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diff --git a/old/67503-0.txt b/old/67503-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index f79ace2..0000000 --- a/old/67503-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7338 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Parts of Speech: Essays on English, by -Brander Matthews - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Parts of Speech: Essays on English - -Author: Brander Matthews - -Release Date: February 25, 2022 [eBook #67503] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive/American - Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARTS OF SPEECH: ESSAYS ON -ENGLISH *** - - - - - - PARTS OF SPEECH - - ESSAYS ON ENGLISH - - - - - _Books by Brander Matthews_: - - - ESSAYS AND CRITICISMS - - French Dramatists of the 19th Century - - Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of more or less importance - - Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays - - The Historical Novel, and other Essays - - Parts of Speech, Essays on English - - The Development of the Drama (_in preparation_) - - - - - PARTS OF SPEECH - - ESSAYS ON ENGLISH - - - BY - - BRANDER MATTHEWS - PROFESSOR IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1901 - - - - - Copyright, 1901, by - BRANDER MATTHEWS - - _Published September, 1901_ - - - THE CAXTON PRESS - NEW YORK. - - - - - TO MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE - GEORGE RICE CARPENTER - PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION - IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - - - - -PREFATORY NOTE - - -Altho the various essays which are now brought together in this book -have been written from time to time during the past ten years, nearly -all of them have had their origin in a desire to make plain and to -emphasize one fact: that the English language belongs to the peoples -who speak it--that it is their own precious possession, to deal with at -their pleasure and at their peril. The fact itself ought to be obvious -enough to all of us; and yet there would be no difficulty in showing -that it is not everywhere accepted. Perhaps the best way to present it -so clearly that it cannot be rejected is to draw attention to some of -its implications; and this is what has been attempted in one or another -of these separate papers. - -The point of view from which the English language has been approached -is that of the man of letters rather than that of the professed expert -in linguistics. But the writer ventures to hope that the professed -expert, even tho he discovers little that is new in these pages, will -find also little that demands his disapproval. The final essay is -frankly more literary than linguistic, for it is an attempt to define -not so much a word as a thing. - -So wise a critic of literature and of language as Sainte-Beuve has -declared that “orthography is like society: it will never be entirely -reformed; but we can at least make it less vicious.” In this sensible -saying is the warrant for the simplified spellings adopted in the -following pages. As will be seen by readers of the two papers on our -orthography, the writer is by no means a radical “spelling-reformer,” -so called. But he believes that all of us who wish to keep the English -language up to its topmost efficiency are bound always to do all in our -power to aid the tendency toward simplification--whether of orthography -or of syntax--which has been at work unceasingly ever since the -language came into existence. - - B. M. - - COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, - July 4, 1901. - - - - - _CONTENTS_ - - - PAGE - - I _The Stock that Speaks the Language_ 3 - - II _The Future of the Language_ 29 - - III _The English Language in the United States_ 47 - - IV _The Language in Great Britain_ 81 - - V _Americanisms Once More_ 97 - - VI _New Words and Old_ 127 - - VII _The Naturalization of Foreign Words_ 165 - - VIII _The Function of Slang_ 187 - - IX _Questions of Usage_ 217 - - X _An Inquiry as to Rime_ 241 - - XI _On the Poetry of Place-Names_ 271 - - XII _As to “American Spelling”_ 295 - - XIII _The Simplification of English Spelling_ 319 - - XIV _Americanism--An Attempt at a Definition_ 343 - - - - - I - - THE STOCK THAT SPEAKS - THE LANGUAGE - - -It is a thousand years since the death of the great Englishman, King -Alfred, in whose humble translations we may see the beginnings of -English literature. Until it has a literature, however unpretending -and however artless, a language is not conscious of itself; and it is -therefore in no condition to maintain its supremacy over the dialects -that are its jealous rivals. And it is by its literature chiefly that -a language forever binds together the peoples who speak it--by a -literature in which the characteristics of these peoples are revealed -and preserved, and in which their ideals are declared and passed down -from generation to generation as the most precious heritage of the race. - -The historian of the English people asserts that what made Alfred -great, small as was his sphere of action, was “the moral grandeur of -his life. He lived solely for the good of his people.” He laid the -foundations for a uniform system of law, and he started schools, -wishing that every free-born youth who had the means should “abide at -his book till he can understand English writing.” He invited scholars -from other lands to settle in England; but what most told on English -culture was done not by them but by the king himself. He “resolved -to throw open to his people in their own tongue the knowledge which -till then had been limited to the clergy,” and he “took his books as -he found them,” the popular manuals of the day, Bede and Boethius and -Orosius. These he translated with his own hand, editing freely, and -expanding and contracting as he saw fit. “Do not blame me if any know -Latin better than I,” he explained with modest dignity; “for every -man must say what he says and must do what he does according to his -ability.” And Green, from whom this quotation is borrowed, insists -that, “simple as was his aim, Alfred created English literature”--the -English literature which is still alive and sturdy after a thousand -years, and which is to-day flourishing not only in Great Britain, where -Alfred founded it, but here in the United States, in a larger land, the -existence of which the good king had no reason ever to surmise. - -This English literature is like the language in which it is written, -and also like the stock that speaks the language, wherever the race -may have planted or transplanted itself, whether by the banks of the -little Thames or on the shores of the broad Hudson and the mighty -Mississippi. Literature and language and people are practical, no -doubt; but they are not what they are often called: they are not -prosaic. On the contrary, they are poetic, essentially and indisputably -poetic. The peoples that speak English are, and always have been, -self-willed and adventurous. This they were long before King Alfred’s -time, in the early days when they were Teutons merely, and had not yet -won their way into Britain; and this they are to-day, when the most -of them no longer dwell in old England, but in the newer England here -in America. They have ever lacked the restraint and reserve which are -the conditions of the best prose; and they have always exulted in the -untiring energy and the daring imagination which are the vital elements -of poetry. “In his busiest days Alfred found time to learn the old -songs of his race by heart,” so the historian tells us; “and he bade -them be taught in the palace-school.” - -Lyric is what English literature has always been at its best, lyric and -dramatic; and the men who speak English have always been individual and -independent, every man ready to fight for his own hand; and the English -language has gone on its own way, keeping its strength in spite of -the efforts of pedants and pedagogs to bind it and to stifle it, and -ever insisting on renewing its freshness as best it could. Development -there has been in language and in literature and in the stock itself, -development and growth of many kinds; but no radical change can be -detected in all these ten centuries. “No national art is good which -is not plainly the nation’s own,” said Mr. Stopford Brooke in his -consideration of the earliest English lyrics. “The poetry of England -has owed much to the different races which mingled with the original -English race; it has owed much to the different types of poetry it -absorbed--Greek, Latin, Welsh, French, Italian, Spanish: but below all -these admixtures the English nature wrought its steady will. It seized, -it transmuted, it modified, it mastered these admixtures both of races -and of song.” - -The English nature wrought its steady will; but what is this English -nature, thus set up as an entity and endowed with conscious purpose? Is -there such a thing, of a certainty? Can there be such a thing, indeed? -These questions are easier to ask than to answer. It is true that we -have been accustomed to credit certain races not merely with certain -characteristics, but even with certain qualities, esteeming certain -peoples to be specially gifted in one way or another. For example, we -have held it as an article of faith that the Greeks, by their display -of a surpassing sense of form, proved their possession of an artistic -capacity finer and richer than that revealed by any other people since -the dawn of civilization. And again, we have seen in the Roman skill -in constructive administration, in the Latin success in law-making -and in road-building--we have seen in this the evidence of a native -faculty denied to their remote predecessors, the Egyptians. Now come -the advocates of a later theory, who tell us that the characteristics -of the Greeks and of the Romans are not the result of any inherent -superiority of theirs, or of any native predisposition toward art -or toward administration, but are caused rather by circumstances of -climate, of geographical situation, and of historical position. We are -assured now that the Romans, had they been in the place of the Greeks -and under like circumstances, might have revealed themselves as great -masters of form; while the Greeks, had their history been that of the -Romans, would certainly have shown the same power of ruling themselves -and others, and of compacting the most diverse nations into a single -empire. - -No doubt the theory of race-characteristics, of stocks variously gifted -with specific faculties, has been too vigorously asserted and unduly -insisted upon. It was so convenient and so useful that it could not -help being overworked. But altho it is not so impregnable as it was -supposed to be, it need not be surrendered at the first attack; and -altho we are compelled to abandon the theory as a whole, we can save -what it contained of truth. And therefore it is well to bear in mind -that even if the Greeks in the beginning had no sharper bent toward art -than had the Phenicians,--from whom they borrowed so much of value to -be made by them more valuable,--even if their esthetic superiority was -the result of a happy chapter of chances, it was a fact nevertheless; -and a time came at last when the Greeks were seen to be possessed of -a fertility of invention and of a sense of form surpassing all their -predecessors had ever exhibited. When this time came the Greeks were -conscious of their unexampled achievements and properly proud of them; -and they proved that they were able to transmit from sire to son this -artistic aptitude--however the aptitude itself had been developed -originally. So whether the Roman power to govern and to evolve the -proper instruments of government was a native gift of the Latins, -or whether it was developed in them by a fortuitous combination of -geographical and historical circumstances, this question is somewhat -academic, since we know that the Romans did display extraordinary -administrative ability century after century. Whenever it was evolved, -the artistic type in Greece and the administrative type in Italy was -persistent; and it reappeared again and again in successive generations. - -This indeed needs always to be remembered, that race-characteristics, -whatever their origin, are strangely enduring when once they are -established. The English nature whereof Mr. Stopford Brooke speaks, -when once it was conscious of itself, worked its steady will, despite -the changes of circumstance; and only very slowly is it modified by the -accidents of later history and geography. M. Fouillée has set side by -side the description of the Germans by Tacitus and the account of the -Gauls by Cæsar, drawing attention to the fact that the modern French -are now very like the ancient Gauls, and that the descendants of the -Germans of old, the various branches of the Teutonic race, have the -characteristics of their remote ancestors whom the Roman historian -chose to praise by way of warning for his fellow-citizens. - -The Romans conquered Gaul and held it for centuries; the Franks took -it in turn and gave it their name; but the Gallic type was so securely -fixed that the Roman first and then the Frank succumbed to it and were -absorbed into it. The Gallic type is not now absolutely unchanged, for, -after all, the world does move; but it is readily recognizable to this -day. Certain of Cæsar’s criticisms read as tho they were written by -a contemporary of Napoleon. As Cæsar saw them the Gauls were fickle -in counsel and fond of revolutions. Believing in false rumors, they -were led into deeds they regretted afterward. Deciding questions of -importance without reflection, they were ready to war without reason; -and they were weak and lacking in energy in time of disaster. They were -cast down by a first defeat, as they were inflamed by a first victory. -They were affable, light, inconstant, and vain; they were quick-witted -and ready-tongued; they had a liking for tales and an insatiable -curiosity for news. They cultivated eloquence, having an astonishing -facility of speech, and of letting themselves be taken in by words. And -having thus summed up Cæsar’s analysis of the Gaul, M. Fouillée asks -how after this we can deny the persistence of national types. - -What Tacitus has to say of the Germans comes home more closely to -us who speak English, since the Teutonic tribes the Latin historian -was considering are not more the ancestors of the modern Prussians -than they are of the wide-spread Anglo-Saxon peoples. As those who -speak English went from the mainland across the North Sea to an -island and dwelt there for centuries, and were joined by earlier kin -from elsewhere, the race-characteristics were obviously modified a -little--just as they have been as obviously modified a little more -when some of those who spoke English went out again from the island -to a boundless continent across the Atlantic, and were joined here by -many others, most of whom were also derived from one or another of the -varied Teutonic stocks. - -It is nearly two thousand years since Tacitus studied the Teutonic -race-characteristics, and yet most of the peculiarities he noted -then are evident now. Tacitus tells us that the Teutons were tall, -fair-haired, and flegmatic. They were great eaters, not to say gross -feeders; and they were given to strong drink. They were fond of games, -and were ready to pay their losses with their persons, if need be. They -were individual and independent. Their manners were rude, not to call -them violent. They were possessed of the domestic virtues, the women -being chaste and the husbands faithful. They loved war as they loved -liberty. They had a passionate fidelity to their leaders. They decided -important questions of policy in public assembly. - -The several peoples of our own time who are descended from the Teutons -thus described by Tacitus with so sympathetic an insight have been -developing for twenty centuries, more or less, each in its own way, -under influences wholly unlike, influences both geographical and -historical; and it is small wonder that they have diverged as they -have, and that no one of them nowadays completely represents the -original stock. Some of the points Tacitus made are true to-day in -Prussia and are not true in Great Britain; and some hit home here -in the United States, altho they miss the mark in Germany. The -modern Germans still retain a few of these Tacitean characteristics -which the peoples that speak English have lost in their adventurous -career overseas. And on the other hand, certain of the remarks of -Tacitus might be made to-day in the United States; for example, the -willingness to run risks for the fun of the game--is not this a present -characteristic of the American as we know him? And here we have always -been governed by town-meeting, as the old Teutons were, whereas the -modern German is only now getting this back by borrowing it from the -English precedent. In our private litigations we continue to abide by -the customs of our remote Teutonic ancestors, while the German has -accepted as a legal guide the Roman law, wrought out by the countrymen -of Tacitus. - -Second only to a community of language, no unifying force is more -potent than a community of law. In the depths of their dark forests the -Teutons had already evolved their own rudimentary code by which they -did justice between man and man; and these customary sanctions were -taken over to Britain by the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes; and -they served as the foundation of the common law by means of which the -peoples that speak English still administer justice in their courts. -And here again we find the handiwork of the great King Alfred, from -whom we may date the codification of an English law as we may also -reckon the establishing of an English literature. With the opportunism -of our race, he had no thought of a new legislation, but merely merged -the best of the tribal customs into a law for the whole kingdom. The -king sought to bring to light and to leave on record the righteous -rulings of the wise men who had gone before. “Those things which I met -with,” so the historian transmits his words, “either of the days of -Ine, my kinsman, or of Offa, King of the Mercians, or of Æthelberht, -who first among the English race received baptism, those which seemed -to me rightest, those I have gathered, and rejected the rest.” - -Law and language--these are the unrelaxing bands that hold a race -firmly together. There are now two main divisions of the Teutonic -stock, separated to-day by language and by law--the people who speak -German and are ruled by Roman law, and the peoples who speak English -and are governed by the common law; and the separation is as wide and -as deep legally as it is linguistically. “By the forms of its language -a nation expresses its very self,” said one of the acutest of British -critics; and we have the proof of this at hand in the characteristic -differences between the English language and the German. By the forms -of its law a people expresses its political beliefs; and we have the -evidence of this in the fact that we Americans regard our rulers merely -as agents of the town-meeting of the old Teutons, while the modern -Germans are submitting to a series of trials for lese-majesty. - -Laws have most weight when they are seen to be the expression of the -common conscience; and they are most respected when they best reflect -the ideals that are “the souls of the nations which cherish them,” as -a historian of American literature has finely phrased it--“the living -spirits which waken nationality into being, and which often preserve -its memory long after its life has ebbed away.” The marked difference -now obvious between the two great divisions of the Teutonic stock--that -which speaks English and that which speaks German--is due in part to -their not having each conserved exactly the same portion of the ideals -inherited from their common ancestors, and in part to their having each -acquired other ideals in the course of the many centuries of their -separate existence. And the minor differences to be detected between -the two great divisions of the stock that speaks English, that dwelling -in Great Britain and that dwelling in the United States, are due to -similar causes. - -While the ancestors of the people who speak German were abiding at -home, where Tacitus had seen them, the ancestors of the peoples who -speak English went forth across the North Sea and possessed themselves -of the better part of Great Britain and gave it a new name. They -were not content to defeat the earlier inhabitants in fair fight, -and then to leave them in peace, as the Romans did, ruling them and -intermarrying with them; the English thrust the natives out violently -and harried them away. As Green puts it tersely, “The English conquest -for a hundred and fifty years was a sheer dispossession and driving back -of the people whom the English conquered.” No doubt this dispossession -was ruthless; but was it complete? The newcomers took the land for -their own, and they meant to kill out all the original owners; but -was this possible? The country was rough and thickly wooded, and -it abounded in nooks and corners where a family might hide itself. -Moreover, what is more likely than that the invader should often spare -a woman and take her to wife? For centuries the English kept spreading -themselves and pushing back the Britons; but in the long war there -were truces now and again, and what is more likely than an incessant -intermingling of the blood all along the border as it was slowly driven -forward? - -Certain it is that one of the influences which have modified the modern -English stock is a Celtic strain. If the peoples that speak English -are now not quite like the people that speak German, plainly this is -one reason: they have had a Celtic admixture, which has lightened them -and contributed elements lacking in the original Teuton. To declare -just what these elements are is not easy; but to deny their presence is -impossible. The Celt has an impetuosity and a swiftness of perception -which we do not find in the original Teuton, and which the man who -speaks English is now more likely to possess than the man who speaks -German. The Celt has a certain shy delicacy; he has a happy sensibility -and a turn for charming sentiment; he has a delightful lyric note; -and he has at times a sincere and puissant melancholy. These are all -qualities which we find in our English literature, and especially in -its greatest figure. “The Celts do not form an utterly distinct part -of our mixed population,” said Henry Morley in a striking passage. -“But for early, frequent, and various contact with the race that in -its half-barbarous days invented Ossian’s dialogues with St. Patrick, -and that quickened afterward the Northmen’s blood in France, Germanic -England would not have produced a Shakspere.” - -Here we see Morley declaring that the Celt had “quickened the -Northmen’s blood in France”; and perhaps by his choice of a word he -meant to remind us that whereas the Northmen who sailed down the -mouth of the Seine were Teutons, the Normans who were to sail up to -Hastings had been materially modified during their sojourn in France, -which had once been Celtic Gaul. Two series of occasions there were -when the English received an accession of Celtic blood: first, when -they conquered England; and second, when they in turn were conquered -by the Normans, who ruled them for centuries, and were finally merged -in them, just as earlier the Romans had been merged in the Gauls. And -this recalls to us the fact that there was more in the Norman than the -intermingling of the Teuton and the Celt; there was in the Norman also -not a little of the Roman who had so long ruled Gaul, and who had so -deeply marked it with certain of his own characteristics. Thus it was -that the Norman brought into England a Latin tradition; he had acquired -something of the Roman administrative skill, something of the Roman’s -genius for affairs. After the Renascence, Latin influences were to -affect the English language and English literature; but it was after -the conquest that the English people itself came first in contact with -certain of the Roman ideals. - -Matthew Arnold thought that we owed “to the Latin element in our -language the most of that very rapidity and clear decisiveness by which -it is contradistinguished from the modern German”; and he found in the -Latinized Normans in England “the sense for fact, which the Celts had -not, and the love of strenuousness, clearness, and rapidity, the high -Latin spirit, which the Saxons had not.” Perhaps the English feeling -for style, our command of the larger rhetoric, may be due to this blend -of the Norman; and it cannot be denied that this gift has not been -granted to the modern German. The fantastic brilliancy of De Quincey -and the sonorous picturesqueness of Ruskin are alike inconceivable in -the language of Klopstock; and altho there is a pregnant concision in -the speeches of Bismarck at his best, there is no German orator who -ever attained the unfailing dignity and the lofty affluence of Webster -at his best. - -Less than two centuries after the good King Alfred had declared English -law and established English literature, the Normans came and saw and -conquered. Less than three centuries after King William took the land -there was born the first great English poet. If the language is to-day -what it is, it is because of Chaucer, who chose the court dialect of -London to write in, and who made it supple for his own use and the use -of the poets that were to come after. The Norman conquest had brought a -new and needed contribution to the English character; it had resulted -in an immense enrichment of the English language; and it had related -English literature again to the broad current of European life. To the -original Teutonic basis had been added Celtic and Norman and Latin -strains; and still the English nature wrought its steady will, still it -expressed itself most freely and most fully in poetry. And in no other -poet are certain aspects of this English nature more boldly displayed -than in Chaucer, in whom we find a fresh feeling for the visible world, -a true tenderness of sentiment, a joyous breadth of humor, and a -resolute yet delicate handling of human character. - -Two centuries after Chaucer came Shakspere, in whom the English nature -finds its fullest expression. The making of England was then complete; -all the varied elements had been fused in the fire of a struggle -for existence and welded by war with the most powerful of foes. The -race-characteristics were then finally determined; and in Elizabethan -literature they are splendidly exhibited. Something was contributed -by the literature of the Spain that the Elizabethans had stoutly -withstood, and something more by the literature of the Italy so many of -them knew by travel; but all was absorbed, combined, and assimilated by -the English nature, like the contributions that came from the classics -of Rome and Greece. Bacon and Cecil, Drake and Ralegh, are not more -typical of that sudden and glorious outpouring of English individuality -than are Marlowe, Shakspere, and Jonson, Spenser, Chapman, and -Massinger. In that greatest period of the race we do not know which -is the greater, the daring energy, the enthusiastic impetuosity, the -ability to govern, that the English then displayed, or the mighty sweep -and range of the imagination as nobly revealed in their poetry. The -works of the Elizabethan writers are with us, like the memory of the -deeds of the Elizabethan adventurers, as evidence, if any was needful, -that the peoples that speak English are of a truth poetic, that they -are not prosaic. - -In the days of Elizabeth the English began to go abroad and to settle -here and there. To those who came to America there were added in due -season many vigorous folk from other Teutonic sources; and here in the -centuries that have followed was to be seen a fusion of races and a -welding into one nation such as had been seen in England itself several -centuries earlier. To those who remained in England there came few -accretions from the outside, altho when the edict of Nantes was revoked -the English gained much that the French lost. The Huguenots were stanch -men and sturdy, of great ability often, and of a high seriousness. -Some crossed the Channel and some crossed the ocean; and no one of the -strands which have been twisted to make the modern American is more -worthy than this. - -More important than this French contribution, perhaps, was another -infusion of the Celtic influence. When the King of Scotland became -King of England, his former subjects swarmed to London--preceding by a -century the Irishmen who made themselves more welcome in the English -capital, with their airy wit and their touch of Celtic sentiment. Far -heavier than the Scotch raid into England, and the Irish invasion, -was the influx of Scotch, of Irish, and of Scotch-Irish into America. -At the very time when Lord Lyndhurst was expressing the opinion that -the English held the Irish to be “aliens in blood, aliens in speech, -aliens in religion,” the Irish were withdrawing in their thousands -from the rule of a people that felt thus toward them; and they were -making homes for themselves where prejudice against them was not -potent. Yet in England itself the Irish left their mark on literature, -especially upon comedy, for which they have ever revealed a delightful -aptitude; and in the eighteenth century alone the stage is lightened -and brightened by the plays of Steele, of Sheridan, and of Goldsmith. -About the end of the same century also the Scotch began to make their -significant and stimulating contribution to English literature, which -was refreshed again by Burns with his breath of sympathy, by Scott with -his many-sided charm, and by Byron with his resonant note of revolt. - -Just as the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes had mingled in Great -Britain to make the Englishman, and had been modified by Celtic and -Norman and Latin influences, so here in the United States the Puritan -and the Cavalier, the Dutchman and the Huguenot and the German, the -Irish and the Scotch and the Scotch-Irish, have all blended to make -the American. Not a few of the original Teutonic race-characteristics -recorded by Tacitus are here now, as active as ever; and not a few -of the English race-characteristics as revealed by the Elizabethan -dramatists survive in America, keeping company with many a locution -which has dropped out of use in England itself. There is to-day in the -spoken speech of the United States a larger freedom than in the spoken -speech of Great Britain, a figurative vigor that the Elizabethans -would have relished and understood. It is not without significance -that the game of cards best liked by the adventurers who worried the -Armada should have been born again to delight the Argonauts of ’49. -The characteristic energy of the English stock, never more exuberantly -displayed than under Elizabeth, suffered no diminution in crossing the -Atlantic; rather has it been strengthened on this side, since every -native American must be the descendant of some man more venturesome -than his kin who thought best to stay at home. Nor is the energy less -imaginative, altho it has not taken mainly a literary expression. -“There was no chance for poetry among the Puritans,” so Lowell reminded -us, “and yet if any people have a right to imagination, it should -be the descendants of those very Puritans.” And he added tersely: -“They had enough of it, or they could never have conceived the great -epic they did, whose books are States, and which is written on this -continent from Maine to California.” - -More than half those who speak English now dwell in the United States, -and less than a third dwell within the British Isles. To some it may -seem merely fanciful, no doubt, but still the question may be put, -whether the British or the American is to-day really closer to the -Elizabethan? It has recently been remarked that the typical John Bull -was invisible in England while Shakspere was alive, and that he has -become possible in Great Britain only since the day when these United -States declared their independence. Walter Bagehot, the shrewdest of -critics of his fellow-countrymen, maintained that the saving virtue -of the British people of the middle of the nineteenth century was -a stolidity closely akin to stupidity. But surely the Elizabethans -were not stolid; and the Americans (who have been accused of many -things) have never been accused of stupidity. Mr. Bernard Bosanquet -has just been insisting that the two dominant notes of the British -character at the beginning of the twentieth century are insularity and -inarticulateness. The Elizabethan was braggart and self-pleased and -arrogant, but he was not fairly open to the reproach of insularity, -nor was he in the least inarticulate. Perhaps insularity and -inarticulateness are inseparable; and it may be that it is the immense -variety of the United States that has preserved the American from the -one, as the practice of the town-meeting has preserved him from the -other. - -No longer do we believe that there is any special virtue in the purity -of race, even if we could discover nowadays any people who had a just -right to pride themselves on this. The French are descended from the -Gauls, but to the Gauls have been added Romans and Franks; the English -are descended from the Teutons, but they have received many accretions -from other sources; and the Americans are descended from the British, -but it is undeniable that they have differentiated themselves somehow. -The admixture of varied stocks is held to be a source of freshness -and of renewed vitality; and it may be that this is the cause of the -American alertness and venturesomeness. And as yet these foreign -elements have but little modified the essential type; for just as -the English nature wrought its steady will through the centuries, so -the American characteristics have been imposed on all the welter of -nationalities that swirl together in the United States. - -Throughout the land there is one language, a development of the -language of King Alfred, and one law, a development of the law of King -Alfred; and throughout the land there are schools such as the good -king wished for. American ideals are not quite the same as British -ideals, but they differ only a little, and they have both flowered -from the English root, as the earlier English ideals had flowered -from a Teutonic root. The English stock has displayed in the United -States the same marvelous assimilating faculty that it displayed -centuries ago in Great Britain, the same extraordinary power of getting -the sojourners within its borders to accept its ideals. The law of -imitation is irresistible, as M. Tarde has shown; and as M. Fouillée -asserts, a nation is really united and unified only when its whole -population thrills at the same appeal and vibrates when the same chord -is struck. Then there is a consciousness of nationality and of true -national solidarity. Throughout the United States there is a unanimous -acceptance of the old English ideals--a liking for energy, a respect -for character, a belief in equality before the law, and an acceptance -of individual responsibility. These are the ideals which will echo -again and again in English literature on both shores of the Atlantic, -as they have echoed so often since King Alfred died. “A thousand years -are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” - - (1901) - - - - -II - -THE FUTURE OF THE LANGUAGE - - -Two apparently contradictory tendencies are to-day visible. One of -them is revealed by our increasing interest in the less important -languages and in the more important dialects. The other is to be seen -in the immense expansion of the several peoples using the three or four -most widely spoken European tongues, an expansion rapidly giving them -a supremacy which renders hopeless any attempt of the less important -European languages ever to equal them. (It may be noted now once for -all that in this paper only the Indo-European languages are taken into -account, altho Arabic did succeed for a while in making itself the -chief tongue of the Mediterranean basin, overrunning Sicily and even -thrusting itself up into Spain, and altho Chinese may have a fateful -expansion in the dark future.) - -As an instance of the first of the two conflicting tendencies, we have -in France the movement of the _félibres_ to revive Provençal, and to -make it again a fit vehicle for poetry. We have in Norway an effort -to differentiate written Norwegian from the Danish, which has hitherto -been accepted as the standard speech of all Scandinavian authors. -We have in Belgium an increasing resistance to French, which is the -official tongue, and an attempt arbitrarily to resuscitate the Flemish -dialect. We have in Switzerland a desire to keep alive the primitive -and moribund Romansh. We have in North Britain a demand for at least a -professorship of broad Scots. We see also that, among the languages of -the smaller nations, neither Dutch nor Portuguese shows any symptoms of -diminishing vitality, while Rumanian has been suddenly encouraged by -the political independence of the people speaking it. - -All this is curious and interesting; and yet at the very period when -these developments are in progress, other influences are at work on -behalf of the languages of the greater races. The developments noted -above are largely the work of scholars and of students; they are the -artificial products of provincial pride; and they are destined to -defeat by forces as invincible as those of nature itself. In their -different degrees Provençal and Flemish are struggling for existence -against French; but French itself is not gaining in its old rivalry -with English and with German. - -At the end of the seventeenth century French was the language of -diplomacy; it was the speech of the courts of Europe; it was the one -modern tongue an educated man in England or in Germany, in Spain or in -Italy, needed to acquire. As Latin had been the world-language in the -days of the Empire, so French bade fair to be the world-language in the -days when all the parts of the earth should be bound together by the -bands of commerce and finance. In the eighteenth century the supremacy -of French was still indisputable; but in the nineteenth century it -disappeared. And, unless all calculations of probability fail us, -somewhere in the twentieth century French will have fallen from the -first place to the fifth, just below Spanish, just above Italian, and -far, far beneath English and Russian and German. - -It was the social instinct of the French which made their language so -neat, so apt for epigram and compliment, so admirable and so adequate -for criticism; and it was the energy of the English-speaking peoples, -their individuality, their independence, which made our language so -sturdy, so vigorous, so powerful. - -An excess of the social instinct it is which has kept the French at -home, close to the borders of France, and which has thus restricted the -expansion of their language, while it is also an excess of the energy -of our stock that has scattered English all over the world, on every -shore of all the seven seas. And now that the nineteenth century has -drawn to an end, if we can guess at the future from our acquaintance -with the past, we are justified in believing that the world-language -at the end of the twentieth century--should any one tongue succeed in -winning universal acceptance--will be English. If it is not English, -then it will not be German or Spanish or French; it will be Russian. - -This attempt to foretell the future is not a random venture or a -reckless brag; it is based on a comparison of the number of people -speaking the different European languages at different periods. At my -request Mr. N. I. Stone, of the School of Political Science of Columbia -University, made an examination of the statistics, in so far as they -are obtainable. The figures are rarely absolutely trustworthy before -the nineteenth century--indeed, they are sometimes little better than -guesswork. Yet they are approximately accurate, and they will serve -fairly well for purposes of comparison. They make plain the way in -which one language has gained on another in the past; and they afford -material for us to hazard a prediction as to the languages likely to -gain most in the immediate future. - -In the fourteenth century the population of France was about ten -millions, and that of the British Isles probably less than four -millions. In both territories there were certainly many who did not -speak the chief language; yet the proportion of those who spoke French -to those who spoke English was at least ten to four. - -Toward the end of the fifteenth century the British Isles still had -less than four millions, while France had more than twelve millions. At -this same period Italy had a few more than nine millions, and Spain a -few less, while the Germans (including always the Austrians who spoke -German) were about ten millions. - -Coming toward the end of the sixteenth century, we find six millions -in the British Isles, more than fourteen millions in France and in the -French-speaking portions of the adjacent countries, and more than ten -millions in Italy. The Russians then numbered nearly four millions and -a half--only a million and a half less than the British. - -At the very end of the seventeenth century the number of those speaking -English was nearly eight millions and a half--most of them still in the -British Isles, but some of them already departed into the colonies in -America and elsewhere. The number of those speaking French was twenty -millions, of those speaking Italian a few less than twelve millions, -and of those speaking Russian about fifteen millions. Those speaking -Spanish were chiefly at home in the Iberian peninsula, but not a few -were in the colonies in America: they amounted to about eight millions -in all, the mother-country having wasted her people in ruinous wars. - -At the very end of the eighteenth century we find the English-speaking -peoples on both shores of the Atlantic swollen to twenty-two millions, -having nearly trebled in a hundred years, while the French had added -only a third to their population, amounting in all to a few more than -twenty-seven millions. The Germans were about thirty-three millions, -having passed the French; and the Italians were a few more than -thirteen millions, having increased very slowly. Neither Germans nor -Italians had as yet been able either to achieve unity for themselves or -to found colonies elsewhere. The Spanish, including their pure-blooded -colonists, numbered perhaps ten millions. The Russians had increased to -twenty-five millions, the boundaries of their empire having been widely -extended. - -The nineteenth century was a period of unexampled expansion for the -English-speaking race, who have spread to India, to Australia, and to -Africa, besides filling up the western parts of the United States; they -now number probably between a hundred and twenty-five and a hundred -and thirty millions. The Russians have also pushed their borders across -Asia, and they also show an immense increase, now numbering about a -hundred and thirty millions, altho probably a very large proportion -of their conglomerate population does not yet speak Russian. The -Germans have supplied millions of immigrants to the United States, -and thousands of expatriated traders to all the great cities of the -world; and in spite of this loss they now number about seventy millions -(including, as before, the German portions of the Austro-Hungarian -monarchy). The Spanish-speaking peoples in the old world and the new -are about forty-two millions, not half of them being in Spain itself. - -The French lag far behind in this multiplication; they number now a -few more than forty millions, including those Belgians and Swiss who -have French for their mother-tongue. The relative loss of the French -can best be shown by a comparison with the English after an interval of -five hundred years. In the fourteenth century, as we have seen, those -who spoke French were to those who spoke English as ten to four; in -the nineteenth century those who speak English are to those who speak -French as one hundred and thirty to forty. In other words, the French -during five centuries have increased fourfold, while the English have -multiplied more than thirtyfold. - -French is still the language most frequently employed by diplomatists; -it is still the tongue in which educated men of differing nationalities -are most likely to be able to converse with each other. But its -supremacy has departed forever. It has long been fighting a losing -battle. Its hope of becoming the world-language of the future vanished, -never to reappear, when Clive grasped India and when Wolfe defeated -Montcalm. At a brief interval the French let slip their final chances -of holding either the east or the west. - -The English-speaking peoples and the Russians have entered into the -inheritance which the French have renounced. The future is theirs, for -they are ready to go forth and subdue the waste places of the earth. -They are the great civilizing forces of the twentieth century, each in -its own way and each in its own degree. The Russians have revealed a -remarkable faculty of assimilation, and have taken over the wild tribes -of the east, which they are slowly starting along the path of progress. -The English--by which I mean always the peoples who speak the English -language--have possessed themselves of North America and of South -Africa and of Australia; and there is no sign yet visible of any lack -of energy or of any decrease of vigor in the branches of this hardy and -prolific stock. - -At the rate of increase of the nineteenth century, the end of the -twentieth century will find eight hundred and forty millions speaking -English and five hundred millions speaking Russian, while those who -speak German will be one hundred and thirty millions and those who -speak French perhaps sixty millions. But it is very unlikely that the -rate of increase in the twentieth century will be what it was in the -nineteenth. The extraordinary expansion of the United States is the -salient phenomenon of the nineteenth century; and it is doubtfully -possible and certainly improbable that any such expansion can take -place in the twentieth century, even in South Africa. On the other -hand, the building of the Siberian railroad may open to the Russians -an outlet for the overflow of their population not unlike that offered -to the English by the opening of the middle west of the United States. -The outpouring of Germans, hitherto directed chiefly to the United -States (where they have been taught to speak English), may perhaps -hereafter be diverted to German colonies, where the native tongue will -be cherished. - -Thus it seems likely that, while the estimate for the year 2000 of -one hundred and thirty million Germans is none too large, that of -five hundred million Russians is perhaps too small, and that of eight -hundred and fifty millions for the English-speaking peoples is -probably highly inflated. What, however, we have no reasonable right -to doubt is that German will be a bad third, as French will be a bad -fourth; and that the English language and the Russian will stand far -at the head of the list, one all-powerful in the west and the other -all-powerful in the east. Which of them will prevail against the other -in the twenty-first century no man can now foretell, nor can he get any -help from statistics. - -The issue of that conflict cannot be foreseen by any inspection of -figures, for it will turn not so much on mere numbers--altho the -possession of these will be an immense advantage: it will be decided -rather by the race-characteristics of the two stocks when thrust into -irresistible opposition. The manners and customs of the people who -speak Russian and of the peoples who speak English, their physical -strength and their vitality, their ideals, social and political--all -these things will be the decisive factors in the final combat. Whether -Russian or English shall be the world-language of the future depends -not on the language itself and its merits and demerits, but on the -sturdiness of those who shall then speak it, on their strength of -will, on their power of organization, on their readiness to sacrifice -themselves for the common cause, and on their fidelity to their ideals. - -Russian is a beautiful language, so those say who know it best: it is -fresh and vigorous, as might be expected in a speech the literature of -which is not yet old; it is also as clear and as direct as French. But -it has one insuperable disadvantage: its grammar is as primitive and -as complex as the grammar of German or the grammar of Greek. The verb -has an elaborate conjugation, the noun an elaborate declension, the -adjective an elaborate method of agreement in gender, number, and case. - -Now English is fortunate in having discarded nearly all this primitive -machinery, which is always a sign of linguistic immaturity. The English -language has shed almost all its unnecessary complications; it has -advanced from complexity toward simplicity, while Russian still lingers -in its unreformed condition of arbitrary elaboration. One objection, -it may be noted, to Volapük, which a German scholar kindly invented -as the world-language of the future, was that its grammar was of this -primitive and complicated type. - -In these days of the printing-press and of the schoolmaster any -radical modification of the mother-tongue is increasingly difficult, -so that it is highly improbable that Russian can now ever shake off -these grammatical encumbrances that really unfit it for use as a -world-language to be acquired by all men. Russian is one of the -most backward of modern languages in its progress toward grammatical -simplicity; and English is one of the most forward. Italian is also a -language which had the good fortune partly to reform its grammar before -the invention of printing made the operation almost impossible; and -Italian is like English in that it is a very easy language to learn -by word of mouth, as the rules of grammar we must needs obey are very -few,--tho in this respect English is superior even to Italian. If -English is hard to learn when it is taught by the eye instead of the -ear, this is because of our cumbersome and antiquated spelling; here -the Italian is far better off than the English. - -Indeed, it is not a little strange that the English language, which is -one of the most advanced in grammatical simplicity, is one of the most -belated in orthographic simplicity. In no other modern language is the -system of spelling--if system that can be called which has no rule or -reason--more arbitrary and more chaotic than in English; and no other -peculiarity of our language does more to retard its diffusion than its -wantonly foolish orthography. - -Probably much of the violent opposition to the simplification of our -spelling is due to the fanatic zeal of the phonetic reformers, who -have frightened away all the timid respecters of tradition by their -rash insistence upon the immediate adoption of some brand-new and -comprehensive scheme. The English-speaking peoples are essentially -conservative and unfailingly opportunist; they abhor all radical -remedies. They are wont to remove ancient abuses piecemeal, and not -root and branch. The most they can be got to do in the immediate future -is to follow the example of the Italians, and to lop off gradually