Chapter XVI: Common Improprieties of Speech (1)

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold,
Alike fantastic if too new or old;
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.--POPE.

If a gentleman be to study any language, it ought to be that of
his own country.--LOCKE.

Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in
language as well as in politics.--W. D. WHITNEY.

People who write essays to prove that though a word in fact means
one thing, it _ought_ to mean another, or that though all well
educated Englishmen do conspire to use this expression, they
_ought_ to use that, are simply bores.--EDINBURGH REVIEW.

One of the most gratifying signs of the times is the deep interest which both our scholars and our people are beginning to manifest in the study of our noble English tongue. Perhaps nothing has contributed more to awaken a public interest in this matter, and to call attention to some of the commonest improprieties of speech, than the publication of “The Queen’s English” and “The Dean’s English,” and the various criticisms which have been provoked in England and in the United States by the Moon-Alford controversy. Hundreds of persons who before felt a profound indifference to this subject, have had occasion to thank the Dean for awakening their curiosity in regard to it; and hundreds more who otherwise would never have read his dogmatic small-talk, or Mr. Moon’s trenchant dissection of it, have suddenly found themselves, in consequence of the newspaper criticisms of the two books, keenly interested in questions of grammar, and now, with their appetites whetted, will continue the study of their own language, till they have mastered its difficulties, and familiarized themselves with all its idioms and idiotisms. Of such discussions we can hardly have too many, and just now they are imperiously needed to check the deluge of barbarisms, solecisms, and improprieties, with which our language is threatened. Not only does political freedom make every man in America an inventor, alike of labor-saving machines and of labor-saving words, but the mixture of nationalities is constantly coining and exchanging new forms of speech, of which our busy Bartletts, in their lists of Americanisms, find it impossible to keep account.

It is not merely our spoken language that is disfigured by these blemishes; but our written language,--the prose of the leading English authors,--exhibits more slovenliness and looseness of diction than is found in any other literature. That this is due in part to the very character of the language itself, there can be no doubt. Its simplicity of structure and its copiousness both tend to prevent its being used with accuracy and care; and it is so hospitable to alien words that it needs more powerful securities against revolution than other languages of less heterogeneous composition. But the chief cause must be found in the character of the English-speaking race. There is in our very blood a certain lawlessness, which makes us intolerant of syntactical rules, and restive under pedagogical restraints. “Our sturdy English ancestors,” says Blackstone, “held it beneath the condition of a freeman to appear, or to do any other act, at the precise time appointed.” The same proud, independent spirit which made the Saxons of old rebel against the servitude of punctuality, prompts their descendants to spurn the yoke of grammar and purism. In America this scorn of obedience, whether to political authority or philological, is fostered and intensified by the very genius of our institutions. We seem to doubt whether we are entirely free, unless we apply the Declaration of Independence to our language, and carry the Monroe doctrine even into our grammar.

The degree to which this lawlessness has been carried will be seen more strikingly if we compare our English literature with the literature of France. It has been justly said that the language of that country is a science in itself, and the labor bestowed on the acquisition of it has the effect of vividly impressing on the mind both the faults and the beauties of every writer’s style. Method and perspicuity are its very essence; and there is hardly a writer of note who does not attend to these requisites with scrupulous care. Let a French writer of distinction violate any cardinal rule of grammar, and he is pounced upon instantly by the critics, and laughed at from Calais to Marseilles. When Boileau, who is a marvel of verbal and grammatical correctness, made a slip in the first line of his Ninth Satire,

“C’est _à_ vous, mon Esprit, _à_ qui je veux parler,”

the grammatical sensibility of the French ear was shocked to a degree that we, who tolerate the grossest solecisms, find it hard to estimate. For two centuries the blunder has been quoted by every writer on grammar, and impressed on the memory of every schoolboy. Indeed, such is the national fastidiousness on this subject, that it has been doubted whether a single line in Boileau has been so often quoted for its beauty, as this unfortunate one for its lack of grammar. When did an English or an American writer thus offend the critical ears of his countrymen, even though he were an Alison, sinning against Lindley Murray on every page?

We are no friends to hypercriticism, or to that finical niceness which cares more for the body than for the soul of language, more for the outward expression than for the thought which it incarnates. Too much rigor is as unendurable as laxity. It is, no doubt, possible to be so over-nice in the use of words and the construction of sentences as to sap the vitality of our speech. We may so refine our expression, by continual straining in our critical sieves, as to impair both the strength and the flexibility of our noble English tongue. There are some verbal critics, who, apparently go so far as to hold that every word must have an invariable meaning, and that all relations of thoughts must be indicated by absolute and invariable formulas, thus reducing verbal expression to the rigid inflexibility of a mathematical equation. If we understand Mr. Moon’s censures of Murray and Alford, some of them are based on the assumption that an ellipsis is rarely, if ever, permissible in English speech. We have no sympathy with such extremists, nor with the verbal purists who challenge all words and phrases that cannot be found in the “wells of English undefiled,” that have been open for more than a hundred years. We must take the good with the bad in the incessant changes and masquerades of language. “The severe judgment of the scholar may condemn as verbiage that undergrowth of words which threatens to choke up and impoverish the great roots that have occupied the soil from the earliest times; he may apprehend wreck and disaster to the fixedness of language when he sees words loosened from their etymons, and left to drift upon the ocean at the mercy of wind and tide; and he is justified in every seasonable and reasonable attempt he makes to reconcile current and established significations with the sanction of authority.” But it must not be forgotten that language is a living, organic thing, and by the very law of its life must always be in a fluctuating state. To petrify it into immutable forms, to preserve it as one preserves fruits and flowers in spirits of wine and herbariums, is as hopeless as it would be undesirable, if we would have it a medium for the ever-changing thoughts of man.

