P^KWW H -■u:^-. ^H ■ ■ I rtw m ■ U HI mm ■IBS— mi ■ ■ ml I ■ ■ • ■ A PLEA FOR THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER . 148, Strand 139, Grand Street London . New York A PLEA FOR THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH Streg ^fatta en Spiaftrng m& Spelling by HENRY ALFORD, d.d. DBAN OK CANTERBURY TENTH THOUSAND ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER LONDON AND NEW YORK 1866 «< Psedagoguli abite pestes, Istino ferte pedem invennsti inepti, Invisi pueris bonis malisque, Abite in miseram crucem execrati &ecli perniciesciue litterarum. Nigoolo, Conted'Aroo. (See Preface). toed**™ OnthzSto VI \ INDEX. PAGE Introductory ...... 1 The matter in hand, no trifle .... 5 Examples : American debasements . 6 Chatterton's imposture 7 Detection of St. Peter by his speech 8 Omitting the "u" in words ending in " -our " . . 10 "Neighbour" . 11 "Control" 13 "Tenor" and "tenour" .... 13 Phonetic spelling ....... 14 "Ent" and "ant" 18 "In-" or "en-" in compound words 19 "Ecstasy" and "apostasy" 20 "Lay" and "lie" 20 The apostrophe of the genitive singular . 21 What is the apostrophe ? 24 Plurals of compound names .... 26 "Attorneys" and "moneys" 28 "Means" "News" 29 "Mewses" 30 "Summons" 31 " Diocess " or " diocese " 33 Division of a word between lines . . . . 33 "To "and "too" 35 Doubling the final letter . . . . . . 35 INDEX "Benefitted" . • • "Lose" and "loose" . "Sanitary" and "sanatory" "Pharaoh" . Mis-spelling in newspapers "Ize"or"ise" . "Show" and "shew" . Pronunciation— misuse of the aspirate " A" or " an " before a vowel "Such an one" . " Only one hen in Venice " "Hear," &c. Calling "u" "oo" . "Heritor," "curator" "Manifold" . "Prophecy" "Alms,"&c. . "Cowper" . "Cucumber" . Mispronunciation of Scripture names Examples "Johnny Stittle" . Samaria and Philadelphia "Urbane" . "Junias" "Covetous" "The Revelation" . "Able" for "Abel,"&c. Criticism in a newspaper . Serious accompaniments of ignorance Usage and construction Idiom . Idiomatic mode of address . Elliptical usages . Caprice of idiom "Methinks" Example from the Greek this matter INDEX. Spoken and written English " Those kind of things" "Attraction" "This" and "that " . "To-day," "to-night" . Triple meaning of ' ' that " " This much," " that much " "That ill" . . . "Ever so" or "never so " "What was," "what was not " "No" and "yes" the same " Oldest inmate " -. . - . "Lesser" "Replace" "Enclosure" . . "Who "and "which" . Use of "but" . "As" and "so" . "Had rather" ; Colloquial contractions . Feminine substantives Punctuation .... Comma between two adjectives Too few commas . Notes of admiration "Centre" .... "By-and-by" . 1 ' Endeavour ourselves " " To be mistaken " . " Good looking" or " well looking " "Latter," of more than two ' ' Superior, " " inferior " "Talented" . "Gifted" . * ' To leave, " absolute " Could not get " . " Does not belong " . last, of only two PAGE 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 82 82 84 84 85 85 87 87 90 92 93 94 95 96 98 99 100 101 101 J 03 104 105 106 106 108 109 109 109 110 111 INDEX. To "belong Leeds," &c. "To progress" ..... Passage from Milton .... Nouns made into verbs .... ' ' To treat of," or ' < to treat " ? Fallacy : — of two ways of expression one must be "The Book Genesis," "the City London" " Reverend " and " reverent " . Subjective and objective words " Or " and "nor " in a negative sentence . Elliptical sentences .... General rule in such cases Arrangement of words in sentences . Ordinary rule . . Emphasis requires violation of the rule . in the case of clauses . Parenthesis, in the case of words Examples from Scripture .... Grammar of our authorised version . of Shakspeare Best way of proceeding in regard of such rules Real ambiguity Note after a tithe dinner .... Clerical advertisement .... Criticism of Fechter's "Hamlet" The same term in different cases Position of adverbs : "only" . "both" " The three first gospels " Confused use of " he " and " it " . Does "than" govern an accusative case ? Two ways of constructing ' ' than " . "It is me" Dr. Latham's opinion .... "It is him," "it is her" "You and I," accusative PAGE 111 112 113 115 116 wrong 117 117 INDEX. PAGK "As thee" 160 Use of "of" 161 Prepositions at the end of sentences 162 Present, past, and perfect tenses . . . . 164 Their confusion . 166 " Was being written" 167 "Shall" and "will" .... 168 "I will" 169 "I shall" ....... 170 171 "You shall" 171 Exceptions . ...... 172 " Will" and "shall" in the third person 172 Instances of almost indifferent usage . 173 Ambiguity 174 Confusion of * * shall " and " will . 176 Dr. Latham's account of this .... 177 A case in which it seems to fail 178 Use of superfluous particles — "doubt but that" . 179 "Onto" 180 "On to" and "into" . 181 . 181 "On" and "upon" . 182 "At best," "at the best" .... . 185 " All of them," " both of them" 186 "Fifty cubits high," &c . 187 "Going" and "coming" .... 188 " Come to grief " . 189 Other uses of "go" and "come" . . 190 Misuse of " whom " . 191 "Different to" . 193 " Inversely as " . 195 INDEX. 4 ' Contrast to," or "with" ? Meaning of " a term " .... Reason for mentioning these objections " I need not have troubled myself" Caution respecting past and perfect tenses . Use of the present to signify fixed design . Sentences -wrongly supposed elliptic Caution against rash and positive assertions about construction " Construct " and " construe ' . "Above" .... . . Adjectives used as adverbs Two uses of adverbial qualifications Subjective and objective .... " Looking sadly, " &c "It would read oddly " .... Usage in comparative and superlative clauses . "A decided weak point" .... Anomalies " Long " and " short " . . . . "Just now" Subjunctive and indicative moods in conditional The general rule stated by Dr. Latham Ignorance of this rule .... This rule perhaps unknown to our older writers Bias formerly to the subjunctive . but now more to the indicative Phenomenon to be observed Verb after "that " without an auxiliary . Singulars and plurals .... " Twice one are two " Cases not understood .... Account of these usages Use of certain conjunctional particles . Violation of this rule ..... PAGE 195 196 196 196 197 198 199 INDEX. XI PAGE Use of" except "for "unless" .... 222 "Without" 222 "A mutual friend" 223 "We will write you" 224 "And which" 225 "One," joined to "his" 226 " Didn't use," "hadn't used," &c. . . .228 "Riding" or "driving" 230 "I take it" 230 " The eartfi's revolving " . . 231 "Predicate" for "predict" 233 "If" for "whether" . . . ... 233 " Seldom or never " 234 "Like I do" 234 Nouns of number 234 "People" and "persons" 235 " I know nothing by myself " explained . . . . 236 "The three 'poys' just mentioned" . . . 237 " Eeligion in the arm-chair " 238 " The right man in the right place " . . . . 239 " His wrong slippers " 239 Ambiguous descriptions of men 239 "By applying" 240 "Wants cutting" 241 Deterioration of the language itself . . .241 Sources of our language 242 Process of degeneration : whence mainly arising . 244 in what consisting . . 245 Dialect of our journals 245 A " party " 246 Technical sense of "party" ..... 247 "Proceed" . . . . . . . . 248 "Partake" . . . . ' . . . .248 "Locality" 248 "Apartments" 248 "Evince" 248 "Commence" 249 Xll INDEX. PAGE "Eventuate" . . . . . ... 250 "Avocation" 250 "Persuasion" . . 251 "To sustain" . .251 " To experience " ....... 252 "To accord" .252 "To entail" ........ 252 "Desirability" 253 " Displenishing" 253 "Reliable" 253 "Allude" 253 Examples of the deterioration 253 A monster balloon 256 "So fully proved, than..." 256 Excuse of hasty writing 257 Wonderful capacity of a -windmill .... 258 Ghosts summoned by advertisement . . . . 259 Powers of a night-watchman . . . . .259 Inflated language in prayers . . . . . 260 Nicknames and expressions of endearment . . 26] Talking nonsense to children 263 Sir J M and the tired nurse . . . 264 Extract from the Leeds Mercury . . . . 265 Use of expletives . . . . . . .272 "Well," "why" 274 "At all" 275 "And the like" 277 Unmeaning exclamations 277 Concluding advice 278 Conclusion 281 ' Notes 283 PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The fact, that an edition consisting of an unusually large number of copies of this little work has been exhausted in a few months, shews that the Public are not indifferent to the interest of the subject. The course of the controversy which it has excited has at all events shewn one thing : that its publication was not un-needed. And though, in the course of this controversy, I have received some hard hits, I have no reason to complain, seeing that it has continually fur- nished me, as it has gone on, with fresh material for new remarks, and ampler justification for those which I had already made. A charge has been brought against me, to which I feel bound to reply. One of my censors has alleged that the concluding sentence in paragraph 89 has been altered, so as to convey a xiv PREFACE. sense offensive to him, since its delivery in his hearing at Canterbury. This allegation is incorrect. That sentence now stands verbatim as he heard it delivered here: and let me add, bears no such offensive sense as he supposes. A mistake occurred in the title-page of the first edition, owing to my absence from England. The title ought to have stood, as will be seen by the first paragraph in that edition, " A Plea for the Queen's English,'' and now that title has been restored. I mention this here, because that accidental circumstance has been supposed by one of my censors to conceal I know not what deep pur- pose, and has been dignified with the name of "the tactics of my opponent." The motto at the back of the title-page has been borrowed from a little work by Signor Pagliardini, entitled " Essays on the Analogy of Languages." It expresses, in a jocular form, what every one who values our native tongue in its purity must feel : that most of the grammars, and rules, and applications of rules, now so com- monly made for our language, are in reality not contributions towards its purity, but main instru- ments of its deterioration. These rules are often laid down by persons ignorant of the analogy of PREFACE. xv languages, of the laws of thought, and of the practice of those writers whose works are the great fountain-heads of our English usage. Diffi- cile est . . . non scrihere, when we see men whose knowledge does not extend to the most ordinary facts of derivation, and requirements of speech, exalted into authorities whereby to judge of the correctness of Shakspeare, and Milton, and the English version of the Bible. We may not indeed say, Malim cum Platone errare: but we may say confidently, that the old writer had in his mind some reason for his mode of expression, which was far above the grasp of his modern critic. I am happy to have been, in the course of my writing these "stray notes," made acquainted with some modern English Grammars which form exceptions to the description just given: Grammars based upon essential facts and princi- ples which are utterly unknown to the "pceda- goguli" of Count d'Arco's epigram. I may mention among these, Dr. Latham's sensible English Grammar, and "'An English Grammar specially intended for Classical Schools and Private Students," by Edward Higginson: Longmans, 1864. It • now only remains for me to express my thanks to my many Correspondents, for their xvi PREFACE. valuable contributions, inquiries, hints, and cor- rections : to my Censors, both gentle and ungentle, for their teaching by example and by precept : and to the Public in general, for the kind interest which they have shown in these stray notes on speaking and spelling. Canterbury, October 28, 1864, A PLEA FOE. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 1. I have called these "stray notes" "A introduc- tory. Plea for the Queen's English. 2. I must begin by explaining what I mean by the term. It is one rather familiar and conventional, than strictly accurate. The Queen (God bless her !) is of course no more the proprietor of the English language than any one of us. Nor does she, nor do the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, possess one particle of right to make or un- make a word in the language. But we use the phrase, the Queen's English, in another sense ; one not without example in some similar phrases. We speak of the Queen's Highway, not meaning that Her Majesty is possessed of that portion of road, but that it is a high road of the land, as distinguished from by-roads and private roads : open to all of THE QUEENS ENGLISH. common right, and the general property of our country. And so it is with the Queen's English. It is, so to speak, this land's great highway of thought and speech ; and seeing that the Sovereign in this realm is the person round whom all our common interests gather, the source of our civil duties and centre of our civil rights, the Queens English is not an unmeaning phrase, but one which may serve to teach us some profitable lessons with regard to our language, and its use and abuse. 3. I called our common English tongue the highway of thought and speech ; and it may not be amiss to carry on this similitude further. The Queen's highway, now so broad and smooth, was once a mere track over an unen- closed country. It was levelled, hardened, widened, by very slow degrees. Of all this trouble, the passer-by sees no trace now. 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. There were no Croydon baskets, in the day when Henry II. and his train came to do penance from Southampton up that narrow, hollow, rough pilgrims' road, leading over Harbledown Hill to Canterbury. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. way itself of Queen's English that I would now speak, as of some of the laws and usages of the road ; the by-rules, so to speak, which hang up framed at the various stations, that all may read them. 6. I have called the contents of these pages " Stray notes on speaking and spelling." The things of which I have to treat are for the most part insulated and unconnected ; so that I fear there will not be even the appearance of connection between the various parts of my volume. And again, it must be confessed that they are not of a very interesting kind. I shall have to speak of such dull things as parts of speech, and numbers, and genders ; the obscuration, or the conventional and licensed violation, of rules of grammar, and the pronunciation and spelling of words. 7. It will be necessary perhaps to state that The matter in hand no the things of which I am going to speak are trifie - not to be looked upon as altogether of a trifling character. One of my critics, of whom I shall have more to say further on, thinks it ludicrous and absurd that a dignitary of the Church of England should meddle with such small matters. But the language of a people is no trifle. The national mind is reflected in the national speech. If the way in which men THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. which they can manage to offer to the pro- gress of their vehicle. Along it the poet and novelist drive their airy tandems, de- pendent for their success on the dust which they raise, and through which their varnished equipages glitter. On the same road divines, licensed and unlicensed, ply once a week or more, with omnibus or carrier's cart, pro- mising to carry their passengers into another land than that over which the road itself ex- tends, just as the coaches out of London used to astonish our boyish eyes by the " Havre de Grace" and "Paris" inscribed on them. And along this same Queen's highway plods ever the great busy crowd of foot-passengers — the talkers of the market, of society, of the family. Words, words, words; good and bad, loud and soft, long and short; millions in the hour, innumerable in the day, unimaginable in the year : what then in the life ? what in the his- tory of a nation 1 what in that of the world ? And not one of these is ever forgotten. There is a book where they are all set down. What a history, it has been well said, is this earth's atmosphere, seeing that all words spoken, from Adam's first till now, are still vibrating on its sensitive and unresting medium. 5. But it is not so much of the great high- THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 4. Now just so is it with our English lan- guage — our Queen's English. There was a day when it was as rough as the primitive inhabitants. Centuries have laboured at level- ling, hardening, widening it. For language wants all these processes, as well as roads do. In order to become a good highway for thought and speech, it must not have great prominent awkward points, over which the mind and the tongue may stumble ; its words must not be too weak to carry the weight of our thoughts, nor its limiting rules too narrow to admit of their extension. And it is by processes of this kind in the course of centuries, that our English tongue has been ever adapted more and more to our continually increasing wants. It has never been found too rough, too unsub- stantial, too limited, for the requirements of English thought. It has become for us, in our days, a level, firm, broad highway, over which all thought and all speech can travel smoothly and safely. Along it the lawyer and the parliamentary agent propel their heavy waggons, clogged with a thousand pieces of cumbrous antiquated machinery, — and no wonder, when they charge freightage, not by the weight of the load, combined with the distance, but by the number of impediments b2 6 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. express their thoughts is slipshod and mean, it will be very difficult for their thoughts themselves to escape being the same. If it is high-flown and bombastic, a character for national simplicity and truthfulness, we may be sure, cannot be long maintained. That nation must be (and it has ever been so in history) not far from rapid decline, and from being degraded from its former glory. Every important feature in a people's language is reflected in its character and history. American* 8. Look, to take one familiar example, ments!" at the process of deterioration which our Queen's English has undergone at the hands of the Americans. Look at those phrases which so amuse us in their speech and books; at their reckless exaggeration, and contempt for congruity ; and then compare the cha- racter 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. Such examples as this (and they are as many as the number of the na/tions and their tongues) may serve to show that language is no trifle. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 1 9. Then, again, carefulness about minute P^J^jJjJ 1 ' 3 accuracies of inflexion and grammar may appear to some very contemptible. But it would be just as easy to give examples in refutation of this idea. Two strike me, of widely different kinds. Some years ago a set of poems was published at Bristol, purporting to have been written in very early times by a poet named Rowley. Literary controversy ran high about them ; many persons believed in their genuineness; some do even now. But the imposture, which was not easy to detect at the time, has been now completely unmasked by the aid of a little word of three letters. The writer uses " its " as the posses- sive case of the pronoun " it " of the neuter gender. Now this possessive " its " was never used in the early periods of our language ; nor, indeed, as late down as Elizabeth. It never occurs in the English version of the Bible, made in its present authorized form in the reign of James I. :* " his " or " her " being * We have it in one place in our present copies, viz. , Levit. xxv. 5 : "That which groweth of its own accord." But this has been an alteration by the printers : King James's authorized copies have "of it own accord :" just as Shakspeare wrote (see notice of the Cambridge Shakspeare in the "Times" of Sept. 29, 1863) "The innocent milk in it most innocent mouth :" and "go to it grandam, child, and it grandam 8 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. always used instead. " They came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city ; which opened to them of his own accord" (Acts xii. 10). " Of beaten work made he the candlestick; his shaft, and his branch, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, were of the same" (Ex. xxxvii. 17). "The tree of life, which yielded her fruit every month " (Rev. xxii. 2). It is said also only to occur three times in Shakspeare, and once in "Paradise Lost." The reason, I suppose, being, that possession, indicated by the possessive case " its" seemed to imply a certain life or per- sonality, which things neuter could hardly be thought of as having. Detection of ]_o. The other example is one familiar to St. Peter by r his speech. vou ^ f a more solemn character. When St. Peter was stoutly denying all knowledge of his suffering Master, they that stood by said to him, u Surely thou art one of them ; for thou art a Galilean, and thy speech agreeth thereto." So that the fact of a provincial pronunciation was made use of to bring about the repentance of an erring apostle. 