Chapter VII: Preface: To the First Edition (6)

It will fare not otherwise, as I am bold to predict, with the flexional genitive, formed in ‘s’ or ‘es’ (see p. 161). This too will finally disappear altogether from the language, or will survive only in poetry, and as much an archaic form there as the ‘pictaï’ of Virgil. A time will come when it will not any longer be free to say, as now, either, “_the king’s sons_”, or “_the sons of the king_”, but when the latter will be the only admissible form. Tokens of this are already evident. The region in which the alternative forms are equally good is narrowing. We should not now any more write, “When _man’s son_ shall come” (Wiclif), but “When _the Son of man_ shall come”, nor yet, “_The hypocrite’s hope_ shall perish” (Job viii. 13, Authorized Version), but, “_The hope of the hypocrite_ shall perish”; not with Barrow, “No man can be ignorant _of human life’s brevity and uncertainty_”, but “No man can be ignorant _of the brevity and uncertainty of human life_”. The consummation which I anticipate may be centuries off, but will assuredly arrive{194}.

{Sidenote: _Lost Diminutives_}

Then too diminutives are fast disappearing from the language. If we desire to express smallness, we prefer to do it by an auxiliary word; thus a little fist, and not a ‘fistock’ (Golding), a little lad, and not a ‘ladkin’, a little worm, rather than a ‘wormling’ (Sylvester). It is true that of diminutives very many still survive, in all our four terminations of such, as ‘hillock’, ‘streamlet’, ‘lambkin’, ‘gosling’; but those which have perished are many more. Where now is ‘kingling’ (Holland), ‘whimling’ (Beaumont and Fletcher), ‘godling’, ‘loveling’, ‘dwarfling’, ‘shepherdling’ (all in Sylvester), ‘chasteling’ (Bacon), ‘niceling’ (Stubbs), ‘fosterling’ (Ben Johnson), and ‘masterling’? Where now ‘porelet’ (=paupercula, Isai. x. 30, Vulg.), ‘bundelet’, (both in Wiclif); ‘cushionet’ (Henry More), ‘havenet’, or little ‘haven’, ‘pistolet’, ‘bulkin’ (Holland), and a hundred more? Even of those which remain many are putting off, or have long since put off, their diminutive sense; a ‘pocket’ being no longer a _small_ poke, nor a ‘latchet’ a _small_ lace, nor a ‘trumpet’ a small _trump_, as once they were.

{Sidenote: _Thou and Thee_}

Once more--in the entire dropping among the higher classes of ‘thou’, except in poetry or in addresses to the Deity, and as a necessary consequence, the dropping also of the second singular of the verb with its strongly marked flexion, as ‘lovest’, ‘lovedst’, we have another example of a force once existing in the language, which has been, or is being, allowed to expire. In the seventeenth century ‘thou’ in English, as at the present ‘du’ in German, ‘tu’ in French, was the sign of familiarity, whether that familiarity was of love, or of contempt and scorn{195}. It was not unfrequently the latter. Thus at Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial (1603), Coke, when argument and evidence failed him, insulted the defendant by applying to him the term ‘thou’:--“All that Lord Cobham did was at _thy_ instigation, _thou_ viper, for I _thou_ thee, _thou_ traitor”. And when Sir Toby Belch in _Twelfth Night_ is urging Sir Andrew Aguecheek to send a sufficiently provocative challenge to Viola, he suggests to him that he “taunt him with the licence of ink; if thou _thou’st_ him some thrice, it shall not be amiss”. To keep this in mind will throw much light on one peculiarity of the Quakers, and give a certain dignity to it, as once maintained, which at present it is very far from possessing. However needless and unwise their determination to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ the whole world was, yet this had a significance. It was not, as now to us it seems, and, through the silent changes which language has undergone, as now it indeed is, a gratuitous departure from the ordinary usage of society. Right or wrong, it meant something, and had an ethical motive: being indeed a testimony upon their parts, however misplaced, that they would not have high or great or rich men’s persons in admiration; nor give the observance to some which they withheld from others. It was a testimony too which cost them something; at present we can very little understand the amount of courage which this ‘thou-ing’ and ‘thee-ing’ of all men must have demanded on their parts, nor yet the amount of indignation and offence which it stirred up in them who were not aware of, or would not allow for, the scruples which obliged them to it{196}. It is, however, in its other aspect that we must chiefly regret the dying out of the use of ‘thou’--that is, as the pledge of peculiar intimacy and special affection, as between husband and wife, parents and children, and such other as might be knit together by bands of more than common affection.

{Sidenote: _Gender Words_}

I have preferred during this lecture to find my theme in changes which are now going forward in English, but I cannot finish it without drawing one illustration from its remoter periods, and bidding you to note a force not now waning and failing from it, but extinct long ago. I cannot well pass it by; being as it is by far the boldest step which in this direction of simplification the English language has at any time taken. I refer to the renouncing of the distribution of its nouns into masculine, feminine, and neuter, as in German, or even into masculine and feminine, as in French; and with this, and as a necessary consequence of this, the dropping of any flexional modification in the adjectives connected with them. Natural _sex_ of course remains, being inherent in all language; but grammatical _gender_, with the exception of ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’, and perhaps one or two other fragmentary instances, the language has altogether forgone. An example will make clear the distinction between these. Thus it is not the word ‘poetess’ which is _feminine_, but the person indicated who is _female_. So too ‘daughter’, ‘queen’, are in English not _feminine_ nouns, but nouns designating _female_ persons. Take on the contrary ‘filia’ or ‘regina’, ‘fille’ or ‘reine’; there you have _feminine_ nouns as well as _female_ persons. I need hardly say to you that we did not inherit this simplicity from others, but, like the Danes, in so far as they have done the like, have made it for ourselves. Whether we turn to the Latin, or, which is for us more important, to the old Gothic, we find gender; and in all daughter languages which have descended from the Latin, in most of those which have descended from the ancient Gothic stock, it is fully established to this day. The practical, business-like character of the English mind asserted itself in the rejection of a distinction, which in a vast proportion of words, that is, in all which are the signs of _inanimate_ objects, and as such incapable of sex, rested upon a fiction, and had no ground in the real nature of things. It is only by an act and effort of the imagination that sex, and thus gender, can be attributed to a table, a ship, or a tree; and there are aspects, this being one, in which the English is among the least imaginative of all languages even while it has been employed in some of the mightiest works of imagination which the world has ever seen{197}.

