each word and its contribution towards the meaning of the whole. But in English the sense depends upon the arrangement, and therefore the order of the English sentence cannot be much altered without detriment to the sense : Men seek victual. Cats like fish Boys love play. Fools hate knowledge. Horses draw carts. All these examples present us with one, and that the simplest, scheme of a sentence: and in them we see that the sense requires the arrangement of the words in the given order of collocation. 555. Each of these three words is capable of amplification. In the first place the subject may be amplified by an adjective; thus, Hungry men seek victual. Wise men desire truth. Healthy boys love play. We have no This adjective has its proper collocation. choice whether we will say hungry men or men hungry. The latter is inadmissible, unless it were for some special exigency, such as might rise in poetry; and then the collocation would so far affect the impression communicated, that after all it could not be called a mere alternative, whether we should say hungry men or men hungry. The next thing is the placing of the article. The article stands immediately before the adjective: The hungry man seeks victual. The healthy boy loves play. A wise man desires truth. Ll This amplification brings out to view an important consequence of the order last observed. As we put our adjective before our substantive, it results that when the article is put before both, it is severed from the substantive to which it primarily appertains. The French, who can put the adjective either before or after its substantive, have the means of keeping the article and substantive together in most cases where it is desirable. This is a trifle, so long as it is confined to the difference between the wise man, a good man, and l'homme sage, un homme bon. But then the adjective being capable of amplification in its turn, the gap between the article and its substantive may be considerably widened. An adverb may be put to the adjective, and then it becomes the truly wise man, a really good man. 556. The severance between the article and its noun had not in English extended beyond such examples as these, until within the recent period which may be designated as the German era. Our increased acquaintance with German literature has caused an enlargement in this member of our syntax. We not unfrequently find a second adverb, or an adverbial phrase, or a negative, included in the interval between the article or pronoun and the substantive1; thus,— In that not more populous than popular thoroughfare.—Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, 'ch. xii. And is it indeed true that they are so plied with the gun and the net and the lime that the utter extinction of their species in these islands may be looked upon as a by no means remote eventuality? There he puts down the varied and important matter he is about to say, according to a large plan and tolerably strictly carried out arrangement.— Translation from German. 1 In Spanish this structure was already ridiculed as strange and romantic by Cervantes (1549–1617):—'el jamas conio se debe alabado caballero D. Quijote The never-enough-to-be-praised Don Quixote.—Ch. i.; translation by Charles Jarvis. This is now sometimes used by highly qualified English writers. I have now travelled through nearly every Department in France, and I do not remember ever meeting with a dirty bed: this, I fear, cannot be said of our happily in all other respects cleaner island.-Mr. Weld, Vacation in Brittany, 1866. Douglas, in the Nenia, p. 10, is so far as I know the first who called attention to this passage of our great poet [Hamlet, v. 1], as illustrating the very commonly to be observed presence of shards, flints, and pebbles,' in graves, into which it is diffieult to think they could have got by accident.George Rolleston, M.D., On Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon Sepulture. 557. This expansibility of the noun applies equally to the subject and to the object; that is to say, it may take place either before or after the verb, or even both. It does not often happen that the two wings of the sentence are expanded in the same manner, because the uniformity would not be pleasing. But the same order rules on the one side as on the other; and variety is sought only to avoid monotony. If we were speaking of the sense of liberty which is nourished in a people by the habit of discussing and correcting the laws which bind them, we might say,— Deliberation implies consent. Continuous deliberation implies continuous consent. A continuous deliberation implies a continuous consent. A continuous deliberation on the law implies a continuous consent to the law. A continuous deliberation on the law by the subject, implies a continuous assent to the law on the part of the subject. A continuous deliberation on the law by the subject through the medium of representation, implies a continuous assent to the law on the part of the subject in his own proper person. A practically continuous deliberation . . . implies an absolutely continuous assent, &c. When the accumulation between the article (or pronoun) and the substantive becomes overcharged, the sentence recovers its equilibrium by turning the qualifying phrase over to the other side. Instead of 'a practically continuous deliberation' we may say we may say a deliberation which is practically continuous'; and if we alter ‘a tolerably strictly carried out arrangement' to 'an arrangement which is tolerably strictly carried out' we relieve the phrase of some part of its turgidity. 558. And indeed we seem to trace a recurrent inversion in the ordering of words in the Sentence. The movement is so gradual, that to the national apprehension, and for all purposes of grammar, the collocative habit is fixed. It is only if we look across great tracts of time that we perceive the inversion. If we translate the Latin verb IBO in the order of its elementary parts, it is, go will I but now all the great western languages say it in this order, I will go. The general habit of the old Indo-European languages was to place the symbolic words after their presentives, and it was out of this habit that terminal flexion grew so widely prevalent. The modern languages put the pronouns and prepositions before their verbs and nouns, and thus act as a counterpoise to the ancient terminations. The Mosogothic remains are not generally available as independent evidence of ancient collocation, because they so largely obey the order of the Greek original. For this reason I do not quote runa nêmun (94) and many such, which else would be to the point. But there is at least one case of independent Mosogothic structure. When a single Greek word is resolved in translation into two or three words, we then see the native order of arrangement so far as these two or three words are concerned, because it cannot be guided by the Greek. In Matt. xi. 5, кaðaρíčovrai is rendered 'hrainyai wairthand,' i.e. 'clean become': and in verse 19, edikaion is thus given-uswaurhta gadomida warth,' i. e. 'righteous judged is.' These are the exact reverse of the modern order, 'become clean,' and 'is judged righteous.' 559. A like conclusion may be drawn from Particle-composition. We find particles which once were prefixes now used as separable suffixes; thus Gower, in the Fifth Book of the Confessio Amantis, says that the king ordered a table to be set up and spread before his bed, only instead of 'set up,' as we should now speak, he has it 'upset' : Ther scholde be to-fore his bed, A bord upset and faire spred. In Acts xxvii. 16, 'We had much work to come by the boat,' the verb to come by means to compass or get possession of; and it is only an inverse reconstruction of the old verb to become (= by come), if we remember its first sense of come about and so arrive at. The adverb by is identical in origin with the prefix be-, and both at first meant about, around. But this signification being lost sight of, we find that round comes naturally in as its reinforcer, and is ranged on the other side of the principal as a counter-satellite to the particle be :— Ham. Being thus be-netted round with villanies. William Shakspeare, Hamlet, v. 2. 29. 560. One of the most telling examples is the English Negative. Its place is now after the verb, as I was not, I will not. In early times it was before the verb; thus-ic ne was, ic ne wille; and hence the coalesced forms nas and nill. And this case of the Negative is only a particular instance of a rule which applies on a large scale to the station of adverbs in attendance on verbs. In the whole tribe of verbal |