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 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 
 
 THE CHUECHMAN. 
 "We think Mr. Moon entitled to the gratitude of all lovers of 
 our language in its purity for this exposure of the Dean's English." 
 
 THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 
 
 " Demonstrating that while the Dean undertook to instruct 
 others, he was, himself, but a castaway in matters of grammar." 
 
 THE RECORD, 
 11 Coming out for wool, in fact, the Dean went back shorn ; 
 rushing forth to teach, he went home taught. We can cordially 
 recommend Mr. Moon's volume ; it is really an able critique." 
 THE NEW YORK ROUND TABLE. 
 "The Dean's book occasioned a great deal of comment in 
 England when it was first published, but nothing that will compare 
 with Mr. Moon's little book, which contains some of the best speci- 
 mens of verbal criticism that we have ever seen." 
 
 THE MORNING ADVERTISER. 
 " It is one of the smartest pieces of prose-criticism we have 
 chanced to meet with for many a day." 
 
 THE JOURNAL OF SACRED LITERATURE. 
 
 " It is one of the smartest pieces of criticism we ever read. It 
 is not only admirable as a specimen of critical style, but it abounds 
 in suggestions which no man in his senses can undervalue : more 
 than this, it is a delightful example of good writing." 
 
11 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN NEWS. 
 "Mr. Moon's letters are models of English composition, and 
 are so full of animation, so sharp, lively, and trenchant, that it is 
 quite a treat to read them. He has, with a precision and an 
 elegance which are unsurpassed in any writings, rendered a dry 
 and forbidding subject both pleasing and profitable. His formidable 
 indictment of the Dean is supported with an ability and an acuteness 
 we have seldom seen excelled." 
 
 THE SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW. 
 " Mr. Moon well performs his self-imposed task : he evinces a 
 fine sense of discernment in the niceties of language ; and while 
 severely criticising the sentences of his opponent, shows that he, 
 himself, knows how to write in a remarkably clear, terse, and 
 vigorous style." 
 
 THE LONDON QUAETEBLY EEVIEW. 
 "Mr. Moon knows the secrets of both the strength and the 
 grace of his own tongue." 
 
 THE WESTMINSTER EEVIEW. 
 " The Dean has laid himself open to criticism as much for bad 
 taste as for questionable syntax. His style of writing is awkward 
 and slovenly, that of his antagonist remarkably terse and clear, and 
 bearing witness to a sensitiveness of ear and taste which are 
 glaringly deficient in his opponent." 
 
 THE ENGLISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. 
 " We advise all our readers to see Mr. Moon's reply. Written 
 in pure, forcible, elegant, and classic English — perfect in composi- 
 tion and punctuation ; and, in its gentlemanly dignity, so opposed 
 to the slip-shod, half -vulgar easiness of the Dean's 'Plea' — it 
 merits the attention of all students of our tongue." 
 
 THE DUBLIN EEVIEW. 
 " Even practised writers may here learn a lesson or two in the art 
 of expressing themselves in their mother tongue clearly and cor- 
 rectly." 
 
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. Ill 
 
 THE LONDON REVIEW. 
 
 " It is calculated to render considerable service to loose thinkers, 
 speakers, and writers." 
 
 THE RECORD. 
 
 "The argument is conducted with admirable temper, and no 
 reader can finish the volume without learning many valuable lessons 
 in English composition, and some other things well worth knowing." 
 
 THE COURT CIRCULAR. 
 
 " All who are interested in such critical discussions as are so 
 clearly and accurately carried on in this little book will be grateful 
 to Mr. Moon not only for much solid instruction, but for much 
 entertainment also." 
 
 THE NONCONFORMIST. 
 
 " We thank Mr. Moon very cordially for what he has done, and 
 have no hesitation in saying that he has so far succeeded in his 
 vindication of pure and correct English, as opposed to that which 
 is lax and slip-shod, as to deserve the gratitude of those who, like 
 ourselves, deem our mother-tongue, in all its restraints as well as 
 in all its liberties, to be one of the most precious inheritances of 
 Englishmen." 
 
 THE SUNDAY TIMES. 
 
 " Mr. Moon has rendered a real service to literature by his 
 exposure of Dean Alford, and we are glad to express our recog- 
 nition of the value of his labours." 
 
 THE NEWSMAN. 
 " It is a very valuable contribution to English philology, and one 
 of the most masterly pieces of literary criticism in the language." 
 
 THE SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW. 
 " With the air of a combatant who is confident of success, Mr. 
 Moon plays with his antagonist before seriously commencing the 
 fray ; he then points out the Dean's errors one by one ; strips him 
 of his grammatical delusions ; and leaves him at last in a forlorn 
 state of literary nudity." 
 
IV EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 
 
 THE PHONETIC JOURNAL. 
 
 "To those who are interested in speaking and writing good 
 English, — and what educated person is not ? — this book is full of 
 instruction ; and to those who enjoy a controversy, conducted with 
 consummate skill and in excellent taste by a strong man, well 
 armed, it is such a treat as does not fall in one's way often during 
 a life- time." 
 
 THE PUBLISHERS' CIRCULAR. 
 
 " For ourselves, we have carefully scanned the present paragraph, 
 but we confess to sending it to the printer's with some mis- 
 givings. If it should meet the eye of Mr. Moon, we can only trust 
 that no latent vice of style nor any faulty piece of syntax may be 
 found to destroy the force of our hearty acknowledgments of his 
 talents as a writer, and of his skill in literary controversy." 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
" All that concerns the culture of language is of infinite 
 " importance." 
 
 " The language is common property ; and one of the most 
 " laudable objects an educated man can pursue is to defend it 
 " from contamination." 
 
 " The care bestowed upon language is bestowed on the most 
 "perfect instrument of the mind, without which all other 
 " gifts are valueless." 
 
 The Edinburgh Review, vol. cix, p. 366—9. 
 
 " It is very idle to assail such an art as that of criticism, as 
 " being nothing beyond an unkindly love of fault-finding. It 
 " has its origin in a love of truth, and its real aim is to discover 
 " and foster excellence, though, as a means to this end, it may 
 " be sometimes necessary to expose pretence and incompetence." 
 The North British Review, vol. lxxxiii, p. 163. 
 
THE 
 
 DEAN'S ENGLISH: 
 
 ON THE 
 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 
 G, WASHINGTON MOON, 
 
 FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE. 
 
 3ntb (&bitx oxt. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HATCHARD AND CO., 187 PICCADILLY. 
 
 NEW YORK: POTT AND AMEEY, 
 
 5 COOPER UNION, FOURTH AVENUE. 
 
 1868. 
 

 " Literature, if it is to flourish, must have a standard of 
 6i taste built up, which shall expand to meet new forms of 
 " excellence, but which shall preserve that which is excellent 
 " in old forms, and shall serve as a guide to the rejection 
 " of whatever is bad, pretentious, and artificial ; and it is 
 " the business of critics to see that this standard is built up 
 " and maintained." — The Saturday Review. 
 
 By Transfer 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 i 
 
 The purity of the English language is as dear to 
 educated Americans as it is to ourselves. One of 
 them (A. J. C.) thus writes in a recent number 
 of the New York ' Bound Table ' : — 
 
 " The corrupter of a language stabs straight at the 
 4i heart of his country. He commits a crime against 
 " every individual of the nation, for he throws a poison 
 " into a stream from which all must drink. He wrongs 
 "himself first, and afterward every man and woman 
 " whose native speech he mars. It is the duty of every 
 " educated man to guard ( zealously the purity of his 
 " native tongue. No inheritance which can descend to an 
 " individual or to a nation is comparable in value with a 
 "language which possesses words into which may be 
 " coined all great thoughts, pure motives* noble enter- 
 prises, grand endeavors, the wealth of philosophy, 
 " poetry, and history, and even the beauty of the canvas 
 " and the glory of the marble. He who does aught to 
 
 I 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 " preserve such a language deserves the gratitude of his 
 " people, as he who mars an organism so beautiful and 
 "precious, merits their severest displeasure. He who 
 " hunts down and pillories a slang phrase, a vulgarism, a 
 " corruption of any kind, is a public benefactor. In the 
 " fulfilment of the sacred trust which rests on him as an 
 " educated man, he adds a stone to the bulwark of his 
 " nation's safety and greatness." 
 
 My contribution towards that bulwark is this 
 little work, which urges upon every Englishman 
 the study of his own language, and points out to 
 him the disgrace he may incur by neglecting it. 
 Incidentally the book cautions him against self- 
 deception in this matter. It tells him of one who 
 had received a collegiate education, had attained 
 academical honours, was raised to the deanery of 
 Canterbury, and who considered himself to be 
 such a thorough master of the language, that he 
 actually assumed the office of public lecturer on 
 the Queen's English ; and yet was so ignorant of 
 its simplest rules, that the grossness of his errors 
 in grammar and in composition, even in his lectures, 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 made him the laughing-stock of those whom he 
 thought himself competent to instruct. 
 
 But I wish it to be distinctly understood that 
 in writing these criticisms I have not been actuated 
 by any feeling of ill-will towards the Dean of 
 Canterbury. I object not to the man, but to the 
 man's language ; it is extremely faulty ; and 
 since the faults of teachers, if suffered to pass 
 unreproved, soon become the teachers of faults, 
 it was necessary that some one should take upon 
 himself the task of " demonstrating ", as ' The 
 ' Edinburgh Eeview ' said, " that while the Dean 
 " undertook to instruct others, he ivas himself hut a 
 " castaway in matters of grammar ". As a Fellow 
 of the Royal Society of Literature, one of the 
 objects of which is "to preserve the purity of 
 " the English language ", I took upon myself the 
 demonstration. How far I have succeeded, each 
 individual reader will determine for himself; but 
 the yearly increasing sale of ' The Dean's English ' 
 bears very flattering testimony to the fact that 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 the work meets with the approval of the public 
 generally. The best evidence, however, of its 
 popularity is to be found in the circumstance that 
 the Dean's own publishers have been tempted to 
 reprint the book in America. What the Dean 
 will say to this, I cannot imagine; but, for myself, 
 while I fully appreciate the compliment which 
 Messrs. Strahan & Co. thus pay me, I protest 
 against their right to pirate a work of one of their 
 own countrymen. Indeed, I protest against piracy 
 under any circumstances. Piracy is robbery ; and 
 robbery is an injustice committed by those who 
 are more influenced by sordid gain than by honour. 
 I hold such men in utter detestation. They tell 
 us that literary piracy is legal where there is no 
 international copyright. I blush for publishers who 
 can accept such a refuge from the world's scorn as 
 that. "Legal" ! This is the old tale. A child 
 first commits a theft, and then tells a lie to con- 
 ceal it. Piracy is not legal. I challenge any man, 
 either in England or in America, to produce from any 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 statute book of either nation, an act which declares 
 literary piracy to be legal. The truth is, that 
 unprincipled publishers, taking advantage of the 
 absence of any law on the subject, earn a dishonest 
 living by stealing the labour of other men's brains. 
 
 For the information of my Transatlantic readers 
 I mention that the American reprint of this work 
 is from an early issue of it, and contains only a 
 portion of the matter published in the subsequent 
 editions. 
 
 As for the Dean's book, it certainly contains 
 much valuable information, collected from various 
 sources; but it is blended with so very much 
 that would be really injurious to the student of 
 literature, that the work can never safely be 
 recommended for his guidance. The style, too, 
 in which it is written, is so hopelessly bad, that 
 no amount of alteration could obtain for it the 
 praise of being a model for chasteness and 
 elegance of expression. We read in it, of persons 
 making " a precious mess " of their work ! and 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 expletives, we are informed, serve to " grease the 
 "wheels of talk " ! Some improvements, it is true, 
 have been made in the second edition ; a man is 
 no longer spoken of by the slang phrase "an 
 " individual " ; but the Dean is so strangely for- 
 getful of the courtesy due to women, that he uses, 
 respecting them, the most debasing of all slang 
 phrases. When speaking of even our Sovereign 
 Lady the Queen, he describes her by an epithet 
 which is equally applicable to a dog ! Her 
 Majesty is a — "female"! We speak of " dog- 
 " Latin " ; what more appropriate name than 
 " dog-English " could be given to ungentlemanly 
 language like this ? and how could we better 
 serve the interests of literature than by hooting 
 all such " dog-English " out of society ? " The 
 " power of sneering ", says Professor Masson, u was 
 " given to man to be used ; and nothing is more 
 " gratifying than to see an idea which is proving 
 " a nuisance, sent clattering away with a hue and 
 " cry after it, and a tin kettle tied to its tail." 
 
PREFACE. xv 
 
 The Dean has just published an appendix to 
 his ' Queens English \ It was said that, if he 
 should ever write again upon language, he would, 
 doubtless, w r rite with greater care. The reviewers 
 were very charitable to attribute his errors to 
 carelessness ; but, that those errors sprang from 
 another source, is now evident beyond dispute : — 
 the appendix, although written after four years' 
 more study, abounds with errors as gross as any 
 that were found in the Dean's first essay. What 
 does the reader think of there being, in a treatise 
 on the Queen's English, such an error in grammar 
 as the following: — "'Abnormal 9 is one of those 
 "words which has come in to supply a want in 
 " the precise statements of science " : — those words 
 which has come ! As for the courtesies of litera- 
 ture, the Dean calls those persons who differ w T ith 
 him in the use of certain words, " apes " " asses ", 
 and " idiots ". Is this " sound speech, that cannot 
 " be condemned 99 : Titus ii, 8 ? Is this being 
 "gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 <l meekness instructing those that oppose them- 
 " selves " : 2 Timothy ii, 24 ? But I forbear. 
 
 Surely, surely, it will be only modest of the 
 Dean to retire from the office of lecturer on the 
 Queen's English ; and, if his good sense has not 
 utterly left him, he will wisely reflect on the folly 
 of attracting attention to a style of writing 
 " which ", as Junius said of the character of Sir 
 William Draper, "will only pass without censure 
 " when it passes without observation? 
 
 London, 
 
 January, 1867. 
 
 ■ 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 ADJECTIVES. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " A decided weak point ", or " A decidedly weak point " 48 
 "Not a strict neuter- substantive,' ' or "Not strictly a 
 
 neuter- subs t ant ive ,J . . .50, 123 
 
 "Speak no coarser than usual", or "Speak not more 
 
 coarsely than usual" . . • . 49,83 
 
 "The words nearest connected", or "The words most 
 
 nearly connected" . . . .49 
 
 The rule respecting "first and last" and "former and 
 
 latter" . . . . .152 
 
 "Less" and "lesser" . . . .176 
 
 ADVEEBS. 
 
 Dr. Blair on adverbs . . . .14 
 
 " Hath the Lord only spoken by Moses ? " or "Hath the 
 
 Lord spoken only by Moses?" . . 73, 87, 127 
 
 "His own use so frequently of it", or "His own so 
 
 frequent use of it " . . . .87 
 
 " How nicely she looks ", or " How nice she looks " . 86 
 
 "It appears still more plainly", or "It appears still 
 
 more plain" , . . .86 
 
 " I only bring forward some things ", or " I bring for- 
 ward some things only " . . 14, 118 
 
 "They may be correctly classified", or "They may 
 
 correctly be classified " . . 101,128 
 
 "We merely speak of numbers", or "We speak of 
 
 numbers merely " . . .14 
 
 " Eather familiar " .... 161 
 
xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 AMBIGUITY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dr. Campbell on constructive ambiguity . .21 
 
 Lord Karnes on constructive ambiguity . . 10 
 
 A backwood planted with thoughts . . 55 
 
 A man losing his mother in the papers . 13, 118 
 
 A paragraph of fewer than ten lines, yet so ambiguously 
 
 worded that it admits of 10.240 different readings 30,61, 125 
 A strange sentence from Dean Swift's writings . 16 
 
 A witness " intoxicated by the motion of an honourable 
 
 member " . . . .17 
 
 " Compositors without any mercy " . . , 12 
 
 " Compositors without the slightest compunction " 11, 117 
 Defiling a detachment of soldiers . . . J9 
 
 Disappointed ambition . . . .19 
 
 Expressing a sentence, or expressing the meaning . 58 
 
 Expressing a woman . . . .58 
 
 Human kidneys in dogs . . . .31 
 
 Intellectual qualities of raiment . . .32 
 
 Incongruous association of ideas . . .60 
 
 " I will introduce the body of — my essay " . 12, 117 
 
 Literary Frenchmen . . . 17, 119 
 
 Obscure writing . . . . .96 
 
 Professors walking off with dictionaries . 56, 125 
 
 Solemn characters .... 161 
 
 " Sometimes the editors fall, from their ignorance " . 9 
 " The beaux painted their faces, as well as the women " 17 
 " The Greeks wheeled about and halted, with the river 
 
 on their hacks " . . . .19 
 
 "The one rule of all others" . . 49,122 
 
 CONJUNCTIONS. 
 
 Does "than" govern the accusative case ? 47, 85, 149, 155, 172 
 
 " As well as ", and " So well as " . .92 
 
 " This [as well as that] fix it " . . 104, 129 
 
 " Try and think ", or " try to think " . .156 
 
 
CONTENTS. xix 
 
 ELLIPSIS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Brevity should be subordinate to perspicuity . . 99 
 
 Unallowable ellipsis . . . .25 
 
 " We call a cup-board a cubbard, and so of many other 
 
 compound words " . . 53, 124 
 
 EMPHASIS. 
 
 The use of emphasis . . . .24 
 
 The misuse of emphasis — " And they did eat " . 25 
 
 " Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him " . .80 
 
 FINE LANGUAGE. 
 
 " Call a spade a spade " .... 136 
 
 "Chrononhotonthologos" . . . 136 
 A man is "an individual 1 ', or "a person", or u a 
 
 party " 138, 142 
 
 A woman is u a female", or " a lady", or "a young 
 
 person" ..... 139 
 
 A bull is " a gentleman coiv" . . . 139 
 
 A bitch is " a lady dog " . . . 139 
 Boys and girls are " young gentlemen", " young ladies ", 
 
 " juveniles " or " juvenile members of society " . 140 
 
 To live in a house is " to reside in a residence " . 140 
 
 An inn is " an hotel " , . . . 140 
 
 A room is " an apartment " . . . 140 
 
 Lords and nobles are " the aristocracy " . . 140 
 The people of England are " the million", or " the 
 
 masses " . . . . 141 
 
 To take a walk is " to promenade " . . 141 
 
 Landowners are "proprietors " . . . 141 
 
 Farmers and yeomen are " agriculturists " . . 141 
 
 A working man is " an operative " . . . 141 
 A place is " a locality " . . . .141 
 
 A celebrated person is " a celebrity " . . 141 
 
 A maid- of- all- work speaks of her " situation" . 141 
 A house-agent speaks of his " clients " . .141 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 A schoolmaster is a " Principal of a Collegiate Insti- 
 tution" .... 
 To be buried is " to be interred *' 
 A churchyard is " a cemetery " or " a necropolis" 
 To ask is "to inquire" 
 To speak of is " to allude to" 
 
 PAGB 
 141 
 
 141 
 141 
 143 
 143 
 
 NOUNS. 
 
 Relatives without any nouns to which they refer 31, 121 
 
 Singular or plural . . . .52 
 
 OBSCURITY. [See Ambiguity]. 
 
 PERSPICUITY. 
 
 What is perspicuity ? . . . .22 
 
 The most essential quality in all writings . . 23 
 
 [See also Ambiguity]. 
 
 PREPOSITIONS. 
 
 " Different to ", or " Different from " . .48 
 Errors in the use of the preposition "from" . 10, 91 
 "In respect of", or " With respect to" . .58 
 Not " five outs and one in", but five ins and one out . 107 
 " The cat jumped on [to] the chair" . 38, 176 
 "Treating an exception" or "Treating of an excep- 
 tion" . . . . 58,99 
 
 PRONOUNS. 
 
 Dr. Campbell on pronouns . . . .29 
 
 A difficulty of him . . . .56 
 
 A paragraph with twenty-eight nouns intervening be- 
 tween the pronoun and its noun . . 32, 61, 122 
 "As tall as him", "As tall as me" . . . 151 
 "It is I", or "It is me" . . 48,146,162,173 
 "Itisher" .... 147,174 
 Misuse of pronouns . . . .29 
 " More than I ", or " More than me " . 85, 143 
 
 : 
 
CONTENTS. xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 M Our Father which [or who] art in Heaven " . . 178 
 
 " Than who ", or " Than whom" . . 150, 156 
 
 " Than he" . . . . .156 
 
 The management of pronouns is the test of a scholar's 
 
 mastery over the language . . .28 
 
 The possessive pronoun "its" occurs only once in the 
 
 Bible . . . - 33,122 
 
 The date of the introduction of " its " into the Bible 70, 126 
 The origin of "its" . . . .169 
 
 "The nations not so blest as thee" . . . 151 
 
 The relation between nouns and pronouns, the great 
 
 stumbling-block to most writers . 
 "This" and "that" 
 " Thou " and " thee ", when used 
 William Cobbett on "it" . 
 "Which I do" . 
 Tom and Jack 
 " He'd a stick and he'd a stick" 
 
 PKONUNCIATION. 
 
 The pronunciation of Greek proper names 
 Should the "h" in " humble" be aspirated ? 
 American pronunciation of the aspirate "h" 
 " Manifold " and " Manifest " 
 
 PUNCTUATION. 
 
 An error in the sense occasioned by the insertion of a 
 
 comma ..... 100 
 
 An error in the sense occasioned by the misplacing of a 
 
 comma ..... 103 
 
 An error in the sense occasioned by the omission of a 
 
 comma . . . . 11, 20 97, 117 
 
 Lord Karnes on punctuation . . .10 
 
 SENTENCES. 
 
 Dr. Blair on the construction of sentences . . 16 
 
 Dr. Campbell on the construction of sentences 15, 21 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 ft 
 
 ,64, 
 
 117 
 32 
 157 
 163 
 164 
 
 27, 
 
 66, 
 
 121 
 
 27,: 
 
 153, 
 
 178 
 
 48 
 
 178 
 
xxu 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Lord Karnes on the construction of sentences 10, 15 
 
 Other authorities on the construction of sentences . 16 
 
 Examples of the violations of the law respecting the 
 
 position of words in a sentence 17, 18, 19, 119, 120, 125, 162 
 
 Objectionable construction of sentences . . 59 
 
 " Squinting construction " . . . 20,100 
 
 The natural order of constructing a sentence . .59 
 
 SLANG. 
 
 " A juvenile " 
 
 . 140 
 
 "A female" 
 
 . 102, 128, 139 
 
 " An individual " . 
 
 . 59, 125, 138 
 
 " A party" 
 
 142, 159 
 
 " A tipple " 
 
 . 159 
 
 "A trap" 
 
 . 159 
 
 "Come to grief " 
 
 . 25. 120, 159 
 
 SPELLING. 
 
 
 " Honor " or " Honour " 
 
 39, 81, 174 
 
 "Odor", or "Odour" 
 
 . 82 
 
 " Tenor ", or " Tenour " 
 
 . 42 
 
 " Reliable ", or " Rely-upon-able " 
 
 . 174 
 
 TAUTOLOGY AND TAUTOPHANY. 
 
 "Abated the nuisance by enacting that the debatable 
 
 syllable", &c. . . . 106,129 
 
 " Account for specimens, for which the author must not 
 
 be accounted responsible " . . . 106 
 " A counter-roll or check on the accounts. From this 
 
 account of the word it appears", &c. . . 106 
 
 Five ins and one out .... 107 
 
 Three ins following each other, — " in in in " . . 24 
 
 Other, other, others .... 106 
 
 VEEBS. 
 
 " He ate no dinner " 
 
 "I ain't certain", "I ain't going" 
 
 165 
 S8 
 

 PAGE 
 
 . 
 
 54 
 
 . 
 
 164 
 
 . 
 
 56 
 
 51 
 
 ,123 
 
 , , 
 
 151 
 
 . 
 
 57 
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 " I need not have troubled myself " . 
 
 " Stick no bills " . 
 
 " The next point which I notice shall be", &c. 
 
 " There are three first and [there are] one last ' 
 
 The verb "to leave " 
 
 The verb "to progress " 
 
 "To the former belong three, to the latter [belong] 
 
 one" . . . . 51, 123 
 
 " Twice one is two ", or " twice one are two " . .52 
 
 "Would have been broken to pieces or [would have 
 
 been] come to grief » . . 25, 60, 120, 159 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 The power of example . . . .3 
 
 Dr. Campbell on the formation of languages . . 3 
 
 The office of the grammarian and of the critic . 4 
 
 The influence of popular writers . . .6 
 
 Throwing stones . , . . .7 
 
 Persuasive teaching . . . .7 
 
 " The Times " . . 7, 8, 9, 103, 104 
 
 " Mending their ways ", " highways", " by-roads ", and 
 
 " private roads" . . . 11,117 
 
 Great things which hang up framed at railway stations 18, 119 
 " Individuals in social intercourse " . . 18, 120 
 
 The source of mistakes . . .26, 121 
 
 "Odious" and " odorous" . . . .28 
 
 The language of the Bible . . .28, 89, 180 
 
 " Be courteous " . . . . 34,76 
 
 " We do not write for idiots " . . .36 
 
 "A most abnormal elongation of the auricular appen- 
 dages" . . . . 37,74 
 Call a spade, a spade . . .37, 136 
 Falling up into a depth . . . .36 
 "No case, abuse the plaintiff" . . .37 
 "Open up" . . . . .45 
 A language that grew up by being brought down . 46 
 
XXIV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Neglect of the study of English at our public schools 
 
 " An individual occurring in Shakspeare " 
 
 A fact " stated into prominence" 
 
 A bottomless swamp " filled in " 
 
 Eating and being " filled up " 
 
 Dean's English 
 
 A literary curiosity 
 
 The play of Hamlet with the Ghost left out 
 
 Misquotation of an opponent's words 
 
 Misrepresentations 
 
 " Seeing " is not always " believing " 
 
 Strange errors in an old edition of the Scriptures 
 
 Misquotation of Scripture . . .73, 
 
 " Why do you call me an ass ? " 
 
 A letter to the Editor of ' The Patriot * 
 
 Explanation respecting the charge of discourtesy 
 
 Withdrawal of the charge of discourtesy 
 
 A teacher is always amenable to criticism 
 
 What is a nucleus ? 
 
 " No more " and " never again " 
 
 "Eight to a £" . 
 
 The importance of trifles 
 
 A groundless fear 
 
 John Milton on rules and maxims 
 
 An anecdote of Douglas Jerrold 
 
 Educated persons 
 
 "The final 'u* in tenour" and "the final 's' 
 
 months" 
 Variety not always charming 
 No special training in English at our colleges 
 The English language compared to a temple 
 The prospects of the English language 
 Precept v. practice 
 " Punch the barber " 
 Parallelisms • , 
 
 The injurious effects of Dean Alford' s essays 
 Dr. Alford' s abuse of the Americans 
 
 
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THE DEAN'S ENGLISH: 
 
 A CEITICISM. 
 
 To the Very Eev. Henry Alford, d.d., Dean of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 Eev. Sir, 
 
 On the publication of your 'Plea for the Queens 
 € English ' * I was surprised to observe inaccuracies 
 in the structure of your sentences, and also more than 
 one grammatical error. Under ordinary circum- 
 stances I should not have taken notice of such 
 deviations from what is strictly correct in composi- 
 tion; but the subject of your essay being the 
 Queen's English, my attention was naturally drawn 
 to the language you had employed ; and as, when 
 I privately wrote to you respecting it, you justified 
 
 * ' A Plea for the Queen's English ', by the Dean of Canter- 
 bury : < Good Words', March, 1863. 
 
 B 
 
2 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 
 
 your use of tlie expressions to which I had referred, 
 I am desirous of knowing whether such expressions 
 are really allowable in writings, and especially 
 whether they are allowable in an essay which has 
 for its object the exposure and correction of literary 
 inaccuracies. I therefore publish this my second 
 letter to you ; and I do so, to draw forth criticism 
 upon the rules involved in this question ; that, the 
 light of various opinions being made to converge 
 upon these rules, their value or their worthlessness 
 may thereby be manifested. I make no apology 
 for this course; for when, by your violations of 
 syntax and your defence of those violations, you 
 teach that Campbell's l Philosophy of Rhetoric, 
 Karnes's 'Elements of Criticism \ and Blair's 
 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres' are no 
 longer to be our guides in the study of the English 
 language, no apology is needed from me for my 
 asking the public whether they confirm the opinion 
 that these hitherto acknowledged authorities should 
 be superseded. 
 
 To spread this inquiry widely is the more ne- 
 cessary, because, on account of the position which 
 you hold, and the literary reputation which you 
 enjoy, your modes of expression, if suffered to 
 pass unchallenged, will, probably, by and by be 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 3 
 
 quoted in justification of the style of other writers 
 who shall presume to damage by example, if not 
 by precept, the highway of thought over which all 
 desire to travel. 
 
 By influential example it is that languages are 
 moulded into whatever form they take ; therefore, 
 according as example is for good or for evil, so will 
 a language gain in strength, sweetness, precision, 
 and elegance, or will become weak, harsh, un- 
 meaning, and barbarous. Popular writers may 
 make or may mar a language. It is with them, 
 and not with grammarians, that the responsibility 
 rests ; for language is what custom makes it ; and 
 custom is, has been, and always will be, more 
 influenced by example than by precept. 
 
 Dr. Campbell, speaking of the formation of 
 languages, justly says : — * " Language is purely a 
 " species of fashion, in which, by the general, but 
 " tacit, consent of the people of a particular state 
 " or country, certain sounds come to be appropriated 
 " to certain things as their signs, and certain ways 
 " of inflecting and of combining those sounds come 
 " to be established as denoting the relations which 
 " subsist among the things signified. It is not the 
 " business of grammar, as some critics seem pre- 
 * Campbell's 'Philosop h y of Rhetoric', vol. i, book 2, chap. 1, 2. 
 
 B '1 
 
4 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " posterously to imagine, to give law to the fashions 
 a which regulate our speech. On the contrary, 
 " from its conformity to these, and from that alone, 
 " it derives all its authority and value. For, what 
 " is the grammar of any language ? It is no other 
 " than a collection of general observations metho- 
 " dically digested, and comprising all the modes 
 " previously and independently established, by 
 " which the significations, derivations, and combi- 
 " nations of words in that language are ascertained. 
 " It is of no consequence here to what causes origi- 
 " nally these modes or fashions owe their existence 
 " — to imitation, to reflection, to affectation, or to 
 " caprice ; they no sooner are accepted and become 
 " general than they are the law^s of the language, 
 " and the grammarian's only business is to note, 
 " collect, and methodise them." " ' But/ it may be 
 " said, ' if custom, which is so capricious and 
 " ' unaccountable, is everything in language, of 
 " ( what significance is either the grammarian or the 
 " ' critic ? ' Of considerable significance notwith- 
 " standing ; and of most then, when they confine 
 " themselves to their legal departments, and do not 
 " usurp an authority that does not belong to them. 
 " The man who, in a country like ours, should 
 u compile a succinct, perspicuous, and faithful digest 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 5 
 
 " of the laws, though no lawgiver, would be univer- 
 (t sally acknowledged to be a public benefactor. 
 " How easy would that important branch of 
 "knowledge be rendered by such a work, in 
 " comparison with what it must be when we have 
 " nothing to have recourse to but a labyrinth of 
 " statutes, reports, and opinions. That man also 
 " would be of considerable use, though not in the 
 " same degree, who should vigilantly attend to every 
 " illegal practice that were beginning to prevail, and 
 " should evince its danger by exposing its contra- 
 riety to law. Of similar benefit, though in a 
 " different sphere, are grammar and criticism. In 
 " language, the grammarian is properly the compiler 
 " of the digest ; and the verbal critic, is the man who 
 " seasonably notifies the abuses that are creeping 
 " in. Both tend to facilitate the study of the 
 " tongue to strangers, to render natives more perfect 
 " in the knowledge of it, to advance general use 
 " into universal, and to give a greater stability at 
 " least, if not a permanency, to custom, that most 
 " mutable thing in nature." 
 
 I have quoted these passages because they have 
 direct reference to the subject under consideration ; 
 for I do not find fault with the critical remarks in 
 your essay. Many of them, it is true, are not new ; 
 
6 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 but most of them are good, and therefore will bear 
 re^perusal ; } T et it was scarcely necessary to repeat 
 in the March number of 'Good Words', the meaning 
 of " avocation ", which Archbishop Whately had 
 given in the same magazine in the previous August; 
 and so far from its being " so well known a fact " 
 that we reserve the singular pronouns "thou " and 
 "thee" "entirely for our addresses in prayer to 
 11 Him who is the highest Personality ", it is not a 
 fact. These pronouns are very extensively and 
 very properly used in poetry, even when inanimate 
 objects are addressed ; as is the case in the 
 following lines from Coleridge's ' Address to Mont 
 ' Blanc' : — 
 
 " dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee 
 " Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 
 " Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer 
 " I worshipped the Invisible alone." 
 
 However, I shall not notice your critical remarks, 
 for they are of only secondary importance. Very 
 little can be added to the canons of criticism 
 already laid down ; very much may be done for the 
 permanent enriching of our language, by popular 
 writers' exercising more care as to the examples 
 they set in composition, than as to the lessons they 
 teach concerning it. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 7 
 
 But, in literature especially, it has always been 
 so much easier for authors to censure than to guide 
 by example, and it has been thought by them so 
 much better fun to break another author's windows 
 than to stay quietly at home taking care of their 
 own, that the throwing of stones has long been a 
 favourite amusement. Nor do we object to it, 
 providing two things be granted : first, that the 
 glass of the windows is so bad that the objects 
 seen through it appear distorted ; and, secondly, 
 that in no spirit of unkindness shall the stones be 
 thrown, lest you not only break the authors 
 windows, but also wound the author himself. 
 
 It must be admitted that there is in your essay 
 so little of the " sweetness of the lips " which 
 " increaseth learning " that but a very small 
 amount of good can result to those whom you 
 think to be most in need of improvement. You 
 speak of u the vitiated and pretentious style which 
 "passes current in our newspapers' 9 . You sneeringly 
 say, " In a leading article of ' The Times' not long 
 "since, teas this beautiful piece of slipshod English:" 
 then follows the quotation, with this remark ap- 
 pended, "Here we see faults enough besides the 
 " wretched violations of grammar"; and, " these writers 
 " are constantly doing something like this." 
 
8 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 That the reader may be able to form some idea 
 of the labour attendant upon one issue of our 
 leading daily paper, of which you speak so con- 
 temptuously, I subjoin an extract from a work by 
 Henry Mayhew : — 
 
 " The Times Newspaper of March 25th, 1865, 
 " is now ..before us. It consists of eighteen large 
 " pages, each more than two feet long and one and 
 " a half broad ; so that the paper contains not fewer 
 " than fifty-four square feet of printed matter. 
 " Each of these eighteen pages consists of six 
 " columns, and the whole 108, when pasted together 
 " in one strip, would form a streamer very nearly 
 " 200 feet long ; and as each column has, on an 
 " average, as many as 226 lines, there are in round 
 " numbers not fewer than 24,500 lines in the entire 
 " body of the work ; so that, estimating each line to 
 " be made up of ten words, there must be nearly 
 " a quarter of a million of such words throughout 
 ." the publication. Then, assuming each word to 
 " consist, generally speaking, of six letters, we 
 " arrive at the result that there are nearly a million 
 " and a half of types which have to be picked up 
 '• and arranged in their places daily. 
 
