language as the other. It represents and supplies needs not less real
than the other does. Philosophy and science and the arts of a high
civilization find their utterance in the Latin words of our language,
or, if not in the Latin, in the Greek, which for present purposes may be
grouped with them. How they should have found utterance in the speech of
rude tribes, which, never having cultivated the things, must needs have
been without the words which should express those things. Granting too
that, _cœteris paribus_, when a Latin and a Saxon word offer themselves
to our choice, we shall generally do best to employ the Saxon, to speak
of ‘happiness’ rather than ‘felicity’, ‘almighty’ rather than
‘omnipotent’, a ‘forerunner’ rather than a ‘precursor’, still these
latter must be regarded as much denizens in the language as the former,
no alien interlopers, but possessing the rights of citizenship as fully
as the most Saxon word of them all. One part of the language is not to
be favoured at the expense of the other; the Saxon at the cost of the
Latin, as little as the Latin at the cost of the Saxon. “Both are
indispensable; and speaking generally without stopping to distinguish as
to subject, both are _equally_ indispensable. Pathos, in situations
which are homely, or at all connected with domestic affections,
naturally moves by Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of every kind, which (to
merit the name of _lyrical_) must be in the state of flux and reflux,
or, generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon element of our
language. And why? Because the Saxon is the aboriginal element; the
basis and not the superstructure: consequently it comprehends all the
ideas which are natural to the heart of man and to the elementary
situations of life. And although the Latin often furnishes us with
duplicates of these ideas, yet the Saxon, or monosyllabic part, has the
advantage of precedency in our use and knowledge; for it is the language
of the nursery whether for rich or poor, in which great philological
academy no toleration is given to words in ‘osity’ or ‘ation’. There is
therefore a great advantage, as regards the consecration to our
feelings, settled by usage and custom upon the Saxon strands in the
mixed yarn of our native tongue. And universally, this may be
remarked--that wherever the passion of a poem is of that sort which
_uses_, _presumes_, or _postulates_ the ideas, without seeking to extend
them, Saxon will be the ‘cocoon’ (to speak by the language applied to
silk-worms), which the poem spins for itself. But on the other hand,
where the motion of the feeling is _by_ and _through_ the ideas, where
(as in religious or meditative poetry--Young’s, for instance, or
Cowper’s), the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues of
the thinking, there the Latin will predominate; and so much so that,
whilst the flesh, the blood, and the muscle, will be often almost
exclusively Latin, the articulations only, or hinges of connection, will
be the Anglo-Saxon”.
These words which I have just quoted are De Quincey’s--whom I must needs
esteem the greatest living master of our English tongue. And on the same
matter Sir Francis Palgrave has expressed himself thus: “Upon the
languages of Teutonic origin the Latin has exercised great influence,
but most energetically on our own. The very early admixture of the
_Langue d’Oil_, the never interrupted employment of the French as the
language of education, and the nomenclature created by the scientific
and literary cultivation of advancing and civilized society, have
Romanized our speech; the warp may be Anglo-Saxon, but the woof is Roman
as well as the embroidery, and these foreign materials have so entered
into the texture, that were they plucked out, the web would be torn to
rags, unravelled and destroyed”{32}.
{Sidenote: _The English Bible_}
I do not know where we could find a happier example of the preservation
of the golden mean in this matter than in our Authorized Version of the
Bible. One of the chief among the minor and secondary blessings which
that Version has conferred on the nation or nations drawing spiritual
life from it,--a blessing not small in itself, but only small by
comparison with the infinitely higher blessings whereof it is the
vehicle to them,--is the happy wisdom, the instinctive tact, with which
its authors have steered between any futile mischievous attempt to
ignore the full rights of the Latin part of the language on the one
side, and on the other any burdening of their Version with such a
multitude of learned Latin terms as should cause it to forfeit its
homely character, and shut up large portions of it from the
understanding of plain and unlearned men. There is a remarkable
confession to this effect, to the wisdom, in fact, which guided them
from above, to the providence that overruled their work, an honourable
acknowledgement of the immense superiority in this respect of our
English Version over the Romish, made by one now, unhappily, familiar
with the latter, as once he was with our own. Among those who have
recently abandoned the communion of the English Church one has exprest
himself in deeply touching tones of lamentation over all, which in
renouncing our translation, he feels himself to have forgone and lost.
These are his words: “Who will not say that the uncommon beauty and
marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great
strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear, like a music
that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the
convert hardly knows how he can forgo. Its felicities often seem to be
almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind,
and the anchor of national seriousness.... The memory of the dead passes
into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its
verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden
beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and
all that there has been about him of soft and gentle and pure and
penitent and good speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible.... It
is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never
soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant
with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is
not in his Saxon Bible”{33}.
{Sidenote: _The Rhemish Bible_}
Such are his touching words; and certainly one has only to compare this
version of ours with the Rhemish, and the transcendent excellence of our
own reveals itself at once. I am not extolling now its superior
scholarship; its greater freedom from by-ends; as little would I urge
the fact that one translation is from the original Greek, the other from
the Latin Vulgate, and thus the translation of a translation, often
reproducing the mistakes of that translation; but, putting aside all
considerations such as these, I speak only here of the superiority of
the diction in which the meaning, be it correct or incorrect, is
conveyed to English readers. Thus I open the Rhemish version at
Galatians v. 19, where the long list of the “works of the flesh”, and of
the “fruit of the Spirit”, is given. But what could a mere English
reader make of words such as these--‘impudicity’, ‘ebrieties’,
‘comessations’, ‘longanimity’, all which occur in that passage? while
our Version for ‘ebrieties’ has ‘drunkenness’, for ‘comessations’ has
‘revellings’, and so also for ‘longanimity’ ‘longsuffering’. Or set over
against one another such phrases as these,--in the Rhemish, “the
exemplars of the celestials” (Heb. ix. 23), but in ours, “the patterns
of things in the heavens”. Or suppose if, instead of the words _we_ read
at Heb. xiii. 16, namely “To do good and to communicate forget not; for
with such sacrifices God is well pleased”, we read as follows, which are
the words of the Rhemish, “Beneficence and communication do not forget;
for with such hosts God is promerited”!--Who does not feel that if our
Version had been composed in such Latin-English as this, had abounded in
words like ‘odible’, ‘suasible’, ‘exinanite’, ‘contristate’,
‘postulations’, ‘coinquinations’, ‘agnition’, ‘zealatour’, all, with
many more of the same mint, in the Rhemish Version, our loss would have
been great and enduring, one which would have searched into the whole
religious life of our people, and been felt in the very depths of the
national mind{34}?
There was indeed something still deeper than love of sound and genuine
English at work in our Translators, whether they were conscious of it or
not, which hindered them from presenting the Scriptures to their
fellow-countrymen dressed out in such a semi-Latin garb as this. The
Reformation, which they were in this translation so mightily
strengthening and confirming, was just a throwing off, on the part of
the Teutonic nations, of that everlasting pupilage in which Rome would
have held them; an assertion at length that they were come to full age,
and that not through her, but directly through Christ, they would
address themselves unto God. The use of the Latin language as the
language of worship, as the language in which the Scriptures might alone
be read, had been the great badge of servitude, even as the Latin habits
of thought and feeling which it promoted had been the great helps to the
continuance of this servitude, through long ages. It lay deep then in
the very nature of their cause that the Reformers should develop the
Saxon, or essentially national, element in the language; while it was
just as natural that the Roman Catholic translators, if they must
translate the Scriptures into English at all, should yet translate them
into such English as should bear the nearest possible resemblance to the
Latin Vulgate, which Rome with a very deep wisdom of this world would
gladly have seen as the only one in the hands of the faithful.
{Sidenote: _Future of the English Language_}
Let me again, however, recur to the fact that what our Reformers did in
this matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they had shown the
same wise moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the Latin
side of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it to
encroach upon and usurp those of the Teutonic part of the language. It
would be difficult not to believe, even if many outward signs said not
the same, that great things are in store for the one language of Europe
which thus serves as connecting link between the North and the South,
between the languages spoken by the Teutonic nations of the North and by
the Romance nations of the South; which holds on to and partakes of
both; which is as a middle term between them{35}. There are who venture
to hope that the English Church, being in like manner double-fronted,
looking on the one side toward Rome, being herself truly Catholic,
looking on the other towards the Protestant communions, being herself
also protesting and reforming, may yet in the providence of God have an
important part to play for the reconciling of a divided Christendom. And
if this ever should be so, if, notwithstanding our sins and unworthiness,
so blessed a task should be in store for her, it will not be a small
help and assistance thereunto, that the language in which her mediation
will be effected is one wherein both parties may claim their own, in
which neither will feel that it is receiving the adjudication of a
stranger, of one who must be an alien from its deeper thoughts and
habits, because an alien from its words, but a language in which both
must recognize very much of that which is deepest and most precious of
their own.
{Sidenote: _Jacob Grimm on English_}
Nor is this prerogative which I have just claimed for our English the
mere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. The scholar who in our days is
most profoundly acquainted with the great group of the Gothic languages
in Europe, and a devoted lover, if ever there was such, of his native
German, I mean Jacob Grimm, has expressed himself very nearly to the
same effect, and given the palm over all to our English in words which
you will not grudge to hear quoted, and with which I shall bring this
lecture to a close. After ascribing to our language “a veritable power
of expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other
language of men”, he goes on to say, “Its highly spiritual genius, and
wonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of a
surprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modern
Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance--It is well known in what relation
these two stand to one another in the English tongue; the former
supplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latter
the spiritual conceptions. In truth the English language, which by no
mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most predominant
poet of modern times, as distinguished from the ancient classical poetry
(I can, of course, only mean Shakespeare), may with all right be called
a world-language; and like the English people, appears destined
hereafter to prevail with a sway more extensive even than its present
over all the portions of the globe{36}. For in wealth, good sense, and
closeness of structure no other of the languages at this day spoken
deserves to be compared with it--not even our German, which is torn,
even as we are torn, and must first rid itself of many defects, before
it can enter boldly into the lists, as a competitor with the
English”{37}.
{FOOTNOTES}
{1} These lectures were first delivered during the Russian War. [See De
Quincey to the same effect, _Works_, 1862, vol. iv. pp. vii, 286.]
{2} F. Schlegel, _History of Literature, Lecture 10_.
{3} [If dictionary words be counted as apart from the spoken language,
the proportion of the component elements of English is very
different. M. Müller quotes a calculation which makes the classical
element about 68 per cent, the Teutonic about 30, and miscellaneous
about 2 (_Science of Language_, 8th ed. i, 89). See Skeat,
_Principles of Eng. Etymology_, ii, 15 _seq._, and _infra_ p. 25.]
{4} [What here follows should be compared with the fuller and more
accurate lists of words borrowed from foreign sources given by Prof.
Skeat in his larger _Etymolog. Dictionary_, 759 _seq._; and more
completely in his _Principles of Eng. Etymology_, 2nd ser. 294-440.]
{5} Yet see J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 985.
{6} The word hardly deserves to be called English, yet in Pope’s time it
had made some progress toward naturalization. Of a real or pretended
polyglottist, who might thus have served as an universal
_interpreter_, he says:
“Pity you was not _druggerman_ at Babel”.
‘Truckman’, or more commonly ‘truchman’, familiar to all readers of
our early literature, is only another form of this, one which
probably has come to us through ‘turcimanno’, the Italian form of
the word. [See my _Folk and their Word-Lore_, p. 19].
{7} [‘Tulip’, at first spelt _tulipan_, is really the same word as
_turban_ (_tulipant_ just above), which the flower was thought to
resemble (Persian _dulband_).]
{8} [Ultimately from the Arabic _zabād_ (N.E.D.).]
{9} [Apparently to be traced to the Persian _shim-shír_ or _sham-shír_
(“lion’s-nail”), a crooked sword (Skeat).]
{10} [Rather through the French from low Latin _satinus_ or _setinus_, a
fabric made of _seta_, silk. But Yule holds that it may be from
Zayton or Zaitun (in Fokien, China), an important emporium of
Western trade in the Middle Ages (_Hobson-Jobson_, 602).]
{11} [Probably intended for _cacao_, which is Mexican. _Cocoa_, the nut,
is from Portuguese _coco_.]
{12} See Washington Irving, _Life and Voyages of Columbus_, b. 8, c. 9.
{13} [It is from the Haytian _Hurakan_, the storm-god (_The Folk and
their Word-Lore_, 90).]
{14} [From old Russian _mammot_, whence modern Russian _mamant_.]
{15} [‘Assagai’ is from the Arabic _az-_ (_al-_) _zaghāyah_, ‘the
_zagāyah_’, a Berber name for a lance (N.E.D.).]
{16} [This puts the cart before the horse. ‘Fetish’ is really the
Portuguese word _feitiço_, artificial, made-up, factitious (Latin
_factitius_), 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, _Wörterbuch 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, galleasses, 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
passing 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, _Wörterbuch_, s. vv. ‘Buch’, ‘Buche’); ‘girdle’ and
‘kirtle’; both of them corresponding to the German ‘gürtel’;
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 passage
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 Génin, _Récréations 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 ‘séparer’, without this special
sense; from ‘pastor’, ‘pâtre’, a shepherd in the literal, and
‘pasteur’ the same in a tropical, sense; from ‘catena’, ‘chaîne’
and ‘cadène’; from ‘fragilis’, ‘frêle’ and ‘fragile’; from
‘pensare’, ‘peser’ and ‘penser’; from ‘gehenna’, ‘gêne’ and
‘géhenne’; from ‘captivus’, ‘chétif’ and ‘captif’; from ‘nativus’,
‘naïf’ and ‘natif’; from ‘designare’, ‘dessiner’ and ‘designer’;
from ‘decimare’, ‘dîmer’ and ‘décimer’; from ‘consumere’,
‘consommer’ and ‘consumer’; from ‘simulare’, ‘sembler’ and
‘simuler’; from the low Latin, ‘disjejunare’, ‘dîner’ and
‘déjeûner’; from ‘acceptare’, ‘acheter’ and ‘accepter’; from
‘homo’, ‘on’ and ‘homme’; from ‘paganus’, ‘payen’ and ‘paysan’ [the
latter from ‘pagensis’]; from ‘obedientia’, ‘obéissance’ and
‘obédience’; from ‘strictus’, ‘étroit’ and ‘strict’; from
‘sacramentum’, ‘serment’ and ‘sacrement’; from ‘ministerium’,
‘métier’ and ‘ministère’; from ‘parabola’, ‘parole’ and ‘parabole’;
from ‘peregrinus’, ‘pélerin’ and ‘pérégrin’; from ‘factio’, ‘façon’
and ‘faction’, and it has now adopted ‘factio’ in a third shape,
that is, in our English ‘fashion’; from ‘pietas’, ‘pitié’ and
‘piété’; from ‘capitulum’, ‘chapitre’ and ‘capitule’, a botanical
term. So, too, in Italian, ‘manco’, maimed, and ‘monco’, maimed _of
a hand_; ‘rifutáre’, to refute, and ‘rifiutáre’, 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 petitæ 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 title of ‘well-languaged’; which a cotemporary or
near successor gave him, ventured in some remarkable lines timidly
to anticipate 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 shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
To enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in the yet unformèd 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