M-' 6' -'51-.. //.^e^' ST*'**-- '^'»r< m rf-- BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hcnrg M. Sage 1S9Z }f.../:A3..AL0. llJ/.^.^.. Cornell University Library PE 1460.W72 Some Questions of good English examined 3 1924 027 254 097 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027254097 OUR DICTIONARIES AND OTHER ENGLISH LANGUAGE TOPICS. By RALPH OLMSTED WILLIAMS, Contents : I. The Growth of our Dictionaries (with four fac-similes of Title-pages and Frontis- pieces). II. The word Metropolis as used in England and America. III. Some Peculiarities Real and Supposed in American English. IV. Good English for Americans. V. Cases of Dis- puted Propriety and of Unsettled Usage. VI. Indexes. " I have read every word of it and like it very much, and think it will do good." Prof. William Dwight Whitney, Yale University. " I have read it through incontinently." Prof. Basil L. Gilder sleeve, fohns Hopkins Univ. " Evinces scholarly candor and taste.'' Prof. Theodore W. Hunt, Princeton University. " Am glad to recognize in its teachings the tendency towards freedom of movement and of growth in our language." Prof. Thomas R. Price, Columbia University. "Sensible and scholarly throughout.'' Prof. Isaac N. Demmon, University of Michigan. " There is a lightness of touch, a reserve of manner, a crisp- ness of style, a seasoning of humor, an absence of hammering, which ought to make the book much more popular than I dreamed a book on such a subject could be, without suffering some species of degradation." Prof. Albert S. Cook, Yale University. 12mo, . . ^1.25. HENRY HOLT & CO.. - NEW YORK. SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH EXAMINED IN CONTROVERSIES WITH DR. FITZEDWARD HALL RALPH OLMSTED WILLIAMS AUTHOR OF "OUR DICTIONARIES" NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1897 Copyright, 1897, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRRSS, RAHWAY, w. J. PREFACE. Originating in a pleasantry, the discus- sions republished in this volume soon took a serious turn. Most of the papers are reprinted from the Dial and from Modern Language Notes. They were published in those periodi- cals in 1893, —'4, —'5, and '6. I hope the collection and reprinting of these papers will not be taken by anybody as evidence of exulta- tion on my part in supposed victory, for I am not sure that the advantage will be found altogether on my side, — though to have kept down some- what the score of such an adversary as Dr. Hall is something. But it is much more that knowl- edge of literary usage as to the points con- sidered has been increased. That certainty in regard to some points once questionable has been reached can, I think, be fairly claimed. I do not know of any other replies or reply by Dr. Hall to my criticisms thjm these here reprinted. My grateful acknowledgments are due, and VI PREFACE. are now tendered, to all who have shown an interest in these discussions. Of those who have expressed the opinion that their republica- tion would be useful some are mentioned below, but not as judging the controversies: Professor Adams Sherman Hill, of Harvard; Professors Albert S. Cook and William Lyon Phelps, of Yale; Professor Brander Matthews, of Columbia; Professor Theodore W. Hunt, of Princeton; Professor James M. Hart, of Cornell; Professor Fred Newton Scott, of the University of Michigan. CONTENTS. PAGE Perhaps an Error. I. — "Known to" and "Un- known TO." — W 3 Breach of Idiom. — F. H. 7 Comments on Dr. Hall's Reply. — W. ... 14 Perhaps an Error. II. — W. ... -33 " None But They," ETC. — F. H 38 Comment on Dr. Hall's Reply. — W. ... 46 An Unauthoritative Authority. — W. ... 51 Cardinal Newman Versus Se. — F. H. . . . 56 " Is Being Built."— F. H 65 Comments on Dr. Hall's " Cardinal Newman Ver- sus Se."—W 66 A Pardonable Forgetting. — " Born in Boston." — W. 75 A Classical Solecism. — W. 83 " To Part From " and " To Part With."— F. H. . 92 Comments on Dr. Hall's Reply. — W. ... 98 vii viu CONTENTS. PAGE The American Dialect.— F. H. .... 107 Not So Very American. — W. ... 122 A Rejoinder.— F. H i37 Dr. Hall's Rejoinder Examined. — W. . . 152 A Surprising Conclusion. — W. . . . 162 Every and Each. — W. 169 Only, — Adversative, — Misplacement of Adverb. — W 184 Till, in the Sense of Before. — W 197 Indexes, 211 PERHAPS AN ERROR— "KNOWN TO" AND " UNKNOWN TO." BREACH OF IDIOM. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. PERHAPS AN ERROR.* The frequent letters of " F. H." to the Nation are read with great interest and valued very highly, I am sure, by all American students of modern English. Nevertheless, there is something in these letters (if it may be said) that would be pleasanter if it were different. A reader of a half-dozen of them cannot help wondering whether " F. H." has ever made a mistake, — the master is so masterful, his cen- sure is so pungent. The grammatical question examined below is trivial, perhaps, but the examination itself be- comes important if it be regarded as helping somewhat toward answering the more serious inquiry, — Has " F. H." ever erred? It should be premised that " F. H." has identified himself in the Nation (more than * The Dial, July i, 1893. 4 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. once, I think) as the author of " Modern Eng- lish," and that there cannot be any impro- priety, therefore, in here attributing to him that well-known and very valuable work. The present case is this: At page 85 of his " Modern English " Dr. Hall quotes from Marsh's " Lectures on the English Language," and in one of the sentences quoted inserts sic in brackets after known to. This is the sen- tence quoted from Marsh's " Lectures " : " The word respect, in this combination, has none of the meanings known to [sic^ it, as an inde- pendent noun, in the English vocabulary." Dr. Hall says of this sic in a foot-note : " A Lord Granville of former days wrote of ' a long and destructive warfare, of a nature long since unknown to the practice of civilized nations.' Here, remarks Coleridge, ' the word to is absurdly used for the word in.' (' Essays on His Own Times,' p. 262.) Not unlike the nobleman's ' un- known to,' the context considered, is Mr. Marsh's ' known to.' "—" Modem English," p. 85. Dr. Hall's sic and foot-note seem to show that he regards such uses of known to and un- known to as lacking authority and censurable. PERHAPS AN ERROR. 5 It may be assumed here that Dr. Hall does not find anything objectionable in a use of known to that occurs often in his own writings, as in the following instance: ". . . the histori- cal fact, known to everybody " (" Modern Eng- lish," p. 192, foot-note). Such use has been very common for a long time. But the same construction is common when the word with which known to or unknown to is connected has been substituted by metonymy for something else, — as camp for people in the camp. ... in token of the which. My Noble Steed, knowne to the Campe, I give him. — " Coriolanus," Act I., so. ix. . . . custards, cheesecakes, and minced pies, which were entirely unknown to these parts. . . — Lady M. W. Montagu, Letter, Nov. 27, N. S., 1753. Another accomplishment was that of copying manuscripts, which they did with a perfection un- known to the scholastic age which followed them. — ^Cardinal Newman, "Historical Sketches" (Lon- don, 1885), vol. ii., p. 464. The line is not distinct between such cases and the following : In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers 6 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. employ words in senses unknown to genuine Eng- lish.— J. S. Mill, " Logic," Bk. IV., ch. v., sec. 3. This is the only use of the word in Johnson, the following three being unknown to dictionaries till very recently. — "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles," Remark under Alterna- tive. Noble Tribunes, It is the humane way: the other course Will prove to[o] bloody: and the end of it, Unknowne to the Begitming. — " Coriolanus," Act III., sc. i. Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean spoil . . . Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down. — Tennyson, " Enoch Arden," 11. 93—7. Most of these wretches were not soldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law. — Macaulay, " Hist. Eng.," ch. xii. A remark made by Dr. Hall concerning another locution may be appropriately quoted here: " Even such a purist as Lord Macaulay uses it more than once." — " Modern English," p. 300. The examples given above could be sup- ported by a larger number of similar citations now before me, if there were space for printing so many. W. BREACH OF IDIOM* To the Editor of the Dial: In a foot-note to p. 85 of " Modern English," I call attention to a slip on the part of Mr. G. P. Marsh, where he writes: " The word respect, in this combination, has none of the meanings known to [sic] it, as an inde- pendent noun, in the English vocabulary." Mr. R. O. WilHams, in your issue for July i, contends that Mr. Marsh there delivers him- self metonymically. But, if he so delivers him- self, for what is " word " exchangeable? Its exchangeableness failing, "the meanings known to it," if acceptable, necessitates the acceptance of " the known meanings to it "; " to it " being for of it. Since, in correct usage, known to is prac- tically equivalent to known by, the conversion of Mr. Marsh's passive construction into the active yields : * The Dial, August 16, 1893. 8 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. " The word respect, in this combination, has none of the meanings which it knows, as an independent noun, in the English vocabulary." To say that a meaning " is known to " or " is known by " a word, instead of " is recognized as borne by " it, — just like saying that a word " knows " a meaning, for " has " it, — at best involves, it seems to me, a highly nebulous and intolerable sort of personification. We are by no means obliged, however, to conclude that Mr. Marsh ventured to sanction the novel phenomenon of a word's " knowing " a meaning, whether as an intimate, as a casual acquaintance, or as tantum visum,. The ques- tion of what he actually did, I shall come to a little farther on. In order to be fully intelligible, I repeat my foot-note above referred to: " A Lord Granville of former days wrote of ' a long and destructive warfare, of a nature long since unknown to the practice of civilized nations.' Here, remarks Coleridge, ' the word to is absurdly used for the word in! (' Essays on His Own Times,' p. 262.) Not unlike the nobleman's ' un- known to' the context considered, is Mr. Marsh's ' known to.' " BREACH OF IDIOM. 9 Lord Grenville was far from intending to say, though in effect he says, that, as concerns a cer- tain " long and destructive warfare, the practice of civihzed nations was, in the distant past, ig- norant of its nature." For Coleridge, if he had altered more freely, must have proposed to sub- stitute, in place of " unknown to," " discarded in " ; Lord Grenville's nobiliary rhetoric, un- amended, importing that the kind of warfare which he disapproves of was not known in remote ages. Altogether apart from this, to predicate, re- specting a practice, that it does not " know " this or that, is, I admit, a metonymy, in which " practice " stands for " those who practise." But a metonymy thus violent, permissible though it may be in poetry, is, to my mind, xjuite out of place in plain pedestrian prose. That, however, Lord Grenville indulged in it I see no reason for believing. Coleridge con- demned his " to " only for in ; and " not unlike it, the context considered," as I have said, is the " to " which Mr. Marsh puts for of. All this becomes clear by rewriting, with inversions, the passages quoted. lo SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Mr. Marsh, in doing as he does, exemplifi" the carelessness in the employment of indeclii ables which notably distinguishes our countr men in general. Of this carelessness, a few illu trations, exhibiting to misused for a variety ( prepositions, here follow: "The horse . . . had a very disdainful fling ; his hind legs." — H. W. Longfellow, " Kavanagh (ed. 1849), p. 107. " A claim for extraordinary protection to a cei tain kind of property." — J. R. Lowell (1861 " Political Essays " (1888), p. 57. " Cattle without any go to them." — Dr. O. W Holmes, "Elsie Venner" (1861), ch. xxi. " There was a chivalric smack to the title of th book."— Dr. J. G. Holland, "The Heroes c Crampton " (London ed. 1867), p. 203. " A few hundred pounds to the year were all tha England gave the weary penman." — Mr. E. C Stedman, "Victorian Poets" (London ed. 1876" p. 81. " An old negro . . . rode his plough-horse to most unwonted speed." — Mr. E. Eggleston, Rox (London ed. 1878), vol. ii., p. 29. " The light was so great as to be seen ... fa out to sea." "There is, probably, no short am BREACH OF IDIOM. 1 1 precise solution to the difficult problem."— Mr. Josiah Quincy, " Figures of the Past" (1884), pp. 38. 350. " There was a hard, metallic glitter to his talk, as there is to the dialogues in his plays." — Professor A. S. Hill, " Our English " (1889), p. 205. " He set out at once to Boston, to investigate the subject."— Mr. John Bigelow, "William Cullen Bryant " (1890), p. 2. In all these quotations there is violation of idiom. To allege, against my position relative to their " to," such phrases as " there are three sides to a triangle," " Albany lies to the north of New York," " it serves as a protection to the throat," etc., etc., or quaintnesses like " we have Abraham to^ our father," " he was son to a butcher," is no argument. Good contemporary usage, not analogy, determines what is idio- matic ; and accordingly, Mr. Williams's " a half- dozen of them," in his letter before me, and his " did not have," in " Our Dictionaries," p. 107, cannot be permitted to pass muster. " Has ' F. H.' ever erred? " So inquires Mr. Williams, humorously; and he shall have an an- swer to his inquiry from the very highest au- 12 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. thority, — an answer which he may, with all con- fidence, enroll among the placita prudentum Alas! much too favorable dear sir, often, and far oftener than often, in the course of his philo- logical peregrinations, has that eminent oracle, for want of unction with the oil of inerrancy, gone wholly and disastrously astray, nay, come to utter and irrecoverable grief, precisely after the fashion of the most ordinary lost sheep of the commonest fold. But, for all that, it chances, curiously enough, that, in nearly all cases where he has been charged with taking the wrong road, he has had the good fortune to take the right one ; and this he may some day show in detail, at the same time making a full and contrite confession of his manifold and multifarious shortcomings. Resuming the first person, he would be allowed, meanwhile, to ad- vert to one of his most recent miscarriages, in the matter of expression, and to explain how it came about. It was in the London Academy, in a letter which, by the way, I have to thank the Diai for noticing graciously, that I stumbled and fell. The beginning of that letter runs: " This ques- BREACH OF IDIOM. 13 tion, it may be confidently assumed, is one to which all, barring the grossly illiterate, would reply in the affirmative. Most of them, too, if asked," etc. The proof-sheet had " Most of usr with "we," "our," and "we should," in what immediately follows, instead of " they," " their," and " they would." Revising, in un- avoidable haste, I altered, in " Most of us" only the " us," not observing that I had there- by as good as blundered into the tautological " Most of all" for " most." For the rest, on discovery of the remarkable genius who is not liable, when working against time, to such a mishap as that of mine, I should be glad to se- cure him, if possible, as my literarian Gamaliel. F. H. Marlesford, England, July 15, 1893. P. S. — " Even such a purist as Lord Macau- lay uses it more than once." This sentence Mr. Williams quotes from me as " a remark " which I make " concerning another locution." Is my remark amiss as to its wording? or in what it expresses? I am at a loss to know. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. I. The odd misunderstanding in Dr. Hall's postscript is commented on in pages 26—9. II. To the unexpected happening noted above this also may be added, — that Dr. Hall should regard " the meanings known to it " and " the known meanings to it " as interchange- able, for the validity of " necessitates the ac- ceptance of 'the known meanings to it ' " (p. 7) rests on the interchangeableness of the two phrases. III. Dr. Hall's reply virtually takes for granted that Mr. Marsh's use of known to, in the passage quoted, is bad English, and that Mr. Marsh, in so using known to, " exemplifies the carelessness in the employment of indeclinables which notably distinguishes our countrymen in general." The latter of these assumptions is the supposed justification for introducing illustrative quotations regarded by Dr. Hall as " exhibiting to misused for a variety of prep- ositions." COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 15 Such views ignore the facts that the use of known to and unknown to censured by Dr. Hall is not in the least a peculiarity of Americans, and that the use censured is an idiom of the English language. Whether the idiom origi- nated in metonymy or not may be debatable, but an English idiom it is, and has been for hun- dreds of years. IV. The examples given below include those that I have previously cited. Whether all of them can be explained metonymically is ques- tionable. But if most readers who may exam- ine them (beginning with the first and taking them in the order arranged) should be of the opinion that some are not instances of meton- ymy, I feel confident that few would agree upon the line of cleavage between those which are metonymical and those which are not. That metonymical phrases should give rise to other phrases similar in form but not metonymical in sense is not especially remarkable. It would seem to be one of the numerous changes in language produced by imitation of mere form. Perhaps, too, personification has had some- thing to do with the development of this idiom. i6 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt . . . — Isaiah, xix., 21. ... in token of the which, My Noble Steed, knowne to the Campe, I give him, With all his trim belonging. — " Coriolanus," Act I., sc. ix. I have already described to you this extraor- dinary spot of land, which is almost unknown to the rest of the world. . . — Lady M. W. Montagu, Letter, Louvere, June 23 N. S., 1752. And this led the farmer to mention, as a matter that was no secret, but necessarily known to all the country, the arrest of Carlo Sparti. — ^T. Adolphus Trollope, " Diamond Cut Diamond," ch. ix. I make a very shining figure among my neigh- bours by the introduction of custards, cheesecakes, and minced pies, which were entirely unknown to these parts. . . — Lady M. W. Montagu, Letter, Louvere, Nov. 27, N. S., 1753. The vales [of Inarime] produce . . . many other fruits unknown to our climates, . . . — Berkeley, Letter to Pope, Naples, Oct. 22, 17 17 (N. S.) — Berkeley's Works, London, 1820. Another accomplishment was that of copying manuscripts, which they did with a perfection un- known to the scholastic age which followed them. —J. H. Newman, " Historical Sketches " (5th ed., London, 1885), vol. ii., p. 464. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 17 The contests, however, were well known to all the town. — Macaulay, "History of England" (Lon- don, 1869), vol. iii., ch. X., p. 388. It was known to " the boxes " that Charles Mathews had been made a pet of in many aristo- cratic families, and had acted in private circles at Rome, Florence, and Naples with singular suc- cess. — George Henry Lewes, " On Actors and the Art of Acting " (2d ed., London, 1875), P- 60. . . . for in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down. — Tennyson, " Enoch Arden," 11. 92—7. . . . the prices obtained [for butter and cheese] in Paris and New York, and to some extent for fine brands in England, are absolutely unknown to the creamery or the factory. — ^James Long, " Can the Empire Feed its People? " — The Nineteenth Cen- tury, January, 1896, p. 24. This is the only use of the word in Johnson, the following three being unknown to dictionaries till very recently. — "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles," Remark under Alternative. . . . words unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy. . . — Macaulay, " Critical and Miscel- laneous Essays " (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879), vol. v., p. 222. — " Barere's Memoirs." l8 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. A young Englishman goes out climbing by himself in the country familiar to newspaper writers and novelists, but unknown to maps or gazetteers, as " the Bavarian Tyrol." — The Athenceum, Jan- uary i8, 1896, p. 83. Lord Salisbury's speech last night to that mys- terious body, the Nonconformist Liberal Unionist Association (very few of the members of which are known either to Nonconformity or Liberalism), was not a very wise performance. — The Speaker, February 8, 1896, p. 145. In the middle of the second century before Christ, this Caius Julius, being otherwise unknown to history, married a lady named Marcia. . . — James Anthony Froude, " Caesar " (New York, 1879), ch. iv., p. 43. ... an occasional Dictatorship was an insti- tution acknowledged to be a necessity of state by the most sagacious community known to history. — William O'Connor Morris, Sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford, " Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler " (N. Y. & Lond., 1894), ch. iii., p. 77. Thence a new world to Nature's laws unknown Breaks out refulgent. . . —Pope, " The Dunciad," Bk. IIL, 11. 241-42. . . . they timidly, but firmly, repudiated such a right as unknown to the law. — J. R. Green, " A Short History of the English People " (New York, 1882), ch. viii., sec. ii., p. 479. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 19 Yet, strange to say, it [the Cabinet] still con- tinues to be altogether unknown to the law. — Macaulay, " History of England," vol. i., ch. ii., p. 220. No court, known to the law, would take on itself the office of judging the fountain of jus- tice. — Ihid., vol. i., ch. i., p. 132. Most of these wrretches were not soldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law. — Ihii., vol. iv., ch. xii., p. 163. An institution not known to the law. . . — Ihid., ch. XX. The power of the English in that province [Bengal] had hitherto been altogether undefined. It was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, and it had been ascertained by no compact. — Id., " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays " (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879), vol. iii., p. 142. They [the ministers] owed their power to the clamour which had been raised r.gainst Mr. Fox's East India bill. The authors of that bill, when accused of invading vested rights, and of setting up powers unknown to the constitution, had defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary measures. — Ihid. (Warren Hastings). In other cases it is not the love of finery, but simple want of education, which makes writers employ words in senses unknown to genuine Eng- lish.— Johta Stuart Mill, "A System of Logic," Bk. IV., ch. v., sec. 3. 20 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. His life, tho' long, to sickness past unknown. — Pope, " Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 1. 402. Noble Tribunes, It is the humane way: the other course Will prove to[o] bloody: and the end of it, Unknowne to the Beginning. — " Coriolanus," Act III., sc. i. V. Dr. Hall says: " Mr. Marsh, in doing as he does, exemplifies the carelessness in the employment of indeclinables which notably distinguishes our countrymen in general." — p. 10. If " indeclinables " be limited to prepositions, it may be truly said that they are less correctly used by " our countrymen in general " than by Englishmen, — or less correctly, certainly, than by Englishmen of a fair degree of education. But Dr. Hall is at fault in the choice of some of his examples. The quotations below to which H is prefixed are among those cited (pp. io~ii) by Dr. Hall as " exhibiting to misused for a variety of prepositions." The italics indicating the to misused are his. The parallel citations from English writers, if they are not of such authority as to prove, in every case, the correctness of COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 21 the use criticised, show at least that it is not peculiarly American. (H. 1.) He set out at once to Boston, to inves- tigate the subject. — Mr. John Bigelow, " Wil- liam Cullen Bryant " (1890), p. 2. No more was said. Seth set out to the vil- lage, . . . — George Eliot, "Adam Bede," ch. xi. We set off to the monastery at one o'clock, . . . — The Rev. Harry Jones, M. A., Incumbent of St. Luke's, Berwick St., Soho, " The Regular Swiss Round " (London, 1865), p. 126. . . . packed his trunks, fetched in a couple of porters, and was off to the diligence office in a twinkling. — Thackeray, " The Rose and the Ring," ch. xiv. (H. 2.) The light was so great as to be seen . . . far out to sea. — Mr. Josiah Quincy, " Figures of the Past " (1884). ... if they did not begin to row back as hard as they could, and that soon, they would be out to sea and in the dark. — Walter Besant, " Armorel of Lyonesse," Part I., ch. i. The constructions with to given below (H. 3, 4, 5) are often very convenient, and have the sanction of a long and wide range of English usage. 22 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. (H. 3.) The horse . . . had a very disdain- ful fling to his hind legs. — H. W. Longfellow, " Kavanagh " (ed. 1849), P- io7- In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. — William Hazlitt, " Sketches and Essays " (Lon- don, 1884), p. 269. But this noble equality of all writers . . . has a perilous side to it. — Frederic Harrison, " The Choice of Books," p. 8. ... in England, where even dreamers have a practical side to their heads, . . . — The Spectator, November 21, 1896. The unlucky boys who have no tassels to their caps, are called sizars — servitors at Oxford . . . — Thackeray, " The Book of Snobs," ch. xiii. ... it is a matter of wonder to him . . . how the lady can appear decently dressed, and the man have an unpatched coat to his back. — Ibid., ch. xxxiv. I had a net for books overhead, great pockets to all the windows. . . — Dickens, " The Uncom- mercial Traveller," vii. And now to my small beer again, which will have more of a head to it henceforward. — George du Maurier, " Peter Ibbetson," Part II., p. 183. He wears a huge pair — not of boots, for they have no feet to them — of galligaskins I may call COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 23 them. . . — Anthony Trollope, " The West Indies and the Spanish Main," London, i860, p. 160. He [the caterpillar] had a kind of elastic por- tico to his house. . . — Marianne North, " Recol- lections of a Happy Life " (2d ed., London, 1892), vol. i., p. 121. . . . they had doors and verandas to their huts, . . . — H. Rider Haggard, " Maiwa's Re- venge," ch. i. The seat [of the bagherino] is usually wide . . . but it has no back to it. — T. Adolphus Trollope, " Diamond Cut Diamond," ch. vii. (H. 4.) There was a chivalric smack to the title of the book.— Dr. J. G. Holland, "The Heroes of Crampton " (London ed. 1867), p. 203, We did not find the Well [of Caernarvon Castle] ; nor did I trace the Moat; but moats there were, I believe, to all castles on the plain, which not only hindered access, but prevented mines. — Samuel Johnson, "Journey into North Wales" (London, 1816), August 20. In the beadle's eye the cathedral was nothing but a case or cover to the clock. — Harry Jones, "The Regular Swiss Round" (London, 1865), p. II. . . . being the terminus to so many passes, it [the inn] often gets quite full as the day draws on. — Ibid., p. 58 . . . the terrace to the hotel. . . — Ibid., p. 152. 24 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. There must be an end to the whole thing at once. — George Eliot, "Adam Bede," ch. xiv. Mulligan's speech . . . was . . . extremely tedious. It seemed there would be no end to it. — Thackeray, " The Ravenswing," ch. vii. There was another side to all this magnificence which also might be turned to account. — ^James Anthony Froude, " The English in the West Indies " (New York, 1888), ch. iv., p. 40. . . . but I often think that we forget that other side to this glorious view of literature. — Frederic Harrison, " The Choice of Books," p. i. Positively there are no bounds to Mr. 's impudence. — The Saturday Review, November 28, 1896. Such a class would be a surer safeguard to the country than many Supreme Courts. — G. W. Steevens, " The Presidential Election as I saw it," Blackwood's Magazine, December, 1896. The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen [bells] to the team. . . — Thomas Hardy, " The Woodlanders," ch. xiii. If our " splendid isolation " is to be abandoned in favour of anybody, we must be left masters in our own house, to which South Africa is only a back-garden. — ^The Spectator, March 21, 1896, p. 402. (H. 5.) Cattle without any go to them. — Dr. O. W. Holmes, " Elsie Venner " (1861), ch. xxi. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 25 . . . thin shoes and white stockings, perhaps with silk clocks to them. — George Eliot, " Adam Bede," ch. xv. . . . they ought to have been in wigs and square brown coats with silver buckles to their shoes. — Walter Besant, " Armorel of Lyonesse," Part I., ch. iii. In the tug going down the long Batavian canal, a dreadful woman, with high heels to her boots, two parrots, and one baby, came and sat next to me. — Marianne North, " Recollections of a Happy Life," vol. i., p. 299. . . . at last up trotted a tapir, like a tall pig with a cover to its nose. — Ihid., p. 121. ... he had been seen . . . lurking about the roulette-tables with a tuft to his chin. — Thack- eray, " The Book of Snobs," ch. xii. . . . the white-haired young man with red heels to his shoes. — George du Maurier, " Peter Ibbetson," Part VI., p. 339. . . . the tall lacquey in blue and silver with gold-headed cane, cocked hat, white thread stock- ings and large calves to his legs. . . — William Hazlitt, "Sketches and Essays" (London, 1884), p. 236. — Footmen. Some related examples of the use of to are added. ... a false profete, a Jewe, to whom the name 26 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. was Bariesu, . . . — Wycliffe and Purvey, " Deeds of Apostles," ch. xiii.. Clarendon Press. What's in a name? What is in a handle to it?— Thackeray, " The Book of Snobs," ch. xxxii. I observed . . . that your whip wanted a lash to it. — Addison, " Sir Roger de Coverley " (Lon- don, 1850), ch. iv. The shutters to the large oriel window of the room . . . wtere still unclosed, . . . — Lytton, " Paul Clififord," ch. xi. . . . two enormous tusks . . . formed the gateway to the hut. — H. Rider Haggard, " Mai- wa's Revenge," ch. viii. Middleton is a very devoted husband to Angela Dove. — Anthony Hope, " Middleton's Model." In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character. — Wilkie Collins, " The Woman in White," viii. The illustrations to Rogers' " Italy " have never since been equalled. — Walter Thombury, " The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A." (London, 1862), vol. i., ch. xii., p. 242. ... a somewhat misty atmosphere surcharged with sunlight and serving as a veil to a city of palaces. . . — The AthencBum, January 25, 1896, p. 125. VI. And now as to Dr. Hall's postscript. Although a word or a phrase in Lord Ma- COMMENTS ON BR. HALL'S REPLY. 