have taken no pains either to improve our language or to extend it, none in Europe is spoken habitually by so many. The French boast the universality of theirs: yet the Germans, the Spaniards, and the Italians may contend with them on this ground for as the Dutch is a dialect of the German, so is the Portuguese of the Spanish, and not varying in more original words than the Milanese and Neapolitan from the Tuscan. The lingua franca, which pervades the coasts of the Mediterranean, the Ionian, and the Egean seas, is essentially Italian. The languages of the two most extensive empires in Europe are confined to the fewest people. There are not thirteen millions who speak Turkish, nor fifteen who speak Russian, though branches of the Sclavonic are scattered far. If any respect had been had to the literary glory of our country, whereon much of its political is and ever will be dependent, many millions more would at this time be speaking in English; and the Irish, the Welsh, and the Canadians, like the Danes and Saxons, would have forgotten they were a conquered people. We should be anxious both to improve our language and to extend it. England ought to have no colony in which it will not be soon the only one spoken. Nations may be united by identity of speech more easily than by identity of laws: for identity of laws only shows the conquered that they are bound to another people, while identity of speech shows them that they are bound with it. There is no firm conjunction but this; none that does not retain on it the scar and seam, and often with much soreness. Tooke. Were it not, I should be less solicitous to make it better. Johnson. You make it better, sir! Tooke. By reverencing the authority of the learned, by exposing the corruptions of the ignorant, and by reclaiming what never ought to have been obsolete. Johnson. Sir, the task is hopeless: little can be done now. Tooke. And because little can be done, must we do nothing? Because with all our efforts we are imperfect, may not we try to be virtuous? Many of the anomalies in our language can be avoided or corrected: if many shall yet remain, something at least will have been done for elegance and uniformity. Johnson. I hate your innovations. Tooke. I not only hate them, but would resist and reject them, if I could. It is only such writers as you that can influence the public by your authority and example. Johnson. Sir, if the best writer in England dared to spell three words differently from his contemporaries, and as Milton spelt them, he would look about in vain for a publisher. Tooke. Yet Milton is most careful and exact in his spelling, and his ear is as correct as his learning. His language would be still the language of his country, had it not been for the Restoration. Johnson. I have patience, sir! I have patience, sir! Pray go on. Tooke. I will take advantage of so much affability; and I hope that patience, like other virtues, Johnson. So far, I believe, I may agree with may improve by exercise. you, and remain a good subject. Tooke. Let us now descend from generalities to particulars. Our spelling hath undergone as many changes as the French, and worse. Johnson. And because it hath undergone many, you would make it undergo more! There is a fastidiousness in the use of language that indicates an atrophy of mind. We must take words as the world presents them to us, without looking at the root. If we grubbed under this and laid it bare, we should leave no room for our thoughts to lie evenly, and every expression would be constrained and cramped. We should scarcely find a metaphor in the purest author that is not false or imperfect, nor could we imagine one ourselves that would not be stiff and frigid. Take now for instance a phrase in common use. You are rather Late. Can anything seem plainer? Yet rather, as you know, meant originally earlier, being the comparative of rathe; the "rathe primrose" of the poet recalls it. We can not say, You are sooner Late: but who is so troublesome and silly as to question the propriety of saying, You are rather late. We likewise say, bad orthography and false orthography: how can there be false or bad right-spelling? Tooke. I suspect there are more of these inadvertencies in our language than in any other. Johnson. Sir, our language is a very good language. On the return of Charles from the Continent, some of his followers may really have lost their native idiom, or at least may have forgotten the graver and solider parts of it; for many were taken over in their childhood. On their return to England, nothing gave such an air of fashion as imperfection in English: it proved high-breeding, it displayed the court and loyalty. Homebred English ladies soon acquired it from their noble and brave gallants; and it became the language of the Parliament, of the Church, and of the Stage. Between the last two places was pretty equally distributed all the facetiousness left among us. Johnson. Keep clear of the church, sir, and stick to language. Tooke. Punctually will I obey each of your commands. Johnson. Did South and Cowley and Waller fall into this slough? Tooke. They could not keep others from it. I peruse their works with pleasure: but South, the greatest of them, is negligent and courtly in his spelling, and sometimes, although not often, more gravely incorrect. Johnson. And pray now what language do you like? Tooke. The best in all countries is that which is spoken by intelligent women, of too the number was greater among the Greeks. We have no writer in our language so pure as Madame de Sévigné. Indeed we must acknowledge that the French far excel us in purity of style. When have we seen, or when can we expect, such a writer as Le Sage? In our days there is scarcely an instance of a learned or unlearned man who has written gracefully, excepting your friend Goldsmith and (if your modesty will admit my approaches) yourself. In your Lives of the Poets, you have laid aside the sceptre of Jupiter for the wand of Mercury, and have really called up with it some miserable ghosts from the dead. Tooke. Bearing all your reproofs and reproaches high rank for petty affectation, and of too much | request in society for deep study. Cicero praises with equanimity and submission, I converse with more than one such among the Romans; you on this subject because you have given up much time to it: with another I should decline the discussion. I am hopeful of gaining some information and of suggesting some subject for inquiry. Illiterate, inconsiderate, irreverent, and overweening men, will be always disregarded by me. Like children and clowns, if they see a throne or a judgment-seat, they must forsooth sit down in it. Such people set themselves above me, and enjoy the same feelings as those in the oneshilling gallery who look down on Garrick. He is only on the stage, no higher than the footlights, and plays only for others; whereas they have placed themselves at the summit, and applaud and condemn to please their fancies. It is equitable that coarse impudence should be met with calm contempt, and that Wisdom should sit down and lower his eyes, when Impudence trips over the way to discountenance her, or Ignorance starts up to teach her. Johnson. Sir, I desire no compliments. Tooke. Before, I offered not my compliment but my tribute; I dreaded a repulse; but I little expected to see, as I do, the finger of Aurora on your face. Johnson. If the warmth of the room is enough to kindle your poetry, well may it possess a slight influence on my cheek. The learned men, I presume, are superseded by your public orators. Tooke. Our parliamentary speakers of, most eminence are superficial in scholarship, as we understand the word, and by no means dangerously laden with any species of knowledge. Burke is the most eloquent and philosophical of them; Fox the readiest at reply, the stoutest debater, the acutest disputant. Johnson. Rebels! but what you say of their knowledge is the truth. I have said it of one party, and I know it of the other, else I would trounce you for your asseveration. Tooke. You yourself induced me to make the greater part of my remarks; more important, as being on things more important, than transitory men; such is language. Johnson. How, sir, did I Tooke. By having recommended in some few instances a correcter mode of spelling. Bentley and Hall and Dryden, though sound writers, are deficient in authority with me; when, for example, they write incompatible for incompetible: we want both words, but we must be careful not to confound and misapply them. Dryden and Roscommon formed a design of purifying and fixing the language: neither of them knew its origin or principles, or was intimately or indeed moderately versed in our earlier authors, of whom Chaucer was probably the only one they had perused. It is pretended that they abandoned the design from the unquietness of the times: as if the times disturbed them in their studies, leaving them peace enough for poetry, but not enough for philology. Johnson. And are you, sir, more acute, more learned, or more profound? What! because at one time our English books were scanty, you would oppose the scanty to the many, with all the rashness and inconsistency of a republican. Johnson. Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in dress, some in polity, some in language. Tooke. I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations you have just repeated. Johnson. No, sir! Indignant wise men invented them. Tooke. Long ago then. Indignant wise men lived in the time of the Centaurs: such combinations have never existed since. Your remark however on the introducers of new words into our language, is, I apprehend, well-founded: but you spoke generally and absolutely, and in this (I think) incorrectly. Julius Cæsar, whom you ought to love and reverence for giving the last blow to a republic, was likewise an innovator in spelling; so was Virgil; and to such a degree, that, Aulus Gellius tells us, he spelled the same word differently in different places, to gratify his ear. Milton has done the same. Johnson. And sometimes injudiciously: for instance, in writing Hee emphatically; He less so. He also writes subtile, as a scholar should do; and suttle, as the word is pronounced by the most vulgar. Tooke. Cicero, not contented with new spellings, created new words. Now the three Romans have immemorially been considered the most elegant and careful writers in their language: and we confer on our countryman but a small portion of the praises due to him, in asserting that both in poetry and prose his mastery is above them all. Milton is no factitious or accrete man; no pleader, no rhetorician. Truth in him is the parent of Energy, and Energy the supporter of Truth. If we rise to the Greek language, the most eloquent man on record, Pericles, introduced the double T instead of the double S: and it was enamelled on that golden language to adorn the eloquence of Aspasia, and to shine among the graces of Alcibiades. Socrates bent his thoughtful head over