people. I need not speak upon the question of pecuniary conscientiousness, but in words, which we can spare without much sacrifice, we have been just and even generous. Our trade and our industry, in conjunction with those of England, have sown a broad crop of English and American words over the face of the earth. A French poet complains that England has compelled his countrymen to utter articulations as hard as chewing glass or charcoal: Le railway, le tunnel, le ballast, le tender, Express, trucks, et wagons, une bouche Française These words have passed from England to every Continental country, but it is only a restitution of borrowed stock with usury, for of the seven, only ballast, wagons, and the last half of railway, are Anglo-Saxon. The nomenclature of steam navigation, which has become not less universal, is more purely American. Wherever you meet the steamboat your ear will welcome familiar sounds. You will hear French men on the Rhone, Danes in the Belts, Teutons on the Rhine, Magyars and Slaves on the Danube, and Arabs on the Nile, all alike shouting, half-steam! stop her! go ahead! and many an uninstructed traveller has been agreeably surprised at finding such a remarkable resemblance between good motherEnglish and heathen Arabic or barbarous Dutch, as these homelike words so plainly indicate. Vegetable nature has provided for the dissemination of plants by employing the movable winds and waters, and the migratory beasts of the field and fowls of the air, in the transportation of their seeds. Providence has not less amply secured the diffusion and intermixture of words of cardinal importance to the great interests of man. Religion, natural science, moral and intellectual philosophy and diplomacy, have introduced into English thousands of words nearly identical with those employed for the same purposes in all the languages in Christendom. The history and origin of these are generally very easily traced, but every generation gives birth to a multitude of expressions whose date we can fix with approximate precision, but the etymology and source of which is unknown at the very period of their introduction. These are, for the most part, mere popular words, which obtain no place in literature, but die with the memory of the occasions out of which they grew. But it sometimes happens that such words become permanent, though often ungraceful, additions to our vocabulary, and remain as standing enigmas to the etymologist. Of such, our American caucus is an example, and every man's recollection will suggest other instances. The French essayist Montaigne gives us a striking example of the strange accidents by which foreign words are sometimes introduced. In order the better to familiarize him with Latin, the common speech of the learned in those days, he was allowed in his childhood to use no other language, and not only his teachers, but his parents, attendants, and even his chambermaid, were obliged to learn enough of Latin to converse with him in it. The people of the neighboring villages adopted some of the Latin words which they heard constantly used in the family of their feudal lord; and, writing fifty years later, he declares that these words had become perma nently incorporated into the dialect of the province.* * Quant au reste de sa maison, c'estoit une regle inviolable que ny luy mesme, ny ma mere, ny valet, ny chambriere, ne parloient en ma compaignie qu'autant de mots de latin que chascun avoit apprins pour iargonner avec moy. C'est merveille du fruict que chascun y feit: mon pere et ma mere y apprinderent assez de latin pour l'entendre, et en acquirent à suffisance pour s'en servir à la necessité, comme feirent aussi les aultres domestiques, qui estoient plus attachez à mon service. Somme, nous latinizasmes tant, qu'il en regorgea iusques à nos villages tout autour, où il y a encores, et ont prins pied par l'usage, plusieurs appellations latines d'artisans et d'utils. Montaigne, Essais, Liv. I. ch. XXV. In order that I may not be supposed to have borrowed from a contemporary who has introduced into a recent volume some of the Portuguese etymologies mentioned above, together with the example from Montaigne, I think it proper to say that all those etymologies, with two or three exceptions not material to the present purpose, and the illustration from the French essayist, were given by me in this lecture, at its delivery in November, 1858, and contained in an extract printed in the New York Century, in March, 1859, for the most part in the very words since employed by the ingenious and agreeable writer to whom I refer. Although credit was not given, I certainly do not imagine that there was any intentional appropriation of matter collected by me, and I state the fact only to defend myself against a possible charge, of which I very cheerfully acquit the author in question. LECTURE VII. SOURCES AND COMPOSITION OF ENGLISH. II. THE English language, though by no means wanting in philological individuality and grammatical unity, is, as we have seen, very heterogeneous in its vocabulary. Its harmony and coherence of structure are due to the organic vitality of its cardinal and fundamental element, the Anglo-Saxon tongue, which possesses not only an uncommon receptivity with reference to the admission of foreign ingredients, but an equally remarkable power of assimilating strange constituents, naturalizing them as we say in America, and converting them from alien, if not hostile, forces, into obedient and useful denizens. There is found elsewhere, and especially in the languages of those Oriental families upon whom the Arabs have imposed their religion, and with it their theological dialect and their law, a great readiness to admit foreign words and foreign phrases, without moulding these linguistic acquisitions into any idiomatic conformity with the principles of their own structure. Arabic words are received into Persian and Turkish with all their anomalous inflections, and whole phrases borrowed, without any change of form or termina tion to suit them to the genius and the syntax of the speech that adopts them. Persons familiar with the literature of Germany and of Scandinavia will remember that in the sev enteenth century the languages of those countries exhibited, in a marked degree, a similar tendency with respect to Latin technical phrases and combinations, and many of our old English writers indulge largely in the same practice. The purism, which has for some time prevailed in Germany and Scandinavia, has expelled from their respective literatures not only foreign complex phrases, but, to a considerable extent, all words of extraneous etymology. In English, we have no means of supplying the place of such expressions, and the essentially mixed character of the speech renders them less repugnant to our taste than they are in languages which are so constituted as to be able to do without them. A large proportion of these foreign mercenaries were first employed in the nomenclatures of the learned professions, and many are still confined to them. Others have passed from the bar, the pulpit, and the academic hall into the language of common life, and are, though with a certain hesitation, often used by the most unschooled persons. The lawyer speaks of the rule caveat emptor, denies the authority of an obiter dictum, contends that the onus probandi lies on the other side, disputes how far words spoken are a part of the res gestæ, and mentions an undecided question as being still sub judice. These, with many more of the like sort, remain the exclusive property of that much suffering profession, which is condemned to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with a barbarous pen, while others have become parcel of the heritage of the lay |