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160.
Compromise.
The opposition to inkhorn terms was at its height in the middle of the sixteenth century.
At the end of Elizabeth’s reign it had largely spent its force. By this time borrowing had
gone so far that the attack was rather directed at the abuse of the procedure than at the
procedure itself. The use of unfamiliar words could easily be overdone. It was the
enthusiast and the pedant who brought down the criticism of reasonable people upon the
practice and caused them to condemn it in more sweeping terms than they knew at heart
were justified or were consistent with their own usage. Puttenham, for example, although
issuing a warning against inkhorn terms, admits having to use some of them himself and
seeks to justify them in particular instances. He defends the words
scientific, major domo,
politien
(politician),
conduct
(verb), and others. The word
significative,
he says, “doth so
well serve the turne, as it could not now be spared: and many more like usurped Latine
and French words: as,
Methode, methodicall, placation, function, assubtiling, refining,
compendious, prolixe, figurative, inveigle,
a term borrowed of our common lawyers,
impression,
also a new terme, but well expressing the matter, and more than our English
word…. Also ye finde these wordes,
penetrate, penetrable, indignitie,
which I cannot see
how we may spare them, whatsoever fault wee finde with Ink-horne termes: for our
speach wanteth wordes to such sence so well to be used.” Even Wilson, after exercising
his wit in the lively bit of burlesque quoted above, proceeds at once to qualify his
disapproval: “Now whereas wordes be received, as well Greke as Latine, to set furthe our
meanyng in thenglishe tongue, either for lacke of store, or els because wee would enriche
the language: it is well doen to use them, and no man therin can be charged for any
affectation when all other are agreed to folowe the same waie,” and he cites some that
meet with his approval. Each person who used a new word doubtless felt the justification
of it and, in a matter about which only time could bring agreement, ran the risk of having
their innovations disliked by others. As Ben Jonson remarked in his
Discoveries,
“A man
coins not a new word without some peril and less fruit; for if it happen to be received, the
praise is but moderate; if refused, the scorn is assured.” Some of the words that
Puttenham defends have not stood the test of time, and some of those he objects to, such
as
audacious, egregious, compatible,
have won a permanent place in the language. One
who used any considerable number of new words was in a way on the defensive.
Chapman in presenting his translation of Homer says: “For my varietie of new wordes, I
have none Inckepot I am sure you know, but such as I give pasport with such authoritie,
so significant and not ill sounding, that if my countrey language were an usurer, or a man
of this age speaking it, hee would thanke mee for enriching him.” Obscurity is always a
valid object of criti-cism, and if the word “inkhorn” could be hurled at an opponent, it
was sure to strike him in a vulnerable spot. It was thus that Nash attacked Harvey,
29
who,
it must be confessed, lent himself to such an attack. He replied in kind
30
and was able to
convict Nash of
interfuseth, finicallitie, sillogistrie, disputative, hermaphrodite,
declamatorie, censoriall moralizers, unlineall usurpers of judgement, infringement to
destitute the inditement,
and a dozen similar expressions. Not the least interesting feature
about the whole question of learned borrowings is the way it aroused popular interest. It
even got into the playhouses. In the stage quarrel known as the “War of the Theatres”
The renaissance, 1500-1650 207
Ben Jonson delivered a purge to Marston in the
Poetaster
(1601), relieving him of
retrograde, reciprocal, incubus, lubrical, defunct, magnificate, spurious, inflate,
turgidous, ventosity, strenuous, obstupefact,
and a number of similar words. The attitude
of most people seems to have been one of compromise. No Elizabethan could avoid
wholly the use of the new words. Writers differed chiefly in the extent to which they
allied themselves with the movement or resisted the tendency. As is so often the case, the
safest course was a middle one, to borrow, but “without too manifest insolence and too
wanton affectation.”
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