“Set shallow brooks to surging seas,
An orient pearl to a white pease”.
Puttenham.
[182] [‘Eaves’ (old English efes) from which an imaginary singular ‘eave’ has sometimes been evolved, as when Tennyson speaks of a ‘cottage-eave’ (In Memoriam, civ.), and Cotgrave of ‘an house-eave’.]
[183] It is curious that despite of this protest, one of his plays has for its name, Sejanus his Fall.
[184] Even this does not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; on the contrary he boldly asserts (Spectator, No. 135), “The same single letter ‘s’ on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the ‘his’ or ‘her’ of our forefathers”.
[185] Nothing can be better than the way in which Wallis disposes of this scheme, although less successful in showing what this ‘s’ does mean than in showing what it cannot mean (Gramm. Ling. Anglic., c. 5); Qui autem arbitrantur illud s, loco his adjunctum esse (priori scilicet parte per aphæresim abscissâ), ideoque apostrophi notam semper vel pingendam esse, vel saltem subintelligendam, omnino errant. Quamvis enim non negem quin apostrophi nota commode nonnunquam affigi possit, ut ipsius litteræ s usus distinctius, ubi opus est, percipiatur; ita tamen semper fieri debere, aut etiam ideo fieri quia vocem his innuat, omnino nego. Adjungitur enim et fœminarum nominibus propriis, et substantivis pluralibus, ubi vox his sine solœcismo locum habere non potest: atque etiam in possessivis ours, yours, theirs, hers, ubi vocem his innui nemo somniaret.
[186] See the proofs in Marsh’s Manual of the English Language, English Edit., pp. 280, 293.
[187] I cannot think that it would exceed the authority of our University Presses, if this were removed from the Prayer Books which they put forth, as certainly it is supprest by many of the clergy in the reading. Such a liberty they have already assumed with the Bible. In all earlier editions of the Authorized Version it stood at 1 Kin. xv. 24: “Nevertheless Asa his heart was perfect with the Lord”; it is “Asa’s heart” now. In the same way “Mordecai his matters” (Esth. iii. 4) has been silently changed into “Mordecai’s matters”; and in some modern editions, but not in all, “Holofernes his head” (Judith xiii. 9) into “Holofernes’ head”.
[188] In a good note on the matter, p. 6, in the Comprehensive Grammar prefixed to his Dictionary, London, 1775.
[189] See Grimm. Deut. Gramm., vol. ii. pp. 609, 944.