The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell Part 105

Of Yankee preterites I find _risse_ and _rize_ for _rose_ in Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Dryden, _clim_ in Spenser, _chees_ (_chose_) in Sir John Mandevil, _give_ (_gave_) in the Coventry Plays, _shet_ (_shut_) in Golding's Ovid, _het_ in Chapman and in Weever's Epitaphs, _thriv_ and _smit_ in Drayton, _quit_ in Ben Jonson and Henry More, and _pled_ in the Paston Letters, nay, even in the fastidious Landor. _Rid_ for _rode_ was anciently common. So likewise was _see_ for _saw_, but I find it in no writer of authority (except Golding), unless Chaucer's _seie_ and Gower's _sigh_ were, as I am inclined to think, so sounded.

_Shew_ is used by Hector Boece, Giles Fletcher, Drummond of Hawthornden, and in the Paston Letters. Similar strong preterites, like _snew_, _thew_, and even _mew_, are not without example. I find _sew_ for _sewed_ in 'Piers Ploughman.' Indeed, the anomalies in English preterites are perplexing. We have probably transferred _flew_ from _flow_ (as the preterite of which I have heard it) to _fly_ because we had another preterite in _fled_. Of weak preterites the Yankee retains _growed_, _blowed_, for which he has good authority, and less often _knowed_. His _sot_ is merely a broad sounding of _sat_, no more inelegant than the common _got_ for _gat_, which he further degrades into _gut_. When he says _darst_, he uses a form as old as Chaucer.

The Yankee has retained something of the long sound of the _a_ in such words as _axe_, _wax_, p.r.o.nouncing them _exe_, _wex_ (shortened from _aix_, _waix_). He also says _hev_ and _hed_ (_h[=a]ve_, _h[=a]d_ for _have_ and _had_). In most cases he follows an Anglo-Saxon usage. In _aix_ for _axle_ he certainly does. I find _wex_ and _aisches_ (_ashes_) in Pec.o.c.k, and _exe_ in the Paston Letters. Golding rhymes _wax_ with _wexe_ and spells _challenge_ _chelenge_. Chaucer wrote _hendy_. Dryden rhymes _can_ with _men_, as Mr. Biglow would. Alexander Gill, Milton's teacher, in his 'Logonomia' cites _hez_ for _hath_ as peculiar to Lincolns.h.i.+re. I find _hayth_ in Collier's 'Bibliographical Account of Early English Literature' under the date 1584, and Lord Cromwell so wrote it. Sir Christopher Wren wrote _belcony_. Our _fect_ is only the O.F. _faict_. _Thaim_ for _them_ was common in the sixteenth century. We have an example of the same thing in the double form of the verb _thrash_, _thresh_. While the New Englander cannot be brought to say _instead_ for _instid_ (commonly _'stid_ where not the last word in a sentence), he changes the _i_ into _e_ in _red_ for _rid_, _tell_ for _till_, _hender_ for _hinder_, _rense_ for _rinse_. I find _red_ in the old interlude of 'Thersytes,' _tell_ in a letter of Daborne to Henslowe, and also, I shudder to mention it, in a letter of the great d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, Atossa herself! It occurs twice in a single verse of the Chester Plays,

'_Tell_ the day of dome, _tell_ the beames blow.'

From the word _blow_ (in another sense) is formed _blowth_, which I heard again this summer after a long interval. Mr. Wright[24] explains it as meaning 'a blossom.' With us a single blossom is a _blow_, while _blowth_ means the blossoming in general. A farmer would say that there was a good blowth on his fruit-trees. The word retreats farther inland and away from the railways, year by year. Wither rhymes _hinder_ with _slender_, and Shakespeare and Lovelace have _renched_ for _rinsed_. In 'Gammer Gurton' and 'Mirror for Magistrates' is _sence_ for _since_; Marlborough's d.u.c.h.ess so writes it, and Donne rhymes _since_ with _Amiens_ and _patence_, Bishop Hall and Otway with _pretence_, Chapman with _citizens_, Dryden with _providence_. Indeed, why should not _sithence_ take that form? Dryden's wife (an earl's daughter) has _tell_ for _till_, Margaret, mother of Henry VII., writes _seche_ for _such_, and our _ef_ finds authority in the old form _yeffe_.

