Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/37

 io s. ii. JULY 9, loo*.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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says about another vocable may be said of this ; it is

which everybody, high and low, uses to express that idea, and which expresses that idea with a com- pleteness which is not equalled by any other single word, and scarcely by any circumlocution."
 * ' a word which is appropriate to a particular idea,

From these extracts one might be led to the conclusion that " talented " came into exist- ence during the first half of the last century and that its birthplace was America. But that cannot be, since we find Archbishop Abbot writing in this fashion of the Duke of Buckingham in 1627 :

" What a miserable and restless thing ambition is ! When one talented, but as a common person ;

Et by the favour of his Prince, hath gotten that terest, that, in a sort, all the keys of England hang at his girdle," &c. ' Stuart Tracts,' p. 330, in the new edition of ' An English Garner,' Constable & Co., 1903.

Now the archbishop, who was the author of various books, had also a share in the translation of the New Testament, and may therefore be regarded as no mean authority. Though this is the only instance of the employment of the word in the seventeenth century that I can produce, I am unwilling to believe it is a hapax legomenon at that period, and feel sure that it was used by other writers in whose works examples will be found.

When Coleridge calls " talented " " a vile and barbarous vocable,"one does nbt accept his dictum ; neither is one disposed to agree with Macaulay, who thinks it is not wanted. If we bear in mind its history and employ it in the sense now everywhere attached to it, it seems an excellent expression and an acquisi- tion to the language, inasmuch as it has no complete equivalent, for gifted, which is the nearest, was, as Johnson tells us, "commonly used ironically." It is, besides, perfectly legitimate in its formation as an adjective. Coleridge apparently believed that every word ending in ed was a participle passive ; but how can that be when we have such words as gnarled, naked, rugged, ivicked, wretched, which prove that ed is also an adjectival termination? For the same reason he might have denied that barren, sudden, sullen, were adjectives, because we have such participles passive as fallen, graven, risen. Perhaps Coleridge got this idea from his friend Sir John Stoddart, who, when Chief Justice of Malta, received the poet as his guest in 1804, with a hope that the change might improve his health, injured by opium- eating. At all events, the worthy knight endeavours to uphold the same opinion in opposition to "the rule laid down by some writers that there can be no participles but

what are derived from verbs " (' Philosophy of Language,' second edit., p. 105). With these grammarians, notwithstanding "the principles of Universal Grammar," to which Sir John appeals, I shall still regard all such wordsas daggered(Co\eridge), moneyed (Bacon), mustachioed, nectared (Milton), petticoated, " sivorded Seraphim " (Milton), and a host of others, as adjectives, for the simple but suffi- cient reason that they cannot be parts of verbs which have no existence. This rule, founded, one would fancy, on common sense, is strictly observed in the sixth edition of Johnson's * Dictionary ' (1785) and in Cham- bers's k Twentieth Century Dictionary ' (1901), both of which admirable works I have used, among others, in drawing up this paper, in which I trust I have shown that " talented " is a regularly formed adjective, and a useful addition to our vocabulary. I should be as little inclined to make Coleridge my leader in language as in philosophy, when he him- self was, to use Lord Jeffrey's phrase, " march- ing under the guidance of the Pillar of Smoke.' 7

JOHN T. CURRY.

[Surely the objection to words such as " talented," "gifted/' is maintainable. At any rate, we per- sonally sympathize with Coleridge.]

AINSTY. The Ainsty of York has been written of aforetime in 'N. & Q.' I have notes of references to it 7 th S. x. 68, 194, 312, 382 ; 8 th S. i. 352, 383, 442 ; and the late Canon Isaac Taylor's fancy that Ainsty signified "own enclosure" commended itself to my probably too-easily-pleased understanding. Quite recently a novel theory regarding the origin of the name was advanced by the Rev. J. Solloway, B.D., in a paper on * The Monks of Marmoutier' read before the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and printed in the Annual Report for 1903. Perhaps some of the readers of 'N. & Q.' who were before interested in the etymological value of Ainsty may be glad to have their attention drawn to the latest guess, which I will here record in the hope that its reasonableness may be discussed. " West of the city of York," said Mr. Solloway, "was a richly endowed House of Canons called

Christ's Church; later on the district was

known by this name, Christ's Church, under another form. The Rural Deanery was called the ' Deanery of Christianity.' It was, and is still, a well- known name for rural deaneries. Lincoln City is now in a * Deanery of Christianity,' Leicester also is in a deanery of the same name, and the K. Deanery of Exeter is also called the Deanery of Christianity. Now to sum up : In Domesday the district ly'ing to the west of York was called Christ's Church ; later on it was known as Chris- tianity ; now it is called the Ainsty. When was