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 EVERYDAY ENGLISH. 
 
 A SEQUEL TO 
 
 "WORDS AND THEIK USES." 
 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 
 
 Ratio imperatrix supra grammaticam. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 
 Cbe EtUerBitBe Jprrss, Camfartlig;c. 
 
 1895. 
 
 ^VV
 
 Copyright, 1880, 
 RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 
 
 All righis reaerved. 
 
 The River. nde Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A, 
 Printed bi' H. O. Houghton & Company.
 
 pt 
 
 \ioO 
 
 To 
 
 FRANCIS JAMES CHILD, M.A., Ph.D., 
 
 BOTLSTON PROFESSOR OP BHETOBIO AMD ORATOBT, 
 HAKTARD CNIVERSITr. 
 
 Mt dear Child: — 
 
 Some parts of this book I hope and believe you will approve; soma 
 others I fear you will disapprove. It is not for the former reason, how- 
 ever, that I give my desultory work the honor of having the name of a 
 scholar of your grade upon this page, but that I may have the pleasure of 
 thus bearing publicly my testimony to the value of your linguistic labors, 
 tnd the yet greater pleasure of offering you this token of the friendship ol 
 
 Tours always, 
 
 B. G. W.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 Some of the following chapters appeared serially 
 in the New York " Times " in the years 1877-78, 
 under the title of this book. Others were published 
 from time to time in the " Galaxy " magazine in the 
 years 1873-76. Little change has been made in 
 them except by omission and condensation. Of the 
 author's more recent writing upon the same subject 
 only a small part has been embodied in this volume.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Nine years have passed since the publication of the 
 book to which this is a sequel. Were I much concerned 
 about the fate of that book, or about the linguistic reputa- 
 tion of its writer, I should not be without occasion of self- 
 congratulation in respect to either. The views of the 
 English language which were set forth in " Words and 
 their Uses " need now no defense ; nor shall they now have 
 any defense at the hands of its author, except that which 
 they may incidentally, almost inevitably, receive in the 
 course of an examination in this book of subjects kindred 
 to those of its predecessor. That usage, even the usage of 
 the best writers, is not the final law of language ; that in 
 the scientific sense of the word it is not a law at all ; and 
 that English is, to all intents and purposes, without formal 
 grammar, are truths now perceived by so many intelligent, 
 well-informed, and thinking men, that he who proclaimed 
 them may safely leave them to work out their proper ends 
 without the aid of further advocacy. The views taken in 
 the book in question of the use of particular words, and of 
 their perversion from their proper sense, even by writers of 
 repute, seem also to need no apology or modification ; at 
 least I have none to offer. They may remain as they were 
 written. 
 
 Controversy is so extremely disagreeable to me that I 
 have always avoided it, if I could do so without seeming to 
 admit that I had committed the offense — it might be said 
 the literary crime — of having undertaken to teach that 
 which I myself had not studied ; of having pretended tc 
 knowledge that I had not acquired. On a very few occa^
 
 S PREFACE. 
 
 sious — three only, I believe — I have been led to enter 
 upon my own defense ; but in each of these I was person- 
 ally assailed ; my assailant not having been content to at- 
 tack my doctrine and to refute my argument to the best of 
 his ability, but having sought to gibbet me as a pretender, 
 and to establish his claims to the hangman's office by an 
 imposing exhibition of his own enormous " scholarship.' 
 Such assaults as these only I have repelled. Otherwise 1 
 am content to leave what I write to stand or fall by its own 
 strength. Moreover, I have little respect for controversy, 
 or even for discussion, in the establishment of truth or the 
 extinction of error. The disputants, after a fencing match 
 in which the buttons are apt to come off their foils, even if 
 rankling poison does not infect their blades, remain each of 
 them " of his own opinion still," having merely fought for 
 the amusement of the lookers-on. Men in general are not 
 convinced by arguments, pro and con, by retorts, by pleas 
 i»nd replications, rejoinders, rebutters, and surrebutters. The 
 world at large learns through direct dogmatic teaching by 
 (hose who have strong convictions. The doctrines of such 
 men, suiting more or less the temper of their times, are 
 tssted by the general sense, and are gradually absorbed or 
 rejected in the progress of years. New doctrine must al- 
 ways be bread cast upon the waters.^ 
 
 And there is yet another reason not without weight for 
 the discontinuance, if not for the avoiding, of controversy. 
 When a man or an army is beaten there is an end of that 
 man or that army, at least for the time being ; but fn arga- 
 ment, in discussion, there has yet been discovered no way 
 of preventing the renewed defense of demonstrated error or 
 i,he reassertion of exploded fallacy. 
 
 It was not at all surprising to me that my declaration of 
 the very unimportant nature of the remains of formal gram- 
 
 ^ This paragraph is from an article in the New York Times which 
 was published some months before the appearance of Professor Max 
 Vliiller's article on Spelling in the Fortniyhtlij Review.
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 mar in the English language, and of the utter futility of 
 grammar study as a means of learning to speak English 
 well, was received with surprise and provoked ojiposition. 
 When, some ten years ago, I declared English to be, to all 
 intents and purposes, a grammarless tongue, on the one 
 hand were some who hailed the doctrine as true and nc- 
 cepted it; but on the other there were heard the cries of 
 defiance and the sneers of derision. The result thus far is 
 that the more the question has been discussed, the wider has 
 been the spread of the belief among thinking men that Eng- 
 lish has (with some trilling exceptions) no grammatical con- 
 struction, — that is, construction according to syntactical 
 laws, — and that since then English grammars, so called, 
 have been written and published in which an attempt has 
 been made to sweep out a great deal of the old scholas- 
 tic rubbish with which children were crammed and choked 
 in the mistaken effort to teach them how to speak their 
 mother tongue. Grammars have been diminishing in vol- 
 ume, the diminution being due to the reduction in quantitv 
 of dusty nonsense, — of rules which were shackles instead 
 of guides, and of examples which burdened the memory, 
 but which did not teach the use of words. But much re- 
 mains to be done. People have y.et fully to grasp the fact 
 that there really is no such thing as grammar m the Eng- 
 lish language; that all systems of teaching English-speak- 
 ing children their mother tongue by rules and exceptions, 
 and notes and observations, and cautions and corollaries, are 
 useless, and not only so, but worse, because such a system 
 naturally leads to the injurious misapprehension that writ- 
 ing or speaking grammatically is something else than writ- 
 ing or speaking naturally, — something else than saying in 
 olain language just what you mean. The new modified and 
 curtailed grammars are the fruits of an absurd notion that 
 to learn to speak and write his own language a man must 
 be taught some " grammar " in one shape or another. This 
 tfl but a natural attempt to break a fall. The struggle wiU
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 go on until at last the grammarians and the grammar-loving 
 pedagogues, utterly overthrown, will pass peaceably away, 
 and be carried out to sepulture with a funeral service from 
 Lindley Murray read over their venerable remains. 
 
 English grammar is to all intents and purposes dead. 
 The little life it had was so purely fictitious that one smart 
 assault extinguished it forever. The time is coming, and it 
 will be here erelong, when there will be no more thought 
 of teaching an English-speaking boy to use his mother 
 tongue by grammar rules than of teaching him astrology. I 
 am often asked why I do not write an English grammar as 
 a text-book according to my own principles. How can I 
 do so, when the very first of my principles, if I have any, 
 in regard to English, is that it has no appreciable grammar ; 
 that all English grammar books, even the best of them, 
 should be burned ; and that the study of language, as one 
 that requires trained faculties, a cultivated judgment, and 
 no little knowledge of literature, should be postponed until 
 a late period of the time passed by young people in study, 
 — a notion horrible to many teachers of schools, and ut- 
 terly abominable to all publishers of school-books. 
 
 The high priests, and the low priests, of the mysteries of 
 English grammar have not ceased to deal with me acri- 
 mouiously. Let their railing pass by me as the idle wind : 
 irritating as it is, I would much rather face it than a sharp 
 northwester. I wish, however, to put one of their misrep- 
 resentations in its proper light. They try to bring upon 
 me the odium that pertains to arrogance. In the words of 
 one of them, I " assume to Ve a critical authority upon the 
 English language," and also " an adept in the use " of it. 
 These assertions are absolutely untrue in letter and in 
 B2)irit. I assume no such authority, nor have I ever as- 
 sumed it, directly or indirectly. I profess no such skill ; 
 nor have I ever written or said a word implying such pro- 
 fession. I do not profess — I may say that I hardly try — 
 to write good English ; I on'y profess to know, what hun*
 
 PREFACE, XIU 
 
 dreds of my readers know as well as I do, wLbl good 
 English is written. Did I not believe that I know this, it 
 would indeed have been presuming in me to write what I 
 have written upon this subject. Yet so absolutely untrue 
 is this accusation, that I am not in the position even of hav- 
 ing put myself forward as a critical writer upon language, 
 or upon art, or any other subject except Shakespeare. 
 " Words and their Uses " is not a gathering of volunteer 
 essays. The papers of which it is made up are chiefly the 
 fruit of inquiries addressed to me by strangers ; and they 
 were published, as is the case with all else that I have writ- 
 ten, because people paid me for the right to publish them. 
 I would much rather have spent my time and such strength 
 as I have upon some other subject. 
 
 Yet I have one other motive than that which I have 
 mentioned ; for I do verily believe that whoever writes as 
 these grammarians teach men to write will be sure never 
 to produce a sentence worth reading. A man who takes 
 thought about his " grammar," and is in an anxious frame 
 of mind as to whether his sentences will parse, may as well 
 lay down his pen if he writes for other readers than him- 
 self. A man whose writing, even for its style, to say noth- 
 ing of its matter, is worth the paper on which it is printed, 
 has other things upon his mind than the construction of his 
 sentences according to the " rules of grammar ; " and to 
 show this to my readers is one of the objects of this book 
 and of its predecessor. He who can write what is worth 
 the reading may make his own grammar ; and he surely will 
 do so, as all such men, great writers or small, have done 
 before him. Many of them, indeed all of them, have fallen 
 into formal errors, — errors which offer very pretty occa- 
 sions for the gratification of the critical malice of such 
 censors as those that I am noticing. Addison, who criti- 
 tised others, and whose own style has long been regarded 
 «s a model, erred often thus ; and even Goldsmith, whose 
 •tyle is more correct, and, in my judgment, more pleasing
 
 SIV PREFACE. 
 
 committed sins against " grammar " of which I am sure that 
 this sort of critics could not be guilty ; as sure as I am that 
 their writing would be quite free from some other peculiar- 
 ities which have been remarked in those authors. I com- 
 mend them to their attention ; they may parse them and 
 criticise them to their hearts' content, and find congenial 
 occupation in so doing.^ 
 
 It is a reproach upon grammatical studies that they tend 
 to produce a swarm of semi-literary censors who dart singly 
 or in flocks upon those who enter their field, singing and 
 stinging with a delight and a venom at least as great as 
 that of their insect prototypes. Like them, they are really 
 of almost inexpressible insignificance ; but like them they 
 manage to make themselves heard, and felt, and hated. 
 Those, indeed, we can keep oflf by bars and nets, or drive 
 away by odors which are only less noisome than their buzz 
 and their bite ; but against these there is no bar. Their 
 impudence surmounts and their impertinence penetrates all 
 defenses. Their glee over the annoyance which they hope 
 to inflict is, like that of their model, more irritating than 
 their little sting ; although against that there is no protec- 
 tion but a moral indiflference which is as rare as a skin thick 
 as the hide of a rhinoceros. 
 
 These carpers, even in their best moods, think, and feel, 
 and write with the motive embodied in the saying, " Phy- 
 Bician, heal thyself," than which a more foolish requisition 
 
 1 Picking flaws is poor business, but Addison, for example, could 
 write, and not only write but leave uncorrected, such sentences as this 
 in his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy: — 
 
 " The marble of the arch looks very white and fresh, as being ex- 
 posed to the winds and salt-sea-vapors, that by continually fretting 
 it preserves itself from that mouldy color, which others of the same 
 materials have contracted." (Fifth edition, 1736.) 
 
 This mi^ht have l)een written by Mrs. Gamp. Such confusion 
 tiars the charm of Addison's writings not so rarely as some of those 
 who would have us believe that they give their days and nights to 
 Ihe study of them would seem to think.
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 ivas never uttered. That a physician cannot heal hinaseli 
 IS DO ground for belief that his advice may not profit 
 others ; nor is even the fact that he is ailing evidence that 
 he is ignorant of his condition or unable to better it. He 
 may be, of choice or necessity, too much occupied with 
 others' troubles to look after his own. The occasion when 
 this saying was first uttered is an exponent of its spirit, 
 which was more fully expressed when the Person to whom 
 it was addressed was told by those who passed Him " wag- 
 ging their heads," as these others wag theirs, that if He 
 was what He was accused of professing to be, He might 
 save Himself. I do not set myself up as an example to be 
 followed ; and any endeavor to discredit what I teach by 
 criticism of my own writing is entirely from the purpose. 
 Consequently, writers of the class to which I have referred 
 will not find it profitable to waste time, pens, ink, and pa- 
 per upon me. I have noticed them vicariously now once 
 for all, and have paid in advance all their claims upon me, 
 saying grace, Franklin-wise, " over the whole pork-barrel." 
 I do not expect to be free of them because I have not in 
 these pages or elsewhere made any personal remarks in 
 regard to any one of them. As well might a man walk 
 through Donnybrook Fair with a shillelagh in his hand and 
 expect not to be assaulted because he attacked no one, as 
 to write on the language of his day and escape personal 
 attack from these pene-literators. There is but one way 
 of placating them in my case, and that is that publishers 
 should engage them instead of me to write upon this sub- 
 ject. And on a certain trifling condition I am more than 
 willing that they, or any one of them, should take my place. 
 Like the boy on the edge of the battle in " Henry V.,''' 
 " I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety." 
 Let the publishers pay me the money, and let them write 
 the books, and I will gladly resign my ofiice for some other 
 more to my liking. 
 
 For the method of writing which most of this class orf
 
 KVl PREFACE. 
 
 critics commend 1 have no respect. They may choose to 
 write by rule, and it may answer their purpose to do so ; 
 but I do not so choose, nor would it answer my purpose. 
 My mother tongue is mine by inheritance and by occupa- 
 tion, as it is also that of most of my readers, and I use it, 
 have used it, and shall use it as if it belonged to me, and 
 not as if I belonged to it, caring only to say what I mean 
 in such a way as to impress it upon my readers, and with 
 utter indifference to the rules of any grammarian or the 
 dictums of any lexicographer. I am not like Sir Thomas 
 Overbury's pedant, "who dares not thinke a thought that 
 the nominative case governs not the verbe." To such a po- 
 Bition of independence I hope to bring others. 
 
 So much in reference to what has been said about 
 " "Words and their Uses " and its author by those who have 
 put themselves forward as representatives of the grammari- 
 ans and the precedent-hunters. Of late some of them, pos- 
 sibly in ignorance of what was written on both sides of this 
 question years ago, have sounded the trumpet-call to contro- 
 versy. But to what good this fighting over of old battles ? 
 What they talk about happened consule Planco. 
 
 The republication in England — I do not know in what 
 quarter — of some of these chapters in their original form 
 brought me letters from unknown correspondents tliere, one 
 of whom says something (which he had before said publicly 
 in England), the truth, and indeed the importance, of which 
 I would be the last person to undervalue. This is, that my 
 view of English grammar had occurred to him and to others. 
 Indeed, I believe it to be true, and I own with pleasure, that 
 no small part of any worth or importance which the theory 
 of English speech set forth by me in the following pages, 
 and in " Words and their Uses " some years ago, may have, 
 is Jargely due to the fact that it gives form and utterance 
 to doubts and queries which have of late years sprung up 
 n the minds of many intelligent and thoughtful persons, 
 ((\r whom I have only had the good fortune to speak, going
 
 PREFACE. XVU 
 
 before them, protesting and prophesying iu the name of 
 common-sense. 
 
 The title of this book, like that of its predecessor, tells 
 plainly enough the purpose with which the irticles of which 
 it is composed were written. That purpose was to lead in- 
 telligent and fairly well educated persons, who had made no 
 special study of language, and who were perhaps acquainted 
 with no language but their own, to a knowledge of good 
 English, to help them to protect themselves against the con- 
 tamination of debasing influences in speech, to show them, 
 so far as I am able to do so, the virtue and the beauty of a 
 plain, simple, direct, and exact use of their mother tongue, 
 that tongue which has been for three hundred years the 
 noblest, strongest, richest, most largely capable language 
 ever uttered by man. The liberation of English from the 
 restraints of formal grammar, the wide diffusion among 
 those who are born to speak it of such a degree of educa- 
 tion as makes them all, or nearly all, readers, and the free- 
 dom of English literature from that authoritative academic 
 influence which is almost paramount in the literature of 
 other civilized peoples, combine to endow it on the one 
 hand with a union of strength, flexibility, and inartificiality, 
 in which it is peculiar, and to expose it on the other to 
 perversion and defilement. To the latter liability, the mul- 
 tiplicity of newspapers, and the fact that English newspa- 
 pers, and even English books, are largely written by per- 
 sons who are altogether without literary training, greatly 
 contribute. If Horace could justly say, " "We all, erlucated 
 and uneducated, write poetry," what might be said now of 
 English-speaking men, and of English-speaking women 1 
 And what is true of all the peoples to whom English 
 is their mother tongue is peculiarly and dangerously true 
 of the people of the United States at the present day. 
 Here the English language is in the hands, is almost at the 
 uercy, of a public which unites, in a degree unprecedented, 
 Intellectual activity and independence of thought with infe> 
 6
 
 JCViu PREFACE. 
 
 nor education, anJ, what is almost worse m regard to lan- 
 guage than no education, that half-education which is got 
 from text-books and text-book teachers in public schools. 
 There is no worse English, in some respects, than that 
 which is spoken and written by those who learn their lan- 
 guage in " American " public schools. Better speak the 
 dialect of a peasant in the remotest rural shire in England, 
 than such a prim, pretentious language, begotten by gram- 
 mar upon dictionary. That at least would be genuine and 
 natural ; this is fictitious and artificial. The tendency of 
 our public-school teaching in language is toward a combina- 
 tion of vulgarity and pomposity. And this tendency is 
 greatly aggravated by the addiction of our public to the 
 reading of newspapers. Whatever advantages this habit 
 may have in other respects, it would be well, so far as our 
 language is concerned, if nine hundred and ninety-nine in 
 every thousand of our newspapers could be suppressed to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Errors, harmful errors, in the use of language, however, 
 are not confined to the uneducated and the half-educated 
 writers who address and mislead the public in such quar- 
 ters. Perversions of words from their proper uses occur 
 even in the writings of those who have, and who deserve, 
 an honored place in literature. Upon the latter, as well as 
 upon the former, I have ventured to comment, although I 
 am conscious that I myself am not unlikely to be among 
 the sinners in this respect. But what of that ? Do two 
 wrongs ever make one right ? I stand as ready to con- 
 demn myself as to censure any other. It may be said 
 that no small proportion of the changes which are con 
 Btantly taking place in living languages are due to these 
 unconscious perversions. None the less, however, is per- 
 version to be deplored. If perversion could be lessened, 
 change would be lessened, and language would continue the 
 longer a medium of expression comprehensible and unmis- 
 Uikable by all those by whom it is spoken. What a bles*
 
 PREFACE. XIX 
 
 ing would it have been to mankind if an unchanged conti- 
 nuity of English speech had made the greater part of the 
 labor of some of Shakespeare's commentators superfluous, 
 Bnd the rest of it impossible ! Such a continuity has be- 
 gun to prevail. The writers of the Elizabethan period 
 needed commentators in the days of Queen Anne, a hun- 
 dred years later ; but the Queen Anne writers need no com- 
 ment to make their language comprehensible to us, who 
 come nearly two centuries after them. It was in the hope 
 of effecting something toward this desirable end that I be- 
 gan the writings which have resulted in "Words and their 
 Uses," and in its present sequel. I have been led by the 
 suggestions of others and by the tendencies of the times 
 into the discussion of other topics, connected with the main 
 purpose which I had in view, particularly the proposed 
 change in English spelling ; but this I hope will be not un- 
 acceptable to my readers. 
 
 To those who have followed me thus far I need hardly 
 say that I have not written what, by any stretch of the 
 term, may rightly be called a grammar, or even a grammat- 
 ical dissertation. Nor have I sought or desired to present 
 my readers with anything like a text-book, or with a " scien • 
 tific" and "exhaustive" treatment of my subject. And my 
 discursive discussions are absolutely without any grammat- 
 ical tendency. They will not help any one to parse ; and 
 those, therefore, who pine to parse elegantly, and to take 
 prizes in the parsing matches that will naturally follow the 
 spelling matches that have fired so many ardent minds with 
 emulation during the last two or three years, need not look 
 for help in this book. 
 
 Nor will the book teach any one to spell. In the first 
 place, I have not the highest respect for spelling : I don'i 
 take it to heart. Uniformity of practice in this respect is, 
 indeed, desirable ; but a lack of stric*^ conformity to the re- 
 ceived orthography of the time is not a matter of such grave 
 importauce that an occasional lapse from it should fill any
 
 XX PREFACE. 
 
 one with shame, or be made the occasion of ridicule. Many 
 persons are born with the capacity to be good spellers, and 
 they become so early in life by a kind of intuition. Others 
 are made so, but more rarely, by study and practice. Some 
 persons never learn to spell with unerring correctness; and 
 these are far from being the dullest or the least instructed of 
 mankind. I have known so many persons, feeble-minded 
 and ignorant, who were irreproachable in this respect, that, 
 having met with others who were able to utter the thoughts 
 of strong and richly-stored minds with clearness and force, 
 but who were hardly able to write one page of a letter with- 
 out some failure to conform to the standard of that Jug- 
 gernaut of the timid in language, " the dictionary," I have 
 sometimes thought that perfection in orthography naturally 
 belonged rather to the former class than to the latter, and 
 that they who took to spelling were they whose words were 
 likely to be of small importance, whether they spelled well 
 or ill. Of course, this is not really so. There are fools 
 and ignoramuses who spell badly, and wise and learned men 
 who never go astray in this respect ; it only remains that 
 deviation from the received orthography of the day, if not 
 frequent or gross, is not to be regarded as evidence of inca- 
 pacity or ignorance. 
 
 And English orthography, so called, is so unsystematic 
 that it cannot be justly regarded as an ultimate end of the 
 highest importance, or even, either as process or as result, of 
 very great intellectual value. Its only real standard is us- 
 age, its only safe guide is etymology ; and the latter, often 
 disregarded, it is now sought by many learned philologists, 
 and particularly by many phonologists, to set aside in favor 
 of the phonetic method. 
 
 The proposed change seems to me to be needless and full 
 of peril, for reasons which are given somewhat fully in the 
 course of the second division of this book, in which the va- 
 rious arguments in its favor which have been presented 
 within the last few years by distinguished philologists art
 
 PREFACE. XXI 
 
 eiamiued freely and without timidity, but I hope not with- 
 out due deference. It seems to me that there is altogether 
 too much ado made about this question of spelling, which, 
 as signs cannot represent sounds but can only suggest them, 
 must after all be a mere matter of convenience and of fash- 
 ion, in which changes are likely to take place for the mere 
 sake of convenience and of fashion. For example, the Tur- 
 veydrops of orthography, even in the last generation, in- 
 Bisted upon musick as the spelling of the word which all 
 sane people now write music ; and our children may yet 
 horrify some of us by writing hric or hrih, instead of hrick^ 
 in conformity to a new fashion of their time. Whoever, 
 therefore, in that case should now write musick or hric 
 would be merely behind or before the fashion of the day. 
 
 The committee of eminent scholars appointed by the 
 American Philological Society to consider (and to advocate) 
 the scheme of phonetic spelling presented as the result of 
 their labors a temperate and cautious report, the point of 
 which was that it would be well to drop gradually some of 
 our superfluous terminal and double letters. Well enough : 
 such changes are sure to come gradually in the course of 
 time hereafter as they have come in the course of time here- 
 tofore. But it surely was not necessary that Whitney, and 
 March, and Haldeman, and Trumbull, and Child should bow 
 the heavens on high and come flying all abroad to tell us 
 that. The point to be decided is whether, for example, we 
 shall spell Jizik in the singular, Jizix in the plural, and fizi- 
 shun and Jizikl and fiasisist in the derivatives. Against that 
 which is the entering wedge of a scheme that will rive our 
 written language into such splinters I have protested and 
 endeavored to reason. 
 
 In the first division of this book an examination of a 
 thorough and systematic discussion of the so-called sounds 
 of letters, by one of our most eminent philologists, from 
 whom I venture to differ on some points, is made the occa- 
 rion of remarks upon the pronunciation of English, which 1
 
 XXll PREFACE. 
 
 hope will not be found without interest and value. But 1 
 do not undertake to teach pronunciation. For, in the first 
 place, I am not sure that I pronounce correctly myself ; 
 whether I did so or not never having been a matter of any 
 thought or care to me at any time of my life, that I can re- 
 member ; any more than whether I spelled correctly, as to 
 which 1 have never within my memory given myself tho 
 least trouble. Next, I doubt very much the ability of any 
 one to teach pronunciation by the use of letters, or of any 
 printed signs whatever, however ingeniously contrived. 
 For, whether a sound is indicated by a combination of let- 
 ters or by a special sign, the question at once arises, must 
 arise, What is the sound thus indicated ? To which there 
 is no answer, can be no answer, except by the voice uttering 
 the sound ; and having that, the sign is a superfluity at best, 
 at worst a stumbling-block. Pronunciation cannot be taught 
 otherwise than by speech ; and thus it is always learned. 
 And this brings me to the third reason why I do not pro- 
 pose to teach pronunciation ; which is that it is not to be 
 learned by study and from teachers, even from those who 
 teach orally. Pronunciation is acquired slowly,during youth ; 
 it comes insensibly ; it strikes root deeply ; it is almost in- 
 eradicable. After maturity it is positively so in most cases. 
 Those in which it is not are so few that they may be left out 
 of consideration. Gross faults in this respect maybe corrected 
 by observation, by practice, and by careful watching ; but let 
 excitement once relax the consciousness and the vigilance of 
 the speaker, and early habit, which in language seems not 
 second nature but first nature, instantly resumes its sway, 
 and the precise speaker by rule of a minute before lapses 
 into provincialism or vulgarity. There is no guide to good 
 pronunciation but daily association with the best speakers ; 
 and that, to be effective, should begin early in life. 
 
 And when I am asked, as I am sorry to say I often am 
 asked, what dictionary is the best authority, I am obliged 
 to say, as I am when people ask me how to spell parallel
 
 PREFACE. XXUl 
 
 that I don't know. There are dictionaries which are use- 
 ful and full of information, but in living language there is 
 no authority, and can be none. Usage — the usage of the 
 most cultivated society — is the only guide ; and this should 
 be, and to a certain extent is, moulded by reason and an- 
 alogy. But if usage chooses to set reason and analogy 
 aside it will do so. Dictionaries are but records of usage, 
 as it has been observed by the dictionary makers ; and the 
 changes of language — that is, of speech — are so constant 
 and so subtle that a dictionary can hardly be well launched 
 upon the public before it begins to be historical, a record of 
 obsolescent sounds and meanings. 
 
 The most important part of our every-day English has not 
 to do with grammar, or with spelling, or with pronunciation. 
 It has to do with the right use of words as to their meaning 
 and their logical connection ; and this may be learned by 
 study and by care at almost any time of life. In illustra- 
 tion of the need of such study and care, here is the close of 
 a sentence which I found in an official letter written by a 
 man who I know was very sensitive about his " grammar," 
 and who never by any chance misspelled a word : — 
 
 " . . . . that this is paid by the Chief Clerk of the 
 
 Revenue from funds temporally advanced from small seiz- 
 ures, and that the sum is reimbursed by the auctioneers." 
 
 This man did not see that what he had written was ab- 
 K'^lute nonsense. To him there was no difference between 
 temporally and temporarily ; nor could he see that funds 
 could not be advanced from seizures, but that they must be 
 advanced from the products of seizures ; and he was in like 
 manner incapable of seeing that, although a man or a cor- 
 porate body may be reimbursed, a sum is returned or re- 
 funded. A man is reimbursed by the return of money 
 which he has laid out. Correspondence, every sentence of 
 which will " parse," and every word of which is spelled 
 correctly, is infested with a pestilent use of language like 
 this. It is this department of language, not grammar and 
 orthography, that needs atteut'on.
 
 XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 With such misuses and perversions of words philology 
 does not concern itself, although they furnish it in the end 
 with some of the materials upon which it works. Now it 
 is in the very field which philology passes by that I have 
 labored. Into any higher realm of linguistic endeavor this 
 book and its predecessor venture but rarely, and then only 
 incidentally. Their chief purpose is the humbler one of 
 striving to do what may be done to help their readers to 
 use language reasonably, consistently, normally, and with- 
 out coarseness on one side or affectation of elegance on the 
 other ; to do what may be done to check early perversion 
 of language, which unchecked may pass into unrestrainable 
 usage, as a pebble may turn aside or disperse a rill which 
 might unchecked become a brook and then a river. That 
 the first of these books has done something in this way, 
 yet far too little, their writer has the satisfaction of know- 
 ing. He has seen that he has effected somewhat, and he 
 hopes to effect somewhat more, toward diminishing the 
 number of monstrosities in language which future philolo- 
 gists will have to record, to examine, and to endeavor to 
 explain ; and with that somewhat, be it little or much, he 
 will, as to this small part of his life's work, be content. 
 
 B. G. W. 
 
 Nkw York, j^inil, 1880.
 
 OOI^TENTa 
 
 PART L — SPEECH. 
 
 ■* 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ENGLISH FBONUNCIATION: THB VOWELS. 
 
 Ihare anil sheer; chair and cheer. — Words pronounced, not letters. 
 
 — Professor Whitney's "Elements," etc. — The aA sound of A. — 
 The short souifi of E. — Short I. — Been. — Long E. — I as E. — 
 Words of French origin. — EI 9 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE VOWELS (contitiued). 
 
 Broad A. — God and dog. — Short 0. — None, whole, home, etc.— 
 Short U. — Monosyllables in oo. — Rood, roof, rule, etc. — English 
 U; iotizing. — Wound. — Winding a horn. — R destructive of the 
 EngUshU.— The New England U M 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 consonants: the bones op speech. 
 
 Nature of this inquiry. — Only consonants are articulated. — Articula- 
 tion produced only by consonants. — Few words without consonants. 
 
 — Cries of animals without articulation. — Origin of language. — 
 The first consonants, M, B, P. — Consonants fixed in pronuncia- 
 tion. — The last consonants, L, R. — Claim. — Surd and sonant; 
 hard and soft. — G, hard and soft. — D, L, and R. — Pronunciation 
 
 of kind, guard, and girl. — TH. — The z sound 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OKTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. — SPELLtNG-BOOK SPEECH. 
 
 [^renouncing dictionaries. — Prof. F. W. Newman on English as spoken 
 and written. — Uncertainty of pronunciation. — What sounds shall 
 be phonetically spelled. — The broad A. — Suppression of R; of H. 
 Names of places. — Derby. — Old pronunciation of ER; of IR. — 
 Changes in spelling suggested CI
 
 SXVl CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TNACCENTED VOWELS AND FINAL CONSONANTS. — THE IRISH 
 PRONUNCIATION. 
 
 PAOI 
 
 W^hat IS the true pronunciation of English ? — Cultivated pronuncia- 
 tion not uniform in England. — Slovenly utterance of unaccented 
 vowels. — Unaccented E and I. — The Irish pronunciation that of 
 England in the time of Elizabeth 70 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "AMERICAN" SPEECH. 
 
 Wallack's Theatre. — The English heard there. — Usage tf the best 
 English society absolute as to pronunciation. — " American " pecul- 
 iarities. — Utterance. — Nasality. — Constraint. — Over-emphasized 
 speech of "American" women. — Western speech. — A Western 
 actress. — Throaty speech. — Too much effort in speaking. — " Mar- 
 tin Chuzzlewit." — Dictionary English . . 8fi 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 READING. 
 
 Correct spelling not necessary to easy reading. — Learning to read. — 
 Reading not always essential to education. — Reading aloud. — 
 Beason of its disuse. — Effect of newspapers. — Reading aloud well. 
 ^Mr. Tennyson. — What good reading is. — Naturalness. — Vari- 
 ety of inflection. — An example. — The " Psalm of Life " . . . .108 
 
 PART II. — WRITING. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING: SOME CONSIDERATION OF ITS ALLEGED 
 DIFFICULTY. 
 
 •'Parrot wheezers." — Notions of some phonetic spelling reformers. 
 
 — Professor March's view. — Function of science in every-day 
 speech. — The will in language. — Spelling not singularly diflBcult 
 to learn. — Spelling has nothing to do with speech. — Unreasonable 
 expectations as to spelling. — Spelling, arithmetic, and geography. 
 
 — Bad spelling rare. — Misspelling of short and " easy" words most 
 common llf 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ENGLISH spelling: CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED PHONETIC 
 REFORM. 
 
 n>ree fallacies. — Two classes of advocates of phonetic spelling 
 
 Correspondence of sound and sign. — A philologist's confession —
 
 CONTENTS. XXVll 
 
 Ellis's law of the individual. — Anarchy in spelling. — Saving of 
 time lost in spelling. — Complaints of foreigners. — French spelling. 
 — Letters not pronounced in detail. — Some possible reforms in 
 spelling — Etymology 134 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 
 
 Ormin and his "Ormulum." — Sir John Cheke. — English spelling 
 and Latin spelling. — Sir Thomas Smith. — John Hart.— Spelling in 
 A. D. 1569 and A. d. 1879. — Dean Wilkins and his " real character " 160 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 
 
 Walker and his " principles." — The sound indicated by A. — Lan- 
 guage independent; writing dependent and unessential. — Johnson, 
 Young, and Chesterfield. — Changes in pronunciation not gradual. 
 
 — Original function of letters. — Spelling reform unnecessary, unde- 
 sirable, and impossible. — Difficulties of English spelling overrated. 
 
 — The question of cost. — That of time. — The combination ough. — 
 Uncertaintj' as to what sounds are to be represented. — The ques- 
 tion of practicability 166 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 MAX MTJLLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. — PITMAN'S ALPHABET. — 
 ELLIS'S PAL^OTYPE. 
 
 ihe question merely one of convenience. — The Phonetic Alphabet, 
 and the changes which it involves. — Effect upon English litera- 
 ture. — Disagreement among phonologists as to what is to be spelled 
 phonetically — The question of etymology of secondary importance. 
 
 — Edward Coote's "English Schoolmaster." — Spelling must be 
 arbitrary'. — Signs only suggest sounds 183 
 
 CHAP'^ER XHL 
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. — MR. ELLIS'S GLOSSIO SPELLING. 
 
 A. revolution in spelling not to be feared. — No consensus among the 
 reformers. — Specialists in language not its proper reformers. — Mr. 
 Ellis, Dr. Gladstone, Mr. Lowe, and the Rev. Mr. Sayce. — "An 
 unphilological habit of mind." — Power of government over spell- 
 ing. — Glossic spelli.ng and nomic spelling. — Mr. Ellis's confession 
 of difficulty and perplexity 204 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE INVENTION OF PRINTING: ITS EFFECT UPON ENGLISH SPELLING. 
 
 Early printing and contemporary manuscript. — Variat'ins in early 
 spelling not indicative of corresponding variations in pronunciation
 
 XX.V1U CONTENTS. 
 
 PASI 
 
 — Uniformity not sacrificed because it was unknown. — Gradual 
 approach to uniformity 223 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE THEORY OF COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUKD AND SIGN: 
 RESTORATION OF SILENT LETTERS. 
 
 Examination of alleged instances of compromise. — England. — Colo- 
 nel, and its history. — Lieutenant. — Major. — Silent letters. — L, 
 U, and P. — Some words in which vowels and consonants were 
 silent in the seventeenth century 236 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY : ITS RELATION TO ESTABLISHED 
 ORTHOGRAPHY. 
 
 Johnson neither formed nor fixed English orthography. — Isaak Wal- 
 ton's spelling in 1653. — Sir Matthew Hale's spelling in 1677. — 
 Modern orthography established at the end of the seventeenth cent- 
 ury. — Bailey's dictionarj'. — Johnson, like Bailey, merely adopted 
 the spelling of antecedent writers. — Changes since Johnson's time. 
 
 — Recapitulation 850 
 
 PART III. — GRAMMAR. 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 "ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. — WHAT GRAMMAR IS. 
 
 Mr. Squeers's parsing. — What is grammar? — Various definitions.— 
 Grammar as it is here considered. — English words, with few excep- 
 tions, have but one form. — Usage. — Usage of the best writers not 
 an absolute law in language. — Grammar and logic in language. — 
 Grammar and common-sense. — English grammar not studied by 
 the great writers of English. — Grammar schools in England . . . 281 
 
 CHAPTER XVIH. 
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney. — His prose ; his poetry. — His view of the English 
 language. — " It wanteth grammar." — English once had grammar, 
 
 — "Survivals" of English grammar. — The sentence. — Objective 
 sense. —Dative sense. — Vocative. — Possessive in ei and with of. 
 
 — Inflection a condition of formal grammar. — Gender. — The verb. 
 
 — Professor Whi'ney on English grammar . . 971
 
 CONTENTS. XXIX 
 
 CHAPTER XrX. 
 
 f A RT8 OF SPEECH. — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEARNING GERMAN AND 
 LEARNING ENGLISH. 
 
 PAGI 
 
 The parts of speech interchangeable in English. — German must be 
 learned by foreigners through its grammatical rules. — Not so Eng- 
 lish 296 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 INTERVIEWING: A PARENTHETICAL CHAPTER. 
 
 tfouns used as "active transitive" verbs. — A personal experience. 
 
 — " Oystering." — "Suiciding" 803 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 
 
 •Passive voice." — "Auxiliary" verbs a "formative element." — 
 English distinctively analytical and logical. — Position. — The word 
 only. — A passive verb. — What case is. — Gender a matter of gram- 
 matical form 311 
 
 CHAPTER XXn. 
 
 PRONOUNS. 
 
 rhe grammatical definition. — What pronouns are. — Not always sub- 
 stitutes for nouns. — The pronoun marks the beginning of conscious- 
 ness. — The most ancient and unchangeable part of speech .... 334 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 
 
 'Shilly-shally." — Meaning of will; of shall. — Classification. — 
 Would and should. — Impersonal use of should. — History of this id- 
 iom. — Misuse by British writers of reputation 331 
 
 PART IV. — WORDS AND PHRASES. 
 
 CHAPTER XXTV. 
 
 "popular pie." 
 
 popular = good — Meaning of gentleman and lady. — Disagreement 
 as to meaning of terms. — Latin-English. — Misapprehension of it. 
 
 — History of the word poptdar. — Perversions of meaning. — Indif- 
 ference of philology in this respect. — Lexicographers, recorders of 
 tkct. — The verb to y«u>, and other like words 361
 
 tXX CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 CHANGES IN LANGUAGE. 
 
 Words have properly but one meaning. — History of person. — Use of 
 indiyidual. — Predicate and transpire 385 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE FIRST ENGLISH VERBAL CRITICISM. 
 
 Censure of misuses common A. d. 1770. — Different to and different 
 than 394 
 
 CHAPTER XXVH. 
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 
 
 Verbs made from nouns in ion. — Burgled. — Can. — Avocation. — 
 Couple. — Talk. — Fire. — Calculate. — Accident. — Every once in 
 a while. — Make way. — An unsuccessful suicide. — Omission of the 
 after either and or. — In and into. — Directly. — Anticipate. — Par- 
 ticle. — Remember and recollect. — Next. — Memoranda. — Their, 
 referring to a singular noun. — Ascetic. — Identified. — Balance. — 
 Lengthened. — Table-board. — On the street. — Don't. — Less and 
 fewer. — Every, in a plural sense. — On to. — Expect. — Remuner- 
 ate. — Plenty. — Executed. — Pocket-handkerchief and neck-hand- 
 kerchief 401 
 
 CHAPTER XXVm. 
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Had rather and hadn't oughter. — Employee. — Tou was. — Position 
 of the adverb. — Dilemma. — At fault or in fault. — Debut. — Cum 
 grano sails. — Up and down; above and below. — Differ with and 
 differ from. — Possessives of compounds. — Verbs corresponding to 
 nouns in ion. — English defiled. — Eventuality; canalized. ^Epi- 
 demic and endemic. — Scientist and other ists; a lady poultryist. — 
 Politique and political. — Specialty and specialilj'. — Good usage 
 versus bad sense. — The "perfect infinitive." — Feel bad and feel 
 badly 427 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 CANT, TRADING AND OTHER. 
 
 Difference between cant and slang. — Cant the less respectable. — 
 Various cant phrases. — Conventional phrases apt to stereotype into 
 cant :. 4S4
 
 CONTENTS. XXXI 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ELEGANT ENGLISH, 
 
 PAOB 
 
 rhe Buperfluity of elegance. — Elegant English in the past. — Modem 
 reaction. — Examples of too fastidious or affected elegance. — Ele- 
 gance general'y enfeebling. — The only way of learning to speak 
 good English iSi
 
 SPEECH.
 
 EYERT-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION: THE VOWELS. 
 
 A KINSWOMAN of mine, a lady who lives in the 
 country, was looking for the coining of a woman whom 
 she hired at odd times as a helper in housework ; 
 when, after some delay, a lank, shy girl appeared, and 
 said that her mother could n't come, " 'cause yes'day 
 she was pickin' cherries on sheers, an' she fell down 
 an' hurt herself scan'lous." The use of scandalous 
 to express severity of bodily injury, although not in 
 the highest style of English, may be passed over for 
 the present; and certainly the elegant people who 
 use awful to express a great degree of excellence or 
 of pleasure, as in " awfully nice," and " awfully 
 pretty," and even " awfully jolly," would, on Chris- 
 tian principles, have to cast out a very considerable 
 beam from their ov^ti eyes befoi'e picking at this mote 
 in the eye of their humble sister. We are concerned 
 now with the conditions on which she said that her 
 mother was picking cherries. It was " on sheers," a 
 kind of payment not uncommon in the rural districts. 
 
 The custom now among the best speakers is to 
 ?ay shares, not sheers ; but are we therefore to infei 
 that this girl pronounced share sheer, or, to put th«
 
 4 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 question more simply and concisely, that she gave to 
 the letter a the sound of the letter e? I am sure that 
 Bhe did not ; and for the very good reason that nei- 
 ther she nor her mother ever saw the word share, and 
 that had they seen it they would not have known 
 what it was ; for they could not read. (And, by the 
 bye, I doubt that, their condition in life being what 
 it was, they were therefore any the less virtuous or 
 even the less happy.) The girl called her mother's 
 part of the fruit of such work a " sheer ^' because her 
 mother so called it, and the mother did so for the 
 same reason ; and so back through generations, no 
 one of whom probably could read or spell, and who 
 therefore could not be said to give a the sound of ee. 
 But this word, this vocal sound which is indicated 
 by the characters share, has during all these gen- 
 erations been written in other ways, and in fact is 
 now so written ; for example, shear and shire. It 
 is written in the last way in the name of the part 
 of the country in which these people lived, — Mon- 
 mouthshire, New Jersey. A shire is merely that 
 part of a country which is cut off — that is, sheared 
 — from the rest. Indeed, if etymology and long 
 usage are of any authority, this word, which is 
 the Anglo-Saxon scire, is more properly sheer than 
 share. I have not traced the changes step by step ; 
 but it would seem that the change, which until re- 
 cently had taken place only among literate people, is 
 owing to the change in the pronunciation of i and of 
 e. Some centuries ago the former had, as it has now 
 on the continent of Europe, the sound of our modern 
 English e, and the latter had the sound, or nearly 
 the sound, of our modern English a. So shire came 
 lo be written sheer, and sh'^er to be pronounced and
 
 THE VOWKLS. 6 
 
 then written share. But it would be difficult, If not 
 impossible, I think, to be accurate in any such deduc- 
 tion ; for even in Anglo-Saxon times there seems to 
 have been some unct^tainty upon this point. 
 
 Mere uncertainty as to pronunciation may, however, 
 be disregarded in the consideration of the present 
 subject : the confusion of sounds and of letters is the 
 only important matter. This has obtained, it need 
 hardly be said, in many other words ; for example, 
 chair, which most of us have heard pronounced cheer 
 by some people. And among the people who have 
 BO pronounced it was Shakespeare, in one passage of 
 whose writings the reading is made ambiguous by 
 this confusion. In " Macbeth," Act V., Scene 3, the 
 usurper says, according to the earliest copy, the folio 
 of 1623, — 
 
 "This push 
 Will cheere me ever or diseate me now." 
 
 Some editors read " cheer me," others " chair me ; " 
 but the alternative phrase, " or disseat me," seems to 
 me to leave no room for doubt that " chair me " is 
 what Shakespeare meant. There seems, however, to 
 be as little doubt that he also meant a punning sug- 
 gestion of cheer, and that the form in which the word 
 appears in the folio is a mere phonographic irregu- 
 larity of spelling. 
 
 It is highly probable, indeed, that Shakespeare 
 called a chair a cheer, but this passage does not 
 make it absolutely certain that he did so ; for the 
 question arises, How did he pronounce cheer ? There 
 is very good reason for believirg that in numerous 
 rt'ords in which we use the sound of our modern Encj 
 lijh e he used that of our modern English a; the 
 written letter being constantly e.
 
 6 EVKRY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 The question as to the sound given to these vowels 
 is involved in very great confusion, which, it seems 
 to me, will never be satisfactorily solved. If, how- 
 ever, I am sure of anything in regard to English pro- 
 nunciation in past days, it is that we can be sure 
 only that certain words had certain sounds ; not that 
 certain letters had, by rule, such and such sounds. 
 Words were spoken as independent wholes, and not 
 as the combinations of certain letters ; except by a 
 few pedants whom Shakespeare himself ridicules in 
 " Love's Labor 's Lost." It is only of comparatively 
 late years, since the not very profitable study of dic- 
 tionaries, pronouncing and other, was begun, that 
 the mass of even the more intelligent and better ed- 
 ucated people have regarded their words as the result 
 of the putting together of certain signs of sounds 
 called letters. They spoke, and on the whole still 
 speak, the words — that is, the sounds — signifying 
 thoughts or things, as they heard, or hear, them 
 spoken by their fathers and mothers and their friends, 
 without knowing or caring anything about the rela- 
 tion of those words to written language. 
 
 In the discussion of the subject of English pronun- 
 ciation these facts should be constantly borne in 
 mind. They are, however, too generally disregarded, 
 or set openly at naught. Walker, for instance, opens 
 his remarks upon the pronunciation of the vowels by 
 uaying, " A has three long sounds and two short 
 ones." But, assuming his classification, the fact is 
 that there are three long and two short vowel sounds 
 in the English language which appear in syllables 
 tliat may be written with the letter a. This is no 
 quibble ; iov if in those words or syllables the vowel 
 Bound were to cliange, — as in many cases it ha»
 
 THE VOWELS. 7 
 
 changed, — the letter would yet remain, as in many 
 audi cases, we may say in most such eases, it has re- 
 mained, although in some it has changed ; the fact 
 being that there has never been, is not, and, as I am 
 inclined to think, can never be an exact correspond- 
 ence of the written sign to the spoken sound. 
 
 Among the interesting recent contributions to Eng- 
 lish phonology is Professor Whitney's paper on "The 
 Elements of English Pronunciation," which appears 
 in his " Oriental and Linguistic Studies." It con- 
 tains not a few assertions which cannot but have sur- 
 prised those who are accustomed to hear English 
 from the lips of its best speakers ; but these do little 
 to impair the interest of the learned writer's record 
 of his patient and minute investigation of his subject. 
 Let us examine this record, not with the purpose of 
 criticising its phonological principles, but, using it as 
 a guide, with the humbler although not less practi- 
 cally useful purpose of discovering, if possible, what 
 is the best form of English speech, and what are the 
 nature and the causes of the more important devia- 
 tions from that standard. 
 
 Professor Whitney's method is an analysis of his 
 own pronunciation, or, in his own words, of his own 
 " peculiarities of utterance." The method is a good 
 one, considering: who the observer is and who the ob- 
 served ; the former being a distinguished philologist, 
 and the latter one of that sort of well-educated, well- 
 bred Yankees many of whom speak English with a 
 purity rivaled by only a few among the highest social 
 classes of England. And yet we shall see some ex- 
 traordinary assertions as to pronunciation in these 
 *' confessions of a provincial," as Professor Whitney 
 himself styles them. He tells us that for aught h«
 
 8 EV£RY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 knows his speech may be taken as a fair specimen 
 of that of the orduiarily educated New Englander 
 from the interior.^ Language, and particuhirly the 
 pronunciation of one's mother tongue, is acquired in 
 earlj'^ years ; habits of speech then formed being in 
 ahnost all cases ineradicable. It is well, therefore, 
 that Professor Whitney tells us whence he is. 
 
 Until he was sixteen years old he lived at North- 
 ampton, Massachusetts, " a shire town of long stand- 
 ing, which," he adds, "in my youth had not lost its 
 ancient and well-established reputation as a home of 
 ' old families,' and a scene of special culture and 
 high-bred society." In such a place it could not be 
 otherwise than that, as he says, " to characterize it 
 by a single trait, the proper distinction of shall and 
 will was so stoutly maintained, and a slip in the use 
 of the one for the other as rare and as immediately 
 noticeable and offensive as in the best society of Lon- 
 don." His father was a " merchant and banker, not 
 "limself a coUege-tauglit man, but a son of a graduate 
 of Harvard ; " his mother " from the shore of Con- 
 necticut, her father a clergyman and a graduate of 
 Yale." Better conditions for the nurture of good 
 English speech there could hardly be in this country. 
 
 And now, as I am about to criticise Professor 
 Whitney's " peculiarities of utterance," perhaps it is 
 cnly fair that I should strip, as well as my heavy- 
 weight antagonist, and follow his example by show- 
 ing the conditions under which I acquired my knowl- 
 edge of the sound of my mother tongue. I do not, 
 
 1 As Professor Whitney h-mself has brought his pronunciation up before 
 tie world as a standard of comparison, it is proper that I should sa_v tha' 
 I heard him spfiken of amcng students of language In England as present- 
 ng a marked example of all those peculiarities of speech which are then 
 tailed " American."
 
 THE VOWELS. 9 
 
 however, bring forward my own j^ronunciation as a 
 Btandard of comparison ; and I shall endeavor to 
 refer to it as rarely as possible. 
 
 To begin, then, at the beginning, although born 
 and educated in New York, I am the first of my fam- 
 ily that was so, my forefathers, for about two cent- 
 uries previous, having been in the habit of getting 
 themselves born in and about Middletown, Connecti- 
 cut ; this on my mother's side as well as my father's. 
 Both my grandfathers were graduates of Yale ; and 
 my paternal grandfather, a clergyman of the Episco- 
 pal church, with whom I passed a great deal of my 
 boyhood, spoke, I think, the finest and richest Eng- 
 lish I ever heard. There was a slight tinge of the 
 old days about it, given chiefly by his pronuncia- 
 tion of such words as angel and danger^ which he 
 sounded an-gel, dan-ger, and by his distinct but gen- 
 tle roll of the letter r, which, however, was never 
 striking except when he was reading prayers or from 
 the Bible. I will add that, much as I was in Con- 
 necticut in my boyhood, I never heard, under my 
 grandfather's roof, or in the houses of any of his 
 friends, that sound of ow, best but not perfectly in- 
 dicated by aou^ which is regarded as a peculiar trait 
 of Yankee speech. The first person among our ac- 
 quaintances from whom I heard it was a lady born 
 and bred in Philadelphia, of a family of the highest 
 social standing, and who was then the wife of a very 
 eminent prelate. I was not more than eight years 
 ")ld at the time, but I shall never forget the impres- 
 sion made upon me when this refined and elegant 
 person whined out something to my mother about 
 aour caou (our cow). My teachers, before I en- 
 tered college, were both Massachusetts Yankees, on«
 
 10 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 of them, I believe, from Northampton. My associa 
 tions have been chiefly with New England people, oi 
 those of New England stock. I have heard English 
 spoken by well-educated and well-bred Englishmen 
 n^ore or less all my life, but chiefly after I reached 
 full manhood. The only difference that I remarked 
 between their utterance and that of my own kinsfolk 
 and friends is set forth in " Words and their Uses." 
 
 In writing of phonetics it is natural to begin with 
 the letter a, vvbich has the first place in all the alpha- 
 bets. This, it would seem, is because a represents 
 the primitive utterance of man; b, which follows it, 
 representing the first check, or a modification of the 
 first check, interruption, or consonant by which the 
 mere vocal breathing is broken up into what we call 
 articulation. As to the other letters, they follow in 
 a somewliat promiscuous manner. 
 
 Walker has an elaborate " inquiry into the alpha- 
 betical pronunciation of the letter A ; " that is, 
 whether in repeating the alphabet we are to say Ai/e^ 
 B, C, Ah, B, C, or Atv, B, C. When Walker wrote, 
 seventy-five years ago, the Irish called a ah, the 
 Scotch, mve ; peculiarities of utterance which I be- 
 lieve they still in some measure retain. He decides 
 in favor of the English a^e, on grounds which it is not 
 worth our while to consider ; but there is little room 
 for doubt, if any, that the Irish pronunciation, in this 
 /espect as in so many others, represents the original 
 English sound. This sound ah has been gradually 
 losing ground in English for centuries. The change 
 is much to be regretted ; for with tlie vanishing sound 
 has gone much of the dignity, the; freedom, the clear- 
 ness, and the sweetness of our English speech. 
 
 Among the few adrantages wiiich European Ian
 
 THE VOWF.LS. 11 
 
 guages of modern and, as far as we can judge, of an- 
 cient days have over modern English is their larger 
 possession of this broad, full tone, which is the perfec- 
 tion, as it is the beginning, of simple vocal utterance. 
 It is the full diapason of the chest and vocal organs. 
 It is at the foundation of all good singing. No one 
 can sing in a style worthy to be much regarded who 
 cannot, and does not habitually in vocalization, open 
 the mouth wide enough to put the first and second 
 fingers, one above the other, between the teeth, and 
 say ah from the chest, and sustain that utterance 
 upon a succession of notes. The very general in- 
 ability of English-speaking pupils to do this, because 
 of their narrow, contracted vowel utterance, is one of 
 the great difficulties which good teachers of singing 
 liave to encounter in England and "America." 
 
 But although this sound has passed out of our 
 speech in so many words, I am surprised to learn from 
 Professor Whitney that the leading orthoepists now 
 require a flattened sound like the vowel sound of fat, 
 or one between the sounds of far and of fat, in the 
 following words : calm, calf, half, aunt, alas, pass, 
 basic, path, lath, laugh, staff, raft, and after. Without 
 giving particular authorities, I must be permitted to 
 say that this citation of all the leading orthoepists in 
 favor of the flattened sound is far too sweeping ; and 
 I have no hesitation in adding that among the best 
 speakers, both of English and of American birth, that 
 I have ever met these words all have the broad ah 
 8ound oi a in far and in father.^ In answer, chance, 
 blanch, pant, cant, clasp, last, which Professor Whit- 
 
 1 Tills chapter was first published in October, 1875. On my subsequent 
 risit to Enjjiand, mj' obsers-ation of the pronunciation of the best speaker! 
 there confirmeii me in tiie opinion expressed above. See also the remark; 
 ♦f Professor Newman upon this subject in Chapter IV.
 
 12 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Hey classes with the former, a somewhat flattened 
 Bound has of late prevailed. In blaspheme^ which he 
 also ranges with them, the best usage fluctuates be- 
 tween the ah sound and that of an. In plant the lat- 
 ter sound prevails ; and in gape which he says he 
 learned to pronounce gaJip (as I did), the change haa 
 gone further, and it now has the name sound of a and 
 rhjaiies with rajoe, the noun gap having of course 
 the flattened sound of a in rap. Notwithstanding 
 the soundness of Professor Whitney's remark as to 
 the ah sound, that " an r following it [a] in the same 
 syllable has been with us the most efficient means of 
 its preservation " (an observation previously made 
 by Walker in almost the same words), it is a surprise 
 to find him citing are among his illustrative examples. 
 Are is now indeed pronounced ahr ; but the r has 
 not preserved the ah sound ; for no fact in orthoepy 
 is more certain than that two hundred, and even one 
 hundred and fifty, years ago are was pronounced aiV, 
 and that George Withers in his manly verses wrote a 
 perfect rhyme : — 
 
 " Shall my cheeks grow wan with cart 
 'Cause another's rosy are f" 
 
 Proofs in support of this might be produced by the 
 hundred. The ah sound has not been preserved, by 
 the r ; rather in spite of it pronunciation has fluctu- 
 ated. 
 
 Remarking upon the short e sound, Professor Whit- 
 ney cites as examples of it let., felt., flesh, bread, said, 
 iays, jeopard, treachery, any, all of which have that 
 vowel sound, without a doubt, among the best speak- 
 ers. And there could hardly be better examples to 
 ihow that letters cannot justly be said to be "pro* 
 Uounced " thus or so. For here we have e, ea, ai,
 
 THE VOWELS. 13 
 
 w, and a Ul corresponding in written language to 
 the same sound in the spoken. It is words that are 
 pronounced, not letters. It is words as wholes that 
 change in sound. No sane man pronounces ea, at, 
 eo, and a as short e. 
 
 A confession now surprises us. The writer says, 
 " So far as I know, any and many are the only words 
 in which an a is allowed to be pronounced as short e ; 
 but until I overcame the habit by a conscious effort, 
 I always gave it the same sound in plague^ snake^ 
 naked; nor did I escape the pronunciation of catch 
 as hetcJi, — a deeply-rooted error, almost universal 
 among children in this part of the world." The last 
 error is common, not only among children, but among 
 men and women, in all parts of the English-speaking 
 world. It is the result of mere slovenliness, and of 
 that disposition before mentioned to avoid opening the 
 mouth, an act to the performance of which the Eng- 
 lish-speaking people seem to have developed a great 
 and unhappily an increasing disinclination. The a 
 in catch is moderately broad, like the a in answer 
 and in can; and consequently it is "skimped" by all 
 who are inclined to be slovenly. But that a person 
 having the early associations of Professor Whitney 
 should have caught such pronunciations as pleg^ sneky 
 and nekked, for plague, snake, and naked, is, as I have 
 said, surprising. For in these words the vowel sound 
 is the plain modern English a, which the most slug- 
 gish speaker has no occasion to make any " flatter " 
 or " narrower " than it is already. Pleg I have, 
 however, heard among such speakers ; but snek and 
 nekked are new English words to my ears. " Zieis' 
 ure,^^ he says, " I have always called leisure [that is 
 lezure'], as do, I believe, most Americans." Manj
 
 14 EVERY-DAY EXLLISH. 
 
 Americans may, I believe do, so pronounce it ; but 
 I was taught to give its ei tlie sound of the same 
 diphthong in freight and obeisance^ — that is, ai/e. 
 That this was its pronunciation on its introduction 
 into the language, and that it continued to be so pro- 
 nounced by the best English speakers until less than 
 thirty years ago, I am quite sure, although Walker 
 gives leezure, which of late has come to be its pronun- 
 ciation by a large proportion of the best speakers. 
 
 The short ^ Professor Whitney finds to be the most 
 common of English vowel sounds; and so it is if we 
 except that vowel sound which only we hear in some, 
 culture, other. And here we have another illustra- 
 tion of the truth that words are pronounced and 
 change their pronunciation without regard to the let- 
 ters with which they are written. For although this 
 " short i " sound is represented most generally by i, 
 it is found in the words abyss, busy, minute, women, 
 sieve, guilt, and build, which are cited as examples 
 by Professor Whitney himself. The theory of letter 
 pronunciation requires us to believe that people pro- 
 nounce y, u, i, 0, ie, and ui just alike, and with the 
 sound of i in pin. No one does so. We pronounce 
 the words, without regard to the signs with which 
 they are written. 
 
 Been, which Professor Whitney also cites as an 
 example of the short i sound, has not that sound 
 among speakers of good English, who give it the full 
 e sound, as in seen. He adds, " Been is often uttered 
 as ben in New England, as doubtless elsewhere, and 
 I am not sure that I did not have to unlearn that 
 pronunciation in early boyhood." Ben, which I have 
 heard only from the most slovenly and uneducated 
 ipeakers, is, I am inclined to think, confined to Ne\»
 
 THE VOWELS. 15 
 
 England, or to places into which it has been taken 
 by some New England people ; and bin is almost an 
 Americanism, although it is heard rarely among 
 some slovenly speakers of English birth and breed- 
 ing. From full e (ge) to short ^, as in pin, is the 
 easiest of all transitions, and should by those who 
 wish to speak the best English be watchfully guarded 
 against, particularly in this word. 
 
 Hence, if for no other reason, I would not for a mo- 
 ment imply that the pronunciation bin is an evidence 
 of want of culture or of inferior associations. Nor do 
 I in this instance, or in any other, set up my own 
 pronunciation as a standard for others. Far from it. 
 Indeed, I do not know that I have any standard my- 
 self. How to pronounce a word is the last thing of 
 which I should think. I am here only considering a 
 subject to which I have given much attention in a 
 general way for some years, and which appears to 
 have now for many readers an unusual degree of inter- 
 est. I propose no more than to offer some of the re- 
 sults of my studies and of my observation of others. 
 That observation, I repeat, in the case of Englishmen 
 as to whose culture and position there could be no 
 question, is that the best English pronunciation of 
 been makes it a perfect rhyme with seen. 
 
 The many protests which I received against this 
 opinion on its first publication make it proper that 
 I should refer to evidence upon the subject which it 
 would be hard to gainsay, and which is all the more 
 valuable because it is indirect. The noting of an ex- 
 ception proves a rule ; and what the rule is as to been 
 has ])een thus shown by more than one recent English 
 writer. For example, in " Hero Carthew," a novel 
 by Louisa Parr, those personages who are of the clasi
 
 16 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 of " gentry " say heen^ but those of an Inferior class 
 Bay bin. Thus an old sailor says : " ' Thank'ee, sir. 
 I ain't much of a hand at speechifying, through allays 
 having hin in the carpenter's crew; .... so the 
 cap'n can tell you, as has often spoke up for me be- 
 fore when the wind 's hin pretty stiff up there.' " 
 (Chap, xxvi.) This marking of bin as exceptional is 
 proof sufficient that according to the observation of 
 this English novelist the been of her people of higher 
 position and culture had not the sound of short ^, and 
 did not rhyme with sin. I have remarked the same 
 distinction in the works of other English writers ; but 
 this is sufficient for our present purpose. 
 
 At the same time it should be said that the pro- 
 nunciation bin would not necessarily be regarded as 
 an evidence of want of culture in the best English 
 society; but, if noticed at all, it might be looked 
 upon as an evidence of Americanism in speech, al- 
 though ben is more generally so regarded. The pro- 
 nunciation bin is of long standing. John Wallis, 
 mathematical professor at Oxford, protested against 
 it in his " Grammatica Linguge Anglicanse," 1653, 
 as contrary to the analogy of our language.^ It is 
 worthy of remark that in the novel which I have cited, 
 " Hero Carthew," the personages of inferior position 
 not only say 5m, but use expressions which are gen- 
 erally regarded as Americanisms of New England 
 origin. For example : " ' My dear life 1 ' exclaimed 
 the woman, dropping a succession of courtesies. 
 ' WelU I never did! ' " (Chap, ii.) " ' If so be now 
 I 'd a got anybody to give me a boost up, .... she 'd 
 take me right off the reeV " (Chap, xxvi.) " 'I 
 
 1 "Similiter autem his pro Aee's eodem errore, quo nonnunquam OM 
 ^ het», .... utrobique contra analogiam linguse ; aed asu defenditur.*
 
 THE VOWELS. 17 
 
 hope you find yourself pretty m%ddlin\ ma'am, and 
 that you left Sir Stephen,' " etc. (Chap, xxxviii.) 
 
 As to " American " usage, whether in the East, the 
 West, the North, or the Soutli, its weight in the de- 
 cision of a point of orthoepy is nothing ; it is not to 
 be regarded, for reasons which will appear hereafter. 
 The dictionaries of Webster and Worcester, which 
 have been trained upon me like two great guns, are 
 both very useful guides in pronunciation to those who 
 need a guide ; but I venture to say that they are not 
 infallible (if indeed infallibility is to be considered as 
 attainable on this subject), and also that they can- 
 not be accepted as authoritative, except where they 
 record the best English usage. Smart is deservedly 
 held in high esteem in England, and is the most 
 widely known of all English orthoepists ; but accord- 
 ing to my observation, the most trustworthy guide is 
 the Rev. P. H. Phelp, of Cambridge University, Eng- 
 land, who is responsible for the pronunciation given 
 in Stormonth's dictionary, to the great value of which 
 there is eminent British testimony. But if I should 
 find that either Smart or Phelp gave bin as the pi'oper 
 pronunciation of been, I could only say that his obser- 
 vation of the best English speech differed in this re- 
 spect from mine. I find, however, that Mr. Phelp 
 gives been with the sound of e as in mete ; which, I 
 repeat, is the pronunciation that I have heard from 
 all the well-bred and well-educated Englishmen that 
 I have met. 
 
 It has been supposed by some persons that the pro- 
 nunciation of been with the short i sound has the sup- 
 port of Elizabethan usage, because the word is found 
 in the irregular spelling of that and of preceding and 
 .subsequent times printed h-'n^ of which spelling there 
 s
 
 18 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 are eountless instances. In the first place, the spell* 
 ins: itself has no determining^ value. For in the same 
 book the word is often found spelled bin, ben, been, 
 nnd beene, two or even three varieties of its form ap- 
 pearing together on the same page.^ Moreover, thia 
 
 1 In the Paston Letters, altlioue;h they extend through such a long period 
 1422 to 1509), and are from such numerous and various iiands, I have re- 
 marked, as I find, only the spellings ben, bene, and been, never bin. Nor 
 does bin appear in A C- Mery Talys, the jest book referred to in Muck 
 Ado about Nothing, of which the earliest edition known is dated 1526. 
 Ben I find therein twenty-three times; but the pronunciation of the writer 
 is plainly shown by the form bene, which occurs twenty-four times. In 
 the Mirror for Magistrates, 1587, I find bin, bene, and beene. 
 " To groape me if allurde I would assent 
 To bin a partner in their curst entent." 
 
 (II. 291, V. 47.) 
 " When that he saw his nephews both to bene 
 Through tender years so yet unfit to rule." 
 
 {II. 385, V. 10.) 
 Sir Arthur Gorges, 1614, leaves us no doubt as to what his prouunciatiun 
 of the word was. 
 
 " The .small figures daily seene 
 Of God-heads, not so fearfull beene." 
 
 (Pharsalia, Lib. III., p. 102.) 
 " most accursed, fatal teene, 
 No Libicke slaughters then had beene." 
 
 (The same, Lib. VI., p. 229.) 
 Gorges also has bin ; but, as will be seen by the note on page 19, th« 
 word in, with which it rhymes, was pronounced een. 
 " That earst to him had faithful bin 
 And in this state he now was in." 
 
 (The same, Lib. VIIL, p. 318.) 
 It may be remarked that it was the habit of writers of that time to make 
 their rhyming words conform, if possible, in spelling as well as in so'.jnd. 
 In the first edition of the authorized translation of the Bible (1611) I have 
 remarked only the forms bene and beene. Milton, on the other hand, 1 
 believe always spells this word bin. 
 
 " With what besides, in Counsel or in Fight, 
 Hath bin achieved of merit." 
 
 (Paradise Lost, Book II., I. 20, cd. ]6«7.) 
 "Oh for that warning voice .... 
 
 that now 
 
 While time was, our first Parents had bin warned 
 The coming of their secret foe " 
 
 (Book IV., 11. 1-7. > ,
 
 THE VOWELS. 19 
 
 lupposition disregards tbo important fact that i was 
 then very commonly pronounced with the sound of 
 our modern English e. Indeed, ^ and e, and even ee,, 
 were used interchangeably in the spelling of words 
 which had the full English e sound. For example, 
 quire and queere (choir), frize and freeze (rough 
 cloth), sprite and spreet (spirit), brize and breeze 
 (the insect), rice and rees ; and we even have nine 
 and 7ieen, he and high (I'emark the pronunciation of 
 highlands, hielands'). To go further back, we have 
 in Chaucer's " Romaunt of the Rose : " — 
 
 " Full faire was Mirthe, full long and high : 
 A fairer man I never sigh." 
 
 Here sigh stands for see, and high was pronounced 
 hie or hee. And to come down to the days of the 
 Restoration, Etherege says in " Sir Fopling Flutter," 
 ed. 1676, that certain sins are " vices too gentile for a 
 shoomaker ; " and in " The Gentile Sinner, or Eng- 
 land's Brave Gentleman," by Clement Ellis, Fellow 
 of Queen's College Oxon, 1660, if the meaning of 
 the title were not plain enough, we should learn it 
 from various passages like this : " Whatever others 
 better bred or of a more gentile education may think 
 of him." (Page 45.) Indeed, I could at short notice 
 produce hundreds of examples to the same effect.^ 
 
 In Charles Butler's English Grammar, 1634, 1 find in the index bene and 
 Hn interchanged ; one about as often as the other. Surely it is unnecessary 
 to illustrate this point further. Nor would it have been done here even at 
 this length, were it not that in addition to what Professor Whitney has said 
 upon it. Professor Lounsbury, also of Yale College, has seiiously made 
 this old spelling bin a qtiasi justification of the pronunciation bin, and the 
 ground of an argument for spelling reform. See Scrlbner^s Magazinef 
 October, 1879. 
 ^ Here are a few of marked character ai^ significance: — 
 "There lives within the very flame of love 
 A kind of weeke [wick'j jr snr.fe that will abate it." 
 
 CHamlet, quarto of 1604, Act IV., Scene 7.)
 
 20 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 For this reason, therefore, if for no other, the frequent 
 appearance of 5m in our earlier literature would give 
 no support to the pronunciation at any time of been 
 with the short sound of i. 
 
 The vowel sound in meet^ fr^^i meat, been, field, we 
 call long e, and it now is so ; but it is the thin i of 
 Shakespeare's day and of Milton's. Professor Whit- 
 ney more than once mentions pique as an example of 
 this sound. It is so certainly ; but if it is brought 
 forward as an example of the English pronunciation 
 of i with the continental sound of that letter (our 
 
 " Strong Enobarbe 
 Is weaker than the Wine ; and mine own tongue 
 Spleets [splits] what it speakes." 
 
 (Antony and Cleopatra, fol. 1623, Act II., Scene 7.) 
 "Why should they such dominion seelce 
 As never j'et was heard the lihe f " 
 (Sir Arthur Gorges' Lucan's Pharsalia, 1614, Book II.) 
 And that this was no chance imperfect rhj-me is shown by its repetition. 
 " Or that the wooddy shades I seeke 
 Let him (there panting) do the like." 
 
 (The same, Book IX.) 
 " Lady Mary. Unless he be a gentleman, and Bonville 
 Is by his birth no less. 
 Audley. Such onl_v gentile are that can maintaia 
 Gentily.'''' 
 (Thos. Heywood, The Royal King and Loyal Subject, 1637, Act III., 
 Scene 1.) 
 
 Nor does Wallis (cited above) leave us without testimony as to the Ox- 
 ford pronunciation two centuries and a quarter ago of sin and in and other 
 words which now have the short obscure sound of i, — testimony which 
 deprives the mere spelling bin of any weight as evidence that the word 
 thus spelled had any other vowel sound than that of ee. 
 
 " Jie, i exile. Hunc sonum, quoties correptus est, Angli per t breve ex- 
 primunt; quum vero producitur scribunt ut plurimum per ee, non rare 
 tamen per ie, vel etiam per ea. Ut «'(, sedeo; seeH, id video ;^<, idoneus 
 feet, pedes; Jill, impleo; feel, tactu sentio; field, ager; still, semper quie- 
 tus; steel, clialybs; ill, malus; eel, anguilla; in, in; inne, hospitiura; sin 
 oeccatum ; seen, \\snm; friend, amicus; ^enii, cacodajmon ; near, prope 
 iear, charue; hear, audio," etc. 
 
 See also my Memorandums of English Pronunciation in the FlizcbethoM 
 Era, referred to on page 38.
 
 THE VOWELS. 21 
 
 long e), we must remember tluit pique is a French 
 word of comparatively late introduction into our lan- 
 guage, — so late that it still retains its French pro- 
 nunciation. Except shire, no really English word 
 occurs to me in which simple i has now the conti- 
 nental ee sound ; and sidre has it only in combination. 
 
 The words in which i has this sound, e. g., antique^ 
 pique, intrigue, fatigue, caprice, machine, mutine, ma- 
 rine, quarantine, are all lately introduced from the 
 French ; and of French words in which i used to have 
 this sound, profile, oblige, oblique, are now pronounced 
 with the English i by the best speakers. Canine and 
 rapine have the French sound generally ; but in this 
 respect they are in process of change to the English 
 sound of i. 
 
 An example of a French word now in the course of 
 transition is trait, which we in this country pronounce 
 like an English word, with the final t, to rhyme with 
 bait and ivait ; but in the best English society it is 
 still pronounced as a French word, tray, although it 
 has been in the language a hundred and fifty years. 
 In this instance I do not hesitate to say that I think 
 English usage very un-English. When a foreign word 
 has been transplanted into our speech and has taken 
 firm root there, it should be thoroughly Englished. 
 So, for instance, we should say indexes and memoran- 
 dums, not indices and memorajida. But trait with a 
 final t would sound very strange to a well-educated 
 Englishman, and would entirely deprive Dr. Doran's 
 book, " Table Traits, with Something on Them," of 
 the significant pun in its title. 
 
 One of the principal objects of Professor Whitney's 
 paper is to arrive at the elements of English pronun- 
 ciation, and at the proportions in which the various
 
 22 EVERV-DAY EN(;I.1STT. 
 
 Bounds of vowel and consonant are heard in English 
 speech. When, therefore, he says that " the most 
 frequent representatives of i [that is, long e = ee] in 
 English, besides those instanced above, are ze, as in 
 yields or ei after c, as in receive, conceit, or ey final, as 
 in A^ey," he leaves, I think, an erroneous impression 
 on the mind of his reader. He seems to pass by the 
 multitude of words in which ea has the sound in ques- 
 tion. True, he mentions meat, but merely as an ex- 
 ample of the vowel sound in question. This sound is 
 really one of the most common in our speech, and it 
 is chiefly so because of those words which are written 
 with ea, to which those in ei, or even those in ee, are 
 as nothing. It would also have been at least inter- 
 esting and instructive to many of his readers if he 
 had brought the fact to their attention that all these 
 words in ei, and all or nearly all those in ea, were 
 not long ago pronounced with the English name 
 Bound of a which is still heard in freiglit and in great. 
 Words spelled with ei, like receive and conceit, had 
 that sound, as for example in Butler's couplet, — 
 
 " Some have been wounded with conceit, 
 And died of mere opinion straight; " 
 
 in which there is no doubt that the rhyme was to con- 
 temporary English ears perfect. And even in people 
 and cegis, which he cites as sporadic cases of the ee 
 lound, we may be sure as to the first that tlie pres- 
 k«nt Irish pronunciation, pa?/p?e, is the old English one 
 wliich prevailed in the Elizabethan era and later, al- 
 though as to a^gis we must be content with knowing 
 that it ought to have the aye sound, although it has 
 not. Shire, he says, has the ee sound only in " Amer 
 ioA." On the contrary, it always has that sound ic 
 England in such words as Devonshire, AVarwickshiro
 
 THK VOWELS. 23 
 
 |nst as it has here. As a word by itself, it is pro- 
 nounced to rhyme with fi)'e; and that sound I believe 
 it has here when it is used. But we usually say 
 county. Professor Whitney's use of "shire town" 
 Lmpressed me at the first blush as rather singular.
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE VOWELS (CONTINUED). 
 
 Although I intended no discussion of Professoi 
 Whitney's phonetical principles, I cannot readily ac- 
 cept his theory of the development of the " broad a " 
 or au sound ; that which we have in all and in awe. 
 This he regards as the product of " the next degree 
 of labial closure " after that of the " short o " sound 
 which we have in not and in what. According to 
 him, the order of progressive closeness is shown in 
 the vowel sounds of what., ivar., hole, full, and fool. 
 This seems to be correct except in regard to the first 
 two sounds, — those of what and war. He regards 
 the latter as "a step further from the neutral a 
 (^far^ " than the former is. This it may be ; but 
 that it is the product of an increased labial closure 
 does not seem so clear. It is the product of a differ- 
 ent form of the organs, and is narrower than the a 
 in far and father ; but if there is a difference in 
 oreadth between it and the vowel sound of ivhat, it 
 seems to me that the war sound is broader than the 
 tvhat sound. Let the vowel sound of not and whai 
 be uttered, and the organs kept in the position re- 
 quix-ed for its utterance, and then let the vowel sound 
 of war and all be uttered, and it will be found that 
 the lips open, instead of contracting; the mouth be- 
 comes less narrow, more rounded ; the jaw dropa 
 •lightly, and the root of the tongue does the same.
 
 THE VOWELS. 25 
 
 riie sound is quite as broad as that of not and whaU 
 and it is deeper and more guttural, — at least, I find 
 this the case in my own utterance, and I have ob- 
 served that it is so in that of others. 
 
 But the position of the vocal organs in action seems 
 to me, even after carefully examining Mr. Bell's 
 "Visible Speech," which I did when it first appeared, 
 having previously examined Dean Wilkins's like at- 
 tempt to make speech visible,^ a very difficult mat- 
 ter to determine with any great degree of exactness 
 for all persons. There is, of course, a general like* 
 ness in the position of the organs for the formation of 
 any given sound ; but it seems to me to vary some- 
 what in particular instances. Moreover, I am, and 
 we here are, concerned mainly with the sound pro- 
 duced rather than with the manner of producing it. 
 
 The letters in the words which have this deep, 
 broad "aw sound " are various: a, as in ivar^ ball, 
 walk ; 0, as in for, cloth, song ; aw, as in daub, caught ; 
 aw, as in law, dawn ; on, as in bought, thought ; and 
 oa, as in broad. These vowel-letters and combina- 
 tions of vowel- letters we are asked by the spelling re- 
 formers to believe that we pronounce alike and with 
 a certain sound of our English a. This is true, with 
 two exceptions. We do not pronounce a or o or w, 
 singly or in combination, au; and au is no sound of 
 English a. It is no more so than it is a sound of the 
 Italian e. We give those words that sound without 
 any regard to the letters used in writing them ; and 
 if ten years hence it should become the fashion 
 among certain elegant people to call law lay, as it 
 tvas the fashion among such people not very long aga 
 to call it lah, we should all rush headlong into the 
 1 Mentioned hereafter .n Chapter X.
 
 26 EVERY -DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 same pronunciation, although we should still writfc 
 the word laiv. 
 
 A case in point is the word vase. Fifty years ago, 
 and even later, the most common pronunciation of 
 that word in " the best society " was vaivse. It is 
 now called vahse or vayse ; the pronunciation of it to 
 rhyme with case and race., although frequently heard, 
 is not admitted in polite society. But its aw sound 
 — an affected one — although once a sort of shibbo- 
 leth of that society, is now no longer heard. Scholars 
 and students of art now call it vahse ; but good usage, 
 if not the best, among the unlearned seems to be in- 
 clining to vayse. In extraordinary, or, as Mr. Yel- 
 lowplush wrote it, " igstraivnry^'' we cannot rightly 
 be said to .pronounce aor as aior. The effort required 
 for the separation of a from o — extra-ordinary — has 
 merely caused the dropping of the first vowel, and 
 we say extr'' ordinary. 
 
 In regard to this broad a sound. Professor Whit- 
 ney surprises me by remarking that as to many 
 words which have the sound, " it would be easy by 
 drawling and distorting the utterance even a very 
 little to make some of them seem ungraceful anr* 
 vulgar, and I would say the same of Grod and dog., and 
 their like, in which many persons certainly give the 
 short sound of woi." Unless I misunderstand this, 
 it implies that the received pronunciation of Grod and 
 dog is to give the vowels the broad aw sound, and to 
 say Gawd and dawg. I can hardly believe that Pro- 
 fessor Whitney calls a dog a daivg.^ more than I can 
 believe he calls it a dorg. It is true that many per- 
 sons do so pronounce the word, and so many smal' 
 persons solicit us in the afternoon to buy a Neiv-eese 
 or a Puw-eest meaning News and Post. The propei
 
 THE VOWELS, 27 
 
 pronunciation of dog makes it rhyme with log, or 
 (as some persons do pronounce the latter latvg'), it 
 were better to say, with hog, which, except in the 
 most relaxed Southern speech, I never heard called 
 hawg. 
 
 Pi-ofessor Whitney tells us that " in the regular 
 and authorized pronunciation of English there is no 
 such thing in accented syllables as a true short o," an 
 iissertion which I am not inclined or ready to dispute. 
 But to this succeeds a passage which, if I understand 
 the writei', is so surprising that I give it in full : — 
 
 "■ The sound, however, is a well-recognized element of 
 New England utterance in a very small number of words, — 
 whether and how far outside of New England and its colo- 
 nies, and whether at all on the other side of the ocean, I 
 cannot say. By it none is as perfectly distinguished from 
 known as is full iromfool and sin from seen ; and in these 
 two words (although none is often pronounced like nun, 
 even in New England) the sound most frequently appears. 
 The list of words in which it is given varies, I think, not a 
 little in different individuals ; in my own practice it is nearly 
 or quite restricted to none, whole, home, stone, smoke, folki,, 
 coat, toad, throat ; I have heard most often from others, in 
 addition, hone and boat." 
 
 If I do not misapprehend this passage, the writer 
 means to say that among the best New England 
 Bpeakers the nine words mentioned, from none to 
 throat, have the same vowel sound, and that that 
 Bound is not long o or simple o in any one of them. 
 Of course we cannot suppose for a moment that Pro- 
 fessor Whitney means that he and his friends say 
 hull, hum, stun, and the like. This we might be 
 enre of, even if he had not strangely told us by way 
 of warning and exception that " none is often pio
 
 28 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 nounced like nun, even in New England" ! But none 
 the less it is clear that he declares that among the 
 best New England speakers home, stone, folks, eoat^ 
 dank, toad, and throat have not the long simple o 
 Bound. I can only say that among such New Eng- 
 land people as Professor Whitney seems to have 
 mingled with from his boyhood I never heard these 
 seven words uttered with any other sound than that 
 of long 0, which is also that given to them by the best 
 English speakers. They have the long o of note and 
 moat, which Professor Whitney tells us differs from 
 the sound just treated in being a longer and a some- 
 what closer utterance. This may possibly be true as 
 to whole, but it is so in none of the others; and even 
 as to that I have observed that the best English 
 speakers, and according to my observation the best in 
 "America," are rather particular to avoid any leaning 
 toward hull by a somewhat marked insistence upon 
 the 0, making not the slightest difference between 
 whole and hole. Of this, the following passage in 
 Carlyle's Edinburgh inaugural address happens to be 
 plain proof : " We have in Scotch, too, ' hole ' and its 
 derivatives ; and I suppose our English word ' whole ' 
 (with a vf), all of one piece, without any hole in it, 
 is the same word." As to none, not only is it often 
 pronounced like nun in New England (that being its 
 pronunciation by the best English speakers), but, un- 
 less I am in error, the number of educated New Eng- 
 landers who give it any other sound, or (remember- 
 ing the speech of people elderly in my youth, I do 
 not hesitate to say) who for fifty years and more have 
 given it any other sound, is very small indeed ; sc 
 Bmall that tliey have escaped my observation entirely, 
 lilthough I have been led to believe that my sensitive
 
 THE VOWELS. 29 
 
 Hess to sounds is somewhat more than usually diili- 
 Date. 
 
 As to the conversion of long o into short w, the ob- 
 scure vowel sound in none and nnn^ very remarkable 
 testimony has come to me from a Boston correspond- 
 ent, — a Yankee of Connecticut birth, — who writes 
 about the pronunciation of words like stone. He 
 Bays, " The sound commonly given them is neither o 
 nor w, but nearly o-w, pronounced very quickly and 
 run together," which I do not quite apprehend or 
 understand ; and he adds, " As to the pronunciation 
 stun^ etc., I have never heard it ; not even from a hill 
 farmer or a rural school-boy." This, coming, as it 
 does, from an intelligent and observant man, who has 
 evidently given this subject no little attention, will 
 astonish many others besides myself ; for it seems to 
 me that no one could have been at any time in rural 
 New England without hearing the pronunciation stun 
 once for every stone he saw in the fences. All this, 
 however, illustrates the difficulty which I have here- 
 tofore pointed out as inherent in this subject, — that 
 it is almost impossible for one person to express to 
 another by signs the sound of any word. Only the 
 voice is capable of that ; for the moment a sign is 
 used the question arises. What is the value of that 
 sign ? The sounds of words are the most delicate, 
 fleeting, and inapprehensible things in nature ; far 
 more so than the tones of music, whether made by 
 the human voice or by instruments. Moreover, the 
 question arises as to the capability to apprehend and 
 distinguish sounds on the part of the person whose 
 Bvidence is given. 
 
 As to the " true short w," I find in Professor Whib 
 oey's dissertation what appear to me to be some her
 
 80 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 esies, but they are pei'baps the result of a lack of 
 fine distinction of sounds, 'which causes the writer to 
 misrepresent somewhat his own utterance. He tells 
 us that this " short u " sound is heard in full, hosom, 
 could, and good, and that " it stands related to its 
 corresponding long in fool, ride, move, etc., precisely 
 as the i of sin to that of seen^ But the vowel sound 
 of the first syllable of bosom in the received pronun- 
 ciation of the best speakers is surely not the vowel 
 sound either of fidl or of good and could. It is the 
 full long u or oo sound, as if the word were written 
 boosom. If full were pronounced with the vowel 
 sound of the first syllable of bosom, it would rhyme 
 perfectly with fool. Nor can I accept the pronunci- 
 ation of does dooz by souie New England people — 
 among whom Professor Whitney says be is " natu- 
 rally" — as containing the vowel sound of foot, to 
 which he likens it. That sound of does is merely 
 that of do with the added s of inflection, and do has 
 the pure long u or oo sound ; while that of foot is 
 quite another, shorter and " closer." 
 
 Of the few words that have the short u sound Pro- 
 fessor Whitney may be quite right in saying that a 
 part of them are recent corruptions from the long 
 u sound ; but he impairs the value of his remark 
 by adding, " like that which, as above noticed, has 
 converted whole and home into tvhole and home ;" for 
 whole and home have the pure long o sound. But he 
 is right in saying that the change appears to be still 
 going on, and that ^'■rood, roof, and root are words in 
 which one often hears the short instead of the long 
 sound ; and root especially is very widely and com- 
 monly pronounced like foot.'" I have even heard a 
 very highly educated person, whose English is gen-
 
 THE VOWELS. 31 
 
 erally irreproachable, call a spoon a spwi. This is the 
 result of the English tendency to vowel compression 
 before remarked upon. As to rood, roof, and root, 
 however, they at least cannot be reckoned among the 
 " recent " corruptions from long u ; nor shall I assume 
 that Professor Whitney's remark necessarily implies 
 that they are so. These words all formerly had the 
 pure open o sound, and were written rode, fofe, and 
 rote. Readers of Chaucer will remember the first 
 lines of the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales: " — 
 
 "Whan that Aprille with his schoures swoH 
 The drought of Marche hath perced to the rote." 
 
 In some — most of the best — manuscripts of the 
 "Tales" we find soote and roote, and this is the 
 reading preferred by Morris ; but the doubling of the 
 was only an early device to attain conformity be- 
 tween the sign and the sound, which proved vain, as 
 it ever must, I think. All the words so spelled have 
 come to that pure sound of u (the continental, not 
 the English u^ of which in fact the distinctive sign 
 in English is now oo. Another instance this, and a 
 very marked one, of entire irrelation between letters 
 and pronunciation ; for what phonetic incongruity 
 could be more manifest at a glance than, for exam- 
 ple, the indication of the sound heard in the first syl- 
 lable of riiral by the union of two o's ? 
 
 In his discussion of the pure long u sound (as in 
 rule, food, etc.), Professor Whitney remarks that the 
 pronunciation of wound, a bodily inniry, "is a bone 
 of contention." There is variation in usage as to this 
 word ; but a large majority of the best speakers pro- 
 nounce it with the long u or oo sound, — woond. 
 
 have heard of one of the minority who, being re- 
 monstrated with by a lady for Ins pronunciation, and
 
 32 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 asked, " Why don't you call that yord woond ? " re« 
 plied, " Madam, I have never foond sufficient gvoond 
 that it should have that soond." If he had been a 
 Scotchman, he would have foond it. Professor Whit- 
 ney thinks, and with reason, that the long u pro- 
 nunciation of this word should be encouraged, to 
 establish a distinction between it and wound from 
 wind. 
 
 And here I will remark upon a very common and 
 very ridiculous mistake as to this word. We find in 
 novels and sketches, and even in poetry, such phrases 
 as "a horn was wound," "he wound his horn," and 
 in plays such stage directions as " a horn wound in 
 the distance," and many people use the same or a like 
 phrase in their ordinary talk. An example is fur- 
 nished by the first stanza of Chatterton's " Death of 
 Sir Charles Bawdin," in the spurious Rowley Poems : 
 
 " The feathered songster chaunticleer 
 Haa wounde his bugle home, 
 And tolde the earlie villager 
 The coins nge of the inorne." 
 
 A notion seems to prevail that the phrase " winding 
 a horn " is an expression of the undulating, melodic 
 effect of a horn, and particularly of that effect when 
 it is " wound in the distance." But the winding of 
 a horn is the giving it wind ; and in the line of the 
 old song, " The huntsman is winding, is winding, is 
 winding his horn," the words do not mean, as most 
 people seem to think, that the huntsman is producing 
 a lovely and " romantic " sound, but merely that he 
 .s applying his lips to the mouth-piece, puffing out 
 his cheeks, and blowing wind into the instrument 
 Thus in Chapman's play, ' The Widow's Tears, 
 A.ct IV., Scene 2, we have —
 
 THE VOWELS. 33 
 
 — "you lament 
 As did the Satyre once tliat ran affrighted 
 From Uie homes sound tliat he himselfe had winded.^' 
 
 Chatterton's blundering use of wound for winded was 
 one of the many plain proofs of his forgery. ^ A ball 
 of thread, a watch, is wound ; a horn is winded, that 
 is, given wind ; the huntsman is wind-ing, not wlne- 
 ding, his horn, for it is as absurd to say that a man 
 wound a horn as to say that he blew up, instead of 
 wound up, a clock that had run down. 
 
 Every person who has given even a little attention 
 to phonetics must know that the English w is a diph- 
 thong, formed by the union of the English e with 
 the pure, or oo, sound of u. Thus the sound of duke^ 
 pure, and like words is de-ook, pe-oor, etc. ; the e be- 
 ing the long e, but touched very briefly, very lightly. 
 This e sound being that of i in the classical and con- 
 tinental languages, the introduction of it before an- 
 other letter is called the iotizing of that letter ; from 
 iota, the Greek name of ^. How long the English u 
 has been iotized in certain combinations seems to me 
 very difficult to determine. I am inclined to believe 
 that the introduction of the e (or i) sound is compar- 
 atively recent. The pure sound of u — that which is 
 common to all languages — occurs in English words 
 which are spelled with u, ou, o, and oo; for example, 
 rule, uncouth, ivound, do, fool. Professor Whitney 
 remarks that words of the o class which have this 
 Bound have evidently changed their o sound for a u 
 in comparatively recent times. This may be ac- 
 cepted as generally true ; the " watoe him," which 
 we sometimes, although very rarely, hear from un- 
 
 l Another appears in this stanza : the use, in the second line, of han (aq 
 tid contracted plural form of have) with a lingular nominative. 
 3
 
 34 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 educated persons, beiiig doubtless a relic of the old 
 pronunciation of to. Nevertheless it is to be remarked 
 that a pure w (or oo) sound in some words written 
 with is of considerable antiquity. In Shakespeare's 
 time Rome was pronounced room (a point as to which 
 in my edition of the poet's works I expressed some 
 doubt) ; and gold was pronounced goold by many 
 educated persons even in the last generation. Walker 
 gives both gold and goold^ and says, " It is much to 
 be regretted that the second sound of this word is 
 grown much more frequent than the first." I am 
 inclined to think that it had not become more com- 
 mon, but that, on the contrary, it was in Walkers 
 time slowly yielding, and has now yielded, to the pure 
 sound of 0. If this be the case, it merely furnishes 
 another example of the fact that we pronounce words, 
 not letters. 
 
 There is, however, very little difficulty or disagree- 
 ment as to the pronunciation of words of the o class 
 which have the pure u or oo sound. It is in regard to 
 the English or iotized u that there is uncertainty and 
 disagreement, — a disagreement which is, or was, a 
 shibboleth of cultivated speech. The Turveydrops 
 of language would turn with scorn from a man who 
 pronounced due or deiv with the pure u sound, as do 
 or too. And according to my observation, those words, 
 and some others, as duty^ neiv, stew, etc., are pro- 
 nounced by the best speakers invariably with the io- 
 tized u. With some people a preceding d is soft- 
 ened by the iotized u into j ; so that I heard one of 
 these persons, who had prejudice against the Hebrew 
 race, object with savage wit to residence at Bath on 
 Long Island, that he found the p^ace would not suit 
 him, because of the depressing dampness, — the morr> 
 ing and the evening Jews.
 
 THE VOWELS. 35 
 
 The introduction of the e (or %) before u is, how- 
 ever, difficult after r, s, or I. Jl, indeed, seems to be 
 quite destructive of the English u, which after that 
 consonant is always pronounced, oo. The effect of the 
 English u in rude or rule, for instance, is as ridiculous 
 as its utterance is difficult. And I am surprised at 
 seeing that Professor Whitney, who of course recog- 
 nizes this difficulty and the consequent law of ortho- 
 epy, includes fruit, brew, and rheum among his ex- 
 amples of words having the long u sound " more or 
 less mixed with a preceding i or ^ sound ; " his othex 
 examples being duty, pure, due, feud, few, ?a\d steiv. 
 According to my observation, the best usage requires 
 absolutely the iotized u (^e-oo) in the last six words ; 
 but as absolutely the pure u, or oo, sound in fruit, 
 rheum, and brew. Well-bred people do not laugh at 
 each other's speech ; but I think that if any vagary 
 of pronunciation would provoke among such people 
 an internal smile which might become visible, it would 
 be the pronunciation of fruit and brew asfre-oot and 
 bre-oo. This I have never heard ; ^ but I have heard 
 from a few persons of some culture, but more affecta- 
 tion, a like pronunciation of column — colyume. Pro- 
 fessor Whitney seems, however, to have detected an 
 intermediate sound between the pure u or oo and the 
 iotized u (e-oo or you~) ; for he says, in discrimination, 
 " In my usage, and in that of those who pronounce 
 with me, there is no intermediate sound or compro- 
 mise whatever between a pure u, the vowel sound of 
 food and move, and an absolute yu, in which the y 
 element is as distinctly uttered as it would be if it 
 were written. The general rule with us, as with the 
 "est, is that the y sound is prefixed; and the excep 
 1 The Yankee u is not an iotized « See subsequent remarks upon it
 
 S6 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 tional cases, in which the y is omitted and the u left 
 pure, are those in which the u is so preceded that the 
 insertion of the semi-vowel between it and its prede* 
 cessor is phonetically difficult." To this rule there 
 seems to me to be neither objection nor exception. 
 Nor have I ever remarked, and I admit that, possibly 
 fi'om lack of sufficient delicacy of ear or of speech, I 
 cannot conceive, an intermediate sound between the 
 pure and the iotized u. An attempt to introduce it 
 would, in my opinion, be an affectation that would 
 result in laughable disaster. 
 
 This iotized m, which, as I have already remarked, 
 is in my opinion of comparatively late introduction, 
 I believe to have taken the place of the genuine old 
 English XI ; and the sound of that letter I believe 
 to have been the Yankee u as heard in view^ in irue^ 
 in pure^ and in fruit. This sound has been entirely 
 misapprehended and absurdly caricatured. The stage 
 Yankee, even in America, uttei-s instead of it a sound 
 which is quite as unlike it as either the pure u (or oo) 
 or the iotized u (or you) is, — a snarling, nasal t/gaow. 
 But the real Yankee m is a simple sound, pure and 
 clean of all admixture, and jjarticularly so with regard 
 to any nasality. It is very difficult of utterance by 
 those who have not flexible organs of speech, and whc 
 have not caught it among those by whom it is used 
 unconsciously. It would have been heard in perfect 
 tion from many a well-educated Yankee of two gen- 
 erations past in his reading of Johnson's co'iplet : — 
 
 " Let observation with extensive view 
 Survey manliind from China to Peru." 
 
 He would have given the same u sound in Peru and 
 In view ; but he would not have said Pe-reoo in the 
 one case, nor voo in the other, as some people S'^,ona it
 
 THE VOWELS. 37 
 
 think that he would have said. His vowel would have 
 had no trace of e (or i), and yet it would not have 
 been the pure or continental u. To express it by 
 signs of any certain value at present is quite impossi- 
 ble ; and I am therefore altogether unable to convey 
 to my readers in type any suggestion of its sound, or 
 to describe it, except by saying that it was, or rather 
 is, something between the French u and the pure oo, 
 and that so far from being a sneaking, nasal sound it 
 is remarkably free, open, and firm.^ But thousands 
 of my readers must have heard it, and there are tens 
 of thousands of people in New England at this day 
 by whom it is uttered without any consciousness thai 
 they have any peculiarity of speech. I know a gen- 
 tleman of unusual intelligence, culture, and refinement 
 in New York, whose u is invariably this Yankee u in 
 perfection. This u sound I believe to have passed 
 into the modem English iotized u since the Eliza- 
 bethan period ; at which time, I believe, u had but 
 two sounds, this (now Yankee) one and the pure oo 
 Bound. The obscure, nondescript sound which is now 
 heard in mud, curly, ugly-, young, was then, I believe, 
 unknown ; words of that class having been pronounced 
 at that time with the pure u sound, mood, coorl, oogly^ 
 
 1 Three years and more after the first publication of this passage in the 
 Galaxy, I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Alexander Ellis upon the 
 Bubject of pronunciation, or rather of listening as he talked. I brought 
 this Yankee u to his attention. He was very much interested in it. The 
 sound, he said, was quite a new one to him. He made me repeat it again 
 and again in various words, seeking to get the sound pure and simple, 
 without the effect of a preceding consonant in the word itself, or at the end 
 of the word immediately before it. This is extremelj' difficult ; but at last 
 I thought of 
 
 " The ewe and lamb together play." 
 
 Ewe is the only word in the language in which this u sound is heard un- 
 modified by a consonant, and this line is the only one containing it that I 
 tan remember in which the p-eceding word does not end with a consonant.
 
 88 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 yoong. (See my " Memorandums of English Pronunx 
 elation in the EHzabethan Era," published in vol. xii. 
 of my edition of Shakespeare, 1862, and reprinted in 
 Ellis's " Early English Pronunciation," vol. ii., Lon- 
 don, 1869.)
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONSONANTS : THE BONES OF SPEECH. 
 
 Our examination of the sounds and the letters o£ 
 the English Linguage — an examination which does 
 not profess to be either "scientific" or "exhaustive" 
 — having carried us through the vowels to the Old 
 English u and the New England u, only the conso- 
 nants remain to engage our attention in this part of 
 our subject. The nature of these elements of speech 
 (most of which can hardly be called sounds, as we 
 shall see), and the superficial purpose of our studies, 
 will make this part of our task comparatively short. 
 In using the word superficial, however, I imply its 
 real and not necessarily its metaphorical meaning. 
 For what we now concern ourselves about is the ef- 
 fect of the sounds of letters upon the pronunciation 
 of words, rather than the manner in which those 
 sounds are formed by the vocal organs. I pass by 
 those physiological and even psychological relations 
 and conditions which occupy so much of the attention 
 of Professor Whitney, Mr. Bell, and others who make 
 phonology a special study. And it is to be remarked 
 that the science of phonology and the art of orthoepy 
 (if the right utterance of our mother tongue be prop- 
 erly an art, which I more than doubt) are related 
 only because they are both concerned with spoken 
 language. Orthoepy is entirely independent of plio- 
 aology, and phonology finds in orthoepy only the ma-
 
 to EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 terials upon which it works, which indeed it finds no 
 less in cacoepy. 
 
 Consonants are the bones of speech. By means of 
 consonants we articulate our words ; that is, give them 
 joints. We sometimes find orthoepists and phonol* 
 ogists speaking of the articulation of vowels, an ex- 
 pression which is not correct. We utter vowels, we 
 articulate with consonants. If we utter a single vowel 
 sound and interrupt it by a consonant, we get an ar- 
 ticulation. Thus if in uttering the sound ah we mo- 
 mentarily interrupt it by p^ we get an articulation, 
 and have apa. If in addition to this interruption 
 we intercept the vow^el sound before its emission by 
 p, we h'Aye papa. It is to be remarked that we utter 
 no sound but that of ah. All else that we do is to 
 prevent and to interrupt that sound by bringing the 
 lips firmly together and opening them again. We ar- 
 ticulate and make our two-syllable word by that solu- 
 tion of vowel continuity. 
 
 There is a story of a dialogue between two Low- 
 land Scotchmen, a farmer and a tradesman, which il- 
 lustrates our subject. The farmer takes up a fabric, 
 and these questions and answers follow : — 
 
 «Oo?" 
 
 « Ay, 00." 
 
 "Ah 00?" 
 
 " Ay, ah oo." 
 
 " Ah ae oo ? " 
 
 " Ay, ah ae oo." 
 
 That is, " Wool ? " « Yes, wool." « All wool ? ' 
 " Yes, all wool." " All one wool ? " » Yes, all one 
 wool." Those men had boned their words just as 
 thoroughl;y as a cook ever boned a turkey to be 
 Berved up in a soft, oval, and limbless shape upon a
 
 CONSONANTS. 41 
 
 supper table. But in the strict sense of the word 
 this did not affect their articulation, because the 
 words which they used were all monosyllables, and so 
 had no joints. But the form and character of their 
 words were seriously affected. For a consonant com- 
 ing at the end or at the beginning, or at both the 
 end and the beginning, of a monosyllable gives it 
 strength and also clearness of outline. 
 
 Consonants thus not only give speech its articula- 
 tions or joints, but they help words to stand and have 
 form, just as the skeleton keeps the animal from fall- 
 ing into a shapeless mass of flesh. Therefore con- 
 sonants are the bones of speech ; and as the bones 
 of animals have no active sti-ength in themselves, 
 but furnish the supports and the levers to which 
 the organs of action, the muscles, are attached, so 
 true consonants have no power of utterance in them- 
 selves, but merely serve as assistants or as modifiers 
 of vowel utterance. Excepting exclamations, such as 
 aA, cA, and the Greek ai, which can hardly be called 
 words, there are very few words entirely without con- 
 sonants. The French eau, strangely pronounced oA, 
 is such a word ; but it became so by the suppression, 
 through the process of phonetic decay, of a very pro- 
 nounced consonant, the k in the Latin aqua, from 
 which it came by these stages: aqua — aqva — ava — 
 eve — eave — eaue — eau. Thus, great as the changes 
 were through which aqua passed, it took a thousand 
 years of phonetic decay to deprive it entirely of all 
 consonantal sound ; for it was not until the fourteenth 
 century that it passed from eave into eaue.^ It is in- 
 teresting to remark that there does not remain in this 
 word, the real, the spoken word^ one trace of its origi- 
 
 ^ See Brachet's Dictionnaire Etymologique de .a Langue Frangaise.
 
 42 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 nal sound, either vowel or consonant. The wordS; 
 that is, the vowel sounds, eau (o) and aqua have noth- 
 ing whatever in common. Their connection, like that 
 of many a human ancestor and descendant, is imper- 
 ceptible and purely historical. 
 
 The number of vowel words, not only in any one 
 language, but in all languages that have a literature, 
 taken together, is very small. Expect almost as soon 
 to see a vertebrate animal with a gristle skeleton, or 
 none at all,^ as a real word without a consonant. In 
 English we have only two that I now i-eraember — 
 y ou and /; or, if we are to regard yew and eive, eye 
 said aye^ as being phonologically other words, six. 
 There may be others, but I am not able now to recol- 
 lect them. The Romance languages, whose tenden- 
 cies to vowel utterance are much stronger than those 
 of the Teutonic languages, have more of such words; 
 but even they have very few of them, and generally 
 get them hy the process of phonetic decay. In the 
 only great French epic poem, the " Chanson de Ro- 
 land," which, however, is in such old French that it 
 is almost as easily read by an uneducated German or 
 Englishman as by a Frenchman, unless he is a scholar, 
 the combination Aoi appears at the close of many of 
 the stanzas. Its significance thus far is undetermined 
 by any consent of critics. It is not even certain that 
 t is a word. I cannot but think that it is an ex- 
 clamation of sorrow, a wail over the bloody defeat in 
 Roncesvalles. If it be a word, being a trisyllable, 
 rt is noteworthy to us at present as the longest word 
 known, I believe, without a consonant in au}^ modern 
 Indo-European language. 
 
 The consonant is the distinguishing element of hu 
 1 Not quoted from Sir Boyle Roche.
 
 CONSONANTS. 43 
 
 man speech. Man has been deBned in various ways, 
 according to various attributes, functions, and habits. 
 He might well be called the consonant-using animal. 
 He alone of all animals uses consonants. It is the 
 consonant which makes the chief difference between 
 the cries of beasts and the speech of man. This dis- 
 tinguishing difference we recognize when we say that 
 their cries are inarticulate. And so, when a man 
 "makes a beast of himself" with strong drink, one 
 of the first and most unmistakable signs of his condi- 
 tion is that his speech becomes inarticulate. 
 
 Attempting to express the cries of animals, we 
 say, for example, that a sheep cries haa. But it is 
 not so. That is only the best that we can do to 
 express the sound of bleating. Close attention will 
 enable any person with a delicate ear to perceive 
 that the sheep utters only a compressed, attenuated, 
 and vibrating ah, without any true consonantal sound ; 
 the seeming consonantal sound produced, however, 
 being much more like m than like h. There is really, 
 however, neither m nor h ; only a sound which care- 
 lessly heard may be loosely expressed by ba-a-a or 
 by ma-a-a. Nor does a cow produce a sound much 
 like moo. Her lowing has some little semblance to 
 the vowel sound of moo ; but there is in it no conso' 
 jaantal sound whatever. What is represented by the 
 '«. in moo is a kind of gulp. A beast possibly may, 
 L.ut no beast habitually does, produce even the nasal 
 semi-vowel m. 
 
 In brief, the cries of all beasts are vowel cries. 
 The mouth is opened before the sound is prepared, 
 B,nd it comes straight from the throat, without any 
 modification — that is, intentional or significant modi' 
 fication — by tongue or lips. A beast cannot com-
 
 44 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 press its lips closely enough to make even the sounds 
 haa, or maa, or woo, which otherwise might be made 
 by it involuntarily ; and as to an intentional use of the 
 tongue to modify its vocal utterance, that of course 
 is out of the question. The consonant theiefore re- 
 mains as a distinguishing characteristic of man. 
 
 This fact seems to have a very important bearing 
 upon the much-vexed question of the origin of lan- 
 guage, — a question which has provoked so much very 
 unsatisfactory discussion, combined with such un- 
 pleasant exhibitions of temper, that the Soci^td de 
 Linguistique, lately established in Paris, has made 
 it one of its statute laws that no paper upon the 
 origin of language shall be received by that associa- 
 tion. Where there is such conflict of opinions among 
 great philologists, and where hope of a tenable theory 
 has, by some of the most eminent, been openly aban- 
 doned, it would be more than presumption in me to 
 put forth a theory and ask for its acceptance. But 
 I have one (if so simple a thing can be called a 
 theory) which entirely satisfies myself, and there 
 can be no harm in my telling it to my readers. It 
 is this : — 
 
 Man first uttered formless vowel sounds, as now in 
 early infancy or in idiocy, that prolonged infancy of 
 the mind, he utters only such sounds. These sounds 
 were not language, hardly more than the cries of 
 beasts are language ; but still, being uttered by an 
 intelligent creature, capable of " discourse of reason," 
 they had some significance. The vowel sounds were 
 in the course of time interrupted, modified, and sup- 
 ported by consonants, without which vowels cannot 
 be put to much intelligent or significant use. Vocal 
 utterance, thus made articulate, had of coui'se di£Eer-
 
 CONSONANTS. 45 
 
 ences ; and those differences came naturally and in- 
 evitably to be associated with things, with feelings, 
 and with thoughts ; indeed, were born of such asso- 
 ciation. Thus roots were formed. Those roots were 
 combined and modified as circumstances required ; 
 and in this way original language, or perhaps lan- 
 guages, came into being. When this took place, who 
 would venture even to conjecture? Who knows, or 
 can even hope to know, the first state of man ? As 
 to Sanskrit, that most ancient and most highly elabo- 
 rated form of human speech is far adown the ages ; 
 and even the language from which Sanskrit and the 
 other Indo-European languages are derived repre- 
 sents, we may be sure, a progress through untold 
 centuries from the time when the human consonant 
 turned the merely animal vowel from vague noise 
 into intelligible speech. 
 
 That is the simple belief as to the origin of lan- 
 guage which I shall hold until some great philologist 
 propounds a theory which all the other great philolo- 
 gists shall accept without dispute. I am inclined to 
 the opinion that should I live to the age of Methuselah 
 my theoria laid will not be disturbed. 
 
 The primitive a (all) is acknowledged on all hands 
 as the original vowel sound. It is the simplest of 
 all vocal utterances, that which comes without con- 
 scious effort or premeditation from man and child. 
 The first consonant was probably m, that which we 
 find in most Indo-European languages combined with 
 the first vowel in a word which expresses the earliest 
 object of interest to the human creature, — mamma^ 
 :he female breast, — and which has hence become 
 the infant's word for mother almost the world over. 
 Doubtless the combination was first in a single sylla«
 
 46 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ble ma; but reduplication is one of the earliest modes, 
 perhaps the earliest mode, of expressing intensifica- 
 tion of interest. 
 
 Mis, not, however, to be regarded as the first con- 
 Bonant because it begins the word that is the first 
 that is now used by children ; but as children use m 
 first because it is the easiest and the simplest means 
 of breaking up the continuity of a vowel sound, and 
 giving it articulation, it is probable that it is the 
 first that was heard. The mere opening and closing 
 of the mouth during the utterance of the ah sound 
 gives wja ov mamma ; for what we call the nasal sound 
 of m has to be intentionally avoided. Children now 
 sometimes reduplicate this indefinitely, and say ma- 
 mamamamama, as they do papapapapapa. The lim- 
 itation of either word to a single reduplication is ar- 
 bitrary and conventional, a dictate of convenience. 
 Some linguists regard mamma as the result of a 
 childish attempt to say mother. Surely not. The 
 name must have attached itself to the most visible 
 sign and token of motherhood, and then to the moth- 
 er, from its being the first childish effort at speech. 
 Surely mamma long preceded the earliest form of 
 mother or mater. 
 
 To m probably succeeded b and p, which are so 
 closely related to m that they are mere modifications 
 of it, as any one will see who tries a few experiments 
 ".n the production of these three consonants, which 
 are produced by the lips alone, and are therefore 
 called labials ; for rh can be sounded, although not; 
 continuously, with the nostrils and even the whole 
 aose held tightly closed. The first use of the tongue 
 as an interruption and modifier of vowel utterance 
 probably produced d, which was followed by t, which
 
 CONSONANTS. 47 
 
 \b merely a stronger d, as a similar experiment will 
 bIiow. L and r probably soon followed ; and as to 
 the order ot the succession of the other consonants, I 
 shall not here venture an opinion, nor does our pur- 
 pose require that I should do so. 
 
 Consonants are very fixed in their pronunciation, 
 as to which in various words there is little dispute 
 among the orthoepists of any language ; but those of 
 kindred formation do have a tendency to run into 
 each other, as m into b, t into d, and r into I. But 
 while the tendency of vowels is to change, that of 
 consonants is to stability. Almost all languages have 
 almost all the consonants known to any one of them ; 
 a remark which, however, applies chiefly to what 
 may be called the primitive consonants. But, for ex- 
 ample, the Chinese is without r, for which, in pro- 
 nouncing foreign words in which it occurs, the China- 
 man is obliged to substitute ?, and say, as we all know, 
 ^llelican for American, and lide for ride ; and many 
 children are obliged to do the same. These facts 
 favor the supposition that r is a consonant sound of 
 later formation than l. On the contrary, however, the 
 Japanese find the sound of Z a difficult one to make, 
 and substitute for it that of r. We may at least rea- 
 sonably suppose that these two consonants are the 
 last and most difficult attainments of human speech. 
 
 I now turn to Professor Whitney's remarks upon 
 the consonantal sounds and combinations in the Eng- 
 lish language, as to which, however, little is to be 
 said except in praise of his patient and minute obser- 
 vation of the manner in which the sounds are formed, 
 and of the intelligible style in which he sets forth 
 his conclusions. If speech is to be treated in such a 
 ^ray (and, like the cardinal, ' I do not see the neces*
 
 48 EVERY -DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Bity "), the results of such in\ estigatious could hardly 
 be presented in a form more likely to interest an in- 
 telligent reader not bitten with the monomania of 
 phonetics than that in which Professor Whitney has 
 presented them. Much of this sort of work, I frankly 
 own, seems to me laborious trifling. Take, for ex- 
 ample, the following passage, which, it will be seen, 
 refers to the phonetic opinions of others than Pro- 
 fessor Whitney : — 
 
 " Some phonetists claim that to make a whole p, for ex- 
 ample, both a closure and a breach [of the lips] are required, 
 
 — thus, apa, — either ap or pa being only a half or incom- 
 plete utterance ; others, again, claim that ap is complete 
 and pa is complete, and so that apa is really double, and 
 ought (I infer) to be written appa, a single mute between 
 vowels being an impossibility ; but I see no sufficient 
 ground for either opinion. 
 
 '' It is again asserted by some (notably by Lepsius) that 
 our usual p, t, k, are not simple mutes, but rather aspirates, 
 
 — that is to say, that a bit of breath, a brief //, is slipped 
 out between the breach of mute contact and the beginning 
 of a following vowel or other more open sound. This I 
 ehould confidently rely on as far as our ordinary pronuncia- 
 tion is concerned." 
 
 And what matter if either opinion in either case 
 is true or false? Of what moment is it, as regards 
 language or pronunciation, whether the consonant 
 sound in ajja is single or double, or whether a " bit 
 of breath " slips out after p, t, and k, or not ? I rank 
 such discussions with those as to whether certain 
 words are jDrepositions, or adverbs, or conjunctions 
 whether they are one or another being, it seems tc 
 Vie, of the least possible consequence. 
 
 I may be pardoned, perhaps, for expressing my re»
 
 CONSONANTS. 49 
 
 gret, by the way, that Professor Whitney should give 
 the support of his example to such a use of claim as 
 appeal's twice in one of the sentences just quoted : 
 " Some phonetists claim that to make a whole p" 
 etc. ; " others, again, claim that ap is complete." An 
 intelligent and highly cultivated Englishman said 
 lately, in my hearing, that " the American people 
 have claim on the brain." The gibe seemed to me 
 to be fully justified.^ Of late years this word has 
 come to be used among us in a very queer way as a 
 word of all work. If a man asserts anything, he 
 " claims " it ; if he disputes anything, he " claims " 
 the contrary ; if he suggests anything, he " claims " 
 it ; if he defends his reputation, he " claims that " he 
 is an honest man ; if he denounces a political oppo- 
 nent, he " claims that " " his record " is disgraceful, 
 and perhaps "claims that" his grandfather was a 
 Tory in the Revolution, or he " claims that " his 
 grand-aunt was no better than she should be ; if he is 
 a scientific man, he "claims that" Darwin has estab- 
 lished the theory of evolution ; if a theologian, he 
 "claims that" Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall are 
 emissaries of Satan, — and so forth, and so forth ; for 
 there is no end to the variety of this use, or rather 
 misuse, of the word. A man may claim, or demand, 
 his own, — a thing, an interest, or a promise ; but 
 not that a thing, or a fact, or a person is thus or so. 
 The contamination of evil speaking corrupts good 
 English ; and when it taints the vocabulary of a phi- 
 lologist like Professor Whitney, what may not be par- 
 doned to the rest of us, poor laymen in language ! 
 Professor Whitney calls these three " mutes," j3, t, 
 
 1 I could, however, produce examples ivjn of "claim that" from Brif 
 ilh pablicatious of high rank. 
 4
 
 50 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and ^, " surds," a name which, he tells us, " is in- 
 tended to describe them as produced without any 
 tone, any sonorous vibration of the vocal cords." He 
 insists strongly upon the use of "surd" and "so- 
 nant," and says that to call the consonants in ques- 
 tion '' ' hard,' or ' sharp,' or 'strong,' or by any ofchei 
 Buch scientifically inaccurate and merely fanciful or 
 blundering title, is altogether to be condemned." 
 The terms " strong " or *•' hard " and " soft " oi 
 " weak," he says, " began in ignorance, and are con- 
 tinued in heedless imitation or in misapprehension." 
 This is rather severe treatment of terms which are in 
 favor with the most eminent phonologists, — even, as 
 Professor Whitney admits, the greatest German phi- 
 lologists ; but if the terms are really as meaningless 
 and as misleading as he strenuously asserts that they 
 are, his condemnation of them may be quite justifi 
 able. 
 
 Not professing to treat the subject with what Pro- 
 fessor Whitney calls scientific accuracy, but merely 
 to present to my readers the results of such observa- 
 tions as I have made upon it, I venture to say that 
 to me the terms "hard" or "strong," "soft" or 
 "weak," seem to be so very truly descriptive that I 
 do not wonder that the great German philologists and 
 others cling to them. The question, indeed, is one of 
 fact more than of terminology. It is simply whether 
 the difference between p and h, and between t and 
 c?, is a difference between strength and weakness. 
 It seems to me without doubt to be so ; but not of 
 strength and weakness in the sense of force and fee' 
 bleness of utterance, as Professor Whitney seems to 
 imply. For when a shipmaster shouts, " Port your 
 belum ! " or, " Haul down ! Taut and belay ! " his y'*9
 
 CONSONANTS. 51 
 
 and i's, c?'s and f s, are, indeed, easily distinguished, 
 but no more easily thari those of a school-girl who is 
 whispering slyly to her neighbor. The point is this : 
 jt) and h are formed by the same or by a like action 
 of the lips ; t and d by the same or by a like action 
 of the tongue ; the lips and the tongue producing in 
 each a perfect closure of utterance. The difference 
 between them is, to the ears of those whose usage 
 Professor Whitney derides, a softening of the former 
 — in character, not in force of sound — into tlie 
 latter. This softening is unavoidably accompanied, 
 perhaps is caused, by a slight laryngeal murmur; 
 but none the less does it seem accurately descriptive 
 to say that p and t are "softened" into b and c?, or 
 vice versa, that p and t are " hard " b and d. This 
 Professor Whitney himself seems to admit when he 
 subsequently says : " The b sound then is the sonant 
 counterpart of the p, identical with it in the position 
 of the mouth organs, differing only in the laryngeal 
 action ; " adding the like as to d and t. 
 
 In referring to g as " the intonated k " Professor 
 Whitney makes the former letter the sign only of 
 what is known as the hard sound of g; the soft g 
 be regards as/. In this he is not singular. But con- 
 sidering that in the languages of Continental Europe 
 y represents the English y sound, and that g in the 
 same languages so largely represents the English j 
 Bound, it should seem that the correctness of this 
 limitation of g to the sounds of intonated k may at 
 least be doubtful. The sounds of g hard and g soft 
 are not only so different, but are formed by such a 
 very different action of the vocal organs, that the use 
 of the same character to indicate them is not easily 
 accounted for. The sound of g hard is produced by
 
 62 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 pressing the lower-middle part of the tongue firmly 
 against the roof of the mouth and then drawing it 
 suddenly away with a guttural expulsion of breath. 
 The soft g^ or English /, sound is formed chiefly by 
 the teeth assisted by the tip of the tongue. The tip 
 of the tongue is pressed tightly against the extreme 
 front of the palate, and then as it is withdrawn the 
 breath is driven out between the gradually opening 
 teeth. Neither the two actions nor the two conse- 
 quent sounds pass into each other ; nor are they in 
 any way modifications the one of the other. I believe 
 that there is no uncertainty as to the sound of g^ or 
 any mispronunciation of it which calls for remark, ex- 
 cept in the word suggest^ in which the first g is hard 
 and the second soft, as in succeed the first c is hard 
 and the second soft. But not a few educated people 
 fall into the habit of pronouncing both ^'s soft in the 
 former, — sujjest instead of sugjest. In doing this 
 there is great peril of falling at last into the slough 
 of s'jest. 
 
 I venture also to question the accuracy of the as- 
 sertion that " the d is nearly related to the I and r, 
 all being alike tongue-point letters ; a relaxation of 
 the contact at the tip of the tongue converts the d 
 into r; a like relaxation at the side or sides of the 
 tongue converts it into an I. All, especially the I and 
 -, interchange frequently in the history of language.*' 
 This seems to be a somewhat too mechanical view of 
 the subject. That the point of the tongue has some- 
 thing.to do with the formation of the sounds of all these 
 letters is true. But the essential vocal characters of d 
 and r are as different as those of two vowels can be 
 The essential characteristic of d is perfect closui'e and 
 jnterruption, followed by sudden relaxation and pai
 
 CONSONANTS. 63 
 
 aage of the pure vowel sound ; that of r is non-closure, 
 no relaxation, but a continued passage of the vowel 
 Bound accompanied by a trill. In d the tip of the 
 tongue is pressed firmly against the roof of the mouth, 
 just above the teeth ; in r the jaw is dropped, and the 
 tip of the tongue does not even approach the teeth, 
 but plays freely in the full cavity of the mouth. 
 This great mechanical difference is, however, of im- 
 portance from my point of view only as it accompa- 
 nies two sounds so absolutely unlike as those of d 
 and r. 
 
 In connection with the " palatal mutes," Professor 
 Whitney remarks the ease with which the y sound is 
 inserted after them, and says, " One of the latest 
 downward steps in English orthoepy has been the in- 
 trusion of this y sound after k and g in a not very 
 large class of words by a certain part of the commu- 
 nity." He cites as examples ¥md^ guards }*nd girl., 
 pronounced k-yind, g-yard^ and g-yurl. I do not 
 know what limit is implied in Professor W ^litney's 
 term " latest ; " but the pronunciation to whicK he re- 
 fers is at least two centuries old, and is still ij ^ vogue 
 among the best English speakers. According ^o my 
 observation, no high-bred, well-educated Englishman 
 pronounces girl gurl, any more than he pronomcea 
 duke dook. Nor does he, on the other hand, si-j ge- 
 yurl, de-yook. That is the vocal sign of pincl beck 
 passing itself for gold, and well deserves Prot'^ssor 
 Whitney's denunciation as " particularly affected und 
 disagreeable." But there is in the best English pro- 
 hunciation a delicate softening of the hard conta % of 
 g and k and d upon the succeeding vowel, a kird Df 
 rocal buffer of extremest tenuity, which, to my ear, is 
 the very reverse of disagreeable. And so far is t'vi»
 
 54 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Utterance from being a late downward step, that, on 
 the contrary, it is a little evanescent grace of speech 
 which is beginning to pass away.^ 
 
 In his remarks upon th Professor Whitney saya 
 that the orthoepic manuals are obliged to point out 
 the right sound in each case and insist upon its ob- 
 Bei vance, and that " they tell us we must give the so- 
 nant sound [soft, as in the, theni] in baths, oaths, moths, 
 mouths, sheaths, and many more, and must give the 
 Burd [hai'd, as in thin, thic¥\ in cloths, truths, youths, 
 and a few others." As to the prescriptions of or- 
 thoepic manuals, I am comparatively uninformed ; but 
 should I find in one of them instruction to pronounce 
 truths and youths with the th as in th'm, it would go 
 far with me to discredit the work as a trustworthy 
 record of the best English pronunciation of this gen- 
 eration. I cannot remember to have heard, surely I 
 never heard from a speaker from whom the best pro- 
 nunciation was to be looked for, those words pro- 
 nounced otherwise than with the soft th, as in this. 
 The singular forms truth and youth have th as in 
 thin. As to cloths, it is to be remarked that a dis- 
 tinction is made by pronunciation between cloths in 
 bulk and cloths made up for wearing ; the former 
 having the hard sound and the latter the soft, and be- 
 ing (now) written clothes, although they are really 
 but the same word. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that the old English let- 
 ter 5 for this sound was allowed to fall out of use. 
 
 1 Walker (1791) says, "When this [the letter?] is preceded by hard g 
 fr h, which is but another form for hard c, it is pronounced as if an e wore 
 tiserted between the consonant and tiie vowel. Thus shy, kind, (jnide, 
 ffuise, disguise, guile, beguile, mankind are pronounced as if written ske-y 
 te-in4«, gue-ide, etc., etc." (Principles of English Pronunciation, § 160. 
 The same pronunciation is mentioned by Steele in his Grammar of tht 
 Enyliih Tont/ue. 1720, page 49.
 
 CONSONANTS. 55 
 
 The soiiml is not at all a compound of those of t and 
 h, by uniting which we indicate it. It is a perfect l}! 
 Biinple sound, as much as that of s is ; and it would 
 be well if the philologists who are undertaking to 
 simplify our spelling would advocate the restoration 
 of our old English letter for this (among modern lan- 
 guages) peculiarly English sound. There would be 
 no difficulty, or very little, about bringing it grad- 
 ually into vogue and into favor. 
 
 In regard to the z sound (not the pronunciation of 
 s), Professor Whitney remarks that " a considerable 
 share of our 2's are comparatively recent corruptions 
 of the s sound ; " and he adds that the change is 
 going on actively, and that consequently there are 
 many words, and even whole classes of words, in re- 
 gard to which usage is unsettled. His own pro- 
 nunciation, he tells us, adheres to the older s sound ; 
 and he says dls-ahle^ dis-hatid, dis-dain, dis-gust, dis- 
 honest, dis-miss, dis-ohlige., dis-robe, etc., with a real 
 8 ; but not dis-cern, dis-ease, dissolve. In this pro- 
 nunciation it seems to me that Professor Whitney 
 conforms precisely to the best English usage, and 
 that his implied censure of the dizzi/ pronunciation is 
 fully justified. I do not remember having heard the 
 latter from speakers of good English, — except rarely 
 in disgust and dishonest (^dizgust, dizonest). This 
 (the s sound) I find is the pronunciation given by the 
 last, and what I have found to be the most trust- 
 worthy, English authority, — Phelp, in Stormonth's 
 dictionary, — who, even in disgust and dishonest, 
 gives the simple sound of s. But when Professor 
 Whitney says, as to the combination of e with x, that 
 ue believes there is not a single word in which he 
 pronounces ex as egz, " without an efifort specially
 
 56 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 directed to that end," I cannot hesitate a moment in 
 saying that his pronunciation is, according to my ob- 
 eervation, peculiar to him among men of his culture 
 and position. By my teacher (like him a Yankee 
 born and bred) I was taught to pronounce the unac- 
 cented ex (as in example, exert) as egz ; and among 
 those from whom I caught my speech at home (also 
 Yankees born and bred) I heard the same sound. 
 Phelp gives this pronunciation as that of to-day; and 
 as to the " novelty " of it, Walker, writing in 1791, 
 says, " X. has its flat sound like gz when the accent 
 is not on it and the following syllable begins with 
 a vowel ; " and my grandfather, who graduated at 
 Yale in 1786, pronounced the ex thus ; and as he 
 must have caught the sound from his father or in his 
 father's house, this is pretty good evidence that it 
 antedated Walker a full half-century. 
 
 I see no occasion for further remark upon Pro- 
 fessor Whitney's records of English pronunciation ; 
 and in what I have made them the occasion of saying, 
 I trust that there has been not a word which expressed 
 on my part other than the fullest" recognition of the 
 value of his labors, — valuable even in this minor 
 field of linguistic study, — or which failed in the 
 expression of personal respect. In real philology I 
 should no moi'e think of measuring swords with him 
 than a West Point cadet should think of doing the 
 like with Sherman or Von Moltke in war ; but the 
 subject of pronunciation is one upon which a student 
 of his mother tongue, who has found that he may 
 trust his ear and his memory, may without any such 
 pretense offer the results of his observation.
 
 CHAPTER rV. 
 
 )BTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. — SPELLING-BOOK 
 SPEECH. 
 
 In a dictionary intended to meet the popular de- 
 mand for a hand-book which shall be a guide to the 
 correct use of words, pronunciation is regarded as an 
 element of prime importance. And yet much might 
 be said against the introduction of this department 
 into lexicography, which took place about a hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 One of the objections that lie against pronouncing 
 dictionaries is manifest upon a comparison of Perry's 
 Standard English Dictionary, published at London in 
 1777, and Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, 
 published also at London in 1791, both of which 
 profess to give the usage of the best English society 
 at that time. For although they were published 
 within so few years of each other that the pronuncia- 
 tion which they profess to record must have been the 
 Bame, they differ in many instances. Moreover, there 
 is the almost insuperable difficulty of expressing with 
 any great degree of certainty the sounds and inflec- 
 tions of words as they are uttered in daily conversa- 
 tion ; for those sounds and inflections are in many in- 
 stances so delicate in their character that they cannot 
 even be described, much less expressed exactly and 
 unmistakably by letters, or by other arbitrary signs. 
 We are sent from word to word, and from word to
 
 58 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 sign, and from sign to word, on the assumption that 
 certain signs, or at least certain familiar words, will 
 surely indicate to us certain sounds. The probability 
 is that they will do so in most cases ; but it is also 
 probable that in many cases they will not. The re- 
 sult is a mere circle of uncertainty ; except, indeed^ 
 in regard to accent, as to which, of course, usage may 
 be recorded or change advocated with understanding 
 and precision. 
 
 Striking examples in illustration of the difficulty 
 of expressing and of fixing pronunciation are fur- 
 nished in a very interesting and instructive article, by 
 Prof. F. W. Newman, upon English as spoken and 
 written, which appeared in the " Contemporary Re- 
 view," March, 1878. The main purpose of the writer 
 is the consideration of the question of a change in Eng- 
 lish orthography. But in the course of his article he 
 makes revelations and advances opinions in regard to 
 pronunciation itself which are of much interest, both 
 intrinsically and by way of suggestion. 
 
 Professor Newman's early education and the asso- 
 ciations of his long life, quite as much as his acquire- 
 ments and the nature of his studies, make his remarks 
 upon English pronunciation of greater value than 
 those of almost any other English man of letters would 
 be ; and they are none the less so, but rather the 
 more, because, although an observant student of lan- 
 guage, he is not a professed philologist or phonolo- 
 gist, and is not likely to be committed to any school 
 or crotchet, or to be subject to that perversion of the 
 judgment with which the specialist is so commonly 
 and not unnaturally afflicted. What he gives us is 
 the knowledge and the opinion of a highly educated 
 man, who acqu'red his pronunciation in London and
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 69 
 
 at Oxford, and who has all his life been accustomed 
 to the society of the best bred and most highly cul- 
 tivated English society.^ Yet it will appear, I think, 
 that even sucii a man may err as to the best usage 
 in English speech, and that the reasons of his err6r 
 bear very significantly upon both orthoeijy and pho- 
 netic spelling. 
 
 In showing the difficulties in the way of making a 
 change in written English, Professor Newman first 
 calls attention to the very obtrusive fact of the un- 
 certainty of English pronunciation. " Small indeed," 
 lie says, " is the shifting in orthography compared 
 to the innovations in utterance, especially in a coun- 
 try which has many provincial dialects, and no pub- 
 lic schools in which uniformity of pronunciation is 
 cultivated. It is owing to the change in pronunci- 
 ation while orthography has been almost fixed that 
 there is greater difference between written and spoken 
 English than there was three centuries ago.^ It is 
 for this reason, and because of the assimilating and 
 trait-destroying tendencies of slovenly speech, that, 
 for example, the same sound has come to be the ex- 
 pression of four such different thoughts and things 
 
 1 Professor Newman's brother is the Rev. J. H. Newman, now cardinal, 
 who is regarded by some persons as the best living writer of English ; an 
 uppreciatioii of him which, although it may not be without some reason, 
 implies a degree of positive merit in his style which I have not been able to 
 discover. 
 
 2 I doubt, I more than doubt, that this greater difference can rightly be 
 Raid to exist. For in the first place, to sav that the difference between 
 Miund and sign is greater now than it was tiien implicitly asserts a fixed, 
 continuous value in the sign. This begs the question. Next, granting 
 that we can determine the value of the sign — the letters, — I am inclined 
 to believe that variation between sound and sign was quite as great thea 
 »8 it is now, if not greater than it is now; one reason of which is that pro- 
 ounciation was then less nearly uniform But the question is ao intricate 
 tae, and it being not essential to our purpose, I pass it by.
 
 30 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 as rite, right, write, and wright ; so also as to soul 
 and sole. The reader may easily call to mind others. 
 Now, one question is, Shall we, for the convenience 
 of children and foreigners, increase and multiply and 
 aggravate this undesirable uniformity of name for 
 widely distinct ideas, by destroying the written rec- 
 ord of their difference ? " 
 
 If a change in spelling is to be made, one point 
 must be previously settled, — the pronunciation which 
 the new spelling is to represent. What is the right 
 pronunciation of any given word, and how shall it 
 be expressed ? This position taken by Professor New- 
 man 1 the blindest and most headlong advocates of 
 phonographic spelling cannot have the hardihood to 
 deny. It is from his consideration of our subject in 
 this aspect that Professor Newman's paper has its 
 peculiar value and interest. 
 
 What, then, he asks in the beginning, are we to 
 do with grant, command, grass, task, and other like 
 words, the correct pronunciation of which he holds 
 to be with the a broad, while a pronunciation of them 
 with the a short, as in an, " appears to be in London 
 current and fashionable" ? I will remark in passing 
 that at Oxford and at Cambridge I heard with pleas- 
 ure the long and broad pronunciation of these words 
 by the young men as well as by the old. It was not 
 merely the broad, but not very long, a which I had 
 Deen accustomed to, but a full ah, — eommahnd, grahss, 
 pahst, etc. Yet for the conjunction no one said ahnd, 
 which was doubtless the old pronunciation, but and, 
 with the a as in an. Similar irregularities are not 
 uncommon in English. 
 
 ^ And not new, I may be permitted to say, to my readers of the patf 
 light or ten years.
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 61 
 
 Professor Newman next brings up the suppression 
 3f r at the end of a syllable or before a consonant. 
 '* Thus," he says, " lord^ hard, door, lorn, pore, pork, 
 are sounded laud, haad, daiv, lawn, paw, pawh, if I 
 am rightl}'^ informed; arm^ and alr)is are alike cor- 
 rupted into aams^ As to this pronunciation, it is to 
 be remembered that in the formation of speech the 
 letter r was probably the last to be developed ; that 
 it is, of all English sounds at least, the most difficult 
 of utterance, that which requires the most flexibility 
 of the vocal organs and the most correct habit of 
 speech, and therefore it is the letter most likely to 
 be dropped by the ignorant, the slovenly, and the 
 languid. He also notices the dropping of h in words 
 like which and white and wheel and whistle, which is 
 BO common in England that a record of it as the cor- 
 rect pronunciation has crept into one or two diction- 
 aries. This confounding of which with witch and 
 wheel with weal Professor Newman condemns, and 
 rightly ; but it is very common in England, even 
 among the best bred and best educated people. A 
 man who will say commaAnd and lord will yet say 
 witch for which. This corrupt sounding of ivh as mere 
 w. Professor Newman says, " damages at least seven- 
 teen root words, and surely ought to be rebuked as 
 Bharpl}?^ as the perversion of horse, hand, hedge, hill, 
 into orse, and, edge, ill^ This protest may not be 
 philological ; for the business, or the chief business, 
 of the philologist is merely to record and to trace 
 usage ; but it is the voice of common sense and good 
 taste. A slovenly utterance which damages root 
 words is not to be accepted without resistance, or at 
 least without protest. The suppression of h in wh is, 
 he says, " an especial disgrace of Southern England."
 
 '32 E VERY-DAY r:NGLISH. 
 
 The constant question, then, here recurs. If we are 
 to print our books with phonetic spelling, are we to 
 spell lohifJi or witch, and which is witch, and is witch 
 which ? Professor Newman tells us that his school- 
 master " sounded the tv in whole.'''' Should any reader 
 think such a pronunciation strange or difficult, let 
 him say wh}' it is more strange or difficult to pro- 
 nounce the IV in whole than to do so in ivhirl and in 
 whistle, which is done by all educated " Americans " 
 and by the best speakers in England. If it is sounded 
 in these words, why should it be silent in that ? To 
 distinguish whole from hole, otherwise than by the 
 delicate difference which good speakers make between 
 the length (not in the sound) of the vowel in the 
 two words, is certainly an advantage. His teacher's 
 pronunciation of whole suggests to Professor Newman 
 two small corrections which he regards as needed in 
 orthography : " First, we ought to write wholely (just 
 as solely, vilely^ so as to secure the sounding of the 
 double I ; next, in the unseemly word whore, we 
 ought to omit the to, which is a stupid, causeless ad- 
 dition. Wickliffe writes hore. Wholly ought not to 
 rhyme with holy.'''' As to the last point, it is to be 
 remarked that the rhyme, although permissible in 
 verse, is not absolutely perfect, any more than that of 
 ivhole with liole. The o in wholly is shorter and a 
 little less open than that in holy. 
 
 In the names of places and of men, according to 
 Professor Newman, " the sound ought to be in close 
 harmony with the writing. If we write Berwick, 
 Dulwich, Keswick, Greenwich, and Norwich, we 
 ought to sound the iv, and vice versa.''^ Therefore, 
 since no one, as he reasonably assumes, would favor 
 fche vitiating of historical records by omitting the w
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 63 
 
 be decides thiit the w should be sounded. But would 
 he really have us call Norwich Nor-witch? If so, 
 what is to become of that time-honored epic, — 
 
 "The man in the moon 
 
 Came down too soon, 
 And ask'd his way to Norwich ; 
 
 He went by the south, 
 
 And burnt his mouth 
 With eating cold pease-porridge." 
 
 Plainly the pronunciation Noricli is of a very re- 
 spectable antiquity. And Professor Newman may be 
 sure that an act of Parliament and an act of Congress 
 together could not bring back the pronunciation Nor- 
 witch. Such contractions are inevitable, and are not 
 objectionable. Through them comes to speech a free- 
 dom and ease which cannot be given up for the sake 
 of a literal conformity of sound to sign. Professor 
 Newman himself yields the iv " in rapid and familiar 
 speech," but insists on it, and on a like particularity 
 of pronunciation, in all serious or formal reading or 
 speaking. " So," he suggests, " we tolerate tuppence 
 for two pence, but not in the parable of the Good Sa- 
 maritan." 
 
 But what Parliament and Congress could not effect 
 may be brought about, I fear, by the unnatural and 
 monstrous way of learning to speak by the spelling- 
 book ; for not only is Delhi in New York called 
 by some persons Dell-high, but Warwick is called 
 War-wick, and Tivoli Tio-oh-lie ; but the best speak- 
 ers say Daily, Warick (with the accent on the first 
 syllable), Tiv-o-le. 
 
 One remark made by him in connection with this 
 jubject seems' strangely amiss. He says that " in 
 the town of Derby its name is sounded as it is spelt, 
 while the aristocracy call it DarhyT As to the lat-
 
 64 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 fcer point, there is no doubt; but he quotes with ap 
 proval the remark of an old hidy, made to him in hia 
 boyhood : " They have learned from their grooms to 
 Bay Darby and BarksTiire.'''' But the old lady was 
 wrong; and that she was so, Professor Newman him- 
 self would have seen upon a little reflection. For it 
 is not possible that he should be ignorant that the 
 syllable written er was, until a compai'atively recent 
 day, sounded ar, and even is now so sounded in other 
 words than proper names. 
 
 In the days of our grandfathers clerk was univer- 
 sally pronounced to rhyme with arh^ and was also 
 very often written dark ; and clergy was pronounced 
 clargy. Indeed, the sound of e before r was until a 
 comparatively recent date in most words that of broad 
 a (aK). The most cultivated people two generations 
 ago said sartain and sarvant. Sergeant is even now 
 pronounced by the best speakers in England, and 
 generally in " America," sarjeant ; marcJiant for mer- 
 chant has but just become obsolete, and is preserved 
 in the surname Marchant. The old parlous was a 
 mere contraction of perilous^ and in our word parson 
 we have only a phonographic petrifaction of the old 
 way of pronouncing person ; for the parson of a par- 
 ish was merely the person of it par excellence, and 
 in the "Canterbury Tales" we have the "Person's 
 [that is, the Parson's] Tale." In the following lines, 
 from the ballad of the " Wonders of England," 
 printed about 1559, we find what was then a mere 
 phonographic spelling of martial, as well as evidence 
 that the combination t i a was pronounced then ai 
 Dow: — 
 
 "Fearing again God's light should spring, 
 Brought mershial law forthwith in hand
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 66 
 
 Against all such as would withstand 
 
 Their wicked ravfjne and cruell band, 
 
 And God's part take." 
 
 (Ancient Ballades and Broadsides, page 96.) 
 
 And Ben Jonson, in " The C^^se is Altered," spello 
 the noble Italian name Farnese always Fernese. The 
 pronunciation dark has held its ground, and is still 
 that of the best speakers in England, where indeed it 
 may be regarded as almost universal. Having, in my 
 boyhood, been familiarly acquainted with the old town 
 of Derby, in Connecticut, I can bear witness to the 
 pronunciation of its name as Darby by those who 
 were not grooms and did not learn their speech in 
 stables. Professor Newman was momentarily forget- 
 ful. There is no fact in phonology better established 
 than this old pronunciation of er ; and the aristo- 
 cratic pronunciation of Derby and Berkshire is merely 
 conservative, while that of the people of inferior rank 
 is an innovating conformity of sound to sign, — 
 spelling-book speech. This tendency is much more 
 general in " America " than in England. In the lat- 
 ter country'-, to call the Earl of Derby anything but 
 the Earl of Darby is to be at least eccentric. I re- 
 member hearing an English gentleman of the earl's 
 own social circle reply to a remark that the name 
 was pronounced by some Englishmen Durby, " Pos- 
 sibly ; but I am sure by none of the earl's acquaint- 
 ances." This solicitude as to the pronunciation of 
 words according to their spelling is one of the most 
 unmistakable signs of a lack of that education which 
 is only to be acquired at home, — an education which 
 makes pronunciation, if not reading and writing, 
 "come by nature." The pronunciation now to be 
 learned from teachers in public schools is too often 
 6
 
 66 EVERY-DAY ENGIISH. 
 
 bad, and generally stiff and pedantic, — book talk, 
 not free, manly speech. 
 
 Nevertheless, this pronunciation of e, ea, and i be- 
 fore r as obscure u has been steadily although slowly 
 advancing for many years. Earthy now pronounced 
 urtli^ was formerly pronounced arth^ and it is not 
 long since the pronunciation entirely disappeared, 
 even among cultivated speakers of extreme conserva- 
 tism and high fashion. This seems strange to us of 
 the present generation ; but we have the same sound 
 of ear in hearth and heart. Hearth is but the earth 
 on which the fire was built, as the main beam of the 
 house is the vooi-tree. In both these homely names 
 for homely things the primitive word has remained 
 to us. The pronunciation of hearth as hiirth is slowly 
 creeping in, and will probably prevail ; but it will be 
 a long while before we plainly and openly call our 
 hearts our hurts. There is a tendenc}^ to give not 
 only e but i and even o before r the sound of broad a. 
 We have all heard old people, not uneducated, say 
 vartue, although that pronunciation of vij-tue now 
 marks the extreme of rusticity. I have heard Eng- 
 lishmen, although not those of the best culture, pro- 
 nounce corn earn. The giving of the obscure sound 
 of u to i before r, as in virtue, is a comparatively late 
 fashion. In the middle of the last century, and even 
 later, to pronounce virtue vurtue was pei'haps even 
 more inelegant than to pronounce it vartue. I give 
 here a transcript of a manuscript note which I found 
 hiid in a book I once owned, which was published in 
 the latter part of the last century. The handwriting 
 is elegant and of the period ; the paper such old laid« 
 linen fabric as has not been made for a hundred 
 years.
 
 ORTHOEPy AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 67 
 
 EPIJRAM BY THE CELEBRATED DAVID GARRICK. 
 
 In 1759 Dr. Hill wrote a Pamphlet intituled "To David 
 Garrick, Esqre — the Petition of I in behalf of herself and 
 Sister." The purport of it was to charge Mr. Garrick with 
 mispronouncing some words including the letter I, ^%furm 
 lor JirTTi, vurtue for virtue, and others. 
 
 The Pamphlet is now sunk in oblivion ; but the following 
 Epigram, which Mr. Garrick wrote on the occasion, de- 
 serves to be preserved as one of the best in the English 
 language : — 
 
 TO DR. HILL, UPON HIS PETITION OF THE LETTER I TO DAVID GARRICK, 
 ESQRE. 
 
 If 'tis true, as you say, that I 've injured a letter, 
 I '11 chanare my note soon, and I hope for the better ; 
 May the just right of letters, as well as of men, 
 Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen. 
 Most devoutly I wish that they both have their due. 
 That 1 may be never mistaken for U. 
 
 The pronunciation for which Dr. Hill contended 
 with Garrick was one which I remember having 
 heard from some old people in my boyhood, — a 
 Bound of the i in virtue^ firm, birth, etc., like that 
 which we now give to e m ferry, berry, err^ etc. ; 
 these people thought it very " ungenteel " to say 
 vurtue, furm, burth, and as bad to pronounce inter 
 intur, or err ur. They pronounced all those words 
 vitli the vowel sound of e in error. Bitt nowadays 
 we hear some slovenly speakers pronounce even the 
 first syllable of the last word as ur, making the whole 
 word a guttural ur-r-r. The course of the pronun- 
 ciation of the i in virtue and the like seems to have 
 been this : first veertue (with the Continental sound 
 of z), next verrtue, then vurtue; that of e in clerk and 
 the like, first elayrk (with the Continental so and ot 
 e), then dark, and finally, as in clergyman., clurk.
 
 B8 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 The sound of a and e before r thus shows a tend- 
 ency to run confusedly into the obscure sound of u 
 in /itr, which is certainly not to be admired, but 
 which can be with difficulty restrained.^ 
 
 In words other than proper names, Professor 
 Newman suggests "a few cautious innovations," 
 which are themselves suggestive. In words in which 
 a double spelling is current he advocates what will 
 hardly be disputed by any one, the use of that spell- 
 ing which agrees best with the sound. He would 
 write jail, not gaol, show, not shew, hiccup, not hic- 
 cough, chesnut, not chestnut, guage, not gauge, and so 
 forth, through some eighteen words which need not be 
 particularly mentioned. Among them, however, are 
 to be noticed alchemy and chemist, which he would 
 spell alchymy and chymist. This was the old spell- 
 ing ; and according to him it agrees with the sound of 
 the words. But according to the best orthoepists of 
 the day, the pronunciation is chem in both words ; and 
 I have never heard it otherwise sounded among the 
 best speakers in England or " America." Whom are 
 we to trust on such points, and what phonetic spell- 
 ing shall we adopt ? I have no hesitation in saying 
 that the better spelling and pronunciation is chymist. 
 The question, however, is not what is the best or the 
 normally right, but what is. In this word orthog- 
 raphy has followed orthoepy, and has produced the 
 change in writing which the philologists prefer as a 
 guide to the changes in sound, to trace which is their 
 function. 
 
 In illustration of his views of pronunciation and 
 
 * Walker {Principles, etc., § 110) says that the sound of i as « in tht 
 first syllables of virgin and virtue "has a grossness in it approaching vul 
 parity.'*
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 69 
 
 spelling, and of their relations, Professor Newman 
 treats eleven numbered examples, which are here 
 considered in their order : — 
 
 (1.) Schedule being the only word in which sch 
 has the German sound, he proposes that it should be 
 written shedule, and that schism should be written 
 seism. But consistency would require that we should 
 write sism and sissors, if we make any change at all 
 in this direction ; and as to schedide, it would seem 
 better to pronounce it according to analogy with the 
 ch hard, as in scheme. This best agrees with the 
 derivation of the word, and conforms to the sound 
 of sch in most of those words in which ch is not si- 
 lent. For like reasons schism might better be pro- 
 nounced skism than written seism and pronounced 
 sism, as sceptre might better be pronounced skeptre 
 (like skeptic')., and not written and pronounced septer. 
 (2.) Clerk, sergeant, heart, and hearth have er or 
 ear for ar. It is proposed to extinguish these excep- 
 tions, and to write dark, sargeant, hart, and harth. 
 This proposal is made, as we have seen, in forgetful- 
 ness that the ar sound in these words is the old 
 sound, and that clurk, for example, although it is 
 coming in, is not yet the pronunciation of the best 
 English speakers. Is it not the better and the nat- 
 ural way to let the change go gradually on, until 
 these words conform to servant, person, and the like, 
 •ather than to make a radical change in their written 
 "orms ? 
 
 (3.) '■'■Yacht alone in the language has ch mute. 
 Who will regret the loss of the chf No one, proba- 
 bly, would mourn over it ; but if we insist on repre- 
 senting the present pronunciation of the word in 
 ivriting, why should we not write yot, and have done
 
 70 EVERY-DAY EXGLISH. 
 
 with it ? Once upon tliis road of literal conformity 
 of sign to sound, we cannot stop short of the end, al- 
 though it be absurdity and confusion. 
 
 (4.) As conceive and deceive make conceit and de- 
 ceit, " we see that receive ought to make receit ; the 
 p in receipt is surely a vexation." There seems to 
 be no objection to this. It is a good example of a 
 desirable change in orthography, and is of a kind 
 which will be brought about, we may be sure, in ^he 
 progress of time. 
 
 (5.) " Cruild,^^ Professor Newman says, " used to 
 rhyme with mild, child, and wild.^' It will surprise 
 most readers that he says, " I never heard, in my 
 early days, guild, Guildhall, sounded with short z." 
 So quickly do changes in pronunciation take place, 
 and so strange to the son are the vowels of his 
 father ! But here the change has been a conformity 
 to analogy, and should stand ; the mere fact that 
 giuilt is gratuitously confounded with gild being of no 
 importance. 
 
 (6.) In '"'' Parliament, ia has no proper place," we 
 are told, and that '■'' parlement is the old and only 
 right spelling." As to this there seems to be no 
 doubt. Here we have another example of a sound 
 and sensible change proposed in orthography, one 
 which should be adopted, and probably will be adopted 
 erelong. But it is to be observed that this change 
 s directly in the line of etymological conformity, and 
 also that it disturbs no established association as to 
 sound or as to sense. To changes of this kind no ob- 
 jection will be made by those who allow reason any 
 Bway in this matter. 
 
 (7.) In husg and business the sound of w as ^ 
 Professor Newman says, " is a peculiar anomaly
 
 ORTHOEPY AN) ORTHOGRAPHY. 71 
 
 irithout historical justification," and he adds that we 
 " ought, without hesitation, to write hisy, hishiess, if 
 not rather bizy, hiziness.''^ Etymology is in favor of 
 hisy, for the Anglo-Saxon is bisig ; but that was pro- 
 nounced heeneeg ; and hhy seems to be really a pho- 
 netic conformity to a change in the sound of the 
 word. For that in hu%y u has the sound of z, a pho- 
 nologist would be apt to dispute. True, it has the 
 sound of i in his and in ivisdom; but a phonologist 
 would say that that sound is not the sound of i, or of 
 a, e, 0, or m, but is one of those obscni^e vowel sounds 
 that have no representative in our alphabet. JBizy 
 and biziness, or more correctly bizness, may come 
 into vogue ; and, indeed, on the stage " business " 
 (meaning ilhistrative action on the part of the per- 
 formers) is called biz, which appears even upon 
 prompt-books ; but it may be questioned whether this 
 will greatly tend to further the acceptance of the 
 new orthography. And must we write hereafter 
 
 " How doth the little bizy be " ? 
 
 (8.) Professor Newman next considers one of the 
 eilent-letter combinations, which the phonetic reform- 
 ers set up as such tremendous stumbling-blocks. He 
 says, " Perhaps ten words end in mb with b mute." 
 Here he is not quite right ; there are more than twenty 
 vords (not counting the compounds) ending in mb, 
 ind in all of them the b is mute. In all, however, 
 excepting one, he would have the b suppressed, and 
 would write for tomb, womb, and lamb, toom, woom, 
 and lam. But in climb he would retain the b, be- 
 cause it has " both etymological reason and potential 
 life, as clamber shows ; " wherefo'-e " to write clime 
 for climb would be mere depravation. ' It seems to
 
 72 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 me that any student of language who is not bitten 
 with the phonetic mania would accept the last con* 
 elusion. Professor Newman would also have the b 
 sounded and the i short, which, with reason, he says 
 is, " I doubt not, the old and only true pronuncia- 
 tion." With equal reason he says that there would 
 be no more difficulty in pronouncing climb thus than 
 in sounding the p in limp^ imp, and jump. But 
 in tomb the b has etymological reason, the French 
 being tombeau, the Italian tomba ; and so with womb 
 and lamb, in which the b is from the Anglo-Saxon, 
 as we call the earliest form of our language. And 
 in two of these words the b has also a certain poten- 
 tial life, for it prevents tomb from becoming in sound 
 torn, and ivomb from undergoing a like change to 
 ivom. (We do, indeed, have in Old English, wame.^ 
 Now the introduction of oo into these words for the 
 preservation of their present pronunciation is one 
 of the strangest and most incongruous devices that 
 could be proposed in a scheme for simplifying and 
 normalizing orthography. For among all the anom- 
 alies in our written language, there is none greater 
 than that in virtue of which one a has the sound 
 of oh, but doubled the sound of u in rude. Re- 
 garded in the light of analogy and consistency, it is 
 simply monstrous. The necessity for its introduc- 
 tion well illustrates the entanglement of this whole 
 subject. Better a silent b which has etymological 
 reason than oo which has no reason, and which is a 
 phonetic monstrosity. As to the b in litjib, numb, 
 and thumb, having no etymological support for its 
 presence, it may well be dropped whenever the 
 whim takes us, as it probably will, to have no more 
 of it.
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. 73 
 
 (9.) There are in English two words beginning with 
 hu in which the u is superfluous. These are build and 
 but/ ; for, as Professor Newman well says, in buoy 
 careful speakers rightly sound the z<, and do not con- 
 found the word with boy. Build he would write bild^ 
 which is the spelling of the word in the German lan- 
 guage, from which he believes (disregarding the An- 
 glo-Saxon byldan, to establish) we adopted build; 
 but it must have been more than eight centuries ago. 
 In buy also, according to Professor Newman, the u has 
 no rightful place ; the Anglo-Saxon being bycgan and 
 the Old English bigge. But the Gothic bugjan has 
 Bome weight on the side of w, particularly as i does not 
 exactly represent y. Nevertheless, the u does not 
 seem important for any reason. As to change, Pro- 
 fessor Newman says, " Unless we are to extirpate gh 
 in nigh^ high, and many other words, it is obvious to 
 correct buy, buyer, into bigh, bigher,'' which seems a 
 violent change until we reflect that in the past tense 
 of buy, bought, we have the gh. This combination 
 I'epresents a guttural sound which without a doubt 
 used to be heard in all these words, and which they 
 still have in mouths of North of England and Low- 
 land Scots folk. 
 
 (10.) " The eccentric word women ought certainly 
 to be written wimeyi." Professor Newman gives no 
 reason for this very curt and absolute decision. The 
 reason which might be assigned for the change is 
 twofold : first pronunciation and next derivation, the 
 Anglo-Saxon word having been wif-man, the Old Eng- 
 lish wimmon. But wimen cannot be accepted as the 
 plural of woman; and are we prepared to accept wiman 
 *s the singular ? — to sing our songs and to give our 
 learts to wiman? Rather than this, shall we not ac-
 
 74 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 i^pt iviwen as an irregular, corrupt pronnuciation of 
 women, one of those deviations from strict rectitude 
 wliieb are graceful and pardonable ? 
 
 (11.) '''■Nephew should he neveio ; French nevgw." 
 But already there are indications that erelong nevew 
 will yield to ni'feic, as the pronunciation of this word 
 by the best speakers ; and then the chief reason for 
 the proposed change will have disappeared, and the 
 fate of the word in its new written form will illustrate 
 the difficulty of any deliberate and aggressive refor- 
 mation in language, and will also prefigure the fate 
 of other words which might undergo like transmuta- 
 tion. 
 
 These characteristic examples of changes in orthog- 
 raphy proposed by a man singularly capable of such 
 an undertaking, and one who has considered it care- 
 fidly, and moreover one who shows no conservative 
 shuddering at change, have a various value. It will 
 be seen that they all tend toward etymological con- 
 formity, rather than away from it, and that they seem 
 to do so in conformity to a law, or at least an im- 
 pulse, rather than because of a phonetic purpose on 
 the part of their suggester. They show on the part 
 of such a man as Professor Newman an instinctive 
 preference for an open, free, and manly utterance 
 t>f words. And as to spelling, — for the two sub- 
 jects of spelling and pronunciation are inseparable, 
 — they enable us to see, as it were in a little mir- 
 ror, the extreme difficulty (may it not bo said the 
 Impossibility ?) of making in the received spelling 
 of English such a general reform toward phonetic 
 exactness as would be at once effectual and accept- 
 able. By changes, even of the kind proposed by 
 Professor Newnuin himself, that which he elsewher*
 
 ORTHOEPY AND ORTHOGRAPHY. T5 
 
 calls the " nobler instrument " or medium of thought 
 — written language — would be degraded, if not 
 quite destroyed, as to its higher value. Briefly, we 
 are led to the conclusion that there is no choice 
 between a sweeping away of our present alphabet, 
 and with it of the noblest literature the world has 
 known, — a project rejected now even by the most 
 eminent phonologists, — and the allowing our present 
 orthography to remain, subject only to such gradually 
 shanging influences as have been silently at work 
 apon it for centuries.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ITNACCENTED VOWELS AND FINAL CONSONANTS. — 
 THE IRISH PRONUNCIATION. 
 
 The inquirers as to the true pronunciation of Eng- 
 lish are a great multitude. If they were told that the 
 right pronunciation for each one of them is just that 
 in the midst of which he was born and bred, many of 
 them would, receive the information with doubt and 
 wonder; of which, indeed, there would be some justi- 
 fication. And yet there would be also some reason 
 in the declaration ; for it would not be difficult to 
 maintain that for the members of any community 
 the right pronunciation of their mother tongue is that 
 which prevails among their kinsfolk, their friends, 
 and their neighbors. Of this all men may be sure : 
 that if they do adopt any other pronunciation they 
 will make themselves the subjects of invidious re- 
 mark, and pei'haps fail to attain the only end and 
 purpose of speech, — the being understood by those 
 to whom it is addressed. What people really mean 
 (although they may not know it) by the right pro- 
 nunciation of English is the pronunciation in vogue 
 in the most cultivated society in England, and chiefly 
 of London, and perhaps we may say of the two great 
 universities, Oxford and Cambridge. For persons of 
 rank and education, who were born and bred remote 
 fiom the British metropolis, and who have passed 
 xnoat of their lives in their own counties (particularly
 
 THE IRISH PRONUNCIATION, 77 
 
 if those are far northward or westward from Lon- 
 don), are rarely without peculiarities of utterance, 
 both m general tone and in the sounds of particular 
 words, which mark their speecn as " provincial." 
 
 Now, this pronunciation of cultivated Loi»don is 
 not uniform. It is marked with variations due to 
 several causes, one of which is affectation. There are 
 namby-pamby, dawdling speakers, who min:!e and 
 clip their words, and utter them without distinct ar- 
 ticulation ; and these speakers, notwithstanding that 
 they are reprehended by those who would preserve 
 a simple, strong, and manly speech, and ridiculed 
 (" Punch " makes fun of them), exert an influence. 
 Indeed, it is impossible for even one man to persist 
 'n a peculiarity of speech, if it is not too strangely 
 it variance with the common pronunciation, without 
 exercising a modifying influence upon the speech of 
 those around him. 
 
 The right pronunciation of English means the right 
 pronunciation now ; and the best pronunciation has 
 almost a conventional meaning, that is, the pronun- 
 ciation of the best society. But, as we have seen, 
 the pronunciation of this society may be really bad ; 
 affectation and fashion may change it for the worse. 
 Yet if the deterioration prevails, it must be accepted. 
 There is no help for this in language. We may see 
 plainly that a coming or even an accomplished change 
 is for tiie worse, and we may rightfully protest against 
 it ; but the change once effected, we must adopt it, 
 within certain limits, at least, or else we become sin- 
 gular ; and to be singular in speech is to be to a cer- 
 tain degree unintelligible. 
 
 As to the more strongly marked sound of words, 
 the consonants, the accented vowels, and the long
 
 78 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 unaccented vowels, there can be little diflBculty foi 
 any person whose edncation is sufficient to make un- 
 certainty embarrnssing. On those points the usage 
 which they may observe in every-day life, supple- 
 mented by the dicta of a good dictionary, will be suf- 
 ficient. It is in the minuter points that difficulty 
 lies. It is in the delicate but firm utterance of the 
 unaccented vowels with correct sound that the cult- 
 ured person is most surely distinguished from the 
 uncultured. No one has any difficulty in giving the 
 accented e and the accented o their proper sounds in 
 hysterical and historical ; but how lai'ge is the num- 
 ber of those who make the same distinction between 
 the unaccented e and the unaccented o in mystery 
 and history, in literal and littoral? And yet in that 
 and in like distinction lie the beauty and the elegance 
 of cultivated speech. The slovenly speaker "lumps" 
 almost all such vowels into the obscure sound of w, 
 Baying mystur-y, histur-y, litur-al, and littur-al, even 
 if he does not go further and say mystry, histry, 
 litrall, and litturl. The same abominable slovenli- 
 ness gives us Muzzuruh for Missouri, and FuVdelfy 
 for Philadelphia. So in such words as contrite, finite, 
 ViXiA female the unaccented vowels of the last syllable 
 being long, it must be an ingeniously bad speaker 
 who misutters them. But in such words as mutable, 
 emphasis, purpose, favorable, pliant, and lion, the 
 unaccented vowels are again all made short u by 
 slovens in speech, who pronounce them as mutuhble. 
 cmphusis, purpus (or puppus'), favoruble (or fav- 
 ruble^y pliunt^ liun. In like manner, the unaccented 
 a of the last syllable of such words as damage, rav' 
 age, savage, orange, is changed into the short, obscure 
 Bound of i; and we hear them pronounced damig 
 ravig, savig, oring.
 
 THK IRISH PRONUNCIATION. 79 
 
 It is to be regretted that in the discussion of this 
 part of his subject Professor Newman says merely 
 that " e and i ending an unaccented syllable cannot 
 be discriminated," and that in permeate, vegetate, perse- 
 vere, the sound of the unaccented e cannot be distin- 
 guished from that of the unaccented i in germinate, 
 parsimony, and purity, and that he speaks of this ob- 
 scurity as " the natural result of the stress placed 
 strongly on one syllable." Against this assertion I 
 protest. By those who speak English well a differ- 
 ence is made between the e of such words as the first 
 three and the i of such as the last ; a difference which 
 is effected by them, and the absence of which in the 
 speech of others is detected by them, with ease and 
 with certainty. They sny per-me-ate, making the e as 
 plain as if they said per-mee-ate, although they touch 
 it so lightly ; and when they say par-sim-ony, it is 
 quite impossible for an ear at all nice to mistake the 
 sound for par-8e-mony. 
 
 In so far as a correct and elegant utterance of Ens;- 
 lish is to be acquired by effort, it comes by atten- 
 tion to these details. A person who utters the vowel 
 sounds in the unaccented syllables of words correctly, 
 and whose r's, Z's, and final (i's and ^'s are heard, dis- 
 tinct but light upon his tongue, will have no difficulty 
 about the simpler matters, the sound of the accented 
 vowels. In fact, bad utterance may be said to be al- 
 ways the result of slovenliness in speech. Mere pro- 
 vincialism in pronunciation, which is generally in the 
 eound given to accented vowels, is venial in comparison 
 with slovenly speech, the effect of which is like that 
 of smearing and daubing the outlines of a painting 
 finished but not yet dry. Yet this habit prevails and 
 always has prevailed, with the result of a constant 
 degradation of speech, a phonetic decay in words.
 
 60 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 A perception of this fact in phonetics leads students 
 of language, not unnaturally, although perhaps vainly, 
 to seek for what may be called the best pronunciation 
 abstractly, irrespective of fashion, — the mere usage 
 of the day. The temptation to this inquiry is the 
 greater when, as now, there is an unprecedentedly 
 strong effort to make our written language conform 
 precisely to our speech. Professor Newman is very 
 decided upon this point. He says, " It is at least ab- 
 solutely necessary to define what is the right pronun- 
 ciation (whether or not we can persuade this genera- 
 tion to adopt it) before we can wisely begin so vast 
 a change as total remodeling of our orthography." 
 To this he adds as a corollary that " if in this gen- 
 eration we protest in favor of a right pronunciation, 
 and schools do their dut}^, the next generation will 
 grow up with a new ideal. The defective utterance 
 will be gradually thought vulgar." 
 
 This opinion is noticeable, first, for the position 
 taken in it that there is some other rule of right in 
 language than mere usage — a position not new to the 
 readers of " Words and their Uses." But, passing 
 this by without further comment, we ask, What is 
 the pronunciation which Professor Newman sets forth 
 as the best ? He says, " Of two rival pronunciations, 
 that is the better which better discriminates words 
 ind aids to fix the sense." This so plainly conforms 
 M reason and to the purpose of language that it will 
 hardly be controverted by any competent writer upon 
 the subject. 
 
 Passing from this general and somewhat abstract 
 consideration of the subject we may ask. What is the 
 best actual style of pronouncing English ? Is there a 
 WB.J of pronouncing English which in itself is best
 
 THE IRISH PRONUNCIATION. 81 
 
 Independent of the fashion of any day? I believe 
 that there is such a pronunciation, and some years 
 ago published my belief. It is with pleasure that I 
 find myself supported by the opinion of Professor 
 Newman, who declares liimself in favor of the Irish 
 pronunciation. 
 
 It need hardly be said that he does not desire to 
 introduce the Irish brogue, or brogues; for there are 
 several brogues, distinctive of various provinces. He 
 means the speech of educated Irish gentlemen and 
 ladies. Thus, for example, in carrying out the rule 
 of distinction of sense by pronunciation, he would 
 distinguish soul from sole by giving to soul the Irish 
 pronunciation, sotcl. As to r, he says, " Every Irish 
 gentleman seems to me accurately to pronounce it ; 
 and I do not doubt that he has the true, primitive 
 pronunciation, which we, from carelessness, have 
 lost." He speaks with approval of Irish ladies, who, 
 " without the smallest affectation or effort, pronounce 
 calm, pahn^ alms, just as they are written, retaining 
 the Z, and making the a short and sharp, as in man'^ 
 About half and calf he is not so sure, but he favors 
 the same pronunciation, and believes that such was 
 the English pronunciation once, and such ought to 
 be now. He would extend it to all words in aZ, — 
 walk, stalk, chalk, and balk. The many monosylla- 
 bles in 00, such as book, brook, cook, crook, look, foot, 
 wood, etc., he would pronounce with the long vowel 
 sound in cool, rule. In short (to pass by other res- 
 torations, such as that of the initial consonants in 
 words like knife, gnat, and psalm, which may here 
 only be alluded to), the changes which he regards 
 as necessary are all toward what we now call the 
 frish pronunciation. 
 «
 
 «2 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 For myself I have no hesitation in declaring in fa* 
 vor of the Irish pronmiciation of the words in which 
 a is sounded ah^ and in which the compounds ea and 
 ei have the sound of ay : sayt, not seet, for the word 
 seat^ and consayt, not conseet, for the word conceit; 
 ayther, nayther, not eether, neether^ or much worse 
 ither, nither. And who will doubt a moment that 
 richness and clearness and elegance are given to lan- 
 guage by the Irish r, the light roll of which gives us 
 born instead of bawn, car instead of cah, arms for 
 ahms, order for awduh, and lord for laivd; and which 
 puts a backbone into such words as corn, cart, court, 
 mortal, murky, warn, wear, short, and the like ! ^ 
 
 Whether a return, or even an approximation, to this 
 pronunciation is practicable is a question which I shall 
 not here discuss ; but I am glad of this occasion of 
 reiterating my opinion that the speech of educated 
 Irish gentlemen represents the pronunciation of the 
 English language at its best, — in the Elizabethan pe- 
 riod, the period of Shakespeare and Bacon, and of our 
 translation of the Bible. It has been preserved, at 
 least in a great measure, among educated people of 
 English blood whose forefathers settled in the north 
 of Ireland. As to the silent I in calm and calf, and 
 other clipped and silent letters, there is an illustration 
 in " Love's Labor 's Lost." Plolofernes, the scliool- 
 
 1 That the r in iron is slighted by many speakers, and by not a few 
 who should be ashamed of such slovenliness, I had of course observed; 
 but I was not prepared to find, on turniui^ to Storuionth's dictionarj-, as I 
 read the proof of this page, that Mr. Piielp gives i'ern as the pronuncia- 
 tion of that fine word. I could pardon him for pronouncing pewter peW' 
 lah ; but to lose the r in the word iro7i is almost as bad as it would be to 
 iiose the strength in the metal. Without the r we should lose, with thf 
 Ibyine, half the sense and all the edge of Butler's couplet, — 
 
 "Ah me, the perils that environ 
 The man that meddles with cold iron I "
 
 THE IRISH PRONUNCIATION. 83 
 
 master, speaking of Armado, whom he ridicules and 
 Bcoffs at for his affectation in speech, says that he ab- 
 hors " sucli rackers of orthography as to speak dout, 
 fine, when he should say doubt; det, when he should 
 pronounce debt^ — debt, not det; he clepeth [calls] 
 a calf cauf, half hanf, neir/hbour vocatur nebour ; neigh 
 abbreviated we." And I have myself heard the Z pro- 
 nounced in talk and such like words in Cheshire, 
 England.^ There is no doubt that most of these now 
 Bilent letters were heard in Elizabethan English.^ 
 
 How great the difference is between the sound of 
 Elizabethan English and that of the court of Victoria 
 may be seen by comparing a passage from Hamlet 
 as it is spoken now with the same passage as it was 
 spoken in the year 1600 : — 
 
 "Is it not monstrous that this player here, 
 But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
 Could force his soul so to his own conceit. 
 That from her worlving all his visage warm'd; 
 Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect, 
 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting 
 With forms to his conceit ; and all for nothing." 
 
 Expressed as it best raaj^ be in the spelling of our 
 day,*it was then spoken thus : — 
 
 1 On my mentioning this to a distinguished Oxford professor and aa- 
 tnor, he told me that be pronounced the I in talh and in all similar 
 words. 
 
 2 In taking this position with Professor Newman, I may be pardoned for 
 FJiying that the view of English pronunciation which he presents was set 
 forth in detail more than twenty years ago, in the Memnrnndumn of 
 English Pronnnciation in the Elizabethan Ei-a, appended to the twelfth 
 Tolume of my edition of Shakespeare, 18G3. It was reprinted by Alex- 
 ander Ellis in his great work on tlie history of English pronunciation, 
 Bs being the first attempt to show the pronunciation of the Elizabetlian 
 period. Mr. Ellis gave it a modified assent, which I have good reason 
 to believe would now be far more comprehensive. I am, of course, much 
 gratified at having the support of suet opinion as that of Professor New 
 nan.
 
 84 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH, 
 
 '^Eeg eet not monstroos thot thees player hai'e, 
 Boot ten a.feec-sy-on, een a dhrame of pass-y-on, 
 Coold force hees sowl so to Jiees own consate, 
 Thot from her working all hees veesac/e warm'd; 
 Tares een hees ayes; deesthraction een 's aspect, 
 A broken voice, and hees whole foonction shooting 
 Weet forms to hees consate ; and all for noting." 
 
 To many readers, to most, it will seem irapossille 
 that these can be the spoken words that Shakespeare 
 wrote, and they will regard this pronunciation as ri- 
 diculous. A Hamlet that spoke the soliloquy thus 
 would now be received with shrieks of laughter, if he 
 had not before been driven from the stage, when he 
 broke in upon the Ghost with, " O mee prophetic sowl, 
 meen ooncle /" But I am as sure as I can be of 'dx^j- 
 thing that I do not know of my personal knowledge, 
 that Shakespeare so spoke those words, if he ever 
 spoke them, and that Burbage so spoke them on the 
 stage. This I said nearly twenty years ago. As 
 to the ridiculousness of the pronunciation, nothing 
 in pronunciation is essentially ridiculous. We laugh 
 merely at that to which we are unaccustomed. We 
 may be sure that Shakespeare would have laughed as 
 much at our pronunciation as we do at his. And 
 from laughing at "-Hamlet" we are saved only by the 
 fact that it is preserved to us, not in a phonographic, 
 but in a conventional, orthography.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "AMERICAN" SPEECH. 
 
 I NEVER am at Wallack's Theatre without wishing 
 that more people were in the habit of going there ; 
 or, rather, as that could hardly be without lessening 
 the comfort and risking the safety of those who do 
 go, I wish that there were four or five " Wallack's " 
 in New York, and two or three in Boston and in Phil- 
 adelphia, and one in every smaller town throughout 
 the country. For there one not only sees good plays 
 and good acting, but hears good English speech. Of 
 the dreadful misuse of our mother tongue of which va- 
 rious eminent artists upon various " sensational " and 
 " emotional " stages are guilty, I have said something 
 -Isewhere ; and I shall say nothing more here, except 
 to remark that the mere fact that these artists attain 
 popularity with such an utterance of English shows 
 how thoroughly the ear of the general public is de- 
 praved, how dull it is, how incapable of apprehending 
 beauties or defects in spoken language. Indeed, the 
 indifference of people in this respect is astonishing ; 
 and it is the more so because of their fussy sensitive- 
 ness upon other points of language which are of much 
 less importance. Of the numberless questions in re- 
 gard to language which have from time to time been 
 addressed to me, — I can't see exactly why, and I 
 wish that it had not been so, — almost all were as to 
 what the inquirers called " good grammar," or spell-
 
 BQ EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ing, or some utterly insignificant and contemptible 
 dispute.^ 
 
 As to the most important points of language, speech, 
 the manner of utterance, and the right use of words, 
 few persons or none seem to have any concern. Every 
 one assumes, or seems to assume, that his mode oi 
 speech is just what it ought to be, or he regards the 
 subject as one of no consequence. The former la 
 probably the state of most men's minds upon the sub- 
 ject, and the assumption is unconscious. For the 
 speech amid which we have grown up, and by which 
 our ears and our tongues have been educated through 
 childhood and adolescence, so that we have adopted 
 it unconsciously, is necessarily to us the natural and 
 proper utterance of our mother tongue. We think of 
 it hardly more than we think of the air we breathe 
 or of the light by which we see. We are concerned 
 about it no more than we are about our way of walk- 
 ing. Not even when those whose intonation and 
 enunciation are bad find themselves in the company 
 of those who are irreproachable in these respects dc 
 they doubt the propriety of their own speech. In- 
 deed, unless they have sensitive ears and are more 
 than commonly observant, they do not perceive the 
 difference between their own manner of speech and 
 that of the others. They will suppose that they 
 themselves are speaking just as they are spoken to. 
 But (and this is very remarkable and significant), 
 let the person who speaks properly change his mode 
 of utterance for theirs, even in a single phrase, and 
 
 1 As, for instance, whether it is " proper " to say "To-morrow is Mon- 
 day," or " lo-niorrow will be Mondaj' ; " as to which, although it is not s 
 Diatter worth a moment's thought of anj' reasonable creature, I have re 
 reived at least one hundred letters, besides the personal inquiries, whick 
 I fear that I may not have always answered with unruffled temper.
 
 "AMERICAN" SPEECH. 87 
 
 the change will be noticed instantly, and resented, 
 either openly or silently. The self-confident and un- 
 perceiving person of a moment before at once per- 
 ceives his failing, and is angered at being " mocked." 
 Thus is the ear at the same time sensitive to the 
 slightest changes in the speech of others, and habitu- 
 ally dull and im perceptive in regard to the utterance 
 of the lips which are its constant associates. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly asserted, and it can 
 hardly be too often repeated in the discussion of this 
 subject, that no dictionary, no book on elocution, can 
 teach the proper way of speaking English. That 
 comes, as I have said before, only through the ear, by 
 constantly hearing English well spoken, and by imi- 
 tation, generally unconscious, of good speech. This 
 is why a general and frequent attendance of the 
 "American" public at " Wallack's " is so much to be 
 desired, because there is no other place of public re- 
 sort where English is so correctly spoken. I will not 
 say "so correctly," but simply and plainly that there 
 is no other that I know of where it is correctly spoken, 
 and that I know here no public school of English 
 speech equal to that pleasant one in which lessons 
 may be taken by listening to Mr. Wallack, Mr. Gil- 
 bert, Miss Dyas, and their fellow-artists. 
 
 Usage, of the highest authority and greatest weight 
 in all departments of language, is in pronunciation 
 the supreme and absolute arbiter. With regard to 
 others, reason, historical affiliation, and logical co- 
 herence have some weight, be it moi"e or less ; but if, 
 for example, it is the habit of the best society to call 
 a certain ornamental vessel a vaws, a vatvs it is, and 
 there an end ; that is English. Now, what usage is 
 to decide this question of the sound of the names w-a
 
 B8 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 give to tilings and thoughts and actions? — for that 
 is pronunciation. Is it the usage of Texas, or of 
 California, or of Tennessee ? There are intelligent, 
 educated, polite people in all those places, I am will- 
 ing to believe (for I have never been in any one of 
 them). But is the usage even of such people in 
 those places a standard of the pronunciation of Eng 
 lish ? Is even the usage of scholars and professors 
 and philologists there, or in New England, or in New 
 York, to which I have been referred, authoritative 
 upon this point ? I think not. A man may be very 
 learned, even in language, and yet his use of language, 
 in construction, in the sense of words, and, above all, 
 in their pronunciation, may be very far from an ac- 
 ceptable standard of English. 
 
 In saying that the standard of pronunciation is and 
 must be mere usage, the usage of those who are of 
 the highest social culture and position, I am merely 
 uttering a truism. Indeed, this usage is the accepted 
 standard of orthoepy. The mere opinions of an}^ per- 
 son, however learned in language, are as the dust of 
 the balance when weighed against this usage. Upon 
 this point the speech of a well-bred woman, accustomed 
 all her life to the best society, may be of more value 
 than the opinions of a whole faculty of professors, 
 although she may not know a vowel from a consonant. 
 There is but one proviso, — that the society in which 
 she has grown up shall be the best English society. 
 
 The complaint, which comes to me from more than 
 one quarter, that the term " Americanism " is ap- 
 plied to peculiar use of language in a derogatory 
 sense is not surprising ; but it is unreasonable. For 
 English is the language spoken by English people 
 and while the most important and the most cultivated
 
 "AMERICAN' SPEECH 89 
 
 part of the English race, that which is the direct con- 
 tinuation of the original stock, remains in England, 
 where it was first planted and grew to maturity, it is 
 manifestly to England that we are to go if we would 
 find that which is emphatically and unquestionably 
 English. 
 
 The usage of polite society regulates pronunciation ; 
 and that there is very polite society in Texas and in 
 California the dwellers in those places most vehe- 
 mently declare, and I shall not deny. But with the 
 utmost respect for its intelligence and its politeness, 
 we must all admit, I think, that it is not English 
 society, or that it is so in a modified and limited 
 sense of the term. Therefore, it is not to Texas, or 
 to California, or to Maine, or indeed to any place in 
 " America," that we should go to find our standard 
 English, whether in word, in idiom, or in pronuncia- 
 tion. The language spoken in those places may be a 
 very polite one, very admirable in every respect, but 
 it is not necessarily standard English ; and just in so 
 far as it deviates from the language of the most 
 cultivated society in England it fails to be English. 
 
 And this, true generally as to the language, is es- 
 pecially true as to its pronunciation. For idiom, the 
 sense of words, and the structure of the sentence are 
 preserved in English literature, in a great measure at 
 least, to all English-speaking people. On these points 
 the books of the best writers exemplify a standard 
 o which all may conform, and to which in a meas- 
 ure most writers do conform. But books do not 
 convey, they do not profess to convey, they cannot, 
 if their writers would, convey the tones and inflec- 
 tions of speech. These are almost inexpressible. I 
 tb^nk that they are really quite inexpressible by oi'-
 
 90 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 thoepists themselves, even to each other. " Webster " 
 and " Worcester " are vakiable in this respect only 
 just in so far as they record and are able to express 
 the usage of the best English speakers. Smart, per- 
 haps the most unexceptionable of British orthoepists 
 that have yet attained reputation, has only a like po- 
 sition. In any discussion of pronunciation which is 
 not merely at second hand, we must go to the au- 
 thority to which " Webster " and " Worcester," and 
 even Smart himself, must submit; and any person 
 who has not direct acquaintance with that, and who 
 has not been able to satisfy himself, by his own close 
 self-observation and by the testimony of others, of the 
 delicacy and discrimination of his ear, has no right to 
 speak upon the subject, except as a quoter of the au- 
 thority of others ; that is, not at all. 
 
 Moreover, as to pronunciation, " American " obser- 
 vation is very untrustworthy ; for it is in this respect 
 that the speech of the " average American," how- 
 ever " polite " and " intelligent " he may be, is most 
 likely to deviate from the true English standard. The 
 greater number of " Americans " speak vilely ; they 
 have a bad tone of voice, and very unpleasant inflec- 
 tions, in great variety of unpleasantness, according to 
 the place of their birth and breeding. It is only in 
 a comparatively small, although actually numerous, 
 circle of people of high social culture, in New Eng- 
 land and New York, and in the latter place among 
 those of New England birtli, or very direct descent, 
 that the true standard of English speech is found in 
 this country. 
 
 I do not refer to rusticity or to provincialism. A 
 man may say sarvant for servant, furnitoor for fur* 
 niture^ and even caouiv or coo for cou\ and yet b«
 
 " AMEBl JAN " SPEECH. 91 
 
 free from all the faults which are most striking and 
 unpleasant in average "American " speech. Of these 
 faults, the first to be remarked, as being both the 
 most obvious and the most radical, is the lack of 
 a free delivery of the voice. After you have left 
 " Wallack's," or the company of people who speak 
 as the artists there do, listen to the talk of people in 
 the omnibus or the railway car as you go home, and 
 if your ear is quick and perceptive, you will at onco 
 notice a difference in the mere utterance of the voice. 
 With the former, it seems to come from the chest, 
 higher or lower, with unconscious freedom, and with- 
 out any other obstacle to the passage of the air than 
 that produced by the tongue, teeth, and lips in ar- 
 ticulating the syllables. With the latter there is con- 
 straint of one kind or another ; the vowel sounds are 
 not free, clear, pure. 
 
 The most conmion fault is that nasality which is not 
 a snarl, a whine, or a grunt, but which yet partakes 
 of the qualities of all these graces. We call it, or 
 rather others call it for us, speaking through the nose. 
 But this phrase is incorrect as a description of this 
 mode of utterance ; for nasality is produced by not 
 speaking through the nose. That organ, instead of 
 being left free to perform its important office in our 
 bpeech, is more or less closed. It is spoken through, 
 but not freely ; and therefore I have said that the 
 faults of speech to which I have referred are all due to 
 «ome kind of constraint upon free utterance. If there 
 \vere no such constraint or interference with the free 
 and natural action of the vocal organs, there might 
 be faults indeed, but they would not be such as are 
 characteristic of so large a proportion of " American *' 
 ipeech.
 
 92 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Now, this constraint is due in a great measure to 
 self-consciousness, to awkward effort. It comes, of 
 course, largely by the mere contagion of bad speech ; 
 for so come almost all such faults. Webster strangely 
 attributed it to the deference with which all New 
 England people treat each other, the consequence of 
 which was an effort to subdue the bold, free utterance 
 of the voice. ^ The assigned cause is a very fanciful 
 one, so much so that it is hardly worthy of serious 
 consideration ; and whatever may have been the def- 
 erential politeness of New England manners in the 
 lexicographer's youth (and there is I'eason for believ- 
 ing that it was great and general), it is certain that 
 the effect has survived the assigned cause. It is to 
 be said, however, that in language, as in all other hu- 
 man affairs, effects do survive causes, which is the 
 best reason that could be given for resisting the temp- 
 tation to step out of the right way temporarily, even 
 for a seemingly good reason. 
 
 This nasality of speech, it is almost needless to say, 
 is so common that it has come, very anjustl}^, to be 
 regarded as a general and distinctive trait of " Amer- 
 ican " speech. There are households, there are even 
 social circles, in which it is never heard ; there are 
 kmilies of the oldest New England stock in which 
 Ihe three living generations, from grandfather to 
 grandchild, have not the slightest taint of it ; which 
 is good evidence that there have been families in New 
 
 England from its earliest period in which this mode 
 of speech never was heard. And yet, as you take 
 
 bus or car in the afternoon, hear the little newsboy 
 cry his Telegra-a-a-em^ prolonging the last syllable, 
 Ikud snarling and whining it out until it twists itself 
 
 1 Diuertations on the English Language, 1789, page 106.
 
 "AMERICAN" SPEECH. 93 
 
 ill to your ears like a rusty cork-screw ! And there 
 Is liardly one chance in a thousand that that little fel* 
 low is not the son of two Irish peasants, who have no 
 more nasality in their speech than a bull has in his 
 bellow. Whence is the direful influence that has 
 brought him to his hideous utterance of that sylla- 
 ble ? Why can he not say gram^ which is so much 
 more easily said ? If his parents had remained in Ire- 
 land or had gone to England, he would have done so. 
 In England, for example, if you want a draught, half 
 porter and half ale, you hear the waiter or the bar- 
 maid call it ahf arC ahf. But go to a " dairy " here 
 and ask for a glass of half cream and half milk, 
 and you will hear it called ha-a-ef a-a-end, a strong 
 emphasis being laid upon the conjunction, which is 
 whined out in a little snarling voice ; whereas in 
 England it is clipped almost down to 'w, and the 
 voice is allowed to rest broadly upon the ah sound 
 of both the halfs. 
 
 What is it that has so vitiated the voices of most 
 " American " men, and still more of most " Ameri- 
 can " women ? For there is no doubt that the fairei 
 Bex are in this respect the least to be admired. Among 
 fifty men you will find perhaps ten or a dozen who 
 will open their mouths and speak clearly and freely ; 
 but among fifty women not more than two or three. 
 
 This it is chiefly which here so diminishes the 
 iharms of that sex which in England dehghts the ear 
 even more than it does the eye. Among the general 
 public here, the public of the railway car and the ho- 
 tel, the woman who has not this vice is a rare excep- 
 tion. You shall see a lovely, bright creature, with all 
 the external evidences of culture about her, a woman 
 who will carry you captive so long as she is silent ;
 
 94 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 but let her open her pi-etty lips, and she shall pieroe 
 your ear with a mean, tliin, nasal, rasping tone, by 
 which at once you are disenchanted. An English- 
 woman, even of the lower classes, will delight you 
 with the rich, sweet, smooth, and yet firm and cri?r) 
 tones in which she utters what may perhaps be very 
 bad "grammar." 
 
 In addition to the inferior quality of the voice in 
 most " American " women, and their defective utter- 
 ance, they have a fault, and a great one, which also 
 comes of constraint and consciousness. It is an en- 
 deavor to speak with emphasis. This is carried to such 
 an extent that some women emphasize almost every 
 word they utter I heard one the other day, in speak- 
 ing the following words, emphasize ever}^ one of them 
 strongly, with an upward nasal inflection, — every 
 one but the last : " Say what you will, folks will 
 talk ; an' do what j'ou will, you can't help it," Now, 
 Englishwomen of the lowest grade don't shoot their 
 words out at j^ou in that manner. They speak with 
 evenness and ease ; and so unconsciously they speak 
 well and please the ear. To the contrary method 
 may be attributed not a little of the inferiority in 
 speech of " American " women. 
 
 And since I am telling unpleasant truths about 
 ourselves, I may as well say here that there is more 
 of this among both Western men and women than 
 iimong thosii in other quarters of the country. I re- 
 "iently went into one of our most frequented theatres 
 to pass an hour. There was a scene in progress ; 
 and I remained for a while standing just within the 
 :loor. A lady was doing some emotional business 
 with high manifestation of toilet and gesticulation 
 [ listened a few minutes, and then, turning to an ap
 
 " AMERICAN '" SPEECH. 96 
 
 parently oflScial person, I asked him who she was ; 
 for the situations and the personages of the play were 
 unknown to me. " That," he replied, in a tone of 
 Bome awe (for she was the " leading lady," and she 
 had been playing to very full houses), and looking 
 at me much as if I had asked a like question as to 
 General Grant, or the statue of Washington in the 
 B(juare, "that is Miss ," naming a Western act- 
 ress of some celebrity. I listened for a few min- 
 utes more, and then fled the house. The tone of her 
 voice propelled me from the door like a pellet from 
 a pop-gun. All the emotional and sensational con- 
 vulsions into which she could have fallen would not 
 have allured me to sit under her ministrations of the 
 English language for one quarter of an hour. And 
 her speech bewrayed her as if she had been a female 
 Peter ; for I knew, before I was told, that she must 
 have come from the region west of the Alleghanies. 
 
 The constraint upon the delivery of the voice which 
 BO generally mars " American " speech is not con- 
 fined to nasality. It shows itself in various ways, to 
 describe which is very difficult ; while to represent 
 them by any arrangement of letters is quite impossi- 
 ble. Indeed, a like difficulty obtains in regard to the 
 description and representation of correct enunciation. 
 In nothing do words fail so signally as in their power 
 to describe words ; in nothing do letters, which are 
 supposed to represent sounds, fall so short as in con- 
 veying correct ideas of the sounds produced by the 
 human voice. This I have remarked in regard to 
 pronunciation ; and in regard to enunciation the dif- 
 ficulty is so much greater that it amounts almost 
 to impossibility. I can only lepeat that constraint, 
 leedless effort, conscious or unconscious, seems to me
 
 96 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 to be the chief cause of the common peculiarities and 
 defects of "American" speech. 
 
 What may be called a throaty utterance is quite 
 common, although it is not nearly so much so as 
 nasality. It is produced by a rigid tension of the 
 muscles of the throat and glottis, which gives a hard, 
 inflexible tone to the voice. It is of all the defects 
 produced by conscious effort the most striking in the 
 revelation of its cause. It can be cured only, I be- 
 lieve, by opening the mouth vride, and by then ut- 
 tering the syllable ah from the chest. This, indeed, 
 is the one great remedy for almost all faults of utter- 
 ance. Put in practice many times a day, it will, by 
 patient trial, do more than can be done in any other 
 way to make the utterance of the voice pure, pleas- 
 ant, natural. This sound ah is primal, — the fun- 
 damental sound of all speech. Without the power 
 to utter it freely from the chest, no one can speak 
 well, no one can sing in a style that deserves the 
 name of singing. Listen to all vocal artists of a high 
 order, and you will see that they open their mouths 
 freely, and pour out their voices upon this syllable 
 ah right from the chest. This is what musical critics 
 mean when they speak of a pure and free delivery of 
 the voice. Now, listen to most of the dreadful ama- 
 teur singing which your social duties require you to 
 undergo, and you will observe that the singers are 
 uttering, and generally with a guttui'al tone, oo and 
 ugh and igh and egh^ and all other vowel sounds ex- 
 sept ah. Besides this, you will find that they under- 
 take to sing the consonants ; that is, all of them that 
 can be prolonged, the wi's, w's, «^'s, Z's, etc. On the 
 contrary, the good singer makes the consonants as 
 Bhort and as crisp as possible, mere sharp divisions
 
 " AMERICAN " SPEECH. 97 
 
 between tlie vowels. Now, a good speaker does the 
 Bame. Of course, the vowels are not prolonged by 
 him as they are in singing, but they ai-e uttered with 
 the same purity and freedom, and the consonants are 
 made mere dividing lines, the means of sharp and 
 clear syllabification. 
 
 At the same time it must be admitted that there is 
 often a remarkable unlikeness in the same person be- 
 tween the speaking and the singing voice and the 
 speaking and the singing utterance. The former is 
 sometimes thin, harsh, and constrained, while the lat- 
 ter is comparatively rich, sweet, and free ; and what 
 is more remarkable, a man will speak tenor and sing 
 bass, and the contrary. The pitch and quality of the 
 singing voice seem to depend, not at all upon the size 
 of the man, of his chest, or even of his throat, but 
 upon the nose and the frontal sinuses, I have re- 
 marked that most bass singers have these largely 
 developed, and that tenors generally have straight 
 or at least small noses and smooth foreheads. Not- 
 withstanding the difference sometimes found between 
 the singing and the speaking voice, what I have just 
 uaid in regard to the analogy between them, and the 
 advantage of training the latter as the best Italian 
 teachers train the former, — as to utterance at least, 
 — is, I believe, sound and of general application. 
 
 In regard to the pronunciation and enunciation of 
 words, the striking defect of common " American " 
 speech is again due to constraint, to conscious effort. 
 The " average American " tries to pronounce too dis- 
 tinctly. He is conscious about his syllables, and 
 seems to talk with the spelling-book before his eyes. 
 He is in constant fear of the "• dictionary," that Jug- 
 gernaut of speech. The result is that while he may
 
 98 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Blight some syllables unconsciously he gives undue 
 emphasis and a ridiculous importance to others, which 
 are generally those tliat are passed over most lightly 
 and trippingly by the best English speakers. This is 
 remarkably the case in the course of a discussion, even 
 of the most casual and informal character. Then 
 do the speakers dwell upon those important words, 
 "for," "to," "with," "by," "and;" then do they 
 lay themselves out largely upon the prefixes, " ex," 
 " in," " con," " ad," and the like. It is amazing and 
 amusing to hear them say ex-clude, in-clude, con-fer, 
 ad-mit, separating the prefix from the following syl- 
 lables, and even laying some emphasis upon it, in- 
 stead of giving it a light and slight, although crisp 
 and clear, enunciation. 
 
 Having had occasion to refer to " Martin Chuzzle- 
 wit " on the day on which this chapter was written, 
 but for a purpose not connected with it, I was struck 
 as I turned the leaves with the evidence of Mr. Dick- 
 ens's acute and close observation in this respect. He 
 was a caricaturist, and generally a gross caricaturist, 
 although a most humorous one; but he was an un- 
 commonly keen observer, and his perception was quite 
 equal to his humor. There are passages in "Martin 
 Chuzzlewit " which are rather rough reading for the 
 American eagle, but many of them embody truth 
 which is well worth the consideration of the very 
 'Americans" to whom they will give the greates 
 offense. But to turn to the illustration which the 
 book affords of the remarks I have just made upon 
 enunciation. General Choke says that he is " ac-tive 
 and spry " in his country's service, and the land 
 agent at Eden that " there ain't no such location in 
 the territoi^ry of the U-nited States." The genera.
 
 "AMERICAN" SPEECH. 99 
 
 again says to Martin, " I wish you joy of your 
 po-session. You air now, Sir, a denizen of the most 
 powerful and highly civilized do-minion that has ever 
 graced the world, — a do-minion, Sir, where man is 
 bound to man in one vast bond of equal love and 
 truth. May you. Sir, be worthy of your a-dopted 
 country." The unnamed gentleman who introduces 
 the great Mrs. Hominy says that she "belongs toe 
 one of our most aristocratic families," and when 
 he leaves her with Martin wishes her a " pleasant 
 pro-gress." Captain Kedgick says, " Our people like 
 ex-citement," and that nobody " ever comes back 
 a-live " from Eden. General Fladdock, in New York, 
 exclaims, "• Oh, the con-ventionalities of that a-mazing 
 Europe ! " and again, " the ex-clusiveness, the pride, 
 the form, the ceremony," — emphasizing, Dickens 
 adds, " the article " more vigorously at every repeti- 
 tion. 
 
 Amongst his caricaturings Dickens has caricatured 
 men and things in " America " grossly ; but this is 
 hardly caricature. I hear speech like this often ; gen- 
 erally in public places, but sometimes, although very 
 rarely, even in the most cultivated social circles. 
 I know a lady belonging by all admission to those 
 circles who never says, " I don't believe it," but, " I 
 don't be-lieve it." The emphasis which Dickens 
 makes General Fladdock lay upon " the " is very 
 common, particularly among public speakers, when 
 they are enumerating facts, principles, or planks in 
 a platform. But even by other speakers and at other 
 times the word is pronounced like " thee " instead of 
 ' the." 
 
 Much of all this comes from public-school teach- 
 ing, and from the tyranny oV the spelling-book and
 
 100 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 the dictionary. Instead of speaking without thought 
 as to their speech, these speakers are trying to be 
 exact, to talk like a book, to speak dictionaiy Eng- 
 lish. A word to them is not simply a sound which 
 expresses a thought or a thing, but something which 
 is spelled, and which they must carefully pronounce 
 according to its spelling. This is illustrated by the 
 strange work that is made with proper names. 
 
 It is a rule in all languages, and among all peo- 
 ples, that the pronunciation of proper names is, so to 
 speak, arbitrary ; that is, that their pronunciation is 
 decided entirely by custom, without regard to the 
 way in which they are spelled. But in " America," 
 recently, that is, in the United States, the custom baa 
 come up of pronouncing them rigidly according to 
 their spelling. Thus we not only have War-wick and 
 Wor-ces-ter instead of WaricTc and Wooster^ but the 
 Shawangunk Mountains, which in our youth were the 
 Shongo Mountains, are now ASAa-waw-^ww^, with the n 
 and the k thrust into our ears ; and poor Lake Win- 
 nipiseogee, instead of its old name, Winipisaukie, has 
 every syllable given to it that can be extorted from 
 its letters by a school-ma'am. Delhi, a name ab- 
 surdly given to a town in Alleghany County, is called 
 Dell-high^ when its real name is as nearly as possible 
 Daily. Still further west, Terre Haute is called 
 Terry Hut., an amazing conformity to the spelling- 
 book. If an uneducated man were to write its real 
 name phonographically. Tare Hoht., he would not be 
 nearly so ridiculous as those who find its name, not 
 in a word, but in an assemblage of printed signs. In 
 the city of New York there has been of very late 
 years a remarkable change of name effected by thi« 
 rule of spelling-book. " What," said to me an elderlj
 
 "AMERICAN" SPEECH. 101 
 
 gentleman, a member of a highly respected old New 
 York family, " what do these people mean by Dez- 
 bros-sez Street ? There 's no such street. The name 
 is De Broose Street." He then informed me that the 
 street was named after a family whose name was 
 Bpelled " Desbrosses," but pi'onounced De Broose, and 
 that until it appeared on the street cars it was al- 
 ways so pronounced. I myself have been astonished 
 to hear the family name of an old friend and college 
 classmate of mme — Van Schaick, which time out of 
 mind was pronounced Von Scoik — lately spelling- 
 booked into Van Shake. This solicitude to conform 
 sound to letter has become a disease among us. It 
 exists in no other country ; and here it is due chiefly 
 to common school teaching. 
 
 To those who have gone with me thus far it will 
 be now hardly necessary to repeat that the mere fact 
 that certain pronunciations ai'e common among " po- 
 lite " and " educated " people in various parts of the 
 United States cannot be accepted as at all decisive 
 upon the question as to the correct pi'onunciation of 
 \ single English word. On the other hand, it must 
 lot be assumed that even in England or in London, 
 where the best results of English culture have been 
 Drought together for many generations, and where 
 '.hey have a permanent establishment and a tradi- 
 tional continuity of influence, there is a rigid uni- 
 formity of pronunciation, a standard by which every 
 person is or may be tried, at the peril of being con- 
 demned as illiterate or ill-bred for lack of conformity. 
 Such criticism of each other's language is not at all 
 ■.he habit of people of the best culture and breeding, 
 who, even as to their own pronunciation as well as 
 their "grammar," are generally quite thoughtless, if
 
 102 EVERY-DAY KNGLISH. 
 
 not indifferent. They speak and write unconsciously 
 the language that they hear spoken around them, and 
 therewith the}'^ are content. Professor Whitney says, 
 in his "Elements of English Pronunciation," that 
 " he who cannot take to pieces his own native ut- 
 terance lacks the true foundation on which every- 
 thing else should repose." But it should be remarked 
 that, unless I misapprehend him, this refers not to 
 correct pronunciation, but to the comprehension of 
 phonetics. Among those who speak the best Eng- 
 lish there is not one in a thousand who is more ca- 
 pable of taking his own utterance to pieces than of 
 conjugating a Sanskrit verb of the seventh class; and 
 this I believe no one would more readily admit than 
 Professor Whitney.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 READING. 
 
 In the course of school studies, reading usually 
 follows spelling ; and I believe that it is generally 
 assumed that ability to spell must precede the abil- 
 ity to read. If by ability to spell is meant that of 
 spelling correctly according to the received standard, 
 this assumption is not well founded, as will be seen 
 upon a moment's reflection. In the city of New 
 York, fur example, there are very few persons, if any, 
 among those above the very lowest condition of life, 
 who cannot read, and who do not read more or less 
 daily. Newspapers are in all hands. But of these 
 people, there are a great many, and, if we are to be- 
 lieve the complaints of the spelling reformers, there 
 must be a very large proportion, who, if they were 
 jailed upon to write a letter, or to take part in a 
 'spelling-bee," would surely be guilty of some great 
 mistakes in orthography. 
 
 To return to our newspaper readers, no proof other 
 than their daily performances is required that spell- 
 ing, correct spelling, is not a necessary accompani- 
 ment of the ability to read, and therefore need not 
 precede it. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that of 
 the many (absolutely many, but comparatively few) 
 who would themselves be unable to wnte a short 
 Bentence without spelling a word or two unfashion- 
 ibly, nearly all would be disturbed if they found the
 
 104 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 words over Avliich tliey tripped printed unusually. 
 The very mistakes which they made themselves would 
 annoy them in print. They might not be able to 
 point out tlie errors with certainty, but the words 
 containing them would not " look right." In making 
 this assertion I am not speaking upon probabilities, 
 but upon the result of observation and experiment. 
 The explanation of this apparent paradox is that, 
 although we begin to spell before we begin to read, 
 we learn spelling chiefly by reading. It is not by 
 standing in a row and saying v-a-1 val, e, vale, t-u too, 
 valetoo, d-i di, valetoodi, n-a nay, valetoodinay, r-i ri, 
 valetoodinayri, a-n an, valetoodinayrian, that we mas- 
 ter our written language. It is not by remembering, 
 or, as some folk say, by " memorizing," the syllabic 
 construction of words that we learn to read them or 
 to write them. The pretense of some of the reform- 
 ers that we know the written form of the words of 
 our vocabulary only by such a sheer effort of memory 
 is absurd. This knowledge, like our speech, comes 
 upon us insensibly, by use. We learn to speak by 
 speaking ; we learn to read by reading ; and we learn 
 to spell correctly by reading words correctly spelled. 
 Those who read most spell most correctly and readily. 
 I tliink this rule will be found absolute ; allowance 
 being made only for the peculiarities of some per- 
 sons who are not ready at jDerceiving form in any- 
 thing, and for slips which in others are due to lack of 
 attention to the forms of some few words. There 
 are intelligent peoj)le who, as I have before said, 
 make mistakes in spelling; but all intelligent people 
 are not constant readers. Some who can manage a 
 great business, lead a political party, or command ar 
 army rarely open a book. All of those things could
 
 READING. 105 
 
 be done by men who could not spell " valetudina 
 rian," and who would write "college" eoUedge, as 
 John Locke did. Reading and writing are not the 
 beginning or even the end of all things. 
 
 Learning to read is now, however, the first step to 
 knowledge, if not to education. I say now, because it 
 was not always so. Before the invention of printing 
 from types, and when written books were extremely 
 Bcarce, so scarce that one was a present fit for a king, 
 readers, of course, were rare. It would be a great 
 mistake, however, to assume that knowledge and 
 thought were equally rare in those days. Among the 
 Greeks, to whom we are yet going to school in phi- 
 losophy, in literature, and in art, the number of read- 
 ers, even in the educated classes, was not large. Of 
 the men who could, and who did, enjoy, appreciate, 
 and even intelligently criticise a play by ^schylus 
 or Sophocles on its first performance, or an oration 
 by Demosthenes, very few ever read, and a very large 
 proportion must have been entirely unable to read, 
 them, at least with facility. Instruction was then 
 given orally ; and men remembered and thought 
 about what they heard. The world's work, the 
 higher part of it at least, is done by thinking ; and 
 education is not the imparting of knowledge, but 
 the teaching to think. Knowledge can be obtained 
 by special effort at special times, when it is needed ; 
 but the ability to use it, the ability to think rightly, 
 comes only by exercise and by discipline in thought. 
 
 But nowadays we must all learn to read; and the 
 cry goes up that learning to read, to read English at 
 least, is a slow, toilsome, painful task. There is a 
 demand for some easy way of learning to read ; es- 
 says are written upon the subject, and books of in-
 
 106 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Btruction upon patent plans are published ; one of 
 them that I have seen is called " Reading without 
 Tears." It seems to me that the demand and the ex- 
 pectation upon which it is founded are alike unrea- 
 sonable. Learning to read must be a slow process ; 
 and those who are inclined to weep over toil must not 
 expect to learn to read without tears. The acquire- 
 ment of any knowledge or skill that is worth acquir- 
 ing comes only by patient, persevering labor, which 
 is shortened, indeed, according to the intelligence of 
 the learner, but the lack of which no intelligence, no 
 contrivance, can supply. With w^hat semblance of 
 reason is it expected that learning to read English 
 should be easier than it is to a person wnth a musical 
 organization to learn to read music, or that it can be 
 learned in any other way than that in which music 
 is learned? And, although in music every sign has 
 a fixed value, one sign meaning one sound and no 
 other, and even the duration and succession of the 
 sounds being indicated by other absolutely certain 
 signs, the acquirement of even very moderate skill in 
 reading music comes only by long and steady prac- 
 tice. Every person with a voice and a musical ear 
 can sing after a certain fashion, and so every person 
 can speak; but reading music with an instrument or 
 even with the voice is a very different matter. It is 
 earned, not by the observation of certain rules, al- 
 ihough rules must be observed, but by practice, by 
 :rying and failing, and trying again and doing a lit- 
 tle bettei', and so on again and again, until, according 
 to the old adage, practice makes perfect. Thus, and 
 thus only, it seems to me, can reading be learned, all 
 vhe complaints and protests and all the patent plans 
 uxid reading-without-tears books to the contrary not
 
 READING. 107 
 
 iv^ithstanding. Speech of our mother tongue we learn 
 easily, unconsciously, " naturally," as we say ; but 
 reading is a very different matter : it is a mastery of 
 the meaning of arbitrary and conventional signs. 
 
 Tims far as to reading silently, which every child 
 is taught who is taught at all. Reading aloud seems 
 almost gone out of fashion, except among those who 
 do it in some way professionally. It is no longer 
 really taught in schools, or it is taught in very few. 
 A single generation has seen it pass away. The rea- 
 son of this is twofold, and is strange. For it is, first, 
 the great diffusion of education, and, next, the great 
 increase in reading. Reading aloud cannot be taught 
 in large classes ; and consequently in public schools 
 and in large private schools it has fallen into neglect. 
 Not that there is no pretense made of teaching it, 
 although even of this thei-e is comparatively little ; 
 but that there has ceased to be that individual prac- 
 tice before the teacher, guided by his example as 
 well as informed by his instruction, which used to 
 be regarded as one of the most important of daily 
 school exercises. This is much to be regretted. Bet- 
 ter let two "branches" go than neglect reading aloud. 
 In fixing attention, in leading to exactness of appre- 
 hension, in power of bringing the pupil's mind into 
 }i flexible adaptability to the thought presented to it, 
 there is no exercise that can effectively take the place 
 ©f reading aloud. 
 
 We cannot read anything aloud well, that is, with 
 pi-oper inflection and emphasis, without thoroughly 
 anderstanding it. A pupil cannot scramble through 
 and skip over what he knows that he is likely to be 
 called upon to read aloud. It is among the very 
 .est of educational disciplines. Besides this, with a
 
 108 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 competent teacher, it is, I need hardly say, the very 
 best means of acquiring that clear enunciation which 
 is one of the greatest beauties of speech, and which 
 any observant person will find largely lacking in the 
 younger people of the present day. Good English 
 speaking and good English writing come, except in 
 cases of rare inborn faculty, chiefly by the reading 
 aloud of good English authors under the supervision 
 of a teacher who himself or herself speaks good Eng- 
 lish and understands those authors. Of such teach- 
 ers, how many may be found in our public or in our 
 private schools ? Of such teaching, or of the attempt 
 at such teaching, how much? 
 
 Reading aloud has fallen into disuse in families 
 and in the social circle, because we read so much. 
 The newspaper and the cheap novel have combined 
 to bring this about. We rise from the table ; we 
 seize each of us a newspaper or a new paper-covered 
 novel, and we plunge into their pages, and sit unso- 
 ciably silent. We even resent the reading of any- 
 thing aloud to us, because it interrupts our own self- 
 ish solitary pleasure, and because we think that we 
 could have read the passage so much more quickly by 
 ourselves. The pleasure of a common enjoyment is 
 disregarded in favor of our own greedy devouring of 
 our silent, solitary mental meal; the charm of the 
 sound of the human voice, conveying to us shades of 
 meaning and points of emphasis, is undervalued, and 
 =eems to be passing away as one of the delights of 
 life. Silent reading is even destroying companion- 
 sliip, which now is to be found in perfection only 
 among men at their clubs. Newspapers, thus read 
 are gradually extinguishing conversation. One advan« 
 tage of a long dinner is that it compels those around
 
 READING. 109 
 
 the table to leave books and newspapers out of their 
 Hands while they are there, and talk to each other 
 to their best ability. As to talking at a "reception " 
 or a ball, that is impossible in any coherent, intelli- 
 gent, almost in any intelligible fashion. And thus by 
 silent reading and the neglect of conversation, lan- 
 guage itself is coming to a kind of disuse. For lan- 
 guage is speech, not letters ; and we cannot really 
 enjoy it or master it by hearing sermons and lectures 
 and plays, and thus getting our speaking done for us, 
 as the Turks get their dancing done for them, by 
 others. 
 
 The foregoing remarks upon reading aloud when 
 first published brought such hearty expressions of as- 
 sent from so many and such various quarters as made 
 it plain that I chanced to touch a subject upon which 
 many intelligent people had been thinking. Others 
 were manifestly set a-thinking about what before had 
 been as far out of mind to them as an undiscovered 
 planet. The warmest commendation came to me 
 from women, who protested against, and asked me to 
 scourge, the silent reading of newspapers. But while 
 to a certain degree sympathizing with these com- 
 plainants, I remember that I am not here as a censor 
 either of manners or of morals, and therefore cannot 
 undertake to scourge anything or anybody. I know 
 that wives complain that if they are kind enough to 
 read aloud to their husbands, the gentlemen begin to 
 nod, and sometimes are even impolite enough to 
 Bnore ; and I have heard that even when the parties 
 make an interchange of places as reader and listener 
 something like an exchange of the other performance 
 takes place also. Yet jt is said that this drowsiness, 
 SO apparently overwhelming, ^s instantly dispelled
 
 110 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 by the entrance of an agreeable, smooth-spoken ac- 
 quaintance, who has his head well stored with gossip ; 
 which, if it be true, shows either that gossip is more 
 generally interesting than the contents of books or of 
 newspapers, — although many of the latter and some 
 of the former seem to aim little higher than the gos- 
 siping level, — or that there is some soporific influ- 
 ence in the voice and style of the average reader. 1 
 am inclined to the opinion that both these conclusions 
 are measurably true. My concern, however, is only 
 with the latter. 
 
 It is true that very few people can read even an 
 article in a newspaper in a style which engages the 
 attention of their hearers. It is true that those who 
 can read aloud for fifteen minutes without sending 
 their hearers to sleep or out of the room are the rare 
 exceptions. Whoever thinks about the subject at all 
 must wonder if these people read to themselves as 
 they read aloud, and if they do, what must be their 
 appreciation of the writer's thought, — what their en- 
 joyment of it. For as Ave think in words, so do we 
 read silently with such mental emphasis and such in- 
 flections as accord with our understanding of the au- 
 thor who is addressing us through our eyes. It is 
 said that Mr. Tennyson insists strongly that his 
 poetry can be understood and enjoyed only by being 
 read in a certain way, and that generally the effect 
 of rhythm and rhythmic emphasis that he had in 
 mind when writing is destroyed even by the best 
 readers. And if the reports of his own style of read- 
 ing, when he undertakes to show what is the hidden 
 music of his verse, be true, then must the world at 
 large be entirely deaf and dumb to the Tennys mese 
 poetical language. Hearers of intelligence and culb
 
 READING. Ill 
 
 tire, who are accustomed to the best English speech 
 and t) the best reading, can hardly listen with dec- 
 orously sober faces as the laureate reads bis own 
 verses. His accent is so forced, his inflections are 
 BO grotesque, and even bis pronunciation becomes so 
 strange, tliat to most of his hearers (of whom there 
 have not been many) all the charm of his poetry dis- 
 appears. 
 
 In the case of Tennyson this effect is owing to 
 Bonie peculiar notion that be has adopted, some elocu- 
 tionary theory or crotchet. That he is wi-ong is a mat- 
 ter of course, eminent as he is among the poets of 
 the day, and sure as we may be that he thoroughly 
 understands what be reads. This is made certain by 
 the mere fact that bis reading has such an effect upon 
 intelligent hearers, an effect so injurious to bis poetry. 
 For, having this effect, it fails in the one single pur- 
 pose of reading aloud, which is to convey by clear 
 enunciation and natural inflections of voice the mean- 
 ing of what is read to an intelligent, or even to a not 
 very intelligent, bearer. Intelligence, learning, liter- 
 ary skill, singly or united, do not give the ability to 
 do this. I think that the worst reading that I have 
 heard was from men who, as thinkers, as scholars, 
 and as writers, were far above their fellows, even in 
 the educated classes. They read with a heavy mono- 
 tone, ^pitched high or low, but in most cases low, and 
 with an absence of intelligent emphasis that made 
 their performance about as interesting as the drone 
 of a bagpipe. Well taught in many things they 
 had not been taught to read ; or they bad a defect 
 of ear which made it impossible for them to learn. 
 For it i(} just as impossible for seme people to learn 
 to rsad aloud, with good emphasis and discretion, aa
 
 112 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 it is for others to learn to sing. The number of the 
 former, however, is very much smaller than that of 
 the latter. 
 
 And what is good vocal reading, that it is so neg- 
 lected by many and so nearly impossible to some ? 
 It is simply the natural utterance of the sentences, 
 read according to their meaning. All that is neces 
 Bary to good reading aloud is an intelligent apprehen- 
 sion of what is read, and an utterance of it with such 
 emphasis and such inflection as are in natural accord- 
 ance with the meaning of each clause, sentence, and 
 passage. Yet the doing of this simple thing perfectly 
 well is a rare accomplishment, and one which is found 
 rather more rarely among professed elocutionists than, 
 proportionately, among intelligent and educated peo- 
 ple who make no such professions. So it is said that 
 to walk well — well enough, for instance, to pass 
 across the stage without seeming awkward — is some- 
 thing that most actors have to learn, although all that 
 is required is a natural and easy movement of the 
 body and limbs ; and that to stand perfectly still with 
 ease and dignity upon the stage is one of the rarest 
 of theatrical accomplishments. The reason of this is 
 that self-consciousness, or the loss of self-possession, 
 or the effort to be pleasing, — to do something, and 
 not simply to be, — begets awkwardness, uneasiness, 
 and leads to indulgence in little tricks and mentions, 
 all of which are inconsistent with grace and dignity. 
 
 Something of the same kind takes place wlien most 
 people read aloud. They think they must do some- 
 thing more than to speak naturally what is before 
 vihem ; and thus they become either heavily monoto- 
 nous or absurdly emphatic. In either case, their ef 
 fort is disagreeably apparent ; we see that they are
 
 READING. 118 
 
 thinking of themselves (as awkward people gen- 
 erally do) instead of what they are about. For if 
 they had in mind only what is before their eyes, and 
 spoke that out simply and naturally, they would read 
 well enough to enable their hearers to understand 
 and to enjoy moderately what they might read. 
 The voice might be harsh, or otherwise unpleasant; 
 the pronunciation might not be that of the best 
 speakers ; but still the reading would be tolerably 
 good. It would be natural ; and the humblest and 
 most ignorant and uneducated persons, speaking with 
 the utterance and with the inflections that nature 
 prompts in them, always speak with proper emphasis 
 and proper inflection. Indeed, to read and to speak, 
 in those respects, as they do, as anybody does (for 
 in this respect all are alike), is the last and highest 
 attainment of elocutionary art. 
 
 I remember a very simple but very striking and 
 significant example of this, which occurred in the ex- 
 ercise of my reading class at school. We were all 
 under twelve years of age. Our master, not a pro- 
 fessed elocutionist, was one of the very best readers, 
 one of the most effective, I ever heard, and he taught 
 us "with great care. On the occasion to which I have 
 referred, a passage from the tragedy "Pizarro" was 
 read, in which Pizarro, if I remember aright, ap- 
 proaching his friend's cell, calls " Alonzo ! Alonzo ! " 
 The passage was passed by the teacher from boy to 
 boy without remark, but we all saw that something 
 was wrong, and every one tried to do the right thing, 
 the result being, as I vaguely remember, more forced, 
 unnatural reading than had been heard from us in a 
 long while. At last one boy uttered, with free voice, 
 the first " Alonzo " with a free upward inflection,
 
 114 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and the second with an inflection as freely downward. 
 " That 's right," immediately said our teacher ; " that '3 
 what I 've been trying for all the time. I wanted to 
 Bee if there was not one boy among j'ou that would 
 Bay that just as if he himself was calling, 'Tom! 
 Tom ! ' " One would think that a class of boys who 
 were calling to each other so many times daily would, 
 any and all of them, have read at least such a passage 
 naturally. But no ; the notion that reading must be 
 something else than a natural expression of the sense 
 of what is read seems to take possession of almost all 
 readers, and of none so strongly as the young and the 
 uncultivated, — I do not mean unlearned. A woman 
 who knows no language but her own, and that im- 
 perfectly, who has acquired very little book knowl- 
 edge, but who is intelligent and cultivated, may speak 
 charmingly, and read impressively. This, however, 
 she will do only by the command of a good voice, by 
 a thorough understanding of what she reads, and by 
 losing herself in her reading. 
 
 It will always be found that poor reading is the 
 result of the efforts of awkward self-consciousness, — 
 mental dullness and natural impediments or imper- 
 fections being, of course, left out of consideration. 
 Take, for instance, this passage : — 
 
 " Life is real, life is earnest, 
 
 And the grave is not its goal; 
 Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 
 Was not spoken of the soul." 
 
 How often it is read I how rarely read well ! and 
 simply because so few read it just as if they were 
 speaking it of themselves to some one else. Usually 
 we hear it with a dropping of the voice on " real ' 
 and " earnest " in the first line ; a monotone on the
 
 READING. 115 
 
 lecond line until the " goal " is reached, and then an- 
 other dropping ; in the third line the same dropping 
 of the voice at " art ; " and in the fourth monotone 
 again, with a strong emphasis on " not " and " soul," 
 and a dropping of the voice on the last word. Now 
 no person would speak that sentence so. The voice 
 would rise upon "real" and "earnest;" in the second 
 line, "grave" would have an emphasis, and be pro- 
 longed with a falling inflection, while " not " would 
 be emphasized with a rising inflection ; the third line 
 would fall, like an inclined plane, from beginning to 
 end, which descent would continue gently into the 
 fourth line to the very last word, when " soul " would 
 receive a marked emphasis by an upward, sharp ris- 
 ing inflection. This would be simple nature ; but the 
 passage read in this way has all the meaning that is 
 in it brought clearly out and made impressive. 
 
 Now, as I have said before, learning, knowledge, 
 scholarship, scientific acquirement, will not enable 
 their possessor to read thus. Mr. Robert Lowe's 
 complaint and implied expectation to the contrary, 
 that boys, although they had been at school, could 
 not read the newspapers intelligently and intelli- 
 gibly to him (he is almost blind), are quite iinrea- 
 eonable. As well expect a man because he is a 
 scholar, or even a philologist, to write well. Some 
 scholars, and even some philologists, do write well, 
 admirably ; but they are very few in number, and 
 their ability in this respect is not the fruit of their 
 knowledge, to which it has no proportionate relation. 
 Reading, when not a natural gift, is learned only 
 by practice in presence of a good reader. Language, 
 living language, speech, passes only from living lipa 
 through living ears to living lips ; and reading is, or
 
 116 EVEBY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 should be, but prescribed speech. What can be 
 taught of it is learned by the ear, and by the ear 
 only. But there is much besides that can be learned ; 
 and that is, understanding, quick apprehension, the 
 appreciation of the relation of thought. These come 
 only by education ; not by learning facts, but by 
 education, of which more hereafter.
 
 WKITING.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING: SOME CONSIDERATIONS OF Ha 
 ALLEGED DIFFICULTY. 
 
 As I lately walked up Nassau Street, that Cheap- 
 Bide of peripatetic vendors, I heard a voice crying, 
 " Oh nee three cents furrup parrot wheezers wuth 
 too-oo sh'ln." I turned my head, with some curiosity 
 upon the subject of parrot wheezers, and found that 
 the owner of the voice and of those articles held the 
 latter between his thumb and forefinger, while a 
 dozen or more of them lay before him on a tray. 
 In fact, he supposed that he was saying what, ac- 
 ».,ording to the prejudices now prevalent as to Eng- 
 lish orthography, would be written, " Only three 
 cents for a pair of tweezers worth two shillings ; " 
 and the purpose of his outcry was the purely phil- 
 anthropic one of vending those useful implements at 
 that alarming sacrifice. I did not become a pur- 
 chaser, whether from a writer's lack of the coin nec- 
 essary to such a transaction, or from a dim conscious- 
 ness that I was already the possessor of some half 
 dozen parrot wheezers, vagrant and of various degrees 
 ">i antiquity and dissolution, it is not worth while 
 particularly to set forth. But only a few minutes 
 liad passed when I felt that I really owed that adoles- 
 cent person three cents, if not more, for some reflec- 
 tions which he had suggested to me on the subject of 
 Rnglish speech and spelling.
 
 120 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 On wliat ground could it be reasonably maintained 
 that he was not right in the utterance which I, with 
 feeble attempt at phonography, have endeavored to 
 record ? Usage ? There are more people, even among 
 the educated, who call the little toilet tools which he 
 was engaged in dispensing a parrot wheezers than 
 there are that call them a pair of tweezers. I doubt 
 if Macaulay called them a pair of tweezers. Mr. 
 Everett might have done so. This being the case, — 
 and I think that no intelligent and accurate observer 
 of English speech will deny that it is so, — if lan- 
 guage is spoken words, of which writing is but a 
 visible record and expression, why is not parrot 
 wheezers the proper name, and the proper spelling of 
 the name, of the implements in question ? The fact 
 that there is a bird called a parrot, and that there 
 are certain men and other animals which are called 
 wheezers, and that the combination of those two 
 words and things might in that case be supposed to 
 be indicated, is of no importance in this relation. 
 We merely use the same sounds to mean entirely 
 different things. The old spelling-books give a list of 
 words of the same sound, but of different meaning, 
 including, for example, ball, a round body, ball^ an 
 assemblage for dancing, and baivl, to cry aloud. But, 
 again, if language is mere vocal utterance, speech, why 
 are not b a 11 the first, b a 11 the second, and bawl 
 the same words, — not seemingly the same, but tc 
 all intents and purposes actually the same? Their 
 entirely different etymology and meaning are facts 
 ivhich have no bearing upon the question considered 
 from this point of view. And if, as the phonetic 
 spelling reformers declare, orthography should do no 
 more than i-epresent to the eye the sounds of words,
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 121 
 
 and should do that exactly under all circumstances, 
 no matter what the meaning or the origin of the 
 words, why should not hall and bawl be spelled alike, 
 as aspire (Romanic, meaning to breathe) and a spire 
 (Teutonic, meaning a sprout) really are ; and why 
 should we not write, instead of a pair of tweezers, u 
 parrot wheezers ? 
 
 The chief objection to our doing so, it should seem, 
 according to those who take the view of language 
 and of orthography just mentioned, is that by writ- 
 ing the words meaning a round body and also to cry 
 aloud with the same letters, or by writing pai-rot 
 wheezers instead of pair of tweezers, we should save 
 no time. For your advocate of phonetic spelling is 
 strong upon the point of the saving in time, in 
 trouble, and in money that would be brought about 
 by his reform. 
 
 These persons, the phonetic spelling reformers, great 
 and small, but chiefly small, are now quite cock-a- 
 hoop in their demand and expectation of a thorough 
 change in the spelling of the English language, and 
 they speak and write upon the subject in the spirit 
 of exterminating persecution. One of them, writing 
 to me, declares that " the ridiculous nonsense of the 
 old alphabetic construction is simply satanic," and 
 I have heard others of his stripe call it " fiendish," 
 and stamp metaphorically up and down as they de- 
 tiounced it as a crime perpetrated at the instigation 
 of the devil. These people are full of scorn and con- 
 tempt for what they call the old, ridiculous way of 
 ispelling ; speaking of it as if it were a device, and as 
 '.f the present relations of spoken English and written 
 English were the result of a contrivance which had 
 failed miserably. Now, the simple fact is that tho8«
 
 122 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 relations are tlie growth of circumstances, — a growth 
 which in the ver^^ nature of things was inevitable, 
 and which, were we to have a new alphabet to-mor- 
 row, would occur again, beginning the next day after 
 to-morrow. This the phonetic reformers do not see ; 
 their eyes are so fixed upon the discrepancy and con- 
 fusion in such pairs of words, for example, as are and 
 hare, hear and hear, tough and through, daughter and 
 laughter, that they see no farther than their present 
 perplexity ; and their supreme desire is to bring us 
 to a divine and heavenly conformity of sound with 
 letter. That I am not misrepresenting them, even 
 by hyperbole, will be seen by the following passage, 
 quoted, italic and all, from the letter of the phonetic 
 enthusiast before cited : " We do not want new 
 theory, or misleading diverging roads ; the narrow 
 way is open ; it leads to life, and for God's sake why 
 will we not walk in it ? " Simply, my good friend, 
 because we have preserved our common sense, and 
 have not gone clean daft, as specialists are apt to do. 
 We spell as we do, and much as our fathers spelled, 
 because we are our fathers' children, and our chil- 
 dren will spell much as we do because they are our 
 children. We are our fathers' children mentally as 
 well as physically, and the language of one genera- 
 tion is the offspring of tliat of its predecessor, — a 
 reproduction of it with differences unessential and 
 hardly perceptible. You might as well attempt to 
 cut men off from their progenitors in any other re- 
 spect, physical, moral, or mental, as to sever rudely 
 jmd abruptly the language, either written or spoken, 
 of one generation froui that of its predecessor. 
 
 The view of language and of orthography which ia 
 iaken by the soberer and abler advocates of a radical
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 123 
 
 spelling reform is clearly and strongly set forth by 
 one of our most eminent philologists, Professor Fran- 
 cis A. March, in an address delivered by him before 
 the American Philological Society, as president of 
 that learned body. I give it in full, because, coming 
 from such a source, it is worthy of the most respect- 
 ful consideration, and also in order that my readers 
 may see for themselves completely the position which 
 I shall examine : — 
 
 "In the first place, a scientific knowledge of language may 
 be and should be the means of improving language itself. 
 When there is talk of improving language, the first thing 
 that a man who uses the Enghsh language thinks of is spell- 
 ing. It is of no use to try to characterize with fitting 
 epithets and adequate terms of objurgation the monstrous 
 
 spelling of the English language Spelling is often 
 
 thought of as child's work and of little serious moment, 
 but it is by no means so. The time lost by it is a large 
 part of the whole school-time of the mass of men, and with 
 a large majority of those who are said to read, and who 
 can read if you give them time, it is a fatal bar through life 
 to that easy and intelligent reading which every one ought 
 to have at command. Count the hours which each man 
 wastes in learning to read at school, the hours which he 
 ;vastes through life from the hindrance to easy reading, the 
 hours wasted at school in learning to spell, the hours spent 
 through life in keeping up and perfecting this knowledge of 
 spelling, in consulting dictionaries, — a work that never 
 ends, — the hours that he spends in writing silent letters, 
 and multiply this time by the number of persons who speak 
 English, and we shall have a total of millions of years 
 wasted by each generation. The cost of printing the silent 
 letters of the English language is to be counted by millions 
 of dollars for each generation. Who has not heard the 
 groans of Germans or Frenchmen trying to learn how
 
 124 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 our words sound, or read the petitions of the Japanese ? 
 And yet literary amateurs fall in love v/ith these squintings 
 and lispings. Their favorite old English editions extend 
 the charms of their fair white paper, clear and graceful 
 type, broad margins, and comely, trusty binding to the 
 Bpelliug which is used in them, and these old forms of the 
 words have an aroma like the old leather of the binding, 
 more delightful than wine. They try to defend them by 
 pleading their advantage in the study of etymology. But 
 a changeless orthography destroys the material for etymo- 
 logical study, and written records are valuable to the phi- 
 lologist just in proportion as they are accurate records of 
 speech as spoken from year to year." 
 
 In the objections here raised to the present system 
 of orthography — if it can be called a system — there 
 is nothing particularly new, according to my obser- 
 vation, except the jDoint as to the loss of money in- 
 volved in the time spent in writing letters which are 
 not pronounced. The irregularity, the incongruity, 
 and the anomaly of English orthography have been 
 asserted and discussed for many years. And it must 
 be confessed that the objections made to it have much 
 reason on their side, — if they are not made against 
 an unavoidable result of the relations of spoken and 
 written language. Nor shall I, for one, hold up for 
 unqualified admiration a system which has, in a great 
 measure, been imposed upon us by pedagogues, print- 
 ers, and publishers, not however without great benefit 
 to literature. But although Professor March is a plii- 
 lulogist with whom any writer upon language might 
 well consult his safety by agreeing, I shall venture 
 to express my disagreement with some of the posi- 
 tions wliich he has taken. 
 
 In the first place, it does not seem to be so sure a
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 126 
 
 thing that a scientific knowledge of language eithei 
 may be or should be a means of improving language 
 itself. Science is essentially positive ; and above all 
 other sciences that of language is so. It deals with 
 ascei'tained facts. Its function is the discovery of 
 facts in the Instory of human speech, of their rela- 
 tions and their analogies, and of the laws, if there be 
 laws, according to which those facts have been evolved. 
 Reasoning from what has been to what may be, 
 science may point out, not with certainty, but with 
 more or less of probability, what will be the course 
 of events in any department of human knowledge. 
 Briefly, it may indicate a normal line of progress. 
 But this, possible in other sciences, seems to be ex- 
 ceedingly difficult, if not almost impossible, in lan- 
 guage. For the form and the very substance of lan- 
 guage depend upon the working of an incalculable 
 foi'ce, the human will, — say rather, as to language, 
 the human caprice, the unreasonable, fleeting fashion 
 of a day. And this capricious force, rebelling against 
 no law, because it is rightfully subject to no law, is 
 a constant force. Now in no department of language 
 is the will so capricious, so unaccountable, and so un- 
 traceable in its action as in pronunciation, with which 
 orthography disagrees, and with which, in all lan- 
 guages which have a literature, orthography has al- 
 ways disagreed more or less, the variation being least, 
 I believe, in the modern Spanish. 
 
 Moreover, in all departments of language science 
 ^ould seem to be powerless as an agent, because, in 
 the very nature of things, usage must run ahead of 
 icience, and usage is determined by an altogether 
 irresponsible, irregular, and almost undetectable ex» 
 srcise of the will. Usage may not always make
 
 126 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 right in language, but it must make fact. And as to 
 pronunciation and orthography, science may teach 
 through trumpets, but men will be guided, must be 
 guided, and ought to be guided by usage, and not by 
 reason. You may preach to a man from the highest 
 pinnacle of phonology that he ought to pronounce 
 sewer soo-er or see-wer, but if those around him pro- 
 nounce it sJiore, as all men used to, he will so pro- 
 nounce it.^ You may prove to him in Barbara that 
 he ought to write through Oru, and if the people 
 around him write it through he will so write it. He 
 must so pronounce, he must so write, or he would be 
 unintelligible, and thus fail of the very end he has 
 in view in either speaking or writing. The misuse 
 of words may be corrected by teaching ; the art of 
 using lauguage effectively may be taught, or at least 
 
 1 To persons whose knowledge of language is limited by what they 
 hear from day to day, this pronunciation (as I have found) seems 
 very strange. But the word was sometimes written in a way that 
 would leave no doubt, if there were room for doubt, as to its pro- 
 nunciation. 
 
 " Log how the man who stir'd Rome's comon shore 
 Until it stunk, and stunk him out of dore." 
 
 (Gataker's Life of Bale, page 500.) 
 
 " . . . . the common shore of a city, nothing falls amiss unto them 
 [informers], and if there be no filth in the commonwealth they can 
 live by honesty." 
 
 (Shirley, Love Tricks, Act L, Scene 1.) 
 
 " Though she be Linsey-Woolsey, Bawd and Whore 
 .... to Venus, Nature's common shore." 
 
 (Earl of llochester. Satyr against Marriage.) 
 
 But enough : the nature of the thing makes the illustration of the 
 word unsavory. This pronunciation continued iu vogue until within 
 tlu! last half-century. I have heard it from old people. There is 
 nothing so strange about it. The ew has the sound that it has in seic 
 (soiv), a spelling that is but just goiug out ; aud tlie s has the sound 
 that it has in sugar and in sure, aud which in the days of our grand 
 (athers it had in presume, etc., and in Shakespeare's days in suit.
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 127 
 
 it may be learned ; but how science is to in: prove 
 language itself it is at least very difiicult to discover, 
 unless language is first formed by science, and ia 
 then imposed upon men by a linguistic autocrat, — 
 one, for two would surely disagree. 
 
 Nor can I, for one, acknowledge that the first 
 thought of every man who thinks at all upon the 
 subject of improving the English language is in ref- 
 erence to its spelling. Certainly, there are many 
 thoughtful, although possibly not inerroneous, stu- 
 dents of the subject, who regard other possible im- 
 provements as much more desirable, and as not less 
 desirable because of their possibility. Among these 
 are the purging it of needless, cumbrous, and en- 
 feebling Romanic words and phrases and construc- 
 tions, the increase of its compounding power, and the 
 attainment of a greater exactness and precision by a 
 regard to the radical meaning of words already form- 
 ing a part of its vocabulary. 
 
 That the spelling of the English language is so 
 grievous an infliction upon mankind as Professor 
 March, and some others whose opinions are of less 
 weight, would make it out to be, I cannot see. Care- 
 ful and cautious as he is in linguistic analysis, it 
 would seem that here he has given loose rein to ex- 
 aggeration. And I think, moreover, that he has mis- 
 apprehended the facts, as some others have. Learn- 
 ing to spell a full vocabulary of English words is not 
 very easy work for most children ; but it nevertheless 
 does very distinctly and clearly seem to be " child's 
 work." For it is of that purely elemental, unreason- 
 ing kind, requiring only study, memory, and habit, 
 vrliich is peculiarly adapted to tlie childish condition 
 j>f mind. It is almost the only thing that may be
 
 128 EVERY-DAT ENGLISH. 
 
 kaught absolutely and witliout discussion, which ad- 
 mits no question, and in a young child invites none, 
 but which is accepted absolutelj'^ by him, as he re- 
 ceives it from usage and from instruction, — as he 
 receives his spoken mother tongue itself. The teach- 
 ing of it, too, is a task that may be left to almost any 
 person of ordinary intelligence and education, quite 
 regardless of beliefs or moral questions. There is 
 not a religious and a freethinking, a Papist and a 
 Protestant, school of spelling. As to its not being 
 child's work, if it is not learned in childhood, it 
 will never be learned at all. 
 
 Without doubt, it is not easy — that is, it is not 
 very easy — to learn to spell English. But why 
 should it be easy ? It is not easy to learn to do any- 
 thing rightly and readily that is much worth the 
 doing, or to get thoroughly any knowledge that is 
 much worth the knowing. To learn to spell requires 
 attention, observation, application, memory. So does 
 the acquirement of any knowledge ; and one of the 
 advantages of early exercise in spelling is the disci- 
 pline it gives to all the faculties just mentioned, the 
 proper training of which, and not the mere knowl- 
 edge attained, is education. 
 
 The fact of first importance in the consideration of 
 this subject is that spelling has nothing to do with 
 speech, that is, with spoken words, with language 
 proper. It is an accompaniment and condition of 
 writing only. No writing, no spelling. Yet many 
 persons, perhaps most persons, seem to think that 
 the words they speak are made by being spelled, — 
 that they are the result of putting together certain 
 letters. The relation of spelling to speech, on the 
 contrary, is not only arbitrary and conventional, but 
 entirely unessential.
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 120 
 
 It seems, nevertheless, to be assumed by many peo- 
 ple that spelling, that is, the use of this arbitrary, 
 conventional, and highly artificial form of language, 
 ought to be learned with little trouble or none. I 
 should like to have them tell me why. It is not 
 even easy to learn to speak well and readilj^ How 
 many years pass and how much trouble is taken be- 
 fore a child of common intelligence is able to speak 
 its mother tongue plainly and correctly ! Some are 
 well on in their 'teens before they accomplish that, 
 and some never do accomplish it. There are certain 
 sounds and certain combinations of sounds which they 
 are never able to utter, just as some other young per- 
 sons are never able to master certain combinations 
 in written language, that is, in spelling. And why 
 should we look for a readiness and command in the 
 use of the arbitrary visible signs of speech that we 
 do not find in speech itself ? It seems to be assumed 
 that all persons should be able to spell as they are 
 able to speak. Why ? It would be very difficult, I 
 think, to give a sufficient ground in reason to sup- 
 port this assumption. 
 
 If pronunciation were not the varying — now 
 slightly, now greatly, varying — thing that it is, and 
 if every arbitrary sign represented the single sound 
 to which it was first assigned (if indeed any letters, 
 except a very few of the consonants, were so assigned, 
 which seems to me more than doubtful) ; if sounds 
 were expressible by signs, so that one man could com- 
 municate that which he means to another by any 
 alphabet, however ingeniously contrived and however 
 copious (which I think I shall show hereafter is not 
 the case, even among phonologists), — if these sup- 
 posed relations of speech and spellirg were as certain 
 9
 
 130 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 AS tbey are doubtful, with what reason should we 
 even then expect children or young persons to learn 
 easily to spell well ? What do they learn easily ? 
 Not arithmetic, I believe, although figures are un- 
 changeable in their representative power and in their 
 relations, and children begin to count and to reckon 
 almost as soon as tliey begin to speak. Children toil 
 over the spelling-book, but do they not also toil over 
 arithmetic ? In the days of feruling, for which did 
 they suffer more, — their spelling or their tables, 
 polysyllables or long division ? According to my 
 experience and my observation, much more for the 
 latter. And with what result ? We can most of us 
 spell correctly all the words that we have occasion to 
 use, and do it without thought. But apart from pro- 
 fessed accountants, which of us could go through the 
 multiplication table on the spur of the moment as 
 readily and as correctly as he could write a letter, — 
 something immediately ready to say in the letter 
 being provided ? I fear that at any competitive ex- 
 amination through which I might be put I should be 
 found shaky in my "sevens" and "nines;" and I 
 know that there are many persons who spell " like a 
 book " who would share my uncertainty. The as- 
 sumption that spelling should be more easily learned 
 and retained than any other elementary branch of 
 study, for instance, arithmetic or geography, seems 
 to be entirely without foundation in reason. That 
 the power of speaking easily and correctly should be 
 general might be much more reasonably assumed 
 because speech is the distinctive attribute of mankind. 
 But we all know that even speech, correct speech, if 
 not thus easily and readily acquired ; how, then, car 
 We expect that the ready and correct use of the ar
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 131 
 
 bitravy signs of shifting speech should be acquired 
 more readily, and retained so as to be more abso- 
 lutely at command ? 
 
 Spelling, however, is spoken of by the phonetic re- 
 foi-mers as if it were the most difficult to acquire of all 
 the elementary branches of knowledge. I am sure 
 that it is not so, except as it is the first to be learned. 
 Being the first real study to which a child is put, it 
 is the one which is most tedious, and under which he 
 is most fretful. The breaking in of a colt, to which 
 it corresponds, is not very easy either to the colt 
 or to the breaker-in. But once started, once broken 
 in, a child learns spelling at least as easily as he 
 learns anything. Some three years ago, in one of 
 my country walks in England, I came upon a village 
 school-house in Essex. I entered it, and observed 
 the scholars and talked w^ith the school-master. 
 The former were about one hundred in number, and 
 were the sons and daughters of the small farmers and 
 peasantry of a very rural district ; the latter had re- 
 cently come there from " the counties," as he said, — 
 Essex, Sussex, and Kent, and 1 believe Norfolk and 
 Suffolk, not being called counties or shires, and the 
 people living there taking some local pride in the 
 fact, for reasons which I need not go into here. He 
 was from Warwickshire, where he had had a village 
 Bchool; and he had had one elsewhere. In the course 
 of my talk I asked him if he did not find it very 
 difficult to teach his little folk to spell. " No," he 
 promptly replied, " after the first, not at all ; quite 
 the contrary. The diflBcult branches to teach them 
 are arithmetic and geography." His reply confirmed 
 nay own previously formed judgment, given above, 
 »nd published two years before (as to which he
 
 132 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 knew nothing ; for I was to him only a passing 
 Btranger taking a country walk), and I am sure that 
 it represents the true state of the case. 
 
 That it does so I am the surer, because of the 
 difficulty there is in getting a sight of a letter which 
 is marked by any gross errors in spelling, and by the 
 nature of the errors when they do occur. I have 
 applied to men who, by the duties of their positions, 
 were required to examine scores of letters every day ; 
 and I have learned from them, and also from the 
 inspection myself of heaps of letters on their tables 
 at various times, that in ordinary letter-writing mis- 
 spelling is tlie rarest of faults. One of these gentle- 
 men, who for the very purpose of correction reads 
 carefully thousands of letters yearly, — letters, many 
 of which he knows are from men who have not had 
 even a common public-school education, — told me 
 that he had many other errors to correct, but very 
 rarely, if ever, one in spelling. Then as to the nature 
 of the errors. I have two letters before me which I 
 have kept as examples. They were written by a 
 man who is wholly uneducated, who was brought up 
 before the mast, and who has remained in his first 
 condition of life, although with honor. He is re- 
 spectable and intelligent ; but he writes / with a 
 small letter, carefully dotted, i; he spells like lick^ 
 reef reff^ allow aloio, hook hock, once wonce. But it ia 
 to be observed that in these same letters, " commo- 
 dore," "friend," "explain," "position," " aifairs," 
 "department," "execution," "transferred," "trans- 
 action," " service," " consideration," and other such 
 words are spelled riglitly. That he does not go 
 for these to a dictionary I know, for I have seen hiii. 
 write letters, and a very good handwriting he has
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 133 
 
 Now, this, according to my observation, is the rule : 
 misspelling ^n every-day English is in the easy words, 
 •^ those in which there are fewest letters, in which 
 the letters have their simplest and most obvious value. 
 This shows that the difficulty in spelling, such as 
 there is, is not in the lack of exact correspondence 
 between sign and sound, and that it is owing to some 
 other cause. Only a few days ago I had occasion to 
 look over a page of writing by a young man who I 
 knew had been well taught in his early childhood ; 
 who had been to a good public school and good pri- 
 vate schools ; who had had two college graduates as 
 private tutors in Latin, Greek, and mathematics; and 
 whose associations had always been with well-educated 
 people, — and he, writing words of many syllables 
 and obscure sounds correctly, spelled name naim ; 
 but, moreover, he had spelled it thus with the ivord 
 properly prmted before his eyes^ for he had copied 
 the passage from a book. It was no mere chance, 
 for I found that he made other similar mistakes in 
 copying as well as in merely writing simple words. 
 Plainly, it is not the difficulties of orthography which 
 cause bad spelling. What is its cause I may not be 
 %ble to show.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 NGLISH SPELLING: CONSIDERATION OF PROPOSED 
 PHONETIC REFORM. 
 
 " With tlie simplest form for a letter, atid a letter 
 for each sound in the language, there is no need of 
 further theory ; we want action^ Thus begins a let- 
 ter that I received from an intelligent man, almost 
 rabid with the phonetic mania. Quite in the same 
 vein is the following passage from a printed comment 
 on some of my criticism of the spelling reform : " In 
 the first place, it is absurd that any child should have 
 to learn to spell. It is possible so to construct the 
 sound signs — otherwise letters — that, having once 
 mastered them, the mere act of speaking a word 
 gives its spelling." And my first-cited correspondent 
 says ; " Fifteen years ago all the experiments were 
 satisfactorily tried and the results recorded. The 
 war bi'oke up the interest, or Congress would have 
 finished the work it began, to have all the printed 
 matter of the country in true type." 
 
 These three passages from two quarters are worthy 
 of special attention, because they embody the three 
 great fallacies of the phonetic reformers. The first 
 is that there is no good reason why the spelling of 
 one's written language should require to be learned, 
 ■ — a very profound discovery, which, however, was 
 anticipated by a gentleman named Dogberry, who, in 
 his well-known remark that "to be a well-favored
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 135 
 
 man is the gift of God, but reading and writing come 
 by nature," was, it seems, but a pioneer and prophet 
 preparing tlie way of phonetic spelling reform. The 
 second of these fallacies is that all that is necessary 
 to make a change to phonetic writing practicable is 
 the provision of a letter for each sound in the lan- 
 guage ; English sounds, according to this correspond- 
 ent, being forty-two in number. The third fallacy 
 is that this practicable phonetic writing being once 
 discovered, it may be brought into general use by 
 " action " of some kind or othei", — whereas-ing, re- 
 solving, bill in Congress, or what not. 
 
 The advocates of a phonetic writing of English 
 are of two classes, — first, learned specialists, whose 
 opinions as to the past in language are worthy of the 
 utmost respect, but who, as is generally the case with 
 specialists, while holding the course of their specialty 
 have lost the balance of their common-sense : just as 
 a ship kept on one tack sometimes shifts her ballast, 
 having it all just as before, but a little out of place, 
 and beiug just as good a sailer as ever, if only she 
 could be righted. To these are added a second and 
 very much lai'ger class of unlearned specialists, whose 
 opinions upon language, past or present, are worth 
 nothing, who never had common-sense enough to 
 ballast an intellectual cock-boat, and whose propet 
 harbor is David Jones's locker. It is with deference 
 and self-distrust that I express difference of opinion 
 with the former, however strong may be my convic- 
 tion of their speculative error. It is not, however, 
 in their writings that we find these three fallacies, 
 but in those of the latter, who are the most numer- 
 ous, and who are generally vociferous in proportiou 
 to their ignorance.
 
 136 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 No one needs telling that if the number of sounds 
 in a language is exactly ascertained, and an unmis- 
 takable sign is provided for each sound, while these 
 sounds remain unchanged, and while the signs or 
 letters are confined strictly to the expression or in- 
 dication of the sounds to which they were originally 
 assigned, any word in that language may be easily 
 and exactly expressed — that is, written or spelled — 
 by any person who justly apprehends the sounds and 
 has mastered the signs or letters. Nor is there room 
 for reasonable doubt that a word thus written will be 
 unmistakable in its sound and structure by every per- 
 son who has exactly the same apprehension of the 
 sounds that the writer has, and the same conception 
 as his of the force of the letters. But this is a condi- 
 tion of things which does not now exist, which has 
 never existed since the world began, and which never 
 can exist. It is not in the nature of speech or of 
 written language that it should exist. If it could be 
 establislied to-day absolutely and clearly by a power 
 that had under control the actions, the thoughts, the 
 feelings, and the intuitions of men for twenty-four 
 hours, and no longer, it would not exist in perfection 
 to-morrow ; and before a generation had passed the 
 difference of the relations between sound and sign, 
 when compared witli their original relations, if not so 
 great as they now are assumed to be by the phonetic 
 reformers, would be great enough to be made a sub- 
 ject of agitation by those who are born agitators. 
 
 This seemed clear to me, and I published it long 
 ago ; and when I visited Oxford I talked this matter 
 over with a distinguished philologist and Oriental 
 Bchoiar, — a very eminent man indeed, who avowed 
 himself in favor of a phonetic reform. After we had
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 137 
 
 turned the subject over pretty thoroughly, ray part 
 being chiefly that of listening and suggesting, I said, 
 " Well, professor, suppose all this done, considering 
 the normal course of linguistic progress, what would 
 be the condition of things in the next generation?" 
 " Well," he answered, with a demure and deprecating 
 smile, " I am afraid it would all have to be done over 
 again." But since that time I have found that Alex- 
 ander Ellis himself, whose preeminence as a phonolo- 
 gist is questioned by no one, and who also advocates 
 phonetic writing, expresses the same opinion, in the 
 first chapter of his great work on the " History of 
 English Pronunciation." In regard to the use of pho- 
 netic writing, he remarks, " Would our pronunciation 
 remain fixed ? All experience is against its doing so, 
 and consequently spelling, considered as the mirror 
 of speech, would probably have to be adjusted from 
 generation to generation." The mistake of the emi- 
 nent philologists who lean toward phonetic reforma- 
 tion of written English seems to me to be that they 
 suppose the world would consent to this continual re- 
 adjustment. They do not, like the vociferating pho- 
 netic crowd, fail to see the tremendous upturning 
 of written language that would be going on ; they 
 know too much for that. But, looking habitually at 
 language as a subject of philological study, and al- 
 most of manipulation, they think that others may be 
 brought to regard it from the same point of view. 
 It seems to me that they might, with nearly as much 
 reason, ask men to give philology a like influence 
 upon the breath of tneir nostrils. 
 
 This opinion seems also to me to be supported by 
 the following important dictum s of Mr. Ellis. He lay a 
 down certain phonological laws, which no one has
 
 138 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 disputed, and only one of which (unimportant here) 
 Beems to me disputable. One of them is this " in- 
 dividual law," as he terms it : "A series of spoken 
 Bounds acquired during childhood and youth remains 
 fixed in the individual during the rest of his life." 
 Let this law be borne in mind in connection with the 
 fact that no two distant places, even in this country, 
 have just the same sounds for the same words, and 
 that nicely discriminating phonologists say that no two 
 men give exactly the same sound to the same word. 
 Consider also another important fact in language to 
 which Ellis calls attention (Part I., page 18) : that 
 at any particular time there are generally three gen- 
 erations living ; that each middle generation has be- 
 gun to exist at a different time from the others, and 
 has modified the speech of its predecessor in a some- 
 what different manner, after which it retains its own 
 modification, from which the following generation 
 proceeds to change that form once more ; and that 
 consequently there will not be any approach to uni- 
 formity of speech-sound in any one place at any one 
 time, but a kind of mean — the general speech of the 
 more thoughtful, educated, and respected persons, — 
 consider these facts and this law, which I am sure 
 will be disputed by no intelligent person who has 
 even a moderate acquaintance witli the history of lan- 
 guage, and then decide, if you can, what would be 
 the result of an attempt at the phonetic writing and 
 printing of English at this stage of its literature and 
 condition of its journalism, and say whether the 
 opinion that those who read books and newspapers, 
 to say nothing of those wlio make them, would accept 
 that result much longer than twenty-four hours ia 
 consistent with a condition of perfect mental sanity
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 139 
 
 It is difficult to see any other result of such a 
 change in written English than that, on the one 
 hand, there would be anarchy in visible speech, 
 every place having a spelling of its own, and almost 
 every man doing likewise ; and, on the other, that 
 the written English of the past would, in the course 
 of a generation, become as much a dead language as 
 Anglo-Saxon is. Now, to the real philologists this 
 would be of very little consequence. Indeed, from 
 their professional point of view, they would rather 
 like it. Varieties of speech in different places would 
 thus be expressed and recorded ; phonetic decay could 
 be easily traced ; and the periods and localities of 
 language would be marked unmistakably. Special- 
 ists and scientific men generally get into the habit 
 of looking at the whole cosmos, and upon every in- 
 dividual, animal, or thing in it, and upon the very 
 feelings and needs and habits and hopes of men, 
 women, and children, merely as subjects of study and 
 ratiocination. But this is not the way in which lan- 
 guage is regarded by those who use it daily, that 
 is, to all intents and purposes, by the whole world. 
 They use language only to communicate with each 
 ether and with the past : all of them with the past 
 for a generation or two, many of them with men of 
 remoter times. I think that every one who has gone 
 with me thus far, with certain exceptions (those 
 bitten with the phonetic mania, whose madness is in- 
 curable), will now begin to suspect that the introduc- 
 tion of a new alphabet of forty-two letters for forty- 
 two sounds would make the inter-communication just 
 spoken of, if not impossible, so di3icult and uncertain 
 that people at large would not submit to it. 
 
 To consider a very familiar illustration or two of
 
 140 EVERY -DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 this. There is a certain fruit which in some parts of 
 this country is called 2^ par, but in others it is called 
 a peer, while by the best speakers here and in Eng 
 land it is called a pare. But for all these people 
 the sign which expresses the name of that fruit, and 
 which expressed it for their fathers, and expresses 
 it for their children, is pear. Then there is the hair 
 which grows upon the lower part of a man's face : I 
 have heard this often, and by various jjeople, called 
 variously hard and hurd and haird, although by the 
 best speakers here and in England it is called beerd, 
 which four sounds, be it remembered, are severally the 
 names of that thing to these several sorts of people.^ 
 Nor does any one of these sounds lack historical and 
 analogical support. But the one sign of that name to 
 all these people, a sign which they all recognize the 
 moment they see it in a book or in a newspaper, is 
 beard. It gives these people no trouble whatever to 
 recognize the combination of signs pear and bea7'd as 
 the indications of the names of the objects in ques- 
 tion. They call up those names immediately, "on 
 sight," as a man has the privilege of being shot in 
 the places where some of the sounds prevail. But a 
 phonetic printing of those two words would unsettle 
 all these people. They would have to make a special 
 ntudy of them ; and so they would with regard to 
 almost every word in the language. And not only 
 would they, that is, the people at present living in 
 various places, be obliged to make this study, but ali 
 people forever afterward would be obliged to study 
 
 1 The pronunciation of beard as burd, or rather of ear as ur. has strik 
 tng and amusing illustration in this punning passage from a play of th< 
 Elizabethan period : — 
 
 " I hold my life that the black beard [black bird] her husband whissell 
 for her." (Westward Hoe, 1607, Act II., Scene 2.)
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 141 
 
 ivritten English in the same manner. For, as we 
 have seen, it is impossible, on the admission of all 
 competent students of language, to fix, on the one 
 side, the pronunciation of words, and, on the other, 
 the value of letters, even for a single generation. 
 
 That time is lost, and, as time is money, that 
 money is lost, in writing letters which are not sounded 
 is also not so clear to me as it seems to be to Professor 
 March and those for whom he has so strongly spoken. 
 Time is spent, indeed, in writing silent letters ; but so 
 is time spent in doing anything; and looking at the 
 Bubject from my point of view, and I venture to think 
 from Professor March's, it is not quite sure that all 
 time is lost that is not spent in getting or in saving 
 money. I should be sorry to think that the author 
 of the great Anglo-Saxon grammar took that view of 
 even the humblest form of literary labor. And may 
 it rightly and reasonably be said that our spelling is 
 " a fatal bar through life to easy and intelligent read- 
 ing " ? Such an assertion, I think, cannot safely be 
 made in the face of the daily experience of the readers 
 of the millions of volumes and the tens of millions of 
 newspapers and magazines that are issued yearly. I 
 .tm very sure that the readers of those publications — 
 those of them who can do anything easily and intelli- 
 gently — read them with little or no thought of spell- 
 ing, and entirely untroubled by it, even if they do not 
 always spell correctly themselves. And as to the mill- 
 ions of years that are wasted in consequence of the 
 DBCuliarities of English spelling and in consulting dio- 
 tionaries, is it not safe to assume at once that the 
 assertions of this passage are, to say the least, made 
 in the very strongest possible form of hyperbole ? 
 
 To the groans of Frenchmen and of Germans upon
 
 142 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 this subject I confess that I can listen with a dull and 
 unsympatliizing ear, and to the petition of the Japan- 
 ese that we should alter our spelling for their conven- 
 ience, with a quiet laugh at their notions of the func- 
 tions of a language and of the power of petitions and 
 of legislation over it ; in which, however, it must be 
 confessed that they are not peculiar. The English 
 language is made neither for foreigners nor for phi- 
 lologists, but for the use of English-speaking people ; 
 it is made by themselves, for their own convenience, 
 or, if you please, for their own inconvenience, and 
 without regard to the peculiarities of speech or or- 
 thography pertaining to other peoples. I, for one, 
 hope that it will never lose its distinctive characteris- 
 tics, however difficult they may be of acquirement by 
 foreigners. It might be convenient for publicists to 
 have a common means of inter-coramunication, as Latin 
 long was, and to a certain degree still is, among schol- 
 ars, as it would be for merchants to have a coin which 
 would serve as a common resolvent of all accounts ; 
 but the loss of peculiarities of language cannot be 
 looked for while those of race, and therefore of liter- 
 ature, exist ; and to deprive the world of these would 
 be like depriving nature of her peculiarities of scenery 
 and of climate. Without them life would lack its 
 Bavor. One of the deplorable results of what is called 
 :he spread of civilization is the laying aside of na- 
 tional costume ; and language is the intellectual cos- 
 tume of race. I would counter the petition of our Jap- 
 anese friends as to English orthograpliy by one en- 
 treating them to preserve their own costume, in which 
 they are picturesque, dignified, and comfortable, in- 
 »tead of adopting the chimney-pot hat, the formless 
 trousers, and the hideous coat of western civilization
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 143 
 
 in which they look like mulatto barbers' boys or am- 
 bitious monkeys, while they more than share our dis- 
 comfort in our troublesome disguises by the unfitness 
 of our clothes to their climate. 
 
 Complaint of our orthography comes from French- 
 men with an ill grace. If English has words the 
 spelling and pronunciation of which are incongruous, 
 French has them too, not less striking either in con- 
 gruity or in number. If written English has letters 
 which are not heard in speech, French has so many 
 that they cannot be counted for multitude. Examples 
 in almost every phrase in common use will occur to 
 every reader : as, monsieur, mademoiselle, billet doux^ 
 faux pas, il fait beau temps, je suis heureux, faites mes 
 compliments, tapis vert, coup de maitre. See also 
 these words on the first p^ge of the first French book 
 that I open : " oil tant d'officiers perdirent leurs vies,^^ 
 '"'' vous n'avez point d'Stat,''"' "a partir de ce temps,^'' 
 " en doigtanty But to make this point is work of 
 supererogation. As to variable and uncertain pro- 
 nunciation, it may be remarked, for example, that e 
 and u are letters which have a very marked, and the 
 latter a very peculiar, sound in French; yet e in je 
 and u in brun have the same sound, the anomalous, 
 obscure vowel sound in tuh and in come, while in 
 hrune u has the common sound heard in the English 
 rune, and in brUlement it has the peculiar indescrib- 
 able and unindicable French sound ; e in the same 
 word having in the second syllable again the sound of 
 u in hrun^ and in the third the common sound which 
 it has in encore, which is that of a in banc. The i in 
 timbale and in epingle has the same sound as ai in 
 pain; and yet in pair the ai has exactly the same 
 sound which the same combination has in English.
 
 144 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 But whj go into particulars as to the manifold in- 
 congruities of French pronunciation, which would be 
 monstrous if tliey were not, as I believe, like our own, 
 perfectly natural and almost unavoidable ? And what 
 shall we say of the many imperfect, mangled, half- 
 Btifled sounds in that lang-uage, making it almost ri- 
 diculous and almost unfit for manly speech, — sounds 
 like those of en, in, an, em, im, in which all distinc- 
 tion of vowel and consonant is swallowed up in half- 
 formed nasality, — and of eux and ut and tre final 
 and aille, to pass by numberless others ? Surely it 
 would become French-speaking people to avoid mak- 
 ing complaints of the pronunciation of other lan- 
 guages. Nor is German without like monstrosities of 
 written and spoken language, although, as far as my 
 knowledge of it goes, they are less numerous and less 
 striking than those of French and Euglish. 
 
 However, notwithstanding all that has been said, 
 it must be admitted that the incongruities of Eng- 
 lish speech and English spelling are great and mani- 
 fold. That, for example, urn, earn, work, bird, were^ 
 scourge, and tierce should have the same vowel sound, 
 and that the like should be true of mine, pie, eye^ 
 buy, and height, would seem at the first thought to 
 show that in spoken and written Englisli the relation 
 between sound and sign is almost indeterminable. 
 The frequently cited through, rough, cough, doughy 
 and lough may well puzzle foreigners. But none of 
 these, or of their kind, it seems to me, should puzzle 
 or trouble English-speaking men. For, unless I am 
 greatly in error, the perplexity and the grief of mind 
 that many do bring themselves to feel on this sub- 
 
 1 This TTord was pronounced ware iu Shakespeare's day, and later. Iti 
 tnalogy is with there.
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 145 
 
 ject arise from a misapprehension of the facts. V/e 
 do not really pronounce u and ea and o and i alike ; 
 nor do we pronounce ouc/h oo, nor vff, nor off^ nor o7i, 
 nor oc7i, all of the latter being easily traceable to one 
 guttural sound something like that of the Greek X' 
 No intelligent man, if asked what is the sound of w, 
 Avould give that of the vowel sound in urn, or if of o 
 the vowel sound in work, or if of i or e the vowel 
 sounds in bird and were ; all these sounds being in 
 fact one. He would no more do this than he would 
 Bay, on the other hand, that the correct utterance of 
 a well-known line of Pope's is, The proh-jjeer stew- 
 die ohf mane-kind ice mane. It by no means fol- 
 lows, because the word which vve spell lord is pro- 
 nounced lawrd, that we pronounce o aiv. Such a 
 conclusion would reverse the relations of spoken and 
 written language. For it is the former which is lan- 
 guage ; and the latter is a series of merely arbitrary 
 and conventional signs by which we represent it and 
 call it to mind. And this representing and calling 
 to mind is not that of the elements of a written word, 
 but of a whole spoken word. Whatever may have 
 been the original relations of sounds and letters, of 
 Bpoken and written language, such are the I'elations 
 they have at present. Spoken language is one thing; 
 and it is an absolute thing, self-existent and not 
 limited and controlled, although it may be, and to 
 I certain degree is, modified by written language, 
 which is quite another thing. It may be objected 
 that this is just what is complained of, — that this 
 Beverance of the relations of spoken and written lan- 
 guage is the grievance against Avhicli the phono- 
 graphic school of phonologists protest, the wrong 
 which they seek to right. Tu which the reply is that 
 
 10
 
 146 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 this severance is involved in the nature of things , 
 and that it is unavoidable, at least to a certain de- 
 gree, except by such a continual change of orthog- 
 raphy as would make written language as variable 
 as spoken. This brings us to the consideration of 
 the last point in the passage which is the occasion of 
 these remarks. 
 
 Before considering this, however, let me, at the risk 
 of violating the good maxim, " Qui s' excuse s^accuse,'^ 
 declare that, although I believe it to be true that, in 
 Professor March's words, " tliere are literaiy amateurs 
 that fall in love with these squintings and lispings," 
 I am not one of those who are thus besotted. If 
 there be a fibre of conservatism in my complexion, it 
 is not in regard to orthography and pronunciation, 
 as to which I am personally ready for very radical 
 measures. I would begin, for instance, by turning k 
 out of the English alphabet, where it has no business, 
 and restoring to c its proper sound and functions ; 
 so that, for example, we should pronounce sceptre 
 skeptre, and not write skeptic (any more than we 
 should write skeptik^ but sceptic, and write thic and 
 hric instead of thick and brick. I would stay that 
 tendency to throw a strong accent upon the antepe- 
 nultimate syllable, merely because it is the antepe- 
 nultimate, which not only mars our language by an 
 awkward, jerky, anti-rhythmical huddle of sounds, 
 but often hides meaning and violates common-sense, 
 giving us such words as ge-Sgraphy., hiSg-raphy, or^ 
 thdg-raphy, 8ten-<Sgraphy, in which compounded words 
 tne o] ly stress is laid upon a syllable which has no 
 proper or significant existence as such, it being com- 
 posed of the last letter of one word and tlie first let- 
 ter of another, each torn away from a place where
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 141 
 
 it sounds well and means something, — a tendency, 
 or rule, or " law," as some folk call such whimsies, 
 which threatens to give us, indeed requires, such 
 abominations as al-l6p-athy, ho-moe-dp-atliy, pho-tdg- 
 raphy, and te-leg-raphy. With regard to the last two 
 words, however, and in a measure the first two also, 
 the common-sense and the good ear of people in gen- 
 eral protects them against this distortion. In spite 
 of the dictionaries, they say plidtogrdpliy and tele- 
 grdphy^ and generally dllopdthy^ hdmoeopdthy, the 
 second accent being somewhat lighter than the first. 
 In all such matters we must conform to usage whether 
 we will or not, unless we would seem affected, pe- 
 dantic, and to a certain extent ridiculous ; and there- 
 fore I suppose that erelong we snail be talking of 
 te-lSg-raphy and te-leg-raphers. But how much bet- 
 ter the rhythm of these words, and how much more 
 preservative of their sense, if they were pronounced 
 according to their formation, with two light accents 
 instead of one heavy one, tele-grdph-y ^ pli6 -to-grdph-y^ 
 hd-moeo-pdth-y, dl-lo-pdth-y^ and I do not hesitate to 
 Bay, gS-o-grd-phy^ hi-o-grd-phy^ 6r-tho-grd-phy, stSrv- 
 o-grd-phy^ hopeless as their case is by the bad usage 
 of generations. This, however, only by the bye, and 
 by way of indicating my freedom from prejudice 
 against change merely as change. 
 
 Nevertheless it does seem to me that there is 
 Bmie "advantage in the study of etymology " to be 
 derived from the preservation in orthography of the 
 remnants of the elements and the roots of words. 
 For example, a great many people say in affirmative 
 reply to a lady, " Yes'm," and it is at least quite 
 possible that such may become the general usage. 
 Now here the '??i, which is a mer^ nasal hum, is the 
 "emnant of mea domina^ \\\q;\\v wg '' luy lady," " my
 
 148 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 mistress ; " the steps of decay being, mea domino^ 
 madamina, madame, madam, ma'ayn, mum, 'm. Now 
 I do venture to believe that mea domina is far more 
 easily traceable by the etymologist in madam than in 
 'wi, or even in mum. So, for example, it would seem 
 that the French dit, which is the descendant of the 
 Latin dictus, and which used to be written diet, is 
 much more obviousl}^ connected with its original than 
 if it were written di, as it is pronounced, or rather 
 as the word which the letters d i t represent is pro- 
 nounced, and very much more so than if the sound di 
 were represented by some " palseographic " or phono- 
 graphic contrivance of arbitrary signs, by which the 
 d should be replaced (only for example) by A and 
 the i (again only for example) by -q. It will be seen 
 by any student of language that this in no way 
 touches the application of any well-established law 
 of word formation, or of phonetic decay, such, for ex- 
 ample, as that by which in Italian the Latin I passes 
 into i, and from pluvium, plumbum, and planta we 
 have piova, piomha, and pianta. 
 
 One other case in point may prove interesting, if 
 not convincing. If a philologist of the future, with- 
 out certain special knowledge, or indeed if any person 
 without such knowledge, were to meet with an ac- 
 lount of the lamentations of a musician over his 
 broken shell, what would he understand by it, and 
 what would be the notion that he would form of the 
 shell, the destruction of which was the cause of such 
 grief to a musician ? Naturally he would think of 
 the origin of Apollo's lyre, and suppose that here 
 was a poetic use of the old Greek legend. But he 
 would be wrong ; and when he found out that he 
 was so, and that this shell w^as the musician's name 
 for a big fiddle, I take it that the etymology of the
 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 149 
 
 word would not be very obvious, certainly not so 
 clear as if he had found it written eelle^ although it 
 was pronounced shell. 
 
 This is no supposed case. Among professional mu- 
 Bicians a violoncello has come to be called a shell, and 
 this name for it is spreading rapidly among amateui's. 
 It has come, as any one may see, from a dropping of 
 the first part of a long word. Its last syllables, cello 
 (tshello') in Italian, celle (^selW) in French, and cell 
 (tshell) in German, have naturally and easily taken 
 the pronunciation of shell for shortness and for ease ; 
 and we thus find the instrument spoken of by an ab- 
 breviation of its name, which omits entirely the es- 
 sential and really designating part of it, violon (of 
 which the stem is viol), and preserves only the dimin- 
 utive affix cello, which again is degraded into shell. 
 According to the theory of orthography and pronun- 
 ciation which we have been considering, such should 
 be the received spelling of the word, and we should 
 write, not of a violoncello player, or even of a 'cello 
 player, but of a shell player or a shellist. Moreover, 
 we are called on to believe that the etymologist would 
 find his path as clear in tracing shell as in doing tho 
 same with violoncello. 
 
 These are mere hints and suggestions of reasons 
 for doubting the entire truth of the assertion that 
 "written records are valuable to the philologist just 
 in proportion as they are accurate records of speech 
 AS spoken from year to year." If there be no force 
 In these reasons, we may, as far as etymology is con- 
 cerned, write, instead of phonetic news and pazV of 
 iiveezers, fonetic nuz &,nd parrot wheezers ; although 
 there may perhaps be other than etymological rea- 
 ions against the adoption of those as established or 
 thographies.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SPtLLIXG REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 
 
 The spelling reformers held a convention in En£-- 
 land. And why not? Everything now is done, oi 
 at least regulated, by a convention. The cooking- 
 stove makers had held their convention, and why 
 should not the spelling reformers, cookers or cooks of 
 language, have theirs ? Not that I would by any 
 means imply that there is as much reason in hold- 
 ing a convention to reform or to regulate written 
 language as there is in holding one to regulate and 
 reform the manner of making and selling cooking- 
 stoves. For stoves, whether used to destroy and to 
 render unwholesome and ill-tasted the flesh of eata- 
 ble beasts and the fruits of the earth, or to make the 
 air of houses unfit for human creatures to breathe, 
 are made, contrived, and wrought with malice afore- 
 thought and by the instigation of the devil, — the 
 first dealer and lai'gest manufacturer and proprietor 
 in the stove line ; whereas language, even in its writ- 
 ten form, is the result of a long and almost uncon- 
 scious process, over which no man or assemblage of 
 men has, or can have, any direct control whatever. 
 Observe that I have said that this process is almont 
 unconscious, and that men have no direct control over 
 it ; for language is made by men for their own use, 
 and consciousness does enter into its formation to a 
 certain degiee, and man's will does indirectly cnntroj 
 it. But no sort of men, however learned or skillful
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 151 
 
 sail come together and lay down laws for making lan- 
 guage and bringing it into vogue, as other men may 
 convene and lay down laws for the making and sell- 
 ing of stoves. In the former case the thing produced 
 is the result of the informal consent of all those who 
 make and use it, including the stove-makers. 
 
 As to the doings of the convention of the British 
 spelling reformers, I shall have something to say here- 
 after. I propose now to ask the attention of my read- 
 ers to the doings of a few of the predecessors of these 
 reformers, or, I should rather say, to point out that 
 they have had predecessors, which many of them, in 
 this country, if not in England, seem to be ignorant 
 of, or at least to ignore. Even a moderate acquaint- 
 ance with what has been endeavored in this respect 
 in regard to the English language, and with what de- 
 gree of success, would seem to be enough to check 
 the self-sufficiency with which they propose to reform 
 our written language by deliberate whereas-ing and 
 resolving. 
 
 In one of the delightful little songs that Shake- 
 speare dropped into his plays is the line, 
 
 " A long while ago the world began," 
 
 which suggests a truth that every thinking, observ- 
 ing man, who looks before and after, finds impressed 
 upon him more deeply day by day. The new is 
 antiquated ; reform is musty ; and even progress is 
 hoary with the snows of ages. English spelling re- 
 foi m is not a new " movement ; ' and not only is it 
 old, but it began actually before the language had 
 'issumed the form which is known to philologists aa 
 
 oiodern English. It has always failed, absolutely, 
 
 i^holly, utterly.
 
 152 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Some writers upon the subject have given to Sir 
 John Clieke the credit of being the first to attempt 
 the reform of English spelling. Cheke was a scholar, 
 and a great one for his time — the reigns of Edward 
 VI. and Mary (he was born A. D. 1514, and died 
 A. D. 1557) ; and when very few men in England 
 knew anything of Greek, he was professor of that 
 language at Cambridge. He gave much attention to 
 its pronunciation, and had a sharp literary discus- 
 sion on that subject with Bishop Gardiner, which was 
 published at Basle, A. D, 1555. It was natural that 
 such a man should be led to like studies of his own 
 language, and to tamper with its spelling. We may 
 glance at what he proposed anon. But more than 
 three hundred years before his day — that is, more 
 than six hundred years ago — another man made a 
 very remarkable endeavor in the same direction. 
 
 This first English spelling reformer was a monk 
 named Ormin, who was a North of England man, and 
 who about the beginning of the thirteenth century 
 wrote a religious poem, or rather put into verse form 
 homilies founded upon the gospel of the day in the 
 church service. His work, which exists only in one 
 manuscript, supposed to be his own, is imperfect, but 
 consists of more than two thousand lines. Not content 
 with such a serious performance, he must undertake 
 to reform the spelling of his time, which was very 
 irregular ; and he wrote his poem in a spelling of his 
 own invention, by which he hoped to indicate the 
 oronunciation beyond mistake. His method was a 
 very simple one, and not ill adapted- to his purpose 
 Ft consisted chiefly in using single consonants .after 
 vowels which had their long or name soun<l9, and 
 ilouble consonants after those which were sliort or
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 153 
 
 ** obscure." The former sound we now generally in- 
 dicate by tlie use of final e after a single consonant : 
 for example, Tnan mane^ met mete, fir fire, or ore^ 
 us use. But Ormin spelled mane man, and man 
 mann; fire fir, and fir firr, etc. He believed in his 
 reformed spelling, as all his successors have believed 
 each in his own ; and he insists strongly upon the 
 preservation of it by every person who copies his 
 poem, — of printing he had of course no notion. In a 
 passage which I modernize in phrase as well as in 
 spelling he says : " Whoever shall wish to write this 
 book, him I bid that he write it riglit, .... and 
 that he look well that he writes a letter twice when- 
 ever it is so in the book ; for he may not else in Eng- 
 lish write right the word." Thus it has ever been 
 with the spelling reformer ; he believes that unless his 
 Bpelling is adopted readable English cannot be writ- 
 ten. A few lines of the poem will give a notion of 
 the effect produced by the system of this first of the 
 reformers of Englisli spelling ; that is, the first of 
 whom we yet have any knowledge ; for even of him 
 it may be true that brave men lived before Aga- 
 memnon : — 
 
 Off all J)iss god U3S brinnge{)J) word 
 
 7 errnde 7 god tit>l)ennde 
 
 Goddspell, "7 forr^Ji maj^ itt well 
 
 God errnde ben ^ehatenn. 
 
 Forr mann ma^^ uppo Goddspellboc 
 
 Godnessess findenn seffne 
 
 ^att ure Laferrd Jesu Crist 
 
 Uss hafe{)J) don onn erfe 
 
 pnuh. ^att he comm to manne, 7 I)urrh 
 
 pzXt he warrj) mann onn ex^} 
 
 * The followinp: modern Eng-iish version of this passage \s as little 
 thanged from the original as ] xssihle : —
 
 154 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 It is not worth our while to vex ourselves with the 
 exauiination of more than two lines, and a few words 
 of this. Whoever chooses to examine the poem care- 
 fully will find two long extracts from it in Professor 
 Corson's (of Cornell University) excellent " Hand- 
 Book of Anglo-Saxon and Early English," by the 
 Btudy of which alone any capable person who is in 
 earnest may attain a very fair knowledge of the early 
 history of our language. 
 
 The first line shows by the doubling of the conso- 
 nants that " of," "all," " this," " us," and " bringeth " 
 were pronounced six hundred years ago nearly, if not 
 exactly, as they are now. There may have been some 
 Blight difference in the sounds of the shortened vowels, 
 but that is not probable. But we also see by the 
 spelling in this line and in the second and the fourth 
 lines that God was pronounced with the o long, to 
 ihyme with load and hode^ and that the o in ivord 
 was pronounced as we still pronounce the o in sword, 
 which, by the way, was once written siverd, but nev- 
 ertheless pronounced swohrd, as we pronounce sew 
 soh. In Goddspell we have the early form of gospel, 
 and the double d shows that combination had already 
 exercised its modifying influence upon the first sylla* 
 ble, the sound of which in the compound had passed 
 from GoJid to God. The d was then dropped, the 
 
 Of all this God us bringeth word 
 
 & message & good tidings 
 
 Gospel, & therefore may it well 
 
 God message be called. 
 
 For mau may upon gospelbook 
 
 Goodnesses find seven 
 
 That our I>ord Jesu Christ 
 
 Us hath done on earth, 
 
 Through [tliat is, because] that he came to man, & througli 
 
 That he was uuiu on earth.
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 155 
 
 rowel sound retained, and the result was our gospel. 
 In ffodnessess, the omission of the double d, we may 
 be sure, was an oversight. The poem presents not a 
 few such. 
 
 It is not worth while to refer to all the words 
 which, according to this passage, had the same sound 
 in the North of England six hundred years ago, even 
 before the formation of what is known as modern 
 English, that they have in the general usage of the 
 present day. The reader who is sufficiently interested 
 in the subject to care to know these will easily find 
 them without assistance. But the seventh line is 
 worthy of some attention. The second word in this 
 line, ure, is our, and we see that the u was sounded 
 long and with the name sound of the vowel. But 
 that sound was not our sound of u. Ormin's ure 
 was not sounded to rhyme with our pure and eure. 
 It had the Continental sound, which we strangely in- 
 dicate by 00, and which some gentlemen and ladies 
 Btill give it, when, for example, they s-dj funiitoor, in 
 which they are merely a little old-fashioned. ^ The 
 pronoun our was then and for a long time afterward 
 pronounced oor. If any one thinks this strange, let 
 him reflect how he still pronounces the other pro- 
 noun your, which I venture to say is to rhyme it, 
 not with hour, but with poor, just as English-speak- 
 ing people did six centuries ago. In the next word, 
 laferrd, we have the Anglo-Saxon hlaford, a master, 
 in an early stage of its passage into our modern 
 lord. In the name Jesu Crist tlie j was sounded 
 like y, and the vowels had the sounds \vhich they 
 
 - Mr. Ellis thinks that this u {oo) passed into the modern English u {too) 
 18 early as 1300. It is dangerous to differ openly from Mr. Ellis upon a 
 jistorical point of EnglLi^h phonology; but such is not the impression lef* 
 Upon Hie bj" my reading.
 
 1.56 EVEEY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Btill Lave on the continent of Europe. The sound 
 of this line, therefore, as the people of Ormin's day 
 heard it, was, to indicate it as best I can, some- 
 what in a " glossic " fashion, " That oor lafurd yay- 
 600 creest," which corresponds to our "That our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 Ormin's work is very valuable for the light thrown 
 by it upon the pronunciation of English at the re- 
 mote period when it was written ; and we ought 
 therefore to be thankful for the freak that placed him 
 in the van of the noble army of spelling reformers. 
 But even its evidence as to the sounds of words, as 
 its author heard, or thought that he heard, them 
 spoken, is attainable only by comparison and conject- 
 ure after previous study of the subject. As to any 
 effect upon spelling, it had no more than if he had 
 shaken so many types in a dice-box and thrown them 
 upon the page. He called his poem "The Ormulum," 
 from his own name ; and well he might do so, for hia 
 attempt to make spelling conform to speech only shut 
 him out from the rest of the world, and reduced his 
 poem to the condition of an entirely private and per- 
 sonal affair, with one reader, — the writer himself. 
 There is no evidence whatever that any other person 
 than he ever read a page of it until withm the last 
 half century or so, when it was found to have a phil- 
 ological interest and value. It was known to schol- 
 ars ; but even they passed it by, supposing it to be 
 Gothic, not dreaming that it was English. And such, 
 in a great measure at least, nmst be the result of any 
 effort, whether made by one man or a hundred, to 
 get up a new and " reasonable " orthography. 
 
 Let us now consider our subject in connection witfc 
 the labors of other early spelling reformers, who, how 
 B\<^\\ did not prove to be reformers of spelling.
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 167 
 
 Of these, Sir John Cheke, already mentioned, was 
 the second of whom we have any knowledge. His 
 biographer, Strype, tells us that Cheke was led into 
 his efforts at reform because " the writing and spell- 
 ing of oui English tongue was in those times very 
 bad, even scholars themselves taking little heed how 
 they spelt." By very bad spelling Strype meant very 
 irregular and unsettled spelling. The phonetic re- 
 formers would regard the spelling just before Cheke's 
 day as really better than that of Strype's day (about 
 two centuries ago), which is to all intents and pur- 
 poses that now in use ; for the former was more pho- 
 netic. People then spelled without reference to any 
 standard, for there was none, and merely with the 
 purpose of expressing by letters, after a fashion and 
 as the notion took them, the sounds which they gave 
 to words. The consequence was irregularity, or what 
 Strype calls, and what would now be called, bad spell- 
 ing. 
 
 It is to be remarked, as being much to our purpose, 
 that the vei'y scholars who spelled English so badly 
 or irregularly spelled Latin very well, that is, with 
 strict conformity to one standard. Now, the reason 
 of this difference is that Latin was a dead language 
 and English a living one. Since the revival of learn- 
 ing, at least, there has been but one way of spelling 
 Latin among all peoples, — the way in vogue at the 
 Ciceronian period. As to this, scholars were and are 
 very particular ; and what was known as "literature" 
 before Cheke's day, and for some time afterward, was 
 written in Latin. Men of letters then wrote their 
 books and serious treatises, and even held their oral 
 discussions, in Latin, which was cailed the universal 
 language. Their own languages they held in a kind
 
 158 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 of contempt, each calling his own respectively " the 
 vulgar tongue," vulgar here having had, however, its 
 original meaning, comuion, with, nevertheless, a sug- 
 gestion that wiiat was common was also unclean. But 
 Latin, when it was a living language, a speech, varied 
 in its spelling from time to time, and even with indi- 
 viduals. Latin of only two generations before Cicero's 
 day was not spelled as he spelled it ; and although 
 the Roman literature of the Augustan age did, by its 
 supremacy, much to fix the language in its written 
 form, it erelong began to change. The people at 
 large then did not write, and therefore did not spell ; 
 for spelling has nothing to do with speech, even cor- 
 rect and elegant speech ; and the spelling of later pe- 
 riods, as it appears in inscriptions, and even in man- 
 uscripts, is not that of Cicero and his contempora- 
 ries and immediate successors. The bad or irregular 
 spelling of English, and also of other languages, three 
 hundred years ago, was phonetic, and was due chiefly 
 to the absence of any standard. The phonetic spell- 
 ing reformers are scornful of the accepted spelling of 
 English, because, as they say, it has been imposed 
 upon us by printers and proof-readers. But it is to 
 the introduction of printing that we owe it that there 
 .s any uniformity in our spelling. The diffusion of 
 :3rinted books among the people, and the abandon- 
 ment by men of letters of Latin for " the vulgar 
 tongue," which became necessary when they ceased 
 to write only for the learned class, and addressed what 
 we now call the general public, made uniformity de- 
 sirable, if not necessary, and that uniformity was 
 brought about — very gradually indeed — by the de« 
 ipised printers and proof-readers.^ 
 
 1 As to the correctors of the press, it seems to me that Ihiur influence cai>
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 158 
 
 Cheke's endeavor was in the contrary direction from 
 Ormin's. Ormin attempted to indicate the true sound 
 of vowels by the use of consonants, using the latter 
 doubly or singly for that purpose. Cheke directed 
 his attention to the vowels themselves. The final e, 
 which now generally has only the function of indi- 
 cating a long sound in a preceding vowel, had once, 
 generally, an historical and phonetic significance. 
 This it had ceased to have even before Cheke's day ; 
 and he would have done away with it altogether, 
 spelling, for example, thus : excus, ^:)razs, commun, 
 instead of excuse, praise, commune. But in other 
 words, inconsistently, it w^ould seem, he indicated 
 the long sound by doubling the vowel, writing maad, 
 straat, daar, for made, strait (or straight"), dare, which 
 Ormin would have written mad, strat, dar. Like all 
 phonetic reformers of spelling, he was intolerant of 
 silent letters, and wrote frute, wold, faut, dout, for 
 fruit, would, fault, and doubt. By these spellings we 
 see that in his day — and it was so long afterward 
 — the I was pronounced in ivould and was not pro 
 nounced in fault. The fashion has changed since 
 then, and we now leave the I out of would, and pro- 
 nounce it in fault. The latter is an instance of the 
 less common change in pronunciation, in which the 
 progress of time much oftener destroys letters than 
 it restores them. It is needless to give more time to 
 Cheke's attempted spelling reforms. They had no 
 effect whatever. Printers and proof-readers had more 
 
 lot have been otherwise than for good upon written language. For niy- 
 Belf, I have owed so much to the intelligence, the carefulness, and the 
 ^ood-nature of proof-readers, they have sc often saved me from the conse- 
 quences of haste and numan imperfection, and I have found them gea- 
 ►rally so capable of their work, and so faithful and willing and patient in 
 •ne doing of it, that I feel as if T ought gladly to acknowledge them as 
 ell >w craftsmen, to whom it becomes me to be grateful and respectful.
 
 160 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 power in this direction than the distinguished scholax 
 who " taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek." 
 Soon after Cheke's death, Sir Thomas Smith pub- 
 lished, in 1568, a book, the object of which was to 
 improve orthography. Although the object of his en- 
 deavor was English orthography, he wrote his book 
 in Latin. It was "De Recta et Emendata Linorua. 
 Anglicanaa Scriptione," — concerning a correct and 
 amended writing of the EngUsh hmguage. At this 
 early day he proposed a phonetic alphabet ; and he 
 was, I believe, the first to do so. His failure, if I 
 am right, was the first of a long series of like fruitless 
 efforts. The craze has since then been continuous. 
 The very next year, 1569, John Hart, who was Ches- 
 ter Herald, published a book the purpose of which 
 was to induce people to spell phonetically, that they 
 might represent exactly the sounds they uttered in 
 speech. He condescended to write in English. His 
 book was " An Orthographic containing the Due 
 Order and Reason howe to Write or Paint th' Image 
 of Mannes Voice most like to Life or Nature ; " and 
 his preface was addressed " To the doubtfull of the 
 English Orthographic." In this preface, after defin- 
 ing orthography, he says that according to it we 
 " ought to use an order in writing which, nothing 
 cared for unto this day, our predecessors have ben (as 
 it were) drouned in a maner of negligence, to bee 
 contented with such maner of writing as they and we 
 now have found from age to age, without any regard 
 to the several parts of the voice, which the writing 
 ought to represent." He closes his address thus : 
 " And accordinglye here foloweth a certain order of 
 true writing of the speech, and founded upon reason 
 — mother of all sciences ; wherewith you may hap
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 161 
 
 pily be profited ; and so health and tlie grace of God 
 be with you. So be it." 
 
 With the Chester herald's true writing of the 
 speech we need not trouble ourselves. Having been 
 " founded upon reason," which would seem to be the 
 poorest of suppoi-ts in orthography, it is now mere 
 matter of literary curiosit}^ of little or no interest to 
 the general reader. But it is worth our while to 
 look at the spelling which he speaks of so contumeli- 
 ously, calling it elswhere, just as our phonetic re- 
 formers of to-day do, " disorder and confusion." In 
 the passages quoted above, his spelling is exactly fol- 
 lowed ; and how much does the disorder and confusion 
 of more than three hundred years ago differ from that 
 to-day ? Hardly at all. There is no essential differ- 
 ence between the spelling of this John Hart who 
 wrote in 1569 and that of a John Hart who might 
 write or has written in 1879. Throughout those two 
 passages which I have quoted for their substance, and 
 which fairly represent the author's spelling, there are 
 only five words which differ from our present stand- 
 ard ; and they differ not essentially in the radical 
 sounds and letters, but merely by an e more or less, 
 y for ^, or two consonants instead of one. No person 
 who can read at all would have any more difficulty 
 in reading John Hart's book, which was printed three 
 hundred years ago, than he would if it had been 
 written and published three hundred years later ; nor 
 is there a reason graver than conformity to fashion 
 wliy any person should not now spell just as he did. 
 What great matter is it whether we write learn or 
 learne^ we or wee ? Unifoumity is indeed desira'^le, 
 although it is not essent?a., and our friends the print- 
 ers and proof-readers will insure it if we print our 
 11
 
 162 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 writing. If we do not print it, the consequences of 
 Buch small and unessential variation as there is be- 
 tween Hart's spelling and ours are not worth five 
 minutes' thought by any reasonable creature. The 
 great faults of our every-day English are in much 
 graver matters than this is ; and there are people in 
 a constant twitter of apprehension about their spell- 
 ing and their "grammar" who might well let those 
 go uncared for, while they give their attention to 
 speaking and writing sense in words that express 
 their meaning. 
 
 The sameness of Hart's spelling with our own in all 
 essential points, and the rare and very slight differences 
 in the unessential, have a lesson for those who will 
 learn it. Here was a man who endeavored to upturn 
 the written English language, and who thought that he 
 would do so ; and yet, after three hundred years of 
 continuous effort like his, our orthography — if orthog- 
 raphy it must be called — is to all intents and pur- 
 poses just what he found it. As the centuries have 
 slowly gone by, the writers of English have dropped 
 a letter here and there (very rarely one which had 
 any etymological or phonetic value) ; but our written 
 language has remained essentially the same that it 
 was when he undertook its reformation. 
 
 A hundred years passed by, not unvexed by pho- 
 netic reformers, when the most pi-etentious of them all 
 appeared. This was John Wilkins, Dean of Ripon,^ 
 who published, in 1668, " An Essay toward a Real 
 Character and a Philosophical Language." His " es- 
 say," unlike the essays of Bacon, who first used the 
 word in this sense, made a large folio. Its title ia 
 significant, because it contains a strong expression 
 
 1 Afterwards Bishop of Cliester.
 
 SPELLING REFORMERS OF THE PAST. 1G3 
 
 Df the misleading fancy which has beguiled all re- 
 formers of this class. He sought a " real character ' 
 and a " philosophical " hmguage. The notion which 
 takes possession of these men is that there is, or ought 
 to be, and that there may be, some real connection 
 between spoken words and the signs used to express 
 them, and that language may be made philosophical, 
 — a kind of scientific structure. Now, there is no 
 Buch real connection, nor has there ever been any 
 such structure, except perhaps the Sanskrit language. 
 Written language is composed of arbitrary and con- 
 ventional signs; and hieroglyphics, or numerical fig- 
 ures, or stenographic lines and dots, are no less writ- 
 ten language than letters. A painted crow and a K 
 signifies " croquet " just as well as seven letters do, 
 besides being so exquisitely funny ; and if we could 
 have one sign for each syllable that we utter, instead 
 of being obliged to use from two to three or four, 
 the device would answer our purposes. Moreover, 
 language, written or spoken, is not philosophical or 
 A science; although there is a science of language, 
 which is a very different matter. It is only an art, — 
 the first and homeliest of all arts, — a mere device 
 for communication between man and man ; and its 
 only object is to make that communication as clear 
 and sure as possible. 
 
 Dean Wilkins invented a phonetic alphabet, using 
 bout four hundred and fifty charactei'S to express 
 various shades of sound. He also anticipated one of 
 the most prominent of tlie phonologists of our day, 
 Bell, in his lately published " Visible Speech," by 
 showing the mode of formation of the sounds of the 
 principal letters. He engraved diagrams of about 
 ;hirty-five heads wiih one jaw and a side of the neck
 
 164 EVERT-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 cut away, to show the action of tongue, palate, and 
 glottis. He had also the faith in his system which is 
 characteristic of reformers, and moreover that con- 
 tempt for others which is common to most of them. 
 He says : — 
 
 " As for those other new alphabets that are prepared by 
 Sir Thomas Smith [mentioned above], Bullokar, and Alex- 
 ander Gill, they do none of them give a just imitation of 
 the simple elements of speech ; but, what by the mixture of 
 long and short words, which do not differ specifically, to- 
 gether with the insertion of double letters, they do too much 
 increase the number of them. Besides that, some other 
 letters are left out and omitted," 
 
 Thus it ever is : my panacea is the great remedy , 
 as for " those others," they are of no value. Ob- 
 serve, by the way, that in the hundred years that 
 passed between Hart and Williins written English be- 
 came just what it is at present. The passage quoted 
 from Wilkins, althougli it was written and printed 
 more than two centuries ago, would pass muster at 
 a spelling bee to-day. Observe also at the end the 
 words " left out and omitted." The first two and the 
 last have exactly the same meaning ; and his word 
 ' and " is superfluous or misleading. This union of 
 iinglish words and Romance words to express one 
 thought is common in books written two hundred or 
 three hundred years ago. The Common Prayer Book 
 is full of examples of it.^ 
 
 1 The union was not always that of an Enjijlish word with one of Latin 
 Drigin, but was Foinetimes, although rarely, that of an uncommon with a 
 common word. Of this absurd practice, the most marked instance that I 
 recall is in the following couplet from George Marshall's Coinpendiout 
 Treatise in Metre, declaring the First Originall of Sacrifice, A. d. 1554 : — 
 " That Peter and ye Apostles so sore was affrayd, 
 That in spelunkes and caves there thei masse said." 
 
 .'hau is, that in caves and caves, etc ; for ipelunc is merely an Euglisk 
 (orm of tlip Latin word for cave.
 
 SPELLING RKFORMERS OF THE PAST. 165 
 
 I give below the Lord's Prayer as it is printed by- 
 Dean Wilkins, after a phonetic fashion which shows 
 that Mr. Ellis's " glossic,"i or a mode of spelling 
 which is to all intents and purposes the same, is more 
 than two hundred years old. In this y is used to 
 express that obscure sound in English which is heard 
 in ^<s, and which begins so many diphthongal sounds, 
 as ah-oor, our, thah-ee, thy. I am obliged to use an 
 itidlc ou in the place of an obsolete Greek character, 
 a contraction of omicron and upsilon, which Wilkins 
 uses for the sound oo. I has our sound of ee. 
 
 " Your ftidher howitsh art in heven halloed bi dhyi nam, 
 dhyi cingdym cym, dhyi o«ilI bi dyn, iu erth az it iz in 
 heven ; giv ys dhis dai jouv daili bred, aud fargiv ys jour 
 trespassez as ou\\ fargiv dhem dhat trespas against ys, ancl 
 led ys nat into^« temptaisiaB, byt deliver ys from ivil, far 
 dhyin iz dhe cingdym, dhi pyouer aud dhi glari, far ever 
 aud ever. Amen." 
 
 Notwithstanding Dean Wilkins's great and ingen- 
 ious labor and equal self-confidence, his book has gone 
 with its predecessors and most of its successors into 
 the literary dust bin ; and we need trouble ourselvea 
 no further with him and not at all with the otbe? 
 upelling reformers of past days. 
 
 1 See Chapter Xm.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 
 
 Three quarters of a century ago, and more, John 
 Walker thought that he had settled the principles of 
 English pronunciation. His pronouncing dictionary 
 was a valuable work, and had a beneficial influence 
 upon our language ; but he did not settle the prin- 
 ciples of English pronunciation, for the very good 
 reason that it had no principles to be settled. His 
 introductory treatise, in which he professed to have 
 accomplished what no doubt seemed to him a very 
 important purpose, is after all (like so much other so- 
 called philology) a mere classification of usage, — the 
 usage of his time, — with an attempt to reconcile some 
 discrepancies, and to enforce a few analogies. His 
 attempts, and those of other orthoepists, to lay down 
 rules are grounded upon the false assumption that 
 language is a combination of signs, and that the tones 
 and articulations of those who speak it are, or should 
 be, determined by the signs used by those who write 
 it. On the contrary, language is a combination o. 
 sounds ; and the proper function of the signs of writ* 
 ten language is not to express, but rather to call to 
 mind, those combinations, so far as it is possible for 
 signs to suggest sounds. 
 
 This was the original function of letters, and it 
 itill is their legitimate function; but the effect of the 
 diffusion of books and of the ability to read them 
 has been to make the question practically, for many
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRArilY AND ITS REFORMATION. 167 
 
 people, not how certain sounds shall be expressed, 
 but how certain combinations of letters shall be pro- 
 nounced. 
 
 Take, for example, the broad sound of a as in father. 
 This may be regarded as the primitive human utter 
 ance ; and it was in very remote times the most fre- 
 quently heard sound in human speech. We may be 
 as sure as we can be of anything in regard to the 
 sounds of speech in the past that the sign A, when it 
 was first used, represented that sound only. These 
 assertions seem somewhat over-positive. But all in- 
 dications point so clearly to these initial facts of speech 
 and of writing that there can be little risk in taking 
 them as established, with the modification — what- 
 ever it may be — of the other fact, that written lan- 
 guage followed spoken language at a distance in time 
 now quite incalculable. 
 
 With the progress of ages, however, the words into 
 the composition of which the sound indicated by this 
 letter A had entered were changed in their pronunci- 
 ation, so that (for example, merely) the broad ah 
 sound passed into the vowel sounds of all, last, and 
 hat. But although the sound was varied, the form 
 )f the letter remained unchanged ; and thus it has 
 ^ome to be said that A has such and such different 
 tounds. This statement, however useful it may be 
 in practical spelling and pronouncing, is not strictly 
 true. For, as the fact has come to be, it is not that 
 this letter and others have various sounds, but that 
 "ertain combinations of letters have for a period more 
 lir less long represented certain things or thoughts, 
 the spoken names of which have varied in their pro- 
 nunciation. 
 
 There are very few hitters, evpu itmong the conso- 
 nants, which absolutely repi-csent a certain sound
 
 168 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and as to some words the assertion that the letters 
 ftre pronounced thus and so cannot be made with- 
 out manifest absurdity. For example, no fusion oi 
 any sounds pertaining to g and h will result in /; 
 and the same may be said of p and h; nor is the 
 combined sound of t and h that of 6. And yet in 
 rough and laughter the written gh corresponds to the 
 spoken y, as ph does in p)hial and in photograph ; and 
 in thane, thick, thin, th corresponds to the spoken 
 Saxon 5 and the Greek 0. Yet no man can utter a 
 g and an h so as to produce the sound of/. It is im- 
 possible ; and so it is as to ph and /, and th and 6, 
 These marked examples illustrate the very impor- 
 tant fact that written language has long ceased to 
 be merely an exact indication of sound, if indeed it 
 ever were so after the days of the first generation of 
 writing-men. It may with truth be urged that the 
 examples are extreme, and that they hold only in 
 English. But if extreme, they are characteristic ; 
 and although they are English they are not without 
 parallels in most other living tongues which have 
 been written for some centuries.-^ 
 
 The one great misleading assumption, as it appeara 
 to me, in the general consideration of this department 
 jf language is that our speech is the conscious utter- 
 ance of a combination of certain specific sounds for 
 vvhich we have distinctly corresponding letters. That 
 it is not so will be manifest, if we suppose that to- 
 night all books and writings, and all memor}^ oi 
 them, should perish. Language would still exist in 
 perfection. To-morrow we should be speaking ex- 
 actly as we do to-da3\ There would not be a word 
 a sound, an inflection lost from the language; onlj 
 
 1 rh and th are earlj' Greek combinations for which <p and 9 were sab 
 Mituted.
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 169 
 
 certain of us would not be consulting dictionaries, 
 and vexing our souls and the souls of other men who 
 never look at dictionaries, to know what is the proper 
 pronunciation of exquisite. But if, on the other hand, 
 speech and the memory of it were lost, all the books 
 and all the writings in the world would cease to 
 be books and writings, and become merely soiled 
 paper, fit only to kindle fires withal ; and man would 
 lapse into a savagery below that of the African Bush- 
 man, probably even into that of his forefather, — 
 in the Genesis according to Darwin, — an ape, and 
 be unable to make a fire of his books even to keep 
 his unclothed body warm. Truths these sufficiently 
 obvious, one would think ; and yet they are truths 
 the significance of which is continually disregarded. 
 The inversion of the proper order of things in this 
 matter is illustrated by Dr. Johnson's relation of his 
 experience in regard to the word great, which Lord 
 Chesterfield told him should be pronounced so as to 
 rhyme with state ; but Sir Charles Young said that 
 it should be pronounced so as to rhyme with seat, 
 and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it 
 grate. Now, both those accomplished men (the one 
 the first speaker in the Lords, the other in the Com- 
 mons) wrote that word in the same way ; but does it 
 follow that the difference in their pronunciation of it 
 was caused by one of them pronouncing the combina- 
 tion ea with the vowel sound of state, and the other's 
 ^ renouncing it with that of meet f How was it then 
 with seat, to which we know by implication they 
 Voth gave the latter sound ? And yet there is not 
 a fact in the histoiy of language oetter established 
 than that at the time of the grandfathers of these 
 jrentlemen seat was generally proi nunced sate, and
 
 170 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 that Lord Chesterfield's pronunciation of great was 
 no innovation, but merely a perpetuation of the old 
 sound, while Sir Charles Young's greet was a new 
 fasliion, which failed of that general and lasting adop- 
 tion that prevailed as to a similar change in the pro- 
 nunciation of seat. The facts of the case were that 
 both these men spoke their language with the sounds 
 ■which they liked to give it, or which they adopted 
 unconsciously from those around them, and that they 
 would have so spoken it whether it had been written 
 or not ; ^ that the sounds of the words that expressed 
 respectively largeness and a place upon which to sit 
 were in process of change, the change prevailing in 
 regard to one, but failing in regard to the other ; 
 while the written chai-acters which expressed those 
 things remained the same as they had been for gen- 
 erations, unmodified by any change in the sounds 
 which expressed those things in speech. 
 
 A like change took place in some words and failed 
 to take place in others in the pronunciation, so to 
 speak, of gli. We write laughter, and speak lahfter ; 
 we write daughter, and speak dawter. But the words 
 were once pronounced alike ; and the sound corre- 
 sponding to gh was at first guttural in both. Many 
 examples in point might be produced. 
 
 The fact that the gh both in laughter and in 
 daughter once represented a guttural sound, of which 
 there still lingers a remnant in the pronunciation of 
 raught by some persons, only still further illustrates 
 the perpetuation of the visible sign, unmodified by 
 any change in the sound which it once represented, 
 or by that of which in contemporary speech it is pro- 
 
 1 I pass over here the influence of written lanj^uage on spoken, — \M 
 direct, indeterminable, but appreciable.
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 171 
 
 vocative. And if it be true, as that profound stu- 
 dent of plionology, Mr. Alexander Ellis, has said, 
 that changes in pronunciation are not gradual, but 
 sudden (of which, conscious although I am of the 
 deference due from me to his decisions, I am not 
 quite convinced), tliis still further illustrates both 
 the absence of such principles of pronunciation as 
 Walker thought that he had laid down, and the 
 error of the assumption that the written signs of lan- 
 guage (that is, letters) have, so to speak, certain pho- 
 nological rights and powers, and that they " ought " 
 to be pronounced thus and so. To claim principles 
 for that which changes suddenly and with no other 
 reason than preference, and to insist upon rights and 
 powers which can be taken away at a breath and 
 upon caprice, is to disregard the plain meaning of the 
 words we use. The truth is that there is nothing: 
 more subject to the absolute, irresponsible will of 
 man, nothing more the servant of his will, his ne- 
 cessity, or his whim, than the sound with which he 
 utters his words. The attempt to control it by the 
 tyranny of visible signs has failed, and, although 
 they do somewhat modify that utterance, must fail 
 always. 
 
 If we cannot conform speech to writing, shall we 
 herefore conform writing to speech ? 
 
 That writing should conform to speech is the orig- 
 inal and the normal relation of the two forms of 
 language. If letters were to be invented to-day, we 
 should have a sign for every sound, we should limit 
 each sign to the expression of one sound, and we 
 should thus spell our written words exactly as they 
 are spoken. 
 
 We should do it for just one day ; and the we
 
 172 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 would be just those few persons, and no more, who 
 would be able to agree upon the number and the nat- 
 ure of the sounds in the language, and upon the 
 signs by which they should be represented. 
 
 This conclusion is not favorable to a reform in Eng- 
 lish orthography, — a reform to which the majority 
 of the eminent philologists of both the English-speak- 
 ing countries have given their adhesion. With all 
 this preponderance of learning and ability on one side, 
 I shall venture to present on the other some views 
 which may be worthy of consideration by my readers. 
 
 The sudden and deliberate re-forming of English 
 spelling seems to me to be open to three objections : 
 it is unnecessary ; it is undesirable ; it is impossible. 
 These objections, as I have previously said, have 
 nothing to do with what is known as the conservative 
 view of this question. If English spelling be, as it 
 has been called, chaotic, I at least, for one, have no 
 sympathy with the gentleman whose voice was heard, 
 on a certain occasion, coming out of the darkness that 
 was upon the face of the deep, crying, " 3Ion Dieu ! 
 conservons le chaos ! " If a radical reform in the spell- 
 ing of the English language is necessary, desirable, 
 and possible, let us have it by all means, and Avith 
 what speed we may. But they who propose such a 
 tremendous literary uprooting of that which is the 
 gradual growth of centuries, and which in fact is the 
 visible body of English literature, have upon their 
 hands, as the first part of their task, to show the world 
 its necessity, or at least its desirability, and some rea- 
 son for believing it possible. 
 
 That it is not necessary seems manifest, for the 
 reason that the present system, or rather fashion, — 
 !or that which has neither law nor consistency cannol
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 173 
 
 be called a system, — is perfectly practicable, and ia 
 daily used with unconscious facility and a reasonable 
 approach to accuracy by millions of English-speaking 
 peo])le. If the present English orthography had been 
 found to be a hindrance to the production of a good 
 literature, or a hindrance to its appreciation, or a hin- 
 drance to the communication of thoughts and fact3 
 and wishes by writing, there would be some sem- 
 blance of a reasonable plea for the necessity of such 
 a reform. But English orthography, as it has ex- 
 isted for nearly three centuries, modified slightly from 
 generation to generation by the people who have used 
 it, is the outward form of a literature inferior to that 
 of no other people, and superior to that of most others 
 in quantity no less than in quality ; and as to letter- 
 writing, there are many of us, I am sure, who would 
 much more gladly hear of some means of diminish- 
 ing than of any contrivance for increasing its facility 
 and its frequency. 
 
 As to the difficulties of English spelling, they do 
 not appear in any form which entitles them to much 
 consideration. Reiterating what I have said before, 
 I declare that after a somewhat close observation in 
 this respect for no little time past I have no hesita- 
 tion in saying that these difficulties are very much ex- 
 aggerated. I receive, and for some years have re- 
 ceived daily, many letters written by representatives 
 of all sorts and conditions of men ; and I can safely 
 Bay that an error in spelling is the very rarest that I 
 meet with. Indeed, I might almost say that an error 
 of this kind never occurs in any manuscript that comes 
 under my observation. Mistakes of all other sorts 
 are common, chiefly in the construction of sentences j 
 those in the meaning of words are only less frequent ,
 
 174 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 but in general the spelling may be said to be always 
 correct. A change in spelling seems to be necessary 
 to give neither writers nor readers a complete and 
 easy command of the English language, spoken or 
 written. 
 
 What is not necessary may, however, be desirable. 
 The desirability of a reform of English spelling is 
 urged on three grounds : it would save much time now 
 lost in writing silent letters, and much money now lost 
 in printing tliem; it would make pronunciation cer- 
 tain ; it would diminish very greatly the time spent in 
 learning to write the language. 
 
 An appeal to the pocket is alwaj^s an effective 
 one, and is particularly so in these days of political 
 economy's dismal rule. When, therefore, we are told 
 that "■ bad spelling costs the country $15,000,000 a 
 year," and that the cost of printing silent letters " is 
 to be counted by millions for each generation," it ha& 
 a very formidable sound, and it seems as if there 
 must be a committee appointed of correspondingly 
 formidable functions, the results of whose labors shall 
 take form in a resolution that henceforth the Eng- 
 L'sh language shall be spelled in a more economical 
 manner. For doubtless nothing is beyond the reach 
 of resolutions, not even the formation of a written 
 language ; and as it was once declared by a very great 
 political economist that the three-hooped pot should 
 have ten hoops, so now it shall be proclaimed, on the 
 contrary, that the six-lettered Avord shall have two 
 letters, and that excess shall hereafter be written xs. 
 
 I shall doubtless be accused of treating a serious 
 subject with levity ; and I confess that I cannot be 
 very grave over these assertions as to the immense 
 sums that bad spelling and silent letters cost yearly
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 175 
 
 It is because I have considered the subject seriously 
 that I am disposed to laugh at the charge of $15,000,- 
 000 a year to " unscientific " spelling. No proofs of 
 such an expenditure on that account are produced ; 
 and therefore I can only say that I am very sure that 
 the assertion is wildly extravagant, or that it must 
 mean something very different from the plain purport 
 of its words and figures. But suppose it to be true ; 
 and suppose that those other millions, untold, which 
 the printing of silent letters costs amount to another 
 fifteen. That would make the cost of the present style 
 of spelling just $30,000,000 yearly. Now, even if all 
 this were saved by the simple and easy means of a 
 thorough reformation of the spelling of the English 
 language, there would not be enough of it to give one 
 dollar a year each to the inhabitants of the United 
 States alone. The benefit ought surely to be very 
 great indeed which disturbs the literature of a whole 
 race and deranges its means of daily communication 
 without saving a dollar each for only one branch of 
 that race in a year. 
 
 It might be shown, on the contrary, and I think 
 that I shall show, that the cost of the reform would 
 be very much more than fifteen millions of dollars 
 yearly for a very considerable time. For in the first 
 place all the books, or at least all the valuable books, 
 that have been printed for the last three hundred 
 years must needs be reprinted, or to the next genera- 
 tion they would be as unreadable as if they were writ- 
 ten in Anglo-Saxon, or at least as if they were put 
 into the Old Enghsh of that first of our phonogra* 
 phers, the author of the " Ormulum," who did his 
 work six hundred years ago.^ This would cost very 
 1 See Chapter X.
 
 176 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 many millions of dollars. Then in the course of a 
 single generation the stock of English books now ex- 
 isting all over the world in private and in public li- 
 braries would become worthless, except a very few to 
 preserve as curiosities, and for consultation by schol- 
 ars, involving a loss of many more millions of dol- 
 lars. All the stereotype plates now in the hands of 
 publishers would become onl}'^ so much metal to be 
 melted down ; and this would involve the loss of many 
 millions more. Imagine besides the upturning that 
 such a reform would cause in the printing-offices of 
 the whole English-speaking people ; the sinking of 
 capital already invested ; the necessary new expenses 
 involved ; and the relearning of their trade by the 
 printers, whose art is the growth of centuries ! I 
 think that the economical argument in favor of a 
 change in English spelling other than that which has 
 been going on gradually from the time of Chaucer 
 and Wyclitl'e, those fathers of English literature, may 
 be dismissed without further consideration. To use 
 a common and very expressive phrase, such a change 
 would cost very much more than it would come to. 
 
 A reform in our spelling might nevertheless be de- 
 sirable, notwithstanding the ruinous expense that it 
 ;i70uld involve. Of the reasons for which the reform 
 IS asked, the one most strongly urged is the time that 
 it takes to learn to spell English correctly according 
 to the prevailing and long-established fashion. This 
 time is said to be five years. I very much doubt the 
 truth of this assertion, if it is taken as meaning what 
 it seems and is apparently intended to mean. If it 
 means that an adult English-speaking person of av- 
 erage intelligence cannot learn to spell his mother 
 tongue so as to communicate his thoughts correctly
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. ITT 
 
 by writing in less than five years of constant study, 
 it is so absurdly untrue that it need not be regarded. 
 Such a person can learn to spell a foreign language, 
 French, for instance, well enough for all practical 
 purposes, in the course of a year's application ; and 
 French spelling is quite as difficult as English is. 
 Even of French the spelling comes much more easily 
 than the grammar, the construction, the idioms, the 
 forms of thought ; much more easily than the pronun- 
 ciation, and above all the inflections of voice neces- 
 sary to really good French speaking. Think of the 
 genders and the verbs ! and think of the exceptions ! 
 Many an English student of French, many a French 
 student of English, can spell any word in his acquired 
 vocabulary of either of those languages, who could not 
 write half a page or speak five minutes without fla- 
 grant violation of grammar and of idiom. 
 
 This, however, is probably not the meaning of the 
 assertion in question. What is meant is that five 
 years of a child's life pass from the time when he be- 
 gins to learn to spell until he can be said to spell well. 
 This is true enough, probably, in the majority of in- 
 stances ; and some do not learn to spell well in ten 
 years ; a few, never. But as I have remarked before, 
 neither do they all learn other things well in the 
 i5ame time, — proper pronunciation, legible writing, 
 the simple rules of arithmetic, geography, history 
 even in outline, and so forth. With what reason is 
 it expected that spelling should be learned more 
 quickly than these ? If a child learns to spell tolera- 
 bly between the ages of five and ten years, he does 
 well. For during that time he gives but about an 
 hour a day to this task for five days of the week ; and 
 meantime he is learning other things ; and his very 
 
 12
 
 178 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 spelling comes to him quite as much by unconscious 
 observation of what he reads as by direct study. 
 Moreover, at this period his attention is largely given, 
 or should be so given, to those things which build up 
 in him a sound and healthy physical and moral nat- 
 ure. To say that even a child spends five years in 
 learning to spell conveys a very misleading notion of 
 the real facts of the case. And if a child between the 
 years of five and ten, in addition to all the rest that 
 he should and generally does learn in that time, learns 
 to spell tolerably w^ell, he makes as good a use of hia 
 study-time in those childish years as could be asked 
 for him. 
 
 The only other reason of seeming importance for a 
 reform in English spelling is that we should thereby 
 know more certainly how words should be, or how 
 they are, pronounced. It is insisted that if each let- 
 ter represented only one sound we should be rid of 
 a world of uncertainty and ambiguity in language. 
 " Men are asking," Dr. Trumbull tells us, " whether 
 there is not, after all, as much absurdity in represent- 
 ing half a dozen different and dissimilar sounds by 
 one and the same combination of letters — the termi- 
 nation ough, for instance — as in the wildest eccen- 
 tricities of phonography." That unhappy little ter- 
 mination oiigh, which corresponds to other sounds 
 than /in only ten words in the language, — only ten,^ 
 — how has it served foreigners for a jest, and been 
 worked over by phonetic reformers for an argument I 
 But this reason for a reform of spelling toward pho- 
 nography seems at once to reverse the relations of 
 
 1 Bough, dough, hiccough, hough, slough, though, plough, furlough 
 Chrough, borough; and of these oue, hiccough, has ;roperly the/* sound 
 fctcctf/'.
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 179 
 
 Fpoken and written language. For, apart from the 
 consideration that speech, and not writing, is language, 
 pronunciation is, for many centuries has been, and — 
 may we not therefore safely assume ? — always will 
 be independent of spelling. 
 
 That this is true will, I think, appear from what I 
 shall hereafter present in detail upon this part of my 
 subject ; but it may be briefly illustrated here. In- 
 deed, it has been illustrated in what is said in the 
 foregoing pages as to the pronunciation of great. The 
 word either is another example in point. What we 
 call the Irish pronunciation of it is ayther ; the gen- 
 eral English pronunciation is eether ; but many Eng- 
 lish people of the best education and social culture 
 pronounce it i-ther. The Irish pronunciation is the 
 oldest and the most analogically correct. There is 
 no doubt that Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan 
 and Dryden and Addison and Pope said ayther. 
 Dr. Johnson did, if we may trust the anecdote told of 
 him, that when asked whether he said eether or i-ther., 
 he answered, " Nayther." The story at least shows 
 us when i-ther was coming in. But with all these 
 marked variations in the spoken word, the written 
 word remained just the same; just as Chesterfield 
 and Young both wrote great, while one spoke grate 
 and the other greet. 
 
 The great difiiculty, however, in establishing con- 
 formity of sign to sound is, in my judgment, the un- 
 certainty that always must exist as to sound itself. 
 Most well-educated and well-bi-ed people seem to 
 speak so nearly alike that this diSiculty may appear 
 chimerical to those who have given no attention to 
 this subject. Take an example furnished by Mr. 
 Ellis himself. In his great work on English pronun-
 
 180 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ciation (page 106), referring to a discussion betweer 
 himself and Mr. Bell, the author of " Visible Speech,' 
 he says, "My own pronunciation of man be [Mr. 
 Bell] finds frequently the same as his pronunciation 
 of men ; so that to him I pronounce men man (men, 
 m-E-n)." Here were two distinguished phonologists 
 brought face to face, and they not only disagreed as 
 to the pronunciation of so simple a word as man^ but 
 the actual sounds that they gave it were different 
 each to the ear of the other. And what is gained by 
 printing either E or A ? If men cannot agree upon 
 the sound of e or a, how are they heljDed by using E 
 or A? Again, in one of the Pitman j)honogi-aphic 
 tracts (edited by Mr. Ellis, I believe, or, if not by 
 him, by Pitman himself) I find these pronunciations 
 phonographically indicated : jenurully (generally), 
 triumphu7it, i<pokun^ troubul, evul, ignorunee^ peopul. 
 Now it need hardly be said that these words are not 
 thus pronounced by good speakers, who (giving no 
 thought to their speech) say generally, triumphant, 
 spo-kn, irouhl, e-vll, ig-no-rans, peepl. Such illustra- 
 tions of this difficult}' might be multiplied a hundred 
 fold ; and they will receive some attention from me 
 hereafter. 
 