 " Look at the print as closely as you will — scan 
 " it as minutely as any professional printer's eyes 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 9 
 
 " would scrutinise it for errors of the press, and it 
 " will be difficult to find one letter turned upside- 
 " down — one mistake in spelling — one fault in 
 ''punctuation — one slip in grammar, or even one 
 " inelegance in composition — throughout the entire 
 " mass. And yet all this wonderful extent of 
 " matter has been written, composed, and corrected, 
 " in one day and night." 
 
 A writer in ' The Glasgoiu Christian Neivs' says : 
 " When it is considered that in every newspaper of 
 " any pretensions there are articles, letters, and par- 
 " agraphs, from thirty or forty different pens, there 
 u is not much to be astonished at in occasional 
 " blunders. If the Dean knew more of newspaper 
 " matters he would be more charitable in his criti- 
 " cism. Is it fair to expect in a leading article 
 " composed at midnight, against time, and carried 
 " off to the printers slip by slip as it is written, the 
 " same rhythmical beauty and accuracy of expres- 
 " sion as in any essay elaborated by the labour of 
 " many days for a quarterly review ? Yet the 
 " English of the Dean, corrected and re-corrected, 
 " pales before that of ' The Times ' written perhaps 
 11 by a wearied man at two in the morning/' 
 
 You say, " Sometimes the editors of oar papers fall, 
 a from their ignorance, into absurd mistakes", Cer- 
 
10 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 tainly not a very happy arrangement of words in 
 which to remark upon the " absurd mistakes " of 
 other people ; for we ought to be as careful what 
 our sentences suggest, as what they affirm ; and we 
 are so accustomed to speak of people falling from 
 a state or position, that your words naturally 
 suggest the absurd idea of editors falling from their 
 ignorance. 
 
 I submit it to the reviewers whether your sen- 
 tence be not altogether faulty. The words, " from 
 " their ignorance " should not come after " fall", 
 they should precede it. But, for the reason just 
 given, the w r ord "from" is objectionable in any 
 part of the sentence, which would have been better 
 written thus, Sometimes our editors, in consequence 
 of their ignorance, fall into absurd mistakes. If 
 you say that the defect in perspicuity is removed 
 by the punctuation, I answer, in the language of 
 Lord Karnes, " Punctuation may remove an ambi- 
 " guity, but will never produce that peculiar beauty 
 " which is perceived when the sense comes out 
 " clearly and distinctly by means of a happy 
 "arrangement". The same high authority tells 
 us that a circumstance ought never to be placed 
 between two capital members of a sentence ; or if 
 it be so placed, the first word in the consequent 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 11 
 
 member should be one that cannot connect it with 
 that which precedes. In your sentence, unfortu- 
 nately, the connection is perfect, and the suggestion 
 of a ridiculous idea is the result. 
 
 Nor is the foregoing the only instance of this 
 kind of faulty arrangement. You say, " The great 
 " enemies to understanding anything printed in 
 " our language are the commas. And these are 
 "inserted by the compositors without the slightest 
 " compunction ". I should say that the great 
 enemy to our understanding these sentences of 
 yours is the want of commas; for though the 
 defective position of words can never be compen- 
 sated for by commas, they do frequently help to 
 make the sense clearer, and would do so in this 
 instance. How can we certainly know that the 
 words " without the slightest compunction " refer 
 to " inserted " ? They seem, by their order in the 
 sentence, to describe the character of the composi- 
 tors ; — they are " compositors without the slightest 
 " compunction ". And then that word " compimc- 
 "tion"; what an ill-chosen word of which to 
 make use when speaking of punctuation. But 
 this is only on a par with that which occurs in the 
 first paragraph of your essay, where you speak of 
 persons " mending their ways"; and in the very 
 
12 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 next paragraph you speak of the " Queen s high- 
 " ivay", and of " by -roads" and "private roads". 
 
 But to return. Not only do you describe the 
 poor compositors as beings " without any compunc- 
 " tion " ; but also as beings " without any mercy ". 
 The sentence runs thus : " These c shrieks \ as they 
 " have been called, are scattered up and down the 
 "page by compositors without any mercy". I 
 have often heard of " printers' devils", and I 
 imagined them to be the boys who assist in the 
 press-room ; but if your description of compositors 
 is true, these are beings of an order very little 
 superior. 
 
 By-the-way, while noticing these ghostly exist- 
 ences, I may just remark that immediately after 
 your speaking of " things without life ", you 
 startle us with that strange sentence of yours — " I 
 " will introduce the body of my essay ". Introduce 
 the body ! We are prepared for much in these 
 days of " sensation " writing ; and the very preva- 
 lence of the fashion for that style of composition 
 pre-disposes any one of a quick imagination to 
 believe, for the instant, that your essay on the 
 ' Queen's English ' is about to turn into a ( Strange 
 1 Story \ 
 
 " But to be more serious ", as you. say in your 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 13 
 
 essay and then immediately give us a sentence in 
 which the grave and the grotesque are most incon- 
 gruously blended. I read, " A man does not lose 
 "his mother now in the papers". I have read 
 figurative language which spoke of lawyers being 
 lost in their papers, and of students being buried in 
 their books ; but I never read of a man losing his 
 mother in the papers ; therefore I do not quite see 
 what the adverb " now " has to do in the sentence. 
 Ah ! stop a moment. You did not mean to speak 
 of a man losing his mother in the papers. I per- 
 ceive by the context that what you intended to 
 say was something of this sort : — According to the 
 papers; a man does not now lose his mother ; — but 
 that is a very different thing. How those little 
 prepositions " from " and " in " do perplex you ; or 
 rather, how greatly your misuse of them perplexes 
 your readers. 
 
 With the adverbs also you are equally at fault. 
 You say, " In all abstract cases where we merelv 
 "speak of numbers the verb is better singular/' 
 Here the placing of the adverb " merely " makes 
 it a limitation of the following word " speak " ; and 
 the question might naturally enough be asked, But 
 what if we ivrite of numbers ? The adverb, being 
 intended to qualify the word " numbers ", should 
 
14 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 have been placed immediately after it. The sen- 
 tence would then have read, " In all abstract cases 
 " where we speak of numbers merely, the verb is 
 " better singular." So also in the sentence, " I only 
 " bring forward some things " the adverb "only" is 
 similarly misplaced ; for, in the following sentence, 
 the words " Plenty more might be said ", show that 
 the " only " refers to the " some things ", and not 
 to the fact of your bringing them forward. The 
 sentence should therefore have been, "I bring 
 " forward some things only. Plenty more might 
 " be said." Again, you say " Still, though too 
 " many commas are bad, too few are not without 
 " inconvenience also." Here the adverb " also ", 
 in consequence of its position, applies to " incon- 
 " venience " ; and the sentence signifies that too 
 few commas are not without inconvenience besides 
 being bad. Doubtless, what you intended was, 
 " Still, though too many commas are bad, too few 
 " also are not without inconvenience." 
 
 Blair, speaking of adverbs, says, "The fact is, 
 " with respect to such adverbs as only, vjholly, at 
 " least, and the rest of that tribe, that, in common 
 " discourse, the tone and emphasis we use in pro- 
 nouncing them, generally serve to show their 
 "reference, and to make the meaning clear; and 
 
IRE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 15 
 
 " hence we acquire the habit of throwing them in 
 " loosely in the course of a period. But in writ- 
 41 ing ", [and I wish you to notice this, because it 
 bears upon a remark in your letter to me,] " But 
 " in writing, where a man speaks to the eye and not 
 " to the ear, he ought to he more accurate, and so to 
 " connect those adverts with the vjords which they 
 *■ qualify as to put his meaning out of doubt upon 
 " the first inspection" 
 
 In my former letter to you, I quoted as the basis 
 of some remarks I had to make, the well known 
 rule that " those parts of a sentence which are 
 " most closely connected in their meaning, should 
 " be as closely as possible connected in position/' 
 In your reply you speak of my remarks as " the 
 " fallacious application of a supposed rule." Whe- 
 ther my application of the rule be fallacious or 
 not, let others judge from this letter ; and as to 
 whether the rule itself be only " a supposed rule ", 
 or whether it is not, on the contrary, a standard 
 rule emanating from the highest authorities, let 
 the following quotations decide. 
 
 I read in Karnes's 'Elements of Criticism', 
 " Words expressing things connected in the thought, 
 " ought to be placed as near together as possible." 
 
 I read in Campbell's 'Philosophy of Rhetoric, 
 
16 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 "In English and other modern languages, the 
 <c speaker doth not enjoy that boundless latitude 
 " which an orator of Athens or of Eome enjoyed 
 " when haranguing in the language of his country. 
 u With us, who admit very few inflections, the 
 " construction, and consequently the sense, depends 
 " almost entirely on the order." 
 
 I read in Blair's 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles 
 * Lettres\ " The relation which the words, or the 
 " members of a period, bear to one another, cannot 
 " be pointed out in English, as in Greek or in Latin, 
 " by means of terminations ; it is ascertained only 
 " by the position in which they stand. Hence a 
 " capital rule in the arrangement of sentences is, 
 " that the words, or the members, most nearly related 
 " should be placed in the sentence, as near to each 
 " other as possible ; so as to make their mutual 
 " relation clearly appear." 
 
 See also 'Hurray's Grammar 9 , part 2, in the 
 Appendix ; likewise, ' The Elements of English 
 i Composition', by David Irving, ll.d., chapter 7 ; 
 and the 'Grammar of Rhetoric, by Alexander 
 Jamieson, ll.d., chapter 3, book 3. 
 
 As an illustrative example of the violation of 
 this rule, take the following sentences. "It con- 
 " tained ", says Swift, " a warrant for conducting 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 17 
 
 " me and my retinue to Traldragdubb or Trildrog- 
 " drib, for it is pronounced both ways, as near as I 
 " can remember, by a 'party of ten horse!' The 
 words in italics must be construed with the parti- 
 ciple " conducting ", but they are placed so far 
 from that word, and so near the word "pronounced", 
 that at first they suggest a meaning perfectly 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Again, in the course of a certain examination 
 which took place in the House of Commons in the 
 year 1809, Mr. Dennis Browne said, the witness 
 had been " ordered to withdraw from the bar in 
 " consequence of being intoxicated, by the motion 
 " of an honourable member." This remark, as 
 might have been expected, produced loud and^ 
 general laughter. The speaker intended to say, 
 that, " in consequence of being intoxicated, the 
 " witness, by the motion of an honourable member, 
 " had been ordered to withdraw from the bar." 
 
 A similar error occurs in a work by Isaac 
 DTsraeli. He meant to relate that, " The beaux of 
 " that day, as well as the women, used the abomi- 
 u nable art of painting their faces " ; but he writes, 
 " The beaux of that day used the abominable art 
 " of painting their faces, as well as the women " ! 
 
 In your essay, you say, " I remember, when the 
 
 c 
 
18 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " French band of the 'Guides' were in this country, 
 " reading in the ' Illustrated News' ". Were the 
 Frenchmen, when in this country, reading in ' The 
 'Illustrated News'? or did you mean that you 
 remembered reading in ( The Illustrated News', 
 when the band of the French Guides, &c ? 
 
 You say also, "It is not so much of the great 
 "highway itself of the Queen's English that I 
 " would now speak, as of some of the laws of the 
 " road ; the by-rules, to compare small things 
 " with great, which hang up framed at the various 
 " stations ". What are the great things which 
 hang up framed at the various stations ? If you 
 meant that the by-rules hang up framed at the 
 various stations, the sentence would have been 
 better thus, " the laws of the road ; or, to compare 
 " small things with great, the by-rules which hang 
 " up framed at the various stations ". 
 
 So, too, in that sentence which introduces the 
 tody of your essay, you speak of " the reluctance 
 " which we in modern Europe have to giving any 
 " prominence to the personality of single individ- 
 " uals in social intercourse " ; and yet it was 
 evidently not of single individuals in social inter- 
 course that you intended to speak, but of giving, 
 in social intercourse, any prominence to the 
 
 II 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 19 
 
 personality of single individuals. Your language 
 expresses a meaning different from that which was 
 intended : just as does Goldsmith's language when, 
 in the following tautological sentence, he says, 
 "The Greeks, fearing to be surrounded on all 
 " sides, wheeled about and halted, with the river 
 " on their backs." Talk of Baron Munchausen ! 
 Why, here was an army of Munchausens. They 
 " wheeled about and halted, with the river on their 
 " backs." 
 
 An accurate writer will always avoid the possi- 
 bility of his sentences' having a double meaning ; 
 yet the following extract is from a certain journal 
 which started with the avowed intention of setting 
 the rest of the literary world an example of pure 
 English : — " On Saturday morning a man, sup- 
 " posed to be a doctor of philosophy, threw a stick 
 " at the window at which the King of Prussia 
 " was witnessing the defiling of a detachment of 
 " soldiers " ! This is almost as rich as Dr. Blair's 
 description of disappointed ambition : — 
 
 " Ambition, half convicted of her folly, 
 Hangs down the head, and reddens at the tale." 
 
 Blair 1 s Grave. 
 
 Once more, you say, " When I hear a person 
 " use a queer expression, or pronounce a name in 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " reading differently from his neighbours, it always 
 " goes down, in my estimate of him, with a minus 
 " sign before it — stands on the side of deficit, not 
 " of credit." Poor fellow ! So he falls in your 
 estimation, merely because when " reading differ- 
 " ently from his neighbours," you hear him " pro- 
 " nounce a name ". Would you have him pass 
 over the names without pronouncing them ? The 
 fact is, that in the very words in which you 
 censure a small fault of another person, you 
 expose for censure a greater fault of your own. 
 The pronunciation of proper names is a subject 
 upon which philologists are not in every case 
 unanimous ; and to differ where the wise are not 
 agreed, if it be a fault, cannot be a great fault ; 
 but to publish a sentence like yours, having in it 
 a clause with what the French call a " squinting 
 " construction ", * is to commit a fault such as no 
 one would expect to find in l A Plea J "or the Queen's 
 ' English \ The words " in reading ", look two 
 ways at once, and may be construed either with the 
 words which precede, or with those which follow. 
 We may understand you to say, "pronounce a 
 "name in reading"; or, "in reading differently 
 " from his neighbours ". A more striking example 
 * " Construction louche". 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 21 
 
 of this ludicrous error could scarcely have been 
 given. 
 
 Dr. Campbell, in speaking of similar instances 
 of bad arrangement, says, " In all the above 
 " instances there is what may be justly termed 
 " a constructive ambiguity ; that is, the words are 
 " so disposed in point of order, as to render them 
 " really ambiguous, if, in that construction which 
 " the expression first suggests, any meaning were 
 " exhibited, As this is not the case, the faulty 
 " order of the words cannot properly be considered 
 " as rendering the sentence ambiguous, but as 
 " rendering it obscure. It may indeed be argued 
 " that, in these and the like examples, the least 
 " reflection in the reader will quickly remove the 
 * obscurity. But why is there any obscurity to be 
 " removed ? Or why does the writer require more 
 " attention from the reader, or the speaker from 
 " the hearer, than is absolutely necessary ? It 
 u ought to be remembered, that whatever applica- 
 " tion we must give to the words, is, in fact, so 
 " much deducted from what we owe to the senti- 
 " ments. Besides, the effort that is exerted in a 
 " very close attention to the language, always 
 "weakens the effect which the thoughts were 
 u intended to produce in the mind. ' By per- 
 
22 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " ' spicuity ', as Quintillian justly observes, ' care 
 " ' is taken, not that the hearer may understand, if 
 " ' he will, but that he must understand, whether 
 " ' he will or not.' * Perspicuity, originally and 
 " properly, implies transparency, such as may be 
 " ascribed to air, glass, water, or any other medium 
 " through which material objects are viewed. 
 " From this original and proper sense it has been 
 " metaphorically applied to language ; this being, 
 " as it were, the medium through which we per- 
 " ceive the notions and sentiments of a speaker. 
 " Now, in corporeal things, if the medium through 
 " which we look at any object is perfectly trans- 
 " parent, our whole attention is fixed on the object ; 
 " we are scarcely sensible that there is a medium 
 " which intervenes, and we can hardly be said to 
 "perceive it. But if there is any flaw in the 
 u medium, if we see through it but dimly, if the 
 " object is imperfectly represented, or if we know 
 " it to be misrepresented, our attention is imme- 
 " diately taken off the object to the medium. We 
 " are then anxious to discover the cause, either of 
 " the dim and confused representation, or of the 
 " misrepresentation, of things which it exhibits, 
 u that so the defect in vision may be supplied by 
 *' Instit\ lib. viii. cap 2. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 23 
 
 " judgment. The case of language is precisely 
 " similar. A discourse, then, excels in perspicuity 
 u when the subject engrosses the attention of the 
 " hearer, and the diction is so little minded by 
 " him, that he can scarcely be said to be conscious 
 "it is through this medium he sees into the 
 " speaker's thoughts. On the contrary, the least 
 " obscurity, ambiguity, or confusion in the style, 
 * instantly removes the attention from the senti- 
 "ment to the expression, and the hearer endeav- 
 " ours, by the aid of reflection, to correct the 
 ■' imperfections of the speaker's language." 
 
 In contending for the law of position, as laid 
 down by Lord Karnes, Dr. Campbell, and others, 
 I do so on the ground that the observance of this 
 law contributes to that most essential quality in 
 all writings, — perspicuity; and although I would 
 not on any account wish to see all sentences con- 
 structed on one uniform plan, I maintain that the 
 law of position must never be violated when such 
 violation ivould in any way obscure the meaning. 
 Let your meaning still be obvious, and you may 
 vary your mode of expression as you please ; and 
 your language will be the richer for the variation. 
 Let your meaning be obscure, and no grace of 
 diction, nor any music of a well-turned period, 
 
24 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 will make amends to your readers for their being 
 liable to misunderstand you. 
 
 In noticing my remarks upon this part of the 
 subject, you say, " The fact is, the rules of 
 " emphasis come in, in interruption of your sup- 
 " posed general law of position/' Passing over 
 the inelegant stuttering, "in, in, in", in this 
 sentence, I reply to your observation. The rules 
 of emphasis, and what you are pleased to call 
 " the supposed general law of position ", are entirely 
 independent of each other, and can no more clash 
 than two parallel lines can meet. The rules of 
 emphasis do not come " in, in interruption of the 
 " general law of position." A sentence ought, 
 under all circumstances, to be constructed accu- 
 rately, whatever may chance to be the emphasis 
 with which it will be read. A faulty construction 
 may be made intelligible by emphasis, but no 
 dependence on emphasis will justify a faulty con- 
 struction. Besides, if the sentence is ambiguous, 
 how will emphasis assist the reader to the author's 
 meaning ? Where shall he apply the emphasis ? 
 He must comprehend what is ambiguous, in order 
 that what is ambiguous may by him be compre- 
 hended, which is an absurdity. 
 
 Emphasis may be very useful to me in explain- 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 25 
 
 ing to you my own meaning, or, in explaining 
 another's meaning which I may understand; but 
 it can be of no use to me to explain that which I 
 do not understand. When to correctness of posi- 
 tion is added justness of emphasis, your words 
 will be weighty; but when the first of these 
 qualities is wanting, not the thunder of a Boanerges 
 will compensate for the deficiency. 
 
 An amusing instance of wrong emphasis in 
 reading the Scriptures was thus given in a recent 
 number of 'The Reader'. "A clergyman, in the 
 " course of the church service, coming to verses 
 " 24 and 25 of 1 Sam. xxviii, which describe how 
 " Saul, who had been abstaining from food in the 
 " depth of his grief, was at last persuaded to eat, 
 " read them thus : ' And the woman had a fat calf 
 " ' in the house ; and she hasted, and killed it, and 
 " ' took flour, and kneaded it, and did bake 
 "'unleavened bread thereof: and she brought it 
 " ' before Saul, and before his servants ; and they 
 " ' did eat ' ". 
 
 Continuing my review of your essay, I notice 
 that it is said of a traveller on the Queen's high- 
 way, " He bowls along it with ease in a vehicle 
 " which a few centuries ago would have been 
 " broken to pieces in a deep rut, or come to grief 
 
26 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 "in a bottomless swamp." There being here no 
 words immediately before " come ", to indicate in 
 what tense that verb is, I have to turn back to 
 find the tense, and am obliged to read the sentence 
 thus, " would have been broken to pieces in a deep 
 "rut, or [would have been] come to grief in a 
 " bottomless swamp " ; for, a part of a complex 
 tense means nothing without the rest of the tense ; 
 therefore, the rest of the tense ought always to be 
 found in the sentence. Nor is it allowable, as in 
 your sentence, to take part of the tense of a 
 passive verb to eke out the meaning of an active 
 verb given without any tense whatever. 
 
 Further on, I find you speaking of " that fertile 
 " source of mistakes among our clergy, the mispro- 
 nunciation of Scripture proper names". It is 
 not the "mispronunciation of Scripture proper 
 " names " which is the source of mistakes ; the 
 mispronunciation of Scripture proper names con- 
 stitutes the mistakes themselves of which you are 
 speaking ; and a thing cannot at the same time be 
 a source, and that which flows from it. It appears 
 that what you intended to speak of was, "that 
 " fertile source of mistakes among our clergy, their 
 " ignorance of Scripture proper names, the mispro- 
 nunciation of which is quite inexcusable" 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 27 
 
 Speaking on this subject, I may remark that, as 
 you strongly advocate our following the Greeks 
 in the pronunciation of their proper names, I hope 
 you will be consistent and never again, in reading 
 the Lessons, call those ancient cities Samaria and 
 Philadelphia otherwise than Samaria and Phila- 
 delphia. 
 
 I was much amused by your attempt to set up 
 the Church ' Prayer Book ' as an authority for the 
 aspiration of the " h " in the word " humble " ; 
 when, on the first page of the ' Morning Prayer \ 
 we are exhorted to confess our sins "with an 
 "humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart". 
 As for the argument wdiich you base upon the 
 alliterative style of the 'Prayer Booh' ; that argu- 
 ment proves too much, to be in your favour ; for 
 if, because we find the words " humble " and 
 " hearty'' following each other, we are therefore to 
 believe that it was the intention of the compilers 
 of our beautiful ritual that we should aspirate the 
 " h " in " humble ", as in " hearty " ; what was the 
 intention of the compilers when, in the supplica- 
 tion for the Queen, they required us to pray that 
 we "may faithfully serve, honour, and humbly 
 "obey her"? 
 
 Towards the end of your essay you say, " Entail 
 
28 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " is another poor injured verb. Nothing ever leads 
 " to anything as a consequence, or brings it about, 
 " but it always entails it. This smells strong of 
 " the lawyers clerk". It was a very proper ex- 
 pression which Horace made use of when, speaking 
 of over-laboured compositions, he said that they 
 smelt of the lamp ; but it is scarcely a fit expres- 
 sion which you employ, when, speaking of a certain 
 word, you say, this smells strong of the lawyer's 
 clerk. Lawyers or their clerks may be odious to 
 you, but that does not give you the right to use an 
 expression which implies that they are odorous. 
 
 Just as we may know by the way in which a 
 man deals with the small trials of life, how far he 
 has attained a mastery over himself; so may we 
 know by the way in which a writer deals with the 
 small parts of speech, how far he has attained a 
 mastery over the language. Let us see therefore 
 how you manage the pronouns. 
 
 I begin by noticing a remark which, in your 
 letter to me, has reference to this part of the 
 subject. You say, respecting my criticism on your 
 essay, " Set to work in the same way with our 
 " English version of the Bible, and what work you 
 " would make of it " ! To this I repty : Our 
 English version of the Bible is acknowledged to be, 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 29 
 
 on the whole, excellent, whether considered with 
 respect to its faithfulness to the originals, or with 
 respect to its purity and elegance of language. Its 
 doctrines, being divine, are, like their Author, 
 perfect ; but the translation, being human, is 
 frequently obscure.* You bid rue look at the 
 " he " and " him " in Luke xix, 3, 4, 5. You surely 
 do not defend the construction of these sentences ? 
 See what Dr. Campbell says on this subject, in his 
 ' Philosophy of Rhetoric ', book ii, chap. 6. a It is 
 . " easy to conceive that, in numberless instances, 
 " the pronoun ' he ' will be ambiguous, when two or 
 " more males happen to be mentioned in the same 
 " clause of a sentence. In such a case we ought 
 " always either to give another turn to the expres- 
 " sion, or to use the noun itself, and not the 
 " pronoun ; for when the repetition of a word is 
 " necessary, it is not offensive. The translators of 
 
 * " The Dean falls back upon the authority of Scripture in 
 " defence of some of his indefensible positions. But examples of 
 "bad grammar and bad construction can be found in King 
 " James's translation ; and all our standard writers, not 
 " excepting even Addison himself, to the study of whose works 
 " we used to be told to give both day and night, have furnished 
 " an abundant harvest of errors for the critics. Yet there is 
 " good writing, and Mr. Moon's is good ; and there is bad 
 " writing, and, in spite of the mending, the Dean's is bad."— 
 The Nation, No. lix, p. 791. [A New York Journal,'] 
 
30 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 "the Bible have often judiciously used this 
 " method ; I say judiciously, because, though the 
 " other method is on some occasions preferable, yet, 
 " by attempting the other, they would have run a 
 " much greater risk of destroying that beautiful 
 " simplicity which is an eminent characteristic of 
 " Holy Writ. I shall take an instance from the 
 " speech of Judah to his brother Joseph in Egypt. 
 " l We said to my lord, The lad cannot leave his 
 " ' father, for if he should leave his father, his 
 " ' father would die.' Gen. xliv, 22. The words 
 " ' his father ' are, in this short verse, thrice repeated, 
 " and yet are not disagreeable, as they contribute 
 " to perspicuity. Had the last part of the sentence 
 " run thus, ' if he should leave his father he would 
 " f die ', it would not have appeared from the ex- 
 " pression, whether it were the child or the parent 
 " that would die " 
 
 A little attention to this matter would have 
 saved you from publishing such a paragraph as the 
 following ; " Two other words occur to me which 
 " are very commonly mangled by our clergy. One 
 " of these is ' covetous ' and its substantive i covet- 
 " ' ousness \ I hope some who read these lines will 
 " be induced to leave off pronouncing them ' covet- 
 " t ious ' and ' covetiousness \ I can assure them 
 
THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 31 
 
 " that when they do thus call them, one at least of 
 a their hearers has his appreciation of their teaching 
 " disturbed ".* You have so confusedly used your 
 pronouns in the above paragraph, that it may be 
 construed in ten thousand different ways. 
 
 In some sentences your pronouns have actually 
 no nouns to which they apply. For example, on 
 page 192, "That nation ". What nation? You 
 have not spoken of any nation whatever. You 
 have spoken of " the national mind ", " the national 
 " speech " and " national simplicity ", things per- 
 taining to a nation, but have not spoken of a 
 nation itself. So also, on page 195, "a journal 
 11 published by these people ". By what people ? 
 Where is the noun to which this relative pronoun 
 refers ? In your head it may have been, but it 
 certainly is not in your essay. 
 
 The relation between nouns and pronouns is a 
 great stumbling-block to most writers. The 
 following sentence occurs in Hallam's ' Literature of 
 'Europe': — "No one as yet had exhibited the 
 " structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having 
 " only examined them in dogs ". Human kidneys 
 in dogs ! *f* 
 
 * The italics are not the Dean's, 
 t Breen's ' Modern English Literature '. 
 
32 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 
 
 In a memoir of John Leyden, the shepherd boy, 
 in 'Small Beginnings ; or, the Way to Get On\ 
 there is, on page 104, the following passage : — 
 " The Professor soon perceived, however, that the 
 " intellectual qualities of the youth were superior 
 a to those of his raiment ". Intellectual qualities 
 of raiment ! 
 
 In your essay, on page 196, you say, "I have 
 " known cases where it has been thoroughly eradi- 
 " cated ". " When I hear a man gets to his its ", 
 says Wm. Cobbett, " I tremble for him " Now 
 just read backwards with me, and let us see how 
 many singular neuter nouns intervene before we 
 come to the one to which your pronoun "it" 
 belongs. " A tipple ", " a storm " " the charitable 
 " explanation ", " the well-known infirmity ", " the 
 a way " "ale ", " an apology ", "the consternation " 
 " their appearance ", " dinner ", " the house ", " the 
 " following incident " " his ed ", " a neighbouring 
 "table", "a South-Eastern train", "a Great 
 " Western " " Eeading " " a refreshment-room " 
 " the ^atmosphere ", " the hair ", " the air " the 
 " cholera " " his opinion " " this vulgarism ", 
 " energy ", " self-respect ", " perception " " intelli- 
 " gence " " habit ." Here we have it at last. Only 
 twenty-eight nouns intervening between the pro- 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 33 
 
 noun u it " and the noun " hahit " to which it 
 refers! I could give additional examples from 
 your essay, but surely this is enough, to show that 
 the schoolmaster is needed by other people besides 
 the Directors of the Great- Western and of the 
 South-Eastern railways. 
 
 One word in conclusion. You make the asser- 
 tion that the possessive pronoun " its " " never 
 " occurs in the English version of the Bible ". It 
 is to be regretted that you have spoken so posi- 
 tively on this subject. Probably the knowledge of 
 our translators' faithfulness to the original text, 
 and the fact of there being in Hebrew no neuter, 
 may have led you and others into this error ; but 
 look at Leviticus xxv, 5, " That which groweth of 
 " its own accord ", and you will see that " its " the 
 possessive of " it " does occur " in the English 
 " version of the Bible ". 
 
 I am, Eev. Sir, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 G. WASHINGTON MOON. 
 

 THE DEAFS ENGLISH: 
 
 CEITICISM No. II; 
 
 In Eeply to the Dean of Canterbury's 
 Rejoinder. 
 
 What ! is it possible that the Dean of Canterbury 
 can have so forgotten the Scriptural precept " Be 
 " courteous ", as to speak, in a public meeting, in 
 such a manner about an absent antagonist, that the 
 language is condemned by the assembly, and the 
 Dean is censured by the public press ? Your own 
 county paper, Reverend Sir, ' The South-Eastern 
 1 Gazette,' in giving a report of your second lecture * 
 in St George's Hall, Canterbury, makes the 
 following observations : a Mr. G-. W. Moon issued 
 " a pamphlet controverting many of the points 
 " advanced by the Dean, and showing that the 
 " reverend gentleman himself had been guilty of 
 * Subsequently published in ' Good Words', June, 1863. 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 35 
 
 " the very violations of good English which he had 
 " so strongly condemned in others. The greater 
 " portion of the Dean's lecture on Monday evening 
 " was devoted to an examination of the statements 
 " made by Mr. Moon, and to a defence of the 
 " language employed by the Dean in his former 
 " lecture. Opinions differ as to the success of the 
 " reverend gentleman, many of his positions being 
 " called in question ; while the epithets which he 
 " did not hesitate to use, in speaking of an antago- 
 " nist possessing some acquaintance with the 
 " English language, were generally condemned. 
 " These might and ought to have been avoided, 
 " especially by one whose precepts and example 
 " have their influence, for good or for harm, upon 
 " the society in which he moves. ' Get wisdom, get 
 " ' understanding, and forget it not ', is a text that 
 " even the Dean of Canterbury might ponder over 
 " with advantage ". 
 
 What, too, is to be said of that language which, 
 even in your calmer moments, you have not 
 scrupled to apply to me ? You had, in your former 
 essay,* worded a sentence so strangely, that it 
 suggested a meaning perfectly ludicrous. I called 
 
 * 'A Plea for the Queen's English 1 . — l Good Words', 
 March, 1863. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 your attention to this, first in a private letter, and 
 afterwards in a pamphlet,* and, in your i Plea for 
 'the Queen's English, No. II \ you indignantly ex- 
 claim, in reference to my remarks, " We do not write 
 " for idiots". Thank you for your politeness; I 
 can make all excuses for hasty words spoken in 
 unguarded moments ; but when a gentleman 
 deliberately uses such expressions in print, he 
 shows, by his complacent self-sufficiency, how 
 much need he has to remember that it is possible 
 to be worse than even an idiot. " Seest thou a 
 " man wise in his own conceit ? there is more hope 
 " of a fool than of him". Prov. xxvi, 12. 
 
 Continuing your remarks on my criticisms, you 
 say, " It must require, to speak in the genteel 
 " language w 7 hich some of my correspondents 
 a uphold, a most abnormal elongation of the auri- 
 " cular appendages, for a reader to have suggested 
 " to his mind a fall from the sublime height of 
 11 ignorance down into the depth of a mistake." I 
 spoke of editors falling into mistakes : it remained 
 for the Dean of Canterbury to add, that they fell 
 down into the depth of a mistake. You say you 
 do not write for idiots ; who else would imagine 
 that it were possible to fall up into a depth ? 
 
 * The previous letter is a re-publication of that pamphlet. 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 37 
 
 Eeverting to your expression, " abnormal elonga- 
 " Hon of the auricular appendages ", — you recom- 
 mended us, in your former essay, to use plainness 
 of language, and, when we mean a spade, to say so, 
 and not call it " a well-known oblong instrument 
 " of manual husbandry " I wonder you did not 
 follow your own teaching, and, in plain language, 
 call me an ass; but I suppose you considered the 
 language plain enough, and certainly it is : there 
 can be no doubt as to your meaning. I must leave 
 it to the public to decide whether I have deserved 
 such a distinguished title. Eecipients of honours 
 do not generally trouble themselves about merit : 
 but, as I am very jealous for the character of him 
 who has thus flatteringly distinguished me ; and as 
 some captious persons may call in question his 
 right to confer the title of ass ; I shall endeavour, 
 in the following pages, to silence for ever all 
 cavillers, and to prove, to demonstration, that he 
 did not give away that which did not belong to 
 him. 
 
 Of my former letter, you say that, when you 
 first looked it through, it reminded you of the old 
 story of the attorney's endorsement of the brief, — 
 "No case: abuse the Plaintiff M ; for, the objec- 
 tions brought by me against the matter of your 
 
38 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 essay, are very few and by no means weighty, as I 
 have spent almost all my labour in criticisms on 
 your style and sentences. Precisely ! I wished 
 to show, by your own writings, that so far were 
 you from being competent to teach others English 
 composition, you had need yourself to study its 
 first principles ; but there is no abuse whatever in 
 that letter : you had no precedent in my remarks 
 for your language; and as for my having made 
 but few objections to your essay, I will at once 
 give you convincing proof that it was not because 
 I had no more objections to make. 
 
 I had written the following paragraph before 
 your second essay was published ; and although, 
 in that essay, you defend the statement you had 
 previously made, I conceive that you have not by 
 any means established your position. 
 