11. This little book will be found to justify will give it a plum." The usage of "it" for "its," is still found in the provincial talk of the Midland and Northern counties. (See on this subject Dr. Latham's " History of the English Language," pp. 527-9, 589.) THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. the description on its title, which represents it as consisting of " Stray notes." These were written down during the intervals of more serious employment, to serve as matter for lectures to the " Church of England Young Men's Literary Association " at Canterbury. Having performed that duty, they were pub- lished in the widely circulated periodica^ entitled " Good Words ; " and now, in a con- siderably altered form, they are presented to the public. 12. As the lectures were given, and the articles were published, considerable contro- versy sprang up respecting many points which were noticed in them. Correspondence became very abundant, and full of amusement and interest, and the second and third essays assumed something of a controversial cha- racter. On collecting them, however, into a volume, I found it desirable to omit very much that referred to matters in dispute ; and in this second edition, I have carried this omission further, and struck out or modified most of the notices which pointed at indi- vidual antagonists. 13. The few allusions to matters of contro- versy which have been still retained, are those which seemed necessary, as immediately con- -our. 10 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. centring the subjects under treatment. While striking out all that was merely vindicative of myself in refutation of an opponent, I have been unwilling to part with arguments which, though contributing to that end also, yet were chiefly auxiliary to the main objects which I had in view. Omitting 14. The first remark that I have to make the "u" in words in shall be on the trick now so universal across the Atlantic, and becoming in some quarters common among us in England, of leaving out the ll u" in the termination "-our;" writing honor, favor, neighbor, Savior, he. Now the objection to this is, not that it makes very ugly words, totally unlike any- thing in the English language before (for we do thus spell some of the words thus derived, for example, author, governor, emperor, &c), but that it is part of a movement to reduce our spelling to uniform rule as opposed to usage, and to help forward the obliteration of all trace of the derivation and history of words. It is true that honor and favor are derived originally from Latin words spelt exactly the same ; but it is also true that we did not get them direct from the Latin, but through the French forms, which ended in "-eur." Sometimes words come through THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 11 as many as three steps before they reach us — '•' 'Twas Greek at first ; that Greek was Latin made : That Latin, French ; that French to English straid." 15. The late Archdeacon Hare, in an article on English Orthography in the " Philological Museum," 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 fashion- able friends in such company, I hope we may none of us be tempted to join it.* 16. We have spoken of these words in" 11 ^ 11 - J - bour. " our " as mostly having come to us from the Latin in " or," through the French in " eur." It has been observed, that this is not the case with some words involved in the " or " and * Much has been made of the fact of some of these transatlantic spellings being found in the last edition of my own poems. But, as will be seen on referring to the advertisement to that edition, the main part of the printer's work was done in America, and my own spelling was altered there. The occurrence of ' ' favored " and "odors" in one of the last poems in the volume, is owing to that, with some other pieces, having formed part of an imperfect sheet in the American edition, and having been, in making up the additional sheets in the English volume, reprinted without correction. 12 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. u our " question. One of these is " neighbour.,, This has come from the German " nachhar f* and it is therefore urged, that an exception should be made in its case to the ending with our, and it should be written "neighbor.''' I am afraid the answer must be, that English custom has ruled the practice another way, and has decided the matter for us. We do not follow rule in spelling the other words, but custom. We write senator, orator, go- vernor, in spite of the French senateur, orateur, gouverneur. If we once begin reforming our spelling on rule, we ought to be consistent, and to carry our principles throughout. It is only the maintenance of our national custom and usage for which a reasonable man can plead. We have no Academy to settle such things for us ; and as long as neighbour is universally spelt in England with a " w," I fear we must be content to conform, even though it appear to have been first so spelt by those * It appears that the derivation of neighbour from the German nadibar is questioned. I have had a letter from a Danish correspondent, who charges me with error in stating this as its derivation, and be- lieves it to come from the Danish or rather Norse, nabo, compounded from the words ncer, near, and hoe, to live or dwell. I observe, moreover, that the dictionaries derive it from the Anglo-Saxon " nehgebur : " in which ease the u has more right in the word than the o. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 13 who forgot its derivation. It is when custom is various, and some rule is needed to decide which variety is right, that I have advocated the application of rules in order to that decision. 17. In the case of another word thus "control." variously spelt, control, the rule is plain, and general usage conforms to it. Control never acquired any right to be spelt with a " u" It comes from the French controle, i.e., contre- role : and the original meaning is still found in the name Controller, when applied to finance : i.e., an officer whose duty it is to keep a counter-roll, or check on the accounts of others. It seems also clear, from this ac- count of the word, that it ought not to be spelt compt, as it frequently is, but cont. 18. With regard to one word of the class "tenor" and ' ' fo- under consideration, tenor, it has been alleged that it bears different senses, according as we spell it with or without u in the last syllable : tenour signifying the character, or complexion, or drift of a course of action or speaking ; and tenor signifying the part in music. But I can find no such distinction observed, either by writers, or by the compilers of our diction- aries. Some dictionaries give tenor for both, some tenour ; and with regard to usage, the nour. 14 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. distinction attempted to be set up is certainly not observed. Sir Philip Sidney, Shak- speare, Dryden, Pope, Waterland, Locke, all use tenor in the sense of the constant mode, or manner of continuity, as may be seen in the dictionaries. The distinction is observed in French, but never appears to have been made a point of in English : and the word thus re- mains in the same predicament as the rest of those in this class — subject to be varied this way or that, according to prevailing usage. Phonetic 19. When I published my first paper in speUmg - «g 00( i Words," I wrote to this effect :— " The omission of the i u i 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; concerning which we became rather alarmed some years ago, when we used to see on our reading-room tables a journal published by the advocates of this change, called the ' Phonetic News,' but from its way of spelling looking like Frantic Nuts. The whole thing has now, I believe, disappeared, and gone into the limbo of abor- tive schemes ; the knacker's yard of used-up hobbies." This sentence gave great offence to the supporters of the so-called spelling- reform. I had imagined that their endeavour THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 15 to substitute irrational for rational spelling had entirely failed, and died away; and I expressed myself accordingly. It appears that it is still going on, and that the " Phonetic Journal/' its organ, has attained a circulation of 1,000 : no very large figure certainly, considering the number of years during which the movement has existed. I have stated the fact, as I was requested to do : but I cannot change my opinion either as to the character or as to the prospects of the movement. Its character may be in some measure illustrated by the view which its promoters seem to take of the facts of ety- mology. Enclosed in a letter of remonstrance to me was a copy of a reprint by them of Dean Swift's burlesque, in which he face- tiously proves that the Greek and Latin tongues were derived from the English, making out that AndromacTie was Andrew Mackay, and the like. Here is a rich spe- cimen. " Alexander the Great was very fond of eggs roasted in hot ashes. As soon as his cooks heard he was come to dinner or supper, they called aloud to their under-omcers, i All eggs under the grate,' which, repeated every day at noon and evening, made strangers think it was that prince's real name, and they 16 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. therefore gave him no other : aud posterity has been ever since under the same delusion." 20. Now it is one thing to write or to enjoy a joke, and another to use it with a view to an ulterior purpose. It is natural that those who are obliterating the traces of the historical formation of the language, should endeavour to cast ridicule on etymo- logists ; but it is not easy to say why they should have republished Swift's squib, if, as they profess, their system tends to preserve the history of the language, and not to efface it. 21. And as to the future, I cannot bring myself to believe that the system will ever prevail generally among English writers. It is a good thing to devise every means by which a short-hand writer, — whose object is to note down with all speed what he hears, — may be enabled to abridge his work. Let it by all means set at nought conventional spelling, and use what symbols he finds most conve- nient for the sounds expressed by combined letters. But our object is not expeditious writing only, nor is it easy spelling, nor uniformity in expressing the same sounds. We use, in writing, an instrument which has been adapted to our use by nearly sixty cen- turies; which bears on it the^marks of many THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 17 a conflict of thought and belief ; whose very uncertainties and anomalies are records of our intercourse with other nations, and of the agglomeration of our mingled English people- You may gain, with no great trouble, unifor- mity of spelling, and of pronunciation accord, ing to spelling ; but you will do it at the sacrifice of far more than the gain is worthy 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, and mixture of styles, and traces of architectural transition, from the venerable front of an ancient cathedral. I have fulfilled my promise to my phonetic cor- respondent, and announced that my former statement was not correct. I can only say I am sony for it, and express a hope that it may not be long before the result then antici- pated is fully accomplished. 22. In a letter received from another pho- netic correspondent, I learn that there is division in the camp. The gentleman who is by his own followers characterized as the apostle of the movement, is by the other party regarded as the principal hindrance to its progress. So that the end may not be far o -ant.' 18 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. off after all. I also learn from this later correspondent, that it is only the short-hand department of the phonetic movement which can at all be described as being in a flourish- ing state ; and to that I wish all prosperity, provided always that it rises on the ruins of the other. ~™l", and 23. Here is another instance, in which our acknowledged English custom in spelling- seems to defy all rule. How does it stand with the words ending in -ent and -ant, derived from the participles of Latin verbs % Some of these follow rule, others depart from it. The first conjugation of Latin verbs, forming its participle in -am, genitive -antis, gives rise to a set of derivatives in our lan- guage which keep constant to the termination -ant. We have abundant, reluctant, exuberant, remonstrant, recusant, recalcitrant, and the rest. But in the case of the second, third, and fourth Latin conjugations, forming their par- ticiples in -ens, genitive -entis, we have not been able to keep the derivatives steady to the original type. In the greater number of cases, they follow it : in some, usage varies ; in a few, they have rejected the primitive form, and have adopted the -ent. We always write different and difference; indeed the deri- THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 19 vative differential seems to fix these forms on us, as transcendental fixes transcendent De- pendent and dependant seem to be written in- differently. But defendant and attendant are universal. In some cases, the rules of pronun- ciation have kept the -ent unvaried. Take for instance the derivatives from Latin verbs end- ing in -esco,— crescent, quiescent, acquiescence, arborescent : and such words as detergent, emer- gency. In all these, the substitution of a for e would change the soft sound of the pre- ceding consonant into a hard one : we should be obliged to say creschant, deterghant, . the final mg any less usual sense ot a monosyllabic letter. word by doubling the final letter. Thus I have sometimes seen "This house to leti." And in one of the numerous mining circulars which are constantly swelling one's daily parcel of letters, I observe it stated, that the d2 36 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 11 sett" is very rich and promising. Thus, likewise, clear profit is sometimes described as " nett" instead of "net." "b-ne- 44. This reminds us of another doubling fitted." & of a final letter, respecting which there is con- siderable doubt. Does the verb to henefit, in forming its past participle, double its final letter ? Is it true, as stated in the first edi- tion of this work, that this doubling only takes place in a syllable on which the accent is laid, and that the purpose of it is to ensure the right pronunciation 1 At first sight it would seem so. If the participle of quit were spelt quited, it w T ould be pronounced as in requited, and would lose the sound of its verb : whereas by spelling it quitted, that sound is retained. And so of fit, rebel, abhor, and other words of the same kind. When the syllable has no accent on it, the reduplication seems not to be needed, for there can be but one way of pronouncing it ■ we might as well make the participle of remember, rememberred, as that of benefit, benefitted. But the intelli- gent Irish correspondent, whom I quote at length on paragraph 225, observes justly that this view does not seem borne out in the case of cavilling, travelling, grovelling, and the like words. So that, after all, it seems THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 37 as if usage were our only safe guide in the matter. 45. I have several times noticed, and once " lose " and "loose." in a letter censuring some of my own views on the Queen's English, the verb to lose spelt loose. A more curious instance of the arbi- trary character of English usage as to spelling and pronunciation, could hardly be given, than these two words furnish : but usage must be obeyed. In this case it is not con- sistent with itself in either of the two practices : the syllable il -oose" keeps the sound of "s" in loose, noose, goose, but changes it for that of "z" in choose: the syllable "-ose" keeps the sound of "s" in close, dose, but changes it for that of " z " in chose, hose, nose, pose, rose. But when usage besides this requires us to give the " o " in lose the sound of "u i} in luminary, we feel indeed that reasoning about spelling and pronunciation is almost at an end. 46. Sanitary and sanatory are but iust " sanitary" and "sana- beginning to be rightly understood. Sanitary, t01 T-" from sanitas, Latin for soundness or health, means, appertaining to health; sanatory, from sano, to cure, means appertaining to healing or curing. "The town is in such a bad sanitary condition, that some sanatorv mea- 38 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. sures must be undertaken." I was surprised to see, in the Illustrated Neivs of Oc- tober 31, 1863, a print and description of Murree, one of the "Sanitariums" for our troops in India. "Pharaoh." 47. I have noticed that the title of the ancient Egyptian kings hardly ever escapes mis-spelling. That title is PharaoA, not Pha- roah. Yet a leading article in the Times, not long since, was full of Phaeoah, printed, as proper names in leading articles are, in con- spicuous capitals. Nay, even worse than this : on my first visit to the South Kensington Museum, an institution admirably calculated to teach the people, I found a conspicuous notice with the same mis-spelling in it. I gave a memorandum of it to the attendant ; but whether it has been corrected or not I cannot say. Mis spelling 48. It is in newspapers, and especially in papers. provincial newspapers, that most frequent faults in spelling are found. No doubt there is much to be said which may account for this. Sometimes their editors are men of education, aided by a very inefficient staff, and are at the mercy of their compositors and readers; sometimes they are half-educated men, aspiring to the use of words which they THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 39 do not understand. Examples might be gathered of the most absurd mis-spelling and misuse of words, from almost any copy of any provincial journal in the kingdom. In a country newspaper, not long since, I read that a jury might be "immersed" in a heavy fine; the meaning being, of course, that they might be " amerced." We were informed one day last year, in the Evening Star, London penny paper, that the Pope went to the " basilisk" of St. Peter's; meaning "basilica" the name given by the Romans to several of their largest churches. 49. How are we to decide between s and z g *' ize " or -ise." in such words as anathemati 8 e, cauterize, criti- cise, deodorize, dogmatize, fraterni'e, and the rest 1 Many of these are derived from Greek verbs ending in -izo ; but more from French verbs ending in -iser. It does not seem easy to come to a decision. Usage varies, but has not pronounced positively in any case. It seems more natural to write anathematize and cauterize with the z, but criticise is com- monly written with thes. I remember hearing the late Dr. Donaldson give his opinion that they ought all to be written with s. But in the present state of our English usage the ques- tion seems an open one. 40 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. " show ' and 4 ' shew/ PrormnciP- tion — mis- use of the aspirate 50. It is not easy to say how the verb cor- responding to the substantive show comes to be spelt sJiew. Here again we seem bound to follow usage, and not rashly to endeavour to reform it. 51. I pass from spelling to pronunciation. And first and foremost, let me notice that worst of all faults, the leaving out of the as- pirate where it ought to be, and putting it in where it ought not to be. This is a vulgarism not confined to this or that province of Eng- land, nor especially prevalent in one county or another, but common throughout Eng- land to persons of low breeding and inferior education, principally to those among the inhabitants of towns. Nothing so surely stamps a man as below the mark in intel- ligence, self-respect, and energy, as this un- fortunate habit : in intelligence, because, if he were but moderately keen in perception, he would see how it marks him; in self- respect and energy, because if he had these, he would long ago have set to work and cured it. Hundreds of stories are current about the absurd consequences of this vulgarism. We remember in Punch the barber who, while operating on a gentleman, exnresses his opinion, that, after all, the THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 41 cholera was in the hair. " Then," observes the customer, " you ought to be very care- ful what brushes you use." " Oh, sir," replies the barber, laughing, " I didn't mean the air of the ed, but the hair of the hatmosphere" 52. 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, I hear one of two commercial gentlemen, from a neighbouring table, telling his friend that " his ed used to halce ready to burst." 