is very word (now under discussion) of the _sublime_. To those
who have little Greek and _no_ Latin, it is necessary in the first
place that we should state what are the most obvious elements of the
word. According to the noble army of etymologists, they are these two
Latin words--_sub_, under, and _limus_, mud. Oh! gemini! who would
have thought of groping for the sublime in such a situation as
that?--unless, indeed, it were that writer cited by Mr. Coleridge, and
just now referred to by ourselves, who complains of frivolous modern
readers, as not being able to raise and sequester their thoughts to
the abstract consideration of dung. Hence it has followed, that most
people have quarrelled with the etymology. "Whereupon the late Dr.
Parr, of pedantic memory, wrote a huge letter to Mr. Dugald Stewart,
but the marrow of which lies in a nutshell, especially being rather
hollow within. The learned doctor, in the first folio, grapples with
the word _sub_, which, says he, comes from the Greek--so much is
clear--but from what Greek, Bezonian? The thoughtless world, says he,
trace it to [Greek: hypo] (hypo), sub, _i. e._ under; but I, Ego,
Samuel Parr, the Birmingham doctor, trace it to [Greek: hyper]
(hyper), super, _i. e._ above; between which the difference is not
less than between a chestnut horse and a horse-chestnut. To this
learned Parrian dissertation on mud, there cannot be much reasonably
to object, except its length in the first place; and, secondly, that
we ourselves exceedingly doubt the common interpretation of _limus_.
Most unquestionably, if the sublime is to be brought into any relation
at all to mud, we shall all be of one mind--that it must be found
_above_. But to us it appears--that when the true modern idea of mud
was in view, _limus_ was not the word used. Cicero, for instance, when
he wishes to call Piso 'filth, mud,' &c. calls him _Caenum_: and, in
general, _limus_ seems to have involved the notion of something
adhesive, and rather to express _plaister_, or artificially prepared
cement, &c., than that of filth or impure depositions. Accordingly,
our own definition differs from the Parrian, or Birmingham definition;
and may, nevertheless, be a Birmingham definition also. Not having
room to defend it, for the present we forbear to state it.]

Now, therefore, after this explanation, recurring to the Longinian
critiques upon Homer, it will avail any idolator of Homer but little,
it will affect us not much,