English Past and Present Part 3

We have seen when the great influx of French words took place--that is, from the time of the Conquest, although scantily and feebly at the first, to that of Chaucer. But with him our literature and language had made a burst, which they were not able to maintain. He has by Warton been well compared to some warm bright day in the very early spring, which seems to say that the winter is over and gone; but its promise is deceitful; the full bursting and blossoming of the springtime are yet far off. That struggle with France which began so gloriously, but ended so disastrously, even with the loss of our whole ill-won dominion there, the savagery of our wars of the Roses, wars which were a legacy bequeathed to us by that unrighteous conquest, leave a huge gap in our literary history, nearly a century during which very little was done for the cultivation of our native tongue, during which it could have made few important accessions to its wealth.

{Sidenote: _Latin Importation_}

The period however is notable as being that during which for the first time we received a large accession of Latin words. There was indeed already a small settlement of these, for the most part ecclesiastical, which had long since found their home in the bosom of the Anglo-Saxon itself, and had been entirely incorporated into it. The fact that we had received our Christianity from Rome, and that Latin was the constant language of the Church, sufficiently explains the incoming of these.

Such were 'monk', 'bishop' (I put them in their present shapes, and do not concern myself whether they were originally Greek or no; they reached _us_ as Latin); 'provost', 'minster', 'cloister', 'candle', 'psalter', 'ma.s.s', and the names of certain foreign animals, as 'camel', or plants or other productions, as 'pepper', 'fig'; which are all, with slightly different orthography, Anglo-Saxon words. These, however, were entirely exceptional, and stood to the main body of the language not as the Romance element of it does now to the Gothic, one power over against another, but as the Spanish or Italian or Arabic words in it now stand to the whole present body of the language--and could not be affirmed to affect it more.

So soon however as French words were imported largely, as I have just observed, into the language, and were found to coalesce kindly with the native growths, this very speedily suggested, as indeed it alone rendered possible, the going straight to the Latin, and drawing directly from it; and thus in the hundred years which followed Chaucer a large amount of Latin found its way, if not into our speech, yet at all events into our books--words which were not brought _through_ the French, for they are not, and have not at any time been, French, but yet words which would never have been introduced into English, if their way had not been prepared, if the French already domesticated among us had not bridged over, as it were, the gulf, that would have otherwise been too wide between them and the Saxon vocables of our tongue.

In this period, a period of great depression of the national spirit, we may trace the attempt at a pedantic latinization of English quite as clearly at work as at later periods, subsequent to the revival of learning. It was now that a crop of such words as 'facundious', 'tenebrous', 'solacious', 'pulcritude', 'consuetude' (all these occur in Hawes), with many more, long since rejected by the language, sprung up; while other words, good in themselves, and which have been since allowed, were yet employed in numbers quite out of proportion with the Saxon vocables with which they were mingled, and which they altogether overtopped and shadowed. Chaucer's hearty English feeling, his thorough sympathy with the people, the fact that, scholar as he was, he was yet the poet not of books but of life, and drew his best inspiration from life, all this had kept him, in the main, clear of this fault. But in others it is very manifest. Thus I must esteem the diction of Lydgate, Hawes, and the other versifiers who filled up the period between Chaucer and Surrey, immensely inferior to Chaucer's; being all stuck over with long and often ill-selected Latin words. The worst offenders in this line, as Campbell himself admits, were the Scotch poets of the fifteenth century. "The prevailing fault", he says, "of English diction, in the fifteenth century, is redundant ornament, and an affectation of anglicising Latin words. In this pedantry and use of "aureate terms" the Scottish versifiers went even beyond their brethren of the south....

When they meant to be eloquent, they tore up words from the Latin, which never took root in the language, like children making a mock garden with flowers and branches stuck in the ground, which speedily wither"{43}.