_E_ sometimes takes the place of _u_, as _jedge, tredge, bresh_. I find _tredge_ in the interlude of 'Jack Jugler,' _bresh_ in a citation by Collier from 'London Cries' of the middle of the seventeenth century, and _resche_ for _rush_ (fifteenth century) in the very valuable 'Volume of Vocabularies' edited by Mr. Wright. _Resce_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon forms of the word in Bosworth's A.-S. Dictionary. Golding has _shet_.

The Yankee always shortens the _u_ in the ending _ture_, making _ventur, natur, pictur_, and so on. This was common, also, among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile _vencher, naycher, pickcher_, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze. Nash in his 'Pierce Penniless' has _ventur_, and so spells it, and I meet it also in Spenser, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Herrick, and Prior. Spenser has _tort'rest_, which can be contracted only from _tortur_ and not from _torcher_. Quarles rhymes _nature_ with _creator_, and Dryden with _satire_, which he doubtless p.r.o.nounced according to its older form of _satyr_. Quarles has also _torture_ and _mortar_. Mary Boleyn writes _kreatur_. I find _pikter_ in Izaak Walton's autograph will.

I shall now give some examples which cannot so easily be ranked under any special head. Gill charges the Eastern counties with _kiver_ for _cover_, and _ta_, for _to_. The Yankee p.r.o.nounces both _too_ and _to_ like _ta_ (like the _tou_ in _touch_) where they are not emphatic. When they are, both become _tu_. In old spelling, _to_ is the common (and indeed correct) form of _too_, which is only _to_ with the sense of _in addition_. I suspect that the sound of our _too_ has caught something from the French _tout_, and it is possible that the old _too too_ is not a reduplication, but a reminiscence of the feminine form of the same word (_toute_) as anciently p.r.o.nounced, with the _e_ not yet silenced.

Gill gives a Northern origin to _geaun_ for _gown_ and _waund_ for _wound_ (_vulnus_). Lovelace has _waund_, but

there is something too dreadful in suspecting Spenser (who _borealised_ in his pastorals) of having ever been guilty of _geaun!_ And yet some delicate mouths even now are careful to observe the Hibernicism of _ge-ard_ for _guard_, and _ge-url_ for _girl_. Sir Philip Sidney (_credite posteri!_) wrote _furr_ for _far_. I would hardly have believed it had I not seen it in _facsimile_. As some consolation, I find _furder_ in Lord Bacon and Donne, and Wittier rhymes _far_ with _cur_. The Yankee, who omits the final _d_ in many words, as do the Scotch, makes up for it by adding one in _geound_. The purist does not feel the loss of the _d_ sensibly in _lawn_ and _yon_, from the former of which it has dropped again after a wrongful adoption (retained in _laundry_), while it properly belongs to the latter. But what shall we make of _git, yit_, and _yis_? I find _yis_ and _git_ in Warner's 'Albion's England,' _yet_ rhyming with _wit, admit_, and _fit_ in Donne, with _wit_ in the 'Revenger's Tragedy,' Beaumont, and Suckling, with _writ_ in Dryden, and latest of all with _wit_ in Sir Hanbury Williams.

