of George Eliot and Jane Austen has not fallen on the fair authoress's shoulders. Even Mrs. Oliphant, a novelist who is old enough to know better, and who has delighted us all with charming tales of truly English life, is wont to sprinkle French freely through her many volumes, not only in her novels, but even in her unnecessary Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whom she rashly credited with gaieté du coeur (sic)."】

On this subject Punch gives some sound "advice to an actor":

"Do not call your part a rôle; it is not English.... And do not call the wings the coulisses. Do not style yourself an artist, or an artiste, as the case may be, and do not speak of applause, however loud and genuine, as a perfect furore. Do not describe a performance given at three o'clock in the afternoon as a matinée, and do not call a burlesque a travestie or extravaganza. When a concert or mixed entertainment is given between more solid pieces at a benefit, there is no occasion to describe it as a mélange, or inter

Borrowed verbal finery is perhaps less common than it was a generation ago; but it still appears in writings that find many readers.

"We need only glance into one of the periodical representatives of fashionable literature, or into a novel of the day, to see how serious this assault upon the purity of the English language has become. The chances are more than equal that we shall fall in with a writer who considers it a point of honor to choose all his most emphatic words from a French vocabulary, and who would think it a lamentable falling off in his style, did he write half-adozen sentences without employing at least half that number of foreign words. His heroes are always marked by an air distingué ; his vile men are sure to be blasés; his lady friends never merely dance or dress well, they dance or dress à merveille; and he himself when lolling on the sofa under the spirit of laziness does not simply enjoy his rest, he luxuriates in the dolce far niente, and wonders

1 The Saturday Review, Jan. 26, 1884, p. 113.

* Punch, Dec. 23, 1882.

when he will1 manage to begin his magnum opus. And so he carries us through his story, running off into hackneyed French, Italian, or Latin expressions whenever he has anything to say which he thinks should be graphically or emphatically said. It really seems as if he thought the English language too meagre, or too commonplace a dress, in which to clothe his thoughts. The tongue which gave a noble utterance to the thoughts of Shakspere and Milton is altogether insufficient to express the more cosmopolitan ideas of Smith, or Tomkins, or Jenkins!

"We have before us an article from the pen of a very clever writer; and, as it appears in a magazine which specially professes to represent the best society,' it may be taken as a good specimen of the style. It describes a dancing party, and we discover for the first time how much learning is necessary to describe a 'hop' properly. The reader is informed that all the people at the dance belong to the beau monde, as may be seen at a coup d'œil; the demimonde is scrupulously excluded, and in fact every thing about it bespeaks the haut ton of the whole affair. A lady who has been happy in her hair-dresser is said to be coiffée à ravir. Then there is the bold man to describe. Having acquired the savoir faire, he is never afraid of making a faux pas, but no matter what kind of conversation is started plunges at once in medias res. Following him is the fair débutante, who is already on the look-out for un bon parti, but whose nez retroussé is a decided obstacle to her success. She is of course accompanied by mamma en grande toilette, who, entre nous, looks rather ridée even in the gaslight. Then, lest the writer should seem frivolous, he suddenly abandons the description of the dances, vis-à-vis and dos-à-dos, to tell us that Homer becomes tiresome when he sings of Boots пóτиα "Hpŋ twice in a page. The supper calls forth a corresponding amount of learning, and the writer concludes his article after having aired his Greek, his Latin, his French, and, in a subordinate way, his English." "

On behalf of some of these expressions, — viz., blasé, dolce far niente, demi-monde, savoir faire, faux pas, débutante, vis-à-vis, dos-à dos, — something may be said, for it is hard to find English equivalents; but it can never be wise to crowd a page with foreign expressions, even though some of them may be allowable. A book intended for English-speaking people should be in English.

1 Is this the proper auxiliary?

• The Leeds Mercury; quoted by Dean Alford in "The Queen's English."

ions in

Of late years there has sprung up a practice of fol lowing the foreign fashion in the spelling of proper names of foreign extraction which have long had Eng- Foreign fashlish forms. Since the old word is familiar, spelling. the new word is not needed, and it is not pleasing to English ears.

There might be less objection to a change in the direction proposed, if it were rigidly carried out with all proper names of foreign origin, if it were founded upon any intelligible principle, or if the practice of its advocates were uniform.

