Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/123

Rh Landor's specific observations upon usage abound in mistakes of fact and mistakes of inference. Of the various delusions under which he labored, the one most frequently to be observed concerned etymology. He was fully possessed by that devil of derivation which, unlike the evil spirit of Scripture, makes happy him in whom it dwells and vexes only the souls of those with whom he comes in contact. There are some men who seem incapable of comprehending the fact that it is the present meaning of a word which determines the propriety of its use; not its past meaning, still less its meaning in the tongue from which it came. Of this particular kind of incapacity Landor furnished so many examples in his Conversations that we must restrict ourselves to a very few which can be treated in a few words. He implies that it is wrong to say bad or false orthography, because "orthography" means by its derivation right spelling. He informs us that we are at liberty to gather two or more roses, but not to gather one; for "gather" comes from the same root as ''together. Examine into is incorrect, because "examine" strictly means "to weigh out.''"

Further, we are required to believe that it is highly improper to say under the circumstances, though every- body has been saying it for the past two or three centuries. But the Latin circum shows that circumstances are about us, not above us; it is therefore quite impossible for us to be under them. So Landor assures us; and then proceeds himself to write averse to. This is a construction which has been in the best of use for three hundred years, and is likely so to continue for hundreds of years to come. But while the rest of us have the right to say it, Landor had not, if he purposed to remain faithful to his principles. The construction with from, not so common in the best usage, was nevertheless unobjectionable, and was open to him. It was his business to use it and not the one with to.

To base propriety of present usage upon derivation would render it necessary for an English writer to master three or four languages before he could safely deliver himself in his own. The ridiculousness of such a requirement reveals at once the ridiculousness of the idea that makes an inference of such a nature possible. All that is further needed to enhance the preposterousness of the course is to rest the meaning upon an erroneous derivation. This, Landor, who was in no sense a scholar as regards his own tongue, was usually able to accomplish. Conjecture ran riot in his observations, unembarrassed by sufficient knowledge to give it even a slight claim to plausibility. Bower, he tells us, is the last syllable of arbour. As a matter of fact bower was in the language some centuries before arbour—originally (h)erbere—made its appearance in it. Landor indeed was so deplorably ignorant of English etymology that he missed the benefit he would have derived from it to support the views he advocated. "We write island with an s," he said, in his capacity of spelling-reformer, "as if we feared to be thought ignorant of its derivation." The truth is, we write island with an s because we are ignorant of its derivation. It was not till the sixteenth century that men, under the fancied belief that the word was connected with isle, inserted the s, which hides from us its real origin.

One more illustration must suffice of Landor's efforts to restore usage to its primitive purity. He was unaware that whiles is etymologically an adverbial genitive; he assumed that it was a plural noun. On the strength of this blunder he was enabled to pronounce the following dictum for the benefit of writers. "While," he said, "is the time when; whiles is the times when." But he never had the slightest doubt as to the correctness of his statements and the truth of his convictions. Exposure of his blunders provoked his wrath, but never shook his self-confidence. The waywardness and wrong-headedness of the views he expressed, joined with the violence of his utterances, give a certain justification to Byron's designation of him as "that deep-mouthed Bœotian, Savage Landor." The errors which vitiated his conclusions and those of others before him will constitute the subject of an article in the January number.