at different times have been made, and the losses thereon ensuing, we
may guess what the loss would be were the system fully carried out. Of
those fairly acquainted with Latin, it would be curious to know how
many have seen 'silva' in 'savage,' since it has been so written, and
not 'salvage,' as of old? or have been reminded of the hindrances to a
civilized and human society which the indomitable forest, more perhaps
than any other obstacle, presents. When 'fancy' was spelt 'phant'sy,'
as by Sylvester in his translation of Du Bartas, and other scholarly
writers of the seventeenth century, no one could doubt of its identity
with 'phantasy,' as no Greek scholar could miss its relation with
phantasia. Spell 'analyse' as I have sometimes seen it, and as
phonetically it ought to be, 'annalize,' and the tap-root of the word
is cut. How many readers will recognize in it then the image of
dissolving and resolving aught into its elements, and use it with a
more or less conscious reference to this? It may be urged that few do
so even now. The more need they should not be fewer; for these few do
in fact retain the word in its place, from which else it might
gradually drift; they preserve its vitality, and the propriety of its
use, not merely for themselves, but also for the others that have not
this knowledge. In phonetic spelling is, in fact, the proposal that the
learned and the educated should of free choice place themselves under
the disadvantages of the ignorant and uneducated, instead of seeking to
elevate these last to their own more favoured condition.
On this subject one observation more. The multitude of difficulties of
every sort and size which would beset the period of transition, and
that no brief period, from our present spelling to the very easiest
form of phonetic, seem to me to be almost wholly overlooked by those
who are the most eager to press forward this scheme: while yet it is
very noticeable that so soon as ever the 'Spelling Reform' approaches,
however remotely, a practical shape, the Reformers, who up to this time
were at issue with all the rest of the world, are at once at issue
among themselves. At once the question comes to the front, Shall the
labour-pangs of this immense new-birth or transformation of English be
encountered all at once? or shall they be spread over years, and little
by little the necessary changes introduced? It would not be easy to
bring together two scholars who have bestowed more thought and the
results of more laborious study on the whole subject of phonetic
spelling than Mr. Ellis and Dr. Murray have done, while yet at the last
annual meeting of the Philological Society (May 20, 1881) these two
distinguished scholars, with mutual respect undiminished, had no choice
but to acknowledge that, while they were seeking the same objects, the
means by which they sought to attain them were altogether different,
and that, in the judgment of each, all which the other was doing in
setting forward results equally dear to both was only tending to put
hindrances in the way, and to make the attainment of those results
remoter than ever. [Footnote: [For arguments in defence of phonetic
spelling the student is referred to Sweet's _Handbook of Phonetics_
(Appendix); Skeat's _Principles of English Etymology_, p. 294; Max
Muller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_, ii. 108.]]
But to return. Even now the relationships of words, so important for
our right understanding of them, are continually overlooked; a very
little matter serving to conceal from us the family to which they
pertain. Thus how many of our nouns are indeed unsuspected participles,
or are otherwise most closely connected with verbs, with which we
probably never think of putting them in relation. And yet with how
lively an interest shall we discover those to be of closest kin, which
we had never considered but as entire strangers to one another; what
increased mastery over our mother tongue shall we through such
discoveries obtain. Thus 'wrong' is the perfect participle of 'to
wring' that which has been 'wrung' or wrested from the right; as in
French 'tort,' from 'torqueo,' is the twisted. The 'brunt' of the
battle is its heat, where it 'burns' the most fiercely; [Footnote: The
word _brunt_ is a somewhat difficult form to explain. It is probably of
Scandinavian origin; compare Danish _brynde_, heat. For the dental
suffix -_t_, see Douse, _Gothic_, p. 101. The suffix is not
participial.] the 'haft' of a knife, that whereby you 'have' or hold it.
This exercise of putting words in their true relation and connexion
with one another might be carried much further. Of whole groups of
words, which may seem to acknowledge no kinship with one another, it
will not be difficult to show that they had the same parentage, or, if
not this, a cousinship in common. For instance, here are 'shore,'
'share,' 'shears'; 'shred,' 'sherd'; all most closely connected with
the verb 'to sheer.' 'Share' is a portion of anything divided off;
'shears' are instruments effecting this process of separation; the
'shore' is the place where the continuity of the land is interrupted by
the sea; a 'shred' is that which is shorn from the main piece; a
'sherd,' as a pot-'sherd,' (also 'pot-share,' Spenser,) that which is
broken off and thus divided from the vessel; these not all exhausting
this group or family of words, though it would occupy more time than we
can spare to put some other words in their relation with it.
But this analysing of groups of words for the detecting of the bond of
relationship between them, and their common root, may require more
etymological knowledge than you possess, and more helps from books than
you can always command. There is another process, and one which may
prove no less useful to yourselves and to others, which will lie more
certainly within your reach. You will meet in books, sometimes in the
same book, and perhaps in the same page of this book, a word used in
senses so far apart from one another that at first it will seem to you
absurd to suppose any bond of connexion between them. Now when you thus
fall in with a word employed in these two or more senses so far removed
from one another, accustom yourselves to seek out the bond which there
certainly is between these several uses. This tracing of that which is
common to and connects all its meanings can only be done by getting to
its centre and heart, to the seminal meaning, from which, as from a
fruitful seed, all the others unfold themselves; to the first link in
the chain, from which every later one, in a direct line or a lateral,
depends. We may proceed in this investigation, certain that we shall
find such, or at least that such there is to be found. For nothing can
be more certain than this (and the non-recognition of it is a serious
blemish in Johnson's _Dictionary_), that a word has originally but one
meaning, that all other uses, however widely they may diverge from one
another and recede from this one, may yet be affiliated to it, brought
back to the one central meaning, which grasps and knits them all
together; just as the several races of men, black, white, and yellow
and red, despite of all their present diversity and dispersion, have a
central point of unity in that one pair from which they all have
descended.
Let me illustrate this by two or three familiar examples. How various
are the senses in which 'post' is used; as 'post'-office; 'post'-haste;
a 'post' standing in the ground; a military 'post'; an official 'post';
'to post' a ledger. Is it possible to find anything which is common to
all these uses of 'post'? When once we are on the right track, nothing
is easier. 'Post' is the Latin 'positus,' that which is _placed_; the
piece of timber is 'placed' in the ground, and so a 'post'; a military
station is a 'post,' for a man is 'placed' in it, and must not quit it
without orders; to travel 'post,' is to have certain relays of horses
''placed' at intervals, that so no delay on the road may occur; the
'post '-office avails itself of this mode of communication; to 'post' a
ledger is to 'place' or register its several items.
Once more, in what an almost infinite number of senses 'stock' is
employed; we have live 'stock,' 'stock' in trade or on the farm, the
village 'stocks,' the 'stock' of a gun, the 'stock'-dove, the 'stocks,'
on which ships are built, the 'stock' which goes round the neck, the
family 'stock,' the 'stocks,' or public funds, in which money is
invested, with other 'stocks' besides these. What point in common can
we find between them all? This, that being all derived from one verb,
they cohere in the idea of _fixedness_ which is common to them all.
Thus, the 'stock' of a gun is that in which the barrel is fixed; the
village 'stocks' are those in which the feet are fastened; the 'stock'
in trade is the fixed capital; and so too, the 'stock' on the farm,
although the fixed capital has there taken the shape of horses and
cattle; in the 'stocks' or public funds, money sticks fast, inasmuch as
those who place it there cannot withdraw or demand the capital, but
receive only the interest; the 'stock' of a tree is fast set in the
ground; and from this use of the word it is transferred to a family;
the 'stock' is that from which it grows, and out of which it unfolds
itself. And here we may bring in the 'stock'-dove, as being the 'stock'
or stirps of the domestic kinds. I might group with these, 'stake' in
both its spellings; a 'stake' is stuck in the hedge and there remains;
the 'stakes' which men wager against the issue of a race are paid down,
and thus fixed or deposited to answer the event; a beef-'steak' is a
portion so small that it can be stuck on the point of a fork; and so
forward. [Footnote: See the _Instructions for Parish Priests_, p. 69,
published by the _Early English Texts Society_.] When we thus affirm
that the divergent meanings of a word can all be brought back to some
one point from which, immediately or mediately, they every one proceed,
that none has primarily more than one meaning, it must be remembered
that there may very well be two words, or, as it will sometimes happen,
more, spelt as well as pronounced alike, which yet are wholly different
in their derivation and primary usage; and that, of course, between
such homonyms or homographs as these no bond of union on the score of
this identity is to be sought. Neither does this fact in the least
invalidate our assertion. We have in them, as Cobbett expresses it well,
the same combination of letters, but not the same word. Thus we have
'page,' the side of a leaf, from 'pagina,' and 'page,' a small boy;
'league,' a treaty (F. ligue), from 'ligare,' to bind, and 'league' (O.
F. legue), from leuca, a Celtic measure of distance; 'host' (hostis),
an army, 'host' (O. F. hoste), from the Latin hospitem, and 'host'
(hostia), in the Roman Catholic sacrifice of the mass. We have two
'ounces' (uncia and Pers. yuz); two 'seals' (sigillum and seolh); two
'moods' (modus and mod); two 'sacks' (saccus and sec); two 'sounds'
(sonus and sund); two 'lakes' (lacus and lacca); two 'kennels' (canalis
and canile); two 'partisans' (partisan and partegiana); two 'quires'
(choeur and cahier); two 'corns' (corn and cornu); two 'ears' (ohr and
ähre); two 'doles' (deuil and theil); two 'perches' (pertica and
perca); two 'races' (raes and the French race); two 'rocks,' two
'rooks,' two 'sprays,' two 'saws,' two 'strains,' two 'trunks,' two
'burrows,' two 'helms,' two 'quarries'; three 'moles,' three 'rapes'
(as the 'rape' of Proserpine, the 'rape' of Bramber, 'rape'-seed); four
'ports,' three 'vans,' three 'smacks.' Other homonyms in the language
are the following: 'ash,' 'barb,' 'bark,' 'barnacle,' 'bat,' 'beam,'
'beetle,' 'bill,' 'bottle,' 'bound,' 'breeze,' 'bugle,' 'bull,' 'cape,'
'caper,' 'chap,' 'cleave,' 'club,' 'cob,' 'crab,' 'cricket,' 'crop,'
'crowd,' 'culver,' 'dam,' 'elder,' 'flag,' 'fog,' 'fold,' 'font,'
'fount,' 'gin,' 'gore,' 'grain,' 'grin,' 'gulf,' 'gum,' 'gust,' 'herd,'
'hind,' 'hip,' 'jade,' 'jar,' 'jet,' 'junk,' 'lawn,' 'lime,' 'link,'
'mace,' 'main,' 'mass,' 'mast,' 'match,' 'meal,' 'mint,' 'moor,'
'paddock,' 'painter,' 'pernicious,' 'plot,' 'pulse,' 'punch,' 'rush,'
'scale,' 'scrip,' 'shingle,' 'shock,' 'shrub,' 'smack,' 'soil,' 'stud,'
'swallow,' 'tap,' 'tent,' 'toil,' 'trinket,' 'turtle.' You will find it
profitable to follow these up at home, to trace out the two or more
words which have clothed themselves in exactly the same outward garb,
and on what etymologies they severally repose; so too, as often as you
suspect the existence of homonyms, to make proof of the matter for
yourselves, gradually forming as complete a list of these as you
can. [Footnote: For a nearly complete list of homonyms in English see
List of Homonyms at the end of Skeat's _Etym. Dict._; Kock's
_Historical Grammar of the English Language_, vol. i. p. 223; Mätzner's
_Engl. Grammatik_, vol. i. pp. 187-204; and compare Dwight's _Modern
Philology_, vol. ii. p. 311.] You may usefully do the same in any other
language which you study, for they exist in all. In them the identity
is merely on the surface and in sound, and it would, of course, be lost
labour to seek for a point of contact between meanings which have no
closer connexion with one another in reality than they have in
appearance.
Let me suggest some further exercises in this region of words. There
are some which at once provoke and promise to reward inquiry, by the
evident readiness with which they will yield up the secret, if duly
interrogated by us. Many, as we have seen, have defied, and will
probably defy to the end, all efforts to dissipate the mystery which
hangs over them; and these we must be content to leave; but many
announce that their explanations cannot be very far to seek. Let me
instance 'candidate.' Does it not argue an incurious spirit to be
content that this word should be given and received by us a hundred
times, as at a contested election it is, and we never ask ourselves,
What does it mean? why is one offering himself to the choice of his
fellows called a 'candidate'? If the word lay evidently beyond our
horizon, we might acquiesce in our ignorance; but resting, as
manifestly it does, upon the Latin 'candidus,' it challenges inquiry,
and a very little of this would at once put us in possession of the
Roman custom for which it witnesses--namely, that such as intended to
claim the suffrages of the people for any of the chief offices of the
State, presented themselves beforehand to them in a _white_ toga, being
therefore called 'candidati.' And as it so often happens that in
seeking information upon one subject we obtain it upon another, so will
it probably be here; for in fully learning what this custom was, you
will hardly fail to learn how we obtained 'ambition,' what originally
it meant, and how Milton should have written--
'To reign is worth ambition, though in hell.
Or again, any one who knows so much as that 'verbum' means a word,
might well be struck by the fact (and if he followed it up would be led
far into the relation of the parts of speech to one another), that in
grammar it is not employed to signify any word whatsoever, but
restricted to the verb alone; 'verbum' is the verb. Surely here is
matter for reflection. What gives to the verb the right to monopolize
the dignity of being 'the word'? Is it because the verb is the
animating power, the vital principle of every sentence, and that
without which understood or uttered, no sentence can exist? or can you
offer any other reason? I leave this to your own consideration.
We call certain books 'classics.' We have indeed a double use of the
word, for we speak of the Greek and Latin as the 'classical' languages,
and the great writers in these as '_the_ classics'; while at other
times you hear of a 'classical' English style, or of English
'classics.' Now 'classic' is connected plainly with 'classis.' What
then does it mean in itself, and how has it arrived at this double use?
'The term is drawn from the political economy of Rome. Such a man was
rated as to his income in the third class, such another in the fourth,
and so on; but he who was in the highest was emphatically said to be of
_the_ class, "classicus"--a class man, without adding the number, as in
that case superfluous; while all others were infra classem. Hence, by
an obvious analogy, the best authors were rated as "classici," or men
of the highest class; just as in English we say "men of rank"
absolutely, for men who are in the highest ranks of the state.' The
mental process by which this title, which would apply rightly to the
best authors in _all_ languages, came to be restricted to those only in
two, and these two to be claimed, to the seeming exclusion of all
others, as _the_ classical languages, is one constantly recurring,
making itself felt in all regions of human thought; to which therefore
I would in passing call your attention, though I cannot now do more.
There is one circumstance which you must by no means suffer to escape
your own notice, nor that of your pupils--namely, that words out of
number, which are now employed only in a figurative sense, did yet
originally rest on some fact of the outward world, vividly presenting
itself to the imagination; which fact the word has incorporated and
knit up with itself for ever. If I may judge from my own experience,
few intelligent boys would not feel that they had gained something,
when made to understand that 'to insult' means properly to leap as on
the prostrate body of a foe; 'to affront,' to strike him on the face;
that 'to succour' means by running to place oneself under one that is
falling; 'to relent,' (connected with 'lentus,') to slacken the
swiftness of one's pursuit; [Footnote: 'But nothing might _relent_ his
hasty flight,' Spenser _F. Q._ iii. 4.] 'to reprehend,' to lay hold of
one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back; 'to exonerate,' to
discharge of a burden, ships being exonerated once; that 'to be
examined' means to be weighed. They would be pleased to learn that a
man is called 'supercilious,' because haughtiness with contempt of
others expresses itself by the raising of the eyebrows or
'supercilium'; that 'subtle' (subtilis for subtexilis) is literally
'fine-spun'; that 'astonished' (attonitus) is properly thunderstruck;
that 'sincere' is without wax, (sine cera,) as the best and finest
honey should be; that a 'companion,' probably at least, is one with
whom we share our bread, a messmate; that a 'sarcasm' is properly such
a lash inflicted by the 'scourge of the tongue' as brings away the
_flesh_ after it; with much more in the same kind.
'Trivial' is a word borrowed from the life. Mark three or four persons
standing idly at the point where one street bisects at right angles
another, and discussing there the idle nothings of the day; there you
have the living explanation of 'trivial,' 'trivialities,' such as no
explanation not rooting itself in the etymology would ever give you, or
enable you to give to others. You have there the 'tres viae,' the
'trivium'; and 'trivialities' properly mean such talk as is holden by
those idle loiterers that gather at this meeting of three
roads. [Footnote: But 'trivial' may be from 'trivium' in another sense;
that is, from the 'trivium,' or three preparatory disciplines,--grammar,
arithmetic, and geometry,--as distinguished from the four more advanced,
or 'quadrivium'; these and those together being esteemed in the Middle
Ages to constitute a complete liberal education. Preparatory schools
were often called '_trivial_ schools,' as occupying themselves with the
'trivium.'] 'Rivals' properly are those who dwell on the banks of the
same river. But as all experience shows, there is no such fruitful
source of contention as a water-right, and these would be often at
strife with one another in regard of the periods during which they
severally had a right to the use of the stream, turning it off into
their own fields before the time, or leaving open the sluices beyond
the time, or in other ways interfering, or being counted to interfere,
with the rights of their neighbours. And in this way 'rivals' came to
be applied to any who were on any grounds in unfriendly competition
with one another.
By such teaching as this you may often improve, and that without
turning play-time into lesson-time, the hours of relaxation and
amusement. But 'relaxation,' on which we have just lighted as by chance,
must not escape us. How can the bow be 'relaxed' or slackened (for this
is the image), which has not been bent, whose string has never been
drawn tight? Having drawn tight the bow of our mind by earnest toil, we
may then claim to have it from time to time 'relaxed.' Having been
attentive and assiduous then, but not otherwise, we may claim
'relaxation' and amusement. But 'attentive' and 'assiduous' are
themselves words which will repay us to understand exactly what they
mean. He is 'assiduous' who sits close to his work; he is 'attentive,'
who, being taught, stretches out his neck that so he may not lose a
word. 'Diligence' too has its lesson. Derived from 'diligo,' to love,
it reminds us that the secret of true industry in our work is love of
that work. And as truth is wrapped up in 'diligence,' what a lie, on
the other hand, lurks in 'indolence,' or, to speak more accurately, in
our present employment of it! This, from 'in' and 'doleo,' not to
grieve, is properly a state in which we have no grief or pain; and
employed as we now employ it, suggests to us that indulgence in sloth
constitutes for us the truest negation of pain. Now no one would wish
to deny that 'pain' and 'pains' are often nearly allied; but yet these
pains hand us over to true pleasures; while indolence is so far from
yielding that good which it is so forward to promise, that Cowper spoke
only truth, when, perhaps meaning to witness against the falsehood I
have just denounced, he spoke of
'Lives spent in _indolence_, and therefore _sad_,'
not 'therefore _glad_,' as the word 'indolence' would fain have us to
believe.
There is another way in which these studies I have been urging may be
turned to account. Doubtless you will seek to cherish in your scholars,
to keep lively in yourselves, that spirit and temper which find a
special interest in all relating to the land of our birth, that land
which the providence of God has assigned as the sphere of our life's
task and of theirs. Our schools are called 'national,' [Footnote: This
was written in England, and in the year 1851.] and if we would have
them such in reality, we must neglect nothing that will foster a
national spirit in them. I know not whether this is sufficiently
considered among us; yet certainly we cannot have Church-schools worthy
the name, least of all in England, unless they are truly national as
well. It is the anti-national character of the Roman Catholic system
which perhaps more than all else offends Englishmen; and if their sense
of this should ever grow weak, their protest against that system would
soon lose much of its energy and strength. But here, as everywhere else,
knowledge must be the food of love. Your pupils must know something
about England, if they are to love it; they must see some connexion of
its past with its present, of what it has been with what it is, if they
are to feel that past as anything to them.