w ♦. t a-ovfc-T 
 
 iiii 
 
V 
 
 IKELE' 
 
 R 
 
 'ER^Ijir OF 
 
 ^ 
 
 h 
 
 Prof. C. H. A. BULKLEY, 
 
 HOWARD UNIVERSITY, 
 
 WASHINGTON. D. 
 
l!^ N G r. I S H, 
 
 I'* AST AND PRESENT. 
 
Works by R. C. Trench, D. D., Dean of Westminster. 
 
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ON THE 
 
 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. 
 
 DEAN OF WESTMINSTER 
 
 AUTII. A OV "SyNONYMS OF THK NEW TESTAMENT" — "THE STUDY OF WOHDS" 
 " proverbs" — " sermons" — '• poems" — ' CALDERON," ETC. 
 
 NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 W. J. WIDDLETON 
 
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 18 6 
 
V^in^ 
 
 -7 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A SERIES of four lectures which I delivered last 
 spring to the pupils of King's College School, London, 
 supplied the foundation to this present volume. These 
 lectures, which I was obliged to prepare in haste, on 
 a brief invitation, and under the pressure of other en- 
 gag oments, being subsequently enlarged and recast, 
 were delivered in the autumn somewhat more nearly 
 in their present shape to the pupils of the Training 
 School, Winchester ; although of course with those 
 alterations, omissions, and additions, which the dif- 
 ference in my hearers suggested as necessary or de- 
 sirable. I have found it convenient to keep the lec- 
 tures, as regards the persons presumed to be addressed, 
 in that earlier form which I had sketched out at the 
 first ; and, inasmuch as it helps much to keep lectures 
 vivid and real that one should have some well-defined 
 audience, if not actually before one, yet before the 
 mind's eye, to suppose myself throughout ^addressing 
 my first hearers. I have supposed myself, that is, 
 addressing a body of young Englishmen, all with a 
 
 025 
 
() PREFACE. 
 
 fair amount of classical knowledge (in my explana- 
 tions I have sometimes had others with less than 
 theirs in my eye), not wholly unacquainted with mod- 
 ern languages ; but not yet with any special designa- 
 tion as to their future work ; having only as yet 
 marked out to them the duty in general of living lives 
 worthy of those who have England for their native 
 country, and English for their native tongue. To 
 lead such through a more intimate knowledge of this 
 into a greater love of that, has been a principal aim 
 which I have set before myself throughout. 
 
 In a few places I have been obliged again to go 
 over ground which I had before gone over in a little 
 book, " On the Study of Words ;^^ but I believe that I 
 have never merely repeated myself, nor given to the 
 readers of my former work and now of this any right 
 to complain that I am compelling them to travel a 
 second time by the same paths. At least it has been 
 my endeavor, whenever I have found myself at points 
 where the two books come necessarily into contact, 
 that what was treated with any fullness before, should 
 be here touched on more lightly ; and only what there 
 was slightly handled, should here be entered on at 
 large. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 EKGLISH A C03IP08ITE LANGUAGE P40B 9 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE «tf 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 104 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS 159 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS 193 
 
ENGLISH, 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 " A VERY slight acquaintance with the history of 
 our own language will teach us that the speech of 
 Chaucer's age is not the speech of Skelton's. that 
 there is a great difference between the language un- 
 der Elizabeth and that under Charles I., between that 
 under Charles I. and Charles II., between that under 
 Charles II. and Queen Anne ; that considerable changes 
 had taken place between the beginning and the mid- 
 dle of the last century, and that Johnson and Fielding 
 did not write altogether as we do now. For in the 
 course of a nation's progress new ideas are evermore 
 mounting above the horizon, while others are lost sight 
 of and sink below it : others, again, change their form 
 and aspect : others, which seemed united, split into 
 parts. And as it is with ideas, so it is with their sym- 
 bols, words. New ones are perpetually coined to 
 meet the demand of an advanced understanding, of 
 new feelings that have sprung out of the decay of old 
 
 1* 
 
10 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 ones, of ideas that have shot forth from the summit 
 of the tree of our knowledge ; old words meanwhile 
 fall into disuse and become obsolete ; others have 
 their meaning narrowed and defined ; synonyms di- 
 verge from each other, and their property is parted 
 between them ; nay, whole classes of words will now 
 and then be thrown overboard, as new feelings or 
 perceptions of analogy gain ground. A history of 
 the language in which all these vicissitudes should be 
 pointed out, in which the introduction of every new 
 word should be noted, so far as it is possible — and 
 much may be done in this way by laborious, and dili- 
 gent, and judicious research — in which such words 
 as have become obsolete should be followed down to 
 their final extinction, in which all the most remarka- 
 ble words should be traced through their successive 
 phases of meaning, and in which moreover the causes 
 and occasions of these changes should be explained, 
 such a work w^ould not only abound in entertainment, 
 but would throw more light on the development of 
 the human mind than all the brainspun systems of 
 metaphysics that ever were written." 
 
 These words, which thus far are not my own, but 
 the words of a greatly-honored friend and teacher, 
 who, though we behold him now no more, still teaches, 
 and will teach, by the wisdom of his writings and the 
 nobleness of his life (they are words of Archdeacon 
 Hare), I have put in the forefront of my lectures ; 
 seeing that they anticipate in the way of masterly 
 sketch all which I shall attempt to accomplish, and 
 indeed draw out the lines of much more, to which I 
 shall not venture even to put forth my hand. They 
 
LOVE OF OUR OWN TONGUE. 11 
 
 ar^ the more welcome to me, because they eucouiage 
 mo to believe that if, in choosing the English language, 
 its past and its present, as the subject of that brief 
 course of lectures which I am to deliver in this place, 
 I liave chosen a subject which in many ways tran- 
 scends my powers, and lies beyond the range of my 
 knowledge, it is yet one in itself of deepest interest, 
 and of fully-recognised value. Nor can I refrain from 
 hoping that even with my imperfect handling, it is an 
 argument which will find an answer and an echo in 
 the hearts of all who hear me ; which would have 
 found this at any time ; which will do so especially 
 at the present. For these are times which naturally 
 rouse into liveliest activity all our latent affections 
 for the land of our birth. It is one of the compensa- 
 tions, indeed the greatest of all, for the wastefulness, 
 the wo, the cruel losses of war, that it causes and in- 
 deed compels a people to know itself a people ; lead- 
 ing each one to esteem and prize most that which he 
 has in common with his fellow-countrymen, and not 
 now any longer those things which separate and divide 
 him from them. 
 
 And the love of our own language, what is it in 
 fact but the love of our country expressing itself in 
 one particular direction ? If the great acts of that 
 nation to which we belong are precious to us, if we 
 feel ourselves made greater by their greatness, sum- 
 moned to a nobler life by the nobleness of Englishmen 
 wlio have already lived and died, and have bequeathed 
 to us a name which must not by us be made less, what 
 exploits of theirs can well be nobler, what can more 
 clearly point out their native land and ours as having 
 fulfilled a glorious past, as being destined for a glori- 
 
12 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 ous future, than that they should have acquired for 
 themselves and for those who come after them a clear, 
 a strong, an harmonious, a noble language ? For all 
 this bears vritness to corresponding merits in those 
 that speak it, to clearness of mental vision, to strength, 
 to harmony, to nobleness, in them that have gradually 
 formed and shaped it to be the utterance of their in- 
 most life and being. 
 
 To know of this language, the stages which it has 
 gone through, the quarters from which its riches have 
 been derived, the gains which it is now making, the 
 perils which have threatened or are threatening it, 
 the losses which it has sustained, the latent capaci- 
 ties which may yet be in it, waiting to be evoked, the 
 points in which it is superior to other tongues, in 
 which it comes short of them — all this may well be 
 the object of worthy ambition to every one of us. So 
 may we hope to be ourselves guardians of its purity, 
 and not corrupters of it ; to introduce, it may be, 
 others into an intelligent knowledge of that with 
 which we shall have ourselves more than a merely su- 
 perficial acquaintance; to bequeath it to those who 
 come after us not worse than we received it ourselves. 
 " Spartam nactus es ; hanc exorna''' — this should be 
 our motto in respect at once of our country, and of 
 our country's tongue. 
 
 Nor shall we, I trust, any of us, feel this subject to 
 be alien or remote from the purposes which have 
 brought us to study within these walls. It is true 
 that we are mainly occupied here in studying other 
 tongues than our own. The time we bestow upon it 
 is small as compared with that bestowed on those oth- 
 ers. And yet one of our main purposes in learning 
 
DUTY TO OUR OWN TONGUE. 13 
 
 them is that we may better understand this. Nor 
 ought any other to dispute with it the first and fore- 
 most place in our reverence, our gratitude, and our 
 love. It has been well and worthily said by an illus- 
 trious German scholar : '' The care of the national 
 language I consider as at all times a sacred trust and 
 a most important privilege of the higher orders of 
 society. Every man of education should make it the 
 object of his unceasing concern to preserve his lan- 
 guage pure and entire ; to speak it, so far as is in his 
 power, in all its beauty and perfection A na- 
 tion whose language becomes rude and barbarous, 
 must be on the brink of barbarism in regard to every- 
 thing else. A nation which allows her language to 
 go to ruin, is parting with the last half of her intel- 
 lectual independence, and testifies her willingness to 
 cease to exist."* 
 
 But this knowledge, like all other knowledge which 
 is worth attaining, is only to be attained at the price 
 of labor and pains. The language which at this day 
 we speak is the result of processes which have been 
 going forward for hundreds and for thousands of 
 years. Nay, more ; it is not too much to affirm that 
 processes modifying the English which at the present 
 day we write and speak, have been at work from the 
 first day that man, being gifted with discourse of 
 reason, projected his thought fronr out himself, and 
 embodied and contemplated it in his word. AVhich 
 things being so, if we would understand this language 
 as it now is, we must know something of it as it has 
 been ; we must be able to measure, however roughly, 
 
 * F. Schlegel, History of Literature, lecture x. 
 
14 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LA.NGUAGE. 
 
 the forces which have been at work upon it, moulding 
 and shaping it into the forms which it now wears. 
 
 At the same time, various prudential considerations 
 must determine for us how far up we will endeavor to 
 trace the course of its history. There are those who 
 may seek to trace our language to the forests of Ger- 
 many and Scandinavia, to investigate its relation to 
 all the kindred tongues that were there spoken ; 
 again, to follow it up, till it and they arc seen de- 
 scending from an elder stock ; nor once to pause, till 
 they have assigned to it its place not merely in respect 
 of that small group of languages which are immedi- 
 ately round it, but in respect of all the tongues and 
 languages of the earth. I can imagine few studies of 
 a more surpassing interest than this. Others, how- 
 ever, must be content with seeking such insight into 
 their native language as may be within the reach of 
 all who, unable to make this the subject of especial 
 research, possessing neither that vast compass of 
 knowledge nor that immense apparatus of books, not 
 being at liberty to dedicate to it that devotion almost 
 of a life which, followed out to the full, it would re- 
 quire, have yet an intelligent interest in their mother- 
 tongue, and desire to learn as much of its growth, 
 and history, and construction, as may be reasonably 
 deemed within their reach. To such as these I shall 
 suppose myself to be speaking. It would be a piece 
 of great presumption in me to undertake to speak to 
 any other, or to assume any other ground than this 
 for myself. 
 
 I know there are some who, when they are invited 
 to enter at all upon the past history of the language, 
 are inclined to make answer : " To what end such 
 
Tti.E PAST EXPLAINS THE PRESENT. 15 
 
 studies to us ? Why can not we leave them to a few 
 antiquaries and grammarians ? Sufficient to us to 
 know the laws of our present English, to obtain an 
 accurate acquaintance with the language as we now 
 find it, without concerning ourselves with the phases 
 through which it has previously passed." This may 
 sound plausible enough ; and I can quite understand 
 a real lover of his native tongue, supposing he had 
 not bestowed much thought upon the subject, arguing 
 in this manner. And yet indeed such argument pro- 
 ceeds altogether on a mistake. One sufficient reason 
 why we should occupy ourselves with the past of our 
 language is, because the present is only intelligible in 
 the light of the past, often of a very remote past in- 
 deed. There are anomalies out of number now exist- 
 ing in our language, which the pure logic of grammar 
 is quite incapable of explaining ; which nothing but a 
 knowledge of its historic evolutions, and of the dis- 
 turbing forces which have made themselves felt there- 
 in, will ever enable us to understand. Even as, again, 
 unless we possess some knowledge of the past, it is 
 impossible that we can ourselves advance a single 
 step in the unfolding of the latent capabilities of the 
 language, without the danger of committing some 
 barbarous violation of its very primary laws. 
 
 The plan which I have laid down for myself, and 
 to which I shall adhere, in this lecture and in those 
 which will succeed it, is as follows : In this my first 
 lecture I will ask you to consider the language as now 
 it is, to decompose with me some specimens of it, to 
 prove by these means of what elements it is compact, 
 and what functions in it these elements or component 
 
16 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 parts severally fulfil ; nor shall I leave this subject 
 without asking you to admire the happy marriage in 
 our tongue of the languages of the North and South, 
 an advantage which it alone among all the languages 
 of Europe enjoys. Having thus presented to ourselves 
 the body which we wish to submit to scrutiny, and 
 having become acquainted, however slightly, with its 
 composition, I shall invite you to go back with me, 
 and trace some of the leading changes to which in 
 time past it has been submitted, and through which 
 it has arrived at what it now is ; and these changes I 
 shall contemplate under four aspects, dedicating a 
 lecture to each — changes which have resulted from 
 the birth of new, or the reception of foreign, words ; 
 changes consequent on the rejection or extinction of 
 words or powers once possessed by the language ; 
 changes through the altered meaning of words ; and 
 lastly, as not unworthy of our attention, but often 
 growing out of very deep roots, changes in the orthog- 
 raphy of words. 
 
 I shall everywhere seek to bring the subject down 
 to our present time, and not merely call your atten- 
 tion to the changes which have been, but to those also 
 which are now being, effected. I shall not account 
 the fact that some are going on, so to speak, before 
 our own eyes, a sufficient ground to excuse me from 
 noticing them, but rather an additional reason for 
 doing this. For indeed changes which are actually 
 proceeding in our own time, and which we are our- 
 selves helping to bring about, are the very ones which 
 we are most likely to fail in observing. There is so 
 much to hide the nature of them, and indeed their 
 very existence, that, except it may be by a very few. 
 
ALTERATIONS UN0BS1':KV^ED. 17 
 
 they will often pass wholly unobserved. Loud and 
 sudden revolutions attract and compel notice ; but 
 silent and gradual, although to issue perhaps in 
 changes far greater and deeper, run their course, and 
 it is only when their cycle is completed or nearly so, 
 that men perceive what mighty transforming forces 
 have been at work unnoticed in the very midst of 
 themselves. 
 
 Thus, to apply what I have just affirmed to this 
 matter of language — how few aged persons, let them 
 retain the fullest possession of their faculties, are con- 
 scious of any difference between the spoken language 
 of their early youth and that of their old age ; that 
 words and ways of using words are obsolete now, 
 which were usual then ; that many words are current 
 now, which had no existence at that time ! And yet 
 it is certain that so it must be. A man may fairly be 
 supposed to remember clearly and well for sixty years 
 back ; and it needs less than five of these sixties to 
 bring us to the period of Spenser, and not more than 
 eight to set us in the time of Chaucer and Wiclif. 
 How great a change, how vast a difference in our lan- 
 guage, within eight memories ! No one, overlooking 
 this whole term, will deny the greatness of the change. 
 For all this, we may be tolerably sure that, had it 
 been possible to interrogate a series of eight persons, 
 such as together had filled up this time — intelligent 
 men, but men whose attention had not been especially 
 roused to this subject — each in his turn would have 
 denied that there had been any change worth speak- 
 ing of, perhaps any change at all, during his lifetime. 
 And yet, having regard to the multitude of words 
 which have fallen into disuse during these four or five 
 
18 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 hundred years, we are sure that there must have been 
 some lives in this chain which saw those words in use 
 at their commencement, and out of use before their 
 close. And so, too, of the multitude of words which 
 have sprung up in this period — some, nay, a vast 
 number, must have come into being within the limits 
 of each of these lives. It can not then be superfluous 
 to direct attention to that which is actually going for- 
 ward in our language. It is indeed that, which of 
 all is most likely to be unnoticed by us. 
 
 With these preliminary remarks I proceed at once 
 to the special subject of my lecture of to-day. And 
 first, starting from the recognised fact that the Eng- 
 lish is not a simple but a composite language, made 
 up of several elements, in the same way as we are a 
 people made up of Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans, 
 with not a few accessions from other quarters besides, 
 I would suggest to you the profit and instruction 
 which we might derive from seeking to resolve it into 
 its component parts — from taking, that is, any pas- 
 sage of an English author, distributing the words of 
 which it is made up according to the languages from 
 which we have drawn them ; estimating the relative 
 numbers and proportions which these languages have 
 severally lent us ; as well as the character of the 
 words which they have thrown into the common stock 
 of our tongue. 
 
 Thus, suppose the English language to be divided 
 into a hundred parts : of these, to make a rough dis- 
 tribution, sixty would be Saxon ; thirty would be 
 Latin (including, of course, the Latin which has come 
 to us through the French) ; five would be Greek. We 
 
PROPORTIONS IN ENGLISH. 19 
 
 should thus have assigned ninety five parts, leaving 
 the other five, perhaps too large a residue, to be di- 
 vided among all the other languages from which we 
 have adopted isolated words. And yet these are not 
 few; from our widely-extendeck colonial empire we 
 come in contact with half the world ; we have picked 
 up words in every quarter, and, the English language 
 possessing a great power of incorporating foreign ele- 
 ments into itself, have not scrupled to make many of 
 these our own. 
 
 Thus we have a certain number of Hebrew words, 
 mostly, if not entirely, belonging to religious matters 
 — as ' amen,' ' cabala,' ^ cherub,' ' ephod,' ' gehenna,' 
 ' hallelujah,' ' hosanna,' 'jubilee,' ' manna,' ' Messiah,' 
 ' sabbath,' ' seraph,' ' shibboleth.' The Arabic words 
 in our language are more numerous ; we have several 
 arithmetical and astronomical terms, as ' algebra,' 
 ' almanach,' ' azimuth,' ' cypher,'* ' nadir,' * talisman,' 
 
 * zenith,' ' zero ;' and chemical, for the Arabs were the 
 chemists, no less than the astronomers and arithmeti- 
 cians, of the middle ages ; as ' alcohol,' ' alembic,' 
 
 * alkali,' ' elixir.' Add to these the names of animals, 
 plants, fruits, or articles of merchandise, first intro- 
 duced by them to the notice of western Europe ; as 
 
 * amber,' ' artichoke,' ' barragan,' ' camphor,' ' coffee,' 
 
 * cotton,' ' crimson,' ' gazelle,' ' giraffe,' 'jar, 'jasmin,' 
 ' lake' (lacca), ' lemon,' ' lime,' ' lute,' ' mattress,' 
 ' mummy,' ' saffron,' ' sherbet,' ' shrub,' ' sofa,' ' sugar,' 
 ' syrup,' ' tamarind ;' and some further terms, ' admi- 
 ral,' ' arsenal,' ' assassin,' ' barbican,' ' caliph,' ' caffre,' 
 'carat,' ' divan,' ' dragoman,'f 'emir,' 'fakir,' 'harem,' 
 
 * Yet see J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 985. 
 
 t The word hardly deserves to be called English, yet in Pope's 
 
20 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 ^ hazard,' ' houri/ ' magazine,' ' mamaluke,' ' minaret,' 
 ' monsoon,' ' mosque,' ' nabob,' ' razzia,' ' sahara,' ' si- 
 moom,' 'sirocco,' * sultan,' ' tarif,' 'vizier' — and I 
 believe we shall have nearly completed the list. We 
 have moreover a few Persian words, as ' azure,' ' ba- 
 zaar,' ' caravan,' ' caravanserai,' ' chess,' ' dervish,' 
 ' lilac,' ' orange,' ' saraband,' ' taffeta,' ' tambour,' 
 ' turban ;' this last appearing in strange forms at its 
 first introduction into the language : thus, ' tolibant' 
 (Puttenham), ' tulipant' (Herbert's Travels), ' turri- 
 bant' (Spenser), ' turbat,' ' turbant,' and at length 
 'turban.' We have also a few Turkish, such as 
 'tulip,' 'chouse,' 'sash,' 'janisary.' Of ' civet' and 
 ' scimitar' I believe it can only be asserted that they 
 are Eastern. The following are Hindostanee, ' calico,' 
 ' chintz,' ' cowrie,' ' lac,' ' muslin,' ' punch,' ' toddy.' 
 ' Tea,' or ' tcha,' as it is spelt in our early dictiona- 
 ries, is of course Chinese ; so, too, ' satin.' 
 
 The New World has given us a certain number of 
 words, Indian and other — 'cacique' (' cassiqui' in 
 Raleigh's Guiana), ' chocolate,' ' cocoa,' ' condor,' 
 ' hamoc' (' hamaca' in Raleigh), ' lama,' ' maize' (Hay- 
 tian), ' pampas,' ' pemmican,' ' potato' (' batata' in our 
 earlier voyagers), ' raccoon,' ' squaw,' ' tobacco,' ' to- 
 mato' (Mexican), ' wigwam.' If ' hurricane' is a word 
 which Europe originally obtained from the Caribbean 
 
 time it had made some progress toward naturalization. Of a real or 
 pretended polyglottist, who might thus have served as a universal 
 interpreter, he says : — 
 
 " Pity you was not druggerman at Babel." 
 
 'Truckman,' or more commonly 'truchman/ familiar to all readers 
 of our early literature, is only another form of this, one which proba- 
 bly has come to us through * turcimanno,' the Italian form of the 
 word. 
 
ITALIAN AND SPANISH WORDS. 21 
 
 islanders,* it should of course be included in this list. 
 A certain number of words also we have received, 
 one by one, from various languages, which sometimes 
 have not bestowed on us more than this single one: 
 Thus ^ mammoth' is a Siberian word, ' tattoo' Poly- 
 nesian, ' steppe' Tartarian ; ' sago' ' bamboo,' * rattan,' 
 
 * ourang-outang,' are all, I believe, Malay words ; 
 ' assegai,' ' zebra,' ' chimpanzee,' belong to different 
 African dialects. 
 
 To come., nearer home — we have a certain number 
 of Italian words, as * balcony,' ' baldachin,' ' balus- 
 trade,' ' bravo,' * bust' (it was ' busto' as first used in 
 English, and therefore from the Italian, not from the 
 French), 'cameo,' * canto,' 'caricature,' ' carneval,' 
 ' charlatan,' ' cupola,' ' ditto,' 'fresco,' ' gazette,' ' gon- 
 dola,' ' grotto' (' grotta' is the earliest form in which 
 we have it in English), ' harlequin,' ' influenza,' ' lava,' 
 
 * macaroni,' ' manifesto,' ' motto,' ' opera,' ' pantaloon,' 
 ' piazza,' ' portico,' ' regatta,' ' scaramouch,' ' sequin,' 
 ' seraglio,' ' sirocco,' ' stanza,' ' stiletto,' ' stucco,' ' um- 
 brella,' ' virtuoso,' ' vista,' ' volcano,' ' zany.' ' Fan- 
 tastico' and ' magnifico,' both common enough once, 
 are now used no longer. If these are at all the whole 
 number of our Italian words — and I can not call to 
 mind any other — the Spanish in the language are at 
 least as numerous ; which indeed is not much to be 
 wondered at, for our points of contact with Spain, 
 friendly and hostile, have been much more real than 
 with Italy. Thus we have from the Spanish ' alliga- 
 tor' (' el lagarto'), ' alcove,'! ' armada,' ' armadillo,' 
 
 * See Washington Irving, Life and Voyages of Columbus, book viii., 
 chap. ix. 
 
 t On the question whether this ought not to have been included 
 among the Arabic, see Diez, Worterhuch d. Roman. Sprachen, p. 10. 
 
22 EI^GLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 ' barricade,' ' bravado,' ' caiban,' ' cambist,' ' carbo- 
 Dado,' ' cargo,' ' cigar,' ' Creole,' ' desperado,' ' don,' 
 
 * duenna,' ' embargo,' ' flotilla,' * gala,' ' grandee,' ' gre- 
 nade,' * jennet,' 'junto,' * mosquito,' * mulatto,' 'negro,' 
 
 * olio,' ' ombre, ' palaver,' ' parroquet,' ' platina,' ' pon- 
 cho,' ' punctilio' (for a long time spelt ' puntillo' in 
 English books), ' savannah,' ' sherry,' ' strappado,' 
 ' tornado,' ' vanilla,' ' verandah.' ' Buffalo' also is 
 Spanish, ' buff' or ' buffle' being the proper English 
 word ; ' caprice' too we probably obtained rather from 
 Spain than Italy, as we find it written ' capricho' by 
 those who used it first. Other Spanish words, once 
 familiar enough, are now extinct. ' Privado,' signi- 
 fying a prince's favorite, which for a long time kept 
 its place in English (it is no uncommon word in Jei^- 
 emy Taylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so 
 has ' quirpo,' the name given to a jacket fitting close 
 to the body (' cuerpo') ; and ' matachin,' the title of 
 a sword-dance, and ' quellio' ('cuello'), a ruff or neck- 
 collar ; these are all frequent in our early dramatists. 
 ' Mandarin' is our only Portuguese word I can call to 
 mind. A good many of our sea-terms are Dutch, as 
 ' sloop,' ' schooner,' ' yacht,' * boom,' ' skipper,' ' taf- 
 ferel,' ' to smuggle ;' ' to wear,' in the sense of veer, 
 as when we say ' to wear a ship ;' ' skates.' Celtic 
 thing's are for the most part designated among us by 
 Celtic words, such as ' bard,' ' kilt,' * clan,' ' pibroch,' 
 ' plaid,' ' reel.' Nor only such as these, which are all 
 of them comparatively jf modera introduction, but a 
 considerable number — how large a number is yet a 
 very unsettled question — of words which at a much 
 earlier date found admission into our tongue, are de- 
 rived from this quarter. 
 
ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH. 23 
 
 . Now, of course, I have no right to presume that 
 any among us are equipped with that knowledge of 
 other tongues which shall enable us to detect of our- 
 selves and at once the nationality of all or most of 
 the words which we may meet — some of them greatly 
 disguised, and having undergone manifold transforma- 
 tions in the process of their adoption among us ; but 
 only that we have such helps at command in the 
 shape of dictionaries and the like, and so much dili- 
 gence in their use, as will enable us to discover the 
 quarter from which the words we may encounter have 
 reached us ; and I will confidently say that few stud- 
 ies of the kind will be more fruitful, will suggest more 
 various matter- of reflection, will more lead you into 
 the secrets of the English tongue, than an analysis of 
 a certain number of passages drawn from different 
 authors, such as I have just now proposed. For this 
 analysis you will take some passage of English verse 
 or prose — say the first ten lines of Paradise Lost — 
 or the Lord's Prayer — or the twenty-third Psalm; 
 you will distribute the whole body of words contained 
 in that passage, of course not omitting the smallest, 
 according to their nationalities — writing, it may be, 
 A over every Anglo-Saxon word, L over every Latin, 
 and so on with the others, if any other should occur 
 in the portion which you have submitted to this ex- 
 amination. When this is done, you will count up the 
 number of those which each language contributes ; 
 again, you will note the character of the words de- 
 rived from each quarter. 
 
 Yet here, before I pass further, I would observe in 
 respect of those which come from the Latin, that it 
 will be desii-able further to mark whether they are 
 
24 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 directly from it, and such might be marked L^, or 
 only mediately from it ; and to us directly from the 
 French, which would be L^, or L at second hand — 
 our English word being only in the second generation 
 descended from the Latin — not the child, but the 
 child's child. There is a rule that holds pretty con- 
 stantly good, by which you may generally determine 
 this point. It is this — that if a word be directly 
 from the Latin, it will not have undergone any alter- 
 ation or modification in its form and shape, save only 
 ^s respects the termination : ' innocentia' will have 
 become ' innocency,' * natio' will have become ' na- 
 tion,' * firmamentum' ' firmament,' but nothing more. 
 On the other hand, if it comes throygh the French, it 
 will generally be considerably altered in its passage. 
 It will have undergone a process of lubrication ; its 
 sharply-defined Latin outline will in good part have 
 departed from it ; thus ' crown' is from ' corona,' but 
 through ' couronne,' and itself a dyssyllable, ' coroune,' 
 in our earlier English ; ' treasure' is from ' thesaurus,' 
 but through ' tresor ;' ' emperor' is the Latin ' impera- 
 tor,' but it was first ' empereur.' It will not at all 
 uncommonly happen that the substantive has passed 
 to us through this process, having come through the 
 intervention of the French ; while we have only felt 
 at a later period our want of the adjective also, which 
 we have proceeded to borrow direct from the Latin. 
 Thus, * people' is indeed ' populus,' but it was ' peuple' 
 first, while ' popular' is a direct transfer of a Latin 
 vocable into our English glossary. So too ' enemy' 
 is ' inimicus,' but it was first softened in the French, 
 and had its Latin physiognomy to a great degree 
 obliterated, while ' inimical' is Latin throughout ; 
 
DOUBLE ADOPTIONS. Zb 
 
 ' parish' is * paroiss6,' but ' parochiar is * parochi- 
 alis.' 
 
 SometinYes you will find in English what I may call 
 a double adoption of a Latin word ; I mean that we 
 have many Latin words which now make part of our 
 vocabulary in two shapes, in both these forms Q dop- 
 pelgangers' the Germans would call them), directly 
 from the Latin, and mediately through the French. 
 In these cases it will be particularly noticeable how 
 that which has come through the French has been 
 shaped and moulded, generally cut short, often cut a 
 syllable or two shorter (for the French devours letters 
 and syllables) than the Latin. I will mention a few 
 examples : ' secure' and ' sure,' both from the Latin 
 ' securus,' but one directly, the other through the 
 French ; ' fidelity' and ' fealty,' both from the Latin 
 ' fidelitas,' but one directly, the other at second-hand ; 
 ' species' and ' spice,' both from the Latin ' species,' 
 spices being properly only kinds of aromatic drugs ; 
 * blaspheme' and ' blame,' both from ' blasphemare,'* 
 but ' blame' immediately from ' blamer ;' add to these 
 ' granary' and ' garner ;' ' tradition' and ' treason ;' 
 ' regality' and ' royalty ;' ' hospital' and ' hotel ;' ' digit' 
 and ' doit ;' ' pagan' and ' paynim ;' ' captive' and ' cai- 
 tiff ;' ' persecute' and ' pursue ;' ' superficies' and ' sur- 
 face ;' ' faction' and ' fashion ;' ' particle' and ' parcel ;' 
 ' redemption' and ' rane om ;' ' probe' and ' prove ;' 
 ' abbreviate' and ' abridge ;' ' dormitory' and ' dortoir' 
 or ' dorter' (this last now obsolete, but common enough 
 in Jeremy Taylor) ; ^ radius' and ' ray ;' ' potion' and 
 
 * This particular instance of double adoption, or dimorphism, as 
 Latham calls it, recurs in Italian, ' bestemmiare' and 'biasimare;' 
 and in Spanish, 'blasfemar' and 'lastimar.' 
 
 2 
 
2b ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 ' poison ;' ' ration' and ' reason ;' ' oration' and ' ori- 
 son.'* I have, in the instancing of these, named al- 
 ways the Latin form before the French ; but the re- 
 verse is in almost every case the order in which the 
 words were adopted by us : we had ' pursue' before 
 
 * persecute,' ' spice' before ' species,' ^ royalty' before 
 
 * regality,' and so for the most part with the others. f 
 
 The explanation of this greater change which the 
 earlier form of the word has undergone, is not far to 
 seek. Words which have been introduced into a lan- 
 guage at an early period, when as yet writing is rare, 
 and books are few or none — when therefore orthog- 
 raphy is unfixed, or, being purely phonetic, can not 
 properly be said to exist at all — such words for a 
 long while live orally on the lips of men, before they 
 are set down in writing ; and out of this fact it is that 
 we shall for the most part find them reshaped and re- 
 moulded by the people who have adopted them, en- 
 tirely assimilated to their language in form and ter- 
 
 * Somewhat different from this, yet itself also curious, is the pas- 
 sing of an Anglo-Saxon word in two different forms into English, and 
 continuing in both; thus, 'desk' and 'dish,' both the Anglo-Saxon 
 'disc,' the German * tisch ;' ' beech' and * book,' both the Anglo-Saxon 
 
 * boc,' our first hooks heing beechen tablets (see Grimm, Worterbuch, 
 s. vv. 'Buch,' 'Buche'); 'girdle' and 'kirtle,' both of them corre- 
 sponding to the German 'giirtel;' already in Anglo-Saxon a double 
 spelling, 'gyrdel,' 'cyrtel,' had prepared for the double woi'ds ; so too 
 'haunch' and 'hinge;' 'lady' and 'lofty;' 'deal' and 'dole;' 'weald' 
 and 'wood;' 'shirt' and 'skirt;' 'black' and 'bleak;' 'pond' and 
 ' pound.' It may be a question whether ' wayward' and ' awkward' 
 would not have a right to be mentioned as examples of this. 
 
 t We have in the same way double adoptions from the Greek : one 
 direct, at least as regards the forms ; one modified by its passage 
 through some other language ; thus, ' adamant' and ' diamond ;' 
 'monastery' and 'minster;* 'scandal' and 'slander;' 'theriac' and 
 'treacle;' 'asphodel' and ' daffodil ;' ' presbyter' and ' priest.' 
 
DOUBLE ADOPTIONS IN FRENCH. 27 
 
 mination, so as in a little while to be almost or quite 
 indistinguishable from natives. On the other hand, 
 a most efibctual che<;k to this process — a process 
 sometimes barbarizing and defacing, however it may be 
 the only one which will make the new entirely homo- 
 geneous with the old — is imposed by the existence of 
 a much-written language and a full-formed literature. 
 The foreign word, being once adopted into these, can 
 no longer undergo a thorough transformation. For 
 the most part the utmost which use and familiarity can 
 do with it now is, to cause the gradual dropping of 
 the foreign termination. Yet this, too, is not unim 
 portant ; it often goes far to making a home for a 
 word, and hindering it from wearing the appearance 
 of a foreigner and stranger.* 
 
 * The French itself has also a double adoption, or as perhaps we 
 should more accurately call it there, a double formation, from the 
 Latin, and one quite bearing out what has been said above : one 
 ftDing far back in the history of the language, the other belonging to 
 a later and more literary period. Thus from ' separare' is derived 
 'sevrer,' to separate the child from its mother's breast, to wean, but 
 also ' separer,' without this special sense ; from ' pastor' * patre,' a 
 shepherd in the literal, and * pasteur' the same in a tropical, sense ; 
 from ' catena,' * chaine' and ' cad^ne ;' from * pensare,' * peser' and 
 'penser;' from 'gehcnna,' 'gene' and *g6henne;' from 'captivus,' 
 'chetif and 'captif;' from * nativus,' 'naif and 'natif;' from 'desig- 
 nare,' 'dessiner' and 'designer;' from 'decimare,' 'dimer' and 'd6ci- 
 raer;' from 'homo,' 'on' and 'homme ;' from ' paganus,' 'payen'and 
 'paysan;' from ' obedientia,' 'ob^issance' and 'obedience;' from 
 ' strictus,' * etroit' and ' strict ;' from ' sacramentum,' ' serment' and 
 'sacreraent;' from * ministerium,' 'metier' and * ministere ;' from 
 'parabola,' 'parole' and 'parabole;' from ' peregrinus,' 'pelerin' and 
 •peregrin;' from 'factio,' 'fa^on' and 'faction,' and they have now 
 adopted 'factio' in a third shape, that is, in our English 'fashion ;' 
 from 'capitulum,' 'chapitre' and 'capitule,' a botanical term. So, 
 too, in Italian 'manco,' maimed, and ' monco,' maimed of a hand* 
 ' rifutdrc,' to refute, and ' rifiutarc,' to refuse. 
 
28 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 But to return from this digression : I said just now 
 that you would learn very much from observing and 
 calculating the proportions in which the words of one 
 descent and those of another occur in any passage 
 which you analyze. Thus examine the Lord's Prayer. 
 It consists of exactly sixty words. You will find that 
 only the following six claim the rights of Latin citizen- 
 ship : ' trespasses,' ' trespass, ' temptation,' ' deliver,' 
 * power,' ' glory.' Nor would it be very difficult to 
 substitute for any one of these a Saxon word. Thus 
 for ' trespasses' might be substituted ' sins ;' for * de- 
 liver' ' free ;' for ' power' ' might ;' for * glory' * bright- 
 ness ;' which would only leave ' temptation,' about 
 which there could be the slightest difficulty, and ' tri- 
 als,' though we now ascribe to the word a somewhat 
 different sense, would in fact exactly correspond to it. 
 This is but a small percentage, six words in sixty, the 
 proportion, that is, of ten in the hundred ; and we 
 often light upon a still smaller proportion. Thus 
 take the first three verses of the twenty-third Psalm : 
 " The Lord is my Shepherd ; therefore can I lack 
 nothing ; he shall feed me in a green pasture, and 
 lead me forth beside the waters of comfort; he shall 
 convert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of 
 righteousness for his name's sake." Here are forty- 
 five words, and only the three in italics are Latin ; 
 and for every one of these, too, it would be easy to 
 substitute a word of Saxon origin ; little more, that is, 
 than the proportion of seven in the hundred ; while, 
 still stronger than this, in five verses out of Genesis, 
 containing one hundred and thirty words, there are 
 only five not Saxon — less, that is, than four in the 
 hundred. 
 
ANGLO-SAXON AND LATIN. 29 
 
 Shall we therefore conclude that these are the pro- 
 portions in which the Anglo-Saxon and Latin elements 
 of the language stand to one another ? If they are 
 so, then my former proposal to express their relations 
 by sixty and thirty was greatly at fault ; and seventy 
 and twenty, or even eighty and ten, would fall short 
 of adequately representing the real predominance of 
 the Saxon over the Latin element of the language. 
 But it is not so ; the Anglo-Saxon words by no means 
 outnumber the Latin in the degree which the analysis 
 of those passages would seem to imply. It is not that 
 there are so many more Anglo-Saxon words, but that 
 the words which there are, being words of more pri- 
 mary necessity, do therefore so much more frequently 
 recur. The proportions which the analysis of the 
 dictionary, that is, of the language at rest, would fur- 
 nish, are very different from these which I have just 
 instanced, and which the analysis of sentences, or of 
 the language in motion, gives. 
 
 The notice of this fact will lead us to some very im- 
 portant conclusions as to the character of the words 
 which the Saxon and the Latin severally furnish ; and 
 principally to this : that while the English language 
 is thus compact in the main of these two elements, we 
 must not for all this regard these two as making, ono 
 and the other, exactly the same kind of contributions 
 to it. On the contrary, their contributions are of 
 very different character. The Anglo-Saxon is not so 
 much, as I have just called it, one element of the 
 English language, as the foundation of it, the basis. 
 All its joints, its whole articulation, its sinews and its 
 ligaments, the great body of articles, pronouns, con- 
 junctions, prepositions, numerals, auxiliary verbs, all 
 
so ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 smaller words which serve to knit together and bind 
 the larger into sentences — these, not to speak of the 
 grammatical structure of the language, are exclusively 
 Saxon. The Latin may contribute its tale of bricks, 
 yea, of goodly and polished hewn stones, to the spir- 
 itual building; but the mortar, with all that holds 
 and binds the different parts of it together, and con- 
 stitutes them into a house, is Saxon throughout. I 
 remember Selden, in his Table-Talk^ using another 
 comparison, but to the same effect : " If you look upon 
 the language spoken in the Saxon time, and the lan- 
 guage spoken now, you will find the difference to be 
 just as if a man had a cloak which he wore plain in 
 Queen Elizabeth's days ; and since, here has put in a 
 piece of red, and there a piece of blue ; and here a 
 piece of green, and there a piece of orange-tawny. 
 We borrow words from the French, Italian, Latin, as 
 every pedantic man pleases." 
 
 I believe this to be the law which holds good in 
 respect of all composite languages. However com- 
 posite they may be, yet they are only so in regard of 
 their words. There may be a medley in respect of 
 these, some coming from one quarter, some from an- 
 other : but there is never a mixture of grammatical 
 forms and inflections. One or other language entirely 
 predominates here, and everything has to conform and 
 subordinate itself to the laws of this ruling and as- 
 cendant language. The Anglo-Saxon is the ruling 
 language in our present English ; while that has 
 thought good to drop its genders, even so the French 
 substantives which come among us must also leave 
 theirs behind them ; as in like manner the French 
 verbs must renounce their own conjugations, and adapt 
 
ONE GRAMMAR PREDOMINANT. 31 
 
 themselves to ours.* I believe that a remarkable par- 
 allel to this might be found in the language of Persia, 
 since the conquest of that country by the Arabs. The 
 ancient Persian religion fell with the government, but 
 the language remained totally unaffected by the revo- 
 lution, in its grammatical structure and character. 
 Arabic vocables, the only exotic words found in Per- 
 sian, are found, as 1 understand, in numbers varying 
 with the object and quality, style and taste of the 
 writers ; but pages of pure, idiomatic Persian may 
 be written without employing a single word from the 
 Arabic. 
 
 At the same time the secondary or superinduced 
 language, even while it is quite unable to force any of 
 its forms on the language which receives its words, 
 may yet compel that to renounce a portion of its own 
 forms, by the impossibility which, is practically found 
 to exist of making them fit the new-comers ; and thus 
 it may exert, although not a positive, yet a negative, 
 influence on the grammar of the other tongue. It 
 has been so, as is generally admitted, in the instance 
 of our own. " When the English language was in- 
 undated by a vast influx of French words, few, if any, 
 French forms were received into its grammar ; but 
 the Saxon forms soon dropped away, because they 
 did not suit the new roots ; and the genius of the 
 language, from having to deal with the newly-import- 
 ed words in a rude state, was induced to neglect the 
 inflections of the native ones. Tliis, for instance, led 
 to the introduction of the s as the universal termina- 
 
 * W. Schlegel {Indische Bibliothek, vol. i., p. 284) : " Coeunt quidem 
 paullatim in novum corpus peregrina vocabula, sed graramatica lio 
 guarum, unde petitae sunt, ratio perit." 
 
82 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 tion of all plural nouns, which agreed with the usage 
 of the French language, and was not alien from that 
 of the Saxon, but was merely an extension of the 
 termination of the ancient masculine to other classes 
 of nouns."* 
 
 If any of you should wish to convince yourselves, 
 by actual experience, of the fact which I just now 
 asserted, namely, that the radical constitution of the 
 language is Saxon, I would say, try to compose a 
 sentence, it need not be more than of ten or a dozen 
 words, on any subject you please, employing therein 
 only words which are of a Latin derivation. You will 
 find it impossible, or next to impossible, to do it ; 
 whichever way you turn, some obstacle will meet you 
 in the face. And wliile it is thus with the Latin, 
 whole pages might be written, I do not say in philos- 
 ophy or theology or upon any abstruser subject, but 
 on familiar matters of common everyday life, in which 
 every word should be of Saxon extraction, not one 
 of Latin ; and these pages, in which, with the exer- 
 cise of a very little skill, all appearance of awkward- 
 ness and constraint should be avoided, so that it 
 should never occur to the reader, unless otherwise 
 informed, that the writer had submitted himself to 
 this restraint and limitation in the words which he 
 employed, and was only drawing them from one sec- 
 tion of the English language. Sir Thomas Browne 
 has given several long paragraphs so constructed. 
 Take, for instance, the following, which is only a little 
 fragment of one of them : " The first and foremost step 
 to all good works is the dread and fear of the Lord 
 of heaven and earth, which through the Holy Ghost 
 
 * J. Grimm, quoted in the Philological Museum, vol. i., p. 667. 
 
CONNECTING WORDS SAXON. 33 
 
 enlightenetli the blindness of our sinful hearts to tread 
 the ways of wii?dom, and lead our feet into the land 
 of blessing."* This is not stiffer than the ordinary 
 p]nglish of his time. I would suggest to you at your 
 leisure to make these two experiments. Endeavor 
 first to compose a sentence of some length, choosing 
 freely your subject, from which every word which the 
 Saxon has contributed to our tongue shall be rigidly 
 excluded : you will find it at least, if I may judge by 
 my own experience, wholly beyond your power. On 
 the other hand, with a little patience and ingenuity 
 you will be able to compose a connected narrative of 
 any length you please into which no word from the 
 Latin shall be admitted, in which none but Saxon 
 shall be employed. 
 
 While thus I bring before you the fact that it would 
 be quite possible to write English, foregoing altogeth- 
 er the use of the Latin portion of the language, I would 
 not have you therefore to conclude that this portion 
 of the language is of little value, or that we could 
 draw from the resources of our Teutonic tongue effi- 
 cient substitutes for all the words which it has con- 
 tributed to our glossary. I am persuaded that we 
 could not ; and, if we could, that it would not be de- 
 sirable. I mention this, because there is sometimes 
 a regret expressed that we have not kept our language 
 more free from the admixture of Latin, a suggestion 
 made that we should even now endeavor to keep under 
 the Latin element of it, and remove it as far as possi- 
 ble out of sight. I remember Lord Brougham urging 
 upon the students at Glasgow as a help to writing 
 good English, that they should seek as far as possible 
 
 * Works, vol. iv., p. 202. 
 
 O* 
 
34 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 to rid their diction of long-tailed words in ' osity' and 
 'ation.' He plainly intended to indicate by this 
 phrase all learned Latin words, or words derived from 
 the Latin. This exhortation is not altogether to be 
 set aside ; no doubt there were writers of a former 
 age, Samuel Johnson in the last century, Cudworth 
 and Sir Thomas Browne in the century preceding, 
 who gave undue preponderance to the learned, or 
 Latin, portion in our language ; and very much of its 
 charm, of its homely strength and beauty, of its most 
 popular and truest idioms, would have perished from 
 it had they succeeded in persuading others to write 
 as they had written. 
 
 But at the same time we could almost as ill do 
 without this side of the language as the other. It 
 represents and supplies needs not less real than the 
 other does. Philosophy and science and the arts of 
 a high civilization find their utterance in the Latin 
 words of our language, or, if not in the Latin, in the 
 Greek, which for present purposes may be grouped 
 with them. How should they have found it in the 
 other branch of our language, among a people who 
 had never cultivated any of these ? And while it is 
 undoubtedly of importance to keep this within due 
 bounds, and, cceteris paribus^ it will in general be 
 advisable, when a Latin and a Saxon word offer them- 
 selves to our choice, to use the Saxon rather than the 
 other, to speak of ' happiness' rather than ' felicity,' 
 * almighty' rather than ' omnipotent,' a ' forerunner' 
 rather than a ' precursor,' still these latter must be 
 regarded as much denizens in the language as the 
 former, no alien interlopers, but possessing the rights 
 of citizenship as fully as the most Saxon word of then? 
 
QUOTATION FROM DE QUINCEY. 35 
 
 all. One part of the language is not to be cultivated 
 at the expense of the other ; the Saxon at the cost of 
 the Latin, as little as the Latin at the cost of the 
 Saxon. " Both are indispensable ; and speaking gen- 
 erally without stopping to distinguish as to subject, 
 both are equally indispensable. Pathos, in situations 
 which are homely, or at all connected with domestic 
 affections, naturally moves by Saxon words. Lyrical 
 emotion of every kind, which (to merit the name of 
 lyrical) must be in the state of flux and reflux, or, 
 generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon ele- 
 ment of our language. And why ? Because the Sax- 
 on is the aboriginal element ; the basis and not the 
 superstructure : consequently it comprehends all the 
 ideas which are natural to the heart of man and to 
 the elementary situations of life. And although the 
 Latin often furnishes us with duplicates of these ideas, 
 yet the Saxon, or monosyllabic part, has the advan- 
 tage of precedency in our use and knowledge ; for it 
 is the language of the nursery whether for rich or 
 poor, in which great philological academy no tolera 
 tion is given to words in ' osity' or ' ation.' There 
 is, therefore, a great advantage, as regards the conse- 
 cration to our feelings, settled by usage and custom 
 upon the Saxon strands in the mixed yarn of our na- 
 tive tongue. And universally, this may be remarked 
 — that wherever the passion of a poem is of that sort 
 which uses^ presumes^ or postulates the ideas, without 
 seeking to extend them, Saxon will be the ' cocoon' 
 (to speak by the language applied to silk-worms), 
 which the poem spins for itself. But on the other 
 liand, where* the motion of the feeling is by and 
 through the ideas, where (as in religious or meditative 
 
36 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 poetry — Young's, for instance, or Cowper's) the 
 pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues 
 of the thinking, there the Latin will predominate ; and 
 so much so that, while the flesh, the blood, and the 
 muscle, will be often almost exclusively Latin, the 
 articulations only, or hinges of connection, will be 
 Anglo-Saxon." 
 
