Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-86)
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Life
| b. Dublin, ed. Cambridge where he was a friend of Tennyson and the dedicatee of The Palace of Art (1832); grad. Cambridge, M.A,; vicar of Itchen Stoke, Hants, professor of Divinity, King's College, London, and examining chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Oxford; preferred Dean of Westminster and afterwards Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, 1 Jan. 1864 - succeeding Dr. Whately; led the United See of Dublin, Glendalough and Kildare after the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland; issued num. poetry collections incl. Justin Martyr (1835), Honor Neale (1838), and Poems from Eastern Sources (1842); trans. Sacred Latin Poetry (1849) as well as Christian hymns in translation; trans. a play of Calderon; he is best-known for his popular philological works such as Study of Words (1851) and English Past and Present (1856), taking an evolutionist view of language as ‘fossil poetry’ (in Emerson’s phrase) - yet still compatible with Genesis; |
| said to have been acquainted with both Garibaldi and Gladstone; ed. Journals and Remains of his mother, Melissa Trench [q.v.], while still Dean of Westminster; he is accredited with a motion at the Philological Society on 7 Jan. 1858 which led to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary; retired from the See of Dublin, 1884; his collected Poems were issued in 2 vols. in 1885; he spent summers at Broomfield House, Ashford, Co. Wicklow and d. at his home on Eaton Sq., London; his Study of Words was a source for Joyce’s preparations and quotations in “Oxen of the Sun” (Ulysses); the character called Haines (‘the oxy chap downstairs’); in Ulysses, was modelled on Richard Samuel Chenevix Trench who was (b.1881) a gs. of R.C. Trench, who committed suicide with a revolver in 1909; his adopted name was Dermot. CAB ODNB PI DIB DIW TAY OCEL MKA ODQ RAF OCIL |
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Works
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| Poetry |
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| Theological & Ecclesiastical (pastoral) |
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| Sermons |
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| Philology (Etymology & Semantics) |
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| Translations & Classical studies |
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| Correspondence |
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| COPAC also lists: |
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| COPAC - search: Richard Chenevix Trench - online; accessed 19.09.2023. |
Bibliographical note
The Study of Words [XII Lects.] (1st Edn. 1851); On the Study of Words: Lectures Addressed (originally) to the pupils at the Diocesan Training School, Winchester [4th edn., rev.] (London: Macmillan and Co 1853); Do. [26th edn.; rev. by A.L. Mayhew] (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner 1899); Do. [27th edn.] (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co 1904). Also American edns.: Do. [9th Edn.] (New York: Redfield 1855). 236pp.; Do. (NY: H. W. Bell 1904).
English, Past and Present: Five Lectures [4th edn., rev.] (London: John W. Parker & Son 1859), vi, 263pp.; English, Past and Present: Eight Lectures [6th edn. revised and improved] (London: Macmillan 1868); Do., [10th edn., rev.] (London, Macmillan & Co 1877); Do., in part rewritten by A.L. Mayhew [14th edn.] (London: Kegan Paul 1889), 392pp. [Mayhew Pref. dated Aug. 1888; available at Gutenberg Project - online]. American editions incl. Do. (NY: Redfield 1855) [New edn., rev. & enl.] (NY: Blakeman 1859), and On the English language, past and present [New ed, rev. and enl.] (New York: W.J. Widdleton 1860).
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Commentary
Susan Davison, ‘Joyce’s Incorporation of Literary Sources in “Oxen of the Sun”’, in Genetic Joyce Studies, 9 (Spring 2009): ‘Richard Chevenix Trench’s The Study of Words (1892), a posthumously revised edition of On the Study of Words: Lectures Addressed (Originally) to the Pupils of the Diocesan Training-School Winchester (1851). In ‘Richard Chenevix Trench and Joyce’s Historical Study of Words’, [Gregory] Downing suggests that “Joyce absorbed the idea of analyzing language as an organic medium of culture from Trench’ and that “Oxen” subsumes lots of linguistic phenomena discussed in his four major works: On the Study of Words; On the Lessons in Proverbs; English Past and Present; and A Select Glossary. He noticed a proliferation of “Trench-words” in the final text of “Oxen” , but had been unable to identify any “canvassing clusters or sequences” on the notesheets. [21] We can now say with confidence that Joyce had access to The Study of Words as he was writing “Oxen”’ (Online; accessed 21.05.2010). Reference to Downing, ‘Joyce’s “Oxen of the Sun” Notesheets: A Transcription and Sourcing of the Stylistic Entries: A Compilation of the Existing Transcriptions and Sourcings, Supplemented by New Sourcing Work’, in Genetic Joyce Studies, 2 (2002).
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The Study of Words (1851; 20th edn. 1888)
[ Epigraphs ] ‘Language is the armoury of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future, conquests’ — Coleridge.
‘Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!‘ — Shakespeare.PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION [by Richard Chenevix Trench] These lectures will not, I trust, be found anywhere to have left out of sight seriously, or for long, the peculiar needs of those for whom they were originally intended, and to whom they were primarily addressed. I am conscious, indeed, here and there, of a certain departure from my first intention, having been in part seduced to this by a circumstance which I had not in the least contemplated when I obtained permission to deliver them, by finding, namely, that I should have other hearers besides the pupils of the Training-School. Some matter adapted for those rather than for these I was thus led to introduce - which afterwards I was unwilling, in preparing for the press, to remove; on the contrary adding to it rather, in the hope of obtaining thus a somewhat wider circle of readers than I could have hoped, had I more rigidly restricted myself in the choice of my materials. Yet I should greatly regret to have admitted so much of this as should deprive these lectures of their fitness for those whose profit in writing and in publishing I had mainly in view, namely schoolmasters, and those preparing to be such.
Had I known any book entering with any fulness, and in a popular manner, into the subject-matter of these pages, and making it its exclusive theme, I might still have delivered these lectures, but should scarcely have sought for them a wider audience than their first, gladly leaving the matter in their hands, whose studies in language had been fuller and riper than my own. But abundant and ready to hand as are the materials for such a book, I did not; while yet it seems to me that the subject is one to which it is beyond measure desirable that their attention, who are teaching, or shall have hereafter to teach, others should be directed; so that they shall learn to regard language as one of the chiefest organs of their own education and that of others. For I am persuaded that I have used no exaggeration in saying, that for many a young man “his first discovery that words are living powers, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquiring of another sense, or the introduction into a new world,” - while yet all this may be indefinitely deferred, may, indeed, never find place at all, unless there is some one at hand to help for him, and to hasten the process; and he who so does, will ever after be esteemed by him as one of his very foremost benefactors. Whatever may be Horne Tooke’s shortcomings (and they are great), whether in details of etymology, or in the philosophy of grammar, or in matters more serious still, yet, with all this, what an epoch in many a student”s intellectual life has been his first acquaintance with The Diversions of Purley. And they were not among the least of the obligations which the young men of our time owed to Coleridge, that he so often himself weighed words in the balances, and so earnestly pressed upon all with whom his voice went for anything, the profit which they would find in so doing. Nor, with the certainty that I am anticipating much in my little volume, can I refrain from quoting some words which were not present with me during its composition, although I must have been familiar with them long ago; words which express excellently well why it is that these studies profit so much, and which will also explain the motives which induced me to add my little contribution to their furtherance:
“A language will often be wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even than the wisest of those who speak it. Being like amber in its efficacy to circulate the electric spirit of truth, it is also like amber in embalming and preserving the relics of ancient wisdom, although one is not seldom puzzled to decipher its contents. Sometimes it locks up truths, which were once well known, but which, in the course of ages, have passed out of sight and been forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of truths, of which, though they were never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse in a happy moment of divination. A meditative man cannot refrain from wonder, when he digs down to the deep thought lying at the root of many a metaphorical term, employed for the designation of spiritual things, even of those with regard to which professing philosophers have blundered grossly; and often it would seem as though rays of truth, which were still below the intellectual horizon, had dawned upon the imagination as it was looking up to heaven. Hence they who feel an inward call to teach and enlighten their countrymen, should deem it an important part of their duty to draw out the stores of thought which are already latent in their native language, to purify it from the corruptions which Time brings upon all things, and from which language has no exemption, and to endeavour to give distinctness and precision to whatever in it is confused, or obscure, or dimly seen” - Guesses at Truth, First Series, p.295.’
[End.]
ITCHEN STOKE: Oct. 9, 1851.
