No More Learning

_Warn_, in the sense of _notify_, is, I believe, now
peculiar to us, but Pecock so employs it. I find _primmer_ (_primer_, as
we pronounce it) in Beaumont and Fletcher, and a 'square eater' too
(compare our '_square_ meal'), _heft_ for _weight_, and 'muchness' in
the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' _bankbill_ in Swift and Fielding, and _as_
for _that_ I might say _passim_. _To cotton to_ is, I rather think, an
Americanism. The nearest approach to it I have found is _cotton
together_, in Congreve's 'Love for Love. ' To _cotton_ or _cotten_, in
another sense, is old and common. Our word means to _cling_, and its
origin, possibly, is to be sought in another direction, perhaps in A. S.
_cvead_, which means _mud, clay_ (both proverbially clinging), or better
yet, in the Icelandic _qvoda_ (otherwise _kod_), meaning _resin_ and
_glue_, which are [Greek: kat' exochaen], sticky substances. To _spit
cotton_ is, I think, American, and also, perhaps, to _flax_ for to
_beat_. _To the halves_ still survives among us, though apparently
obsolete in England. It means either to let or to hire a piece of land,
receiving half the profit in money or in kind (_partibus locare_). I
mention it because in a note by some English editor, to which I have
lost my reference, I have seen it wrongly explained. The editors of
Nares cite Burton. _To put_, in the sense of _to go_, as _Put! _ for
_Begone!
_ would seem our own, and yet it is strictly analogous to the
French _se mettre a la voie_, and the Italian _mettersi in via_. Indeed,
Dante has a verse,

'_Io sarei_ [for _mi sarei_] _gia messo per lo sentiero_,'

which, but for the indignity, might be translated,

'I should, ere this, have _put_ along the way,'

I deprecate in advance any share in General Banks's notions of
international law, but we may all take a just pride in his exuberant
eloquence as something distinctively American. When he spoke a few years
ago of 'letting the Union slide,' even those who, for political
purposes, reproached him with the sentiment, admired the indigenous
virtue of his phrase. Yet I find 'let the world slide' in Heywood's
Edward IV. ;' and in Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wit without Money,'
Valentine says,

'Will you go drink,
And let the world slide? '

So also in Sidney's 'Arcadia,'

'Let his dominion slide. '

In the one case it is put into the mouth of a clown, in the other, of a
gentleman, and was evidently proverbial. It has even higher sanction,
for Chaucer writes,

'Well nigh all other cures _let he slide_. '

Mr. Bartlett gives 'above one's bend' as an Americanism; but compare
Hamlet's 'to the top of my bent. ' _In his tracks_ for _immediately_ has
acquired an American accent, and passes where he can for a native, but
is an importation nevertheless; for what is he but the Latin _e
vestigio_, or at best the Norman French _eneslespas_, both which have
the same meaning? _Hotfoot_ (provincial also in England), I find in the
old romance of 'Tristan,'

'_Si s'en parti_ CHAUT PAS'

_Like_ for _as_ is never used in New England, but is universal in the
South and West. It has on its side the authority of two kings (_ego sum
rex Romanorum et supra grammaticam_), Henry VIII. and Charles I. This
were ample, without throwing into the scale the scholar and poet Daniel.
_Them_ was used as a nominative by the majesty of Edward VI.