What, it may be asked, is the meaning and explanation of all this? It is that at certain earlier periods of a nation’s life its genius is synthetic, and at later becomes analytic. At earlier periods all is by synthesis; and men love to contemplate the thing, and the mode of the thing, together, as a single idea, bound up in one. But a time arrives when the intellectual obtains the upper hand of the imaginative, when the tendency of those that speak the language is to analyse, to distinguish between these two, and not only to distinguish but to divide, to have one word for the thing itself, and another for the quality of the thing; and this, as it would appear, is true not of some languages only, but of all.

{FOOTNOTES}

{128} [Apparently a slip for ‘ebb’]

{129} It is still used in prose as late as the age of Henry VIII; see
the _State Papers_, vol. viii. p. 247. It was the latest survivor
of a whole group or family of words which continued much longer in
Scotland than with us; of which some perhaps continue there still;
these are but a few of them; ‘wanthrift’ for extravagance;
‘wanluck’, misfortune; ‘wanlust’, languor; ‘wanwit’, folly;
‘wangrace’, wickedness; ‘wantrust’ (Chaucer), distrust, [Also
‘wan-ton’, devoid of breeding (_towen_). Compare German
_wahn-sinn_, insanity, and _wahn-witz_.]

{130} We must not suppose that this still survives in ‘_gir_falcon’;
which wholly belongs to the Latin element of the language; being
the later Latin ‘gyrofalco’, and that, “a _gyrando_, quia diu
_gyrando_ acriter prædam insequitur”.

{131} [‘Heft’, from ‘heave’ (_Winter’s Tale_, ii. 1, 45), is widely
diffused in the Three Kingdoms and in America. See E.D.D. _s.v._]

{132} “Some _hot-spurs_ there were that gave counsel to go against them
with all their forces, and to fright and terrify them, if they
made slow haste”. (Holland’s _Livy_, p. 922.)

{133} _State Papers_, vol. vi. p. 534.

{134} [‘Malinger’, French _malingre_ (mistakenly derived above), stands
for old French _mal-heingre_ (maliciously or falsely ill, feigning
sickness), which is from Latin _male aeger_, with an intrusive
_n_--Scheler.]

{135} [To which the late Boer War contributed many more, such as
‘kopje’, ‘trek’, ‘slim’, ‘veldt’, etc.]

{136} The only two writers of whom I am aware as subsequently using this
word are, both writing in Ireland and of Irish matters, Spenser
and Swift. The passages are both quoted in Richardson’s
_Dictionary_. [‘Bawn’ stands for the Irish _ba-dhun_ (not
_bábhun_, as in N.E.D.), or _bo-dhun_, literally ‘cow-fortress’, a
cattle enclosure (Irish _bo_, a cow). See P. W. Joyce, _Irish
Names of Places_, 1st ser. p. 297.]

{137} There is an excellent account of this “refugee French” in Weiss’
_History of the Protestant Refugees of France_.

{138} [Thus the Shakespearian word _renege_ (Latin _renegare_), to deny
(_Lear_ ii, 2) still lives in the mouths of the Irish peasantry. I
have heard a farmer’s wife denounce those who “_renege_ [_renaig_]
their religion”.]

{139} With all its severity, there is some truth in Ben Johnson’s
observation: “Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no
language”. In this matter, however, Ben Jonson was at one with
him; for he does not hesitate to express his strong regret that
this form has not been retained. “The _persons_ plural” he says
(_English Grammar_, c. 17), “keep the termination of the first
_person_ singular. In former times, till about the reign of King
Henry VIII, they were wont to be formed by adding _en_; thus,
_loven_, _sayen_, _complainen_. But now (whatsoever is the cause)
it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so generally
prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again; albeit
(to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof, well
considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue. For
seeing _time_ and _person_ be as it were the right and left hand
of a verb, what can the maiming bring else, but a lameness to the
whole body”?

{140} [The two words are often popularly confounded. When a good woman
said “I’m _afeerd_”, Mr. Pickwick exclaimed “_Afraid_”! (_Pickwick
Papers_, ch. v.). Chaucer, instructively, uses both in the one
sentence, “This wyf was not _affered_ ne _affrayed_” (_Shipman’s
Tale_, l. 400).]

{141} Génin (_Récréations Philologiques_, vol. i. p. 71) says to the
same effect: “Il n’y a guères de faute de Français, je dis faute
générale, accréditée, qui n’ait sa raison d’être, et ne pût au
besoin produire ses lettres de noblesse; et souvent mieux en règle
que celles des locutions qui ont usurpé leur place au soleil”.

{142} A single proof may in each case suffice:

“Our wills and fates do so _contráry_ run”.--_Shakespeare._

“Ne let _mischiévous_ witches with their charms”.--_Spenser._

“O argument _blasphémous_, false and proud”.--_Milton._

[These archaisms are still current in Ireland.]

