no pretence to completeness; ‘martext’, ‘carrytale’, ‘pleaseman’,
‘sneakcup’, ‘mumblenews’, ‘wantwit’, ‘lackbrain’, ‘lackbeard’,
‘lacklove’, ‘ticklebrain’, ‘cutpurse’, ‘cutthroat’, ‘crackhemp’,
‘breedbate’, ‘swinge-buckler’, ‘pickpurse’, ‘pickthank’, ‘picklock’,
‘scarecrow’, ‘breakvow’, ‘breakpromise’, ‘makepeace’--this last and
‘telltruth’ (Fuller) being the only ones in the whole collection wherein
reprobation or contempt is not implied. Nor is the list exhausted yet;
there are further ‘dingthrift’ = prodigal (Herrick), ‘wastegood’
(Cotgrave), ‘stroygood’ (Golding), ‘wastethrift’ (Beaumont and
Fletcher), ‘scapethrift’, ‘swashbuckler’ (both in Holinshed),
‘shakebuckler’, ‘rinsepitcher’ (both in Bacon), ‘crackrope’ (Howell),
‘waghalter’, ‘wagfeather’ (both in Cotgrave), ‘blabtale’ (Racket),
‘getnothing’ (Adams), ‘findfault’ (Florio), ‘tearthroat’ (Gayton),
‘marprelate’, ‘spitvenom’, ‘nipcheese’, ‘nipscreed’, ‘killman’
(Chapman), ‘lackland’, ‘pickquarrel’, ‘pickfaults’, ‘pickpenny’ (Henry
More), ‘makefray’ (Bishop Hall), ‘make-debate’ (Richardson’s _Letters_),
‘kindlecoal’ (attise feu), ‘kindlefire’ (both in Gurnall), ‘turntippet’
(Cranmer), ‘swillbowl’ (Stubbs), ‘smell-smock’, ‘cumberwold’ (Drayton),
‘curryfavor’, ‘pinchfist’, ‘suckfist’, ‘hatepeace’ (Sylvester),
‘hategood’ (Bunyan), ‘clutchfist’, ‘sharkgull’ (both in Middleton),
‘makesport’ (Fuller), ‘hangdog’ (“Herod’s _hangdogs_ in the tapestry”,
Pope), ‘catchpoll’, ‘makeshift’ (used not impersonally as now),
‘pickgoose’ (“the bookworm was never but a _pickgoose_”){162}, ‘killcow’
(these three last in Gabriel Harvey), ‘rakeshame’ (Milton, prose), with
others which it will be convenient to omit. ‘Rakehell’, which used to be
spelt ‘rakel’ or ‘rakle’ (Chaucer), a good English word, would be only
through an error included in this list, although Cowper, when he writes
‘rakehell’ (“_rake-hell_ baronet”) evidently regarded it as belonging to
this group{163}.
{Sidenote: _Words become Vulgar_}
Perhaps one of the most frequent causes which leads to the disuse of
words is this: in some inexplicable way there comes to be attached
something of ludicrous, or coarse, or vulgar to them, out of a feeling
of which they are no longer used in earnest serious writing, and at the
same time fall out of the discourse of those who desire to speak
elegantly. Not indeed that this degradation which overtakes words is in
all cases inexplicable. The unheroic character of most men’s minds, with
their consequent intolerance of that heroic which they cannot
understand, is constantly at work, too often with success, in taking
down words of nobleness from their high pitch; and, as the most
effectual way of doing this, in casting an air of mock-heroic about
them. Thus ‘to dub’, a word resting on one of the noblest usages of
chivalry, has now something of ludicrous about it; so too has ‘doughty’;
they belong to that serio-comic, mock-heroic diction, the multiplication
of which, as of all parodies on greatness, and the favour with which it
is received, is always a sign of evil augury for a nation, is at present
a sign of evil augury for our own.
‘Pate’ in the sense of head is now comic or ignoble; it was not so once;
as is plain from its occurrence in the Prayer Book Version of the Psalms
(Ps. vii. 17); as little was ‘noddle’, which occurs in one of the few
poetical passages in Hawes. The same may be said of ‘sconce’, in this
sense at least; of ‘nowl’ or ‘noll’, which Wiclif uses; of ‘slops’ for
trousers (Marlowe’s _Lucan_); of ‘cocksure’ (Rogers), of ‘smug’, which
once meant no more than adorned (“the _smug_ bridegroom”, Shakespeare).
‘To nap’ is now a word without dignity; while yet in Wiclif’s Bible it
is said, “Lo he schall not _nappe_, nether slepe that kepeth Israel”
(Ps. cxxi. 4). ‘To punch’, ‘to thump’, both of which, and in serious
writing, occur in Spenser, could not now obtain the same use, nor yet
‘to wag’, or ‘to buss’. Neither would any one now say that at Lystra
Barnabas and Paul “rent their clothes and _skipped out_ among the
people” (Acts xiv. 14), which is the language that Wiclif employs; nor
yet that “the Lord _trounced_ Sisera and all his host” as it stands in
the Bible of 1551. “A _sight_ of angels”, for which phrase see Cranmer’s
Bible (Heb. xii. 22), would be felt as a vulgarism now. We should
scarcely call now a delusion of Satan a “_flam_ of the devil” (Henry
More). It is not otherwise in regard of phrases. “Through thick and
thin”, occurring in Spenser, “cheek by jowl” in Dubartas{164}, do not
now belong to serious poetry. In the glorious ballad of _Chevy Chase_, a
noble warrior whose legs are hewn off, is described as being “in doleful
dumps”; just as, in Holland’s _Livy_, the Romans are set forth as being
“in the dumps” as a consequence of their disastrous defeat at Cannæ. In
Golding’s _Ovid_, one fears that he will “go to pot”. In one of the
beautiful letters of John Careless, preserved in Foxe’s _Martyrs_, a
persecutor, who expects a recantation from him, is described as “in the
wrong box”. And in the sermons of Barrow, who certainly intended to
write an elevated style, and did not seek familiar, still less vulgar,
expressions, we constantly meet such terms as ‘to rate’, ‘to snub’, ‘to
gull’, ‘to pudder’, ‘dumpish’, and the like; which we may confidently
affirm were not vulgar when he used them.
Then too the advance of refinement causes words to be forgone, which are
felt to speak too plainly. It is not here merely that one age has more
delicate ears than another; and that matters are freely spoken of at one
time which at another are withdrawn from conversation. This is
something; but besides this, and even if this delicacy were at a
standstill, there would still be a continual process going on, by which
the words, which for a certain while have been employed to designate
coarse or disagreeable facts or things, would be disallowed, or at all
events relinquished to the lower class of society, and others adopted in
their place. The former by long use being felt to have come into too
direct and close relation with that which they designate, to summon it
up too distinctly before the mind’s eye, they are thereupon exchanged
for others, which, at first at least, indicate more lightly and
allusively the offensive thing, rather hint and suggest than paint and
describe it: although by and by these new will also in their turn be
discarded, and for exactly the same reasons which brought about the
dismissal of those which they themselves superseded. It lies in the
necessity of things that I must leave this part of my subject, very
curious as it is, without illustration{165}. But no one, even
moderately acquainted with the early literature of the Reformation, can
be ignorant of words freely used in it, which now are not merely coarse
and as such under ban, but which no one would employ who did not mean to
speak impurely and vilely.
* * * * *
{Sidenote: _Lost Powers of a Language_}
Thus much in respect of the words, and the character of the words, which
we have lost or let go. Of these, indeed, if a language, as it travels
onwards, loses some, it also acquires others, and probably many more
than it loses; they are leaves on the tree of language, of which if some
fall away, a new succession takes their place. But it is not so, as I
already observed, with the _forms_ or _powers_ of a language, that is,
with the various inflections, moods, duplicate or triplicate formation
of tenses; which the speakers of a language come gradually to perceive
that they can do without, and therefore cease to employ; seeking to
suppress grammatical intricacies, and to obtain grammatical simplicity
and so far as possible a pervading uniformity, sometimes even at the
hazard of letting go what had real worth, and contributed to the more
lively, if not to the clearer, setting forth of the inner thought or
feeling of the mind. Here there is only loss, with no compensating gain;
or, at all events, diminution only, and never addition. In regard of
these inner forces and potencies of a language, there is no creative
energy at work in its later periods, in any, indeed, but quite the
earliest. They are not as the leaves, but may be likened to the stem and
leading branches of a tree, whose shape, mould and direction are
determined at a very early stage of its growth; and which age, or
accident, or violence may diminish, but which can never be multiplied. I
have already slightly referred to a notable example of this, namely, to
the dropping of the dual number in the Greek language. Thus in all the
New Testament it does not once occur, having quite fallen out of the
common dialect in which that is composed. Elsewhere too it has been felt
that the dual was not worth preserving, or at any rate, that no serious
inconvenience would follow on its loss. There is no such number in the
modern German, Danish or Swedish; in the old German and Norse there was.
{Sidenote: _Extinction of Powers_}
How many niceties, delicacies, subtleties of language, _we_, speakers of
the English tongue, in the course of centuries have got rid of; how bare
(whether too bare is another question) we have stripped ourselves; what
simplicity for better or for worse reigns in the present English, as
compared with the old Anglo-Saxon. That had six declensions, our present
English but one; that had three genders, English, if we except one or
two words, has none; that formed the genitive in a variety of ways, we
only in one; and the same fact meets us, wherever we compare the
grammars of the two languages. At the same time, it can scarcely be
repeated too often, that in the estimate of the gain or loss thereupon
ensuing, we must by no means put certainly to loss everything which the
language has dismissed, any more than everything to gain which it has
acquired. It is no real wealth in a language to have needless and
superfluous forms. They are often an embarrassment and an encumbrance to
it rather than a help. The Finnish language has fourteen cases. Without
pretending to know exactly what it is able to effect, I yet feel
confident that it cannot effect more, nor indeed so much, with its
fourteen as the Greek is able to do with its five. It therefore seems to
me that some words of Otfried Müller, in many ways admirable, do yet
exaggerate the losses consequent on the reduction of the forms of a
language. “It may be observed”, he says, “that in the lapse of ages,
from the time that the progress of language can be observed, grammatical
forms, such as the signs of cases, moods and tenses have never been
increased in number, but have been constantly diminishing. The history
of the Romance, as well as of the Germanic, languages shows in the
clearest manner how a grammar, once powerful and copious, has been
gradually weakened and impoverished, until at last it preserves only a
few fragments of its ancient inflections. Now there is no doubt that
this luxuriance of grammatical forms is not an essential part of a
language, considered merely as a vehicle of thought. It is well known
that the Chinese language, which is merely a collection of radical words
destitute of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical ideas
with tolerable precision; and the English, which, from the mode of its
formation by a mixture of different tongues, has been stripped of its
grammatical inflections more completely than any other European
language, seems, nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to be distinguished
by its energetic eloquence. All this must be admitted by every
unprejudiced inquirer; but yet it cannot be overlooked, that this
copiousness of grammatical forms, and the fine shades of meaning which
they express, evince a nicety of observation, and a faculty of
distinguishing, which unquestionably prove that the race of mankind
among whom these languages arose was characterized by a remarkable
correctness and subtlety of thought. Nor can any modern European, who
forms in his mind a lively image of the classical languages in their
ancient grammatical luxuriance, and compares them with his mother
tongue, conceal from himself that in the ancient languages the words,
with their inflections, clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, come
forward like living bodies, full of expression and character, while in
the modern tongues the words seem shrunk up into mere skeletons”{166}.
