to be near that upon which either operates, agency and instrumentality are marked by the word. So, too, a person must get near that which he obtains, and we can speak of coming by anything, meaning getting possession of it. But we can also say to come by train, where it is means we are marking. Nearness may also imply agreement, and by all accounts is much the same as according to all accounts. In the same way for, which marks one thing as being in front of another, admits of extension. To be in front of another is to be in the position of a defender, we may fight for a person; or the idea of advocate or representative is suggested, we may plead for, or act for, another. Hindrance, again, may be marked, for aught I can see; or cause, they did it for envy. And it is the same with all the words of this class. are application to the non material of ing the Other illustrations of development, where from a supposed connection between the material and the nonmaterial the words which denote the former have given rise to those which denote the latter, seen in the following. We speak of a person as being jovial, or mercurial, or saturnine; the words are derived from the names of the planets, which according to the belief of an earlier time could influence the dispositions of men. The moon, too, could exercise an influence, and hence the word lunatic. Or, again, we have courage, melancholy, phlegmatic, choleric; the words are based on the names of parts of the body, which parts were supposed to be in some way connected with the qualities denoted by the words. And the words remain, although the beliefs to which they are due may now be rejected. One other instance of this class may be considered rather more fully, as in this case the stages between an early simple physical meaning, and a later one that has been found not very easy to define, are fairly marked. We may look to Ben Jonson for an explanation of the development which the word humour had reached in his time, and may note in passing, that development becomes degradation, if a language is shaped by careless users, as when humour was being maltreated by Corporal Nym and his kind. Very properly objecting to such abuse, he desired, as he says in the Induction to Every Man out of his Humour, To give these ignorant well-spoken days Some taste of their abuse of this word humour. And then explains what is the proper use according to its derivation : We do conclude That whatsoe'er hath fluxure and humidity Is humour. So in every human body, In some one part, and are not continent, It may, by metaphor, apply itself As when some one peculiar quality It was in this sense that the word was used by Ben Jonson in the titles to his two plays, Every Man in his Humour and Every Man out of his Humour, and the adjective humorous meant that a person was marked by this kind of humour, as in the title to another play, The Humorous Lieutenant. Something of the old meaning remains in good- or ill-humoured, or the less-used humoursome; but mostly we connect a very different idea with the words humour, and humorous, than that which belonged to them in Ben Jonson's time. Modification of the sounds 8. So far it has been from one point of view only that words have been looked at in respect to their work of conveying a meaning. But there is of a language: another point to be taken into account, where again the question of change arises there is the spoken form of a word, its pronunciation. And here from the nature of the case, quite as much as with the meaning, change is unavoidable. For the transmission of the spoken forms of words is due to successive imitations; each individual attempts to reproduce that which he hears uttered, and while the result of the attempt must of course be so far successful, that the reproduction is recognisable as an imitation of its original, yet such success does not require or attain, at least over long periods or in the case of all words, exactness. Taking then even a form of speech which is current among so limited a community that at any particular time it may be considered practically uniform, it is certain that the descendants of such a community will not preserve the speech unchanged in this respect. English has had so varied a history that, as might be as in the case expected, it will offer abundant illustration of such change; for example, the long vowel-sounds of the old stan, cwēn, wrītan, tōþ, ūt are in no cases kept in the modern stone, queen, write, tooth, out. Further, as is suggested by a comparison of writan with write, parts of a word may be lost in the course of successive transmissions; no infinitive now has the old termination, and most of the inflections have suffered the same fate. Words, too, get contracted by those who will not make the effort necessary for giving each part of a word distinctly, as when feowertine niht is contracted to fortnight. The change under consideration has been so great that hardly a word, which both was used in Alfred's time and is used in our own, has the same form, written and spoken, at both times. of the long English. Only very slightly has the adaptability of language to evervarying needs of expression been illustrated. The intention with which such illustration as has been given is offered, has been in the first place to suggest that, if we even cursorily examine English as it is found during a not very extended period, we shall see changes of such a kind and extent as to make it appear possible that, if time be allowed for similar C changes to be worked out, language material, that did no more than satisfy the needs of a primitive state of existence, might have been a sufficient origin for the language of an advanced civilization like that of England to-day. And in the second place to suggest what a wonderful instance of development is furnished by such a language as English, what interest might be found in its history. CHAPTER II Relation to one another, and to the common original, of languages which have had a common source — England and America — the languages of modern Europe — their likeness — likeness due to borrowing — likeness due to common origin — the case of the Romance languages — regular differences between Latin and English worked out-the case of the two languages parallel to that of the Romance languages- the light hence thrown upon English by Latin - other languages may be associated with English - further knowledge of English which is thus gained other languages may be associated with Latinthe Aryan family — the classification of the Germanic or Teutonic group — its oldest monuments - - the likeness of their vocabularies illustratedlight thrown by languages on the condition of those who spoke them - unique position of English. The relation and to the original, of 1. THE extent and character of change in the language of a country has been slightly illustrated in the preceding chapter by the help of some common to one another, English words. As an introduction to the present chapter a particular case of change in a language which also may be illustrated from the later history of English, may be noticed; that, namely, where from the migration of a section of the main body of its speakers a language develops simultaneously under different conditions. Such which have had a common source. The case of Eng- land and is the case of English in England and in the United States; and already there are differences noticeable when the speech of one country is compared with that of the other; e.g. though guess and calculate are current in both, yet neither is used in both |