 Then there is another point to be considered. We 
 have such words as ivright, tvrite, right, and rite. 
 The spoken words have exactly the same sound ; 
 they are vocally the same word. Is it desirable thai 
 the difference between them which is preserved in 
 spelling should be altogether destroyed ? The etymo- 
 logical argument to the contrary may be worth some- 
 thing, but not much. That historical spelling doea 
 aid etymological research seems to be manifest ; bu 
 vliilologists do not need it ; the etymological view o
 
 MODERN ORTHOGRAPHY AND ITS REFORMATION. 181 
 
 uhe question is really of little importance on either 
 lide. But the distinction which spelling makes for 
 us silently in our minds between words of exactly the 
 Bame sound seems valuable enough not to be thrown 
 away. When Hamlet tells us that certain reflec- 
 tions upon mortality " must give us pause," we may 
 be thankful that phonographic uniformity in spelling 
 does not yet thrust upon us the doggish notion of giv- 
 ing us paws. 
 
 But suppose it settled that for economical and other 
 reasons a thorough reformation of English spelling 
 is necessary and desirable, how is it to be brought 
 about ? Suppose the new system elaborated to per- 
 fection, how and when would its adoption be secured ? 
 Books and letters are written not to conform to the 
 views of phonologists and philologists, but that they 
 may be read, and read immediately. To be read 
 books must be printed and letters written in the spell- 
 ing which their intended readers have learned. If 
 their spelling differs much from that to which the in- 
 tended readers are accustomed (and unless the differ- 
 ence is great there will be no real reform ; no other 
 change than that which has been gradually goiDg on 
 for centuries), they might as well be written in an- 
 other language. It is not a question of conservatism, 
 of shrinking from novelty, of laziness, or, as it is 
 sometimes said, of " pig-headedness ; " it is simply 
 the practical one of whether a man shall write to be 
 understood, or to be not understood ; of whether a 
 publisher shall print his books in the language of his 
 customers, or in another, — a better, it might be, but 
 Btill another. Here seems to be an insuperable dif- 
 ficulty in the way of any great change, and particu- 
 larly of any systematic change in English spelling, or
 
 182 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 in fact in the spelling of any language. The purpose 
 of language is to communicate facts and thoughts ; 
 and communication implies, in terms as well as in fact, 
 the use of that which is common to the two parties 
 concerned. Phonoiogists may elaborate a system of 
 spelling which shall be a marvel of symmetry and 
 precision ; and they may use it among themselves, as 
 any little association of men may use any other ci- 
 pher. But whoever would address English-speaking 
 folk must write English as English-speaking folk 
 write it ; and the mass of any people, ninety-nine in 
 a hundred of them, or rather nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine in a thousand, are, and must ever be, 
 those who have no time for the acquirement of new 
 habits of speech, and of spelling above all other 
 things. They must use the words and the letters of 
 their language as they have been brought up to use 
 them. This consideration alone seems to be conclu- 
 sive against the possible introduction of a new system 
 of orthography ; and it is safe to assume that the 
 spelling of the immediate future will differ no mors 
 from that of the present than that of the present does 
 from that of the immediate past. A reformation of 
 modern orthography, to be at all effectual, must needs 
 be, like the reformation of moral character, rej^en 
 eration.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 MAX MtJLLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. PITMAN'S 
 ALPHABET. ELLIS'S " PAL^OTYPE." 
 
 Peofessoe, Max Muller, in a paper on "Spell- 
 ing," in the " Fortnightly Review," sets forth views 
 upon the subject than which none could be more rad- 
 ical, and which, if put in act and force, would not so 
 much reform our present spelling as uproot it, over- 
 turn it, and sweep it away. His argument, like all 
 his writings, commands admiration by its ability, its 
 candor, and its common-sense. The very extremity 
 of the change which he favors is a claim upon the re- 
 spect even of those who cannot agree with him ; for it 
 shows the sincerity of the man and the logical clear- 
 ness of his mind. It shows that he sees the truth, 
 that if any considerable change is to be made in the 
 writing of English, consistency, which is the very ob- 
 ject sought to be attained, requii-es so great a change 
 that the newly written language will be to all intents 
 and purposes a new language to the eye. Indeed, he 
 says, " If we compare English as spoken with Eng- 
 lish as written, they seem almost like two different 
 languages, — as different as Latin is from Italian." 
 
 I am one of those who cannot see this great differ- 
 ence, or a much greater difference, if difference it 
 must be called, than always must exist between a 
 written and a spoken language which has a great lit- 
 erature, the product of centuries. But this I see, and
 
 184 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 I think that all others, Professor Miiller included, 
 must see : that if written and spoken English differ 
 almost as much as Latin and Italian, a change which 
 should effect conformity between them would make 
 the new written language differ as much from the old 
 — that is, the present — as Italian does from Latin. 
 The logic of this conclusion is inevitable. 
 
 Now the question is whether such and so great a 
 change is desirable, whether it would be tolerated by 
 the English-speaking peoples, and whether, if desir- 
 able and tolerable, it would be possible. Seeing as 
 clearly as this great philologist does the incongruities 
 between written English and spoken English, I have 
 ventured, with full consciousness of my temerity in 
 so doing, to say that I do not regard such a change 
 as desirable, and that I believe it to be neither toler- 
 able nor possible. Professor Miiller speaks avowedly 
 for philologists and scholars ; I speak only in the in- 
 terests of men of average intelligence and some ac- 
 quaintance with their mother tongue and its litera- 
 ture, of whose cause I presume to offer myself as an 
 advocate. 
 
 Professor Miiller begins by declaring that the ne- 
 cessity for a thorough reform of English spelling " is 
 no longer a matter for argument ; " whereupon he im- 
 mediately sets out upon an argument in its favor which 
 covers twenty-four large, closely printed octavo pages. 
 This might be regarded as somewhat inconsistent. But 
 what if it be? That does not in the least diminish 
 the value of what he says, or injuriously affect his 
 position. For in spite of the shallow line of which 
 so many are eager to discover the origin, and which 
 BO many more are fond of quoting, consistency is not 
 a jewel ; that is, it is not so absolutely and of itself.
 
 MAX MIJLLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 185 
 
 If one argument is destructive of another which ia 
 used by the same person, that is an inconsistency 
 which is of moment. But the mere fact that a man's 
 action at one time is inconsistent with either his action 
 or his words at another neither impeaches the honesty 
 of his action nor impairs the vakie of his opinion. 
 Professor Miiller adds to his former remark one that 
 seems to me full of wisdom. It is that his experience 
 and observation of hfe has convinced him that " noth- 
 ing vexes people so much, and hardens them in their 
 unbelief and in their resistance to reforms, as undeni- 
 able facts and unanswerable arguments," and that 
 " reforms are carried by time." But his further de- 
 velopment of the same notion — that " what gener- 
 ally prevails in the end are not logical deductions, 
 but some haphazard and frequently irrational mo- 
 tives " — seems hardly so sound. It is true that 
 logical deductions rarely effect reforms ; but that by 
 which they are effected is not hap-hazard, irrational 
 motives, but a change in the moral tone and in the 
 general intellectual perceptions and actions of man- 
 kind. The world suddenly wakes up and sees that 
 what was true, or was thought true, yesterday, is not 
 true to-day ; that what was tolerable a few years ago 
 is not to be tolerated now. Reforms are made possi- 
 ble by the moral and intellectual development of the 
 race. Thus, for example, the belief in witchcraft 
 and in possession by evil spirits suddenly disappeared. 
 The passages in the Bible which were supposed to 
 make a belief in witches and in possession a part of 
 «,n orthodox religious creed remained unchanged ; but 
 men's minds had changed, and, notwithstanding the 
 passages which a few years before they had accepted 
 as authoritative, they began to reject the notion of
 
 186 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 witchcraft as ridiculous, and to regard the hanging 
 and drowning of supposed witches as not only cruel, 
 but absurd. 
 
 Such a change as this, however, either in its sud- 
 denness or its independence of reason or authorit}^ is 
 not to be looked for in regard to the question whether 
 we shall discard the present method of writing Eng- 
 lish, which is the gradual, unconscious growth of 
 almost a thousand years, and adopt a new one, made 
 for us out of hand on the spot, and particularly 
 adapted to the speech of our own day. For this is 
 a question not of right and wrong; nor is it a phil 
 osophical question, or one in any way of morals, or of 
 belief, or of conduct. It does not concern man's rela- 
 tions to man individually, socially, or politically, or his 
 intellectual development, or the present or the future 
 condition of what he calls his soul, which are the 
 points upon which reforms are carried by time. It is 
 a question simply of convenience in the use of a 
 means or instrument, upon which he depends daily 
 for the communication of facts, thoughts, and needs. 
 Is it easier and better for him to take the written 
 language as he learned it, almost unconsciously, in 
 his youth, and in a form which enables hun to com- 
 mand all its literature for at least three hundred years 
 back, or to have a brand new alphabet, and, after he 
 \ias learned it, to write down, to the best of his abil- 
 ity, not words, as we now understand the term, but 
 the sounds that he utters, witliout regard to any other 
 relation of speech and writing whatever? Is it, for 
 example, easier and better for all of us who are more 
 than five years old to spell thus : years, assaults, 
 physiologists, reason, always, nations, weights, exer 
 tions, requires, fixed laws, generations ; or thus
 
 MAX MULLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 187 
 
 yiVz, asalts, fiziolojists, rizun, alwez, np/unZi wets^ 
 ekzer/unz^ rikquirz, fikst loz, jenerefimz ? These 
 words (in their hitter form) I have taken ahnost at 
 hap-hazard from a specimen which Professor Miiller 
 gives of phonetic printing, according to the Pitman 
 system, the one which he advocates. ^ 
 
 Professor Miiller asks any intelligent and unprej- 
 udiced reader whether he could not read and write 
 English according to Pitman's system, after a few 
 days' practice, with perfect ease. It may be at once 
 admitted that such a person with endeavor in good 
 faith could do so. Indeed, a man with respectable 
 powers of acquirement could in haK an hour make 
 very considerable progress toward mastering English 
 written in this way, and with a few weeks' daily prac- 
 tice could read it, and possibly even write it, with 
 correctness and ease. A man who could not do that 
 might better give up learning anything, except by 
 \)rocess of gradual absorption. But this is not the 
 point at issue. So a man might learn with equal 
 ease, and in no longer time, to write down the sounds 
 of English words in German text or in Greek letters. 
 The question rather is whether the whole change in- 
 volved in this so-called phonetic reform is, all things 
 ijonsidered, rational, desirable, feasible ; and notwith- 
 standing Professor Miiller's declaration and all that 
 has been written upon the subject besides, this does 
 %eem to me to be eminently a matter for argument. 
 
 To see what the whole change would be, it is nec- 
 
 * The specimen covers more than half an octavo page; but I could not 
 ■l.ote from it a single sentence, however brief, for the lack of other and 
 Jtrange letters. The use of the Greek omega and epsibn, and the old 
 ong s, enables me to show very nearly the characters used fot the vowel 
 lound? of a/Zand oi pay, and for the mixed consonantal sound («A) la th« 
 ■addle of nation.
 
 188 
 
 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 essary first to examine Pitman's phonetic alphabet 
 ftnd compare it with our own ; and before doing so I 
 willingly admit that this alphabet is not only the 
 best that has been contrived, but that I cannot see in 
 it room for material improvement. It is given thus 
 in Professor Miiller's paper. 
 
 THE PHONETIC ALPHABET. 
 
 
 [The 
 
 phonetic 
 
 letters in the first and second col- 
 
 umns are pronounced like the italic letters 
 
 in the 
 
 third column.] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CONSONANTS. 
 
 
 
 Liquids. 
 
 
 
 
 Mutes. 
 
 
 L 
 
 1 
 
 idl 
 
 P 
 
 
 p 
 
 rope 
 
 R 
 
 r 
 
 rare 
 
 B 
 
 
 b 
 
 robe 
 
 
 Coakscents. 
 
 
 T 
 
 
 t 
 
 ia.te 
 
 
 
 
 D 
 
 
 d 
 
 fade 
 
 W 
 
 w 
 
 wet 
 
 G 
 
 
 5 
 
 etch 
 
 Y 
 
 7 
 
 yet 
 
 J 
 
 
 j 
 
 edge 
 
 
 Aspirate. 
 
 
 K 
 
 
 k 
 
 leek 
 
 H 
 
 h 
 
 h&j 
 
 G 
 
 
 s 
 
 league 
 
 
 
 
 
 Continuants. 
 
 
 
 VOWELS. 
 
 
 F 
 
 
 f 
 
 sa/e 
 
 A 
 
 a 
 
 am 
 
 V 
 
 
 V 
 
 save 
 
 a. 
 
 V 
 
 alma 
 
 & 
 
 
 i 
 
 wreath 
 
 E 
 
 e 
 
 dl 
 
 a 
 
 
 ct 
 
 ■wreathe 
 
 s 
 
 8 
 
 old 
 
 s 
 
 
 s 
 
 hiss 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 til 
 
 z 
 
 
 z 
 
 his 
 
 X 
 
 1 
 
 eel 
 
 c 
 
 
 / 
 
 vicious 
 
 
 
 O 
 
 on 
 
 'I 
 
 
 3 
 
 vision 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 all 
 
 
 
 Nasals. 
 
 
 "S- 
 
 » 
 
 up 
 
 M 
 
 
 m 
 
 seem 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 ope 
 
 N 
 
 
 n 
 
 seen 
 
 u 
 
 n 
 
 full 
 
 W 
 
 
 I) 
 
 eing 
 
 UI 
 
 lU 
 
 foci 
 
 Diphthongs'. i 
 
 I U U. 
 
 OU, 
 
 o; 
 
 as heart 
 
 in b^ 
 
 new, 
 
 now, 
 
 hoif 
 
 On looking at this alphabet the reader who haa 
 been alarmed at the words phonetic and phonog
 
 MAX MULLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING, 189 
 
 raphy may be surprised at the few changes in the 
 force of letters which it involves. Of the consonants. 
 p, J, d^ t, y, k, g,f, V, s, 2, m, w, ?, and r, fifteen in all, 
 are retained with their long-recognized values. TF, 
 ?/, and h appear also with their values unchanged. 
 But consonants are the most stable elements of speech, 
 both in the mouth and upon the pen. It is the vowel, 
 which is the breath of life to language, that varies 
 in sound from generation to generation, and not in- 
 fretjuently within a generation ; and it is in the en- 
 deavor to define and fix the vowel sounds that all in- 
 ventors of phonetic signs make the greatest changes, 
 and have their ingenuity most severely tested. Mr. 
 Pitman's alphabet is not an exception to the general 
 rule in this respect. We have inJeed our old friends 
 a, e, i, 0, and u ; but the sign "a" is restricted to the 
 representation of one sound, and that is neither the 
 English name sound of a («y) nor the primal sound 
 for which it originally stood (aA), but a small, mean, 
 intermediate sound, — that in am, hat, sind pat. " E " 
 is likewise assigned and restricted to the obscure sound 
 in ell ; while for the distinctive English sound of e 
 (eg), as in eel, we have an altogether new sign, as we 
 have one almost new, a kind of e, to express our Eng- 
 ish name sound of a. So " o " is deprived of its birth- 
 right, which is involved in its very name (oA), and put 
 off with the miserable semblance of it that there is 
 in the vowel sound of on, which is but ah compressed 
 until the life is squeezed out of it ; while for the real 
 ■'o" we have h, an infuriated Q with its tail in the 
 uir, in a rage at bemg turned in its proper form clean 
 out of the alphabet. To be sure, it has no very inde- 
 perdent place there, leaning, as it does, always upon 
 u. But still an alphabet which admits a sign for
 
 190 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Buch compounds as the consonantal sounds in etch^ in 
 wreathe, in vicious, and in vuion might have let poor 
 q alone, characteristically leading as he does so many 
 '(although comparatively few) words which mark the 
 Latin element in our language. And we may be sure 
 that most intelligent and fair-minded persona, with 
 a moderate sense of the ridiculous, would gladly be 
 saved from spelling queen kwin, quack kwak, quart 
 kiv^i^rt, queer kwir, and quote kwbt, to which we should 
 be reduced by the abolition of q and the adoption of 
 the other phonetic changes proposed by Mr. Pitman 
 and advocated by Professor Miiller. 
 
 The change involved in the adoption of the Pitman 
 phonetic alphabet, or any other, is not so much in the 
 value of individual letters as in the entire structure 
 of written English. Thus, for example, the com- 
 bination tch is stricken out, and for catch we have kag, 
 and, as ng also goes, for watching wagiy. t/does not 
 lose its power, but the combination dg, for which it 
 is substituted, disappears, and for edge we have ej, 
 and for knowledge nolej ; our youthful spoon victuals 
 become porij, a hedge a hej, and a bridge a hrij. And 
 so, with the disappearance of g with its soft sound in 
 favor of y, and the disuse of a with its name sound 
 (for it is the sound which determines the sign in all 
 liases), we shall find our rage rEJ, our page psj, our 
 stage stej, and so forth. The combinations c^, si, and 
 ti will also disappear, and not only will words like 
 vicious and vision be written vi/us and viZun ; but to 
 relieve the contestants at spelling bees of doubts as 
 to sh and ti, gracious and damnation will be spelled 
 gre/iis and damneAm- 
 
 A great and a very important dislocation of our 
 written speech would be effected by the making or
 
 MAX MULLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 191 
 
 thogriipliy conform to every change produced in sound 
 by the addition of prefixes and sufiixes, by inflection, 
 and by the change of accent. Thus clean would be 
 written klin^ but cleanli,' not klinli, but klenli ; for 
 nature we should have negur^ but for natural nagurid ; 
 for create kriet, but for creature krigur ; j^roduce as a 
 verb would be prbdi(Sy but as a noun prodiis. I 
 have thus but slightly indicated, or rather merely 
 hinted at, the sort of changes which would be effected 
 by the introduction of a phonetic alphabet ; being 
 limited not only by the space which I can give to this 
 part of my subject, but by the lack of the phonetic 
 type which a fuller illustration of this point would 
 require. 
 
 Another effect of the adoption of a phonetic alpha- 
 bet and system of spelling would appear in a dimin- 
 ished capacity of the new generation to enjoy the 
 literature of the past unless it were reprinted (hav- 
 ing been previously all rewritten) in the new Eng- 
 lish. I have said that the ability to read English as 
 it is at present written gives a command of the litera- 
 ture of our language for three hundred years back. 
 This is a very moderate limit. The general miscon- 
 ception upon this point by those who are unacquainted 
 with English literature as it appears in books of past 
 centuries is very great. We have to get past the 
 Elizabethan period before the slightest difficulty ap- 
 pears. In illustration of this position I quote the fol- 
 owing stanza, the first of George Gascoigne's " Good- 
 morrow," as it was printed just five years more than 
 three centuries ago, in 1575, the book having been 
 the first that came to my hand, and the poem the 
 >ne to w hich the book opened of itself : —
 
 192 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 "You that haue spent the silent night 
 
 In sleepe and quiet rest, 
 And ioj-e to see the cheerfull lyght 
 
 That riseth in the East : 
 Now cleare your voyce, now chere your hart, 
 
 Come helpe nie novve to siug : 
 Each willing wyght come beare a part 
 
 To prayse the heauenly King." 
 
 This is a fair representation of our language as it 
 was written and printed tliree hundred years ago, be» 
 fore Spenser had published a line, and while Shake- 
 speare and Bacon were at grammar school. I shall 
 not insult the intelligence of any mature reader by 
 asking if such a person could not read such verses 
 and enjoy them without hindrance from their spell- 
 ing, or even without a thought about it ; but I will 
 ask if any child old enough to read the " Arabian 
 Nights" or " Robinson Crusoe " could not read those 
 verses just as easily as he could read a paragraph in 
 to-day's newspaper. The child might be struck and 
 amused by three or four superfluous e's, by the use of 
 u for V, and of 9/ four times where modern orthogra- 
 phy requires i ; but these slight variations from the 
 modern style of spelling would be no hindrance to his 
 enjoyment, — rather from their quaintness a help and 
 a stimulus. Suppose, however, that the child or the 
 man had been brought up on the phonetic alphabet, 
 and had seen the words which compose those lines 
 always written thus : — 
 
 Yq dat hav spent de silent nit 
 
 In slip and kwiet rest. 
 And joi tui si di qirful lit 
 
 cTat rrze^ in di 1st: 
 Now klir yur vois, now Qir yqr hBrt, 
 
 Kxni help mi now tiu siij: 
 \q williij wit kxm ber o pBrt 
 
 Tui prtz de hevenii Kiy; 
 
 and if he had learnetl (as he would have learned)
 
 MAX MULLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 193 
 
 that those sounds could be indicated only by those 
 letters, and that those letters could have those sounds 
 and no others, what would be his capacity for read- 
 ing Gascoigne's verses, or those of any other English 
 poet from the pre-Elizabethan period to the present ? 
 The fact that some of the letters which I have used 
 are mere make-shifts, only as nearly as possible like 
 Pitman's phonetic letters as the types at my com- 
 mand will allow, is of no moment. For the purposes 
 of illustration and argument one strange arbitrary 
 sign is as good as another. It should be remarked, 
 however, that this stanza of Gascoigne's does not 
 present this part of the case in so strong a light as 
 * might be thrown upon it, because it has an unusual 
 number of words in which the phonetic alphabet 
 makes no change. 
 
 Let us now consider the converse of this view. 
 Certain lines spoken by Hamlet after the player 
 leaves him, in the last scene of the second act of the 
 tragedy, have already (Chapter V., page 84) been pre- 
 sented with the pronunciation of Shakespeare's day 
 lepresented in our orthography. For the convenience 
 of the reader the passage is here repeated : — . 
 
 " Ees eet not monstroos tliot thees plaj'er hare, 
 Boot een s. feec-sy-on, een a dhrame oi pass-y-on, 
 Could force hees sowl so to liees own consate, 
 That from her working all hees veesaye warm'd ; 
 Tares een hees ayes; deesthraction een 's aspect, 
 A broken voice, and hees \\ho\e J'oonction shouting 
 Weet forms to hees consate ; and all for noting.'^ 
 
 Assuming this pronunciation, then, as Shake- 
 speare's (from which even according to ]\Ir. Ellis's 
 vitw it differs but sightly), what would be the ef- 
 fect of this and other passages upon modern readers 
 if they had been written in a phonetic alphabet the 
 
 13
 
 194 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 powers of which had remained without change, while 
 pronunciation had changed, as it must (and as Pro- 
 fessor Miiller admits that it would) have done ? 
 Shakespeare's poetry and all the poetr}"^ of the past 
 would, to say the least, have lost much of its charm 
 for us. It would be in a certain sense ridiculous. We 
 could not read it without laughing at its antiquated 
 and what would seem to us its uncovith sound ; 
 whereas, with its fixed orthography, its beauty re- 
 mains fixed likewise. The printed words are but visi- 
 ble signs which call up their vocal counterparts, ac- 
 cording to our own mode of vocalizing;; them. The 
 sign (the written word) remains the same, or nearly 
 the same, for all generations, and each generation 
 gives to the sign the sound of the word according to 
 the fashion of its own period. And this is one great 
 value of a fixed or very slowly changing system of 
 spelling. It does not conform to the floating fashions 
 of pronunciation ; and it thus preserves the form of 
 literature which would otherwise be destroyed in the 
 lapse and ruin of time. 
 
 It is thus with the literature of Greece and of 
 Rome. Professor Miiller, with his usual candor, con- 
 fesses that, notwithstanding all the efforts that have 
 been made by philologists and phonologists, " we 
 shall never be able to speak with anything like real 
 Bcientific accuracy of the pronunciation of ancient 
 languages " (and I may be pardoned for calling to 
 mind that I published the same opinion years ago), 
 but we can nevertheless enjoy their literature, includ- 
 ing their poetry ; and it is a question whether we 
 cIo not enjoy it the more because we are freed from 
 the necessity of strict conformity to their pronuncia- 
 tion. In English, accent has remained nearly th«
 
 MAX xMULLER AND PHONETIC SrELLING. 195 
 
 same for centuries, the force of consonants almost ex- 
 actly the same ; and the consequence is that, notwith- 
 standing the Tariation in the ephemeral sound of the 
 vowels, the rhythm of poetry and even of prose re- 
 mains unchanged ; and it is certainly protected from 
 the degrading effect which would have been caused 
 by the phonetic spelling and printing of antiquated 
 speech. The result of a fixed orthography is an almost 
 perennial preservation of the beauties of literature. 
 
 Professor Miiller candidly recognizes the one great 
 difficulty in the way of the adoption of a phonetic 
 system of spelling, — the uncertainty as to the sounds 
 which are to be phonetically recorded. Pronuncia- 
 tion differs so much, even among educated speakers, 
 as to render unattainable that uniformity and abso- 
 luteness in phonetic writing without which it is 
 worthless for general and literary purposes, however 
 valuable it might be to philologists as a record of 
 what is or has been, with which facts only philology 
 concerns itself. He says that he could mention the 
 names of three English bishops, " one of wdiom pro- 
 nounced the vowel in Giod like gaud, another like 
 rod, a third like gady The last pronunciation, he 
 says, " would probably be condemned by everybod}^" 
 True ; and yet it was once the elegant pronunciation. 
 A. remnant of it, a survivor, appears in the oath, 
 
 'fore gad," which is in the mouths of half the fine 
 ffcllovvs in the old comedies. " But the other two 
 Dronunciations," he adds, " would remain sanctioned 
 by the highest authority, and therefore retained in 
 phonetic writing." But what is that phonetic writ- 
 ing worth which gives us god and gaud for the same 
 word ? 
 
 Another part of this difficulty is the variableness
 
 196 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 in the perceptions of sound, even among professed 
 phonologists. They do not agree as to the speech of 
 people generally ; and not only so, they differ as to 
 each other's speech, and are even unable to record 
 their own with satisfactory accuracy. Mr. Ellis gives 
 in phonetic type the parable of the Prodigal Son as 
 it is written by another distinguished phonologist, and 
 as he himself would read it aloud. The difference is 
 BO great that it seems in some passages to be in dif- 
 ferent languages, — languages as different as Italian 
 and Spanish. 
 
 I rejjroduce here one verse of the parable (the 
 second) as Mr. Ellis gives it in his palseotype, an 
 elaborate phonographic alphabet which he has in- 
 vented to represent accurately all known vocal sounds. 
 The first example was written out by Mr. Bell ; the 
 second by Mr. Ellis himself. 
 
 Melville Bell. 
 
 ^nd not mEn^ deiz aah'ft^r dh?/ JE-qgKi SEn goe*- 
 dhmd aaI tugE-dh'Bi ahud twk nhiz dzha.ini i-hntu 
 ah fai ka-ntri. 
 
 Alexander J. Ellis. 
 
 ^nd-na*t me*ni dgez aa.ft-e dha-js-qg^ sen gce-dhed 
 AaI tuge'dha 'en-tuk-iz dzlaa-ni in-tu-i3-faa ka-ntri. 
 
 It will be seen that even in this one verse only 
 three words, alU took, and to, are represented in both 
 versions as having the same sounds. It will also be 
 observed by those who look closely that, according 
 to his own record of his own speech, the former pres- 
 ident of the British Philological Society does not 
 iound the letter r at the end of words like father
 
 ll\X MULLLR AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 197 
 
 younger, and together, but pronounces them fatJia, 
 youngd, and to-gethd. Like noteworthy characteris- 
 tics of his speech will be found in one of the follow- 
 ing additional examples of the difference of pronunci- 
 ation between gentlemen who are themselves eminent 
 phonologists ; they are the last with which I shall 
 aflflict my long-suffering reader. The phrase to be 
 expressed (for I forbear giving a whole sentence) is 
 the following : — 
 
 " The written and printed representation of the 
 Bounds of language." 
 
 This is given in the Ellis palasotype as its sounds 
 impress themselves upon the hearing of Mr. Ellis, 
 of Professor Haldeman, of Mr. Sweet, and of Mr. 
 Smart. 1 
 
 Mr. Alexander J. Ellis. 
 
 Dh'B-r^'-t'n 'Bu-prz-ntyd retprizentee'sh-en 'B-d-h'B- 
 sawnz 'BV-l'Baqw^dzhsh. 
 
 Professor S. S. Haldeman. 
 
 Dha \xitn 3/nd p[rmt?/d Lrep.</zentee'sh?/n ^v dha 
 Ba'wndz yY laeqgwidzh. 
 
 Mr. H. Sweet. 
 
 Dh'-rrtu-'n-pri-'nted-rE:pr'z'nteysh'n-'v-dh' saeaao*- 
 ndz-' v-lse - • qqg wedzh . 
 
 Mr. B. H. Smart. 
 
 Dha rtt-n end prz'nt-ed rep.-rizenteeLishan av dha 
 paaundz av lasq'gwedzh. 
 
 1 Mr. Henry Sweet, one of the foremost living Anglo-Saxon scholars, 
 ,e the author of the llislory of English Sounds, and was in 1876 president 
 of the London Philological Society. Mr. Sm;irt I have already spoken of ; 
 and Professor Haldeman, of the Unive.aity of Pennsylvania, needs uo 
 jitroduction to readers who are at all interested in linguistic studies.
 
 198 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Here again we find that liardl}'^ two words in ten 
 are beard alike and expressed alike by four of the most 
 eminent English orthoepists and phonologists. Even 
 the in its short, unemphatic utterance is expressed 
 by three of them in three different ways. Behold, 
 too, their labor in representatioyi and their travail in 
 bringing forth language, and see the uncertain look of 
 Doth those words. See too that Mr. Ellis, according 
 to his own showing, does not say and printed, but '>< 
 •printid, nor of the sounds, but o' th' souns. 
 
 It seems to me that the impossibility of forming 
 a phonetic system of spelling needs no further or 
 clearer illustration than this. For if even Ellis and 
 Haldeman and Smart cannot agree as to what are 
 the sounds of words and what are the characters 
 proper to express them, when they have a system of 
 phonotype of minute exactness made to their hands, 
 what is there to be reasonably hoped for in this 
 direction ? 
 
 Professor Miiller shows at some length that the 
 etymological significance of our present spelling is 
 not of sufficient importance to be allowed to stand in 
 the way of a change which would give us ease and 
 ■".ertainty in the use of signs to express sounds. He 
 ueed not, I think, have given so much space and at- 
 tention to this part of the subject. The etymology 
 of words as indicated by their spelling is interesting ; 
 but language is made for daily use, not for etymolo- 
 gists and philologists, amateur or professional ; and 
 their intellectual pleasures cannot be allowed to stand 
 in the way of the world's convenience. But when 
 Professor Miiller, like other eminent philologists, ad- 
 vocates phonetic spelling because of the scientific 
 value that it would have to philologists as a phonetic
 
 MAX MiJLLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 199 
 
 record of the sounds that words had in past genera- 
 tions, he fails to see, or forgets for the moment, I 
 think, that even if we had a phonetic spelling in 
 the literature of the past we should not know what 
 sounds the characters were meant to indicate. And 
 who could tell a hundred years hence what sound any 
 vowel had in any word at this day, except by a pain- 
 ful process of research, examination of authorities, 
 collation of rhj'mes, and the like, and then not with 
 certainty ? If in any system of spelling certain let- 
 ters are omitted which appear in others, we may at 
 once infer that those letters were silent — on the lips 
 of the p)^rson who did not write them. But we can 
 infer nothing more ; for even by the brief examples 
 given above we see that letters are silent in the 
 speech or to the ears of Mr. Ellis which are uttered 
 and heard by Mr. Smart, and by almost every one, 
 except careless and slovenly speakers. 
 
 Even when great care has been taken, as by the 
 writers of past generations upon English orthoepy 
 (and within the last three hundred years they have 
 been many), it is almost impossible, I shall not say 
 to see, but even by patient study to discover, what 
 Bounds were intended by certain combinations of let- 
 ters. No part of Mr. Ellis's great work — admirable 
 for its vast labor, its signal ability, and its candid 
 spirit — is more instructive by way of warning, it 
 seems to me, than his painful endeavors to show from 
 vhe writings of these old orthoepists what was the 
 pronunciation of their day. He generally fails to con- 
 vince me by that means, as he has failed to convince 
 others, admirers, no less than I, and no more, of his 
 ability and his learning.^ We are to pronounce lull 
 
 ^ 8«je for example On Early English P or.unciation, with Espedd
 
 200 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 like 2)ull. Yes ; but how was j^ull pronoimced ? like 
 fulU or like dull? Who can tell? — and the per- 
 plexity stretches back into remote generations. And 
 if we are told that it is proposed to remove this doubt 
 fore-ver b}^ giving but one sound to the combination 
 ull^ for example, the reply that sweeps that away is, 
 What sound will you give to ull, and what sound can 
 you fix upon it ? Mr. Ellis himself has declared that 
 the pronunciation of certain combinations of letters 
 changes suddenly, and therefore nil., if it had the 
 Bound that it has in hull to-day, might in ten years 
 have the sound which it also to-day has in dull^ in 
 cull, and in mull. The inability to indicate to the 
 mind's ear what is the sound intended to be expressed 
 by certain signs or letters underlies the whole diffi- 
 culty about phonetic writing, and would deprive it of 
 historical value even more than of present conven- 
 ience. 
 
 Here is an example in point. It is quoted by Mr. 
 Ellis from Edward Coote's " English Schoolmaster," 
 4to, 1673. Robert and John are instructiug us, by 
 way of dialogue, in the niceties of English speech : — 
 
 Roh. But, Goodman Taylor, our clerk, when I went to 
 Bchool with him, taught me to sound these vowels [in f ram, 
 frem, frim, froni] otherwise than (metliiuks) you do. 
 
 Joh. How as that ? 
 
 Roh. I remember he taught me these syllables thus : for 
 had, bed, bid, bod, bud, I learned to say bade, bid, bide, bode, 
 bude ; sounding a bed to ly upon as to bid or command, and 
 bid. as bide, long as in abide ; bud of a tree as bude, long 
 \iko rude ; for these three vowels, a, i, u, are very corruptly 
 and ignorantly taught by many unskilful teachers, which is 
 
 Reference to Chaucer, in Opposition to the Views maintained by Mr. A. J. 
 Ellis, F. R. S. IJy Richard Francis Weymouth, D. Lit., M. A., Fellow o 
 Dnirersity College, London.
 
 MAX MULLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 201 
 
 the cause of so great ignorance of the true writing in those 
 that want the Latin tongue. 
 
 Joh. You say true ; for so did my dame teach me to pro- 
 nounce ; for s«, «e, si., so, su, to say sa, see, si, soo, sow, as 
 if she had sent me to see her sow, whereas se should be 
 sounded like the sea, and sic as to sue one at the law. 
 
 This passage refers merely to the pronunciation of 
 a, e, i, 0, and 7^ in monosyllables, not longer ago than 
 the time of Dryden's prime ; and yet what can be 
 learned from it ? Even according to Mr. Ellis, noth- 
 ing ; for he says of it, " the exact meaning of which 
 it is difficult to discover; " and he supposes that it 
 must refer to some childish school-boy puzzle " like 
 that in the spelling of HabakkuJc.'' But I cannot 
 think so ; for the serious purpose of the writer is 
 very apparent, and he makes it unmistakable by 
 this foot-note : " Let the unskilful teachers take 
 great heed of this fault, and let some good scholars 
 hear their children pronounce these syllables." And 
 yet, simple as the matter is, all that the writer has 
 been able to convey to us is the fact that the vowels 
 had in his day, or just before it, sounds different from 
 those which they have now. I think that his mean- 
 ing might perhaps be discovered by careful analysis 
 and comparison ; but none the less does the result 
 vf his phonetic effort show on its face the futility of 
 phonography as a record of value to the philologist. 
 It had meaning to his contemporaries, — to some of 
 them, perhaps to many ; but to us it is only a pho- 
 netic puzzle, the meaning of which we may find out 
 if we can. 
 
 Professor Miiller, like the other advocates of a pho* 
 netic system of spelling, insists strongly upon the diffi 
 Dulty with which our present orthography is learned
 
 202 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and the sufferings — one might say, from the way in 
 which these gentlemen talk about it, the agonies — 
 that children undergo in learning to read and write 
 our present written English. This subject I have 
 considered before ; and I can only repeat that those 
 great difficulties and those great agonies, as peculiar 
 to spelling, I have never been able to see. I never 
 knew them m^^self ; nor do I remember them in any 
 of my school-fellows. There were difficulties ; but so 
 there were difficulties in learning anything, — rather 
 less in spelling than in others. I know of letters 
 written by boys eight or nine years old which are 
 quite correctly spelled ; and I repeat that with an 
 unusually wide range of obsei'vation for many years 
 in the writing of persons who have had little educa- 
 tion — none rightly so called — a mistake in spelling 
 is the rarest error I have observed. We learn spell- 
 ing quite as much b}' gradual absorption of its meth- 
 ods as by teaching and the iterative practice of the 
 school-room. We learn to spell by reading, those 
 who read much being generally correct spellers ; and 
 the result of my observation is that most intelligent 
 persons of average education, if asked to spell a word 
 that they had never seen or heard before, would spell 
 it correctly. Some might fail ; but what matter if 
 they did ? Is there anything so very grievous in 
 spelling a word not according to "the dictionary"? 
 I cannot see that there is. As for myself, if 1 were 
 caught misspelling a word, I should not care one 
 drop of this ink with which I am writing; and in 
 iaying this I am not pleading for my own errois, for 
 I have reason to believe that I have never misspelled 
 a word since I was old enough to be trusted with per 
 n,nd ink. J Jut many a much better and abler mar
 
 MAX MULLER AND PHONETIC SPELLING. 203 
 
 has done so ; and what of it ? I cannot see that this 
 matter of speUing is worth all the fuss that is made 
 about it. 
 
 In any case, spelling must be merely arbitrary, a 
 matter of fashion and tacit agreement. A sound haa 
 no real relation to a sign ; and we may as well have 
 signs for words (as we do now) as signs for single 
 sounds. And if we had such signs for single sounds 
 they would soon, by the variableness of speech, cease 
 to indicate them, and would stand for some other 
 sounds. For, as Professor Mliller incidentally ad- 
 mits in one place, this difficulty is " inherent in the 
 very life of language ; " and, as he justly says else- 
 where, " writing indicates, but does not paint, sounds." 
 In these admissions he has, it seems to me, given up 
 the very cause for which he was doing battle.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. MR. ELLIS'S GLOSSIC 
 SPELLING. 
 
 We have seen (in Chapter X.) how long ago and 
 how very early in the history of our language men 
 curious as to spelling began to contrive modes of pho- 
 netic orthography, and how continuous such efforts 
 liave been to the present day. Now, however, there 
 is a phonetic-spelling " movement." The slender suc- 
 cession of individual reformers through centuries is 
 suddenly in one generation developed into a band 
 of agitators, somewhat numerous, and in some 
 instances highly distinguished, who clamor for a 
 change. Just so a rocket rises through the darkness 
 in a thin line of light and then bursts into a blaze of 
 stars ; but that is the end of it ; the stars pass off in 
 smoke. I feel very sure that, bright as many of 
 the names are which now illumine it, such will be 
 the end of spelling reform. But of the numerous- 
 uess of the advocates of a change in the written 
 form of English I had only an imperfect notion be- 
 fore the receipt of various printed records of their 
 loings, which have been kindly sent me within the 
 last year or two. There are spelling-reform asso- 
 ciations, and verily they have " transactions," and, 
 faith, they print 'em ; not always, however, very 
 ntelligibly to the general eye and mind. There are 
 writers who publish in magazines each his little proj- 
 ect for changing at a word, and by law or by geiv
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. 206 
 
 eral consent — sort of intellectual mass-meeting — 
 the outward and visible form of a language which is 
 the product of many centuries of well-rooted growth. 
 There are conventions : one such was held in Phila- 
 delphia some two years and a half ago ; another more 
 recently in London. The Bulletin of the Spelling 
 Reform Association, No. 1, which bears the ominous, 
 and, were it not for my respect for individuals con- 
 nected with it, I should say the fitting, date of April, 
 1877, opens with the declaration : " Never before in 
 the history of the language has there been so much 
 promise of a reform in our orthography as at the 
 present time." 
 
 These facts explain to me the interest with which 
 I have learned, somewhat to my surprise, that what 
 I have written upon a dry subject, and it seems to 
 me almost a trivial, is read. It is timely. I am 
 sorry for it. People might be much more profitably 
 employed in using, or even in studying, the language 
 as it is, than in the attempt to change its written 
 form ; an attempt which, from the very nature of the 
 thing to be changed, can end only in utter failure. 
 No one who dreads the sudden and violent disturb- 
 ance of the visible surface of our lanp;uao;e and its 
 literature need regard the phonetic-spelling move- 
 ment with any apprehension of evil. It will effect 
 no change of importance. Changes in spelling there 
 will be, but not in virtue of the " movement ; " nor 
 will the changes be those for which the reformers 
 are clamoring. Our alphabet and our spelling will 
 Burely remain, for some generations at least, very 
 much what they have been for centuries. 
 
 The advocates of a destruction of the present writ- 
 ten English language for the sake of phonetic spell*
 
 206 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 iiig, however, in presenting their case to the public 
 insist strongly upon the fact that nearly all the emi- 
 nent English philologists are favorers of a reformed 
 spelling of the English language. To a certain ex- 
 tent this is true. It is certainly true that nearly all 
 of them are very much dissatisfied with the present 
 English spelling ; but of a consent among them as to 
 what refoi^m shall be and how it shall be brought 
 about, I have been able to discover no indications. 
 Until there is such a consent, all expression of dis- 
 content and crying for reform is very much like the 
 howling of wolves against a storm ; it expresses dis- 
 content and a desire of change, but it does nothing 
 more. A phonetic reformer,^ who makes the most 
 of the "movement," has nevertheless recently ad- 
 mitted that " it would be a dangerous error to sup- 
 pose that, after all, a very great deal, comparatively 
 speaking, has been gained." 
 
 Now, what is it that has been gained ? Merely 
 that certain experts an-d specialists in language — 
 men who give themselves up not to the study of liter- 
 ature nor to the practice of wi'iting or that of speak- 
 ing, but to the scientific study of the history and 
 structure of language — have declared themselves in 
 favor of a phonetic change in English spelling. In 
 the first place, the fact that they are experts and 
 specialists in language is against them in this matter, 
 Upon questions of fact in the history of language, 
 upon the relations of languages and of words, upon 
 the indications which language gives of the connec- 
 tion of peoples and of the development of civilization^ 
 the opinions of such men are to be received with def 
 
 1 Professor Lounsburj', in Scribner's Magazine, October and Novembef 
 1.879.
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. 207 
 
 erence, and to be disputed by laymen with caution, 
 if at all, and even with humility ; but as to what it 
 is best for us English-speaking and English-writing 
 people to do with our mother tongue, our household 
 words, our mean of common life from day to day, 
 their opinions are likely to be worth much less than 
 those of the mass of intelligent, well-educated, and 
 thoughtful people who have not made the study of 
 language a specialty. 
 
 Specialists and experts are always to be distrusted 
 upon practical questions, if those questions are con- 
 nected with their specialty. In particular, specialists 
 in language come to look upon language as being 
 chiefly and almost entirely a subject of analysis, of 
 comparison, of historical inquiry. The facts that it 
 enables the three living genei^ations of men to com- 
 municate daily and hourly their thoughts and wishes 
 to each other, and that by it they are also enabled to 
 know and to enjoy the thoughts and to sympathize 
 with the joys and sorrows of generations through cent- 
 uries past, are comparatively little regarded by them. 
 And it is to be remarked, in connection with this 
 view of their case, that the pinncipal reason given (if 
 I mistake not) by almost every one of the eminent 
 specialists in language who has entered the phonetic- 
 reform movement for his contempt of the present 
 English spelling and his desire for a phonetic reform 
 is that any other than phonetic spelling conceals ety- 
 mology, does not record the history of speech, and 
 makes philological research difficult. That this is 
 true, in a measure, no one who has given any consid- 
 erable attention to the historical study of even his 
 own language can for a moment doubt. But what 
 of that ? Is language made for philologists, or are
 
 208 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 philologists made for language ? What is it to ua 
 who wish to read the letters and the books of our 
 friends and neighbors, of our fathers and our grand- 
 fathers and our great-great-grandfathers, and to be 
 intelligible to our children and our grandchildren, 
 that our way of writing is not what the philologist of 
 the future may approve ? For it is to be remembered 
 that no change can help the philologist of the present. 
 The past is fixed. And shall we write, not for our 
 own convenience, but for that of the coming philolo- 
 gist ? Shall we then in like manner also think, not 
 as our reason and our instincts lead us, but with the 
 metaphysician of the future in our eye ; and shall 
 we live, not according to our own convictions of right 
 and wrong, but in the hope of pleasing some great 
 moral anatomist of the soul hereafter ? 
 
 The positions taken by the phonologists are that 
 English orthography cannot be mastered without 
 study, and that it is no guide to pronunciation. The 
 first of these is true, and it ought to be true ; the sec- 
 ond is not true in the sense in which it is urged. 
 " Who," exclaimed Mr. Pitman (" Fonetic Nuz " Pit- 
 man) at the London spelling-reform convention, — 
 " who could spell beauty without having seen it writ- 
 ten ? " To which the reply is, first, that, although 
 persons whose notion of the functions of letters is 
 limited to such a use of them as b u 5m, t e te^ bu-te^ 
 would probably not be able to spell beauty without 
 having seen it written, their incapacity is of very lit- 
 tle importance, certainly of not enough to justify a 
 disturbance of the visible structure of an ancient lan- 
 guage and a great literature. Next, that hundreds 
 out of every thousand could spell beauty if they had 
 first acquired some knowledge of the structure o|
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. 209 
 
 English words ; and without such knowledge of any 
 subject, with what reason is a man expected to have 
 any mastery of it ? Mr. Ellis said, if not on this oc- 
 casion, at another time, that a man on seeing a word 
 written does not know how to pronounce it until 
 he is told, — an opinion which seems to me quite 
 wrong. Under the condition just mentioned, I am 
 sure, from observation and experiment, that nine in- 
 telligent men out of ten would pronounce correctly, 
 at sight, an English word that they had never met 
 with before. There is no limit to the extravagance 
 of specialists who have gone ojff on an agitation. 
 
 At this convention Dr. Gladstone made much of 
 the point that differing standards prevail in differ- 
 ent school districts, and that pupils "are plucked, 
 in one district for spelling honor with the u, and in 
 another for spelling it without." What if they are ? 
 It only shows the pettiness of pedagoguery. What 
 difference does it make whether a boy or a man spells 
 lionor or honour? One way is just as good as the 
 other. Both spellings have support in etymology and 
 in analogy. The question is merely one of fashion 
 and of convenience. The difference is not worth a mo- 
 ment's thought. This sort of fussiness justly brings 
 word-mongers into contempt. 
 
 Mr. Robert Lowe, M. P., who has joined the ranks 
 of the reformers, sent a letter to the convention, in 
 which he said that as he was informed that there are 
 thirty-nine sounds in the language, and there are only 
 twenty-four letters, he thought " that fifteen new 
 letters should be added, so that there be a letter for 
 every sound, and that every one should write as he 
 speaks^ The result, it may be remarked in passing, 
 would be striking and interesting, if not altogether 
 
 14
 
 210 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 lovely. He added that he could get no boys to read 
 to him " tolerabl}^ ; " they " have no idea of the pro- 
 nunciation of tlie language." His only remedy for 
 this is "to teach all the thirty -nine sounds together 
 with the letter which presents each of them." Thia 
 last is amazing. It would seem that a man of Mr. 
 Lowe's general intelligence should know that right 
 pronunciation of a language is not learned from letters, 
 but from daily intercourse with those who speak it 
 well, and by means of perceptions naturally fine and 
 highly cultivated. He could find many a well-bred 
 woman who had had very little education, and v^ho 
 never gave the question of the powers of letters a 
 thought, whose pronunciation of English is unexcep- 
 tionably good, and who could read to him much bet- 
 ter than tolerably. English orthography was fixed 
 in the days of Queen Anne, and was then to all 
 intents and purposes just what it is now. But the 
 Duke of Marlborough, one of the greatest generals 
 that ever lived, an accomplished and successful di- 
 plomatist, an elegant man of society, whose English, 
 we may be sure, was as fine as was ever spoken, could 
 not spell. And what matter ? What had liis spell- 
 ing to do either with his ability and his accomplish- 
 ments or with his English ? I am informed that the 
 late Dr. Nott, the distinguished president of Union 
 College, spelled so badly that his wife had to correct 
 all his manuscripts. Unfashionable spelling may be 
 ruinous to dunces ; but it is of little consequence how 
 a clever man spells, especially if he is in the hands 
 of a competent wife or a careful proof-reader. 
 
 The most strikino- and characteristic remark made 
 at this convention came from the Reverend A. H 
 Sayce, of Oxford, an eminent philologist and Orienta
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. 211 
 
 scholar, who first took the chair. He objected to 
 English spelling that it " cultivated an unphilological 
 habit of mind," — a criticism not less than amazing 
 in its scope and purpose. In very deed it is true. 
 And what could be more deplorable than an unphilo- 
 logical habit of mind among the millions of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking people ! It is much to be feared that 
 the habit of Mr. John Bright's mind is hopelessly 
 unphilological. Certain it is that John Bunyan's 
 was so. Indeed, the Bedford tinker was so deprav- 
 edly unphilological that he spelled one well-known 
 word both slough and slow. But perhaps it may be 
 reasonably doubted whether philological habits of 
 mind would have improved either the English or the 
 delivery of John Bright's speeches, or the style of 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress." Could there be better 
 illustration than this remark of the unfitness of philo- 
 logical specialists to deal with such a practical ques- 
 tion as that of a change in the written form of a lan- 
 guage and a literature like the English ! 
 
 Dr. Gladstone brought before his fellow philolo- 
 gists a subject upon which many of them seem to have 
 taken leave of facts and of their own common-sense. 
 He said that the means of effecting a change to a 
 uew system of spelling " were in the hands of the 
 government," and thereupon Mr. Ellis proposed the 
 third resolution : " That as no change would be ef- 
 fectual unless the amended spelling were accepted by 
 school inspectors, civil service examiners, and public 
 depai'tments side by side with the present spelling, 
 the assistance of the government will be required." 
 
 True, indeed, most learned and most candid of pho- 
 nologists ; but there is yet another body whose aid ia 
 ">£ incalculably moi-e importance, and without which
 
 212 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 the assistance of the government would not bo of one 
 feather power, — the bulk of English-speaking peo- 
 ple. It is for them that books and newspapers are 
 printed, and not for philologists, or for phonologists, 
 or for others, who, being neither philologists nor pho- 
 nologists, take it upon themselves to agitate a spell- 
 ing reform. What would induce the publishers of 
 the leading journals in New York and in London to 
 make the reading of newspapers difficult to the three 
 generations — old, middle-aged, and young — whom 
 they address daily ? What would induce the hun- 
 dreds of publishers of millions of English volumes 
 yearly to lay phonetic stumbling-blocks and phono- 
 logical fun-provokers along every line of eveiy page 
 they issued ? If ninety-nine in every hundred of them 
 should do so, they would merely ruin themselves and 
 make the " eternal fortune " of the hundredth who 
 did not. It is not surprising that ray first corre- 
 spondent, heretofore mentioned, would have " Con- 
 gress finish the work " which some spelling reformers 
 had begun ; but even Professor March announces, 
 with evident expectations of success, that " the re- 
 formers have accordingly proposed to add to the au- 
 thority of the Philological Association whatever can be 
 gained by government sanction. They petition Con- 
 gress to move for a joint commission of the English- 
 speaking peoples to report upon the amendments." ^ 
 This is midsummer madness. In the first place. Con- 
 gress has no power, no right, to interfere in any way 
 with the question of language or of school instruction. 
 Any law having such a purpose would be unconstitu- 
 tional and void. Nor has Congress the power even 
 lo appoint such a commission as that proposed. I. 
 
 1 Princeton Review, January, 1880.
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. 213 
 
 the State of Louisiana should choose to pass its stat- 
 utes in the French language, and to have that Ian 
 guage spoken in its courts and taught in its schools, 
 if California should do the same as to the Spanish lan- 
 guage, if Colorado should in like manner adopt the 
 vernacular of the Utes, and if New York should re- 
 turn to the language of Nevr Amsterdam, they would 
 have the right to do so, and Congress has not the 
 power, on the one hand, to say them nay, or, on the 
 other, to appropriate a dollar of their money for the 
 improvement of the English language, or of any other. 
 But if Congress had the general powers of Parlia- 
 ment in this matter, they both together would be as 
 powerless as the three tailors of Tooley Street. Con- 
 gress may, if it pleases, decree that all pleadings be- 
 fore the Supreme Court shall be in Norman French, 
 as Parliament may decree that the royal assent to a 
 bill, instead of being announced as La Heine le vult^ 
 shall be, The Queen wills it. But as to affecting the 
 way in which one man writes for another to read, all 
 the Congresses and Parliaments and conventions that 
 were ever convoked would be as powerless as a boy 
 .vhistling against the north wind. True, the boy's 
 whistle has some power, and so have conventions ; but 
 as in the former case no very great change is made 
 in the course or in the velocity of the wind, so in the 
 .atter the progress of the language would continue in 
 its normal lines, quite unaffected by anything in the 
 form of " whereas," " resolved," or " be it enacted." 
 Congress and Parliament can give laws to the two 
 great English-speaking peoples ; but they cannot give 
 laws to the language, even the written language, of 
 ihose peoples. Such laws ^re formed by the uude* 
 liberate and almost uncc.iscious action, and settled by
 
 214 EVEKY-DAY EXGLTSH. 
 
 the unexpressed assent, of those peoples themselves 
 — guided some\Yhat, but not controlled, as to uiii 
 formit}' in public spelling by printers and proof-read- 
 ers. 
 
 Reform in other matters is possible by law, or by 
 individual or concerted action. Abuses may be thus 
 done away with, old things set aside for better new 
 ones, the right of one day be made by statute law 
 the crime of the next. Not so with language in any 
 of its departments. Some of the spelling reformers 
 speak of change in this matter as if it were like 
 change in any other, — most vainly and ignorantl}^ 
 You may pull down the house that covers your own 
 head, if you like, and live roofless and hearthless until 
 3'ou can build you another and a better ; but you can- 
 not by law or any other force make the language 
 spoken by a people with a past different to-morrow, 
 or next week, or next month, or next year, from what 
 it is to-day. And were this possible. Congress is the 
 very last body to whom the power to do it should be 
 committed. 
 
 The phonologists and philologists, notwithstanding 
 Jieir single-eyed devotion to their specialty, have 
 come at last to the perception that an attempt to in- 
 troduce a phonetic spelling of English, or anything 
 like it, " will not do." A phonetic English orthog- 
 raphy would bring in chaos, and put at once a stop to 
 reading books and to communication by writing. Of 
 all these specialists, Mr. Ellis is the most experienced, 
 the most learned in phonology, and, it would seem, 
 the most under the guidance of common-sense. He 
 has invented and proposed for adoption a transition 
 spelling, by which the passage from the orthographic 
 English of to-day to the phonographic English of thf
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFOIIMKR^. 215 
 
 future shall be made easy. Others have made like 
 endeavor; but there bemg a necessary similarity 
 among all such schemes, and his being likely to be 
 the best, it may well be accepted and considered as 
 a representative of them all. INIoreover, he has ac- 
 companied it with some remarks which are of great 
 significance and of the utmost importance. 
 
 Mr. Ellis calls his scheme of transition spelling 
 " glossic," and he has set it forth in a paper which 
 was read before the British Philological Society, and 
 which he has since issued for private circulation 
 The title of that work, a pamphlet of thirty-two 
 pages, as it is printed upon the title-page, is worth 
 quoting at full length. It is : — 
 
 " On Glosik, a new sistem ov Ingglisli speling, proa- 
 poa-zd faur konkur-ent eus, in aurder too rernedi dhi di- 
 fek-ts withou-t ditrak-ting from dhi valeu ov our prezent 
 aurthog-rafi. Bei Aleksaander Jon Ells, F. R. S., F. S. A., 
 &s., author ov ' Erli Ingglish Proammsiai-shen,' «S:s. Ree- 
 printed faur preivet serkeula-sheii from dhi transakshens ov 
 flhi Filoaloj-ikel Soasei-iti for 1876." 
 
 This method of writing Mr. Ellis calls " glossic," 
 that is, according to the tongue, in opposition to 
 " nomic," the name which he gives to the conven- 
 tional writing which has prevailed for the last three 
 hundred years with few and slowly made changes. 
 He wrote (that is, composed) this very able paper 
 in the glossic spelling, and he tells us that he found 
 '•■hat spelling no check upon the flow of his thoughts. 
 This fact has some value, but not much ; because Mr. 
 Ellis has been engaged for thirty years and more in 
 phon('tic studies and experiments, and what would bo 
 easy to him might be impossible to others. It must 
 oe admitted that almost anv intellitrent and educated
 
 216 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 person can read this glossic writing with little trouble 
 after some study. But this fact is also of small im- 
 portance, because we can any of us as easily read 
 and understand a letter misspelled from beginning to 
 end. We can read " Josh Billings," and are some- 
 times not unable to laugh at him, if not always with 
 h/m. 
 
 Mr. Ellis proposes his glossic writing, as I have re- 
 marked before, only as a transition from the present 
 spelling to a more perfect one, — "a transiteri in- 
 strooment," as he calls it. With all his earnest ad- 
 vocacy of reform in spelling, he does not underrate 
 the difficulties in the way of any change. His knowl- 
 edge of the subject is too great for that. He, an 
 accomplished linguist and philologist, — facile prin- 
 ceps of English phonologists, — does not say, " With 
 the simplest form for a letter, and a letter for each 
 sound in the language, there is no need of further 
 theory ; what we want is action," as so many others 
 do. Of such reformers, and of such crass iconoclasra, 
 he gives an opinion which I shall render into com- 
 mon English writing : — 
 
 " There are many in England, France, Germany, and 
 America who have crude notions on the subject, and of 
 these the least informed would probably be ready with cut- 
 and-dried systems. But there are perhaps not twenty men 
 .in the world capable of initiating or discussing any scheme 
 of universal writing. [True phonetic writing is, of course, 
 of universal application.] As regards myself, I can only 
 Bay that when, in times past, I imagined I could construct 
 Buch an alphabet, I was very ignorant of what it had to ef- 
 fect, and that I have only some faint glimmerings even yet 
 As Boon as I come out of the friendly obscurity of the study 
 Into the broad daylight of practical application, I feel h()\i
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS RKFORMERS. 217 
 
 little I have yet learned, and how much remains to be ac- 
 complished. My glossic writing, therefore [his last expe- 
 dient], ev#n in its most developed form, is but a transitory 
 
 instrument, a tool to be hereafter discarded Even 
 
 for English I regard it as a mere auxiliary scheme, worth 
 trial, of educational and social as well as literary and phil- 
 ological value; quite as good, certainly, as our present or- 
 thography, and in many respects far superior to it, but not 
 intended to supersede that orthography in which are em- 
 balmed the treasures of English thought." 
 
 Thus, frankly, modestly, cautiously, speaks the great- 
 est master of English phonology that has ever lived. 
 He, who has spent a long life in the study, leaves to 
 others the production of their cut-and-dried systems. 
 He confesses that his former notions on the subject 
 were vain imaginations. He has found that before 
 the test of practical application elaborated systems of 
 reformed writing with brand new alphabets — " a let- 
 ter for every sound " — crumble up into literary dust 
 and ashes. He knows that there are hardly twenty 
 men in the world capable even of discussing the for- 
 mation of a scheme of phonetic writing. Perhaps 
 we may be able to see, although imperfectl}', and by 
 a mere glance as it were, when the vastness of the 
 lubject is considered, why it is that such a reform as 
 would effect the proposed change is so very difficult 
 lis to be practically impossible. 
 
 Mr. Ellis says, in the first place, that in glossic 
 writing " the ordinary letters should be used as far as 
 oossible in their most ordinary adopted senses, so 
 that a passage written in glossic, when only represent- 
 ing such sounds as are acknowledged in received pro 
 "aunciation, should be immediately intelligible to a 
 Tjomic reader without instruction." This view of the
 
 218 E VERY-DAY EXGLISH. 
 
 case will commend itself to all those who have not a 
 patent read3^-macle system of forty-two letters, more 
 or less, for forty-two sounds, more or less. Then comea 
 the second requisite, which is this: " The glossic should 
 indicate the precise sound of every word, without am- 
 biguity, and without reference to anything but the 
 sound, so that sound and symbol should be mechan- 
 ically convertible." Yes, surely ; but what sound ? 
 This diflSculty has been discussed before ; but I think 
 that it may be advantageousl}' shown by the testi- 
 mony of Mr. Ellis himself that to indicate the precise 
 sound of every word without ambiguity is quite im- 
 possible, consistently with that certainty, uniformity, 
 and ease of spelling without the attainment of which 
 the reform in question would fail utterly in the very 
 purpose for which it is agitated. For, if we can but 
 approximate, we may as well use one approximation 
 as another ; and when one is established as the means 
 of communication between thi'ee living generations, 
 and in it are " embalmed the treasures of English 
 thought," there may be said to be no question as to 
 choice. 
 
 Passing by a process of reform which compels such 
 Bpelling as auldhoa for although^ sein for sign, skair- 
 kroa for scarecrow, euzejez for usages, moesyeo for 
 monsieur, and sheovaalyai for chevalier, althougli the 
 hard necessity of such cruel and ludicrous distortion 
 's not without importance, let us look at Mr. Ellis's 
 glossic spelling of some words, with an eye not to its 
 desirability or practicability^ for general adoption, but 
 as indicative of the sound which he gives to those 
 words, or rather, as I venture to say, tiiinks that he 
 gives to them. I find these spellings of words which 
 a little examination will unravel : proanunsiaishen.
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS RKFORMHRS. 219 
 
 ttkwizishen, komeunikaishen, asoashiaishenz, hwestyen^ 
 %i(jestyen, dijikelt, praktikel^ edeukaishenel. Accord- 
 ing, then, to his own record of his speech, Mr. Alexan- 
 der Ellis, Fellow of the Royal Society, late president 
 of the British Philological Society, etc., gives to the 
 syllable spelled tion the sound of shen, to that spelled 
 ult the sound of elt, to that spelled al the sound of el, 
 and he pronounces suggest surest. Now, with high 
 personal regard for him, in addition to the utmost re- 
 Bpect for his authority in phonetics, I believe no such 
 thing. I have talked with him, and at one time for 
 liDurs together, observing his speech closely, as I found 
 afterward he did mine, and I am sure that he does 
 not pronounce as he says he does, but that he gives 
 to the syllable tion a sound not clearly expressible 
 with letters, but something between shon and shun; 
 that in difficult he gives the last syllable the sound of 
 cult^ but very shortly and lightly ; and that in prac- 
 tical and educational his sonnd of the last syllable is 
 a very short and light al, which is something like le 
 in the last syllable of simple, but is not el, his speech 
 following in this respect the usage of educated peo- 
 ple. What his pronunciation of suggest is I shall not 
 venture to say ; but I should almost as soon expect to 
 liear him say susseed for sue-seed as svjjest for sug- 
 jest. 
 
 This discrepancy between his appreciation of his 
 . vn speech and the appreciation of it by another ob- 
 servant person is a matter of the very first importance. 
 It is not peculiar to him and to me. We have al- 
 ready seen (page 180) what discrepancy there was 
 between him and another eminent phonologist, Mr, 
 I3ell, as to the way in which each of them pronounced 
 «o simple a word as man.
 
 220 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Perfect frankness and boldness in facing difficulty 
 are marked traits in Mr. Ellis as a philologist, and I 
 believe as a man ; and therefore it is not surprising 
 to hear from him the following confessions, which, 
 when considered in connection with the foregoing 
 facts, are of great significance. They are from a foot- 
 note in his " Glossic :" " Even among highly-educated 
 Englishmen marked varieties of pronunciation exist. 
 .... Hence professional orthoepists have endeav- 
 ored to determine what pronunciations are correct, 
 hut they do not agree among themselves^ and they have 
 vainly striven after principle s^ The italic emphasis 
 is mine. This life-long advocate of phonetic spell- 
 ing, or I should rather say this honest seeker after a 
 phonetic S3'stem, then makes the following remarka- 
 ble admission : " Any system of notation for sounds 
 should enable us to represent all the prevalent vari- 
 eties, and each person shoidd write what he thinks 
 best." That this does not apply to glossic writing as 
 a mere record for phonetic purposes is made certain 
 by his subsequent reference to his own glossic writ- 
 ing of nature, failure, and verdure, — naiteur,faileur, 
 and verdeur, — which he says " many might write 
 naicher, failyer, and verjer. Or," he adds, " writers 
 might even object to the use of r at all after aa, au, 
 u, and write naichu, failyu, vu-ju, as well as deeu, 
 paat, laud, klaak, for " — what does the reader think ? 
 — "for deer, part, lord, and clerk.'" lie does not 
 shirk the consequences, but adds, " And they ought 
 to do so, if they speak so. There is no reason why 
 Buch usages, although stigmatized now, should not 
 become fashionable a century hence." The history 
 of our language shows that the truth of this admis- 
 iBion cannot be disputed ; and after this somewhat
 
 PHILOLOGISTS AS REFORMERS. 221 
 
 amazing indication of the approach to ease and uni- 
 formity of spelling attainable by the phonetic road 
 on the part of its oldest and ablest seeker and advo- 
 cate, I think that we may drop this part of our sub- 
 ject.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE IITVENTION OF PRINTING : ITS EFFECT UPON 
 ENGLISH SPELLING. 
 
 Some reasons have lately been given for the exist- 
 ence of the present English orthography, and some to 
 justify its extinction, which I have not thus far had 
 occasion to consider, but which are not less important 
 or less interesting than those which have already 
 been remarked upon.^ These I sliall examine in the 
 present chapter and in those which follow it in the 
 present division of this book. 
 
 First as to the origin of English orthography : one 
 of the great causes, if not the chief cause, of that 
 dreadful condition of English spelling over which the 
 phonetists weep and wail and wring their philolog- 
 ical hands, they fuid in the introduction of the art of 
 printing into England. As to this, it is said, " The 
 importance of its influence in this respect cannot 
 well be overstated. Any confusion which might be- 
 fore have existed in spelling became from this time 
 worse confounded. Upon the inti'oduction of print- 
 ing, English orthography entered into tliat realm of 
 Cliaos and old Night in which it has ever since been 
 loundering." My observation has led me to an en« 
 tirely different conclusion, which is that at' first 
 printing had no effect whatever upon English spell- 
 jig, and tliat the influence whicli the printing-oifice 
 
 ^ See the papers in Scribne7-'s Magazine, iiK'iitioned before.
 
 THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 223 
 
 very gradually exerted upon spelling during the 
 progress of centuries was toward regularity and uni- 
 formity. Early printing is more regular in its or- 
 thography than contemporary manuscript is, and the 
 printing-oflBce slowly and gradually (if that may 
 be called gradual which is irregular and fitful in 
 its course) brought about the present orthography, 
 which has at least this value, that it is common to all 
 the millions of the English-speaking peoples. If any 
 student of lansruaoe who has imbibed this notion 
 about the baneful influence of printing upon spelling 
 will do as I have done, and compare a very early 
 printed book — for example, Caxton's " Game and 
 Playe of the Chesse," or " Dictes and Sayengis of 
 the Philosophirs," fac-similes of which are accessible 
 — with contemporary manuscript or its typographical 
 equivalent, say the " Paston Letters " from No. 700 
 downward, he will find so much less irregularity in 
 the printer's work than in the writer's, and on fur- 
 ther research of the same kind he will find that 
 irregularity diminish so much more perceptibly in 
 the former than in the latter, that I am sure that he 
 will see reason to modify, if not entirely to change, 
 his opinion. For example, in one single letter, writ- 
 ten by Edmund Paston (No. 933, A. D. 1492), 
 wife is spelled first wyveffe, then wyve, then wyffe, 
 and finally wyffve ; but good Margaret Paston, writ- 
 ing to her husband, subscribes herself, " Your ^//, M. 
 P." (No. 809, A. D. 1477). The good lady (who for 
 her true womanliness and perfect wifehood deserves 
 a biography) was phonetic with a vengeance. Now 
 the variation and irregularity exhibited in these 
 words is characteristic of this correspondence, and I 
 io not hesitate to say, after examination, that, great
 
 224 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 as are tlie irregularities of spelling in English books 
 printed at that time, they are less than those of exist- 
 ing English manuscripts contemporarj^ with them, 
 and that the like relation of writing and printing 
 prevails througli the subsequent two centuries, at the 
 close of which English spelling became to all intents 
 and purposes what it is now. 
 
 It is also not uncommonly believed by tliose who 
 are afflicted with anxiety on the subject of English 
 Bpelling, and it has been asserted by some of them, 
 that its old-time irregularities, from which the print- 
 ers selected the forms which were finally adopted 
 for general use, represented in most cases actual dif- 
 ferences of pronunciation. And the notion is plaus- 
 ible, — one of those that we call natural. But I am 
 sure that it will not bear to be confronted with the 
 facts. It ignores the fact, among others, that the 
 same writer at the same time spelled a word in vari- 
 ous ways. For example, did Edmund Fasten, in the 
 letter cited above, indicate by his spelling four differ- 
 ent ways of pronouncing wife ? Did Margaret Fas- 
 ton, writing to her husband (No. 529, September 27, 
 1459), indicate a difference of pronunciation by writ- 
 ing fellowship feleschipp in one line and felech//p a 
 few lines below, by spelling sheriff schreve, and a few 
 lines after schryf ; and must we believe that she pro- 
 nounced shall in three different ways in the course 
 of five minutes, because within little more than as 
 many lines she spells it challe, choulle, and cholle? 
 It is not uncommon to find the same writer in long- 
 past days spelling ded, dedde^ and dead, or did and 
 dydde, within a few lines ; and in tlie first act ot 
 ''Hamlet" the following variations in spelling ap* 
 pear in the old copies : chapes shapes, solemb solemne
 
 THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 225 
 
 tea8on ceasen, cliff cleef^ arture 'n-tirc (artery), sin- 
 now8 sinnezvs. The old copies of Chaucer present 
 eaw in a dozen different but contemporary spellings : 
 sawh, sauh, smvhe, saugh, sagh, say, seigh, segh, sigh, 
 eihe, sy, sie ; and there are yet others. The often- 
 used monosyllable been appears in all the following 
 different forms in books printed in London within 
 twenty-five years of each other, and in the Eliza 
 bethan period : ben, betie, been, beene, 6m, bine, byn , 
 byne, bynne.^ 
 
 1 In illustration of some of these irregularities and apparent inconsist- 
 encies in tlie same writer, or in co-working writers, see the following 
 examples: — 
 
 " What, lingering still 
 About this paltry town. Hadst thou bin rulde 
 By my advice, thou hadst at this time bene 
 A gallant courtyer." 
 
 (Chapman, All Fooles, a. d. 1605, page 156, ed. 1873.", 
 
 [Within a few lines.] '"My wings would have 6ee7j dipt Yoi^- and 
 
 I have 6m the best benefactors to the ragged Tegimeut of poets I 
 
 believe there hath bin more impressions of severall kinds of lamentable 
 
 ballads, etc I am sure I know not so, for had not my wings beene 
 
 long." (Times Alterations, 1641, Apud Wallington, 11., 336.) 
 
 " These two bred this unknowne offence 
 I wo'd they had bine^ 
 
 (Wit Kestored, 1658, page 147.) 
 " Had he hetne thee or of they fatal tribe." 
 
 (The same, page 183.) 
 " 'T had bin enough for that poor virgin's sonne 
 That was incarnate." 
 
 (The same, page 186.) 
 " I wish the world had njt this pamphlet scene. 
 Or having view'd it, it had faulty been." 
 
 (The same, page 2G7.) 
 Wallis, the Oxford professor, says that the present pronunciation of his 
 was not tolerated by good speakers in 1653, and that the same is true of 
 iin for been, although both were sometimes heard. He saj's (translating 
 oini) that we hear "/u'« for hees by the same error by which sometimes, or 
 rarely {' nonnunquam''), we hear bin (or been, both of which are against the 
 unalogy of the language." This shows, not that the (spelling bin represented 
 I sound rhyming with our Jdn and thin, but that that spelling represented 
 tie vowel sound of ee, which made bin rhyme with our keen, and that the 
 15
 
 226 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Such variations in spelling ai-e not records of dif- 
 ferences in pronunciation ; tbey are merely evidence 
 of a prevailing irregularity, the consequence of care- 
 lessness and nncertainty. But although the opinion 
 that these differences in the written signs of words 
 have any plionetic signification seems to me entirely 
 untenable, this is true : that variations in spelling, 
 when they are found in the manuscript of writers 
 living in various parts of England, are generally rec- 
 ords of dialectic variations in speech. 
 
 Dialectic variations are, however, not those which 
 the holders of the opinion just referred to have in 
 mind. For example, a recent advocate of phonetic 
 reform says, " The distinguishing trait of the ancient 
 spelling was that it made an effort to represent the 
 ancient pronunciation, and that to attain that end it 
 had no hesitation about sacrificing uniformity ; " and 
 he adds that, " consequently, when writers attempted 
 to represent the spoken sound, they differed widely in 
 the orthography because there was often a wide differ- 
 ence in the orthoepy." I have made the word " be- 
 cause " emphatic for the reason that in it alone inheres 
 the entirely misleading part of this whole statement. 
 It is true, to a certain degree, that there was in an- 
 cient spelling an effort to represent pronunciation ; 
 it is true that the writers of old differed widely in 
 their use of letters ; and it is true that there was 
 often a wide difference in their pronunciation. But 
 it is not true that they differed in their spelling be- 
 cause they differed in their pronunciation. For one 
 
 (or ee) in both his and bin was by some careless speakers sounded with 
 the vowel sound oC kin. No wonder; for in all language there is nc 
 transition so easj', none so difficult to avoid, as that from modern ee t« 
 modern short i. In fact, the two sounds in rapid speech are almost indi» 
 lingttisbable. And see the foot-note on page 18.
 
 THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 227 
 
 person would, in the course of tlie writing of a single 
 brief letter, differ as much from himself or herself as 
 half a dozen others would differ from each other in 
 spelling the same words. Of this variation I have 
 already given a few examples, which make the point 
 plain beyond misapprehension ; and, were it neces- 
 sary to prove the fact in question, they might be 
 easily multiplied by ten thousand. The signilicance 
 of the fact cannot be misapprehended. One person 
 could not have pronounced a word, dialectically or 
 not, in two or three or four different ways at the 
 same time. 
 
 Old-time English spelling, in its effort to represent 
 pronunciation, failed of uniformity, simply because 
 no uniform system of English spelling had yet been 
 elaborated and adopted. Uniformity was not sacri- 
 ficed, because uniformity was unknown. The printers 
 and proof-readers, working together with the men of 
 letters, had not yet done their part in forming our 
 written language. There was no English orthogra- 
 phy before the Elizabethan period; at wliich time 
 our present system began to take shape, and to assert 
 for itself an authority which it did not absolutely at- 
 tain until the latter part of the seventeenth century. 
 As early as A. D. 1604, Middleton, in the " Address 
 to the Reader," prefixed to "Father Hubburd's Tale," 
 wrote, " I never wished this book better fortune 
 Lhan to fall into the hands of a true-spelling printer 
 and an honest-minded book-seller." Humphrey King, 
 in the preface to his " Halfe Pennyworth of Wit," 
 published in the year 1613, says of himself, " I am a 
 very bad writer of orthography, and can scarce spell 
 my ahcie if it were laid before me. The printer may 
 Velpe me to deliver to you true English ; but as I ara
 
 228 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 a true man to my God and my King he linds it not in 
 my coppy." Spelling, then, was irregular, but not 
 entirely so; system had begun to prevail ; there were 
 printers who were more "true-spelling" than others, 
 and the printing-office, instead of bringing written 
 English to chaos, might be trusted to do something 
 to correct mistakes made by a careless or an uned- 
 ucated writer. 
 
 In support of the position that variations in spell- 
 ing were caused by variations in pronunciation, there 
 have been brought forward certain examples which 
 it may be well to consider. The first of these is 
 catchy which is pronounced by many ignorant or care- 
 less speakers ketch. We are gravely told that " this 
 word must have been pronounced the same way in 
 the sixteenth century, for occasionally it can be found 
 with the spelling ketch.'''' This is worthy of remark 
 only because of the strange selection of this word as 
 an illustrative example, and because of the terms in 
 which its function is set forth. For ketch was the 
 general pronunciation of the word in the seventeenth 
 as well as in the sixteenth century. It was taken to 
 Ireland by the Englishmen who went there in the 
 days of Elizabeth and James and Charles and the 
 Commonwealth ; and it is mentioned by Sheridan, at 
 the close of the eighteenth century, among the pro- 
 nunciations in which the " well-educated natives of 
 Ireland " differ from those of England. The occa- 
 sional spelling ketch is evidence, not that some per- 
 sons pronounced the word catch and some others 
 ketch^ but that ketch was the common, if not the uni- 
 versal, pronunciation of catch, and this not only in the 
 aixteenth century, but in the seventeenth. Isaak 
 Walton, in the first edition of his "Compleat Angler,'
 
 THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. 229 
 
 1653, spells Tcetch ; but the inference that this rep- 
 resents a pronunciation peculiar to him or to his 
 Bocial circle, or one in any way different from that 
 in vogue at the time, is prevented by his more fre 
 quent use of the normal form catch.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE THEORY OF COMPEOMISE BETWEEN SOUNB 
 AND SIGN: RESTORATION OF SILENT LETTERS. 
 
 Upon the differences which appear in the spelling 
 of the same word in the written and printed English 
 of days long past, and upon the difference of sound 
 assumed to have been indicated by that variation in 
 visible form, there has been founded a theory to ac- 
 count for the failure of modern English orthography 
 to indicate the sounds of words exactly. This theory 
 is that " we have in modern English not unfrequently 
 retained the spelling of the one form and the pro- 
 nunciation of the other," or, as it has been otherwise 
 expressed, " Modern English gets rid of any difficulty 
 in the choice [between different forms] by selecting 
 one form to denote the spelling, and the other to de- 
 note the pronunciation." 
 
 In illustration and in support of this theory cer- 
 tain words supposed, and indeed asserted, to be 
 strongly characteristic have been put forth as exam- 
 ples. The first of these is (for the two are one) Eng- 
 lish and England, as to which it is said tliat " perhaps 
 no better example can be given " of the purposed 
 divarication in question. The spelling is English 
 and England.^ and the authorized pronunciation 'given 
 in the dictionaries is ing-glish and ing-gland. " How," 
 it is asked, "did this divergence come about? " and 
 the question is glibly answered thus : " To the his. 
 torical student of our tongue the answer is by nc
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGX. 231 
 
 means a difficult one. In the early speech there were 
 two waj^s of writing the words, corresponding pre- 
 cisely, without doubt, to the two waj^s of pronouncing 
 them." Passages are then quoted from the " Cursor 
 Mundi," from Barbour, and from Thomas of Ersel- 
 doune, in which the forms Inglis, Inglysche., and Ing- 
 land occur, and these are contrasted with Chaucer's 
 nearly contemporary Englissh. Now that instances 
 of both spellings are numerous in our early writers is 
 perfectly true. But that a professed philologist, who 
 is instructing his readers in the history of English 
 speech and spelling, should conclude that therefore 
 there were two pronunciations of the word, is amaz- 
 ing. He must have momentarily forgotten that in 
 the time of Chaucer, and for centuries afterward, the 
 English i represented our modern sound of ee^ and 
 that the pronunciation of Inglis and Ingland from the 
 fourteenth century — the date of his examples — to 
 the beginning of the seventeenth would be repre- 
 sented in our orthography by Eenglees and JEenglond, 
 and that the sound of e varied at the same time, hav- 
 ing sometimes its modern sound, and at others that 
 of ag. The historical course of the pronunciation of 
 the first two syllables of the words in question seems 
 to have been ahngle, angle, aingle, eengle. As to the 
 early written forms of the word, Venerable Bede has 
 Angle ("Angli"); King Alfred, Ongel ("ongel- 
 t)eode") and JEnglise ; Bishop ^lirio, Angle (" An- 
 glorum "), JEnglise, and Englisry (" Engliscre spras- 
 ce ") ; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Englise and 
 Engleland ; Layaraon's Brut, Engle, Engelo7id, and 
 Engleneland ; the Ormulum, Eiuiglissh ; Henry III. 's 
 proclamation, A. D. 1258, Engleneloande (precisely, 
 twice) ; Robert of Glouc^ester, Englisse and Enge-
 
 232 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 lond; Trevisa (translation of Ralph Higdeii), Unc^ 
 lische and England. The introduction of the form 
 Inglis and Ingland^ which appears in the fourteenth 
 century, seems to have been due to the influence of 
 the Norman French upon the then much-mixed Eng- 
 lish language. This form marks strongly the incom- 
 ing of the pronunciation JSenglish, which has prevailed 
 for at least four centuries. As to its prevalence more 
 than two centuries ago, we have the direct testimony 
 of Charles Butler, in his Grammar, 1633, to this ef- 
 fect : '''' Eengland is vulgarly written England, hut 
 always sounded Ecngland.^^ Two other orthoepists 
 of the seventeenth century give the same testimony, 
 as may be seen in Ellis's great work on the history 
 of English pronunciation (page 1007). As the pro- 
 nunciation was in Chaucer's time and in Butler's, so 
 it is to this day, as any observant person will see by 
 Bpeaking with the rapidity of ordinary speech a sen- 
 tence in which Eengland occurs. It will become at 
 once apparent that without special and deliberate ef- 
 fort it is impossible to pronounce Eengland otherwise 
 than Ingland. Therefore, the conclusion that " here 
 was a genuine difference in the sound conveyed to 
 the ear, which naturally found expression in a differ- 
 ence of orthography," is not warranted, but the re- 
 verse. 
 
 We now come to what is set forth as " the most 
 suggestive illustration " that could be produced to 
 show that in modern English we have not unfre- 
 quently " retained the spelling of the one form and 
 the pronunciation of the other." This is " the word 
 colonel.'''' Perhaps we ought not to be surprised that 
 even a philologist should take up this word as an il 
 lustration of phonetic and orthographic disagreement
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 233 
 
 in the past, and a ground of argument for phonetic 
 spelling reform in the present ; for it is an enticing 
 word. Its first part is spelled colo, and is pronounced 
 cur ; and there is a form of it known to English lit- 
 erature as coronet and cornel. What wonder, then, 
 that a phonetic reformer who chose been and England 
 as his examples to the same effect should be led very 
 specifically to declare that there " was an early and 
 wide-spread use of the particular pronunciation \_cur- 
 ner\ which has now become universal," and that 
 when " the tendency toward a fixed and unvarying 
 orthography became more and more decided, .... 
 the same blundering compromise was made ; the pro- 
 nunciation of the one form [curneV] had become gen- 
 eral, and was necessarily retained, but along with it 
 was retained the spelling [colonel^ of the other ! " 
 Unfortunately for the argument grounded upon it, 
 this assertion is not true. There was no early and 
 wide-spread adoption of the pronunciation in ques- 
 tion ; nor, when a fixed orthography was adopted, 
 was that pronunciation retained along with the in- 
 congruous spelling. 
 
 The history of this word is somewhat interesting. 
 Its pronunciation in Walker's day (the same as now) 
 seemed to that orthoepist " one of those gross irreg- 
 ularities which must be given up as incorrigible." 
 Colonel is merely the English form of the Italian 
 colonello^ which is itself a diminutive of eolonna, a 
 column, and means, therefore, a little column. The 
 little column or company at the head of a regiment 
 was called colonello, which name was naturally trans- 
 ferred to the leader of the column, that is, the com- 
 inander of the regiment. From the Italian language 
 his name for that officer went, in the sixteenth cent-
 
 234 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ury, into the Spanish and the French hinguages, and 
 also into the English. In the Spanish language it 
 became coronet, and so remains. The change of ^ to r 
 is a common one in language, ancient and modern, 
 the world over. 
 
 The first appearance of the title in our language 
 is in the form coronet, which is found in the latter 
 part of the sixteenth century. The use of this form 
 of the word at that time is due to the predominance 
 of Spanish military power, and to the fact that Eng- 
 lish military officers were frequently brought into 
 relations of some sort with those of Spain. The word 
 having been used by some Englishmen in the latter 
 part of the sixteenth century in the form coronet, it 
 was a plausible and enticing inference that that pro- 
 nunciation prevailed then, remained in vogue there- 
 after, and came down to us from that, time, accom- 
 panying the written form cotonel. That this is a 
 mistake I shall proceed to show. 
 
 The form coronet seems to have been almost con- 
 fined to military writers and a few others, and soon 
 to have disappeared from common writing and from 
 common speech, if it ever obtained a foot-hold in the 
 latter, which I am inclined to doubt. The earliest 
 use of the word in literature of which, until recently, 
 I had a memorandum is in Thomas Dekker's comedy, 
 " The Shoe-maker's Holiday," which was written in 
 1599, and published in the following year. Tiiis is a 
 little earlier than that cited by Skeat in his Etynn^- 
 logical Dictionary from Holland's " Pliny," IGOl, 
 where it appears as coronet. Examples some ten 
 years earlier have been cited, in the form coronet, 
 out they are found in the militai-y correspondence of 
 the Earl of Leicester, then in command of the Eng
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 235 
 
 lish forces serving in the Netherlands against the 
 Spaniards, who used the form coronet^ and from 
 whom the earl doubtless got the new title. Spenser, 
 however, used this word in his " View of the Present 
 State of Ireland," which was written in 1595, but re- 
 mained unpublished until 1633. Dr. Johnson, citing 
 Spenser as what is strangely called " authority " for 
 the use of the word, represents him as vising it in the 
 form colonel^ and Dr. Latham does the same, merely, 
 it is to be supposed, adopting Johnson's quotation. 
 This, however, is incorrect, as I found on a recent 
 reading of Spenser's "View." He spells the word 
 coronel, not only in the passage quoted by Johnson, 
 but in every other in which I met with it.^ This is 
 probably the earliest appearance of the word in our 
 literature in any form. It antedates by four years 
 the passage in Dekker, which, however, is interest- 
 ing, because it presents both forms of the word used 
 by the same writer at the same time. It will be seen 
 that in the first example the word must be spoken as 
 a trisyllable for the rhythm's sake : — 
 
 " I thanke his grace he hath appointed him 
 Chief colonell of all those companies 
 Mustred in London and tlie shires about." 
 
 (The Shoe-maker's Holiday, 1600, Act I., Scene 1.) 
 
 "Here be the cavaliers and the coronets, master." 
 
 (The same, Act I., Scene 1.) 
 
 ■ "And afterwardes theyr coronell, named Don Sebastian, came foorthe 
 U intreate that they might parte with theyr amies like souldioura," etc. 
 
 •'Whereupon the sayd coronel did absolutely yeeld himselfe and the 
 forte," etc. 
 
 " But the cheifest helpe for prevention hereof must be the care of th« 
 txironel that hath the government of all his garrison." 
 
 "But what say you of the coronell f what aut'noritye thinke you meete 
 to give him? " 
 
 " In all which the greate discretion and uprightness of the corone, hini- 
 letf is to be the cheifest stay," eto. (Pagen 656, 657, ed. Morris.)
 
 236 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 The latter form both in spoken and in written lan- 
 guage seems to have gradually, but quickly, passed 
 out of use. 
 
 That colonel was pronounced in three syllables in 
 the middle of the seventeenth century two well-worn 
 examples have been relied upon as evidence ; this 
 line from one of Milton's sonnets : — 
 
 " Captain or Colonel or knight in arms ; " 
 
 and the following couplet from Butler's " Hudi- 
 bras : " — 
 
 "Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, 
 And out he rode a colonelling." 
 
 In both of these passages the measure requires, and 
 in the second both the measure and the rliyme require, 
 the pronunciation of colonel in three syllables, and it 
 is admitted that there is no reason to believe that 
 the I when written was then sounded as if it were r. 
 But if colonel were then pronounced as it is written, 
 where is the evidence in this word of that " blunder- 
 ing compromise " between sound and spelling upon 
 which the philological reformers insist so sti-ongly? 
 And the word having then been pronounced in three 
 syllables, with the first as col, where is the evidence 
 of "that permutation of I and r . . . . at the time of 
 its introduction " into English and French to which 
 its present pronunciation has been so confidently 
 attributed? When, indeed, since speech was first 
 used by man, was there not a change of I to r, and 
 in what language, supposing, always, that there 
 vas an I and an r to interchange ? ^ 
 
 1 The inability of the Chinese to pronounce r and their substitution of { 
 lor it, and the converse inability of the Japanese to pronounce I, for which 
 they ase r, I have already remarked upon (page 47). Wallis tells us that 
 the American Indians in New England (a. d. 1G56) could pronounce nei' 
 *her { nor r, so that for lobster they said nobstan: " Literas L et B pro
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 237 
 
 There is good reason why the passages from Mil- 
 ton's sonnet and from " Hudibras " should have 
 been much used and relied upon ; for the word is 
 not a common one in literature before the eighteenth 
 century, and to have any determining power as to its 
 own pronunciation it must be found in well-measured 
 verse. It does not occur in Shakespeare (nor does it 
 in the Bible), although we have there general^ captain, 
 lieutenant, and ensign ("ancient"). The following 
 passages from writers of the Elizabethan period have 
 a very direct bearing upon the pronunciation of the 
 word. In Middleton's play, "A Fair Quarrel," there 
 is a personage called simply the Colonel, and that he 
 was called col-o-nel, and not cornel, seems plain : — 
 
 — " That being young, 
 Should have an anger more inclined to courage 
 And moderation than the Colonel.^' 
 
 (Act I., Scene 1.) 
 
 " Consider then the man, the Colonel.'''' 
 
 (Act II., Scene 1.) 
 
 " And with that reverence I receive the gift 
 As it was sent me, worthy Colonel.'^ 
 
 (Act IV., Scene 3.) 
 
 Massinger furnishes the following examples in 
 |.»oint : — 
 
 " Two long hours since 
 The Colonels, Commissioners, and Captains 
 To pay him all the rites," etc. 
 
 (The Unnatural Combat, 1615, Act III., Scene 2.) 
 
 " Desert in these days ! 
 Desert may make a Sergeant to a Colonel, 
 And it may hinder him from rising higher." 
 
 (The Maid of Honor, Act III., Scene 1.) 
 
 " His Colonel looks finely like a drover 
 That hath a Winter laid perdue in the rain." 
 
 (The Fatal Dowry, Act II., Scene 2.) 
 
 nuniJare non posse, sed ipsorum loco JV substituere ; adeoque Nohstan 
 Ulcere pro Lobstar." This seems to confirm the view of the lateness ol 
 me appearance of these consonants in speech whicn is taken in Chapter III
 
 238 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 "Nay, to provoke you, Sir, to call to account 
 This Colonel lioinoiit, for the foul wrong," etc. 
 
 (The same, Act IV., Scene 1.) 
 "And, as I said, Meg, when this gull disturb'd us, 
 This honorable lord, this Colonel.'''' 
 
 (A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act III., Scene 2.) 
 
 I liave many more illustrations of this kind at 
 hand, but I forbeai- to wear}' my parisliioners, in this 
 way, any further. These passages from two writers 
 born in the latter part of the sixteenth century, — 
 Middleton about 1570 and Massinger in 1584, — the 
 latter of whom continued to write in the time of 
 Charles I. and the Commonwealth, are sufficient evi- 
 dence, it would seem, that the form colonel prevailed 
 in England from a time soon after the first introduc- 
 tion of the word to the time of Milton. From him 
 we pass to the contemporaries of Butler ; and their 
 pronunciation (illustrated above) brings us down to 
 the time of James II. It is proper, however, to say 
 that in the writings of the poets of the earlier of 
 these periods there are passages which show that the 
 word was occasionally contracted by them into two 
 syllables. But, in the first place, what word would 
 not the poets of that period contract? And, next, 
 the question is to be settled whether the contracted 
 form was colnel or cornel. There is evidence of 
 weight that it was the former. 
 
 The dramatist Farquhar, who was born in the 
 •» eign of Charles II., and who wrote in the reigns of 
 William and Mary and of Queen Anne, has in hifs 
 comedy, " Sir Harry Wildair," a personage named 
 Colonel Stannard. Now, this personage's title is 
 nbbreviated by most of the speakers. Some of them 
 Bpeak to him or of him by his full title, but by most 
 of them it is clipped, and then it is written not
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 239 
 
 merely Col^ with one Z, but with two, Coll^ unmis- 
 takable evidence of the pronunciation. Thus : " Ay, 
 Bays a sneering coxcomb, the Coll. has made his 
 fortune with a witness." (Page 4, ed. 1711.) 
 " ' Han't the ColL a name of his own ? ' ' Well, then, 
 the Coll.'' " (The same, page 12.) " Lard, Lard, 
 Coll. ! what a room have you made here with your 
 dirty feet ! " (The same, page 13.) " I 'm a pretty 
 gentleman. — Coll.., where 's your wife ? " (The same, 
 page 16.) I forbear to quote any others, and will only 
 say that I have about a score more examples from 
 this play. These speeches, it is to be remarked, are 
 made by the commoner personages of the play ; but 
 when the elegant Sir Harry Wildair addresses the 
 Colonel, he gives him his full title, and that is 
 spelled, it should be also noted, not with one Z, but 
 with two. " Wildair. — What d' ye think of the ghost 
 now, Collonel? Is it not a very loving ghost?" 
 (Ed. 1711, page 48.) " Wild. — Oh, Collonel ! such 
 discoveries." (Page 50.) " Wild. — Then, Collonel, 
 we '11 have a new wedding." (Page 20.) ^ 
 
 Again, we have positive and unmistakable testi- 
 mony that this word was pronounced, not cornel, but 
 colnel, in the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 In 1701, J. M. D. Jones published his " Practical 
 Phonography," the purpose of which is shown by his 
 explanation that it is " the new art of rightly spell- 
 ng and writing words by the sound thereof, and of 
 
 1 It maybe worth while to remark that .c the course of the play the 
 Colonel's title is given him in full eighteen times, and that it is spelled 
 with two I's, twelve times. When abbreviated, which it is seventeen 
 limes, it is always given with two Vs, Coll. Beau Banter, when he is 
 telling tha Colonel his position, says, " You are still a disbanded co/o«e/, 
 vnd she is still a woman of quality I take i;." But, directly after- 
 »ard, mereh' addressing him by his title, he abbreviates it: " Coll., youl 
 lumble servant."
 
 240 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 rightly sounding and reading words iu the sight 
 thereof, applied to the English tongue ; " and to the 
 great value of his work, as a record of pronunciation, 
 Alexander Ellis bears testimony. This phonographic 
 witness says that the pronunciation of colonel was 
 colnel, or, as Mr. Ellis prints it in his palseotype key, 
 '^ kal-nal." 
 
 Skeat of course refers the pronunciation eurnel to 
 the transmutation of I into r. This took place after 
 the middle of the last century. The change seems to 
 have been preceded by a general contraction of the 
 word from three syllables, col-o-nel, into two (the I 
 in the first being preserved) ; and, indeed, the ap- 
 pearance of the r in the modern English sound of the 
 word was very probably due chiefly to that contrac- 
 tion. In the prologue to Mrs. Centlivre's comedy, 
 " The Busy-Body," which was written about 1700, 
 there is a line which in the original edition is printed 
 thus : — 
 
 •' Undaunted Colonels will to camps repair 
 Assur'd tliere'll be no skirmishes tliis _vear." 
 
 Here Colonels may have been a trisyllable, as two 
 short syllables are permissible instead of one in that 
 part of the line. But speech is always somewliat 
 in advance of printed language, and probably Mrs. 
 Centlivre said Colnels^ although she wrote Colonels. 
 Jn subsequent old editions of the same play we have 
 the elision carefully marked with an apostrophe. 
 " Undaunted CoVnels^'''' etc. The mark of elision 
 c>hows that the right of the second syllable was still 
 recognized, just as an exception proves a rule, and 
 just as the mark of the elision of the I in ivould and 
 should Qwou'd, should} in books of the latter part of 
 the seventeenth century shows that the pronunci*
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 241 
 
 tion of that letter in those words was passing away, 
 or had already passed away, but was not yet forgot- 
 ten. When the pronunciations woud and shoud were 
 firmly established, the I came back again. As to 
 the pronunciation colnel in the beginning of the last 
 century, there is the positive testimony of the pho- 
 nographist, Jones, before mentioned. And finally, 
 as to the continuance of this pronunciation fifty years 
 longer, we have the testimony of Dr. Johnson. His 
 dictionary does not give pronunciations ; indeed, in 
 his day pronouncing dictionaries were not known ; 
 but of this word he gives the pronunciation with 
 particularity, thus : " It is now generally sounded 
 with only two distinct syllables, cornel.''' In 1755, 
 then, the two-syllable pronunciation was general, but 
 not universal, and the first syllable was not cor, but 
 col. 
 
 Now this pronunciation colnel having been once 
 reached, the passage to curnel was sure and swift. 
 This any of my readers will soon discover by saying 
 colnel a few times easily and quickly. It will be 
 found that the combination In cannot very easily be 
 distinguished from that of 7'n, if the r is really ar- 
 ticulated, that is, trilled, although ever so lightly. 
 Colnel and cornel with a trilled r are as like as two 
 ivords can be which are at all unlike. The tendency, 
 however, will be found to be for the I to pass through 
 r into extinction. Once eliminate the o which sep- 
 arates the I from the w, and curnel comes soon, and 
 cunnel soon after. A word like colonel was as sure 
 to become curnel in ordinary speech, and finally cun- 
 lel, as summer is to follow spring, and autumn sum- 
 mer. And this is the history of the word, as we 
 know. Our great-great-grandfathers said colnel ; our 
 
 16
 
 242 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 grandfathers eurnel, as we do ; but long ago slovenly 
 and rustic speakers said cunnel. 
 
 This being the history of the word, it is plain that 
 when its orthography was settled as colonel in the 
 earliest years of the seventeenth century, no " blun- 
 dering compromise " was made between one form of 
 spelling and another of pronouncing. For a hundred 
 and fifty years and more the word was pronounced 
 literally according to its written form ; and we have 
 here, as in beeii and in England, an entire failure 
 to support the theory that the modern relations of 
 spoken and written English are in a great measure 
 due to the fact that " when two methods of writing 
 the same word were in common use we have not un- 
 frequently retained the spelling of the one form and 
 the pronunciation of the other ! " 
 
 I do not, however, mean to assert that there are no 
 words in the English language of which this is true. 
 For, besides that general negative assertions are very 
 dangerous to the maker, I do know one word which 
 Qfaute de colonel^ might serve, if not as a basis for 
 the support of the theory in question, at least as an 
 illustration of it ; and this Avord is, oddly enough, 
 another military title, — lieutenant. The pronuncia- 
 tion of this word, by all good English speakers, has 
 for centuries been leftenant. That is its pronuncia- 
 tion now in England and in Ireland, and by the best 
 speakers in America. Very anciently it was spelled 
 lieutenant, as now. Gower writes leutenant. Lord 
 Berners, in his translation of Froissart, A. D. 1523, 
 wiites, " vycar generall and lief tenant for the em- 
 t^erour." Some seventy -five years later Thomaa 
 'Jhurchyard, a poor poet, but a careful phonographic 
 ipeller, writes : —
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 243 
 
 " O falls forsworn, whatear you aer give place 
 To mighty lovs liej'tenant here on earth." 
 (Wished Reformacion of Winked Rebellion, 1598, page 1.) 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, or his printer, spelled the word in 
 the same way : — 
 
 " And on my thoughts give thy lie/tenancy." 
 
 (Astrophel and Stella, 106, ed. 1605, page 569.) 
 
 Lieutenant was, however, the general spelling even 
 in the olden time ; lieftenant the rare phonographic 
 exception ; and for the last three hundred years lieu- 
 tenant has been absolute in spelling, and lef tenant as 
 absolute in pronunciation. The pronunciation loo- 
 tenant is not only an Americanism, but one of very 
 late origin. I never heard it in my boyhood. It has 
 begun to prevail recently, and is a manifestation 
 of spelling-book speech and public-school teaching. 
 Only those who must go to spelling-books and to dic- 
 tionaries to know what language is, and who speak 
 "by the card" and not by the ear, would teach such 
 a pronunciation. Here, then, is a word in which 
 ihere has been a deliberate preservation of a form of 
 writing concurrent with a directly opposed form of 
 pronunciation. 
 
 Lieutenant came into the English language from 
 the French ; and as it came with the sound of w, its 
 obtaining that of / is worthy of remark. That came 
 about, it seems to me, in this way : In old writing, u 
 and V were interchanged, and this led to the pronun- 
 ciation of liev-tenant as leev-ieiMxwt, which became 
 U'e/-tenant, and finally Z^/-tenant. 
 
 It is apropos and not without interest that another 
 iiiilitary title apparently had a pronunciation dif- 
 l^erent from that of tc-day, major, which seems to 
 have been sounded mayor, in conf )rmity to a fashion
 
 244 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 of pronouncing j upon which I remarked years ago 
 in my " Memorandums of English Pronunciation in 
 the Elizabethan Era." We even find the word so 
 written, for example, in the following passage in the 
 diar}^ of Sir Henry Slingsby, a Royalist commander 
 in the Great Rebellion, who seems also not to have 
 pronounced colonel curnel. 
 
 " My regiment was left in Stamport Bridge by order from 
 the Mayor General, and to receive further orders from Gol- 
 lonell Thronmerton," etc. (a. d. 1642. Page 93, ed. 1836.) 
 
 The fortune of the I in colonel connects itself with 
 another argument which is made much of by the 
 spelling revolutionists. This is that silent letters 
 should be dropped in writing as they are in speech, 
 because they are useless now, and will remain unused 
 ever hereafter. Thus the man who prefers deign, 
 feign, and impugn to dein, fein, and impiun is scoffed 
 at for his desire to retain a letter g " which he can 
 never possibly use ; " and as regards " the silent k 
 of the word knave,^^ we are told that " there is not 
 the slightest probability that anybody will ever pro- 
 nounce it in the future." How do they know this ? 
 How can it be known by anybody ? I cannot suppose 
 that philologists who have undertaken to upturn the 
 written English language from its very foundations 
 are ignorant of the fact that letters once silent in 
 our language have been restored to speech. This let- 
 ter I in particular has been preserved to us in many 
 words by the art of printing, whose function as to 
 written language they find so pernicious, and it has 
 been heard in those words by the common unex 
 pressed consent of the last three or four generations 
 although it had been silent through preceding centu 
 ries.
 
 COMPROiMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 245 
 
 A few examples of old phonographic spelling will 
 illustrate what must be known to all students of 
 English, not excepting possibly some of the profes- 
 sional philologists. Altar was pronounced awter and 
 psalter sawter, as will be seen in the following pas- 
 sage. There are hundreds like it, but not many in 
 which psalm also appears with the I: — 
 
 " Theyr consceyence purge fro the synnes seven, 
 Or they presum to go to the aiotere, 
 The same psalme set in the psawtere." 
 
 (Lydgate, The Vertue of the Masse, a. d. 1500.) 
 
 Realm was also pronounced ream, as might be 
 shown by many examples, but not by many in which 
 it is sandwiched between two controlling words, as in 
 the jBrst of the following passages : — 
 
 *' As the King in earth supreame, 
 Head of the church of this realme, 
 Oneh' to be our joyful beam." 
 (Thomas Gibson, Breve Cronycle of the Bj-sshope of Rome's Blessing, 
 A. D. 1550.) 
 
 " Never did King set foote on English ground 
 With more applaud than our renowmed James; 
 For as great ioyes within our heartes abound, 
 As ever were contained in all bis i-ealmes." 
 
 (God Save the King, 1603, .Uulth's reprint.) 
 
 Fault was also pronounced faut, of which the 
 illustrative examples are countless ; but here is one, 
 from the sermons of an illustrious martyr, by which 
 we see that he, or his reporter, recognized the I, al- 
 though he did not sound it : — 
 
 "To make themselves fauMesse, or at least way they will 
 diminish their f antes." (Latimer, Sermons, ed. 1562, folio 
 68.) 
 
 So, too, vault was pronounced vaut, and assault as- 
 %aut (it will be observed that all these words are of 
 French origin) ; and the wcrd that looks so odd to
 
 246 e\t:ry-day English. 
 
 us, salvage, in the phrases "salvage man," "salvage 
 beasts," in old books, was not pronounced with an I 
 in the first syllable, but at first soivvahge, then sauV' 
 ahge, then, after the I was dropped, salivahge, and 
 lastly savedg. Of this lifting of I out of silence into 
 speech the word falcon is an interesting example. 
 In "America," even among good speakers, this word 
 is pronounced to rhyme exactly with the first two syl- 
 lables of halcon-y, and this pronunciation is beginning 
 to assert itself in England, where, however, the pro- 
 nunciation of good speakers has been, as it has been 
 here, fawkn. Indeed, this pronunciation is given not 
 only by the majority of the best English orthoe- 
 pists (some giving fal-coTi), but by " Webster " and 
 " Worcester." It is needless to quote for the sake 
 of establishing, or even of illustrating, this point ; but 
 he following passage illustrates the petrifaction of 
 this pronunciation in the proper name Falkner (a 
 falconer) : — 
 
 " Birds so poor 
 They seem scarce worth the killing; with the lark, 
 (The movmng' sfawlhner), so they may mount, hie," etc. 
 (Dekker, The Whore of Babylon, 1607, page 230, ed. 1873.) 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that although this word 
 came through French from Latin, and although the 
 Latin is falco, and the Old French faideon, the I 
 was not pronounced in Old English and does not ap- 
 pear in the word in the manuscript of early English 
 writers, who spell the first syllable fau. The resto- 
 ration of the I in later times did not alter the pronun- 
 ciation. Indeed, I came to be regarded as the silent 
 sign of a broad vowel, and was used in words in which 
 it had no proper place ; for example, hawk : — 
 
 " Let me but hatvlke at him, and like the other, 
 He shall confess aU.
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 247 
 
 Let me but hawlke at him,, as at the rest. 
 