the -most flagrant inconsistencies and absurdities of our present spelling, -here a little and there a little, going forward hesitatingly, but never -stopping. - -In this good work of injecting a little more sense into our -orthography, as in the other good work of still further simplifying our -grammar as occasion serves and opportunity offers, we Americans may -have to take the lead. The English language is ours by inheritance, -and our interest in it is as deep and as wide as that of our British -cousins. As Mark Twain has put it, with his customary shrewdness, it -is “the King’s English” no longer, for it has gone into the hands of -a company, and a majority of the stock is held on our side of the -Atlantic. - -We Americans must awake to a sense of our responsibility as the chief -of the English-speaking peoples. The tie that binds the British -colonies to the British crown is strong only because it is loose; and -in Australia and in Canada the conditions of life resemble those of -the United States rather than those of Great Britain. The British Isles -are the birthplace of our race, but they no longer contain the most -important branch of the English-speaking peoples. On both sides of the -Atlantic, and afar in the Pacific also, and along the shores of the -Indian Ocean, are “the subjects of King Shakspere,” the students of -Chaucer and Dryden, the readers of Scott and Thackeray and Hawthorne; -but most of them, or at least the largest single group, will be in the -United States at the end of the twentieth century, as they are at the -end of the nineteenth. - -No one has more clearly seen the essential unity of the -English-speaking race, and no one has more accurately stated the -relation of the American branch of this race to the British branch, -than the late John Richard Green. In his chapter on the independence -of America, he recorded the fact that since 1776 “the life of the -English people has flowed not in one current, but in two; and while the -older has shown little sign of lessening, the younger has fast risen -to a greatness which has changed the face of the world. In wealth and -material energy, as in numbers, it far surpasses the mother-country -from which it sprang. It is already the main branch of the English -people; and in the days that are at hand the main current of that -people’s history must run along the channel, not of the Thames or the -Mersey, but of the Hudson and the Mississippi.” - -When English becomes the world-language,--if our speech ever is raised -to fill that position of honor and usefulness,--it will be the English -language as it is spoken by all the branches of the English race, no -doubt; but the dominant influence in deciding what the future of that -language shall be must come from the United States. The English of the -future will be the English that we shall use here in the United States; -and it is for us to hand it down to our children fitted for the service -it is to render. - -This task is ours, not to be undertaken boastfully or vaingloriously -or in any spirit of provincial self-assertion, on the one hand, or -of colonial self-depreciation on the other, but with a full sense of -the burden imposed upon us and of the privilege that accompanies it. -It is our duty to do what we can to keep our English speech fresh and -vigorous, to help it draw new life and power from every proper source, -to resist all the attempts of pedants to cramp it and restrain its -healthy growth, and to urge along the simplification of its grammar and -its orthography, so that it shall be ready against the day when it is -really a world-language. - - (1898) - - - - -III - -THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE UNITED STATES - - -When Benjamin Franklin was in England in 1760, he received a letter -from David Hume commenting on the style of an essay of his writing and -on his choice of words; and in his reply Franklin modestly thanked his -friend for the criticism, and took occasion to declare his hope that -we Americans would always “make the best English of this island our -standard.” And yet when France acknowledged the independence of the -United States in 1778 and Franklin was sent to Paris as our minister, -Congress duly considered the proper forms and ceremonies to be observed -in doing business with foreign countries, and finally resolved that -“all speeches or communications may, if the public ministers choose it, -be in the language of their respective countries; and all replies or -answers shall be in the language of the United States.” - -What is “the language of the United States”? Is it “the best English” -of Great Britain, as Franklin hoped it would always be? Franklin -was unusually far-sighted, but even he could not foresee what is -perhaps the most extraordinary event of the nineteenth century,--an -era abounding in the extraordinary,--the marvelous spread and immense -expansion of the English language. It is not only along the banks of -the Thames and the Tweed and the Shannon that children are now losing -irrecoverable hours on the many absurdities of English orthography: a -like wanton wastefulness there is also on the shores of the Hudson, -of the Mississippi, and of the Columbia, while the same A B C’s are -parroted by the little ones of those who live where the Ganges rolls -down its yellow sand and of those who dwell in the great island which -is almost riverless. No parallel can be found in history for this -sudden spreading out of the English language in the past hundred -years--not even the diffusion of Latin during the century when the rule -of Rome was most widely extended. - -Among the scattered millions who now employ our common speech, in -England itself, in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, in the United -States and Canada, in India and in Australia, in Egypt and in South -Africa, there is no stronger bond of union than the language itself. -There is no likelihood that any political association will ever -be sought or achieved. The tie that fastens the more independent -colonies to the mother-country is loose enough now, even if it is -never further relaxed; and less than half of those who have English -for their mother-tongue owe any allegiance whatever to England. The -English-speaking inhabitants of the British Empire are apparently fewer -than the inhabitants of the American republic; and the population -of the United Kingdom itself is only a little more than half the -population of the United States. - -To set down these facts is to point out that the English language is -no longer a personal possession of the people of England. The power of -the head of the British Empire over what used to be called the “King’s -English” is now as little recognized as his power over what used to be -called the “king’s evil.” We may regret that this is the case, or we -may rejoice at it; but we cannot well deny the fact itself. And thus -we are face to face with more than one very interesting question. What -is going to become of the language now it is thus dispersed abroad and -freed from all control by a central authority and exposed to all sorts -of alien influences? Is it bound to become corrupted and to sink from -its high estate into a mire of slang and into a welter of barbarously -fashioned verbal novelties? What, more especially, is going to be the -future of the English language here in America? Must we fear the dread -possibility that the speech of the peoples on the opposite sides of -the Western Ocean will diverge at last until the English language will -divide into two branches, those who speak British being hardly able to -understand those who speak American, and those who speak American being -hardly able to understand those who speak British? Mark Twain is a -humorist, it is true, but he is very shrewd and he has abundant common -sense; and it was Mark Twain who declared a score of years ago that he -spoke the “American language.” - -The science of linguistics is among the youngest, and yet it has -already established itself so firmly on the solid ground of ascertained -truth that it has been able to overthrow with ease one and another -of the many theories which were accepted without question before it -came into being. For example, time was--and the time is not so very -remote, it may be remarked--time was when the little group of more or -less highly educated men who were at the center of authority in the -capital of any nation had no doubt whatsoever as to the superiority -of their way of speaking their own language over the manner in which -it might be spoken by the vast majority of their fellow-citizens -deprived of the advantages of a court training. This little group set -the standard of speech; and the standard they set was accepted as -final and not to be tampered with under penalty of punishment for the -crime of lese-majesty. They held that any divergence from the customs -of speaking and writing they themselves cherished was due to ignorance -and probably to obstinacy. They believed that the court dialect which -they had been brought up to use was the only true and original form of -the language; and they swiftly stigmatized as a gross impropriety every -usage and every phrase with which they themselves did not happen to be -familiar. And in thus maintaining the sole validity of their personal -habits of speech they had no need for self-assertion, since it never -entered into the head of any one not belonging to the court circle to -question for a second the position thus tacitly declared. - -Yet if modern methods of research have made anything whatever -indisputable in the history of human speech, they have completely -disproved the assumption which underlies this implicit claim of the -courtiers. We know now that the urban dialect is not the original -language of which the rural dialects are but so many corruptions. -We know, indeed, that the rural dialects are often really closer -to the original tongue than the urban dialect; and that the urban -dialect itself was once as rude as its fellows, and that it owes its -preëminence rarely to any superiority of its own over its rivals, but -rather to the fact that it chanced to be the speech of a knot of men -more masterful than the inhabitants of any other village, and able -therefore to expand their village to a town and at last to a city, -which imposed its rule on the neighboring villages, the inhabitants of -these being by that time forgetful that they had once striven with it -on almost equal terms. Generally it is the stability given by political -pre-eminence which leads to the development of a literature, without -which no dialect can retain its linguistic supremacy. - -When the sturdy warriors whose homes were clustered on one or another -of the seven hills of Rome began to make alliances and conquests, they -rendered possible the future development of their rough Italic into the -Latin language which has left its mark on almost every modern European -tongue. The humble allies of the early Romans, who possessed dialects -of an equal antiquity and of an equal possibility of improvement, could -not but obey the laws of imitation; and they sought, perforce, to -bring their vocabulary and their syntax into conformity with that of -the men who had shown themselves more powerful. Thus one of the Italic -dialects was singled out by fortune for an extraordinary future, and -the other Italic dialects were left in obscurity, altho they were each -of them as old as the Roman and as available for development. These -other dialects have even suffered the ignominy of being supposed to be -corruptions of their triumphant brother. - -The French philologist Darmesteter concisely explained the stages of -this development of one local speech at the expense of its neighbors. -As it gains in dignity its fellows fall into the shadow. A local speech -thus neglected is a patois; and a local speech which achieves the -dignity of literature is a dialect. These written tongues spread on -all sides and impose themselves on the surrounding population as more -noble than the patois. Thus a linguistic province is created, and its -dialect tends constantly to crush out the various patois once freely -used within its boundaries. - -In time one of these provinces becomes politically more powerful than -the others and extends its rule over one after another of them. As -it does this, its dialect replaces the dialects of the provinces as -the official tongue, and it tends constantly to crush out these other -dialects, as they had tended constantly to crush out the various -patois. Thus the local speech of the population of the tiny island in -the Seine, which is the nucleus of the city of Paris, rose slowly to -the dignity of a written dialect, and the local speech of each of the -neighboring villages sank into a patois--altho originally it was in no -wise inferior. In the course of centuries Paris became the capital of -France, and its provincial dialect became the official language of the -kingdom. When the kings of France extended their rule over Normandy -and over Burgundy and over Provence, the Parisian dialect succeeded in -imposing itself upon the inhabitants of those provinces as superior; -and in time the Norman dialect and the Burgundian and the Provençal -were ousted. - -The dialect of the province in which the king dwelt and in which the -business of governing was carried on, could not but dispossess the -dialects of all the other provinces; and thus the French language, -as we know it now, was once only the Parisian dialect. Yet there was -apparently no linguistic inferiority of the _langue d’oc_ to the -_langue d’oil_; and the reasons for the dominion of the one and the -decadence of the other are purely political. Of course, as the Parisian -dialect grew and spread itself, it was enriched by locutions from the -other provincial dialects, and it was simplified by the dropping of -many of its grammatical complexities not common to the most of the -others. - -The French language was developed from one particular provincial -dialect probably no better adapted for improvement than any one of half -a dozen others; but it is to-day an instrument of precision infinitely -finer than any of its pristine rivals, since they had none of them -the good fortune to be chosen for development. But the patois of the -peasant of Normandy or of Brittany, however inadequate it may be as a -means of expression for a modern man, is not a corruption of French, -any more than Doric is a corruption of Attic Greek. It is rather in the -position of a twin brother disinherited by the guile of his fellow, -more adroit in getting the good will of their parents. It was the -literary skill of the Athenians themselves, and not the superiority -of the original dialect, that makes us think of Attic as the only -genuine Greek, just as it was the prowess of the Romans in war and -their power of governing which raised their provincial dialect into the -language of Italy, and then carried it triumphant to every shore of the -Mediterranean. - -The history of the development of the English language is like the -history of the development of Greek and Latin and French; and the -English language as we speak it to-day is a growth from the Midland -dialect, itself the victor of a struggle for survivorship with the -Southern and Northern dialects. “With the accession of the royal house -of Wessex to the rule of Teutonic England,” so Professor Lounsbury -tells us, “the dialect of Wessex had become the cultivated language of -the whole people--the language in which books were written and laws -were published.” But when the Norman conquest came, altho, to quote -from Professor Lounsbury again, “the native tongue continued to be -spoken by the great majority of the population, it went out of use as -the language of high culture,” and “the educated classes, whether lay -or ecclesiastical, preferred to write either in Latin or in French--the -latter steadily tending more and more to become the language of -literature as well as of polite society.” And as a result of this the -West-Saxon had to drop to the low level of the other dialects; “it had -no longer any preëminence of its own.” There was in England from the -twelfth to the fourteenth centuries no national language, but every one -was free to use with tongue and pen his own local speech, altho three -provincial dialects existed, “each possessing a literature of its own -and each seemingly having about the same chance to be adopted as the -representative national speech.” - -These three dialects were the Southern (which was the descendant of -Wessex, once on the way to supremacy), the Northern, and the Midland -(which had the sole advantage that it was a compromise between its -neighbors to the north and the south). London was situated in the -region of the Midland dialect, and it was therefore “the tongue mainly -employed at the court” when French slowly ceased to be the language -of the upper classes. As might be expected in those days before the -printing-press and the spelling-book imposed uniformity, the Midland -dialect was spoken somewhat differently in the Eastern counties from -the way it was spoken in the Western counties of the region. London -was in the Eastern division of the Midland dialect, and London was -the capital. Probably because the speech of the Eastern division of -the Midland dialect was the speech of the capital, it was used as the -vehicle of his verse by an officer of the court--who happened also to -be a great poet and a great literary artist. Just as Dante’s choice of -his native Tuscan dialect controlled the future development of Italian, -so Chaucer’s choice controlled the future development of English. It -was Chaucer, so Professor Lounsbury declares, “who first showed to all -men the resources of the language, its capacity of representing with -discrimination all shades of human thought and of conveying with power -all manifestations of human feeling.” - -The same writer tells us that “the cultivated English language, in -which nearly all English literature of value has been written, sprang -directly from the East-Midland division of the Midland dialect, and -especially from the variety of the East-Midland which was spoken at -London and the region immediately to the north of it.” That this -magnificent opportunity came to the London dialect was not due to any -superiority it had over any other variety of the Midland dialect: it -was due to the single fact that it was the speech of the capital--just -as the dialect of the Île-de-France in like manner served as the stem -from which the cultivated French language sprang. The Parisian dialect -flourished and imposed itself on all sides; within the present limits -of France it choked out the other local dialects, even the soft and -lovely Provençal; and beyond the boundaries of the country it was -accepted in Belgium and in Switzerland. - -So the dialect of London has gone on growing and refining and enriching -itself as the people who spoke it extended their borders and passed -over the wide waters and won their way to far countries, until to-day -it serves not merely for the cockney Tommy Atkins, the cow-boy of -Montana, and the larrikin of Melbourne: it is adequate for the various -needs of the Scotch philosopher and of the American humorist; it is -employed by the Viceroy of India, the Sirdar of Egypt, the governor of -Alaska, and the general in command over the Philippines. In the course -of some six centuries the dialect of a little town on the Thames has -become the mother-tongue of millions and millions of people scattered -broadcast over the face of the earth. - -If the Norman conquest had not taken place the history of the English -race would be very different, and the English language would not be -what it is, since it would have had for its root the Wessex variety -of the Southern dialect. But the Norman conquest did take place, and -the English language has for its root the Eastern division of the -Midland dialect. The Norman conquest it was which brought the modest -but vigorous young English tongue into close contact with the more -highly cultivated French. The French spoken in England was rather the -Norman dialect than the Parisian (which is the true root of modern -French), and whatever slight influence English may have had upon it -does not matter now, for it was destined to a certain death. But this -Norman-French enlarged the plastic English speech against which it was -pressing; and English adopted many French words, not borrowing them, -but making them our own, once for all, and not dropping the original -English word, but keeping both with slight divergence of meaning. - -Thus it is in part to the Norman conquest that we owe the double -vocabulary wherein our language surpasses all others. While the -framework of English is Teutonic, we have for many things two names, -one of Germanic origin and one of Romance. Our direct, homely words, -that go straight to our hearts and nestle there--these are most of -them Teutonic. Our more delicate words, subtle in finer shades of -meaning--these often come to us from the Latin through the French. -The secondary words are of Romance origin, and the primary words of -Germanic. And this--if the digression may here be hazarded--is one -reason why French poetry touches us less than German, the words of the -former seeming to us remote, not to say sophisticated, while the words -of the latter are akin to our own simpler and swifter words. - -One other advantage of the pressure of French upon English in the -earlier stages of its development, when it was still ductile, was -that this pressure helped us to our present grammatical simplicity. -Whenever the political intelligence of the inhabitants of the capital -of a district raises the local dialect to a position of supremacy, so -that it spreads over the surrounding districts and casts their dialects -into the shadow, the dominant dialect is likely to lose those of its -grammatical peculiarities not to be found also in the other dialects. -Whatever is common to them all is pretty sure to survive, and what -is not common may or may not be given up. The London dialect, in its -development, felt the influence, not only of the other division of the -Midland dialect, and of the two rival dialects, one to the north of it -and the other to the south, but also of a foreign tongue spoken by all -who pretended to any degree of culture. This attrition helped English -to shed many minor grammatical complexities still retained by languages -which had not this fortunate experience in their youth. - -Perhaps the late Richard Grant White was going a little too far when he -asserted that English was a grammarless tongue; but it cannot be denied -that English is less infested with grammar than any other of the great -modern languages. German, for example, is a most grammarful tongue; and -Mark Twain has explained to us (in ‘A Tramp Abroad’) just how elaborate -and intricate its verbal machinery is; and the Volapük, which was made -in Germany, had the syntactical convolutions of its inventor’s native -tongue. - -By its possession of this grammatical complexity, Volapük was unfitted -for service as a world-language. A fortunate coincidence it is that -English, which is becoming a world-language by sheer force of the -energy and determination of those whose mother-speech it is, should -early have shed most of these cumbersome and retarding grammatical -devices. The earlier philologists were wont to consider this throwing -off of needless inflections as a symptom of decay. The later -philologists are coming to recognize it as a sign of progress. They are -getting to regard the unconscious struggle for short-cuts in speech, -not as degeneration, but rather as regeneration. As Krauter asserts, -“The dying out of forms and sounds is looked upon by the etymologists -with painful feelings; but no unprejudiced judge will be able to see -in it anything but a progressive victory over lifeless material.” And -he adds, with terse common sense: “Among several tools performing -equal work, that is the best which is the simplest and most handy.” -This brief excerpt from the German scholar is borrowed here from a -paper prepared for the Modern Language Association by Professor C. A. -Smith, in which may be found also a dictum of the Danish philologist -Jespersen: “The fewer and shorter the forms, the better; the analytic -structure of modern European languages is so far from being a drawback -to them that it gives them an unimpeachable superiority over the -earlier stages of the same languages.” And it is Jespersen who boldly -declares that “the so-called full and rich forms of the ancient -languages are not a beauty, but a deformity.” - -In other words, language is merely an instrument for the use of man; -and like all other instruments, it had to begin by being far more -complicated than is needful. The watch used to have more than a -hundred separate parts, and now it is made with less than twoscore, -losing nothing in its efficiency and in precision. Greek and German are -old-fashioned watches; Italian and Danish and English are watches of a -later style. Of the more prominent modern languages, German and Russian -are the most backward, while English is the most advanced. And the end -is not yet, for the eternal forces are ever working to make our tongue -still easier. The printing-press is a most powerful agent on the side -of the past, making progress far more sluggish than it was before books -were broadcast; yet the English language is still engaged in sloughing -off its outworn grammatical skin. Altho in the nineteenth century the -changes in the structure of English have probably been less than in any -other century of its history, yet there have been changes not a few. - -For example, the subjunctive mood is going slowly into innocuous -desuetude; the stickler for grammar, so-called, may protest in vain -against its disappearance: its days are numbered. It serves no useful -purpose; it has to be laboriously acquired; it is now a matter of -rule and not of instinct; it is no longer natural: and therefore it -will inevitably disappear, sooner or later. Careful investigation has -shown that it has already been discarded by many even among those -who are very careful of their style--some of whom, no doubt, would -rise promptly to the defense of the form they have been discarding -unconsciously. One authority declares that altho the form has seemed to -survive, it has been empty of any distinct meaning since the sixteenth -century. - -This is only one of the tendencies observable in the nineteenth -century; and we may rest assured that others will become visible in -the twentieth. But when English is compared with German, we cannot -help seeing that most of this work is done already. Grammar has -been stripped to the bone in English; and for us who have to use -the language to-day it is fortunate that our remote ancestors, who -fashioned it for their own use without thought of our needs, should -have had the same liking we have for the simplest possible tool, and -that they should have cast off, as soon as they could, one and another -of the grammatical complexities which always cumber every language in -its earlier stages, and most of which still cumber German. In nothing -is the practical directness of our stock more clearly revealed than in -this immediate beginning upon the arduous task of making the means of -communication between man and man as easy and as direct as possible. -Doubly fortunate are we that this job was taken up and put through -before the invention of printing multiplied the inertia of conservatism. - -It was the political supremacy of Paris which made the Parisian dialect -the standard of French; and it was the genius of Dante which made the -Tuscan dialect the standard of Italian. That the London dialect is -the standard of English is due partly to the political supremacy of -the capital and partly to the genius of Chaucer. As the French are -a home-keeping people, Paris has retained its political supremacy; -while the English are a venturesome race and have spread abroad and -split into two great divisions, so that London has lost its political -supremacy, being the capital now only of the less numerous portion of -those who have English as their mother-tongue. - -It is true, of course, that a very large proportion of the inhabitants -of the United States, however independent politically of the great -empire of which London is the capital, look with affection upon the -city by the Thames. Their feeling toward England is akin to that which -led Hawthorne to entitle his record of a sojourn in England ‘Our Old -Home.’ The American liking for London itself seems to be increasing; -and, as Lowell once remarked, “We Americans are beginning to feel that -London is the center of the races that speak English, very much in the -sense that Rome was the center of the ancient world.” It was at a -dinner of the Society of Authors that he said this, and he then added: -“I confess that I never think of London, which I also confess I love, -without thinking of the palace David built, ‘sitting in the hearing of -a hundred streams’--streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity.” - -While the London dialect is the stem from which the English language -has grown, the vocabulary of the language has never been limited by -the dialect. It has been enriched by countless words and phrases and -locutions of one kind or another from the other division of the Midland -dialect and from both the Northern and the Southern dialects--just -as modern Italian has not limited itself to the narrow vocabulary of -Florence. Yet in the earlier stages of the development of English the -language benefited by the fact that there was a local standard. The -attempt of all to assimilate their speech to that of the inhabitants of -London tended to give uniformity without rigidity. As men came up to -court they brought with them the best of the words and turns of speech -peculiar to their own dialect; and the language gained by all these -accretions. - -Shakspere contributed Warwickshire localisms not a few, just as Scott -procured the acceptance of Scotticisms hitherto under a ban. As Spenser -had gone back to Chaucer, so Keats went to the Elizabethans and dug -out old words for his own use; and William Morris pushed his researches -farther and brought up words almost pre-Chaucerian. Every language in -Europe has been put under contribution at one time or another for one -purpose or another. The military vocabulary, for instance, reveals the -former superiority of the French, just as the naval vocabulary reveals -the former superiority of the Dutch. And as modern science has extended -its conquests, it has drawn on Greek for its terms of precision. - -Under this influx of foreign words, old and new, the framework of the -original London dialect stands solidly enough, but it is visible only -to the scholarly specialist in linguistic research. But the latest -London dialect, the speech of the inhabitants of the British capital -at the end of the nineteenth century, has ceased absolutely to serve -as a standard. Whatever utility there was in the past in accepting -as normal English the actual living dialect of London has long since -departed without a protest. No educated Englishman any longer thinks of -conforming his syntax or his vocabulary to the actual living dialect -of London, whether of the court or of the slums. Indeed, so far is he -from accepting the verbal habits of the man in the street as suggesting -a standard for him that he is wont to hold them up to ridicule as -cockney corruptions. He likes to laugh at the tricks of speech that -he discovers on the lips of the Londoners, at their dropping of their -initial _h_’s more often than he deems proper, and at their more recent -substitution of _y_ for _a_--as in “tyke the cyke, lydy.” - -The local standard of London has thus been disestablished in the course -of the centuries simply because there was no longer a necessity for any -local standard. The speech of the capital served as the starting-point -of the language; and in the early days a local standard of usage was -useful. But now, after English has enjoyed a thousand years of growth, -a standard so primitive is not only useless, but it would be very -injurious. Nor could any other local standard be substituted for that -of London without manifest danger--even if the acceptance of such a -standard was possible. The peoples that speak English are now too -widely scattered and their needs are too many and too diverse for any -local standard not to be retarding in its limitations. - -To-day the standard of English is to be sought not in the actual living -dialect of the inhabitants of any district or of any country, but in -the language itself, in its splendid past and in its mighty present. -Five hundred years ago, more or less, Chaucer sent forth the first -masterpieces of English literature; and in all those five centuries the -language has never lacked poets and prose-writers who knew its secrets -and could bring forth its beauties. Each of them has helped to make -English what it is now; and a study of what English has been is all -that we need to enable us to see what it will be--and what it should -be. Any attempt to trammel it by a local standard, or by academic -restrictions, or by school-masters’ grammar-rules, is certain to fail. -In the past, English has shaken itself free of many a limitation; and -in the present it is insisting on its own liberty to take the short-cut -whenever that enables it to do its work with less waste of time. We -cannot doubt that in the future it will go on in its own way, making -itself fitter for the manifold needs of an expanding race which has the -unusual characteristic of having lofty ideals while being intensely -practical. A British poet it was, Lord Houghton, who once sent these -prophetic lines to an American lady: - - That ample speech! That subtle speech! - Apt for the need of all and each; - Strong to endure, yet prompt to bend - Wherever human feelings tend. - Preserve its force; _expand its powers_; - And through the maze of civic life, - In Letters, Commerce, even in Strife, - Forget not it is yours and ours. - -The English language is the most valuable possession of the peoples -that speak it, and that have for their chief cities, not London -alone, or Edinburgh or Dublin, but also New York and Chicago, Calcutta -and Bombay, Melbourne and Montreal. The English language is one and -indivisible, and we need not fear that the lack of a local standard may -lead it ever to break up into fragmentary dialects. There is really no -danger now that English will not be uniform in all the four quarters of -the world, and that it will not modify itself as occasion serves. We -can already detect divergencies of usage and of vocabulary; but these -are only trifles. The steamship and the railroad and the telegraph -bring the American and the Briton and the Australian closer together -nowadays than were the users of the Midland dialect when Chaucer -set forth on his pilgrimage to Canterbury; and then there is the -printing-press, whereby the newspaper and the school-book and the works -of the dead-and-gone masters of our literature bind us together with -unbreakable links. - -These divergencies of usage and of vocabulary--London from Edinburgh, -and New York from Bombay--are but evidences of the healthy activity of -our tongue. It is only when it is dead that a language ceases to grow. -It needs to be constantly refreshed by new words and phrases as the -elder terms are exhausted. Lowell held it to be part of Shakspere’s -good fortune that he came when English was ripe and yet fresh, when -there was an abundance of words ready to his hand, but none of them -yet exhausted by hard work. So Mr. Howells has recently recorded -his feeling that any one who now employs English “to depict or to -characterize finds the phrases thumbed over and worn and blunted with -incessant use,” and experiences a joy in the bold locutions which are -now and again “reported from the lips of the people.” - -“From the lips of the people”;--here is a phrase that would have sadly -shocked a narrow-minded scholar like Dr. Johnson. But what the learned -of yesterday denied--and, indeed, have denounced as rank heresy--the -more learned of to-day acknowledge as a fact. The real language of -a people is the spoken word, not the written. Language lives on the -tongue and in the ear; there it was born, and there it grows. Man wooed -his wife and taught his children and discussed with his neighbors for -centuries before he perfected the art of writing. Even to-day the work -of the world is done rather by the spoken word than by the written. And -those who are doing the work of the world are following the example of -our remote ancestors who did not know how to write; when they feel new -needs they will make violent efforts to supply those needs, devising -fresh words put together in rough-and-ready fashion, often ignorantly. -The mouth is ever willing to try verbal experiments, to risk a new -locution, to hazard a wrenching of an old term to a novel use. The hand -that writes is always slow to accept the result of these attempts to -meet a demand in an unauthorized way. The spoken language bristles with -innovations, while the written language remains properly conservative. -Few of these oral babes are viable, and fewer still survive; while only -now and again does one of these verbal foundlings come of age and claim -citizenship in literature. - -In the antiquated books of rhetoric which our grandfathers handed down -to us there are solemn warnings against neologisms--and neologism was -a term of reproach designed to stigmatize a new word as such. But in -the stimulating study of certain of the laws of linguistics, which -M. Bréal, one of the foremost of French philologists, has called -‘Semantics,’ we are told that to condemn neologisms absolutely would be -most unfortunate and most useless. “Every progress in a language is, -first of all, the act of an individual, and then of a minority, large -or small. A land where all innovation should be forbidden would take -from its language all chance of development.” And M. Bréal points out -that language must keep on transforming itself with every new discovery -and invention, with the incessant modification of our manners, of -our customs, and even of our ideas. We are all of us at work on the -vocabulary of the future, ignorant and learned, authors and artists, -the man of the world and the man in the street; and even our children -have a share in this labor, and by no means the least. - -Among all these countless candidates for literary acceptance, the -struggle for existence is very fierce, and only the fittest of the new -words survive. Or, to change the figure, conversation might be called -the Lower House, where all the verbal coinages must have their origin, -while literature is the Upper House, without whose concurrence nothing -can be established. And the watch-dogs of the treasury are trustworthy; -they resist all attempts of which they do not approve. In language, as -in politics, the power of the democratic principle is getting itself -more widely acknowledged. The people blunders more often than not, but -it knows its own mind; and in the end it has its own way. In language, -as in politics, we Americans are really conservative. We are well -aware that we have the right to make what change we please, and we -know better than to exercise this right. Indeed, we do not desire to -do so. We want no more change in our laws or in our language than is -absolutely necessary. - -We have modified the common language far less than we have modified -the common law. We have kept alive here many a word and many a meaning -which was well worthy of preservation, and which our kin across the -seas had permitted to perish. Professor Earle of Oxford, in his -comprehensive volume on ‘English Prose,’ praises American authors for -refreshing old words by novel combinations. When Mr. W. Aldis Wright -drew up a glossary of the words, phrases, and constructions in the -King James translation of the Bible and in the Book of Common Prayer, -which were obsolete in Great Britain in the sense that they would no -longer naturally find a place in ordinary prose-writing, Professor -Lounsbury pointed out that at least a sixth of these words, phrases, -and constructions are not now obsolete in the United States, and -would be used by any American writer without fear that he might not -be understood. As Lowell said, our ancestors “unhappily could bring -over no English better than Shakspere’s,” and by good fortune we have -kept alive some of the Elizabethan boldness of imagery. Even our -trivial colloquialisms have often a metaphoric vigor now rarely to be -matched in the street-phrases of the city where Shakspere earned his -living. Ben Jonson would have relished one New York phrase that an -office-holder gives an office-seeker, “the glad hand and the marble -heart,” and that other which described a former favorite comedian as -now having “a fur-lined voice.” - -When Tocqueville came over here in 1831, he thought that we Americans -had already modified the English language. British critics, like Dean -Alford, have often animadverted upon the deterioration of the language -on this side of the Atlantic. American humorists, like Mark Twain, -have calmly claimed that the tongue they used was not English, but -American. It is English as Mark Twain uses it, and English of a force -and a clarity not surpassed by any living writer of the language; but -in so far as American usage differs from British, it was according to -the former and not according to the latter. But they differ in reality -very slightly indeed; and whatever divergence there may be is rather -in the spoken language than in the written. That the spoken language -should vary is inevitable and advantageous, since the more variation is -attempted, the better opportunity the language has to freshen up its -languishing vocabulary and to reinvigorate itself. That the written -language should widely vary would be the greatest of misfortunes. - -Of this there is now no danger whatever, and never has been. The -settlement of the United States took place after the invention of -printing; and the printing-press is a sure preventive of a new dialect -nowadays. The disestablishment of the local standard of London leaves -English free to develop according to its own laws and its own logic. -There is no longer any weight of authority to be given to contemporary -British usage over contemporary American usage--except in so far as -the British branch of English literature is more resplendent with -names of high renown than the American branch. That this was the case -in the nineteenth century--that the British poets and prose-writers -outnumber and outvalue the American--must be admitted at once; that -it will be the case throughout the twentieth century may be doubted. -And whenever the poets and prose-writers of the American branch of -English literature are superior in number and in power to those of the -British branch, then there can be no doubt as to where the weight of -authority will lie. The shifting of the center of power will take place -unconsciously; and the development of English will go on just the same -after it takes place as it is going on now. The conservative forces -are in no danger of overthrow at the hands of the radicals, whether -in the United States or in Great Britain or in any of her colonial -dependencies. - -Perhaps the principle which will govern can best be stated in another -quotation from M. Bréal: “The limit within which the right to innovate -stops is not fixed by any idea of ‘purity’ (which can always be -contested); it is fixed by the need we have to keep in contact with -the thought of those who have preceded us. The more considerable the -literary past of a people, the more this need makes itself felt as a -duty, as a condition of dignity and force.” And there is no sign that -either the American or the British half of those who have our language -for a mother-tongue is in danger of becoming disloyal to the literary -past of English literature, that most magnificent heritage--the -birthright of both of us. - - (1899) - - - - -IV - -THE LANGUAGE IN GREAT BRITAIN - - -There is a wide gap between the proverb asserting that “figures never -lie” and the opinion expressed now and again by experts that nothing -can be more mendacious than statistics misapplied; and the truth -seems to lie between these extreme sayings. Just as chronology is the -backbone of history, so a statement of fact can be made terser and more -convincing if the figures are set forth that illuminate it. If we wish -to perceive the change of the relative position of Great Britain and -the United States in the course of the centuries, nothing can help us -better to a firm grasp of the exact facts of the case than a comparison -of the population of the two countries at various periods. - -In 1700 the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland numbered between -eight and nine millions, while the inhabitants of what is now the -United States were, perhaps, a scant three hundred thousand. In 1900, -the people of the British Isles are reckoned at some thirty-seven -millions more or less, and the people of the United States are almost -exactly twice as many, being about seventy-five millions. To project a -statistical curve into the future is an extra-hazardous proceeding; and -no man can now guess at the probable population either of the United -Kingdom or of the United States in the year 2000; but as the rate of -increase is far larger in America than in England, there is little -risk in suggesting that a hundred years from now the population of the -American republic will be at least four or five times as large as that -of the British monarchy. - -Just as the center of population of the United States has been -steadily working its way westward, having been in 1800 in Maryland -and being in 1900 in Indiana, so also the center of population of the -English-speaking race has been steadily moving toward the Occident. -Just as the first of these has had to cross the Alleghanies during -the nineteenth century, so will the second of them have to cross the -Atlantic during the twentieth century. Whether this latter change shall -take place early in the century or late, is not important; one day or -another it will take place, assuredly. - -Inevitably it will be accompanied or speedily followed by another -change of almost equal significance. London sooner or later will -cease to be the literary center of the English-speaking race. For -many centuries the town by the Thames has been the heart of English -literature; and there are now visible very few signs that the days of -its supremacy are numbered. Even in the United States to-day the old -colonial attitude, not yet abandoned, causes us Americans often to be -as well acquainted with second-rate British authors as the British -are with American authors of the first rank. Yet it is not without -significance that at the close of the nineteenth century the two most -widely known writers of the language should be one of them an American -citizen and the other a British colonial, owing no local allegiance to -London--Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. - -The disestablishment of London as the literary center of English will -be retarded by various circumstances. Only very reluctantly is a -tradition of preëminence overthrown when consecrated by the centuries. -The conditions of existence in England are likely long to continue to -be more favorable to literary productivity than are the conditions -in America. In a new country literature finds an eager rival in -life itself, with all its myriad opportunities for self-expression. -No paradox is it to say that more than one American bard may have -preferred to build his epic in steel or in stone rather than in words. -The creative imagination has outlets here denied it in a long-settled -community, residing tranquilly in a little island, where even the -decorous landscape seems to belong to the Established Church. But the -Eastern States are already, many of them, as orderly and as placid as -Great Britain has been for a century. The conditions in England and in -America are constantly tending toward equalization. - -A time will come, and probably long before the close of the twentieth -century, when there will be in the United States not only several -times as many people as there are in the British Isles, but also far -more literary activity. Sooner or later most of the leading authors of -English literature will be American and not British in their training, -in their thought, in their ideals. That is to say, the British in -the middle of the twentieth century will hold to the Americans about -the same position that the Americans held toward the British in the -middle of the nineteenth century. The group of American authors between -1840 and 1860 contained Irving and Cooper, Emerson and Hawthorne, -Longfellow and Lowell, Poe and Whitman and Thoreau. These are names -endeared to us and highly important to us, and not to be neglected -in any consideration of English literature; but it is foolish for an -American to seek to set them up as the equal of the British group -flourishing during the same score of years. So in the middle of the -twentieth century the British group will probably not lack striking -individualities; but, as a whole, it will probably be surpassed by -the American group. The largest portion of the men of letters who use -English to express themselves, as well as the largest body of the -English-speaking race, will have its residence on the western shore of -the Western Ocean. - -What will then happen to the English language in England when England -awakens to the fact that the center of the English-speaking race is no -longer within the borders of the little island? Will the speech of the -British sink into dialectic corruption, or will the British resolutely -stamp out their undue local divergences from the normal English of -the main body of the users of the language in the United States? Will -they frankly accept the inevitable? Will they face the facts as they -are? Will they follow the lead of the Americans when we shall have the -leadership of the language, as the Americans followed their lead when -they had it? Or will they insist on an arbitrary independence, which -can have only one result--the splitting off of the British branch of -our speech from the main stem of the language? To ask these questions -is to project an inquiry far into the future, but the speculation is -not without an interest of its own. And altho it is difficult to -decide so far in advance of the event, yet we have now some of the -material on which to base a judgment as to what is likely to happen. - -Of course, the question is not one to be answered offhand; and not a -few arguments could be brought forward in support of the opinion that -the British speech of the future is likely to separate itself from -the main body of English as then spoken in this country. In the first -place, England, altho it has already ceased to be the most populous of -the countries using English, will still be the senior partner of the -great trading-company known as the British Empire. That the British -Empire may be dissolved is possible, no doubt. The Australian colonies -have federated; and having formed a strong union of their own, they -may prefer to stand alone. South Africa may follow the example of -Australia. India may arise in the might of her millions and cast out -its English rulers. Canada may decide to throw in its lot with the -greater American republic. But each of these things is improbable; -and that they should all come to pass is practically inconceivable. -All signs now seem to point not only to a continuance of the British -Empire, but also to its steady expansion. London is likely long to be -the capital of an empire upon which the sun never sets, an empire -inhabited by men of every color and every creed and every language. For -these men English must serve as the means of communication one with -another, Hindu with Parsee, Boer with Zulu, Chinook with Canuck. - -That this will put a strain on the language is indisputable. Wherever -any tongue serves as a _lingua franca_ for men of various stocks, -there is an immediate tendency toward corruption. There is a constant -pressure to simplify and to lop off and to reduce to the bare elements. -The Pidgin-English of the Chinese coast is an example of what may -befall a noble language when it is enslaved to serve many masters, -ignorant of its history and careless of its idioms. Mr. Kipling’s -earliest tales are some of them almost incomprehensible to readers -unacquainted with the vocabulary of the competition-walla; and the -reports of the British generals during the war with the Boers were -besprinkled with words not hitherto supposed to be English. - -Some observers see in this a menace to the integrity of the language, a -menace likely to become more threatening as the British Empire spreads -itself still farther over the waste places of the earth. But is there -not also a danger in the integrity of English close at home--in England -itself, even in London, and not afar in the remote borders of the -Empire--the danger due to the prevalence of local dialects? To the -student of language one of the most obvious differences between Great -Britain and the United States lies in the fact that we in America have -really no local dialects such as are common in England. Every county -of England has an indigenous population, whose ancestors dwelt in the -same place since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the -contrary; and this indigenous population has its own peculiarities of -pronunciation, of vocabulary, and of idiom, handed down from father -to son, generation after generation. But no one of the United States -was settled exclusively by immigrants from a single English county; -and, therefore, no one of these local dialects was ever transplanted -bodily to America. And no considerable part of the United States -has a stationary population, inbreeding and stagnant and impervious -to outside influences; indeed, to be nomadic, to be here to-day and -there to-morrow, to be born in New England, to grow up in the middle -west, to be married in New York, and to die in Colorado--is not this -a characteristic of us Americans? And it is a characteristic fatal to -the development of real dialects in this country such as are abundant -in England. Of course we have our local peculiarities of idiom and of -pronunciation, but these are very superficial indeed. Probably there -has been a closer uniformity of speech throughout the United States -for fifty years past than there is even to-day in Great Britain, where -the Yorkshireman cannot understand the cockney, and where the Scot sits -silent in the house of the Cornishman. - -This uniformity of speech throughout the United States is, perhaps, -partly the result of Noah Webster’s ‘Spelling-Book.’ It has certainly -been aided greatly by the public-school system, firmly established -throughout the country, and steadily strengthening itself. The -school system of the United Kingdom is younger by far; it is not yet -adequately organized; it has still to be adjusted to its place in -a proper scheme of national education. In the higher institutions -of learning in England, at Oxford and at Cambridge, there is no -postgraduate work in English; and whatever instruction an undergraduate -may get there in English literature is incidental, not to say -accidental. - -Probably there is no connection between this lack of university -instruction in English and a carelessness in the use of the language -which strikes us unpleasantly, not merely in the unpremeditated letters -of scholarly Englishmen, but sometimes even in their more academic -efforts. Jowett’s correspondence, for example, and Matthew Arnold’s, -offer examples of a slovenliness of phrase not to be found in Lowell’s -letters or in Emerson’s. - -Certain Briticisms are very prevalent, not merely among the uneducated, -but among the more highly cultivated. _Directly_ is used for _as soon -as_ by Archbishop Trench (the author of a lively little book on words) -and by Mr. Courthope (the Oxford professor of poetry). _Like_ is used -for _as_--that is, “like we do”--by Charles Darwin, and in more than -one volume of the English Men of Letters series, edited by Mr. John -Morley. The elision of the initial _h_, which the British themselves -like to think a test of breeding, is discoverable far more often than -they imagine on the lips of those who ought to know better. It is said -that Lord Beaconsfield, for example, sometimes dropped his _h_’s, and -that he once spoke of “the ’urried ’Udson.” And if we may rely on the -evidence of spelling, the British often leave the _h_ silent where we -Americans sound it. They write _an historical essay_ from which it is -a fair inference that they pronounce the adjective _’istorical_. In -Mr. Kipling’s ‘From Sea to Sea’ he writes not only _an hotel_ and _an -hospital_, but also _an hydraulic_. - -Thus we see that the immense size and variegated population of the -British Empire may be considered as a menace to the integrity of the -English language in the British Isles; and that a second source of -danger is to be discovered in the local dialects of Great Britain; and, -finally, that there is observable in England even now a carelessness -in the use of the language and a willingness to innovate both in -vocabulary and in idiom. - -But however formidable these three tendencies may look when massed -together, there is really no weight to be attached to any of them -singly or to all of them combined. The language has already for two -centuries been exposed to contact with countless other tongues in -America and Asia and Africa without appreciable deterioration up to the -present time; and there is no reason to fear that this contact will -be more corrupting in the twentieth century than it has been in the -nineteenth. On the contrary, it will result rather in an enrichment -and refreshment of the vocabulary. The danger from the local dialects -of Great Britain, instead of increasing, is decreasing day by day as -the facilities for travel improve and as the schoolmaster is able to -impose his uniform English upon the young. Lastly, the willingness to -use new words not authorized by the past of the language is in itself -not blameworthy; it may be indeed commendable when it is restrained by -a conservative instinct and controlled by reason. - -The Briticisms that besprinkle the columns of London newspapers -are like the Americanisms to be seen in the pages of the New York -newspapers in that they are evidences of vitality, of the healthiness -of the language itself. In Latin it may be proper enough for us to set -up a Ciceronian standard and to reject any usage not warranted by the -masterly orator; but in English it is absurd to declare any merely -personal standard and to reject any term or any idiom because it was -unknown to Chaucer or to Shakspere, to Addison or to Franklin, to -Thackeray or to Hawthorne. Latin is dead, and the Ciceronian decision -as regards the propriety of any usage may be accepted as final. English -is a living tongue, and the great writers of every generation make -unhesitating use of words and of constructions which the great writers -of earlier generations were ignorant of or chose to ignore. - -The most of these British innovations, both of to-day and of to-morrow, -will be individual and freakish; and, therefore, they will win no -foothold even in the British vocabulary. But a few of them will prove -their own excuse for being, and these will establish themselves in -Great Britain. The best of them, those of which the necessity is -indisputable, will spread across the Atlantic and will be welcomed by -the main body of users of English over here--just as certain American -innovations and revivals were hospitably received in England when -only the smaller branch of the English-speaking race was on the -American side of the ocean. And, of course, the new terms which spring -into existence in the United States after the literary center of the -language has crossed the Atlantic will be carried over to England in -books and in periodicals. - -When the bulk of contemporary English literature is produced by -American authors, and when the British themselves have accepted the -situation and resigned themselves at last to the departure of the -literary supremacy of London, then the weight of American precedent -will be overwhelming. Without knowing it, British readers of American -books will be led to conform to American usage; and American terms will -not seem outlandish to them, as these words and phrases do even now, -when comparatively few American authors are read in Great Britain. -And these American innovations will be very few, for the conservative -instinct is in some ways stronger in the United States than it is in -Great Britain, due perhaps partly to the more wide-spread popular -education here, which gives to every child a certain solidarity with -the past. - -It is education and the school-book; it is the printing-press and -the newspaper and the magazine; it is the ease of travel across the -Atlantic and the swiftness of the voyage;--it is a combination of all -these things which will prevent any development of a British branch -of the language after the numerical preponderance of the American -people becomes overwhelming. And working toward the same union is a -loyal conservatism, due in a measure to a proud enjoyment of the great -literature of the language, the common possession of both British and -Americans, having its past in the keeping of the elder division of the -stock, and certain to transfer its future to the care of the younger -division. - -To declare that the literary center of English is to be transferred -sooner or later from the British Isles to the United States may seem -to some a hazardous prediction; and yet it is as safe as any prophecy -before the event can hope to be. Such a transfer, it is true, is -perhaps unprecedented in literary history,--altho the scholar may see -a close parallel in the preëminence once attained by Alexandria as the -capital of Greek culture. Unprecedented or not, phenomenal or not, the -transfer is inevitable sooner or later. - - (1899) - - - - -V - -AMERICANISMS ONCE MORE - - -It is a reflection upon what we are wont to term a liberal education -that the result of college training sometimes appears to be rather a -narrowing of the mental outlook than the broadening we have a right -to anticipate. What a student ought to have got from his four years -of labor is a conviction of the vastness of human knowledge and a -proper humility, due to his discovery that he himself possesses only an -infinitesimal fraction of the total sum. Many graduates--indeed, most -of them nowadays, we may hope--have attained to this much of wisdom: -that they are not puffed up by the few things they do know, so much -as made modest by the many things they cannot but admit themselves -to be ignorant of. With the increasing specialization of the higher -education, the attitude of the graduate is likely to be increasingly -humble; and a college man will not be led to feel that he is expected -to know everything about everything. - -Perhaps the disputatious arrogance of a few of the younger graduates -of an earlier generation was due to the dogmatism of the teaching -they sat under. In nothing is our later instruction more improved -than in the disappearance of this authoritative tone--due in great -measure, it may be, to the unsettling of old theories by new facts. -In no department of learning was the manner more dogmatic than in the -teaching of the English language. The older rhetoricians had no doubts -at all on the subject. They never hesitated as to the finality of their -own judgment on all disputed points. They were sure that they knew -just what the English language ought to be; and it never entered into -their heads to question their own competence to declare the standard of -speech. Yet, as a matter of fact, they knew little of the long history -of the language, and they had no insight into the principles that were -governing its development. At most, their information was limited to -the works of their immediate predecessors; and for a more remote past -they had the same supreme contempt they were ever displaying toward the -actual present. Thus they were ever ready to lay down rules made up out -of their own heads; and their acts were as arbitrary as their attitude -was intolerant. - -In his ‘Philosophy of Rhetoric,’ which he tells us was planned in -1750, Dr. George Campbell quotes with approval Dr. Johnson’s assertion -that the “terms of the laboring and mercantile part of the people” -are mere “fugitive cant,” not to be “regarded as part of the durable -matter of a language.” Dr. Campbell himself refuses to consider it -as an evidence of reputable and present use that a word or a phrase -has been employed by writers of political pamphlets or by speakers in -the House of Commons, and he declares that he has selected his prose -examples “neither from living authors, nor from those who wrote before -the Revolution: not from the first, because an author’s fame is not so -firmly established in his lifetime; nor from the last, that there may -be no suspicion that his style is superannuated.” Now contrast this -narrow-mindedness with the liberality discoverable in our more recent -text-books--in the ‘Elements of Rhetoric,’ for example, of Professor -George R. Carpenter, who tells us frankly that “whenever usage seems to -differ, one’s own taste and sense must be called into play.” Professor -Carpenter then pleads “for a considerable degree of tolerance in such -matters. If we know what a man means, and if his usage is in accordance -with that of a large number of intelligent and educated people, it -cannot justly be called incorrect. For language rests, at bottom, on -convention or agreement, and what a large body of reputable people -recognize as a proper word or a proper meaning of a word cannot be -denied its right to a place in the English vocabulary.” - -For an Englishman to object to an Americanism as such, regardless -of its possible propriety or of its probable pertinence, and for an -American to object to a Briticism as such--either of these things is -equivalent to a refusal to allow the English language to grow. It is -to insist that it is good enough now and that it shall not expand in -response to future needs. It is to impose on our written speech a -fatal rigidity. It is an attempt on the part of pedants so to bind the -limbs of the language that a vigorous life will soon be impossible. -With all such efforts those who have at heart the real welfare of our -tongue will have no sympathy--least of all the strong men of literature -who are forever ravenous after new words and old. Victor Hugo, for -example, so far back as 1827, when the modern science of linguistics -was still in its swaddling-clothes, had no difficulty in declaring the -truth. “The French language,” he wrote in the preface to ‘Cromwell,’ -“is not fixed, and it never will be. A living language does not fix -itself. Mind is always on the march, or, if you will, in movement, and -languages move with it.... In vain do our literary Joshuas command the -language to stand still; neither the language nor the sun stands still -any more. The day they do they fix themselves; it will be because they -are dying. That is why the French of a certain contemporary school is a -dead language.” - -In the ‘Art of French Poetry,’ first printed in 1565, Ronsard, one -of the most adroit of Victor Hugo’s predecessors in the mastery of -verse, proffers this significant advice to his fellow-craftsmen (I am -availing myself of the satisfactory translation of Professor B. W. -Wells): “You must choose and appropriate dexterously to your work the -most significant words of the dialects of our France, especially if you -have not such good or suitable words in your own dialect; and you must -not mind whether the words are of Gascony, of Poitiers, of Normandy, -Manche, or Lyonnais, as long as they are good and signify exactly what -you want to say.... And observe that the Greek language would never -have been so rich in dialects or in words had it not been for the great -number of republics that flourished at that time, ... whence came many -dialects, all held without distinction as good by the learned writers -of those times. For a country can never be so perfect in all things -that it cannot borrow sometimes from its neighbors.” - -Here we have Ronsard declaring clearly that local varieties of speech -are most useful to the common tongue. Indeed, we may regard the dialect -of any district as a cache--a hidden storehouse--at which the language -may replenish itself whenever its own supplies are exhausted. Whoever -has had occasion to study any of these dialects, whether in Greek -or in French or in English, must have been delighted often at the -freshness and the force of words and phrases unexpectedly discovered. -Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, made an affectionate -collection of Suffolk sea-phrases, and from these a dozen might be -culled, or a score or more, by the use of which the English language -would be the gainer. Lowell’s loving and learned analysis of the speech -of his fellow New-Englanders is familiar to all readers of the ‘Biglow -Papers.’ It was Lowell also who has left us this brilliant definition: -“True Americanisms are self-cocking phrases or words that are wholly of -our own make, and do their work shortly and sharply at a pinch.” - -Characteristically witty this definition is, no doubt, but not wholly -adequate. What is an Americanism? And what is a Briticism? Not long ago -a friendly British writer rebuked his fellow-countrymen for a double -failing of theirs--for their twin tricks of assuming, first, that every -vulgarism unfamiliar to them is an Americanism, and that therefore, -and secondly, every Americanism is a vulgarism. In the mouths of many -British speakers “Americanism” serves as a term of reproach; and so -does “Briticism” in the mouths of some American speakers. But this -should not be; the words ought to be used with scientific precision and -with no flush of feeling. Before using them, we must ascertain with -what exact meaning it is best to employ them. - -An American investigator gathered together a dozen or two queer words -and phrases that he had noted in recent British books and journals, -and as they were then wholly unknown to America, he branded them as -Briticisms, only to evoke a prompt protest from Mr. Andrew Lang. For -the stigmatized words and phrases Mr. Lang proffered no defense; but -he boldly denied that it was fair to call them Briticisms. True, one -or another of them had been detected in pages of this or that British -author. Yet they were not common property: they were individualisms; -they were to be charged against each separate perpetrator and not -against the whole United Kingdom. Mr. Lang maintained that when Walter -Pater used so odd a term as _evanescing_, this use “scarcely makes it a -Briticism; it was a Paterism.” - -This is a plea in confession and avoidance, but its force is -indisputable. To admit it, however, gives us a right to insist that the -same justice shall be meted out to the so-called Americanisms which -Mr. Lang has more than once held up to British execration. If the use -of an ill-made word like _essayette_ or _leaderette_ or _sermonette_ -by one or more British writers does not make it a Briticism until it -can be proved to have come into general use in Great Britain, then, -of course, the verbal aberrations of careless Americans, or even the -freakish dislocations of the vocabulary indulged in by some of our -more acrobatic humorists, does not warrant a British writer in calling -any chance phrase of theirs an Americanism. Mr. W. S. Gilbert once -manufactured the verb “to burgle,” and Mr. Gilbert is a British writer -of good repute; but _burgling_ is not therefore a Briticism: it is a -Gilbertism. Mr. Edison, an inventor of another sort, once affirmed that -a certain article giving an account of his kineto-phonograph had his -“entire indorsation.” According to Mr. Lang’s theory, _indorsation_, -not being in use generally in the United States, is not an Americanism: -it is an Edisonism. - -The more Mr. Lang’s theory is considered, the sounder it will appear. -Individual word-coinages are not redeemable at the national treasury -either in the United Kingdom or in the United States. Before a word or -a phrase can properly be called a Briticism or an Americanism there -must be proof that it has won its way into general use on its own side -of the Atlantic. _Right away_ for “at once” is an Americanism beyond -all dispute, for it is wide-spread throughout the United States; -and so is _back of_ for “behind.” _Directly_ for “as soon as” is a -Briticism equally indisputable; and so is _different to_ for “different -from.” In each of these four cases there has been a local divergence -from the traditional usage of the English language. All four of these -divergences may be advantageous, and all four of them may even be -accepted hereafter on both sides of the Atlantic; but just now there is -no doubt that two of them are fairly to be called Americanisms and two -of them are properly to be recorded as Briticisms. - -Every student of our speech knows that true Americanisms are abundant -enough; but the omission of terms casually employed here and there, -seed that fell by the wayside, springing up only to wilt away--the -omission of all individualisms of this sort simplifies the list -immensely, just as a like course of action in England cuts down the -number of Briticisms fairly to be catalogued as such. It must be -remarked, however, that the collecting of so-called Americanisms -is a pastime that has been carried on since the early years of the -nineteenth century, whereas it was only in the closing decades of that -century that attention was called to the existence of Briticisms, and -to the necessity of a careful collection of them. The bulky tomes which -pretend to be ‘Dictionaries of Americanisms’ are stuffed with words -and phrases having no right there. - -These dictionaries would be very slim if they contained only true -Americanisms, that is to say, words and phrases in common use in the -United States and not in common use in the United Kingdom. Yet they -would be slimmer still if another limitation is imposed on the use -of the word. Is a term fairly to be called an Americanism if it can -be shown to have been formerly in use in England, even though it may -there have dropped out of sight in the past century or two? Now, -everybody knows that dozens of so-called Americanisms are good old -English, neglected by the British and allowed to die out over there, -but cherished and kept alive over here. Such is _guess_=“incline to -think”; such is _realise_=“to make certain or substantial”; such is -_reckon_=“consider” or “deem”; such is _a few_=“a little”; such is -_nights_=“at night”; and such are dozens of other words often foolishly -animadverted upon as indefensible Americanisms, and all of them solidly -established in honorable ancestry. An instructive collection of these -survivals can be seen in Mr. H. C. Lodge’s aptly entitled and highly -interesting essay on ‘Shakspere’s Americanisms.’ - -It is with an amused surprise that an American in his occasional -reading keeps coming across in the pages of British authors of one -century or another what he had supposed to be Americanisms, and even -what he had taken sometimes for mere slang. The _cert_ of the New York -street-boy, apparently a contraction of _certainly_, is it not rather -the _certes_ of the Elizabethans? And the interrogative _how?_=“what -is it?”--a usage abhorred by Dr. Holmes,--this can be discovered in -Massinger’s plays more than once (‘Duke of Milan,’ iii. 3, and ‘Believe -as You List,’ ii. 2). “I’m _pretty considerably_ glad to see you,” says -Manuel, in Colley Cibber’s ‘She Would and She Would Not.’ _To fire -out_=“expel forcibly,” is in Shakspere’s Sonnets and also in ‘Ralph -Roister Doister’--altho, perhaps, with a slightly different connotation -from that now obtaining in America. A theatrical manager nowadays likes -to have the first performance of a new play out of town so that he can -come to the metropolis with a perfected work, and he calls this _trying -it on the dog_; the same expression, almost, is to be found in Pope. In -‘Pickwick,’ Sam Weller proposes to _settle the hash_ of an opponent; -and in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ we find _down to the ground_ used as -a superlative, and quite in our own later sense. The Southern _peart_ -is in ‘Lorna Doone,’ and the Southwestern _dog-gone it_ is in the -‘Little Minister.’ In Mr. Barrie’s story also do we find _to go back on -your word_; just as in Mr. William Watson’s ‘Excursions in Criticism’ -we discover _grit_=“staying power” or “doggedness.” - -Very amusing indeed is the attitude of the ordinary British newspaper -reviewer toward words and phrases in this category. Not being a scholar -in English, he is unaware that scholarship is a condition precedent to -judgment; and he is swift to denounce as American innovations terms -firmly rooted in the earlier masters of the language, while he passes -the frequent Briticisms in the pages of contemporary London writers -without a hint of reproof. From a British author like Rossetti he -accepts “the _gracile_ spring,” while he rejects “_gracile_ ease” in -an American author like Mr. Howells. Behind this arrogant ignorance -is to be perceived the assumption that the English language is in -immediate peril of disease and death from American license if British -newspapers fail to do their duty. The shriller the shriek of protest -is, the slighter the protester’s competence upon the question at issue. -No outcry against the deterioration of English in America has come from -any of the British scholars who can speak with authority about the -language. - -What we Americans have done is to keep alive or to revive many a good -old English term; and for this service to our common speech our British -cousins ought to be properly grateful. We must admit that words and -phrases and usages thus reinstated are not true Americanisms--however -much we might like to claim them for our very own. We have already -seen that most of the individualisms of eccentric or careless writers -are also not to be received as true Americanisms. And there is yet a -third group of so-called Americanisms not fairly entitled to the name. -These are the terms devised in the United States to meet conditions -unknown in England. Here is no divergence from the accepted usage of -the language, but a development of the common tongue to satisfy a -new necessity. The need for the new word or phrase was first felt in -America, and here the new term had to be found to supply the immediate -want. But the word itself, altho frankly of American origin, is not -to be styled an Americanism. It is a new English word, that is all--a -word to be used hereafter in the United Kingdom as in the United -States. It is an American contribution to the English language; but -it is not an Americanism--if we limit Americanism to mean a term -having currency only in North America, just as Briticism means a term -having currency only in the British Islands. The new thing exists now, -and as it came into existence in America, we stood sponsors for it; -but the name we gave it is its name once for all, to be used by the -British and the Australians and the Canadians as well as by ourselves. -_Telephone_, for example,--both the thing and the word are of American -invention,--is there any one so foolish as to call _telephone_ an -Americanism? - -These American contributions to the English language are not a -few. Some of them are brand-new words, minted at the minute of -sudden demand, and well made or ill made, as chance would have it; -_phonograph_ is one of these; _dime_ is another; and _typewriter_ -is a third. Some of them are old words wrenched to a new use, like -_elevator_=“storehouse for grain,” and like _ticker_=“telegraphic -printing-machine.” Some of them are taken from foreign tongues, either -translated, like _statehouse_ (from the Dutch), or unchanged, like -_prairie_ (from the French), _adobe_ (from the Spanish), and _stoop_ -(from the Dutch). Some of them are borrowed from the rude tongues of -our predecessors on this continent, like _moccasin_ and _tomahawk_ and -_wigwam_. To be compared with this last group are the words adopted -into English from the native languages of India--_punka_, for example. -And I make no doubt that the Australians have taken over from the -aborigines round about them more than one word needed in a hurry as a -name for something until then nameless in our common language because -the something itself was until then unknown or unnoticed. But these -Australian contributions to English cannot be called Australianisms -any more than _telephone_ and _prairie_ and _wigwam_ can be called -Americanisms. - -So far the attempt has been here made to subtract from the immense and -heterogeneous mass of so-called Americanisms three classes of terms -falsely so called: first, the mere individualisms, for which America as -a whole has a right to shirk the responsibility; second, the survivals -in the United States of words and usages that happen to have fallen -into abeyance in Great Britain; and, third, the American contributions -to the English language. As to each of these three groups the case -is clear enough; but as to a fourth group, which ought also to be -deducted, one cannot speak with quite so much confidence. - -This group would include the peculiarities of speech existing -sporadically in this or that special locality and contributing what -are often called the American dialects--the Yankee dialect first of -all, then the dialect of the Appalachian mountaineers, the dialect of -the Western cow-boys, etc. Are these localisms fairly to be classed as -Americanisms? The question, so far as I know, has never been raised -before, for it has been taken for granted that if any such things as -Americanisms existed at all, they could surely be collected from the -mouth of Hosea Biglow. And yet if we pause to think, we cannot but -admit that the so-called Yankee dialect is local, that it is unknown -outside of New England, and that a majority of the inhabitants of the -United States find it almost as strange in their ears as the broad -Scotch of Burns. As for the so-called dialect of the cow-boy, it is not -a true dialect at all; it is simply carelessly colloquial English with -a heavy infusion of fugitive slang; and whatever it may be in itself, -it is local to the cow-country. The Appalachian dialect is perhaps more -like a true dialect; but it is even less wide-spread than either of the -others here picked out for consideration. No one of these three alleged -dialects is in any sense national; all three of them are narrowly -local--altho the New England speech has spread more or less into the -middle west. - -Perhaps some light on this puzzle may be had by considering how they -regard a similar problem in England itself. The local dialects which -still abound throughout the British Isles are under investigation, each -by itself. No one has ever suggested the lumping of them all together -as Briticisms. Indeed, the very definition of Briticism would debar -this. What is a Briticism but a term frequently used throughout Great -Britain and not accepted in the United States? And if this definition -is acceptable, we are forced to declare that an Americanism is a term -frequently used throughout the United States and not accepted in Great -Britain. The terms of the Yankee dialect, of the Appalachian, and of -the cow-boy, are localisms; they are not frequently used throughout the -United States; they are not to be classed as Americanisms any more than -the cockney idioms, the Wessex words, and the Yorkshire phrases are to -be classed as Briticisms. - -It is greatly to be regretted that Dr. Murray and Mr. Bradley and the -other editors of the comprehensive Oxford Dictionary have not been -so careful as they might be in identifying the locality of American -dialectic peculiarities. They have taken great pains to record and -circumscribe British dialectic peculiarities; but they are in the habit -of appending a vague and misleading (U. S.) to such American words and -usages as they may set down. It is to be hoped that they may hereafter -aim at a greater exactness in their attributions, since their present -practice is quite misleading, as it often suggests that a term is a -true Americanism, used freely throughout the United States, when it is -perhaps merely an individualism or at best a localism. - -Of true Americanisms there are not so very many left, when we have -ousted from their usurped places these four groups of terms having -no real title to the honorable name. And true Americanisms might be -subdivided again into two groups, the one containing the American -terms for which there are equivalent Briticisms, thus indicating a -divergence of usage, and the other including only the words and phrases -which have sprung up here without correlative activity on the other -side of the Atlantic. - -When the attempt is made to set up parallel columns of Briticisms -and Americanisms, each more or less equal to the other, it is with -surprise that we discover how few of these equivalencies there -are. In other words, the variations of usage between Great Britain -and the United States are infrequent. In England the railway was -preceded by the stage-coach, and in America the railroad was -preceded rather by the river steamboat; and probably this accounts -for the slight differentiation observable in the vocabulary of the -traveler. But this is not the reason why we in America make misuse -of a French word, _dépôt_, while the British prefer the Latin word -_terminus_,--restricting its application accurately to the terminal -station of a line. In England they name him a _guard_ whom we in -America name _brakeman_ or _trainman_; and it is to be noted that -when Stevenson was an Amateur Emigrant he sought to use the word of -the country and so mentions the _brakesman_--thus proving again the -difficulty of attaining exactness in local usage. The British call -that a _goods-train_ which we call a _freight-train_; and they speak -of a _crossing-plate_ when they mean what we know as a _frog_. In the -United States a _sleeping-car_ is often termed a _sleeper_, whereas -in Great Britain what they call a _sleeper_ is what we here call a -_tie_. They say a _keyless watch_ where we say a _stem-winder_. They -say _leader_ where we say _editorial_. They call that a _lift_ which -we call an _elevator_; and we call him a _farm-hand_ whom they call -an _agricultural laborer_. They have even borrowed one Americanism, -_caucus_, and made it a Briticism by changing its meaning to signify -what we are wont to describe as the _machine_ or the _organisation_. -It is to be noted also that _corn_ in England refers to _wheat_ and -in America to _maize_; and that in Great Britain _calico_ is a plain -cotton cloth and in the United States a printed cotton cloth. - -This list of correlative Americanisms and Briticisms might be extended, -of course; but however sweeping our investigations may be we cannot -make it very long. Far longer is the list of American words and phrases -and usages for which there is no British equivalent--far too long, -indeed, for inclusion in this essay. All that can be done here and -now is to pick up a surface specimen or two from the outcroppings to -show the quality of the vein. For instance, the vocabulary of the -university is largely indigenous--altho we have recently borrowed -a British vulgarism, speaking now of the _varsity team_ and the -_varsity crew_. _Campus_ seems to be unknown to the British, and so -does _sophomoric_, a most useful epithet understood at once all over -the United States. Its absence from the British vocabulary is probably -due to the fact that the four-year course of the old-fashioned American -college is unknown in England, where there are _freshmen_ indeed, but -no _sophomores_. - -Going out from the academic groves to the open air of the wider West, -as so many of our college graduates do every year, we meet with a host -of Americanisms vigorous with the free life of the great river and -of the grand mountains. But is _blaze_=“to mark a trail through the -woods by chipping off bits of bark”--is this a true Americanism? Is it -not rather an American contribution to the English language? Surely -every man in Africa or in Asia who wishes to retrace his path through -a virgin forest must needs _blaze_ his way as he goes. But _shack_=“a -cabin of logs driven perpendicularly into the ground”--this is a true -Americanism undoubtedly. And its compound _claim-shack_=“a shack built -to hold a claim on a preëmption”--this is another true Americanism -likely to puzzle a British reader. Even _preëmpt_ and _preëmption_ are -probably Americanisms in that they have with us a meaning somewhat -different from that they may have on the other side of the Atlantic. -Another true Americanism, which comes to us from the plains, is -_mavericks_=“the unbranded cattle at large to become the property of -the first ranch-owner whose men may chance upon them.” And _ranch_, -while it is itself a contribution to the language, has usages in which -it is an Americanism merely--as in the Californian _hen-ranch_, for -example. - -There is a large freedom about the Western vernacular and a swift -directness not elsewhere observable in the English language, whether -in the United States or in the British Empire. These are most valuable -qualities, and they are likely to be of real service to English in -helping to refresh the jaded vocabulary of more scholarly communities. -The function of slang as a true feeder of language is certain to get -itself more widely recognized as time goes on; and there is no better -nursery for these seedlings of speech than the territory west of the -Mississippi and east of the Rockies. To say this is not to say that -there are not to be found east of the Mississippi many interesting -locutions still inadequately established in the language. For example, -there are three words applied to the same thing in different parts of -the East; perhaps they ought to be styled localisms, but as they would -be comprehended all over the United States, they are probably entitled -to be received as true Americanisms--if, on the other hand, they are -not in fact good old English words. A pass through the hills is often -called a _notch_ in the White Mountains, a _clove_ in the Catskills, -and a _gap_ in the Blue Ridge. Yet even as I write this I have my -doubts as to there being any narrow geographical delimitation of usage, -since I can recall a Parker Notch in the Catskills, not far from Stony -Clove and Kaaterskill Clove. - -One of the best known of true Americanisms is _lumber_=“timber.” When -we speak of the _lumbering_ industry we mean not only the cutting down -of trees and their sawing up into planks, but also their marketing. -From the apparent participle _lumbering_ a verb has been made _to -lumber_--a not uncommon process in the history of the language, one -British analog being the making of the verb _to bant_ from the innocent -name of Mr. Banting. _To lumber_ is apparently now used in the sense -of _to deforest_, if we may rely on a newspaper paragraph which -informed us that a certain tract of twenty-five thousand acres in the -Adirondacks had “been lumbered, but not in such a way as to injure -it for a park.” The verb _to launder_=“to wash,” has been revived of -late in America, if indeed it has not been made anew from the noun -_laundry_; and shirt-makers in their price-lists specify whether -the shirts are to be sold _laundered_ or _unlaundered_. And to the -word _laundry_ itself has been given a further extension of meaning. -In New York, at least,--and the verbal fashions of the metropolis -spread swiftly throughout the Union,--it signifies not only the place -where personal linen is washed but the personal linen itself. An -advertisement in a college magazine informed the lone student that -“gentlemen’s _laundry_” was “mended free.” - -When an American student of English printed a collection of Briticisms -in which more than one strange wild fowl of speech had been snared on -the wing in newspapers and advertisements, Mr. Andrew Lang protested -against the acceptance of phrases so gathered as representative -Briticisms; and it is only fair to admit that they represented -colloquial or industrial rather than literary usage. Yet they were -interesting in that they gave us a glimpse of the actual speech of the -common people--just such a glimpse, in fact, as we get from the Roman -inscriptions. This actual speech of the people, whether in Rome or in -London or in New York, is the real language, of which the literary -dialect is but a sublimation. Language is born in the mouth, altho it -dies young unless it is brought up by hand. Language is made sometimes -in the library, it is true, and in the parlor also, but far more often -in the workshop and on the sidewalk; and nowadays the newspaper and -the advertisement record for us the simple and unstilted phrases of the -workshop and the sidewalk. - -The most of these will fade out of sight unregretted; but a few will -prove themselves possessed of sturdy vitality. Briticisms, it may be, -or Americanisms, as it happens, they will fight their way up from the -workshop to the library, from the sidewalk to the study. Born in a -single city, they will serve usefully throughout a great nation, and -perhaps in the end all over the world, wherever our language is spoken. - -The ideal of style, so it has been tersely put, is the speech of the -people in the mouth of the scholar. One reason why so much of the -academic writing of educated men is arid is because it is as remote -as may be from the speech of the people. One reason why Mark Twain -and Rudyard Kipling are now the best-beloved authors of the English -language is because they have each of them a welcome ear for the speech -of the people. Mark Twain abounds in true Americanisms; on the other -hand, Rudyard Kipling is sparing of real Briticisms--having, indeed, -a certain hankering after Americanisms. Kipling’s case is not unlike -that of Æschylus, who was a native of Greece but a frequent resident -in Sicily, and in whose vocabulary occasional Sicilianisms have been -found by the keen-eyed German critics. So Plautus greedily availed -himself of the vigorous fertility he discovered in the vocabulary of -the Roman populace; and when Cicero went to the works of Plautus for -the words he needed, we had once more the speech of the people in the -mouth of the scholar. - -Something of the toploftiness of the elder rhetoricians yet lingers -in the tone many British writers of to-day see fit to adopt whenever -they take occasion to discuss the use of the English language here in -America. A trenchant critic like Mr. Frederic Harrison, in a lecture -on the masters of style, went out of his way to warn his hearers -that though they might be familiar in their writing they were by no -means to be vulgar. “At any rate, be easy, colloquial if you like, -but shun those vocables which come to us across the Atlantic, or from -Newmarket and Whitechapel.” This linking of America and Whitechapel -may seem to us to be rather vulgar than familiar; and it was Goethe--a -master of style well known to Mr. Harrison--who reminded us that -“when self-esteem expresses itself in contempt of another, be he the -meanest, it must be repellant.” It is only fair to say that fewer -British writers than ever before sink to so low a level as this; and -it is right to admit that a definite recognition of the American -joint-ownership of the English language is not now so rare as once it -was in England. - -Not often, however, do we find so frank and ungrudging acknowledgment -of the exact truth as is to be found in Mr. William Archer’s ‘America -To-day.’ Part of one of the Scotch critic’s paragraphs calls for -quotation here because it sets forth, perhaps more clearly and -concisely than any American has yet dared to do, what the facts of the -case really are: - -“There can be no rational doubt, I think, that the English language has -gained, and is gaining, enormously by its expansion over the American -continent. The prime function of a language, after all, is to interpret -the ‘form and pressure’ of life--the experience, knowledge, thought, -emotion, and aspiration of the race which employs it. This being so, -the more tap-roots a language sends down into the soil of life, and -the more varied the strata of human experience from which it draws its -nourishment, whether of vocabulary or idiom, the more perfect will be -its potentialities as a medium of expression. We must be careful, it -is true, to keep the organism healthy, to guard against disintegration -of tissue; but to that duty American writers are quite as keenly alive -as we. It is not a source of weakness but of power and vitality to -the English language that it should embrace a greater variety of -dialects than any other civilized tongue. A new language, says the -proverb, is a new sense; but a multiplicity of dialects means, for the -possessors of the main language, an enlargement of the pleasures of the -linguistic sense without the fatigue of learning a totally new grammar -and vocabulary. So long as there is a potent literary tradition keeping -the core of the language one and indivisible, vernacular variations can -only tend, in virtue of the survival of the fittest, to promote the -abundance, suppleness, and nicety of adaptation of the language as a -literary instrument. The English language is no mere historic monument, -like Westminster Abbey, to be religiously preserved as a relic of the -past, and reverenced as the burial-place of a bygone breed of giants. -It is a living organism, ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, -in the processes of assimilation and excretion.” - - (1899) - - - - -VI - -NEW WORDS AND OLD - - -Not long before the opening of the splendid exhibition which, for the -short space of six months, made Chicago the most interesting city in -the world, its leading literary journal editorially rejoiced that -English was becoming a world-language, but sorrowed also that it was -sadly in danger of corruption, especially from the piebald jargon of -our so-called dialect stories. Not long before the celebration of -the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria a notorious sensation-monger -of London, having founded a review in which to exploit himself, -proclaimed that English was in a parlous state, and that something -ought to be done at once or the language would surely die. The Chicago -editor was grieved at the sorry condition of our language in the -United States, while the London editor wept over its wretched plight -in Great Britain. The American journalist called upon us to take -pattern by the British; and the British journalist cried out for an -Academy like that of the French to lay down laws for the speaking of -our mother-tongue--intending perhaps to propose later the revival of -the pillory or of the ducking-stool for those who shall infringe the -stringent provisions of the new code. - -There is nothing novel in these shrill outbreaks, which serve only to -alarm the timid and to reveal an unhesitating ignorance of the history -of our language. The same kind of protest has been made constantly ever -since English has been recognized as a tongue worthy of preservation -and protection; and it would be easy to supply parallels without -number, some of them five hundred years old. A single example will -probably suffice. In Steele’s ‘Tatler’ Swift wrote a letter denouncing -“the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our -English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual -corruption of our style.” Here we find the ‘Tatler’ (of London) in the -first decade of the eighteenth century saying exactly what the ‘Dial’ -(of Chicago) echoed in the last decade of the nineteenth. But the -earlier writer had an excuse the later writer was without; Swift wrote -before the history of our language was understood. - -We know now that growth is a condition of life; and that only a dead -language is rigid. We know now that it is dangerous to elevate the -literary diction too far above the speech of the plain people. We -have found out that nobody in Rome ever spoke Ciceronian Latin; -Cicero did not speak it himself; he did not even write it naturally; -he wrote it with an effort and not always to his own satisfaction -at the first attempt. We have discovered that there was a wide gap -between the elegance of the orator’s polished periods and the uncouth -bluntness of the vulgar tongue of the Roman people; and we believe -that this divergence was broader than that between the perfect style -of Hawthorne, for example, and the every-day dialect of Salem or of -Concord. - -By experts like Whitney we are told that there has been less structural -modification of our language in the second half of the nineteenth -century than in any other fifty-year period of its existence. Our -vocabulary has been enormously enriched, but the skeleton of our speech -has been only a little developed. With the decrease in illiteracy -the conserving force of the printing-press must always hereafter -make change increasingly difficult--even in the obvious cases where -improvement is possible. The indirect influence of the novelist and the -direct influence of the schoolmaster--very powerful each of them and -almost irresistible when united--will always be exerted on the side of -the conservatives. To seize these facts firmly and to understand their -applications is to have ready always an ample answer for all those who -chatter about the impending corruption of our noble tongue. - -But we may go further. The study of history shows us that the future -of English is dependent not on the watchfulness of its guardians, not -upon the increasing richness and flexibility of its vocabulary, not -upon the modification of its syntax, not upon the needed reform of its -orthography; it is not dependent upon any purity or any corruption of -the language itself. The future of the English language is dependent -upon the future of the two great peoples that speak it; it is dependent -upon the strength, the energy, the vigor, and the virtue of the British -and the Americans. A language is but the instrument of those who use -it; and English has flourished and spread not because of its own -merits, many as they are, but because of the forthputting qualities of -the masterful English stock. It must rise and fall with us who speak -it. “No speech can do more than express the ideas of those who employ -it at the time,” so a recent historian of our language has reminded us. -“It cannot live upon its past meanings, or upon the past conceptions of -great men that have been recorded in it, any more than the race which -uses it can live upon its past glory or its past achievements.” - -When we have once possessed ourselves of the inexorable fact that it -is not in our power to warp the development of our language by any -conscious effort, we can listen with amused toleration to the excited -outcries of those who are constantly protesting against this or that -word or phrase or usage which may seem to them new and therefore -unjustifiable. We discover also that the self-appointed legislators -who lay down the law thus peremptorily are often emphatic in exact -proportion to their ignorance of the history of the language. - -“Every word we speak,” so Dr. Holmes told us, “is the medal of a dead -thought or feeling, struck in the die of some human experience, worn -smooth by innumerable contacts, and always transferred warm from one to -another.” We must admit that these chance medalists of language have -not always been gifted artists or skilled craftsmen, so the words of -their striking are sometimes misshapen; nor have they always respected -the standard, so there is counterfeit coin in circulation sometimes. -Even when the word is sterling and well minted, be it new or old, - - Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess, - And now of a Bloody Mary, - -the coin itself is sometimes locked up in the reserve, to be -misrepresented by a shabby paper promise to pay. So fierce is the -popular demand for an increased _per capita_ that the verbal currency -is ever in danger of debasement. This is the apparent justification -of the self-appointed tellers who busy themselves with touchstones of -their own and who venture to throw out much false coin. Their tests are -trustworthy now and again; but more often than not the pieces they have -nailed to the counter are of full weight and ought to pass current. - -“There is a purism,” Whitney said, “which, while it seeks to maintain -the integrity of the language, in effect stifles its growth; to be too -fearful of new words and phrases, new meanings, familiar and colloquial -expressions, is little less fatal to the well-being of a spoken tongue -than to rush into the opposite extreme.” And Professor Lounsbury goes -further and asserts that our language is not to-day in danger from -the agencies commonly supposed to be corrupting it, but rather “from -ignorant efforts made to preserve what is called its purity.” And -elsewhere the same inexpugnable authority reminds us that “the history -of language is the history of corruptions,” and that “the purest of -speakers uses every day, with perfect propriety, words and forms which, -looked at from the point of view of the past, are improper, if not -scandalous.” - -There would be both interest and instruction in a list of the many -words securely intrenched in our own vocabulary to-day which were -bitterly assaulted on their first appearance. Swift praises himself for -his valiant effort against certain of these intruders: “I have done my -utmost for some years past to stop the progress of _mob_ and _banter_, -but have been plainly borne down by numbers and betrayed by those who -promised to assist me.” Puttenham (or whoever it was that wrote the -anonymous ‘Arte of English Poesie,’ published in 1589) admitted the -need of certain words to which the purists might justly object, and -then adds that “many other like words borrowed out of the Latin and -French were not so well to be allowed by us,” citing then, among those -of which he disapproved, _audacious_, _egregious_, and _compatible_. In -the ‘Poetaster,’ acted in 1601, Ben Jonson satirized Marston’s verbal -innovations, and among the words he reviled are _clumsy_, _inflate_, -_spurious_, _conscious_, _strenuous_, _defunct_, _retrograde_, and -_reciprocal_; and in his ‘Discoveries’ Jonson shrewdly remarked that -“a man coins not a new word without some peril and less fruit; for if -it happen to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the -scorn is assured.” - -Puttenham wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, Jonson at the -beginning of the seventeenth, Swift at the beginning of the eighteenth; -and at the beginning of the nineteenth we find Lady Holland declaring -_influential_ to be a detestable word and asserting that she had tried -in vain to get Sheridan to forego it. - -At the end of the nineteenth century the battle was still raging over -_standpoint_, for example, and over _reliable_ and over _lengthy_, and -over a score of others, all of which bid fair to establish themselves -ultimately because they supply a demand more or less insistent. The -fate is more doubtful of _photo_ for _photograph_ and of _phone_ for -_telephone_; they both strike us now as vulgarisms, just as _mob_ (and -for the same reason) struck Swift as vulgar; and it may be that in -time they will live down this stigma of illegitimacy just as _mob_ has -survived it. Then there is the misbegotten verb, _to enthuse_, in my -sight the most hideous of vocables. What is to be its fate? Altho I -have detected it in the careful columns of the ‘Nation,’ it has not as -yet been adopted by any acknowledged master of English; none the less, -I fear me greatly, it has all the vitality of other ill weeds. And is -_bike_ going to get itself recognized as a substitute for _bicycle_, -both as verb and as noun? It seems to be possible, since a monosyllable -has always an advantage over a trisyllable in our impatient mouths. - -Swift objected sharply to the curtailing of words “when we are -already overloaded with monosyllables, which are the disgrace of our -language.” Then he wittily characterizes the process by which _mob_ -had been made, _cab_ was to be made, and _photo_ is now in the making: -“Thus we cram one syllable and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened -her mice after she had bit off their legs to prevent them from running -away; and if ours be the same reason for maiming our words, it will -certainly answer the end: for I am sure no other nation will desire -to borrow them.” Swift was rash enough to assert that _speculation_, -_operation_, _preliminaries_, _ambassador_, _communication_, and -_battalion_ were words newly introduced, and also to prophesy that -they were too poly-syllabic to be able to endure many more campaigns. -As it happens no attempt has been made to shorten any one of them -except _speculation_, and it can hardly be maintained that _spec_ has -established itself. Certainly it has not disestablished _speculation_, -as _mob_ has driven out _mobile vulgus_. - -Dryden declared that he traded “both with the living and the dead -for the enrichment of our native language”; but he denied that he -Latinized too much; and most of the Gallicisms he attempted have not -won acceptance. Lowell thought that Dryden did not add a single word -to the language, unless “he first used _magnetism_ in its present -sense of moral attraction.” Dr. Holmes also discovered that it is not -enough to make a new word when it is needed and to fashion it fitly; -its fortune still depends on public caprice or popular instinct. “I’ve -sometimes made new words,” he told a friend; “I made _chrysocracy_, -thinking it would take its place, but it didn’t; _plutocracy_, meaning -the same thing, was adopted instead.” But _anesthesia_ is a word of Dr. -Holmes’s making which has won its way not only in English but in most -of the other modern languages. It may be doubted whether a like fortune -will follow another word to be found quoted in one of his letters, -_aproposity_, a bilingual hybrid not without analogues in our language. - -It is with surprise that in Stevenson’s very Scotch romance ‘David -Balfour’ we happen upon another malformation--_come-at-able_, hitherto -supposed to be Yankee in its origin and in its aroma. Elsewhere in -the same story we read “you _claim_ to be innocent,” a form which the -cockney critics are wont to call American. Stevenson in this novel -uses both the modern _jeopardize_ and the ancient _enjeopardy_. Just -why _to jeopardize_ should have driven _to jeopard_ out of use, it -is not easy to declare, nor why _leniency_ is supplanting _lenity_. -As _drunk_ seems to suggest total intoxication, it is possible to -discover the cause of the increasing tendency to say “I have _drank_.” -No defense is easy of _in our midst_ for _in the midst of us_, and -yet it will prevail inevitably, for it is a convenient short-cut. Dr. -Holmes confessed to Richard Grant White that he had used it once, and -that Edward Everett (who had also once fallen from grace) made him see -the error of his ways. It is to be found twice in Stevenson’s ‘Amateur -Emigrant,’ and again in the ‘Res Judicatæ’ of Mr. Augustine Birrell, a -brisk essayist, altho not an impeccable stylist. - -It is nothing against a noun that it is new. To call it a neologism -is but begging the question. Of necessity every word was new once. -It was “struck in the die of human experience,” to come back to Dr. -Holmes’s figure; and it is at its best before it is “worn smooth -by innumerable contacts.” Lowell thought it was a chief element of -Shakspere’s greatness that “he found words ready to his use, original -and untarnished--types of thought whose sharp edges were unworn by -repeated impressions.” He “found a language already established but not -yet fetlocked by dictionary and grammar mongers.” For the same reason -Mérimée delighted in Russian, because it was “young, the pedants not -having had time to spoil it; it is admirably fit for poetry.” - -This native relish for the uncontaminated word it was that led Hugo and -Gautier to ransack all sorts of special vocabularies. This thirst for -the unhackneyed epithet it is that urges Mr. Rudyard Kipling to avail -himself of the technical terms of trade, which serve his purpose, not -merely because they are exact, but also because they are unexpected. -The device is dangerous, no doubt, but a writer of delicate perceptions -can find his advantage in it. Perhaps George Eliot was a little too -fond of injecting into fiction the terminology of science, but there -was nothing blameworthy in the desire to enlarge the vocabulary which -should be at the command of the novelist. Professor Dowden records -that when she used in a story words and phrases like _dynamic_ and -_natural selection_, the reviewer pricked up his delicate ears and -shied; and he makes bold to suggest that “if the thoroughbred critic -could only be led close up to _dynamic_, he would find that _dynamic_ -would not bite.” Every lover of our language will sympathize with -Professor Dowden’s assertion that “a protest of common sense is really -called for against the affectation which professes to find obscurity -in words because they are trisyllabic or because they carry with them -scientific associations. Language, the instrument of literary art, is -an instrument of ever-extending range, and the truest pedantry, in an -age when the air is saturated with scientific thought, would be to -reject those accessions to the language which are the special gain of -the time.” - -Where George Eliot erred--if err she did at all in this matter--was in -the use of scientific terms inappropriately, or, so to say, boastfully, -whereby she aroused an association of ideas foreign to the purpose in -hand. Every writer needs to consider most carefully both the obvious -and the remote associations of the phrases he employs, that these may -intensify the thought he wishes to convey. A word is known by the -company it has kept. Especially must a poet have a keen nose for the -fragrant word, or else his stanzas will lack savor. The magic of his -art lies largely in the syllables he selects, in their sound and in -their color. Not their meanings merely are important to him, but their -suggestions also--not what they denote more than what they connote. An -American psychologist has recently told us that every word has not only -its own note but also its overtones. With unconscious foresight, the -great poets have always acted on this theory. - -Perhaps this is a reason why the poets have ever been ready to rescue -a cast-off word from the rubbish-heap of the past. Professor Earle (of -Oxford) declares that “it has been one of the most interesting features -of the new vigor and independence of American literature, that it has -often displayed in a surprising manner what springs of novelty there -are in reserve and to be elicited by novel combinations”--a statement -more complimentary in its intent than felicitous in its phrasing. And -Professor Earle praises Emerson and Lowell and Holmes for their skill -in enriching our modern English with the old words locked up out of -sight in the treasuries of the past. Lowell said of Emerson that “his -eye for a fine, telling phrase that will carry true is like that of a -backwoodsman for a rifle; and he will dredge you up a choice word from -the mud of Cotton Mather himself.” - -Of course this effort to recover the scattered pearls of speech, -dropped by the wayside in the course of the centuries, is peculiar -neither to the United States nor to the nineteenth century--altho -perhaps it has been carried further in our country and in our time -than anywhere else. Modern Greek has recalled to its aid as much old -Greek as it can assimilate. Sallust was accused by an acrid critic of -having made a list of obsolete words, which he strove deliberately to -reintroduce into Latin. This is, in effect, what Spenser sought to do -with Chaucer’s vocabulary; and it is curious to reflect that, owing, -it may be, in part, to the example set by the author of the ‘Faerie -Queene,’ the language of the ‘Canterbury Tales’ is far less strange, -less remote, less archaic to us to-day than it was to the Elizabethans. - -A rapid consumption of the vocabulary is going on constantly. Words -are swiftly worn out and used up and thrown aside. New words are made -or borrowed to fill the vacancies; and old words are impressed into -service and forced to do double duty. No sooner is a new dictionary -completed than the editor sets about his inevitable supplement. And the -dictionary is not only of necessity incomplete: it is also inadequate -in its definitions, for it may happen that a word will take on an -added meaning while the big book is at the bindery. Our language is -fluctuating always; and now one word and now another has expanded its -content or has shrunk away into insignificance. No definition is surely -stable for long. When Cotton Mather wrote in defense of his own style -_disgust_ was fairly equivalent to _dislike_; “and if a more massy way -of writing be never so much disgusted at this day, a better gust will -come on.” - -Once upon a time _to aggravate_ meant to increase an offense; now it -is often used as tho it meant to irritate. Formerly _calculated_--as -in the sentence “it was _calculated_ to do harm”--implied a deliberate -intention to injure; now the idea of intention has been eliminated -and the sentence is held to be roughly equivalent to “it was likely -to do harm.” _Verbal_ is slowly getting itself accepted as synonymous -with _oral_, in antithesis to _written_. _Lurid_ was really _pale_, -_wan_, _ghastly_; but how often of late has it been employed as tho it -signified _red_ or _ruddy_ or _bloody_? - -At first these new uses of these old words were slovenly and -inadmissible inaccuracies, but by sheer insistence they are winning -their pardon, until at last they will gain authority as they broaden -down from precedent to precedent. It is well to be off with the old -word before you are on with the new; and no writer who respects his -mother-tongue is ever in haste to take up with words thus wrested from -the primitive propriety. - -But, as Dryden declared when justifying his modernizing of Chaucer’s -vocabulary, “Words are not like landmarks, so sacred as never to -be removed; customs are changed, and even statutes are silently -repealed when the reason ceases for which they were enacted.” It was -Dryden’s “Cousin Swift” who once declared that “a nice man is a man -of nasty ideas”--an assertion which I venture to believe to be wholly -incomprehensible to-day to the young ladies of England in whose mouths -_nice_ means _agreeable_ and _nasty_ means _disagreeable_. _Nice_ -has suffered this inexplicable metamorphosis in the United States as -well as in Great Britain, but _nasty_ has not yet been emptied of its -original offensiveness here as it has over there. And even in British -speech the transformation is relatively recent; I think Stevenson was -guilty of an anachronism in ‘Weir of Hermiston’ when he put it in the -mouth of a young Scot. - -If the Scotch have followed the evil example of the English in misusing -_nasty_, the English in turn have twisted the _ilk_ of North Britain -to serve their own ends. _Of that ilk_ is a phrase added to a man’s -surname to show that this name and the name of his estate are the same; -thus Bradwardine of Bradwardine would be called “Bradwardine _of that -ilk_.” But it is not uncommon now to see a phrase like “people of that -ilk,” meaning obviously “people of that sort.” - -In like manner _awful_ and _terrible_ and _elegant_ have been so -misused as mere intensives that a careful writer now strikes them out -when they come off the end of his pen in their original meaning. So -_quite_ no longer implies _completely_ but is almost synonymous with -_somewhat_--_quite poor_ meaning _somewhat poor_ and _quite good_ -meaning _pretty good_. _Unique_ is getting to imply merely excellent -or perhaps only unusual; its exact etymological value is departing -forever. _Creole_, which should be applied only to Caucasian natives of -tropical countries born of Latin parents, is beginning to carry with it -in the vulgar tongue of to-day a vague suspicion of negro blood. - -While the perversion of _nice_ and _nasty_ is British, there is an -American perversion of _dirt_ not unlike it. To most Americans, I -think, _dirt_ suggests _earth_ or _soil_ or _clay_ or _dust_; to most -Americans, I think, _dirt_ no longer carries with it any suggestion -of _dirtiness_. I have heard a mother send her little boy off to make -mud-pies on condition that he used only “clean _dirt_”; and I know -that a lawn-tennis ground of compacted earth is called a _dirt_ court. -Yet, tho the noun has thus been defecated, the adjective keeps its -earlier force; and there even lingers something of the pristine value -in the noun itself when it is employed in the picturesque idiom of the -Rocky Mountains, where to be guilty of an underhand injury against any -one is _to do him dirt_. Lovers of Western verse will recall how the -frequenters of Casey’s table d’hôte went to see “Modjesky as Cameel,” -and how they sat in silence until the break occurs between the lover -and his mistress: - - At that Three-fingered Hoover says: “I’ll chip into this game, - And see if Red Hoss Mountain cannot reconstruct the same. - I won’t set by and see the feelin’s of a lady hurt-- - Gol durn a critter, anyhow, that does a woman dirt!” - -Here no doubt, we have crossed the confines of slang; but having done -so, I venture upon an anecdote which will serve to show how completely -sometimes the newer meaning of a word substitutes itself for the older. -Two friends of mine were in a train of the elevated railroad, passing -through that formerly craggy part of upper New York which was once -called Shantytown and which now prefers to be known as Harlem. One of -them drew the attention of the other to the capering young capricorns -that sported over the blasted rocks by the side of the lofty track. -“Just look at those kids,” were the words he used. He was overheard -by a boy of the streets sitting in the next seat, who glanced out of -the window at once, but failed to discover the children he expected to -behold. Whereupon he promptly looked up and corrected my friend. “Them -’s not kids,” declared the urchin of Manhattan; “them’s little goats!” -In the mind of this native youngster there was no doubt at all as to -the meaning of the word _kid_; to him it meant _child_; and he would -have scorned any explanation that it ever had meant _young goat_. - -In ignorance is certainty, and with increase of wisdom comes hesitancy. -For example, what does the word _romantic_ really mean? Few adjectives -are harder worked in the history of modern literature; and no two of -those who use it would agree upon its exact context. It suggests one -set of circumstances to the student of English literature, a second set -to a student of German literature, and a third to a student of French -literature; while every student of comparative literature must echo -Professor Kuno Francke’s longing for “the formation of an international -league for the suppression of the terms both _romanticism_ and -_classicism_.” - -Other words there are almost as ambiguous--_philology_, for example, -and _college_ and _chapel_. By _classical philology_ we understand -the study of all that survives of the civilizations of Greece and -Rome, their languages, their literature, their laws, their arts. But -has _Romance philology_ or _Germanic philology_ so broad a basis? Has -_English philology_? To nine out of ten of us, this use of the word now -seems to put stress on the study of linguistics as against the study -of literature; to ninety-nine out of a hundred, I think, _philologist_ -suggests the narrow student of linguistics; and therefore the wider -meaning seems likely soon to fall into innocuous desuetude. - -The change in the application of _college_ is still in process of -accomplishment. In England a college was a place of instruction, -sometimes independent (as Eton College, in which case it is really a -high school) and sometimes a component part of a university (in which -case the rest of the organization is not infrequently non-existent). -An English university is not unlike a federation of colleges; and -the relation of Merton and Magdalen to Oxford is not unlike that of -Massachusetts and Virginia to the United States. In America _college_ -and _university_ were long carelessly confused, as tho they were -interconvertible terms; but of late a sharp distinction is being set -up--a distinction quite different from that obtaining in England. In -this new American usage, a _college_ is a place where undergraduates -are trained, and a _university_ is a place where graduate-students -are guided in research. Thus the college gives breadth, and the -university adds depth. Thus the college provides general culture and -the university provides the opportunity of specialization. If we -accept this distinction,--and it has been accepted by all those who -discuss the higher education in America,--we are forced to admit that -the most of the self-styled universities of this country should be -called colleges; and we are allowed to observe that the college and -the university can exist side by side in the same institution, as at -Harvard and at Columbia. We are forced also to admit that what is known -in Great Britain as “University Extension” cannot fairly retain that -title here in the United States, since its object is not the extension -of university work, as we now understand the word _university_ here; it -is at most the extension of college work. - -While this modification of the meaning of _college_ is being made in -America, a modification of _chapel_ has been made in England. At first -_chapel_ described a subordinate part of a _church_, devoted to special -services. By natural extension it came to denote a smaller edifice -subsidiary to a large church, as Grace Church, in New York, was once a -chapel of Trinity Church. But in the nineteenth century _chapel_ came -to be applied in England especially to the humbler meeting-houses of -the various sects of dissenters, while _church_ is reserved for the -places of worship of the established religion. Thus Sir Walter Besant -classifies the population of a riverside parish in London into those -who go to _church_ and those who go to _chapel_, having no doubt that -all his British readers will understand the former to be Episcopalians -and the latter Methodists or the like. - -This is a Briticism not likely ever to be adopted in America. But -another Briticism bids fair to have a better fortune. Living as they -do on a little group of islands, the British naturally are in the -habit of referring to the rest of Europe as the _Continent_. They run -across the Channel to take a little tour “on the Continent.” They speak -of the pronunciation of Latin that obtains everywhere but in Great -Britain and Ireland as the _continental_ pronunciation. When they -wish to differentiate their authors, for instance, from the French -and the German and the Italians, they lump these last together as -the _continental_ authors. The division of Europe into _continental_ -and _British_ is so convenient that it is certain to be adopted on -this side of the Atlantic. Already has a New York literary review, -after having had a series of papers on “Living Critics” (in which -were included both British writers and American), followed it with a -series of “Living Continental Critics” (in which the chief critics of -France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia were considered). Yet there is -no logic in this use of the word over here, since we Americans are not -insular; and since North America is a continent just as Europe is. As -it happens, the word _continental_ in a wholly contradictory meaning is -glorious in the history of the United States. Who does not know how, - - In their ragged regimentals, - Stood the old Continentals, - Yielding not? - -None the less will the convenience of this British use of the word -outweigh its lack of logic in America--as convenience has so often -overridden far more serious considerations. Language is only a -tool, after all; and it must ever be shaped to fit the hand that -uses it. This is why another illogical misuse of a word will get -itself recognized as legitimate sooner or later--the limitations of -_American_ to mean only that which belongs to the United States. When -we speak of American ideas we intend to exclude not only the ideas of -South America but also those of Mexico and of Canada; we are really -arrogating to ourselves a supremacy so overwhelming as to warrant our -ignoring altogether all the other peoples having a right to share -in the adjective. Our reason for this is that there is no national -adjective available for us. We can speak of _Mexican_ ideas and of -_Canadian_ ideas; but we cannot--or at least we do not and we will -not--speak of _United Statesian_ ideas. And this appropriation to -ourselves of an adjective really the property of all the inhabitants of -the continent seems to be perfectly acceptable to the only other group -of those inhabitants speaking our language,--the English colonists to -the north of us. On both sides of the Niagara River the smaller brother -of the gigantic Horseshoe cataract is known as the “American fall.” -Even in the last century the British employed _American_ to indicate -the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies; and Dr. Johnson wrote in -1775: “That the _Americans_ are able to bear taxation is indubitable.” -But our ownership of _American_ as a national adjective, if tolerated -by the Canadians and the British, is not admitted by those who do not -speak our language. Probably to both the Italians and the Spaniards -South America rather than North is the part of the world that rises in -the mental vision when the word _American_ is suddenly pronounced. - -Another distinction not unlike this, but logical as well as convenient, -is getting itself recognized. This distinction results from accepting -the obvious fact that the literature of the English language has -nowadays two independent divisions--that produced in the British Isles -and that produced in the United States. The writers of both nations -speak the English language, and therefore their works--whensoever these -rise to the level of literature--belong to English literature. We are -wont to call one division _American_ literature, and we are beginning -to see that logic will soon force us to call the other division -_British_ literature. Mr. Stedman has dealt with the poetry of the -English language of the past sixty years in two volumes, one on the -‘Victorian Poets,’ and the other on the ‘Poets of America,’ and this -serves to show how sharp is the line of separation. With his customary -carefulness of epithet, Mr. Stedman in the preface to the earlier -volume always uses _British_ as the antithesis of _American_, reserving -_English_ as the broader adjective to cover both branches of our -literature. Probably the many collections of the ‘British Poets,’ the -‘British Novelists,’ the ‘British Theater,’ were so called to allow -the inclusion of works produced in the sister kingdoms; it is well to -remember that Scott and Moore were neither of them Englishmen. There is -a certain piquancy in the fact that the adjective _British_, available -in the beginning of the nineteenth century because it included the -Scotch and the Irish, is even more useful at the end of the nineteenth -century because it differentiates the English, Scotch, and Irish, taken -all together, from the Americans. - -_Telegram_ was denounced as a mismade word, and _cablegram_ was -rejected with abhorrence by all defenders of purity. Yet the firm -establishment of _telegraph_ and _telephone_ made certain the ultimate -acceptance of _telegram_. But _cablegram_ is still on probation, and -may fail of admission in the end, perhaps, because a part of the word -seems to be better fitted for its purpose than the whole. A message -received by the telegraph under the ocean is often curtly called a -_cable_, as when a man says, “I’ve just had a cable from my wife in -Paris.” This, I think, is rather American than British; but it is -akin to the British use of _wire_ as synonymous with both _telegram_ -and _to telegraph_. An Englishman invites you to a house-party, and -writes that he will meet you at the station “on a _wire_,” intending to -convey to you his desire that you should telegraph him the hour of your -arrival. In a short story by Mr. Henry James, that most conscientious -of recorders of British speech, he tells us that after _wires_ and -_counterwires_ one of the characters of his tale was at last able to -arrive at the house where the action takes place. The locution is hot -from the verbal foundry; and it seems to imply what an American writer -would have expressed by saying that there had been “telegraphing to and -fro.” - -American, probably, is the verb _to process_, and also its past -participle _processed_. When new methods of photo-engraving were -introduced here in the United States, a black-and-white artist would -express a preference either to have his drawing engraved on wood or -have it reproduced mechanically by a photo-engraving process; and as -he needed a brief word to describe this latter act, one was promptly -forthcoming, and he asked, “Is this thing of mine to be engraved -or _processed_?” The word _half-tone_ seems also to be of American -manufacture; and it describes one of these methods of photo-engraving. -It is not only a noun, but also, on occasions, a verb; and the artist -will ask if his wash-drawing is to be _half-toned_. Of necessity the -several improvements in the art of photo-engraving brought with them -a variety of new terms absolutely essential in the terminology of the -craft, most of them remaining hidden in the technical vocabulary, -altho now and again one or another has thrust itself up into the -general language. - -Any attempt to declare the British or the American origin of an idiom -is most precarious; and he who ventures upon it has need of double -caution. When a friend of mine asked the boy at the door of the club -if it was still raining, and was answered, “No, sir; it’s _fairing -up_ now,” he was at first inclined to think that he had captured an -Americanism hitherto unknown and delightfully fresh; but he consulted -the Century Dictionary, only to find that it was a Scoticism,--there -was even a quotation from Stevenson’s ‘Inland Voyage,’--and that it was -not uncommon in the southwestern states. And when Captain Mahan brought -out the difference between _preparation_ for war and _preparedness_ -for war, this friend was ready to credit the naval historian with the -devising not only of a most valuable distinction but also of a most -useful word; but a dip into the Century Dictionary again revealed that -a Scotchman had not waited for an American to use the word, and that it -had been employed by Bain, not even as tho it was a novelty. - -Once in the pages of Hawthorne, who was affluent in words and -artistically adroit in his management of them, I met a phrase -that pleased me mightily, “a _heterogeny_ of things”; and I find -_heterogeny_ duly collected in the Century Dictionary but without -any quotation from Hawthorne. Another word of Hawthorne’s in the -‘Blithedale Romance’ is _improvability_: “In my own behalf, I rejoice -that I could once think better of the world’s _improvability_ than it -deserved.” This I fancy may be Hawthorne’s very own; but it is in the -Century Dictionary, all the same, and without any indication of its -origin. Quite possibly the New England romancer disinterred it from -some forgotten tome of the “somniferous school of literature,” as he -had humorously entitled the writings of his theological ancestors. - -There is a word of Abraham Lincoln’s that I long for the right to use. -Mr. Noah Brooks has recorded that he once heard the President speak of -a certain man as _interruptious_. This adjective conveys a delicate -shade of meaning not discoverable in any other; it may not be inscribed -in the bead-roll of the King’s English, but it was a specimen of the -President’s English; and has any Speech from the Throne in this century -really rivaled the force and felicity of the Second Inaugural? - -It was not the liberator of the negro but one of the freedmen -themselves who made offhand use of a delicious word, for which it is -probably hopeless for us to expect acceptance, however useful the new -term might prove. During a debate in the legislature of South Carolina -in the Reconstruction days, a sable ally of the carpet-baggers rose -to repel the taunts of his opponents, declaring energetically that he -hurled back with scorn all their _insinuendos_. The word holds a middle -ground between _insinuation_ and _innuendo_; and between the two it has -scant chance of survival. But it is an amusing attempt, for all its -failure; and it would have given pleasure to the author of ‘Alice in -Wonderland.’ And how many of Lewis Carroll’s own verbal innovations, -wantonly manufactured for his sport, are likely to get themselves -admitted into the language of literature? _Chortle_ stands the best -chance of them all, I think; and I believe that many a man has said -that he _chortled_, with no thought of the British bard who ingeniously -devised the quaint vocable. - -So Mr. W. S. Gilbert’s _burgle_ seems to be winning its way into -general use. At first those who employed it followed the example of -the comic lyrist, and did so with humorous intent; but of late it -is beginning to serve those who are wholly devoid of humor. Perhaps -the verb _to burgle_ (from the noun _burglar_) supplied the analogy -on which was made the verb _to ush_ (from the noun _usher_). With my -own ears I once heard a well-known clergyman in New York express the -thanks of the congregation to “the gentlemen who _ush_ for us.” - -It is well that strange uses like these do not win early acceptance -into our speech--that there should be alert challengers at the portal -to cry “Halt!” and to examine a newcomer’s credentials. It is well also -that the stranger should have leave to prove his usefulness and so in -time gain admittance even to the inner sanctuary of the language. John -Dryden discussed the reception into English of new words and phrases -with the sturdy common sense which was one of the characteristics -most endearing him to us as a true type of the man of letters who was -also a man of the world. “It is obvious,” he wrote in his ‘Defense of -the Epilog,’ “that we have admitted many, some of which we wanted, -and therefore our language is the richer for them, as it would be by -importation of bullion; others are rather ornamental than necessary; -yet by their admission the language is become more courtly and our -thoughts are better dressed.” - -Historians of the language have had no difficulty in bringing together -a mass of quotations from the British writers of the eighteenth century -to show that they were then possessed of the belief that it was -feasible and necessary to set bounds to the growth of English. They -were afraid that the changes going on in the language would make it -“impossible for succeeding ages to read or appreciate the literature -produced.” In his interesting and instructive lecture on the ‘Evolution -of English Lexicography,’ Dr. Murray remarks that “to us of a later -age, with our fuller knowledge of the history of language, and our -wider experience of its fortunes, when it has to be applied to entirely -new fields of knowledge, such as have been opened to us since the birth -of modern science, this notion seems childlike and pathetic. But it was -eminently characteristic of the eighteenth century.” - -It is small wonder therefore that this absurd notion infected two of -the most characteristic figures of the eighteenth century--Johnson and -Franklin. Dr. Johnson set forth in the plan of his dictionary that -“one great end of this undertaking is to fix the English language.” -Even so shrewd a student of all things as was Franklin seems to have -accepted this current fallacy. When he acknowledged the dedication of -Noah Webster’s ‘Dissertations on the English Language,’ he declared -that he could not “but applaud your zeal for preserving the purity of -our language, both in its expressions and pronunciation.” Then, as tho -to prove to us, once for all, the futility of all efforts to “fix the -language” and to “preserve its purity,” Franklin picks out half a dozen -novelties of phrase and begs that Webster will use his “authority in -reprobating them.” Among these innovations that Franklin disapproved of -are _improved_, _noticed_, _advocated_, _progressed_, and _opposed_. - -This letter to Webster was written in 1789; and already in 1760 -Franklin had yielded to certain of David Hume’s criticisms upon his -parts of speech: “I thank you for your friendly admonition relating to -some unusual words in the pamphlet. It will be of service to me. The -_pejorate_ and the _colonize_, since they are not in common use here, I -give up as bad; for certainly in writings intended for persuasion and -for general information, one cannot be too clear; and every expression -in the least obscure is a fault. The _unshakable_, too, tho clear, I -give up as rather low. The introducing new words, where we are already -possessed of old ones sufficiently expressive, I confess must be -generally wrong, as it tends to change the language.” - -With all his intellect and all his insight and all his common -sense--and with this most precious quality Franklin was better -furnished than either Johnson or Dryden--he could not foresee that -_to notice_ and _to advocate_ and _to colonize_ were words without -which the English language could not do its work in the world. And -when he gives up _unshakable_ “as rather low” he stands confessed -as a contemporary of the men whom Fielding and Goldsmith girded -at. In spite of the example of Steele and Addison, in spite of his -own vigorous directness in ‘Poor Richard’ and in all his political -pamphlets, Franklin feels that there is and that there ought to be -a wide gap between the English that is spoken and the English that -is written. He did not perceive that spoken English, with all its -hazardous expressions, its clipped words, its violent metaphors, its -picturesque slang, its slovenly clumsiness, is none the less the -proving-ground of the literary vocabulary, which is forever tending to -self-exhaustion. - -Nobody has better stated the wiser attitude of a writer toward the -tools of his trade than Professor Harry Thurston Peck in his incisive -discussion of ‘What is Good English?’ He begins by noting that “the -English language, as a whole, is the richest of all modern tongues, -and it is not to be bounded by the comparatively narrow limits of -its literature. There exists, as well, the easy, fluent usage of -conversation, and there is also the strong, simple, homely speech of -the common people, rooted in plain Saxon, smacking of the soil, and -having a sturdy power about it that is unsurpassable for downright -force and blunt directness.” And Professor Peck, having pointed out -how an artist in words is free to avail himself of the term he needs -from books or from life, declares that “the writer of the best English -is he whose language responds exactly to his mood and thought, now -thundering and surging with the majestic words whose immediate ancestry -is Roman, now rippling and singing with the smooth harmonies of later -speech, now forging ahead with the irresistible energy of the Saxon, -and now laughing and wantoning in the easy lightness of our modern -phrase.” - - (1897-99) - - - - -VII - -THE NATURALIZATION OF FOREIGN WORDS - - -When Taine was praising that earliest of analytical novels, the -‘Princess of Cleves,’ he noted the simplicity of Madame de Lafayette’s -style. “Half of the words we use are unknown to Madame de Lafayette,” -he declared. “She is like the painters of old, who could make every -shade with only five or six colors.” And he asserts that “there is no -easier reading” than this story of Madame de Lafayette’s; “a child -could understand without effort all her expressions and all her -phrases.... Nowadays every writer is a pedant, and every style is -obscure. All of us have read three or four centuries, and three or four -literatures. Philosophy, science, art, criticism have weighted us with -their discoveries and their jargons.” - -This is true enough, no doubt; and one of the strange phenomenons of -the nineteenth century was the sudden and enormous swelling of our -vocabularies. Perhaps the distention of the dictionary is even more -obvious in English than in French, for there are now three times as -many human beings using the language of Shakspere as there are now -using the language of Molière; and while the speakers of French are -compacted in one country and take their tone from its capital, the -speakers of English are scattered in the four quarters of the earth, -and they use each man his own speech in his own fashion. From the wider -variety of interests among those who speak English, our language is -perforce more hospitable to foreign words than French needs to be, -since it is used rather by a conservative people who prefer to stay at -home. - -Perhaps the French are at times even too inhospitable to the foreign -phrase. A friend of mine who came to the reading of M. Paul Bourget’s -‘Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,’ fresh from the perusal of -the German philosophers, told me that he was pained by M. Bourget’s -vain effort to express the thoughts the French author had absorbed -from the Germans. It seemed as tho M. Bourget were struggling for -speech, and could not say what was in his mind for lack of words in -his native tongue capable of conveying his meaning. Of course it -must be remembered that German philosophy is vague and fluctuating, -and that the central thought is often obscured by a penumbra, while -French is the most precise of languages. Those who are proud of it -have declared that what is not clear is not French. When Hegel was -asked by a traveler from Paris for a succinct statement of his system -of philosophy, he smiled and answered that it could not be explained -summarily--“especially in French!” - -The English language extends a warmer welcome to the foreign term, and -also exercises more freely its right to make a word for itself whenever -one is needed. The manufactured article is not always satisfactory, -but if it gets into general use, no further evidence is required that -it was made to supply a genuine want. _Scientist_, for example, is an -ugly word (altho an invention of Whewell’s), and yet it was needed. How -necessary it was can be seen by any reader of the late F. W. H. Myers’s -essay on ‘Science and a Future Life,’ who notes that Myers refused -resolutely to use it, altho it conveys exactly the meaning the author -wanted, and that the British writer preferred to employ instead the -French _savant_, which does not--etymologically at least--contain his -full intention. Myers’s fastidiousness did not, however, prevent his -using _creationist_ as an adjective, and also _bonism_ as a substitute -for _optimism_, “with no greater barbarism in the form of the word and -more accuracy in the meaning.” - -Just as Myers used _savant_ so Ruskin was willing to arrest the -rhythm of a fine passage by the obtrusion of two French words: “A -well-educated gentleman may not know many languages; may not be able -to speak any but his own; may have read very few books. But whatever -language he knows, he knows precisely; whatever word he pronounces, -he pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned in the peerage of -words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance -from words of modern _canaille_; remembers all their ancestry, their -intermarriages, distantest relationships, and the extent to which they -were admitted, and offices they hold among the national _noblesse_ of -words, at any time and in any country.” There seems to be little or -no excuse for the employment here of _noblesse_=nobility; and as for -_canaille_, perhaps Ruskin held that to be a French word on the way -to become an English word--a naturalization not likely to take place -without a marked modification of the original pronunciation, which is -difficult for the English mouth. - -Every one who loves good English cannot but have a healthy hatred -for the style of a writer who insists on bespattering his pages with -alien words and foreign phrases; and yet we are more tolerant, I -think, toward a term taken from one of the dead languages than toward -one derived from any of the living tongues. Probably the bishop who -liked now and then to cite a Hebrew sentence was oversanguine in his -explanation that “everybody knows a little Hebrew.” It is said that -even a Latin quotation is now no longer certain to be recognized in -the British House of Commons; and yet it was a British statesman who -declared that, altho there was no necessity for a gentleman to know -Latin, he ought at least to have forgotten it. - -For a bishop to quote Hebrew is now pedantic, no doubt, and even for -the inferior clergy to quote Latin. It is pedantic, but it is not -indecorous; whereas a French quotation in the pulpit, or even the -use of a single French word, like _savant_, for example, would seem -to most of us almost a breach of the proprieties. It would strike -us, perhaps, not merely as a social solecism, but somehow as morally -reprehensible. A preacher who habitually cited French phrases would -be in danger of the council. To picture Jonathan Edwards as using the -language of Voltaire is impossible. That a French quotation should -seem more incongruous in the course of a religious argument than a -Latin, a Greek, or a Hebrew quotation, is perhaps to be ascribed to the -fact that many of us hold the Parisians to be a more frivolous people -than the Romans, the Athenians, or the Israelites; and as the essay -of Mr. Myers was a religious argument, this may be one reason why his -employment of _savant_ was unfortunate. - -Another reason is suggested by Professor Dowden’s shrewd remark that “a -word, like a comet, has a tail as well as a head.” An adroit craftsman -in letters is careful always that the connotations of the terms he -chooses shall be in accord with the tone of his thesis. It may be -disputed whether _savant_ denotes the same thing as _scientist_, but -it can hardly be denied that the connotations of the two words are -wholly different. For my own part, some lingering memory of Abbott’s -‘Napoleon,’ absorbed in boyhood, links the wise men of France with the -donkeys of Egypt, because whenever the Mameluke cavalry threatened the -French squares the cry went up, “Asses and _savants_ to the center!” - -After all, it is perhaps rather a question whether or not _savant_ is -now an English noun. There are many French words knocking at the door -of the English language and asking for admission. Is _littoral_ for -_shore_ now an English noun? Is _blond_ an English adjective meaning -_light-haired_ and opposed to _brunette_? Is _brunette_ itself really -Anglicized? (I ask this in spite of the fact that a friend of mine once -read in a country newspaper a description of a _brunette_ horse.) Has -_inedited_ for _unpublished_ won its way into our language finally? -Lowell gave it his warrant, at least by using it in his ‘Letters’; but -I confess that it has always struck me as liable to confusion with -_unedited_. - -Foreign words must always be allowed to land on our coasts without a -passport; yet if any of them linger long enough to warrant a belief -that they may take out their papers sooner or later, we must decide -at last whether or not they are likely to be desirable residents of -our dictionary; and if we determine to naturalize them, we may fairly -enough insist on their renouncing their foreign allegiance. They must -cast in their lot with us absolutely, and be bound by our laws only. -The French _chaperon_, for example, has asked for admission to our -vocabulary, and the application has been granted, so that we have -now no hesitation in recording that Daisy Miller was _chaperoned_ by -Becky Sharp at the last ball given by the Marquis of Steyne; and we -have even changed the spelling of the noun to correspond better with -our Anglicized pronunciation, thus _chaperone_. Thus _technique_ has -changed its name to _technic_, and is made welcome; so early as 1867 -Matthew Arnold used _technic_ in his ‘Study of Celtic Literature,’ but -even now his fellow-islanders are slow in following his example. Thus -_employé_ is accepted in the properly Anglicized form of _employee_. -Thus the useful _clôture_ undergoes a sea-change and becomes the -English _closure_. And why not _cotery_ also? I note that in his -‘Studies in Literature,’ published in 1877, Professor Dowden put -_technique_ into italics as tho it was still a foreign word, while he -left _coterie_ in ordinary type as tho it had been adopted into English. - -So _toilette_ has been abbreviated to _toilet_; at least, I should -have said so without any hesitation if I had not recently seen the -foreign spelling reappearing repeatedly in the pages of Robert Louis -Stevenson’s ‘Amateur Emigrant’--and this in the complete Edinburgh -edition prepared by Mr. Sidney Colvin. To find a Gallic spelling in the -British prose of Stevenson is a surprise, especially since the author -of the ‘Dynamiter’ is on record as a contemner of another orthographic -Gallicism. In a foot-note to ‘More New Arabian Nights’ Stevenson -declares that “any writard who writes _dynamitard_ shall find in me a -never-resting fightard.” - -I should like to think that the naturalized _literator_ was supplanting -the alien _littérateur_, but I cannot claim confidence as to the -result. _Literator_ is a good English word: I have found it in the -careful pages of Lockhart’s ‘Life of Scott’; and I make no doubt -that it can prove a much older pedigree than that. It seems to me a -better word by far than _literarian_, which the late Fitzedward Hall -manufactured for his own use “some time in the fifties,” and which he -defended against a British critic who denounced it as “atrocious.” -Hall, praising the word of his own making, declared that “to -_literatus_ or _literator_, for _literary person_ or a longer phrase of -equivalent import, there are obvious objections.” Nobody, to the best -of my belief, ever attempted to use in English the Latin _literatus_, -altho its plural Poe made us familiar with by his series of papers on -the ‘Literati of America.’ Since Poe’s death the word has ceased to be -current, altho it was not uncommon in his day. - -Perhaps one of the obvious objections to _literatus_ is that if it be -treated as an English word the plural it forms is not pleasant to the -ear--_literatuses_. Here, indeed, is a moot point: How does a foreign -word make its plural in English? Some years ago Mr. C. F. Thwing, -writing in _Harper’s Bazar_ on the college education of young women, -spoke of _foci_. Mr. Churton Collins, preparing a book about the study -of English literature in the British universities, expressed his desire -“to raise Greek, now gradually falling out of our _curricula_ and -degenerating into the cachet and shibboleth of cliques of pedants, to -its proper place in education.” Here we see Mr. Thwing and Mr. Collins -treating _focus_ and _curriculum_ as words not yet assimilated by our -language, and therefore required to assume the Latin plural. - -Does not this suggest a certain lack of taste on the part of these -writers? If _focus_ and _curriculum_ are not good English words, what -need is there to employ them when you are using the English language -to convey your thoughts? There are occasions, of course, where the -employment of a foreign term is justifiable, but they must always -be very rare. The imported word which we really require we had best -take to ourselves, incorporating it in the language, treating it -thereafter absolutely as an English word, and giving it the regular -English plural. If the word we use is so foreign that we should print -it in italics, then of course the plural should be formed according -to the rules of the foreign language from which it has been borrowed; -but if it has become so acclimated in our tongue that we should not -think of underlining it, then surely it is English enough to take an -English plural. If _cherub_ is now English, its plural is the English -_cherubs_, and not the Hebrew _cherubim_. If _criterion_ is now -English, its plural is the English _criterions_, and not the Greek -_criteria_. If _formula_ is now English, its plural is the English -_formulas_, and not the Latin _formulæ_. If _bureau_ is now English, -its plural is the English _bureaus_, and not the French _bureaux_. - -What is the proper plural in English of _cactus_? of _vortex_? of -_antithesis_? of _phenomenon_? In a volume on the ‘Augustan Age,’ in -Professor George Saintsbury’s ‘Periods of European Literature,’ we find -_lexica_--a masterpiece of petty pedantry and of pedantic pettiness. -As Landor made himself say in his dialog with Archdeacon Hare, “There -is an affectation of scholarship in compilers of spelling-books, and -in the authors they follow for examples, when they bring forward -_phenomena_ and the like. They might as well bring forward _mysteria_. -We have no right to tear Greek and Latin declensions out of their -grammars: we need no _vortices_ when we have _vortexes_ before us; and -while we have _memorandums_, _factotums_, and _ultimatums_, let our -shepherd dogs bring back to us by the ear such as have wandered from -the flock.” - -Landor’s own scholarship was too keen and his taste was too fine for -him not to abhor such affectation. He held that Greek and Latin words -had no business in an English sentence unless they had been frankly -acclimated in the English language, and that one of the conditions of -this acclimatizing was the shedding of their original plurals. And -that this is also the common-sense view of most users of English is -obvious enough. Nobody now ventures to write _factota_ or _ultimata_; -and even _memoranda_ seems to be vanishing. But _phenomena_ and _data_ -still survive; and so do _errata_ and _candelabra_. Whatever may be -the fate of _phenomena_, that of the three other words may perhaps be -like unto the fate of _opera_--which is also a Latin plural and which -has become an English singular. We speak unhesitatingly of the _operas_ -of Rossini; are we going, in time, to speak unhesitatingly of the -_candelabras_ of Cellini? In his vigorous article on the orthography -of the French language--which is still almost as chaotic and illogical -as the orthography of the English language--Sainte-Beuve noted as a -singular peculiarity the fact that _errata_ had got itself recognized -as a French singular, but that it did not yet take the French plural; -thus we see _un errata_ and _des errata_. - -It is true also that when we take over a term from another language -we ought to be sure that it really exists in the other language. For -lack of observance of this caution we find ourselves now in possession -of phrases like _nom de plume_ and _déshabille_, of which the French -never heard. And even when we have assured ourselves of the existence -of the word in the foreign language, it behooves us then to assure -ourselves also of its exact meaning before we take it for our own. In -his interesting and instructive book about ‘English Prose,’ Professor -Earle reminds us that the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe is not yet an -extinct species; and he adds in a note that “the word _levée_ seems to -be another genuine instance of the same insular dialect,” since it is -not French of any date, but an English improvement upon the verb (or -substantive) _lever_, “getting up in the morning.” - -An example even more extraordinary than any of these, I think, will -occur to those of us who are in the habit of glancing through the -theatrical announcements of the American newspapers. This is the taking -of the French word _vaudeville_ to designate what was once known -as a “variety show” and what is now more often called a “specialty -entertainment.” For any such interpretation of _vaudeville_ there is no -warrant whatever in French. Originally the “vaudeville” was a satiric -ballad, bristling with hits at the times, and therefore closely akin to -the “topical song” of to-day; and it is at this stage of its evolution -that Boileau asserted that - - Le Français, né malin, créa le vaudeville. - -In time there came to be spoken words accompanying those sung, and -thus the “vaudeville” expanded slowly into a little comic play in -which there were one or more songs. Of late the Parisian “vaudeville” -has been not unlike the London “musical farce.” At no stage of its -career had the “vaudeville” anything to do with the “variety show”; -and yet to the average American to-day the two words seem synonymous. -There was even organized in New York, in the fall of 1892, a series of -subscription suppers during which “specialty entertainments” were to -be given; and in spite of the fact that the organizers were presumably -persons who had traveled, they called their society the “Vaudeville -Club,” altho no real “vaudeville” was ever presented before the members -during its brief and inglorious career. Of course explanation and -protest are now equally futile. The meaning of the word is forever -warped beyond correction; and for the future here in America a -“vaudeville performance” is a “variety show,” no matter what it may be -or may have been in France. When the people as a whole accept a word as -having a certain meaning, that is and must be the meaning of the word -thereafter; and there is no use in kicking against the pricks. - -The fate in English of another French term is even now trembling in -the balance. This is the word _née_. The French have found a way out -of the difficulty of indicating easily the maiden name of a married -woman; they write unhesitatingly about Madame Machin, _née_ Chose; and -the Germans have a like idiom. But instead of taking a hint from the -French and the Germans, and thus of speaking about Mrs. Brown, _born_ -Gray, as they do, not a few English writers have simply borrowed the -actual French word, and so we read about Mrs. Black, _née_ White. As -usual, this borrowing is dangerous; and the temptation seems to be -irresistible to destroy the exact meaning of _née_ by using it in the -sense of “formerly.” Thus in the ‘Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848-88,’ -collected and arranged by Mr. George W. E. Russell, the editor supplies -in foot-notes information about the persons whose names appear in the -correspondence. In one of these annotations we read that the wife of -Sir Anthony de Rothschild was “_née_ Louisa Montefiore” (i. 165), -and in another that the Hon. Mrs. Eliot Yorke was “_née_ Annie de -Rothschild” (ii. 160). Now, neither of these ladies was _born_ with -a given name as well as a family name. It is obvious that the editor -has chosen arbitrarily to wrench the meaning of _née_ to suit his own -convenience, a proceeding of which I venture to think that Matthew -Arnold himself would certainly have disapproved. In fact, I doubt -if Mr. Russell is not here guilty of an absurdity almost as obvious -as that charged against a wealthy western lady now residing at the -capital of the United States, who is said to have written her name on -the register of a New York hotel thus: “Mrs. Blank, Washington, _née_ -Chicago.” - -Why is it that the wandering stars of the theatrical firmament are -wont to display themselves in a _répertoire_ when it would be so -much easier for them to make use of a _repertory_? And why does the -teacher of young and ambitious singers insist on calling his school -a _conservatoire_ when it would assert its rank just as well if it -was known as a _conservatory_? What strange freak of chance has led -so many of the women who have made themselves masters of the technic -of the piano to announce themselves as _pianistes_ in the vain belief -that _pianiste_ is the feminine of _pianist_? How comes it that a man -capable of composing so scholarly a book as the ‘Greek Drama’ of Mr. -Lionel D. Barnett really is should be guilty of saying that certain -declamations in the later theater “were adapted to the style of popular -_artistes_”? And why does Mr. Andrew Lang (in his ‘Angling Sketches’) -write about the _asphalte_, when the obvious English is either -_asphalt_ or _asphaltum_? - -And yet Mr. Lang, himself convicted of this dereliction, has no -hesitation in objecting to a “delightful grammatical form which closes -a scene in one of the new rag-bag journals. The author gets his -characters off the stage with the announcement: ‘They exit.’ He seems -to think that _exit_ is a verb. I _exit_, he _exits_, they _exit_. It -would be interesting to learn how he translates _exeunt omnes_. One is -accustomed to ‘a _penetralia_’ from young lions, and to ‘a _strata_,’ -but ‘they _exit_’ is original.” - -But the verb _to exit_ is not original with the writer in the new -rag-bag journal. It has been current in England for three quarters of a -century at least, and it can be found in the pages of that vigorously -written pair of volumes, Mrs. Trollope’s ‘Domestic Manners of the -Americans’ (published in 1831), in the picturesque passage in which she -describes how the American women, left alone, “all console themselves -together for whatever they may have suffered in keeping awake by -taking more tea, coffee, hot cake and custard, hoe-cake, johnny-cake, -waffle-cake and dodger-cake, pickled peaches and preserved cucumbers, -ham, turkey, hung-beef, apple-sauce, and pickled oysters, than ever -were prepared in any other country of the known world. After this -massive meal is over, they return to the drawing-room, and it always -appeared to me that they remained together as long as they could bear -it, and then they rise _en masse_, cloak, bonnet, shawl, and exit.” - -The verb _to exit_, with the full conjugation Mr. Lang thought so -strange, has long been common among theatrical folk. The stage-manager -will tell the leading lady “You _exit_ here, and she _exits_ up left.” -The theatrical folk, who probably first brought the verb into use, did -not borrow it from the Latin, as Mr. Lang seems to suppose; they simply -made a verb of the existing English noun _exit_, meaning a way out. We -old New-Yorkers who can recall the time when Barnum’s Museum stood at -the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, remember also the signs which -used to declare - - THIS WAY - - TO THE - - GRAND EXIT - -and we have not forgotten the facile anecdote of the countryman who -went wonderingly to discover what manner of strange beast the “exit” -might be, and who unexpectedly found himself in the street outside. - -The unfortunate remark of Mr. Lang was due to his happening not to -recall the fact that _exit_ had become, first, an English noun, and, -second, an English verb. When once it was Anglicized, it had all the -rights of a native; it was a citizen of no mean country. The principle -which it is well to keep in mind in any consideration of the position -in English of terms once foreign is that no word can serve two masters. -The English language is ever ravenous and voracious; its appetite is -insatiable. It is forever taking over words from strange tongues, dead -and alive. These words are but borrowed at first, and must needs -conform to all the grammatical peculiarities of their native speech. -But some of them are sooner or later firmly incorporated into English; -and thereafter they must cease to obey any laws but those of the -language into which they have been adopted. Either a word is English or -it is not; and a decision on this point is rarely difficult. - - (1895-1900) - - - - -VIII - -THE FUNCTION OF SLANG - - -It is characteristic of the interest which science is now taking in -things formerly deemed unworthy of consideration that philologists -no longer speak of slang in contemptuous terms. Perhaps, indeed, it -was not the scholar, but the amateur philologist, the mere literary -man, who affected to despise slang. To the trained investigator -into the mutations of language and into the transformations of the -vocabulary, no word is too humble for respectful consideration; and it -is from the lowly, often, that the most valuable lessons are learned. -But until recently few men of letters ever mentioned slang except -in disparagement and with a wish for its prompt extirpation. Even -professed students of speech, like Trench and Alford (now sadly shorn -of their former authority), are abundant in declarations of abhorrent -hostility. De Quincey, priding himself on his independence and on his -iconoclasm, was almost alone in saying a good word for slang. - -There is this excuse for the earlier author who treated slang with -contumely, that the differentiation of _slang_ from _cant_ was not -complete in his day. _Cant_ is the dialect of a class, often used -correctly enough, as far as grammar is concerned, but often also -unintelligible to those who do not belong to the class or who are -not acquainted with its usages. _Slang_ was at first the _cant_ of -thieves, and this seems to have been its only meaning until well into -the present century. In ‘Redgauntlet,’ for example, published in 1824, -Scott speaks of the “thieves’ Latin called _slang_.” Sometime during -the middle of the century _slang_ seems to have lost this narrow -limitation, and to have come to signify a word or a phrase used with a -meaning not recognized in polite letters, either because it had just -been invented, or because it had passed out of memory. While _cant_, -therefore, was a language within a language, so to speak, and not to be -understanded of the people, _slang_ was a collection of colloquialisms -gathered from all sources, and all bearing alike the bend sinister of -illegitimacy. - -Certain of its words were unquestionably of very vulgar origin, being -survivals of the “thieves’ Latin” Scott wrote about. Among these are -_pal_ and _cove_, words not yet admitted to the best society. Others -were merely arbitrary misapplications of words of good repute, such as -the employment of _awfully_ and _jolly_ as synonyms for _very_--as -intensives, in short. Yet others were violent metaphors, like _in the -soup_, _kicking the bucket_, _holding up_ (a stage-coach). Others, -again, were the temporary phrases which spring up, one scarcely knows -how, and flourish unaccountably for a few months, and then disappear -forever, leaving no sign; such as _shoo-fly_ in America and _all -serene_ in England. - -An analysis of modern slang reveals the fact that it is possible to -divide the words and phrases of which it is composed into four broad -classes, of quite different origin and of very varying value. Toward -two of these classes it may be allowable to feel the contempt so often -expressed for slang as a whole. Toward the other two classes such a -feeling is wholly unjustifiable, for they are performing an inestimable -service to the language. - -Of the two unworthy classes, the first is that which includes the -survivals of the “thieves’ Latin,” the vulgar terms used by vulgar men -to describe vulgar things. This is the slang which the police-court -reporter knows and is fond of using profusely. This is the slang which -Dickens introduced to literature. This class of slang it is which -is mainly responsible for the ill repute of the word. Much of the -dislike for slang felt by people of delicate taste is, however, due to -the second class, which includes the ephemeral phrases fortuitously -popular for a season, and then finally forgotten once for all. These -mere catchwords of the moment are rarely foul, as the words and phrases -of the first class often are, but they are unfailingly foolish. _There -you go with your eye out_, which was accepted as a humorous remark in -London, and _Where did you get that hat?_ which had a like fleeting -vogue in New York, are phrases as inoffensive as they are flat. These -temporary terms come and go, and are forgotten swiftly. Probably -most readers of Forcythe Wilson’s ‘Old Sergeant’ need now to have it -explained to them that during the war a _grape-vine_ meant a lying -rumor. - -It must be said, however, that even in the terms of the first class -there is a striving upward, a tendency to disinfect themselves, as any -reader of Grose’s ‘Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue’ must needs remark -when he discovers that phrases used now with perfect freedom had a -secret significance in the last century. There are also innuendos not a -few in certain of Shakspere’s best-known plays which fortunately escape -the notice of all but the special student of the Elizabethan vocabulary. - -The other two classes of slang stand on a different footing. Altho -they suffer from the stigma attached to all slang by the two classes -already characterized, they serve a purpose. Indeed, their utility -is indisputable, and it was never greater than it is to-day. One of -these classes consists of old and forgotten phrases or words, which, -having long lain dormant, are now struggling again to the surface. -The other consists of new words and phrases, often vigorous and -expressive, but not yet set down in the literary lexicon, and still -on probation. In these two classes we find a justification for the -existence of slang--for it is the function of slang to be a feeder of -the vocabulary. Words get threadbare and dried up; they come to be -like evaporated fruit, juiceless and tasteless. Now it is the duty of -slang to provide substitutes for the good words and true which are worn -out by hard service. And many of the recruits slang has enlisted are -worthy of enrolment among the regulars. When a blinded conservative is -called a _mossback_, who is so dull as not to perceive the poetry of -the word? When an actor tells us how the traveling company in which -he was engaged got _stranded_, who does not recognize the force and -the felicity of the expression? And when we hear a man declare that -he would to-day be rich if only his foresight had been equal to his -_hindsight_, who is not aware of the value of the phrase? No wonder -is it that the verbal artist hankers after such words which renew -the lexicon of youth! No wonder is it that the writer who wishes to -present his thought freshly seeks these words with the bloom yet on -them, and neglects the elder words desiccated as tho for preservation -in a herbarium! - -The student of slang is surprised that he is able to bring forward an -honorable pedigree for many words so long since fallen from their high -estate that they are now treated as upstarts when they dare to assert -themselves. Words have their fates as well as men and books; and the -ups and downs of a phrase are often almost as pathetic as those of a -man. It has been said that the changes of fortune are so sudden here -in these United States that it is only three generations from shirt -sleeves to shirt sleeves. The English language is not quite so fast -as the American people, but in the English language it is only three -centuries from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves. What could seem more -modern, more western even, than _deck_ for _pack_ of cards, and _to lay -out_ or to _lay out cold_ for _to knockdown_? Yet these are both good -old expressions, in decay no longer, but now insisting on their right -to a renewed life. _Deck_ is Elizabethan, and we find in Shakspere’s -‘King Henry VI.’ (part iii., act v., sc. i.) that - - The king was slyly finger’d from the deck. - -_To lay out_ in its most modern sense is very early English. - -Even more important than this third class of slang expressions is the -fourth, containing the terms which are, so to speak, serving their -apprenticeship, and as yet uncertain whether or not they will be -admitted finally into the gild of good English. These terms are either -useful or useless; they either satisfy a need or they do not; they -therefore live or die according to the popular appreciation of their -value. If they expire, they pass into the limbo of dead-and-gone slang, -than which there is no blacker oblivion. If they survive it is because -they have been received into the literary language, having appealed to -the perceptions of some master of the art and craft of speech, under -whose sponsorship they are admitted to full rights. Thus we see that -slang is a training-school for new expressions, only the best scholars -getting the diploma which confers longevity, the others going surely to -their fate. - -Sometimes these new expressions are words only, sometimes they are -phrases. _To go back on_, for instance, and _to give one’s self away_ -are specimens of the phrase characteristic of this fourth and most -interesting class of slang at its best. In its creation of phrases -like these, slang is what idiom was before language stiffened into -literature, and so killed its earlier habit of idiom-making. After -literature has arrived, and after the schoolmaster is abroad, and -after the printing-press has been set up in every hamlet, the -idiom-making faculty of a language is atrophied by disuse. Slang is -sometimes, and to a certain extent, a survival of this faculty, or at -least a substitute for its exercise. In other words (and here I take -the liberty of quoting from a private letter of one of the foremost -authorities on the history of English, Professor Lounsbury), “slang is -an effort on the part of the users of language to say something more -vividly, strongly, concisely than the language as existing permits it -to be said”; and he adds that slang is therefore “the source from which -the decaying energies of speech are constantly refreshed.” - -Being contrary to the recognized standards of speech, slang finds no -mercy at the hands of those who think it their duty to uphold the -strict letter of the law. Nothing amazes an investigator more, and -nothing more amuses him, than to discover that thousands of words now -secure in our speech were once denounced as interlopers. “There is -death in the dictionary,” said Lowell, in his memorable linguistic -essay prefixed to the second series of the ‘Biglow Papers’; “and -where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground -for expression to grow in is limited also, and we get a _potted_ -literature--Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees.” And in the paper -on Dryden he declared that “a language grows and is not made.” Pedants -are ever building the language about with rules of iron in a vain -effort to keep it from growing naturally and according to its needs. - -It is true that _cab_ and _mob_ are clipped words, and there has always -been a healthy dislike of any clipping of the verbal currency. But -_consols_ is firmly established. Two clipped words there are which have -no friends--_gents_ and _pants_. Dr. Holmes has put them in the pillory -of a couplet: - - The things named _pants_, in certain documents, - A word not made for gentlemen, but _gents_. - -And recently a sign, suspended outside a big Broadway building, -announced that there were “Hands wanted on pants,” the building being a -clothing factory, and not, as one might suppose, a boys’ school. - -The slang of a metropolis, be that where you will, in the United States -or in Great Britain, in France or in Germany, is nearly always stupid. -There is neither fancy nor fun in the Parisian’s _Ohé Lambert_ or _on -dirait du veau_, nor in the Londoner’s _all serene_ or _there you go -with your eye out_--catchwords which are humorous, if humorous they -are, only by general consent and for some esoteric reason. It is to -such stupid phrases of a fleeting popularity that Dr. Holmes refers, -no doubt, when he declares that “the use of slang, or cheap generic -terms, as a substitute for differentiated specific expressions is at -once a sign and a cause of mental atrophy.” And this use of slang is -far more frequent in cities, where people often talk without having -anything to say, than in the country, where speech flows slowly. - -Perhaps the more highly civilized a population is, the more it has -parted with the power of pictorial phrase-making. It may be that a -certain lawlessness of life is the cause of a lawlessness of language. -Of all metropolitan slang that of the outlaws is most vigorous. It -was after Vidocq had introduced thieves’ slang into polite society -that Balzac, always a keen observer and always alert to pick up unworn -words, ventured to say, perhaps to the astonishment of many, that -“there is no speech more energetic, more colored, than that of these -people.” Balzac was not academic in his vocabulary, and he owed not -a little of the sharpness of his descriptions to his hatred of the -cut-and-dried phrases of his fellow-novelists. He would willingly have -agreed with Montaigne when the essayist declared that the language -he liked, written or spoken, was “a succulent and nervous speech, -short and compact, not so much delicated and combed out as vehement -and brusk, rather arbitrary than monotonous, ... not pedantic, but -soldierly rather, as Suetonius called Cæsar’s.” And this brings us -exactly to Mr. Bret Harte’s - - Phrases such as camps may teach, - Saber-cuts of Saxon speech, - -There is a more soldierly frankness, a greater freedom, less restraint, -less respect for law and order, in the west than in the east; and -this may be a reason why American slang is superior to British and to -French. The catchwords of New York may be as inept and as cheap as the -catchwords of London and of Paris, but New York is not as important -to the United States as London is to Great Britain and as Paris is to -France; it is not as dominating, not as absorbing. So it is that in -America the feebler catchwords of the city give way before the virile -phrases of the west. There is little to choose between the _how’s your -poor feet?_ of London and the _well, I should smile_ of New York, for -neither phrase had any excuse for existence, and neither had any hope -of survival. The city phrase is often doubtful in meaning and obscure -in origin. In London, for example, the four-wheel cab is called a -_growler_. Why? In New York a can brought in filled with beer at a -bar-room is called a _growler_, and the act of sending this can from -the private house to the public house and back is called _working the -growler_. Why? - -But when we find a western writer describing the effects of -_tanglefoot_ whisky, the adjective explains itself, and is justified -at once. And we discover immediately the daringly condensed metaphor -in the sign, “Don’t _monkey_ with the _buzz-saw_”; the picturesqueness -of the word _buzz-saw_ and its fitness for service are visible at a -glance. So we understand the phrase readily and appreciate its force -when we read the story of ‘Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral,’ and are told that -“he never _went back on_ his mother,” or when we hear the defender of -‘Banty Tim’ declare that - - “Ef one of you teches the boy - He’ll _wrestle his hash_ to-night in hell, - Or my name’s not Tilman Joy.” - -_To wrestle one’s hash_ is not an elegant expression, one must admit, -and it is not likely to be adopted into the literary language; but it -is forcible at least, and not stupid. _To go back on_, however, bids -fair to take its place in our speech as a phrase at once useful and -vigorous. - -From the wide and wind-swept plains of the west came _blizzard_, and -altho it has been suggested that the word is a survival from some local -British dialect, the west still deserves the credit of having rescued -it from desuetude. From the logging-camps of the northwest came _boom_, -an old word again, but with a new meaning which the language promptly -accepted. From still farther west came the use of _sand_ to indicate -staying power, backbone--what New England knows as _grit_ and old -England as _pluck_ (a far less expressive word). From the southwest -came _cinch_, from the tightening of the girths of the pack-mules, and -so by extension indicating a grasp of anything so firm that it cannot -get away. - -Just why a _dead cinch_ should be the securest of any, I confess I -do not know. _Dead_ is here used as an intensive; and the study of -intensives is as yet in its infancy. In all parts of Great Britain -and the United States we find certain words wrenched from their true -meaning and most arbitrarily employed to heighten the value of other -words. Thus we have a _dead cinch_, or a _dead sure thing_, a _dead -shot_, a _dead level_--and for these last two terms we can discover -perhaps a reason. Lowell noted in New England a use of _tormented_ as -a euphemism for _damned_, as “not a _tormented_ cent.” Every American -traveler in England must have remarked with surprise the British use of -the Saxon synonym of _sanguinary_ as an intensive, the chief British -rivals of _bloody_ in this respect being _blooming_ and _blasted_. -All three are held to be shocking to polite ears, and it was with -bated breath that the editor of a London newspaper wrote about the -prospects of “a b----y war”; while, as another London editor declared -recently, it is now impossible for a cockney to read with proper -sympathy Jeffrey’s appeal to Carlyle, after a visit to Craigenputtock, -to bring his “blooming Eve out of her blasted paradise.” Of the other -slang synonyms for _very_--_jolly_, “he was _jolly_ ill,” is British; -_awfully_ was British first, and is now American also; and _daisy_ is -American. But any discussion of intensives is a digression here, and I -return as soon as may be to the main road. - -_To freeze to_ anything or any person is a down-east phrase, so Lowell -records, but it has a far-western strength; and so has _to get solid -with_, as when the advice is given that “if a man is courting a girl it -is best _to get solid with_ her father.” What is this phrase, however, -but the French _solidarité_, which we have recently taken over into -English to indicate a communion of interests and responsibilities? -The likeness of French terms to American is no new thing; Lowell -told us that Horace Mann, in one of his public addresses, commented -at some length on the beauty and moral significance of the French -phrase _s’orienter_, and called upon his young friends to practise -it, altho “there was not a Yankee in his audience whose problem had -not always been to find out what was _about east_, and to shape his -course accordingly.” A few years ago, in turning over ‘Karikari,’ a -volume of M. Ludovic Halévy’s clever and charming sketches of Parisian -character, I met with a delightful young lady who had _pas pour deux -liards de coquetterie_; and I wondered whether M. Halévy, if he were an -American, and one of the forty of an American Academy, would venture -the assertion that his heroine was _not coquettish for a cent_. - -Closely akin to _to freeze to_ and _to be solid with_ is _jumped on_. -When severe reproof is administered the culprit is said to be _jumped -on_; and if the reproof shall be unduly severe, the sufferer is said -then to be _jumped on with both feet_. All three of these phrases -belong to a class from which the literary language has enlisted many -worthy recruits in the past, and it would not surprise me to see them -answer to their names whenever a new dictionary calls the roll of -English words. Will they find themselves shoulder to shoulder with -_spook_, a word of Dutch origin, now volunteering for English service -both in New York and in South Africa? And by that time will _slump_ -have been admitted to the ranks, and _fad_, and _crank_, in the -secondary meaning of a man of somewhat unsettled mind? _Slump_ is an -Americanism, _crank_ is an Americanism of remote British descent, and -_fad_ is a Briticism; this last is perhaps the most needed word of the -three, and from it we get a name for the _faddist_, the bore who rides -his hobby hard and without regard to the hounds. - -Just as in New York the “Upper Ten Thousand” of N. P. Willis have -shrunk to the “Four Hundred” of Mr. Ward McAllister, so in London the -_swells_ soon became the _smart_ set, and after a while developed into -_swagger_ people, as they became more and more exclusive and felt the -need of new terms to express their new quality. But in no department of -speech is the consumption of words more rapid than in that describing -the degrees of intoxication; and the list of slang synonyms for the -drunkard, and for his condition, and for the act which brings it about, -is as long as Leporello’s. Among these, _to get loaded_ and _to carry -a load_ are expressions obvious enough; and when we recall that _jag_ -is a provincialism meaning a light load, we see easily that the man -who _has a jag on_ is in the earlier stages of intoxication. This use -of the word is, I think, wholly American, and it has not crossed the -Atlantic as yet, or else a British writer could never have blundered -into a definition of _jag_ as an umbrella, quoting in illustration a -paragraph from a St. Louis paper which said that “Mr. Brown was seen on -the street last Sunday in the rain carrying a large fine jag.” One may -wonder what this British writer would have made out of the remark of -the Chicago humorist, that a certain man was not always drunk, even if -he did jump “from jag to jag like an alcoholic chamois.” - -Here, of course, we are fairly within the boundaries of slang--of the -slang which is temporary only, and which withers away swiftly. But -is _swell_ slang now, and _fad_, and _crank_? Is _boom_ slang, and -is _blizzard_? And if it is difficult to draw any line of division -between mere slang on the one side, and idiomatic words and phrases -on the other, it is doubly difficult to draw this line between mere -slang and the legitimate technicalities of a calling or a craft. Is -it slang to say of a picture that the chief figure in it is _out of -drawing_, or that the painter has got his _values_ wrong? And how could -any historian explain the ins and outs of New York politics who could -not state frankly that the _machine_ made a _slate_, and that the -_mugwumps_ broke it. Such a historian must needs master the meaning of -_laying pipe_ for a nomination, or _pulling wires_ to secure it, of -_taking the stump_ before election, and of _log-rolling_ after it; he -must apprehend the exact relation of the _boss_ to his _henchmen_ and -his _heelers_; and he must understand who the _half-breeds_ were, and -the _stalwarts_, and how the _swallowtails_ were different from the -_short-hairs_. - -To call one man a _boss_ and another a _henchman_ may have been slang -once, but the words are lawful now, because they are necessary. It -is only by these words that the exact relation of a certain kind -of political leader to a certain kind of political follower can be -expressed succinctly. There are, of course, not a few political phrases -still under the ban because they are needless. Some of these may some -day come to convey an exact shade of meaning not expressed by any -other word, and when this shall happen, they will take their places -in the legitimate vocabulary. I doubt whether this good fortune will -ever befall a use of _influence_, now not uncommon in Washington. The -statesman at whose suggestion and request an office-holder has received -his appointment is known as that office-holder’s _influence_. Thus -a poor widow, suddenly turned out of a post she had held for years, -because it was wanted by the henchman of some boss whose good will a -senator or a department chief wished to retain, explained to a friend -that her dismissal was due to the fact that her _influence_ had died -during the summer. The inevitable extension of the merit system in -the civil service of our country will probably prevent the permanent -acceptance of this new meaning. - -The political is only one of a vast number of technical vocabularies, -all of which are proffering their words for popular consumption. Every -art and every science, every trade and every calling, every sect and -every sport, has its own special lexicon, the most of the words in -which must always remain outside of the general speech of the whole -people. They are reserves, to be drawn upon to fill up the regular army -in time of need. Legitimate enough when confined to their proper use, -those technicalities become slang when employed out of season, and when -applied out of the special department of human endeavor in which they -have been evolved. Of course, if the public interest in this department -is increased for any reason, more and more words from that technical -vocabulary are adopted into the wider dictionary of popular speech; and -thus the general language is still enriching itself by the taking over -of words and phrases from the terminology devised by experts for their -own use. Not without interest would it be if we could ascertain exactly -how much of the special vocabulary of the mere man of letters is now -understandable by the plain people. It is one of the characters in -‘Middlemarch’ who maintains that “correct English” is only “the slang -of prigs who write history and essays, and the strongest slang of all -is the slang of poets.” - -Of recent years many of the locutions of the Stock Exchange have won -their way into general knowledge; and there are few of us who do not -know what _bears_ and _bulls_ are, what a _corner_ is, and what is a -_margin_. The practical application of scientific knowledge makes the -public at large familiar with many principles hitherto the exclusive -possession of the experts, and the public at large gets to use freely -to-day technicalities which even the learned of yesterday would not -have understood. _Current_, for example, and _insulation_, made -familiar by the startlingly rapid extension of electrical possibilities -in the last few years, have been so fully assimilated that they are -now used independently and without avowed reference to their original -electrical meanings. - -The prevalence of a sport or of a game brings into general use the -terms of that special amusement. The Elizabethan dramatists, for -example, use _vy_ and _revy_ and the other technicalities of the game -of primero as freely as our western humorists use _going it blind_ and -_calling_ and the other technicalities of the game of poker, which has -been evolved out of primero in the course of the centuries. Some of the -technicalities of euchre also, and of whist, have passed into every-day -speech; and so have many of the terms of baseball and of football, of -racing and of trotting, of rowing and of yachting. These made their -way into the vocabulary of the average man one by one, as the seasons -went around and as the sports followed one another in popularity. So -during the civil war many military phrases were frequent in the mouths -of the people; and some of these established themselves firmly in the -vocabulary. - -“In language, as in life,” so Professor Dowden tells us, “there is, so -to speak, an aristocracy and a commonalty: words with a heritage of -dignity, words which have been ennobled, and a rabble of words which -are excluded from positions of honor and trust.” Some writers and -speakers there are with so delicate a sense of refinement that they are -at ease only with the ennobled words, with the words that came over -with the conquerer, with the lords, spiritual and temporal, of the -vocabulary. Others there are, parvenus themselves, and so tainted with -snobbery that they are happy only in the society of their betters; and -these express the utmost contempt for the mass of the vulgar. Yet again -others there are who have Lincoln’s liking for the plain words of the -plain people--the democrats of the dictionary, homely, simple, direct. -These last are tolerant of the words, once of high estate, which have -lost their rank and are fallen upon evil days, preferring them over -the other words, plebeian once, but having pushed their fortunes -energetically in successive generations, until now there are none more -highly placed. - -Perhaps the aristocratic figure of speech is a little misleading, -because in the English language, as in France after the Revolution, -we find _la carrière ouverte aux talents_, and every word has a fair -chance to attain the highest dignity in the gift of the dictionary. No -doubt family connections are still potent, and it is much easier for -some words to rise in life than it is for others. Most people would -hold that war and law and medicine made a more honorable pedigree for a -technical term than the stage, for example, or than some sport. - -And yet the stage has its own enormous vocabulary, used with the utmost -scientific precision. The theater is a hotbed of temporary slang, often -as lawless, as vigorous, and as picturesque as the phrases of the west; -but it has also a terminology of its own, containing some hundreds of -words, used always with absolute exactness. A _mascot_, meaning one who -brings good luck, and a _hoodoo_, meaning one who brings ill fortune, -are terms invented in the theater, it is true; and many another odd -word can be credited to the same source. But every one behind the -scenes knows also what _sky-borders_ are, and _bunch-lights_, and -_vampire-traps_, and _raking-pieces_--technical terms all of them, -and all used with rigorous exactitude. Like the technicalities of -any other profession, those of the stage are often very puzzling to -the uninitiated, and a greenhorn could hardly even make a guess at -the meaning of terms which every visitor to a green-room might use -at any moment. What layman could explain the office of a _cut-drop_, -the utility of a _carpenter’s scene_, or the precise privileges of a -_bill-board ticket_? - -There is one word which the larger vocabulary of the public has lately -taken from the smaller vocabulary of the playhouse, and which some -strolling player of the past apparently borrowed from some other -vagabond familiar with thieves’ slang. This word is _fake_. It has -always conveyed the suggestion of an intent to deceive. “Are you going -to get up new scenery for the new play?” might be asked; and the answer -would be, “No; we shall _fake_ it,” meaning thereby that old scenery -would be retouched and readjusted so as to have the appearance of new. -From the stage the word passed to the newspapers, and a _fake_ is a -story invented, not founded on fact, “made out of whole cloth,” as -the stump-speakers say. Mr. Howells, always bold in using new words, -accepts _fake_ as good enough for him, and prints it in the ‘Quality -of Mercy’ without the stigma of italics or quotation-marks; just as in -the same story he has adopted the colloquial _electrics_ for _electric -lights_--i.e., “He turned off the electrics.” - -And hereafter the rest of us may use either _fake_ or _electrics_ -with a clear conscience, either hiding ourselves behind Mr. Howells, -who can always give a good account of himself when attacked, or -else coming out into the open and asserting our own right to adopt -either word because it is useful. “Is it called for? Is it accordant -with the analysis of the language? Is it offered or backed by good -authority? These are the considerations by which general consent is -won or repelled,” so Professor Whitney tells us, “and general consent -decides every case without appeal.” It happens that Don Quixote -preceded Professor Whitney in this exposition of the law, for when -he was instructing Sancho Panza, then about to be appointed governor -of an island, he used a Latinized form of a certain word which had -become vulgar, explaining that “if some do not understand these terms -it matters little, for custom will bring them into use in the course -of time so that they will be readily understood. That is the way a -language is enriched; custom and the public are all-powerful there.” -Sometimes the needful word which is thought to be too common for use -is Latinized, as Don Quixote preferred, but more often it is ennobled -without change, being simply lifted out from among its former low -companions. - -One of the hardest lessons for the amateurs in linguistics to -learn--and most of them never attain to this wisdom--is that -affectations are fleeting, that vulgarisms die of their own weakness, -and that corruptions do little harm to the language. And the reason -is not far to seek: either the apparent affectation, the alleged -vulgarism, the so-called corruption, is accidental and useless, in -which case its vogue will be brief and it will sink swiftly into -oblivion; or else it represents a need and fills a want, in which -case, no matter how careless it may be or how inaccurately formed, it -will hold its own firmly, and there is really nothing more to be said -about it. In other words, slang and all other variations from the high -standard of the literary language are either temporary or permanent. -If they are temporary only, the damage they can do is inconsiderable. -If they are permanent, their survival is due solely to the fact that -they were convenient or necessary. When a word or a phrase has come to -stay (as _reliable_ has, apparently), it is idle to denounce a decision -rendered by the court of last resort. The most that we can do with -advantage is to refrain from using the word ourselves, if we so prefer. - -It is possible to go further, even, and to turn the tables on those -who see in slang an ever-growing evil. Not only is there little -danger to the language to be feared from those alleged corruptions, -and from these doubtful locutions of evanescent popularity, but real -harm is done by the purists themselves, who do not understand every -modification of our language, and who seek to check the development -of idiom and to limit the liberty which enables our speech freely to -provide for its own needs as these are revealed by time. It is these -half-educated censors, prompt to protest against whatever is novel to -them, and swift to set up the standard of a narrow personal experience, -who try to curb the development of a language. It cannot be declared -too often and too emphatically how fortunate it is that the care of our -language and the control of its development is not in the hands even of -the most competent scholars. In language, as in politics, the people -at large are in the long run better judges of their own needs than any -specialist can be. As Professor Whitney says, “the language would soon -be shorn of no small part of its strength if placed exclusively in the -hands of any individual or of any class.” In the hands of no class -would it be enfeebled sooner than if it were given to the guardianship -of the pedants and the pedagogs. - -A sloven in speech is as offensive as a sloven in manners or in dress; -and neatness of phrase is as pleasant to the ear as neatness of attire -to the eye. A man should choose his words at least as carefully as he -chooses his clothes; a hint of the dandy even is unobjectionable, if -it is but a hint. But when a man gives his whole mind to his dress, it -is generally because he has but little mind to give; and so when a man -spends his force wholly in rejecting words and phrases, it is generally -because he lacks ideas to express with the words and phrases of which -he does approve. In most cases a man can say best what he has to say -without lapsing into slang; but then a slangy expression which actually -tells us something is better than the immaculate sentence empty of -everything but the consciousness of its own propriety. - - (1893) - - - - -IX - -QUESTIONS OF USAGE - - -If any proof were needed of the fact that an immense number of people -take an intense interest in the right and wrong use of the English -language, and also of the further fact that their interest is out -of all proportion to their knowledge of the history of our speech, -such proof could be found in the swift and unceasing eruption of -“letters to the editor” which broke out in many of the American -newspapers immediately after the publication of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s -‘Recessional.’ The exciting cause of this rash exhibition was found in -the line which told us that - - The shouting and the tumult dies. - -The gross blunder in this sentence leaped to the eyes of many whose -acquaintance with the principles of English construction was confined -to what they chanced to remember of the rules learned by heart in their -grammar-school days. But there were others whose reading was a little -wider, and who were able to cite precedents in Mr. Kipling’s favor -from Milton and from Shakspere and from the King James translation -of the Bible. Yet the argument from the past failed to convince some -of the original protestants, one of whom suggested that the erring -poet should be sent to a night-school, while another objected to any -further discussion of the subject, since “a person who doesn’t know -that the plural form of the verb is used when the subject of said verb -is two or more nouns in the singular number should receive no mention -in a reputable newspaper.” It may be doubted whether the altercation -was really bloody enough to demand attention from the disreputable -newspapers, altho it was fierce and intolerant while it lasted. - -The battle raged for a fortnight, and the foundations of the deep -were broken up. Yet it was really a tempest in a teapot, and oil for -the troubled waters was ready at hand had any of those in danger of -shipwreck thought to make use of it. In Professor Lounsbury’s ‘History -of the English Language’--a book from which it is a constant pleasure -to quote, since it combines sound scholarship, literary skill, and -common sense in an uncommon degree--we are told that “rules have been -and still are laid down ... which never had any existence outside of -the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. By these rules, so far -as they are observed, freedom of expression is cramped, idiomatic -peculiarity destroyed, and false tests for correctness set up, which -give the ignorant opportunity to point out supposed error in others, -while the real error lies in their own imperfect acquaintance with the -best usage.” - -And then Professor Lounsbury cites in illustration the rule which was -brought up against Mr. Kipling: “There is a rule of Latin syntax that -two or more substantives joined by a copulative require the verb to -be in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar of English, -of which it is no more true than it is of modern German.... The -grammar of English, as exhibited in the utterances of its best writers -and speakers, has from the very earliest period allowed the widest -discretion as to the use either of the singular or the plural in such -cases. The importation and imposition of rules foreign to its idiom, -like the one just mentioned, does more to hinder the free development -of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of expression, than the widest -prevalence of slovenliness of speech, or of affectation of style; for -these latter are always temporary in their character, and are sure to -be left behind by the advance in popular cultivation, or forgotten -through the change in popular taste.” - -This is really a declaration of independence for writers of English. -It is the frank assertion that a language is made by those who use -it--made by that very use. Language is not an invention of the -grammarians and of the word-critics, whose business, indeed, is not -to make language or to prescribe rules, but more modestly to record -usage and to discover the principles which may underlie the incessant -development of our common speech. And here in discussing the syntax -Professor Lounsbury is at one with Mr. George Meredith discussing the -vocabulary of our language, when the British novelist notes his own -liking for “our blunt and racy vernacular, which a society nourished -upon Norman English and English Latin banishes from print, largely to -its impoverishment, some think.” - -Those who have tried to impose a Latin syntax on the English language -are as arbitrary as those who have insisted on an English pronunciation -of the Latin language. Their attitude is as illogical as it is -dogmatic; and nowhere is dogmatism less welcome than in the attempt to -come to a just conclusion in regard to English usage; and nowhere is -the personal equation more carefully to be allowed for. A term is not -necessarily acceptable because we ourselves are accustomed to it, nor -is it necessarily to be rejected because it reaches us as a novelty. -The Americanism which a British journalist glibly denounces may be -but the ephemeral catchword of a single street-gang, or it may have -come over in the ‘Mayflower’ and be able to trace its ancestry back to -a forefather that crossed with William the Conqueror. The Briticism -which strikes some of us as uncouth and vulgar may be but a chance bit -of cockney slang, or it may be warranted by the very genius of our -language. - -Most of the little manuals which pretend to regulate our use of our -own language and to declare what is and what is not good English are -grotesque in their ignorance; and the best of them are of small value, -because they are prepared on the assumption that the English language -is dead, like the Latin, and that, like Latin again, its usage is fixed -finally. Of course this assumption is as far as possible from the fact. -The English language is alive now--very much alive. And because it -is alive it is in a constant state of growth. It is developing daily -according to its needs. It is casting aside words and usages that -are no longer satisfactory; it is adding new terms as new things are -brought forward; and it is making new usages, as convenience suggests, -short-cuts across lots, and to the neglect of the five-barred gates -rigidly set up by our ancestors. It is throwing away as worn out words -which were once very fashionable; and it is giving up grammatical forms -which seem to be no longer useful. It is continually trying to keep -itself in the highest state of efficiency for work it has to do. It is -ever urging ahead in the direction of increased utility; and if any of -the so-called “rules” happens to stand in the path of its progress--so -much the worse for the rule! As Stephenson said, “It will be bad for -the coo!” - -The English language is the tool of the peoples who speak English -and who have made it to fit their hands. They have fashioned it to -suit their own needs, and it is quite as characteristic as anything -else these same peoples have made--quite as characteristic as the -common law and as parliamentary government. A language cannot but be -a most important witness when we wish to inquire into the special -peculiarities of a race. The French, for instance, are dominated by the -social instinct, and they are prone to rely on logic a little too much, -and their language is therefore a marvel of transparency and precision. -In like manner we might deduce from an analysis of the German language -an opinion as to the slowness of the individual Teuton, as to his -occasional cloudiness, as to his willingness to take trouble, and as to -his ultimate thoroughness. - -The peoples who speak English are very practical and very direct; they -are impatient of needless detail; and they are intolerant of mere -theory. These are some of the reasons why English is less embarrassed -with niceties of inflection than other languages, why it has cut its -syntax to the bone, why it has got rid of most of its declensions -and conjugations--why, in short, it has almost justified the critic -who called it a grammarless tongue. In every language there is a -constant tendency toward uniformity and an unceasing effort to get rid -of abnormal exceptions to the general rule; but in no language are -these endeavors more effective than in English. In the past they have -succeeded in simplifying the rules of our speech; and they are at work -now in the present on the same task of making English a more efficient -instrument for those who use it. - -This effort of the language to do its duty as best it can is partly -conscious and partly unconscious; and where the word-critic can be of -service is in watching for the result of the unconscious endeavor, so -that it can be made plain, and so that it can be aided thereafter by -conscious endeavor. The tendency toward uniformity is irresistible; -and one of its results just now to be observed is an impending -disappearance of the subjunctive mood. Those who may have supposed that -the subjunctive was as firmly established in English as the indicative -can discover easily enough by paying a little attention to their own -daily speech and to the speech of their educated neighbors that “if I -_be_ not too late,” for instance, is a form now rarely heard even in -cultivated society. - -And the same tendency is to be observed also in the written language. -Letters in the London _Author_ in June and July, 1897, showed that -in a few less than a million words chosen from the works of recent -authors of good repute there were only 284 instances of the subjunctive -mood, and that of these all but fifteen were in the verb “to be.” -This reveals to us that the value of this variation of form is no -longer evident, not merely to careless speakers, but even to careful -writers; and it makes it probable that it is only a question of time -how soon the subjunctive shall be no longer differentiated from the -indicative. Where our grandfathers would have taken pains to say “if I -_were_ to go away,” and “if I _be_ not misinformed,” our grandchildren -will unhesitatingly write, “if I _was_ to go away,” and “if I _am_ -not misinformed.” And so posterity will not need to clog its memory -with any rule for the employment of the subjunctive; and the English -language will have cleansed itself of a barnacle. - -It is this same irresistible desire for the simplest form and for the -shortest which is responsible for the increasing tendency to say “he -don’t” and “she don’t,” on the analogy of “we don’t,” “you don’t,” -and “they don’t,” instead of the more obviously grammatical “he does -n’t” and “she does n’t.” A brave attempt has been made to maintain -that “he don’t” is older than “he does n’t,” and that it has at least -the sanction of antiquity. However this may be, “he don’t” is certain -to sustain itself in the future because it calls for less effort and -because any willingness to satisfy the purist will seem less and less -worth while as time goes on. It is well that the purist should fight -for his own hand; but it is well also to know that he is fighting a -losing battle. - -The purist used to insist that we should not say “the house is _being -built_,” but rather “the house is _building_.” So far as one can judge -from a survey of recent writing the purist has abandoned this combat; -and nobody nowadays hesitates to ask, “What is being done?” The purist -still objects to what he calls the Retained Object in such a sentence -as “he was given a new suit of clothes.” Here again the struggle is -vain, for this usage is very old; it is well established in English; -and whatever may be urged against it theoretically, it has the final -advantage of convenience. The purist also tells us that we should say -“come to see me” and “try to do it,” and not “come and see me” and “try -and do it.” Here once more the purist is setting up a personal standard -without any warrant. He may use whichever of these forms he likes best, -and we on our part have the same permission, with a strong preference -for the older and more idiomatic of them. - -Theory is all very well, but to be of any value it must be founded -on the solid rock of fact; and even when it is so established it has -to yield to convenience. This is what the purist cannot be induced -to understand. He seems to think that the language was made once for -all, and that any deviation from the theory acted on in the past is -intolerable in the present. He is often wholly at sea in regard to his -theories and to his facts--more often than not; but no doubt as to his -own infallibility ever discourages him. He just knows that he is right -and that everybody else is wrong; and he has no sense of humor to save -him from himself. And he makes up in violence what he lacks in wisdom. -He accepts himself as a prophet verbally inspired, and he holds that -this gives him the right to call down fire from heaven on all who do -not accept his message. - -It was a purist of this sort who once wrote to a little literary weekly -in New York, protesting against the use of _people_ when _persons_ -would seem to be the better word, and complacently declaring that -“for twenty-five years or more I have kept my eye on this little word -_people_ and I have yet to find a single American or English author who -does not misuse it.” We are instantly reminded of the Irish juryman who -said, “Eleven more obstinate men I never met in the whole course of my -life.” In this pitiful condition of affairs one cannot discover on what -this purist bases the hope he expresses that “in the course of two or -three hundred years the correct employment of it may possibly become -general.” Rather may it be hoped that in the course of two or three -hundred years a knowledge of the principles which govern English usage -may become general. - -What is called the Split Infinitive is also a cause of pain to the -purist, who is greatly grieved when he finds George Lewes in the -‘Life of Goethe’ saying “to completely understand.” This inserting -of an adverb between the _to_ and the rest of the verb strikes the -word-critic as pernicious, and he denounces it instantly as a novelty -to be stamped out before it permanently contaminates our speech. Even -Professor A. S. Hill, in his ‘Foundations of Rhetoric,’ while admitting -its antiquity, since it has been in use constantly from the days of -Wyclif to the days of Herbert Spencer, still declares it to be “a -common fault” not sanctioned or even condoned by good authority. - -The fact is, I think, that the Split Infinitive has a most respectable -pedigree, and that it is rather the protest against it which is the -novelty now establishing itself. The Split Infinitive is to be found -in the pages of Shakspere, Massinger, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe, Burke, -Coleridge, Byron, De Quincey, Macaulay, Matthew Arnold, Browning, -Motley, Lowell, and Holmes. But it is a fact also, I think, that -since the protest has been raised there has been a tendency among -careful writers to eschew the Split Infinitive, or at least to employ -it only when there is a gain in lucidity from its use, as there is, -for example, in Professor Lounsbury’s “to more than counterbalance” -(‘Studies in Chaucer,’ i. 447). - -A writer who has worked out for himself a theory of style, and who has -made up his mind as to the principles he ought to follow in writing, -often yields to protests the validity of which he refuses to admit. He -gives the protestant the benefit of the doubt and drops the stigmatized -words from his vocabulary and refrains from the stigmatized usages, -reserving always the right to avail himself of them at a pinch. What -such a writer has for his supreme object is to convey his thought -into the minds of his readers with the least friction; and he tries -therefore to avoid all awkwardness of phrase, all incongruous words, -all locutions likely to arouse resistance, since any one of these -things will inevitably lessen the amount of attention which this reader -or that will then have available for the reception of the writer’s -message. This is what Herbert Spencer has called the principle of -Economy of Attention; and a firm grasp of this principle is a condition -precedent to a clear understanding of literary art. - -For a good and sufficient reason such a writer stands ready at any -time to break this self-imposed rule. If a solecism, or a vulgarism -even, will serve his purpose better at a given moment than the more -elegant word, he avails himself of it, knowing what he is doing, and -risking the smaller loss for the greater gain. M. Legouvé tells us that -at a rehearsal of a play of Scribe’s he drew the author’s attention -to a bit of bad French at the climax of one of the acts, and Scribe -gratefully accepted the correct form which was suggested. But two or -three rehearsals later Scribe went back unhesitatingly to the earlier -and incorrect phrase, which happened to be swifter, more direct, and -dramatically more expressive than the academically accurate sentence -M. Legouvé had supplied. Shakspere seems often to have been moved by -like motives, and to have been willing at any time to sacrifice strict -grammar to stage-effectiveness. - -Two tendencies exist side by side to-day, and are working together -for the improvement of our language. One is the tendency to disregard -all useless distinctions and to abolish all useless exceptions and to -achieve simplicity and regularity. The other is the tendency toward a -more delicate precision which shall help the writer to present his -thought with the utmost clearness. - -Of the first of these abundant examples can be cited phrases which the -word-critic would denounce, and which are not easy to defend on any -narrow ground, but which are employed freely even by conscientious -writers, well aware that no utility is served by a pedantic precision. -So we find Matthew Arnold in his lectures ‘On Translating Homer’ -speaking of “the _four first_,” where the purist would prefer to have -said “the _first four_.” So we find Hawthorne in the ‘Blithedale -Romance’ writing “fellow, clown, or bumpkin, to _either_ of these,” -when the purist would have wished him to say “to any one of these,” -holding that “either” can be applied only when there are but two -objects. - -In like manner the word-critics object to the use of the superlative -degree when the comparative is all that is needed; yet we find in the -King James translation of Genesis, “her eldest son, Esau,” and she -had but two sons. And they refuse to allow either a comparative or a -superlative to adjectives which indicate completeness; yet we find in -Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall,’ “its success was not more universal.” They -do not like to see a writer say that anything is “more perfect” or -“most complete,” holding that what is universal or perfect or complete -“does not admit of augmentation,” as one of them declared more than a -century ago in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for July, 1797. In all these -cases logic may be on the side of the word-critic. But what of it? -Obedience to logic would here serve no useful purpose, and therefore -logic is boldly disobeyed. However inexact these phrases may be, they -mislead no one and they can be understood without hesitation. - -Side by side with this tendency to take the short-cut exists the -other tendency to go the long way round if by so doing the writer’s -purpose is more easily accomplished. There is a common usage which -is frequently objurgated by the word-critics and which may fall into -desuetude, not through their attacks, but because of its conflict -with this second tendency. This is the insertion of an unnecessary -_who_ or _which_ after an _and_ or a _but_, as in this sentence from -Professor Butcher’s admirable discussion of Aristotle’s ‘Theory of -Poetry’: “Nature is an artist capable indeed of mistakes, but _who_ by -slow advances and through many failures realizes her own idea.” So in -Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’ we are told of “a chorus of twenty-seven -youths and as many virgins, of noble family, and _whose_ parents were -both alive.” This locution is proper in French, but it is denounced as -improper in English by the purists, who would strike out the _but_ -from Professor Butcher’s and the _and_ from Gibbon’s. - -It is a constant source of amusement to those interested in observing -the condition and the development of the language to note the frequency -with which the phrases put under taboo by the word-critics occur in the -writings of the masters of English. In my own recent reading I have -found this despised construction in the pages of Fielding, Johnson, -Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mr. John Morley, -Mr. Henry James, and Professor Jebb in Great Britain, and in pages of -Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, and Mr. John Fiske in the United States. -What is more significant perhaps is its discovery in the works of -professed students of language--Trench, Isaac Taylor, Max Müller, and -W. D. Whitney. - -And yet, in spite of this array of authorities, I am inclined to -believe that this usage may perhaps disappear with the increasing -attention which the best writers are now giving to the rhythm and -balance of their sentences. It is not that the form is wrong--that is -a matter not to be decided offhand; it is that the form is awkward -and that it jars on the feeling for symmetry--the feeling which leads -us to put a candlestick on each side of the clock on the mantelpiece. -Professor Whitney began one of his sentences thus: “Castrén, himself a -Finn, and whose long and devoted labors have taught us more respecting -them than has been brought to light by any other man, ventures,” etc. -Would not this sentence have been easier and more elegant if Whitney -had either struck out _and_ (which is not needed at all) or else -inserted _who was_ after Castrén? In the sentence as Whitney wrote -it _and whose_ makes me look back for the _who_ which my feeling for -symmetry leads me to suppose must have preceded it somewhere, and -in this vain search part of my attention is abstracted. I have been -forced to think of the manner of his remarks when my mind ought to have -given itself so far as might be to the matter of them. In other words, -the real objection to this usage is that it is in violation of the -principle of Economy of Attention. - -Another usage also under fire from the purists is exemplified in -another extract from Whitney: “It is, I am convinced, a mistake to -commence at once upon a course of detailed comparative philology with -pupils who have _only_ enjoyed the ordinary training in the classical -or modern languages.” Obviously his meaning would be more sharply -defined if he had put _only_ after instead of before _enjoyed_. So -Froude, writing about ‘English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century,’ says -that “the fore-and-aft rig alone would enable a vessel to tack, as -it is called, and this could _only_ be used with craft of moderate -tonnage”; and here again a transposition after the verb would increase -the exactness of the statement. - -The proposition of _only_ is really important only when the misplacing -of it may cause ambiguity; and Professor F. N. Scott has shown how -Webster, always careful in the niceties of style, unhesitatingly put -_only_ out of its proper place, if by so doing he could improve the -rhythm of his period, as in this sentence from the second Bunker Hill -oration: “It did not, indeed, put an end to the war; but, in the then -existing hostile state of feeling, the difficulties could only be -referred to the arbitration of the sword.” This is as it should be, -the small effect promptly sacrificed for the larger. The rule--if rule -it really is--must be broken unhesitatingly when there is greater gain -than loss. - -There is an anecdote in some volume of French theatrical memoirs -narrating an experience of Mademoiselle Clairon, the great tragic -actress, with a pupil of hers, a girl of fine natural gifts for -the histrionic art, but far too frequent and too exuberant in her -gesticulation. So when the pupil was once to appear before the public -in a recitation, Mademoiselle Clairon bound the girl’s arms to her side -by a stiff thread and sent her thus upon the stage. With the first -strong feeling she had to express the pupil tried to raise her arms, -only to be restrained by the thread. A dozen times in the course of -her recitation she was prevented from making the gestures she desired, -until at the very end she could stand it no longer, and in the climax -of her emotion she broke her bonds and lifted her hands to her head. -When she came off the stage she went humbly to where Mademoiselle -Clairon was standing in the wings and apologized for having snapped the -thread. “But you did quite right!” said the teacher. “That was the time -to make the gesture--not before!” - -Rules exist to aid in composition; and by wise men composition is not -undertaken merely to prove the existence of the rules. Circumstances -may alter even codes of manners; in Paris, for instance, it is -permissible to sop bread in the sauce, a practice which is bad form in -London--since nobody would want any more of a British sauce than could -be avoided. This paper, however, has failed of its purpose if it is -taken as a plea for license. Rather is it intended as an argument for -liberty. It has been written as the result of a belief that a frank -protest is needed now and again against the excessive demands of the -linguistic dogmatists. That what the linguistic dogmatists write is -as widely read as it seems to be is a sign of a healthy interest in -the speech which must serve us all, scholars and school-masters and -plain people. This interest should be aroused also to shake off the -shackles with which pedagogs and pedants seek to restrain not only -the full growth of our noble tongue, but even its free use. As Renan -pithily put it, every time that “grammarians have tried deliberately to -reform a language, they have succeeded only in making it heavy, without -expression, and often less logical than the humblest dialect.” - -If English is to be kept fit to do the mighty work it bids fair to be -called upon to accomplish in the future, it must be allowed to develop -along the line of least resistance. It must be encouraged to follow its -own bent and to supply its own needs and to shed its worn-out members. -It must not be hampered by syntax taken from Latin or by rules evolved -out of the inner consciousness of word-critics. It must not be too -squeamish or even too particular, since excessive refinement goes only -with muscular weakness. It must be allowed to venture on solecisms, on -neologisms, on Americanisms, on Briticisms, on Australianisms, if need -be, however ugly some of these may seem, for the language uses itself -up fast, and has to be replenished that it shall not lose its vigor and -its ardor. - -To say this is not to say that every one of us who uses English in -speaking or in writing should not always choose his words carefully -and decide on his forms judiciously. Only by a wise selection can the -language be kept at its highest efficiency; only thus can its full -powers be revealed to us. And if we decide that we prefer to keep -to the very letter of the law as laid down by the grammarians--why, -that is our privilege and no one shall say us nay. But let us not -think scorn of those who are careless in paying their tithes of mint -and anise and cummin, if also they stand upright and speak the truth -plainly. - -For myself--if a personal confession is not here out of place--I shrink -always from profiting by any license I have just claimed for others; I -strive always to eschew the Split Infinitive, to avoid _and who_ when -there is no preceding _who_ which may balance it, and to put _only_ -always in the place where it will do most good. It is ever my aim -to avail myself of the phrase which will convey my meaning into the -reader’s mind with the least friction; and out of the effort to achieve -this approach along the line of least resistance, I get something of -the joy an honest craftsman ought always to feel in the handling of -his tools. For this is what words are, after all; they are the tools -of man, devised to serve his daily needs. As Bagehot once suggested, -we may not know how language was first invented and made, “but beyond -doubt it was shaped and fashioned into its present state by common, -ordinary men and women using it for common and ordinary purposes. They -wanted a carving-knife, not a razor or lancet; and those great artists -who have to use language for more exquisite purposes, who employ it to -describe changing sentiments and momentary fancies and the fluctuating -and indefinite inner world, must use curious nicety and hidden but -effectual artifice, else they cannot duly punctuate their thoughts -and slice the fine edges of their reflections. A hair’s breadth is as -important to them as a yard’s breadth to a common workman.” - - (1898) - - - - -X - -AN INQUIRY AS TO RIME - - -“I have a theory about double rimes for which I shall be attacked by -the critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or, -at least, analogy,” wrote Mrs. Browning to a friend not long after -the publication of one of her books. “These volumes of mine have -more double rimes than any two books of English poems that ever to -my knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems not comic. Now of -double rimes in use which are perfect rimes you are aware how few there -are; and yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making -a rhythm various and vigorous double riming is in English poetry. -Therefore I have used a certain license; and after much thoughtful -study of the Elizabethan writers have ventured it with the public. -And do you tell me--you who object to the use of a different vowel in -a double rime--why you rime (as everybody does, without blame from -everybody) _given_ to _heaven_, when you object to my riming _remember_ -to _chamber_? The analogy is all on my side, and I believe that the -spirit of the English language is also.” - -Here Mrs. Browning raises a question of interest to all who have paid -any attention to the technic of verse. No doubt double rimes do give -vigor and variety to a poem, altho no modern English lyrist has really -rivaled the magnificent medieval ‘Dies Iræ,’ wherein the double rimes -thrice repeated fall one after the other like the beating of mighty -trip-hammers. There is no doubt also that the English language is not -so fertile in double rimes as the Latin, the German, or the Italian; -and that some of the English poets, clutching for these various and -vigorous effects, have refused to abide by the strict letter of the -law, and have claimed the license of modifying the emphatic vowel from -one line to another. Mrs. Browning defends this revolt, and finds -it easy to retort to her correspondent that he himself has ventured -to link _heaven_ and _given_. Many another poet has coupled these -unwilling words; and not a few have also married _river_ and _ever_, -_meadow_ and _shadow_, _spirit_ and _inherit_. - -Mrs. Browning is prepared to justify herself by authority, or at least -by analogy; and yet, in bringing about the espousal of _chamber_ and -_remember_, she is evidently aware that it is no love-match she is -aiding and abetting, but at best a marriage of convenience. She pleads -precedence to excuse her infraction of a statute the general validity -of which she apparently admits. The most that she claims is that the -tying together of _chamber_ and _remember_ is permissible. She seems to -say that these ill-mated pairs are, of course, not the best possible -rimes, but that, since double rimes are scarce in English, the lyrist -may, now and then, avail himself of the second best. An American poet -of my acquaintance is bolder than the British poetess; he has the full -courage of his convictions. He assures me that he takes pleasure in the -tying together of incompatible words like _river_ and _ever_, _meadow_ -and _shadow_, finding in these arbitrary matings a capricious and -agreeable relief from the monotony of more regular riming. - -This forces us to consider the basis upon which any theory of -“allowable” rimes must rest--any theory, that is, which, after -admitting that certain rimes are exact and absolutely adequate, -asserts also that certain other combinations of terminal words, altho -they do not rime completely and to the satisfaction of all, are still -tolerable. This theory accepts certain rimes as good, and it claims in -addition certain others as “good enough.” - -Any objection to the pairing of _spirit_ and _inherit_, of _remember_ -and _chamber_, and the like, cannot be founded upon the fact that in -the accepted orthography of the English language the spelling of the -terminations differs. Rime has to do with pronunciation and not with -orthography; rime is a match between sounds. The symbols that represent -these sounds--or that may misrepresent them more or less violently--are -of little consequence. What is absurdly called a “rime to the eye” is a -flagrant impossibility, or else _hiccough_ may pair off with _enough_, -_clean_ with _ocean_, and _plague_ with _ague_. The eye is not the -judge of sound, any more than the nose is the judge of color. _Height_ -is not a rime to _eight_; but it is a rime to _sight_, to _bite_, -to _proselyte_, and to _indict_. So _one_ does not rime with either -_gone_ or _tone_; but it does with _son_ and with _bun_. _Tomb_ and -_comb_, and _rhomb_ and _bomb_ are not rimes; but _tomb_ and _doom_, -and _spume_ and _rheum_ are. The objection to the linking together of -_meadow_ and _shadow_, and of _ever_ and _river_ is far deeper than any -superficial difference of spelling; it is rooted in the difference of -the sounds themselves. In spite of the invention of printing, or even -of writing itself, the final appeal of poetry is still to the ear and -not to the eye. - -Probably the first utterances of man were rhythmic, and probably poetry -had advanced far toward perfection long before the alphabet was devised -as an occasional substitute for speech. In the beginning the poet had -to charm the ears of those whom he sought to move, since there was -then no way by which he could reach the eye also. To the rhapsodists -verse was an oral art solely, as it is always for the dramatists, -whose speeches must fall trippingly from the tongue, or fail of -their effect. The work of the lyrist--writer of odes, minnesinger, -troubadour, ballad-minstrel--has always been intended to be said or -sung; that it should be read is an afterthought only. Even to-day, when -the printing-press has us all under its wheels, it is by our tongues -that we possess ourselves of the poetry we truly relish. A poem is not -really ours till we know it by heart and can say it to ourselves, or at -least until we have read it aloud, and until we can quote it freely. -If a poem has actually taken hold on our souls, it rings in our ears, -even if we happen to be visualizers also, and can call up at will the -printed page whereon it is preserved. - -This fact, that poetry is primarily meant to be spoken aloud rather -than read silently, altho obvious when plainly stated, has not been -firmly grasped by many of those who have considered the technic of the -art, and therefore there is often obscurity in the current discussions -of rime and rhythm. In the rhetoric of verse there is to-day not a -little of the confusion which existed in the rhetoric of prose before -Herbert Spencer put forth his illuminating and stimulating essay on -the ‘Philosophy of Style.’ Even in that paper he suggested that the -principle of Economy of Attention was as applicable to verse as to -prose; and he remarked that “were there space, it might be worth while -to inquire whether the pleasure we take in rime, and also that which we -take in euphony, are not partly ascribable to the same general cause.” - -This principle of Economy of Attention explains why it is that any -style of speaking or writing is more effective than another, by -reminding us that we have, at any given moment, only so much power -of attention, and that, therefore, however much of this power has to -be employed on the form of any message must be subtracted from the -total power, leaving just so much less attention available for the -apprehension of the message itself. To convey a thought from one mind -to another, we must use words the reception of which demands more -or less mental exertion; and therefore that statement is best which -carries the thought with the least verbal friction. Some friction there -must be always; but the less there is, the more power of attention the -recipient has left to master the transmitted thought. - -It is greatly to be regretted that Spencer did not spare the space -to apply to verse this principle, which has been so helpful in the -analysis of prose. He did go so far as to suggest that metrical -language is more effective than prose, because when “we habitually -preadjust our perceptions to the measured movement of verse” it is -“probable that by so doing we economize attention.” This suggestion -has been elaborated by one of his disciples, the late Mr. Grant Allen, -in his treatise on ‘Physiological Esthetics,’ and it has been formally -controverted by the late Mr. Gurney, in his essay on the ‘Power of -Sound.’ Perhaps both Spencer and Gurney are right; part of our pleasure -in rhythm is due to the fact that “the mind may economize its energies -by anticipating the attention required for each syllable,” as the -former says, and part of it is “of an entirely positive kind, acting -directly on the sense,” as the latter maintains. - -Whether or not Spencer’s principle of Economy of Attention adequately -explains our delight in rhythm, there is no doubt that it can easily be -utilized to construct a theory of rime. Indeed, it is the one principle -which provides a satisfactory solution to the problem propounded by -Mrs. Browning. No one can deny that more or less of our enjoyment of -rimed verse is due to the skill with which the poet satisfies with the -second rime the expectation he has aroused with the first. When he ends -a line with _gray_, or _grow_, or _grand_, we do not know which of the -twoscore or more of possible rimes to each of these the lyrist will -select, and we await his choice with happy anticipation. If he should -balk us of our pleasure, if he should omit the rime we had confidently -counted upon, we are rudely awakened from our dream of delight, and -we ask ourselves abruptly what has happened. It is as tho the train -of thought had run off the track. Spencer notes how we are put out by -halting versification; “much as at the bottom of a flight of stairs a -step more or less than we counted upon gives us a shock, so too does a -misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable.” - -So, too, does an inaccurate or an arbitrary rime give us a shock. If -verse is something to be said or sung, if its appeal is to the ear -primarily, if rime is a terminal identity of sound, then any theory -of “allowable” rimes is impossible, since an “allowable” rime is -necessarily inexact, and thus may tend to withdraw attention from the -matter of the poem to its manner. No doubt there are readers who do not -notice the incompatibility of these matings, and there are others who -notice yet do not care. But the more accurately trained the ear is, the -more likely these alliances are to annoy; and the less exact the rime, -the more likely the ear is to discover the discrepancy. The only safety -for the rimester who wishes to be void of all offense is to risk no -union of sounds against whose marriage anybody knows any just cause -of impediment. Perhaps a wedding within the prohibited degrees may be -allowed to pass without protest now and again; but sooner or later -somebody will surely forbid the banns. - -Just as a misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable gives us a -shock, so does the attempt of Mrs. Browning to pair off _remember_ and -_chamber_; so may also the attempt of Poe to link together _valleys_ -and _palace_. The lapse from the perfect ideal may be but a trifle, -but a lapse it is nevertheless. A certain percentage of our available -attention may thus be wasted, and worse than wasted; it may be -called away from the poem itself, and absorbed suddenly by the mere -versification. For a brief moment we may be forced to consider a defect -of form, when we ought to have our minds absolutely free to receive the -poet’s meaning. Whenever a poet cheats us of our expectancy of perfect -rime, he forces us to pay exorbitant freight charges on the gift he has -presented to us. - -It is to be noted, however, that as rime is a matching of sounds, -certain pairs of words whose union is not beyond reproach can hardly -be rejected without pedantry, since the ordinary pronunciation of -cultivated men takes no account of the slight differences of sound -audible if the words are uttered with absolute precision. Thus -Tennyson in the ‘Revenge’ rimes _Devon_ and _Heaven_; and thus Lowell -in the ‘Fable for Critics’ rimes _irresistible_ and _untwistable_. In -‘Elsie Venner’ Dr. Holmes held up to derision “the inevitable rime of -cockney and Yankee beginners, _morn_ and _dawn_”; but, at the risk -of revealing myself as a Yankee of New York, I must confess that any -pronunciation of this pair of words seems to me stilted that does not -make them quite impeccable as a rime. - -We are warned, however, to be on our guard against pushing any -principle to an absurd extreme. If certain pairs of words have been -sent forth into the world by English poets from a time whereof the -memory of man runneth not to the contrary, then perhaps they may now -plead prescription whenever any cold-hearted commentator is disposed to -doubt the legitimacy of their conjunction. Altho the union is forbidden -by the strict letter of the law,--like marriage with a deceased -wife’s sister in England,--only the censorious are disposed to take -the matter into court. In time certain rimes--falsely so called--“are -legitimated by custom,” one British critic has declared, citing _love_ -and _prove_, for example, and asserting that “_river_ has just got -to rime with _ever_ or the game cannot be played.” You must have -_forgiven_ or you will never get to _heaven_. “We expect these licenses -and do not resent them, as we do resent Poe’s _valleys_ and _palace_ -and the eccentricities of Mrs. Browning.” That there is force in this -contention cannot be denied; but it must be remembered that those who -urge it are necessarily lovers of poetry, or at least fairly familiar -with a large body of English verse, or else they would not be aware of -the fact that _love_ and _prove_, _heaven_ and _given_, have often been -tied together. But even if these critics, who have been sophisticated -by over-familiarity with poetic license, do not resent this pairing of -unequal sounds, it does not follow that those who for the first time -hear _dove_ linked with _Jove_ are equally forgiving or negligent. -Even if these licenses are pardoned by some as venial offenses, there -are others whose ears are annoyed by them and whose attention is -distracted. In other words, we are here face to face with the personal -equation; and the only way for a writer of verse to be certain that one -or another of his rimes will not be resented by this reader or that is -to make sure that all his marriages are flawless. - -Thus and thus only can he avoid offense with absolute certainty. If -his rimes are perfect to the ear when read aloud or recited, then they -will never divert the attention of the auditor from the matter of the -poem to the mere manner. On the other hand, it is only fair to confess -that there are some lovers of poetry who find a charm in lawlessness -and in eccentricity. A series of perfect rimes pleases them; but so -also does an occasional rime in which the vowel is slightly varied. And -the poet’s consolation for the loss of these must lie in the knowledge -that he cannot hope to satisfy everybody. Consolation may lie also in -the belief that any lapse from the perfect rime is dangerous, for even -if there are some who enjoy the divergence when it is delicate,--that -is, when the vowel sound, even if not absolutely identical, is -sympathetically akin,--there are very few who are not annoyed when the -difference becomes as obvious as in the attempt to link together _dial_ -and _ball_ or _water_ and _clear_. - -And as it is only a sophisticated ear which enjoys the mating of -_valleys_ with _palace_, for example, so the attempted rime of this -type is to be found chiefly in the more labored poets--in those who -are consciously literary. The primitive lyrist, the unconscious singer -who makes a ballad of a May morning or rimes a jingle for the nursery -or puts together a couplet to give point to a fragment of proverbial -wisdom, is nearly always exact in the repetition of his vowel. Where -he is careless is in the accompanying consonants. As is remarked by -the British critic from whom quotation has already been made, “we may -observe that in all early European poetry, from the ‘Song of Roland’ to -the popular ballads, the ear was satisfied with assonance, that is, -the harmony of the vowel sounds; _hat_ is assonant to _tag_, and that -was good enough.” So in the proverbial couplet, - - See a pin and pick it _up_, - All day long you’ll have good _luck_. - -So again more than once in the unaffected lyrics of the laureate of the -nursery, Mother Goose: - - Goosy, goosy _gander_, - Where do you _wander_? - Upstairs and downstairs, - And in my lady’s _chamber_. - - Leave them _alone_ - And they will come _home_. - -This assonance is visible in the linking of _wild wood_ and -_childhood_, which many versifiers have proffered as tho it was a -double rime; it is to be seen again in Whittier’s _main land_ and -_trainband_; and it is obvious in Mr. Bret Harte’s ‘Her Letter’: - - Of that ride--that to me was the _rarest_; - Of--the something you said at the gate. - Ah! Joe, then I wasn’t an _heiress_ - To the best-paying lead in the State. - -Altho this substitution of assonance for rime is uncommon in the more -literary lyrics, which we may suppose to have been composed with the -pen, it is still frequently to be found in the popular song, born on -the lips of the singer, and set down in black and white only as an -afterthought. It abounds in the college songs which have been sung into -being, and in the brisk ballads of the variety-show--which Planché -neatly characterized as “most music-hall, most melancholy.” In one -dime song-book containing the words set to music by Mr. David Braham -to enliven one of Mr. Edward Harrigan’s amusing pictures of life among -the lowly in the tenement-house districts of New York, there can be -discovered at least a dozen instances of this use of assonance as tho -it were rime: - - De gal’s name is _Nannie_, - And she’s just left her _mammie_. - - He can get a pair of crutches - From the doctor, it’s well _known_, - And feel like the King of Persia, - When he goes marching _home_. - - One husband was a _toper_, - The other was a _loafer_. - - ’T is there the solid _voters_ - Wear Piccadilly _chokers_. - - On Sundays, then, the _ladies_ - With a hundred million _babies_. - - To the poor of suffering Ireland: - Time and time _again_; - We thank you for our countrymen, - And Donavan is our _name_. - -When these lines are sung, rough as they are, the ear is satisfied -by the absolute identity of the final vowel, upon which the voice -lingers--while the final consonant is elided or almost suppressed. -It may be doubted whether one in a hundred of those who heard these -songs ever discovered any deficiency in the rimes. In more literary -ballads only an exact rime attains to the sterling standard; but in -folk-songs, ancient and modern, assonance seems to be legal tender by -tacit convention. When Benedick was trying to make a copy of verses -for Beatrice, he declared that he could “find out no rime to _lady_ -but _baby_, an innocent rime”--a remark which shows us that Benedick’s -theory of riming was much the same as Mr. Harrigan’s. - -Probably, however, the attempt to substitute assonance for rime would -be resented by many of the readers who are tolerant toward such -departures from exactness as _heaven_ and _shriven_ or _grove_ and -_dove_. That is to say, the unliterary ear insists on the identity of -the vowel while careless as to the consonant, and the literary ear -insists on the identity of the consonant while not quite so careful as -to the vowel. And here is another reason for exact accuracy, which -satisfies alike the learned and the unlearned, and is also in accord -with Herbert Spencer’s principle. It is true, probably, that such minor -divergencies as the mating of _home_ and _alone_ and of _shadow_ and -_meadow_--to take one of each class--are not generally conscious on the -part of the poet himself. Nor are they generally noticed by the reader -or the auditor; and even when noticed they are not always resented -as offensive. But just so long as there is a chance that they may be -noticed and that they may be resented, they had best be avoided. The -poet avails himself of his license at his peril. That way danger lies. - -It is in the ‘Adventures of Philip’ that Thackeray records his hero’s -disapproval of a poet who makes _fire_ rime with _Marire_. Even -if the rime is made accurate to the ear, it is only by convicting -the lyrist of carelessness of speech--not to call it vulgarity of -pronunciation. But Dr. Holmes himself, sharp as he was upon those who -rimed _dawn_ and _morn_, was none the less guilty of a peccadillo -quite as reprehensible--_Elizas_ and _advertisers_. Whittier ventured -to chain _Eva_ not only with _leave her_ and _receive her_, which -suggest a slovenly utterance, but also with _give her_, _river_, -and _never_, which are all of them wrenched from their true sounds -to force them unto a vain and empty semblance of a rime. A kindred -cockney recklessness can be found in one of Mrs. Browning’s misguided -modernizations of Chaucer: - - Now grant my ship some smooth haven _win her_; - I follow Statius first, and then _Corinna_. - -In each of these cases the poet takes out a wedding license for his -couplet, only at the cost of compelling the reader to miscall the names -of these ladies, and to address them as _Marire_, _Elizer_, _Ever_, -and _Corinner_; and tho the rimes themselves are thus placed beyond -reproach, the poet is revealed as regardless of all delicacy and -precision of speech. Surely such a vulgarity of pronunciation is as -disenchanting as any vulgarity in grammar. - -Not quite so broad in the mispronunciation that makes these rimes are -certain of Mr. Kipling’s, as to which we are a little in doubt whether -he is making his rime by violence to the normal sound or whether his -own pronunciation is so abnormal that the rime itself seems to him -accurate: - - Railways and roads they _wrought_ - For the needs of the soil within; - A time to scribble in _court_. - A time to bear and grin. - - Long he pondered o’er the question in his scantly furnished _quarters_, - Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin’s _daughters_. - - I quarrel with my wife at home. - We never fight _abroad_; - But Mrs. B. has grasped the fact, - I am her only _lord_. - -Far less offensive than this wilful slovenliness, and yet akin to it, -is the trick of forcing an emphasis upon a final syllable which is -naturally short, in order that it may be made to rime with a syllable -which is naturally long. For example, in the exquisite lyric of -Lovelace’s, ‘To Althea from Prison,’ in the second quatrain of the -second stanza we find that we must prolong the final syllable of the -final word: - - When thirsty grief in wine we steep, - When healths and draughts go _free_, - Fishes that tipple in the deep - Know no such liber_ty_. - -Here the rime evades us unless we read the last word _libertee_. But -what then are we to do with the same word in the second quatrain of the -first stanza? To get his rime here, the poet insists on our reading the -last word _libertie_: - - When I lie tangled in her hair - And fettered to her _eye_, - The birds that wanton in the air - Know no such liber_ty_. - -Lovelace thus forces us not only to give an arbitrary pronunciation -to the final word of his refrain, but also to vary this arbitrary -pronunciation from stanza to stanza, awkwardly arresting our attention -to no purpose, when we ought to be yielding ourselves absolutely to the -charm of his most charming poem. Many another instance of this defect -in craftsmanship can be discovered in the English poets, one of them in -a lyric by that master of metrics, Poe, who opens the ‘Haunted Palace’ -with a quatrain in which _tenanted_ is made to mate with _head_: - - In the greenest of our valleys, - By good angels tenan_ted_, - Once a fair and stately palace-- - Radiant palace--reared its _head_. - -In the one poem of Walt Whitman’s in which he seemed almost willing -to submit to the bonds of rime and meter, and which--perhaps for that -reason partly--is the lyric of his now best known and best beloved, -in ‘O Captain, My Captain,’ certain of the rimes are possible only by -putting an impossible stress upon the final syllables of both words of -the pair: - - The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all _exulting_, - While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and _daring_. - -And again: - - For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths, for you the shores _a-crowding_; - For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces _turning_. - -In all these cases--Lovelace’s, Poe’s, Whitman’s--we find that the -principle of Economy of Attention has been violated, with a resulting -shock which diminishes somewhat our pleasure in the poems, delightful -as they are, each in its several way. We have been called to bestow a -momentary consideration on the mechanism of the poem, when we should -have preferred to reserve all our power to receive the beauty of its -spirit. - -It may be doubted whether any pronunciation, however violently -dislocated, can justify Whittier’s joining of _bruised_ and _crusade_ -in his ‘To England,’ or Browning’s conjunction of _windows_ and -_Hindus_ in his ‘Youth and Art.’ In ‘Cristina’ Browning tries to -combine _moments_ and _endowments_; in his ‘Another Way of Love’ he -conjoins _spider_ and _consider_; and in his ‘Soliloquy in a Spanish -Cloister’ he binds together _horse-hairs_ and _corsair’s_. Perhaps -one reason why Browning has made his way so slowly with the broad -public--whom every poet must conquer at last, or in the end confess -defeat--is that his rimes are sometimes violent and awkward, and -sometimes complicated and arbitrary. The poet has reveled in his own -ingenuity in compounding them, and so he flourishes them in the face -of the reader. The principle of Economy of Attention demands that in -serious verse the rime must be not only so accurate as to escape -remark, but also wholly unstrained. It must seem natural, necessary, -obvious, even inevitable, or else our minds are wrested from a rapt -contemplation of the theme to a disillusioning consideration of the -sounds by which it is bodied forth. - -“Really the meter of some of the modern poems I have read,” said -Coleridge, “bears about the same relation to meter, properly -understood, that dumb-bells do to music; both are for exercise, and -pretty severe too, I think.” A master of meter Browning proved himself -again and again, very inventive in the new rhythms he introduced, and -almost unfailingly felicitous; and yet there are poems of his in which -the rimes impose on the reader a steady muscular exercise. In the -‘Glove,’ for example, there not only abound manufactured rimes, each -of which in turn arrests the attention, and each of which demands a -most conscientious articulation before the ear can apprehend it, but -with a persistent perversity the poet puts the abnormal combination -first, and puts last the normal word with which it is to be united in -wedlock. Thus _aghast I’m_ precedes _pastime_, and _well swear_ comes -before _elsewhere_. This is like presenting us with the answer before -propounding the riddle. - -In comic verse, of course, difficulty gaily vanquished may be a part -of the joke, and an adroit and unexpected rime may be a witticism in -itself. But in the ‘Ingoldsby Legends’ and in the ‘Fable for Critics’ -it is generally the common word that comes before the uncommon -combination the alert rimester devises to accompany it. When a line of -Barham’s ends with _Mephistopheles_ we wonder how he is going to solve -the difficulty, and our expectation is swiftly gratified with _coffee -lees_; and when Lowell informs us that Poe - - ... talks like a book of iambs and _pentameters_, - -we bristle our ears while he adds: - - In a way to make people of common sense _damn meters_. - -But the ‘Glove’ is not comic in intent; the core of it is tragic, -and the shell is at least romantic. Perhaps a hard and brilliant -playfulness of treatment might not be out of keeping with the -psychologic subtlety of its catastrophe; but not a few readers -resentfully reject the misplaced ingenuity of the wilfully artificial -double rimes. The incongruity between the matter of the poem and the -manner of it attracts attention to the form, and leaves us the less for -the fact. - -It would be interesting to know just why Browning chose to do what he -did in the ‘Glove’ and in more than one other poem. He had his reasons, -doubtless, for he was no unconscious warbler of unpremeditated lays. If -he refused to be loyal to the principle of Economy of Attention, he -knew what he was doing. It was not from any heedlessness--like that of -Emerson when he recklessly rimed _woodpecker_ with _bear_; or like that -of Lowell when he boldly insisted on riming the same _woodpecker_ with -_hear_. Emerson and Lowell--and Whittier also--it may be noted, were -none of them enamoured of technic; and when a couplet or a quatrain or -a stanza of theirs happened to attain perfection, as not infrequently -they do, we cannot but feel it to be only a fortunate accident. They -were not untiring students of versification, forever seeking to spy out -its mysteries and to master its secrets, as Milton was, and Tennyson -and Poe. - -And yet no critic has more satisfactorily explained the essential -necessity of avoiding discords than did Lowell when he affirmed that -“not only meter but even rime itself is not without suggestion in -outward nature. Look at the pine, how its branches, balancing each -other, ray out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray -answers to spray, strophe and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands -an embodied ode, Nature’s triumphant vindication of proportion, number, -and harmony. Who can doubt the innate charm of rime who has seen the -blue river repeat the blue o’erhead; who has been ravished by the -visible consonance of the tree growing at once toward an upward and a -downward heaven on the edge of the twilight cove; or who has watched -how, as the kingfisher flitted from shore to shore, his visible echo -flies under him, and completes the fleeting couplet in the visionary -vault below?... You must not only expect, but you must expect in the -right way; you must be magnetized beforehand in every fiber by your own -sensibility in order that you may feel what and how you ought.” - -Here Lowell is in full agreement with Poe, who declared that “what, -in rime, first and principally pleases, may be referred to the human -sense or appreciation of equality.” But there is no equality in the -sound of _valleys_ and _palace_, and so the human sense is robbed of -its pleasure; and there is no consonance, visible or audible, between -_woodpecker_ and _hear_, and so we are suddenly demagnetized by our own -sensibility, and cannot feel what and how we ought. - -So long as the poet gives us rimes exact to the ear and completely -satisfactory to the sense to which they appeal, he has solid ground -beneath his feet; but if once he leaves this, then is chaos come again. -Admit _given_ and _heaven_, and it is hard to deny _chamber_ and -_remember_. Having relinquished the principle of uniformity of sound, -you land yourself logically in the wildest anarchy. Allow _shadow_ -and _meadow_ to be legitimate, and how can you put the bar sinister -on _hear_ and _woodpecker_? Indeed, we fail to see how you can help -feeling that John Phœnix was unduly harsh when he rejected the poem of -a Young Astronomer beginning, “O would I had a telescope with fourteen -slides!” on account of the atrocious attempt in the second line to rime -_Pleiades_ with _slides_. - -Lieutenant Derby was a humorist; but is his tying together of -incompatible vocables much worse than one offense of which Keats is -guilty? - - Then who would go - Into dark Soho, - And chatter with dack’d-haired _critics_, - When he can stay - For the new-mown hay - And startle the dappled _prickets_? - -This quotation is due to Professor F. N. Scott, who has drawn attention -also to an astounding quatrain of Tennyson’s ‘Palace of Art’: - - Or in a clear-wall’d city on the sea, - Near gilded organ-pipes, her _hair_ - Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily; - An angel look’d at _her_. - -Professor Scott declares that he hesitates “for a term by which to -characterize such rimes as these. Certainly they are not eye-rimes -in the proper meaning of that term. Perhaps ... they may be called -nose-rimes.” - -Just as every instance of bad grammar interferes with the force of -prose, so in verse every needless inversion and every defective rime -interrupts the impression which the poet wishes to produce. There are -really not so many in Pope’s poems as there may seem to be, for since -Queen Anne’s day our language has modified its pronunciation here and -there, leaving now only to the Irish the _tea_ which is a perfect rime -to _obey_, and the _join_ which is a perfect rime to _line_. - -Perhaps the prevalence in English verse of the intolerable “allowable -rimes” is due in part to an acceptance of what seems like an -evil precedent, to be explained away by our constantly changing -pronunciation. Perhaps it is due in part also to the present wretched -orthography of our language. The absurd “rimes to the eye” which abound -in English are absent from Italian verse and from French. The French, -as the inheritors through the Latin of the great Greek tradition, -have a finer respect for form, and strive constantly for perfection -of technic, altho the genius of their language seems to us far less -lyric than ours. Théodore de Banville, in his little book on French -versification, declared formally and emphatically that there is no -such thing as a poetic license. And Voltaire, in a passage admirably -rendered into English by the late Frederick Locker-Lampson, says that -the French “insist that the rime shall cost nothing to the ideas, that -it shall be neither trivial, nor too far-fetched; we exact vigorously -in a verse the same purity, the same precision, as in prose. We do not -admit the smallest license; we require an author to carry without a -break all these chains, yet that he should appear ever free.” - -In a language as unrhythmic as the French, rime is far more important -than it need be in a lilting and musical tongue like our own; but in -the masterpieces of the English lyrists, as in those of the French, -rime plays along the edges of a poem, ever creating the expectation it -swiftly satisfies and giving most pleasure when its presence is felt -and not flaunted. Like the dress of the well-bred woman, which sets -off her beauty without attracting attention to itself, rime must be -adequate and unobtrusive, neither too fine nor too shabby, but always -in perfect taste. - - (1898-1900) - - - - -XI - -ON THE POETRY OF PLACE-NAMES - - -Plutarch tells us that the tragedian Æsopus, when he spoke the opening -lines of the ‘Atreus,’ a tragedy by Attius, - - I’m Lord of Argos, heir of Pelops’ crown. - As far as Helle’s sea and Ion’s main - Beat on the Isthmus, - -entered so keenly into the spirit of this lofty passage that he struck -dead at his feet a slave who approached too near to the person of -royalty; and Professor Tyrrel notes how these verses affect us with -“the weight of names great in myth-land and hero-land,” and he suggests -that they produce “a vague impression of majesty,” like Milton’s - - Jousted in Aspromont or Montalban, - Damasco or Morocco or Trebizond, - Or whom Biserta sent from Afric’s shore, - When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell - By Fontarabia. - -It is a question how far the beauty of the resonant lines of the -‘Agamemnon’ of Æschylus, where the news of the fall of Troy is flashed -along the chain of beacons from hilltop to promontory, is due even -more to the mere sounds of the proper names than it is to the memories -these mighty names evoke. Far inferior to this, and yet deriving its -effect also from the sonorous roll of the lordly proper names (which -had perhaps lingered in the poet’s memory ever since the travels of his -childhood), is the passage in the ‘Hernani’ of Victor Hugo, when, the -new emperor ordering all the conspirators to be set free who are not of -noble blood, the hero steps forward hotly to declare his rank: - - Puisqu’il faut être grand pour mourir, je me lève. - Dieu qui donne le sceptre et qui te le donna - M’a fait duc de Segorbe et duc de Cardona, - Marquis de Mouroy, comte Albatera, vicomte - De Gor, seigneur de lieux dont j’ignore le compte. - Je suis Jean d’Aragon, grand maître d’Avis, né - Dans l’exil, fils proscrit d’un père assassiné - Par sentence du tien, roi Carlos de Castille! - -Lowell, after telling us that “precisely what makes the charm of poetry -is what we cannot explain any more than we can describe a perfume,” -proceeds to point out that it is a prosaic passage of Drayton’s -‘Polyolbion’ which gave a hint to Wordsworth, thus finely utilized in -one of the later bard’s ‘Poems on the Naming of Places’: - - Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld - That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. - The Rock, like something starting from a sleep, - Took up the Lady’s voice, and laughed again; - The ancient Woman seated on Helm-crag - Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar, - And the tall steep of Silver-how, sent forth - A noise of laughter; southern Loughrigg heard, - And Fairfield answered with a mountain tone; - Helvellyn, far into the clear blue sky, - Carried the Lady’s voice,--old Skiddaw blew - His speaking-trumpet;--back out of the clouds - Of Glaramara southward came the voice; - And Kirkstone tossed it from his misty head. - -Not a little of this same magic is there in many a line of Walt -Whitman; especially did he rejoice to point out the beauty of Manahatta: - - I was asking something specific and perfect for my city, - Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name. - -Longfellow has recorded his feeling that - - The destined walls - Of Cambalu and of Cathain Can - -(from the eleventh book of ‘Paradise Lost’) is a “delicious line.” -Longfellow was always singularly sensitive to the magic power of words, -and not long after that entry in his journal there is this other: “I -always write the name October with especial pleasure. There is a secret -charm about it, not to be defined. It is full of memories, it is full -of dusky splendors, it is full of glorious poetry.” And Poe was so -taken with the melody of this same word that in ‘Ulalume’ he invented a -proper name merely that he might have a rime for it: - - It was night in the lonesome October - Of my most immemorial year; - It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, - In the misty mid-region of Weir-- - It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, - In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. - -The charm of these lines is due mainly to their modulated music, and -to the contrast of the vowel sounds in _Auber_ and _Weir_, just as a -great part of the beauty of Landor’s exquisite lyric, ‘Rose Aylmer,’ is -contained in the name itself. Is there any other reason why Mesopotamia -should be a “blessed word,” save that its vowels and its consonants are -so combined as to fill the ear with sweetness? Yet Mr. Lecky records -Garrick’s assertion that Whitefield could pronounce Mesopotamia so as -to make a congregation weep. And others have found delight in repeating -a couplet of Campbell’s: - - And heard across the waves’ tumultuous roar - The wolfs long howl from Oonalaska’s shore-- - -a delight due, I think, chiefly to the unexpected combination of open -vowels and sharp consonants in the single Eskimo word, the meaning of -it being unknown and wholly unimportant, and the sound of it filling -the ear with an uncertain and yet awaited pleasure. - -Just as Oonalaska strikes us at once as the fit title for a shore along -which the lone wolf should howl, so Atchafalaya bears in its monotonous -vowel a burden of melancholy, made more pitiful to us by our knowledge -that it was the name of the dark water where Evangeline and Gabriel -almost met in the night and then parted again for years. Charles -Sumner wrote to Longfellow that Mrs. Norton considered “the scene on -the Lake Atchafalaya, where the two lovers pass each other, so typical -of life that she had a seal cut with that name upon it”; and shortly -afterward Leopold, the King of the Belgians, speaking of ‘Evangeline,’ -“asked her if she did not think the word Atchafalaya was suggestive of -experience in life, and added that he was about to have it cut on a -seal”--whereupon, to his astonishment, she showed him hers. - -It would be difficult indeed to declare how much of the delight our -ear may take in these words--Atchafalaya, Oonalaska, Mesopotamia,--is -due simply to their own melody, and how much to the memories they -may stir. Here we may see one reason why the past seems so much more -romantic than the present. In tales of olden time even the proper -names linger in our ears with an echo of “the glory that was Greece -and the grandeur that was Rome.” Here is, in fact, an unfair advantage -which dead-and-gone heroes of foreign birth have over the men of our -own day and our own country. “If we dilate in beholding the Greek -energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already domesticating the -same sentiment,” said Emerson in his essay on ‘Heroism,’ and he added -that the first step of our worthiness was “to disabuse us of our -superstitious associations with places and times.” And he asks, “Why -should these words, Athenian, Roman, Asia, and England, so tingle in -the ear? Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, -and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, -and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and the ear loves the names -of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and if we hurry a -little, we may come to learn that here is best.... The Jerseys were -honest ground enough for Washington to tread.” - -Emerson penned these sentences in the first half of the nineteenth -century, when we Americans were still fettered by the inherited -shackles of colonialism. Fifty years after he wrote, it would have been -hard to find an American who thought either Boston Bay or Massachusetts -a paltry place. And Matthew Arnold has recorded that to him, when he -was an undergraduate, Emerson was then “but a voice speaking from three -thousand miles away; but so well he spoke that from that time forth -Boston Bay and Concord were names invested to my ear with a sentiment -akin to that which invests for me the names of Oxford and Weimar.” - -As for the Connecticut River, had not Thoreau done it the service -Irving had rendered long before to the Hudson?--had he not given it a -right to be set down in the geography of literature? It is well that -we should be reminded now and again that the map which the lover of -letters has in his mind’s eye is different by a whole world from the -projection which the school-boy smears with his searching finger, since -the tiny little rivers on whose banks great men grew to maturity, the -Tiber and the Po, the Seine and the Thames, flow across its pages with -a fuller stream than any Kongo or Amazon. And on this literary map -the names of not a few American rivers and hills and towns are now -inscribed. - -It is fortunate that many of the American places most likely to be -mentioned in the poetic gazetteer have kept the liquid titles the -aborigines gave them. “I climbed one of my hills yesterday afternoon -and took a sip of Wachusett, who was well content that Monadnock was -out of the way,” wrote Lowell in a letter. “How lucky our mountains -(many of them) are in their names, tho they must find it hard to live -up to them sometimes! The Anglo-Saxon sponsor would Nicodemus ’em to -nothing in no time.” It will be pitiful if the Anglo-Saxons on the -Pacific coast allow Mount Tacoma to be Nicodemused to Mount Rainier, as -the Anglo-Saxons of the Atlantic coast allowed Lake Andiatarocte to be -Nicodemused into Lake George. Fenimore Cooper strove in vain for the -acceptance of Horicon as the name of this lovely sheet of water, which -the French discoverer called the Lake of the Holy Sacrament. - -Marquette spoke of a certain stream as the River of the Immaculate -Conception, altho the Spaniards were already familiar with it as the -River of the Holy Spirit; and later La Salle called it after Colbert; -but an Algonquin word meaning “many waters” clung to it always; and so -we know it now as the Mississippi. The Spaniard has been gone from its -banks for more than a hundred years, and the Frenchman has followed the -Indian, and the Anglo-Saxon now holds the mighty river from its source -to its many mouths; but the broad stream bears to-day the name the red -men gave it. And so also the Ohio keeps its native name, tho the French -hesitated between St. Louis and La Belle Rivière as proper titles -for it. Cataraqui is one old name for an American river, and Jacques -Cartier accepted for this stream another Indian word, Hochelaga, but -(as Professor Hinsdale reminded us) “St. Lawrence, the name that -Cartier had given to the Gulf, unfortunately superseded it.” - -Much of the charm of these Indian words, Atchafalaya, Ohio, -Andiatarocte, Tacoma, is due no doubt to their open vowels; but is -not some of it to be ascribed to our ignorance of their meanings? We -may chance to know that Mississippi signifies “many waters” and that -Minnehaha can be interpreted as “laughing water,” but that is the -furthermost border of our knowledge. If we were all familiar with the -Algonquin dialects, I fancy that the fascination of many of these names -would fade swiftly. And yet perhaps it would not, for we could never be -on as friendly terms with the Indian language as we are with our own; -and there is ever a suggestion of the mystic in the foreign tongue. - -We engrave _Souvenir_ on our sweetheart’s bracelet or brooch; but -the French for this purpose prefer _Remember_. “The difficulty of -translation lies in the _color_ of words,” Longfellow declared. “Is -the Italian _ruscilletto gorgoglioso_ fully rendered by _gurgling -brooklet_? Or the Spanish _pojaros vocingleros_ by _garrulous birds_? -Something seems wanting. Perhaps it is only the fascination of foreign -and unfamiliar sounds; and to the Italian and Spanish ear the English -words may seem equally beautiful.” - -After the death of the Duke of Wellington, Longfellow wrote a poem on -the ‘Warden of the Cinque Ports’; and to us Americans there was poetry -in the very title. And yet it may be questioned whether the Five Ports -are necessarily any more poetic than the Five Points or the Seven -Dials. So also Sanguelac strikes us as far loftier than Bloody Pond, -but is it really? I have wondered often whether to a Jew of the first -century Aceldama, the field of blood, and Golgotha, the place of a -skull, were not perfectly commonplace designations, quite as common, in -fact, as Bone Gulch or Hangman’s Hollow would be to us, and conveying -the same kind of suggestion. - -We are always prone to accept the unknown as the magnificent,--if I may -translate the Latin phrase,--to put a higher value on the things veiled -from us by the folds of a foreign language. The Bosporus is a more -poetic place than Oxford, tho the meaning of both names is the same. -Montenegro fills our ears and raises our expectations higher than could -any mere Black Mountain. The “Big River” is but a vulgar nickname, and -yet we accept the equivalent Guadalquivir and Rio Grande; we even allow -ourselves sometimes to speak of the Rio Grande River--which is as -tautological as De Quincey declared the name of Mrs. Barbauld to be. -Bridgeport is as prosaic as may be, while Alcantara has a remote and -romantic aroma, and yet the latter word signifies only “the bridge.” We -can be neighborly, most of us, with the White Mountains; but we feel a -deeper respect for Mont Blanc and the Weisshorn and the Sierra Nevada. - -Sometimes the hard facts are twisted arbitrarily to force them into -an imported falsehood. Elberon, where Garfield died, was founded by -one L. B. Brown, so they say, and the homely name of the owner was -thus contorted to make a seemingly exotic appellation for the place. -And they say also that the man who once dammed a brook amid the pines -of New Jersey had three children, Carrie, Sally, and Joe, and that he -bestowed their united names upon Lake Carasaljo, the artificial piece -of water on the banks of which Lakewood now sits salubriously. In Mr. -Cable’s ‘John March, Southerner,’ one of the characters explains: “You -know an ancestor of his founded Suez. That’s how it got its name. His -name was Ezra and hers was Susan, don’t you see?” And I have been told -of a town on the Northern Pacific Railroad which the first comers -called Hell-to-Pay, and which has since experienced a change of heart -and become Eltopia. - -In the third quarter of the nineteenth century a thirst for -self-improvement raged among the villages of the lower Hudson River, -and many a modest settlement thought to better itself and to rise in -the world by the assumption of a more swelling style and title. When a -proposition was made to give up the homely Dobbs Ferry for something -less plebeian, the poet of ‘Nothing to Wear’ rimed a pungent protest: - - They say “Dobbs” ain’t melodious; - It’s “horrid,” “vulgar,” “odious”; - In all their crops it sticks; - And then the worse addendum - Of “Ferry” does offend ’em - More than its vile prefix. - Well, it does seem distressing, - But, if I’m good at guessing, - Each one of these same nobs - If there was money in it, - Would ferry in a minute, - And change his name to Dobbs! - - That’s it--they’re not partic’lar - Respecting the auric’lar - At a stiff market rate; - But Dobbs’s special vice is - That he keeps down the prices - Of all their real estate! - A name so unattractive - Keeps villa-sites inactive, - And spoils the broker’s jobs; - They think that speculation - Would rage at “Paulding’s Station,” - Which stagnates now at “Dobbs.” - -In the later stanzas Mr. Butler denounces changes nearer to New York: - - Down there, on old Manhattan, - Where land-sharks breed and fatten, - They wiped out Tubby Hook. - That famous promontory, - Renowned in song and story, - Which time nor tempest shook, - Whose name for aye had been good, - Stands newly christened “Inwood,” - And branded with the shame - Of some old rogue who passes - By dint of aliases, - Afraid of his own name! - - See how they quite outrival - Plain barn-yard Spuyten Duyvil - By peacock Riverdale, - Which thinks all else it conquers, - And over homespun Yonkers - Spreads out its flaunting tail! - -No loyal Manhattaner but would regret to part with Spuyten Duyvil -and Yonkers and Harlem, and the other good old names that recall the -good old Dutchmen who founded New Amsterdam. Few loyal Manhattaners, -I think, but would be glad to see the Greater New York (now at last -an accomplished fact) dignified by a name less absurd than New York. -If Pesth and Buda could come together and become Budapest, why may -not the Greater New York resume the earlier name and be known to -the world as Manhattan? Why should the people of this great city of -ours let the Anglo-Saxons “Nicodemus us to nothing,” or less than -nothing, with a name so pitiful as New York? “I hope and trust,” wrote -Washington Irving, “that we are to live to be an old nation, as well as -our neighbors, and have no idea that our cities when they shall have -attained to venerable antiquity shall still be dubbed New York and New -London and new this and new that, like the Pont Neuf (the new bridge) -at Paris, which is the oldest bridge in that capital, or like the Vicar -of Wakefield’s horse, which continued to be called the colt until he -died of old age.” - -Whenever any change shall be made we must hope that the new will be -not only more euphonious than the old, but more appropriate and more -stately. Perhaps Hangtown in California made a change for the better -many years ago when it took the name of Placerville; but perhaps -Placerville was not the best name it could have taken. “We will be -nothing but Anglo-Saxons in the old world or in the new,” wrote -Matthew Arnold when he was declaring the beauty of Celtic literature; -“and when our race has built Bold Street in Liverpool, and pronounced -it very good, it hurries across the Atlantic, and builds Nashville -and Jacksonville and Milledgeville, and thinks it is fulfilling the -designs of Providence in an incomparable manner.” In this sentence the -criticism cuts both British habits and American. Later in life Matthew -Arnold sharpened his knife again for use on the United States alone. -“What people,” he asked, “in whom the sense for beauty and fitness -was quick, could have invented or tolerated the hideous names ending -in _ville_--the Briggsvilles, Higginsvilles, Jacksonvilles--rife from -Maine to Florida?” - -Now, it must be confessed at once that we have no guard against a -thrust like that. Such names do abound and they are of unsurpassed -hideousness. But could not the same blow have got home as fatally had -it been directed against his own country? A glance at any gazetteer of -the British Isles would show that the British are quite as vulnerable -as the Americans. In fact, this very question of Matthew Arnold’s -suggested to an anonymous American rimester the perpetration of a copy -of verses, the quality of which can be gaged by these first three -stanzas: - - Of Briggsville and Jacksonville - I care not now to sing; - They make me sad and very mad-- - My inmost soul they wring. - I’ll hie me back to England, - And straightway I will go - To Boxford and to Swaffham, - To Plunger and Loose Hoe. - - At Scrooby and at Gonerby, - At Wigton and at Smeeth, - At Bottesford and Runcorn, - I need not grit my teeth. - At Swineshead and at Crummock, - At Sibsey and Spithead, - Stoke Poges and Wolsoken - I will not wish me dead. - - At Horbling and at Skidby, - At Chipping Ongar, too, - At Botterel Stotterdon and Swops, - At Skellington and Skew, - At Piddletown and Blumsdown, - At Shanklin and at Smart, - At Gosberton and Wrangle - I’ll soothe this aching heart. - -To discover a mote in our neighbor’s eyes does not remove the mote -in our own, however much immediate relief it may give us from the -acuteness of our pain. When Matthew Arnold animadverted upon “the -jumbles of unnatural and inappropriate names everywhere,” he may have -had in mind the most absurd medley existing anywhere in the world--the -handful of Greek and Roman names of all sorts which was sown broadcast -over the western part of New York State. Probably this region of -misfortune it was that Irving was thinking about when he denounced the -“shallow affectation of scholarship,” and told how “the whole catalog -of ancient worthies is shaken out of the back of Lemprière’s Classical -Dictionary, and a wide region of wild country is sprinkled over with -the names of heroes, poets, sages of antiquity, jumbled into the most -whimsical juxtaposition.” - -Along the road from Dublin, going south to Bray, the traveler finds -Dumdrum and Stillorgan, as tho--to quote the remarks of the Irish -friend who gave me these facts--a band of wandering musicians had -broken up and scattered their names along the highway. For sheer -ugliness it would be hard to beat two other proper names near Dublin, -where the Sallynoggin road runs into the Glenageary. - -It may be that these words sound harsher in our strange ears than -they do to a native wonted to their use. We take the unknown for the -magnificent sometimes, no doubt; but sometimes also we take it for -the ridiculous. To us New-Yorkers, for instance, there is nothing -absurd or ludicrous in the sturdy name of Schenectady; perhaps there -is even a hint of stateliness in the syllables. But when Mr. Laurence -Hutton was in the north of Scotland some years ago there happened to -be in his party a young lady from that old Dutch town; and when a -certain laird who lived in those parts chanced to be told that this -young lady dwelt in Schenectady he was moved to inextinguishable -laughter. He ejaculated the outlandish sounds again and again in the -sparse intervals of his boisterous merriment. He announced to all his -neighbors that among their visitors was a young lady from Schenectady, -and all who called were presented to her, and at every repetition of -the strange syllables his violent cachinnations broke forth afresh. -Never had so comic a name fallen upon his ears; and yet he himself -was the laird of Balduthro (pronounced Balduthy); his parish was -Ironcross (pronounced Aron-crouch); his railway-station was Kilconquhar -(pronounced Kinŏcher); and his post-office was Pittenweem! - -Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scotchman who had changed his point of -view more often than the laird of Balduthro; he had a broader vision -and a more delicate ear and a more refined perception of humor. When he -came to these United States as an amateur immigrant on his way across -the plains, he asked the name of a river from a brakeman on the train; -and when he heard that the stream “was called the Susquehanna, the -beauty of the name seemed part and parcel of the beauty of the land. -As when Adam with divine fitness named the creatures, so this word -Susquehanna was at once accepted by the fancy. That was the name, as no -other could be, for that shining river and desirable valley.” - -And then Stevenson breaks from his narrative to sing the praises of -our place-names. The passage is long for quotation in a paper where -too much has been quoted already; and yet I should be derelict to my -duty if I did not transcribe it here. Stevenson had lived among many -peoples, and he was far more cosmopolitan than Matthew Arnold, and more -willing, therefore, to dwell on beauties than on blemishes. “None can -care for literature in itself,” he begins, “who do not take a special -pleasure in the sound of names; and there is no part of the world -where nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous, and picturesque as -the United States of America. All times, races, and languages have -brought their contribution. Pekin is in the same State with Euclid, -with Bellefontaine, and with Sandusky. Chelsea, with its London -associations of red brick, Sloane Square, and the King’s Road, is own -suburb to stately and primeval Memphis; there they have their seat, -translated names of cities, where the Mississippi runs by Tennessee and -Arkansas.... Old, red Manhattan lies, like an Indian arrow-head under -a steam-factory, below Anglified New York. The names of the States -and Territories themselves form a chorus of sweet and most romantic -vocables: Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, -Minnesota, and the Carolinas; there are few poems with a nobler music -for the ear; a songful, tuneful land; and if the new Homer shall arise -from the western continent, his verse will be enriched, his pages sing -spontaneously, with the names of states and cities that would strike -the fancy in a business circular.” - -As Campbell had utilized the innate beauty of the word Wyoming, so -Stevenson himself made a ballad on the dreaded name of Ticonderoga; -and these are two of the proper names of modern America that sing -themselves. But there is nothing canorous in Anglified New York; there -is no sonority in its syllables; there is neither dignity nor truth in -its obvious meaning. It might serve well enough as the address of a -steam-factory in a business circular; but it lacks absolutely all that -the name of a metropolis demands. Stevenson thought that the new Homer -would joy in working into his strong lines the beautiful nomenclature -of America; but Washington Irving had the same anticipation, and it -forced him to declare that if New York “were to share the fate of Troy -itself, to suffer a ten years’ siege, and be sacked and plundered, no -modern Homer would ever be able to elevate the name to epic dignity.” -Irving went so far as to wish not only that New York city should be -Manhattan again, but that New York State should be Ontario, the Hudson -River the Mohegan, and the United States themselves Appalachia. Edgar -Allan Poe, than whom none of our poets had a keener perception of the -beauty of sounds and the fitness of words, approved of Appalachia as -the name of the whole country. - -Perhaps we must wait yet a little while for Appalachia and Ontario -and the Mohegan; but has not the time come to dig up that old red -arrow-head Manhattan, and fit it to a new shaft? - - (1895) - - - - -XII - -AS TO “AMERICAN SPELLING” - - -[This paper is here reprinted from an earlier volume now out of print.] - - -When the author of the ‘Cathedral’ was accosted by the wandering -Englishmen within the lofty aisles of Chartres, he cracked a joke, - - Whereat they stared, then laughed, and we were friends. - The seas, the wars, the centuries interposed, - Abolished in the truce of common speech - And mutual comfort of the mother-tongue. - -In this common speech other Englishmen are not always ready to -acknowledge the full rights of Lowell’s countrymen. They would put us -off with but a younger brother’s portion of the mother-tongue, seeming -somehow to think that they are more closely related to the common -parent than we are. But Orlando, the younger son of Sir Rowland du -Bois, was no villain; and tho we have broken with the fatherland, the -mother-tongue is none the less our heritage. Indeed, we need not care -whether the division is _per stirpes_ or _per capita_; our share is not -the less in either case. - -Beneath the impotent protests which certain British newspapers are -prone to make every now and again against the “American language” as -a whole, and against the stray Americanism which has happened last -to invade England, there is a tacit assumption that we Americans are -outer barbarians, mere strangers, wickedly tampering with something -which belongs to the British exclusively. And the outcry against the -“American language” is not as shrill nor as piteous as the shriek of -horror with which certain of the journals of London greet “American -spelling,” a hideous monster which they feared was ready to devour them -as soon as the international copyright bill should become law. In the -midst of every discussion of the effect of the copyright act in Great -Britain, the bugbear of “American spelling” reared its grisly head. -The London _Times_ declared that English publishers would never put -any books into type in the United States because the people of England -would never tolerate the peculiarities of orthography which prevailed -in American printing-offices. The _St. James’s Gazette_ promptly -retorted that “already newspapers in London are habitually using the -ugliest forms of American spelling, and these silly eccentricities do -not make the slightest difference in their circulation.” The _Times_ -and the _St. James’s Gazette_ might differ as to the effect of the -copyright act on the profits of the printers of England, but they -agreed heartily as to the total depravity of “American spelling.” I -think that any disinterested foreigner who might chance to hear these -violent outcries would suppose that English orthography was as the law -of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not; he would be justified -in believing that the system of spelling now in use in Great Britain -was hallowed by the Established Church, and in some way mysteriously -connected with the state religion. - -Just what the British newspapers were afraid of it is not easy to say, -and it is difficult to declare just what they mean when they talk of -“American spelling.” Probably they do not refer to the improvements in -orthography suggested by the first great American--Benjamin Franklin. -Possibly they do refer to the modifications in the accepted spelling -proposed by another American, Noah Webster--not so great, and yet not -to be named slightingly by any one who knows how fertile his labors -have been for the good of the whole country. Noah Webster, so his -biographer, Mr. Scudder, tells us, “was one of the first to carry a -spirit of democracy into letters.... Throughout his work one may detect -a confidence in the common sense of the people which was as firm as -Franklin’s.” But the innovations of Webster were hesitating and often -inconsistent; and most of them have been abandoned by later editors of -Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. - -What, then, do British writers mean when they animadvert upon “American -spelling”? So far as I have been able to discover, the British -journalists object to certain minor labor-saving improvements of -American orthography, such as the dropping of the _k_ from _almanack_, -the omission of one _g_ from _waggon_, and the like; and they protest -with double force, with all the strength that in them lies, against -the substitution of a single _l_ for a double _l_ in such words as -_traveller_, against the omission of the _u_ from such words as -_honour_, against the substitution of an _s_ for a _c_ in such words as -_defence_, and against the transposing of the final two letters of such -words as _theatre_. The objection to “American spelling” may lie deeper -than I have here suggested, and it may have a wider application; but -I have done my best to state it fully and fairly as I have deduced it -from a painful perusal of many columns of exacerbated British writing. - -Now if I have succeeded in stating honestly the extent of the British -journalistic objections to “American spelling,” the unprejudiced -reader may be moved to ask: “Is this all? Are these few and slight -and unimportant changes the cause of this mighty commotion?” One may -agree with Sainte-Beuve in thinking that “orthography is the beginning -of literature,” without discovering in these modifications from the -Johnsonian canon any cause for extreme disgust. And since I have quoted -Sainte-Beuve once, I venture to cite him again, and to take from the -same letter of March 15, 1867, his suggestion that “if we write more -correctly, let it be to express especially honest feelings and just -thoughts.” - -Feelings may be honest tho they are violent, but irritation is not the -best frame of mind for just thinking. The tenacity with which some -of the newspapers of London are wont to defend the accepted British -orthography is perhaps due rather to feeling than to thought. Lowell -told us that esthetic hatred burned nowadays with as fierce a flame -as ever once theological hatred; and any American who chances to note -the force and the fervor and the frequency of the objurgations against -“American spelling” in the columns of the _Saturday Review_, for -example, and of the _Athenæum_, may find himself wondering as to the -date of the papal bull which declared the infallibility of contemporary -British orthography, and as to the place where the council of the -church was held at which it was made an article of faith. - -The _Saturday Review_ and the _Athenæum_, highly pitched as their -voices are, yet are scarcely shriller in their cry to arms against the -possible invasion of the sanctity of British orthography by “American -spelling” than is the London _Times_, the solid representative of -British thought, the mighty organ-voice of British feeling. Yet -the _Times_ is not without orthographic eccentricities of its own, -as Matthew Arnold took occasion to point out. In his essay on the -‘Literary Influence of Academies,’ he asserted that “every one has -noticed the way in which the _Times_ chooses to spell the word -_diocese_; it always spells it _diocess_, deriving it, I suppose, from -_Zeus_ and _census_.... Imagine an educated Frenchman indulging himself -in an orthographical antic of this sort!” - -When we read what is written in the _Times_ and the _Saturday Review_ -and the _Athenæum_, sometimes in set articles on the subject, and -even more often in casual and subsidiary slurs in the course of -book-reviews, we wonder at the vehemence of the feeling displayed. -If we did not know that ancient abuses are often defended with more -violence and with louder shouts than inheritances of less doubtful -worth, we might suppose that the present spelling of the English -language was in a condition perfectly satisfactory alike to scholar and -to student. Such, however, is not the case. The leading philologists -of Great Britain and of the United States have repeatedly denounced -English spelling as it now is on both sides of the Atlantic, Professor -Max Müller at Oxford being no less emphatic than Professor Whitney -at Yale. There is now living no scholar of any repute who any longer -defends the ordinary orthography of the English language. - -The fact is that a little learning is quite as dangerous a thing now -as it was in Pope’s day. Those who are volubly denouncing “American -spelling” in the columns of British journals are not students of -the history of English speech; they are not scholars in English; in -so far as they know anything of the language, they are but amateur -philologists. As a well-known writer on spelling reform once neatly -remarked, “The men who get their etymology by inspiration are like the -poor in that we have them always with us.” Altho few of them are as -ignorant and dense as the unknown unfortunate who first tortured the -obviously jocular _Welsh rabbit_ into a ridiculously impossible _Welsh -rarebit_, still the most of their writing serves no good purpose. Nor -do we discover in these specimens of British journalism that abundant -urbanity which etymology might lead us to look for in the writing of -inhabitants of so large a city as London. - -Any one who takes the trouble to inform himself on the subject will -soon discover that it is chiefly the half-educated men who defend the -contemporary orthography of the English language, and who denounce the -alleged “American spelling” of _center_ and _honor_. The uneducated -reader may wonder perchance what the _g_ is doing in _sovereign_; the -half-educated reader discerns in the _g_ a connecting-link between the -English _sovereign_ and the Latin _regno_; the well-educated reader -knows that there is no philological connection whatever between _regno_ -and _sovereign_. - -Most of those who write with ease in British journals, deploring the -prevalence of “American spelling,” have never carried their education -so far as to acquire that foundation of wisdom which prevents a man -from expressing an opinion on subjects as to which he is ignorant. The -object of education, it has been said, is to make a man know what he -knows, and also to know how much he does not know. Despite the close -sympathy between the intellectual pursuits, a student of optics is not -necessarily qualified to express an opinion in esthetics; and on the -other hand, a critic of art may easily be ignorant of science. Now -literature is one of the arts, and philology is a science. Altho men -of letters have to use words as the tools of their trade, orthography -is none the less a branch of philology, and philology does not come -by nature. Literature may even exist without writing, and therefore -without spelling. Writing, indeed, has no necessary connection -with literature; still less has orthography. A literary critic is -rarely a scientific student of language; he has no need to be; but -being ignorant, it is the part of modesty for him not to expose his -ignorance. To boast of it is unseemly. - -Far be it from me to appear as the defender of the “American spelling” -which the British journalists denounce. This “American spelling” is -less absurd than the British spelling only in so far as it has varied -therefrom. Even in these variations there is abundant absurdity. Once -upon a time most words that now are spelled with a final _c_ had an -added _k_. Even now both British and American usage retains this -_k_ in _hammock_, altho both British and Americans have dropped the -needless letter from _havoc_; while the British retain the _k_ at the -end of _almanack_ and the Americans have dropped it. Dr. Johnson was -a reactionary in orthography as in politics; and in his dictionary -he wilfully put a final _k_ to words like _optick_, without being -generally followed by the publick--as he would have spelled it. -_Music_ was then _musick_, altho, even as late as Aubrey’s time, it -had been _musique_. In our own day we are witnessing the very gradual -substitution of the logical _technic_ for the form originally imported -from France--_technique_. - -I am inclined to think that _technic_ is replacing _technique_ more -rapidly--or should I say less slowly?--in the United States than in -Great Britain. We Americans like to assimilate our words and to make -them our own, while the British have rather a fondness for foreign -phrases. A London journalist recently held up to public obloquy as an -“ignorant Americanism” the word _program_, altho he would have found -it set down in Professor Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary. “_Programme_ -was taken from the French,” so a recent writer reminds us, “and in -violation of analogy, seeing that, when it was imported into English, -we had already _anagram_, _cryptogram_, _diagram_, _epigram_, etc.” -The logical form _program_ is not common even in America; and British -writers seem to prefer the French form, as British speakers still give -a French pronunciation to _charade_, and to _trait_, which in America -have long since been accepted frankly as English words. - -Possibly it is idle to look for any logic in anything which has to -do with modern English orthography on either side of the ocean. -Perhaps, however, there is less even than ordinary logic in the -British journalist’s objection to the so-called “American spelling” of -_meter_; for why should any one insist on _metre_ while unhesitatingly -accepting its compound _diameter_? Mr. John Bellows, in the preface to -his inestimable French-English and English-French pocket dictionary, -one of the very best books of reference ever published, informs us -that “the act of Parliament legalizing the use of the metric system -in this country [England] gives the words _meter_, _liter_, _gram_, -etc., spelled on the American plan.” Perhaps now that the sanction of -law has been given to this spelling, the final _er_ will drive out the -_re_ which has usurped its place. In one of the last papers that he -wrote, Lowell declared that “_center_ is no Americanism; it entered the -language in that shape, and kept it at least as late as Defoe.” “In -the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century,” says -Professor Lounsbury, “while both ways of writing these words existed -side by side, the termination _er_ is far more common than that in -_re_. The first complete edition of Shakspere’s plays was published in -1623. In that work _sepulcher_ occurs thirteen times; it is spelled -eleven times with _er_. _Scepter_ occurs thirty-seven times; it is not -once spelled with _re_, but always with _er_. _Center_ occurs twelve -times, and in nine instances out of the twelve it ends in _er_.” So we -see that this so-called “American spelling” is fully warranted by the -history of the English language. It is amusing to note how often a -wider and a deeper study of English will reveal that what is suddenly -denounced in Great Britain as the very latest Americanism, whether -this be a variation in speech or in spelling, is shown to be really a -survival of a previous usage of our language, and authorized by a host -of precedents. - -Of course it is idle to kick against the pricks of progress, and no -doubt in due season Great Britain and her colonial dependencies will -be content again to spell words that end in _er_ as Shakspere and Ben -Jonson and Spenser spelled them. But when we get so far toward the -orthographic millennium that we all spell _sepulcher_, the ghost of -Thomas Campbell will groan within the grave at the havoc then wrought -in the final line of ‘Hohenlinden,’ which will cease to end with even -the outward semblance of a rime to the eye. We all know that - - On Linden, when the sun was low, - All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, - And dark as winter was the flow - Of Iser, rolling rapidly; - -and those of us who have persevered may remember that with one -exception every fourth line of Campbell’s poem ends with a _y_,--the -words are _rapidly_, _scenery_, _revelry_, _artillery_, _canopy_, and -_chivalry_,--not rimes of surpassing distinction, any of them, but -perhaps passable to a reader who will humor the final syllable. The one -exception is the final line of the poem-- - - Shall be a soldier’s _sepulchre_. - -To no man’s ear did _sepulchre_ ever rime justly with _chivalry_ and -_canopy_ and _artillery_, altho Campbell may have so contorted his -vision that he evoked the dim spook of a rime in his mind’s eye. A rime -to the eye is a sorry thing at best, and it is sorriest when it depends -on an inaccurate and evanescent orthography. - -Dr. Johnson was as illogical in his keeping in and leaving out of -the _u_ in words like _honor_ and _governor_ as he was in many other -things; and the makers of later dictionaries have departed widely -from his practice, those in Great Britain still halting half-way, -while those in the United States have gone on to the bitter end. -The illogic of the burly lexicographer is shown in his omission of -the _u_ from _exterior_ and _posterior_, and his retention of it in -the kindred words _interiour_ and _anteriour_; this, indeed, seems -like wilful perversity, and justifies Hood’s merry jest about “Dr. -Johnson’s Contradictionary.” The half-way measures of later British -lexicographers are shown in their omission of the _u_ from words which -Dr. Johnson spelled _emperour_, _governour_, _oratour_, _horrour_, and -_dolour_, while still retaining it in _favour_ and _honour_ and a few -others. - -The reason for his disgust generally given by the London man of -letters who is annoyed by the “American spelling” of _honor_ and -_favor_ is that these words are not derived directly from the Latin, -but indirectly through the French; this is the plea put forward by -the late Archbishop Trench. Even if this plea were pertinent, the -application of this theory is not consistent in current British -orthography, which prescribes the omission of the _u_ from _error_ and -_emperor_, and its retention in _colour_ and _honour_--altho all four -words are alike derived from the Latin through the French. And this -plea fails absolutely to account for the _u_ which the British insist -on preserving in _harbour_ and in _neighbour_, words not derived from -the Latin at all, whether directly or indirectly through the French. -An American may well ask, “If the _u_ in _honour_ teaches etymology, -what does the _u_ in _harbour_ teach?” There is no doubt that the _u_ -in _harbour_ teaches a false etymology; and there is no doubt also -that the _u_ in _honour_ has been made to teach a false etymology, -for Trench’s derivation of this final _our_ from the French _eur_ is -absurd, as the old French was _our_, and sometimes _ur_, sometimes even -_or_. Pseudo-philology of this sort is no new thing; Professor Max -Müller noted that the Roman prigs used to spell _cena_ (to show their -knowledge of Greek), _coena_, as if the word were somehow connected -with _κοινή_. - -Thus we see that the _u_ in _honour_ suggests a false etymology; so -does the _ue_ in _tongue_, and the _g_ in _sovereign_, and the _c_ -in _scent_, and the _s_ in _island_, and the _mp_ in _comptroller_, -and the _h_ in _rhyme_; and there are many more of our ordinary -orthographies which are quite as misleading from a philological point -of view. As the late Professor Hadley mildly put it, “our common -spelling is often an untrustworthy guide to etymology.” But why should -we expect or desire spelling to be a guide to etymology? If it is to -be a guide at all, we may fairly insist on its being trustworthy; and -so we cannot help thinking scorn of those who insist on retaining a -superfluous _u_ in _harbour_. - -But why should orthography be made subservient to etymology? What have -the two things in common? They exist for wholly different ends, to be -attained by wholly different means. To bend either from its own work -to the aid of the other is to impair the utility of both. This truth -is recognized by all etymologists, and by all students of language, -altho it has not yet found acceptance among men of letters, who are -rarely students of language in the scientific sense. “It may be -observed,” Mr. Sweet declares, “that it is mainly among the class of -half-taught dabblers in philology that etymological spelling has found -its supporters”; and he goes on to say that “all true philologists -and philological bodies have uniformly denounced it as a monstrous -absurdity both from a practical and a scientific point of view.” I -should never dare to apply to the late Archbishop Trench and the London -journalists who echo his errors so harsh a phrase as Mr. Sweet’s -“half-taught dabblers in philology”; but when a fellow-Briton uses it -perhaps I may venture to quote it without reproach. - -As I have said before, the alleged “American spelling” differs but very -slightly from that which prevails in England. A wandering New-Yorker -who rambles through London is able to collect now and again evidences -of orthographic survivals which give him a sudden sense of being in -an older country than his own. I have seen a man whose home was near -Gramercy Park stop short in the middle of a little street in Mayfair, -and point with ecstatic delight to the strip of paper across the glass -door of a bar proclaiming that _CYDER_ was sold within. I have seen the -same man thrill with pure joy before the shop of a _chymist_ in the -window of which _corn-plaisters_ were offered for sale. He wondered -why a British house should have _storeys_ when an American house has -_stories_; and he disliked intensely the wanton _e_ wherewith British -printers have recently disfigured _form_, which in the latest London -typographical vocabularies appears as _forme_. This _e_ in _form_ -is a gratuitous addition, and therefore contrary to the trend of -orthographic progress, which aims at the suppression of all arbitrary -and needless letters. - -The so-called “American spelling” differs from the spelling which -obtains in England only in so far as it has yielded a little more -readily to the forces which make for progress, for uniformity, for -logic, for common sense. But just how fortuitous and chaotic the -condition of English spelling is nowadays both in Great Britain and -in the United States no man knows who has not taken the trouble to -investigate for himself. In England, the reactionary orthography -of Samuel Johnson is no longer accepted by all. In America, the -revolutionary orthography of Noah Webster has been receded from even by -his own inheritors. There is no standard, no authority, not even that -of a powerful, resolute, and domineering personality. - -Perhaps the attitude of philologists toward the present spelling of -the English language, and their opinion of those who are up in arms in -defense of it, have never been more tersely stated than in Professor -Lounsbury’s most admirable ‘Studies in Chaucer,’ a work which I should -term eminently scholarly, if that phrase did not perhaps give a false -impression of a book wherein the results of learning are set forth with -the most adroit literary art, and with an uninsistent but omnipresent -humor, which is a constant delight to the reader: - -“There is certainly nothing more contemptible than our present -spelling, unless it be the reasons usually given for clinging to it. -The divorce which has unfortunately almost always existed between -English letters and English scholarship makes nowhere a more pointed -exhibition of itself than in the comments which men of real literary -ability make upon proposals to change or modify the cast-iron framework -in which our words are now clothed. On one side there is an absolute -agreement of view on the part of those who are authorized by their -knowledge of the subject to pronounce an opinion. These are well aware -that the present orthography hides the history of the word instead of -revealing it; that it is a stumbling-block in the way of derivation -or of pronunciation instead of a guide to it; that it is not in any -sense a growth or development, but a mechanical malformation, which -owes its existence to the ignorance of early printers and the necessity -of consulting the convenience of printing-offices. This consensus of -scholars makes the slightest possible impression upon men of letters -throughout the whole great Anglo-Saxon community. There is hardly -one of them who is not calmly confident of the superiority of his -opinion to that of the most famous special students who have spent -years in examining the subject. There is hardly one of them who does -not fancy he is manifesting a noble conservatism by holding fast to -some spelling peculiarly absurd, and thereby maintaining a bulwark -against the ruin of the tongue. There is hardly one of them who has -any hesitation in discussing the question in its entirety, while every -word he utters shows that he does not understand even its elementary -principles. There would be something thoroughly comic in turning into a -fierce international dispute the question of spelling _honor_ without -the _u_, were it not for the depression which every student of the -language cannot well help feeling in contemplating the hopeless abysmal -ignorance of the history of the tongue which any educated man must -first possess in order to become excited over the subject at all.” -(‘Studies in Chaucer,’ vol. iii., pp. 265-267.) - -Pronunciation is slowly but steadily changing. Sometimes it is going -further and further away from the orthography; for example, _either_ -and _neither_ are getting more and more to have in their first syllable -the long _i_ sound instead of the long _e_ sound which they had -once. Sometimes it is being modified to agree with the orthography; -for example, the older pronunciations of _again_ to rime with _men_, -and of _been_ to rime with _pin_, in which I was carefully trained as -a boy, seem to me to be giving way before a pronunciation in exact -accord with the spelling, _again_ to rime with _pain_, and _been_ to -rime with _seen_. These two illustrations are from the necessarily -circumscribed experience of a single observer, and the observation of -others may not bear me out in my opinion; but tho the illustrations -fall to the ground, the main assertion, that pronunciation is changing, -is indisputable. - -No doubt the change is less rapid than it was before the invention -of printing; far less rapid than it was before the days of the -public school and of the morning newspaper. There are variations of -pronunciation in different parts of the United States and of Great -Britain, as there are variations of vocabulary; but in the future -there will be a constantly increasing tendency for these variations to -disappear. There are irresistible forces making for uniformity--forces -which are crushing out Platt-Deutsch in Germany, Provençal in France, -Romansch in Switzerland. There is a desire to see a standard set up to -which all may strive to conform. In France a standard of pronunciation -is found at the Comédie Française; and in Germany, what is almost -a standard of vocabulary has been set in what is now known as -_Bühnen-Deutsch_. - -In France the Academy was constituted chiefly to be a guardian of the -language; and the Academy, properly conservative as it needs must be, -is engaged in a slow reform of French orthography, yielding to the -popular demand decorously and judiciously. By official action, also, -the orthography of German has been simplified and made more logical -and brought into closer relation with modern pronunciation. Even more -thorough reforms have been carried through in Italy, in Spain, and in -Holland. Yet neither French nor German, not Italian, Spanish, or Dutch, -stood half as much in need of the broom of reform as English, for in -no one of these languages were there so many dark corners which needed -cleaning out; in no one of them the difference between orthography and -pronunciation so wide; and in no one of them was the accepted spelling -debased by numberless false etymologies. - -Beyond all question, what is needed on both sides of the Atlantic, in -the United States as well as in Great Britain, is a conviction that -the existing orthography of English is not sacred, and that to tamper -with it is not high treason. What is needed is the consciousness that -neither Samuel Johnson nor Noah Webster compiled his dictionary under -direct inspiration. What is needed is an awakening to the fact that -our spelling, so far from being immaculate at its best, is, at its -best, hardly less absurd than the haphazard, rule-of-thumb, funnily -phonetic spelling of Artemus Ward and of Josh Billings. What is needed -is anything which will break up the lethargy of satisfaction with -the accepted orthography, and help to open the eyes of readers and -writers to the stupidity of the present system and tend to make them -discontented with it. - - (1892) - - - - -XIII - -THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ENGLISH SPELLING - - -In a communication to a London review Professor W. W. Skeat remarked -that “it is notorious that all the leading philologists of Europe, -during the last quarter of a century, have unanimously condemned the -present chaotic spelling of the English language, and have received on -the part of the public generally, and of the most blatant and ignorant -among the self-constituted critics, nothing but abusive ridicule, -which is meant to be scathing, but is harmless from its silliness”; -and it cannot be denied that the orthographic simplifications which -the leading philologists of Great Britain and the United States are -advocating have not yet been widely adopted. In an aggressive article -an American essayist has sought to explain this by the assertion that -phonetic-reform “is hopelessly, unspeakably, sickeningly vulgar; and -this is an eternal reason why men and women of taste, refinement, -and discrimination will reject it with a shudder of disgust.” -Satisfactory as this explanation may seem to the essayist, I have -a certain difficulty in accepting it myself, since I find on the -list of the vice-presidents of the Orthographic Union the names of -Mr. Howells, of Colonel Higginson, of Dr. Eggleston, of Professor -Lounsbury, and of President White; and even if I was willing to admit -that these gentlemen were all of them lacking in taste, refinement, and -discrimination, I still could not agree with the aggressive essayist so -long as my own name was on the same list. - -What strikes me as a better explanation is that given by the president -of the Orthographic Union, Mr. Benjamin E. Smith, who has suggested -that phonetic-reformers have asked too much, and so have received too -little; they have demanded an immediate and radical change, and as a -result they have frightened away all but the most resolute radicals; -they have failed to reckon with the immense conservatism which gives -stability to all the institutions of the English-speaking race. As -Mr. Smith puts it, “there is a deep-rooted feeling that the existing -printed form is not only _a_ symbol but the _most fitting_ symbol for -our mother-tongue, and that a radical change must impair _for us_ the -beauty and spiritual effectiveness of that which it symbolizes.” - -A part of the unreadiness of the public to listen to the advocates of -phonetic-reform has been due also to the general consciousness that -pronunciation is not fixed but very variable indeed, being absolutely -alike in no two places where English is spoken, and perhaps in no two -persons who speak English. The humorous poet has shown to us how the -little word _vase_ once served as a shibboleth to reveal the homes of -each of the four young ladies who came severally from New York and -Boston and Philadelphia and Kalamazoo. The difference between the -pronunciation of New York and Boston is not so marked as that between -London and Edinburgh--or as that between New York and London. And the -pronunciation of to-day is not that of to-morrow; it is constantly -being modified, sometimes by imperceptible degrees and sometimes by a -sudden change like the arbitrary substitution of _aither_ and _naither_ -for _eether_ and _neether_. Now, if pronunciation is not uniform in any -two persons, in any two places, at any two periods, the wayfaring man -is not to blame if he is in doubt, first, as to the possibility of a -uniform phonetic spelling, and, second, as to its permanence even if it -was once to be attained. - -A glance down the history of English orthography discloses the fact -that, however chaotic our spelling may seem to be now or may seem to -have been in Shakspere’s day, it is and it always has been striving -ineffectively to be phonetic. Always the attempt has been to use -the letters of the word to represent its sounds. From the beginning -there has been an unceasing struggle to keep the orthography as -phonetic as might be. This continuous striving toward exactness of -sound-reproduction has never been radical or violent; it has always -been halting and half-hearted: but it has been constant, and it has -accomplished marvels in the course of the centuries. The most that -we can hope to do is to help along this good work, to hasten this -inevitable but belated progress, to make the transitions as easy as -possible, and to smooth the way so that the needful improvements may -follow one another as swiftly as shall be possible. We must remember -that a half-loaf is better than no bread; and we must remind ourselves -frequently that the greatest statesmen have been opportunists, knowing -what they wanted, but taking what they could get. - -We have now to face the fact that in no language is a sudden and -far-reaching reform in spelling ever likely to be attained; and in -none is it less likely than in English. The history of the peoples who -use our tongue on both sides of the Atlantic proves that they belong -to a stock which is wont to make haste slowly, to take one step at a -time, and never to allow itself to be overmastered by mere logic. -By a series of gradations almost invisible the loose confederacy of -1776 developed into the firm union of 1861, which was glad to grant to -Abraham Lincoln a power broader than that wielded by any dictator. Even -the abolition of the corn-laws and the adoption of free-trade in Great -Britain, sudden as it may seem, was only the final result of a long -series of events. - -The securing of an absolutely phonetic spelling being -impracticable,--even if it was altogether desirable,--the efforts of -those who are dissatisfied with the prevailing orthography of our -language had best be directed toward the perfectly practical end of -getting our improvement on the instalment plan. We must seek now to -have only the most flagrant absurdities corrected. We must be satisfied -to advance little by little. We must begin by showing that there is -nothing sacrosanct about the present spelling either in Great Britain -or in the United States. We must make it clear to all who are willing -to listen--and it is our duty to be persuasive always and never -dogmatic--that the effort of the English language to rid itself of -orthographic anomalies is almost as old as the language itself. We -must show those who insist on leaving the present spelling undisturbed -that in taking this attitude they are setting themselves in opposition -to the past, which they pretend to respect. The average man is open -to conviction if you do not try to browbeat him into adopting your -beliefs; and he can be induced to accept improvements, one at a time, -if he has it made plain to him that each of these is but one in a -series unrolling itself since Chaucer. We must convince the average -man that we want merely to continue the good work of our forefathers, -and that the real innovators are those who maintain the absolute -inviolability of our present spelling. - -Even the vehement essayist from whom I have quoted already, and who -is the boldest of later opponents of phonetic-reform, is vehement -chiefly against the various schemes of wholesale revision. He himself -refuses to make any modification,--except to revert now and again to -a medievalism like _pædagogue_,--but he knows the history of language -too well not to be forced to admit that a simplification of some sort -is certain to be achieved in the future. “The written forms of English -words will change in time, as the language itself will change,” he -confesses; “it will change in its vocabulary, in its idioms, in its -pronunciation, and perhaps to some extent in its structural form. For -change is the one essential and inevitable phenomenon of a living -language, as it is of any living organism; and with these changes, slow -and silent and unconscious, will come a change in the orthography.” As -we read this admirable statement we cannot but wonder why a writer who -understands so well the conditions of linguistic growth should wish to -bind his own language in the cast-iron bonds of an outworn orthography. -We may wonder also why he is not consistent in his own practice, and -why he does not spell _phænomenon_ as Macaulay did only threescore and -ten years ago. - -Underneath the American essayist’s objection to any orthographic -simplification in English, and underneath the plaintive protests of -certain British men of letters against “American spelling,” so called, -lies the assumption that there is at the present moment a “regular” -spelling, which has existed time out of mind and which the tasteless -reformers wish to destroy. For this assumption there is no warrant -whatever. The orthography of our language has never been stable; it -has always been fluctuating; and no authority has ever been given to -anybody to lay down laws for its regulation. For a convention to have -validity it must have won general acceptance at some period; and the -history of English shows that there has never been any such common -agreement, expressed or implied, in regard to English spelling. Some of -the unphonetic forms which are most vigorously defended, as hallowed by -custom and by sentiment, are comparatively recent; and others which -seem as sacred have had foisted into them needless letters conveying -false impressions about their origins. - -That there is no theory or practice of English orthography universally -accepted to-day is obvious to all who may take the trouble to observe -for themselves. The spelling adopted by the ‘Century Magazine’ is -different from that to be found in ‘Harper’s Magazine’; and this -differs again from that insisted upon in the pages of the ‘Bookman.’ -The ‘Century’ has gone a little in advance of American spelling -generally, as seen in ‘Harper’s,’ and the ‘Bookman’ is intentionally -reactionary. In the United States orthography is in a healthier state -of instability than it is in Great Britain, where there is a closer -approximation to a deadening uniformity; but even in London and -Edinburgh those who are on the watch can discover many a divergence -from the strict letter of the doctrine of orthographic rigidity. - -And just as there is no system of English spelling tacitly agreed on by -all men of education using the English language at present, so there -was also no system of English spelling consistently and continually -used by our ancestors in the past. The orthography of Matthew Arnold -differs a little, altho not much, from the orthography of Macaulay; and -that in turn a little from the orthography of Johnson. In like manner -the spelling of Dryden is very different from the spelling of Spenser, -and the spelling of Spenser is very different from the spelling of -Chaucer. At no time in the long unrolling of English literature from -Chaucer to Arnold has there been any agreement among those who used the -language as to any precise way in which its words should be spelled -or even as to any theory which should govern particular instances. -The history of English orthography is a record still incomplete of -incessant variation; and a study of it shows plainly how there have -been changes in every generation, some of them logical and some of them -arbitrary, some of them helpful simplifications, and some of them gross -perversities. - -Thus we see that those who defend any existing orthography, which -they choose to regard as “regular” and outside of which they affect -to behold only vulgar aberration, are setting themselves against the -example left us by our forefathers. We see also that those of us who -are striving to modify our spelling in moderation are doing exactly -what has been done by every generation that preceded us. To repeat -in other words what I have said already, there is not any system of -English orthography which is supported by a universal convention to-day -or which has any sanctity from its supposed antiquity. - -The opponents of simplification have been greatly aided by the -general acceptance of this assumption of theirs that the advocates -of simplification wanted to remove ancient landmarks, to break with -the past, to introduce endless innovations. The best part of their -case will fall to the ground when it is generally understood that the -orthography of our language has never been fixed for a decad at a -time. And this understanding of the real facts of the situation is -likely to be enlarged in the immediate future by the wide circulation -of many recent reprints of the texts of the great authors of the past -in the exact spelling of the original edition. So long as we were -in the habit of seeing the works of Shakspere and Steele, of Scott, -Thackeray, and Hawthorne, all in an orthography which, if not uniform -exactly, did not vary widely, we were sorely tempted to say that the -spelling which was good enough for them is good enough for us and for -our children. - -But when we have in our hands the works of those great writers as they -were originally printed, and when we are forced to remark that they -spell in no wise alike one to the other; and when we discover that such -uniformity of orthography they may have seemed to have was due, not to -any theory of the authors themselves, but merely to the practice of -the modern printing-offices and proof-readers--when these things are -brought home to us, any superstitious reverence bids fair to vanish -which we may have had for the orthography we believed to be Shakspere’s -and Steele’s and Scott’s and Thackeray’s and Hawthorne’s. - -And one indirect result of this scholarly desire to get as near as may -be to the masterpiece as the author himself presented it to the world, -is that men of letters and lovers of literature--two classes hitherto -strangely ignorant of the history of the English language and of the -constant changes always going on in its vocabulary, in its syntax, -and in its orthography--will at least have the chance to acquire -information at first hand. Their resistance to simplification ought -to become less irreconcilable when the men of letters, now its chief -opponents, have discovered for themselves that there is not now and -never has been any stable system of orthography. When they really grasp -the fact that there has been no permanency in the past and that there -is no uniformity in the present, perhaps they will show themselves -less unwilling to take the next step forward. Just now they are rather -like the Tories, who, as Aubrey de Vere declared, wanted to uninvent -printing and to undiscover America. - -The most powerful single influence in fixing the present absurd -spelling of our language was undoubtedly Johnson’s Dictionary, -published in the middle of the eighteenth century. We cannot but -respect the solid learning of Dr. Johnson and his indomitable energy; -but the making of an English dictionary was not the task for which his -previous studies had preëminently fitted him. Probably he would have -succeeded better with a Latin dictionary; and indeed there is something -characteristically incongruous in the spectacle of the burly doctor’s -spending his toil in compiling a list of the words in a language the -use of which he held to be disgraceful in a friend’s epitaph. Johnson -was, in fact, as unfit a person as could be found to record English -orthography, a task calling for a science the existence of which he -did not even suspect, and for a delicacy of perception he lacked -absolutely. In all matters of taste he was an elephantine pachyderm; -and there are only a few of his principles of criticism which are not -now disestablished. - -Any one whose reading is at all varied and who strays outside of books -printed within the past quarter-century, can find abundant evidence -of the former chaos of English orthography. In Moxon’s ‘Mechanic -Exercises,’ published in 1683, for example, we read that “how well -other Forrain languages are Corrected by the Author, we may perceive -by the English that is Printed in Forrain Countries”; and this shows -us that the phonetic form _forrain_ is older than the unphonetic -_foreign_. In the ‘Spectator’ (No. 510) Steele wrote _landskip_ where -we should now write _landscape_; in Addison’s criticism of ‘Paradise -Lost,’ contributed to the same periodical, we find _critick_, -_heroick_, and _epick_; and whether Steele or Addison held the pen, -_ribbons_ were then always _ribands_. - -On the title-page of the first edition of ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ published -in 1719, we are told that we can read within “an account of how he was -at last strangely delivered by _Pyrates_.” Fielding, in the ‘Champion’ -in 1740, tells us that “dinner soon follow’d, being a gammon of bacon -and some chickens, with a most excellent apple-_pye_.” In the same -essay Fielding wrote that “our friends _exprest_ great pleasure at our -drinking”; and in ‘Tom Jones’ he wrote _profest_ for _professed_ (as we -should now spell it). Here we discover that the nineteenth century is -sometimes more backward than the eighteenth, _profest_ and _exprest_ -being the very spellings which many are now advocating. Fielding also -wrote _Salique_ where we should now write _Salic_, as Wotton had -written _Dorique_ for _Doric_ in a letter to Milton; and here the -advantage is with us. So it is also in our spelling of the italicized -word in the playbill of the third night of Mr. Cooper’s engagement at -the Charleston theater, Friday, April 18, 1796: “_Smoaking_ in the -Theatre Prohibited.” - -Attention has already been called to Macaulay’s _phænomenon_ (and to -Professor Peck’s _pædagogue_). The abolition of the digraph has been a -protracted enterprise not yet completed. In a translation of Schlegel’s -‘Lectures on Dramatic Literature,’ published in London early in the -nineteenth century, I have found _æra_ for _era_; and in the eighteenth -century _economics_ was _œconomics_. _Esthetic_ has not yet quite -expelled _æsthetic_, altho _anesthetic_ seems now fairly established. - -The Greek _ph_ is also a stumbling-block. We write _phantom_ on the one -hand and _fancy_ on the other, and either _phantasy_ or _fantasy_; yet -all these words are derived from the same Greek root. Probably _phancy_ -would seem as absurd to most of us as _fantom_. Yet _fantasy_ has only -recently begun to get the better of _phantasy_. The Italians are bolder -than we are, for they have not hesitated to write _filosofia_ and -_fotografia_. To most of us _fotografer_, as we read it on a sign in -Union Square, seems truly outlandish; and yet if our great-grandfathers -were willing to accept _fancy_ there is no logical reason why our -great-grandchildren may not accept _fotografy_. There is no longer any -logical basis for opposition on the ground of scholarship. Indeed, -the scholarly opposition to these orthographic simplifications is -not unlike the opposition in Germany to the adoption of the Roman -alphabet by those who cling to the old Gothic letter on the ground -that it is more German, altho it is in reality only a medieval -corruption of the Roman letter. With those who speak German, as with -those who speak English, the chief obstacle to the accomplishment of -proposed improvements in writing the language is to be found in the -general ignorance of its history--or perhaps rather in that conceited -half-knowledge which is always more dangerous than modest ignorance. - -To diffuse accurate information about the history of English -orthography is the most pressing and immediate duty now before those -of us who wish to see our spelling simplified. We must keep reminding -those we wish to convince that we want their aid in helping along the -movement which has in the past changed _musique_ to _music_, _riband_ -to _ribbon_, _phantasy_ to _fantasy_, _æra_ to _era_, _phænomenon_ -to _phenomenon_, and which in the present is changing _catalogue_ -to _catalog_, _æsthetic_ to _esthetic_, _programme_ to _program_, -_technique_ to _technic_. - -There never has been any “regular” spelling accepted by everybody, or -any system of orthography sustained by universal convention. To assume -that there is anything of the sort is adroitly to beg the very question -at issue. There are always in English many words the spelling of which -is not finally fixed; and these doubtful orthographies Professor Peck, -for example, would decide in one way and Professor Skeat would decide -in another. The most of Professor Peck’s decisions would result in -conforming his spelling to that which obtains in the printing-office of -the London _Times_, but in several cases he would exercise the right of -private judgment, spelling _pædagogue_, for example, and _Vergil_. But -if he chooses to exercise the right of private judgment, he is estopped -from denying this right also to Professor Skeat; and the moment either -of them sets up the personal equation as a guide, all pretense of an -accepted system vanishes. - -It is our duty also to draw attention to the fact that it is a -wholesome thing that there is no accepted system and that the -orthography of our language should be free to modify itself in the -future as it has in the past. It is this absence of system which gives -fluidity and flexibility and the faculty of adaptation to changing -conditions. The Chief Justice of England, when he addressed the -American Bar Association, recorded his protest against a cast-iron -code in law as tending to hinder legal development; and our language, -like our law, must beware lest it lose its power of conforming to the -needs of our people as these may be unexpectedly developed. Just as the -conservatism of the English-speaking stock makes it highly improbable -that any sweeping change in our spelling will ever be made, so the -enterprise of the English-speaking stock, its energy and its common -sense, make it highly improbable that any system will long endure which -cramps and confines and prevents progress and simplification. - -Finally, we must all of us bend our energies to combating the notion -that, as Mr. Smith has put it, “the existing printed form is not -only _a_ symbol but the _most fitting_ symbol of our mother-tongue.” -There is an almost superstitious veneration felt by most of us for -the spellings we learnt at school; they seem to us sanctified by -antiquity; and perhaps even an inquiry into the history of the language -is not always enough to disestablish this reverence for false gods. -Yet knowledge helps to free us from servitude to idols; and when we -are told that the so-called “accepted spelling” has “dignity,” we may -ask ourselves what dignity there can be in the spelling of _harbour_ -with an inserted _u_ which is not pronounced, which has been thrust in -comparatively recently, and which is etymologically misleading. - -In his effective answer to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s argument against the -metric system, President T. C. Mendenhall remarked that “ignorant -prejudice” is not so dangerous an obstacle to human progress, nor as -common, as what may be called “intelligent prejudice,” meaning thereby -“an obstinate conservatism which makes people cling to what is or has -been, merely because it is or has been, not being willing to take the -trouble to do better, because already doing well, all the while knowing -that doing better is not only the easier, but is more in harmony with -existing conditions. Such conservatism is highly developed among -English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic.” It is just such -conservatism as this that those of us will have to overcome who wish -to see our English orthography continue its lifelong efforts toward -simplification. - -To understand how unfortunate for the cause of progress it is when its -leaders miscalculate the popular inertia and when they are therefore -moved to demand more than seems reasonable to the people as a whole, -we have only to consider the result of the joint action, in 1883, of -the Philological Society of England and of the American Philological -Association, in consequence of which certain rules were prepared to -simplify our spelling. Here was a union of indisputable authorities -in favor of an amended orthography; but unfortunately the changes -suggested were both many and various. They were too various to please -any but the most resolute radicals; and they were too many to be -remembered readily by the great majority of every-day folk taking no -particular interest in the subject. They included _theater_, _honor_, -_advertize_, _catalog_; and had they not included anything else, or had -they included only a very few similar simplifications, these spellings -might have won acceptance in the past score of years, even in Great -Britain; the same authorities would now be in a position to make a few -further suggestions equally easy to remember, with a fair hope that -these would establish themselves in turn. - -Owing to this attempt to do too much all at once, the joint action of -the two great philological organizations came to naught. Such effect -as it had was indirect at best. It may have been the exciting cause of -the so-called “Printers’ Rules,” which were approved and recommended -by many of the leading typographers of the United States a few years -later. These printers’ rules were few and obvious. They suggested -_catalog_, _program_, _epaulet_, _esthetic_--all of which have become -more familiar of late. They suggested further _opposit_, _hypocrit_, -etc., and also _fotograf_, _fonetic_, etc.; and these simplifications -have not yet been adopted widely enough to prevent the words thus -emended from seeming a little strange to all those who had paid no -special attention to the subject. And these uninterested outsiders are -the very people who are to be converted. To them and to them only must -all argument be addressed. We may rest assured that we have slight -chance of bringing over to our side any of those who have actually -enlisted against us. We must not count on desertions from the enemy; we -must enroll the neutrals at every opportunity. - -Probably the most important action yet taken in regard to our -orthography was that of the National Educational Association in -formally adopting for use in all its official publications twelve -simplified spellings--_program_, _tho_, _altho_, _thoro_, _thorofare_, -_thru_, _thruout_, _catalog_, _prolog_, _decalog_, _demagog_, -_pedagog_. These simplified spellings were immediately adopted in the -‘Educational Review’ and in other periodicals edited by members of the -association. They are very likely to appear with increasing frequency -in the school-books which members may hereafter prepare; and any -simplified spelling which once gets itself into a school-book is pretty -sure to hold its own in the future. After an interval of ten or fifteen -years the National Educational Association will be in a position to -consider the situation again; and it may then decide that these twelve -words have established themselves in their new form sufficiently widely -and firmly to make it probable that the association could put forward -another list of a dozen more simplified spellings with a reasonable -certainty that those also will be accepted. - -The United States government appointed a board to decide on a uniform -orthography for geographical names; and the recommendations of this -body were generally in the direction of increased simplicity--_Bering_ -Straits, for example. The spellings thus officially adopted by the -national government were at once accepted by the chief publishers -of school text-books. And these makers of school-books also follow -the rules formulated by a committee of the American Association for -the Advancement of Science appointed to bring about uniformity in -the spelling and pronunciation of chemical terms. Among the rules -formulated by the committee and adopted by the association were two -which dropped a terminal _e_ from certain chemical terms entering into -more general use. Thus the men of science now write _oxid_, _iodid_, -_chlorid_, etc., and _quinin_, _morphin_, _anilin_, etc., altho the -general public has not relinquished the earlier orthography, _oxide_ -and _quinine_. Even the word _toxin_, which came into being since the -adoption of these rules by the associated scientists, is sometimes to -be seen in newspapers as _toxine_. - -Thus we see that there is progress all along the line; it may seem -very slow, like that of a glacier, but it is as certain as it is -irresistible. There is no call for any of us to be disheartened by the -prospect. We may, indeed, each of us do what little we can severally -toward hastening the result. We can form the habit of using in our -daily writing such simplified spellings as will not seem affected or -freakish, keeping ourselves always in the forefront of the movement, -but never going very far in advance of the main body. We must not -make a fad of orthographic amelioration, nor must we devote to it a -disproportionate share of our activity--since we know that there are -other reforms as pressing as this and even more important. But we can -hold ourselves ready always to lend a hand to help along the cause; and -we can show our willingness always to stand up and be counted in its -favor. - - (1898-1901) - - - - -XIV - -AMERICANISM--AN ATTEMPT AT A DEFINITION - - -There are many words in circulation among us which we understand fairly -well, which we use ourselves, and which we should, however, find it -difficult to define. I think that _Americanism_ is one of these words; -and I think also it is well for us to inquire into the exact meaning -of this word, which is often most carelessly employed. More than -once of late have we heard a public man praised for his “aggressive -Americanism,” and occasionally we have seen a man of letters denounced -for his “lack of Americanism.” Now what does the word really mean when -it is thus used? - -It means, first of all, a love for this country of ours, an -appreciation of the institutions of this nation, a pride in the history -of this people to which we belong. And to this extent _Americanism_ -is simply another word for _patriotism_. But it means also, I think, -more than this: it means a frank acceptance of the principles which -underlie our government here in the United States. It means, therefore, -a faith in our fellow-man, a belief in liberty and in equality. It -implies, further, so it seems to me, a confidence in the future of this -country, a confidence in its destiny, a buoyant hopefulness that the -right will surely prevail. - -In so far as Americanism is merely patriotism, it is a very good thing. -The man who does not think his own country the finest in the world -is either a pretty poor sort of a man or else he has a pretty poor -sort of a country. If any people have not patriotism enough to make -them willing to die that the nation may live, then that people will -soon be pushed aside in the struggle of life, and that nation will be -trampled upon and crushed; probably it will be conquered and absorbed -by some race of a stronger fiber and of a sterner stock. Perhaps it is -difficult to declare precisely which is the more pernicious citizen of -a republic when there is danger of war with another nation--the man who -wants to fight, right or wrong, or the man who does not want to fight, -right or wrong; the hot-headed fellow who would plunge the country -into a deadly struggle without first exhausting every possible chance -to obtain an honorable peace, or the cold-blooded person who would -willingly give up anything and everything, including honor itself, -sooner than risk the loss of money which every war surely entails. “My -country, right or wrong,” is a good motto only when we add to it, “and -if she is in the wrong, I’ll help to put her in the right.” To shrink -absolutely from a fight where honor is really at stake, this is the act -of a coward. To rush violently into a quarrel when war can be avoided -without the sacrifice of things dearer than life, this is the act of a -fool. - -True patriotism is quiet, simple, dignified; it is not blatant, -verbose, vociferous. The noisy shriekers who go about with a chip on -their shoulders and cry aloud for war upon the slightest provocation -belong to the class contemptuously known as “Jingoes.” They may be -patriotic,--and as a fact they often are,--but their patriotism is too -frothy, too hysteric, too unintelligent, to inspire confidence. True -patriotism is not swift to resent an insult; on the contrary, it is -slow to take offense, slow to believe that an insult could have been -intended. True patriotism, believing fully in the honesty of its own -acts, assumes also that others are acting with the same honesty. True -patriotism, having a solid pride in the power and resources of our -country, doubts always the likelihood of any other nation being willing -carelessly to arouse our enmity. - -In so far, therefore, as Americanism is merely patriotism it is a -very good thing, as I have tried to point out. But Americanism is -something more than patriotism. It calls not only for love of our -common country, but also for respect for our fellow-man. It implies an -actual acceptance of equality as a fact. It means a willingness always -to act on the theory, not that “I’m as good as the other man,” but that -“the other man is as good as I am.” It means leveling up rather than -leveling down. It means a regard for law, and a desire to gain our -wishes and to advance our ideas always decently and in order, and with -deference to the wishes and the ideas of others. It leads a man always -to acknowledge the good faith of those with whom he is contending, -whether the contest is one of sport or of politics. It prevents a man -from declaring, or even from thinking, that all the right is on his -side, and that all the honest people in the country are necessarily of -his opinion. - -And, further, it seems to me that true Americanism has faith and -hope. It believes that the world is getting better, if not year by -year, at least century by century; and it believes also that in this -steady improvement of the condition of mankind these United States are -destined to do their full share. It holds that, bad as many things may -seem to be to-day, they were worse yesterday, and they will be better -to-morrow. However dark the outlook for any given cause may be at -any moment, the man imbued with the true spirit of Americanism never -abandons hope and never relaxes effort; he feels sure that everything -comes to him who waits. He knows that all reforms are inevitable in -the long run; and that if they do not finally establish themselves it -is because they are not really reforms, tho for a time they may have -seemed to be. - -And a knowledge of the history of the American people will supply ample -reasons for this faith in the future. The sin of negro-slavery never -seemed to be more secure from overthrow than it did in the ten years -before it was finally abolished. A study of the political methods of -the past will show that there has been immense improvement in many -respects; and it is perhaps in our political methods that we Americans -are most open to censure. That there was no deterioration of the moral -stamina of the whole people during the first century of the American -republic any student can make sure of by comparing the spirit which -animated the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies during the Revolution -with the spirit which animated the population of the northern states -(and of the southern no less) during the civil war. We are accustomed -to sing the praises of our grandfathers who won our independence, -and very properly; but our grandchildren will have also to sing the -praises of our fathers who stood up against one another for four years -of the hardest fighting the world has ever seen, bearing the burdens of -a protracted struggle with an uncomplaining cheerfulness which was not -a characteristic of the earlier war. - -True Americanism is sturdy but modest. It is as far removed from -“Jingoism” in times of trouble as it is from “Spread-Eagleism” in -times of peace. It is neither vainglorious nor boastful. It knows -that the world was not created in 1492, and that July 4, 1776, is not -the most important date in the whole history of mankind. It does not -overestimate the contribution which America has made to the rest of the -world, nor does it underestimate this contribution. True Americanism, -as I have said, has a pride in the past of this great country of ours, -and a faith in the future; but none the less it is not so foolish as to -think that all is perfection on this side of the Atlantic, and that all -is imperfection on the other side. - -It knows that some things are better here than anywhere else in the -world, that some things are no better, and that some things are not -so good in America as they are in Europe. For example, probably the -institutions of the nation fit the needs of the population with less -friction here in the United States than in any other country in the -world. But probably, also, there is no other one of the great nations -of the world in which the government of the large cities is so wasteful -and so negligent. - -True Americanism recognizes the fact that America is the heir of the -ages, and that it is for us to profit as best we can by the experience -of Europe, not copying servilely what has been successful in the old -world, but modifying what we borrow in accord with our own needs and -our own conditions. It knows, and it has no hesitation in declaring, -that we must always be the judges ourselves as to whether or not we -shall follow the example of Europe. Many times we have refused to walk -in the path of European precedent, preferring very properly to blaze -out a track for ourselves. More often than not this independence was -wise, but now and again it was unwise. - -Finally, one more quality of true Americanism must be pointed out. It -is not sectional. It does not dislike an idea, a man, or a political -party because that idea, that man, or that party comes from a certain -part of the country. It permits a man to have a healthy pride in being -a son of Virginia, a citizen of New York, a native of Massachusetts, -but only on condition that he has a pride still stronger that he is an -American, a citizen of the United States. True Americanism is never -sectional. It knows no north and no south, no east and no west. And -as it has no sectional likes and dislikes, so it has no international -likes and dislikes. It never puts itself in the attitude of the -Englishman who said, “I’ve no prejudices, thank Heaven, but I do hate -a Frenchman!” It frowns upon all appeals to the former allegiance of -naturalized citizens of this country; and it thinks that it ought -to be enough for any man to be an American without the aid of the -hyphen which makes him a British-American, an Irish-American, or a -German-American. - -True Americanism, to conclude, feels that a land which bred Washington -and Franklin in the last century, and Emerson and Lincoln in this -century, and which opens its schools wide to give every boy the chance -to model himself on these great men, is a land deserving of Lowell’s -praise as “a good country to live in, a good country to live for, and a -good country to die for.” - - (1896) - - - - -Transcriber’s Notes - -In a few cases, obvious errors in punctuation have been corrected. - -Page 107: “‘Tess of the Durbervilles’” changed to “‘Tess of the -d’Urbervilles’” - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARTS OF SPEECH: ESSAYS ON -ENGLISH *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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