English Past and Present Part 14

"More white than are the whitest creams, Or moonlight _tinselling_ the streams".

{201} [Hence also the epidemic of malefic power supposed to be air-borne, 'influenza'.]

{202} See Holinshed's _Chronicles_, vol. iii, pp. 827, 1218; Ann. 1513, 1570.

{203} _Fairy Queen_, vi, 7, 27; cf. v. 3, 37.

{204} [The two words are intimately related, 'king', contracted for _kining_ (Anglo-Saxon _cyn-ing_), 'son of the kin' or 'tribe', one of the people, cognate with _cynde_, true-born, native, 'kind', and _cynd_, nature 'kind', whence 'kindly', natural.]

{205} See Sir W. Scott's edition of Swift's _Works_, vol. ix, p. 139.

{206} ????a??, from ??????, a designation given to the viper, see Acts xxviii, 4. 'Theriac' is only the more rigid form of the same word, the scholarly, as distinguished from the popular, adoption of it.

Augustine (_Con. duas Epp. Pelag._ iii, 7): Sicut fieri consuevit antidotum etiam de serpentibus contra venena serpentum.

{207} And Chaucer, more solemnly still:

"Christ, which that is to every harm _triacle_".

The _antidotal_ character of treacle comes out yet more in these lines of Lydgate:

"There is no _venom_ so parlious in sharpnes, As whan it hath of _treacle_ a likenes".

{208} "A slave that within these twenty years rode with the _black guard_ in the Duke's carriage, 'mongst spits and dripping pans".

(Webster's _White Devil_.) [First ed. 1612. "The Black Guard of the King's Kitchen" is mentioned in a State Paper of 1535 (N.E.D.).]

{209} Genin (_Lexique de la Langue de Moliere_, p. 367) says well: "En augmentant le nombre des mots, il a fallu restreindre leur signification, et faire aux nouveaux un apanage aux depens des anciens".

{210} [Accordingly there is nothing tautological in the "dead corpses"

of 2 Kings xix, 35, in the A.V.]

{211} ['Weed', vegetable growth, Anglo-Saxon _weod_, is here confounded with a perfectly distinct word 'weed', clothing, which is the Anglo-Saxon _waed_, a garment.]

{212} And no less so in French with 'dame', by which form not 'domina'

only, but 'dominus', was represented. Thus in early French poetry, "_Dame_ Dieu" for "_Dominus_ Deus" continually occurs. We have here the key to the French exclamation, or oath, as we now perceive it to be, 'Dame'! of which the dictionaries give no account. See Genin's _Variations du Langage Francais_, p. 347.

{213} ['Hoyden' seems to be derived from the old Dutch _heyden_, a heathen, then a clownish, boorish fellow.]

{214} [This "ancient Saxon phrase", as Longfellow calls it, has not been found in any old English writer, but has been adopted from the Modern German. Neither is it known in the dialects, E.D.D.]

{215} "A _furlong_, quasi _furrowlong_, being so much as a team in England plougheth going forward, before they return back again".

(Fuller, _Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, p. 42.) ['Furlong' in St.

Luke xxiv, 13, already occurs in the Anglo-Saxon version of that pa.s.sage as _furlanga_.]

{216} [Recent etymologists cannot see any connexion between 'peck' and 'poke'.]

{217} [e. g. "One said thus _preposterously_: 'when we had climbed the clifs and were a sh.o.r.e'" (Puttenham, _Arte of Eng. Poesie_, 1589, p. 181, ed. Arber). "It is a _preposterous_ order to teach first and to learn after" (_Preface to Bible_, 1611). "Place not the coming of the wise men, _preposterously_, before the appearance of the star" (Abp. Secker, _Sermons_, iii, 85, ed. 1825).]

{218} Thus Barrow: "Which [courage and constancy] he that wanteth is no other than _equivocally_ a gentleman, as an image or a carca.s.s is a man".

