ufficient
reason. _Ill_ as an adverb was at first a vulgarism, precisely like the
rustic's when he says, 'I was treated _bad_.' May not the reason of this
exceptional form be looked for in that tendency to dodge what is hard to
pronounce, to which I have already alluded? If the letters were
distinctly uttered, as they should be, it would take too much time to
say _ill-ly_, _well-ly_, and it is to be observed that we have avoided
_smally_[26] and _tally_ in the same way, though we add _ish_ to them
without hesitation in _smallish_ and _tallish_. We have, to be sure,
_dully_ and _fully_, but for the one we prefer _stupidly_, and the other
(though this may have come from eliding the _y_ before _a_s) is giving
way to _full_. The uneducated, whose utterance is slower, still make
adverbs when they will by adding _like_ to all manner of adjectives. We
have had _big_ charged upon us, because we use it where an Englishman
would now use _great_. I fully admit that it were better to distinguish
between them, allowing to _big_ a certain contemptuous quality; but as
for authority, I want none better than that of Jeremy Taylor, who, in
his noble sermon 'On the Return of Prayer,' speaks of 'Jesus, whose
spirit was meek and gentle up to the greatness of the _biggest_
example.' As for our double negative, I shall waste no time in quoting
instances of it, because it was once as universal in English as it still
is in the neo-Latin languages, where it does not strike us as vulgar. I
am not sure that the loss of it is not to be regretted. But surely I
shall admit the vulgarity of slurring or altogether eliding certain
terminal consonants? I admit that a clear and sharp-cut enunciation is
one of the crowning charms and elegances of speech. Words so uttered are
like coins fresh from the mint, compared with the worn and dingy drudges
of long service,--I do not mean American coins, for those look less
badly the more they lose of their original ugliness. No one is more
painfully conscious than I of the contrast between the rifle-crack of an
Englishman's _yes_ and _no_, and the wet-fuse drawl of the same
monosyllables in the mouths of my countrymen. But I do not find the
dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor
do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that
inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious. How
many educated men pronounce the _t_ in _chestnut_? how many say
_pentise_ fo