No More Learning

Chapman has _wan_ for _wand_, and _lawn_ has rightfully displaced
_laund_, though with no thought, I suspect, of etymology. Rogers tells
us that Lady Bathurst sent him some letters written to William III. by
Queen Mary, in which she addresses him as '_Dear Husban_. ' The old form
_expoun'_, which our farmers use, is more correct than the form with a
barbarous _d_ tacked on which has taken its place. Of the kind opposite
to this, like our _gownd_ for _gown_, and the London cockney's _wind_
for _wine_, I find _drownd_ for _drown_ in the 'Misfortunes of Arthur'
(1584) and in Swift. And, by the way, whence came the long sound of wind
which our poets still retain, and which survives in 'winding' a horn, a
totally different word from 'winding' a kite-string? We say _beh[=i]nd_
and _h[=i]nder_ (comparative) and yet to _h[)i]nder_. Shakespeare
pronounced _kind_ _k[)i]nd_, or what becomes of his play on that word
and _kin_ in 'Hamlet'? Nay, did he not even (shall I dare to hint it? )
drop the final _d_ as the Yankee still does? John Lilly plays in the
same way on _kindred_ and _kindness_.




But to come to some other ancient instances. Warner rhymes _bounds_ with
_crowns_, _grounds_ with _towns_, _text_ with _sex_, _worst_ with
_crust_, _interrupts_ with _cups_; Drayton, _defects_ with _sex_;
Chapman, _amends_ with _cleanse_; Webster, _defects_ with _checks_; Ben
Jonson, _minds_ with _combines_; Marston, _trust_ and _obsequious_,
_clothes_ and _shows_; Dryden gives the same sound to _clothes_, and has
also _minds_ with _designs_. Of course, I do not affirm that their ears
may not have told them that these were imperfect rhymes (though I am by
no means sure even of that), but they surely would never have tolerated
any such had they suspected the least vulgarity in them. Prior has the
rhyme _first_ and _trust_, but puts it into the mouth of a landlady.
Swift has _stunted_ and _burnt_ it, an intentionally imperfect rhyme, no
doubt, but which I cite as giving precisely the Yankee pronunciation of
_burned_. Donne couples in unhallowed wedlock _after_ and _matter_, thus
seeming to give to both the true Yankee sound; and it is not uncommon to
find _after_ and _daughter_. Worse than all, in one of Dodsley's Old
Plays we have _onions_ rhyming with _minions_,--I have tears in my eyes
while I record it. And yet what is viler than the universal _Misses_
(_Mrs. _) for _Mistress_? This was once a vulgarism, and in 'The Miseries
of Inforced Marriage' the rhyme (printed as prose in Dodsley's Old Plays
by Collier),

'To make my young _mistress_
Delighting in _kisses_,'

is put into the mouth of the clown. Our people say _Injun_ for _Indian_.
The tendency to make this change where _i_ follows _d_ is common. The
Italian _giorno_ and French _jour_ from _diurnus_ are familiar examples.
And yet _Injun_ is one of those depravations which the taste challenges
peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton--who rhymes
'_Indies_' with '_cringes_'--and four English lexicographers, beginning
with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say _invidgeous_. Yet after all it is no worse
than the debasement which all our terminations in _tion_ and _tience_
have undergone, which yet we hear with _resignashun_ and _payshunce_,
though it might have aroused both _impat-i-ence_ and _in-dig-na-ti-on_
in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the sermon
be dull,

'God takes a text and preacheth patience,'

the prolongation of the word seems to convey some hint at the
longanimity of the virtue. Consider what a poor curtal we have made of
Ocean. There was something of his heave and expanse in _o-ce-an_, and
Fletcher knew how to use it when he wrote so fine a verse as the second
of these, the best deep-sea verse I know,--

'In desperate storms stem with a little rudder
The tumbling ruins of the ocean. '

Oceanus was not then wholly shorn of his divine proportions, and our
modern _oshun_ sounds like the gush of small-beer in comparison.