27 caulay's writings has sometimes arrested the "unfavourable attention" of Dr. Hall, yet, in the main. Lord Macaulay's English has received Dr. Hall's approbation. In fact, there are pas- sages in Dr. Hall's discussions of good and bad English which give one the impression that, at the time they were penned, he regarded Ma- caulay as an unquestionable exemplar of cor- rectness. Among the evidences of his respect for the authority of Macaulay are the' follow- ing: " Let us now turn to another writer of high and deserved repute, the last of our really well informed lingual conservatives. Like Dr. Newman, Lord Macaulay uses," etc. — " Modern English," p. 292, foot-note. " I have called the word [helpmate] classical. Lord Macaulay writes, in the third chapter of his History: 'A waiting woman was generally con- sidered as the most suitable helpmate for a par- son.' " — Ibid., p. 156, foot-note. "... it has been seen how many fashions of speech which he [R. G. White] rejects and ridi- cules are practically warranted by Lord Macau- lay. . ." — " Recent Exemplifications of False Phi- lology," pp. 107—8. " That which he [De Quincey] deems to be the 28 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. English of ' French reporters ' was good enough EngHsh, in the last century, for Jeremy Bentham, and is good enough, in our century, for Lord Macaulay." — IhiA., pp. 18-19. "... even such a purist as Lord Macaulay has used" [certain words named]. — "Modern Eng- Hsh," p. 142, foot-note. " Even such a purist as Lord Macaulay uses it more than once." — Ihid., p. 300. It was natural that I should want to avail myself of an authority so highly esteemed by Dr. Hall when I was citing authorities against his opinion. Several passages from Macaulay's writings containing the " breach of idiom " dis- approved by Dr. Hall were before me, but limi- tations of space prevented the use of more than one, viz: " Most of these wretches were not soldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law." — Macaulay, " Hist. Eng.," ch. xii. To which I added: "A remark made by Dr. Hall concerning another locution may be appropriately quoted here: ' Even such a purist as Lord Macaulay uses it more than once.' " — " Modem English," p. 300. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 29 Now all that Dr. Hall says in his reply about this point is in a postscript. It reads as fol- lows: " P. S. — ' Even such a purist as Lord Macaulay uses it more than once.' This sentence Mr. Wil- liams quotes from me as ' a remark ' which I make ' concerning another locution.' Is my remark amiss as to its wording? or in what it expresses? I am at a loss to know." I could not anticipate that the author of " Modern English " would fail to see the appli- cation of a sentence cited against himself from his own book. W. PERHAPS AN ERROR. 11. "NONE BUT THEY," ETC. COMMENT ON DR. HALL'S " ' NONE BUT they; ETC" PERHAPS AN ERROR. II.* In the Dial for July i, I examined very briefly certain uses of known to and unknown to. The examination was ancillary to the more important inquiry. Has " F. H." ever erred? Following the same line of research, I now submit, with illustrative quotations, a word or two about but ; premising, as in my former letter, that " F. H." has identified him- self in the public press as the author of " Mod- em EngUsh." Dr. Hall, or " F. H.," commenting adversely on Landor's praise of Gray's English, says: " But is Gray's English, from the ordinary point of view, altogether faultless? Look at . . . his pre- terites begun, run, and throwed; and his past par- ticiples broke, chose, and zvrote. Add his . . . • none but they '; ' nobody but / '; I have seen nothing, neither '; ' nor drink out of nothing but ' ; everybody . . . them.' In his ' Progress of Poesy,' furthermore, he violates all idiom by," etc. — " Modem English," pp. 103-4, foot-note. * The Dial, August I, 1893 33 34 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. A careful reading of Dr. Hall's note can leave no doubt, I think, in the mind of anybody that the words and phrases quoted in it were re- garded by Dr. Hall as bad English. And no doubt most ef them must be so regarded now. But are they all bad? Pausing first to remark that Gray wrote the English of his time, the grammar of which was very unsettled, I venture to say that " none but they " and " nobody but I " are very good Eng- lish, — as good English as there is. Of course, I don't mean that the prepositional use of but with the objective case is bad English. . . . although no man was in our parts spoken of but he for his manhood. . . — Sir Philip Sid- ney, " Arcadia," Collected Writings, edition of 1598, p. 38. There is none but he. Whose being I doe feare. — ■" Macbeth," III., i.. First Folio, reduced fac- simile. Not out of confidence that none but wee Are able to present this Tragedie. — Chapman, " Bussy D'Ambois," Prologue. ... yet whO' would keep him company but I? — Id., "An humerous dayes mirth." — Tragedies and Comedies, London, 1873. PERHAPS AN ERROR. II. 3S Then came brave Glorie puffing by In silks that whistled, who but he? —George Herbert, "The Temple" {The Quip), 1st ed., facsimile reprint, p. 103. . . . and none but they can carry Arms . . . —James Howell, " Familiar Letters," Sect. I., xxxx. (ed. 1645), P- 80. The most obvious answer, then, to the ques- tion, why we yield to the authority of the Church in the questions and developments of faith, is, that some authority there must be if there is a revela- tion, and other authority there is none but she. — Cardinal Newman, " An Essay on the Develop- ment of Christian Doctrine " (London, 1846), pp. 126—7. Under such circumstances, any men but they would have had a strong leaning towards what is called " Conversatism." — Id., " Historical Sketches" (London, 1885), vol. iii., p. 131. And in his hand he shakes the brand Which none but he can wield. ^Macaulay, " Lays of Ancient Rome," Hora- tius, xlii. . . . since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I. — Browning, " My Last Duchess." Our old young friend Casabianca turns up here. A remark in Well's Grammar, citing 36 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but him had fled is quoted by Goold Brown in " The Grammar of English Grammars " (p. 596, loth edition, New York, 1880). In the carefully printed Philadelphia edition (seven volumes, 1840) of the works of Mrs. Hemans, the lines read: The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled. Sometimes, of course, the objective case is required whether the construction be regarded as conjunctional or prepositional. "... one that hath no other guide but him. . ." — Sir Philip Sidney, " The Defence of Poesie," Collected Writings, edition of 1598, p. 498. The quotations from Cardinal Newman given above are especially interesting here, because Dr. Hall has expressed very emphati- cally his opinion as to the correctness of New- man's writing. In his " Modern English " (p. 292, foot-note), he says: " Dr. Newman, when writing at his best, comes nothing short of Addison, for grace, and, for cor- rectness, is incomparably his superior. . . Having PERHAPS AN ERROR. II. 37 studied nearly every line of Dr. Newman's volumi- nous writings, I am surprised to find how little there is in them, as regards words and uses of words, to arrest unfavourable attention." And at page 329, he writes: "... some of the choicest of living English writers employ it [a certain locution] freely. Pre- eminent among these stands Dr. Newman. . ." Some instances where Cardinal Newman's English has arrested the " unfavourable atten- tion " of Dr. Hall are mentioned in his note at page 292, but the use of the nominative case after but is not among them. W. "NONE BUT THEY," ETC.* To the Editor of theZ>?a/.-— I reply to Mr. R. O. Williams's letter in your issue of Au- gust i: Landor, in "The Last Fruit Off an Old Tree," dogmatizes as follows: " ' Antique ' is the worst portion of Gray's heri- tage. . . In honest truth, we neither have, nor had then, a better and [read or] purer writer than he [read him], although he lived in the time of the purest and best. Goldsmith, Sterne, Fielding, and Inchbald." With reference to this, I venture in my " Modem English," to query: " But is Gray's English, from the ordinary point of view, alto- gether faultless? " And then I specify words and phrases from Gray, among which are "none but t/tey " and " nobody but /." These ex- pressions, in the opinion of Mr. Williams, are " very good English, as good English as there is." * The Dial, October i, 1893. 38 "NONE BUT THEY," ETC. 39 Compendiously, old authors may, I know, be quoted, without number, for " none but tkey " and the like; and, in recent times, these archa- isms have been indulged in by poets, as a license of their craft, or else for the sake of quaintness, from a love of which, if not from a reductive reminiscence of Biblical phraseology, they have also now and then found favor with prose writers of the same period. Lord Macaulay has, to be sure, the verse, " Which none but /le can wield" ; but has he allowed himself a similar construction anywhere in his essays, history, or letters? Dr. Latham, in his edition of Johnson's Dic- tionary, adducing, in connection with the point under discussion, " we are all ready but Ae " and " we are all ready but Mm," says that, " in writing, the nominative is the commoner." In proof of this assertion, he gives, however, only one quotation, and that is from Cowper's "John Gilpin," " who but he? " Dr. Murray, in illustration of what he con- siders to be modern usage, proposes, in the "New English Dictionary": "Is there any- one in the house but she? {or but her?) Who 40 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. could have done it but he? {or but him?) " Where Dr. Murray hesitates, Dr. William Smith and Mi-. Theophilus D. Hall, in their popular English Grammar, distinctly disapprove. Parenthetically, I am aware of the specula- tion that, in Shakespeare's " who hath any cause to mourn but we ? " as in like cases, possibly, "6ut is used as a passive participle with nomi- native absolute." So the Rev. Dr. E. A. Ab- bott, in his Shakespearian grammar (ed. 1871), p. 81. Mr. C. P. Mason, in his English Grammar (ed. 1881), has, in a foot-note to p. 124: " ' Ne nis na god buten he '=' there is no God but he [is God].' This shows thrt but may be fol- lowed by a nominative case, provided the ellipse can be filled up so as to allow of its occurrence in the complete sentence. ' Nobody knows it but he ' =' Nobody knows it but he [knows it].' It is equally correct to say ' Nobody knows it but him ' ; only but is then a preposition, and but him forms a limiting adjunct to nobody." " Nobody knows it but he [knows it]," with- out punctuation, as transcribed, is unmeaning. Nor does the interposition of a semicolon after "it" mend matters; for how can he know it, "NONE BUT THEY," ETC. 41 if nobody knows it? Who can say that sophis- try may not next equate " I saw nobody but him " with " I saw nobody but [I saw] him," and attempt to do away altogether with hit as a preposition? To argue as Mr. Mason does is to no practical purpose. Neither analogy nor ancient prescription, but only the consensus of good modern writers, could legitimate but he for our ordinary service. This, also, merely in passing. The fact is, that but he, but she, but we, and but they, preceded by anyone, everyone, no- body, none, all, etc., are not, in our time, con- spicuously common. The case standing thus, " we are all ready but he " and " we are all ready but him " being propounded for option, " it is probable," according to Dr. Latham, " that few persons could tell, without reflection, which of the two he [read theyj would give." Nevertheless, most persons would, I surmise, involuntarily choose, rather than " nobody was there but /," " nobody was there but me"; though, much more frequently, they would, in a like connection, use except me, or besides me, instead of but me. Contrast, too, " anybody 42 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. but she would consent " with " no one was to blame but me," in Thackeray's " Esmond," ch. xiv. Accordingly, I doubt whether " none but they " and " nobody but /," which, in the dic- tion of prose, were, already in Gray's age, drop- ping out of literary currency, are, for us, " alto- gether faultless." Mr. Williams has by no means proved that, for everyday employment, they are " as good English as there is." Let versifiers avail themselves of them, if they please, still I am disposed to think that such locutions should be avoided by others. Not a few long-established modes of speech, as " whom do men say that I am? " we certainly do well in cashiering. That things of this kind, though ever so objectionable, possess an ob- stinate vitality, is a matter of course. " Be- tween you and I " deforms the pages of many an author that has, in the main, acquitted him- self meritoriously. And here, as curiosities, are two quotations for grammar quite as infirm: " By the mere Law of Nature, no one is bound by the act of another except he who is the successor "NONE BUT THEY," ETC. 43 of his property."— Rev. Dr. W. Whewell, " Gro- tius " (1853), vol. iii., p. 41. "All metaphysicians, except you, and /, and Boole, consider mathem-tics as," etc. — Professor A. De Morgan [1857], in the Rev. R. P. Graves's "Life of Sir W. R. Hamilton," vol. iii., p. 512, [1889]. On going afresh through the voluminous notes of which I formerly worked up a part, in criticizing the language of Cardinal Newman, I discover, in a group of them which would have suited my purpose, if it had struck my eye op- portunely, two, in particular. I refer to the passages which Mr. Williams cites, containing, respectively, " none but she" and " any men but they." Expressions matching these I have observed in Sheridan, Eliot Warburton, Sir G. W. Dasent, and others. High as was, and as still is, my esteem for Car- dinal Newman's English, I cannot regard his " none but she " and "any men but they " as very much better than, for instance, his "an human," " an hymn," " is dead of a fever," " an- other from" " anywhere than," " the hitherto editions," " has drank," " helpmeet," and " con- ventical " for " conventicular." 44 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. To conclude, I would here once more frankly acknowledge that " Modern English," which was published twenty years ago, is not free from grave defects. It is a book of which I am not in the least degree proud; and any genuine exposure of its mistakes I shall always welcome, as subserving the interests of truth. Mr. Wil- liams now has my second answer to his reiter- ated inquiry, " Has F. H. ever erred? " F. H. Marlesford, England, Sept. 4, 1893. P. S. — As concerns " there is one God, and there is none other but /te," but, when it follows none other, no other, no one else, etc., is equiv- alent to than, and is, to this day, sometimes substituted for it. Other and else, not their qualificatives, are there constructed with but. May it not be that some moderns, failing to perceive this, have given in to no one but he, on the hasty supposition of its being on all fours with none other but he ? To the same category as the ungrammatical " I saw no man but he" belongs the subjoined sentence from Cardinal Newman: "NONE BUT THEY," ETC. 45 " Certainly, I am one among a thousand, all of them wrong but /." — "Discussions," etc. [1872], p. 6. If Shakespeare were not an ancient, a parallel to this would be offered in his " what stays had I but they f " Even experts occasionally slip with respect to cases of pronouns, by prescribing them wrongly. Thus, Professor Adams S. Hill, quot- ing from Burke, " it will be, by some one abler than me, demonstrated," etc., would have " than me," replaced by " than /. " (" The Prin- ciples of Rhetoric" [1878], p. 46. I have seen no other edition of this work.) COMMENT ON DR. HALL'S "'NONE BUT THEY,' ETC." Dr. Hall's reply shows (what we knew) that, as regards none but they, etc., and none but them, etc., usage is unsettled, and that Dr. Hall prefers the latter expressions. In such matters Dr. Hall's preference is always important, but it is not necessarily conclusive as to what is permissible. — A few other examples of the nominative after hut are added below. His paragon of a wife was by no means the beautiful person he had made her out to be, nor did anybody but he seem to think her so. — George du Maurier, " Peter Ibbetson," Part II., p. loo. If, indeed, Isaac did not kill her before anyone but he knew. — Mrs. Humphry Ward, " The Story of Bessie Costrell " (New York and London, 1895), scene iii., p. 75. ... it was those scorned and detestled Gali- leans, and none but they, . . . who, returning good for evil, housed and lodged the scattered 46 COMMENT OAT " NONE BUT THEY." 47 remnants of that old world's wisdom. . .—J. H. Newman, " Historical Sketches " (5th ed., London, 1885), p. 109. And Rustum seized his club, which none but he Could wield. —Matthew Arnold, "Poems," " Sohrab and Rustum." . . . who but he? — Browning, " Asolando," — " Which? " Emilia, fairer than all else but thou. — Tennyson, " Audley Court," 1. 66. Would all the world but he had quite forsworn. " The Taming of the Shrew," Act IV., sc. ii. All slaine outright but he? — Chapman, " Bussy D'Ambois," II., i. — " Tragedies and Comedies," London, 1873. So fell it out within a munth or there aboute after the makeinge of the Statute for the oath of Supremacie and Matrimony, that all the Priestes of London and Westminster, and no temporall men but he [Sir Thomas More] were sent to appear at Lambith, . . . ther to tender the oath. . . — William Roper, "The Life of Sir Thomas More."— " More's Utopia," Pitt Press Series, p. xl. . . . and this token that Sir Thomas More told me from you, I well perceived none could tell it but you and I. — Lady Catherine Daubeney, 48 SOM£ QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Letter to Secretary Cromwell (1534), " Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies," Letter liii., vol. ii., p. 122. In other words " nobody else went but me (or I) " is variously analyzed as = " nobody else went except me," and " nobody else went except (that) I (went)," and as these mean precisely the same thing, both are pronounced grammatically cor- rect. . . — "A New English Dictionary on His- torical Principles," Oxford. — But. W. AN UNAUTHORITATIVE AUTHORITY. CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. •' IS BEING BUILT." COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S "CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE." AN UNAUTHORITATIVE AUTHORITY.* At page 114 of his " Recent Exemplifications of False Philology" (New York, 1872), Dr. Hall said: " To the authorities for expressions like is being built, which I formerly adduced, I can now add Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, Dr. Arnold, Dr. Newman, Mr. Ruskin, and the Rev. Charles Kingsley." Although there might be dififerent opinions concerning the value, as authorities for gram- matical usage, of most of the writers mentioned — at least when regarded separately, — yet there could be hardly any doubt as to the importance that would be attached to the name of John Henry Newman. What Dr. Hall himself thought of Dr. Newman as an authority has been shown in passages quoted by me in a for- mer letter. I will quote one of them again, at * The Dial, September I, 1893. 52 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. somewhat greater length, because it contains the gist of the matter now to be considered. In an appendix to his " Modern English " (1873, pp. 321-359) Dr. Hall returns to the dis- cussion of is being built, and there (pp. 328-9) says: " I need, surely, name no more, among the dead, who found is being built, or the like, acceptable. . . and we all know that the sort of phraseology under consideration is daily becoming more and more common. The best-Avritten of the English reviews, magazines, and journals are perpetually marked by it; and some of. the choicest of living English writers employ it freely. Preeminent among these stands Dr. Newman, who wrote, as far back as 1846: 'At this very moment, souls are being led into the Catholic Church, on the most various and independent impulses, and from the most opposite directions.' — ' Essays Critical and His- torical,' vol. 2, p. 448. " Bishop Wilberforce shall be summoned next." [Then follow four illustrative quotations from the bishop's writings.] No other instance of the use of this form of expression by Dr. Newman is quoted or re- ferred to by Dr. Hall in this appendix of thirty- nine pages (where less important authorities AN UNAUTHORITATIVE AUTHORITY. S3 are quoted several times), although Dr. Hall had previously said (p. 292) that he had " studied nearly every line of Dr. Newman's voluminous writings." This quotation from Newman, with others from other writers illus- trative of " imperfects passive," was con- tributed by Dr. Hall to "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles," where, shortened, it appears under ^^. Now an inquisitive reader would like to know whether Dr. Hall, at the time he wrote the re- marks quoted above, had knowledge of such a number of instances where Dr. Newman had used this locution in his voluminous writings, that he. Dr. Hall, could fairly say, either by di- rect assertion or by implication, that Dr. New- man employed it " freely." It will be noticed that the propriety of is being built is not ques- tioned here; that has been long settled. I do not know how many examples of the " imperfect passive " have been added from Cardinal Newman's writings, by Dr. Hall and others, to the one quoted above; but Professor Earle, in "The Philology of the English Tongue " (third edition, Oxford, 1879, pp. 54 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. 546-7) has given to the public very distinct in- formation as to Newman's feeling concerning is being : " From an early friend of Dr. Newman's I learnt that he had long ago expressed a strong dislike to the cumulate formula is being. I desired to be more particularly informed, and Dr. Newman wrote as follows to his friend : ' It surprises me that my antipathy to is being existed so long ago. It is as keen and bitter now as ever it was, though I don't pretend to be able to defend it. . . Now I know nothing of the history of the language, and cannot tell whether all this will stand, but this I do know, that, rationally or irrationally, I have an undying, never-dying hatred to is being, whatever arguments are brought in its favour. At the same time I fully grant that it is so convenient in the present state of the language, that I will not pledge myself I have never been guilty of using it.' " Although I have noticed two instances (one in a letter), besides the one cited above by Dr. Hall, where the " imperfect passive " was em- ployed by Dr. Newman, yet I am confident that its use by him — at least in print — was very rare. Surprise that one feels at the weakness of the support to be had from Dr. Newman is in- creased by surprise from a different source, when AN UNAUTHORITATIVE AUTHORITY. 55 one compares with the quotation from " Mod- ern English " given above Dr. Hall's opinion of Bishop Wilberforce as shown in other parts of the same volume. " Would that pessimists could learn to stifle their flatulent lamentations. Listen to another [Bishop Wilberforce] one who, for all his unctu- ous clutter, is, certainly, the most mechanical of contemporary prelates." — P. 290, foot-note. And at page 48 Dr. Hall pays this compliment to the Bishop's Enghsh: " The self-accommodating Bp. Wilberforce, when, a few years ago, he wrote of ' the alone Saviour,' was ridiculed, in that, when he cleansed his skirts of Low-churchism, he did not fully unlearn its characteristic jargon." Perhaps Dr. Hall did not intend to include Bishop Wilberforce (with Dr. Newman) in " some of the choicest of living English writers"; but if he did not, page 329 needs amending. W. CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE* To the Editor of the Dial: Descanting on English Imperfects Passive, in the appendix to my " Modern English " (1873), I say, respect- ing " the sort of phraseology under considera- tion," that " some of the choicest of living English writers employ it freely." I proceed: " Pre-eminent among these stands Dr. Newman, who wrote, as far back as 1846," etc. A single relevant citation from him is then adduced. Mr. R. O. Williams, in your issue of Septem- ber I, takes exception to my qualifier "freely." He adds: " Although I have noticed two instances (one in a letter), besides the one cited above by Dr. Hall, where the ' imperfect passive ' was employed by Dr. Newman, yet I am confident that its use by him — at least in print — ^was very rare." In 1879, the Rev. Professor John Earle pub- lished what follows, from a letter addressed by Dr. Newman to the Rev. George Buckle: *The Dial, December i, 1893. 56 CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. 57 " It surprises me that my antipathy to ' is being ' existed so long ago. It is as keen and bitter now as ever it was, though I don't pretend to be able to defend it. . . Rationally, or irrationally, I have an undying, never-dying hatred to ' is being,' what- ever arguments are brought in its favour. At the same time, I fully grant that it is so convenient, in the present state of the language, that I will not pledge myself I have never been guilty of using it." Here we have Dr. Newman all over: a man with whom, avowedly, feeling had the ascend- ancy over reason; who could hate intensely, however valid the demonstration might be that he should not hate at all; who, nevertheless, was not sure that his hatred, though " undy- ing, never-dying," had not sometimes been in abeyance; and who could confess all this ex- plicitly. But neither subtility nor learning is any warrant for ethical sanity. And why, one may ask, if imperfects passive are " convenient in the present state of the language," would they not have been equally convenient in ages gone by? His or // sufficed the contemporaries of Henry the Eighth, as a neuter possessive; but would its, if it had been evolved in their day, have proved to be less con- 58 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. venient than it has proved to be for hard on three centuries? As far back as 1838 I began the practice, which I have kept up ever since, of desultorily jotting down notes on points of English. Of those notes, which for many years were made solely for my own instruction, a group stood me in good stead, when, in 1871, I drew up my paper on " English Imperfects Passive," and sent it to America, where it was pubHshed in "Scribner's Monthly" for April, 1872. At that time, satisfied, for the most part, analysis apart, with a chronological investigation, and with showing that a noticeable array of authors already become classic — Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, and Landor — had not scorned the con- struction in question, I troubled myself but lit- tle to cite authorities for it of more recent date. It was from being reminded how highly Dr. Newman was esteemed, for his style, among writers then living, that, on recasting my paper in 1873, I summoned him as supporting the form of locution therein discussed. A twelve- month previously, when, in reading the first series of his " Essays Critical and Historical," I CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. 59 there encountered " are being led " — it oc- curred to me that I had not brought forward anything similar from him in my paper, and it also came back to me that I had, in the past, observed his use, repeatedly, of like expressions. Since 1872 I have hardly done more than cas- ually dip into any of his writings, his posthu- mous Letters excepted. True as it is that I quoted him but once for imperfects passive, yet I was convinced, when doing so, that I might speak as I did of his lending them his counte- nance. My memory, though I seldom trust to it, seldom plays me false. Not only are Dr. Newman's literary produc- tions numerous, but the minor ones, of which many have not been collected, are widely scat- tered; not even the catalogue of the British Museum guides one to anything like all of them. Still, as has been seen, Mr. Williams is " confident " that the occurrence, in them, of imperfects passive is " very rare." He speaks of two apposite quotations from them, besides that which I formerly gave. If he had gone far- ther afield, he would have made the discovery that the eloquent visionary manifested, practi- 6o SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. cally, nothing perceptible of the " hatred to ' is being' " which he was so incautious and obliv- ious as to profess. Dr. Newman, in his letter quoted in a preced- ing paragraph as well as by Mr. Williams, ex- presses himself as if, in his eyes, imperfects passive were things to be catholicly eschewed — ubique, semper, et ab omnibus, — and were on a par with, say, lay for lie, set for sit, and expect for suspect. The latter he would, no doubt, have held to be inexcusable, absolutely; but the former, despite his passionate reprobation of them, seem to have been rather attractive to him. Between 1832 and 1846 he was, accord- ing to his own adjudication, " guilty of ": " I fear the Church is being corrupted by the union." — "Letters" [1891], vol. i., p. 449. " You are being taught to unlearn the world." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 74. " What a mass of Catholic literature is now being poured upon the public!" — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 252. " Pusey was being worn out." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 282. " Every nerve is being exerted against Williams." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 366. CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. 6i " All that is dear to me is being taken from me." — Ibid., vol. ii., p. 464. It turns out, then, that Dr. Newman's " un- dying, never-dying hatred " of imperfects pas- sive was, in all likelihood, a mere transient spasm of displacency, possibly due to bile or in- digestion. Alternatively, may not the abhorrent employment of them have served him as an act of penance, in lieu of cultivating fleas inside his shirt, or disciplining himself with a cat-o'-nine- tails? Copying passages where, besides signifying an emphatic aversion to the late Bp. Wilber- force, I refer to somebody as having ridiculed him for using a term which that somebody characterizes as " jargon," Mr. Williams would have me, in the name of consistency, cancel my inclusion of the Bishop among " the choicest of living English writers." But, under favor, things entirely disparate are not to be con- founded. " We find, we confess," comments Lord Macaulay, " so great a charm in Mr. Southey's style, that, even when he writes non- sense, we generally read it with pleasure, ex- 62 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. cept, indeed, when he tries to be droll." Why, pray, may not a man be, personally, ever so objectionable, and also go the length of venting the most indisputable balderdash, and yet be, as a rhetorician, a very model of excellence? In the hope, apparently, of scoring a point of some sort against me, Mr. Williams allows him- self in a rash venture, or something worse. He credits me with having contributed to the " New Enghsh Dictionary " the quotation in which Dr. Newman has " are being led." By so doing he assumes to know more than I know myself. Even if he had ploughed with my heifer, he would not have discovered what he has stated as a fact. (See the Nation, vol. xliv., pp. 447~8.) Asmodeus ought not to dis- pense with his spectacles. Nor, perhaps, would it be altogether amiss, if he redoubled his dili- gence of research. F. H. Marlesford, England, Nov. 3, 1893. P. S. — For expressions typified by " is being built " I could give, in 1873, only three quota- tions earlier than 1800, namely, one dated 1795 and two dated 1797. I can now add to them CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. 63 Others dated 1667, 1769, 1779, 1782, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1788, 1792, 1795, and 1796 (two). For the years between 1800 and 1820 I have similar quotations, not before spoken of, from Dr. T. Beddoes, Lord Byron, Sir J. C. Hobhouse, W. H. Ireland, T. L. Peacock, and several anonymous novels. Imperfects passive have since been used by Dr. J. H. Appleton, Mrs. Sarah Austin, Sir C. Babbage, Mr. R. D. Black- more, Sir John Bowring, Rev. J. S. Brewer, Rev. Dr. J. W. Donaldson, Archdeacon Farrar, Miss Caroline Fox, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, Lady Duflf Gordon, W. R. Greg, Rev. W. Gresley, Prof. John Grote, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Sir J. F. W. Herschel, Dr. W. B. Hodgson, A. J. B. Hope, J. R. Hope-Scott, Sir H. S. Maine, Rev. Dr. S. R. Maitland, Mr. W. H. Mallock, Car- dinal Manning, Miss Harriet Martineau, J. S. Mill, J. C. Morison, Mr. John Morley, Prof. F. W. Newman, Laurence Oliphant, Rev. F. E. Paget, Rev. Mark Pattison, Rev. Baden Powell, Rev. J. Pycroft, Rev. Dr. E. B. Pusey, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Goldwin Smith, Mr Herbert Spencer, Sir J. F. Stephen, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Lord Strangford, J. A. Symonds, and many an 64 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. author here unnamed. The evidence, in all these cases, is at hand. In George Eliot's " Romola " alone, the form of construction referred to is exhibited no fewer than thirty- nine times. Mr. Williams, in " Our Dictionaries," p. 139, premising " 1800," advances the opinion that " from about that time . . . the innovation" presented in is being " must have spread with great rapidity." As a colloquialism, it may have done so; but it certainly did not do so in books till as late as 1830, or somewhat later. " Was being done away " is offered, by the Bible revisionists, as a variant rendering in II. Corinth., iii., 7. Yet, in I. Peter, iii., 20, they have retained the now vulgar " while the ark was a preparing. " To some, it is conceived, these particulars may be of interest. F. H. " IS BEING BUILT."