{143} I cannot doubt that this form which our country people in
Hampshire, as in many other parts, always employ, either retains
the original pronunciation, our received one being a modern
corruption; or else, as is more probable, that _we_ have made a
confusion between two originally different words, from which they
have kept clear. Thus in Howell’s _Vocabulary_, 1659, and in
Cotgrave’s _French and English Dictionary_ both words occur:
“nuncion or nuncheon, the afternoon’s repast”, (cf. _Hudibras_, i.
1, 346: “They took their breakfasts or their _nuncheons_”), and
“lunchion, a big piece” i.e. of bread; for both give the old
French ‘caribot’, which has this meaning, as the equivalent of
‘luncheon’. It is clear that in this sense of lump or ‘big piece’
Gay uses ‘luncheon’:

“When hungry thou stood’st staring like an oaf,
I sliced the _luncheon_ from the barley loaf”;

and Miss Baker in her _Northamptonshire Glossary_ explains ‘lunch’
as “a large lump of bread, or other edible; ‘He helped himself to
a good _lunch_ of cake’”. We may note further that this ‘nuntion’
may possibly put us on the right track for arriving at the
etymology of the word. Richardson has called attention to the fact
that it is spelt “noon-shun” in Browne’s _Pastorals_, which must
at least suggest as possible and plausible that the ‘nuntion’ was
originally applied to the labourer’s slight meal, to which he
withdrew for the _shunning_ of the heat of the middle _noon_:
especially when in Lancashire we find a word of similar formation,
‘noon-scape’, and in Norfolk ‘noon-miss’, for the time when
labourers rest after dinner. [It really stands for the older
English _none-schenche_, i.e. ‘noon-skink’ or noon-drink (see
Skeat, _Etym. Dict._, _s.v._), correlative to ‘noon-meat’ or
‘nam-met’.] It is at any rate certain that the dignity to which
‘lunch’ or ‘luncheon’ has now arrived, as when we read in the
newspapers of a “magnificent _luncheon_”, is altogether modern;
the word belonged a century ago to rustic life, and in literature
had not travelled beyond the “hobnailed pastorals” which professed
to describe that life.

{144} See it so written, Holland’s _Pliny_, vol. ii. p. 428, and often.

{145} As a proof of the excellent service which an accurate acquaintance
with provincial usages may render in the investigation of the
innumerable perplexing phenomena of the English language, I would
refer to the admirable article _On English Pronouns Personal_ in
_Transactions of the Philological Society_, vol. i. p. 277.

{146} [We now have the good fortune to possess a complete collection of
this valuable class of words in the splendid “English Dialect
Dictionary”, edited by Professor Joseph Wright of Oxford, which is
an essential supplement to all existing dictionaries of our
language.]

{147} This last very curious usage, which served as a kind of
stepping-stone to ‘its’, and of which another example occurs in
the Geneva Version (Acts xii. 10), and three or four in
Shakespeare, has been abundantly illustrated by those who have
lately written on the early history of the word ‘its’; thus see
Craik, _On the English of Shakespeare_, p. 91; Marsh, _Manual of
the English Language_ (Eng. Edit.), p. 278; _Transactions of the
Philological Society_, vol. 1. p. 280; and my book _On the
Authorized Version of the New Testament_, p. 59.

{148} Thus Fuller (_Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, vol. ii. p. 190): “Sure
I am this city [the New Jerusalem] as presented by the prophet,
was fairer, finer, _slicker_, smoother, more exact, than any
fabric the earth afforded”.

{149} [In the United States ‘plunder’ is used for personal effects,
baggage and luggage (Webster). This is not noticed in the E.D.D.]

{150} [But we have acquired, in some quarters, the abomination ‘an
invite’.]

{151} How many words modern French has lost which are most vigorous and
admirable, the absence of which can only now be supplied by a
circumlocution or by some less excellent word--‘Oseur’,
‘affranchisseur’ (Amyot), ‘mépriseur’, ‘murmurateur’,
‘blandisseur’ (Bossuet), ‘abuseur’ (Rabelais), ‘désabusement’,
‘rancœur’, are all obsolete at the present. So ‘désaimer’, to
cease to love (‘disamare’ in Italian), ‘guirlander’, ‘stériliser’,
‘blandissant’, ‘ordonnément’ (Montaigne), with innumerable others.

{152} [It has now attained a fair currency.]

{153} [‘Gainly’ is still used by nineteenth century writers, 1855-86;
see N.E.D.]

{154} [‘Dehort’ has been used in modern times by Southey (_Letters_,
1825, iii, 462), and Cheyne (_Isaiah, introd._ 1882, xx.)--N.E.D.]

{155} [Tennyson has endeavoured to resuscitate the word--“_Rathe_ she
rose”--_Lancelot and Elaine_--but with no great success.]

{156} For other passages in which ‘rathest’ occurs, see the _State
Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 92, 170.

{157} [‘Buxom’ for old English _buc-sum_ or _buch-sum_, i.e. ‘bow-some’,
yielding, compliant, obedient. “Sara was _buxom_ to Abraham”, 1
Pet. iii, 6 (xiv. Cent. Version, ed. Pawes, p. 216).]

{158} [‘Lissome’ for _lithe-some_, like Wessex _blissom_ for
_blithe-some_. Tennyson has “as _lissome_ as a hazel wand”--_The
Brook_, l. 70.]

{159} Jamieson’s _Dictionary_ gives a large number of words with this
termination which I should suppose were always peculiar to
Scotland, as ‘bangsome’, i.e. quarrelsome, ‘freaksome’, ‘drysome’,
‘grousome’ (the German ‘grausam’) [Now in common use as
‘gruesome’.]

{160} [A list of some of these reduplicated words was given by Dr. Booth
in his “Analytical Dictionary of the English Language”, 1835; but
a full collection of nearly six hundred was published by Mr. H. B.
Wheatley in the _Transactions of the Philological Society_ for
1865.]

{161} Many languages have groups of words formed upon the same scheme,
although, singularly enough, they are altogether absent from the
Anglo-Saxon. (J. Grimm, _Deutsche Gramm._, vol. ii. p. 976). The
Spaniards have a great many very expressive words of this
formation. Thus with allusion to the great struggle in which
Christian Spain was engaged for so many centuries, a vaunting
braggart is a ‘matamoros’, a ‘slaymoor’; he is a ‘matasiete’, a
‘slayseven’; a ‘perdonavidas’, a ‘sparelives’. Others may be added
to these, as ‘azotacalles’, ‘picapleytos’, ‘saltaparedes’,
‘rompeesquinas’, ‘ganapan’, ‘cascatreguas’.

{162} [This stands for ‘peak-goose’ (_peek goos_ in Ascham,
_Scholemaster_, 1570, p. 54, ed. Arber), a _goose_ that _peaks_ or
pines, used for a sickly, delicate person, and a simpleton. In
Chapman, Cotgrave and others it appears as ‘pea-goose’.]

{163} The mistake is far earlier; long before Cowper wrote the sound
suggested first this sense, and then this spelling. Thus
Stanihurst, _Description of Ireland_, p. 28: “They are taken for
no better than _rakehels_, or _the devil’s black guard_”; and
often elsewhere.

{164} [i.e. in Joshua Sylvester’s translation of “Du Bartas, his Diuine
Weekes and Workes”, 1621.]

{165} As not, however, turning on a _very_ coarse matter, and
illustrating the subject with infinite wit and humour, I might
refer the Spanish scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote
and his squire on the dismissal of ‘regoldar’, from the language
of good society, and the substitution of ‘erutar’ in its room
(_Don Quixote_, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Pætus (_Fam._
ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on
forbidden words, and their philosophy.

{166} _Literature of Greece_, p. 5.

{167} [Notwithstanding the analogous instance of ‘abbess’ for ‘abbatess’
this account of ‘lass’ must be abandoned. It is the old English
_lasce_ (akin to Swedish _lösk_), meaning (1) one free or
disengaged, (2) an unmarried girl (N.E.D.)]

{168} In Cotgrave’s _Dictionary_ I find ‘praiseress’, ‘commendress’,
‘fluteress’, ‘possesseress’, ‘loveress’, but have never met them
in use.

{169} On this termination see J. Grimm, _Deutsche Gramm._, vol. ii. p.
134; vol. iii. p. 339.

{170} [_The Knightes Tale_, ed. Skeat, l. 2017.]

{171} [Yes; so in N.E.D.]

{172} I am indebted for these last four to a _Nominale_ in the _National
Antiquities_, vol. i. p. 216.

{173} The earliest example which Richardson gives of ‘seamstress’ is
from Gay, of ‘songstress’, from Thomson. I find however
‘sempstress’ in the translation of Olearius’ _Voyages and
Travels_, 1669, p. 43. It is quite certain that as late as Ben
Jonson, ‘seamster’ and ‘songster’ expressed the _female_ seamer
and singer; a single passage from his _Masque of Christmas_ is
evidence to this. One of the children of Christmas there is
“Wassel, like a neat _sempster_ and _songster_; _her_ page bearing
a brown bowl”. Compare a passage from _Holland’s Leaguer_, 1632:
“A _tyre-woman_ of phantastical ornaments, a _sempster_ for
ruffes, cuffes, smocks and waistcoats”.

{174} This was about the time of Henry VIII. In proof of the confusion
which reigned on the subject in Shakespeare’s time, see his use of
‘spinster’ as--‘spinner’, the _man_ spinning, _Henry VIII_, Act.
i. Sc. 2; and I have no doubt that it is the same in _Othello_,
Act i. Sc. 1. And a little later, in Howell’s _Vocabulary_, 1659,
‘spinner’ and ‘spinster’ are _both_ referred to the male sex, and
the barbarous ‘spinstress’ invented for the female.

{175} I have included ‘huckster’, as will be observed, in this list. I
certainly cannot produce any passage in which it is employed as
the _female_ pedlar. We have only, however, to keep in mind the
existence of the verb ‘to huck’, in the sense of to peddle (it is
used by Bishop Andrews), and at the same time not to let the
present spelling of ‘hawker’ mislead us, and we shall confidently
recognize ‘hucker’ (the German ‘höker’ or ‘höcker’), in hawker,
that is, the _man_ who ‘hucks’, ‘hawks’, or peddles, as in
‘huckster’ the _female_ who does the same. When therefore Howell
and others employ ‘hucksteress’, they fall into the same barbarous
excess of expression, whereof we are all guilty, when we use
‘seamstress’ and ‘songstress’.--The note stood thus in the third
edition. Since that was published, I have met in the _Nominale_
referred to p. 155, the following, “hæc auxiatrix, a _hukster_”.
[Huckster, xiii. cent. _huccster_, it may be noted is an older
word in the language than _hukker_ (hucker) and _to huck_, both
first appearing in the xiv. cent. N.E.D.]

{176} [Preserved in the surnames Baxter and Brewster. See C. W.
Bardsley, _English Surnames_, 2nd ed. 364, 379.]

{177} _Notes and Queries_, No. 157.

{178} [‘Welkin’ is possibly a plural, but in Anglo-Saxon _wolcen_ is a
cloud, and the plural _wolcnu_.]

{179} When Wallis wrote, it was only beginning to be forgotten that
‘chick’ was the singular, and ‘chicken’ the plural: “_Sunt qui
dicunt_ in singulari ‘chicken’, et in plurali ‘chickens’”; and
even now the words are in many country parts correctly employed.
In Sussex, a correspondent writes, they would as soon think of
saying ‘oxens’ as ‘chickens’. [‘Chicken’ is properly a singular,
old English _cicen_, the _-en_ being a diminutival, not a plural,
suffix (as in ‘kitten’, ‘maiden’). Thus ‘chicken’ was originally
‘a little chuck’ (or cock), out of which ‘chick’ was afterwards
developed.]

{180} See Chaucer’s _Romaunt of the Rose_, 1032, where Richesse, “an
high lady of great noblesse”, is one of the persons of the
allegory; and compare Rev. xviii. 17, Authorized Version. This has
so entirely escaped the knowledge of Ben Jonson, English scholar
as he was, that in his _Grammar_ he cites ‘riches’ as an example
of an English word wanting a singular.

{181} “Set shallow brooks to surging seas,
An orient pearl to a white _pease_”.

