Psha, Pshaw, expresses contempt. 'Doubt is always crying psha and sneering.'-Thackeray, Humourists, p. 69. Tush. Now little used, but frequent in writers of the sixteenth century, and familiar to us through the Psalter of 1539. Heigh ho. Some interjections have so vague, so filmy a meaning, that it would take a great many words to interpret what their meaning is. They seem as well fitted to be the echo of one thought or feeling as another; or even to be no more than a mere melodious continuance of the rhythm :— How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! This will suffice to exhibit the nature of the first class of interjections;-those which stand nearest to nature and farthest from art; those which owe least to conventionality and most to genuine emotion; those which are least capable of orthographic expression and most dependent upon oral modulation. It is to this class of interjections that the following quotation applies. It has long and reasonably been considered that the place in history of these expressions is a very primitive one. Thus De Brosses describes them as necessary and natural words, common to all mankind, and produced by the combination of man's conformation with the interior affections of his mind.Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ch. v. vol. i. p. 166. And this writer has produced a large collection of evidence tending to the probability that the affirmative answers aye, I (102, 205), yea, yes, are of this primitive class of words, although their forms may have been modified by admixture of grammatical material. § 2. Historical Interjections. 203. The interjections which we have been considering thus far, may be called the spontaneous or primitive interjections, and they are such as have no basis in grammatical forms. But we now pass on to the other group, which may be called the historical or secondary interjections; a group which, though extra-grammatical no less than the former, in the sense that they do not enter into the grammatical construction, are yet founded upon grammatical words. Verbs, nouns, participles, adjectives, pronouns, have at times lost their grammatical character, and have lapsed into the state of interjections. Our first example shall be borrowed from the manners and customs of the British parliament. That scene may fairly be regarded as presenting to our view the most mature and full-grown exhibition of the powers of human speech, and it is there that one of the most famous of interjections first originated, and is in constant employment. The cry of 'Hear, hear,' originally an imperative verb, is now nothing more nor less than a great historical interjection. The following is the history of the exclamation, as described by Lord Macaulay, History of England, ch. xi. (1689). The King therefore, on the fifth day after he had been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House of Lords, and took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; and he, with many gracious expressions, reminded his hearers of the perilous situation of the country, and exhorted them to take such steps as might prevent unnecessary delay in the transaction of public business. His speech was received by the gentlemen who crowded the bar with the deep hum by which our ancestors were wont to indicate approbation, and which was often heard in places more sacred than the Chamber of the Peers. As soon as he had retired, a Bill, declaring the Convention a Parliament, was laid on the table of the Lords, and rapidly passed by them. In the Commons the debates were warm. The House resolved itself into a Committee; and so great was the excitement, that, 'Doubt is always Psha, Pshaw, expresses contempt. crying psha and sneering.'-Thackeray, Humourists, p. 69. Tush. Now little used, but frequent in writers of the sixteenth century, and familiar to us through the Psalter of 1539. Heigh ho. Some interjections have so vague, so filmy a meaning, that it would take a great many words to interpret what their meaning is. They seem as well fitted to be the echo of one thought or feeling as another; or even to be no more than a mere melodious continuance of the rhythm : How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! : This will suffice to exhibit the nature of the first class of interjections;-those which stand nearest to nature and farthest from art; those which owe least to conventionality and most to genuine emotion; those which are least capable of orthographic expression and most dependent upon oral modulation. It is to this class of interjections that the following quotation applies. It has long and reasonably been considered that the place in history of these expressions is a very primitive one. Thus De Brosses describes them as necessary and natural words, common to all mankind, and produced by the combination of man's conformation with the interior affections of his mind.Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ch. v. vol. i. p. 166. And this writer has produced a large collection of evidence tending to the probability that the affirmative answers aye, I (102, 205), yea, yes, are of this primitive class of words, although their forms may have been modified by admixture of grammatical material. CHAPTER III. OF INTERJECTIONS. 193. THE term Interjection signifies something that is 'pitched in among' things of which it does not naturally form a constituent part. The Interjection has been so named by grammarians in order to express its relation to grammatical structures. It is found in them, but it forms no part of them. The interjection may be defined as a form of speech which is articulate and symbolic but not grammatical. It is only to be called grammatical in that widest sense of the word, in which all that is written, including accents, stops, and quotation marks, would be comprised within the notion of grammar. When we speak of grammar as the handmaid of logic, then the interjection must stand aside. Emotion is quick, and leaves no time for logical thought: if it use grammatical phrases they must be ready made and familiar to the lips; there is not time to select what is appropriate or consecutive. Hence the limited variety of interjections, and the almost unlimited use of single forms. An interjection implies a meaning which it would require a whole grammatical sentence to expound, and it may be regarded as the rudiment of such a sentence. But it is a confusion of thought to rank it among the parts of speech. It is not in any sense a part; it is a whole (though an indistinct) expression of feeling or of thought. An inter jection bears to its context the same sort of relation as a pictorial illustration does. We rightly call an adjective or an adverb a Part of Speech, because these have no meaning by themselves without the aid of nouns and verbs, and because their very designation implies the existence of nouns and verbs. But an interjection is intelligible without any grammatical adjunct; and such completeness as it is capable of is attained without collateral assistance. 194. Ancient grammarians ranked the interjections as adverbs, but the moderns have made them a separate class. If it were a question to which of the parts of speech the interjection is most cognate, it must be answered to the verb. For if we take any simple interjection, such as, for example, the cry 'Oh! Oh!' in the House of Commons, and assign to it a predicative value, it can only be done by a verb, either in the imperative or in the indicative first person. Either you must say it is equivalent to 'Don't say such things,' or else to 'I doubt,' 'I wonder,' 'I demur, 'I dispute,' 'I deny,' 'I protest': by one or more of these or such verbs must 'Oh, Oh!' be explained; and thus it seems to present itself as a rudimentary verb. But this again rises, not out of any singular affection that it bears to the verb in its formal character, but out of the general fact that the verb is the central representative and focus of that predicative force, which unequally pervades all language, but which in the interjection is wrapped round and enfolded with an involucre of emotion. It may stand either insulated in the sentence, or by virtue of this obscure verbal character, it may be connected with it by a preposition, as— Oh for a humbler heart and prouder song! This is the nearest approach which it makes to structural |