Language is a growing thing, as truly as a tree; and as a tree, while it casts off some leaves, will continually put forth others, so a language will be perpetually growing and expanding with the discoveries of science, the extension of commerce, and the progress of thought. Such events as the growth of the Roman Empire, the introduction of Christianity, the rise of the scholastic and of the mystic theology in the middle ages, the irruption of the northern barbarians into Italy, the establishment, of the Papacy, the introduction of the feudal system, the Crusades, the Reformation, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, give birth to new ideas, which clamor for new words to express them. Every age thus enriches language with new accessions of beauty and strength. Not only are new words coined, but old ones continually take on new senses; and it is only in the transition period, before they have established themselves in the general favor of good speakers and writers, that purity of style requires them to be shunned. Those who are so ignorant of the laws of language as to resist its expansion,--who declare that it has attained at any time the limit of its development, and seek by philological bulls to check its growth,--will find that, like a vigorous forest tree, it will defy any shackles that men may bind about it; that it will reck as little of their decrees as did the advancing ocean of those of Canute. The critics who make such attempts do not see that the immobility of language would be the immobility of history. They forget that many of the purest words in our language were at one time startling novelties, and that even the dainty terms in which they challenge each new-comer, though now naturalized, had once to fight their way inch by inch. Shakespeare ridicules “element”; Fulke, in the seventeenth century, objects to such ink-horn terms as “rational,” “scandal,” “homicide,” “ponderous,” and “prodigious”; Dryden censures “embarrass,” “grimace,” “repartee,” “foible,” “tour,” and “rally”; Swift denounces “hoax” as low and vulgar; Pope condemns “witless,” “welkin,” and “dulcet”; and Franklin, who could draw from the clouds the electric fluid which now carries language with the speed of lightning from land to land, vainly struggled against the introduction of the words “to advocate” and “to notice.” In the “New World of Words,” by Edward Phillips, published in 1678, there is a long list of words which he declared should be either used warily or rejected as barbarous. Among these words are the following, which are all in good use to-day: autograph, aurist, bibliograph, circumstantiate, evangelize, ferocious, holograph, inimical, misanthropist, misogynist, and syllogize.

The word “Fatherland” seems so natural that we are apt to regard it as an old word; yet the elder Disraeli claims the honor of having introduced it. Macaulay tells us that the word “gutted,” which was doubtless objected to as vulgar, was first used on the night in which James II fled from London: “The king’s printing-house ... was, to use a coarse metaphor, which then, for the first time, came into fashion, completely _gutted_.” How much circumlocution is saved by the word “antecedents” (formerly a grammatical term only), in its new sense, denoting a man’s past history; with reference to which Punch says it would be more satisfactory to know something of a suspected man’s _relatives_ than of his _antecedents_! What a happy, ingenious use of an old word is that of “telescope” to describe a railway accident, when the force of a collision causes the cars to run or fit into each other, like the shortening slides of a telescope! The term is so picturesque and so convenient in avoiding a periphrasis, that it cannot fail to be stamped with the seal of good usage. How admirably was a real void in the vocabulary filled by the word “squatter,” when it was first coined! The man who first uttered it gave vivid expression to an idea which had existed vaguely in the brains of thousands; and it was hardly spoken before it was on every tongue. Coleridge observes truly that any new word expressing a fact or relationship, not expressed by any other word in the language, is a new organ of thought; and how true is this of the terms “solidarity” (as in the phrase “solidarity of the peoples”), and “international,” both of which express novel and characteristic conceptions of our own century. The latter word is a coinage of Jeremy Bentham, to whom we are also indebted for “codify,” “maximise,” and “minimise.” The little word “its” had to force its way into the language, against the opposition of “correct” speakers and writers, on the ground of its apparent analogy with the other English possessives.

Dr. Johnson objected to the word “dun” in Lady Macbeth’s famous soliloquy, declaring that the “efficacy of this invocation is destroyed by the insertion of an epithet now seldom heard but in the stable:--”

“Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell.”

It was a notion of the great critic and lexicographer, with which his mind was long haunted, that the language should be refined and fixed so as finally to exclude all rustic and vulgar elements from the authorized vocabulary of the lettered and polite. Dryden had hinted at the establishment of an academy for this purpose, and Swift thought the Government “should devise some means for ascertaining and _fixing the language forever_,” after the necessary alterations should be made in it.

If it were possible to exclude needed new words from a language, the French Academy would have succeeded in its attempts to do so, consisting as it did of the chief scholars of France. Not content with crushing political liberty, Richelieu sought to become autocrat of the French language. No word was to be uttered anywhere in the realm until he had countersigned it. But in spite of all the efforts of his Academy to exercise a despotic authority over the French tongue, new words have continually forced their way in, and so they will continue to do while the French nation maintains its vitality, in spite of the protests of all the purists and academicians in France. “They that will fight custom with grammar,” says Montaigne, “are fools”; and, with the limitations to be hereafter stated, the remark is just, and still more true of those who triumphantly appeal against custom to the dictionary, which is not merely a home for living words, but a cemetery for the dead.