The Study of Words (1851) - Contents
Lecture I. Introductory Lecture Lecture II. On the Poetry in Words Lecture III. On the Morality of Words Lecture IV. On the History of Words Lecture V. On the Rise of New Words Lecture VI. On the Disction of Words Lecture VII. The Schoolmaster"s Use of Words Index of Words See copy at Gutenberg Project - online; accesssed 17.09.2023. The Study of Language (1851) - Introductory Lecture : ‘[...] But language is fossil history as well. What a record of great social revolutions, revolutions in nations and in the feelings of nations, the one word “frank” contains, which is used, as we all know, to express aught that is generous, straightforward, and free. The Franks, I need not remind you, were a powerful German tribe, or association of tribes [ftn.], who gave themselves this proud name of the “franks” or the free; and who, at the breaking up of the Roman Empire, possessed themselves of Gaul, to which they gave their own name. They were the ruling conquering people, honourably distinguished from the Gauls and degenerate Romans among whom they established themselves by their independence, their love of freedom, their scorn of a lie; they had, in short, the virtues which belong to a conquering and dominant race in the midst of an inferior and conquered one. And thus it came to pass that by degrees the name “frank” indicated not merely a national, but involved a moral, distinction as well; and a “frank” man was synonymous not merely with a man of the conquering German race, but was an epithet applied to any man possessed of certain high moral qualities, which for the most part appertained to, and were found only in, men of that stock; and thus in men”s daily discourse, when they speak of a person as being “frank,” or when they use the words “franchise,” “enfranchisement,” to express civil liberties and immunities, their language here is the outgrowth, the record, and the result of great historic changes, bears testimony to facts of history, whereof it may well happen that the speakers have never heard. [ftn.]
| 1: This explanation of the name Franks is now generally given up. The name is probably a derivative from a lost O.H.G. francho, a spear or javelin: compare A.S. franca, Icel. frakka; similarly the Saxons are supposed to have derived their name from a weapon - seax, a knife; see Kluge”s Dict. (s.v. frank).] |
| 2: [ftn.] Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 55. [It is very doubtful whether the idea of “glory” was implied originally in the national name of Slav. It is generally held now that the Slavs gave themselves the name as being “the intelligible,” or “the intelligibly speaking” people; as in the case of many other races, they regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as “barbarian,” that is “stammering,” or even as “dumb.” So the Russians call their neighbours the Germans njemets, connected with njemo, indistinct. The old name Slovene, Slavonians, is probably a derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the form slovo, a word; see Thomsen”s Russia and Scandinavia, p. 8. Slovo is closely connected with the old Slavonic word for “fame” - slava, hence, no doubt, the explanation of Slave favoured by Gibbon.] |
| “Frank,” though thus originally a German word, only came back to Germany from France in the seventeenth century. With us it is found in the sixteenth; but scarcely earlier.] The word “slave” has undergone a process entirely analogous, although in an opposite direction. “The martial superiority of the Teutonic races enabled them to keep their slave markets supplied with captives taken from the Sclavonic tribes. Hence, in all the languages of Western Europe, the once glorious name of Slave has come to express the most degraded condition of men. What centuries of violence and warfare does the history of this word disclose.”] |
Note: The above footnotes were added to the 20th edn. of 1888 by its editor Rev. A. L. Mathew who sets out, in his own Preface, to ‘alter Archbishop Trench’s work as little as possible’ while making an attempt ‘to purge the book of all erroneous etymologies, and to correct in the text small matters of detail.retain . [BS: Ricorso; 18.09.2023.] |
H. Hovelaque [professeur au lycée Saint-Louis], Anthologie de la Littérature irlandaise des Origines au XXe siècle (Paris Libraire Delagrave 1924), contains an extract from Trench"s Study of Words under the title of ‘La puissance du langage’ - being a title introduced by him to some materiall from the Introductory Lecture in the original. The translation reads as follows.
‘La language est aussi l’histoire fossile. Quel souvenir de grandes révolutions sociales - révolutions dans les nations et dans les sentiment des nations - est contenu dans le mot “frank” done on se sert, nous le savons tous, pour exprimer tout ce qui est généreux, droit et libre. ... ’;
Orig.: But language is fossil history as well. What a record of great social revolutions, revolutions in nations and in the feelings of nations, the one word “frank” contains, which is used, as we all know, to express aught that is generous, straightforward, and free.
‘Le langage est plein d’enseignements, parce qu’il est l’expression intime, l’incarnation, si je puis m’exprimer ainsi, des sentiments,des pensées et de l’experience d’une nation ou même souvent, et de tous les résultats qu’elles ont obtenues,de tous les progres qu’elles ont faits dans le cours des siècles. [... &c.]’ (Hovelaque, op. cit., pp.361ff.)
