my own expence. This information will in the highest manner oblige,

'As soon as my son is perfect in this art (which I hope will be in a year's time, for the boy is pretty apt), I design he shall learn to ride the great horse (although he is not yet above twenty years old), if his mother, whose darling he is, will venture him.'

TO THE SPECTATOR.

The humble Petition of Benjamin Easy, Gent.

THAT it was your petitioner's misfortune to walk to Hackney church last Sunday, where to his great amazement he met with a soldier of your own training; she furls a fan, recovers a fan, and goes through the whole exercise of it to admiration. This well-managed officer of your's has, to my knowledge, been the ruin of above five young gentlemen besides myself, and still goes on laying waste wheresoever she comes, whereby the whole village is in great danger. Our humble request is therefore, that this bold Amazon be ordered immediately to lay down. her arms, or that you would issue forth an order, that we who have been thus injured may meet at the place of general rendezvous, and there be taught to manage our snuff-boxes in such manner as we may be an equal match for her;

R.

And your petitioner shall ever pray, &c.'

VOL. VIII.

.

N° 135. SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 1711.

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia

HOR. 1 Sat. x. 9.

Let brevity dispatch the rapid thought.

I HAVE Somewhere read of an eminent person, who used in his private offices of devotion to give thanks to heaven that he was born a Frenchman: for my own part, I look upon it as a peculiar blessing that I was born an Englishman. Among many other reasons, I think myself very happy in my country, as the language of it is wonderfully adapted to a man who is sparing of his words, and an enemy to loquacity.

As I have frequently reflected on my good fortune in this particular, I shall communicate to the public my speculations upon the English tongue, not doubting but they will be acceptable to all my curious readers.

The English delight in silence more than any other European nation, if the remarks which are made on us by foreigners are true. Our discourse is not kept up in conversation, but falls into more pauses and intervals than in our neighbouring countries; as it is observed, that the matter of our writings is thrown much closer together, and lies in a narrower compass than is usual in the works of foreign authors: for, to favour our natural taciturnity, when we are obliged to utter our thoughts, we do it in the shortest way we are able, and give as quick a birth to our conceptions as possible.

This humour shews itself in several remarks that

we may make upon the English language. As first of all by its abounding in monosyllables, which gives us an opportunity of delivering our thoughts in few sounds. This indeed takes off from the elegance of our tongue, but at the same time expresses our ideas in the readiest manner, and consequently answers the first design of speech better than the multitude of syllables, which make the words of other languages more tuneable and sonorous. The sounds of our English words are commonly like those of string music, short and transient, which rise and perish upon a single touch; those of other languages are like the notes of wind instruments, sweet and swelling, and lengthened out into variety of modulation.

In the next place we may observe, that where the words are not monosyllables, we often make them so, as much as lies in our power, by our rapidity of pronunciation; as it generally happens in most of our long words which are derived from the Latin, where we contract the length of the syllables that gives them a grave and solemn air in their own language, to make them more proper for dispatch, and more conformable to the genius of our tongue. This we may find in a multitude of words, as liberty, conspiracy, theatre, orator,' &c.

The same natural aversion to loquacity has of late years made a very considerable alteration in our language, by closing in one syllable the termination of our præterperfect tense, as in these words, drown'd, walk'd, arriv'd, for drowned, walked, arrived,' which has very much disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest words into so many clusters of consonants. This is the more remarkable, because the want of vowels in our language has been the general complaint of our politest authors, who

nevertheless are the men that have made these retrenchments, and consequently very much increased our former scarcity.

This reflection on the words that end in ED, I have heard in conversation from one of the greatest geniuses this age has produced.* I think we may add to the foregoing observation, the change which has happened in our language, by the abbreviation of several words that are terminated in eth,' by substituting an s in the room of the last syllable, as in 'drowns, walks, arrives,' and innumerable other words, which in the pronunciation of our forefathers were drowneth, walketh, arriveth.' This has wonderfully multiplied a letter which was before too frequent in the English tongue, and added to that hissing in our language, which is taken so much notice of by foreigners; but at the same time humours our taciturnity, and eases us of many superfluous syllables.

I might here observe, that the same single letter on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the 'his' and 'her' of our forefathers. There is no doubt but the ear of a foreigner, which is the best judge in this case, would very much disapprove of such innovations, which indeed we do ourselves in some measure, by retaining the old termination in writing, and in all the solemn offices of our religion.

As in the instances I have given we have epitomized many of our particular words to the detriment of our tongue, so on other occasions we have drawn two words into one, which has likewise very much untuned our language, and clogged it with

*This was probably Dean Swift, who has made the same observation in his proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English tongue, &c. See Swift's Works.

consonants, as mayn't, can't, shan't, won't,' and the like, for may not, can not, shall not, will not,' &c.

It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more than we needs must, which has so miserably curtailed some of our words, that in familiar writings and conversations they often lose all but their first syllables, as in mob. rep. pos. incog.' and the like; and as all ridiculous words make their first entry into a language by familiar phrases, I dare not answer for these, that they will not in time be looked upon as a part of our tongue. We see some of our poets have been so indiscreet as to imitate Hudibras's doggrel expressions in their serious compositions, by throwing out the signs of our substantives which are essential to the English language. Nay, this humour of shortening our language had once run so far, that some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon Sir Roger L'Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the spelling to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all our etymologies, and have quite destroyed our tongue.

We may here likewise observe that our proper names, when familiarized in English, generally dwindle to monosyllables, whereas in other modern languages they receive a softer turn on this occasion, by the addition of a new syllable.-Nick in Italian is Nicolini; Jack in French Janot; and so of the

rest.

There is another particular in our language which is a great instance of our frugality of words, and that is the suppressing of several particles which must be produced in other tongues to make a sentence intelligible. This often perplexes the best writers, when they find the relatives' whom, which, or they,' at their mercy, whether they may have