* To the Editor of the Dial : I beg the favor of your inserting this short note. In the Dial of December i, where I specify recent users of expressions hke is being built, you have excised the names of Mr. G. J. Caley, the Earl of CarHsle, Arthur H. Clough, Mr. Richard Congreve, Prof. J. Conington, Mr. Bernard Cracroft, Sir George W. Dasent, Prof. A. De Morgan, and those of Bp. Thirlwall, Sir George O. Trevelyan, Anthony Trollope, Rev. R. E. Tyrwhitt, Eliot Warburton, Major George Warburton, H. W. Wilberforce, Prof. H. H. Wilson, Bp. Christopher Wordsworth, Miss C. M. Yonge. The omission of these names would, to some, argue a very imperfect acquaintance, on my part, with the English literature of the last seventy years. F. H. Marksford, England, Dec. 24, 1893. * The Dial, January 16, 1894. 6s COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S " CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE."* I. Most people when expressing their thoughts in print take more care in regard to forms of expression than when writing confi- dential letters to familiar friends. This, I sup- pose, is true even in the case of writers whose style in print is colloquial and familiar. More- over, a form of expression found in a private letter is not an instance of its use by the writer in print even though the letter be subsequently published in a book. Private letters often get into books, but publication does not convert their phraseology into expressions used in print. My apology for stating and insisting on mat- ters so obvious will be found in the fact that, obvious as these simple truths are, they have been wholly overlooked by Dr. Hall in his re- ply to my criticism of the evidence that Dr. * The substance of these comments appeared in a communica- tion to the Dial for May i6, 1894, under the head-line Unexpected Happenings. 66 CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. t>7 Newman employed the " imperfect passive " freely. Strange as it is, with my words before him (for he quotes them correctly), Dr. Hall offers, in contradiction of a remark of mine, ci- tations which by the very terms of the remark itself are excluded. And strange, too, he rests his case on those citations. He produces no other new ones. In the /?«■«/ for September i I said: " Although I have noticed two instances (one in a letter) besides the one cited above by Dr. Hall, where the ' imperfect passive ' was employed by Dr. Newman, yet I am confident that its use by him — ^at least in print — was very rare." After more than a column of desultory prelimi- naries. Dr. Hall proceeds to upset the confi- dence expressed by me above in this manner: " Between 1832 and 1846 he [Dr. Newman] was, according to his own adjudication, ' guilty of ' ;" — then follow six quotations from Car- dinal Newman's " Letters " (1891) published since his death. As the volumes in which these letters appear contain, besides the " Letters," some things actually written by Cardinal New- man for publication, I have taken pains to find 68 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. the context of these quotations, in order to as- certain beyond a doubt whether the passages cited by Dr. Hall are parts of private corre- spondence or whether they occur in writings in- tended for the public. Every one of these six instances of the " imperfect passive " cited by Dr. Hall occurs in a private confidential letter written to a familiar friend. Not one of them militates against my reservation as to the use of the imperfect passive by Cardinal Newman in print. Dr. Hall, however, introduces them with, " If he [Mr. Williams] had gone farther afield, he would have made the discovery," etc. ; and supplements them with " Nor, perhaps, would it be altogether amiss, if he redoubled his diligence of research." All this after quoting from me the precise words that shut out such citations. II. Dr. Hall's reply opens with the following statement : " Descanting on English Imperfects Passive, in the Appendix to my ' Modern English ' (1873), I say, respecting ' the sort of phraseology under consideration,' that ' some of the choicest of living English writers employ it freely.' I proceed : ' Pre- CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. 69 eminent among these stands Dr. Newman, who wrote, as far back as 1846,' etc. A single relevant citation from him is then adduced. " Mr. R. O. Williams, in your issue of Septem- ber I, takes exception to my qualifier ' freely.' " No, — begging the writer's pardon, — I have never intimated a doubt of the alleged fact that " some of the choicest of living English writers employ it freely." Dr. Hall's statement of the issue does not define it with sufficient exactness. The question raised by me was "whether Dr. Hall, at the time he wrote the remarks " quoted by him above, " had knowledge of such a num- ber of instances where Dr. Newman had used this locution in his voluminous writings that he. Dr. Hall, could fairly say, either by direct assertion or by implication, that Dr. Newman employed it "freely"; — whether, in other words, Dr. Hall, at the time he made the assertion rela- tive to Newman, had in his knowledge sufficient evidence to justify it. The doubt was sug- gested by (among other things): (i) a very strong antipathy which Newman had expressed for is being ; (2) the fact that Dr. Hall, in thirty- nine pages of text given to the discussion of ii 70 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. being, etc., had cited but one instance of its use by Newman, notwithstanding the preeminence assigned him among " some of the choicest of living English writers"; (3) that several in- ferior writers were, each, cited more than once; (4) a strong belief of mine that the use of is being, etc., by Newman — " at least in print — was very rare." Dr. Hall, in the course of his desultory reply, tells us when he found (1872) the said in- stance of the use cf the " imperfect passive " by Newman, and that, at the time he found it, he recalled the fact that he " had in the past observed his use repeatedly of like expres- sions." "My memory," Dr. Hall adds, " though I seldom trust to it, seldom plays me false." He then proves the trustworthiness of his memory by bringing forward quotations from letters published nineteen years after his memory had rendered the service specified. The quotations would be pertinent if ofifered by Dr. Hall as evidence of his clairvoyance — especially if they had been produced by him before the publication of the private letters where the passages quoted occur — but they CARDINAL NEWMAN VERSUS SE. 7^ cannot prove that, in and before 1872, Dr. Hall had seen in Newman's publications so many examples of the " imperfect passive " that he could fairly put Newman among the authors of whom he said, " some of the choicest of liv- ing English writers employ it freely." W. A PARDONABLE FORGETTING.— "BORN IN BOSTON." A PARDONABLE FORGETTING.— "BORN IN BOSTON."* An American can learn what prepositions are used in British English after born, before the names of towns and cities, by examining the " Dictionary of National Biography," edited by Mr. Leslie Stephen and Mr. Sidney Lee. The biographical sketches in it are so numerous and the writers of them are of such various oc- cupations and antecedents, that, concerning this point, the Dictionary may be regarded as a very trustworthy reflection of educated British usage. Before most towns and cities at is used in this dictionary after born, — as, born at Worcester, at Penzance, at Sheffield, at Salis- bury; but in is used before London. " Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682), physician and author, was born in London. . ." " Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer, first Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), . . . was born in London. . ." * The Dial, October i6, 1893. 75 76 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. "Abbott, Charles Stuart Aubrey, third Lord Tenterden, . . . was born in London. . ." " He [Sir WilHam a' Beckett] was born in London. . ." Before Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dub- lin, and some important foreign cities, at or in is used — at perhaps oftener than in, but in very often. " De Lane, Solomon, . . . born at Edinburgh." -" Darling, James, . . . was born in Edin- burgh." " Grant, Sir Francis, . . . born in Edinburg'h." " Davidson, Alexander Dyce, D. D., . . . was born in Aberdeen." " Finlay, Kirkman (1773-1842), . . . was born in Glasgow." " Macalister, Arthur, . . . bom in Glasgow." " Maccabe, William Bernard, . . . was bom of Roman Catholic parents in Dublin." " Mc- Cabe, Edward [same page], . . . bom at Dublin." " De Cort, Henry Francis, . . . was bom at Antwerp." " Decker, Sir Matthew, . . . bom in Amsterdam." I will add some instances of the use of in after born noted in the course of a half-hour's search in a small library. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in the year 1667.— William Edward Hartpole Lecky, "The A PARDONABLE FORGETTING. 77 Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland " (New York, 1883), p. I. . . . Swift was born in Dublin. . . — Thackeray, "The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century " (London, 1869), p. 136. With the exception of Wordsworth and Shelley, all our principal poets were either born in Lon- don, or made it their home. — Frederic Harri- son, " The choice of Books," etc. (London, 1886), p. 241. — Historic London. Henri Perreyve was born in Paris, April, 1831. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton, " Modern French- men " (London, 1887), p. 109. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was bom on Janu- ary 22, 1729, in Kamenz, a small town in Upper Lusatia. . . — James Sime, " Lessing " (Boston, 1877), p. 20. Born in London, Oct. 19, 1605. — ^W. A. Greenhill, " Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici," etc. (London, 1881), Chronological Table, p. xxvi. Gozzoli, Benozzo, . . . was born in Florence. — "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (Ninth Ed.) Hall or Halle, Edward, . . . was born in London. {Ibid.) Hamilton, Sir William, Bart., . . . was bom in Glasgow. (Ibid.) Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, was born in Dublin. (Ibid.) Decamps, Alexander Gabriel, . . . was born in Paris. (Ibid.) The life of Edmund Spenser has few incidents and little certainty. He tells us he was born in 78 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. London, near the Tower. . . — G. W. Kitchin, Introduction to " Book I. of The Faery Queene " (Oxford, 1881), p. v.* For the purpose of showing that a word or its employment is not peculiarly American, the quotations cited above are as good evidence as if they were taken from the writings of Cardinal Newman or Matthew Arnold. But Dr. Fitzedward Hall, in a letter pub- lished in the Academy, March 25, 1893, under the headline " The American Dialect," cites, as one among numerous examples of " indefensi- ble " Americanisms, this sentence: " Benjamin Franklin . . . was born in Boston." Dr. Hall brings forward this and many other quotations from an American schoolbook for the purpose of illustrating " locutions which go far to realize * " Johann Wolfgang Goethe, born at noon on the 28th August, 1749, in Frankfort-on-the-Main. . . " — Richard Holt Hut- ton, " Literary Essays" (London, 1888), p. 11. — Goethe and his Influence. " William Dyce was bom in 1806 in Aberdeen." — Sarah Tytler, "Modem Painters" (London, 1886), p. 229. — "Allan Ramsay, the son of Allan Ramsay the poet . . . was bom in Edinburgh in 1713." — Hid., p. 51. ' ' Anne-Robert- Jacques Turgot was born in Paris on the loth of May, 1727. . ."—John Morley, '' Critical Miscellanies, Second Series" (London, 1877). — Turgot. A PARDONABLE FORGETTING. 79 finished debasement." However, we have seen that British usage requires the employment of in after born before London, and permits its use before the names of other large cities, — at least before the names of other large cities not in England. The only thing questionable, then, in " born in Boston " is whether in is properly used before Boston little as well as Boston big, — ^whether, in other words, a writer should dis- tinguish by the preposition chosen the rather insignificant Boston that was Franklin's birth- place from the populous Boston of later years. What perplexities would beset writers of biogra- phy who tried to make such a distinction general, may be imagined. Fancy the applica- tion of a similar test of correctness to the afs and ins of authors writing about the Middle Ages. But without pressing this further, surely we may say that it is pardonable in Americans to forget for a moment the taper beginning of a city that has long held so large a place in their minds. Since an early day American usage has been unsettled as to the preposition employed after born. So SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. "... he [Franklin] was born at Boston . . ." —William Smith, D. D., " Eulogium delivered March i, 1791, in Philadelphia, before both Houses of Congress, and the American Philosophical Society," London, 1792. Does this at reflect Philadelphian jealousy? " I was bom in Boston, in New England." — Benjamin Franklin, " Memoirs," etc. (3 vols., London, 1818), vol. i., p. 5. There is not space here for the examination of Dr. Hall's opinions concerning the growth of an American dialect. That the widely spread English speech will eventually separate into distinct dialects, British, American, Australian, African, etc., I have no doubt. W. A CLASSICAL SOLECISM. "TO PART FROM" AND "TO PART WITH." COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. A CLASSICAL SOLECISM.* In parting, as employed in " the parting guest," there is a survival of a sense that for- merly was one of the commonest meanings of part when used intransitively, viz., depart, set out, go away. This archaic sense of part is seen in the Hnes below: " Before man parted for this earthly strand, While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood." — Matthew Arnold, Poems, "Revolutions." The employment of part in this way was ex- tremely frequent in the seventeenth and the latter part of the sixteenth century. "... she told him the truth, with all circum- stances ; how being parted alone \how having set out alone], meaning to die in some solitary place. . ." —Sir Philip Sidney, "Arcadia" (Collected Writ- ings, ed. 1598), p. 28. Part from, or merely part, was used with hence and similar adverbs. * The Dial, January 1, 1894. 83 84 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. " My lord, 't is time for us to part from hence." — Thomas Dekker, " The Shoemaker's Holi- day," Act v., sc. i. " No, I am fixt not to part hence without him." — Milton, " Samson Agonistes," 1. 1481. I have said that depart is an archaic meaning of part. Yet there is considerable evidence that this sense, in certain connections, at least, is in common use. For instance, in Webster's International Dictionary, the second definition oipart, V. i., is " to go away, to depart, to take leave," etc.; and one of the illustrative quota- tions cited is this: " He owned that he had parted from the duke only a few hours before." (Macaulay.) Similar definitions, without char- acterization or comment, are found in other dictionaries. But, if this sense of part is not really archaic, how does it happen that the his- toric difiference between part from and part with is so often overlooked by scholarly people when they are moved to caution the unlearned against a supposed misuse of part with ? Here is an example: " So, though we still say ' I parted mth a house,' or 'with a servant' (considered as a chattel) [!], A CLASSICAL SOLECISM. 85 we could not say ' When you parted with the King.' —Rich. II., 2, 2."— E. A. Abbott," A Shakespearian Grammar " (London, 1886), sec. 194, pp. 128-9. The index, referring to this passage, says " ' parted with ' for ' parted from,' 194." Now, as the play shows us, it was not " you," the queen, that parted from the king, but the king that parted from the queen — for Ireland. In saying " when you parted with the King," Shakespeare observed a distinction that was usually observed at that time between part from and part with, but which at the present day is generally disregarded. If the older meaning of part from had not sunk into the obscurity of an archaism, there would be fewer instances of those misconceived corrections of part with that turn up now so often. To part with once had three meanings: (i) To depart with. "... and taking onely with him certaine prin- cipal! Jewels of his owne, hee [Daiphantus] would have parted [departed] alone with Argalus . . . but that the whole multitude wold needes gard him [Daiphantus] into Arcadia." — Sir Philip Sidney, "Arcadia" (Collected Writings, ed. 1598), p. 26. 86 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. (2) To relinquish. " Soldiers forget their honours, usurers Make sacrifice of gold, poets of wit, And men religious part with fame and goodness.'' — Massinger, " The Fatal Dowry," Act I., sc. i. (3) To be separated from, — especially after the expression of farewell wishes, etc.; to dismiss or let go with courteous expressions of regard. " Come, He convey thee through the City-gate, And ere I part with thee, confer at large Of all that may concerne thy Love-affairs." — " The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act III., sc. i. We have to do here with the third meaning of part with, and to observe that it differed from the common meaning of part from. The widest divergence in the employment of the two phrases would be seen where somebody parted with a friend making or about to make a journey, and where an offended or unfriendly person parted from another unceremoniously. " Nay, with your favour let him stay a little ; I would part with him too, because he is A CLASSICAL SOLECISM. 87 Your companion; and I'll begin with him." —Thomas Dekker, " The Witch of Edmonton," Act III., sc. ii. " He parted frowning from me, as if ruin Leap'd from his eyes." — " Henry VIII.," Act III., sc. ii. In the former of these two quotations evi- dently the prominent idea belonging to part with is the observance of the friendly courtesies that usually are exchanged when friends or ac- quaintances separate. But it is likely that, when there was no occasion for accentuating the differences in sense between part with and part from, the two phrases were sometimes used interchangeably. It is not clear, for in- stance, that either would be distinctly more appropriate than the other in the next quo- tation. " Before I part with this Mayden City, I will make a parallel betwixt her and old Rome . . ." — ^James Howell, "A Survay of the Signorie of Venice," ed. 165 1, p. 44. Here the courteous dismissal or surrender of the " Mayden City " may be the idea uppermost in the mind of the writer. 88 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Whether the distinction between part from and part wit A, pointed out above, has lasted to the present day, I am uncertain; for, notwith- standing that the distinction is disregarded by the many, it may, perhaps, be observed by the few. But, anyhow, a misconception of the real difference between the two phrases has grown up, so that people who are ambitious to speak and write the best schoolmaster's English sub- stitute part from for part with in cases where, if the two phrases do not mean the same thing, part with is, in fact, more appropriate. It is to be regretted that this pedagogic afifectation is countenanced by Dr. Fitzedward Hall's high authority. In " Recent Exemplifications of False Phi- lology " (pp. 103-7), I^J"- Hall, citing examples of " solecisms " found in the writings of Na- thaniel Hawthorne and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, italicises with in the following passage quoted (pp. 105-6) from " The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table " : "I remember a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time." In the index, we are told that, at page 106, part with is for part from. A CLASSICAL SOLECISM. 89 But part with, as there employed by Dr. Holmes, has been classical English for three centuries. To the examples previously given I v\^ill add the following: "... to avoid seeing people that I love well enough to be very much mortified when I think I am going to part with them for ever." — Lady M. W. Montagu, Letter, Vienna, Jan. 16, O. S. 1717. But observe the use of part from in the next quotation: ■ Poor Lady G is parting from her discreet spouse for a mere trifle. — Id., Letter to the Countess of Mar, Twickenham, 1723. An affectionate wife, when in fear of parting with her beloved husband, heartily desired of God his life or society, upon any conditions that were not sinful. — Taylor. — Cited in Johnson's Dic- tionary (first ed., 1755), To part with. She could not divest herself of the belief that she had parted with Valancourt to meet no more. —Ann Radcliflfe, "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (2d ed., 1794), vol. i., ch. xiv., p. 402. She came solitarily down the gravel walk — a Miss Martin just appearing at the door, and part- ing with her seemingly with ceremonious civility. — ^Jane Austen, " Emma " (first ed.), vol. ii., ch. v., p. 72. 90 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. I had, apparently, most reason for dejection, because I was leaving the savior of my life. . . She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who had little means of serving her, except by kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow. — Thomas De Quincey, " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater " (Boston, 1856), p. 48. I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean; parted with my friends at Rome. . . — Cardinal Newman, " Apologia pro Vita Sua " (London, 1883), ch. i., p. 32. For here I came, twenty years back, — the week Before I parted with poor Edmund. — Tennyson, " The Brook." . . . unknown to any one lest the troops should lose courage at parting with him, he [Caesar] flew across through an enemy's country with a handful of attendants to Vienne, on the Rhone. . . — James Anthony Froude, " Csesar " (New York, 1879), p. 345. . . . when the pangs of parting with the old lady were no longer felt in all their intensity. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton, " Harry Blount," ch. ii. Our Boston informant writes so crisply and smartly that one is unwilling to part with him. — Matthew Arnold, " Civilization in the United States " (Boston, 1888), p. 78. The distinction between part from and part with that has been defined and illustrated above A CLASSICAL SOLECISM. 91 seems to have been observed more or less — I am not prepared to say always — by Macaulay, De Quincey, and Matthew Arnold. By De Quincey and Macaulay, however, the sugges- tion of good-will and regret associated with part with was disregarded. "... if I had parted with him at that moment, I should have thought of him ... as a surly and almost brutal fellow." — De Quincey, " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater " (Boston, 1856), p. 50. " Influenced by such considerations as these, James, from the time at which he parted in anger with his Parliament, began to meditate a general league of all Nonconformists. . ." — Macaulay, " History of England," ch. vii. James had in person prorogued Parliament.* " The authority of very excellent writers," says Dr. Hall in his Doctor Indoctus (p. 45) " justifies ' than whom '; and there is an end." Is not the authority for Dr. Holmes's " sole- cism " as good? Sometimes Dr. Hall's judg- ments seem arbitrary. W. * Compare : ' ' They parted from their father-in-law with many signs of love, and set forth on a journey with Dona Elvira and Dona Sol." — Macaulay, Preface to "Lays of Ancient Rome" (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, D. Appleton & Co., 1879), vol. vii., p.376. "TO PART FROM" AND "TO PART WITH." * To the Editor of the Dial: On these phrases, referred to below as A and B, I purpose to re- mark briefly. With B, denoting relinquishment, A was, for a considerable time, occasionally made one in signification. Of producible proofs of this, here are four followed by a quotation in which " part from " is noticeably archaistic: " From all parts of the iland the people come unto us, bringing all such things as they had, to wit, sheepe, cockes, etc. {from hennes they would not part), and divers sorts of fruits and rootes," etc. — Sir Richard Hawkins [died 1622], "The Hawkins' Voyages" (1878), p. 228. " And, as it [a chain] was giuen mee with a g^eat deale of loue, so did it exceedingly grieue mee that I must shortly part so unkindly with it. I would, if I could, haue kept it rather than my life, and never haue parted from it." — Rev. James *The Dial, March 16, 1894. 92 " TO PART FROM" 93 Mabbe, Trans, of " Aleman's The Rogue " (1622), vol. ii., p. 99. " Some condemned his resignation as an unad- vised act; as if he had first parted from his wits, who would willingly part from a Kingdome." — Rev. Dr. Thomas Fuller, "The Historic of the Holy Warre " (1639), p. 159, ed. 1647. " It being certain, and confirmed by Common Practice, that he that voluntarily parts from his right may do it on what terms he thinks fit," etc. — Rev. Thomas Creech, " Lucretius " (1682), Notes, p. 54, ed. 1683. " Their pride tenaciously grasping the shadow of power, whilst their property constrained them to part from the substance," etc. — ^Anon., " The Minstrel " (1793), vol. iii., p. 30. For B, importing, contextually, personal separation, as in " I parted with him," I have at hand quotations, dated from before 1600 to our own day, numbering upwards of a hundred. From first to last, however, among authors of mark, few have employed it at all freely, while many such authors have shunned it wholly. In Goldsmith, negligent as he is in his diction, I have noticed it but once, and but once in the thousands of pages bequeathed to us by Southey. Yet Mr. R. O. Williams, in the Dial 94 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. for Jan. i, roundly avers that it " has been clas- sical English for three centuries." There are industrious and observant students that know better. Dr. O. W. Holmes writes, " I remember a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time." Objecting to " part with " here, I have said that " part from " should be sub- stituted for it; and because of my having said so, Mr. Williams pronounces that " sometimes " my judgments " seem arbitrary." My objec- tion was made two and twenty years ago. Fashions in language change rapidly; and, therefore, it does not surprise me that, 1894, I find myself obliged to alter, in part, my criti- cism of 1872. Though, as I could show from books, " part from " him, or her, etc., was common at that date, one very rarely hears it nowadays, at least in English society. Indeed, it is, appar- ently, on the way to become, before very long, almost as outworn as " part from " a place. " They parted," etc., that is to say, mutually, is, however, still as current as ever. The humbler class of people hereabouts, in- " TO PART FROM" 95 eluding the most illiterate, continue, as might have been expected, to use what Mr. Williams calls a " pedantic affectation," namely, " I parted from him," and practically ignore " I parted with him." I think it worth mentioning, too, that, in a batch of 680 essays which I have had occasion to go through within a few weeks, I came on the Hke of " I parted from him " and " I parted with him " only once each, but on " we parted." etc., repeatedly. In fact, so infrequent at present is " part with " for " leave," "take leave of," " be absent from," " go away from," etc., and so infrequent has it been for the last fifty years, more or less, that it must be ranked, as is " never so," among those second-rate archaisms which the best writers of recent times have generally avoided. I am convinced, moreover, that any wide and heedful reader of English literature will share this opinion with me. As to the distinction which Mr. Williams professes to have discov- ered between " part from " and " part with," he may be assured that, when he has investigated further, he will see it to have no foundation but 96 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. fancy. Neither of the combinations, by the bye. occurs anywhere in the Bible. The approved uses of " part with " may here appropriately be enumerated. Primarily, it is a material thing that is parted with, by which is meant that one divests oneself of it by gift, sale, or loan. Further, one speaks of parting with a servant ; and Lord Macaulay writes of James II. that " he parted in anger with his Parliament," when he dispensed with it by prorogation.* One may say, too, with Tom Jones, " I feel my innocence, my friend; and I would not part with that feeling for the world." Nor, again, need one hesitate to copy the expression of Tom Jones, where, alluding to the prospects of his odious rival, Blifil, he protests to Sophia West- ern, " Indeed, I can never part with you; indeed, I cannot." Permissible, finally, is " part with," for " have done with," in the ensuing quotation, concluding this tedious letter: * If the reader will turn back to page 91 he will find this pas- sage quoted at greater length. — It seems to me that Dr. Hall imports into Macaulay's sentence a meaning that was not intended by its author. — W. ■' TO PART FROM." 97 " I shall only tell you, before I part with this city . . . that as I was one day coming forth from my Inn," etc. — Gabriel d'Emilianne, " The Frauds of Romish Monks and Priests " (1691), p. 109. F. H. Maries-ford, England, Feb. 17, 1894. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. I. — Dr. Hall says: (i) " Dr. O. W. Holmes writes, ' I remember a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time.' Objecting to ' part with ' here, I have said that 'part from' should be substituted for it; and because of my having said so, Mr. Williams pronounces that ' sometimes ' my judgments ' seem arbitrary.' "—P. 94.* (2) " In fact, so infrequent at present is ' part with ' for ' leave,' ' take leave of,' ' be absent from,' ' go away from,' etc., and so infrequent has it been for the last fifty years, more or less, that it must be ranked, as is ' never so,' among those second-rate archaisms which the best writers of recent times have generally avoided. I am con- vinced, moreover, that any wide and heedful reader of English literature will share this opinion with me." — P. 95. The pertinence of the remarks made in (2) would depend on the fact — if it were a fact — * Dr. Hall seemed to stigmatize Dr. Holmes's use oi part with as a "solecism." — See "Recent Exemplifications of False Phi- lology," pp. 105-7. 98 COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPLY. 99 that Dr. Holmes used part with in some one of the senses there stigmatized. But apparently part with was not so used by Dr. Holmes. That it was so used is one of Dr. Hall's assump- tions. The passage in which Dr. Holmes's sentence is found is given below.* II. If it be true that " the best writers of recent times have generally avoided " the em- ployment oipart with in the senses mentioned by Dr. Hall in (2), the fact, so far as it goes, tends to show that the difference between part with and part from, pointed out by me, has not been wholly obliterated. Dr. Hall brushes aside in a characteristic manner the distinction I have mentioned, but the distinction is sup- ported by his observations as quoted above. III. As to the greater frequency of we or they parted, as compared with T or he parted *" There are a good many symbols, even, that are more ex- pressive than words. I remember a young wife who had to part with her husband for a time. She did not write a mournful poem ; indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps hardly said a word about it ; but she quietly turned of a deep orange color with jaundice." — "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" (Boston, 1871), VI., p. 152. loo SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. from and / or he parted with, it may be re- marked that either of the latter phrases may, nevertheless, be common. In the writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, / parted from, I parted with, and the Uke, were certainly common, but their use was much less frequent than we, and they parted. This would naturally be the case. We parted is less distinc- tive than I parted with or I parted from, and therefore is applicable to more instances of separation. IV. The sort of company in which the " sole- cism " part with is found is shown below. What said our Cosin when you parted with him? Farewell. — " Richard II.," Act I., sc. iv. Come He convey thee through the City-gate, And ere I part with thee, confer at large Of all that may conceme thy Love-affairs. — " The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act III., sc. i. Nay, with your favour let him stay a little; I would part with him too, because he is Your companion; and I'll begin with him. —Thomas Dekker, " The Witch of Edmonton," Act III., sc. ii. COMMENTS ON DR, HALLS REPLY. loi A Wench Parting with her Sweet-heart. — L'Es- trange, " Fables of .