PE 1460 .05 1864b Copy 1 v ;,»/:> 1 m%*m > 3BN ^fr/ro**t/m.fctrt ftf ifo? 31rr+i>vrrtrv Books are ii of 11 a. m. an< The Librar 4 p. m. Book 1. Theemplo borrow books fr 2. Before beii the Librarian a or of the Bureau 3. ]STo book w borrower shall 1 4. Of works ( of two or more i 5. The perioc prohibited fron Department or ] 8. Borrowers may at t!ie clos weeks. 7. The loan c 8. Books clat with an asterisk 9. When a b( must be replace 10. Applicatio pases of sicknes 11. Books reti replaced upon t] 12. AVI) en ab< renewal, its pri< and deducted fin 13. Writing oil tneieaves or cover's of books, andfnelbMirig or turiiii^; down of their leaves are strictly prohibited ; violation of this iule will debar (anployes from further privileges of the Library. 14. In selecting books from the shelves care must be used in handling them, replacing those qoI drawn on the shelves from which they were taken; the number of the shelf may be ascertained from the label* above 15. Employes, on quitting the service of the Department, must return all books in fcheir possession belonging to the Library. Final payment of their salaries will be withheld by the Disbursing Officer until lie is satisfied that all - charged again s1 fcKem at fche Library have been returned. Hi. For infringements of any of the above rules the Librarian is authorized to suspend or refuse t he issue of books to the culpable persons. By order of t he Secretary : GEO. M. LOCKWOOD, Chief Clerk. (13599—10 M.j mw- ie hours m. till orized to j tile with •artment, me of the of works e strictly er of the r o weeks, onal two Catalogue rower, it wcept in lined and s without •artment, cc CO re (ICC CCC 4CL7 CCcCC" "< r^ rrr^> c c;c CC CSCCX CO CCCC <« icc<3gc ecstasy " 24. There seems to be considerable doubt and "apos- , 1 -i V« ' • i i tasy. 1 ' m the public mind how to spell the two words ecstasy and apostasy. The former of these - especially is a puzzle to our compositors and journalists. Is it to be extasy, extacy, ecstacy, or ecstasy ? The question is at once decided for us by the Greek root of the word. This is ecstasis (ezcraGiq), a standing, or position, out of, or beside, one's-self. The same is the case with apostasy. The root of this is apo- stasis (d7c6(7Ta • • meaning of language from the triple meaning of " tha t, ""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 thai 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 1 common expressions, " this much" " that much ?" We continually hear and read, " This much I know," " Of that much I am * Seven "thats" maybe 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. % 81 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 ?" 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- ts 82* THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. ♦ tainty. When I say " That much I knew before" 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" " That I knew before" 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" but at the same time more fitted for colloquial use. "that m." 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" 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." * "ever so' 1 105. Are we to say " ever so," or " never so," so r iu expressions like "be he ever [never) so old," * An Irish correspondent informs me that " which ?" is used in Ireland as equivalent to our u what?" or "what did yon say?" TEE 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 troublesome petitioner, " If you ask me ever so much, I won't give it you :" but we read, " Which refuseth 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 w T hich 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, u 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- G2 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 10 7. 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 ?" 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 question. 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 thi& 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 "oldest ... ., . . 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 ? 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- "lesser. 11 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 ? 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 "rfyore;" 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 icas 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 u 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 fill 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 bach again, by his rival. 113. The " enclosure" of a letter, what is "enclo- sure." it ? Is it that which encloses the letter, viz.. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. the envelope ? or is it something* enclosed in the letter, as a dried flower, or a lock of hair ? 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 that 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 11 7. It will be well to attempt some expla- 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 which 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 whilh 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 who 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, u Our Father which art in heaven," " who " 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 pronoun 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. Use of 119. There is a use of the word "but" "but." 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 but respectable, because respectability with old age is not something unexpected.* Even while I #The expression u allow me respectfully, but ear- nestly to represent to you," is objected to. Yet here 4 so." THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 93 write, ray train stops at a station on the Great Western Railway, 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 would be far more reason- able, because wildness raises an expectation of grandeur, which the " but " contradicts. 120. A correspondent writes : " Many, espe- "as" and dally I think ladies, say, 'He is not as tall as his brother.' Am I not right in saying that after a negative l so ' should be used — l He is not so tall as his brother' ?" 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. Arespect- ,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 u 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 few, 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." "hadra- 121. A question has been asked about the ther." expressions " / had rather" " / had as soon" or " as lief" What is the "had" in these sentences ? Is it really part of the verb THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 95 u have" , at all? If it is, how do we explain it? 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 rather, which is short not for / had rather, but / would rather. " I would rather be " is good English, because " I would be " is good English ; but " I had rather be " is not good English, because " I had be " is not good English. 122. One word with regard to the colloquial colloquial . . contrac- contractions which 1 just now mentioned, tions. We occasionally hear some made use of, which cannot be defended. For instance, u I ain't certain" u I ain't going." This latter, in the past tenses, degenerates still further into the mere vulgarism, " / warnH 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 " ainUt ?" It cannot be a contraction of 96 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. " am not." What " arn't " 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 " / am not" is " Pm not :" " Pm not going ;" " Pm not quite sure" The same way of contracting is used in the case of u 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 arn't ;" u they're not coming" not " they arn't" or " ain't"* Feminine 123. A few remarks may be made on the substan- . • . , tives. 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 rise, by some of our best writers, of the subjunctive u thou 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. 91 hearing # 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 pilgrimess" &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 " grocer ess and tea- dealeress, 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. H tion. 98 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 u 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, 1 ' 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. 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 between two 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" 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 wide world" " the deep deep sea" Such expressions you almost invariably find printed " the wide, wide world" " the deep, deep sea" 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 dag, 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 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, lj where the language is pure exclamation, as in " How beautiful is night !" or, " O 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 defined, 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 down 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 by. 1 ' 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 onlv the preposition u to," emphasized ; a u 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." 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 u 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 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 . . . ?" 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- taken. 1 ' somewhat anomalous. Its etymology seems simple enough — to take amiss. And by the analogy of " misunderstand," " misinterpret," " mislead," lC misinform," u 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, li 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 be 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: 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 >oking" or well look- or well looking ? Here is another instance of 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 . . , two ; " last," precisians is, the avoiding of the use of " latter of only two. lookini " wel ing." THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 10*7 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 lio-ht. o Of two invasions, the earlier is undoubtedly the first, the latter the second. JSTow "first" is a superlative ; and if of two, one is designated by a superlative, why not the other ? 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 " 3 f 108 ZEE 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 ? 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, 11 139. 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, k 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 ? It looks like a participle. From what verb ? 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), u 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, 1 ' 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 ;" THE QUEE2TS ENGLISH. Ill "but I 'couldn't get" The fall 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 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, 11 &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- 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 very 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. 