Notes.—Adamant means the unsubduable; a chirurgeon is literally a worker with the hand; phantasia is the power of presenting to the mind’s eye a bodily image that is not present; presbuteros means simply elder. In the time of Shakspeare, fancy meant love. ‘Tell me where is fancy bred!’ is the first line of a song in the Merchant of Venice.
[42.] ENGLISH WORDS AND FRENCH WORDS IN SENTENCES.—The difference between English steeped in French and Latin, and English written almost wholly in pure English words, can be at once seen in the two following passages, which are taken from the work of Mr C. Schele De Vere, an American writer.
(a) ‘The Norman altered and increased our language; but he could not extirpate it. To defend his conquest, he took possession of the country; and, master of the soil, he erected fortresses and castles, and attempted to introduce new terms. The universe and the firmament—the planets, comets, and meteors—the atmosphere and the seasons, all were impressed with the seal of the conqueror. Hills became mountains, and dales valleys; streams were called rivers, and brooks rivulets; waterfalls, cascades; and woods, forests.’
All the words in italics in the above passage are either of Latin or of French origin; if of French, then they are Latin at second-hand.
(b) ‘But the dominion of the Norman did not extend to the home of the Englishman, it stopped at the threshold of his house; there, around the fireside in his kitchen,[A] and the hearth in his room,[12] he met his beloved kindred; the bride, the wife, and the husband, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, tied to each other by love, friendship, and kind feelings, knew nothing dearer than their own sweet home.’
Only one word in the above is French (dominion), and two are Latin (extend and kitchen). All the others are purely English.
[43.] ENGLISH WORDS LOST.—The copious introduction of Norman-French, Latin, and Greek terms into our language, had the effect of pushing a great number of purely English words out of our speech, or at least of making them less frequent in use. Thus we used to say fore-elders, but this word has had its place taken by ancestors; fairhood has been pushed out by beauty; and wonstead by residence. In the same way, forewit has given place to caution; licherest[13] to cemetery; inwit to conscience; bookhoard to library; and hindersome to obstructive. In fact, it is often easier for us to understand foreign words than those of our own native home-grown speech. The title of an old book written in the thirteenth century is the Ayenbite[14] of Inwyt—a title which is to us much more intelligible in its Franco-Latin translation of Remorse of Conscience. Mr Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, has tried to re-introduce the genuine homely English way of speaking and writing; and to banish Latin terms. Thus, in his Grammar or ‘Book of Speech-Craft,’ he calls singular, onely; plural, somely; and he calls degrees of comparison, pitches of suchness. The difficulty he has to contend with is, that this home English is less intelligible to our modern ears than the foreign Latin. Thus the following sentence looks like a word-puzzle: ‘These pitch-marks off mark sundry things by their sundry suchnesses, as, “The taller or less tall man of the two is my friend.”’ And he also says—what is a useful warning for us: ‘Speech was shapen of the breath-sounds of speakers, for the ears of hearers; and not from speech-tokens (letters) in books, for men’s eyes.’
CHAPTER II.
The History of the Grammar of English.
[1.] AN INFLECTED LANGUAGE.—When, in the fifth century, our English speech was brought over from the Continent, it was a highly inflected or Synthetic language; and it remained in this condition for several centuries. The coming of the Danes had the effect of beginning the dropping off of inflections. The coming of the Normans extended very much and hastened this process, which has gone on with considerable rapidity down to the present day. We may put the general fact in this way:
The English Language was a Synthetic Language down to about the year 1100; since that time, it has been becoming more and more of an Analytic Language.