Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/84

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io«-s. iv. JULY 22,1905. •died as infants ; Joseph, a lieutenant of En- gineers, was killed at Taiifa,in Spain, on the last day of 1811, ajid a tablet to his memory •was placed in the church at Gibraltar; •George, the youngest son, in the ac- countant's office in the East India House, -died on 2 February, 1815, aged nineteen, and •was buried in St. Pancras churchyard. The other children were Frances, Mrs. Hall, d. 5 December, 1845, aged sixty-seven ; Eliza- beth, Mrs. de Berniere, d. January, 1859, aged seventy-nine ; Charlotte, Mrs. Jeffery, d. March, 1868, aged eighty-seven; Sophia, Mrs. Davenport, d. 7 May, 1860, aged seventy- eight ; Anna Maria, Mrs. Lloyd, d. 26 Feb- ruary, 1852, aged sixty-eight; William, Fellow of St. John's Coll., Camb., and Chancery barrister, d. 1 March, 1846, aged sixty ; John, •major Royal Artillery, d. Governor of the Isle of Dominica, June, 1839, aged fifty- three ; Charles Thomas, Archbishop of Can- terbury, d. 27 October, 1868, aged seventy- four ; Catherine, d. February, 1870; Martha, •d. October, 1872; Rosamond, Mrs. Lynn Smart, d. March, 1841, aged forty-nine. Longley was the author of (1) 'America, an Ode' (anon.), 1776, which I identify with •'America, an Ode to the People of England,' Lond., Alraon, 1776, quarto, noticed in The Monthly Review, July, 1776, p. 72. (2) ' De- fence of Archdeacon Law in Reply to a Kentish Curate' (i.e., Thomas Francklin, see 'D.N.B.'), who animadverted on Law's visi- tation charge (anon.), 1780. (3) ' An Essay towards forming a More Complete Represen- tation of the Commons of Great Britain,' 1795. It was dedicated to William Smith (of Norwich), the Hon. Thomas Erskine, and the other members of the Society of the Friends of the People, and in it ne exposed the -delusions under which the American war had been popular for a time and the exag gerations of Ministers on the danger from events in France. Many of the provisions which he advocated (e.y., vote by ballot and the trial of contested elections by a separate legal body) have been adopted ; but more •(such as biennial elections, all elections on one fixed day, and but one vote to be allowed to each citizen) are still unaccomplished. The essay was the production of a Whig and something more. On p. 13 he acknowledges his obligations to the teaching of Burgh. (4) ' The Case of the Hop Planters under the Additional Duty of 1802' (Rochester, 1803). He contended that the tax was "contrary to the soundest principles of political economy.' This tract is not in the Library of the British Museum. (5) ' Observations on the Trial by •Jury, particularly on the Unanimity required _n the Verdict." This was reissued in The Pamphleteer, No. x., May, 1815, and was pirated at Edinburgh "when the Bill for ,he introduction of the trial by jury in civil cases in Scotland was before Parliament, and 5reat efforts were made to get rid of the inanimity." The last three pamphlets bear lis name. W. P. COUETNEY. NOUNS AND VERBS DIFFERENTLY PRONOUNCED. WE distinguish between the sb. accent and bhe verb to accent by a difference of stress ; I propose to discuss this on a future occasion. We also distinguish between the sb. use and the verb to use by employing a voiceless s in the former case and a voiced z in the latter. I observe the following note in Latham's 'Grammar,' ch. xviii. :— "Verbs formed from nouns by changing a final sharp consonant into its corresponding flat one ; as tt.se, sb. to use, vb. ; breath, to breathe; cloth, to clothe." No explanation is offered ; and the true facts are concealed. There is no such thing as this alleged " changing," but only a natural difference at a most remote period. The difference has existed throughout _ the whole period of literary English. A little reflection will show that the spoken forms of the sb. and the vb. were always distinct from the first. The sb. use is the Norman us (with the s sound) from Lat. usum, accus. The s was voiceless because it was final : and the addition of • in the written E. form did not alter its sound. But the Norman verb was •user, and the Middle English verb was usen, both being dissyllabic. Here the s was neces- sarily pronounced as a voiced z, because it was intervocalic, having a vowel after it as well as before it; and this is the whole of the secret. Even when the n of the infinitive mood was lost, and the infinitive thus became monosyllabic, there remained several forms such as useth, using, uses, used (dissyllabic), in which the s was still a z ; and all that was needed to distinguish the verb from the sb. was to go on as before. Very striking in this connexion is the employment of uses as a pi. .sb., because here the pronunciation of the singular was faithfully retained ; whilst he uses (with z) is verbal. But the process was perfectly natural, and quite inevitable, wherever distinctness was at all desired. The same explanation applies to all similar cases. Thus breath has the voiceless th, because it is final. But in the M.E. brethen. to breathe, the th was intervocalic, as it still remains in the pres. participle breathing and in the pp. breath-ed in archaic pronunciation.