7 ' to pro- 145. The verb to "progress" is challenged by one of my friends as a modern 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 correspond- ent anxious to vindicate Shakspeare from having used a modern vulgarism. He would understand "doth progress" 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.] gress, THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 113 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 magnificent peroration of his " Treatise of Milton. Reformation 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. 1 heaven and earth. Where they undoubt; that by their labours, counsels and praj have been earnest for the common goo13; for all these are formed from the same I of the original Latin verbs, as this " pro- iss " on which we have been speaking. 148. In treating of this verb to "progress" Nouns made . .. into verbs. \ a correspondent notices that there prevails a pendency to turn nouns into verbs : " The hip remained to coal :" " the church is being pewed :" "he was prevailed on to head the movement." I do not see that we can object ;b this tendency in general, seeing that it has 4*own with the growth of our language, and ander due regulation is one of the most obvious means of enriching it. Verbs thus I formed will carry themselves into use, in spite of the protests of the purists. Some years iet down as English verbs in the folio edition of Bailey's tjniversal Dictionary, published in 1755. But there 4 as wide a difference between dictionary ivords 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," u abstrude," "acervate," "acetosity," u adjugate,"- "admetiate," "adminicle," "advolation," u 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, 11 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, m " Then let the pealing organ blow," the verb " blow" is rightly nsed. 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, bloios, and produces music. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 117 "treat a subject:" or it maybe 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 y» /» • • i*ii tw0 wa y s °*' 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, "the 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,' Hhe play of " Hamlet." ■ We sometimes hear it pro- be city London." 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 4 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 u 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 " of" It is used, in designations of this kind, in three different senses : 1. To denote authorship, as "the booh of Daniel ;" 2. To denote subject- matter, as " the first book of Kings :" 3. As a note of apposition, signifying, " which is," or a which is called," as " the book of Genesis" " of Exodus" Jest je would be THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 157 the right expression. Both constructions, the English and the French, are predicative: and when constructions are predicative, a change is what we must expect rather than be surprised at." 196. The account which Dr. Latham has here given, is doubtless the right one. There is a disposition, when the personal pronoun is used predicatively, to put it into the accusa- tive case. That this is more prevalent in the pronoun of the first person singular than in the others, may perhaps arise from the fact which Dr. Latham has elsewhere established, that me is not the proper, but only the adopted accusative of /, being in fact a dis- tinct and independent form of the personal pronoun. But, it may fairly be asked, whence arises this disposition to shrink from the use of the nominative case in the predicate ? For it does not apply to all instances where the pronoun is predicative. " He said unto them, it is I : be not afraid." This is a capital instance : for it shows us at once why the nominative should be sometimes used. The Majesty of the Speaker here, and His purpose of re-assuring the disciples by the assertion that it was none other than Himself, at once point out to us the case in which it would be 158 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. proper for the nominative, and not the accu- sative, to be used.* "it is he?"" 19 ^' ■ Dr ' Latnam g° es on to sa y> after tne first of my two citations, p. 587, "At the same time it must be observed, that the ex- pression, it is me = it is I, will not justify the use of it is him, it is her = it is he, and it is she. Me, ye, you, are what may be called indifferent forms, i. e., nominative as much as accusative, and accusative as much as nomi- native. Him and her, on the other hand, are not indifferent. The -m and -r are re- spectively the signs of cases other than the nominative." 198. But is this quite consistent with the idea that the categorical use of the pronoun in the predicate may be different from that of the same pronoun as a subject? Me may not have been the original accusative case of /: but it is unquestionably the adopted ac- cusative, in constant use as such. Where lies the difference, grammatically, between it is me, and it is him, or it is her, as far as present usage is concerned? It seems to me that, if we are prepared to defend the one, we ought in consistency also to defend the other. When, * The predicate in the question, "Is it I?" (Matt, xxvi. 22), is hardly perhaps a case in point. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 159 in the Ingoldsby legend, the monks of Rheims saw the poor anathematised jackdaw appear, "Regardless of grammar, they cried out, 1 That's him !' " And I fear we must show an equal disregard of what ordinarily passes for grammar ', if we would give a correct account of the prevalent usages of our language.* 199. There is one form of construction which is sometimes regarded as coming under the present question, but with which, in fact, it is not concerned. I mean that occurring in such phrases as " You didn't know it to be me" u I suspected it to be him" In these, the accusative cases are simply in government, and nominatives would be altogether un- grammatical. The verb substantive takes the same case after it as went before it. It is in fact, in these sentences, equivalent to as, or as being. " You didn't knoio it to be I" would be equivalent to " you didn't recog- nise it as I" which of course would be wrong. 199a. A correspondent asks me to notice "a "you and . I," accu- usage now becoming prevalent among persons sative. who ought to know better : viz. that of ' you and 1/ after prepositions governing the accu- sative." He gives an instance from " Both- well," a poem by Professor Aytoun, p. 199 : * See note F, at the end of the volume. 160 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. " But it were vain for you and I In single fight our strength to try." On the impropriety of this there can of ,. course be only one opinion. "Perhaps," my correspondent adds, "Professor Aytoun may have read 'John Gilpin, 5 and, innocent himself of cockneyisms, may have supposed that it is good English to say 1 On horseback after 'we.' " «as thee." 1996. When Thomson, in "'Rule Britannia," wrote " The nations not so blest as thee," was he writing correct English? I venture to think he was. As r like than, is capable of being used in two distinct constructions, the elliptic, and the complete. "As thou" is the elliptic construction, requiring the verb sub- stantive for its completion, "as thou art" " As thee" like " than whom," is the complete construction, in which the conjunction of com- parison has a quasi-prepositional force, and governs the pronoun in the objective case. The construction cited from Sir Walter Scott by one of my critics as faulty, " Yet oft in Holy Writ we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise," THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 161 is perfectly correct : not, it is true, the usual form of expression, or the more elegant, but one to which, on purely grammatical grounds, there is no objection. The attempt which my critic makes to convict it of error by assuming it to be the elliptical fo*m, such . . . as me (am), only shows how much some of us need reminding of the first principles of the syntax of our language. 200. We have said something of superfluous Use of "of." prepositions : let us remark on the use of pre- positions themselves. The preposition " of " is sometimes hardly dealt with. When I read in an article in the Times, on a late annexation, " What can the Emperor possibly want of these provinces of Savoy ?" I saw at once that the writer must be a native of the midland counties, where your friends complain that you have not "called of them of a long timeP Now in this case it is not the expression, but the sense meant to be conveyed by it, that is objectionable. " What can the Emperor want of these provinces V is very good English, if we mean " What request has he to make of these provinces?" But if we mean, as the Times 1 writer evidently did, " What does he want with the provinces ?" ?. sense of untechnical use, signifies man associated. But ' k party." we must remember that it has a technical use also. " I don't think," says a correspon- dent, " that party must mean ' man associated] but that it means one or more persons as re- garded in relation to one or more others : and that by following out this, the passages in 'Tobit' and the ' Tempest' maybe cleared, without giving any countenance to bagman's English. ' The parties (partes) in a lawsuit may be each a single person : and a clergy- man who gives out a notice about ' these 248 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. " proceed. 1 * partake.'' * locality.'' " apart- ments." parties being joined together " although he is wrong in departing from the Prayer- book, does not seem to me incorrect in lan- guage." 337. The newspaper writers never allow us to go anywhere, we always proceed. A man going home, is set down as " an individual proceeding to his residence." 338. We never eat, but always partake, even though we happen to eat up the whole of the thing mentioned. In court, counsel asks a witness, "Did you have anything to eat there T " Yes." " What was it ?" " A bun." Now go to the report in the paper, and you'll be sure to find that " witness con- fessed to having partaken of a bun," as if some one else shared it with him. 330. We never hear of a place ; it is .always a locality. Nothing is ever placed, but always located. " Most of the people of the place " would be a terrible vulgarism to these gentlemen ; it must be "the majority of the residents in the locality." 