IV

[165]As not, however, turning on averycoarse matter, and illustrating the subject with infinite wit and humour, I might refer the Spanish scholar to the discussion between Don Quixote and his squire on the dismissal of ‘regoldar’, from the language of good society, and the substitution of ‘erutar’ in its room (Don Quixote, 4. 7. 43). In a letter of Cicero to Pætus (Fam.ix. 22) there is a subtle and interesting disquisition on forbidden words, and their philosophy.

[166]Literature of Greece, p. 5.

[167][Notwithstanding the analogous instance of ‘abbess’ for ‘abbatess’ this account of ‘lass’ must be abandoned. It is the old Englishlasce(akin to Swedishlösk), meaning (1) one free or disengaged, (2) an unmarried girl (N.E.D.)]

[168]In Cotgrave’sDictionaryI find ‘praiseress’, ‘commendress’, ‘fluteress’, ‘possesseress’, ‘loveress’, but have never met them in use.

[169]On this termination see J. Grimm,Deutsche Gramm., vol. ii. p. 134; vol. iii. p. 339.

[170][The Knightes Tale, ed. Skeat, l. 2017.]

[171][Yes; so in N.E.D.]

[172]I am indebted for these last four to aNominalein theNational Antiquities, vol. i. p. 216.

[173]The earliest example which Richardson gives of ‘seamstress’ is from Gay, of ‘songstress’, from Thomson. I find however ‘sempstress’ in the translation of Olearius’Voyages and Travels, 1669, p. 43. It is quite certain that as late as Ben Jonson, ‘seamster’ and ‘songster’ expressed thefemaleseamer and singer; a single passage from hisMasque of Christmasis evidence to this. One of the children of Christmas there is “Wassel, like a neatsempsterandsongster;herpage bearing a brown bowl”. Compare a passage fromHolland’s Leaguer, 1632: “Atyre-womanof phantastical ornaments, asempsterfor ruffes, cuffes, smocks and waistcoats”.

[174]This was about the time of Henry VIII. In proof of the confusion which reigned on the subject in Shakespeare’s time, see his use of ‘spinster’ as—‘spinner’, themanspinning,Henry VIII, Act. i. Sc. 2; and I have no doubt that it is the same inOthello, Act i. Sc. 1. And a little later, in Howell’sVocabulary, 1659, ‘spinner’ and ‘spinster’ arebothreferred to the male sex, and the barbarous ‘spinstress’ invented for the female.

[175]I have included ‘huckster’, as will be observed, in this list. I certainly cannot produce any passage in which it is employed as thefemalepedlar. We have only, however, to keep in mind the existence of the verb ‘to huck’, in the sense of to peddle (it is used by Bishop Andrews), and at the same time not to let the present spelling of ‘hawker’ mislead us, and we shall confidently recognize ‘hucker’ (the German ‘höker’ or ‘höcker’), in hawker, that is, themanwho ‘hucks’, ‘hawks’, or peddles, as in ‘huckster’ thefemalewho does the same. When therefore Howell and others employ ‘hucksteress’, they fall into the same barbarous excess of expression, whereof we are all guilty, when we use ‘seamstress’ and ‘songstress’.—The note stood thus in the third edition. Since that was published, I have met in theNominalereferred to p. 155, the following, “hæc auxiatrix, ahukster”. [Huckster, xiii. cent.huccster, it may be noted is an older word in the language thanhukker(hucker) andto huck, both first appearing in the xiv. cent. N.E.D.]

[176][Preserved in the surnames Baxter and Brewster. See C. W. Bardsley,English Surnames, 2nd ed. 364, 379.]

[177]Notes and Queries, No. 157.

[178][‘Welkin’ is possibly a plural, but in Anglo-Saxonwolcenis a cloud, and the pluralwolcnu.]

[179]When Wallis wrote, it was only beginning to be forgotten that ‘chick’ was the singular, and ‘chicken’ the plural: “Sunt qui dicuntin singulari ‘chicken’, et in plurali ‘chickens’”; and even now the words are in many country parts correctly employed. In Sussex, a correspondent writes, they would as soon think of saying ‘oxens’ as ‘chickens’. [‘Chicken’ is properly a singular, old Englishcicen, the-enbeing a diminutival, not a plural, suffix (as in ‘kitten’, ‘maiden’). Thus ‘chicken’ was originally ‘a little chuck’ (or cock), out of which ‘chick’ was afterwards developed.]

