English Past and Present Part 5

'Human' is what every man is, 'humane' is what every man ought to be; for Johnson's suggestion that 'humane' is from the French feminine, 'humaine', and 'human' from the masculine, cannot for an instant be admitted. 'Ingenious' expresses a mental, 'ingenuous' a moral, excellence{118}. A gardener 'prunes', or trims his trees, properly indeed his _vines_ alone (pro_vigner_), birds 'preen' or trim their feathers. We 'allay' wine with water; we 'alloy' gold with platina.

'Bloom' is a finer and more delicate efflorescence even than 'blossom'; thus the 'bloom', but not the 'blossom', of the cheek. It is now always 'clots' of blood and 'clods' of earth; a 'float' of timber, and a 'fleet' of ships; men 'vend' wares, and 'vent' complaints. A 'curtsey'

is one, and that merely an external, manifestation of 'courtesy'.

'Gambling' may be, as with a fearful irony it is called, _play_, but it is nearly as distant from 'gambolling' as h.e.l.l is from heaven{119}. Nor would it be hard, in almost every pair or larger group of words which I have adduced, as in others which no doubt might be added to complete the list, to trace a difference of meaning which has obtained a more or less distinct recognition{120}.

But my subject is inexhaustible; it has no limits except those, which indeed may be often narrow enough, imposed by my own ignorance on the one side; and on the other, by the necessity of consulting your patience, and of only choosing such matter as will admit a popular setting forth. These necessities, however, bid me to pause, and suggest that I should not look round for other quarters from whence accessions of new words are derived. Doubtless I should not be long without finding many such. I must satisfy myself for the rest with a very brief consideration of the _motives_ which, as they have been, are still at work among us, inducing us to seek for these augmentations of our vocabulary.

And first, the desire of greater clearness is a frequent motive and inducement to this. It has been well and truly said: "Every new term, expressing a fact or a difference not precisely or adequately expressed by any other word in the same language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned it"{121}. The limits of their vocabulary are in fact for most men the limits of their knowledge; and in a great degree for us all. Of course I do not affirm that it is absolutely impossible to have our mental conceptions clearer and more distinct than our words; but it is very hard to have, and still harder to keep, them so. And therefore it is that men, conscious of this, so soon as ever they have learned to distinguish in their minds, are urged by an almost irresistible impulse to distinguish also in their words. They feel that nothing is made sure till this is done.

{Sidenote: _Dissimilation of Words_}

The sense that a word covers too large a s.p.a.ce of meaning, is the frequent occasion of the introduction of another, which shall relieve it of a portion of this. Thus, there was a time when 'witch' was applied equally to male and female dealers in unlawful magical arts. Simon Magus, for example, and Elymas are both 'witches', in Wiclif's _New Testament_ (Acts viii. 9; xiii. 8), and Posthumus in _Cymbeline_: but when the medieval Latin 'sortiarius' (not 'sort.i.tor' as in Richardson), supplied another word, the French 'sorcier', and thus our English 'sorcerer' (originally the "caster of lots"), then 'witch' gradually was confined to the hag, or female practiser of these arts, while 'sorcerer'

was applied to the male.

New necessities, new evolutions of society into more complex conditions, evoke new words; which come forth, because they are required now; but did not formerly exist, because they were not required in the period preceding. For example, in Greece so long as the poet sang his own verses 'singer' (???d??) sufficiently expressed the double function; such a 'singer' was Homer, and such Homer describes Demodocus, the bard of the Phaeacians; that double function, in fact, not being in his time contemplated as double, but each part of it so naturally completing the other, that no second word was required. When, however, in the division of labour one made the verses which another chaunted, then 'poet' or 'maker', a word unknown in the Homeric age, arose. In like manner, when 'physicians' were the only natural philosophers, the word covered this meaning as well as that other which it still retains; but when the investigation of nature and natural causes detached itself from the art of healing, became an independent study of itself, the name 'physician'

remained to that which was as the stock and stem of the art, while the new offshoot sought out a new name for itself.

Another motive to the invention of new words, is the desire thereby to cut short lengthy{122} explanations, tedious circuits of language.

Science is often an immense gainer by words, which say singly what it would have taken whole sentences otherwise to have said. Thus 'isothermal' is quite of modern invention; but what a long story it would be to tell the meaning of '_isothermal_ lines', all which is summed up in and saved by the word. We have long had the word 'a.s.similation' in our dictionaries; 'dissimilation' has not yet found its way into them, but it speedily will. It will appear first, if it has not already appeared, in our books on language{123}. I express myself with this confidence, because the advance of philological enquiry has rendered it almost a matter of necessity that we should possess a word to designate a certain process, and no other word would designate it at all so well. There is a process of 'a.s.similation'

going on very extensively in language; it occurs where the organs of speech find themselves helped by changing a letter for another which has just occurred, or will just occur in a word; thus we say not '_adf_iance' but '_aff_iance', not 're_n_ow_m_', as our ancestors did when the word 'renommee' was first naturalized, but 're_n_ow_n_'. At the same time there is another opposite process, where some letter would recur too often for euphony or comfort in speaking, if the strict form of the word were too closely held fast, and where consequently this letter is exchanged for some other, generally for some nearly allied; thus it is at least a reasonable suggestion, that 'c_r_uleum' was once 'c_l_uleum', from clum: so too the Italians prefer 've_l_e_n_o' to 've_n_e_n_o'; and we 'cinnamo_n_' to 'cinnamo_m_' (the earlier form); in 'turtle' and 'purple' we have shrunk from the double '_r_' of 'turtur' and 'purpura'; and this process of _making unlike_, requiring a term to express it, will create, or indeed has created, the word 'dissimilation', which probably will in due time establish itself among us in far wider than its primary use.

'Watershed' has only recently begun to appear in books of geography; and yet how convenient it must be admitted to be; how much more so than 'line of water parting', which it has succeeded; meaning, as I need hardly tell you it does, not merely that which _sheds_ the waters, but that which _divides_ them ('wa.s.serscheide'); and being applied to that exact ridge and highest line in a mountain region, where the waters of that region separate off and divide, some to one side, and some to the other; as in the Rocky Mountains of North America there are streams rising within very few miles of one another, which flow severally east and west, and, if not in unbroken course, yet as affluents to larger rivers, fall at least severally into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It must be allowed, I think, that not merely geographical terminology, but geography itself, had a benefactor in him who first endowed it with so expressive and comprehensive a word, bringing before us a fact which we should scarcely have been aware of without it.

There is another word which I have just employed, 'affluent', in the sense of a stream which does not flow into the sea, but joins a larger stream, as for instance, the Isis is an 'affluent' of the Thames, the Moselle of the Rhine. It is itself an example in the same kind of that whereof I have been speaking, having been only recently const.i.tuted a substantive, and employed in this sense, while yet its utility is obvious. 'Confluents' would perhaps be a fitter name, where the rivers, like the Missouri and the Mississippi, were of equal or nearly equal importance up to the time of their meeting{124}.

{Sidenote: '_Selfishness_', '_Suicide_'}

Again, new words are coined out of the necessity which men feel of filling up gaps in the language. Thoughtful men, comparing their own language with that of other nations, become conscious of deficiencies, of important matters unexpressed in their own, and with more or less success proceed to supply the deficiency. For example, that sin of sins, the undue love of self, with the postponing of the interests of all others to our own, had for a long time no word to express it in English.

Help was sought from the Greek, and from the Latin. 'Philauty'

(f??a?t?a) had been more than once attempted by our scholars; but found no popular acceptance. This failing, men turned to the Latin; one writer trying to supply the want by calling the man a 'suist', as one seeking _his own_ things ('sua'), and the sin itself, 'suicism'. The gap, however, was not really filled up, till some of the Puritan writers, drawing on our Saxon, devised 'selfish' and 'selfishness', words which to us seem obvious enough, but which yet are little more than two hundred [and fifty] years old{125}.

{Sidenote: _Notices of New Words_}

Before quitting this part of the subject, let me say a few words in conclusion on this deliberate introduction of words to supply felt omissions in a language, and the limits within which this or any other conscious interference with the development of a language is desirable or possible. By the time that a people begin to meditate upon their language, to be aware by a conscious reflective act either of its merits or deficiencies, by far the greater and more important part of its work is done; it is fixed in respect of its structure in immutable forms; the region in which any alteration or modification, addition to it, or substraction from it, deliberately devised and carried out, may be possible, is very limited indeed. Its great laws are too firmly established to admit of this; so that almost nothing can be taken from it, which it has got; almost nothing added to it, which it has _not_ got. It will travel indeed in certain courses of change; but it would be as easy almost to alter the career of a planet as for man to alter these. This is sometimes a subject of regret with those who see what they believe manifest defects or blemishes in their language, and such as appear to them capable of remedy. And yet in fact this is well; since for once that these redressers of real or fancied wrongs, these suppliers of things lacking, would have mended, we may be tolerably confident that ten times, yea, a hundred times, they would have marred; letting go that which would have been well retained; retaining that which by a necessary law the language now dismisses and lets go; and in manifold ways interfering with those processes of a natural logic, which are here evermore at work. The genius of a language, unconsciously presiding over all its transformations, and conducting them to a definite issue, will have been a far truer, far safer guide, than the artificial wit, however subtle, of any single man, or of any a.s.sociation of men. For the genius of a language is the sense and inner conviction of all who speak it, as to what it ought to be, and the means by which it will best attain its objects; and granting that a pair of eyes, or two or three pairs of eyes may see much, yet millions of eyes will certainly see more.

{Sidenote: _German Purists_}

It is only with the words, and not with the forms and laws of a language, that any interference such as I have just supposed is possible. Something, indeed much, may here be done by wise masters, in the way of rejecting that which would deform, allowing and adopting that which will strengthen and enrich. Those who would purify or enrich a language, so long as they have kept within this their proper sphere, have often effected much, more than at first could have seemed possible.

The history of the German language affords so much better ill.u.s.tration of this than our own would do, that I shall make no scruple in seeking my examples there. When the patriotic Germans began to wake up to a consciousness of the enormous encroachments which foreign languages, the Latin and French above all, had made on their native tongue, the lodgements which they had therein effected, and the danger which threatened it, namely, that it should cease to be German at all, but only a mingle-mangle, a variegated patchwork of many languages, without any unity or inner coherence at all, various societies were inst.i.tuted among them, at the beginning and during the course of the seventeenth century, for the recovering of what was lost of their own, for the expelling of that which had intruded from abroad; and these with excellent effect.

But more effectual than these societies were the efforts of single men, who in this merited well of their country{126}. In respect of words which are now entirely received by the whole nation, it is often possible to designate the writers who first subst.i.tuted them for some affected Gallicism or unnecessary Latinism. Thus to Lessing his fellow-countrymen owe the subst.i.tution of 'zartgefuhl' for 'delicatesse', of 'empfindsamkeit' for 'sentimentalitat', of 'wesenheit' for 'essence'. It was Voss (1786) who first employed 'alterthumlich' for 'antik'. Wieland too was the author or reviver of a mult.i.tude of excellent words, for which often he had to do earnest battle at the first; such were 'seligkeit', 'anmuth', 'entzuckung', 'festlich', 'entwirren', with many more. For 'maskerade', Campe would have fain subst.i.tuted 'larventanz'. It was a novelty when Busching called his great work on geography 'erdbeschreibung' instead of 'geographie'; while 'schnellpost' instead of 'diligence', 'zerrbild'

for 'carricatur' are also of recent introduction. In regard of 'worterbuch' itself, J. Grimm tells us he can find no example of its use dating earlier than 1719.

Yet at the same time it must be acknowledged that some of these reformers proceeded with more zeal than knowledge, while others did whatever in them lay to make the whole movement absurd--even as there ever hang on the skirts of a n.o.ble movement, be it in literature or politics or higher things yet, those who contribute their little all to bring ridicule and contempt upon it. Thus in the reaction against foreign interlopers which ensued, and in the zeal to purify the language from them, some went to such extravagant excesses as to desire to get rid of 'testament', 'apostel', which last Campe would have replaced by 'lehrbote', with other words like these, consecrated by longest use, and to find native subst.i.tutes in their room; or they understood so little what words deserved to be called foreign, or how to draw the line between them and native, that they would fain have gotten rid of 'vater', 'mutter', 'wein', 'fenster', 'meister', 'kelch'{127}; the first three of which belong to the German language by just as good a right as they do to the Latin and the Greek; while the other three have been naturalized so long that to propose to expel them now was as if, having pa.s.sed an alien act for the banishment of all foreigners, we should proceed to include under that name, and as such drive forth from the kingdom, the descendants of the French Protestants who found refuge here at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or even of the Flemings who settled among us in the time of our Edwards. One notable enthusiast in this line proposed to create an entirely new nomenclature for all the mythological personages of the Greek and the Roman pantheon, who, one would think, might have been allowed, if any, to retain their Greek and Latin names. So far however from this, they were to exchange these for equivalent German t.i.tles; Cupid was to be 'l.u.s.tkind', Flora 'Bluminne', Aurora 'Rothin'; instead of Apollo schoolboys were to speak of 'Singhold'; instead of Pan of 'Schaflieb'; instead of Jupiter of 'Helfevater', with much else of the same kind. Let us beware (and the warning extends much further than to the matter in hand) of making a good cause ridiculous by our manner of supporting it, of a.s.suming that exaggerations on one side can only be redressed by exaggerations as great upon the other.

{FOOTNOTES}

{38} Thus Alexander Gil, head-master of St. Paul's School, in his book, _Logonomia Anglica_, 1621, _Preface_: Huc usque peregrinae voces in lingua Anglica inauditae. Tandem circa annum 1400 Galfridus Chaucerus, infausto omine, vocabulis Gallicis et Latinis poesin suam famosam reddidit. The whole pa.s.sage, which is too long to quote, as indeed the whole book, is curious. Gil was an earnest advocate of phonetic spelling, and has adopted it in all his English quotations in this book.

{39} We may observe exactly the same in Plautus: a mult.i.tude of Greek words are used by him, which the Latin language did not want, and therefore refused to take up; thus 'clepta', 'zamia' (???a), 'danista', 'harpagare', 'apolactizare', 'nauclerus', 'strategus', 'morologus', 'phylaca', 'malacus', 'sycophantia', 'euscheme'

(e?s????), 'dulice' (d???????), [so 'scymnus' by Lucretius], none of which, I believe, are employed except by him; 'mastigias' and 'techna' appear also in Terence. Yet only experience could show that they were superfluous; and at the epoch of Latin literature in which Plautus lived, it was well done to put them on trial.

{40} [Modern poets have given 'amort' a new life; it is used by Keats, by Bailey (_Festus_, x.x.x), and by Browning (_Sordello_, vi).]

{41} ['Bruit' has been revived by Carlyle and Chas. Merivale. Its verbal form is used by Cowper, Byron and d.i.c.kens.]

{42} Let me here observe once for all that in adding the name of an author, which I shall often do, to a word, I do not mean to affirm the word in any way peculiar to him; although in some cases it may be so; but only to give one authority for its use. [Coleridge uses 'eloign'.]

{43} _Essay on English Poetry_, p. 93.

{44} _Dedication of the Translation of the aeneid_.

{45} [i.e. the promoters of Cla.s.sical learning.]

{46} We have notable evidence in some lines of Waller of the sense which in his time scholars had of the rapidity with which the language was changing under their hands. Looking back at what the last hundred years had wrought of alteration in it, and very naturally a.s.suming that the next hundred would effect as much, he checked with misgivings such as these his own hope of immortality:

"Who can hope his lines should long Last in a daily changing tongue?

While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.

"Poets that lasting marble seek, Must carve in Latin or in Greek: _We_ write in sand; our language grows, And like the tide our work o'erflows".

Such were his misgivings as to the future, a.s.suming that the rate of change would continue what it had been. How little they have been fulfilled, every one knows. In actual fact two centuries, which have elapsed since he wrote, have hardly antiquated a word or a phrase in his poems. If we care very little for them now, that is to be explained by quite other causes--by the absence of all moral earnestness from them.

{47} In his _Art of English Poesy_, London, 1589, republished in Haslewood's _Ancient Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy_, London, 1811, vol. i. pp. 122, 123; [and in Arber's _English Reprints_, 1869].

{48} London, 1601. Besides this work Holland translated the whole of Plutarch's _Moralia_, the _Cyropdia_ of Xenophon, Livy, Suetonius, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, and Camden's _Britannia_. His works make a part of the "library of dullness" in Pope's _Dunciad_:

"De Lyra there a dreadful front extends, And here the groaning shelves _Philemon_ bends"--

very unjustly; the authors whom he has translated are all more or less important, and his versions of them a mine of genuine idiomatic English, neglected by most of our lexicographers, wrought to a considerable extent, and with eminent advantage by Richardson; yet capable, as it seems to me, of yielding much more than they hitherto have yielded.

{49} And so too in French it is surprising to find of how late introduction are many words, which it seems as if the language could never have done without. 'Desinteress.e.m.e.nt', 'exact.i.tude', 'sagacite', 'bravoure', were not introduced till late in the seventeenth century. 'Renaissance', 'emportement', 'scavoir-faire', 'indelebile', 'desagrement', were all recent in 1675 (Bouhours); 'indevot', 'intolerance', 'impardonnable', 'irreligieux', were struggling into allowance at the end of the seventeenth century, and were not established till the beginning of the eighteenth.

'Insidieux' was invented by Malherbe; 'frivolite' does not appear in the earlier editions of the _Dictionary of the Academy_; the Abbe de St. Pierre was the first to employ 'bienfaisance', the elder Balzac 'feliciter', Sarrasin 'burlesque'. Mad. de Sevigne exclaims against her daughter for employing 'effervescence' in a letter (comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voila un mot dont je n'avais jamais ou parler). 'Demagogue' was first hazarded by Bossuet, and was counted so bold a novelty that it was long before any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne had introduced 'diversion' and 'enfantillage', though not without being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the last.

Desfontaines was the first who employed 'suicide'; Caron gave to the language 'avant-propos', Ronsard 'avidite', Joachim Dubellay 'patrie', Denis Sauvage 'jurisconsulte', Menage 'gracieux' (at least so Voltaire affirms) and 'prosateur', Desportes 'pudeur', Chapelain 'urbanite', and Etienne first brought in, apologizing at the same time for the boldness of it, 'a.n.a.logie' (si les oreilles francoises peuvent porter ce mot). 'Preliber' (praelibare) is a word of our own day; and it was Charles Nodier who, if he did not coin, yet revived the obsolete 'simplesse'.--See Genin, _Variations du Langage Francais_, pp. 308-19.

{50} [Resuscitated in vain by Charles Lamb.]

{51} J. Grimm (_Worterbuch_, p. xxvi.): Fallt von ungefahr ein fremdes wort in den brunnen einer sprache, so wird es so lange darin umgetrieben, bis es ihre farbe annimmt, und seiner fremden art zum trotze wie ein heimisches aussieht.

{52} Have we here an explanation of the 'battalia' of Jeremy Taylor and others? Did they, without reflecting on the matter, regard 'battalion' as a word with a Greek neuter termination? It is difficult to think they should have done so; yet more difficult to suggest any other explanation. ['Battalia' was sometimes mistaken as a plural, which indeed it was originally, the word being derived through the Italian _battaglia_, from low Latin _battalia_, which (like _biblia_, _gaudia_, etc.) was afterwards regarded as a feminine singular (Skeat, _Principles_, ii, 230). But Shakespeare used it as a singular, "Our _battalia_ trebles that account"

(_Rich. III_, v. 3, 11); and so Sir T. Browne, "The Roman _battalia_ was ordered after this manner" (_Garden of Cyrus_, 1658, p. 113).]

{53} "And old heroes, which their world did daunt".

_Sonnet on Scanderbeg._

{54} [By J. H(ealey), 1610, who has "centones ... of diuerse colours", p. 605.]