 These words which I have just quoted are De 
 Quincey's — whom I must needs esteem the greatest 
 living master of our English tongue. And on the 
 same matter Sir Francis Palgrave has expressed him- 
 self thus : " Upon the languages of Teutonic origin 
 the Latin has exercised great influence, but most en- 
 ergetically on our own. The very early admixture 
 of the Langue (T Oil, the never-interrupted employ- 
 ment of the French as the language of education, and 
 the nomenclature created by the scientific and literary 
 cultivation of advancing and civilized society, have 
 Romanized our speech ; the warp may be Anglo-Saxon, 
 but the woof is Roman as well as the embroidery, and 
 these foreign materials have so entered into the tex- 
 ture, that were they plucked out, the web would be 
 torn to rags, unravelled and destroyed."* 
 
 I do not know where we could find a happier ex- 
 ample of the. preservation of the golden mean in this 
 matter than in our authorized version of the Bible. 
 One of the chief among the minor and secondary bles- 
 sings which that version has conferred on the nation 
 or nations drawing spiritual life from it — a blessing 
 not small in itself, but only small by comparison with 
 the infinitely higher blessings whereof it is the vehicle 
 to them — is the happy wisdom, the instinctive tact, 
 
 * History of Normandij and England, vol. i., p. 78- 
 
TME ENGLISH BIBLE. 37 
 
 with which iis authors have steered between any futile 
 mischievous attempt to ignore, the full rights of the 
 Latin part of the language on the one side, and on 
 the other, any burdening of their version with such a 
 multitude of learned Latin terras as should cause it to 
 forfeit its homely character, and shut up great por- 
 tions of it from the understanding of plain and un- 
 learned men. There is a remarkable confession to 
 this effect, to the wisdom, in fact, which guided them 
 from above, to the providence tliat overruled their 
 work, an honorable acknowledgment of the immense 
 superiority in this respect of our English version over 
 the Romish, made by one now unhappily familiar with 
 the latter, as once he was with our own. One of 
 those who has abandoned the communion of the Eng- 
 lish church has expressed himself in deeply-touching 
 tones of lamentation over all, which in forsaking our 
 translation, he feels himself to have foregone and lost. 
 These are his words : " Who will not say that the 
 uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the prot- 
 estant bible is not one of the great strongholds of 
 heresy in this country ? It lives on the ear, like a 
 music tliat can never be forgotten, like the sound of 
 church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he 
 can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost 
 things rather than mere words. It is part of the 
 national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. 
 .... The memory of the dead passes into it. The 
 potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its 
 verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a 
 man is hidden beneath its words. It is the repre- 
 sentative of his best moments, and all that there has 
 been about him of soft and gentle and pure and peni- 
 
38 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 tent and good speaks to liim for ever out of his English 
 
 bible It is his sacred thing, which doubt has 
 
 never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the 
 length and breadth of the land there is not a protes- 
 tant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose 
 spiritual biography is not in his Saxon bible."* 
 
 Such are his touching words ; and certainly one has 
 only to compare this version of ours with the Rhemish, 
 and the far greater excellence of our own reveals it- 
 self at once. I am not speaking now in respect of 
 superior accuracy of scholarship ; nor yet of the ab- 
 sence of by-ends, of all turning and twisting of the 
 translation to support certain doctrines ; nor yet do I 
 allude to the fact that one translation is from the ori- 
 ginal Greek, the other only from the Latin, and thus 
 the translation of a translation, often reproducing the 
 mistakes of that translation ; but, putting aside all 
 considerations such as these, I would now speak only 
 of the superiority of the diction in which the meaning, 
 be it correct or incorrect, is conveyed to English read- 
 ers. I open the Rhemish version at Galatians, v. 19, 
 where the long list of the " works of the flesh," and 
 "fruit of the Spirit," is given. But what could a 
 mere English reader make of words such as these — 
 * impudicity,' ' ebrieties,' ' comessations,' ' longanimi- 
 ty,' all which occur in that passage ? while our ver- 
 sion for ' ebrieties' has ' drunkenness,' for * comessa- 
 tions' has ' revellings,' and so also for ' longanimity' 
 ' longsufFering.' Or set over against one another such 
 phrases as these — in the Rhemish, ' the exemplars of 
 the celestials' (Heb. ix. 23), but in ours, 'the pat- 
 terns of things in the heavens.' Or suppose if, instead 
 
 * Dublin Review, June, 1853. 
 
THE RHEMISH BIBLE. 39 
 
 of the words which we read at Heb. xiii. 16, namely, 
 " To do good and to communicate forget not ; for with 
 such sacrifices God is well pleased," we read as fol- 
 lows, which are the words of the Rhemish : "• Benefi- 
 cence and communication do not forget ; for with such 
 hosts God is promerited" ! Who does not feel that 
 if our version had arrayed itself in such diction as 
 this, had been composed in such Latin-English as this, 
 our loss would have been great and enduring — one 
 which would have searched into the whole religious 
 life of our people, and been felt in the very depths of 
 the national mind ? 
 
 There was indeed something still deeper than love 
 of sound and genuine English at work in our transla- 
 tors, whether they were conscious of it or not, which 
 hindered them from sending the Scriptures to their 
 fellow-countrymen dressed out in a semi-Latin garb. 
 The Reformation, which they were in this translation 
 so mightily strengthening and confirming, was just a 
 throwing ofif, on the part of the Teutonic nations, of 
 that everlasting pupilage in which Rome would have 
 held them ; an assertion at length that they were 
 come to full age, and that not through her, but di- 
 rectly through Christ, they would address themselves 
 unto God. The use of the Latin language as the lan- 
 guage of worship, as the language in which the Scrip- 
 tures might alone be read, had been the great badge 
 of servitude, even as the Latin habits of thought and 
 feeling which it promoted had been the great helps to 
 the continuance of this servitude, through long ages. 
 It lay deep then in the very nature of their cause that 
 the reformers should develop the Saxon, or essentially 
 national, element in the language ; while it was just 
 
40 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 as natural that the Roman catholic translators, if they 
 must translate the Scriptures into English at all, 
 should yet translate them into such English as should 
 bear the nearest possible resemblance to the Latin 
 Yulgate, which Rome, with a very deep wisdom of 
 this world, would gladly have seen as the only one in 
 the hands of the faithful. 
 
 Let me again, however, recur to the fact that what 
 our reformers did in this matter, they did without 
 exaggeration ; even as they had shown the same wise 
 moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the 
 Latin side of the language its rights, though they 
 would not suffer it to encroach upon and usurp those 
 of the Teutonic part of the language. It would be 
 difficult not to believe, even if all outward signs said 
 not the same thing, that there are great things in 
 store for the one language of Europe which is thus 
 the connecting link between the North and the South, 
 between the languages spoken by the Teutonic nations 
 of the North and by the Romance nations of the 
 South ; which holds on to both ; which partakes of 
 both ; which is as a middle term between both. It 
 has been often thought that the English church, being 
 in like manner double-fronted, looking on the one side 
 toward Rome, being herself truly catholic, looking on 
 the other toward the protestant communions, being 
 herself also protesting and reformed, may yet in the 
 providence of God have a great part to play for the 
 reconciling of a divided Christendom. And if this 
 ever should be so — if, in spite of our sins and unwor- 
 thiness, so blessed a task should be in store for her — 
 it will not be a small help and assistance thereunto, 
 that the language in which her mediation will have to 
 
JACOB GRIMM ON ENGLISH. 41 
 
 be eflected is one wherein both parties may claim 
 their own ; in wliich neither will feel that it is receiv- 
 ing the adjudication of a stranger, of one who must 
 be an alien from its deeper thonglits and habits, be- 
 cause an alien from its words, but a language in which 
 both recognise very much of that which is deepest and 
 most precious of their own. 
 
 Nor is this merit which I have just claimed for our 
 English the mere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. 
 The scholar who in our days is most profoundly ac- 
 quainted with the great group of the Gothic languages 
 in Europe, and a passionate lover, if ever there was 
 such, of his native German — I mean Jacob Grimm — 
 has expressed himself very nearly to the same effect, 
 and given the palm over all to our English in words 
 which you will not grudge to hear quoted, and with 
 which 1 shall bring this lecture to a close. After as- 
 cribing to our language " a veritable power of expres- 
 sion, such as perhaps never stood at the command of 
 any other language of men," he goes on to say : " Its 
 highly spiritual genius, and wonderfully happy devel- 
 opment and condition, have been the result of a sur- 
 prisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages 
 in modern Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance. 
 It is well known in what relation these two stand to 
 one another in the English tongue ; the former supply- 
 ing in far larger proportion the material groundwork, 
 the latter the spiritual conceptions. In truth, the 
 English language, which by no mere accident has pro- 
 duced and upborne the greatest and most predominant 
 poet of modern times, as distinguished from the an- 
 cient classical poetry (I can, of course, only mean 
 Shakespeare), may with all right be called a world- 
 
42 ENGLISH A COMPOSITE LANGUAGE. 
 
 language ; and, like the English people, appears des- 
 tined hereafter to prevail with a sway more extensive 
 even than its present over all the portions of the 
 globe.* For in wealth, good sense, and closeness of 
 structure, no other of the languages at this day spo- 
 ken deserves to be compared with it — not even our 
 German, which is torn, even as we are torn, and must 
 first rid itself of many defects, before it can enter 
 boldly into the lists, as a competitor with the Eng- 
 lish."! 
 
 * A little more than two centuries ago, a poet, himself abundantly- 
 deserving the title of " well-languaged," which a contemporary or near 
 successor gave him, ventured in some remarkable lines timidly to an- 
 ticipate this. Speaking of his native tongue, which he himself wrote 
 with such vigor and purity, though wanting in the fiery impulses 
 which go to the making of a first-rate poet, Daniel exclaims ; — 
 
 " And who, in time, knows whither we may vent 
 The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores 
 This gain of our best glory shall be sent. 
 To enrich unknowing nations with our stores 1 
 What worlds in the yet unformed Occident 
 May come refined with the accents that are ours ? 
 Or who can tell for what great work in hand 
 The greatness of our style is now ordained ? 
 What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command, 
 What thoughts let out, what humors keep restrained, 
 What mischief it may powerfully withstand. 
 And what fair ends may thereby be attained V* 
 
 * Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1852, p. 50. 
 
LIVING AND DEAD LANGUAGES. 48 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 It is not for nothing that we speak of some lan- 
 guages as living, of others as dead. These epithets 
 are not severally mere synonyms for ' spoken' and 
 * unspoken,' however we very often esteem them no 
 more. Some languages are living, or alive, in quite 
 a different and in a much higher sense than this ; 
 showing themselves to be so by many infallible proofs 
 — by motion, growth, acquisition, loss, progress, and 
 decay. A living language is one in which a vital, 
 formative energy is still at work ; a dead language is 
 one in which this has ceased. A living language is 
 one which is in the course of actual evolution ; which 
 is appropriating and assimilating to itself what it any- 
 where finds congenial to its own life, multiplying its 
 resources, increasing its wealth ; which at the same 
 time is casting off useless and cumbersome forms, dis- 
 missing from its vocabulary words of which it finds 
 no use, rejecting from itself by a reactive energy the 
 foreign and heterogeneous which may for a while have 
 been forced upon it. I would not assert that in the 
 process of all this it does not make mistakes. In the 
 desire to simplify it may let go distinctions which 
 were not useless, and which it would have been better 
 to retain ; its acquisitions are not all gains ; it some- 
 
44 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 times rejects words as worthless, or suffers words to 
 die out, which were most worthy to have lived. So 
 far as it does this, its life is an unhealthy one ; there 
 are here signs of decay and death approaching ; but 
 still it lives, and even these misgrowths and malfor- 
 mations, these errors, are themselves the utterances 
 and evidences of life. A dead language — the Latin, 
 for instance — is as incapable of losing as it is of gain- 
 ing. We may know it better ; but it can never be 
 more nor less in itself than it has been for hundreds 
 of years. 
 
 Our own is, of course, a living language still ; it is 
 therefore gaining and losing ; it is a tree in which the 
 vital sap is yet working, ascending from its roots into 
 its branches ; and, as this works, new leaves are being 
 put forth by it, old are dropping away and dying. I 
 propose for the. subject of my present lecture to con- 
 sider some of the evidences of this its present life. 
 As I took for the subject of my first lecture the actual 
 proportions in which the several elements of our com- 
 posite English are now found in it, so I shall take, for 
 the subject of this, the sources from which the English 
 language has enriched its vocabulary, the periods at 
 which it has made its chief additions, the character 
 of the additions which at different periods it has made, 
 and the motives which induced it to seek them. 
 
 I had occasion to mention in that lecture, and in- 
 deed I dwelt with some emphasis on the fact, that the 
 core, the radical constitution of our language, is 
 Anglo-Saxon ; so that, composite or mingled as it 
 must freely be allowed to be, it is only such in respect 
 of its words, not in respect of its construction, inflex- 
 ions, or generally its grammatical forms. These are 
 
THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 46 
 
 all of one piece ; and whatever of new has come in 
 has been compelled to conform itself to these. The 
 framework is English ; only a part of the filling in is 
 otherwise ; and of this filling in, of these its compara- 
 tively more recent accessions, I now propose to speak. 
 
 The first great augmentation by foreign words of 
 our Saxon vocabulary was a consequence, although 
 not an immediate one, of the battle of Hastings, and 
 of the Norman domination which Duke William's vic- 
 tory established in our land. And here let me say 
 in respect of that victory, in contradiction to the sen- 
 timental regrets of Thierry and others, and with the 
 fullest acknowledgment of the immediate miseries 
 which it entailed on the Saxon race, that it was re- 
 ally the making of England ; a judgment, it is true, 
 but a judgment and mercy in one. God never showed 
 more plainly that he had great things in store for the 
 people who should occupy this English soil, than when 
 he brought hither that aspiring Norman race. At the 
 same time, the actual interpenetration of our Anglo- 
 Saxon with any large amount of French words did 
 not find place till very considerably later than this 
 event, however it was a consequence of it. Some 
 French words we find very soon after ; but in the 
 main the two streams of language continued for a long 
 while separate and apart, even as the two nations 
 remained aloof, a conquering and a conquered, and 
 neither forgetting the fact. 
 
 Time, however, softened the mutual antipathies. 
 The Norman, after a while shut out from France, be- 
 gan more and more to feel that England was his home 
 and sphere. The Saxon, recovering little by little 
 from the extreme depression which had ensued on his 
 
46 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 defeat,* became every day a more important element 
 of the new English nation which was gradually form- 
 ing from the coalition of the two races. His language 
 partook of his elevation. It was no longer the badge 
 of inferiority. French was no longer the only lan- 
 guage in which a gentleman could speak, or a poet 
 sing. At the same time, the Saxon, now passing into 
 the English language, required a vast addition to its 
 vocabulary, if it were to serve all the needs of those 
 who were willing to employ it now. How much was 
 there of high culture, how many of the arts of life, of 
 its refined pleasures, which had been strange to Saxon 
 men, and had therefore found no utterance in Saxon 
 words ! All this it was sought to supply from the 
 French. 
 
 We shall not err, 1 think, if we assume the great 
 period of the incoming of French words into the Eng- 
 lish language to have been when the Norman nobility 
 
 * We may trace, I think, a permanent record of this depression in the 
 fact that a vast number of Teutonic words, which have a noble sense 
 in the kindred language of Germany, and evidently had once such in 
 the Anglo-Saxon, have forfeited this in whole or in part, have been 
 contented to take a lower place ; M'hile, in most instances, a word of 
 the Latin moiety of the language has assumed the place which they 
 have vacated. Thus, 'tapfer' is valiant, courageous, but ' dapper' is 
 only spruce or smart ; * prachtig/ which means proud, magnificent, 
 has dwindled into 'pretty;' 'taufen,' being to baptize, only appears 
 with us as * to dip ;' ' weinen' is honest weeping in German, it is only 
 ' whining' with us ; * dach' is any roof whatever, but * thatch' is only 
 a straw-roof for us ; ' baum' is a living tree, while * beam' is only a 
 piece of dead timber ; in 'horn-beam,' one of our trees, 'beam' still 
 keeps its earlier use. 'Haut' is skin, but its English representative 
 is 'hide' — skin, that is, of a beast; 'stuhl,' a seat or chair, is de- 
 graded into 'stool ;' while 'graben' is no longer to dig, but ' to grub ;' 
 again, in''rasch' there is nothing of the sense of too great haste, of 
 temerity, which in our ' rash' there is. And this list might be very 
 largely increased. 
 
INCOMIMG OP FRENCH. 47 
 
 were exchanging their own language for the English ; 
 and I should be disposed with Tyrwhitt to believe 
 that there is much exaggeration in attributing the 
 large influx of these into English to one man's influ- 
 ence — namely, to Chaucer's.* Doubtless, he did 
 much ; he fell in wdth and furthered a tendency which 
 already prevailed. But to suppose that the greater 
 number of French vocables which he employed in his 
 poems had never been employed before, had been 
 hitherto unfamiliar to English ears, is to suppose that 
 his poems must have presented to his contemporaries 
 an absurd patchwork of two languages, and leaves it 
 impossible to explain how he should at once have 
 become the popular poet of our nation. 
 
 That Chaucer largely developed the language in 
 this direction is indeed plain. We have only to com- 
 pare his English with that of another great master of 
 the tongue, his contemporary Wiclif, to perceive how 
 much more his diction is saturated with French words 
 than is that of the reformer. We may note, too, that 
 a great many which he and others employed, and as it 
 were proposed for admission, were not finally allowed 
 and received ; so that no doubt they went beyond the 
 needs of the language, and were here in excess.f At 
 
 * Thus Alexander Gil, head-master of St. Paul's school, in his 
 book, Logonomia Anglica, 1621, preface: "Hue usque peregrinae 
 voces in lingua Anglica inauditae. Tandem circa annum 1400 Gal- 
 fridus Chaucerus, infausto omme, vocabulis Gallicis et Latinis poesin 
 suam famosam reddidit." The whole passage, which is too long to 
 quote, as indeed the whole book, is curious. Gil was an earnest 
 advocate of phonetic spelling, and has adopted it in all his English 
 quotations in this book. 
 
 t We may observe exactly the same in Plautus ; a multitude of 
 Greek words are used by him, which the Latin language did not want, 
 and therefore refused to take up. Thus, 'clepta,' 'zaniia* (^ij/zta). 
 
48 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 the same time, this can be regarded as no condemna- 
 tion of their attempt. It was only by actual experi- 
 ence that it could be proved whether the language 
 wanted those words or not, whether it could absorb 
 them into itself, and assimilate them with all that it 
 already was and had ; or did not require, and would 
 therefore in due time reject and put them away. And 
 what happened then will happen in every attempt to 
 transplant on a large scale the words of one language 
 into another. Some will take root ; others will not, 
 but after a longer or briefer period will wither and 
 die. Thus, I observe in Chaucer such French words 
 as these: ' misericorde,' ' malure' (malheur), ' peni- 
 ble,' ' tas,' ' gipon,' ' pierrie' (precious stones) ; none 
 of which have been permanently incorporated in our 
 tongue. As little has ' creansur,' which Wiclif (2 Kin. 
 iv. 1) employs for creditor, held its place. For a long 
 time ' roy' struggled hard for a place in the language : 
 it quite obtained one in Scotch. It is curious to mark 
 some of these French adoptions keeping their ground 
 to a comparatively late day, and yet finally extruded : 
 seeming to have taken firm root, they have yet with- 
 ered away in the end. Thus has it been, for example, 
 with ' egal' (Futtenham) ; with ' ouvert' (Holland) ; 
 with ' rivage,' 'jouissance,' * noblesse,' ' accoil' (ac- 
 cueillir), ' sell' (= saddle), all occurring in Spenser ; 
 with ' to serr' (serrer), with ' vive,' used both by Ba- 
 
 'danista,' *harpagare,' * apolactizare/ 'naucleras,' 'strategus/ *mo- 
 rologus,' *phylaca,' 'malacus/ 'sycophantia/ 'euscheme' {slcx,fii.iMs), 
 'dulice* {oov'SiKuii), (so 'scymnus' by Lucretius), none of which, I be- 
 lieve, are employed except by him ; ^mastigias' and 'techna' appear 
 also in Terence. Yet only experience could show that they were 
 superfluous ; and at the epoch of Latin literature in which Plautus 
 lived, it was well done to put them on triaL 
 
FRENCH WORDS REJECTED. 49 
 
 con ; and so with ' espcrancc,' ' orgillous' (orgueil- 
 leiix), ' rondeur,' ' scrimer' (^= fencer), all in Shake- 
 speare ; with * amort' (this also in Shakespeare), and 
 'avie' (Holland). ' Maugre,' ' congie,' 'mot,' * de- 
 voir,' ' sans,' were English once ; when we employ 
 them now, it is with the sense that we are using for- 
 eign words. The same is true of ' dulce,' ' aigredoulce' 
 (= soursweet), of ' mur' for wall, of ' baine' for bath, 
 of the verb ' to cass' (all in Holland), of ' volupty' 
 (Sir Thomas Elyot), ' volunty' (Evelyn), ' medisance' 
 (Montagu), ' petit' (South), ' eloign' (Hacket), this 
 last surviving still in the beautiful word, now indeed 
 only provincial, though formerly employed by Chau- 
 cer, ' ellinge,' that is, separated from friends, and thus 
 lonely, melancholy.* 
 
 We have seen when the great influx of French 
 words took place — that is, from the time of the Con- 
 quest, although scantily and feebly at the first, to that 
 of Chaucer. But with hira our literature and lan- 
 guage had made a burst, which they were not able to 
 maintain. He has by Warton been well compared to 
 some warm, bright day in the very early spring, which 
 seems to say that the winter is over and gone. But 
 its promise is deceitful : the full bursting and blossom- 
 ing of the spring-time are yet far off. That struggle 
 with France which began so gloriously, but ended so 
 disastrously, even with the loss of our whole ill-won 
 dominion there ; the savagery of our wars of the Roses 
 — wars which were a legacy bequeathed to us by that 
 
 * Let me here observe, once for all, that in adding the name of an 
 author, which I shall often do, to a word, I do not mean to affirm the 
 word in any way peculiar to him — although in some cases it may be 
 so — but only to give one authority for its use. 
 
 3 
 
50 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 unrighteous conquest — leave a great blank in our lit- 
 erary history, nearly a century during which very little 
 was done for the cultivation of our native tongue, 
 during which it could have made few important ac- 
 cessions to its wealth. 
 
 The period, however, is notable as being that du- 
 ring which for the first time we received a large ac- 
 cession of Latin words. There was, indeed, already 
 a small settlement of these, for the roost part ecclesi- 
 astical, which had long since found their home in the 
 bosom of the Anglo-Saxon itself, and had been entirely 
 incorporated into it. The fact that we had received 
 our Christianity from Rome, and that Latin was the 
 constant language of the church, sufficiently explains 
 the incoming of these. Such were ' monk,' * bishop' 
 (I put them in their present shapes, and do not con- 
 cern myself whether they were originally Greek or 
 not — they reached us as Latin), ' provost,' ' minster,' 
 * cloister,' ^ candle,' ' psalter,' ^ mass ;' and the names 
 of certain foreign animals, as ' camel,' or plants or 
 other productions, as ' pepper,' ' fig ;' which are all, 
 with slightly different orthography, Anglo-Saxon words. 
 These, however, were entirely exceptional, and stood 
 to the main body of the language, not as the Romance 
 element of it does now to the G-othic, one power over 
 against another, but as the Spanish, or Italian, or 
 Arabic words in it now stand to the whole present 
 body of the language — and could not be affirmed to 
 affect it more. 
 
 So soon, however, as French words were imported 
 largely, as I have just observed, into the language, 
 and were found to coalesce kindly with the native 
 growths, this very speedily suggested, as indeed it 
 
PEDANTIC LATINTSMS. 51 
 
 alone rendered possible, the going straight to the 
 Latin, and drawing directly from it ; and thus, in the 
 hundred years which followed Chaucer, <a large amount 
 of Latin found its way, if not into our speech, yet at 
 all events into our books — words which were not 
 brought through the French, for they are not, and 
 have not at any time been, French ; but yet words 
 which would never have been introduced into Eng- 
 lish, if their way had not been prepared — if the 
 French, already domesticated among us, had not 
 bridged over, as it were, the gulf that would have 
 otherwise been too wide between them and the Saxon 
 vocables of our tongue. 
 
 In this period, a period of great depression of the 
 national spirit, we may trace the attempt at a pedantic 
 latinization of English quite as clearly at work as at 
 later periods, subsequent to the revival of learning. 
 It was now that a crop of such words as ' facundious,' 
 ' tenebrous,' • solacious,' ' pulcritude,' ' consuetude' (all 
 these occur in Hawes), as ' spelunc,' 'jument,' 'irre- 
 ligiosity,' long since rejected by the language, sprung 
 up ; while other words, good in themselves, and which 
 have been since allowed, were yet employed in num- 
 bers quite out of proportion with the Saxon vocables 
 with which they were mingled, and which were alto- 
 gether overtopped and overshadowed by them. Chau- 
 cer's hearty English feeling, his thorough sympathy 
 with the people ; the fact that, scholar as he was, he 
 was yet the poet not of books but of life, and drew 
 his best inspiration from life — all this had kept him, 
 in the main, clear of this fault. But in others it is 
 very manifest. Thus, I must esteem the diction of 
 Lydgate, Hawes, and tlie other versifiers who filled 
 
52 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 up the period between Chaucer and Surrey, in this 
 respect a great going back from Chaucer's English ; 
 being all stuck over with long and often ill-selected 
 Latin words. The worst offenders in this line, as 
 Campbell himself admits, were the Scotch poets of the 
 fifteenth century. " The prevailing fault," he says, 
 " of English diction, in the fifteenth century, is redun- 
 dant ornament, and an affectation of anglicizing Latin 
 words. In this pedantry and use of ' aureate terms' 
 the Scottish versifiers went even beyond their breth- 
 ren of the south When they meant to be elo- 
 quent, they tore up words from the Latin, which never 
 took root in the language ; like children making a 
 mock garden with flowers and branches stuck in the 
 ground, which speedily wither."* 
 
 To few indeed is the wisdom and discretion given, 
 certainly it was given to none of those, to bear them- 
 selves in this hazardous enterprise according to the 
 rules laid down in the following remarkable passage ; 
 Dryden is in it declaring the motives that induced him 
 to seek for foreign words, and the considerations by 
 which he was guided in their selection : " If sounding 
 words are not of our growth and manufacture, who 
 shall hinder me to import them from a foreign coun- 
 try ? I carry not out the treasure of the nation which 
 is never to return, but what I bring from Italy I spend 
 in England. Here it remains and here it circulates, 
 for, if the coin be good, it will pass from one hand to 
 another. I trade both with the living and the dead, 
 for the enrichment of our native language. We have 
 enough in England to supply our necessity, but if we 
 will have things of magnificence and splendor, we 
 
 * Essay on English Poetry, p. 93. 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE REFORMATION. 53 
 
 must get them by commerce. Poetry requires adorn- 
 ment, and that is not to be had from our old Teuton 
 monosyllables ; therefore, if I find any elegant word 
 in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalized by 
 using it myself; and if the public approves of it, the 
 bill passes. But every man can not distinguish 
 betwixt pedantry and poetry : every man, therefore, is 
 not lit to innovate. Upon the whole matter a poet 
 must first be certain that the word he would introduce 
 is beautiful in the Latin ; and is to consider, in the 
 next place, whether it will agree with the English 
 idiom : after this, he ought to take the opinion of 
 judicious friends, such as are learned in both lan- 
 guages ; and lastly, since no man is infallible, let him 
 use this license very sparingly ; for if too many foreign 
 words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were 
 designed not to assist the natives, but to conquer 
 them."* 
 
 But this tendency to latinize our speech was likely 
 to receive, and actually did receive, a new impulse 
 from the revival of learning, and the familiar re- 
 acquaintance with the great masterpieces of ancient 
 literature which went along with this. Happily there 
 accompanied, or at least followed hard on, this intel- 
 lectual movement another far deeper, and in England 
 essentially national movement ; one which even in- 
 tellectually stirred the nation to far deeper depths, 
 in that it was also a moral one ; I mean of course the 
 Reformation. It was only among the Germanic na- 
 tions of Europe, as has often been remarked, that the 
 Reformation struck lasting roots ; it found its strength 
 therefore in the Teutonic element of the national 
 
 * Dedication of the Translation of the ^-Eneid. 
 
64 GAINS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 character, which also it in its turn further strength- 
 ened, purified and called out. And thus, though Latin 
 came in upon us now faster than ever, and in a certain 
 measure also Greek, yet this was not without its coun- 
 terpoise, in the contemporaneous unfolding of the more 
 fundamentally popular side of the language. Popular 
 preaching and discussion, the necessity of dealing 
 with the highest matters in a manner intelligible not 
 to scholars only, but to the unlearned, all this served 
 to evoke the native resources of our tongue ; and thus 
 the relative proportion between the one part of the 
 language and the other was not dangerously disturbed, 
 the balance was not destroyed ; as it would have been, 
 if only the Humanists had been at work, and not the 
 Reformers as well. 
 
 The revival of learning, which found place some- 
 what earlier in Italy, where it had its birth, than with 
 us, extended to England, and was operative here, 
 during the reigns of Henry VHI. and his immediate 
 successors ; in other words, if it slightly anticipated 
 in time, it afterward ran exactly parallel with, the 
 period during which our Reformation was working 
 itself out. It was an epoch in all respects of immense 
 mental and moral activity, and such are always times 
 of extensive changes and enlargements in a language. 
 The old garment, which served a people's needs in 
 the time past, is too narrow for it now to wrap itself 
 in any more. " Change in language is not, as in 
 many natural products, continuous ; it is not equable, 
 but eminently by fits and starts." When the foun- 
 dations of the national mind are heaving under the 
 power of some new truth, greater and more important 
 changes will find place in fifty years than in two cen* 
 
DATE OP SOME LATIN WORDS. 65 
 
 turies of calmer or more stagnant existence. Thus 
 the activities and energies which the Reformation set 
 a stirring among us here, and I need not tell you that 
 these reached far beyond the domain of our directly 
 religious life, caused mighty alterations in the English 
 tongue.* 
 
 For example, the Reformation had its scholarly, 
 we might say, its scholastic, as well as its popular, 
 aspect. Add this fact to the fact of the revived in- 
 terest in classical learning, and you will not wonder 
 that a stream of Latin, now larger than ever, began 
 to flow into our language. Thus Puttenham, writing 
 in Queen Elizabeth's reign,f gives a long list of words 
 
 * We have a remarkable evidence of the sense which at this time 
 'scholars had of the rapidity with which the language was changing^ 
 under their hands in some lines of Waller. Looking back at what 
 the last hundred years had wrought of alteration in it, and assuming, 
 as was not much to be wondered at, that the next hundred would ef- 
 fect as much, he checked with misgivings such as these his own ex- 
 pectation of immortality : 
 
 " Who can hope his lines should long 
 Last in a daily changing tongue ? 
 While they are new, envy prevails, 
 And as that dies, our language fails. 
 
 " Poets that lasting marble seek. 
 Must carve in Latin or in Greek : 
 We write in sand ; our language grows. 
 And like the tide our work o'erflows." 
 Such were his misgivings as to the future, assuming that the rate of 
 change would continue what it had been. How little they have been 
 fulfilled, every one knows. In actual fact two centuries which have 
 elapsed since he wrote, have hardly antiquated a word or a phrase in 
 his poems. If we care very little for them now, this is to be explained 
 by quite other causes — by the absence of all moral earnestness from 
 them. 
 
 t In his Art of English Poesy, London, 1589, republished in Hasle- 
 wood's Ancient Critical Essai/s upon English Poets and Poesy, London, 
 1811 vol, i., pp. 122, 123. 
 
6Q GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 which he states to have been of quite recent introduc- 
 tion into the language. Some of them are Greek, a 
 few French and Italian, but very far the most are 
 Latin. I will not give you his whole catalogue, but 
 some specimens from it ; it is difficult to understand 
 in regard of some of these how the language should 
 have managed to do without them so long ; ' method,' 
 'methodical,' ' function,' ' numerous,' ' penetrate,' ' pen- 
 etrable,' * indignity,' 'savage,' 'scientific,' 'delinea- 
 tion,' 'dimension' — all which he notes to have re- 
 cently come up; so too 'idiom,' 'significative,' 'com- 
 pendious,' 'prolix,' 'figurative,' 'impression,' 'in- 
 veigle,' 'metrical.' All these he adduces with praise ; 
 others upon which he bestows equal commendation 
 have not held their ground, as ' placation,' numerosity,' 
 ' harmonical.' Of those novelties which he disallowed, 
 in some cases, as in the words, ' facundity,' ' implete,' 
 ' attemptat, ('attentat'), he only anticipated the de- 
 cision of a later day ; while others which he disal- 
 lowed no less, as ' audacious,' ' compatible,' ' egregi- 
 ous,' have maintained their ground. These too have 
 done the same ; ' despicable,' ' destruction,' ' homicide,' 
 'obsequious,' ' ponderous,' ' portentous,' ' prodigious,' 
 all which another writer a little earlier condemns as 
 " inkhorn terms, smelling too much of the Latin." 
 
 It is curious to observe the " words of art," as he 
 calls them, which Philemon Holland, a voluminous 
 translator at the end of the sixteenth and beginning 
 of the seventeenth century, counts it needful to ex- 
 plain in a sort of glossary which he appends to his 
 translation of Pliny's Natural History* One can 
 
 * London, 1601. Besides this work, Holland translated the whole 
 of Plutarch's Moralia, Livy, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and 
 
DATE OF SOME FRENCH WORDS. 6T 
 
 liardly at the present day understand how any person 
 who would care to consult the book at all would find 
 any difficulty with words like the following : ' acrimo- 
 ny,' ' austere,' ' bulb,' ' consolidate,' ' debility,' ' dose,' 
 'ingredient,' 'opiate,' 'propitious,' 'symptom' — all 
 which, however, as novelties, he carefully explains. 
 Some of the words in his glossary, it is true, are 
 harder and more technical than these ; but a vast 
 proportion of them present no greater difficulty than 
 those which I have adduced.* 
 
 tliimdcn's Britannia. His works make a part of the " library of dull- 
 ness" in Pope's Danciad: — 
 
 " De Lyra there a dreadful front extends, 
 And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends." 
 
 Very unjustly ; the authors whom he has translated are all more or 
 less important, and his versions of them a mine of genuine idiomatic 
 English, neglected by most of our lexicographers, wrought to a con- 
 siderable extent and with great advantage by Richardson ; yet capa- 
 ble, as it seems to me, of yielding much more in illustration of the 
 language than they yet have yielded. 
 
 * And so, too, in Fi-ench, it is surprising to find of how late intro- 
 duction are many words, which it seems as if the language could 
 never have done without. 'Desint^ressement,' 'exactitude,' 'saga- 
 cite,' 'bravoure,' were not introduced till late in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. 'Renaissance,' 'emportement,' ' desagrdment,' were all recent 
 in 1675 (Bouhours) ; 'indevot,' ' intolerance,' ' impardonnable,' * ir- 
 r^ligieux,' were struggling into allowance at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century, and were not established till the beginning of the 
 eighteenth. 'Insidieux' was invented byMalherbe; 'frivolite' does 
 not appear in the earlier editions of the Dictionary of the Academy; 
 the abbe de St. Pierre was the first to employ ' bienfaisance,' the elder 
 Balzac 'feliciter,' Sarrasin 'burlesque.' Madame de Sevign6 ex- 
 claims against her daughter for employing ' effervescence' in a let- 
 ter. (" Comment dites-vous cela, ma fillel Voil;\ un mot dont jo 
 n'avais jamais oui parler.") 'Demagogue' was first hazarded by 
 Bossuer, and was counted so bold a novelty, that it was long before 
 any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier, Montaigne 
 had introduced 'diversion' and ' enfantillag'%' tliougli not without 
 
 3* 
 
58 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 The period during which this naturalization of Latin 
 words in the English language was going actively for- 
 ward, may be said to have continued till about the 
 restoration of Charles II. It first received a check 
 from the coming up of French tastes, fashions, and 
 habits of thought, consequent on that event. The 
 writers already formed before that period, such as 
 Cudworth and Barrow, still continued to write their 
 stately sentences, Latin in structure and Latin in dic- 
 tion, but not so those of a younger generation. We 
 may say of this influx of Latin, that it left the lan- 
 guage immensely increased in copiousness, with greatly 
 enlarged capabilities, but perhaps somewhat burdened, 
 and not always able to move gracefully under the 
 weight of its new acquisitions ; for as Dryden has 
 somewhere truly said, it is easy enough to acquire 
 foreign words ; but to know what to do with them 
 after you have acquired, is the difficulty. It might 
 have received, indeed, most serious injury, if all the 
 words which the great writers of this second Latin 
 period of our language employed, and so proposed as 
 candidates for admission into it, had received the 
 stamp of popular allowance. 
 
 being rebuked by contemporaries on the score of the last. * Conver- 
 tisseur' was born of those hateful efforts to convert the French protest- 
 ants at so much a head; one who undertook this on a large scale 
 being so called. Caron gave to the language 'avant-propos,' Ron- 
 sard ' avidite/ Joachim Dubellay * patrie,' Denis Sauvage ' juriscon- 
 sulte/ Menage 'prosateur/ Desportes 'pudeur/ Chapelain 'urban- 
 it^/ and Etienne first brought in, apologizing at the same time for the 
 boldness of it, ' analogic.' (" Si les oreilles frangoises peuvent porter 
 ce mot.") 'Preliber' (prgelibare) is a word of our own day; and it 
 was Charles Nodier who, if he did not coin, yet revived the obsolete 
 *simplesse.' — See Genin, Variations du Langage Fran^ais, pp. 308- 
 319. 
 
LATIN WORDS REJECTED. 59 
 
 But, happily, it was not so ; it was here, as it had 
 been before with the French importations, and with 
 the earlier Latin of Lydgate and Occleve. The re- 
 active powers of the language, enabling it to throw 
 off that which Was foreign to it, did not fail to dis- 
 play themselves now, as they had done on former 
 occasions. The number of unsuccessful candidates 
 for admission into, and permanent naturalization in, 
 the language during this period, is enormous ; and 
 one must say that, in almost all instances where the 
 alien act has been enforced, the sentence of exclusion 
 was a just one ; it was such as the circumstances of 
 the case abundantly bore out. Either the words were 
 not idiomatic, or were not intelligible, or were not 
 needed, or looked ill, or sounded ill, or some other 
 valid reason existed against them. A lover of his 
 native tongue will tremble to think what that tongue 
 would have become, if all the vocables from the Latin 
 and the Greek which were then introduced or endorsed 
 by illustrious names, had been admitted on the strength 
 of their recommendation ; if ' torve' and ' tetric' (Ful- 
 ler), 'cecity' (Hooker), ' immanity' (Shakespeare), 
 ' insulse' and ' insulsity' (Milton, prose), ' scelestick' 
 (Feltham) , ' splendidious' (Drayton) , ' pervicacy' (Bax- 
 ter), ' lepid' and ' sufflaminate' (Barrow), 'facinorous' 
 (Donne), ' immorigerous,' ' clancular,' ' ferity,' ' ustu- 
 lation,' ' stultiloquy,' ' lipothymy' (Xsi-ro^u^j'a), ' hype- 
 raspist' (all in Jeremy Taylor), ' pauciloquy' and ' mul- 
 tiloquy' (Beaumont, Psyche) ; if ' dyscolous' (Foxe), 
 ' moliminously' (Cud worth), ' immarcescible' (Bishop 
 Hall), ' ataraxy' (Alley tree), 'exility,' ' spinosity,' 
 ' incolumity,' ' solertiousness,' ' eluctate,' ' eximious' 
 (all in Hacket), ' arride' (ridiculed by Ben Jonson), 
 
60 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 with the hundreds of other words like these, and even 
 more monstrous than are some of these, not to speak 
 of such Italian as ' leggiadrous' (Beaumont, Psyche)^ 
 had not been rejected and disallowed by the true in- 
 stinct of the national mind. 
 
 A great many, too, were allowed and adopted, but 
 not exactly in the shape in which they first were in- 
 troduced among us : they were made to drop their 
 foreign termination, or otherwise their foreign appear- 
 ance, to conform themselves to English ways, and only 
 so were finally incorporated into the great family of 
 English words.* Thus, of Greek words we have the 
 following : ' pyramis' and ' pyramides,' forms often em- 
 ployed by Shakespeare, became ' pyramid' and ' pyra- 
 mids ;' ' synonymon' (Jeremy Taylor), or ' synonymum' 
 (Hacket), and ' synonyma' (Milton, prose), became 
 severally ' synonym' and ' synonyms ;' ' syntaxis' (Ful- 
 ler) became ' syntax ;' ' epitheton' (Cowell) ' epithet ;' 
 ' epocha' (Dryden) ' epoch ;' ' chylus' (Bacon) ' chyle ;' 
 ' apostata' (Massinger) ' apostate ;' ' despota' (Fox) 
 ' despot ;' ' misanthropos' (Shakespeare) ' misanthrope ;' 
 * idioma' and ' prosodia' (both in Daniel, prose) ' idi- 
 om' and ' prosody ;' ' phantasma' (Donne) ' phantasm ;' 
 ' magnes' (Gabriel Harvey) ' magnet ;' ' cynosura' 
 (Hacket) ' cynosure ;' ' galaxias' (Fox) ' galaxy ;' 
 ' heros' (Henry More) ' hero ;' ' epitaphy' (Hawes) 
 ' epitaph.' The same process has gone on in a multi- 
 tude of Latin words, which testify by their termina- 
 tions that they were, and were felt to be, Latin at 
 
 * J, Grimm {Worterhuch, p. xxvi.) : "Fiillt von ungefahr ein 
 fremdes wort in den brunnen einer sprache, so Avird es so lange darin 
 umgetrieben, bis es ihre farbe anniramt, und seiner fremden art zura 
 trotzc wie ein lieimischcs aussieht." 
 
NATURALIZATION OF WORDS. 61 
 
 their first employment ; though now they arc such no 
 longer. Thus, Bacon uses generally — I know not 
 whether always — ' insecta' for ' msects ;' so ' intcrsti- 
 tium' (Fuller) preceded ' interstice ;' ' cxpansum' (Jer- 
 emy Taylor) ' expanse ;' and ' preludium' (Beaumont, 
 Psyche) ' prelude ;' we have ' intervalla,' not ' inter- 
 vals,' in Chillingworth ; ' archiva,' not ' archives,' in 
 Baxter; ' demagogi,' not ' demagogues,' in Hacket ; 
 ' pantomimi' in Lord Bacon for ' pantomimes ;' ' atomi' 
 in Lord Brooke for 'atoms:' 'effigies' and ' statua' 
 (both in Shakespeare) went before ' effigy' and ' statue ;' 
 and ' abyssus' (Jackson) before ' abyss ;' while only 
 after a while, ' quasre' gave place to ' query,' and 
 ' plaudite' (Henry More) to ' plaudit ;' and the low 
 Latin ' mummia' (Webster) became ' mummy.' The 
 widely-extended change of such words as ' innocency,' 
 ' indolency,' ' temperancy,' and the large family of 
 words with the same termination, into 'innocence,' 
 ' indolence,' ' temperance,' and the like, can only be 
 regarded as part of the same process of entire natu- 
 ralization. 
 
 The plural very often tells the secret of a word, and 
 of the light in which it is regarded by those who em- 
 ploy it, when the singular, being less capable of modi- 
 fication, would have failed to do so : thus, when Hol- 
 land writes ' phalanges,' ' idese,' it is clear that ' pha- 
 lanx' and ' idea' were still Greek words for him ; as 
 ' dogma' was for Glanville, when he made its plural 
 not ' dogmas,' but ' dogmata ;' and when Spenser uses 
 ' heroes' as a trisyllable, it plainly is not yet thor- 
 oughly English for him. ' Cento' is not English, but 
 a Latin word used in English, so long as it makes its 
 plural not ' centos' but ' centones,' as in the anon}^- 
 
GAINS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 translation of Augustin's City of God; and ' bi- 
 sontes,' used by Holland, shows that ' bison' was still 
 regarded by him as a foreign word. Pope, in like 
 manner, could have only written the following line — 
 
 " Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove" — 
 
 making, as he evidently does, ' satellites' a quadri- 
 syllable, under the feeling that he was still dealing 
 with it as Latin. ' Terminus,' a word which the ne- 
 cessities of railways have introduced among us, will 
 not be truly naturalized till we have agreed to use 
 ' terminuses' and not ' termini' for its plural ; nor 
 ' phenomenon,' till we have renounced * phenomena.' 
 Sometimes it has been found convenient to retain both 
 plurals, that formed according to the laws of the clas- 
 sical language, and that formed according to the laws 
 of our own, only employing them in different senses : 
 thus is it with ' indices' and ' indexes,' ' genii' and 
 ' geniuses.' 
 
 The same has gone on with words from other lan- 
 guages, as from the Italian and the Spanish: thus, 
 
 * bandetto' (Shakespeare), ' bandito' (Jeremy Taylor), 
 becomes ' bandit ;' ' caricatura' (Sir Thomas Browne), 
 ' caricature ;' ' princessa' (Hacket) ' princess ;' ' scara- 
 mucha' (Dryden) ' scaramouch ;' ' caprichio' (Shake- 
 speare) becomes first ' caprich' (Butler), then ' ca- 
 price ;' ' scalada' (Heylin) or ' escalado' (Holland) 
 
 * escalade ;' ' granada' (Hacket) ' grenade ;' ' ambus- 
 cado,' ' stoccado,' ' barricado,' ' renegado,' ' hurricano' 
 (all in Shakespeare), ' brocado' (Plackluyt), ' palissa- 
 do' (Howell), drop their foreign terminations, and sev- 
 erally become ' ambuscade,' ' stockade,' ' barricade, 
 
 * renegade,' ' hurricane,' ' brocade,' ' palisade.' ' Croi 
 
NATURALIZATION OF WORDS. 63 
 
 sado' in like manner (Bacon) becomes first ' croisade' 
 (Jortin), and then ' crusade.' Other slight modifica- 
 tions of spelling, not in the termination, but in the 
 body of a word, will indicate in like manner its more 
 entire incorporation into the English language. Thus 
 ' shash,' a Turkish word, becomes ' sash ;' ' colone, 
 (Burton) ' clown ;' ' restoration' was at first spelt 
 ' restauration ;' and so long as ' vicinage' was spelt 
 ' voisinage'* (Bishop Sanderson), ' mirror' miroir* 
 (Fuller), 'recoil' ' recule,' or 'career' ' carriere,* 
 (both by Holland), they could scarcely be said to be 
 those purely English words which now they are.f 
 
 Here and there even at this comparatively late 
 period of the language, awkward foreign words will 
 be recast throughout into a more English mould ; ' chi- 
 rurgeon' will become ' surgeon ;' hemorrhoids' ' eme- 
 rods ;' ' squinancy, will become first ' squinzey' (Jere- 
 my Taylor), and then ' quinsey ;' ' porkpisce' (Spen- 
 ser), that is sea-hog, or more accurately hog-fish, will 
 be ' porpesse,' and then ' porpoise,' as it is now. In 
 other words the attempt will be made, but it will be 
 now too late to be attended with success. ' Physi- 
 ognomy' will not give place to ' visnomy,' however 
 Spenser and Shakespeare employ this briefer form ; 
 nor ' hippopotamus' to ' hippodame,' even at Spenser's 
 bidding. In like manner the attempt to naturalize 
 ' avant-courier' in the shape of ' vancurrier' has failed. 
 Other words also we meet which have finally refused 
 
 * Skinner (Etymologican, 1671) protests aojainst the word altogether, 
 as purely French, and having no right to be considered English at all. 
 
 t It is curious how etfectually the nationality of a word may by 
 these slight alterations in spelling be disguised, I have met an ex- 
 cellent French and English scholar quite unaware that 'redingoto' 
 was our * riding-coat. ' 
 
GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 to take a more popular form, although such was once 
 more or less current. Thus Holland wrote ' cirque/ 
 but we ' circus ;' Dampier ' volcan,' but this has not 
 superseded ' volcano ;' nor ' pagod' (Fope) ' pagoda ;' 
 hor ' skelet' (Holland) ^ skeleton ;' nor ' stimule' 
 (Stubbs) ' stimulus.' Bolinbroke wrote ' exode,' but 
 we hold fast to ' exodus.' ' Quirry' (Sylvester) has 
 not put ' equerry,' nor ' superfice' (Dryden) ' super- 
 ficies,' nor ' limbeck' ' alembic,' out of use. Chaucer's 
 ' potecary' has given way to a more Greek formation 
 ' apothecary.' Such as these however must be re- 
 garded quite as the exceptions ; the tendency of things 
 is the other way. 
 
 Looking at this process of the reception of foreign 
 ^%ords, and afterward their assimilation to our own, 
 and the great number of these in which this work has 
 been accomplished, we may trace, as was to be ex- 
 pected, a certain conformity between the genius of 
 our institutions and that of our language. It is the 
 very character of our institutions to repel none, but 
 rather to afford a shelter and a refuge to all, from 
 whatever quarter they come ; a,nd after a while longer 
 or shorter, all these strangers and incomers have been 
 incorporated into the English nation, within one or 
 two generations have forgotten that they were ever 
 any other than members of it, retaining no other 
 reminiscence of their foreign extraction than some 
 slight difference of name, and that often disappearing 
 or having disappeared. Exactly so has it been with 
 the English language. None has been less exclusive ; 
 none has stood less upon niceties ; none has thrown 
 open its arms wider, with a greater confidence, a con* 
 fidence justified by experience, that it could make 
 
FRENCH AT THE RESTORATION. 65 
 
 truly its own, assimilate and subdue to itself what- 
 ever it thought good to receive into its bosom. 
 
 Such are the two great enlargements from without 
 of our vocabulary. All other are minor and subor- 
 dinate. Thus the introduction of French tastes by 
 Charles II. and his courtiers returning from exile, to 
 which 1 have just adverted, ^hough it rather modified 
 the structure of our sentences than the elements of 
 our vocabulary, gave us some new words. In one of 
 Dryden's plays. Marriage a la Mode, a lady full of 
 afiectation is introduced, who is always employing 
 French idioms in preference to English, French words 
 rather than native. It is not a little curious that of 
 these, which are thus put into her mouth to render 
 her ridiculous, not a few are excellent English now, 
 and have nothing far-sought or afiected about them — 
 so often does it prove that what is laughed at in the 
 beginning, is by all admitted and allowed at the last. 
 For example, to speak of a person being in the ' good 
 graces' of another has nothing in it ridiculous now ; 
 nor yet have the words ' repartee,' ' embarrass,' ' cha- 
 grin,' ' grimace ;' which all must plainly have been 
 both novel and affected at the time w^hen Dryden 
 wrote. ' Fougue' and ' fraischeur,* which he himself 
 employed — being it is true, no frequent offender in 
 this way — have not been justified by the same suc- 
 cess. 
 
 Nor can it be said that this adoption and natural- 
 ization of foreign words ever ceases in a language. 
 Tliere are periods, as we have seen, when this goes 
 forward much more largely than at others ; when a 
 language throws open, as it were, its doors, and wel- 
 comes strangers with an especial freedom ; but there 
 
66 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 is never a time, when one by one these foreigners and 
 strangers are not stepping into it. We do not for the 
 most part observe the fact, at least not while it is 
 actually doing. Time, the greatest of all innovators, 
 manages his innovations so dexterously, spreads them 
 over such vast periods, and therefore brings them 
 about so gradually, that often, while effecting the 
 mightiest changes, he seems to us to be effecting none 
 at all. 
 