[180]See Chaucer’sRomaunt of the Rose, 1032, where Richesse, “an high lady of great noblesse”, is one of the persons of the allegory; and compare Rev. xviii. 17, Authorized Version. This has so entirely escaped the knowledge of Ben Jonson, English scholar as he was, that in hisGrammarhe cites ‘riches’ as an example of an English word wanting a singular.

[181]“Set shallow brooks to surging seas,An orient pearl to a whitepease”.Puttenham.

[181]

“Set shallow brooks to surging seas,An orient pearl to a whitepease”.

Puttenham.

[182][‘Eaves’ (old Englishefes) 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, locohisadjunctum 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 vocemhisinnuat, omnino nego. Adjungitur enim et fœminarum nominibus propriis, et substantivis pluralibus, ubi voxhissine solœcismo locum habere non potest: atque etiam in possessivisours,yours,theirs,hers, ubi vocemhisinnui nemo somniaret.

[186]See the proofs in Marsh’sManual 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: “NeverthelessAsa hisheart was perfect with the Lord”; it is “Asa’sheart” now. In the same way “Mordecai hismatters” (Esth. iii. 4) has been silently changed into “Mordecai’smatters”; and in some modern editions, but not in all, “Holofernes hishead” (Judith xiii. 9) into “Holofernes’head”.

[188]In a good note on the matter, p. 6, in theComprehensive Grammarprefixed to hisDictionary, London, 1775.

[189]See Grimm.Deut. Gramm., vol. ii. pp. 609, 944.

[190]The existence of ‘stony’—‘lapidosus’, ‘steinig’, does not make ‘stonen’—‘lapideus’, ‘steinern’, superfluous, any more than ‘earthy’ makes ‘earthen’. That part of the field in which the good seed withered so quickly (Matt. xiii. 5) was ‘stony’. The vessels which held the water that Christ turned into wine (John iii. 6) were ‘stonen’.

[191]J. Grimm (Deutsche Gramm.vol. i, p. 1040): Dass die starke form die ältere, kräftigere, innere; die schwache die spätere, gehemmtere und mehr äusserliche sey, leuchtet ein. Elsewhere, speaking generally of inflections by internal vowel change, he characterizes them as a ‘chief beauty’ (hauptschönheit) of the Teutonic languages. Marsh (Manual of the English Language, p. 233, English ed.) protests, though, as it seems to me, on no sufficient grounds, against these terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, as themselves fanciful and inappropriate.

[192]The entire ignorance as to the past historic evolution of the language, with which some have undertaken to write about it, is curious. Thus the author ofObservations upon the English Language, without date, but published about 1730, treats all these strong præterites as of recent introduction, counting ‘knew’ to have lately expelled ‘knowed’, ‘rose’ to have acted the same part toward ‘rised’, and of course esteeming them as so many barbarous violations of the laws of the language; and concluding with the warning that “great care must be taken to prevent their increase”!!—p. 24. Cobbett does not fall into this absurdity, yet proposes in hisEnglish Grammar, that they should all be abolished as inconvenient. [Now many others are rapidly becoming obsolescent. How seldom do we hear ‘drank’, ‘shrank’, ‘sprang’, ‘stank’.]

[193]J. Grimm (Deutsche Gramm.vol. i. p. 839): “Die starke flexion stufenweise versinkt und ausstirbt, die schwache aber um sich greift”. Cf. i. 994, 1040; ii. 5; iv. 509.

[194][See also J. C. Hare,Two Essays in Eng. Philologyi. 47-56.]

[195]Thus Wallis (Gramm. Ling. Anglic., 1654): Singulari numero siquis alium compellet, vel dedignantis illud esse solet, vel familiariter blandientis. [For a good discussion of the old use of ‘thou’, see the Hares,Guesses at Truth, 1847, pp. 169-90. Even at the present day a Wessex matron has been known to resent the too familiar address of an inferior with the words, “Who bist thoua-theein’of”? (The Spectator, 1904, Sept. 3, p. 319).]

[196]What the actual position of the compellation ‘thou’ was at that time, we may perhaps best learn from this passage in Fuller’sChurch History, Dedication of Bookvii.: “In opposition whereunto [i.e. to the Quaker usage] we maintain thatthoufrom superiors to inferiors is proper, as a sign of command; from equals to equals is passable, as a note of familiarity; but from inferiors to superiors, if proceeding from ignorance, hath a smack of clownishness; if from affectation, a tone of contempt”.

[197]See on this subject of the dropping of grammatical gender, Pott,Etymologische Forschungen, part 2, pp. 404,sqq.

I propose, according to the plan sketched out in my first lecture, to take for my subject in the present those changes which in the course of time have found place, or now are finding place, in the meaning of many among our English words; so that, whether we are aware of it or not, we employ them at this day in senses very different from those in which our forefathers employed them of old. You observe that it is notobsoletewords, words quite fallen out of present use, which I propose to consider; but such, rather, as are still on the lips of men, but with meanings more or less removed from those which once they possessed. My subject is far more practical, has far more to do with your actual life, than if I had taken obsolete words, and considered them. These last have an interest indeed, but it is an interest of an antiquarian character. They constituted a part of the intellectual money with which our ancestors carried on the business of their life; but now they are rather medals for the cabinets and collections of the curious than current money for the needs and pleasures of all. Their wings are clipped, so that they are “wingedwords” no more; the spark of thought or feeling, kindling from mind to mind, no longer runs along them, as along the electric wires of the soul.

Obsolete Words

And then, besides this, there is little or no danger that any should be misled by them. A reader lights for the first time on one of these obsolete English words, as ‘frampold’, or ‘garboil’, or ‘brangle’[198]; he is at once conscious of his ignorance; he has recourse to a glossary, of if he guesses from the context at the word’s signification, still his guess is as a guess to him, and no more. But words that have changed their meaning have often a deceivableness about them; a reader not once doubts but that he knows their intention, has no misgiving but that they possess for him the same force which they possessed for their writer, and conveyed tohiscontemporaries, when indeed it is quite otherwise. The old life has gone out of them and a new life entered in.

Thus, for example, a reader of our day lights upon such a passage as the following (it is from thePrefaceto Howell’sLexicon, 1660): “Though the root of the English language beDutch[199], yet it may be said to have been inoculated afterwards on a French stock”. He may know that theDutch is a sister language or dialect to our own; but this that it is the mother or root of it will certainly perplex him, and he will hardly know what to make of the assertion; perhaps he ascribes it to an error in his author, who is thereby unduly lowered in his esteem. But presently in the course of his reading he meets with the following statement, this time in Fuller’sHoly War, being a history of the Crusades: “The French,Dutch, Italian, and English were the four elemental nations, whereof this army [of the Crusaders] was compounded”. If the student has sufficient historical knowledge to know that in the time of the Crusades there were no Dutch in our use of the word, this statement would merely startle him; and probably before he had finished the chapter, having his attention once aroused, he would perceive that Fuller with the writers of his time used ‘Dutch’ for German; even as it was constantly so used up to the end of the seventeenth century; and as the Americans use it to this present day; what we call now a Dutchman being then a Hollander. But a young student might very possibly want that amount of previous knowledge, which should cause him to receive this announcement with misgiving and surprise; and thus he might carry away altogether a wrong impression, and rise from a perusal of the book, persuaded that the Dutch, as we call them, played an important part in the Crusades, while the Germans took little or no part in them at all.

