disappear with old things, or acquire new meanings; new things call for new names, and the new names, if generally accepted, come into present use. Familiar instances are supplied by the history of chivalry, heraldry, astrology, on the one hand, and of gas, steam, mining, electricity, on the other.

Sometimes words long disused are recalled to life.

"Reason and understanding, as words denominative of distinct aculties; the adjectives sensuous, transcendental, subjective and objective, supernatural, as an appellation of the spiritual, or that immaterial essence which is not subject to the law of cause and effect, and is thus distinguished from that which is natural, are ail words revived, not invented by the school of Coleridge." 1

Other words "revived, not invented," are connotation, spiritualism, tennis, plaisance (which is the old word pleasance) in "Midway Plaisance;" but each of these is used in a sense different from that which it originally bore.

Words may be in present use in poetry which are obsolete, er almost obsolete, in prose.

Such words are: ere, anon, nigh, save (except), betwixt, scarce and exceeding (scarcely, exceedingly), erst, fain, whilom, withal, hath, yore, quoth, kine, don, doff, nay, yea, ever or alway (always), mine, as in "mine host."

Mrs. Browning may write twain and corse, where prose would write "two" and " 'corpse;" Tennyson may write rampire and shoon, where prose would write "rampart” and “shoes,” just as may call the sky "the steadfast blue.” 8

he

Words that are obsolete for one kind of prose may not be obsolete for another. In an historical novel, for example, archaic expressions may be introduced if they are characteristic of the time in which the scene is laid:

1 Marsh: Lectures on the English Language, lect. viii.
J. S. Mill: A System of Logic, book i. chap. ii. sect. v.
A Dream of Fair Women.

but they should not be so many as to render the work unintelligible or distasteful to ordinary readers. All that may properly be done is to suggest antiquity. In Thackeray's "Henry Esmond," for example, the use of 'tis for "it is " (frequent in "The Spectator," but rare in modern prose 1) helps to take the reader back to Queen Anne's time

In all cases, "the question is not, whether a diction is antiquated for current speech, but whether it is antiquated for that particular purpose for which it is employed. A diction that is antiquated for common speech and common prose, may very well not be antiquated for poetry or certain special kinds of prose. 'Peradventure there shall be ten found there,' is not antiquated for Biblical prose, though for conversation or for a newspaper it is antiquated. The trumpet spake not to the arméd throng,' is not antiquated for poetry, although we should not write in a letter, ‘he spake to me,' or say, 'the British soldier is armed with the Enfield rifle." " 2

Some words may be regarded as applicants for admission to the language, but as not yet in present use. Such words are allowable in conversation, in books that reproduce conversation, and in writings that serve a temporary purpose.

"I certainly should not, in regular history," writes Macaulay, "use some of he phrases which you censure. But I do not consider a review of this sort as regular history, and I really think that, from the highest and most unquestionable authority, I could vindicate my practice. Take Addison, the model of pure and graceful writing. In his Spectators I find 'wench,' 'baggage,' 'queer old put,' 'prig,' 'fearing that they should smoke the Knight.' All these expressions I met this morning, in turning over two or three of his papers at breakfast. I would no more use the word 'bore? or 'awkward squad' in a composition meant to be uniformly serious and earnest, than Addison would in a State paper have called

1 Used frequently, however, by Emerson.

2 Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism; On Translating Homer Last Words.

- is

Louis an 'old put,' or have described Shrewsbury and Argyle as
'smoking' the design to bring in the Pretender. . . . The first rule
of all writing — that rule to which every other is subordinate
that the words used by the writer shall be such as most fully and
precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his readers.
All considerations about the purity and dignity of style ought to
bend to this consideration. To write what is not understood in its
full force for fear of using some word which was unknown to Swift
or Dryden would be, I think, as absurd as to build an observatory
like that at Oxford, from which it is impossible to observe, only for
the purpose of exactly preserving the proportions of the Temple of
the Winds at Athens. That a word which is appropriate to a par-
ticular idea, which everybody, high and low, uses to express that
idea, and which expresses that idea with a completeness which is
not equalled by any other single word, and scarcely by any cir-
cumlocution, should be banished from writing, seems to be a mere
throwing-away of power. Such a word as 'talented' it is proper
to avoid first, because it is not wanted; secondly, because you
never hear it from those who speak very good English. But the
word 'shirk' as applied to military duty is a word which everybody
uses; which is the word, and the only word, for the thing; which
in every regiment and in every ship belonging to our country is
employed ten times a day; which the Duke of Wellington, or
Admiral Stopford, would use in reprimanding an officer. To in-
terdict it, therefore, in what is meant to be familiar, and almost
jocose, narrative, seems to me rather rigid." 2

NATIONAL USE is fixed by speakers and writers of national reputation. That reputation they could not possess if they were readily understood by National use.

the inhabitants of only one district or the
members of only one class. Using language intelligible
in every district and to every class, they keep the com-
mon fund of expression in general circulation.

