Century. A far greater master of English was Bishop Pecock, the best of our prose writers in this age, a man who was in theology a compound of Bellarmine and Hooker, and who therefore drew down upon himself the wrath of the Anglican Church.[1] Pecock is the last good writer in whom we see the old Southern form thilk for iste. By 1450 the speech of the Mercian Danelagh had all but made a thorough conquest of London; the prefix to the Past Participle was nearly gone; and the endings of Verbs were not to last many years. Chaucer's example, though he was held to be the best of all patterns of language, had been unable to preserve the few traces of Southern speech that lingered in his day. The old ʓede (ivit) had made way for went; Capgrave's eldfœder for graunt fadir. We find both schulde and schude, the last showing the rise of our present pronunciation of should. The helpful for is no longer used to compound verbs, as to fordo. We see both esilier and esier, the old and the new form of the Comparative in the Adverb. England hence-forward became so slovenly as to express the Comparative of both the Adjective and the Adverb by one and the same word. The Bishop is most fond of tacking on a French ending to an English root, like the bondage of 1303; we find in his work se-able, knowe-able, here-able, do-able, dout-able; also craftiose.[2] The English un is preferred to the Latin in in uncongruité, unmoveable and
- ↑ Pecock's Repressor, whence I quote, was published by the Master of the Rolls. I give a long passage from it in my Appendix.
- ↑ When we want a new adjective, we almost always compound with this foreign able. Dr. Johnson spoke of an unclubbable man; we speak of a thing as uncomeatable, when it is inaccessible.
