Forgotten English

[lishesquex]

His-self (pronoun) - A courtier will say, "Let him do it himself," but the Cockney has it, "Let him do it his-self." Here the latter comes nearest to the truth, though both he and courtier are wrong, for the grammatical construction should be, "Let he do it his-self," or by a transposition of words, better and more energetically arranged, "Let he his-self do it." It must be allowed that the Londoner does not use this compounded pronoun in the mode before us from any sense of conviction. He has fortunately stumbled upon a part of the truth which the courtier has overleaped, [as] the nominative in the singular number is my-self, and not me-self. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, c. 1803