He by the heels him hung upon a tree,
And _baffled_ so, that all which passéd by
The picture of his punishment might see”{203}.
Probably when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote, men were not so remote from
the days of chivalry, or at any rate from the literature of chivalry,
but that this custom was still fresh in their minds. How much more to
them than to us, so long as we are ignorant of the same, would those
words I just quoted have conveyed?
{Sidenote: ‘_Religion_’}
There are several places in the Authorized Version of Scripture where
those who are not aware of the changes which have taken place during the
last two hundred and fifty years in our language, can hardly fail of
being to a certain extent misled as to the intention of our Translators;
or, if they are better acquainted with Greek than with early English,
will be tempted to ascribe to them, though unjustly, an inexact
rendering of the original. Thus the altered meaning of a word involves
a serious misunderstanding in that well known statement of St. James,
“Pure _religion_ and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. “There”, exclaims
one who wishes to set up St. James against St. Paul, that so he may
escape the necessity of obeying either, “listen to what St. James says;
there is nothing mystical in what he requires; instead of harping on
faith as a condition necessary to salvation, he makes all religion to
consist in practical deeds of kindness from one to another”. But let us
pause for a moment. Did ‘religion’, when our translation was made, mean
godliness? did it mean the _sum total_ of our duties towards God? for,
of course, no one would deny that deeds of charity are a necessary part
of our Christian duty, an evidence of the faith which is in us. There is
abundant evidence to show that ‘religion’ did not mean this; that, like
the Greek θρησκεία, for which it here stands, like the Latin ‘religio’,
it meant the outward forms and embodiments in which the inward principle
of piety arrayed itself, the _external service_ of God; and St. James is
urging upon those to whom he is writing something of this kind: “Instead
of the ceremonial services of the Jews, which consisted in divers
washings and in other elements of this world, let our service, our
θρησκεία, take a nobler shape, let it consist in deeds of pity and of
love”--and it was this which our Translators intended, when they used
‘religion’ here and ‘religious’ in the verse preceding. How little
‘religion’ once meant godliness, how predominantly it was used for the
_outward_ service of God, is plain from many passages in our
_Homilies_, and from other contemporary literature.
Again, there are words in our Liturgy which I have no doubt are commonly
misunderstood. The mistake involves no serious error; yet still in our
own language, and in words which we have constantly in our mouths, and
at most solemn times, it is certainly better to be right than wrong. In
the Litany we pray God that it would please Him, “to give and preserve
to our use the _kindly_ fruits of the earth”. What meaning do we attach
to this epithet, “the _kindly_ fruits of the earth”? Probably we
understand by it those fruits in which the _kindness_ of God or of
nature towards us finds its expression. This is no unworthy explanation,
but still it is not the right one. The “_kindly_ fruits” are the
“_natural_ fruits”, those which the earth according to its _kind_ should
naturally bring forth, which it is appointed to produce. To show you how
little ‘kindly’ meant once benignant, as it means now, I will instance
an employment of it from Sir Thomas More’s _Life of Richard the Third_.
He tells us that Richard calculated by murdering his two nephews in the
Tower to make himself accounted “a _kindly_ king”--not certainly a
‘kindly’ one in our present usage of the word{204}; but, having put them
out of the way, that he should then be lineal heir of the Crown, and
should thus be reckoned as king _by kind_ or natural descent; and such
was of old the constant use of the word.
{Sidenote: ‘_Worship_’}
A phrase in one of our occasional Services “with my body I thee
_worship_”, has sometimes offended those who are unacquainted with the
early use of English words, and thus with the intention of the actual
framers of that Service. Clearly in our modern sense of ‘worship’, this
language would be unjustifiable. But ‘worship’ or ‘worthship’ meant
‘honour’ in our early English, and ‘to worship’ to honour, this meaning
of ‘worship’ still very harmlessly surviving in the title of “your
worship”, addressed to the magistrate on the bench. So little was it
restrained of old to the honour which man is bound to pay to God, that
it was employed by Wiclif to express the honour which God will render to
his faithful servants and friends. Thus our Lord’s declaration “If any
man serve Me, him will my Father _honour_”, in Wiclif’s translation
reads thus, “If any man serve Me, my Father shall _worship_ him”. I do
not say that there is not sufficient reason to change the words, “with
my body I thee _worship_”, if only there were any means of changing
anything which is now antiquated and out of date in our services or
arrangements. I think it would be very well if they were changed, liable
as they are to misunderstanding and misconstruction now; but still they
did not mean at the first, and therefore do not now really mean, any
more than, “with my body I thee _honour_”, and so you may reply to any
fault-finder here.
Take another example of a very easy misapprehension, although not now
from Scripture or the Prayer Book, Fuller, our Church historian, having
occasion to speak of some famous divine that was lately dead, exclaims,
“Oh the _painfulness_ of his preaching!” If we did not know the former
uses of ‘painfulness’, we might take this for an exclamation wrung out
at the recollection of the tediousness which he inflicted on his
hearers. Far from it; the words are a record not of the _pain_ which he
caused to others, but of the _pains_ which he bestowed himself: and I am
persuaded, if we had more ‘painful’ preachers in the old sense of the
word, that is, who _took_ pains themselves, we should have fewer
‘painful’ ones in the modern sense, who _cause_ pain to their hearers.
So too Bishop Grosthead is recorded as “the _painful_ writer of two
hundred books”--not meaning hereby that these books were painful in the
reading, but that he was laborious and painful in their composing.
Here is another easy misapprehension. Swift wrote a pamphlet, or, as he
called it, a _Letter to the Lord Treasurer_, with this title, “A
proposal for correcting, improving, and _ascertaining_ the English
Tongue”. Who that brought a knowledge of present English, and no more,
to this passage, would doubt that “_ascertaining_ the English Tongue”
meant arriving at a certain knowledge of what it was? Swift, however,
means something quite different from this. “_To ascertain_ the English
tongue” is not with him to arrive at a subjective certainty in our own
minds of what that tongue is, but to give an objective certainty to that
tongue itself, so that henceforth it shall not alter nor change. For
even Swift himself, with all his masculine sense, entertained a dream
of this kind, as is more fully declared in the work itself{205}.
{Sidenote: ‘_Treacle_’}
In other places unacquaintance with the changes in a word’s usage will
not so much mislead as leave you nearly or altogether at a loss in
respect of the intention of an author whom you may be reading. It is
evident that he has a meaning, but what it is you are unable to divine,
even though all the words he employs are words in familiar employment to
the present day. For example, the poet Waller is congratulating Charles
the Second on his return from exile, and is describing the way in which
all men, even those formerly most hostile to him, were now seeking his
favour, and he writes:
“Offenders now, the chiefest, do begin
To strive for grace, and expiate their sin:
All winds blow fair that did the world embroil,
_Your vipers treacle yield_, and scorpions oil”.
Many a reader before now has felt, as I cannot doubt, a moment’s
perplexity at the now courtly poet’s assertion that “_vipers treacle
yield_”--who yet has been too indolent, or who has not had the
opportunity, to search out what his meaning might be. There is in fact
allusion here to a curious piece of legendary lore. ‘Treacle’, or
‘triacle’, as Chaucer wrote it, was originally a Greek word, and wrapped
up in itself the once popular belief (an anticipation, by the way, of
homœopathy), that a confection of the viper’s flesh was the most potent
antidote against the viper’s bite{206}. Waller goes back to this the
word’s old meaning, familiar enough in his time, for Milton speaks of
“the sovran _treacle_ of sound doctrine”{207}, while “Venice treacle”,
or “viper wine”, as it sometimes was called, was a common name for a
supposed antidote against all poisons; and he would imply that regicides
themselves began to be loyal, vipers not now yielding hurt any more, but
rather healing for the old hurts which they themselves had inflicted. To
trace the word down to its present use, it may be observed that,
designating first this antidote, it then came to designate any antidote,
then any medicinal confection or sweet syrup; and lastly that particular
syrup, namely, the sweet syrup of molasses, to which alone it is now
restricted.