_Puttenham._

{182} [‘Eaves’ (old English _efes_) from which an imaginary singular
‘eave’ has sometimes been evolved, as when Tennyson speaks of a
‘cottage-eave’ (_In Memoriam_, civ.), and Cotgrave of ‘an
house-eave’.]

{183} It is curious that despite of this protest, one of his plays has
for its name, _Sejanus his Fall_.

{184} Even this does not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; on
the contrary he boldly asserts (_Spectator_, No. 135), “The same
single letter ‘s’ on many occasions does the office of a whole
word, and represents the ‘his’ _or ‘her’_ of our forefathers”.

{185} Nothing can be better than the way in which Wallis disposes of
this scheme, although less successful in showing what this ‘s’
does mean than in showing what it cannot mean (_Gramm. Ling.
Anglic._, c. 5); Qui autem arbitrantur illud s, loco _his_
adjunctum esse (priori scilicet parte per aphæresim abscissâ),
ideoque apostrophi notam semper vel pingendam esse, vel saltem
subintelligendam, omnino errant. Quamvis enim non negem quin
apostrophi nota commode nonnunquam affigi possit, ut ipsius
litteræ s usus distinctius, ubi opus est, percipiatur; ita tamen
semper fieri debere, aut etiam ideo fieri quia vocem _his_ innuat,
omnino nego. Adjungitur enim et fœminarum nominibus propriis, et
substantivis pluralibus, ubi vox _his_ sine solœcismo locum habere
non potest: atque etiam in possessivis _ours_, _yours_, _theirs_,
_hers_, ubi vocem _his_ innui nemo somniaret.

{186} See the proofs in Marsh’s _Manual of the English Language_,
English Edit., pp. 280, 293.

{187} I cannot think that it would exceed the authority of our
University Presses, if this were removed from the Prayer Books
which they put forth, as certainly it is supprest by many of the
clergy in the reading. Such a liberty they have already assumed
with the Bible. In all earlier editions of the Authorized Version
it stood at 1 Kin. xv. 24: “Nevertheless _Asa his_ heart was
perfect with the Lord”; it is “_Asa’s_ heart” now. In the same way
“_Mordecai his_ matters” (Esth. iii. 4) has been silently changed
into “_Mordecai’s_ matters”; and in some modern editions, but not
in all, “_Holofernes his_ head” (Judith xiii. 9) into
“_Holofernes’_ head”.

{188} In a good note on the matter, p. 6, in the _Comprehensive Grammar_
prefixed to his _Dictionary_, London, 1775.

{189} See Grimm. _Deut. Gramm._, vol. ii. pp. 609, 944.

{190} The existence of ‘stony’--‘lapidosus’, ‘steinig’, does not make
‘stonen’--‘lapideus’, ‘steinern’, superfluous, any more than
‘earthy’ makes ‘earthen’. That part of the field in which the good
seed withered so quickly (Matt. xiii. 5) was ‘stony’. The vessels
which held the water that Christ turned into wine (John iii. 6)
were ‘stonen’.

{191} J. Grimm (_Deutsche Gramm._ vol. i, p. 1040): Dass die starke form
die ältere, kräftigere, innere; die schwache die spätere,
gehemmtere und mehr äusserliche sey, leuchtet ein. Elsewhere,
speaking generally of inflections by internal vowel change, he
characterizes them as a ‘chief beauty’ (hauptschönheit) of the
Teutonic languages. Marsh (_Manual of the English Language_, p.
233, English ed.) protests, though, as it seems to me, on no
sufficient grounds, against these terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, as
themselves fanciful and inappropriate.

{192} The entire ignorance as to the past historic evolution of the
language, with which some have undertaken to write about it, is
curious. Thus the author of _Observations upon the English
Language_, without date, but published about 1730, treats all
these strong præterites as of recent introduction, counting ‘knew’
to have lately expelled ‘knowed’, ‘rose’ to have acted the same
part toward ‘rised’, and of course esteeming them as so many
barbarous violations of the laws of the language; and concluding
with the warning that “great care must be taken to prevent their
increase”!!--p. 24. Cobbett does not fall into this absurdity, yet
proposes in his _English Grammar_, that they should all be
abolished as inconvenient. [Now many others are rapidly becoming
obsolescent. How seldom do we hear ‘drank’, ‘shrank’, ‘sprang’,
‘stank’.]

{193} J. Grimm (_Deutsche Gramm._ vol. i. p. 839): “Die starke flexion
stufenweise versinkt und ausstirbt, die schwache aber um sich
greift”. Cf. i. 994, 1040; ii. 5; iv. 509.

{194} [See also J. C. Hare, _Two Essays in Eng. Philology_ i. 47-56.]

{195} Thus Wallis (_Gramm. Ling. Anglic._, 1654): Singulari numero
siquis alium compellet, vel dedignantis illud esse solet, vel
familiariter blandientis. [For a good discussion of the old use of
‘thou’, see the Hares, _Guesses at Truth_, 1847, pp. 169-90. Even
at the present day a Wessex matron has been known to resent the
too familiar address of an inferior with the words, “Who bist thou
_a-theein’_ of”? (_The Spectator_, 1904, Sept. 3, p. 319).]

{196} What the actual position of the compellation ‘thou’ was at that
time, we may perhaps best learn from this passage in Fuller’s
_Church History, Dedication of Book_ vii.: “In opposition
whereunto [i.e. to the Quaker usage] we maintain that _thou_ from
superiors to inferiors is proper, as a sign of command; from
equals to equals is passable, as a note of familiarity; but from
inferiors to superiors, if proceeding from ignorance, hath a smack
of clownishness; if from affectation, a tone of contempt”.

