I remember, years ago, thinking I must rebel against English by using ‘impitiable’ for ‘incapable of Pity.’ Yet I suppose that, according to Alford & Co., I was justified, though ‘pitiable’ is, I think always used of the thing pitied, not the Pitier. But I should defer to customary usage rather than to any particular whim of my own; only that it happened to come handy at the time, and I did not, and do not, much care.
But is not usage against your use of ‘imitable’ at p. 100, meaning what ought not, not what cannot, be imitated? ‘Non imitabile fulmen,’ etc., and, negatively, ‘inimitable’?
‘Vengeable’ with its host of Authorities surprised, and gratified, me.
Johnson, you say (p. 34) called ‘uncomeatable’ a low corrupt word: rather, as you well say, ‘a permissible colloquialism.’ Yes; like old Johnson’s own ‘Clubable’ by which he designated some Good sociable Fellow.
‘Party’ has good Authority (from Shakespeare himself, as we know), and is a handy word we ought
not to dismiss: better than the d---d ‘Individual’ which should only be used in philosophic or scientific discrimination. Still, Crabbe, in his fine Opium-inspired ‘World of Dreams’ should not recall his beloved as ‘that dear Party.’
Other adjectives beside those that ‘exit in able’ are cavilled at. ‘Fadeless’; what is ‘a Fade’? Why not ‘unfading’? Yet there is a difference between what has not as yet faded, and what cannot fade. And I shall become very ‘tiresome,’ though I don’t know of any ‘tire’ but of a Waggon wheel; and remain yours truly.
E. FitzGerald.
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. August 21/77.