Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/39

Rh teenth century that had liefer followed by a verb made its first recorded appearance in the language. Once established it came rapidly into extensive use. No reader of Chaucer needs to be told how frequently it is to be met in his pages. Nor is his practice in employing it different from that of his contemporaries and immediate successors. For about two hundred years this particular locution may be said to have been fully recognized, not merely in colloquial speech, but in literature of all sorts. But about the middle of the fifteenth century a rival idiom sprang up. It conveyed the same idea with the use of a different word. This was had rather. The newcomer did not expel had liefer speedily. As a matter of fact it never has entirely. But it steadily encroached upon the frequency of its employment. Though the two expressions lasted side by side for at least a century, the later form not only pushed gradually the earlier one from its supremacy, but finally drove it almost entirely from literary use. The practice of Shakespeare may be said to indicate the fortune which in his time had overtaken the supplanted and supplanting idioms. Had rather is found in his plays scores of times, had liefer not once.

Practically, therefore, after the sixteenth century this particular locution had died out of the language of literature. It can, indeed, be found employed in it occasionally. Even in our own day it is not altogether disused. Two or three writers of eminence have at times resorted to it; but as a general rule, when it now occurs, it is either put in the mouths of the uneducated or is the conscious adoption of an archaism. In this latter respect the effort made by Tennyson to revive the idiom is worthy of mention. As early as 1842 he had made use of the archaic combination of lief and dear in the "Morte d'Arthur"; but it was not until his later writings that he introduced had liefer. The first instance of its occurrence is in the Idyls of the King, which came out in 1859. Twice does Enid employ it in the poem which goes under her name. Her first use of it is where she says that, compared with having her lord suffer shame through his love to her.

But Tennyson's course seems, up to this time, to have found few imitators. Decay has overtaken the expression. There has probably never been a period in which it has not been more or less employed in the colloquial speech; but in literature its day has long been gone.

Had rather is therefore the lineal successor of had liefer, or, strictly speaking, its supplanter. The meaning of both is essentially the same. But in the sixteenth century there began to be employed an analogous, though not a rival, locution. This was had better. An example of it has been cited from a poem of the fifteenth century; but even if no doubt exists of its appearance then, it did not come into general use until a good deal later. Like liefer, but unlike rather, better had been originally employed with the pronoun and the substantive verb. Me were better—that is, "it would be better for me"—was the method of expression which gradually gave way to I had better. It may be remarked in passing that a confusion of these constructions sprang up in the Elizabethan period and became somewhat prevalent. The dative with the substantive verb was sometimes replaced by the nominative. Hence we find such expressions as Viola's in Twelfth Night, "She were better love a dream." It was had liefer, however, which pretty certainly furnished the model upon which had better was formed. But the latter was apparently slow in coming into any wide general use. It could not encroach upon the employment of had rather, for it was distinct in meaning; but for some reason there seems to have been for a long while a reluctance to resort to it. In our version of the Bible it does not occur. In Shakespeare it is found but once followed by a verb, and that instance belongs to a part of Henry VIII. which is now usually ascribed to Fletcher.

This condition of things seems to have continued during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Had better, though employed, was, comparatively speaking, not much employed; at least this is true if we confine our consideration to the writings of authors of the first rank. But in the nineteenth century all this was changed. The idiom came to be constantly used in literature, while the