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THE PRINCIPLES OF RHETORIC.

PART I.

COMPOSITION IN GENERAL.

BOOK I.

GRAMMATICAL PURITY.

CHAPTER I.

GOOD USE.

Importance of correct expression.

GRAMMAR, in the widest sense of the word, though readily distinguishable from Rhetoric, is its basis. He who has mastered the mechanics of language has a great advantage over one who cannot express himself correctly, as a painter whose pencil rarely errs has a great advantage over one who cannot draw correctly. To know the proper use of one's native tongue is no merit; not to know it is a positive demerit, a demerit the greater in the case of one who has enjoyed the advantages of education. Yet, not even eminent speakers or writers, not even those who readily detect similar faults in others, are themselves free from errors in grammar, such, at least, as may be committed, through inadvertence, in the hurry of speech or of composition. "A distinguished British scholar of the last century said he had known but three of his countrymen who spoke their native language with uniform

grammatical accuracy; and the observation of most persons widely acquainted with English and American society confirms the general truth implied in this declaration." 1 "It makes us blush to add," says De Quincey,2"that even grammar is so little of a perfect attainment amongst us, that, with two or three exceptions (one being Shakspere, whom some affect to consider as belonging to a semi-barbarous age), we have never seen the writer, through a circuit of prodigious reading, who has not sometimes violated the accidence or the syntax of English grammar.'

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Correctness (or Purity) is, then, the first requisite of discourse, whether spoken or written. Whatever is addressed to English-speaking people should be in the English tongue. With a few exceptions, to be hereGrammatical after noted, it should (1) contain none but purity defined. English words, phrases, and idioms; (2) these words, phrases, and idioms should be combined according to the English fashion; and (3) they should be used in the English meaning.

What, now, determines whether a given expression is English?

Evidently, the answer to this question is not to be False tests of sought in inquiries concerning the origin, the good English. history, or the fundamental characteristics of the language. However interesting in themselves, however successfully prosecuted, such investigations are foreign to a study which has to do, not with words as they have been, or might have been, or may be, but with words as they are; not with the English of yes

1 George P. Marsh: Lectures on the English Language, lect. v.

2 Essay on Style.

8 Query as to the position of this clause; see p. 140.
4 See p. 34 for an example taken from this very essay.

5 See pp. 10, 61.

terday or to-morrow, still less with a theorist's ideal English, but with the English of to-day.

In the English of to-day, one word is not preferred to another because it is derived from this or from that source; the present meaning of a word is not fixed by its etymology, nor its inflection by the inflection of other words with which it is commonly classed, nor its spelling by what some writers are pleased to call "reason."

Arithmetic (from the Greek), flour (from the Latin), mutton (from the French), gas (a term invented by a chemist 1), are as good words as sheep, meal, or fire. In its proper place, manufacture is as good as handiwork, purple as red, prairie as meadow, magnificent as great, murmur as buzz, have as be, oval as egg, convention as meeting.

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Though a vast majority of nouns form the plural in s, the plural of ox is still oxen, and that of mouse is still mice; though we may no longer say that "a bee stang John,' we may say that "the bells rang;" though its has been used only three centuries, it is as much a part of the language as his and her, and one can only smile at a recent writer's hostility to this "unlucky, new-fangled word." 2

V

"There is," says Landor, "a fastidiousness in the use of language that indicates an atrophy of mind. We must take words as the world presents them to us, without looking at the root. If we grubbed under this and laid it bare, we should leave no room for our thoughts to lie evenly, and every expression would be constrained and crampt.' We should scarcely find a metaphor in the purest author that is not false or imperfect, nor could we imagine one ourselves that would not be stiff and frigid. Take now, for instance, a phrase in common use. You are rather late. Can any thing seem plainer? Yet rather, as you know, meant

Van Helmont, a Fleming (born in 1577).

T. L. Kington Oliphant: The Sources of Standard English, p. 309. (1873.) 'A spelling peculiar to Landor among modern prose writers. Cramped is the proper form.

originally earlier, being the comparative of rathe: the 'rathe primrose' of the poet recalls it. We cannot say, You are sooner late; but who is so troublesome and silly as to question the propriety of saying, You are rather late? We likewise say, bad orthography and false orthography: how can there be false or bad rightspelling?" 1

The fastidiousness that objects to well-established words because their appearance "proclaims their vile and despicable origin; "2 or to well-understood phrases, because they "contain some word that is never used except as a part of the phrase; "2 or to idiomatic expressions, because," when analyzed grammatically, they include a solecism," 2 or because they were "originally the spawn, partly of ignorance, and partly of affectation," the fastidiousness, in short, that would sacrifice to the proprieties of language the very expressions that give life to our daily speech and vigor to the best writing, deserves no gentler treatment than Landor gives the etymologists.

2

Pell-mell, topsy-turvy, helter-skelter, hurly-burly, hocus-pocus, hodgepodge, harum-scarum, namby-pamby, willy-nilly, shilly-shally, higgledypiggledy, dilly-dally, hurry-scurry, carry their meaning instantaneously to every mind.3

Though the italicized words in "by dint of," "as lief,” “to and might and main," "hue and cry," "pro and con," "spick and span new,' are unused except in the phrases quoted, the phrases are universally understood, and there is no more reason for challenging the words composing them than there is for challenging a syllable in a word.

fro,"
""not a whit,'
"kith and kin, 99 66

1 Walter Savage Landor: Works, vol. iv. p. 165.

2 George Campbell: The Philosophy of Rhetoric, book ii. chap. ii. (1750.) See Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Browning's "Hervé Riel," and various passages in Burke.

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