 It is, indeed, well-nigh impossible to conceive any- 
 thing more gradual than the steps by which a foreign 
 word is admitted into the full rights of an English 
 one ; and thus the process of its incoming often eludes 
 our notice altogether. It appears to me that we may 
 best understand this by fixing our attention upon some 
 single word which at this very moment is in the course 
 of becoming English. I know no better example than 
 the French word ' prestige' will afford. ' Prestige' 
 manifestly supplies a want in our tongue ; it expresses 
 something which no single word in English could ex- 
 press ; which could only be expressed by a long cir- 
 cumlocution ; being that magic influence on others, 
 which past successes, being as it were the pledge and 
 promise of future ones, breed. The word has thus 
 naturally come to be of very frequent use by good 
 English writers ; for they do not feel that in employ- 
 ing it they are passing by as good or a better word 
 of their own. At first, all used it avowedly as French, 
 writing it in italics to indicate this. At the present 
 moment some writers do so still, some do not ; that 
 is, some regard it still as foreign, others consider that 
 it has now become English, and obtained settlement 
 
NATURALIZATION OF WORDS. 67 
 
 among us.* Gradually the number of those who write 
 it in italics will become fewer and fewer, till they 
 cease altogether. It will then only need that the ac- 
 cent should be shifted, in obedience to the tendencies 
 of the English language, as far back in the word as 
 it will go — that instead of ' prestige,' it should be 
 pronounced ' prestige,' even as within these few years 
 instead of ' depot' we have learned to say ' depot' — 
 and its naturalization will be complete. 1 have little 
 doubt that in twenty years it will be so pronounced 
 by the great body of well-educated Englishmen, and 
 that our present pronunciation will pass away in the 
 same manner as ' obkege,' once universal, has passed 
 away, and given place to ' obltge.'f 
 
 Let me here observe, in passing, that the process 
 of throwing the accent of a word back, by way of 
 
 * We may see something of the same process in Greek words which 
 were being incorporated in the Latin. Thus, Cicero writes dvTinoSEg 
 {Acad., ii., 39, 123), but Seneca (£/)., 122) 'antipodes;' that is, the 
 word for Cicero was still Greek, while in the period that elapsed 
 between him and Seneca, it had become Latin. Exactly in the same 
 way * criterion' was so little felt to be an English word in the time of 
 Jeremy Taylor, that he writes it Kpirfipiov, and in like manner not 
 * theocracy' but BeoKparia. ' Apotheosis' was so little familiar when 
 Henry More used it, that he wrote dnoQiojcn ; and Sylvester, in his 
 Funeral Sermon on Richard Baxter, ascribes to him, not ' pathos,' but 
 niiOoi. Ben Jonson {Discoveries) speaks of "the knowledge of the 
 liberal arts, which the Greeks called cyKVKXo-rraidEiat'." He is not, in- 
 deed, perfectly accurate in this statement ; for the Greeks spoke of 
 
 ev kvkX'o naihia, but had no SUCh one word as £y»ct)»fXo7ra«j£j«. We 
 
 gather, however, from these words, as from Lord Bacon's using the 
 term 'circle-learning' {= orbis doctrinaj, Quintilian), that 'encyclo- 
 paedia' did not exist in their time. 
 
 t See in Coleridge's Tahle-Talk, p. 3, the am.using story of John 
 Kemblc's stately correction of the prince of Wales for adhering to 
 the earlier pronunciation, ' obleege' — '* It will become your royal 
 mouth better to say oblige." 
 
68 GAINS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 completing its naturalization, is one which we may 
 note constantly going forward in our language. Thus, 
 while Chaucer accentuates sometimes ' nature,' he also 
 accentuates elsewhere ' nature ;' while sometimes ' vir- 
 tue,' at other times ^ virtue.' ' Academy' was ' aca- 
 demy' with Cowley and Butler ;* ' prostrate' was ' pros- 
 trate,' and ' impulse' ' impulse' with Milton. ' Essay' 
 was ' essay' with Dryden and with Pope : the first 
 closes an heroic line with the word ; Pope does the 
 same with ' barrier'f and 'effort' — therefore pro- 
 nounced ' barrier,' ' effort,' by him. 
 
 Besides ' prestige' there is a considerable number 
 of other French words which in like manner are at 
 this moment hovering on the verge of English, and 
 hardly knowing whether they shall become such or 
 not. Some of these, we may confidently anticipate, 
 will complete this naturalization ; others will after a 
 time retreat again, and become for us avowedly 
 French. Such are ' ennui,' exploitation,' ' verve,' 
 ' persiflage,' ' badinage,' ' chicane,' ' finesse,' and oth- 
 ers. In respect of most among these we have been 
 tempted to that frequent employment of them, out of 
 which adoption gradually proceeds, by the fact that 
 they express shades of meaning not expressed by any 
 words of our own. ' Solidarity,' a word which we 
 owe to the French communists, and which signifies a 
 fellowship in gain and loss, in honor and dishonor, in 
 victory and defeat — a being, so to speak, all in the 
 same bottom — is so convenient that, unattractive as 
 tte word must be allowed to be, it will be in vain to 
 
 * "In this great academy of mankind." 
 
 To the Memory of Du Val 
 I « 'Twixt that and reason what a nice barrier I" 
 
GREEK AND LATIN IN ENGLISH. 69 
 
 struggle against its reception. The newspapers al- 
 ready have it, and books will not long exclude it ; 
 not to say that it has estal)lislied itself in German, 
 and probably in other European languages as well. 
 
 Greek and Latin words also we still continue to 
 adopt, although now not any longer in masses, but 
 only one by one. With the lively interest which al- 
 ways has been felt in classical studies among us, and 
 which will continue to be felt so long as any greatness 
 and nobleness survive in our land, it must needs be 
 that accessions from these quarters would never cease 
 altogether. I do not refer here to purely scientific 
 terms ; these, so long as they continue such, and do 
 not pass beyond the threshold of the science or sci- 
 ences for the use of which they were invented, being 
 never heard on the lips or employed in the writings 
 of any but the cultivators of these sciences, have no 
 right to be properly called words at all. They are 
 a kind of shorthand of the science, or algebraic nota- 
 tion ; and will not find place in a rightly-constituted 
 dictionary of the language, but rather in a technical 
 dictionary apart by themselves. Of these, compelled 
 by the advances of physical science, we have coined 
 multitudes out of number in these later times, fashion- 
 ing them mainly from the Greek, no other language 
 within our reach yielding itself at all so easily to our 
 needs. 
 
 Of non scientific words, both Greek and Latin, some 
 have made their way among us quite in these latter 
 times. To speak first of Greek, Burke attempted the 
 verb ' to spheterize,' for, to appropriate or make one's 
 own ; but this without success. Others have been 
 more fortunate ; ' aesthetic' we have got indeed through 
 
70 • GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 the Germans, but from the Greeks. Tennyson has 
 given allowance to ' ason ;' and ' myth' is a deposite 
 which vast and far-reachinp^ controversies have left in 
 the popular language. ' Photography' is an example 
 of what I was just now speaking of — namely, a scien- 
 tific word which has travelled beyond the limits of 
 the science which it designates, and which gave it 
 birth ; being heard on the lips of others besides pho- 
 tographers, and therefore having a right to be con- 
 sidered as making part of the language. ' Stereotype' 
 is another word of the same character. It was in- 
 vented — not the thing, but the word — by Didot, not 
 very long since ; but is now absorbed into healthy 
 general circulation, being current in a secondary and 
 figurative sense. Ruskin has given to ' ornamenta- 
 tion' the sanction and authority of his name. Not 
 quite so new, but of quite recent introduction into the 
 language, are ' normal,' ' abnormal.' 
 
 When we consider the near aflSnity between the 
 English and German languages, which, if not sisters, 
 may at least be regarded as first-cousins, it is some- 
 what remarkable that almost since the day when they 
 parted company, each to fulfil its own destiny, there 
 has been little further commerce between them in the 
 matter of giving or taking, that is, until within the 
 last fifty years. At any rate, adoptions on our part 
 from the German have been till within this period 
 extremely rare. The explanation of this lies in the 
 fact that the literary activity of Germany did not be- 
 gin till very late, nor our interest in it till later still 
 — not till the beginning of the present century. Yet 
 * plunder,' as I have mentioned elsewhere, was brought 
 back from Germany about the beginning of our civil 
 
GERMAN IMPORTATIONS. 71 
 
 wars, by the soldiers who had served under Gustavus 
 Adolphus and his captains. ' Iceberg' (eisberg) also 
 we must have taken whole from the German, as, had 
 we constructed the word for ourselves, we should 
 have made it, not ' ice-berg-,^ but ' ice-mountain.^ I 
 have not found it in our earlier voyagers, whose con- 
 stant-term, as far as I know, is * icefield.' An Eng- 
 lish ' swindler' is not exactly a German ' schwindler ;' 
 yet the notion of the ' nebulo,' though more latent in 
 the German, is common to both, and we must have 
 drawn the word from Germany (it is not an old one 
 in our tongue) during the course of the last century. 
 If ' /i/<?-guard' was originally, as Richardson suggests, 
 * /^i6-garde,' or ' ^oc?y-guard,' and from that trans- 
 formed, by the determination of Englishmen to make 
 it significant in English, into * /i/(?-guard,' or guard 
 defending the life of the sovereign, this will be an- 
 other word from the same quarter. Yet I have my 
 doubts. ' Leib-garde' would scarcely have found its 
 way hither before the accession of the house of Han- 
 over, or at any rate before the arrival of Dutch Wil- 
 liam with his memorable guards ; while ' lifeguard,' 
 in its present shape, is certainly an older word in the 
 language, as witness Fuller's words : " The Chere- 
 thites were a kind of lifegard to King David."* 
 
 Of late, our German importations have been some- 
 what more numerous. With several German oin- 
 pound words we have been in recent times so well 
 pleased, that we must needs adopt them into English, 
 or imitate them in it. We have not always been 
 very happy in those which we have selected for imita- 
 tion or adoption. Thus, we might have been satisfied 
 
 * Pisgah Sight of Palestine, 1650, p. 217. 
 
72 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 with 'manual/ and not put together that very ugly 
 and very unnecessary word ' liandbook,' which is 
 scarcely, I should suppose, ten or fifteen years old 
 And now we are threatened with ' word-building,' as 
 I see a book announced under the title of " Latin 
 word-building y ' Ein-seitig' (itself a modern word, 
 if I mistake not, or at any rate modern in its second- 
 ary application) has not, indeed, been adopted, but is 
 evidently the pattern on which we have formed ' one- 
 sided,' a word to which a few years ago something of 
 affectation was attached; so that any one who em- 
 ployed it at once gave evidence that he was more or 
 less a dealer in German wares : it has, however, its 
 manifest conveniences, and will hold its ground. ' Fa- 
 therland' (vaterland), on the contrary, will scarcely 
 establish itself among us ; the note of affectation will 
 continue to cleave to it, and we shall go on contented 
 with ' native country' to the end. The most success- 
 ful of these compounded words, borrowed recently 
 from the German, is ' folk-lore ;' and the substitution 
 of this for ' popular superstitions,' a long and Latin 
 phrase, must be esteemed, I think, an unquestionable 
 gain. 
 
 To speak now of other sources from which the new 
 words of a language are derived. Of course, the pe- 
 riod when absolutely new roots are generated will 
 have passed away, long before men begin to take any 
 notice by a reflective act of processes going forward 
 in the language which they speak. This pure, pro- 
 ductive energy, creative we might call it, belongs 
 only to the earliest stages of a nation's existence — to 
 times quite out of the ken of history. It is only from 
 
COMPOUNDED WORDS. 73 
 
 materials already existing either in its own bosom or 
 in the bosom of other languages, that it can enrich 
 itself in the later or historical stages of its life. 
 
 And first, it can bring its own words into new com- 
 binations ; it can join two, and sometimes even more 
 than two, of the words which it already has, and form 
 out of them a new one. It need hardly be observed 
 that much more is wanted here than merely to unite 
 two or more words to one another by a hyphen ; this 
 is not to make a new word : they must really coalesce 
 and grow together. Different languages possess this 
 power of forming new words by the combination q£ 
 old in very different degrees, and even the same lan- 
 guage at different periods of its existence. The emi- 
 nent felicity of; th^ Greek in tjiis respect has bieen 
 always acknowledged. " The joints of her compound- 
 ed words," says Fuller, *■' are so naturally oiled, that 
 they run nimbly on the tongue, which makes them, 
 though long, never tedious, because significant."* Sir 
 
 * Holi/ State, book ii., chap. vi. There was a time when the Latin 
 promised to display, if not an equal, yet not a very inferior, freedom 
 in this forming of new words by the happy marriage of old. But in 
 this, as in so many respects, it seemed possessed, at the period of its 
 hi<;hest culture, with a timidity which caused it voluntarily to abdicate 
 many of its own powers. Where do we find in the Augustan period 
 of the language so grand a pair of epithets as these, occurring as they 
 do in a single line of Catullus : * Ubi cerva silvicultrix, ubi aper nc- 
 morivagiis' ? Virgil's vitisator (^n., vii., 179) is not his own, but 
 derived from one of the earlier poets. Nay, the language did not 
 even retain those compound epithets which it once had formed, but 
 was content to let numbers of them drop : * parcipromus,' 'turpilu- 
 cricupidus,' and many more, do not extend beyond Plautus. On this 
 matter Quiiitilian observes (i., v., 70) : " Res tota magis Graecos decet, 
 nobis minus succedit ; nee id fieri natura puto, sed alienis favemus ; 
 ideoque C4im Kvprav-^^em mirati sumus, incurvicervicum vix a risu de- 
 fondimus." Elsewhere he complains, though not with reference to 
 
 4 
 
74 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 Philip Sidney boasts of the capability of our English 
 language in this respect — that "it is particularly 
 happy in the composition of two or three words to- 
 gether, near equal to the Greek " No one has done 
 more than Milton to justify this praise, or to make 
 manifest what may be effected by this marriage of 
 words. Many of his compound epithets, as ' golden- 
 tressed,' ' tinsel-slippered,' ' coral-paven,' ' flow'ry-kir- 
 tled,' ' violet-embroidered,' ' vermeil-tinctured,' are 
 themselves poems in miniature. Not unworthy to be 
 set beside these are Sylvester's ^ opal-colored morn,' 
 Drayton's '■ silver-sanded shore,' and perhaps Mar- 
 lowe's 'golden-fingered Ind.' 
 
 Our modern inventions in the same kind are for the 
 most part very inferior : they could hardly fail to be 
 so, seeing that the formative, plastic powers of a lan- 
 guage are always waning and diminishing more and 
 more. It may be, and indeed is, gaining in other 
 respects, but in this it is losing ; and thus it is not 
 strange if its later births in this kind are less success- 
 ful than its earlier. Among the poets of our own 
 time, Shelley has done more than any other to assert 
 for the language that it has not renounced this power ; 
 while, among writers of prose in these later days, 
 Jeremy Bentham has been at once one of the boldest. 
 
 compound epithets, of the little generative power which existed in tho 
 Latin language, that its continual losses were compensated by no 
 equivalent gains (viii., vi., 32): " Deinde, tanquam consummata 
 sint omnia, nihil generare audemus ipsi, quum raulta quotidie ab 
 antiquis ficta moriantur." Notwithstanding this complaint, it must 
 be owned that the silver age of the language, which sought to re- 
 cover, and did recover to some extent, the abdicated energies of its 
 earlier times, reasserted among other powers that of combining words, 
 M'ith a certain measure of success. 
 
ADJECTIVES IN AL. 75 
 
 but at the same time one of the most unfortunate, of 
 those who have issued this money from their mint.. 
 Still we ought not to forget, while we divert ourselves 
 with the strange, amorphous progeny of his brain, that 
 we owe international' to him — a word at once so 
 convenient, and supplying so real a need, that it was 
 and with manifest advantage at once adopted by all. 
 Another way in which languages increase their 
 stock of vocables is by the forming of new words ac- 
 cording to the analogy of formations, which in seem- 
 ingly parallel cases have been already allowed. Thus 
 long since upon certain substantives such as 'nation,' 
 ' congregation' ' convention,' were formed their adjec- 
 tives, ' national,' ' congregational,' ' conventional ;' 
 yet these also at a comparatively modern period ; 
 ' congregational' and ' national' first rising up in the 
 Assembly of Divines, or during the time of the Com- 
 monwealth.* These having found admission into the 
 language, it is attempted to repeat the process in the 
 case of other words with the same ending. I confess 
 the effect is often exceedingly disagreeable. We are 
 now pretty well used to ' educational,' and the word 
 is sometimes serviceable enough ; but I can perfectly 
 remember when some eighteen year^ ago an " Educa- 
 tional Magazine" was started, the first impression on 
 one's mind was, that a work having to do with edu- 
 cation should not thus bear upon its front an offensive, 
 or to say the best, a very dubious novelty in the Eng- 
 lish language. These adjectives are now multiplying 
 fast. We have ' inflexional,' ' denominational,' and, 
 not content with this, in dissenting magazines at least, 
 the monstrous birth ' denominationalism ;' ' emotional' 
 
 * CoUection of Scarce Tracts, edited by Sir W. Scott, vol. vii , p 91 
 
76 GAINS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 is creeping into books, * sensational,' and others as 
 well ; so that it is hard to say where this influx will 
 stop, or whether all our words with this termination 
 will not finally generate an adjective. Convenient as 
 you may sometimes find these, I would yet certainly 
 counsel you to abstain from all but the perfectly well 
 recognised formations of this kind. There may be 
 cases of exception, but for the most part Pope's advice 
 is good, that we be not among the last to use a word 
 which is going out, nor among the first to employ one 
 that is coming in. 
 
 * Starvation' is another word of comparatively re- 
 cent introduction, formed in like manner on the model 
 of preceding formations of an apparently similar char- 
 acter — its first formers, indeed, not observing that 
 they were putting a Latin termination to a Saxon 
 word. Some have supposed it to have reached us 
 from America. It has not however travelled from so 
 great a distance, being a stranger indeed, yet not from 
 beyond the Atlantic, but only from beyond the Tweed. 
 It is ah old Scottish word, but unknown in England, 
 till used by Mr. Dundas, the first Viscount Melville, 
 in an American debate in 1775. That it then jarred 
 strangely on English ears is evident from the nick- 
 name, " starvation Dundas," which in consequence he 
 obtained.* 
 
 Again, languages enrich themselves, our own has 
 done so, by recovering treasures which for a while 
 had been lost by them or foregone. I do not mean 
 that all which drops out of use is loss ; there are words 
 
 *,. =*= See Letters of Horace Walpole and Mann, vol. ii , p. 396, quoted 
 in Notes and Queries, No. 22.5; and anotlier proof of the novelty of the 
 word in Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, lf^l4, p. 38. 
 
WORDS COME BACK INTO USE. 77 
 
 which it is gain to be rid of; which it would be folly 
 to wish to revive; of which Dryden, setting himself 
 against an extravagant zeal in this direction, says in 
 an ungracious comparison — they do "not deserve 
 this redemption, any more than the crowds of men 
 who daily die, or are slain for sixpence in a battle, 
 merit to bo restored to life, if a wish could revive 
 them."* There are others, however, which it is a 
 real gain to draw back again from the temporary ob- 
 livion which had overtaken them ; and this process 
 of their setting and rising again is not so unfrequent 
 as at first might appear. 
 
 You may perhaps remember that Horace, tracing 
 in a few memorable lines the history of words, while 
 he notes that many once current have uow dropped 
 out of use, does not therefore count that of necessity 
 their race is for ever run ; on the contrary he confi- 
 dently anticipates a palingenesy for many among 
 them ;f and I am convinced that there has been such 
 in the case of our English words to a far greater ex- 
 tent than we are generally aware. Words slip almost 
 or quite as imperceptibly back into use as they once 
 slipped out of it. Let me suggest a few facts in evi- 
 dence of this. In the contemporary gloss which an 
 anonymous friend of Spenser's furnished to his Shep- 
 herd's Calendar^ first publislied in 1579, " for the 
 exposition of old words," as he declares, he thinks it 
 expedient to include in his list, the following, ' dap- 
 per,' ' scathe,' ' askance,' ' sere,' ' embellish,' ' bevy,' 
 • forestall,' ' fain,' with not a few others quite as fa- 
 
 * Postscript to his Translation of the uEneid. 
 t Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere. 
 
 De A. P. 46-32 ; cf. Ep. ii., ii., 115. 
 
78 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 miliar as these. In Speght's Chaucer, (1667), there 
 is a long list of " old and obscure words in Chaucer 
 explained ;" these " old and obscure words" including 
 ' anthem,' ' blithe,' ' bland,' ' chaplet,' ' carol,' ' del- 
 uge,' ' franchise,' ' illusion,' ' problem,' ' recreant,' 
 ' sphere,' ' tissue,' ' transcend,' w^ith very many easier 
 than these. In Skinner's Etymologicon (1671), there 
 is another such list of obsolete words,* and among 
 these he includes ' to dovetail,' ' elvish,' ' interlace' 
 (enterlase), 'phantom' (fantome), 'gawd,' 'glare,' 
 ' encombred,' ' masquerade' (mascarade), ' oriental,' 
 ' plumage,' ' pummel' (pomell), and ' stew,' that is, 
 for fish. Who will say of the verb ' to hallow' that 
 it is now even obsolescent ? and yet Wallis two hun- 
 dred years ago observed — "It has almost gone out 
 of use" (fere desuevit). It would be difficult to find 
 an example of the verb, ' to advocate,' between Milton 
 and Burke. Franklin, a close observer in such mat- 
 ters, as he was himself an admirable master of English 
 style, considered the word to have sprung up during 
 his own residence in Europe. In this, indeed, he was 
 mistaken ; it had only during this period revived. 
 Johnson says of 'jeopardy' that it is " a word not now 
 in use ;" which certainly is not any longer true. 
 
 I am persuaded that in facility of being understood, 
 Chaucer is not merely as near, but much nearer to us, 
 than Dryden and his contemporaries felt him to be to 
 them. He and the writers of his time make exactly 
 the same sort of complaints, only in still stronger 
 language, about his archaic phraseology and the ob- 
 scurities which it involves, that are made at the pres- 
 
 * Etymologicon vocum omnium antiguarum guce usque a Wilhelmo 
 Victore invaluertmt, et jam ante parentum cetatem in usu esse desierunt 
 
CHAUCER AND DRYDEN. 79 
 
 ent day. Thus iii the preface to his Tales from 
 Chaucer, having quoted some not very difficult lines 
 from the earlier poet whom he was modernizing, he 
 proceeds : '' You have here a specimen of Chaucer's 
 language, which is so obsolete that his sense is scarce 
 to be understood." Nor was it merely thus with 
 respect of Chaucer. These wits and poets of the 
 court of Charles II. were conscious of a greater gulf 
 between themselves and the Elizabethan era, separated 
 from them by little more than fifty years, than any of 
 which we are aware, separated from it by nearly two 
 centuries more. I do not mean merely that they felt 
 themselves more removed from its tone and spirit ; 
 their altered circumstances might explain this ; but I 
 am convinced that they found a greater difficulty and 
 strangeness in the language of Spenser and Shake- 
 speare than we find now ; that it sounded in many 
 ways more uncouth, more old-fashioned, more abound- 
 ing in obsolete terms, than it does in our ears at the 
 present. Only in this way can I explain the tone in 
 which they are accustomed to speak of these worthies 
 of the near past. I must again refer to D^yden, the 
 truest representative of literary England in its good 
 and in its evil during the last half of the seventeenth 
 century. Of Spenser, whose death was separated 
 from his own birth by little more than tliirty years, 
 he speaks ^as of one belonging to quite a different 
 epoch, counting it much to say, '' notwitlistanding his 
 obsolete language, he is still intelligible."* Nay, hear 
 what his judgment is of Shakt^speare himself, so far 
 as language is concerned : " It must be allowed to the 
 present age that the tongue in general is so much re- 
 
 * Preface to Juvenal, 
 
80 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 fined since Shakespeare's time, that many of his words 
 and more of his phrases are scarce intelligible. And 
 of those which we understand, some are ungrammati- 
 cal, others coarse ; and his whole style is so pestered 
 with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it 
 is obscure."* 
 
 Sometimes a word will emerge anew from the under- 
 current of society, not indeed new, but yet to most 
 seeming as new, its very existence having been alto- 
 gether forgotten by the gl-eater number of those speak- 
 ing the language ; although it must have somewhere 
 lived on upon the lips of men. Thus, for instance, 
 since the Californian and Australian discoveries of 
 gold, we hear often of a * nugget' of gold ; being a 
 lump of the pure metal ; and there has been some dis- 
 cussion whether the word has been born for the pres- 
 ent necessity, or whether it be a recent malformation 
 of ' ingot.' I am inclined to think that it is neither 
 one nor the other. I would not indeed affirm that it 
 may not be a popular recasting of ' ingot ;' but only 
 that it is not a recent one ; for ' nugget' very nearly 
 in its present form, occurs in our elder writers, being 
 spelt ' niggot' by them.f There can be little doubt 
 that this is the same word ; all the consonants, which 
 are generally the stamina of a word, being the same ; 
 
 * Preface to Troilus and Cressida. In justice to Dryden, and lest 
 it should be said that he had spoken poetic blasphemy, it ouo:ht not 
 to be forgotten that ' pestered' had not in his time at all so offensive 
 a sense as it would have now. It meant no more than inconveniently 
 crowded thus Milton : " fJonfined and pestered in this pinfold here." 
 
 t Thus in North's Plutarch, p. 499 : "After the fire was quenched, 
 they found in niggots of gold and silver mingled together, about a 
 thousand talents;" ani again, p. 323: "There was brought a mar- 
 vellous great mass of treasure in niggots of gold." 
 
PROPER NAMES BECOME WORDS. 81 
 
 wliile this early form ' niggot' makes more plausible 
 th ir suggestion that 'nugget' is only 'ingot' disguised, 
 seeing that there wants nothing but the very common 
 transposition of the fi^st two letters to bring that out 
 of this. 
 
 New words are often formed from the names of per- 
 sons, actual or mythical. Some one has observed how 
 interesting would be a complete collection, or a col- 
 lection approaching to completeness, in any language 
 of the names of persons which have afterward become 
 names of things, from nomina appellativa have become- 
 nomina realia. Let me, without confining myself to 
 those of more recent introduction, endeavor to enu- 
 merate as many as I can remember of the words which 
 have by this method been introduced into our lan- 
 guage. To begin with mythical antiquity — the Chi- 
 maera has given us ' chimerical,' Hermes ' hermetic,' 
 Tantalus ' to tantalize,' Hercules ' herculean,' Yulcan 
 ' volcano' and ' volcanic,' and Daedalus ' dedal,' if this 
 word may on Spenser's and Shelley's authority be 
 allowed. Gordius, the Phrygian king who tied that 
 famous ' gordian' knot which Alexander cut, will sup- 
 ply a natural transition from mythical to historical. 
 Here Mausolus, a king of Caria, has left us ' mauso- 
 leum,' Academus ' academy,' Epicurus ' epicure,' Philip 
 of Macedon a ' philippic,' being such a discourse as 
 Demosthenes once launched against the enemy of 
 Greece, and Cicero ' cicerone.' Mithridates, who had 
 made himself poison-proof, gave us the now-forgotten 
 word ' mithridate,' for antidote ; as from Hippocrates 
 we derived ' hipocras' or ' ypocras,' a word often oc- 
 curring in our early poets, being a wine supposed to 
 be mingled according to his receipt. Gentius, a king 
 
 4* 
 
82 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 of Illjria, gave his name to the plant ' gentian,' having 
 been the first to discover its virtues. A grammar 
 used to be called a ' donat' or ' donet' (Chaucer), 
 from Donatus, a famous granyiiarian. Lazarus, per- 
 haps an actual person, has given us ' lazar' and ' laza- 
 retto ;' Simon Magus ' simony ;' Mahomet a ' maumet' 
 or ' mammet,' meaning an idol ; and ' dunce' is from 
 Duns Scotus. To come to more modern times, and 
 not pausing at Ben Johnson's ' chaucerisms,' Bishop 
 Hall's * scoganisms,' from Scogan, Edward lY.'s jester, 
 or his ' aretinisms,' from an infamous writer, " a pois- 
 onous Italian ribald," as Gabriel Harvey calls him, 
 named Aretine ; these being probably not intended even 
 by their authors to endure ; a Roman cobbler named 
 Pasquin has given us the ' pasquil' or ' pasquinade ;' 
 ' patch' in the sense of fool, and often so used by 
 Shakespeare, was originally the proper name of a 
 favorite fool of Cardinal Wolsey's ; Colonel Negus 
 in Queen Anne's time first mixed the beverage which 
 goes by his name ; Lord Orrery was the first for whom 
 an ' orrery' was constructed ; and Lord Spencer first 
 wore, or at first brought into fashion, a * spencer.' 
 Dahl, a Swede, introduced the cultivation of the 
 ' dahlia,' and M. Tabinet, a French protestant refugee, 
 the making of the stufi" called ' tabinet' in Dublin. 
 The ' tontine' was conceived by an Italian named 
 Tonti; and another Italian, Galvani, first noted the 
 phenomena of galvanism. ' Martinet,' ' mackintosh,' 
 ' doyly,' ' brougham,' ' to macadamize,' ' to burke,' are 
 all names of persons or formed from persons, and then 
 transferred to things, on the score of some connection 
 existing between the one and other.* 
 
 * Several of these we have in common with the French ; of their 
 own they have * sardanapalisme,' any piece of profuse luxury, from 
 
PROPER NAMES BECOME WORDS. 83 
 
 Again the names of popular characters in literature, 
 such as have taken strong hold on the national mind, 
 give birth to a number of new words. Thus from 
 Ilomer we have ' mentor' for a monitor ; ' stentorian' 
 for loud-voiced ; and inasmuch as with all of Hector's 
 nobleness there is a certain amount of big talking 
 about him, he has given us ' to hector ;'* while the 
 medieval romances about the siege of Troy ascribe to 
 Panda rus that shameful ministry out of which his name 
 has passed into the words ' to pandar' and ' pandar- 
 ism.' ' Rodomontade' is from Rodomont, a blustering 
 and boasting hero of Boiardo, adopted by Ariosto ; 
 ' thrasonical' from Thraso, the braggart in the Latin 
 comedies. Cervantes has given us ' quixotic ;' Swift 
 ' lilliputian ;' to Moliere the French language owes 
 ' tartuffe' and ' tartuflferie.' ' Reynard,' too, which 
 with us is a duplicate for fox, while in the French 
 ' renard' has quite excluded the older ' volpils,' was 
 
 Sardanapalus ; while for ' lambiner/ to dally or loiter over a task, they 
 are indebted to Denis Lambin, a worthy Greek scholar of the sixteenth 
 century, whom his adversaries accused of sluggish movement and 
 wearisome difFuseness in style. Every reader of Paschal's Provincial 
 Letters will remember Escobar, the great casuist among the Jesuits, 
 whose convenient subterfuges for the relaxation of the moral law have 
 there been made famous. To the notoriety which he thus acquired, 
 he owes his introduction into the French language ; where ' escobarder' 
 is used in the sense of to equivocate, and * escobarderie' of subterfuge 
 or equivocation. The name of an unpopular minister of finance, 
 M. de Silhouette, unpopular because he sought to cut down unneces- 
 sary expenses in the state, was applied to whatever was cheap, and, 
 as was implied, unduly economical. It has survived in the black out- 
 line portrait which is now called a * silhouette.' (Sismondi, Histoire 
 des Franfais, tom. xix., pp. 94, 95.) The 'mansardc' roof is derived 
 from Fr. Mansart, the name of the architect who introduced it. I 
 need hardly add 'guillotine.' 
 
 * See Col. Mure, iMtiguage and Literature of Ancient Greece, vol. i, 
 p. 350. 
 
84 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 originally not the name of a kind, but the proper name 
 of the fox-hero, the vulpine Ulysses, in that famous 
 beast-epic of the middle ages, Reineke Fuchs ; the 
 immense popularity of which we gather from many 
 evidences, from none more clearly than from this. 
 * Chanticleer' is in like manner the proper name of 
 the cock, and ' Bruin' of the bear in the same poem.* 
 These have not made fortune to the same extent of 
 actually putting out in any language the names which 
 before existed, but still have become quite familiar to 
 us all. 
 
 ^ ■ We must not count as new words properly so called, 
 jalthough they may delay us for a minute, those comic 
 words, most often comic combinations formed at will, 
 and sometimes of enormous length, in which, as plays 
 and displays of power, great writers, ancient and 
 modern, have delighted. These for the most part are 
 meant to do service for the moment, and then to pass 
 away. The inventors of them had themselves no in- 
 tention of fastening them permanently on the lan- 
 guage. Thus among the Greeks, Aristophanes coined 
 fAsXXovjxjotw, to loiter like Nicias, with allusion to the 
 delays with which this prudent commander sought to 
 put off the disastrous Sicilian expedition, with not a 
 few others familiar to every scholar. The humor of 
 them sometimes consists in their enormous length, as 
 in the dii(piitTo\siJ.o'n'r,Sy](iirT^aToc; of Eupolis ; sometimes 
 in their mingled observance and transgression of the 
 laws of the language, as in the ' oculissimus' of Plau- 
 tus, a comic superlative of ' oculus ;' as in the ' do- 
 sones,' ' dabones,' which in Greek and medieval Latin 
 were names given to those, who were ever promising, 
 
 * See Genin, Des Variations du Langage Frangais, p, 12. 
 
ORIGIN OP CHOUSE. 85 
 
 ever raying, " I will give," but never performing their 
 promise. Plautus, with his exuberant wit, and exult- 
 ing in his mastery and command of the Latin language, 
 will compose four or five lines consisting entirely of 
 comic combinations tlirown oif for the occasion.* Of 
 the same character is Butler's ' cynarctomachy,' or 
 battle of a dog and bear. Nor do I suppose that 
 Fuller, when he used ' to avunculize,' to imitate or 
 follow in the steps of one's uncle, or Cowper, when 
 he suggested ' extraforaneous' for out of doors, in the 
 least intended them as lasting additions to the lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Sometimes a word springs up in a very curious way ; 
 here is one, not having, I suppose, any great currency 
 except among schoolboys ; yet being no invention of 
 theirs, but a genuine English word, though of some- 
 what late birth in the language, I mean ' to chouse.' 
 It has a singular origin. The w^ord is, as I have men- 
 tioned already, a Turkish one, and signifies ' interpre- 
 ter.' Such an interpreter or ' chiaous' (written ' chaus' 
 in Hackluyt, ' chiaus' in Massinger), being attached 
 to the Turkish embassy in England, committed in the 
 year 1609 an enormous fraud on the Turkish and 
 Persian merchants resident in London. He succeeded 
 in cheating them of a sum amounting to four thousand 
 pounds sterling — a sum very much greater at that 
 day than at the present. From the vast dimensions 
 of the fraud, and the notoriety which attended it, any 
 one who cheated or defrauded was said ' to chiaous,' 
 
 * Persa, iv. 6, 20-23. At the same time these words may be earn- 
 est enough; such was the t\ay^i(TT6Tef) yg of St. Paul (Ephes. iii. 8); 
 just as in the Middle Ages some did not account it s^ufficient to call 
 themselves "frati-es minores, minimi, postrcmi," but coined 'postre- 
 missimi/ to express the depth of their "voluntary humility/' 
 
86 GAINS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 ' chause,' or ' cliouse ;' to do, that is, as this ' chiaous' 
 had done.* 
 
 There is another very fruitful source of new words 
 in a language, or rather perhaps another way in which 
 it increases its vocabulary, for a question might arise 
 whether the words thus produced ought to be called 
 new. I mean through the splitting of single words 
 into two or even more. The impulse and suggestion 
 to this is in general first given by varieties in pronun- 
 ciation, which come gradually to be represented by 
 varieties in spelling ; but the result very often is, that 
 what at first were only precarious and arbitrary dif- 
 ferences in this, come in the end to be regarded as 
 entirely different words •: they detach themselves from 
 one another, not again to reunite ; just as accidental 
 varieties in fruits or flowers, produced at hazard, have 
 yet permanently separated off, and settled into differ- 
 ent kinds. They have each its own distinct domain 
 of meaning, as by general agreement assigned to it ; 
 dividing the inheritance between them, which hitherto 
 they held in common. No one who has not had his 
 attention called to this matter, who has not watched 
 and catalogued tliese words as they have come under 
 his notice, would at all believe how numerous they 
 are. 
 
 Sometimes as the accent is placed on one syllable 
 of a word or another, it comes to have different sig- 
 
 * It is curious that a correspondent of Skinner (Etyiiiologican, 1671), 
 although quite ignorant of this stor}', and, indeed, wholly astray in his 
 application, had suggested that 'chouse' might be thus connected with 
 the Turkish 'chiaus.' I believe GifFord, in his edition of Ben Jon- 
 son, was the first to clear up the matter. To this he was naturally 
 led by a passage in TTie Alchemist, act i., sc. i., which put him on the 
 right track for the discovery. 
 
DIFFERENT SPELLING OF WORDS. 87 
 
 nincations, and those so distinctly marked, that it 
 may be considered out of one word to have grown 
 into two. Examples of this are the following : ' di- 
 vers' and ' diverse ;' 'conjure' and ' conjure ;' ' antic' 
 and ' antique ;' ' human' and ' humane ;' ' gc'ntle' and 
 ' gent^'cl ;' * custom' and ' costume ;' ' essay' and ' as- 
 say ;' ' property' and ' propriety.' Or, again, a word 
 is pronounced with a full sound of its syllables, or 
 somewhat more shortly : ' thus, ' spirit' and ' sprite ;* 
 * blossom' and ' bloom ;' ' piety' and ' pity ;' ' courtesy' 
 and ' curtsey ;' ' nourish' and ' nurse ;' ' personality' 
 and ' personalty ;' ' fantasy' and ' fancy ;' ' triumph' 
 and ' trump' (the winning card*) ; ' happily' and ' hap- 
 ly ;' ' wagon' and ' wain ;' ' ordinance' and ' ordnance ;' 
 ' ghallop' and ' sloop ;' * brabble' and ' brawl ;' ' syrup' 
 and ' shrub ;' ' balsam' and ' balm ;' ' eremite' and ' her- 
 mit ;' ' nighest' and ' next ;' ' poesy' and ' posy ;' ' fra- 
 gile' and ' frail ;' ' achievement' and ' hatchment ;' 
 'manoeuvre' and 'manure;' — or with the dropping 
 of the first syllable : ' history' and ' story ;' ' etiquette' 
 and ' ticket ;' ' escheat' and ' cheat ;' ' estate' and 
 ' state ;' — or with a dropping of the last syllable, as 
 'Brittany' and 'Britain;' 'crony' and 'crone;' — or 
 without losing a syllable, with more or less stress laid 
 on the close : ' regiment' and ' regimen ;' ' corpse' and 
 ' corps ;' ' bite' and ' bit ;' ' white' and ' whit ;' ' sire' 
 and ' sir ;' ' land' or ' laund' and ' laun ;' ' gulph' and 
 ' gulp ;' ' launch' and ' lance ;' ' wealth' and ' weal ;' 
 ' stripe' and ' strip ;' ' borne' and ' born ;' ' clothes' and 
 
 * If there were any doubt about this matter, which indeed there is 
 not, a reference to Latimer's famous Sermon on Cards would abun- 
 dantly remove it, where * triumph' and * trump' are interchangeably 
 used. 
 
88 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 * cloths ;' — or a slight internal vowel change finds 
 place, as between ' dent' and ' dint ;' ' rant' and ' rent' 
 (a ranting actor tears or rends a passion to tatters) ; 
 ' creak' and ' croak ;' ' weald' and ' wold ;' ' float' and 
 
 * fleet ;' ^ sleek' and ' slick ;' ' sheen' and ' shine ;' 
 
 * shriek' and * shrike ;' ' pick' and ' peck ;' ' drip' and 
 
 * drop ;' ' wreathe' and ' writhe ;' ' spear' and ' spire' 
 (the least spire of grass, South) ; * trist' and ' trust ;' 
 ' band,' ' bend,' and 'bond;' 'spike' and 'spoke;' 
 ' cope,' ' cape,-' and ' cap ;' ' tip' and ' top ;' ' tamper' 
 and ' temper ;' ' gargle' and ' gurgle ;' ' snake' and 
 ' sneak' (both crawl) ; ' deal' and ' dole ;' ' sip,' ' sop,' 
 ' soup,' and ' sup ;' ' tetchy' and ' touchy ;' ' neat' and 
 ' nett ;' ' stud' and ' steed ;' ' then' and ' than ;' ' grits' 
 and ' grouts ;' ' spirt' and ' sprout ;' ' cure' and ' care ;' 
 
 * prune' and ' preen ;' ' mister' and ' master ;' ' allay' 
 and ' alloy ;' ' ghostly' and ' ghastly ;' ' person' and 
 ' parson ;' ' cleft' and ' clift,' now written ' cliff;' ' trav- 
 el' and ' travail ;' ' truth' and ' troth ;' ' pennon' and 
 
 * pinion ;' ' quail' and ' quell ;' ' quell' and ' kill ;' 
 ' metal' and ' mettle ;' ' chagrin' and ' shagreen ;' ' can' 
 and ' ken ;' ' Francis' and ' Frances ;'* ' chivalry' and 
 ' cavalry ;' ' oaf and ' elf ;' ' lose' and ' loose.' Some- 
 times the difference is mainly or entirely in the initial 
 consonant, as between ' phial' and ' vial ;' ' pother' and 
 ' bother ;' ' bursar' and ' purser ;' ' thrice' and ' trice ;' 
 
 * chattel' and ' cattle ;' ' chant' and ' cant ;' ' channel' 
 and ' kennel ;' ' wise' and ' guise ;' ' quay' and ' key ;' 
 ' thrill,' ' trill,' and ' drill ;'-^or in the consonants in 
 
 * The appropriating of Frances to women and Francis to men is 
 of quite modern introduction ; it was formerly nearly as often Sir 
 Frances Drake as Sir Francis, while Fuller {Hol^ State, book iv., ch. 
 xiv.) speaks of Francis Brandon, eldest daughter of Charles Brandon, 
 duke of Suffolk ; and sec Ben Jonson's New Inn, act ii., scene i. 
 
DIFFERENT SPELLING OP WORDS. 89 
 
 the middle of the word, as between ' cancer' and ^ can- 
 ker ;' * nipple' and ' nibble;' ' price' and ' prize ;' ' con- 
 sort' and ' concert ;' — or there is a change in both, 
 as between ' pipe' and * fife.' 
 
 Or a word is spelt now with a final /c, and now with 
 a final ch ; out of this variation two different words 
 have been formed — with, it may be, other slight dif- 
 ferences superadded : thus is it with 'poke' and 
 'poach;' ' dyke' and ' ditch ;' ' stink' and ' stench ;' 
 ' break' and ' breach,' to which may be added ' broach ;* 
 ' lace' and ' latch ;' ' lurk' and ' lurch ;' ' bank' and 
 ' bench ;' ' stark' and ' starch ;' ' wake' and ' watch.' 
 So, too, t and d are easily exchanged, as in ' clod' 
 and ' clot ;' ' vend' and ' vent ;' ' brat' and ' brood ;' 
 ' sad' and • set ;' ' chart' and ' card.' Or there has 
 grown up, besides the rigorous and accurate pronun- 
 ciation of a word, a popular as well ; and this in the 
 end has formed itself into another word : thus is it 
 with ' housewife' and ' hussey ;' ' Egyptian' and ' gyp- 
 sey ;' ' hanaper' and ' hamper ;' ' puisne' and ' puny ;* 
 ' patron' and < pattern ;' ' spital' (hospital) and ' spit- 
 tle' (house of correction) ; ' accompt' and ' account ;' 
 ' donjon' and ' dungeon ;' ' nestle' and ' nuzzle' (now 
 obsolete). Other changes can not perhaps be reduced 
 exactly under any of these heads : as between ' ounce' 
 and ' inch ;' ' errant' and ' arrant ;' ' slack' and ' slake ;' 
 bow' and ' bough ;' ' dies' and ' dice' (both being plu- 
 rals of ' die') ; ' plunge' and ' flounce ;' ' staff' and 
 ' stave ;' ' benefit' and ' benefice.'* I do not know 
 
 * Were there need of provino; that these both lie in 'beneficium/ 
 which there is not, for in Wiclifs translation of the Bible the distinc- 
 tion is still latent (I Tim. vi. 2), one might adduce a singularly char- 
 acteristic little trait of papal policy, which once turned upon thy 
 
90 GAINS OF TilF. ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 whether we ought to add to these, ' news' and ' noise,' 
 which some tell us to be the same word ; at any rate, 
 the identifying of them is instructive, for how much 
 news is but noise, and passes away like a noise before 
 long ! Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes 
 the two forms of the word into two words is in the 
 spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable 
 only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear : thus is 
 it with '■ draft' and ' draught ;' ' plain' and ' plane ;' 
 ' coign' and ' coin ;' ' flower' and ' flour ;* * check' and 
 
 * cheque ;' ' straight' and ' strait ;' ' ton' and ' tun ;' 
 ' road' and ' rode ;' ' throw' and ' throe ;' ' wrack' and 
 ^ rack ;' ' gait' and ' gate ;' ' hoard' and ' horde ;' 
 
 * knoll' and ' noil ;' ' chord' and ' cord ;' ' drachm' 
 and ' dram ;' ' sergeant' and ' serjeant ;' ' mask' and 
 
 * masque ;' ' villain' and ' villein.' 
 
 Now, if you will follow up these instances, you will 
 find, I believe, in every case that there has attached 
 itself to the different forms of the words a modifica- 
 tion of meaning more or less sensible, that each has 
 won for itself an independent sphere of meaning, in 
 
 double use of this word. Pope Adrian IV., writing to the emperor 
 Frederick I. to complain of certain conduct of his, reminded the em- 
 peror that he had placed the imperial crown upon his head, and would 
 willingly have conferred even greater ' beneficia* upon him than this. 
 Had the word been allowed to pass, it would no doubt have been 
 afterward appealed to as an admission on the part of the great empe- 
 ror that he held the empire as a feud or fief (for ' beneficium^ was then 
 the technical word for this, though the meaning has much narrowed 
 since) from the pope — the very point in dispute between them. The 
 word was indignantly repelled by the emperor and the whole German 
 nation ; whereupon the pope appealed to the etymology, that ' benefi- 
 cium' was but ' bonum factum,' and had the meanness to protest that 
 he meant no more than to remind the emperor of the ' benefits' which 
 he had done him, and which he would have willingly multiplied still 
 more. 
 
DIVERS, DIVERSE, ETC. 91 
 
 which it, and it only, moves. For take a few in- 
 stances in proof. ' Divers' implies difference only, 
 but ' diverse' difference with opposition ; thus, the 
 several evangelists narrate the same events in ' divers' 
 manners, but not in * diverse.' ' Antique' is ancient, 
 but 'antic' is now the ancient regarded as overlived, 
 out of date, and so in our days grotesque, ridiculous ; 
 and then, with a dropping of the reference to age, the 
 grotesque, the ridiculous alone. ' Human' is what every * 
 man is, ' humane' is what every man ought to be ; for 
 Johnson's suggestion that ' humane' is from the French 
 feminine ' humaine,' and ' human' from the masculine, 
 can not for an instant be admitted. ' Ingenious' ex- 
 presses a mental, ' ingenuous' a moral, excellence. A 
 gardener 'prunes' or trims his trees — properly, in- 
 deed, his vines alone (^provig-nerj ; birds ' preen' or 
 trim their feathers. We ' allay' wine with water ; we 
 ' alloy' gold with platina. ' Bloom' is a finer and 
 more delicate efflorescence even than ' blossom ;' thus 
 the ' bloom,' but not the ' blossom,' of the cheek. It 
 is now always ' clots' of blood and ' clods' of earth ; 
 a ' float' of timber, and a ' fleet' of ships ;' men ' vend' 
 wares, and ' vent' complaints. A ' curtsey' is one, 
 and that merely an external, manifestation of ' cour- 
 tesy.' ' Gambling' may be, as with a fearful irony it 
 is called, play^ but it is nearly as distant from ' gam- 
 bolling' as hell is from heaven. Nor would it be 
 hard, in every or almost every other of the words 
 which I have instanced, as in others of like kind which 
 no doubt might be added to them, to trace a distinc- 
 tion of meaning which has made itself more or less 
 strongly felt.* 
 
 * The same happens in other languages. Thus, in Greek, ' dvaQti^^ 
 and ' a»arij/ja' both signify that which is devoted, though in very dif 
 
92 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 But my subject is inexhaustible. It has no limits 
 except those, which indeed may be often narrow 
 enough, imposed by my own ignorance on the one 
 side, and on the other by the necessity of consulting 
 your patience, and of only choosing such matter as 
 will admit a popular setting forth. These necessities, 
 however, bid me to pause, and suggest that I should 
 not look round for other quarters whence accessions 
 of new words are derived. Doubtless I should not 
 be long without finding many such. I must satisfy 
 myself for the rest with a very brief consideration of 
 the motives w^hich, as they have been, are still at work 
 among us, inducing us to seek for these augmentations 
 of our vocabulary. 
 
 And first, the desire of greater clearness is a fre- 
 quent motive and inducement to this. It has been 
 well and truly said : " Every new term, expressing a 
 fact or a diflerence not precisely or adequately ex- 
 pressed by any other word in the same language, is a 
 
 ferent senses, to the gods ; ' dapaog,* boldness, and * Opacx;,* temerity, 
 are only d liferent spellings of one and the same word ; not otherwise 
 is it with ypiTTOi and yP^^"^> ^^"f ^^^ rjOos: while 6,3i\di and d/?(jXr)5, 
 aopos and acjpos, are probably the same words. So, too, in Latin, 
 'penna' and 'pinna' differ only in form, and signify alike a 'wing:* 
 while yet in practice * penna' has come to be used for the wing of a 
 bird, 'pinna' (the diminutive of which, ' pinnaculum,' has given us 
 'pinnacle') for that of a building. So is it with 'Thrax' a Thracian, 
 and ' Threx' a gladiator; with 'codex' and 'caudex;' 'providens' 
 and 'prudens;' 'celeber'and 'creber;' 'infacetus' and 'inficetus;' 
 ' providentia' and * provincia ;' * columen' and ' culmen ;' ' coitus' and 
 coetus;' 'tegriraonia' and 'asrumna;' 'Lucina' and 'luna;' 'navita' 
 and ' nauta :' in German, with * rechtlich' and ' redlich ;' ' schlecht' 
 and ' schlicht ;' ' ahnden' and * ahnen ;' ' biegsam' and ' beugsajn ;* 
 'fursehung' and 'vorsehung:' in French, with 'harnois,' the armor 
 or ' harness' of a soldier, ' harnais' of a horse : in Spanish, with ' fray 
 and 'frey.' 
 
REASONS FOR SEEKING NEW WORDS. 93 
 
 new organ of thought for the mind that has learned 
 it."* Tlie limits of their vocabulary are in fact for 
 most men the limits of their knowledge ; and in a 
 great degree for us all. Of course, I do not affirm 
 that it is absolutely impossible to have our mental 
 conceptions clearer and more distinct than our words ; 
 but it is very hard to have, and still harder to keep, 
 them so. And therefore it is that men, conscious of 
 this, so soon as ever they have learned to distinguish 
 in their minds, seek also to distinguish in their words. 
 
 The desire of greater explicitness, the sense that a 
 word covers too large a space of meaning, is the fre- 
 quent occasion of the introduction of another, which 
 shall relieve it of a portion of this. Thus, there was 
 a time when ' witch' was applied equally to male and 
 female dealers in unlawful magical arts. Simon 
 Magus, for example, and Elymas are both ' witches,' 
 in Wiclif 's Neiv Testament (Acts viii. 9 ; xiii. 8), 
 and Fosthumus in Shakespeare's Cymbeline : but when 
 the medieval Latin, ' sortiarius,' supplied another word, 
 the French ' sorcicr,' and thus our English ' sorcerer' 
 (originally " the caster of lots"), then ' witch' grad- 
 ually was confined to the hag, or female practiser of 
 these arts, while ' sorcerer' was applied to the male. 
 
 New necessities, new evolutions of society into more 
 complex conditions, evoke new words ; which come 
 forth, because they are required now; but did not 
 formerly exist, because they were not required in the 
 period preceding. For example, in Greece so long 
 as the poet sang his own verses, ' singer' (aoicJoc:) suffi- 
 ciently expressed the double function ; such a ' singer' 
 was Homer, and such he descril)es Demodocus, the 
 
 * Coleridge, Church and State, p. 200. 
 
94 (JAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 bard of the Phseacians ; that double function, in fact, 
 not being in his time contemplated as double, but 
 each part of it so naturally belonging to the other, 
 that no second word was required. When, however, 
 in the division of labor one made the verses which 
 another chanted, then ' poet' or ' maker,' a word 
 unknown in the Homeric age, arose. In like manner, 
 when ' physicians' were the only natural philosophers, 
 the word covered this meaning, as well as that other 
 which it still retains ; but when the investigation of 
 nature and natural causes detached itself from the 
 art of healing, became an independent study of itself, 
 the name ' physician' remained to that which was as 
 the stock and stem of the art, while the new offshoot 
 sought out a new name for itself. 
 
 Another motive to the invention of new words is 
 the desire thereby to cut short lengthy explanations, 
 tedious circuits of language. Science is often a great 
 gainer by words, so far as they can be called such, 
 which say at a stroke what it would have taken sen- 
 tences otherwise to have said. Thus ' isothermal' is 
 quite of modern invention ; but what a long story it 
 would be to tell the meaning of * isothermal lines,' all 
 which is saved by the word. We have long had the 
 word ' assimilation' in our dictionaries ; ' dissimilation' 
 has not yet found its way into them, but it speedily 
 will. It will appear first, if it has not already ap- 
 peared, in our books on language. I express myself 
 with this confidence, because the advance of philolo- 
 gical inquiry has rendered it almost a matter of neces- 
 sity that we should possess a word to designate a cer- 
 tain process, and no other word would designate it at 
 all so well. There is a process of ' assimilation' going 
 
ASSIMILATION, DISSIMILATION. 95 
 
 Oil very extensively in language ; it occurs where the 
 organs of speech find themselves helped by changing 
 a letter for another which has just occurred, or will 
 just occur in a word ; thus we say not ' a^iance' but 
 ' a^iance,' not ' re/ioww,' as our ancestors did when 
 the word * renommee' was first naturalized, but * re- 
 nown.' But there is also another opposite process, 
 where some letter would recur too often for euphony 
 or comfort in speaking, if the strict form of the word 
 were too closely held fast, and where consequently 
 this letter is exchanged for some other, generally for 
 some nearly allied ; thus in Latin ' mec?ic?ies' (medius 
 dies) is changed into ^ meridies ;' thus, too, the Italians 
 prefer ' ve/ewo' to ^ veneno :' and we ' cinnamon' to 
 ' cinnamow,' which was the earliest form of the word ; 
 and this process of making- unlike, requiring a word 
 to express it, will create, or indeed has created, the 
 word ' dissimilation,' which probably will in due time 
 establish itself among us in far wider than its primary 
 use. 
 
 * Watershed' has only recently begun to appear in 
 books of geography ; and yet how convenient it must 
 be admitted to be ; how much more so than " line of 
 water parting," which it has succeeded ; meaning, as 
 I need hardly tell you it does, not merely that which 
 sheds the waters, but that which divides them Q was- 
 serscheide'); and being applied to that exact ridge 
 and highest line in a mountain region, where the 
 waters of that region separate off and divide, some to 
 one side and some to the other; as in the Rocky 
 Mountains of North America there are streams rising 
 within very few miles of one another, which flow sev- 
 crally east and west, and, if not in unbroken course, 
 
:^ GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 yet as affluents to larger rivers, fall at last severally 
 into tlie Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It must be al 
 lowed, I think, that not merely geographical termi- 
 nology, but geography itself, had a benefactor in him 
 who first endowed it with so expressive'and compre- 
 nensive a word, bringing before us a fact which we 
 should scarcely have been aware of without it. , , ,, 
 
 There is another word which I have just employed, 
 ^ affluent,' in the sense of a stream which does not 
 flow into the sea, but joins a larger stream, as for 
 instance, the Tsis is an ' affluent' of the Thames, the 
 Moselle of the Rhine. It is itself an example in the 
 same kind of that whereof I have been speaking, 
 having been only recently constituted a substantive, 
 and employed in this sense, while yet its utility is 
 obvious. ' Confluents' would perhaps be a fitter name, 
 where the rivers, like the Missouri and the Mississippi, 
 were of equal or nearly equal importance up to the 
 time of their meeting. 
 
 Again, new words are coined out of the necessity 
 which men feel of filling up gaps in the language. 
 Thoughtful men, comparing their own language with 
 that of other nations, become conscious of deficiencies, 
 of important matters unexpressed in their own, and with 
 more or less success proceed to supply the deficiency. 
 For example, that too common sin, the undue love of 
 self, with the postponing of the interests of all others 
 to our own, had for a long time no word to express 
 it in English. Help was sought from the Greek and 
 from the Latin. ' Philauty' ((piXauTi'a) had been more 
 than once attempted by our scholars ; but found no 
 acceptance. This failing, men turned to the Latin ; 
 one writer trying to supply the want by calling the 
 
PHILAUTY, SUICISM, SELFISHNESS. 97 
 
 man a ^ suist,' as one s. eking his own things (sua,) 
 and the sin itself, ' suicism.' The gap, however, was 
 not really filled up, till some of the Puritan writers, 
 drawing on our Saxon, devised ' selfish' and ' selfish- 
 ness,' words which to us seem obvious enough, but 
 which yet are not more than two hundred years old.* 
 
 * A passage from Hackett's Life of Archbishop Williams, part ii., 
 p. 144, marks the first rise of this word, and the quarter whence 
 it arose : " When they [the presbyterians] saw that he was not selfish 
 (it is a word of their own new mint)," &c. In Whitlock's Zootomia 
 (1654) there is another indication of it as a novelty, p. 364 : " If con- 
 stancy may be tainted with this selfishness (to use our new wordings 
 of old and general actings)," It is he who in his striking essay. The 
 Grand Schismatic, or Suist anatomized, puts forward his own words, 
 'suist' and 'suicism,' in lieu of those which have ultimately been 
 adopted. * Suicism,' let me observe, had not in his time the obvious 
 objection of resembling another word too nearly, and being liable to 
 be confused with it; for 'suicide' did not then exist in the language, 
 nor indeed till some twenty years later. The coming up of * suicide* 
 is marked by this passage in Phillips' New World of Words, 1671, 
 3d edition; "Nor less to be exploded is the word * suicide,' which 
 may as well seem to participate of sus a sow, as of the pronoun sui." 
 
 Let me, by occasion of this quotation, urge the advantage of a com- 
 plete collection, or one approaching as near to completeness as the 
 industry of the collectors would allow, of all the notices in our litera- 
 ture, which mark, and would serve as dates for, the first incoming of 
 nejjf words into the language. These notices are of course of the most 
 various kinds. Sometimes they are protests and remonstrances, as 
 that just quoted, against a new word's introduction; sometimes they 
 are gratulations at the same ; while many hold themselves neuter as 
 to approval or disapproval and merely state, or allow us to gather, 
 the fact of a word's recent appearance. There is a very considerable 
 number of these notices which I desire, in Richardson's Dictionary: 
 thus one from Lord Bacon under 'essay ;' from Swift under * banter;* 
 from Sir Thomas Elyot under ' mansuetude ;' from Lord Chesterfield 
 under 'flirtation ;' from Davics and Marlow's Epigrams under 'gull;* 
 from llogor North under 'sham' (Appendix); the third quotation from 
 Dryden under 'mob;* one from the same under 'philanthropy,' and 
 a;;ain under ' witticism,' in which he claims the authorship of the word ; 
 that from Evelyn under ' miss ;' and from Milton under ' demagogue.* 
 There are also notices of the same kind in Todd's Johnson. The work, 
 
 5 
 
98 GAINS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 Before quitting this part of the subject, let me say 
 a few words in conclusion on this deliberate introduc- 
 
 however, is one which no single scholar could hope to accomplish, 
 which could only be accomplished by many lovers of their native 
 tongue throwing into a common stock, as into Notes and Queries, the 
 results of their several studies, there to remain treasured up for the 
 future uses of lexicographers. The sources from which these illus- 
 trative passages might be gathered can not beforehand be enumerated, 
 inasmuch as it is difficult to say in what unexpected quarter they 
 would not sometimes be found, although some of these sources are 
 obvious enough. As a very slight sample of what might be done in 
 this way by the joint contributions of many, let me throw together 
 references to a few passages of the kind which I do not think have 
 found their way into any of our dictionaries. Thus add to that which 
 Kichardson has quoted on * banter,' another from The Tatler, No. 230. 
 On ' plunder' there are two instructive passages in Fuller's Church 
 History, b. xi., § 4, 33; and b. ix., § 4; and one in Heylin's Animad- 
 versions thereupon, p. 196. On 'admiralty' see a note in Harington's 
 Ariosto, book xix.; on 'maturity' Sir Thomas Elyot's Governor, h. i., 
 c. 22 ; and on ' industry' the same, b. i., c. 23 ; on ' neophyte' a notice 
 in Fulke's Defence of the English Bible, Parker Society's edition, 
 p. 586 ; and on 'panorama,' and marking its recent introduction (it is 
 not in Johnson), a passage in Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Lan- 
 guage, first published in 1803, but my reference is to the edition of 
 1814, p. 306. On 'accommodate,' and supplying a date for its first 
 coming into popular use, see Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV. act 3, sc. 2 ; 
 on 'shrub,' Junius' Etymologicon, s. v. 'syrup;' on 'sentiment* and 
 * cajole' Skinner, s. vv., in his Etymologicon ; and on ' opera' Evelyn's 
 Memoirs and Diary, 1827, vol. i., pp. 189, 190. In such a collection 
 there ought to be included those passages of our literature which sup- 
 ply implicit evidence for the non-existence of a word up to a certain 
 moment. It may be said that it is difficult, or indeed impossible, to 
 prove a negative ; and yet a passage like the following from Boling- 
 broke would be perfectly decisive that up to and at the time when it 
 was written, the word ' isolated' did not exist in our language : " The 
 events we are witnesses of in the course of the longest life, appear to 
 us very often original, unprepared, signal, and unrelative; if I may 
 use such a Avord for want of a better in English. In French I would 
 say isoles." — {Noies and Queries, No. 226.) 
 
 There is one precaution which, let me observe, would be necessary 
 in the collecting, or rather in the after making use, of these statements 
 — for I think the passages themselves, even when erroneous, ought 
 
NOTICES 01 NEW WORDS. 99 
 
 tion of words to supply felt omissions in a language, 
 and the limits within which this or any other conscious 
 interference with the development of a language is 
 desirable or possible. By the time that a people 
 begin to meditate upon *their language, to be aware 
 by a conscious reflective act either of its merits or 
 deficiencies, by far the greater and more important 
 part of its work is done ; it is fixed in respect of its 
 structure in immutable forms ; the region in which 
 any alteration or modification, addition to it, or sub- 
 traction from it, deliberately devised and carried out, 
 may be possible, is very limited indeed. Its great 
 laws are too firmly established to admit of this ; so 
 that almost nothing can be taken from it, which it has 
 got ; almost nothing added to it, which it has not got. 
 It will travel indeed in certain courses of change; 
 but it would be as easy almost to alter the career of 
 a planet as for man to alter these. This is sometimes 
 a subject of regret with those who see what they be- 
 lieve manifest defects or blemishes in their language, 
 and such as appear to them capable of remedy. And 
 yet in fact this is well ; since for once that these re- 
 
 not the less to be noted — namely, that where there is the least motive 
 for suspicion, no one's affirmation ouj^ht to be accepted simply and 
 at once as to the novelty of a word ; for all here are liable to error. 
 Thus, more than once a word which Sir Thomas Elyot indicates as 
 new in his time, * mafj^nanimity' for example ( The Governor^ ii. 14), is 
 to be met in Chaucer. When Skinner affirmed of ' sentiment* that it 
 had only recently obtained the rights of English citizenship from the 
 translaions of French books, he was altogether mistaken, this word 
 being also one of continual recurrence in Chaucer. An intelligent 
 coiTCspondent gives in Notes and Queries, No. 225, a useful catalogue 
 of recent neologies in our speech, which yet would require to be used 
 with caution, for there are at least half a dozen in the list which havo 
 not the smallest right to be so considered. 
 
100 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 dressers of real or fancied wrongs, these suppliers of 
 things lacking, would have mended, we may be toler- 
 ably confident than ten times, yea, a hundred times, 
 they would have marred ; letting go that which it 
 would have been well to have retained ; retaining that 
 which by a necessary law the language now lets fall ; 
 and in manifold ways interfering with the processes 
 of natural logic. The genius of a language, uncon- 
 sciously presiding over all its transformations, and 
 conducting them to a definite issue, will have been a 
 far truer, far safer guide, than the artificial wit, how- 
 ever subtle, of any single man, or of any association 
 of men. For the genius of a language is the utterance 
 of the sense and inner conviction of all who speak it, 
 as to what it ought to be, and the means by which it 
 will best attain its objects ; the other attempt is but 
 that of a few ; and while a pair of eyes, or two or 
 three pairs of eyes may see much, millions of eyes will 
 certainly see more. 
 
 In the forms and laws of a language any interference 
 such as that which I have supposed is impossible ; it 
 can only find place in the words. Something, indeed 
 much, may here be done by wise masters, in the way 
 of rejecting that which would deform, allowing and 
 adopting that which will strengthen and enrich. 
 Those who would purify or enrich a language, so long 
 as they have kept within this their proper sphere, have 
 often effected much, far more than at first could have 
 seemed possible. The history of the German language 
 afi'ords so much better illustration of this than our 
 own would do, that I shall make no scruple in seeking 
 my examples there. When the patriotic Germans 
 began to wake up to a consciousness of the enormous 
 
GERMAN PURISTS. 101 
 
 encroachments which foreign languages, the Latin and 
 French above all, had made on their native tongue, 
 the lodgments which they had therein effected, and 
 the danger which threatened it, namely, that it should 
 cease to be German at all, but only a mingle-mangle, 
 a variegated patchwork of many languages, without 
 any unity or inner coherence at all, various societies 
 were instituted among them, at the beginning and 
 during the course of the seventeenth century, for the 
 recovering of what was lost of their own, for the ex- 
 pelling of that which had intruded ^rom abroad ; and 
 these with excellent effect. 
 
 But more effectual than these societies were the 
 efforts of single men, who in this merited well of their 
 country.* In respect of words which are now entirely 
 received by the whole nation, it is often possible to 
 designate the writers who first substituted them for 
 some affected Gallicism or unnecessary Latinism. Thus 
 to Lessing his fellow-countrymen owe the substitution 
 of ' zartgefuhl' for ' delicatesse,' of * empfindsamkeit' 
 for ' sentimentalitat,' of ' wesenheit' for ' essence.' It 
 was Voss (1786) who first employed ' alterthiimlicV 
 for ' antik.' Wieland, too, was the author or reviver 
 of a multitude of excellent words, for which often he 
 had to do earnest battle at the first ; such were ' selig- 
 keit,' ' anmuth,' ' entziickung,' ' festlich,' ' entwirren,' 
 with many more. It was a novelty when Biisching 
 called his great work on geography ^ erdbeschreibung' 
 instead of ' geographic ;' while ' schnellpost' instead 
 of ' diligence,' ' zerrbild' for ' carricatur,' are also of 
 
 * There is an admirable essay by Leibnitz with this view {Opera, 
 vol. vi., partii., pp. 6-51) in French and German, with this title: 
 Considerations sur la Culture et la Perfection de la Langue Allemande. 
 
102 GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 recent introduction. In regard of ' worterbuch' itself, 
 J. Grimm tells us he can find no example of its use 
 dating earlier than 1719. 
 
 Yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that 
 some of these reformers proceeded with more zeal 
 than knowledge, while others did whatever in them 
 lay to make the whole movement absurd — even as 
 there ever hang on the skirts of a noble movement, 
 be it in literature, or politics, or higher things yet, 
 those who contribute their all to bring ridicule and 
 contempt upon it. Thus, in the reaction against for- 
 eigners which ensued, an4 in the zeal to purify the 
 language from them, some went to such extravagant 
 excesses as to desire to get rid of ' testament,' ' apos- 
 tel,' which last Campe would have replaced by ' lehr- 
 bote,' with other words like these, consecrated by 
 longest use, and to find native substitutes in their 
 room ; or they understood so little what foreign words 
 were, or how to draw the line between them and na- 
 tiYjC, that they would fain have gotten rid of ' vater,' 
 ' mutter,' ' wein,' * fenster,' ' meister,' 'kelch;'* the 
 first three of which belong to the German language 
 by just as good a right as they do to the Latin and 
 the Greek ; while the otlier three have been natural- 
 ized so long, that to propose to expel them now would 
 be as if, having passed an alien act for the banishment 
 of all foreigners, we should proceed to include under 
 that name, and as such drive forth from the kingdom, 
 the descendants of the French protestants who found 
 refuge here at the revocation of the edict of Nantes, 
 or even of the Flemings who settled among us in the 
 
 * Zur Geschichte und Beurtheilung der Fremdworter im Deutschen, 
 von Aug. Fuchs : Dessau, 1842, pp. 85-91, 
 
GERMAN PURISTS. 103 
 
 time of our Edwards. One notable enthusiast in this 
 line proposed to create an entirely new nomenclature 
 for all the mythological personages of the Greek and 
 the Roman pantheon, who, one would think, might 
 have been allowed, if any, to retain their Greek and 
 Latin names. So far, however, from this, they were 
 to exchange these for equivalent German titles : Cupid 
 was to be ' Lustkind,' Flora ' Bluminne,' Aurora ' Ro- 
 thin ;' instead of Apollo, Schoolboys were to speak of 
 ' Singhold ;' instead of Pan, of ' Schaflieb ;' instead 
 of Jupiter, of ' Helfevater ;' with much else of the 
 same kind. Let us beware (and the warning extends 
 a great deal further than to the matter in hand) of 
 making a good cause ridiculous by our manner of sup- 
 porting it, of assuming that exaggerations on one side 
 can only be redressed by exaggerations as great upon 
 the other. 
 
104 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 I TOOK occasion to observe, at the commencement 
 of my last lecture, that it is the essential character 
 of a living language to be in flux and flow, to be gain- 
 ing and losing ; the vrords which constitute it as little 
 continuing exactly the same, or in the same relations 
 to one another, as do the atoms which at any one 
 moment make up our bodies remain for ever without 
 alteration. As I th6n undertook for my especial sub- 
 ject to trace some of the acquisitions which our own 
 language has made, I shall dedicate the present to a 
 consideration of some of tlie losses, or at any rate 
 diminutions, which during the same period it has en- 
 dured. It will, however, be expedient here, by one 
 or two preliminary observations, to avert any possible 
 misapprehensions of my meaning. 
 
 It is certain that all languages must, or at least all 
 languages do in the end, perish. They run their course ; 
 not all at the same rate, for the tendency to change 
 is different in diff'erent languages, both from internal 
 causes (mechanism, etc.), and also from causes exter- 
 nal to the language, laid in the varying velocities of 
 social progress and social decline ; but so it is, that 
 whether of shorter or longer life, they have their 
 youth, their manhood, their old age, their decrepi- 
 
LANGUAGES NOT IMMORTAL. 105 
 
 tude, their final dissolution. Not indeed that, even 
 when this last hour has arrived, they disappear, leav- 
 ing no traces behind tliem. On the contrary, out of 
 their death a new life comes forth ; they pass into 
 new forms, the materials of which they were composed 
 more or less survive, but these now organized in new 
 shapes and according to other laws of life. Thus, for 
 example, the Latin perishes as a living language, but 
 a great part of the words that composed it live on in 
 the four daughter-languages, French, Italian, Spanish, 
 and Portuguese ; not a few in our own. Still, in their 
 own proper being, languages perish and pass away ; 
 no nations, that is, continue to speak them any more. 
 Seeing, then, that they thus die, they must have had 
 the germs of death, the possibilities of decay, in them 
 from the very first. 
 
 Nor is this all ; but in such mighty, strong-built 
 fabrics as these, the causes which thus bring about 
 their final dissolution must have been actually at 
 work very long before the results began to be visible. 
 Indeed, very often it is with them as with states, 
 which, while in some respects they are knitting and 
 strengthening, in others are already unfolding the 
 seeds of their future and, it may be, still remote over- 
 throw. Equally in these and those, in states and 
 languages, it would be a serious mistake to assume 
 that all up to a certain point and period is growth 
 and gain, and all after, decay and loss. On the con- 
 trary, there are long periods during which growth in 
 somo directions is going hand in hand with decay in 
 others ; losses in one kind are being compensated, or 
 more than compensated, by gains in another ; during 
 which a language changes, but only as the bud 
 
106 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 changes into the flower, and the flower into the fruit. 
 There is, indeed, a moment when the growth and 
 gains cease to constitute any longer a compensation 
 for the losses and the decay ; when these ever become 
 more, those ever fewer ; when the forces of disorgani- 
 zation and death at work are stronger than those of 
 life and order. It is from this moment the decline 
 of a language may properly be dated. But until that 
 crisis and turning point has arrived, we may be quite 
 justified in speaking of the losses, the real losses of a 
 language, without in the least thereby implying that 
 the period of its commencing degeneracy has begun ; 
 it may yet be far distant ; and therefore when I dwell 
 on certain losses and diminutions which our own has 
 undergone, or is undergoing, you will not conclude 
 that I am seeking to present it to you as now travel- 
 ling the downward course to dissolution and death. 
 This is very far from my intention. In some respects 
 it is losing, but in others gaining. Nor is every- 
 thing which it lets go, a loss ; for this, too, the part- 
 ing with a word in which there is no true help, the 
 dropping of a cumbrous or superfluous form, may it- 
 self be sometimes a most real gain. It is undoubt- 
 edly becoming diff'erent from what it has been ; but 
 only diff'erent in that it is passing into another stage 
 of its development ; only different, as the fruit is dif- 
 ferent from the flower, and the flower from the bud ; 
 having changed its merits, but not having renounced 
 them ; possessing, it may be, less of beauty, but more 
 of usefulness ; not serving the poet so well, but serving 
 the historian, and philosopher, and theologian, better 
 than of old. 
 
 One thing more let me say, before entering on the 
 
GAINS AND LOSSES OP LANGUAGE. lOT 
 
 special details of my subject. It is this : the losses 
 and diminutions which a languapje endures differ in 
 one respect from its gains and acquisitions — namely, 
 that they are of tivo kinds, while its gains are only 
 of one. Its gains are only in words; it never puts 
 forth in the course of its later evolution a new power; 
 it never makes for itself a new case, or a new tense, 
 or a new comparative. But its losses are both in 
 words and in powers — in words, of course, but in 
 powers also : it leaves behind it, as it travels onward, 
 cases which it once possessed, renounces the employ- 
 ment of tenses which it once used ; is content with 
 one termination for both masculine and feminine, and 
 so on. Nor is this a peculiar feature of one language, 
 but the universal law of all. " In all languages," as 
 has been well said, " there is a constant tendency to 
 relieve themselves of that precision which chooses a 
 fresh symbol for every shade of meaning, to lessen the 
 amount of nice distinction, and detect as it were a 
 royal road to the interchange of opinion." For ex- 
 ample, a vast number of languages had at an early 
 period of their development, besides the singular and 
 plural, a dual number, some even a trinal, which they 
 have let go at a later. But what I mean by a lan- 
 guage renouncing its powers will, I trust, be more 
 clear to you before my lecture is concluded. I just 
 say this much about it now, to explain and justify a 
 division which I shall make : considering first the 
 losses of the English language in the region of words, 
 and then in the region of powers. 
 
 And first, there is going forward a continual extinc- 
 tior of the words in our language — as, indeed, in ev~ 
 
108 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 ery other. When I speak of this the dying out of 
 words, I do not allude to mere tentative^ experimental 
 words, such as I spoke of in my last lecture — words 
 offered to the language, but not accepted by it ; I re- 
 fer rather to such as either belonged to the primitive 
 stock of the language, or, if not so, which had been 
 domiciled in it long, and had appeared to have found 
 a lasting home in it. Thus, not a few pure Anglo- 
 Saxon words lived on into the formation of our early 
 English, and yet have since dropped out of our vocab- 
 ulary, while their places have been filled by others. 
 Not to mention those of Chaucer and Wiclif, which 
 are very numerous, many have lived on to far later 
 periods, and yet have finally given way. That beau- 
 tiful word ' wanhope' for despair, hope which has so 
 waned that now there is an entire want of it, was in 
 use down to the reign of Elizabeth ; it occurs so late 
 as in the poems of Gascoigne.* That not very grace- 
 ful word ' skinker' for ' cupbearer' is used by Shake- 
 speare, and lasted to Dryden's times and beyond. 
 Spenser uses often ' to welk' (welken) in the sense of 
 to fade, ' to sty' for to mount, ' to hery' as to glorify 
 or praise, ' to halse' as to embrace, ' teene' as vexa- 
 tion or grief: Shakespeare 'to tarre' as to provoke, 
 ' to sperr' as to enclose or bar in ; * to sag' for to 
 droop, or hang the head downward. Holland em- 
 
 * It is still used in prose as late as the age of Henry VIII. ; see the 
 State Papers, vol. viii., p. 247. It was the latest survivor of a whole 
 group or family of words which continued much longer in Scotland 
 than with us, of which some perhaps continue there still ; these are 
 but a few of them : ' wanthrift' for extravagance ; ' wanluck,' misfor- 
 tune ; ' wanlust/ languor ; ' wanwit/ folly ; ' wangrace,' wickedness • 
 'wantrost' Chaucer), distrust. 
 
SAXON WORDS EXTINCT. 109 
 
 ploys ' geir'* for vulture (" vultures or geirs'^), ' reise' 
 for journey, ' friiiim' for lusty or strong; and iu Sir 
 Thomas Urquhart and others a rogue is still a ' skel- 
 lum.' ' To schimmcr' occurs in Bishop Hall ; ' to 
 tind,' that is, to kindle, and surviving in ' tinder,' is 
 used by Bishop Sanderson ; ' to nimm,' or take, as 
 late as by Fuller. ' Nesli' in the sense of soft through 
 moisture, ' leer' in that of empty, ' eame' in that of 
 uncle, mother^ s brother (the German ^ oheim'), good 
 Saxon-English once, still live on in some of our pro- 
 vincial dialects ; so does ' flitter-mouse' or ' flutter- 
 mouse' (mus volitans), where we should use bat. In- 
 deed, of those above named, several do the same ; it 
 is so with * frimm,' with ' to sag,' ' to nimm.' ' Heft,' 
 employed- by Shakespeare in the sense of weight, is 
 still employed in the same sense by our peasants in 
 Hampshire. 
 
 A number of vigorous compounds we have dropped 
 and let go. Such, for instance, is Wiclif 's ' dear- 
 wortli' for beloved. ' Ear-sports' for entertainments 
 of song or music (axpo Vara) is a constantly-recurring 
 word in Holland's Plutarch. Were it not for Shake- 
 speare, we should have quite forgotten that young men 
 of hasty, liery valor were called ' hotspm-s ;' and even 
 now we regard the word rather as the proper name 
 of one than that which would have been once alike 
 the designation of all.f Fuller warns men that they 
 
 * We must not suppose that this still survives in '(/eV-falcon/ which 
 wholly belongs to the Latin element of the language ; being the later 
 Latin 'gyrofaico/ and that, "a gyrando, quia diu gyrando acriter 
 praidam insequitur.** 
 
 t " Some hotspurs there were that gave counsel to go against them 
 with all their forces, and to fright and terrify them, if they made slow 
 haste " — {Holland's Livi/, p. 922.) 
 
110 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 should not ' witwaiiton'* with God. Severe, austere 
 old men, such as, in Falstaff's words, would " hate us 
 youth," were ' grimsirs' or ' grimsires' once (Massin- 
 ger). * Realm-rape,' occurring in The Mirror for 
 Magistrates, is a vigorous word. ' Rootfast' and 
 ' rootfastness'f were ill lost, being worthy to have 
 lived ; so, too, was Lord Brooke's ' book-hunger ;' and 
 Baxter's ' word-warriors,' with which term he noted 
 those whose strife was only about words. I believe 
 ' malingerer' is familiar enough to military men, but I 
 do not find it in our dictionaries ; being the soldier 
 who, out of evil will (malin gre) to his work, shams 
 and shirks, and is not found in the ranks. 
 
 Those who would gladly have seen the Anglo-Saxon 
 to have predominated over the Latin element in our 
 language, even more than it actually has done, must 
 note with regret that in a great many instances a 
 word of the former stock has been dropped, and a 
 Latin coined to supply its place ; or where the two 
 once existed side by side, the Saxon has died, and 
 the Latin lived on. Thus, Wiclif employed ' sooth- 
 saw,' where we now use proverb ; ' sourdough,' where 
 we employ leaven ; ' to afterthink' (still in use in Lan- 
 cashire) for to repent ; ' medeful,' which has given 
 way to * meritorious ;' Chaucer has ' foreword' for 
 promise ; Sir John Cheke ' freshman' for proselyte, 
 ' mooned' for lunatic ; Jewel ' fgretalk,' where we now 
 employ preface ; ' Holland ' sunstead,' where we use 
 
 * The word is not in our dictionaries ; but it is not, as might be 
 assumed, a mere combination of Fuller's for a single occasion. Thus 
 Sylvester ( Works, 1621, p. 1150) :— 
 
 *• All epicures, witwantons, atheists." 
 
 t State Papers, vol. vi., p. 534. 
 
SAXON WORDS THRUST OUT. Ill 
 
 solstice ; and ' leechcraft' for medicine. ' Starconner' 
 (Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrol- 
 oger, yet side by side with it ; 'to eyebite' (Holland) 
 was the expressive word which was employed where 
 we now employ to fascinate ; ' waterfright' was a bet- 
 ter word than our awkward Greek hydrophobia. 
 * Wan hope,' as we saw just now, has given place to 
 despair ; ' middler,' for one who goes in the middle, 
 to mediator ; and it would be easy to increase this list. 
 
 I had occasion just now to notice the fact that many 
 words survive in our provincial dialects, long after 
 they have died out from the main body of the speech. 
 The fact is one connected with so much of deep inter- 
 est in the history of language, that I can not pass it 
 thus slightly over. It is one which, rightly regarded, 
 may assist to put us in a just point of view for estima- 
 ting the character of the local and provincial in speech, 
 and rescuing it from that unmerited contempt and 
 neglect with which it is often regarded. I must here 
 go somewhat further back than I could wish ; but only 
 so, only by looking at the matter in connection with 
 other phenomena of speech, can I hope to explain to 
 you the worth and significance which local and pro- 
 vincial words and usages must oftentimes possess. 
 
 Let us, then, first suppose a portion of those speak- 
 ing a language to have been separated off" from the 
 main body of its speakers, either through their forsa- 
 king for one cause or other their native seats, or by 
 the intrusion of a hostile people, like a wedge, between 
 them and the others, forcibly keeping them asunder, 
 and cutting off their communications, as the Saxons 
 intruded between the Britons of Cornwall and of 
 Wales ; and it will inevitably happen that before very 
 
112 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 long diiferences of speech will begin to reveal them- 
 selves between those to whom even dialectic distinc- 
 tions had been once unknown. The divergences will 
 be of various kinds ; idioms will come up in the sepa- 
 rated body, which, not being recognised and allowed 
 by those who will continue the arbiters of the lan- 
 guage, will be esteemed by them, should they come 
 under their notice, violations of its law, or at any rate 
 departures from its purity. Where a colony has gone 
 forth into new seats, and exists under new conditions, 
 it is probable that the necessities, physical and moral, 
 rising out of these new conditions, will give birth to 
 words among them, which there will be nothing to 
 call out among those who continue in the old haunts 
 of the nation ; or even their intercourse with people 
 whom they, and not the other, now touch, will bring 
 in new words, as the contact with the Indian tribes 
 has given to American-English a certain number of 
 words hardly or not at all allowed by us. 
 
 There is another cause, however, which will proba- 
 bly bje more effectual than all these — namely, that 
 words will in process of time be dropped by those 
 who constitute the original stock of the nation, which 
 will not be dropped by the offshoot ; idioms which 
 those have overlived, and have stored up in the un- 
 honored lumber-room of the past, will still be in use 
 and currency among the smaller and separated sec- 
 tion which has gone forth ; and thus it will come to 
 pass that what seems and in fact is the newer swarm, 
 will have many older words, and very often an archaic 
 air and old-world fashion both about the words they 
 use, the pronunciation of the words, and the order 
 and manner in which they combine them. Thus, after 
 
ARCHAISMS IN LANGUAGE. 113 
 
 the Conquest, we know that our insular French gradu- 
 ally diverged from the French of the continent. Chau- 
 cer's prioress in the Canterbury Tales could speak her 
 French " full faire and fetisbly," but it was French, 
 as the poet slyly adds — 
 
 " After the scole of Stratford atte bow, 
 For French of Paris was to hire unknowe." 
 
 One of our old chroniclers, writing in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, informs us that by the English colonists 
 within the Pale in Ireland a great many words were 
 preserved in common use, " the dregs of the old an- 
 cient Chaucer English'^ as he contemptuously calls it, 
 which had become quite obsolete and forgotten in 
 England itself. For example, they still called a spi- 
 der an ' attercop* — a word, by-the-way, which in the 
 north has not even now gone out of popular use ; a 
 physician a ' leech,' as in poetry he still is called ; a 
 dunghill was still for them a ' mixen' (the word is 
 still common all over England in this sense) ; a quad- 
 rangle or base court was a * bawn ;'* they employed 
 ' uncouth' in the earlier sense of unknown. Nay, 
 more, their general manner of speech was so different, 
 though continuing English still, that Englishmen at 
 their first coming over often found it hard or impossi- 
 ble to comprehend. We have another example of the 
 same in what took place after the revocation of the 
 edict of Nantes, and the consequent formation of colo- 
 nies of protestant French emigrants in various places, 
 especially in Amsterdam and other chief cities of Hoi- 
 
 * The only two writers of whom I am aware as subsequently using 
 this word arc, both writing in Ireland and of Irish matters, Spenser 
 and Swift. The passages are both quoted in Richardson's Dictionartj. 
 
114 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 land. There gradually grew up among these what 
 came to be called '' refugee French," which within a 
 generation or two diverged in several particulars from 
 the classical language of France ; its divergence being 
 mainly occasioned by this, that it remained stationary, 
 while the classical language was in motion ; it re- 
 tained usages and words which the latter had con- 
 sented to let go.* 
 
 Nor is it otherwise in respect of our English pro- 
 vincialisms. It is true that our country people who 
 in the main employ them, have not been separated by 
 distance of space, nor yet by insurmountable obstacles 
 intervening, from the main body of their fellow-coun- 
 trymen ; but they have been quite as effectually divided 
 by deficient education. They have been, if not locally, 
 yet intellectually, kept at a distance from the onward 
 march of the nation's mind ; and of them also it is 
 true that a great number of their words, idioms, turns 
 of speech, which we are ready to set down as vulgar- 
 isms, solecisms of speech, violations of the primary 
 rules of grammar, do merely attest that those who 
 employ them have not kept abreast with the advance 
 of the language and nation, but have been left behind 
 by it. The usages are only local in the fact that, 
 having once been employed by the whole body of the 
 English people, they have now receded from the lips 
 of all except those in some certain country districts, 
 who have been more faithful than others to the tra- 
 ditions of the language. 
 
 It is thus in respect of a great number of isolated 
 words, which were excellent Anglo-Saxon, which were 
 
 * There is an excellent account of this "refugee French" in Weiss* 
 History of the P^'otestant Refugees of France, 
 
OLD PARTICIPLES. 115 
 
 excellent early English, and which only are not ex- 
 cellent present English, because use, which is the su- 
 preme arbiter in these matters, has decided against 
 their lurther employment. Several of these I enume- 
 rated just now. It is thus also with several gram- 
 matical forms and flexions. For instance, where we 
 decline the plural of ' I sing,' ' we sing,' ' ye sing,' 
 * they sing,' there are parts of England in which they 
 wouli decline, ' we s'mgen,^ ' ye singew,' ' they singew.' 
 This is not indeed the original form of the plural, but 
 it is that form of it which, coming up about Chaucer's 
 time, was just going out in Spenser's ; he, though we 
 must ever keep in mind that he does not fairly repre- 
 sent the language of his time, or indeed of any time, 
 affecting a certain artificial archaism both in words 
 and forms, continually uses it.* After him it becomes 
 ever rarer, the last of whom I am aware as occasion- 
 ally using it being Fuller, until it quite disappears. 
 
 The termination of the participle present in ' ande' 
 or ' and,' which was first changed into ' end,' and then 
 further softened into ' ing ;' ' sendawt/e,' ' sende/16?,' 
 ' sendm^,' may be observed in Scotch poetry down to 
 
 * With all its severity, there is some truth in Ben Jonson's obser- 
 vation : " Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language." In 
 this matter, however, Ben Jonson was at one with him ; for he does 
 not hesitate to express his strong regret that this form has not been 
 retained. " The persons plural," he says (English Grammar, c. 17), 
 " keep the termination of the first person singular. In former times, 
 till about the reign of King Henry VIII., they were wont to be formed 
 by adding en; thus, loven, sayen, complainen. But now (whatsoever 
 is the cause) it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so gener- 
 ally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again; albeit 
 (to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof, well 
 considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue. For seeing 
 time and peison be as it were the right and left hand of a verb, what 
 can the maiming hing else, but a lameness to the whole body"?" 
 
116 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 a very recent date. In the earlier shape in which we 
 post^ess Wiclif 's Bible ' and' or ' end' is predominantly, 
 and in some parts of it invariably, used as the parti- 
 cipial termination ; while in the somewhat later re- 
 vision ' ing' has taken its place. In Chaucer the old 
 form still occasionally struggles with the new ; thus 
 ' iQ^ande^' ' criande,^ ' sparawc?^,' ' sittande,^ for ' leap- 
 ing,' ' crying,' ' sparing,' ^ sitting ;' but it has nearly 
 given away. In Spenser a solitary example of it crops 
 out in the term ' glitterand arms,' which he is fond 
 of employing. 
 
 Of such as may now employ forms like these we 
 must say, not that they violate the laws of the lan- 
 guage, but only that they have taken their permanent 
 stand at a point of it which was only a point of tran- 
 sition, and which it has now left behind, and overlived. 
 Thus, to take examples which you may hear at the 
 present day in almost any part of England — a coun- 
 tryman will say, ''He made me afeardf or ''The 
 price of corn ris last market-day ;" or " I will axe 
 him his name." You would probably set these phra- 
 ses down for barbarous English. They are not so at 
 all ; in one sense they are quite as good English as 
 " He made me afraid f or " The price of corn rose 
 last market-day ;" or "I will ask him his name." 
 'Afeard,' used by Spenser, is the regular participle 
 of the old verb ' to affear,' still existing as a law- 
 term, as ' afraid' is of ' to affray,' and just as good 
 English ; ' ris' or ' risse' is an old preterite of ' to 
 rise ;' ' to axe' is not a mispronunciation of ' to ask,' 
 but a genuine English form of the word, the form 
 which in the earlier English it constantly assumed ; 
 it is quite exceptional when the word appears in its 
 
ANTIQUATED PRONUNCIATION. 117 
 
 other, that is its present, shape in Wiclif 's Bible ; and 
 indeed ' axe' occurs continually, I know not whether 
 invariably, in Tyndale's translation of the Scriptures. 
 Even such phrases as " Put them things away," or 
 " The man what owns the horse," are not bad, but 
 only antiquated, English. While I say this, I would 
 not imply that these forms are open to you to use ; I 
 do not say they would be good English /or you. They 
 would not ; inasmuch as they are contrary to present 
 use and custom, and these must be our standards in 
 what we speak and in what we write ; just as in our 
 buying and selling we are bound to use the current 
 coin of the realm, and not attempt to pass that which 
 long since has been called in, whatever merits or in- 
 trinsic value it may possess. All which I affirm is 
 that the phrases just brought forward represent past 
 stages of the language, and are not barbarous viola- 
 tions of it. 
 
 The same may be asserted of certain ways of pro- 
 nouncing words, which are now in use among the 
 lower classes, but not among the higher ; as, for ex- 
 ample, ' contrary,' ' mischievous,' ' blasphemous,' in- 
 stead of ' contrary,' ' mischievous,' ' blasphemous.' It 
 would be abundantly easy to show by a multitude of 
 quotations from our poets, and those reaching very far 
 down, that these are merely the retention of the ear- 
 lier pronunciation by the people, after the higher clas- 
 ses have abandoned it.* And on the strength of what 
 has just been spoken, let me here suggest to you that 
 
 * A single proof may in each case suffice : 
 " Our wills and fates do so contrary run." — Shakespeare. 
 " Ne let mischievous witches with their charms." — Spenser, 
 "O argument blasphemous, false, and proud." — M/fon. 
 
118 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 in your place and position you should be on the watch 
 for provincial words and inflexions, local idioms, and 
 modes of pronouncing. Count nothing in this kind 
 beneath your notice. Do not at once ascribe anything 
 which you hear to the ignorance or stupidity of tho 
 speaker. Lists and collections of provincial usage, 
 such as I have suggested, always have their value. 
 If you are not able to turn them to any profit your- 
 selves, and they may not stand in close enough con- 
 nection with your own .studies for this, yet there al- 
 ways are those who will thank you for them ; those to 
 w^hom tlie humblest of these collections, carefully and 
 intelligently made, will be in one way or other of real 
 assistance. And there is the more need to urge this 
 at the present, because, notwithstanding the tenacity 
 with which our country folk cleave to their old forms 
 and usages, still those forms and usages must now be 
 rapidly growing fewer ; and there are forces, moral 
 and material, at work in England, which will prob- 
 ably cause that of those which now survive the greater 
 part will within the next fifty years have disap- 
 peared. 
 
 Before quitting this subject, let me instance one 
 example more of that which is commonly accounted 
 ungrammatical usage, but which is really the reten- 
 tion of old grammar by some, where others have sub- 
 stituted new : I mean the constant application by our 
 rustic population in the south, and I dare say through 
 all parts of England, of ' his' to inanimate objects, 
 and to these not personified, no less than to persons ; 
 where ' its' would be employed by others. I shall 
 presently call your attention to the late introduction 
 of this little word ' its' into the English language ; 
 
HIS AND ITS. 119 
 
 resting as altogether it does on a mistake and a for- 
 getfulness of the true constructions of the language. 
 It would be long to explain this at full : it has been 
 explained well in Latham's English Language. I 
 will only endeavor very briefly to put the matter be- 
 fore you, and trace the steps by which this came to 
 pass. Let me prepare the way by reminding you first 
 that ^ his' does not exactly correspond to ' suus,' but 
 to ' sui,' ' ejus,' or ' illius' — being the genitive of ' he' 
 ('he's' = 'his') ; and that * it,' or 'hit,' as it was 
 long written (Sir Thomas More in general so writes 
 it, although not many others so late as him), is the 
 neuter of ' he,' the final t being the sign of this neu- 
 ter, just as ' illud' is the neuter of * ille.' Now, by 
 way of illustrating the matter in hand, let us suppose 
 that those who spoke the Latin language had forgot- 
 ten that the final d in ' illud' was the sign of the neu- 
 ter ; let us suppose further that ' illud' through some 
 cause or other had still further lost in their eyes its 
 connection with ' ille,' as ' hit' through becoming ' it' 
 has obscured its relation to ' he ;' and that it had 
 been dealt with by them quite as an independent 
 word, upon which they proceeded to form a genitive 
 of its own, while ' illius' no longer seemed to them 
 such genitive ; and that they had proceeded to fashion 
 an ' illudz?/5 :' so doing, they would have committed 
 exactly the same error which we have committed in 
 forming the word ' its,' and in dismissing ' his' from 
 any longer serving as the neuter genitive no less than 
 the masculine. I do not say that many conveniences 
 have not attended the change : the desire to obtain 
 these was doubtless the motive to the creation of this 
 genitive ; which for all this rested on a misapprehen- 
 
120 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LA.NGUAGE. 
 
 sion, and, however now sanctioned by time and usage, 
 can be considered as originally only a blunder. 
 
 Attention once called to the matter, it is surprising 
 to note of how recent introduction the word ' its* 
 proves to be into the language. Through the whole 
 of our authorized version of the Bible, ' its' does not 
 once occur ;* the office which it now fulfils being ac- 
 complished as our rustics accomplish it at the present, 
 by ' his't or ' her,' J applied as freely to inanimate 
 things as to persons, or else by ' thereof or ' of it.' 
 * Its' occurs, I believe, only three times, in all Shake- 
 speare, and Milton has only once admitted it into his 
 poetry ;|1 and this, though in his time others freely 
 allowed it. How soon all this was forgotten we have 
 striking evidence in the fact that when Dry den, in 
 one of his fault-finding moods with the great men of 
 the preceding generation, is taking Ben Jonson to 
 task for general inaccuracy in his English diction, 
 among other counts of his indictment, he quotes this 
 line from Catiline — 
 
 ^' Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once" — 
 
 and proceeds, " heaven is ill syntax with his ;" while 
 in fact, up to within forty or fifty years of the time 
 when Dryden began to write, no other syntax was 
 known. Curious also is it to note that in the long 
 
 * Lev. XXV. 5 has been adduced, as an exception to this assertion ; 
 but it is not so. The * its' which is now found there, is not found in 
 the original edition of 1611. 
 
 1 Thus, Exod. xxxvii. 17: '^ Of beaten work made he the candle- 
 stick ; his shaft and his branch, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, 
 were of the same;" cf. I Kings vii. 23; Matt. v. 15; xxvi. 52. 
 
 X Rev. xxii. 2 : " The tree of life, which yielded her fruit every 
 month." 
 
 jj Hi^mn on the Nativitj/, stanza x. 
 
LUNCHEON, NUNTION, ETC. 121 
 
 controversy which followed on Chatterton's publica- 
 tion of the poems ascribed by him to a monk Rowlie, 
 living in the fifteenth century, no one appealed at the 
 time to such lines as the following — 
 
 " Life and all its goods I scorn" — 
 
 as at once decisive of the fact that the poems were 
 not of the age which they pretended. Warton, who 
 rejected, although with a certain amount of hesitation, 
 the poems — giving reasons, and many of them good 
 ones, for this rejection — yet took no notice of this 
 little word ; while yet there needed nothing more than 
 to point to it, for the disposing of the whole question : 
 the forgery at once was betrayed.* 
 
 * Lest this digression should grow to an immoderate length, I must 
 append in a note another illustration of the matter in hand. Instead 
 of * luncheon,' our country-people in Hampshire, as in many other 
 parts, always use the form 'nuncheon'or 'nuntion,' I can not doubt 
 that either this was the original pronunciation, and our received one 
 a modern corruption ; or else, and this appears to me more probable, 
 that we have made a confusion between two origmally diflFerent words, 
 from which they have kept clear. Thus, in Howell's Vocabularj/, 
 1659, and in Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary, both words 
 occur: "nuncion or nuncheon, the afternoon's repast" (cf. Hxidihras, 
 i., 1, 346 : " They took their breakfasts or their nuncheons"), and ** lun- 
 chion, a big piece," that is, of bread; for both give the old French 
 'canbot,' which has this meaning, as the equivalent of luncheon. It 
 is clear that in this sense of lump or * big piece' Gay uses Muncheon :* 
 
 " When hungry thou stood'st staring like an oaf, 
 I sliced the luncheon from the barley loaf." 
 
 And Miss Baker, in her Northamptonshire Glossary, explains * lunch* 
 as " a large lump of bread, or other edible : * He helped himself to a 
 good lunch of cake.' " We may note further that this * nuntion' may 
 possibly put us on the right track for arriving at the etym.ology of the 
 word. Kichardson has called attention to the fact that it is spelt 
 ' noon-shun' in Browne's Pastorals, which must at least suggest as 
 possible and plausible that the ' nuntion' was originally applied to 
 the laborer's slight meal, to which he withdrew for the shunning of the 
 
 6 
 
122 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 What has been here said in respect of much of our 
 provincial English, namely, that it is old English ra- 
 ther than bad English, may be affirmed, no doubt, with 
 equal right in respect of many so-called Americanisms. 
 There are parts of America where ' het' is used, or 
 was used a few years since, as the perfect of ' to heat ;* 
 * holp' as the perfect of ' to help ;' ' stricken' as the 
 participle of ' to strike.' Again, there are words 
 which have become obsolete here during the last two 
 hundred years, which have not become obsolete there, 
 although many of them probably retain only a provin- 
 cial life. Thus ' slick,' which indeed is only another 
 form of ' sleek,' was employed by our good writers of 
 the seventeenth century.* Other words, again, which 
 indeed have continued in currency on both sides of 
 the Atlantic, have yet on our side receded from their 
 original use, while they have not receded from it on 
 the other. ' Plunder' is a word in point. 
 
 In the contemplation of facts like these it has been 
 sometimes asked whether a day will ever arrive when 
 the language spoken on this side of the Atlantic and 
 on the other will divide into two languages, an old 
 English and a new. We may confidently answer, no. 
 
 heat of the middle noon; especially when in Lancashire we find a word 
 of similar formation, 'noon-scape/ and in Norfolk 'noon-miss/ for 
 the time when laborers rest after dinner. It is at any rate certain 
 that the dignity to which Munch' or 'luncheon' has now arrived, as 
 when we read in the newspapers of a " magnificent luncheon," is alto- 
 gether modern ; the word belonged a century ago to rustic life, and 
 in literature had not travelled beyond the " hobnailed pastorals" which 
 professed to describe that life. 
 
 * Thus, Fuller {Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. ii., p. 190) : " Sure 
 I am this city [the New Jerusalem], as presented by the prophet, was 
 fairer, finer, slicker, smoother, more exact, than any fabric the earth 
 afForded." 
 
OLD AND NEW ENGLISH. 123 
 
 Doubtless, if those who went out from us to people 
 and subdue a new continent, had left our shores two 
 or three centuries earlier than they did, when the 
 language was very much farther removed from that 
 ideal after which it was unconsciously striving, and in 
 which, once reached, it in great measure acquiesced ; 
 if they had not carried with them to their distant 
 homes their English Bible, and what else of worth 
 had been already uttered in the English tongue ; if, 
 having once left us, the intercourse between Old and 
 New England had been entirely broken off, or only 
 rare and partial — there would then have unfolded 
 themselves differences between the language spoken 
 here and there, which in tract of time accumulating 
 and multiplying, might in the end have justified the 
 regarding of the languages as no longer one and the 
 same. It could not have been otherwise than that 
 such differences should have displayed themselves ; 
 for while there is a law of necessity in the evolution 
 of languages, while they pursue certain courses and in 
 certain directions, from which they can be no more 
 turned aside by the will of men than one of the heav- 
 enly bodies could be pushed from its orbit by any 
 engines of ours, there is a law of liberty no less ; and 
 this liberty would not have failed to make itself in 
 many ways felt. In the political and social condition 
 of America, so far removed from ours ; in the many 
 natural objects which are not the same with those 
 which surround us here ; in efforts independently car- 
 ried out to rid the language of imperfections, or to 
 unfold its latent powers ; even in the different effects 
 of soil and climate on the organs of speech — there 
 wovld have been causes enough to have provoked in 
 
124 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 the course of time not immaterial divergences of lan- 
 guage. 
 
 As it is, however, the joint operation of those three 
 causes referred to already, namely, that the separa- 
 tion did not take place till after the language had 
 attained the ripeness of maturity ; that England and 
 America owned a common body of literature to which 
 they alike looked up and appealed, as containing the 
 authoritative standards of the language ; that the in- 
 tercourse between the one people and the other has 
 been large and frequent, as probably it will be larger 
 and more frequent still — these have been strong 
 enough to traverse and check these tendencies ; have 
 so effectually combined in repressing such divergence, 
 that the ivritten language of educated men on both 
 sides of the water remains precisely the same, their 
 .spoken manifesting a few trivial differences of idiom ; 
 while even among those classes who do not consciously 
 recognise any ideal standard of language, there are 
 scarcely greater differences — ^in some respects far 
 smaller — than exist between inhabitants of different 
 provinces in this one island of England ; and in the 
 future we may reasonably anticipate that these differ- 
 ences, so far from increasing, will have rather the 
 tendency to diminish. 
 
 But I must return from this long digression. It 
 seems often as if an almost unaccountable caprice 
 presided over the fortunes of words, and determined 
 which should live and which die. Thus, in a vast 
 number of instances, a word lives on as a verb, but 
 has ceased to be employed as a noun ; we say ' to em- 
 barrass,' but no longer an ' embarrass ;' 'to revile,' 
 
EXTINCT WORDS. 125 
 
 but not, with Chapman and Milton, a ' revile ;' * to 
 wed,' but not a ' wed,' unless it should be ur^^ed that 
 this survives in ' ived-lQok^^ a locking or binding to- 
 gether through the giving and receiving of a ' wed' or 
 pledge, namely, the ring ; we say ' to infest,' but use 
 no longer the adjective ' infest.' Or, with a reversed 
 fortune, a word lives on as a noun, but has perished 
 as a verb : thus, as a noun substantive, a ' slug,' but no 
 longer ' to slug' or render slothful ; a ' child,' but no 
 longer ' to child' (^" childing autumn," Shakespeare) ; 
 a ' rogue,' but not ' to rogue.' Or as a noun q^djective, 
 ' serene,' but not ' to serene,' a beautiful word, which 
 we have let go, as the French have ' sereiner ;'* ' meek,' 
 but not ' to meek' (Wiclif ) ; ' fond,' but not ' to fond' 
 (Dryden) ; ' intricate,' but ' to intricate' (Jeremy 
 Taylor) no longer. 
 
 Or again, the affirmative remains, but the negative 
 is gone : thus, ' wisdom,' but not any more ' unwisdom' 
 (Wiclif) ; ' cunning,' but not ' uncunning ;' ' manhood,' 
 
 * wit,' ' mighty,' ' tall,' but not ' unmanhood,' ' unwit,' 
 
 * unmighty,' ' untall' (all in Chaucer) ; ' buxom,' but 
 not ' unbuxom' (Dryden) ; ' ease,' but not ' unease' 
 (Hacket) ; ' repentance,' but not ' unrepentance ;' * sci- 
 ence, but not ' nescience' (Glanvill) ; ' to know,' but 
 not ' to unknow' (Wiclif), surviving only in ' unknow- 
 ing' and ' unknown.' Or, once more, with a curious 
 
 * How many words modern French has lost which are most vigor- 
 ous and admirable, the absence of which can only now be supplied by 
 a circumlocution or by some less excellent word! 'Oseur,' 'affran- 
 chisseur' (Amyot), 'mepriseur,' * murmurateur/ 'blaiidisscur' (Bos- 
 suet), *abuseur' (Rabelais), ' desabusement,' 'rancceur,' are all obsolete 
 at the present. So ' desaimer,' to cease to love (' disamare' in Italian), 
 * guirlander,' 'steriliser, * blandissant,* * ordonnement' (Montaigne], 
 with innumerable others 
 
126 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 variation from this, the negative survives, while the 
 affirmative is gone : thus, ' wieldy' (Chaucer) survives 
 only in ' unwieldy ;' '■ couth' and ' couthly' (both in 
 Spenser) only in ' uncouth' and ' uncouthly ;' ' ruly' 
 (Foxe) only in ' unruly ;' ' gainly' (Henry More) in 
 ' ungainly ;' these last two were both of them service- 
 able words, and have been ill lost ; ' gainly' is indeed 
 still common in the West Riding of Yorkshire ; ' exo- 
 rable' (Holland) and ' evitable' only in ' inexorable' 
 and ' inevitable ;' ' faultless' remains, but hardly ' fault- 
 ful' (Sh^espeare). In like manner, ^ semble' (Foxe) 
 has, except as a technical law term, disappeared ; 
 while ' dissemble' continues. So also of other pairs, 
 one has been taken and one left ; ' height,' or ' highth,' 
 as Milton better spelt it, remains, but ' lowth' (Becon) 
 is gone ; ' righteousness,' or ' right wiseness,' as it would 
 once and more accurately have been written, for ' righ- 
 teous' is a corruption of ' rightwise,' remains, but its 
 correspondent ' wrongwiseness' has been taken ; ' in- 
 road' continues, but ' outroad' (Holland) has disap- 
 peared ; ' levant' lives, but ' ponent' (Holland) has 
 died ; ^ to extricate' continues, but, as we saw just 
 now, ' to intricate' does not. Again, of whole groups 
 of words formed on some particular scheme, it may 
 be only a single specimen will survive. Thus, ' gain- 
 say,' that is, again say, survives ; but ' gainstrive' 
 (Foxe), that is, resist, ' gainstand,' and other simi- 
 larly-formed words, exist no longer. It is the same 
 with ' foolhardy,' which is but one, though now indeed 
 the only one remaining, of at least four adjectives 
 formed on the same principle : thus, ' foollarge,' quite 
 as expressive a word as prodigal, occurs in Chaucer, 
 and ' foolhasty,' found also in him, lived on to the 
 
RATHE, RATHER, RATHEST. 127 
 
 time of Holland ; while ' foolhappy' is in Spenser. 
 * Exhort' remains ; but ' dehort,' a word whose place 
 neither dissuade nor any other exactly supplies, has 
 escaped us. We have * twilight,' but ' twibill' (= bi- 
 pennis, Chapman) is extinct. 
 
 Let me mention another real loss, where in like 
 manner there remains in the present language some- 
 thing to remind us of that which is gone. The com- 
 parative ' rather' stands alone, having dropped on 
 either side its positive ' rathe' and superlative ' rathest.' 
 ' Rathe,' having the sense of early, though a graceful 
 word, and not fallen quite out of popular remem- 
 brance, inasmuch as it is embalmed in the Lycidas of 
 Milton — 
 
 "And the rathe primrose, which forsaken dies" — 
 
 might still be suffered to share the common lot of so 
 many words which have perished, though worthy to 
 have lived ; but the disuse of ' rathest' has created a 
 real gap in the language, and the more so, seeing that 
 ' liefest' is gone too. ' Rather' expresses the Latin 
 '- potius ;' but ' rathest' being gone, we have no word, 
 unless ' soonest' may be accepted as such, to express 
 ' potissimum,' that is, the preference, not of one way 
 over another or over certain others, but of one over 
 all ; which we therefore effect by dint of various cir- 
 cumlocutions. Nor is ' rathest' so long out of use, 
 that it would be a playing of the antic to attempt to 
 revive it. On the contrary, it is found so late as in 
 Bishop Sanderson's Sermons, who in the opening of 
 that beautiful sermon from the text, " When my fa- 
 tlier and my mother forsake me, the Lord taketh 
 me up," puts the conjrideration, " why these," that is. 
 
128 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE; 
 
 father and mother, " are named the rathesi, and the 
 rest to be included in them."* 
 
 The causes which are at work to bring about that 
 certain words, becoming in the course of time obso- 
 lete, drop out of the living spoken tongue, are often 
 very hard to arrive at. I mean that it is difficult to 
 perceive how it has come to pass that there should be 
 a certain tacit consent on the part of a whole people 
 not to employ them any more ; for, without this, they 
 could not have died out. I must be content with 
 little more than calling your attention to the fact, and 
 illustrating it by a few examples. That it is not ac- 
 cident, that there is a law here at work,, however 
 hidden it may be from us, is plain from the fact that 
 certain families of words, words formed on certain 
 principles, have a tendency thus to fall into desue- 
 tude. 
 
 Thus, I think, we may trace a certain tendency in 
 words ending in ' some,' the Anglo-Saxon and early 
 English ' sum,' the German ' sam' (' friedsam,' ' selt- 
 sam'), to fall out of use. It is true that a vast num- 
 ber of these survive, as ' gladsome,' ' handsome,' ' wea- 
 risome,' ' buxom' (this last spelt better ' bucksome' by 
 our earlier writers, for its present spelling altogether 
 disguises its true character, and the family to whi<3h 
 it belongs — being the same word as the German 
 ' beugsam' or ' biegsam,' bendable, compliant) ; but a 
 large number of these words, more than can be as- 
 ciibed to. accident, more than their due proportion, 
 are either quite or nearly extinct. Thus in Wiclif 's 
 Bible alone you might note the following : ' lovesum,' 
 
 * For other passages in ^\luc•l^ ' raihcst' occurs, see the State Pa 
 pers, vol. ii., pp. 92, 170. 
 
WORDS ENDING IN 'SOME' AND ' ARD.' 129 
 
 Miatesum,' 'lustsura,' 'wealsum,' ' heavy sum,' Might- 
 sum,' ' dclightsum ;' of these, ' lightsum' still survives 
 in provincial dialects ; but all the others, except the 
 last, are gone ; and that, although used in our author- 
 ized version (Mai. iii. 12), is now only employed in 
 poetry. So, too, ' brightsome' (Marlowe), 'wield- 
 some' (Golding), ' unlightsome' (Milton), *• ugsome' 
 (Foxe), ' laborsome' (Shakespeare), ' longsome' (Ba- 
 con), ' quietsome,' ' mirksome' (both in Spenser), 
 * toothsome' (Beaumont and Fletcher), ' gleesome,' 
 *joysome' (both in Browne's Pastorals)^ ' bigsome,' 
 ' awsome,' ' timersome,' ' winsome,' ' dosome,' meaning 
 prosperous, well-to-do (these still surviving in the 
 north), ' play some' (employed by the historian Hume), 
 ' lissome,' have nearly or quite disappeared from our 
 English speech. They seem to have held their ground 
 in Scotland in considerably larger numbers than in 
 the south of the island.* 
 
 Neither can I esteem it a mere accident that of a 
 group of depreciatory and contemptuous words ending 
 in ' ard,' at least one half should have dropped out of 
 use ; I allude to that group of which ' dotard,' ' lag- 
 gard,' ' braggard,' now spelt ' braggart,' ' sluggard,' 
 ' buzzard,' ' bastard,' ' wizard,' may be taken as sur- 
 viving specimens ; ' blinkard' (Homilies) ; ' dizzard' 
 (Burton); 'dullard' (Udal) ; ' musard' (Chaucer); 
 ' puggard,' ' stinkard' (Ben Jonson), ' haggard,' in the 
 sense of good-for-nothing hawk, as extinct. 
 
 Thus, too, there is a very curious province of our 
 
 * Jamieson's Dicllonary gives a large number of words with this 
 termination which I should suppose were always peculiar to Scotland, 
 vxs 'bangsome,' that is, quarrelsome, 'freaksome,' 'drysome,* 'gro'i- 
 some' (the German 'grausam'), 
 
 6* 
 
130 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 language, in which we were once so rich, that exten- 
 sive losses here have failed to make us poor ; so many 
 of its words still surviving, even after as many or 
 more have disappeared. I refer to those double words 
 which either contain within themselves a strong rhy- 
 ming modulation — such, for example, as ' willy-nilly,' 
 ' hocus-pocus,' ' helter-skelter,' ' tag-rag,' ' namby- 
 pamby,' ' pell-mell,' ' hodge-podge ;' or with a slight 
 difference from this, though belonging to the same 
 group, those of which the characteristic feature is not 
 this internal likeness with initial unlikeness, but ini- 
 tial likeness with internal unlikeness ; not rhyming, 
 but strongly alliterative, and in every case with a 
 change of the interior vowel from a weak into a strong, 
 generally from i into aovo ; as ' shilly-shally,' ' mingle- 
 mangle,' ' tittle-tattle,' ' prittle-prattle,' ' riff-raff,' ' see- 
 saw,' ' slip-slop.' No one who is not quite out of love 
 with the homelier yet more vigorous portions of the 
 language, but will acknowledge the life and strength 
 which there is often in these and in others still cur- 
 rent among us. But of the same sort what vast num- 
 bers have fallen out of use, some so fallen out of all 
 remembrance that it may be difficult almost to find 
 credence for them ! Thus, take of rhyming the follow- 
 ing : '• hugger-mugger,' ' hurly-burly,' ' kicksy-wicksy' 
 (all in Shakespeare) ; ' hibber-gibber,' ' rusty-dusty,' 
 ' horrel-lorrel,' ' slaump-paump' (all in Gabriel Har- 
 vey),' royster-doyster' (old play), ' hoddy-doddy' (Ben 
 Jonson) ; while of alliterative might be instanced these; 
 
 * skimble-skamble,' ' bibble-babble' (both in Shake- 
 speare), ' twittle-twattle,' ' kim-kam' (both in Hol- 
 land), 'hab-nab' (Lilly), 'trim-tram,' ' trish-trash,' 
 
 * swish-swash' (all in Gabriel Harvey), ' whim wham' 
 
WORDS UNDER BAN. 131 
 
 (Beaumont and Fletcher), ' mizz-mazz' (Locke), •• snip- 
 snap' (Pope), ' flim-flam' (Swift), ' tric-trac,' and 
 others. 
 
 Again, there was once a whole family of words, 
 whereof the greater number are now under ban ; 
 which seem to have been formed at one time almost 
 at pleasure, the only condition being that the combi- 
 nation should be a happy one — I mean all those sin- 
 gularly expressive words formed by a combination of 
 verb and substantive, the former governing the latter ; 
 as * scarecrow,' ^ telltale,' ' scapegrace,' ' turncoat,' 
 ' turntail,' ' skinflint,' ' spendthrift,' ' spitfire,' * lick- 
 spittle,' ' daredevil' (= wagehals), ' makebate' (= 
 storenfried), ' marplot,' ' killjoy.' These, with a cer- 
 tain number of others, have held their ground, and 
 may be said to be still more or less in use ; but what 
 a number more are forgotten ! — and yet, though not 
 always elegant, they constituted a very vigorous por- 
 tion of our language, and preserved some of its most 
 genuine idioms. It could not well be otherwise ; they 
 are almost all words of abuse, and the abusive words 
 of a language are always among the most picturesque, 
 and vigorous, and imaginative, which it affords. The 
 whole man speaks out in them, and often the man un- 
 der the influence of passion and excitement, which 
 always lend force and fire to his speech. Let me 
 remind you of a few of them : ' smellfeast,' if not a 
 better, is yet a more graphic, word than our foreign 
 parasite ; as graphic, indeed, for us as rps-xiSsiirvo; to 
 Greek ears ; ' clawback' (Hacket) is a stronger, if not 
 a more graceful, word than flatterer or sycophant ; 
 ' tosspot' (Fuller), or less frequently ' reelpot' (Mid- 
 dleton), is a word which tells its own tale as well as 
 
132 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 .drunkard; and ' pinchpenny' (Holland), or ' nipfar- 
 thing' (Drant), as well as or better than miser. And 
 then what a multitude more there were in like kind : 
 
 * spintext/ ' lacklatin,' ' mumblematins,' all applied to 
 ignorant cleriQs ; ' bitesheep' (a favorite word with 
 Foxe) to such of these as were rather wolves tearing, 
 than shepherds feeding, the flock ; * slipstring' (= pen- 
 dard, Beaumont and Fletcher), ' slipgibbet,' ' scape- 
 gallows ;' all names given to those who, however 
 they might have avoided, were justly owed to the 
 gallows. 
 
 How many of these words occur in Shakespeare ! 
 The following list makes no pretence to complete- 
 ness : ' martext,' ' carry tale,' ' pleaseman,' ' scarecrow,' 
 ' sneakcup,' ' mumblenews,' ' wantwit,' ' lackbrain,' 
 ' lackbeard,' ' lacklove,' ' ticklebrain,' ' cutpurse,' ' cut- 
 throat,' ' crackhemp,' ' breedbate' (the old French 
 ' attise-feu,' or ' attise-querelle'), ' swingebuckler,' 
 ' pickpurse,' ' pickthank,' ' picklock,' ' breakvow,' 
 ' breakpromise,' ' makepeace ;' this last and ' telltruth' 
 (Fuller) being the only ones in the whole collection 
 wherein reprobation or contempt is not implied. Nor 
 is the list exhausted yet : there are further, ' dingthrift' 
 (== prodigal, Herrick), ' wastegood' (Cotgrave), 
 
 • wastethrift' (Beaumont and Fletcher), ' scape thrift,' 
 'swashbuckler' (both in Holinshed), ' shakebuckler' 
 (Becon), ' crackrope' (Howell), ' waghalter' (Cot- 
 grave), ' blabtale' (Hacket), ' getnothing' (Adams), 
 ' findfault' (Florio), ' marpr elate,' ' spitvenom,' 'kill- 
 man' (Chapman), 'lackland,' ' pickquarrel ,' 'pick- 
 faults,' ' makefray' (Bishop Hall), ' makedebate' (Rich- 
 ardson's Letters)^ ' turntippet,' ' swillbowl' (Stubbs), 
 ' smellsmock,' ' cumberworld' (Drayton), ' curryfavor/ 
 
GROUP OP DISUSED WORDS. 133 
 
 ' clutclifist,' * sharkguir (both in Middleton), * make- 
 sport' (Fuller), ' hangdog' Q' Herod's hang-do^s m 
 the tapestry," Pope), ^catchpoll,' ^makeshift' (used 
 not impersonally, as now), ' pickgoose' ("the book- 
 worm was never but a pickfroose'' )^ ' killcow' (these 
 last tliree in Gabriel Harvey), ' rakeshame' (Milton, 
 prose), with others which it will be convenient to 
 omit. ' Rakehell,' which used to be spelt ' rakeF or 
 ' rakle' (Chaucer), a good English word, would be 
 only through an error included in this list, although 
 Cowper, when he writes '• rakehell' (^" rakp-hell baro- 
 net"), evidently regarded it as belonging to this 
 group.* 
 
 Perhaps one of the most frequent causes which leads 
 to the disuse of words is this : in some inexplicable 
 way there comes to be attached something of ludi- 
 crous, or coarse, or vulgar to them, out of a feeling 
 of which they are no longer used in earnest, serious 
 writing, and at the same time fall out of the discourse 
 of those who desire to speak elegantly. Not, indeed, 
 that this degradation which overtakes words is in all 
 
 * The mistake is far garlier : it is clear that at a very early time 
 tlie sound snugestcd first the scn&e, and then this spelling. Thus, 
 Stanihurst, Description of Inland, p. 28 : "They are taken for no 
 better than rakchels, or the devil's black guard ;" and often elsewhere. 
 Let me observe, before quitting the matter, that many languages have 
 groups of words formed upon the same scheme, although, singularly 
 enough, they are altogether absent from the Anglo-Saxon. (J. Grimtn, 
 Deutsche Graitun.,\o\. ii., p. 976.) The Spaniards have a great many 
 very expressive words of this formation. Thus, with allusion to the 
 great struggle in which Christian Spain was engaged for so many 
 centuries, a '^'aunting braggart is a ' matamoros/ a 'slaymoor;' he ia 
 a ' matasioie,' a ' slaysevcn ;' <* ' perdonavidas,' a ' sparelives.' Others 
 jnay be added to these, as 'azotacalles,' ' picapleytos,' 'saltaparedes/ 
 * rompe-esquinas/ 'ganapan,' oascatreguas.' 
 
134 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 cases inexplicable. The unheroic character of most 
 men's minds, with their consequent intolerance of that 
 heroic which they can not understand, is constantly at 
 work, too often with success, in taking down words 
 of nobleness from their high pitch, and, as the most 
 effectual way of doing this, in casting an air of mock- 
 heroic about them. Thus, ' to dub,' a word resting 
 on one of the noblest usages of chivalry, has now 
 something of ludicrous about it ; so, too, has ' doughty.' 
 They belong to that serio-comic, mock-heroic diction, 
 the multiplication of which, as of all parodies on great- 
 ness, is always a sign of evil augury for a nation, is a 
 present sign of evil augury for our own. 
 
 ' Pate' in the sense of head is now comic or igno- 
 ble ; it was not so once, as is plain from its occurrence 
 in the Prayer-Book version of the Psalms (Ps. vii. 17) ; 
 as little was ' noddle,' which occurs in one of the few 
 poetical passages in Hawes. The same may be said 
 of ' sconce,' in this sense at least ; of ' nowl' or ' noil,' 
 which Wiclif uses ; of ' slops' for trousers (Marlowe's 
 Lucan) ; of ' smug,' which once meant no more than 
 adorned (" the smug bridegroom," Shakespeare). * To 
 nap,' in the sense of to slumber lightly, is now a word 
 without dignity ; while yet in Wiclif 's Bible it is said, 
 " Lo he schall not nappe^ nether slepe that kepeth 
 Israel" (Ps. cxxi. 4). 'To punch,' ' to thump,' both 
 which, and in serious writing, occur in Spenser, could 
 not now obtain the same use, nor yet to ' wag,' or to 
 ' buss ;' neither would any one now say that at Lystra 
 Barnabas and Paul " rent their clothes and skipped 
 out among the people" (Acts xiv. 14), which is the 
 language that Wiclif employs. We should scarcely 
 call now a seduction of Satan a '•'flam of the devil" 
 
COARSENESS ATTACHED TO WORDS. 135 
 
 (Henry More). It is not otherwise in regard of 
 phrases. In the glorious ballad of Chevy C/m56?, which 
 Sir Philip Sidney declared he could never hear but 
 " it stirred him like a trumpet," a noble warrior whose 
 legs are hewn off is described as being " in doleful 
 dumps ;" just as, in Holland's Livy^ the Romans are 
 set forth as being " in the dumps" as a consequence 
 of their disastrous defeat at Cannae. And in the ser- 
 mons of Barrow, who certainly intended to write an 
 elevated style, and did not seek familiar, still less vul 
 gar, expressions, we yet meet such terms as ' to rate,' 
 ' to snub,' ' to gull,' ' to pudder,' ' dumpish,' and the 
 like ; which we may confidently affirm were not vul- 
 gar when he used them. 
 
 Then, too, the advance of refinement causes words 
 to be foregone which are felt to speak too plainly. It 
 is not here merely that one age has more delicate 
 ears than another ; this is something ; but besides this, 
 and even if this delicacy were at a standstill, there 
 would still be a continual process going on, by which 
 the words, which for a certain while have been em- 
 ployed to designate coarse or disagreeable facts or 
 things, would be disallowed or at least relinquished 
 to the lower classes of society, and others assumed in 
 their place. The former by long use being felt to 
 have come into too direct and close relation with that 
 which they designate, to summon it up too distinctly 
 before the mind's eye, they are thereupon exchanged 
 for other words, which, at first at least, indicate more 
 lightly and at a greater distance the oftensive thing, 
 rather hint and suggest than paint and describe it: 
 although by-and-by these new will be themselves also 
 probably discarded, and for the same reasons which 
 
136 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 brought about the dismissal of those which they re- 
 placed. It lies in the necessity of things that I must 
 leave this part of my subject without illustration.* 
 
 Thus much in respect of the words, and the charac- 
 ter of tlie words, which we have lost or let go. In 
 regard of these, if a language, as it travels onward, 
 loses some, it also acquires others, and probably many 
 more than those which it loses ; they are leaves on 
 the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a 
 new succession takes their place. But it is not so, as 
 I already observed, with the forms or powers of a 
 language ; that is, with the various inflections, moods, 
 duplicate or triplicate formation of tenses, which those 
 who speak the language come gradually to perceive 
 that they can do without, and therefore cease to em- 
 ploy ; seeking to suppress grammatical intricacies, and 
 to obtain grammatical simplicity and so far as possi- 
 ble a pervading uniformity, sometimes even at the 
 hazard of letting go that which had real worth, and 
 contributed to the more lively, if not to the clearer, 
 setting forth of the inner thought or feeling of the 
 mind. Here there is only loss, with no compensating 
 gain ; or at least only diminution, never addition. In 
 regard of these inner forces and potencies of a lan- 
 guage, there is no creative energy at work in its later 
 periods — in any, indeed, but quite the earliest. They 
 
 * As not, however, turning on a very coarse matter, and illustrating 
 the subject with infinite wit and humor, I might refer the Spanish 
 scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote and his squire on the 
 dismissal of ' regoldar' from the language of good society, and the 
 substitution of ' erutar' in its room. [Don Quixote, iv., vii., 43.) In a 
 letter of Cicero to Pa;tus {H^m., ix., 22) there is a subtile and inter, 
 esting disquisition on forbidden words and their philosophy. 
 
GENDERS, CASES, ETC. 137 
 
 are not as the leaves, but may be likened to the stem 
 and leading branches of a tree, whose shape, mould, 
 and direction, are determined at a very early period 
 of its growth : and which accident or other causes 
 may diminish, but which can never be increased. I 
 have already slightly alluded to a very illustrious ex- 
 ample of this, namely, to the dropping of the dual 
 number in the Greek language. When the New Tes- 
 tament was written, it had so fallen out of the com- 
 mon dialect in which that is composed, that, as is 
 probably well known to us all, no single example of 
 it occurs throughout all the books of the New Cove* 
 nant. Nor, in respect of this very form, is this an 
 isolated case. There is no dual in the modern Ger- 
 man, Danish, or Swedish; in the old German and 
 Norse there was. 
 
 How much in this respect for better or for worse 
 we have got rid of. How bare, whether too bare is 
 another question, we have stripped ourselves, I need 
 hardly tell you ; what simplicity reigns in the present 
 English, as compared with the old Anglo-Saxon. 
 That had six declensions, our present English but 
 one ; that had three genders, English, if we except 
 one or two words, has none ; that formed the genitive 
 in a variety of ways, we only in one ; and the same 
 fact meets us, wherever we compare the grammars of 
 the two languages. At the same time, it can scarcely 
 be repeated too often, that in the estimate of the gain 
 or loss thereupon ensuing, we must by no means put 
 certainly to loss everything which the language has 
 dismissed, any more than everything to gain which it 
 has acquired. It is no real wealth in a language to 
 have needless and superfluous forms. They are often 
 
138 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 an embarrassment and an incumbrance to it rather 
 than a help. The Finnish language has fourteen 
 cases ; I know nothing further than the fact ; but feel 
 quite sure that it can not do more, nor indeed at all 
 as much, with its fourteen as the Greek is able to do 
 with its five. 
 
 And therefore it seems to me that some words of 
 Otfried Miilh r, in many ways admirable, do yet exag- 
 gerate the losses consequent on the reduction of the 
 forms of a language. " It may be observed," he says, 
 " that in the lapse of ages, from the time that the 
 progress of language can be observed, grammatical 
 forms, such as the signs of cases, moods, and tenses, 
 have never been increased in number, but have been 
 constantly diminishing. The history of the Romance, 
 as well as of the Germanic languages, shows in the 
 clearest manner how a grammar, once powerful and 
 copious, has been gradually weakened and impover- 
 ished, until at last it preserves only a few fragments 
 of its ancient inflections. Now there is no doubt that 
 this luxuriance of grammatical forms is not an essential 
 part of a language, considered merely as a vehicle of 
 thought. It is well known that the Chinese language, 
 which is merely a collection of radical words destitute 
 of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical 
 ideas with tolerable precision ; and the English, which, 
 from the mode of its formation by a mixture of differ- 
 ent tongues, has been stripped of its grammatical in- 
 flections more completely than any other European 
 language, seems nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to 
 be distinguished by its energetic eloquence. All this 
 must be admitted by every unprejudiced inquirer; but 
 yet it can not be overlooked, that this copiousness of 
 
TERMINATION IN ESS. 139 
 
 grammatical forms, and the fine shades of meaning 
 which they express, evince a nicety of observation, 
 and a faculty of distinguishing, which unquestionably 
 prove that the race of mankind among whom these 
 languages arose was characterized by a remarkable 
 correctness and subtilty of thought. Nor can any 
 modern European, who forms iu his mind a lively 
 image of the classical languages in their ancient gram- 
 matical luxuriance, and compares them with his mother- 
 tongue, conceal from himself that in the ancient lan- 
 guages the words, with their inflections, clothed as j^ 
 were with muscles and sinews, come forward like living 
 bodies, full of expression and character, while in the 
 modern tongues the words seem shrunk up into mere 
 skeletons."* 
 
 I can not think but that this is stated somewhat 
 too strongly ; however, when my lecture is concluded, 
 you will be able better to judge for yourselves. And 
 here I am sure that you will greatly prefer that I 
 should address myself to the consideration not of forms 
 which the language has relinquished long ago, but 
 mainly to those which it is relinquishing now ; such 
 as, touching us more nearly, will have a far more, 
 lively interest for us all. Let me then instance one 
 of these. The female termination which we employ 
 in certain words, such as from ^e^ir' ' heiress,' from 
 ' prophet' ^^"^ophetess,' from 'sorcerer' 'sorceress,' was 
 once far more widely extended than it nowli ; the 
 words which retain it are daily becoming fewer. It 
 has already fallen away in so many, and is evidently 
 becoming of more unfrequent use in so many others, 
 that, if we may augur of the future from the analogy 
 
 * Literature of Greece, p. 5. 
 
140 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 of tlie past, it will one day altogether disappear from 
 
 the language. Thus all these occur in Wiclif 's Bible : 
 
 techeress' as the female teacher (2 Chron. xxxv. 25) 
 
 frienHess' (Prov. vii. 4) ; ' servantess' (Gen. xvi. 2) 
 
 leperess' (=saltatrix, Ecclus. ix. 4); ' neighboress 
 
 (Exod. iii. 22); ' sinneress' (Luke vii. 37); 'devour- 
 
 ess' (Ezek. xxxvi. 13) ; ' spousess' (Prov. v. 19) ; 
 
 ' thralless' (Jer. xxxvi. 16) ; ' dwelleress' (Jer. xxi. 
 
 13) ; ' waileress' (Jer. ix. 17) ; ' cheseress' (= elec- 
 
 trix, Wisd. viii. 4); ^^mgeress,' ' breakeress/ ^ wait^ 
 
 eress/ this last indeed having recently come up again. 
 
 Add to these ' chideress' the female chider, ' herdess,' 
 
 * constabless,' ' moveress,' ' soudaness' (= sultana), 
 ' guideress,' 'charmeress' (all in Chaucer); and others, 
 which however we may have now let them fall, reached 
 to far later periods of the language ; thus ^ vanqueress' 
 (Fabyan), ' poisoneress' (Greneway) ; '. pedleressj_^ 
 
 * championess,' ' vassaless,' ' avengeress,' ' warrioress,' 
 'vietoress,' 'creatress' (all in Spenser); ' fornicatress,' 
 
 * cloistress' (both in Shakespeare) ; 'vowess' (Holin- 
 shed); ' ministress,' ' flatteress' (both in Holland); 
 ' saintess,' ' deviless' (both in Sir T. Urquhart); 'hero- 
 .ess,' ' dragoness,' ' butleress' (all in Chapman) ; ' cli- 
 
 entcss,' ' pandress' (both in Middleton) ; ' papess' 
 (Bishop Hall) ; ' soldieress,' ' guardianess,' 'votaress' 
 (all in Beaumont and Fletcher) ; comfortress' (Ben 
 Jonson); ' soveraintess' (Sylvester); ' solicitress,' *im- 
 postress,' ' buildress,' ' intrudress,' (all in Fuller) ; 
 *^1danceress' (Prynne); ' commandress' (Burton); ' mon- 
 archess' (Drayton) ; ' discipless' (Speed) ; ' auditress,' 
 '"caleress,' ' chantress,' ' tyranness' (all in Milton) ; 
 ' citess,' ' divineress' (both in Dryden) ; ' deaness' 
 (Stone); ' detractress' (Addison); ' hucsteress' (How- 
 
TERMINATION IN 'STER.' 141 
 
 ell) ; ' tutoress' (Shaftesbury) ; ' farmeress' (Lord 
 Peterborougli, Letter to Fope} ; * laddess,' which how- 
 ever still survives in the contracted form of ' lass ;' 
 with more which, I doubt not, it would not be very 
 hard to bring together. 
 
 Exactly the same thing has happened with another 
 feminine affix, which was once used in a far greater 
 number of words than now. I mean * ster' in the room 
 of ' er,' to indicate that a noun before applied to the 
 male was now intended to be transferred and applied 
 to the female.* ' Spinner,' taking the feminine form 
 of ' spinster,' furnishes an excellent example of what 
 I mean, and perhaps the only one in which both the 
 forms still remain in use. Formerly, however, there 
 were a vast number of these ; thus ' baker' had ' bake- 
 ster,' being the female who baked ; ' brewer' ' brew- 
 ster ;' ' sewer' ' sewster ;' ' reader' ' roadster ;' ' seamer' 
 ' seamster ;' ' fruiterer' ' fruitester ;' ' tumbler' ' tumbles- 
 ter' (this and the preceding both in Chaucer) ; ' knit- 
 ter' knitster' (a word which, I have understood, is 
 still alive in Devon). And further we may observe, 
 and it is a striking example of the richness of a lan- 
 guage in forms at the earlier stages of its existence, 
 that not a few of the words which had, as we have 
 just seen, a feminine termination in ' ess,' had also a 
 second feminine in ' ster.' Thus ' daunser,' beside 
 ' daunseress,' had also ' daunster' (Ecclus. ix. 4) ; 
 ' wailer,' beside * waileress,' had ' wailster' (Jer. ix. 
 17); 'dweller' 'dwelstcr' (Jer. xxi. 13); and 'singer' 
 ' singster' (2 Kin. xix. 85) ; so too, ' chider' had 
 
 * On this termination see J. Grimm's Deutsche Gramm., vol. ii. 
 p. 134 ; vol. iii. p. 339. 
 
142 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 ' chidster' (Chaucer), as well as ' chideress/ with 
 others that might be named. 
 
 I know there are some who call into question the 
 assertion just made that the termination ' ster' did 
 once announce invariably a female doer. It may be, 
 and indeed has been, urged that the existence of such 
 words as ' seamstress,' ' songstress,' is decisive evi- 
 dence that the ending ' ster' of itself was not counted 
 sufficient to designate persons as female ; for if, it has 
 been said, ^seams^er' and ' song^^er' had been felt \o 
 be already feminine, no one would have ever thought 
 of doubling on this, and adding a second female ter- 
 mination ; ' seam.9^r6'5.9,' ' songstress.^ But all which 
 can justly be concluded from hence is, that when this 
 final ' ess' was added to these already feminine forms, 
 and examples of it will not, I think, be found till a 
 comparative late period of the language, the true prin- 
 ciple and law of the words had been lost sight of and 
 forgotten.* 
 
 The same may be said in respect of such other of 
 these feminine forms as are now applied to men, such as 
 * gamester,' ' youngster,' ^ oldster,' ' drugster' (South), 
 ' huckster,' ' hackster' (= swordsman, or grassator, 
 Milton, prose), ' teamster,' ' throwster,' ' rhymester,' 
 ''Y>^nster^ ( Spectator), 'tapster,' 'whipster' (Shake- 
 
 * The earliest example which Richardson gives of * seamstress' is 
 from Gay, of 'songstress,' from Thomson. I find, however, 'semp- 
 stress' in the translation of ' Olcarius' Voyages, and Travels, 1669, 
 p, 43, It is quite certain that as late as Ben Jonson, ' seamster' and 
 'songster* expressed the female seamer and singer; a single passage 
 from his Masque of Christmas is evidence to this. One of the children 
 of Christmas there is " Wassel, like a neat sempster and songster; her 
 page bearing a brown bowl." Compare a passage from Holland's 
 Leaguer, 1632 : "A tyre-woman of phantastical ornaments, a sempster 
 for ruifes, cuffes, smocks, and waistcoats." 
 
TERMINATION IN ' STER.' 143 
 
 speare), ' trickster.' Either like ' teamster' and ' pun 
 ster,' the words first came into existence and assumed 
 this form, when the true significance of the form was al- 
 together lost ;* or like ' tapster,' which is female in Chau- 
 cer (" the gay tapstere^^), or ' bakester,' at this day 
 used in Scotland for ' baker,' as ' dyester' for ' dyer,' the 
 word did originally belong of right and exclusively to 
 women ; but with the gradual transfer of the occupa- 
 tion to men, joined to an increasing forgetfulness of 
 what this termination implied, there went also a trans- 
 fer of the name ;t just as in other words, and out of 
 the same causes, exactly the converse has found place ; 
 and ' baker' or ' brewer,' not ' bakester' or ' brewster,' 
 would be now in England applied to the female ba- 
 king or brewing. So entirely has this power of the 
 language now been foregone, that it survives more 
 apparently than really even in ' spinner' and ' spinster,' 
 which I adduced just now as the only words in which 
 formally it continued ; seeing that ' spinster' has now 
 
 * This w as about the time of Henry VIII. In proof of the confu- 
 sion which reigned on the subject in Shakespeare's time, see his use 
 of * spinster' as = ' spinner,' the man spinning, Henry VIII., act i., 
 scene ii. ; and I have no doubt that it is the same at Othello, act i., 
 scene i. And a little later, in Howell's Vocabulary, 1659, 'spinner* 
 and ' spinster' are both referred to the male sex, and the barbarous 
 *spinstress* invented for the female. 
 
 1 1 have introduced ' huckster,' as will be observed, in this list. I 
 certainly can not produce any passage in which it is employed as the 
 female pedler. "We have only, however, to keep in mmd the exist- 
 ence of the verb ' to huck^' in the sense of to peddle (it is used by 
 Bishop Andrews), and at the same not to let the present spelling of 
 'hawker' mslcad us, and we shall confidently recognise 'hucker' (the 
 German ' hoker' or ' hocker') in hawker ; that is, the man who ' bucks,' 
 'hawks,' or peddles, as in 'huckster' the female who does the same. 
 When, therefore, Howell and others employ * hucksteress,' they fall 
 into the same barbarous excess of expression whereof we are all guilty 
 when we use * seamstress' and ' songstress.' 
 
144 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 been transferred to quite another meaning than that 
 of a female spinning, whom, as well as the male, we 
 should designate not as a ' spinster,' but a ' spinner.'* 
 Let me observe here, in confirmation of what has 
 just been asserted, that it is almost incredible, if 
 wo had not frequent experience of the fact, how soon 
 and how easily the true law and significance of some 
 form, which has never ceased to be in everybody's 
 mouth, may yet be wholly lost sight of. No more 
 curious chapter in the history of language could bo 
 written than one which should trace the violations of 
 analogy, the transgressions of the most primary laws 
 of a language, which often follow hereupon ; the plu- 
 rals like ' welkin' (= T^olken, the clouds), ' chicken,'! 
 which are dealt with as singulars — the singulars, like 
 
 * riches' (richesse),^ 'pease' (pisum, pois),|| 'alms,' 
 
 * eaves,' which are assumed to be plurals. 
 
 There is one example of this, familiar to us all ; 
 probably so familiar, that it would not be worth while 
 adverting to it, if it did not illustrate, as no other 
 word could, this forgetfulness which may overtake a 
 
 * Notes and Queries, No. 157. 
 
 t When Wallis wrote, it was only beginning to be forgotten that 
 
 * chick' was the singular, and ' chicken' the plural : " Sunt qui dicunt 
 in singulari ' chicken,' et in plurali ' chickens ;' " and even now the 
 words are in many country parts correctly employed. In Sussex, a 
 correspondent writes, they would as soon think of saying ' oxens' as 
 ' chickens.' 
 
 i See Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, 1032, where Richesse, "an 
 high lady of great noblesse," is one of the persons of the allegory. 
 This has so entirely escaped the knowledge of Ben Jonson, English 
 scholar as he was, that in his Grammar he cites ' riches' as an example 
 of an English word wanting a singular. 
 
 jl " Set shallow brooks to surging seas, 
 An orient pearl to a white pease." 
 
 Puttenhain. 
 
THE ENGLISH GENITIVE. 145 
 
 whole people in regard of the true meaning of a gram- 
 matical form they have never ceased to employ. I 
 allude to the mistaken assumption that the ' s' of the 
 genitive, as ' the king's countenance,' was merely a 
 more rapid way of pronouncing ' the king his counte- 
 nance,' and that the linal ' s ' in ' king's' was in fact 
 an elided ' his.' This explanation for a long time 
 prevailed almost universally ; I believe there are many 
 who accept it still. It was in vain that here and 
 there a deeper knower of our tongue protested against 
 this " monstrous syntax," as Ben Jonson in his Gram- 
 mar justly calls it.* It was in vain that Wallis, an- 
 other English scholar of the seventeenth century, 
 pointed out in his Grammar that the slightest exami- 
 nation of the facts revealed the untenable character 
 of this explanation, seeing that we do not merely say 
 " the king-\s countenance," but " the queen^s counte- 
 nance ;" and in this case the final ' s' can not stand 
 for ' his,' for " the queen his countenance" can not be 
 intended.! We do not say merely " the child's bread," 
 but " the children's bread," where it is no less impos- 
 sible to resolve the phrase into " the children his 
 bread." J Despite of these protests the error held its 
 
 * It is curious that, despite of this protest, one of his plays has for 
 its name, Sejanus his Fall. 
 
 t Even this does not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; 
 on the contrary, he boldly asserts {Spectator, No. 135) : "The same 
 single letter s on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and 
 represents the 'his' or 'her' of our forefathers." 
 
 X Nothing can be better than the way in which Wallis disposes of 
 this scheme, although less successful in showing what this * s ' does 
 mean than in showing what it can not mean ( Gramm. Ling. Anglic, 
 c. V. : " Qui autem arbitrantur illud s, loco his adjunctum esse (priori 
 scilicet parte per aphjiircsini abscissa), ideoque apostrophi notam sem- 
 per vol pnigcndam esse, vel saltern subintelligendam, oranino errant. 
 
 7 
 
146 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 ground. It seems to have begun early in the sixteenth 
 century : you can hardly open a book printed during 
 the seventeenth, or the early decades of the eighteenth, 
 but you will find often this * 5 ' in the actual printing 
 spread out into ' his.' The books of scholars are not 
 a whit clearer of the mistake than those of others. 
 Spenser, Donne, Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, all fall into 
 it ; I can not say confidently whether Milton does. 
 Dryden more than once helps out his verse with an 
 additional syllable gained^ by its aid. It has even 
 forced its way into our Prayer-Book itself, where in 
 the " Prayer for all sorts and conditions of men" — 
 added, I believe, by Bishop Sanderson at the last re- 
 vision of the Liturgy in 1661 — we are bidden to say, 
 " And this we beg for Jesus Christ his sake."* I 
 need hardly tell you that this ' 5 ' is in fact the one 
 remnant of flection surviving in the singular number 
 of our English noun substantives ; it is the sign of the 
 genitive, and just as in Latin ' lapis' makes ' lapidis' 
 
 Quaravis enim non negem quin apostrophi nota commode nonnun- 
 quam affigi possit, ut ipsius litter^e s usus distinctius, ubi opus est, per- 
 cipiatur; ita taraen semper fieri debere, autetiam ideo fieri quia vocem 
 his innuat omuino nego. Adjungitur enim et foeminarum nominibus 
 propriis, et substantivis pluralibus, ubi vox his sine soloecismo locum 
 habere non potest : atque etiam in posscssivis ours, yours, theirs, hers, 
 ubi vocem his innui nemo somniaret." 
 
 * I can not think that it would exceed the authoiiry of our university 
 presses, if a form so palpably and offensively ungrammatical were re- 
 moved from the Prayer-Books which they put forth, as I have no doubt 
 that it is suppressed by many of the clergy in tlie reading. They would 
 be only using here a liberty which they have already assumed iii the 
 case of the Bible. In all earlier editions of the authorized version it 
 stood originally at I Kings xv. 24 : " Nevertheless Asa his heart was 
 perfect with the Lord;" it is "Asa's heart" now. In the same way 
 " Mordecai his matters" (Esth. iii. 4) has been silently changed into 
 Mordecai's matters ;" and in some modern editions, but not in all, 
 " Holofernes his head" (Judith xiii. 9) into " Ho/ofernes' head." 
 
UNGRAMMATICAL FORM. 147 
 
 in the genitive, so ' king,' ' queen,' ^ child,' make sev- 
 erally * kings,' ' queens,' ' childs' — the comma, an ap- 
 parent note of elision, being a mere modern expedi- 
 ent, " a late refinement," as Ash calls it,* to distin- 
 guish the genitive singular from the plural cases. f 
 
 I can not leave this matter of the forgetfulness which 
 may overtake a whole people concerning a form which 
 they have been always using, without another illustra- 
 tion. There is a phrase which, as now it appears, is 
 grammatically quite unintelligible, but which owes its 
 present shape to this same fact, namely, that men, 
 having forgotten what it meant at the first, and being 
 therefore perplexed about it, have supposed they must 
 patch it up, and have done so on a wrong scheme. 
 It is the phrase of which, in this line from Milton's 
 Allegro — 
 
 " Many a youth and many a maid" — 
 
 you have a twofold example. In such a usage as 
 " many a youth" there are more things than one which 
 can scarcely fail to strike and perplex the thoughtful 
 student of English. The first is the place of the in- 
 definite article, namely, between the adjective and 
 substantive ; next, that it is not lawful to change this 
 place, and bring it back to its ordinary position ; not 
 to say " a many youth," or " a many maid." Then, 
 further, the joining of ' many,' an adjective of num- 
 ber, for adjective it now and here is, with ' youth' and 
 ^ maid' in the singular, is very noticeable ; which union 
 nowhere else occurs — for, withdraw that ' a,' and it 
 is not lawful to say, ' many youth,' or ' many maid,' 
 
 * In a good note on the matter, which finds phice, pa<;e 6, in the 
 Comprehensive Grammar prefixed to his Dictionary, London, 1775. 
 t Sec Grimm, Deutsche Cramm., vol. ii., pp. 609, 944. 
 
148 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 any more than ' many cow,' or ' many tree.' What 
 is the explanation of all this ? A few considerations 
 will give it to us. In the first place, then, it must be 
 observed that ' many' was originally a substantive, the 
 old French ' mesgnee,' ' mesnie,' and signified a house- 
 hold, which meaning it constantly has in Wiclif (Matt. 
 xxiv. 45, and often), and retained down to the time 
 of Spenser, as in this line from the Shepherd\s Cal- 
 endar : — 
 
 " Then forth he fared with all his many bad." 
 
 We still recognise its character as a substantive in the 
 phrases " a good many" " a great many," as in old 
 English or Scotch even " a few many."* In the next 
 place, the syllable or letter ' a' is the ultimate result 
 of almost any short syllable or word often and rapidly 
 pronounced : thus, " he fell asleep," that is, on sleep ; 
 " a God's name," that is, in God's name ; ' acorn," 
 that is, oak-Qorn : and in the same way ' a' is here not 
 the indefinite article, but the final residuum of the 
 preposition ' of.' I find often in Wiclif such language 
 as this : " I encloside manye of seintis [multos sanc- 
 torum] in prisoun" (Acts xxvi. 10) ; and there can 
 be no reasonable doubt that such a phrase as " many 
 a youth" was once " many o/ youths," or " a many of 
 youths." By much use ' of was worn away into ' a ;' 
 this was then assumed to be the indefinite article, that 
 which was really such being dropped ; and ' youtlis' 
 was then changed into ' youth' to match ; one mistake, 
 as is so often the case, being propped up and sought 
 
 * Richardson, On the Study of Language, p. 140, a very instructive 
 commentary on the Diversions of Purl ey. 
 
ADJECTIVES IN 'EN.' 149 
 
 to be rendered plausible by a second ; and thus we 
 arrive at our present strange and perplexing idiom.* 
 But to return. We may notice another example 
 of this tendency to dispense with inflection, of this 
 endeavor on the part of the speakers of a language 
 to reduce its forms to the fewest possible, consistent 
 with the accurate communication of their thoughts to 
 one another, in the fact that of our adjectives in ' en,' 
 foraied on substantives, and denoting the material or 
 substance of which anything is made, some have gone, 
 others are going out of use ; while we content our- 
 selves with the bare juxtaposition of the substantive 
 itself, as sufficiently expressing our meaning. Thus, 
 instead of ^' g-olden pin," we say '' g-old pin ;" instead 
 of " earthen works," we say " earth-worksJ^ It is 
 true that in the case of these two adjectives, ' golden' 
 and ' earthen,' they still belong to our living speech, 
 though mainly as part of our poetic diction, or of the 
 solemn and thus stereotyped language of Scripture. 
 Other, however, of these adjectives have become obso- 
 lete, and have nearly or quite disappeared from the 
 language, although the epochs of their disappearance 
 are very different. ' Rosen' went early ; I know no 
 later example of it than in Chaucer frosen chape- 
 
 * It will follow from what has been said that Tennyson's words in 
 TTie Miller's Daughter — 
 
 '— " those eyes, 
 
 They have not wept a many tears" — 
 
 are strictly grammatical; that is, "a many of tears." He has, in- 
 deed, the authori y of our old dramatists for the usage. Thus Mas 
 sinner :— 
 
 " Honesty is some fiend, and frights him hence ; 
 A many courtiers love it not." 
 