^Esop and other Eminent Mythologists " (2d. ed., London, 1694). — Fable cclxix. ... to avoid seeing people that I love well enough to be very much mortified when I think I am going to part with them for ever. — Lady M. W. Montagu, Letter, Vienna, Jan. 16, O. S., 1717. An affectionate wife, when in fear of parting with her beloved husband, heartily desired of God his life or society, upon any conditions that were not sinful. — Taylor. — Cited in Johnson's Dic- tionary (first ed., 1755), To part with. She could not divest herself of the belief that she had parted with Valancourt to meet no more. — ^Ann RadclifFe, "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (2d. ed., 1794), vol. i., ch. xiv., p. 402. She came solitarily down the gravel walk — a Miss Martin just appearing at the door, and part- ing with her seemingly with ceremonious civility. — Jane Austen, " Emma " (first ed.), vol ii., ch. v., p. 72. . . . the doctor . . . unwilling to part with so charming a guest, seized him now by the but- ton.— Lytton, " Paul Clifford," ch. xi.* Influenced by such considerations as these, James, from the time at which he parted in anger * Compare: "Augustus Tomlinson, on parting from Long Ned, had succeeded in reaching Calais." — Ihid., ch. xxxvi. 102 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. with his ParHament, began to meditate a general league of all Nonconformists. . . — Macaulay, " History of England," ch. vii. The only men who, as I opine, ought to be allowed the use of Clubs, are married men without a profession. . . Such men are best there during the daytime surely. When you part with them, dear ladies, think of the rapture consequent on their return. — Thackeray, " The Book of Snobs," ch. xxxvii. I had, apparently, most reason for dejection, because I was leaving the savior of my life. . . She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who had little means of serving her, except by, kindness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow. — Thomas De Quincey, " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater " (Boston, 1856), p. 48. For here I came, twenty years back, — the week Before I parted with poor Edmund. —Tennyson, "The Brook." A little after you had parted with him, He suddenly dropt dead of heart-disease. — ^Tennyson, " Sea Dreams." But Hetty . . . was absorbed in the thought that Arthur Donnithorne would soon be coming into the church. . . She had never seen him since she parted with him* in the wood on Thursday * Compare : " . . . the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago." — Ibid., ch. iv. COMMENTS ON DR. HALL'S REPL Y. 103 evening. . . — George Eliot, "Adam Bede," ch. xviii. . . . since I parted with you at Dieppe, . . . —Charlotte M. Yonge, " Nuttie's Father," ch. xviii. I went to various coasts of the Mediterranean; parted with my friends at Rome. . . — Cardinal Newman, " Apologia pro Vita Sua " (London, 1883), ch. i., p. 32. . . . sometimes when I part with you, I am nearly moved to tears. . . — Ihid., ch. iv., p. 225. Modestus parted with him with the respect which firmness necessarily inspires in those who witness it. — Id., " Historical Sketches " (5th ed., London, 1885), vol. ii., p. 11. I parted with my chance companion at Knowlesbury. . . — Wilkie Collins, " The Woman in White " {Hartright's Story, ch. i.). . . . think- ing we had said all that was necessary on either side, [I] made an attempt to get back to the house. But Mme. Fosco seemed resolved not to part with me, . . .— " The Woman in White," IV., June 17. . . . her marriage [with Michael Sunlocks] and the festival that followed, had passed her by like a dream. Then came the first short parting with Sunlocks when he had said, " I must leave you for a fortnight." — Hall Caine, " The Bond- man," Michael Sunlocks, ch. ix.* * Compare : " . . . and seeing Adam part from the rest, he had concluded that with the purse-bearer the purse of the company had gone." — " The Bondman," Red Jason, ch. i. 104 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. We parted with them at Hungerford, walking up to the station with them. — ^WilHam Black, " The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat," ch. xxvi. We parted with them more in sorrow' than in anger, . . . — Ibid., ch. xxiii. . . . unknown to any one lest the troops should lose courage at parting with him, he [Caesar] flew across through an enemy's country with a handful of attendants to Vienne, on the Rhone. . . — James Anthony Froude, " Caesar " (New York, 1879). P- 345- . . . when the pangs of parting with the old lady were no longer felt in all their intensity. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton, " Harry Blount," ch. ii. Our Boston informant writes so crisply and smartly that one is unwilling to part with him. — Matthew Arnold, "A Word about America," — Civilization in the United States (Boston, 1888), p. 78. This may be a mixed company. But such is Literature. W. THE AMERICAN DIALECT. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. A REIOINDER. DR. HALL'S REJOINDER EXAMINED. A SURPRISING CONCLUSION. THE AMERICAN DIALECT * Marlesford. The following well-meant critique, mainly as it now stands, was offered to the editors of two American periodicals, but was declined. Quite possibly it would have fared differently with it, if the faults italicized in my quotations had been accompanied by corrections of them. In the absence of these, nine in ten of the per- sons for whose behoof I wrote would, no doubt, fail, in many cases, to see that I was pointing to what deserves censure. Again, the grooves in which Americans will- ingly allow one another to run are, as a gen- eral rule, somewhat limited in number; and an essayist must noticeably outrank Outis Nemi- nissimus, to count on any encouragement from them in sporting a groove that is pretty much all his own. According to Sydney Smith, " it is always considered as a piece of impertinence, *1he Academy, London, March 25, 1893, pp. 265-7. io8 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. in England, if a man of less than two or three thousand a year has any opinions at all upon important subjects." Mutandis mutatis, a simi- lar canon of judgment still largely obtains elsewhere. F. H. DOES IT MATTER WHAT KIND OF LANGUAGE WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN? This question, it may be confidently assumed, is one to which all, barring the grossly illiterate, would reply in the affirmative. Most of them, too, if asked to specify the kind of language they preferred that their children should be taught, would name genuine English. Yet they would do so unadvisedly. For genuine English is no longer, practically, our portion; and our teaching it for everyday purposes would be an anachronism. Instances are most abundant in which we have, instead of its words and phrases, substitutes for them. Of the dif- ference in quality between such of these substi- tutes as are tolerable and such as should be pro- nounced intolerable, not many of us, however, have other than a hazy conception. By way of illustration, in the issue of the Educational Re- THE AMERICAN DIALECT. 109 view for May of last year, the epithet " admi- rable," and without discrimination of particulars, is applied to .* And "admirable," in the sense of the term now obsolete, that per- formance, for its corruptness of dialect, assur- edly is. It is to this feature of it that, in the interest of sound and rational culture, I would invite the attention of our educationists. Disporting himself, through the medium of flimsy novels, as an accessary to neurospastic fanaticism, Mr. has given copious and decisive proof of a capability of solecizing little short of incalculable. From a person who, in our day, can write, for example, " if Roxy hadn't have been cross, he might have got along," what, in the article of barbarism, may not be anticipated? It was to my disquiet, therefore, that, aware of Mr. 's regret- table popularity, I was informed of his hav- ing ambitiously ventured to subserve, as an author, the cause of juvenile instruction; there being little likelihood that, as regards observ- ing propriety of expression, any one will acquit * In reprinting this letter, the name of the book criticised and the name of its author have been omitted. W. no SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. himself better, when addressing the young, than when ad/dressing adults. With the sub- ject-matter of I am not here con- cerned; but our teachers should, I think, have jt clearly impressed on them how profusely the work is besprinkled with locutions which go far to realize finished debasement. My grounds for so thinking will be discovered, on considering the quotations from it which follow. Of these quotations, the first group exemplifies its mis- uses of particles and the like: Like Columbus, he studied much about geog- raphy, as it was then understood. P. i8. We cannot tell the story of the war here; you will study about it in larger histories. P. 183. Then he sailed out, and followed along the shores, till he came to, etc. P. 45. Henry . . . thought he could find a way to get around Africa to the rich countries of Asia. P. 3. So he turned around, and marched swiftly back to Jamestown. P. 83. He used to carry letters around in the crown of his hat, and distribute the mail in that way. P. 177. Washington was at the North, watching New York. P. 122. In one council at the South the Indians refused to join him. P. 147. Wire stretched back and forth across the room. P. 163. THE AMERICAN DIALECT. m Soaked by rain, he stopped at an inn. P. 90. They shaved his head, except for a single lock. P. 139. Franklin came back to Philadelphia, as clerk for a merchant. P. 94. Benjamin Franklin . . . was born in Boston. P. 86. Business-men were slow to try new things in that time. P. 167. The professor . . . had not eaten a mouthful in twenty-four hours. P. 166. Jefferson was sent to take Franklin's place as American Minister in France. P. 130. Sometimes he studied fifteen hours in a day. P. 127. Smith spent his summer on the French fleet. P-34. At length the most of the savages submitted. P. 157- They determined to set up as a country to them- selves. P. 119. King Henry the Seventh fitted up Cabot with another and much larger expedition. P. 21. " To make money out of the whale-fishery," " his men suffered with hunger and sickness," and " people paid a dollar apiece to see the wonder," on pp. 44, 48, 144, are only low-class. To the foregoing citations a much larger number, of the same stamp, might, if it were necessary, be added. Several of the aberrancies 112 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. indicated in them are, it is true, of almost uni- versal currency in the United States; but yet, as having no good warrant in reason, and as being shunned by our most approved stylists, they ought, doubtless, to be discouraged. Salient among them are the three mistaken uses of around, for which sixteen quotations, besides the three that have been transcribed, are producible from the little manual under examination. One, at least, of those uses, as in " a way to get around Africa," it may be noted in passing, seems to have found its way rather freely into a rank of literature which should have withstood its intrusion. Miscellaneous modes of speech which, on one score or another, Mr. would have done well to avoid, are, with a host of others, such as these: He said that the Indians would not amount to any- thing, when they came to fight his well-drilled Eng- lish troops. P. 112. His wife helped him to attend the shop. P. 96. Those who were building the telegraph. P. 168. The fire was built out of doors. P. 172. Washington had all his camp-fires built up. P. 120. THE AMERICAN DIALECT. 113 Some of the Southern States claimed that they had a right to withdraw from the Union. P. 182. They believed that Africa reached clear to the south pole. P. 3. The judge concluded to furnish the two thousand dollars. P. 164. Tecumseh cooled off, and had another talk with the governor the next day. P. 149. He did not have much appetite. P. 27. He did not have them. P. 173. You look wild and mutter. That don't matter. P. 76. That river empties into the Mississippi. P. 174. To get out of the way of their troubles. P. 49. But, after a while, France sent men and ships to help the United States finish the war. P. 122. He went out to work as a hired man. P. 175. After he ceased to keep store, he was post-master. P. 177. He was only a large boy, when, etc. P. 104. Hudson persuaded his men to turn about, and sail with him to America, to look up the way to India that Smith had written about. P. 45. Benjamin ran the little paper while his brother was in prison. P. 89. He made his engine run a number of oars. P. 142. But Benjamin Harrison just took him up in his arms, and sat him down in the chair. P. 146. A wig, or suit of false hair. P. 95. Little George Was:hington went to a school taught by a man named Hobby. P. 102. 114 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Even if he had wanted to, he could not have wasted his time ... by reading exciting stories. P. 173- Captain John Smith . . . traded a lot of trinkets with the Indians for corn. P. 26. Also P. 16. He . . . made his entry in a triumphant proces- sion. P. 14. If you pick a piece of twine string to pieces. P. lOI. They laughed at Franklin, because he did not use beer. P. 94. So Franklin's father took him walking with him sometimes. P. 87. If you can send that, so that Professor Morse can read it at the other end of the wire, I will be convinced. P. 167. The plentiful specimens of bad grammar and slovenly construction afforded by Mr. are, for want of space, passed by unnoticed. Nor can his notions of orthoepy be allowed more than a glance. Nowhere but in remote backwoods can he have brought himself to adopt Musco'vy and Tecumsy. Moreover, where there are two pronunciations of a word, varying in repute, he invariably gives the pref- erence, ochlocratically, to the inferior; as is seen in Allegha'ny, cas'sava, and pat'ent. THE AMERICAN DIALECT. US Most of the vulgarisms and sectionalisms, with other deviations from the best American English, exhibited in the phrases instanced above, are such that no comment on them can be necessary for any one whose acquaintance with our dialect deserves to be accounted criti- cal. Some, however, there are among them, once unobjectionable, but now fallen from their old estate, — as is without for unless, — which, nearly as much for the great majority of our scholars as for others, seem to require annota- tion. One or two of them shall be mentioned. Only in America, I believe, is the verb empty, except as meaning " become empty," any longer intransitive: the humblest rustic in my parish would say, " The Ore empties itself into the Aide." Again, help finish, instead of help to finish, be it as it may elsewhere, is, in this country, now exclusively confined to the dis- course of plebeians. And not a shade more rep- utable, here in Great Britain, and barely more endurable than does not be, etc., are does not have, did not have, etc., though their preten- sions to respectability are observably dififerent in the United States. ii6 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Passing to the common euphemism a hired man, I would also ask, under my breath, whether it is not as ludicrous, to the full, as a suit of hair. But, from reluctance to subject myself to the imputation of tepid or waning patriotism, having made bold to this extent, I think it prudent to forbear indulging in farther strictures. It has been posited above that Americans who can discriminate, otherwise than darkly, between what is expediently eligible in their native speech and what is not so, are seldom to be met with. But this position, I am well aware, will be challenged by many. " Our Eng- lish," they will maintain, " has, to be sure, a few trifling peculiarities, which everybody knows to be such"; and one may expect to be told, also, that, " nevertheless, it is as good, taken in its entirety, as the English of Eng- land." To this I demur. With those who, either from denseness of ignorance or from aesthetic insensibility, deliver themselves in this uncritical fashion, it would be squandering words to argue: they must be left to perish in their pravity. More or less as much as the THE AMERICAN DIALECT. 117 language of Scotland, American English, as a whole, has already come to be a dialect ; and day by day it entitles itself more and more to that designation. How difificult it is for an Ameri- can to keep free from dialectism is easily enough illustrated. In the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, which has just been set on foot, the very first page begins with the following sentence: "The division of labour, essential to industrial thrift and prosperity, has always been regarded as tending to minimize the manhood of the operator." The writer of this is the Rev. Dr. A. P. Peabody, who graduated as long ago as 1826. Dr. Peabody uses thrift — ^and, by the way, since he couples with it prosperity, uses the latter tautologically — for " thriving condi- tion " ; a sense of the term which, though preva- lent throughout the United States, has, it appears, been extinct in England since the seventeenth century. Yet this accomplished divine is a more competent Anglicist than one American in many myriads. If egotism for a moment is pardonable, no false shame deters me from avowing that, though I have lived away from America up- il8 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. wards of forty-six years, I feel, to this hour, in writing English, that I am writing a foreign language, and that, if not incessantly on my guard, I am in peril of stumbling. Nor will it be amiss for any American, when experiment- ing like myself, to feel as I do, and never to re^ lax his vigilance, if he would not every now and then reveal himself, needlessly and to his preju- dice, as an exotic. Not for five minutes can he listen to the conversation of his fellow-country- men, or for that length of time read one of their newspapers, or one of such books as they usu- ally write, without exposure to the influence of some expression which is not standard English. Try as he will to resist this influence, successful resistance to it is well-nigh impossible. On the other hand, if he is indifferent about resisting it, his fancied English will, a thousand to one, be chequered with solecisms, crudenesses, and piebald jargon, of the sort which the pages of Mrs. Stowe, Mr. E. P. Roe, and Mr. Howells have rendered familiar. In short, the language of an American is, all but inevitably, more or less dialectal. That, for the most part, there is not even colourable justification of its being THE AMERICAN DIALECT. 119 SO is, from a cosmopolitan point of view, to be regretted. To return to Mr. , it would be idle to contend that his Americanisms have not, in large share, the countenance of all our later writers of any conspicuous note, a mere hand- ful of them, the very choicest, omitted from account. And even these Americanize in some measure. Indeed, if they did otherwise, in ad- dition to perplexing most of their readers, they would occasionally be chargeable, not unfairly, with affectation. In so saying, I of course imply that our lin- guistic innovations, some of which have estab- lished themselves ineradicably, and are, in fact, indispensable, are by no means to be con- demned without exception. At present, how- ever, without undertaking the defence of such of them as are defensible, I limit myself to dep- recating those which are indefensible, either as being entirely gratuitous or on other grounds equally valid. Of innovations of this descrip- tion, which so commonly disfigure American English, the number, I repeat, is very great. Manifestly, then, their diffusion and their con- I20 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. stant increase call for grave consideration. That a duty devolves on us, in connexion with them, is what I would suggest by this slight paper. Earthquakes, dynamiters, influenza, and kings to the contrary notwithstanding, no good reason is obvious why our little Tellus, though ever so crank, should not forge along till the year 2000. And momentous changes must, by that time, be wrought on our continent. For one thing, our English-speaking population will then have come to exceed, probably by at least sixfold, that of Great Britain. In a future not far distant, we shall also cease to be appreciably dependent on the Old World for anything either useful or ornamental. Again, as respects resourcefulness, energy, and persistence, our possession of these endowments no one will be so hardy as to gainsay. And why should not the zeal which we of the present day evince, as for other things, for education in all its departments, intellectual, physical, indus- trial, and artistic, be evinced by our descend- ants? Already that zeal has borne worthy fruit; and it will bear fruit still more worthy. Al- THE AMERICAN DIALECT. 121 ready, too, we owe to it a specific character, ex- tending, in its manifold distinctiveness, to our speech. Circumstances generated by unprece- dented combinations have entailed on us a recognizable dialect, and one which is rapidly ■developing. Whether it is fated to remain a dia- lect is a hazardous speculation. Yet, unless we chance to breed a matter of half a dozen Shake- speares and Miltons, it will hardly, without great purification, reach the dignity of a sub- stantive language. But, be its eventual status what it may, that which should especially weigh with us is its unquestionable destiny to serve as the mother-tongue of hundreds of millions. Towards the shaping of it, so that our succes- sors shall do us credit, we can contribute con- sciously. Most surely it behoves us, therefore, to take measures, and take them promptly, to the end that, so far as may prove feasible, its evolution be controlled by proficients in knowl- edge and taste, and not by sciolists and vul- garians. November, 1892. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN* In Dr. Fitzedward Hall's remarks on " The American Dialect" (the Academy, March 25, 1893, pp. 265—7) there is a recognition of two kinds of Americanisms, — " tolerable " and " in- tolerable." The former are noticed only by- allusions here and there; the latter are com- mented on at some length, and illustrated by very numerous quotations taken from an American schoolbook. As it is my purpose to show that many of the locutions supposed by Dr. Hall to be Americanisms are not peculiarly American, I will first make the fact evident that they were cited as such by Dr. Hall. In his letter to the Academy, Dr. Hall says: "To return to Mr. [the author of the schoolbook previously referred to] , it would be idle to contend that his Americanisms have not, in large share, the countenance of all our later writers of any conspicuous note, a mere handful of them, the very choicest, omitted from account. And even these Americanize in some measure. Indeed, if * Modern Language Notes, December, 1893. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 123 they did otherwise, in addition to perplexing most of their readers, they would occasionally be chargeable, not unfairly, with affectation. ■' In so saying, I, of course, imply that our linguistic innovations, some of which have estab- lished themselves ineradicably, and are, in fact, indispensable, are by no means to be condemned without exception. At present, however, with- out undertaking the defence of such of them as are defensible, I limit myself to deprecating those which are indefensible, either as being entirely gratuitous or on other grounds equally valid. Of innovations of this description, which so com- monly disfigure American English, the number, I repeat, is very great. Manifestly, then, their diffusion and their constant increase call for grave consideration. That a duty devolves on us, in connexion with them, is what I would suggest by this slight paper." — P. 266, 3d column. These remarks follow a digression in which Dr. Hall speaks of the difficulty he has experi- enced in unlearning his American English. In returning to Mr. , Dr. Hall returns to the American writer whose schoolbook has sup- plied him with all his dialectic examples except one. In the introductory part of his letter (p. 265), Dr. Hall tells us that "genuine English is no longer, practically, our portion. . . Instances are most abundant in which 124 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. we [Americans] have, instead of its words and phrases, substitutes for them. Of the difference in quality between such of these substitutes as are tolerable and such as should be pronounced intoler- able, not many of us, however, have other than a hazy conception." For the purpose of illustrating " such [sub- stitutes] as should be pronounced intolerable," Dr. Hall produces his quotations from this American schoolbook. Although capping " Americanisms " by cit- ing similar expressions from British literature is not very serious employment, it will be ad- mitted, I think, that the exercise has some utility when the discoverer of " our linguistic innovations " is so high an authority as Dr. Hall. It is true that the English of some of the British writers quoted below is not first- rate, but for capping " Americanisms " it is as good as the best. I will prefix H. to quotations cited by Dr. Hall. The italics indicating the supposed Americanisms are his. (H. I.) The judge concluded to furnish the two thousand dollars. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 125 "Concluded," as here employed, expresses a complex of ideas, — doubt or hesitation, consid- eration, decision, intention. Conclude is simi- larly used by Mr. Thomas Hardy. ... if I continue to feel about the business as I feel at this moment, — perhaps I may conclude never to go at all. — " The Woodlanders," ch. xxvii.* (H. 2.) You look wild and mutter. That don't matter. They don't want it, but that don't matter. — H. Rider Haggard, " Mr. Meeson's Will," ch. ii. Don't for doesn't is a very common British colloquialism.f (H. 3.) Then he sailed out, and followed along the shores, till he came to. Along is not redundant here; it permits the mind to give more attention to the course fol- lowed. * "... he concluded to take ship to a point of the southern coast.. . ." — Yla[\ Came, " 'T'h&'RandLTaa.n" {Michael Sunlocks, ch. xi.). f " Clive going to see his military friends in the Regent's Park once, . . . heard two or three young men talking, and one say to another, ' I bet you three to two Farintosh don't marry her, and I bet you even that he don't ask her.' " — Thackeray, " The New- comes" (London, 1878), vol. ii., ch. vii. " Rich meats it don't obtain at call." — Arthur Hugh Clough, " Dipsychus," sc. v. — Poems. — London, i888. 126 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Csesar meanwhile had followed along Pompey's track, hoping to overtake him. — ^James Anthony Froude, " Caesar," ch. xxiii.* (H. 4.) Benjamin Franklin . . . was born in Boston. In instead of at. . . . Swift was born in Dublin. . . — Thackeray, " The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Cen- tury " (London, 1869), p. 136. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born on January 22, 1729, in Kamenz, a small town in upper Lu- satia. . . — James Sime, " Lessing " (Boston, 1877), p. 20. (H. 5.) To make money out of the whale-fishery. Having the national respect for money, he [the average Briton] in secret, if not in public, despises it [literature]. . . What can literature be worth, if a man can't make a fortune out of it? — H. Rider Haggard, " Mr. Meeson's Will," ch. iv. (H. 6.) People paid a dollar apiece to see the wonder. The tax-gatherer, however, does not credit the ladies with even one-seventh of a soul apiece, . . . —Fred. J. Whishaw, " Out of Doors in Tsarland " (London, 1893), p. 5. ♦Compare: "... seating himself where he could see along the short passage to the open dairy door." — George Eliot, "Adam Bede," ch. vi. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 127 . . . the regiment devoted itself to polo with unexpected results, for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible polo corps, the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies apiece for a short hour's fight. . .— Rudyard Kipling, " Mine Own People " {The Man Wlw Was).* (H. 7.) If you can send that, so that Professor Morse can read it at the other end of the wire, I will be convinced. I have not observed that the misuse of will for sAaU is commoner in American than in English writing. If ye do this thing we will be satisfied indeed. — H. Rider Haggard, "King Solomon's Mines," ch. xi. * " At that moment the door-bell was heard to ring, and the women gave a scream apiece, as if the bailiffs were actually coming to take possession." — Thackeray, " The Newcomes " (London 1878), vol. ii., ch. xxxiii., p. 360. "... those seven or eight Irish bishops, the probates of whose wills were mentioned in last year's journals, and who died leaving behind them some two hundred thousand pounds apiece." — Thackeray, " The Book of Snobs," ch. xi. " If there were a thousand men with ten pounds apiece, it would not be worth while for nine hundred and ninety of them to rob ten, and it would be a bold attempt for six hundred of them to rob four hundred. But if ten of them had a hundred thousand pounds apiece, the case would be very different." — Macaulay, " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays " (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879), ^°'- ^•> P- 292. — Mill's Essay on Government, 128 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Then I suppose we'll have a council of regency, and a tutor for the young prince, . . . — Rudyard Kipling, " Mine own People " (At the End of the Passage). (H. 8.) Little George Washington went to a school taught by a man named Hobby. The first school I remember was taught by the regular old dame of Shenstone's verse, in a high- crowned black bonnet, worn permanently. — Char- lotte M. Yonge, "An Old Woman's Outlook," etc. (London, 1892), p. 81. (H. 9.) Even if he had wanted to, he could not have wasted his time ... by reading exciting stories. The disembodied infinitive, as this variety of infinitive might appropriately be called, haunts not American English exclusively.* "But don't [said Lady Holmhurst], if you don't wish to, you know." But Augusta did wish to, and then and there she unfolded her whole sad story. . . — H. Rider Haggard, " Mr. Meeson's Will," ch. v., Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good asked me to [write it]. — Id., * " They could still eat and drink and be merry. I could not, and did not even want to." — George du Maurier, " Peter Ibbet- son," Part II., p. 133. " I should like to very much ; but no, no, no, it is quite impos- sible." — Robert Louis Stevenson, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (Incident at the Window). NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 129 "King Solomon's Mines," ch. i. 1 think that each of us was wondering if we should ever see that wagon again; for my part I never expected to. — Ibid., ch. iv. (H. 10.) Some of the Southern States claimed that they had a right to withdraw from the Union. A clause introduced by that is here made the object oi claim.