Even slang words, after long knocking, will often gain admission into a language, like pardoned outlaws received into the body of respectable citizens. We need not add to these, words coined in his lofty moods by the poet, who is a _maker_ by the very right of his name. That creative energy which distinguishes him,--“the high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet,”--will, of course, display itself here, and the all-fusing imagination will at once, as Trench has remarked, suggest and justify audacities in speech which would not be tolerated from creeping prose-writers. Great liberties may be allowed, too, within certain bounds, to the idiosyncrasies of all great writers. We love the rugged, gnarled oak, with the grotesque contortions of its branches, better than the smoothly clipped uniformity of the Dutch yew tree. Carlyleisms may therefore be tolerated from the master, though not from the _umbræ_ that spaniel him at the heels, and feebly echo his singularities and oddities. A style that has no smack or flavor of the man that uses it is a tasteless style. But there is a limit even to the liberty of great thinkers in coining words. It must not degenerate into license. Coleridge was a skilful mint-master of words, yet not all his genius can reconcile us to such expressions as the following, in a letter to Sir Humphrey Davy: “I was a well meaning sutor who had ultra-crepidated with more zeal than wisdom.”

No one would hesitate to place Isaac Barrow among the greatest masters of the English tongue; yet the weighty thoughts which his words represented did not prevent many of the trial-pieces which he coined in his verbal mint from being returned on his hands. Who knows the meaning of such words as “avoce,” “acquist,” “extund”? Sir Thomas Browne abounds in such hyperlatinistic expressions as “bivious,” “quodlibetically,” “cunctation,” to which even his gorgeous rhetoric does not reconcile the reader. Charles Lamb has “agnise” and “bourgeon.” Coleridge invents “extroitive,” “retroitive,” “influencive”; Bentley, “commentitious,” “negoce,” “exscribe.” Sydney Smith was continually coining words, some of them compounds from the homely Saxon idiom, others big-wig classical epithets, devised with scholar-like precision, and exceedingly ludicrous in their effect. Thus he speaks of “frugiverous” children, of “mastigophorous” schoolmasters, of “fugacious” or “plumigerous” captains; of “lachrymal and suspirious” clergymen; of people who are “simious,” and people who are “anserous”; he enriches the language with the expressive hybrid, “Foolometer”; and he characterizes the September sins of the English by the awful name of “perdricide.” In the early ages of our literature, when the language was less fixed, and there were few recognized standards of expression, writers coined words without license, supplying the place of correct terms, when they did not occur to their minds, by analogy and invention. But a bill must not only be drawn by the word-maker; it must also be accepted. The Emperor Tiberius was very properly told that he might give citizenship to men, but not to words. All innovations in speech, every new term introduced, should harmonize with the general principles of the language. No new phrase should be admitted which is not consonant with its peculiar genius, or which does violence to its fundamental integrity. Nor should any form of expression be tolerated that violates the universal laws of language. As Henry lingers has well said, a philosophical mind will consider that, whatever deflection may have taken place in the original principles of a language, whatever modification of form it may have undergone, it is, at each period of its history, the product of a slow accumulation and countless multitude of associations, which can neither be hastily formed nor hastily dismissed; that these associations extend even to the modes of spelling and pronouncing, of inflecting and combining words; and that anything which does violence to such associations impairs, for the time, at least, the power of the language.

Even good usage itself is but a proximate and strongly presumptive test of purity. Custom is not an absolute despotism, though it approaches very nearly to that character. Its decisions are generally authoritative; but, as there are extreme measures which even oriental despots cannot put into execution without endangering the safety of their possessions, so there are things which custom cannot do without endangering the fixity and purity of language. If grammatical monstrosities exist in a language, a correct taste will shun them, as it does physical deformities in the arts of design. Dean Alford defends some of his own indefensible expressions by citing the authority of the Scripture; but authority for the most vicious forms of speech can be found in all our writers, not excepting King James’s translators,--as Mr. Harrison has shown by hundreds of examples in his work on “The English Language.” Take, for example, the following sentence, or part of a sentence, from so great a writer as Dean Swift: “Breaking a constitution by the very same errors, _that_ so many have been _broke_ before.” Here, in a sentence of only fifteen words, we have three grammatical errors, glaring, and, in such a writer, unpardonable. We smile at the rustic ignorance which has engraved on a Hampshire tombstone such lines as

“_Him_ shall never come again to _we_;
But _us_ shall one day surely go to _he_;”

but is this couplet a whit more ungrammatical than Scott’s “I know not _whom_ else are expected,” in “the Pirate”; or Southey’s sentence in “the Doctor,” “Gentle reader, let you and _I_, in like manner, endeavor to improve the enclosure of the Carr;” or Professor Aytoun’s

“But it were vain for you and _I_
In single fight our strength to try.”

A writer in “Blackwood” affirms that, “with the exception of Wordsworth, there is not one celebrated author of this day who has written two pages consecutively without some flagrant impropriety in the grammar;” and the statement, we believe, is undercharged. The usage, therefore, of a good writer is only _prima facie_ evidence of the correctness of a disputed word or phrase; for he may have used the word carelessly or inadvertently, and it is altogether probable that, were his attention called to it, he would be prompt to admit his error. It has been remarked that “nowadays” and “had have” meet all the conditions of good usage, being reputable, national, and present; but one is a solecism, the other a barbarism. Again, if the writer is an old writer, like Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, or Addison, his authority must always be received with caution, and with increasing caution as we recede from the age in which he flourished. The great changes which our language has undergone within even a hundred years, show that the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are unsafe guides for the nineteenth, unless they are corroborated by contemporary usage. Let the English language he enriched in the spirit, and according to the principles of which we have spoken, and it will be, not a tank, but a living stream, casting out everything effete and impure, refreshed by new sources of inspiration and wealth, keeping pace with the stately march of the ages, and still retaining much of its original sweetness, expression and force.

