again; albeit
(to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof, well
considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue. For
seeing _time_ and _person_ be as it were the right and left hand
of a verb, what can the maiming bring else, but a lameness to the
whole body"?

{140} [The two words are often popularly confounded. When a good woman
said "I'm _afeerd_", Mr. Pickwick exclaimed "_Afraid_"! (_Pickwick
Papers_, ch. v.). Chaucer, instructively, uses both in the one
sentence, "This wyf was not _affered_ ne _affrayed_" (_Shipman's
Tale_, l. 400).]

{141} Genin (_Recreations Philologiques_, vol. i. p. 71) says to the
same effect: "Il n'y a gueres de faute de Francais, je dis faute
generale, accreditee, qui n'ait sa raison d'etre, et ne put au
besoin produire ses lettres de noblesse; et souvent mieux en regle
que celles des locutions qui ont usurpe leur place au soleil".

{142} A single proof may in each case suffice:

"Our wills and fates do so _contra/ry_ run".--_Shakespeare._

"Ne let _mischie/vous_ witches with their charms".--_Spenser._

"O argument _blasphe/mous_, false and proud".--_Milton._

[These archaisms are still current in Ireland.]

{143} I cannot doubt that this form which our country people in
Hampshire, as in many other parts, always employ, either retains
the original pronunciation, our received one being a modern
corruption; or else, as is more probable, that _we_ have made a
confusion between two originally different words, from which they
have kept clear. Thus in Howell's _Vocabulary_, 1659, and in
Cotgrave's _French and English Dictionary_ both words occur:
"nuncion or nuncheon, the afternoon's repast", (cf. _Hudibras_, i.
1, 346: "They took their breakfasts or their _nuncheons_"), and
"lunchion, a big piece" i.e. of bread; for both give the old
French 'caribot', which has this meaning, as the equivalent of
'luncheon'. It is clear that in this sense of lump or 'big piece'
Gay uses 'luncheon':

"When hungry thou stood'st staring like an oaf,
I sliced the _luncheon_ from the barley loaf";

and Miss Baker in her _Northamptonshire Glossary_ explains 'lunch'
as "a large lump of bread, or other edible; 'He helped himself to
a good _lunch_ of cake'". We may no