"It never once entered Thomas Newcome's head, nor Clive's, nor Florac's, nor his mother's, that the Colonel demeaned himself at all by accepting that bounty."1 "Yes, very proud,' added Norman; but we shall not demean ourselves any more, so you may take away your ugly stupid star ling; Edith is not to take it.'" 2 "Jackson complied with the request of the ruffians who occu pied the team with him." 8 "If the owners of heavy brick teams could be induced to put tires to their wagons, it would no doubt be a saving to the city."8 "The loads of merchandise which now pass in teams through our narrow streets will, when this improvement is completed, make the transit by rail." 8 "She [Nausicaa] unharnessed the mules from the team." "His domestic virtues are too well known to make it necessary to allude to them." 5 "A single quotation from the Epistles' of Horace, in his 'Life' of Lucullus, exhausts, if I do not mistake, the entire of his references." 997 "The gloomy staircase on which the grating gave.” "I was surprised to observe that, notwithstanding the rain and the coldness of the evening, the window which gave upon this balcony was open." "The Cardinal declares that he 'dies tranquil, in the conscience of never having failed in his duty toward the sacred person of the Pope.'" 10 "And these sentiments being uttered in public, upon the promenade, to mutual friends, of course the Duchess had the benefit of Lady Kew's remarks a few minutes after they were uttered." 11 1 Thackeray: The Newcomes, chap. lxxvi. 8 American newspaper. 5 Lord Dalling and Bulwer: Life of Sir Robert Peel, part vi. chap. iii 6 Whose? The meaning is, "Plutarch's." 7 Archbishop Trench: Plutarch, lect. i. 8 Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit, book i. chap. i. 9 Stanley J. Weyman: A Gentleman of France, chap. iv, 10 The [London] Spectator. "Thackeray: The Newcomes, chap. xxxiii. "Mara's opinion in their mutual studies began to assume a value in his eyes that her opinion on other subjects had never done, and she saw and felt, with a secret gratification, that she was becoming more to him through their mutual pursuit.” 1 "Its judgments . . . not alone confirm Swift's own account of his studies, but apply otherwise.” 2 "Resolved, That the directors, if they deem it expedient, may lease or otherwise aid, as authorized by statutes, in the construction and operation of any branch of connecting railroads." 8 "Art thou still so much surprised,' said the Emir, and hast thou walked in the world with such little observance as to wonder that men are not always what they seem?'" 4 "Quite a host of miscellaneous facts relating to the inhabitants of the United States are brought together." "Then in the afternoon the whole of them got into a boat, and were rowed away to a long and flat and sandy island." "In the centre of this confused mass, the whole of the common prisoners were placed, but were no otherwise attended to by their nautical guard than as they furnished the subjects of fun and numberless quaint jokes." 7 "The whole of the commissioners are unanimous in recommending the construction of a reservoir in the mill valley."8 "We are more liable to become acquainted with a man's faults than with his virtues."9 "Men differ in their liability to suggestion." "It is easy to accede something to Mr. Matthews." 10 "It is not alone important but necessary to pronounce correctly." 9 1 American novel. 2 Forster: Life of Swift, book i. chap. ii. 3 Resolution passed at a meeting of stockholders. 7 James Fenimore Cooper: The Pilot, chap. xxx. 8 The Nineteenth Century, May, 1894, p. 869. 9 Student's theme. 10 Augustine Birrell: Men, Women, and Books; Americanisms and Briticisms. "You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old crea ture!' cried Bella." 1 66 Mayor Hart predicates a majority for Greenhalge." 2 VI. Each word in a phrase may be used in its proper sense, and yet the phrase taken as a whole Improprieties may imply a contradiction in terms that con stitutes an impropriety: in phrases. "Andrew Johnson, the last survivor of his honored predecessors.” a "I do not reckon that we want a genius more than the rest of our neighbours." 4 "We are at peace with all the world, and seek to maintain our cherished relations of amity with the rest of mankind.” This sentence appeared in President Taylor's Message to Congress (Dec. 4, 1849) as printed in the newspapers of the day. It was so much ridiculed that it was corrected in the permanent official record, which reads as follows: "We are at peace with all the other nations of the world, and seek to maintain our cherished relations of amity with them." Some improprieties, though logically absurd, are rhetorically defensible:— "He [Cerberus] was a big, rough, ugly-looking monster, with three separate heads, and each of them fiercer than the two others.” 5 "Adam, the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters, Eve."6 "On entering this court, I am greeted with a frightful uproar; a thousand instruments, each one more outlandish than the other, produce the most discordant and deafening sounds."7 "Holland House, however, was the seat of Charles's boyhood; and his earliest associations were connected with its lofty avenues, 1 Dickens: Our Mutual Friend, book iii. chap. xv. 2 American newspaper. 8 From the Message of a President of the United States. 1 Henry M. Stanley: Through the Dark Continent, chap. ix. its trim gardens, its broad stretches of deep grass, its fantastic gables, its endless vista of boudoirs, libraries, and drawing-rooms, each more homelike and habitable than the last."1 “This made several women look at one another slyly, each knowing more than the others, and nodding while sounding the others' ignorance." 2 Evidently, in these instances, the literal statement cannot be true; but the imagination makes it seem true, by making each one of the objects compared appear, at the moment it is looked at, superior to the others in the point in question. SECTION III. SOLECISMS. As compared with highly inflected languages, English undergoes few grammatical changes of form. Its syntax is easily mastered, and for that very reason is often neglected. In conversation, indeed, slight inaccuracies may be pardoned for the sake of colloquial ease, and in oratory fire tells for more than correctness; but a writer is expected to take whatever time he needs to make his sentences grammatical. Hence, the grosser faults of common speech are avoided by good authors; but even they sometimes fall into constructions not English, — that is, they are guilty of SOLECISMS. Grammar," says De Quincey, "is so little of a perfect attainment amongst us, that, with two or three exceptions (one being Shakspeare,3 whom some affect to con 1 G. O. Trevelyan: The Early History of Charles James Fox, chap. ii. 2 R. D. Blackmore: Cripps the Carrier, chap. xii. Per contra, see Introduction to "A Shakespearian Grammar," by E A. Abbott. sider 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."2 use of foreign I. Nouns of foreign origin are sometimes Errors in the used incorrectly. nouns. Cherub and seraph may form their plural either according to the Hebrew idiom, as cherubim, seraphim, or according to the Eng. lish, as cherubs, seraphs; but it is equally incorrect to speak of "a cherubim," and of "two little cherubims.” 4 were; A similar fault is committed by Addison: "The zeal of the seraphim [Abdiel] breaks forth in a becoming warmth of sentiments and expressions, as the character which is given us of him denotes that generous scorn and intrepidity which attend heroic virtue."5 The elder Disraeli says in one place, "The Roman Saturnalia " in another, "Such was the Roman Saturnalia." "The minutiæs" and "the minutia" (as a plural) are sometimes seen. "In the Daily News of Saturday last, April 19th, we are informed that in the excavations at Luxor three new necropoli have been discovered."7 A speaker in the House of Representatives, 1877, said that "The Electoral Commission had made the two Houses of Congress a mere addenda to a conspiracy." A college student wrote, "A natural phenomena is under the control of natural law;" another, " "8 a strata;" another, "this fungi.” 8 II. The possessive case is sometimes used as if it were coextensive with the Latin genitive. 1 Query as to the position of this phrase. 2 Thomas De Quincey: Essay on Style. The possessive case. 3 Shakspere: The Tempest, act i. scene ii. Thus modern editions: the folio of 1623 has cherubin. 4 George Eliot: The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, chap. i. 5 The Spectator, No. 327. 6 Quoted by Henry H. Breen: Modern English Literature; Its Blemishes and Defects. 7 The [London] Athenæum, April 26, 1884, p. 536. 8 For additional examples, see "The Foundations of Rhetoric," pp. 47, 48. |