Why we should read Part 21

But for a study of seventeenth-century colloquial English we are directed to the letters in the _Verney Memoirs_. Just as in the sixteenth century Henry Machyn's diary was more to our purpose than the work of any great man, so are the _Verney Papers_ in the seventeenth century the eternal joy of the philologist. A large proportion of the letters are written by ladies, and it is from these that we get the greater number of departures from the conventional spelling which shed so much light upon p.r.o.nunciation. If they spell phonetically it is not because their talk was more careless, but because they read less and were therefore unfamiliar with the orthodox spelling of printed books.

To spell badly, it must be remembered, was no fault in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. From them we get this common form of p.r.o.nouncing _ar_ for _er_--_sartinly_, _desarve_, _sarvant_, _sarve_, _presarve_, _divartion_, _larne_, _marcy_; from them we get _gine_ for _join_, _byled_ for _boiled_, _oblege_ for _oblige_, _seein_, _missin_, _comin_, _disablegin_, _lemonds_, _night gownd_; they shorten _have_ to _a_; they say _between you and I_ and _he is reasonable well agane_.

This free and easy p.r.o.nunciation and grammar which are characteristic of fashionable English down to the middle of the eighteenth century is partly due to the intimate relation that existed between the ruling cla.s.ses who visited their estates in the country and came directly into contact with regional speech. "It is just this constant touch with country pursuits and rustic dialect which distinguished, and still distinguishes, the upper cla.s.ses from the middle-cla.s.s dwellers in the town."

We owe a good deal to a phonetician called Cooper, whose _Grammatica Anglicana_ was published in 1685. From him we see that _line_ and _loin_ had the same p.r.o.nunciation. _Ant_ and _aunt_, _Rome_ and _room_, _Noah's_ and _nose_, _Walter_ and _water_, _doer_ and _door_, _pulls_ and _pulse_, _shire_ and _shear_--these show us at once how closely the real rustic of to-day gets to the fashionable speech of two hundred years ago. He then gives us p.r.o.nunciations which he would have his readers avoid as barbarous: _ommost_ for _almost_, _wuts_ for _oats_, _fut_ for _foot_; but it is pleasant to find that Mr Cooper is pleasantly free from that gross and besetting sin of the schoolmaster to describe an ideally "correct" English.

This omission of the "l" (in _Walter_) is extended by another "phonographer" in 1701 to _St Albans_, _Talbot_, _falcon_, _almanac_, _almost_, _Falmouth_, _falter_: apparently too, in his time, the _au_ sound which most of us have kept in _sausage_ and _because_ extended then to _auburn_, _auction_, _audience_, _august_, _aunt_, _austere_, _daunt_, _fault_, _fraud_, _jaundice_, _Paul_ and _vault_.

William Baker in 1724 gave us in his _Rules for True Spelling and Writing English_, an instructive list of what he called "words that are commonly p.r.o.nounced very different from what they are written"!

_Stomick_, _spannel_, _Dannel_, _venison_, _medson_ are noteworthy.

From the middle of the eighteenth century there are signs of a reaction against a laxity in p.r.o.nunciation, influenced perhaps by Lord Chesterfield and Doctor Johnson.

Johnson, we know, favoured the "regular and solemn" rather than the "cursory and colloquial."

It is to be noticed in pa.s.sing that all the "reforms" in p.r.o.nunciation and grammar which have pa.s.sed into general currency in colloquial English during the last hundred and fifty years have come from below and not from above, in the first instance. This accounts for what some of us look on as the offensive vulgarity of the modern p.r.o.nunciations of _waistcoat_, _often_, _forehead_, _landscape_, _handkerchief_, due to a wish to speak correctly. So our p.r.o.nunciation of _gold_, _servant_, _oblige_, _nature_, _London_, _Edward_, etc., would in their turn have struck our grandfathers as offensive vulgarisms.

The later eighteenth century and the early nineteenth seem to have favoured a very serious turn of mind. It is really extraordinary to think of the hold which Jane Austen exerts over us when we come to a.n.a.lyse the total absence of brilliance, humour, pointedness or charm of any kind that marks the conversation of her characters. The charm and the genius lie in the author's handling of these second-rate people, but she represents them as they actually were. These are actually the conversations of living people. All the little pomposities and reticences, the polite formulas, the unconscious vulgarisms, the well-bred insincerities of the age are here perfectly displayed. The Bennets, D'Arcy's, Wodehouses, etc., p.r.o.nounced their words _kyard_, _gyearl_, _ojus_, _Injun_, _comin'_, _goin'_, and so on. Lady Catherine de Burgh probably said _Eddard_, _tay_, _chaney_, _ooman_, _neigb'rood_, _lanskip_, _Lunnon_, _cheer_ (chair) and perhaps _goold_, _obleege_ and _sarvant_.