{219} Phillips, _New World of Words_, 1706. ['Garble' comes through old French _garbeler_, _grabeler_ (Italian _garbellare_) from Latin _cribellare_, to sift, and that from _cribellum_, a sieve, diminutive of _cribrum_.]

{220} "But his [Gideon's] army must be _garbled_, as too great for G.o.d to give victory thereby; all the fearful return home by proclamation" (Fuller, _Pisgah Sight of Palestine_, b. ii, c. 8).

{221} [Compare the transitions of meaning in French _manant_ = (1) a dweller (where he was born--from _manoir_ to dwell), the inhabitant of a homestead, (2) a countryman, (3) a clown or boor, a coa.r.s.e fellow.]

{222} [These words lie totally apart. 'Brat', an infant, seems a figurative use of 'brat', a rag or pinafore, just as 'bantling'

comes from 'band', a swathe.]

{223} "We cannot always be contemplative, or _pragmatical_ abroad: but have need of some delightful intermissions, wherein the enlarged soul may leave off awhile her severe schooling". (Milton, _Tetrachordon_.)

{224} [Anglo-Saxon _cnafa_, or _cnapa_, a boy.]

{225} [Mr. Fitzedward Hall in 1873 says 'antecedents' is "not yet a generation old" (_Mod. English_, 303). Landor in 1853 says "the French have lately taught (it to) us" (_Last Fruit of an Old Tree_, 176). De Quincey, in 1854 calls it "modern slang" (_Works_ xiv, 449); and the earliest quotation, 1841, given in the N.E.D., introduces it as "what the French call their antecedents".]

{226} See Whewell, _History of Moral Philosophy in England_, pp.

xxvii.-x.x.xii.

{227} For a fuller treatment of the subject of this lecture, see my _Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present_, 2nd ed. London, 1859.

V

CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS

When I announce to you that the subject of my lecture to-day will be English orthography, or the spelling of the words in our native language, with the alterations which this has undergone, you may perhaps think with yourselves that a weightier, or, if not a weightier, at all events a more interesting subject might have occupied this our concluding lecture. I cannot admit it to be wanting either in importance or in interest. Unimportant it certainly is not, but might well engage, as it often has engaged, the attention of those with far higher acquirements than any which I possess. Uninteresting it may be, by faults in the manner of treating it; but I am sure it ought as little to be this; and would never prove so in competent hands{228}. Let us then address ourselves to this matter, not without good hope that it may yield us both profit and pleasure.

I know not who it was that said, "The invention of printing was very well; but, as compared to the invention of writing, it was no such great matter after all". Whoever it was who made this observation, it is clear that for him use and familiarity had not obliterated the wonder which there is in that, whereat we probably have long ceased to wonder at all--the power, namely, of representing sounds by written signs, of reproducing for the eye that which existed at first only for the ear: nor was the estimate which he formed of the relative value of these two inventions other than a just one. Writing indeed stands more nearly on a level with speaking, and deserves rather to be compared with it, than with printing; which, with all its utility, is yet of altogether another and inferior type of greatness: or, if this is too much to claim for writing, it may at any rate be affirmed to stand midway between the other two, and to be as much superior to the one as it is inferior to the other.

The intention of the written word, that which presides at its first formation, the end whereunto it is a mean, is by aid of symbols agreed on beforehand, to represent to the eye with as much accuracy as possible the spoken word.