It is our intention in this chapter, not to notice all the improprieties of speech that merit censure,--to do which would require volumes,--but to criticise some of those which most frequently offend the ear of the scholar in this country. The term _impropriety_ we shall use, not merely in the strictly rhetorical sense of the word, but in the popular meaning, to include in it all inaccuracies of speech, whether offences against etymology, lexicography, or syntax. To pillory such offences, to point out the damage which they inflict upon our language, and to expose the moral obliquity which often lurks beneath them, is, we believe, the duty of every scholar who knows how closely purity of speech, like personal cleanliness, is allied to purity of thought and rectitude of action. To say that every person who aspires to be esteemed a gentleman should carefully shun all barbarisms, solecisms, and other faults in his speech, is to utter the merest truism. The man who habitually deviates from the custom of his country in expressing his thoughts, is hardly less ridiculous than one who walks the streets in a Spanish cloak or a Roman toga. An accurate knowledge and a correct and felicitous use of words are, of themselves, almost sure proofs of good breeding. No doubt it marks a weak mind to care more for the casket than for the jewel it contains,--to prefer elegantly turned sentences to sound sense; but sound sense always acquires additional value when expressed in pure English. Moreover, he who carefully studies accuracy of expression, the proper choice and arrangement of words in any language, will be also advancing toward accuracy of thought, as well as toward propriety and energy of speech; “for divers philosophers hold,” says Shakespeare, “that the lip is parcel of the mind.” Few things are more ludicrous than the blunders by which even persons moving in refined society often betray the grossest ignorance of very common words. A story is told in England of an over-classical Member of Parliament, who, not knowing or forgetting that “omnibus” is the plural of the Latin “_omnis_,” and means “for all,”--that is, a vehicle in which people of all ranks may sit together,--spoke of “two omnibi.” There are hundreds of educated persons who speak of the “banister” of a staircase, when they mean “balustrade,” or “baluster”; there is no such word as “banister.” There are hundreds of others who never _eat_ anything, not even an apple, but always _partake_, even though they consume all the food before them; and even the London “Times,” in one of its issues, spoke of a jury “immersing” a defendant in damages. We once knew an old lady in a New England village, quite aristocratic in her feelings and habits, who complained to her physician that “her blood seemed to have all _stackpoled_;” and we have heard of another descendant of Mrs. Malaprop, who, in answer to the question whether she would be sure to keep an appointment, replied, “I will come,--_alluding_ it does not rain.”

Goldsmith is one of the most charming writers in our language; yet in his “History of England,” the following statement occurs in a chapter on the reign of Elizabeth. Speaking of a communication to Mary, Queen of Scots, he says: “This they effected by conveying their letters to her by means of a brewer, _that supplied the family with ale through a chink in the wall of her apartment_.” A queer brewer that, to supply his ale through a chink in the wall! Again, we read in Goldsmith’s “History of Greece”: “_He_ wrote to that distinguished philosopher in terms polite and flattering, begging of _him_ to come and undertake _his_ education, and bestow on _him_ those useful lessons of magnanimity and virtue which every great man ought to possess, and which _his_ numerous avocations rendered impossible for _him_.” In this sentence the pronoun _he_ is employed six times, under different forms; and as, in each case, it may refer to either of two antecedents, the meaning, but for our knowledge of the facts, would be involved in hopeless confusion. First, the pronoun stands for Philip, then for Aristotle, then for Alexander, again for Alexander, and then twice for Philip. A still greater offender against clearness in the use of pronouns is Lord Clarendon; _e.g._, “On which, with the king’s and queen’s so ample promises to _him_ (the Treasurer) so few hours before, conferring the place upon another, and the Duke of York’s manner of receiving _him_ (the Treasurer), after _he_ (the Chancellor) had been shut up with _him_ (the Duke), as _he_ (the Treasurer) was informed might very well excuse _him_ (the Treasurer) from thinking _he_ (the Chancellor) had some share in the effront _he_ (the Treasurer) had undergone.” It would be hard to match this passage even in the writings of the humblest penny-a-liner; it is “confusion, worse confounded.”

Solecisms so glaring as these may not often disfigure men’s writing or speech; and some of the faults we shall notice may seem so petty and microscopic that the reader may deem us “word-catchers that live on syllables.” But it is the little foxes that spoil the grapes, in the familiar speech of the people as well as in Solomon’s vineyards; and, as a garment may be honey-combed by moths, so the fine texture of a language may be gradually destroyed, and its strength impaired, by numerous and apparently insignificant solecisms and inaccuracies. Nicety in the use of particles is one of the most decisive marks of skill and scholarship in a writer; and the accuracy, beauty, and force of many a fine passage in English literature depend largely on the use of the pronouns, prepositions, and articles. How emphatic and touching does the following enumeration become through the repetition of one petty word! “_By_ thine agony and bloody sweat; _by_ thy cross and passion; _by_ thy precious death and burial; _by_ thy glorious resurrection and ascension; and _by_ the coming of the Holy Ghost.” How much pathos is added to the prayer of the publican by the proper translation of the Greek article,--“God be merciful to me _the_ sinner!”