{Sidenote: ‘_Blackguard_’}
I will draw on the writings of Fuller for one more example. In his _Holy
War_, having enumerated the rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runaway
slaves, thieves, adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause or
another with heaviest censures of the Church, who swelled the ranks, and
helped to make up the army, of the Crusaders, he exclaimed, “A
lamentable case that the devil’s _black guard_ should be God’s
soldiers”! What does he mean, we may ask, by “the devil’s _black
guard_”? Nor is this a solitary mention of the “black guard”. On the
contrary, the phrase is of very frequent recurrence in the early
dramatists and others down to the time of Dryden, who gives as one of
his stage directions in _Don Sebastian_, “Enter the captain of the
rabble, with the _Black guard_”. What is this “black guard”? Has it any
connexion with a word of our homeliest vernacular? We feel that probably
it has so; yet at first sight the connexion is not very apparent, nor
indeed the exact force of the phrase. Let me trace its history. In old
times, the palaces of our kings and seats of our nobles were not so well
and completely furnished as at the present day: and thus it was
customary, when a royal progress was made, or when the great nobility
exchanged one residence for another, that at such a removal all kitchen
utensils, pots and pans, and even coals, should be also carried with
them where they went. Those who accompanied and escorted these, the
lowest, meanest, and dirtiest of the retainers, were called ‘the black
guard’{208}; then any troop or company of ragamuffins; and lastly, when
the origin of the word was lost sight of, and it was forgotten that it
properly implied a company, a rabble rout, and not a single person, one
would compliment another, not as belonging to, but as himself being, the
‘blackguard’.
The examples which I have adduced are, I am persuaded, sufficient to
prove that it is not a useless and unprofitable study, nor yet one
altogether without entertainment, to which I invite you; that on the
contrary any one who desires to read with accuracy, and thus with
advantage and pleasure, our earlier classics, who would avoid continual
misapprehension in their perusal, and would not often fall short of, and
often go astray from, their meaning, must needs bestow some attention on
the altered significance of English words. And if this is so, we could
not more usefully employ what remains of this present lecture than in
seeking to indicate those changes which words most frequently undergo;
and to trace as far as we can the causes, mental and moral, at work in
the minds of men to bring these changes about, with the good and evil
out of which they have sprung, and to which they bear witness.
For indeed these changes to which words in the progress of time are
submitted are not changes at random, but for the most part are obedient
to certain laws, are capable of being distributed into certain classes,
being the outward transcripts and witnesses of mental and moral
processes inwardly going forward in those who bring them about. Many, it
is true, will escape any classification of ours, the changes which have
taken place in their meaning being, or at least seeming to us, the
result of mere caprice; and not explicable by any principle which we can
appeal to as habitually at work in the mind. But, admitting all this, a
majority will still remain which are reducible to some law or other, and
with these we will occupy ourselves now.
{Sidenote: ‘_Duke_’, ‘_Corpse_’, ‘_Weed_’}
And first, the meaning of a word oftentimes is gradually narrowed. It
was once as a generic name, embracing many as yet unnamed species within
itself, which all went by its common designation. By and bye it is found
convenient that each of these should have its own more special sign
allotted to it{209}. It is here just as in some newly enclosed country,
where a single household will at first loosely occupy a whole district;
while, as cultivation proceeds, this district is gradually parcelled out
among a dozen or twenty, and under more accurate culture employs and
sustains them all. Thus, for example, all food was once called ‘meat’;
it is so in our Bible, and ‘horse-meat’ for fodder is still no unusual
phrase; yet ‘meat’ is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book or
writing was a ‘libel’ once; now only such a one as is scurrilous and
injurious. Any leader was a ‘duke’ (dux); thus “_duke_ Hannibal” (Sir
Thomas Eylot), “_duke_ Brennus” (Holland), “_duke_ Theseus”
(Shakespeare), “_duke_ Amalek”, with other ‘dukes’ (Gen. xxxvi.). Any
journey, by land as much as by sea, was a ‘voyage’. ‘Fairy’ was not a
name restricted, as now, to the _Gothic_ mythology; thus “the _fairy_
Egeria” (Sir J. Harrington). A ‘corpse’ might be quite as well living as
dead{210}. ‘Weeds’ were whatever covered the earth or the person; while
now as respects the earth, those only are ‘weeds’ which are noxious, or
at least self-sown; as regards the person, we speak of no other ‘weeds’
but the widow’s{211}. In each of these cases, the same contraction of
meaning, the separating off and assigning to other words of large
portions of this, has found place. ‘To starve’ (the German ‘sterben’,
and generally spelt ‘sterve’ up to the middle of the seventeenth
century), meant once to die any manner of death; thus Chaucer says,
Christ “_sterved_ upon the cross for our redemption”; it now is
restricted to the dying by cold or by hunger. Words not a few were once
applied to both sexes alike, which are now restricted to the female. It
is so even with ‘girl’, which was once a young person of either
sex{212}; while other words in this list, such for instance as
‘hoyden’{213} (Milton, prose), ‘shrew’ (Chaucer), ‘coquet’ (Phillips,
_New World of Words_), ‘witch’ (Wiclif), ‘termagant’ (Bale), ‘scold’,
‘jade’, ‘slut’ (Gower), must be regarded in their present exclusive
appropriation to the female sex as evidences of men’s rudeness, and not
of women’s deserts.
{Sidenote: _Words used more accurately_}
The necessities of an advancing civilization demand a greater precision
and accuracy in the use of words having to do with weight, measure,
number, size. Almost all such words as ‘acre’, ‘furlong’, ‘yard’,
‘gallon’, ‘peck’, were once of a vague and unsettled use, and only at a
later day, and in obedience to the requirements of commerce and social
life, exact measures and designations. Thus every field was once an
‘acre’; and this remains so still with the German ‘acker’, and in our
“God’s acre”, as a name for a churchyard{214}; it was not till about the
reign of Edward the First that ‘acre’ was commonly restricted to a
determined measure and portion of land. Here and there even now a
glebeland will be called “the acre”; and this, even while it contains
not one but many of our measured acres. A ‘furlong’ was a ‘furrowlong’,
or length of a furrow{215}. Any pole was a ‘yard’, and this vaguer use
survives in ‘sail_yard_’, ‘hal_yard_’, and in other sea-terms. Every
pitcher was a ‘galon’ (Mark xiv. 13, Wiclif), while a ‘peck’ was no more
than a ‘poke’ or bag{216}. And the same has no doubt taken place in all
other languages. I will only remind you how the Greek ‘drachm’ was at
first a handful (δραχμή = ‘manipulus’, from δράσσω, to grasp); its
later word for ‘ten thousand’ (μύριοι) implied in Homer’s time any great
multitude; and with the accent on a different syllable always retained
this meaning.
{Sidenote: _Words used less accurately_}
Opposite to this is a counter-process by which words of narrower
intention gradually enlarge the domain of their meaning, becoming
capable of much wider application than any which once they admitted.
Instances in this kind are fewer than in that which we have just been
considering. The main stream and course of human thoughts and human
discourse tends the other way, to discerning, distinguishing, dividing;
and then to the permanent fixing of the distinctions gained, by the aid
of designations which shall keep apart for ever in word that which has
been once severed and sundered in thought. Nor is it hard to perceive
why this process should be the more frequent. Men are first struck with
the likenesses between those things which are presented to them, with
their points of resemblance; on the strength of which they bracket them
under a common term. Further acquaintance reveals their points of
unlikeness, the real dissimilarities which lurk under superficial
resemblances, the need therefore of a different notation for objects
which are essentially different. It is comparatively much rarer to
discover real likeness under what at first appeared as unlikeness; and
usually when a word moves forward, and from a specialty indicates now a
generality, it is not in obedience to any such discovery of the true
inner likeness of things,--the steps of successful generalizations being
marked and secured in other ways. But this widening of a word’s meaning
is too often a result of those elements of disorganization and decay
which are at work in a language. Men forget a word’s history and
etymology; its distinctive features are obliterated for them, with all
which attached it to some thought or fact which by right was its own.
Appropriated and restricted once to some striking specialty which it
vigorously set out, it can now be used in a wider, vaguer, more
unsettled way. It can be employed twenty times for once when it would
have been possible formerly to employ it. Yet this is not gain, but pure
loss. It has lost its place in the disciplined _army_ of words, and
become one of a loose and disorderly _mob_.
Let me instance the word ‘preposterous’. It is now no longer of any
practical service at all in the language, being merely an ungraceful and
slipshod synonym for absurd. But restore and confine it to its old use;
let it designate that one peculiar branch of absurdity which it
designated once, namely the reversing of the true order of things, the
putting of the last first, and, by consequence, of the first last, and
of what excellent service the word would be capable. Thus it is
‘preposterous’, in the most accurate use of the word, to put the cart
before the horse, to expect wages before the work is done, to hang a man
first and try him afterwards; and in this strict and accurate sense the
word was always used by our elder writers{217}.
In like manner ‘to prevaricate’ was never employed by good writers of
the seventeenth century without nearer or more remote allusion to the
uses of the word in the Roman law courts, where a ‘prævaricator’
(properly a straddler with distorted legs) did not mean generally and
loosely, as now with us, one who shuffles, quibbles, and evades; but one
who plays false in a particular manner; who, undertaking, or being by
his office bound, to prosecute a charge, is in secret collusion with the
opposite party; and, betraying the cause which he affects to support, so
manages the accusation as to obtain not the condemnation, but the
acquittal, of the accused; a “feint pleader”, as, I think, in our old
law language he would have been termed. How much force would the keeping
of this in mind add to many passages in our elder divines.
Or take ‘equivocal’, ‘equivocate’, ‘equivocation’. These words, which
belonged at first to logic, have slipped down into common use, and in so
doing have lost all the precision of their first employment.
‘Equivocation’ is now almost any such dealing in ambiguous words with
the intention of deceiving, as falls short of an actual lie; but
according to its etymology and in its primary use ‘equivocation’, this
fruitful mother of so much error, is the calling by the same name, of
things essentially diverse, hiding intentionally or otherwise a real
difference under a verbal resemblance{218}. Nor let it be urged in
defence of its present looser use, that only so could it have served the
needs of our ordinary conversation; on the contrary, had it retained its
first use, how serviceable an implement of thought would it have been in
detecting our own fallacies, or those of others; all which it can be now
no longer.
{Sidenote: ‘_Idea_’}
What now is ‘idea’ for us? How infinite the fall of this word since the
time when Milton sang of the Creator contemplating his newly created
world,
“how it showed,
Answering his great _idea_”,
to its present use when this person “has an _idea_ that the train has
started”, and the other “had no _idea_ that the dinner would be so bad”.
But this word ‘idea’ is perhaps the worst case in the English language.
Matters have not mended here since the times of Dr. Johnson; of whom
Boswell tells us: “He was particularly indignant against the almost
universal use of the word _idea_ in the sense of _notion_ or _opinion_,
when it is clear that _idea_ can only signify something of which an
image can be formed in the mind”. There is perhaps no word in the whole
compass of English, so seldom used with any tolerable correctness; in
none is the distance so immense between the frequent sublimity of the
word in its proper use, and the triviality of it in its slovenly and its
popular.
This tendency in words to lose the sharp, rigidly defined outline of
meaning which they once possessed, to become of wide, vague, loose
application instead of fixed, definite, and precise, to mean almost
anything, and so really to mean nothing, is among the most fatally
effectual which are at work for the final ruin of a language, and, I do
not fear to add, for the demoralization of those that speak it. It is
one against which we shall all do well to watch; for there is none of us
who cannot do something in keeping words close to their own proper
meaning, and in resisting their encroachment on the domain of others.