"early" ex. of initial "myself"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Earlier still:

  1875 J. A. Lawson _Wanderings in the Interior of New Guinea_ (London: Chapman & Hall)52: Myself and Danang were not so fortunate

  And way earlier:

  1823 David Porter _A Voyage in the South Seas_ (London: Sir Richard Phillips & Co.) 24: On Sunday, about three o'clock, myself and officers were on shore with our boats to take the ladies on board the ship.

  Porter (1780-1843) was a prominent U.S. naval officer, born in Boston.

  My ECCO access is temporarily suspended, but the usage presumably goes back to the 18th C. or earlier.  Just why the use of initial _myself_  should be so vilified is far from clear, unless it stem (note rare and classy subjunctive) from a pious belief that _myself_ "can only be emphatic or reflexive, G-dd-mi-t !"

  JL
"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: "early" ex. of initial "myself"
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On May 3, 2007, at 5:22 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> Then there's the "Me myself I VP" of BE, which carries the meaning,
> "as far as I'm concerned," "with rrespect to the way that I feel about
> this subject," "as for me." etc.

haven't we had this discussion before?

in any case, it's not just BE, by any means. for the "attitude
particle", some people have "me", some "myself", some the emphatic
combo "me myself", and lots of people have two or three of these
(though i have no idea how they are used in context).

arnold

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