Locutius in Fabrica. 



bad habit. For all their rude appearance, it would be hard to suggest 

 any improvement in the practical working of this collection of hetero- 

 geneous apparatus. 



Now I have often thought, while watching this mechanic at work, 

 that his position (barring of course any question as to relative degrees 

 of skill) is in some respects not unlike that of a member of the Insti- 

 tute preparing a paper for your consideration. Is not the English 

 language, too, a seemingly disordered and inharmonious assemblage 

 of implements, appliances and raw material ? Our vocabulary is made 

 up of importations from every country under heaven; our present 

 tenses and their preterites, our individual terms and their significance 

 in idiomatic phrases, our spoken words and their representatives in 

 writing, have in scores of cases about as much seeming congruity as 

 my mechanical friend's delicate watch-making lathe with the dirty 

 table on which it stands and the rough box that covers it. And yet, 

 what work can be accomplished with the English language! What 

 distinction so fine, what conception so grand, what mental creation so 

 lovely, that this unsymmetrical and in many respects unbeautiful 

 tongue is inadequate (if one only knows how to use it) for putting it 

 into permanent form for preservation ? As a means for the expression 

 of thought, our modified Anglo-Saxon in the hands of a master ex- 

 cels the comparatively regular languages of antiquity and of many 

 savage peoples, as the mechanic's unattractive tools excel for practi- 

 cal purposes the handsome but untrustworthy contents of the " gen- 

 tlemen's tool-chests." Less sonorous than German, less sparkling than 

 French, less musical than Spanish, less logical and systematic by far 

 in its structure than Latin, less flexible than Greek, how it surpasses 

 them all for meeting the varied necessities of mankind ! 



And does not this parallelism suggest a useful lesson to certain 

 hypercritical critics whose wont it is to act the part of grand inquisi- 

 tors as to the legitimacy of the new terms which are constantly 

 appearing in our language, often to supply real and important wants ? 

 A great hubbub was made by this class of people on the introduction 

 of the now well established noun starvation, which even Mr. Skeat, 

 notwithstanding his usual liberality of judgment, condemns as a 

 "ridiculous hybrid." Hybrid of course it is — an Anglo-Saxon root 

 with a Latin suffix, as if one were to fit a rough hickory handle into 

 a highly polished lignuni-vitse mallet. But consider the circumstances. 

 The implement was badly needed ; the materials of which it was con- 

 structed were the best at hand at the moment, or the best that were 

 thought of; and it answers its purpose well. Can we afford to discard 

 it because it is not handsome in appearance? Reliable has fallen 

 under the ban of the same class of thinkers. It is badly formed, no 