{Sidenote: _Imperfection of Writing_}

It never fulfils this intention completely, and by degrees more and more imperfectly. Short as man's spoken word often falls of his thought, his written word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causes contribute to this. In the first place, the marks of imperfection and infirmity cleave to writing, as to every other invention of man. All alphabets have been left incomplete. They have superfluous letters, letters, that is, which they do not want, because other letters already represent the sound which they represent; they have dubious letters, letters, that is, which say nothing certain about the sounds they stand for, because more than one sound is represented by them--our 'c' for instance, which sometimes has the sound of 's', as in '_c_ity', sometimes of 'k', as in '_c_at'; they are deficient in letters, that is, the language has elementary sounds which have no corresponding letters appropriated to them, and can only be represented by combinations of letters. All alphabets, I believe, have some of these faults, not a few of them have all, and more. This then is one reason of the imperfect reproduction of the spoken word by the written. But another is, that the human voice is so wonderfully fine and flexible an organ, is able to mark such subtle and delicate distinctions of sound, so infinitely to modify and vary these sounds, that were an alphabet complete as human art could make it, did it possess eight and forty instead of four and twenty letters, there would still remain a mult.i.tude of sounds which it could only approximately give back{229}.

{Sidenote: _Alphabets Inadequate_}

But there is a further cause for the divergence which comes gradually to find place between men's spoken and their written words. What men do often, they will seek to do with the least possible trouble. There is nothing which they do oftener than repeat words; they will seek here then to save themselves pains; they will contract two or more syllables into one; ('toto opere' will become 'topper'; 'vuestra merced', 'usted'; and 'topside the other way', 'topsy-turvey'{230}); they will slur over, and thus after a while cease to p.r.o.nounce, certain letters; for hard letters they will subst.i.tute soft; for those which require a certain effort to p.r.o.nounce, they will subst.i.tute those which require little or none. Under the operation of these causes a gulf between the written and spoken word will not merely exist; but it will have the tendency to grow ever wider and wider. This tendency indeed will be partially counterworked by approximations which from time to time will by silent consent be made of the written word to the spoken; here and there a letter dropped in speech will be dropped also in writing, as the 's' in so many French words, where its absence is marked by a circ.u.mflex; a new shape, contracted or briefer, which a word has taken on the lips of men, will find its representation in their writing; as 'chirurgeon' will not merely be p.r.o.nounced, but also spelt, 'surgeon', and 'synodsman'

'sidesman'. Still for all this, and despite of these partial readjustments of the relations between the two, the anomalies will be infinite; there will be a mult.i.tude of written letters which have ceased to be sounded letters; a mult.i.tude of words will exist in one shape upon our lips, and in quite another in our books.

It is inevitable that the question should arise--Shall these anomalies be meddled with? shall it be attempted to remove them, and bring writing and speech into harmony and consent--a harmony and consent which never indeed in actual fact at any period of the language existed, but which yet may be regarded as the object of written speech, as the idea which, however imperfectly realized, has, in the reduction of spoken sounds to written, floated before the minds of men? If the attempt is to be made, it is clear that it can only be made in one way. The alternative is not open, whether Mahomet shall go to the mountain, _or_ the mountain to Mahomet. The spoken word is the mountain; it will not stir; it will resist all interference. It feels its own superior rights, that it existed the first, that it is, so to say, the elder brother; and it will never be induced to change itself for the purpose of conforming and complying with the written word. Men will not be persuaded to p.r.o.nounce 'wou_l_d' and 'de_b_t', because they write 'would' and 'debt' severally with an 'l' and with a 'b': but what if they could be induced to write 'woud' and 'det', because they p.r.o.nounce so; and to deal in like manner with all other words, in which there exists at present a discrepancy between the word as it is spoken, and the word as it is written?

{Sidenote: _Phonetic Systems_}

Here we have the explanation of that which in the history of almost all literatures has repeated itself more than once, namely, the endeavour to introduce phonetic writing. It has certain plausibilities to rest on; it has its appeal to the unquestionable fact that the written word was intended to picture to the eye what the spoken word sounded in the ear.

At the same time I believe that it would be impossible to introduce it; and, even if it _were_ possible, that it would be most undesirable, and this for two reasons; the first being that the losses consequent upon its introduction, would far outweigh the gains, even supposing those gains as great as the advocates of the scheme promise; the second, that these promised gains would themselves be only very partially realized, or not at all.