We proceed now to will, would. How greatly the word will is felt to have lost presentive power in the last three centuries may be judged from the following. In Matthew xv. 32, where our Bible has 'I will not send them away fasting,' it is proposed by Dean Alford as a correction to render 'I am not willing to. Again, in Matthew xx. 14, 'I will give unto this last even as unto thee,' the same critic finds it desirable to substitute 'It is my will to give.' It should be noticed that in neither of these criticisms is there any question of Greek involved. It is simply an act of fetching up the expression of our Bible to the level of modern English; and it furnishes the best evidence that a change has come over the word will.

And yet it has still a good deal of presentive power left. Wilt thou have, &c.? I will !

This verb in its presentive sense retains a pair of old flexional forms which are never found in the symbolic sense. These are willest, willeth. God willeth Samuel to yeeld vnto the importunitie of the people' (1 Sam. viii, Contents); 'It is not of him that willeth' (Rom. ix. 16).

Willest be asked, and thou shalt answer then.

Frederic W. H. Myers, St. Paul.

This verb has also an infinitive as, 'to will and to do'; and in this respect differs from the more highly symbolic shall, of which an infinitive was never heard in our language.

We see in the verb will the graduated movement from the presentive to the symbolic state well displayed. And not unfrequently the transition is played upon, as in the following dialogue :

Cres. Doe you thinke I will?

Troy. No, but something may be done that we wil not.

Shakspeare, Troylus and Cressida, iv. 4. 91.

Both will and shall are seen in their presentive power in the familiar proposal to carry a basket, or to do any other little handy service, I will if I shall1; that is, I am willing if you will command me; I will if so required.

The different powers of would are illustrated in the following quotation, where the first would has absolutely nothing remaining of that original idea of the action of Will, which is still appreciably present in the second would.

It would be a charity if people would sometimes in their Litanies pray for the very healthy, very prosperous, very light-hearted, very much bepraised.―John Keble, Life, p. 459.

239. Before we leave these auxiliaries we must notice a curious phenomenon, as Dean Alford has called it2, one which has arrested attention thousands of times, and which brings valuable illustration to this place. I speak of the very old and familiar fact that large numbers of our Englishspeaking fellow-subjects cannot seize the distinction between. shall, should, and will, would. Here is a distinction which is unerringly observed by the most rustic people in the purely English counties, while the most carefully educated persons who have grown up on Keltic soil cannot seize it! This Kelticism is by no means rare in Sir Walter Scott's works :—

At the same time I usually qualified my denial by stating, that, had I been the author of these works, I would have felt myself quite entitled to protect my secret by refusing my own evidence.-General Preface to the 1829 Edition of the Waverley Novels.

Note a remarkable contrast. In the case of shall we admire the substantial uniformity of its application over wide areas and peoples long dissociated; but as to will, its application is unequalized even within the four seas! And why is this? Simply because shall is a primeval pangothic symbol,

1 I have since discovered that this is not generally understood; but at least every native of Devon should be familiar with it.

2 Queen's English, § 208.

installed in its office long ages ago; whereas will is a recent symbol, a product of our insular history, which is not yet come to maturity and the verification of its province.

240. May, Might. We get this word in its presentive function in our early poetry, as in the following from Chevelere Assigne, l. 134,

I myзte not drowne hem for dole,

the meaning of which is, I was not able to drown them for compassion. Here myzte, which is the same as might, is presentive, and means 'potui,' 'I was able.'

This word originally meant, not ability by admission or permission (as now) but by power and right, as in the substantive might and the adjective mighty. We no longer use the verb so. But it makes a characteristic feature of the fourteenth-century poetry:—

There was a king that mochel might
Which Nabugodonosor hight.

Confessio Amantis, Bk. i. vol. i. p. 1316, ed. Pauli. This would be in Latin, 'Rex quidam erat qui multum valebat, cui nomen Nabugodonosoro.'

Some traces of its presentive use linger about may. We use it in its old sense of 'to be able' in certain positions, as 'It may be avoided.' But, curious to note, we change the verb in the negative proposition, and say, 'No, it cannot.'

Power cannot change them, but love may.

John Keble, Christian Year, Sunday after Christmas.

Dare. So completely has the sense of dare-ing evaporated from this auxiliary, that 'I dare say' is a different thing from 'I dare to say.' The latter might be negatived by 'I dare not to say'; but 'I dare not say' would not be the just negative of 'I dare say.' In that expression, the verb 'dare' has lost its own colour, and it is infused into 'say.' And therefore the two often merge by symphytism into one

word, as in the following, from a newspaper report of a public speech:

I daresay you have heard of the sportsman who taught himself to shoot steadily by loading for a whole season with blank cartridge only.

241. Disturbances apart, the constant law is, that the deeper a word imbibes the symbolic character, the more is it naturally liable to attrition. This is artificially counteracted through the vigilance of literature, but we get some peeps into Nature's workshop. We find a good friend in John Bunyan. He writes the auxiliary have as a, often and often:-'I thought you would a come in.'-'Who, that so was, could but a done so?'—' Christiana had like to a been in.'-'Thou wouldst not a bin afraid of a dog.'-' Why I would a fought as long as breath had been in me.'—' He had like to a beguiled Faithful.'—' But it would a made you a wondered to have seen the dead.' To find these gems, however, the reader must go to the original, from which I have quoted, and will quote once more:—

Mercy. I might a had husbands afore now, tho' I spake not of it to any.-Pilgrims Progress, ii. 84. ed. facsim. Elliot Stock.

242. Do. This word is presentive in such a sentence as the following:

My object is to do what I can to undo this great wrong.-Edward A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, vol. iii. init.

It is however in full activity, both as a near and also as a far-off symbolic word.

Diddest not thou accuse women of inconstancie? Diddest not thou accompt them easie to be won? Diddest not thou condemne them of weakenes?-John Lyly, Euphues, 1579, P. 59, ed. Arber.

I have often heard' an old friend quote the following, which he witnessed at an agricultural entertainment. The speaker was proposing the chairman's health, and after much eulogy, he apostrophized the gentleman thus:-'What I

mean to say, Sir, is this: that if more people was to do as you do, there wouldn't be so many do as they do do!' In the final do do' it is clear we have the verb in two different powers, the first being highly symbolic, and the second. almost presentive. Again, in the familiar salutation, 'How d'ye do?' we have the same verb in two powers. Here moreover the usual mode of writing it conveys the important lesson, that the more symbolic a word is, the more it loses tone and becomes subject to elision. It might seem as if this observation were contradicted by the previous example, in which it is plain to the ear of every reader that of the two words in 'do do,' the former, that is to say, the more symbolic, is the more emphatic. But this is caused by the antithesis between that word and the 'was to do' preceding. It is a disturbance of the intrinsic relative weight by rhetorical influence.

In these gradations of symbolism, we see what provision is made for the lighter touches of expression, the vague tints, the vanishing points. Towards a deep and distant background the full-fraught picture of copious language carries our eye, while the foreground is almost palpable in its reality.

243. As a further illustration of this distinction it may be observed that a little more or less of the symbolic element has a great effect in stamping the character of diction. By a little excess of it we get the sententious or 'would-be wise' mannerism. By a diminution of it we get an air of promptness and decision, which may produce (according to circumstances) an appearance of the business-like, or the military, or the off-hand. This is one of those observations which may best be justified by an appeal to caricatures of acknowledged merit. In the Pickwick Papers, the conversation of Mr. Weller the elder, a man of maxims and proverbs and store of experience, is marked by an occasional excess of the