it, and it was observed in the majestic march of JOHN HORNE (TOOKE). SAMUEL JOHNSON AND Plato. At the same time Thucydides and the trage- Hurd is less so in his use of the word counterfeit, "Alexander suffered none but an dians, together with Aristophanes, contributed to which we are accustomed to take in an unfavourform, or united to countenance, the Middle Attic. able sense. One would expect that Elegance and Atticism her- Apelles and a Lysippus to counterfeit the form and self might have rested and been contented. No: features of his person." The sentence is moreover Xenophon, Plato, Eschines, Demosthenes, were lax. I am glad, however, to find that he writes promoters of the New Attic, altering and softening With such men many words in the spelling. before me, I think it to be deeply regretted that coxcombs and blockheads should be our only teachers, where we have much to learn, much to obliterate, and much to mend. Johnson. Follow your betters, sir! Tooke. Such is my intention: and it is also my intention that others shall follow theirs. Johnson. Obey the majority, according to your own principles. You reformers will let nothing The orators you be great, nothing be stabile. mention were deluders of the populace. Tooke. And so were the poets, no doubt: but let us hope that the philosophers and moralists were not, nor indeed the writers of comedy. Menander was among the reformers: so was Plautus at Rome the most highly estimated for his rich Latinity by Cicero and all the learned. Our own language had, under the translators of the Bible and of the Liturgy, reached the same pitch as the Latin had in the time of Plautus; and the sanctitude of Milton's genius gave it support, until the worst of French invasions overthrew it. Cowley, Sprat, Dryden, imported a trimmer and succincter dress, stripping the ampler of its pearls and bullion. Arbuthnot and Steele and Swift and Addison added no weight or precision to the language, nor were they choice in the application of words. None of them came up to their French contemporaries in purity and correctness; and their successors, who are more grammatical, are weak competitors with the rival nation for those De Foe compact and beautiful possessions. has a greater variety of powers than they, and he far outstrips in vigour and vivacity all the He other pedestrians who started with him. spells some words commendably, others not. Of the former are onely, admitt, referr, supplie, relie, searcht, wisht; of the latter, perticulars, perusall, speciall, callues. Hurd, very minute and fastidious, in like manner writes often reprehenDo you tolerate his sibly, though oftener well. "catched." He has the merit too of Johnson. Improperly. Nobody writes wast for Tooke. We cease to look for Eloquence; she vanished at the grave of Milton. Johnson. Enough of Milton. Praise the French, sir! A republican is never so much at his ease as among slaves. Tooke. We must lead happy lives then. But you were pleased to designate us as enemies to greatness and stability. What is it I admire in Milton but the greatness of his soul and the stability of his glory? Transitory is everything else on earth. The minutest of worms corrodes the throne; a slimier consumes what sat upon it yesterday. I know not the intentions and designs of others: I know not whether I myself am so virtuous that I should be called a republican, or so intelligent that I should be called a reformer. In regard to stability, I do however think I could demonstrate to you, that what has a broad basis is more stabile than what has a narrow one, and that nothing is gained to solidity by top-heaviness. In regard to greatness, I doubt my ability to convince you. Much in this is comparative. Compared with the plain, the mountains are indeed high: compared with what is above them in the universe of space, they are atoms and invisibilities. too are mortals. I do not say the creatures of the cannon-foundry and the cutlery; I do not say those of the jeweller and toyman, from whom we exclude light as from infants in a fever, and to whom we speak as to drunken men to make them quiet; but the most intellectual we ever have conversed with. What are they in comparison with a Shakspeare or a Bacon or a Newton? Johnson. Sir, I was teached better. Tooke. He also writes "under these circum- You however seemed to refer to power only. I stances." Such have not meditated on this subject so much as you Johnson. Circumstances are things round about; have, and my impression from it is weaker : we are in them, not under them. Tooke. We find "those who had rather trust to the equity" for "would rather." I believe he is the last writer who uses the word wit for understanding, he is out of his although we continue to say wits." He very properly says encomiums, to avoid a Grecism. We never say "rhododendra," but "rhododendrons." In our honest old English, all's well that ends well: and encomiums, phenomenons, memorandums, sound thoroughly and fully English. nevertheless I do presume to be as hearty and as firm a supporter of it, removing (as I would do) the incumbrances from about it, and giving it ventilation. Johnson. Ventilation! yes forsooth! from the bellows of Brontes and Steropes and Pyracmon. Tooke. Come, Doctor, let us throw a little more dust on our furnace, which blazes fiercelier than our work requires. The word firy comes appositely: why do we write it fiery, when wire gives wiry? The word rushes into my mind out of without a p, and benedetto without a c: we never