De Quincey strikingly observes: “People that have practised composition as much, and with as vigilant an eye as myself, know also, by thousands of cases, how infinite is the disturbance caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word as despicable as the word _even_. A mote that is in itself invisible, shall darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye,--the heavens shall be hid by a wretched atom that dares not show itself,--and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the right-hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound a system.” It is a fact well known to lawyers, that, the omission or misplacement of a monosyllable in a legal document has rendered many a man bankrupt. Fifteen years ago an expensive lawsuit arose in England, on the meaning of two phrases in the will of a deceased nobleman. In the one he gives his property “to my brother and _to_ his children in succession”; in the other, “to my brother and his children in succession.” This diversity gives rise to quite different interpretations. In another case, by omitting the letter _s_ in a legal document, an English attorney is said to have inflicted on a client a loss of £30,000.

In language, as in the fine arts, there is but one way to attain to excellence, and that is by study of the most faultless models. As the air and manner of a gentleman can be acquired only by living constantly in good society, so grace and purity of expression must be attained by a familiar acquaintance with the standard authors. It is astonishing how rapidly we may by this practice enrich our vocabularies, and how speedily we imitate and unconsciously reproduce in our language the niceties and delicacies of expression which have charmed us in a favorite author. Like the sheriff whom Rufus Choate satirized for having “overworked the participle,” most persons make one word act two, ten or a dozen parts; yet there is hardly any man who may not, by moderate painstaking, learn to express himself in terms as precise, if not as vivid, as those of Pitt, whom Fox so praised for his accuracy.[46] The account which Lord Chesterfield gives of the method by which he became one of the most elegant and polished talkers and orators of Europe, strikingly shows what miracles may be achieved by care and practice. Early in life he determined not to speak one word in conversation which was not the fittest he could recall; and he charged his son never to deliver the commonest order to a servant, but in the best language he could find, and with the best utterance. For years Chesterfield wrote down every brilliant passage he met with in his reading, and translated it into French, or, if it was in a foreign language, into English. By this practice a certain elegance became habitual to him, and it would have given him more trouble, he says, to express himself inelegantly than he had ever taken to avoid the defect. Lord Bolingbroke, who had an imperial dominion over all the resources of expression, and could talk all day just as perfectly as he wrote, told Chesterfield that he owed the power to the same cause,--an early and habitual attention to his style. When Boswell expressed to Johnson his surprise at the constant force and propriety of the Doctor’s words, the latter replied that he had long been accustomed to clothe his thoughts in the fittest words he could command, and thus a vivid and exact phraseology had become habitual.

It has been affirmed by a high authority that a knowledge of English grammar is rather a matter of convenience as a nomenclature,--a medium of thought and discussion _about_ the language,--than a guide to the actual use of it; and that it is as impossible to acquire the complete command of our own tongue by the study of grammatical precept, as to learn to walk or swim by attending a course of lectures on anatomy. “Undoubtedly I have found,” says Sir Philip Sydney, “in divers smal learned courtiers a more sound stile than in some possessors of learning; of which I can ghesse no other cause, but that the courtier following that which by practice he findeth fittest to nature, therein (though he know it not) doth _according_ to art, though not _by_ art; where the other, using art to shew art, and not to hide art (as in these cases he should doe), flieth from nature, and indeed abuseth art.”

Let it not be inferred, however, from all this that grammatical knowledge is unnecessary. A man of refined taste may detect many errors by the ear; but there are other errors, equally gross, that have not a harsh sound, and consequently cannot be detected without a knowledge of the rules that are violated. Besides, it often happens, as we have already seen, that even the purest writers inadvertently allow some inaccuracies to creep into their productions. The works of Addison, Swift, Bentley, Pope, Young, Blair, Hume, Gibbon, and even Johnson, that leviathan of literature, are disfigured by numberless instances of slovenliness of style. Cobbett, in his “Grammar of the English Language,” says that he noted down about two hundred improprieties of language in Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” alone; and he points out as many more, at least, in the “Rambler,” which the author says he revised and corrected with extraordinary care. Sydney Smith, one of the finest stylists of this century, has not a few flagrant solecisms; and, strange to say, some of them occur in a passage in which he is trying to show that the English language “may be learned, practically and _unerringly_,” without a knowledge of grammatical rules. “When,” he asks, “do we ever find a well educated Englishman _or_ Frenchman embarrassed by an ignorance of the grammar of _their_ respective languages? _They_ first learn it practically and unerringly; and then, if _they_ chose (choose?) to look back and smile at the idea of having proceeded by a number of rules, without knowing one of them by heart, or being conscious that they had any rule at all, this is a philosophical amusement; but who ever _thinks_ of learning the grammar of _their_ own tongue, before _they_ are very good grammarians!” The best refutation of the reasoning in this passage is found in the bad grammar of the passage itself.