To few indeed is the wisdom and discretion given, certainly it was given to none of those, to bear themselves in this hazardous enterprise according to the rules laid down by Dryden; who in the following admirable pa.s.sage declares the motives that induced him to seek for foreign words, and the considerations that guided him in their selection: "If sounding words are not of our growth and manufacture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country? I carry not out the treasure of the nation which is never to return, but what I bring from Italy I spend in England. Here it remains and here it circulates, for, if the coin be good, it will pa.s.s from one hand to another. I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language. We have enough in England to supply our necessity, but if we will have things of magnificence and splendour, we must get them by commerce. Poetry requires adornment, and that is not to be had from our old Teuton monosyllables; therefore if I find any elegant word in a cla.s.sic author, I propose it to be naturalized by using it myself; and if the public approves of it, the bill pa.s.ses. But every man cannot distinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry: every man therefore is not fit to innovate. Upon the whole matter a poet must first be certain that the word he would introduce is beautiful in the Latin; and is to consider in the next place whether it will agree with the English idiom: after this, he ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in both languages; and lastly, since no man is infallible, let him use this licence very sparingly; for if too many foreign words are poured in upon us, it looks as if they were designed not to a.s.sist the natives, but to conquer them"{44}.

{Sidenote: _Influence of the Reformation_}

But this tendency to latinize our speech was likely to receive, and actually did receive, a new impulse from the revival of learning, and the familiar re-acquaintance with the great masterpieces of ancient literature which went along with this revival. Happily another movement accompanied, or at least followed hard on this; a movement in England essentially national; and which stirred our people at far deeper depths of their moral and spiritual life than any mere revival of learning could have ever done; I refer, of course, to the Reformation. It was only among the Germanic nations of Europe, as has often been remarked, that the Reformation struck lasting roots; it found its strength therefore in the Teutonic element of the national character, which also it in its turn further strengthened, purified, and called out. And thus, though Latin came in upon us now faster than ever, and in a certain measure also Greek, yet this was not without its redress and counterpoise, in the cotemporaneous unfolding of the more fundamentally popular side of the language. Popular preaching and discussion, the necessity of dealing with truths the most transcendent in a way to be understood not by scholars only, but by 'idiots' as well, all this served to evoke the native resources of our tongue; and thus the relative proportion between the one part of the language and the other was not dangerously disturbed, the balance was not destroyed; as it might well have been, if only the Humanists{45} had been at work, and not the Reformers as well.

The revival of learning, which made itself first felt in Italy, extended to England, and was operative here, during the reigns of Henry the Eighth and his immediate successors. Having thus slightly antic.i.p.ated in time, it afterwards ran exactly parallel with, the period during which our Reformation was working itself out. The epoch was in all respects one of immense mental and moral activity, and such never leave the language of a nation where they found it. Much is changed in it; much probably added; for the old garment of speech, which once served all needs, has grown too narrow, and serves them now no more. "Change in language is not, as in many natural products, continuous; it is not equable, but eminently by fits and starts"; and when the foundations of the national mind are heaving under the power of some new truth, greater and more important changes will find place in fifty years than in two centuries of calmer or more stagnant existence. Thus the activities and energies which the Reformation awakened among us here--and I need not tell you that these reached far beyond the domain of our directly religious life--caused mighty alterations in the English tongue{46}.

{Sidenote: _Rise of New Words_}

For example, the Reformation had its scholarly, we might say, its scholastic, as well as its popular, aspect. Add this fact to the fact of the revived interest in cla.s.sical learning, and you will not wonder that a stream of Latin, now larger than ever, began to flow into our language. Thus Puttenham, writing in Queen Elizabeth's reign{47}, gives a long list of words which, as he declares, had been quite recently introduced into the language. Some of them are Greek, a few French and Italian, but very far the most are Latin. I will not give you his whole catalogue, but some specimens from it; it is difficult to understand concerning some of these, how the language should have managed to do without them so long; 'method', 'methodical', 'function', 'numerous', 'penetrate', 'penetrable', 'indignity', 'savage', 'scientific', 'delineation', 'dimension'--all which he notes to have recently come up; so too 'idiom', 'significative', 'compendious', 'prolix', 'figurative', 'impression', 'inveigle', 'metrical'. All these he adduces with praise; others upon which he bestows equal commendation, have not held their ground, as 'placation', 'numerosity', 'harmonical'. Of those neologies which he disallowed, he only antic.i.p.ated in some cases, as in 'facundity', 'implete', 'attemptat' ('attentat'), the decision of a later day; other words which he condemned no less, as 'audacious', 'compatible', 'egregious', have maintained their ground. These too have done the same; 'despicable', 'destruction', 'homicide', 'obsequious', 'ponderous', 'portentous', 'prodigious', all of them by another writer a little earlier condemned as "inkhorn terms, smelling too much of the Latin".