Shakspeare, "And the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods." Truly this would be a very odd species of delight. But Shakspeare never wrote such nonsense: he wrote belighted (whence our blighted), struck by lightning: a fit preparation for such bathing. Why do we write lieutenant, when we write, "I would as lief." Would there be any impropriety or inconvenience in writing endevor and demeanor as we write tenor, omitting the u? shudder at the danger they incur of losing the traces of derivation. The most beautiful and easy of languages assumes no appearance of strength by the display of harshness, nor would owe its preservation to rust. Let us always be analogical when we can be so without offence to pronunciation. There are some few words in which we are retentive of the Norman laws. We write island with an s, as if we feared to be thought ignorant of its derivation. If we must be reverential to custom, let it rather be in the presence of the puisne judge. Johnson. Then you would imitate cards of invi- There are only the words puisne, isle, island, detation, where we find favor and honor. Tooke. We find author and editor and inventor in the works of Doctor Johnson, who certainly bears no resemblance to a card of invitation. Why can not we place all these words on the same bench? Most people will give us credit for knowing that they are derived from the Latin; but the wisest will think us fools for ending them like hour, sour, and flour, pronounced so differently. I look upon it as a piece of impudence to think we can correct the orthography of such writers as Selden and Milton. They wrote not only honor, favor, labor, but likewise brest, lookt, unlookt-for, kinde, minde. To spell these differently is a gross absurdity. Johnson. By removing a single letter from the holy word Saviour, you would shock the piety of millions. Tooke. In that word there is an analogy with others, although the class is small: paviour and behaviour, for instance. Johnson. It now occurs to me that honor was spelt without the u in the reign of Charles I., with it under his successor. Perhaps armour should be armure, from the low Latin armatura. Tooke. If we must use such words as reverie, why not oblige them to conform with their predecessors, travesty and gaiety, which should have the y instead of the i. When we, following Cowley, write pindarique, we are laughed at; but nobody laughs at picturesque and antique, which are equally reducible to order. Johnson. It is an awful thing to offend the Genius of our language. We can not spell our words as the French spell theirs. No other people in the world could reduce to nothing so stiff and stubborn a letter as a, which they do in eaux. Tooke. We never censure them for writing carême, which they formerly wrote caresme, more anciently quaresme, and other words similarly yet they have one language for writing, another for speaking, and affect a semblance of grammatical construction by a heap of intractable letters. While three suffice with us (a, m, a), they use eight (aimaient), of which the greater part not only are unprofitable, but would, in any language on earth, express a sound, or sounds, totally different from what they stand for: r, s, t, end words whose final sound is our a. We never censure the Italians for writing ricetto, as they pronounce it, mesne, viscount, and the family name Grosvenor, in which an s is unsounded. I would omit it in these. The French have set us an example here, rejecting the useless letter. They also write dette, which we write "debt." I know not why we should often use the letter b where we do. We have no need of it in crumb and coomb; the original words being without it. Johnson. King Charles I. writes dout. In the same sentence he writes therefor.* But to such authority such men as you refuse allegiance even in language. Your coomb is sterile, and your crumb is dry; as such minutenesses must always be. Tooke. So are nuts; but we crack and eat them. They are good for the full, and for those only. Johnson. The old writers had strange and arbitrary ways of spelling, which makes them appear more barbarous than they really are. There are learned men who would be grieved to see removed from words the traces of their origin. Tooke. There are learned men who are triflers and inconsiderate. Learning, by its own force alone, will never remove a prejudice or establish a truth. Of what importance is it to us that we have derived these words from the Latin through the French? We do not preserve the termination of either. Formerly if many unnecessary letters were employed, some were omitted. Ea and oa were unusual. In various instances the spelling of Chaucer is more easy and graceful and elegant than the modern. He avoids the diphthong, or reduplication, in coat, green, keen, sheaf, goat; writing cote, grene, kene, shefe, gote. Sackville, remarkable for diligence and daintiness of composition, spells "delights "delites, and "shriek" shreek. He also writes bemone, brest, yeeld. What we foolishly write work was formerly spelt werke, as we continue to pronounce it. Formerly there was such a word as shew: we still write it, but we pronounce it show, and we should never spell it otherwise. There is another of daily occurrence which we spell amiss, although we pronounce it rightly. Coxcomb in reality is cockscomb, and Ben Jonson writes it so, adding an e. He who first wrote it with an a certainly did not know how to spell his own name. In a somewhat like manner we have changed our pennies into pence, and our acquaintants into acquaintance. Now what have * Letter to P. Rupert. See Forster's Life of Cromwell, in his Statesmen of the Commonwealth. 1 these gained by such exchange? Latterly we have run into more unaccountable follies; such as compel for compell, and I have seen inter for interr. Nobody ever pronounces the last syllables of these words short, as the spelling would indicate. You would be induced to believe such writers are ignorant that their inter and our enter are of a different stock. In the reign of Charles I. parliament was usually, though not universally, spelt parlement: how much more properly! What we write door and floor the learned and judicious Jonson wrote dore and flore. I find in his writings cotes, profest, spred, partrich, grone, herth, theater, forraine, diamant, phesants, mushromes, banisht, rapt, rackt, addrest, ake, spred, stomack, plee, strein (song), windore, fild (filled), moniment, beleece, yeeld, scepter, sute (from sue), mist (missed), grone, crackt, throte, yong, harbor, harth, oke, cruze, crost, markt, minde (which it is just as absurd to write mind, as it would be to write time tim), taught, banisht, cherisht, heapt, thankt. It is wonderful that so learned a man should be ignorant that spitals are hospitals. He writes: "Spittles, post-houses, hospitals." Had he spelt the first properly, as he has done all the other words, he could not have made this mistake. Fairfax writes cew, bow (bough), milde, winde, oke, spred, talkt, embrast. Fleming, in his translation of the Georgics, ile, oke, anent; (which latter word, now a Scotticism, is used by Philemon Holland); gote, feeld, yeeld, spindel. Drayton, and most of our earlier writers, instead of thigh, write thie. Milton in the Allegro, Where the bee with honied thie. I perceive that you yourself, in your letter to Lord is not generally acknowledged after so weighty I wish I were as sure that Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere, Quæ nunc sunt în honore vocabula. I am unacquainted with any language in which, during the prosperity of a people, the changes have run so seldom into improvement, so perpetually into impropriety. Within another generation, ours must have become so corrupt, that writers, if they hope for life, will find it necessary to mount up nearer to its sources. Johnson. And what will they do when they get there? The leather from the stiff old jerkin will look queerly in its patches on the frayed satin. Tooke. Good writers will suppress the violence of contrast. They will rather lay aside what by 66 its impurity never had much weight, than what has lost it by the attrition of time; and they will be sparing of such expressions as are better for curiosities than for utensils. You and I would never say " by that means" instead of these; nor an alms;" yet Addison does. He also says a "dish of coffee," yet coffee never was offered in a dish, unless it was done by the fox to the crane after the dinner he gave her. We hear of our lyrical poetry, of our senate, of our manes, of our ashes, of our bards, of our British Muse. Luckily the ancients could never run into these fooleries; but their judgment was rendered by discipline too exact for the admission of them. Only one valuable word has been received into our language since my birth, or perhaps since yours. I have lately heard appreciate for estimate. Johnson. I am an antigallican in speech as in sentiments. What we have fairly won from the French let us keep, and avoid their new words like their new fashions. Words taken from them should be amenable, in their spelling, to English laws and regulations. Appreciate is a good and useful one; it signifies more than estimate or calue; it implies to "value justly." All words are good which come when they are wanted; all which come when they are not wanted, should be dismissed. Tooke. Let us return from new words to the old spellings of Benjamin Jonson, which other learned men followed: deprest, speke, grete, fede, reson, reper, sheves, relefe, leve, grene, wether, erthe, breth, seke, seson, sege, meke, stepe, rome, appere, dere, throte, tothe, betwene, swete, deth, hele, chere, nere, frende, tretise, teche, concere, tonge, bere, speche, stere. Altogether there are about forty words, out of which the unnecessary diphthong is ejected. He always omits the s in island and isle; he writes more have written sceptre than quivre. sovrane, subtil, childe, and werke. He would no Johnson. Milton too avoided the diphthong; he wrote drede and redy. Mandevile wrote dede, and grane of incense. Tooke. You tell us that the letter c never ends a word according to English orthography: yet it did formerly both in words of Saxon origin and British, as Eric, Rod-eric, Caradoc, Madoc. Wenlock, the name of a town in Shropshire, formerly ended in c, and Hume always writes Warwic. Johnson. Sir, do not quote infidels to me. Would you write sic and quic? Tooke. I would, if we derived them from the Greek or Latin. Johnson. Without the authority of Ben Jonson, on whom you so rely? Tooke. There is in Jonson strong sense, and wit too strong; it wants airiness, ease, and volatility. I do not admire his cast-iron ornaments, retaining but little (and that rugged and coarsegrained) of the ancient models, and nothing of the workmanship. But I admire his judgment in the spelling of many words, and I wish we could return to it. In others we are afraid of being as English as we might be and as we ought to be. Some appear to have been vulgarisms |
