H

“ Whenever we hear a run of words rhyming alliteratively in H, it is highly probable that only half the pleasure we experience is conveyed to us by ear, and that the other half is of a subjective nature, and arises from our knowing the letter H to enter into the formation of the words, and the alliteration would be almost lost to us were we ignorant of their orthography. ”

“ He hears the echoes of his island home, difficulties are presented in the way of a regard for H’s and for metre. Under all circumstances, to stop and stutter is inelegant, to repeat a word for the sake of giving it its dropped H, has a ludicrous effect; and to attempt by a powerful effort to aspirate some particular vowel, will often result in a promiscuous scattering of H’s. The only advice to the novice is: select difficult passages, [7] and practice them repeatedly—speak slowly and carefully. ”

“ In pronouncing the H of HŪ, the markings are scarcely discernable or altogether absent; the breath-stream having become diverted and attenuated by friction against the palate. In Aspirating ha! the breath-marks are very distinct; but still more so in the case of the jerked terminal h‘ of a quick, contemptuous bah‘!
The above experiment is valuable as affording an insight into the phonation of the modern English Aspirate, and as a means by which the new convert from the H-dropping heresy may learn to avoid the opposite error of excessive zeal in the production of his H’s. ”

“ Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"—the like of which I never heard in all England. ”

“ The sound of the consonant H, (though articulate and audible when properly uttered,) is little more than an aspirate breathing. It is heard in hat, hit, hot, hut, adhere.
H at the beginning of a word, is always sounded; except in heir, herb, honest, honour, hospital, hostler, hour, humble, humour, with their compounds and derivatives. H after r, is always silent; as in rhapsody, rhetoric, rheum, rhubarb. H final, immediately following a vowel, is always silent ”

“ Where the H is silent, has been difficult to determine; why the H is silent, cannot be determined at all. This much has long been divulged; it is silent in hour, honour, honest, heir, and most of their formatives; the rest is darkness—in the dictionaries. On no point of English pronunciation have authorities more notoriously disagreed than on that of words beginning with H; and if any one wishes to see the fathers of English Orthoepy at loggerheads, or the 47Doctors of Modern English Pronunciation in a muddle, let him glance at the H section of their several dictionaries. ”

“ If we know the present tense form, the past, and the perfect participle of any verb, we can tell to which conjugation it belongs, and can give all its inflections of person, number, tense, and mode, therefore the present tense form, the past and the perfect participle, are called the principal parts of the verb. When we give all the inflections of a verb, or indicate them by the principal parts, we conjugate it. ”

“ Etymology.
There are four principal H’s—English, French, Latin, and Greek.
As a rule, pronounce all but the French; and, of these, all but some words of Latin origin.
Examples. English—HILL, HOG, (though this is properly Welsh) , HUNT. The h should never be omitted, being an original aspirate of great strength.
French—herb, hospital, hostler, &c. By rule, 83the h should be silent; but the word herb, in particular, has become so completely Anglicised that to hear an h in it is common. So also habit, haughty, hearse, human; habit and human being counted as Latin. ”

“ The frequent letters of “F. H.” to “The Nation” are read with great interest and valued very highly, I am sure, by all American students of modern English. Nevertheless, there is something in these letters (if it may be said) that would be pleasanter if it were different. A reader of a half-dozen of them cannot help wondering whether “F. H.” has ever made a mistake,—the master is so masterful, his censure is so pungent. ”

“ A verb that forms its past tense by changing the vowel of the present, and its perfect participle by adding n or en to the present, is a verb of the strong or old conjugation; as, fall, fell, fallen.
Note.—Verbs of the old conjugation are called strong because they form their past tense within themselves. Verbs of the new conjugation are called weak because they form their past tense by the aid of an additional syllable. ”

“ A correct pronunciation, when once discarded, is not easily regained—lost H’s have a knack of turning up in wrong places, when 13they return at all. Schoolmasters are not always models of correctness, and a staff of H-dropping ushers is not likely to impress school-boys with a regard for the Aspirate. ”

“ Persons who consider themselves experts in the art of aspirating might do well to procure “Harry Hawkins’ H Book; showing how he learned to aspirate his H’s,” and put their aspirative faculties to a crucial test, by reading aloud the story of “The Hairy Ape.” ”

“ Is the same idea expressed by the sentences in each group?—
With a certain form of the verb, its subject names the actor; with another form of the verb, the subject names the thing acted upon. This change in the form of the verb is called voice.
A transitive verb that represents the person or thing named by its subject as acting is said to be in the active voice; as, James struck the horse.
A transitive verb that represents the person or thing named by its subject as being acted upon is said to be in the passive voice; as, The horse was struck by James. ”

“ As a final it is very lightly sounded.
5. g is always hard, as in get, go. The soft g, as in gin, is here represented by j, but in the MSS. g was often used for it.
6. h has two degrees of sound. As an initial it is rather more lightly sounded than in English, except when it is a mutation of c (see Chapter II.) , when it is more strongly sounded. Then, and when it occurs in the middle of a word, it represents in a lighter p. 62form the guttural c’h of Breton, the ch of German, Welsh, and Gaelic, or the guttural gh of older English. ”