53. The following incident happened at the house of friends of my own. They had asked to dinner some acquaintances who were not perfect in their aspirates. When they made their appearance somewhat late, imagine the consternation of my relative, on receiving from the lady an apology, that she was very sorry they were after their time, but they had some ale by the way. The well-known infirmity suggested the charitable explana- tion, that it was a storm, and not a tipple, which had detained them. 54. I had, shortly after the publication ot my first paper in "Good Words," a very curious communication on the subject of the pronunciation of the aspirate. My correspon- 42 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. dent objected, that the portion of my Essay which treated of this matter conveyed no meaning to him, for that from a child he had never been able to tell the difference in pro- nunciation between a word beginning with an "A," and one beginning without: and he insisted that I ought to have adopted some method of making this plainer. He adds, " In all cases where the l h ' is used, to me it appears superfluous." I adduce this without comment, to show how inveterate the habit of neglecting the aspirate must be : — even more so than I had ever imagined. 55. Still, I have known cases where it has been thoroughly eradicated, at the cost, it is true, of considerable pains and diligence. But there are certain words with regard to which the bad habit lingers in persons not otherwise liable to it. We still sometimes, even in good society, hear " ospital," " erb" and "umble" — all of them very offensive, but the last of them by far the worst, especially when heard from an officiating clergyman. The English Prayer-book has at once settled the pronunciation of this word for us, by causing us to give to God our " humble and hearty thanks " in the general thanksgiving. Umble and hearty few can THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 43 pronounce -without a pain in the throat : and " umblanarty " we certainly never were meant to say ; Aumble and /iearty is the only pro- nunciation which will suit the alliterative style of the prayer, which has in it " not only with our lips, but in our lives" If it be urged that we have "an humble and contrite heart," I answer, so have we " the strength of an horse;'" but no one supposes that we were meant to say " a norse." The following are even more decisive : " holy and humble men of heart : " " thy humble servants," not " thine.'" It is difficult to believe that this pronunciation can long survive the satire of Dickens in David Copperfield : " I am well aware that I am the umblest person going," said Uriah Heep, modestly, " let the other be who he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble ; he was a sexton." 56. As I might have expected, the remarks here made on the pronunciation of humble have given rise to much controversy. The unaspirated pronunciation has been stoutly defended : partly on the ground of being borrowed from the Italian, partly by the alle- 44 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. gation that I have failed to prove from the Prayer-book the intention of the compilers of our Liturgy that the aspirate should be pro- nounced. 57. It has been asserted by one correspon- dent that the alliteration in the words, "humble and hearty," is as perfect without the aspirate on the former word, as with it ; and I am told that the fact of the occnrrence of "thy humble servants,'"' and "thine un- worthy servants," decides nothing, because we have u thy honour anal glory." But be it observed, that in order to answer my argu- ment, an instance ought to have been pro- duced, not of a different unaspirated vowel with "thy" before it, but of the same unaspirated vowel; because some vowels have in themselves sounds more or less nearly approaching to the power of a con- sonant, and therefore enduring " thy" and "a" before them. The long " u" has this power; we may say "a unit" " a university,' because the first syllable sounds as if it began with "you" and " y" has here the power of a consonant. But the short " u" as in "humble" is not one of those vowels which require a consonant to enunciate them : one could not say "a unlearned man:" and I THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 45 must therefore still maintain that the occur- rence of "thy humble,'" and "thine unworthy" shows that the. "A" was meant to be aspi- rated in the former case, as we know it was not in the latter. 58. Another correspondent brings what is apparently a more formidable objection against my conclusion from "thy humble" and "thine unworthy." "Were you/' he says, "to find the words i my umbrella'' in some standard work, would you at once exclaim, ' Oh, this writer calls it ' humbrella ? ' ' Here is an example of the short u." My answer is very simple. Mine is now almost universally disused : and my has taken its place before vowels. The translators of the Bible wrote "mine eyes:" but if I found "my eyes" in a modern book, I certainly should not charge the writer with aspirating the substantive. I must still maintain that, when the same persons, in the same book, wrote "thy humble," and "thine unworthy," they meant to indicate a difference, in respect of the aspi- rate, between the pronunciation of the two words thus differently preceded. 59. Another correspondent, writing from Ireland, charges me with being in error for finding fault with those who drop the aspi- 46 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. rate in the word "hospital" "for," says he, " no one in Ireland, so far as I am aware, ever thinks of aspirating the h in that word." This is certainly a curious reason why we should not aspirate it in England. It re- minds me of an American friend of ours, who, after spending two or three days with us, ventured to tell us candidly, that we all "spoke tvith a strong English accent." The same correspondent states that he never met an Englishman who could pronounce the rela- tive pronoun "which" He charges us all with pronouncing it as if it were " ivitch." I may venture to inform him that it was his ear which was in fault. The ordinary English pronunciation " which " is as distinguishable from " witch" as it is from the coarse Irish and Scotch " ivh-ich" "A "or 60. What is our rule — or have we any — " an " be- J forea vowel, respecting the use of a or an before words be- ginning with an aspirated h ? The rule com- monly given is this : that when the accent on the word thus beginning is on the first syllable, we must use a ; when it is on the second or any following syllable, we may use an. This is reasonable enough, because the first syllable, by losing its accent, also loses some portion of the strength of its aspiration. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 47 We cannot aspirate "with the same strength the first syllables in the words history and historian, and in consequence, we commonly say a history; but an historian. 61. Still, though this may define our modern practice, it is rather a reasonable description of it, than a rule recognised by our best writers. They do not scruple to use an before aspirated words, even when the accent falls on the first syllable. In the course of an examination through the letter h in the Concordance, verified by the text in all passages which seemed doubtful, I have found in the English version of the Bible very few instances of the article a used before a word beginning with h. We have an half, an hammer, an hand, an high hand, an hand- maid, an harp, an haven, an head, an heap, an heart, an hedge, an helmet, an help, an herdsman, an heretic, an heritage, an hill, an high hill, an hissing, an holy day, an holy man, an holy angel, an horn, an horrible thing (I may men- tion that Cruden has cited a horrible in every instance, but that in every instance it stands an, both in the edition of 1611 and in our present Bibles), an horse, an host, an house, an hundred, an husband, an hymn, an hypo- crite. The only exceptions which I have 48 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. found are, a hill, Josh. xxiv. 33 : a holy solemnity, Isa. xxx. 29. So that the surprise of a correspondent at Archbishop Trench's having written an hero was hardly justified. I do not, of course, mean to say that the usage of the translators of the Bible should be our rule nov/ : but in the absence of any general fixed rule, we can hardly find fault with writers who choose to follow a practice once so widely prevalent, and still kept before the public in the Book most read of all books. I must just remark, that the fact, that we are more particular about this matter than our ancestors were, seems to shew that, notwith- standing the very common vulgarism of dropping the aspirated h, the tendency of modern times has been rather to aspirate more, than less. "Such an 62. A correspondent questions the pro- priety of the common use of "an" before "one" in the phrase "such an one." I bring this forward not with any idea of deciding- it, but because in my examination of the usage of our translators of the Bible, a curious circumstance has come to light. They uniformly used " such a one," the expression occurring about thirteen times. In the New Testament, the printers have Oil THE QUEEN' 8 ENGLISH. 49 altered it throughout to "such an one:" in the Old Testament, they have as uniformly left it as it was. It seems to me that we may now, in writing, use either. In common talk, I should always naturally say " such a one," not "such an one" which would sound formal and stilted. 63. A student at one of our military aca- Only one hen in demies had copied a drawing of a scene in Venice. Venice, and in copying the title, had spelt the name of the city Vennice. The drawing mas- ter put his pen through the superfluous letter, observing, " Don't you know, sir, there is but one hen in Venice ? '* On which the youth burst out laughing. Being asked what he was laughing about, he replied he was think- ing how uncommonly scarce eggs must be there. The master, in wrath, reported him to the colonel in command, a Scotchman. He, on hearing the disrespectful reply, without in the least perceiving the point of the joke, observed, " An a varra naatural observaation too." 64. A worse fault even than dropping the *' idear," &c. aspirate, is the sounding words ending with a, or aw, as if they ended with ar. A corre- spondent, accustomed apparently to attend the Houses of Parliament, sends me a strong remonstrance against this practice. He says, s 50 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. " Woe betide any unfortunate member if he strews the floor with ' aitches ' ; the laughter is open and merciless : but honourable mem- bers may talk of the ' lawrr ' of the land, or 'scawn the idear,' with perfect impunity. One of the greatest offenders in this matter is a well-known opposition speaker whom I shall not name. The startling way in which he brings out idear is enough to make the hair of any one but a well-seasoned Cockney stand on end." My correspondent goes on to say, "Amelia Ann is a great stumbling-block to people with this failing, becoming of course in their mouths Amelia ran. I remember once seeing a little elementary tract on French pronunciation, in which, opposite the French a, was placed ar, by way oi indicating to British youth the pronunciation thereof. I showed the curiosity to several Londoners, but they could not be made to see the point of the joke." Calling "u H 65. There is a very offensive vulgarism, most common in the midland counties, but found more or less almost everywhere : giving what should be the sound of the u in certain words, as if it were oo : calling "duty? dooty ; "Tuesday" Toosday; reading to us that "the clouds drop down the doo;" exhorting us 00. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 51 " dooly to do the dooties that are doo from us ; " asking to be allowed to see the " noos- paper." And this is not from incapacity to utter the sound ; for though many of these people call "new" noo, no one ever yet called "few," foo ; but it arises from defective edu- cation, or from gross carelessness. 66. A Scottish correspondent, speaking of ''heritor "■— some usages prevalent in the north, says : — " ' Heritor,' proprietor of landed property, is most commonly pronounced ' eritor,' which is manifestly inconsistent with ' heritage, ' here- ditary,' &c, in which the aspiration is always given. In our Scotch courts of law, we hear of entries being made on the ' record,' never record : but in other than law uses the word is always accented on the first syllable. This reminds me of another term in Scotch law — ' Curator,' pronounced curator, in violation, certainly, of the Latin analogy. It is told of a witty Scotch counsel, that when pleading before the House of Lords, and when cor- rected by one of their lordships for his false quantity in the pronunciation of this word, he replied, with a profound bow, that he must submit to the authority of so learned a sena- tor, and so eloquent an orator." • 66a. In one letter sent to me, fault is 52 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. found with the pronunciations "decanal" " ruri-decanal" " optative" on the ground that it is the genius of our language always to throw back the accent to the first syllable of a tri-syllabic word, as in "senator" "orator" "minister." In such a case, custom is our only guide. It is not to be thought that, be- cause we say "senator" "orator" or "minis- ter" we have any objection to tri-syllabic words with the accent on the penultima ; we have hundreds of them : witness " objector" 11 protector" " reflector" " assertor" &c. So that no rule can be laid down, except the " norma loquendi." "manifold." 67. A correspondent asks for a comment on the pronunciation of the word " manifold? He thinks that we lose the idea of its original composition by calling it, as we generally do, "mannifold" and that it ought to be called "many-fold" as if it were two words. My reply would be, that the end proposed is a praiseworthy one, but I am afraid it will not justify the means used in attaining it — viz., the violation of common usage, which has stamped " mannifold " with its approval. It may be that the mispronunciation first ori- . ginated in the apparent analogy with " mani- fest." I would remind him, that this is not THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 53 the only word which suffers change of pro- nunciation when compounded. We call a "vine-yard" "vinyard:" the man would be deservedly set down as a pedant who should do otherwise. We call a " cup-board" a " cub- bard" a "half -penny" a "haepny" and we similarly contract many other compound words. The great rule, I take it, in all such cases of conventional departure from the pro- nunciation of words as spelt, is to do nothing which can attract attention. We naturally think somewhat less favourably than we otherwise should of a person who says " vic- tu-al" when the rest of the world say "vittal;" "med-i-cine" when others say "meoVcine;" "ve-ni-son" where we thought we should hear "verison" We commonly expect that such a man will be strong-willed, and hard to deal with in ordinary life : and I think we are not often wrong. 68. A correspondent complains of the stress "prophecy." laid on the final syllable of the substantive prophecy : and says, " What should we think of ecstasy, fallacy, phantasy, especially if put in the plural?" But in this case, usage is right, and apparent analogy wrong. Ecstasy, as we have already seen, is from the Greek ecstasis ; phantasy, from the Greek phantasia ; 54 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. fallacy, from the Latin fallacia. But pro- phecy is from the Greek propheteia : and it is therefore not without reason that we lay the stress on the last syllable. The verb, to pro- phesy, we pronounce in the same way ; I sup- pose, by a double analogy : partly guided by the sound of the substantive, partly by that of the last syllable in other verbs ending in " y" to qualify, to amplify, to mystify, &c. "aims,"&c. 69. Complaint has been made of the pro- nunciation of the words alms, psalms, calm, after the fashion of elm and film. ISTo doubt the marked utterance of the "V in these words would savour of affectation j at the same time, there is a subdued sound of it which should be heard in "alms :" even less audibly in "psalm" and hardly at all in " calm : " usage, as learnt in society, being in this, as in other uncertain pronunciations, the only safe guide. "Cowpcr/' 70. There are two words, the pronunciation of the former of which can easily be settled, whereas that of the latter seems to defy all settlement. How are we to call the Christian poet who spells his name C-o-w-p-e-r 2 He himself has decided this for us. He makes his name rhyme with trooper. We must therefore call him Coo-per, not Cow-per ; THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 55 seeing that a man's own usage is undeniably the rule for the pronunciation of his own name. I have had a letter from a correspon- dent, urging that this rhyme may have been only a poetical pronunciation of the name, not the usual one ; as Coleridge in one place makes his name rhyme to " polar ridge." But I have received an interesting testimony from Dr. Goddard Rogers, confirming the settle- ment of the pronunciation as given above. " Cowper," he says, " not only decided the matter by ' making his name rhyme to trooper;' but in conversation always begged his friends to call him Cooper. I have this from a very old gentleman whom I attended in his last illness. He was Thomas Palmer Bull, son of Cowper' s friend, l smoke-inhaling Bull/ and had himself heard the poet make the remark." 71. Another word also brings into ques- "cucum- tion the " coo " and " cow," but without any such chance of a settlement. It is the agree- able but somewhat indigestible gourd spelt c-it-c-u-m-b-e-r. Is it to be coo-cumber ? cow- cumber? or Jcew-cwoaber 1 The point is one warmly debated : so warmly in certain circles, that when I had a house full of pupils, we were driven to legislation on it, merely to keep the peace of the household. Whenever 56 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. the unfortunate word occurred at table, which was almost every day during the summer months, a fierce fray invariably set in. At last we abated the nuisance by enacting that in future- the first syllable should be dropped, and the article be called for under the undebateable name of "cumber." Perhaps, of the three, the strongest claim might be set up for kew, or Q-cumber : seeing that the Latin name, cucumis, can hardly by English lips be otherwise pronounced. Mis-pro- 72. I cannot abstain from saying a few nunciation , ,, . . . of scripture words on the mispronunciation of Scripture proper names by our clergy. This, let me remind them, is quite inexcusable. It shows a disregard and absence of nains in a matter, about the least part of which no pains ought to be spared. To take it on no other ground, is it justifiable in them to allow themselves to offend by their ignorance or carelessness the ears of the most intelligent of their hearers 2 This was not the spirit of one who said he would not eat meat while the world lasted, if it scandalized his neighbour. But this is not all. When I hear a man flounder about among St. Paul's salutations, calling half of them wrongly, I am sure that that man does not know his Bible. The same THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 57 carelessness is sure to show itself in misap- propriation of texts, wrong understanding of obsolete phrases, and the like. The man who talks of Aristobiilus in the Lesson, is as likely as not to preach from St. Paul's "I know nothing by myself," to show us that the Apostle wanted divine teaching, and not to be aware that he meant, he was not con- scious of any fault * 73. Three Sundays before this was written, Examples. Jan. 18, 1863, we had the crucial chapter, Bom. xvi., for the evening lesson. A friend writes to me from a distant city in Italy : — u In the afternoon a stranger officiated ; but as he saluted -issyncritus and Patrobas, I knew what to expect in the sermon, and so it was." Another writes from London, that he was on that day at a fashionable London churchy and heard Epenetus and Patrobas introduced to the congregation. A clergy- man in the West of England found on his breakfast-table one Monday morning a note from his congregation to this effect : — To-day you said, "ye know Stephanas ;" This misconception, f sir, doth pain us : For it is Stephanas we know, And beg that you will call him so.t * See the text explained, in paragraph 319 below, t I have had a very amusing letter, written anony- 58 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. A friend of mine heard the following in a London church, and, strange to say, from a schoolmaster : — " Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick." But it perhaps may be said to me, with the beautiful inconsequence of the logic of the present day, Is a man a per- fect Christian minister, because he knows how to pronounce these names'? To which I fearlessly answer, " No, by no means ; but he is, at all events, as near to it as if he did not know how to pronounce them." I am st^ttT" 7 P u ^ * n m ^ n ^' ^7 this question, of "Johnny Stittle," a redoubtable preacher who used to hold forth at Cambridge, in a chapel in Green Street. The tradition of him and his sayings was yet a living thing, when I went up as an under-graduate in 1828. His wont was to rail at the studies of the Uni- versity; and in doing so on one occasion, after having wound himself up to the re- quisite pitch of fervour, he exclaimed, in a mously, from the clergyman in the West of England to ■whom these verses were sent. He comes to a rather curious conclusion from the fact of my having told the story. He infers that I was present, and that I made the verses. As this may be my only means of com- municating with him, let me assure him this was not the case. I merely tell the tale as 'twas told to THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 59 voice of thunder, "D'ye think Poivl knew Greek?"