English Past and Present Part 8

{Sidenote: _Vigorous Compound Words_}

A number of vigorous compounds we have dropped and let go. 'Earsports'

for entertainments of song or music (?????ata) is a constantly recurring word in Holland's _Plutarch_. Were it not for Shakespeare, we should have quite forgotten that young men of hasty fiery valour were called 'hotspurs'; and even now we regard the word rather as the proper name of one than that which would have been once alike the designation of all{132}. Fuller warns men that they should not 'witwanton' with G.o.d.

Severe austere old men, such as, in Falstaff's words would "hate us youth", were 'grimsirs', or 'grimsires' once (Ma.s.singer). 'Realmrape'

(=usurpation), occurring in _The Mirror for Magistrates_, is a vigorous word. 'Rootfast' and 'rootfastness'{133} were ill lost, being worthy to have lived; so too was Lord Brooke's 'bookhunger'; and Baxter's 'word-warriors', with which term he noted those whose strife was only about words. 'Malingerer' is familiar enough to military men, but I do not find it in our dictionaries; being the soldier who, out of _evil will_ (malin gre) to his work, shams and s.h.i.+rks and is not found in the ranks{134}.

Those who would gladly have seen the Anglo-Saxon to have predominated over the Latin element in our language, even more than it actually has done, must note with regret that in many instances a word of the former stock had been dropped, and a Latin coined to supply its place; or where the two once existed side by side, the Saxon has died, and the Latin lived on. Thus Wiclif employed 'soothsaw', where we now use proverb; 'sourdough', where we employ leaven; 'wellwillingness' for benevolence; 'againbuying' for redemption; 'againrising' for resurrection; 'undeadliness' for immortality; 'uncunningness' for ignorance; 'aftercomer' for descendant; 'greatdoingly' for magnificently; 'to afterthink' (still in use in Lancas.h.i.+re) for to repent; 'medeful', which has given way to meritorious; 'untellable' for ineffable; 'dearworth'

for precious; Chaucer has 'forword' for promise; Sir John Cheke 'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft'

instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner'

(Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of astrologer, yet side by side with it; 'halfG.o.d' (Golding) had the advantage over 'demiG.o.d', that it was all of one piece; 'to eyebite' (Holland) told its story at least as well as to fascinate; 'shriftfather' as confessor; 'earshrift'

(Cartwright) is only two syllables, while 'auricular confession' is eight; 'waterfright' is a better word than our awkward Greek hydrophobia. The lamprey (lambens petram) was called once the 'suckstone' or the 'lickstone'; and the anemone the 'windflower'.

'Umstroke', if it had lived on (it appears as late as Fuller, though our dictionaries know nothing of it), might have made 'circ.u.mference'

and 'periphery' unnecessary. 'Wanhope', as we saw just now, has given place to despair, 'middler' to mediator; and it would be easy to increase this list.

{Sidenote: _Local and Provincial English_}

I had occasion just now to notice the fact that many words survive in our provincial dialects, long after they have died out from the main body of the speech. The fact is one connected with so much of deep interest in the history of language that I cannot pa.s.s it thus slightly over. It is one which, rightly regarded, may a.s.sist to put us in a just point of view for estimating the character of the local and provincial in speech, and rescuing it from that unmerited contempt and neglect with which it is often regarded. I must here go somewhat further back than I could wish; but only so, only by looking at the matter in connexion with other phenomena of speech, can I hope to explain to you the worth and significance which local and provincial words and usages must oftentimes possess.

Let us then first suppose a portion of those speaking a language to have been separated off from the main body of its speakers, either through their forsaking for one cause or other of their native seats, or by the intrusion of a hostile people, like a wedge, between them and the others, forcibly keeping them asunder, and cutting off their communications one with the other, as the Saxons intruded between the Britons of Cornwall and of Wales. In such a case it will inevitably happen that before very long differences of speech will begin to reveal themselves between those to whom even dialectic distinctions may have been once unknown. The divergences will be of various kinds. Idioms will come up in the separated body, which, not being recognized and allowed by those who remain the arbiters of the language, will be esteemed by them, should they come under their notice, violations of its law, or at any rate departures from its purity. Again, where a colony has gone forth into new seats, and exists under new conditions, it is probable that the necessities, physical and moral, rising out of these new conditions, will give birth to words, which there will be nothing to call out among those who continue in the old haunts of the nation.

