INFLUENCE OF THE RESTORATION.

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can. hardly at the present day understand how any person who would care to read the book at all would find any difficulty with words like the following, 'acrimony,' 'austere,' 'bulb,' 'consolidate,' 'debility,' dose,' 'ingredient,' ' opiate,'' propitious,' ' symptom,' all which as novelties he carefully explains. Some of the words in his glossary, it is true, are harder and more technical than these; but the vast proportion of them present no more difficulty than those which I have adduced.*

ralla, Livy, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and possibly other classical authors. His works make a part of the library of dullness in Pope's Dunciad:

"De Lyra there a dreadful front extends,

And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends."

But his books are a mine of genuine idiomatic English, neglected by most of our lexicographers, wrought to a considerable extent and with great advantage by Richardson; yet capable, as it seems to me, of yielding much more in illustration of the language than they yet have yielded.

* And so too in French it is surprising to find of how late introduction are many words, which it seems as if the language could never have done without. 'Désintéressement,' 'exactitude,' 'sagacité,'' bravoure,' were not introduced till late in the seventeenth century. ‘Renaissance,’ ́emportement,' 'désagrément,' were all recent in 1675 (Bouhours); ' indévot,' ' intolérance,' 'impardonnable,' 'irréligieux' were struggling into allowance at the end of the seventeenth century, and were not established till the beginning of the eighteenth; 'insidieux' was invented by Malherbe; 'frivolité' does not appear in the earlier editions of the Dictionary of the Academy. The Abbé de St Pierre was the first to employ 'bienfaisance,' the elder Balzac 'féliciter,' Sarrasin 'burlesque.' Mad. de Sevigné cries out against her daughter for employing' effervescence' in a letter. (Comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voilà un mot dont je n'avais jamais ouï parler.) 'Demagogue' was first hazarded by

The period during which this naturalization of Latin words in the English language was going actively forward, may be said to have continued for about a century or more. It first received a check from the coming up of French tastes, fashions, and habits of thought with the Restoration of Charles the Second. The writers already formed before that period, such as Cudworth and Barrow, still continued to write their stately sentences, Latin in structure, and Latin in diction, but not so those of a younger generation. We may say of this influx of Latin that it left the language immensely increased in copiousness, with greatly enlarged capabilities, but perhaps somewhat burdened, and not always able to move gracefully under the weight of its new acquisitions; for as Dryden has somewhere truly said, it is easy enough to acquire foreign words, but to know what to do with them after you have acquired, is the difficulty. It might have received indeed most serious injury, if all the words which the great writers of this the Latin period of our language employed, and so proposed as

Bossuet, and was counted so bold that it was long before any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne had introduced diversion' and 'enfantillage,' though not without being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the last. Convertisseur' was born of those hateful efforts to convert the French Protestants at so much a head; one who undertook this on a large scale being so called. Caron gave to the language 'avant-propos,' Ronsardavidité,' Joachim Dubellay' patrie,' Denis Sauvage ‘jurisconsulte,' and Etienne first brought in, apologising at the same time for the boldness of it, 'analogie.' (Si les orielles françoises peuvent porter ce mot.)

NATURALIZATION OF WORDS.

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candidates for admission into it, had received the stamp of popular allowance.

But happily it was not so; it was here, as it had been before with the French importations; the reactive powers of the language, enabling it to throw off that which was foreign to it, did not fail to display themselves now, as they had done then. The number of unsuccessful candidates for admission into, and permanent naturalization in, the language during this period, is enormous; and one must say that in almost all instances where the alien act has been enforced, the sentence of exclusion was a just one; it was such as the circumstances of the case abundantly bore out. Either the words were not idiomatic, or were not intelligible, or were not needed, or looked ill, or sounded ill, or some other valid reason existed against them. A lover of his native tongue will tremble to think what that tongue would have become, if all the vocables from the Latin and the Greek which were then introduced or endorsed by illustrious names, had been admitted on the strength of their recommendation; if torve' and 'tetric' (Fuller), 'cecity' (Hooker), 'lepid' and 'sufflaminate' (Barrow), 'stultiloquy,' 'immorigerous,' 'clancular,' 'ferity,' 'hyperaspist' (all in Jeremy Taylor), if 'dyscolous' (Foxe), 'moliminously' (Cudworth), 'immarcescible' (Bishop Hall), 'arride' (ridiculed by Ben Jonson), with the hundreds of other words like these, and even more monstrous than some of these, not to speak of such Italian as 'leggiadrous' (Beaumont, Psyche), had not been rejected and disallowed by the true instinct of the national mind.

