Epistle To Earl Harcourt, On His Wishing Her To Spell Her Name With Of Catherine With A K.
AND can his antiquarian eyes,
My Anglo-Saxon C despise?
And does Lord Harcourt, day by day,
Regret th' extinct initial K?
And still, with ardour unabated,
Labour to get it reinstated?--
I know, my Lord, your generous passion
For ev'ry long-exploded fashion;
And own the Catherine you delight in,
Looks irresistibly inviting,
Appears to bear the stamp, and mark,
Of English, used in Noah's Ark;
'But all that glitters is not gold,'
Nor all things obsolete, are old.
Would you but take the pains to look
In Doctor Johnson's quarto book,
(As I did, wishing much to see
Th' aforesaid letter's pedigree),
Believe me, 't would a tale unfold,
Would make your Norman blood run cold.
My Lord, you'll find the K's no better
Than an interpolated letter,--
A wand'ring Greek, a franchis'd alien,
Deriv'd from Cadmus or Deucalion,
And, why, or wherefore, none can tell,
Inserted 'twixt the J and L.
The learned say, our English tongue
On Gothic beams is built and hung;
Then why the solid fabric piece
With motley ornaments from Greece?
Her letter'd despots had no bowels
For northern consonants and vowels;
The Norman and the Greek grammarian
Deem'd us, and all our words, barbarian,
Till those hard words, and harder blows,
Had silenced all our haughty foes,
And proud they were to kiss the sandals
(Shoes we had none) of Goths and Vandals.
So call we now the various race
That gave the Roman eagle chace,
Nurtur'd by all the storms that roll
In thunder round the Arctic Pole,
And from the bosom of the North,
Like gelid rain-drops scatter'd forth--
Dread Odin's desolating sons,
Teutones, Cimbrians, Franks, and Huns;--
But hold, 't would try Don Quixote's patience,
To nomenclate this mob of nations:
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poem by Joanna Baillie
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