“ Two or more singular nouns connected by and take a verb in the plural; as, James and Mary are here. Music and drawing were taught during the term.
If two or more singular nouns connected by and are preceded by each, every, or no, the verb is in the singular, because they refer to things considered separately; as, Every man and woman was lost. ”

“ Modern poets, it is true, have not unfrequently pressed H into service as an alliterative rhyme, but in so doing they have afforded ample proof of the inefficiency of the modern English Aspirate, when acting in that capacity. One of the best specimens of 30modern alliterative H-rhymes is that in one of Moore’s American poems:—
“And I said, ‘If there’s peace to be found in the world,
A heart that is humble might hope for it here.’” But the alliteration is scarcely appreciable, unless the rendering be accompanied by undue aspiratory efforts. ”

“ The latter (designated by h) became the model for the second class of manuscripts, the readings coinciding in many instances with those of P. As the corrector frequently used the eraser, for readings lacking in G and C we have only the testimony of the second class. The readings of h are sometimes happy amendments, sometimes atrocious corruptions. ”

“ From Ai. hog (e) ri [hog··əri·] is also reported in sense of marriage, match, esp. jocularly of a poor match: he’s made a h. — Prob.: *hag-reið, f., arrangement; putting to rights, etc.; cf. Fær. hagreiða, vb., to put into shape; to treat in a certain manner. See hag2, sb., condition; order; state of things; management, etc., and red, vb., to put in order. — hog (e) ri, however, in all essentials assimilates to the uncompounded hoger, sb. [O.N. hagr] , and might also be regarded as an extended form of that word through infl. ”

“ There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his eighteenth-century appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome young Englishman, Alexander tall and the handsome politician, democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a long Cassandra, and the women lurid with colour, all dutifully smoking their long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in the comfortable, soft-lighted drawing-room, round the logs that flickered on the marble hearth. ”

“ There are persons to whom the simple act of aspirating, will never have suggested the idea of difficulty; but there are many others (who in their ordinary speech, put H before half the vowels that do not require it) who are totally at a loss when asked to aspirate a given vowel. They either aspirate unconsciously or not at all. If the reader has never attempted to reform a persistent H-dropper, by teaching him 42the value and nature of the Aspirate, he can form no adequate idea of the extreme difficulty of the task. Some people can learn everything but H’s. ”

“ Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay, half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs, as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the doctor and hides in the mother’s bosom, refusing to be touched. ”

“ There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. ”

“ Select the words in the following sentences that are used to modify nouns, and also imply action or being:—
A word that participates in the nature of the verb and the adjective is called a participle; as, Leaving the room, we walked into the garden. I found a treasure hidden in the ground.
A participle qualifies a noun or pronoun, like an adjective, and takes modifiers like a verb. A participle formed from a transitive verb takes an object. ”

“ To parse a noun is to state the class to which it belongs, its gender, number, case, and its grammatical relation to other words in the sentence.
The changes in meaning and use which nouns undergo with or without a change in form, are called their inflections.
The inflections of the noun are number and case.
EXERCISE.
Parse all the nouns in the following sentences:—
Model.—John, a proper, concrete noun; masculine gender; singular number; nominative case, subject of lost.
Teacher’s, a common, concrete noun; masculine or feminine gender; singular number; possessive case, possessing book. ”

“ There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across the distance.
“What a big night!” thought Siegmund. “The night gathers everything into a oneness. ”

“ Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. ”

“ In the third declension of feminine nouns in the dative and locative cases of the singular, the mutations of h, ch, k, and r into z, š, c, ř, also take place; thus učiti se uloze, to learn a lesson from uloha ”

“ In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o’clock, yet he lounged, dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve and curious as sea-lions strayed afar. ”

“ Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible. Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In front, Sieglinde’s island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him, bringing him Helena. ”

“ Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure control ”

“ The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm; farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. ”

“ Yet, to this general rule for the verb, the author of a certain "English Grammar on the Productive System," (a strange perversion of Murray's compilation, and a mere catch-penny work, now extensively used in New England,) is endeavouring to establish, by his own bare word, the following exception: "Every is sometimes associated with a plural noun, in which case the verb must be singular; as, 'Every hundred years constitutes a century.'"--Smith's New Gram., p. ”

“ The Termination of the Infinitive Mood Present Tense, of the Verb Active, in regular Verbs, is always the same as the first Person of the Indicative Mood Present Tense singular; as to love, I love.
The Termination of the second Person Singular is formed out of the first by adding st or est; as I love, thou lovest; I read, thou readest.
The Termination of the third Person singular is formed out of the first by adding th or eth; as I love, he loveth, I read, he readeth; or only by adding s; as he loves, he reads. ”