Even the literary detectives, who spend their time in hunting down and showing up the mistakes of others, enjoy no immunity from error. Harrison, in his excellent work on “The English Language,” written expressly to point out some of the most prevalent solecisms in its literature, has such solecisms as the following: “The _authority_ of Addison, in matters of grammar; of Bentley, who never made the English grammar his study; of Bolingbroke, Pope, and others, _are_ as nothing.” Breen, who in his “Modern English Literature: its Blemishes and Defects,” has shown uncommon critical acumen, writes thus: “There is _no_ writer so addicted to this blunder as Isaac D’Israeli.” Again, in criticising a faulty expression of Alison, he sins almost as grievously himself by saying: “It would have been correct to say: ‘Suchet’s administration was incomparably less oppressive than that of _any_ of the French generals in the Peninsula.’” This reminds one of the statement that “Noah and his family outlived all who lived before the flood,”--that is, they outlived themselves. Latham, in his profound treatise on “The English Language,” has such sentences as this: “The logical and historical _analysis_ of a language generally in some degree _coincides_.” Here the syntax is correct; but the sense is sacrificed, since a coincidence implies at least two things. In the London “Saturday Review,” which “is nothing if not critical,” we find such a cacophonous sentence as the following: “In personal relations Mr. Bright is probab_ly_ general_ly_ kind_ly_.” Blair’s “Rhetoric” has been used as a text-book for half a century; yet it swarms with errors of grammar and rhetoric, against almost every law of which he has sinned. Moon, in his review of Alford, has pointed out hundreds of faults in “The Dean’s English,” as censurable as any which he has censured; and newspaper critics, at home and abroad, have pointed out scores of obscurations, as well as of glaring faults, in Moon.

It has been well observed by Professor Marsh that most men would be unable to produce a good caricature of their own individual speech, and that the shibboleth of our personal dialect is unknown to ourselves, however ready we may be to remark the characteristic phraseology of others. “It is a mark of weakness, of poverty of speech, or, at least, of bad taste, to continue the use of pet words, or other peculiarities of language, after we have once become conscious of them as such.” There are certain stock phrases, also, which, though not objectionable in themselves, have been so worn to shreds by continual repetition in speech and in the press, that a man of taste will shun using them as instinctively as he shuns a solecism. A few examples are the following: “History repeats itself,” “The irony of fate,” “That goes without saying,” “Ample scope and verge enough,” “We are free to confess,” “Conspicuous by its absence,” “The courage of his convictions.”

We proceed to notice some of the common improprieties of speech. Many of them are of recent origin, others are old offenders that have been tried and condemned at the bar of criticism again and again:--

_But_, for that, or if. Example: “I have no doubt but he will come to-night.” “I should not wonder but that was the case.”

_Agriculturalist_, for agriculturist, is an impropriety of the grossest sort. Nine-tenths of our writers on agriculture use the former expression. They might as well say geologicalist, instead of geologist, or chemicalist, instead of chemist.

_Deduction_, for induction. _Induction_ is the mental process by which we ascend to the discovery of general truths; _deduction_ is the process by which the law governing particulars is derived from a knowledge of the law governing the class to which particulars belong.

_Illy_ is a gross barbarism, quite common in these days, especially with newly fledged poets. There is no such word as _illy_ in the language. The noun, adjective, and adverb, are _ill_.

_Plenty_, for plentiful. Stump politicians tell us that the adoption of a certain measure “will make money plenty in every man’s pocket.”

_I have got_, for I have. Hardly any other word in the language is so abused as the word _get_. A man says, “I have got a cold”; he means simply, “I have a cold.” Another says that a certain lady “has got a fine head of hair,” which may be true if the hair is false, but it is probably intended as a compliment. A third says: “I have got to leave the city for New York this evening,” meaning only that he _has_ to leave the city, etc. Nine out of ten ladies who enter a dry-goods store, ask, “Have you got” such or such an article? If such a phrase as “I have possess” were used, all noses would turn up together; but “I have got,” when used to signify “I have,” is equally a departure from propriety. A man may say, “I have got more than my neighbor has, because I have been more industrious”; but he cannot with propriety say, “I have got a long nose,” however long his nose may be, unless it be an artificial one. Even so able a writer as Prof. Whitney expresses himself thus: “Who ever yet got through learning his mother tongue, and could say, ‘The work is done’?”

_Recommend._ This word is used in a strange sense by many persons. Political conventions often pass resolutions beginning thus: “Resolved, that the Republicans (or Democrats) of this county be recommended to meet,” etc.

_Differ with_ is often used, in public debate, instead of _differ from_. Example: “I differ with the learned gentleman, entirely,”--which is intended to mean, that the speaker holds views different from those of the gentleman; not that he agrees with the gentleman in differing from the views of a third person. _Different to_ is often spoken and written in England, and occasionally in this country, instead of _different from_. An example of this occurs in Queen Victoria’s book, edited by Mr. Helps.

_Corporeal_, for corporal, is a gross vulgarism, the use of which at this day should almost subject an educated man to the kind of punishment which the latter adjective designates. _Corporeal_ means, having a body corporal, or belonging to a body.

_Wearies_, for is wearied. Example: “The reader soon wearies of such stuff.”

_Any how_ is an exceedingly vulgar phrase, though used even by so elegant a writer as Blair. Example: “If the damage can be any how repaired,” etc. The use of this expression, _in any manner_, by one who professes to write and speak the English tongue with purity, is unpardonable.

_It were_, for it is. Example: “It were a consummation devoutly to be wished for.” Dr. Chalmers says: “It were an intolerable spectacle, even to the inmates of a felon’s cell, did they behold one of their fellows in the agonies of death.” For _were_ put _would be_, and for _did_ put _should_.

_Doubt_ is a word much abused by a class of would-be laconic speakers, who affect an Abernethy-like brevity of language. “I doubt such is the true meaning of the Constitution,” say our “great expounders,” looking wondrous wise. They mean, “I doubt whether,” etc.

