English Past and Present Part 2

{13} [It is from the Haytian _Hurakan_, the storm-G.o.d (_The Folk and their Word-Lore_, 90).]

{14} [From old Russian _mammot_, whence modern Russian _mamant_.]

{15} ['a.s.sagai' is from the Arabic _az-_ (_al-_) _zaghayah_, 'the _zagayah_', a Berber name for a lance (N.E.D.).]

{16} [This puts the cart before the horse. 'Fetish' is really the Portuguese word _feitico_, artificial, made-up, fact.i.tious (Latin _fact.i.tius_), applied to African amulets or idols.]

{17} ['Domino' is Spanish rather than Italian (Skeat, _Principles_, ii, 312).]

{18} ['Harlequin' appears to be an older word in French than in Italian (_ibid._).]

{19} On the question whether this ought to have been included among the Arabic, see Diez, _Worterbuch d. Roman. Sprachen_, p. 10.

{20} Not in our dictionaries; but a kind of coasting vessel well known to seafaring men, the Spanish 'urca'; thus in Oldys' _Life of Raleigh_: "Their galleons, gallea.s.ses, gallies, _urcas_, and zabras were miserably shattered".

{21} [A valuable list of such doublets is given by Prof. Skeat in his large _Etymological Dictionary_, p. 772 _seq._]

{22} This particular instance of double adoption, of 'dimorphism' as Latham calls it, 'dittology' as Heyse, recurs in Italian, 'bestemmiare' and 'biasimare'; and in Spanish, 'blasfemar' and 'lastimar'.

{23} ['Doit', a small coin (Dutch _duit_) has no relation to, 'digit'.

Was the author thinking of old French _doit_, a finger, from Latin _digitus_?]

{24} Somewhat different from this, yet itself also curious, is the pa.s.sing of an Anglo-Saxon word in two different forms into English, and continuing in both; thus 'desk' and 'dish', both the Anglo-Saxon 'disc' [a loan-word from Latin _discus_, Greek _diskos_] the German 'tisch'; 'beech' and 'book', both the Anglo-Saxon 'boc', our first books being _beechen_ tablets (see Grimm, _Worterbuch_, s. vv. 'Buch', 'Buche'); 'girdle' and 'kirtle'; both of them corresponding to the German 'gurtel'; already in Anglo-Saxon a double spelling, 'gyrdel', 'cyrtel', had prepared for the double words; so too 'haunch' and 'hinge'; 'lady'

and 'lofty' [these last three instances are not doublets at all, being quite unrelated; see Skeat, s. vv.]; 'shirt', and 'skirt'; 'black' and 'bleak'; 'pond' and 'pound'; 'deck' and 'thatch'; 'deal' and 'dole'; 'weald' and 'wood'; 'dew' and 'thaw'; 'wayward' and 'awkward'; 'dune' and 'down'; 'hood' and 'hat'; 'ghost' and 'gust'; 'evil' and 'ill'; 'mouth' and 'moth'; 'hedge' and 'hay'.

[All these suggested doublets which I have obelized must be dismissed as untenable.]

{25} We have in the same way double adoptions from the Greek, one direct, at least as regards the forms; one modified by its pa.s.sage through some other language; thus, 'adamant' and 'diamond'; 'monastery' and 'minster'; 'scandal' and 'slander'; 'theriac' and 'treacle'; 'asphodel' and 'daffodil'; 'presbyter' and 'priest'.

{26} The French itself has also a double adoption, or as perhaps we should more accurately call it there, a double formation, from the Latin, and such as quite bears out what has been said above: one going far back in the history of the language, the other belonging to a later and more literary period; on which subject there are some admirable remarks by Genin, _Recreations Philologiques_, vol.

i. pp. 162-66; and see Fuchs, _Die Roman. Sprachen_, p. 125. Thus from 'separare' is derived 'sevrer', to separate the child from its mother's breast, to wean, but also 'separer', without this special sense; from 'pastor', 'patre', a shepherd in the literal, and 'pasteur' the same in a tropical, sense; from 'catena', 'chaine'

and 'cadene'; from 'fragilis', 'frele' and 'fragile'; from 'pensare', 'peser' and 'penser'; from 'gehenna', 'gene' and 'gehenne'; from 'captivus', 'chetif' and 'captif'; from 'nativus', 'naf' and 'natif'; from 'designare', 'dessiner' and 'designer'; from 'decimare', 'dimer' and 'decimer'; from 'consumere', 'consommer' and 'consumer'; from 'simulare', 'sembler' and 'simuler'; from the low Latin, 'disjejunare', 'diner' and 'dejeuner'; from 'acceptare', 'acheter' and 'accepter'; from 'h.o.m.o', 'on' and 'homme'; from 'paga.n.u.s', 'payen' and 'paysan' [the latter from 'pagensis']; from 'obedientia', 'obeissance' and 'obedience'; from 'strictus', 'etroit' and 'strict'; from 'sacramentum', 'serment' and 'sacrement'; from 'ministerium', 'metier' and 'ministere'; from 'parabola', 'parole' and 'parabole'; from 'peregrinus', 'pelerin' and 'peregrin'; from 'factio', 'facon'

and 'faction', and it has now adopted 'factio' in a third shape, that is, in our English 'fashion'; from 'pietas', 'pitie' and 'piete'; from 'capitulum', 'chapitre' and 'capitule', a botanical term. So, too, in Italian, 'manco', maimed, and 'monco', maimed _of a hand_; 'rifutare', to refute, and 'rifiutare', to refuse; 'dama'

and 'donna', both forms of 'domina'.

{27} See Marsh, _Manual of the English Language_, Engl. Ed. p. 88 _seq._

{28} W. Schlegel (_Indische Bibliothek_, vol. i. p. 284): Coeunt quidem paullatim in novum corpus peregrina vocabula, sed grammatica linguarum, unde pet.i.tae sunt, ratio perit.

{29} J. Grimm, quoted in _The Philological Museum_ vol. i. p. 667.

{30} _Works_, vol. iv. p. 202.

{31} [These words are taken from the 'Whistlecraft' of John Hookham Frere:--

"Don't confound the language of the nation With long-tail'd words in _osity_ and _ation_".

(_Works_, 1872, vol. 1, p. 206).]

{32} _History of Normandy and England_, vol. i, p. 78.

{33} [F. W. Faber,] _Dublin Review_, June, 1853.

{34} There is more on this matter in my book _On the Authorized Version of the New Testament_, pp. 33-35.

{35} See a paper _On the Probable Future Position of the English Language_, by T. Watts, Esq., in the _Proceedings of the Philological Society_, vol. iv, p. 207.

{36} A little more than two centuries ago a poet, himself abundantly deserving the t.i.tle of 'well-languaged'; which a cotemporary or near successor gave him, ventured in some remarkable lines timidly to antic.i.p.ate this. Speaking of his native tongue, which he himself wrote with such vigour and purity, though wanting in the fiery impulses which go to the making of a first-rate poet, Daniel exclaims:--

"And who, in time, knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue, to what strange sh.o.r.es This gain of our best glory shall be sent, To enrich unknowing nations with our stores?

What worlds in the yet unformed Occident May come refined with the accents that are ours?

Or who can tell for what great work in hand The greatness of our style is now ordained?

What powers it shall bring in, what spirits command, What thoughts let out, what humours keep restrained, What mischief it may powerfully withstand, And what fair ends may thereby be attained"?

{37} _Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache_, Berlin, 1832, p. 5.

II

GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

It is not for nothing that we speak of some languages as _living_, of others as _dead_. All spoken languages may be ranged in the first cla.s.s; for as men will never consent to use a language without more or less modifying it in their use, will never so far forgo their own activity as to leave it exactly where they found it, it will therefore, so long as it is thus the utterance of human thought and feeling, inevitably show itself alive by many infallible proofs, by motion, growth, acquisition, loss, progress, and decay. A living language therefore is one which abundantly deserves this name; for it is one in which, spoken as it is by living men, a _vital_ formative energy is still at work. It is one which is in course of actual evolution, which, if the life that animates it be a healthy one, is appropriating and a.s.similating to itself what it anywhere finds congenial to its own life, multiplying its resources, increasing its wealth; while at the same time it is casting off useless and c.u.mbersome forms, dismissing from its vocabulary words of which it finds no use, rejecting from itself by a re-active energy the foreign and heterogeneous, which may for a while have been forced upon it. I would not a.s.sert that in the process of all this it does not make mistakes; in the desire to simplify it may let go distinctions which were not useless, and which it would have been better to retain; the acquisitions which it makes are very far from being all gains; it sometimes rejects words as worthless, or suffers words to die out, which were most worthy to have lived. So far as it does this its life is not perfectly healthy; there are here signs, however remote, of disorganization, decay, and ultimate death; but still it lives, and even these misgrowths and malformations, the rejection of this good, the taking up into itself of that ill, all these errors are themselves the utterances and evidences of life. A dead language is the contrary of all this. It is dead, because books, and not now any generation of living men, are the guardians of it, and what they guard, they guard without change. Its course has been completely run, and it is now equally incapable of gaining and of losing. We may come to know it better; but in itself it is not, and never can be, other than it was when it ceased from the lips of men.

{Sidenote: _English a Living Language_}

Our own is, of course, a living language still. It is therefore gaining and losing. It is a tree in which the vital sap is circulating yet, ascending from the roots into the branches; and as this works, new leaves are continually being put forth by it, old are dying and dropping away. I propose for the subject of my present lecture to consider some of the evidences of this life at work in it still. As I took for the subject of my first lecture the actual proportions in which the several elements of our composite English are now found in it, and the service which they were severally called on to perform, so I shall consider in this the _sources_ from which the English language has enriched its vocabulary, the _periods_ at which it has made the chief additions to this, the _character_ of the additions which at different periods it has made, and the _motives_ which induced it to seek them.

I had occasion to mention in that lecture and indeed I dwelt with some emphasis on the fact, that the core, the radical const.i.tution of our language, is Anglo-Saxon; so that, composite or mingled as it must be freely allowed to be, it is only such in respect to words, not in respect of construction, inflexions, or generally its grammatical forms.

These are all of one piece; and whatever of new has come in has been compelled to conform itself to these. The framework is English; only a part of the filling in is otherwise; and of this filling in, of these its comparatively more recent accessions, I now propose to speak.

{Sidenote: _The Norman Conquest_}

The first great augmentation by foreign words of our Saxon vocabulary, setting aside those which the Danes brought us, was a consequence, although not an immediate one, of the battle of Hastings, and of the Norman domination which Duke William's victory established in our land.

And here let me say in respect of that victory, in contradiction to the sentimental regrets of Thierry and others, and with the fullest acknowledgement of the immediate miseries which it entailed on the Saxon race, that it was really the making of England; a judgment, it is true, but a judgment and mercy in one. G.o.d never showed more plainly that He had great things in store for the people which should occupy this English soil, than when He brought hither that aspiring Norman race. At the same time the actual interpenetration of our Anglo-Saxon with any large amount of French words did not find place till very considerably later than this event, however it was a consequence of it. Some French words we find very soon after; but in the main the two streams of language continued for a long while separate and apart, even as the two nations remained aloof, a conquering and a conquered, and neither forgetting the fact.

Time however softened the mutual antipathies. The Norman, after a while shut out from France, began more and more to feel that England was his home and sphere. The Saxon, recovering little by little from the extreme depression which had ensued on his defeat, became every day a more important element of the new English nation which was gradually forming from the coalition of the two races. His language partook of his elevation. It was no longer the badge of inferiority. French was no longer the only language in which a gentleman could speak, or a poet sing. At the same time the Saxon, now pa.s.sing into the English language, required a vast addition to its vocabulary, if it were to serve all the needs of those who were willing to employ it now. How much was there of high culture, how many of the arts of life, of its refined pleasures, which had been strange to Saxon men, and had therefore found no utterance in Saxon words. All this it was sought to supply from the French.

We shall not err, I think, if we a.s.sume the great period of the incoming of French words into the English language to have been when the Norman n.o.bility were exchanging their own language for the English; and I should be disposed with Tyrwhitt to believe that there is much exaggeration in attributing the large influx of these into English to one man's influence, namely to Chaucer's{38}. Doubtless he did much; he fell in with and furthered a tendency which already prevailed. But to suppose that the majority of French vocables which he employed in his poems had never been employed before, had been hitherto unfamiliar to English ears, is to suppose that his poems must have presented to his contemporaries an absurd patchwork of two languages, and leaves it impossible to explain how he should at once have become the popular poet of our nation.

{Sidenote: _Influence of Chaucer_}

That Chaucer largely developed the language in this direction is indeed plain. We have only to compare his English with that of another great master of the tongue, his contemporary Wiclif, to perceive how much more his diction is saturated with French words than is that of the Reformer.

We may note too that many which he and others employed, and as it were proposed for admission, were not finally allowed and received; so that no doubt they went beyond the needs of the language, and were here in excess{39}. At the same time this can be regarded as no condemnation of their attempt. It was only by actual experience that it could be proved whether the language wanted those words or not, whether it could absorb them into itself, and a.s.similate them with all that it already was and had; or did not require, and would therefore in due time reject and put them away. And what happened then will happen in every attempt to transplant on a large scale the words of one language into another. Some will take root; others will not, but after a longer or briefer period will wither and die. Thus I observe in Chaucer such French words as these, 'misericorde', 'malure' (malheur), 'penible', 'ayel' (aieul), 'tas', 'gipon', 'pierrie' (precious stones); none of which, and Wiclif's 'creansur' (2 Kings iv. 1) as little, have permanently won a place in our tongue. For a long time 'mel', used often by Sylvester, struggled hard for a place in the language side by side with honey; 'roy' side by side with king; this last quite obtained one in Scotch. It is curious to mark some of these French adoptions keeping their ground to a comparatively late day, and yet finally extruded: seeming to have taken firm root, they have yet withered away in the end. Thus it has been, for example, with 'egal' (Puttenham); with 'ouvert', 'mot', 'ecurie', 'baston', 'gite' (Holland); with 'rivage', 'jouissance', 'n.o.blesse', 'tort' (=wrong), 'accoil' (accuellir), 'sell' (=saddle), all occurring in Spenser; with 'to serr' (serrer), 'vive', 'reglement', used all by Bacon; and so with 'esperance', 'orgillous' (orgueilleux), 'rondeur', 'scrimer' (=fencer), all in Shakespeare; with 'amort' (this also in Shakespeare){40}, and 'avie' (Holland). 'Maugre', 'congie', 'devoir', 'dimes', 'sans', and 'bruit', used often in our Bible, were English once{41}; when we employ them now, it is with the sense that we are using foreign words. The same is true of 'dulce', 'aigredoulce'

(=soursweet), of 'mur' for wall, of 'baine' for bath, of the verb 'to ca.s.s' (all in Holland), of 'volupty' (Sir Thomas Elyot), 'volunty'

(Evelyn), 'medisance' (Montagu), 'pet.i.t' (South), 'aveugle', 'colline'

(both in _State Papers_), and 'eloign' (Hacket){42}.