A great many too were allowed and adopted, but not exactly in the shape in which they first were introduced among us; they were made to drop their foreign termination, or otherwise their foreign appearance, to conform themselves to English ways, and only so were finally incorporated into the great family of English words.* Thus 'pantomimi' (Lord Bacon) soon became 'pantomimes;' 'atomi' (Lord Brooke) 'atoms;' 'epocha' (Dryden, and used as late as South) became 'epoch;' 'caricatura' (Sir T. Brown) 'caricature;' 'effigies' and 'statua' (both in Shakespeare) 'effigy' and 'statue;' not otherwise 'pyramis' and 'pyramides,' which also are forms employed by him, became 'pyramid' and 'pyramids ;' 'coloné' (Burton) 'clown;' 'apostata' (Massinger) became 'apostate;' 'despota' (Foxe) 'despot;' 'mummia' (Webster) 'mummy;' 'synonyma' (Milton, prose) 'synonyms;' galaxias' (Foxe) 'galaxy;' and 'heros' (H. More) 'hero.' Nor can that slight but widely extended change of 'innocency,' 'indolency,' 'temperancy,' and the large family of words with similar termination, into 'innocence,' 'indolence,' 'temperance' and the like, be regarded otherwise than as part of the same process. The same has gone on with words from other languages, as from the Italian and the Spanish; thus 'banditto' (Shakespeare) becomes 'bandit;' 'princessa' (Hacket) 'princess;' 'scaramucha'

* J. Grimm (Wörterbuch, p. xxvi.): Fällt von ungefähr ein fremdes wort in den brunnen einer sprache, so wird es so lange darin umgetrieben, bis es ihre farbe annimmt, und seiner fremden art zum trotze wie ein heimisches aussieht.

ENGLISH NOT EXCLUSIVE.

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(Dryden) 'scaramouch;' 'caprichio becomes first 'caprich' (Butler), then 'caprice;' ambuscado,' 'barricado,' 'renegado,' 'hurricano' (all in Shakespeare), 'brocado' (Hackluyt), drop their foreign terminations, and severally become ambuscade,' 'barricade,' 'renegade,' hurricane,' brocade.' Other slight modifications of spelling, not in the termination, but in the body of a word, will indicate in like manner its more entire incorporation into the English language. Thus ' restoration' was at first spelt 'restauration;' and so long as 'vicinage' was spelt 'voisinage,' as by Bishop Sanderson, or 'mirror' 'miroir,' as by Fuller, they could scarcely be said to be those purely English words which now they are.

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Here and there even at this late period of the language awkward foreign words will be recast throughout into a more English mould; chirurgeon' will become 'surgeon;' 'squinancy' will become first 'squinzey' (J. Taylor), and then 'quinsey;' 'porkpisce' (Spenser), that is 'sea-hog,' or 'hog-fish,' will be 'porpesse,' and then 'porpoise,' as it is now. In other words the attempt will be made, but it will be now too late to be attended with success. Physiognomy' will not give place to 'visnomy,' even though Spenser and Shakespeare employ this briefer form; nor 'hippopotamus' to 'hippodame,' even at Spenser's bidding. In like manner the attempt to naturalize 'avant-courier' in the shape of 'vancurrier' has failed.

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Looking at this process of the reception of foreign words, and afterwards their assimilation to our own, and the great number of words in which this work