_Lie_, _lay_. Gross blunders are committed in the use of these words; _e.g._, “He laid down on the grass,” instead of “he laid himself down,” or, “he lay down.” The verb _to lie_ (to be in a horizontal position) is _lay_ in the preterite. The book does not _lay_ on the table; it _lies_ there. Some years ago an old lady consulted an eccentric Boston physician, and, in describing her disease, said: “The trouble, Doctor, is that I can neither lay nor set.” “Then, Madam,” was the reply, “I would respectfully suggest the propriety of roosting.”

“_Like I did_,” is a gross western and southern vulgarism for “as I did.” “You will feel like lightning ought to strike you,” said a learned Doctor of Divinity at a meeting in the East. Even so well informed a writer as R. W. Dale, D.D., says: “A man’s style, if it is a good one, fits his thought _like_ a good coat fits his figure.” _Like_ is a preposition, and should not be used as a conjunction.

_Less_, for fewer. “Not less than fifty persons.” _Less_ relates to quantity; _fewer_, to number.

_Balance_, for remainder. “I’ll take the balance of the goods.”

_Revolt_, for are revolting to. “Such doctrines revolt us.”

_Alone_, for only. Quackenboss, in his “Course of Composition and Rhetoric,” says, in violation of one of his own rules: “This means of communication, as well as that which follows, is employed by man alone.” _Only_ is often misplaced in a sentence. Miss Braddon says, in the prospectus of “Belgravia,” her English magazine, that “it will be written in good English. In its pages papers of sterling merit will only appear.” A poor beginning this! She means that “only papers of sterling merit will appear.” Bolingbroke says: “Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in the world, that, of all that belongs to us, the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others.” The last clause should be, “only the least valuable parts can fall under the will of others.” The word _merely_ is misplaced in the following sentence from a collegiate address on eloquence: “It is true of men as of God, that words merely meet no response,--only such as are loaded with thought.”

_Likewise_, for also. _Also_ classes together things or qualities, whilst _likewise_ couples actions or states of being. “He did it likewise,” means he did it in like manner. An English Quaker was once asked by a lawyer whether he could tell the difference between _also_ and _likewise_. “O, yes,” was the reply, “Erskine is a great lawyer; his talents are universally admired. You are a lawyer also, but not like-_wise_.”

_Avocation_, for vocation, or calling. A man’s _avocations_ are those pursuits or amusements which engage his attention when he is “called away from” his regular business or profession,--as music, fishing, boating.

_Crushed out_, for crushed. “The rebellion has been crushed out.” Why _out_, rather than _in_? If you tread on a worm, you simply crush him,--that is all. It ought to satisfy the most vengeful foe of “the rebels” that they have been crushed, without adding the needless cruelty of crushing them _out_, which is to be as vindictive as Alexander, of whom Dryden tells us that

“Thrice he routed all his foes,
And thrice he slew the slain.”

_Of_, for from. Example: “Received of John Smith fifty dollars.” Usage, perhaps, sanctions this.

_At all_ is a needless expletive, which is employed by many writers of what may be called the forcible-feeble school. For example: “The coach was upset, but, strange to say, not a passenger received the slightest injury at all.” “It is not at all strange.”

_But that_, for that. This error is quite common among those who think themselves above learning anything more from the dictionary and grammar. Trench says: “He never doubts but that he knows their intention.” A worse error is _but what_, as in the reply of Mr. Jobling, of “Bleak House”: “Thank you, Guppy, I don’t know but what I will take a marrow pudding.” “He would not believe but what I was joking.”

_Convene_ is used by many persons in a strange sense. “This road will convene the public.”

_Evidence_ is a word much abused by learned judges and attorneys,--being continually used for _testimony_. _Evidence_ relates to the convictive view of any one’s mind; _testimony_, to the knowledge of another concerning some fact. The evidence in a case is often the reverse of the testimony.

_Had have._ _E.g._ The London “Times” says “Sir Wilfred Lawson _had_ better _have_ kept to his original proposal.” This is a very low vulgarism, notwithstanding it has the authority of Addison. It is quite common to say “Had I have seen him,” “Had you have known it,” etc. We can say, “I have been,” “I had been,” but what sort of a tense is _had have_ been?

_Had ought_, _had better_, _had rather_. All these expressions are absurdities, no less gross than _hisn_, _tother_, _baint_, _theirn_. No doubt there is plenty of good authority for _had better_ and _had rather_; but how can future action be expressed by a verb that signifies past and completed possession?

_At_, for by. _E.g._, “Sales at auction.” The word auction signifies a _manner_ of sale; and this signification seems to require the preposition _by_.

_The above_, as an adjective. “The above extract is sufficient to verify my assertion.” “I fully concur in the above statement” (the statement above, or the foregoing statement). Charles Lamb speaks of “the above boys and the below boys.”

_Then_, as an adjective. “The then King of Holland.” This error, to which even educated men are addicted, springs from a desire of brevity; but verbal economy is not commendable when it violates the plainest rules of language.

_Final completion._ As every completion is final, the adjective is superfluous. A similar objection applies to _first beginning_. Similar to these superabundant forms of expression is another, in which _universal_ and _all_ are brought into the same construction. A man is said to be “universally esteemed by all who know him.” If _all_ esteem him, he is, of course, _universally_ esteemed; and the converse is equally true.

