plan, it is found that Shakespeare's vocabulary in his Plays and Poems consists of about 15,000 words. The greater extent of Shakespeare's poetical vocabulary, as compared with Milton's, may be accounted for partly by the greater bulk of the poetical matter from which the vocabulary is gathered; but it is, doubtless, owing in part also to the greater multifariousness of that aggregate of things and notions amid which Shakespeare's imagination moved for the purposes of his dramas. An interesting question with respect to any English writer the extent of whose total vocabulary may have been ascertained is the question what proportion of that vocabulary consists of words of the old native English or "Anglo-Saxon" stock, and what of words derived from the Latin or other non-Saxon sources that have contributed to our matured and composite English. "In the vocabulary of the English Bible," says Mr. Marsh (Lect. on Eng. Lang., 4th American edit. pp. 123, 124), "sixty per cent. are native; in that of Shakespeare the proportion is very nearly the same; while of the stock of words employed in the poetical works of Milton less than thirty-three per cent. are AngloSaxon." In other words, while about two-fifths of Shakespeare's vocabulary, or about 6,000 words out of the total 15,000 which he uses, are of non-Saxon derivation, the non-Saxon element in Milton's poetical vocabulary amounts to about two thirds, or to about 5,300 words out of the total 8,000. Milton's draught upon the Latin and other so-called "foreign" constituents of our speech for the purposes of his poetry would thus appear to have been relatively, but not absolutely, larger than Shakespeare's. But the proportions of the "Saxon" and the "non-Saxon " elements in a writer's total vocabulary would by no means indicate the proportions of the same elements in his habitual style. The vocabulary gives the words, so to speak, in a state of quiescence, or as lying in the writer's cabinet for use; but in actual speech or writing some words are in such constant demand that they are continually being taken out of the cabinet and put back again, while others are not called out more than once or twice in a year or in a whole literary life time. In order, therefore, to ascertain the proportion of Teutonic and non-Teutonic in a writer's habitual style, a very different plan must be adopted from that of merely counting the Teutonic and non-Teutonic words in his vocabulary. Specimens of different length must be taken from his text; and every word in these specimens must be counted, not once only but every time that it occurs. Of various critics who have applied this method to the styles of the more important English writers, no one has taken greater pains than Mr. Marsh; and the result of his investigations has been in some cases to set aside previous conceptions on the subject. He finds, for example (Lect. on Eng. Lang., pp. 124-126), that even in the last century, when the style of our writers was highly Latinized, the proportion of Saxon to non Saxon words in any extensive and characteristic passage from the writings of the best authors very rarely falls beneath 70 per cent.-Swift, in the case of one Essay, falling as low as 68 per cent., but usually ranging higher; and Johnson's proportion being 72 per cent., Gibbon's 70 per cent., and Hume's 73 per cent. He finds, moreover, that, in spite of the additons to our Dictionary since that time, mainly of words from non-Teutonic sources, the proportion of Teutonic in the style of our best-known writers of the present century has risen rather than fallen. Macaulay he rates at 75 per cent. (one non-Saxon word in four), and other recent prose-writers at about the same, while from examinations of long passages in Tennyson, Browning, and Longfellow, it actually appears that the proportion of Saxon in our poetry is hardly less at this day than it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or even earlier. Thus, Tennyson's Lotus Eaters yields 87 per cent. of Saxon, and his In Memoriam 89 per cent.; Browning's figure is 84 per cent., and Longfellow's 87 per cent. ; while Spenser, from the examination of a Canto, is rated at 86 per cent., Shakespeare at from 88 to 91 per cent., and even Chaucer only once reaches 93 per cent. and is usually nearer 89 or 90. Milton's place in the list is assigned from these computations as follows: L'Allegro Il Penseroso. Paradise Lost, Book VI. 90 per cent. 83 per cent. 80 per cent. From examinations of various passages in Paradise Lost, I am inclined to believe that Mr. Marsh's estimate of 80 per cent. of Saxon words will be found about right for the whole poem, if, with him, we always omit the proper names in counting. In various passages of some length, counting the proper names as well, I have found the average to come out at about 75 per cent. But, just as the percentage of Saxon words in Paradise Lost is less than in Il Penseroso and much less than in L'Allegro, so within Paradise Lost itself the rate varies according to the poet's mood and the nature of his matter at particular moments. Passages may be hit on, or may be selected-and not those only which abound in proper names-where the percentage of Saxon falls as low as 70 or lower. The principle, in