Prior rhymes _fitting_ and _begetting_. Worse is to come. Among others, Donne rhymes _again_ with _sin_, and Quarles repeatedly with _in_. _Ben_ for _been_, of which our dear Whittier is so fond, has the authority of Sackville, 'Gammer Gurton' (the work of a bishop), Chapman, Dryden, and many more, though _bin_ seems to have been the common form. Whittier's accenting the first syllable of _rom'ance_ finds an accomplice in Drayton among others, and, though manifestly wrong, is a.n.a.logous with _Rom'ans_. Of other Yankeeisms, whether of form or p.r.o.nunciation, which I have met with I add a few at random. Pec.o.c.k writes _sowdiers (sogers, soudoyers)_, and Chapman and Gill _sodder_. This absorption of the _l_ is common in various dialects, especially in the Scottish. Pec.o.c.k writes also _biyende_, and the authors of 'Jack Jugler' and 'Gammer Gurton'

_yender_. The Yankee includes '_yon_' in the same catagory, and says 'hither an' yen,' for 'to and fro.' (Cf. German _jenseits_.) Pec.o.c.k and plenty more have _wrastle_. Tindal has _agynste, gretter, shett, ondone, debyte_, and _scace_. 'Jack Jugler' has _scacely_ (which I have often heard, though _skurce_ is the common form), and Donne and Dryden make _great_ rhyme with _set_. In the inscription on Caxton's tomb I find _ynd_ for _end_, which the Yankee more often makes _eend_, still using familiarly the old phrase 'right anend' for 'continuously.' His 'stret (straight) along' in the same sense, which I thought peculiar to him, I find in Pec.o.c.k. Tindal's _debyte_ for _deputy_ is so perfectly Yankee that I could almost fancy the brave martyr to have been deacon of the First Parish at Jaalam Centre. 'Jack Jugler' further gives us _playsent_ and _sartayne_. Dryden rhymes _certain_ with _parting_, and Chapman and Ben Jonson use _certain_, as the Yankee always does, for _certainly_.

The 'Coventry Mysteries' have _occapied, ma.s.sage, nateralle, materal (material),_ and _meracles_,--all excellent Yankeeisms. In the 'Quatre fils, Aymon' (1504),[25] is _vertus_ for _virtuous_. Thomas Fuller called _volume vollum_, I suspect, for he spells it _volumne_. However, _per contra_, Yankees habitually say _colume_ for _column_. Indeed, to prove that our ancestors brought their p.r.o.nunciation with them from the Old Country, and have not wantonly debased their mother tongue, I need only to cite the words _scriptur_, _Israll_, _athists_, and _cherfulness_ from Governor Bradford's 'History.' So the good man wrote them, and so the good descendants of his fellow-exiles still p.r.o.nounce them. Brampton Gurdon writes _shet_ in a letter to Winthrop. _Purtend_ (_pretend_) has crept like a serpent into the 'Paradise Of Dainty Devices;' _purvide_, which is not so bad, is in Chaucer. These, of course, are universal vulgarisms, and not peculiar to the Yankee. Butler has a Yankee phrase, and p.r.o.nunciation too, in 'To which these _carr'ings-on_ did tend.' Langham or Laneham, who wrote an account of the festivities at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Bess, and who evidently tried to spell phonetically, makes _sorrows_ into _sororz_. Herrick writes _hollow_ for _halloo_, and perhaps p.r.o.nounced it (_horresco suggerens_!) _hollo_, as Yankees do. Why not, when it comes from _hola_?

I find _ffelaschyppe_ (fellows.h.i.+p) in the Coventry Plays. Spenser and his queen neither of them scrupled to write _afore_, and the former feels no inelegance even in _chaw_ and _idee_. _'Fore_ was common till after Herrick. Dryden has _do's_ for _does_, and his wife spells _worse_ _wosce_. _Afeared_ was once universal. Warner has _ery_ for _ever a_; nay, he also has illy, with which we were once ignorantly reproached by persons more familiar with Murray's Grammar than with English literature. And why not _illy_? Mr. Bartlett says it is 'a word used by writers of an inferior cla.s.s, who do not seem to perceive that _ill_ is itself an adverb, without the termination _ly_,' and quotes Dr. Mosser, President of Brown University, as asking triumphantly, 'Why don't you say '_welly_?' I should like to have had Dr. Messer answer his own question. It would be truer to say that it was used by people who still remembered that _ill_ was an adjective, the shortened form of _evil_, out of which Shakespeare and the translators of the Bible ventured to make _evilly_. This slurred _evil_ is 'the dram of _eale_' in 'Hamlet.'

I find, _illy_ in Warner. The objection to _illy_ is not an etymological one, but simply that it is contrary to good usage,--a very sufficient reason. _Ill_ as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the rustic's when he says, 'I was treated _bad_.' May not the reason of this exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to p.r.o.nounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided _smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure, _dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other (though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in his n.o.ble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_ example.' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an Englishman's _yes_ and _no_, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How many educated men p.r.o.nounce the _t_ in _chestnut_? how many say _pentise_ for _penthouse_, as they should. When a Yankee skipper says that he is "boun' for Gloster" (not Gloucester, with the leave of the Universal Schoolmaster),[27] he but speaks like Chaucer or an old ballad-singer, though they would have p.r.o.nounced it _boon_. This is one of the cases where the _d_ is surrept.i.tious, and has been added in compliment to the verb _bind_, with which it has nothing to do. If we consider the root of the word (though of course I grant that every race has a right to do what it will with what is so peculiarly its own as its speech), the _d_ has no more right there than at the end of _gone_, where it is often put by children, who are our best guides to the sources of linguistic corruption, and the best teachers of its processes. Cromwell, minister of Henry VIII., writes _worle_ for world.

Chapman has _wan_ for _wand_, and _lawn_ has rightfully displaced _laund_, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as '_Dear Husban_.' The old form _expoun'_, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a barbarous _d_ tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite to this, like our _gownd_ for _gown_, and the London c.o.c.kney's _wind_ for _wine_, I find _drownd_ for _drown_ in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur'

(1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say _beh[=i]nd_ and _h[=i]nder_ (comparative) and yet to _h[)i]nder_. Shakespeare p.r.o.nounced _kind_ _k[)i]nd_, or what becomes of his play on that word and _kin_ in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it?) drop the final _d_ as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the same way on _kindred_ and _kindness_.

But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes _bounds_ with _crowns_, _grounds_ with _towns_, _text_ with _s.e.x_, _worst_ with _crust_, _interrupts_ with _cups_; Drayton, _defects_ with _s.e.x_; Chapman, _amends_ with _cleanse_; Webster, _defects_ with _checks_; Ben Jonson, _minds_ with _combines_; Marston, _trust_ and _obsequious_, _clothes_ and _shows_; Dryden gives the same sound to _clothes_, and has also _minds_ with _designs_. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the rhyme _first_ and _trust_, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady.

Swift has _stunted_ and _burnt_ it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee p.r.o.nunciation of _burned_. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock _after_ and _matter_, thus seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to find _after_ and _daughter_. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old Plays we have _onions_ rhyming with _minions_,--I have tears in my eyes while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal _Misses_ (_Mrs._) for _Mistress_? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays by Collier),

'To make my young _mistress_ Delighting in _kisses_,'

is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say _Injun_ for _Indian_.

The tendency to make this change where _i_ follows _d_ is common. The Italian _giorno_ and French _jour_ from _diurnus_ are familiar examples.

And yet _Injun_ is one of those depravations which the taste challenges peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes '_Indies_' with '_cringes_'--and four English lexicographers, beginning with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say _invidgeous_. Yet after all it is no worse than the debas.e.m.e.nt which all our terminations in _tion_ and _tience_ have undergone, which yet we hear with _resignashun_ and _payshunce_, though it might have aroused both _impat-i-ence_ and _in-dig-na-ti-on_ in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon be dull,

'G.o.d takes a text and preacheth patience,'

the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in _o-ce-an_, and Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,--

'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder The tumbling ruins of the ocean.'

Ocea.n.u.s was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our modern _oshun_ sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison. Some other contractions of ours have a vulgar air about them. _More 'n_ for _more than_, as one of the worst, may stand for a type of such. Yet our old dramatists are full of such obscurations (elisions they can hardly be called) of the _th_, making _whe'r_ of _whether_, _where_ of _whither_, _here_ of _hither_, _bro'r_ of _brother_, _smo'r_ of _smother_, _mo'r_ of _mother_, and so on. And dear Brer Rabbit, can I forget him? Indeed, it is this that explains the word _rare_ (which has Dryden's support), and which we say of meat where an Englishman would use _underdone_. I do not believe, with the dictionaries, that it had ever anything to do with the Icelandic _hrar_ (_raw_), as it plainly has not in _rareripe_, which means earlier ripe,--President Lincoln said of a precocious boy that 'he was a _rareripe_.' And I do not believe it, for this reason, that the earliest form of the word with us was, and the commoner now in the inland parts still is, so far as I can discover, _raredone_. Golding has 'egs reere-rosted,' which, whatever else it mean, cannot mean _raw_-roasted, I find _rather_ as a monosyllable in Donne, and still better, as giving the sound, rhyming with _fair_ in Warner. There is an epigram of Sir Thomas Browne in which the words _rather than_ make a monosyllable;--

'What furie is't to take Death's part And rather than by Nature, die by Art!'

The contraction _more'n_ I find in the old play 'Fuimus Troes,' in a verse where the measure is so strongly accented as to leave it beyond doubt,--

'A golden crown whose heirs More than half the world subdue.'

It may be, however, that the contraction is in 'th'orld.' It is unmistakable in the 'Second Maiden's Tragedy:'--

'It were but folly, Dear soul, to boast of _more than_ I can perform.'

Is our _gin_ for _given_ more violent than _mar'l_ for _marvel_, which was once common, and which I find as late as Herrick? Nay, Herrick has _gin_ (spelling it _gen_), too, as do the Scotch, who agree with us likewise in preferring _chimly_ to _chimney_.

I will now leave p.r.o.nunciation and turn to words or phrases which have been supposed peculiar to us, only pausing to pick up a single dropped st.i.tch, in the p.r.o.nunciation of the word _supreme_, which I had thought native till I found it in the well-languaged Daniel. I will begin with a word of which I have never met with any example in any English writer of authority. We express the first stage of withering in a green plant suddenly cut down by the verb _to wilt_. It is, of course, own cousin of the German _welken_, but I have never come upon it in literary use, and my own books of reference give me faint help. Graff gives _welhen_, _marcescere_, and refers to _weih_ (_weak_), and conjecturally to A.-S, _hvelan_. The A.-S. _wealwian_ (_to wither_) is nearer, but not so near as two words in the Icelandic, which perhaps put us on the track of its ancestry,--_velgi_, _tepefacere_, (and _velki_, with the derivative) meaning _contaminare_. _Wilt_, at any rate, is a good word, filling, as it does, a sensible gap between drooping and withering, and the imaginative phrase 'he wilted right down,' like 'he caved right in,' is a true Americanism. _Wilt_ occurs in English provincial glossaries, but is explained by _wither_, which with us it does not mean. We have a few words such as _cache_, _cohog_, _carry_ (_portage_), _shoot_ (_chute_), _timber_ (_forest_), _bushwhack_ (to pull a boat along by the bushes on the edge of a stream), _buckeye_ (a picturesque word for the horse-chestnut); but how many can we be said to have fairly brought into the language, as Alexander Gill, who first mentions Americanisms, meant it when he said, '_Sed et ab Americanis nonnulla mutuamur ut_ MAIZ _et_ CANOA'? Very few, I suspect, and those mostly by borrowing from the French, German, Spanish, or Indian.[28] 'The Dipper,' for the 'Great Bear,' strikes me as having a native air. _Bogus_, in the sense of _worthless_, is undoubtedly ours, but is, I more than suspect, a corruption of the French _baga.s.se_ (from low Latin _bagasea_), which travelled up the Mississippi from New Orleans, where it was used for the refuse of the sugar-cane. It is true, we have modified the meaning of some words. We use _freshet_ in the sense of _flood_, for which I have not chanced upon any authority. Our New England cross between Ancient Pistol and Dugald Dalgetty, Captain Underhill, uses the word (1638) to mean a _current_, and I do not recollect it elsewhere in that sense. I therefore leave it with a? for future explorers. _Crick_ for _creek_ I find in Captain John Smith and in the dedication of Fuller's 'Holy Warre,' and _run_, meaning a _small stream_, in Waymouth's 'Voyage'

(1605). _Humans_ for _men_, which Mr. Bartlett includes in his 'Dictionary of Americanisms,' is Chapman's habitual phrase in his translation of Homer. I find it also in the old play of 'The Hog hath lost his Pearl.' _Dogs_ for _andirons_ is still current in New England, and in Walter de Biblesworth I find _chiens_ glossed in the margin by _andirons_. _Gunning_ for _shooting_ is in Drayton. We once got credit for the poetical word _fall_ for _autumn_, but Mr. Bartlett and the last edition of Webster's Dictionary refer us to Dryden. It is even older, for I find it in Drayton, and Bishop Hall has _autumn fall_. Middleton plays upon the word: 'May'st thou have a reasonable good _spring_, for thou art like to have many dangerous foul _falls_.' Daniel does the same, and Coleridge uses it as we do. Gray uses the archaism _picked_ for _peaked_, and the word _smudge_ (as our backwoodsmen do) for a smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, the last _preux chevalier_) has 'the Emperor's folks' just as a Yankee would say it. _Loan_ for _lend_, with which we have hitherto been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so long ago as in 'Albion's England.' _Fleshy_, in the sense of _stout_, may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in Francklin's 'Lucian.' _Ch.o.r.e_ is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined to prefer it to _chare_ and _char_, because I think that I see a more natural origin for it in the French _jour_--whence it might come to mean a day's work, and thence a job--than anywhere else.[29] _At onst_ for _at once_ I thought a corruption of our own, till I found it in the Chester Plays. I am now inclined to suspect it no corruption at all, but only an erratic and obsolete superlative _at onest_. _To progress_ was flung in our teeth till Mr. Pickering retorted with Shakespeare's 'doth progress down thy cheeks.' I confess that I was never satisfied with this answer, because the accent was different, and because the word might here be reckoned a substantive quite as well as a verb. Mr. Bartlett (in his dictionary above cited) adds a surreb.u.t.ter in a verse from Ford's 'Broken Heart.' Here the word is clearly a verb, but with the accent unhappily still on the first syllable. Mr. Bartlett says that he 'cannot say whether the word was used in Bacon's time or not.' It certainly was, and with the accent we give to it. Ben Jonson, in the 'Alchemist,' had this verse,

'Progress so from extreme unto extreme,'

and Sir Philip Sidney,

'Progressing then from fair Turias' golden place.'

Surely we may now sleep in peace, and our English cousins will forgive us, since we have cleared ourselves from any suspicion of originality in the matter! Even after I had convinced myself that the chances were desperately against our having invented any of the _Americanisms_ with which we are _faulted_ and which we are in the habit of _voicing_, there were one or two which had so prevailingly indigenous an accent as to stagger me a little. One of these was 'the biggest _thing out_.' Alas, even this slender comfort is denied me. Old Gower has

'So harde an herte was none _oute_,'

and

'That such merveile was none _oute_.'

He also, by the way, says 'a _sighte_ of flowres' as naturally as our up-country folk would say it. _Poor_ for _lean_, _thirds_ for _dower_, and _dry_ for _thirsty_ I find in Middleton's plays. _Dry_ is also in Skelton and in the 'World' (1754). In a note on Middleton, Mr. Dyce thinks it needful to explain the phrase _I can't tell_ (universal in America) by the gloss _I could not say_. Middleton also uses _sneeked_, which I had believed an Americanism till I saw it there. It is, of course, only another form of _s.n.a.t.c.h_, a.n.a.logous to _theek_ and _thatch_ (cf. the proper names Dekker and Thacher), _break_ (_brack_) and _breach_, _make_ (still common with us) and _match_. _'Long on_ for _occasioned by_ ('who is this 'long on?') occurs constantly in Gower and likewise in Middleton. _'Cause why_ is in Chaucer. _Raising_ (an English version of the French _leaven_) for _yeast_ is employed by Gayton in his 'Festivous Notes on Don Quixote.' I have never seen an instance of our New England word _emptins_ in the same sense, nor can I divine its original. Gayton has _limekill_; also _shuts_ for _shutters_, and the latter is used by Mrs. Hutchinson in her 'Life of Colonel Hutchinson.'

Bishop Hall, and Purchas in his 'Pilgrims,' have _chist_ for _chest_, and it is certainly nearer _cista_, as well as to its form in the Teutonic languages, whence probably we got it. We retain the old sound from _cist_, but _chest_ is as old as Chaucer. Lovelace says _wropt_ for _wrapt_. 'Musicianer' I had always a.s.sociated with the militia-musters of my boyhood, and too hastily concluded it an abomination of our own, but Mr. Wright calls it a Norfolk word, and I find it to be as old as 1642 by an extract in Collier. 'Not worth the time of day,' had pa.s.sed with me for native till I saw it in Shakespeare's 'Pericles.' For _slick_ (which is only a shorter sound of _sleek_, like _crick_ and the now universal _britches_ for _breeches_) I will only call Chapman and Jonson. 'That's a sure card!' and 'That's a stinger!' both sound like modern slang, but you will find the one in the old interlude of 'Thersytes' (1537), and the other in Middleton. 'Right here,' a favorite phrase with our orators and with a certain cla.s.s of our editors, turns up _pa.s.sim_ in the Chester and Coventry plays. Mr. d.i.c.kens found something very ludicrous in what he considered our neologism _right away_. But I find a phrase very like it, and which I would gladly suspect to be a misprint for it, in 'Gammer Gurton:'--

'Lyght it and bring it _t.i.te away_.'

But _t.i.te_ is the true word in this case. After all, what is it but another form of _straightway_? _Cussedness_, meaning _wickedness, malignity_, and _cuss_, a sneaking, ill-natured fellow, in such phrases as 'He done it out o' pure cussedness,' and 'He is a nateral cuss,' have been commonly thought Yankeeisms. To vent certain contemptuously indignant moods they are admirable in their rough-and-ready way. But neither is our own. _Cursydnesse_, in the same sense of malignant wickedness, occurs in the Coventry Plays, and _cuss_ may perhaps claim to have come in with the Conqueror. At least the term is also French.

Saint Simon uses it and confesses its usefulness. Speaking of the Abbe Dubois, he says, 'Qui etoit en plein ce qu'un mauvais francois appelle un _sacre_, mais qui ne se peut guere exprimer autrement.' 'Not worth a cuss,' though supported by 'not worth a d.a.m.n,' may be a mere corruption, since 'not worth a _cress_' is in 'Piers Ploughman.' 'I don't see it,'

was the popular slang a year or two ago, and seemed to spring from the soil; but no, it is in Cibber's 'Careless Husband.' _Green sauce_ for _vegetables_ I meet in Beaumont and Fletcher, Gayton, and elsewhere. Our rustic p.r.o.nunciation _sahce_ (for either the diphthong _au_ was anciently p.r.o.nounced _ah_, or else we have followed abundant a.n.a.logy in changing it to the latter sound, as we have in _chance, dance_, and so many more) may be the older one, and at least gives some hint at its ancestor _salsa_. _Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now peculiar to us, but Pec.o.c.k so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as we p.r.o.nounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too (compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_ for _that_ I might say _pa.s.sim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love.' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A.S.

_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kod_), meaning _resin_ and _glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to _beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land, receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put!_ for _Begone!_ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly a.n.a.logous to the French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed, Dante has a verse,

'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's Edward IV.;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'

Valentine says,

'Will you go drink, And let the world slide?'

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'