any experience in the art of verbal expression."-Barrett Wendell English Composition, p. 52.

A. S. Hill offers suggestions somewhat different:

"Other things being equal, it is obvious that the writer who has most words to choose from is most likely to find in his assortment just the word which he needs at a given moment. It is therefore worth while for a young writer to keep his ears open while conversation is going on about him, and his eyes open while he is reading; and to note and remember every word that is new to him in itself or in the meaning given it. He may thus, while avoiding vulgarisms on the one hand and high-flown expressions on the other, enrich his diction from the racy speech of plain people and the best utterances of great authors, the two sources of what is most alive in language. If he is a student of other tongues, whether ancient or modern, he has at hand a third means of adding to his stock of English. Translation,' as Rufus Choate is reported to have said, 'should be pursued to bring to mind and to employ all the words you already own, and to tax and torment invention and discovery and the very deepest memory for additional, rich, and admirably expressive words.'”—A. S. Hill: The Foundations of Rhetoric, p. 171.

These ideas are obviously valuable and practical, too. They may be followed out, and there can be no doubt that if they were continuously followed out they would give excellent results. But as they stand they can hardly be brought into the discipline of the class-room, except, of course, the last method mentioned by A. S. Hill. They must remain part of that personal discipline which is really the only true means of acquiring any art. The class exercises only serve the sensible student of composition with help and hint.

Other exercises, too, have been described which lend themselves more to the necessities of the class-room, besides

being useful as suggestions for private study. I note one or two as showing the opportunities open to the student.

"Let the student read the selection but once, and then, putting aside the book, write what he can remember. After a little practice he will be able to reproduce the thought of a whole page, keeping the order of the writer. He should attend chiefly to the thought, using as many words as he can recall. In this way he will find his stock of words continually enlarging, as well as his power to express the thought in his mind."-E. R. Shaw: English Composition by Practice, p. 23.

In the same text-book, e.g., pp. 125 ff. occurs an exercise which in a developed form may be found in Genung's Outlines, p. 19, and elsewhere. In this exercise the student is continually placed in the position of having to decide between several words, the words to choose from being suggested. We all of us do something of the sort whenever we write the position (often without the words to choose from) is one of the difficulties which meet all beginners. Exercises such as these, however, still leave open further possibilities.

B. EXERCISES FOR THE INCREASE OF THE VOCABULARY.

I. THE VOCABULARY OF A GIVEN IDEA.

55. Some of the Necessities for such Exercises. I have already said that it is hardly to be imagined that we shall get much farther along than the forming a good mental habit: we cannot expect to make great acquisitions in bulk, so to speak. In studying foreign languages one often begins by learning by heart lists of words. But with our own language we have all of us got well beyond that point. It would puzzle a teacher to draw up such lists, even if his students could be induced to learn them. The Earl of Chatham is said to have been in the habit of read

ing the Dictionary before he made a speech, but it may be presumed that it was not merely to learn words out of it.' It is not the net gain in words that we are to have in mind; our real want is something that will give us the habit of mind which gathers about the nucleus of words. already possessed stores of other words perhaps vaguely known before, perhaps quite unknown; which assimilates the new material with the old, and makes out of all a good working instrument. If our class-work can lay the foundation of such a habit, we may well be satisfied. We cannot rightly expect it to do more.

In certain directions, it is true, we can and habitually do make absolute acquisitions. When we interest ourselves in any new study or in any new occupation, we always have to familiarize ourselves with a new vocabulary which is of different value in different circumstances, is sometimes large and sometimes small, sometimes quite technical, sometimes more general. But of whatever kind it be we always have to make it our own, we have to make a direct acquisition. Such direct acquisitions, however, do not have very much connection with our present occupation. In the first place such acquisitions are not matters of difficulty, and in the second they do not make much addition to our general vocabulary. If a person desires an accurate knowledge of the technical terms of architecture, for instance, he can acquaint himself with them without great difficulty by reading some books on the subject. But after he has done so he is not very much better off as far as concerns his general vocabulary. He is better fitted to discuss matters of architecture, but the technical terms of architecture do not make a great part of that general vocabulary which is the object of our present study. In one respect, it is well to point out, is such study very advantageous even

1 Cf. Emerson : "The Poet," Essays, Second Series.

in a general way. It encourages the habit of using words exactly. A person who distinguishes between the words. machicolated and crenellated, let us say, has done something at least toward a habit which will be of great general value. But our desire is for something which shall affect the general vocabulary as directly as may be.

The ideal state of mind so far as vocabulary is concerned would be that—

1. For every idea should come to mind a word.

2. The word should correctly convey the idea in ques

tion to others.

Doubtless no one attains this ideal. Still it serves to show what we may aim at. Doubtless, also, we can hardly hope that for every idea there shall immediately come to mind one word only, and that the right one. We may well be satisfied if—

1. Every idea brings to mind a number of words somehow connected with it,

2. From which we are able to select the right one for our special purpose.

If, then, we are to pursue our work in an orderly way, we want some systematic way of accumulating around any idea the words that are in some way or other connected with it, and we want also some systematic arrangement of ideas that it will be useful to gather words around. Then next, we want to have in mind the principles that will guide us in particular cases to discriminate between words of similar meaning so as to use always the right word.

With a view of accomplishing the first of these ends I shall turn aside for a moment to a consideration of the English vocabulary from three standpoints, i.e., according to the origin of its words, according to their structure, and according to the grammatical function that they serve.

a. THE WORDS OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY.

56. According to their Origin. The vocabulary of the English language is of a very composite character; that is to say, the words have been got together, in process of time, from many different sources. It provides innumerable examples of what students of language have called "borrowed words." When two peoples speaking different languages come in contact with each other for any length of time, each of them, as a rule, borrows words of the other. So also is there borrowing when a people interests itself greatly in the literature of another tongue. The English-speaking peoples have always borrowed words from other languages with great facility, and as a consequence the English vocabulary is made up of words from many different sources.

Whoever may have been the very earliest inhabitants of the British Islands, the earliest known to history were of Keltic stock, which about the time of the Christian era was spread over a great part of Western Europe. Cæsar calls them Brittani (or Britanni) and the island Brittania, whence our words British and Britain. The Anglo-Saxon writers, several centuries afterwards, called them Wealas, whence the name Welsh. The former was the Latinized form of the name that they gave themselves; the latter is a Teutonic word meaning "strangers," and in one form or another has been given by the Teutonic peoples to various of their neighbors. Both names have been preserved. The Keltic name is now shared by their Teutonic conquerors; the name given them has proved more permanent in its restricted application. The languages spoken by the Keltic

1 The term loan-words" is also used. The word seems to me rather barbarous and not very descriptive, for the words are not so much loaned by one nation as borrowed by the other, and that, as is often the way with borrowers, without the slightest intention of repayment.

2 O. E. Welisc.

Or it may originally have been borrowed from Kelt. Volcae.