er words, and out of
the same causes, the exact converse has found place; and 'baker' or
'brewer', not 'bakester' or 'brewster'{176}, would be now in England
applied to the woman baking or brewing. So entirely has this power of
the language died out, that it survives more apparently than really even
in 'spinner' and 'spinster'; seeing that 'spinster' has obtained now
quite another meaning than that of a woman spinning, whom, as well as
the man, we should call not a 'spinster', but a 'spinner'{177}. It would
indeed be hard to believe, if we had not constant experience of the
fact, how soon and how easily the true law and significance of some
form, which has never ceased to be in everybody's mouth, may yet be lost
sight of by all. No more curious chapter in the history of language
could be written than one which should trace the violations of analogy,
the transgressions of the most primary laws of a language, which follow
hereupon; the plurals like 'welkin' (=wolken, the clouds){178},
'chicken'{179}, which are dealt with as singulars, the singulars, like
'riches' (richesse){180}, 'pease' (pisum, pois){181}, 'alms',
'eaves'{182}, which are assumed to be plurals.

{Sidenote: _The Genitival Inflexion '-s'_}

There is one example of this, familiar to us all; probably so familiar
that it would not be worth while adverting to it, if it did not
illustrate, as no other word could, this forgetfulness which may
overtake a whole people, of the true meaning of a grammatical form which
they have never ceased to employ. I refer to the mistaken assumption
that the 's' of the genitive, as 'the king's countenance', was merely a
more rapid way of pronouncing 'the king _his_ countenance', and that the
final 's' in 'king's' was in fact an elided 'his'. This explanation for
a long time prevailed almost universally; I believe there are many who
accept it still. It was in vain that here and there a deeper knower of
our tongue protested against this "monstrous syntax", as Ben Jonson in
his _Grammar_ justly calls it{183}. It was in vain that Wallis, another
English scholar of the seventeenth century, pointed out in _his_ Grammar
that the slightest examination of the facts revealed the untenable
character of this explanation, seeing that we do not merely say "the
_king's_ countenance", but "the _queen's_ countenance"; and in this case
the final 's' cannot stand for 'his', for "the queen _his_ countenance"
cannot be intended{184}; we do not say me