 Virgin Martyr, act ii., scene ii. 
 
150 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 let"). ' Silvern' stood originally in Wiclif's Bible 
 ('^ silverne housis to Diane," Acts xix. 24) ; but al- 
 ready in the second recension of this was exchanged 
 for ' silver.' ' Stonen' is in Wiclif ; ' hairen' in Wic- 
 lif and in Chaucer. ' Tinnen' occurs in Sylvester's 
 Du Bartas ; where also we meet with " Jove's milken 
 alley," as a name for the Via Lactea ; by Bacon also 
 called, not " The M%," but " The Milken Way." 
 In the coarse polemics of the Reformation the phrase 
 " breaden god," provoked by the Romish doctrine of 
 transubstantiation, was of frequent employment, and 
 occurs as late as in Oldham. '* Mothen parchments" 
 is in Fulke ; " tivig-g-en bottle" m Shakespeare ; ' yew- 
 en,' or, according to earlier spelling, " ewghen bow," 
 in Spenser ; " cedarn alley," " azurn sheen," both in 
 Milton ; " boxen leaves" in Dryden ; " a treen cup" in 
 Jeremy Taylor ; '' a glassen breast," meaning a trans- 
 parent one, in Whitlock ;* ' yarnen' occurs in Turber- 
 ville ; ' eldern' I have seen, but only in an old diction- 
 ary ; * hornen,' for of horn, is still in provincial use ; 
 so, too, is ' bricken.' 
 
 It is true that a good number of these adjectives in 
 ' en' still hold their ground ; yet the roots which sus- 
 tain even these we may note on closer observation as 
 being gradually cut away from beneath them. Thus, 
 ' brazen' may at first sight seem as strongly estab- 
 lished in the language as ever ; yet it is very far from 
 so being : the preparations for its disappearance are 
 already vigorously at work. Even now it only lives 
 in a tropical and secondary sense, as '' a brazen face ;" 
 or if in a literal sense, it is only, as was said of oth- 
 ers, in poetic diction or in the consecrated language 
 
 * Zootomia, 1654, p. 357. 
 
STRONG AND WEAK PRETERITES. 151 
 
 of Scripture, as " the brazen serpent ;" otherwise we 
 say " a brass farthing," " a brass candlestick." It is 
 the same with ' oaten,' ' oaken,' ' birchen,' ' beechen,' 
 ' strawen,' and many more, of which some are obso- 
 lescent, some obsolete ; and the manifest tendency of 
 the language is, as it has long been, to rid itself of 
 these, and to satisfy itself with an adjectival use of 
 the substantive in their stead. 
 
 Let me illustrate by another example that which I 
 am now seeking especially to press on your notice, 
 namely, that a language, as it travels onward, simpli- 
 fies itself, approaches more and more to a grammatical 
 and logical uniformity, seeks to do the same thing al- 
 ways in the same manner ; where it has two or three 
 ways of conducting a single operation, lets all of them 
 go but one ; and in these ways becomes no doubt ea- 
 sier to be mastered, more handy, more manageable ; 
 but at the same time is in danger of forfeiting elements 
 of strength, variety, and beauty, which it once pos- 
 sessed. I would adduce, then, as a further example 
 of this, the tendency of our verbs to let go their strong 
 praeterites, and to substitute weak ones in their room ; 
 or, where they have two or three praeterites, to re- 
 tain only one of them, and that invariably the weak 
 one. Though many of us no doubt are familiar with 
 the terms ' strong' and ' weak' praeterites, which in 
 all our better grammars have put out of use the wholly 
 misleading terms ' irregular' and ' regular,' I perhaps 
 had better remind you of what the exact meaning of 
 the terms is. A strong praeterite is one formed by 
 an internal vowel change ; for instance, the verb ' to 
 driue* forms the praeterite ' droved by an internal 
 change of the vowel ' i ' into ' o.' But why, it may 
 
152 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 be asked, called ' strong' ? In respect that there is 
 enough of vigor and indwelling energy in the word to 
 form its past tense from its own resources, and with 
 no calling in of help from without. On the other 
 hand, ' to lift' forms its prasterite ' lUted,^ not by any 
 internal change, but by the addition of ' ed ;' ' to 
 grieve' in like manner has ' grievec/.' Here are weak 
 tenses ; as strength was ascribed to the other verbs, 
 so weakness to these ; being only able to form their 
 praeterites by external aid and addition. You will 
 at once perceive that these strong praeterites, while 
 they testify to a vital energy in the words which are 
 able to put them forth, do also, as is the confession of 
 all who have studied the matter, contribute much to 
 the variety and charm of a language.* 
 
 The point, however, to which I would solicit your 
 especial attention is, that these are becoming fewer 
 in our language every day ; a vast number of them 
 have disappeared, having gradually fallen quite out 
 of use, while others are in the act of so falling. Nor 
 is there any compensating process on the other hand ; 
 the power of forming new strong praeterites is long 
 ago extinct ; probably no new verb which has come 
 into the language since the Conquest has asserted this 
 power, while multitudes have let it go. . Let me men- 
 tion a few instances in which it has disappeared. Thus, 
 ' shape' has now a weak prasterite, ' shaped,' it had 
 once a strong one, ' shope ;' ' to bake' has now a weak 
 
 '* J. Grimm {Deutsche Gramm., vol. i., p. 1040) : "Dass die starke 
 form die iiltere, kriiftiirerc, innere; die schwache die spatere,^ehemm- 
 tere und mehr ausserliche soy, leuclitet ein." Elsewhere, speaking 
 generally of inflections by internal vowel change, he characterizes 
 them as a "chief beauty" (hauptschonheit) of the Teutonic Ian. 
 guages. ^ 
 
STRONG PRETERITES DISAPPEAR. 153 
 
 prseterite, ' baked,' it had once a strong one, * boke ;' 
 the praeterite of ' glide' is now ' glided,' it was once 
 
 * glode' or ' glid ;' ' help' makes now ' helped.' it made 
 once ' halp' and ' holp.' ' Creep' made ' crope,' still 
 current in the north of England ; ' weep' ' wopef' ' yell' 
 
 * yoir (both in Chaucer) ; ' seethe' * soth' or ' sod' 
 (" Jacob sod pottage," Gen. xxv. 29) : in each of 
 these cases the strong praeterite has given way to the 
 weak. It is the same with ' sheer,' which once made 
 ' shore ;' as ' leap' made ' lope ;' ' wash' ' wishe' (Chau- 
 cer) ; ' snow' ' snew ;' ' delve' ' dalf ' and ' dolve ;' 
 'sweat' *swat;' 'yield' ' yold' (both in Spenser); 
 ' melt' ' molt ;' ' wax' ' wex' and ' wox ;' ' laugh' ' leugh ;' 
 with innumerable others.* 
 
 We again recognise in this which has just been 
 noted, the limits and restraints which a language 
 gradually imposes on its own freedom of action. We 
 may observe further, while on this matter of strong 
 praeterites, for it bears directly on our subject, that 
 where verbs have not actually renounced these their 
 strong praeterites, and contented themselves with 
 weak ones in their room, yet having once two, or, it 
 might be, three of these strong, they now have only 
 one. The others, on the principle of dismissing what- 
 ever can be dismissed, they have let go. Thus, ' chide' 
 
 * As a marvellous example of the entire ignorance as to the past 
 historic evolution of the language, with which it has been often under- 
 taken to write about it, I may mention that the author of Observations 
 upon the English Lampiage, without date, but published about 1730, 
 treats all these strong preterites as of recent introduction, counting 
 
 * knew* to have lately expelled ' knowed,' * rose' to have acted the 
 same part toward 'rised,' and of course esteeming them as so many 
 barbarous violations of the laws of the language ; and concludmg 
 with the warning that "great care must be taken to prevent their 
 increase" ! ! — p. 24. 
 
 7* 
 
154 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 had once ' chid' and ' chode ;' but though ' chode' is 
 in our bibles (Gen. xxxi. 86), it has not maintained 
 itself in our speech ; ' sling' had ' slung' and ' slang' 
 (1 Sam. xvii. 49) ; only ' slung' remains ; ' fling' had 
 once ' Jlung' and ' flang ;' ' tread' had ' trod' and ' trad ;' 
 ' choose' had ' chose' and ' chase ;' ' give' had ' gave' 
 and ' gove ;' ^ lead' had ' led' ' lad' and ' lode ;' ' write' 
 had ' wrote' ' writ' and ' wrate ;' in each of these 
 cases, and they might easily be multiplied, only the 
 praeterite which I have named, the first, remains in 
 use. 
 
 Nor should you fail to observe that, wherever there 
 is at the present time a conflict going on between 
 weak and strong forms, which shall remain in use, as 
 there is in several verbs, in every instance the battle 
 is not to the strong ; on the contrary, the weak is car- 
 rying the day, is gradually putting the other out of 
 use. Thus, ' climbed' is getting the upper hand of 
 ' clomb,' as the past tense of ' to climb ;' ' swelled' of 
 ' swoll ;' ' hanged' of * hung.' It is not too much to 
 anticipate that a time will arrive, although it may be 
 centuries distant, when all the verbs in the English 
 language will form their praeterites weakly ; not with- 
 out a considerable loss of the fullness and energy 
 which in this respect the language even now displays, 
 and once far more eminently displayed.* * 
 
 Once more : the entire dropping among the higher 
 classes of ' thou,' except in poetry or in addresses to 
 the Deity, and, as a necessary consequence, the drop- 
 ping also of the second singular of the verb with its 
 
 * J. Grimm {Deutsche Gramm., vol. i., p. 839) : " Die starke flexion 
 stufenweise versinkt und ausstirbt, die schwache aber um sich greift.'' 
 Cf. i., 994, 1040 ; ii., 5 ; iv., 509. 
 
EMPLOYMENT OP 'THOU.' 155 
 
 strongly-marked flexion as ' lovest,' ' lovedst,' is an- 
 other example of a force once existing in the language, 
 which has been, or is being, allowed to expire. In 
 the seventeenth century it was with ' thou' in English 
 as it is still with ' du' in German, with ' tu' in French ; 
 being, as it then was, the sign of familiarity, whether 
 that familiarity was of love, or of contempt and scorn.* 
 It was not unfrequently the latter. Thus, at Sir Wal- 
 ter Raleigh's trial (1603), Coke, when argument and 
 evidence failed him, insulted the defendant by apply- 
 ing to him the term ' thou' : " All that Lord Cobham 
 did was at thy instigation, thou viper! for I thou thee, 
 thou traitor." And when Sir Toby Belch, in Twelfth 
 Nig-ht, is urging Sir Andrew Aguecheek to send a 
 sufficiently-provocative challenge to Viola, he suggests 
 to him that he " taunt him with tlie license of ink ; 
 if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss." 
 To keep this in mind will throw considerable light on 
 one early peculiarity of the quakers, and give a cer- 
 tain dignity to it, as once maintained, which at pres- 
 ent it is very far from possessing. We shall see that 
 however unnecessary and unwise their determination 
 to ' thee' and ' thou' the whole world was, yet this 
 had a significance ; it was not, as now to us it seems, 
 and through the silent changes which language has 
 undergone, as now it indeed is, a gratuitous departure 
 from the ordinary usage of society. Right or wrong, 
 it meant something, and had an ethical motive : being 
 indeed a testimony upon their parts, however mis- 
 placed, that they would not have high, or great, or 
 
 * Thus Wallis (Gramm. Ling. Anglic, 1654) : " Singulari numero 
 siquis alium compellet, vel deOlsjnantis illud esse solet, vel familiari- 
 ter blandientis." 
 
156 DIMINUTIONS OF THE ENGLISH LA.NrxUAGE. 
 
 rich men's persons in admiration ; nor give the obser- 
 vance to some what they withheld from others. And 
 it was a testimony which cost them something ; at 
 present we can very little understand the amount of 
 courage which this ' thou-ing' and ' thee-ing' of all 
 men must have demanded on their parts, nor yet the 
 amount of indignation and offence which it stirred up 
 in them who were not aware of, or would not allow 
 for, the scruples which induced them to it.* It is, 
 however, in its other aspect that we must chiefly regret 
 the dying out of the use of 'thou' — that is, as the 
 voice of peculiar intimacy and special affection, as be- 
 tween husband and wife, parents and children, and 
 such other as might be knit together by bands of more 
 than common affection. 
 
 I observed, in entering upon this part of my sub- 
 ject, that my illustrations of it should be drawn in 
 the main from that which is now going forward in the 
 language ; yet, before concluding my lecture, I will 
 draw one illustration from its remoter periods, and 
 will call your attention to a force not now waning and 
 failing, but which has wholly disappeared long ago. 
 I can not well pass it by; because we have here the 
 boldest step which in this direction of simplification 
 the English language has at any time taken. I allude 
 to the renouncing of the distribution of its nouns into 
 
 * What the actual position of the corapellation ' thou' M'as at that 
 'time, we may perhaps best learn from this passage in Fuller's Church 
 History, Dedication of Booh vii. : " In opposition whereunto [that is, 
 to the quaker usage] we maintain that thou from superiors to inferiors 
 is proper, as a sign of command ; from equals to equals is passable, 
 as a note of familiarity; but from inferiors to superiors, if proceeding 
 from ignorance, hath a smack of clownishness ; if from affectation, a 
 tone 0^ contempt." 
 
FEMALE, FEMININE, ETC. 157 
 
 masculine, feminine, and neuter, or even into maFCU- 
 line and feminine, as in the French ; and with this, 
 and as a necessary consequence of this, the dropping 
 of any flexional modification in the adjectives con- 
 nected with them. Natural sex of course remains, 
 ])(jing inherent in all language ; but grammatical gen- 
 der, with the exception of ' he,' ' she,' and ' it,' and 
 perhaps one or two other fragmentary instances, the 
 language has altogether foregone. An example will 
 make clear the distinction between these. When I 
 use the word ' poetess,' it is not the word '• poetess' 
 which is feminine^ but the person indicated by the 
 word who is female. So, too, ' daughter,' ' queen,* 
 are in English v^oi feminine nouns, but nouns designa- 
 ting female persons. Take, on the contrary, ' filia' 
 or 'regina,' ' fille' or ' reine,' there you haye feminine 
 nouns as well as female persons. I need hardly say 
 to you that we did not inherit this simplicity from 
 others, but, like the Danes, in so far as they have 
 done the like, have made it for ourselves. Whether 
 we turn to the Latin, or, which is for us more impor- 
 tant, to the old Gothic, we find gender ; and in the 
 four daughter-languages which have descended from 
 the Latin, in most of those which have descended 
 from the ancient Gothic stock, it is fully established 
 to the present day. The practical, business-like char- 
 acter of the English mind asserted itself in the rejec- 
 tion of a distinction which, in the great multitude of 
 words — that is, in all having to do with inanimate 
 things, and as such incapable of sex — rested upon a 
 fiction, and had no ground in the real nature of things. 
 It is only by an act and effort of the imagination that 
 sex, and thus gender, can be attributed to a table, a 
 
158 DIMINUTIONS OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 ship, or a tree ; and there are aspects — this is one — 
 in which the English is among the least imaginative 
 of all languages, even while it has been employed in 
 some of the greatest works of imagination which the 
 world has ever seen. 
 
ETC. 169 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE MEANING OP ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 I PROPOSE, according to the plan which I sketched 
 out in my first lecture, to take for the subject of my 
 present one the changes which in the course of time 
 have found place, or now are finding place, in the 
 meaning of many among our English words ; so that, 
 whether we are aware of it or not, we employ them 
 at this day in senses very different from those in which 
 our forefathers employed them of old. You will ob- 
 serve that it is not obsolete words, words quite fallen 
 out of present use, which I propose to consider — 
 words, rather, which are still on the lips of men, but 
 with meanings more or less removed from those which 
 once they possessed. My subject is far more practi- 
 cal, you will feel it to have far more to do with your 
 actual life, than if I had taken obsolete words, and 
 considered them. These last have an interest indeed, 
 but it is an interest of an antiquarian character. Such 
 words were a part of the intellectual money with which 
 our ancestors carried on their affairs, but now they 
 are rather medals for the cabinets and collections of 
 the curious than current money for the needs and 
 ploasures of all. Their wings are clipped, so that 
 they are '•'^wing-ed words" (tVsa cr.-s^oevra) no more ; 
 tlic spark of thought or feeling, kindling from mind to 
 
160 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 mind, no longer runs along them, as along the electric 
 wires of the soul. 
 
 And then, besides this, there is little or no danger 
 that any should be misled by them. A reader lights 
 for the first time on one of these obsolete English 
 words, ' frampold,' or ' garboil,' or ' brangle.' He is 
 at once conscious of his ignorance ; he has recourse 
 to a glossary, or, if he guesses from the context at the 
 word's signification, still his guess is as a guess to 
 him, and no more. But words that have changed 
 their meaning have often a deceivableness about them ; 
 a reader not once doubts but that he knows their in- 
 tention, has no misgiving but that they possess for him 
 the same force which they possessed for their writer, 
 'and conveyed to his contemporaries, when indeed it 
 is otherwise altogether. 
 
 Let me illustrate this by examples. A reader of 
 our day lights upon such a passage as the following 
 (it is in the Preface to Howell's Lexicon^ 1660): 
 " Though the root of the English language be Dutch, 
 yet it may be said to have been inoculated afterward 
 on a French stock." He may know that the Dutch is 
 a sister-language or dialect to our own ; but this, that 
 it is the mother or root of it, will certainly perplex 
 Tiim, and he will hardly know what to make of the 
 assertion ; perhaps he ascribes it to an error in his 
 author, who is thereby unduly lowered in his esteem. 
 Biit presently in the course of his reading he meets 
 with the following statement, this time in Fuller's 
 Holy War, being a history of the Crusades : " The 
 French, Dutch, Italian, and English, were the four 
 elemental nations whereof this army [of the crusaders] 
 was compounded." If the student has sufiGcient his- 
 
DUTCH AND GERMAN. 161 
 
 torical knowledge to know that in the time of the 
 Crusades there were no Dutch in our use of the word, 
 tliis statement would merely startle him ; and proba- 
 bly before he had finished the chapter, having his at- 
 tention once roused, he would perceive that Fuller, 
 with the writers of his time, used ' Dutch' for German ; 
 even as it was constantly so used up to the end of the 
 seventeenth century ; what we call now a Dutchman 
 being then a Hollander. But a young student might 
 very possibly want that amount of previous knowledge, 
 which should cause him to receive this announcement 
 with misgiving and surprise ; and thus he might carry 
 away altogether a wrong impression, and rise from a 
 perusal of the book, persuaded that the Dutch, as we 
 call them, played an important part in the Crusades, 
 while the Germans took little or no part in them 
 at all. 
 
 And as it is here with an historic fact, so still more 
 often will it happen with the subtiler changes which 
 words have undergone, conveying now much more 
 blame and condemnation, or conveying now much 
 less, than formerly ; or of a different kind ; and a 
 reader not aware of the changes which have taken 
 place, may be in continual danger of misreading his 
 author, of misunderstanding his intention, while he 
 has no doubt whatever that he is perfectly apprehend- 
 ing and taking it in. Thus, when Shakespeare, in 
 1 Hmry VI., makes the gallant York address Joan 
 of Arc as a ' miscreant,' how coarse a piece of invec- 
 tive this sounds I how unlike what the chivalrous sol- 
 dier would have uttered ; or what one might have 
 supposed Shakespeare, even with his unworthy esti- 
 mate of the holy warrior-maid, would have put 
 
162 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 into his mouth ! But a ' miscreant' in Shakespeare's 
 time had nothing of the meaning which now it has. 
 It was simply, in agreement with its etymology, a 
 misbeliever, one who did not believe rightly the arti- 
 cles of the catholic faith. And I need not tell you 
 that this was the constant charge which the English 
 brought against Joan, and on which in the end they 
 burnt her — namely, that she was a dealer in hidden 
 magical arts, a witch, and as such had fallen from 
 the faith. It is this which York means when he calls 
 her a ' miscreant,' and not what we should intend by 
 the name. 
 
 In reading of poetry, above all, what forces through 
 this ignorance are often lost, what emphasis passes 
 unobserved ! how often the poet may be wronged in 
 our estimation — that seeming to us now flat and 
 pointless, which at once would lose this character did 
 we know how to read into some word the power and 
 peculiar force which it once had, but which now has 
 departed from it ! For example, Milton ascribes in 
 Comus the " tinsel-slippered feet" to Thetis, the god- 
 dess of the sea. How comparatively poor an epithet 
 this ' tinsel-slippered' sounds for those who know of 
 * tinsel' only in its modern acceptation of mean and 
 tawdry finery, affecting a splendor which it does not 
 really possess ! But learn its earlier use by learning 
 its derivation ; bring it back to the French ' etincelle,' 
 and the Latin ' scintillula ;' sec in it, as Milton and 
 the writers of his time saw, " the sparkling," and how 
 exquisitely beautiful a title does this become, applied 
 to a goddess of the sea ! how vividly does it call up 
 before our mind's eye the quick glitter and sparkle 
 
TINSEL- SLIPPERED, INFLUENCE, ETC. 163 
 
 of the waves under the light of sun or moon !* It is 
 Homer's ' silver-footed' (ap/u^o?6^a),not servilely trans- 
 ferred, but reproduced and made his own by the Eng- 
 lish poet, dealing as one great poet will do with an- 
 other — who will not disdain to borrow, but to what 
 he borrows will often add a further grace of his own. 
 Or, again, do we keep in mind, or are we even 
 aware, that whenever the word ' influence' occurs in 
 our English poetry, down to comparatively a modern 
 date, there is always more or less remote allusion to 
 the skyey, planetary influences, supposed to be exer- 
 cised by the heavenly luminaries upon the lives of 
 men ? How many a passage starts into new life and 
 beauty and fullness of allusion, when this is present 
 with us ; even Milton's 
 
 "store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
 Rain influence" — 
 
 as spectators of the tournament, gain something, when 
 we regard them — and using this language, he intended 
 we should — as the luminaries of this lower sphere, 
 shedding by their propitious presence, strength and 
 valor into the hearts of their knights 
 
 The word even in its present acceptation may yield, 
 as here, a convenient and even a correct sense ; we 
 may fall into no positive misapprehension about it ; 
 and still, through ignorance of its past history and of 
 the force which it once possessed, we may miss a great 
 part of its significance. We are not beside the mean- 
 ing of our author, but we are short of it. Thus in 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's King and no King (act iii., 
 
 * So in Herrick's Electra : — 
 
 " More white than are the whitest creams, 
 Or moonlight tinselling the streams." 
 
164 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 sc. 2), a cowardly braggart of a soldier describes the 
 treatment he experienced, when like Parolles he was 
 at length found out, and stripped of bis lion's skin : — 
 " They hung me up by the heels and beat me with 
 hazel-sticks, . . . that the whole kingdom took notice 
 of me for a baffled whipped fellow." The word to 
 which I wish here to call your attention is ' baffled.' 
 Probal)ly if you were reading, there would be nothing 
 here to cause you to pause ; you would attach to the 
 word the meaning which sorts very well with the con- 
 text — " hung up by the heels and beaten, all his 
 schemes of being thought much of were baffled and 
 defeated." But ' baffled' implies far more than this ; 
 it contains allusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, 
 according to which a perjured or recreant knight was 
 either in person, or more commonly in effigy, hung up 
 by the heels, his scutcheon blotted, his spear broken, 
 and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject 
 of all kinds of indignities ; such a one being said to 
 be ' baffled.'* Twice in Spenser recreant knights arc 
 so dealt with. I can only quote a portion of the 
 shorter passage, in which this infamous punishment is 
 described : 
 
 ** And after all, for greater infamy 
 He by the heels him hun<; upon a tree, 
 And baffled so, that all which pass6d by 
 The picture of his punishment might see."t 
 
 Probably when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote, men 
 were not so remote from the days of chivalry but that 
 this custom was still fresh in their minds. How much 
 more to them than to us, so long as we are ignorant 
 
 * See Holinshed's Chronicles, vol, iii. pp. 827, 1218: Ann. 1513^ 
 1 .570. 
 t Fairy Queen, vi. 7, 27 ; of. v. 3, 37. 
 
NEPHEW, CARRIAGES. 166 
 
 of the same, would those words I just quoted have 
 conveyed ? 
 
 There are several places in the authorized version 
 of scripture, where those who are not aware of the 
 changes, which having taken place during the last two 
 hundred and fifty years in our language, can hardly 
 fail of being to a certain extent misled as to the inten- 
 tion of our translators ; or, if they are better ac- 
 quainted with Greek than with early English, will be 
 tempted to ascribe to them, but unjustly, an inexact 
 rendering of the original. When for instance St. 
 Paul teaches that if any widow hath children or 
 ' nephews,' she is not to be chargeable to the church, 
 but these are to requite their parents, and to support 
 them (1 Tim. v. 4), it must seem strange that ' neph- 
 ews' should be here introduced ; while a reference to 
 the original (^x^ova) makes manifest that the' difficulty 
 is not there, but in our version. But from this also 
 it is removed, so soon as we know that ' nephews,' 
 like the Latin ' nepotes,' was continually used at the 
 time when this version was made, for grandchildren 
 and other lineal descendants ; being so employed by 
 Hooker, by Shakespeare, by Spenser, and by the other 
 great writers of the time. 
 
 Elsewhere St. Luke says : " We took up our car- 
 riages, and went up to Jerusalem" (Acts xxi. 15). 
 How was this possible, exclaims a modern objector, 
 when there is nothing but a mountain track, impassa- 
 ble for wheels, between Caesarea, the place from which 
 Paul and his company started, and Jerusalem ? He 
 would not have made this difficulty, if he had known 
 that in our early English ' carriages' did not mean 
 things which carried us, but things which we carried ; 
 
166 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 and " we took up our carriages''^ implies no more than 
 " we took up our baggage," or " we trussed up our 
 fardels," as an earlier translation more familiarly has 
 it, and so " went up to Jerusalem."* 
 
 But a passage in which the altered meaning of a 
 word involves sometimes a more serious misunder- 
 standing is that well-known statement of St. James, 
 " pure religion and undefiled before God and the 
 Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in 
 their affliction." " There," exclaims one who wishes 
 to set up St. James against St. Paul, that so he may 
 escape the necessity of obeying either, '^ listen to what 
 St. James says ; he does not speak of faith as the con- 
 dition necessary to salvation ; there is nothing mys- 
 tical in what he requires ; instead of harping on faith, 
 he makes all religion to consist in practical deeds of 
 kindness from one to another." But let us pause a 
 moment. Did ' religion,' when our translation was 
 made, mean godliness ? did it mean the suvi total of 
 our duties toward God ? for of course no one would 
 deny that deeds of kindness are a part of our Christian 
 duty, an evidence of the faith which is in us. There 
 is abundant evidence to show that ' religion' did not 
 mean this ; that, like the Greek i1^)iup<s;a, for which it 
 here stands, like the Latin ' religio,' it meant the out- 
 ward forms and embodiments in which the inward 
 principle of piety arrayed itself, the external service 
 of God : and St. James is urging upon those to whom 
 he is writing something of this kind : " Instead of the 
 
 * ' Carriage' is used in the same sense, I Sam. xvii. 22 ; and com- 
 pare North's Plutarch, p. 470 : " Spartacus charged his [Lentulus'j 
 lieutenants that led the army, gave them battle, overthrew them, and 
 took all their carriage [-*> ix.r)(j<zvhv an-ao-a:'.]" 
 
MRANTNG OF RELIGION. 167 
 
 ceremonial services of the Jew s, wliich consisted in 
 divers washings and in other elements of this world, 
 let our service, our 6^r,(fxcla, take a nobler shape, let it 
 consist in deeds of pity and of love" — and it was this 
 which our translators intended, when they used ' re- 
 ligion' here and ' religious' in the verse preceding. 
 How little ' religion' once meant godliness, how pre- 
 dominantly it was used for the outward service of God, 
 is plain from many passages in our Homilies, and 
 from other contemporary literature. 
 
 Again, there is a passage in our Liturgy which 1 
 hav§ no doubt is commonly misunderstood. The mis- 
 take involves no serious error ; yet still in our own 
 language, and in words which we have constantly in 
 our mouths, and at most solemn times, it is certainly 
 better to be right than wrong. You know that in the 
 Litany we pray God that it would please him " to 
 give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the 
 earth." What meaning do we attach to this epithet, 
 " the kindly fruits of the earth ?" Probably we un- 
 derstand by it those fruits in which the kindness of 
 God or of nature toward us finds its expression. 
 This is no unworthy explanation, but still it is not the 
 right one. The " kindly fruits" are the " natural 
 fruits," those which the earth according to its kind 
 should naturally bring forth, which it is appointed to 
 produce. To show you how little ' kindly' meant 
 once benignant, as it means now, I will instance an 
 employment of it from Sir Thomas More's Life of 
 Richard III. He tells us that Richard calculated by 
 murdering his two nephews in the Tower to make 
 himself accounted " a kindly king" — not certainly a 
 * kindly' one in our present usage of the word ; but, 
 
168 CHANGED MEANING OP ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 having put them out of the way, that ho should then 
 be lineal heir of the crown, and should thus be reck- 
 oned as king by kind or natural descent ; and such 
 was of old the constant use of the word. 
 
 There is another passage in one of our occasional 
 services, which sometimes offends those who are un- 
 acquainted with the early uses of English words, and 
 thus with the intention of the actual framers of that 
 service. I mean the words in our marriage service, 
 " with my body I thee worship.''* Clearly in our 
 modern sense of ' worship' this language would be 
 unjustifiable. But ' worship' or ' worthship' meant 
 ' honor' in our early English, and ' to worship' to 
 honor, this meaning of ' worship' still surviving in 
 the title of " your worship," addressed to the magis- 
 trate on the bench. So little was it restrained of old 
 to the honor which man is bound to pay to God, that 
 it was employed by Wiclif to express the honor which 
 God will render to his faithful servants and friends. 
 Thus our Lord's declaration, " If any man serve me, 
 him will my Father honor ^^^ in Wiclif 's translation 
 reads thus : " If any man serve me, my Father shall 
 worship him." I do not say that there is not sufficient 
 reason to change the words, " with my body I thee 
 worship,^^ if only there were any means of changing 
 anything which is now antiquated and out of date in 
 our services or arrangements. I think it would be 
 very well if they were changed, liable as they are to 
 misunderstanding and misconstruction now ; but still 
 they did not mean at the first, and therefore do not 
 now really mean, any more than, " with my body I 
 thQQ honor, ^^ and so you may reply to any fault-finder 
 here. 
 
PAINFUL, ASCERTAIN. 169 
 
 Take anotlier example of a very easy misapprehen- 
 sion, although not now from Scripture or the Prayer 
 Book. Fuller, our church historian, having occasion 
 to speak of some famous divine that was lately dead, 
 exclaims, " Oh the painfulness of his preaching !" 
 We might assume at first hearing, and if we did not 
 know the former uses of ' painfulness,' that this was 
 an exclamation wrung out at the recollection of the 
 tediousness which he inflicted on his hearers. Par 
 from it ; the words are a record not of the pain which 
 he caused to others, but of the pains which he bestowed 
 himself: and I am persuaded, if we had more ' pain- 
 ful' preachers in the old sense of the word, that is, 
 who took pains themselves, we should have fewer 
 * painful' ones in the modern sense, who cause pains 
 to their hearers. So too Bishop Grosthead is recorded 
 as " the painful writer of two hundred books" — not 
 meaning hereby that these books were painful in the 
 reading, but that he was laborious and painful in their 
 composing. 
 
 Here is another easy misapprehension. Swift wrote 
 a pamphlet, or, as he called it, a Letter to the Lord 
 Treasurer, with this title, " A proposal for correcting, 
 improving, and ascertaining the English tongue." 
 Who that brought a knowledge of present English, 
 and no more, to this passage, would doubt that " as- 
 certaining the English tongue" meant arriving at a 
 certain knowledge of what it was ? Swift, however, 
 means something quite difierent from this. " To as- 
 certain the English tongue" is not with him to arrive 
 at a subjective certainty in our own minds of what 
 that tongue is, but to give an objective certainty to 
 that tongue itself, so that henceforward it shall not 
 
 8 
 
170 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 alter nor change. For even Swift himself, with all 
 his good sense, entertained a dream of this kind, as 
 is more fully declared in the work itself.* 
 
 In other places, un acquaintance with the changes 
 in a word's usage will not so much mislead as leave 
 you nearly or altogether at a loss in respect of the 
 intention of an author whom you may be reading. It 
 is evident that he has a meaning, but what it is you 
 are unable to divine, even though all the words he 
 employs are words in familiar employment to the 
 present day. Take an example. The poet Waller 
 is congratulating Charles II. on his return from exile, 
 and is describing the way in which all men, even those 
 formerly most hostile to him, were now seeking his 
 favor, and he writes : — 
 
 " OfFenders now, the chiefest, do begin 
 To strive for grace, and expiate their sin : 
 All winds blow fair that did the world embroil, 
 Your vipers treacle yield, and scorpions oil." 
 
 Many a reader before now has felt, as I can not doubt, 
 a moment's perplexity at the now courtly poet's asser- 
 tion that "vipers treacle yieW — who yet has been 
 too indolent, or who has not had the opportunity, to 
 search out what his meaning might be. There is, in 
 fact, allusion here to a curious piece of legendary 
 lore. ^ Treacle,' or ' triacle,' as Chaucer wrote it, was 
 originally a Greek word, and wrapped up in itself the 
 once-popular belief (an anticipation, by-the-way, of 
 homoeopathy) that a confection of the viper's flesh 
 was the most potent antidote against the viper's bite.f 
 
 ^ See Sir W. Scott's edition of Swift's Works, vol. ix., p. 139. 
 t QriptuKfi, from dripiny^ a designation given to the viper, see Acts 
 xxviii. 4. * Theriac' is only the more rigid form of the same word — 
 
ORIGIN OP BLA.CKGUARD. 171 
 
 Waller goes back to this the word's old meaning, 
 familiar enough in his time, for Milton speaks of '• the 
 sovran treacle of sound doctrine,"* while " Yenice 
 treacle," or " viper wine," as it sometimes was called, 
 was a common name for a supposed antidote against 
 all poisons ; and he would imply that regicides them- 
 selves began to be loyal, vipers not now yielding hurt 
 any more, but rather healing for the old hurts which 
 they themselves had inflicted. To trace the word 
 down to its present use, it may be observed that, ex- 
 pressing first this antidote, it then came to express 
 any antidote, then any medicinal confection or sweet 
 sirup ; and lastly that particular sirup, namely, the 
 sweet sirup of molasses, to which alone it is now re- 
 stricted. 
 
 I will draw on the writings of Fuller for one more 
 example. In his Holy War, having enumerated the 
 rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runaway slaves, thieves, 
 adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause or 
 another with heaviest censures of the church, who 
 swelled the ranks and helped to make up the army 
 of the crusaders, he exclaims : " A lamentable case, 
 that the devil's blackguard should be God's soldiers !" 
 What does he mean, we may ask, by " the devil's 
 black guard'^ ? Nor is this a solitary allusion to the 
 
 the scholarly, as distinguished from the popular, adoption of it. Au- 
 gustine {Con. duas Epp. Pelag., iii., 7) : " Sicut fieri consuevit anti- 
 dotum etiam de serpentibus contra venena serpentum." 
 * And Chaucer, more solemnly still : — 
 
 " Christ, which that is to every harm triade." 
 
 The antidotal character of treacle comes out yet more in these lines 
 of Lydgate : — 
 
 " There is no vemtn so parlious in sharpnes, 
 As whan it hatii of treacle a likenes." 
 
172 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 " black guard." On the contrary, the phrase is of 
 very frequent occurrence in tlie early dramatists and 
 others down to the time of Dryden, who gives, as one 
 of his stage-directions in Don Sebastian : " Enter the 
 captain of the rabble, with the Black guards What 
 is this ' black guard' ? Has it any connection with 
 a word of our homeliest vernacular ? We feel that 
 probably it has so ; yet at first sight the connection 
 is not very apparent, nor indeed the exact force of 
 the phrase. Let me trace its history. In old times, 
 the palaces of our kings and seats of our nobles were 
 not so well and completely furnished as at the present 
 day : and thus it was customary, when a royal prog- 
 ress was made, or when the great nobility exchanged 
 one residence for another, that at such a removal all 
 kitchen-utensils, pots and pans, and even coals, should 
 be also carried with them where they went. Those 
 who accompanied and escorted these, the lowest, mean- 
 est, and dirtiest of the retainers, were called " the 
 black guard ;"* then any troop or company of raga- 
 muffins ; and lastly, when the origin of the word was 
 lost sight of, and it was forgotten that it properly im- 
 plied a company, a rabble rout, and not a single per- 
 son, one would compliment another, not as belonging 
 to, but as himself being, the ' blackguard.' 
 
 The examples which I have adduced are, I am per- 
 suaded, sufficient to prove that it is not a useless and 
 unprofitable study, nor yet one altogether without 
 entertainment, to which I invite you ; that, on the 
 
 * '*A slave that within these twenty years rode with the black 
 guard in the duke's carriage, 'mongst spits and dripping-pans.' 
 (Webster's While Devil.) Anotlicr illustration here of what was just 
 asserted, p. 165, of the word 'carriage.* 
 
GENERIC AND SPECIAL WORDS. 173 
 
 contrary, any one who desires to read with accuracy 
 and thus with advantage and pleasure, our earlier 
 classics — who would avoid continual misapprehension 
 in their perusal, and would not often fall short of, and 
 often go astray from, their meaning — must needs be- 
 stow some attention on the altered significance of 
 English words. And if this is so, we could not more 
 usefully employ wliat remains of this present lecture 
 than in seeking to indicate those changes which words 
 most frequently undergo ; and to trace as far as we 
 can the causes, mental and moral, at work in the 
 minds of men to bring these changes about, with the 
 good and evil out of which they have sprung, and to 
 which they bear witness. 
 
 For, indeed, these changes to which words in the 
 progress of time are submitted, are not changes at 
 random, but for the most part are obedient to certain 
 laws, are capable of being distributed into certain 
 classes, being the outward transcripts and witnesses 
 of mental and moral processes inwardly going forward 
 in those who bring these changes about. Many, it is 
 true, will escape any classification of ours ; the changes 
 which have taken place in their meaning being, or at 
 least seeming to us, the result of mere caprice, and 
 not explicable by any principle which we can appeal 
 to as habitually at work in the mind. Many more, 
 however, are reducible to some law or other, and with 
 these we will occupy ourselves now. 
 
 And, first, the meaning of a word oftentimes is 
 gradually narrowed. It was once as a generic name, 
 embracing many as yet unnamed species within itself, 
 which all went by its common designation. By-and- 
 by, it is found convenient that each of these should 
 
174 CHANGED MEANING OP ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 have its own more special sign allotted to it. It is 
 here just as in some newly-enclosed country, where a 
 single household will at first loosely occupy a whole 
 district ; while, as cultivation proceeds, this district 
 is gradually parcelled out among a dozen or twenty, 
 and under more accurate culture employs and sustains 
 them all. Thus, for example, all food was once called 
 ' meat ;' it is so in our Bible, and ' horse-meat' for fod- 
 der is still no unusual phrase ; yet ' meat' is now a 
 name given only to flesh. Any little book or writing 
 was a ' libel' once ; now only such a one as is scurri- 
 lous and injurious. Any leader was a ' duke' (dux) ; 
 thus, "duke Hannibal" (Sir Thomas Elyot), "duke 
 Brennus" (Holland), " duke Theseus" (Shakespeare), 
 " duke Amalek," with other ' dukes' (Gen. xxxvi.). 
 Any journey, by land as much as by sea, was a ' voyage ;' 
 ' fairy' was not a name restricted, as now, to the Gothic 
 mythology : thus, " the fairp Egeria" (Sir J. Harring- 
 ton). A 'corpse' might be quite as well living as 
 dead. ' Weeds' were whatever covered the earth or 
 the person ; while now, as respects the earth, those 
 only are ' weeds' which are noxious, or at least self- 
 sown ; as regards the person, we speak of no other 
 weeds but the widow's. In each of these cases, the 
 same contraction of meaning, the separating off and 
 assigning to other words of large portions of this, 
 has found place. ' To starve' (the German ' sterben,' 
 and generally spelt ' sterve' up to the middle of the 
 seventeenth century), meant once to die any man- 
 ner of death ; thus, Chaucer says Christ " sterved 
 upon the cross for our redemption;" it now is re- 
 stricted to the dying by cold or by hunger. Words 
 not a few were once applied to both sexes alike, which 
 
WORDS USED MORE ACCURATELY. 175 
 
 are now restricted to the female. It is so even with 
 ' girl,' wliich was once a young person of either sex ;* 
 while other words in this list, such for instance as 
 'hoyden' (Milton, prose), 'shrew' (Chaucer), 'co- 
 quet' (Phillips, New World of Words), ' witch' (Wio- 
 lif), ' termagant' (Bale), ' scold,' 'jade,' ' slut' (Gow- 
 er), must be regarded in their present exclusive 
 appropriation to the female sex as evidences of men's 
 rudeness, and not of women's deserts. 
 
 The necessities of an advancing civilization de- 
 mand a greater precision and accuracy in the use of 
 words having to do with weight, measure, number, 
 size. Almost all such words as ' acre,' ' furlong,' 
 'yard,' 'gallon,' 'peck,' were once of a vague and 
 unsettled use, and only at a later day, and in obedi- 
 ence to the requirements of commerce and social life, 
 exact measures and designations. Thus, every field 
 was once an ' acre ;' and this remains so still with 
 the German ' acker,' and in our " God's acre," as a 
 name for a churchyard : it was not till about the reign 
 of Edward I. that ' acre' was commonly restricted to 
 a determined measure and portion of land. Here 
 and there even now a glebeland will be called " the 
 acre ;" and this, even while it contains not one but 
 many of our measured acres. A ' furlong' was a ' fur- 
 rowlong,' or length of a furrow. f Any pole was a 
 
 * And no less so in French with 'dame/ by which form not 'domi- 
 na' only, but 'dominus/ was represented. Thus, in early French 
 poetry, " Dame Dicu" for " Dominus Dcus" continually occurs. We 
 have here the key to the French exclamation, or oath, as we now 
 perceive it to be, ' Dame !' of which the dictionaries give no account. 
 See G^nin's Variations du Langage Fran^ais, p. 347 — a most instruc- 
 tive work. 
 
 t " A furlong, qiiAs'i furrowlong, being so much as a team in England 
 
176 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ' yard,' and this vaguer use survives in ' ssLili/ard,'' 
 ' halyard,' and in other sea-terms. Every pitcher 
 was a ' galon' (Mark xiv. 13, Wiclif), while a ' peck' 
 was no more than a ' poke' or bag. And the same 
 has no doubt taken place in all other languages. I 
 will only remind you how the Greek ' drachm' was at 
 first a handful (^SpaxM = ' manipulus,' from (^ptxcro'w, to 
 grasp) ; its later word for ten thousand (,aupio») implied 
 in Homer's time any great multitude. 
 
 Opposite to this is a counter-process by which words 
 of narrower intention gradually enlarge the domain 
 of their meaning, becoming capable of much wider 
 application than any which once they admitted. In- 
 stances in this kind are fewer than in that which we 
 have just been considering. The main stream and 
 course of human thoughts and human discourse tends 
 the other way, to discerning, distinguishing, dividing ; 
 and then to the permanent fixing of the distinctions 
 gained, by the aid of designations which shall keep 
 apart for ever in word that which has been once sev- 
 ered and sundered in thought. Nor is it hard to per- 
 ceive why this process should be the more frequent. 
 Men are first struck with the likenesses between those 
 things which are presented to them, with their points 
 of resemblance ; on the strength of which they bracket 
 them under a common term. Further acquaintance 
 reveals their points of unlikeness, the real dissimilari- 
 ties which lurk under superficial resemblances, the 
 need therefore of a different notation for objects which 
 are essentially different. It is comparatively much 
 rarer to discover real likeness under what at first afh 
 
 ploughetli going forward, before they return back again." Fuller, 
 Pisgah Sight of Palestine, p. 42.) 
 
WORDS USED LESS ACCURATELY. 177 
 
 peared as unlikeness ; and usually when a word moves 
 forward, and from a specialty indicates now a gener- 
 ality, it is not in obedience to any such discovery of 
 the true inner likeness of things — the steps of success- 
 ful generalizations being marked and secured in other 
 ways. But this widening of a word's meaning is too 
 often a result of those elements of disorganization and 
 decay which are at work in a language. Men forget 
 a word's history and etymology ; its distinctive fea- 
 tures are obliterated for them, with all which attached 
 it to some thought or fact which by right was its own. 
 Appropriated and restricted once to some striking 
 specialty which it vigorously set out, it can now be 
 used in a wider, vaguer, more unsettled way. It can 
 be employed twenty times for once when it would 
 have been possible formerly to employ it. Yet this 
 is not gain, but pure loss. It has lost its place in the 
 army of words, and become one of the loose and dis- 
 orderly mob. 
 
 Let me instance the word 'preposterous.' It is 
 now no longer of any practical service at all in the 
 language, being merely an ungraceful and slipshod 
 synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to 
 its old use ; let it designate that one peculiar branch 
 of absurdity which it designated once — namely, the 
 reversing of the true order of things, the putting of 
 the last first, aild, by consequence, of the first last — 
 and of what excellent service the word would be ca- 
 pable ! Thus, it is ' preposterous,' in the most accu- 
 rate use of the word, to put the cart before the horse, 
 to expect wages before the work is done, to hang a 
 man first and try him afterward ; and in this strict 
 
 8* 
 
178 CHANGED MEANIiNG OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 and accurate sense the word was always used by our 
 elder writers. 
 
 In like manner, " to prevaricate" was never em- 
 ployed by good writers of the seventeenth century 
 without nearer or more remote allusion to the uses of 
 the word in the Roman law-courts, where a ' prsevari- 
 cator' (properly a straddler with distorted legs) did 
 not mean generally and loosely, as now with us, one 
 who shuffles, quibbles, and evades ; but one who plays 
 false in a particular manner ; who, undertaking, or 
 being by his office bound, to prosecute a charge, is in 
 secret collusion with the opposite party ; and, betray- 
 ing the cause which he affects to support, so manages the 
 accusation as to obtain, not the condemnation, but the 
 acquittal, of the accused ; a " feint-pleader," as, I think, 
 in our old law-language, he would have been termed. 
 How much force would the keeping of this in mind 
 add to many passages in our elder divines ! 
 
 Or take ' equivocal,' ' equivocate,' ' equivocation.' 
 These words, which belonged at first to logic, have 
 slipped down into common use, and in so doing have 
 lost all the accuracy of their first employment. ' Equiv- 
 ocation' is now almost any such dealing in ambiguous 
 words with the intention of deceiving, as falls short 
 of an actual lie ; but according to its etymology, and 
 in its primary use, ' equivocation,' this fruitful mother 
 of so much error, is the calling by the same name, of 
 things essentially diverse, hiding intentionally or oth- 
 erwise a real difference under a verbal resemblance.* 
 N'or let it be urged, in defence of its present looser 
 
 * Thus Barrow : " Wliich [courage and constancy] he that wanteth 
 is no other than equivocally a gentleman, as an image or a carcass in 
 a man." 
 
EQUIVOCATE, IDEA, ETC. 179 
 
 use, that only so could it have served the needs of 
 our ordinary conversation ; on the contrary, had it 
 retained its first use, how serviceable an implement 
 of thought would it have been in detecting our own 
 fixllacies, or those of others! — all which it can now 
 be no longer. • 
 
 What now is ' idea' for us ? How infinite the fall 
 of this word since the time when Milton sang of the 
 Creator contemplating his newly-created world — 
 
 " how it showed, 
 
 Answering his great idea" — 
 
 to its present use, when this person " has an idea that 
 the train has started," and the other " had no idea 
 that the dinner would be so bad" ! But this word 
 ' idea' is perhaps the worst case in the English lan- 
 guage. Matters have not mended here since the 
 times of Dr. Johnson, of whom Boswell tells us : " He 
 was particularly indignant against the almost universal 
 use of the word idea in the sense of notion or opinion, 
 when it is clear that idea can only signify something 
 of which an image can be formed in the mind." There 
 is, indeed, no other word in the whole compass of 
 English, which perhaps is so seldom used with any 
 tolerable correctness ; in none is the distance so im- 
 mense between the frequent sublimity of the word in 
 its proper use, and the triviality of it in its slovenly 
 and its popular. 
 
 This tendency in words to lose the sharp, rigidly- 
 defined outline of meaning which they once possessed 
 — to become of wide, vague, loose application instead 
 of fixed, definite, and precise — to mean almost any- 
 thing, and so really to mean nothing — is, as I have 
 already said, one of those tendencies, and among the 
 
180 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 most fatally effectual, which are at work for the 
 final ruin of a language, and, I do not fear to add, ^ 
 for the demoralization of those that speak it. It is 
 one against which we shall all do well to watch ; for 
 there is none of us who can not do something in keep- 
 ing words close to their own proper meaning, and in 
 resisting their encroachment on the domain of others. 
 The causes which bring this mischief about are not 
 hard to trace. We all know that when a piece of 
 our silver money has long acted as " pale and common 
 drudge 'tween man and man," all which it had at first 
 of sharper outline and livelier impress is obliterated 
 from it in the end. So it is with words, above all 
 with words of science and theology. These, getting 
 into general use, and passing often from mouth Tt) 
 mouth, lose the " image and superscription" which 
 they had before they descended from the school to the 
 market-place, from the pulpit to the street. Being 
 now caught up by those who understand imperfectly 
 and thus incorrectly their true value, who will not 
 take the trouble, or who are incapable of grasping 
 that, they are obliged to accommodate themselves to 
 the lower sphere in which they circulate, by laying 
 aside much of the precision, and accuracy, and depth, 
 which once they had. They become weaker, shal- 
 lower, more indefinite ; till in the end, as exponents 
 of thought and feeling, they cease to be of any service 
 at all. 
 