 Where would you find such game as you would hawlke at? " 
 
 (Chapman, Bussy d'Ambois, 1607, Act III., Scene 1.) 
 
 The proper name Ralph was until a comparatively 
 recent period always pronounced Rafe, as indeed it is 
 now by some old and punctilious people.^ So, also, 
 Walter was pronounced Water. Of this well-known 
 fact there is whimsical illustration in Middleton's com- 
 edy, " Michaelmas Term." An adventurer named 
 Andrew Gruel changes his name to Lethe, — the 
 water of oblivion. He enters : — 
 
 "Who's this? 
 
 " In the name of the black angels, Andrew Gruel! " 
 
 " No, Andrew Lethe." 
 
 "Lethe? 
 
 " Has forgot his father's name. 
 
 " Poor Walter Gruel, that begot him, fed him, 
 
 " And brought him up." 
 
 (Act I., Scene 3.) 
 
 Andrew Lethe's father's name was plainly Water 
 Gruel ; but the I was sounded in Walter in the last 
 century. 
 
 I could point out many such examples of the com- 
 ing out of letters once silent, vowels as well as conso- 
 nants, but it would be both superfluous and weari- 
 some. The w, for example, used never to be heard 
 in quote and banquet., which, till a comparatively re- 
 cent period, were pronounced kote and banket. In 
 bankrupt the p was silent for centuries, so that the 
 word was oftener than otherwise written without it. 
 For example : — 
 
 " I will not have my trains 
 Made a retreat for bankroutes, nor my court 
 A hive for droanes, proude beggars and true thieves." 
 
 (Chapman, Byron's Conspiracy, 1608, Act I., Scene 1.) 
 
 1 In the preliminary matter to Penelope's Complaint, a. d. 15Q6, ad- 
 tressed to the widow of Sir Ralph Hcsey, his name is spelled Ba/« 
 HanJ'e, and Raph, never Ralph.
 
 248 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Here we have letters, both consonants and vowels, 
 which were silent for centuries, brought boldly for- 
 ward into speech, and in the case of falcon the tran« 
 sition is gomg on before our eyes, or, rather, in our 
 very ears. 
 
 To the foregoing examples I add more briefly the 
 following to show that letters once silent do not al- 
 ways remain so. In the seventeenth century and in 
 the early part of the last, a was silent in acquit^ 
 alembic^ and arrears; c in perfect, verdict, and sched- 
 ule; d in amendment, children, coynmandment, dan- 
 dle, fondle, goldsmith, and handsome ; e in moiety ; 
 I in emerald, in addition to the words mentioned 
 above / n in hittern and kiln ; o in coin, destroy, oint- 
 ment, oil, oyster, broil, join, point, poison, soil; tin 
 beastly; u in conduit, and in venture, lecture, and 
 all words ending in ure it had the sound of close, 
 short e, as in inter ; o in houseivife ; w in backward, 
 forward, and Edward. Moreover, h was heard be- 
 tween s and u in sue, suet, suicide, sup^'eme, suprem- 
 acy, suit, and suitor, as it is now in sure and in sugar. 
 Sometimes, but very rarely, we find it phonograph- 
 ically written, as, for example : — 
 
 " Durst my sonne, thusrebell to his dutie, 
 Steale up a match unshuting to his estate? " 
 
 (Chapman, All Fooles, 1605, Act II., Scene 1.) 
 
 This pronunciation gave Shakespeare an opportu- 
 nity for a pun on suitor and shooter in " Love's La- 
 bor 's Lost." 
 
 " Boyet. Who is the suitor? who is the suitor ? 
 Rosaline. Shall I teach you to know? 
 
 Boyet. Ay, my continent of beauty. 
 
 Rosaline. Why, she that bears the bow." 
 
 (Act IV., Scene 1.) 
 
 Indeed, in the original edition suitor is here pho
 
 COMPROMISE BETWEEN SOUND AND SIGN. 249 
 
 nogiaphically printed shooter^ and in the previous act 
 we have shue for sue. This pronunciation lingered 
 in New England (and I believe in Old England too) 
 until the second quarter of this century. I remem- 
 ber having heard in my boyhood very old people, 
 persons of education and breeding, say shupreme. 
 
 In the face of these facts, and when we have such 
 a man as Professor Newman urging the restoration 
 to sound of letters now silent (see Chapters IV. and 
 v.), is it not, to say the least, somewhat rash, if not 
 presuming, for speculative philologists to venture 
 upon a pi'ediction as to what silent letter may not 
 be heard once more, or heard at last, though never 
 heard before ? And is there not a warning to us in 
 this not to disturb the silent letters in our written 
 language, — quieta non movere ?
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TOHNSCN's DICTIONARY: ITS EELATION TO ESTAB- 
 LISHED ENGLISH ORTHOGRAPHY. 
 
 Not only phonetic spelling reformers and philolo- 
 gists, but many others, assign to Dr. Johnson's Dic- 
 tionary an important agency in the formation of the 
 orthography of the present time. This, we are told, 
 " was practically fixed by Johnson's Dictionary, and 
 as he left it such it has, with unimportant exceptions, 
 remained." Again it is said, " Johnson's Dictionary 
 almost instantly petrified the forms of the words in- 
 cluded in it. The univei-sal adoption of the spelling 
 employed by him arrested even the few processes to- 
 ward simplification that were then going on." Yet 
 again : " It was not until the appearance of John- 
 son's Dictionary, in 1755, that the orthography can 
 be said to have become fixed ; " and we are told, 
 moreover, that " the injury that Johnson did the 
 orthography of our tongue can hardly be ascribed to 
 his teachings." 
 
 It is worth the while of those who are giving at- 
 tention to this subject to have these opinions set be- 
 fore them specifically and in detail, because they are 
 so generally entertained ; having been adopted incon- 
 siderately, I venture to think, by a very large num- 
 ber of those who have interested themselves in Eng- 
 lish spelling. Indeed, it would be safe to sa}' that 
 nearly if not quite all such persons believe that Dr 
 Johnson, by his dictionary, did very much — fai
 
 Johnson's dictionary. 251 
 
 more than any other person — to foi'm our present 
 English orthography, and that he did absolutely fix 
 that orthography and impose it upon the English- 
 Bpeakiug peoples. 
 
 This belief is altogether erroneous. Johnson nei- 
 ther formed nor fixed English orthography. There 
 was no adoption, universal or partial, of the spell- 
 ing employed by Johnson. It is not true that Eng- 
 lish orthography cannot be said to have become 
 fixed until 1755, the date of the appearance of John- 
 son's Dictionary. Johnson did the orthography of 
 the English tongue no harm ; nor did he do it any 
 good. 
 
 Johnson did not form, in any degree, our modern 
 orthography, because he took it simply as he found 
 it. His spelling was not " adopted " universally or 
 partially, because people went on spelling after the 
 publication of his dictionary just as they had spelled 
 for seventy-five years before that event. English or- 
 thography was as much fixed during that antecedent 
 period as it has been in any period since. This being 
 true, it follows that Johnson did English spelling 
 neither harm nor good. 
 
 That it is true will, I think, plainly appear upon 
 the presentation of certam facts in the case. I had, 
 in a general way, come long ago to the conclusions 
 just set forth ; but wishing to have my conclusions 
 rest upon some specific and characteristic facts, I 
 made certain books the subject of careful comparison. 
 It was dreary drudgery, but when you wish to know 
 the number of persons at a table there is only one 
 way of coming at the knowledge, — to " count noses." 
 3 could not if I would repeat here the details of my 
 somparison and in mercv to my readers I would not
 
 252 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 do so if I could. I shall Dierely present facts enough 
 to make the matter clear, 
 
 Johnson's Dictionary was published in 1755. The 
 first edition of Isaak Walton's " Compleat Angler " 
 was published in 1653, — to all intents and purposes 
 just a century before the dictionary. Walton, al- 
 though he was not, like that master of English style, 
 John Bunyan, a wholly illiterate man, was yet unedu- 
 cated, and was not a good speller for his day ; but we 
 may pass over that disability (which makes against 
 the view here presented) in consideration of the po- 
 sition of his book in literature, and of its date. An 
 examination of the words upon a hundred pages of 
 the original edition of the " Compleat Angler," and 
 the comparison of them with Johnson's Dictionary, 
 shows 135 words which are spelled in the former as 
 they are not in the latter ; that is, less than one 
 word and a half in a page. 
 
 Advancing some twenty-five years, I examined two 
 books by Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale, who, 
 unlike Walton, was a scholar and a man of letters. 
 The first was his " Life of Pomponius Atticus," which 
 was published in 1677. The first edition of this book 
 shows (I do not go into the details of the comparison 
 in this instance), in three chapters, making 103 pages, 
 and containing 17,716 words, 42 words the spelling 
 of which differs from Di;. Johnson's. Many of these 
 are repeated ; but counting all the repetitions, there 
 is less than one word in 185 the spelling of which 
 differs from the Johnsonian " standard." 
 
 This book, however, contains many typographical 
 errors ; and to show that these were not disregarded 
 'n those days, I mention that in my copy they are 
 corrected in a contemporary hand. But this work 
 was published anonymously, and seems to have been
 
 Johnson's dictionary. 253 
 
 one of those to which the Chief Justice refers in the 
 preface of the next book of his which I examined as 
 "some writings of mine [which] have without my 
 privity come into print." I therefore examined his 
 " Primitive Origination of Mankind," which also was 
 published in 1677, but under his own supervision. 
 The large folio pages of this work contain, in round 
 numbers, 600 words each. On 30 of these pages, 
 containing 18,000 words, I found only 25 words the 
 Bpelling of which differs from that of Johnson's Dic- 
 tionary. But repetitions (for example meer or meerly 
 four times, subtil four times, agil thrice) brought the 
 number of variations to 41. This in 18,000 gives, 
 within a fraction, only one word in 400 in which Sir 
 Matthew Hale, who in 1677 was sixty-six years old, 
 and therefore somewhat old-fashioned, differed from 
 the " standard " orthography of Johnson's Dictionary, 
 which was published in 1755, three quarters of a cent- 
 ury later ! 
 
 It is sufficient to say that other examinations and 
 comparisons of the same kind led to substantially the 
 Bame results ; and that finally the examination of 
 books of a date one quarter of a century later than 
 Sir Matthew Hale's discovered no difference whatever 
 (except in an occasional manifest slip of the press or 
 of the pen) between their spelling and that of John- 
 son's Dictionary. There the " Johnsonian " words 
 were ; the governour, the candour, the honour, the 
 musick, the politick, and all the rest of them. There 
 was no difference whatever ; and yet this left half a 
 century to pass before the appearance of the great 
 dictionary. Moreover, in the course of that half cent- 
 ury tbere appeared a very important, and to this day 
 a very useful, dictionary of the English language, 
 Bailey's, the first edition of which was published, I
 
 254 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 believe, in 1726. Now, Bailey's spelling is exactly 
 that of Jolinson. I have not been able to find one 
 word in which they differ, except governour^ which 
 Bailey spells governor, and even this is not improb- 
 ably a typographical error. 
 
 The case is simply this : Bailey spelled words as 
 he found them spelled in the literature of the day, in 
 the books of tlie best contemporary writers. Addi- 
 son, Steele, Pope, and their fellows were his " au- 
 thorities" for spelling. The same is true of Dr. 
 Johnson. He found his orthography in the books 
 which were the English classics of his day, which 
 formed the body of the elegant literature of that 
 time ; that is, the works of the writers who had ob- 
 tained reputation in the half century previous to the 
 publication of his dictionary. Instead of establish- 
 ing a standard to which his contemporaries and his 
 immediate successors conformed, instead of '■' adopt- 
 ing " a spelling to which they showed a " slavish 
 deference," he, with deference to established forms, — 
 if that may be called deference which was hardly to 
 be avoided, — "slavishly" recorded the orthography 
 of his contemporaries and of his predecessors for half 
 a century, an orthography which a preceding diction- 
 ary maker had in like manner accepted and recorded, 
 and for the same reason. 
 
 This being true, the truth of my other propositions 
 follows in the simple course of reason. For the con- 
 tinuance and careful preservation for half a century 
 after the publication of Johnson's Dictionary (which 
 brings us down to the year 1800) of the orthography 
 which had been established and carefully preserved 
 for at least half a century previous to the date of that 
 tremendous lexicographical event is plainly not due
 
 JOUNSONS DICTIONARY. 255 
 
 to the literary authority of Samuel Johnson. The 
 same power which established the orthography in 
 vogue in 1800 and in 1700, and preserved it for fifty 
 years before the appearance of Dr. Johnson upon the 
 field of lexicography, preserved it after that impos- 
 ing manifestation. That power was the consent of 
 the educated classes of the English people, expressed 
 through their representatives, the great writers and 
 scholars of the day, counseled and assisted by intel- 
 ligent and educated printers and correctors of the 
 press. These were the men, and not Dr. Johnson, 
 who gave us our present way of writing English. It 
 was by their labors, extending through two centuries, 
 but coming rapidly to a destined result just before 
 the reign of Queen Anne, that a uniform and, despite 
 all that has been said, a tolerably consistent standard 
 of orthography was attained in the English language. 
 It is the recognition by such men of the general 
 fitness and the supreme convenience of that standard 
 that has preserved it essentially thus far, and not in 
 any way the authority of Dr. Johnson, who did Eng- 
 lish spelling neither harm nor good ; no harm, even 
 if change and progress toward phonetic spelling is a 
 necessary condition of freedom from evil. For John- 
 son has been as powerless to prevent change as he 
 was apparently unable or undesirous to begin it. 
 English orthography has been less stable, less fixed, 
 since the appearance of his dictionary than it was 
 before that event. A volume of Macaulay's " Es- 
 says " differs more in spelling from Johnson's " stand- 
 ard " than a volume of Addison's — for example, his 
 " Freeholder " — does in the same respect. Thus 
 much for England ; and when we cross to America, 
 lUid compare Webster's Dictionary with Johnson's,
 
 256 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 we find that in its manifold variations in spelling it ia 
 not to be compared with the principal predecessor of 
 Johnson ; for Johnson's spelling is but Bailey's. Nor 
 is it to be compared with the authors of a quarter 
 of a centui'y preceding Bailey ; for again Johnson's 
 spelling, like Bailey's, is but their spelling. John- 
 son, as he did nothing to form English orthography, 
 has done nothing to fix it. 
 
 The matter of a settled and uniform orthography 
 was coming rapidly to a head about the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, wholly without the aid of lexi- 
 cogi'aphers, great or small. This may be illustrated 
 by a classification of the words above referred to in 
 Walton which differ from that standard which, by 
 silent and common consent of the best writers, had 
 been adopted somewhat before A. D. 1700. Of those 
 135 words in the 100 pages of Walton's "Compleat 
 Angler," the only difference in no less than 55, more 
 than one third of the whole number, is the mere ad- 
 dition of a superfluous g, — wee for w«, heare for hear, 
 businesse for business, alwayes for alivays, and so forth. 
 In 25 the only difference is the use of ie for y final, 
 ■ — pitie for pity, flie for fly, antiquitie for antiquity, 
 and so forth. In 14 the difference is that of one final 
 I for two, as til for till. In four the difference is the 
 absence of a final e, as partridg for partridge. In 
 three the perfect participle is spelled (as it fre- 
 quently is nowadays) with t instead of ed, as jixt 
 for fixed.^ 
 
 1 In an examination of Walton's spelling heretofore I set forth his vari- 
 Btions from standard orthography as being considerably fewer tlian those 
 mentioned above. The difference is partly due to the enumeration in th« 
 present calculation of repetitions, and also of all variations whatever, such 
 for example, as He and Bostis, although these are plainly not intention, 
 fclly spellings of / will or of the feminine of Hoste.
 
 Johnson's dictionary. 257 
 
 It will be seen that in all these words the varia- 
 tions are merely terminal ; they do not touch the 
 body, the real structure, of the word. They leave 
 but 31 in which the body of the word is affected, — 
 examples are sowr for sour, neer for near, Jcetch for 
 catch, pibhle for pebble ; and of these not a few may 
 be fairly set down to the good angling sempster's 
 old-fashioned ways. 
 
 When we come to examine Sir Matthew Hale's 
 spelling, we find that the superfluous terminal e has 
 almost entirely disappeared ; it is found in but four 
 words : si/steme, atome, saye, and essa,ye. The final 
 ie appears in four : satisfie, busie, phantasie, and sig- 
 nifie. The final e is omitted in four : agil, engin, 
 subtil, and tast. The doubled consonant is omitted 
 in three : setled, enabled, and dazle, which may be 
 misprints. But of mere terminal irregularities there 
 are very few instances, even reckoning condescention 
 as one ; and the uncertainty appears chiefly in such 
 spellings as cloaths, ceconomical, extreamly, voyce, 
 priviledge, chuse, and so forth. But it is to be re- 
 membered that these variations, all told, including 
 repetitions, show a difference from the spelling of 
 Johnson's Dictionary of only one word in 400 ! To 
 this point had the discipline of the printing-ofiice 
 and the common consent of scholars and writers 
 brought Englisli spelling more than three quarters 
 of a century before the appearance of Johnson's Dic- 
 tionary. The next quarter of a century perfected a 
 standard which it imposed upon Dr. Johnson, but 
 which the alleged authority of Dr. Johnson has not 
 been able to impose so absolutely upon succeeding 
 writers and makers of dictionaries. We are com- 
 pelled, therefore, to conclusions wholly at variance 
 
 17
 
 258 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 with the teachings of some enthusiastic phonetio-soell- 
 ing reformers upon this subject. 
 
 It may be well to set forth concisely and in a new 
 order the positions which have been taken in the fore- 
 going division. These are, — ' 
 
 (1.) Language is speech, of which writing is not 
 the representation, but the suggestion. (Pages 119, 
 145, 166.) 
 
 (2.) Spelling has nothing to do with speech: spoken 
 words are not formed by a combination of distinct 
 sounds, as written words are formed by combinations 
 of signs : words, not letters, are pronounced. (Pages 
 128, 145, 168.) 
 
 (3.) A certain non-conformity of speech and writ- 
 ing is inevitable, and is the growth of circumstances. 
 (Pages 124, 171.) 
 
 (4.) The difficulty of learning to spell has been 
 much exaggerated by phonetic enthusiasts, and mis- 
 apprehended by other persons. (Pages 127,. 173, 176, 
 202.) 
 
 (5.) The economical disadvantages of the received 
 English spelling have also been monstrously exag- 
 gerated. (Pages 141, 174.) 
 
 (6.) The economical disadvantages of a phonetic 
 change in the spelling of English would be so great 
 as to be calamitous. (Page 175.) 
 
 (7.) Phonetic spelling involves changes in written 
 language from time to time. (Page 137.) 
 
 (8.) The introduction of phonetic spelling would 
 make the written English of the past a dead letter 
 and English literature from the time of Spenser
 
 Johnson's dictionary. 259 
 
 Bacon, and Shakespeare a dead literature, except in 
 transliteration. (Page 191.) 
 
 (9.) Phonetic spelling involves an entire change 
 in the structure of written English. (Page 190.) 
 
 (10.) The function of science as to language is not 
 to improve it, but to study it historically, compara- 
 tively, and analytically. (Page 125.) 
 
 (11.) Philologists are incompetent, and out of 
 place, as reformers of written language. (Pages 
 139, 207.) 
 
 (12.) Spelling, like speech, is not for the conven- 
 ience of philologists and phonologists, but for the 
 e very-day use of three coexisting generations of men, 
 who wish not only to communicate with each other, 
 but with past and with future generations. The 
 question as to spelling is chiefly one of practical con- 
 venience — to-day. (Page 181.) 
 
 (13.) Printing did not introduce confusion into 
 written language, but, on the contrary, was the 
 means of an approximation to a systematic and uni- 
 form orthography. (Pages 158, 223.) 
 
 (14.) Modern English orthography is not the re- 
 ftvilt of a blundering compromise between sound and 
 written form. (Pages 230-249.) 
 
 (15.) The received spelling of English is in no 
 way the result of Dr. Johnson's labors. His diction- 
 ary merely recorded a spelling which had been es- 
 tablished for fifty years, and that spelling it has not 
 been able to fix. (Pages 251-257.) 
 
 (16.) Etymology, although not of controlling im- 
 portance in spelling, is decorous ; it is interesting and 
 valuable, and to a certain degree instructive. (Page 
 147.) 
 
 (17.) Phonetic spelling reform is no new discovery
 
 260 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 or " movement," but is centuries old, and notwith- 
 standing tlie learning, the ingenuity, and the labor 
 of its advocates it has always failed. (Page 150.) 
 
 (18.) The sounds to be expressed by phonetic 
 writing are quite indeterminable. (Pages 179, 195, 
 199.) 
 
 (19.) Letters once silent have in numerous and 
 various instances, including whole classes of words, 
 been restored to sound. This might be done again, 
 and should not be hindered. (Page 244.) 
 
 (20.) The ablest, most learned, and most expe- 
 rienced of spelling reformers in his last publication 
 confesses, after a life given to the work, that the 
 more he endeavors after a phonetic spelling the 
 greater the difficulties he finds in his way. (Page 
 216.) 
 
 Therefore we may safely infer and conclude that, — 
 
 (21.) A revolution in English spelling is unneces- 
 sary, and is not called for by the mass of the intel- 
 ligent English-speaking and English-reading people, 
 and is practically impossible. Any attempt to in- 
 troduce phonetic spelling into literature on an ex- 
 tended scale would result only in anarchy, confusion, 
 and disaster, which would be temporary, indeed, but 
 ^ave and deplorable.
 
 GRAMMAR.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 * ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. WHAT GRAM* 
 MAR IS. 
 
 ** Ah, it 's me," said Mr. Squeers, "and me 's the 
 first person singular, nominative case, agreeing with 
 the verb it 's, and governed by Squeers understood ; 
 as, a acorn, a hour ; but when the A is sounded, the 
 a only is to be used, as a 'and, a 'art, a 'ighway." 
 This delicious passage is highly overcharged, like al- 
 most all of its author's writing, but nevertheless is 
 full of life and truth. The reason of its being so ex- 
 quisitely laughable is not because of its representa- 
 tion of the ignorance of the school-master, the union 
 of the pedagogue and the ignoramus having been 
 often presented before, but because it calls up so 
 vividly the vague, confused memories left in most 
 minds by the study of that absurd and utterly useless 
 " branch " of education, English grammar. 
 
 Squeers's speech is constructed with admirable art. 
 The blunder in the person and case of me, the mak- 
 vng the noun agree with the verb, and the confused 
 reference to it 's as a verb, — the single syllable really 
 containing the verb is, — make a ridiculous muddle, 
 indeed ; but all this would have failed of its present 
 effect without the introduction of that sage and mys- 
 terious formula of " parsing " which completes the 
 analysis, " and governed by Squeers understood." 
 The climax is capped by the " as " and the introduc- 
 tion, in the manner of grammarians, of an example
 
 264 EVERY -DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 which is entirely from the purpose, and which is not 
 only confused and erroneous, but, with all its ab- 
 surdity, so characteristic an example of the style of 
 illustration in English grammar, that every person 
 who has been put tlirough the bewildering discipline 
 of that study recognizes on the instant the condition 
 of his own mind at some period of his pupilage. 
 Dickens is the great master of this sort of word cari- 
 cature, — that which represents a confused recollec- 
 tion of facts and an inconsequent, disconnected suc- 
 cession of thoughts. Shakespeare touched this, of 
 course, as he touched everything. But he did it 
 merely by the way, in passing. Dickens lays him- 
 self out on it, elaborates it, and rises with it to the 
 height of the ridiculous, — in Mrs. Gamp, for in- 
 stance, and Flora, in "Little Dorrit." 
 
 I believe that I have not overstated the case in 
 saying that Mr. Squeers's amazing effort in parsing 
 is a mere caricature of the impression left upon most 
 minds by the study of English grammar. I know 
 that there are some persons who have not yet written 
 English grammars, — the existing number of which, 
 however, shows that a very large proportion of the 
 English-speaking race must have engaged, at one 
 period or another, in that cheerful occupation, — but 
 who, mute, inglorious Lindley Murrays and Goold 
 Browns, do believe that to speak and write " good 
 grammar " is the highest attainable point in educa- 
 tion, and to whom a sentence, albeit uttered by the 
 Supreme Wisdom amid tnunderings and lightnings, 
 is chiefly something that may be parsed. But these 
 people are specialists, and partake of the insanity 
 ihat pertains to specialism. Those who I expect will 
 agree with me are the mass of intelligent people to
 
 •* ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. 265 
 
 «vhom language is merely the means of communicat- 
 mg facts and thoughts. 
 
 I have called the contrivance known as English 
 grammar absurd, and the study of it a useless study ; 
 and I verily and soberly believe both these assertions 
 to be ti'ue. The absurdity of the contrivance was 
 shown in " Words and their Uses ; " the uselessness 
 of the study may appear by what follows. I believe 
 that the effect of the study of English grammar, so 
 called, is to cramp the free action of the mind ; to be- 
 wilder and confuse where it does not enfeeble and for- 
 malize ; to pervert the perception of the true excel- 
 lence of English speech ; and, in brief, to substitute 
 the sham of a dead form for the reality of a living 
 spirit. 
 
 The question, What is grammar ? is of tener asked 
 now than it used to be ; for the old definition fails to 
 satisfy many people, — most, indeed, of those who 
 think upon the subject. But this question, in its 
 bare and simple form, is almost as hard to answer as 
 jesting Pilate's. One answer which has been given 
 with great confidence by more than one writer on 
 language is that " grammar is a statement of the facts 
 of a language." Truly a somewhat expansive defini- 
 tion, and, I venture to say, one that is sorely enfee- 
 bled with vagueness. For the facts of a language 
 incilude all the incidents of its history, — its origin, 
 its formation, its development, the fleeting usages, 
 both verbal and constructive, in past centuries, as well 
 as the best usage of the present, and so forth, and 
 BO forth. There is nothing in regard to language 
 which this definition will not cover. It means so 
 much that, in my judgment, it practically means 
 aothingr.
 
 266 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 As to the word "grammar," it has no limited, ab- 
 solute meaning. It must be accepted in the sense in 
 which it is used by any writer whose abilities are 
 respectable enough to make his views worthy of con- 
 sideration. It was formerly used to mean not only 
 the art, so called, of reading and writing correctly, 
 but all the arts of which language was the medium, 
 ■^ rhetoric, poetry, tragic composition, and elocution. 
 Cicero uses it (in " De Finibus " and " De Oratore ") 
 to mean philology in the widest sense known in his 
 time. These senses are at once narrower and wider 
 than that ot the definition given above. They do 
 not include the history of a language, but they do in- 
 clude literary arts, to which that definition does not 
 apply. 
 
 Let us see what some highly distinguished writers 
 upon language mean when they use the word gram- 
 mar. Turning only to such books as are within my 
 reach as I write, I find the following definitions: 
 Lilly, in his Latin grammai', which was almost exclu- 
 sively used in England for nearly three centuries 
 (my copy is dated 1621), and from whicb Shake- 
 speare quotes in the " Merry Wives of Windsor," 
 says, " Crrammatica est recte scrihendi atque lo- 
 quendi ars,''"' of which Murray's well-known defini- 
 tion is merely an English version. Making a skip 
 of three hundred years, and turning, for the moment, 
 to Professor Whitney's "Essentials of English Gram- 
 mar," we have as its first dictum, " Grammar is that 
 branch of knowledge which teaches the art of speak- 
 ing correctly." Truly, this notion has held its own 
 well tlu'ough the lapse of centuries. But the distin- 
 guished Yale professor goes on to say (rightly, in my 
 opinion, as I need hardly tell my readers) that,
 
 " ENGLISH GRAMxMAR," SO CALLED. 267 
 
 '•properly speaking, it [grammar] includes only ety- 
 mology and syntax." ^ 
 
 In the first thoroughly historical, analytical, and, 
 BO to speak, philological Latin grammar published 
 in the English language, Roby's " Grammar of the 
 Latin Language, from Plautus to Suetonius," the au- 
 thor says, with emphasis, "Now, first, by grammar I 
 mean an orderly arrangement of the facts which con- 
 cern the form of a language." It will be observed 
 that he does not limit this definition to any one lan- 
 guage or group of languages. Madvig, the Copen- 
 hagen professor, whose Latin grammar is in the hands 
 of all scholars, says that " Latin grammar teaches 
 the form of Latin words and their combination in 
 sentences." 
 
 Dr. Morris, the eminent English scholar and editor, 
 lately president of the British Philological Society, 
 Eays in his short English grammar that "grammar 
 tells about the words which make up a language ; " 
 and in his principal work on this subject, the " His- 
 torical Outlines of the English Language," that 
 " grammar treats of the words of which language is 
 composed, and of the laws by which it is governed." 
 Professor Maetzner, the Colossus, the Briareus, the 
 Argus, of English grammarians, says, " Grammar, or 
 the doctrine of language, treats of the laws of speech, 
 and in the first place of the word^ as its fundamental 
 constituent with respect to its matter and its form; 
 in prosody, or the doctrine of sounds, and in mor- 
 fhology, or the doctrine of forms, and then of the 
 combination of words in speech ; in syntax, or the 
 doctrine of the joining of words and sentences." 
 
 Finally, Dr. Alexander Bain, professor in Aber 
 
 1 See Wo~ds and their Uses, page 277.
 
 268 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 deen University, whose " Higher English Grammar " 
 is of well-established repute, in the companion to 
 that work wholly abandons the attempt to define 
 grammar, saying, " Although we might be expected 
 at the outset to define the scope or province of the 
 subject itself, we are precluded from doing so by the 
 neglect of grammarians to observe a clear line of dis- 
 tinction between grammar and the allied depart- 
 ments, — philology on one hand, and rhetoric on the 
 other." Further on, however, he gives, incidentally, 
 but very clearly, his notion of grammar in the follow- 
 ing passage : " The defining of parts of speech is a 
 serious affair. The whole fabric of grammar rests 
 upon the classifying of words according to their func- 
 tions in the sentence." 
 
 Certainly here is no lack of variety of view as to 
 the functions of grammar. But all of these eminent 
 writers, who leave the generality as to speaking and 
 writing correctly, agree that grammar concerns forms 
 and construction ; and Professor Whitney, the latest 
 and one of the ablest of them, limits it by those bound- 
 aries. It is only that I may protect myself against 
 the charge of adopting his views and setting them 
 forth as my own that I mention, what many of my 
 readers well know, that I expressed the same view 
 some years before the publication of Professor Whit- 
 ney's "Essentials." This is a small matter ; but it is 
 not too small to be brought forward now, as I am 
 about to give my own definition of grammar, as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Grammar concerns the forms of words and their 
 •Jependent relations in the sentence. 
 
 It will be observed that here grammar is not de- 
 fined as a science, or as an art, or even as a thing.
 
 " ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. 2G9 
 
 For I believe grammar to be neither a science nor 
 an art ; and as to its being a thing I am somewhat 
 puzzled. A grammar book is a thing ; a treatise on 
 grammar is a thing; but grammar itself, in the ab- 
 stract, — what is it ? It cannot correctly be said even 
 to be a record of usage or of so-called law. The 
 grammar is not the record or the treatise ; it is the 
 sum total of the usage and the so-called law which is 
 recorded or discussed. 
 
 However this may be, I have never pretended to 
 consider grammar from any other point of view than 
 that which is presented in my definition ; and that, I 
 venture to say, is the one from which it is regarded, 
 not only by such eminent writers on language as 
 those whom I have cited, but by educated and intel- 
 ligent people generally, when they speak of good 
 gi-ammar and bad grammar. I cannot justly be 
 gauged by any other measure. Now, it is this gram- 
 mar, that which concerns the forms of words and 
 their dependent relations in the sentence, that, except- 
 ing a trifling and almost inappreciable residuum, I 
 have declared has died out of the English language. 
 And it has died out because the forms of words upon 
 which it depended departed long ago. With a mini- 
 mum of exception in pronouns, in one case of nouns, 
 and a few persons and numbers of verbs, English 
 words have hut one form. 
 
 Now, where words have not varying forms indica- 
 tive of their various relations, a grammar which is 
 dependent upon those relations is obviously impossi- 
 ble. And it is only such a grammar that admits of 
 those requirements of agreement and government and 
 what not which have been imposed upon English by 
 mistaken scholars. It is such grammar that has sc
 
 270 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 weighed down our poor beparsed English-speaking 
 people that when their freedom was proclaimed a few 
 years ago, and a man in whom some of them put 
 some trust dared to tell them that they might fling off 
 their incubus in the name of great Common Sense, 
 from every country where English is spoken there 
 t-^ame back to him cries of relief and utterances of 
 hearty thanks, which have not yet quite died away. 
 
 A view of grammar which demands attention be- 
 cause, although partial, it is correct as far as it goes, 
 has been thus presented : — 
 
 " The ofRce of the grammarian is to state what the lan- 
 guage is, and to know what the language is he must learn 
 what is the established usage of the best writers and speak- 
 ers. If he should find it to be the established usage among 
 the best writers and speakers to use the form lis, he would 
 have to state the fact ; and the statement would form a 
 ' rule ' in grammar." 
 
 This is the old doctrine : usage is law in language. 
 To a certain extent it is sound doctrine. For in lan- 
 guage we must conform to usage whether we will or 
 not. We speak to be understood ; and if we use 
 words with which our hearers are unacquainted, or 
 constructions to which they are not accustomed, we 
 speak to them more or less in an unknown tongue. 
 But usage is not all the law of language. There is 
 in every langiuige a normal speech. Reason has 
 Bome sway even in so arbitrary an exercise of the 
 mind as the use of words. It is possible to believe 
 that / is might be good English ; because am and is 
 express existence under the same condition of time ; 
 and indeed it would be much better now to say 1 
 is than to speak of " predicating " an action upon a 
 •act : for the one would be a mere disregard of one
 
 " ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. 271 
 
 of the scraps and remnants of English grammar, 
 which would not in any way obscure the speaker's 
 meaning ; the other is ridiculous nonsense. But it is 
 quite impossible to suppose that, for example, I gone 
 should be good English, unless upon the assumption 
 that gone had another meaning as to time than that 
 which it has now, — an assumption futile and not 
 worthy of consideration, because it supposes language 
 entirelj' subverted, as if the word rose should mean 
 an elephant, or the word bread a stone, and so forth. 
 Nor is a statement of the usage of the best writers 
 always a law in language, although it may be called 
 a rule hj grammarians. For instance, that use of 
 what the grammarians call the perfect infinitive, of 
 which " he would have liked to have gone " is an 
 example, is illogical, or, in simpler, blunter phrase, 
 nonsensical. But I having pointed this out, a gram- 
 marian, a great stickler for English grammar, de- 
 murred at the term illogical, and in his criticism said 
 that he had before him " a work which treats of the 
 very point" in question, and that this use "is shown 
 to be ungrammatical." Now, if it is ungrammatical, 
 it must be so because it is in defiance of a " rule," 
 which as we have seen is a statement of " the usage 
 of the best writers." But so far is this use of the 
 perfect infinitive from being in opposition to such a 
 rule that, on the contrary, it strictly conforms to that 
 usage of the best writers upon which the grammarians 
 pay all rules are founded. I would undertake to show, 
 under any penalty that might be imposed upon me, 
 that the construction in question has been in common 
 and constant use with the best writers in English 
 literature from the Elizabethan period to the present 
 iay. Therefore, according to the grammarians them
 
 272 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Selves, " he would have liked to have gone " is not 
 ungrammatical ; it is merely illogical, or nonsensical. 
 
 Moreover, in this definition, so commonly given, 
 that grammar is a methodical setting forth of the 
 usage of the best writers, there is a term which itself 
 needs defining, — usage. Their usage as to what? 
 This phrase, " usage of the best writers," etc., like 
 the other, " the facts of a language," is vei-y vague. 
 Does it mean usage as to signification of words ? 
 That is very important ; but no one nowadays re- 
 gards such usage as a part of grammar. Is it usage 
 as to the form of sentences, that is, whether they shall 
 be long or short, direct or inverted, and so forth ? 
 That is matter of taste ; it belongs to aesthetics, to 
 what is called rhetoric, as I am sure the very gram- 
 marians would admit. The usage which makes gram- 
 mar being neither usage as to the meaning of words 
 nor usage as to the rhetorical form of speech, it can 
 therefore be only usage as to the relations of words, 
 as words, in the sentence. 
 
 Now the relations of words, irrespective of their 
 meaning and of the taste with which they are used, 
 must depend on their forms ; and a relation of form 
 implies inflection for the sake of conformity. This 
 does not exist in the English language. Upon the 
 absence of this essential part of formal grammar I 
 have remarked heretofore in " Words and their Uses," 
 and I shall refer to the subject again in a subsequent 
 chapter. 
 
 To an objection which has been made, that my 
 protest against English grammar is merely a matter 
 of terms, and that what I call illogical other people 
 call ungrammatical, I have only to say that what I 
 call illogical other people may call ungrammatical.
 
 " ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. 273 
 
 or Pharisaical, or pragmatical, or hyperbolical, or 
 anything else they choose to call it ; and if it is illog- 
 ical their calling will make no difference ; if it is 
 not, what I say will fall to the ground. Let that 
 pass; I remark upon it only for the sake of the fol- 
 lowing illustration : Some two or three years ago 
 a highly-gifted and equally well-instructed lady, a 
 German, wrote to me, asking a question as to Eng- 
 lish usage. Besides being an accomplished German 
 scholar, she was instructed in Latin and Greek, and 
 wrote English with rare idiomatic grace and force. I 
 replied to her question — a very simple one — just as 
 any English scholar to whom she might have writ- 
 ten must have replied. Li her answer she wrote, 
 " This seems to me rather a lesson in logic than in 
 grammar." She was right. Grammar this accom- 
 plished and thoughtful person found in Greek, in 
 Latin, and in German ; in English she found, and 
 could find, little else than logic. 
 
 Formal grammar is at war with common-sense ; 
 and I repeat that by formal grammar I mean that 
 system of language which constructs sentences upon 
 the correspondence of the forms of words, or, where 
 there are no forms or few, upon the imaginary rela- 
 tions of words, instead of the logical order of thought. 
 But in saying that grammar is at war with common- 
 sense, I do not mean that it is inconsistent with sense 
 in writing. By common-sense we mean that faculty 
 of perceiving the practical relations of things which 
 IS the best guide through life, and which may exist in 
 an uninstructed and very commonplace mind, and be 
 entirely lacking in one which is stored with learning 
 or gifted with creati ve genius. This faculty exists in 
 a greater degree in some races tnan in others. The 
 18
 
 274 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon race are distinguished by it ; they are 
 preeminently a people of common-sense. This is one 
 reason why they, more than any other people, have 
 discarded formal grammar. 
 
 The fact that formal grammar is at war with com- 
 mon-sense is shown by the history of language. It 
 might naturally be supposed that with the advance- 
 ment of civilization and the perfection of literary 
 Bkill grammar would become more elaborate, if not 
 more complicated ; that as life became more com- 
 plex and society more polished, language, the chief 
 means of intellectual development and social prog- 
 ress, would, with equal steps, become more complex 
 and elaborated. The contrary is the case. The fur- 
 ther we go back in the history of the world, the 
 more complex we find language, the more minutely 
 varied and numerous are the forms of words, the 
 more elaborate is the construction of the sentence. 
 The grammar of the oldest written language known 
 — the Sanskrit — is of all grammars the most com- 
 plicated, and the rivals of Sanskrit in this respect are 
 the languages of some utterly barbarous peoples. 
 The supply of grammar before the time of the 
 Tower of Babel must have been something quite 
 inconceivable at the present day. As the world has 
 advanced it has gradually laid aside the unessential 
 in language ; it has dropped forms of words which 
 expressed minute shades of meaning as to time and 
 other relations, and has accomplished, by simpler 
 methods, the ends for which those forms were made, 
 the change always being destructive of formal gram- 
 mar. 
 
 All languages, living or dead, show in their history 
 Qie progress of this change ; but it appears most in
 
 "ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. 27.S 
 
 the Anglo-Saxon or English language, in Avliicli for- 
 mal grammar might be said to have entirely disap- 
 peared, but for a very small number of " survivals," 
 "which are to be found in a few forms of pronouns 
 and verbs. In this the distinguishing common-sense 
 of the English race is eminently apparent. It is not 
 certain that this deformalizing of the English lan- 
 guage has yet reached its end (for example, the sub- 
 junctive mood is almost gone, the adverb is beginning 
 to yield place to the adjective, and the distinction be- 
 tween who and whom seems to be disappearing, and 
 I believe will disappear). The retention of the few 
 syntactical forms which it preserves at present may 
 be due, on the one hand, to a common-sense view of 
 their practical usefulness, or, on the other, in pro- 
 nouns at least, to the immobility of those most an- 
 cient and unchanged of all the elements of language. 
 The uselessness of the study of what is called Eng- 
 lish grammar is shown by the fact that none of the 
 great writers and speakers of English, before the 
 present century at least, were at all instructed in that 
 — by pedagogues — much-vaunted "branch" of ed- 
 ucation. Our great poets, philosophers, statesmen, 
 orators, — men whose words are the glory and the 
 priceless heritage of the English race, and whose use 
 of language we feebly emulate — knew nothing of 
 English grammar. Is there any use in teaching a 
 method of speaking and writing the English lan- 
 guage correctly that was utterly unknown to Chau- 
 cer, Spenser, Sidney, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben 
 Jonson, Bacon, Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Dryden, 
 Locke, Addison, Steele, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sterne, 
 Burke, Johnson, and ^"o the English translators of the 
 Bible ? And what English short of that of Shake-
 
 276 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Bpeare and the English Bible is to be compared with 
 John Bunyan's ? — a man ignorant not only of Eng- 
 lish grammar, but of any grammar at all. 
 
 I have stopped in the citation of my examples with 
 the writers of the last century merely because, in re- 
 gard to those of the present, I am less sure about 
 their school-boy experience in learning their mother 
 tongue, and because it was not long before the begin- 
 ning of this century that the English-grammar plague 
 broke out. But that mental malady has never raged 
 much in England, at least among those who receive 
 the higher education ; and it is probable at least that 
 Walter Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Macau- 
 lay, Carlyle, and Thackeray received no special in- 
 struction in English grammar. 
 
 This assertion may surprise some who know that 
 " srrammar schools " have lonof been established in 
 England. They have existed there for centuries, — 
 from the time of Edward VI. at least. There was a 
 grammar school at Stratford-on-Avou, to which Shake- 
 speare probably went. But these grammar schools 
 had nothing to do with English grammar. Tlie 
 grammar tliat they taught was the Latin grammar. 
 Then "grammar" meant, without more words, Latin 
 grammar. The generation that produced Shakespeare 
 and Bacon and the translators of the Bible would 
 as soon have thought of setting up schools to teach 
 young ducks to swim, as a school to teach English 
 boys the art of speaking and -writing the English 
 language correctly. In " The Merry Wives of Wind- 
 sor " Shakespeare makes the clergyman, Sir Hugb 
 Evans, ask little William Page some questions ip 
 " his accidence," at the request of his mother, who 
 lays that his father complains that he "profits uotl^
 
 "ENGLISH GRAMMAR," SO CALLED. 277 
 
 fug in the world ;it his book ; " and his accidence is 
 Latin, his book, simply his Latin grammar.^ The 
 men whom Jack Cade tells Lord Say it will be proved 
 to his face he has about him, and who " usually talk 
 of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as 
 no Christian ear can endure to hear," talked only of 
 Latin nouns and verbs. 
 
 The first English grammar that I am acquainted 
 with was written by Ben Jonson, who wrote it, I be- 
 lieve, after Shakespeare's time, and left it unfinished. 
 After that there were various English grammars 
 written, but they were not for the use of schools. 
 Knowledge of the construction of language was ob- 
 tained in England, until a very recent period, only 
 through the medium of the Latin grammar or the 
 Greek. Reynolds the dramatist, who wrote in Lon- 
 don in the latter part of the last century and the 
 beginning of this, tells us in his autobiography that 
 at Westminster school he " studied the Latin but 
 never the English grammar." 
 
 " America " has been the great field of labor in 
 English grammar ; and the first great English gram- 
 mar, the one by which school-boydom has been chiefly 
 oppressed, was written by an " American," Lindley 
 
 1 I have been asked if the study of Latin does not teach English gram- 
 mar. No, except in so far as there must be some relation between all lan- 
 guages, because they are all varieties of human speech. It does not: first, 
 for the all-sufficient aud never-too-often-to-be-repeated reason that there is 
 no English grammar to be taught; next, because the Latin language and 
 i&e English are diametrically unlike in their structure, and you cannot 
 teach the construction or the use of one thing by training a pupil to the 
 construction and the use of another altogether different. Indeed, it has 
 been the curse of the teaching of English by grammars and by school- 
 niasters in the last seventy-five years or more, and particularly in "Amer- 
 ica," that the methods, the spirit, and the terminology of Latin syntax 
 have been transferred and applied to the English tongue. As well migh* 
 % horse undertake to teach an eagle to fly, or a dolphin to swim.
 
 278 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Murraj'^, the Philadelphia Quaker. The influence of 
 this book and its imitations in our country has not 
 been happy. Our English has suffered from it. We 
 have produced some writers who use the English lan- 
 guage with freedom and inborn mastery ; but the 
 mass of our free-and-independent, public-school-edu- 
 cated "American" citizens would, I believe, have 
 written better and spoken better, more naturally, 
 easily, forcibly, idiomatically, if English grammar- 
 books had been unknown.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 
 
 Among the eminent writers of English who were 
 utterly untaught in English grammar is one whom I 
 have merely mentioned by name, but whose position 
 in literature has a peculiar and impressive signifi- 
 cance in connection with our present subject. This 
 is Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney is one of the great 
 writers of the early period of modern English ; mod- 
 ern English having formed itself only in the genera- 
 tion before that in which he lived, and having since 
 been modified in no particular that is essential, im- 
 portant, or even remarkable. Elizabeth, whose chief 
 virtue, whose almost only virtue, was that she knew a 
 man when she found him, called Sidney " the jewel 
 of her times ; " and well she might so call him. He 
 was simply the highest-minded, truest-hearted, and 
 most accomplished English gentleman of his period. 
 He was a writer, although not so by profession. He 
 wi'ote — as Raleigh and other gentlemen and noble- 
 men of that time wrote — with no other object than 
 the expression of thought and feeling, or the accom- 
 plishment of some purpose. His romance " Arcadia " 
 is tedious reading to us of nowadays, and I am not 
 sure that it was not tedious to those for whom it 
 was written. It went indeed through many editions 
 in the course of a century, but romances then were 
 scarce, and some of them were veiy much longer and 
 much more tedious than Sidney's.
 
 280 KVtRY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 The tediousness, however, which makes the " Arca- 
 dia" now unreadable, except as a study in English 
 literature, does not at all depend upon the English in 
 vrhich it is written, — than which nothing could be 
 better. Its style is quaint, formal, antiquated, and 
 prolix ; but this was a mere consequence of the fash- 
 ion of the da}-, — a fashion which prevailed chiefly, 
 if not only, in prose. It did not appear in Sidney's 
 poetr}^ ; for Sidney, although he did not set up as a 
 poet, was one. In this very " Arcadia " is the follow- 
 ing sonnet, which is not only for its thought one of 
 the most beautiful in our literature, but is also re- 
 markable for its fine idiomatic use of English : — 
 
 "With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies, 
 How silently, and with how wan a face! 
 What! may it be, that even in heavenly place 
 That busy archer his sharp arrows tries ? 
 Sure, if that long with love acquainted eyes 
 Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case; 
 1 read it in thj' looks, tliy languished grace 
 To me that feel the like thy state discries 
 Then even of fellowship, moon! tell me 
 Is constant love deemed there but want of wit? 
 Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 
 Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
 Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess ? 
 Do they call virtue, there, ungratefulness? " * 
 
 Then there is another, beginning , — 
 
 "Come, sleep, O sleep! the certain knot of peace. 
 The bating piece of wit, the balm of woe, 
 The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
 The indifferent judge between the high and low." 
 
 The man who wrote these verses wrote in the great 
 English ; English wliicli is not of a time or a period, 
 vehich has no fashion, old or new, but which is for al3 
 time. 
 
 1 As to the construction and meaning of the last line, see Wordt an* 
 lAetr Umci, page 291.
 
 HOW IT IS THAT E^'GLISH HAS NO GRAMJIAR. 281 
 
 But Sidney's most celebrated literary performance 
 is his " Apology for Poetry." This essay is remarka- 
 ble as being the first critical essay worthy of the name 
 in our literature. And not only is it the first, but it 
 remains to the present day one of the very best. It 
 sometimes happens that the man who conceives a 
 thing, and produces the fii'st of its kind, attains 
 therein an excellence which may afterward be ri- 
 valed, but will hardly be surpassed. There is to this 
 day no more beautiful printing than that which came 
 from the first printing-office in the world ; and Gas- 
 pard da Salo, who made the first real violin, wrought 
 it upon a model to which, after years of deviation, 
 the art returned in the hands of that skillful and judi- 
 cious workman, Stradivarius. 
 
 In Sidney's " Apology for Poetry," moreover, there 
 is a passage which has a direct bearing on the sub- 
 ject of pretended English grammar. Sidney, like all 
 men of his time, and of more than a century follow- 
 ing, was entirely uninstructed in English grammar ; 
 for then, as I have before said, no English grammar 
 had been written ; none was taught in grammar 
 schools, and the English language itself was looked 
 upon with scorn by professed men of letters, and 
 slightingly called the vulgar tongue, — meaning the 
 tongue of the common people. The passage to which 
 I refer is the following. Speaking of English, he 
 says : — 
 
 " I know some will say it is a mingled language. And 
 why not so much the better, taking the best of both the 
 uther ? Another will say that it wanteth [lacks] grammer. 
 Nay, truly, it hath that praise that it wanteth not [does not 
 need] grammer ; for grammer it might have, but it needes 
 t not ; being so easie of itselfe, and so voyd of those cum
 
 282 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH, 
 
 Dersome differences of cases, genders, moodes, and tenses, 
 which I think was a peece of the Tower of Babilon's curse 
 that a man should be put to schoole to learne his mother 
 tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the con- 
 ceits of the minde, which is the end of speech, that hath it 
 equally with any other tongue in the world ; and is particu- 
 larly happy in compositions of two or three words together, 
 neere the Greeke, far beyond the Latine, which is one of 
 the greatest beauties can be in a language." 
 
 The " Apology for Poetry " was published in 1595, 
 and here we have the recognition nearly three hun- 
 dred years ago of the fact in philology that English 
 is a grammarless tongue. Sidney says, it " wanteth," 
 that is, it lacks, grammar ; and not only so, but with 
 a clear and admirable insight he says that it " hath 
 tha,t praise that it wanteth not grammar," that is, has 
 no need of grammar. He saw that in its lack of 
 grammar was the glory and the strengtli of the Eng- 
 lish language, as well as its easy fitness to the every- 
 day uses of common men. There is no other such 
 language in the world, nor has there ever been such 
 a language. Sidney goes on to say why it is that 
 English has no grammar : that it is because it is " void 
 of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, 
 moods, and tenses." And then he puts the English 
 common-sense view of the subject, that " it was a 
 piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse that a man 
 should be put to school to learn Ids mother tongue."" 
 How little a man needed such schooling to use his 
 mother tongue with clearness, with strength, and with 
 expression, Sidney showed in this very essay, the 
 •• Apology for Poetry," and in various passages of 
 his other writings. Entirely apart from the poetical 
 beauty of the thought, in the verses quoted above,
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 283 
 
 will any one venture to say that such a use of Eng- 
 lish can be taught by daily parade in school, accord- 
 uig to the tactics of those drill-masters in language, 
 Lindley Murray and Goold Brown, or even William 
 Cobbett ? 1 
 
 The reason, therefore, why English has no gram- 
 mar is that it is uncumbered with cases, genders, 
 moods, and tenses, and, we may almost say, with gram- 
 matical person. For these are the essence of gram- 
 mar, or rather, I should say, its conditions ; without 
 them there can be no grammar. When people say 
 good grammar and bad grammar, they refer only 
 to the forms of words and the construction of sen- 
 tences. 
 
 Grammar has to do with the correct form and cor- 
 relation of words. But in English there is no form, 
 and consequently no correlation dependent upon form 
 that has any noteworthy influence upon the construc- 
 tion of the sentence. Let candid objectors wait a 
 little before they spring up to reply. I said " note- 
 worthy influence," meaning by this phrase to allow 
 for certain small remnants of grammar which are to 
 be found in the English language. 
 
 For English had once a grammar. When the Eng- 
 lish-speaking people were rude, ignorant, savage, and 
 heathen, without literature, without any semblance of 
 fine art, knowing little even of the useful arts, living 
 \n hovels, tilling the ground in the rudest manner, and 
 
 1 This passage of Sidney's I had either entirely forgotten, or had never 
 observed until after the publication not onlj' of my essay, The Grammar- 
 less Tongue, but of the first edition of Words and their Uses. In the 
 second, I gladly found mj'self under the necessity of recognizing (as I di"^ 
 in the preface to that edition) that in these few lines I had had an illustri- 
 »us predecessor in what not only most others, but even I myself, had re- 
 rarded as a peculiar view (and it certainly was an original view) )f th« 
 Cngiish language.
 
 284 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 having a money price for man's life, their language had 
 a grammar which surpassed in complexity that of the 
 Romans, and almost equaled that of the Greeks. 
 But as they became civilized they rid themselves of 
 this complexity ; and when they had reached the point 
 at which they were about to produce a Bacon and a 
 Shakespeare, they had, to all intents and purposes, 
 freed themselves from it entirely. Not that civiliza- 
 tion was the direct agent in producing this result, 
 which was due to several causes, the enumeration of 
 which is not to our present purpose, but that the grad- 
 ual casting aside of the trammels of grammar did 
 accompany advancement in civilization, and in partic- 
 ular did accompany the development of English lit- 
 erature into the splendors of the Elizabethan era. 
 Therefore, it need hardly be said, this absence of 
 grammar is in no way inconsistent with intellectual 
 development or with the highest form of literary ex- 
 pression. Indeed, as I have mentioned before, this 
 simplification of verbal forms and this doing away of 
 the correlation that depends upon those forms, or, in 
 other words, the laying aside of grammar, seems to be 
 a tendency of language. But in no other language 
 has this tendency been so strong and so overpow'er- 
 ing as in English. 
 
 Of the complex grammar which once entangled the 
 speakers of English there remain a few vestiges, such 
 as some of the philosophei's of the present day have 
 chosen to call " survivals," but which, it seems to me. 
 might better be called survivors. Whoever will ob- 
 serve will see that in all the examples given by the 
 followers of Lindley Murray to show that the Eng 
 lish language has grammar, the writers use pronouns 
 The reason for this is that they could use no othet
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 285 
 
 W^ords. They are driven to /, and me, and Mm^ and 
 Jier, and whom. For our pronouns and two or three 
 verbal forms are the last refuge of the once dominant 
 and all-pervading English grammar. Pronouns have 
 nominative cases and objective cases ; but nouns have 
 not. But pronouns are so few in number that you 
 may count them on your fingers (those who choose 
 to count them may), whereas nouns are numbered by 
 the tens of thousands, and form, as far as the subject 
 and object of action are concerned, the whole of the 
 language, to all intents and purposes. Could any- 
 thing be more unreasonable, more inconsistent with 
 English common-sense, than the assumption that be- 
 cause in some half a score of peculiar words there re- 
 main vestiges of grammar therefore there is a gram- 
 mar for the whole language, of which these form 
 hardly an appreciable part ? 
 
 At the risk of repeating what must be known, or 
 once have been known, to many of my readers, I 
 must remark that, according to the grammarians, a 
 simple sentence is composed of two parts, the subject 
 and the predicate. The grammatical subject is the 
 word which expresses the person or thing of which 
 action or existence or enduring is predicated ; the 
 predicate is the word which expresses that action, ex- 
 istence, or enduring. Examples of this sort of sen- 
 tence are. Time flies, God exists, Ireland famishes. 
 But although a subject and a verb are technically a 
 sentence, it seems to me that to the ungrammaticai 
 mind the simplest form of a perfect sentence is that 
 in which the verb has an object. The object of 
 the verb is, however, technically a part of the predi- 
 cate. Thus, in the sentence, Women love children, 
 * women " is the grammatical subject, and the predi-
 
 286 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 cate is " love children." In such sentences the verb 
 has been called a copula by some grammarians, a dis- 
 tinction which I cannot bring myself to respect. But 
 however this may be, for our present purpose we have 
 only to consider the fact that in what is known as 
 modern English, this relation of subject, predicate, 
 and object is a purely logical relation, that is, a rela- 
 tion of reason, of thought, and it is indicated chiefly 
 by the succession in which the thoughts are presented. 
 In languages having grammar, which depends upon 
 the relations of words rather than upon those of the 
 thoughts expressed by words, the succession of the 
 words has comparatively little to do with the con- 
 struction of the sentence, and still less with its mean- 
 ing. It has been found by English-speaking people 
 that an objective form or case of the noun, differenc- 
 ing it from the nominative, is altogether unnecessary 
 for the indication of its objective condition, that is, to 
 show that it is the object of action. We know just 
 as well when we say " Women love children " that it 
 is meant that children are the object of women's love 
 as if the word "children " had a form peculiar to the 
 expression of this objective relation ; that is, as if it 
 were in the objective case.^ 
 
 In languages that have grammar there are other 
 cases, which express by the forms of words senses and 
 relations which in English are expressed by little 
 ivords which the grammarians have named preposi- 
 tions. There is the dative case, which expresses 
 %^hat in English we express by prefixing " to " or 
 " for " to the noun. But we also do without the prep- 
 psition, particularly in the case of pronouns. Even 
 
 1 I must Iiere again refer the reader to Chapters IX. and X. of Wonk 
 9ttd their U»e».
 
 HOW IT I& THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 287 
 
 then, however, although we drop the preposition, we 
 do not assume a case form. For example, " I gave it 
 him," that is, to him; "I got her a doll," that is, for 
 her; and Desdemona's exclamation, which, to use her 
 father's phrase, "made her half the wooer," when 
 she told Othello that " she wished that heaven had 
 made her such a man," that is, had made for her such 
 a man.^ The order. Boil me an egg, does not indi- 
 cate that the speaker is an unhatched chicken crying 
 out to be cooked ; nor in reading 1 Kings xiii. 13, 
 " And he said unto his sons. Saddle me the ass," is 
 the emphasis warranted, in the next sentence, " So 
 they saddled him," etc. One English grammarian, 
 whose perceptions have cari-ied him beyond the point 
 of an objective case " governed by for understood," 
 but no further, declares that in such sentences we 
 have examples of an English dative case. " In what 
 case is the pronoun," he asks, "if not in the dative? " 
 In no case at all, most excellent grammarian. There 
 is simply a dative sense expressed by the meaning of 
 the words and by their order. When shall we be 
 rid of this notion that an English noun must be in 
 Bome case ? There is the ablative case, the sense of 
 which we express by prefixing with, in, from, or b^/ 
 to the noun. These prepositions, however, cannot 
 
 1 In a criticism of this chapter on its first publication, the following 
 question was asked with sarcastic triumph : " Does the author of Shake- 
 tpeare's Scholar reall}' think that Desdemona was guilty (or so represented) 
 of the indelicacy of saying to the Moor ' she wished that heaven had made 
 [for] her such a man ' V " If mj' censor had read the book which he uses tc 
 feather his shaft, he would know that the construction of the passage at 
 which he scoffs was therein elaborately set forth as the onl}' one admissible •, 
 «nd the manner of his presenting the subject will excuse my saying that 
 linee then (1854) this view of the passage has oeen generally, if not uni- 
 versally, taken, not only in England and in France, but in Germany. 
 Gervinus sajs, "With tiiis hint the maiden proffered herself to him." 
 Ed. 1862.) '
 
 288 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 be omitted in the expression of this sense ; the reason 
 of which seems to be that the English language in 
 its earliest form, which some call Anglo-Saxon and 
 some Old English, had a dative case, but no ablative.^ 
 The dative sense in the simple noun after the verb 
 is a remnant, a " survival " or survivor, of the old 
 grammar. Thus we say, " I gave Charles an apple," 
 that is, I gave to Charles, etc. ; but we cannot saj', 
 " I went Charles to church," meaning, I went with 
 Charles, etc. We must use the preposition, as our 
 forefathers used it for centuries. In the other phrase 
 we use no preposition, yet we retain the dative sense, 
 which they indicated by a dative case or form of the 
 noun, which we have found unnecessary. Again, 
 in Latin and in Greek there is a form or case of the 
 noun expressive of calling, summoning, appealing, 
 named the vocative ; but this does not appear even 
 in the earliest form of English. We find when we 
 Bay, " Tom, come here ! " or call, " Mary ! Mary ! " 
 or demand, " What do you mean, Charles ? " that it 
 is not at all necessary to put Tom and Mary and 
 Charles (that is, the words, not the persons) in a pe- 
 culiar form or case. The meaning is perfectly plain 
 without a change of form or inflection expressive of 
 that sense, which would be a grammatical process. 
 
 We have, however, one case in English, that 
 which expresses possession or a relation of pertaining. 
 This case is called in Latin grammar, and in Greek, 
 the genitive case ; we call it the possessive. It has 
 always existed in English : first with the ending as, 
 then gs, and now (that is, for about the last three 
 hundred years) with a suppression of the vowel in- 
 
 1 We may say, Depart the house, for Depart from the house ; bat ii 
 tuch cases depart is used for leave or quit.
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 289 
 
 dicated by an apostrophe. Smitlias became Smithes, 
 then Smith's. This possessive case is a distinctive 
 trait of English among modern languages. For it is 
 remarkable that the modern Latin or Romanic tongues 
 have no possessive case, although in the Latin — their 
 Bource — it was one of the most strikingly and strongly- 
 developed forms of the noun and the adjective. In 
 French, Italian, and Spanish the possessive or per- 
 taining idea is expressed by the preposition de. Still 
 stranger is it that although this possessive form as or 
 es is Teutonic, and belongs by inheritance to the 
 whole Teutonic family of languages, in German — 
 one of the oldest and most important of these lan- 
 guages — it is dropped in what is called the modern 
 declension of nouns, and appears only in the genitive 
 of the article, des. Some German nouns retain the 
 old normal form of the possessive in the singular, but 
 drop it in the plural. 
 
 In English, too, we can use the preposition of, cor- 
 responding to the Romanic de. We can say " the 
 top of the mountain " as well as " the mountain's 
 top." But a Frenchman must say le sommet de la 
 montagne ; and not only so, but he must say le cha- 
 'peau de nion fils, the hat of my boy. This causes 
 K formality and an elaboration of the thought to be 
 conveyed, which loses a simple strength that we have 
 in English, and also adds, to us at least, an incon- 
 gruity of form with sense which approaches the ab- 
 Burd. As an illustration of the former, suppose that 
 in this splendid passage, 
 
 "And jocund daj' 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops," 
 
 ■Shakespeare had chosen to write " the misty mount- 
 ain's top," the effect wr uld hare been nearly the 
 
 19
 
 290 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 same. But suppose that in that case he had been 
 obliged to write " the misty top of the mountain," 
 how much of the elevation and the irapressiveness 
 of the passage would have been lost ! On the other 
 hand, think of being obliged always to say " the hat 
 of my boy," instead of " my boy's hat " ! 
 
 This remnant of inflection has not, however, any 
 appreciable effect in strengthening or multiplying the 
 bonds of English grammar. In regard to it there 
 seems nothing necessary to be said but that the inflec- 
 tion of a noun in es, or its contraction 's, expresses 
 possession, or pertaining, in regard to the object ex- 
 pressed by the following word or phrase. For the 
 object of possession, or that which pertains, is not 
 necessarily a thing. We may say, " John's hat is 
 black," or " John's going to Washington is unfortu- 
 nate." In the first case the thing pertaining to John 
 is a material object, a hat ; in the last the thing per- 
 taining to him is an act, his going to Washington. 
 
 The only real grammatical question raised by the 
 possessive case is that as to the double possessive, as, 
 " that horse of Alexander's," " that bust of Csesar's." 
 This I pass by at the present, my object now being 
 merely to show to what degree and in what manner 
 English is free from the trammels of grammar. 
 
 An objection has been made to the view of English 
 grammar here presented, which is clearly enough put 
 .n the question asked by more than one objector, if I 
 intend to take the position that grammar is the same 
 as inflection, or, in the words of one of them, "en- 
 tirely synonymous " with it. I do not ; and the ques- 
 tion surprises me. It asks if the cause, or rather the 
 condition, of a thing is identical or " synonymous ' 
 with the thing itself. Inflections are not grammar
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 291 
 
 but grammar is chiefly the consequence of inflections. 
 And here I must remind the reader of the sense in 
 which I use " grammar," which is the common, gen- 
 erally accepted sense, as to which I must refer to 
 former explanations. This difficulty as to the defi- 
 nition of terms is a great obstacle to discussion. I 
 know some very able and mentally well-eqviipped 
 men who decline discussion altogether, because they 
 Bay that the first condition of it, exact agreement as 
 to the meaning of essential terms, does not exist, and 
 cannot be brought about without a preliminary dis- 
 cussion', which would postpone the main argument 
 indefinitely. To return to our subject. Grammar in 
 any other sense than that which deals with the rela- 
 tions of words, or, in the phrase of one of my gram- 
 marians, " the correct form and correlation of words," 
 we here have nothing to do with. But without in- 
 flection, of what constructional importance can the 
 form of words be ? and then can words which have 
 but one form have correlation ? The obvious answer 
 to both these questions seems to me to be, None. 
 Therefore it is that in English there can be no gram- 
 mar, or none to all intents and purposes, there being 
 in our language only a few remnants of inflection, 
 and consequently of correlation of words. 
 
 As to gender, which is one of the most imjwrtant 
 elements of this formal grammar, there is not a ves- 
 tige of it in the English language. English has no 
 gender. There is not an English noun or adjective 
 that has gender. There are, indeed, English words 
 which express distinctions of sex ; but sex has noth- 
 hig to do with grammatical gender. Sex is some- 
 thing that pertains to and distinguishes living things ; 
 gender, grammatical gender, belongs to words ; not
 
 292 • EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 to the things which the words mean, but to the worda 
 themselves. Thus in French table is feminine ; not 
 that a table is regarded by the French people as hav- 
 ing sex ; not even that it is personified, as the moon 
 is when we say she rises, but that the word, the 
 combination of letters t-a-b-l-e, is in French of the 
 feminine gender, so that la, a combination of letters 
 meaning " the," which is also feminine, must be used 
 with it, and to say le table (le also meaning " the," 
 just Hi la does) is bad grammar. Now in English 
 we say " the man " as well as " the woman," using 
 the same article in both instances, because our words 
 have no gender, even when they express distinctions 
 of sex.^ And in a Latin sentence every word directly 
 connected with another must be thus adapted to it in 
 form, sometimes of gender, at others of case and 
 person. This is the essential part of grammar, and 
 it is the attempt to transfer the rules and the phrases 
 which pertain to this grammar to our simply formed, 
 but therefore none the less rich and strong, mother 
 tongue that has produced that monstrous hybrid, 
 called English gi-ammar. 
 
 In the verb English is almost entirely void, as Sir 
 Philip Sidney said, of moods and tenses, and is hardly 
 less so of number and person. We say, for example, 
 T, you, we, or they love ; only for the third person sin- 
 gular do we make any difference in the verb, — he, 
 she, or it loves. So I, you, we, they have ; he, she, or 
 it has. A like simplicity of structure and sameness of 
 form runs through moods and tenses. The subjunctive 
 mood, which differs a very little from the indicative, 
 
 1 That sex has nothing to do with gender is illustrated by the fact thaj 
 in Latin word most expressive of the female sex is of the masculine geu 
 •er.
 
 HOW IT IS THAT ENGLISH HAS NO GRAMMAR. 293 
 
 ts passing rapidly out of use. There is no impera- 
 tive mood ; it is the. same as the indicative. Qo is 
 indicative and imperative. It is the connection in 
 which it is used, the tone in which it is spoken, that 
 gives it an indicative or an imperative meaning. In 
 English there is no passive voice. We express pas- 
 sivity, of course, but we do it by making a little sen- 
 tence. In Latin, which has a passive voice, amo the 
 active means I love, and amor is the passive, which 
 we express by the sentence, I am loved. 
 
 It is needless to follow this line of examination 
 further. I did it in detail twelve years ago and more, 
 and those who care to do so will find two chapters 
 about it in " Words and their Uses." It is sufficiently 
 clear to the reader, I hope, that the English sentence 
 is not constructed upon the forms of words and their 
 correlation. Its construction is purely logical ; that 
 is, according to the succession of thought, there being 
 in it, however, a few vestiges of grammar, the use- 
 fulness of which is fully proved by the fact of their 
 retention.^ 
 
 1 Professor Whitnej''s Essentials of English Grammar was published 
 as these chapters were appearing in their original form. It was after their 
 publicatiou that I read this latest English grammar-book. So far as the 
 soundness of its teachings goes, it seems to me in almost every particular 
 excellent. (I will say, by the way, that I should not presume to speak in 
 Buch a tone of approval of anything that Professor Whitney had written 
 in the higher philology.) I do not wonder that Professor Child, of Har 
 vard, than whom there is no more accomplished or sagacious English 
 Bcholar in the country, says of it, "I do not know that I ever before saw 
 an English grammar which I would permit my children to look into, so 
 great the chance has been that they would learn nothing or be taught 
 something false." Professor Whitney's book does teach, and it teaches 
 nothing false, at least of any importance; but what a reproach is Professor 
 Child's commendation upon that system of grammar in favor of which 
 .here went up such outcries when I published The Grammarless Tonyue. 
 But Professor Whitney's book is not a grammar ; and he himself plainly 
 loes not believe in English grammar, such as we have considered it; nor 
 i«es he believe in teaching it as it has been taught, or that learning it is
 
 2^4 ' EVERY-r»AY EXGLISn. 
 
 necessary to p;ood English speech or writing. As to which read this pas* 
 Bage from his preface, in whicii I have emphasized some opinions : — 
 
 "That the leading object of the study of English grammar is to teach 
 the correct use of English is, in my view, an error, and one which is grad- 
 ually becoming removed, giving way to the sounder opinion that grammar 
 is the reflective studj' of language, for a variety of purposes, of which 
 correctness in writing is only one, and a secondary or subordinate one, — 
 by no means unimportant, but best attained when sought indirectly. It 
 should be a pervading element in the whole school and home training of 
 the young to make them use their own tongue with accuracy and force, 
 «nd, along with any special drilling directed to this end, some of the rudi- 
 mentary distinctions and rules of grammar are conveniently taught ; but 
 that is not the study of grammar, and it will not bear the intrusion of 
 much formal grammar loithout being spoiled for its otcn ends. It is con- 
 stant use and practice, under never-failing watch and correction, that makes 
 good writers and speakers; the application of direct authority is the most 
 efficient corrective. Grammar has its part to contribute, but rather in the 
 higher than in the lower stages of the work. One must be a somewhat re- 
 flective user of language to amend even here and there a point by gram- 
 matical reasons; and no one ever changed from a bad speaker to a good 
 one by applying the rules of grammar to what he said." 
 
 This gives up the whole question. The reflective study of language, 
 which does not concern itself with rudimentary distinctions or with rules, 
 and which does not change a bad speaker to a good one, may be, and in- 
 deed is, a very valuable and interesting study, but it is not what the school- 
 teacher or the school-boy means by learning grammar. The reflective study 
 of language, too, is an exercise of the mind, than which there is none 
 which more requires natural abilitv and the high training which comes of 
 discipline. It is a study far bej'ond the capacity of the pupils at our pub- 
 lic schools and academies, into whose hands even Professor Whitney's 
 Essentials might better not be put. 
 
 As to gender and verb forms he has on the next page the following re- 
 marks, which present briefly but substantially the same views of the sub- 
 ject which I have already given: — 
 
 "The ordinarv method with gender in nouns, for example, which was 
 really an imposition upon English of a system of distinctions belonging 
 elsewhere, has been abandoned in favor of one that is both truer and far 
 simpler. The sharp distinction, again, of the verb-phrases or compound 
 forms from the real verb-forms seems to me a matter of no small impor- 
 Isnce il the study of the construction of sentences is to be made a reality.'
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PAETS OF SPEECH. — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN" LBAEN. 
 ING GERMAN AND LEARNING ENGLISH. 
 
 One trait of the English language is the great 
 flexibility, not to say looseness, of its structure in re- 
 gard to what are called the parts of speech. In this 
 respect it is, as in others, nearly unique among the 
 languages of the civilized world. English may almost 
 be said to have no distinctive parts of speech. This 
 is a strong putting of the case, I admit ; but it ex- 
 presses the truth more nearly than it could be ex- 
 pressed without a long and carefully-elaborated state- 
 ment. The principal parts of speech are the noun, 
 the verb, the adjective, and that peculiar sort of word 
 which by grammarians has been strangely called the 
 pronoun, about which I shall say something hereafter. 
 With these words sentences can be formed; and with- 
 out any others we could speak and write, and attain 
 all, or nearly all, the great ends of language. True, 
 our speech would be clumsy, the forms of our thought 
 blockish, compared with what they are now ; but we 
 could speak of the necessary things of daily life, and 
 communicate intelligibly upon almost any subject. 
 
 Now, the fact is that these principal parts of speech 
 .tre so interchangeable in our mother tongue that 
 they can hardly be said to be distinguished from each 
 other. In English, almost any simple noun may be 
 used as a vei-b without change in its form ; and in 
 like manner almost any verb may be used as a noun.
 
 296 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Kouns are used as adjectives, and adjectives as nouns, 
 Pronouns may be used, and ai'e used, as nouns, as ad- 
 jectives, and even as verbs. We wire a message, we 
 table a resolution, we foot our way home, a hunter 
 trees a bear, a broker bears stock or bulls it, the mer- 
 chant ships his goods, the hypocrite cloaks his sins 
 with acted falsehood, the invalid suns himself, the 
 east wind clouds the sky. We thus constantly use, 
 and for centuries have used, as verbs words which 
 originally were nouns. On the other hand, we speak 
 of the run of a ship, of a great haul of fish, of a horse 
 coming in on the jump, of a man being on the go, of 
 a great rush of people, of the push of business, of 
 the thrust of the rafters of a house, of the spring 
 and fall, and so on, using verbs as nouns. We can- 
 not speak of the right and the wrong, the good and 
 the bad, the strong and the weak, without using ad- 
 jectives as nouns ; for the pretense of the elder gram- 
 marians that a qualified noun is understood in these 
 cases is unfounded, and was made only for the sake 
 of keeping up the make-believe of grammar. And 
 as to using nouns as adjectives, we cannot speak of 
 a gold watch, an iron bar, a bar-room, a carpet-bag, 
 a carpet knight, a brick house, a stone bridge, or a 
 windmill, without doing that. It is the commonest 
 conversion of parts of speech. We could hardly 
 communicate in English without it. And it is not 
 because in the phrases " lady friend " and " gen- 
 tleman friend " a noun is used as an adjective that 
 they are so offensive, — at least to some people. 
 When we say a brew-house, a wash-house, or a turn- 
 stile, we use verbs as adjectives. As to pronouns, 
 'he" and "she" are constantly used as adjectives, 
 «8, a he goat, a she animal. Pepys writes of hit
 
 PARTS OF SPEECH. 297 
 
 "she cousin." Of the use of "she" as a noun in the 
 sense of woman, English poetry of all times is full. 
 " The fair, tlie chaste, the unexpressive she," in "As 
 You Like It," is one of a thousand like instances. 
 Shakespeare also uses "thou" as a verb: "If thou 
 thou'st him," that is, if thou say'st " thou" to him ; 
 and we nowadays say that Friends " thee and thou " 
 us. Indeed, this convertibility of the parts of speech 
 is so characteristic of the English language that I 
 found this sentence in a London magazine : " Here 
 are the whereons to make your fortune," — an adverb 
 being used as a noun. The example is not one which 
 I should liold up for imitation; but it is in the normal 
 line of English speech development, which tends to 
 the obliteration of the formal distinction of parts of 
 speech. Under what circumstances this distinction 
 shall be disregarded is a question of taste, to be de- 
 cided by the speaker or writer at his own peril. In 
 the following passage from a speech by a Cavalier 
 commander in the Great Rebellion is an instance quite 
 as striking as that just cited above, but far more suc- 
 cessful : "But when you have come to the puritan- 
 ical towns Taunton, Crewkerne, Bristol, Dorchester, 
 and Exeter, then let your swords cruel it without dif- 
 ference of sex, age, or condition." (Lord Paulet's 
 speech at Sherborne, September 7, 1642, apud Wal- 
 lington, ii. 92.) Here we have an adjective used as 
 a verb most happily.^ 
 
 It has been objected to this theory of the English 
 language that it refutes itself, and that every lan- 
 guage must have parts of speech, without which in- 
 
 1 It is proper to say that the correctness of the report of this speech wa« 
 ienied by Lord Paulet and hn friends; but ^at is not to our present rur- 
 wse.
 
 298 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 fcelligible sentences could not be constructed; without 
 which, indeed, there could not be language. True 
 enough this, in a certain sense. If it is meant that 
 the words in an English sentence express object, sub- 
 ject, act, quality, etc., including all the modes of 
 making, modifying, extending, or limiting an asser- 
 tion, who could dissent ? Certainly not I. But if it 
 is meant that there are certain words the meaning of 
 which is limited to some one of these functions, and 
 that such words are definitely certain parts of speech, 
 BO that it may be told whether they are verbs, nouns, 
 or adjectives, without knowing the connection in 
 which they are used, as it may in other languages, 
 then I dissent and deny. Nor can I believe that any 
 intelligent and competently instructed critic would 
 attempt to maintain such a theory of English parts 
 of speech after giving the subject due consideration. 
 For example : Love in English corresponds to both 
 amor and amo in Latin, and to amour and aime in 
 French. Man is a noun, meaning a human male 
 (Jiomo^ Tiomme) ; and it is a verb, as, to man a ship, 
 for which in Latin and French there must be peri- 
 phrasis ; and it is an adjective, as man child, man 
 rope, a use of the word impossible in Latin or in 
 French. Amor and amo, amour and aime^ are re- 
 Bpectively noun and verb in Latin and French ; but 
 what is love? Homo and homme are, respectively, a 
 part of speech, a noun ; but what is man? You can- 
 not tell whether love or man is noun, verb, or adjec- 
 tive until you see it in a sentence. The illustrations 
 of this fact in English are countless. 
 
 This comparative freedom not only from rules, bu^ 
 from limitations, — from the bonds even of terminol- 
 ogy, — makes English a language radically differen
 
 PARTS OF SPEECH. 299 
 
 from all otheis. It may be learned, must be learned, 
 as no other language can be learned by one not born 
 and bred to speak it. I am reminded of this by the 
 letter of a business man who asks me how he shall 
 set about to learn the German language. A strange 
 request this to make of me ; for I have undertaken 
 onl)^ to tell my readers, so far as I can do so, some- 
 thing about the English language ; and, in general, I 
 profess acquaintance only with my mother tongue, — 
 at least, with any approach to thoroughness. I would 
 gladly help this business man, if I were able to do 
 BO ; but I am not. Let us see how the case stands. 
 According to his own representation of it, he is thirty 
 years old ; he has little time for study, and he wishes 
 to learn German, the most complex of the languages 
 known to modern literature, without learning the 
 laws of its complex construction. He thinks, also, 
 that I would not advise him to commit the main rules 
 of German grammar to memory ; and for a very 
 strange reason, — because he is unused and inapt to 
 that work. On the contrary, this is the very rea- 
 son wh}^ he, hoping to learn German at all, should 
 make himself thoroughly acquainted with the laws of 
 its etymology and its syntax, should learn them by 
 heart, and have them ready for application at any 
 moment. 
 
 If this correspondent will only give himself the 
 trouble to be born once more, and become as a little 
 child, and if he will so order the preliminaries that 
 the interesting event shall happen in Germany, and 
 if he will thereafter live in Germany for a dozen or 
 a score of years, he may then learn German so as to 
 ipeak it fluently and read it easily, without learning 
 ts grammar. The German that he will then speak
 
 300 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 will be. good or bad, exactly according to the educa- 
 tion and the social culture of the people with whom 
 he consorts, and the kind of authors whose books he is 
 in the habit of reading. But even if he should accom- 
 plish what I have suggested to him, he could hardly, 
 I venture to say, write German with precision and 
 clearness unless he should study the grammar of the 
 language. From my very moderate acquaintance 
 with its structure, I should say that of all the lan- 
 guages that are learned for business or literary pur- 
 poses — English, German, French, Italian, and Span- 
 ish — German is the one in which an acquaintance 
 with the rules of its grammar is most necessary to a 
 writer of it, even when it is his mother tongue. It is 
 indeed a most discouraging language to a foreigner ; 
 and its grammar is only less complex than the Greek. 
 About as well might a man undertake to learn Greek 
 as German without learning its rules. True, it may 
 be, and it is, picked up by valets-de-place in a valet- 
 de-place way. Then there is the Ollendorf method. 
 But I frankly confess that I have not much respect 
 for that. It seems to me but a poor substitute for 
 the being born over again in the right place. The 
 effect of this regeneration is not accomplished by ask- 
 ing in a foreign tongue, " Have you seen the green 
 goggles of my uncle ? " " Have you worn the petti 
 coat of my aunt ? " and replying, " I have seen the 
 green goggles of your uncle ; " "I have not worn the 
 petticoat of your aunt." I know no way of learn- 
 ing a foreign language that has a real grammar, that 
 is, the structure of whose sentences depends in a 
 great measure upon the forms of words and the corre- 
 lation of those forms, than by studying the laws of 
 tHat grammar; and if this correspondent means ta
 
 PARTS OF SPEECH. 801 
 
 learn German he must prepare himself for a long, 
 tough wrestle. 
 
 It is asked in various quarters, and even by those 
 who begin to see the real nature of the English lan- 
 guage, if I would have no rules at all of English 
 grammar taught. I answer, None whatever to chil- 
 dren under twelve years of age, or thereabout ; none 
 until the scholar has already learned good English by 
 hearing it and by speaking it. In this I have the 
 support of so eminent a philologist as Professor Whit- 
 ney, who says that it is " constant use and practice, 
 under never-failing watch and correction, that makes 
 good writers and speakers ; " and that good English 
 is to be taught not through the study of grammar, but 
 " the application of direct authority." The example 
 by and the authority of parents, kinsfolk, friends, and 
 teachers, who themselves speak correctly, will lead a 
 child surely into a right use of his mother tongue. 
 After he has thus learned that use, then let him enter 
 upon the " reflective study " of its history and struct- 
 ure, if he has the time, the inclination, and the ability 
 for such a mental exercise. This study, however, 
 will not help him to speak correctly or to write well. 
 It is merely a knowledge, simple of itself, barren of 
 daily usefulness. In Professor Whitney's words, " No 
 one ever changed from a bad speaker to a good one 
 by applying the rules of grammar to what he said." 
 It is true, as one critic puts the matter, as to gram- 
 mar, that " without a knowledge of its laws, acquired 
 either from actual tuition in it, or from constant in- 
 tercourse with people who speak grammatically, or 
 from the reading of good writers, no man can write 
 correctly and eloquently." But the force of implica- 
 tion in '^lese ors is tremendous. In my opinion the
 
 W2 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 intercourse and the reading are worth the tuition a 
 thousand times over. And the peculiarity of the 
 English language in this respect is that to obtain the 
 most complete mastery of it only intercourse with good 
 speakers and reading good books are necessary. Tu- 
 ition may be wholly dispensed with.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 » 
 
 tNlER VIEWING. — A PARENTHETICAL CHAPTEE. — 
 NOUNS USED AS " ACTIVE TRANSITIVE " VERBS. 
 
 I AM asked, called upon, entreated, exhorted, almost 
 implored to denounce, proscribe, ban, and excommu- 
 nicate, with bell, book, and candle, the verb to inter- 
 view. With all my heart, I would do so if I could. If 
 by a stroke of my pen I could extinguish the verb, 
 with its two participles interviewing and interviewed^ 
 and its noun interviewer^ — nay, could I by a word 
 put out of existence the interviewer himself, the 
 thing as well as the name, — I know that manslaugh- 
 ter as well as word slaughter would sit lightly on my 
 soul to-morrow. But with curses in my heart, I am 
 bound, if not to bless this word, at least to refrain 
 myself from evil speaking of it. The son of Beor 
 was not more sorely racked between his wishes and 
 his duty than I am between mine ; and like him I 
 must say to those who summon me to curse the com- 
 mon enemy that if they were to give me, what I need 
 far more than Balaam did, a house full of silver and 
 gold, I could not declare against the correctness, the 
 perfect regularity, and no less the clear expressive- 
 ness of this word detestable. 
 
 My tongue is tied and my hand is stayed not be- 
 cause I remember, or think I remember, having met 
 with the word in a play by some one of the Eliza- 
 bethan dramatists ; for a bad, abnormally formed 
 word is not made a good one by any usage, however
 
 304 EVEEY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 eminent; while, on the other hand, it is not bad 
 merely because it is a new word, a neologism, or a 
 "neoterism," as a " neoterist " — shall I say ? — has 
 chosen to call such things. But I must withhold 
 myself from expressing the feeling which the word 
 excites, I believe, in the minds of all decent people, 
 by pronouncing against it upon its own merits. Foi 
 it is a perfectly proper word. If we have view as a 
 verb, there is nothing to be said against intervieiv. 
 We might as well undertake to set aside intermeddle 
 from meddle as interview from view. And on the 
 other hand, we have long had interview^ the noun ; 
 and having that, the use of it as a verb is a use of 
 language than which there is nothing more truly 
 English. This of course carries with it the partici- 
 ples in ing and in ec?, and the name of the agent in 
 er. It would seem, then, that there is nothing to be 
 said against the perfect legitimacy of to interview^ 
 interviewing, interviewed, and interviewer. 
 
 But although I am thus constrained to admit the 
 perfect propriety of this new name, I would, as poets 
 invoke the Muses, call upon the Furies to aid me 
 while I prophesy against this new thing. It is the 
 most perfect contrivance yet devised to make journal- 
 ism an offense, a thing of ill savor in all healthy nos- 
 trils. It elevates paying into an art, leaving it no 
 longer a mystery, and makes boring a paid profession. 
 It is a conspiracy against the privacy of the individ- 
 ual, which is more deserving of reprehension, because 
 it is less open to remedy, than an attempt against the 
 liberty of the citizen. To get gain by the gratification 
 of a feeling, curiosity, so petty that its expression 
 degrades even the noblest countenance, it attempts to 
 dignify intrusion with the mantle of the teacher whc
 
 INTERVIEWING. 305 
 
 ministers to the noble desire of knowledge. It pan- 
 ders to the vanity of petty men who covet notoriety ; 
 it extorts a sacrifice of time and inclination from men 
 who would avoid needless publicity, by making them 
 shrink from seeming personal discourtesy to the in- 
 terviewer ; and it places the person who either con- 
 sents or refuses to be interviewed at the mercy of his 
 tormentor, who in either case can misrepresent him, 
 and who often does so, to suit his own purposes, or 
 those of his employers. It is in every respect a thor- 
 oughly contemptible business, which honorable jour- 
 nalists should shun as they would shun contamina- 
 tion. 
 
 My personal experience of interviewing is small ; 
 but it has not been such as to modify favorably my 
 judgment of it in the abstract. I was ill, confined to 
 my house, and seeking and needing the perfect men- 
 tal quiet which was prescribed as one of the condi- 
 tions of my recovery. A gentleman called, and was 
 informed that I saw no one. He called twice again, 
 and at his third call left word that he was from the 
 
 , and that it was important that he should see 
 
 me. Thinking that some person or some cause in 
 which I was interested was in need of a service that 
 I could render, at his next call I saw him. On en- 
 tering the room I told him that I was ill, but that I 
 was ready to hear what he had to say ; when to my 
 surprise he began an inquiring conversation upon a 
 subject which in my judgment was not worth five 
 minutes of the time of any reasonable creature. I 
 told him so. He was perfectly civil in manner, but 
 equally pertinacious. He " supposed that I had read 
 
 the article in the upon the subject." I told him 
 
 that I had not. He asked if I had read another arti- 
 20
 
 506 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ele upon the same subject in another newspaper. I 
 told him that I had not ; and although he contrived 
 to continue the conversation for a little while, I man- 
 aged to make the interview as short as I could make 
 it without being rude to a man in my own house. 
 For this is the means of extortion that pertains to 
 interviewing. The victim must do some talking, at 
 the risk of seeming churlish and personally offensive. 
 Now the man who talks with an interviewer is lost. 
 
 I thought that I had rid myself of the matter, and 
 that I should hear no more of it. Vain delusion ! 
 What was my surprise to see published the very next 
 morning a report of this interview, beginning with 
 the assertion that I had entered with alacrity upon 
 the discussion of the subject, and that I had said that 
 I had read the two articles upon it that I had not 
 read, my opinion as to its triviality and futility being, 
 of course, entirely omitted, and the opinions which 
 had dropped from me in the course of the brief replies 
 that I could not help making being set forth in a style 
 «vhich represented them about as exactly as this arti- 
 cle would represent my opinions upon the present sub- 
 ject if, after being put in type, some printer's boy 
 should knock it into pi. And then the jeers for days 
 from certain friends that a man of my experience 
 with the press should allow himself to be entrapped 
 into an interview ! How, in the pride and insolence 
 of their uninterviewed souls, they girded at me ! 
 
 But this was not the end. Twenty-four hours had 
 hardly passed when word was brought me, just as I 
 had sat down to dinner, that a gentleman wished to 
 Bee me upon business of importance, and would wait 
 my leisure. To relieve him, I saw him immediately 
 He was of suave and gentle manners ; and he blandly
 
 INTERVIEWING. 307 
 
 proposed to me that, as he saw the report just men- 
 tioned could not have done me justice, I should write 
 out an article expressing fully my opinions, which he 
 would considerately publish in the form made and 
 provided for such occasions. That interview proved 
 to be a veiy short one indeed ; and I returned to my 
 dinner with a venomousness of appetite altogether 
 unbestowable by the bitterest tonics of my physician. 
 But somehow or other it must have got about that I 
 was an interviewable man (interview ahle^ although 
 never used before, I believe, is an excellent word, 
 and uninterviewable, which is five seconds younger, 
 much better, — indeed, quite admirable); for a few 
 days afterward one of the fraternity, after calling 
 
 twice in vain, sent in his card, " Mr. , of the 
 
 ," to me at dinner. He wished to see me upon 
 
 another subject (having been sent, I grieve to relate, 
 by a treacherous friend), and to know if I would not 
 be seen then, when I could be seen. The answer was, 
 Not at all. Whereupon, as my servant informed me, 
 he demanded his card in a huff, and went off in high 
 dudgeon. 
 
 I recount this experience, brief and mild although 
 it must be in comparison with that which others have 
 gone through, not for my own sake, but because I 
 hope that it may be of some service to those who 
 have undergone less discipline than mine. And yet 
 I will say for myself that hereafter, if an interview 
 with me is reported, it may be safely assumed, first, 
 ihat I have not been interviewed at all ; next and 
 last, that the opinions, or at least the language, at- 
 tributed to me are not mine ; in which respect I shall 
 only have suffered what others, as we know, have 
 suffered before. What journalism now chiefly needs
 
 308 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 to sweeten it and give it dignity is a decent respect 
 for the personal privacy of all men. 
 
 The foregoing consideration of interviewing (both 
 the word and the thing) was, on its first publica- 
 tion, made the subject of not a little remark, critical 
 and jocose, in various quarters, more or less nota- 
 ble. That which was merely in the way of common 
 grammar talk may be profitably passed by with little 
 attention. It consisted chiefly of expressions of an- 
 guish that I could countenance the making " an act- 
 ive transitive verb of the noun mterview." Now as 
 to what is an active transitive verb I am not quite 
 sure that I or any one else can clearly tell ; but I do 
 know that whether all the nouns in the language are 
 made into articles of that kind I do not care a copu- 
 lative conjunction. In one quarter, however, an in- 
 telligent critic went into particulars, and jocosely, 
 but plainly with serious intent, cited a published ac- 
 count of a sleigh-ride of some gay young people, who, 
 before returning home, visited the village restaurant, 
 where they were, in the language of the reporter, 
 " oystered " by Mr. Jones. The question was then 
 asked, " Why is not the verb ' to oyster ' as good as 
 the verb ' to interview,' and as legitimate ? And why 
 are not ' oystering ' and ' oystered ' the equals in pro- 
 priety with ' interviewing ' and * interviewed ' ? And 
 why are not ' to suicide,' ' suiciding,' and ' suicided ' 
 — the latter word being frequently used by the As- 
 sociated Press to save tolls — as legitimate as either 
 of the others ? " 
 
 There is no reason why they are not in form just 
 as correct. The legitimacy of either cannot be dis- 
 Duted on any ground that I can now perceive. Oyster 
 to be sure, is a noun ; but so are butter, bread, and
 
 INTERVIEWING. 309 
 
 wine, names of the usual accompaniments of oysters. 
 And yet for generations we have known the man 
 whose bread is buttered on both sides, we have eaten 
 breaded cutlets, we have dined men and wined them. 
 And in " Punch " we have one of Mr. Du Manner's 
 prim little damsels complaining that her brother 
 George has not only buttered his bread, but has 
 •' actually been and Liehig* s-extract-of-beefed it as 
 well." We may have bowels of compassion for poor 
 George, who ate that half-stewed fleshly abomination ; 
 but as to the phraseology of his sister, although she 
 does make a rather startling compound verb, there 
 can be no doubt, in my judgment, as to the correct- 
 ness of the use as a verb of the compound noun X^e- 
 big' s-extract-of-beef, which is perfectly analogous with 
 her verb use of butter. It is not the verb use of the 
 noun that strikes us as strange and laughable, but 
 the compound ; the use of which as a verb it is that 
 impresses upon us the fact that the four words really 
 make but one noun. 
 
 Moreover, there is the case of the Bowery boy, 
 who, approaching with bis sweetheart another in like 
 manner accompanied, in the lobby of the theatre, 
 said, " I say, Bill, have yer salooned yer g'hal ? " 
 ' Naouw," was the reply. " Then lend us two shil'n, 
 and I '11 treat." Here grant the noun saloon, and the 
 " active transitive " verb to saloon (the gi-ammarians 
 will tell me if I am wrong) cannot be disputed. 
 The question as to its use is one of taste, not of ana- 
 iogical correctness. And just so it is with oystered 
 Bnd intervieived. Those who like them may use 
 them without the slightest fear that they are vio- 
 lating any rule or analogy of the English language. 
 Our language has recently been enriched with tha
 
 310 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Verb to finance. I find in a late number of the Lon- 
 don " Telegraph," " They have also largely financed 
 the paper of projected or unfinished railways ; " and 
 if negotiate will not do, finance may be used with 
 equal correctness. As to financiered, for some possi- 
 bly discoverable reason, it seems to be falling into dis- 
 grace. 
 
 To suicide as a verb, the objection is of altogether 
 another sort. Its inadmissibility depends not upon 
 its noun form, but upon its meaning. Suicide is 
 merely an English form of two compounded Latin 
 words meaning self-murder. To say that a man sui- 
 cided himself is therefore to commit the absurd pleo- 
 nasm of saying that he self-murdered himself ; and 
 to say simply that he suicided is to say that he self- 
 murdered, which is as thoroughly and absurdly un- 
 English as to say of a man that he self -loved, or 
 self-praised, or self-washed, instead of that he loved 
 himself, praised himself, washed himself. The same 
 objection, and no greater, would apply to homicided, 
 fratrieided, parricided. In all the nouns on which 
 these supposed verbs are based, the object of the ac- 
 tion and the action itself are both expressed ; and it 
 IS not English, never has been, and we may, perhaps, 
 safely say never will be English, to use an " active 
 transitive " verb without an object of its action. On 
 the other hand, there is no more thoroughly English 
 use of language, according to its best usage since it 
 was first spoken, than the making a noun do duty as 
 a verb ; always provided that its meaning admits of 
 Bnch conversion. As to whether we shall say that 
 we oystered our friends, or liquored them, or that we 
 Balooned our glials, that is purely a matter of per 
 Bonal taste ; in regard to which too great fastidious 
 aess might perhaps savor of bloated aristocracy.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 
 
 About the passive voice and auxiliary verbs, so 
 called, enough would seem to have been said iu 
 " Words and their Uses ; " but in reply to suggestions 
 and queries upon the subject it may be well to say a 
 little more, although at the risk of some repetition. 
 
 It is not strange that those who have been brought 
 up to think that " I am loved " is the passive voice of 
 "I love," and who have been misled by the phrase 
 " auxiliary verbs," should shy away from the blunt 
 assertion that English has no passive voice, and that 
 the verbs so called are not properly auxiliary ; that 
 is, that they have their own proper meaning and force 
 whenever or wherever they are used, and are not 
 mere aids in the formation of a real tense. According 
 to all English grammarians, the auxiliary verbs, so 
 called, are have^ is, shall, and will ; but it seems to 
 me that ma^ and can are equally so, and by some 
 grammarians they are so regarded. If "I shall go " 
 is a tense, iu which shall is auxiliary, it should seem 
 that " I may go " is equally a tense, in which waj/ is 
 merely auxiliary. As to meaning, if in " I have ap- 
 ples " have means possess, how is have voided of that 
 meaning in " I have lived " ? 
 
 The opposite and generally received theory has 
 been ably and ingeniously defended by Professor 
 «¥hitney, who says that " where there is even no 
 object for have to gjvern, where condition and not
 
 312 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 action is expressed, and ' you are been,' ' he is come, 
 ' tliey are gone,' would be theoretically more correct 
 (as they are alone proper in German), then we have 
 converted have from an independent part of speech 
 into a fairly formative element." This is quoted by 
 Dr. iMorris in his " Historical Outline of English Ac- 
 cidenco " as an explanation of the formation of tenses 
 by composition. It is with unaffected diffidence that 
 I express a doubt as to the soundness of a theory 
 which has the support of two such eminent philol 
 ogists as Dr. Morris and Professor Whitney ; but I 
 shall venture to examine this one. 
 
 First, as to the proviso, " where condition and not 
 action is expressed." Does have ever express any- 
 thing but condition, the state of possessing ? Does is 
 ever express anything but the condition of existence? 
 Is either of these verbs expressive of action ? And as 
 to " he is come " and " they are gone," which Pro- 
 fessor Whitney cites as theoretically more correct than 
 other forms of expression which he implies are more 
 practically correct according to English usage, are we 
 to understand that he and Dr. Morris deny that al- 
 though "he has come" and " they /iave gone" are 
 often heard, " he is come " and " they are gone " are 
 the better and indeed the correct forms, and have the 
 support of higher and longer usage ? This I can 
 hardly believe. As to the theory that have loses its 
 meaning of possession and becomes a " formative ele- 
 ment " of tense-by-composition, it is to be remai'ked 
 that the idea of possession is not always or necessarily 
 that of gross physical possession. When we say, " I 
 have a hope," we do not mean that we have a hope 
 in our hands, or in our pockets, or in a basket, as if it 
 were an apple ; we mean that we possess it in oui
 
 VOICE, TEXSE, CASE, GENDEIl, ETC. 313 
 
 hearts, or we mean, as we often say, that our hearts 
 are possessed hy it; we are in a hopeful condition. 
 The notion of possession is more subtle, more intel- 
 lectual, than it is when we say, " I have an apple ; " 
 but still there remains the notion of possession. So, 
 when we say, " I have to go," we express obligation 
 by declaring that we possess, or are possessed by, the 
 idea of going. The notion of possession is here even 
 yet more subtle, more intellectual, than in the phrase, 
 " I have a hope ; " it becomes even moral ; but it is 
 still the notion of possession. 
 
 Nor does there seem to me in this even any theo- 
 retical difficulty ; for to go is a noun, a verbal noun, 
 and any noun may be the object of the verb have. 
 The French made, ages ago, their future tense by the 
 union of this idea of possession with a verbal noun. 
 J'aimerai, I shall love, is simply /e ai aimer^ I have 
 to love ; the idea of possession, alien to that of obli- 
 gation, implying the certainty of future action. So 
 we say in English, " I shall love." Shall expresses 
 obligation, and obligation implies future action. This 
 no English scholar questions ; and any one will easily 
 perceive the obligatory meaning of shall in the phrase. 
 You shall do so and so. The Frencb by uniting ai 
 (have) to aimer (to love) as a suffix have made a real 
 tense. This is what is called a synthetic form of lan- 
 guage ; and the Frenchman uses aimerai without any 
 thought that he expresses his future by saying, " I 
 have to love." In English, however, we preserve the 
 analytic form, and keep the words and the thoughts 
 separate ; the idea of possession, although subtle, in- 
 tellectual, and moral, not being lost, but being as pos- 
 ■tively and absolutely present a? they usually are in 
 war use of phrases which have become so common
 
 314 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 that we do not think of analyzing them in thonght or 
 speech. 
 
 Let us now consider tense and passive voice, so 
 called, together. According to the English gram- 
 marians, " We have been pleased " is the first person 
 plural of the perfect tense of the passive voice of the 
 verb please ; and according to Professor Whitney (if 
 I apprehend him rightly) have has here lost its mean- 
 ing of possession, and is become a mere " forma- 
 tive element." But we say, " We have been much 
 pleased," thrusting an adjective, mrich, between the 
 elements, formative and other, of the so-called tense. ^ 
 Now it is the function of an adjective to modify not 
 the part of a tense, but a noun or its equivalent, 
 which in this case is the participial adjective pleased. 
 To test this so-called tense formation further in the 
 same way, let us consider the effect upon it of the 
 following modifications : — 
 
 We have been pleased. 
 We have been much pleased. 
 We have all been pleased. 
 We have all been much pleased. 
 We all have been much pleased. 
 We have been all much pleased. 
 We all much pleased have been. 
 All we much pleased have been. 
 Much pleased we all have been. 
 Much have we all been pleased. 
 
 It seems to me that here the tense and voice 
 
 1 Those who choose, with the grammarians, to call much in one place 
 in adjective, and in another an adverb, although it really expresses the 
 game tlioiiglit, may call it here an adverb. But wlien we say, " Bacon 
 wa? a man of much wisdom, much the wisest man of modern times," al 
 though rnrich modilies first a noun, and then an adjective, it would be difft 
 tuJt to show wliy it should be called one thing in one place and aiiothe 
 ^hing in another place.
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 315 
 
 '* have been pleased " is very much shaken to pieces. 
 These forms of the same expression are all English. 
 Every one of them has the support of the best usage, 
 and most of them have the support of common usage 
 as well as that of the best. But the so-called aux- 
 iliary verbs, including the "formative element," are 
 separated at our pleasure, and scattered about with- 
 out the slightest regard to any other consideration 
 than the use of the words to express our thought in 
 jusi such a form as suits us. And we may not only 
 put an adjective between our auxiliary verb and our 
 " formative element," but we may do the same with 
 nouns and adverbs, and say, for example, " We Amer- 
 icans have all certainly been very much more than 
 pleased at the honors done to General Grant in Eu- 
 rope." Will any one dispute that the first clause of 
 this compound sentence, ending at " pleased," is in 
 itself a perfect sentence ? It would be interesting, 
 certainly, and perhaps instructive, if any one who 
 does not dispute it would explain why it is any more 
 a sentence than " We have been pleased," — the so- 
 called first person plural of the perfect tense of the 
 passive voice of the verb please. Is there really any 
 reasonable doubt that tenses that may be broken up 
 and scattered through a sentence as this so-called 
 tense is in the last sentence given above are mere 
 grammatical shams ? What is the use of teaching a 
 child or a man that such successions of words, each of 
 which has its own meaning, and any two of which 
 may be separated at pleasure by the introduction of 
 ather words, each of which has also, no more nor less, 
 Us own meaning, are moods and voices and tenses ? 
 
 Other languages have voices ; English has not. 
 The phraseology, or the terminology, of the gram
 
 B16 EVEEY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 mars of other languages has been pedantically ap- 
 plied to English, to which it has no real relation. 
 *' Love " is an active verb, — when it is not a noun of 
 an adjective, — but it is not properly called an active 
 voice, because that expression distinguishes it from a 
 passive voice ; and where is the passive voice ? "I 
 shall have been loved " expresses futurity, completion 
 as to time, and passivit}' ; but it is not a perfect tense 
 of a passive voice. If we had twisted it round and 
 worked it together into lovdshalhaben, and then into 
 lovshalahen^ as the French did their aimer into aime- 
 rai, so that we should say, I lovshalaben^ you lovshal- 
 aben, and so forth, without thinking of the meaning 
 of the formative elements, or of the elements at all, 
 but merely regarding it as a simple word with a sim- 
 ple meaning, we then should have had a future per- 
 fect tense of a passive voice. But we preserve the 
 analytic form, and, I think, with tlie form preserve 
 the proper meaning of each word in our little sen- 
 tence. 
 
 The analytical and logical character of English is 
 almost its distinctive trait among languages. Other 
 modern languages are analytical and logical to a cer- 
 tain degree, but very much less so than English is. 
 To speak and to write good English it is necessary 
 only to choose proper words, and place them in such 
 an order, in such a relative position to each other, 
 that they will set forth our thoughts logically. The 
 choice of words is a matter of preference, of taste, so 
 long as we use them in their proper or their recog- 
 nized senses. In all languages the speaker or the 
 .vriter who chooses the best words for his thoughts 
 will produce the most pleasing and the most forcible 
 impression. And so, indeed, the order of words is ia
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 317 
 
 all languages to a certain degree a matter of impor- 
 tance ; but it is far more so in analytical than in syn- 
 thetical languages (Latin and Greek, for example), 
 and most of all in English. Moreover, in English the 
 position of words has something more than the impor- 
 tance which relates to pleasing effect and to impress- 
 iveness. It touches the question of one sense or an- 
 other ; of sense and of nonsense. We have seen that 
 it is the mere position of a noun in regard to a verb 
 which decides whether it expresses a subject acting 
 or an object of action : e. g.^ " Men love women ; 
 women love men." This is and must needs be the 
 case in languages which have no objective or accusa- 
 tive form of the noun to distinguish it when it has an 
 objective sense. If we were to write, "Men women 
 love," it would not be certain whether men or women 
 were the object of love, although it would probably 
 be women ; but in speech it would be decided by in- 
 flection of voice and emphasis. The importance of 
 the position of words increases just in proportion to 
 the analytical character of a language. 
 
 This matter of position is not only a fact as to the 
 construction of English, but a tendency. It is an 
 element of what is loosely called the genius of the 
 language. This may be exemplified by a change 
 which has taken place somewhat recently in the use, 
 as to position, of the word only. In the " Rape of 
 Lucrece," Lucrece says to Tarquin, — 
 
 " This deed will make thee only loved for fear." 
 But she did not mean that Tarquin would be " only 
 "oved " because of fear ; but that he would be loved 
 >lily for fear. So Collatinus says of his dead wife, — 
 
 " Let no mourner say, 
 He weeps for her; for she was only mine,"
 
 818 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 meaning, She was mine only. And in that beautiful 
 sonnet (Shakespeare's fifty-fourth) beginning — 
 
 " O, how much more doth beautj' beauteous seem, 
 By that sweet ornament that truth doth give ! " 
 
 the poet says of wild roses, which have no perfume, 
 
 " But for their virtue only is their show, 
 They live unwoo'd and unrespected die ; " 
 
 meaning, not that the show or appearance of wild 
 roses is virtue only, but that their only virtue is 
 their show. A truer perception of the significance of 
 logical relation, as indicated by position, has changed 
 the usage in regard to oyily since Shakespeare's time. 
 For example, " for only she was mine " means that 
 the speaker possessed only the she referred to ; " for 
 she was mine only " means that he, and he only, pos- 
 sessed her ; " for she was only mine," although it 
 is susceptible of the second construction, means in 
 general acceptance she was nothing else but mine. 
 This illustration of the effect of position might be 
 carried on without end; and it would be extended 
 had I needful room. Word position in the English 
 sentence is determined by and defines the logical re- 
 lation of thought. 
 
 It is objected, on the part of the grammarians, 
 to the theory that English is grammarless because 
 it lacks voice, cases, gender, etc., that gender, case, 
 voice, mood, and tense have nothing to do with the 
 forms of words, but are '•^attributes given to nouns and 
 verbs, which sometimes have means of showing thoso 
 attributes, and more frequently have not." This is 
 Bpecious, and to those whose minds have been per- 
 verted by the study of English grammar may seem 
 plausible, and even more than plausible. But first 
 it is a very vague view, or a very vague statement of
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 319 
 
 ft view. What kind of attributes can be given to 
 words ? A man may have attributes, or any subject 
 may have attributes, which may not be shown ; bufc 
 how can a word, which is a mere sound or sign of a 
 sound, have an attribute which does not appear ? 
 
 Passing by this general argument, I come to the 
 particular plea that " a verb which denotes or ex- 
 presses passivity is in the passive voice, whether that 
 voice is shown by a termination or by an auxiliary 
 verb." This argument has an inherent incongruity 
 which destroys it. Like Gonzalo's commonwealth, 
 its latter end forgets its beginning. It is quite true 
 that a verb which expresses passivity is in the passive 
 voice. I have not written anything to the contrary. 
 If any one will find me such a verb in the English 
 language, I will agree that, if not in the passive 
 voice, it at least is a passive verb.^ But the argu- 
 ment closes by assuming that the passivity is ex- 
 pressed by an auxiliary verb. In other words, pas- 
 sivity is expressed not by the verb in question, but 
 by another verb. An astonishing argument this to 
 prove that a verb may express passivity, — to show 
 that it cannot do so except by means of another verb. 
 
 A brief illustration will make this clear. Love is 
 a verb ; and it is an active verb, because the word 
 love expresses an action. Now, what is the verb, the 
 word, which expresses the reception, or the under- 
 going, of that action ? There is none. Passivity in 
 regard to love is expressed by " I am loved." Now, 
 
 1 English has one passive verb, the only one known to me, which is 
 now rarely used, — hight. This verb needs no "auxiliary" and no par- 
 ticiple; it means "is called." Shakespeare ases it several times: "This 
 ihild of fancy that Armado hight;" "As I remember, hight Costard;" 
 ''This grisly beast which lion hight by name." It \* not uncommoa in 
 more modern poetr}'. It is a real passive verb.
 
 320 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 in this plirase there is no word, verb or other, that 
 expresses passivity. Am is the only real verb, and 
 that expresses only present existence. Loved is not 
 a verb, but a participle ; and even as a participle it 
 does not express passivit}^, but only perfected action. 
 In " I shall have been loved " there are three verbs, 
 shall, have, and been, not one of which expresses 
 passivity, and a participle, loved, which also has no 
 Buch expression. But the sentence or phrase as a 
 whole does express passivity, perfected and future. 
 It seems plain, then, that there is in English no pas- 
 sive voice of any verb. 
 
 As to case, it is urged that " a noun used as the 
 subject of an independent sentence has the nomina- 
 tive case, whether that case is shown by its position 
 or by a termination." This argument seems to be 
 brought forward in ignorance of the meaning of the 
 word case. In English and in some other languages 
 subjectivity or objectivity may be given to a word 
 by yjosition, but case cannot. For case — from casus, 
 a fall — means metaphorically something that has 
 fallen, and in the cases of nouns the word is supposed 
 to have fallen away from the normal upright stand- 
 ard or stem form of the word. Therefore it is that 
 nouns are " declined," that is, passed through their 
 declination, or stages of failing, to wit, their cases. 
 Case without special form is impossible ; it is a con- 
 tradiction in terms. And therefore there is really 
 no nominative case, not only in English, but in any 
 language. For the nominative is the normal form 
 from which there must be declination (casus') before 
 there can be case. The nominative is called a case 
 Dnly for the convenience of grammatical study. 
 
 Moreover, if the relation expressed by a noun puts
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 321 
 
 it, by position or otherwise, in a case, then we have 
 not only a nominative case and an objective, but a 
 dative case, which has been remarked upon previ- 
 ously, on page 286. For example, when a lady says 
 to her friend or her groom, " Put me on my horse" 
 (and she might much better say upon my horse), she 
 refers to herself as the object of an action, and the 
 English grammarians say that me is in the objective 
 case. But when she says to her maid, " Put me on 
 a flat-iron," she does not mean that she wishes to be 
 put on, or upon, the flat-iron ; she means, Put for 
 me on a flat-iron. She uses me not in an objective 
 sense, but a dative. So when a boy says, " Show 
 me a picture," he means, Show to me a picture, show 
 a picture to me ; me is not used objectively, but 
 datively, and " picture " is the object of the verb 
 "show."i 
 
 It is needless to carry this illustration further. 
 But is there, because of this dative sense, a dative case 
 in English? If aye, then there is also a vocative, 
 when we call, " Tom ! Tom ! " But we all know 
 that there is neither a dative nor a vocative case ; and 
 soon we shall all see that there is neither an object- 
 ive nor a nominative case. We merely express the 
 objective, the dative, and the vocative idea ; but we 
 do it by the same case (so to speak) ; that is, by no 
 case at all, except in pronouns, and even in those the 
 dative case has disappeared. For the possessive we 
 have a real case. Mere dictionary definition decides 
 
 1 I remember a school-fellow's going to our master — an egregious 
 grammarian — and asking him how to narse " Give me a book " (or soma 
 Euch sentence). Pedagogus replied, ' In those cases you have to parse me 
 as an objective case governed by to understood." (See Squeers, in the first 
 ihapter of this division.) And I remember laughing in my boyish sleeve 
 %i the notion that the sentence must be parsed, and at the fetch by which 
 ^e feat bad to be accomplished. 
 21
 
 322 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 this question so far as definition can do so. As 1 
 write I turn to Stormontli's Dictionary, — small, but 
 the best I know of the English language, — and that 
 defines "case " as " that which falls, comes, or hap- 
 pens The infiection of nouns." This argu- 
 ment for case is futile, because, if it prove anything, 
 it proves that which all the world knows to be un- 
 true. 
 
 As to gender, the position is taken that this gram- 
 matical distinction should not be held to depend on 
 inflection, if we express the same ideas which are ex- 
 pressed in other languages (Latin, for example), by 
 words that have gender ; and this view is particularly 
 urged in regard to adjectives. Let us see : bonus 
 liber, a good book ; bona domus, a good house ; bo- 
 num aratrum, a good plow. Now, do the words bon- 
 us, bon-a, and bon-um here express anything more 
 or other than is expressed by the word " good " ? 
 Nothing. There is no question about the matter. 
 But bonus, bona, bonum, are respectively masculine, 
 feminine, and neuter ; and therefore, according to 
 this argument, " good " must be masculine in the first 
 example, feminine in the second, and neuter in the 
 third. This leads the grammarian into a dreadful 
 predicament ; for in " a good book," " a good house," 
 and " a good plow," the adjective is, in all the exam- 
 ples, of the neuter gender, that is, of no gender at 
 all, because the nouns "book," "house," and "plow" 
 are neuter. Now, there was nothing male in a book, 
 or female in a house, or any more reason why a plow 
 should not be regarded as either male or female, in 
 the times of the ancient Romans than there is now 
 Thus this matter of gender is purely grammatical, 
 And pertains to words only, not to things or even to
 
 VOICE, TENSE, CASE, GENDER, ETC. 323 
 
 thoughts, and has nothing to do with sex. It is the 
 words for book and house and plow which in Latin 
 have gender ; the things were as sexless two thousand 
 years ago as they are now. And this word-gender 
 has nothing to do with form. Pennce and pennarum 
 are feminine equally with penna. Nor has it even 
 anything to do with termination. Penna., ending in 
 a, is feminine, but domus, ending in us, is also fem- 
 inine. Yet dominus, with the same termination, is 
 masculine ; and liber, with still another termination, 
 is also masculine. But we may dismiss all this. We 
 have no more anything to do with gender. We 
 simply do not call a woman a man, or a cow a bull.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 PKONOUNS. 
 
 I MUST say something briefly about the words that 
 the grammarians call pronouns. They have had this 
 name ever since the first existing systematic treatise 
 on grammar was written by Dionysius, surnamed 
 Thrax (that is, the Thracian), which is more than fif- 
 teen hundred years ago. This name, pronoun, mean- 
 ing " for a noun," would seem to justify the definition 
 given by Lindley Murray, and by most other gram- 
 marians, " A pronoun is a word used instead of a 
 noun, to avoid a too frequent repetition of the same 
 woi'd." The examples usually given, which are of 
 this sort, " John is a good boy ; he learns his task," 
 do, indeed, support the definition. For in such cases 
 the word Ms is used instead of the word Johti's^ and 
 it does enable us to avoid a monotonous iteration. 
 But this definition takes the most narrow and limited 
 view possible of the subject. It is most remarkable 
 for what it omits. 
 
 We get a glimpse at what it does omit even in 
 Lindley Murray. At the foot of the page, in very 
 small type, is a note setting forth that a pronoun 
 " may also represent an adjective, or a sentence, or a 
 part of a sentence, or sometimes even a series of 
 propositions." The following examples are given : 
 " They supposed him to be innocent, which he cer- 
 tainly was." " His friend bore the abuse ver_7 pa« 
 tiently, which served to increase his rudeness ; it pro
 
 PRONOUNS. 325 
 
 duced at length contempt and anger." In the first 
 of these examples, the pronoun is used instead of the 
 adjective "• innocent." In the second example, the 
 first pronoun, " which," does not refer even to a fore- 
 going sentence or phrase, but to a supposed phrase, 
 that is, " his bearing the abuse patiently ; " and the 
 second, " it," represents the supposed phrase, " the 
 increase in his rudeness." Here we have at once an 
 astonishing enlargement of the definition that a pro- 
 noun is a word used instead of a noun, to avoid too 
 frequent repetition ; and when it is considered that 
 this last use of pronouns is one of the most common, 
 we begin to see that these so-called make-shifts, or 
 representatives of nouns, are something else than we 
 have been taught that they are. 
 
 It having been objected to my citation of Lindley 
 Murray and Goold Brown as representative English 
 grammarians that those writers are somewhat old- 
 fashioned, and that we have now grammars both 
 more compact and more rational than theirs, I quote 
 from " The Elements of the English Language," by 
 Dr. Adams, of University College, London, fifteenth 
 edition, 1877 (first edition, 1862) : " Pronouns are 
 short words used to represent nouns without naming 
 them. They thus avoid a repetition that would al- 
 ways be tedious and often obscure." Also from Pro- 
 fessor Whitney's " Essentials of English Grammar," 
 the last and best book on its subject : " A pronoun is a 
 word standing for a noun or ordinary name, and may, 
 like a noun, be used as subject of a sentence." Again, 
 in the same book we find, " A pronoun does not pre- 
 cisely name anything, but it points to or points out 
 lome person or thing that has been named before, or 
 that is shown by a gesture, or is defined by its rela-
 
 826 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 tion to something else that is named." We thus see 
 that the grammarian notion of a pronoun has not 
 changed much, even in the mind of so able a re- 
 former of English grammar as Professor Whitney. 
 
 Now, that a pronoun may, like a noun, be used as 
 the subject of a sentence is clear enough ; but that it 
 *s sufficiently defined as a word that stands for a noun 
 or ordinary name, or as one that points out some per- 
 son or thing that has been named before, seems to 
 me a false notion, — a notion which has its origin in 
 the name pronoun, and which has been handed down, 
 and accepted almost without question, from gramma- 
 rian to grammarian for centuries. True, Buttman 
 does say that " pronouns cannot be so precisely de- 
 fined as not to admit many words which may also 
 be regarded as adjectives." But this is only a part 
 of the confusion which reigns in grammar. For the 
 very grammarians cannot agree among themselves 
 as to the limits between nouns and adjectives, so 
 tliat some of them compromise the matter by mak- 
 ing two classes, nouns substantive and nouns adjec- 
 tive. And there is a like dispute as to whether some 
 words are conjunctions or prepositions, and a decision 
 that they are both. And much good such disputes 
 and such compromises and decisions are to people 
 of common-sense, who can read with understanding 
 and delight, and write clearly what they have to 
 say, without knowing a noun substantive from a 
 noun adjective, or a conjunction from a preposition I 
 As to pronouns, Lindley Murray says they are of 
 three kinds, — personal, relative, and adjective ; but 
 in Professor Adams's accidence (cited above) tliey 
 develop into " personal, demonstrative, relative, in 
 terrogative, possessive, reflective, reciprocal, indefi
 
 PRONOUNS. 6Z ( 
 
 nite, and distributive pronouns." Here, as Mrs. 
 Malaprop says, is " a nice derangement of epitaphs." 
 It could be shown that there are not these nine divis- 
 ions among pronouns, but that the uses of the same 
 words run into and lap over each other ; but even if 
 it were not so, to what use this mere naming of ver- 
 bal tools? It helps no one to understand, to think, 
 to speak, or to write. 
 
 The notion hitherto received, and without question, 
 I believe, that a pronoun is used instead of a noun, 
 or that it points to, or points out, some person or 
 thing that has been named before, seems to me alto- 
 gether wrong, — so wrong that I wonder that any 
 man of intelligence who has examined the subject and 
 thought upon it at all could take such a view of it on 
 a second thinking. Let us see. In the sentence, 
 
 "For he who fights and runs away 
 May live to fight another daj'," 
 
 what noun is "he" used instead of ? What person or 
 thing named before does it point out ? In the well- 
 known utterance of one of the saddest of those truths 
 that seem eternal, " To him that hath shall be given, 
 and from him that hath not shall be taken away that 
 which he hath," what noun does "him" stand for? 
 What person or thing named before or after does 
 either " him " point out? It does, by the aid of an- 
 other pronoun and of a verb, " that hath," point out 
 Bome person, or rather a class of persons ; and in like, 
 manner we know that the last " him " refers to a 
 person or class other than that referred to by the 
 first ; but neither of these persons or classes has been 
 mentioned or in any way indicated before. " Him " 
 here means merely the man, or those men. It does 
 QOt "stand for" those WDrda anymore than many
 
 828 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 another word stands for what it means ; and it cer- 
 tainly does not point out any person who has been 
 named before (for none has been named), or who 
 is to be named afterward, for none is named. It 
 is not a pro-noun. So in " Who steals my purse 
 steals trash," the so-called relative pronoun " who " 
 means any man that ; but it is not used instead of 
 any noun ; nor does it refer to any person mentioned 
 before. The relative has no relation ; it does not re- 
 late. If I were to go on with this illustration, it 
 could be much varied and yet more extended. I 
 bring up these few examples merely to direct the 
 reader's attention to the fact, of which he may find 
 many examples in his every-day reading, that a pro- 
 noun, even a personal or a relative pronoun, so called, 
 is not necessarily used instead of another noun to 
 prevent repetition, and that it does not necessai'ily 
 point out or refer to some person or thing that is 
 named before or even after. 
 
 The truth upon this subject is that the so-called 
 pronoun, instead of being a make-shift, a convenience 
 to prevent confusion and monotony, a sort of appen- 
 dix and auxiliary to an already developed vocabulary, 
 is the noun of nouns, the word of words, the most 
 important, the most radical, and the most ineradicable 
 element of language. It represents the beginning of 
 thought ; its evolution is the first sign of human con- 
 Bciousness, — we may almost say of animal conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 When the infant first knows by touch that there 
 is another thing in the world but itself, the ideas rep- 
 resented by /and it are at once evolved. This that 
 feels touch is " me ; " this that touches is " not me.' 
 Here is the first dawn of consciousness, if not the first
 
 PRONOUNS. 329 
 
 ray of intelligence. " Me " and " not me ; " in tlii8 
 twin-born thoiiglit conies the knowledge of self-exist- 
 ence and of existence outside of self, which is the be- 
 ginning of all knowledge, the starting-point of all 
 thought; and in "me" and "not me" are involved 
 the germs of all the so-called pronouns. " Not me " 
 is " it ; " and " he " and " she " are (mentally, not 
 etymologically) mere modifications and divisions of 
 " it," consequent upon after-experience and reflection. 
 So also is " you " a mere modification of the idea 
 " not me " expressed by " it." " We " is an expan- 
 sion of " I ; " " they " an expansion of " it." There 
 are really but two persons, the first and the second, 
 representing the " me " and the " not me," but the 
 second has been divided, and a third made by the 
 introduction of the modified form of the " not me " 
 before mentioned. 
 
 From these considerations it seems clear that the 
 pronoun expresses the first, the most important, and 
 the most inexpugnable idea that finds utterance in 
 language. For it will be found that ivho, what, this, 
 that, and the rest have the same relations, or a modi- 
 fication of the same relations, to the expression of the 
 first act of consciousness and cogitation that I, you, 
 and it have ; in fact, that the former words express 
 ideas which are directly ^-elated to and involved in 
 the latter. 
 
 The word called pronoun, then, so far from being a 
 mere convenient substitute for something more impor- 
 tant, — a remplagant, to use an operatic phrase, — is 
 Jie word which expresses the first distinction made 
 by the human intellect ; it is the word of substantive 
 distinction, by which persons and things are, first, 
 separated from the ego, the " me," and, next, from 
 <4ach other ; a distinction which precedes all othei
 
 130 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 distinguishing, as, for example, that into living and 
 not living, not to say into classes of animals and indi- 
 viduals. The pronoun is the first existing substantive 
 noun. 
 
 It may be owing, but I am not now prepared to 
 Bay that it is owing, to this primordial quality in 
 pronouns that in all languages they are the most an- 
 cient and immovable parts of speech, that they seem 
 to have a peculiar origin and development, and that 
 in all the Indo-European tongues the principal pro- 
 nouns are to all intents and purposes the same. The 
 number of people of all climes and tongues to whom 
 me has the same signification (with modifications of 
 pronunciation too slight for consideration) is to be 
 counted only by hundreds of millions, and this iden- 
 tity of the expression of self as distinguished from not 
 self stretches back into the remotest ages. And pro- 
 nouns, although they are slightly modified in sound, 
 are not added to or lessened in number. The dual 
 number has disappeared and with it the dual pro- 
 noun ; but except this change, the ranks of the pro- 
 nouns in the Indo-European tongues stand much aa 
 they did at the dawn of the historic period. We have 
 Iropped nouns and verbs by the hundred ; we have 
 taken new ones in their places ; but the pronouns 
 stand. There is no such thing as a new pronoun, or 
 oven a modern pronoun ; and to make and introduce 
 a new pronoun, as, for example, an impersonal one 
 in English for the expression of relative distinction 
 without sex, would be a task of such difficulty that 
 t might be set down as impossible. This is but a 
 rAeagre and sketchy presentation of a view of the so- 
 ialled pronoun which I venture to think is worthy ot 
 consideration by those who think at all about Ian* 
 guage.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 
 
 At the request of many readers, I shall say some* 
 thing more than I have already said (in " Words and 
 their Uses ") on the words at the head of this chap- 
 ter. 
 
 The mistakes made in the use of sliall and will^ and 
 of should and would ^ by persons who are not unlet- 
 tered, and who are wont to hear English well spoken, 
 must come, it should seem, either from sheer careless- 
 ness or inapprehensiveness, or from the opposite tend- 
 ency to a fussy taking of thought about propriety 
 and grammar in speech, instead of talking right on 
 in words as they come by habit, and caring^only to 
 utter a thought or to tell a stoi-y. And the latter is 
 rather more apt to cause confusion and entanglement 
 than the former. Most true is this about such alter- 
 luitive words as shall and ivill^ should and would^ any 
 attempt to use which with a conscious conformity to 
 the rules of "good grammar" will, in most cases, 
 quite surely — to speak elegantly — eventuate in ca- 
 lamity. The best way is to give yourself no trouble 
 at all about your grammar. Read the best authors, 
 converse with the best speakers, and know what you 
 mean to say, and you will speak and write good Eng- 
 lish, and may let grammar go to its own place. 
 
 In recommending the reading of the best authors 
 ^or this purpose, if for no other ;^and this is the least 
 'important for which they should be read), I do not
 
 332 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 mean that you should look to them as " authorities," 
 and use no word or form of speech for which you do 
 not find the warrant of example in their writings. 
 That would be almost as bad as a solicitude about 
 " speaking good grammar." There was never a more 
 absurd resolution than that of Fox, to admit no word 
 into his history (never finished) for which he had not 
 the authority of Dryden. The effect upon the mind 
 of the reading of the best authors is like that of as- 
 sociation with the best bred people upon manners, 
 which, as far even as external politeness goes, is much 
 better than a pocket copy of my Lord Chesterfield's 
 letters. Genuine politeness comes only by a union of 
 inward grace and outward culture ; and so a real mas- 
 tery of language is in a great measure a birthright, 
 like beauty, or strength, or stature. 
 
 As to shall and will^ something may doubtless be 
 done by study, and by taking thought to check bad 
 habits and correct the result of unfortunate associa- 
 tions. The mistake most commonly made in the use 
 of these words, and the one, therefore, most carefully 
 to be avoided, is the use of will for shall, and of the 
 corresponding would for should. Shall is much less 
 often used for will. And yet in the word shilly- 
 shally., which is upon everybody's lips, is petrified the 
 Tule and the example in regard to shall and will. 
 
 Shilly-shally is merely a colloquial corruption of 
 "Shall I? Shall I?" and thus expresses the condi- 
 tion of a man who is vacillating between two courses 
 of conduct. It has been made into a participle, per- 
 haps even into a verb. A man who " stands shilly- 
 shallying about a woman," as the ladies say, is a man 
 who, as they also sometimes say, does n't know his 
 jwn mind about her, — a mental condition for whicb
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 333 
 
 the sex has no very great liking. Now no one would 
 Bay that a man stood asking himself, " Will I ? Will 
 I ? " and yet such is essentially the mistake most 
 frequently made in regard to the use of these words 
 in conversation. We hear some people say, " What 
 will I do ? " and even, " Will I do " thus or so ? — the 
 offenders in these cases being generally of what some 
 people humorously call the Hibernian persuasion, — 
 an expression, by the way, for which there is " au- 
 thority " of very respectable standing and antiquity. 
 Among people of Anglo-Saxon race and of average 
 education the mistake, when made, most commonly 
 takes the indicative form, thus : " I will go to bed 
 [elegantly, retire] at ten o'clock to-night," or " We 
 ivill breakfast at eight to-morrow," instead of, " I 
 shall go to bed," etc., " We shall breakfast," etc. 
 Not quite so often we hear, " I would be glad to go," 
 *' We ivould be happy to see you," instead of, "I 
 should be glad," " We should be happy," etc. 
 
 As striking examples of the misuse of ivill and 
 would (which, as I have said, is the most common form 
 of this speech-illness), I give the following extracts 
 from a newspaper of the highest class, and one of tlie 
 most carefully edited in the country. If the editor 
 Baw them, they must have set his teeth on edge : — 
 
 " An order was made that supplemental mails to all Euro- 
 pean steamers will [shall] be dispatched to the steamer f '•om 
 the main office after the close of the regular mail." 
 
 " M. Soutzo, who killed Prince Ghika in the recent due' 
 near Paris, has written an impudent letter from Luxembourg 
 io the Procureur of the French republic, saying that aftei' 
 he duel he left Paris, lest his arrest would [shouliV^ cause 
 bis mother serious emotion." 
 
 In common conversation and in ordinary writing 
 these forms of the shall-and-will idiom are those in
 
 334 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 most frequent use, and therefore those most frequently 
 misused. There are other confusions ; but they per- 
 tain to subtler forms of thought. A speaker once well 
 grounded in I shall, I should, we shall, we should, you 
 will, you would, as mere declarations of future action, 
 and I will, I would, we will, we would, as expressions 
 of present will or determination as to future action, and 
 you shall, you should, as expressions of obligation or 
 necessity in future action, will rarely go astray upon 
 other points, if he has any familiarity with the writ- 
 ings of good authors. 
 
 The rule and the reason of this idiom will be found 
 set forth with sufficient clearness in almost all good 
 grammars, — they have at least that value.^ But 
 upon solicitation, they are set forth briefly here in a 
 form somewhat differing from any one in which I 
 have ever seen them ; they are as follows : — 
 
 Will in the first person expresses a wish and an in- 
 tention, or a promise; as, " I will go," that is, I mean 
 to go, or I promise to go. Will is never to be used as 
 a question with the first person ; as, " Will I go ? " 
 A man cannot ask if he wills to do anything. That 
 he must know, and only he knows. 
 
 Will in the second person declares or foretells; 
 as, " You will go with him." Hence it is used with 
 courteous authority as a command, because it foretells 
 something that must happen. A superior officer says 
 to a subordinate, " You will report yourself," etc. 
 As a question, will in the second person asks the in- 
 tention of the person addressed ; as, " Will you go to 
 morrow?" that is, Do you mean to go to-morrow? 
 
 Will in the third person also declares or foretells 
 
 ^ Almost all grammars in common use have, however, the fault of giv 
 tag " I shall or will " for the future tense, as if either form were to h# 
 ued indiscriminately.
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 335 
 
 E8, " He will come," that is, He is coming, and may 
 be looked for. As a question, will in the third person 
 asks what is to be the future action of the person 
 spoken of, with a necessary reference to intention ; 
 as, " Will he go?" that is. Is he going? Does he 
 mean to go, and is his going sure ? In the third per- 
 son, will bas of course no mandatory force. 
 
 Shall in the first person simply declares or fore- 
 tells, without any reference to wish ; but when it an- 
 nounces personal action, it of course may accompany 
 intention ; as, " I shall go," that is, I am going, I am to 
 depart hence. Used as a question in the fi.rst person, 
 it is a simple inquiry as to the future ; as, " Shall I 
 find him ? " that is. May I expect to find him ? or it 
 asks direction ; as, " Shall I go ? " that is. Decide for 
 me as to my going. 
 
 Shall in the second person and in the third de- 
 clares authoritatively, and therefore promises, com- 
 mands, or threatens ; as, " You shall be paid," " Thou 
 shalt not steal," "They shall suffer," — which need 
 no paraphrase. 
 
 Would and should conform to the usage of ivill 
 and shall ; ivoidd referring to an exercise of "will, and 
 shoidd implying contingent, dependent action, or ob- 
 ligation. 
 
 As the uncertainty felt by some as to the use of 
 ihall and will is in regard to the persons to which 
 they are to be severally applied, they, with woidd 
 and should, are arranged below under the headings 
 of the three persons, in conformity to the rules given 
 above : — 
 
 FIRST PERSON. 
 
 Simple Future . 1 shall f^o. We shall go. 
 
 Contingent or Obligatory I should go. We should go. 
 
 Interrogative Simple Shall I go? Shall we go? 
 
 'nterrogative Coatingent, or Obligatory . Should I go7 Should we eoi
 
 336 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 SECOND PKRSON. 
 
 Simple Future You will go. 
 
 Contingent or Obligatory You should go. 
 
 Interrogative 'limple Shall you go? 
 
 Interrogative 'ontingent, or Obligatory Should you goV 
 
 THIRD PERSON. 
 
 Simple Future He will go. They will go. 
 
 Contingent or Obligatory He should go. They should go. 
 
 Interrogative Simple Will he go? TFiVMheygo? 
 
 IntenOg,ative Contigent, or Obligatory . Should he go? Should they go? 
 
 These forms imply no exercise of the will on the 
 part of the person who speaks, or in regard to the 
 person spoken to or spoken of. " I shall go " means 
 merely (as we have seen before), I am going ; " You 
 will go," you are going; " He will go," he is going. 
 " I should go " means, I ought to go, or, T would go if 
 there were reason ; and in " You should go " and " He 
 or they should go " should has the same limitation of 
 meaning. When will is exercised or implied, the 
 future action may be called determining, and is ex- 
 pressed as follows : — 
 
 FIRST PERSON. 
 
 Determining Future I will go. We will go. 
 
 Contingent Determining I would go. We would go. 
 
 Interrogative Obligatory Determining . Should I go? Should we go? 
 
 Interrogative Contingent [rare]. . . . Would I go? Would we go? 
 
 SECOND PERSON. 
 
 Determining Future You shall go. 
 
 Contingent Determining You would go. 
 
 Interrogative Determining )Fj7Zyougo? 
 
 Interrogative Contingent Determining TrowWyougo? 
 
 THIRD PERSON. 
 
 Determining Future He shall go. They shall go- 
 
 Contingent Determining He would go They would go 
 
 interrogative Determining Shall he go? Shall they go? 
 
 Interrogative Contingent Determining . Would he go? Would they go? 
 
 The rules above given, and the classification by 
 persons which follows them, cover all the uses of shah 
 and will, should and would, with perhaps one excep
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 387 
 
 tion, and may, I believe, be relied upon by those who 
 seek a guide in this matter. It seems to me, how- 
 aver, that rules and classification of such subjects are, 
 for practical purposes, of little value, or rather of 
 none ; sometimes of less than none. They who need 
 them cannot apprehend them and apply them ; they 
 who can master them are they who have no need of 
 them. But still, " Would you go ? " is an interrogative 
 contingent determining future form ; and it may be 
 of use to some persons to be told that it is so. 
 
 As to would and should, it will be found that, with 
 one exception, to be remarked upon hereafter, what- 
 ever the connection in which they appear, they are 
 used, the former with some implication of will, the 
 latter with some implication of obligation. For ex- 
 ample, would, when it expresses a habit or a custom, 
 as, " She would weep all day," " He would bluster 
 like Herod," implies a habitual exercise of will. In 
 such phrases as, " I would have you take this to 
 heart," the expression of will is very plain ; and in 
 such as, " Would that it were night ! Would that 
 it wei*e morning ! " mere will or strong wish is ex- 
 pressed, and Tvould can hardly be called an " auxiliary " 
 by any grammarian. Consequently, when will or 
 wish is expressed by any other part of a phrase, loould 
 becomes superfluous and out of place. Expressing 
 willingness, we say, " I would grant your request ; " 
 but if we introduce willingly or with pleasure, we use 
 should, and say, " I should willingly, or with pleasure, 
 ^rant your request," not, '•'-1 ivoidd willingly," etc. 
 In like manner we say, " I will see you to-morrow ; " 
 out if we add an expression of pleasure, " I shall be 
 glad, or happ3% to see you to-morrow " not, " I will 
 be glad," etc. For example : — 
 
 22
 
 838 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 " Lord Strathmore gives me commission to say, he shcUl 
 be extremely glad to see you at Glames." (Gray, Letters, 
 iv. 67.) 
 
 " The editor cannot conclude without adding that he shall 
 be happy to receive hints and materials for the improvement 
 and better elucidation of the Spectator and Guardian," etc. 
 (John Nichols, Advertisement to the Tatler, ed. 1786.) 
 
 Both these examples are formally incorrect ; for in 
 both the third person is used, and that requires will^ 
 — " He will be happy," etc. But they are the more 
 impressive because they show the injQaence of the 
 expression of preference. Lord Strathmore said to 
 Gray, "I shall be extremely glad," etc., and Gray 
 repeated what his lordship had said. Nichols, writing 
 in the third person, but thinking in the first, says of 
 himself, " He shall be happy to receive hints ; " as 
 speaking he would have said, " I shall be happy," 
 etc. 
 
 In the phrases, " You should do this " and " He 
 should not do that," the expression of obligation, 
 di.ty, debt, is very plain ; and even when should is 
 used to express design or plan, as " Under the cix*- 
 cumstances I should do thus, or so," there is an ex- 
 pression of obligation, of something owed to the cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Briefly, will and tvould refer directly or indirectly 
 to the exercise of will ; shall and should imply debt, 
 owing, obligation. 
 
 Example in regard to language is much more val- 
 uable than precept ; and particularly is it so in regard 
 *;o the subject under discussion. I therefore give here 
 a few passages in which the correct distinction in the 
 nse of these words is very clearly and sharply drawn 
 T'hey are from the wc^ks of authors of ri^putation, who
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 339 
 
 $xe too modern to have any odor ot antiquity about 
 them, and who, with one exception, are noted for the 
 care and precision of their writing ; and yet that one 
 excepted author, the first one cited, furnishes the best 
 example. I do not know in English literature an- 
 other passage in which the distinction between shall 
 and will and would and should is at once so elegantly, 
 BO variously, so precisely, and so compactly illustrated 
 as in the following lines from a song in Sir George 
 Etherege's " She Would if She Could : " — 
 
 " How long I shall love him I can no more tell, 
 Than, had I a fever, when I should be well. 
 My passion shall kill me before I tvill show it, 
 And yet I wou'd give all the world he did know it ; 
 But oh how I sigh, when I think, shou'd he woo me, 
 I cannot refuse what I know wou'd undo me."i 
 
 (Act v., Scene 1, ed. 1704.) 
 
 This and the following passages, from the same au- 
 thor and from others, may well be read with refer- 
 ence to the rules and classification given above : — 
 
 Gat. Letters ! Bless me, what tvill this come to ? 
 
 Court. To that none of us shall have cause to repent, I 
 h »pe, madam. 
 
 (The same, iv. 2.) 
 
 Med. Where shall we dine to-day ? 
 
 Dor. "Where you will. 
 
 (Etherege, Sir Fopling Flutter, i. 1 .) 
 
 " I must give notice to my correspondents for the future, 
 who shall apply to me on this occasion, that as I shall decide 
 Dothing unadvisedly, etc However, for the future I 
 
 1 Observe the lightness, freedom, and idiomatic ease of this cleverly 
 jonstructed and almost colloquial song — none the less admirable in these 
 respects because of its freedom in another sense. It is written throughout 
 in the best English that is spoken, —that of a well-bred, but not necessa- 
 rily much educated, and decidedlj' un-lnerary woman, who has acquired 
 ter mother tongue unconsciously by intercourse, all her life, with w».)t 
 Hred people.
 
 840 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ihall have an eye to the diet of this great city, and will reo 
 ommend the best and most wholesome food, etc." (Addi* 
 Bon, Tatler, No. 147.) 
 
 " . . . . in short, a thousand matters that you shall not 
 know till you give me," etc. (Gray, Letters, ii. 6.) 
 
 " If wishes could turn to realities, I would fling down my 
 law books," etc. (The same, ii. 7.) 
 
 " . . . . and I never desire to part with the remembrance 
 of that loss, nor would wish you shoidd." (The same, iv. 28.) 
 
 " If he does, I will send him (in a packet to you) the same 
 things I shall send to Dodsley." (The same, iv. 76.) 
 
 " I believe soon I shall bear to see nobody. I do hate all 
 hereabouts already, except one or two. I will have my din- 
 ner brought upon my table in my absence, and the plates 
 fetched away in my absence, and nobody shall see me." 
 (Shenstone, Letters, No. 16.) 
 
 " I have an old aunt that visits me sometimes, whose con- 
 versation is the perfect counterpart of them. She shall fetch 
 a long-winded sigh, with Dr. Young, for a wager." (The 
 same, No. 36.) 
 
 " The minister who should propose it would be liable to 
 be told," etc. (Helps, Friends in Council, ii. 5.) 
 
 " . . . and therefore it was not to be presumed that they 
 would do anything wrong." (The same. Slavery, ii.) 
 
 " It was one of the deep superstitions of Realmah that if 
 he woidd succeed no form of life shoidd be hostile to him." 
 (The same, Realmah, chap, xvi.) 
 
 In the second passage from Shenstone, " She shall 
 fetch a long-winded sigh," shall has a certain bind- 
 ing, obligatory force, as if he had said, " I promise 
 you, I undertake, that she shall," etc. It indicates 
 the state of mind which leads to a bet. The third 
 passage from Helps illustrates not only the distino 
 tive meanings of ivould and should, but the peculiai 
 change in the meaning of a sentence which follows a
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 341 
 
 ihange of their places, and putting one in the stead 
 of tlie other. " If he would succeed, no form of life 
 should be hostile," means, If he wished to succeed, 
 no form of life ought to be hostile, etc. ; but " If he 
 should succeed, no form of life ivould be hostile," 
 means, In case of his success, he would find no form 
 of life hostile, etc. 
 
 There is a use of should which can hardly be de- 
 termined by the rules, or disposed under any one of 
 the heads above given. It generally appears in an 
 impersonal construction; as, '•'■It should seem thus," 
 " Should it prove so." As would conforms to will and 
 as we have ' He (or it) will seem," we should ex- 
 pect, " He would seem," and so, " It would seem." 
 But the best usage for centuries has been, *' It should 
 seem," " One should think," etc. Here are a few ex- 
 amples, beginning with the Elizabethan period, before 
 which, according to my present memory of my read- 
 ing, the impersonal use of should is not common : — 
 
 " It should seem by the lawes of Lycurgus .... that 
 the Grecians," etc. (Lloyd's Conference of Divers Lawes, 
 1602, page 74.) 
 
 " Nevertheless, it should seem that the Doctrine of Abu- 
 beyner hath not lost all force ; for the Examples are many 
 71 all Saracens Lands." (Sir Walter Ealeigh, Three Dis- 
 courses, ed. 1702, Ecclesiastical Power.) 
 
 " He is no suitor, then ? So it should seem." (Jonson, 
 Magnetic Lady, i. 1.) 
 
 " It should seem so certainly ; for her breath is yet in- 
 flamed." (Beaumont and Fletcher, Knight of the Burning 
 Pestle, V 2.) 
 
 Phil. I suspect this shrewdly 1 
 Is it his daughter that the people call 
 The miller's fair maid? 
 2 Lord. It should seem so, sir 
 
 (Fletcher, The Maid in the Mill, Hi. t.)
 
 542 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 " But finding him, as it should seem, by nature little stu 
 dious." (Reliquiae Wottonianag, page 76, ed. 1652.) 
 
 " But it should seem the very horror of the fact had stu- 
 pefied all curiosity." (The same, page 117.) 
 
 " An island in the air inhabited by men, who were able 
 (as it should seem) to raise or sink it as they pleased." 
 (Swift, Gulliver's Voyage to Laputa, chap, i.) 
 
 " The royal power, it should seem, might be intrusted 
 in their hand^." (Hume, History of England, vol. iii., p. 
 883.) 
 
 " In judging only from the nature of things, and without 
 the surer aid of the Divine Revelation, one should be apt to 
 embrace the opinion of Diodorus Siculus." (Warbvirton, 
 Divine Legation, vol. ii., p. 81.) 
 
 " . . . . considering which, one should imagine it ought to 
 be larger than one finds it." (Gray, Letters, Sec. 2, Let. v.) 
 
 " It should seem the many lies discernible in books of 
 travel may be owing to," etc. (Shenstone, Works, 1764, 
 vol. ii., p. 192.) 
 
 " Richard Greenham .... became minister of Dry 
 Drayton, three miles distant, where it should seem from a 
 rhyming proverb," etc. (Gilchrist's Note to Bishop Cor- 
 bet's Distracted Puritane, page 246.) 
 
 " . . . . and one should suppose that a body which died 
 of such a distemper must contain in a high degree," etc. 
 (Wx-axall's Tour, 1775, page 403.) 
 
 " One should have imagined that echoes, if not entertain- 
 ing, must at least have been harmless." (White's Natural 
 History of Selborne, Letter 80, February 12, 1778.) 
 
 " As one should suppose, from the burning atmosphere 
 ivhich they inhabit, they are a thirsty race," etc. (The 
 lame. Letter 89.) 
 
 " You are not exactly the person from whom one shonla 
 expect fables." (Helps, Friends in Council, chap, vi.) 
 
 Examples of tliis kind might, of course, be given 
 v^ithout numbev, and so easily that to those who have
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 343 
 
 considered this subject these may seem superfluous, 
 except for the sequel. I add instances cf a like use 
 of should, not impersonal : — 
 
 "... . here a shepherd's boy pipuig as though he should 
 never be old." (Sidney, Arcadia.) 
 
 " .... if hee had traced the nature of the soule from 
 its first principles, hee could not have suspected it should 
 sleepe in the grave," etc. (Sir Kenelm Digby, On Religio 
 Medici, 1G43, page 12.) 
 
 *' One might imagine that the latter, indebted, etc 
 
 should have readily repaid this poetical obligation." (Shen- 
 Btone, Works, 1764, vol. ii., p. 177.) 
 
 " . . . . and one would imagine if that argument concern- 
 ing the distance of the rhymes in [Lycidas] were pressed 
 home in a public essay, it should be sufficient to extirpate 
 that kind of verse forever." (vShenstone, Letters, No. 62.) 
 
 " It will be seen that, although the letter p should seem 
 to have been fully recognized," etc. (Prompt. Parv., pref- 
 ace, xlix.) 
 
 The impersonal use of should where, according to 
 analogy, we should look for n^ould I shall not under- 
 take to explain ; for showing what it is and what it 
 is like can hardly be called explanation. It will be 
 Been that in all these examples, instead of shoidd, we 
 might use in some cases ought, in others might, al- 
 though we should in either case not express fully and 
 exactly the sense of the original phrase, in which 
 should conveys something of the sense of each of 
 those words. This use of should, and more rarely of 
 shall, corresponds to that of the German soil, which 
 is used to convey a doabtful or questionable assertion, 
 one for which the speaker does not answer ; as, for 
 sxample, Sie sollen es gethan hahen, which, although 
 ioVeu = shall, means, It is sail that he has done it,
 
 34-4 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 He may have done it. (And yet in a mandatory 
 sense we have Er soil gleich gehen = He shall go in- 
 stantly.) 
 
 This, the subtlest form of this idiom, appears with 
 its most delicate signification in the phrase, now 
 rarely heard or seen, " as who should say." For ex- 
 ample : — 
 
 ■■' As who should say, God hath given you ceremonies, 
 but ye know not the use of them." (Tyndale, Prologue to 
 the Five Books of Moses, 1530, vol. ii., ed. 1828, p. 22.) 
 
 " As who should say, Lo ! thus my strength is tried." 
 (Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 1. 280.) 
 
 " .... as who should say. He would rather they would 
 turn from their wickedness and folly." (Burthogge, Causa 
 Dei, 1675, page 150.) 
 
 This idiom, however, seems not to have been al- 
 ways well apprehended, and would has been used by 
 good writers instead of should. Even Burthogge, 
 quoted above, a learned .writer of excellent English, 
 elsewhere in the same work furnishes the following 
 examples : — 
 
 ". . . . that there is a Blessed Begotten God, as who 
 woidd say, the Son." (Causa Dei, page 257.) 
 
 " As who luordd say, that there is God, the Son," etc. 
 (The same, page 259.) 
 
 So writers of repute give support to the use of 
 "it would seem " and "one would,^^ etc., of which 
 Shenstone furnished an example above, and here are 
 others : — 
 
 " For though one ivould suppose that if it be once sin- 
 cere, had a true original, and was wisely contracted, it 
 ihould," etc. (Palmer, Moml Essays, etc., page 169.) 
 
 " And that, so far from withdrawing into warmer climate^
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 315 
 
 it would appear that they never depart," etc. (White's 
 Natural History of Selborne, Letter 90, October 10, 1781.) 
 " I will only add on this point that it would appear from 
 the constant allusions in our old ballads," etc. (Warter, 
 The Seaboard and the Down, vol. i., p. 115.) 
 
 There seems to be no doubt, however, that in this 
 idiom should — as, "it should seem," "one should 
 suppose," " as who should say " — has a preponder- 
 ance of usage on its side, and that such instances 
 as those given above may be regarded as examples of 
 a deviation from that idiom. 
 
 There is another discrimination between ivoulcl and 
 should which is worthy of attention, particularly as 
 it has been pronounced ujjon by a recent critic with 
 what may appear to have been too little knowledge 
 and too much pretension. The usage referred to is 
 where the verb expressing future action follows and 
 depends upon the expression of a wish or a com- 
 mand ; as, " I request that you will go to your own 
 home," or as in the following sentence from Swift's 
 " Voyage to Lilliput : " — 
 
 " He desired I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs 
 as far asunder as I conveniently could." (Chap, iii.) 
 
 In cases like those above, in which the assertion is 
 direct and personal, the general usage of the best 
 writers is that of will and would.^ But it is by no 
 
 1 The writer referred to above having brought forward a single in- 
 Btance of this usage, I add a gleaning from my memorandums, confining 
 .wyself as before to writers of repute : — 
 
 "To this UI_vsses answered and said : 
 'T was not her fault we came not both together ; 
 She bade me I would not; but," etc. 
 
 (Hobbes, Odyssey, Book VII., 1. 281. i 
 
 "And I made bold to desire ray conductor tiiat he would be p.eased t# 
 ■KplAin." (Swift, Gulliver, Laputa, chap, i.]
 
 84G EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 means universal, even among such writers, and when 
 the construction is impersonal should is used ; as, 
 " It was desired that we should come." A sentence 
 remarked upon in " Words and their Uses " (page 
 269) — 
 
 " . . . . and it was requested that no persons would leave 
 their seats during dinner " — 
 
 is directly at variance with the best English usage, 
 as was therein pointed out. Writing hastily, how- 
 ever, and with too little care, I said that "we request 
 that people shall do thus and so," when the question 
 before me, and which I had in mind, was as to what 
 should follow the impersonal phrase, " it was re- 
 quested," or as to a somewhat similar construction. 
 Whereupon the world was informed that the phrase 
 which I condemned is "perfectly idiomatic;" that 
 my comment is " absurd," except according to " the 
 English of Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York ; " 
 and, moreover, that " neither in Old England nor 
 in New is there a plowboy of ten yeai's old" who 
 could not hei*e set me right. It is comforting to see 
 
 " Therefore I hope the reader will forgive me that I desire he would go 
 to the play called tlae ' Stratagem ' this evening." (Steele, Tatler, No. 3. 
 
 "I shall begin with a very earnest and serious exhortation to all my 
 Well-disposed readers that they would return to the food of their fore- 
 lathers." (Addison, Tatler, No. 148.) 
 
 " Sir Robert has written to Mr. Walpole to desire he would go to Italy." 
 (Gray, Letters, Let. ix.) 
 
 " I desire you would believe that I absolutely assent to your critique.' 
 (Shenstone, Letters, No. 3.) 
 
 " Meanwhile it is our wish that our country loould adopt the healthful 
 pious, and economical practice of what Sir Thomas Browne calls 'thefierr 
 «olutioa.' " (St. John, Anatomy of Society, i. 243.) 
 
 " lie wishes — but he is very ill, so ill he cannot rise from his bed — 
 bat I would go and visit him." (Landor, Pericles and Aspasia, ed. 1842 
 7ol. i., p. 48.) 
 
 " .... at the end of whicii he prayed the prince that he would inter 
 nde in h^« favor with the king." (Helps, Friends in Council, Slavery, 4
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 347 
 
 Giant Despair stumble headlong when he pursues the 
 victims whose bones he means to bieak and to pick. 
 This writer, with all his pai*aded reading, was plainly 
 ignorant of the usage of which here are a few exam- 
 ples : — 
 
 " We desired it should be opened." (Swift, Voyage to 
 Lilliput, chap, ii.) 
 
 " And the Gray made me signs [that is, desired'] that I 
 thotdd walk before him." (Swift, Houyhuhnms, chap, i.) 
 
 " I expect you should send me a congratulatory letter, 
 or, if you please, an epithalamium." (Addison, Spectator, 
 No. 89.) 
 
 "Led in his hand the pimp had brought me 
 Three bouncing wenches, and besought me 
 I should decide the strife, and stop all 
 Their mouths that watered for an apple." 
 
 (Ratcliffe, Wits Paraphrased, ed. 1680, p. 69.) 
 
 " Mr. Mauleverer, who has studied astronomy very care- 
 fully, expressed « wish that in the evening we should come 
 out upon the lake," etc. (Helps, Realmah, chap, viii.) 
 
 " We wish that our good host and hostess should take a 
 little conjugal walk, arm in arm." (The same, cha]). — .) 
 
 " They bm'st in upon the banquet with loud demands that 
 Otho should show himself." (History of Tacitus, translated 
 by A. J. Church, of Oxford, and W. J. Brodrilb, of Cam- 
 bridge.) 
 
 " Receiving a reply in the negative, she desired that she 
 should be sent to her as soon as she came in." (Mrs. Alex- 
 ander, The Wooing O't, chap, xxxiii.) 
 
 With this introduction to a few " English plow- 
 Doys of ten years old," I bid my giant farewell. To 
 my readers I shall venture to say that if they express 
 Loping and wishing and the like with will and would, 
 and command, demand, and mandatory desire with 
 i.hall and should, — for example, "I hoj)e that Mrs. 
 Unwin will invite them to tea," and " I wish that
 
 348 EVERY- -DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Mrs. Unwin ivould invite them to tea ; " but, " He 
 commands that Mrs. Unwin shall invite them to 
 tea," and " He desired that Mrs. Unwin should in- 
 vite them to tea ; " and impersonally, " It is wished 
 that no person shall leave his seat," and " It was re- 
 quested that no persons should leave their seats," — 
 they will not be far from right. 
 
 It has been strongly insisted upon, by men whose 
 learning and ability command the most respectful 
 consideration of their opinions, that the established 
 usage as to shall and will (if indeed it may be re- 
 garded as established) did not prevail until after the 
 Elizabethan period ; and the plays of Shakespeare 
 and of contemporary playwrights, and even the au- 
 thorized translation of the Bible, are appealed to in 
 support of this opinion. Lowth, in his grammar 
 (1763), was, I believe, the first to set forth this opin- 
 ion, which has been since accepted and repeated, par- 
 ticularly by the editors of Shakespeare, to account 
 for the irregularities in this respect which appear in 
 the text of his plays. 
 
 In a deference to such judgments too unquestion- 
 ing, but perhaps becoming, I adopted in my edition 
 of Shakespeare's works the common opinion on this 
 point, — an opinion which subsequent examination 
 of the subject has led me to believe is entirely erro- 
 neous. It seems to me clear now that the shall-and- 
 will idiom was well rooted many generations before 
 Shakespeare wrote, and that he himself fully recog- 
 lized it. In not a few passages in his plays, as in 
 jhose of his contemporaries, it is violated ; but this 
 )s entirely owing to the heedlessness as to "gram- 
 mar," and even as to correctness of style, with which 
 those plays were written, and the carelessness with
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 349 
 
 which they were printed, — a double cause of con- 
 fusion of all kinds as to their language, which, the 
 longer I consider it, the more does it seem to me im- 
 possible to be overrated. 
 
 Tliis position with regard to Shakespeare may fort- 
 unately be proved to reasonable certainty. For in 
 his poems, which he wrote with care and had printed 
 with care, resting upon them alone his literary repu- 
 tation, but which, had they not been buoyed up by his 
 hastily written and utterly neglected plays, produced 
 as mere journey-work for daily bread, would have 
 Bunk into the oblivion of bibliomaniacal collections, 
 . — in those poems and in the sonnets, which he also 
 wrote as literature and circulated among his private 
 friends, there is not a single violation of the estab- 
 lished usage as to this idiom ; not one ; although the 
 four words occur in those writings at least four hun- 
 dred and seventy times.^ It seems to me that this 
 fact as to the poems which Shakespeare wrote with 
 care is decisive as far as he is concerned. But we 
 ai'e not left to such inference. Two younger con- 
 temporaries of Shakespeare, both famous men, have 
 left droll but unmistakable evidence upon this point. 
 George Wither closes his spirited lyric poem, begin- 
 ning, — 
 
 «' Shall I, wasting in despair, 
 Die because a woman 's fair ? " 
 
 with a stanza in which is the following couplet : — 
 
 "If she love me, then believe 
 I will die ere she shall grieve," — 
 
 a couplet much in favor with all women. Now Ben 
 
 ' To this conclusion my own examination of the poems and sonnets 
 had brought me some years ago; and I am now strengthened and built up 
 »^ it by the publication of Mrs. Horace Howard Furness's Concordane* 
 to Shakespeare's Poems. Mrs. Furness gives every word in the poems.
 
 350 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Jonson wrote a burlesque parody of this poem ; and 
 the couplet corresponding to the one above is this: — 
 
 " If slie hate me, then believe 
 She shall die ere I will grieve." 
 
 The distinction between shall and will could not 
 have a more marked recognition. And beginning 
 with the two other more celebrated dramatists of 
 the Elizabethan era, Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
 going backward, I shall quote a series of passages, 
 each characteristic of its author's use of this idiom, 
 which will, I think, make it clear that shall and will 
 came into the language, distinguished from each other, 
 at the earliest period of which we have any record, 
 and that they have been used for centuries with nearly, 
 if not exactly, the same force in combination with 
 other verbs which they now have, although they had 
 also, when not so combined, their primitive meaning.^ 
 
 Git. Come, Nell, shall we go ? the play 's done. 
 
 Wife. Nay, by my faith, George, I have more manners 
 than so ; / '// speak to these gentlemen first. I thank you 
 all, gentlemen, for your patience and countenance to Ralph, 
 a poor fatherless child ! and if I might see you at my 
 house it should go hard but I would have a pottle of wine 
 and a pipe of tobacco for you ; for truly I hope you do 
 Uke the youth ; but I woidd be glad to know the truth : I 
 refer it to your own discretions, whether you will applaud 
 him or no ; for I will wink, and, whilst, you shall do what 
 you will. — I thank you with all my heart. God give you 
 good night ! — Come, George. (Beaumont and Fletcher 
 EpUogue to Knight of Burning Pestle.) 
 
 Do you think ■v'^e shall do well ? 
 Hon. Why, what should ail us ? 
 ([•"letcher, The Loyal Subject, Act III., Scene 6.) 
 
 1 [ will add that a careful examination of all the numerous letters by 
 various writers in the Memoirs of Sir Christoj)her Nation, Queen Eliza- 
 beUi's dancing Lord Chancellor, has put me in [lossessiou of a mass of evi 
 dence which coiifirni> this conclusion.
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 351 
 
 " Where I would say, I will punish thee, that all the 
 w^orld shall take an example of thee, there the Jew ivould 
 say, I will circumcise thee," etc. (Tyndale, Prologues, etc., 
 1530, ed. 1828, p. 40.) 
 
 " For hee assureth you that all shcdl be well. T assure 
 him, quod the Archebishoppe, be it as well as it will, it will 
 never be so well as we have seene it." (Sir Thomas IMore, 
 Richard III., ed. Singer, p. 29.) 
 
 " Then shall we by myne advice and the kynges author- 
 itye fetclie hym out of the prisone." (The same, page 38.) 
 
 "• . . . so farre out of ioynt that it shold never be brought 
 in frame agayne. Whiche stryfe if it shoulde happe as it were 
 iykelye to come to a fickle .... yet shoulde the authoritie 
 be on that side," etc. (The same, page 33.) 
 
 " For thouz men schulden be iugis, zit so must thei be bi 
 uce of the said resoun and doom of resoun and if this be 
 trewe, who schulde thaune better, or so weel, use, demene 
 and execute this resoun and the said doom, as schulde the 
 men which han spende so miche labour," etc. (Pecock, 
 Repressor, a. d. 1450, vol. i., p. 86, apud Olyphant.) 
 
 " Now wolde sorn men wayten, as I gesse, 
 That I schulde tellen al the purveyance." 
 
 (Chaucer, Man of Lawes Tale, L 148.) 
 " And tome I wol ayein to mj- matiere." 
 
 (The same, 1. 224.) 
 " The lyf schulde rather out of my body sterte 
 Or Makametes law go out of myn herte 
 What schal us tyden of this newe lawe 
 But thraldom ? " etc 
 
 (The same, 1. 237.) 
 "But lordes, wol ye maken assuraunce 
 As I schal seyn, assenting to my lore 
 And I schal make us sauf for evermore ? " 
 
 (The same, 1. 243.) 
 " Or that the wild wawe wo' hir dryve 
 Unto the place ther as sche schal arryve." 
 
 (The same, 1. 370.) 
 *' But what sche was, sche wolde no man seye 
 for foal ne fair, though that she scholde deye." 
 
 (The same, 1. 427.)
 
 352 EVEEY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Between Chaucer and Mandeville the Wyckliffite 
 translation of the Bible is in place ; but I omit the 
 passages I had marked for quotation, because in no 
 respect does the authoritative, declarative, and pro- 
 phetic character of the sacred writings more affect 
 language than in regard to the verbs expressive of 
 future tiuie. Hence will and would are of compara- 
 tively rare occurrence, even in our " authorized " 
 translation. Tyndale, to whom we owe most of the 
 shalls in that version, used will and would freely in 
 his own miscellaneous writings. To go on backward 
 with examples : — 
 
 " But zif it lyke zou I schalle shewe how zee schulle 
 knowe and preve, to the ende that zee schulle not ben 
 flisceyved. Fnst ze schulle wel knowe that the naturelle 
 
 bawme is fulle deer And undrestondethe, that zif ye 
 
 wil putte a litylle bawme iu the pawme of zoure bond, etc. 
 .... and zif it be naturelle bawme, anon it wole take and 
 beclippe the mylk." (Sir John Mandeville, A. d. 1356.) 
 
 " Forthi flrede delitable drynke* and thow shall do bettere." 
 " Tliat is the wrecclied worlde* looldihe: bitraj'e." 
 "And for thou sholdest ben ywar* I wisse the the beste." 
 " The clerkes that kenneth this- shulde keiine it about." 
 "Kynges & knigtes- shulde kepe it bi resoun." 
 " But holden with him & with hir* that wolden al treuthe." i 
 "And alle that worche with wrongc wenden hij shulle 
 After her deth day and dwelle with that shrewe. 
 Ac tho that worche wel* .... 
 
 .... shal wend to heuene." 
 "No dedlj' synne to do- dey thog thow sholdest." 
 " For the same mesiires that ge mete" amys other elles 
 Ge shullen ben weyen ther-wyth" whan ye wende hennes." 
 
 (Piers the Plowman, a. d. 13G2, passus \\.,pa$rim.) 
 'Knelynge, conscience- to the kynge louted, 
 To wite what his wille were* and what he do shulde. 
 * Wcltow wedde this woman,' quod the kynge ; 'gif I wil assente ' ? " 
 
 (The same, passus iv., 1. 116 ) 
 " He sal be king of kinges alle 
 To hend and fete we sal him falle
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 853 
 
 Gais, he said, and spirs well gem 
 And quen ye funden haf the bam 
 Cums agen and tels me 
 For wit wirschip I wil him se." 
 
 (Cursor Mundi, A. d. 1320, apud Morris, page 72.) 
 ' T shai the shewe a pryuyt4 
 A thyng that thou shalt do to me; 
 y wyl that tho uo manhj't telle; 
 
 But thou do thus, y wyl be wroth, 
 And thou and thyne shal be me loth. 
 Zif thou do hyt y shall the zj'ue," etc. 
 (Robert of Brunne, A. D. 1303, Handlyng Synne, 11. 5750-5759.) 
 
 ** Wonne hit and holdeth zut* icholle telle in wuch manere. 
 
 that he ne ssolde abbe in al Engelond* an hurne to wite him ione. 
 
 And zif thou me woH seche in Engelond* ne be thou nozt so stume 
 Siker thou be, tho ne ssalt me* finde in none hurne 
 Thou William hurde that he woldc susteine is trecherie. 
 
 William, and alle hia 
 That into this bataile mid him ssolde i wis." 
 
 (Robert of Gloucester, a. d. 1298, ed. Heam, vii. 30, 31, 61.) 
 
 "Herknet to me gode men 
 Wiues, maydnes, and alle men 
 Of a tale that ich j'ou wile telle 
 Wo so wile here, and therto duelle. 
 
 Here y schal begiunen a rym 
 
 Burwes, tunes, sibbe and fremde 
 That thider sholden comen swithe 
 Til him and heren tithandes blithe 
 That he hem alle shuhle telle: 
 Of hem ne wolde neuere on dwelle." 
 (Havelok, about A. d. 1280, ed. Skeat, U. 1-4, 21, 2277-2281.) 
 
 " Ich chulle vor the luve of the nimen this fiht upon me. 
 
 . . . Ich wot thauh for sothe thet ich schal bitweonen ham 
 undervongen deathes wunde, and ich hit wulle heortelichte 
 vorte ofgon thine heorte." (Ancren Riwle, A. d. 1220, ed. 
 Cam. Soc, p. 388.) 
 
 " ich the teleen wille mine wille 
 
 ich wUh delen mine riche 
 23
 
 154 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and thou schalt worden wenchen 
 
 and wunian in wanside 
 
 for navere ich ne wende 
 
 that thu me woldes thus scandea 
 
 tharfore thu scalt beon daed ic wene: 
 
 fliz out of mei eseh sene 
 
 thine sustren sculen habbere mi kinlour." 
 
 (Layamon's Brut, A. D. 1200-1210.1) 
 " Forr thatt I wollde blitheliz 
 Thatt all Ennglisshe lede 
 Withth tere shollde lisstenn itt 
 Withth herrte shollde it trowenn, 
 
 & ziff thezz wilenn herenn itt, 
 
 & foUzhenn itt withth dede 
 
 Ice hafe hemm hollpenn unnderr Crist 
 
 To winnenn thezzre berrhless 
 
 & I shall hafenn forr min swinnc," etc. 
 
 (The Ormulum, A. d. 1200, 11. 131-143.) 
 •' cwseth tht the hehsta 
 hatan sceolde 
 satan siththan." 
 
 (CsBdmon, It. 18.) 
 " nu wille ic eft tham lize near 
 Satan ic tha;r secan wille.^' 
 
 (The same, xiiL 35.) 
 *' to hwon sculon wit weorthan nu." 2 
 
 (The same, ziii. 38.]* 
 '* On geredae hmta 
 God almeyottig 
 tha he walde 
 on galgu gi stiga " 8 
 (Stephens, Bunic Monuments, i. 405, Ruth well Runes, aboat A. D. 680.) 
 
 1 Layamon is filled full of illustrations of the shall-and-will idioia 
 Hure is haidly a score of lines in which the distinction is not made. 
 ^ Saith that the highest 
 Be called should 
 Satan since then. 
 
 Now will I again the flame near 
 Satan I there will seek. 
 
 What shall now become of a* 7 
 • Engirded him 
 God Almighty 
 When he would 
 On gallows ascend.
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 355 
 
 This is but a small selection from the passages 
 which I had chosen as examples. If they are char- 
 acteristic, as I believe they are, it seems clear that 
 the opinion that the shall-and-will idiom is of com- 
 paratively late establishment is not well founded, but 
 that the usage dates from the very earliest period of 
 the language ; and that any deviations from it must 
 be attributed to the carelessness or the ignorance of 
 writers and scribes, and afterwards of printers. I 
 have added the passages from Csedmon and the Ruth- 
 well Runes because, although shall and will, particu- 
 larly the latter, have doubtless in Anglo-Saxon less 
 of the so-called " auxiliary " character than they have 
 in modern English, I venture, although with some 
 hesitation, to express the opinion that they have much 
 more of it than seems to have been generally sup- 
 posed. 
 
 As to the original meaning of these words, which 
 is the germ of the idiom, that of will is plain enough 
 to any reader. Shall (Anglo-Saxon, sceal) had its 
 signification of "owe" — which it retained even 
 later, I think, than the date of Chaucer's well-known 
 '* I shal to God " ^ — in this way. It is the perfect 
 tense of a Gothic verb skulan, to kill, and thus means 
 originally, " I have killed," and therefore, according 
 to the old Teutonic law, I owe the fine for having 
 killed a man, the wer-geld ; hence, I owe generally. 
 This is Grimm's etymology, and the only one yet 
 brought forward that seems to meet the case. 
 
 As to the misuse of this idiom, which some Eng- 
 lishmen are fond of setting up as a shibboleth against 
 
 1 " Frende, as I am trewe knyghi, 
 
 And by that feith I shal to God and vow, 
 I hadde it nevere halfe so hoote as now." 
 
 (Troylus and Cryseyde, Book IIL, stanza 229. |
 
 356 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Yankees as well as against Irishmen and Scotsmen, 
 and wliicli some pedantic Yankees, more English 
 than the English themselves, find in its purity in the 
 mouths of babes and sucklings and among plowmen, 
 I proposed to give in this chapter a long series of 
 plain, unmistakable examples of its misuse by Eng- 
 lish writers of which I have memorandums scattered 
 upon the fly-leaves of my books. But my readers I 
 am sure will be quite content that I should spare my 
 labor, and give only the following, from Cowley, 
 Richard Burthogge, Samuel Shaw (the Puritan di- 
 vine), Steele, Addison, Swift, Samuel Palmer, Shen- 
 stone, Burke, Landor, Robert Blake}^, and Sydney 
 Smith, — hardly either babes or plow-boys : — 
 
 "I met with several great persons, whom I liked very 
 well, but could not perceive that any part of their great- 
 ness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would 
 
 [should] be glad or content to be in a storm A 
 
 storm would not agree with my stomach." (Cowley, Es- 
 says, ed. 1868, page 122.) 
 
 " Such a Protector we have had as we would [should] 
 have been glad to have changed for an enemy." (The 
 "»ame, page 136.) 
 
 ". . . . as who should say, He would rather they would 
 "should, — in Absolution, Common Prayer Book, "may"] 
 lurn from their wickedness and folly and live." (Bur- 
 thogge, Causa Dei, or Apology for God, 1675, page 156.) 
 
 " Oh, it is enough ; we see that there are pleasant things 
 in that land ; we will [s/m//] never come at it." (Samuel 
 8haw, Voice of One Crying, etc., reprint, 1746, page 118.) 
 
 " After a short silence he told me he did not know how 
 [ woxdd [should] take what he was going to say." (Swift, 
 Ilouyhnhiims, chap, x.) 
 
 •' Had it been otherwise you may be sure I would [should^ 
 not have pretended to have given for news," etc. (Steele. 
 Tatler, No. 7.)
 
 SHALL AND WILL. 357 
 
 " But if vVe look into the English comedies above men- 
 tioned, we would [should] think they were formed upon 
 quite a contrary maxim." (Addison, Spectator, 446.) 
 
 "The reasons for contentment are invincible unless we 
 will [would] quarrel with the order of nature, which has 
 determined that some shall be poor." (Palmer, Moral Es- 
 Bays, chap, cxxix.) 
 
 " I should be heartily glad if you would come and live 
 with me for any space of time that you could find conven- 
 ient. But I loill [shall] depend on your coming over with 
 Mr. Whistler in the spring." (Shenstone, Letters, No. 
 39, ed. 1769.) 
 
 " I would [should] be glad if Mr. were, upon your 
 
 request, to give his opinion of particulars." (The same, 
 No. 40.) 
 
 " If this passion was simply painful, we would [should] 
 shun with the greatest care all persons and places that 
 could excite such a passion." (Burke, Sublime and Beau- 
 tiful, Part I., Section 14.) 
 
 " As an opiate or spirituous liquors shall [will] suspend 
 the operations of grief, or fear, or anger, in bpite of all our 
 eflEorts," etc. (The same, iv. 4.) 
 
 " I woidd [should] wish to commence a new epoch in the 
 composition of introductory chapters." (I says, says I, 
 Cond. 1812, introd. chap.) 
 
 " He promises me it will [shall] soon be ready to sail," 
 ftc. (Laudor, Pericles and Aspasia, page 251.) 
 
 " . . . . how awfully would [should] I pause before I 
 fccnt forth the flame and the sword," etc. (Sydney Smith, 
 p. Plymly's Letters.) 
 
 " I proposed to Dr. Paley and our two Italian friends 
 that we tvould [should] leave the Tweed." (Blakey, Old 
 Faces in New Masks, page 311.) 
 
 Let us, then, should we make a slip, possess our 
 aouls in patience, and not bewail ourselves that wa 
 are uttei-ly lost to English idiom. For he must be aD
 
 558 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 insufficiently informed critic of English literature who 
 does not know that even the most thorough-bred 
 English writers themselves have (as I have somewhat 
 Bhown above) not always been able to use shall and 
 will^ and particularly should and would, without some 
 Bhilly-shallying between them.
 
 WORDS AND PHRASES.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 
 
 I USED sometimes to go for oatmeal and milk to 
 one of those unpretending eating-houses which are 
 called dairies, because at first their customers were 
 fed only on a diet of milk and of bread or porridge. 
 They have not yet been dignified with the French 
 name restaura7it, introduced by those who would 
 be elegant, and who would avoid both the simple 
 " eating-house " arid the old-fashioned " ordinary," 
 the latter of which I remember having seen in my 
 boyhood, in New York, on the signs of the eating- 
 houses then in the wide part of Fulton Street which 
 stretches between Water Street and the river. 
 
 As I was one day sitting in this dairy, ruminating 
 over my fodder, perhaps also in a Jacques mood, 
 ' chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy," ^ 1 
 was startled by hearing, in a sharp and rather nosey 
 foice, the assertion, in a discontented and positive 
 tone, " I don't call this very pop'lar pie." 
 
 The extraordinary nature of this declaration roused 
 me from my musing. It was addressed, as I found, 
 to a pretty, fair-haired waitress by a lad, or, as he 
 doubtless regarded himself, young man, or, better, 
 young gentleman. A glance at his face showed me 
 
 1 I believe that Shakespeare wrote "chewing the cud of sweet and bit- 
 ter fancy," and that the presence of food in the old text is owing to the 
 oronunciation of Mas oo. {See Memorandums of English Pronunciation 
 •n the Elizabethan Period, vol. xii. of my edition of Shakespeare, 1863. 
 K change of the text is, however, hardly warranted.
 
 362 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 that he was perfectly serious, and that he was quite 
 unaware that what he had said was of any impor- 
 tance, except in so far as it expressed his opinion of 
 the compound that lay before him, ruda indigestaque 
 moles. I had expected to find the speaker something 
 of a wag, and to see in a twitch of the eyelid, a slight 
 twist of the mouth, or at least in a determinedly va- 
 cant and stolid look of the whole face, an indication 
 of the consciousness of di-y humor. I saw nothing of 
 the kind. He was a chap some eighteen or twenty 
 years old, who, in an inked and draggled linen coat, 
 with his hat on the back of his head, a pen behind his 
 ear, a long, heavenly blue satin neck-tie, and a large 
 amethyst ring on the little finger of his right hand, 
 had come in for his dinner of " roas beef lean an well 
 done na cuppa coughy," to which he had added, by 
 way of dessert or banquet, " up piece up eye." His 
 declaration as to the segment of sodden dough and 
 half-stewed " sass " with which he was about to af- 
 flict his bowels, that it was not popular, had no ref- 
 erence whatever to the favor with which it was re- 
 garded by the public at large, or even by that part 
 of the public which frequented that particular eating- 
 bouse. He meant merely that he found it not to his 
 liking ; that it was not good ; and therefore he an- 
 nounced his inability to pronounce it popular. 
 
 It was the first time, I am willing to believe, that 
 this word had ever been publicly used in that sense ; 
 and yet he was as unconscious that he had perpe- 
 trated a neologism as an honest German near by was 
 that he had illustrated Grimm's law by calling for 
 " bork und peans." To him popular meant good. 
 From the very beginning of his knowledge of words 
 tie had heard and seen this word used in a way which,
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 363 
 
 as he did not know its real meaning, led him to take 
 it in the sense of excellent. A good thing was popu' 
 lar; a bad thing, unpopular. A popular measure, a 
 popular man, a popular book, meant to him a good 
 measure, a good man, a good book. Of the connec- 
 tion of popular and popularity with populous he was 
 probably as thoughtless as he was ignorant of their 
 connection with populus. His extraordinary perver- 
 sion of the word was a striking illustration of the 
 effect produced by the constant reference to the opin- 
 ion of " the people " as a criterion of merit in all 
 things, from pies to presidents. 
 
 This effect has come (for although the use of the 
 word in his sense has, I believe, never been remarked, 
 there are doubtless hundreds of thousands of persons 
 to whom it has that meaning or nearly that) from 
 an ignorance or a disregard of its essential meaning, 
 and a fastening of the attention upon an idea alto- 
 gether adventitious and incidental.^ It is in this way 
 that words are distorted from their true functions, 
 and that language becomes so confused that people 
 who have not the same intellectual training, and who 
 do not breathe the same social atmosphere, rarely 
 talk together without some misunderstanding, of 
 more or less importance. 
 
 There are two words, for example, gentleman and 
 lady, which in this country are, to all intents and 
 purposes, without any generally accepted meaning. 
 Among certain people they have one meaning, among 
 certain other people quite another ; and so divergent 
 are these meanings that, unless you know the person 
 
 1 Soon after the publication of this chapter in its original form, I re» 
 ceived letters from two correspondents at the West, informing me thai 
 they had heard the word used by uneducated people there in the sense ol 
 good, excellent.
 
 364 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 with whom you speak so well that you can put your- 
 Belf in his place and assume his habits of thought, 
 you cannot understand exactly what he means by the 
 phrases a perfect gentleman and a perfect lady. The 
 only meaning common to all who use them is their 
 distinction of sex : they distinguish man from woman; 
 two creatures that seem to have disappeared, almost, 
 from the western world, except among people of the 
 highest culture and simplest manners. Do we not 
 see often the advertisement which announces that " a 
 sales lady " offers her services to any one who may 
 be in need of them ? Does not the gentlemanly con- 
 ductor ask us to move up in the bulging street-car, 
 and " let in this lady," as Bridget McQuean, smelling 
 slightly of pipe and poteen, struggles at the car door 
 with her basket of clothes ? Far be it from me to 
 insinuate that Bridget is not a perfect lady ; for I 
 should thereby run the risk of having my head 
 broken by Patrick, her husband, whom the conductor 
 would also call a gentleman ; chiefly, however, because 
 it is not my business here to draw social distinctions, 
 but only verbal ones. There are some people whose 
 ideal of a perfect gentleman is a man who pays his 
 bills without question the first time they are pre- 
 sented ; tried by which test, I fear there are some of 
 us who would fail sadly in the article of our gentry. 
 A waiter's ideal of a perfect gentleman is a man who 
 orders a good dinner, and, paying for it, gives him all 
 the change under a dollar ; and I know a woman of 
 V^ery excellent sense and breeding whose notion of a 
 perfect gentleman is a man that never speaks to her in 
 the street without taking his hat quite off, and does 
 •lot sit in her presence until she does him the honor 
 •o request him to do so. Perliaps the waiter's criterion
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 365 
 
 is quite as reasonable as hers. Twenty years ago the 
 South honestly believed that there were very few gen- 
 tlemen in the North ; and perhaps the most unexcep- 
 tionable definition of a gentleman might then have 
 been given, if the giver could have put his idea into 
 words, by an old Southern negro house servant, who 
 for all his life had served masters hardly better man- 
 nered than himself. 
 
 But it is not as to the meaning of such words and 
 phrases only that there is confusion. The great dif- 
 ficulty in most discussions in general society is the 
 misapprehension of terms. To various people the 
 same words have different shades of meaning, and 
 even meanings widely different. This is so much the 
 case that intelligent and good-natured argument upon 
 subjects of common interest is often found impossible. 
 The disputants exasperate each other by what seem 
 to them mutually to be willful perversions of lan- 
 guage ; the fact being merely that words really have 
 to them different significations. The first step in all 
 discussion should be the settlement of the exact 
 meaning of terms in regard to the matter in dispute ; 
 and it will generally be found that this in itself in- 
 volves no little discussion, and that the various ap- 
 prehension of those terms makes rational and satis- 
 factory discussion very difficult. The higher the 
 culture of the disputants, the less of this difficulty 
 will be found. Discussions among scholars and scien- 
 tific men are comparatively easy and satisfactory, be- 
 cause they have a common and a clear idea of the 
 meaning of the words they use. But yet there is 
 good ground for Moliere's satire when he makes Dr. 
 Pancrace rave when Dr. Marphurius speaks to him of 
 *;he form of a hat, when he should say the figure oj
 
 866 EVERY-L>AY ENGLISH. 
 
 a hat.^ The wide diffusion of a loose or merely lit- 
 erate acquaintance with the terms of science, of phi- 
 losophy, and of criticism has increased this difficulty 
 BO much of late years that, as I have previously men- 
 tioned, some intelligent men, whose sensitive natures 
 shrink from wrangling, eschew social discussion al- 
 together. Thus, the influence of this restriction is 
 added to many others which tend to that diminu- 
 tion of the higher style of conversation which has for 
 many years been among the negative forces in the 
 deterioration of the pleasures of society. 
 
 It will be found that the words as to the meaning 
 of which there is this divergent apprehension are 
 mostly Latin words, more or less Englished in their 
 endings. Perhaps all words are subject in some de- 
 gree to this misapprehension and perversion, but those 
 jf Romanic or Latin origin are more so than truly 
 English words, because of the imperfect and, so to 
 Bpeak, stranger-like apprehension of their meaning 
 by the mass of the people. 
 
 1 Sgnnarelle. Et quoi encore ? 
 
 Pancrace. Un ipfnorant m'a volu soutenir une proposition erron^e, nne 
 proposition ^pouvantable, effroj'able, extoable. 
 
 S. Puis-je demander ce que c'est ? 
 
 P. Ah ! seigneur Sganarelle, tout est reverse aujourd'hui, et le monde 
 est tomb^ dans une corruption g^n^rale : une licence ^pouvantable r^gne 
 partout; et les magistrats qui sont ^tablis pour maintenir I'ordre dans cet 
 Etat devraient mourir de honte en souffrant un scandale aussi intolerable 
 que celui dont je veux parler. 
 
 8. Quoi done ? 
 
 P. N'est-ce pas une chose horrible, une chose qui cri vengeance au ciel, 
 que d'endurer qu'on disc publiquement la forme d'un chapeau? 
 
 8. Comment? 
 
 P. Je soutiens qu'il faut dire la figure d'un chapeau, et uon pas !a 
 forme: d'autant qu'il y a cettc difference entre la forme et la figure, quo 
 la forme est la disposition extdrieure des corps qui sont animds, et la figure 
 a disposition ext^rieure des corps qir. sont inanini^s: et puisque le cha- 
 peau es- un corps iiianim<?, il faut dire la figure d'un chapeau, et non pas la 
 ornip. 
 
 (Le Mariage Forc^, Scene vi.)
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 367 
 
 Really to understand and rightlj'^ to use the whole 
 vocabulary of what (apart from all technical words) 
 has been called English for a very long time requires 
 jome knowledge of the Latin language. Evidence 
 of this condition of things comes out very plainly 
 when persons whose education has not included some 
 study of that language, or constant intercourse with 
 highly cultivated people (no small or inferior part 
 of education), undertake to use the Latin part of 
 our modern so-called English language. If they can 
 do so without striking blunders, they very rarely es- 
 cape without showing a misapprehension of the true, 
 that is the radical, meaning of some one or more of 
 the Romanic words they use. They stumble into 
 some sort of "popular pie," and very often into some- 
 thing much worse. Wits and humorists have felt 
 this, although they may not have had a clear ap- 
 prehension of its cause. The blunders of the Mrs. 
 Quicklys, the Mrs. Malaprops, the Mrs. Partingtons, 
 and their kind will be found to be almost wholly in 
 the Latin part of the language. In long English 
 words their brains or tongues are not entangled ; 
 but a two-syllable word of Latin origin trips them 
 headlong. 
 
 A somewhat close observation has given me reason 
 to believe that many intelligent people, not in the 
 humbler conditions of life, consciously fail to under- 
 Btand, or unsuspectingly misunderstand, not a little 
 m the sermons and the speeches which they hear, and 
 ,in the leading articles which they read. They say 
 nothing about the matter, and they listen and read on, 
 antil by and by they get some notion of the meanings 
 jf the words which are at first mere sounds to them ; 
 out it is generally a vague and often a mistakec
 
 368 E VERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 notion, like supposing popular to mean good, because 
 goodness is a commonly assumed element in popu- 
 larity. I have no doubt that could we think the 
 thoughts of a very large proportion of the general 
 public — those who have received only a common- 
 school education, their schooling having ended at the 
 twelfth or fourteenth year — we should find that in 
 their i*eading and hearing they more or less mistake 
 at least one in ten of the Romanic words used by a 
 writer or a speaker. I am sure that such persons 
 might listen for an hour to the talk of those of 
 higher education, when the topics led away from the 
 word-paths of simple English, and not really under- 
 stand what they said, much better than if they spoke 
 French or Latin, although the speakers themselves 
 would not be at all conscious of anything outlandish 
 or even unusual in their speech. 
 
 Quite another matter is that failure both of appre- 
 hension and of comprehension which is a consequence 
 of the remoteness of a subject from the mind of the 
 hearer or the reader ; in which case it is the thoughts 
 and the relations of the thoughts that are strange and 
 out of reach. This, by the bye, has one remarkable 
 result. I have read repeatedly, and to various per- 
 sons, whose intelligence and information were much 
 above the common, passages from the works of writ- 
 ers on moral philosophy and mental physiology, which 
 contained no unusual words, and every word of which, 
 KS used ordinarily, my hearers clearly understood, 
 and have been frankly told that they could not un- 
 derstand the passages at all ; that the words, although 
 they had a familiar sound, conveyed no meaning what, 
 ever to them ; and that I might as well have read ta 
 them in a foreign language.
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 369 
 
 This phenomenon has relations with a fact which 
 has not been remarked upon, to my knowledge, but 
 which is worthy of observation : that not a little of 
 our readiness at understanding what we hear depends 
 upon its being in some degree what we expect to 
 hear. When an answer to a question is entirely 
 from the purpose, we often actually fail in under- 
 standing the words addressed to us, or, as we may 
 think, in hearing them. 
 
 It is not, however, to that failure to understand 
 which is the consequence of strangeness in the sub- 
 ject written or spoken of, that I have referred, but to 
 that which is the consequence of the mere use of 
 words foreign to the hearer. For example, I know 
 that the servants that wait on us at table often un- 
 derstand almost as little of what we say in our talk 
 over even the most common topics of the day as 
 if we were speaking in a foreign language. I say 
 that I know this because I have made experiments 
 which enable me to know it. And I have had, in 
 an ofi&cial position, occasion to remark, in intelligent 
 and capable marine officers and persons engaged in 
 mechanical pursuits, as great an inability to appre- 
 hend the meaning of words and phrases which are <5f 
 common occurrence in literature and in the every- 
 day speech of educated people as there is among 
 people in general to understand the technical phrases 
 of seamanship or mechanics. And the words thus 
 misapprehended, if not quite misunderstood, are al- 
 most always words of Latin origin ; which shows, as 
 I have said, that for the clear apprehension and un- 
 derstanding of the English language as it is now 
 Bpoken and written, some acquaintance with the Latin 
 language is necessary. 
 
 24
 
 370 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 This, I am informed, is not the case in Germany 
 Highly educated Germans, it need hardly be said, 
 use a vocabulary much more copious and varied than 
 that used by those of their countrymen who are not 
 BO educated, — an unavoidable consequence of the 
 wider range and subtler character of their thought. 
 But owing to the fact that this vocabulary is mostly 
 formed by combinations of German words, and not 
 by importations from the Latin and Greek, the Ger- 
 man of humbler grade, if he apprehends the meaning 
 of what he hears or reads at all, apprehends it cor- 
 rectly. His mind strikes at once at the radical, 
 central, vital meaning of the word that he hears ; he 
 does not fumble with some much deflected or merely 
 adventitious or allusive signification. And thus there 
 is in the German of every-day life much less of that 
 double character which is so striking a trait of the 
 English language. There is not in the former that 
 divergence between the speech of the cultivated and 
 the uncultivated which there is in the latter, even in 
 these days of what is called popular education. The 
 same is also measurably true of the Romanic lan- 
 guages, the French, Spanish, and Italian, which are 
 to a great degree homogeneous. And here it may 
 be remarked that much of what seems to us inflated 
 in the daily speech of the Latin peoples is not rightly 
 Bubject to that reproach. Our homely every-day 
 Bpeech is English, or "Anglo-Saxon," so called; and 
 to speak in a general way, we reserve our words of 
 Romanic origin for great subjects and great occa- 
 Bions. But with the Latin peoples the correspondent 
 Romanic words form in a great measure their homely 
 every-day speech. 
 
 To return to our " popular pie." How great is
 
 " POPULAR PIE." 371 
 
 the apparent change in the meaning of popular from 
 the time when there was no incongruity in the ques- 
 tion which Shakespeare puts into Pistol's mouth, 
 " Art thou base, common, and popular ? " ^ to the 
 present, when it is used by some persons to express 
 the most desired condition or quality in a man. or a 
 thing ! And yet there has been really no change 
 whatever in the meaning of the word, rightly used. 
 It is the thing which the word means that has 
 
 1 Pistol, it is true, is a fantastic speaker, and asks the grade or rank of 
 the person whom he addresses; but there are instances enough of the use 
 of popular in a derogatory sense. So late as 1631 Shirley wrote, in the 
 Prologue to Love in a Maze, — 
 
 " That Muse whose song within another sphere 
 Hath pleasM some, and of the best, whose ear 
 Is able to distinguish strains that are 
 Clear and Phoebean, from the popular 
 And sinful dregs of the adulterate brain," etc. 
 Popularity expressed at first the disposition of the person to whom it WM 
 applied, rather than the disposition of the people toward him : — 
 
 "We observe him, 
 His popularity : how affable 
 He 's to the people; his hospitality 
 Which adds unto his love." 
 (Thomas Hey wood, The Royal King, 1595-1600, Act I., Scene 1.) 
 But in less than half a century popular was applied to a man loved by 
 the people for good qualities. Massinger's Fatal Dowry, written cer- 
 tainly before 1632, and probably before 1620, furnishes us with the follow- 
 ing example of its use : — 
 
 " Now you do see her made another man's. 
 And such a man's, so good, so popular! " 
 
 (Act II., Scene 2.) 
 5ret, as we have seen, Shirlej', Massinger's younger contemporary', uses 
 it in a derogatory sense. Clarendon, writing in the third quarter of the 
 seventeenth century, Cavalier as he was, never uses it in such a way, but 
 with almost its proper modern meaning, — generally acceptable to the 
 people. The following passage, in which Clarendon defines his meaning, 
 is interesting: "He [Hampden] was indeed a very wise rflan, and of 
 great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of popularity, that 
 is, the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man I ever 
 knew." (Book VII., vol. iv., p. 35., ed. 183S ) F.ven now in the mouths of 
 toen of science, men of letters, and f hilosophers, popular conveys a senat 
 Jf disparagement.
 
 872 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 changed ; and the apparent change is merely the 
 Bign of a political and social revolution. Popular 
 means merely that which belongs to, is suited to, ot 
 originates with the people, the populace. This sense, 
 in its bare utterance, was at first derogatory. To be 
 popular was to be base, low, contemptible ; and to 
 the word populace there still clings a derogatory 
 sense, notwithstanding the revolution which has made 
 popular a word of approbation. The apparent change 
 in the meaning of the latter word has been brought 
 about by the fact that the people have risen morally 
 and intelleetuall}^, and in consideration ; so that what 
 wins general, that is populai', favor is now something 
 much higher and better than it was three hundred 
 years ago, when popular first came into use. But 
 the word now means rightly just what it did then, — 
 that which pertains to, comes from, or pleases the 
 people ; and whether that is intrinsically good or 
 bad depends upon the moral and intellectual condi- 
 tion of the people. For the expression of the rela- 
 tion to the people of that to which it is applied, it 
 is rightly used ; but its use to mean absolutely good, 
 or worthy of approbation, is a degradation and con- 
 fusion of language. A popular measure, meaning a 
 wise measure, or a popular man, meaning an admi- 
 rable man, is not a whit more defensible than pop- 
 ular pie, meaning good pie. The word, indeed, is 
 never so used by good writers and speakers ; but who 
 shall say what a not very distant future may have 
 in store for us in this respect? If good writers and 
 speakers should so use it, we should have to submit 
 to its use, just as we are obliged to put up with many 
 other wrongs. But they are not the less wrong be* 
 cause we are obliged to submit to them ; and so the
 
 " POPULAR PIE." 373 
 
 nse of popular or of any other word without regard 
 to its essential meaning is a wrong. 
 
 There are other words the sense of which is now 
 beginning to be perverted before our very eyes, or 
 rather in our very ears. We see upon the bulletin 
 boards of certain newspapers, day after day, the an- 
 nouncement of an Extra ; and newsboys run about in 
 the afternoons crying their " extrys." One day I 
 meekly addressed one of these ragged news Mercurys, 
 who in a street car summoned me to buy his extra, 
 and asked, " My boy, what makes you call that an 
 extra? Tell nie what an extra is." [Promptly.] 
 " Dunno. [Reflectively.] Extry 's somethin' sella 
 fuss-rate. [Eagerly.] Want one?" I did not want 
 one ; but I went through the motions as if I did, 
 and he left the car content with his first experience 
 in making an acquaintance with what some people 
 call philology. His notion of an extra was, I am 
 inclined to think, not very different from that of 
 many newspaper publishers, who announce any num- 
 ber which contains a somewhat unusual supply of 
 " sensational " or " emotional " matter as an extra. 
 
 An extra is " something beyond " (the ordinary, 
 understood) ; and an extra number of a newspaper 
 is one beyond the ordinary and regular publication. 
 The war caused such to be issued from many offices 
 two or three times a week, and even at some crises as 
 many times a day. They were sold by the hundreds 
 of thousands. This continued through four years, 
 with great profit to the publishers of newspapers, who 
 began to regard an extra merely as something that 
 ' sold first-rate ; " and when the war ended they, un- 
 willing to forego their profits, and perhaps unable to 
 drop at once their habits, announced any regulai
 
 374 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 number of their papers containing matter supposed to 
 be of unusual interest as an extra. This is another 
 example of those perverted uses of language which 
 often become established in usage, but which usage 
 cannot make right. So long as extra, is used in re- 
 gard to a newspaper or in regard to anything else to 
 mean beyond the ordinary, it is rightfully used ; but 
 when its contents or its quickness of sale is meant, 
 the use is incorrect. A number may indeed be said 
 to be extra (ordinarily) interesting, or it may sell 
 extra (ordinarily) well ; but it is not an extra because 
 it " sells fuss-rate." 
 
 A similar perversion of language is that of a man 
 who advertised himself somewhat extensively as " The 
 Only True Living Phenomenon." All the world 
 except Mr. Barnum may be willing to pass over his 
 arrogant assumption that he is unique. But none the 
 less we ask of ourselves, What can the man mean ? 
 The context enlightens us. According to him, the 
 only true living phenomenon is a man who " per- 
 forms the stupendous feat of dancing on the rocky 
 road to Dublin for thirty consecutive hours, with 
 only ten minutes' rest, and no sleep." Now although 
 we may not know what dancing on the rocky road 
 to Dublin is, we may admit that the man who can 
 do it for thirty consecutive hours is a phenomenon 
 (or extraordinary manifestation) of endurance. But 
 plainly this is not what he means by phenomenon. 
 To him the word has a specific and limited meaning. 
 It means something of which there may be only one; 
 which as to a phenomenon in any true sense is im- 
 possible. With just as much meaning, he miglit 
 have announced himself as the only living parallelo 
 gram.
 
 " POPULAR PIK. 375 
 
 On tlie other hand, we see a word which I have 
 just used, unique^ perverted in the opposite direc- 
 tion. In advertisements and catalogues we see books 
 and works of art advertised as " very unique ; " which 
 is nonsense. A thing is unique when it is the only 
 one of its kind, whether it is good or bad, ugly or 
 beautiful. But some person, an auctioneer or a cata- 
 logue maker, having seen unique applied to a beau- 
 tiful object, ignorantly assumed that the word ex- 
 pressed the beauty of the object, and not the fact 
 that there was no other like it ; and hence a misuse 
 of the word, which is already becoming somewhat 
 commoii in newspapers and in every-day talk. 
 
 Another change with wdiich we are threatened, 
 which perhaps has been already thoroughly effected 
 within a few years under our veiy eyes, is a degi"ad- 
 ing perversion of the word fast, used metaphorically. 
 And here,- by the way, having fully in mind how 
 mucli of language is metaphor, I will remark that 
 misunderstandings and consequent wrongs and griefs 
 unnumbered and unnumberable are due to the meta- 
 phorical use of words. As to the proper metaphor- 
 ical use of fast, it appears, despite the writer's pro- 
 test, in the following interesting passage from Sir 
 Henry Holland's " Recollections of Past Life : " — 
 
 " I may mention in the same cursory way another change 
 manifest to me during my London life, and in truth hardly 
 'ess obvious in the world at large. This is (using the word 
 ;.«re in its simpler sense) the mcYea?,edi fastness of living in- 
 cident to all classes and occupations of men. Looking espe- 
 cially at home, we find that the augmented speed and hurry 
 of locomotion (and I can affirm that people walk faster in 
 the London streets than they did when I first knew those 
 great thoroughfares) is carr'ed into every other department
 
 S7G EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 of life, — politics, commerce, literature, science, professionaJ 
 and social existence. The loiterers in life are fewer, and 
 the charm of a tranquil leisure is less appreciated and 
 Bought after." (Page 268.) 
 
 This fastness of living, when it invades and modi- 
 fies " social existence," produces in the end fast men 
 and fast women ; of which variety of the human spe- 
 cies a striking definition was given some years ago 
 by a well-known " swell " professional gambler of 
 New York, a man who might have stood for Mr. John 
 Oakhurst. He was in the witness box, and having 
 spoken in his evidence of a certain gentleman as a 
 fast man, he was asked by the court what he meant 
 by that phrase. " Well, your honor," was the reply, 
 after a little hesitation, " a fast man is a man that 
 has more money to spend than he has time to spend 
 it in." The definition will not bear close analysis; 
 but it was regarded at the time as happily shadow- 
 ing out the life of the " fast." 
 
 When Mr. Thackeray was last here his use of this 
 word brought upon him a rebuff, in this wise. He 
 was introduced to a lady well known in fashionable 
 and literary society, both North and South. He said, 
 
 " Ah, Mrs. , I 'm glad to meet you," and after a 
 
 moment's pause, " I hear you 're quite fast." " Sir," 
 was the reply, "you should never believe half that 
 you hear. I heard that Mr. Thackeray was a gen- 
 tleman ; " and she turned her back. At the time 
 when this occurred I heard of it with some surprise , 
 for I knew that the lady (who is no longer living 
 was not only fast, but rather proud of her rapidity , 
 and although in any case Mr. Thackeray's remarJj 
 was rather brusque, as his remarks were somewhat 
 too apt to be, still there seemed to be nothing ift
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 377 
 
 it meriting such treatment in that particular quarter. 
 It was not until two or three years afterward that 1 
 discovered that the cause of the offense was that the 
 word fast had come to be used by a certain chiss of 
 women in a sense l^nown to the lady, but not known 
 to Mr. Thackeray or to me. The fact was, as many 
 of. my readers must now know, that Anonyma had 
 sought to grace her peculiar life by calling it fast, 
 and glorying in the name of a fast woman. Then 
 all the poor, low, wretched hirelings of Anonyraa's 
 tribe, thinking thereby to raise themselves to the 
 level of their purple-clad sister, called themselves 
 fast, and — hence those tears. 
 
 This is an example, passing under our very eyes, 
 of that degradation of language which is one of the 
 vicissitudes to which it is subject. Words almost 
 always sink in grade with the progress of time ; they 
 very rarely rise ; and one cause of this change in their 
 fortunes is the grasping after the higher sign by those 
 in the lower condition, who think thereby to raise 
 themselves ; when all that they can do is to drag down 
 and befoul the distinction that they covet. Perhaps 
 ^ast is not gone into the pit beyond hope of recovery. 
 It were well if it were not ; for it expresses in its cor- 
 rect metaphorical use a certain life of headlong, care- 
 less gayety ; while for its use as a descriptive term for 
 common harlotry there is no justification whatever. 
 
 Even as I am writing there comes before me another 
 perversion which might, it is not unlikely, be the 
 beginning of another usage, — unjustifiable but abso- 
 lute. The own correspondent of one of the most 
 carefully edited and best written newspapers in the 
 country writes of Marshal Bazaine, " The details 
 given of the escape are a little romanesque, but I give
 
 378 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 tliera as related in the most widely accepted version.* 
 The writer meant what " the base vulgar do call ' 
 romantic. Romanesque is a technical term of archi- 
 tecture, and is applied to the debased Roman style 
 of design, which happily yielded to the Gothic, and 
 it has, of course, no possible application to human 
 acts of any kind, or to stories of adventure. But 
 there is just enough likeness and kindred between 
 the two words to lead those who wish, as this writer 
 did, to be very new and fine and elegant, into the 
 use of romanesque^ and thus to spread a perversion 
 which might easilj'^ pass into an established but in- 
 correct and unjustifiable usage. 
 
 Some of the advertisements and signs that meet 
 the eye of a city pedestrian show a power of misap- 
 prehending and misconstruing language which is as- 
 tonishing as well as amusing. We have, for example, 
 " Colored Intelligence Office." Now even if it is not 
 the intelligence which is colored, but the office, what 
 IS a colored office of any kind ? True, we can easily 
 guess what is meant; and so we can in the case of 
 another like sign, " Colored Relief." But what does 
 colored relief really mean ? On the west side of New 
 York, about a year ago, I saw a flaming sign, " Home 
 Made Restaurant," which struck me as the most com- 
 ical arrangement of words that I had ever seen seri- 
 ously put together. And yet six months had hardly 
 })assed before I had a card thrust into my hand, in 
 the street, announcing the opening of a "• Home Made 
 Hotel." We may be sure that neither the restau- 
 rant-keeper nor the hotel-keeper had the least sus- 
 picion that he had been other than quite correct in 
 his use of language.-^ 
 
 * The following announcement, which appears in the windows of
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 379 
 
 It may be asked, What need of taking notice of 
 fclie advertisements of mountebanks, the bombast of 
 newspaper bulletins and of newspaper correspond- 
 ents, the slang of harlots, and the blunders of igno- 
 rant lads in eating-houses and those of eating-house 
 keepers, and the like ? They are not literature. In 
 reply : First, they are remarked upon as living, pres- 
 ent examples of the perversion of language under 
 our eyes, and of characteristic misuses, which possi- 
 bly may pass into usage. Next, literature is not 
 the source of language, at least to any very great 
 extent. The movement is the other way. And in 
 this country particularly a misuse repeated day aftei 
 day in an advertisement, by newsboys, or in eating- 
 houses is likely to work itself gradually and not very 
 slowly into usage. Even in the most improbable of 
 these cases, that of fast^ we have seen that a word 
 perverted to their use by the unmentionable outcasts 
 of society came soon to be recognized only in its 
 perverted sense by ladies of character. 
 
 As to such processes, philology is sublimely indif- 
 ferent ; except in so far as to observe them, to record 
 them, to trace their course, and, if possible, to account 
 for them, and to point out the tendency of which they 
 \ire the manifestations. As to any attempt to check 
 them or to modify them, Pilate could not have washed 
 his hands with more serene disregard of consequences. 
 They are the phenomena which philology observes, 
 the material upon which it works. Philology says, 
 About this time popular began to mean good ; trans- 
 pire, to take place ; extra, something that sold rapidly, 
 
 furniture shop in Chatham Street, is a jewd ?f an example of the con 
 'usion of thought: — 
 
 ^^ Monthly and Weekly Paymentt 
 "oe longest time and easiest terms given by any other house in the city.''
 
 380 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 inaugurate, to begin ; phenomenon., a man who danced 
 thirty hours upon tlie rocky road to Dublin ; sample' 
 room, a grog-shop ; romanesque, romantic ; predicate, 
 to found, to establish ; fast, harlot-like ; adopt, to give 
 a child away ; and awfully, very — and, je me lave 
 les mains. 
 
 Of course I am speaking only of the very lowest 
 function and the lowest department of that great 
 science which is doing so much to reveal the prog- 
 ress of the world, and which has bound the dominant 
 races of three great continents together into one vast 
 family. But it is none the less true that the function 
 of philology is not to correct or to attempt to guide, 
 but only to observe, to investigate, to record, to infer. 
 So far is this true that it is insisted in quarters of the 
 highest philological authority that even in lexicogra- 
 phy and grammar, two of the lowest departments of 
 the science, and two which have to do with the present 
 of language, and perhaps the future, as well as with 
 the past, it is the function of the lexicographer and 
 of the grammarian only to record usage, and not in 
 any way to attempt to guide it. 
 
 Whatever may be the function of philologists and 
 'exicographers as to the present and the future of lan- 
 guage, there can be no doubt about it as to the past. 
 They must record faitlifully and exactly the results of 
 their investigations. Unless this is done, philology is 
 a delusion and dictionaries are a snare. It must have 
 been in ignorance or in forgetfulness of this obviously 
 sound rule in linguistics and lexicography that aii 
 esteemed Jewish gentleman requested the publishers 
 of Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries to omit 
 from those books the verb to jeiv ; and as surely it 
 was in a deliberate setting aside of that rule that the
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 381 
 
 latter yielded to the request. Upon this a contro- 
 versy arose, in which several newspapers and persons 
 were involved ; and I was asked by more than one of 
 the parties, in terms that I could not without dis- 
 courtesy disregard, to give the point some considera- 
 tion. 
 
 The request laid upon me an unwelcome task. For 
 among the most intelligent, the most polite, the most 
 trustworthy, and the most benevolent men that I 
 have ever met, I reckon no small proportion of the 
 few Hebrews of my acquaintance. And in particular 
 I have had occasion to remark not only their probity 
 in matters of money, but their fairness and kindliness 
 of dealing. And yet when I am asked, as I am, 
 whether the word jeiv has been used for longer than 
 ten years as a verb, in the sense of to cheapen, to 
 cheat, I can only express my surprise at the putting 
 of such a question. I am unable now to put my hand 
 upon any passages in the writings of English authors 
 in which the word is so used, because the point never 
 was suggested, or suggested itself, to me for even the 
 most casual consideration, and I cannot spend the 
 time that would be required in looking them up. 
 But that there are many such passages in authors 
 who wrote in the last century and in the present, I 
 am very sure ; and as to the usage of the present 
 generation I can bear witness myself to having heard 
 !'his verb from time to time in my boyhood. The 
 sense in which it was used was not exactly either to 
 cheapen or to cheat, but one between the two, a sense 
 for which there is no other verb. I remember its 
 use in various connections, as " He jewed me down," 
 " He jewed it out of me," and so forth. 
 
 Is it at all strange that a people like the blunt
 
 382 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, who for centuries have prayed, and to 
 this day pray, for " Jews, Turks, heretics, and infi- 
 dels " (I don't know whether the Roman Cathulics 
 are in like manner considerate), and who read in the 
 very Pentateuch that the Jews spoiled the Egyptians, 
 and who have been so long at the mercy of the op- 
 pressed Hebrew in money matters, great and small, 
 should have made such a verb as to jew ? The ques- 
 tion is not whether it was just, but whether, the 
 moral forces at work and the relative positions of 
 the two peoples being what they were, the blunter 
 and coarser and more tyrannical could have avoided 
 making this verb, and whether, they having made 
 and used it, philologists and lexicographers can hon- 
 estly shut their eyes to its existence. The question 
 is answered in the asking. And I think that the 
 Hebrew gentlemen on one side of this discussion have 
 taken the matter much too seriously to heart. The 
 word, if not quite out of use, is rapidly becoming so ; 
 and there is no power vrhich will so soon drive it 
 into oblivion as the character and the conduct of the 
 Hebrews themselves, which are likely to be far more 
 effective in that way than the strongest protest or the 
 most rigid expurgation. 
 
 As to the mere fact of its presence in standard 
 dictionaries of the English language, it merely takes 
 its place there with other terms which are the word- 
 marks of history, — foot-prints of hatred, of prejudice, 
 of wrong, of error, or of mere circumstance upon the 
 yielding surface of language. Such, for instance, ia 
 ihouse, a word more nearly synonymous with that in 
 tuestion than any other in the language. It is orig- 
 aially a Turkish word meaning an envoy. It has its 
 English meaning from the misconduct of a Turkish
 
 "POPULAR PIE." 382 
 
 envoy, or chiaus, sent by the Grand Sultan to London 
 in 1603, since which time to chouse (or to Turkish- 
 envoy) a man out of anything has meant to cheat 
 him out of it. But would it be permissible that, be- 
 cause of a protest of a college of Ottoman diplomatists 
 against the presence of this verb in an English dic- 
 tionary, an English lexicographer should suppress it? 
 Again I think the question is answered in the ask- 
 ing. Of similar origin are the words Jesuitical, which 
 has no equivalent, as it means something other than 
 crafty, intriguing ; hector, to irritate by bragging 
 and threatening ; herod, as a verb in the sense of 
 raving furiously ; caitiff, meaning originally only a 
 captive ; and miscreant, which, meaning merely mis- 
 believer, has come to the vilest signification, showing 
 and recording in language the former virulence of 
 religious hatred. It would seem, then, that there 
 is no justification for the omission of the word in 
 question from any English dictionary pretending to 
 thoroughness and trustworthmess, and as surely also 
 that there is none for the use of the word by the 
 present generation. 
 
 Upon one other kindred point I will repeat here a 
 remark made in " Words and their Uses," where this 
 subject was considered. There is a sensitiveness as 
 to the use of the word Jew in a descriptive sense, 
 iv^hich seems to me unreasonable. It is asked, Who 
 ever thinks of mentioning that a culprit is a Roman 
 Catholic, a Presbyterian, or a Methodist ? Why, then, 
 say that he is a Jew ? Answer : Because when the 
 word is thus used it merely defines the nationality or 
 race of the person to whom it is applied. We fre- 
 quently see it mentioned that a prisoner is a French- 
 man, an Irishman, or a German. Just so, and only
 
 384 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 BO, it is said that he is a Jew. No reference what- 
 ever is made to his religion ; no thought is taken of it. 
 His race merely is indicated. For the Jews are still 
 a peculiar people, who, in the words of one of the 
 most distinguished of their family, but not of their 
 faith, " have outlived the Pharaohs." Hebrew would 
 ba the better word ; for that, I belieye, according to 
 their usage, carries with it no implication of religious 
 belief. But the Hebrews have been so faithful and 
 have so clung together that to speak of them as men 
 is to speak of them as the people chosen by the One 
 God to proclaim Him to the world ; and to touch the 
 pride of the race is to offend every member of it, from 
 the highest to the humblest. 
 
 Let them sit as serene as Mordecai. They who 
 have outlived the Pharaohs may outlive philology. 
 Certainly they will live down prejudice and obloquy, 
 of which this verb is evidence reproachful only to its 
 present users.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 CHANGES IN" LANGUAGE. 
 
 That words change their meaning every intelligent 
 person who observes language and thinks about it well 
 knows. The change is almost always by a grada- 
 tion, the steps of which are traceable, although they 
 cannot always be clearly defined. Nevertheless, some 
 philologists maintain that a word has, and can have, 
 at least at any one time, but one meaning. Now, if 
 this were the case, it is difficult to see how any change 
 could take place. For if a word has but one meaning, 
 even at one time, it must be used with that meaning 
 by all the three generations that are living in the 
 world at the same time, each of which is advancing 
 gradually to fill the place of the other. If the third 
 generation receives a word with a clearly defined 
 meaning, it would seem that when this third genera- 
 iion becomes the second it must hand that word with 
 the same meaning to the new third, and so on forever. 
 But this is not the case. 
 
 It is true, in a certain sense, that, with but few ex- 
 lieptions, words have but one meaning ; that is, the 
 radical and essential meaning of the word exists so as 
 to be perceivable, and so as to be a constant guide to 
 its right use. At the same time, most words, if not 
 indeed all, are used with such a degree of vagueness, 
 small though it be, such a lack of perfect consent and 
 . dentical apprehension among all the users, that pos- 
 sibly no word has exactly the same meaning to any 
 
 25
 
 386 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 two persons. Just so it is true that no word has ex« 
 actly the same sound to any two persons, or is pro- 
 nounced by any two in exactly the same way. In- 
 deed, it may be said, without so much of paradox as 
 might be generally supposed, that a word exists only 
 for one moment of time, — that at which it is spoken ; 
 and that if it is then immediately repeated by the 
 person to whom it is addi'essed, it is in some respect, 
 either of sound or of meaning, not quite the same 
 word which had just before been spoken. 
 
 This, indeed, is not what might be called a prac- 
 tical view of language. In practice we must assume, 
 and we do assume, that a word used at a given time 
 — the present — is in all respects absolutely the same 
 to all its users. That it is not so is certainly true ; 
 but this is merely a fact interesting and instructive 
 in the history of language. A striking illustration of 
 the changes of meaning through which a word may 
 pass is a word which I used a few lines above, — 
 person. To all who read this book person means an 
 individual of the human species ; but it has also an- 
 other meaning, connected with the former, and spruig- 
 ing from it : it means the body of one of the human 
 species. Thus, we say that a man has a very fine 
 person ; meaning that his body is, in its form and in 
 its expression, satisfying to the eye. We say that 
 a well-bred and delicate woman is nice and dainty 
 about her person ; meaning that she is careful and 
 fastidious to preserve her bod}' in perfect cleanliness 
 and freshness, and not to have it brought into con- 
 tact with anything at which her nice sense revolts. 
 
 Now, person had originally no such meaning, li 
 meant a mask. The word is of Latin origin, but it 
 is in existence in all of the European languages, witb
 
 CHANGES IN LANGUAGE. 387 
 
 the same meaning ; and in all of tliem, its use can be 
 traced in an unbroken line from the earliest period 
 at wliicli it is known. 
 
 The Greek and Roman theatres were vast unroofed 
 structures, entirely open to the air. The observation 
 cf any play of feature in the actors of these theatres 
 would have been quite impossible, and never was at- 
 tempted. Some distinction between the personages 
 of the drama was, however, necessary, and this led to 
 the use of comic and tragic masks. These two kinds 
 of masks were at last greatly subdivided, and there 
 were masks which belonged to each well-known per- 
 sonage of the drama ; just as with us there is a re- 
 ceived costume for Sir Peter Teazle, for example, or 
 for King Lear, for Malvolio, or for Touchstone. 
 
 These masks performed, however, another very im- 
 portant function. The remoteness of the stage from 
 the audience and the openness of the theatre not only 
 prevented the audience from seeing anything except 
 the general appearance, attitudes, and movements of 
 the actors, but also interfered much with their hear- 
 ing of what was said ; for when Sophocles wrote, and 
 A-ristophanes and Terence, as also when Shakespeare 
 and even Sheridan had possession of the stage, peo- 
 ple actually went to the theatre to listen, — to hear 
 something higher, nobler, grander, than a repetition 
 of their own foolish gabble by other people in fine 
 clothes. This difficulty of hearing was overcome in 
 a measure by a form given to the mouth of the mask, 
 which was greatly widened, and protruded so as to 
 increase the resonance of the voice and carry it for- 
 ward. 
 
 Then, as these masks were subdivided into classes, 
 eorresponding to the heavy fathcx^'s, the first young
 
 388 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 men, the leading ladies, the chamber-maids, and so 
 forth of the modern stage, — as the division was car- 
 ried even further into the individual distinction of 
 character, — these personce came to be distinctive of 
 the characters of the dramas in which they were used; 
 so that to enumerate the masks, or personce, of a 
 drama was to enumerate the characters that figured 
 in it. This usage, pure and simple, still survives 
 (though with some difference of meaning to the mod- 
 ern mind) in the phrase dramatis personce (that is, 
 persons of the drama), which is generally used as a 
 heading of the list of characters m a play in all Indo- 
 European languages which have a dramatic litera- 
 ture. 
 
 Persona, having thus come to mean a fictitious man, 
 came at last to mean a real one, reference being at 
 first made, however, to the character of the individual, 
 and to his face as expressive of that character. At 
 last, however, it came to mean a man, that is, a " hu- 
 man " (homo, not vir') ; as, for example, we say, " If a 
 person were to do thus and so," meaning if a man 
 or a woman were to do thus and so. (And, by the 
 way, person is here just as much a pronoun, because 
 it stands for a man or a woman, as lihn is in the 
 sentence, " To him that hath shall be given," because 
 him there stands for "any man.") Person having 
 thus come to mean the individual man or woman, it 
 was at last applied to the body of a man or woman ; 
 and thus the word, the identical word (with the 
 mere dropping of a final letter), which at first meant 
 Bomething under and through which an actor spoke, 
 came at last to mean the fleshly body of a human — 
 jperson. 
 
 This is an extreme example of what may be called
 
 CHANGES IN LANGUAGE. 389 
 
 A legitimate or normal change in the meaning of 
 a word; that is, the change has been, so to speak, 
 logical. Each shade of meaning that the word has 
 had has grown naturally and reasonably out of a pre- 
 ceding meaning. To changes in language of this kind 
 there can be no reasonable objection, so long as they 
 are so gradual as not to be confusing. Indeed, it is 
 in vain to strive against any change, normal or abnor- 
 mal, which is an accomplished fact. In language even 
 more than in anything else that which is must be ac- 
 cepted. Reason may protest, good taste may revolt; 
 but if a word has come to be generally used with a 
 certain meaning, that is practically its meaning in the 
 community in which it is so used ; and though the 
 usage may be abnormal, absurd, and even disgusting, 
 there is no help for it. The only time for protest 
 with any hope of success is when the tendency to a 
 vicious change first manifests itself. 
 
 Now, it is to be remarked that a great number of 
 the changes in the meaning of words which are not of 
 the character which has just been illustrated in the 
 history of person^ and all of those which are really 
 objectionable on the ground of reason or of good taste, 
 are the consequences of the use of words by persons 
 who do not understand their meaning. And how 
 many persons there are who daily use words in a 
 strikingly elegant and somewhat overpowering man- 
 ner, without understanding them, I shall not here un- 
 dertake to say. Some words, indeed, are of such a 
 character that most persons, even the intelligent and 
 the educated, do not apprehend their real meaning. 
 K word which I have used above, and necessai"ily 
 used, in the discussion of the word person^ that is, 
 individual^ is such a word Individual is used geu-
 
 590 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 erally and constantly to mean simply person. There 
 are few nouns in the language so nearly synonymous 
 as individual and person; and yet there are no two 
 whose origin and real significance are more unlike. 
 An individual is merely a thing, an entity, which 
 cannot be divided, a unit ; and a man is called an 
 individual merely because he is a single, indivisible, 
 self-contained creature. 
 
 The truth is that we are hard pressed in English 
 for a general synonym of man^ meaning one man ; 
 and there seems to be with many people a reluctance 
 to use the simple word man, just as with many 
 more there is a reluctance to use as simple and as 
 good a word, woman. Hence we have the general 
 adjective female, whicli belongs to all she creat- 
 ures, made into a noun, as an elegant synonym of 
 woman. I have even heard of a man who wished 
 to be gallant, and to give a reason for the gallantry 
 that was in him, assign as that reason that " his 
 mother was a female." So, doubtless, she was ; and 
 BO was the dam of his mastiff dog. Otherwise we 
 have that common and really unmeaning use of the 
 word lad^, which is well fitted to excite in some per- 
 sons a feeling of nausea. 
 
 To avoid the use of man, meaning a human per- 
 son of either sex, we say individual, which, however, 
 is most often so used by persons whose speech is 
 more elaborately elegant than sensible. The word, 
 however, is perfectly legitimate, and if sparingly used 
 is open to no objection. But how many of those who 
 do thus use it know or think of its real meaning ? 
 They accept it without question in the sense in which 
 they are accustomed to hear it ; and so, indeed, mosi 
 words are accepted. Thus it is that speech is the
 
 CHANGES IN LANGUAGE. 391 
 
 surest test of education, of breeding, of association. 
 Peter's speech did not more surely betray that he 
 was a Galilean than the speech of every other raaii 
 shows what was the speech of those among whom 
 he received his breeding ; and, as Alexander Ellis 
 says, this speech once thoroughly acquired is, to all 
 intents and purposes, ineradicable. After maturity, 
 the prospect of any material change in this respect is 
 very slight indeed. 
 
 But as to our words and their changes. Individ- 
 ual is recondite in its real meaning, but, happily, 
 that meaning is almost incapable of misapprehension 
 or perversion. Pretentious writers and speakers may 
 choke us — and themselves — with it, but it would 
 seem that they cannot use it in any other than its 
 proper sense. But there are countless numbers of 
 words which are constantly used with more or less 
 perversion, and this perversion leads to deplorable 
 confusion, and sometimes to misunderstanding which 
 \(as serious consequences. 
 
 In the every-day speech of " America," two words 
 constantly illustrate what has been said before as to 
 the ignorant use of language. These are predicate 
 and transpire. I have remarked upon their misuse 
 before,! and so have others ; but the misuse is so fla- 
 grant and so common, it is so ridiculous and really 
 Bo monstrous, that I cannot do better than to mark 
 it again by using it as an illustration of abnormal 
 change in the use of words, a change of a kind quite 
 inlike that which has taken place in person ; a 
 Jiange which, although it is increasing, should be re- 
 sisted, and may yet be resisted with some hope of pre- 
 venting its final accomplishment. It was only the 
 i In Words and thtir Jses.
 
 392 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 other day that I heard a judge of one of our highest 
 courts — and that he was an upright judge, an able 
 judge, and one learned in the law I know — say on 
 the bench that a certain action " vf a.?, predicated upon " 
 a certain statute. He might as well have said that at 
 his breakfast he had predicated his butter upon his 
 bread. So we constantly hear one man, generally a 
 man of some intelligence and education, asking another 
 if he means to predicate any action upon such or such 
 a state of things. What he means to ask is whether 
 his friend means to found any action upon such cir- 
 cumstances, or to take any action in consequence of 
 them. What he really says is nonsense, utter, abso- 
 lute. To any one who knows what predicate means^ 
 it is difficult to apprehend the condition of mind of a 
 man who talks about predicating an action upon any- 
 thing. To predicate means, in simple words, merely 
 to say ; or, to use larger words, to utter, to declare. 
 A verb and the words which accompany and modify 
 it are the predicate of a sentence, because they say 
 something, declare something, of the subject and 
 about the object. It will thus be seen that there is 
 not the remotest connection, metaphorical or other- 
 wise, between the real meaning of predicate and that 
 which is so commonly given to it in this country, even 
 by judges upon the bench. 
 
 And so it is as to a common use of transpire. 
 Every day we hear it said, and see it printed, that 
 such and such an occurrence transpired yesterday ; the 
 speaker's or the writer's meaning in simple English 
 being that it happened, that it took place, that the 
 thing was done. Now, transpire means to breathe 
 through, to pass through, and, in its metaphorical use 
 which is the only one in which it is received, it meani
 
 CHANGES IN LANGUAGE. • 393 
 
 to pass from secrecy to knowledge, from privacy to 
 publicity. For example, " The decision in the cabi- 
 net upon the New York appointments has not yet 
 transpired," or, " The decision did transpire yester- 
 day," — that is, it came to public knowledge yester- 
 day. This is the proper use of the word, and the 
 only one. But some person, having heard it said cor- 
 rectly that such or such a thing transpired yesterday, 
 with the meaning that the knowledge of it became 
 public, supposed that it was a big, elegant word for 
 the simple English " happened " or " took place," 
 and thereafter used it with a pretentious ignorance 
 which has infected many others innocent of his intel- 
 lectual snobbishness. A like ignorant misapprehen- 
 sion and pretentious misuse has given us the deplor- 
 ably ridiculous usage of predicate which has been 
 above set forth. It is such perversion of language as 
 this — perversion in some one respect or more — that 
 is really worth the serious attention of those who 
 would speak and write good English. This is of more 
 real importance than all those errors in " grammar " 
 or in spelling as to which so many persons seem so- 
 licitous. For perversions like this really affect the 
 Cleaning of what is said, which the few grammatical 
 errors possible in the English language — for exam- 
 ple, us for we, them for those^ done for do — in no 
 way touch. 
 
 I shall in the following chapters give some attention 
 to this part of my subject*
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE FIEST ENGLISH VERBAL CEITICISM. 
 
 As we were slow to write a grammar of our own 
 tongue, even on false, that is on Latin, principles, so 
 were we late in entering upon the field of English 
 verbal criticism. The " Gardens of Eloquence " and 
 " Arts of Rhetoric," and the like, Avhich appeared in 
 the Elizabethan period, had little or nothing to do 
 with the origin, the meaning, or the forms of Eng- 
 lish words ; and even Puttenham's " Arte of English 
 Poesie " touches those subjects but incidentally. It 
 was not until 1770 that the first work of avowed 
 English verbal criticism that is known to me ap- 
 peai-ed. It was entitled " Remarks on the English 
 Language, in the Nature of Vaugelas's Remarks on 
 tlie French : Being a Detection of many Improper 
 Expressions used in Conversation, and of many oth- 
 ers to be found in Authors. To which is prefixed a 
 Discourse addressed to His Majesty."^ It was anon- 
 ymous, but its author's name was Robert Baker. He 
 was not a scholar ; knew no Greek and almost no 
 Latin, but seems to have been familiar with French 
 Nor was he an historical etymologist ; for in his day 
 true etymology hardly existed; and as to Sanskrit, it» 
 very existence was then known to but a few Western 
 scholars, and its value as a key to Indo-European lan- 
 guage structure was unsuspected even by them. He 
 
 - The address to the kinj^ appeared only in the first edition, it having 
 »een omitted from the second as too outspoken and presuming.
 
 THE FIRST ENGLISH VERBAL CRITICISM. 395 
 
 erred sometimes, — as indeed who does not ? — but 
 being a man of good sense, of considerable cultivation, 
 and of good taste in literature and in art, and having 
 given much thought to his subject, he produced a lit- 
 tle book which was of real service, and the effect of 
 which is plainly visible upon English speech. 
 
 To mere usage and authority Baker did not silently 
 submit ; for what he deemed errors in usage were the 
 very subjects of his criticism, without regard to the 
 reputation of the authors in whose works he detected 
 them ; and among those whose incorrect use of words 
 or faulty construction of sentences he remarked upon 
 were Locke, Addison, Swift, Bolingbroke, Warbur- 
 ton, Melmoth, Warton, and Harris, the author of 
 " Hermes." But his criticism was always respectful, 
 without asperity or personal sneers at the writers 
 whose errors he pointed out ; and in censuring the 
 usage of authors then living, particularly those of mi- 
 nor fame, he often considerately avoided mentioning 
 names, using the phrase " an author " or "a writer," 
 a manifestation of decorum and good nature in which 
 he has not been imitated by some of his successors. 
 His likening of his book to Vaugelas's, published in 
 1647, does hardly justice to himself; for, unlike Vau- 
 gelas, he attempted little in the way of etymology (al- 
 though, with his assumed prototype, he erred when he 
 did so), and, unlike Vaugelas, he was neither priggish 
 nor pedantic, nor was he a courtier, or a precisian, or a 
 lover of speaking fine. His book consists of one hun- 
 dred and twenty-seven remarks upon what were then 
 common usages among the best speakers and writers, 
 as any one familiar with the literature of that time 
 .veil knows ; and the justice of his strictures and their 
 effect are evident from the fact that almost all the
 
 896 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Bolecisms which he censures were erelong abandoned 
 by good writers, and gradually ceased to be heard 
 among educated speakers. 
 
 It may be of interest to my readers to know some 
 of the faults in phraseology and of the misuses of 
 words which were thought worthy of remark by the 
 first English verbal critic, one hundred and ten years 
 ago. I shall select not only those which have been al- 
 together given up. Among them are: as follow for as 
 follows, which still has some support in respectable 
 usage ; chay for chaise, the latter being mistaken for a 
 plural, — as some people who wish to be very correct 
 speak of the corp of an army, or of a widow mourn- 
 ing over the corp of her husband, or, as I was told by 
 a lawyer, of the claw of a statute, to avoid the " bad 
 grammar " of saying " a clause ; " ingenuity in the 
 double sense of ability, cleverness, and of ingenuous- 
 ness, is pointed out as a blemish, — the latter sense 
 it has lost ; demean for debase or lessen ; he is came 
 for he is come ; set for sit, and lie for lay ; propose for 
 purpose; whom for who, as, '•'•whom you would say 
 passed their afternoons," etc. ; H is him, H is her, H is 
 me, His them, for His he. His she. His I, His they; 
 mutual for common, an error not infrequent now even 
 among educated people; either and neither used as 
 plural, as, "neither of them are ;"" contemptuously for 
 contemptibly, vl\q:^\\\\-\^ "with contempt," — the latter, 
 being then "most commonly used," has now passed 
 out of use ; fell for fallen, as, the horse has fell, 
 which is said to have been then used by " many writ- 
 ers " (indeed, the literature of that time is full of a 
 like use of the past tense of the verb for the parti- 
 ciple ; it was a usage, but neither sense nor English) j 
 hoth, as in they both met, and in " those two men are
 
 THE FIEST ENGLISH VERBAL CRITICISM. 397 
 
 both equal in capacity," whicli is justly pronounced 
 nonsense ; agreeable^ suitable, conformable, for agreea- 
 hly, suitably, conformably, as, " he performed agreeable 
 to his promise," " he conducted himself suitable to 
 the occasion," — a usage common in that day, but in- 
 defensible, of course, and since then abandoned ; safe 
 for safely, as, " I arrived here safely, ""^ instead of safe, 
 an error not uncommon now, and among those who 
 are anxious about their " grammar ; " dare for dares^ 
 as, "he dare not do it " for " he dares not," etc., which, 
 although it is mentioned, rightly, as the usage of 
 "numbers of people " and of " many authors," Baker 
 says " appears to me to give a person an air of illiter- 
 acy," — but we hear of no offense taken at this as- 
 sumption of social superiority ; en passant for in 
 joassm^^, justly condemned as sheer affectation ; the 
 misplacing of only, either, and neither, as in " Theism 
 can only be opposed to polytheism or atheism," and 
 " He was neither learned in the languages nor philos- 
 ophy," which has in its support the usage of centuries 
 of years and centuries of authors, but which has been 
 since seen to be indefensible according to the struct- 
 ure of the English sentence, and which has almost 
 disappeared; the false construction, '•'• I was going to 
 have done so and so," which has like " authoritative " 
 support, and which is in like manner indefensible. 
 
 Of the subjects of Baker's one hundred and twenty- 
 Beven remarks I have room to mention only these, 
 which are not the most important, but -which unite 
 some interest with conveniency for citation. To these 
 I will add one other, his condemnation of the phrases 
 different to, as, " this is different to that," and differ- 
 ent than, as in the sentence, " I found your affairs had 
 been managed in a different manner than what I had
 
 398 EVEBY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 advised," which is quoted from Mehuoth's Cicero. 
 Both tliese are set down as being neither English nor 
 sense, which is true of them ; and yet for both of 
 them tliere is the "authority" of long and eminent 
 usage. They are interesting as being peculiarly Brit- 
 ish misusages ; neither of them having ever obtained 
 a foot-hold in " America." Indeed, there would seem 
 to be something peculiarly puzzling to our British 
 cousins in the proper use of different^ or they could 
 hardly have fallen into the double confusion of such 
 phrases as different to and different than, even the 
 latter of which is now heard from some of them who 
 are not uneducated.^ In the course of his criticism of 
 the former phrase, Baker makes a remark which 
 shows that he had a just estimate of the relative 
 weight of usage and reason in determining the propri- 
 eties of language. He says, " I know that custom 
 often reconciles improprieties of this sort; yet there 
 are some cases where it never reconciles them entire- 
 ly, and this appears to me to be one. I would there- 
 fore give my vote for different from, and would ban- 
 ish the expression of different to.^'' He submits to 
 usage if needs must ; but he does not accord with it if 
 it is inconsistent with reason. He speaks very decid- 
 edly, and yet expects his decision to be received only 
 as his " vote." He says boldly that he would banish 
 the expression dfferent to ; and yet, although that 
 was even more than this the day of savage quarrels 
 about questions of verbal criticism, we hear of no 
 personal attacks upon him by the users of different to 
 
 1 It is proper that I should say that I did not meet with Baker's book, 
 •rhich is not a common one, until some months after writing my letter U 
 Ibe Nation, published September 12, 1872, in which I expressed the opi» 
 on that iry own criticism of different to (in 1854) was tho earliest con 
 (emnation ti ti\at phrase.
 
 THE FIRST ENGLISH VERBAL CRITICISM. 399 
 
 because of an affectation on his part of social superi- 
 ority, and an implication that they were bred among 
 people whose English deserved banishment.^ 
 
 The reader has probably seen already that be- 
 tween the first book of verbal criticism upon the Eng- 
 lish language and the last^ there are some strong 
 points of lilieness ; and if any " eager, listening en- 
 emy " of the author of the latter, on either side of 
 the ocean, is ready to find a likeness between them in 
 their errors and deficiencies, he is welcome to all the 
 comfort he can derive from so doing. Baker's book 
 did not profess to be etymological, or, in the proper 
 sense of the word, philological. Indeed, it could not 
 have been philological with the meaning which the 
 word has now ; for the philology of our day, the only 
 true philology, was in Baker's day unknown. And 
 yet his book had a laudable purpose, and, as we have 
 seen, did good, although it is a small affair. No other 
 in its purpose or its pretensions is " Words and their 
 Uses," the author of which hopes for it only that it 
 may effect a like and perhaps a greater good. 
 
 " One language hath no law but use : and still 
 
 Runs blinde, unbridled, at the vulgar's will. 
 
 Another's course is curiouslj' inclos'd 
 
 In lists of Art; of choice fit words compos'd. 
 
 1 Different to has continued in use among British writers of education 
 end even of reputation. It is remarked upon in Words and their Uses, 
 Here follow instances of its British use in respectable quarters, a century 
 and a half apart. 
 
 " The bass viol is an instrument of quite a different nature to the trum- 
 pet." (Addison, Tatler, No. 153.) 
 
 " The storms and the mists .... are strangely different to those safer 
 and milder phenomena among which the English people have developed 
 their prosperity," etc. (Buckle, History of Civilization, vol. iii., p. 36.) 
 
 Were it desirable or tolerable I could multiply these examples by the 
 icore. No eminence or frequenc}' of usage, however, can justify the phrase, 
 while to and different retain the meaning they have had for centuries. 
 
 * Word* and Their Uses is referred to.
 
 iOO EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 One, in the feeble birth, becomminff old, 
 Is cradle-toomb'd : another warreth bold 
 With the j-eer-spinners. One, unhappy-founded, 
 Lives in a narrow valley ever bounded: 
 Another with the learned troop doth presse 
 From Alexander's Altars even to Fez." 
 
 (Sylvester's Du Bartaa, page 261, ed. 16XL)
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 COMMON MIS USAGES. 
 
 The every-day English of " American " life is so 
 much affected by what the " average American " sees 
 before his eyes every day, not only in newspapers, but 
 in chance advertisements, and even on signs, that mis- 
 usages of the lowest origin rise not unfrequently into 
 acceptance with people of tolerably decent habits of 
 speech and conduct. It is only lately that I have dis- 
 covered how very large the class is that never reads a 
 book, hardly even a novel of the slightest kind ; and 
 I am inclined to think that I yet do not quite know 
 how many people there are in New York, that dress 
 well, live comfortably, and have " mone}^ in the bank," 
 who are dependent entirely, for the little intellectual 
 sustenance which they assimilate, upon their morning 
 and their evening newspaper. I have myself ob- 
 served how slang and, what is very much worse, — 
 for slang has in some cases a peculiar pungen t mean- 
 ing, — vulgar, slovenly words and phrases creep into 
 use among people who would be angry or ashamed 
 if they were told that their speech was vulgar and 
 slovenly. I shall therefore remark, briefly and un- 
 methodically, upon some examples of this kind of 
 every-day language.^ 
 
 There is a strange way of making a verb and then 
 
 1 Some hundred and fifty common misuses of words are remarked upon in 
 Words and their Uses, where they are arranged alphabetically ; but such 
 an order seemed not required for the comparatively few instances in this 
 supplementary chapter. 
 26
 
 402 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 a participle from a noun in ion, of which the most 
 familiar and offensive example used to be donate, from 
 donation ; but now resurrect, from resurrection, has 
 followed it into a certain vogue. I found a cabinet 
 minister, the other day, telling about a thing being 
 resurrected. Why he was not satisfied with raised or 
 raised up, or revived, which have perfectly answered 
 the purposes of all good writers and speakers and of 
 the common people (and it is the best words and 
 phrases only that do both), I cannot understand. It 
 is to be hoped that his example will not bring the 
 word into yet more general use. Worse than resur- 
 rect, however, is Southey's resurrectionise, used per- 
 haps jocosely : "At least half these gentlemen are not 
 included in the common collections of the poets, and 
 must be resurrectionised at Stationer's Hall." (Let- 
 ters, vol. i., p. 270.) Nor can Frith's revelate for re- 
 veal be regarded with any favor : " He saw it in faith 
 .... plainly revelated unto him, albeit he were dead 
 many hundred years before it was actually fulfilled 
 and revelated unto the world." (The Body of Christ, 
 1533, ed. 1829, voL iv., p. 327.) 
 
 Another queer use of verbs which is coming into 
 vogue is the perversion of their meaning from a proper 
 object. In a paragraph before me I find mention of 
 a man who " feared to be embezzled ; " and I have 
 read a report in which it was said that a bank " was 
 defalcated." This is almost equal to the case of the 
 man who announced that " last ftight a great bug- 
 glery was committed, and I am the gentleman that 
 was buggled." I have seen the word burbled, made 
 from burglar^/, like resurrect from resurrection^ used, 
 if not with perfect seriousness, at least in such a way 
 that it would be sure to mislead un instructed speak
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 403 
 
 Ers. Now, it is to be observed that there is no " bad 
 grammar " in this. The sentences, " He was em- 
 bezzled," "The bank was defalcated," will "parse" 
 perfectly, and so will " He was burgled." The error 
 in the first case, as in the last, is merely that of the 
 ignorant perversion of the meaning of a word. A 
 man's money may be embezzled, but he cannot ; and 
 BO with a bank and its money. 
 
 The verb can is now too commonly used, even by 
 persons who should know better, erroneously in the 
 sense of may. A mistress will say to her servant, 
 " You can go out," meaning to give her permission to 
 go out, the proper word to express which is may. 
 There was no question whether the servant could go 
 out, that is, had the ability to do so. If the doors 
 had been barred, or the girl had broken her leg, then 
 it might have been said to her, " You can't go out ; " 
 but permission is granted by may. When a school- 
 boy puts up his hand and says, " Please, can I 
 g'out?" he means, and should say, "May I go out?" 
 The distinctions between may, can, shall, and will 
 are of great value, and should be carefully preserved. 
 When these verbs are used in what the grammarians 
 call their auxiliary position, they enable us to express 
 varieties of meaning which are inexpressible in the 
 corresponding tenses of synthetic languages. As to 
 the loss that we should suffer by the confusion of the 
 meanings of these verbs, that will be seen by any per- 
 son who reflects a moment how it would be if we 
 aould no longer say, I may do so and so to-morrow if 
 I can ; I might do so if I could ; I would do so *i I 
 should. 
 
 Avocation is a word very much misused in the sense 
 af work, business, occupation, even by writers of in-
 
 404 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 telligence and education. The examples at my hand 
 are very numerous. It will be found thus misused 
 not only in the pages of such journals as the Lon- 
 don " Times," the " Saturday Review," " The [Lon- 
 don] Spectator," and the " Pall Mall Gazette," which 
 represent the best English of the day, but in the 
 books of writers of high reputation. 
 
 The following instance is from the " Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette : " " They invited a number of barristers of fully- 
 established reputation to help them, they attached 
 salaries to the new chairs, and arranged the duties of 
 the professors so as to interfere as little as possible 
 *rith their professional avocations." Now a barrister's 
 professional duty is his vocation; matters which call 
 him away from these duties are avocations. Thus 
 Falstaff says to the Prince, when he gibes him about 
 the proposed robbery, " 'T is my vocation, Hal." 
 Vocation means, simply, calling. One man's calling 
 is agriculture, another's trading, another's shoe-mak- 
 ing ; and these are their vocations. Thus the Book 
 of Common Prayer, with that duplicate expression of 
 the same thought in an English word and a Latin one 
 which was common of old, speaks of a man's vocation 
 and calling.! How it was that avocation came to be 
 used in a sense directly opposed to its real meaning I 
 cannot, of course, say positively ; but I have no doubt 
 that it was merely through that pretentious ignorance 
 v»r that slovenliness in speech, to which we owe the 
 greater number of the perversions of language. The 
 misusage began a long while ago. See, for example, 
 the following passage from a writer of the rank of 
 Defoe, who wrote nearly two centuries since : — 
 
 1 It is remarkable that this use of two synonymous words, one Latin &i\i 
 Ae other English, appears in the title of the first printed Englist book 
 The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, printed in 1-177.
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 405 
 
 " Wherefore I think to write to the learned Dr. B., im- 
 ploring his most sublime haughtiness that when his other 
 more sublime avocations oi pedantry and pedagogism will 
 give him an interval," etc. (History of the Devil, page 
 463, ed. Bohn.) 
 
 There is no room left for doubt as to what Defoe 
 meant, for the Dr. B. was to get " an interval " from 
 his " avocations." Now, Defoe, by his misuse of avo- 
 cation, said exactly what he did not mean to say. 
 He meant Dr. B.'s vocations, or, better, his vocation. 
 A man's vocation is his calling, his trade, work, busi- 
 ness, occupation. The occupations of his leisure hours, 
 or those which call him away from his work, are avo- 
 cations : vocare, to call ; a-^oeare, to call away. 
 
 And yet a writer so learned and so painstaking 
 about his style as Buckle continually misuses this 
 word, thus : — 
 
 " At all events, between these two professions men were 
 necessarily divided ; the only avocations were war and theol- 
 ogy." (History of Civilization, vol. i., chap, iv.) 
 
 " . . . . and this forced interruption encourages among 
 the people an irregularity and instab lity of purpose which 
 makes them choose the wandering avocations of a shepherd 
 rather than the more fixed pursuits of agriculture." (Vol. 
 li., chap, viii.) 
 
 And here I will remark that this use of avocation 
 by Defoe, and since his time by hundreds of good 
 writers, such as Buckle, so that nowadays it has be- 
 come almost the general usage, does not and cannot 
 make it right. There goes something besides the 
 mere repetition of a word in a certain sense to the 
 making of normal language. As vocation means call- 
 ing, a-vocation cannot properly mean calling, but 
 oust properly mean a calling away, a thousand De
 
 406 EVEEY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 foes and Buckles to the contrary notwithstanding. 
 The use of it in the former sense is as indefensible aa 
 the use of demerit for merit by some of the best Eng- 
 lish writers before 1625. And the word itself might 
 well be dropped, whether used rightly or wrongly, in 
 favor of a plainer and simpler one. Thus, where, in 
 "The Cruise of the Galatea" (page 220), it is said, 
 " The laborers are able in the hottest weather to 
 carry on their usual avocations without danger," it 
 might much better have been written that they weie 
 able to "do their daily work," etc. 
 
 Couple. This word is another example of a gen- 
 eral misusage which has extended through not less 
 than three centuries, and of which many instances 
 may be found in the works of the best writers. The 
 following passage from the " Saturday Review " is an 
 example of the misusage in question : "In broad 
 daylight she met a couple of men carrying a couple 
 of sacks." (February 23, 1878.) The incorrectness 
 of this use of the word is made very manifest by the 
 following example of its correct use in the very same 
 journal, and, in fact, in the same article ; " The real 
 master of the establishment is the stiff and exacting 
 Colonel Demarcay, who pensions her husband, pays 
 her dressmaker's bills, and, in short, maintains the 
 young couple, on condition of their absolute subservi- 
 ence." The man and the wife are properly called a 
 couple, because they are joined or coupled together. 
 The men carrying the sack were not coupled, nor 
 were the sacks coupled. There were two men carrying 
 two sacks. It is not easy to find a reason for thia 
 general misuse of a word of two syllables for a wor(f 
 of one, unless, indeed, we find it in a dislike of plain- 
 ness and simplicity. I have remarked upon this mia
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 407 
 
 asage before, but it occurred to me as another (and 
 yet a stronger) example of general error, such as that 
 last remarked upon. One illustrates the other. Nor 
 Bhall I be deterred from the indication of error be- 
 cause I may have censured it at some time before. 
 
 Talk is now very generally misused for speak, and 
 bv many persons who should know better. Thus, 
 Trollope writes : — 
 
 " The fact is, George, we are rather a divided house here. 
 Some of us talk Italian and some English. I am the only 
 common interpreter in the house, and I find it a bore." 
 (Popenjoy, chap, xxx.) 
 
 " But they are quite willing to think that I and my wife 
 ought to be damned because we talk Italian, and that my 
 Bon ought to be disinherited because he was not baptized in 
 the English Church." (Popenjoy, chap, xxiv.) 
 
 And even Thackeray has 
 
 " I talked Latin faster than my own beautiful patois of 
 Alsatian French." (Paris Sketch-Book, ed. 1869, page 126.) 
 
 In all these cases the proper word is speak. The 
 people spoke Italian, and they spoke Latin. A man 
 may speak Italian, or English, or any other language, 
 very well, and yet talk nonsense. People speak to 
 tach other in the street, or as they pass each other in 
 the dismal promenade of evening parties ; and they 
 Bometimes stop and talk. Speak corresponds to the 
 French parler ; talk, to causer. A child may be able 
 '■.o speak, that is, say mamma and papa, but not to 
 talk, that is, to put words together intelligently. 
 Tlie two words may seem to overlap each other, even 
 m correct usage ; but it will be found, I believe, 
 Miat they do not. At any rate, the misusage in ques- 
 tion is flagrant.
 
 408 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Fire is very generally misused in a way of which 
 the following instance is an example : — 
 
 " Then came the aboriginal games, in which Dick-a-Dick 
 appeared in his clever trick of dodging a cricket-ball. . . . 
 An incessant fire at him was kept up at a distance of 
 only twenty yards, but he fended them all off most adroitly'' 
 (Cruise of the Galatea, page 374.) 
 
 And we hear and see continually such phrases as, 
 " He fired a stone," and I remember even, " He fired 
 a glass of water in his face." Indeed, fire has come 
 to be used by the majority of people, in a loose, slov- 
 enly way, for both throw and shoot. Its misuse came 
 about at first by a use of it as a synonym of shoot. 
 When hand fire-arms came into use, and very slowly 
 superseded the bow, the musketeer carried a lighted 
 match (by which the poor fellow often blew him- 
 self up with his own powder), and the word of com- 
 mand was, " Give fire ! " that is, put fire to the pow- 
 der.i This was soon naturally abbreviated to " fire." 
 Hence fire came to be used, pardonably as to arms, 
 for shoot. But the last line of "Hamlet" is, "Go 
 bid the soldiers shoot," — Fortinbras's command for 
 the military salute to the corpse of the Prince.^ 
 This use of fire for shoot has gone on, until we now 
 hear archers talk of "firing an arrow," a somewhat 
 absurd expression. The next stage of perversion ia 
 the use of fire to express the projection of any mis- 
 lile ; for example, to fire a stone, instead of to throw 
 
 1 Here is a passage, whimsically in point, from the last of the Eliza> 
 bethan dramatists : — 
 
 lacomo. He'll be drunk presently. 
 
 Bomho. Bottle, in battle 'ray ! Present ! Give fire ! [DrihhsJ] 
 Bo I As you were. \^Sets doicn the flask.'] 
 
 (Shirley, The Royal Master, Act H , Scene t> 
 
 • ftklutes used always to be fired with shotted guns.
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 409 
 
 a stone, to fire a cricket-ball, instead of to throw one. 
 Erelong we may hear of a fireman firing water at a 
 fire ; for there is no knowing what may be in store 
 for us. 
 
 Oalculate (as to which see " Words and their 
 Uses") is another word similarly misused by a very 
 large number of speakers not unintelligent or unedu- 
 cated. To calculate is to compute. An astronomer 
 calculates by a toilsome and vastly comprehensive 
 mathematical process the orbit of a planet. A busi- 
 ness man calculates the probable cost of an enterprise. 
 Hence, anything which is very carefully designed or 
 adapted to a certain purpose may be said to be cal- 
 culated for it. But the word, or at least the partici- 
 ple, is very commonly used to mean, merely, fitted, 
 Buited, apt. I find even in the London " Times " the 
 following sentence : " The stuff itself was well cal- 
 culated to burn, though of course it was not there for 
 such a purpose." This is almost a contradiction in 
 terms. The stuff was not calculated to burn ; no one 
 had contrived it for that purpose, or wished it to 
 burn ; it was merely apt to burn, liable to take fire. 
 
 Accident is a word which too commonly suffers a 
 like perversion. It is used as if it meant a wound. 
 Thus I read in an advertisement the very doubtful 
 assertion that "witch-hazel cures accidents and inju- 
 ries of all kinds." Now, accidents are of countless 
 kinds ; among them are the falling of steeples, the 
 explosion of steam boilers, the collision of railway 
 trains, and the falling of fat into the fire ; all of 
 which, it may safely be said, are quite uncurable, even 
 by witch-hazel. A wound, or a burn, or a bodily in- 
 jury is not an accident, but it may be, and it gener- 
 ally is, the result of an accident. But such is the
 
 no EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 ignorant and vague apprehension of the meaning of 
 the word by people who woukl be in a fidget about 
 their grammar that 1 have heard it said that " they 
 were carrying accidents into the hospital ; " accidents 
 being used to mean wounded men who were injured 
 by accident ! 
 
 Every once in a while is a phrase most often heard 
 from ladies' lij)S, but too often from men, and some- 
 times seen in print. In this phrase every qualifies all 
 that comes after it ; and what is a once in a while ? 
 The nonsense is apparent. This phrase is, I believe, 
 an Americanism of indisputable origin and usage. At 
 least, I have never heard it except from American 
 speakers, or met with it except in American writers. 
 It is a perversion by transposition of "once in every 
 little while," which, although not a very good, phrase, 
 being itself a perversion of " once in a little while," 
 is yet comprehensible. But a moment's reflection 
 will show any one who can understand the use of 
 words that " every once in a little while " is an ab- 
 surd and meaningless phrase, — an illustration of the 
 absoluteness of logical position in the English lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Another phrase commonly misused is make way — 
 a phrase idiomatic, although found in other lan- 
 guages. It is misused thus : " He snatched up the 
 cloth and made way with it." What the writer 
 meant to say was that the thief made away witli the 
 cloth. When he began to run, he doubtless made 
 way as fast as he could. To make way is to move 
 ■nore or less rapidly, to dispatch ; to go off with is 
 to make away with. Hence the phrase " He made 
 away with himself " for " connnitted suicide," whicb 
 js not unfrequently perverted into "made way.'
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 411 
 
 The mention of suicide reminds me that I saw the 
 other day, in a newspaper of very high standing, a 
 mention of two suicides, " one successful and the 
 other unsuccessful." I wonder what kind of event 
 an unsuccessful suicide is. A few repetitions of such 
 a nonsensical blunder as this, and hundreds of people 
 will assume that suicide means an attempt upon a 
 man's own life. 
 
 Some of the most ludicrous mistakes in language 
 that are made are to be seen where they are likely to 
 do the most harm — in the street railway cars. Thus, 
 when it is announced that " children more than five 
 years will be charged full fare," every indignant 
 father of a strapping lad or lass swallows with his 
 wrath a lesson in bad English. He does not con- 
 sider the announcement in the light of the query how 
 a child can be more than five years, any more easily 
 than it can be more than five apples or more than five 
 pairs of shoes. He regards it in the light only of an 
 extra five cents, and the phrase is seared into his 
 memory. A child is more or less than five years old^ 
 or of age. 
 
 Another of these announcements holds a bad lesson 
 before the public eye daily. " Passengers are ear- 
 nestly requested not to hold conversation with either 
 conductor or driver." Now, this implies that there 
 are two conductors and two drivers, and that the pas- 
 sengers are asked not to talk, or, in elegant phrase, 
 '' hold conversation," with either of them. The sim- 
 ple introduction of the rectifies the phrase : " not to 
 hold conversation with either the conductor or the 
 driver." The error of which this is an example is a 
 ommon one ; the is omitted after either and or from 
 slovenliness or ignorance, and the result is not only
 
 412 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 slovenly English, but actual confusion, whieli, in laws, 
 for instance (and most of our laws of late years aro 
 drawn up in a very inexact, slipshod way), is pro- 
 ductive of serious injury. 
 
 In and into are very commonly confused ; but of 
 the two, into is much the greater sufferer, as some 
 people seem inclined to drive it out of the language. 
 Nothing is more common than to hear a man say 
 that he got in a 'bus or car, meaning that he got into 
 it. When he had got into the 'bus, then he was in it. 
 So, some people will say that they have not looked in 
 A book for a long while, meaning that they have not 
 looked into a book. 
 
 The difference in the signification of these two 
 words is that into implies tendency toward, if not 
 motion ; in implies confinement, limitation. We 
 walk into a room, and then are in it ; we look into 
 an affair ; we see into a scheme ; a fish swims from a 
 brook into a pond, and then swims in the pond. But 
 the distinction between the uses is sometimes not 
 clear. I had marked this sentence, as I read it in 
 Trollope's " American Senator," chapter iv., as errone- 
 ous in the use of into : " Seated back on the sofa was 
 Mr. Ribbs, the butcher, who was allowed i7ito the 
 society as being a specially modest man." But on 
 reverting to it I am not sure that it is wrong. Re- 
 ceived or admitted into the society would certainly 
 be right; and I am inclined to think that the un- 
 pleasant jar on my ear was produced by the unhappy 
 use of the word alloived. 
 
 Directly. The misuse of this woi'd, in the sense of 
 when or as soon as, is British ; but as bad example 
 is contagious, I remark upon it anew, although it 
 A considered in " Words and their Uses." Directly
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 413 
 
 means straightway, and so in the shortest time ; senses 
 from which there is no right road to the sense of 
 when or as soon as. And yet the most eminent Brit- 
 ish writers (with a few exceptions, among whom is 
 Macaulay) use the word in the latter sense. Buckle's 
 pages are peppered with it. For example, " . . . . but 
 Richelieu, directly he was called to the council, deter- 
 mined to humble that house in both its branches." 
 (History of Civilization, vol. ii., chap, i.) " The cele- 
 brated work of De Lolme on the English constitution 
 was suppressed directly it appeared^ (The same, 
 Bhap. V.) Buckle's misuse of the word is so frequent 
 that I stopped making memorandums of it. Cardi- 
 nal Newman also writes, " . . , . but that directly they 
 ire loved for their own sake, then they return to their 
 )riginal dust." (Sermons on Subjects of the Day, No. 
 XVII.) This perversion is of recent origin, and will 
 probably be corrected by criticism. 
 
 Anticipate is commonly, it may almost be said 
 generally, misused in the sense of expect, look for. 
 Thus : I anticipate going to Albany to-morrow, I 
 anticipate seeing her this evening. Now, anticipate 
 means, by derivation, to take beforehand, and its 
 proper meaning in English is to take first possession 
 of, or to take before the proper time. If a man's 
 note is due on the 30th, and he pays it on the 25th, 
 he anticipates its due payment. A man may antici- 
 pate another in doing something which both intend 
 doing; that is, he may succeed in doing it first. But 
 his looking forward to doing either of these acts ia 
 not anticipation ; it is expectation. 
 
 Particle is strangely used to mean "at all," or "in 
 uny degree," as we very colloquially use bit. There 
 Is a man who walks up and down Broadway bearing
 
 414 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 i picture which represents a triumphant dentist fiend- 
 ishly brandishing in the air a forceps containing a 
 huge, three-fanged, uprooted double tooth, while he 
 demands of a meek individual in a large chair, " Did 
 it hurt you ? " to which the meek individual replies, 
 from the chair, "Not a particle." He meant "not at 
 all," or, more simply, "no." Particle is, through the 
 Latin, a diminutive of part^ and means the smallest 
 possible division of matter; and it is so matei'ial and 
 mechanical in its signification that the use of it to 
 express degree, and especially degree of pleasure or 
 pain, is, to say the very least, in the worst possible 
 taste. Its only support is in the common phrase, 
 "not a bit." But the image presented to the general 
 mind by hit has caused the word expressing it to be 
 used in almost all languages as it is in English. It 
 Beems to be a metaphor which the child invents and 
 the man retains. 
 
 Remember and recollect are used interchangeably, 
 as if they were synonyms, and the preference seems 
 to be most generally given to the latter.^ They are 
 not synonymous, and the distinction between them 
 is an important one, which ought to be preserved. 
 That which lies in our memory at hand, ready for use 
 at any moment, we remember ; but we also really do 
 remember much that does not lie at hand, that we 
 cannot find in our mind's storehouse on the instant, 
 and this w^e try to recollect, that is, to re-collect. 
 Therefore, the expression, I don't remember, but I 
 will try to recollect, is not only correct, but it sets 
 'oith a condition of the mind expressible in no other 
 way, and to speak of which we have frequent neces- 
 •ity. The ability to do so will be impa'red, if not 
 
 1 See Wordt and their Uses.
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 415 
 
 altogether lost, when the distinction between the two 
 words is done away. 
 
 Next. A correspondent asks, " What is the mean- 
 ing of the word next when used to designate a future 
 day of the week?" and gives as one example of a 
 doubt as to its meaning, " To-day is Thursday, and 
 if I should agree to be in New York next Saturday, 
 I should expect to be there the day after to-morrow : 
 but I find that many people would think that I meant 
 to be there just one week later ; " and as another, 
 " Divines will announce that there will be such or 
 Buch a meeting next Saturday week, when they mean 
 that the meeting will be held on the second Saturday 
 after the giving of the notice." The first of these 
 uses or apprehensions is wrong, the second right. 
 Next means, merely, nearest. It is the superlative of 
 near., — near, nigher, next. Its meaning has not 
 changed a whit for more than a thousand years. We 
 say that a minor brings a suit " by his next friend ; " 
 that is, by his nearest friend. The next house to our 
 own is simply the nearest house. If we are speaking 
 on Thursday, " next Saturday " means the nearest 
 Saturday to the day of our speaking ; that is, the day 
 but one after. I have observed the misuse mentioned 
 by my correspondent, and I cannot explain it except 
 by attributing it to mere blundering misapprehension. 
 Next Saturday is the Saturday of next week only 
 when we speak on Saturday. Next Saturday week, 
 however, is " short " for a week from next Saturday ; 
 and therefore, of course, does mean the second Satur- 
 day after the day of speaking. 
 
 3Iemoranda is a word which lingers far too long 
 among us. It is the Latin plural of memorandum^ 
 which word has been so very long in our language
 
 416 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 that it surely is naturalized. It has far more light 
 to be treated as an Enghsh word than a score of 
 others to which no one would dream of affixing a 
 Latin termination. A correspondent, a lad whose 
 Christian name is Poins (which touches me nearly), 
 sends me a plea for memoranda. But a fellow named 
 Poins should know that nearly three hundred years 
 ago another fellow, named Falstaff, whose English \a 
 unexceptionably good, said memorandums, in a pas- 
 sage of " Henry IV.," Part L, Act IV., Scene 3, 
 which is here somewhat unquotable. 
 
 Tlieir is very commonly misused with reference to 
 a singular noun. Even John Ruskin has written 
 such a sentence as this : " But if a customer wishes 
 you to injure their foot or to disfigure it, you are to 
 refuse their pleasure." (Fors Clavigera, No. 77, 
 May, 1877.) How Mr. Ruskin could have written 
 Buch a sentence as that (for plainly there is no slip 
 of the pen or result of imperfect interlinear correc- 
 tion in it), or how, it having been written, it could be 
 passed by an intelligent proof-reader, I cannot sur- 
 mise. It is, perhaps, an exemplification of the straits 
 to which we are driven by the lack of a pronoun of 
 common gender meaning both he and she, his and 
 her. But, admitting this lack, the fact remains that 
 his is the representative pronoun, as mankind includes 
 both men and women. Mr. Ruskin might better have 
 said, " If a customer wishes you to injure his foot you 
 are to refuse his pleasure." To use " his or her " in 
 cases of this kind seems to me very finical and pe- 
 dantic. 
 
 Ascetic is a word which, if used at all, must be 
 used, it would seem, in its proper sense. But, unfort- 
 unately, there are many such words which are per
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 417 
 
 rerted by ignorant affectation. I have heard ascetic 
 used as if it meant elegant, refined ; and here is an 
 example of such a use, or something like it, from a 
 newspaper of high standing. Of General Fremont's 
 library it is said that " it was such a collection of books 
 as a man of General Fremont's ascetic tastes would 
 Belect." Now ascetic really means austere, rigid. A 
 hermit's habits of life are ascetic. What the writer 
 of the sentence just quoted meant by it we can only 
 guess at ; but we guess aesthetic. 
 
 Identified is strangely misused by combining it 
 with incongruous words. We most frequently hear 
 it now in the phrase, such or such a man was " promi- 
 nently identified " with such a party or such a busi- 
 ness interest. Now, to any one who knows and thinks 
 what prominently means and what identified means, 
 the idea of using the former to qualify the latter is 
 absurd. Identity is sameness ; prominence is a stand- 
 ing out or apart from. To say that a man is identi- 
 fied with a cause or a business is of itself a coarse 
 overstraining of metaphor ; but to say that he is promi- 
 nently identified with it is past the extreme limits of 
 tolerable license. 
 
 Balance. It is, perhaps, hopeless in a community 
 BO given up to trade as ours is to check the use of the 
 word balance in the sense of that which is left. Peo- 
 ple speak even of the balance of a day, of spending 
 thus or so the balance of their time, or even the bal- 
 ance of their lives. This to my taste is hideous 
 English. Balance means, first, scales; next, what 
 will keep scales evenly poised ; and, finally, by meta- 
 phor, the sum which equalizes an account. But it 
 does not mean that which is left of anything, whether 
 >f a day or of a life-time to express which we have 
 
 27
 
 418 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 rest, remainder, and residue. It would be better to 
 Bay, what is left, or even what is over, than the bal- 
 ance. I have remarked upon this misuse before ; so 
 have others ; but it cannot be too often or too se- 
 verely censured. 
 
 Lengthened. Why lengthened is misused as it is 
 I cannot see. For example, in the London " Times : " 
 " On Sunday afternoon the Earl of Beaconsfield had 
 a lengthened audience of her Majesty at Windsor." 
 What the writer meant was that the audience was 
 long ; and why he did not say so is a puzzle. If an 
 audience is, by custom or appointment, to be an hour, 
 or a quarter of an hour, or five minutes long, and then 
 for any reason it is made an hour and a half, or 
 twenty minutes, or ten minutes, it is lengthened. 
 But if there were no limit of custom or appointment, 
 and it should last all day, it is only a long, or a very 
 long, audience. And as of audiences so of sermons, 
 and the like. We hear of lengthy sermons, when what 
 is meant is merely long or very long sermons, or, to 
 use a very expressive old English word, longsome ser- 
 mons, — a word strictly analogical in its expressive- 
 ness, longsome being formed from lotig, as loearisome 
 is from weary. 
 
 We are beginning to see in advertisements now the 
 phrase, table-board ; for example, "table-board one 
 dollar a day." If not an incorrect, it is a very droll, 
 combination of words. For board thus used means 
 that which is placed upon the board or table. Board 
 is one thing, and lodging is another ; so that we see 
 signs, " board and lodging." There are few words 
 in our language so absolutely synonj'mous as board 
 Hud table, the one being the English, the other the 
 Homance, name for the same thing; so that table*
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 419 
 
 hoard is simply table-table or board-board. Now, 
 this use of table-board is an example of the history 
 which often is embodied in words and phrases. It 
 Bhows that in New York, and in other American cities 
 which delight in being little imitation New Yorks, 
 lodging-houses are passing away, and that board means 
 both board and lodging, unless it is otherwise ex- 
 pressed. The phrase table-board would sound very 
 strangely to British ears. It is thus far an Ameri- 
 canism ; almost a New York-ism. 
 
 It is, perhaps, as hopeless to check the prevalence of 
 " on the street " as that of balance for rest, as to both 
 of which errors something is said in " Words and 
 their Uses." The proper phrase, both logically and 
 by good usage, is " in the street." A house even, 
 although it fronts on a street, is in a street. There 
 is a noise in the street ; people walk in the street, not 
 on the street. A street is not a surface ; it is a pas- 
 sage-way, in or through which people go. True, we 
 speak of a man being on his way or on the road to 
 such a place, but we do not thereby mean that he 
 was physically upon a certain surface of earth called 
 a road : on is then used idiomatically, as it is in the 
 phrases, " on the run," " on the jump," " on the gal- 
 lop." This bad and pedantically literal use of on, 
 which is becoming prevalent here, but not in England, 
 is, I believe, a Scotticism. At any rate, I find it used 
 by Carlyle : " Some said they had seen her on the 
 street, some on the roofs of the adjoining houses." 
 (Wilhelm Meister, ii. 4.) " On the street they heard 
 the cry of fire." (The same, v. 13.) Here the second 
 use of the word is correct, and it illustrates the incor- 
 rectness of the first use and of the third ; for Carlyle 
 Rurel}' did not mean that the girl was on the street
 
 i20 EVERY -DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 as he did that she was on the house-tops. To *«,y 
 that a noise is on a street is a deplorable perversion 
 of language. 
 
 DonH for does rCt is one of the commonest errors 
 in speech. Doesn't, the contracted form of "does 
 not," is properly used, of course, with he, she, or it; 
 because we say he does, she does, it does. DonH, the 
 contracted form of "do not," belongs to I, we, you, 
 and they. " He don't " is one of the few violations of 
 grammatical form possible in English. I am piteously 
 entreated, by more than one correspondent, to say 
 that " he don't " is bad English, and therefore I say 
 it. But " he don't " for " he does n't " is, I sus- 
 pect, an example rather of phonetic degradation than 
 of ignorance or defiance of grammar, like I^d for 
 /'M, the proper contraction of I would ; Vd being 
 the contracted form of I had. Therefore, " He 
 don't " does n't grieve me as it grieves my corre- 
 spondents. 
 
 Some of these take such matters more to heart than 
 I do. For example, here is one who tells me he is so 
 aggrieved by the use of less, in such a phrase as 
 " less than nine letters," that " within ten years " he 
 has written " some hundreds of protests against the 
 use of the adjective of quantity for that of number, 
 and not a few to that most rare and exquisite of all 
 critical journals, the ' Evening Post ; ' but," he wails, 
 " all to no purpose." I am sorry for him, although I 
 cannot imagine a man so afflicted by the vse of less 
 for fewer that he should write hundreds of letters 
 about it. Strictly, he is right, of course; but the 
 matter is not one about which a man should rend hia 
 heart, or even his garments. 
 
 Every. A misuse of the word every is worth t»
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 421 
 
 mark, — the using it in a plural sense, which is very 
 common. Thus : "Every person rose and took their 
 leave," instead of " All rose and took their leave." 
 The word is thus constantly misused by persons who 
 would not be guilty of saying, for example, " Every 
 one thiyik so and so," instead of " Every one thinks,^* 
 etc. But even a writer like Mallock has " Every one 
 looked about them silently." (New Republic, Book 
 III., chap, i.) In such sentences, however, the use 
 of this word is made difficult by the lack of a singular 
 pronoun of dual sex. On the occasion referred to by 
 Mr. Mallock there were women present as well as 
 men. He did not wish to write, " Every one then 
 looked about bim or her," nor did he wish to exclude 
 the women from his assertion. Nevertheless, this is 
 no warrant for the conjunction of everi/ and them. 
 His meaning would have been expressed by " all 
 looked about them," etc. 
 
 O71 to. The misuse of this combination in the 
 sense of upon is common and is growing. Mr. Trol- 
 lope, whose English is usually good and idiomatic, al- 
 though not precise, is a constant offender in this re- 
 Bpect. Here are two instances in a single sentence : 
 
 " It was a large, brick building facing on to the villao-e 
 Btreet, .... but with a front on to its own ground." (An 
 Eye for an Eye, chap, v.) 
 
 The latter of the two is very flagrant : in both the 
 proper word is upon. So we hear it said that a cat 
 jumped on to a chair. The cat jumped upon, that is 
 up on, the chair. She could not jump on to the chair ; 
 for when she was once on the chair she could not 
 jump to it. To jump on a chair is to be on the chair 
 l,nd jump there. It is like dancing on a tight rope, 01 
 walking 07i stilts, or standing on a platform.
 
 i22 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Possessives. Quite lately there has come into 
 vogue in the newspapers a use of the possessive case 
 which seems to me objectionable. For example, 
 " A Pacific steamer's loss," " Brooklyn's murder," 
 *' John Smith's robbery." In all such cases a clear, 
 clean use of language requires a preposition instead 
 of the possessive case ; for what is meant is the loss 
 of a Pacific steamer, the murder in Brooklyn, the 
 robbery of John Smith. A Pacific steamer's loss is 
 the loss that has befallen a Pacific steamer, — it 
 might be of a screw, or a smoke-stack, or what not. 
 John Smith's robbery really means the robbery that 
 John Smith has committed ; and we naturally expect 
 to hear what or whom he robbed. As to phrases 
 like Brooklyn's murder, they are simply in the worst 
 taste possible, very bad English. For, although a 
 city might metaphorically be said to possess a mur- 
 der " of its ain particular," as the Scots would saj^ 
 and although instances of such a use of the possessive 
 might be produced from poetical writing, this is no 
 justification, but rather the contrary, of a like usage 
 in every-day cold-blooded speech or writing. Lan- 
 guage is so much learned from newspapers nowadays 
 that this growing solecism demands notice. 
 
 Expect. I have heretofore remarked upon a too 
 common misuse of this word in the simple sense of 
 think or believe. This misuse has become very com- 
 mon ; nor is it confined to uneducated speakers or to 
 untrained writers. I very recently observed two in- 
 stances of it in Mr. Mallock's remarkable book, " The 
 New Republic : " — 
 
 " ' I expect,' said Miss Merton, ' that we are naturall* 
 taore introspective thau men.'" (Book III., chap, ii.) 
 " For, in the first place, I expect it requires certain nat
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 423 
 
 oral advantages of position to overlook life." (Book III., 
 chap, ii.) 
 
 Mr. Mallock is not only a thoughtful writer and a 
 brilliant one, but he is a schohu' ; and he knows as well 
 as any one can know that expect means to look for- 
 ward to, and not to think, or to believe, or guess, or 
 surmise, or conjecture. And yet, meaning to express 
 the idea think or believe, he wrote expect^ — wrote it 
 intentionally and by no blunder, being led into his 
 error by the mere effect of contamination. He heard 
 people around him use expect in that way, and he 
 read it in newspapers and in magazines, and his 
 knowledge did not prove a sufficient disinfectant. 
 His example shows the use of such verbal criticism as 
 this, which otherwise would be trivial business. 
 
 Remunerate. A common error in the use of this 
 word shows a misapprehension of its meaning, which 
 confounds it with reimburse. For example, this pas- 
 sage from a respectable newspaper : " His assets are 
 very large, though in the present condition of trade 
 it is thought they could not be made remunerative." 
 Now, a trade, or even a profession, is remunerative to 
 the person engaged in it ; that is, it makes him a good 
 return for his outlay of time and money. But assets, 
 however valuable, cannot be remunerative. It might 
 properly be said that it is thought that in the present 
 condition of trade the assets, although large, will not 
 reimburse the creditors. 
 
 Plenty is very commonly misused to mean many, 
 enough in numbers. It is aot only heard thus col- 
 loquially, but may be found in the books of good 
 writers. For example, " Plenty of the gang told 
 Die. They all know it." (Miss Martineau, Game 
 Law Tales, vol. ii., p. 74.) Plenty means a sufficient
 
 424 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 or a large supply of anything, as, plenty of corn and 
 wine. It does not refer to numbers. " Plenty of 
 tlie gang " reminds me of the speech of a youngster 
 who said that in a certain place there was an " abun- 
 dance of boys." Many of the gang, or enough of the 
 gang, would have been right. 
 
 Executed. In " Words and their Uses " I declared 
 and showed that the general use of this word now and 
 for a long time past, to mean put to death in pursu- 
 ance of sentence of a court or other superior power, 
 is really absurd, and is tolerable only on the ground 
 of custom. When I did this, I of course knew very 
 well that I was attacking a usage quite tln-ee hundred 
 years old, which has the support given by the example 
 of the best writers. Because of that usage, however, 
 none the less it is objectionable as a damaging and 
 confusing perversion of language. Of this Buckle 
 furnishes the following striking illustrations. De- 
 scribing Philip II. of Spain's cruel persecution of 
 Protestants, he says : — 
 
 " lie ordered that every heretic who refused to recant 
 should be burned. If the heretic did recant, some indul- 
 gence was granted ; but having been once tainted, he must 
 die. Instead of being burned, he was therefore to be exe- 
 cuted." (History of Civilization, vol. ii., chap, viii.) 
 
 That this use of the word was not one of those 
 casual slips to which all writers are subject, and from 
 which they are often saved by the care of correctors 
 of the press, is shown by the recurrence of the word 
 m the same strange sense, and even in a more pro- 
 nounced manner, on the next page :".... an esti- 
 mate probably not far from the truth, since we know 
 from otlier sources that in one year eight thousand 
 »eere either executed or burned."
 
 COMMON MISUSAGES. 425 
 
 Here " either " very distinctly and purposely op- 
 poses burning to execution. But whether the heretic 
 were put to death by burning or in any other way, it 
 was in execution of a sentence. The sentence might 
 have been that he should be burned, or be hanged, 
 or be beheaded, or be tortured to death. If he were 
 executed in one ease, he was executed in any other. 
 There is no form of death that is specifically execu- 
 tion. Buckle probably means that those who were 
 not burned were either hanged or beheaded ; but 
 there is no warrant or justification for such a lim- 
 itation of the sense of the word execute. A capital 
 execution is sometimes by shooting. We have here 
 an example of the confusion which is a natural and 
 almost an inevitable consequence of the arbitrary, 
 abnormal use of words, — an example which illus- 
 trates the truth of the doctrine that mere usage 
 should not be accepted as a final law in language. 
 This instance and others which I have given, and 
 yet others which might be produced, from Buckle's 
 writings are the more important and impressive, not 
 only from the fact of his eminence as a writer, but 
 from consideration of the other fact that he was a 
 very learned and extremely careful writer, and one 
 who had (as his diary informs us) made style a 
 special study. Yet he was neither so correct nor 
 (apart from the thoughts which he presented) so 
 impressive a writer as other writers whose style is 
 unlabored. 
 
 Pocket-handkerchief and neck-handkerchief. No 
 
 vrror in usage is too trifling to be made the subject 
 
 f verbal criticism ; but I should not make these 
 
 iBompounds the subject of remark had I not been 
 
 requested to do so, which, indeed, is true of much
 
 426 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 that I have written of this kind. Kerchief is an 
 Anglicized and corrupted form of the French couvre- 
 chef an antiquated word, the last syllable of which 
 is the obsolete chiefs the head. I find among my 
 memorandums an interesting passage from the an- 
 cient French poem, " Le Roman de la Rose," written 
 about A. D. 1310, which shows both words, the com- 
 pound and the simple, in striking juxtaposition : — 
 
 " Tantost Abstinence contrainte 
 Vest d'une robe caraeline, 
 Et s'atourne comme beguyne, 
 Et eut d'ung large couvrcchief, 
 Et d'ung blanc drap convert son chief.''^ 
 
 That is, " had a large kerchief, and with a white 
 cloth covered her head." Kerchief thus meaning 
 originally a cloth to cover the head, it is well enough 
 to call a similar cloth for the neck a neck-kerchief, 
 and one for use in the hand a hand-kerchief ; but 
 pocket-handkerchief and neck-handkerchief are the 
 abomination of superfluity and the effervescence of 
 haberdashery.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 Under the convenient beading of this chapter I 
 iball gather a very few of the brief colloquial discus- 
 sions into which I have been led, either rarely by 
 critics, or mucli more frequently by correspondents, 
 Bince the publication of " Words and their Uses." I 
 shall purposely leave them as nearly in their original 
 form as seems suitable to their present place, not 
 smoothing their controversial edge or pruning them 
 of the repetition of arguments pro and con, to which 
 it seems to me that they ov/e any interest which they 
 may have had when they were first published, or may 
 hope to awaken at present. For a like reason I shall 
 in some cases give the letters of my correspondents.^ 
 
 " HAD RATHER " AND " HAD n't OUGHTER." 
 
 In a letter dated from one of our colleges of the 
 best standing the writer brings up for consideration 
 the word had in the phrases, " As if a hundred horses 
 bad better not have been killed " and " He had better 
 have avoided it." To this use of had he objects, and 
 ae makes the following suggestion : — 
 
 " The frequent employment in conversation of the sound 
 of the final rf as a common contraction for had and would, 
 in connection with rather and better, might easily cause the 
 
 1 I nevertheless here repeat for certainly the twentieth time my earnest 
 request that my readers and my non-readers will not call upon me to de- 
 eide disputed points in language. I have never set myself up as com' 
 tetent for such an ofBce, and for it I have nei.her leisure nor liking.
 
 428 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 phrase I had rather to be substituted for I luould rather, in 
 conversation, through the colloquial I'd rather ; and thus 
 it might pass into writing. The same applies to better. 
 Does this afford a sufficient explanation ? " 
 
 The supposition, which is not new, that had rather 
 is the fruit of a misapprehended contraction common 
 to both had and would is not well founded. Doubt- 
 less, Z'^ rather may represent I would rather; and 
 when intended as a contraction of that phrase it 
 might be misapprehended as a contraction of I had 
 rather. It is true also that both phrases are used by 
 writers of good standing. But the conclusion drawn 
 by my correspondent, and even by some grammarians, 
 is not warranted ; for I had rather, you had better, and 
 the like have been in common use for centuries. On 
 the other hand, that fact proves only itself ; that is, 
 a certain frequency of use. It does not show that 
 the phrase in question is the best for its purpose, or 
 that it is a reasonable use of language ; although the 
 latter is always to be presumed in a plirase or a con- 
 struction of long and general acceptance. It may be 
 added, as of some interest and as conclusive against 
 the assumption that I''d represents I would, that the 
 I in should and woidd was pronounced until about a 
 century and a half ago, and was so strongly insisted 
 upon that we have to go back only about two hun- 
 dred years to find the contraction of 1 would printed 
 I ''Id, which shows that J't?, which appears side by 
 side with / 7c?, was then a contracted form of / had. 
 
 The question as to the correctness of had rather^ 
 and the unfavorable judgment upon it which I casu- 
 ally expressed in " The Galaxy," were discussed in 
 an essay in the " Educational Monthly." The tone 
 of the writer is magisterial and severe : but it lacka
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 429 
 
 khat rough flavor of personal discourtesy which some 
 champions of usus et prceterea nihil think becoming 
 in them, — an assumption that I shall not dispute, — 
 or which, perhaps, they find themselves compelled to 
 adopt as seasoning to give some zest to the flat dull- 
 ness of trite platitude. There is so much satisfaction 
 in meeting a manly and fair opponent that I wish 
 the arguments of the writer in the " Educational 
 Monthly " were more pointedly directed against my 
 position. But in fact there is very little of it that 
 concerns me, and that little is easily disposed of ; for 
 almost all of the writer's argument and irony is put 
 forth against those (for it seems that there are such) 
 who regard Jiad in phrases like / had rather go as 
 " an auxiliary verb," and who find fault with it in 
 those constructions because " it will not parse." ^ 
 Now, even as to whether there really be such a thing 
 as an auxiliary verb I very much doubt ; and as to 
 whether any English sentence would " parse " I have 
 not once concerned myself since I came from under 
 the ferule that tenderly guided my earliest years.^ It 
 may be that it would have been better for me and for 
 my readers if I had made a grammarian of myself; 
 but that does not affect the fact that I have not ; and 
 ^he only wrong done me by the author of the article 
 /n question is that he speaks of my little paragraph 
 R,s " the latest instance of this kind of criticism ; '* 
 
 1 " The whole difficult}' as to the propriety of saj'ing ' had rather,' 'had 
 better,' ' had as lief,' etc., arises from regarding had as an ' auxiliary verb,' 
 m the common acceptation of that term. In a certain sense, no doubt, it 
 IS an auxiliary. Dare, in the sentence 'I dare do it,' and is mid, in the 
 sentence ' Hanno is said to have reached the shores of Arabia, ' may be 
 called auxiliary verbs. So had, when used in the forms under considera- 
 tion, may be said to be an auxiliary ; that is, it aids in complementing th« 
 Dhraseology which embodies the predicate of the sentence." (Page 62.) 
 
 * See Words and their Uses, chapter ix.
 
 430 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 meaning the {luxiliary and the parsing kind. Ac- 
 cording to the view that I take of the English lan- 
 guage, parsing is the merest superfluity, either as 
 training for its mastery or as a means of its analytic 
 study. The writer in the " Educational Monthly " 
 seems to think otherwise ; and he does battle with 
 antagonists of his own faith. It must be admitted 
 that of them he makes great slaughter. But I shall 
 not weep over their remains. Let the dead in gram- 
 mar bury their dead. It is "none of my funeral." 
 
 The only point which I brought forward for consid- 
 eration (and in doing so I spoke rather as a recorder 
 of doubts that were making themselves felt than as 
 an opponent of one form or the advocate of another) 
 was whether, in the phrases in question, had is the 
 best word, or, if you please, a good word, the right 
 word, to convey the intended meaning. The mean- 
 ing of a word is determined in a great measure, but 
 not absolutely and entirely, by precedent, " author- 
 ity," usage. And as to " had better," " had rather," 
 "had as lief," and so forth, it is out of question that 
 this use of had has the sanction of long usage, not 
 only by the English-speaking people generally, but 
 by some of their greatest and most careful writers. 
 It is therefore not at all surprising that my " Educa- 
 tional " opponent should say, — 
 
 " Hence, consistently with grammatical principles, as well 
 fts with long-established, unquestioned English usage, and 
 ihat too of the best and most careful writers in the language, 
 we hesitate not to write 'had rather ' and 'had better' when- 
 ever it suits our purpose." 
 
 Two points, however, in the judgment pronounced 
 by this critic, need comment ; in one case very brief.
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 431 
 
 in the other more extended. The phraseology is said 
 to be consistent with grammatical principles. Now, 
 as I have said before, with what are called gram- 
 matical principles in the English language I profess 
 to have no concern whatever ; and therefore whether 
 any construction is in conformity with them or not is, 
 ad hoc^ a matter that I cannot rightfully be called 
 upon to take into consideration. 
 
 The second point is the assertion that this usage is 
 " unquestioned," — an assertion which seems to have 
 been too thoughtlessly made. I deny it ; and to the 
 contrary produce not only a score of such letters as 
 that cited above (although they are evidence of some 
 weight), but the very grammarians whom the writer 
 in the " Educational Monthly " feels called upon to 
 withstand, together with a writer on language of the 
 learning and acumen of Archbishop Trench, and an 
 orator of the high repute of Wendell Phillips, both of 
 whom this very writer in this very article brings for- 
 ward for castigation because of what is a deliberate 
 avoidance of the phraseology " had better." Mani- 
 festly, therefore, the fact is directly to the contrary 
 of this writer's too inconsiderate and unqualified as- 
 sertion. The phraseology is questioned. It is now 
 called upon to pass under the revision of what I have 
 before called the court that pronounces judgment 
 upon language, — "a mixed commission of the com- 
 mon and the critical, before whom precedent and 
 good usage have presumptive authority, on condition 
 that they bear the test of criticism, that is, of reason." 
 And what I have thus far done is little more than to 
 venture the prediction that the verdict of that court 
 will be against such uses of words as had rather he 
 and had better go^ and that therefore they will suffer 
 gradual, although not very slow, extinction.
 
 432 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 But let us examine the passages quoted from Arch- 
 bishop Trench and Mr. Phillips. The archbishop, in 
 his book on " Bible Revision," wrote, " It appears 
 with variations, slight indeed, but yet which would 
 better have been avoided." Mr. Phillips, in a speech 
 reported February 21, 1866, said, "Governor Par- 
 sons said he would like a million of dollars ; and the 
 eloquent apostle said he thought Massachusetts could 
 better lend it." I venture without hesitation to say 
 that in both these instances the distinguished gentle- 
 men were incorrect in their phraseology. The prel- 
 ate should have written, "but which yet might better 
 have been avoided ; " the orator should have said, " he 
 thought Massachusetts might better lend it." But 
 observe that in both cases, as far as " would better " 
 and " could better " are concerned, there is no ques- 
 tion of grammar. As far as mere grammar and the 
 requirements of " parsing " go, might, could, would^ 
 and should suit the construction equally. The error 
 was, in the one case, that the writer used would when 
 his meaning was might, and in the other that the 
 speaker used could when his meaning also was might. 
 It is a mere question of the meaning of words, not of 
 syntax, or even of rhetoric. 
 
 To consider this question of the meaning of the 
 verbs to be used with better and rather and the like 
 words : let us first take an example quoted in the 
 "Educational Monthly's" article from Boyd's "Lei- 
 sure Hours : " " The most meddlesome of tattling old 
 women knows when she may venture to repeat Mrs. 
 Grundy's opinion, and when she had better not." 
 Here it is said that " had better not " " is equivalent 
 to ought not or should not," and that " neither would^ 
 aor might, nor even should will fill the place of had
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 433 
 
 alone," and express tlie meaning. I venture to say- 
 that this decision is wrong. Of course, neither " she 
 would better not " nor " she should better not " is ad- 
 missible. But is not might the proper correlative of 
 may ; and as we should say " when she may venture 
 to speak and when she might better hold her tongue," 
 so would it not be proper and exactly expressive to say 
 "when she may venture to repeat Mrs. Grunc]y's opin- 
 ion and when she might better not [repeat it] " ? The 
 use of had for all the different shades of meaning in 
 mighty could, would, and shotdd seems to indicate a rude 
 and indiscriminating manner of speech ; and if these 
 various meanings could not be expressed, a barbarous 
 poverty of language would be indicated, or at least 
 an inflexibility and narrowness akin to that of the 
 Latin use of amai'em for I might love and I could 
 love and / would love and I should love.^ But see 
 again that the question is not a grammatical one ; 
 not one of syntax or even of rhetorical construction, 
 but of the mere meaning of the word that is to be 
 used. The error is of precisely the same sort as that 
 in the sentence, " The book can be seen by any per- 
 son at this oflBce," which I find in a journal of the 
 highest standing. What was intended to be expressed 
 was neither the ability of any person to see the book, 
 nor the visibility of the book, but permission to any 
 person to see it. The writer meant to say, " The 
 book may be seen by any person," etc. 
 
 And now as to the meaning of had, which is all 
 with which I have any direct concern. Its " gram- 
 matical character," to the consideration of which the 
 writer in the " Educational. Monthly " gives so much 
 attention, and which he discusses with discrimination, 
 
 1 See Words and their Uses, page 312. 
 88
 
 434 EVf:nY-DAY English. 
 
 if not with correct conclusion, is nothing at all to my 
 purpc se. 
 
 Have, of wliich had is the preterite form, expresses 
 simply present possession. If it ever implies or seems 
 to express any other meaning, that is only in virtue 
 of the association of ideas, or by figure of speech. In 
 the sentence, " I have a duty to perform," obligation 
 is expressed, but it is expressed by the sentence as a 
 vehole ; have expresses merely present possession. It 
 asserts that the performance of a duty pertains to, 
 belongs to, the speaker. It pertains to me to perform 
 a duty — it belongs to me to perform this duty. So 
 in the sentence, " I have to go home," obligation is 
 expressed ; but in this case, as in the other, and in all 
 others of a like construction, have expresses simply 
 present possession. Just so we say, merely using the 
 possessive pronoun to express obligation, "It is yours 
 to do thus or so ; " that is, " You have to do thus or 
 so." And so the Latin form of "I have to go" is 
 eundum est mihi. To signify that an action must 
 be done, the impersonal gerund is combined with the 
 dative of possession. The subject of the obligation, 
 that is, the person that has to do something, is ex- 
 pressed by the dative ; and that the dative has a 
 possessive force, even with regard to material objects, 
 of course no one moderately acquainted with Latin 
 needs to be reminded. That in all such phrases have, 
 in any of its tenses, expresses simple possession at 
 some time seems too clear to need further enforce- 
 ment or illustration. And so in the sentence, " Deal 
 with others as you would have others deal with you ' 
 (which is another of those examples brought for 
 ward as illustrative of the notion that have expresses 
 obligation rather than possession), have expresses
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 435 
 
 merely present possession, although in combination 
 with would it implies volition as to present, or rather 
 as to indefinite, time. It can have no other meaning 
 than that which it has in the question, " How would 
 you have others deal with you?" which seems to 
 be just the same that it has in the tailor's question, 
 " How will you have your trousers made ? " or in 
 Celia's threat to Rosalind, " We must have your 
 doublet and hose plucked over your head." 
 
 Consequently, in the sentence, " I have had this 
 cold for more than a week," which is brought for- 
 ward in this article as a critical crux for my discom- 
 fiture, had, in my judgment, can express only past 
 possession. The sentence as a whole expresses both 
 past and present possession ; but had expresses only 
 that which is past. " I had this cold for more than 
 a week " would express the possession of the cold 
 for more than a week at some time past. " I have 
 this cold " would express possession of the cold at the 
 time present, and we cannot add " for more than a 
 week," becavise that takes in time past. And when 
 we wish to express past possession and present pos- 
 session ^^»e combine had with have^ and say " I have 
 had." 
 
 But there is one other use of had brought forward 
 by the critic of the "Educational Monthly," which 
 cannot be passed over. He cites Cowper's line ad- 
 dressed to his mother's portrait : — 
 
 " Oh, that those lips had language ! " 
 
 and also the sentence, "I wish I had his oppoi'tuni- 
 ties ; " to which I volunteer to acid another of the 
 same sort, " If I had him here, it were better." It is 
 adroitly put that " Cowper of course means, ' Would
 
 436 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH, 
 
 that they now had language, and could speak to me I ' 
 Had does not express a perfected or even a past pos- 
 session, for the lips referred to never had spoken. It 
 merely assumes a present non-possession, and helps 
 to express the wish that the power of speech were 
 possessed." 
 
 At the first blush it does seem that this construc- 
 tion (and this only of all that are jDroduced or that 
 have occurred to me) shows that my assertion that 
 had always expresses perfected or past possession was 
 too sweeping. But let us examine the construction. 
 In all these sentences had is put in the stead of might 
 have, could have : " Oh, that those lips might have lan- 
 guage ! " "I wish I could have his opportunities ; " 
 and this construction is merely the use, the idiomatic 
 use, of (in grammar phrase) the imperfect subjunc- 
 tive for the imperfect potential. So in the third 
 sentence, " If I had him here, it were better," the 
 same idiomatic conversion has taken place in both 
 verbs ; and the sentence in its normal form is, " If 
 I could have him here, it would be better." This 
 Bubstitution is formally recognized by the gramma- 
 rians as idiomatic in regard to had and were. (See 
 Lindley Murray, Etymology, sec. 7, vol. i., p. 146, 
 ed. 1824.) Whether it is directly traceable to the 
 Anglo-Saxon use of hcefed for had or might have, and 
 of wcere for were or would be, I shall not undertake 
 to say. But that the usage is not at all dependent 
 upon a sense of obligation conveyed by this use of 
 had (the explanation of the writer in the " Educa- 
 tional Monthly ") is very clear from the fact that 
 the same use of the preterite obtains in almost all, if 
 uot all, verbs. For example : " He could not do it if 
 he tried ;'''' that is, if he should try, etc. " I would
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 437 
 
 break with him if it broke ray heart ; " that is, if 
 t should break my heart. " She would not Hsten, 
 charmed he never so wisely ; " that is, should he 
 charm, etc. The idiom is exactly the same as in 
 
 "• . . . had he a thousand lives, 
 What were ten thousand to a wrong like mine?" 
 
 Milton pushed this idiom to the extreme, writing, in 
 the " Areopagitica," " And he who ivere pleasantly 
 disposed could not well avoid to lik'n it," etc. ; that 
 is, he who should be pleasantly disposed could not, 
 etc. 
 
 But such sentences as " I had rather be a door- 
 keeper in the house of my God," etc., and " I had 
 rather be right than President," cannot be thus re- 
 solved. For " I would have rather be a door-keeper,'* 
 etc., " I would have rather be right," etc., are incon- 
 gruous, aud at variance with reason. The incongru- 
 ity of " I had rather be," etc., is that of the combina- 
 tion of the sign of past time with that of present 
 time, — had be, — which is shown by the obvious 
 congruity of the combination of had with the sign of 
 past time, been ; for to " I had rather been a door- 
 keeper," etc., " I had rather been right," etc., there 
 is no logical objection. These may properly be sub- 
 stituted for " I would have rather been a door-keeper," 
 etc., " I would have rather been right," etc. The 
 pestion as to which form shall be preferred is one 
 loerely of taste and usage. In these sentences the 
 word rather, meaning only sooner, may confuse and 
 mislead some readers, although it is merely a modi- 
 fier of had, and has no formative function in the sen- 
 tence. The incongruous and anomalous position of 
 had in these sentences may be seen by considering 
 the expression of exactly the same thought by the
 
 i38 EVERY-DAY F.XGUSH. 
 
 use of would and the transposition of rather. " I 
 would be a door-keeper in the house of thy God rather 
 than dwell in the tents of the ungodly," " I would 
 be right rather than be President, " are sense and 
 English ; but " I had be a doorkeeper, etc., rather 
 than dwell" and "I had be right rather than be 
 President " are nonsense. 
 
 We may now consider the following couplet from 
 *' Marmion," which is brought forwai-d as " present- 
 ing an instance of the correct use of had rather : " — 
 
 " You shall wish the fiery Dane 
 Had rather been your guest again." 
 
 Upon this there is the following comment ; — 
 
 " Here had, of course, is equivalent to might have. But 
 had the poet, under the idea that had rather should be would 
 rather, written, — 
 
 ' You shall wish the fiery Dane 
 Would rather been 3'our guest again,' 
 
 what ' a logical and self-consistent phraseology ' we should 
 have had in ' would rather heen ' ! But we are thankful that 
 Sir Walter's instincts were more trustworthy than some 
 people's generalizations are." 
 
 This is very sad business. It might first be sug- 
 gested that Sir Walter's instincts as to the use of 
 language were not always trustwortliy ; he, although 
 standing next to Shakespeare in imaginative genius, 
 being one of the most incorrect among the distin- 
 guished writers of our language. And then it might 
 ilso be suggested that in this instance he was quite 
 right, and that this example is a correct use of had 
 rather, in which had doubtless is equivalent to might 
 have. And therefore, of course, we may be sure 
 that some people cannot avoid asking whether, if 
 Bir Walter's instincts had led him to write " had
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 439 
 
 rather he your guest again," that is, " might have 
 rather he your guest again," those instincts would 
 still have been more trustworthy than some people's 
 generalizations are. Plainly, Scott in this passage 
 was quite right. There is no better English than 
 had been ; and it is as logical and congruous as had 
 he is illogical and incongruous. 
 
 Here, however, we seem to have unearthed the 
 origin of the illogical form which has its t^^pe in 1 
 had rather he. It is the peiwersion of an idiom, — the 
 mistaken, or, as we sometimes saj^ the slipshod use 
 of the form expressive of past time (the imperfect 
 tense) in combination with that expressing present 
 time ; the proper use of had with heen or spoke, and 
 the like, having led to a thoughtless and incorrect use 
 of it with he or speak, and the like ; and the only ob- 
 jection made by me to the use of T had rather he, 
 that is, that had expresses perfect and past posses- 
 sion, seems to be sustained. 
 
 As a further illustration of the law of this con- 
 struction, let us consider another example. A lady 
 said, " The floor had better be bai-e than have that 
 carpet ; indeed, I don't know but it had best be bare, 
 any way." This is one of the cases in which we are 
 told by the advocate of had rather he that had ex- 
 presses obligation. It may be admitted, at least for 
 the sake of the argument, that in these cases the 
 whole sentence does express a sort of obligation. 
 But the point is the meaning, not of the sentence, 
 but of had. If had expresses obligation with the 
 comparative and the superlative, it should express 
 he same with the positive ; and we should s-aj, " The 
 door had well be bare," which we do not say, nor 
 even, " The floor had as well be bare." But we may
 
 4:40 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and do say, " The iloor might well, or might better, 
 or might best, be bare." So we may consistently 
 and logically say, " The floor had [or might have] 
 best been bare, or had [or might have] better been 
 bare, or had [or might have] as well been bare.'* 
 Thus, again, we find that had does not express a 
 wish or willingness or an obligation, but merely past 
 possession ; and that even in its idiomatic substitu- 
 tion for could, would, or might have, like that of were 
 for could, would, or might be, its " preterite" or past 
 signification must not be lost sight of. 
 
 It is not surprising to find that the advocates of 
 had rather place themselves in a position which in- 
 volves the defense of that peculiar locution which is 
 most frequently heard in the form hadn^t oughter. 
 For example, in the article under consideration, this 
 sentence is cited with approval by way of illustra- 
 tion : " A lesson which requires so much time to 
 learn had need be early begun with." This, we are 
 told, is from a book called " The Government of the 
 Tongue;" but it need hardly be said to any reader 
 who will consider the sentence for a moment, that 
 the tongue concerning whose government the author 
 writes is not the English tongue. An intelligible 
 sentence less worthy of imitation could hardly be 
 produced. The verbs in it and the preposition are 
 in a very unhappy state of bereavement. It is diffi- 
 cult to see what is the object of either " requires " or 
 " learn," or what function " Avith " performs in the 
 expression of the author's thought. However forlorn 
 of grammar, no one who is not bereft of comraon- 
 «ense can avoid seeing that the correct form of the 
 sentence (assuming that the writer's words are to be 
 ased) would be : "A lesson which it requires so mucli
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 441 
 
 time to learn [or which requires so much time to 
 learn it] has need to be early begun [or to be begun 
 early]." We can put up ivith bad conduct or hear 
 with a wayward friend, and in going through a course 
 of study we can begin with a certain lesson. But 
 after we have said that a certain lesson has need to 
 be early begun, it is difficult to discover any other 
 consequence than confusion from the addition of ivith 
 to begun, — as difficult as to discover what is the func- 
 tion of got in the sentence, " I have got a dollar in 
 my pocket," or what that assertion means more than 
 " I have a dollar in my pocket." 
 
 To return to the particular point in question : in 
 the phrase " had need to be early begun with," need 
 means merely ought. For example, we may say, 
 with the same meaning, that such a lesson needs to 
 be begun early, or that it ought to be begun early. 
 But those who most affect tlie use of had in such 
 constructions would say that it " had ought to be 
 begun early," unless, indeed, they were of the opin- 
 ion that it did not need such early attention, when 
 they would probably say that it " had n't oughter." 
 Indeed, this very critic tells us that " need here is an 
 adverb corresponding to better in the foregoing exam- 
 ples," that is, " had better," etc. This being the 
 case, if we may turn the verb need into an adverb, 
 and say " had need," we may surely do the same 
 with the verb ought, and say " had ought " or " had n't 
 ought." Those who do so will doubtless be grateful 
 for this grammatical defense of the locution which 
 they so much affect. It may be questioned, however, 
 A'hether there is any more reasonable ground of de- 
 fense of hadnH ought to be than there is of had 
 rather be and had better be, of which it is the wor- 
 thy, if not the legitimate, offspring.
 
 442 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 In regard to the point of usage, which is so much 
 insisted upon and of which so much is made, it is 
 proper to add that " I had better," etc., has not only 
 been questioned by men like Archbishop Trench and 
 Mr. Wendell Phillips, but doubted and shunned by 
 the Elizabethan writers, who generally avoided what 
 their fine intuitions of speech taught them was not a 
 clear and forcible expression, and used instead of it 
 " I were," " you were," etc. The dramatists are full 
 of examples like the following : — 
 
 " .... If it be so, as 'tis, 
 Poor lady, she were better love a dream." 
 
 (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ii. 2.) 
 " I would kiss before I spoke. 
 Nay, you were better speak first, and when," etc. 
 
 (As You Like It, iv. 1.) 
 *• And we were better parch in Afric sun 
 Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes." 
 
 (Troihis and Cressida, i. 3.) 
 " Give them their weapons. — Sirs, you 're best be gone." 
 
 (Middleton, Honest Whore, iv. 3.) 
 " Why, you Ve best go see." 
 
 (The same, v. 1.) 
 ' ' I will not say 
 "Your mother play'd false. 
 
 No, sir, you were not best." 
 
 (The Widow, i. 2.) 
 ' Look to yourself, housewife ! answer me in strong lines, you were best.*' 
 (Ford, The Lover's Melancholy, iii. 1.) 
 " You were best assault me, too ! 
 You were best call him a bastard, too." 
 
 (Shirley, Gentleman of Venice, i. 1.) 
 " I were best deliver up my cold iron here." 
 
 (Honoria and Mammon, i. 1.) 
 
 My memorandums of such passages are number 
 less ; and I believe that on the other hand " I had ' 
 is comparatively rare with the Elizabethan writers 
 »— a fact certainly of much significance.
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 448 
 
 EMPLOYEE. 
 
 New York, March 25, 1873. 
 Sir, — During the publication of " Words and their 
 Uses " in " The Galaxy " I looked for something about the 
 French word employee, which has come so much in vogue 
 here of later years. I hoped to find an opinion upon it, if 
 not in the chapter upon "Words that are not Words," at 
 least in that upon " Misused Words ; " but in vain. Will 
 you have the kindness to give me your judgment as to the 
 propriety and need of the new usage, and much oblige, 
 
 F. A. H. 
 
 This correspondent tempts me to the expression of 
 personal preference, to which I fear that I have 
 already manifested too strong an inclination, even in 
 discnssions of language which were avowed to be 
 chiefly on the grounds of taste, judgment, and rea- 
 son. I confess at the outset that I am prejudiced by 
 a strong feeling against this word. The introduction 
 of employee is the sign and fruit of a foolish and 
 "snobbish" dislike to the word servant; a simple 
 and honest word, which, with all that it implies, I 
 like. Peter avows himself the servant of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; a British oflBcer is proud to say that he 
 serves her Majesty ; companies of actors, of whom 
 Williani Shakespeare and John Philip Kemble were 
 members, were his Majesty's servants. The servants 
 of a household seem to me to hold a place in it 
 which is perfectly respectable, and which only their 
 own conduct can degrade ; I myself was for many 
 jrears a servant of the United States, and I hope that 
 no one will ever call me an employee. I cannot see 
 why those who serve a railway company, or a hospi- 
 tal, or any corporate body, mercantile firm, or indi
 
 J44 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 vidual, should not be called its or his servants. But 
 it is to be said tliat employee has a claim to a place 
 among a goodly family of words: nominee, one who 
 is nominated ; payee, one who is paid ; mortgagee, 
 grantee, trustee, referee, patentee, devotee, etc. ; and 
 so employee, one who is employed. Then let those 
 who prefer, and who use it, recognize it boldly as an 
 English word, which they may do with perfect pro- 
 priety, and call their servants or themselves (if, being 
 servants, they do not wish to be so called) employees, 
 and not vex their souls and their vocal organs, to- 
 gether with the ears of their hearers, by writing em- 
 ploySs, and talking of omploy-yays. 
 
 YOU WAS. 
 Court Street, Boston, March 28, 1873. 
 Dear Sir, — The expression " if I was you," or " if you 
 [singular] was," etc., is very much in vogue among the more 
 cultivated of our people. Is there any authority, or at least 
 authority of any weight, to support the use of the singular 
 form of the verb in such cases ? Pardon me for obtruding 
 such a question upon you [etc., etc.]. 
 
 Vei-y truly, G. L. H. 
 
 The two cases presented here are not at all alike. 
 In the first, " if I was you," the verb " was " belongs 
 to "I;" there can therefore be no objection to the 
 '' singular form." The only question as to this case 
 is whether it should not be " if I wei-e you ; " to 
 which the answer is that even among educated people 
 and careful writers and speakers the "subjunctive" 
 form is passing out of favor and out of use. In this 
 case, however, I should personally much prefer " if I 
 were you." In the second case the verb belongs to 
 
 you," which has long been the pronoun of the second
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 445 
 
 person singular, as much so as I is the pronoun of 
 the first ; and the apparent incongruity here is in the 
 use of the pronoun of the second person with the verb 
 of the first and third, " if you was " instead of " if 
 thou wast or wert." 
 
 One of the most remarkable phenomenons in the 
 history of language is the substitution, centuries ago, 
 in the western tongues, of the pronoun of the second 
 person plural for that of the second person singular, 
 which has obtained in English, more or less, for five 
 hundred years. This appears to have been caused by 
 the operation of an inexplicable sense of discourtesy 
 in the use of thou, or rather in the use of the second 
 person at all. In the generation before the last it 
 was customary in families of the strictest and most 
 thorough breeding for the children never to address 
 their parents as " you," but to say, for instance, " Does 
 father think thus?" "Will mother do so?" The 
 awful mystery of the etiquette of su and usted is one 
 of the first difficulties the learner of Spanish has to 
 encounter. And one cannot open the first pages of 
 Shakespeare without encountering this problem. In 
 the long dialogue in the second scene of the " Tem- 
 pest," Miranda always uses you in speaking to her 
 father; he always tliou in speaking to her. Ariel, 
 as a supernatural being, addresses Prospero as thou. 
 When Ferdinand enters, Prospero immediately, and 
 always when speaking harshly, thous him ; but in 
 one speech, in which he addresses him kindly, and 
 with a recognition of the young man's rank, he uses 
 you. The use of thou plainly implied an assertion 
 of superiority. 
 
 T^^'hen the change from thou to you in ordinary 
 conversation was made, and in place of thou wast
 
 t46 EVERY-DAY ENdLISII. 
 
 came you were., the plural pronoun took with it the 
 plural form of the verb ; which seems, moreover, to 
 have been welcomed for its own sake, because it rid 
 us of wast and wert. For in cases in which thou was 
 permissible, and indeed was on the lips of a speaker 
 or the pen of a writer, we find in the same sentence 
 a change to you, which seems plainly for the mere 
 purpose of ease from the formal and ponderous thou 
 wast and thoii wert. And now the very frequent use 
 of you was among people of education has the air of a 
 movement toward making was., throughout that tense, 
 the singular form of the verb, as were is the plural. 
 The old second person singular is gone forever, al- 
 though its lifeless form is embalmed in the Hebra- 
 ism of prayer, and in poetry, which always affects 
 archaism. It is dangerous to assert a general nega- 
 tive ; but I should hardly hesitate to say that there 
 cannot be produced an instance of its use in prose 
 within one hundred and fifty years, that is, for five 
 generations, except with the obvious consciousness of 
 the reproduction of an archaic form. " Thou lovest " 
 is as dead as " thou hast holpen," that is, " you have 
 helped." 
 
 As to the question between you was and you were 
 (singular) used indicatively, it seems to me hardly 
 debatable ; for the purpose of using you is not at- 
 tained if the plural form of the verb does not accom- 
 pany the pronoun. But you was has the support of 
 eminent example ; that, for instance, of so careful and 
 finished a writer as Sterne, who uses it frequently. 
 Nor is it uncommon with other English writers of 
 equal grade.
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 447 
 
 A BUNDLE OF QUEELEB. 
 207 East 82d Street, New Yoek, September 29, 1873. 
 
 Dear Sir, — You are doing a good work, etc., etc., etc. 
 [My correspondents will pardon my omission of their kind 
 and encouraging remarks, and also the suppression of the 
 names of the authors of some of the examples of bad Eng- 
 lish sent for correction.] I would ask you, Can nothing be 
 done to get rid of that barbarism of speech which has lately 
 come into vogue, introduced by our American journalists, of 
 placing the adverb between the sign of the infinitive mood 
 and the verb ? — as, " She is learning to elegantly dance," 
 instead of to dance elegantly ; " I hope to soon recover my 
 health ; " "I propose to to-morrow return home ; " " For 
 the benefit of my health I have resolved to four miles walk 
 every day ; " "I am unable to fully understand you." This 
 collocation is grossly unclassical, not being found in any 
 Btandard author of any age. I can see nothing gained by it 
 but the gratification of disgusting pedantic pride, or a mali- 
 cious pleasure in torturing cultivated ears. 
 
 Will you tell me whether to say on or between the horns 
 of a dileruma, and why ? Also the origin of the Latin 
 phrase, cum grano sails ? 
 
 Many good American writers confound at fault and in 
 
 fault. I noticed the other day that does. At 
 
 fault is a huntsman's phrase. The hounds are said to be at 
 fault when they have lost scent of the game, and are running 
 hither and thither to find it. In fault signifies in error; at 
 fault, in perplexity. 
 
 Permit me also to ask how long we are to use daily a class 
 of foreign words before incorporating them and anglicizing 
 the pronunciation ? Take the French word debut, for in- 
 stance ; not one American in five hundred can pronounce it 
 correctly. The u he sounds like oo. 
 
 The French, when they adopt a foreign word, gallicize it 
 M once; they make the pronunciation bend to their own
 
 448 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 laws. The Spaniards say Gil Bias; but final s is silent in 
 French ; the French therefore say Gil Bin (a broad). The 
 French language stands on its dignity ; our vernacular has 
 no dignity to stand on, so it crouches. Is it always to be a 
 parasite ? Why don't we say dehutt f Because, if we did^ 
 we should laugh at one another. We don't laugh when we 
 say deboo, for the sufficient reason that we don't know that 
 we are speaking bad French. 
 
 Yours respectfully, D. R. T. 
 
 The foregoing letter is a specimen, although its 
 g:;od sense and good taste prevent its being a fair 
 specimen, of the many received by the writer of these 
 chapters ; not one in a hundred of his correspondents 
 being a person with whom he has any acquaintance, 
 even by way of previous correspondence. 
 
 D. R. T. gives information as well as asks it. He 
 is so clearly right about the placing of the adverb as 
 to make comment unnecessary. The examples which 
 he gives are in themselves a condemnation of the 
 fashion which he regards with such disfavor. Distin- 
 guished precedent miglit be shown for this construc- 
 tion, as for many other bad uses of language ; but it 
 is eminently un-English.^ 
 
 As to a dilemma, the proper word of relation is be- 
 tween ; because a dilemma — SiA7;/x/xa, meaning two 
 inclosing positions — presents to a disputant two 
 unpleasant alternatives, called horns, of which he is 
 obliged to accept one. When the dilemma is pre- 
 Bented he is upon neither horn ; and he never is upon 
 both. 
 
 Cum grano salts has its point from a sort ot puu 
 
 1 As the proof of this page is passing through my hands, I receive a let> 
 ter in which the writer says, "As I have been unable to satisfactorily ia 
 form myself," etc. If he had written "to inform myself satisfactorily' 
 %is English would have been better.
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 449 
 
 which is lost in the translation, — " with a grain of 
 salt." Sal has for its secondary meaning wit, men- 
 tal acumen, intellectual good taste and judgment; 
 and so, to take a thing cum grano sails is to use cau- 
 tion and discrimination in giving it credence or con- 
 sideration. 
 
 As regards foreign words adopted by us, whether 
 French, Latin, Greek, or what not, their complete 
 naturalization is of course to be effected only by time, 
 and by frequent and general usage ; and the question 
 as to when this has been accomplished is also of course 
 to be determined only by observation. The usage 
 with regard to the plural is a good guide. For ex- 
 ample, index is an unmodified Latin word, of which 
 the plural is indices^ which was formerly used. But 
 no one would now say indices, except when using the 
 word in a scientific way. Of memorandum, the Latin 
 plural memoranda is used by some, the English metn- 
 orandums by others, showing, as matter of history, a 
 yet imperfect naturalization of the word ; and crite- 
 rion has generally criteria as its plural ; for which I 
 can see no sufficient reason. It would seem to be a 
 sensible and, to use my corresiDondent's expression, a 
 dignified way to naturalize such words completely as 
 soon as possible. Nevertheless, he would be a bold 
 man who should speak of an actress's debutt, and of 
 her dehutting. It may be doubted, however, whether, 
 if he could not say d4but (dayhue), he might not bet- 
 ter say dehutt than deboo. 
 
 UP AND DOWN, ABOVE AND BELOW. 
 
 The question is asked whether it is right to say 
 that a thing is up stairs or that it is above stairs, 
 that it is down stairs or that it is below stairs. The
 
 450 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 meaning of the words and the best usage require the 
 latter form in both cases. We go up stairs to get 
 something that is above stairs, and down stairs to get 
 something that h below stairs. We go up a hill and 
 down a hill ; but a house is upon a hill or below a 
 hill. And yet, although we go up town or down 
 town, a friend may live up town or down town. But 
 in the latter cases it will be observed that wp and 
 down do not express a relation as to position in the 
 town, but to ourselves or to some other object. It 
 is diflBcult to express the difference in the shade of 
 meaning, which is yet very distinct ; for although 
 above and helow always imply fixed position, up and 
 down do not always imply motion ; as in the nursery 
 rhyme about the star, — 
 
 " Up above the world so high, 
 Like a diamond in the skj''," 
 
 and in " down below the middle earth." These four 
 words are called adverbs by the grammarians and 
 lexicographers, but also pi-epositions; a variable clas- 
 sification, which shows the difficulty and uncertainty 
 of such a system of nomenclature. As to usage, the 
 best is exemplified in the title of the old comedj^ 
 *' High Life helow Stairs," and in this sentence from 
 Fielding: "Those orders I gave in no very low voice, 
 BO that those above stairs might possibly conceive," 
 etc. Failure to perceive the distinction in meaning, 
 or an indifference to it, is, however, bringing " up 
 gtairs " and "down stairs" as expressive of position 
 into very general use. 
 
 " DIFFER WITH " AND " DIFFER FROM." 
 
 My attention has been called to a discussion as to 
 the comparative propi'iety of these two phrases, in
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 451 
 
 wliich the question was finally submitted to Cbancelloi* 
 A. R. Benton, who, in a published letter upon the 
 subject, decides that both are proper ; " differ from " 
 when mere divergence is intended to be expressed, 
 " differ with " when mere negation or disagreement. 
 The question is something like that in regard to 
 "different from" and "different to," and turns, of 
 course, as Chancellor Benton remarks, upon the mean- 
 ing of the particle dis, from which the s has fallen 
 away, and which, as it denotes separation, requires 
 from after it.^ There can be no doubt as to the ex- 
 amples, " Agassiz differed from Darwin upon the the- 
 ory of development," " One star differeth from another 
 star in glory." The question is not as to " differ 
 from," but as to " differ with," and whether it is ad- 
 missible, and if so, when and on what grounds. There 
 seems to be no doubt that it is admissible, but not 
 as an alternative with " differ from.'''' It has quite 
 a different meaning; more, I venture to think, than 
 Chancellor Benton's mere negation or disagreement. 
 To say that one star differs with another star in glory 
 would be inadmissible, not English. " Differ from " 
 is used to express mere unlikeness, divergence, in 
 things both animate and inanimate ; " differ with " to 
 express the action of intelligent beings, — the expres- 
 sion of a difference ; with implying the presence, or 
 the constructive presence, of two differing or disagree- 
 ing parties. A man may differ from another man in 
 tpinion, without differing with him. For one may 
 never have heard of the other's opinion, from which he 
 
 1 The chancellor says that he had hoped to find in Words and their 
 Uses a discussion of this word, but that he had failed to do so. I hope 
 that no one expects to fiul in that book a discussion of all the bad or 
 nncertain phrases which are spoken as English. The book contains only 
 'our hundred and fifty pages
 
 452 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 yet differs ; or, hearing it, he may hold his peace about 
 his own difference. But if he disputes the other's 
 opinion, particularly if he does so in his presence, he 
 differs with him. Thus Hazlitt, describing a com- 
 monplace critic, says : " He is a person who thinks by 
 proxy, and talks by rote. He differs with you, net 
 because he thinks you in the wrong, but because he 
 thinks somebody else will think so." And so we say 
 that a man had a difference with another, meaning a 
 dispute with him. For example; " This part of the 
 matter is chiefly worth notice because it illustrates the 
 blind precipitation with which Mr. Gladstone swal- 
 lows and repeats any accusation against those who 
 have the good or bad fortune to differ with him po- 
 litically." (^Saturday Hevieio, February 21, 1880.) 
 We should never think of saying that he had a dif- 
 ference from him ; nor should we say that he had a 
 difference with him, unless his difference of opinion 
 or of feeling received expressiou. Therefore, " I beg 
 leave to differ from you" is correct, and "I beg leave 
 to differ with you " incorrect. For what is intended 
 in this is a courteous expression of mere difference of 
 -opinion. And yet, in speaking of what took place on 
 such an occasion, it would be correct to say that the 
 pne instantly differed with the other. We should not 
 Bay that he instantly differed from him ; for his dif- 
 ference from the opinion of the man with whom he 
 ihen differed might have been of ten years' standing. 
 