Intercourse with new tribes and people will bring in new words, as, for instance, contact with the Indian tribes of North America has given to American English a certain number of words hardly or not at all allowed or known by us; or as the presence of a large Dutch population at the Cape has given to the English spoken there many words, as 'inspan', 'outspan'{135}, 'spoor', of which our home English knows nothing.

{Sidenote: _Antiquated English_}

There is another cause, however, which will probably be more effectual than all these, namely, that words will in process of time be dropped by those who const.i.tute the original stock of the nation, which will not be dropped by the offshoot; idioms which those have overlived, and have stored up in the unhonoured lumber-room of the past, will still be in use and currency among the smaller and separated section which has gone forth; and thus it will come to pa.s.s that what seems and in fact is the newer swarm, will have many older words, and very often an archaic air and old-world fas.h.i.+on both about the words they use, their way of p.r.o.nouncing, their order and manner of combining them. Thus after the Conquest we know that our insular French gradually diverged from the French of the Continent. The Prioress in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ could speak her French "full faire and fetishly", but it was French, as the poet slyly adds,

"After the scole of Stratford atte bow, For French of Paris was to hire unknowe".

One of our old chroniclers, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, informs us that by the English colonists within the Pale in Ireland numerous words were preserved in common use, "the dregs of the old ancient Chaucer English", as he contemptuously calls it, which had become quite obsolete and forgotten in England itself. For example, they still called a spider an 'attercop'--a word, by the way, still in popular use in the North;--a physician a 'leech', as in poetry he still is called; a dunghill was still for them a 'mixen'; (the word is still common all over England in this sense;) a quadrangle or base court was a 'bawn'{136}; they employed 'uncouth' in the earlier sense of unknown.

Nay more, their general manner of speech was so different, though containing English still, that Englishmen at their first coming over often found it hard or impossible to comprehend. We have another example of the same in what took place after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the consequent formation of colonies of Protestant French emigrants in various places, especially in Amsterdam and other chief cities of Holland. There gradually grew up among these what came to be called 'refugee French', which within a generation or two diverged in several particulars from the cla.s.sical language of France; its divergence being mainly occasioned by this, that it remained stationary, while the cla.s.sical language was in motion; it retained usages and words, which the latter had dismissed{137}.

{Sidenote: _Provincial English_}

Nor is it otherwise in respect of our English provincialisms. It is true that our country people who in the main employ them, have not been separated by distance of s.p.a.ce, nor yet by insurmountable obstacles intervening, from the main body of their fellow-countrymen; but they have been quite as effectually divided by deficient education. They have been, if not locally, yet intellectually, kept at a distance from the onward march of the nation's mind; and of them also it is true that many of their words, idioms, turns of speech, which we are ready to set down as vulgarisms, solecisms of speech, violations of the primary rules of grammar, do merely attest that those who employ them have not kept abreast with the advance of the language and nation, but have been left behind by it. The usages are only local in the fact that, having once been employed by the whole body of the English people, they have now receded from the lips of all except those in some certain country districts, who have been more faithful than others to the tradition of the past{138}.

It is thus in respect of a mult.i.tude of isolated words, which were excellent Anglo-Saxon, which were excellent early English, and which only are not excellent present English, because use, which is the supreme arbiter in these matters, has decided against their further employment. Several of these I enumerated just now. It is thus also with several grammatical forms and flexions. For instance, where we decline the plural of "I sing", "we sing", "ye sing", "they sing", there are parts of England in which they would decline, "we sin_gen_", "ye sin_gen_", "they sin_gen_". This is not indeed the original form of the plural, but it is that form of it which, coming up about Chaucer's time, was just going out in Spenser's; he, though we must ever keep in mind that he does not fairly represent the language of his time, or indeed of any time, affecting a certain artificial archaism both in words and forms, continually uses it{139}. After him it becomes ever rarer, the last of whom I am aware as occasionally using it being Fuller, until it quite disappears.