{197} See on this subject of the dropping of grammatical gender, Pott,
_Etymologische Forschungen_, part 2, pp. 404, _sqq._

IV

CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF ENGLISH WORDS

I propose, according to the plan sketched out in my first lecture, to take for my subject in the present those changes which in the course of time have found place, or now are finding place, in the meaning of many among our English words; so that, whether we are aware of it or not, we employ them at this day in senses very different from those in which our forefathers employed them of old. You observe that it is not _obsolete_ words, words quite fallen out of present use, which I propose to consider; but such, rather, as are still on the lips of men, but with meanings more or less removed from those which once they possessed. My subject is far more practical, has far more to do with your actual life, than if I had taken obsolete words, and considered them. These last have an interest indeed, but it is an interest of an antiquarian character. They constituted a part of the intellectual money with which our ancestors carried on the business of their life; but now they are rather medals for the cabinets and collections of the curious than current money for the needs and pleasures of all. Their wings are clipped, so that they are “_winged_ words” no more; the spark of thought or feeling, kindling from mind to mind, no longer runs along them, as along the electric wires of the soul.

{Sidenote: _Obsolete Words_}

And then, besides this, there is little or no danger that any should be misled by them. A reader lights for the first time on one of these obsolete English words, as ‘frampold’, or ‘garboil’, or ‘brangle’{198}; he is at once conscious of his ignorance; he has recourse to a glossary, of if he guesses from the context at the word’s signification, still his guess is as a guess to him, and no more. But words that have changed their meaning have often a deceivableness about them; a reader not once doubts but that he knows their intention, has no misgiving but that they possess for him the same force which they possessed for their writer, and conveyed to _his_ contemporaries, when indeed it is quite otherwise. The old life has gone out of them and a new life entered in.

Thus, for example, a reader of our day lights upon such a passage as the following (it is from the _Preface_ to Howell’s _Lexicon_, 1660): “Though the root of the English language be _Dutch_{199}, yet it may be said to have been inoculated afterwards on a French stock”. He may know that the Dutch is a sister language or dialect to our own; but this that it is the mother or root of it will certainly perplex him, and he will hardly know what to make of the assertion; perhaps he ascribes it to an error in his author, who is thereby unduly lowered in his esteem. But presently in the course of his reading he meets with the following statement, this time in Fuller’s _Holy War_, being a history of the Crusades: “The French, _Dutch_, Italian, and English were the four elemental nations, whereof this army [of the Crusaders] was compounded”. If the student has sufficient historical knowledge to know that in the time of the Crusades there were no Dutch in our use of the word, this statement would merely startle him; and probably before he had finished the chapter, having his attention once aroused, he would perceive that Fuller with the writers of his time used ‘Dutch’ for German; even as it was constantly so used up to the end of the seventeenth century; and as the Americans use it to this present day; what we call now a Dutchman being then a Hollander. But a young student might very possibly want that amount of previous knowledge, which should cause him to receive this announcement with misgiving and surprise; and thus he might carry away altogether a wrong impression, and rise from a perusal of the book, persuaded that the Dutch, as we call them, played an important part in the Crusades, while the Germans took little or no part in them at all.

{Sidenote: _Miscreant_}

And as it is here with an historic fact, so still more often will it happen with the subtler changes which words have undergone. Out of this it will continually happen that they convey now much more blame and condemnation, or convey now much less, than formerly they did; or of a different kind; and a reader not aware of the altered value which they now possess, may be in continual danger of misreading his author, of misunderstanding his intentions, while he has no doubt whatever that he perfectly apprehends and takes it in. Thus when Shakespeare in _1 Henry VI_ makes the gallant York address Joan of Arc as a ‘miscreant’, how coarse a piece of invective this sounds; how unlike what the chivalrous soldier would have uttered; or what one might have supposed Shakespeare, even with his unworthy estimate of the holy warrior Maid, would have put into his mouth. But a ‘miscreant’ in Shakespeare’s time had nothing of the meaning which now it has. It was simply, in agreement with its etymology, a misbeliever, one who did not believe rightly the Articles of the Catholic Faith. And I need not remind you that this was the constant charge which the English brought against Joan,--namely, that she was a dealer in hidden magical arts, a witch, and as such had fallen from the faith. On this plea they burnt her, and it is this which York means when he calls her a ‘miscreant’, and not what we should intend by the name.

In reading of poetry above all what beauties are often missed, what forces lost, through this assumption that the present of a word is always equivalent to its past. How often the poet is wronged in our estimation; that seeming to us now flat and pointless, which at once would lose this character, did we know how to read into some word the emphasis which it once had, but which now has departed from it. For example, Milton ascribes in _Comus_ the “_tinsel-slippered_ feet” to Thetis, the goddess of the sea. How comparatively poor an epithet this ‘tinsel-slippered’ sounds for those who know of ‘tinsel’ only in its modern acceptation of mean and tawdry finery, affecting a splendour which it does not really possess. But learn its earlier use by learning its derivation, bring it back to the French ‘étincelle’, and the Latin ‘scintillula’; see in it, as Milton and the writers of his time saw, ‘the sparkling’, and how exquisitely beautiful a title does this become applied to a goddess of the sea; how vividly does it call up before our mind’s eye the quick glitter and sparkle of the waves under the light of sun or moon{200}. It is Homer’s ‘silver-footed’ (ἀργυρόπεζα), not servilely transferred, but reproduced and made his own by the English poet, dealing as one great poet will do with another; who will not disdain to borrow, but to what he borrows will add often a further grace of his own.

{Sidenote: ‘_Influence_’}

Or, again, do we keep in mind, or are we even aware, that whenever the word ‘influence’ occurs in our English poetry, down to comparatively a modern date, there is always more or less remote allusions to invisible illapses of power, skyey, planetary effects, supposed to be exercised by the heavenly luminaries upon the lives of men{201}? How many a passage starts into new life and beauty and fulness of allusion, when this is present with us; even Milton’s

“store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain _influence_”,

as spectators of the tournament, gain something, when we regard them--and using this language, he intended we should--as the luminaries of this lower sphere, shedding by their propitious presence strength and valour into the hearts of their knights.