{Sidenote: _French Neologies_}

It is curious to observe the "words of art", as he calls them, which Philemon Holland, a voluminous translator at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, counts it needful to explain in a sort of glossary which he appends to his translation of Pliny's _Natural History_{48}. One can hardly at the present day understand how any person who would care to consult the book at all would find any difficulty with words like the following, 'acrimony', 'austere', 'bulb', 'consolidate', 'debility', 'dose', 'ingredient', 'opiate', 'propitious', 'symptom', all which, however, as novelties he carefully explains. Some of the words in his glossary, it is true, are harder and more technical than these; but a vast proportion of them present no greater difficulty than those which I have adduced{49}.

The period during which this naturalization of Latin words in the English Language was going actively forward, may be said to have continued till about the Restoration of Charles the Second. It first received a check from the coming up of French tastes, fas.h.i.+ons, and habits of thought consequent on that event. The writers already formed before that period, such as Cudworth and Barrow, still continued to write their stately sentences, Latin in structure, and Latin in diction, but not so those of a younger generation. We may say of this influx of Latin that it left the language vastly more copious, with greatly enlarged capabilities, but perhaps somewhat burdened, and not always able to move gracefully under the weight of its new acquisitions; for as Dryden has somewhere truly said, it is easy enough to acquire foreign words, but to know what to do with them after you have acquired, is the difficulty.

{Sidenote: _Pedantic Words_}

It might have received indeed most serious injury, if _all_ the words which the great writers of this second Latin period of our language employed, and so proposed as candidates for admission into it, had received the stamp of popular allowance. But happily it was not so; it was here, as it had been before with the French importations, and with the earlier Latin of Lydgate and Occleve. The re-active powers of the language, enabling it to throw off that which was foreign to it, did not fail to display themselves now, as they had done on former occasions.

The number of unsuccessful candidates for admission into, and permanent naturalization in, the language during this period, is enormous; and one may say that in almost all instances where the Alien Act has been enforced, the sentence of exclusion was a just one; it was such as the circ.u.mstances of the case abundantly bore out. Either the word was not idiomatic, or was not intelligible, or was not needed, or looked ill, or sounded ill, or some other valid reason existed against it. A lover of his native tongue will tremble to think what that tongue would have become, if all the vocables from the Latin and the Greek which were then introduced or endorsed by ill.u.s.trious names, had been admitted on the strength of their recommendation; if 'torve' and 'tetric' (Fuller), 'cecity' (Hooker), 'fastide' and 'trutinate' (_State Papers_), 'immanity' (Shakespeare), 'insulse' and 'insulsity' (Milton, prose), 'scelestick' (Feltham), 'splendidious' (Drayton), 'pervicacy' (Baxter), 'stramineous', 'ardelion' (Burton), 'lepid' and 'sufflaminate' (Barrow), 'facinorous' (Donne), 'immorigerous', 'clancular', 'ferity', 'ustulation', 'stultiloquy', 'lipothymy' (?e?p????a), 'hyperaspist'

(all in Jeremy Taylor), if 'mulierosity', 'subsannation', 'coaxation', 'ludibundness', 'delinition', 'septemfluous', 'medioxumous', 'mirificent', 'palmiferous' (all in Henry More), 'pauciloquy' and 'multiloquy' (Beaumont, _Psyche_); if 'dyscolous' (Foxe), 'ataraxy'

(Allestree), 'moliminously' (Cudworth), 'luciferously' (Sir Thomas Browne), 'immarcescible' (Bishop Hall), 'exility', 'spinosity', 'incolumity', 'solertiousness', 'lucripetous', 'inopious', 'eluctate', 'eximious' (all in Hacket), 'arride'{50} (ridiculed by Ben Johnson), with the hundreds of other words like these, and even more monstrous than are some of these, not to speak of such Italian as 'leggiadrous' (a favourite word in Beaumont's _Psyche_), 'amorevolous' (Hacket), had not been rejected and disallowed by the true instinct of the national mind.

{Sidenote: _Naturalization of Words_}

A great many too _were_ allowed and adopted, but not exactly in the shape in which they first were introduced among us; they were made to drop their foreign termination, or otherwise their foreign appearance, to conform themselves to English ways, and only so were finally incorporated into the great family of English words{51}. Thus of Greek words we have the following: 'pyramis' and 'pyramides', forms often employed by Shakespeare, became 'pyramid' and 'pyramids'; 'dosis' (Bacon) 'dose'; 'distichon' (Holland) 'distich'; 'hemistichion' (North) 'hemistich'; 'apogaeon' (Fairfax) and 'apogeum' (Browne) 'apogee'; 'sumphonia'

(Lodge) 'symphony'; 'prototypon' (Jackson) 'prototype'; 'synonymon'

(Jeremy Taylor) or 'synonymum' (Hacket), and 'synonyma' (Milton, prose), became severally 'synonym' and 'synonyms'; 'syntaxis' (Fuller) became 'syntax'; 'extasis' (Burton) 'ecstasy'; 'parallelogrammon' (Holland) 'parallelogram'; 'programma' (Warton) 'program'; 'epitheton' (Cowell) 'epithet'; 'epocha' (South) 'epoch'; 'biographia' (Dryden) 'biography'; 'apostata' (Ma.s.singer) 'apostate'; 'despota' (Fox) 'despot'; 'misanthropos' (Shakespeare) if 'misanthropi' (Bacon) 'misanthrope'; 'psalterion' (North) 'psaltery'; 'chasma' (Henry More) 'chasm'; 'idioma'

and 'prosodia' (both in Daniel, prose) 'idiom' and 'prosody'; 'energia', 'energy', and 'Sibylla', 'Sibyl' (both in Sidney); 'zoophyton' (Henry More) 'zoophyte'; 'enthousiasmos' (Sylvester) 'enthusiasm'; 'phantasma'

(Donne) 'phantasm'; 'magnes' (Gabriel Harvey) 'magnet'; 'cynosura'

(Donne) 'cynosure'; 'galaxias' (Fox) 'galaxy'; 'heros' (Henry More) 'hero'; 'epitaphy' (Hawes) 'epitaph'.

The same process has gone on in a mult.i.tude of Latin words, which testify by their terminations that they were, and were felt to be, Latin at their first employment; though now they are such no longer. Thus Bacon uses generally, I know not whether always, 'insecta' for 'insects'; and 'chylus' for 'chyle'; Bishop Andrews 'nardus' for 'nard'; Spenser 'zephyrus', and not 'zephyr'; so 'interst.i.tium' (Fuller) preceded 'interstice'; 'philtrum' (Culverwell) 'philtre'; 'expansum'

(Jeremy Taylor) 'expanse'; 'preludium' (Beaumont, _Psyche_), 'prelude'; 'precipitium' (Coryat) 'precipice'; 'aconitum' (Shakespeare) 'aconite'; 'balsamum' (Webster) 'balsam'; 'heliotropium' (Holland) 'heliotrope'; 'h.e.l.leborum' (North) 'h.e.l.lebore'; 'vehiculum' (Howe) 'vehicle'; 'trochaeus' and 'spondaeus' (Holland) 'trochee' and 'spondee'; and 'machina' (Henry More) 'machine'. We have 'intervalla', not 'intervals', in Chillingworth; 'postulata', not 'postulates', in Swift; 'archiva', not 'archives', in Baxter; 'demagogi', not 'demagogues', in Hacket; 'vestigium', not 'vestige', in Culverwell; 'pantomimus' in Lord Bacon for 'pantomime'; 'mystagogus' for 'mystagogue', in Jackson; 'atomi' in Lord Brooke for 'atoms'; 'aedilis' (North) went before 'aedile'; 'effigies' and 'statua' (both in Shakespeare) before 'effigy' and 'statue'; 'abyssus' (Jackson) before 'abyss'; 'vestibulum' (Howe) before 'vestibule'; 'symbolum' (Hammond) before 'symbol'; 'spectrum' (Burton) before 'spectre'; while only after a while 'quaere' gave place to 'query'; 'audite' (Hacket) to 'audit'; 'plaudite' (Henry More) to 'plaudit'; and the low Latin 'mummia' (Webster) became 'mummy'. The widely extended change of such words as 'innocency', 'indolency', 'temperancy', and the large family of words with the same termination, into 'innocence', 'indolence', 'temperance', and the like, can only be regarded as part of the same process of entire naturalization.

The plural very often tells the secret of a word, and of the light in which it is regarded by those who employ it, when the singular, being less capable of modification, would have failed to do so; thus when Holland writes 'phalanges', 'bisontes', 'ideae', it is clear that 'phalanx', 'bison', 'idea', were still Greek words for him; as 'dogma'

was for Hammond, when he made its plural not 'dogmas', but 'dogmata'{52}; and when Spenser uses 'heroes' as a trisyllable, it plainly is not yet thoroughly English for him{53}. 'Cento' is not English, but a Latin word used in English, so long as it makes its plural not 'centos', but 'centones', as in the old anonymous translation of Augustin's _City of G.o.d_{54}; and 'specimen', while it makes its plural 'specimina' (Howe).

Pope making, as he does, 'satellites' a quadrisyllable in the line

"Why Jove's _satellites_ are less than Jove",

must have felt that he was still dealing with it as Latin; just as 'terminus', a word which the necessities of railways have introduced among us, will not be truly naturalized till we use 'terminuses', and not 'termini' for its plural; nor 'phenomenon', till we have renounced 'phenomena'. Sometimes it has been found convenient to retain both plurals, that formed according to the laws of the cla.s.sical language, and that formed according to the laws of our own, only employing them in different senses; thus is it with 'indices' and 'indexes', 'genii' and 'geniuses'.

The same process has gone on with words from other languages, as from the Italian and the Spanish; thus 'bandetto' (Shakespeare), 'bandito'

(Jeremy Taylor), becomes 'bandit'; 'ruffiano' (Coryat) 'ruffian'; 'concerto', 'concert'; 'busto' (Lord Chesterfield) 'bust'; 'caricatura'

(Sir Thomas Browne) 'caricature'; 'princessa' (Hacket) 'princess'; 'scaramucha' (Dryden) 'scaramouch'; 'pedanteria' (Sidney) 'pedantry'; 'impresa' 'impress'; 'caprichio' (Shakespeare) becomes first 'caprich'

(Butler), then 'caprice'; 'duello' (Shakespeare) 'duel'; 'alligarta'

(Ben Jonson), 'alligator'; 'parroquito' (Webster) 'parroquet'; 'scalada'

(Heylin) or 'escalado' (Holland) 'escalade'; 'granada' (Hacket) 'grenade'; 'parada' (J. Taylor) 'parade'; 'emboscado' (Holland) 'stoccado', 'barricado', 'renegado', 'hurricano' (all in Shakespeare), 'brocado' (Hackluyt), 'palissado' (Howell), drop their foreign terminations, and severally become 'ambuscade', 'stockade', 'barricade', 'renegade', 'hurricane', 'brocade', 'palisade'; 'croisado' in like manner (Bacon) becomes first 'croisade' (Jortin), and then 'crusade'; 'quinaquina' or 'quinquina', 'quinine'. Other slight modifications of spelling, not in the termination, but in the body of a word, will indicate in like manner its more entire incorporation into the English language. Thus 'shash', a Turkish word, becomes 'sash'; 'colone'

(Burton) 'clown'{55}; 'restoration' was at first spelt 'rest_au_ration'; and so long as 'vicinage' was spelt 'voisinage'{56} (Sanderson), 'mirror' 'miroir' (Fuller), 'recoil' 'recule', or 'career' 'carriere'

(both by Holland), they could scarcely be considered those purely English words which now they are{57}.

Here and there even at this comparatively late period of the language awkward foreign words will be recast in a more thoroughly English mould; 'chirurgeon' will become 'surgeon'; 'hemorrhoid', 'emerod'; 'squinancy'

will become first 'squinzey' (Jeremy Taylor) and then 'quinsey'; 'porkpisce' (Spenser), that is sea-hog, or more accurately hogfish{58} will be 'porpesse', and then 'porpoise', as it is now. In other words the attempt will be made, but it will be now too late to be attended with success. 'Physiognomy' will not give place to 'visnomy', however Spenser and Shakespeare employ this briefer form; nor 'hippopotamus' to 'hippodame', even at Spenser's bidding. In like manner the attempt to naturalize 'avant-courier' in the shape of 'vancurrier' has failed.

Other words also we meet which have finally refused to take a more popular form, although such was once more or less current; or, if this is too much to say of all, yet hazarded by good authors. Thus Holland wrote 'cirque', but we 'circus'; 'cense', but we 'census'; 'interreign', but we 'interregnum'; Sylvester 'cest', but we 'cestus'; 'quirry', but we 'equerry'; 'colosse', but we still 'colossus'; Golding 'ure', but we 'urus'; 'metropole', but we 'metropolis'; Dampier 'volcan', but this has not superseded 'volcano'; nor 'paG.o.d' (Pope) 'paG.o.da'; nor 'skelet'

(Holland) 'skeleton'; nor 'stimule' (Stubbs) 'stimulus'. Bolingbroke wrote 'exode', but we hold fast to 'exodus'; Burton 'funge', but we 'fungus'; Henry More 'enigm', but we 'enigma'; 'a.n.a.lyse', but we 'a.n.a.lysis'. 'Superfice' (Dryden) has not put 'superficies', nor 'sacrary' (Hacket) 'sacrarium', nor 'limbeck' 'alembic', out of use.

