So that the word you in the plural number,
together with the other titles and compellations of honour, seem to have
taken their rise from despotic government, which afterwards, by degrees,
came to be derived to private persons." He says also in his History of
France, that "in ancient times, the peasants addressed their kings by
the appellation of thou, but that pride and flattery first put inferiors
upon paying a plural respect to the single person of every superior, and
superiors upon receiving it."
John Maresius, of the French Academy, in the preface to his Clovis,
speaks much to the same effect. "Let none wonder, says he, that the word
thou is used in this work to princes and princesses, for we use the same
to God, and of old the same was used to Alexanders, Caesars, queens, and
empresses. The use of the word you, when only base flatteries of men of
later ages, to whom it seemed good to use the plural number to one
person, that he may imagine himself alone to be equal to many others in
dignity and worth, from whence it came at last to persons of lower
quality."
Godeau, in his preface to the translation of the New Testament, makes an
apology for differing from the customs of the times in the use of thou,
and intimates that you was substituted for it, as a word of superior
respect.
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