Which is in its origin a composite word derived from who and like. Its Saxon form was hwile, which was made of hwa and lic. Compare such in the next section.

Whom is now used only personally. But there is no historical reason for this, beyond modern usage. Time was when it was used of things as much as what, and examples occur in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The following is of the date 1484, and it contains the which as well as whom in the use to be illustrated:

Item. I bequethe to the auter of saint John the Baptist and saynt Nicholas the which is myne owen chapell in the parish chirche of Newlonde in the Forest of Dene in whome my body shalbe buried In primis a crosse of silver,' &c.-The Will of Dame Jane Lady Barre, in Mr. Ellacombe's Memoir of Bitton, p. 47.

And lest it should be supposed that such a use can only be produced from obscure writings, I may mention the Faerie Queene, in a passage which is quoted above on p. 135, where whom refers to a ship.

Before quitting this set, it may be interesting to observe that what in Anglo-Saxon had a peculiar function as a leading interjection, a usage which is familiar to those who know the dialect of the Lake district. The minstrel often began his lay with Hwat!

The noblest of Anglo-Saxon poems, the Beowulf, begins with this exclamation:

Hwæt we Gar Dena on gear dagum

Peod cyninga þrim ge frunon

Hu þa æðelingas ellen fremedon.'

What bo! the tales of other times

The Gar-Danes' mighty realm and martial proud array
And practice bold of princes in affray.

Interrogation, appeal, expostulation, admiration, lie very near to one another in the structure of the human mind, and hence we see in many languages an approach to this habit. In Latin there is the rhetorical use of quid! in French of

quoi! and if we would see a situation in which several of those meanings blend inseparably, we may refer to Proverbs xxxi. 2, where the version of 1611 is rigidly literal, while that of 1535 is homely and unconstrained according to wont:

Miles Coverdale.

'My sonne, thou sonne of my body: O my deare beloued sonne.'

6

1611.

What, my sonne! and what, the sonne of my wombe! and what, the sonne of my vowes!

Here we must notice the old substantive-pronoun so, though it is no longer found in this character standing by itself. The Saxon form was swa, with a rarer poetic form SE; and already in the earliest Saxon literature it had lost its original independence. Then, as now, it occurred only in composite expressions, as swa hwa swa, whoso; swa hwat swa, whatso, &c. These are, however, sufficient to determine its ancient habit, and to indicate from what original all the varieties of so and its composite such have had their derival.

In the words whoso, whatso, the so is manifestly subordinated, and has lost its accent. This was the result of the elevation of who, what, with the depression of so. Anciently so was the leading element, what was indefinite and enclitic.

We have yet a set of pronouns to mention before closing this section; namely, the Indefinite. The chief of these was in the Saxon period a symbolised man, which is the chief indefinite pronoun to this day in German. It should also be noticed that the French on is only a form of homme, in which the spelling has varied with the sublimation of the meaning. This indefinite man, or, as it was oftener written, mon, we lost at an early date, in the great shaking that followed the Conquest. But it is so natural a word for a

pronoun to grow out of, that we do from time to time fall as if unconsciously into this use. In the following quotation from Mark viii. 4, a man is a manifest pronoun; the Greek is δυνήσεταί τις. To show the pedigree of the expression in this place, three versions are put side by side:

This is, however, but a feeble example of the pronominal use of the word man, a use which it has been our singular fortune to lose after having possessed it in its fulness. In place of it, we resort to a variety of shifts for what may justly be entitled a pronoun of pronouns, that is to say, a pronoun which is neither I nor we, nor you nor they, but which may stand for either or all of these or any vague commixture of two or three of them. Sometimes we say 'you' not meaning, nor being taken to mean you at all, but to express a corporate personality which quite eludes personal application.

'It is always pleasant to be forced to do what you wish to do, but what until pressed, you dare not attempt.'-Dean Hook, Archbishops, vol. iii. c. 4.

This you is often convenient to the poet as a neutral medium of address, applicable either to one particular person, or to all the world:

'Yet this, perchance, you'll not dispute,—
That true Wit has in Truth its root,

Surprise its flower, Delight its fruit.

Or haply, this may be more clear,

The pirouette of an Idea;

Which, just as you conclude your grasp,
Slips laughing from your empty clasp,
Presenting in strange combination

Some ludicrous association;

Which you repel with indignation,
But cannot find its confutation :-
I know no other image fit

To tell you what I mean by Wit.'

W. M. A. in The Spectator, July 2, 1870.

Sometimes, again, it is we, and at other times it is they which represents this much-desired but long-lost or not-yetinvented representative' pronoun. We render the French on dit by they say.

But besides the resort to pronouns of a particular person in order to achieve the effect of a pronoun impersonal, we have also some substantives which have been pronominalised for this purpose, as person, people, body, folk.

people.

'Bothwell was not with her at Seton. As to her shooting at the butts when there, this story, like most of the rest, is mere gossip. People do not shoot at the butts in a Scotch February.'-Quarterly Review, vol. 128, P. 511.

body.

The foolish body hath said in his heart, There is no God.'—Psalm liii. 1, elder version.

And from this we get the composite pronouns somebody, nobody, everybody. In like manner, but less fixed in habit, some people, and also some folk, as in the well known refrain,

'Some folk do, some folk do!'

Perhaps the French on has not been without some sort of undefined effect in this region of our language, by guiding us through its mere sound to a use of the first numeral which is unexampled in other languages. Some of our pronominal uses of one are easily paralleled in other languages, the one and the other l'un et l'autre; one another = l'un l'autre, &c., but in that particular use of one which more precisely belongs to this place, as when we say, 'One never

=

knows what this sort of thing may lead to,' it would be impossible to put in that place l'un or ein or unus or eis.

There are instances in which one language catches up a confused idea from another, and a mere sound which has been heard will suggest a term totally different in idea from the meaning of that sound. The first numeral has an intimate natural affinity with the pronominal principle, and this is widely acknowledged in the languages by the pronominal uses of it which are very common and very well known. But this English use is far from common, if it is not absolutely singular; namely, when it is employed as a veiled Ego, thus: One may be excused for doubting whether such a policy as this can have its root in a desire for the public welfare.'

The one of which we speak is quite distinct from those cases in which it is little removed from the numeral, as: 'One thinks this, and one thinks that.' In this case one is fully toned, but not so in the case referred to, as when a person who is pressed to buy stands on the defensive with, 'One can't buy everything, you know;' here the one is lightly passed over with that sensitiveness which accompanies egotism.

It is still more distinct from the case in which one appears in concord or under government :

'As nations ignorant of God contrive

A wooden one.' William Cowper, The Timepiece.

'And unto one her note is gay,

For now her little ones have ranged;
And unto one her note is changed,
Because her brood is stol'n away.'

In Memoriam, xxi.

The strictly logical deduction from the premises is not always found in practice the true one.'-Sir J. T. Coleridge, Keble, p. 388.

There will always be sharp men to practice on dull ones.'