See for other cases of prosthesis P. L., vi., 258, 353; and let yourself grow familiar with the fact that by the most opposite expedients does literature effect her wonders. Prefixing is quite the opposite of front-cut.

VIII. Epenthesis, or Insertion, is our next figure of etymology, the inserting of a letter or letters in the middle of a word. This usage, the opposite of mid-cut, is rare, except in our comic literature. American humor is of the broadest; the United States people, like the Scotch, are a proof that the gravest folks are exactly they who can laugh the heartiest, for humor is fed on the quiet, shrewd observation of the character of those around us. A humorous man is usually a man of some depth of judgment, whose eyes are open to the ludicrous points in others. Nothing more amusing, in the American way, than the "Bigelow Papers," by James Russell Lowell. Hear his candidate's creed. The speaker is applying for office :

"I du believe in prayer and praise

To him that hez the grantin'
Of jobs; in every thing that pays;
But most of all in cantin';

That doth my cup with marcies fill,
That lays all thought o' sin to rest;
I don't believe in Princerple,

But, oh! I du in Interest."

In a celebrated letter, that of Artemus Ward to the Prince of Wales, on the occasion of his friend the Prince's marriage, we find not a few insertions, like that last one in "princerple." Saith Artemus:

"I never attempted to reorganize my wife but once; I shall hever attempt it agin. I'd bin to a public dinner, and had allowed to be betrayed into drinkin' several people's health; and wishin' to make 'em as robust as possible, I continuered drinkin' their healths until my own became affected. Consekens was, I presented myself at Betsy's bedside late at night with con

I had sumhow got

sid❜ble lickor concealed about my person. perseshun of a hosswhip on my way home; and rememberin' sum cranky observations of Mrs. Ward's in the mornin', I snapt the whip pretty lively, and, in a very loud voice, I cried, ‘Betsy, you need reorganizin'! I have cum, Betsy,' I continuered, crackin' the whip over the bed-'I have cum to reorganize you! Have you per-rayed to-nite?' I dream'd that nite that sumbody had laid a hosswhip over me sev'ral consekootiv' times; and whin I woke up I found she had. I hain't drank much of any thin' since; and if I ever have another reorganizin' business on hand, I shall let it out by the job. There's varis ways of managin' a wife, friend Wales, but the best and only safe way is to let her do jist about as she wants to. I 'dopted that there plan sum time ago, and it works like a charm.”

IX. Annexation, or Paragoge, the contrast to end-cut, is the putting of a letter or letters to the end of a word, as withouten for without. When Lord Howe was in command of the Magnanime, a negro sailor was ordered to be flogged. Every thing being ready, and the ship's company assembled, the Captain made a long address to the culprit on the enormity of his offense. Poor Sambo, tired of the harangue, and of having his unfortunate back exposed to the cold, exclaimed:

"Massa, if you floggee, floggee; or if you preachee, preachee: but no preachee and floggee both."

He knows little of English and of courting, who knows not the endearing effects of a y at the end. Thus, in R. H. Barham, the humorist:

"The wearied sentinel

At eve may overlook the crouching foe,
Till, ere his hand can sound the alarum bell,
He sinks beneath the unexpected blow;
Before the whisker of grimalkin fell,

When slumbering on her post, the mouse may go:
But woman, wakeful woman's never weary;

Above all, when she waits-to thump her deary."

F

Shenstone, too often lackadaisical, in his poem "The Schoolmistress," wherein are some sketches true to nature, presents a paragoge in his use of grieven for grieve; which leads us to whisper, parenthetically, albeit very earnestly, that you might much enrich your English by turning adjectives into verbs, through this annexation of n, as when Milton and Southey use the verb worsen, to make or grow worse; and milden, to make mild. Would that you all went back to Anglo-Saxon, that overflows with riches, to beyouth and bestrengthen your style. But hie we to the tasteful Laird of the Leasowes and his school-marm:

"In every village marked by little spire,

Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame,
There dwells in lowly shed, and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we Schoolmistress name;
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame:
They grieven sore in piteous durance pent."

In Milton's supremely beautiful word "eremite," for hermit, he deftly gives us in one fine creation an aphære sis, a paragoge, and an epenthesis: a front-cut of the h; an insertion in the second e; an annexation in the final e.

Sir John Suckling, a poet very minor indeed, was ridiculed as follows by a contemporary knight, Sir John Mennis, wherein annexation lubricates the fun:

"Sir John he got him an ambling nag,

To Scotland for to ride-a,

With a hundred men, all his own he swore,
To guard him on every side-a."

You are by this time convinced that even things so tiny as Forms Etymologic, the least important part of our theme, may add much of humor, of quaint oddity, nay, of considerable attraction, to language. As thus: a country swain makes an insidious attempt to persuade Dolly to let him carry on the courtship at an unseason

able hour; which, we rejoice to say, the buxom maiden triumphantly repels-ever be it so:.

"Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window

Thumpaty, thumpaty, thump.

He begged for admittance. She answered him-' No!'
Glumpaty, glumpaty, glump.

'No, no, Roger; No! As you came you may go!'

Stumpaty, stumpaty, stump."

From Horace Smith we purloin the following: sardonical, ironical, for sardonic, laconic; while yees is epenthesis. A bullying barrister would make a butt of a Yorkshire farmer:

"Well, Farmer Numskull, how goes calves at York?"
"Why not, sir, as they do wi' you,

But on four legs instead of two."
"Officer!" cried the legal elf,

Piqued at the laugh against himself,

"Do pray keep silence down below there!

Now look at me, clown, and attend:

Have I not seen you, somewhere, friend?"
"Yees, very like; I often go there."
"The rustic's waggish-quite laconical,"
The counsel cried, with grin sardonical;
"I wish I'd known this prodigy,
This genius of the clods, when I
On circuit was at York residing.
But, Farmer, do for once speak true.
Mind, you're on oath; so tell me, you
Who doubtless think yourself so clever,
Are there as many fools as ever
In the West Riding?"

"Why no, sir, no; we've got our share,

But not so many as when you were there."

Such figures as we are at present handling are small, but it is important for us all to remember that things small are in language often of great value. It was said

by a witty lady, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, that the sole difference between the infidel and the Christian lies in very small compass; the former merely took the "No" out of the Commandments and put it in the Creed.

We have spoken more than once of a monk of Malvern Abbey, whose name, somewhat uncertain, is given as William Langlande-unsparing in his attacks on the monks; invaluable in the glimpses he gives of the wretched social life of the fourteenth century; a powerful original genius and reformer; a spirit of a far higher order than John Gower, who was a mere listless harper on dead Greek mythologies, but this a soul of flame, warring against oppressions and for the wretched. His work was produced between 1360 and 1370; is older therefore than the "Canterbury Tales." We give you a sample. from him-we feel it to be very powerful and deeply pathetic-the description of the miserable life of a poor plowman in those grim days. Mark the annexations, and the alliterations in every line, after the manner of all Anglo-Saxon poetry, and of all Icelandic. Let it be said, also, that it is not even yet, perhaps, too late to restore the plural form of the verb in "n"; as "they loven," which might be in poetry a fine variety: