ITS.
(Vol. vii., p. 578.)
I am sorry to intrude upon your valuable space again in reference to this little word, but the inquiry of Mr. Rye (p. 578.), and other reasons, render it desirable. The truth is that Mr. Keightley, Mr. Rye and myself, are more or less mistaken. 1. Mr. Keightley, in his quotation from Fairfax's Tasso (Mr. Singer's accurate reprint, 1817), has his in both lines. 2. Mr. Rye, in understanding me to refer to any translation proper; unless Sternhold and Hopkins are to be considered as having produced one. 3. Myself, in supposing the old metrical version in the Book of Common Prayer originally had the word its. I copied from the Oxford edition in fol. of 1770; but a 4to. edition, "printed by Iohn Daye, dwelling over Aldersgate, anno 1574," does not exhibit the word in the places specified; we have instead her in both places.
Hitherto, then, the oldest examples of the use of this word have been adduced from Shakspeare. These are to be found in the first folio, but are in each case printed with the apostrophe after the t,—it's. This method of writing the word, however, soon disappeared, for in a treatise of Pemble's, printed 1635 (the author died in 1623), it appears as we write it now:
"If faith alone by its own virtue and force."—Works, fol. p. 171.
I have not observed the fact remarked, that besides the use of his, her, hereof, thereof, of it, and the, it was customary to employ the unchanged word it for the possessive case. I will give an example or two. In the Genevan version, at Rom. viii. 20., we read "Not of it owne wille." This passage is thus quoted in 1611 and in 1622, but in a later edition of the same work, 1656, its is substituted for it. I have a note of one other instance from Perkins on Rev. ii. 28. (ed. 1606): "For as the sunne in the spring time quickeneth by it warme beames."
In conclusion, may I request that if any genuine instance of the use of this word its, is observed by any of your many contributors, they will communicate the fact to you? At present we can only go back to Shakspeare, in his Winter's Tale and Henry VIII.
B. H. C.