{Sidenote: _Earlier and Later English_}

Of such as may now employ forms like these we must say, not that they violate the laws of the language, but only that they have taken their _permanent_ stand at a point which was only a point of transition, and which it has now left behind, and overlived. Thus, to take examples which you may hear at the present day in almost any part of England--a countryman will say, "He made me _afeard_"; or "The price of corn _ris_ last market day"; or "I will _axe_ him his name"; or "I tell _ye_". You would probably set these phrases down for barbarous English. They are not so at all; in one sense they are quite as good English as "He made me _afraid_"; or "The price of corn _rose_ last market day"; or "I will _ask_ him his name". 'Afeard', used by Spenser, is the regular participle of the old verb to 'affear', still existing as a law term, as 'afraid' is of to 'affray', and just as good English{140}; 'ris' or 'risse' is an old praeterite of 'to rise'; to 'axe' is not a misp.r.o.nunciation of 'to ask', but a genuine English form of the word, the form which in the earlier English it constantly a.s.sumed; in Wiclif's Bible almost without exception; and indeed 'axe' occurs continually, I know not whether invariably, in Tyndale's translation of the Scriptures; there was a time when 'ye' was an accusative, and to have used it as a nominative or vocative, the only permitted uses at present, would have been incorrect. Even such phrases as "Put _them_ things away"; or "The man _what_ owns the horse" are not bad, but only antiquated English{141}. Saying this, I would not in the least imply that these forms are open to you to employ, or that they would be good English for _you_. They would not; inasmuch as they are contrary to present use and custom, and these must be our standards in what we speak, and in what we write; just as in our buying and selling we are bound to employ the current coin of the realm, must not attempt to pa.s.s that which long since has been called in, whatever merits or intrinsic value it may possess. All which I affirm is that the phrases just brought forward represent past stages of the language, and are not barbarous violations of it.

{Sidenote: _Luncheon_, _Nuncheon_}

The same may be a.s.serted of certain ways of p.r.o.nouncing words, which are now in use among the lower cla.s.ses, but not among the higher; as, for example, 'contrary', 'mischievous', 'blasphemous', instead of 'contrary', 'mischievous', 'blasphemous'. It would be abundantly easy to show by a mult.i.tude of quotations from our poets, and those reaching very far down, that these are merely the retention of the earlier p.r.o.nunciation by the people, after the higher cla.s.ses have abandoned it{142}. And on the strength of what has just been spoken, let me here suggest to you how well worth your while it will prove to be on the watch for provincial words and inflexions, local idioms and modes of p.r.o.nunciation, and to take note of these. Count nothing in this kind beneath your notice. Do not at once ascribe anything which you hear to the ignorance or stupidity of the speaker. Thus if you hear 'nuncheon', do not at once set it down for a malformation of 'luncheon'{143}, nor 'yeel'{144}, of 'eel'. Lists and collections of provincial usage, such as I have suggested, always have their value. If you are not able to turn them to any profit yourselves, and they may not stand in close enough connexion with your own studies for this, yet there always are those who will thank you for them; and to whom the humblest of these collections, carefully and intelligently made, will be in one way or another of real a.s.sistance{145}. And there is the more need to urge this at the present, because, notwithstanding the tenacity with which our country folk cling to their old forms and usages, still these forms and usages must now be rapidly growing fewer; and there are forces, moral and material, at work in England, which will probably cause that of those which now survive the greater part will within the next fifty years have disappeared{146}.

{Sidenote: _'Its' of Late Introduction_}

Before quitting this subject, let me instance one example more of that which is commonly accounted ungrammatical usage, but which is really the retention of old grammar by some, where others have subst.i.tuted new; I mean the constant application by our rustic population in the south, and I dare say through all parts of England, of 'his' to inanimate objects, and to these not personified, no less than to persons; where 'its' would be employed by others. This was once the manner of speech among all; for 'its' is a word of very recent introduction, many would be surprised to learn of how recent introduction, into the language. You will look for it in vain through the whole of our Authorized Version of the Bible; the office which it now fulfils being there accomplished, as our rustics accomplish it at the present, by 'his' (Gen. i. 11; Exod. x.x.xvii. 17; Matt. v. 15) or 'her' (Jon. i. 15; Rev. xxii. 2) applied as freely to inanimate things as to persons, or else by 'thereof' (Ps. lxv. 10) or 'of it' (Dan. vii. 5). Nor may Lev. xx. 5 be urged as invalidating this a.s.sertion; for reference to the exemplar edition of 1611, or indeed to any earlier editions of King James' Bible, will show that in them the pa.s.sage stood, "of _it_ own accord"{147}. 'Its' occurs very rarely in Shakespeare, in many of his plays it will not once be found. Milton also for the most part avoids it, and this, though in his time others freely allowed it. How soon all this was forgotten we have striking evidence in the fact that when Dryden, in one of his fault-finding moods with the great men of the preceding generation, is taking Ben Jonson to task for general inaccuracy in his English diction, among other counts of his indictment, he quotes this line from _Catiline_

"Though heaven should speak with all _his_ wrath at once",

and proceeds, "_heaven_ is ill syntax with _his_"; while in fact up to within forty or fifty years of the time when Dryden began to write, no other syntax was known; and to a much later date was exceedingly rare.

Curious also, is it to note that in the earnest controversy which followed on Chatterton's publication of the poems ascribed by him to a monk Rowlie, who should have lived in the fifteenth century, no one appealed to such lines as the following,

"Life and all _its_ goods I scorn",

as at once deciding that the poems were not of the age which they pretended. Warton, who denied, though with some hesitation, the antiquity of the poems, giving many and sufficient reasons for this denial, failed to take note of this little word; while yet there needed no more than to point it out, for the disposing of the whole question; the forgery at once was betrayed.

{Sidenote: _American English_}

What has been here affirmed concerning our provincial English, namely that it is often _old_ English rather than _bad_ English, may be affirmed with equal right of many so-called Americanisms. There are parts of America where 'het' is used, or was used a few years since, as the perfect of 'to heat'; 'holp' as the perfect of 'to help'; 'stricken'

as the participle of 'to strike'. Again there are the words which have become obsolete during the last two hundred years, which have not become obsolete there, although many of them probably retain only a provincial existence. Thus 'slick', which indeed is only another form of 'sleek', was employed by our good writers of the seventeenth century{148}. Other words again, which have remained current on both sides of the Atlantic, have yet on our side receded from their original use, while they have remained true to it on the other. 'Plunder' is a word in point{149}.

In the contemplation of facts like these it has been sometimes asked, whether a day will ever arrive when the language spoken on this side of the Atlantic and on the other, will divide into two languages, an old English and a new. We may confidently answer, No. Doubtless, if those who went out from us to people and subdue a new continent, had left our sh.o.r.es two or three centuries earlier than they did, when the language was very much farther removed from that ideal after which it was unconsciously striving, and in which, once reached, it has in great measure acquiesced; if they had not carried with them to their distant homes their English Bible, and what else of worth had been already uttered in the English tongue; if, having once left us, the intercourse between Old and New England had been entirely broken off, or only rare and partial; there would then have unfolded themselves differences between the language spoken here and there, which in tract of time acc.u.mulating and multiplying, might in the end have justified the regarding of the languages as no longer one and the same. It could not have failed but that such differences should have displayed themselves; for while there is a law of _necessity_ in the evolution of languages, while they pursue certain courses and in certain directions, from which they can be no more turned aside by the will of men than one of the heavenly bodies could be pushed from its...o...b..t by any engines of ours, there is a law of _liberty_ no less; and this liberty must inevitably have made itself in many ways felt. In the political and social condition of America, so far removed from our own, in the many natural objects which are not the same with those which surround us here, in efforts independently carried out to rid the language of imperfections, or to unfold its latent powers, even in the different effects of soil and climate on the organs of speech, there would have been causes enough to have provoked in the course of time not immaterial divergencies of language.