* 74. A writer in the " English Churchman" * I Lave had two interesting communications from Cambridge, giving accurate details respecting "Johnny Stittle." He is mentioned in the Rev. Aimer Brown's "Recol- lections of Rev. Chas. Simeon," Introduction, p. xiii., where he is described as a "day labourer," and it is said that Mr. Simeon thought well enough of him to encourage him by pecuniary assistance. In a memoir of Rowland Hill, by Mr. Jones, are the following notices of Stittle : — "During Mr. Hill's residence at Cambridge he was much attached to ' Johnny Stittle,' one of Mr. Berridge's converts. He was naturally a gifted man, though, like his patron, he moved in his own orbit. He preached for many years in Green Street, Cambridge, and died in 1813, in his 87th year. "As Mr. Hill was on his way to Duxford to preach for the Missionary Society, he suddenly exclaimed, 'I must go to Cambridge, and see the widow of an old clergyman who is living there, for I have a message to leave with her.' On being asked if the message was important, he replied, ' Yes, sir, I want the old lady — who will soon be in heaven — to give my love to Johnny Stittle, and to tell him I shall soon see him again.' " Another correspondent says, "I am old enough to re- member, and to have actually heard, Johnny Stittle at Cambridge. He compared eternity, in one of his ser- mons, to a great clock, which said 'tick' in one century, and ' tack ' in the next. Then suddenly turning to some gownsmen, he said, 'Now go home, and calculate the length of the pendulum." One must acknowledge that if there was eccentricity here, there was something very like genius also. 60 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. adds the following to many instances of mis- pronunciation of Scripture proper names. " Too well," says the writer in the " Church- man," "do I remember the city of Colosse pronounced Coloss, as if it were a word of only two syllables; the epistle to Philemon; ' the gainsaying of Core ' (one syllable), betray- ing that the speaker had no conception he was talking of the person who in the 16th chapter of Numbers is designated ' Koran.' " I have also a complaint sent me of a clergy- man who insists on always saying "Achaicus" and an anecdote of a remark being made, how well the Venite exultemus was chanted. 75. A correspondent requests me to endea- vour to correct the very common mispro- nunciation Timotheus, into the proper sound, TimothS-iis. On the other hand, one of my Censors expresses a hope that as I so strongly advocate our following the Greeks in the pro- nunciation of their proper names, I shall be consistent, and never again, in reading the Samaria lessons, call those ancient cities, Samaria and deipina. Philadelphia, otherwise than Samaria and Philadelphia. The answer to this is very simple — viz., that I do not advocate the following of the Greeks in the pronunciation of their proper names, in any case where THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 61 English usage has departed from their pro- nunciation. It is in cases where there is no such usage, and where the reader is thrown back on what' ought to be his own knowledge of the form and composition of the name, that we are pained at discovering that one who ought to be able rightly to divide the Word of Truth, is not in the habit of consulting his New Testament in the original Greek. 76. But there is more to be said about the two rather unfortunate instances given by my critic. The tendency of our language has been universally to shorten the last syllable but one, in those names of cities which in Greek ended in la. Alexandria is now called Alexandria >• Seleucla, Seleucia ; and Samaria and Philadelphia, Samaria and Philadelphia. But no such usage infringes the proper Greek pronunciation of Epoenetus, Asyncritus, Patro- has, Aristobulus, and the like. Of course, usage is not immutable. We now say Zabu- lon, but the day may come when the stricter scholars may have overborne common usage, and we may say Zabulon, which is right according to the Hebrew and the Greek. We now say Sennacherib; and so universal is this usage, that a correspondent writes in strong terms, stigmatising the strictly accurate pro- 62 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. nunciation, Sennacherib, as a blunder. When I was at school, the common practice was to pronounce the names of two of the Greek letters, as "Epsilon" and " Omtcron :" now, such sounds are unknown in schools, and the right pronunciation, "Epsilon" and "Omicron" is universal. Urbane. 77. Three correspondents have written about another Scripture name. It is that of a person saluted in Eom. xvi. 9, and in our present Bibles spelt U-r-b-a-n-e. The common idea respecting this name is that it belongs to a woman, and most readers pro- nounce it as three syllables, Urbane. But it is simply the English for the Latin name Urbanus, in English Urbane, or, as we now call it, Urban. The assumed name of the Editor of " The Gentleman's Magazine " has been, time out of mind, Sylvanus Urban. The royal printers, who have made so many unauthorised alterations in the text of our Bibles, might with advantage drop out the final "e" from this word, and thus prevent the possibility of confusion. Junias. 78. I may mention that in verse 7 of the same chapter, Junia, who is mentioned with Andronicus, is not a woman, but a man, Junias. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 63 79. While treating of the pronunciation of "covetous." those who minister in public, two other words occur to me which are very commonly mangled by our clergy. One of these is " covetous" and its substantive, " covetousness." I hope that some of my clerical readers will be induced to leave off pronouncing them " covetious" and " covetiousness." I can assure them, that when they do thus call the words, one at least of their hearers has his appreciation of their teaching disturbed. 80. The other hint I would venture to give ^ e Reveia- ° tion. them is, that the mysterious concluding book of Scripture is the Revelation* of St. John, not the Revelations. I imagine this very common mistake must have arisen from our being accustomed to speak of the Lamentaftwis of Jeremiah, in which case the word is plural. 80a. A complaint respecting slovenly pro- ««f?i"» aT nunciation has been sent me, which seems to bring before us a matter of some delicacy and uncertainty. A correspondent blames * I had a strong letter of remonstrance for having called this book the " Revelation of St. John," where- as it is, by ch. i. 1, "the Revelation of Jesus Christ." Here we have a misapprehension of the meaning of the preposition ; so puerile, as not to be worth recording, were it not to illustrate a point hereafter to be treated of. 64 • THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. rightly the slovenly habit of pronouncing " Abel," " Mabel," " Ethel," as if they were 11 Able;' "Mahle," " Ethle ;" and speaks with proper severity of Walker, who, in his ''Pronouncing Dictionary," has set down '' evle" as the pronunciation of " evil." So far seems clear. But, when we come to the question, whether all words in -el or -il are to be rigidly pronounced in full, we are, I think, compelled to yield somewhat to custom. Nay, custom has, as matter of fact, prevailed in some cases, even to the altera- tion of our conventional spelling. What was once " battail," then " battel," has now be- come "battle;" "chattail," or "chattel," has become " cattle ; " " subtile," or " sub- til," has become " subtle ; " " castell," or " castel," has become " castle." The word " devil" is far more frequently pronounced " devvle," than " de-vill j" indeed, this latter pronunciation, in the mouth of an affected precisian, is offensive. Good taste, and the observance of usage, must in such matters be our guides. Criticism in 81. A very curious and choice bit of a news- paper, newspaper criticism on these "notes' was sent me the other day. The writer says : " There seems, to our mind, something small, THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 65 not to say ludicrous and absurd, about the notion of a dignitary of the Church of Eng- land constituting himself the censor and reporter of small slips of pronunciation, such as Sophcerietus for Sophcznetus, and the like. We should think none the worse of a man for tripping once, or even twice, in those long Pauline lists of salutations. Not to trip at all would, except in the case of practised and familiar scholars, suggest to us the notion that rather more pains and time had been bestowed upon the matter than it deserved." Where this critic found the name Sophcenetus among the Pauline salutations, I am at a loss to say : at all events it shews that he prac- tised his own advice, and had not bestowed more time nor pains on the matter than it deserved. But it is his doctrine, that in knowledge of the proprieties of these minute points in Scripture, inaccuracy is better than accuracy, that I would especially hold up for reprobation. Very little time and pains are really required in the matter. 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 ; or if he is in the practice of regular reading in the original, 66 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. he will not want even this two minutes' reference. And those who cannot refer to the original will be kept right without any pains at all, if the clergy are right; for they will simply follow their leaders. Surely this doc- trine of the writer in the newspaper cannot represent the general opinion among those bodies who have of late years been making- such remarkable advance in the accurate study of the original text of the Scriptures, and have by the results of the training in some of their admirable colleges done so much for the credit of biblical scholarship in England. 82. For my own part, I was disposed to put together this critique and a letter which I received from a friend, saying that he had heard a person, not a clergyman, read Arc- turns and Orion and the Pleiades. I could not help imagining that I had tracked my critic tripping twice or even more in what I daresay he believes to be some more of these Pauline salutations.* Serious _ 83. The really serious aspect of the matter accompani- -- ments of comes before us, when we hear what my friend ignorance in this matter, adds, that the man thus reading proceeded to expound the chapter. An error in pronuncia- * See note B at end of book. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 67 tion may be, in an ordinary person, a trifle ; but when a teacher makes it, it is no longer a trifle : and for this reason, that a teacher is bound to be acquainted with the real meaning of that which he expounds, and enforces ; with the context of the passages, and with the spirit and force of the sacred word as the Spirit has given it to us. And when we find a teacher ignorant of even outward matters of common information respecting the text, we are not led to hope much for his power of rightly dividing the word of truth. That it may please Him who is the fountain of wisdom, to make exceptions, and to endow even ignorant men with insight into the meaning of His word, no one would deny ; still, it is not our business to take such excep- tions for granted, but rather to take for granted His ordinary course of proceeding on our part, and to provide for its success as we best may. He who feels this, will not think correctness even in the lists of Pauline saluta- tions a trifling matter. 84. I now come to that which must form a Usage and construc- pnncipal part of my little work, — some notes tion. on the usage of words and construction of sentences. And let me premise, in order to prevent mistakes, that my object in these f 2 68 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. notes is not to lay down nor to exemplify mere rules of grammar, — though of course the consideration of such rules must often come before us, — but to illustrate the usages and tendencies of our common language, as matter of fact, by the discussion of questions arising out of doubtful words and phrases. One of the most interesting subjects connected with a language is its tendencies : the cur- rents, so to speak, which set in for or against certain modes of speech or thought. These are to be discovered in all languages, and in none more notably than our own. We are a mixed race, and our tongue everywhere bears traces of the fact. We have gone through more crises of religious and political strife than most nations, and thought and speech have ever been freer in England than in other countries. From these, and from other circumstances, the English language has be- come more idiomatic than most others ; and the tendency is still going on among us, to set aside accurate grammatical construction, and to speak rather according to idiom than according to rule, idiom. 85. Let me explain myself: and to this end let me say something about that which is known as the idiom of a language, as distin- THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 69 g aished from strictness of grammatical con- struction. This word "idiom," then, is de- rived from the Greek, and properly signifies a thing or habit peculiar to one person or set of persons, and forming an exception to general rules. Our usage of the term has confined this its meaning .in English to matters of language. When we speak of an idiom, we mean some saying, or some way of speaking, peculiar to some one language or family of languages, which can only be accounted for by the peculiar tendency, or habit of thought, of those who use it. When we say that a phrase is idiomatic, we mean that it bears this character. 86. Now let us see to what this amounts. Such expressions, if judged by strict rules, will commonly fail to satisfy them. In so far as they are idiomatic, they are depar- tures from the beaten track of that gram- matical construction, and that critical analogy, which are common to all languages. For the rules of grammar and of logic, being depen- dent not on local usage, but on the con- stitution of the human mind, are common to all nations. And when any nation sets up, so to speak, for itself, and indulges in the peculiarities which we call idioms, it 70 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. takes a course which these general rules do not justify, idiomatic 87. Let us show this by some examples. mode of ad- J r dress. It is the habit of modern European nations to avoid the second person singular in addressing individuals. Some languages use the second person plural instead : some the third person. The English, the French, and others, say " you " for " thou ;" the Germans, and those cognate to them, say "they" for "tJwu :" the Italians, still more strangely, say " she" meaning " your excellency." These are the idioms or idio- matic usages of these languages respectively. Every one speaking any of those languages must use the idiomatic expression, or he would render himself ridiculous. * * Nay, the consequences may sometimes be much more serious. A correspondent sends me the follow- ing story : "My friend, a student in the University of Heidelberg, acquired his first knowledge of German chiefly by colloquial exercise with his fellow-students, who habitually addressed each other in the second person singular, ' du.' Having thus acquired enough of the language to blunder through a conversation, he was present at a party, where he danced with the sister of one of his fellow- students, and entertained her with the choicest German at his command, but unfortunately always addressed her as ' du.' This (to a German ear) impertinent familiarity was either overheard by, or re- ported to, the young lady's brother, who deemed it impossible to wipe out the scandal by any other means THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 71 88. But, if we judge such expressions by strict rules, they cannot be defended. It cannot be correct to address one person as if he were many : it cannot be correct to look at and address one person as if he were not present, and, being absent, were more than one. We all know this : notwithstanding we do not criticise and carp at every such usage, but simply acquiesce in it as being the common custom. 89. Let us take another instance. Some Elliptic languages are more elliptic than others : that is, the habits of thought of some nations will bear the omission of certain members of a sentence, better than the habits of thought of other nations. In English we should say, "At the Equinox the sun rises at six and sets at six" But if we were speaking in French, we should say, "At the Equinox, the sun rises at six hours of the morning, and sets at six hours of the evening." Now here there is than a duel. In vain my friend explained his ignorance of the German conventional mode of address. The offence had been committed in public, and if the culprit wished to remain at Heidelberg in peace in future, he must fight there. They fought accordingly, and the skilful German cleverly inflicted a slight wound which drew blood ; honour was satisfied, and the affair ended in pipes, friendship, and beer." 72 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. no doubt that the Frenchman has the advan- tage in fulness and propriety of expression. Any one disposed to cavil at our English sentence, and to treat it as some of my sen- tences have been treated, might say, " rises at six and sets at six ! Six what ? Six miles, or six minutes, or six occasions?" But we do not in practice thus cavil, because we are in the enjoyment of common sense, and we are prepared, in the daily use of our language, to omit that which the thought would natu- rally supply.* chpricecf 90. One more example. In English, our common mode of salutation to one another is, " How d'ye do t" Now of course we all under- stand, that in this phrase we use the verb tl do " in a neuter sense : in the same sense which it bears in the reply of the disciples concerning Lazarus : " Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well." But suppose a person were to insist on this usage being carried throughout our converse, and to make it an objection to the question " Hoiv d'ye do?" that one can- not say in the same sense, " I went to see A or B, and he did well." We should at once reply, if we thought on the matter, that while * See note C, at the end of the volume. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH, 73 the verb admits of being thus used in certain tenses, and in certain connexions, it does not admit of being thus used in certain other tenses, and in certain other connexions ; and that the account to be given of this is, that the English people will have it so : it is an idiom, or arbitrary usage, of their language. 91. The capricious character of idiomatic usage is admirably illustrated by this very example. For though it is admissible to say, " I went to see A or B, and he was doing very well," the words would not carry the sense, that I was able to say to him "How d'ye do?" and he to reply, "Very well, thank you;" but would convey the impression that he had lately met with an accident, and was going on favourably. 92. Some idiomatic expressions seem to JJjJJ^ defy any attempt to give a satisfactory ac- count of them. Take the phrase " methinks." It is believed to have arisen from a strange impersonal use of the verb, and the trans- position of the pronoun, which should come after it. We have the simlar phrase, "me- seems," which can more easily be resolved : viz., into " it seems to me." That this is the account to be given of both, appears plain, seeing that in both cases we find in use the 74 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. other and more formal third person, "me- thinketh" and "me-seemeth." But what an expression to come under the ferule of the strict grammarian ! Example 93. I want yet one more example for the from the J r Greek. purpose I have in view, and I must get it from a dead language. In the Greek, — which is perhaps the finest and most subtle vehicle ever formed for human thought, — it is the practice to join a plural noun of the neuter gender to a verb in the singular number. Now, of course, according to the rules of uni- versal grammar, this is wrong. A plural noun should be joined to a plural verb. But the Greek had his reason, and a very good one it was. He felt, that things without life, when spoken of in the plural, formed but one mass, and might be treated as one thing. And so the tendency of the national thought, which was to define and to express the subtle dis- tinctions of thought, prevailed over the rule of grammar, and the usage became idio- matic. Spoken and 94. Let another thing also be remem- written English. bered. We must distinguish between the English which we speak, and that which we write. Many expressions are not only tole- rated but required in conversation, which are THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 75 not usually put on paper. Thus, for instance, everyone says "can't" for cannot, "wont" for will not, " isn't" for is not, in conversation ; but we seldom see these contractions in books, except where a conversation is related. This is a difference which the foreigner is generally slow in apprehending. He says " / will not," "I cannot," "I must not," " I shall not:" "I am," for "I'm," "they are" for "they're : " and he often may be detected by his precision in these matters, even after he has mastered the pronunciation and construction of our language. This difference between our spoken and our written language should always be borne in mind, when we are treat- ing of expressions commonly found in collo- quial English. Many persons, in judging of them, bring them to the test of the stricter rule of written composition, to which they are not fairly amenable. 