{Sidenote: _Words in ‘-ess’_}
Whether languages are as much impoverished by this process as is here
assumed, may, I think, be a question. I will endeavour to give you some
materials which shall assist you in forming your own judgment in the
matter. And here I am sure that I shall do best in considering not forms
which the language has relinquished long ago, but mainly such as it is
relinquishing now; which, touching us more nearly, will have a far more
lively interest for us all. For example, the female termination which
we employ in certain words, such as from ‘heir’ ‘heiress’, from
‘prophet’ ‘prophetess’, from ‘sorcerer’ ‘sorceress’, was once far more
widely extended than at present; the words which retain it are daily
becoming fewer. It has already fallen away in so many, and is evidently
becoming of less frequent use in so many others, that, if we may augur
of the future from the analogy of the past, it will one day altogether
vanish from our tongue. Thus all these occur in Wiclif’s Bible;
‘techeress’ as the female teacher (2 Chron. xxxv. 25); ‘friendess’
(Prov. vii. 4); ‘servantess’ (Gen. xvi. 2); ‘leperess’ (=saltatrix,
Ecclus. ix. 4); ‘daunceress’ (Ecclus. ix. 4); ‘neighbouress’ (Exod. iii.
22); ‘sinneress’ (Luke vii. 37); ‘purpuress’ (Acts xvi. 14); ‘cousiness’
(Luke i. 36); ‘slayeress’ (Tob. iii. 9); ‘devouress’ (Ezek. xxxvi. 13);
‘spousess’ (Prov. v. 19); ‘thralless’ (Jer. xxxiv. 16); ‘dwelleress’
(Jer. xxi. 13); ‘waileress’ (Jer. ix. 17); ‘cheseress’ (=electrix, Wisd.
viii. 4); ‘singeress’, ‘breakeress’, ‘waiteress’, this last indeed
having recently come up again. Add to these ‘chideress’, the female
chider, ‘herdess’, ‘constabless’, ‘moveress’, ‘jangleress’, ‘soudaness’
(=sultana), ‘guideress’, ‘charmeress’ (all in Chaucer); and others,
which however we may have now let them fall, reached to far later
periods of the language; thus ‘vanqueress’ (Fabyan); ‘poisoneress’
(Greneway); ‘knightess’ (Udal); ‘pedleress’, ‘championess’, ‘vassaless’,
‘avengeress’, ‘warriouress’, ‘victoress’, ‘creatress’ (all in Spenser);
‘fornicatress’, ‘cloistress’, ‘jointress’ (all in Shakespeare);
‘vowess’ (Holinshed); ‘ministress’, ‘flatteress’ (both in Holland);
‘captainess’ (Sidney); ‘saintess’ (Sir T. Urquhart); ‘heroess’,
‘dragoness’, ‘butleress’, ‘contendress’, ‘waggoness’, ‘rectress’ (all in
Chapman); ‘shootress’ (Fairfax); ‘archeress’ (Fanshawe); ‘clientess’,
‘pandress’ (both in Middleton); ‘papess’, ‘Jesuitess’ (Bishop Hall);
‘incitress’ (Gayton); ‘soldieress’, ‘guardianess’, ‘votaress’ (all in
Beaumont and Fletcher); ‘comfortress’, ‘fosteress’ (Ben Jonson);
‘soveraintess’ (Sylvester); ‘preserveress’ (Daniel); ‘solicitress’,
‘impostress’, ‘buildress’, ‘intrudress’ (all in Fuller); ‘favouress’
(Hakewell); ‘commandress’ (Burton); ‘monarchess’, ‘discipless’ (Speed);
‘auditress’, ‘cateress’, ‘chantress’, ‘tyranness’ (all in Milton);
‘citess’, ‘divineress’ (both in Dryden); ‘deaness’ (Sterne);
‘detractress’ (Addison); ‘hucksteress’ (Howell); ‘tutoress’
(Shaftesbury); ‘farmeress’ (Lord Peterborough, _Letter to Pope_);
‘laddess’, which however still survives in the contracted form of
‘lass’{167}; with more which, I doubt not, it would not be very hard to
bring together{168}.
{Sidenote: _Words in ‘-ster’_}
Exactly the same thing has happened with another feminine affix. I refer
to ‘ster’, taking the place of ‘er’ where a feminine doer is
intended{169}. ‘Spinner’ and ‘spinster’ are the only pair of such
words, which still survive. There were formerly many such; thus ‘baker’
had ‘bakester’, being the female who baked: ‘brewer’ ‘brewster’; ‘sewer’
‘sewster’; ‘reader’ ‘readster’; ‘seamer’ ‘seamster’; ‘fruiterer’
‘fruitester’; ‘tumbler’ ‘tumblester’; ‘hopper’ ‘hoppester’ (these last
three in Chaucer; “the shippes _hoppesteres_”, about which so much
difficulty has been made, are the ships _dancing_, i.e., on the
waves){170}, ‘knitter’ ‘knitster’ (a word, I am told, still alive in
Devon). Add to these ‘whitster’ (female bleacher, Shakespeare),
‘kempster’ (pectrix), ‘dryster’ (siccatrix), ‘brawdster’, (I suppose
embroideress){171}, and ‘salster’ (salinaria){172}. It is a singular
example of the richness of a language in forms at the earlier stages of
its existence, that not a few of the words which had, as we have just
seen, a feminine termination in ‘ess’, had also a second in ‘ster’. Thus
‘daunser’, beside ‘daunseress’, had also ‘daunster’ (Ecclus. ix. 4);
‘wailer’, beside ‘waileress’, had ‘wailster’ (Jer. ix. 17); ‘dweller’
‘dwelster’ (Jer. xxi. 13); and ‘singer’ ‘singster’ (2 Kin. xix. 35); so
too, ‘chider’ had ‘chidester’ (Chaucer), as well as ‘chideress’,
‘slayer’ ‘slayster’ (Tob. iii. 9), as well as ‘slayeress’, ‘chooser’
‘chesister’, (Wisd. viii. 4), as well as ‘cheseress’, with others that
might be named.
{Sidenote: _Deceptive Analogies_}
It is difficult to understand how Marsh, with these examples before him
should affirm, “I find no positive evidence to show that the termination
‘ster’ was ever regarded as a feminine termination in English”. It may
be, and indeed has been, urged that the existence of such words as
‘seamstr_ess_’, ‘songstr_ess_’, is decisive proof that the ending ‘ster’
of itself was not counted sufficient to designate persons as female; for
if, it has been said, ‘seam_ster_’ and ‘song_ster_’ had been felt to be
already feminine, no one would have ever thought of doubling on this,
and adding a second female termination; ‘seam_stress_’, ‘song_stress_’.
But all which can justly be concluded from hence is, that when this
final ‘ess’ was added to these already feminine forms, and examples of
it will not, I think, be found till a comparatively late period of the
language, the true principle and law of the words had been lost sight of
and forgotten{173}. The same may be affirmed of such other of these
feminine forms as are now applied to men, such as ‘gamester’,
‘youngster’, ‘oldster’, ‘drugster’ (South), ‘huckster’, ‘hackster’,
(=swordsman, Milton, prose), ‘teamster’, ‘throwster’, ‘rhymester’,
‘punster’ (_Spectator_), ‘tapster’, ‘whipster’ (Shakespeare),
‘trickster’. Either, like ‘teamster’, and ‘punster’, the words first
came into being, when the true significance of this form was altogether
lost{174}; or like ‘tapster’, which was female in Chaucer (“the gay
_tapstere_”), as it is still in Dutch and Frisian, and distinguished
from ‘tapper’, the _man_ who keeps the inn, or has charge of the tap, or
as ‘bakester’, at this day used in Scotland for ‘baker’, as ‘dyester’
for ‘dyer’, the word did originally belong of right and exclusively to
women; but with the gradual transfer of the occupation to men, and an
increasing forgetfulness of what this termination implied, there went
also a transfer of the name{175}, just as in other words, and out of
the same causes, the exact converse has found place; and ‘baker’ or
‘brewer’, not ‘bakester’ or ‘brewster’{176}, would be now in England
applied to the woman baking or brewing. So entirely has this power of
the language died out, that it survives more apparently than really even
in ‘spinner’ and ‘spinster’; seeing that ‘spinster’ has obtained now
quite another meaning than that of a woman spinning, whom, as well as
the man, we should call not a ‘spinster’, but a ‘spinner’{177}. It would
indeed be hard to believe, if we had not constant experience of the
fact, how soon and how easily the true law and significance of some
form, which has never ceased to be in everybody’s mouth, may yet be lost
sight of by all. No more curious chapter in the history of language
could be written than one which should trace the violations of analogy,
the transgressions of the most primary laws of a language, which follow
hereupon; the plurals like ‘welkin’ (=wolken, the clouds){178},
‘chicken’{179}, which are dealt with as singulars, the singulars, like
‘riches’ (richesse){180}, ‘pease’ (pisum, pois){181}, ‘alms’,
‘eaves’{182}, which are assumed to be plurals.
{Sidenote: _The Genitival Inflexion ‘-s’_}
There is one example of this, familiar to us all; probably so familiar
that it would not be worth while adverting to it, if it did not
illustrate, as no other word could, this forgetfulness which may
overtake a whole people, of the true meaning of a grammatical form which
they have never ceased to employ. I refer to the mistaken assumption
that the ‘s’ of the genitive, as ‘the king’s countenance’, was merely a
more rapid way of pronouncing ‘the king _his_ countenance’, and that the
final ‘s’ in ‘king’s’ was in fact an elided ‘his’. This explanation for
a long time prevailed almost universally; I believe there are many who
accept it still. It was in vain that here and there a deeper knower of
our tongue protested against this “monstrous syntax”, as Ben Jonson in
his _Grammar_ justly calls it{183}. It was in vain that Wallis, another
English scholar of the seventeenth century, pointed out in _his_ Grammar
that the slightest examination of the facts revealed the untenable
character of this explanation, seeing that we do not merely say “the
_king’s_ countenance”, but “the _queen’s_ countenance”; and in this case
the final ‘s’ cannot stand for ‘his’, for “the queen _his_ countenance”
cannot be intended{184}; we do not say merely “the _child’s_ bread”, but
“the _children’s_ bread”, where it is no less impossible to resolve the
phrase into “the children _his_ bread”{185}. Despite of these protests
the error held its ground. This much indeed of a plea it could make for
itself, that such an actual employment of ‘his’ _had_ found its way
into the language, as early as the fourteenth century, and had been in
occasional, though rare use, from that time downward{186}. Yet this,
which has only been elicited by the researches of recent scholars, does
not in the least justify those who assumed that in the habitual ‘s’ of
the genitive were to be found the remains of ‘his’--an error from which
the books of scholars in the seventeenth, and in the early decades of
the eighteenth, century are not a whit clearer than those of others.
Spenser, Donne, Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, all fall into it; I cannot say
confidently whether Milton does. Dryden more than once helps out his
verse with an additional syllable gained by its aid. It has even forced
its way into our Prayer Book itself, where in the “Prayer for all sorts
and conditions of men”, added by Bishop Sanderson at the last revision
of the Liturgy in 1661, we are bidden to say, “And this we beg for Jesus
Christ _his_ sake”{187}. I need hardly tell you that this ‘s’ is in fact
the one remnant of flexion surviving in the singular number of our
English noun substantives; it is in all the Indo-Germanic languages the
original sign of the genitive, or at any rate the earliest of which we
can take cognizance; and just as in Latin ‘lapis’ makes ‘lapidis’ in the
genitive, so ‘king’, ‘queen’, ‘child’, make severally ‘kings’, ‘queens’,
‘childs’, the comma, an apparent note of elision, being a mere modern
expedient, “a late refinement”, as Ash calls it{188}, to distinguish the
genitive singular from the plural cases{189}.
{Sidenote: _Adjectives in ‘-en’_}