_Party_, for man or woman. This error, so common in England, is becoming more and more prevalent here. An English witness once testified that he saw “a short party” (meaning person) “go over the bridge.” Another Englishman, who had looked at a portrait of St. Paul in a gallery at Florence, being asked his opinion of the picture, said that he thought “the party was very well executed.” It is hardly necessary to say that it takes several persons to make a party.

_Celebrity_ is sometimes applied to celebrated persons, instead of being used abstractly; _e.g._, “Several celebrities are at the Palmer House.”

_Equanimity of mind._ As equanimity (_æquus animus_) means evenness of mind, why should “of mind” be repeated? “Anxiety of mind” is less objectionable, but the first word is sufficient.

_Don’t_ for doesn’t, or does not. Even so scholarly a divine as the Rev. Dr. Bellows, of New York, employs this vulgarism four times in an article in the “Independent.” “A man,” he says, “who knows only his family and neighbors, don’t know them; a man who only knows the present don’t know that.... Many a man, with a talent for making money, don’t know whether he is rich or poor, because he don’t understand bookkeeping,” etc.

_Predicate_, for found. _E.g._, “His argument was predicated on the assumption,” etc.

_Try_, for make. _E.g._, “Try the experiment.”

_Superior_, for able, virtuous, etc. _E.g._, “He is a superior man.” Not less vulgar is the expression, “an inferior man,” for a man of small abilities.

_Deceiving_, for trying to deceive. _E.g._, a person says to another, “You are deceiving me,” when he means exactly the opposite, namely, “You are trying to deceive me, but you cannot succeed, for your trickery is transparent.”

_The masses_, for the people generally. “The masses must be educated.” The masses of what?

_In our midst._ This vulgarism is continually heard in prayer-meetings, and from the lips of Doctors of Divinity, though its incorrectness has been exposed again and again. The second chapter in Prof. Schele De Vere’s excellent “Studies in English” begins thus: “When a man rises to eminence in our midst,” etc.,--which is doubtless one of the few errors in his book _quas incuria fudit_. The possessive pronoun can properly be used only to indicate possession or appurtenance. “The midst” of a company or society is not a thing belonging or appurtenant to the company, or to the individuals composing it. It is a mere term of relation of an adverbial, not of a substantive character, and is an intensified form of expression for _among_. Would any one say, “In our middle”?

_Excessively_, for exceedingly. Ladies often complain that the weather is “excessively hot,” thereby implying that they do not object to the heat, but only to the excess of heat. They mean simply that the weather is _very_ hot.

_Either_ is applicable only to two objects; and the same remark is true of _neither_ and _both_. “Either of the three” is wrong; so is this,--“Ten burglars broke into the house, but neither of them could be recognized.” Say, “_none_ of them,” or “_not one_ of them could be recognized.” _Either_ is sometimes improperly used for _each_; _e.g._, “On either side of the river was the tree of life,”--Rev. xxi, 2. Here it is not meant that if you do not find that the tree of life was on _this_ side, it was on _that_; but that the tree of life was on each side,--on this side, and on that. The proper use of _either_ was vindicated some years ago in England, by the Court of Chancery. A certain testator left property, the disposition of which was affected by “the death of either” of two persons. One learned counsel contended that the word “either” meant both; in support of this view he quoted Richardson, Webster, Chaucer, Dryden, Southey, the history of the crucifixion, and a passage from the Revelation. The learned judge suggested that there was an old song in the “Beggar’s Opera,” known to all, which took the opposite view:

“How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away.”

In pronouncing judgment, the judge dissented entirely from the argument of the learned counsel. “Either,” he said, “means one of two, and does not mean both.” Though occasionally, by poets and some other writers, the word was employed to signify _both_, it did not in the case before the court.

_Whether_ is a contraction of _which of either_, and therefore cannot be correctly applied to more than two objects.

_Never_, for ever. _E.g._, “Charm he never so wisely”; “Let the offence be of never so high a nature.” Many grammarians approve of this use of _never_; but its correctness, to say the least, is doubtful. In such sentences as these, “He was deaf to the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely,” “Were it ever so fine a day, I would not go out,” the word _ever_ is an adverb of degree, and has nothing to do with time. “If I take ever so little of this drug, it will kill me,” is equivalent to “however little,” or “how little soever I take of this drug, it will kill me.” Harrison well says on this point: “Let any one translate one of these phrases into another language, and he will find that ‘ever’ presents itself as a term expressive of degree, and not of time at all. ‘Charm he ever so wisely’: Quamvis incantandi sit _peritus_ aut _peritissimus_.”

_Seldom, or never_ is a common vulgarism. Say “seldom, if ever.”

_Sit_, _sat_, are much abused words. It is said that the brilliant Irish lawyer, Curran, once carelessly observed in court, “an action lays,” and the judge corrected him by remarking: “Lies, Mr. Curran,--hens lay;” but when afterward the judge ordered a counsellor to “set down,” Curran retaliated, “Sit down, your honor,--hens set.” The retort was characterized by more wit than truth. Hens do not set; they sit. It is not unusual to hear persons say, “The coat sets well”; “The wind sets fair.” _Sits_ is the proper word. The preterite of _sit_ is often incorrectly used for that of _set_; _e.g._, “He sat off for Boston.”

_From thence_, _from whence_. As the adverbs _thence_ and _whence_ literally supply the place of a noun and preposition, there is a solecism in employing a preposition in conjunction with them.

_Conduct._ In conversation, this verb is frequently used without the personal pronoun; as, “he conducts well,” for “he conducts himself well.”

_Least_, for less. “Of two evils, choose the least.”