95. Let me further illustrate this ten- "those kind of dency of nations by another usage now al- things." most become idiomatic, and commonly found in the talk of us all. I mean the expression "these" or "those hind of things." At first sight, this seems incorrect and indefensible. It would appear as if we ought to say " this hind of things" " that hind of things." It tion. 76 THE QUEEN' 8 ENGLISH. becomes then an interesting inquiry, as it was in the other case, why this should be so. And here again my readers must excuse me if I go to a dead language for my illustration — not for my reason: the reason will be found in the laws of thought : but it will be best illustrated by citing the usage of that language in which, more than in any other, the laws of thought have found their expression, attrac- 96. In the Greek language, there is an idiomatic usage called attraction. It may be thus described. If an important noun in a sentence is in a certain case, say the genitive or dative, a relative pronoun referring to it is put in the same case, though by the construc- tion of the sentence it ought to be in another. Thus, if I wanted to put into Greek the sen- tence, " / gave it to the man whom I saw" the relative pronoun "whom" would not be in the accusative case, as it ought to be, governed by the verb " saw" but in the same case as "man" viz., dative, and the sentence would be roughly represented, as far as the mere form of it is concerned, by the English " I gave it to the man, to whom I saw." 97. Now in the way of speaking of which I treat, it is evident that this same tendency, to draw the less important word into simi- THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 77 larity to the more important one, is suffered to prevail over strict grammatical exactness. We are speaking of "things" in the plural. Our pronoun "this" really has reference to " hind" not to " things :" but the fact of " things™ being plural, gives a plural com- plexion to the whole, and we are tempted to put " this" into the plural. That this is the account to be given, appears still more plainly from the fact that not unfrequently we find a rival attraction prevails, and the clause takes a singular complexion from the other substantive, "kind." We often hear people say, " this kind of thing" " that sort of thing." It must be confessed that the phrases, " this kind of things" " that sort of things" have a very awkward sound ; and we find that our best writers have the popular expression, These kind, those sort* 98. One word on "this" and "that" as we " t ^ is " and 7 ** That. " pass onward. "Tim" and "these" refer to per- sons and things present, or under immediate consideration; "that" and "those" to per- sons and things not present, nor under im- mediate consideration ; or if either of these, one degree further removed than the others * See note D, at the end of the volume. that.' 78 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. of which are used " this" and " these" We find this rule sometimes curiously violated in conversation and in writing. A barrister tells me that the confusion is common in the Irish law courts : " Those arguments I now use," &c. Another Irish correspondent is often greeted with, " That's a could day, yer riv'rence." I have a Scottish friend, who always designates the book which he has in his hand as " that booh;" the portfolio of drawings which he is turning over as " those drawings." 99. We have this usage in England, but it carries another meaning. If I have a book in my hand, and say, " tliat booh mill mahe a great sensation" I mean to remove my own and my hearer's attention from the particular volume, or even the present consideration of its contents, and to describe it in its general, and as it were historical, effect »on the world. 100. The oddest departure from the com- mon usage of i( this" and "that" which I remember to have observed, was in a notice which I repeatedly saw, in the summer of " to-day," 1863, posted on houses in Devonshire, "Those houses to let" " That house for sale." 100a. In "this day" " this night" the THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 79 somewhat stiff and formal demonstrative pronoun is curiously abbreviated. " To-day" " to-night,''' are universally used. In the dialect of the western counties, " this year" is commonly expressed by " to-year." In Scotland and Ireland, " the day" " the night," " the year," are the ordinary expressions : " it'll no rain the day," &c. 101. Confusion sometimes arises in our Triple . meaning ol language from the triple meaning of "that, "that." which, with us, is a demonstrative pronoun, a relative pronoun, and a conjunction. It is possible to use six "thats" consecutively in the same sentence. Take the sentence, "He said, that the meaning which the report which that man told him had been thought to bear was more than had been intended." Here I have already " that," conjunction ; and I may express "the meaning," by "that," demon- strative pronoun ; "which," by "that," relative pronoun ; " the report," by " that," demon- strative pronoun ; " ivhich" again, by " that," relative pronoun ; and then I end with " that man," " that " being in this last case again a demonstrative pronoun. So that I get the following sentence, with, as I said, six " thats" occurring consecutively : " He said, that that that that that that man told him had been 80 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. thought to mean, was more than had been intended." * 102. From this threefold import of the word it sometimes is not apprehended which of its meanings it bears in a given sentence. Ps. xc. 4, in the Prayer-book version runs thus — " A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that is past as a watch in the night" Here, of course, that is the de- monstrative pronoun, and refers to "yester- day" which has just been spoken of ; and it ought, in reading, to have a certain emphasis laid on it. But not unfrequently we hear it read in the responses of the congregation, as if it were the conjunction : " Seeing that is past as a watch in the night." I remember having some trouble in curing our choristers at Canterbury of singing it thus, "this 103. What are we to think of the very « that common expressions, " this much" " that much?" We continually hear and read, " This much I know," " Of that much I am * Seven "thats" may be used together, if one of them is a mere citation. "I assert that that 'that,' that that that that person told me contained, was im- properly emphasized." And this use may be carried even further yet : "I assert, that that, that that 'that,' that that that that person told me contained, implied, has been misunderstood." THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 51 certain," and the like. It might be supposed at first sight that this way of speaking was indefensible. "Much" is an adjective of quantity, and requires, in order to define it, not a pronoun, but an adverb. We may say very much, pretty much (where "pretty" is used in its colloquial adverbial sense of tolerably, moderately), as much, so much, or thus much; but from such a view it would appear that we must not say " this much" or " that much" Still, may not another view be taken? High, deep, long, broad, are adjectives of measure ; but we may say a -foot high, a yard long, an ell broad. And if we choose to designate with the hand, or otherwise, the measure of a foot, yard, or ell, we may substitute the demonstrative pronoun for the substantive, and say with precisely the same construction of the sentence, " this high," " this long," " that broad" Now, how is this with " much V If I may use this and that to point out the extent of length, height, and breadth which I want to indicate, why not also to point out the extent of quantity which I want to indicate ? When I say " Of this much I am certain" I indicate, by the pro- noun this, something which I am about to state, and which is the extent of my cer- 82 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. tainty. When I say "That much I knew before, 11 I indicate, by the pronoun " that," the piece of intelligence which my friend supposed to be new to me. But it may be replied, I might have said, " Of this I am certain, 1 ' " That I knew before. 11 True : but then I should express nothing as to the extent of my certainty or previous knowledge. I believe both expressions to be correct; not so elegant perhaps as " Thus much 11 but at the same time more fitted for colloquial use. "that in." 104. There is one use of that, which is quite indefensible, and, indeed, is not found except as a provincialism. I mention it, because some might suppose that what I have said might be cited in defence of it likewise. . I mean, when it is used as a qualifying word with adjectives not denoting extent, and when itself must be explained by " to that extent. 11 I have heard in the midland and eastern counties, " I was that ill, that I could not go to work :" " He was that drunk, that he didn't know what he was about."* " c l?l so " 105. Are we to say " ever so." or "never so 11 or never * 50 ? " in expressions like "be he ever {iiever) so old," * An Irish correspondent informs me that "which?" is used in Ireland as equivalent to our "what?" or ' ' what did you say ? " THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 83 and the like % Usage seems divided. In fa- miliar speech we mostly say " ever so : " in writing, and especially in the solemn and ele- vated style, we mostly find "never so." We say to a tronblesome petitioner, " If you ask me ever so much, I won't give it you :" but we read, " Which remseth to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely." Can we give any account of this ? What is the difference between the expressions % Be- cause one would think there must be some difference, when two such words are con- cerned, which are the very opposites of one another. Sentences similarly constructed with these two words are as different in meaning as possible. " Had he ever loved at all," and "Had he never loved at all," are opposite in meaning to one another. And so, actually and literally, are the two which we are now considering : but in the general sense they both convey the meaning which is intended. This may be made plain as follows : " Be it ever so large," means, "though it attain every imaginable degree of size : " " be it never so large," means, "though there be no imaginable degree of size which it does not attain." The former is inclusively affirmative ; the latter is ex- g 2 84 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. clusively negative : and these two amount to the same, "what 106. There are some curious phenomena was," "what , was not." coming under the same head as this last. I may say, "What was my astonishment," and I may say, " What was not my astonishment," and I may convey the same meaning. By the former I mean, " how great was my astonish- ment ;" by the latter, that no astonishment could be greater than mine was. "no" and 107. Another correspondent mentions a same. curious fact about negatives and affirmatives. If we were to ask the question, "Had you only the children with you 1 " a person south of the Tweed would answer " no," and a per- son north of the Tweed "yes" both meaning the same thing — viz., that only the children were there. I think I should myself, though a Southron, answer yes. But there is no doubt that such questions are answered in the two ways when the same meaning is intended to be conveyed. The account to be given of this seems to be, that "only" is "none but." " Had you none but the children with you ? " and the answer is "None" affirming the ques- tion. So that the negative form naturally occurs to the mind in framing its answer, and " none " becomes " no." Whereas in the other THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 85 case this form does not occur to the mind, but simply to affirm the matter inquired of, viz., the having only the children : and the answer is " Even so" or " Yes." 108. In some sentences unobjectionably " old f st „ •* inmate. expressed, it is impossible to be sure of the meaning. An establishment has been founded fifty years. A person tells me that he is "one of its oldest inmates."' Am I to under- stand that he is one of the few survivors of those who came to it at or near its first foun- dation, in which case he may be any age above fifty ; or am I to understand that he is at the present moment one of the oldest in age of the inmates there, which would bring his age up to between eighty and ninety 1 In other words, does the term "oldest" qualify him absolutely, or only as an inmate of that establishment ? 109. The mention of degrees of compa- " rison leads me to another point, which I have been requested to notice by more than one correspondent. It is the use of lesser in certain combinations, instead of less. Are we to stigmatise this as an impropriety, or to regard it as an idiomatic irregularity which we must be content to tolerate 1 It seems to me that the latter must be our course. 86 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. The usage is sanctioned by our best writers, and that not here and there, but uniformly. " God made two great lights : the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." 110. The account to be given of it seems to be somewhat like that which we gave of a former irregularity : that it has arisen origi- nally by the force of attraction to another word, greater, which in such sentences pre- cedes it. For example, when we have spoken of " the greater light" " the less light " sounds halting and imperfect ; and the termination er is added to balance the sentence. Some- times the usage occurs where the other word is not expressed : as when we say " the lesser of two evils : " but still the com- parison is in the mind, though not on the tongue. It may be too, that it is not only the sound of the one word "greater" which is usually the companion of " lesser" but that of almost every other comparative in the language, which has produced the effect ; for they are almost without exception dis- syllables. It is a confirmation of the account which we have been giving of this usage, that no one thinks of attaching the addi- tional syllable to " less " when it is combined THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 87 with "more;" more and less being already well balanced. 111. We may notice the growing practice "replace." of using the word " replace" to signify just the opposite of its real meaning. " Lord Derby went out of office, and was replaced by Lord Palmerston." This, as now used, conveys the meaning, "was succeeded by Lord Palmerston." But put the sentence before our grandfathers, and they would have understood it to mean that Lord Derby went out of office, and Lord Palmerston put him in again; he was replaced by Lord Palmerston. 112. I need not say that the usage is bor- rowed from that of the French " remplacer" But there is this difference, that the French verb does not mean to replace, in our sense, nor has it in its derivation anything to do with " replace" but is " remplir la place," " to ill the place" and thus has for its proper meaning that which it is now attempted to give the English word replace. Lord Derby went out of office, and was "remplace" i.e., his place was filled, by Lord Palmerston ; but he was not replaced, i.e., put back again, by his rival. 113. The "enclosure" of a letter, what is "encio- it ? Is it that which encloses the letter, viz., sure. 83 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. the envelope ? or is it something enclosed in the letter, as a dried flower, or a lock of hair 1 or is it something enclosed with the letter, as another letter of the same size, or a map or plan of a larger size ? 114. Strictly speaking, I suppose the noun is an abstract one, signifying the act of en- closing, as exposure means the act of exposing. In this sense we might say " the enclosure of letters in envelopes, before the penny postage was established, incurred the payment of double postage." Then, when we pass from the abstract to the concrete use of the word, i.e., use it to signify not the act of enclosing, but something which is the instrument, or object, or result of tftat act, the question arises, ought it to signify the thing en- closing, or the thing enclosed ? There are examples both ways. Cincture is properly the act of girding. A cincture is the thing which girds, not the thing which is girded. But on the other hand, a fissure is the rift produced by cleaving, not the thing which cleaves it. There seems no reason why enclo- sure may not be used in both senses, that which encloses, and that which is enclosed. We may say of sheep in a fold, " the flock was all within the enclosure," meaning:. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 89 within the hurdles surrounding the square; or we may say that " the flock occupied the whole of the enclosure," meaning the whole of the square enclosed. In the case in question, usage seems to have fixed the meaning in the latter of these two senses, viz., the thing en- closed. An envelope is not said to be the enclosure of the letter, but the letter is said to be the enclosure of the envelope. If I write to the Committee of Council on Educa- tion, I receive printed directions as to our correspondence, the first of which is, " Every letter containing enclosures should enumerate them specially." 115. Clearly however, in strict propriety, the word ought to apply to matter enclosed in, and not merely with, the letter. But when this is departed from, when we write on a sheet of note-paper, and speak of a drawing three times its size as the enclosed, or the en- closure of this letter, we may say that we are using the word letter in its wider sense, as meaning the envelope as it is received un- opened from the post. 116. A curious extension of this license is sometimes found. I remember some years ago receiving a letter from my tailor to the following effect : — " Rev. Sir, the enclosed to 90 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. your kind order, which hope will give satis- faction, and am, respectfully and obliged." Now " the enclosed " in this case was a suit of clothes, sent by coach, and arriving some two days after the letter, "who" and 117. It will be well to attempt some expla- " which. " nation of the usages of "who" and " which" especially in our older writers. It may per- haps serve to clear up a matter which may have perplexed some, and to show that there is reason and meaning, where all has appeared confusion and caprice. The common modern distinction between these two forms of the relative pronoun is, that "who" is used of persons, "which" of things. And this, if borne in mind, will guide us safely through- out. It may be well to notice that what I am about to say does not apply to colloquial English ; indeed, hardly to modern English at all : for this reason, that now we do not commonly use either the one or the other of these pronouns, but make the more conve- nient one, " that" do duty for both. We do not say, " the man who met me," nor " the cattle which I saw grazing," but " the man that met me," " the cattle that I saw." We must take care, however, to remember that which was not always accounted the neuter of THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 91 who, nor is it so in grammar. Dr. Latham says : " To follow the ordinary grammarians, and to call ivhich the neuter of who, is a blunder. It is no neuter at all, but a com- pound word." It is made up of who and like : and this he shows by tracing it through the various Gothic and German forms, till we come to the Scottish whilk and the English which. 