Even

1 Were Macaulay alive to-day, he would probably no longer object to "talented," for the word is now sanctioned by good use.

2 Macaulay; in Trevelyan's "Life and Letters of Macaulay,” vol. ii chap. ix.

※

in matters of pronunciation and accent, the standard, though difficult to find, can be found in the concurrent practice of the most approved poets and public speakers and of the most cultivated social circles.

Among provincialisms are: shay (chaise); lines (reins); Indiarubbers or gums (over-shoes); vest (waistcoat); slice (fire-shovel); grip (cable-car); grip or grip-sack (hand-bag); folks (family); creek (small inland stream); truck (garden produce); The States (The United States); elective, optional, special, as nouns; campus, formerly campo (college or school yard or grounds); boomers, sooners; smart, as used in a smart distance, a smart chance, a smart boy, a smart gown, the smart set; boughten, as distinguished from "homemade;" proven (proved); shew (showed); to reckon, calculate, guess, when used to express opinion, expectation, or intention; to allow (admit, maintain); to rag (steal); to rag at (rail at); to be through (finish); to hitch up (harness); to flit, flitting (move or remove, moving or removing); to hail from, as, " He hails from Arkansas; to fetch up (bring up, as a child); to admire, as, "I should admire " "I disremember;" "I'll be back to rights" (presently); right off, right away (immediately); "It rains right (very) hard;" right here (at this point).

to see;

-

Instances of expressions that have come from professional into more or less general but not into good use, are the following: from the law, aforesaid or said, as, "the said man," on the docket, entail (involve), And now comes, at the beginning of a paragraph, I claim (maintain); from the church, sponsor, as, “This article needs no sponsors," on the anxious seat, to pass under the rod, advent, neophyte; from trade, to discount, the balance, as, "The balance of the day was given to talk,” in his line, A No. 1, from the Congressional dialect, to champion (support) a measure, to antagonize, — two measures contending for precedence in the order of legislation are said to antagonize each other, a senator is said to antagonize (oppose) a bill or another senator; from mathematics, to differentiate (make a difference between), minus, as, “Come, minus your children;" from a school in political economy, wage and wage-fund (wages, wagesfund); from the stock-market, to appreciate and to depreciate (rise in value, fall in value), to aggregate, as, "The sales aggregated fifty thousand shares," to take stock in, above par; from mining, to pan

out, to get down to bed-rock or to hard pan, to strike a bonanza or to strike oil (succeed), these diggings (this section); from the dialect of the race-course, fit (in good physical condition).

vincialism.

American

In the opinion of many Englishmen and of some Anglomaniacs in America, every expression which is in national use in America but not in national British and use at the present time in England is a pro- usage. To this assertion it is no answer to say what is no doubt true that many so-called Americanisms were in good use in England in the time of Chaucer, of Milton, or of Fielding. This argument would justify many expressions which are now vulgarisms, as axe for "ask," learn for "teach," you was for "you were." The real question is, Are the United States so far as language is concerned - still provinces of England, or do they constitute a nation?

The true doctrine appears to be that expressed by the late Edward A. Freeman, whose opinion on this point is valuable because he was an Englishman of Englishmen. After discussing several cases in which usage differs in the two countries, Mr. Freeman goes on to say: "One way is for the most part as good as the other; let each side of the ocean stick to its own way, if only to keep up those little picturesque differences which are really a gain when the substance is essentially the same. This same line of thought might be carried out in a crowd of phrases, old and new, in which British and American usage differs, but in which neither usage can be said to be in itself better or worse than the other. Each usage is the better in the land in which it has grown up of itself. A good British writer and a good American writer will write in the same language and the same dialect; but it is well that each should keep to those little peculiarities of