Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/269

On English Preterites and Genitives. 259 for instance in the Lay of the Nibelungen, is no way at variance with those rules which G. C. L. terms empirical, that is to say, which have been drawn from the general practice of languages. On the contrary it is grammatically defensible, as merely an instance of apposition : and it cor- responds very nearly to the Homeric use of the demonstra- tive pronoun along with proper names. Wallis in his Grammar, ch. 4, speaks of it as a construction which occurs seldom in Latin, more frequently in Hellenistic Greek, but is very common in Hebrew and in English. As a proof that its purpose is mostly to give emphasis, I may observe that this use of the pronoun after a name is, I believe, pretty nearly confined to the nominative case. The Eldridge knighte^ he pricked his steed ; — That knighte^ he is a foul paynim ; — Sir Cauline, he slewe the Eldridge knighte : these expres- sions are perfectly agreeable to grammatical idiom, and in all of them the pronoun adds to the force of the passage. If we often hear this pleonasm used by the lower orders with regard to matters which to us do not appear to be of the slightest importance, it may perhaps arise from our having a different scale to judge of importance from theirs, and from our not considering how entirely the uneducated are taken up by whatever happens to be immediately before them, whether before their senses or their thoughts, if indeed in their case such a distinction is applicable. No- body however would say Sir Cauline slewe the Eldridge knight him : and yet this expression comes much nearer to the one we are considering, only that the latter is ungram- matical into the bargain, or, if that expression be not al- lowable, is inconsistent with the rules followed in the com- bination of words both in our own language and the cognate ones. I grant that, if the Germans do indeed use such an expression as der Konig sein Hans in familiar conversation, this analogy would be a strong argument in favour of the corruption I am impugning. But I am disposed to doubt the genuineness of that phrase, more especially as it is not men- tioned by Becker in his Grammar (Vol. i. p. 172), where he is speaking of the pleonastic use of the pronoun, and in- stances the redundancies des Vaters sein Hut^ der Mutter ihr Kleid, as habitual among the lower orders. This cumulative