* ... a writ must be issued to revoke the probate, and claiming that the court should pronounce in favour of the later will. — H. Rider Haggard, " Mr. Meeson's Will," ch. xvi. (H. II.) Benjamin ran the little paper while his brother was in prison.f * " Not the least satisfactory thing about the [Venezuela] com- promise is that it will enable both sides to claim a victory. Lord Salisbury can claim having protected the rights of British settlers. Mr. Olney can claim with literal truth that he has succeeded in bringing Great Britain to arbitration." — The Daily News, London. — Quoted in the Evening Post, New York, November 10, i8g6. Claim is often, and correctly, used in the sense to assert (as something to be concede^. When so used it may be followed by that or an infinitive ; as, they claimed that the governor had exceeded his authority ; he claimed to be a prophet. " In his own field, Lightf oot was much greater than Newman. Any sensible man who knew both their writings on such a subject as the authenticity of the Ignatian epistles, or Justin Martyr's ' Memorials of the Apostles,' would regard Lightfoot as a sure and trustworthy guide, which Newman neither was nor so much as claimed to be." — The Spectator, August 5, 1893, p. 172. Claim, in this sense, is sometimes pressed into odd service ; as, he claims that he was drunk when he signed the paper. \ ' ' Those who run factories have not the raw material which 13° SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. When you and I, dear Alec, think and talk of people, we conclude that they are exactly like our- selves — do we not? Quite worldly and selfish, you know. Everyone with his little show to run for himself. — Walter Besant, "Armorel of Lyonesse," (New York, 1890), Part II., ch. v. . . . London, where all the men and most of the women have their own shows to run. . . — Ibid., Part I., ch. ix. (H. 12.) Washington had all his camp fires built up. " Jim " built up a great fire, and before long we were all sitting round it at supper. — Isabella L. Bird, " A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains " (New York, 1879—80), Letter vii., October. (H. 13.) They shaved his head, except for a single lock. To shave the head means to make the head bare by shaving. If the sentence quoted be so understood, the use of except for in it is seen to be parallel to its use in the next quotation: . . . while the church, — one night, except For greenish glimmerings thro' the lancets — made Still paler the pale head of him, who tower'd Above them, . . . — Tennyson, " Aylmer's Field," 11. 621—4. the individual farmer commands." — James Long, "Can the Em- pire Feed its People?" (The Nineteenth Century, January, 1896, p. 24). "... the idea of running a store at Pretoria upon strictly cash principles."— H. Rider Haggard, " Maiwa's Revenge," ch. i. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 131 But, perhaps, it is not legitimate here to make a syntactical analogy by substituting one phrase for another. Although the two next passages differ in grammatical construction from the American quotation, they show how a careless use of except for, such as that censured by Dr. Hall, may have been suggested. His face was smooth-shaven except for a dense moustache and imperial. — Isabella L. Bird, " A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains " (New York, 1879—80), Letter vi., Sept. 28. . . . and except for the tones of our voices, and an occasional crackle and splutter as a pine knot blazed up, there was no sound on the mountain side. — Ibid., Letter vii. The difiference between common English and the three next Americanisms would be pre- cisely indicated by italicizing the a of " around " instead of the whole word. (H. 14.) So he turned around, and marched swiftly back to Jamestown. . . . they turned round without speaking, and went back again along the lane. — George Eliot, " Scenes of Clerical Life " (Janet's Repentance, ch. xxvi.). ... we may walk from Paddington to Mile 132 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. End without seeing one person in whom any feat- ure is so overcharged, that we turn round to stare at it. — Macaulay, " Miscellaneous Writings " (The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay).* . . . and hearing a tittering behind him, turned round just once, to quell it, with an awful frown. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton, " Harry Blount," ch. ii. (H. 15.) Henry . . . thought he could find a way to get around Africa to the rich countries of Asia.t . . . the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, round which we were making our way now to the northward again. — Marianne North, " Recollec- lections of a Happy Life " (2d ed., London, 1892), vol. ii., p. 202. — Jenner had . . . sent him on a sailing voyage round the Cape. — Ibid., p. 102. . . . that marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in sons of the soil and dependants generally. — Thomas Hardy, " The Woodlanders," ch. xxvii. * In the edition named below (vol. v., p. 55) instead of " round ' there is "around," — "that we turn around to stare at it." Criti- cal and Miscellaneous Essays, by T. Babington Macaulay. — New and Revised Edition ; New York, D. Appleton and Company, 1879. f " After the villa we had another lazy cruise around the prom- ontory. We told our boatman to row slowly. . ." — The Rev. Harry Jones, M. A., Incumbent of St. Luke's, Berwick St., Soho, " The Regular Swiss Round" (London, 1865), p. 303. ' ' And now the carriage cut around the corner and whirled out into the glare of the parade, . . ." — William Black, " A Princess of Thule," Part VII., ch. xiv. NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 133 (H. 16.) He used to carry letters around in the crown of his hat, and distribute the mail in that way. The city authorities were proud of what they were doing. They took us round in a steam launch, showed us their vast excavations [etc.]. — James Anthony Froude, " Oceana " (New York, 1886), p. 246. The new members [of the Roman Senate] came in slowly, and it is needless to say were unwillingly received; a private hand- bill was sent round, recommending the coldest greetings to them. — Id., " Caesar " (New York, 1879), ch. xxvi., p. 488.* In a similar sense round is connected with many intransitive verbs. The writer sneered at me for travelling round Europe with a portmanteau full of culture on my back. — ^John Addington Symonds, " In the Key of Blue," etc. (London, 1893), p. 195. . . . going round the town, no doubt, in search of some unwatched house or some unfastened door. — Mrs. Gaskell, " Cranford," ch. x.f But around and round are confused in Eng- lish as well as in American writing. *". . . he never brought the letters round except on unusual occasions. . ." — Mrs. Gaskell, " Cranford," ch. xiii. f " A collection was made during the hymn by a man who went round with a large metal ladle. . ." — Harry Jones, " The Regular Swiss Round" (London, 1865), p. 159. 134 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and had been calling for me . . . " I thought you'd come," he said. " Have I been walking around the house at all? " I explained that he had been in the dining room and the smoking room and two or three other places. — Rudyard Kipling, " Mine Own People " (The Recrudescence of Imray). . . . you have got your work to do and you must not fool around any longer. — Walter Besant, " Armorel of Lyonesse," Part I., ch. iv. . . . no visitor . . . wanders on the beaches and around the bays. — Ibid., ch. viii. . . . if . . . you climb every headland and walk round every bay. . . — Ibid.* * " As they drove around to Mrs. Kavanagh's house [in Lon- don] on that Tuesday evening. . ." — William Black, " A Princess of Thule," Part VII., ch. xviii. ". . . before he had time to cross the pavement she had run around and opened the door and stood at the top of the steps to receive him." — liiii. In the following passages about wrould be better than around. " . . . in regions around the Rhine and the Tiber." — W. O. Morris, " Napoleon" (New York and London, 1894), p. 112. ' ' Figure to yourselves a crowd of fops, chattering like a. flock of daws, carrying their stools in their hands, and settling around, and sometimes upon the stage itself, with as much noise as pos- sible." — Henry Irving, " The Drama," p. 120. " 'You have got a whole lot of people around the door,' he said."— William Black, "A Princess of Thule," Part VII., ch. xiv. " He proceeds to dance around on his hind legs. . ." — Id., " The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat," ch. iii. And this was odd conduct on the part of each honest rustic. " The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran." —Goldsmith, " The Deserted Village." NOT SO VERY AMERICAN. 135, In whatever sense around is understood in the next quotation, the spatial difficulties are immense.* She stamped her foot and raised her voice, insomuch that two drowsy attendants [in "The National Gallery"] woke up and stood around, thinking they had dreamed something unusual. — " Armorel of Lyonesse," Part II., ch. xvii. In bringing together for comparison the foregoing quotations, it has not been my no- tion that any form of expression found in an American book is justified by the production of a parallel expression from an English book. Such an idea would be absurd. A locution that is censured as an Americanism may be shown to be EngHsh, but still it may be bad English. A discussion of the quality of the English of the passages compared is beyond the scope of this paper. However, the reader has noticed, no doubt, that some of the quotations (both Dr. Hall's and mine) are fragments of conversation, and that, therefore, they cannot fairly be re- garded as representing the writers' ideas of cor- * " . . . every one around heard it. . ." — Lytton, " Paul Clifford," ch. x. 136 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. rect English. In England, I believe, as in America, a studied observance of grammatical correctness in conversation is felt to be under- bred. The larger part of Dr. Hall's citations in the Academy remain uncapped. Some of these are undoubtedly Americanisms; many more may be; but it would be a rash venture for anybody to undertake to separate all the Americanisms from the rest. Dr. Hall's knowledge of the dif- ferences between British and American English is incomparably greater than that of anybody else, and yet it seems that even he has fallen into error. It would take considerable space to discuss Dr. Hall's opinions concerning " the American dialect." That an American dialect is in proc- ess of formation I regard as certain; but it should be remembered that the dififerences be- tween American and British English are as much the results of departures in England from an earlier standard as of such departures in America. Apparently, Dr. Hall thinks that America is still in the colonial period. W. A REJOINDER.* To THE Editors of Mod. Lang. Notes: Sirs: — Early last year there appeared, in the London Academy, some strictures by me, under the heading of " The American Dialect." As I have only just learned, they were animadverted on, some time ago, by a contributor to your journal, Mr. R. O. Williams. The whole that my depreciator has to say may be summed up in a single question and the answer to it. In sub- stance asking whether my philology is not egre- giously amiss, he seems to resolve the point conclusively. If his representations could bear scrutinizing, protest against his decision would be futile. But what if his alleged facts have no other ground than fiction, in all its sweet sim- plicity? My paper, mentioned above, has for its sub- ject the deterioration of the English tongue in the United States. The slangy jargon of or- * Modem Language Notes, November, 1894. 138 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. dinary conversation and of most newspapers is there had in view only subordinately, while I take particular account of the diction which is found in thousands of our books. Inevitably we have a dialect. But a dialect, equally with a language, has its prescriptions; and why should so many of us consent to be democratic, mobo- cratic, and even anarchic, linguistically? Can the assertion be traversed, that ninety and nine in every hundred of us take little pains to be otherwise? By nobody who is capable of judg- ing can it be gainsaid, and it behoves a wise patriot to acknowledge and to lament, that the phraseology of nearly all our recent popular authors is tarnished with vulgarisms, imported and indigenous, at which a cultivated taste can- not but revolt. Nor is this the sole uncouth trait that sullies the written style of the great body of our fellow-countrymen. Conspicuous, with them, almost in like degree, are slovenli- ness, want of lucidity, breach of established idiom, faulty grammar, and needless American- ism, general or sectional. Of these oflfences against the aesthetics of literary composition they are seen, moreover, to show themselves, A REJOINDER. 139 year by year, increasingly regardless. That Americanism would probably come to desig- nate appropriately the tissue of rhetorical de- fects which has been partially analysed was to be reckoned on. Shall this stigma be allowed to become impressed ineffaceably? More or less to Americanize, that is, to give in to Americanism, specialties indistinguishable from provincialism, can now hardly be helped; but, to most, at the cost of proper care, American- ism is largely avoidable. My article in the Academy eminently con- sults the interests of our people. Right no- tions, to be instilled most effectively, must be instilled in childhood. For a long time it has been a source of regret to me that our school- books have, as a rule, left much to desire with respect to their English. One of these, its sub- ject-matter passed over, I undertook, in my article, to criticize. If I selected , my reasons for so doing were, that it was fresh from the press, and that, owing to the author's popularity, there was every likelihood of its being widely adopted by teachers. I had no- ticed, too, that a writer in so influential a peri- I40 SOME QUESTION'S OF GOOD ENGLISH. odical as the Educational Review, ignoring its style, had roundly characterized it as " ad- mirable."* The demand that it should have conformed, in its language, to the standard of the English of England is nowhere made in my observa- tions. I admitted, by the clearest implication, that it might without any reproach be marked, to some slight extent, by Americanism; and its Americanisms I glanced at only incidentally, as a subject for discussion. In order to foreclose possibility of misapprehension, I studiedly pre- mised that its feature arranged [arraigned?] by me in [is?] its " corruptness of dialect," with which, in England, analogizes what chiefly con- stitutes that blemish, corruptness of English. Just before speaking of "corruptness of dialect," I say : " Genuine English is no longer practically our portion; and our teaching it for everyday purposes would be an anachronism. Instances are most abundant in which we have, instead of its words and phrases, substitutes for them. Of the difiference in quality between such of these * In reprinting this letter, the name of the book criticised hy Dr. Hall and the name of its author have been omitted. — W. A REJOINDER. 141 substitutes as are tolerable, and such as should be pronounced intolerable, not many of us, how- ever, have pther than a hazy conception." To nothing else could I, of course, refer, by "substitutes," "tolerable" and "intolerable," than justifiable innovations, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, solecisms, gratuitous departures from right English, whether home- bred or international. My censure of Mr. was for outraging in an elementary manual, of all places, our special variety of Eng- lish, as presented in a reasonably acceptable form ; and this he assuredly does in " he studied much about geography," in " a piece of twine string," and in a host of other instances. From beginning to end, my article is of a rigidly uniform tenor. By way of illustrating Mr. 's proneness to solecism, I give two groups of quotations from him. The first group exemplifies, as I put it, " misuses of par- ticles and the like." It contains twenty-one items. These items given, I go on to say: " Several of the aberrancies indicated in them are, it is true, of almost universal currency in the United States; but yet as having no good 142 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. warrant in reason, and as being shunned by our most approved stylists, they ought, doubtless, to be discouraged." Not one of those aber- rancies have I even hinted to be an American- ism. We have, in them, well-nigh one and all, simply solecisms which might be committed, here and there, by Englishmen. Again, prefacing a second and longer group of quotations, I speak of it as containing " mis- cellaneous modes of speech which, on one score or another, Mr. would have done well to avoid." And subjoined to those quota- tions is the remark : " most of the vulgarisms and sectionalisms, with other deviations from the best American English exhibited in the phrases instanced above, are such that no com- ment on them can be necessary for any one whose acquaintance with our dialect deserves to be accounted critical." By Americanism, in the sense of the word noted higher up, the American dialect, in its more usual form, that of debasement, the form of it employed by Mr. , is, unhappily, de- scribed aright. But even in that form of it, Americanisms, strictly so-called, are compara- A REJOINDER. 143 tively infrequent. On these as I take the de- nomination, and as all the world takes it, I have touched very slightly, in dealing with Mr. . He has, certainly, not a few, of the exceptional class, as I obliquely intimated by saying that " it would be idle to contend that his Americanisms have not in large share the countenance of all our later writers of any con- spicuous note, a mere handful of them, the very choicest, omitted from account." And even these Americanize in some measure. Indeed, if they did otherwise, in addition to perplexing most of their readers, they would occasionally be chargeable, not unfairly, with affectation. Yet only three out of all Mr. 's Ameri- canisms, the archaic " that river empties into the Mississippi," the sectionalism " a wig or suit of false hair," and " to work as a hired man" have I particularized. It is for his pre- vailing plebeianism and lawlessness of expres- sion that I think him blamable. Had he reached the level of creditable American English, my critique would never have been written. To return to the paragraph just reproduced, more than is there said I should have spared to say, 144 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. regarding his Americanisms, except for the three among them which I picked out for anno- tation. But what, at the hands of Mr. Williams, have all my painstaking guardedness and scrupulous exactness in defining my scheme of criticism stood me in stead? Not one of the passages which I have cited from myself in the two para- graphs preceding the last, nor the import of any of them, has he so much as alluded to. He perfectly well foresaw that the production of them would be suicidal. So far, by garbling me, he indulges in uncandid suppression of the truth. But he goes further than this. He as good as asserts that I consider all the objec- tionable locutions which I extract from Mr. 's pages to be Americanisms; for, since [omit " for " or " since "?] in a critical passage, and there only, he encloses that term in double commas, with the design, unquestionably, in keeping with his paper throughout, to have it understood that I apply it to those locutions. And what follows from this device? Nothing less than this, that he virtually charges me with rating as Americanisms the expressions, A REJOINDER. 145 taken from Mr. , " that don't matter " and " Benjarnin Harrison just took him up in his arms, and sat him down in the chair," for example. Now, an American stripling of fifteen, if an oblivious blockhead, may re- quire to be told that such samples of bad grammar are of common occurrence in novels, tales, and what not, new and old, that come to us from England; and I am inferen- tially assigned an equality with the poor crea- ture. This equality determined, how, pray, in venturing to discuss English, could I be any- thing better than a passed-master in charla- tanry? My critic assumes that I class as an Americanism any incorrect or slipshod English into which our compatriots trespass. Other- wise, he must theorize that, as a reader, I labour under a unique description of intermittent philological blindness; that I possess the faculty of discerning errors, when the book before me is American, but wholly lose that faculty, when the book is English. I now resume my examination of the method by which Mr. Williams would make out that what I impeach in Mr. 's book is solely 146 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. its Americanisms. In the opening of his " Not So Very American," he premises that, in my Academy article, " there is a recognition of two kinds of Americanisms, ' tolerable ' and ' intolerable.' The former are noticed only by allusions here and there; the latter are com- mented on at some length, and illustrated by very numerous quotations taken from an American schoolbook. As it is my purpose to show that many of the locutions supposed by Dr. Hall to be Americanisms are not peculiarly American, I will first make the fact evident that they were cited as such by Dr. Hall." One of his two quotations from me, " Genu- ine English," etc., then introduced, in reliance on which he professes to bring home to me what amounts to portentous folly, I have tran- scribed some way back. It is not, as has been seen, merely Americanisms, but Americanisms and very much besides, that I there divide into tolerable and intolerable; the word Ameri- canisms I cautiously avoided using. There goes far more than Americanisms to make up the medley which I call " the Ameri- can dialect." Our popular deviations from A REJOINDER. 147 good British English, not in part, but in all I designedly and expressly pointed to by my wording; and those deviations, as, by laying Mr. 's little book under contribu- tion, I proceeded to demonstrate, fall under several categories. The only other quotation from me which is produced by Mr. Williams consists of the para- graph, " It would be idle," etc., likewise tran- scribed above, with the paragraph immediately succeeding it; the two, presumably in order to the perversion of my meaning, being run into one. Those paragraphs occur towards the close of my paper. In the first of them, I reflect cursorily on the Americanisms scattered through the pages of Mr. and so take leave of him. The second of them, a gen- eral reclamation against the American dialect in its ordinary lawless form, and substantially a repetition of the beginning of my paper, where I speak of " substitutes," " tolerable " and " in- tolerable," is as follows: " In so saying, I of course imply that our linguistic innovations, some of which have es- 148 SOMM QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. tablished themselves ineradicably, and are, in fact, indispensable, are by no means to be con- demned without exception. At present, how- ever, without undertaking the defence of such of them as are defensible, I limit myself to dep- recating those which are indefensible, either as being entirely gratuitous or on other grounds equally valid. Of innovations of this descrip- tion, which so commonly disfigure American English, the number, I repeat, is very great. Manifestly, then, their diffusion and their con- stant increase call for grave consideration. That a duty devolves on us, in connexion with them, is what I would suggest by this slight paper." How, I would now ask, could I have delivered myself more unmistakably than I have done in my Academy article. I should have stultified myself by heading that article " Americanisms." Very unimportant, I say again, are American- isms, as an ingredient of the vulgar American dialect, in comparison with, for example, its unidiomatic, markedly inferior, or positively spurious English. Americanisms, alone, how- ever, Mr. Williams unjustly represents me as concerned with. He would have it believed A REJOINDER. 149 that I see them in Mr. 's " way to get around Africa," "a school taught by a man named Hobby," "if he wanted to, he could not," " a triumphant procession," " he did not use beer," " if you send that, ... I will be convinced," and so on to weariness. As re- gards " help . . . finish the war," and " he did not have much appetite," he represents that I take them to be Americanisms, though these words of mine, which he had before him, but to which he chose to shut his eyes, by plain con- struction contradict his averment: "Help finish instead of kelp to finish, be it as it may else- where, is, in this country, [now] exclusively con- fined to the discourse of plebeians. And not a shade more reputable, here in Great Britain, and barely more endurable than does not be, etc., are does not have, did not have, etc., though their pretensions to respectability are observ- ably dififerent in the United States." "I did not have them " is met with even in Cardinal Newman, to be sure; but for all that, its prole- tarianism is beyond denial. The aim of Mr. Williams is to lay at my door that for which, if he made good his contention, ISO SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. I should justly be an object of contemptuous derision. On his faith, I have been duped by conceit into imagining myself able to point out the discrepancies of the English of America from that of England, and yet have still to ac- quire the very elements of the information essential for such an undertaking. After ex- pending page after page, with intent to fasten on me the imputation of crass ignorance and utter incompetence as a philologist, he thinks fit to say, however, that my " knowledge of the dififerences between British [English] and American, English is incoim'parably greater than that of anybody else." Inconsistency he would, I suppose, disavow; and I have no dis- position to tax him with it. He is, of course, ironical. Let it be hoped that practice will by and by impart to his essays in irony a higher finish and a keener edge than have hitherto dis- tinguished them. Should any curious person impartially go through my " American Dialect " and Mr. Wil- liams' " Not So Very American," I am entirely confident of his conclusion. It would be, sum- marily, that my critic's citations, from Enghsh A REJOINDER. 151 books, of passages parallel to those which I have given from Mr. , in no way what- ever affect my argument; that he has not detected me in a single error; and that his in- dictment of me for fatuity recoils on himself. FiTZEDWARD HaLL. Marlesford, England. DR. HALL'S REJOINDER EXAMINED.* To THE Editors of " Modern Language Notes." Sirs: Dr. Fitzedward Hall's "Rejoinder" (Mod. Lang. Notes, Nov., 1894) to my " Not So Very American " requires on my part some comments. In the Academy for March 25, 1893, there appeared a communication from Dr. Hall, under the heading of " The American Dialect," in which many quotations from an American schoolbook were cited as illustrating some of the baser elements of that dialect, — " substi- tutes " for the words and phrases of genuine English " such as should be pronounced in- tolerable." In reading the quotations from Mr. 's book, it seemed to me that some of the locutions censured by Dr. Hall were not Americanisms. A glance into a few English books and a hasty search in memoranda pre- * Modem Language Notes, January, 1895. DR. HALLS REJOINDER EXAMINED. 153 pared for other matters quickly supplied, from British writings, citations parallel to a dozen or more of the quotations from Mr. . In the circumstances, I thought it worth while to point out the parallelism, and I did so in a very temperate, unpretentious little paper hav- ing the title, " Not So Very American," printed i Modern Language Notes, December, 1893. It was not at all within the scope of my remarks (much expanded in apparent length by the quotations supporting them) to " animadvert " on the opinions that made the staple of Dr. Hall's letter to the Academy. But Dr. Hall, explaining the meaning of his Academy letter in seven columns of " Rejoin- der " to my parallel quotations, scouts the idea that the locutions capped were cited by him as Americanisms. His rejection of the thought is vehement : " The aim of Mr. Williams is to lay at my door that for which, if he made good his contention, I should justly be an object of contemptuous derision." So far, then, there is progress. The locutions capped by parallel British citations are not 154 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Americanisms, and were not regarded as such by Dr. Hall. There remains to be considered whether my attributing to Dr. Hall the opinion that they were Americanisms involved an un- reasonable construction and interpretation of his Academy letter, — or, to put the query some- what differently, — whether Dr. Hall's " Re- joinder " does not read into his Academy letter esoteric meanings and restrictions that are not discoverable in the unexpounded text. Dr. Hall's "Rejoinder" says: "Early last year there appeared, in the London Academy, some strictures by me, under the heading of ' The American Dialect.' " In no part of the " Rejoinder " is there an intimation that the heading, as printed, was imposed (as might have happened) on his communication by the editor of the Academy. The title of the letter, " The American Dialect," may fairly be regarded, then, as indicating Dr. Hall's view of its sub- ject-matter. But his " Rejoinder," in Modern Language Notes, shows that while, under the heading of " The American Dialect," he was censuring " locutions which go far to realize finished debasement " — (an odd purpose of DR. HALL'S REJOINDER EXAMINED. IS5 theirs, but no matter) — and was illustrating such locutions from an American book exclusively, he really had in mind, not a dialect peculiarly American, but an international dialect — a dia- lect common to America and England. This concealed meaning of the Academy letter could not have been reached by an uninitiated student of it, and naturally, therefore, I supposed that Americanisms virere referred to by " substi- tutes " in the passage subjoined. The reader should bear in mind that, in this passage and in the subsequent ones quoted, " our," " we," and " us " refer to Americans. " For genuine English is no longer, practically, our portion ; and our teaching it for everyday pur- poses would be an anachronism. Instances are most abundant in which we have, instead of its words and phrases, substitutes for them. Of the difference in quality between such of these substi- tutes as are tolerable and such as should be pro- nounced intolerable, not many of us, however, have other than a hazy conception. By way of illustra- tion, in the issue of the Educational Review for May of last year, the epithet ' admirable,' and without discrimination of particulars, is applied to . And ' admirable,' in the sense of the term now obsolete, that performance, for its cor- 156 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. ruptness of dialect, assuredly is. It is to this feature of it that, in the interest of sound and rational culture, I would invite the attention of our educationists." * It is a curious example of Dr. Hall's proc- esses of thought that, in his " Rejoinder," he explains " substitutes " in the foregoing pas- sage in the following manner: " To nothing else could I, of course, refer, by ' substitutes,' ' tolerable ' and ' intolerable,' than justifiable innovations, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, solecisms, gratuitous departures from right English, whether home-bred or inter- national." f Unquestionably, since Dr. Hall says so. But how was an outsider to know it? Certainly not from the Academy letter itself. Under " of course," as a safe-conduct, there is brought in a lot of matter that (to the uninitiated) is new. In this new matter " genuine English " is dis- placed by " right English " carrying a bagful of different intendments ; for " right English " ex- cludes had English: whereas, had English may *The Academy, p. 265, col. 3. t Modern Language Notes, vol. ix. , cols. 442-3. DR. HALL'S REJOINDER EXAMINED. 15 7 be as truly genuine English as bad wine may be genuine wine. The expository skill that changed " genuine English " into " right Eng- lish," in so doing, changed the limitation, and therefore the sense, of "substitutes." In " substitutes " for the words and phrases of " genuine English " there is an implication of something foreign; but there is not such an im- plication in " substitutes " for the words and phrases of "right EngHsh"; the latter substi- tutes might be strictly English in origin and use. If the " substitutes " for the words and phrases of " right English " were current in both Eng- land and the United States, they might (perhaps) be regarded as constituents of an international dialect, and so the quotations from Mr. 