{Sidenote: ‘_Baffle_’}

The word even in its present acceptation may yield, as here, a convenient and even a correct sense; we may fall into no positive misapprehension about it; and still, through ignorance of its past history and of the force which it once possessed, we may miss a great part of its significance. We are not _beside_ the meaning of our author, but we are _short_ of it. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher’s _King and no King_, (Act iii. Sc. 2,) a cowardly braggart of a soldier describes the treatment he experienced, when like Parolles he was at length found out, and stripped of his lion’s skin:--“They hung me up by the heels and beat me with hazel sticks, ... that the whole kingdom took notice of me for a _baffled_, whipped fellow”. The word to which I wish here to call your attention is ‘baffled’. Were you reading this passage, there would probably be nothing here to cause you to pause; you would attach to ‘baffled’ a sense which sorts very well with the context--“hung up by the heels and beaten, all his schemes of being thought much of were _baffled_ and defeated”. But “baffled” implies far more than this; it contains allusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, according to which a perjured or recreant knight was either in person, or more commonly in effigy, hung up by the heels, his scutcheon blotted, his spear broken, and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject of all kinds of indignities; such a one being said to be ‘baffled’{202}. Twice in Spenser recreant knights are so dealt with. I can only quote a portion of the shorter passage, in which this infamous punishment is described:

“And after all, for greater infamy
He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And _baffled_ so, that all which passéd by
The picture of his punishment might see”{203}.

Probably when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote, men were not so remote from the days of chivalry, or at any rate from the literature of chivalry, but that this custom was still fresh in their minds. How much more to them than to us, so long as we are ignorant of the same, would those words I just quoted have conveyed?

{Sidenote: ‘_Religion_’}

There are several places in the Authorized Version of Scripture where those who are not aware of the changes which have taken place during the last two hundred and fifty years in our language, can hardly fail of being to a certain extent misled as to the intention of our Translators; or, if they are better acquainted with Greek than with early English, will be tempted to ascribe to them, though unjustly, an inexact rendering of the original. Thus the altered meaning of a word involves a serious misunderstanding in that well known statement of St. James, “Pure _religion_ and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. “There”, exclaims one who wishes to set up St. James against St. Paul, that so he may escape the necessity of obeying either, “listen to what St. James says; there is nothing mystical in what he requires; instead of harping on faith as a condition necessary to salvation, he makes all religion to consist in practical deeds of kindness from one to another”. But let us pause for a moment. Did ‘religion’, when our translation was made, mean godliness? did it mean the _sum total_ of our duties towards God? for, of course, no one would deny that deeds of charity are a necessary part of our Christian duty, an evidence of the faith which is in us. There is abundant evidence to show that ‘religion’ did not mean this; that, like the Greek θρησκεία, for which it here stands, like the Latin ‘religio’, it meant the outward forms and embodiments in which the inward principle of piety arrayed itself, the _external service_ of God; and St. James is urging upon those to whom he is writing something of this kind: “Instead of the ceremonial services of the Jews, which consisted in divers washings and in other elements of this world, let our service, our θρησκεία, take a nobler shape, let it consist in deeds of pity and of love”--and it was this which our Translators intended, when they used ‘religion’ here and ‘religious’ in the verse preceding. How little ‘religion’ once meant godliness, how predominantly it was used for the _outward_ service of God, is plain from many passages in our _Homilies_, and from other contemporary literature.

Again, there are words in our Liturgy which I have no doubt are commonly misunderstood. The mistake involves no serious error; yet still in our own language, and in words which we have constantly in our mouths, and at most solemn times, it is certainly better to be right than wrong. In the Litany we pray God that it would please Him, “to give and preserve to our use the _kindly_ fruits of the earth”. What meaning do we attach to this epithet, “the _kindly_ fruits of the earth”? Probably we understand by it those fruits in which the _kindness_ of God or of nature towards us finds its expression. This is no unworthy explanation, but still it is not the right one. The “_kindly_ fruits” are the “_natural_ fruits”, those which the earth according to its _kind_ should naturally bring forth, which it is appointed to produce. To show you how little ‘kindly’ meant once benignant, as it means now, I will instance an employment of it from Sir Thomas More’s _Life of Richard the Third_. He tells us that Richard calculated by murdering his two nephews in the Tower to make himself accounted “a _kindly_ king”--not certainly a ‘kindly’ one in our present usage of the word{204}; but, having put them out of the way, that he should then be lineal heir of the Crown, and should thus be reckoned as king _by kind_ or natural descent; and such was of old the constant use of the word.

{Sidenote: ‘_Worship_’}

A phrase in one of our occasional Services “with my body I thee _worship_”, has sometimes offended those who are unacquainted with the early use of English words, and thus with the intention of the actual framers of that Service. Clearly in our modern sense of ‘worship’, this language would be unjustifiable. But ‘worship’ or ‘worthship’ meant ‘honour’ in our early English, and ‘to worship’ to honour, this meaning of ‘worship’ still very harmlessly surviving in the title of “your worship”, addressed to the magistrate on the bench. So little was it restrained of old to the honour which man is bound to pay to God, that it was employed by Wiclif to express the honour which God will render to his faithful servants and friends. Thus our Lord’s declaration “If any man serve Me, him will my Father _honour_”, in Wiclif’s translation reads thus, “If any man serve Me, my Father shall _worship_ him”. I do not say that there is not sufficient reason to change the words, “with my body I thee _worship_”, if only there were any means of changing anything which is now antiquated and out of date in our services or arrangements. I think it would be very well if they were changed, liable as they are to misunderstanding and misconstruction now; but still they did not mean at the first, and therefore do not now really mean, any more than, “with my body I thee _honour_”, and so you may reply to any fault-finder here.

