into books, though as yet I have but seen it in an American, and I dare say others as well; so that it is hard to say where this influx will stop, or whether all our words with this termination will not finally bring forth an adjective. Convenient as you may sometimes find these, I would yet certainly counsel you to abstain from all but the perfectly well recognized formations of this kind. It is prudent to follow here, rather than to lead.

'Starvation' is another word of quite recent introduction, formed in like manner on the model of preceding formations of a similar character-its first formers indeed not observing that they were putting a Latin termination to a Saxon word. The word is an Americanism. "Strange as it may appear," observes a writer in the Notes and Queries, "it is nevertheless quite true that this word, now unhappily so common on every tongue, is not to be found in our own English dictionaries; neither in Todd's Johnson, published in 1826, nor in Richardson's, published ten years later, nor in Smart's Walker Remodelled, published about the same time as Richardson's. It is Webster, who has the credit of importing it from his country into this, and in a supplement issued a few years ago Mr. Smart adopted it as 'a trivial word, but in very common and at present good use.""

Again, languages enrich themselves, our own has done so, by recovering treasures which for a while had been lost by them or foregone. I do not mean that all which drops out of use is loss; there are words which it is gain to be rid of; which it would be folly to wish

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to revive; of which Dryden, setting himself against an extravagant zeal in this direction, says in an ungracious comparison-they do "not deserve this redemption, any more than the crowds of men who daily die, or are slain for sixpence in a battle, merit to be restored to life, if a wish could revive them."* There are others however which it is a real gain to draw back again from the temporary oblivion which had overtaken them; and this process of their setting and rising again is not as unfrequent as at first might seem.

You may perhaps remember that Horace, tracing in a few memorable lines the history of words, while he notes that many which were once current have now dropped out of use, does not thereby count that of necessity their race is for ever run; on the contrary he confidently anticipates a palingenesy for many among them: "Multa renascentur, quæ jam cecidere ;" and I am convinced that there has been such in the case of our English words to a far greater extent than we are generally aware. Words slip almost or quite as imperceptibly back into use as they once slipped out of it. Let me suggest a few facts in evidence of this. In the cotemporary gloss which an anonymous friend of Spenser's furnished to his Shepherd's Calendar, “for the exposition of old words," as he declares, he thinks it expedient to include in his list, such as the following: 'dapper,' 'scathe,' 'askance,' 'sere,' 'embellish,' 'bevy,' 'forestall,' 'fain,' with not a few others quite as familiar as these. Who will say of the verb 'to hal

* Postscript to his translation of the Æneid.

low' that it is even obsolescent; and yet Wallis two hundred years ago observed-"it has almost gone out of use" (fere desuevit). It would be difficult to find an example of the verb 'to advocate' between Milton and Burke. Franklin, a close observer in such matters, as he was himself an admirable master of English style, considered the word to have sprung up during his own residence in Europe. In this indeed he was mistaken; it had only during this period revived. Johnson says of 'jeopardy'-"it is not in use;" which certainly is not any longer true. I am persuaded that as far as intelligibility is concerned, Chaucer is not merely as near, but much nearer, to us than he was felt by Dryden and his cotemporaries to be to them. He and the writers of his time make exactly the same sort of complaints, only in still stronger language, about his archaic phraseology and the obscurities which it involves that are made at the present day. Thus in the Preface to his Tales from Chaucer Dryden having quoted some not very difficult lines from the earlier poet whom he was modernizing, proceeds: "You have here a specimen of Chaucer's language, which is so obsolete that his sense is scarce to be understood."

Nor was it merely thus with respect of Chaucer. These wits and poets of the court of Charles the Second were conscious of a greater gulf between themselves and the Elizabethian æra, separated from them by little more than fifty years, than any of which we are aware, separated from it by nearly two centuries more. I do not mean merely that they felt themselves more removed from its tone and spirit; their altered circum

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stances might explain this; but I am convinced that they found a greater difficulty and strangeness in the language of Spenser and Shakespeare than we find now; that it sounded in many ways more uncouth, more old-fashioned, more abounding in obsolete terms than it does in our ears at the present. Only in this way can I explain the tone in which they are accustomed to speak of these worthies of the near past. I must again refer to Dryden, the truest representative of literary England in its good and in its evil during the last half of the seventeenth century. Of Spenser, whose death was separated from his own birth by little more than thirty years, he speaks as of one belonging to quite a different epoch, counting it much to say, "notwithstanding his obsolete language, he is still intelligible." Nay, hear what his judgment is of Shakespeare, so far as language is concerned: "It must be allowed to the present age that the tongue in general is so much refined since Shakespeare's time, that many of his words and more of his phrases are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure."+

* Preface to Juvenal.

† Preface to Troilus and Cressida. In justice to Dryden, and lest it should be said that he had spoken poetic blasphemy, it ought not to be forgotten that 'pestered' had not in his time at all so offensive a sense as it would have now. It meant no more than inconveniently crowded; thus Milton: "Confined and pestered in this pinfold here."

I

Sometimes a word will emerge anew from the undercurrent of society, not indeed new, but yet to most seeming as new, its very existence having been altogether forgotten by the greater number of those speaking the language; although it must have somewhere lived on upon the lips of men. Thus, for instance, since the Californian and Australian discoveries of gold we hear often of a 'nugget' of gold; a lump, that is, of the pure metal; and there has been some discussion whether the word had been born for the present necessity, or whether it be a recent malformation of 'ingot.' am inclined to think that it is neither one nor the other. I would not indeed affirm that it may not be a popular recasting of 'ingot;' but only that it is not a recent one; for 'nugget' very nearly in its present form, occurs in our elder writers, being spelt 'niggot' by them.* There can be little doubt that this is the same word; all the consonants, which are generally the stamina of a word, being the same; while this early form 'niggot' makes more plausible their suggestion that 'nugget' is only 'ingot' disguised, seeing that there wants nothing but the very common metathesis of the two first letters to bring that out of this.

New words are often formed from the names of persons, actual or mythical. Some one has observed how interesting would be a complete collection, or a collection approaching to completeness, in any language of

*Thus in North's Plutarch, p. 499: "After the fire was quenched, they found in niggots of gold and silver mingled together, about a thousand talents;" and again, p. 323: "There was brought a marvellous great mass of treasure in niggots of gold."