THE "SHORTER OXFORD"

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 31, 5 August 1933, Page 17

THE "SHORTER OXFORD"

DEFINITIONS AND QUOTATIONS

AN ANTHOLOGY OF PROSE AND VERSE

(By "Ajax.")

'Jjhe ''Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Hiss torical Principles. Prepared by William Little, H. W. Fowler, and JY Coulson. Revised and edited by C. T. Onions. 10J x 7}; in two volumes. Vol. 1, A-M, sxi + 1306 pp.; Vol. 11, N-Z viii + 1307-3175 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lou- - don: Milford. Published price, 63s the two volumes.' • •■■"" [Final, Notice] ■ I have not yet had the pleasure o£ seeing Mr. A. E. Housman'a Leslie Stephen Lecture on "The Name and Nature of Poetry," .but on Sunday I read with- great pleasure a passage from it quoted by Mr. Gerald Gould in his-Very* able review of the book in the "Observer" of June 4. A year or two ago, in common with others;'-1- received, from' America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that iffbukMio-more define poetry than a terrier ,can define a rat, but that 1 thought we' both recognised the object by the symptoms which it provokes in usl This was pleasing in its smartness but far from satisfying, and I liked a good deal better the equally smart comment. . .' ■'•;.■, . '~'... That is all very ■ well, said Mr. Gould, and has in substance - been said- oiten. But, roughly speaking, it is to be assumed that all rats provoke the same symptoms in ail ■temereV.-And-th)ls the, -analogy fteaWldown.-^Wf all poetry prp : vokestWe same'symptoms in all-persons.

But, as I am not out to discuss poetry, Mr. Gould's retort and my.-sat-isfaction with it are quite irrejevant. Professor' Housman 's refusal' to -define a thing of which' ho had undertaken to discuss the name and nature is relevant because it suggested a. .contrast .between the freedom of the lecturer aud the writer and the slavery of those "harmless drudges;" the makers of dictionaries who cannot dodge a single one' of the 400,000 or 500,000 words that ther havo discovered; becatise it compelled' me to see what definition of "poetry" theso faithful creatures had Evolved;' and because it thus started me on another browse in tho "Shorter Oxford" with which.l believed myself to have finished last weok.'

The definition ,of .poetry, in its principal existi^ tee'lof'the twin which lam at.last able, to reach in the "Shorter Oxford," is excellent:— " The expression 'of beautiful or; elevated ' thought,' imagination,' or feeling, in ■ approjS language, such language .contammg. - a rhythmical element, and having usu. a inefyical form. 1581. , .. , , ,'WM : dato 1581, as a reference to the biz Oxford Dictionary shows, is that of Sir' Philip Sidney's "Apologie for Poetne,'f from Avhich, the following quotation is taken: . , ; Verse being but an ornament and no cause to. Poetry: ' sith there have ■ beene wk'ny-inoßi excellent ;Poets, that iiever S-emfiedi V' ■ ' :i:'" r ■■' '•'•■"•'' .•■ ThW passage is not to be found in the "Shorter Oxford," but it quotestfroni •',Lov^B Labour' 3, Lost" (1688) as follOTTS: . ..;.... , "': . ' ~ I will prove those Verses to be very vh'learned, neither ■ savouring of Poetne, Wit, nor Invention. ■ • ' • > ' ■ v Though" the passage is intrinsically-loss valuable than the other, I quote it to illustrate the unfailing -attention that the editors havo paid to Shakespeare and the fidelity with ,which the old text is reproduced withqufany disguisefron£ln,(Jdc^i |inpta#ns. i' ,-,'-..":■... :'• ■

■ Another of Mr. Housinan's points vi the sanie, lecture I. owe to the criticism of Mr '•' L'ascelles ' Ab'ercrbmbie lit' the ''ilanches-tei' Guardian ■(Weekly; Edition, June 9): . ■ Poetry is: riot the 'thing said' but a way o£'saying it. *...■,„Meaning is.;of the in : , teljject, ppetry is not. ;' Mr. Hou&man offers proof in the fact that a verse ill: the Prayer ; Book Psalter is poetry, while in tho. A.Y. it is prose. This,"says Mr.; Abercr'ombie, is a game in (experimental, criticism as old as Aristotle, and can be played even more strictly .than Mr. Housman plays it:- Change-but a tingle-word in a phrase of poetry: Uut, out. brief candle"; put "sllort. for "brief" and note the result. But will anyone say th.at "short" means the same .thing .^as ."brief"? ' And here I was thrown, back on tho dietioriaryvagain,, > . ; ■•■•"■'.;.*'■

In 'ihsJ.' Concise,Oxford,*' which was the/dictionary available at the moment, I "isirand the distinction ' between "sh'bri;":;an,d "brief" much more pfceiselft1 flr'a^^tHai 'Iv;.Kaa^< expected; "Short" was very neatly interpreted as - ' measuring little from end to end in space or* time,, soon traversed or finished, "Brief," according to the same authority, means "of short duration; concise," and nothing more. Tho "Shorter Oxford" adds as a third meaning, "short, curtailed, limited in space," but marks it as ."less usual"' and not found before 1668.: It is rer markable that Shakespeare vis here gi,ven a completo monopoly of- the quotations: — 1. Out, out, breefo Candle. Macb. V, v. 23. To be b., i.e., expeditious. Tr, & Cr., IV. v. 237. 2. Breefe Chronicles. Hami. 11. ii. 648. "To be b."; to speak concise!}'. 3. fig. Cymb. V. v. 165.

In the difficult.passage.from "Cymbeline," to which the "Shorter Oxford" only gives the reference: — The shrine' of Venus, or straight-pight Minerva, Postures beyond Breefe, Nature, Johnson interprets "breefe" as "contracted, narrow." Otherwise lie gives, it the meaning of "short, concise," and adds that "it la now seldom nsod but of words." So far had this tendency apparently been carried in 1843 that Barclay's "Universal Dictionary" in that year-, has- nothing at all to say about the word except appropriated to language, nhort, concise, opposed to diffusive or.verbose.

Of "short," I have left myself little room to speak, yet it has so. wide a range that it fills 2J columns in the "Shorter Oxford," and no less than 17 in the larger.book. Among the quota-