In the matter of the reflexive pronouns the American vulgate exhibits forms which plainly show that it is the spirit of the language to regard /self/, not as an adjective, which it is historically, but as a noun. This confusion goes back to Anglo-Saxon days; it originated at a time when both the adjectives and the nouns were losing their old inflections. Such forms as /Petrussylf/ (=/Peter's self/), /Cristsylf/ (=/Christ's self/) and /Icsylf/ (=/I/, /self/) then came into use, and along with them came combinations of /self/ and the genitive, still surviving in /hisself/ and /theirselves/ (or /theirself/). Down to the sixteenth century these forms remained in perfectly good usage. "Each for /hisself/," for example, was written by Sir Philip Sidney, and is to be found in the dramatists of the time, though modern editors always change it to /himself/. How the dative pronoun got itself [Pg225] fastened upon /self/ in the third person masculine and neuter is one of the mysteries of language, but there it is, and so, against all logic, history and grammatical regularity, /himself/, /themselves/ and /itself/ (not /its-self/) are in favor today. But the American, as usual, inclines against these illogical exceptions to the rule set by /myself/. I constantly hear /hisself/ and /theirselves/, as in "he done it /hisself/" and "they don't know /theirselves/." Sometimes /theirself/ is substituted for theirselves, as in "they all seen it /theirself/." Also, the emphatic /own/ is often inserted between the pronoun and the noun, as in "let every man save his /own/ self." The American pronoun does not necessarily agree with its noun in number. I find "I can tell each one what /they/ make," "each fellow put /their/ foot on the line," "nobody can do what /they/ like" and "she was one of /these/ kind of people" in Charters, and "I am not the kind of man that is always thinking about /their/ record," "if he was to hit a man in the head ... /they/ would think /their/ nose tickled" in Lardner. At the bottom of this error there is a real difficulty: the lack of a pronoun of the true common gender in English, corresponding to the French /soi/ and /son/. /His/, after a noun or pronoun connoting both sexes, often sounds inept, and /his-or-her/ is intolerably clumsy. Thus the inaccurate plural is often substituted. The brothers Fowler have discovered "anybody else who have only /themselves/ in view" in Richardson and "everybody is discontented with /their/ lot" in Disraeli, and Ruskin once wrote "if a customer wishes you to injure /their/ foot." In spoken American, even the most careful, /they/ and /their/ often appear; I turn to the /Congressional Record/ at random and in two minutes find "if anyone will look at the bank statements /they/ will see."[70] In the lower reaches of the language the plural seems to get into every sentence of any complexity, even when the preceding noun or pronoun is plainly singular. [Pg226] § 5