. m. JAN. 21, m] NOTES AND QUERIES.
51
( 'entlivre, Foote, and Col man) for helpmate,
vhich he, as well as Mr. Hall, calls "the
classical word." On the other hand, except-
i ig the spurious example from Milton to be
] oticed in the sequel, the earliest authority
for helpmeet, as a true compound with the
accent on the first syllable, is perhaps not
i if ty years old. This would show that Words-
worth used helpmate* in 1800, the date of his
' Michael,' while the other word was infuturo;
- md perhaps it was still awaiting invention
when Mrs. Browning wrote :
You want a helpmate, not a mistress, sir ;
A wife to help your ends, in her no end.
' Aurora Leigh,' ii. 401.
Prof. Skeat assumes that "helpmate is a coinage due to a mistaken notion of the phrase 'an help meet,'" and quotes in illus- tration a passage from Archbishop Sharp's sermons in which the archbishop says of Eve that God " created her that she might be a help-mate for the man" ('Works,' vol. iv. ser. 12). It is a pity Prof. Skeat does not inform us what, according to his view, the " mistaken notion " was. For if he imputes the coinage to the archbishop, it is hard to conceive how a divine of his culturet could blunder the meaning of two words so common and so accordant with the literary style of the period, and still harder to conjecture what could prompt him to change meet to mate, seeing that he was not a native of the Emerald Isle, who would habitually pronounce " help meet " as " help mate," and considering that even then his pronunciation would not prejudice his spelling. Prof. Skeat, of course, will not admit confusion, as that would upset his hypothesis. But one assumption is as good as another, and I assume that the arch- bishop, clothing the passage of Scripture in his own phraseology, used an expression already current.
There is evidence, too, in support of an independent formation of helpmate. It will not, I presume, be pretended that helpfellow could be due to a " mistaken notion " of a Scriptural phrase. I proceed, therefore, to add that Nicholas Udall designates Timothy " an helpefellowe of our office " (1 Thess. iii. 2), where I find in a 1599 Bible "our labour fellow in the Gospell of Christ," and in the original o-wepyos (rendered " helpmate " in Major's translation of Schrevelius's ' Lexicon') TOV 0cov 6 v TW uayyeA./w. Now helpmate is as intelligible 'as helpfeltow on C. C. B.'s own
- Wordsworth, like Sir Walter Scott ('Guy
Mannering,' xliv.), applies the term also to the husband ('Excursion, bks. i. and v.).
t See his life in the ' Dictionary of National Bio- graphy. 3
showing, for, says he, " a mate is a fellow."
I contend that helpmate is merely a variant of helpfellow, as "bedmate" is of "bedfellow," "schoolmate" of "schoolfellow," or "play- mate" of "playfellow." But whether help- mate owe its origin to the phrase of Genesis or not a question we shall have better means of deciding when the next H section of the ' Historical English Dictionary ' appears* I hold, with Dr. Palmer, that helpmeet is a cor- ruption of helpmate, due to crotchety ideas about the phrase of Genesis. Mr. Fitz- edward Hall, it is true, notes (' Modern Eng- lish,' p. 367) that there is an example of "help-meet" with hyphen in the 1738 and 1753 editions of Milton's 'Prose Works' (treatise on ' Divorce,' bk. i. chap, ii.) ; but as " help meet " without hyphen is, he adds, the reading of the 1698 edition, the hyphen was evidently foisted in by the printers in as- similation of the phrase to the familiar com- pound " help-mate," as then printed, so that it does not disturb Dr. Palmer's theory.
This corruption of Milton's text deserves a few words of elucidation. His 'Divorce' treatise contains "help meet" only as a Scriptural phrase with the complementary words " for him " or (as in one place) " for man," occurring for the first time at p. 6 of
the 1643 edition: " I will make him a
help meet for him." Here and everywhere else the 1738 edition prints "help-meet" (vol. i. p. 170 et passim) ; and on p. 194 there are four instances of "meet help," with a quotation, or rather misquotation, of Gen. ii. 20, "there was not yet found an help-meet for Man," sandwiched between the first two. These examples of "help-meet "show confusion with " help-mate," but those of " helpmeet " in the present century are founded on the idea that " helpmate " is a blunder. So little was Milton under a "mistaken notion" that he alternates " fit help " with " meet help " (ibid., pp. 171, 173); compare also 'Paradise Lost,' viii. 449 :
What next I bring shall please thee, be assured ;
Thy likeness, thy fit help.
F. ADAMS.
Helpmate is rather a favourite word with Sir Walter Scott, who fails, however, to restrict it to the use to which, in the opinion of your valued correspondent C. C. B., it alone applies. The following extract from 'The Fortunes of Nigel,' chap, viii., in which Ben- jamin Suddlechop interrupts his wife while
- Since the composition of this article the section
has been published, convicting me of error in my observations above on the age of helpmeet, and so invalidating any conclusions therefrom.