 I venture to assert that, what we say figuratively 
 of some not over- wise persons, we may say literally 
 of you, — " You do not know how the cat jumps " ; 
 for, what do you tell us ? You tell us that it is 
 wrong to say, " The cat jumped on to the chair ", 
 the "to", you remark, "being wholly unneeded 
 " and never used by any careful writer or speaker." 
 With all due deference to such a high authority on 
 such a very important matter, I beg leave to 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 39 
 
 observe that, when we say, " The cat jumped on 
 " to the chair ", we mean that the cat jumped from 
 somewhere else to the chair, and alighted on it ; 
 but when we say, " The cat jumped on the chair ", 
 we mean that the cat was on the chair already, 
 and that, while there, she jumped. The circum- 
 stances are entirely different ; and according to the 
 difference in the circumstances, so should there be 
 a difference in the language used to describe them 
 respectively. It is evident that in watching the 
 antics of puss, you received an impulse from her 
 movements, and you yourself jumped — to a wrong 
 conclusion* 
 
 Again, you say, " I pass on now to spelling, on 
 " which I have one or two remarks to make. The 
 " first shall be, on the trick now so universal " [' so 
 1 universal ' ! as if universality admitted of com- 
 
 * ' The Edinburgh Revieiv\ after objecting to some of my 
 remarks as hypercritical, says, " It is not meant that all Mr. 
 " Moon's comments are of this kind. The Dean's style is 
 " neither particularly elegant nor correct, and his adversary 
 " sometimes hits him hard ; besides in one or two cases success- 
 " fully disputing his judgments. On the important question 
 " (for instance) whether we should say the cat jumped ( on 
 "'to the chair', or ( on the chair', we must vote against 
 " the Dean, who unjustly condemns the former expres- 
 " sion." 
 
40 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 parison] "across the Atlantic, and becoming in 
 " some quarters common among us in England, of 
 " leaving out the ( u 9 in the termination 'our 9 ; 
 " writing honor, favor, neighbor, Savior, &c. Now 
 " the objection to this is not only that it makes 
 " very ugly words, totally unlike anything in the 
 "English language before, but that it obliterates 
 " all trace of the derivation and history of the 
 " word. The late Archdeacon Hare, in an 
 "article on English orthography in the ' Philo- 
 " ' logical Museum 9 , some years ago, expressed a 
 " hope that ' such abominations as honor and favor 
 " ' would henceforth be confined to the cards of 
 " ' the great vulgar/ There we still see them, and 
 " in books printed in America ; and while we are 
 " quite contented to leave our fashionable friends 
 " in such company, I hope we may none of us be 
 " tempted to join it." I will tell you where else 
 these " abominations " may be found, besides being 
 found " on the cards of the great vulgar ". They 
 may be found in a volume of poems by Henry 
 Alford, Dean of Canterbury ; a volume published, 
 not in America, but in this country, by Eivingtons 
 of Pall Mall. The following is a specimen taken 
 from his "Kecent Poems ". Two verses will 
 suffice. 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 41 
 
 EECENT POEMS. 
 A WISH. 
 
 " Would it were mine, amidst the changes 
 " Through which our varied lifetime ranges, 
 " To live on Providence's bounty 
 " Down in some favored western county. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " There may I dwell with those who love me ; 
 " And when the earth shall close above me, 
 " My memory leave a lasting savor 
 " Of grace divine, and human favor" 
 
 It is true that there is a preface to the volume, 
 and that it accounts for the spelling of such 
 words, by informing us that many of the poems 
 have been published in America ; but that is no 
 justification of your retaining the Transatlantic 
 spelling which you condemn. I guess you do not 
 mean to imply that it is with poems as with 
 persons, — i.e., that a temporary residence abroad 
 occasions them to acquire habits of pronuncia- 
 tion, &c, not easily thrown off on a return to the 
 mother country ; and yet, if this be not what the 
 preface means, pray, what does it mean ? Per- 
 haps, as mountain travellers brand certain words 
 on their alpenstocks, to show the height that has 
 been attained by those using them, so you have 
 
42 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 thought well to favor us with this savor of Ameri- 
 canisms, to show us that your poems have had the 
 honor of being republished on the other side of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 It appears to me that the preface serves only to 
 make matters worse ; for it shows that the objec- 
 tionable form of orthography is retained with your 
 knowledge and your sanction, for I have quoted 
 from the " Third Edition" How is this ? You 
 say that the spelling in question should be confined 
 to the cards of " the great vulgar " ; and you your- 
 self adopt that very spelling ! 
 
 Before quitting the subject of the spelling of 
 words of the above class, I beg leave to say that 
 although there are, in our language, certain words 
 ending in " our ", which, as we have seen, are 
 sometimes spelt with " or " only ; as honor, favor, 
 &c, without interference with the sense, honor 
 being still the same as honour, and favor the same 
 as favour; there is one word of this class, the 
 meaning of which changes with the change of 
 spelling ; namely, the word tenour, which, with the 
 " u ", means continuity of state ; as in ' Gray's 
 'Elegy' — 
 
 " Along the cool sequestered vale of life 
 
 " They kept the noiseless tenour of their way :" 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 43 
 
 but without the "u", signifies a certain clef in 
 music. This distinction has been very properly 
 noticed by Dr. Nugent in his \ English and French 
 'Dictionary' ; there the words stand thus : — 
 
 " Tenor, alto, m. 
 
 " Tenour, maniere, f." 
 
 but you, after lecturing us upon the impropriety of 
 leaving out the "u" in "honour", and in "favour", 
 although the omission in these words makes no 
 alteration in the sense, yourself leave the " u " out 
 of "tenour", and speak, on page 429, of the 
 " tenor " of your essay ! If this be not straining 
 at gnats and swallowing a camel, I do not know what 
 is. What with the tenor of your essay, and the 
 bass, or baseness, of your English, you certainly are 
 fiddling for us a very pretty tune. It is to be 
 hoped that if we do not dance quite correctly, to 
 your new music, you will take into consideration 
 the extreme difficulty we have to understand the 
 contradictory instructions we have received. 
 
 The following remarks upon this subject are 
 from ' The Round Table \ a New York Journal : — 
 " The mode of spelling this class of words under 
 " discussion, which is now getting more and more 
 " established, is only a part of the simplifying 
 
44 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " process which has been going on in the ortho- 
 " graphy of the English language for two hundred 
 " and fifty years. Wherever such a process tends 
 "to obscure the origin of words it ought to be 
 " checked. But this cannot be said in the present 
 " case ; for honor and the like come to us from the 
 "Latin, and in fact seem to have retained their 
 " Latin form in French originally, as the following 
 " lines will show — lines as old as the times of the 
 " Norman minstrels : 
 
 " ' Les terres, les ficus, les honors.' 
 " ' Des Daneiz firent grant dolor. 1 
 
 " English usage has never been settled or uniform 
 " with regard to the spelling of words ending in 
 " our. Every one knows this, and yet it will be 
 " pleasant to illustrate the fact by a few examples. 
 " Milton, who was always particular about his 
 " spelling, is wicked enough sometimes to write 
 
 " thus : 
 
 " c honor dishonorable, 
 
 " ( Sin- bred, how have ye troubl'd all mankind 
 
 " ' With shews instead, meer shews of seeming pure/ 
 
 " ( Paradise Lost,' First Edition, Book iv. Line 314. 
 
 " I wonder what the old bard would have said if 
 " Dean Alford had been there to tell him that the 
 " spelling in the above passage was an 'abomina- 
 
THE DEANS ENGLISH. 45 
 
 " * tion/ Probably he would have extended to him 
 "the same polite invitation that Samson did to 
 " Harapha, namely, just to come within reach of his 
 " fists. Bacon also does not scruple to spell after the 
 " same fashion when it pleases him ; as is seen 
 " here : ' In sutes of favor the first comming ought 
 " ' to take little place ;' ' hee doth not raine wealth, 
 " l nor shine honors and vertues upon men equally ;' 
 " where honors is the word given in the manuscript. 
 " It is a little singular that Sidney always addresses 
 "his letters to the 'Eight Honorable,' but com- 
 " monly prefers to say ' your honour! 
 
 " Every writer seems to follow his own notions 
 " about the spelling of words in our, and those 
 " ' abominations ' in the eyes of Archdeacon Hare 
 " and Dean Alford have been freely used by the 
 "best authors through all periods of English 
 " literature." 
 
 You censure the editors of newspapers for 
 using the expression "open up", and you say, 
 " what it means more than open would mean, I 
 " never could discover ". Permit me to say that, if 
 you look at home, you will find in your own 
 periodical, in the identical number of it containing 
 this remark of yours, two Doctors of Divinity 
 using the very expression you condemn; a third 
 
46 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 Doctor of Divinity using an expression very 
 similar ; and a fourth, yourself, using an expression 
 which, under the circumstances, is deserving of 
 severe censure. To begin with the Editor; the 
 Eev. Norman Macleod, d.d., says, on page 204, 
 " He opens up in the parched desert a well that 
 " refreshes us ". The Eev. John Caird, d.d., says, 
 on page 237, " Now these considerations may open 
 11 up to us one view of the expediency of Christ's 
 " departure ". The Eev. Thomas Guthrie, d.d., 
 says, on page 163, " the past, with its sin and folly, 
 " rose up before his eyes ". I suppose you would 
 say, "What rose up means more than rose would 
 "mean, I cannot discover". Probably not, but 
 just tell us what you mean by saying, on page 197, 
 " Even so the language grew up ; its nerve, and 
 " vigour, and honesty, and toil, mainly brought 
 " down to us in native Saxon terms ". If the word 
 " up " be redundant in the quoted sentences of the 
 other learned Doctors, what shall we say of it in 
 your own ? In their expressions there is sense ; so, 
 too, is there in your expression ; but it is a kind of 
 sense best described by the word nonsense. The 
 language grew up by being brought down ! Sure, 
 it must have been the Irish language that your 
 honour was spaking of. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 47 
 
 Now for your reply to my letter. In condem- 
 nation of your wretched English, I had cited some 
 of the highest authorities ;* and you coolly say, 
 " I must freely acknowledge to Mr. Moon, that not 
 " one of the gentlemen whom he has named has 
 " ever been my guide, in whatever study of the 
 " English language I may have accomplished, or in 
 " what little I may have ventured to write in that 
 " language " " I have a very strong persuasion 
 " that common sense, ordinary observation, and the 
 " prevailing usage of the English people, are quite 
 " as good guides in the matter of the arrangement 
 " of sentences, as [are] the rules laid down by 
 " rhetoricians and grammarians." Thus we come 
 to the actual truth of the matter. It appears that 
 you really have never made the English language 
 your study ! All that you know about it is what 
 you have picked up by " ordinary observation " ; -f- 
 and the result is, that you tell us it is correct to 
 say, "He is iviser than me; I and that you speak 
 
 * Dr. Campbell, Lord Kames, Hugh Blair, Lindley Murray, 
 and others. 
 
 t " It is notorious that at our public schools, every boy has 
 " been left to pick up his English where and how he could."— 
 Harrison ' On the English Language', preface, p. v. 
 
 t This subject was ably commented on by a writer in the 
 1 English Churchman '. See Appendix. 
 
48 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 of " a decided weak point " in a man's character ! 
 You must have a decidedly weak point in your 
 own character, to set up yourself as a teacher of 
 the English language, when the only credentials of 
 qualification that you can produce are such sen- 
 tences as these. 
 
 You sneer at " Americanisms ", but you would 
 never find an educated American who would 
 venture to say, " It is me ", for " It is I " ; or, " It 
 " is him ", for " It is he " ; or, " different to ", for 
 " different from ". And nowhere are the use and 
 the omission of the " h " as an aspirate, so clearly 
 distinguished as in the United States. In confir- 
 mation of this statement turn over the pages of 
 that humorous American work, " Artemus Ward, 
 " His Booh " and among all the vulgarisms and 
 misspellings there, you will scarcely ever find that 
 the aspirate " h " is omitted. 
 
 With regard to the purport of your second essay 
 on the Queen's English, it is, as I expected it 
 would be, chiefly a condemnation of my former 
 letter ; but you very carefully avoid those parti- 
 cular errors which I exposed ; such as, " Sometimes 
 " the editors of our papers fall, from their igno- 
 " ranee, into absurd mistakes " ; and, " A man does 
 " not lose his mother now in the papers ". There 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 41 
 
 are, however, in your second essay, some very 
 strange specimens of Queen's English. You say, 
 " The one rule, of all others, which he cites ". 
 Now as, in defence of your particular views, you 
 appeal largely to common sense, let me ask, in 
 the name of that common sense, How can one 
 thing be another thing ? How can one rule be of all 
 other rules the one which I cite ? If this be 
 Queen's English, you may well say of the authori- 
 ties I quoted, "There are more things in the 
 " English language than seem to have been dreamt 
 " of in their philosophy " ; for I am quite sure 
 that they never dreamt of any such absurdities. 
 
 In my former letter I drew attention to your 
 misplacing of adverbs ; and now you appear to be 
 trying, in some instances, to get over the difficulty 
 by altogether omitting the adverbs, and supplying 
 their places by adjectives ; and this is not a new 
 error with you. You had previously said, " If 
 " with your inferiors, speak no coarser than usual ; 
 " if with your superiors, no finer!' We may cor- 
 rectly say, " a certain person speaks coarsely " ; but 
 it is absurdly ungrammatical to say, "he speaks 
 " coarse " ! In your second essay, you say, " the 
 "words nearest connected", instead of "the words 
 " most nearly connected " ; but this will never do ; 
 
 E 
 
50 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 the former error, that of position, was bad enough, 
 it was one of syntax ; the latter error, that of 
 substituting one part of speech for another, is still 
 worse. I have spoken of your ''decided weak 
 "point" : I will now give another example, a very 
 remarkable one, for it is an example of using an 
 adjective instead of an adverb, in a sentence in 
 which you are speaking of using an adverb instead 
 of an adjective. You say, "The fact seems to be, 
 " that in this case I was using the verb ' read ' in 
 u a colloquial and scarcely legitimate sense, and 
 " that the adverb seems necessary, because the 
 "verb is not a strict neuter-substantive." We 
 may properly speak of a word as being not strictly 
 a neuter-substantive; but w r e cannot properly 
 speak of a substantive as being " strict ". So much 
 for the grammar of the sentence; now for its 
 meaning. Your sentence is an explanation of your 
 use of the word "oddly", in the phrase, "would 
 " read rather oddly " ; and oddly enough you have 
 explained it: "would read" is the conditional 
 form of the verb ; and how can that ever be either 
 a neuter-substantive, or a substantive of any other 
 land ? 
 
 In your former essay you prepared us to expect 
 many strange things ; I suppose we are to receive 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 51 
 
 this as one of them. You told us, " Plenty more 
 " might be said about grammar ; plenty that would 
 " astonish some teachers of it. I may say some- 
 a thing of this another time." Take all the credit 
 you like ; you have well earned it ; for you have 
 more than redeemed your promise ; you have 
 astonished other persons besides teachers of gram- 
 mar. 
 
 Again, you say, " The whole number is divided 
 " into two classes : the first class, and the last 
 " class. To the former of these belong three : to 
 "the latter, one" That is, "To the former of 
 " these belong three ; to the latter [belong] one "; 
 one belong ! When, in the latter part of a com- 
 pound sentence, we change the nominative, we 
 must likewise change the verb, that it may agree 
 with its nominative. The error is repeated in the 
 very next sentence. You say, " There are three 
 " that are ranged under the description ' first ' : 
 " and one that is ranged under the description 
 " ' last V That is, " There are three that are 
 " ranged under the description ' first ' ; and [there 
 " are] one that is ranged under the description 
 " ' last '." There are one ! The sentence cannot 
 be correctly analysed in any other way. It is true 
 we understand what you mean ; just as we under- 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 stand the meaning of the childish prattle of our 
 little ones ; but, because your sentence is not 
 unintelligible, it is not, on that account, the less 
 incorrect. 
 
 An esteemed friend of mine, Colonel Shaw of 
 Ayr Castle, in reviewing your first essay on the 
 Queen's English, thus wrote concerning a similar 
 error of yours : — " We find this teacher playing 
 " with the inaccuracy (so he calls it) of saying, 
 " ' Twice one are two ', and ' Three times three are 
 " ' nine! In order to prove the grammatical incor- 
 " rectness of these two assertions, the clever Dean 
 " alters the form of the expression, and, 'presto!' 
 " the juggle is concluded. ' What we want/ says 
 " the Dean, l being simply this, that three taken 
 " ' three times makes up, is equal to, nine.' Now, 
 " admitting this to be correct, Mr. Dean, — admit- 
 " ting three not to be plural any more than one ; 
 " which is just what you should prove, but is also 
 "just what you do not attempt to prove; never- 
 " theless, admitting your improved premises ; yet, 
 " when we say, in another mode, what you 'want* 
 " us to say, if that other mode has a plural 
 " nominative, the verb must also be plural ; and, 
 " we say, ' three times ' must be plural, and so must 
 " even l three \ For example, I might say of a 
 
THE DEANS ENGLISH. 53 
 
 " man and his wife, — ' they twain are one flesh ' ; 
 " but you, Mr. Dean, might reply to me, as you are 
 " in fact now doing, — ' What we want to say is 
 " ' simply this, — this man is, and that woman is, 
 "'■one flesh, — makes up, is equal to, one flesh'. 
 " All very good ! But as long as we speak of 
 " them as ' twain 9 , we must, in order to be gram- 
 " matical, employ the word 'are ' respecting them." 
 
 It appears to me that, before you have finished 
 a sentence, you have forgotten how you began it. 
 You say, " We call a ' cup-board ' a c cubbard ', a 
 11 ' half-penny ' a ' haepenny ', and so of many 
 " other compound words ". Had you begun your 
 sentence thus, We speak of a rt cup-board " as a 
 " cubbard ", of a a half-penny ,? as a a haepenny ", 
 it would have been correct to say, a and so of 
 " many other compound words " ; because the 
 clause would mean, " and so [ive speak] of many 
 " other compound words M ; but having begun the 
 sentence with, " We call ", it is sheer nonsense to 
 finish it with, " and so of" ; for it is saying, " and 
 " so [ire call] of many other compound words " 
 
 Elsewhere you say, " Call a spade { a spade ', not 
 " an oblong instrument of manual husbandry ; let 
 " home be ' home ', not a residence ; a place r a 
 "'place', not a locality; and so of the rest" 
 
54 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 What is your meaning in this last clause ? The 
 sentence is undoubtedly faulty, whether the words 
 " and so of" are considered in connexion with the 
 first clause, or in connexion with the following 
 one. In the former case we must say, "and 
 " [speak] so of the rest " ; and in the latter case we 
 must say, " and [let us speak] so of the rest ". In 
 neither case can we use the word "call", with 
 which you have begun your sentence. 
 
 Here is another specimen of your ' Queen's 
 ' English ', or rather, of the Deans English ; a 
 specimen in which the verbs, past and present, are 
 in a most delightful state of confusion. You are 
 speaking of your previous essay, and of the rea- 
 sons you had for writing it ; and you say, a If I 
 " had believed the Queen's English to have been 
 " rightly laid down by the dictionaries and the 
 "professors of rhetoric, I need not have troubled 
 " myself to write about it. It was exactly because 
 " I did not believe this, but found both of them in 
 " many cases going astray, that I ventured to put 
 " in my plea." 
 
 Now, " I need not " is present, not past ; and it 
 is of the past you are speaking ; you should there- 
 fore have said, " I needed not " or " I should not 
 " have needed ". And the verb " troubled ", which 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 55 
 
 you have put in the past, should have been in the 
 present ; just as the verb " need ", which you have 
 put in the present, should have been in the past ; 
 for you were not speaking of what you would not 
 have needed to have clone, but of what you would 
 not have needed to do. The sentence, then, should 
 have been, " If I had believed so-and-so, / should 
 " not have needed to trouble myself". 
 
 I may notice also that, in the above sentence, 
 you speak of rules laid down by the "dictionaries", 
 and the " 'professors of rhetoric " ; thus substituting, 
 in one case, the works for the men ; and, in the 
 other case, speaking of the men themselves. Why 
 not either speak of the " compilers of dictionaries *', 
 and the u professors of rhetoric" ; or else speak of 
 the " dictionaries ", and the " treatises on rhetoric " ? 
 Write either figuratively or literally, whichever 
 you please ; or write in each style, by turns, if you 
 like ; for, variety in a series of sentences, where 
 there is uniformity in each, is a beauty; but 
 variety in a single sentence is merely confusion : 
 witness the following extract from Gilfillan's 
 'Literary Portraits' : — " Channing's mind was 
 " planted as thick with thoughts, as a backwood 
 " of his own magnificent land." A backwood 
 'planted with thoughts ! What a glorious harvest 
 
56 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 for the writers of America ! says Breen. How- 
 ever, I must not enter upon the subject of style, 
 lest I should extend this letter to a wearisome 
 length. Suffice it to say, you do not mean that 
 you found the professors of rhetoric walking off with 
 the books ; though you do tell us you "found both 
 " of them [the dictionaries and the professors of 
 rhetoric] in many cases going astray ". 
 
 Continuing my review, I have to notice that you 
 say, " His difficulty (and I mention it because it 
 " may be that of many others besides him) is that 
 " he has missed the peculiar sense of the preposi- 
 " tion by as here used." Tour difficulty seems to 
 be, that you have missed seeing the peculiar sense 
 {nonsense) of your own expressions. You tell us 
 that you mention your correspondent's difficulty, 
 because it may be a difficulty of many other per- 
 sons, besides being a difficulty of him ! 
 
 Finally, as regards my criticisms on your gram- 
 mar ; you say, " The next point which I notice 
 " shall be the use of the auxiliaries ' shall 9 and 
 " ' will \ Now here we are at once struck by a 
 " curious phenomenon." We certainly are ; — the 
 phenomenon of a gentleman setting himself up to 
 lecture on the use of verbs, and publicly proclaim- 
 ing his unfitness for the task, by confusing the 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 57 
 
 present and the future in the very first sentence he 
 utters on the subject. 
 
 Speaking of the verb "to progress", you say, 
 " The present usage makes the verb neuter ", and, 
 " We seem to want it ; and if we do, and it does 
 " not violate any known law of formation, by all 
 " means let us have it. True, it is the first of its 
 " own family ; we have not yet formed aggress, 
 « re g resS} & c>? i n to verbs." If you will allow me to 
 digress from the consideration of your grammar to 
 the consideration of your accuracy, I will show 
 that you transgress in making this statement. In 
 the folio edition of Bailey's 'Universal Dictionary', 
 published in 1755, I find the very verbs, "to 
 "aggress" and "to regress", which you, in 1863, 
 say, " we have not yet formed ". In the same dic- 
 tionary there is also the verb " to progress " ; and 
 it is given as a verb neuter. So that what you 
 call " the present usage " is, clearly, the usage of 
 the past ; the verb which you say is " the first of 
 " its own family ", is nothing of the sort ; " to 
 "aggress" and "to regress", which you say "we 
 " have not yet formed ", are found in a dictionary 
 published in 1755; and the neuter verb which 
 you say " ive seem to want", we have had in use 
 more than one hundred years ! Nor are the verbs 
 
5S THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 aggress and regress mere " dictionary words without 
 " any authority for their use ". The former is used 
 by Prior in his 'Ode to Queen Anne'-, and the 
 latter is used by Sir Thomas Browne in his 
 1 Vulgar Errors '* 
 
 I will briefly notice a few of your numerous 
 errors in syntax, &c, and then pass on to weightier 
 matters. You speak of a possibility being il pre- 
 " eluded in " the mind. You tell us of " a more 
 " neat way of expressing what would be Mr. Moon's 
 " sentence ". We express a meaning, or we write a 
 sentence ; but we do not express a sentence. The 
 word seems to be rather a pet of yours ; you speak 
 of expressing a ivoman ! l Queer English ' would 
 not have been an inappropriate title to your essays. 
 Then we have "in respect of" for " with respect to" ;*f- 
 and u an exception which I cannot well treat", 
 instead of, " of which I cannot well treat " ; for it 
 is evident from the context, that you w r ere not 
 
 *For an account of the origin and gradual development of 
 the words "progress", digress", "egress", "regress", and 
 "transgress", see an interesting little book, called 'English 
 'Boots', by A. J. Knapp, p. 135. 
 
 t This error is treated of at some length in ' Lectures on the 
 'English Language', by George P. Marsh, edited by Dr. 
 William Smith, Classical Examiner at the University of 
 London, pp. 467-9. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 59 
 
 speaking of treating an exception, but of treating 
 of an exception. 
 
 The construction of some of your sentences is 
 very objectionable : you say, " I have noticed the 
 " word l party ' used for an individual, occurring in 
 " Shakspeare " instead of, " I have noticed, in 
 " Shakspeare, the word ' party ' used for an indi- 
 " vidual ". But how is it that you call a man an 
 individual ? In your first essay on the Queen s 
 English you said, " It is certainly curious enough 
 " that the same debasing of our language should 
 " choose, in order to avoid the good honest Saxon 
 " ' man \ two words, 'individual ' and 'party', one of 
 " which expresses a man's unity, and the other 
 " belongs to man associated " It certainly is 
 curious ; but what appears to me to be more 
 curious still, is that you, after writing that sentence, 
 should yourself call a man " an individual " 
 
 Again, I read, " The purpose is, to bring the fact 
 " stated into prominence " : stated into prominence ! 
 unquestionably, this should be, "to bring into 
 " prominence the fact stated " 
 
 Even when writing on the proper construction 
 of a sentence, you construct your own sentence so 
 ^properly that it fails to convey your meaning. 
 You say, " The natural order of constructing the 
 
60 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " sentence would be to relate what happened first, 
 " and my surprise at it afterwards ". Your sentence 
 does not enlighten us on your views of the proper 
 order in which the facts should be related ; it tells 
 us merely that we should relate what first 
 happened, and your subsequent surprise at it. 
 Not one word about the order of relation. We are 
 to relate what " happened first ", but we are not 
 told what to relate first. You should have said, 
 "The natural order of constructing the sentence 
 " would be to relate first what happened, and 
 " afterwards my surprise at it ". 
 
 Lastly, on this part of the subject; you say, 
 " Mr. Moon quotes, with disapprobation, my words, 
 " where I join together ' would have been broken 
 " ' to pieces in a deep rut, or come to grief in a 
 '"bottomless swamp'. He says this can only be 
 " filled in thus, ' would have been ' " &c. I am 
 quite sure that Mr. Moon never, after mentioning 
 your sentence about " a deep rut " and " a bottomless 
 " swamp " speaks of the sentence being a filled 
 " in " ! That is the Dean of Canterbury's style ; 
 he gives a sentence about eating and being full } 
 and then speaks of the sentence being ''filled up "! 
 He speaks of people mending their ways ; and, in 
 the very next paragraph, talks about the " Queen's 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. CI 
 
 "highway" and "by-roads" and "private roads". 
 He speaks of things "without life" ; and imme- 
 diately afterwards says he will introduce the body of 
 — Ms essay. 
 
 You will, doubtless, gain great notoriety by your 
 strange essays on the Queen's English ; for, in 
 consequence of your inaccuracies in them, it will 
 become usual to describe bad language as "Deans 
 " English ". By " bad language ", I do not mean 
 rude language ; I say nothing about that. I mean 
 that, in consequence of your ungrammatical sen- 
 tences, it will be as common to call false English, 
 " Dean's English", as it is to call base white metal, 
 " German Silver" 
 
 You say, "I have given a fair sample of the 
 " instances of ambiguity which Mr. Moon cites out 
 "of my essay". A fair sample! and yet you 
 have made no mention of the instance of the 
 eight-and-twenty nouns intervening between the 
 pronoun "it" and the noun "habit", to which it 
 refers. A fair sample ! and yet you have made 
 no mention of the instance of ambiguity in the 
 paragraph about " covetous and covetousness " ; a 
 paragraph of fewer than ten lines, yet so ambiguously 
 worded that you may ring as many changes on it 
 as on a peal of bells ; only the melody would not 
 
62 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 be quite so sweet. However, if you do not object 
 to a little bell-ringing, and if you will not think it 
 sacrilegious of me to pull the ropes, I will just see 
 what kind of a peal of bells it is that you have 
 hung in your belfry, for I call the paragraph, " the 
 " belfry ", and the pronouns, " the peal of bells ", and 
 these I name after the gamut, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, 
 so we shall not have any difficulty in counting the 
 changes. You say, " While treating of the pronun- 
 " ciation of those who minister in public, two 
 " other words occur to me which are very commonly 
 
 A 
 
 " mangled by our clergy. One of these is 'covetous', 
 " and its substantive ' covetousness \ I hope some 
 " who read these lines will be induced to leave off 
 " pronouncing them ' covetious', and 'covetiousness'. 
 
 C D 
 
 " I can assure them, that when they do thus call 
 
 E F 
 
 " them, one, at least, of their hearers has his appre- 
 
 t( ciation of their teaching disturbed ". I fancy 
 that many a one who reads these lines will have 
 his appreciation of your teaching disturbed, as far 
 as it relates to the Queen s English. But now for 
 the changes which may be rung on these bells, as 
 I have called them. The first of them, " A " may 
 apply either to " words " or to " our clergy ". You 
 i*ay, " our clergy. One of these is ' covetous ' ". I 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 63 
 
 am sorry to say that the general belief is, there are 
 more than one; but perhaps you know one in 
 particular. However, my remarks interrupt the 
 bell-ringing, and we want to count the changes, so 
 I will say no more, but will at once demonstrate 
 that we can ring 10,240 changes on your peal of 
 bells ! In other words, that your paragraph, of 
 fewer than ten lines, is so ambiguously worded, 
 that without any alteration of its grammar or of 
 its syntax, it may be read in 10,240 different 
 ways ! and only one of all that number will be the 
 right way to express your meaning. 
 
 The Pro- 
 nouns . 
 
 Nouns to which they may apply. 
 
 2 
 
 No. of Different Readings 
 
 
 A 
 
 these 
 
 words, or clergy 
 
 
 2 
 
 B 
 
 them 
 
 words, clergy, readers, or lines 
 
 4 
 
 these 4 X by the above 2= 
 
 8 
 
 C 
 
 them 
 
 words, clergy, readers, or lines 
 
 4 
 
 these 4 X by the above 8= 
 
 32 
 
 D 
 
 they 
 
 words, clergy, readers, or lines 
 
 4 
 
 these 4 X by the above 32= 
 
 128 
 
 E 
 
 them 
 
 words, clergy, readers, or lines 
 
 4 
 
 these 4 X by the above 128= 
 
 512 
 
 F 
 
 their 
 
 words, clergy, readers, or hues 
 
 4 
 
 these 4 X by the above 512= 
 
 2048 
 
 G 
 
 their 
 
 f words, clergy, readers, lines, 
 | or hearers .... 
 
 5 
 
 these 5 X by the above 2048=10,240 
 
 This is indeed a valuable addition to the 
 curiosities of literature : a treasure u presented 
 " to the British Nation by the Very Rev. the 
 "Dean of Canterbury ". No doubt it will be 
 
64 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 carefully preserved in the library of the British 
 Museum. 
 
 T have, now, a serious charge to prefer against 
 you ; a charge to which I am reluctant to give a 
 name. I will therefore simply state the facts, and 
 leave the public to give to your proceedings in 
 this matter, whatever name they may think most 
 fitting. You say, on page 439, " I am reminded, 
 " in writing this, of a criticism of Mr. Moon's on 
 "my remarks that we have dropped 'thou' and 
 " ' thee ' in our addresses to our fellow-men, and 
 " reserved those words for our addresses in prayer 
 " to Him who is the highest personality. It will 
 " be hardly believed that he professes to set this 
 " right by giving his readers and me the informa- 
 " tion that ' these pronouns are very extensively 
 " ' and profusely [I used no such word] used in 
 " c poetry, even (!) when inanimate objects are 
 " ' addressed ' : and thinks it worth while to quote 
 " Coleridge's Address to Mont Blanc to prove his 
 " point ! Eeally, might not the very obvious 
 " notoriety of the fact he adduces have suggested 
 " to him that it was totally irrelevant to the 
 " matter I was treating of ? " Truly, this is the play 
 of Hamlet with the Ghost left out hy special desire. 
 Your object was to controvert what I had advanced 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 65 
 
 against your essay ; and, I must say, that the 
 means you have adopted to accomplish that end, 
 are, to speak mildly, not much to your credit. I 
 will prove what I say. The one vjord, against 
 which the whole of my argument toas directed, you 
 have, in reproducing your sentence, omitted from the 
 quotation ; and then, of the mangled remains of 
 the sentence, you exclaim, "It will be hardly 
 " believed that he professes to set this right ". I 
 professed nothing of the sort; you must know 
 well, that my attack was against the one word 
 which you have omitted. That this was the case, 
 may be clearly seen on reference to my former 
 letter,* where that word was, and still is, printed 
 in italics, to draw special attention to it. You 
 betray the weakness of your cause when you have 
 recourse to such a suppression. 
 
 Nor is the above instance of misquotation the 
 only one in your essay. On page 429, you put 
 into my mouth words which I never uttered; 
 words which express a meaning totally at variance 
 with what I said. You enclose the sentence in 
 inverted commas to mark that it is a quotation ; 
 and, as if that were not enough, you preface that 
 sentence with this doubly emphatic remark ; " these 
 * Pa-e 6. 
 
66 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " are his wprds, not mine ". You then make me 
 say that I hope, "as I so strongly advocate our 
 "following the Greeks in the pronunciation of 
 " their proper names, I shall be consistent, and 
 " never again, in reading the Lessons, call those 
 " ancient cities Samaria and Philadelphia otherwise 
 '* than Samaria and Philadelphia" I never had 
 any such thought, nor did I ever express any such 
 wish. These words are not mine ; nor are they 
 any more like mine, than I am like you. The 
 original sentence, of which the above is a perver- 
 sion, will be found ,on page 27 of my former 
 letter. 
 
 But the part of my letter which you most fully 
 notice in your reply, is that which treats of the 
 arrangement of sentences; and, exactly as you 
 suppress, in the instance I have given, the one 
 important word on which the whole of the argu- 
 ment turns ; so, in the matter of the arrangement 
 of sentences, you suppress the one important 
 paragraph w T hich qualifies all the rest ! You 
 privately draw the teeth of the lion and then 
 publicly show how valiantly you can put your 
 head into his mouth ; thus you not only damage your 
 own character for honesty of representation, but 
 also insult the public whom you address, and who, 
 
THE DEAJSPS ENGLISH. 67 
 
 you imagine, can be deceived by such childish 
 performances. The following are the facts of the 
 case. You say, after mentioning the authorities I 
 had named, " The one rule of all others [!] which 
 "he [Mr. Moon] cites from these authorities, 
 "and which he believes me to have continually 
 " violated, is this : that ' those parts of a sentence 
 " ' which are most closely connected in their meaning, 
 u ' should be as closely as possible connected in posi- 
 " ' tion \ Or, as he afterwards quotes it from Dr. 
 " Blair, l A capital rule in the arrangement of 
 " ' sentences is, that the words or members most nearly 
 " e related should be placed in the sentence as near to 
 u 'each other as possible, so as to make their mutual 
 " ( relation clearly appear ' 9 \ You then go on to 
 say, " Now doubtless this rule is, in the main, and 
 " for general guidance, a good and useful one ; 
 " indeed, so plain to all, that it surely needed no 
 " inculcating by these venerable writers. But 
 " there are more things in the English language 
 " than seem to have been dreamt of in their philo- 
 " sophy. If this rule were uniformly applied, it 
 " would break down the force and the living interest 
 " of style in any English writer, and reduce his 
 " matter to a dreary and dull monotony ; for it is 
 " in exceptions to its application that almost all 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " vigour and character of style consist". Would 
 any person — could any person — in reading the 
 above extract from your reply to my letter, ever 
 imagine that that letter contains such a paragraph 
 as the following ? I quote from page 23, where I 
 say, " In contending for the law of position, as laid 
 " down by Lord Karnes, Dr. Campbell, and others, 
 " I do so on the ground that the observance of 
 " this law contributes to that most essential quality 
 " in all writings — perspicuity ; and although I 
 " would not, on any account, wish to see all sen- 
 " tences constructed on one uniform plan, I maintain 
 " that the law of position must never be violated 
 " when such violation would in any way obscure the 
 " meaning. Let your meaning still be obvious, and 
 a you may vary your mode of expression as you 
 "please, and your language will be the richer for the 
 " variation. Let your meaning be obscure, and no 
 " grace of diction, nor any music of a well-turned 
 " period, will make amends to your readers for 
 " their being liable to misunderstand you ". The 
 existence of this paragraph, by which I carefully 
 qualify the reader's acceptance of Dr. Blair's law 
 of position as a universal rule, you utterly ignore ; 
 and, with the most strange injustice, you charge 
 me, through sentence after sentence, and column 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 69 
 
 after column, of your tedious essay, with main- 
 taining that all expressions should be worded on 
 one certain uniform plan. Sentences so arranged 
 are, you say, according to "Mr. Moon's rule". 
 Sentences differing from that arrangement are, you 
 say, a violation of "Mr. Moon's rule". With as 
 much reasonableness might you leave out the word 
 " not ", from the ninth commandment, and assert 
 that it teaches, "Thou shalt bear false witness 
 " against thy neighbour." 
 
