summer Night's Dream, I. 2, signifies a color obtained from kermes, and doubtless refers to a hair-dye of that material: Bottom.-Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play it in?

Quin.-Why, what you will.

Bottom.-I will discharge it in either your straw-colored beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-colored beard, your perfect yellow.

Again, Webster defines the phrase to dye in grain, “to dye in the raw material, as wool or silk, before it is manufactured." That the phrase is popularly misunderstood, and has long been commonly used in this sense is true, but the original signification is dyed with grain or kermes.

The explanation of this familiar and figurative sense, which is given by the lexicographer as the proper and literal one, is simple. The color obtained from kermes or grain was a peculiarly durable, or as it is technically called, a fast or fixed dye, for fast used in this sense is, etymologically, fixed. When then a merchant recommended his purple stuffs, as being dyed in grain, he originally meant that they were dyed with kermes, and would wear well, and this phrase, by a common process in language, was afterwards applied to other colors, as a mode of expressing the quality of durability.* Thus in the Comedy of Errors, (iii. 2,) to the observation of Antipholus:

That's a fault that water will mend

Dromio replies:

No, Sir, 'tis in grain; Noah's flood could not do it.

*The bright reds of the old Brussels tapestry, so remarkable for the durability, as well as the brilliancy of their tints, are known to have been dyed with kermes or grain.

And in Twelfth Night, (act 1, scene 5,) when Olivia had unveiled, and speaking of her own face had asked:

Is it not well done?

to Viola's insinuation that her complexion had been improved by art;

Excellently done, if God did all;

Olivia replies:

'Tis in grain, Sir; 'twill endure wind and weather.

In both these examples it is the sense of permanence, a well-known quality of the purple produced by the grain or kermes, that is expressed. It is familiarly known that if wool be dyed before spinning, the color is usually more permanent than when the spun yarn or manufactured cloth is first dipped in the tincture. When the original sense of grain grew less familiar, and it was used chiefly as expressive of fastness of color, the name of the effect was transferred to an ordinary known cause, and dyed in grain, originally meaning dyed with kermes, then dyed with fast color, came at last to signify dyed in the wool or other raw material. The verb ingrain, meaning to incorporate a color or quality with the natural substance, comes from grain used in this last sense, and is now very extensively employed in both a literal and a figurative acceptation.

Kermes, which I have used as a synonym of grana or grain, is the Arabic and Persian name of the coccus insect, and the word occurs in a still older form, krmi, in Sanscrit. From this root are derived the words carmine and crimson, common to all the European languages. The Romans sometimes applied to the coccus the generic name vermiculus, a little worm or insect. Vermiculus is the diminutive of vermis, which is doubtless cognate with the Sanscrit krmi,

as is also the English word worm. From ver niculus comes vermilion, the name of an allied color, erroneously supposed to be produced by the kermes, though in fact of a different ɔrigin, and I may add that cochineal, as the name both of a dye which has now almost wholly superseded the European grain, and of the American insect which produces it, is derived, through the Spanish, from coccum, the Latin name of the Spanish insect. Johnson, and even Richardson, mistake the meaning of grain, and ascribe to it the same signification as Webster. Richardson derives it from the Saxon geregnan, certainly a wrong etymology, and they both refer to most of the passages I have quoted, as exemplifications of the erroneous definition they have given it. This is a remarkable oversight, because grain, as the English for coccum, was in very general use in the seventeenth century, and it is only recently that kermes has superseded it. Good exemplifications of this employment of the word will be found in Holland's Pliny, i. 259, 261, 461, ii. 114, and in many other old English writers.

It will, I think, be admitted that in every passage which I have cited in illustration of the meaning of the word grain, the knowledge of its true origin and signification gives additional force and beauty to the thought in the expression of which it is employed, and I have selected it as a striking example of the advantages to be derived from the careful study of words, and especially of the light which is thus often thrown upon obscure figurative expressions, as contrasted with the insignificance of the bare fact, that the same word or root exists in other languages. It is, however, rarely the case that a simple uncompounded word so well repays the labor of investigation, though the analysis of many compound words will be found equally instructive.

The importance of habitual attention to the exact meaning of words, considered simply as a mental discipline, can hardly be overrated, and etymology is one of the most ef ficient means of arriving at their true signification. But etymology alone is never a sure guide. In passing from one language to another, words seldom fail to lose something of their original force, or to acquire some new significance, and we can never be quite safe on this point, until we have established the precise meaning of a word by a comparison of different passages where it occurs in good authors.

LECTURE IV.

FOREIGN HELPS TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH.

FROM the opinions I have already expressed, it will have been observed, that I do not hold any wide range of linguistic learning necessary to the attainment of a good knowledge of English etymology. I am equally well persuaded that English grammar, so far as respects the application of its principles to practical use, may be thoroughly mastered with little aid from foreign sources. The purpose of the present remarks will be to enforce this opinion, and in a cursory way to point out how far the study of foreign languages is useful in this respect, and what particular tongues are most important to the student for the purposes of English philology. In considering the subject of grammatical inflections in a subsequent part of the course, I shall particularly notice the relations between inflected and uninflected languages, and for this reason I shall, on this occasion, refer to the grammar of the classical languages only in very general terms.*

* A speaker, who strives to accustom himself to accuracy of thought and precision of expression, is often made painfully sensible of the danger of misapprehension to which he is exposed in discoursing upon subjects incapable of illustration by visible symbols, representations, or experiments. The danger is