Words; Their Use and Abuse

by William Mathews

The devil does not care for your dialectics and eclectic homiletics, or Germanic objectives and subjectives; but pelt him with Anglo-Saxon in the name of God, and he will shift his quarters.—Rev. C. H. Spurgeon.

Words have their proper places, just like men;

We listen to, not venture to reprove,

Large language swelling under gilded domes,

Byzantine, Syrian, Persepolitan.—Landor.

It is a question of deep interest to all public speakers and writers, and one which has provoked not a little discussion of late years, whether the Saxon or the Romanic part of our language should be preferred by those who would employ “the Queen’s English” with potency and effect. Of late it has been the fashion to cry up the native element at the expense of the foreign; and among the champions of the former we may name Dr. Whewell, of Cambridge, and a modern rector of the University of Glasgow, whom De Quincey censures for an erroneous direction to the students to that effect. We may also add Lord Stanley,—one of the most brilliant and polished speakers in the British Parliament,—who, in an address some years ago to the students of the same university, after expressing his surprise that so few persons, comparatively, in Great Britain, have acquainted themselves with the origin, the history, and the gradual development of that mother tongue which is already spoken over half the world, which is destined to yet further geographical extension, and which embodies many of the noblest thoughts that have ever issued from the brain of man,—adds: “Depend upon it, it is the plain Saxon phrase, not the term borrowed from Greek or Roman literature, that, whether in speech or writing, goes straightest and strongest to men’s heads and hearts.” On the other hand “the Opium-Eater,” commenting on a remark of Coleridge that Wordsworth’s “Excursion” bristles beyond most poems with polysyllabic words of Greek or Latin origin, asserts that so must it ever be in meditative poetry upon solemn, philosophic themes. The gamut of ideas needs a corresponding gamut of expressions; the scale of the thinking, which ranges through every key, exacts for the artist an unlimited command over the entire scale of the instrument he employs.

It has been computed, he adds, that the Italian opera has not above six hundred words in its whole vocabulary; so narrow is the range of its emotions, and so little are those emotions disposed to expand themselves into any variety of thinking. The same remark applies to that class of simple, household, homely passion, which belongs to the early ballad poetry. “Pass from these narrow fields of the intellect, where the relations of the objects are so few and simple, and the whole prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable and sea-like arena upon which Shakespeare careers,—co-infinite with life itself,—yes, and with something more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What is the lexis? Is it Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon by preference? So far from that, the Latinity is intense,—not, indeed, in his construction, but in his choice of words; and so continually are these Latin words used, with a critical respect to their earliest (and where that happens to have existed, to their unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one argument I would rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis of Dr. Farmer as to Shakespeare’s learning.... These ‘dictionary’ words are indispensable to a writer, not only in the proportion by which he transcends other writers as to extent and as to subtlety of thinking, but also as to elevation and sublimity. Milton was not an extensive or discursive thinker, as Shakespeare was; for the motions of his mind were slow, solemn, sequacious, like those of the planets; not agile and assimilative; not attracting all things into its sphere; not multiform; repulsion was the law of his intellect,—he moved in solitary grandeur. Yet, merely from this quality of grandeur,—unapproachable grandeur,—his intellect demanded a larger infusion of Latinity into his diction.” De Quincey concludes, therefore, that the true scholar will manifest a partiality for neither part of the language, but will be governed in his choice of words by the theme he is handling.

This we believe to be the true answer to the question. The English language has a special dowry of power in its double-headed origin: the Saxon part of the language fulfils one set of functions; the Latin, another. Neither is good or bad absolutely, but only in its relation to its subject, and according to the treatment which the subject is meant to receive. The Saxon has nerve, terseness, and simplicity; it smacks of life and experience, and “puts small and convenient handles to things,—handles that are easy to grasp;” but it has neither height nor breadth for every theme. To confine ourselves to it would be, therefore, a most egregious error. The truth is, it is no one element which constitutes the power and efficiency of our noble and expressive tongue, but the great multitude and the rich variety of the elements which enter into its composition. Its architectural order is neither Doric, Ionic, nor Corinthian, but essentially composite; a splendid mosaic, to the formation of which many ancient and modern languages have contributed; defective in unity and symmetrical grace of proportion, but of vast resources and of immense power. With such a wealth of words at our command, to confine ourselves to the pithy but limited Saxon, or to employ it chiefly, would be to practise a foolish economy,—to be poor in the midst of plenty, like the miser amid his money bags. All experiments of this kind will fail as truly, if not as signally, as that of Charles James Fox, who, an intense admirer of the Saxon, attempted to portray in that dialect the revolution of 1688, and produced a book which his warmest admirers admitted to be meagre, dry, and spiritless,—without picturesqueness, color, or cadence.

It is true that within a certain limited and narrow circle of ideas, we can get along with Saxon words very well. The loftiest poetry, the most fervent devotion, even the most earnest and impassioned oratory, may all be expressed in words almost purely Teutonic; but the moment we come to the abstract and the technical,—to discussion and speculation,—we cannot stir a step without drawing on foreign sources. Simple narrative,—a pathos resting upon artless circumstances,—elementary feelings,—homely and household affections,—these are all most happily expressed by the old Saxon vocabulary; but a passion which rises into grandeur, which is complex, elaborate, and interveined with high meditative feelings, would languish or absolutely halt, without aid from the Romanic part of the vocabulary. If Anglo-Saxon is the framework or skeleton of our language, the spine on which the structure of our speech is hung,—if it is the indispensable medium of familiar converse and the business of life,—it no more fills out the full and rounded outline of our language, than the skeleton, nerves, and sinews form the whole of the human body. It is the classical contributions, the hundreds and thousands of Romanic words which during and since the sixteenth century have found a home in our English speech, that have furnished its spiritual conceptions, and endowed the material body with a living soul.

These words would never have been adopted, had they not been absolutely necessary to express new modes and combinations of thought. As children of softer climes and gentler aspect than our harsh but pithy Teutonic terms, they have been received into the English family of words, and add grace and elegance to the speech that has adopted them. The language has gained immensely by the infusion, not only in richness of synonym and the power of expressing nice shades of thought and feeling, but, more than all, in light-footed polysyllables that trip singing to the music of verse. If the saying of Shakespeare, that