As it is, however, the joint operation of those three causes referred to already, namely, that the separation did not take place in the infancy or youth of the language, but only in its ripe manhood, that England and America owned a body of literature, to which they alike looked up and appealed as containing the authoritative standards of the language, that the intercourse between the one people and the other has been large and frequent, hereafter probably to be larger and more frequent still, has effectually wrought. It has been strong enough so to traverse, repress, and check all those causes which tended to divergence, that the _written_ language of educated men on both sides of the water remains precisely the same, their _spoken_ manifesting a few trivial differences of idiom; while even among those cla.s.ses which do not consciously acknowledge any ideal standard of language, there are scarcely greater differences, in some respects far smaller, than exist between inhabitants of different provinces in this one island of England; and in the future we may reasonably antic.i.p.ate that these differences, so far from multiplying, will rather diminish and disappear.

{Sidenote: _Extinct English_}

But I must return from this long digression. It seems often as if an almost unaccountable caprice presided over the fortunes of words, and determined which should live and which die. Thus in instances out of number a word lives on as a verb, but has ceased to be employed as a noun; we say 'to embarra.s.s', but no longer an 'embarra.s.s'; 'to revile', but not, with Chapman and Milton, a 'revile'; 'to dispose', but not a 'dispose'{150}; 'to retire' but not a 'retire'; 'to wed', but not a 'wed'; we say 'to infest', but use no longer the adjective 'infest'.

Or with a reversed fortune a word lives on as a noun, but has perished as a verb--thus as a noun substantive, a 'slug', but no longer 'to slug'

or render slothful; a 'child', but no longer 'to child', ("_childing_ autumn", Shakespeare); a 'rape', but not 'to rape' (South); a 'rogue', but not 'to rogue'; 'malice', but not 'to malice'; a 'path', but not 'to path'; or as a noun adjective, 'serene', but not 'to serene', a beautiful word, which we have let go, as the French have 'sereiner'{151}; 'meek', but not 'to meek' (Wiclif); 'fond', but not 'to fond' (Dryden); 'dead', but not 'to dead'; 'intricate', but 'to intricate' (Jeremy Taylor) no longer.

Or again, the affirmative remains, but the negative is gone; thus 'wisdom', 'bold', 'sad', but not any more 'unwisdom', 'unbold', 'unsad'

(all in Wiclif); 'cunning', but not 'uncunning'; 'manhood', 'wit', 'mighty', 'tall', but not 'unmanhood', 'unwit', 'unmighty', 'untall'

(all in Chaucer); 'buxom', but not 'unbuxom' (Dryden); 'hasty', but not 'unhasty' (Spenser); 'blithe', but not 'unblithe'; 'ease', but not 'unease' (Hacket); 'repentance', but not 'unrepentance'; 'remission', but not 'irremission' (Donne); 'science', but not 'nescience'

(Glanvill){152}; 'to know', but not 'to unknow' (Wiclif); 'to give', but not 'to ungive'. Or once more, with a curious variation from this, the negative survives, while the affirmative is gone; thus 'wieldy'

(Chaucer) survives only in 'unwieldy'; 'couth' and 'couthly' (both in Spenser), only in 'uncouth' and 'uncouthly'; 'rule' (Foxe) only in 'unruly'; 'gainly' (Henry More) in 'ungainly'; these last two were both of them serviceable words, and have been ill lost{153}; 'gainly' is indeed still common in the West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re; 'exorable'

(Holland) and 'evitable' only in 'inexorable' and 'inevitable'; 'faultless' remains, but hardly 'faultful' (Shakespeare). In like manner 'semble' (Foxe) has, except as a technical law term, disappeared; while 'dissemble' continues. So also of other pairs one has been taken and one left; 'height', or 'highth', as Milton better spelt it, remains, but 'lowth' (Becon) is gone; 'righteousness', or 'rightwiseness', as it would once more accurately have been written, for 'righteous' is a corruption of 'rightwise', remains, but its correspondent 'wrongwiseness' has been taken; 'inroad' continues, but 'outroad' (Holland) has disappeared; 'levant' lives, but 'ponent'

(Holland) has died; 'to extricate' continues, but, as we saw just now, 'to intricate' does not; 'parricide', but not 'filicide' (Holland).

Again, of whole groups of words formed on some particular scheme it may be only a single specimen will survive. Thus 'gainsay', that is, again say, survives; but 'gainstrive' (Foxe), 'gainstand', 'gaincope'

(Golding), and other similarly formed words exist no longer. It is the same with 'foolhardy', which is but one, though now indeed the only one remaining, of at least five adjectives formed on the same principle; thus 'foollarge', quite as expressive a word as prodigal, occurs in Chaucer, and 'foolhasty', found also in him, lived on to the time of Holland; while 'foolhappy' is in Spencer; and 'foolbold' in Bale. 'Steadfast' remains, but 'shamefast', 'rootfast', 'bedfast'

(=bedridden), 'homefast', 'housefast', 'masterfast' (Skelton), with others, are all gone. 'Exhort' remains; but 'dehort' a word whose place neither 'dissuade' nor any other exactly supplies, has escaped us{154}. We have 'twilight', but 'twibill' = bipennis (Chapman) is extinct.

Let me mention another real loss, where in like manner there remains in the present language something to remind us of that which is gone. The comparative 'rather' stands alone, having dropped on one side its positive 'rathe'{155}, and on the other its superlative 'rathest'.

'Rathe', having the sense of early, though a graceful word, and not fallen quite out of popular remembrance, inasmuch as it is embalmed in the _Lycidas_ of Milton,

"And the _rathe_ primrose, which forsaken dies",

might still be suffered without remark to share the common lot of so many words which have perished, though worthy to have lived; but the disuse of 'rathest' has left a real gap in the language, and the more so, seeing that 'liefest' is gone too. 'Rather' expresses the Latin 'potius'; but 'rathest' being out of use, we have no word, unless 'soonest' may be accepted as such, to express 'potissimum', or the preference not of one way over another or over certain others, but of one over all; which we therefore effect by aid of various circ.u.mlocutions. Nor has 'rathest'

been so long out of use, that it would be playing the antic to attempt to revive it. It occurs in the _Sermons_ of Bishop Sanderson, who in the opening of that beautiful sermon from the text, "When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord taketh me up", puts the consideration, "why these", that is, father and mother, "are named the _rathest_, and the rest to be included in them"{156}.

It is sometimes easy enough, but indeed oftener hard, and not seldom quite impossible, to trace the causes which have been at work to bring about that certain words, little by little, drop out of the language of men, come to be heard more and more rarely, and finally are not heard any more at all--to trace the motives which have induced a whole people thus to arrive at a tacit consent not to employ them any longer; for without this tacit consent they could never have thus become obsolete.

That it is not accident, that there is a law here at work, however hidden it may be from us, is plain from the fact that certain families of words, words formed on certain patterns, have a tendency thus to fall into desuetude.

{Sidenote: _Words in '-some'_}

Thus, I think, we may trace a tendency in words ending in 'some', the Anglo-Saxon and early English 'sum', the German 'sam' ('friedsam', 'seltsam') to fall out of use. It is true that a vast number of these survive, as 'gladsome', 'handsome', 'wearisome', 'buxom' (this last spelt better 'bucksome', by our earlier writers, for its present spelling altogether disguises its true character, and the family to which it belongs); being the same word as the German 'beugsam' or 'biegsam', bendable, compliant{157}; but a larger number of these words than can be ascribed to accident, many more than the due proportion of them, are either quite or nearly extinct. Thus in Wiclif's Bible alone you might note the following, 'lovesum', 'hatesum', 'l.u.s.tsum', 'gilsum'

(guilesome), 'wealsum', 'heavysum', 'lightsum', 'delightsum'; of these 'lightsome' long survived, and indeed still survives in provincial dialects; but of the others all save 'delightsome' are gone; and that, although used in our Authorized Version (Mal. iii, 12), is now only employed in poetry. So too 'mightsome' (see Coleridge's _Glossary_), 'brightsome' (Marlowe), 'wieldsome', and 'unwieldsome' (Golding), 'unlightsome' (Milton), 'healthsome' (_Homilies_), 'ugsome' and 'ugglesome' (both in Foxe), 'laboursome' (Shakespeare), 'friendsome', 'longsome' (Bacon), 'quietsome', 'mirksome' (both in Spenser), 'toothsome' (Beaumont and Fletcher), 'gleesome', 'joysome' (both in Browne's _Pastorals_), 'gaysome' (_Mirror for Magistrates_), 'roomsome', 'bigsome', 'awesome', 'timersome', 'winsome', 'viewsome', 'dosome'