short, is that it depends on the thought of a writer in any particular passage, on the class of things and notions with which he is there concerning himself, whether the expression shall show more or less of the Saxon. There is one way in which a verbal index to a writer might be made a key to his mind. It might be noted not only that a word did occur, but also how many times it occurred; and from the relative degrees of frequency thus noted in the occurrence of words instructive inferences might be drawn. The frequency or infrequency of a word in any writer depends on a composition of causes. Some objects and notions are, in their nature, so much nearer or easier than others to the human apprehension in general that the words denoting them, or asso ciated with them, may fairly be expected to occur in any writer with the corresponding greater degree of frequency. All men, for example, think more frequently of fire than of the Zodiac. Again, the particular bent of an individual writer, the prevalent direction of his thoughts, and the nature of his theme or purpose, occasion a more than average frequency of recourse to certain words and classes of words. For example, one would expect the words Angels and Heaven oftener in Paradise Lost than in most other poems. In the third place, the mere form of a particular work may be such as to preclude, or at least discourage, the use in it of words perfectly well-known to the writer and used by him on other occasions. There are words, for example, which, from their pronunciation or structure, as well as from their intellectual associations, will not so readily be brought into verse as into prose. Lastly, a word which is common now may have been far less common at a former period in the history of the language, so that, though it is occasionally to be found in a writer of that period, it is not found so often as we should expect from the nature of its meaning. A thorough application of these remarks to the vocabularies of Shakespeare and Milton would yield curious results. As respects Milton, an indication or two must here suffice:-Just as, from the mere statement that Milton's poetical vocabulary consists of but about 8,000 words, it is evident that thousands of words, not only in our present English Dictionary, but even in the English Dictionary of his day, were never used by him even once, but, so far as his poems were concerned, were allowed to lie about ungrasped, so it may be expected that, of the words which he did use, there were very many which he used only once. What are called the άraž λɛyoμeva of any writer, indeed-i.e. the words used by him only once in the whole course of his writings-will be found on examination greatly more numerous than might have been supposed beforehand. Mr. Marsh incidentally quotes the following as instances of ȧraέ λeyoμeva in Shakespeare—abrupt, ambiguous, artless, congratulate, improbable, improper, improve, impure, inconvenient, incredible. But it would only be necessary to run the finger down the columns of the Concordance to Shakespeare to add hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of other words to the list of which hundreds, or thousands, scores at least would be as remarkable as any of the ten cited. Milton's ama λɛyoμɛva are probably even more numerous proportionally than Shakespeare's. Of the ten Shakespearian words mentioned, three are also ȧna Xeyoμera in Milton's poetry-to wit abrupt, congratulate (in the form congratulant) and inconvenient; four occur three or four times each to wit ambiguous, improve, impure, and incredible; and three do not occur even once-to wit artless, improbable, and improper. It may throw light upon this subject if I give a list of the principal ȧra Xeyopera of Milton's poems under one of the letters of the Alphabet. Under A I find, by the Concordances, without including strictly proper names, th 2, the following:-ability, abrupt, abruptly, absolutely, abstemious, absurd, accessible, accomplishment, accusation, ache, acquist, acquittance, activity, actual, adamantéan, adjourn, adjust, admonishment, adrift, advantageous, adventurer, adversities, adulterous, adultery, advocate, adust, affection, afield, afloat, afresh, afternoon, agape, agate, agent, aggravation, aggregate (v), agitation, agreeable, aidless, alacrity, alchemist, alchemy, alimental, allegoric, allow, allusion, alms, Alpine, altern, alternate, ambrosia, (the adjective ambrosial is not unfrequent), amerced, American, amice, ammiral (admiral), ammunition, anarch, anchor (n.), anciently, annex, annihilate, announce, antarctic, antipathy, antiquity, apathy, Apocalypse, apology, apostle, appellant, appertain, appetence, applaud, appointment, apprehensive, approbation, April, aqueduct, arable, arbitrary, arbitrate, arborets, arborous, arch, architrave, ardent, argent, arraign, arrowy, arsenal, articulate, artifice, artillery, ashore, ashy, aslope, aspirer, assailant, assassin, assessor, assiduous, assimilate, asthma, astronomer, atheous, athwart, atonement, atrophy, attach, attent, attrite, attune, avaunt, avarice, aver, avow, austerity, auxiliar. Here, under one letter of the alphabet, are at least 118 words that occur only once in all Milton's poems; and there are places in the vocabulary where the proportion of such words is even greater. Thus, of about 375 words beginning with the letters Un which I find in Todd's Index to Milton's Poems, I have counted no fewer than 241 as occurring only once-the reason being that so many of those words are negative adjectives. Unadorned, unattempted, unbecoming, unbound, unbroken, unclouded, undesirable, uneven, unfasten, ungoverned, ungraceful, unhurt, unkindness, unlimited, unpaid, unreal, unsafe, unskilful, unsound, unsteady, unsuccessful, unwelcome, unwilling, and unwonted are a few of such negatives only once used in Milton's poems. Altogether I should not be surprised if between 2,000 and 3,000 of the 8,000 words of Milton's total poetical vocabulary were found to be άπαξ λεγόμενα. Passing from words used only once to those used twice, thrice, or seldom, we might have in this class also a list of hundreds. Hence, again, we might rise to the class of occasionally-used words; hence again to words used pretty frequently; and hence again to those occurring very frequently. In this last class I have noted such words as these :-Adam, air, all, alone, age, angel, arms, battle, beam, beast, beauty, better, birth, black, bliss, bold, bright, bring, call, care, cause, celestial, change, cloud, come, command, create, darkness, day, death, deep, delight, divine, doubt, dread, earth, end, enemy, equal, eternal, eye, fair, faith, fall, false, far, fate, father, fear, field, fierce, find, fire, firm, first, flower, foe, force, foul, free, fruit, full, garden, gentle, give, glory, glorious, go, God, gold, good, grace, great, green, grove, ground, hand, happy, hard, head, hate, heart, Heaven, Hell, help, high, hill, holy, honour, hope, host, hour, human, ill, immortal, joy, just, King, know, knowledge, land, large, last, law, lead, life, light, long, Lord, lost, loud, love, low, make, man, might, mild, mind, moon, morn, mortal, move, mount and mountain, name, nature, new, night, old, pain, Paradise, part, past, peace, place, power, praise, pride, pure, race, reason, reign, rest, right, rise, sacred, sad, Satan, say, sea, seat, see, seem, sense, serpent, serve, shame, side, sin, sing, sit, soft, son, song, sky, sleep, solemn, sorrow, soul, sound, speak, spirit, stand, star, state, strength, sun, sure, sweet, thing, think, thought, throne, time, tree, true, truth, vain, virtue, voice, walk, war, water, way, well, wide, wild, will, wind, wing, wise, woe, woman, wonder, wood, word, work, world. Not only some of the verbs but also some of the nouns and adjectives in this list occur so very often (Earth, Heaven, God, man, high, free, good, fair, glory, happy, large, love, hard, soft, new, old, thing, eye, and death, are examples) that they may be registered as next in frequency to those mere particles and auxiliaries—and, the, but, not, to, for, from, we, our, their, that, which, could, did, will, is, are, were, though, on, ever, &c. &c.-which are scattered innumerably over the pages of every writer. One question more respecting Milton's vocabulary in his poems. Is any proportion of it obsolete? On the whole, whether from the judiciousness with which Milton chose words that had a strong force of vitality in them, or from the power of such a writer to confer future popularity on the words adopted by him, the number of words in Milton's poems that are now obsolete or even archaic is singularly small. Mr. Marsh's estimate (Lect. on Eng. Lang., pp. 264, 265) on this subject is that, while about five or six hundred of Shakespeare's words have gone out of currency or changed their meaning, there are not more than a hundred of Milton's words in his poetry which are not as familiar at this day as in that of the poet himself. How far Mr. Marsh is right may appear from the following list of the words or verbal forms in Milton's poetry which I have noted as either obsolete or unusual now-acquist (acquisition, S. A. 1755), adamantéan, admonishment; advantaged, adust (burnt, P. L., XII. 635), aidless, alack, alimental, altern (alternate, P. L., VII. 348), amerced, ammiral (admiral, P. L., I. 294), appaid (paid, P. L., XII. 401), arboret, arborous, arrowy, astonied, atheous (atheist, godless, P. R., I. 487), attent (attentive, attentively, P. R., I. 385), attrite (rubbed, F. L., X. 1073), ay (ah!), azurn (azure, Comus, 893), battailous (battle-full or battle-like, P. L., VI. 81), bearth (produce, P. L., IX. 624), bicker (to fight, P. L., VI. 766), blanc (white, P. L., X. 656), burdenous (burdensome, S. A. 567), cataphracts, cedarn, Chineses, circumfluous, colure (an old astronomical term), concoctive, conflagrant, conglobed, congratulant, consolatories (pieces of consolation, S. A. 657), contrarious, corny, cressets, daffadillies, debel (to war down, P. R., IV. 605), democraty, 1 If the Concordances are to be relied on, the word woman does not occur in any form in Milton's poetry before Paradise Lost. Exactly so with the word female. On the other hand, the word lady, which does not occur once in Paradise Lost, is frequent enough in the earlier poems, and occurs twice in the plural in Par. Reg. and Sams. Ag. Eight times in the earlier poems we have maid or maiden; only twice in the later poems. The words girl and lass do not occur in the poetry at all. |