Chaucer's 'potecary' has given way to a more Greek formation 'apothecary'. Yet these and the like must be regarded quite as exceptions; the tendency of things is altogether the other way.

Looking at this process of the reception of foreign words, with their after a.s.similation in feature to our own, we may trace, as was to be expected, a certain conformity between the genius of our inst.i.tutions and that of our language. It is the very character of our inst.i.tutions to repel none, but rather to afford a shelter and a refuge to all, from whatever quarter they come; and after a longer or shorter while all the strangers and incomers have been incorporated into the English nation, within one or two generations have forgotten that they were ever ought else than members of it, have retained no other reminiscence of their foreign extraction than some slight difference of name, and that often disappearing or having disappeared. Exactly so has it been with the English language. No language has shown itself less exclusive; none has stood less upon niceties; none has thrown open its arms wider, with a fuller confidence, a confidence justified by experience, that it could make truly its own, a.s.similate and subdue to itself, whatever it received into its bosom; and in none has this experiment in a larger number of instances been successfully carried out.

{Sidenote: _French at the Restoration_}

Such are the two great enlargements from without of our vocabulary. All other are minor and subordinate. Thus the introduction of French tastes by Charles the Second and his courtiers returning from exile, to which I have just adverted, though it rather modified the structure of our sentences than the materials of our vocabulary, gave us some new words.

In one of Dryden's plays, _Marriage a la Mode_, a lady full of affectation is introduced, who is always employing French idioms in preference to English, French words rather than native. It is not a little curious that of these, thus put into her mouth to render her ridiculous, not a few are excellent English now, and have nothing far-sought or affected about them: for so it frequently proves that what is laughed at in the beginning, is by all admitted and allowed at the last. For example, to speak of a person being in the 'good graces' of another has nothing in it ridiculous now; the words 'repartee', 'embarra.s.s', 'chagrin', 'grimace', do not sound novel and affected now as they all must plainly have done at the time when Dryden wrote.

'Fougue' and 'fraischeur', which he himself employed--being, it is true, no frequent offender in this way--have not been justified by the same success.

{Sidenote: _Greek Words Naturalized_}

Nor indeed can it be said that this adoption and naturalization of foreign words ever ceases in a language. There are periods, as we have seen, when this goes forward much more largely than at others; when a language throws open, as it were, its doors, and welcomes strangers with an especial freedom; but there is never a time, when one by one these foreigners and strangers are not slipping into it. We do not for the most part observe the fact, at least not while it is actually doing.

Time, the greatest of all innovators, manages his innovations so dexterously, spreads them over such vast periods, and therefore brings them about so gradually, that often, while effecting the mightiest changes, we have no suspicion that he is effecting any at all. Thus how imperceptible are the steps by which a foreign word is admitted into the full rights of an English one; the process of its incoming often eluding our notice altogether. There are numerous Greek words, for example which, quite unchanged in form, have in one way or another ended in finding a home and acceptance among us. We may in almost every instance trace step by step the naturalization of one of these; and the manner of this singularly confirms what has just been said. We can note it spelt for a while in Greek letters, and avowedly employed as a Greek and not an English vocable; then after it had thus obtained a certain allowance among us, and become not altogether unfamiliar, we note it exchanging its Greek for English letters, and finally obtaining recognition as a word which however drawn from a foreign source, is yet itself English. Thus 'acme', 'apotheosis', 'criterion', 'chrysalis', 'encyclopedia', 'metropolis', 'opthalmia', 'pathos', 'phenomena', are all now English words, while yet South with many others always wrote ???, Jeremy Taylor ?p????s?? and ???t?????, Henry More ???sa???, Ben Jonson speaks of 'the knowledge of the liberal arts, which the Greeks call ???????pade?a?'{59}, Culverwell wrote ?t??p???? and ?f?a??a, Preston, fa???e?a--Sylvester ascribes to Baxter, not 'pathos', but p????{60}. ???? is a word at the present moment preparing for a like pa.s.sage from Greek characters to English, and certainly before long will be acknowledged as an English word{61}. The only cause which has hindered this for some time past is the misgiving whether it will not be read 'ethos,' and not 'ethos,' and thus not be the word intended.

