is evident, have a partially divided use, forms gaining currency at one point which are unrecognized at another. As nearly as possible, our vocabulary should be of the common stock, intelligible to Englishmen on either side of the Atlantic. (5) By the use of vulgarisms-words and phrases, whether colloquialisms or slang, which are suggestive of what is low and mean. Originating in heedless conversation, and there tolerated, they are expelled from dignified address as the scum of expression. As a rule, they are ephemeral. Occasionally one is adopted by respectable usage. (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5) are usually called barbarisms. Another and grave offence against purity is the solecism a violation of the laws of syntax. These laws express the principles by which, according to established usage, words are combined into sentences. The chief of them it is our purpose to point out and illustrate: (1) The subject of a finite verb, when capable of inflectional change, should be in the nominative case: I have no other saint than thou [art] to pray to.-Longfellow. Elizabeth publicly threatened that she would have the head of whoever had advised it.-Hume. Confusion of the oblique case of pronouns and the nominative is widely diffused in the popular speech; nor are specimens wanting in the literary language: But none so lovely and so brave As him who wither'd in the grave. - Byron. Nor thee nor them, thrice noble Tamburlaine, Shall want my heart to be with gladness fill'd.-Marlowe. If you were here, you would find three or four in the parlour, after dinner, whom, you would say, passed their afternoons very agreeably. Swift. (2) An appositive, assumptive or predicative, is put in the same case as the substantive to which it refers: He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West, perhaps him who published Pindar at Oxford.-Johnson. It is I.-Dickens. I am I.-Shakespeare. Who are thou?-Wycliff. He enjoys, he sinner, a glimpse of the glorious Martyr's very Body.-Carlyle. The following constructions, viewed in the light of analogy, will be seen therefore to be erroneous: Whom do they say that I am?—Matthew. For Richelieu's murderer.—Bulwer. Him I had known, Had served with, suffered with.-Rogers. This rule is frequently violated, not seldom in the literary, but particularly in the popular, speech: Who have we got here?-Smollet. Who does it come from?-Goldsmith. Let they who raise the spell beware the Fiend.—Bulwer. Perhaps every one present, except he, guessed why.-Charles Kingsley. (4) It is a fundamental rule in English that the verb should agree with its subject in number and person: The Lotos blooms below the barren peak.-Tennyson. 6 This Romeo and Juliet' was not only produced at Weimar.— Lewes. Dryden's and Rowe's manner are quite out of fashion.-Gold smith. So mingle banner, wain, and gun.-Scott. The oldest, as well as the newest, wine Offences often arise from the inversion or intervention of parts, both of which causes tend to obscure the true subject. Concord is of course more difficult to preserve in long sentences than in short ones: What means these questions?-Young. There is no more such Cæsars.-Shakespeare. Nor wood, nor tree, nor bush, are there.-Scott. No action or institution can be salutary and stable which are not based on reason and the will of God.-M. Arnold. Neither the difficulty nor the cost are insuperable.-W. R. Greg. The delusiveness of Bolingbroke's repeated observations are transparent enough.-A. W. Ward. (5) A pronoun agrees, in number and person, with that for which it stands: Are you not he That fights the maidens?-Shakespeare. Pope, who couldst make Immortals, art thou dead?--Young. Happy day! that breaks our chain!-Ibid. Faulty examples are: Nobody knows what it is to lose a friend, till they have lost him. -Fielding. A person of beautiful mind, dwelling on whatever appears to them most desirable . . . will not only pass their time pleasantly, etc.-Ruskin. One of those fanciful, exotic combinations that gives the same impression of brilliancy and richness that one receives from tropical insects and flowers. -Mrs. Stowe. This is one of the most important cases of releasing right of entry for conditions broken which has been settled by arbitration for a considerable period.-Dr. Holmes. (6) In general, a word should have grammatical, as well as logical, connection with the rest of the sentence. Non-rhetorical pleonasms and non-referable participles. like the following are therefore wrong: I bemoan Lord Carlisle, for whom, although I have never seen him, and he may never have heard of me, I have a sort of personal liking for him.-Miss Mitford. And the reason seems to be given by some words of our Bible, which, though they may not be the exact rendering of the original in that place, yet in themselves they explain the connection of culture and conduct very well.- M. Arnold. There is a story of a father whom his sons resolved to rob. Having left unguarded the key of his escritoire as if through forgetfulness, the thief rushed toward the gold.-Professor J. P. Nichol. Having perceived the weakness of his poems upon the FrancoGerman war, they now reappear to us under new titles, and largely pruned or otherwise remodeled.-E. C. Stedman. (7) In the sequence of tenses, the objective relations of time should be preserved: I purpose to write the history of England.-Macaulay. I thought I ne'er should see his face again.-Longfellow. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.-Dickens. Specimens of incorrect usage are: I was much tempted1 to have broken the rascal's head [tempted to break].-Scott. Dunwoodie! is he then here? I thought to have met him by the side of my brother's bed [thought to meet].-Cooper. I intended to have insisted on this sympathy at greater length. -Ruskin. Friendships which we once hoped and believed would never have grown cold.-F. W. Farrar. It would doubtless have exhibited itself quietly enough if it were [had been] absolutely undiluted.— Justin McCarthy. (8) Universal truths or permanent require the present tense. incorrect: arrangements Hence the following are 1 The state or activity denoted by the principal verb, is here, evidently, logically and chronologically prior to that denoted by the dependent verb, It is confidently reported that two young gentlemen made a discovery that there was no God.-Swift. (9) In the sequence of moods and in the use of compound tense-forms, congruity of parts should be observed. Instances of error are: I suppose you would aim at him best of all, if he was [were] out of sight.-Sheridan. I would not have said this for the world, if I was [were] not a little anxious about my own girl.—Bulwer. Politics would become one network of complicated restrictions as soon as women shall [should] succeed in getting their voice preponderant in the state.-Spectator, 1869. I never have, and never will, attack a man for speculative opinions.-Buckle. Those persons for whom this distinction is too subtle had [might] better confine themselves to plain English.'-R. G. White. And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal.—Byron. On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire, Too divine to be mistook.-Milton. Of the last two examples it may be said that the solecism is a poetic license. A grammatically purer poet than either of the above, however, could write, in the same measure as that of Milton: His countenance meanwhile Was hidden from my view, and he remained With slacken'd footsteps I advanced.-- Wordsworth. (10) Purity further requires conformity to the English 1 Farther on (Words and their Uses), Mr. White maintains the incongruity of this form: 'Another example of the so-called authoritative misuse of language is the use of had in the phrases, I had rather, you had better. . . . Nothing . is more certain than that had expresses perfected and past possession. How . . . can it be used to express future action?' In a later work (EveryDay English), Mr. White ventures the prediction that the verdict of the court which pronounces judgment upon language'a mixed commission of the common and the critical will be against such uses of words as had rather be and had better go."' |