Nor Pope:

"Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said;
Tie up the knocker; say I'm sick,- I'm dead."

It is said that the word ill, in the present English sense, does not occur once in King James's version of the Bible.

Another supposed Americanism is baggage, which is said to be improperly used for luggage. The best English lexicographers, however, define luggage as "heavy, cumbrous baggage, or package,"- that is, for example, the bulky, ponderous movables which an army, or a family when moving, transport with them. The phrase "bag and baggage" is one of the most familiar in English literature. A late English writer, Rev. W. L. Blackley, in his "WordGossip," speaking of the American use of slim, as applied to attendance, says that "it is nearer the original meaning in which the word came to us than either of the senses in which we are wont to use it. It does not strike us as awkward to say, 'there was a thin attendance,' which is equivalent to the ordinary meaning of slim; and still less do we object to the expression 'a bad attendance,' which is the sense in which we first received the word, from the German schlimm, 'bad,' its root idea in that language probably signifying 'crooked,' 'irregular." So clever, in the sense of "good-natured,” plunder in the American sense, overslaugh, and wilt, may all be defended by the best English authority. The truth is, while John Bull has been sneering at us for our vulgarisms, it is we who have adhered to, and he who has departed from, the ancient and sound usage in regard to these words; it is the island, and not the continent, that has corrupted the tongue.

999

The force of these considerations our English censors are beginning at last themselves to acknowledge. They

are beginning to admit that the vast number of words, obsolete or provincial in England, which were brought to this country generations ago, which have cropped up among us, and which, when met with in American writers, have an outlandish look to an Englishman, are a clear gain to the language. A late number of "Blackwood" has an article on this subject, in which it admits that these words and phrases have been branded, very unjustly, with the name of Americanisms, when many of them are not only pure Anglicisms, but made English for evermore in the pages of Spenser, Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. It is not the first time in history that the language of a people has been preserved in greater purity in the colonies than in the mother country. The descendants of the Greek colonists of Asia Minor, it is said, speak a language much nearer to the old Greek than do the citizens of Greece. Dutch resembles the old German more closely than the present dialect of Prussia; and Spanish is more Latin-like than the Italian. Among these legitimate English words, current in America, but little known in English, "Blackwood cites these: Bender -"to go on the bender "- from bend, to crook the elbow in lifting the glass to the mouth; fall, the beautiful synonym of "autumn"; meech, an old Shakspearean word for "skulk"; platform, in its political sense, a term frequently employed by the writers of the Commonwealth; rile, to vex a person by exciting his temper; sag; slick, as used in the phrase, "he goes slick about his business"; slide, in the sense of which we have already spoken; splurge, to swagger and make a great fuss and display of one's wealth; squelch, of the old English use of which we have an example in the old ballad in which it is said that St. George "did the dragon fell, and gave him a plaguy

squelch"; squirm, to wriggle like an eel or worm; stent or stint, and wilt.

66

All these words, excepting bender, the critic in "Blackwood" declares "are worthy of the favor of English writers and speakers, and can boast an ancient, and in some cases an illustrious, ancestry." Another class of words, which the critic deems true Americanisms, such as buncombe," "lobbying," "wire-pulling," "log-rolling," "axe-grinding," he thinks the purists will not be able long to shut out from the dictionary, especially as the English are becoming very familiar with the practices they describe. But a third class of Americanisms, which are clamoring for admission into the language, he pronounces "offensive," and declares should be resisted at the threshold. These are donate, locate; balance, for a part of anything; to post or post up a person; pled for "pleaded"; avails for "proceeds "; illy for "ill"; quite for "very"; retiracy, boss, at that, as in the sentence, "He has a scolding wife, and an ugly one at that"; and many others which are regarded as slang as well by educated Americans as by Englishmen. For these words, the meanings of which are fully expressed by old and legitimate words, there is no necessity whatever; and we are perfectly willing that the interlopers should be handed over to the critic, to be excommunicated. It must be admitted, too, that some of our words, which are legitimate enough of themselves, are too often overworked, as Mr. Choate said of the sheriff's participle. As Dominie Sampson could never open his mouth without letting out "Prodigious!" so Americans are sure to "guess," "reckon," " presume," ," "calculate," whenever they give an opinion.

INDEX.

blues," 82; on angling, 192; | Coleridge, Rev. E., his memory,

his "Anatomy," 228.
Butler, Samuel, his self-praise, 93.
Buxton, Jedediah, his memory,