Degraded Words. 



65 



that gives constant annoyance in our daily life, and seems sometimes 

 to prepare the way for all the others — the habit of procrastination, 

 unnecessary and vexatious delay when action is demanded. A vice 

 so common could hardly fail to make its impression on the language. 

 Accordingly we find that certain adverbs of time which are and 

 have been very frequently employed in promising immediate atten- 

 tion to duty, have lost by degrees a large share of their former intensity 

 (promises of this kind being so often broken), and have become 

 so weakened and enervated as quite to obscure the sense in many 

 passages of the older writers. Thus Bailey's definition of the w^ord 

 presently — which is " at present, at this time, now," as exemplified 

 by Cardinal Beaufort in King Henry Sixth [part two, i, i], this 

 weighty business will not brook delay; I'll to the Duke of Suffolk 

 presently " — this definition is marked " obsolete" by Webster, 

 though that meaning still seems to survive to some extent in Eng- 

 land, for I read the other day in the Newcastle Courant that " Gene- 

 ral Ramsay is presently visiting at the castle." Yet the American 

 Lexicographer is indisputably correct when he proceeds to mention, 

 as the synonyms of this adverb in its more common applications, the 

 words " soon, before long, after a little time " — which embody 

 quite a different conception. 



As regards the similar term hy-and-hy, the case is if possible 

 still stronger, the ancient meaning still more debilitated in its 

 modern usage. Of course this word in our present understanding of 

 it, invariably implies considerable delay, but we need only turn to 

 the Greek testament to discover that King James' translators con- 

 sidered it the equivalent for the most emphatic adverbs that the 

 original tongue can furnish to indicate instant and hurried action — 

 euthus^ eutheos and exautes. These words mean suddenly,hastily, rash- 

 ly, at the very point of time; and are rendered "straightway," "im- 

 mediately" and " forthwith" in the Bible itself, when by-a7id-byh not 

 used. In the account given by Ulysses in the Ajax of his breathless 

 and frantic pursuit of the mad warrior who had buteher6d the flocks 

 and their guardians, Sophocles makes him say: "And to me a watch- 

 man that espied him bounding over the plains alone, with freshly 

 reeking sword, tells it; and eutheos [that is, instantly] I hurry 

 close on his steps." Fancy rendering this, as is done with the same 

 word in the Bible, " by-and-by I hurry on his steps ! " How com- 

 pletely such a translation destroys the coherence of the narrative ! 

 What a flood of light is thrown too upon the real intent of the sacred 

 writers, when we substitute the stronger and now more accurate ex- 



