Opuscula: Essays chiefly Philological and Ethnographical

by R. G. Latham

Now the system, that produces a negative excellence in morals, may produce also a negative excellence in literature. More than this (for the truth must be told) Art can not do. For Wit, and Vigour, and Imagination we must be indebted to Nature.

I know that the system of picking out, and holding up, either a neighbour's foibles, or an author's inelegancies, is not a gracious occupation; the question, however, is, not whether it be gracious or ungracious but whether it be efficient or inefficient.

Whosoever is conversant with the writings of etymologists must be well aware, that there are few subjects wherein men run wild to the degree that they run wild in Etymology. A little learning, dangerous everywhere, is preeminently dangerous in Etymology. There has been in the world an excess of bad etymology for two reasons.

The discovery of remote analogies is not only mental exercise, but, worse luck, it is a mental amusement as well. The imagination is gratified, and Criticism thinks it harsh to interpose.

Again, there is no language that a man so willingly illustrates as he illustrates his own. He knows it best, and he studies it with the greatest ease. He loves it not wisely but too well. He finds in its structure new and peculiar beauties; he overvalues its excellence, and he exaggerates its antiquity. Such are the men who talk—in Wales, of the ubiquity of the Celts; in Germany, of the Teutonic Origin of the Romans; and in Ireland of the Phœnician extraction of the Milesians.

Thus then, two out of the Thousand and One causes of bad Etymology are the reason psychological, and the reason patriotic. Nemini credendum de Patria sua.

I think that at the entrance upon an unsettled subject, a man should boldly say, and say at the very onset of his career, upon whose opinions he relies, and whose opinions he distrusts. He should profess himself, not indeed the implicit follower of any School, but he should name the School that he preferred. He should declare whose books he could recommend, and whose he would eschew. Thus, if I were lecturing upon Geology, I should say, at once, whether I were what is called a Scriptural Geologist or a Latitudinarian one: And thus, in the department in point, I name the writers I put faith in. In the works of Grimm and Rask I place much trust; in those of Horne Tooke some; and in those of Whiter and Vallancey (to name small men along with great) none whatsoever.

In the study of the Languages that have ceased to be spoken we find, in an Etymological view, one thing, and one thing only; words as they have been affected by previous processes of change; in other terms, the results of these processes. But in the Language that we hear spoken around us, and, still more, in the Language that we ourselves speak, we find something more than results; we find the processes that give occasion to them; in other terms, we see the change as it takes place. Within the lifetime of an individual, within even a very few years, those that look may find, not only that certain words are modified in respect to their meaning, and certain letters modified, in respect to their pronunciation, but they may also see how these modifications are brought about, ascertaining—of words the intermediate meanings, and of letters the intermediate sounds. We may trace the gradations throughout. We can, of our own Language, and in our own Times, see, with a certainty, what change our Language more especially affects; we can observe its tendencies. And we can do this because we can find towards what particular laxities (be they of meaning or be they of pronunciation) ourselves and our neighbours more especially have a bias. We can, as it were, prophesy. We cannot do this with the Latin of Augustus; we cannot do it with the Greek of Pericles.

Hence it is that what we will know, to a certainty, of Etymological processes, must be collected from Cotemporary Languages. Those who look for them elsewhere seek for the Living among the Dead; arguing from things unknown (at least unknown to a certainty), and so speculating laxly, and dogmatizing unphilosophically. Hence it is, that in Cotemporary Languages, and of those Cotemporary Languages, in our own most especially, we may lay deep and strong, and as the only true substratum of accurate criticism, the foundations of our knowledge of Etymological Processes. And, observe, we can find them in a sufficient abundance provided that we sufficiently look out for them. For Processes, the same in kind, though not the same in degree, are found in all languages alike. No process is found in any one language that is not also found (in some degree or other) in our own; and no process can be found in our own language which does not (in some degree or other) exist in all others beside. There are no such things as Peculiar Processes: since Languages differ from each other, not in the nature of their Processes, but in the degrees of their development. These are bold, perhaps novel, assertions, but they are not hasty ones.[1]

Simply considered as an Instrument of Etymology I imagine that the study of Cotemporary Languages is, in its importance, of the very first degree; while next in value to this (considered also, as an Instrument of Etymology,) is the study of Languages during what may be called their breakings-up, or their transitions.