Immagini della pagina
PDF
ePub

345. In ice or ise: after two or three various Latin terminations, but typically from -itia. The Romanesque languages have a double rendering for the Latin -itia, the first of these being in Italian -izia, in French -ice or -ise. Examples :—avarice, covetise Spenser, cowardice, foolhardise Spenser, justice, malice, merchandise, nigardise Spenser Faery Queene, iv. 8. 15, notice, queintise Chaucer, riotise Spenser.

gentrise, covetise.

Wonder it ys sire emperour that noble gentrise

That is so noble and eke y fuld with so fyl couetyse.

Robert of Gloucester, p. 46.

Franchise was a great word in the French period, and it had a wide range of significations. Among other things it meant political privilege, exemption, and also good manners, good breeding, which latter occurs among the numerous renderings of this word in Randle Cotgrave's Dictionarie of the French and English Tongves, 1611.

franchise.

We mote, he sayde, be hardy and stalworthe and wyse,
3ef we wole habbe oure lyf, and hold our franchise.

Robert of Brunne, p. 155.

To this class belonged the French word pentice or pentise, of which the last syllable had been already before Shakspeare's time anglicised into 'house,' making a sort of compound, pent-house.

We must admit into this set such words as edifice, prejudice, service, and we cannot make the Latin termination -itium a ground of distinction in English philology, where words are assimilated in form. On the confluence of formatives see 339.

346. In the sixteenth century these words were often

written with a 2, and in this we must recognise a phonetic effort. The French -ise sounded the same as -ice, but English people gave it a zed-sound. Hence that struggle between the forms -ise, -ice, -ize. The -ise and -ice are French, the -ize is the insular usage phonetically written. In the sixteenth century the letter z was favoured by fashion, and it made a certain inroad, gaining a good many places which were for the most part phonetically due to it. Queen Elizabeth wrote her name with a z, and that alone was an influential example. In some cases the fashion disappeared and left no traces behind it; in other cases it was the origin of the received orthography. Thus wizard became the recognised form instead of wisard, which was the spelling of Spenser, as may be seen above, 326.

In The Faery Queene we see this fashion well displayed. There are such forms as bruze, uze (iii. 5. 33), wize, disguize, exercize, guize (iii. 6. 23), Paradize (iii. 6. 29), enterprize, emprize, arize, devize (vi. 1. 5). So that there is nothing to marvel at if we find covetise (= covetousness) spelt covetize (iii. 4. 7), and the substantive which we now write practice, written practize :—

Ne ought ye want but skil, which practize small

Wil bring, and shortly make you a mayd Martiall. iii. 3. 53. This was due to the Italian example.

347. But there is a further observation to be made concerning this French substantive form. It seems that we must acknowledge it to have introduced one of the most extensive modern innovations. It was apparently the employment of this substantive as a verb that gave us our first verbs in -ize, and so ushered the Greek -íçew. An unfamiliar example of one of these substantives verbally employed may be quoted from the correspondence of Throgmorton and Cecil in 1567 :—

They would not merchandise for the bear's skin before they had caught the bear.--Quoted by J. A. Froude, History of England, vol. ix. p. 163.

Indeed, there are instances in which the substantive of this form is no longer known, while the verb is in familiar Such is the verb to chastise (pronounced as if spelt with z), which appears in its substantive character, equivalent to chastity, in Turbervile, Poem to his Loue (about 1530):

use.

And sooth it is she liude

in wiuely bond so well, As she from Collatinus wife of chastice bore the bell.

I imagine the case is the same with the verbs to jeopardise, and to advertise. Both of these I would identify with this substantive form, though I am not prepared with an example of either in its substantive character. But there is perhaps evidence enough in Shakspeare's pronunciation that the verb to advertise was not formed from the Greek -ize. In all cases does this verb in Shakspeare sound as advértice, and never as now advertize:

Aduertysing, and holy to your businesse.

Measure for Measure, v. 1. 381.

Please it your Grace to be aduertised.

2 Henry VI, iv. 9. 22.

For by my Scouts, I was aduertised.

3 Henry VI, ii. 1. 116.

I haue aduertis'd him by secret meanes.

3 Henry VI, iv. 5. 9.

We are aduertis'd by our louing friends.

3.Henry VI, v. 3. 18.

As I by friends am well aduertised.

Richard III, iv. 4. 501.

Henry VIII, ii. 4. 178.

Wherein he might the King his Lord aduertise.

In one instance the First Folio has it with a z, but it

makes no difference:

I was aduertiz'd, their Great generall slept.
Troylus and Cressida, ii. 3. 211.

We have still several substantives of the -ice type, as cowardice, justice, malice, notice; but I cannot call to mind more than one verb in which this primitive form is retained, and that is the verb to notice. Where -ment has been added to -ise, the -ise has kept its first sound, as in advertisement, aggrandisement, chastisement.

348. The second Romanesque rendering of the Latin -îtia is in Italian -ezza, in French -esse. So that this form -esse (-ess) is a collateral form to -ice. And the French language presents us with justice and justesse co-existent in differing shades of sense.

Examples-duresse Spenser, finesse, largess, prowess.

Riches belongs here by its extraction, being only an altered form of richesse. In grammatical conception it has passed from a singular, to a plural without a singular. This was one of the effects of centuries of Latin schooling. The word richesse having been constantly used to render opes or divitiae, which are plural forms, and being itself so nearly like an English plural, has thus come to be so conceived of, -and written accordingly.

Burgess has taken this shape, but it is from the French bourgeois, and that from the Latin burgensis.

The form -esse, as derived from -issa, and expressive of the feminine gender, will be found at the close of the section, 384.

349. In the French reign must be included also the forms in -ity and -ty.

In -ity, after the French -ité, with the last syllable accented, because it represents two syllables of the Latin accusative -itatem, Italian -itá; as Latin caritatem, Italian caritá, French charité, English charity.

Examples:-antiquity, benignity, civility, city civitatem, dexterity, equality, fidelity, gratuity, humanity, integrity, joviality, legibility, majority, nativity, obscurity, pity pietatem, posterity, quality, rapidity, sincerity, timidity, urbanity, velocity.

civility, equity, humanity, morality, security.

The morality of our earthly life, is a morality which is in direct subservience to our earthly accommodation; and seeing that equity, and humanity, and civility, are in such visible and immediate connection with all the security and all the enjoyment which they spread around them, it is not to be wondered at, that they should throw over the character of him by whom they are exhibited, the lustre of a grateful and a superior estimation. -Thomas Chalmers, Sermon V. (1819).

And -ty, a more venerable form of the same, historically associated with the legal and political ideas of that early stage of our national life when French was the language of administration.

Examples:-admiralty, casually, certainty, fealiy, loyalty, mayoralty, nicety, novelty, personalty, realty, royalty, shrievalty, soverainty, spiritually, surety, temporalty.

Mayoralty has taken as much as -alty for its suffix, and so grouped itself with admiralty, royalty, spiritualty, temporalty.

And here we may observe by how slight a variation in form great distinctions are sometimes expressed. Whereas personally signifies personal property, chattels, personality signifies the possession of conscious life: whereas realty signifies real property, as land or houses, reality signifies the objective existence of things. The one is after an earlier, the other after a more modern French form. In some instances we see words changing from one form to another as a mere fashion, and without any adequate distinction. Thus specially seems to be endangered by the tendency to imitate the French specialité1.

1 The reader who wishes to know more about the derival of French from Latin should consult the Historical Grammar of the French Tongue, by

« IndietroContinua »