Take another example of a very easy misapprehension, although not now from Scripture or the Prayer Book, Fuller, our Church historian, having occasion to speak of some famous divine that was lately dead, exclaims, “Oh the _painfulness_ of his preaching!” If we did not know the former uses of ‘painfulness’, we might take this for an exclamation wrung out at the recollection of the tediousness which he inflicted on his hearers. Far from it; the words are a record not of the _pain_ which he caused to others, but of the _pains_ which he bestowed himself: and I am persuaded, if we had more ‘painful’ preachers in the old sense of the word, that is, who _took_ pains themselves, we should have fewer ‘painful’ ones in the modern sense, who _cause_ pain to their hearers. So too Bishop Grosthead is recorded as “the _painful_ writer of two hundred books”--not meaning hereby that these books were painful in the reading, but that he was laborious and painful in their composing.

Here is another easy misapprehension. Swift wrote a pamphlet, or, as he called it, a _Letter to the Lord Treasurer_, with this title, “A proposal for correcting, improving, and _ascertaining_ the English Tongue”. Who that brought a knowledge of present English, and no more, to this passage, would doubt that “_ascertaining_ the English Tongue” meant arriving at a certain knowledge of what it was? Swift, however, means something quite different from this. “_To ascertain_ the English tongue” is not with him to arrive at a subjective certainty in our own minds of what that tongue is, but to give an objective certainty to that tongue itself, so that henceforth it shall not alter nor change. For even Swift himself, with all his masculine sense, entertained a dream of this kind, as is more fully declared in the work itself{205}.

{Sidenote: ‘_Treacle_’}

In other places unacquaintance with the changes in a word’s usage will not so much mislead as leave you nearly or altogether at a loss in respect of the intention of an author whom you may be reading. It is evident that he has a meaning, but what it is you are unable to divine, even though all the words he employs are words in familiar employment to the present day. For example, the poet Waller is congratulating Charles the Second on his return from exile, and is describing the way in which all men, even those formerly most hostile to him, were now seeking his favour, and he writes:

“Offenders now, the chiefest, do begin
To strive for grace, and expiate their sin:
All winds blow fair that did the world embroil,
_Your vipers treacle yield_, and scorpions oil”.

Many a reader before now has felt, as I cannot doubt, a moment’s perplexity at the now courtly poet’s assertion that “_vipers treacle yield_”--who yet has been too indolent, or who has not had the opportunity, to search out what his meaning might be. There is in fact allusion here to a curious piece of legendary lore. ‘Treacle’, or ‘triacle’, as Chaucer wrote it, was originally a Greek word, and wrapped up in itself the once popular belief (an anticipation, by the way, of homœopathy), that a confection of the viper’s flesh was the most potent antidote against the viper’s bite{206}. Waller goes back to this the word’s old meaning, familiar enough in his time, for Milton speaks of “the sovran _treacle_ of sound doctrine”{207}, while “Venice treacle”, or “viper wine”, as it sometimes was called, was a common name for a supposed antidote against all poisons; and he would imply that regicides themselves began to be loyal, vipers not now yielding hurt any more, but rather healing for the old hurts which they themselves had inflicted. To trace the word down to its present use, it may be observed that, designating first this antidote, it then came to designate any antidote, then any medicinal confection or sweet syrup; and lastly that particular syrup, namely, the sweet syrup of molasses, to which alone it is now restricted.

{Sidenote: ‘_Blackguard_’}

I will draw on the writings of Fuller for one more example. In his _Holy War_, having enumerated the rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runaway slaves, thieves, adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause or another with heaviest censures of the Church, who swelled the ranks, and helped to make up the army, of the Crusaders, he exclaimed, “A lamentable case that the devil’s _black guard_ should be God’s soldiers”! What does he mean, we may ask, by “the devil’s _black guard_”? Nor is this a solitary mention of the “black guard”. On the contrary, the phrase is of very frequent recurrence in the early dramatists and others down to the time of Dryden, who gives as one of his stage directions in _Don Sebastian_, “Enter the captain of the rabble, with the _Black guard_”. What is this “black guard”? Has it any connexion with a word of our homeliest vernacular? We feel that probably it has so; yet at first sight the connexion is not very apparent, nor indeed the exact force of the phrase. Let me trace its history. In old times, the palaces of our kings and seats of our nobles were not so well and completely furnished as at the present day: and thus it was customary, when a royal progress was made, or when the great nobility exchanged one residence for another, that at such a removal all kitchen utensils, pots and pans, and even coals, should be also carried with them where they went. Those who accompanied and escorted these, the lowest, meanest, and dirtiest of the retainers, were called ‘the black guard’{208}; then any troop or company of ragamuffins; and lastly, when the origin of the word was lost sight of, and it was forgotten that it properly implied a company, a rabble rout, and not a single person, one would compliment another, not as belonging to, but as himself being, the ‘blackguard’.

The examples which I have adduced are, I am persuaded, sufficient to prove that it is not a useless and unprofitable study, nor yet one altogether without entertainment, to which I invite you; that on the contrary any one who desires to read with accuracy, and thus with advantage and pleasure, our earlier classics, who would avoid continual misapprehension in their perusal, and would not often fall short of, and often go astray from, their meaning, must needs bestow some attention on the altered significance of English words. And if this is so, we could not more usefully employ what remains of this present lecture than in seeking to indicate those changes which words most frequently undergo; and to trace as far as we can the causes, mental and moral, at work in the minds of men to bring these changes about, with the good and evil out of which they have sprung, and to which they bear witness.

For indeed these changes to which words in the progress of time are submitted are not changes at random, but for the most part are obedient to certain laws, are capable of being distributed into certain classes, being the outward transcripts and witnesses of mental and moral processes inwardly going forward in those who bring them about. Many, it is true, will escape any classification of ours, the changes which have taken place in their meaning being, or at least seeming to us, the result of mere caprice; and not explicable by any principle which we can appeal to as habitually at work in the mind. But, admitting all this, a majority will still remain which are reducible to some law or other, and with these we will occupy ourselves now.

{Sidenote: ‘_Duke_’, ‘_Corpse_’, ‘_Weed_’}