CHAPTER 1V: 345 severity, according as the case requires : so when there is a ne- cessity of expressing things unclean or obscene, a wise man will do it in the most decent language, to excite as felt' uncleanly ideas as possible in the minds of the hearers. Note 2dly, In the length of time, and by the power of custom, words sometimes change their primary ideas as shall be declared, and sometimes they have changed their secondary ideas, though the primary ideas may remain : so words that were once chaste, by frequent use grow obscene and uncleanly; and words that-were once honourable may, in the next genera- tion, grow mean and contemptible. So the word dame originally signified a mistress of a family, who was a lady, and it is used still in the English law to signify a lady ; but in common use now-a -days it represents a farmer's wife, or a mistress of a family of the lower rank in the country. So those words of Rabshakeh; Ise. xxxvi. 12. in our translation, (Eat their own dung, 4c.) were doubtless decent and clean language, when our translators wrote them, above a hundred years ago. 'l'he word eat has maintained its old secondary idea and inoffensive sense, to this day ; but the other word in that sentence has by cus- tom acquired a more uncleanly idea, and should now rather be changed into a more decent term, and so it should he read in public, unless it should be thought more proper to omit the sentence *. For this reason it is that the Jewish Rabbins have sup- plied other chaste words in the margin of the Hebrew bible, where the words of the text, through time and custom, are de- generated ; so as to carry any base and unclean secondary idea in them ; and they read the word which is in the margin, which they call Keri, and not that which was written in the text, which they called Chetib. SECT. IV. Of Words common and proper. III. Words and names are either common or proper. Com- mon names are such as stand for universal ideas, or a whole rank of geings, whether general or special. 'These are called apellatives; so fish, bird, Haan, city, river, are common names; and so are trout, eel, lobster, for they all agree to many indi- viduals, and some of them to many species : but Cicero, Vir- gil, Bucephalus, London, Rome, LEtna, the. Thames, are pro- per names, for each of them agrees only to one single being. Note, here, first, that a proper name may become in some sense common, when it bath been given to several beings of the same kind ; so Cre:car, which was the proper name of the first Emperor, Julius, became also a common name to all the fol- * So in some places of the sacred historians, where it is written, eeerrf ene that pisseth against the mall, we should read, every male.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=