 This being your mode of conducting a contro- 
 versy, I assure you that, were you not the Dean of 
 Canterbury, I would not answer your remarks. 
 Doubtless, before the publication of this, rejoinder, 
 many of the readers of your second essay will 
 have noticed the significant circumstance, that, of 
 the various examples you give of sentences con- 
 structed on what you are pleased to call "Mr. 
 " Moon's rule ", but which, as I have shown, is 
 only a part of " Mr. Moon's rule ", not one example 
 is drawn from Mr. Mooris % own letter. 
 
 You say, " But surely we have had enough of 
 " Mr. Moon and his rules ". I do not doubt that 
 you have ; but I must still detain you, as the 
 Ancient Mariner detained the wedding-guest, until 
 the tale is told. That being finished, I will let you 
 
70 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 go; and I trust that, like him, you will learn 
 wisdom from the past : — 
 
 " He went like one that hath been stunned, 
 
 " And is of sense forlorn : 
 " A sadder and a wiser man, 
 
 " He rose the morrow morn" 
 
 With respect to the date of the introduction of 
 the possessive pronoun "its", which, you said, 
 " never occurs in the English version of the Bible " ; 
 and which, as I showed you, occurs in Leviticus, 
 xxv. 5 ; you shelter yourself under the plea that 
 you meant that the word never occurs in the 
 " authorised edition ", known as " King James's 
 " Bible ". But, as you did not say either " author- 
 " ised edition " or " King James s Bible ", I am 
 justified in saying that you have only yourself to 
 blame for the consequences of having used language 
 so unmistakably equivocal, as you certainly did 
 when you said, " the English version of the Bible " 
 and did not mean the English version now in every 
 one's hands, but meant a particular edition pub- 
 lished 252 years ago. Speaking of my correction 
 of your error, you say, " What is to be regretted is, 
 "that a gentleman who is setting another right 
 " with such a high hand, should not have taken 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 71 
 
 u the pains to examine the English version as it 
 " really stands, before printing such a sentence as 
 " that which I have quoted ". I will show you that 
 my examination of the subject has been sufficiently 
 deep to discover that yours must have been very 
 superficial. Speaking of the word " its ", you say, 
 " Its apparent occurrence in the place quoted is 
 " simply due to the King's printers, who have 
 " modernised the passage ". " Apparent occur- 
 " rence " ! It is a real occurrence. Are we not to 
 believe our eyes ? As for the " King's printers ", it 
 was not they who introduced the word " its " into 
 the English Bible. The first English Bible in 
 which the w r ord is found, is one that was printed 
 at a time when there was no King on the English 
 throne, consequently wdien there were no "King's 
 "printers": it was printed during the Common- 
 wealth. Nor was that Bible printed by the 
 "printers to the Parliament " Indeed, it is 
 doubtful whether it was printed in this country. 
 The word " its " first occurs in the English version 
 of the Bible, in a spurious edition supposed to have 
 been printed in Amsterdam. It may be distin- 
 guished from the genuine edition* of the same 
 
 * The genuine edition contains most gross errors ; for 
 instance, in Rom. vi, 13, it is said, " Neither yield ye your 
 
72 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 date, 1653, by that very word "its", which is not 
 found in the editions printed by the " printers to 
 "the Parliament", or by the " King's printers" 
 until many years afterwards. So when, in your 
 endeavours to escape the charge of inaccuracy 
 contained in my former letter, you say that the 
 introduction of the word " its " into the English ■ 
 version of the Bible, is owing to the "King's 
 "printers", you, in trying to escape Scylla, are 
 drawn into the whirlpool of Charybdis ! 
 
 You speak of my demolishing your character 
 for accuracy. I do not know what character you 
 have for accuracy ; but this I know, that whenever 
 I see a man sensitively jealous of any one point 
 in particular of his character, I am not often 
 wrong in taking his jealousy to be a sure sign of 
 conscious weakness in that very point. What are 
 the facts of the case with regard to yourself ? I 
 have given several instances of your gross in- 
 accuracy. I take no notice of unimportant mis- 
 
 " members as instruments of righteousness", instead of " un- 
 " righteousness " ; and, as if to confirm the above teaching, it 
 is said, in 1 Cor. vi, 9, "the wirighteous shall inherit the 
 ** kingdom of God " ; instead of " shall not inherit ". Com- 
 plaint was made to the Parliament ; and most of the copies 
 now extant were cleared of the errors by the cancelling of 
 leaves. The spurious edition is comparatively faultless. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 73 
 
 quotations of the Scriptures and of my own 
 sentences, though I could mention several of each 
 occurring in your second essay ; but what are we 
 to say of the following? It is, if intentional, 
 which I cannot believe, the boldest instance of 
 misquotation of Scripture, to suit a special pur- 
 •pose, that I ever met with. I am sure it must 
 have been unintentional ; but it is such an error, 
 that to have fallen into it will, I hope, serve so to 
 .convince you that you, like other mortals, are 
 liable to err; that the remembrance of it will be 
 a powerful restraint on your indignation, if others 
 should venture, as I have done, to call in question 
 your accuracy. The singular instance of misquo- 
 tation to which I refer is the following. — Speaking 
 of the adverb "only" and of its proper position 
 in a sentence ; you say, " The adverb ' only \ in 
 " many sentences, where strictly speaking it ought 
 " to follow its verb, and to limit the objects of the 
 " verb, is in good English placed before the verb. 
 " Let us take some examples of this from the 
 " great storehouse of good English, our authorised 
 "version of the Scriptures. In Numbers xii, 2, 
 " we read, ' Hath the Lord only spoken by Moses ? 
 " 'hath He not spoken also by us V According to 
 " some of my correspondents, and to Mr. Moon's 
 
74 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 "pamphlet (p. 12)*, this ought to be ' Hath the 
 "'Lord spoken only by Moses V I venture to 
 " prefer very much the words as they stand ". 
 Now, strange as it may appear after your assertion, 
 it is nevertheless a fact that the words, as you 
 quote them, do not occur either in the authorised 
 version, known as King James's Bible of 1611, or 
 in our present version, or in any other version that 
 I have ever seen ; and the words, in the order in 
 which you say I and your other correspondents 
 would have written them, do occur in every copy of 
 the Scriptures to which I have referred ! So you 
 very much prefer the words as they stand, do you ? 
 Ha ! ha ! ha ! So do I. When next you write 
 about the adverb "only", be sure you quote only 
 the right passage of Scripture to suit your pur- 
 pose ; and on no account be guilty of perverting 
 the sacred text ; for these are not the days when 
 the laity will accept without proof, where proof is 
 possible, the statements of even the Dean of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 Before closing this letter, I have just one 
 question to ask ; it is this : Why do you say I 
 must have " a most abnormal elongation of the 
 "auricular appendages" 1 In other words, Why 
 
 * Page 14, in this Edition. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 75 
 
 do you call me an ass ? I confess to a little 
 curiosity in the matter ; therefore pardon me if I 
 press the inquiry. Is it because the authorities I 
 quoted are " venerable Scotchmen " and that there- 
 fore you conclude I must be fond of thistles ? — 
 No ? Well, I will guess again. Is it because I 
 kicked at your authority ? — No ? Once more, then, 
 Is it because, like Balaam's ass, I "forbad the 
 " madness of the prophet " ? Still, No ? Then I 
 must give it up, and leave to my readers the 
 solving of the riddle ; and while perhaps there 
 may be some who will come to the conclusion that 
 the Dean of Canterbury calls me an ass because I 
 have been guilty of braying at him ; there are 
 others, I know, who will laughingly say that the 
 braying has been of that kind mentioned in 
 Prov. xxvii, 22. 
 
 I am, Eev. Sir, 
 Your most obedient Servant, 
 
 G. WASHINGTON MOON. 
 
76 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 Note. — The Dean of Canterbury having pub- 
 lished a letter exonerating himself from the charge 
 of discourtesy, the following appeared in 'The 
 ' Patriot 9 newspaper, in answer to that letter. 
 
 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF THE PATRIOT. 
 
 
 Sir, — Permit me to say, in reference to the letter 
 from the Dean of Canterbury which yon published in 
 the last number of ' The Patriot \ that I heartily join 
 you in your regret that any personalities should have 
 intruded into this discussion on the Queen's English, 
 and I gladly welcome from the Dean any explanation 
 which exonerates him from the charge of discourtesy. 
 But I must say, in justification of my having made 
 those condemning remarks which called forth the Dean's 
 letter, that I was not alone in my interpretation of his 
 language. Those who had the privilege of hearing the 
 Dean deliver his ' Plea ', when there were all the accom- 
 panying advantages of emphasis and gesture to assist 
 the hearers to a right understanding of the speaker's 
 meaning, understood the epithets which he employed to 
 be intended for me ; and, as such, generally condemned 
 them. My authority is * The South-Eastern Gazette ', of 
 May 19th, which published a report of the meeting. 
 
 The Dean states, in his explanatory letter, that he 
 intended the objectionable epithets not for me, but for 
 the hypothetical reader supposed by me to be capable of 
 the misapprehensions I had adduced. It happens, 
 
TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 77 
 
 rather unfortunately for the Dean's explanation, that I 
 had not spoken of any hypothetical reader. Litera 
 scripta manet, — judge for yourself. I spoke not of what 
 the Dean's faulty language might suggest to some 
 imaginary reader, but of what it did suggest ; and to 
 whom, but to me ? The hypothetical reader is entirely 
 a creation of the Dean's. However, as he says he 
 intended the epithets for this said reader, that is suf- 
 ficient. I am quite willing to help the Dean to put the 
 saddle on this imaginary " ass " ; and I think the Dean 
 cannot do better than set the imaginary " idiot " on the 
 said ass's back, and then probably the one will gallop 
 away with the other, and we may never hear anything 
 more of either of them. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 G. WASHINGTON MOON. 
 

 " Instead of always fixing our thoughts upon the 
 " points in which our literature and our intellectual life 
 " generally are strong, we should, from time to time, fix 
 " them upon those in which they are weak, and so learn 
 " to perceive clearly what we have to amend." — ' Essays 
 1 in Criticism \ p. 55. — Matthew Arnold. 
 
 
THE DEAFS ENGLISH. 
 
 CEITICISM No. III. 
 
 Eev. Sir, 
 
 It gives me great pleasure to withdraw the 
 charge of discourtesy contained in my former 
 letter to you. I cordially accept the explanation 
 you have given ; and though I cannot quite recon- 
 cile your statements with all the facts of the case, 
 I feel sure that the discrepancy is merely apparent, 
 not real ; and that you are sincere in saying you 
 did not intend to apply to me those epithets of 
 which I complained. But allow me to remark 
 that for whomsoever they were intended, they are 
 objectionable. Such figures of speech neither add 
 weight to arguments, nor give dignity to language ; 
 they serve only to illustrate how easy it is for a 
 teacher of others to disregard his own lessons, and 
 
80 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 
 
 become oblivious of the fact that all teaching, like 
 all charity, should begin at home. You say that 
 the obnoxious epithets were intended for some 
 hypothetical person ; be pleased to receive my 
 remarks on the said epithets as intended for some 
 hypothetical Dean. 
 
 In the collected edition of your essays you 
 have called me your friend. Let me then, as a 
 friend, advise you never again to apply to an 
 opponent, whether real or imaginary, such expres- 
 sions as " idiot " and " ass " ; lest some of your 
 reacjers, who read also what you are pleased to 
 call your opponent's (< caustic remarks", (lunar- 
 caustic, if you like,) should amuse themselves by 
 imagining they see a parallelism between your 
 case and the case of the old prophet of Bethel, as 
 that was understood by some who heard a clergy- 
 man, not remarkable for correctness of emphasis, 
 thus read a portion of the old prophet's history ; — 
 "He spake to his sons, saying, 'Saddle me the 
 " ' ass '. And they saddled him ". 1 Kings xiii, 27. 
 
 Actuated by a sincere love for the language 
 which, it seems to me, you are injuring by precept 
 and by example, I resume my criticisms on your 
 essays. You constitute yourself a teacher of the 
 Queen's English. "Were it not so, I should con- 
 
TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 31 
 
 sider any strictures on your language as simply 
 impertinent; but as you have judged it to be 
 right to lecture the public on certain improprieties 
 of expression which have crept into common use ; 
 it cannot be out of place for one of the public, 
 whom you address, to step forward on behalf of 
 himself and his companions, to test your fitness 
 for the office you have assumed ; especially if he 
 confine his test to an examination of the language 
 used in those very lectures themselves. 
 
 The only deviation which I have made from 
 that course is in my second letter. There, noticing 
 your remarks concerning the practice of spelling 
 without the "u" such words as "honour" and 
 "favour" , I quote from your 'Poems' the words 
 so spelt, and add some prefatory remarks of yours 
 concerning them. In your third essay you speak 
 of the above circumstance, and you inform me 
 that the words "honor" and "favor", which I 
 quoted from your ' Poems ', were from that part of 
 the volume which was printed in America, and 
 that it was against such American spelling that 
 you protested in your preface. 
 
 Allow me to say, in explanation of my having 
 unconsciously quoted from the American part of 
 the volume, that, as the preface stated that the 
 
 G 
 
82 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 poems which you added to the American edition 
 were the products of "later years", it was not 
 unnatural for me to believe they were those 
 headed " Eecent Poems " : and it was from them 
 that my quotations were made. Besides, you call 
 the American part of the volume the "nucleus" 
 of the edition: therefore, if I had taken my 
 examples of orthography from the commencement 
 as well as from the end of the volume, I should 
 have been justified in doing so ; for, surely, a 
 " nucleus " is that around which other matter is 
 collected. You do indeed make a strange use of 
 the word when you call 400 pages of a volume of 
 poems the "nucleus", and leave only 29 pages at 
 the end, to come under the description of " con- 
 globated matter " ! However, even in those few 
 pages of English printing, which, according to 
 your own confession, were under your control, I 
 find the word honour spelt " honor ", and the word 
 odours spelt " odors ". The charge, therefore, 
 stands as it did ; and your explanation has served 
 only to draw more scrutinizing attention to an 
 inconsistency which otherwise might have passed 
 almost unnoticed. 
 
 So you really defend your ungrammatical sen- 
 tence, " If with your inferiors speak no coarser 
 
TEE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 83 
 
 " than usual ; if with your superiors, no finer " ; 
 and you not only defend it, as allowable, but 
 actually maintain that it is " strictly correct " ; the 
 ground of your assertion being that you have " no 
 " choice " open to you between saying " speak no 
 " coarser ", and " speak no more coarsely " ; and 
 you object to the latter expression because you 
 believe it would be ambiguous, owing to the term 
 " no more " being capable of meaning " never again \ 
 Was, then, the sentence, with which I found fault, 
 simply "Speak no coarser " ? You know it was not. 
 Why, then, do you, by omitting the latter part of 
 the sentence, try to make it appear that it was ? 
 Be assured that even if you could by such means 
 prove to the careless reader that you were correct, 
 or that, at least, you had some show of reason for 
 your use of the expression which I condemned ; 
 you would prove it at a cost of character which 
 would make all good men sigh with regret. 
 
 But I will not again charge you with intentional 
 inaccuracy. I prefer to impale you on the other 
 horn of the dilemma by first admitting that your 
 remarks were intended to apply to the whole of the 
 sentence, and then showing the absurdity of your 
 reasoning. 
 
 Are you not aware that a weak defence is a 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 strong admission ? It is true that " no more " 
 sometimes signifies " never again " ; but you well 
 know that it never can have that signification 
 when it is followed by " than". The phrase " speak 
 " no more coarsely " may, indeed, mean " speak 
 " never again coarsely " ; but u speak no more 
 " coarsely than usual " could never be understood 
 as " speak never again coarsely than usual " ; for, 
 such a sentence would be without meaning. 
 Besides, if you feared that your sentence would be 
 ambiguous with the expression "no more than", 
 why did you use that expression in other parts of 
 your essays ? For instance, you say, " The Queen 
 " is no more the proprietor of the English language 
 " than you or I ". A certain word, you say, a ought 
 " no more to be spelt ( diocess ', than cheese ought 
 " to be spelt ' chess \" Where were your scruples 
 about "no more" and "never again", when you 
 wrote these sentences ? As for your having no 
 choice between saying " speak no coarser than 
 " usual " and saying " speak no more coarsely than 
 "usual"; you certainly had not well considered 
 the subject when you made that remark ; for, 
 neither of the expressions is the best that might 
 have been used ; indeed, the former is grossly un- 
 grammatical ; and, as for the latter, to make it 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 85 
 
 "right to a t", you must change the " no " into 
 11 not"; and we shall then have the sentence 
 correct, — " If with your inferiors speak not more 
 "coarsely than usual"; or, "do not speak more 
 " coarsely than usual " 
 
 You tell us that " than n governs an accusative 
 case. If that be so, why did you, in the sentence 
 which I just now quoted, write, — "The Queen is 
 " no more the proprietor of the English language 
 " than you or I" ? You are inconsistent. Your 
 precepts and your practice do not agree. According 
 to your own rule you should have said "than you 
 " or me " If " than " governs an accusative, the 
 translators of the Scriptures, too, were wrong in 
 making Solomon say, in Eccles. ii. 25, " Who can 
 "eat more than I"? They should have made 
 him say, " Who can eat more than me 1 " but even 
 a child would tell you that such an expression 
 would be absurd, except under the supposition 
 that Solomon was the king of the Cannibal 
 Islands ! It is not the circumstance that the 
 pronoun is preceded by "than", that determines 
 whether the pronoun is to be in the nominative or 
 in the accusative case. It is the meaning which 
 the writer intends to convey, that determines 
 in which case the pronoun must be. I have given 
 
86 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 you an example of the proper use of "than I" ; 
 here is an instance of the proper use of " than me " 
 Our Saviour says, in Matt. x. 37, " He that 
 "loveth father or mother more than me is not 
 " worthy of me ". The meaning is obvious ; but 
 had our Saviour said " He that loveth father or 
 "mother more than I", his words would have 
 suggested the possibility of man's love exceeding 
 Christ's ! " Than " has nothing whatever to do 
 with determining the case of the pronoun. 
 
 In your first ' Plea for the Queens English', you 
 laid it down as a rule that neuter verbs should not 
 be qualified by adverbs, but by adjectives ; i.e. we 
 ought not to say " how nice/?/ she looks " but " how 
 " nice she looks " ; because, the verb " to look ", as 
 here used, is a neuter verb, one not indicating an 
 action, but merely a quality, or a state. Very well ; 
 but, unfortunately, your practice mars the good 
 which otherwise might be done by your precept ; 
 for, "to appear" is as much a neuter verb as "to 
 " look " used as above ; in fact it is but another 
 form of expression for the same meaning ; and yet, 
 after ridiculing " youug ladies fresh from school ", 
 for saying " how nicely she looks " ; you yourself 
 say that the account to be given of a certain inac- 
 curacy " appears still more plainly " from the fact 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 87 
 
 that, &c., &c. If I may be allowed to make a 
 somewhat questionable pun, I will say that it 
 appeal's to me more and more plain that you never 
 more completely missed your vocation than when 
 you began lecturing " boarding-school misses " on 
 the Queen's English. 
 
 While remarking on your wrong use of adverbs, 
 I may notice that you say " our Lord's own use so 
 " frequent/?/ of the term ". His use of a particular 
 term may be said to have been frequent ; but it 
 cannot be said to have been iC frequently y \ Trans- 
 pose the words in your sentence and you will see 
 this at once. " Our Lord's own so frequently use of 
 *'the term"! Surely no boarding-school miss 
 would ever write thus. It is the verb that requires 
 the adverb ; the noun requires the adjective. He 
 used the term frequently ; but his use of it was 
 frequent 
 
 In my former letter I advised you, when next 
 you wrote about the adverb " only ", to quote only 
 the right passage of Scripture to suit your purpose. 
 I little imagined that I should catch you with a 
 hook so barbed with sarcasm ; but you swallowed 
 the bait, and I have fairly caught you. You have 
 taken my words in their literal signification ; and, 
 having withdrawn from your essay the misquoted 
 
88 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 passage from the book of Numbers, which certainly 
 did not suit your purpose, have substituted the 
 fourth verse of Psalm lxii. Is it, then, allow- 
 able to select from the Scriptures a particular 
 passage favouring a theory of your own, and not to 
 tell your pupils that the language in the verses 
 immediately before and after that passage is 
 opposed to the lessons you deduce from it ? I 
 think not; and I cannot refrain from expressing 
 surprise at your adopting such a course. Besides, 
 how could you hope to succeed when every 
 English layman of the present day follows the 
 example of the noble Bereans of old and searches 
 the Scriptures for himself ? 
 
 The question between us was concerning the 
 position which the adverb "only" should occupy in a 
 sentence. I affirmed that it should be as near as 
 possible to the words it is intended to qualify ; and 
 you, that it may with propriety be placed at a 
 distance from them. In support of your opinion, 
 you brought forward a passage from what you call 
 " that storehouse of good English, the authorised 
 "version of the Scriptures". I proved that you 
 had grossly misquoted the passage, and that the 
 ■words were not to be found in the order in which 
 you had written them. With respect to the sub- 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 83 
 
 stituted passage from Psalm lxii, I suppose I shall 
 not be communicating information that is quite 
 new to you, if I mention that in the first six 
 verses of the psalm the adverb "■ only " occurs four 
 times ; and, except in the solitary verse which you 
 quote, it is in each instance joined to the words 
 that it is intended to qualify. In the fifth verse 
 we read u Wait thou only upon God ; " and in the 
 second verse and, again, in the sixth, " He only is 
 " my rock and my salvation." 
 
 As for the Scriptures' being a " storehouse of 
 " good English " allow me to tell you that there 
 are tares among the wheat. The Bible is no more 
 a storehouse of good English than it is a storehouse 
 of scientific truth. It abounds with errors in 
 grammar and in composition. For an example of 
 these, look at Deut. xvii. 5 ; but read part of the 
 previous verse : — [If] " it be true, and the thing 
 " certain, that such abomination is wrought in 
 " Israel : Then shalt thou bring forth that man or 
 " that woman which have committed that wicked 
 u thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that 
 " woman, and shalt stone them with stones till 
 " they die ". In the first place, the conjunction 
 "or" being disjunctive, the nominative to the verb 
 " committed" is in the singular number ; and there- 
 
90 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 lore, as the verb is not in the subjunctive mood, 
 the " have " should be " has ", for a verb should 
 agree with its nominative. Secondly, the phrase 
 " unto thy gates " is quite out of place; the meaning 
 intended to be conveyed, is not "committed that 
 (i wicked thing, unto thy gates " ; but, " thou shalt 
 " bring forth unto thy gates that man or that woman'. 
 Thirdly, " that woman which " should be " that 
 " tuoman ivho ". In modern English " which " is ap- 
 plied to irrational animals, to things without life, and 
 to infants; and either "who" or "that" is more appro- 
 priate when speaking of persons. We should say 
 either " the tuoman who ", or " the woman that "; not 
 " the woman which " Fourthly, " then shalt thou 
 " bring forth that man or that woman, .... and 
 " shalt stone them ". Had it been " that man and 
 " that woman " it would have been quite right to 
 use the plural pronoun ; but as the verse stands, 
 " them " is certainly improper. Fifthly and lastly, 
 " till they die " ; clearly the verse is speaking of 
 only one person being stoned, either a man or a 
 woman, how, then, can we say "till they die"? 
 Here are five errors in four lines. So much for 
 your "storehouse of good English ". Unquestionably 
 there are, in the Bible, passages which for sim- 
 plicity, for grandeur, for soul-stirring pathos, for 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 91 
 
 richness of poetic imagery, for climax and for 
 antithesis, are unsurpassed in the language ; and, 
 in praise of such passages, I would heartily join 
 you ; but, when you wish scholars to accept the 
 Bible as a text-book by which grammatical dispu- 
 tations may be settled, we part company at once. 
 
 In a former letter I called attention to your 
 injudicious use of the preposition "from" ; and I 
 pointed out the necessity for guarding against 
 suggesting any idea which has no real connexion 
 with the matter of which you may be speaking. 
 I gave, as an example of this kind of fault, your 
 sentence, " Sometimes the editors of our papers 
 " fall, from their ignorance, into absurd mistakes ". 
 Here the preposition "Jrom", immediately following 
 the verb "fall", suggests the absurd idea of 
 editors falling from their ignorance. In your third 
 essay you repeat the fault, and speak of " archi- 
 " tectural transition, from the venerable front of an 
 " ancient cathedral ". The sentence runs thus, 
 " A smooth front of stucco may be a comely thing 
 "for those that like it, but very few sensible men 
 " will like it, if they know that in laying it on, we 
 " are proposing to obliterate the roughnesses, ami 
 " mixture of styles, and traces of architectural 
 " transition, from the venerable front of an ancient 
 
92 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 " cathedral " Here, if you perceived that the mere 
 juxtaposition of the words "transition" and "from" 
 was suggestive of an idea which you by no means 
 intended to convey, you should have separated the 
 words by transposing the last clause of the sentence. 
 It might have been done thus ; — " proposing to 
 " obliterate, from the venerable front of an ancient 
 " cathedral, the roughness, and mixture of styles, 
 a and traces of architectural transition." You 
 may say these are trifles; but, remember, "it is 
 " by attention to trifles that perfection is attained ; 
 " and, perfection is no trifle." Besides, to quote 
 your own words, " An error may be, in an ordinary 
 " person, a trifle ; but when a teacher makes it, it 
 " is no longer a trifle." 
 
 In your remarks on " so ", used in connection 
 with "as", you say "'so' cannot be used in the 
 " affirmative proposition, nor ' as ' in the negative ". 
 If this be correct, why do you yourself use " as " 
 in the negative ? You say " ' its ' was never used 
 " in the early periods of our language, nor, indeed, 
 " as late down as Elizabeth/' 
 
 But I suppose it is almost useless for me to 
 address you on the subject of the various niceties 
 of arrangement which require to be attended to in 
 the construction of sentences. You seem to care 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 93 
 
 for none of these things. Yet, believe me, such 
 matters, unimportant as they may appear, contri- 
 bute in a far greater degree than you imagine, to 
 make up the sum of the difference between a style 
 of composition which is ambiguous and inelegant ; 
 and one which is perspicuous and chastely correct. 
 
 You evidently entertain some fear lest the study 
 of the rules of composition should cramp the 
 expression of the thoughts ! Never was there a 
 more groundless apprehension : and, in proportion 
 as you are successful in disseminating such notions, 
 do you inflict on our language the most serious 
 injury. Fortunately for that language, the poison 
 of your teaching carries with it its own antidote. 
 They who read your essays on the Queen's English 
 cannot fail to notice the significant fact, that he who 
 is thus strongly advocating the principle that the 
 rules of composition serve no other purpose than 
 to " cramp the expression of his thoughts ", does 
 not exhibit that fluency and gracefulness of diction 
 which, if his view of the matter were correct, 
 would necessarily be displayed in his own compo- 
 sitions. 
 
 A reviewer in ' The Nonconformist ' writes as 
 follows : — " Away with all needless and artificial 
 " rules, say we, indeed — as energetically as the 
 
94 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 
 
 " most energetic. But the elementary and natural 
 " laws of a language fetter only the impatient or 
 " the unskilful ; and in the living freedom with 
 " which genius obeys those laws, is its strength and 
 " mastery shown." 
 
 What was Milton's opinion on this subject ? 
 Was he opposed to rules and maxims ? Did he 
 think they served no other purpose than to "cramp 
 " the expression of the thoughts " ? Quite the 
 contrary. 
 
 In the year 1638, Milton, in a Latin letter 
 addressed to an Italian scholar who was then 
 preparing a work on the grammar of his native 
 tongue, wrote as follows : " Whoever in a state 
 " knows how to form wisely the manners of men 
 " and to rule them at home and in war by excellent 
 " institutes, him in the first place, above others, I 
 t( should esteem worthy of all honour ; but next to 
 " him the man who strives to establish in maxims 
 " and rules the method and habit of speaking and 
 " writing derived from a good age of the nation, and, 
 " as it were, to fortify the same round with a kind of 
 " wall, the daring to overleap which, a law, only 
 " short of that of Romulus, should be used to prevent. 
 " Should we choose to compare the two in respect 
 " to utility, it is the former only that can make the 
 
 
TRE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 93 
 
 11 social existence of the citizens just and holy ; but 
 " it is the latter that makes it splendid and beauti- 
 " ful, which is the next thing to be desired. The 
 " one, as I believe, supplies a noble courage • and 
 "intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the 
 " territory ; the other takes to himself the task of 
 " extirpating and defeating, by means of a learned 
 " detective police of ears and a light infantry of 
 " good authors, that barbarism which makes large 
 " inroads upon the minds of men, and is a des- 
 " tructive intestine enemy to genius. Nor is it to 
 " be considered of small importance what language, 
 " pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their 
 " customary degree of propriety in speaking it — a 
 " matter which oftener than once was the salvation 
 " of Athens : nay, as it is Plato's opinion that by a 
 " change in the manner and habit of dress serious' 
 " commotions and mutations are portended in a 
 " commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather 
 " believe that the fall of that city and its low 
 " and obscure condition followed on the general 
 " vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech ; for, 
 " let the words of a country be in part unhandsome 
 " and offensive in themselves, in part debased by 
 a wear and wrongly uttered, and what do they 
 " declare but, by no slight indication, that the 
 
96 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly- 
 a yawning race, with minds already long prepared 
 " for any amount of servility ? On the other hand, 
 " we have never heard that any empire, any state, 
 " did not flourish in at least a middling degree as 
 " long as its own liking and care for its language 
 " lasted." 
 
 So far John Milton — the noble advocate of law 
 and rule, though in virtue of the transcendency of 
 his genius he might have claimed to be above all 
 rules. Now let us have a specimen of your 
 English, — the English of the Dean of Canterbury, 
 who, avowedly, disregards all rules, fearing they 
 would " cramp the expression of Ms thoughts " / 
 
 The following example is taken from your third 
 essay. I read, " l this ' and ' these ' refer to persons 
 " and things present, or under immediate consider- 
 a ation ; ' that ' and ' those ' to persons and things 
 " not present nor under immediate consideration ; 
 " or, if either of these, one degree further removed, 
 " than the others of which are used 'this' and 'these'". 
 What can be the meaning of this last clause ? The 
 reader can only wonder and guess. It utterly 
 defies all power of analysis, and really makes one 
 uncomfortable to read it. It forcibly recalls the 
 following anecdote told of Douglas Jerrold. ll On 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH, 97 
 
 "recovering from a severe illness, Browning's 
 "'Sordello' was put into his Lands. Line after 
 " line, page after page, he read, but no consecutive 
 " idea could he get from the mystic production. 
 " Mrs. Jerrold was out, and he had no one to whom 
 " to appeal. The thought struck him that he had 
 " lost his reason during his illness, and that he was 
 " so imbecile he did not know it. A perspiration 
 " burst from his brow, and he sat silent and 
 "thoughtful. As soon as his wife returned, he 
 "thrust the mysterious volume into her hands, 
 91 crying out, ' Eead this, my dear ! ' After several 
 " attempts to make any sense out of the first page 
 " or so, she gave back the book, saying, ' Bother 
 u l the gibberish ! I don't understand a word of 
 "'it'. ' Thank Heaven', cried Jerrold, 'then I 
 " ' am not an idiot ! ' " 
 
 Here is another specimen from your essay ; I 
 give the entire sentence, which, closing with a 
 period, should be complete in its sense. You say, 
 " The next thing I shall mention, not for its own 
 "sake, but as a specimen of the kind of criticism 
 " which I am often meeting with, and instructive 
 "to those who wish to be critics of other men's 
 " language." It was not until I had long and 
 hopelessly pondered over your sentence, that I 
 
 H 
 
98 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 discovered what it was you intended to say, and 
 what was the reason of my not instantly catching 
 your meaning. I find that the first clause in your 
 sentence is inverted, and that the punctuation 
 necessary to mark the inversion is incorrect, or 
 rather, is altogether omitted; hence, I read the 
 sentence thus, — " The next thing [which] I shall 
 " mention, not for its own sake, but as a specimen/' 
 &c. ; whereas your meaning was, — " The next 
 " thing [,] I shall mention, not for its own sake, 
 " but as a specimen," &c. ; or, putting the words 
 in their natural order, " I shall mention the next 
 " thing, not for its own sake, but as a specimen/' &c. 
 Your hobby of leaving out commas carries you 
 too far; your readers cannot follow you: and if 
 you are going to set aside the rules of punctuation 
 as well as those of grammar, you must give us 
 something better than this to convince us of the 
 advantage to be gained by adopting such a course. 
 Among other curious matters to be found in 
 your essays, is the somewhat startling information 
 that the expressions "I ain't certain", "I ain't 
 " going " are not un frequently used by " educated 
 " persons " ! I suppose you mean educated at 
 college, where the study of English is altogether 
 ignored; but of that, more by-and-by. In the 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 99 
 
 mean time I pass on to the next sentence in your 
 essay. Having told us that the above expressions 
 are not unfrequently used by " educated persons " ; 
 you go on to say, " The main objection to them is, 
 " that they are proscribed by usage ; but exception 
 " may also be taken to them on their own account". 
 So I should think, if they ivill use such ex- 
 pressions as " I ain't certain " " I ain't going ". 
 
 I see you still say "treated", rather than "treated 
 " of" ; e.g. " a matter treated in my former paper ". 
 On a previous occasion I spoke of this error ; but I 
 suppose, as you still express yourself in the same 
 way, you consider the terms synonymous ; but 
 they certainly are not. To treat is one thing; to 
 treat of is another ; and it is the latter expression 
 that would convey your meaning. The following 
 sentence will exhibit the difference between the 
 two terms : — "A matter treated of in my former 
 " paper was treated by you with indifference." 
 
