of had better and the partial avoidance of had rather, there are those who think that the latter is destined to undergo the same fate as had liefer; that while it will continue to be heard in colloquial speech, it will disappear from literary. But this is altogether improbable. There may be variation in the extent of the employment of the locution at particular times and by particular persons. That is something, however, quite distinct from its abandonment. Had liefer had died out of general literary use before literature had had full opportunity to exert its preserving influence. For the great agency which prevents the decay and death of words and idioms is their employment by a large number of writers of the highest grade. Such authors always continue in fashion; they are always read and studied and imitated. Hence they give enduring vitality to the forms of expression which appear in their productions. In the great writers of the past had rather is found almost universally; in some of them it is found very frequently. Their employment of the locution is certain in consequence to keep it alive; its concurrent employment in the colloquial speech will keep it vigorous. The most determined efforts directed against it for a century and a half have failed to displace it from the usage of the educated. With the fuller knowledge now possessed of its origin and character these efforts are sure in process of time to be abandoned altogether. It accordingly remains now to explain its exact nature and to recount some of the various views entertained about it.
It is clear from what has been said that during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries men were in the habit of using had rather, and to a less extent had better, with no thought at all of the peculiar character of these locutions. They accepted them, as they did many other idioms, without seeking to understand them. It was enough for them that they found them in good use at the time, or saw that they had been in good use in the past. But there always comes a period in the history of a cultivated language when it begins to be studied for itself as well as for what it contains. The vehicle is to some of full as much importance as the material it conveys. Points of linguistic propriety, which at all times have interest for the few, begin now to be discussed by the many. In English this feeling first made itself distinctly manifest in the second half of the eighteenth century. Grammars and dictionaries then took up to some extent the question of usage. Manuals made their appearance instructing us as to the expressions we ought to avoid. It was inevitable that an idiom of the peculiar nature of had rather should attract attention. It was not understood in the least; and idioms not understood, like men in the same situation, are sure to be misunderstood. At the outset, accordingly, to mention this particular locution was usually to misrepresent it and to censure it. The analogous expression had liefer had died out of the language of literature; had better was comparatively little employed. The brunt of the attack fell consequently upon had rather.
There are two persons who are deserving of particular mention in connection with the early criticism of this idiom. Attention is due to the one because of his influence upon English lexicography, and to the other because of his influence over later grammarians. It was in 1755 that Dr. Johnson brought out the dictionary which goes under his name. No previous work of the nature, so far as I can discover, contained even an allusion to the locution under discussion. Their compilers either did not have their attention called to it or chose to refrain from committing themselves upon a matter which they were unable to comprehend. It is certainly not referred to in the dictionaries of either Dyche or Bailey, the two works of this kind which were in widest use before the appearance of Johnson's. It would have been no injury either to the truth or to his own reputation had Johnson preserved the same reticence as his predecessors. On the subject he had two utterances, one under have, and the other under rather. The fifth definition which he gave of the verb was "to wish, to desire in a lax sense." Two passages were cited to exemplify the meaning, and of these one was the text of the Psalms previously quoted. Under rather he defined to have rather as meaning "to desire in preference." "This is, I think," was his added com-