Orig.: Here then is the explanation of the fact that language should be thus instructive for us, that it should yield us so much, when we come to analyse and probe it; and yield us the more, the more deeply and accurately we do so. It is full of instruction, because it is the embodiment, the incarnation, if I may so speak, of the feelings and thoughts and experiences of a nation, yea, often of many nations, and of all which through long centuries they have attained to and won.
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ReferencesOxford Dictionary Quotation selects ‘England, we love thee better than we know’; and verses from The Kingdom of God. (See also Melasina, supra.)
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Charles A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Literature (London, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast & Edinburgh: Blackie & Son [1876-78]), lists Justin Martyr and other poems (1835); Sabbation, Honor Neale, and other poems (1838); Sacred Poems for Mourners; Sacred Latin Poetry.
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); b. 9 Sept.; ed. Harrow and Cambridge; Archbish. of Dublin; Dean of Westminster 1856; hon DD TCD, 1864; d. Eaton Square Lon. 28 Mar. The Story of Justin Martyr and Other Poems (Lon. 1835), Sabbation, Honor Neale and other poems (1838, Poems (anon. 1841?), Genoveva, a poem (1842), Poems from Eastern Sources; The Steadfast Prince and other Poems (1842), Poems written during the Russian War; Alma and other poems (1855), Timeleon, a poem (1881), Poems, 2 vols. (Lon 1885); many other theol. works.
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978) , calls him ‘an Irishman impervious to any of the influences that were shaping a native literature’; cites John Bromley, The Man of Ten Talents, A Portrait of Richard Chenevix Trench (1959) 253p. See also The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (1991), note at p.455.
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2; Bibl., The Story of Justin Martyr, and other poems (1835); Sabbation, Honor Neale, and other poems (1838); Poems (1841); Genoveva, a poem (1842); Poems from Eastern Sources[:] The Steadfast Prince, and other poems (1842); Elegiac Poems (1843); Sacred Latin Poetry (1849); Poems Written During the Russian War (1854-55); Alma and other Poems (1855); Poems (NY 1856); Timoleon, poem (1881); Poems, 2 vols. (1885).
Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford Companion of English Literature (OUP: 1985), ‘drew attention to masterpieces of Latin hymnody’]; and Life’s a Dream, trans Calderon; theological works; also The Study of Words [1851], from which ‘Language is fossil poetry ... many a single words is itself a concentrated poem, having stores of poetical thought and imagery laid in it.’
Henry Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988): 1807-1886; Trench fought against disestablishment of the Church [of Ireland, but presided over its new identity; incapacitated by an accident in 1875; died 23 Eaton Sq., London; issued Study of Words (1851).
University of Ulster Library, Morris Collection, holds Study of Words (1914).
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Notes
Palace of Art: Alfred Lord Tennyson dedicated The Palace of Art (1832) to Richard Chenevix Trench. The poem was produced three years after his receiving the Chancellor’s Gold Medal at Cambridge in 1829 and opens with the lines: ‘I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house, Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse, Dear soul, for all is well’.
Namesake? - Probably author of Richard Chenevix [sic], A Charge to the Clergy of [...] Dublin and Glendalough and Kildare [&c.] (Dublin: Hodges 1868), 83pp.; another of the same kind, [ ...] at the Visitation (Dublin: Hodges Oct. 1869) [Emerald Isle Books, Cat. 1995].
Kith & Kin: Richard Samuel Chenevix Trench, who styled himself Dermot, was the model for Haines in Ulysses (1922) and the author of a pamphlet entitled What is the Use of Reviving Irish? (Maunsel & Co. 1907). He was a grandson of Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench (1864-84) and was educated at Eton, Balliol Coll. (Oxford) and a member of the Oxford Gaelic Soc., where he met Oliver St. John Gogarty and thus became a guest at the Martello Tower which Gogarty rented - not Joyce, as the latter implies in speaking of the rent and the key in the novel. (This switch of leasee-ship fortifies the theme of usurpation in the early chapters.) He became Ricahrd Samuel Dermot Chenevix Trench by deedpoll in 1905. His suicide is said to have been consequent on an unhappy love affair. Charles Chenevix Trench is the author of Charlie Gordon: An Eminent Victorian Reassessed (London: Allen Lane 1978) and an essay entitled “Dermot Chenevix Trench and Haines of Ulysses,” in JJQ 13 (1975), pp.39-48. See Sam Slote, et al., Ulysses, with Annotations (Alma Books 2015), "Telemachus", n.3. See also The Joyce Project - Ulysses > Telemachus > Haines [online].
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