 Sometimes a word does not merely narrow or extend 
 its meaning, but altogether changes it ; and this it 
 does in more ways than one. Thus a secondary fig- 
 urative sense will occasionally quite put out of use and 
 
'BOMBAST' MEANS COTTON WOOL. 181 
 
 extinguish the literal, until in the entire predominance 
 of that it is altogether forgotten that it ever possessed 
 any other. I may instance ' bombast' as a word about 
 which, in the great body of those who use it, this for- 
 getfulness is complete. The present meaning of 
 
 * bombast' is familiar to us all, namely inflated words, 
 " full of sound and fury," but " signifying nothing." 
 This, which is now its sole meaning, wa;S once only 
 the secondary and superinduced ; ' bombast' being 
 properly the cotton plant, and then the cotton wadding 
 with which garments were stuffed out and lined. You 
 remember perhaps how Prince Hal addresses Falstaff, 
 "How now, my sweet creature of bombast f^ using 
 the word in its literal sense ; and another early poet 
 has this line : — 
 
 " Thy body 's bolstered out with bombast and with bags." 
 
 ' Bombast' was then transferred in a vigorous image to 
 the big words without strength or solidity wherewith 
 the discourses of some were stuffed out, and has now 
 quite foregone any other meaning. So too * to garble' 
 was once " to cleanse from dross and dirt, as grocers 
 do their spices, to pick or cull out."* It is never used 
 now in this its primary sense, and has, indeed, under- 
 gone this further change, that while once ' to garble' 
 was to sift for the purpose of selecting the best, it is 
 now to sift with a view of picking out the worst.f 
 ' Polite' is another word in which the figurative sense 
 has quite extinguished the literal. We still speak of 
 
 * polished' surfaces ; but not any more, with Cudworth, 
 
 * Phillips, New World of Words, 1706. 
 
 t ** But his [Gideon's] army must be garbled, as too great for God 
 to give victory thereby; all the fearful return home by proclamation.*' 
 (Fuller, Pisgah Sight of Palest hie, b. ii., c. 8.) 
 
182 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH \yORDS. 
 
 of ''polite bodies, as looking glasses." Neither do 
 we now 'exonerate' a ship (Burton); nor -stigmatize,' 
 at least otherwise than figuratively, a ' malefactor' 
 (the same); nor ' corroborate' our health (Sir Thomas 
 Elyot). 
 
 Again^ a word will travel on by slow and regularly 
 progressive courses of change, itself a faithful index 
 of changes going on in society and in the minds of 
 men, till at length everything is changed about it. 
 The process of this it is often very curious to observe ; 
 capable as not seldom it is of being watched step by 
 step in its advances to the final consummation. There 
 may be said to be three leading phases which the 
 word successively presents, three steps in its history. 
 At first the word grows naturally out of its own root, 
 is filled with its own natural meaning. Presently the 
 word allows another meaning, one superinduced on 
 the former, and foreign to its etymology, to share with 
 the other in the possession of it, on the ground that 
 where the former exists, the latter commonly co-exists 
 with it. At the third step, the newly-introduced 
 meaning, not satisfied with its moiety, with dividing 
 the possession of the word, has thrust out the original 
 and rightful possessor altogether, and remains in sole 
 and exclusive possession. The three successive stages 
 may be represented by a, ab, b ; in which series b^ 
 which was wanting altogether at the first stage, and 
 was only admitted as secondary at the second, does 
 at the third become primary and indeed alone. 
 
 We are not to suppose that in actual fact the tran- 
 sitions from one signification to another are so strongly 
 and distinctly marked, as I have found it convenient 
 to mark them here. Indeed, it is hard to imagine 
 
GRADUAL CHANGE IN MEANING. 183 
 
 anything more gradual, more subtile and impercepti- 
 ble, than the process of change. The manner in which 
 the new meaning first insinuates itself into the old, 
 and then drives out the old, can only be compared to 
 the process of petrifaction, as rightly understood — 
 the water not gradually turning what is put into it to 
 stone, as we generally take the operation to be ; but 
 successively displacing each several particle of that 
 which is brought within its power, and depositing a 
 stony particle in its stead, till, in the end, while all 
 appears to continue the same, all has in fact been 
 thoroughly changed. It is precisely thus, by such 
 slow, gradual, and subtile advances that the new mean- 
 ing filters through and pervades the word, little by 
 little displacing entirely that which it before possessed. 
 No word would illustrate this process better than 
 that old example, familiar probably to us all, of ' vil- 
 lain.' The ' villain' is, first, the serf or peasant, ^ vil- 
 lanus,' because attached to the ' villa' or farm. He 
 is, secondly, the peasant who, it is taken for granted, 
 will be churlish, selfish, dishonest, and generally of 
 evil moral conditions, these having come to be assumed 
 as always belonging to him, and to be permanently 
 associated with his name, by those higher classes of 
 society who in the main commanded the springs of lan- 
 guage. At the third step, nothing of the meaning 
 which the etymology suggests, nothing of ' villa,' sur- 
 vives any longer; the peasant is wholly dismissed, 
 and the evil moral conditions of liim who is called by 
 this name alone remain ; so that the name would now 
 in this its final stage be applied as freely to peer, if 
 lie deserved it, as to peasant. ' Boor' has had exactly 
 the same history; being first the cultivator of the soil; 
 
184 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 then secondly, the cultivator of the soil who, it is as- 
 sumed, Avill be coarse, rude, and unmannerly ; and then, 
 thirdly, any one who is coarse, rude, and unmannerly. 
 So too ' pagan ;' which is first villager, tlien heathen 
 villager, and lastly heathen. .You may trace the same 
 progress in ' churl,' 'clown,' ' antic,' and in numerous 
 other words. The intrusive meaning might be likened 
 in all these cases to the egg which the cuckoo lays in 
 the sparrow's nest ; the young cuckoo first sharing the 
 nest with its rightful occupants, but not resting till it 
 has dislodged and ousted them altogether. 
 
 Let me instance one word more by way of illustra- 
 ting this part of my subject. It shall be the word 
 ' gossip,' on which however there will be a word or 
 two first to say. I called your attention in my last' 
 lecture to the true character of several words and 
 forms in use among our country people, and claimed 
 for them to be in many instances genuine English, 
 although English now more or less antiquated and 
 overlived. Not otherwise is it with this word ' gossip.' 
 I have myself heard this title given by our Hampshire 
 peasantry to the sponsors in baptism, the godfathers 
 and godmothers. 1 do not say that it is a usual word ; 
 but it is occasionally employed, and well understood. 
 This is a perfectly correct employment of ' gossip,' in 
 fact its proper and original one, and involves more- 
 over a very curious record of past beliefs. ' Gossip,' 
 or ' gossib,' as Chaucer spelt it, is a compound word, 
 made up of the name of ' God,' and of an old Anglo- 
 Saxon word, ' sib,' still alive in Scotland, as all read- 
 ers of Walter Scott will remember, and in some parts 
 of England, and which means akin ; they were said to 
 be ' sib,' who were related to one another. But why, 
 
GOSSIPS SPONSORS. '' 186 
 
 you may ask, was the name given to sponsors ? Out 
 of this reason ; — in tlie middle ages it was the pre- 
 vailing belief (and the Romish church still affirms it), 
 that those who stood as sponsors to the same child, 
 beside contracting spiritual obligations on behalf of 
 that child, also contracted spiritual affinity one with 
 another; they became sib, or akin in God; and thus 
 ' gossips ;* hence ' gossipred,' an old word, exactly 
 analogous to ' kindred.' Out of this faith the Roman 
 catholic church will not allow (unless indeed by dis- 
 pensations procured for money), those who have stood 
 as sponsors to the same child, afterward to contract 
 marriage with one another, affirming them too nearly 
 related for this to be lawful. 
 
 Take ' gossip,' however, in its ordinary present use, 
 as one addicted to idle tittle-tattle, and it seems to 
 bear no relation whatever to its etymology and first 
 meaning. The same three steps, however, which we 
 have traced before will bring us to its present use. 
 ' Gossips' are, first, the sponsors, brought by the act 
 of a common sponsorship into affinity and near famil- 
 iarity with one another ; secondly, these sponsors, 
 who being thus brought together, allow themselves 
 one with the other in familiar, and then in trivial and 
 idle talk ; thirdly, any who allow themselves in this 
 trivial and idle talk — called in French ' coramerage,* 
 from the fact that ' commere' has run through exactly 
 the same stages as its English equivalent. 
 
 It is plain that words which designate not things 
 and persons only, but these as they are contemplated 
 more or less in an ethical light, words which tinge 
 with a moral sentiment what they designate, are pe- 
 culiarly exposed to change ; are constantly liable to 
 
186 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 take a new coloring, or to lose an old. The gauge 
 and measure of praise or blame, honor or dishonor, 
 admiration or abhorrence, which they convey, is so 
 purely a mental and subjective one, that it is most 
 difficult to take accurate note of its rise or of its fall, 
 while yet there are causes continually at work leading 
 it to the one or the other. There are words not a 
 few, but ethical words above all, which have so im- 
 perceptibly drifted away from their former moorings, 
 that although their position is now very different from 
 that which they once occupied, scarcely one in a hun- 
 dred of casual readers, of those whose attention has 
 not been specially called to the subject, will have ob- 
 served that they have moved at all. Here too we 
 observe some words conveying less of praise or blame 
 than once, and some more ; while some have wholly 
 shifted from the one to the other. Some words were 
 at one time words of slight, almost of offence, which 
 have altogether ceased to be so now. Still these are 
 rare by comparison with those which once were harm- 
 less, but now are harmless no more ; which once it 
 may be were terms of honor, but which now imply a 
 slight or even a scorn. It is only too easy to perceive 
 why these should exceed those in number. 
 
 Let us take an example or two. If any were to 
 speak now of royal children as '' royal imps,^^ it would 
 sound, and with our present use of the word would 
 be, impertinent and unbecoming enough ; and yet 
 ' imp' was once a name of dignity and honor, and not 
 of slight or of undue familiarity. Thus Spenser ad- 
 dresses the Muses in this language — 
 
 " Ye sacred iJitps that on Parnasso dwell ;" 
 
WORDS GROW CONTEMPTUOUS. 187 
 
 and ' imp' was especially used of the scions of royal 
 or illustrious houses. More than one epitaph, still 
 existing, of our ancient nobility might be quotod, be- 
 ginning in such language as this : *' Here lies that 
 noble I/??/?." Or what should we say of a poet who 
 commenced a solemn poem in this fashion — 
 
 " Oh Israel, oh household of the Lord, 
 Oh Abraham's brats, oh brood of blessed seed" ? 
 
 We could only consider that he meant, by using low 
 words on lofty occasions, to turn sacred things into 
 ridicule. Yet this was very far from the intention 
 of Gascoigne, the poet whose lines I have just quoted. 
 " Abraham's brats''^ was used by him in perfect good 
 faith, and without the slightest feeling that anything 
 ludicrous or contemptuous adhered to the word ' brat,' 
 as indeed in his time there did not, any more than 
 adheres to ' brood,' which is another form of the same 
 word, now. 
 
 Call a person ' pragmatical,' and you now imply 
 not merely that he is busy, but over-husj, officious, 
 self-important and pompous to boot. But it once 
 meant nothing of the kind ; and ' pragmatical' (like 
 "TTpa;, /xaTuoc:) was One engaged in affairs, being an hon- 
 orable title, given to a man simply and industriously 
 engaged in the business which properly concerned 
 him.* So, too, to say that a person ' meddles,' or is 
 a ' meddler,' implies now that he interferes unduly in 
 other men's matters ; meddling, or mixing himself up, 
 with them. This was not insinuated in the earlier 
 
 * " We can not always be contemplative, or pragmatical, abroad : 
 but have need of some delightful intennissions, wherein the enlarged 
 soul may leave off awhile her severe schooling." — (Milton, Tetra- 
 chordon. ) 
 
188 CHANGED MEANING OP ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 uses of the word. On the contrary, three of our ear- 
 lier translations of the Bible have, '^Meddle with 
 your own business (1 Thess. iv. 11) ; and Barrow in 
 one of his sermons draws at some length the distinc- 
 tion between ' meddling' and " being meddlesome^'^ 
 and only condemns the latter. 
 
 Or take, again, the words ' to prose' or a ' proser.' 
 It can not, indeed, be affirmed that they convey any 
 moral condemnation, yet they certainly convey no. 
 compliment now, and are almost among the last which 
 any one would be willing should with justice be ap- 
 plied either to his talking or his writing. For ' to 
 prose,' as we all now know too well, is to talk or 
 write heavily and tediously, without spirit and with- 
 out animation ; but ' to prose' was once very different 
 from this : it was simply the antithesis of to versify, 
 and a • proser' the antithesis of a versifier or a poet. 
 It will follow that the most rapid and liveliest writer 
 who ever wrote, if he did not write in verse, would 
 have ' prosed' and been a ' proser,' in the language 
 of our ancestors. Thus, Drayton writes of his con- 
 temporary Nashe : — 
 
 " And surely Nashe, though he a proser were, 
 A branch of laurel yet deserves to bear" — 
 
 that is, the ornament, not of a ' proser,' but of a poet. 
 The tacit assumption that vigor, animation, rapid 
 movement, with all the precipitation of the spirit, be- 
 long to verse rather than to prose, and are the exclu- 
 sive possession of it, is that which must explain the 
 changed uses of the word. 
 
 Still it is according to a word's present signification 
 that we must apply it now. It would be no excuse, 
 having applied an insulting epithet to any, if we should 
 
SYCOPHANT, ETC. 189 
 
 afterward plead that, tried by its etymology and pri- 
 mary usage, it had nothing offensive or insulting about 
 it ; although indeed Swift assures us that in his time 
 such a plea was made and was allowed. " I remem- 
 ber," he says, " at a trial in Kent, where Sir George 
 Rooke was indicted for calling a gentleman ' knave' 
 and ' villain,' the lawyer for the defendant brought 
 off his client by alleging that the words were not inju- 
 rious ; for ' knave,' in the old and true signification, 
 imported only a servant ; and ' vi-llain' in Latin is vil- 
 licus, which is no more than a man employed in coun- 
 try labor, or rather a baily." The lawyer may have 
 deserved his success for his ingenuity and his bold- 
 ness ; though, if Swift reports him aright, not certainly 
 on the ground of the strict accuracy of either his 
 Anglo-Saxon or his Latin. 
 
 The moral sense and conviction of men is often at 
 work upon their words, giving them new turns in obe- 
 dience to these convictions, of which their changed 
 use will then remain a permanent record. Let me 
 illustrate tliis by the history of our word ' sycophant.' 
 You probably are acquainted with the story which the 
 Greek scholiasts invented by way of explaining a word 
 of which they knew nothing, namely, that the ' syco- 
 phant' was a " manifester of figs," one who detected 
 others in the act of exporting figs from Attica — an 
 act forbidden, they asserted, by the Athenian law — 
 and accused them to the people. Be this explanation 
 worth what it may, the word obtained in Greek a 
 more general sense ; any accuser, and then any false 
 accuser, was a ' sycophant.' And when the word was 
 adopted into the English language, it was in this 
 meaning ; thus, an old English poet speaks of " the 
 
190 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 railing route of sycophants f^ and Holland: "The 
 poor man, that hath naught to lose, is not afraid of 
 the sycophant.''^ But it has not kept this meaning : 
 a ^ sycophant' is now a fawning flatterer ; not one who 
 speaks ill of you behind your back ; rather one who 
 speaks good of you before your face, but good which 
 he does not in his heart believe. Yet how true a 
 moral instinct has presided over the changed signifi- 
 cation of the word ! The calumniator and the flat- 
 terer, although they seem so opposed to one another, 
 how closely united they really are ! They grow out 
 of the same root. The same baseness of spirit which 
 shall lead one to speak evil of you behind your back, 
 will lead him to fawn on you and flatter you before 
 your face — out of a sense of which the Italians have 
 a proverb : " Who flatters me before, spatters me 
 behind." 
 
 But it is not the moral sense only of men which is 
 thus at work, modifying their words ; but the immoral 
 as well. If the good which men have and feel, pene- 
 trates into their speech and leaves its deposite there, 
 so does also the evil. Thus, we may trace a constant 
 tendency — in too many cases it has been a successful 
 one — to empty words employed in the condemnation 
 of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moral rep- 
 robation which they once conveyed. Men's too easy 
 toleration of sin, the feebleness of their moral indig- 
 nation against it, bring about that the blame which 
 words expressed once, has in some of them become 
 much weaker now than once, has from others vanished 
 altogether. " To do a shrewd turn," was once to do 
 a wicked turn ; and Chaucer, using ' shrewdness' by 
 which to translate the Latin ' improbitas,' shows that 
 
SHREWD, ANTECEDENTS, ETC. 191 
 
 it meant wickedness for him ; nay, two murderers he 
 calls two ' shrews' — for there were, as already no- 
 ticed, male shrews once as well as female. But " a 
 shretvd turn" now, while it implies a certain amount 
 of sharp dealing, yet implies nothing more ; and 
 * shrewdness' is applied to men rather in their praise 
 than in their dispraise. And not 'shrewd' and 
 'shrewdness' only, but a great many other words — 
 I will only instance ' prank,' ' flirt,' ' luxury,' ' luxuri- 
 ous, ' peevish,' ' wayward,' ' loiterer,' ' uncivil' — con- 
 veyed once a much more earnest moral disapproval 
 than now they do. 
 
 But I must bring this lecture to a close. I have 
 but opened to you paths, which you, if you are so 
 minded, can follow up for yourselves. We have 
 learned lately to speak of men's ' antecedents ;' the 
 phrase is newly come up ; and it is common to say 
 that if we would know what a man really now is, we 
 must know his ' antecedents,' that is, what he has been 
 in time past. This is quite as true about words. If 
 we would know what they now are, we must know 
 what they have been ; we must know, if possible, the 
 date and place of their birth, the successive stages of 
 their subsequent history, the company which they 
 have kept, all the road whicli they have travelled, 
 and what has brought them to tlio point at which 
 now we find them ; we must know, in short, their an- 
 tecedents. 
 
 And let me say, without attempting to bring back 
 school into these lectures which are out of school, 
 that, seeking to do this, we might add an interest to 
 our researches in the lexicon and the dictionary which 
 otherwise they could never have; that taking such 
 
192 CHANGED MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 wordg, for example, as hxhr^dla, or 'jrakiyysvstfia, or 
 eurpoiitsXia, or (jo:pi<r<rr,g, ov (f-x^oXafjTiy.oc, in Greek ; as ' re- 
 ligio,' or ' sacramentum,' or ' urbanitas,' or ' supersti- 
 tio,' in Latin ; as ' libertine,' or ' casuistry,'* or ' hu- 
 manity,' or ' humorous,' or ' danger,' or ' romance,' in 
 English, and endeavoring to trace the manner in 
 which one meaning grew out of and superseded an- 
 other, and how they arrived at that use in which they 
 have finally rested (if, indeed, before our English 
 words there is not a future still), we shall derive, I 
 believe, amusement — I am sure, instruction ; we shall 
 feel that we are really getting something, increasing 
 the moral and intellectual stores of our minds ; fur- 
 nishing ourselves with that which may hereafter be 
 of service to ourselves, may be of service to others — 
 than which there can be no feeling more pleasurable, 
 none more delightful. I shall be glad and thankful 
 if you can feel as much in regard of that lecture, 
 which I now bring to its end. 
 
 =* See Whewell's History of Moral Philosophy in England, pp. 
 xxvii, xxxii. 
 
WRITING AND PRINTING. 193 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 When I announce to you that the subject of ray 
 lecture to-day will be English orthography, or the 
 spelling of words in our native language, with the 
 alterations which this has undergone, you may per- 
 haps think with yourselves that a weightier, or, if not 
 a weightier, at all events a more interesting, subject 
 might have occupied this our concluding lecture. I 
 can not admit it to be wanting either in importance 
 or in interest. Unimportant it certainly is not, but 
 might well engage, as it often has engaged, the atten- 
 tion of those with far higher acquirements than any 
 which I possess. Uninteresting it may be, by faults 
 in the manner of treating it ; but I am sure it ought 
 as little to be this, and would never prove so in com- 
 petent hands. Let us, then, address ourselves to this 
 matter, not without good hope that it may yield us 
 both profit and pleasure. 
 
 I know not who it was that said : " The invention 
 of printing was very well ; but, as compared to the 
 invention of writing, it was no such great matter after 
 all." Whoever it was who made this observation, it 
 is clear that for him use and familiarity had not oblit- 
 erated the wonder which there is in that, whereat we 
 probably have long ceased to wonder at all — the 
 power, namely, of representing sounds by written 
 
 9 
 
194 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 signs, of reproducing for the eye that which existed 
 at first only for the ear : nor was the estimate which 
 he formed of the relative value of these two inven- 
 tions other than a just one. Writing, indeed, stands 
 more nearly on a level with speaking, and deserves 
 rather to be compared with it, than with printing — 
 which, with all its utility, is yet of altogether another 
 and inferior type of greatness ; or, if this is too much 
 to claim for writing, it may at any rate be affirmed 
 to stand midway between the other two, and to be 
 as much superior to the one as it is inferior to the 
 other. 
 
 The intention of the written word — that which 
 presides at its first formation, the end whereunto it is 
 a mean — is, by aid of symbols agreed on before, to 
 represent to the eye with the greatest accuracy which 
 i& possible the spoken word. 
 
 It never fulfils this intention completely, and by 
 degrees more and more imperfectly. Short as man's 
 spoken word often falls of his thought, his written 
 word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causes 
 contribute to this. In the first place, the marks of 
 imperfection and infirmity cleave to writing, as to 
 every other invention of man. All alphabets have 
 been left incomplete. They have superfluous letters 
 — letters, that is, which they do not want, because 
 other letters already represent the sound which they 
 represent ; they have dubious letters — letters, that is, 
 which say nothing certain about the sounds they stand 
 for, because more than one sound is represented by 
 them (our ' c,' for instance, which sometimes has the 
 sound of ' s,' as in ' city,' sometimes of ' k,' as in ' cat) ; 
 they are deficient in letters — that is, the language 
 
RISE OF PHONOGRAPHY. 195 
 
 has elementary sounds which have no corresponding 
 letters appropriated to them, and can only be repre- 
 sented by combinations of letters. All alphabets, I 
 believe, have some of these faults, and not a few of 
 them have all, and more. This, then, is one reason ot 
 the im})erfcct reproduction of the spoken word by the 
 written. But another is, that the human voice is so 
 wonderfully fine and flexible an organ, is able to mark 
 such subtile and delicate distinctions of sound, so infi- 
 nitely to modify and vary these sounds, that were an 
 alphabet complete as human art could make it, did it 
 possess eight-and-forty instead of four-and-twenty let- 
 ters, there would still remain a multitude of sounds 
 which it could only approximately give back. 
 
 But there is a further cause for the divergence 
 which comes gradually to find place between men's 
 spoken and their written words. What men do often, 
 they will seek to do with the least possible trouble. 
 There is nothing which they do oftener than repeat 
 words : they will seek here, then, to save themselves 
 pains ; they will contract two or more syllables into 
 one (' toto opere' will become ' topper,' ' vuestra mer- 
 ced' ' usted,' and ' God be with you' ' good-by') ; they 
 will slur over, and thus after a while cease to pro- 
 nounce, certain letters ; for hard letters they will sub- 
 stitute soft ; for those which require a certain efibrt 
 to pronounce, they will substitute those which require 
 little or none. 
 
 And thus, as the result of these causes, a gulf be- 
 tween the written and spoken word will not merely 
 exist ; but it will have the tendency to grow ever 
 wider and wider. This tendency, indeed, will be 
 partially counterworked by approximations which 
 
196 CHANGED SPELLING OP ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 from time to time will by silent consent be made of 
 the written word to be spoken ; here and there a let- 
 ter dropped in speech will be dropped also in writing, 
 as the ' s ' in so many French words, where its absence 
 is marked by a circumflex ; a new shape, contracted 
 or briefer, which a word has taken on the lips of men, 
 will find its representation in their writing ; as ' chi- 
 rurgeon' will not merely be pronounced, but also spelt, 
 ' surgeon/ Still for all this, and despite of these par- 
 tial readjustments of the relations between the two, 
 the anomalies will be infinite ; there will be a multi- 
 tude of written letters which have ceased to be sounded 
 letters ; a multitude of words will exist in one shape 
 upon our lips, and in quite another in our books. 
 
 It is inevitable that the question should arise: 
 " Shall these anomalies be meddled with ? shall it be 
 attempted to remove them, and bring writing and 
 speech into harmony and consent — a harmony and 
 consent which never, indeed, in actual fact, at any 
 period of the language existed, but which yet may be 
 regarded as the object of written speech, as that which 
 it was intended to display ?" If the attempt is to be 
 made, it is clear that it can only be made in one way. 
 The question is not open, whether Mohammed shall 
 go to the mountain, or the mountain to Mohammed. 
 The spoken word is the mountain ; it will not stir ; it 
 will resist all interference. It feels its own primary 
 rights, that it existed the first, that it is, so to speak, 
 the elder brother ; and it will never be induced to 
 change itself for the purpose of conforming and com- 
 plying with the written word. Men will not be per- 
 suaded to pronounce ' wou/d' and ' deZ^t,' because they 
 write these words ' would' and ' debt' severally with 
 
THE SPOKEN AND WRITTEN WORD. 197 
 
 an / and with a, b : but perhaps they might be per- 
 suaded to write ' woud' and ' det,' because they pro- 
 nounce so ; and in like manner with all other words, 
 in which there exists at present a chasm between the 
 word as we speak it and the word as we write it. 
 
 Here we have the explanation of that which in the 
 history of almost all literatures has repeated itself 
 more than once, namely, the endeavor to introduce 
 phonetic writing. It has certain plausibilities to rest 
 on ; it has its appeal to the unquestionable fact that 
 the written word was intended ' to picture to the eye 
 what the spoken word sounded in the ear. At the 
 same time, I believe that it would be impossible to in- 
 troduce it ; and if it tvere possible, that it would be 
 most undesirable, and this for two reasons : the first 
 being that the losses consequent upon its introduction 
 would far outweigh the gains, even supposing those 
 gains as great as the advocates of the scheme promise ; 
 the second, that these promised gains would themselves 
 be only very partially realized, or not at all. 
 
 In the first place, I believe it to be impossible. It 
 is clear that such a scheme must begin with the recon- 
 struction of the alphabet. The first thing that the 
 phonographers have perceived is the necessity for the 
 creation of a vast number of new signs, the poverty 
 of all existing alphabets (at any rate of our own) not 
 yielding a several sign for all the several sounds in 
 the language. Our English phonographers have there- 
 fore had to invent ten of these new signs or letters, 
 which are henceforth to take their place with our 
 a, b, c, and to enjoy equal rights with them. Reject- 
 ing two (q, x), and adding ten, they have raised their 
 alphabet from twenty-six letters to thirty-four. But 
 
198 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLLSH WORDS. 
 
 fco procure the reception of such a reconstructed alpha- 
 bet is simply an impossibility — as much an impossi- 
 bility as would be the reconstitution of the structure 
 of the language in any points where it was manifestly 
 deficient or illogical. Sciolists or scholars may sit 
 down in their studies, and devise these new letters, 
 and prove that we need them, and that the introduc- 
 tion of them would be a great gain, and a manifest 
 improvement ; and this may be all very true : but if 
 they think they can induce a people to adopt them, 
 they know little of how closely entwined the alphabet 
 is with the whole innermost life of a people. One 
 may freely own that all present alphabets are redun- 
 dant here, are deficient there ; our English perhaps 
 is as greatly at fault as any, and with that we have 
 chiefly to do. It is not to be denied that it has more 
 letters than one to express one and the same sound ; 
 that it has only one letter to express two or three 
 sounds ; that it has sounds which are only capable of 
 being expressed at all by awkward and roundabout 
 expedients. Yet at the same time we must accept 
 the fact, as we accept any other which it is out of our 
 power to change — with regret, indeed, but with a 
 perfect acquiescence : as one accepts the fact that Ire- 
 land is not some thirty or forty miles nearer to Eng- 
 land ; that it is so difficult to get round Cape Horn ; 
 that the climate of Africa is so fatal to European life. 
 A people will no more quit their alpliabet than they 
 will quit their language ; they will no more consent 
 to modify the one ab extra than the other. Ca3sar 
 avowed that with all his power he could not introduce 
 a new word, and certainly Claudius could not intro- 
 duce a new letter. Centuries may sanction the bring- 
 
LEARNING TO SPELL. 199 
 
 ing in of a new one, or the dropping of an old. But 
 to imagine that it is possible suddenly to introduce a 
 group of ten new letters, as these reformers propose 
 — they might just as feasibly propose that the English 
 language should form its comparatives and superla- 
 tives on some entirely new scheme, say in Greek fash- 
 ion, by the terminations ' oteros' and ' otatos ;' or that 
 we should agree to set up a dual ; or that our substan- 
 tives should return to their Anglo-Saxon declensions. 
 Any one of these or like proposals would not betray 
 a whit more ignorance of the eternal laws which reg- 
 ulate human language, and of the limits within which 
 deliberate action upon it is possible, than does this of 
 increasing our alphabet by ten entirely novel signs. 
 
 But grant it possible — grant our six-and-twenty 
 letters to have so little sacredness in them that Eng- 
 lishmen would endure a crowd of upstart interlopers 
 to mix themselves on an equal footing with them — 
 still this could only be from a sense of the greatness 
 of the advantage to be derived from this introduction. 
 Now, the vast advantage claimed by the advocates of 
 the system is, that it would facilitate the learning to 
 read, and wholly save the labor of learning to spell, 
 which " on the present plan occupies," as they assure 
 us, " at the very lowest calculation, from three to five 
 years." Spelling, it is said, would no more need to 
 be learned at all ; since whoever knew the sound, 
 would necessarily know also the spelling, this being 
 in all cases in perfect conformity with that. The an- 
 ticipation of this gain rests upon two assumptions 
 which are tacitly taken for granted, but both of them 
 erroneous. 
 
 The first of these assumptions is, that all men pro- 
 
200 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 nounce all words alike ; so that, whenever they come 
 to spell a word, they will exactly agree as to what 
 the outline of its sound is. Now, we are sure men 
 will not do this, from the fact that, before there was 
 any fixed and settled orthography in our language, 
 when therefore everybody was more or less a phonog- 
 rapher, seeking to write down the word as it sounded 
 to him (for he had no other law to guide him), the 
 variations of spelling were infinite. Take, for in- 
 stance, the word ' sudden,' which does not seem to 
 promise any great scope for variety. I have myself 
 met with this word spelt in no less than the following 
 fourteen ways among our early writers : ' sodain,' 
 ' sodaine,' ' sodan,' ' sodayne,' ' sodden,' ' sodein,' ' sod- 
 eine,' ' soden,' ' sodeyn,' ' suddain,' ' suddaine,' ' sud- 
 dein,' ' sudden,' ' sudeyn.' Again, in how many ways 
 was Raleigh's name spelt, or Shakespeare's ! The 
 same is evident from the spelling of uneducated per- 
 sons in our own day. They have no other rule but 
 the sound to guide them. How>js it that they do not 
 all spell alike — erroneously, it may be, as having 
 only the sound for their guide, but still falling all 
 into exactly the same errors ? They not merely spell 
 wrong, which might be laid to the charge of our per- 
 verse system of spelling, but with an inexhaustible 
 diversity of error, and that too in case of simplest 
 words. Thus, the little town of Woburn would seem 
 to give small room for caprice in spelling, while yet 
 the postmaster there has made, from the superscrip- 
 tion of letters that have passed through his hands, a 
 collection of no less than two hundred and forty-four 
 varieties of ways in which the place has been spelt !* 
 
 * Notes and Queries, No. 147. 
 
VARIETIES IN SPELLING. 201 
 
 It may be said that these were all or nearly all from 
 the letters of the ignorant and uneducated. Exactly 
 so ; but it is for their sakes, and to place them on a 
 level with the educated, or rather to accelerate their 
 education by the omission of a useless yet troublesome 
 discipline, that the change is proposed. I wish to 
 show you that after the change, they would be just as 
 much or almost as much at a loss in their spelling as 
 now. 
 
 And another reason which would make it just as 
 necessary then to learn orthography as now, is the 
 following : Pronunciation, as I have already noticed, 
 is far too fine and subtile a thing to be more than 
 approximated to, and indicated in, the written letter. 
 In a multitude of cases the difficulties which pronun- 
 ciation presented would be sought to be overcome in 
 different ways, and thus different spellings would 
 arise ; or, if not so, one would have to be arbitrarily 
 selected, and would have need to be learned, just as 
 much as the spelling of a word now has need to be 
 learned. I will only ask you, in proof of this which 
 I affirm, to turn to any pronouncing dictionary. That 
 greatest of all absurdities, a pronouncing dictionary, 
 may be of some service to you in this matter ; it will 
 certainly be of no service to you in any other. When 
 you mark the elaborate and yet ineffectual artifices by 
 which it toils after the finer distinctions of articula- 
 tion, seeks to reproduce in letters what exists, and 
 can only exist, as the spoken tradition of pronuncia- 
 tion, acquired from lip to lip, capable of being learned, 
 but incapable of being taught ; or when you compare 
 two of these dictionaries with one another, and mark 
 the entirely different schemes and combinations of Ict- 
 ' 9* 
 
202 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ters which they have for representing the same sound 
 to the eye ; you will then perceive how idle the at- 
 tempt to make the written in language commensurate 
 with the sounded ; you will own that not merely out 
 of human caprice, ignorance, or indolence, the former 
 falls short of and difers from the latter ; but that this 
 lies in the necessity qf things, in the fact that man's 
 voice can effect a great deal more than ever his letter 
 can.* You will then perceive that there would be as 
 much, or nearly as much, of the arbitrary in spelling 
 which calls itself phonetic as in our present ; that 
 spelling would have to be learned just as really then 
 as now. We should be unable to dismiss the spelling- 
 card even after the arrival of that great day, when, 
 for example, those lines of Pope which hitherto we 
 have thus spelt and read — 
 
 "But errs not Nature from this gracious end, 
 From burning suns when livid deaths descend, 
 When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep 
 Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep V* — 
 
 when, I say, instead of this, they should present them- 
 selves to our eyes in the following attractive form ; — 
 
 " B^t "i erz not nstymr from dis gre/ys end, 
 from b^rnir) ssuz hwen livid dets disend, 
 hwen ertkweks swolor, or hwen tempests swjp 
 touiiz tu w^n grev, he-l nejonz tu 4e djp." 
 
 The scheme would not, then, fulfil its promises. Its 
 vaunted gains, when we come to look closely at them, 
 disappear. And now for its losses. There are in 
 every language a vast number of words, which the 
 ear does not distinguish from one another, but which 
 
 * Sec Boswell's Life of Johnson, Croker's edit., 1848, p. 233, 
 
LOSSES OP PHONETIC SPELUNG. 203 
 
 are at once distinguishable to the eye by the spelling. 
 I will only instance a few which are the same parts 
 of speech : thus, * sun' and ' son ;' ' virge' (virga, now 
 obsolete) and ' verge ;' ' reign,' ' rain,' and ' rein ;' 
 ' hair' and ' hare ;' ' plate' and ' plait ;' ' moat' and 
 
 * mote ;' ' pear' and ' pair ;' ' air' and ' heir ;' ' ark' and 
 
 * arc ;' * mite' and ' might ;' ' pour' and ' pore ;' ' veil' 
 and ' vale ;' ' knight' and ' night ;' ' knave' and ' nave ;' 
 ' pier' and ' peer ;' * rite' and ' right ;' ' site' and ' sight ;' 
 ' aisle' and ' isle ;' ' concent' and ' consent ;' ' signet' 
 and ' cygnet.' Now, of course, it is a real disadvan- 
 tage, and may be the cause of serious confusion, that 
 there should be words in spoken language of entirely 
 different origin and meaning, which yet can not in 
 sound be differenced from one another. The phonog- 
 raphers simply propose to extend this disadvantage 
 already cleaving to our spoken language, to the writ- 
 ten language as well. It is fault enough in the French 
 language that ' mere' a mother, ' mer' the sea, ' maire' 
 a mayor of a town, should have no perceptible differ- 
 ence between them in the spoken tongue ; or, again, 
 that the same should find place in respect of ' ver' a 
 worm, ' vert' green, ' verre' a glass, ' vers' a verse. 
 Surely it is not very wise to propose gratuitously to 
 extend the same fault to the written language as 
 well ! 
 
 This loss in so many cases of the power of discrimi- 
 nating between words, which, however liable to con- 
 fusion now in our spoken language, are liable to none 
 in our written, would be serious enough ; but more 
 serious than this would be the loss in so many cases 
 of all which visibly connects a word with the past — 
 which tells its history, and indicates the quarter from 
 
204 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 which it has been derived. In how many English 
 words a letter silent to the ear, is yet most eloquent 
 to the eye ! — the g-, for instance, in ' deign,' ' feign,' 
 ' reign,' ' impugn,' telling as it does of ' dignor,' ' fingo,' 
 * regno,' ' impugno ;' even as the h in ' debt,' ' doubt,' 
 is not idle, but tells of ^ debitum' and ' dubium.' 
 
 At present it is the written word which is in all 
 languages their conservative element. In it is the 
 abiding witness against the mutilations or other capri- 
 cious changes in their shape which affectation, folly, 
 ignorance, and half-knowledge, would inti'oduce. It 
 is not, indeed, always able to hinder the final adop- 
 tion of these corrupter forms, but does not fail to op- 
 pose to them a constant, and very often a successful, 
 resistance. With the adoption of phonetic spelling, 
 this witness would exist no longer; whatever was 
 spoken would have also to be written, let it be never 
 so barbarous, never so great a departure from the true 
 form of the word. Nor is it merely probable that 
 such a barbarizing process, such an adopting and 
 sanctioning of a vulgarism, might take place, but 
 among phonographers it already has taken place. 
 We all probably are aware that there is a vulgar pro- 
 nunciation of the word ' Euro;?6?,' as though it were 
 ' Eurwp.' Now, it is quite possible that numerically 
 more persons in England may pronounce the word in 
 this manner than in the right ; and therefore the pho- 
 nographers are only true to their principles when they 
 spell it in the fashion which they do, ' Eurup,' or, in- 
 deed, omitting the E at the beginning, ' "[Jrup,'* with 
 thus the life of the first syllable assailed no less than 
 
 * A chief phonographer denies that this is the present spelling 
 (1856) of 'Europe.' It was so when this paragraph was w.ritten. 
 
LOSSES BY PHONETIC SPELLING. 205 
 
 that of the second. What arc the consequences ? 
 First, its relations with the old mythology are at once 
 and entirely broken off; secondly, its most probable 
 etymology from two Greek words, signifying ' broad' 
 and 'face' — Europe being so called from the broad 
 line ov face of coast which our continent presented to 
 the Asiatic Greek — is totally obscured. But so far 
 from the spelling servilely following the pronuncia- 
 tion, I should be bold to affirm that if ninety-nine out 
 of every hundred persons in England chose to call 
 Europe '• IJrup,' this would be a vulgarism still, against 
 which the written word ought to maintain its protest, 
 not sinking down to their level, but rather seeking to 
 elevate them to its own.* 
 
 And if there is much in orthography which is unset- 
 tled now, how much more would be unsettled then ! 
 Inasmuch as the pronunciation of words is continually 
 altering, their spelling would, of course, have contin- 
 ually to alter too. For the fact that pronunciation is 
 undergoing constant changes — although changes for 
 the most part unmarked, or marked only by a few — 
 
 ^ Quintilian has expressed himself with the true dignity of a scholar 
 on this matter {Inst., \., vi., 45) : " Consuetudinem sermonis vocabo 
 consensum eruditorum ; sicut vivendi consensum bonorum." How dif- 
 ferent from innovations like this the changes in the spelling of German 
 whicli J. Grimm, so far as his own example may reach, has introduced ! 
 — and tlie still bolder and more extensive ones which in the prefaco 
 to his DeiUsches Worterbuch (pp. 54-62) he avows his desire to see in- 
 troduced, as the employment of/, not merely where it is at pi'esent 
 used, but also wherever v is now employed ; the substituting the v, 
 which would be thus disengaged, for w, and the entire dismissal of w. 
 They may be advisable, or they may not; it is not for strangers to 
 offer an opinion : but at any rate they are not a seizing of the fluctu- 
 ating, superficial accidents of the present, and a seeking to give per- 
 manent authority to these; but they all rest on a deep historic study 
 of the language, and of the true genius of the language. 
 
206 CHANGED SPELLING OP ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 would be abundantly easy to prove. Take a pronoun- 
 cing dictionary of fifty or a hundred years ago ; turn 
 to almost any page, and you will observe schemes of 
 pronunciation there recommended, which are now 
 merely vulgarisms, or which have been dropped alto- 
 gether. We gather from a discussion in Boswell's 
 Life of Johnson* that in his time * great' was by some 
 of the best speakers of the language pronounced ' gr^et,' 
 not ' grate.' Pope usually rhymes it with ' cheat/ 
 ' complete,' and the ' like ;' thus, in the Dunciad : — 
 
 " Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great, 
 There, stamped with arras, Newcastle shines complete." 
 
 Again, Pope rhymes ' obliged' with ' besieged ;' and 
 it has only ceased to be ' obleeged' almost in our own 
 time. Who now drinks a cup of ' ta,y' ? yet there is 
 abundant evidence that this was the fashionable pro- 
 nunciation in the first half of the last century ; the 
 word, that is, was still regarded as French : Locke 
 writes it ' the ;' and in Pope's time, though no longer 
 written, it was still pronounced so. Take this coup- 
 let of his in proof : — 
 
 " Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obe^, 
 Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea." 
 
 So, too, a pronunciation which still survives, though 
 scarcely among well-educated persons, I mean ' Room' 
 for ' Rome,' must have been in Shakespeare's time the 
 predominant one, else there would have been no point 
 in that play on words where, in Julius CcBsar, Cassius, 
 complaining that in all Rome there was not room for 
 a single man, exclaims — 
 
 "Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough." 
 * Croker's edit., 1848, pp. 57, 61, 233. 
 
PRONUNCIATION ALTERS. 207 
 
 Rogers, too, assures us that in his youth " everybody 
 said ' Loniion,' not ' London.' Fox said ' Lonnon' to 
 the last." 
 
 The following quotation from Swift will prove to 
 you that I have been only employing here an argument 
 which he employed long ago against the phonogra- 
 phers of his time. He exposes thus the futility of 
 their scheme :* " Another cause which has contributed 
 not a little to the maiming of our language, is a fool- 
 ish opinion advanced of late years that we ought to 
 spell exactly as we speak : which, besides the obvious 
 inconvenience of utterly destroying our etymology, 
 would be a thing we should never see an end of. Not 
 only the several towns and counties of England have 
 a diiTerent way of pronouncing, but even here in Lon- 
 don they clip their words after one manner about the 
 court, another in the city, and a third in the suburbs , 
 and in a few years, it is probable, will all differ from 
 themselves, as fancy or fashion shall direct ; all which, 
 reduced to writing, would entirely confound orthog- 
 raphy." 
 
 This much I have thought good to say in respect of 
 that entire revolution in English orthography which 
 some rash innovators have proposed. Let me, dismiss 
 sing them and their innovations, call your attention 
 now to those alterations in spelling which are con- 
 stantly going forward, at some periods more rapidly 
 than at others, but wliich never wholly cease out of a 
 language ; and let me seek to trace, where this is pos- 
 sible, the motives and inducements which bring them 
 
 * A Proposal for co- reeling, improving, and ascertaining the English 
 Tongue, 1711 : Works vol. ix., pp, 139-159. 
 
208 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 about. It is a subject which none can neglect, who 
 desire to obtain even a tolerably accurate acquaint- 
 ance with their native tongue. Some principles have 
 been laid down in the course of what has been said 
 already, that may help us to judge whether the changes 
 which have found place in our own have been for bet- 
 ter or for worse. We shall find, if I am not mistaken, 
 of both kinds. 
 
 There are alterations in spelling which are for the 
 worse. Thus, an altered spelling will sometimes ob- 
 scure the origin of a word, concealing it from those 
 who, but for this, would at once have known whence 
 and what it was, and would have found both pleasure 
 and profit in this knowledge. I need not say that in 
 all those cases where the earlier spelling revealed the 
 secret of the word, told its history, which the latter 
 defaces or conceals, the change has been injurious, 
 and is to be regretted ; while, at the same time, where 
 it has thoroughly established itself, there is nothing 
 to do but to acquiesce in it : the endeavor to undo it 
 would be absurd. Thus, when ' grocer' was spelt 
 ' grosser,' it was comparatively easy to see that he 
 first had his name, because he sold his wares not by 
 retail, but in the gross. ' Co:2;comb' tells us nothing 
 now ; but it did when spelt, as it used to be, ' cocks- 
 comb,' the comb of a cock being then an ensign or 
 token which the fool was accustomed to wear. In 
 ' grogram' we are entirely to seek for the derivation ; 
 but in ' grograii' or ' grogram,' as earlier it was spelt, 
 one could scarcely miss ' grosgrain,' the stuff of a 
 coarse grain or woof. How many now understand 
 ' woodbine' ? but who could have helped understand- 
 ing ' woodbind' (Ben Jonson) ? 
 
209 
 
 * Figmy^ used formerly to be spelt ' pygmy ;' and so 
 long as it was so, no Greek scholar could see the word, 
 but at once he knew that by it were indicated mani- 
 kins whose measure in height was no greater than 
 that of a man's arm from the elbow fo the closed Jist* 
 Now he may know this in other ways ; but the word 
 itself, so long as he assumes it to be rightly spelt, tells 
 him nothing. Or, again, the old spelling, ' diamaw/,' 
 was preferable to the modern ' diamond.^ It was 
 preferable, because it told more of the quarter whence 
 the word had reached us. ' Diamant' and ' adamant' 
 are, in fact, only two different appropriations of one 
 and the same Greek, which afterward became a Latin, 
 word. The primary meaning of ' adamant' is, as you 
 know, the untameable, and it was a name given at 
 first to steel as the hardest of metals ; but afterward 
 transferred! to the most precious among all the pre- 
 cious stones — as that which in power of resistance 
 surpassed everything besides. 
 
 Neither are new spellings to be commended, which 
 obliterate or obscure the relationship of a word with 
 others to which it is really allied ; separating from 
 one another, for those not thoroughly acquainted with 
 the subject, words of the same family. Thus, when 
 'yaw' was spelt ' c/iaw,' no one could miss its connec- 
 tion with the verb ' to chew.' Now, probably ninety- 
 
 * Pygmaei, quasi Cubitales (Augustine). 
 
 t First so used by Theophrastus in Greek, and by Pliny in Latin. 
 The real identity of the two words explains Milton's use of ' diamond* 
 in Paradise Lost, book vii. ; and also in that sublime passage in his 
 Apologij for Smecfymnuns : " Then zeal, whose substance is ethereal, 
 arming in complete diamond." Dioz ( Worterbuch d. Roman. Sjnachen, 
 p. 123) supposes, not very probably, that it was under a certain inllu- 
 ence of * diafano,' the translucent, ihat ' adamante' was in the Italian, 
 ■whence we have derived the word, changed into ' diavaixnic' 
 
210 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 nine out of a hundred who use both words, iare entire- 
 ly unaware of any relationship between them. It is 
 the same with ' cousin' (consanguineus), and ' to cozen' 
 or to deceive. I do not propose to determine which 
 of these words should conform itself to the spelling 
 of the other. There was great irregularity in the 
 spelling of both from the first ; yet for all this, it was 
 then better than now, when a permanent distinction 
 has established itself between them, keeping out of 
 sight that ' to cozen' is in all likelihood to deceive 
 under show of kindred and affinity ; w^hich, if it be so, 
 Shakespeare's words — 
 
 " Cousins indeed, aud by their uncle cozened 
 Of comfort"* — 
 
 will be found to contain not a pun, but an etymology. 
 The real relation between ' bliss' and ' to bless' is in 
 like manner at present obscured. 
 
 The omission of a letter, or the addition of a letter, 
 may each effectually do its work in keeping out of 
 sight the true character and origin of a word. Thus 
 the omission of a letter. When the first syllable of 
 ' bran-new' was spelt '■ branch' with a final d, ' branch- 
 new,' how vigorous an image did the word contain. 
 The ' brand' is the fire, and ' brand-new' equivalent to 
 'fire-new' (Shakespeare), is that which is fresh and 
 bright, as being newly come from the forge and fire. 
 As now spelt, ' bran-new' conveys to us no image at 
 all. • 
 
 Again, you have the word ' scrip' — as a ' scrip' of 
 paper, government ' scrip.' Is this the same word 
 with the Saxon ' scrip,' a wallet, having in some 
 strange manner obtained these meanings so diflerent 
 
 ^= Richard III., act iv., scene iv. 
 
SCRIP, AFRAID, SCKXT. 211 
 
 and so remote ? Have we here only two different 
 applications of one and the same word, or two homo- 
 nyms, wholly different words, though spelt alike? 
 We have only to note the way in which the first of 
 these ' scrips' used to be written, namely with a final 
 t not ' scrip' but ' scrips,' and we are at once able to 
 answer the question. This ' scrip' is a Latin, as the 
 other is an Anglo-Saxon, word, and meant at first 
 simply a ivrilten (scripta) piece of paper — a circum- 
 stance which since the omission of the final t may 
 easily escape our knowledge. ' Afraid' was spelt much 
 better in old times with the double jf, than with the 
 single / as now. It was then clear that it was not 
 another form of ' afeard,' but wholly separate from it, 
 the participle of the verb ' to affray,' ' affrayer,' or, as 
 it is now written, * effrayer.' 
 
 In the cases hitherto adduced, it has been the omis- 
 sion of a letter which has clouded and concealed the 
 etymology. The intrusiou of a letter sometimes does 
 the same. Thus in the early editions of Paradise 
 Lost, and in all writers of that time, you would find 
 ' scent,' an odor, spelt ' sent.' It was better so ; there 
 is no other noun substantive ' sent,' with which it is 
 in danger of being confounded ; while its relation with 
 ' sentio,' with ' resent,'* ' dissent,^ and the like, is put 
 out of sight by its novel spelling ; the intrusive c serves 
 only to mislead. The same thing was attempted with 
 
 * How close this relationship was once, not merely in respect of 
 etymology, but also of significance, a passage like this will prove : 
 " Perchance, as vultures are said to smell the earthiness of a dying 
 corpse, so this bird of prey [the evil spirit which personated Samuel, 
 1 Sam. xxviii, 14] resented a worse than earthly savor in the soul of 
 Saul, as evidence of his death at hand." (Fuller, The Profane State, 
 b. 5., c. 4.) 
 
