The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1886-05-22
Pedantrx Run Mad.

From the baltimore SuH.
In the last issue of 'sThe Nineteeth Cen
tury" Mr.. Frederick Harrison has done
good service by exposing the pedantry of
quite number of modern writers in deal
ing with names that history and the Greek
and Roman classics have rendered familiar
Mr.. Harrison very justly remarks that the
rewriting of old familiar proper names, and
the remaining of persons and places
"heirlooms of the English language"-have
been carried to such an extent as to have
become "a pedantic nuisance" Most scho-
lars will agree with him. This practice
began with Mr.. Grote, the historian of
Greece, many years ago, but what in Mr..
Grote was but small offending has ex-
panded since into such proportions as to
threaten to become an upmixed evil. His
toric and classic names have beensso much
changed in the spelling, and in what is now
declared to be the correct pronunciation, as
to be almost unrecognizable by students of
old histories and old classical studies. Even
the Bible has not escaped the reforming
spirit The fantastic example set by Grote,
Carlyle, Freeman, some of the writers in
the new British Cyclopedia, and multi
tude of others, have, since followed, We
give a few illustrations. The battle of
Hastings, which, asevery schoolboy knows,
gave to Norman William the realm of Eng
land, has been changed by Mr.. Freeman
into the battle of Senlac, of which no school
boy ever heard. But the most radical
changes have been made in proper names.
Thus Alfred is Aelfred, Macbeth is Mace
bethe, and Edward Eadweard All these,
however, are mild perversions of familiar
names. When We get into the old realm
of the classics, and instead of Hercules and
Cecrops, Crete, Cleopatra, Corcyra and
Circe, we find them spelled and pronounced
Herakles, Kekrops and Krete, Keupatra,
Korkyra and Kirke, ordinary readers thus
lose the sense of identity, and may reason,
ably begin to think that such gay deluders
as Kirke and Kleopatra must have been
commonplace sort of women after ALL Who
would recognize the Hebrew lawgiver
Moses in his appellation Of ''Mosheth," or
of Jesus as "Jehoshua ?" When, too, the
pendantic writer changes Voltaire into
Aroult. Napoleon into Buonaparte, Currer
Bell into Mrs. Nichols, what wonder is it
that people should begin not only to in
wardly dissent, but also to outwardly in
dorse Mr.. Harrison when he scornfully pro-
tests against the introduction of this ''ma-
caronic piebald" into our noble and time
honored language? When old English
names were sometimes spelled dozen diff
ferent ways the name that has come down
to us through the centuries, as Alfred fol-
instance, is the name to be retained What
do we know of Kikero? To us it will al
ways be Cicero who made that grand speech
against Verres and drove Catiline out OF
Rome. Moreover, in whatever form Latin,
Greek and Hebrew names have come down
to us, it is doubtful if we have more than
the most elementary idea of the way in
which they were pronounced.
There are extant twenty different ways
of spelling Shakespeare's name, half of them
written by his own hand and many of them
requiring change of pronunciation. We
have largely in modern times clung to
Shakespeare, and the sound follows the
spelling, but we have no reason to suppose,
beyond Green's satire, that his contempo-
raries did not call him "Shagsper," as the
name is written by him in the marriage
bond of 1882 sAll this combative revi-
VAL, says Mr.. Harrison, srests upon the
curious delusion of antiquarians that bits
of ancient things can be crammed into the
living organism of modern civilization.
Any rational culture must be wisely sub
ordinate to organic evolution. Gross Jumps
of the past are not to be stuck down our
throats like horse drench. A brick OF
two from our fathers houses will not really
testify how they built their homes, and
exhuming these buried words may prove
but source of offense to the living"