 One of the defects noticeable in your essays, is 
 that of making your expressions too elliptical. 
 Brevity is undoubtedly an excellent quality in 
 writing ; but brevity should always be subordinate 
 to perspicuity. This has not been attended to in 
 the following sentence, which, singularly enough, 
 happens to be upon the very subject of ellipsis 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 itself. You say, " Some languages are more ellip- 
 " tical than others ; that is, the habits of thought 
 " of some nations will bear the omission of certain 
 u members of a sentence better than the habits of 
 " thought of other nations " \ivill\ Do you not 
 perceive that but for the little word " will ", which 
 I have added to your sentence, the statement would 
 be, that " the habits of thought of some nations 
 " will bear the omission of certain members of a 
 " sentence better than [they will bear] the habits 
 " of thought of other nations " ? — a truth which no 
 one will be found to deny ; but, at the same time, 
 a truth which you did not mean to affirm. 
 
 What ! Not yet over that "pons asinorum" of 
 juvenile writers, the "construction louche"! You 
 were there when I wrote to you my first letter ; 
 and you are there still. This ought not to be; 
 for, the effect of this error is so ridiculous, and the 
 error itself may be so easily avoided. You say, 
 " Though some of the European rulers may be 
 " females, when spoken of altogether, they may be 
 " correctly classified under the denomination 
 ui kings '." In this sentence, the clause which I 
 have put in italics has, what our Gallic neigh- 
 bours designate, "a squinting construction", it 
 looks two ways at once; that is, it may be 
 
THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 101 
 
 construed as relating either to the words which pre- 
 cede, or to those which follow. Your former error 
 of this sort was in the omission of a comma ; this 
 time you have erred by the insertion of a comma, 
 and in each case a like result is produced. Had 
 there been no comma after the word " altogether ", 
 the ambiguity would have been avoided, because 
 the words in italics would then have formed part 
 of the last clause of the sentence : but as the 
 italicised clause is isolated by commas, the sen- 
 tence is as perfect a specimen of this error as ever 
 could have been given. Absurd as would be the 
 sentence, its construction is such, that we may 
 understand you to say, " Some of the European 
 " rulers may be females, when spoken of alto- 
 " gether " ; or we may understand you to say, 
 " when spoken of altogether, they may be correctly 
 " classified under the denomination ' kings ' " ; but, 
 even in this last clause, it is evident that you say 
 one thing and mean another. The context shows 
 that what you meant, was, " they may correctly be 
 " classified ", not " they may be correctly classified " 
 Slight as is the apparent difference here, the real 
 difference is very great. If I say, " they may be 
 " correctly classified ", my words mean that the 
 classification may be made in a correct manner ; 
 
102 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 but if I say, " they may correctly he classified ", the 
 meaning is, that it is correct to classify them. In 
 the first example, the adverb qualifies the past 
 participle " classified " ; in the second, it qualifies 
 the passive verb to " be classified " ; or, in other 
 words, the adverb in the former instance describes 
 the thing as being properly done ; and, in the 
 latter instance, as being a thing proper to do. 
 
 One word more before we finish with this 
 strange sentence of yours. On page 59 I had to 
 ask you why, when speaking of a man, you used 
 the slang expression, " an individual ". I have 
 here, to ask you a question which is still graver. 
 Why, when speaking of women, and one of those 
 the highest lady in the land, do you apply to them 
 the most debasing of all slang expressions ? You 
 speak of " some of the European rulers ", [there are 
 but two to whom your words can refer ; — our own 
 Sovereign Lady, and the Queen of Spain,] and you 
 describe them by an epithet which cannot appro- 
 priately be used except concerning the sex of 
 animals! — they are, you tell us, — "females" ! I 
 am sure that all who desire your welfare will join 
 me in hoping that Her Majesty will not see your 
 hook. It is but too evident that in condemning 
 these slang phrases, as you do in your 'Queen's 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 103 
 
 1 English \ page 246, you are echoing the senti- 
 ments of some other writer, rather than expressing 
 your own abhorrence of slang. I shall be glad it 
 you are able to inform me that I am mistaken in 
 this particular; and that you have not been 
 quoting, but have been giving us original matter. 
 
 Eeverting to the error occasioned by a comma 
 in the former part of your sentence, I may give, 
 as another example of the importance of correct 
 punctuation, an extract from a letter in * The 
 1 Times' of June 19th, 1863 ; there, simply by the 
 placing of the smallest point, a comma, before, 
 instead of after, one of the smallest words in the 
 language, the word " on ", the whole meaning of 
 | the sentence is entirely altered, and it is made to 
 express something so horrible that the reader 
 shudders at the mere suggestion oF it. 
 
 The letter is on the American war, and the 
 writer says, "The loss of life w r ill hardly fall short 
 " of a quarter of a million ; and how many more 
 "were better with the dead than doomed to crawl, 
 "on the mutilated victims of this great national 
 "crime!" He meant to say, — "than doomed to 
 " crawl on, the mutilated victims of this great 
 " national crime." 
 
 While pointing out this solitary error, 1 emphati- 
 
104 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 cally protest against the injustice of your remarks 
 concerning the general inaccuracy of the composi- 
 tion of ' The Times.' I hold that, to those per- 
 sons who are desirous of perfecting themselves 
 in the English language, no better course of study 
 can be recommended than the constant perusal of the 
 leading articles in our principal daily paper. That 
 faults are to be found even there, occasionally, must 
 be admitted ; but they are very few. The style, 
 varying according to the subject under considera- 
 tion, is familiar without being coarse, and dignified 
 without being ostentatious. The language is 
 powerful, yet is never marred by invectives ; 
 trenchant, yet never at the sacrifice of courtesy. 
 Free alike from vulgarism and slovenliness on 
 the one hand, and from formality and pedantry on 
 the other, the student may safely take it as a 
 model on which to form a style that will enable 
 him to express his thoughts with grace, precision, 
 and persuasiveness. 
 
 But I must hasten to the conclusion of my 
 letter. You say, " The derivation of the word, as 
 " well as the usage of the great majority of 
 " English writers, fix the spelling the other way ", 
 i.e. This (as well as that) fix it! Excuse me, 
 but I must ask why you write thus, even though 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 105 
 
 by putting the question, I put you " in a fix " to 
 answer it. 
 
 You speak of " the final ' u ' in tenour ", and 
 " the final ' s ' in months ". You might just as 
 reasonably speak of the final " a " in the alphabet. 
 
 These errors are so gross that I cannot forbear 
 reproving you in your own words. "Surely it is 
 "an evil J or a people to he daily accustomed to read 
 " English expressed thus obscurely and ungrammati- 
 " cally : it tends to confuse thought, and to deprive 
 " language of its proper force, and by this means to 
 " degrade us as a nation in the rank of thinkers and 
 " speakers." 
 
 In your second essay you are loud in praise of 
 variety in composition ; and variety enough you 
 undoubtedly have given us ; but, unfortunately, 
 the variety is not of that description which, in 
 our school days, writing-masters made us describe 
 in our copy-books as " charming ". We have 
 found, in your Essays on the Queens English, 
 errors in the use of pronouns ; errors in the use of 
 nouns, both substantive and adjective ; errors in 
 the use of verbs and of adverbs ; and errors in the 
 use of prepositions. There are errors in composi- 
 tion, and errors in punctuation ; errors of ellipsis, 
 and errors of redundancy; specimens of ambiguity, 
 
108 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 and specimens of squinting constructions ; speci- 
 mens of slang, and specimens of misquotation of an 
 opponent's words ; and, worst of all, a specimen of 
 a misquotation of Scripture. Add to this the 
 following specimens of tautology and tautophony, 
 and the list will, I think, be complete. 
 
 As you have introduced into your essays the 
 short preface to your Poems, that preface becomes 
 fairly amenable to criticism, and I remark that in 
 it you say, " This will account for a few specimens 
 " of Transatlantic orthography for which the 
 " author must not be accounted responsible ". 
 
 The following is from your third essay : — " An 
 " officer whose duty it is to keep a counter-roll, or 
 " check on the accounts of others. It seems also 
 " clear, from this account of the word, that it 
 " ought not," &c. 
 
 Then I read, " One word on ' this ' and i that ', 
 " as we pass onward ". 
 
 " At last we abated the nuisance by enacting, 
 '- that in future the debatable first syllable should 
 u be dropped ". 
 
 " Thought and speech have ever been freer in 
 "England than in other countries. From these 
 "and other circumstances, the English language 
 " has become more idiomatic than most others ". 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 107 
 
 " The sentences which I have quoted are but a 
 "few out of the countless instances in our best 
 " writers, and in their most chaste and beautiful 
 "passages, in which this usage occurs. On ex- 
 a amining into it, we find " — &c, &c. 
 
 Enough ! It was my intention to say a few 
 words of caution to students of the Queen's 
 English, on your advice to them to disregard the 
 rules of grammarians and be guided by custom 
 and common sense ; but, on second thoughts, I am 
 sure that any further remarks must be unnecessary ; 
 fur if your plan cannot do more for its teacher, 
 there need be no fear that it will be followed by 
 any sagacious pupil. 
 
 I had fully intended to speak also on the neces- 
 sity of a more thorough study of English at our 
 Universities; but any remarks on that, will 
 likewise be considered needless ; for, your own 
 English is, itself, a volume on the subject. 
 
 Nevertheless, read what appeared in the 'Comhill 
 ' Magazine' for May, 1861 : — " In Greek and Latin, 
 11 no doubt, the clergy have advanced as fast as their 
 " age, or faster. University men now write Greek 
 " Iambics, as every one knows, rather better than 
 " Sophocles, and would no more think of violating 
 " the Pause than of violating an oath. A good 
 
108 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 " proportion of them are also perfectly at home in 
 u the calculation of perihelions, nodes, mean 
 " motions, and other interesting things of the same 
 "kind, which it is unnecessary to specify more 
 " particularly. So far the clergy are at least on a 
 " level with their age. But this is all that can be 
 " said. When we come to their mother-tongue a 
 " different story is to he told. Their English — the 
 " English of their sermons — is nearly where it was 
 " a hundred years ago. The author of ' Twenty 
 " 'years in the Church'' makes the driver of a coach 
 " remark to his hero, that young gentlemen from 
 " college preparing to take orders appear to have 
 " learned everything except their own language. 
 " And so they have. Exceptions, of course, there 
 " are, many and bright ; but in the main the charge 
 "is true. The things in which, compared with 
 " former ages, they excel so conspicuously, are the 
 11 very things which have least concern with their 
 " special calling. The course of their progress has 
 " reversed the course of charity ; — it began abroad, 
 " and has never yet reached home/' 
 
 There are, however, a few English scholars who 
 are patriotically fighting under the banner of their 
 own country against the supremacy of foreign 
 languages in our schools and our colleges ; and fore- 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 109 
 
 most among that few is the English lecturer at 
 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, — the Eev. Alex. 
 J. D. D'Orsey, B.D. ; a man of great ability, and one 
 who, for his persevering efforts to awaken an interest 
 in the study of the English language and obtain for it 
 in our Universities that place of honour to which it 
 is entitled, deserves the highest praise. He draws 
 a melancholy picture, but a true one, when, in his 
 
 I Plea for the study of the English Language \ he 
 writes ; — " To such as can hardly believe, that in 
 "our Public Schools, Colleges, and Universities, 
 "there is not the slightest special training in 
 
 II English, even for those who are about to enter 
 " Holy Orders, I can only say that, however sur- 
 prising it may seem, it is the simple fact. Some 
 " have said, that no English teaching is needed in 
 " our Universities, for men are sufficiently in- 
 " structed in the language when they ' come up \ 
 " I meet this by a simple denial, adding that most 
 " men are not sufficiently instructed even when they 
 " 'go down. I appeal to College Tutors, Examiners, 
 " Bishops' Chaplains, and to the Public, whether 
 " I exaggerate or not in making this assertion.*" 
 
 Eead also the 'Report of Her Majesty's Commis- 
 1 sioners appointed to inquire into the management 
 1 of certain Colleges and Schools'. (Presented to 
 Parliament by command of Her Majesty, March, 
 
110 THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 1864) The following is from the Eeport of the ex- 
 amination of the head master of Eton, " the greatest 
 " and most influential of our Public Schools." 
 
 " Question, No. 3530. [Lord Clarendon.] ' What 
 " ' measures do you now take to keep up English at 
 " c Eton ? ' — * There are none at present, except 
 " ' through the ancient languages.' 
 
 ''Question, No. 3531. 'You can scarcely learn 
 " ' English reading and writing through Thucy- 
 "'dides?'— 'No/ 
 
 " Question, No. 3532. [Sir S. Northcote.] 'You 
 " ' do not think it is satisfactory ? ' — l No ; the 
 " ' English teaching is not satisfactory, and as a 
 " ' question of precedence, I would have English 
 " ' taught before French.' 
 
 " Question, No. 3533. ' You do not consider that 
 Cl ' English is taught at present ? ' — ' No! " 
 
 What a disgrace to us as Englishmen is 
 this ! — that our noble language, — the language 
 of our prayers to the Throne of Heaven; the 
 language of the dearest and holiest relationships of 
 life ; the language of the maternal lips that have 
 blessed us and are now silent in the grave; the 
 language of our sorrows and our joys, our aspirations 
 and our regrets ; the language in which we breathe 
 our consolations to the dying and our farewells to 
 those whom we love ; the language in which are 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. Ill 
 
 embalmed the stirring appeals of our patriots and 
 the thrilling battle-cries of our warriors ; the 
 language of our funeral dirges over those who have 
 fallen in defence of our homes, our children, and 
 our liberties ; the language in which have been 
 sung our poeans of triumph in the hours of victo- 
 ries which have made England great among the 
 nations ; that this language, — the language of 
 Shakspeare, of Milton, and of the Bible, should 
 be utterly ignored as a study in our schools and our 
 colleges ! This is indeed a disgrace such as the 
 barbarians of Greece and of Eome never incurred ; 
 and a disgrace upon which men in future ages of 
 the world will look back with wonder. 
 
 Ah ! Doctor Alford, we find you guilty of 
 injuring by your example and your influence a 
 glorious inheritance, such as has been bequeathed 
 to no other nation under heaven.* 
 
 I can believe that the English language is 
 destined to be that in which shall arise, as in one 
 universal temple, the utterance of the worship of 
 
 * Grimm says, " The English tongue possesses a veritable 
 " power of expression, such as, perhaps, never stood at the 
 " command of any other language of man." — ' Ur sprung cler 
 1 Sprache,' p. 52. 
 
 " Take it all in all, it is the grandest and the richest of 
 " modern tongues."— ' Edinburgh Review,' July, 1864, p. 176. 
 
112 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 all hearts. Broad and deep have the foundations 
 been laid; and so vast is the area which they 
 cover, that it is co-extensive with the great globe 
 itself. For centuries past, proud intellectual giants 
 have laboured at this mighty fabric ; and still it 
 rises, and will rise for generations to come: and 
 on its massive stones will be inscribed the names 
 of the profoundest thinkers, and on its springing 
 arches the records of the most daring flights of the 
 master minds of genius, whose fame was made 
 enduring by their love of the Beautiful and their 
 adoration of the All Good. In this temple the 
 Anglo-Saxon mosaic of the sacred words of truth 
 will be the solid and enduring pavement; the 
 dreams of poets will fill the rich tracery of its 
 windows with the many-coloured hues of thought ; 
 and the works of lofty philosophic minds will be 
 the stately columns supporting its fretted roof, 
 whence shall hang, sculptured, the rich fruits of 
 the tree of knowledge, precious as "apples of 
 " gold ", — " the words of the wise ". 
 
 I am, Eev. Sir, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 G. WASHINGTON MO 
 
 
1HE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 113 
 
 Note. — Since the publication of the previous 
 edition of these letters, I have discovered, in a 
 back number of ' The Edinburgh Review \ the 
 following passage on the prospects of the English 
 language : — 
 
 " The time seems fast approaching when the English 
 " language will exercise over the other languages of the 
 " world a predominance which our forefathers little dreamt 
 " of. The prospects of the English language are now the 
 " most splendid that the world has ever seen. The entire 
 " number of persons who speak certain of the languages 
 " of Northern Europe, — languages of considerable literary 
 " repute, — is not equal to the number simply added every 
 " year, by the increase of population, to those who speak 
 " the English language in England and America alone. 
 " There are persons now living* who will in all probability 
 "see it the vernacular language of one hundred and fifty 
 " millions of the earth's civilized population. 
 
 " Although French is spoken by a considerable propor- 
 tion of the population in Canada, and although in the 
 " United States there is a large and tolerably compact body 
 "of German- speaking Germans, these languages must 
 " gradually melt away, as the Welsh and the Gaelic have 
 " melted away before the English in our own island. The 
 " time will speedily be here when a gigantic community in 
 "America, — besides rising and important colonies in 
 "Africa and Australia, — will speak the same language, 
 " and that the language of a nation holding a high position 
 "among th.3 empires of Europe. When this time shall 
 
 * 1859. 
 
1 14 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 "have arrived, the other languages of Europe will be 
 " reduced to the same relative position with regard to the 
 " predominant language, as that in which the Basque 
 " stands to the Spanish, or the Finnish to the Russian. 
 
 " For such predominance the English language pos- 
 " sesses admirable qualifications ; standing, as it does, 
 " midway between the Germanic and the Scandinavian 
 "branches of the ancient Teutonic, and also uniting the 
 " Teutonic with the Romanic in a manner to which no 
 " other language has any pretension. A prize was given 
 "in 1796 by the Academy at Berlin for an essay on the 
 " comparison of fourteen ancient and modern languages of 
 " Europe, and in that essay the author, Jenisch, assigns 
 "the palm of general excellence to the English; it has 
 " also been allowed by other German critics that in regard 
 " to the qualifications which it possesses for becoming a 
 " general interpreter of the literature of Europe, not even 
 "their own language can compete with it." — 'Edinburgh 
 ' Review \ vol. cix, p. 375,6. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 CEITICISM No. IV. 
 
 EXAMPLE VerSUS PRECEPT. 
 
 Eev. Sir, 
 
 A very few more words, and then I close 
 this controversy. You said in ' Good Words ' for 
 1863, page 437, " The less you turn your words 
 " right or left to observe Mr. Moon's rules, the tetter". 
 It will provoke a smile on the face of the reader 
 to be told that although, you give this advice to 
 others, you have, in your second edition, altered 
 and struck out, altogether, not fewer than eight- 
 and-twenty passages which, in their original form, 
 I condemned as faulty. 
 
 I 2 
 
116 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 It is scarcely requisite to say that " altered " does 
 not necessarily imply " corrected ". For example, 
 in 'Good Words 9 you wrote, — "You perhaps have 
 "heard of the barber who, while operating on a 
 "gentleman, expressed his opinion, that, after all, 
 " the cholera was in the hair. 9 ' As " altered ", the 
 sentence runs thus, — " We remember in Punch the 
 a barber who, while operating ", &c. This, of 
 course, suggests the idea that Punch, besides being 
 a wit, and a satirist, is also a barber, and that he 
 operates not only upon human consciences but 
 also upon human chins ! 
 
 You will very likely put in your irresistible 
 plea, — "We do not write for idiots"; but, seeing 
 you are always trying to make us believe that the 
 style you advocate is one pre-eminent for its direct 
 and simple clearness, why did you not say, — " We 
 " remember reading in 'Punch,' of the barber who/' 
 &c. ? This would have been much more perspicuous. 
 
 For the entertainment of the curious in such 
 matters, the original passages, published in ' Good 
 ' Words ' and condemned in the ' Dean's English ', 
 and the altered passages, as they now appear in 
 the second edition of your ' Queen's English ', are 
 subjoined in parallel columns. 
 
THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 117 
 
 THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 I. 
 
 " So far from its being ' so well 
 * known a fact ' that we reserve the 
 singular pronouns 'thou' and 'thee' Struck out 
 
 'entirely for our addresses in prayer 
 'to Him who is the highest Person- 
 ality ', it is not a fact." — p. 6. 
 
 II. 
 
 "You say, 'The great enemies 
 jj to understanding anything printed 
 'in our language are the commas. 
 'And these are inserted by the 
 'compositors without the slightest 
 ' compunction.' I should say that 
 the great enemy to our understand- 
 ing these sentences of yours is the 
 want of commas." — p. 11. 
 
 III. 
 
 "You speak of persons 'mending 
 ' their ways '; and in the very next 
 paragraph you speak of 'the Queen's Struck out. 
 
 ' highivay ', and of ' by-roads ' and 
 'private roads ' ". — p. 11. 
 
 IY. 
 
 "Immediately after your speak- 
 ing of 'things without life', you 
 
 A comma has been 
 inserted between 
 " compositors " and 
 "without the slight - 
 " est compunction ". 
 —p. 99. 
 
118 
 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH, 
 
 THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 startle us with that strange sen- 
 tence of yours, — 'I will introduce 
 'the body of my essay'. Introduce 
 
 the body J 
 
 12. 
 
 Struck out. 
 
 "'But to be more serious', as 
 you say in your essay, and then 
 immediately give us a sentence in 
 which the grave and the grotesque 
 are most incongruously blended. I 
 read, 'A man does not lose his 
 'mother now in the papers. 9 I 
 have read figurative language which 
 spoke of lawyers being lost in their 
 papers, and of students being buried 
 in their books ; but I never read of 
 a man losing his mother in the 
 "-p. 12. 
 
 rs, a 
 
 "In the papers, 
 man does not now 
 lose his mother." 
 p. 251. 
 
 VI. 
 
 "In the sentence, 'I only bring 
 'forward some things \ the adverb 
 'only' is similarly misplaced; for, 
 in the following sentence, the words 
 ' Plenty more might be said ', show 
 that the ' only ' refers to the ' some 
 ' things ', and not to the fact of your 
 
THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 
 
 Ill) 
 
 THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 bringing them forward. The sen- 
 tence should therefore have been, 
 'I bring forward some things only'", 
 —p. 14. 
 
 Struck out. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " In your essay, you say, c I re- 
 ' member, when the French band of "I remember, when 
 
 * the ' Gkiides ' were in this country, the French band of 
 
 * reading in the ' Illustrated News ' \ the ' Guides ' were in 
 Were the Frenchmen, when in this this country, to have 
 country, reading in 'The Illustrated read in the 'Illus- 
 * ' Nnvs 9 ? or did you mean that you * trated News ' ". — p. 
 remembered reading in ' The Illus- 249. 
 
 mated News 999 ?— -p. 17. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " You also say, ' It is not so much 
 
 * of the great highway itself of the 
 
 * Queen 9 s English that I would now 
 
 ' speak, as of some of the laws of the « The bye-rules, so 
 
 * road; the by-rules, to compare small to speak, which hang 
 'things with great, which hang up up framed at the v a r- 
 1 framed at the various stations '. i ous stations." — p. 5. 
 What are the great things which 
 
 hang up framed at the various sta- 
 tions ? " — p. 18 
 
120 
 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 IX. 
 
 " So, too, in that sentence which 
 introduces the body of your essay, 
 yon speak of 'the reluctance which 
 ' we in modem Europe have to giving 
 1 any prominence to the personality 
 s of single individuals in social inter- 
 ' course ' ; and yet it was evidently 
 not of single individuals in social 
 intercourse that you intended to 
 speak, but of giving, in social inter- 
 course, any prominence to the per- 
 sonality of single individuals/' — p. 
 18. 
 
 Struck out. 
 
 " Continuing my review of your 
 essay, I notice that it is said of a 
 traveller on the Queen's highway, 
 ' He bowls along it with ease in a 
 ' vehicle, which a few centuries ago 
 ' would have been broken to pieces in 
 4 a deep rut, or come to grief in a 
 ' bottomless sw atrip '. There being 
 here no words immediately before 
 'come', to indicate in what tense 
 that verb is, I have to turn back to 
 find the tense, and am obliged to 
 read the sentence thus, ' would have 
 
 " He bowls along it 
 with ease in a vehicle, 
 which a few centu- 
 ries ago would have 
 been broken to pieces 
 in a deep rut, or 
 would have come to 
 grief in a bottomless 
 swamp." — p. 2. 
 
TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 121 
 
 THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 1 been broken to pieces in a deep 
 1 rut, or [would have been] come to 
 ' grief in a bottomless swamp ' ". 
 —p. 25. 
 
 XI. 
 
 " Further on, I find you speaking 
 of 'that fertile source of mistakes 
 'among our clergy, the mispronun- 
 ' elation of Scripture proper names'. 
 It is not the 'mispronunciation of 
 1 Scripture proper names ' which is 
 the source of mistakes ; the mis- 
 pronunciation of Scripture proper 
 names constitutes the mistakes 
 themselves of which you are speak- 
 ing; and a thing cannot at the 
 same time be a source, and that 
 which flows from it." — p. 26. 
 
 
 XII. 
 
 "In some sentences your pro- 
 nouns have actually no nouns to 
 which they apply. For example, 
 you say, 'a journal published by 
 1 these people \ By what people ? 
 Where is the noun to which this 
 relative pronoun refers ? In your 
 head it may have been, but it cer- 
 tainly is not in your essay." — p. 31. 
 
 Struck out. 
 
 " A journal pub- 
 lished by the advo- 
 cates of this change." 
 —p. 14. 
 
122 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 
 "Only eight -and -twenty nouns 
 
 . , , , , , The paragraph has 
 
 intervening between the pronoun r . n ] 
 
 , . , , -, x1 < 7 7 . , , . i-i been entirely recon- 
 
 * it and the noun habit to which • J Jrk 
 
 . , n i„ oo structed. — p. 42. 
 
 it refers ! — p. 32. r 
 
 XIY. 
 
 " You make the assertion that " In the English 
 
 the possessive pronoun 'its 9 'never version of the Bible, 
 
 occurs in the 'English version of made in its present 
 
 ' the Bible '. Look ' at Leviticus authorized form in 
 
 xxv, 5, ' That which groweth of its the reign of James J." 
 
 ' own accord ' ". — p. 33. — p. 7. 
 
 XY. 
 
 There are, in your second essay, 
 some very strange specimens of 
 
 Queen's English. You say, * The "The one rule 
 * one rule, of all others, which he w hi c h i s supposed by 
 ' cites '. Now as, in defence of your tlie or dinary rheto- 
 particular views, you appeal largely r i c ians to regulate 
 to common sense, let me ask, in t } ie arrangement of 
 the name of that common sense, WO rds in sentences 
 
 how can one thing be another | s » ^ Cj p |23. 
 
 thing ? How can one rule be of all 
 other rules the one which I cite ? " 
 —p. 48. 
 
THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 123 
 
 the 
 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 " You say, ' The verb is not a 
 ' strict neuter - substantive '. Your In a previous para- 
 sentence is an explanation of your graph we now read of 
 use of the word 'oddly", in the a verb, "of that class 
 phrase, ' would read rather oddly ' ; called neuter - sub - 
 and oddly enough you have explained stantive, i.e., neuter, 
 it: ' would read' is the conditional and akin in construe - 
 form of the verb ; and how can that tion to the verb-sub- 
 ever be either a neuter-substantive, stantive to be." — p. 
 or a substantive of any other kind?" 206. 
 —p. 50. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 " Again, you say, ' The whole 
 ' number is divided into two classes : 
 ! the first class, and the last class. To 
 ' the former of these belong three : to 
 ' the latter, one '. That is, ' To the 
 
 'former of these belong three; to " To tne f o rmer of 
 4 the latter [belong] one'; one belong! tnese belong three: 
 When, in the latter part of a com- to the latter belongs 
 pound sentence, we change the one ' P* ^ 0# 
 nominative, we must likewise change 
 the verb, that it may agree with its 
 nominative." — p. 51. 
 
 XVIII. 
 "The error is repeated in the 
 very next sentence. You say, 
 ' There are three that are ranged 
 
124 TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 "There are three 
 
 i under the description 'first 1 : and 
 ' one that is ranged under the des- 
 cription 'last". That is, 'There ,_ _ . ? n , 
 , ,, ,, j j the description* first ; 
 
 are three that are ranged nnder , ., . , 
 
 ,,, t ... .« ,, -. r , 7 and there is one that 
 
 the description first ; and [there . 
 
 t -i j.i j. • j j il is ranged nnder the 
 
 * are] one that is ranged nnder the , w 
 
 ' description 'last." There are onel" ^\ rt 
 
 ki — p. 146. 
 
 — p. 51. r 
 
 XIX. 
 
 " It appears to me that, before 
 yon have finished a sentence, yon 
 have forgotten how yon began it. 
 Here is another instance. Yon say, 
 ' We call a ' cup-board ' a ' cubbard ', 
 
 * a ' half -penny ' a ' haepenny ', and 
 ' so of many other compound words'. 
 Had yon begun yonr sentence thus, " We call a ' cup- 
 ' We speak of a 'cup-board' as a ' board ' a ' cubbard ', 
 ' ' cubbard ', of a 'half-penny' as a a 'half-penny' a 'hae- 
 ' ' haepenny ', it would have been ' pny ', and we simi- 
 correct to say, ' and so of many larly contract many 
 'other compound words'; because other compound 
 the clause would mean, ' and so \we words." — p. 53. 
 
 ' speak"] of many other compound 
 ' words ' ; but having begun the 
 sentence with ' We call 1 it is sheer 
 nonsense to finish it with ' and so 
 ' of 1 ; for it is saying, ' and so [we 
 ' call] of many other compound 
 ' words ' ". — p. 53. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 125 
 
 THE DEAN S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 XX. 
 
 "You speak of rules laid down 
 
 * by the dictionaries' and by the 'pro- 
 
 * feasors of rhetoric 9 ; thus substi- 
 tuting, in one case, the works for 
 the men; and, in the other case, 
 speaking of the men themselves. 
 Why not either speak of the ' com- 
 'pilers of dictionaries 1 and the 'pro- 
 cessors of rhetoric '; or else speak 
 of the * dictionaries ' and the * trea- 
 tises on rhetoric 'f " — p. 55. 
 
 Struck out. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 "The construction of some of your 
 sentences is very objectionable : 
 rou say, 'I have noticed the word 
 
 "party 9 used for an individual, "The word ' par ty\ 
 ■ occurring in Shakspeare '; instead for a man, occurs 
 * of, 'I have noticed, in Shakspeare, in Shakspeare." — p. 
 ' the word ' party ' used for an 246. 
 'individual.' But how is it that 
 you call a man 'an individual 9 ? " 
 —p. 59. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 "You say, 'While treating of 
 'the pronunciation of those who 
 1 minister in public, two other 
 
126 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 ' words occur to me which are very 
 
 ' commonly mangled by our clergy. 
 
 ' One of these is * covetous \ and its .. T , /7 . 
 
 ,,,..« , ti 1 nope r/iat some 
 
 substantive covetousness . 1 nope - 7 . 7 7 
 
 . _ J7 7 . .__ _ x oj my clerical readers 
 
 some who read mese toes will be .,, , . 1 -. 
 ,.-,,', «, . will be induced to 
 
 induced to leave on pronouncing , ^ 
 
 , , . leave on pronouncing 
 
 'them 'covetious , and 'covetious- ,-, , ,. , i 
 
 , them 'covetious and 
 
 ness . I can assure mem, that t ,. , j 
 
 _ , . „ _ covetiousness . I 
 
 ' when thev do thus call mem, one, , -, , , ] 
 
 J . . . can assure them, that 
 
 * at least, of their hearers has his , , , , ,, 
 
 . . n -, - i • -.. when they do thus 
 
 ' appreciation of their teaching dis- ^ ^ w§; , & ^ 
 
 'turbed'. I fancy that many a 
 
 one who reads these lines will have 
 
 Ms appreciation of your teaching 
 
 disturbed." — p. 62. 
 
 -p. 63. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 " Speaking of the word 'its\ you 
 say, * Its apparent occurrence in the 
 'place quoted is simply due to the 
 1 King's printers, who have modern- Struck out. 
 
 ' ised the passage '. 'Apparent occur- 
 ' rence'! It is a real occurrence. Are 
 we not to believe our eyes ? " — p. 71. 
 
 XXIY. 
 
 " As for the ' King's printers \ it 
 was not they who introduced the 
 word ' its ' into the English Bible. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 127 
 
 THE 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLTSH. 
 
 The first English Bible in which 
 the word is found, is one that was 
 printed at a time when there was « ^ n alteration by 
 
 no King on the English throne, con- ^ e printers" p. 7. 
 
 sequently when there were no 
 'King's printers': it was printed 
 during the Conimon wealth." — p. 71. 
 
 XXY. 
 
 " The following is, if intentional, 
 which I cannot believe, the boldest 
 instance of misquotation of Scrip- 
 ture, to suit a special purpose, that 
 I ever met with. You say, 'In 
 1 Numbers xii, 2, we read, ' Hath 
 ' ' the Lord only spoken by Moses ? 
 ' ' hath He not spoken also by us ? ' 
 'According to some of my cor- 
 ' respondents, and to Mr. Moon's 
 ' pamphlet, this ought to be ' Hath 
 ' ' the Lord spoken only by Moses?' 'I 
 'venture to prefer very much the 
 ' words as they stand'. Now, strange 
 as it may appear, after your asser- 
 tion, it is nevertheless a fact that the 
 words, as you quote them, do not 
 occur either in the authorised ver- 
 sion, known as King James's Bible 
 of 1611, or in our present version, 
 
128 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 THE 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 or in any other version that I have 
 ever seen; and the words, in the order 
 in which you say I and your other 
 correspondents would have written 
 them, do occur in every copy of the The Dean found 
 Scriptures to which I have referred ! another passage, 
 So you Yery much prefer the words which suited his pur- 
 as they stand, do you? Ha! Ha! pose, and he quoted 
 Ha ! So do L When next you it. — p. 143. 
 write about the adverb ' only \ be 
 sure you quote only the right pas- 
 sage of Scripture to suit your 
 purpose." — p. 73. 
 
 XXYI. 
 
 " You say, ' Though some of the 
 
 * European rulers may be females, 
 6 when spoken of altogether, they may 
 ' be correctly classified under the de- " Though some of 
 
 * nomination ' kings ' \ In this the European rulers 
 sentence, the clause which I have ma y be females, they 
 put in italics has, what our Gallic may be correctly 
 neighbours designate, * a squinting classified, when spo- 
 ' construction ', it looks two ways ken of altogether, 
 at once ; that is, it may be con- under the denomina- 
 strued as relating either to the words tion 'kings ' ". — p. 97. 
 which precede, or to those which 
 
 follow. Absurd as would be the 
 sentence, its construction is such, 
 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 129 
 
 THE 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 that we may understand yon to say, 
 6 Some of the European rulers may 
 'be females, when spoken of al- 
 4 together.' "—p. 100. 
 
 XXYIT. 
 
 " You say, * The derivation of the 
 
 * word, as ivell as the usage of the "The derivation of 
 
 1 greo,t majority of English writers, the word, as well as 
 
 ' fix the spelling the other way '. i.e. the usage of the great 
 
 This (as well as that)j^a? it! Excuse majority of English 
 
 me, but I must ask you why you writers, fixes the 
 
 write thus, even though by putting spelling the other 
 
 the question, I put you 'in a fix' way." — p. 33. 
 to answer it." — p. 104. 
 
 XXVIII. "At last we abated 
 
 "'At last we abated the nuisance the nuisance by en- 
 
 «by enacting, that in future the acting that in future 
 
 'debatable first syllable should be the first syllable 
 
 ' dropped ' ".—p. 106. should be dropped." 
 
 —p. 56. 
 
 In conclusion, allow me, Dr. Alford, to thank 
 you for the compliment which you unintentionally 
 pay me in making the foregoing alterations. It 
 must be admitted that you were wise to alter 
 your sentences ; — to turn your words right and 
 
 K 
 
130 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 left in observance of certain rules. Forgive me if 
 I smile at your quietly doing so after you had 
 advised your readers to do nothing of the sort. 
 It would have been more noble openly to have 
 acknowledged yourself to have been in error. 
 