212 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ' site,' ' situate,' ' situation,' spelt for a time by many, 
 ' scite,' ' scituate,' ' scituation ;' but it did not continue 
 with these. 
 
 Again, ' whole' in Wiclif's Bible, and indeed much 
 later, occasionally as far down as Spenser, is spelt 
 ' hole,' without the w at the beginning. The present 
 orthography may have the advantage of at once dis- 
 tinguishing the word to the eye from any other ; but 
 at the same time the initial w, now prefixed, hides its 
 relation to. the verb ' to heal,' with which it is closely 
 allied. The ' whole' man is he whose hurt is ' healed' 
 or covered (we say of the convalescent that he ' re- 
 covers') ; ' whole' being closely allied to ' hale' (inte- 
 ger), from which also from its modern spelling it is 
 divided. ' Wholesome' has naturally followed the for- 
 tunes of ' whole ;' it was spelt ' holsome' once. 
 
 Of ' island' too our present spelling is inferior to 
 the old, inasmuch as it suggests a hybrid formation, 
 as though the word were made up of the Latin ' insula,' 
 and the Saxon ' land.' It is quite true that ' isle' is 
 in relation with, and descent from, ' insula,' ' isola,' 
 ' lie ;' and hence probably the misspelling of ' island.' 
 This last, however, has nothing to do with ' insula,' 
 being identical with the German ' eiland,' the Anglo- 
 Saxon ^ ealand,' and signifying the sea-land, or land 
 girt round with the sea, just as ' insula' = in salo. 
 And it is worthy of note that this s in the first sylla- 
 ble of ' island' is quite of modern introduction. In 
 all the early versions of the Scriptures, and in the 
 authorized version as at first set forth, it is ' iland ;' 
 while in proof that this is not accidental, it may be 
 observed that, while ' iland' has not the s, ' isle' has 
 it (see Rev. i. 9). 'Hand,' indeed, is the spelling 
 
WRONGLY-ASSUMED DERIVATION OP WORDS. 213 
 
 which we meet with far down into the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 What has just been said of ' island' leads me as by 
 a natural transition to observe that one of the most 
 frequent causes of alteration in the spelling of a word 
 is a wrongly-assumed derivation. It is then sought to 
 bring the word into harmony with, and to make it by 
 its spelling suggest, this derivation, which has been 
 erroneously thrust upon it. Here is a subject which, 
 followed out as it deserves, would form no uninterest- 
 ing nor yet uninstructive chapter in the history of lan- 
 guage. Let me offer one or two small contributions 
 to it ; noting first by the way how remarkable an 
 evidence we have in this fact, of the manner in which 
 not the learned only, but all persons learned and un- 
 learned alike, crave to have a meaning in the words 
 which they employ, crave to have these words not 
 body alone, but body and soul. What an attestation, 
 I say, of this lies in the fact that where a word in its 
 proper derivation is unintelligible to them, they will 
 shape and mould it into some other form, not enduring 
 that it should be a mere inert sound without sense in 
 their ears ; and if they do not know its right origin, 
 will rather put into it a wrong one, than that it should 
 have for them no meaning, and suggest no derivation 
 at all.* 
 
 There is probably no language in which such a 
 process has not been going forward ; in which it is 
 not the explanation, in a vast number of instances, of 
 changes in spelling and even in form, which words 
 have undergone. I will offer a few examples of it 
 
 * Dicz looks with mucli favor on this process, and calls it, cia 
 sinnreiches mittel fremdlinge ganz heimisch zu raachen. 
 
214 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 from foreign tongues, before adducing any from our 
 own. ' Pyramid' is a word, the spelling of which was 
 affected in the Greek by an erroneous assumption of 
 its derivation ; the consequences of this error surviving 
 in our own word to the present day. It is spelt by 
 ns with a y in the first syllable, as it was spelt with 
 the u corresponding in the Greek. But why was this ? 
 It was because the Greeks assumed that the pyramids 
 were so named from their having the appearance of 
 flame going up into a point,* and so they spelt ' pyra- 
 mid' that they might find -rup or ' pyre' in it ; while in 
 fact the word ' pyramid,' as those best qualified to 
 speak on the matter declare to us, has nothing to do 
 with flame or fire at all ; being an Egyptian word of 
 quite a different signification, and the Coptic letters 
 being much better represented by the diphthong '- ei' 
 than by the letter y, as no doubt, but for this mistaken 
 notion of what the word was intended to mean, they 
 would have been. 
 
 Once more — the form '• Hierosolyma,' wherein the 
 Greeks reproduced the Hebrew 'Jerusalem,' was in- 
 tended in all probability to express that the city so 
 called was the sacred city of the Solymi.^ At all 
 events the intention not merely of reproducing the 
 Hebrew word, but also of making it significant in 
 Greek, of finding Ispov in it, is plainly discernible. 
 For indeed the Greeks were exceedingly intolerant 
 of foreign words, till they had laid aside their foreign 
 appearance — of all words which they could not thus 
 quicken with a Greek soul ; and, with a very char- 
 acteristic vanity, an ignoring of all other tongues but 
 
 * Ammianus Marcellinus, xxii., 15, 28. 
 t Tacitus, Hist., v., 2. 
 
TARTAR, TARTARY. 215 
 
 their own, assumed with no apparent misgivings that 
 all words, from whatever quarter derived, were to be 
 explained by Greek etymologies.* 
 
 ' Tartar' is another word, of which it is at least 
 possible that a wrongly-assumed derivation has mod- 
 ified the spelling, and indeed not the spelling only, 
 but the very shape in which we now possess it. To 
 many among us it may be known that the people 
 designated by this appellation are not properly ' Tar- 
 tars,' but ' Tatars ;' and you sometimes perhaps have 
 noted the omission of the r on the part of those who 
 are curious in their spelling. How then, it may be 
 asked, did the form ' Tartar' arise ? When the ter- 
 
 *Let me illustrate this by further instances in a note. Thus 
 PovTvpof, from which, through the Latin, our * butter' has descended 
 to us, is borrowed, as Pliny {Hist. Nat. xxviii. 9) tells us, from a 
 Scythian word, now to us unknown : yet it is sufficiently plain that 
 the Greeks so shaped it and spelt it as to contain apparent allusion to 
 cow and cheese ; there is in 3vrvpov an evident feeling after 0ovi and 
 Tvpdv. Bozra, meaning citadel in Hebrew and Phoenician, and the 
 name, no doubt, which the citadel of Carthage bore, becomes Bupo-a 
 on Greek lips ; and then the well known legend of the ox-hide was 
 invented upon the name ; not having suggested, but being itself sug- 
 gested by it. Herodian (v. 6) reproduces the name of the Syrian 
 goddess Astarte in a shape that is significant also for Greek ears — 
 'Aarpoipx.ri. the Star-rulcr or Star-queen. When the apostate and 
 hellenizing Jews assumed Greek names, 'Eliakim' or "Whom God 
 has set," became ' Alcimus' (aX/ci/ioc) or The Strong (1 Mace. vii. 5). 
 Latin examples in like kind are * comissatio,' spelt continually 
 ' comessatio,' as though it were connected wirh ' camedo,' to cat, being 
 indeed the substantive from the verb * comissari' (~ Kf^^.-i^eti^), to revel ; 
 and 'orichalcum,' spelt often 'awrichalcum,' as though it were a com- 
 posite metal of "mingled gold and brass; being indeed the mountain 
 brass [opEixa^^o^). The miracle pl»y, which is called ' mystere' in 
 French, whence our English 'mystery,' was originally written mistere, 
 being properly derived from 'ministere,' and having its name because 
 tlie clergy, the ministri ecclesiae, conducted it. This was forgotten, 
 and it then took its present form of ' mystery,' as though the mysteries 
 of the faith were in it set forth. 
 
216 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 rible hordes of middle Asia burst in upon civilized 
 Europe in the thirteenth century, many beheld in the 
 ravages of their innumerable cavalry a fulfilment of 
 that prophetic word in the Revelation (chap, ix.) con- 
 cerning the opening of the bottomless pit ; and from 
 this belief ensued the change of their name from ' Ta- 
 tars' to ' Tartars,' which was thus put into closer re- 
 lation with ' Tartarus' or hell, out of which their mul- 
 titudes were supposed to have proceeded.* 
 
 Another good example in the same kind is the Ger- 
 man word ' siindflut,' the Deluge, which is now so 
 spelt as to signify a ' sinflood,' the plague or flood of 
 waters brought on the world by the sins of mankind ; 
 and probably some of us have before this admired the 
 pregnant significance of the word. Yet the old High 
 German word had originally no such intention ; it was 
 spelt ' Sinfluot,' that is, the great flood ; and as late 
 as Luther, indeed in Luther's own translation of the 
 Bible, is so spelt as to make plain that the notion of 
 a ' .s-m-flood' had not yet found its way into, even as 
 it had not affected the spelling of the word.f 
 
 But to look now nearer home for our examples. 
 The little raisins brought from Greece, which play so 
 important a part in one of the national dishes of Eng- 
 land, the Christmas plum-pudding, used to be called 
 ' corinths ;' and so you would find them in mercantile 
 lists of a hundred years ago : either that for the most 
 
 * We have here, in this bnngin<? of the words by their supposed 
 etymology together, the explanation of the fact that Spenser [Fairy 
 Queen, i., 7. 44), Middleton (Works, vol. v., pp. 524, .528, 538 j, and 
 others employ * Tartary' as equivalent to ' Tartarus' or hell. 
 
 t For a full discussion of this matter and fixing of the period at 
 which ' sinfluot' became ' siindflut,' see the Theol. Stiid. u. Krit. vol. vii., 
 p. 613. 
 
COURT-CARDS ONCE COAT-CARDS. 217 
 
 part they were shipped from Corinth, the principal 
 commercial city in Greece, or because they grew in 
 large abundance in the immediate district round about 
 it. Their likeness in shape and size and general ap- 
 pearance to our own currants, working together with 
 the ignorance of the great majority of English people 
 about any such place as Corinth, soon brought the 
 name * corinths' into * currants,' which now with a 
 certain unfitness they bear ; being not currants at all, 
 but dried grapes, though grapes of diminutive size. 
 
 ' Court-cards,^ that is the king, queen, and knave, in 
 each suit, were once ' coat-csirds ;'* having their name 
 from the long splendid ' coat' (vestis talaris) with 
 which they were arrayed. Probably ' coat' after a 
 while did not perfectly convey its original meaning 
 and intention ; being no more in common use for the 
 long garment reaching down to the heels ; and then 
 ' coat' was easily (exchanged for ' court,' as the word 
 is now both spelt and pronounced, seeing that nowhere 
 so fitly as in a court should such splendidly-arrayed 
 personages be found. A public house in the neigh- 
 borhood of London having a few years since for its 
 sign " The George Canning^^ is already " The George 
 and Cannon^'' — so rapidly do these transformations 
 proceed, so soon is that forgotten which we suppose 
 would never be forgotten. " Welsh rarebiV becomes 
 "Welsh rabbit r and '-farced^ or stufi'ed 'meat' be- 
 comes '-^forced meat." Even the mere determination 
 to make a word look English, to put it into an English 
 shape, without thereby so much as seeming to attain 
 any result in the way of etymology, this is very often 
 sufficient to bring about a change in its spelling, and 
 
 * Ben Jonson, Tlte New Inn, act i., scene i. 
 
 10 
 
218 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 even in its form.* It is thus that ' sipahi' has become 
 * sepoy :' and only so could ' weissager' have taken its 
 present form of ' wiseacre. 'f 
 
 It is very uncommon for a word, while it is derived 
 from one word, to receive a certain impulse and mod- 
 ification from another. This extends sometimes be- 
 yond the spelling, and in cases whore it does so, would 
 hardly belong to our present theme. Still I may no- 
 tice an instance or two. Thus our ' obsequies' is the 
 Latin ' exequiae,' but formed under a certain impulse 
 of ' obsequium,' and seeking to express the observant 
 honor of that word. ' To refuse' is ' recusare,' while 
 yet it has derived the / of its second syllable from 
 ' refutare ;' it is a medley of the two. The French 
 ' rame,' an oar, is ' remus,' but that modified by an 
 unconscious recollection of ' ramus.' ' Orange' is no 
 doubt a Persian word, which has reached us through 
 the Arabic, and which the Spanish ' naranja' more 
 nearly represents than any form of it existing in the 
 other languages of Europe. But what so natural as 
 to think of the orange as the golden fruit, especially 
 when the " aurea mala" of the Hesperides were fa- 
 miliar to all antiquity ? There can not be a doubt 
 that ' aurum,' ' or,' made themselves felt in the shapes 
 
 * ' Leghorn' is sometimes quoted as an example of this, but erro- 
 neously ; for, as Admiral Smyth has shown ( The Mediterranean, p. 
 409), 'Livorno' is itself rather the modern corruption, and 'Ligorno* 
 the name found on the earlier charts. 
 
 t Exactly the same happens in other languages : thus, * armbrust/ 
 a crossbow, looks German enough, and yet has nothing to do witL 
 'arm' or * brust,' being a contraction of 'arcubalista,' but a contrac- 
 tion under these influences. As little has ' abenteuer' anything to do 
 with ' abend' or ' theuer,' however it may seem to be connected with 
 them, being indeed the Proven§al 'adventura.' And 'weissager"' in 
 its earlier forms had nothing in common with ' sagen.' 
 
TRANSFORMATION OF WORDS. 219 
 
 which the word assumed in the languages of the West, 
 and that here we have the explanation of the change 
 in the first syllable, as in the low Latin ' aurantium,' 
 ' orangia,' and in the French * orange,' which has given 
 us our own. 
 
 It is foreign words, or words adopted from foreign 
 languages, as might beforehand be expected, which 
 are especially subjected to such transformations as 
 these. The soul which the word once had in its own 
 language having, for as many as do not know that 
 language, departed from it, or at least not being now 
 any more to be recognised by such as employ the 
 word, these are not satisfied till they have put another 
 soul into it, and it has thus become alive to them 
 again. Thus — to take first one or two very familiar 
 instances, but which serve as well as any other to 
 illustrate my position — the Bellerophon becomes for 
 our sailors the ' Billy Ruffian,' for what can they know 
 of the Greek mythology, or of the slayer of Chimaera ? 
 An iron steamer, the Hirondelle, now or lately plying 
 on the Tyne, is the ' Iron Devil.' ' Contre danse,' 
 or dance in which the parties stand face to face with 
 one another, and which ought to have appeared in 
 English as ' counter dance,' does become ' country 
 dance,'* as though it were the dance of the country- 
 
 * It is upon this word that De Quincey (Life and Manners, p. 70, 
 American edition) says excellently well : " It is in fact by such cor- 
 ruptions, by offsets upon an old stock, arisinj^ through ignorance or 
 mispronunciation originally, that every language is frequently en- 
 riched ; and new modifications of thought, unfolding themselves in 
 the progi-ess of society, generate for themselves concurrently appro- 
 priate expressions It must not be allowed to weigh against a 
 
 word once fairly naturalized by all, that originally it crept in upon an 
 abuse or a corruption. Prescription is as strong a ground of legiti- 
 mation, in a case of this nature, as it is in law. And the old axiom 
 
220 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 folk and rural districts, as distinguished from the 
 quadrille, and waltz, and more artificial dances, of the 
 town. A well-known rose, the " rose des quatre sai- 
 sons,''^ or of the four seasons, becomes on the lips of 
 some of our gardeners the " rose of the quarter ses- 
 sions, ^^ though here it is probable that the eye has 
 misled, rather than the ear. ' Dent de lion' (it is 
 spelt ' dentdelyon' in our early writers) becomes 
 ' dandylion ;' " chaude melee," or an affray in hot 
 blood, " chance-medley ;" ' causey' (chaussee) becomes 
 ' causeway,' ' rachitis' ' rickets,' and in French ' man- 
 dragora' ' main de gloire.' 
 
 ' Necromancy' is another word which, if not now, 
 yet for a long period, was erroneously spelt, and in- 
 deed assumed a different shape, under the influence 
 of an erroneous derivation ; which, curiously enough, 
 even now that it has been dismissed, has left behind 
 it the marks of its presence, in our common phrase, 
 *' the black art." I need hardly remind you that 
 ' necromancy' is a Greek word, which signifies, ac- 
 cording to its proper meaning, a prophesying by aid 
 of the dead, or that it rests on the presumed power of 
 raising up by potent spells the dead, and compelling 
 them to give answers about things to come. We all 
 know that it was supposed possible to exercise such 
 power ; we have a very awful example of it in the 
 story of the witch of Endor, and a very horrid one in 
 Lucan.* But the Latin medieval writers, whose Greek 
 was either little or none, spelt the word ' nigroman- 
 tia,' as if its first syllables had been Latin : at the 
 
 is applicable : ' Fieri non dehuit, factum valet.' Were it otherwise, 
 languages would be robbed of much of their wealth." 
 * Phars., vi., 720-830. 
 
NECROMANCY, PLEURISY, ETC. 221 
 
 same time, not wholly forgetting the original meaning, 
 but in fact getting round to it though by a wrong pro- 
 cess, they understood the dead by these ' nigri,' or 
 blacks, whom they had brought into the word.* Down 
 to a rather late period we find the forms ' neg-romsm- 
 cer' and ' neg-y-omancy^ frequent in English. 
 
 ' Pleurisy' used often to be spelt (I do not think it 
 is so now) without an e in the first syllable, evidently 
 on the tacit assumption that it was from plus pluris. 
 When Shakespeare falls into an error, he " makes the 
 offence gracious;" yet, I think, he would scarcely 
 have written — 
 
 " For goodness growing to a plurisy 
 Dies of his own too much" — 
 
 but that he^ too, derived ' plurisy' from pluris. This, 
 even with the " small Latin and less Greek," which 
 Ben Jonson allows him, he scarcely would have done, 
 had the word presented itself in that form which, by 
 right of its descent from -rXsupa (being a pain, stitch, 
 or sickness in the side)., it ought to have possessed. 
 Those who spelt ' crucible' ' chrysoble' (Jeremy Tay- 
 lor does so), must evidently have done this under the 
 assumption that the Greek for gold^ and not the Latin 
 for cross^ lay at the foundation of this word. 
 
 In all these words which I have adduced last, the 
 correct spelling has in the end resumed its sway. It 
 is not so with ' frontispiece,' which ought to be spelt 
 ' frontispzce' (it was so by Milton and others), being 
 the low Latin ' frontispicium,' from ' frons' and ' aspi- 
 cio,' the forefront of the building, that part which 
 presents itself to the view. It was only the entirely 
 
 * Thus, in a Vocabulary, 1475: "Nigromansia dicitur divinatio 
 facta per nigros." 
 
222 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 ungrounded notion that the word ' piece' constitutes 
 the last syllable, which has given rise to our present 
 orthography.* 
 
 * As ' orthography' itself means properly " right spelling," it might 
 be a curious question whether it is permissible to speak of an incor- 
 rect orthography, that is, of a wrong rj'^A^spelling. The question 
 which would be thus started is one of not unfrequent recuiTence, and 
 it is very worthy of observation how often, so soon as we take note 
 of etymologies, this contradictio in adjecto is found to occur. I will 
 here adduce a few examples from the Greek, the Latin, the German, 
 and from our own tongue. Thus, the Greeks, having no convenient 
 word to express a rider, apart from a rider on a horse, did not scruple 
 to speak of the Norseman {[Tnr£:vi) upon an elephant. They often al- 
 lowed themselves in a like inaccuracy, where certainly there was no 
 necessity : as in using dv6^jiai of the statue of a woman ; where it would 
 have, been quite as easy to have used elKchv or aya^na. So, too, their 
 '^ table' {■Kp(n:c^a=^ TiTpoi-E^a) involved probably the four feet which 
 commonly support one ; yet they did not shrink from speaking of a 
 fAree-footed table (rpi'rrot)? Tpaml^a), in other words, a " <Aree-footed four- 
 footed ;" much as though we should speak of a " iAree-footed guadru- 
 ped." Homer writes of a * hecatomb' not of a hundred, but of twelve, 
 oxen ; and elsewhex'e of Hebe he says, in words not reproducible in 
 English, vcKTan E':)i'o^6ei. ' Tctrarchs' were often rulers of quite other 
 than fourth parts of a land. "AKparos had so come to stand for wine, 
 without any thought more of its signifying originally the unmingled, 
 that St. John speaks of u-paroj KCKEpaa^ihos (Rev. xiv. 10), or the un- 
 mingled mingled. Boxes in which precious ointments were contained 
 were so commonly of alabaster, that the name came to be applied to 
 them whether they were so or not ; and Theocritus celebrates ''golden 
 alabasters." Cicero, having to mention a water-clock, is obliged to 
 call it a water swmlial (solarium ex aqua). Columella speaks of a 
 *' vintage of honey" (viudemia mellis) ; and Horace invites his friend 
 to impede, not his foot, but his head, with myrtle {caput imped'wa 
 myrto). Thus, too, a German writer, who desired to tell of the golden 
 shoes with which the folly of Caligula adorned his horse, could scarcely 
 avoid spedking o^ golden hoof-iVons. The same inner contradiction i.s 
 involved in such language as our own — a ''false rerdict," a "steel 
 cuirass" C coriacea' from corium, leather^, " antics new" (Harring- 
 ton's Ariosto), an "erroneous etymology," a "corn-chandler," that is, 
 a "corn canc?/e-maker," "rather late," ' rather' being the compar5.tive 
 of 'rathe,' early, and thus "rather late" being indeed "more earlv 
 late ;" and in others. 
 
SYREN, ETC. 223 
 
 You may, perhaps, wonder that I have dwelt so 
 long on those details of spelling ; that I have bestowed 
 on tliem so much of my own attention ; that I have 
 claimed for them so much of yours : yet in truth I can 
 not regard them as unworthy of our very closest heed. 
 For, indeed, of how much beyond itself is accurate 
 or inaccurate spelling the certain indication ! Thus, 
 when we meet ' s^ren' for ' stren,' as so strangely often 
 we do, almost always in newspapers, and often where 
 we should hardly have expected (1 met it lately in 
 the Quarterly Review, and again in Giflford's Massin- 
 gerj, how very difficult it is not to be "judges of evil 
 thoughts," and to take this slovenly misspelling as the 
 specimen and evidence of an inaccuracy and ignorance 
 which reaches very far wider than the single word 
 which is before us ! But why is it that so much sig- 
 nificance is ascribed to a wrong spelling ? Because 
 ignorance of a word's spelling at once argues igno- 
 rance of its origin and derivation. I do not mean 
 that one who spells rightly may not be ignorant of it 
 too, but he who spells wrongly is certainly so. Thus, 
 to recur to the example I have just adduced, he who 
 for ' siren' writes ' s^ren,' certainly knows nothing of 
 the magic cords (trs/pai) of song, by which those beau- 
 tiful enchantresses were supposed to draw those that 
 heard them to their ruin. 
 
 Correct or incorrect orthography being, then, this 
 note of accurate or inaccurate knowledge, we may 
 confidently conclude, where two spellings of a word 
 exist, and are both employed by persons who gener- 
 ally write with precision and scholarship, that there 
 must be something to account for this. It will gen- 
 erally be worth your while to inquire into the causes 
 
224 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 which enable both spellings to hold their ground and 
 to find their supporters, not ascribing either one or 
 the other to mere carelessness or error. It will in 
 these cases often be found that two spellings exist, 
 because two views of the word's origin exist, and 
 each of those spellings, is the correct expression of 
 one of these. The question, therefore, which way of 
 spelling should continue, and wholly supersede the 
 other, and which, while the alternative remains, we 
 should ourselves employ, can only be settled by set- 
 tling which of these etymologies deserves the prefer- 
 ence. So is it, for example, with ' chemist' and 
 * chemist,' neither of which has obtained in our com- 
 mon use the complete mastery over the other. It is 
 not here, as in some other cases, that one is certainly 
 right, the other as certainly wrong : but they severally 
 represent two different etymologies of the word, and 
 each is correct according to its own. If we are to 
 spell ' chemist' and ' chemistry,' it is because these 
 words are considered to be derived from the Greek 
 word xujxocr, sap ; and the chymic art will then have 
 occupied itself first with distilling the juice and sap of 
 plants, and will from this have derived its name. I 
 have little doubt, however, that the other spelling, 
 '; chemist,' not ' chemist,' is the correct one. It was 
 not with the distillation of herbs, but with the amal- 
 gamation of metals, that chemistry occupied itself at 
 its rise ; and the word embodies a reference to Egypt, 
 the land of Ham or ' Cham' (XiifAja),* in which this 
 art was first practised with success. 
 
 Of how much confusion the spelling which used to 
 be so common, ' satyr' for ' satire,' is at once the con 
 
 * As Plutarch tells us Egypt was called, De hid. ei Osir., c. 33. 
 
SATYR, SATIRE, ETC. 225 
 
 sequence, the expression, and cause ! Not, indeed, 
 that this confusion first began with us ;* 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 satyriQ 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' (accord- 
 ing 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 va- 
 riety 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 naive self- 
 ishness, 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, 
 
 * We have a notable evidence liow deeply rooted this error was, 
 how long this confusion endured, of the way in which it was shared 
 by the learned as well as the unlearned, in 'M:Aio\\' & Apology for Sinec- 
 tymnuus, sect. 7, which everywhere presumes the identity of the 'satyr' 
 and the 'satirist.' It was Isaac Casaubon who first effectually dissi- 
 pated it even for the learned world. The results of his investigations 
 v/ere made popular for tlie unlearned reader by Dryden, in the very 
 instructive Discourse on Satirical Poetry, prefixed to his translations 
 of Juvenal ; but the confusion still survives, and ' satyrs' and '■ satires' 
 — the Greek ' satyric' drama, the Latin 'satirical' poetry — are stilJ 
 Assumed bv most to have something to do with one another. 
 
 10* 
 
226 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 were withdrawn ; what man, all that properly made 
 him man being withdrawn, would prove. 
 
 And then what light, as we have already seen, does 
 the older spelling of a word often cast upon its ety- 
 mology ! 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. The derivation of 
 'midwife' 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. 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 contempora- 
 ries ' 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, or 
 drilled, or pierced. We might have read the word 
 for ever in our modern spelling without being taught 
 this. 
 
REPRINTING OF OLD BOOKS. 227 
 
 Again, the ' morris' or ' morrice dance,' which is 
 alluded to so often by our early poets, as it is now 
 spelt informs us nothing about itself; but read ' mo- 
 riske dance,' as it is generally spelt by Holland and 
 his contemporaries, and you will scarcely fail to per- 
 ceive that of which, indeed, there is no manner of 
 doubt ; namely, that it was so called either because 
 it was really, or was supposed to be, a dance in use 
 among the Moriscoes of Spain, and thence introduced 
 into England.* 
 
 Again, philologers tell us, and no doubt rightly, 
 that our ' cray-fish,' or ' craw-fish,' is the French 
 * ecrevisse.' This is true, but certainly it is not self- 
 evident. Trace, however, the word through these 
 successive spellings — ' krevys' (Lydgate), ' crevish' 
 (Gascoigne), ' craifish' (Holland) — and the chasm 
 between ' cray-fish' or ' craw-fish' and ' ecrevisse' is 
 by aid of these three intermediate spellings bridged 
 over at once ; and in the fact of our Gothic ' fish' find- 
 ing its way into this French word we see only another 
 example of a law, which has been already abundantly 
 illustrated in this'lecture.f 
 
 * "I have seen him 
 Caper upright, like a wild M&risco, 
 Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells." 
 
 Shakespeare, 2 Henri/ VL, act iii., sc. i. 
 
 t In the reprinting of old books it is often very difficult to deter- 
 mine how far the old shape in whicli words present themselves should 
 be retained, how far they should be conformed to present usage. It 
 is comparatively easy to lay down as a rule that in books intended 
 for popular use, wherever the form of the word is not affected by the 
 modernizing of the spelling, as where this modernizing consists merely 
 in the dropping of superfluous letters, there it shall take place; as 
 who would wish our Bibles to be now printed letter for letter after 
 the edition of 1611, or Shakespeare with the orthography of the first 
 
228 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WOltDS. 
 
 Ill other ways also an accurate taking note of the 
 spelling of words, and of the successive changes 
 which it has undergone, will often throw light upon 
 
 folio ? But wherever more than the spelling, the actual shape, out- 
 line, and character of the word has been affected by the changes 
 which it has undergone, that in all such cases the earlier form shall 
 be held fast. There can be little question of the justice of such a 
 rule as this. At the same time, when it is attempted to carry it out, 
 it is not always easy to draw the line, and to determine what affects 
 the form and being of a word, and what does not. About some Avords 
 there can be no doubt ; and therefore when a modern editor of Fuller's 
 Cliurch History complacently announces that he has allowed himself 
 in such changes as ' dirige' into * dirge,* * barreter' into ' barrister,* 
 'synonymas' into 'synonymous,' 'extempory' into 'extemporary,* 
 
 * scited' into ' situated,' ' vancurrier' into * avant-courier,' he at the 
 same time informs us that for all purposes of the study of the English 
 language (and few writers are for this more important than Fuller), 
 he has made his edition utterly worthless. Or, again, when modern 
 editors of Shakespeare print, and that without giving any intimation 
 of the fact — 
 
 "Like quills upon the fretful porcupine" — 
 
 he having written, and in his first folio and quarto the words stand 
 ing — 
 
 "Like quills upon the fretful porpentine" — 
 
 this being the earlier, and in Shakespeare's time the more common, 
 form of the word — they must be considered as taking a very unwar- 
 rantable liberty with his text; and no less, when they substitute 
 
 * Kenilworth' for * Killingworth,' which he wrote, and which was his, 
 Marlowe's, and generally the earlier form of the name. 
 
 Nor can I help observing that our later reprints of the authorized 
 version of Scripture have allowed themselves in alterations, from 
 which it would have been far better to have abstained — although I 
 am unable to affirm, not having followed up the matter, how early 
 these began. It may be quite true that *moe,' where we should 
 write ' more,' is antiquated now ; but to a certain extent it was so 
 when the last revision of our translation was made. If, therefore, the 
 authors of that revision, on which the church has set the seal of per- 
 manence, chose to introduce it, or finding it in the former versions to 
 retain it, surely it ought not to have been subsequently removed, as it 
 has been at John iv. 41 ; Gal. iv. 27, and perhaps elsewhere. We do 
 not substitute 'struck' for 'strake' (Acts xxvii. 17), because 'strake' 
 
ENGLISH AUTHORIZED VERSION. 229 
 
 them. Tims, we may know, others having assured 
 us of the fact, that ' ant' and ' emmet' were originally 
 only two difierent spellings of one and the same word ; 
 
 lias become archaic ; as little therefore ought we to have changed the 
 perfect 'lift' into 'lifted' (Acts ix. 41); being, indeed, inconsistent 
 here, as ' life' has elsewhere been suffered to remain ; thus, Luke xvi. 
 23: "He lift up his eyes." If they spelt 'kinred,' as everywhere 
 they did, being the universal spelling to a considerably later period, 
 this should not have been changed into 'kindred;' nor yet 'Jerusa- 
 lem,* everywhere substituted for the statelier ' Hierusalem ;' nor 
 'Apollos' for 'Apollo' (1 Cor. iii. 22; iv. 6); nor 'flux' for 'flix' 
 (Acts xxviii. 8), which last was the constant form of the word in our 
 early literature. So, too, ' broided Yiaxr' might have been suffered to 
 remain at 1 Tim. ii. 9; and ' broidered' not now printed in its stead 
 — the good old English word 'to broid,' which still survives in the 
 form ' to braid,* being the standing word to express the plaiting of 
 hair ; in which sense ' to broider,* however it may be related to it, is 
 never used. Or, again, why now ' &h\])wreck,' if they wrote 'ship- 
 wrack' (2 Cor. xi. 25; 1 Tim. i. 19) ? It is true that we betake our- 
 selves to our bibles for far higher lessons than lessons in the English 
 language ; but why should we not learn by the way, as the word 
 faithfully retained would have taught us, the original identity between 
 these two now distinct words, ' wreck' and * wrack' 1 Least of all 
 should our modern editors have given in to the corruption of * shame- 
 fastwQ&s,' (1 Tim. ii. 9), and printed ' shame/aced'ness,' as now they 
 do, changing the word which meant once a being established firmly 
 and fast in honorable shame, into the mere wearing of the blush of 
 shame upon the yace; cf. Ecclus. xxvi. 15, 25 ; xxxii. 10; xli. 16,24; 
 in all which passages the later editions have departed from that which 
 ought to have been exemplary to them. ' Shamefast' is one of a 
 group and family of words, in all which ' fast' constitutes the second 
 syllabic: thus, ' stciidfast,' ' \yon\fast ;' and those good old words, 
 'rootyasi' and 'rootfastness,' which we have now let go. At Luke 
 vii. 41, the question may be more difficult to determine. The two 
 prteterites of 'to owe,' the elder 'ought,' and the modern 'owed/ 
 have so far separated off in meaning, that money is not 'ought' any 
 more, but only 'owed.' With all this, it may still be a question 
 whether the words of the earlier editions of our Bible should have 
 been changed : " There was a certain creditor which had two debtors •■ 
 the one ought five hundred pence, and the other fifty." They could 
 have created no difficulty for any. 
 
230 CHANGED SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS. 
 
 but we may be perplexed to understand how two 
 forms of a word, now so different, could ever have 
 diverged from a siugle root. When, however, we 
 
 Having thus started the subject of alterations in our authorized 
 version which, as it seems to me, ought not to have been made, let me 
 mention one, which, I think, ought. I can not doubt that the words 
 at Matt, xxiii. 24, "which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel," 
 contain a misprint, which, having been passed over in the first edition 
 of 1611, has held its ground ever since; nor yet that our translators 
 intended, " which strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel ;" this being 
 at once intelligible and a correct rendering of the original ; while our 
 version, as at present it stands, is neither ; or only intelligible on the 
 supposition — no doubt the supposition of most English readers — 
 that "strain at" means, swallowing with difficulty; men hardly and 
 with effort swallowing the little insect, but gulping down meanwhile 
 unconcerned the huge animal. It need scarcely be said that this is- 
 very far from the meaning of the original words, which are o\ JiiiAi^oi/rcs 
 Tov KwvMTca, by Meyer rendered well, " percolando removentes mus- 
 cam;" and by the Vulgate also not ill, "excolantes culicem ;" for 
 which use of iiv'Xii^eiv, as to cleanse by passing through a strainer, see 
 Plutarch, Syinp., vi., 7, 1. It was the custom of the more accurate 
 and stricter Jews to strain their wine, vinegar, and other potables, 
 through linen or gauze, lest unawares they should drink down some 
 little unclean insect therein, and thus transgress Lev. xi. 20, 23, 41, 
 42 — just as the Buddhists do now in Ceylon and Hindostan — and 
 to this custom of theirs the Lord refers. [Since this was first pub- 
 lished, a correspondent, known to me only by name, has kindly sent 
 me the following notice : " In a ride from Tangier to Tetuan, I ob- 
 served that a Moorish soldier who accompanied me, when he drank 
 always unfolded the end of his turban and placed it over the mouth 
 of his hota, drinking through the muslin, to strain out the gnats, whose 
 larvae swarm in the water of that country."] The further fact that 
 our present version rests to so great an extent on the three preceding, 
 Tyndale's, Cranmer's, and the Geneva, and that all these have " strain 
 out," is additional evidence in confirmation of that about which for 
 myself I feel no doubt, namely, that we have here an uncorrected 
 error of the press. In another passage, where there was manifestly 
 such — I mean at 1 Cor. xii. 28, "helps in governments" — the mis- 
 print, after having retained its place in several successive editions, 
 was afterward, I know not by whose authority, removed, and the pres- 
 ent correcter reading, " helps, governments" { hrLXiiipUi, yvQepvficeti), 
 substituted in its room. 
 
RENEGADE, RUNAGATE, ETC. 231 
 
 find the different spellings, ' emmet,' ' emet,' ' amet,' 
 ' amt,' * ant,' the gulf which appeared to separate 
 ' emmet' from ' ant' is bridged over at once, and we 
 not merely know on the assurance of others that these 
 two are in fact identical, their differences being only 
 superficial, but we perceive clearly in what manner 
 they are so. 
 
 Even before any close examination of the matter, 
 it is hard not to suspect that ' runagate' is in fact 
 another form of ' renegade,' slightly transformed, as 
 so many words, to put an English signification into its 
 first syllable ; and then the meaning gradually modi- 
 fied in obedience to the new derivation which was as- 
 sumed to be its original and true one. Our suspicion 
 of this is very greatly strengthened (for we see how 
 very closely the words approach one another) by the 
 fact that ' renegade' is constantly spelt ' renegade' in 
 our old authors ; while at the same time the denial of 
 faith, which is now a necessary element in ' renegade,' 
 and one differencing it inwardly from ' runagate,' is 
 altogether wanting in early use — the denial of counr 
 try and of the duties thereto owing being all that is 
 implied in it. Thus, it is constantly employed in 
 Holland's Livy as a rendering of ' perfuga ;'* while in 
 the one passage where ' runagate' occurs in the Prayer- 
 Book version of the Psalms (Ps. Ixviii. 6), a refer- 
 ence to the original will show that the translators 
 could only have employed it there on the ground that 
 it also expressed rebel, revolter, and not runaway 
 merely. 
 
 * " The Carthaginians shall restore and deliver back all the rene- 
 gctles [pcrfugas] and fugitives that have fled to their side from us.'' — 
 p. 751. 
 
232 CHANGED SPELLING OP ENGLISH WOBDS. 
 
 I might easily occupy your attention much longer, 
 so little barren or unfruitful does this subject of spel- 
 ling appear likely to prove ; but all thinos must have 
 an end : and as I concluded my first lecture with a 
 remarkable testimony borne by an illustrious German 
 scholar to the merits of our English tongue, I will 
 conclude my last with the words of another — not, in- 
 deed, a German, but still of the great Germanic stock 
 — words resuming in themselves much of which we 
 have been speaking upon this and upon former occa- 
 sions : " As our bodies," he says, " have hidden re- 
 sources and expedients, to remove the obstacles which 
 the very art of the physician puts in its way, so lan- 
 guage, ruled by an indomitable inward principle, tri- 
 umphs in some degree over the folly of grammarians. 
 Look at the English, polluted by Danish and Norman 
 conquests, distorted in its genuine and noble features 
 by old and recent endeavors to mould it after the 
 French fashion, invaded by a hostile entrance of Greek 
 and Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to 
 overwhelm the indigenous terms ! In these long con- 
 tests against the combined power of so many forcible 
 enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its 
 power of inversion in the structure of sentences, the 
 means of denoting the difference of gender, and the 
 nice distinctions by inflection and termination ; almost 
 every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent 
 and the drawing of consonants to wrong positions : 
 yet the old English principle is not overpowered. 
 Trampled down by the ignoble feet of strangers, its 
 springs still retain force enough to restore itself. It 
 lives and plays through all the veins of the language ; 
 it impregnates the innumerable strangers entering its 
 
VITAL PRINCIPLE IN ENGLISH. 233 
 
 dominions with its temper, and stains them with its 
 color — not unlike the Greek, which, in taking up 
 oriental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, 
 and bid them to appear as native Greeks."* 
 
 * Halbertsma, quoted by Bosworth, Origin of the English and Gw- 
 manic Languages, p. 39. 
 
INDEX OF WORDS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Abenteuer 218 
 
 Abnormal 70 
 
 Academy 68 
 
 Accommodate 98 
 
 Acre 175 
 
 Adamant 209 
 
 Admiralty 98 
 
 Advocate 78 
 
 ^on 70 
 
 -Esthetic 70 
 
 Afeard 116 
 
 Affluent 96 
 
 Afraid 116 
 
 Afterthink 110 
 
 Alcimus 215 
 
 Alcove 21 
 
 Analogic 58 
 
 Ant 229 
 
 Antipodes 67 
 
 Apotheosis 67 
 
 Armbrust 218 
 
 Arride 58 
 
 Ascertain 169 
 
 Ask 116 
 
 Astarte 215 
 
 Attercop 113 
 
 Aurantium 219 
 
 Aurichalcum 215 
 
 Avunculize 85 
 
 Axe 116 
 
 Baffle 164 
 
 Baker, bakester 143 
 
 Banter 97 
 
 Barrier 68 
 
 Bawn 113 
 
 Beam 46 
 
 Bitesheep 132 
 
 Black Art.. 220 
 
 Blackguard 171 
 
 Blasphemous 117 
 
 Bombast 181 
 
 Book 26 
 
 Boor 1 83 
 
 Bozra 215 
 
 Bran-new 210 
 
 Brat 187 
 
 Brazen 150 
 
 Breaden 150 
 
 Broid 229 
 
 Brum 84 
 
 Buffalo 22 
 
 Butter 215 
 
 Buxom 125 
 
 Carriage 165 
 
 Casuistry 192 
 
 Chagrin 88 
 
 Chance-medley 220 
 
 Chanticleer 84 
 
 Chemist, chemistry 224 
 
 Chicken 144 
 
 Chouse 85 
 
 Chymist, chymistry 224 
 
 Clawback 131 
 
 Coraissatio 215 
 
 Commerage 185 
 
 Confluent 96 
 
 Congregational 75 
 
 Contrary 117 
 
 Convertisseur 58 
 
 Corpse ] 74 
 
 Country dance 219 
 
 Court card 217 
 
INDEX OP WORDS. 
 
 235 
 
 Coxcomb 208 
 
 Cozen 210 
 
 Crawfish 227 
 
 Cre.insur 48 
 
 Criterion 67 
 
 Crone, crony 87 
 
 Crucible 221 
 
 Crusade 63 
 
 Cuirass 222 
 
 Currant 217 
 
 Cynarctomachy 85 
 
 Dahlia 82 
 
 Dame 175 
 
 Dandylion 220 
 
 Dapper 46 
 
 Dearworth 109 
 
 Dedal 81 
 
 Dehort 127 
 
 Demagogue 57 
 
 Denomiriationalism 75 
 
 Depot 67 
 
 Diamond 209 
 
 Dip 46 
 
 Dirge 226 
 
 Dissimilation 94 
 
 Donat 82 
 
 Dosones 84 
 
 Doughty 134 
 
 Drachm 176 
 
 Dragoman 19 
 
 Dub 134 
 
 Duke 174 
 
 Dumps 135 
 
 Dutch 160 
 
 Eame 109 
 
 Earsport 109 
 
 Educational 75 
 
 Effervescence 57 
 
 Einseitig 72 
 
 Eliakim '. .215 
 
 Ellinge 49 
 
 Emmet 229 
 
 Emotional 75 
 
 Encyclopaedia •. 67 
 
 Enfimtillnge 57 
 
 Equivocation 1 78 
 
 Erutar 136 
 
 Escobardcr 83 
 
 Europe 204 
 
 Eyebite 1 1 1 
 
 VAOa 
 
 Fairy 174 
 
 Fatherland 72 
 
 Fiitter-mouse 109 
 
 Folklore 72 
 
 Foolhappy 1 27 
 
 Foolhardy 126 
 
 Foolhasty 126 
 
 Foollarge 126 
 
 Foretalk 110 
 
 Fougue 65 
 
 Fraischeur 65 
 
 Frances 88 
 
 Francis 88 
 
 Frimm 109 
 
 Frivolity 57 
 
 Frontispiece 221 
 
 Furlong 175 
 
 Gainly 126 
 
 Gallon 176 
 
 Galvanism 82 
 
 Garble 181 
 
 Geir .109 
 
 Gentian 82 
 
 Girdle 26 
 
 Girfalcon 109 
 
 Girl 175 
 
 Glassen 1 50 
 
 Glitterand 116 
 
 Gordian 81 
 
 Gossip 184 
 
 Great 206 
 
 Grimsire 110 
 
 Grogram 208 
 
 Grocer 208 
 
 Grub 46 
 
 Hallow 78 
 
 Handbook 72 
 
 Hangdog 133 
 
 Hector 83 
 
 Heft 109 
 
 Hermetic 81 
 
 Hery 108 
 
 Hide 46 
 
 Hierosolyma 214 
 
 Hipocras 81 
 
 Hippodame 63 
 
 His 145 
 
 Hotspur 109 
 
 Huck '. 142 
 
236 
 
 INDEX OF WORDS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Huckster, hucksteress 142 
 
 Hurricane 20 
 
 Iceberg 71 
 
 Icefield 71 
 
 Idea... 179 
 
 Imp 186 
 
 Influence 163 
 
 International 75 
 
 Island 212 
 
 Isle. 212 
 
 Isolated 98 
 
 Isothermal 94 
 
 Its 119 
 
 Jaw 209 
 
 Jeopardy 78 
 
 Kenilworth 228 
 
 Kindly 167 
 
 Kindred 189 
 
 Knave 189 
 
 Knitster 141 
 
 Kirtle 26 
 
 Lambiner 83 
 
 Lazar 82 
 
 Leer 109 
 
 Leghorn 218 
 
 Libel 174 
 
 Lifeguard 71 
 
 London 207 
 
 Lunch, luncheon .121 
 
 Malingerer 110 
 
 Mandragora 220 
 
 Mansarde 83 
 
 Many 147 
 
 Matachin 22 
 
 Matamoros 133 
 
 Mausoleum 81 
 
 Meat 174 
 
 Meddle, meddlesome 187 
 
 Middler Ill 
 
 Midwife 226 
 
 Milken 150 
 
 Mischievous 117 
 
 Miscreant 161 
 
 Mithridate 81 
 
 Mixen 113 
 
 Moe 228 
 
 Moms-dance 227 
 
 Mystery, myst^re 215 
 
 Myth 7C 
 
 Nap.' 134 
 
 National 75 
 
 Necromancy 220 
 
 Negus 82 
 
 Nemorivagus 73 
 
 Neophyte 98 
 
 Nephew 165 
 
 Nesh. 109 
 
 Niggot 80 
 
 Nimm 109 
 
 Noonscape 122 
 
 Noonshun 121 
 
 Normal 70 
 
 Nostril 226 
 
 Nugget. 80 
 
 Nuntion.. 121 
 
 Oblige 67 
 
 Obsequies 218 
 
 Oculissimus 84 
 
 Orange 218 
 
 Orichalcum 215 
 
 Ornamentation 70 
 
 Orrery 82 
 
 Orthography 222 
 
 Ought 229 
 
 Owed 229 
 
 Pagan 184 
 
 Painful, painfulness 169 
 
 Pandar, pandarisra 83 
 
 Panorama 98 
 
 Pasquinade 82 
 
 Patch 82 
 
 Pate 134 
 
 Pease 144 
 
 Pester 80 
 
 Philauty 96 
 
 Photography 70 
 
 Physician 94 
 
 Pigmy 209 
 
 Pinchpenny 132 
 
 Pleurisy 221 
 
 Plunder 70, 98 
 
 Poet 93 
 
 Polite 181 
 
 Porcupine 228 
 
 Porpoise 63 
 
 Postremissimus 85 
 
INDEX OF WORDS. 
 
 237 
 
 Potecary 64 
 
 Praevmicator 178 
 
 Praj^nnatical 187 
 
 Preliber 58 
 
 Preposterous 177 
 
 Prestigx' 66 
 
 Pretty 46 
 
 Prevaricate 178 
 
 Privado 22 
 
 Prose, proser 188 
 
 Punctilio 22 
 
 Pyramid 214 
 
 Quellio 22 
 
 Querpo 22 
 
 Quinsey 63 
 
 Quirry 64 
 
 Pakehell 133 
 
 llame 218 
 
 Kash 46 
 
 Ratlie, rathest 127 
 
 Redingote 63 
 
 Refuse 218 
 
 Re<;oldar 136 
 
 Religion 166 
 
 Renegade 231 
 
 Renown 95 
 
 Resent 211 
 
 Reynard 83 
 
 Rodomontade 83 
 
 Riches 1 44 
 
 liighteousness 126 
 
 Rome 206 
 
 Rootfast 110 
 
 Rosen ..149 
 
 Ruly 126 
 
 Runagate 231 
 
 Sag.. 108 
 
 Sardanapalisme 82 
 
 Sash 63 
 
 Satellites 62 
 
 Satire, satirical 225 
 
 Satyr, satyric 224 
 
 Scent 211 
 
 Schimmer 1 09 
 
 Scrip 210 
 
 Seamster, seamstress 142 
 
 Selfish, selfishness 97 
 
 Sentiment 98 
 
 PAQI 
 
 Sepoy .218 
 
 Serene 125 
 
 Shamefastness 229 
 
 Shrewd, shrewdness 190 
 
 Silhouette 83 
 
 Silvern 150 
 
 Silvicultrix 73 
 
 Siren 223 
 
 Skinker 108 
 
 Skip 134 
 
 Siick 122 
 
 Smellfeast 131 
 
 Smug 134 
 
 Solidarity 68 
 
 Songster, songstress 142 
 
 Sorcerer 93 
 
 Spencer 82 
 
 Sperr 108 
 
 Spheterize 69 
 
 Spinner, spinster 141 
 
 Starconner Ill 
 
 Starve 1 74 
 
 Starvation 76 
 
 Stereotype 70 
 
 Stool 46 
 
 Sudden 200 
 
 Suicide 97 
 
 Suicism, suist 97 
 
 Siindflut 216 
 
 Sunstead 110 
 
 Swindler 71 
 
 Sycophant 189 
 
 Tabinet 82 
 
 Tapster 142 
 
 Tarre 108 
 
 Tartar 215 
 
 Tartary 216 
 
 Tea 206 
 
 Thatch 46 
 
 Theriac 170 
 
 Thou 155 
 
 Thrasonical 83 
 
 Tind 109 
 
 Tinnen 150 
 
 Tinsel 162 
 
 Tinsel-slippered 162 
 
 Tontine 82 
 
 Tosspot 131 
 
 Treacle 1 70 
 
 Turban 20 
 
238 
 
 INDEX OP WORDS. 
 
 PAQI 
 
 Vjincarrier 63 
 
 Vicinage 63 
 
 Villain 183, 189 
 
 Visnomy 63 
 
 Volcano 81 
 
 Voyage 174 
 
 Wanhope 108 
 
 Wateifright Ill 
 
 Watershed 95 
 
 Wedlock 125 
 
 Weed 174 
 
 Welk 108 
 
 FIGI 
 
 Welkin 144 
 
 Whine 46 
 
 Whole 212 
 
 Wiseacre 218 
 
 Witticism 97 
 
 Witch 93 
 
 Witwanton 1 10 
 
 Woburn 200 
 
 Woodbine 208 
 
 Worship 168 
 
 Worterbuch 102 
 
 Yard 175 
 
 THE END. 
 
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