NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. JULY 9, wot
name in a famous trial. When he terms th
word prefixed to this note a " vile and bar
barous vocable," and connects " talent " with
English coins, one cannot help thinking that
his listener has very imperfectly reported
what was said on that particular occasion
He was no Boswell, as any one knows who
has read the volume from which I have
quoted. Surely Coleridge must have addec
some remarks about the origin of the expres-
sion which he condemns, and of which he
could scarcely be ignorant. We have had
no parable of ' The Shillings,' or ' The Far-
things,' or * The Tenpences,' delivered to us,
but more than eighteen hundred years ago
the parable of ' The Talents ' was spoken
far away from our island, and is recorded in
St. Matthew's Gospel, ch. xxv. 14-30. By
constant repetition during this long lapse of
time from innumerable pulpits throughout
all Christian lands, the word "talent" has
lost its original meaning of a sum of money,
and come to signify some special aptitude or
faculty granted to men who have not been
endowed with genius. This distinction was
so happily expressed in a poem written by
Owen Meredith (the second Lord Lytton),
and printed in one of the early numbers of
the Cornhill Magazine, that I have never
forgotten this couplet :
Talk not of genius baffled; genius is master of man; Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.
The ministry of "All the Talents" in Cole- ridge's early manhood (1806) was, as its nick- name implies, conspicuous for its want of a man of genius, and therefore did what it could, which was very little. Had there been one at the head of it who was possessed of that supreme gift which, as Coleridge else- where says, " must have talent as its comple- ment and implement, because the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower," the his- tory of that administration might have been famous.
The use of the word " talent," as the equivalent of intellectual ability, being thus clearly deduced from the parable in the New Testament, we can easily understand how " talented " came into existence, which hap- pened long before the time of Coleridge, who was, moreover, forestalled in his condemna- tion, as we learn from a letter written by Macaulay to his sister on 30 May, 1831. "In the drawing-room/' he says,
" I had a long talk with Lady Holland about the antiquities of the house, and about the purity of the English language, wherein she thinks herself a critic. I happened, in speaking about the Reform Bill, to say that I wished that it had been possible to form a few
commercial constituencies, if the word constituency
were admissible. ' I am glad you put that in,' said
her ladyship. * I was just going to give it you. It
is an odious word. Then there is talented, and
influential, and gentlemanly. I never could break
Sheridan of gentlemanly, though he allowed it to be
wrong.' We talked about the word talents and its
history. I said that it had first appeared in theo-
logical writing, that it was a metaphor taken from
the parable in the New Testament, and that it had
gradually passed from the vocabulary of divinity
into common use. I challenged her to find it in any
classical writer on general subjects before the
Restoration, * or even before the year 1700. I be-
lieve that I might safely have gone down later.
She seemed surprised by this theory, never having,
so far as I could judge, heard of the parable of the
talents. I did not tell her, though I might have
done so, that a person who professes to be a critic
in the delicacies of the English language ought to
have the Bible at his fingers' ends."
And then he oddly adds :
She is certainly a woman of considerable talents and great literary acquirements." 'Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay,' popular edit., pp. 150-1.
If Lady Holland had turned to Johnson's Dictionary ' she would have seen under the word 'Talent' what follows: "Faculty; power ; gift of nature. A metaphor bor- rowed from the talents mentioned in the holy writ," and would also have found examples of its use by Clarendon and Dryden, which would have disproved the too-confident assertion of her guest. We must, however, remember that this letter was written without any thought of publica- ion.
In another, addressed to Macvey Napier,
- hen editor of the Edinburgh Review, who
"lad criticized some of the words employed n his article on Frederic the Great, and, apparently, the one at the head of this note, which, however, does not appear in the corrected edition of the ' Essays,' Macaulay writes on 18 April, 1842 : * Such a word as talented ' it is proper to avoid : first, be- cause it is not wanted ; secondly, because you never hear it from those who speak very good English " (p. 416). Verily, if they who ?peak good English employ it, I do not see vhy it should be banned arid banished from .he language ; and I think it is wanted, and ts rejection would be "a mere throwing away of power," for what the same author
- "All the circumstances were examined and
ounded to the bottom by one of the greatest and most knowing kings of his time, viz.. King James f England ; who had a particular talent and mar- railous sagacity to discusse natural things, and )enetrate them to the very marrow." ' Of the >ympathetick Powder. A Discourse in a Solemn Assembly at Montpellier. Made in French by Sir tenelm Digby, Knight, 1657. London, Printed for fohn Williams, 1669.