 I now close this controversy, and take my leave 
 of you ; and, in doing so, I venture to express a 
 hope that you will never again so presume upon 
 your reputation and position as to treat an adver- 
 sary with contempt. Few persons are so exalted 
 that they can with safety be supercilious ; few are 
 so lowly that they may with impunity be despised. 
 
 I am, Eev. Sir, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 G. WASHINGTON MOOI 
 
 To The Very Eev. Henry Alford, d.d., 
 
 Dean of Canterbury. 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH 
 
 CRITICISM Xo. V. 
 
 PARALLELISMS. 
 
 Rev. Sie, 
 
 It was not my intention to say anything 
 more to you respecting the Queen's English ; but 
 happening one day to be passing a shop where 
 second-hand books are sold, and seeing one with a 
 perfectly plain cover, without any title, I had the 
 curiosity to stop and open it ; and finding that it 
 was an old Quarterly Review containing an essay 
 on ' Modern English ', I purchased it for sixpence ; 
 and I cannot resist the temptation to communicate 
 to you what I then discovered ; namely, the very 
 close resemblance which parts of that essay bear 
 to certain parts of your ' Queen's English \ I 
 looked for the date of the Review, to sea if the 
 writer had been borrowing from your book, with- 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 out acknowledgment ; but I found that the essay 
 had been published some years before your book 
 was in print. That you yourself are not the 
 author of that essay is evident, not only from the 
 fluency of style in which it is written, but also 
 from the extensive knowledge which the author 
 has of his subject. 
 
 With regard to literary parallelisms generally, I 
 can believe it to be possible that to different 
 students engaged in the same inquiry there will 
 sometimes be presented the same ideas ; but when, 
 in two wholly independent works, those ideas are 
 expressed in similar words, and are illustrated by 
 the same examples ; and when this occurs not 
 once only, nor twice only, but nearly a score of 
 times in a dozen pages, the coincidence is so 
 singular that it challenges investigation. Are we 
 to accept such facts as an astonishing instance of 
 unintentional identity of thought and illustration 
 in two writers ; or are we to believe that the later 
 writer has been too proud to acknowledge his obli- 
 gations to the earlier, though not too proud to 
 appropriate, and give forth as his own, the re- 
 flections and observations to which only the earlier 
 writer could lay claim ? 
 
 I purpose to bring together various passages from 
 
TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 133 
 
 ' Modern English ' and from € The Queen's English \ 
 and to ask you if you can give any explanation of 
 the strange concurrence of ideas observable in the 
 two works ; for although some of the parallelisms, 
 considered separately, may be thought to be not 
 very striking ; the whole, considered collectively, is, 
 beyond dispute, remarkable. That this opinion is 
 not held by me only, will be apparent from the 
 following quotation from 'The Saturday Review'. — 
 " There is such a striking likeness between many 
 " of the Dean's remarks and illustrations and some 
 " w r hich have appeared in our own pages, that we 
 " can hardly speak a good word for Dean Alford 
 " without at the same time speaking it for ourselves. 
 " To be sure we do not stand alone in this incidental 
 " likeness. We think w r e could point to an article 
 " in a Quarterly Eeview which has since ' ceased to 
 " ' exist ', the likeness between which and Dean 
 " Alford's ' Plea ' is more striking still/' Need I 
 tell you that the book which I purchased, and that 
 to which the foregoing quotation refers, is the last 
 number that was published of * Bentley's Quarterly 
 1 Review ' ? Very few copies are now T to be met 
 with : but perhaps the author of ' Modern English ' 
 will be induced to issue a reprint of that excellent 
 essay. It ought to be read by every student of 
 
134 THE DEANS ENGLISH. 
 
 the language. Whether its re-appearance would, 
 by you personally, be regarded with pleasure, or 
 not, of course I cannot doubt. If it had never before 
 come under your notice, you might be thankful to 
 have the opportunity of carefully studying it ; for, 
 the author's thoughts and illustrations are so re- 
 markably in unison with your own, that their 
 oneness will often be a subject of mystery, even to 
 the psychologist ; while their parallel expressions 
 will make another treasure to be added to the 
 curiosities of literature. If, on the contrary, the 
 author has already befriended you in your search 
 after knowledge, you, for that reason, might be glad 
 to see his essay re-published ; as it would afford 
 you a suitable occasion on which to offer an 
 apology for your past silence respecting a great 
 obligation ; a silence which I suppose we must, in 
 very charity, attribute to forgetfulness. 
 
 I am, Eev. Sir, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 G. WASHINGTON MOON. 
 
EXTRACTS FEOM 
 
 'MODERN ENGLISH', 
 
 AN ESSAY IN 
 
 ' Bentley's Quarterly Keview ', Yol. II. p. 518-542. 
 
 Learning to read is said to be the hardest of human 
 acquirements. Nothing, indeed, could make us doubt 
 the truth of the saying, except that so many people who 
 succeed in mastering this greatest of difficulties break 
 down in attempting the easier branches of knowledge 
 which follow. To judge by experience, the hardest and 
 rarest of all these later achievements would seem to be 
 that of writing one's mother tongue. In these days, to 
 be sure, everybody writes. But when we have got thus 
 far, a fearful thought comes in, — How do we write ? 
 We all write English, but what sort of English? Can 
 our sentences be construed? Do our words really 
 mean what we wish them to ? Of the vast mass of Eng- 
 lish which is written and printed, how much is really 
 clear and straightforward, free alike from pedantry, from 
 affectation, and from vulgarity? — Modern English, p. 518. 
 Of the many lines of thought which the prevalent 
 
136 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 vices of style open to us, there is one which we wish to 
 work out at rather greater length. It is that which 
 relates to language in the strictest sense — to the choice 
 of words. The good old Macedonian rule of calling a 
 spade a spade finds but few followers among us. The one 
 great rule of the * high-polite style ' is to call a spade 
 anything but a spade. — Modem English, p. 525. 
 
 Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of 
 manual husbandry. — Queen's English, p. 278. 
 
 The shrinking from the plain honest speech of our 
 Teutonic forefathers is ludicrous beyond everything. A 
 public officer, from a prime minister to a post-office clerk, 
 would be ashamed to send forth a despatch which a Dane, 
 a German, or a Dutchman would recognize as written in 
 a speech akin to his mother tongue. — Modem English, 
 p. 526. 
 
 What are the rules we ought to follow in the choice of 
 words ? They seem to us to be very simple. Speak or 
 write plain straightforward English, avoiding the affecta- 
 tion of slang or of technicality on the one hand, and the 
 affectation of purism and archaic diction on the other. 
 The history of our mixed language seems to furnish us 
 with two very sound principles : Never use a Romance 
 word when a Teutonic one will do as well; — Modem Eng- 
 lish, p. 529. 
 
 Never use a long word where a short one will do. — Queen's 
 English, p. 278* 
 
 but on the other hand, Never scruple to use a Romance 
 word when the Teutonic word will not do so well. 
 
 * The Dean, with his usual inconsistency, speaks in a recent number of 
 'The Contemporary Review* [Vol. I, p. 438] of a " clirononhotonthologos" 
 of hymns. Poor wretched, lumbago- stricken beast of a word ! Every 
 joint in its long back groans out " .' " 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 137 
 
 As Sir "Walter Scott, and so many after him, remarked, 
 we still have to go to the Norman for our dressed meats. 
 — Modern English, p. 531. 
 
 We all remember that Gurth and Wamba complain in 
 'Ivanhoe'" that the farm animals, as long as they [? the 
 farm animals] had the toil of tending them [? Gurth and 
 Wamba] were called by the Saxoa and British names, ox, 
 sheep, calf, pig ; but when they were cooked and brought to 
 table, their invaders [? the invaders of the pigs] enjoyed 
 them under Norman and Latin names. — Queen's English, 
 p. 243. 
 
 Our language is one essentially Teutonic; the whole 
 skeleton of it is thoroughly so ; all its grammatical forms, 
 all the pronouns, particles, & :., without which a sentence 
 cannot be put together; all the most necessary nouns 
 and verbs, the names of the commonest objects, the ex- 
 pressions of the simplest emotions are still identical with 
 that old mother-tongue whose varying forms lived on the 
 lips of Arminius and of Hengist, &c. — Modern English, 
 p. 529. 
 
 Almost all its older and simpler ideas, both for things and 
 acts, are expressed by Saxon words. — Queen's English, p. 242. 
 
 But the moment you get upon anything in the least 
 degree abstract or technical, you cannot write a sentence 
 without using Romance words in every line. — Modern 
 English, p. 530. 
 
 »AU its vehicles of abstract thought and science were 
 clothed in a Latin garb. — Queen s English, p. 243. 
 
 We have the two elements, the original stock and the 
 infusion ; we must be content to use both ; the only thing 
 is to learn to use each in its proper place. — Modern Eng- 
 lish, p. 530. 
 
138 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 It would be mere folly in a man to attempt to confine him- 
 self to one or other of these main branches of the language. 
 — Queen's English, p. 243. 
 
 The whole literature of notices, advertisements, and 
 handbills — no small portion of our reading in these days 
 — seems to have declared war to the knife against every 
 trace of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. — Modern Eng- 
 lish, p. 527. 
 
 Our journals seem indeed determined to banish our com- 
 mon Saxon words altogether.— Queen s English, p. 245. 
 
 There are a few words which will obstinately stick 
 to their places : 'of and ' and ' ' in 9 and * out \ ' you 9 , 
 i I\ and 'they 9 , 'is 9 and 'was 9 and 'shall 9 , and a few 
 more of the like kind, seem to have made up their 
 minds not to move. But ' man 9 , ' woman \ ' child 9 , and 
 ' house 9 have already become something like archaisms. — 
 Modern English, p. 527. 
 
 You never read in them of a man, or a woman, or a child. 
 — Queen's English, p. 245. 
 
 What ens rationis of any spirit would put up with 
 being called ' a man \ when he can add four more 
 syllables to his account of himself, and be spoken of as 
 1 cm individual 9 ? The man is clean gone, quite wiped 
 out ; his place is filled up by ' individuals ', ' gentlemen 9 , 
 ' characters \ and 'parties \ — Modern English, p. 527. 
 
 A 'man' is an ' individual' ', or a 'person', or a 'party'. 
 — Queen's English, p, 245. 
 
 The ' woman \ who in times past was the ' man 9 s ' wife, 
 has vanished still more completely. In all * high-polite ' 
 writing, it is a case of ' Oh no, we never mention her/ 
 The law of euphemisms is somewhat capricious ; one 
 
THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 139 
 
 cannot always tell which words are decent and which are 
 not. The ' coiv ' may be spoken of with perfect propriety 
 in the most refined circles : in this case it is the male 
 animal which is not fit to be mentioned ; at least, Ameri- 
 can delicacy requires that he should be spoken of as a 
 * gentleman coiv '. But the female of ' horse ' is doubtful, 
 that of ' dog ' is wholly proscribed. When the existence 
 of such a creature must be hinted at, ' lady dog ' supplies 
 a parallel formula to ' gentleman cow '. And it really 
 seems as if the old-fashioned feminine of 'man 9 were fast 
 getting proscribed in like manner. 
 
 We, undiscerning male creatures that we are, might 
 have thought that ' woman ' was a more elegant and more 
 distinctive title than 'female \ — Modem English, p. 527. 
 A ' woman' is a 4 female '. — Queen's English, p. 246. 
 
 We read only the other day a report of a lecture on the 
 poet Crabbe, in which she who was afterwards Mrs. 
 Crabbe was spoken of as ' a female to whom he had formed 
 ' an attachment \ To us, indeed, it seems that a man's 
 wife should be spoken of in some way which is not equally 
 applicable to a ewe lamb or to a favourite mare. — Modern 
 English, p. 527. 
 
 Why should a ' woman' be degraded from her position as 
 a rational being, and be expressed [sic] by a word which 
 might belong to any animal tribe ? — Queen's English, p. 246. 
 
 But it was a 'female' who delivered the lecture, and we 
 suppose the 'females 1 know best about their own affairs. 
 It is true, 'female * is not our only choice : there are 
 also ' ladies ' in abundance, and a still more remarkable 
 class of ' young persons \ Why a ' young person ' in- 
 variably means a young ivomau is a great mystery, 
 especially as we believe an ' old person ' may be of either 
 sex. — Modem English, p. 527. 
 
140 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 A 'woman' is, if unmarried, a 'young person ', which 
 expression, in the newspapers, is always of the feminine 
 gender. — Queen's English, p. 246. 
 
 Men and women being no more, it is only natural that 
 ' children ' should follow them. There are no longer any 
 
 * boys ' and ' girls 9 ; there are instead * young gentlemen \ 
 
 * young ladies \ 'juveniles ', 'juvenile members of the 
 ' community 9 . — Modem English, p. 527. 
 
 A 'child' is a 'juvenile'. — Queen's English, p. 246. 
 
 ' Houses \ too, have disappeared along with those who 
 used to live in them. A 'man 9 and a ' woman 9 used to 
 
 * live 9 in a * house '; but an * individual 9 , or a 'party \ 
 when he has conducted to the 'hymeneal altar 9 the young 
 'female 9 , to whom he has 'formed an attachment ', cannot 
 possibly do less than take her to * reside 9 in a ' residence \ 
 A ' house ' ! there is no such thing : there is the genus 
 
 * residence 9 , divided into the several species of 'mansion 9 , 
 ' villa residence ', ' cottage residence ', and * tenement \ — 
 Modern English, p. 528. 
 
 A man going home is set down as * an individual ' pro- 
 ceeding to his 'residence'. — Queen's English, p. 248. 
 
 England used to be studded with * inns ' — inns where 
 it was said that one used to get one's warmest welcome. 
 ISTow, there are no such things : to be sure, there are 
 
 * hotels 9 , which do not contain a single ' room 9 , but which 
 are full of ' apartments \ — Modem English, p. 528. 
 
 No one lives in 'rooms' hut always in 'apartments'. — 
 Queen's English, p. 248. 
 
 As man and his dwelling-place exist no longer, it is no 
 wonder that all the sorts and conditions of men to whom 
 one was used are now to be traced no longer. * Lords 9 
 and * nobles ' have made way for an 'aristocracy 9 of whom 
 
THE DEAJSTS ENGLISH. 141 
 
 the law of England knows nothing; and the whole 
 commons of this realm, who once were * the people of 
 ' England,' have now sunk into ' the million ', and * the 
 
 * masses '. A ' shop ' is an ' establishment '; and to * take 
 a walk' is to 'promenade 9 . Our 'landowners' are 'pro- 
 prietors ', our 'farmers' and 'yeomen' are 'agriculturists' , 
 and the * working man ', who toils in the sweat of his 
 brow, is content to cease to have a substantive being at 
 all, and to be spoken of, like a metaphysical abstraction, 
 as an ' operative '.—Modern English, p. 528. 
 
 One form of the vice of which we complain is the 
 fashion of using purely abstract nouns, just because they 
 are longer and stranger, to express very simple things. 
 
 * Locality ', for instance, is a good philosophical term, but 
 it is an intolerable barbarism when used as a mere 
 synonym for 'place'. — Modern English, p. 528. 
 
 We never hear of a 'place', it is always a 'locality'. — 
 Queen's English, p. 248. 
 
 ' Celebrity ', again, may pass as an abstract term ; it is 
 a mere vulgarism when used of a celebrated person. 
 Then, again, there is the mere affectation of grandeur 
 which makes a maid- of- all- work talk of her ' situation ', 
 a house-agent talk of his ' clients ', and a schoolmaster 
 dub himself * Principal of a Collegiate Institution \ In 
 short, this sort of slang pursues us from our cradles to 
 our graves. The unfortunate 'party' or 'individual', 
 when at last he is removed from his earthly ' residence ', 
 cannot, like his fathers, be ' buried ' in a * church-yard ' or 
 ' burying -ground '; some * company ' with ' Limited Ida- 
 ' bility ' is ready to * inter ' him in a ' cemetery ' or in a 
 ' metropolitan necropolis '. — Modern English, p. 538. 
 
 Let us take another word used nearly like 'indi- 
 ' vidua!', though its use is, what that of 'individual', 
 
142 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 we fear, hardly is, still felt as distinctively a vulgarism. 
 This is 'party \ Here is a technical term, thoroughly 
 good in its proper place, abused into a vile piece of slang. 
 — Modern English, p. 537. . 
 
 The word 'party' for a man is especially offensive. — 
 
 Queen's English, p. 246. 
 
 There is something very like it in our version of the 
 Book of Tobit, vi, 7. * We must make a smoke thereof 
 ' before the man or the woman, and the party shall be no 
 ' more vexed '. — Modern English, p. 537. 
 
 Strange to say, the use is not altogether modern. It occurs 
 in the English version of the apocryphal book of Tobit, vi, 
 7. l If [a devil or] an evil spirit trouble any, one [? we] 
 * must make a smoke thereof before the man or the woman, 
 ' and the party shall be no more vexed'. — Queen's English, 
 p. 246* 
 
 A witness, we remember, in the famous Waterloo 
 Bridge and carpet-bag mystery, ' saw a short party go 
 ■ over the bridge \ A 'short party 9 , if it meant anything, 
 might mean a political leader with a small following. 
 But the witness hardly meant that he saw three or four 
 statesmen of peculiar views go over the bridge, inasmuch 
 as the * short party ', if we rightly remember, turned out 
 to be one woman. — Modern English, p. 537. 
 
 Curious is the idea raised in one's mind by hearing of a 
 short party going over the bridge. — Queen's English, p. 247. 
 
 *The reader will perceive that the Dean, by quoting only a part 
 of the previous clause in the verse, has, virtually, misquoted the passage. 
 According to the Dean's version, a smoke is to be made of the evil spirit! 
 If that be so, might not Mrs. Glass's advice be useful ? — " First catch 
 your hare". The Dean makes nonsense of the words; the verse really 
 runs thus ; — " And he said unto him, Touching the heart and the liver, if 
 " a devil or an evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof " 
 — &c. G. W. M. 
 
TEE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 143 
 
 So much for nouns, we will now try a verb or two. No 
 word can be better in its place than to ' inquire \ but it is 
 a strange abuse of language to employ it when you 
 simply mean to ' ash \ Ask a waiter — waiters are, beyond 
 all doubt, the greatest masters of the 'high-polite style ' — 
 any sort of question, the time of a train, or the chance 
 of a dinner, and he always answers * Til inquire \ JSTow, 
 in the English language, to ' inquire ' implies a much 
 more formal and lengthy business than merely to ' ash \ 
 A Commission, say at Wakefield or at Gloucester, ' in- 
 
 * quires ' into something, and, in the course of so doing, 
 
 * asks ' a great many particular questions. But in the 
 other cases, if you use ' inquire ' indiscriminately for 
 ' ask ', you destroy its special force in its proper place. — 
 Modern English, p. 538.* 
 
 i Inquire \ however, is harmless compared with another 
 verb, whose abuse is one of the most marked signs of the 
 style we complain of. Those who call ' men ' ' indivi- 
 ' duals ' are sure to ' allude to 9 them instead of speaking 
 of them. Here, again, a thoroughly good word is per- 
 verted. To ' allude to ' a thing is to speak of it darkly, 
 
 * If the Dean, instead of wasting his time in a fruitless attempt 
 to teach English, had turned his attention to the study of Hebrew, of 
 which he is confessedly ignorant notwithstanding that as " a dignitary of 
 "the church" he is "set for the defence of the gospel" and therefore 
 ought to be "throughly furnished unto all good works ", he would have 
 been able to render good service to the cause of truth by demonstrating 
 that the alleged contradiction between 1 Samuel xxviii, 6, and 1 Chroni- 
 cles x, 14, is apparent only, and not real. The words which in those two 
 passages are translated "inquired" are, in the original, very different, 
 the one from the other. There is no contradiction. Saul asked, but he 
 did not inquire, and therefore "the Lord answered him not". An impor- 
 tant lesson, quite worthy of a Dean's teaching, is treasured in the 
 apparent incongruity, — " he inquired", and yet, "he inquired not." "Ye 
 " shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your 
 "heart.'* G. W. M. 
 
144 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 to hint at it without any direct mention. To use it in 
 any other way is to lose the use of a good word in its 
 proper place. But suppose a letter goes wrong in the 
 Post-office, and you write to St. Martin' s-le- Grand to 
 complain. The invariable beginning of the official reply 
 is to tell you the fate of the letter you allude to in your 
 letter of such a date, though you have most likely 
 alluded to nothing, but have told your story straightfor- 
 wardly without hint or ' innuendo ' of any kind. — 
 Modern English ', p. 539. 
 
 1 Allude to ' is used in a new sense by our journals, and not 
 only by them, but also by the Government Offices. If I have 
 to complain to the Post Office that a letter legibly directed 
 to me at Canterbury has been missent to Caermarthen I get 
 a regular red-tape reply, beginning c The letter alluded, to by 
 you '. Now I did not ' allude to* the letter at all; I men- 
 tioned it as plainly as I could. — Queen's English, p. 253. 
 
 We have now done. If the English language goes to 
 the dogs, it will not be for want of our feeble protest. 
 We believe that to preserve our mother-tongue in its purity 
 is a real duty laid upon every man who is called upon to 
 speak or to write it. We do not at all write in the interest 
 of any sort of archaism or affectation. We ask only for 
 pure and straightforward English, rejecting neither 
 element of our mixed language, but using the words 
 supplied by both, in their proper places and in their 
 proper meaning. We ask for English free from all trace 
 of the cant and slang of this or that school or clique or 
 profession; for a language neither 'provincial' nor 
 ' metropolitan ' — English which is at once intelligible to 
 the unlearned, and which will yet endure the searching 
 criticism of the scholar. — Modern English, p. 542. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 A Criticism from 'The Churchman.' 
 
 We scarcely know whether to look upon the labours of 
 Dean Alford in the cause of our language as a loss or as a 
 gain. In many ways his remarks on the Queen's English 
 must have been attended with good results. The wide 
 circulation which they obtained, when first published in 
 1 Good Words ', has caused a vast number of persons to 
 pay far more attention to this much-neglected subject 
 than they had ever done before. Many have been brought 
 for the first time to bestow a serious attention on their 
 mother-tongue, and to see that the consideration of the 
 words in which their thoughts are clothed is a matter of 
 no small moment, and furnishes a true test of a nation's 
 character and progress. In these papers they have been 
 warned against the use of mean and slipshod English, 
 against an affected and unnatural style, and, in fact, 
 against most of the faults which mar the language of the 
 present day, and which may be found so abundant in the 
 columns of the periodical press, and in the conversation 
 of half-educated persons. On the other hand, the Dean 
 has set an evil example by rendering the standard of 
 right and wrong in language more wavering and un- 
 certain thanever : custom, according to him, is the only 
 
 L 
 
146 APPENDIX. 
 
 court of appeal, and the laws of grammar are to be left 
 to pedants and pedagogues. If this is to be the case, it 
 seems hopeless to bring many of those, who habitually 
 break the laws of language, to a sense of their short- 
 comings. They have been brought up from their birth 
 amongst persons who commit the same faults, and they 
 are unable to see the nature of these faults. If referred 
 to the laws of grammar, they appeal to the authority of 
 Dean Alford to show that it is pedantic to be guided by 
 grammarians; if referred to the custom of educated 
 persons, they maintain their own experience against that 
 of their reprovers, and declare that their own usage is 
 the customary one, and that the one recommended to 
 them is contrary to custom. 
 
 Amongst the paradoxical statements of Dean Alford, 
 we have selected some of the most prominent for com- 
 ment. At the time of the first appearance of these 
 papers, a great, and, in our opinion, not unreasonable, 
 outcry was made against the sanctioning of the phrase, 
 " It is me ". The Dean brings forth Dr. Latham in support 
 of his opinion, and refers us to the following extract from 
 that gentleman's ' History of the English Language': — 
 
 "We may call the word me a secondary nominative, inas- 
 much as such phrases as It is me — It is I, are common. To call 
 such expressions incorrect English, is to assume the point. No one 
 says that c 'est moi is j^ad French, and c'est je is good. The fact 
 is, that with us the whole question is a question of degree. Has or 
 has not the custom been sufficiently prevalent to have transferred 
 the forms me, ye, and you, from one case to another ? Or perhaps 
 we may say, is there any real custom at all in favour of J, except 
 so far as the grammarians have made one ? It is clear that the 
 French analogy is against it. It is also clear that the personal pro- 
 noun as a predicate may be in a different analogy from the personal ' 
 pronoun as a subject ". 
 
APPENDIX. 147 
 
 We have great respect for Dr. Latham's learning, but 
 in a matter like the present we cannot submit to his 
 authority. Modern writers on language, when treating 
 of well-known words and phrases, are often apt to seek 
 opportunities for displaying their own ingenuity in giv- 
 ing unusal explanations of them, and Dr. Latham is by 
 no means free from a partiality for crotchets of this kind. 
 There is no analogy between English and French in this 
 matter. It is a peculiarity of the French language that 
 each pair of words which represents the different cases 
 of the singular personal pronouns in other languages is 
 in French represented by three words instead of two. I, 
 me — -je, me, moi; thou, thee — tu, te, toi; he, him — il, le, 
 fori. Moi, toi, lui, are used as nominative cases when 
 coming after the verb. If Dr. Latham's reasoning is 
 right, that because we have in French c'est moi, not c'est 
 je, therefore, it is right to say in English, " it is me ", not 
 "it is I": then it follows that because we say c'est toi, 
 not c'est tu, c'est lui, not c'est il, it is right to say "it is 
 "thee", "it is him", or "her". It seems to us as bad 
 grammar to say, "it is me", in English, as c'est me in 
 French. He further says that "when constructions are 
 "predicative, a change is what we must expect rather 
 "than be surprised at" We see this change of con- 
 struction in French, when the pronouns are predicative, 
 because each pronoun has three distinct forms, but as 
 English, together with the rest of the European languages 
 (with which we are acquainted), has only two forms 
 of personal pronouns, therefore the change cannot take 
 place when the construction is predicative. Another rea- 
 son given by Dr. Latham for the usuage is, that me is 
 not the proper, but only the adopted, accusative of J, 
 "being in faot a distinct and independent form of the 
 
 L 2 
 
148 APPENDIX. 
 
 "personal pronoun ". We do not see why, because me is 
 the adopted accusative of J, it should become " a second- 
 " ary nominative ". All the European languages of which 
 we have any knowledge have an adopted accusative for 
 the first person singular, but we do not find in them 
 any traces of its being used as a secondary nominative 
 (though it may appear so in French) ; why, then, are we 
 to grant this license to English, merely to gratify a care- 
 less habit which may easily be corrected? We now come 
 to consider Dean Alford's own remarks on these three 
 little words. He seems to think that the reason for the 
 substitution of me for J is a shrinking from obtruding 
 our own personality;* and endeavours to confirm his 
 view by referring to an instance of the contrary practice 
 in the well-known passage : — 
 
 "He said unto them, ' It is I, be not afraid '. This is a capital 
 instance ; for it shows us at once why the nominative should be 
 sometimes used. The Majesty of the Speaker here, and his pur- 
 pose of re- assuring the disciples by the assertion that it was none 
 other than Himself, at once point out to us the case in which it 
 would be proper for the nominative, and not the accusative, to be 
 used". 
 
 # "This shrinking from the use of the personal pronoun, this 
 authophoby, as it may be called, is not indeed a proof of the 
 modesty it is designed to indicate ; any more than the hydrophobia 
 is a proof that there is no thirst in the constitution. On the con- 
 trary, it rather hetrays a morbidly sensitive self-consciousness." 
 
 " So far indeed is the anxiety to suppress the personal pronoun 
 from being a sure criterion of humility, that there is frequently a 
 ludicrous contrast between the conventional generality of our lan- 
 guage and the egotism of the sentiments expressed in it." 
 
 " Modesty must dwell within, in the heart ; and a brief I is the 
 modestest, most natural, simplest word I can use." * Guesses at 
 Truth,' pp. 142, 148, 150. 
 
APPENDIX. 149 
 
 We will venture to say that the sole reason which the 
 translators of the Bible had for writing " it is I " in this 
 verse, was because they considered it the proper gram- 
 matical phrase, and "it is me" ungrammatical. How 
 would Dean Alford account for the two following verses, 
 Matt, xxvi, 22, 25, " And they were exceeding sorrowful, 
 " and began every one of them to say unto Him, Lord, is 
 "it I ? " " Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered 
 "and said, "Master, is it I?" Certainly, according to 
 the Dean's reasoning, we ought in each case to have, "Is 
 " it me ? " but there is no trace of such a usage through- 
 out the Bible. 
 
 Dean Alford asks the question, " What are we to think 
 " of the question whether than does or does not govern 
 " an accusative case ?" — 
 
 "The fact is, that there are two ways of constructing a clause 
 with a comparative and ' than '. You may say either ' than I' or 
 1 thorn me'. If you say the former, you use what is called an 
 elliptical expression, i.e. an expression in which something is left 
 out— and that something is the verb ' am' . ' He is wiser than I', 
 being filled out, would be, 'He is wiser than I am'. 'He is wiser 
 than me ' is the direct and complete construction". 
 
 We agree that there are two ways of constructing the 
 clause — a right way and a wrong way. "He is wiser 
 "than I" is right. "He is wiser than me" is wrong. 
 There is no occasion to make use of an ellipse at all. 
 Than is a conjunction, and, therefore, cannot govern 
 an accusative case, as it is a fundamental rule of all 
 languages that conjunctions should couple like cases. We 
 cannot see in what way " He is wiser than me " can be 
 more complete than "He is wiser than I". Again, we 
 find the rule laid down by the Dean, that, when solemnity 
 is required, the construction in the nominative is used- 
 
150 APPENDIX. 
 
 and he quotes John xiv, 28, " My father is greater than 
 I ". This would be of some weight if he could bring a 
 single instance in which than of itself governed an accu- 
 sative in a case where solemnity was not required, but we 
 do not think that he will find one in the Bible. In Gen. 
 xxxix, 8, Joseph says to Potiphar's wife, " Behold, my 
 master knoweth not what is with me in the house, and 
 " he hath committed all that he hath to my hand ; there 
 "is none greater in the house than I; neither hath 
 " he kept back ", &c. We cannot suppose that the trans- 
 lators wished to represent Joseph as attaching any 
 solemnity to the words " there is none greater than I ", 
 which are introduced in the middle of a long sentence. 
 The reason for their occurring thus is because the trans- 
 lators knew that the phrase, "there is none greater than 
 "me", is entirely ungrammatical. Dean Alford considers 
 that the invariable use of " than whom ", instead of "than 
 " who ", is a proof that than governs an accusative case, 
 as in ' Paradise Lost', ii. 299: — 
 
 " Which, when Beelzebub perceived, than whom, 
 
 " Satan except, none higher sat '*. 
 We quite agree that, to say " than who ", would be in- 
 tolerable in this instance to most ears, but we do not 
 consider that this single anomalous expression is enough 
 to warrant us in saying that "than" takes the accusative. 
 The expressions " than whom ", " than which ", are very 
 sparingly used in writing, and never in ordinary con- 
 versation. Probably the first person who wrote "than 
 " whom ", did so in ignorance of the rules of grammar, 
 and the error was so perpetuated by his coypists that it 
 became a settled usage. Another explanation of it is, 
 that the " m " was added for the sake of euphony. How- 
 ever that may be, we cannot allow that one anomaly of 
 
APPENDIX. 151 
 
 this kind can justify us in going counter to the grammar 
 and usage of all languages. 
 
 As is a word of precisely the same character as than : 
 would Dean Alford defend the vulgarisms, " I am as tall 
 " as him ", " He is as tall as me " ? * 
 
 A correspondent has kindly sent us a well-known ex- 
 ample of the latter usage from one of our standard 
 poets : — 
 
 "The nations not so blest as thee 
 
 " Must in their turn to tyrants fall, 
 " Whilst thou shalt flourish, great and free, 
 "The dread and envy of them all." 
 
 Thomson's ' Rule Britannia.' 
 
 In our opinion the first line of this stanza is utterly 
 indefensible. 
 
 The Dean upholds the use of the verb " to leave ", in a 
 neuter, or, as he bids us term it, an absolute sense. He 
 defends the sentence " I shall not leave before December 
 1 " on the ground that the verb is still active, but the 
 object is still suppressed. We deny that to " leave " is 
 here used in an active sense ; it is synonymous with " to 
 " go away ", " depart ", &c, which are neuter verbs. The 
 Dean brings forward the instances of the verbs "to read" 
 and " to write ", *as though they were analogous cases, 
 because they may be used at will either transitively or 
 intransitively. These verbs, however, themselves express 
 an occupation, just as much as to run, to sit, or to stand. 
 If we wish to know how any one is spending his time, it 
 is a sufficient answer to say " He is reading " ; if we are 
 aware of that fact, and wish to know what is the object 
 of his study, then we must use the verb transitively, and 
 say, "He is reading 'The Queen's English'", or any other 
 
 *Yes. See ir Tlie Queen s English', 2nd edition, page 160.— G.W.M. 
 
152 APPENDIX. 
 
 book. " To read " has become to all of us a complete no- 
 tion ; " to leave " is not so ; and, as we said before, must 
 be used as an equivalent for to depart, or go away, in the 
 phrase quoted. This is an unnecessary extension of its 
 signification, and as all such extensions give rise to more 
 or less ambiguity, they should be avoided. The use of a 
 verb in an intransitive as well as a transitive sense must 
 always be a matter depending entirely on authority. 
 Such a use of "to leave " was ignored formerly, and has 
 arisen only within comparatively few years from the care- 
 lessness of slipshod speakers and writers. In the present 
 day it is eschewed by good writers of English; by others 
 it is used invariably, but quite unnecessarily, in a neuter 
 sense. 
 
 In Dr. Alford's objections to the restrictions placed by 
 grammarians on the words first and last, former and latter, 
 he makes the following remarks : — 
 
 " * First ' is unavoidably used of that one in a series with which 
 we begin, whatever be the number which follow ; whether many or 
 few. Why should not last be used of that one in a series with 
 which we end, whatever be the number which preceeded, whether 
 many or few?" 
 
 We should have thought that the answer was quite 
 evident. First has two meanings; it stands for the 
 superlative of the comparative former, and for the ordinal 
 corresponding to the cardinal number one. Last is used 
 only as the superlative of latter ; it cannot, therefore, be 
 ever used in numerical statements. In speaking of a 
 book in two volumes, which are numbered 1 and 2, we 
 refer to the 1st or the 2nd volume ; but 1st is not here the 
 same as first, the superlative of former. This is easily 
 shown in the case of most of our large public schools, 
 where the 6th form is the first, and the 1st form the last 
 
APPENDIX. 153 
 
 in the school. If we had such a word as onefh to stand as 
 the ordinal of one, we should say that the sixth form is 
 the first, and the oneth the last ; as it is, we are obliged 
 to make first do duty in each case. 
 