Let us trace a like process in some French word, which is at this moment becoming English. I know no better example than the French 'prestige'

will afford. 'Prestige' has manifestly no equivalent in our own language; it expresses something which no single word in English, which only a long circ.u.mlocution, could express; namely, that magic influence on others, which past successes as the pledge and promise of future ones, breed. The word has thus naturally come to be of very frequent use by good English writers; for they do not feel that in employing it they are pa.s.sing by as good or a better word of their own. At first all used it avowedly as French, writing it in italics to indicate this. At the present moment some write it so still, some do not; some, that is, regard it still as foreign, others consider that it has now become English, and obtained a settlement among us{62}. Little by little the number of those who write it in italics will become fewer and fewer, till they cease altogether. It will then only need that the accent should be s.h.i.+fted, in obedience to the tendencies of the English language, as far back in the word as it will go, that instead of 'prestige', it should be p.r.o.nounced 'prestige' even as within these few years instead of 'depot' we have learned to say 'depot', and its naturalization will be complete. I have little doubt that in twenty years it will be so p.r.o.nounced by the majority of well educated Englishmen{63},--some p.r.o.nounce it so already,--and that our present p.r.o.nunciation will pa.s.s away in the same manner as 'obl_ee_ge', once universal, has past away, and everywhere given place to 'obl_i_ge'{64}.

{Sidenote: _s.h.i.+fting of Accents_}

Let me here observe in pa.s.sing, that the process of throwing the accent of a word back, by way of completing its naturalization, is one which we may note constantly going forward in our language. Thus, while Chaucer accentuates sometimes 'nature', he also accentuates elsewhere 'nature', while sometimes 'virtue', at other times 'virtue'. 'Prostrate', 'adverse', 'aspect', 'process', 'insult', 'impulse', 'pretext', 'contrite', 'uproar', 'contest', had all their accent on the last syllable in Milton; they have it now on the first; 'character' was 'character' with Spenser; 'theatre' was 'theatre' with Sylvester; while 'academy' was accented 'academy' by Cowley and Butler{65}. 'Essay' was 'essay' with Dryden and with Pope; the first closes an heroic line with the word; Pope does the same with 'barrier'{66} and 'effort'; therefore p.r.o.nounced 'barrier', 'effort', by him.

There are not a few other French words which like 'prestige' are at this moment hovering on the verge of English, hardly knowing whether they shall become such, or no. Such are 'ennui', 'exploitation', 'verve', 'persiflage', 'badinage', 'chicane', 'finesse', and others; all of them often employed by us,--and it is out of such frequent employment that adoption proceeds,--because expressing shades of meaning not expressed by any words of our own{67}. Some of these, we may confidently antic.i.p.ate, will complete their naturalization; others will after a time retreat again, and become for us avowedly French. 'Solidarity', a word which we owe to the French Communists, and which signifies a fellows.h.i.+p in gain and loss, in honour and dishonour, in victory and defeat, a being, so to speak, all in the same bottom, is so convenient, that unattractive as confessedly it is, it will be in vain to struggle against its reception. The newspapers already have it, and books will not long exclude it; not to say that it has established itself in German, and probably in other European languages as well.

{Sidenote: _Greek in English_}

Greek and Latin words also we still continue to adopt, although now no longer in troops and companies, but only one by one. With the lively interest which always has been felt in cla.s.sical studies among us, and which will continue to be felt, so long as any greatness and n.o.bleness survive in our land, it must needs be that accessions from these quarters would never cease altogether. I do not refer here to purely scientific terms; these, so long as they continue such, and do not pa.s.s beyond the threshold of the science or sciences for the use of which they were invented, being never heard on the lips, or employed in the writings, of any but the cultivators of these sciences, have no right to be properly called words at all. They are a kind of shorthand of the science, or algebraic notation; and will not find place in a dictionary of the language, constructed upon true principles, but rather in a technical dictionary apart by themselves. Of these, compelled by the advances of physical science, we have coined mult.i.tudes out of number in these later times, fas.h.i.+oning them mainly from the Greek, no other language within our reach yielding itself at all so easily to our needs.