Loves Meinie

Love's Meinie, by John Ruskin

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Title: Love's Meinie Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: April 18, 2007 [EBook #21138]
Language: English
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MEINIE ***

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LOVE'S MEINIE.
THREE LECTURES ON GREEK AND ENGLISH BIRDS.

By
JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., D.C.L.
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; AND
HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE,
OXFORD

THIRD EDITION
GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON AND 156,
CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON
1897
[All rights reserved]

CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE v
LECTURE I. THE ROBIN 1
LECTURE II. THE SWALLOW 25
LECTURE III. THE DABCHICKS 52
APPENDIX 107

PREFACE.
BRANTWOOD, 9th June, 1881.

Quarter past five, morning.
The birds chirping feebly,--mostly chaffinches answering each other,
the rest discomposed, I fancy, by the June snow;[1] the lake neither
smooth nor rippled, but like a surface of perfectly bright glass, ill cast;
the lines of wave few and irregular, like flaws in the planes of a fine
crystal.
[1] The summits of the Old Man, of Wetherlam, and Helvellyn, were
all white, on the morning when this was written.
I see this book was begun eight years ago;--then intended to contain
only four Oxford lectures: but the said lectures also 'intended' to
contain the cream of forty volumes of scientific ornithology. Which
intentions, all and sundry, having gone, Carlyle would have said, to
water, and more piously-minded persons, to fire, I am obliged now to
cast my materials into another form: and here, at all events, is a bundle
of what is readiest under my hand. The nature and name of which I
must try to make a little more intelligible than my books have lately
been, either in text or title.
'Meinie' is the old English word for 'Many,' in the sense of 'a many'
persons attending one, as bridesmaids, when in sixes or tens or
dozens;--courtiers, footmen, and the like. It passes gradually into
'Menial,' and unites the senses of Multitude and Servitude.
In the passages quoted from, or referred to in, Chaucer's translation of
the Romance of the Rose, at the end of the first lecture, any reader who
cares for a clue to the farther significances of the title, may find one to
lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than mine: and
ladder enough also,--if there be either any heavenly, or pure earthly,
Love, in his own breast,--to guide him to a pretty bird's nest; both in the
Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the Sermons of St. Francis
and St. Bernard.
The term 'Lecture' is retained, for though I lecture no more, I still write
habitually in a manner suited for oral delivery, and imagine myself
speaking to my pupils, if ever I am happily thinking in myself. But it

will be also seen that by the help of this very familiarity of style, I am
endeavoring, in these and my other writings on Natural History, to
compel in the student a clearness of thought and precision of language
which have not hitherto been in any wise the virtues, or skills, of
scientific persons. Thoughtless readers, who imagine that my own style
(such as it is, the one thing which the British public concedes to me as a
real power) has been formed without pains, may smile at the
confidence with which I speak of altering accepted, and even
long-established, nomenclature. But the use which I now have of
language has taken me forty years to attain; and those forty years spent,
mostly, in walking through the wilderness of this world's vain words,
seeking how they might be pruned into some better strength. And I
think it likely that at last I may put in my pruning-hook with effect; for
indeed a time must come when English fathers and mothers will wish
their children to learn English again, and to speak it for all scholarly
purposes; and, if they use, instead, Greek or Latin, to use them only
that they may be understood by Greeks or Latins;[2] and not that they
may mystify the illiterate many of their own land. Dead languages, so
called, may at least be left at rest, if not honored; and must not be torn
in mutilation out of their tumuli, that the skins and bones of them may
help to hold our living nonsense together; while languages called living,
but