118. Both who and which are in our older writers used of persons. When this is so, is there any distinction in meaning, and if so, what is it ? I think we shall find that the composition of the word which, out of ivho and like, will in some measure guide us to the answer ; and I think, without presuming to say that every case may be thus explained, that the general account of the two ways is this: "who" merely identifies, whereas "which" classifies. Let us quote in illustration one of the most important and well-known instances. If, in the solemn address, " Our Father which art in heaven," "ivho" had been used instead, then we should have been taught to express only the fact that HE, whom we address as our Father, dwelleth in heaven. But as the sentence now stands, if I under- stand it rightly, we are taught to express the fact that the relation of Father in which He 92 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. stands to us is not an earthly but a heavenly one ; that whereas there is a fatherhood which is on earth, His is a Fatherhood which is in heaven. And herein I believe that our trans- lators have best followed the mind of Him who gave us the prayer. The bare construc- tion of the clause in the original does not determine for us whether the relative prono an applies to the person only of Him whom we address, or to His title of Father. But from our Lord's own use so frequently of the term " your heavenly Father," I think they were right in fixing the reference to the relationship, rather than to the Person only. E£$ 119. There is a use of the word "butf principally to be found in our provincial newspapers, but now and then " leaking up- wards" into our more permanent literature. It is when that conjunction is made the con- necting link between two adjectives which do not require any such disjoining. We may say that a man is old, but vigorous, because vigour united with age is something unex- pected ; but we have no right to say old hut respectable, because respectability with old age is not something unexpected.* Even while I * The expression "allow me respectfully, hut ear- nestly to represent to you," is objected to. Yet here THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 93 write, my train stops at a station on the Great Western Kailway, where passengers are invited to take a trip to Glasgow, "to witness the wild but grand scenery of Scotland." Now, because scenery is wild, there is no reason why it should not be also grand ; nay, wildness in scenery is most usually an accompaniment of grandeur. Wild but not grand w ? ould be far more reason- able, because wildness raises an expectation of grandeur, which the " but " contradicts. 120. A correspondent writes : " Many, espe- \\ as" and cially I think ladies, say, ' He is not as tall as his brother.' Am I not right in saying that after a negative ' so ' should be used — ' He is not so tall as his brother ' 1 " Such certainly appears to be the usage of our language, how- ever difficult it may be to account for it. We say, " one way of speaking is as good as the other ; " but when we deny this propo- sition, we are obliged to say, " one way of speaking is not so good as the other." So cannot be used in the affirmative proposition, nor as in the negative. Change the form of we seem to require the disjunctive particle. A respect- ful representation carries with it the idea of a certain distance and formality, with which the zeal implied in earnestness is at first sight inconsistent : and the dis- junctive particle seems to show that though the latter is present, the former is not forgotten. 94 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. the sentence into one less usual and still allowable, "the one way of speaking is equally good with the other," and the same adverb will serve for both affirmative and negative : " the one is equally good with the other ; " " the one is not equally good with the other." 120a. The accuracy of this rule has been called in question by one of my censors, and he gives as his example "There are few artists who draw horses as well as Mr. Leech": in which sentence he rightly observes that " so well " ought to have been used. But why? Simply because the sentence is not affirmative, as he designates it, but negative. There are few ( = not many), denies the existence of many : there are a feiv, affirms the existence of some. It never could be said " There are a few artists, who draw horses so well as Mr. Leech." His example confirms the rule, instead of impugning it. Carry the negative a little further, and we have " There are no artists who draw horses so well as Mr. Leech." badra 121. A question has been asked about the expressions " / had rather," " / had as soon" or "as lief." What is the "had" in these sentences 1 Is it really part of the verb ther." !' THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 95 " have " at all 1 If it is, how do we explain it 1 We cannot use " to have rather " in any other tense : it is no recognised phrase in our language. And therefore it has been sug- gested, that the expression " I had rather " has originated with erroneous filling up of the abbreviated Td rathir, which is short not for I had rather, but I would rather. " I would rather be" is good English, because " I would be " is good English ; but " / had rather be " is not good English, because " / had be " is not good English. 122. One word with regard to the colloquial Colloquial Contrao contractions which I just now mentioned, tious. We occasionally hear some made use of, which cannot be defended. For instance, "laird certain" "I ain't going." This latter, in the past tenses, degenerates still further into the mere vulgarism, "I ivarrit going." This latter is heard only as a vulgarism ; but the other two are very frequently used, even by highly educated persons. The main objection to them is that they are proscribed by usage ; but exception may also be taken to them on their own account. A contraction must surely retain some trace of the resolved form from which it is abbreviated. What, then, is " ainH ? " It cannot be a contraction of 96 Feminine substan- tives. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. " am not: 1 What " arrit " is contracted from is very plain ; it once was " are not;' which, of course, cannot be constructed with the first person singular. The only legitimate colloquial contraction of " I am not," is " Tm not : " « Tm not going ; » « I'm not quite sure." The same way of contracting is used in the case of "are not." It is usually contracted by attaching the verb to the personal pro- noun, not by combining it with the negative particle. We say " You're not in time," not "you amH; " " they're not coming," not " they arnH," or "ain't."* 123. A few remarks may be made on the use in English of feminine substantives. Certain names of occupations and offices seem to require them, and others to forbid them. We say "emperor" and "empress;" but we do not in the same sense say "governor" and "governess." In this latter case the feminine form has acquired a meaning of its own, and refuses to part with it. I remember, during the first weeks of our present Queen's reign, * A correspondent complains of the use, by some of our best writers, of the subjunctive "tJum wert," as equivalent to the indicative " thou wast." I own I had not observed it. Of course there can be no doubt that it is wrong, wherever it may occur. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 97 hearing a clergyman pray for " Alexandrina, our most gracious Queen and governess" Very many, indeed most names of occupations and offices, are common to both sexes, and it savours of pedantry to attempt by adding the feminine termination, to make a differ- ence. The description "pilgrim" for in- stance, may include both men and women; yet I saw the other day advertised, "The Wanderings of a pilgrirness" &c. " Porter " is another of these words. When we are told to apply to the porter, we are not surprised to see "her that keeps the gate" answer to our knock. But in many public establish- ments we see the "portress" announced as the person to whom we are to apply.* I expect we shall soon see "groceress and tea- dealer ess, and licenced vendress of stamps." A rule regarding the classification of both sexes together is sometimes forgotten. When both are spoken of under one head, the mas- culine appellation is used. Thus, though some of the European rulers may be females, they may be correctly classified, when spoken * The word " portress " is legitimate enough. We have in Milton "the portress of hell gate." But it does not follow, because it is used in poetry, that we may use it in our common discourse. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. of altogether, under the denomination "kings." It has been pointed out that Lord Bacon* does this even in the case of two, " Ferdi- nand and Isabella, kings of Spain." This would hardly be said now ; and in ordinary language, we should perhaps rather choose to call the European rulers "sovereigns." But this is no reason why the rule should be forgotten, nor why sentences, when it is observed, should be charged with incorrect- ness, or altered to suit modern ears. A correspondent writes that his clergyman, in the following sentence in the prayer for the Queen, in the Communion service, "We are taught that the hearts of kings are in Thy rule and governance," alters the word kings into sovereigns. Punctua- 124. From speaking of the forms of words, we will come to punctuation, or stopping. I remember when I was young in printing, once correcting the punctuation of a proof-sheet, * A correspondent has charged me with falling into the blunder of calling this distinguished philosopher Lord Bacon, which he never was. Surely one who is contending for usage against pedantry stands acquitted here. How far the title, " Lord Bacon," has prevailed, may be seen in the lettering of the backs of the volumes of the only good edition of his works, that by Heath, Ellis, and Spedding. tion. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 99 and complaining of the liberties which had been taken with my manuscript. The pub- lisher quietly answered me, that 'punctuation was always left to the compositors. And a pre- cious mess they make of it. The great enemies to understanding anything printed in our lan- guage are the commas. And these are inserted by the compositors, without the slightest com- punction, on every possible occasion. Many words are by rule always hitched off with two commas; one before and one behind; nursed, as the Omnibus Company would call it. " Too " is one of these words ; " however" another ; "also" another; the sense in almost every such case being disturbed, if not destroyed by the process. I remember beginning a sentence with — " However true this may be." When it came in proof, the inevitable comma was after the "however," thus of course making nonsense of my unfortunate sentence. I have some satisfaction in reflecting, that, in the course of editing the Greek text of the New Testament, I believe I have destroyed more than a thousand commas, which prevented the text being properly understood. 125. One very provoking case is that where comma two adjectives come together, belonging to adjectives. the same noun-substantive. Thus, in print- h 2 100 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. ing a nice young man, a comma is placed after nice, giving, we may observe, a very- different sense from that intended : bringing before us the fact that a man is both nice and young, whereas the original sentence introduced to us a young man that was nice. Thus too in the expression "a great black dog,' 1 printed without commas, every- body knows what we mean ; but this would be printed " a great, black dog." Take again the case where meaning is intensified by adjectives being repeated — as in "the wide icicle world," "the deep deep sea" Such expressions you almost invariably find printed " the wide, wide world/ 9 " the deep, deep sea,' 7 thereby making them, if judged by any rule at all, absolute nonsense. Too few 126. Still, though too many commas are bad, too few are not without inconvenience also. I saw the other day a notice of "the Society for Promoting the Observance of the Lord's- day which was founded in 1831," giving the notion that the day, not the society, was founded in that year. Had the date been 1631, instead of 18, an awkward interpre- tation might have been possible. 127. I take the following, verbatim and punctuatim, from a religious newspaper of commas. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 101 this present year : " Education. — In a Ladies' School conducted on Evangelical principles about nine in number, good in- struction is given, &c." 128. While I am upon stops, a word is Notes of x x admiration. necessary concerning notes of admiration. A note of admiration consists, as we know, of a point with an upright line suspended over it, strongly suggestive of a gentleman jumping off the ground with amazement. These shrieks, as they have been called, are scattered up and down the page by the com- positors without mercy. If one has written the words " sir" as they ought to be written, and are written in Genesis xliii. 20, viz., with the plain capital " " and no stop, and then a comma after " Sir," our friend the compositor is sure to write " Oh " with a shriek (!) and to put another shriek after "Sir." Use, in writing, as few as possible of these nuisances. They always make the sense weaker, where you can possibly do without them. The only case I know of where they are really necessary, is where the language is pure exclamation, as in "How beautiful is night ! " or, " that I might find him ! " 129. The very simple and intelligible word " centre. " centre" comes in for a good deal of mal- 102 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. treatment in our days. Centre is from the Greek word " Kentron" meaning merely a point : the point of a needle, or of a sting, or of anything else : and hence is used in geometry to denote that point round which a circle or any other symmetrical curve is drawn. And in accordance with this its ori- ginal meaning ought its use always to be : a centre should always designate a point, never a line, nor, except as presently denned, a middle space. But we see this often departed from. "A gangway will be left down the centre of the room," is a clear case of such departure. I do not of course mean to advo- cate absolute strictness in this or in any other usage. Accuracy is one thing, punctilious- ness is another. The one should be always observed, the other always avoided. While I should take care not to say that I walked up and doivn the centre of the lawn, I should not object to say that there is a large bed of geraniums in the centre, although strictly speaking the centre of the lawn is in the bed, not the bed in the centre. * * A correspondent informs me, that a parliamentary notice to landowners, which has been in use for the last seventeen years, and is issued to the number of hun- dreds of thousands at once, contains the words "within THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 103 130. And in the figurative use of this word, and of all words, intelligent common sense, rather than punctiliousness, ought to be our guide. Centre, and its adjective central, are often used in speaking of objects of thought, as well as of sight. Let it be borne in mind, when this is done, that these words apply only to a principal object round which others group themselves, and not to one which happens to be pre-eminent amongst others. To say that some conspicuous person in an assembly was the centre of attraction, is perfectly correct ; but to say that some subject of conversation, merely because it happened to occupy more of the time than other subjects, was the central topic of the evening, is incorrect and unmeaning. 131. Ought we to write by and by, or by " by and and bye ? by the by, or by the bye ? There is a tendency to add a vowel, by way of giving emphasis in pronunciation, when a preposition is used as an adverb. Thus " too " is only the preposition "to," emphasized; a "bye" eleven yards, or thereabouts, of the centre-line of the proposed work." This is not absolutely wrong : for the centre-line is the line which passes through the centre, as the Chatham-line is the line which passes through Chatham. 104 ' THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. ball, at cricket, is only a ball that runs by. In this latter case the added " e " is universal : but not so in by-play, by-end, which are sometimes spelt with it and sometimes without it. And we never add it when " by " is used as an adverb in construction in a sentence, as in passing by. This being so, it is better, perhaps, to confine this way of spelling to the only case where it seems needed, the bye ball, and to write "by and by," "by the by." "endeavour 132. A mistake is very generally made by ourselves. J ° " / J our clergy in reading the collect for the second Sunday after Easter. We there pray, with reference to Our Lord's death for us, and His holy example, " that we may thank- fully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life." This is often read with an emphasis on the word "ourselves" as if it were in the nominative case, and to be distinguished from some other person. But no other persons have been men- tioned ; and the sense thus becomes confused for the hearer. The fact is, that " ourselves " is not in the nominative case at all, but in the accusative after the verb "endeavour" which at the time of the compiling of our taken. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 105 Prayer-book was used as a reflective verb. To endeavour myself, is to consider myself in duty bound. That this is so, appears clearly from the answer given in the Ordina- tion service, where the Bishop asks, " Will you be diligent in prayers and in reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same . . . V* And the candidate replies, "I will endea- vour myself so to do, the Lord being my helper." 133. The usage of the verb to mistake is "to be mis- somewhat anomalous. Its etymology seems simple enough — to take amiss. And by the analogy of " misunderstand," " misinterpret," "mislead," "misinform," "miscalculate," it ought to be simply an active verb, as in the phrases, "you mistook my meaning," "he had mistaken the way." This would give as its passive use, " my meaning was mistaken by you." But our English usage is different ; we have these phrases, it is true, but we far more commonly use the verb in the pas- sive, to carry what should be its active mean- ing. To he mistaken is not, with us, to be misapprehended by another, but to commit a mistake oneself. This is a curious transla- tion of meaning, but it is now rooted in the 106 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. language and become idiomatic. "I thought so, but I was mistaken," is universally said, not " I mistook." We expect to hear " you are mistaken," and should be surprised at hearing asserted "you are mistaking," or "you mistake," unless followed by an accu- sative, "the meaning," or "me." When we hear the former of these, we begin to con- sider whether we were right or wrong ; when the latter, we at once take the measure of our friend, as one who has not long escaped from the study of the rules of the lesser grammarians, by which, and not by the usages of society, circumstances have com- pelled him to learn his language, "good 134. A correspondent asks me, good looking looking "or r 7 * J " well look- or we n looking ? Here is another instance of nig." * idiom versus accuracy. And idiom decidedly has it. To speak of a well-looking man would be to make oneself ridiculous : all usage is against the word. But, at the same time, to be good looking is not to look good. It is, in one sense, to look well ; or, if we will, to have good looks. So that the whole matter seems to be left to usage, which in this case is decisive, "latter," of 135. One point made very much of by the more than t,wo ; "last," precisians is, the avoiding of the use of " latter" of only two. l ° THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 107 when we have spoken of more than two things, and of " last " when we have spoken of only two. Is this founded in any neces- sity or propriety of the laws of thought ; or is it a mere arbitrary regulation laid down by persons who know little and care little about those laws ? 136. Let us inquire into the matter. The notion is, that in speaking of two things, we can have only positive and comparative ; that for a superlative we require three or more ; and when we have three or more, we must • use the superlative. Thus if I speak of two invasions of Great Britain, I must call the earlier the former, not the first, and the se- cond the latter, not the last. But if I speak of three invasions, I must call the third, in re- ferring to it, the last, not the latter. Is there reason in this ? Let us look at it in this light. Of two invasions, the earlier is undoubtedly the first, the later the second. Now "first" is a superlative ; and if of two, one is designated by a superlative, why not the other 1 137. Still, this is not digging to the root of the matter ; it is only arguing from the acknowledged use of a form in one case, to its legitimate use in an analogous one. Let us take it in another point of view. "First" 108 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 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 preceded, whether many or few 1 The second invasion, when we spoke of only two, was undoubtedly the last men- tioned ; and surely therefore may be spoken of in referring back to it, as the last, without any violation of the laws of thought. • 138. Nor does the comparative of neces- sity suggest that only two are concerned, though it may be more natural to speak of the greatest of more than two, not of the greater. For that which is greatest of any number, is greater than the rest, 'superior," 139. There is an expression creeping into general use which cannot be justified in grammar, "a superior man •" "a very inferior person." We all know what is meant : and a certain sort of defence may be set up for it by calling it elliptical : by saying that the comparatives are to be filled up by inserting " to most men," or the like. But with all its convenience, and all the defence which can be set up for it, this way of speaking is not desirable ; and if followed out as a precedent, interior. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 109 cannot but vulgarize and deteriorate our language. 140. We seem rather unfortunate in our "talented." designations for our men of ability. For another term by which we describe them, " talented," is about as bad as possible. What is it 1 It looks like a participle. From what verb 1 Fancy such a verb as " to talent ! " Coleridge somewhere cries out against this newspaper word, and says, Imagine other par- ticiples formed by this analogy, and men being said to be pennied, shillinged, or pounded. He perhaps forgot that, by an equal abuse, men are said to be "moneyed" men, or as we sometimes see it spelt (as if the word itself were not bad enough without making it worse by false orthography), " monied" 141. Another formation of this kind, " gifted." "gifted" is at present very much in vogue. Every man whose parts are to be praised, is a gifted author, or speaker, or preacher. Nay, sometimes a very odd transfer is made, and the pen with which the author writes is said to be "gifted" instead of himself. 142. Exception has been taken to what has " to leave," absolute. been called the neuter use of the verb to leave : " I shall not leave before December 1." But it is not correct to describe this as a 110 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. neuter use; it is rather the absolute use. The verb is still active, but the object is suppressed. Thus, if there are three persons in a room, one reading the Bible, another the newspaper, and the third a review, I say that they are all reading, without depriving the verb of its active force ; using it as an absolute predicate applicable to them all. Thus too, if of three persons one is leaving his own home to-morrow, another a friend's house, and the third an hotel, I may say that they are all leaving to-morrow. And this absolute usage is perfectly legitimate where one person only is concerned. " I shall not read this morning, but I shall write." "It is my intention to leave when my lease is up." How far it may be more or less elegant under given cir- cumstances to speak thus, is another question, which can only be decided when those circum- stances are known ; but of the correctness of the usage I imagine there can be no doubt, could not 143. Connected with the last are, or may seem to be, certain elliptical usages which can- not be similarly defended. Thus when the object has been to visit a friend; or to attain a certain point, we sometimes hear the excuse for failure thus expressed, " I meant to come to you," — or, " I fully intended to be there;" get' I THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. Ill "but / couldnt get.'"' The full expression would in this case be, " I couldn't get to you;" or, "I couldn't get there." But the verb " to get " is used in so many meanings, that it is hardly fit for this elliptical position. Besides that the sentence ends inelegantly and inharmoniously, an ambiguity is sug- gested: "couldn't get what?" a horse? or time ? or money to pay the fare ? or some one to show the way ? 144. Another word objectionably thus used " does not J J belong." is the verb "to belong" "Is Miss A. coming to the Amateur Concert to-night ? " " No : she does not belong;" meaning, does not belong to the Society. And then perhaps we are told that "though she does not belong this year, she means to belong next." Here again we may say that belong is a verb of so wide a signification, that it will hardly admit of being thus detached from its acci- dents, and used absolutely and generally. 144a. I am reminded by a valued corre- to " belong Leeds," &c. spondent, of another use of the verb " to be- long" already familiar to me, as having been long resident in the north-midland counties. " We have," he says, " in these parts a provin- cial usage of the word " belong:" as, " belong to Halifax," " belong to Leeds : " or, more com- "to pro crress." 112 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. monly, "belong Halifax," "belong Leeds:" meaning, live there. The late Mr. F. W., one of the largest proprietors of land in York- shire, and M.P. for the yet undivided county —and, let me add, a wise and munificent friend to the Church,— was withal so little lavish on his person, that he might easily pass for a veiy humble farmer. He was one day accosted on the roadside by two strangers in a gig on their way to Wighill, near York. "My man, do you belong Wighill?" He answered, "No, Sirs, Wighill belongs to me." 145. The verb to "progress;' is challenged by one of my friends as a modem Ameri- canism. This is not strictly accurate. Shak- speare uses it in King John, act v. sc. 2 : " Let me wipe off this honourable dew, That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks." * But you will observe that the line requires the verb to be pronounced progress, not pro- * I mention, as in courtesy bound, an account of this construction which has been sent me by a correspondent anxious to vindicate Shakspeare from having used a modern vulgarism. He would understand "doth pro- gress" as "doeth progress," the latter word being a substantive. Surely, he can hardly be in earnest. [I am surprised to see this advocated in the very sensible little English Grammar of Mr. Higginson. Aug. 1864.] THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH, IK gress, so that this is perhaps hardly a case in point, except as to the word, a verb formed on the noun progress. 146. Milton also uses such a verb, in the Passage from magnificent peroration of his "Treatise of Milton. Eeformation in England." I cannot forbear citing the whole passage, as it may be a relief to my readers and to myself in the midst of these verbal enquiries : "Then amidst the Hymns and Hallelujahs of saints, some one may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty mea- sures, to sing and celebrate thy divine mer- cies, and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages ; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of Truth and Righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her old vices, may press on hard to that high and happy Emulation, to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day, when Thou the Eternal and shortly expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and distributing national honours and rewards to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly Tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and mild Monarchy through 114 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. heaven and earth. Where they undoubtedly, that by their labours, counsels and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of Religion and their country, shall receive above the inferior orders of the Blessed, the regal addition of Principalities, Legions, and Thrones into their glorious Titles, and, in superemi- nence of beatifick vision, progressing the date- less and irrevoluble circle of Eternity, shall clasp inseparable Hands with Joy and Bliss, in over measure for ever." 147. It may be noticed again that Milton's use of the verb is not exactly that which is become common now. He seems to make it equivalent to "moving along" or "moving throughout," in an active sense. These fa- voured ones are to progress the circle of Eter- nity, i.e., I suppose, to revolve for ever round and round it. The present usage makes the verb neuter ; to progress meaning to advance, to make progress. I can hardly say I feel much indignation against the word, thus used. 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, regress, egress, or retrogress* * One of my Censors has found seme of these words THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 115 into verbs ; but we have done in substance the same thing, by having admitted long ago the verbs suggest, digest, project, object, reject, eject ; for all these are formed from the same part of the original Latin verbs, as this "pro- gress " on which we have been speaking. 148. In treating of this verb to ' progress" Nouns made & f it > into verbs. a correspondent notices that there prevails a tendency to turn nouns into verbs : " The ship remained to coal : " " the church is being pewed ;" " he was prevailed on to head the movement." I do not see that we can object to this tendency in general, seeing that it has grown with the growth of our language, and under due regulation is one of the most obvious means of enriching it. Verbs thus formed will carry themselves into use, in spite of the protests of the purists. Some years set down as English verbs in the folio edition of Bailey's Universal Dictionary, published in 1755. But there is as wide a difference between dictionary words and English words, as between vocabulary French and spoken French. We might in a few minutes find a list of dictionary words which would introduce us to some strange acquaintances. What do we think of "abarcy," "aberuncate," "abolishable," " abstringe," "abstrude," "acervate," "acetosity," "adjugate," "admetiate," "adminicle," " advolation," " adus- tible," &c, &c. Thousands of words in the Diction- aries are simply Latin, made English in form, without any authority for their use. I 2 116 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. ago, precise scholars used to exclaim against the verb "to experience;'''' and a very ugly candidate for admission into the language it was. Milton introduced its participle when he wrote, " He through the armed files Darts his experienced eye." Still, as we know in the case of "talented'''' and "moneyed" the participle may be tolerated long before the verb is invented : and no instance of the verb " to experience " occurs till quite recently. But all attempts to exclude it now would be quite ineffectual.* "to treat 149. To treat of, or to treat? Plainly, of." or "to treat?" which we please. To treat is to handle, to have under treatment, to discuss. The verb may be used with an object following it, to * A correspondent referred to me the question whether in Milton's line, " Then let the pealing organ blow," the verb "blow" is rightly used. The organ, it was urged, is blown : and it might as well be said that the fire " blows," when it is blown. But I believe Milton to be quite correct. The whole action of the organ is, to produce sound by blowing into the pipes : and this it is, rather than the filling the bellows with wind, that is meant. The action of fire is, not to blow, but to burn : when it is blown, it burns : but when the organ is blown, it, by aid of its valves, opened by the pressure on the keys, blows, and produces music. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 117 " treat a subject ;" or it may be used abso- lutely, to "treat concerning" or "of" a subject. It is one of those very many cases so little understood by the layers down of precise rules, where writers and speakers are left to choose, as the humour takes them, between different ways of expression. 149a. And I may once for all notice a Fallacy:— of fallacious way of arguing, into which the expression, one must be sciolists who would legislate for our language wrong. are continually betrayed. It consists in assuming that, of two modes of expression, if one be shown to be right, the other must necessarily be wrong. Whereas very often the varying expressions are equally legitimate, and each of them full of interest, as bearing traces of the different sources from which our language has sprung. 150. There is a piece of affectation becoming " the book ± ° Genesis," sadly common among our younger clergy, " th ? cit ,y which I had already marked for notice, when I received a letter, from which the following is an extract : — " I wish to call your atten- tion to the ignorance which is sometimes exhibited by clergy and others of the true meaning of the preposition in such expres- sions as ' the city of Canterbury,' ' the play of " Hamlet." ' We sometimes hear it pro- 118 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. claimed from the desk, 'Here beginneth the first chapter of the book Genesis :' and we read in parochial documents of * the parish of St. George,' ' the parish of St. Mary,' instead < of St. George's,' ' of St. Mary's,' &c." 151. I believe the excuse, if it can be called one, set up for this violation of usage is, that " the book of Genesis " and " the book of Daniel" cannot both be right, because the former was not written by Genesis, as the latter was by Daniel. But, as my corres- pondent says, this simply betrays ignorance of the meanings of the preposition " o/." It is used, in designations of this kind, in three different senses : 1. To denote authorship, as 11 the book of Daniel:" 2. To denote subject- matter, as " the first booh of Kings : " 3. As a note of apposition, signifying, u which is," or "which is called," as " the booh of Genesis" " of Exodus," &c. This last usage meets us at every turn ; and the pedant who ignores it in the reading desk, must, in consistency, drop it everywhere else. Imagine his letter describing his summer holiday : " I left the city London, and passed through the county Kent, leaving the realm England at the town Dover, and entering the empire France at the THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 119 town Calais, on my way to the Republic Switzerland." * 152. I may remark in passing, that here again usage comes in with its prescriptive laws, and prevents the universal application of rules. While we always say "the city of Cairo," not "the city Cairo," we never say "the river of Nile," but always "the river Nile." So too " the city of London," but " the river Thames." 153. It seems astonishing that many of our "reverend," writers should not yet be clear in their dis- verent " tinctive use of " revemzd " and " reverb." I saw lately a description of a certain person as being "unintentionally irreverend." The writer (or printer) of this forgot that "reverent" (r ever ens, -entis) is the subjective word, de- scribing the feeling within a man as its sub- ject, whereas " reverend " (reverendus) is the objective word, describing the feeling with which a, man is regarded, — of which he is the object from without. Dean Swift might be " very reverend," by common courtesy ; but he was certainly not " very reverent " in his conduct or in his writings. 154. A few words more about these subjective Subjective . and objec- and objective words. It has been the fashion tive words * See note E, at the end of the volume. 120 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. to laugh at and decry these terms, subjective and objective. I have generally found that those who do so are wanting in appreciation of the distinction which these words are intended to convey, and which can hardly be conveyed but by their use. Take the case where one and the same word is used in both senses. We say " a fearful heart," and we say " a fearful height." In the former phrase we use fearful in its subjective sense, as describing a quality inherent in the subject of the sentence ; in the latter phrase, we use fearful in its objective sense, as describing an effect produced on those who are the objects con- templated. How otherwise than by the use of these terms are we clearly and shortly to indicate this difference 1 Other instances of this double use of one and the same word may be found in "a hopeful spirit," "a hopeful youth," — "a joyful multitude," "a joyful occasion ;" and an example of the distinction in the use of two words, in the adjectives "tall" (sub- jective, — high with reference to himself as compared with others) and "high" (objec- tive, contemplated as an object from with- out), "or" and 155. A good deal of confusion is pre- " nor hi a negative valent in the usages of " or" and " nor " in sentence. ° THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 121 a negative sentence. When I wrote, in the last paragraph but one, " he was certainly not very reverent in his conduct or in his writ- ings," was 1 right or wrong? Ought I to have said, "he was not very reverent in his conduct nor in his writings 1 " We may regard this sentence in two ways, which may be represented by the two following modes of punctuation : 1. "He was not very reverent in his conduct, or in his writings." 2. " He was not very reverent, in his conduct or in his writings." According to the former punc- tuation, "or" is wrong; it should be "nor." But observe that thus we get a somewhat awkward elliptical sentence : " He was not very reverent in his conduct, nor (was he very reverent) in his writings." In the second form of the sentence, "or" is right, and "nor" would be wrong. This will be evident in a moment by filling up the sentence with the other alternative particle, " He was not very reverent, either in his conduct or in his writings ; " not, " He was not very reverent, neither in his conduct, nor in his writings." 156. We may, if we will, strike out the negative altogether from the part of the sentence containing the 'verb, and attach it entirely to the alternative clauses. But in 122 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. this case it is usual to place those clauses before the predicative portion of the sentence : " neither in his conduct, nor in his writings was he very reverent." Elliptical 157. As I have been speaking of an elliptical sentences. x o r sentence, I may remark that it is astonishing what an amount of ellipsis the English ear will tolerate : in other words, how great an effort the mind of a hearer will make in supplying that which is suppressed. This extends sometimes even to changing the construction, and turning affirmative into negative, tacitly and unconsciously, as the sentence falls upon the eye or ear. A remark- able example of this occurs in one of the most solemn prayers in our English Communion Service : "We do not presume to come to this Thy Table, most merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness ; but (we do presume to come, trusting) in thy manifold and great mercies." Put this admirable sentence into the hands of our ordinary rhetoricians, and it would be utterly marred. The apparently awkward ellipsis would be removed thus : " We presume to come to this Thy Table, trusting, not in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies." But at the same time, the whole character of the sentence THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 123 and of the prayer would be altered. Who does not see, that by the opening words, "We do not presume," the key-note of the whole prayer is struck — the disclaiming of presump- tion founded on our own righteousness ? It was worth any subsequent halting of the sentence in mere accuracy of construction, to secure this plain declaration of the spirit in which the prayer was about to be made. 158. And this leads us to a rule which we General rule m such should do well to follow in all such cases. To cases - secure the right sense being given, and the right emphasis laid, is the first thing : not to satisfy the rules of the rhetoricians. Many a sentence, which the mere rhetorician would pronounce faulty in arrangement, does its work admirably, and has done it for centuries: let him correct it and re-arrange it, and it will do that work no more. Its strong emphasis will have disappeared : its nervous homeliness will have departed, and it will sink down into vapid commonplace. 159. Let us now enter on this matter some- Arrange- what more in detail. The one rule which is words in ■.,.-, ,. , . . sentences. supposed by the ordinary rhetoricians to regu- late the arrangement of words in sentences, is this : that " those parts of a sentence which are most closely connected in their meaning, slwuld 124 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. be as closely as possible connected in position ; " or, as it is propounded by Dr. Blair, "A capital rule inthe arrangement of sentences is that the words or 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" Ordinary 160. Now doubtless this rule is, in the ule. main, and for general guidance, a good and useful one: indeed, so plain to all, that it surely needed no inculcating. But there are more things in the English language than seem to have been dreamt of in the philoso- phy of the rhetoricians. If this rule were uni- formly applied, it would break down the force and the living interest of style in any English writer, and reduce his matter, as we just now said, to a dreary and dull monotony. For it is in exceptions to its application, that almost all vigour and character of style consist. Of this I shall give abundant illustration by-and- by. Meantime let me make some remarks on two very important matters in the con- struction of sentences: the requirements of emphasis, and the requirements of parenthesis; neither of which are taken into account by the ordinary rule. Emphasis. 