newer contrivances, are entirely abolished. We still have recourse to mere repetition for an adverbial effect; as—

A lesson too too hard for living clay.

The Faery Queene, iii. 4. 26.

Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt!

Hamlet, i. 2.

Here we go up up up; and here we go down down down, is a rule of universal application, expressing the average, the balance, which prevails in human affairs.-Frederic Eden, The Nile without a Dragoman, 1871; ch. xii.

569. We will close this section with the flat infinitive, or infinitive expressed by position alone, as seen in the following examples:

I do think.

They did expect.

I will hope.

I shall go.

You cannot think.

You may try.

You might get.

They would have.

They should not have.

They shall smart.

These and other such are but the slender remnant of a usage that was once more widely prevalent. As we draw back to the sub-flexional times, we see this Flat Infinitive in positions which now seem strange 1.

Wilt please your highness walk?

But labour lost it was to weene

Lear, iv. 7.

approch him neere.

Faery Queene, ii. 11. 25.

1 In Maetzner, English Grammar, vol. iii. init., there is a good store of examples of these Flat, or as he calls them, Pure Infinitives.

The Americans seem to have preserved one peculiar usages of the Flat Infinitive; as

or two

to help persons appreciate landscape more adequately.-Thomas Starr King, The White Hills, New York, 1870; Preface.

In all these cases the verb is an infinitive by position. In Saxon this infinitive was a flexional one. It could not be otherwise, because there was no flexionless infinitive in the language. This variety then, which we call the Flat Infinitive, is a direct product of deflectionization. These are verbs which in shedding flexion have still retained their infinitival places without taking any substitute for Flexion. They shew what could be done in verbal expression without the aid of flexion, and thus they appear in the light of a reversion from an artificial to a simpler and more primitive type of speech.

570. The positional stage of syntax is most highly displayed in the Chinese language. This is in itself a confirmation of the claim which Chinese literature makes to an exceedingly high antiquity. Speaking generally, it may be said that the whole of Chinese grammar depends upon position. Chinese words change their grammatical character as substantives, adjectives, verbs, according to their relative positions in the collocation of the sentence (223). M. Julien has published a Chinese syntax with a title in which this principle is conspicuously displayed. From a notice of this work in the Academy the following illustration is borrowed::

For instance, the character tch'i, 'to govern,' if placed before a substantive remains a verb, as tch'i koue, to govern a kingdom'; if the order of

1 Syntaxe Nouvelle de la Langue Chinoise, fondée sur la Position des Mots, suivie de deux Traités sur les Particules, et les principaux Termes de Grammaire, d'une Table des Idiotismes, de Fables, de Légendes et d'Apologues traduits mot à mot. Par M. Stanislas Julien. Paris: Librairie de Maisonneuve. London: Trübner and Co., 1869.

these two characters is reversed, they signify the kingdom is governed'; and if the character tch'i be placed after chi, a magistrate,' it becomes a substantive, and the two words are then to be translated the administration of the magistrates.'

Very remarkable is the plasticity of signification which such a grammatical system demands. I imagine that the best European illustration of the Chinese language is to be found in our flat syntax, and the second best in the German compounds.

It must not be supposed that the Chinese language stands alone in the possession of such a syntax: what it does stand alone in, is in the development of a great literature through means so rudimentary. The whole outer field of so-called Allophylian languages, those namely which lie outside the Aryan and Semitic families, appear to be of this character. They are divided into-(1) Isolating, i.e. monosyllabic and unsyntactical; (2) Agglutinating; (3) Polysynthetic :—and all these varieties are but so many different stages and conditions of the positional. This is therefore to be regarded as the basement storey of all syntax, and it is largely discoverable in the English language.

2. SYNTAX OF FLEXION.

571. Flexion is any modification of a word whereby its relation to the sentence is indicated. This power is very variable, in some languages it is great, in others small; in the classical stage of the Latin language it was so great as to eclipse and almost suspend the importance of collocation. This has been indicated at the opening of the previous section.

The English language is at the opposite extreme: the syntactic import of flexion is with us very low, and as

compared with the import of collocation, it may be said almost to count for nothing.

The syntax of the English language is therefore at its weakest in this division. We can only collect a few remaining features, which have lived through the collision of the transition period, and have up to the present time defied the innovations of the symbolic movement. We will consider these relics in order, taking first those of the nounal, and afterwards those of the verbal flexion.

Syntax of Nounal Flexion.

572. We have retained the genitive singular of nouns, as 'heart's desire' Psalm xx and xxi, 'Simon's wife's mother' Luke iv. 38, 'yesterdayes hunting' Compleat Angler (1653) p. 50. Except personal names, this is mostly found in old and set phrases, as 'money's worth,' 'out of harm's way,' 'change for change's sake.'

This structure has often an archaic, and sometimes almost a romantic or imposing effect; as when President Lincoln was admiringly called 'nature's diplomat. There are but few specimens of this type in current use. They have undergone change in two ways. A limited number of them have become compounds, as bondsman, kinsman, sportsman, and others (607): but the wide and general change has been by the substitution of the preposition for the flexion, whereby we no longer speak thus-'the man's rod whom I shall choose' Numbers xvii. 5; but thus-'the rod of the man whom.'

However, we still say 'a ship's captain' and we have not yet followed the French-un capitaine de navire.

1

By an American author, Major Jones, the biographer of Charles Sumner.

A monument of the transition from the flexional to the phrasal structure is seen in the Double Genitive, a peculiar English combination, where both the of and the s are retained, as 'that boy of Norcott's'- 'that idea of

Palmerston's.'

In connection with this Genitive there is another remarkable phenomenon, an appearance as of separable flexion. It looks as if the possessival termination had detached itself in the form of es or is, and had then passed into a pronoun by a sort of degeneracy, as in 'John his book,' and other well-known examples. An original document of the year 1525, by the Prior of Bath, begins thus: To all true Cristen people to whome this present wrytyng Indentour shall come William Hollowaye by Gode is suffer'nce Priour,' &c. And again in the same: 'As they haue doone in tyme paste whan the saide pastures were in the lorde is handes, Soo that thereby the lorde is owne werkes elles where and woode carriage be nott nestoppede att any tyme.'

This supplies the intermediate step between -es and his; and the following quotation supplies an example of the sort of structure in which this separable flexion would be felt as a convenience :

his.

The Cathedrall Churche of Christe in Oxford of Kinge Henry theight his fowndac'on.-Assignment by John Haryngton to William Blanchard of Catterne, 1594.

I used to be satisfied with this explanation, but renewed travel in the Low Dutch regions has caused me to refer this peculiar structure to a much more remote origin. I now think it was brought from the old mother countries by the original settlers, or some tribe of them. It does not appear in Anglosaxon literature, but it is found as early as the second half of the thirteenth century in the later manuscript

M m