the whole number, bear upon their face unmistakable traces of their origin. The explanation of this lies in the great changes which phonetic corruption effects in language. No sooner do men coin a word, than they instinctively and unconsciously seek to rid it of its superfluous letters, and in other ways to economize the time and labor expended upon its utterance; and if they are obliged to use a new or strange word, which conveys no intrinsic meaning to them, they try to give it a meaning by so changing it as to remove its arbitrary character. (See “Words of Illusive Etymology,” in Chapter on the “Curiosities of Language.”) Thus words, in the course of ages, are rolled and rubbed out of shape, like the pebbles which are rubbed and rounded into smoothness by the sea waves on a shingly beach, until at last, though once plainly imitative, they lose all trace of their sensuous origin. Who, without knowledge of the intermediate diurnus and giorno, would for a moment suspect that jour could be derived from dies; or would suppose, if he had not traced the etymology of “musket,” that it is derived from the onomatope, musso, “I buzz”? But, notwithstanding all this, and though in the progress of scientific culture language becomes more and more abstract,—that is, words having no natural connection with the thoughts are used more and more arbitrarily to represent them, just as algebraic signs represent mathematical relations,—still language never loses wholly its original imitative character. It will always, therefore, be a signal excellence of style when thought and emotion are represented by imitative expressions,—that is, by means of pictures or images of sensible things and events. The sound then points to the external object or event, or some sensible property or characteristic of it, and this, again, to the mental state or thought which it is taken to represent. It is for this reason that the poets, from Homer to Tennyson, abound in onomatopes,—in words and combinations of words in which the sound is an echo to the sense. These words are not only the most vivid, the most passionate, and the most picturesque, but they are the only ones which are instantly intelligible, and which possess an inherently graphic power. The power of poetry lies largely in the fact that, as Bunsen says, it “reproduces the original process of the mind in which language originates. The coinage of words is the primitive poem of humanity, and the imagery of poetry and oratory is possible and effective only because it is a continuation of that primitive process which is itself a reproduction of creation.”

Dyer, in his “Ruins of Rome,” thus exemplifies, in a passage quoted with praise by Johnson, the beauty and force imparted to style by the adaptation of the sounds to the object described:

Not only single words, but an entire sentence, or a series of sentences, may resemble the sound represented; as in the following description of the abode of Sleep, in Spenser:

An intelligent writer reminds us that in reading this stanza, we ought to humor it with a corresponding tone of voice, lowering or deepening it, “as though we were going to bed ourselves, or thinking of the rainy night that had lulled us.” He suggests also that attention to the accent and pause in the last line will make us feel the depth and distance of the scene. Another illustration is furnished by the well known lines of Pope:

More striking still, in some respects, is Christopher Pitt’s translation of the corresponding passage in Vida’s “Art of Poetry”:

The overflowing of the fourth line in this passage, the abrupt termination of the middle of the next line, the pause at “Be quick!” and the rapidity of the last four lines, are exceedingly happy. The illustration of rapid motion is far superior to the last long and sprawling line of Pope, in which the preponderance of liquids and sibilants detains the voice too much, while it is further impeded by the word “unbending,”—one of the most sluggish, as Johnson truly says, in the language.

How felicitous are “the hoarse Trinacrian shore” of Milton, and his description of the rapid motion and grating noise with which Hell’s gates are opened!—

What can be more expressive than this representation of the sounds of a battle in ancient times?—

How effective is the pause after the word “shook” in these lines!—

Discordant sounds are vividly described in this line from “Lycidas”:

Two of the most perfect examples of imitative harmony in our literature are Wordsworth’s couplet,

and Byron’s vivid description of a storm among the mountains:

The numerous adaptations of sound to sense in Dryden’s “Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day” are familiar to all. The following verse, from a song in his “King Arthur,” is less hackneyed:

No modern poet has made a more frequent or a more judicious use of onomatopoeia than Tennyson. “The Bugle Song,” “The Brook,” “Tears, Idle Tears,” and “Break, Break, Break,” will at once occur to the poet’s admirers as masterpieces of representative art. The second stanza of the “Bugle Song” has few equals in ancient or modern verse:

What can be more perfect of its kind than the picture of the shock of a melÉe, when the combatants

or the picture of a fleet of glass wrecked on a reef of gold, in the lines,—

Motion, as well as sound, has been happily imitated in language,—of which we have signal examples in the progress of Milton’s fiend, whose wearisome journey is portrayed by this artful arrangement of words:

and in Pope’s translation of the noted passage in the “Odyssey” describing Sisyphus:

In reading the second line, with its frequent recurrence of the aspirate, one seems to hear the giant pantings and groanings of Sisyphus; and a similar feeling is experienced in reading the following line:

Crowe, the now forgotten author of “Lewisdon Hill,” fairly rivals Pope in the closing line of a version of the foregoing passage in the “Odyssey”:

An able literary critic,—the Rev. Robert A. Willmott,—has thus contrasted the majestic and easy verse of Dryden with the “mellifluence” of Pope. “‘The mellifluence of Pope,’ as Johnson called it, has the defect of monotony. Exquisite in the sweet rising and falling of its clauses, it seldom or never takes the ear prisoner by a musical surprise. If Pope be the nightingale of our verse, he displays none of the irregular and unexpected gush of the songster. He has no variations. The tune is delicate, but not natural. It reminds us of a bird, all over brilliant, which pipes its one lay in a golden cage, and has forgotten the green wood in the luxury of confinement. But Dryden’s versification has the freedom and the freshness of the fields.... This is a great charm. He preserved the simple, unpremeditated graces of the earlier couplet, its confluence and monosyllabic close, while he added a dignity and a splendor unknown before. Pope’s modulation is of the ear; Dryden’s of the subject. He has a different tone for Iphigenia slumbering under trees, by the fountain side; for the startled knight, who listens to strange sounds within the glooms of the wood; and for the courtly Beauty to whom he wafted a compliment.”

In the following lines from “Il Penseroso,” the effect combines both sound and motion:

How admirably does the quick and joyous movement of the following lines from “L’Allegro” portray the thing described!—

Huge, unwieldy bulk, implying slowness of movement, has been happily expressed by Milton in the subjoined passages:

How inflated with bulky meaning are these lines from Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida”!—

The greatest of the Greek and Roman poets have employed those “echoes of nature,” the onomatopes, as freely as the modern. Every schoolboy is familiar with the words in which Virgil describes thunder,—“Iterum atque iterum fragor intonat ingens,” as well as with those in which he represents the rapid clatter of horses’ hoofs:

and the vivid words in which Homer recalls the snapping of a sword:

Who does not catch the hurtling of battle in the same poet’s

and a murmur of ocean in

A similar effect is produced by his

the first word of which was perhaps intended to represent the roaring of the wave as it mounts on the sea-shore, and the second the hissing sound of a receding billow.

Virgil’s description of the Cyclopses toiling at the anvil; his picture of the Trojans laboriously hewing the foundations of a tower on the top of Priam’s palace, and its sudden and violent fall; Ennius’s imitation of a trumpet blast; and the imitation by Aristophanes of the croaking of frogs,—will recur to the classic reader as other examples of the felicitous use of this figure by the Greek and Roman writers.

Paronomasia and alliteration owe their subtle beauty to the fact that in using them the writer has reference to words considered as sounds. Though an excess of either is offensive, yet, charily used, it adds a surprising force to expression. How much is the grandeur of the effect enhanced by the repetition of the s in the following lines from Macbeth!—

Dr. Johnson, in speaking of imitative harmony, observes that the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense “has produced many wild conceits and imaginary beauties.” This is only saying that the poet, like the painter, may exaggerate the importance of his accessories, while he gives too little heed to his main theme. But this is no argument against the legitimate use of any subtle or peculiar beauty in either the pictorial or the metrical art. There are many cases where it is impossible to use language which is specific, vivid, and appropriate, without employing imitative words. For the choice of these words no rules can be given; only an instinctive and exquisite taste can enable one to decide when they may be consciously used, and when they should be shunned. But he who can use onomatopoeia with skill and judgment,—who can call into play, on proper occasions, that swift and subtle law of association whereby a reproduction of the sounds at once recalls to the mind the images or circumstances with which they are connected,—has mastered one of the greatest secrets of the writer’s art. It was a saying of Shenstone, which experience confirms, that harmony and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in our judgments upon writing and writers; and, as a proof of this, he says that the lines of poetry, the periods of prose, and even the texts of Scripture we most frequently recollect and quote, are those which are preËminently musical. The following magical lines, which owe their interest to the cadence hardly less than to their imagery, illustrate Shenstone’s remark: