PART III

BOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

I

_A HISTORY OF MODERN COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH_--BY H. C. WYLD

I purposely refrained from saying "Philology" because it has a frightening sound. There is a feeling that the study of literature is directly hostile to a study of Philology, whereas the truth is that, as Professor Wyld says, "_Rightly interpreted, language is a mirror of the minds and manners of those who speak it_," a point of view which cannot be sufficiently emphasised.

In the old days the study of language meant the chasing of umlaut and the tracking down of ablaut; to-day we find ourselves enticed into the study of modern colloquial English in these words:

"Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore, Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise."

The study of language in H. C. Wyld's _History of Modern Colloquial English_ becomes "one line of approach to the Knowledge of Man," and is vastly intriguing.

We find ourselves, for instance, trying to account for the great shifting in pronunciation between the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century in words of the "er" and "ar" type. Why did "sarvice," "vartue," "sarmon" die out, and "Derby," "Berkshire," "clerk" remain? Of course the great factor which nowadays destroys the value of vocabulary as a specific characteristic of a given regional dialect is the migratory habits of the population, and the war will have done more to ruin it than any amount of Elementary Education.

But we are concerned for the moment with curiosities. Why is "napkin" to be preferred to "serviette"? Why do not people who speak of "the influenza" say "the appendicitis"? Even so great an authority on social propriety as Lord Chesterfield talks of "the head-ach." Where do shop-walkers get their "half-hose," "vest" (for waistcoat), "neckwear," "footwear" and similar words? What has happened to the word "_genteel_"?

"O damn anything that's low"--"The genteel thing is the genteel thing"; but the fun lies in finding out what each age and each individual means or has meant by "genteel" and "low."

It is with a certain sense of surprise that those who have never studied the English Language find that in mediæval times our ancestors gave the alphabet Continental values; those who have a smattering of literary history are equally surprised to find that Chaucer, "the Father of English Literature," did not create the English of Literature; he found it ready to his hand and used it with a gaiety, a freshness, a tenderness and a humanity which has never been surpassed.

Those interested in Literature have ever looked upon the fifteenth century as an arid waste: in language, on the other hand, it is a period of intense importance. For one thing, there is a big increase in the number of people who can write, and therefore in the number of private documents that have come down to us. Freed from the shackles of the professional scribe, writing becomes a listening to actual people speaking, and so we find a great variety of spelling ... we find that modern English is beginning ... and there is of course the introduction of printing. It is to these old printers and to these old printers alone that we owe our persistence in clinging to an outworn system of spelling.

For four hundred and fifty years they have dictated to us how we are to spell, and a defence of our existing system which is completely unphonetic is defensible chiefly on the ground of custom, not at all for any pretended historical merit. If only Caxton had been a trifle more enterprising our spelling would have been less widely divorced from the facts of pronunciation.

In the sixteenth century we find that regional dialect disappears completely from the written language of the South and Midlands--almost every private letter contains a certain number of spellings which throw light upon pronunciation: "the tongue which Shakespeare spake" was the tongue which he wrote: and there is a definite unity between the colloquial language and the language of literature which is after all natural when we think how closely approximated to the action done was every word written by the Elizabethans who one and all seem to have been writers as well as soldiers, statesmen, politicians, sailors, merchant venturers and ambassadors.

"It is not for nothing," says Professor Wyld, "that matters stood thus between the men of letters and the courtiers and the explorers in the age when Literary English was being made, or rather, let us say, when English speech was being put to new uses, and made to express in all its fullness the amazing life of a wonderful age, with all its fresh experiences, thoughts and dreams.

"If anyone doubts whether the language of Elizabethan literature was actually identical with that of everyday life, or whether it was not rather an artful concoction, divorced from the real life of the age, let him, after reading something of the lives and opinions of a few of the great men we have briefly referred to, ask himself whether the picture of Ascham, Wilson, Sidney, or Raleigh posturing and mourning like the Della Cruscans of a later age, is a conceivable one ... if the speech of the great men we have been considering was unaffected and natural, it certainly was not vulgar. If it be vulgar to say _whot_ for _hot_, _stap_ for _stop_, _offen_ for _often_, _sarvice_ for _service_, _venter_ for _venture_: if it be slipshod to say _Wensday_ for _Wednesday_, _beseechin_ for _beseeching_, _stricly_ for _strictly_, _sounded_ for _swooned_, _attemps_ for _attempts_, and so on; then it is certain that the Queen herself, and the greater part of her Court, must plead guilty to these imputations."

The individualism in spelling which still to a certain extent prevailed in the sixteenth century enables us to collect from written works, to a far higher degree than at present, the individual habits of speech which the writer possessed. The result of an examination of the writings of this age, from this point of view, is that we see that there existed a greater degree of variety in speech--both in pronunciation and in grammatical forms--than exists now.

One particularly valuable document which Professor Wyld makes use of is the diary of Henry Machyn, a sixteenth-century tradesman who gossips at random in the vernacular of the middle-class Londoner with no particular education or refinement. Like the Wellers, he confuses his _v's_ and _w's_: _wacabondes_, _wergers_, _walues_, _welvet_, _woyce_, _voman_, _Vestmynster_ are examples. He misplaces his initial aspirates, _alff_, _Amton Courte_, _ard_, _Allallows_, _elmet_, _alpeny_, _hanswered_, _haskyd_, _harme_: his is the largest list of "dropped aspirates" in words of English, not Norman-French, origin which Professor Wyld has found in any document as early as this. _As_ as a relative pronoun, _good ons_ for _good ones_, _syngyne_ for _singing_, _wyche_ for _which_ and _watt_ for _what_ are valuable signs. Machyn lets us into more secrets of contemporary speech than does any other writer of his period: he is marvellously emancipated from traditional spelling, which makes him a wonderful guide to the lower type of London English of his time.

When he gets to the seventeenth century the ordinary reader of to-day feels that the writers of that period begin for the first time to speak like men and women of his own age; both in spirit and in substance we have reached our own English; by the time we reach Sir John Suckling and Cowley we scent a colloquial modernity which is altogether foreign to the soaring periods of Milton, the eccentricity of Sir Thomas Browne or the didactic aloofness of Bacon. Dryden was conscious of great differences between the speech of his own time as reflected in writing, especially in the drama, and that of the Elizabethans. He attributes the change and "improvement" to the polish and refinement of Charles II.'s Court. He congratulates himself that "the stiff forms of conversation" had passed away; his charges against the older age are merely charges against the archaic and unfamiliar. To be obsolete in his eyes was to be inferior. Hence his attempt to modernise Chaucer and improve on Shakespeare. These strictures of Dryden about English refer primarily to literature, but they are applicable to the colloquial language. If literary prose style changes it is because the colloquial language has changed first.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century we have Swift's instructive treatises on the English of his day and of the age before, which is diametrically opposed to Dryden's theories. But it is important to notice that among the hosts of solecisms to which he objects he does not quote what we should expect him to quote. Why does he not mention _Lunnon_, _Wensday_, _Chrismas_, _greatis_ (greatest), _respeck_, _hounes_ (hounds)? The reason is that they were so widespread among the best speakers that he himself didn't notice anything wrong with them. His strictures are those of the academic pedant, Dryden's are those of the man of the world.

But for a study of seventeenth-century colloquial English we are directed to the letters in the _Verney Memoirs_. Just as in the sixteenth century Henry Machyn's diary was more to our purpose than the work of any great man, so are the _Verney Papers_ in the seventeenth century the eternal joy of the philologist. A large proportion of the letters are written by ladies, and it is from these that we get the greater number of departures from the conventional spelling which shed so much light upon pronunciation. If they spell phonetically it is not because their talk was more careless, but because they read less and were therefore unfamiliar with the orthodox spelling of printed books. To spell badly, it must be remembered, was no fault in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. From them we get this common form of pronouncing _ar_ for _er_--_sartinly_, _desarve_, _sarvant_, _sarve_, _presarve_, _divartion_, _larne_, _marcy_; from them we get _gine_ for _join_, _byled_ for _boiled_, _oblege_ for _oblige_, _seein_, _missin_, _comin_, _disablegin_, _lemonds_, _night gownd_; they shorten _have_ to _a_; they say _between you and I_ and _he is reasonable well agane_.

This free and easy pronunciation and grammar which are characteristic of fashionable English down to the middle of the eighteenth century is partly due to the intimate relation that existed between the ruling classes who visited their estates in the country and came directly into contact with regional speech. "It is just this constant touch with country pursuits and rustic dialect which distinguished, and still distinguishes, the upper classes from the middle-class dwellers in the town."

We owe a good deal to a phonetician called Cooper, whose _Grammatica Anglicana_ was published in 1685. From him we see that _line_ and _loin_ had the same pronunciation. _Ant_ and _aunt_, _Rome_ and _room_, _Noah's_ and _nose_, _Walter_ and _water_, _doer_ and _door_, _pulls_ and _pulse_, _shire_ and _shear_--these show us at once how closely the real rustic of to-day gets to the fashionable speech of two hundred years ago. He then gives us pronunciations which he would have his readers avoid as barbarous: _ommost_ for _almost_, _wuts_ for _oats_, _fut_ for _foot_; but it is pleasant to find that Mr Cooper is pleasantly free from that gross and besetting sin of the schoolmaster to describe an ideally "correct" English.

This omission of the "l" (in _Walter_) is extended by another "phonographer" in 1701 to _St Albans_, _Talbot_, _falcon_, _almanac_, _almost_, _Falmouth_, _falter_: apparently too, in his time, the _au_ sound which most of us have kept in _sausage_ and _because_ extended then to _auburn_, _auction_, _audience_, _august_, _aunt_, _austere_, _daunt_, _fault_, _fraud_, _jaundice_, _Paul_ and _vault_.

William Baker in 1724 gave us in his _Rules for True Spelling and Writing English_, an instructive list of what he called "words that are commonly pronounced very different from what they are written"! _Stomick_, _spannel_, _Dannel_, _venison_, _medson_ are noteworthy.

From the middle of the eighteenth century there are signs of a reaction against a laxity in pronunciation, influenced perhaps by Lord Chesterfield and Doctor Johnson.

Johnson, we know, favoured the "regular and solemn" rather than the "cursory and colloquial."

It is to be noticed in passing that all the "reforms" in pronunciation and grammar which have passed into general currency in colloquial English during the last hundred and fifty years have come from below and not from above, in the first instance. This accounts for what some of us look on as the offensive vulgarity of the modern pronunciations of _waistcoat_, _often_, _forehead_, _landscape_, _handkerchief_, due to a wish to speak correctly. So our pronunciation of _gold_, _servant_, _oblige_, _nature_, _London_, _Edward_, etc., would in their turn have struck our grandfathers as offensive vulgarisms.

The later eighteenth century and the early nineteenth seem to have favoured a very serious turn of mind. It is really extraordinary to think of the hold which Jane Austen exerts over us when we come to analyse the total absence of brilliance, humour, pointedness or charm of any kind that marks the conversation of her characters. The charm and the genius lie in the author's handling of these second-rate people, but she represents them as they actually were. These are actually the conversations of living people. All the little pomposities and reticences, the polite formulas, the unconscious vulgarisms, the well-bred insincerities of the age are here perfectly displayed. The Bennets, D'Arcy's, Wodehouses, etc., pronounced their words _kyard_, _gyearl_, _ojus_, _Injun_, _comin'_, _goin'_, and so on. Lady Catherine de Burgh probably said _Eddard_, _tay_, _chaney_, _ooman_, _neigb'rood_, _lanskip_, _Lunnon_, _cheer_ (chair) and perhaps _goold_, _obleege_ and _sarvant_.

Professor Wyld quite rightly waxes indignant over the rise of bogus pronunciations, based purely on the spelling, among persons who were ignorant of the best traditional usage until they obtained currency among the better classes. "It would be desirable," he says, "to run these monstrosities to earth, when it would probably appear that many had their origin among ignorant teachers of pronunciation." "It would be an interesting inquiry," he says in another place, "how far the falling off in the quality of prose style among the generality of writers after the third quarter of the eighteenth century is related to social developments. An East Indian director is said to have told Charles Lamb (of all men!) that the style the Company most appreciated was the humdrum, thus doubtlessly voicing the literary ideals of the rising class of bankers, brokers, and nabobs whose point of view was largely to dominate English taste for several generations."