's book might illustrate — not Americanisms — but base locutions used in such international dialect. I do not deny the existence of inter- national dialects; but that the quotations from Mr. , in the Academy letter, were cited by Dr. Hall as illustrations of an interna- tional dialect could not, I am confident, have been known without the supplementary ex- planations in "A Rejoinder." It is true that 158 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. among the locutions censured (more than fifty) there are two (or three) that are spoken of in the letter as being used in England by the baser sort; but it would have been a most inexcus- able construction of the letter to have made its drift turn on by-matter that seemed to have got into it casually: such a construction of its pur- port would have sacrificed all that was most distinct and prominent in it to that which was comparatively insignificant. For any doubt which the presence of those locutions might raise in the mind of a careful reader would be put to rest by matter that soon fol- lows the comments on them — matter in which the avowal is made by Dr. Hall that, " though I have lived away from America upwards of forty-six years, I feel, to this hour, in writing English, that I am writing a foreign language," — and especially would the reader's doubt be dissipated by the following passage: "To return to Mr. [the author of the book criticised] , it would be idle to contend that his Americanisms have not, in large share, the counte- nance of all our later writers of any conspicuous note, a mere handful of them, the very choicest, DR. HALL'S REJOINDER EXAMINED. IS9 omitted from account. And even these American- ize in some measure." * That a supplemental commentary was needed for the right understanding of the Academy letter will be evident to any one who compares that letter with the exposition of it in " A Re- joinder." I read it very carefully two or three times before writing " Not So Very American," and thought I understood it; I was conscious of difficulties in reconciUng all its parts, but I believed I had succeeded in construing them not only reasonably but rightly. As one of the ele- ments of such reasoriable and right construction " our linguistic innovations," in the passage subjoined, was interpreted by me as meaning Americanisms : " In so saying, I of course imply that our linguis- tic innovations, some of which have established themselves ineradicably, and are, in fact, indis- pensable, are by no means to be condemned with- out exception. At present, however, without undertaking the defence of such of them as are defensible, I limit myself to deprecating those which are indefensible [compare with ' substi- tutes,' ' tolerable ' and ' intolerable ' previously * The Academy, p. 266, col. 3. i6o SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. noted], either as being entirely gratuitous or on other grounds equally valid. Of innovations of this description, which so commonly disfigure American English, the number, I repeat, is very great. Manifestly, then, their diffusion and their constant increase call for grave consideration. That a duty devolves on us, in connexion Avith them, is what I would suggest by this slight paper." * What could " our linguistic innovations," as used in that paragraph, mean, if it did not mean Americanisms? If Dr. Hall's "slight paper" was not deprecating " indefensible " Ameri- canisms, and illustrating them by quotations from Mr. 's book, what, then, was its purport? Nobody, I am sure, could have known before the true exposition appeared in " A Rejoinder." Dr. Hall was deprecating and illustrating " gratuitous departures from right English, whether home-bred or international." — See "A Rejoinder," columns 443—4 and 446. — Briefly sumTning up, Dr. Hall was deprecat- ing and illustrating — not indefensible Ameri- canisms — but the British- American " plebeian- ism " of the American international dialect. * Ibid. DR. HALL'S REJOINDER EXAMINED. i6l And yet, in the Academy letter (p. 266, col. 3), Dr. Hall said: "Already, too, we [Americans] owe to it [our zeal] a speciiic character, extending in its manifold distinctiveness, to our speech. Circumstances gen- erated by unprecedented combinations have en- tailed on us a recognizable dialect, and one which is rapidly developing." The italics are mine. One can see there are difficulties in that letter, even now. W. A SURPRISING CONCLUSION. In the foregoing letter to Modern Language Notes the phrase, " Dr. Hall's processes of thought," is used (p. 156). At the time of ex- pressing myself in that manner, it seemed to me, and it seems now, that Dr. Hall's processes of thought are exceptional. In the paragraph quoted below from his Academy letter. Dr. Hall reaches a conclusion that to me is surprising, because it is exactly opposed to the conclusion which I should have anticipated from his state- ment of the facts. Dr. Hall says: " If egotism for a moment is pardonable, no false shame deters me from avowing that, though I have lived away from America upwards of forty-six years, I feel, to this hour, in writing English, that I am writing a foreign language, and that, if not incessantly on my guard, I am in peril of stum- bling. Nor will it be amiss for any American, when experimenting like myself, to feel as I do, and never to relax his vigilance, if he would not every now and then reveal himself, needlessly and to his prejudice as an exotic [Read an Ameri- A SURPRISING CONCLUSION. 163 con.']. Not for five minutes can he listen to the conversation of his fellow-countrymen, or for that length of time read one of their newspapers, or one of such books as they usually write, without exposure to the influence of some expression which is not standard English. Try as he will to resist this influence, successful resistance to it is well- nigh impossible. On the other hand, if he is indif- ferent about resisting it, his fancied English will, a thousand to one, be chequered with solecisms, crudenesses, and piebald jargon, of the sort which the pages of Mrs. Stowe, Mr. E. P. Roe, and Mr. Howells have rendered familiar. In short, the language of an American is, all but inevitably, more or less dialectal. That, for the most part, there is not even colourable justification of its being so is, from a cosmopolitan point of view, to be regretted." — Supra, pp. 117—9. An American who reads that paragraph as far as the beginning of its last sentence feels that the acquisition of English by an American must be extremely difficult. Much more distinctly does he feel that it must be so if he recalls Dr. Hall's exceptional opportuni- ties for such acquisition. For almost exactly twenty years before that paragraph was printed in the Academy, Dr. Hall said, in his Preface to "Modem English" (dated July 15, 1873): 164 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. "... my intercourse with educated English- men has, perhaps, been, as of longer duration, so of a more intimate character, than has fallen to the lot of any other American who has made the Eng- lish language a subject of serious study." — " Modern EngHsh," p. xii. Now to extend the experience of such inter- course more than nineteen years — a good bit of a man's lifetime — and yet to feel that, being an American, he is " never to relax his vigilance, if he would not every now and then reveal him- self, needlessly and to his prejudice, as an" — American, — well (to speak temperately), must be discouraging. So far I follow Dr. Hall un- derstandingly through the difficulties he sets forth, and up to and through the sentence: " In short, the language of an American is, all but inevitably, more or less dialectal." But between that sentence and the next is the jumping-ofif place. Dr. Hall's processes of thought carry him on to: " That, for the most part, there is not even colourable justification of its being so is, from a cosmopolitan point of view, to be regretted." A SURPRISING CONCLUSION. 165 — Pardon. — One would think (it seems to me) that, if " the language of an American is, all but inevitably, more or less dialectal," there must be at least colourable justification of its being so. If there is colourable justification, there cannot be any reason for regretting that there is not colourable justification. W. EVERY AND EACH. ONLY,— ADVERSATIVE,— MISPLACEMENT OF ADVERB. TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. EVERY AND EACH.* In " Doctor Indoctus " (London, 1880), Dr. Hall asserts at one time the freedom that belongs to literary usage, and at another, the binding authority of dicta. At page 12 of this little book. Dr. Hall, commenting on " But, when each particular is so emphasized," f turns his back on literature and declares for dicta in the manner following: " As the particulars referred to, more than two, are unspecified, the proper word, in prose, is ' every.' Landor, speaking for Home Tooke, notes this punctuality of good English." A foot-note adds: " Lord Macaulay is notably free from the error adverted to. Nevertheless, he writes in one place: ' Only eight thousand copies were printed, much * Modern Language Notes, March, 1894. f The quotation is not long enough to show that any other fault is to be found with each as used in it than the one alleged by Dr. HaU. 169 i7o SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. less than one to each parish in the kingdom.' — ' History,' chap. xxi. The parishes, a multitude, are not spoken of in the previous context; and hence ' every parish ' is demanded." The source of the knowledge that constrains Dr. Hall to write in this manner about eacJi. is not disclosed by him otherwise than sugges- tively by his mention of Landor. That the actual usage to be found in good nineteenth- century English literature has not been, in this case, the source of Dr. Hall's knowledge, any- body who has at hand a dozen miscellaneous volumes of such literature can satisfy himself. I will quote from prose writings exclusively. It would be impossible, of course, without making the quotations unreasonably long, to show that the persons or things referred to by each " are not spoken of in the previous context." Con- text has a very elastic sense. Space limitations prevent my giving more than one quotation from each author cited. — {Every wouldn't fit that sentence). In " each parish in the kingdom," the parishes referred to by each are indicated by Macaulay more distinctly than the various per- EVERY AND EACH. 171 sons and things referred to by each in most of the quotations cited below. Mrs. Shelley had done her work admirably; her introductions to the poems of each year, with Shelley's prefaces and passages from his letters, supplied the very picture of Shelley to be desired. — Matthew Arnold, " Essays in Criticism," Second Series. — Shelley. And I wandered about, and the enchanted region seemed illimitable, and at each turn more magical and more bright. . . Thus glided many a day in unconscious and creative reverie; but sometimes when I had explored over and over again each nook and comer, . . . — Beaconsfield, " Contarini Fleming," ch. iii. She sang " How doth the little busy bee " ; she sang " Ye banks and braes " ; she sang " Sylvia hath a beaming eye," or any other thing that could be suggested to her; and ever the recurrent and stormy chorus was volunteered her at the end of each verse. — William Black, " The Strange Ad- ventures of a House-Boat," ch. x. The sea was curiously discoloured all along the coast, more especially when we turned the corner, so to speak, and went through the Boca de los Huevos. This discoloration is produced by the muddy waters of the Orinoco, discharged from its many mouths on the coast of Venezuela, nearly a hundred miles distant, and bringing down alluvial 172 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. deposits from the far-off Andes. I thought, as each Httle stick or weed went floating by, of the marvellous scenes and adventures through which it must have passed, and how I would give the world to behold what it had no eyes to see. — Lady Brassey, " In the Trades, the Tropics and the Roaring Forties " (New York, 1885), p. 95. It [Ormin's Ormulum] is a metrical version of the service of each day with the addition of a ser- mon in verse. — Stopford Brooke, " English Litera- ture " (" Literature Primer," New York, 1879), ch. ii., p. 22. . . . they found themselves obliged to cover suc- cessively each space upon which they trode with parts of their dress, in order to gain any sup- portable footing. — De Quincey, " The Caesars " (Boston, 1851), p. 106. . . . not a day passed but he wandered through the neighbouring woods, [etc.] Then . . . before each night came he had been again through all the uninhabited rooms of the house. . . — George Eliot, " Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," ch. xix. . . . Caesar set himself again to the reorganiza- tion of the administration. Unfortunately, each step that he took was a fresh crime in the eyes of men whose pleasant monopoly of power he had overthrown. — ^James Anthony Froude, " Caesar " (New York, 1879), p. 488. It was impossible to live a month at Cranford, EVERY AND EACH. 173 and not know the daily habits of each resident. — Mrs. Gaskell, " Cranford," ch. ii., first sentence. On each occasion he looked gravely at the little scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious wound. — ^Thomas Hardy, "The Woodlanders," ch. xxvii. Along the whole course of the Rhine he went from Cologne to Constance; and in each city that he left few of the male inhabitants had not assumed the Cross. — Frederic Harrison, " The Choice of Books," etc. (London, 1886). — Bernard of Clairvaux. To each man is appointed his particular dread. . . — Rudyard Kipling, "The Light that Failed," ch. vii. The men of each age must be judged by the ideal of their own age and country, and not by the ideal of ours.— W. E. H. Lecky, " The Political Value of History " (New York, 1893), p. 50. . . . his voice — sweetly, clearly full — each slow enunciation unaffectedly, mellowly distinct. . . — Lytton, " What Will He Do With It? " Book IL, ch. ii. It [this law] is as follows. Each of our leading conceptions, each branch of knowledge, passes successively through three different phases. . . In the Metaphysical state . . . the properties of each substance have attributed to them an existence distinct from that substance. — ^John Morley, 174 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. " Critical Miscellanies " (London, 1888), vol. iii., pp. 363-4. . . . the votes fell on the men whom each elector in his conscience thought best to answer to the standard of a Fellow of Oriel. . . — John Henry Newman, " Autobiographical Memoir " (London, 1890), ch. ii. The eyes and ears were perfectly active the moment they [young ostriches] came out of the shell. The one I painted, half in and half out, turned its head to look at each person who spoke, and seemed to be attending to what we said. — Marianne North, " Recollections of a Happy Life," (2d ed., London, 1892), vol. ii., p. 223. The particular tone or direction of any school [of painting] seems to me always to have resulted rather from certain phases of national character, limited to particular periods, than from individual teaching; and, especially among moderns, what has been good in each master has been commonly original. — Ruskin, " Modem Painters," vol. i., ch. vii., sect. 17. Stockmar regularly spent a great part of each year with the English Royal Family. — Goldwin Smith, " Lectures and Essays " (New York, 1881), p. 196.* When the food obtained by the outer organs has * " . . . the claim of each colony to a copyright law of its own. . ." — Goldwin Smith, in the Saturday Review, February 15, i8g6, p. 167. EVERY AND EACH. I7S been put into the stomach, the cooperation required of the viscera, though it varies somewhat as the quantity or kind of food varies, has nevertheless a general uniformity; and it is required to go on in much the same way whatever the outer circum- stances may be. In each case the food has to be reduced to a pulp, supplied with various solvent secretions, propelled onward, and its nutritive part taken up by absorbent surfaces. — Herbert Spencer, " Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy, and Morals " (New York, 1890), p. 244.* But what meaning does Whitman attach to this word Personality? How does he envisage that phenomenon of self, which is the one thing cer- tain for each separate individual who thinks and feels. . . — ^John Addington Symonds, " A Study of Walt Whitman " (London, 1893), p. 47. . . . the weather was windy and the sea was rough, and he [Clive] was pronounced a brute to venture on it with a wife in Rosey's situation. Behind that " situation " the widow shielded her- self. She clung to her adored child, and from that bulwark discharged abuse and satire at Clive and his father. He could not rout her out of her posi- tion. Having had the advantage on the first two or three days, on the four last he was beaten, and *" I computed the Number of our People, by reckoning how many Millions there might be of each religious Sect, or political Party among us."— Swift, " Gulliver" (London, 1727), vol. i., p. 222. — Voyage to Brobdingnag, ch. vi. 176 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. lost ground in each action. — Thackeray, "The Newcomes" (London, 1878), vol. ii., ch. xxxvi. ... as each young compeer slaps his back and bids him live a thousand years. . . — Anthony Trollope, " Doctor Thorne," ch. i. . . . the Whit-Monday procession of the village club, when . . . the Friendly Society " walked," as it was technically called. Each member carried a blue staff tipped with red. . . — Charlotte M. Yonge, "An Old Woman's Outlook," etc. (Lon- don, 1892), p. 97.* And now I will point out some dififerences between every and eack that are recognizable in the prevalent usage of nineteenth-century writers. I. If one says that every prisoner was put to death, although the prisoners are spoken of individually, nevertheless our attention is di- rected to the totality of the prisoners (whether numerically known or not) rather than to the individuals. It is a somewhat more emphatic way of saying that all the prisoners were put to death. If, however, it is said that the daily * " Each natural object seemed to gain a new accent, a more individual beauty, from the vanishing and yet lingering sunlight." — Mrs. Humphry Ward, ' ' The Story of Bessie Costrell " (New York, 1895), sc. i., p. 4. EVERY AND EACH. 177 allowance of food for each prisoner was (etc.) the attention is directed to a single prisoner, or to a very small number of prisoners — two, three, or four, at the most — regarded separately and successively. The rest of the aggregate of prisoners, although not wholly overlooked, have only a dim and shadowy pres- ence in the mind. Briefly, the single thing or person is made prominent by each, but is not made prominent by every. — Of course, this re- mark is relative. Every, as contrasted with all, makes individuals noticeable; contrasted with each, it does not. 2. Every may be used in a sense so loose that it does not mean every as ordinarily understood. The modification of its meaning is shown by the context. " Every part of Europe swarmed with exiles." — Macaulay, " Essays." — Burleigh and his Times. "... whatever remained of the old feeling [John- son's prejudice] had been efifectually removed by the kind and respectful hospitality with which he had been received in every part of Scotland." — Ibid. — Samuel Johnson. Such a loose use of each is not admissible; it is not consistent with the particularity of each. 178 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. 3. As usage has given to each a greater par- ticularity than to every, each is commonly used instead of every, when separateness of place, time, or condition on the part of the compo- nents of a group of things referred to is to be emphasized. The quotations cited above sup- ply abundant evidence of the truth of this remark. " The men of each age must be judged by the ideal of their own age and country." — Lecky. "... the votes fell on the men whom each elector in his conscience thought best to answer to the standard of a Fellow of Oriel. . ." — Newman. " I thought as each little stick or weed went float- ing by of the marvellous scenes and adventures through which it must have passed. . ." — ^Lady Brassey. " ... as each young compeer slaps his back. . ." — Trollope. What a loss of particularity results if each is displaced in these passages by every. Assem- blage — not separation, which the writers want to emphasize — is then made prominent. If the reader will re-examine the other quotations given above, he will observe that in most of them each seems to be required for a proper expression of the sense. In a few (as in the EVERY AND EACH. 1 79 quotation from Mrs. Gaskell and where each is first used by Beaconsfield) every would be bet- ter, because in these cases each produces a false emphasis.* 4. The persons or things to which each re- fers by qualifying one of them (or as a pronoun) may be only two ; the persons or things to which every refers must be more than two. There are other differences between every and each, but the foregoing are sufficient to show that the two words are by no means ex- actly interchangeable. An implication, how- ever, that belongs to both must not be passed by, for it is important in relation to the matter under discussion. Both every and each imply that the persons or things referred to by either * In fourteenth-century English totality was emphasized by each, — a use of each that has not yet wholly disappeared. " And ther weren in Jerusalem dwellinge Jewis, religiouse men, of ech nacioun that is under heuene." — Wycliffe and Purvey, "The New Testament," Zi^i/j of ApostUs, cap. ii. — Clarendon Press. " And it schal be, ech man which euere schal clepe to help the name of the Lord, schal be saaf." — Ibid. In these quotations ech means every. In the passages from Beaconsfield and Mrs. Gaskell above, and from Lytton below, the same sense is uppermost. ■■ . . . fearful of each knock at his door, . . ." — Lytton, " My Novel," Book XL, ch. xvi. i8o SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. axe, or soon will be, known by the person ad- dressed. The knowledge may be information imparted (or soon to be imparted) to him by the speaker or writer, or it may be a part of the stock of knowledge which, it is reasonable to assume, he already possesses. More precise knowledge is, in many cases, implied in the employment of each than where every is used; but there is no difference in implication between the two words as to the source of the knowl- edge or the time of its acquirement. The pas- sage cited by Dr. Hall from Macaulay's " History of England " illustrates an employ- ment of each where the limitation defining the things referred to follows immediately after, instead of preceding, the thing mentioned. " Only eight thousand copies were printed, much less than one to each parish in the kingdom." — " History," ch. xxi. The limiting phrase " in the kingdom " de- fines the parishes referred to perfectly, and it follows so closely after the mention of " each parish " that the mind is not conscious of sus- pense while it looks for the author's meaning. If the information to be conveyed by the writer EVERY AND EACH. i8l had been such that a reference to all the par- ishes was to be emphasized, " all " or " every " would have been required, — as in such a sen- tence as this: There were printed in a single day copies enough to supply every parish in the kingdom. — When the persons or things re- ferred to by each are directly recognizable by implication, the connection of each with one of them is sufficient for conveying the sense with- out their mention before or afterwards. For example: The successful production of such a play required careful preparation; all the actors labored conscientiously and harmoniously; at each rehearsal some defect was overcome. — Evidently the appropriateness here of each is not at all affected by the fact that " rehearsals " have not been previously mentioned. The reader or hearer knows that rehearsals are im- plied in the careful preparation of a play. The familiar qualification of such words as day, week, year, etc., by every or each is a further illustration of the same principle of intelligi- bility. " I have been intending every day to go there," — " The particular work of each day ought to be completed on that day." In neither i82 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. example is the previous mention of days neces- sary; the days referred to are understood from the circumstances of the case. The same prin- ciple of intelligibility explains and justifies each in the passage quoted above from Mr. Kipling: " To each man is appointed his particular dread." There is no need of speaking of men in the previous context; the whole human race is understood. That the sentence would be dis- torted, or at least weakened, by the substitU" tion of every is obvious. If the view here presented is correct, each in the passage quoted by Dr. Hall from Macaulay is distinctly more appropriate than every. And each is distinctly more appropriate than every in the passage I shall quote below. The writer has been describing the minute attention which Frederic gave to trivial details in the adminis- tration of the Prussian government. " The public business would assuredly have been better done if each department had been put under a man of talents and integrity, and if the king had contented himself v/ith a general control." — Macaulay, " Essays." — Frederic the Great* *" Critical and Miscellaneous Essays " (New York, D. Apple- ton & Co., 1879), vol. iv., p. 208. EVERY AND EACH. 183 The word " departments " occurs five sentences back, but it does not refer to the departments of the Prussian government. Every, however, if substituted for each, would falsify the mean- ing of the sentence. W. ONLY,— ADVERSATIVE,— MISPLACE- MENT OF ADVERB.* " There is [in Boston] a sort of park, the ' Com- mon,' with iron railings, and houses something Hke the Piccadilly row above the Green Park, only all residences without shops. . . It is really very tolerably English in the town [Boston]. The har- bour is very pretty. It is like a very good sort of English country town in some respects." — ^Arthur Hugh Clough, Letter, Boston, November 15, 1852. — " Poems and Prose Remains," vol. i., p. 184. Only, as used above, seems identical in sense with but; commonly, however, the adversative only means but plus something more. The ad- versative only is an outgrowth of the sense solely that often belongs to the adverb only. Expression of its meaning by supplying the words understood would take different forms according to circumstances; as, this being un- derstood solely (with or without that); — this * Modern Language Notes, March, 1895. 184 ONL Y—AD VERSA TIVE. 185 being reserved, excepted, changed, asked, begged, etc., solely (with or without that). — Do what you like, only don't miss the train. A few illustrations of the adversative only are given below; the substitution of but in any of these passages would cause some loss or dis- tortion of the sense. My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pound a year at the uttermost, . . . — Hugh Latimer, First Sermon before Edward VI., " Typical Selec- tions from the Best English Writers " (Clarendon Press), vol. i., p. 3. But since you command, I obey; onely let me say thus much, . . . — Sir Philip Sidney, " Arca- dia" (ed. 1598), p. 304. I am in all affected as your selfe. Glad that you thus continue your resolve To sucke the sweets of sweete Philosophic. Onely (good master) while we do admire This vertue and this morall discipline, Let's be no Stoickes, nor no stocks I pray. — " The Taming of the Shrew," Act. I., sc. i. . . . but when I came back, I found no sign of any visitor, only there sat a creature like a wild cat upon one of the chests. . . — Defoe, " Robinson Crusoe " (Stockdale ed., 1790), vol. i., "p. 67. The field began to be now clear, both armies 1 86 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. stood, as it were, gazing at one another, only the king, having rallied his foot, seemed inclined to renew the charge. — Defoe, " Memoirs of a Cava- lier" (Oxford, 1840), p. 170. Such artifices, indeed, were not unknown in the old Provenqal poetry. . . Only, in Rossetti at least, they are redeemed by a serious purpose. . . Walter Pater, "Appreciations" (London, 1889), pp. 233-4. Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way! Only let me lead the line. . . — Browning, " Herve Riel," vi. I propped her head up s before. Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still. — Id., " Porphyria's Lover." [Daniel] Webster's father had a neighbour who was an honest, well-behaved man, only given to drink. — Arthur Hugh Clough, Letter, January 3, 1853. . . . and, only she did not dare to own it to her- self, was a great deal happier than she had been for many a day. — Thackeray, " The Ravenswing," ch. vi. . . . for was it not an island, only with a better climate? — Beaconsfield, " Lothair," ch. Ixx. ... a legitimate enhancement of the worth of classical study; only one that is liable to be exag- gerated, and perverted to the service of narrow- ONLY,— ADVERSATIVE. 187 mindedness and pedantry. — William Dwight Whit- ney, "Oriental and Linguistic Studies" (New York, 1873), p. 407. We may believe him [De Quincey] ; only he disliked, in others, that which was the express image of one of his own most marked peculiarities. — Fitzedward Hall, " Recent Exemplifications of False Philology" (New York, 1872), p. 9, foot- note. Petrarch, too, was a Florentine by origin, only not born there because of one of the accidents of her turbulent history. — Mrs. Oliphant, " The Mak- ers of Venice" (London, 1888), Part IL, ch. ii., p. 176. But it must nevertheless not be supposed that his [Girtin's] finest drawings . . . were completed without thought or labour, only that he began them with a clear conception to which he adhered. — Cosmo Monkhouse, " The Earlier English Water- Colour Painters " (London, 1890), p. 45. In the end it will prevail; only we must have patience. — Matthew Arnold, " Mixed Essays " (New York, 1883). — Falkland. Only beware of the fever, my friends, beware of the fever! For it is not like that of our cold Acadian climate, Cured by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a nutshell. — Longfellow, " Evangeline," 11. 994—6. — Se6 also 11. 1269 and 1297. i88 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. The censure (not by Dr. Hall) of the use of only as an adversative is passed here with the mention of it. II. The commonest meanings of the adverb only are (approximately) " solely " and " merely." Critics often note instances of what they as- sume to be a misplacement of the adverb only in sentence-making. Instances of an assumed misplacement of only, cited by Dr. Fitzedward Hall, are given below; the italics are Dr. Hall's. " The infinitive of the verb is now only used substantively, as a nominative." — Cited in Dr. Hall's " Doctor Indoctus " (London, 1880) at page 19. The sentence is quoted from Pro- fessor John Nichol's " English Composition." Dr. Hall, commenting on it, says : " Vague, with a misplacement of ' only.' " " The possessive form only attaches to the last term of a title." — Cited in " Doctor Indoc- tus," at page 32, from the same book. " This fraud could only be counteracted by an edition equally cheap and more commo- dious."— Cited in Dr. Hall's " Modern Eng- "MISPLACEMENT" OF ONLY. 189 lish" (New York, 1873), at page 200 (foot- note), from Dr. Johnson's " Life of Pope." In the index to " Modern EngUsh " there is the reference, " Only, misplacement of, 200." " When next you see the bird which now perches above your head, you will only have five days more to Hve." — Cited in Dr. Hall's " Re- cent Exemplifications of False Philology " (New York, 1872), at page 21 (foot-note), from De Quincey's writings. The quotations from De Quincey among which this one appears are introduced by Dr. Hall, with the following pref- atory words: "Page upon page might be filled with specimens of Mr. De Quincey's bad or dubious English. A few samples are sub- joined." " But, though we were ten days in Naples, I only saw one quarrel," etc. — Cited in " Recent Exemplifications of False Philology," from Mr. W. D. Howells's " Italian Journeys." In the index to " Recent Exemplifications " one finds, " Only, misplacement of, 21, 107." At page 21, in a foot-note, is the quotation from De Quin- cey produced above; in a foot-note at page 107 is the quotation from Mr. Howells just cited. 190 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Eight instances of an assumed misplacement of only in Professor Nichol's " English Com- position " are noted by Dr. Hall in " Doctor Indoctus." If the usage of English literature has deter- mined what is the right place for only in a sen- tence, the fact is important as regards English composition. Whether the right place for only has been so determined is a question that I shall not consider at present, but I will try to show by literary examples having a considerable range of time and character that the assumed misplacement of only, in the quotations given above as part of those cited by Dr. Hall, contra- venes a rule of doubtful obligation. A single example is quoted from each author cited. The quotations are in the alphabetical order of the names of their authors. For a sound cause he could not fight, because there was none; he could only fight for the least bad of two unsound ones. — Matthew Arnold, "Mixed Essays" (New York, i^:^).— Falkland. What I admire [said Mr. Phoebus] in the order [English nobility] to which you belong is that they do live in the air, that they excel in athletic sports, that they can only speak one language, and "MISPLACEMENT" OF ONLY. 191 that they never read. — Beaconsfield, " Lothair," ch. xxix. . . . they had only arrived two days before. . . — Walter Besant, " Armorel of Lyonesse," Part I., ch. iv. My boots have only been blackened once during the last two months. — Isabella L. Bird, " A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains," Letter xii. It [Judith] was found in the same MS. as Beowulf, and of the twelve books in which it was originally written, we only possess the three last, . . . — Stopford Brooke, " English Literature Primer" (New York, 1894), sec. 10, p. 15. For my part I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are Witches: they that doubt of these, do not only deny them, but Spirits; and are obliquely and upon consequence a sort not of Infidels, but Atheists. — Sir Thomas Browne, " Re- ligio Medici," Part I., sec xxx., p. 50, Golden Treasury Series, London, 1881. My Lord, I onely come to say, y'are welcome, And so must say, farewell. — Chapman, " Th^ Gentleman Usher," Act I., sc. i. {The Comedies and Tragedies of George Chap- man, London, 1873). . . . also my lord Goring, then only called colonel Goring. . . — Defoe, " Memoirs of a Cava- lier" (Oxford, 1840), p. 196. We can only collect a few remaining features, which have lived through the collision of races. . . 192 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. —John Earle, "The Philology of the English Tongue," 5th ed., sec. 571. The " Night Thoughts " only differ from his [Young's] previous works in the degree and not in the kind of power they manifest. — George Eliot, " Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book " (2d ed., Edinburgh, 1884), p. 38. In 1525 Francis himself was taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia, and was only released after consenting to a treaty (which he did not keep), by which he yielded many things to the Emperor. — Edward A. Freeman, " General Sketch of European History" (London, 1885), ch. xiii., sec. 8, p. 257. During peace these colonies have only experi- enced the advantages of union with us. — ^James Anthony Froude, " The English in the West Indies " (New York, 1888), p. 3. They [candles] were usually brought in with tea; but we only burned one at a time. — Mrs. Gas- kell, " Cranford," ch. v. . . . she asked him in an angry tone, what he did there; to which he only replied in an ironical way, by drinking her health. — Goldsmith, " The Vicar of Wakefield," ch. xxi. A falsehood was to her [Elizabeth] simply an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty; and the ease with which she asserted or denied whatever suited her purpose was only equaled by the cynical indifference with which she met the exposure of her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. — "MISPLACEMENT" OF ONLY. 193 J. R. Green, " A Short History of the Enghsh People " (New York, 1882), ch. vii., sec. iii., p. 378. Mr. D'Israeli there [in " Curiosities of Litera- ture "] calls the French demoralisation a " barba- rous term." By this we are only to understand that he disrelished the political principles of its reputed author. — Fitzedward Hall, " Modem Eng- lish " (New York, 1873), p. 43, foot-note. — ^This instance of the " misplacement " of only by Dr. Hall is exceptional. . . . but how completely Turner's conduct in this matter proves that he can only have been elected [Royal Academician] on his merits. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton, " The Life of J. M. W. Turner" (London, 1879), p. 51. ... a knowledge of the world only means a knowledge of our own interest. — William Hazlitt, " On Knowledge of the World " {Sketches and Essays, London, 1884, p. 123). There are peasant farmers and gentlemen farm- ers everywhere. But the man I have in my eye is only to be found at home. — T. E. Kebbel, " Eng- lish Country Life" (London, 1891), p. iii. . . . that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full growth across the Atlan- tic. — Rudyard Kipling, " Mine Own People " (authorized ed., New York, 1891). — The Mutiny of the Mavericks. Mr. Mill has chosen only to look at one-half of human nature, . . . — Macaulay, " Critical and 194 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Miscellaneous Essays " (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879), vol. v., p. 280. — Mill's Essay on Government* Their friendship had only lasted a year when she died. . . — ^John Morley, " Critical Miscellanies " (London, 1888), vol. iii., p. 357. . . . but these excursive acts only occupied their leisure hours. — ^J. H. Newman, " Autobiographical Memoir " (London, 1890), ch. i. In London he had only had eyes for Susie Moore. — W. E. Norris, " Mrs. Fenton," ch. x. He was very deaf, and could only hear through a long trumpet and an india-rubber tube. — Mari- anne North, " Recollections of a Happy Life " (2d ed., London, 1892), vol. ii., p. 131. . . . accused before the Venetian governor of treasonable practices, and only saved by the arrival of the great convoy from Venice. . . — Mrs. Oli- phant, " The Makers of Venice " (London, 1888), Part n., ch. ii., p. 176. . . . men . . . who do not desire to steal baubles and common trash, but wish only to possess pecu- liar rarities. . . — Sir Joshua Reynolds, " Twelfth Discourse " (Literary Works, London, 1879, vol. ii., P- 50). * In Macaulay's writings anly is usually put next to the word or phrase it emphasizes ; often it emphasizes a clause, as below. " But he was now so irrecoverably depraved, that the discipline of adversity only drove him further into wickedness." — Hid., p. 150- — Sarin's Memoirs. I have noticed, however, many instances of " misplacement." "MISPLACEMENT" OF ONLY. 195 . . . you shall have this armour willingly, which I did onely put on to do honor to the owner. . . — Sir Philip Sidney, "Arcadia" (ed. 1598), p. 41. . . . but these [Hearts] are too perishable to preserve their Memories, which can only be done by the Pens of able and faithful Historians. — Swift, " A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue " (2d ed., London 17 12), p. 38. We have only had one really fine day. — ^John Addington Symonds, " In the Key of Blue," etc. (London, 1893), p. 185. He knew all the best [billiard] tables in town, and the marker at Hunt's could only give him ten. — Thackeray, " The Ravenswing," ch. i.* *"If I were asked at this moment to say plainly what defects I have discovered in Sir Percival, I could only point out two." — Wilkie Collins, " The Woman in White," Diary, December 17. ' ' And now I only feel that proud blush when somebody is by. . ." — Mme. D'Arblay, "Diary,"' July 24, 1786. — Diary and Letters, London, 1842. " TheFuegian wigwam resembles, in size and dimensions, a haycock. . . The whole cannot be the work of an hour, and it is only used for a few days." — Charles Darwin, "Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle " (London, 1845), p. 212. " That they only met twice, and in the way he describes, is a fact about which there can be no doubt." — George du Maurier, ' ' Peter Ibbetson. " — Introduction, p. 4. "... a modest inoffensive Man, . . . only Known for his Misfortunes and his Wit."— Samuel Johnson, "Life of Savage" (2d ed., London, 1748), p. 39. " As Lord Castleton's carriage only held two, . . " — Lytton, " The Caxtons," Book II., ch. Ixxxii. ". . .he [Nelson] only reached Antigua to find Villeneuve 196 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. The collocation of only illustrated in the ex- amples given above is infrequent in some of the works mentioned, but in most of them it occurs so often as to leave the impression that it is commoner than any other; its frequency is especially noticeable in writings that show spontaneity. W. gone, . . ."— W. O. Morris, " Napoleon " (New York and Lon- don, i8g4), p. 158. " It [art] is the instinctive and necessary result of powers which can only be developed through the mind of successive genera- tions, . . ." — John Ruskin, "Sesame and Lilies " (New York, 1888), p. 166. " The illusion only endured an instant." — Robert Louis Stev- enson, " Will o' the Mill." TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE.* In some strictures on the English of Mr. William Dean Howells made by Dr. Hall in his " Recent Exemplifications of False Philology " (New York, 1872), at page 107 (foot-note), there is the following quotation from " Subur- ban Sketches " : " It seemed long till that foolish voice was stilled." This is Dr. Hall's comment: "Is this bar- barous use of ^?7/ peculiar to the West? It oc- curs in ' Venetian Life,' also, pp. 96, 1 14. I know it only as an Irishism, in modern times." It is natural to want to know what it is in this use of //// that is barbarous, and one turns (after glancing at " Irishism " and " peculiar to the West ") to the index for enlightenment. There the information is supplied, — " Till, for before, 107." The edition of " Venetian Life " referred to by Dr. Hall is an early one, and in paging ap- * Modern Language Notes, February, 1896. 198 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. patently different from later editions. In one of 1880, I have found the passages quoted be- low at the pages there indicated. Perhaps Dr. Hall would regard these passages and the one quoted above as objectionable for the same reason. The relation of the pages where these quotations are found to the pages cited by Dr. Hall suggests that the passages quoted may be the ones to which he referred. " It is sufificiently bad to live in a rented house; in a house which you have hired ready-furnished it is long till your life takes root." — P. 104. " I have said G. was the flower of serving- women; and so at first she seemed, and it was long till we doubted her perfection." — P. 122. At present, however, let us restrict our at- tention to the passage quoted by Dr. Hall, and to the definition of its error supplied in the in- dex to his " Recent Exemplifications." Dr. Hall says that the use of till in the sentence quoted is " barbarous," and that till, as there used, is " for before." The implication seems to be that the use of " till, for before," — that is, in the sense of " before " — ^is barbarous. But, if my opinion may be trusted here, I would say TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. 199 (i) That, in the passage quoted, " till " is not "for before," and (2) that the use of "till, for before," is often quite right. Let us con- sider the second point first, and turn to literature to see whether a use of till that Dr. Hall regarded as " barbarous " has not the sanction of a considerable range of literary authority. Treuli Y seie to you, that this generacioun schal not passe, til alle thingis be don. — ^Wycliffe and Purvey, " The New Testament," Luke, ch. xxi.. Clarendon Press, 1879. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all things be accomplished. — " The New Testament," Luke, ch. xxi.. Revised Version, Cambridge University Press, 188 1. . . . but who believes it, till Death tells it us? — Sir Waher Raleigh, "History of the World,— Typical Selections -from the Best English Writers (Clarendon Press Series), vol. i., p. 17. . . . but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. — " Hamlet," Act IV., sc. vii. . . . and begged of me not to go on shore till day. — Defoe, " Robinson Crusoe " (Stockdale ed., 1790), vol. i., p. 28. 200 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them. — Goldsmith, " The Vicar of Wakefield " (Facsimile of ist ed., London, 1885), vol. i., ch. xviii. But perhaps Goldsmith was using an Irishism. It [Guido's " Siege of Troy "] does not seem to have much entered into English literature till Chaucer's time, but Chaucer and Lydgate both used it. — Stopford Brooke, " English Literature Primer " (New York, 1894), sec. 25, p. 32. She did not know how long she had been there, till she was startled by the prayer-bell. — George Eliot, " Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," ch. v. . . . though I demur to the truth of the asser- tion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. — William Hazlitt " On the Conversation of Lords " (Sketches and Essays, London, 1884, p. 200). Northumberland strictly obeyed the injunction which had been laid on him, and did not open the door of the royal apartment till it was broad day. — Macaulay, " History of England," vol. iii., ch. x., p. 294. Nothing could wake her to life till the time came. — George du Maurier, " Peter Ibbetson," Part v., p. 307. That, however, at the earliest, would not be till to-morrow. — W. H. Mallock, " A Human Docu- ment," ch. xvi. He had planned not to touch his hoard till he TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. 201 had done with the Frampton job, and returned to Clinton for good. — Mrs. Humphry Ward, "The Story of Bessie Costrell " (New York, 1895), sc. iv., p. 98. . . . but I had no formal religious convictions till I was fifteen. — J. H. Newman, " Apologia," ch. i., p. I.* * " . . . solitary Birds which seldom make their Appearance till the Dusk of the Evening." — Addison, " Sir Roger de Cover- ley " (London, 1850), ch. vi. " He had been asked to dinner, to meet Dr. Johnson, but could not come till evening." — Mme. D'Arblay, " Diary," January 4, 1783. — Diary and Letters, London, 1842. "When once he had entered a Tavern, or engaged in a Scheme of Pleasure, he never retired till Want of Money obliged him to some new Expedient. "1 — ^Johnson, "Life of Savage" (2d ed., London, 1748), p. 130. " . . .we had some difficulty in obtaining admission, till Mr. Boswell made himself known."— Id., " Journey to the Western Islands " (Dublin, 1775), p. 19. " . . . none of them, till a later period, attained anything like popularity." — Fitzedward Hall, " Modem English" (New York, 1873), p. 293, foot-note. ". . . he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was gone." — Lytton, " The Caxtons," Book I., ch. v. ' ' But he . . . refused to enter on his office till the event of the next election of Directors should be known." — Macaulay, " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays " (New York, 1879), vol. iii., p. 137. — Malcolm's Life of Clive. " As to the schism at Antioch, it was not terminated till the time of Chrysostom." — J. H. Newman, " The Arians of the Fourth Century" (2d ed., London, 1854), p. 208. " Nobody interrupted me till I was done, . . ." — R.L.Ste- venson, " Treasure Island," ch. xii. " . . .he did not die till night." — Swift, "A Vindication of 202 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. So, too, until. On the present occasion, we did not quit the dinner until Mr. Slang, the manager, was consider- ably excited by wine. . . — Thackeray, " The Ravenswing," ch. vii. . . . Tom was delighted and greatly relieved to see us, having quite abandoned all hope of our appearing until the morning. . . — Lady Brassey, " Last Voyage " (London, 1887), p. 201. Man is altogether passive in this call, until the Holy Spirit enables him to answer it. — Matthew Arnold, " St. Paul and Protestantism," p. 9.* The intention of " We won't go home till morning " was irregular and indiscreet, but its English is without fault. Till or until is preferably used for before when the proximity of some word of an incon- Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq." — Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (Lon- don, 1711), p. 299. *" The great dance was not to begin until eight o'clock." — George Eliot, "Adam Bede," ch. xxv. "It had been ordered that no person should be admitted until the judge had taken his seat on the bench." — Lytton, " Paul Clifford," ch. xxxv. " No book is serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again." — Ruskin, "Sesame and Lilies" (New York, 1888), p. 51. " When an Englishman comes to Paris, he cannot appear until he has undergone a total metamorphosis." — Smollett, " Travels through France and Italy " (London, 1766), Letter vi. TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. 203 gruous sense would make before sound mis- placed or odd. Among incongruous words of this kind are certain prepositions and adverbs, as after, later, within, etc. It is hardly possible, therefore, that disputes about politics or religion should have embittered his [Barere's] domestic life till some time after he became a husband. — Macaulay, " Critical and Mis- cellaneous Essays" (D. Appleton & Co., 1879), vol. v., p. 157. — Barere's Memoirs. Now whose this small voice was I did not find out till many years later, . . . — George du Mau- rier, " Peter Ibbetson," Part II., p. 105. Her nature, indeed, had never gauged its own capacities for pleasure till within the last few months. — Mrs. Humphry Ward, " The Story of Bessie Costrell " (New York, 1895), sc. v., p. 162. . . . her armies had not approached the Vistula until weeks after the disaster of Jena. — W. O. Morris, " Napoleon " (New York and London, 1894), p. 201. It was not, however, till several years after that it occurred to the much-wandering poet to fix his habitation in Venice. — Mrs. Oliphant, " The Makers of Venice," Part IV., ch. i., p. 345. As it suddenly burst on one its entire aspect was English. It was not till a little later that the eye took note of the differences. — W. H. Mallock, " In An Enchanted Island," p. 75. 304 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known how much of happiness depended on being first with Mr. Knightley, first in interest and affection. — ^Jane Austen, " Emma " (London, 1816), vol. iii., ch. xii., p. 213.* It is interesting to note the gradations by which till (or until) and before pass into a com- mon meaning. There is always an implication of before in till and until when used of time; but the sense that is in the foreground, in most cases, is that of continuance to a certain point. If the first and two last of the subjoined ex- amples be compared, it will be seen that in the * " If he lunched with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he would not reach the chase again till nearly five, . . ." — George Eliot, " Adam Bede," ch. xii. " The Pope and the Emperor agreed that the Florentines should be obliged again to take back the Medici, but they did not do so till after a long and terrible siege." — Edward A. Freeman, " General Sketch of European History" (London, 1885), p. 259. " Mr. Partrige pretends to tell Fortunes, and recover stolen Goods ; which all the Parish says he must do by conversing with the Devil, and other evil Spirits : And no wise man will ever al- low he could converse personally with either till after he was dead." — Swift, "A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq." — Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (London, 1711), p. 299. " He confessed he had often had it in his Head, but never with much Apprehension till about a Fortnight before." — "An Account of the Death of Mr. Partrige." — Ibid., p. 285. — In the table of con- tents, Partrige is twice spelled Patrige. TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. 205 first the substitution of before for till would ex- actly reverse the sense, — for, at the time spoken of, the vessel could and did swim; in the two last quotations, however, the displacement of till and until by before would leave the sense (though not the smoothness of expression) un- changed. At what point the thought becomes such that till and before might be used inter- changeably for its expression is a question that would, probably, be variously answered by dif- ferent people, and variously, perhaps, even by the same person at different times. ... it was not possible she could swim till we might run into port . . . — Defoe, " Robinson Crusoe," vol. i., p. 14. Every attentive regarder of the character of Paul, not only as he was before his conversion but as he appears to us till his end, must have been struck with two things. — Matthew Arnold, "St. Paul and Protestantism," p. 26. The subscribers engaged ... to persist in their undertaking till the liberties and the religion of the nation should be effectually secured. — Macaulay, " History of England," vol. iii., ch. ix., p. 249. But one vast realm of wonder spreads around. And all the Muses' tales seem truly told, 2o6 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. Till the sense aches with gazing to behold The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon. — Byron, " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Second Canto, Ixxxviii. Bessie ran till she was out of breath. — Mrs. Humphry Ward, " The Story of Bessie Costrell," sc. ii., p. 42. . . . and thus I lay till the water ebbed away, and left my raft and all my cargo safe on shore. — " Robinson Crusoe," vol. i., p. 65. It [the villa] seemed to profane the landscape, and I was sorry that I had set eyes on it till, after a minute or two spent indoors, we were taken out into the garden. . . — W. H. Mallock, " In An Enchanted Island," p. 77. . . . men of high rank, who had, till within a few days, been considered as zealous Royalists. — Macaulay, " History of England," vol. iii., ch. ix., p. 276. . . . zealous Tories, who had, till very recently, held the doctrine of non-resistance in the most absolute form. . . — Ibid., p. 277. Until we had secured 850 head [of cattle] in the corral some hours afterwards, we scarcely saw each other to speak to. — Isabella L. Bird, " A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains," Letter ix. He used to go to meeting and preach himself, until his son took orders. — Thackeray, " The Book of Snobs," ch. xiv. . . . laying up every corn, I resolved to sow them all again, hoping in time to have some quan- TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. 207 tity sufficient to supply me with bread; but it was not till the fourth year that I could allow myself the least grain of this corn to eat. — " Robinson Crusoe," vol. i., p. 98. One terrible cry, ringing through the stillness of the night, was heard by the royal fleet, but it was not till the morning that the fatal news reached the King. — J. R. Green, " A Short History of the Eng- lish People " (New York, 1882), ch. ii., sec. vi., p. 125. All men could not come in their own persons, and it was not for a long time, not till the twelfth or thirteenth century, that any one thought of choos- ing a smaller number of men to speak and act on behalf of all. . . — Edward A. Freeman, " General Sketch of European History " (London, 1885), ch. X., sec. 6, p. 175. Until Mrs. Walker arrived. Miss Larkins was the undisputed princess of the Baroski company. — Thackeray, " The Ravenswing," ch. iv. We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. — ^William Hazlitt, " On Prejudice " (Sketches and Essays, London, 1884, p. 68). 1 never knew till the other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. — Id., " On the Conversa- tion of Lords " (Sketches and Essays, p. 207). This will not go till all is over.— J. H. Newman, " Apologia " (London, 1883), ch. iv., p. 235. The answer to the French ultimatum will prob- 2o8 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. ably not be published until these pages are in our readers' hands. — The Spectator, July 22, 1893, p. lOI. An undiscriminating use of till and before often produces ambiguity. If we note the primary meaning of till and compare with it the sense of before where till and before seem to be interchangeable, we shall see that before carries varying implications according to the circumstances in which it is used. Till means, continually to a point of time mentioned or referred to, and usually with an implication of discontinuance at that point, — as, he slept till the bell rang ; it rained from ten till noon, I know, because I was out in it. The rain spoken of in the second sentence may have continued after noon, but the speaker does not assert knowledge of it. Bearing in mind the meaning of till, let us examine two sen- tences in which before occurs. {a) Before he met with that accident his health was good, {b) His health was good before he went to Colorado. In {a), till may be used for before because health is a continuing state, and his good health TILL, IN THE SENSE OF BEFORE. 209 lasted to the time of the accident, at which point it ceased (by implication) to be good. But before produces here no ambiguity. In {b), till ought to be used instead of before if the meaning intended is that his health ceased to be good after he went to Colorado, for the sen- tence as it stands may be understood in more than one way, and there is nothing to show whether, after he went to Colorado, there was any change or not in his health. — We may say, then: Where it appears from the circum- stances — that is, without the use of till — that a state or act continued to a certain time and then ceased or changed, before and till may be used interchangeably; but, if such meaning be intended, and the intention does not ap- pear from the circumstances, then till ought to be used to make the meaning clear. Sentences of which {a) is the type are very common; fre- quent examples of them turn up in remarks, serious or burlesque, about things " before the War." — "What a moon that was — fo deh Wah!" The ambiguous before illustrated in (3) oc- curs in affirmative sentences; in negative sen- 210 SOME QUESTIONS OF GOOD ENGLISH. tences there may be an ambiguous till. One cannot know, from the sentence alone, " it did not rain till noon," whether the rain did not begin before noon, or whether it ceased before noon. If the former meaning is intended, the ambiguity will be removed by the substitution of before for till ; if the latter sense is the right one, it should be apparent from the circum- stances. Returning now to the passage that has served as the text for this discourse — Dr. Hall's quo- tation from Howells — the question at once rises in the mind. Is " till " used there for " before "? — " It seemed long till that foolish voice was stilled." — To me the sense is not quite the same as when before is substituted. Till gives to " seemed " a continuance that is not con- veyed in before, and that protracted duration of the seeming was doubtless the sense intended by the author. The two quotations from How- ells, cited by conjecture as those referred to by Dr. Hall, stand, perhaps, on a dififer- ent footing. W. INDEXES. INDEX OF NAMES. *«* A foot-note is indicated byy after a page number. Abbott, The Rev. E. A., A Shakespearian Grammar, 40, 85. Abbott, Charles Stuart Aubrey, 75. Aberdeen, 76. Academy, The, 12, 78, 107, 122, 136-7, 139, 146, 148, 152-3. 156. 163. Addison, Joseph, 36. Sir Roger de Coverley, 26, 201/. Africa, no, 113, 149. Aide, The, 115. Aleman's The Rogue, 93. Alleghany, 114. America, 58, 113, 117, 136, 158, 162. American, 15, 79, 107, 116-8, 155, 162-4. Amsterdam, 76. Andes, The, 172. Anglicist, 117. Antigua, 195/. Antioch, io\f. Antwerp, 76. Appleton, Dr. J. H., 63. Arblay, Mme. D', Diary and Letters, 195/, 201/. Arcadia, 85. Argalus, 85. Arnold, Dr., 49. Arnold, Matthew, 78, 91. Civilization in the United States, 90, 104. Arnold, Matthew. — Continued. Essays in Criticism, Second Series, 171. Mixed Essays, 187, 190. Poems, 83. Sohrab and Rustum, 47. Saint Paul and Protestantism, 202, 205. Asia, lie, 132. Asmodeus, 62. Athenaeum, The, 18, 26. Atlantic, The, 193. Austen, Jane, Emma : A Novel, 89, 101, 204. Austin, Mrs. Sarah, 63. Babbage, Sir C, 63. Harare's Memoirs, 17, 194/, 203. Bariesu, 26. Beaconsfield, Lord, 179. Contarini Fleming, 171. Lothair, 186, 191. Beckett, Sir William a', 76. Beddoes, Dr. T., 63. Bengal, 19. Bentham, Jeremy, 28. Beowulf, 191. Berkeley, Bp., Berkeley's Works, 16. Bernard of Clairvaux, 173. Berwick Street, 21. Besant, Sir Walter, Armorel of Lyonesse, 21, 25, 130, 134-5. 191- Bible, The, 96. 214 INDEX OF NAMES. Bigelow, John, William CuUen Bryant, ii, 21. Bird, Isabella L., A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, 130-1, 191, 206. Black, William, A Princess of Thule, 132 /, 134/- The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat, 104, 134, 171. Blackmore, R. D., 63. Blackwood's Magazine, 24. Boca de los Huevos, 171. Bolingbroke, Lord, 207. Boole, 43. Boston, 21, in, 184. Boston Common, 184. Boswell, 201 /. Bowring, Sir John, 63. Brassey, Lady, 178. In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties. 172. Last Voyage, 202. Brewer, Rev. J. S., 63. British Museum, 59. Brobdingnag, Voyage to, 175/. Brooke, Rev. Stopford, English Literature Primer, 172, 191, 200. Brown, Goold, The Grammar of English Grammars, 36. Browne, Sir Thomas, 75. Religio Medici, 191. Browning, Asolando, 47. My Last Duchess, 35. Herve Riel, 186. Porphyria's Lover, 186. Buckle, Rev. George, 56. Burke, 45. Byron, Lord, 63. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 206. Cabot, III. Caernarvon Castle, 23. CsEsar, 90, 104, 126, 172. Caine, Hall, The Bondman, 103, 125/. Caius Julius, 18. Calais, loi/. Caley, G. J., 65. Carlisle, Earl of, 65. Casablanca, 35. Catholic Church, The, 52. Chapman, George, Comedies and Tragedies, 34, 47, igi- An humerous dayes mirth, 34- Bussy D'Ambois, 34, 47. The Gentleman Usher, igi. Chaucer, 200. Christ, 18. Chrysostom, 201 f. Clinton, 201. Clive, Malcolm's Life of, 201/. Clough, Arthur Hugh, 65, 186. Poems and Prose Remains, 125/, 184. Coleridge, 58. Essays on His own Times, 4, 8. Collins, Wilkie, The Woman in White, 26, 103, 195/. Cologne, 173. Columbus, no. Congreve, Richard, 65. Conington, J., 65. Constance, 173. Corinthians, II., 64. Cowper, John Gilpin, 39. Cracrott, Bernard, 65. Creech, Rev. Thomas, Lucretius, 93. Cromwell, Secretary, 48. Daiphantus, 85. Darling, James, 76. INDEX OF NAMES. 215 Darwin, Charles, Voyage of H. M. S. Beagle, 195/. Dasent, Sir George W., 43, 65. Daubeney, Catherine, 47. Davidson, Alexander Dyce, 76. Decamps, Alexander Gabriel, 77. Decker, Sir Matthew, 76. De Cort, Henry Francis, 76. Defoe, Memoirs of a Cavalier, 186, 191. Robinson Crusoe, 185, 199, 205-7. Dekker, Thomas, The Shoemaker's Holiday, 84. The Witch of Edmonton, 87, 100. De Lane, Solomon, 76. De Morgan, A., 43, 65. De Quincey, 27, 91, 102, 187, 189. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 90-1, 102. The Caesars, 172. Dial, The, 7, 12, 33, 38, 56, .65-7, 75. 83, 92-3- Dieppe, 103. Dickens, The Uncommercial Trav- eller, 22. Dictionaries, Dictionary of the Academy, 17- Dictionary of National Biog- raphy, 75. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 6, 17, 39. 48, 53, 62. Johnson's Dictionary, 6, 17, 39. loi. Webster's International Dic- tionary, 84. Disraeli, Isaac, Curiosities of Literature, 193. Donaldson, Dr. J. W., 63. Dublin, 76, 126. Earle, The Rev. Professor John, The Philology of the English Tongue, 53, 56. Edinburgh, 76. Educational Review, The, 108-9, 140. Edward VI., 185. Eliot, George, Adam Bede, 21, 24-5, 103, 126/, 202/, 204/. Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book, 192. Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story, 172, 200. Romola, 64. Scenes of Clerical Life, 131. Elizabeth, Queen, 192. Elvira, Dona, 91 y. Emilianne, Gabriel d'. The Frauds of Romish Monks and Priests, 97. Emperor, The,— (Charies V.), 192. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 77. England, 13, 17,22, 117, 129/, 133, 136, 151, 157-8. Egypt, 16. Falkland, 187, 190. Farrar, Archdeacon, 63. Fielding, 38. Finlay, Kirkman, 76. Florence, 17. Florentine, 187, 204/. Fox, Caroline, 63. Frampton, 201. France, 113. Francis I., 192. Franklin, Benjamin, 78, ill, 114, 126, 129. Memoirs, 80. Frankfort-on-the-Main, 78/. 2l6 INDEX OF NAMES. Frederick II., 182. Freeman, Edward A., General Sketch of European History, 192, 204/, 207. Froude, James Anthony, Csesar, 18, 90, 104, 126, 133, 172. The English in the West Indies, 24, 192. Oceana, 133. Fuller, Rev. Dr. Thomas, Historie of the Holy Warre, 93- Galileans, 46. Gamaliel, 13. Gaskell, Mrs., Cranford, 133/, 173, 179, 192. Gladstone, William E., 63. Glasgow, 76. Goethe, 78/. Goldsmith, 38, 93. The Deserted Village, 134/. The Vicar of Wakefield, 192, 200. Gordon, Lady Duff, 63. Gozzoli, Benozzo, 77. Grant, Sir Francis, 76. Graves, R. P., Life of Sir W. R. Hamilton, 43- Gray, 33-4, 38, 42. Progress of Poesy, 33. Great Britain, 115, 120, 129/, 149. Green, J. R., A Short History of the Eng- lish People, 18, 193, 207. Greenhill, W. A., Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, 77. Green Park, The, 184. Greg, W. R., 63. Grenville, Lord, 4, 8, 9. Gresley, Rev. W., 63. Grote, John, 63. Grotius, 43. Guide's Siege of Troy, 200. H., F., 3, II, 33, 44. Haggard, H. Rider, King Solomon's Mines, 127, IZ9. Maiwa's Revenge, 23, 26, 130/. Hall or Halle, Edward, 77. Hall, Dr. Fitzedward, 14-5, 20, 26-9, 34, 46, 53-4, 66-9, 71, 78, 80, 99, 123-4, 131, 135, 146, 151, 158, 163-4, 170, 180, 182, 210. Doctor Indoctus, 91, 169, 188, 190. Modern English, 4-7, 27-9, 33. 36, 38, 44, 52, 55-6. 68, 163, 188, 193, 201/. Recent Exemplifications of False Philology, 27-8, 51, 88, 98/, 187, 189, 197-8. The American Dialect, Letter to the Academy, 78, 107, 122 136-7, 152, 154, 156- 7, 159, i6i-2. Hall, Theophilus D., English Grammar, 40. Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, Harry Blount, 90, 104, 132. The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A., 193. Modern Frenchmen, 77. Hamilton, Sir William, 77. Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, 77- Hardy, Thomas, The Woodlanders, 24, 125, 132, 173. Harrison, Frederic, 63. The Choice of Books, 22, 24, 77. 173- Harvard Graduates' Magazine, The, 117. Hastings, Warren, 19. Hawkins, Sir Richard, 92. INDEX OF NAMES. 317 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 88. Hazlitt, William, On the Conversation of Lords, 200, 207. On Knowledge of the World, 193- On Prejudice, 207. Sketches and Essays, 22, 25, 193, 200, 207. Hemans, Mrs., 36. Henry VII., III. Henry VIII., 57. Herbert, George, The Temple, 35. Herschel, Sir J. F. W., 63. Hill, Adams Sherman, Our English, 11. The Principles of Rhetoric, 45- Hobby, 128, 149. Hobhouse, Sir J. C, 63. Hodgson, Dr. W. B.,63. Holland, Dr. J. G., The Heroes of Crampton, lo, 23. Holmes, Dr. O. W., 89, 91, 94, 98-9. The Autocrat of the Break- fast-Table, 88. Elsie Venner, 10, 24. Hope, A. J. B., 63. Hope, Anthony, 26. Hope-Scott, J. R., 63. Howell, James, Familiar Letters, 35. A Survay of the Signorie of Venice, 87. Howells, W. D., 118, 163, 210. Italian Journeys, 189. Suburban Sketches, 197. Venetian Life, 197. Hudson, 113. Hungerford, 104., Hutton, Richard Holt, Literary Essays, 78/". Inarime, 16. Inchbald, Elizabeth, 38. India, 113. Indians, The, no, 112, 114. Ireland, W. H., 63. Irving, Henry, The Drama, 134/. Isaiah, 16. James II., 91, 96, loi. Jamestown, no, 131. Jena, 203. Jerusalem, 179/". Jewis, 179/ Johnson, Samuel, 177. A Dictionary of the English Language, 6, 17, 39, loi. Journey into North Wales, 23. Journey to the Western Islands, 201 /. Life of Pope, 189. Life of Savage, 195 y, 201 f. Jones, Rev. Harry, The Regular Swiss Round, 21, 23, 132, 133/. Jones, Tom, 96. Judith, 191. Kamenz, 126. Kebbel, T. E., English Country Life, 193. Kingsley, Charles, 51. Kipling, Rudyard, The Light that Failed, 173. Mine Own People, 127-8, 134. 193- Kitchin, G. W., Book I. of the Faery Queene Annotated, 78. Knowlesbury, 103. Lamb, 58. Lambith, 47. Landor, 33, 58, 169, 170. The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, 38. Latham, 39, 41. 2l8 INDEX OF NAMES. Latimer, Hugh, Sermons, 185. Lecky, William Edward Hart- pole, 76, 178. The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 77. The Political Value of His- tory, 173. Lee, Sidney, 75. Lessing, 77, 126. Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain from the commencement of the twelfth century to the close of the reign of Queen Mary. Edited by Mary A. E. Wood, 48. L'Estrange, The Fables of ^sop and other Eminent Mytholo- gists, loi. Lewes, George Henry, On Actors and the Art of Acting, 17. Lightfoot, I29y. London, 47, 75-6, 78. Long, James, Can the Empire Feed its People?, 17, 130/. Longfellow, Evangeline, 187. Kavanagh, 10, 22. Louvere, 16. Lowell, Political Essays, 10. Luke's, St., 21. Lusatia, Upper, 77, 126. Lydgate, 200. Lytton, Lord, 75. The Caxtons, 195/, 201 /. My Novel, 179. Paul Clifford, loi, 135/, 202/. What Will He Do With It?, 173- Mabbe, The Rev. James, 92-3. Macalister, Arthur, 76. Macaulay, Lord, 26-9, 39, 61, 84, 96, 169. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, 17, 19, 127/, 132/, 182, 193-4, 201/, 203. Essays, 177, 132. History of England, .6, 17, 19, 27, 91, 102, 170, 180, 200, 205. Lays of Ancient Rome, 35, 91/. Maccabe, Edward, 76. Maccabe, William Bernard, 76. Maine, Sir H. S., 63. Maitland, Rev. Dr. S. R., 63. Mallock, W. H., 63. A Human Document, 200. In an Enchanted Island, 203, 206. Manning, Cardinal, 63. Mar, Countess of, 89. Marcia, 18. Marlesford, 13, 44, 62, 65, 97, 107, 151. Marsh, George P., 7-10, 14, 20. Lectures on the English Lan- guage, 4. Martineau, Harriet, 63. Martyr's, Justin, Memorials of the Apostles, 129/. Mason, C. P., English Grammar, 40-1. Massinger, The Fatal Dowry, 86. Mathews, Charles, 17. Maurier, George du, Peter Ibbetson, 22, 25, 46, 128/, 195/, 200, 203. Medici, 204/. Mediterranean, 90, 103. Middle Ages, 79. Mile End, 131-2. Mill, John Stuart, 63. A System of Logic, 6, 19. Mill's Essay on Government, 194, 127/. INDEX OF NAMES. 219 Milton, 121. Samson Agonistes, 84. Minstrel, The, 93. Mississippi, The, 113, 143. Modem Language Notes, 122, 137. 152-4, 156, 103, 169, 184, 197. Modestus, 103. Monkhouse, Cosmo, The Earlier English Water- Colour Painters, 187. Montagu, Lady M. W., 5, 16, 8g, 101. More, Sir Thomas, 47. Utopia, 47. Morison, J. C, 63. Morley, John, 63. Critical Miscellanies, 78 f, 173-4, 194. Morris, William O'Connor, Napoleon, WarriorandRuler, 18, 134/, 196/, 203. Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 127. Mutiny of the Mavericks, The, 193. Naples, 16-7, 189. Nation, The, 3, 62. National Gallery, The, 135. Nelson, Lord, 195 y. Newman, Francis William, 63. Newman, John Henry, 27, 36-7, 43-4, 51-8, 60-2, 67- 71, 78, 129/, 149, 178. Apologia pro Vita Sua, go, 103, 201, 207. The Arians of the Fourth Century, 201/. Autobiographical Memoir, 174, 194. Discussions, 45. An Essay on the Develop- ment of Christian Doctrine, 35- Essays Critical and Historical, 52, 58. Newman, John Heniy. — Con- tinued. Historical Sketches, 5, 16, 35, 47, 103. Letters, 59, 60, 67. News, The Daily, 129/. New York, 17, no. Nichol, John, English Composition, 188, 190. Nineteenth Century, The, 17, 130/. Nonconformist Liberal Union- ist Association, 18. Nonconformists, 91, 102. Norris, W. E., Mrs. Fenton, 194. North, Marianne, Recollections of a Happy Life, 23, 25, 132, 174, 194. Oliphant, Laurence, 63. Oliphant, Mrs., The Makers of Venice, 187, 194, 203. Olney, Richard, 129. Ore, The, 115. Oriel College, 18. Oriel, A Fellow of, 174, 178. Orinoco, The, 171. Ormin's Ormulum, 172. Outis Neminissimus, 107. Oxford, 18, 22. Paddington, 131. Paget, Rev. F. E., 63. Paris, 17, 202/. Parliament, 91, 96, 102. Partrige (fortune-teller) ; mis- spelling of his name, 204/'. Pater, Walter, Appreciations, 186. Pattison, Rev. Mark, 63. Pavia, Battle of, 192. Peabody, The Rev. Dr. A. P., 117. Peacock, T. L. , 63. INDEX OF NAMES. Penzance, 75. Perreyve, Henri, 77. Peter, First Epistle of, 64. Petrarch, 187. Philadelphia, 36, iii. Phoebus, Mr., igo. Piccadilly row. The, 184. Pitt, 207. Pompey, 126. Pope, Alexander, 16. The Dunciad, 18. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 20. Powell, Rev. Baden, 63. Purvey, John, 26, I7qy. Pusey, Rev. Dr. E. B., 60, 63. Pycroft, Rev, J., 63. Quincy, Josiah, Figures of the Past, 11, 21. Radcliffe, Ann, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 89, lOI. Raleigh, Sir Walter, History of the World, igg. Ramsay, Allan, 78/. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, Literary Works, 194. Rhine, The, 173. Rhone, The, 90, 104. Rocky Mountains, The, 132. Rogers' Italy, 26. Roman Senate, 133. Rome, 17, 87, 103. Roper, William, The Life of Sir Thomas More, 47. Rossetti, 186. Royalists, 206. Ruskin, 51. Modern Painters, 174. Sesame and Lilies, 196/, 202/. Salisbury, 75. Salisbury, Lord, 18, 63, 129. Saturday Review, The, 24, 174/. Scotland, Language of, 117. Scribner's Monthly, 58. Shakespeare, 40, 45, 121. Coriolanus, 5, 6, 16, 20. Hamlet, igg. Henry VIII., 87. Macbeth, 34. Richard II., 85, 100. The Taming of the Shrew, 47, 185. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 86, 100. Sheffield, 75. Shelley, 51, 77, 171. Shelley, Mrs., 51, 171. Shenstone, 128. Sheridan, 43. Sidney, Sir Philip, Arcadia, 34, 85, 185, 195. The Defence of Poesie, 36. Collected Writings, 34, 36, 85. Sime, James, Lessing, 77, 126, Smith, III. Smith, Goldwin, 63, 174/. Lectures and Essays, 174. Smith, (Japtain John, 114. Smith, Sydney, 107. Smith, Dr. William, English Grammar, 40. Smith, Rev. Dr. William, Eulogium on Franklin, 80. Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, 202 /. Soho, 21. Sol, Dofia, 91 /. South Africa, 24. Southern States, 113, 129. Southey, 61, 93. Speaker, The, 18. Spectator, The, 22, 24, 208. Spencer, Herbert, 63. Recent Discussions in Science, Philosophy and Morals, 175. INDEX OF NAMES. 221 Spenser, Edmund, 77. Stedman, E. C, Victorian Poets, 10. Steevens, G. W., 24. Stephen, Sir J. F., 63. Stephen, Leslie, 63, 65. Sterne, 38. Stevenson, Robert Louis, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 128/. Treasure Island, 201 /. Will o' the Mill, 196/ Stockmar, 174. Stowe, Mrs., 118, 163. Strangford, Lord, 63. Swift, 76, 77, 126. An Account of the Death of Mr. Partrige, 204/. A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertain- ing the English Tongue, 195. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, 175/^ A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. 201-2/, 204/. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 202/, 204/. Symonds, John Addington, 63. In the Key of Blue, 133, 195. A Study of Walt Whitman, 175. Taylor, 8g, loi. Tecumseh, 113. Tecumsy, 114. Tellus, 120. Tennyson, Audley Court, 47. Aylmer's Field, 130. The Brook, 90, 102. Enoch Arden, 6, 17. Sea Dreams, 102. Testament, The New, — Re- vised Version, 199. Thackeray, The Book of Snobs, 22, 26, 102, 127/, 206. The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, 77. 126. Esmond, 42. The Newcomes, 125 /, 127/, 176. The Ravenswing, 24, 186, 195, 202, 207. The Rose and the Ring, 21. Thirlwall, Bp., 65. Thornbury, Walter, The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A., 26. Tooke, John Home, 169. Tories, 206. Trevelyan, Sir George O. , 65. TroUope, Anthony, 65, 178. Doctor Thorne, 176. The West Indies and the Spanish Main, 23. Trollope, T. Adolphus, Diamond Cut Diamond, 16, 23. Turgot, Anne-Robert- Jacques, 78/. Turner, J. M. W., 26, 193. Twickenham, 89. Typical Selections from the Best English Writers, 185, 199. Tyrol, The Bavarian, 18. Tyrwhitt, Rev. R. E., 65. Tytler, Sarah, Modern Painters, 78 /. Union, The, 113, 129. United States, The, 112, 113, 117, 141, 149. 157. Venezuela, 129/, 171. Venice, 194, 203. Vienna, 89. Vienne, 90, 104. INDEX OF NAMES. Villeneuve, 195 ^ . Vistula, The, 203. Warburton, Eliot, 43, 65. Warburton, Major George, 65. Ward, Mrs. Humphry, The Story of Bessie Costrell, 46, 176/, 201, 203, 206. Washington, George, IIO, 112, 113, 128, 130. Webster, Daniel, 186. Webster's International Dic- tionary, 84. Wells' Grammar, 35, Westminster, 47. Whewell, Rev. Dr. W., 43. Whishaw, Fred J. , Out of Doors in Tsarland, 126. White, Richard Grant, 27. Whit-Monday, 176. Whitney, William Dwight, Oriental and Linguistic Studies, 187. Wilberforce, Bp., 52, 55, 61. Williams, 60. Williams, R. O., Our Dictionaries, II, 64. Witches, igi. Worcester, 75. Wordsworth, 77. Wordsworth, Bp. Christopher, 65. Wycliffe and Purvey, Deeds of Apostles, 26, 179/. Yonge, Charlotte M., 65. Nuttie's Father, 103. An Old Woman's Outlook, 128, 176. Young, Night Thoughts, 192. INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. *,* A foot-note is indicated by / after a page number. A: while the ark was a prepar- ing, 64. About: around lor about , 134 y^" studied about geography, no, 141. Academy letter, The; — exposi- tion of, in A Rejoinder, 159; concealed meaning of, 155; difficulties in reconciling all the parts of, 158-61. Acadian climate, 187. Alone: the alone Saviour, 55. Along: followed along the shores, no, 125; followed along Pompey's track, 126; see along the passage, 126/. Alternative, 6, 17. American, 21, 107, 122, 135, 145; the American dialect, 107- 21, 146-7; American English, 117, 119, 123, 128, 136, 142-3. 148, 150, 160; language of an American more or less dialectal, 118, 163. Americanism, Americanisms, 119, 131, 135-6. 140. 142- 9, 152, 154-5, 157-60; tolerable and intolerable, 122, 146; Americanism. — Continued. Americanism (abstract or col- lective), 138-40; Americanism, — the American dialect in its more usual form, that of debasement, 142. Americanize, ng, 122, 139, 143, 159- Amount : the Indians would not amount to anything, II2. An: an human, 43 ; an hymn, 43- Another from, 43. Anywhere than, 43. Apiece: four pounds apiece, 127; leaving some two hundred thousand pounds apiece, 127// a hundred thousand pounds apiece, T.'i'l f; one-seventh of a soul apiece, 126; paid a dollar apiece, III, 126; a thousand men with ten pounds apiece, 127; the women gave a scream apiece, 127/'. Around: — See Round. cruise around the promon- tory, 132 /y to get around Africa, no, 112, 132, 149; wanders around the bays, 134; 224 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. Around. — Continued. turned around and marched back, no, 131; turn around to stare at it, 132/.- the carriage cut around the corner, 132 f; had run around and opened the door, \'i\fj drove around to, I'i^f; carry letters around, no, 133; dance around, 134 /l," fool around, 134; every one around, 135 f; lot of people around the door, 134 fj ran around the man, li^f; regions around the Rhine, 134 /y settling arourd the stage, 134// stood around, 135; walking around the house 134; around and round confused, 133; mistaken uses of fl!»'o«»if, 112. Ascertained, 19. At: at the North, no; at the South, no. Attend; to attend the shop, 112. Back and forth, no. Be, 53. Before : before he met with that ac- cident, 208; before he went to Colorado, 208; ambiguous use of before, 208-9; before and till sometimes in- terchangeable, 209. Being: is being, 54, 56-7, 60, 64, 69, 70; is being built, 51-3, 62, 65; Being. — Continued. is being corrupted, 60; is being exerted, 60; is being poured, 60; is being taken, 61; are being led, 52, 59, 62; was being done away, 64; was being worn out, 60. Between you and I, 42. Bible revisionists, 64. Born, 75: at., aiiexborn, 75; in, after bom, 76; in, after born,heior& London, 75; born at Boston, 80; born at Dublin, 76; born at Edinburgh, 76; born at Penzance, 75; born at Sheffield, 75; born at Salisbury, 75; born at Worcester, 75; born in Aberdeen, 76, 78 f; bom in Amsterdam, 76; born in Boston, 75, 78-9; I was born in Boston, in New England, 80; born in Dublin, 126; born in Florence, 77; bom in Glasgow, 77; born in Kamenz, 77, 126; born in London, 75-7; born in Paris, 77. Boxes, The, 17. British English, 136, 147, 150. British settlers, 129/. Build: built up a great fire, 130; Washington had all his camp-fires built up, 112, 130; the fire was built out of doors, 112; building the telegraph, 112. But, 33-45, 48: " as a passive participle," 40; nominative after but, 37, 46; INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 225 But. — Continued. all the world but he, 47; all but he, 36, 39, 41, 47; anybody but he, 46; anybody but she, 41-2; any men but they, 35, 43; any one but he, 46; any one but she, 39; fairer than aU else but thou, 47; nobody but I, 41-2, 48; nobody but me, 41, 48; nobody but he, 40; no God but he, 40; no man but he, 34, 44; no men but he, 47; none but I, 35 ; none but we, 34, none but he, 34-5, 39, 47; none but she, 35, 43; none but you and I, 47; none but they, 34-5, 38-9, 42, 46; no one but me, 42; no one but he, 44; who but I, 34; who but we, 40; who but he, 35, 39,40,47; what stays had I but they, 45: all but him, 36, 39, 41; any one but her, 39; nobody but him, 40-1 ; none but them, 46; no other guide but him, 36; who but him, 40; but, when it follows none other, no other, no one else, etc., is equivalent to than, 44; none other but he, 44; preposition, 34. By: by himself, 18; soaked by rain, III. By-matter, 158. Cabinet, The, 19. Capping, "Americanisms," 124. Cassava, 114. Claim: object of, 129; claimed that they had a right, 113, 129; claimed that the governor had exceeded his authority, 129// can claim that he has suc- ceeded, 12') f J- claiming that the court should, 129; claims that he was drunk, 129 fs can claim having protected the rights, 129 fj claimed to be a prophet, 129 f; nor claimed to be, 129 f. Clairvoyance, 70. Clear: that Africa reached clear to the south pole, 113. Colonial period, 136. Conclude, 124-5 : concluded to furnish the two thousand dollars, 113, 124; concluded to take ship, 125 f; may conclude never to go at all, 125. Conservatism, 35. Conventical, 43. Conventicular, 43. Cool: Tecumseh cooled off, 113. Com, 114. Corral, 206. Dead: is dead of a fever, 43. Dialect: circumstances have entailed on us a recognizable dialect, 121; our dialect, critical acquaint- ance with, 142; British, American, Australian, African dialects, 80. Dialectism, 117. 226 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. Discrepancies of the English of America from that of Eng- land, 150. Does not be, 115, 149. Don't for doesn't : that don't matter, 113, 125, 145. Drank: has drank, 43. Each, 169-183: archaic sense of, 179 /; has greater particularity than every, 178; instances of false emphasis, 179/,- makes the single thing or person prominent, 177; number of things referred to by eacA, 179; for every, 179 f; each parish in the kingdom contrasted with every par- ish in the kingdom, 180-1 ; each man, 173; when each particular is so emphasized, 169; each rehearsal, 181. Ech man which euere, 179 /. Ech nacioun that is under heuene, 179/. Empty (verb), 115. Empties into the Mississippi, "3, US- England, Hatred of, 193. English: English imperfects passive, 58, 68 ; deterioration of the English tongue in the United States, 137; some characteristics of the English nobility, 190-1; a very good sort of English country town, 184; the English of England, 116, 140; English a foreign language to an American, 118, 158, 162; English. — Continued. acquisition of English by an American very difficult, 163; our special variety of Eng- lish, 141. Englishmen: prepositions used less correctly by Americans than by Englishmen, 20. Every, 169-83: an implication that belongs to both every and each, 179-80; some differences between every and each, 176; loose sense of every, 177; every part of Scotland, 177; every part of Europe, 177; number of things referred to by every, 179; every parish, 170, 180-1. Ever so, 42. Except for, iii, 130-1. Except he, 42. Except you and I, 43. Expect, 60. Faith, On his, 150. Fitted up Cabot with another expedition, 11 1. For: clerk for a merchant, III. Franklin's birth-place, 80. Freedom that belongs to liter- ary usage, 169. Fox: Mr. Fox's East India bill, 19. Fuegian wigwam, 195 f. Genuine English, 108, 123, 140, 155-7: substitutes for its words and phrases, 108, 123-4, 140-1, 155; tolerable and intol- erable substitutes, 108, 123-4, 140-1, 155. Good, For, 201. INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 227 Half-dozen of them, A, 3, ii. Hall, Dr. Fitzedward: inter- course of, with educated Englishmen, 164; feels, in writing English, that he is writing a foreign language, 117-8, 158, 162. See Hall, Dr. Fitzedward, in Index of Names. Have: does not have, 115, 149; did not have, 11, 113, 115, 149. Head, had it in his, 204 f. Help finish, 113, 149. Helpmate, 27. Helpmeet, 43. Hired man, 113, 116, 143. His, as a neuter possessive, 57. Hitherto: the hitherto editions, 43. How doth the little busy bee, 171. Ignatian epistles. The, 129 f. Imperfects passive, 53-4, 56-9, 61, 63, 67-8, 70-1. In: American Minister in France, iii; in a day, in; in twenty-four hours, in; in that time, in; bom in Boston, 75-80, in, 126. Infinitive, The disembodied, 128. Innovations that disfigure American English, 119. Intermittent philological blind- ness, 145. Irishism, 197, 200. It, as a neuter possessive, 57. Its, 57. Keep store, 113. Known by, 7-8. Known meanings to it, 7, 14. Known to, 3-29, 33: See Un- known to. known to all the country, 17; known to all the town, 17; known to " the boxes," 17; knowne to the Campe, 5 ; known to Egypt, 16; known to history, 18; known to the law, 6, 19, 28; known either to Nonconform- ity or Liberalism, 18; meanings known to it, 4, 7; to the market cross were known, 6, 17. Lay for lie, 60. Large boy, A, 113. Linguistic innovations that dis- figure American English, 160. Locutions which go far to real- ize finished debasement, no, 154- Low-churchism, 55. Make a fortune out of, 126; make money out of, in, 126. Metaphysical state. The, 173. Metonymy, 5, 9, 15; metonym- ically, 7, 15. Misuses of particles, 141. Most: the most of the savages, III. Muscbvy for Muscovy, 114. Never so, 95. Not so very American, 122-36. On the French fleet, in. Only, 184-96: adversative, 184-8; com- monly means, 184; "misplacement" of only, 188-96; usual place of (^w/y in Macaulay's writings, 194 /; 228 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. Only . — Continued. only arrived two days before, 191; only attaches to the last term, 188; only be counteracted by, 188; only be developed through the mind, ig6 // only be done by, 195; only been blackened once, 191; only burned one, 192 ; only called Colonel Goring, 191; only collect a few, 191; only come to say, 191; not only deny them but spirits, 191; only differ in degree, 192; only elected on his merits, 193; only endured an instant, 196 f; only equaled by, 192; only experienced the advan- tages, 192; only feel that proud blush when, 195 /,• could only fight for, 1 90; only give him ten, 195 ; only had eyes for, 194; only had one fine day, 195; only have five days more, 189; could only hear through a long trumpet, 194; only held two, 195 f; only known for his misfor- tunes, 195 f; only lasted a year, 194; only means a knowledge of, 193; only met twice, 195 fj only occupied their leisure hours, 194; only point out two, 195 f; only possess the three last, 191; Only. — Continued. only put on to do honor to, 195; only reached Antigua to find, 195 f; only reaches its full growth across the Atlantic, 193; ' only released after consent- ing to a treaty, 192; only replied in an ironical way, 192; only saved by the arrival, 194; only saw one quarrel, 189; only speak one language, 190; only to be found at home, 193; only to look at one-half of, 193; only to possess peculiar rari- ties, 194; only to understand that, 193; only used for a few days, 195 f; only used substantively, 188. Our linguistic innovations, 119, 123-4, 147, 159-60; defensible and indefensible, 119, 123, 147. Our English, 116. Out of: to make money out of the whale fishery, 11 1, 126; make a fortune out of, 126. Parliament of James II., 91, 96, 102. Part from, part with, 83-104: part, v. i., archaic sense of, 83-4; partmg guest, the, 83; part from with hence, 83; part from a place, 94; difference between part from anipart witk, 84, 86, 90-1, 99; misconception of the differ- ence between part from and part with, 88; INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 229 Part from, part with. — Con- tinued. seeing Adam part from the rest, 103 f; parted from in bitterness, 102 f; parting from Long Ned, 101 // part with, 85-91,94-6, 98-9; meanings oipart with, 85-6; the company in which part ■with is found, 100-4; part with a guest, loi ; part with him, loO, 104; part with me, 103 ; part with thee, 100; part with them, 101-2; part with you, 103 ; parted with my companion, 103; parted with Edmund, 102; parted with my friends, 103; parted with him, 100, 102-3 ! parted with his Parliament, 91, 96, 101-2; parted with them, 104; parted with Valancourt, 101 ; parted with you, 103; at parting with him, 104; parting with her, 101 ; parting with her husband, 101; parting with the old lady, 104; parting with one, 102 ; parting with Sunlocks, 103; parting with her sweetheart, 101; frequency of we parted and they parted, 99. Particles, misuses of, 1 10, 141. Pat'ent, 114. Personification, 15. Prepositions, less correctly used by Americans than by Eng- lishmen, 20. Provengal poetry, 186. Prussian government. Admin- istration of the, 182. Punctuality : notes this punc- tuality of good English, 169. Rejoinder, A, 136-151. Rejoinder Examined, Dr. Hall's, 152-161. Right English : departures from, 141; " genuine English " dis- placed by "right Eng- lish," 156. Round: — See Around. brought the letters round, 133 fj going round the town, 133; handbill sent round, 133; steering round odd tempers, 132; took us round in a steam launch, 133; travelling round Europe, 133; turn round to stare, 132; turned round to quell it, 132; turned round and went back, 131; voyage round the Cape, 132; walk round every bay, 134; went round with a ladle, 133/- Run, V. t. : Benjamin ran the little paper while his brother was in prison, 113, 129; made his engine run a num- ber of oars, 113; those who run factories, 129 f; running a store, 130 fj all the men and most of the women have their own shows to run, 130; everyone with his little show to run for himself, 130. 230 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. Sat: took him up and sat him down in the chair, 113, 145. School: a school taught by, 113, 128, 149. Servitors, 22. Set for sit, 60. Sizars, 22. Spider, Cured by wearing a, 187. Sporting a groove, 107. Spurious English, 148. Substitutes for the words and phrases of genuine English, 108, 123-4, 140. 147, 155-7; tolerable and intolerable sub- stitutes, 108,123-4, I4I> 147. 155-7. Suffer: suffered with hunger and sickness, iii. Suit of hair, 113, 116, 143. Sylvia hath a beaming eye, 171. Than: unsettled analysis and usage in the case of some sentences having than, 45 ; by some one abler than I, 45; by some one abler than me, 45- Than whom, 91. Thrift, 117. Till:— See Until. meaning of, 208; in the sense of bifore, 197- 210; sometimes ambiguous, 2og- 10; it did not rain till noon, 210; till and before sometimes in- terchangeable, 205, 209; an undiscriminating use of till and before often causes ambiguity, 208; gradations by which till and before reach a common meaning, 204-8 ; Till. — Continued. the sense of till may some- times be reversed by the substitution of before, 205 ; could not come till, 201 ; did not die till night, 201 f; did not know, till, 200; did not open the door till, 200; did not say a word till, 201 f; does not seem to have much entered, till, 200; had some difficulty, till, 201 f; long it could not be till, 199; man little knows, till, 200; never do anything well till, 207 ; never retired till, 201 f; nobody interrupted me till, 201 f; no convictions till, 201 ; nothing could wake her till, 200; not to begin till, 202 f; not to go on shore till day, 199; not to touch his hoard till, 200; refused to enter on his office till, 201 fj seldom make their appear- ance till, 201 f,- there is no saying, till, 200 ; schal not passe, til alle thingis be don, 199; shall not pass away, till all things be accomplished, 199; was not terminated till, 201 f- who believes it, till, 199 ; will not go till, 207; would not be, till, 200; till or until preferably used for before, when, 202-3; did not do so till after a long and terrible siege, 204 f; INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 231 Till. — Continued. did not find out till many years later, 203; had never gauged, till within the last few months, 203; never, till about a fortnight before, 204/,- none of them, till a later period, attained, 201 fs not till a little later, 203; not till several years after, 203; till after he was dead, 204 /,• till many years later, 203 ; till now, she had never known, 204; till several years after, 203 ; till some time after he be- came, 203; till within the last few months, 203; would not reach the chase again till nearly five, 204 f; the sense of till in "It seemed long till that fool- ish voice was stilled," 210. To: did wish to, 1 28; did not even want to, 128 fj if you don't wish to, 128; never expected to, 129; should like to, 128 /y wanted to, 114, 128, 149 ; To. — Continued. to set up a country to them- selves, III; he set out at once to Boston, II, 21; Seth set out to the village, 21; we set off to the monastery, 21; was off to the diligence office, 21; seen far out to sea, 10, 21; would be far out to sea, 21; had a very disdainful fling to his hind legs, 10, 22; had doors and verandas to their huts, 23 ; had great pockets to all the windows, 22; had a kind of elastic portico to his house, 23; our imagination has a body to it, 22; the seat . . . has no back to it, 23; this noble equality . . . has a perilous side to it, 22; a huge pair — not of boots, for they have no feet to them, 22; have no tassels to their caps, 22; have more of a head to it, 22; have a practical side to their heads, 22; have an unpatched coat to his back, 22; there was a chivalric smack to the title of the book, 10, 23; there was another side to all this magnificence, 24; there were sixteen bells to the team, 24; there are no bounds to Mr. 's impudence, 24; there are three sides to a triangle, 11; moats there were to all cas- tles on the plain, 23; our own house, to which South Africa is only a back-garden, 24; there must be an end to the whole thing, 24; 232 INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. To. — Continued. there would be no end to it, 24; a case to the clock, 23; that other side to this glori- ous view, 24; a surer safeguard to the coun- try, 24; lacquey with large calves to his legs, 25 ; man with red heels to his shoes, 25; stockings with silk clocks to them, 25; tall pig with a cover to its nose, 25; with a tuft to his chin, 25 ; with silver buckles to their shoes, 25; woman with high heels to her boots, 25; cattle without any go to them, 10, 24; Jewe to whom the name was Bariesu, 25-6; gave me the key to her whole character, 26; the illustrations to Rogers' "Italy," 26; what is in a handle to it, 26; formed the gateway to the hut, 26; the shutters to the large oriel window were still unclosed, 26; your whip wanted a lash to it, 26; misty atmosphere serving as a veil to a city, 26; it serves as a protection to the throat, 1 1 ; we have Abraham to our father, 11; he was son to a butcher, 1 1 ; a very devoted husband to Angela, 26; lies to the north, 11. Traded a lot of trinkets with the Indians, 114. Triumphant procession, 114, 149. Twine string, 114, 141. Ubique, semper, el ab omnibus, 60. Until, in the sense of before, 201-2:— See Till. cannot appear until, 202 /"y did not quit the dinner until, 202; had not approached the Vis- tula until, 203; having abandoned all hope of our appearing until, 202 ; no book is serviceable until, 202; no person should be admitted until, 202 /.• not to begin until, 202 f; passive until, 202; will not be published until, 207-8. Unexpected Happenings, 66 /■ Unknown to, 3-29: — See Known to. unknown to the ancient con- stitution of the empire, 19; unknowne to the Beginning, 6, 20; unknown to our climates, 16; unknown to the constitution, 19; unknown to the creamery, 17; unknown to the Dictionary of the Academy, 17; unknown to dictionaries, 17; unknown to genuine English, 19; unknown to history, 18; unknown to the law, 18-9; unknown to maps or gazet- teers, 18; INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES. 233 Unknown to. — Continued. unknown to these parts, 5, 16; unknown to the practice of civilized nations, 4; unknown to the rest of the world, 16; unknown to the scholastic age, 5, 16; to Nature's laws unknown, 18; to sickness past unknown, 20. Use beer, 114, 149. Up: fitted up Cabot with an- other expedition, ill. Walk, V. i., Specific sense of (when the Friendly Society "walked"), 176. Walking: took him walking, 114. Way: to get out of the way of, 113- We won't go home till morn- ing, 202. Whom do men say that I am, 42. Williox shall, 127: I will be convinced, 114, 127, 149; we will be satisfied, 127. Without iox unless, 115. fei ^^.x-^ h^''v ■ v|^ u-- ^^^^R pri-v- ' ^^^^^R ^H P^V .' *^* V^-' « ''': ^^1 ^H|.'-v' ^^^^1 ^H|PI >.,c . ^^^1 ^^^^,'^.'', ^^H ^^^Pr ■, 'ly