CHAPTER 12. THE LANGUAGE The 18th century may be taken as representing the first period of Modern English proper as distinct from Early Modern, the outside limits of the period extending from the beginnings of a new literary and standard usage about 1660 to the early 19th century. The transition stage between the first and second periods terminated about 1830, by which time the changes in spelling and pronunciation which took place about 1800 were fully established, and the literary usages of the 18th century had passed out of fashion. The Literary Usage.—The new usage which came into fashion after the Restoration continued to dominate the early 18th century. Literary style and diction continued to be plain and unrhetorical, and to reflect the spoken usage of town life. Addison's prose style marks an advance in the direction of greater elegance and refinement, but it is in close touch with the everyday speech of fashionable people, as is the poetic diction of Pope. The more colloquial and informal speech of the less fashionable classes is represented in the writings of Defoe, and to some extent in Swift. A similar contrast may be observed between Richardson and Fielding. Towards the middle of the century a reaction in favour of a more elevated and erudite mode of writing set in, heralded by Johnson, who aimed at a more rhetorical diction than the "middle style" of Addison. Compare Johnson's criticism of Addison (Lives of the Poets): His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling; . . . always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or painted sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. The more elevated style is seen in the prose of Burke and Gibbon. In poetry also it replaced the plainer usage of Pope, and continued in fashion, modified more and more by the ideals of the romantic movement, until ultimately displaced by new literary theories and experiments, such as the poetic diction of Wordsworth or Keats, or the prose of De Quincey or Lamb. The Spoken Usage.-Eighteenth-century changes in pronunciation depend in the main on class usage. Thus the pronunciation of è (M.E. open e) as i in words like clean, meat [klin, mit] existed before 1600, but did not apparently become the standard usage for some time after 1700, and Pope's rhymes seat: fate, heat: estate, tea : obey, away, show that he favoured the conservative usage. The rhymes great : state, break make (Pope), beside great: heat (Dryden), great seat (Rowe) perhaps show that the modern pronunciation of break, great, is a survival of the earlier fashion. The old pronunciation of oi (representing Early Modern ui) as ai in boil, join, spoil, toil, poison, etc., did not become vulgar until the end of the century-cf. boil: beguile (Spenser), spoil: defile (Dryden), join: divine (Pope), toil: smile (Johnson). The fashionable pronunciation of oblige was the French-cf. Pope, besieged obliged. The modern standard impure (i.e., diphthongal) pronunciation of long vowels, as in make, bone, toe [meik, boun, tou], came in at the end of the 18th or beginning of the 19th century, and is noted already in 1809 by Batchelor.' Smart (1836) 2 speaks of the London pronunciation of these vowels as "not quite simple but apt to contract toward the end"; so è in make, etc., finishes more slenderly than it begins, tapering, so to speak, towards the sound of è" (i.e. i). The necessity for a standard pronunciation was much urged in the 18th century. In 1766 Buchanan published his Essay towards Establishing a Standard for an Elegant and Uniform Pronunciation of the English Language throughout the British Dominions, and his work was succeeded by the pronouncing dictionaries of Sheridan (1780), Nares (1784), and Walker (1791). Spelling. A standard spelling was finally fixed by Johnson's Dictionary (1755), almost the only change since being the substitution of c for ck in words like antic, music, at the beginning of the 19th century. Cf. Pegge, Anecdotes of the English Language (1814): "It is now the ton to write physic, music, public, etc., without the old final letter k, which no schoolboy dared to have done with impunity forty years ago." That English spelling presented difficulties is clear from Franklin's Scheme for a New Alphabet and Reformed Spelling (1768), and also from earlier writers. Thus Jones, Practical Phonography, or New Art of Rightly Speling [sic] and Writing Words by the Sound thereof, contains the rule : All words which can be sounded several ways must be written according to the hardest, harshest, longest, and most unusual sound." Vocabulary and Syntax.-The common use of slang or colloquial abbreviations is satirized by Swift in the Tatler (No. 230) as among "the late refinements crept into our language." Examples are "mobb," "incog," "plenipo," "I'd h' brot 'um," "bamboozl," "banter," "sham," etc. French words, especially military terms, were still freely used. Addison in the Spectator (No. 165) complains that "the present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words," and gives a letter "very modishly chequered with this modern military eloquence" (e.g., reconnoitre, maraud, defile, corps, etc.). Steele's "Humble Petition of Who and Which" in the Spectator (1711) reflects on the exaggerated use of that as a relative. In the latter part of the century a number of Celtic words were introduced through the Ossianic fashion, such as bard, brogue, whiskey, plaid, shamrock. SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST GABRIELSON, A.: Rime as a Criterion of the Pronunciation of Spenser, Pope, Byron, and Swinburne (Upsala, 1909).-HORN, W.: Hist. Neueng. Grammatik (1908).-MEAD, W. E.: Versification of Pope (Leipzig, 1889).-WYLD, H. C.: History of Modern Colloquial English. 1 T. Batchelor, An Orthoëpical Analysis of the English Language (London, 1809). SECTION VI THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAPTER I. GENERAL VIEW General View-The Democratic Movement-The Scientific Movement-The Spiritual Revival The Democratic Movement. The century opened in the midst of widespread disturbance caused by the French Revolution and the events which had followed. The enthusiasm with which the "glorious outburst" of '89 had been welcomed by many in this country, especially among the ardent spirits of the younger generation, had already waned, and the excesses of the Reign of Terror and the military ambitions of the Republic had brought about a sweeping change in English thought. This change was completed by the long struggle with Napoleon. Waterloo delivered Europe from the despotism of the Great Adventurer, but at the same time it marked the triumph of the forces of reaction; and though the democratic ideas generated by the Revolution were by no means destroyed, progress all over Europe was definitely checked. In England men's minds were still haunted by the spectre of anarchy, and for some years there was no further talk of constitutional reform. Meanwhile, however, vast new economic forces had come into play, and England was being rapidly transformed from an agricultural and mercantile into an industrial nation. The far-reaching social changes wrought by this transformation made. political reorganization an imperative necessity, and at length the first step was taken in the Reform Act of 1832, by which the political monopoly of the territorial oligarchy was broken and a large share of their power transferred to the middle classes, the representatives of commerce and capital. It was intended by those who passed this measure that it should be definitive. But the working classes in turn began to clamour for recognition, and the agitation for the further extension of the franchise that ensued was powerfully reinforced by industrial depression. Hence the Chartist movement of 1837-49, with its demand for manhood suffrage and other Radical reforms. Chartism died out under the influence of improved industrial conditions; but the extension of the franchise, though delayed, came in time, and the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884-5 register the steady onward sweep of English democracy. The purely political aspects of the democratic movement are, however, of less moment to us here than its indirect effects on the fabric and temper of society. The social consciousness was deeply stirred; the old sharp dividing lines between class and class began to be obliterated; increasing attention was given to the claims of the masses as against those of the privileged few; humanitarianism spread, and the sphere of legislation was enlarged to include the amelioration of the conditions of labour and of the poor. Some advance was made towards the breaking up of social conventions and the increase of freedom for thought and action; and, more important still, a movement began for the emancipation of women. Much of the literature of the Victorian age is the direct expression of these new social enthusiasms and ideals. The development of popular education, though very slow, was yet another significant accompaniment, part cause and part effect, of democratic progress. So, too, was the diffusion of knowledge through the newspapers (the number and circulation of which increased enormously after the abolition of the Stamp Duty in 1855 and the Paper Duty in 1861), in magazines, and in cheap books. Even the humblest were thus made partakers in the larger intellectual life of their time, and ideas and speculations which would otherwise have been limited to the aristocracy of culture became the common property of the multitude. An ever-widening public for literature was thus opened up, with results to literature itself too numerous and complex to be considered in a mere epitome. The Scientific Movement. Not less important than the advance of democracy during the 19th century was the corresponding advance of science, to which nothing in previous history affords a parallel. Decade by decade men penetrated more and more deeply into the secrets of the universe, adding fact to fact and generalization to generalization; decade by decade they gained more and more control over the forces of nature. On the practical side—in the application of science to life in factory, railway, steamship, and in the multitudinous uses of electricity-the result was a complete transformation of the world. No less complete was the revolution effected in the domain of thought. In matter and spirit alike literature was profoundly affected by this "march of mind" and the new ideas which it brought in its train. Directly, it showed the influence of science in the realistic tendency which for a time was dominant. Fiction and history alike became scientific. The poets, from Tennyson to Meredith, were continuously engaged in reconciling the revelations of science with human idealism. The Spiritual Disturbance and Revival. While not wholly responsible for it (for powerful disintegrating forces were at work within the edifice of faith itself), the scientific movement was in large measure the cause of the great religious upheaval of the Victorian age. New knowledge and old dogmas came into fierce conflict; the ancient system of thought was shaken at its foundations; traditional landmarks were swept away; intelligent men of all sects and classes were deeply stirred by the spirit of speculation and unrest. Hence the scepticism, the continual heart-searchings, the widespread melancholy which are among the persistent features of higher Victorian literature, and the strenuous moral spirit which makes it so different as a whole from the literature of the age of Elizabeth or of the first half of the 18th century. Hence, too, the strong reaction against the domination of science in many quarters; the religious revivals initiated in the High Church movement; and outside the Church itself, the unceasing protest of some of the greatest poets and prose-writers against the materialism to which science seemed to lead. That protest had two sides. On the one hand, it was inspired by hostility to the mechanical and godless view of the world which appeared to be sapping the bases of all religious faith. On the other hand, it was directed against the hardness and ugliness which had come to characterize life in a commercial, utilitarian, and comfortable age. The renaissance of art and a fresh outburst of romanticism were the most conspicuous expressions of this newly awakened sense of beauty. The fact that both æstheticism and romanticism soon became intimately connected with social reform attests the ever-growing influence of social ideas during the period with which we are now to be concerned. |