VII.

SHREW, SHREWD, SHREWDNESS.

271

6

many cases it has been a successful one-to empty words employed in the condemnation of evil, of the depth and earnestness of the moral reprobation which they once conveyed. Men's too easy toleration of sin, the feebleness of their moral indignation against it, brings this about, namely that the blame which words expressed once, has in some of them become much weaker now than once, from others has vanished altogether. To do a shrewd turn,' was once to do a wicked turn; and Chaucer, using shrewdness' by which to translate the Latin 'improbitas,' shows that it meant wickedness for him; nay, two murderers he calls two shrews,'-for there were, as already noticed, male shrews' once as well as female. But a shrewd turn' now, while it implies a certain amount of sharp dealing, yet implies nothing more; and shrewdness' is applied to men rather in their praise than in their dispraise. And not these only, but a multitude of other words,—I will only instance 'prank,' ' flirt,' 'luxury,' 'luxurious,' 'peevish,' 'wayward,' loiterer," uncivil,' involved once a much more earnest moral disapprobation than they do at this present.

But I must bring this lecture to a close. I have but opened to you paths, which you, if you are so minded, can follow up for yourselves. We have learned lately to speak of men's antecedents;' the phrase is newly come up; and it is common to say that if we would know what a man really now is, we must know his antecedents," that is, what he has been in time past. This is

quite as true about words. If we would know what they now are, we must know what they have been; we must know, if possible, the date and place of their birth, the successive stages of their subsequent history, the company which they have kept, all the road which they have travelled, and what has brought them to the point at which now we find them; we must know, in short, their antecedents.

And let me say, without attempting to bring back school into these lectures which are out of school, that, seeking to do this, we might add an interest to our researches in the lexicon and the dictionary which otherwise they could never have; that taking such words, for example, as èxxλnola, οι παλιγγενεσία, οι εὐτραπελία, οι σοφιστής, οι oxoλaσTIKós, in Greek; as 'religio,' or 'sacramentum,' or 'urbanitas,' or 'superstitio,' in Latin; as 'libertine,' or 'casuistry,'* or humanity,' or 'humourous,' or 'danger,' or 'romance,' in English, and endeavouring to trace the manner in which one meaning grew out of and superseded another, and how they arrived at that use in which they have finally rested (if indeed before our English words there is not a future still), we shall derive, I believe, amusement, I am sure, instruction; we shall feel that we are really getting something, increasing the moral and intellectual stores of our minds; furnishing ourselves with

* See Whewell, History of Moral Philosophy in England, pp. xxvii.~xxxii.

VII.

CONCLUSION OF THE LECTURE.

273

that which may hereafter be of service to ourselves, may be of service to others-than which there can be no feeling more pleasurable, none more delightful. I shall be glad and thankful, if you can feel as much in regard of that lecture, which I now bring to an end.*

*For a fuller treatment of the subject of this lecture, see my Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in Senses different from their present, 3rd ed., London and Cambridge, 1865.

T

LECTURE VIII.

CHANGES IN THE SPELLING OF ENGLISH WORDS.

HE subject of my lecture to-day will be English

THE

orthography, and it will be mainly taken up with notices of some changes which this has undergone. You may think perhaps that a weightier, or at all events a more interesting, subject might have claimed our attention to-day. But it is indeed one wanting neither in importance nor in interest. Unimportant it is not, having often engaged the attention of the foremost scholars among us. Uninteresting it may be, through faults in the manner of its treatment; but would never prove so in competent bands.* Let me hope that even in mine it may yield some pleasure and profit.

I know not who it was that said, 'The invention of printing was very well; but, as compared to the invention of writing, it was no such great matter after all.' Whoever made this observation, familiarity had not obliterated

for him use and

* Let me refer, in proof, to a paper, On Orthographical Expedients, by Edwin Guest, Esq., in the Transactions of the Philological Society, vol. iii. p. 1.

VIII.

WRITING AND PRINTING.

275

the wonder of that, at which we probably have long ceased to wonder, if indeed the marvel of it ever presented itself to our minds at all-the power, namely, of representing sounds by written signs, of reproducing for the eye what existed at first only for the ear. Nor was the estimate which he formed of the relative value of these two inventions other than a just one. Writing stands more nearly on a level with speaking, and deserves better to be compared with it, than with printing; which last, with all its utility, is yet of quite another and inferior type of greatness: or, if this be too much to claim for writing, it may at all events be affirmed to stand midway between the other two, and to be as much superior to the one as it is inferior to the other.

The intention of the written word, the end whereto it is a mean, is by aid of signs agreed on beforehand, to represent to the eye with as much accuracy as possible the spoken word. This intention, however, it never fulfils completely. There is always a chasm between these two, and much going forward in a language to render this chasm ever wider and wider. Short as man's spoken word often falls of his thought, his written word falls often as short of his spoken. Several causes contribute to this. In the first place, the marks of imperfection and infirmity cleave to writing, as to every other invention of man. It fares with almost all alphabets as with our own. They have superfluous letters, letters which they do not want, because others already represent their sound;