Professor Wyld quite rightly waxes indignant over the rise of bogus p.r.o.nunciations, based purely on the spelling, among persons who were ignorant of the best traditional usage until they obtained currency among the better cla.s.ses. "It would be desirable," he says, "to run these monstrosities to earth, when it would probably appear that many had their origin among ignorant teachers of p.r.o.nunciation." "It would be an interesting inquiry," he says in another place, "how far the falling off in the quality of prose style among the generality of writers after the third quarter of the eighteenth century is related to social developments. An East Indian director is said to have told Charles Lamb (of all men!) that the style the Company most appreciated was the humdrum, thus doubtlessly voicing the literary ideals of the rising cla.s.s of bankers, brokers, and nabobs whose point of view was largely to dominate English taste for several generations."

It is worth remembering that the change in p.r.o.nunciation of a host of words like _heat_, _meat_, _eat_, _ease_, _sea_, _speak_, _cheat_, _dream_, _deceit_ from _hate_, _mate_, _ate_, _ase_, _say_ and so on is not in the nature of a sound change, but is merely the abandonment of one type of p.r.o.nunciation, and the adoption of another, a very common phenomenon.

It was a visit to _The Beggar's Opera_ that made me think the following sentence worthy of comment. The present-day vulgarism of dropping the initial aspirate was not widespread much before the end of the eighteenth century, and it made one wince to hear an otherwise good actor so far go out of his part as to drop "h's" where the original would never have done so. The restoration of an aspirate in _humour_ is a trick of yesterday. The gap in the evidence between Machyn and two hundred years later is remarkable. The practice which did exist in Machyn's day in London must have been confined to a limited cla.s.s. The wrong addition of _h_ is far more noticeable.

In a most diverting final chapter Professor Wyld dilates on colloquial idiom, and reminds us how impossible it would be for us, if we were transported into the sixteenth century, to know how to greet or take leave of those we met, how to express our thanks suitably, how to ask a favour, pay a compliment or send a polite message to a gentleman's wife.

We should be at a loss how to begin and end the simplest note, whether to a friend, relative or stranger. We should hesitate every moment how to address the person we were talking to.

Readers of Ford Madox Hueffer's _Ladies whose Bright Eyes_, and those who saw _When Knights were Bold_, will realise what infinite amus.e.m.e.nt can be called up by imagining oneself driven to talk on level terms with our ancestors.

Professor Wyld opens up the subject by giving characteristic specimens of modes of greeting, farewells, compliments, endearments, angry speeches, oaths, affectations and so on, all of which are entertaining and enlightening. We find, for instance, most of our modern formulas in letter-writing in use before the end of the first half of the seventeenth century.

For anyone in the least interested in the sources and development of his own language there is no book which will whet his appet.i.te to pursue the subject still more deeply than Professor Wyld's History. It has the added advantage that scholars will find in it plenty of material for further research; but everyone should read it for the flood of light it sheds on what we fondly imagined to be good taste, on what is falsely thought to be "the correct thing," and most of all because it shows us still another way of "catching the manners" of other ages "living as they rise."

II

_THE ROMANCE OF WORDS_--BY ERNEST WEEKLEY

Professor Weekley interests us in philology no less than Professor Wyld, but he treads an entirely different path. His aim is to select the unexpected in etymology, to show us the close connection between _jilt_ and _Juliet_, to trace _a.s.segai_ back to Chaucer, to explain the true meaning of phrases like _curry favour_, which really means the combing down of a horse of a particular colour.

The result of this system is that we begin for ourselves to eye every word with suspicion, and work out by ourselves reasons why _trivial_ means _commonplace_ (it can be picked up anywhere, at the meet of "three ways," _trivium_), and so on.

Why are the series of monosyllables by which notes are indicated, do, re, mi, fa, so, la? They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn:

"_Ut_ (_do_) queant laxis _re_sonare fibris _Mi_ra questorum _fa_muli tuorum _Sol_ve polluti _la_bu reatum Sancte Iohannees ..."

Professor Weekley invites us to watch words as they travel, an amusing game.

_Apricot_ starts in mediaeval Greek, through vulgar Latin as _praec.o.x_ (early ripe), through Arabia. It first crossed the Adriatic, pa.s.sed on to Asia Minor or the north coast of Africa, and then travelling along the Mediterranean re-entered Southern Europe. _Carat_ does much the same, being a corruption through French, Italian and Arabic of the Greek [Greek: ?e?at???] (fruit of the locust-tree, little horn). _Hussar_ is a doublet of _corsair_, and has travelled a long way since the separation first took place. The _cocoa_ of _cocoanut_ is a Spanish baby word for a bogey-man.

Then there are words of popular manufacture like _ortolan_, _guinea-pig_ (which is not a pig and does not come from Guinea), _parrot_ ("little Peter"), _pinchbeck_ and _nicotine_ (from the names of men), and so on.

Phonetic accidents account for many vagaries, as we see only too commonly with the letter "_h_." It is noteworthy that in Imperial Rome educated people sounded the aspirate, while it completely disappeared from the everyday language of the lower cla.s.ses, the vulgar Latin from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned.

That is why the Romance languages have no aspirate. Our "educated" _h_ in modern English is mainly artificial, as we saw before: cf. _Armitage_ with _hermitage_.

Then there are sound changes by a.s.similation, dissimilation and metathesis: the _lime_ and _linden_ is an example of the first; _tankard_ for _cantar_, _wattle_ and _wallet_ examples of the third.

Some words shrink, like _Spittlegate_ near Grantham for _hospital gate_, _gin_ for _Geneva_, _grog_ from the admiral who wore _grogram_ breeches, _navvy_ for _navigator_. Words have a habit too of completely changing their meaning. _Treacle_ used for _balm_ in Coverdale's Bible from _theriaca_, a remedy against snake-bite, a _lumber_-room, is really a _Lombard_ room, where the p.a.w.nbrokers stored pledged property.

Adjectives are especially subject to change. _Quaint_ used to mean _acquaint_; _restive_ used to mean standing stock still; _smug_ used to mean trim, elegant, beautiful; _homely_ used to mean ugly, disagreeable, coa.r.s.e.

_Miniature_ ought to mean something painted in _minium_ (red lead).

The original _scavenger_ was an important official.

There is too the study of semantics--the science of meanings as distinguished from phonetics, the science of sound.

The _exchequer_ is really a _chess-board_; _chancel_ a _cross-bar_, so _cancel_.

The study of metaphors is a little startling, when we find that to "take the cake" is paralleled by the Greek [Greek: ?ae?? t?? p??a???ta], and that "to lose the _ship_ for a ha'porth of tar" is merely dialect for _sheep_. Tar is used as a medicine for sheep.

Folk etymology is worth spending time over, if only to discover such things as the derivation of _humble-pie_, a pie made from the _umbles_ of a stag; _umpire_ (non per), not equal; _ramper_, causeway, a doublet of _rampart_; _purley_, a strip of disforested woodland from _pour-allee_; _taffrail_ from _tafel_, picture; _posthumous_, from _postumus_, latest-born. _Witch-elm_ has nothing to do with witches; it is for _weech-elm_, the bent elm.

Ignorance of the true meaning of a word leads to vain repet.i.tions: _greyhound_ means _hound-hound_; _Buckhurst Holt Wood_ means beech wood wood wood; a _cheerful face_ means a face full of face.

And before taking leave of us and sending us off on a thousand different scents of our own in chase of words Professor Weekley warns us to preserve the rules of the hunt. A sound etymology must not violate the recognised laws of sound change (these may be found in Professor Wyld's book); the development of meaning must be clearly traced, and it must start from the earliest or fundamental sense of the word.

With the few delicious examples that I have quoted before you, multiplied by a thousand in _The Romance of Words_, this is a game to send you into ecstasies, and one of which you can never tire.

III

_THE ROMANCE OF NAMES_--BY ERNEST WEEKLEY

This companion volume to _The Romance of Words_ is no less diverting. It is just one branch of the hunt, and perhaps the most interesting one to start with. We find mythical etymologies like that of the Napiers of Merchiston who took the motto _n'a pier_ ("has no equal"), whereas their ancestors were the servants who looked after the napery. Not all the _Seymours_ are _St Maurs_. Some of them were once _Seamers_--_i.e._ tailors.

The ff in _ffrench_ and _ffoulkes_ is sheer affectation, as the _ff_ is merely the method of indicating the capital letter in early doc.u.ments.

The telescoping of long names leads to trouble among the ignorant.

Auchinleck, _Affleck_; Postlethwaite, _Posnett_; Wolstenholme, _Woosnam_ are good examples of this.

It is well to be reminded, for the sake of those who bear "hideous names," of the following facts. Matthew Arnold in his essay on the _Function of Criticism at the Present Time_ is moved by the case of _Wragg_ to this: