6

The object of this essay is not religious edification, but the true criticismi of a great and misunderstood author. Yet it is impossible to be in presence of this Pauline conception of faith without remarking on the incomparable power of edification which it contains.'-Matthew Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 135.

for-sake (with genitive between).

Now for the comfortless troubles' sake of the needy.'-Psalm xii. 5 (Elder version).

'But if any man say vnto you, This is offered in sacrifice vnto idoles, eate not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake.'-1 Cor. x. 28.

This is the formula throughout the English Bible, and throughout Shakspeare with three exceptions, according to Mrs. Cowden Clarke. In the above examples, troubles', his, conscience are in the genitive case. The s genitival is not added to conscience, because it ends with a sibilant sound, and where there are two sibilants already, a third could hardly be articulated. The s of the genitive case is, however, often absent where this reason cannot be assigned. Thus:

For his oath sake.'-Twelfth Night, iii. 4.

For fashion sake.'-As You Like It, iii. 2.

For sport sake.'—1 Henry IV. ii. 1.

Instead of this genitive, however, the present use of the language substitutes an of-form, which occurs in Shakspeare three times :

This class of prepositions is useful as letting us see how the older prepositions came into their place, and (to speak generally) how the symbolic element sustains itself and preserves itself from the natural decay of inanition. Here is a presentive word enclosed between two prepositions, as if it had been swallowed by them, and gradually undergoing the process of assimilation. By and bye the substantive becomes obsolete elsewhere, and lives on here in a preposition, with a purely symbolic power. For instance, none but scholars can see anything but a preposition in such a case as instead of.

II. OF CONJUNCTIONS.

Of all the parts of speech the conjunction comes last in the order of nature. As the office of the conjunction is to join sentences together, it presupposes the completion of the simple sentence; and as a consequence, it would seem to imply the pre-existence of the other parts of speech, and to be the terminal product of them all. It is essentially a symbolic word, but this does not hinder it from comprising within its vocabulary a great deal of half-assimilated pre

sentive matter. This is a point which will have to be further noticed in the course of the chapter.

The necessity for conjunctions (other than and, or) does not arise until language has advanced to the formation of compound sentences. Hence the conjunctions are as a whole a comparatively modern formation. Here we have not an array of short and ancient and obscure examples, as in the case of the prepositions. Almost all the conjunctions are recent enough for us to know of what they were made. And indeed they may conveniently be divided according to the parts of speech out of which they have been formed.

Of the derival of a conjunction from a preposition, we have a ready instance in the old familiar but, at first a preposition and compounded of two earlier prepositions, namely, by and out; in Saxon butan, from be and utan. Others of the same character are

for.

'For thou, for thou didst view,

That death of deaths, companion true.'

till.

'As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has it in his own breast.'-W. M. Thackeray, Esmond, Bk. II. ch. i.

until.

Shakspeare was quite out of fashion until Steele brought him back into the mode.'-W. M. Thackeray, Esmond, Bk. II. ch. x.

'No character is natural until it has been proved to be so.'-W. S. Macleay, quoted by Professor Rolleston, Forms of Animal Life, p. xxi.

Then there are conjunctions formed by the symphytism of a preposition with a noun, as in the Shakspearian belike, which is pure English, or peradventure, which is pure French, or perhaps, which is half French and half Danish.

peradventure.

Some peraduenture would haue no varietie of sences to be set in the margine, lest the authoritie of the Scriptures for deciding of controuersies by that show of vncertaintie, should somewhat be shaken.'-The Translators to the Reader, 1611.

In Chaucer, Knight's Tale, 2488, we find the full phrase out of which has been made the compressed form

A conjunction formed from the reference of a preposition to a foregoing adverb, is

too... to.

'I have seen too much of success in life to take off my hat and huzza to it as it passes in its gilt coach.'-W. M. Thackeray, Esmond, Bk. I. p. 30.

But the great source of conjunctions is the pronoun. Here the ancient relative pronoun so is one of the most frequent factors, not only in its own form but likewise in also; and in as, which is shortened from an elder form of 'also,' namely ealswa, i.e. 'entirely, altogether so,' 'quite in that manner.'

In the following line of Chaucer, Prologue 92, we see the after as already mature, while the fore one is still in the course of formation. We see al and so in various stages of approximation until their final coalition in the form of as. By means of Mr. Furnivall's Six-Text Print we have the comparison of the manuscripts ready to our hand :

He was als freissch as is pe monp of May.'

Corpus MS,

Cambridge MS.

'He was as frosch as is the month of May.'

as.

'The volume of a gas increases as its temperature is raised, and decreases as the temperature is lowered.'

as-as and as.

The only kind of faith which is inseparable from life is a divine conviction of truth imparted to the intellect through the heart, and which becomes as absolute to the internal conscience as one's existence, and as incapable of proof.'-Laurence Oliphant, Piccadilly, p. 275.

So and as frequently make up a conjunction by their combined action, when if we were to consider them apart, each by itself, we should be forced to call them adverbial pronouns; and it is by their inherent capacity of standing to each other as antecedent and relative, that they together constitute a conjunction.

as-so and so.

'As great men flatter themselves, so they are flattered by others, and so robbed of the true judgment of themselves.-R. Sibbes, Soul's Conflict, ch. xiv.

so-as.

'With a depth so great as to make it a day's march from the rear to the van, and a front so narrow as to consist of one gun and one horseman.'A. W. Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, vol. iii. ch. ix.

The use of as for a conjunction-sole is now disallowed, and is in fact one of our standard vulgarisms. It is seen in the familiar saw, 'Handsome is as handsome does.' Yet this use occurs in the Spectator, No. 508-in the course of a correspondent's letter it is true, but the correspondent is a young lady, and writes like one :

Is it sufferable, that the Fop of whom I complain should say, as he would rather have such-a-one without a Groat, than me with the Indies?'