Miscreant

And as it is here with an historic fact, so still more often will it happen with the subtler changes which words have undergone. Out of this it willcontinually happen that they convey now much more blame and condemnation, or convey now much less, than formerly they did; or of a different kind; and a reader not aware of the altered value which they now possess, may be in continual danger of misreading his author, of misunderstanding his intentions, while he has no doubt whatever that he perfectly apprehends and takes it in. Thus when Shakespeare in1Henry VImakes the gallant York address Joan of Arc as a ‘miscreant’, how coarse a piece of invective this sounds; how unlike what the chivalrous soldier would have uttered; or what one might have supposed Shakespeare, even with his unworthy estimate of the holy warrior Maid, would have put into his mouth. But a ‘miscreant’ in Shakespeare’s time had nothing of the meaning which now it has. It was simply, in agreement with its etymology, a misbeliever, one who did not believe rightly the Articles of the Catholic Faith. And I need not remind you that this was the constant charge which the English brought against Joan,—namely, that she was a dealer in hidden magical arts, a witch, and as such had fallen from the faith. On this plea they burnt her, and it is this which York means when he calls her a ‘miscreant’, and not what we should intend by the name.

In reading of poetry above all what beauties are often missed, what forces lost, through this assumption that the present of a word is always equivalent to its past. How often the poet is wronged in our estimation; that seeming to us now flat and pointless, which at once would losethis character, did we know how to read into some word the emphasis which it once had, but which now has departed from it. For example, Milton ascribes inComusthe “tinsel-slipperedfeet” to Thetis, the goddess of the sea. How comparatively poor an epithet this ‘tinsel-slippered’ sounds for those who know of ‘tinsel’ only in its modern acceptation of mean and tawdry finery, affecting a splendour which it does not really possess. But learn its earlier use by learning its derivation, bring it back to the French ‘étincelle’, and the Latin ‘scintillula’; see in it, as Milton and the writers of his time saw, ‘the sparkling’, and how exquisitely beautiful a title does this become applied to a goddess of the sea; how vividly does it call up before our mind’s eye the quick glitter and sparkle of the waves under the light of sun or moon[200]. It is Homer’s ‘silver-footed’ (ἀργυρόπεζα), not servilely transferred, but reproduced and made his own by the English poet, dealing as one great poet will do with another; who will not disdain to borrow, but to what he borrows will add often a further grace of his own.

‘Influence’

Or, again, do we keep in mind, or are we even aware, that whenever the word ‘influence’ occurs in our English poetry, down to comparatively a modern date, there is always more or less remote allusions to invisible illapses of power, skyey, planetary effects, supposed to be exercised by the heavenly luminaries upon the lives of men[201]?How many a passage starts into new life and beauty and fulness of allusion, when this is present with us; even Milton’s

“store of ladies, whose bright eyesRaininfluence”,

as spectators of the tournament, gain something, when we regard them—and using this language, he intended we should—as the luminaries of this lower sphere, shedding by their propitious presence strength and valour into the hearts of their knights.

‘Baffle’

The word even in its present acceptation may yield, as here, a convenient and even a correct sense; we may fall into no positive misapprehension about it; and still, through ignorance of its past history and of the force which it once possessed, we may miss a great part of its significance. We are notbesidethe meaning of our author, but we areshortof it. Thus in Beaumont and Fletcher’sKing and no King, (Act iii. Sc. 2,) a cowardly braggart of a soldier describes the treatment he experienced, when like Parolles he was at length found out, and stripped of his lion’s skin:—“They hung me up by the heels and beat me with hazel sticks, ... that the whole kingdom took notice of me for abaffled, whipped fellow”. The word to which I wish here to call your attention is ‘baffled’. Were you reading this passage, there would probably be nothing here to cause you to pause; you would attach to ‘baffled’ a sense which sorts very well with the context—“hung up by the heels and beaten, all his schemes of being thought much of werebaffledand defeated”. But “baffled” implies far more than this; it containsallusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, according to which a perjured or recreant knight was either in person, or more commonly in effigy, hung up by the heels, his scutcheon blotted, his spear broken, and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject of all kinds of indignities; such a one being said to be ‘baffled’[202]. Twice in Spenser recreant knights are so dealt with. I can only quote a portion of the shorter passage, in which this infamous punishment is described:

“And after all, for greater infamyHe by the heels him hung upon a tree,Andbaffledso, that all which passéd byThe picture of his punishment might see”[203].

Probably when Beaumont and Fletcher wrote, men were not so remote from the days of chivalry, or at any rate from the literature of chivalry, but that this custom was still fresh in their minds. How much more to them than to us, so long as we are ignorant of the same, would those wordsI justquoted have conveyed?

‘Religion’

There are several places in the Authorized Version of Scripture where those who are not aware of the changes which have taken place during the last two hundred and fifty years in our language, can hardly fail of being to a certain extent misled as to the intention of our Translators; or, if they are better acquainted with Greek than with early English, will be tempted to ascribe to them, though unjustly, an inexact rendering of the original. Thus the altered meaning of a word involves aserious misunderstanding in that well known statement of St. James, “Purereligionand undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. “There”, exclaims one who wishes to set up St. James against St. Paul, that so he may escape the necessity of obeying either, “listen to what St. James says; there is nothing mystical in what he requires; instead of harping on faith as a condition necessary to salvation, he makes all religion to consist in practical deeds of kindness from one to another”. But let us pause for a moment. Did ‘religion’, when our translation was made, mean godliness? did it mean thesum totalof our duties towards God? for, of course, no one would deny that deeds of charity are a necessary part of our Christian duty, an evidence of the faith which is in us. There is abundant evidence to show that ‘religion’ did not mean this; that, like the Greekθρησκεία, for which it here stands, like the Latin ‘religio’, it meant the outward forms and embodiments in which the inward principle of piety arrayed itself, theexternal serviceof God; and St. James is urging upon those to whom he is writing something of this kind: “Instead of the ceremonial services of the Jews, which consisted in divers washings and in other elements of this world, let our service, ourθρησκεία, take a nobler shape, let it consist in deeds of pity and of love”—and it was this which our Translators intended, when they used ‘religion’ here and ‘religious’ in the verse preceding. How little ‘religion’ once meant godliness, how predominantly it was used for theoutwardservice of God, isplain from many passages in ourHomilies, and from other contemporary literature.

Again, there are words in our Liturgy which I have no doubt are commonly misunderstood. The mistake involves no serious error; yet still in our own language, and in words which we have constantly in our mouths, and at most solemn times, it is certainly better to be right than wrong. In the Litany we pray God that it would please Him, “to give and preserve to our use thekindlyfruits of the earth”. What meaning do we attach to this epithet, “thekindlyfruits of the earth”? Probably we understand by it those fruits in which thekindnessof God or of nature towards us finds its expression. This is no unworthy explanation, but still it is not the right one. The “kindlyfruits” are the “naturalfruits”, those which the earth according to itskindshould naturally bring forth, which it is appointed to produce. To show you how little ‘kindly’ meant once benignant, as it means now, I will instance an employment of it from Sir Thomas More’sLife of Richard the Third. He tells us that Richard calculated by murdering his two nephews in the Tower to make himself accounted “akindlyking”—not certainly a ‘kindly’ one in our present usage of the word[204]; but, having put them out of the way, that he should then be lineal heir of the Crown, and should thus be reckonedas kingby kindor natural descent; and such was of old the constant use of the word.

‘Worship’

A phrase in one of our occasional Services “with my body I theeworship”, has sometimes offended those who are unacquainted with the early use of English words, and thus with the intention of the actual framers of that Service. Clearly in our modern sense of ‘worship’, this language would be unjustifiable. But ‘worship’ or ‘worthship’ meant ‘honour’ in our early English, and ‘to worship’ to honour, this meaning of ‘worship’ still very harmlessly surviving in the title of “your worship”, addressed to the magistrate on the bench. So little was it restrained of old to the honour which man is bound to pay to God, that it was employed by Wiclif to express the honour which God will render to his faithful servants and friends. Thus our Lord’s declaration “If any man serve Me, him will my Fatherhonour”, in Wiclif’s translation reads thus, “If any man serve Me, my Father shallworshiphim”. I do not say that there is not sufficient reason to change the words, “with my body I theeworship”, if only there were any means of changing anything which is now antiquated and out of date in our services or arrangements. I think it would be very well if they were changed, liable as they are to misunderstanding and misconstruction now; but still they did not mean at the first, and therefore do not now really mean, any more than, “with my body I theehonour”, and so you may reply to any fault-finder here.

Take another example of a very easy misapprehension, although not now from Scripture or thePrayer Book, Fuller, our Church historian, having occasion to speak of some famous divine that was lately dead, exclaims, “Oh thepainfulnessof his preaching!” If we did not know the former uses of ‘painfulness’, we might take this for an exclamation wrung out at the recollection of the tediousness which he inflicted on his hearers. Far from it; the words are a record not of thepainwhich he caused to others, but of thepainswhich he bestowed himself: and I am persuaded, if we had more ‘painful’ preachers in the old sense of the word, that is, whotookpains themselves, we should have fewer ‘painful’ ones in the modern sense, whocausepain to their hearers. So too Bishop Grosthead is recorded as “thepainfulwriter of two hundred books”—not meaning hereby that these books were painful in the reading, but that he was laborious and painful in their composing.

Here is another easy misapprehension. Swift wrote a pamphlet, or, as he called it, aLetter to the Lord Treasurer, with this title, “A proposal for correcting, improving, andascertainingthe English Tongue”. Who that brought a knowledge of present English, and no more, to this passage, would doubt that “ascertainingthe English Tongue” meant arriving at a certain knowledge of what it was? Swift, however, means something quite different from this. “To ascertainthe English tongue” is not with him to arrive at a subjective certainty in our own minds of what that tongue is, but to give an objective certainty to that tongue itself, so that henceforth it shall not alter nor change. For even Swift himself, with all his masculine sense, entertained a dreamof this kind, as is more fully declared in the work itself[205].

‘Treacle’

In other places unacquaintance with the changes in a word’s usage will not so much mislead as leave you nearly or altogether at a loss in respect of the intention of an author whom you may be reading. It is evident that he has a meaning, but what it is you are unable to divine, even though all the words he employs are words in familiar employment to the present day. For example, the poet Waller is congratulating Charles the Second on his return from exile, and is describing the way in which all men, even those formerly most hostile to him, were now seeking his favour, and he writes:

“Offenders now, the chiefest, do beginTo strive for grace, and expiate their sin:All winds blow fair that did the world embroil,Your vipers treacle yield, and scorpions oil”.

Many a reader before now has felt, as I cannot doubt, a moment’s perplexity at the now courtly poet’s assertion that “vipers treacle yield”—who yet has been too indolent, or who has not had the opportunity, to search out what his meaning might be. There is in fact allusion here to a curious piece of legendary lore. ‘Treacle’, or ‘triacle’, as Chaucer wrote it, was originally a Greek word, and wrapped up in itself the once popular belief (an anticipation, by the way, of homœopathy), that a confection of the viper’s flesh was the most potent antidote against the viper’s bite[206]. Wallergoes back to this the word’s old meaning, familiar enough in his time, for Milton speaks of “the sovrantreacleof sound doctrine”[207], while “Venice treacle”, or “viper wine”, as it sometimes was called, was a common name for a supposed antidote against all poisons; and he would imply that regicides themselves began to be loyal, vipers not now yielding hurt any more, but rather healing for the old hurts which they themselves had inflicted. To trace the word down to its present use, it may be observed that, designating first this antidote, it then came to designate any antidote, then any medicinal confection or sweet syrup; and lastly that particular syrup, namely, the sweet syrup of molasses, to which alone it is now restricted.

‘Blackguard’

I will draw on the writings of Fuller for one more example. In hisHoly War, having enumerated the rabble rout of fugitive debtors, runaway slaves, thieves, adulterers, murderers, of men laden for one cause or another with heaviest censures of the Church, who swelled the ranks, and helped to make up the army, of the Crusaders, he exclaimed, “A lamentable case that the devil’sblack guardshould be God’s soldiers”! What does he mean, we may ask, by “the devil’sblack guard”? Nor is this a solitary mention of the “black guard”. On the contrary, the phrase is of very frequent recurrence in the early dramatists and others down to the time of Dryden, who gives as one of his stage directions inDon Sebastian, “Enter the captain of the rabble, with theBlack guard”. What is this “black guard”? Has it any connexion with a word of our homeliest vernacular? We feel that probably it has so; yet at first sight the connexion is not very apparent, nor indeed the exact force of the phrase. Let me trace its history. In old times, the palaces of our kings and seats of our nobles were not so well and completely furnished as at the present day: and thus it was customary, when a royal progress was made, or when the great nobility exchanged one residence for another, that at such a removal all kitchen utensils, pots and pans, and even coals, should be also carried with them where they went. Those who accompanied and escorted these, the lowest, meanest, and dirtiest of the retainers, were called ‘the black guard’[208]; then any troop or company of ragamuffins; and lastly, when the origin of the word was lost sight of, and it was forgotten that it properly implied a company, a rabble rout, and not a single person, one would compliment another, not as belonging to, but as himself being, the ‘blackguard’.

