Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/602

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NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. VL D EC. 21, 1912.

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The Science of Etymology. By Walter W. Skeat.

(Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

PROF. SKEAT'S last work is a final service to the science of etymology as a whole. His aim was to show the position of English, and its value in the general scheme of Indo-Germanic lan- guage, in the light of the knowledge amassed during the last twenty years, and along with this to block up yet more effectively than heretofore the entrance to specious byways of conjecture in which many a would-be etymologist has gone astray. He emphasizes yet once more the importance of the spoken language and of preserving or renewing a true relation between it and spelling. Our remote forefathers, before the Norman wiseacres set themselves to introduce reforms, spelt phonetically, and trusted the sound tradition of forms of words rather to speech than to writing. As we all know, Prof. Skeat dis- liked timidity in this matter, and would have had us reform our spelling in the same direction.

His intention here being happily populariza- tion, he devotes his first two chapters to general principles, illustrated from matter already toler- ably familiar, and to the laying down of useful elementary ' ' canons. ' ' There follow four chapters packed with interesting etymological detail, intended to explain the inter-relation of lan- guages belonging to. the divers Indo-Germanic types taking the Romanic and Teutonic branches first, and then the Indo-Germanic group as a whole. Following on this is the most important and original chapter of the book, in which Prof. Skeat sets himself to demonstrate the high philological importance of English as having, better than any language save the defunct Gothic, preserved types of Teutonic words in their oldest forms, thus showing clearly their value as cognates of Sanskrit words. From this point of view the most valuable English words are some of those with the letter to, which, in nearly every Teutonic language but our own, has lost its original pronunciation. AVe notice that Prof. Skeat is glad of the trace of it to be found in write, wrinkle, icreck, and the like, even though phonetically it is scarcely justifiable.

Not long ago we read in a little work on our Saxon forefathers that " words denoted in our dictionaries as of Celtic origin are so few in number that they may almost be counted on the fingers of one hand." If this represents a general impression (but perhaps by " Celtic " the writer intended " British "), the chapter here on the Celtic languages should prove useful in dissipating it. Though not large, the number of words to be traced to Celtic is at least more considerable than that.

Prof. Skeat hazards a conjecture of his own at the beginning of this Celtic chapter : he would derive "basket" for which the old derivation from bascauia, reported by Martial to be British, has not sufficient evidence from E. bast, the material of which matting is made, taking "basket" as a dissimilated form of *baslet. The study of Lithuanian and Slavonic cognates with English is a mass of carefully arranged detail, focussed, as is the following chapter on Armenian, Albanian, and Persian, so as to elucidate English

etymology. Corollaries to the argument about the value of English are chaps, xiii. and xvi. comparisons respectively between English and Sanskrit and English and Hindi ; and outlying parts of the field are gone over in ' A Philological Ramble,' and in the list of Indo-Germanic words collected to show the most ancient and widespread types which, appearing in many languages, are dealt with by each according to its own peculiarities.

We remember noticing in the Preface to ' A Student's Pastime ' Prof. Skeat's modest state- ment of his conviction that to make Englishmen aware of the beauty and wealth of their own language was his vocation. It is surely a happy circumstance that the last piece of work he did should have been at once so comprehensive in its range and so single in its direction towards fresh illustration of English as also that it is not a contribution to the stores laid up by experts, but a selection from these set out for the benefit of the intelligent and inadequately informed reader, for whom so much of his work was done.

Modern English Biography, containing many Thousand Concise Memoirs of Persons who have Died during the Years 1851-1900. By Frederic Boase. Vol. V. (Supplement, Vol. II.) D K. Truro, Netherton & Worth. WE confess to a sort of affection for this work beyond what we are able to entertain for any other of its kind. " Facta non verba " reads the motto on its frontispiece ; and it is the absence of any superfluous word and the abund- ance and variety of facts which make it so curious, lively, and even moving an epitome of human existence. It has the effect of continuous tele- grams delivered tels quels.

Several names of serious renown meet us in this division. There are Gladstone and Huxley, Lord de Tabley, Jowett, Freeman, Froude, Hort, and William Flower ; and a few more might be added, familiar at least within our own four seas. It is, however, natural to linger rather over the biographies whose interest is more curious and less well known. The grimmer side of life seems to us very fully represented in this part of the alphabet. Murder, suicide, strange modes of death, and the lunatic asylum loom frequent and large. Not always disjoined from those, we have the lives, too, of a number of the people who made the gaiety of their day : Jane Hill, who died some sixteen years ago, and was known as " the Vital Spark " ; Corney Grain, who, we learn, besides his other titles to fame, originated the Beefsteak Club ; Helen Faucit and Fanny Kemble ; Sir Augustus Harris ; and some scores of other actors. Then there is the always astonishing number of people, each of whom did or suffered some two or three things of an extra- ordinary kind such as John Day, the hair- dresser of Birmingham, who organized railway excursions, bought at the Great Exhibition the finest specimen of plate-glass in the world, and opened Day's Crystal Palace (the best music- hall of the time in England, noted for its ballets) ^ or William Janvrin Du Port, who was the first to do irrigation work in Egypt by paid labour instead of by corvee ; or Henry Erskine Fraser,. who for a wager rode from Paris to Brussels and back in 30 hours, and again for a wager rode- every day for six days running from Paris to