The foregoing Tract is one of great interest, not only on account of its
intrinsic merit, but also for the racy style of writing adopted by its
author. We find him continually garnishing his language with such
idiomatic and colloquial expressions as the following:--“Quhae’s sillie
braine will reache no farther then the compas of their cap” (page 2);
and again, “but will not presume to judge farther then the compasse of
my awn cap” (p. 20). He observes of the printers and writers of his age
that they care “for noe more arte then may win the pennie” (p. 2), and
on the same page he says, “quhiles I stack in this claye,” which appears
to be equivalent to our term “stuck in the mud.” At p. 3 he says, “and
it wer but a clod;” at p. 14, “neither daer I, with al the oares of
reason, row against so strang a tyde;” and again, on p. 18, we find
reason under another aspect, thus, “noe man I trow can denye that ever
suked the paepes of reason.”
It seems that the expression, _Queen’s English_, is by no means of
modern date, as we have it as the _king’s language_ at p. 2.
Hume laments, in his Dedication, the uncertainty of the orthography
prevailing at the time he writes, and yet we find him spelling words
several different ways, even within the compass of a single sentence,
without being able to lay the blame upon the printers; thus we find him
writing ju_d_gement on p. 11, ju_d_ge p. 8, and ju_d_g p. 33, but juge
p. 18; and there are numberless other instances that it would be tedious
to enumerate. Again, the author uses a mixture of Scotch and English, so
we have sometimes ane and sometimes one; nae on page 1 and noe on p. 2;
mare and mast, and more and most, even in the same sentence (p. 30); and
two is spelt in three different ways, tuae, tuo, and tuoe.
Our author’s stay in England appears to have drawn his attention to the
differences between the two languages of Scotland and England, which he
distinguishes as North and South. He certainly shows, in some instances,
the greater correctness of the Scotch with regard to the spelling of
words derived from the Latin; as, retine instead of retain, corage
instead of courage, etc. (p. 20), in which words the redundant letters
that we Southerners have introduced are thrown out. He is, however, by
no means partial, and gives us praise when he thinks we deserve it.
Page 9. The arguments in favour of the sound given by the English
Universities to the Latin _i_ are curious: it is stated to have its
value in the Greek ει; but the author seems to have been in error as
to the English sounding mihi and tibi alike, or our pronunciation must
have changed since his time.
P. 10. The author speaks of the letter _y_ as being used by the South
for the sound now symbolized by _i_ with a final _e_ following the
succeeding consonant, as _will_ with an _i_, and _wile_ with a _y_ in
place of the _i_ and final _e_; thus in the same way he spells write,
_wryt_.
P. 11 (7). He gives food, good, blood, as examples of the same sound,
thus inferring that the English pronounced the two latter so as to
rhyme with food.
P. 11 (8). He objects to the use of _w_ for _u_ in the diphthongal
sound of _ou_, and therefore spells _how_, _now_, etc., _hou_, _nou_.
P. 11 (10). It is difficult here to see what the pronunciation of
_buu_ would be, which the author gives as the sound of bow (to bow).
Probably the sound he meant would be better represented by _boo_.
P. 13 (12). The author here recommends the distinction both of sound
and symbol of _j_ and _v_ as consonants, and _i_ and _u_ as vowels,
and proposes that we should call _j_ _jod_ or _je_, and _v_ _vau_ or
_ve_, and not single _u_, “as now they doe” (p. 16), and _w_ he would
call _wau_ or _we_, and moreover he places them in his alphabet on the
same page. If this proposal was originally his own, it is curious that
the name _ve_ should have been adopted, though not the _we_ for _w_.
Ben Jonson points out the double power of _i_ and _v_ as both
consonant and vowel, but he does not attempt to make them into
separate letters as Hume does.
P. 15 (12). He gives as an anomaly of the South that while the _d_ is
inserted before _g_ in hedge, bridge, etc., it is omitted in age,
suage, etc. He does not see that the short vowel requires a double
consonant to prevent it from being pronounced long.
P. 21 (6). He disputes the possibility of a final _e_, separated from
a preceding vowel by a consonant, having any effect whatever in
altering the sound of the preceding vowel, and recommends the use of a
diphthong to express the sound required; as, hoep for hope, fier for
fire, bied for bide, befoer for before, maed for made, etc. He
uniformly throughout follows this rule.
P. 22 (5). Hume here accents difficultie on the antepenultimate
instead of the first syllable.
P. 23 (7). He puts down outrage as an instance of two distinct words
joined by a hyphen, which is the derivation given by Ash in his
dictionary, in strange obliviousness of the French word _outrage_.
P. 27 (1, 6). _T_ is omitted after _s_ in the second person singular
of the verb, and so no distinction is made between the second and the
third persons; thus, thou wrytes, and at p. 32 thou was, and thou hes.
P. 29 (7). The supposition that the apostrophe ’s as a mark of the
possessive case is a segment of his, a question which has been lately
revived, is here denied.
P. 34. In this last chapter on Punctuation, which the author styles
“of Distinctiones,” no mention whatever is made of the “semicolon,”
though it occurs frequently in the MS., as, for instance, p. 30, cap.
6. This stop, according to Herbert, was first used by Richard Grafton
in _The Byble_ printed in 1537: it occurs in the Dedication. Henry
Denham, an English printer who flourished towards the close of the
sixteenth century, was the first to use it with propriety.
P. 34 (6). The explanation of the mode of pronouncing the comma “with
a short _sob_” is odd.[5]
[Footnote 5: It will be here as well to mention that as the
punctuation in the MS. is extremely unsystematic, it has been
dispensed with whenever the meaning was confused by it.]
The author continually uses a singular verb to a plural noun; for
instance, “of this we, as the latines, hes almost no use” (p. 22),
though on p. 20 he writes, “in our tongue we have some particles.”
With regard to the Manuscript, there are two corrections in it worth
noting. At p. 10 (6), in the phrase, “the auctours _whole_ drift,” the
word had been originally written _hael_, but is marked through, and
_whole_ substituted for it in the same handwriting. At p. 21 (4), the
word _frensh_ has been inserted before _exemples_, but has been
afterwards struck through.
The numbering is wrong in three places, but it has not been corrected.
At p. 8 there are no sections 12 and 13, at pp. 17, 19, there are two
cap. 7, and at p. 19 there are two sections 4.