4

A would-be reformer writes Thucydidês, Miltiadês, Herodotos, in one book 1 ;1 Thucydides, Miltiades, Herodotus, in another. We find Mykênê, Arkadia, Korkyra, Sophoklês, Xerxês, Pyrrhos, Nizza, Marseille, Elsass, in the same book with Thebes, Corinth, Cyprus, Eschylus, Alexander, Cræsus, Venice, Lyons, Lorraine. In one of two histories published in the same year, Mr. Freeman writes of King Alfred; in the other, of King Alfred.5 The same author writes Buonaparte, but, like Macaulay, he calls the French Louis Lewis, and, like Irving, writes Mahomet and Mahometan. not "Mohammed and "Mohammedan." The Arabic prophet's name still is, as it has been for centuries, a favorite battle-ground for Christians. "Every man who has travelled in the East brings home a new name for the prophet, and trims his turban to his own taste." A remarkable style of turban appears in the title of a book published in England in 1876, - "A Digest of Moohummudan Law."

6

1 Freeman: General Sketch of History (edition of 1876).

2 Ibid. History of Europe (Primer).

3 Ibid. General Sketch of History.

4 Ibid. History of the Norman Conquest

5 Ibid.: History of Europe (Primer).

6 See Campbell's Rhetoric, book ii. chap. iii. sect. i. Failure attended the attempt, in Dr. Campbell's time, to substitute Confutcee for "Confu cius," and Zerdusht for "Zoroaster."

Landor: Conversations, Third Series; Johnson and Horne (Tooke).

The practice of calling Greek deities by Greek names, rather than by the Latin names of other deities, seems to be gaining ground. The reasons for this change are succinctly stated by Matthew Arnold:

"The Latin names of the Greek deities raise in most cases the idea of quite distinct personages from the personages whose idea is raised by the Greek names. Hera and Juno are actually, to every scholar's imagination, two different people. So in all these cases the Latin names must, at any inconvenience, be abandoned when we are dealing with the Greek world. But I think it can be in the sensitive imagination of Mr. Grote only, that 'Thucydides' raises the idea of a different man from ouкudidŋs.” 1

Occasionally, however, a powerful voice is heard on the other side of the question.

"I make no apology for employing in my version the names Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and others of Latin origin, for Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and other Greek names of the deities of whom Homer speaks. The names which I have adopted have been naturalized in our language for centuries, and some of them as Mercury, Vulcan, and Dian - have even been provided with English terminations. I was translating from Greek into English, and I therefore translated the names of the gods, as well as the other parts of the poem.' "72

Barbarisms which come under the general head of Words of low slang or cant—the spawn of a political contest, for instance-usually die a natural

origin.

death. For example: —

Up Salt River, Loco-foco, Copperhead, Barn-burner, Hunker, Softshell, Hard-shell, Adullamite, Dough-face, Short-hairs, Puseyite, Carpet-bagger, Unionist, Secessionist, Free-soiler, Garrisonian, contraband (fugitive slave).

Mugwump, Socialist, Populist, Laborite, Silverite, Coxeyite, are so new that their fate is not yet decided.

1 M. Arnold: Essays in Criticism; On Translating Homer, Last Words. 2 William Cullen Bryant: Preface to "The Iliad."

For

If a word supplies a permanent need in the language it may, whatever its origin, come into good use. example:

Whig, Tory, Methodist, Quaker, Shaker, Yankee, Transcendentalist, Realist, Idealist, Radical, banter, bigot, blue-stocking, bombast, buncombe, cabal, cant, fun, fustian, hoax, humbug, slang, snob, tramp (vagrant), clever, flimsy, quixotic, to boycott, to shunt, to quiz.

Great latitude is allowed in the formation of new words from words in present use, since it is by such changes that a language grows.

New forma

tions.

gas

The noun mob may have been justly objected to while the question of its adoption was open; but when once it was established, to mob, mobbish, mob-rule, and mob-law naturally followed. After came into general use, the word with the thing, — it was necessary, as well as natural, to form derivatives like gaseous and gasometer. Other instances are: to coal, to steam, to experience, to pro gress, to supplement, gifted, talented. Of these the last five met, if

indeed they do not still meet, great opposition.

The

"One verb, that has come to us within the last four years from the American mint, is to interview.' Nothing can better express the spirit of our age, ever craving to hear something new. verb calls up before us a queer pair: on the one side stands the great man, not at all sorry at the bottom of his heart that the rest of mankind are to learn what a fine fellow he is; on the other side fussily hovers the pressman, a Boswell who sticks at nothing in the way of questioning, but who outdoes his Scotch model in being wholly unshackled by any weak feeling of veneration."

Whatever the need of to interview, there is nothing to

be said in favor of many vulgar substitutes for Vulgarisms. expressions in good use. For example:

A stea!, the try,2 educationalist,2 speculatist, preventative, ruina tion, confliction (conflict), cablegram,2 electrocution, reportorial, managerial, informational, in course (of course), tasty2 (tasteful),

8

1 Oliphant: Standard English, chap. vi.

* American newspaper.

2*

8 Student's theme.