 We do not agree theoretically with the Dean's remarks 
 on the aspiration of the "h" in humble, though practi- 
 cally we think it advisable to follow the growing usage of 
 the day, and sound the " h ". It was formerly almost as 
 common to say umble as it is to say onour and (hjour. In 
 regard to the words " ospital" 9 "erb", and "umble", our 
 author says that all of them are "very offensive, but the 
 "last of them by far the worst, especially when heard 
 " from officiating Clergymen ". We believe that the 
 reason why the Clergy have so commonly adopted the 
 practice of sounding the " h " in humble, is because edu- 
 cated persons cannot endure the idea of its being said of 
 them that they drop their "h's"; directly, therefore, 
 the custom became prevalent of aspirating humble, the 
 Clergy at once took it up. It will be the same as soon as 
 it becomes at all usual to sound the "h " in honour, hon- 
 esty, &c. We deny that " umble and hearty no man can 
 "pronounce without a pain in his throat"; it is just as 
 easy to pronounce as " under heaven ". 
 
 There are many other remarks in this work with which 
 we cannot agree, but we have no wish to weary our readers 
 with further criticisms on this somewhat dry subject. 
 
 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 A Criticism from Routledge's Magazine. 
 
 The study of language is one of the most instructive 
 and, at the same time, one of the most interesting occu- 
 pations with which we can employ ourselves ; and, in the 
 
154 APPENDIX. 
 
 present age of advanced education, it is absolutely 
 necessary for everybody to obtain a knowledge of his 
 own language, and to read, speak, and write it in accord- 
 ance with the known rules on the subject. However well 
 taught a man may be in other branches of study, he will 
 never make his way in the world unless he can speak 
 correctly, since correct speaking is, as it were, the out- 
 ward attribute of the gentleman, and the one by which 
 his other qualifications are judged. 
 
 The Dean is evidently not a graceful writer of English, 
 as he is sure to have put forth all his strength in the 
 composition of a book on language. This strength, how- 
 ever, seems to consist in devising the most unnatural 
 manner of writing good English, and in violating some 
 of Lord Karnes's most important rules with regard to 
 words expressing things connected in thought being 
 placed as near together as possible. 
 
 * The Queen's English,' we must state, professes to be a 
 reprint from a widely circulated periodical entitled ' Good 
 ' Words,' and the subject is said to be * presented to the 
 1 public in a considerably altered form.' 
 
 This is strictly true, for, having compared the reprint 
 with the original articles, we are able to compliment the 
 Dean on the many judicious alterations he has made; 
 thanks, perhaps, to the suggestions given by a gentle- 
 man styled, in a country paper, " a knight, bearing on 
 " his shield the emblem of the lunar orb ", and other 
 lovers of pure English who have considered that the 
 reverend grammarian has in some way denied the pure 
 well of English. 
 
 Sitting down with the book,* and the volume of * Good 
 i Words ' for 1863 before us, we note no great difference 
 * Second Edition. 
 
APPENDIX. 155 
 
 until we come to the following expression : " The Queen 
 "is of course no more the proprietor of the English lan- 
 guage than you or J" — (see 'Good Words'), but in the 
 volume we have "than any one of us." Why this change? 
 On page 152 of the book we read: "What are we to think 
 "of the question, whether 'than' does or does not govern 
 "an accusative case? 'than I': 'than me': which is 
 "right ? My readers will probably answer without hesita- 
 " tion, the former. But is the latter so certainly wrong ? 
 " We are accustomed to hear it stigmatized as being so ; 
 " but, I think, erroneously, Milton writes, 'Paradise Lost,' 
 "ii, 299 — 
 
 " ' Which when Beelzebub perceived, than xvhom, 
 Satan except, none higher sat.' 
 
 "And thus every one of us would speak: 'than who', 
 " would be intolerable. And this seems to settle the qicestion." 
 So the Dean thinks. We, however, do not. Poetry 
 is not often considered a high authority on matters of 
 grammatical construction, although the Dean seems to 
 think it should be, since this is the only instance of 
 "than" governing the accusative that he deigns to cite: 
 besides, it is evident that in many cases, the employment 
 of the accusative instead of the nominative, gives to the 
 sentence another meaning, thus : 
 
 1 He likes you better than me. 
 
 2 He likes you better than I. 
 
 Surely it is manifest to everybody that the first form 
 means that he likes you better than [he likes] me, and 
 that the latter means, he likes you better than I [like 
 you] ; and yet our Dean in an authoritative manner says, 
 that you may say either "than I", or "than me", but 
 that the former should be used only when solemnity is 
 required, as " My Father is greater than I." 
 
156 APPENDIX. 
 
 Is solemnity required when mention is made of the 
 Queen in regard to her proprietorship of the English 
 language ? We trow not. Why, then, does our Dean lay 
 down a rule, and break it on the first page of his Essays? 
 This reflection seems to have occurred to the mind of the 
 author, who probably in his reprint weighed with care 
 every expression he made use of. This at any rate seems 
 the only reason why he should alter "than you or J" to 
 " than any one of us" and thus screen himself under an 
 expression which fits either rule. 
 
 Let us pause for a short time and note what some 
 authorities write about this conjunction. Lowth is of 
 opinion that such forms as " thou art wiser than me " are 
 bad grammar. Mr. E. F. Graham, in his excellent book 
 on English style, quotes the objective case after "than" 
 as a downright grammatical error, whilst our old friend 
 Lindley Murray devotes a page and a half to the dis- 
 cussion of this question, and, after citing the lines of 
 Milton just quoted, concludes his notice by saying, " The 
 "phrase than whom, is, however, avoided by the best 
 " modern writers ". The crowning point of all, however, 
 is that the very author whom Dean Alford quotes in 
 support of his theory, says in the first book of ' Paradise 
 'Lost':— 
 
 u What matter where, if I be still the same. 
 And what I should be, all but less than he?'* 
 
 Near the end of a paragraph in the first Essay occurs 
 the following sentence, which is omitted in the book : — 
 "And I really don't wish to be dull; so please, dear 
 " reader, to try and not think me so." 
 
 It was wise, indeed, on the Dean's part, to omit this 
 sentence in his book, for probably it contains the worst 
 mistake he has made. Try and think, indeed ! Try to 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 think, we can understand. Fancy saying " the dear 
 "reader tries and thinks me so"; for, mind, a conjunc- 
 tion is used only to connect words, and can govern no 
 case at all. However, as the Dean has not allowed this 
 to appear in his book, we refrain from alluding further to it. 
 
 As the Dean admits that his notes are for the most part 
 insulated and unconnected, we presume that we need make 
 no apology if our critical remarks happen to partake of 
 the same character; for, the reader will easily understand 
 that criticism on unconnected topics must itself also be 
 unconnected. 
 
 Who does not recollect with pleasure those dear old 
 ladies, Sairah Gamp and Betsey Prig ? " Which, altering 
 " the name to Sairah Gamp, I drink," said Mrs. Prig. 
 
 " As I write these lines, which I do while waiting in a 
 " refreshment room at Reading between a Great Western 
 "and a South Eastern train," says the Dean. It is. 
 always interesting to know the time when, and the place 
 where, great men have written their books; and we thank 
 Dean Alford for telling us where he wrote this elegant 
 sentence; but fancy, what a very small refreshment room 
 there must be at Eeading, if it stands between two trains. 
 May we venture to suggest that the sentence would have 
 been improved if " which I do ", and the words from 
 " between " to " train ", had been altogether omitted. 
 " Which you are right, my dear ", says Mrs. Harris. 
 
 On page 67 the Dean comes to that which he says must 
 form a 'principal part of his little work. The principal 
 part means, we believe, more than half of anything, but 
 as in the present work there are evidently two principal 
 parts (at least), it appears that the volume contains more 
 than the two halves. Perhaps the Dean was waiting be- 
 tween two trains in Ireland when he penned this sentence. 
 
158 APPENDIX. 
 
 With regard to the demonstrative pronouns, " this 
 " refers to the nearest person or thing, and that to the 
 " most distant", says Murray. This, however, is not Dean 
 Alford's view of the matter. 
 
 After mentioning the name Sophoenetus (and no other) 
 he writes, " Every clergyman is, or ought to be, familiar 
 " with his Greek Testament ; two minutes' reference to 
 " that will show him how every one of these names ought 
 " to be pronounced." 
 
 Who is right here — Lindley Murray or the Dean of 
 Canterbury ? Stop ! stop ! Not so fast. In theory, the 
 Dean agrees with our grammarian ; for, eleven pages 
 further on, he says, — "'this' and 'these 1 refer to persons 
 " and things present, or under immediate considera- 
 tion; 'that 9 and 'those' to persons and things not pre- 
 " sent, nor under immediate consideration." He then 
 mentions a Scottish friend, who always designates the 
 book which he has in hand as "that booh. 99 Surely this 
 Scotchman and the Dean belong to one family. 
 
 We now come with much pleasure to the last fault 
 which we have to find with Dr. Alford's book. We have 
 purposely deferred any mention of this particular sub- 
 ject until now, on the same principle as that which actu- 
 ated the schoolboy who always kept the best till the last. 
 
 On page 280 we read the following excellent remarks : — 
 
 " Avoid, likewise, ail slang words. There is no greater 
 " nuisance in society than a talker of slang. It is only fit 
 " (when innocent, which it seldom is) for raw schoolboys 
 " and one-term freshmen, to astonish their sisters with." 
 
 Of course, after expressing himself so strongly on this 
 point, it is not to be expected that, in a work on the 
 Queen's English, Dean Alford will make use of slang 
 terms. Let us see. 
 
APPENDIX. 159 
 
 On page 2, he tells us, " He bowls along it with ease in 
 " a vehicle, which a few centuries ago would have been 
 " broken to pieces in a deep rut, or [would have] come to 
 " grief in a bottomless swamp." 
 
 In the original notes the words " ivould have " were 
 omitted. One of his censors then suggested that the 
 sentence was " or would have been come to grief". On 
 page 132 of his book, the Dean defends his elliptical 
 mode of spelling : but, on page 2, by altering it, he 
 tacitly admits that he is wrong. 
 
 On page 41 he tells us about some persons who had 
 been detained by a tipple. 
 
 On page 178 we are told that the Dean and his family 
 took a trap from the inn. 
 
 And, on page 154, he writes to Mr. Moon, "If you see 
 " an old party in a shovel that will be me ". Whereas, on 
 page 245, in sneering at our journals he says, a man in 
 them is a party. Now we are persuaded that no news- 
 paper writes of a man in such vulgar language. This 
 style seems to have been left to a Dean when writing on 
 sontroversial subjects. 
 
 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 A Criticism from ' The Patriot.' 
 
 Dean Aleord has collected into a book his papers contri- 
 buted to 'Good Words ' and, of course, has subjected 
 them to a fresh and final revision. He tells us, indeed, 
 that " now, in a considerably altered form, they are pre- 
 sented to the public"; so that we may fairly regard 
 both the canons and the composition of this volume as 
 the deliberate and final setting forth of the Dean's no- 
 tions of the proprieties of the English language. No 
 
160 APPENDIX. 
 
 plea of hasty writing, such as unfortunate newspaper 
 writers, or public lecturers, or even magazine contri- 
 butors, might fitly urge, is valid here. The Dean tells us, 
 too — what we are very glad to learn, and what speaks 
 well for the Christian placability of both parties — that 
 the somewhat sharp passage of arms betwixt Mr. Moon 
 and himself has ended in an invitation to dinner and a 
 real friendship. " From antagonism we came to inter- 
 " course; and one result of the controversy I cannot 
 " regret — that it has enabled me to receive Mr. Moon as a 
 " guest, and to regard him henceforward as my friend ". 
 Will this deprive the public of the benefit of Mr. Moon's 
 criticisms upon the present volume ? We should be sorry 
 to think so ; for there really is much to be said about it, 
 and, we fear, much fault to be found with it. Dean 
 Alford has rendered good service to his generation. He 
 was an exemplary working clergyman; and he is, we 
 doubt not, as exemplary a Dean. He is an excellent poet, 
 and his beautiful hymn, " Lo, the storms of life are break- 
 "ing ", sung to sweet music, has often soothed our soul. 
 We cannot call him an accomplished Greek scholar ; but 
 he has compiled the most useful working Greek Testa- 
 ment of our generation ; amenable to a thousand adverse 
 criticisms, but laboriously bringing together almost all 
 that working clergymen need. 
 
 But with all this we cannot regard him as an authority 
 on the philosophy of the English language, or as an 
 example of its more accurate use. It is strange that men 
 should imagine themselves to be that which they are so 
 far from being, that they are unconscious even of their 
 defects. Only a scholar of the widest philological read- 
 ing and of the nicest discrimination should have pre- 
 sumed to write a book on the use and abuse of the 
 
APPENDIX. 161 
 
 Queen's English. No doubt Dean Alford thinks that he 
 is such a scholar, and that his composition, if not in his 
 ordinary sermons, yet in this volume, is faultless. We 
 regret to be compelled to think otherwise. His style, 
 where not positively ungrammatical, is loose, and flabby, 
 and awkward ; his sentences are ungainly in construc- 
 tion, and sometimes positively ludicrous in the meaning 
 which they involuntarily convey. We will take a few in- 
 stances ; and we begin with the third sentence in the book. 
 
 " It [the term "Queen's English"] is one rather familiar 
 " and conventional, than strictly accurate ". As Dean 
 Alford uses it, the adverb " rather " qualifies the terms 
 " familiar " and " conventional ". He means it to qualify 
 the term " strictly accurate ", and should have said, " It 
 is one familiar and conventional rather than strictly 
 "accurate". 
 
 "For language wants all these processes, as well as 
 " roads do ", is scarcely as elegant as a critical Dean 
 should have written. 
 
 Again: "And it is by processes of this kind in the 
 " course of centuries, that our English tongue has been 
 " ever adapted ", &c. ; instead of " It is by processes of 
 " this kind that, in the course of centuries, our English 
 "tongue", &c. 
 
 " Carefulness about minute accuracies of inflexion and 
 " grammar may appear to some very contemptible ". We 
 trust that the Dean is not one of these ; but would it not 
 have been better to write, "may to some appear very 
 " contemptible " ? 
 
 " The other example is one familiar to you, of a more 
 "solemn character": and what is it to those given to 
 levity ? The Dean meant to say, " The other example is 
 " of a more solemn character, and is one familiar to you". 
 
 M 
 
162 APPENDIX. 
 
 " The late Archdeacon Hare, in an article on English 
 " orthography in the * Philological Museum 9 ". We did 
 not know that the English orthography of the * Philolog- 
 ' iced Museum ' was peculiar, or needed an article. The 
 Dean means "in an article in the 'Philological Museum 9 
 " on English orthography ". 
 
 " We do not follow rule in spelling the other words, 
 "but custom". An elegant writer would have said, " In 
 "spelling the other words we do not follow rule, but 
 " custom ". 
 
 These specimens occur in the first twelve pages ; how 
 many the entire volume would afford, is beyond our cal- 
 culation. 
 
 With many of Dean Afford* s canons, both of deriva- 
 tion and of pronunciation, and even of spelling, we have 
 almost equal fault to find ; but we forbear. We must say, 
 however, that, notwithstanding Mr. Latham's authority, 
 and at the risk of being reckoned " grammarians of the 
 " smaller sort ", we are still unconvinced of the propriety 
 of saying, even colloquially, " It's me ", and of the 
 pedantry of saying, " It's I ". 
 
 We must add, too, that a somewhat unseemly egotism 
 and gossipiness pervades the book — pardonable enough 
 in popular lectures, but surely to be excluded from a 
 philological treatise. The Dean seems to have no plan, 
 but just to say anything that comes first, and to say it 
 anyhow. Perhaps he thinks the chit-chat of a Dean 
 sufficient for all persons of less dignity. 
 
 Dean Alford, of course, says many just and use- 
 ful things, and will, we trust, do something to correct 
 some errors and vulgarisms. But it is one thing to 
 read Dean Alford' s sentences, and it is another to read 
 Macaulay's. 
 
APPENDIX, 16$ 
 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH v. THE QUEEN'S 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 
 A Criticism erom The London Beview. 
 
 A writer in the current number of * The Edinburgh 
 ' Review ' censures Mr. Moon for hypercritically objecting 
 to sentences the meaning of which is perfectly clear, 
 though it is possible, haying regard to the mere con- 
 struction, to interpret them in a sense ludicrously false. 
 We think that Mr. Moon does occasionally exhibit an 
 excessive particularity; but many of his criticisms on 
 Dr. Alford are, as the reviewer himself admits, thoroughly 
 deserved. Because certain ambiguities have become 
 recognised forms of speech, and are universally under- 
 stood in the correct sense, a writer is not entitled to 
 indulge in a lax mode of expression, which a little trouble 
 would have rendered unimpeachable without any sacri- 
 fice of ease, grace, or naturalness. The reviewer quotes, 
 or imagines, two sentences to which no reasonable 
 objection could be made, though the construction is 
 assuredly not free from ambiguity : — " Jack was very 
 " respectful to Tom, and always took off his hat when 
 "he met him." "Jack was very rude to Tom, and 
 " always knocked off his hat when he met him." Now, 
 as a mere matter of syntax, it might be doubtful whether 
 Jack did not show his respect to Tom by taking off 
 Tom's hat, and his rudeness by knocking off his own ; 
 but the fault is hardly a fault of construction — it is a 
 fault inherent in the language itself, which has not 
 provided for a distinction of personal pronouns. The 
 sentences in question are clearly defective; but they 
 could be amended only by an excessive verbosity and 
 tautology, which would be much more objectionable; 
 
 M 2 
 
164 APPENDIX. 
 
 and, at any rate, they are no justification of those errors of 
 composition which might easily be amended, and which 
 spring from the "writer's own indolence or carelessness. 
 The confusion of personal pronouns, however, is a 
 subject worthy of comment. It is incidentally alluded 
 to by a writer in the last number of ' The Quarterly 
 ' Review ', in an article on the report of the Public 
 School Commissioners ; and a ludicrous example is given, 
 from the evidence of a Somersetshire witness in a case 
 of manslaughter, though, notwithstanding the jumble, 
 the sense is clear enough. The fatal affray was thus 
 described by the peasant : — " He'd a stick, and he'd a 
 " stick, and he licked he, and he licked he ; and if he'd 
 " a licked he as hard as he licked he, he'd a killed he, and 
 " not he he." Now, supposing the witness not to know 
 either combatant, one does not see how he could have 
 expressed himself more clearly, and he would have a 
 right to charge the defect on the language. Like every- 
 thing else in the world, human speech is very imperfect, 
 and we must sometimes take it with all its blemishes, 
 because we can do no better. For instance, there is a 
 certain form of expression which involves a downright 
 impossibility, but which nevertheless is universally 
 accepted. We cannot explain what we mean more perti- 
 nently than by referring to the phrase commonly seen 
 painted on dead walls and palings : — " Stick no bills." 
 Here what is intended is a prohibition; but it really 
 takes the form of an injunction, and of an injunction to 
 do an impossibility. We are not told to refrain from 
 sticking something, or anything — we are commanded to 
 stick something, and the something we are to stick is 
 " no bills " ! We are to stick on the wall or the paling 
 something which has no existence. Let us try to 
 
APPENDIX. 165 
 
 imagine the process. We must first take up the nonen- 
 tity in one hand, and with the other apply paste to its 
 non-existent back ; we are then to hoist it on a pole, and 
 flatten it against a wall. Of course, the only correct 
 expression would be, "Do not stick bills"; yet no one 
 would seriously recommend the change. (The reader 
 will observe that we have here unconsciously fallen into 
 the same mode of speech. "No one would recommend"!) 
 The received expression is more succinct, and it has now 
 the sanction of time. In like manner we say, " He was 
 " so vexed that he ate no dinner ", and a hundred other 
 phrases of the same character. But they are radically 
 bad, and go far to excuse the uneducated for so frequently 
 using the double negative. The unlettered man knows 
 that he wants to state the negation of something, and not 
 the affirmation, and he obscurely perceives that a species 
 of affirmation of the very thing he wants to deny is put 
 into his mouth by such a sentence as, "He ate no dinner"; 
 so he whips in another negative, and really makes the 
 phrase more intelligible to himself, and to those of his 
 own class who hear him. 
 
 Let us conclude with a hope that Dean Alford and Mr. 
 Moon have by this time made up their quarrel, and that 
 henceforth they will unite their forces for the defence of 
 ' The Queen's English \ 
 
 A PLEA FOE THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 A Criticism from The North American Quarterly 
 Eeyiew. 
 
 It may seem late to undertake the criticism of a book 
 the second edition of which has been already some time 
 before the public. But the first edition, which appeared 
 
166 APPENDIX. 
 
 a few years since (in 1863), although not passing without 
 some slight notice in our literary journals, attained no 
 American circulation, and made no impression upon our 
 community. The enterprise of the publisher has suc- 
 ceeded in procuring for the work in its new form so wide 
 a currency among us, and in attracting to it so much 
 attention, that it becomes worth while seriously to inquire 
 into its merits, and to estimate its right to be accepted 
 as an authority; and this, as much for the sake of 
 challenging a popularity and consideration which may 
 turn out to be undeserved, as from regard to the good or 
 the harm which the book is likely to do ; for it makes no 
 great pretensions to a wide scope, or to philosophic 
 method and profundity. It styles itself " Stray Notes on 
 "Speaking and Spelling" and is composed of desultory 
 and loosely connected remarks on errors and controverted 
 points in orthography, orthoepy, and grammar, and was 
 written in part, as its author takes pains to inform us, at 
 chance moments of leisure, in cars and eating-houses and 
 other such places. Criticism, it is plain, should not be 
 disarmed by such acknowledgments, since no man, who 
 cannot make his odd thoughts fully worth our acceptance, 
 has a right to thrust them before us. The ' Stray Notes ' 
 grew by degrees into their present form. They were put 
 together first into lectures, and then became a series of 
 articles in a monthly magazine. These attracted much 
 notice, and called out abundant correspondence and com- 
 ment, so that the successive papers took on a shape in 
 part controversial and replicatory. The same was their fate 
 after their collection into a volume ; and the second edition 
 is not a little altered from the first, under the process of 
 criticism and reply. They have had, it will be seen, a rather 
 peculiar history, calculated to provoke our curiosity. 
 
APPENDIX. 167 
 
 The author is an English divine, of considerable note 
 as critical editor and commentator of the Greek text of 
 the New Testament, and has also acquired some fame in 
 his earlier years as a writer of verses. We should natur- 
 ally, then, explain to ourselves the popularity which the 
 work has won, by the critical and scholarly ability and 
 the elegant style it is found to display. Such qualities, 
 added to the general and attractive interest of the sub- 
 jects, ought to be enough to insure a notable career to 
 even a heavier volume. It is unfortunate, however, for 
 the American student, who is desirous to draw from this 
 source valuable instruction as to the best usage of his 
 mother-tongue, that he finds himself repelled, almost at 
 the start, by a violent ebullition of spite against his 
 native country. The reverend author, namely, is engaged 
 in magnifying his office as polisher of the habits of speech 
 of English speakers, by showing the exceeding and deep- 
 reaching importance of attention to niceties of diction; 
 and he holds up Americans to reprobation for "the 
 " character and history of the nation, its blunted sense 
 " of moral obligation and duty to man, its open disregard 
 "of conventional right where aggrandizement is to be 
 " obtained, and, I may now say, its reckless and fruitless 
 " maintenance of the most cruel and unprincipled war in 
 "the history of the world." (p. 6.) This, it is true, was 
 written before Lee's surrender. Since the end of 1864 
 we have changed all that; and, in our zeal after self- 
 improvement, we can well afford to pardon a few hard 
 words to a " dignitary of the Church of England," who 
 has given his ardent sympathies to the cause of Secession 
 and Slavery, provided only he shall make good his claim 
 to be our instructor in his proper department. Still, we 
 cannot but form the suspicion that our author is some- 
 
168 APPENDIX. 
 
 what under the dominion of class and national prejudices, 
 and either careless of seeking information as to subjects 
 upon which he is very ready to offer his opinion, or not 
 acute in judging and profiting by information obtained. 
 And further, it cannot but seriously shake our confidence 
 in his philological acumen to find that our dreadful ex- 
 ample is intended to "serve to show" the horrified British 
 nation "that language is no trifle"! Our astonished 
 inquiries into the connection of such a warning with such 
 a lesson bring us to see that the Dean attributes our 
 viciousness to the infelicities of our speech, since "every 
 "important feature in a people's language is reflected in 
 "its character and history." We had always thought, it 
 must be owned, that the " reflection " was in the opposite 
 direction: that character and history determined language. 
 It is perhaps allowable to say, by a kind of figure, that 
 a man's image in the glass is reflected in his person; 
 and it is certain that, if we can make the image tran- 
 scendently lovely, the man himself will be sure to turn 
 out a beauty ; only we cannot well reach the image save 
 through the man himself. In like manner, if we can 
 train the masses of a people to speak elegantly, doubtless 
 we shall change their character vastly for the better ; but 
 the improvement will be only in a very subordinate 
 degree due to the reflex action of language: it will 
 rather be the direct effect of the process of education. 
 
 Our suspicions of the soundness of our philological 
 authority, thus aroused, are not precisely lulled to sleep 
 by an examination of the other incentives he offers to 
 exactness of speech. We are pointed to the example of 
 the Apostle Peter, when accused by the bystanders of 
 being a Galilean, on the ground of his Galilean dialect. 
 "So that," says our author, "the fact of a provincial 
 
APPENDIX. 169 
 
 "pronunciation was made use of to bring about the 
 " repentance of an erring Apostle." It is not easy to see 
 the point of the argumenb here made. One might rather 
 be tempted to infer that a provincial pronunciation is a 
 good thing, and deserves encouragement, if it could be- 
 come the means of so important a conversion; who knows 
 but that our own local idioms, carefully nursed and duly 
 displayed, may somehow be made to work out our salva- 
 tion ? But there is a worse difficulty behind ; and really, 
 if Mr. Alford were not a Dean and an editor of the New 
 Testament text, we should be inclined to accuse him of 
 neglecting his Bible. According to the received reading 
 of the Evangelists, (we have not examined Dean Alford' s 
 edition,) the charge brought against the saint that he did 
 not talk good Jerusalem Hebrew, had for its sole effect to 
 draw from him a repetition of his former lying denial, 
 along with a volley of oaths and curses (luckless Peter ! 
 he forgot that his native dialect would only show more 
 distinctly in such an outbreak of passion); and it was the 
 crowing of the cock that brought about his repentance. 
 So that, after all, the lesson we learn must be that, if we 
 will only repress our local peculiarities of speech, we 
 shall be less exposed to being detected in our wickedness; 
 or else, that we must beware of accusing any one of dia- 
 lectic inaccuracies, lest thereby we drive him to greater 
 enormity of sin. Our author has perverted, without 
 appreciable gain, a text which would not bend to his 
 purpose in its true form. 
 
 We are now tempted to examine the other case in this 
 department, cited by the Dean, and see whether it will not, 
 perhaps, give us a higher idea of his qualifications as a 
 critic of language. He speaks (p. 7 seq.) of the spurious 
 poems of Eowley as having been in part detected by their 
 
170 APPENDIX. 
 
 containing the word its, — a word which was not in good 
 use in Rowley's time. So far, all is well. But then he 
 goes on to discourse concerning the infrequency of its in 
 early English, and the employment of Ms for it, evidently 
 in total ignorance of the reason, namely, that Ms was in 
 Anglo-Saxon, and hence also for a long time in English, 
 the regular genitive case of it (A. S. Mt), not less than of 
 he; and that the introduction of its was a popular in- 
 accuracy, a grammatical blunder, such as the introduction 
 of she 9 s for her would be now. To the general appre- 
 hension, his stood in the usual relation of a possessive 
 case, formed by an added 's to he, and had nothing to do 
 with it; and so, popular use manufactured a new regular 
 possessive for it, which was finally, after a protracted 
 struggle, received into cultivated and literary styles, and 
 made good English. Hear, on the other hand, our 
 author's explanation of the rarity of its during the period 
 from Shakespeare to Milton : " The reason, I suppose, 
 " being, that possession, indicated by the possessive case 
 " its, seemed to imply a certain life or personality, which 
 " things neuter could hardly be thought of as having." 
 A more fantastic and baseless suggestion is rarely made ; 
 it is so empty of meaning that we can hardly forbear to 
 call it silly. There was not at that period a neuter noun 
 in the language that did not form a possessive in 's with 
 perfect freedom. Who can fancy Shakespeare doubting 
 whether a table, as well as a horse or a man, really had or 
 possessed legs; or as being willing to say "a table's 
 " legs," but questioning the propriety of " a table on its 
 "legs "? or how were the Bible translators avoiding the 
 ascription of possession to things inanimate by talking 
 of "the candlestick, his shaft and his branch," and so 
 forth, instead of " its shaft and its branch " ? 
 
APPENDIX. 171 
 
 If these, then, are fair specimens of our author's 
 learning and method, we must expect to find his book 
 characterized by ignorance of the history of English 
 speech, inaccuracy, loose and unsound reasoning, and 
 weakness of linguistic insight. And we are constrained 
 to acknowledge that such expectations will be abundantly 
 realized in the course of a further perusal of the work. 
 Let us cite a few more specimens. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking example we can select of the 
 Dean's want of knowledge on philological subjects is his 
 treatment of the word neighbor. "This," he says (p. 12), 
 " has come from the German naclibar I " but he adds in 
 a foot-note that the derivation has been questioned ; that 
 a Danish correspondent thinks it should be referred to 
 the Danish or Norse nabo ; and he has himself chanced 
 to observe " that the dictionaries derive it from the 
 "Anglo-Saxon nehyebur." He does not venture to judge of 
 a matter of such intricacy, and simply leaves in the text 
 his original etymology from the German. This is very 
 much as if we were to be in doubt whether to trace a 
 friend's descent from his grandfather, or from one or 
 other of his second-cousins, finally inclining to a certain 
 cousin, because with him we ourselves happened to be 
 also somewhat acquainted. Certainly one who can dis- 
 play such ignorance of the first principles of English 
 etymology ought to be condemned to hold his peace for 
 ever on all questions concerning the English language. 
 
 The case is the same wherever a knowledge of the 
 history of English words ought to be made of avail in 
 discussing and deciding points of varying usage. Thus, 
 when inquiring (p. 46 seq.) whether we ought to say a 
 historian or an historian, and instancing the Bible use 
 of an before initial h in almost all cases, he omits to point 
 
172 APPENDIX. 
 
 out that an is the original form, once used before both 
 consonants and vowels, and that, when it came by degrees 
 to be dropped before consonants, for the sake of a more 
 rapid and easy utterance, it maintained itself longest 
 before the somewhat equivocal aspiration, h. He is right, 
 we think, in not regarding the rule for using an before 
 the initial h of an unaccented syllable as a peremptory 
 one. The better reason is on the side of the more popular 
 colloquial usage ; if the h of historian, like that of history, 
 is to be really pronounced, made audible, a ought properly 
 to stand before it, as before the other. But no Biblical 
 support can make of such a combination as an hero aught 
 but the indefensible revival of an antique and discarded 
 way of speaking. 
 
 So, also, Dean Alford (p. 48) fails to see and to point 
 out that, in the antiquated phrase such an one, we have a 
 legacy from the time when one had not yet acquired its 
 anomalous pronunciation wun, but was sounded one (as it 
 still is in its compounds only, alone, atone, etc.) As we 
 now utter the word, such an one is not less absurd and 
 worthy of summary rejection from usage than would be 
 such an wonder. 
 
 The discussion, again, of "better than J" or "better 
 "than me" is carried on (p. 152 seq.) without an allusion 
 to the fact that than is historically an adverb only, the 
 same word with then, and has no hereditary right to 
 govern an accusative, as if it were a preposition. "He is 
 "better than X" is, by origin, "he is better, then I," — that 
 is to say, "I next after him." Linguistic usage has, 
 indeed, a perfect right to turn the adverbial construction 
 into a prepositional ; but, as the former is still in almost 
 every case not only admissible, but more usual, the 
 tendency to convert the word into a preposition is not 
 
APPENDIX. 173 
 
 one to be encouraged, but rather, and decidedly, the 
 contrary. 
 
 It might be deemed unfair to blame our author for his 
 equally faulty discussion of the question between the 
 two forms of locution, "it is Z" and "it is me" because 
 his correspondents and the correspondents of some of 
 the English literary journals (which have been the arena 
 of a controversy upon the subject much more ardent 
 than able, within no long time past) are just as far as he 
 is from doing themselves credit in connection with it. 
 What he cites from Latham, and (in a note) from Ellis, 
 is tolerably pure twaddle. It may well enough be that 
 " it is me " is now already so firmly established in collo- 
 quial usage, and even in written, that the attempt to oust 
 it will be in vain ; but the expression is none the less in 
 its origin a simple blunder, a popular inaccuracy. It is 
 neither to be justified nor palliated by theoretical con- 
 siderations, — as by alleging a special predicative con- 
 struction, or by citing French and Danish parallels. 
 There was a time when to say "us did it" for "we did it," 
 " them did it" for " they did it," was just as correct as to 
 say " you did it " for "ye did it "; but usage, to which we 
 must all bow as the only and indisputable authority in 
 language, has ratified the last corruption and made it 
 good English, while rejecting the other two. He would 
 be a pedant who should insist in these days that we 
 ought to say ye instead of you in the nominative ; but he 
 would also have been worthy of ridicule who, while the 
 change was in progress, should have supported it on the 
 ground of a tendency to the subjective use of the accu- 
 sative, and cited in its favor the example of the Italian 
 Zoro, "them," for elleno, "they," as plural of respectful 
 address. And as long as it is still vulgar to say " it is 
 
174 APPENDIX. 
 
 "him," "it is her," "it is us," 9 "it is them," and still 
 proper and usual to say " it is I," our duty as favorers of 
 good English requires us to oppose and discountenance 
 " it is me," with the rest of its tribe, as all alike regret- 
 able and avoidable solecisms. 
 
 Of course the Dean puts his veto (p. 253) upon reliable; 
 men of his stamp always do. He alleges the staple argu- 
 ment of his class, that rely-upon-able would be the only 
 legitimate form of such a derivative from rely. They 
 ought fairly to put the case somewhat thus : " It is un- 
 " account-for-able, not to say laugh- at- able, that men will 
 " try to force upon the language a word so take-objection- 
 " to-able, so little avail- of- able, and so far from indispense- 
 " with-able, as reliable"; then we should see more clearly 
 how much the plea is worth. 
 
 Of course, again, our author sets his face like flint 
 against writing or instead of our at the end of such words 
 as honor and favor ; and that upon the high and com- 
 manding consideration that to simplify the termination 
 thus "is part of a movement to reduce our spelling to 
 "uniform rule as opposed to usage" (p. 10); that it "is 
 "an approach to that wretched attempt to destroy all 
 " the historic interest of our language, which is known 
 "by the name of phonetic spelling" (p. 14), — and upon 
 the phonetic movement he proceeds to pour out the vials 
 of his ponderous wit and feeble denunciation. On the 
 whole, we think the phonetists are to be congratulated on 
 having the Dean for an adversary ; his hostility is more 
 a credit to them than would be his support. There are a 
 host of difficulties in the way of the phonetic spellers 
 which they themselves, or many of them, are far from 
 appreciating ; but they are not of the kind which Mr. 
 Alford seeks to raise. ]STo one wants to set up rule 
 
APPENDIX, 175 
 
 against usage, but only to change usage from a bad rule 
 to a good one. And our language has a store of historic 
 interest which would not be perceptibly trenched upon, 
 even if we were to take the liberty of writing our words 
 just as we speak them. Our present spelling is of the 
 nature of a great and long-established institution, so in- 
 timately bound up with the habits and associations of 
 the community that it is well-nigh, or quite, impreg- 
 nable. But a philologist ought to be ashamed to defend 
 it on principle, on theoretical grounds. He, at any rate, 
 ought to know that a mode of writing is no proper re- 
 pository for interesting historical reminiscences ; that an 
 alphabetic system has for its office simply and solely to 
 represent faithfully a spoken language, and is perfect in 
 proportion as it fulfils that office, without attempting to 
 do also the duty of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese 
 ideographs. 'No other so great linguistic blessing could 
 be conferred upon the English language and the people 
 who speak it as a consistent phonetic orthography. 
 
 It is calculated profoundly to stagger our faith in 
 Dean Alford's capacity as an interpreter and expositor 
 of difficult texts to find him guilty of explaining (p. 105) 
 the reflexive verb to endeavor one's self by " to consider 
 "one's self in duty bound," and of asserting that this 
 "appears clearly" from the answer made by the candi- 
 date for ordination to the bishop's exhortation to diligence 
 in prayer and other holy exercises, " I will endeavor my- 
 "self so to do, the Lord being my helper." Not only 
 does this answer exact no such interpretation of the 
 phrase as the one given by the Dean, but it even directly 
 and obviously suggests the true meaning, " to exert one's 
 " self, to do one's endeavor." 
 
 A similar paucity of insight is exhibited in our author's 
 
176 APPENDIX. 
 
 theory (p. 86), that the origin of the double comparative 
 lesser, for less, is to be traced to the " attraction " of the 
 dissyllabic word greater, with which it is not infrequently 
 found connected in use. No such effect of attraction as 
 this, we are sure, can be found in any part of our English 
 speech. The true reason of the form is not hard to 
 discover : it lies in the extension of a prevailing analogy 
 to one or two exceptional cases. Less and worse are the 
 only comparatives in our language which do not end in 
 r ; and er is accordingly so distinctly present to the 
 apprehension of the language-users as a sign of compara- 
 tive meaning that they have gone on, naturally enough, 
 to apply it to those two also, thus assimilating them to 
 the rest of their class. The only difference in the result 
 is, that lesser has been fully adopted, in certain connec- 
 tions, into good usage, while worser is still a vulgarism. 
 
 ISTor can we ascribe any greater merit to the Dean's 
 treatment of the preposition on to, or onto, used to de- 
 note motion, as distinguished from locality or place, 
 denoted by the simple preposition on : thus, " The cat 
 "jumped on to the table, and danced about on the table." 
 Such a distinction, as every one knows, is often made in 
 colloquial style, but is not yet, and perhaps may never 
 be, admitted in good writing ; this tolerates only on. Our 
 author is not content with denying that on to is now 
 good writable English ; he tries to make out there is no 
 reason or propriety in attempting to express any such 
 difference of relation as is signified by the two separate 
 forms. His argument is this: if we say, "The cat jumped 
 on the table," or if the tired school -boy, begging a lift on 
 his way, gets from the coachman the permission, "All 
 "right, jump on the box," will there be any danger of a 
 failure to understand what is meant ? Of course not, we 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 reply; but neither should we fail to understand, "The 
 " dog jumped in the water, and brought out the stick"; 
 nor would Tom be slow in taking, and acting on, coachee's 
 meaning, if the reply were, " Jump in the carriage." The 
 question is not one of mere intelligibility, but of the 
 desirableness of giving formal expression to a real differ- 
 ence of relation, — as we have actually done in the case 
 of in and into. On to, says our author (p. 181), is not so 
 good English as into, "because on is ordinarily a pre- 
 " position of motion as well as of rest, whereas in is 
 "almost entirely a preposition of rest." This is an 
 amusing inversion of the real relations of the case : in 
 fact, in is a preposition of rest only, because we have 
 into in good usage as the corresponding preposition of mo- 
 tion; on is obliged to be both, because onto has not won 
 its way to general acceptance. The double form would 
 be just as proper and just as expressive in the one case 
 as in the other, and there is no good reason why we 
 should not heartily wish that onto were as unexception- 
 able English as is into, whether we believe or not that it 
 will ever become so, and whether or not we are disposed 
 to take the responsibility of joining to make it so. Every 
 German scholar knows how nice and full of meaning are 
 the distinctions made in the German language, as re- 
 gards these two and a few other prepositions, by the use 
 after them of a dative to denote locality, and an accusa- 
 tive to denote motion. The Anglo-Saxon was able to 
 accomplish the same object by the same means; but we 
 have, in losing our dative case, lost the power to do so, 
 and have only partially made up the loss, by coining, 
 during the modern period, such secondary words as into 
 and onto, that they may bear a part of the office of in 
 and on. 
 
178 APPENDIX. 
 
 We will barely allude to one or two more instances of 
 a like character : such as our author's conjecture (p. 67) 
 that our separation of manifold in pronunciation from 
 many is due to the influence of its felt analogy with 
 manifest; his attempt (p. 91) to find an etymological 
 reason for the translation, " Our Father which art in 
 "heaven," instead of "who art"; his theory (p. 42) that 
 the conjunction of the two words " humble and hearty " 
 in the Prayer-Book is good ground for holding that the 
 first as well as the second was pronounced with an 
 aspirated h; his apparent assumption (p. 25) that the 's 
 of senator's represent the Latin is of senatoris (or is it 
 only his confused expression that is to blame here?), — 
 and so forth. 
 
 These are but the more prominent and striking illus- 
 trations of Dean Alford's general method. We may say 
 without exaggeration that — especially in the first half of 
 the book, where questions are more often dealt with 
 that include historical considerations and call for some 
 scholarship — there is hardly a single topic brought under 
 discussion which is treated in a thorough and satisfactory 
 manner, in creditable style and spirit : even where we 
 are agreed with respect to our author's conclusions, he 
 repels us by a superficial, or an incomplete, or a prejudiced, 
 or a blundering statement of the reasons that should 
 guide us to them. It is almost an impertinence in one 
 so little versed in English studies to attempt to teach his 
 countrymen how they ought to speak. 
 
 The last half of the work deals prevailingly with syn- 
 tactical points, requiring to be argued rather upon 
 rhetorical than grammatical grounds. But, though in 
 a measure exempt from the class of criticisms which we 
 have found occasion to make above, it is not without its 
 
APPENDIX. 179 
 
 own faults. The dean's chief hobby throughout is the 
 depreciation of " laws," whether of the rhetorician or 
 of the grammarian, and the exaltation of " usage " as 
 opposed to them. He has, of course, a certain right on 
 his side, yet not precisely as he understands it. The laws 
 he rejects are only meant to stand as expressions of good 
 usage ; nor do those who set them up arrogate to them 
 peremptory and universal force, but rather a value as 
 guiding principles, attention to which will save, from 
 many faults, the less wary and skilful. No one holds 
 that he who has not native capacity and educated taste 
 can become by their aid an elegant writer ; no one denies 
 that he who has capacity and taste may cast them to the 
 winds, sure that his own sense of what is right will lead 
 him to clear and forcible expression. But we have all 
 heard of a class of people who inveigh against "laws," 
 and would fain escape judgment by them ; and the very 
 vigor of the Dean's recalcitrations inspires us with suspi- 
 cions that there may be good cause for his uneasiness. 
 And so it is : he has not in any eminent degree that fine 
 sense which enables one to write without rule a pure and 
 flowing English. His style is always heavy and ungrace- 
 ful, and often marked with infelicities and even with 
 inaccuracies. As many of our readers are aware, he has 
 received on this score a terrible scathing from Mr. Moon, 
 in a little work happily entitled " The Dean's English" 
 by way of answer to " The Queen's English." To 
 this we refer any one who may be curious to see, 
 properly exposed, the other side of the Dean's claim to 
 set himself up as a critic of good English. The professed 
 general views he puts forth are in no small part special 
 pleadings, rather, against the criticisms of his censors. 
 He appears to suppose that any somewhat inaccurate or 
 
 n2 
 
180 APPENDIX. 
 
 slovenly phrase or construction of his for which he can 
 find parallels in our Bible translation and in Shakespeare 
 is thereby hallowed and made secure against attack, un- 
 mindful that our style of expression has in many points 
 tended towards precision and nicety during the last 
 centuries, so that not everything which was allowed in 
 Shakespeare's time will be tolerated now; and further, 
 and more especially, that great writers may be pardoned 
 in taking now and then liberties which, if ventured on by 
 little men, like him and ourselves, will be justly visited 
 with reprobation. 
 
 It is our opinion, therefore, upon the whole, that the 
 English- speaking public would have lost little had our 
 author's lucubrations been confined to the " Church of 
 England Young Men's Literary Association," for which 
 they were originally intended, and which doubtless re- 
 ceived them with unquestioning faith, and had he never 
 brought them out where Dissenters and other irreverent 
 outsiders should carp at them. The circulation and 
 credit they have won in this country are mainly a reflec- 
 tion of the unusual attention which has been paid them 
 in England; and the latter is partly fortuitous, the 
 result of a combination of favoring circumstances, partly 
 due to the general interest felt in the subject of the work, 
 and a curiosity to hear what a man of high position and 
 repute for scholarship has to say upon it ; and in part it 
 is an indication of the general low state of philological 
 culture in the British Isles. We cannot wish " The 
 " Queen's English " a continued currency, unless it be 
 understood and received by all for just what it is, — a 
 simple expression of the views and prejudices of a single 
 educated Englishman respecting matters of language ; 
 having, doubtless, a certain interest and value as such, 
 
APPENDIX. 181 
 
 but possessing no more authority than would belong to a 
 like expression on the part of any one among thousands 
 of its readers. Its true character is that of a sample of 
 private opinion, and not a guide and model of general 
 usage. 
 
 THE DEAN'S ENGLISH. 
 
 A Criticism froii 'The Phonetic Journal.' 
 
 If, as some good people hold, everybody and everything is 
 created, not merely for a general, but moreover for some 
 specific, purpose, then we might infer that the particular 
 use to which Nature destined the Dean of Canterbury 
 was to set himself up to lecture upon the Queen's English, 
 and so to offer himself as a conspicuous mark, and a 
 defenceless victim, to the scathing criticism and merciless 
 exposure of Mr. Gr. Washington Moon. Not for many 
 years, have we seen such a brilliant and effective passage 
 of arms, as is contained in the little book under notice, 
 which consists principally of three letters addressed to 
 Dr. Alford, To say, that the poor Dean is worsted in the 
 encounter, is to say very little. His defeat is almost too 
 complete. Like an untrained youth, in the grasp of an 
 athlete, he never has even a chance. At every round, he 
 is quickly thrown ; and the blows, given with a will, and 
 planted with a precision and vigour, which no feint can 
 elude, fall fast and heavily on his defenceless head. At 
 every point, the Dean is confronted by his pertinacious 
 and inexorable assailant, who leaves him no possibility of 
 escape; or, if he does occasionally attempt a feeble de- 
 fence, it only serves to bring down upon himself still 
 severer punishment, until, exhausted by the encounter, 
 he does that, which, for his own sake, he had better have 
 
182 APPENDIX. 
 
 done at first — makes peace with his adversary while yet 
 he is in the way with him. 
 
 To set one's self up for a teacher of English, pure and 
 undefiled; jauntily to ascend the rostrum, as one gifted 
 with authority to lay down the whole law ; and then to 
 be met with such a withering exposure of incompetence, 
 with such inevitable inferences of imbecility, as consti- 
 tute the staple of Mr. Moon's book; for the physician, 
 who gratuitously obtrudes his advice upon us, and vaunts 
 his ability to cure our disorder, — for him to be convicted 
 of labouring under a virulent form of the same disease, 
 certainly this is not a pleasant position for a man to 
 occupy, and we heartily commiserate the unfortunate 
 Dean. 
 
 Even in the fair field of criticism he is quite unable to 
 cope with his skilful and alert adversary. ]STever was 
 there a more conspicuous instance of going out to shear, 
 and coming home shorn. For our own part, we would 
 rather have submitted to a month's stone-breaking than 
 have called down upon ourselves such withering sarcasms 
 and incisive irony as Dr. Alford's language has so justly 
 provoked. 
 
 To those who are interested in speaking and writing 
 good English, — and what educated person is not ? — this 
 book is fall of instruction; and to those who enjoy a 
 controversy, conducted with consummate skill, and in 
 excellent taste by a strong man, well armed, it is such a 
 treat as does not fall in one's way often during a life-time. 
 Eegarded in itself, and without any immediate reference 
 to its object, this book affords a model of • correct and 
 elegant English ; such as is a perfect treat to meet with, 
 in these days of slip- shod writing. Perspicuous, com- 
 pact and nervous in its construction, it is by no means 
 
APPENDIX. 183 
 
 deficient in some of the higher and more brilliant quali- 
 ties of style ; while, for refined sarcasm and covert irony, 
 it has rarely been equalled. We can assure our readers 
 that a pleasanter or more profitable employment than the 
 perusal of this book, it would be difficult to recommend to 
 them. As the subject is not of an ephemeral nature, though 
 the book itself was called forth by a passing occasion, we 
 hope to see the public interest in the work wax, rather 
 than wane, and that still more editions may yet be called 
 for. Every copy that is circulated is so much good seed 
 sown broadcast, — so much seed of tares smothered in its 
 growth. 
 
 Many of our public writers, highly educated, and per- 
 haps because they have been so educated, undertake 
 English composition as if it were the one exceptional art 
 which required no rule but the "rule of thumb." To 
 such, the lamentable fiasco of the Dean, owing to his dis- 
 regard of rules, should be a lesson, but, too probably, will 
 not. We cannot help wishing that a writer who is so 
 eminently qualified as Mr. Moon to teach a subject which, 
 just now, so greatly needs to be taught, and who illus- 
 trates so admirably by his example the precepts that he 
 so clearly enforces, would devote himself to the task of 
 drawing up a code of rules for composition, such as our 
 journalists and periodical writers might appeal to, as a 
 standard for correct English. We are of opinion that 
 there is a crying want of such a work, that it would be 
 one of the most useful and most popular works of the 
 day, and that Mr. Moon, with his thorough mastery of the 
 subject, with his keen perception, nice judgment, and 
 pellucid and elegant style, is just the person to write it. 
 When a man displays peculiar aptitudes, and of a high 
 order, for a given subject, we grieve, we almost resent it, 
 
184 APPENDIX. 
 
 if our natural expectations should remain unfulfilled. 
 We feel that to be defeated of our hopes is, in some 
 sense, to be defrauded of our rights. "We think we have 
 a right to call upon Mr. Moon, now that he has once exhi- 
 bited this shining talent, not to wrap it up again in a 
 napkin, but to put it out to interest, and we have no 
 doubt of its bringing him back most abundant returns. 
 We entertain this opinion notwithstanding Mr. Moon's 
 disclaimer that "very little can be added to the canons of 
 " criticism already laid down ; though very much may be 
 " done for the permanent enriching of our language, by 
 "popular writers using more care as to the examples 
 "they set in composition, than as to the lessons they 
 " teach concerning it," It is precisely because Mr. Moon 
 teaches so well by example, that we would fain have him 
 make this example the vehicle for the inculcation of pre- 
 cepts, and the execution of the work the best comment 
 upon, and illustration of, its rules. The public ear is 
 prepared to listen to him, and rarely do such an occasion, 
 and such an opportunity of earning and of deserving an 
 enduring reputation, fall to the lot of any man, as those 
 which now lie within the reach of Mr. Moon. 
 
 THE END. 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 Just published, in one volume, square 8vo„ toned paper, with engraved frontispiece, from 
 an original drawing, of the Translation of Elijah. 
 
 Price 3s. 6d. 
 
 ELIJAH THE PROPHET: 
 
 A POEM. 
 
 By G. WASHINGTON MOON, F.R.S.L. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 Extracts from Reviews. 
 
 Court Journal. 
 
 Her Majesty has graciously been pleased to accept a 
 copy of Mr. Washington Moon's poem, " Elijah the 
 " Prophet." 
 
 "We have long been aware that Mr. Washington Moon 
 was an acute and discriminating critic, but we were 
 ignorant up to the present that he was possessed of high 
 poetic genius. In his Elijah the Prophet he has produced 
 an epic poem of great merit, exhibiting powers rarely 
 equalled for sublimity and strength, and breathing a 
 noble and an elevated spirit which deserves all prj 
 
186 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 
 
 Weekly Kecord. 
 It is an epic poem of great beauty and power. 
 
 Christian Examinee. 
 It is a poem worthy of the subject and of the author. 
 
 Bookseller. 
 
 
 " Elijah the Prophet " is the most noticeable poem of 
 the season. It is poetical in the true sense of the term. 
 
 Ereeman, 
 
 It is full of quiet beauty, and is specially remarkable 
 for elegance of diction and purity of language. 
 
 Evangelical Christendom. 
 
 The poem is one of unusual interest and beauty. It will 
 find favour chiefly with persons of refined and cultivated 
 taste, who can appreciate the nicer elegancies of com- 
 position. 
 
 Public Opinion. 
 
 Mr. Moon must be congratulated on having made a 
 contribution to sacred minstrelsy of which all religious 
 classes ought to be proud. He has produced a sacred 
 poem alike honourable to his heart and to his head, for 
 it reflects genuine piety and poetic genius. 
 
 London Quarterly Review. 
 
 Mr. Moon has taught the Dean of Canterbury some 
 lessons which he certainly ought not to have needed, but 
 
EXTBACTS FROM REVIEWS. 187 
 
 as certainly did need ; and he has, at the same time, in- 
 structed many besides. Mr. Moon, however, can not only 
 lay down the laws of good prose composition ; he is 
 himself an example of something more than poetic sus- 
 ceptibility and culture. In this beautiful volume there 
 are many sweet thoughts and tender touches, and many 
 highly finished passages. 
 
 British Standard. 
 
 Mr. Moon has already attained for himself a good de- 
 gree by his slashing criticism of "The Dean's English." 
 — that is, the English of Dean Alford. Although we have 
 not found it convenient to take any extended notice of 
 those crushing criticisms, we, nevertheless, read them 
 with pleasure, and often with admiration. They did ex- 
 cellent service to the cause of good writing, and showed 
 that even a Dean, and that Dean a man of genius, litera- 
 ture, and culture, may yet, while correcting others, fall 
 into the most egregious blunders himself. The strictures 
 of Mr. Moon were of more service to the Dean than all 
 that he received from university lectures on English 
 literature. 
 
 But, while pondering and enjoying those brilliant and 
 scarifying contributions, we had no idea that the author 
 was addicted to verse. Here, however, he appears before 
 the public in a very splendid quarto volume, the subject 
 of which is Elijah the Prophet, one of the most renowned 
 of the wonderful class of men to which he belonged. 
 While the subject is quite suited to poetry, it is, never- 
 theless, one of a very arduous character ; but Mr. Moon 
 is equal to great things, and is not afraid to grapple with 
 them. There is much noble thought here, set forth in 
 
188 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 
 
 correct and brilliant diction. We are, indeed somewhat 
 surprised that a gentleman of such ability in poetry has 
 not written much more. The whole is nobly thought and 
 marked by the dignity the subject demands. 
 
 North British Daily Mail. 
 
 The readers of " Good Words " will doubtless recognise 
 in the name of Mr. Moon one with which they have 
 already become acquainted. The lovers of English litera- 
 ture also will hear again the name of a champion in their 
 cause. 
 
 The subsequent works of so bold and successful a critic 
 of the language of a distinguished teacher could not fail 
 to have a severe trial to stand for their own merits, and 
 thus a volume of " Minor Poems " by Mr. Moon passed 
 "through the fire;" with the result, however, of the 
 more firmly establishing the author's fame as an accom- 
 plished and scholarly writer. 
 
 The present poem, " Elijah," is well calculated to add 
 another laurel to Mr. Moon's reputation. The grandeur 
 of the subject is well-nigh unsurpassed, and perhaps the 
 highest praise which could be bestowed on the poem is 
 that it is not unworthy of the subject. 
 
 The language is eminently simple, but, by its very 
 simplicity, is commanding. Lofty thought and poetic 
 imagination grace each page ; while, pervading all, and 
 permeating each varied stanza and melodious canto, 
 there breathes an earnest spirit of deep-toned piety, and 
 a personal knowledge of, and delight in God as "love", 
 which seems to hallow all and harmonize each note into 
 a chord of praise struck by a filial hand to the name of 
 " the Father." 
 
EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 189 
 
 It is not easy to give, from a poem describing the his- 
 torical events of a considerable period, an extract which 
 will fittingly represent the poem itself; bnt the elegance 
 as well as the power of description which belongs to Mr. 
 Moon's language may be gathered from almost any part 
 of " Elijah." 
 
 Christian News. 
 Mr. Moon needs no introduction to those in any way 
 acquainted with English literature. The feature of his 
 poem which will appear most striking to many readers is 
 the simplicity and purity of its diction. Mr. Moon has 
 aimed at using simple terms, and he has accomplished 
 his task in a manner rarely equalled, certainly never sur- 
 passed. We question if there is anything more free from 
 what may be called literary foppery within the compass of 
 the English language. In the whole poem there is not a 
 word which a child may not understand; and there is 
 not a sentence which is in the slightest degree perplexed; 
 and yet, notwithstanding its simplicity of expression, it 
 is as far as possible from being puerile. There is a mas- 
 culineness about it which indicates that the thoughts are 
 those of a strong, stalwart mind; a mind not in any 
 degree gross \ but one, which, while it takes a firm grasp 
 of material things, can relinquish that grasp at pleasure, 
 and rise to the contemplation of the immaterial. 
 
 Edinburgh Daily Review. 
 There is evident, throughout, a remarkable command 
 of language ; but we attribute the unquestionable success 
 of the epic to the devoutness of the mind which has con- 
 ceived it, as well as to the imaginative faculty with which 
 Ihe author is so richly endowed. 
 
190 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS, 
 
 Oxford University Herald. 
 In this work the library has one of the most valuable 
 additions that has for many years emanated from the 
 press. Grift ed with a master-mind, — imaginative, penetra- 
 tive, refined, and modest withal, — the anthor of this poem 
 has thrown the full force of his powers of expression into 
 the accomplishment of a great end, namely, the effective 
 rendering with the aid of poetry of one of the most 
 sublime records of the Old Testament. 
 
 News oe the World. 
 The subject of this epic is one of such surpassing 
 grandeur and sublimity, that we confess to having 
 opened the book with some doubt and misgiving; but 
 we had not read far before we were satisfied that the 
 author had not miscalculated his powers, and that his 
 poem was worthy of high praise. 
 
 St. James's Chronicle. 
 The author has not only the attributes and qualifica 
 tions of a poet in the true and highest sense, but a rare 
 amount of varied knowledge which he brings in the 
 happiest manner to bear on the grand heads of his sub- 
 ject. We have not perused a volume of poetry for many 
 a day that possesses so many attractive features. The 
 book is one series of beautiful and brilliant gems and 
 profound thoughts, set in pure and ornate language. 
 
 
 Court Circular. 
 
 This is a bold attempt by an able man. His work is one 
 of considerable merit. Hitherto, Isaiah has furnished a 
 
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 191 
 
 favourite subject for translation ; but here is certainly a 
 grander subject, and it has been handled with so much 
 strength and energy that the author deserves much 
 praise. He has succeeded in giving us a work that may 
 stand in a high place among the specimens of modern 
 English classical literature. It is not perfect; but we 
 cannot point to any living writer who could with cer- 
 tainty have done it better. 
 
 The Atlas. 
 
 Amongst the most difficult of literary undertakings 
 must be considered the composition of a sacred epic. 
 The only real successes in this field are the Paradise 
 Lost and Eegained of Milton. And the very signal infe- 
 riority of the latter to the former shows more decidedly 
 than anything else, that not even to the highest genius is 
 it vouchsafed to compose at will a sacred epic absolutely 
 beyond rivalry. The French have never had sufficient 
 reverence to undertake the task at all. Italy has never 
 known the Bible well enough even to have the task sug- 
 gested to its men of genius and faith. As for Germany, 
 we cannot read a page of Klopstock's "Messiah" without 
 yawning. During the whole of the unpoetic eighteenth 
 century of English literature nothing of the kind arose 
 above a level of absolute dreariness. Mr. Washington 
 Moon, therefore, has undertaken a most daring enter- 
 prise, and if we cannot congratulate him upon the 
 achievement of great success, he must certainly be ac- 
 quitted of anything approaching to failure. Some of his 
 minor passages of episodical reflection or description are 
 really very beautiful. 
 
1 92 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 
 
 The Orb. 
 The very announcement of an epic poem upon a sacred 
 subject is enough to make one shudder when we call to 
 mind the number of ambitious failures we have witnessed, 
 and we must confess that we opened this book with any- 
 thing but a tolerant disposition towards another of the 
 tribe of incompetents, as we feared this author would 
 prove. Let us hasten, then, as in duty bound, to say that 
 we recognize the " Elijah " of Mr. Moon as really a sacred 
 epic of the highest order, in sentiment pious, in style 
 powerful but chastened ; the author has shown himself a 
 master both of rhyme and rhythm. We are much mis- 
 taken if this work will not live, and, moreover, if it will 
 not prove an aid to the piety of many a Christian who 
 reveres the Bible as the very treasury of all that is sacred 
 and true, the armoury of faith, and the foundation of 
 hope. We strongly recommend the work to the attention 
 of our readers. 
 
 Cambridge University Journal. 
 The author truly had a very grand subject to deal with, 
 so grand that but few men would venture to take it in 
 hand, and still fewer would handle it with any degree of 
 success. To write in poetry the history of the " grandest 
 " and most romantic character Israel ever produced," is 
 a task not easy of accomplishment. There are many 
 scenes in that life which must almost baffle description — 
 the flight into the wilderness, the whirlwind, — and 
 earthquake, and fire, and the " still small voice " on Mount 
 Horeb ; the sacrifice on Carmel and the consequent dis- 
 comfiture of the priests of Baal : and then the grand 
 scene of all — the parting between Elijah and Elisha, 
 
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 193 
 
 followed by the wondrous translation of the former. * 
 
 The author of such lines as those we have just quoted 
 must know something about real poetry — must have 
 some of its spirit— and those who read his work care- 
 fully may be profited and instructed, and at the same 
 time will give Mr. Moon the praise he deserves from us all. 
 
 Church and School Gazette. 
 
 We are bound to say that Mr. Moon's poem is a great 
 work, and has many passages of rare beauty and of well- 
 sustained sublimity. 
 
 That power of imagination and play of fancy which 
 leavens the whole lump of real poetry, and by a subtle 
 touch of art, simile, or metaphor, turns earthly dross 
 into gems and gold to blaze and burn before our eyes, is 
 not wanting in it. The wealth of Mr. Moon's imagination 
 has everywhere enriched his poem. 
 
 We can find space for only the following minor touches 
 of his pencil. — 
 
 "Words are b^t harrowing when hope is dead. 
 True friendship breathes its sympathy in sighs ; 
 And love's most loving ivords are spoken by the eyes." 
 
 " The brightest jewel in the costliest shrines 
 Where God is worshipped is humility. 
 'Tis like a star which trembles as it shines; 
 And through its trembling, brighter seems to be." 
 
 The simile in the above quotation is full of beauty, and 
 brightly reflects the radiance of true genius. 
 
 There is a grandeur and sublimity that reminds one 
 of Milton and of Young, even at their best, in the poet's 
 description of the Day of Doom, in Canto i., and also at 
 the close of the book, in the translation of Elijah. 
 
194 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 
 
 The following beautiful passage is from Canto xii. — 
 
 Peace, troubled heart ! ' Tis only doubt that sorrows ; 
 
 Faith, trusting, says, e'en though through falling tears, — 
 
 ' ' Tis God who for a little season borrows 
 
 ' The gift his hand bestowed in bygone years/ 
 
 O, Gracious God, each loss Thyself endears, 
 
 For Thee we cannot lose. Thou art the same 
 
 For ever : and dost gently chide our fears ; 
 
 Telling the grief- crushed heart, overwhelmed with shame, 
 
 That there is hope, for ' I AM ' is Thy glorious name. 
 
 ' I AM thy Father ; — doubt me not, my child. 
 
 'I AM thy Friend;— O fly thou not from Me. 
 
 ' I AM thy God ; — be not by sin beguiled. 
 
 ' I AM thine All ;— I give Myself to thee. 
 
 ' I AM ' — the rest is blank, that it may be 
 
 Filled up by man according to his need. — 
 
 Trust thou in Him, Elisha ; happy he 
 
 Who, though through griefs which cause his heart to bleed, 
 
 Learns that the heart of God is merciful indeed." 
 
 It is awarding no slight merit to the author to say that 
 his whole poem breathes the purest morality and the 
 loftiest devotion. Going through it is lite going through 
 a cathedral, where, as the grand music rolls on the ear, 
 the eye is almost everywhere enchanted with visions of 
 unearthly interest and scriptural beauty breaking in rich- 
 est colour from its storied windows, while the soul is 
 touched and stirred with the deepest emotions of religion. 
 
 We are much mistaken if the book does not become a 
 favourite. 
 
 Illustrated Weekly News. 
 The magnificent epic poem before us is one of those 
 rare issues, which, like wandering comets, appear only at 
 long intervals. Every page teems with high poetic beau- 
 
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS, 195 
 
 ties, often soaring to the sublime. The author has 
 approached his subject with studied care, and has mas- 
 tered it in a style so grand, that little is left to be desired 
 further than that the poet may attain the position which 
 his brilliant epic entitles him to hold. Where all are so 
 beautiful in thought and force, it is difficult to make an 
 extract as fully showing Mr. Moon's powers. We, there- 
 fore, take, almost at random, 
 
 THE TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH. 
 
 The sun had set, and as they journeyed on 
 
 They thought they caught the sound of distant thunder ; 
 
 Then nearer, clearer; hut o'erhead, stars shone, 
 
 And on the horizon silv'ry clouds sailed under 
 
 The deep blue sky. With mingled awe and wonder 
 
 The prophets turned and saw that towards them came 
 
 From heav'n a chariot and steeds of flame ! 
 
 While Nebo's sacred mountain, with age hoary 
 
 And crowned with snow, was radiant with the glow 
 
 Of that celestial and unutterable glory. 
 
 Ethereal, yet visible ; for bright 
 
 Unto intensity through purest light 
 
 Indwelling, was that chariot of the skies. 
 
 The horses, too, were creatures not of earth ; 
 
 Their necks were clothed with thunder ; and their eyes, 
 
 Starry with beauty, told of Heav'nly birth. 
 
 No harness fettered them ; no curb nor girth 
 
 Restrained the freedom of those glorious ones, 
 
 Nor traces yoked the chariot at their heels ; 
 
 It followed them, as planets follow suns 
 
 Through trackless space, in their empyreal courses ; 
 
 For lo ! the fiery spirit of the horses 
 
 Was as a mighty presence in the wheels, 
 
 And in the dazzling whirlwind which behind them flew 
 
 And caught Elijah up, as sunlight drinks the dew. 
 
196 EXTRA CIS FROM RE VIE WS. 
 
 Away, away to Heav'n those steeds upbore him ; 
 
 Leaving the clouds as dust beneath their feet. 
 
 Wide open flashed the golden gates before him ; 
 
 And angel forms of splendour rose to greet 
 
 The favoured prophet. Oh, the rapture sweet ! 
 
 The ecstacy most thrilling which came o'er him ! — 
 
 But thoughts are voiceless when we soar thus high ; 
 
 And, like the lark that vainly strives to beat 
 
 With little wings the air and pierce the sky, 
 
 We fall again to earth. Elisha there 
 
 Wept o'er his loss, but wept not in despair. 
 
 No ; though a few regretful tear-drops fell, 
 
 He knew that with Elijah all was well ; 
 
 For through the open gates of Heav'n there rang 
 
 Strains of the song of welcome which the angels sang. 
 
 O who can picture that transcendent sight ! 
 
 Who fitly can relate the wondrous story ; 
 
 Who paint the aerial beauty of that night, 
 
 Or sing the fleetness of those steeds of glory 
 
 And God's triumphant chariot of light 
 
 Entering Heav'n ! Never, in depth or height, 
 
 Had mortal gazed on such a scene before ; 
 
 Never shall years, how long soe'er their flight, 
 
 The solemn grandeur of that hour restore, 
 
 Till Heav'n' s last thunder peals forth "It is done ! " 
 
 And the archangel, dazzling as the sun, 
 
 Descends to earth ; and, standing on the shore 
 
 Of ages, swears with upraised hand by ONE 
 
 Who lived ere time its cycles had begun, 
 
 That time shall be no more. 
 
 Advertiser. 
 
 We assure the reader that these lines are but an 
 average specimen of the glowing, vigorous, and lofty 
 versification which characterize the epic of 'Elijah the 
 i Froxjhet\ The poem is a noble effort to embody a noble 
 theme. 
 
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 197 
 
 The Impeuial Review. 
 
 Elijah the Prophet is a fine subject for a great poem. 
 The deep religious mystery that pervades the whole 
 story, the moral grandeur of the prophet's character, its 
 terrible power and its tender pathos, the superhuman 
 and supernatural elements that interweave the whole 
 texture of his mighty mission as an avenging prophet of 
 " the living God," all form a dramatic basis of the 
 broadest kind on which to build a poem of more than 
 ordinary interest, and nothing is more worthy of praise 
 than the manner in which our author has everywhere 
 embodied in the substance of his poem the simple 
 grandeur of the Bible narrative. The epic clings with 
 loving fidelity to the divine record, and in sentiment 
 breathes the very soul of humble piety and exalted faith. 
 The whole tone and temper of the poem is not only 
 :*eligious but devotional in the highest degree. 
 
 Mr. Moon is equally successful in what may be fairly 
 called the earthly element in his poem; he has here 
 shown that penetrating insight into the workings of the 
 human will and human passion, without which no poet 
 can hope to reach the highest department of his art. 
 The dramatic power severally shown in the evolution 
 of the character of Ahab and of Jezebel, and of the 
 sublime prophet who is the hero of the poem, are all 
 distinct evidences of Mr. Moon's capacity in this province 
 of his art. 
 
 His powers of imagination are worthy of an epic 
 poet. 
 
 His descriptions of nature are drawn with remarkable 
 finish and taste. The night scene in the Invocation is an 
 admirable picture, we can only give a few lines of it, 
 
1 98 EXTRA CTS FROM RE VIE WS. 
 
 which contain one of Mr. Moon's striking similes : — 
 
 " The worlds of splendour in the midnight sky, 
 Which, gem-like, shine so beautifully bright ; 
 Are but thy breath, Almighty God most high, 
 Condensed whilst passing through primeval night, 
 With those creative words, ' Let there be light.' " 
 
 The metre adopted is that of the Spenserian stanza, 
 with some slight alteration. With the exception of Lord 
 Byron, no imitator of Spenser has shown a freedom and 
 vigour in the handling of this graceful, but difficult 
 measure, which can be compared with the mastery almost 
 universally evinced by Mr. Moon. We are bound to 
 remark that, taken as a whole, it is by far the best poem 
 on a sacred subject that has appeared for a considerable 
 time. 
 
 ALSO, 
 
 In 1 vol., square 8vo., cloth, gilt, price 5s., 
 
 MINOR POEMS, 
 
 By G. WASHINGTON MOON, F.R.S.L., 
 
 Author op 'Elijah the Prophet,' etc. 
 
 HATCHARD & CO., 187, PICCADILLY, LONDON. 
 
 NORWICH: PRINTED BY FLETCHER AND SON. 
 
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