DELIGHT DEMEAN. 85 he very quietly laid his black head upon the pillow and slept like a young Howard.-C. LAMB. Delight. Used by Shakspeare as to refine, lighten. And, noble Signor, If virtue no delighted beauty lack, Your son-in-law is far more fair than black. SHAKSPEARE, Othello, i. 3. Aye, but to die, and go we know not where; Id., Measure for Measure, iii. 1. The only effect which the Reformation produced in Spain was to make the Inquisition more vigilant and the commonalty more bigoted. One people alone remained like the fleece of the Hebrew warrior, dry in the midst of that fertilising dew, that time of refreshing to all neighbouring nations. Among the men of the seventeenth century the Spaniard was the man of the fifteenth, delighted to behold an auto-da-fè, and ready to volunteer on a Crusade.-MACAULAY. Demean. Old meaning, to manage, behave: now, to debase, disgrace. Lo, is it not a great mischance To let a fool have governance Of things that he cannot demene ?-CHAUCER. The King smiled and examined my firearms, the first ever seen, and we proceeded for sport. Some adjutant birds and vultures were resting on a tree; the King commanded me to fire on them, but I could not demean myself by firing at birds sitting on a tree. I begged him to take a shot himself, but all would not do, so I killed an adjutant on the nest. They were spellbound with astonishment. The King jumped frantically in the air, crying What wonders!—SPEKE, Central Africa. 86 DEMERIT-DEMURE. Demerit. Once synonymous with merit. My demerits May speak unbonnetted to as proud a fortune SHAKSPEARE, Othello, i. 2. We have heard so much of your demerits, That 'twere injustice not to cherish you. SHIRLEY, Humorous Courtier. I am informed there have been brought against me charges of plagiarism. One of them is ludicrous enough; I am reproached for having formed the description of a shipwreck in verse from the narratives of many actual shipwrecks in prose, selecting such materials as were most striking. Gibbon makes a merit in Tasso 'to have copied the minutest details of the Siege of Jerusalem from the Chronicles.' In me it may be a demerit, I presume-let it remain so.-BYRON. Demure. Used by the older writers in a good sense of pensive, modest, solemn; but now with a suspicion of affectation. Lo two most goodly virgins came in place, SPENSER, Fairy Queen, i. 10. Hark, the drums Demurely wake the sleepers. SHAKSPEARE, Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 9. Come pensive nun, devout and pure Sober, stedfast and demure.-MILTON. 'Twas on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dyed The azure flowers that blow; GRAY, On a Cat watching a Bowl of Gold Fish. DEPART-DEPEND. 87 Charles was sick, nervous, and extravagantly superstitious. Carrero had learned in the exercise of his profession the art of exciting and soothing such minds, and he employed such art with the calm and demure cruelty which is characteristic of wicked and ambitious Priests.-MACAULAY. Depart. Old meaning, to divide, separate. For the superficialte of the earth is departed in seven parties. -MANDEVILLE. Till death do us depart.—Book of Common Prayer, 1661. I remember in particular his showing us on a distant eminence, a dreary, lone house called the Hawk's Nest, in which a young man returning from a fair with money had been murdered in the night and buried under the floor, where his remains were found after the death or departure of the inmates. The fact was simple enough, but related in his manner, it was just such a story as should have been told by a poet on a lonely heath.-LOCKHART, Life of Sir W. Scott. Depend. Used formerly in its literal sense of to hang, or rest in a hanging position. As heaven with stars, the roof with jewels glows, And ever living lamps depend in rows. POPE, Temple of Fame. Her andirons (I had forgot them) were two winking cupids SHAKSPEARE, Cymbeline, ii. 4. The warlike power of every country depends on their three per cents. If Cæsar were to reappear upon earth his Com. mentaries would give place to Wetherall's List. Rothschild would open and shut the Temple of Janus, Thomas Baring, or Bates, would probably command the Tenth Legion, and the soldiers would march to battle with loud cries of Scrip and Omnium reduced, Consols and Cæsar.-SYDNEY SMITH. 88 DERIVE-DESOLATE. Derive. Literally, to draw away a river from its proper channel, and so of other things. Now generally, to draw from. Thus to derive the crown to her husband as the next heir in the line of Lancaster.-FULLER. The following great men did not derive their education from public schools. Sir Isaac Newton, Wallis, Flamsteed, Saunderson, Simpson, and Napier, among men of science, were not educated at public schools. The three best historians that the English language has produced, Clarendon, Hume and Robertson, were not educated at public schools. Spenser, Pope, Shakspeare, Butler, Rochester, Spratt, Parnell, Garth, Congreve, Guy, Swift, Thomson, Shenstone, Akenside, Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney, Savage, Arbuthnot and Burns among the poets were not educated in the system of English Schools.-SYDNEY SMITH. Desire. Like desiderium once had the additional meaning of regret for a loss, but is now only applied to an object hoped for and unattained. She that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty and the grave robes of chastity, and she shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies.-JEREMY TAYLOR. When the struggle for existence has been successfully terminated, and the mere instinct of self-preservation no longer absorbs the activities of a people, then the three chief motive forces of civilization begin to operate. These are cupidity, or the desire of wealth and all that it procures; curiosity, or the desire to discover new facts about the world and man; and the love of beauty, which is the parent of all art.-J. A. SYMONDS, Renaissance in Italy, p. 183. Desolate. Used by Chaucer as 'destitute.' O Golias, unmeasurable of length, So young, and of armour so desolate.-CHAUCER. DETEST-DETRACTION. 89 Reader, in thy passage from the Bank northwards didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, brick-and-stone edifice, where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent proportions, its portals ever gaping wide and disclosing to view a grave court with cloisters, with few or no traces of goers in or comers out, a desolation like Balchetha's. This was once a house of trade, a centre of busy interests; the throng of merchants was here, the quick pulse of gain. There are still to be seen stately apartments, deserted, or thinly peopled by a few straggling clerks. Such is the South Sea House, a magnificent relic !-C. LAMB. Detest. Sometimes occurs among old writers in the meaning of 'bearing witness against' (detestari). E'en to vice They are not constant, but are changing still Not half so old as that: I'll write against them, Detest them, curse them.-SHAKSPEARE, Cymbeline, ii. 5. Which is nothing else but to rob men, and make God the receiver, who is the detester, and will be the punisher of such crimes.-HOPKINS, On the First Commandment. Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralise and degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration. Such a monument of its power may indeed be stamped with immortality, but, like the Colosseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence, because we detest the purposes for which it was designed.-COLTON'S Lacon. Detraction. Used by Bacon in its literal meaning of 'taking away.' You shall therefore enquire of the unlawful taking of partridges and pheasants, or fowl, the detraction of the eggs of the said wild fowl.-BACON. Treat a detractor with contempt, and so you shall force spite to drink off his own poison.-ZIMMERMAN. |