POSITE LANGUAGE

"A very slight acquaintance with the history of our own language will
teach us that the speech of Chaucer's age is not the speech of
Skelton's, that there is a great difference between the language under
Elizabeth and that under Charles the First, between that under Charles
the First and Charles the Second, between that under Charles the Second
and Queen Anne; that considerable changes had taken place between the
beginning and the middle of the last century, and that Johnson and
Fielding did not write altogether as we do now. For in the course of a
nation's progress new ideas are evermore mounting above the horizon,
while others are lost sight of and sink below it: others again change
their form and aspect: others which seemed united, split into parts. And
as it is with ideas, so it is with their symbols, words. New ones are
perpetually coined to meet the demand of an advanced understanding, of
new feelings that have sprung out of the decay of old ones, of ideas
that have shot forth from the summit of the tree of our knowledge; old
words meanwhile fall into disuse and become obsolete; others have their
meaning narrowed and defined; synonyms diverge from each other and their
property is parted between them; nay, whole classes of words will now
and then be thrown overboard, as new feelings or perceptions of analogy
gain ground. A history of the language in which all these vicissitudes
should be pointed out, in which the introduction of every new word
should be noted, so far as it is possible--and much may be done in this
way by laborious and diligent and judicious research--in which such
words as have become obsolete should be followed down to their final
extinction, in which all the most remarkable words should be traced
through their successive phases of meaning, and in which moreover the
causes and occasions of these changes should be explained, such a work
would not only abound in entertainment, but would throw more light on
the development of the human mind than all the brainspun systems of
metaphysics that ever were written".

* * * * *

These words, which thus far are not my own, but the words of a greatly
honoured friend and teacher, who, though we behold him now no more,
still teaches, and will teach, by the wisdom of his writings, and the
nobleness of his life (they are words of Archdeacon Hare), I have put in
the forefront of my lectures; seeing that they anti