161. Emphasis means the stress, or force of THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 125 intonation, which the intended sense requires requires its . , , . violation, to be laid on certain words, or changes, in a sentence. Very often (not always) we can indicate this by the form and arrangement of the sentence itself. Some languages have far greater capacities this way than our own; but we are able commonly to do it sufficiently for the careful and intelligent reader. 162. Now how is this done'? A sentence arranged according to the rule above cited, sim- ply conveys the meaning of its words in their ordinary and straightforward construction; and in English, owing to the difficulty, often felt, of departing from this arrangement, we must very generally be contented with it, at the risk of our words not conveying the full- ness of the meaning which we intended. For let me explain, that whenever we wish to indicate that a stress is to be laid on a certain word, or clause, in a sentence, we must do it by taking that word or that clause out of its natural place which it would hold by the above rule, and putting it into some more prominent one. A substantive, for example, governed by a verb, is in a subordinate position to that verb ; the mind of the reader is arrested by the verb, rather than by the substantive; so that if for any rea- of words ; 12G THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. son we wish to make the substantive pro- minent, we must provide some other place for it than next to the verb which governs it. in the case 163. Take, as an example, the words "he restored me to mine office :" where the words are arranged in accordance with the ordinary law, and the idea expressed is the simple one of restoration to office. But suppose a distinction is to be made between the narrator, who had been restored to office, and another man, who had been very differently treated. Of course we might still observe the rule, and say " He restored me to mine office, and he hanged him ; " but the sentence becomes thus (and it is to this that I request the reader's attention) a very tame one, not expressing the distinction in itself, nor admitting of being so read as to express it sharply and decisively. Now, let us violate the rule, and see how the sentence reads: "Me he restored unto mine office, and him he hanged." Thus wrote our translators of Genesis (xli. 13), and they arranged the words rightly. No reader, be his intelligence ever so little, can help reading this sentence as it ought to be read. 164. And let there be no mistake about this being a violation of the rule. The words THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 12, nearest connected are "restored" and "me" which it governs : " hanged" and " him," which it governs. When I take " me " out of its place next " restored" and begin the sen- tence with it, letting the pronoun " he " come between them, I do most distinctly violate the rule, that those words which are most nearly connected in the sense should also be most nearly connected in the arrangement. I have purposely chosen this first instance of the simplest possible kind, to make the matter clear as we advance into it. Let us take another. St. Peter (Acts ii. 23) says to the Jews, speaking of our Lord, " Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." Here we have the pronoun " Him " placed first in the sentence, and at a considerable distance from the verbs that govern it, with the clause, " being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God," inserted between. Yet, who does not see that the whole force of that which was intended to be conveyed by the sentence is thus gained, and could not otherwise be gained 1 Arranged according to the common rule, the sentence would have been, " Ye have taken Him, being delivered 128 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, and by wicked bands have crucified and slain Him;" and the whole force and point would have been lost, andparen- \Q§ m And as this necessity for bringing clauses 3 ° f m ^° P ronnr > en ce affects the position of words in sentences, so does it also that of clauses. A clause is often subordinate in the construc- tion to some word or some other clause; while it is the object of the writer to bring the subordinate, not the principal, clause into prominence. And then, as we saw with regard to words just now, the clause which is inferior in constructive importance is brought out and transposed, so that the reader's attention may be arrested by it. Or perhaps the writer feels the necessity of noticing as he passes on, certain particulars which will come in flatly, and spoil the balance of the sentence, if reserved till their proper place. Such passing notices are called " parentheses," from a Greek word, meaning insertion by the way ; and every such insertion is a violation of the supposed universal rule of position. 166. Thus, for example, I am narrating a circumstance which, when it happened, ex- cited my astonishment. Undoubtedly the natural order of constructing the sentence THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 129 would be to relate what happened first, and my surprise at it afterwards. " I was looking at a man walking on the bank of the river, when he suddenly turned about, and plunged in, to my great surprise." But who does not see the miserable way in which the last clause drags behind, and loses all force ? We there- fore take this clause out of its place, and insert it before that to which it applies, and with which it ought to be constructed : we word the sentence thus : " I was looking at a man walking on the bank of the river, when, to my great surprise, he suddenly turned round, and plunged in." I need not further illustrate so common a transposition : I will only say that it produces instances of violation of the supposed rule of arrangement in almost every extant page of good English ; and in common conversation, every day, and all day long. 167. Sometimes these insertions are such obvious interruptions to the construction, that they are marked off by brackets, and it is thus made evident that the sentence is in- tended to flow on as if they did not exist; but far more frequently they are without any such marks, and the common sense of the reader is left to separate them off for himself. 180 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. It is impossible to write lucidly or elegantly without the use of these parenthetical clauses. Care ought of course to be taken that they be not so inserted as to mislead the reader by introducing the possibility of constructing the sentence otherwise than as the writer intended. But at the same time it may be fearlessly stated, that not one of our best writers has ever been minutely scrupulous on this point : and that there does not exist in our language one great work in prose or in poetry, in which may not be found numerous instances of possible misconstruction arising from this cause. And this has not been from carelessness, but because the writer was intent on expressing his meaning in good manly English, and was not anxious as to the faults which carping and captious critics might find with his style. Lord Karnes gives a rule that u a circumstance ought never to be placed betiveen two capital members of a se?i- tence : or if so placed (I suppose he means, if it be so placed), the first word in the consequent member should be one that cannot connect it with what precedes." 168. Any one on the look out for misun- derstanding may convince himself by trial, that there is hardly a page in any English THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 131 book which will not furnish him with instances of violation of this rule. 169. Let my examples begin at home. One Exampios. of my censors quoted as faulty in this respect the following sentence, which occurred in these notes : I said that certain persons " fall, from their ignorance, into absurd mistakes." The parenthetical clause here is "from their igno- rance." My censor would amend it thus — " certain persons, in consequence of their igno- rance, fall into absurd mistakes." Now this is not what I wanted to say ; at least it is a blundering and roundabout way of expressing it. The purpose is, to bring the fact stated into prominence : and this is done by making the verb "falV immediately follow its sub- ject, " certain persons?' Recording to the proposed arrangement, it is the fact of what is about to be stated being a consequence of their ignorance, which is put into the place of prominence and emphasis. Very well, then : having stated that they fall, and being about to say into ivhat, it is convenient, in order to keep the sentence from dragging a compara- tively unimportant clause at its end, to bring in that clause, containing the reason of the fall, immediately after the verb itself. To my mind, the clause, in spite of the 132 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. possible ambiguity, reads far better* with "from"''' than with "in consequence of" which is too heavy and lumbering. The "possibility of a ludicrous interpretation " which my censor speaks of — the falling from ignorance as a man falls from grace, or falls from virtue, seems to me to be effectually precluded in the mind of any man who happens to remember that ignorance is neither a grace nor a virtue. Really, we do not write for idiots: and it must require, to speak in the genteel lan- guage which some of my correspondents up- hold, a most abnormal elongation of the auricular appendages, for a reader to have suggested to his mind a fall from the sublime height of ignorance down into the depth of a mistake. « 170. There are ona or two more expres- sions of mine which have been found fault with, well worth noticing for the illustrations which they will furnish on matters connected with our present subject. There has been quoted with disapprobation a sentence of mine in paragraph 2 of these notes, which ori- ginally stood thus : " Would have been broken to pieces in a deep rut, or come to grief in a bottomless swamp." It is said that this can only be filled in thus, "Would have THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 133 been broken to pieces, or would have been come to grief in a bottomless swamp :" "for," it is added, "a part of a complex tense means nothing without the rest of the tense." That is, I suppose, the whole of the auxiliary verbs which belong to the first verb in a sentence must also belong to all other verbs which are coupled to that first verb. Now, is this so 1 I do not find that our best writers observe any such rule. In Deut. vi. 11, Israel is admonished, " When thou shalt have eaten and be full, beivare lest thou forget the Lord." We all know that this means : " When thou shalt have eaten and shalt be full." But, according to my censor, it must be filled up, "When thou shalt have eaten and shalt have be full." 171. You might, by applying to any chapter From Scrip- in the Bible the same treatment of which I have just been giving examples, show it to be full of ambiguities, which no one in all these generations has ever found out. Take exam- ples from one chapter, Acts xxii. In verse 4, I read, "And I persecuted this way unto the death." This violates the supposed law of arrangement, and falls under the charge of ambiguity. The gospel might, according to these critics, be understood from it. to be a 134 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. Grammar of our au- thorised version : way unto death instead of a way unto life. Take again verse 29, "Then they departed from him which should have examined him" Now we all know what this means. It is a more neat way of expressing what would be the regularly arranged sentence, " Then they which should have examined him departed from him." But here again the captious and childish critic may find ambiguity — " Then they departed — from him which should have examined him." I must not, however, forget that some of my correspondents find it convenient to depreciate the language and grammar of our authorised version of Scripture.* I would recommend * One gentleman says: "When I was at school, it was the habit of my tutor to give his class specimens of bad English for correction. You will be surprised to hear, that those specimens were chiefly texts from Scripture. They were given with all reverence, never- theless. It was because the readiest examples were to be had from the Bible, that any were taken from that source at all. Again, Shakspeare is held up by you as a pattern to modern grammarians. With all respect, I cannot understand how any man, with the education that you must have received, could venture even to insinuate such a dogma as this. Any one, with even the insufficient light which Murray affords, may detect numberless errors in every play which Shakspeare has written." This is rich indeed. One can well conceive the sort of English which was taught at my correspon- dent's school. And very much of the degenerate Eng- THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 135 them to try the experiment of amending that language. They may then perhaps find that what the translators themselves once said is true. A story is told, that they had a recom- mendation from a correspondent to alter a certain word in their version, giving five suffi- cient reasons for the change. They are said to have replied that they had already con- sidered the matter, and had fifteen sufficient reasons against the change. I think if my correspondents can bring themselves to con- sider reasonably any passage in which the English grammar of our authorised version appears doubtful, they will find themselves in the same predicament as this correspondent of the translators. I have often tried the expe- riment, and this has generally been the result. Mind, our present question is not that of their having adequately translated the Greek, but whether or not they wrote their own language grammatically and clearly. 172. Still, lest I should seem to be a f ghak- " man of one book only," I will give from speare * our greatest English writer, an instance (from among many) of what would be called lish of our day is to be traced to such instruction. I should like to have, seen some of the tutor's corrected texts. 136 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. a similar ambiguity. In the "Two Gentle- men of Verona," act. i. scene 2, Julia says: — " hateful hands, to tear such loving words ! Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey, And kill the hees that yield it with your stings." According to my correspondents, we ought to understand this as saying that the bees yield the honey by means of the wasps' stings. Best way of 173. But I conceive we have had enough of proceeding ° in regard ,.f these so-called universal rules. All I would such rules. say on them to my younger readers is, the less you know of them, the less you turn your words right or left to observe them, the better. Write good manly English; explain what you mean, as sensible intelligent men cannot fail to understand it, and then, if the rules be good, you will be sure to have complied with them; and if they be bad, your writing will be a protest against them. See the " Edin- burgh Review," quoted in note on paragraph 189. Real am- 174. It is not difficult to distinguish the sentences whose arrangement I have been defending, from those in which real ambiguity arises. Take the following as examples. I found it in one of the daily papers : — "The most interest-ins: news from Italv is that of THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 137 the trial of the thieves who robbed the bank of Messrs. Parodi at Genoa, on May 1, 1862, in open daylight, which commenced at Genoa on the 5th." In a letter addressed to another paper, this sentence occurs : " I with my family reside in the parish of Stockton, which consists of my wife and daughters." 175. Now both these sentences are instruc- tive to us. We may see from them how such ambiguity really arises : viz., by the occurrence, between the antecedent and its pronoun, of another word, which naturally suggests to the mind of the hearer a connection with the fol- lowing pronoun. In both these sentences this is the case. Daylight is said to commence at a certain time, as well as a trial : a parish is said to consist of certain persons, as well as a family. Hence the ambiguity: and not, as is often maintained, from the mere form of the senteuce. Any one so disposed may cull sentences out of any English writer, not even excepting Lord Macaulay, and show that they may be understood in a certain number of hundred, or thousand, dif- ferent ways. But the simple answer is, that nobody ever will so understand them : and p as has been seen, there are often reasons why the apparently ambiguous form should be 138 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. preferred to the strictly perspicuous one, as being more forcible, putting the emphatic word or clause in the proper place, or even as avoiding stiffness and awkwardness of sound. Let your style be idiomatic, simple, natural : aim at satisfying the common sense of those who read and hear, and then, though any one who has no better employment may pick holes in every third sentence, you will have written better English than one who suffers the tyranny of small critics to cramp the expression of his thoughts. Note after a 176. The following note has been sent me, tithe dinner. . . received after a tithe dinner m Devonshire : " Mr. T. presents his compliments to Mr. H., and I have got a hat that is not his, and if he have got a hat that is not yours, no doubt they are the expectant ones." It would defy any analysis to detect the source of confusion here. Perhaps "A, would be to Latin or Greek. These last languages require ego sum, lyu tifti (Matt, xiv. 27; Mark vi. 50; John vi. 20). The predicate was here simply omitted. In Gothic we have precisely the same construction, ik im (John vi. 20). The Eng- lish Wyclifiite translations both give I am. But the Anglo-Saxon version, like the modern German, is not content with leaving the predicate unexpressed, and we find ic hit eom ; High German, ich bin es ; literally, / am it; namely, that which you see. The Heliand para- phrase is very explicit (Schmeller's ed., p. 90, line 2), 1 Ik Mum that barn Godes"* ('I am the Son of God'). The Welsh and Gaelic try to be emphatic, the first saying myfi ydyw (q. d. myself am), and the second, is mise a ta ann (q. d. it's myself that's living). But of course we do not look to these languages as a guide to English. The Danish is very peculiar and important on account of its intimate relation with English. As in English, the dative and accusative cases of the personal pronouns now coincide in Danish, J eg, mig (I, me) ; Du, dig (thou, thee) ; Han, ham (he, him). We find the fol- lowing rule laid down in Tobiesen's Danische Sprach- lehre (Sternhagen's ed., 1828, p. 215):— 'After the impersonal verbs, det er and det bliver (it is), the per- sonal pronouns jeg, die, han are not used in the nomi- native, but in the dative, as der er mig der liar gjort det (it's me that did it) ; det er dig, som liar v&ret mester derfor (it's thee who was its master) ; det bliver ham, som vi ville tale med (it's him that we wish to speak with) ; [where also the construction of the relative and preposition is English] ; and similarly in the plural : det er os, jer, dem (it's us, you, them).' This is per- NOTES. 287 fectly explicit, and snows the same construction as the English ; but, in the Testament, the wish to be uncol- loquial has apparently forced the translator to depart from the usual custom when the words are given to Jesus, but he returns to it when they are echoed by Peter (Matt. xiv. 27, 28). *■ Jesus— sagde : — det erjeg, — men Peder — sagde : Herre, devsom det er dig, ba byd mig,' &c. ('Jesus said, It is I ; but Peter said, Lord, if it is thee, bid me,' &c.) The conclusion seems to be that its me is good English, and it's I is a mistaken purism. We have now, I think, come to regard the objective form of the personal pronoun as a predicative form, and this will justify that's him, although the Danes still say ' denne erhan' ('that's he'). We are therefore in the same condition as the French with their ' c'est moi, 1 though we have not quite reached their ' lui rfosait pas ' (' him didn't dare'). " Alexander J. Ellis." It will be curious if, after all, it should be proved that our much-abused colloquial phrase is the really good English, and its rival "a mistaken purism." ADDITIONAL NOTE. A friend has directed my attention to the fact that in "The New Whig Guide," printed in 1824, the word "talented'" is noticed as an Irish expression, equivalent to the English "clever." THE END. H Hi H iffi 1H fog w m n ■ ■ ;** - w- ■ ■ ■