340. Then no one lives in rooms, but always m " apartments." " Good lodgings " would be far too meagre ; so we have u eligible apart- ments y 341. No man ever shows any feeling, but THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 249 always ". evinces " it. This " evince" by the way, is one of the most odious words in all this catalogue of vulgarities, for such they really are. Everybody " evinces " everything. No one asks 7 but " evinces a desire" No one is hurt, but " evinces a sense of suffering." No one thanks another, but " evinces gratitude" I remember, when the French band of the " Guides," were in this country, to have read in the Illustrated JVeics, that as they pro- ceeded, of course, along the streets of the metropolis (we never read of London in polite journals), they were vehemently (everybody does everything vehemently) cheered by the assembled populace (that is the genteel name for the people). And what do you suppose the Frenchmen did in return? Of course, something very different from what English- men would have done under similar circum- stances. But did they toss up their caps, and cry, Vive V Angleterre ? The Illustrated News did not condescend to enter into such details ; all it told us was, that they "evinced a reciprocity" ! 342. Again, we never begin anything in the "com- mence." newspapers now, but always commence. I read lately in a Taunton paper, that a horse Cl com- menced kicking." And the printers seem to 250 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. think it quite wrong to violate this rule. Repeatedly, in drawing up handbills for cha- rity sermons, I have written, as I always do, "Divine service will begin at so and so ;" but almost always it has been altered to " com- mence ;" and once I remember the bill being sent back after proof, with a "query, com- mence ?" written against the word. But even commence is not so bad as " take the initiative" which is the newspaper phrase for the other more active meaning of the verb to begin. "eventu- 343. Another horrible word, which is fast ate." getting into our language through the pro- vincial press, is to " eventuate" If they want to say that a man spent his money till he was ruined, they tell us that his unprecedented extravagance eventuated in the total dispersion of his property, avoca- 344. u Avocation " is another monster patro- nised by these writers. Now avocation, which of itself is an innocent word enough, means the being called away from something. We might say, a He could not do it, having avocations elsewhere." But in our newspapers, avocation means a man's calling in life. If a shoemaker at his work is struck by lightning, we read, that " while pursuing his avocatio n, the electric fluid penetrated the unhappy man's person" tion."" THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 251 345. u , Persuasion" is another word very "persua- sion commonly and very curiously used by them. We all know that persuasion means the fact of being persuaded, by argument or by example. But in the newspapers, it means a sect or way of belief. And strangely enough, it is most generally used of that very sect and way of belief, whose characteristic is this, that they refuse to be persuaded. We constantly read of the " Hebrew persuasion" or the " Jewish persuasion" I expect soon to see the term widened still more, and a man of colour described as " an individual of the negro per- suasion" 346. Not only our rights of conscience, but "tosus- even our sorrows are invaded by this terrible diluted English. In the papers, a man does not now lose his mother : he " sustains (this I saw in a country paper) bereavement of his maternal relative." By the way, this verb to sustain is doing just now a great deal of work not its own. It means, you know, to endure, to bear up under ; to sustain a bereavement, does not properly mean merely to undergo or sufTer a loss, but to behave bravely under it. In the newspapers, however, " sustain" comes in for the happening to men of all the ills and accidents possible. Men never break their tain. 1 ' 252 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. legs, but they always " sustain a fracture " of them ; a phrase which suggests to one the idea of the poor man with both hands holding up the broken limb to keep it straight. " to expe- 347. Akin to sustain is the verb to experience, Hence.'" now so constantly found in our newspapers. No one feels, but experiences a sensation. Now, in the best English, experience is a substan- tive, not a verb at all. But even if it is to be held (see above, paragraph 148), that the modern dialect has naturalized it, let us have it at least confined to its proper meaning, which is not simply to feel, but to have per- onal knowledge of by trial* "to accord. 348. Another such verb is to "accord" which is used for " award" or " adjudge." " The prize was accorded" we read, " to so and so" If a lec- turer is applauded at the end of his task, we are told that u a complete ovation was accorded him" "to entail." 349. Entail is another poor injured verb. Nothing ever leads to anything as a conse- quence, or brings it about, but it always entails it. This smells strong of the lawyer's clerk ; as does another word which we some- times find in our newspapers, in its entirety instead of all or the whole. * I read the other day in the Times, that the weather had experienced a change ! r ( E THE QUEENS ENGLISH. 253 350. Desirability is a terrible word. I "desira- . . bility," found it the other day, I think, in a leading '-dispie- J ' ° nishing. 1 ' article in the Times. And a correspondent sent roe a quotation from the Standard ', in which displenishing occurs, ■p 351. Reliable is hardly legitimate. We do " reliable." p not re£y a man^ we reZy ?^(m a man ; so that reliable does duty for rely-upon-able. " Trust- ) worth]/ " conveys all the meaning required. 352. Allude to is used in a new sense by "allude." the journals, and not only by them, but also by the Government offices. If I have to com- plain to the Post-Office that a letter legibly directed to me at Canterbury has been mis- sent to Caermarthen, I get a regular red-tape reply, beginning " The letter alluded to by you." Now I did not allude to the letter at all ; I mentioned it as plainly as I could. 