SAXON WORDS, OR ROMANIC?
I cannot admire the constant use of French or Latin words,
instead of your own vernacular. My Anglo-Saxon feelings are
wounded to the quick ... by such words as _chagrin_ instead
of “grief,” _malediction_ instead of “curse,” etc.--COUNT DE
MONTALEMBERT, in letter to Mrs. Oliphant.
The devil does not care for your dialectics and eclectic
homiletics, or Germanic objectives and subjectives; but pelt
him with Anglo-Saxon in the name of God, and he will shift his
quarters.--REV. C. H. SPURGEON.
Words have their proper places, just like men;
We listen to, not venture to reprove,
Large language swelling under gilded domes,
Byzantine, Syrian, Persepolitan.--LANDOR.
It is a question of deep interest to all public speakers and
writers, and one which has provoked not a little discussion of
late years, whether the Saxon or the Romanic part of our language
should be preferred by those who would employ “the Queen’s English”
with potency and effect. Of late it has been the fashion to cry up
the native element at the expense of the foreign; and among the
champions of the former we may name Dr. Whewell, of Cambridge,
and a modern rector of the University of Glasgow, whom De Quincey
censures for an erroneous direction to the students to that
effect. We may also add Lord Stanley,--one of the most brilliant
and polished speakers in the British Parliament,--who, in an
address some years ago to the students of the same university,
after expressing his surprise that so few persons, comparatively,
in Great Britain, have acquainted themselves with the origin,
the history, and the gradual development of that mother tongue
which is already spoken over half the world, which is destined
to yet further geographical extension, and which embodies many
of the noblest thoughts that have ever issued from the brain of
man,--adds: “Depend upon it, it is the plain Saxon phrase, not the
term borrowed from Greek or Roman literature, that, whether in
speech or writing, goes straightest and strongest to men’s heads
and hearts.” On the other hand “the Opium-Eater,” commenting on a
remark of Coleridge that Wordsworth’s “Excursion” bristles beyond
most poems with polysyllabic words of Greek or Latin origin,
asserts that so must it ever be in meditative poetry upon solemn,
philosophic themes. The gamut of ideas needs a corresponding gamut
of expressions; the scale of the thinking, which ranges through
every key, exacts for the artist an unlimited command over the
entire scale of the instrument he employs.
It has been computed, he adds, that the Italian opera has not
above six hundred words in its whole vocabulary; so narrow is the
range of its emotions, and so little are those emotions disposed
to expand themselves into any variety of thinking. The same remark
applies to that class of simple, household, homely passion, which
belongs to the early ballad poetry. “Pass from these narrow fields
of the intellect, where the relations of the objects are so few
and simple, and the whole prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable
and sea-like arena upon which Shakespeare careers,--co-infinite
with life itself,--yes, and with something more than life. Here
is the other pole, the opposite extreme. And what is the choice
of diction? What is the _lexis_? Is it Saxon exclusively, or
is it Saxon by preference? So far from that, the Latinity is
intense,--not, indeed, in his construction, but in his choice
of words; and so continually are these Latin words used, with a
critical respect to their earliest (and where _that_ happens to
have existed, to their unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one
argument I would rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis
of Dr. Farmer as to Shakespeare’s learning.... These ‘dictionary’
words are indispensable to a writer, not only in the proportion by
which he transcends other writers as to extent and as to subtlety
of thinking, but also as to elevation and sublimity. Milton was
not an extensive or discursive thinker, as Shakespeare was; for
the motions of his mind were slow, solemn, sequacious, like those
of the planets; not agile and assimilative; not attracting all
things into its sphere; not multiform; repulsion was the law of
his intellect,--he moved in solitary grandeur. Yet, merely from
this quality of grandeur,--unapproachable grandeur,--his intellect
demanded a larger infusion of Latinity into his diction.” De
Quincey concludes, therefore, that the true scholar will manifest a
partiality for neither part of the language, but will be governed
in his choice of words by the theme he is handling.
This we believe to be the true answer to the question. The English
language has a special dowry of power in its double-headed origin:
the Saxon part of the language fulfils one set of functions; the
Latin, another. Neither is good or bad absolutely, but only in
its relation to its subject, and according to the treatment which
the subject is meant to receive. The Saxon has nerve, terseness,
and simplicity; it smacks of life and experience, and “puts small
and convenient handles to things,--handles that are easy to
grasp;” but it has neither height nor breadth for every theme.
To confine ourselves to it would be, therefore, a most egregious
error. The truth is, it is no one element which constitutes the
power and efficiency of our noble and expressive tongue, but the
great multitude and the rich variety of the elements which enter
into its composition. Its architectural order is neither Doric,
Ionic, nor Corinthian, but essentially composite; a splendid
mosaic, to the formation of which many ancient and modern languages
have contributed; defective in unity and symmetrical grace of
proportion, but of vast resources and of immense power. With such a
wealth of words at our command, to confine ourselves to the pithy
but limited Saxon, or to employ it chiefly, would be to practise
a foolish economy,--to be poor in the midst of plenty, like the
miser amid his money bags. All experiments of this kind will fail
as truly, if not as signally, as that of Charles James Fox, who, an
intense admirer of the Saxon, attempted to portray in that dialect
the revolution of 1688, and produced a book which his warmest
admirers admitted to be meagre, dry, and spiritless,--without
picturesqueness, color, or cadence.
It is true that within a certain limited and narrow circle of
ideas, we can get along with Saxon words very well. The loftiest
poetry, the most fervent devotion, even the most earnest and
impassioned oratory, may all be expressed in words almost
purely Teutonic; but the moment we come to the abstract and the
technical,--to discussion and speculation,--we cannot stir a step
without drawing on foreign sources. Simple narrative,--a pathos
resting upon artless circumstances,--elementary feelings,--homely
and household affections,--these are all most happily expressed by
the old Saxon vocabulary; but a passion which rises into grandeur,
which is complex, elaborate, and interveined with high meditative
feelings, would languish or absolutely halt, without aid from the
Romanic part of the vocabulary. If Anglo-Saxon is the framework
or skeleton of our language, the spine on which the structure of
our speech is hung,--if it is the indispensable medium of familiar
converse and the business of life,--it no more fills out the full
and rounded outline of our language, than the skeleton, nerves,
and sinews form the whole of the human body. It is the classical
contributions, the hundreds and thousands of Romanic words which
during and since the sixteenth century have found a home in our
English speech, that have furnished its spiritual conceptions, and
endowed the material body with a living soul.
These words would never have been adopted, had they not been
absolutely necessary to express new modes and combinations of
thought. As children of softer climes and gentler aspect than
our harsh but pithy Teutonic terms, they have been received into
the English family of words, and add grace and elegance to the
speech that has adopted them. The language has gained immensely
by the infusion, not only in richness of synonym and the power of
expressing nice shades of thought and feeling, but, more than all,
in light-footed polysyllables that trip singing to the music of
verse. If the saying of Shakespeare, that
“The learned pate ducks to the golden fool,”
is more expressive than it would be if couched in Latin words,
would not the fine thought that
“Nice customs courtesy to kings,”
be greatly injured by substituting any other words for “nice” and
“courtesy”? Because Shakespeare’s “oak-cleaving thunderbolts” is
so admirable, shall we fail to appreciate Milton’s “fulmined over
Greece,” where the idea of flash and reverberation is conveyed,
without that of riving and shattering? It has been observed that
Wordsworth’s famous ode, “Intimations of Immortality,” translated
into “Hints of Deathlessness,” would hiss like an angry gander.
Instead of Shakespeare’s
“Age cannot wither her.
Nor custom stale her infinite variety,”
say “her boundless manifoldness,” and would not the sentiment
suffer in exact proportion with the music? With what terms
equally expressive would you supply the place of such words as
the long ones blended with the short in the exclamation of the
horror-stricken Macbeth?--
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No! this my hand will rather
The multitudinous sea incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
As the poet Lowell justly asks, could anything be more expressive
than the huddling epithet which here implies the tempest-tossed
soul of the speaker, and at the same time pictures the wallowing
waste of ocean more vividly than does Æschylus its rippling
sunshine? “‘Multitudinous sea,’--what an expression! You feel
the wide weltering waste of confused and tumbling waves around
you in that single word. What beauty and wealth of color too
in ‘incarnadine,’ a word capable of dyeing an ocean! and then,
after these grand polysyllables, how terse and stern comes in
the solid Saxon, as if a vast cloud had condensed into great
heavy drops,--the deep one red.”[20] Is it not plain that if you
substitute any less massive words for the _sesquipedalia verba_,
the sonorous terms “multitudinous” and “incarnadine,” the whole
grandeur of the passage would collapse at once?
Among the British orators of this century few have had a greater
command of language, or used it with nicer discrimination, than
Canning. What can be happier than the blending of the native and
the foreign elements in the following eloquent passage? Most of the
italicized words are Saxon:
“Our present repose is no more a proof of our inability to act
than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen
_those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town_
is a proof that they are devoid of strength or incapable of
being fitted for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one
of those stupendous _masses now reposing on their shadows in
perfect stillness_--how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of
necessity, it would assume _the likeness of an animated thing,
instinct with life and motion_--how soon it _would ruffle_, as
it were, _its swelling plumage--how quickly it would put forth
all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered_ elements
_of strength, and awake its dormant thunders_. Such as is one
of those magnificent machines when springing from inaction
into a display of its strength, such is England itself, while,
apparently passive and motionless, she silently causes her power
to be put forth on an adequate occasion.”
In the famous passage in Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” which has been
pronounced the most musical in our language, nearly all the words
are Saxon:
“The accusing spirit that flew up to Heaven’s chancery with the
oath, blushed as he gave it in, and the recording angel, as he
wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out
forever.”
On the other hand, in the following passage from Napier’s history
of the Peninsular War,--in which the impetuosity of the style
almost rivals that of the soldiers it describes, and in reading
which we seem almost to hear the tramp and the shouts of the
charging squadrons, and the sharp rattle of the musketry,--how
indispensable to the effect of the description are the Romance
words, which we have italicized:
“Suddenly and sternly _recovering_, they closed on their
_terrible_ enemies: and then was seen with what a strength and
_majesty_ the British _soldier_ fights. In vain did Soult, by
_voice_ and gesture, _animate_ his Frenchmen; in vain did the
hardiest _veterans, extricating_ themselves from the crowded
_columns, sacrifice_ their lives to gain time for the mass to
open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself
bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire _indiscriminately_ upon
friends and foes, while the horsemen hovering on the _flank_
threatened to _charge_ the _advancing_ line. Nothing could stop
that _astonishing infantry_; no sudden burst of _undisciplined
valor_, no nervous _enthusiasm_, weakened the _stability_
of their _order_; their flashing eyes were bent on the dark
_columns_ in their _front_; their _measured_ tread shook the
ground; their dreadful _volleys_ swept away the head of every
_formation_; their deafening shouts overpowered the _different
cries_ that broke from all _parts_ of the _tumultuous_ crowd,
as, foot by foot, and with a _horrid carnage_, it was driven by
the _incessant vigor_ of the _attack_ to the furthest edge of
the hill. In vain did the French _reserves_, joining with the
struggling _multitudes, endeavor to sustain_ the fight; their
_efforts_ only _increased_ the _irremediable confusion_, and the
mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went headlong down
the _ascent_. The rain poured after in streams _discolored_ with
blood, and fifteen hundred unwounded men, the _remnant_ of six
thousand _unconquerable_ British _soldiers_, stood _triumphant_
on the _fatal_ field.”
It is true, as we have already said, that the Saxon has the
advantage of being the aboriginal element, the basis, and not the
superstructure, of the language; it is the dialect of the nursery,
and its words therefore, being consecrated to the feelings by early
use, are full of secret suggestions and echoes, which greatly
multiply their power. Its words, though not intrinsically, yet to
us, from association, are more concrete and pictorial than those
derived from the Latin; and this is particularly true of many
beautiful words we have lost. How much more expressive to us is
“sea-robber” than “pirate”; “sand-waste” than “desert”; “eye-bite”
than “fascinate”; “mill-race” than “channel”; “water-fright”
than “hydrophobia”; “moonling” than “lunatic”; “show-holiness”
than “hypocrisy”; “in-wit” than “conscience”; “gold-hoard” than
“treasure”; “ship-craft” than “the art of navigation”; “hand-cloth”
than “towel”; “book-craft” than “literature”! Therefore, as De
Quincey says, “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, while the flesh, the
blood, and the muscle will be often almost exclusively Latin, the
articulations only, or hinges of connection, will be Anglo-Saxon.”
Let us be thankful, then, that our language has other elements
than the Saxon, admirable as that is. The circumstances under
which this element had its origin were such as to impart strength
rather than beauty or elegance. The language of our continental
forefathers was the language of fierce barbarians, hemmed in by
other barbarous tribes, and having no intercourse with foreign
nations, except when roving as sea wolves to plunder and destroy.
It was the speech of a taciturn people living only in gloomy
forests and on stormy seas, and was naturally, therefore, harsh
and monosyllabic. It was full, nevertheless, of pithy, bold, and
vigorous expressions, and needed only that its hardy stock should
receive the grafts of sunnier and softer climes, to bear abundant
and beautiful fruit. Let us be thankful that this union took place.
Let us be grateful for that inheritance of collateral wealth,
which, by engrafting our Anglo-Saxon stem with the mixed dialect of
Normandy, caused ultimately the whole opulence of Roman, and even
of Grecian thought, to play freely through the veins of our native
tongue. No doubt the immediate result was anything but pleasant.
For a long time after the language was thrown again into the
crucible, Britons, Saxons and Normans talked a jargon fit neither
for gods nor men. It was a chaos of language, hissing, sputtering,
bubbling like a witch’s caldron. But luckily the Saxon element
was yet plastic and unfrozen, so that the new elements could fuse
with its own, thus forming that wondrous instrument of expression
which we now enjoy, fitted fully to reflect the thoughts of the
myriad-minded Shakespeare, yet, at the same time, with enough
remaining of its old forest stamina for imparting a masculine depth
to the sublimities of Milton or the Hebrew prophets, and to the
Historic Scriptures that patriarchal simplicity which is one of
their greatest charms.
We are aware that, in reply to all this, it may be asked, “Are not
ninety-three words out of every hundred in the Bible Anglo-Saxon;
and where are the life, beauty and freshness of our language to be
found in so heaped a measure as in that ‘pure well of English,’ the
Bible?” Nothing can be plainer or simpler than its vocabulary, yet
how rich is it in all that concerns the moral, the spiritual, and
even the intellectual interests of humanity! Is it logic that we
ask? What a range of abstract thought, what an armory of dialectic
weapons, what an enginery of vocal implements for moving the
soul, do we find in the epistles of St. Paul! Is it rhetoric that
we require? “Where,” in the language of South, “do we find such
a natural prevailing pathos as in the lamentations of Jeremiah?
One would think that every letter was written with a tear, every
word was the noise of a breaking heart; that the author was a man
compacted of sorrow, disciplined to grief from his infancy, one who
never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a groan.” Yet, while
our translation owes much of its beauty to the Saxon, there are
passages the grandeur of which would be greatly diminished by the
substitution of Saxon words for the Latin ones. In the following
the Latin words italicized are absolutely necessary to preserve one
of the sublimest rhythms of the Bible: “And I heard, as it were,
the voice of a great _multitude_, and as the voice of many waters,
and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, ‘Alleluia, for the
Lord God _Omnipotent reigneth_.’”
The truth is, the translators of the Bible, while they have
employed a large percentage of Saxon words, have hit the golden
mean in their version, never hesitating to use a Latin word when
the sense or the rhythm demanded it; and hence we have the entire
volume of revelation in the happiest form in which human wit and
learning have ever made it accessible to man. This an English
Catholic writer, a convert from the Anglican church, has mournfully
acknowledged, in the following touching passage:--“Who will not say
that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant
Bible is 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 forego. 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 forever 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.”[21]
It is a very striking and suggestive fact that those very writers
who award the palm for expressiveness to the Saxon part of our
language, cannot extol the Saxon without the help of Latin words.
Dr. Gregory tells us that when, in the company of Robert Hall, he
chanced to use the term “felicity” three or four times in rather
quick succession, the latter asked him: “Why do you say ‘felicity’?
‘Happiness’ is a better word, more musical, and genuine English,
coming from the Saxon.” “Not more musical,” said Dr. Gregory.
“Yes, more musical,--and so are all words derived from the Saxon,
generally. Listen, sir: ‘My heart is smitten, and withered like
grass.’ There is plaintive music. Listen again, sir: ‘Under the
shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.’ There is cheerful music.”
“Yes, but ‘rejoice’ is French.” “True, but all the rest is Saxon;
and ‘rejoice’ is almost out of time with the other words. Listen
again: ‘Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears,
and my feet from falling.’ All Saxon, sir, except ‘delivered.’ I
could think of the word ‘tear’ till I wept.” But whence did Robert
Hall get the words “musical” and “plaintive music”? Are they not
from the Greek and the French? Is not this stabbing a man with his
own weapons? It is a curious fact, that, in spite of this eulogy on
Saxon words, a more than ordinary percentage of the words used in
Mr. Hall’s writings are of Romanic origin. Again, even Macaulay,
one of the most brilliant and powerful of all English writers,
finds it impossible to laud the Saxon part of the language without
borrowing nearly half the words of his famous panegyric from the
Romanic part of the vocabulary. In his article on Bunyan, in a
passage written in studied commendation of the “pure old Saxon”
English, we find, omitting the particles and wheelwork, one hundred
and twenty-one words, of which fifty-one, or over forty-two per
cent, are classical or alien. In other words, this great English
writer, than whom few have a more imperial command over all the
resources of expression, finds the Saxon insufficient for his
eloquent eulogy on Saxon, and is obliged to borrow four-tenths of
his words, and those the most emphatic ones, from the imported
stock!
It is an important fact, that while we can readily frame a sentence
wholly of Anglo-Saxon, we cannot do so with words entirely Latin,
because the determinative particles,--the bolts, pins, and hinges
of the structure,--must be Saxon. Macaulay, in his famous contrast
of Dr. Johnson’s conversational language with that of his writings,
has vividly illustrated the superiority of a Saxon-English to a
highly Latinized diction. “The expressions which came first to his
tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for
publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese.
‘When we were taken up stairs,’ says he in one of his letters from
the Hebrides, ‘a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on which one
of us was to lie.’ This incident is recorded in his published
Journey as follows: ‘Out of one of the beds on which we were to
repose, started up, at our entrance, a man as black as a Cyclops
from the forge.’ Sometimes,” Macaulay adds, “Johnson translated
aloud. ‘The Rehearsal,’ he said, ‘has not wit enough to keep
it sweet;’ then, after a pause, ‘It has not vitality enough to
preserve it from putrefaction.’” Doubtless Johnson, like Robertson,
Hume, and Gibbon, thought that he was refining the language by
straining it through the lees of Latin and Greek, so as to imbue it
with the tone and color of the learned tongues, and clear it of the
barbarous Saxon; while real purity rather springs from such words
as are our own, and peculiar to our fatherland. Nevertheless, the
elephantine diction of the Doctor proved, in the end, a positive
blessing to the language; for by pushing the artificial or classic
system to an extreme, it brought it into disrepute, and led men to
cultivate again the native idiom.
In conclusion, to sum up our views of the matter, we would say to
every young writer: Give no fantastic preference to either Saxon or
Latin, the two great wings on which our magnificent English soars
and sings, for you can spare neither. The union of the two gives
us an affluence of synonyms and a nicety of discrimination which
no homogeneous tongue can boast. To know how to use each in due
degree, and on proper occasions,--when to aim at vigor and when at
refinement of expression,--to be energetic without coarseness, and
polished without affectation,--is the highest proof of a cultivated
taste. Never use a Romanic word when a Teutonic one will do as
well; for the former carries a comparatively cold and conventional
signification to an English ear. Between the sounding Latin and
the homely, idiomatic Saxon, there is often as much difference in
respect to a power of awakening associations, as between a gong
and a peal of village bells. Pleasant though it be to read the
pages of one who writes in a foreign tongue, as it is pleasant to
visit distant lands, yet there is always the charm of home, with
all its witchery, in the good old Anglo-Saxon of our fathers. Of
the words that we heard in our childhood, there are some which
have stored up in them an ineffable sweetness and flavor, which
make them precious ever after; there are others which are words
of might, of power,--old, brawny, large-meaning words, heavily
laden with associations,--which, when they strike the imagination,
awaken tender and tremulous memories, obscure, subtle, and yet
most powerful. The orator and the poet can never employ these
terms without great advantage; their very sound is often a spell
“to conjure withal.” Our language is essentially Teutonic; the
whole skeleton of it is thoroughly so; all its grammatical forms,
all its most common and necessary words, are still identical with
that old mother tongue whose varying forms lived on the lips of
Arminius and of Hengest, of Harold of Norway, and of Harold of
England, of Alaric, of Alboin, and of Charles the Great. On the
other hand, never scruple to use a Romanic word when the Saxon will
not do as well; that is, do not over-Teutonize from any archaic
pedantry, but use the strongest, the most picturesque, or the most
beautiful word, from whatever source it may come. The Latin words,
though less home-like, must nevertheless be deemed as truly denizen
in the language as the Saxon,--as being no alien interlopers,
but possessing the full right of citizenship. Some of them came
so early into the language, and are, therefore, so thoroughly
naturalized, that we hardly recognize them as foreign words,
unless our attention is particularly called to their origin.
When a person speaks of “paying money” or “paying a debt,” we are
no more sensible of an exotic effect than if he had spoken of
“eating bread,” “drinking water,” or “riding a horse.” That “pay”
is derived from _pacare_, “debt” from _debitum_, or “money” from
(_Juno_) _Moneta_, scarcely suggests itself even to the scholar.
Perhaps of all our writers Shakespeare may be deemed, in this
matter of the choice of words, the student’s best friend. No one
better knows how far the Saxon can go, or so often taxes its utmost
resources; yet no one better knows its poverty and weakness; and,
therefore, while in treating homely and familiar themes he uses
simple words, and shows, by his total abstinence from Latin words
in some of his most beautiful passages, that he understands the
monosyllabic music of our tongue, yet in his loftiest flights it is
on the broad pinions of the Roman eagle that he soars, and we shall
find, if we regard him closely, that every feather is plucked from
its wing.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] W. W. Story.
[21] F. W. Faber, in “Dublin Review,” June, 1853.