The examples which I have adduced are, I am persuaded, sufficient to prove that it is not a useless and unprofitable study, nor yet one altogether without entertainment, to which I invite you; that on the contrary any one who desires to read with accuracy, and thus with advantage and pleasure, our earlier classics, who would avoid continual misapprehension in theirperusal, and would not often fall short of, and often go astray from, their meaning, must needs bestow some attention on the altered significance of English words. And if this is so, we could not more usefully employ what remains of this present lecture than in seeking to indicate those changes which words most frequently undergo; and to trace as far as we can the causes, mental and moral, at work in the minds of men to bring these changes about, with the good and evil out of which they have sprung, and to which they bear witness.

For indeed these changes to which words in the progress of time are submitted are not changes at random, but for the most part are obedient to certain laws, are capable of being distributed into certain classes, being the outward transcripts and witnesses of mental and moral processes inwardly going forward in those who bring them about. Many, it is true, will escape any classification of ours, the changes which have taken place in their meaning being, or at least seeming to us, the result of mere caprice; and not explicable by any principle which we can appeal to as habitually at work in the mind. But, admitting all this, a majority will still remain which are reducible to some law or other, and with these we will occupy ourselves now.

‘Duke’, ‘Corpse’, ‘Weed’

And first, the meaning of a word oftentimes is gradually narrowed. It was once as a generic name, embracing many as yet unnamed species within itself, which all went by its common designation. By and bye it is found convenient that each of these should have its own more special sign allotted to it[209]. It is here just as in some newly enclosed country, where a single household will at first loosely occupy a whole district; while, as cultivation proceeds, this district is gradually parcelled out among a dozen or twenty, and under more accurate culture employs and sustains them all. Thus, for example, all food was once called ‘meat’; it is so in our Bible, and ‘horse-meat’ for fodder is still no unusual phrase; yet ‘meat’ is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book or writing was a ‘libel’ once; now only such a one as is scurrilous and injurious. Any leader was a ‘duke’ (dux); thus “dukeHannibal” (Sir Thomas Eylot), “dukeBrennus” (Holland), “dukeTheseus” (Shakespeare), “dukeAmalek”, with other ‘dukes’ (Gen. xxxvi.). Any journey, by land as much as by sea, was a‘voyage’.‘Fairy’ was not a name restricted, as now, to theGothicmythology; thus “thefairyEgeria” (Sir J. Harrington). A ‘corpse’ might be quite as well living as dead[210]. ‘Weeds’ were whatever covered the earth or the person; while now as respectsthe earth, those only are ‘weeds’ which are noxious, or at least self-sown; as regards the person, we speak of no other ‘weeds’ but the widow’s[211]. In each of these cases, the same contraction of meaning, the separating off and assigning to other words of large portions of this, has found place. ‘To starve’ (the German ‘sterben’, and generally spelt ‘sterve’ up to the middle of the seventeenth century), meant once to die any manner of death; thus Chaucer says, Christ “stervedupon the cross for our redemption”; it now is restricted to the dying by cold or by hunger. Words not a few were once applied to both sexes alike, which are now restricted to the female. It is so even with ‘girl’, which was once a young person of either sex[212]; while other words in this list, such for instance as ‘hoyden’[213](Milton, prose), ‘shrew’ (Chaucer), ‘coquet’ (Phillips,New World of Words), ‘witch’ (Wiclif), ‘termagant’ (Bale), ‘scold’, ‘jade’, ‘slut’ (Gower), must be regarded in their present exclusive appropriation to the female sex as evidences of men’s rudeness, and not of women’s deserts.

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