 A CIVIL SERVICE QUESTION. — POSSESSIVES OP 
 COMPOUNDS. 
 
 The Board of Civil Service Examiners at Wash- 
 ington gave, as a test of the knowledge of the use of 
 the apostrophe as a sign of the possessive case, th«
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 453 
 
 following sentence : " The Commissioner of Customa 
 decisions are correct," requiring the apostrophe to 
 be placed after " customs." A dispute having arisen 
 upon the point, and it being contended that the proper 
 form was " The Commissioner's (of Customs) decis- 
 ions are correct," an officer of the Treasury Depart- 
 ment submitted the question to me for an opinion. 
 
 The point here to be considered is, What is it 
 that is to be placed in the possessive ? Who is it 
 whose decisions are correct ? The commissioner, of 
 course. But is the word commissioner the complete 
 designation of the subject of the sentence ? If we 
 are to regard the words " of customs " as a merely 
 parenthetical explanation of the sort of commissioner 
 Bpoken of, then the apostrophe, which is the sign of 
 the possessive case, should follow the word commis- 
 sioner. But it seems plain that, according to general 
 acceptance, that is not the case ; and that " Commis- 
 sioner of Customs " is a kind of compound substan- 
 tive, as if it were written Commissioner-of-Customs. 
 The officers thus designated are not spoken of merely 
 as commissioners, except in the customs service. That 
 designation would be altogether too vague. Each one 
 of them, in general speech, is called not merely a 
 kCommissioner, but a Commissioner of the Customs ; 
 jind therefore the strict grammatical accuracy insisted 
 ipon and long-continued usage seem to be perfectly 
 consistent ; and consequently the decision of the Civil 
 Service Board is correct. We say the Secretary of 
 the Treasury's report, and not the Secretary's of the 
 Treasm-y report ; although we say in the plural the 
 Secretaries of the Treasury, and not the Secretary 
 of the Treasuries, and although, when it was under- 
 rtood that affairs of the Treasury were spoken of, an
 
 454 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 officer of the Treasury, and the public generally, 
 would say simply the Secretary's report. The free 
 structure of our language enables us to make such 
 distinctions. In Latin, for example, all the Avorda 
 employed in the expression of such a compound idea 
 would be in the genitive case ; and even when the 
 words are actually compounded into one thej are still 
 all declined, as every boy knows who has got well on 
 in his accidence. For example, respiiblica, a common- 
 wealth, reipublicce, of a commonwealth, jusjurmidum^ 
 an oath, jurisjurandi, of an oath ; and in Anglo- 
 Saxon even himself is thus declined : nom., hesylf^ 
 gen., hisiii/lfes, etc. But in English it seems to be 
 yet not settled by usage whether we are to say some- 
 body's else or somebody else's. So long as these words 
 are regarded as two and written as two, the better 
 usage would seem to be somebody's else. For else 
 means merely other, a person other than one previ- 
 ously spoken of or implied ; and we should say some- 
 body's other than he, and not somebody other's than 
 he. But if we regard the two ideas as compounded 
 into one, and write somebody-else, it is proper to write 
 somebody-else's ; for which there is the authority of 
 usage by eminent writers, and to which general usage 
 reems to be tending. Careful writers and speakers, 
 however, are still particular to use the possessive of 
 the uncompounded form. 
 
 VERBS CORRESPONDING TO NOUNS IN "ION." 
 
 The following letter, from an officer of rank and 
 iistinction in the navy, brings up a point upon which 
 wrord-makers who have given little attention to the 
 structure of language and the etymology of the Ro- 
 manic part of our mixed speech should be very cau 
 rious: —
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 455 
 
 July 30, 1874 
 
 Dear Sir, — In "Words and their Uses" it is stated^ 
 the precise page has escaped me — that under certain con- 
 ditions the coining of a word is justifiable. I am unwill- 
 ing to quote that work as authority, however, without your 
 consent, in the particular case to which I am about to refer, 
 which must be my apology for addressing you. 
 
 In writing of the operations of fleets it is very frequently 
 necessary to refer to their movements in two diflEerent ways. 
 1st. Movements to gain certain advantages over the enemy. 
 Under the old sailing tactics, for example, it was usual to 
 8ay that " a squadron manceiivred for the weather-gage," or 
 " a squadron so manoeuvred as to cut off the enemy's rear," 
 etc. But when we wish to speak of a tactical movement of 
 the fleet, the word manoeuvre will not answer ; we must then 
 ase evolution. For example : '' The fleet had been so thor- 
 oughly exercised that it was able to perform all the ordinary 
 evolutions of a fleet with readiness and precision at night as 
 well as by day." 
 
 In the one case we say, " The admiral manoeuvred the 
 fleet with great skill," etc. In the other, " The admiral per- 
 formed the various evolutions like a skillful tactician." 
 
 But to perform evolutions seems to be a clumsy expres- 
 sion, and to evohite expresses the action clearly and simply. 
 What objection, I ask, is there to my coining that word to 
 use in a strictly technical sense ? 
 
 With all due deference to Webster, his definition of the 
 word manoeuvre is not technically correct ; and from the 
 derivation of the word evolution it seems to me that the 
 verb to evolute would be perfectly proper. I should not like 
 to have such a word printed over my name, however, if it 
 cannot stand fire. May I evolute a fleet ? Begging you 
 will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you, 
 
 I am your very obedient servant, S. D. L. 
 
 I am very glad that this gallant officer did not 
 * evolute " his fleet The proposed word is, I need
 
 i56 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 hardly say, altogether inadmissible. And yet, as wfl 
 have contortion and contort^ suggestion and suggest^ 
 digestion and digest, contribution and contribute, per- 
 sedition and persecute, execution and execute, and the 
 like, it may seem strange to many persons that, as 
 we have evolution, we cannot have evolute. The 
 reason lies in the mixed character of our language, 
 which compels us to conform the etymology of many 
 of our systems of words to that of other tongues (in 
 this case to that of the Latin), a conformity which 
 nevertheless may be carried to excess. Our words 
 revolution, convolution, involution, and evolution are 
 all derived from the Latin, and are based upon the 
 Latin verb volvere, to turn over, to unroll. To this 
 stem the particles re, con, in, and e are prefixed, mak- 
 ing the vei-bs revolvere, convolvere, involvere, and evol- 
 vere. The nouns in question are formed upon a part 
 of these verbs called the supine, ending in turn ; as, 
 revolutum, and so forth. For the correctness of their 
 formation we have the example of the classical evolu- 
 tio, but revolutio is Low Latin. The verbs correspond- 
 ing to these nouns are therefore formed upon the 
 Latin verbs corresponding to their supines ; and the 
 verb of revolution is revolve, of evolution evolve, of 
 involution involve, and so forth. There is a classical 
 Latin verb voluto, meaning to roll, but that was not 
 used in compounds. To speak of evoluting a fleet 
 would therefore be like speaking of revoluting a gov- 
 ernment, or involuting a man in a troublesome af' 
 fair. But when we speak of the overturning of a 
 government we do not say that it is revolved. We 
 take the word revolution, which has come to have a 
 special sense in that regard, and adding to it the 
 Bufifix ize we say that the government is revolution*
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 457 
 
 ized. In like manner, if manoeuvre will not expres 
 the tactical movements of a fleet for which evolution 
 has acquired a specific sense, it is probable that naval 
 tacticians will use the word evolutionize, which, al- 
 Miough not a lovely word, is quite analogical. 
 
 It is probable that this querist was led into his sur- 
 mise by what is said in " Words and their Uses " 
 about the use of juxtapose^ — that it is correct, that 
 word being involved in juxtaposition. But our word 
 position and its compounds, although they originate 
 in the Latin verb ponere, to place, come to us directly 
 from the French ; our words and the French being in 
 fact the very same, letter for letter. We therefore 
 do not go to the Latin verb potiere for the corre- 
 sponding verbs to those nouns. We do not say im- 
 pone, depone, expone, and so forth ; but we use the 
 compounds of the French verb pose?^ and say impose, 
 depose.) expose, and so forth, using even pose in the 
 sense of to place formally. Therefore, also, using jux- 
 taposition, we may use juxtapose. 
 
 "ENGLISH DEFILED." 
 
 Among the criticisms of the Department reports 
 which accompanied the President's Message at the 
 opening of the session of Congress, 1874, was one of a 
 gtrictly verbal character. Such criticisms are rare, -— 
 rarer than they should be ; for our public documents, 
 including our acts of Congress and our state laws, 
 have for some years past been so carelessly worded 
 and so confused in their construction that it can 
 Hardly be but that, in years to c-Dme, misunderstand- 
 ing and doubt will arise as to the meaning of many 
 j>f them, and consequently serious trouble. This in- 
 excusable slovenliness, and the contrast presented
 
 40 S EVEEY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 thereto by the care and precision us to style in the 
 making of the Constitution of the United States, 1 
 have previously remarked upon.^ That instrument 
 and the laws passed by Congress in the earliest years 
 of the federal republic are models of simplicity and 
 clearness of expression, which it would be well for 
 the oflBcial persons and the legislators of our day to 
 study and to follow. Very rarely does it happen 
 that there is any doubt as to the construction or the 
 real meaning of a passage in any one of those laws, 
 other than such as must arise when the necessarily 
 imperfect instrument of human expression, language, 
 is used by more than one person at more than one 
 time. 
 
 For with all our efforts towai'd its perfection, the 
 meaning of language cannot be made absolutely and 
 permanently precise and certain. It can hardly be 
 trusted as it is used between man and man for the 
 moment ; and indeed it may be doubted whether in 
 all speech, which is the only real language, the 
 speaker (that is, his character, tone of mind, views of 
 life, and immediate feeling and purpose) is not such 
 an essential element of meaning that what is once 
 spoken can never be again exactly repeated. The 
 word perishes in its utterance, dies in its birth, and 
 can never again be restored to its full life, except 
 under exactly the same circumstances, — the speaker 
 the same, the hearer the same, their surroundings 
 and state of mind the same, as they were when it 
 ivas spoken ; a recurrence which can never happen. 
 But as practically words must be regarded as hav- 
 ing a fixable and generally accepted, if not a lasting 
 and universally understood, meaning, this element of 
 
 1 Words ana their Uses, pages 36-38.
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 459 
 
 change and uncertainty in language is only a reason 
 for the greater care and precision in its vise on all 
 occasions of general and enduring importance. 
 
 To return to the Secretary of the Navy and the 
 Bins against English with which he was charged. 
 Hardly had his report been published, when one of 
 our daily newspapers, which has long held a high 
 position as an authority in literature no less than 
 in politics and on social questions, — a paper with 
 which are connected the names of Bryant and Parke 
 Godwin and John Bigelow, — the " Evening Post," 
 fell upon the hapless Secretary in an editorial article 
 headed " English Defiled," in which he was sorely 
 chastened for using two words, eventuality and canal- 
 ized. These the critic placed without hesitation in 
 the class of words that are not words. The Secretary 
 wrote that the coming transit of Venus seemed to 
 him an occurrence of such scientific importance that 
 he had determined to put a government ship at the 
 service of a party of observers, " under any eventu- 
 ality now considered." This use of eventuality was 
 thus censured : — 
 
 " What he means to say is that he will do this under any 
 circumstances, or contingency, or event. ' Eventuality ' is 
 a very poor word at the best, and of doubtful birth. It has 
 a place in the best dictionaries, it is true, but its origin is 
 laid to the score of what is called phrenology, and appears 
 to have been due to the desire of some ' professor ' to get 
 a new name for an old bump. In that technical sense it 
 means a ' propensity to take cognizance of facts or events.' 
 Its misuse, into which Secretary Robeson has fallen, is com- 
 mon among a class of newspaper reporters, and those persons 
 ivho prefer sound to sense. 
 
 The exception, m certain respects, seems to lie well
 
 460 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 taken. Eventuality is certainly a poor word at the 
 best, for English-speaking folk to use. It belongs to 
 a class which might well be swept out and kept out 
 of the language, and which the persons described do 
 use in a very unadmirable and un-English way. But 
 as to its meaning (if it is to be admitted to use at 
 all) only " a propensity to take cognizance of facta 
 or events," that is at least doubtful. That is the 
 only definition of it which is given in Worcester's 
 Dictionary, and substantially in Webster's, which 
 hold and deserve so high an authoritative position 
 as to definition. That is its technical phrenological 
 meaning. So far it is little better than a cant word, 
 and must be so regarded until phrenology takes a 
 recognized place among the sciences. It is not rec- 
 ognized as an English word in Latham's edition 
 of Johnson. But in Stormonth's Etymological Dic- 
 tionary, eventuality is defined as meaning " the com- 
 ing or happening as a consequence ; contingency ; 
 dependence upon an uncertain event ; an organ in 
 phrenology, said to enable one to note and com- 
 pare all the active occurrences of life." Here even 
 the technical or cant meaning of the word seems to be 
 more clearly set forth than by either Worcester or 
 Webster ; and as to the real or etymological defini- 
 tion previously given, it is hard to see how, if the 
 word is recognized at all, that meaning can be denied 
 to it. Taking event as the base, if we are to go on 
 and build up a system of verb, adjective, and adverb 
 upon it, — if we are to have the verb eventuate, the 
 adjective eventual, and the adverb eventually, — how 
 can we consistently stop short of eventuality ? Events 
 Hal, which is the French iventuel, means " happening 
 i» a consequence," and eventuality, the noun forraea
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 461 
 
 tipon it, must mean '•'■the coming or happening as a 
 consequence." The technical phrenological use of 
 the word is purely arbitrary, and if not cant at least 
 cantish. Its real etymological meaning, that which 
 logically comes from the combination of its base, 
 event, with the suffixes al and ity, is that which is 
 given by Stormonth, " the coming or happening as a 
 consequence," — just the sense in which it was used 
 by Secretary Robeson. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is a word which the Secretary 
 might better not have used, and which every man 
 who would write good English may well eschew. For 
 after all our double suffixing we get only a pretentious 
 word of five syllables, which means no more than 
 event itself. Our journey brings us back just whence 
 we started. Event is " that which happens or comes 
 to pass, the conclusion, the consequence of any- 
 thing;" the difference between which and the defi- 
 nition given above of eventuality is not quite equal to 
 that between tweedledum and tweedledee.^ And the 
 same reasoning applies to eventuate, which means to 
 come out as a result — a meaning for the expression 
 of which it is not at all necessary to use such a word. 
 For the English way of expressing that meaning is 
 to use the word event as a verb, as it has heretofore 
 been used. We have made the word eveyit from the 
 Latin ; and it is our English way to use words both aa 
 nouns and as verbs. Should we abandon that usage 
 
 1 So Edward Freeman, distinguished hardly less as a philologist than as 
 
 historian : — 
 
 " We have heard in modern times jf oppressed nationalities,' — a form 
 ■f words which, I suppose, means much the same as oppressed nations." 
 Comparative Politics, page 84.) 
 
 These alities are often poor stuff; and some of tne osities are not muck 
 W.ttBr.
 
 462 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 our language would lose not only one of its strik- 
 ing features, but one great element of its strength. 
 It is the free use of words, without regard to the 
 grammatical distinctions of verb, noun, adjective, and 
 adverb, but with a clear apprehension of their in- 
 herent meaning, that gives to Elizabethan English 
 that force and pungency and picturesqueness which, 
 with all the later refinements and enrichments of our 
 tongue, even our best writers find it difiicult, nay, 
 quite impossible, to attain. We of to-day are more 
 exact, more precise ; but we are comparatively tame 
 and weak. As to eventuate and eventuality^ and their 
 inevitable consequences, eventualize and eventualiza- 
 tion, which, yet unknown, I believe, have equal claims 
 with the others to recognition, we can do better with- 
 out them all than with any one of theui. The use of 
 event as a verb — for example, " Such a course of 
 conduct would event unhappily" — is thoroughly in 
 accordance with English analogy and precedent. 
 
 The other occasion of censure by the same critic is 
 in the following sentence : " The westerly trend of 
 the coast made the area that would have to be canal- 
 ized broader in extent." As to this it is said : " We 
 hope the Secretary knows that there is no such word 
 as canalize in the English language. He might as 
 well speak of the removal of the rocks at Hell Gate 
 as channelizing the harbor of New York." The for- 
 mation of the two words is certainly just alike, and 
 Bo is their propriety. And it so happens that they 
 are in fact the same word, canal and channel being 
 merely different ways of spelling one word, as any 
 one will see by pronouncing the ch of the latter word 
 bard ; and kennel, a gutter or water course in a street 
 B also the same word, merely spelled in another way
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 463 
 
 But the fact, however, that there is yet no such 
 word in Eneflish as canalize is not a valid obiection 
 to its use. That sort of conservatism will never do 
 in language. If we need new words, we must have 
 them ; and we will. This I have again and again 
 impressed upon the readers of my word-colloquies, 
 which are written from no conservative or purist 
 point of view.i 
 
 The real objection to canalize is twofold : that it is 
 both needless and un-English. Here again it is Eng- 
 glish to use the same word as a noun and as a verb, 
 and to write " made broader the area that woulc" 
 have to be canaled," etc. The sentence thus written 
 would have been understood at a glance by every 
 English-speaking man who could read, and would 
 have attracted no attention because of the words 
 that entered into its structure ; which, in sober busi- 
 ness prose at least, is one of the most desirable of all 
 qualities in a sentence. Canal and channel are both 
 nouns, but with the use of the latter as a verb, to 
 channel^ and in the participial forms channeling and 
 channeled^ we are all well acquainted ; and the former 
 word should be used in the same manner. Indeed, 
 this observation should not be necessary, and would 
 not here be made, were it not for the tendency (of 
 which the misuse in question is a sign) to set aside 
 the simple and the English mode of word formation 
 in favor of one which would give us in this case, for 
 example, the following sequence : canal, noun ; to ca- 
 nalize, verb; canalist, noun, one who makes or " runs" 
 canals ; canalization, noun, the making of canals ; ca* 
 nalal, adjective, having reference to canals ; and last 
 Qot least (on the system which gives us experiment 
 
 1 Words and their Uses, page 406, an I jjcissirn.
 
 464 EVEKY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 talize instead of experiment, as a verb), canalalize^ 
 to make canals, und caiialalist, one who makes canals, 
 not by simply making them as best he can, but in 
 the high and mighty style, according to a " complex 
 of canons." The word canal, used as a verb or noun, 
 with perhaps the addition of canaler or eanalist^ 
 would answer all the needs of any English-speaking 
 man who does not affect the grand style, and desire 
 finer bread than is made of wheat. 
 
 These almost ti-ite remarks will be justified if they 
 help to direct the attention of the general reader and 
 the average writer to the characteristic English use 
 of the same word as noun and verb, and the need- 
 lessness in most cases of adding the suffix ize to our 
 nouns for the sake of verbal form or expression. In 
 many cases necessity or convenience requires it, and 
 then it must and will be used. But when not so re- 
 quired, it may much better be omitted from a lan- 
 guage already overloaded with words that hiss at 
 themselves as they are uttered. 
 
 EPIDEMIC AND ENDEMIC: A QUESTION IN MEDICAL 
 TERMINOLOGY. 
 
 Knoxville, East Tennksree, | 
 3fay 23, 1874. ) 
 
 Dear Sir, — I do not wish my name, at least for the 
 present, to be made public in connectiru with any attention 
 courteously given by you to the subject of this uote. 
 
 I am anxious for the medical as well as the general 
 readers of your articles to have your opinion of the employ- 
 nent of a word which is in common use, but which, not 
 tilways having the same force, is consequently a source of 
 ^rror in doctrine. 
 
 I do not particularly care for its original or derivative
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 465 
 
 force, but I desire its meaning as a scientific term or as a 
 professional technicality to be conventionally fixed, — to be 
 destitute of any capacity to fill more than a single purpose ; 
 as terms in science and technicalities in professions ought 
 always invariably to carry the same force and meaning. 
 The word is epidemic. I know that in its popular sense it 
 conveys the idea of wide-spread ; but I think that it is never 
 properly used by a mediciner except in a sense antithetical 
 with the word endemic. In my fallible judgment both words 
 have the same derivative force, and hence it is useless to 
 retain them both in professional language, unless each has 
 attached to it by agreement a specific, determined meaning. 
 It is true that the dictionary consulted by medical men in 
 this country — Dunglison's — and the great dictionary by 
 Webster sustain the view I have expressed ; but there is 
 hardly a medical journal published in the English language 
 on the pages of which the word epidemic can be found and 
 restricted to the definition as expressed in Dunglison's and 
 in Webster's dictionaries. Bell's " Encyclopgedia," that 
 probably will now be extensively appealed to as authorita- 
 tive, gives a view very different from Dunglison and Web- 
 ster. I trust that your silence will not cause me to feel 
 that I have presumed. 
 
 Very respectfully, etc., Dr. F. A. R. 
 
 Of the great desirability of a fixed exactness in 
 the meaning attached to scientific or technical terms 
 there can be no doubt. Indeed, vagueness of mean- 
 ing is the defect most to be avoided in all language ; 
 and it is chief among the few defects of our own 
 mixed speech. It is more difficult for a vmter to 
 express himself in English with an exactness which 
 shuts off misapprehension and perversion, than it is 
 for him to do so in German, French, Italian, Spanish, 
 or Latin. I know of at least one profound scholar 
 irho has given up all reading of English books on 
 
 30
 
 466 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 philosophy and the like subjects, because of the Tague 
 and shifting way in which English writers use lan- 
 guage, and of another person, a writer of distinction, 
 who declines oral discussion altogether, because he 
 says it is impossible to understand just what people 
 mean. My humble endeavors in language have been 
 made chiefly in the hope of promoting in some meas- 
 ure a greater exactness in speech, which they may 
 do at least by directing attention to the inexactness 
 which prevails. 
 
 As to the sense of the medical term brought up by 
 our physician, I have only to say that it is of the 
 utmost importance that such a word should have a 
 precise meaning. But although my special medical 
 studies were discontiimed many years ago, they were, 
 1 think, carried far enough, and have brought me 
 enough into contact with the profession, to justify me 
 in expressing a doubt as to the assumed uncertainty 
 of meaning with which epidemic is used by physi- 
 cians. According to my observation, it is not used 
 by them as antithetical to endemic, but rather as dis- 
 criminative from it. 
 
 Etymologically both words have nearly the same 
 meaning ; their only difference being that of the two 
 Greek prepositions epi and en, of which the former 
 means upon and the latter in, or among. Epidemic 
 means, therefore, upon the people (^demoii), endemic, 
 in or among the people. The former, according to 
 established usage among the best physicians, means 
 strictly a disease which breaks out and diffuses itself 
 widely over a community, and which sooner or later 
 abates and disappears, possibly never to return. Tha 
 \fitter, according to the same usage, means a disease 
 whicV prevails in and pertains to a particular neigh«
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 4G7 
 
 borbooJ ; a disease not brought there, but belonging 
 there, and which, although it may prevail more at 
 one time than at another, is likely to be found in 
 that neighborhood at any time, except perhaps under 
 certain forbidding conditions, as, for example, black 
 frost. Thus yellow fever is endemic in Havana ; it 
 was in former years epidemic in New York. E'ever 
 and ague is endemic in many places ; strictly speak- 
 ing, it is never epidemic anywhere. Small-pox and 
 Bcarlet fever are apt to become epidemic wherever 
 they appear ; they are not endemic in any place, or 
 among any people ; but it seems as if diphtheria 
 were about to become endemic in certain neighbor- 
 hoods in the city of New York. Goitre is endemic 
 in Switzerland, and elephantiasis in the East. Chol- 
 era is an epidemic which, starting from India, dif- 
 fuses itself among all peoples and throughout all 
 countries ; while puerperal peritonitis may become a 
 local epidemic circumscribed by the walls of a lying- 
 in hospital. 
 
 In these senses, I believe, these words are strictly 
 used by all competent and careful medical writers 
 and speakers. When there appears to be uncertainty 
 or confusion in their use by such persons, it will be 
 found, I am quite sure, to apply rather to the facts 
 than to the phraseology. One physician or medical 
 writer may regard that as epidemic which another 
 believes to be endemic • but the character and hab- 
 its of a malady being once clearly discriminated and 
 firmly settled, there is, according to my observation, 
 no question as to the class under which it should be 
 ranged.
 
 468 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 SCIENTIST, AND OTHER ISTS. 
 
 The word scientist has been brought to my atten- 
 tion by more than one correspondent. It has attained 
 a certain degree of usage among those who it would 
 Beem are dissatisfied with "scientific man" and "man 
 of science," and who doubtless, with like distaste 
 to " literary man " and " man of letters," will soon 
 contrive some dreadful compound in ist to use m 
 their stead, Scientist appears to me, as it does to 
 many others, intolerable, as being both unlovely in it- 
 self and improper in its formation. " Sample-room " 
 language gives us drinkist^ sJiootist, ivalkist, and the 
 like with an undisguised incongruity, which has a 
 ridiculous effect, partly at least intentional, if not 
 wholly so. Those words are regarded as the creations 
 of exquisite humor by the persons who use them ; nay, 
 their very use is looked upon as an indication of la- 
 tent powers which would place the user, if he would 
 but let himself out, foremost in the ranks of the noble 
 army of " American humorists." 
 
 We say normally naturalist, geologist, organist, etc., 
 and may properly use as many more words formed 
 in like manner as we choose to coin. But I can find 
 no lawful instance corresponding to scientist, which 
 might well go with drinkist and shootist. If we 
 would, we could say sciencist ; and let who will say 
 it, and hiss himself properly in the sayhig of it. But 
 we cannot break up the sibilation with a ^; for even 
 the noun scientia will yield us only ti, which in soun(? 
 is sh, and sciential (noun) and scientialist must b» 
 left to the lovers of words like agential (" an agen- 
 tial ") ; and if we assume the obsolete scient as iti 
 base, the meaning of our new word will be "know 
 ingist."
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 469 
 
 In former times the suffix er seems to have been 
 the principal, if not the only, means of expressing 
 both the doer of an act and the practicer of an art 
 or craft ; for example, murderer^ astrologer. Still a 
 distinction between the two purposes was, in a man- 
 ner, preserved by confining the suffix for the former 
 purpose generally to a verb, and for the latter to a 
 noun, that is, the name of the art or profession prac- 
 ticed. A more modern development in the same di- 
 rection has led to the free appropriation of the Greek 
 Buffixes of use, ize, ism^ ist, to make upon nouns, after 
 the Greek model, verbs of using, abstract nouns of 
 usage, and personal nouns for the user of the thing; 
 for example, dogmatize, dogmatism, and dogmatist, 
 — words an acquaintance with which will not be 
 denied by certain critics to the present writer. A 
 movement towards symmetry and consistency leads 
 us to avoid new coinage in er upon substantive roots, 
 Buch, for instance, as geologer and organer would be. 
 There is not only a weakness, but a kind of insin- 
 cerity, in the interchanging and confusing of these 
 transplanted and assimilated suffixes, now well dis- 
 tinguished and valuable, — and valuable, of course, 
 just in the degree in which their exact and distinctive 
 senses are maintained. And I here remark upon an 
 Rstonishingly neglected difference — neglected by men 
 who should and do know better — between the ter- 
 minations ize and yse. Both of these, indeed, are 
 from the Greek ; but the latter, although it is fre- 
 quently confounded with the former, has nothing in 
 common with it, not being a suffix at all, but repre- 
 senting the Greek AuVi?, a loosening, as in ijaralyse 
 and analyse, which are ofte?i absurdl}' spelled para- 
 lyze and analyze, and which we may perhaps look
 
 470 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 to see spelled paralize and analize in what has been 
 called " the good English of the future." 
 
 This consideration of terminations in ist leads me 
 to remark upon another word of late introduction, 
 'physicist. In its sound, fizzisist, it is unlovely, and 
 in its formation it is irregular and ambiguous. From 
 our lazy, make-shift, and really unnatural habit of 
 going to Greek and Latin, instead of combining or de- 
 veloping the elements of our own language, when we 
 need a name for a new thought or a new thing, we have 
 two words, of which, although they mean ver}^ differ- 
 ent things, one is a mere plural form of the other, — 
 physic, the art of healing, and any drug or medicinal 
 substance, and physics, the science which treats of 
 the properties of matter. Now to express by the use 
 of the suffix ist a student or professor of the latter 
 science, we should make the word physics-ist. But 
 that being intolerable in sound, we have in its stead 
 physic-ist, which really, according to its formation, 
 means a professor or student of the art of physic, — 
 quite a different meaning from that of which we are 
 seeking the expression ; and we pronounce it, instead 
 of fizzikist, fizzisist, thus not really improving much 
 on fizziksist, if indeed the latter, by the interruption 
 by a A; of the continued hissing, is not the pleasanter 
 word, or rather the less offensive. We thus obtain 
 only an incorrect formation, an etymologically am- 
 biguous meaning, and a succession of hisses whicb 
 our performance well deserves. I am not here pro. 
 nouncing against the use of physicist, although a 
 better word is much to be desired ; but merelj'- re- 
 marking upon one of the evils that come from our 
 weak way of going to foreign languages to supply ua 
 with words for ideas which were already expressed
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 471 
 
 in English words, or which might have been expressed 
 by English combinations. We did not gain much, 
 to say the least, when we dropped leech and leechcraft 
 for phi/sician and medicine. We might learn in this 
 respect much from the Germans, who within tlie last 
 half century have turned many Latin and Greet 
 words out of their language, even in their scientific 
 vocabulary, to replace them by Teutonic words, sim- 
 ple and compound ; the gain whereby to their lan- 
 guage in strength, significance, and symmetry has 
 been great, and no less in nationality of character. 
 
 The last and altogether the most exquisite ex- 
 ample of ist-ing that I have met with is in the fol- 
 lowing paragraph in a tremendous puff of the hen- 
 nery of a young woman in Pennsylvania : " One 
 young country girl. Miss A. K., of Bethel, Pennsyl- 
 vania, is entitled to the praise of being the best lady 
 poultryist on record." I have been lifted very high 
 upon winged words before, but "lady poultryist" for 
 henwife is a pitch of elegance to rise to which quite 
 takes one's breath away. It is a very good example 
 of what we may be brought to if every woman must 
 be called a lady, and every occupation must have a 
 fine name. Miss K., if henwife is too homely a word 
 to be applied to her, is a poulterer, or, if her sex 
 must be indicated, a poulteress ; for we are told that 
 she not only raises, but buys and sells poultry. 
 
 It is remarkable that the people who are so ex- 
 quisitely elegant and grandiloquent are those who are 
 east able to write a simple English sentence cor- 
 rectly. Thus this same writer, in another part of his 
 {irticle, tells us that "when attacked by the prevail- 
 ing poultry disease last year. Miss K. freely checked 
 'ts spread by the fret use '^f lime." Now, it is pet-
 
 472 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 haps in the order of nature that a poultryist should 
 be attacked by the poultry disease. Indeed, it would 
 seem as if a poultryist must mean a person who haa 
 that ailment. Still, I doubt that the writer did in- 
 tend to publish to the world that this young woman 
 was thus afflicted, and that she subjected herself and 
 her surroundings to a course of lime therefor. Y^et 
 what he says means that, and nothing else. The 
 blunder that he makes is not uncommon with people 
 who cannot see the logical connection of words in sen- 
 tences. It would be very much better to find out 
 and to master that than to invent such ridiculoua 
 phrases as lady poultryist. 
 
 " POLITIQUE " AND POLITICAL. 
 
 It is appropriate that I should here remark upon 
 the following proposition made by the able Vienna 
 correspondent of the New York " Times : " — 
 
 " I must take this occasion to ask some of our linguists, Mr. 
 Richard Grant White, for instance, if we cannot adopt the 
 word 'politique. ' Political reasons ' is not the equivalent 
 of the concise and comprehensive French term ; and espe- 
 cially in America, where the word 'politics' has been de- 
 graded until it conveys something of a reproach, ' a political 
 reason * is not une raison politique. There is a certain 
 amount of opprobrium conveyed when we speak of a man 
 as a ' politician.' We have adopted a few very expressive 
 French words, — ' solidarity,' to give an example, — and I 
 do not see why we should not appropriate such large and 
 useful words as politique, sagesse, esprit, morale, and about & 
 half dozen more of the sort." 
 
 It is first to be said that the writer to whom this 
 question is referred makes no pretension to being a 
 linguist ; and at the very outset informed his readeri
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 473 
 
 that he undertook upon this subject only what h« 
 could do "without venturing beyond the limits of hia 
 own yet imperfect knowledge of his mother tongue." ^ 
 Nor does he presume to " adopt " a word, except for 
 his own use, or to express more than an individual 
 opinion as to the propriety of its adoption by others. 
 As to the word proposed, however, there does indeed 
 seem to him no necessity for transplanting it from the 
 French language into the English. Such transfers 
 are sometimes necessary, although much more rarely 
 than is supposed ; but they are always to be avoided, 
 unless they enable us to express a thought which is 
 not within the compass of our own vocabulary. It 
 is difficult to discover what the French politique ex- 
 presses which is not better expressed by our own pol- 
 itic, politics, political, and politician. Indeed, here 
 we have much the advantage ; for politique is already 
 overloaded in French, in which it means politic, po- 
 litical, a politic person, a politician, politics, and state 
 policy. Only a somewhat whimsical fancy, it seems 
 to me, can find in une raison politique any meaning 
 other or better than in a political reason, a politic 
 reason, or a reason of state policy. And as to the 
 degradation of politics by politicians with us, it would 
 hardly be wise to confess that it had become so thor- 
 ough and absolute that we must " putrify " it in our 
 language. The Credit Mobilier has brought disgrace, 
 not honor, upon those who were engaged in it ; and 
 William Tweed was sent to the penitentiary on Black- 
 rvell's Island. As to the other words brought for- 
 ward as examples of happy transplantation, it is not 
 pso certain that some of them might not well be spared. 
 Without being too narrowly proud to learn or to 
 
 ^ Preface to Words and their Dses.
 
 474 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 borrow from others, may wu not say with George 
 Herbert, — 
 
 " Let forrain nations of their language boast, 
 What fine variety each tongue affords; 
 I lilte our language, as our men and coast. 
 Who cannot dresse it well want wit, not words^ 
 
 (The Church, page ld<!.) 
 
 SPECIALTY AND SPECIALITY, 
 
 New York, Decei:\.lt,i 17, 1574. 
 Sir, — In your next criticism on words used in improper 
 forms will you not take into consideration specialty, now so 
 general in use for speciality ? Our language has need of 
 both forms to express different ideas, as it has for realty, 
 reality, personalty, personality. So, referring to a peculiar 
 character of obligation known in law, we call it a " spe- 
 cialty," as Shakespeare and the law writers did ; but in 
 speaking of a special pursuit or a merchandising in one 
 article, we should say " speciality." Before the publication 
 of the 1859 (quarto) edition of Webster's Dictionary " spe- 
 ciality " was the only form in use to express the idea of an 
 occupation limited to one object. I have met with it thus 
 in books published by all the leading publishers, some as 
 far back as 1828, and in no single instance, till after 1859, 
 was it written " specialty " in this sense. I have also been 
 familiar with it in speech since 1845, and the change in pro- 
 nunciation was not until after 1859. That it was an error 
 or oversight of the editor of the dictionary in confounding 
 the two forms, and giving only one, is evident from the in- 
 troduction into the recent quarto edition of that work of the 
 other form, " speciality," with numerous extracts from the 
 best writers showing its prevalent use. Still, in the face of 
 this, the newspapers continue the corrupt form, and in cod' 
 versation it is fast supplanting the four-syllabled word. One 
 does not like to be peculiar in the use of a word that intel 
 ligent people speak differently, and there is something pe 
 dantic in frequently explaining why we pronounce a word
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 476 
 
 JifEerently from the general use. As " speci.'ility," the 
 word conforms to the rule of our language in the formation 
 of nouns from adjectives ending in al, as fartial-ity, venal- 
 ity, temporal-ity, and a hundred others. Thei-e are only 
 three or four exceptions. I can give you many proofs of 
 the correctness of the foregoing views if desired. 
 
 Admiring the good fight you are making for our noble 
 language, 
 
 I am truly yours, S. H. T. 
 
 Without venturing to give a decided opinion against 
 this correspondent, I am inclined to doubt the valid- 
 ity of the distinction which he Las drawn. Usage 
 may, if it will, draw that distinction, and thus gain a 
 word for the expression of a modification of an idea. 
 But as a matter of fact I doubt whether an attempt 
 to do so has ever been made. Specialty and special- 
 ity seem rather to be two forms of the same word, 
 in the latter of which the i is merely a connecting 
 vowel. Classical Latin has no corresponding noun ; 
 but in medigeval Latin we have specialifas^ and the 
 French word, formed upon the accusative specialita- 
 tem, is spScialite. This would seem to show that 
 speciality is etymologically the proper form. But 
 there is no question, I believe, that specialty is much 
 the older English form, — older by two or three cent- 
 uries than sp>eciality ; and when the latter appeared 
 it does not seem to have carried with it any discrimi- 
 Uating power. 
 
 A specialty in law is merely a contract for a par- 
 ticular, specified, or special purpose, in contradistinc- 
 tion from a simple contract ; and the same or a simi- 
 lar idea seems to be conveyed when the word, used 
 m either form, is applied to something to which a 
 person has given, or professes to give, special atten-
 
 476 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 tion. Thus in Paris there is at least one restaurant 
 where, with an eye to the inborn cravings of the 
 " American " stomach, there may be seen cards bear- 
 ing the comfortable words, " SpScialite de hucwit 
 cakes,^'' " SpecialitS de pumpkin pie.'^ Johnson gives 
 bctli forms as one word ; and among succeeding dic- 
 tionary makers no one has drawn any distinction in 
 meaning between them. Webster, in his edition of 
 1828 (the last which he issued), gives the older form 
 specialty only. Shakespeare by no means confines 
 himself to the use of the word in its legal sense. 
 For example : — 
 
 " Troy, 3'et upon bis basis, bad been down. 
 And the great Hector's sword bad lack'd a master, 
 But for these instances : 
 The specialty oy"»'M/e hath been neglected," etc. 
 
 (Troilus and Cressida, i. 3, 1. 75.) 
 
 Here specialty means particular thing, and has al« 
 most the force of item. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there does seem to be in 
 regard to these forms a fair opportunity for that dis- 
 crimination which usage sometimes usefully makes 
 between words originally synonymous. Reality cer- 
 tainly does now mean something very different from 
 realty ; but the latter is purely a law term. So with 
 K)ersonality and personalty^ spirituality and spiritu- 
 Hty. But royalty means both the quality of being 
 loyal, kingliness, and that which is paid to the king 
 ji virtue of his seignorage, and hence to the owner 
 of a right for its use. The distinction proposed would 
 give us, for example, rascality^ the quality of being 
 rascally, and rascalty, the concrete mass of those who 
 have that quality ; although that might perhaps be 
 better expressed by rascalry. We might also have 
 teveralty and severality, casualty and easuality ; th«
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 477 
 
 former representing the concrete thing, the latter the 
 abstract quality. The suggestion that specialty and 
 speciality should be used discriminatively is worthy 
 of consideration ; but the question which it raises is 
 one which might better be submitted to Professor 
 Haldeman, who has given so much attention to the 
 affixes of our language. 
 
 GOOD USAGE VERSUS BAD SENSE. 
 
 There is a very common use of what the gramma- 
 rians call the perfect infinitive (for example, to have 
 loved) which is so incongruous as to be nonsensical. 
 Examples are found in the following passages from 
 Black's charming " Princess of Thule : " — 
 
 " He [Mosenberg] would have liked to have shown off 
 Sheilah to some of his friends." (Page 272, Harper's edi- 
 tion.) 
 
 " One friend she had who would have rejoiced to have 
 been of the least assistance to her." (Page 282.) 
 
 Now, it is very plain that what Mosenberg would 
 have liked, at a certain time, was to show off at that 
 time the charming Sheilah to his friends who were 
 present at that time. He could not have liked at 
 that time to have shown her off. It might be prop- 
 erly said of him at an after-time that to have shown 
 her off at the former time would have given hira 
 pleasure in the recollection. So, Sheilah's frien<1 
 would have been glad to he of assistance to her, 
 The first part of the assertion in such sentences is 
 ogically incongruous with the second. 
 
 The error in question is very common, even among 
 ^ood writers, and is not at all new. The absurdity 
 oi the construction is made yet more apparent than
 
 i78 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 it is in the examples from "The Princess of Thule' 
 by the following from Mr. Mallock's " New Repub- 
 lic : " — 
 
 *' Leslie was going to have spoken." (Book I., chap, iv.) 
 " Mr. Luke was going to have answered." (Book lU^ 
 chap, iii.) 
 
 Leslie could not be going to have spoken ; he was 
 going to speak; Mr. Luke was going to answer. The 
 misconstruction here becomes ridiculous by the im- 
 mediate juxtaposition of a present, or indefinite, par- 
 ticiple (jgoing^., asserting immediate future action, 
 with a verbal phrase implying completed action (to 
 have spoken). The logical construction, however, is 
 exactly the same as if (in Mr. Black's phrase) Mr. 
 Mallock had written, " Leslie would have begun to 
 have spoken ; " " Mr. Luke would have begun to 
 have answered." 
 
 As to the length of time that this misconstruction 
 has obtained, even among writers of high repute, it is 
 three hundred years and more ; during which time, 
 indeed, it has been the usage of the best writers in 
 England. I remember it in Latimer's sermons (A. D. 
 15^2), but cannot now put my finger upon the pas- 
 sages. Here are, however, a few examples ready at 
 hand, which, with those given above, will show its 
 orevalence among good and highly educated writers 
 for three centuries : — 
 
 ♦' Hadit thou been here to have heard how I spurred the 
 wench with incantations." (Heywood, Fair Maid of th*? 
 Exchange, Act L, Scene 2.) 
 
 " .... it woidd have made your ladyship have snng noth 
 bg but merry jigs." (Middleton, Father Ilubburd's Tales 
 Works, v. 569.) 
 
 ". . . . and you ivould have brok". into iufiuife laughtel
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 479 
 
 . . . to have seen how quickly the muff swallowed her 
 hand again." (The same, page 593.) 
 
 "I could have been content to have honoured him." (Shir- 
 ley, The Young Admiral, Act I., Scene 1.) 
 
 '' This might very well have disposed his Majesty to have 
 hastened his march to Oxford." (Clarendon, History of the 
 Rebellion, Book VIIL, page 542, ed. 1839.) 
 
 " Wee were both very unwilling to have gon in regard of 
 that concours of people at Westminster." (Sir W. Wal- 
 ler's Vindication, page 105.) 
 
 " Under these circumstances it would have been idle for 
 the crown to have expected aid," etc. (Buckle, History of 
 Civilization, vol. iii., chap, i.) 
 
 In all these passages, and in all cases of the mis- 
 use of which they are examples, the error is in the 
 use of have and a definite participle instead of the in- 
 finitive, when the thought which is to be expressed 
 is indefinite and contingent. Logical congruity re- 
 quires : " It would have been idle for the crown to 
 expect aid ; " " Hadst thou been here to hear how I 
 spurred the wench," etc. 
 
 The fact that the misconstruction here pointed out, 
 and which I am sure that no one will now defend, 
 has the support of the usage of the best English 
 writers from the earliest years of modern English to 
 the present day is a striking illustration of the truth 
 that even the best and longest continued usage is not 
 ftnii should not be an absolute law in language. The 
 best usage may have been wrong. 
 
 This muddle of thought and consequent miscon- 
 struction must not be confounded with a use of the 
 game form in a present reference to a past time. 
 Thus, in " The Princess of Thule," we have this sen 
 *ence : —
 
 480 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 " I should like to have seen the old woraau before she 
 died." (Page 418.) 
 
 Here the speaker expresses a present wish, indeed ; 
 but that wish may reasonably be either for something 
 to come or for something unattained in the past ; and 
 it is the latter. There is no logical inconsistency be- 
 tween the two parts of this assertion. If the assertion 
 had been with reference to time past, the sentence 
 should properly have been, " I sJiould have liked to 
 see the old woman before she died." But there is no 
 time of which the assertion, " I should have liked to 
 have seen the old woman," etc., is consistent with rea- 
 son. 
 
 This is one illustration of the rationale of the con- 
 struction of the English sentence. Some people may 
 call it grammar ; and so they might call it Freema- 
 sonry, and with as much reason. It has nothing to 
 do with the forms of words, or with their dependent 
 relations. 
 
 " FEELING BAD " AND " FEELING BADLY." 
 
 Upon hardly any other point have I received so 
 many letters of inquiry as upon the very trivial one 
 whether it is proper to say, " I feel bad " or " I feel 
 badly." I thought that I had said all that I could be 
 expected to say about it, and that it was dismissed 
 forever. But the inquiries continue at brief intervals, 
 and seem to be made by persons — ladies invariably 
 — who are quite ignorant that I have said my little 
 say about the little matter. And now two come to- 
 gether, one of which is made in such a tone of pitiful 
 t)erplexity that I have not the heart to pass it by un- 
 noticed. 
 
 Briefly, then, it is right to use bad in regard to feel
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 481 
 
 Lng or being, and hadly in regard to doing. For ex- 
 ample, "That was done very badly, and I feel very 
 bad about it," or, " I have behaved badly, and I feel 
 bad about it," — not, " I feel badly." 
 
 As regards physical ills, we say, for example, " My 
 head aches badly this morning," but, " My head is 
 very bad this morning ; " or, " My head feels very 
 bad," etc. ; not, " My head is badly," or " feels badly." 
 Speaking generally of health or physical condition, 
 we say, " I feel ill," or, "I feel sick;" not, "I feel 
 bad." That, although permissible and quite right as 
 to mere form, can hardly be regarded as in the best 
 style of English. When we are in low spirits we say 
 that we feel blue, not that we feel bluely. And we 
 say that the grass looks green and that the day looks 
 bright, not that the one looks greenly and the other 
 brightly. The verbs in these cases express seeming 
 or being or feeling. When we speak of doing we 
 use an adverb, thus : " That woman dresses badly ; " 
 but speaking of the result we say, that is, we may 
 say, " Her dress always looks bad." 
 
 When we say that " the grass looks green," " I feel 
 blue," we merely express a fact of perception ; we 
 say that something seems thus or so, — that the grass 
 seems green to us, that we seem blue to ourselves ; 
 that is, have a consciousness of depression which in 
 whimsical metaphor we call feeling blue. On th© 
 other hand, when we say that a woman dresses badly, 
 or that the air bites keenly, we say that something 
 is done. 
 
 Now as to the use of feel with a word expressing 
 condition or appearance, the whole analogy of the lan- 
 guage shows that the latter word should be an adjec- 
 tive, and not an adverb. For example : " I feel sad," 
 31
 
 482 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 not, " I feel sadly ; " "I feel glad," not, " I feel 
 gladly ; " " I feel sick," not, " I feel sickly ; " " I feel 
 sorry," not, " I feel sorrily ; " "I feel wretched," not, 
 "T feel wretchedly;" "I feel happy," not, "I feel 
 happily ; " "I feel sinful," not, " I feel sinfully," and 
 BO forth through all the vocabulary of seeming and 
 condition. I can see no reason why the adjective bad 
 should be a solitary exception to this universal rule. 
 
 A little observation, a little reflection, and, above 
 all, a little continuance in the use of " I feel bad," 
 will, I think, determine the question in its favor with 
 any doubter who does not, on the one side, take a 
 parsing, pedagogish view of language, or, on the 
 other, regard it from the point of prim feminine prej« 
 udice. For I suspect that the doubting dames who 
 call upon me in vain to defend and confirm them in 
 their suspicion of bad fail to perceive the real cause 
 of their affright, which is this : The woi'd bad conveys 
 a sense of the lack of goodness and of soundness, 
 either physical or moral, as the case may be. We say 
 a bad man or a bad egg ; and usage has transferred, 
 by metaphor, the idea of physical unsavoriness (the 
 radical meaning of bad^ in the egg to moral qualities 
 in the man. By a bad man we mean a man who is 
 morally bad ; by a bad egg^ one that is physically 
 corrupt. But the two conditions have no real con- 
 nection with each other, and only a figurative like- 
 ness. A morally good man may feel bad physically. 
 His physical condition may be really more or less 
 like that of the egg (happily unconscious of its bad- 
 ness), — that is, deteriorated, — and of this he may 
 be conscious, and, being thus conscious, he feels bad. 
 Again, if he has done what he should not have done- 
 oir if he has done badly what he should have dona
 
 DOUBTFUL PHRASES, OLD AND NEW. 483 
 
 he is, in like manner, conscious of defect, of deterio- 
 ration, and he feels bad, there being again a metaphor- 
 ical change in the use of the word. For, in the phrase 
 *' I feel bad," bad has not the sense which it has in the 
 phrase " a bad man," nor does its meaning come from 
 the sense of the word in that phrase. The man feels 
 bad just as he feels glad, or feels sad, or feels sorry, or 
 feels happy. He does not feel that he is a bad man, 
 any more than a boy, when he says that, for any rea- 
 son, " he feels good," means that he feels that he is a 
 good boy. For in the phrases a good man, a good boy, 
 a good woman, the meaning has by long usage been 
 confined to an expression of the moral nature of the 
 persons to whom they are respectively applied. And 
 — to take a necessary step yet further in this direc- 
 tion — by a conventional and altogether unwarranted 
 usage among women (who, like most sects, have a 
 tendency to a cant phraseology of their own), had, as 
 applied by women to a woman, refers altogether to 
 her sexual conduct. Among women, "a bad woman" 
 means an unchaste woman. Hence the feminine doubt 
 as to the use of the phrase " I feel bad ; " and hence 
 the fact that all the letters of inquiry that I have re- 
 ceived upon the subject have been from female writers. 
 But there is in this esoteric feminine use of the word 
 lo reason why had should be an exception to the rule 
 that, governs glad and sad and sorry^ and all other 
 like adjectives in the language.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 CANT, TRADING AND OTHER. 
 
 Cant and slang are often spoken of as if they were 
 the same thmg, or varieties of the same thing ; but 
 they are not so. They have, indeed, this in common 
 that they are both deviations from the correct, normal 
 use of language. In both, words are used in a sense 
 which does not rightly belong to them, either ety- 
 mologically or according to good usage. But between 
 them there is this great difference, that cant is of lim- 
 ited and slang of general use ; cant words and phrases 
 are contrived by special classes for their own special 
 purposes ; slang originates, we hardly know how or 
 why, and attains more or less vogue, according to cir- 
 cumstances which have general application. In slang, 
 humor or satire is more or less an element. For 
 example, when a gentleman who is inclined to talk 
 somewhat tediously upon a subject which he has at 
 heart, but about which his hearers are not much in- 
 clined to hear, is told to " hire a hall," he is gener- 
 ally able to see some satire and the others some humor 
 in the recommendation. Slang has, in many cases, a 
 pith and pungency which make it not only pardona- 
 ble, but tolerable. It often expresses a feeling, if not % 
 thought, of the passing day, which could not be so for 
 cibly expressed — for the day — in any other phrase 
 ology. It is generally evanescent ; but sometimes it 
 endures and becomes a part of the recognized vocabu- 
 .ary of a language. For example, the woi-d 7nob was
 
 CANT, TRADING AND OTHER. 485 
 
 originally slang. It is supposed to be a contraction, — 
 the first syllable of mobile vulgus ; a scornful phrase 
 for the lowest order of common people. Tandem^ 
 also, was originally a slang word. It is Latin for 
 " at length ; " but as applied to driving two horses at 
 length instead of abreast, it is just such Latin as 
 nunquam animus for " never mind." Another slang 
 word, sivell, meaning grand, fine, pretentious, is now 
 perceptibly passing into the recognized vocabulary of 
 good usage. It is a very convenient and expressive 
 ■word, and is used now by the best speakers of Eng- 
 lish without hesitation. It can hardly fail to appear 
 in " the dictionary " of the next generation. 
 
 Cant is not so respectable ; and yet it is, on the 
 whole, more enduring. It appertains, as I have said, 
 to special classes, and is generally offensive to those 
 ■who do not belong to those classes. It very rarely 
 passes into general usage. There is religious cant 
 and trading cant, artists' cant and thieves' cant, and 
 there is the cant of literature and even of science. 
 Almost every occupation has its cant, Avhich is not 
 very well understood by the outside world. Women 
 have their cant : cant of the household, cant of so- 
 ciety, cant of dress, and, finally and absolutely, pure 
 feminine cant. Far be it from me to venture com- 
 ment upon the last, or even to give illustrations of 
 it. Religious cant has much to do with the distaste 
 which many sensible, right feeling, and not irrelig- 
 ious people have for religious affairs. An example 
 of a religious cant phrase in very common use is 
 " walk and conversation " Not one in a thousand of 
 those who use it knows what it really means. They 
 ase it thinking that in it "conversation" means 
 speech, dail}^ talk. Bat it really means association,
 
 486 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 social habits ; tlie use of " conversation " to mean 
 speech being of very modern date, — much later than 
 that of the origin of the phrase " walk and conversa- 
 tion." 
 
 In a community like ours, in which trade is the oc- 
 cnpation of so large a proportion of the people, trad- 
 i/ig cant attains a vogue more general than any other, 
 and reall}^ works its way into a somewhat general 
 acceptation. The use of balance for rest, remainder, 
 residue, what is left, may perhaps be regarded as an 
 example of this adoption of trading cant. I shall re- 
 mark briefly upon some other cant phrases, which 
 trade, or commerce, or finance, has introduced to our 
 acquaintance. 
 
 One of the newest, strangest, and, to me, most in- 
 comprehensible of these is the phrase covered into, 
 as, for example, " covered into the Treasury." A 
 few years ago this phrase made its appearance in the 
 newspapers, and was instantly caught up by those 
 who did not know what it meant, but supposed it 
 was something very fine ; and they, after the fashion 
 of such people, used it with very imposing effect. 
 We heard, and still hear, of the vast sums being 
 " covered into the Treasury." Learned Washington 
 correspondents write it, and still more learned legis- 
 lators speak it : but what it means they, like the old 
 book-collector in regard to his treasure, do not care 
 to know. I have often been asked what it meant ; I 
 nave often asked others, men familiar all their lives 
 with financial affairs on a large scale, but in vain. 
 Ko one could tell. It seems to me about as foolish 
 and unmeaning an assemblage of words as I ever saw 
 or heard. It is, I believe, already beginning to pass 
 out of use. It may well be cast into the waste-basket
 
 CANT, TRADING AND OTHER. 487 
 
 of oblivion, to torment some unhappy verbal critic 
 who, in time to come, shall be called upon to explain 
 the " American " (for it is not English) phraseology 
 of to-day.i 
 
 Another phrase of, I believe, quite as recent origin, 
 and which has come into more general use, is rules 
 high, or low, as the case may be. Thus in the London 
 " Truth : " " The price of what are termel first-class 
 investment securities rules too high." This use of 
 rules seems to me sheer cant, and cant which those 
 who use it would be puzzled reasonably to interpret. 
 I have heard an attempt to explain it as meaning that 
 the price of bonds, land, or what not, is high or lowi 
 as a rule. But a little observation and thought will 
 discover that this is not the meaning of the phrase as 
 it is used. For it is applied to a single article and as 
 to the future. I have again and again heard, "That 
 article will rule higher next spring," and, " Real es- 
 tate will rule higher after the election." The phrase 
 is a mere piece of affectation, the result, possibly, of 
 a blunder at first on the part of some man rich 
 enough to buy the flattery of imitation, and then of a 
 desire to seem to have at command the phraseology of 
 the finest financial circles. Such phrases as this are 
 
 1 A correspondent who read the remarks above on their first publica- 
 tion kindly furnished me with the following explanation of the phrase in 
 question : " ' Covered into the Treasury ' is a phrase expressive of the trans- 
 fer of an unexpended balance of an appropriation back into the Treasury, 
 and the final balancing and canceling of the account. The phrase was 
 originally ' Covering [the item, in a balance-sheet] by a transfer of the 
 amount into the Treasury.' The ' covering ' being a legitimate use of the 
 vord, as ' the appropriation covers the cost,' that is, balances and cancels 
 pach the other; or, the profits of the business cover the expenses. The 
 4iterniediate words of the phrase, 'by a transfer of the amount,' being 
 ilimniated as redundant, the word cove7- in this use really 'ncludes the 
 idea of transfer." This is manifestly satisfactory to my correspondent 
 »nd may be so to others ; but it only makes it m;re clear to me that tb« 
 *hrase is cant, pure and simple.
 
 488 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 of a very different sort from the broker's " call " and 
 " long " and " short " and " put " and " spread," and 
 80 forth. These are honest, unpretending cant, — as 
 honest and unpretending as the cant of thieves ; they 
 are used for convenience, and make no pretension to 
 be anything else than a trouble-saving contrivance, 
 intended only for those who have invented them. 
 
 Line is used in a canting way, chiefly by jobbera 
 and retailers. These will not only say, but write 
 and print, that they have " the finest line of spring 
 goods " ever seen in this city. I have in vain en- 
 deavored to surmise the meaning of line thus used 
 and have asked an explanation of it from those who 
 thus use it, — equally in vain. It will be seen at once 
 that it is not used with the meaning that it has in 
 the question, " Any other article in our line ? " where 
 line means line of business. But a line of goods, — 
 what is it ? Not goods in cases arranged in a line, 
 for it is applied to a trader's whole stock, as " A, B 
 & Co. have a fine line of goods ; " to a part of it, as 
 " D, C & Co. have a fine line of woolens ; " and to a 
 part of a part, for you will see placards on short 
 rows or little heaps of goods, " All goods on this 
 line $5." And yet in a newspaper before me I see a 
 
 .laming advertisement announcing that Messrs. • 
 
 & Co. " have just received a full line of kid gloves." 
 \t is very meaningless cant. 
 
 So is another phrase, of very recent origin, closed 
 vut, which is, I believe, a pure Americanism. I 
 do not know, at least, of its use elsewhere than in 
 New York and the little New Yorks. I have in vain 
 asked for a reasonable explanation of this phrasa 
 A door may be closed, and, metaphorically, an ac« 
 count or a sale may be closed. Goods may be turned
 
 CANT, TRADING AND OTHER. 489 
 
 out-of"doors. But how anything can, in the proper 
 meaning of the words, be " closed out," I have found 
 no one able to explain. Nor have I even been able 
 to get any one to tell me what he thought he meant 
 by closing out goods other than selling all of them. 
 And yet it has, I suppose, to certain people a cer- 
 tain meaning, which they might much better express 
 rightly. In other words it is cant. The adolescent 
 vendor who stands on the street corner and cries, as 
 I have heard him cry scores of times, " Heah you ah ! 
 cul-losin 'em out ; two dollah scahfs faw foh shill'n," 
 uses the phrase in just the same sense in which it 
 was used by the very jobber who " closed out the 
 lot " to him. 
 
 Collect has in trade come to be mere cant. A 
 young man will enter an office and ask, " Can I col- 
 lect X, Y & Co.'s bill ? " or he will be told by his 
 employers to go tut and " collect that bill." Now, 
 you cannot collect one bill any more than you can 
 assemble one man. To collect is to gather together. 
 The idea of numbers is essential to that of collection. 
 You may collect the money for a number of bills 
 (if you can) ; but it may be said without hypercriti- 
 cism that to speak of collecting one bill is to use 
 language with ridiculous absurdity. This, too, is a 
 novelty, and, I believe, an Americanism. I doubt 
 that it is a generation old, and I have never heard 
 it, or met with evidence of its use, in England. Con- 
 nected with it is a dreadful canting formula, " C. O. 
 D." (meaning either collect on delivery or cash on 
 delivery), which has come to be regarded, not as 
 in abbreviation, but as a phrase, and is pronounced 
 «e«, oh, dee ; " and Messrs. Shoddy & Co. will call 
 tttention to their " elegant stock of C. O. D fall
 
 190 EVEKY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 and winter clothing." Entirely apart from the ter- 
 ror which the idea of paj^ment on delivery carries to 
 the general mind, this canting cipher has become one 
 of the nuisances of modern trading language. 
 
 Invest used without an object, as, " I think I shall 
 invest," " He invested in governments," is, if not 
 traders' cant, a gross misuse, brought into vogue by 
 the traders in mone3^ A man may invest money or 
 other interests in this or that enterprise, security, or 
 business; but he cannot simply invest, the verb be- 
 ing one that requires an object. Some people seem 
 to think that it is either fine or funny to use the 
 word in this objectless way. Thus, I find in the Lon- 
 don " Truth," " A few days ago I invested in ' Helen's 
 Babies.' " Why not, I bought the book ? What is 
 gained by the misuse of the other word ? 
 
 I cannot but regard a certain use of the plural, as 
 " ales, wines, teas," " woolens, silks, cottons," as a sort 
 of traders' cant, and to many persons it is very offen- 
 sive. What reason is there for a man who deals in 
 malt liquor announcing that he has a fine stock of 
 ales on hand, when what he has is a stock of ale of 
 various kinds ? What he means is that he has Bass's 
 ale, and Burton ale, and Albany ale, and others ; 
 out these are only different kinds of one thing. One 
 might as well talk of waters, meaning Croton wa- 
 ter and spring water. True, we have in the Bible 
 (Kings or Chronicles, I don't remember which ; and, 
 O criticaster, I don't think it worth my while to 
 look), " Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Da- 
 mascus, better than all the waters of Israel ? " But 
 this does not speak of the water of Abana and that 
 df Pharpar, or that of the several rivers of Judea^ 
 as various "waters." The plural is used as it is iis
 
 CANT, TRADING ANI/ OTHER. 491 
 
 " the waters of the great deep," and in a hundred 
 other like instances. I cannot but think that this 
 use of the pUiral, although it is no novelty and has 
 some analogical support, comes originally of preten- 
 sion. It was thought to be finer, a more swell thing, 
 to have " ales and wines" to sell than merely ale and 
 wine. We never hear of a grocer's having "salts," 
 " molasseses," " wheats," " flours," or "breads," but 
 properly of various brands or kinds of those things. 
 And so we should hear only of various kinds of ale, 
 wine, woolen, silk, cotton, and so forth. 
 
 Apropos of this point, I observed, the other daj^ be- 
 tween Fifth and Sixth Avenues up town, a large and 
 flagrantly elegant sign, on which it was announced, 
 firrt, that families would be supplied with rockaways ; 
 but I saw no sign of any family carriage of that kind. 
 Next, saddle-rocks were promised, and blue points, 
 and finally east rivers, and all " from our own beds." 
 It was not until I turned the corner wondering how 
 rockaways and points and rocks and rivers came into 
 " our own beds," and what families could do with them, 
 that I saw any intimation what these extraordinary 
 articles of family supply really were ; and then it 
 came to me in the imperative mood, in many colors, 
 " Try our Fries." I did not do so, but the entreaty 
 — or was it command ? — led me to suspect that the 
 word " oyster " was lying somewhere near by, hid- 
 den, it might be, under a shell or in a bed ; and that 
 the solitary s that rightfully belonged to that word 
 had been made to do quadruple duty by being ap- 
 pended to the four words which merely described what 
 kinds of oysters 20uld be had. Seriousl}^, how much 
 easier and better it would be to use both noun and ad- 
 ective, — Rockaway, Saddle-Rock, Blue Point, and
 
 492 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 East River Oysters, — O man of Wall Street 1 for 
 it is you that I am addressing. For when you talk 
 of buying and selling " governments " — meaning 
 not the ruling powers of various countries, but the 
 bonds or securities of the government of this country 
 or of some other — you put yourself, in the use of 
 language, exactly on a level with the oysterman who 
 Bets up in his window, " Try our Fries." 
 
 Another form of trading cant appears constantly 
 in business correspondence : " Your favor of the 1st 
 inst. is received, and conte^its rioted^ The affectation 
 and awkwardness of the phrase are plain enough 
 without a word of comment ; and at any rate of what 
 use is it? What meaning has it, to satisfy any rea- 
 sonable creature ? Why should one reasonable creat- 
 ure address it to another ? Of course the contents 
 of a business letter addressed to a business man are 
 noted by him. He might just as well inform his cor- 
 respondent that his letter had been opened, for it is 
 opened only that its contents may be noted. 
 
 Of a like sort is the phrase commonly used in mer- 
 cantile correspondence when a check is sent, or, to 
 use the elegant phrase, "a remittance is made." 
 This is, " Please find iyiclosed our check, " etc. A 
 more ridiculous use of words, it seems to me, there 
 ould not be. I heard its absurdity remarked upon 
 *ong ago by thorough-bred merchants and Wall Street 
 men. How much more natural, simpler, better in 
 every way, is the phrase in the opening of a letter 
 which I received only yesterday from a publishing 
 house of the highest standing : " We inclose herewith 
 our check," etc. I thought it admirable. 
 
 One of the merchants who laughed at " Please 
 find," etc., scoffed at another bit of mercantile cant
 
 CANT, TRADING AND OTHER. 493 
 
 Our Mr. So and So. It seems to me that bis ridi- 
 cule was well bestowed. If a bouse is composed of 
 Mr. Jobn A and Mr. James B, with Mr. Charles C 
 as an associate, and is known as A, B & Co., it is 
 Burely quite sufficiently explicit if in their corre- 
 spondence they call the principals or the " Co." by 
 their simple names, without dubbing them " Our Mr. 
 John A," or " Our Mr Charles C." Affectation 
 again, ending in cant. 
 
 I intended to remark upon some other forms of 
 cant, among them the cant of journalism, in which, 
 for example, our special has become a mystery to the 
 outside world, meaning sometimes a man, a corre- 
 spondent, sometimes a telegram ; in which inter- 
 preted and rendered take the place of acted, played, 
 or sung ; in which a piece of music is called a num- 
 ber, and skill in art is called technique. The last has 
 become a part of the stock cant of " fashionable " art 
 gabble. Every "lady pianiste" is ready to go into 
 raptures over her favorite performer's " splendid teck- 
 neek." I forbear, however, going further into this 
 subject, and leave it with merely a caution against 
 the use of stereotyped conventional phrases, which 
 are sure to become cant.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ELEGANT ENGLISH. 
 
 Some of my readers I know, and many more I sus- 
 pect, have the notion that the main purpose of what 
 I have written upon hinguage is to teach people to 
 gpeak elegant English ; or I should rather say to help 
 or to lead, or, more elegantly, to induce people so to 
 speak. For to presume to teach any one English, or 
 to impart to him any knowledge in regard to it, no 
 matter how much more ignorant he may be than you 
 are, is, I have some reason to suspect, an offense to 
 be resented even with rudeness. But there could 
 not be a greater mistake than that which I have men- 
 tioned. Among my prayers as to deliverance from 
 the little miseries of life is that I may be defended 
 from elegant speaking. Indeed, elegance of any kind 
 has become rather oppressive. One of the curses of 
 the day is that everybody wishes to be elegant, — ele- 
 gant meaning fine, showy, and expensive : the excep- 
 tions being a few people who are content to live their 
 lives according to their own standards of comfort, of 
 happiness, and of beauty, quite indifferent to the ad- 
 miration, the envy, or even the criticism of others. 
 
 Elegance in language, however, although it is 
 almost a modern affectation, is not so much sought 
 after now as it was in the. days of our fathers and 
 grandfathers. Language seems to have been then 
 regarded as something to be thought of and valued 
 for itself, apart from the thoughts that it c(;nveyed
 
 ELEGANT ENGLISH. 49o 
 
 The " language " of a book, or a play, or a sermon 
 was spoken of with praise or dispraise ; and what was 
 meant was not the use of words, or the construction 
 of the sentences as to sense and rhythm, but the 
 words themselves. I remember meeting in my early 
 youth, in the lobby of a theatre where a new com- 
 edy had just been produced, an aged actor of the old 
 Bchool, very polished in manner and somewhat de- 
 monstrative in his courtesy. He asked me what I 
 thought of the new play. I replied that I thought 
 it very dull ; that the situations were forced and the 
 charjicters of the personages unnatural. " Well, yes," 
 he replied, "I 'm inclined to think you 're right ; but 
 the language is very elegant ; that ought to save it." 
 I remember being puzzled as to what he could mean 
 by the language being elegant, and to divine why 
 elegant language should save a dull, unnatural play 
 from being damned. I found out that he meant 
 that it was full of fine words, put together in such a 
 way that they had an effect on the ear, and perhaps 
 on the mind, analogous to that produced on the eye 
 by fine clothes and fine furniture. I afterwards re- 
 marked this same admiration of words by themselves 
 in other persons of his period, and found traces of it 
 in books. 
 
 In this respect there has been a reaction, which 
 during the past generation was healthy and tended 
 to simplicity of speech, and to a disregard, even in 
 poetry, of any other consideration than the clear and 
 strong utterance of thought. Of late, however, it 
 has gone too far, and has brought slang into use, 
 even in good society, and has led also to an abbre- 
 viated style of speech and of writing, which is al 
 tDost as 1 ad as slang, and in some cases much worse.
 
 496 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 Deliberate elegance in language is now the sign 
 either of an extreme of pedantry and affectation, or, 
 more generally, of inferior social and intellectual cul 
 tare. I heard of a woman, who was engaged to ren- 
 der some chance assistance in a household, who in- 
 formed her employer that " she and her chil'n hed 
 ben awful sick; but they went into the country, and 
 they resuscitated dreadful." The good woman meant 
 that they soon got well ; but not content with simple 
 language that would have satisfied Sir Philip Sidney, 
 or Shakespeare, or Lord Bacon, or Goldsmith, or 
 Thackeray, she strove after elegance in speech, with 
 the disastrous result above recorded. And having 
 been rusticated in my Freshman year for some of- 
 fense against college discipline, I fell among some 
 people in the rural part of Eastern Pennsylvania who 
 were so very elegant in their language that they 
 never spoke of helping you to anything at table, but 
 of assisting you to it ; and one day, my hostess ask- 
 ing me if she should " assist me to some sass," I, 
 taken rather suddenly by this dispensation of ele- 
 gance, fell into such a fit of unseemly laughter that 
 all the excuses and explanations that I could contrive 
 did not quite atone for my involuntary lapse from 
 good manners, and there was a constraint at that 
 table until I was recalled within the wholesome in- 
 fluence of mingled classics and college slang. 
 
 It is to be observed that those who are at pains 
 to speak elegantly always choose a longer in place 
 of a shorter word, — one of Latin or Greek, instead 
 of one of purely English, origin. They also avoid 
 idioms, those family traits of language, and — when 
 they are sufficiently instructed — they are solicitous 
 as to their grammar, and talk in sentences that hav«
 
 ELEGANT ENGLISH. 497 
 
 an air of being uttered to be parsed. Prigs and 
 pedants generally speak in elegant language. For 
 this they are not altogether in fault. The habit is a 
 " survival " of the school-teaching of the last genera- 
 tion and of the generation before the last. Indeed, 
 elegant English may be said to have come into vogue 
 in the latter part of the last century. It was one of 
 the results of the refining influence (much needed) of 
 the Queen Anne school of essayists, supplemented 
 by the tendency to inflation (" making little fishes 
 talk like whales ") imparted to the English language 
 by Dr. Johnson. True, thei'e were the Euphuists of 
 the Elizabethan era and other affecters of elegant 
 speech, some of whom Shakespeare has satirized ; but 
 these were very few in number, and formed a small 
 class apart by themselves. The Euphuists were al- 
 most a sect or a school, and it was not until about a 
 hundred years ago that elegance of language became 
 a common affectation. 
 
 In illustration of this part of my subject, I cite 
 some counsels and cautions from a very good book of 
 its kind, published about fifty years ago in Boston, 
 " The English Teacher, or Private Learner's Guide," 
 which is by Isaac Alger, Jr., A. M., who designates 
 himself, further, as " Teacher of Youth." He has a 
 chapter on purity of style, which he well defines as 
 consisting in the use of such words and such construc- 
 tions as belong to the idiom of the language which 
 we speak. But when he comes to particulars, we, 
 or I at least, cannot so readily agree with him ; for 
 he says that all such words and phrases as the follow- 
 ing should be avoided : " quoth he," " erewhile," " I 
 wist not," " behest." and " self-same." Now, the 
 first three of tliese would sound affected in common 
 
 32
 
 498 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 talk, or in a newspaper or a magazine article, for 
 they have passed out of our every-day English. But 
 there is no better English than they are ; and in 
 poetry or a certain kind of narrative they may be 
 used with good effect, and are so used by the best 
 writers. " Self-same " is in commonest use by the 
 best speakers as well as writers, and expresses in 
 two English syllables an idea for which we have no 
 other word than the four-syllabled Romance word 
 " identical," which some people, but hardly the best 
 speakers and writers, may regard as the more elegant. 
 Mr. Alger taught the youth of his time, also, that 
 they should not say, " It irhs me to see " so and so, 
 but " I am wearied with seeing," etc. Such elegance 
 as this is to be avoided by whoever wishes to write 
 or to speak words that will be felt. There is no 
 better English than " it irks me," which means some- 
 thing more than " I am wearied." No good speaker 
 of English would hesitate to use the former, even col- 
 loquial Ij''. 
 
 In the next chapter, " On Propriety," the youth 
 are told that they should avoid " low expressions," 
 Buch as " hurly-burly," " topsy-turvy," " currying fa* 
 v^or," and " dancing attendance." These, however, 
 are picturesque and suggestive phrases, which may 
 be used with effect in the proper place (a limitation 
 which applies to all words and phrases), and which 
 would not be shunned except b}'- sickly squeamish- 
 ness. In the sentence, " Meantime, the Britons, left to 
 shift for themselves, were forced to call in the Saxons 
 for their defense," the phrase " left to shift for them- 
 selves " is condemned as " rather low " and too famil- 
 iar to be proper in a grave treatise. Here is squeam. 
 ishness again. " Shift," as used in this sentence
 
 ELEGANT ENGLISH. 499 
 
 expresses what no other English word or even phrase 
 will quite express, and is in place even in the grav- 
 est historical composition. Macaulay would not have 
 hesitated a moment about using it, nor, I believe, 
 would Ruskin now hesitate, nor even those more fas- 
 tidious but less forcible and picturesque writers. Sir 
 Arthur Helps and Matthew Arnold. 
 
 I cannot do better than to contrast some other 
 phrases which offended Mr. Alger with the more 
 elegant ones he would have substituted for them. 
 
 I had as lief do it myself as per- I ^uould as readily do it niy&elf aa 
 
 Buade another to do it. persuade another to do it. 
 
 He is not a whit better than those He is not in any degree better 
 
 whom he so liberally condemns. than those whom he so liberally 
 
 condemns. 
 
 He stands upon security, and will He insists upon security, and will 
 
 not liberate him until it be obtained, not liberate him, etc. 
 
 The meaning of the phrase, as I The meaning of the phrase, as I 
 
 take it, is very different from the understand it, is very different, etc. 
 common acceptation. 
 
 He might have perceived with half He might have perceived by a 
 
 an eye the difficulties to which his transient view the difficulties, etc. 
 conduct exposed him. 
 
 This performance is much at one This performance is of the same 
 
 with the other. value as the other. 
 
 Now, in every one of these examples, the amend- 
 ment for elegance' sake enfeebles the sentence. There 
 is no better English than " as lief " or " a whit," and 
 as to " stands upon security," it means exactly what 
 is meant by "insists upon security," and expresses it 
 more tersely and graphically. Falstaff's tailor was 
 to have sent him two and twenty yards of satin, but 
 the fat knight says that he and the rest of his craft 
 "stand upon security." In the change of "I take 
 't" to " I understand it," there is not, as to the mere 
 words, any enfeebling of this phrase ; but " I take 
 it" corresponds to " acceptation " much better than
 
 500 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 " understand " does. It is amusing to see the elegant 
 critic shrink from the simple English " I take," and 
 submit without a murmur to the Romance " accept." 
 To those who misapprehend it, the phrase " half an 
 eye " may carrjj^ an unpleasant or, at least, a gro- 
 tesque suggestion ; but at the worst how much better 
 it is than such weak elegance as a " transient view " ! 
 *' Half an eye," however, docs not suppose that a 
 person's eye is to be cut in two, and that he is to see 
 as well with one half as with the whole. An eye ia 
 a glance, a look ; and half an eye is merely the slight- 
 est possible glance. " Much at one " is not only a 
 good bit of idiomatic English, but it means what 
 "of the same value as " does not mean. It expresses 
 sameness or close correspondence much more tersely 
 than the substituted phrase does, — which, indeed, 
 does not expi-ess that thought at all ; for two per- 
 formances might be of the same value, and yet be 
 quite unlike. 
 
 I cite tliese few instances of the taste of half a cent- 
 ury ago as examples of the sort of elegance wdiicli it 
 is always well to avoid. In general, eschew elegance ; 
 and if you are not a practiced writer and familiar 
 with the best literature of the language, whenever 
 you have writen anything that seems to you particu- 
 larly elegant, for that very reason, if you cannot omit 
 the substance of it, rewrite it in the simplest and 
 homeliest language that will express your thought. 
 Even men of sense and culture are apt to be misled 
 into absurdity by a sounding phrase. Here I lind 
 a distinguished clergyman saying of another dis- 
 tinguished clergyman, deceased, " II is habits were 
 Vather retired, and the periphery of his life was th«
 
 ELEGANT ENGMSH. 501 
 
 Circumference of his affections." I cannot but think 
 this a very weak and inflated way of saying, or trying 
 to say, that the end of the man's life was love. True, 
 the phrase is an imitation of one used by Sir Thomas 
 Browne ; but Sir Thomas Browne is, like Carlyle, a 
 writer to be enjoyed, but not to be imitated. Horace 
 Greeley, in the earlier part of his career, wrote direct, 
 vigorous English ; but toward the end of his life he 
 was beguiled by vanity, born of fame, into preten- 
 tiousness and elegance, so that once he even wrote, 
 *' whoever chooses to impel animals along a road." 
 Think of a pig-driver impelling the squealing pork ! 
 
 A few years ago there was a great outbreak of ele- 
 gance in the use of mal. Bad conduct was called 
 mal conduct, and we read in the newspapers, and in 
 the resolutions passed at public meetings, of officers 
 being " found guilty of corrupt, arbitrary, and mal 
 conduct in ofl&ce." It was used with an air, as if it 
 meant something very terrible indeed, and as if the 
 person using it was extinguishing the offender by a 
 phrase of elegant form and dreadful import. But it 
 was merely a half-ignorant, half-affected imitation of 
 the old phrase, " malversation in office," which is al- 
 most technical. Those who used it only made them- 
 selves ridiculous. Luckily they suspected this after 
 a while, and the phrase soon dropped into oblivion. 
 
 The very last instance of elegance in language that 
 I have heard of is " saloon-parlor." I first heard it 
 — not used, but spoken of — only a short time ago, 
 and I did not suppose that any other person had ever 
 "ised it but a pretentious woman, who had passed 
 rapidly not only from poverty, but from the coarsest 
 life, to uhe enjoyment of wealth and such elegance as 
 mere wealth can bring, and who, throwing open the
 
 502 EVERY-DAY ENGLISH. 
 
 door of a great gilded, painted, over-furnished room 
 in a new house which she was showing off to a visitor, 
 said, with a flourish, '•' And this is the saloon-parlor." 
 But within a few days I received a house-furnisher's 
 advertisement, in which the necessary articles for a 
 •' saloon-parlor " are enumerated. I suppose that what 
 is meant is what in the best English of the dav is 
 called a drawing-room. This new name is worth a 
 passing notice because of its illustration of the pre- 
 tentious vulgarity into which the aspiration for ele- 
 gance is apt to lead too many aspirants. " Parlor," 
 meaning a room for conversation, is a good word , 
 " drawing-room,"' a room into which people withdraw 
 themselves from dinner, is not quite so good, but still 
 IS good enough ; but " saloon " is a pretentious word, 
 which, although it was in common use in England 
 not long ago, has not much English flavor, and the 
 combination of it with " parlor " makes as bad and 
 offensive a phrase as could well be concocted. ^ 
 
 What I have said on this subject merely gives 
 warning, by illustration, against a tendency which is 
 likely to manifest itself in those who deliberately un- 
 dertake to make their English elegant, an effort al- 
 most sure to end in disaster. Better make slips in 
 grammar or in spelling now and then than affect ele- 
 gance of language, — far better than misuse it in the 
 way in which, for example, " predicate " and " trans- 
 pire " are misused so often. As I have before said, 
 they who speak the best English are they who take 
 no thought as to their speech, either as to the words 
 
 1 Since writing this passage I have learned that the phrase " saloon- 
 parlor " had its origin in the building trade, and that they who use it 
 apply it to a drawing-room that is made by throwing what used to b« 
 front and back parlor, or drawing-room and dining-room, into one large 
 Hiloon-like apartment.
 
 ELEGANT ENGLISH. 603 
 
 they use, or as to their way of using them. The mas- 
 tery of their mother tongue has come to them from 
 association, from social and intellectual training, and 
 from an acquaintance with the writings of the best 
 authors. For this way of learning to speak and write 
 English well there is no substitute ; although intelli- 
 gent endeavor may do somewhat in later years to sup- 
 ply the lack of these advantages in early life. Even 
 then, however, the same end must be obtained by 
 substantially the same means. You may learn a sci- 
 ence by dint of persevering application ; you cannot 
 BO learn to speak and write your mother tongue. If 
 you hear poor English and read poor English, you 
 will pretty surely speak poor English and write pool 
 English.
 
 rNDEX. 
 
 A, 6. 
 
 a, pronunciation of, 10, 24, 167. 
 
 a, Irish pronunciation of, 82. 
 
 above, 449. 
 
 accident, 409. 
 
 Adams, Dr., 325. 
 
 Addison, 2M, 255, 340, 346, 347, 
 
 357, 399. 
 adverb, position of, 447. 
 setris, 22. 
 
 MUric, Bishop, 231. 
 afrreeable, 397. 
 alchemy, 68. 
 ales, wines, etc., 490. 
 Alexander, Mrs., 347. 
 Alfred, Kinf^, 231. 
 Ali,'er's " English Teacher," 497. 
 alms, 61, 81. 
 altar, 245. 
 analyse, 469. 
 " Ancren Kiwle," 353. 
 angel, 9. 
 
 "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," 231. 
 anticipate, 413. 
 " Antony and Cleopatra," 20. 
 any, 13. 
 aoi, 42 
 aou, 9. 
 
 " Apology for Poetry," 281. 
 are, 12. 
 
 " Areopagitica," 437. 
 Aristophanes, 387. 
 arms, 61. 
 ascetic, 416. 
 as follow, 396. 
 assist, 496. 
 
 " As You Like It," 442. 
 at fault, 447. 
 at one, 499. 
 avocRtion, 403. 
 awful, 3. 
 
 b, 46, 47. 
 
 Bailey, 253. 
 
 Bain, Dr. Alexander, 267. 
 
 Baker, Eobert, 394. 
 
 balance, 486. 
 
 bankrupt, 247. 
 
 banquet, 247. 
 
 Bazaine, Marshal, 377 . 
 
 beard, 140. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 341,3541 
 
 Bede, 231. 
 
 been, 14, 225. 
 
 behest. 497. 
 
 Bell, Melville, 25, 39, 180, 196. 
 
 below, 449. 
 
 Benton, A. E., 451. 
 
 Berners, Lord, 242. 
 
 bit, 414. 
 
 Black, William, 477. 
 
 Bhikey, Robert, 357. 
 
 bosom, 30. 
 
 both, 396. 
 
 Boyd's " Leisure Hours," 432. 
 
 Brachet, 41. 
 
 brew, 35. 
 
 Bright, John, 211. 
 
 Buckle, Henry William, 399, 4(5 
 
 424. 
 Buckle's "History of Civiliza 
 
 tion," 479. 
 buggle, 402. 
 build, 73. 
 Bullokar, 164. 
 
 Bunyan, John, 211, 252, 276 
 Burbage, Richard, 84. 
 Burke, Edmund, 357. 
 Burthogge, 344, 356. 
 business, 70. 
 busy, 70. 
 
 " Busy Body," 240. 
 Butler. Charles. 19.
 
 506 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Butler, Samuel, 22, 232, 236. 
 
 Buttman, 326. 
 
 buy, 73. 
 
 Byron, Lord, 276. 
 
 Casdmon, 354. 
 caitiff, 383. 
 calculate, 409. 
 calf, 81. 
 calm, 81. 
 came, 396. 
 can, 403. 
 canalized, 459. 
 " Canterbury Tales," 64. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 28, 276. 
 " Case is Altered," 65. 
 " Causa Dei," 344. 
 Caxton, William, 223. 
 Centlivre, Mrs., 240. 
 chair, 5. 
 
 " Chanson de Roland," 42, 247. 
 Chapman, George, 32. 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 32, 33. 
 Chaucer, 19, 231,351, 355. 
 chay, 396. 
 cliGGr 5 
 
 Cheke, Sir John, 152, 157, 159. 
 chemist, 68. 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 169, 332. 
 Child, Professor, 293. 
 chouse, 382. 
 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 242. 
 Cicero, 158, 266. 
 claim, 49. 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, 371. 
 Clarendon's " History of the Re- 
 bellion," 479. 
 claw, 396. 
 clerk, 64, 69. 
 closed out, 488. 
 collect, 489. 
 college, 105. 
 colonel, 232. 
 
 colored intelligence, 378. 
 column, 35. 
 command, 60. 
 
 Commissioner of Customs, 453. 
 vommon-sense, 273. 
 conformable, 397. 
 contemptuously, 396. 
 contents ncted, 492. 
 Coote, 200. 
 corp, 396. 
 
 Corson, Professor, 154, 
 could, 30. 
 couple, 406. 
 couvrechief, 426. 
 covered into, 486. 
 Cowley, Abraham, 356. 
 Cowper, 435. 
 criterion, 449. 
 cruel (verb), 297. 
 cum grano salis, 447. 
 currying favor, 498. 
 " Cursor Mundi," 353, 
 
 c?, 46. 
 
 dancing attendance, 498. 
 
 danger, 9. 
 
 dare, 397. 
 
 Darwin, 49. 
 
 dative case, 287. 
 
 dative (Latin), 434. 
 
 daughter, 170. 
 
 dAut, 448. 
 
 Defoe, 404. 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 234, 248 
 
 Delhi, 63, 100. 
 
 demean, 396. 
 
 Derby, 63. 
 
 Deslnosses, 101. 
 
 devotee, 444. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 98, 264. 
 
 " Dictes and Sayings," etc., 404 
 
 different than, 398. 
 
 different to, 397. 
 
 differ from, 450. 
 
 differ with, 450. 
 
 Digby, Kenelm, 343. 
 
 dilemma, 447. 
 
 Dionysius Thrax, 324. 
 
 directly, 412. 
 
 disgust, 55. 
 
 dishonest, 55. 
 
 dit, 148. 
 
 does, 30. 
 
 dog, 26. 
 
 donate, 402. 
 
 door, 61. 
 
 Doran, Dr.. 21. 
 
 down, 449. 
 
 dramatis personce, 388. 
 
 drawing-room, 502. 
 
 duke, 33. 
 
 Du Mauricr, 309. 
 
 dut'^, 34.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 507 
 
 B final, 256, 257. 
 
 e, pronunciation of, 12. 
 
 e, superfluous terminal, 256. 
 
 ea, pronunciation of, 22. 
 
 earn for erne, 257. 
 
 earth, 66. 
 
 eau, 41. 
 
 " Educational Monthly," 429. 
 
 ei, pronunciation of, 22. 
 
 ei, Irish pronunciation of, 82. 
 
 either, 179,396. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 279. 
 
 Elizabethan Era, Memorandums 
 of English Pronunciation in, 
 20. 
 
 Ellis, Alexander, 37, 137, 138, 171, 
 196, 391. 
 
 Ellis, Clement, 19. 
 
 England, 230. 
 
 English Pronunciation, Memoran- 
 dums of, 38, 83, 244. 
 
 " English Schoolmaster," 200. 
 
 employee, 443. 
 
 endemic, 464. 
 
 en passant, 397. 
 
 epidemic, 464. 
 
 er (suffix), 469. 
 
 erewhile, 497. 
 
 err, 67. 
 
 esprit, 472. 
 
 Etherege, 19, 339. 
 
 eunditm est mihi, 434. 
 
 Euphuists, 497. 
 
 event, 461. 
 
 eventuality, 459. 
 
 €ventuel, 460. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 120. 
 
 every once in a while, 410. 
 
 evolute, 455. 
 
 ex, pronunciation of, 56. 
 
 execute, 424. 
 
 extra, 373. 
 
 extraordinary, 26. 
 
 falcon, 245. 
 Farquhar, 238. 
 fast, 375. 
 
 ' Fatal Dowry," 371. 
 " Father Hubburd's Tale," 227. 
 fault, 245. 
 feel bad, 480. 
 feel ladly, 480. 
 fell, 396. 
 
 female, 390. 
 
 tire, 408. 
 
 foot, 30. 
 
 ♦' Fopling Flutter, Sir," 19, 339, 
 
 Ford, John, 442. 
 
 Freeman, Edward, 461. 
 
 Frith, John, 402. 
 
 fruit, 35. 
 
 full, 27, 30. 
 
 Furness, Mrs., 349. 
 
 g, 51. 
 
 ■" Galatea, Cruise of," 406, 408. 
 
 Gardiner, Bishop, 152. 
 
 Gar rick, 67. 
 
 Gascoigne, 191. 
 
 Gataker, 126. 
 
 " Gentile Sinner," 19. 
 
 gentleman, 363. 
 
 " Gentleman of Venice," 442. 
 
 geologer, 469. 
 
 (jh, pronunciation of, 144. 
 
 Gibson, Thomas, 245. 
 
 " Gil Bias," 448. 
 
 Gilchrist, 342. 
 
 Gill, Alexander, 164. 
 
 girl, 53. 
 
 Gladstone, Dr., 209. 
 
 "Glosik,"215, 
 
 god, 26. 
 
 gold, 34. 
 
 good, 30. 
 
 Gorges, Sir Arthur, 18. 
 
 " Government of the Tongue, 
 
 440. 
 governments, 492. 
 governor, 254. 
 Gower, John, 242. 
 grammar schools, 276. 
 grant, 60. 
 grantee, 444. 
 grass, 60. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 338, 340,342,346 
 great, 109. 
 Grimm, Jacob, 355. 
 guard, 53. 
 guild, 70. 
 Guildhall, 70. 
 guilt, 70. 
 
 had, 434. 
 
 had n't oughter, 427. 
 
 had rather, 427.
 
 508 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Haldeman. Professor S. S., 197 
 
 Ihilc, Sir JMattliew, 252, 257. 
 
 half, 81. 
 
 half an eye, 499. 
 
 h.ilf and, 93. 
 
 half aud half, 9.3. 
 
 " Half Peimvworth of Wit," 227. 
 
 " Hamlet," 19, 84, 408. 
 
 hard, 61. 
 
 Hart, John, 160. 
 
 Hatton, Sir Christopher, 350. 
 
 have, 434. 
 
 " Havelok," 353. 
 
 Ha/Jitt, William, 452. 
 
 hearth, 66, 69. 
 
 Hebrew, 384. 
 
 hector, 353. 
 
 Helps, Arthur, 340, 342, 346,347. 
 
 Henry III., 231. 
 
 her, 396. 
 
 " Hero Carthew," 1 5. 
 
 herod, 383. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas, 20, 371. 
 
 " High Life below Stairs," 450. 
 
 him, 396. 
 
 " hire a hall," 484. 
 
 " History of Civilization," 424. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 34.i. 
 
 ho<j, 27. 
 
 Holland, Sir H., 375. 
 
 holpeu, 446. 
 
 home, 30. 
 
 " Honest Whore," 442. 
 
 " llonoria and Mammon," 442. 
 
 " Hudibras," 236. 
 
 Hume, David, 342. 
 
 hurly-burly, 498. 
 
 Huxley, 49. 
 
 i', pronunciation of, 14 19, 21 
 
 I 'd, 428. 
 
 identical, 498. 
 
 ie, terminal, 256, 257 
 
 I gone, 271. 
 
 I is, 270. 
 
 rid. 428. 
 
 impel, 500. 
 
 in, 412. 
 
 index, 21, 449. 
 
 individual, 389. 
 
 \ never did! 16. 
 
 m fault, 447. 
 
 aiyenuity, 396. 
 
 mterpretrd, 493. 
 
 into, 412. 
 
 invest, 490. 
 
 irks, 498. 
 
 iron, 82. 
 
 " I savs, says I," 3!)7. 
 
 isvi (suttix)', 469. 
 
 ist (suffix), 469. 
 
 ize (suffix), 469. 
 
 Jesuitical, 383. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 36, 1 69, 230, 235. 
 
 Jones, J. M. D., 239. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 65, 277, 341, 350. 
 
 jusjurandum, 454. 
 
 juxtapose, 457. 
 
 Kemble, John Philip, 443. 
 
 kennel, 462. 
 
 kerchief, 426. 
 
 ketch, 13. 
 
 kind, 53. 
 
 King, Humphrey, 227. 
 
 lady, 363, 370. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 346, 357 
 
 Latham, Dr., 255. 
 
 Latimer, Bishop, 245. 
 
 laughter, 170. 
 
 law, 25. 
 
 Layamon, 354. 
 
 "Layamon's Brut," 231. 
 
 leech, 471. 
 
 leechcraft, 471. 
 
 Leicester, Earl of 234 
 
 leisure, 13. 
 
 lie, 396. 
 
 lief, 499. 
 
 lieutenant, 242. 
 
 Lilly, William, 266. 
 
 line, 488. 
 
 Ik, final, pronunciation of, 81. 
 
 Llovd, 241. 
 
 Locke, John, 105. 
 
 lord, 61. 
 
 lorn, 61. 
 
 Lounsbury, Professor, 19, 206. 
 
 "Love in a Maze," 371. 
 
 " Lover's Melancholy," 442. 
 
 " Love's Labor's Lost," 6, 248 
 
 Lowe, Kohert, 115, 209 
 
 Lowth, Bishop. 348. 
 
 Lydgate, 24.').
 
 INDEX. 
 
 509 
 
 «, nrst consonant, 45. 
 Macaulaj, Thomas B., 120, 255, 
 
 276. 
 "Macbeth," 5. 
 Madvig, Professor, 267. 
 Maetzuer, Professor, 267. 
 make way, 410. 
 mal, 500. 
 mamma, 40. 
 man, 390. 
 
 Mandeville, Sir John, 352. 
 manoeuvre, 455. 
 many, 13. 
 
 March, Prof. F. A., 123. 
 " Mariage Force," 366. 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 210. 
 " Marmion," 438. 
 Marshall, George, 164. 
 " Martin Chuzzlewit," 98. 
 Massiiiger, Thomas, 237, 371 
 may, 403. 
 
 nib, pronunciation of, 71. 
 me, 396. 
 
 tiKa doniina, 147. 
 medicine, 470. 
 Melmoth, 398. 
 memoranda, 415. 
 memorandum, 21, 449. 
 merchant, 64. 
 "Mery Talys, A C," 18. 
 " Michaelmas Term," 247. 
 Middleton, Thomas, 227, 237, 247, 
 
 442. 
 Milton, John, 18, 236, 437. 
 " Mirror for Magistrates," 18. 
 miscreant, 383. 
 mob, 485. 
 Moliere, 365. 
 morale, 472. 
 Mordecai, 354. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 351. 
 Morris, Dr., 267, 312. 
 mortgagee, 444. 
 Midler, Prof. Max, 183. 
 mutual, 396. 
 
 naked, 13. 
 near, 415. 
 
 neck-handkerchief, 425. 
 neither, 396. 
 neoteri-sm, 304. 
 nephew, 74. 
 lew, .54. 
 
 Newman, Professor, 58, 249. 
 
 next, 415. 
 
 Nichols, 338. 
 
 nominee, 444. 
 
 none, 27, 29. 
 
 not, 26. 
 
 Nott, Dr., 210. 
 
 number, 493. 
 
 o, pronunciation of, 27. 
 
 of age, 411. 
 
 old, 411. 
 
 00, pronunciation of, 81. 
 
 organer, 469. 
 
 origin of language, 44. 
 
 Ormin, 152. 
 
 "Ormulum," 156,231,354, 
 
 our Mr., 493. 
 
 our special, 493. 
 
 p, 46. 
 
 palm, 81. 
 
 Palmer, Samuel, 344, 357. 
 
 paralyse, 469. 
 
 Parliament, 70. 
 
 parlor, 502. 
 
 Parr, Louisa, 15. 
 
 Parsons, Governor, 432. 
 
 part, 414. 
 
 particle, 413. 
 
 "Paston Letters," 18, 22a 
 
 patentee, 444. 
 
 payee, 444. 
 
 pear, 140. 
 
 Pecock, 351. 
 
 people, 22. 
 
 perilous, 64. 
 
 Perry's Dictionary, 57. 
 
 person, 64, 386. 
 
 personality, 476. 
 
 personalty, 476. 
 
 Pharaohs, 384. 
 
 " Pharsalia," 20. 
 
 Phelp, Rev. P. U., 17. 
 
 Philip II., 422. 
 
 Phillip.s, Wendell, 431, 442. 
 
 Phonetic al])habet, 188. 
 
 physician, 470. 
 
 physicist, 470. 
 
 physics, 470. 
 
 "Piers the Plowman," 352. 
 
 pique, 21. 
 
 Pitman (phonetic), 187, 208.
 
 510 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Pizarro," 113. 
 
 plague, 13. 
 
 plciUie find inclosed, 492. 
 
 ])Ocket-h;indkerchief, 425. 
 
 }>olitical, 472. 
 
 l)oliti(jue, 472. 
 
 \ionere, 457. 
 
 Tope, Alexander, 145, 254. 
 
 po|mlace, 371. 
 
 popular, 363. 
 
 pore, 61. 
 
 pork, 61. 
 
 \toser, 457. 
 
 prssessive case, 288. 
 
 poultryist, 471. 
 
 predicate, 391. 
 
 pretty middlin', 17. 
 
 " Princess of Thule," 477. 
 
 " Promptorum Parvulorum," 343. 
 
 proper names, pronunciation of, 
 
 62. 
 propose, 396. 
 psidter, 245. 
 pure, 33. 
 Puttenhara, 394. 
 
 quote, 247. 
 quoth he, 497. 
 
 r, 47. 
 
 r, Irish pronunciation of, 82. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir W., 279, 341. 
 
 Ralph, 247. 
 
 rascality, 476. 
 
 rascalry, 476. 
 
 realiiy, 476. 
 
 realm, 245. 
 
 realty, 476. 
 
 receipt, 70. 
 
 recollect, 414. 
 
 referee, 444. 
 
 remember, 414. 
 
 rendered, 493. 
 
 respuhlica, 454. 
 
 restaurant, 361. 
 
 resurrect, 402. 
 
 resurrectionize, 402. 
 
 resusc itated dreadful, 496. 
 
 revelate, 402. 
 
 rlieum, 35. 
 
 right off the reel, 16. 
 
 Robert of Brunne, 353. 
 
 Robert of Gloucester, 231, 353. 
 
 Roby's Grammar, 267. 
 
 Rochester, 126. 
 
 " Roman de la Rose," 426. 
 
 romanesque, 378. 
 
 " Romaaut of the Rose/' 19. 
 
 Rome, 34. 
 
 rood, 30. 
 
 roof, 30. 
 
 root, 30. 
 
 Rowley Poems, 32. 
 
 " Royal King," etc., 20, 371. 
 
 rules high, 487. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 416. 
 
 Ruthwell Runes, 354, 355. 
 
 safe, 397. 
 sagesse, 472. 
 saloon-parlor, 500. 
 ' Saturday Review," 452. 
 savage, 245. 
 saw, 225. 
 
 Sayce, Rev. A. H., 210. 
 scandalous, 3. 
 schedule, 69. 
 schism, 69. 
 scissors, 69. 
 
 Scott, Sir "Walter, 276, 438. 
 seat, 169. 
 
 second person singular, 445. 
 self -same, 497. 
 sergeant, 64. 
 servant, 64, 69. 
 set, 396. 
 sewer, 126. 
 
 Shakespeare, 5, 84, 344, 442, .143. 
 shares, 3. 
 
 Shaw, Samuel, 356. 
 Shawaugunk, 100. 
 she (noun), 97. 
 shear, 4. 
 sheers, 3. 
 shell, 148. 
 Shenstone, 340, 342, 343, 346, 
 
 357. 
 Sheridan, 228, 387. 
 '' She Would if she Could," 339. 
 shift, 498. 
 shire, 4. 
 shire town, 23. 
 Shirley, James, 126, 371, 408, 
 
 442. 
 " Shoe-maker's Holiday," 234. 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 243, 279, 343
 
 INDEX. 
 
 511 
 
 Silent letters in seventeenth cent- 
 ury, 248. 
 Bin, 27. 
 
 " Sir Harry Wildair," 238. 
 Skeat, Kev. Walter, 234. 
 Slingsbv, Sir Henry, 244. 
 Smart, B. H., 17,197. 
 Smith, Sydney, 357. 
 Smith, Sir Thomas, 160. 
 snake, 13. 
 pole, 81. 
 soil, 343. 
 
 somebody's else, 454. 
 Sophocles, 387. 
 soul, 81. 
 
 Southey, Kobert, 276, 402. 
 speak, 407. 
 spe'a<tUt€, 475. 
 speciality, 475. 
 specialty, 475. 
 Spenser, Edmund, 235. 
 spirituality, 476. 
 spiritualty, 476. 
 stands upon, 499. 
 Steele, 254, 346, 356. 
 Sterne, Laurence, 446. 
 stew, 34. 
 St. John, 346. 
 stone, 29. 
 
 Stormonth's Dictionary, passim. 
 Strype, 157. 
 suicide, 411. 
 suitable, 397. 
 Sweet, Henry, 197. 
 Swift, Dean, 342, 345, 347, 356. 
 Sylvester, 400. 
 
 t, 46. 
 
 t for ed, 256. 
 
 "Table Traits," 21. 
 
 Tacitus, 347. 
 
 take it, 499. 
 
 talk, 407. 
 
 tandem, 485. 
 
 task, 60. 
 
 technique, 493. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 110. 
 
 Terence, 387. 
 
 Torre Haute, 100. 
 
 tit. 54. 
 
 Tliackeray, William M., 271, 376, 
 
 407. 
 the, 41 1 
 
 their, 416. 
 
 thou lovest, 446. 
 
 thous, 445. 
 
 Tivoli, 63. 
 
 to have, 397. 
 
 topsy-turvy, 498. 
 
 trait, 21. 
 
 transpire, 391. 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 431, 442. 
 
 Trevisa, 232. 
 
 " Troilus and Cressida," 442, 476 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, 407, 412. 
 
 Trumbull, 178. 
 
 tmstee, 444. 
 
 truths, 54. 
 
 tuppence, 63. 
 
 " Twelfth Night," 442. 
 
 Tyndale, .344, 351, 352. 
 
 Tyndall, 49. 
 
 u, pronunciation of, 29, 33. 
 «, Yankee, 36. 
 unaccented vowels, 78. 
 unique, 375. 
 unto, 33. 
 
 Unwin, Mrs., 348. 
 up, 449. 
 
 Van Schaik, 101. 
 
 vase, 26. 
 
 vault, 345. 
 
 " View of the Present State ol 
 
 Ireland," 235. 
 virtue, 66. 
 
 " Visible Speech," 25. 
 vocation, 404. 
 volvere, 456. 
 
 "walk and conversation," 485. 
 Walker, John, 6, 10, 56, 57, 68 
 
 166. 
 Waller's " Vindication," 479. 
 Wallis, John, 16, 23. 
 Walter, 247. 
 
 Walton, Isaak, 252, 256. 
 Warburton, Bishop, 342. 
 Warter, J. Wood, 345. 
 Warwick, 63, 100. 
 Webster's Dictionary, passim. 
 were, 144. 
 
 "Westward Ho," 140. 
 Weymouth, Richard Francis, 200 
 wh, promiuciatii)n of, 61.
 
 512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 whereons (noun), 297. 
 
 wliit, 499. 
 
 Wliite, Gilhert, 342, 345. 
 
 Whitney, Professor, 7, 266, 311, 
 
 and passim. 
 whole, 28, 30. 
 wliolly, 62. 
 whom, 396. 
 
 " Whore of Babylon, The," 246. 
 Wickliffe, 62. 
 " W'tlow's Tears," 32. 
 WilKins, Dean, 25, 162. 
 wind (horn), 32. 
 Winnipiseooee, 100. 
 wist not, 497. 
 Wither, George, 349. 
 woman, 390. 
 
 womeji, 73. 
 
 " Wonders of England," 64. 
 
 Worcester, 100. 
 
 W'orcester's Dictionary, passim. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 276. 
 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 342. 
 
 wound, 31. 
 
 Wraxall, 342. 
 
 yacht, 69. 
 
 yes 'm, 147. 
 
 "Young Admiral," 479. 
 
 Young, Sir Charles, 169. 
 
 youths, 54. 
 
 you was, 444.
 
 
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