Of how much confusion the spelling which used to be so common, ‘satyr’ for ‘satire’, is at once the consequence, the expression, and again the cause; not indeed that this confusion first began with us{279}; for the same already found place in the Latin, where ‘satyricus’ was continually written for ‘satiricus’ out of a false assumption of the identity between the Roman _satire_ and the Greek _satyric_ drama. The Roman ‘satira’,--I speak of things familiar to many of my hearers,--is properly a _full_ dish (lanx being understood)--a dish heaped up with various ingredients, a ‘farce’ (according to the original signification of that word), or hodge-podge; and the word was transferred from this to a form of poetry which at first admitted the utmost variety in the materials of which it was composed, and the shapes into which these materials were wrought up; being the only form of poetry which the Romans did _not_ borrow from the Greeks. Wholly different from this, having no one point of contact with it in its form, its history, or its intention, is the ‘satyric’ drama of Greece, so called because Silenus and the ‘Satyrs’ supplied the chorus; and in their naïve selfishness, and mere animal instincts, held up before men a mirror of what they would be, if only the divine, which is also the truly human, element of humanity, were withdrawn; what man, all that properly made him man being withdrawn, would prove. {Sidenote: ‘_Mid-wife_’, ‘_Nostril_’} And then what light, as we have already seen, does the older spelling of a word often cast upon its etymology; how often does it clear up the mystery, which would otherwise have hung about it, or which _had_ hung about it till some one had noticed and turned to profit this its earlier spelling. Thus ‘dirge’ is always spelt ‘dirige’ in early English. This ‘dirige’ may be the first word in a Latin psalm or prayer once used at funerals; there is a reasonable probability that the explanation of the word is here; at any rate, if it is not here, it is nowhere{280}. The derivation of ‘mid-wife’ is uncertain, and has been the subject of discussion; but when we find it spelt ‘medewife’ and ‘meadwife’, in Wiclif’s Bible, this leaves hardly a doubt that it is the _wife_ or woman who acts for a _mead_ or reward{281}. In cases too where there was no mystery hanging about a word, how often does the early spelling make clear to all that which was before only known to those who had made the language their study. For example, if an early edition of Spenser should come into your hands, or a modern one in which the early spelling is retained, what continual lessons in English might you derive from it. Thus ‘nostril’ is always spelt by him and his cotemporaries ‘nosethrill’; a little earlier it was ‘nosethirle’. Now ‘to thrill’ is the same as to drill or pierce; it is plain then here at once that the word signifies the orifice or opening with which the _nose_ is _thrilled_, drilled, or pierced.