It is worth remembering that the change in pronunciation of a host of words like _heat_, _meat_, _eat_, _ease_, _sea_, _speak_, _cheat_, _dream_, _deceit_ from _hate_, _mate_, _ate_, _ase_, _say_ and so on is not in the nature of a sound change, but is merely the abandonment of one type of pronunciation, and the adoption of another, a very common phenomenon.

It was a visit to _The Beggar's Opera_ that made me think the following sentence worthy of comment. The present-day vulgarism of dropping the initial aspirate was not widespread much before the end of the eighteenth century, and it made one wince to hear an otherwise good actor so far go out of his part as to drop "h's" where the original would never have done so. The restoration of an aspirate in _humour_ is a trick of yesterday. The gap in the evidence between Machyn and two hundred years later is remarkable. The practice which did exist in Machyn's day in London must have been confined to a limited class. The wrong addition of _h_ is far more noticeable.

In a most diverting final chapter Professor Wyld dilates on colloquial idiom, and reminds us how impossible it would be for us, if we were transported into the sixteenth century, to know how to greet or take leave of those we met, how to express our thanks suitably, how to ask a favour, pay a compliment or send a polite message to a gentleman's wife. We should be at a loss how to begin and end the simplest note, whether to a friend, relative or stranger. We should hesitate every moment how to address the person we were talking to.

Readers of Ford Madox Hueffer's _Ladies whose Bright Eyes_, and those who saw _When Knights were Bold_, will realise what infinite amusement can be called up by imagining oneself driven to talk on level terms with our ancestors.

Professor Wyld opens up the subject by giving characteristic specimens of modes of greeting, farewells, compliments, endearments, angry speeches, oaths, affectations and so on, all of which are entertaining and enlightening. We find, for instance, most of our modern formulas in letter-writing in use before the end of the first half of the seventeenth century.

For anyone in the least interested in the sources and development of his own language there is no book which will whet his appetite to pursue the subject still more deeply than Professor Wyld's History. It has the added advantage that scholars will find in it plenty of material for further research; but everyone should read it for the flood of light it sheds on what we fondly imagined to be good taste, on what is falsely thought to be "the correct thing," and most of all because it shows us still another way of "catching the manners" of other ages "living as they rise."

II

_THE ROMANCE OF WORDS_--BY ERNEST WEEKLEY

Professor Weekley interests us in philology no less than Professor Wyld, but he treads an entirely different path. His aim is to select the unexpected in etymology, to show us the close connection between _jilt_ and _Juliet_, to trace _assegai_ back to Chaucer, to explain the true meaning of phrases like _curry favour_, which really means the combing down of a horse of a particular colour.

The result of this system is that we begin for ourselves to eye every word with suspicion, and work out by ourselves reasons why _trivial_ means _commonplace_ (it can be picked up anywhere, at the meet of "three ways," _trivium_), and so on.

Why are the series of monosyllables by which notes are indicated, do, re, mi, fa, so, la? They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn:

"_Ut_ (_do_) queant laxis _re_sonare fibris _Mi_ra questorum _fa_muli tuorum _Sol_ve polluti _la_bü reatum Sancte Iohannees ..."

Professor Weekley invites us to watch words as they travel, an amusing game.

_Apricot_ starts in mediæval Greek, through vulgar Latin as _præcox_ (early ripe), through Arabia. It first crossed the Adriatic, passed on to Asia Minor or the north coast of Africa, and then travelling along the Mediterranean re-entered Southern Europe. _Carat_ does much the same, being a corruption through French, Italian and Arabic of the Greek [Greek: κερατιον] (fruit of the locust-tree, little horn). _Hussar_ is a doublet of _corsair_, and has travelled a long way since the separation first took place. The _cocoa_ of _cocoanut_ is a Spanish baby word for a bogey-man.

Then there are words of popular manufacture like _ortolan_, _guinea-pig_ (which is not a pig and does not come from Guinea), _parrot_ ("little Peter"), _pinchbeck_ and _nicotine_ (from the names of men), and so on.

Phonetic accidents account for many vagaries, as we see only too commonly with the letter "_h_." It is noteworthy that in Imperial Rome educated people sounded the aspirate, while it completely disappeared from the everyday language of the lower classes, the vulgar Latin from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned.

That is why the Romance languages have no aspirate. Our "educated" _h_ in modern English is mainly artificial, as we saw before: cf. _Armitage_ with _hermitage_.

Then there are sound changes by assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis: the _lime_ and _linden_ is an example of the first; _tankard_ for _cantar_, _wattle_ and _wallet_ examples of the third. Some words shrink, like _Spittlegate_ near Grantham for _hospital gate_, _gin_ for _Geneva_, _grog_ from the admiral who wore _grogram_ breeches, _navvy_ for _navigator_. Words have a habit too of completely changing their meaning. _Treacle_ used for _balm_ in Coverdale's Bible from _theriaca_, a remedy against snake-bite, a _lumber_-room, is really a _Lombard_ room, where the pawnbrokers stored pledged property.

Adjectives are especially subject to change. _Quaint_ used to mean _acquaint_; _restive_ used to mean standing stock still; _smug_ used to mean trim, elegant, beautiful; _homely_ used to mean ugly, disagreeable, coarse.

_Miniature_ ought to mean something painted in _minium_ (red lead).

The original _scavenger_ was an important official.

There is too the study of semantics--the science of meanings as distinguished from phonetics, the science of sound.

The _exchequer_ is really a _chess-board_; _chancel_ a _cross-bar_, so _cancel_.

The study of metaphors is a little startling, when we find that to "take the cake" is paralleled by the Greek [Greek: λαβειν τον πυραμουντα], and that "to lose the _ship_ for a ha'porth of tar" is merely dialect for _sheep_. Tar is used as a medicine for sheep.

Folk etymology is worth spending time over, if only to discover such things as the derivation of _humble-pie_, a pie made from the _umbles_ of a stag; _umpire_ (non per), not equal; _ramper_, causeway, a doublet of _rampart_; _purley_, a strip of disforested woodland from _pour-allée_; _taffrail_ from _tafel_, picture; _posthumous_, from _postumus_, latest-born. _Witch-elm_ has nothing to do with witches; it is for _weech-elm_, the bent elm.

Ignorance of the true meaning of a word leads to vain repetitions: _greyhound_ means _hound-hound_; _Buckhurst Holt Wood_ means beech wood wood wood; a _cheerful face_ means a face full of face.

And before taking leave of us and sending us off on a thousand different scents of our own in chase of words Professor Weekley warns us to preserve the rules of the hunt. A sound etymology must not violate the recognised laws of sound change (these may be found in Professor Wyld's book); the development of meaning must be clearly traced, and it must start from the earliest or fundamental sense of the word.

With the few delicious examples that I have quoted before you, multiplied by a thousand in _The Romance of Words_, this is a game to send you into ecstasies, and one of which you can never tire.

III

_THE ROMANCE OF NAMES_--BY ERNEST WEEKLEY

This companion volume to _The Romance of Words_ is no less diverting. It is just one branch of the hunt, and perhaps the most interesting one to start with. We find mythical etymologies like that of the Napiers of Merchiston who took the motto _n'a pier_ ("has no equal"), whereas their ancestors were the servants who looked after the napery. Not all the _Seymours_ are _St Maurs_. Some of them were once _Seamers_--_i.e._ tailors.

The ff in _ffrench_ and _ffoulkes_ is sheer affectation, as the _ff_ is merely the method of indicating the capital letter in early documents. The telescoping of long names leads to trouble among the ignorant. Auchinleck, _Affleck_; Postlethwaite, _Posnett_; Wolstenholme, _Woosnam_ are good examples of this.

It is well to be reminded, for the sake of those who bear "hideous names," of the following facts. Matthew Arnold in his essay on the _Function of Criticism at the Present Time_ is moved by the case of _Wragg_ to this:

"What a touch of grossness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names--_Higginbottom_, _Stiggins_, _Bugg_."

As a matter of fact, _Wragg_ is the first element in the heroic Ragnar; _Bugg_ is the Anglo-Saxon Bucga; _Stiggins_ is the illustrious Stigand, and _Higginbottom_ is purely geographical.

We owe a great many of our names in disguise to the paladins and of course to the Bible. _Pankhurst_ is Pentecost, _Chubb_ and _Jupp_ are derived from Job, _Cradock_ from Caradoc (Caractacus), _Maddox_ from Madoc, _Izzard_ from Isolt, _Rome_ from Roland.

Metronymics, as Professor Weekley hastens to assure us, are not always a sign of moral depravity: in mediæval times the children of a widow often assumed the mother's name.

From Matilda we get Tillotson, from Beatrice Betts, from Isabel Ibbotson, from Avice Haweis.

With regard to local surnames we have to accustom ourselves to the idea that the name of a county, town or village was acquired when the locality was left. _Scott_ is an English name, _English_ or _Inglis_ is Scottish; _Cornish_ and _Cornwallis_ first became common in Devonshire, _French_ and _Francis_ are English ... for the same reason _Cutler_ is a rare name in Sheffield. The great exception _Curnow_ in Cornwall may stand for those who could only speak the old Cornish language.

Morris (Moorish) is probably a nickname due to complexion.

"In _ford_, in _ham_, in _ley_ and _tun_ The most of English surnames run."

It is true that we owe many names to "spots." It is curious how _Field_, _Lake_, _Pool_, _Spring_, _Street_ and _Marsh_ persist in the singular, while _Meadows_, _Rivers_, _Mears_, _Wells_, _Rhodes_ and _Myers_ hang on to the plural. So we get _Nokes_, but _Nash_: monosyllables tend to the plural. There are certain Celtic words connected with scenery--_Lynn_, _Carrick_, _Craig_ are common examples.

_Beerbohm Tree_ is pleonastic, meaning pear-tree tree. _Thackeray_ means the corner where the thatch was stored. _Kellogg_ is derived from kill hog. _Cazenove_ and _Newbolt_ have the same meaning. _Rothschild_ means red shield, _Hawtrey_ comes from Hauterive, but Norman ancestry is not always to be assumed because we find French spot-names so common in England (_Neville_, _Villiers_, etc.). _Boyes_ and _Boyce_ may spring from a man of pure English descent who happened to be described _del bois_ instead of _atte wood_, but this is rare. _Roach_ is not a fish-name, but corresponds to _Delaroche_. _Pew_, if not _Ap Hugh_, was a _Dupuy_.

Occupative names become a natural surname, but _Knight_ is not always knightly, for Anglo-Saxon _cuiht_ means servant; _Labouchère_ was the lady butcher, _Cordner_ the worker in Cordovan leather; _Muir_ was _le muur_, who had charge of the mews in which the hawks were kept while moulting. _Reader_ and _Booker_ have nothing to do with literature: the former thatched, the latter was a butcher.

Professor Weekley devotes one whole chapter to show the difficulties that beset the etymologist in his search to derive one single word accurately. The specimen name he takes is _Rutter_, which he eventually traces to fiddler.

From the lower orders of the church we get _Lister_, a reader; _Bennet_, an exorcist; and _Collet_, an acolyte.

In trades we get _Fuller_ in the south, _Tucker_ (toucher) in the west, and _Walker_ in the north. _Secker_ means sackmaker, _Parmenter_ a parchmenter, _Pargater_ a dauber, _Straker_ a maker of tires. _Grieve_, _Graves_ and _Greaves_ was a land agent, _Coster_ dealt in costards--_i.e._ apples; _Jagger_ worked draught-horses for hire; _Stewart_ was the sty-ward; _Todhunter_ hunted the fox; _Toller_ collected the tolls.

Among nicknames _Earnes_ means uncle, and _Neave_ nephew. Who would recognise _Halfpenny_ in _MacAlpine_? _Coffin_ means bald, _Lloyd_ grey, and _Russell_ red; _Oliphant_ elephant; _Hinks_, from Hengst, a stallion; _Stott_, a bullock; _Luttrell_, an otter; _Talbot_, a hound; _Colfox_, a black fox; _Fitch_, a polecat.

Fish-names are usually not genuine.

IV

_THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE_--BY LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

There are few of us so learned that we can afford to dispense with the aid given by the small volumes in the Home University Library in any subject, and Mr Pearsall Smith's philological book is one of the most informative and interesting of the series.

Here we learn of the tendency in English to put the accent on borrowed French words on the first syllable when we decide to pronounce them in our own way: later borrowings are accented according to what we imagine the native pronunciation to be: so we get _gentle_, _dragon_, _gállant_, _baron_, _button_ and _mutton_ of old time against the newer words _genteel_, _dragoon_, _gallânt_, _buffoon_, _cartoon_, _balloon_. In like manner words like _message_ and _cabbage_ show their antiquity when compared with _massage_, _mirage_ and _prestige_. _Police_ has kept its English accent only in Ireland and Scotland.

Mr Pearsall Smith, like Professor Wyld, has much to say against the pedants, and shows us how letters like the _b_ in _debt_, the _l_ in _fault_, the _p_ in _receipt_, the _d_ in _advance_ and _advantage_, the _c_ in _scent_ and _scissors_ have been inserted incorrectly by English scholars who ought to have known better.

In the course of an enthusiastic defence of a mixed language as against a pure national home-bred speech he makes the valuable point that we are richer than most nations in that we can express subtle shades of difference of meaning, of emotional significance between such pairs of words as _paternal_ and _fatherly_, _fortune_ and _luck_, _celestial_ and _heavenly_, _royal_ and _kingly_ by reason of this intermixture of foreign elements.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is on "Makers of English Words," which gives us yet another avenue of approach to the study of the language.

Not only interesting, but surprising, are some of the results gleaned from this: that Sir Isaac Newton was the first to use _centrifugal_ and _centripetal_; that Jeremy Bentham coined _international_; Huxley was responsible for _Agnostic_; _cyclone_ was created in 1848 by a meteorologist, but _anti-cyclone_ had to wait for Sir Francis Galton. Whewell invented _scientist_ and Macaulay was responsible for _constituency_. Other words created in the nineteenth century are _Eurasian_, _esogamy_, _folklore_, _hypnotism_, _telegraph_, _telephone_, _photograph_ and a host of other scientific terms. To go back to the classics: we owe the formation of many new words to Sir Thomas Browne, among them _hallucination_, _insecurity_, _retrogression_, _precarious_, _antediluvian_. Milton coined _infinitude_, _liturgical_, _gloom_, _pandemonium_, _echoing_, _rumoured_, _moonstruck_, _Satanic_. Shakespeare coined more than all the rest of the poets put together. To Coverdale and Tindale we owe a great number of new compounds, like _loving-kindness_, _long-suffering_, _broken-hearted_. It is delightful to think that we owe _irascibility_ to Doctor Johnson, _persiflage_ and _etiquette_ to Lord Chesterfield, _bored_ and _blasé_ to Byron, _colonial_ and _diplomacy_ to Burke, and _pessimism_ to Coleridge. After Keats (whose creations are miniature poems in themselves) there is a remarkable decline in word-creation.

Two valuable chapters are devoted to "Language and History," in which we find how far the evolution of our race and civilisation is embodied in our vocabulary--"A contradiction between history and language rarely or never occurs"--and a further chapter on "Language and Thought" is of extraordinary interest in showing us what words we must delete from our vocabulary if we wish to enter into the spirit and popular consciousness of the Middle Ages, that world of supernatural purposes and interventions. All sense of past and future would drop from us. Our thoughts would be absorbed entirely by immediate practical considerations. We should feel imprisoned, though we might feel more dignified. With the Renaissance we should expand enough to observe our fellows: a century later we should turn to the study of ourselves.

"The change of thought from one generation to another does not depend so much on new discoveries as on the gradual shifting, into the centre of vision, of ideas and feelings that had been but dimly realised before. And it is just this shifting--this change, so important and yet so elusive--which is marked and dated in the history of language."

There was once an American writer who said: "You commend or condemn yourself by your regular choice of words ... don't use such commonplace words as grab, bet, awful, says, worst, boss, monkeying, job, ain't, tackled, floored, bicker, rumpus, shindy, hunk, fellow, drub, henpecked, blubber, spout, pickings, croak, swipe, swap, handy, fluster, nasty, hankering, flabbergasted, highfalutin.... Are you familiar with such _desirable_ words as lassitude, flamboyant, nascent, legendary, perennial, Nemesis, cryptic, brooding, imperturbable, disenchanted, belated, cleavage, august, clarity, demarcation, indigenous, cloistered, malevolent?"

Well, if you agree with him (and there are people who do) it's quite time you started to read some books on the English Language, and if you don't it means that you already understand the delights of philology and you will need no further encouragement to read the four books I have mentioned, if you have not already done so.