But he was no very hardened coiner of words to be thus taken aback by objections:—
"By the way, I see Blackburn has queried (on MS. of Sister Songs) 'lovesome.' Is there no such word? I never made a doubt that there was. It is at any rate according to analogy. If it is an error, then 'lovely' must be substituted throughout, which differs somewhat in nuance of meaning."
He meets Mr. Archer's complaint by quoting Campion's "Cold age deafs not there our ears," and Shakespeare's "Beastly dumbed by him," and Keats' "Nighing to that mournful place":—
"In all this I am a born rebel, founding myself on observed fact before I start to learn theory of theorisers, systems of system-mongers. I doubt me but English verbs are, or were, commonly suggested and derived from adjectives; and had I time and a British Museum ticket would resolve the matter for myself. Anyway I have coined nought to the like; I mistrust not but your same 'dumbed' is all Archer has against me in this quarrel, and all he shall advance against me whereon to build such charge, nor shall he find another like verb in ought of verse I have written, search he like a lantern of Diogenes. The word lay to my hand and was a right lusty and well-pithed word, close grained and forcible as a cudgel, wherefore I used it; and surely I would have used a dozen such had they served my turn."
In another case his defence is ready; thus did he consider the weight, rarity, and character of a word or phrase:—
"Of 'nervure'; I should not, in a like passage, use cuticle of the skin of a flower or leaf: because it is a streaky word—its two K sounds and mouse-shrewd u make it like a wire tweaked by a plectrum. The u of nervure is not only unaccented, therefore unprominent in sound, but the soft v and n quite alter its effect from that it has when combined with k's and parchment-tight t's."
"'In nescientness, in nescientness,'" complained A. T. Q. C. in the Speaker, June 5 and May 29, 1897, "puts me at once into a frame of mind unfavourable to thorough enjoyment of what follows. . . . Undoubtedly the eulogies of his friends have been at once so precipitate and defiant as to lead us to suspect that he is being shielded from frank criticism; that his are not the rare and most desirable friends, who love none the less for their courage to detect faults and point them out; and that, by consequence, he is not being given a fair chance of correcting his excesses. . . . 'Monstrance,' 'vaultages,' 'arcane,' 'sciential,' 'coerule,' 'intemperably,' 'englut' (past participle), 'most strainedest' (double superlative)—these and the like are not easily allowed by anyone possessing a sense of the history of the language."
"Monstrance" is not the only word in that list that shows how hastily the critics fell foul of him, and those who think that Shakespeare bears some part in "the history of the language" may take "Most stillest" for a fair precedent of a double superlative.
Mr. E. K. Chambers, reviewing Sister Songs in 1895, wrote:—