353. I send a sentence to a paper to the Examples of the deterio following effect : — " When I came to the spot, ration. I met a man running towards me with his hands held up." Next day I read, u When the very rev. gentleman arrived in close prox- imity to the scene of action, he encountered an individual proceeding at a rapid pace in the opposite direction, having both his hands elevated in an excited manner." 354. This is fiction ; but the following are 254 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. truth. In a Somersetshire paper I saw that - a man had had his legs burned by sitting for warmth, and falling asleep, on the top of a lime-kiln. The lime was called the " seething mass " (to " seethe " means to boil, — and " sad" or " sodden" is its passive participle) ; and it was said he would soon have been a calcined corpse, which, I take it, would have been an unheard-of chemical phenomenon. 355. In the same paper I read the follow- ing elegant sentence : — " Our prognostications as regards the spirit of the young men here to join the Stogursey rifle-corps proves correct." The same paper, in commenting on the Hop- ley case, speaks through a whole leading article of corporeal punishment. I may men- tion that, in this case, the accused person figures throughout, as so often in provincial papers, as a " demon incarnate" and " a fiend in human shape" 356. In travelling up from Somersetshire I find the directors of the Great Western Railway thus posting up the want of a school- master at their board : " £5 reward. Whereas the windows of the carriages, *-,, -, •, i i • - • T -r nurse. the kind old gentleman and his carriage, lie was riding at his ease one very hot day, when he saw a tired nursemaid toiling along the footpath, carrying a great heavy boy. His THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 265 heart softened : he stopped his carriage, and offered her a seat : adding, however, this : u Mind/' said he, " the moment you begin to talk any nonsense to that boy, you leave my carriage." All went well for some minutes. The good woman was watchful, and bit her lips. But alas ! we are all caught tripping sometimes. After a few hundred yards, and a little jogging of the boy on her knee, burst forth, " Georgy porgy ! ride in coachy poachy !" It was fatal. The check-string was pulled, the steps let down, and the nurse and boy consigned to the dusty foot- path as before. 372. This story is true. The person mainly concerned in it was a well-known philanthropic baronet of the last generation, and my informant was personally acquainted with him. A similar story, a correspondent reminds me, is told of Dr. Johnson. 373. As I am sending these sheets to the Extract from the press, I receive a copy of the Leeds Mercury Leeds Mer- cury. for Nov. 12, 1863, containing a leading article under the title of " English for the English," which touches on an abuse of our language unnoticed in these pages, but thoroughly de- serving of reprobation. It is so appropriate to my present subject that I shall venture 266 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. to cite a large portion of it almost as it stands. 374. " While the Dean," the writer says, " took so much trouble to expose one danger with which our mother tongue is threatened, he took no notice whatever of another peril which to us seems much more serious. He dealt only with the insubordinate little ad- verbs and pronouns of native growth, which sometimes intrude into forbidden places, and ignored altogether the formidable inva- sion of foreign nouns, adjectives, and verbs which promises ere long to transform the manly English language into a sort of mongrel international slang. A class of writers has sprung up who appear to think it their special business to ' enrich ' the language by dragging into it, without any attempt at assimilation, contributions from all the tongues of the earth. The result is a wretched piece of patchwork, which may have charms in the eyes of some people, but which is certainly an abomina- tion in the eyes of the genuine student of language." 375. " We need only glance into one of the periodical representatives of fashionable lite- rature, or into a novel of the day, to see how THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 267 serious, this assault upon the purity of the English language has become. The chances are more than equal that we shall fall in with a writer who considers it a point of honour to choose all his most emphatic words from a French vocabulary, and who would think it a lamentable falling off in his style, did he write half a dozen sentences without employing at least half that number of foreign words. His heroes are always marked by an air distingue ; his vile men are sure to be biases ; his lady friends never merely dance or dress well, they dance or dress a merveille ; and he himself when lolling on the sofa under the spirit of laziness does not simply enjoy his rest, he luxuriates in the dolce far niente, and wonders when he will manage to begin his magnum opus. And so he carries us through his story, running off into hackneyed French, Italian, or Latin expressions, when- ever he has anything to say which he thinks should be graphically or emphatically said. It really seems as if he thought the English language too meagre, or too commonplace a dress, in which to clothe his thoughts. The tongue which gave a noble utterance to the thoughts of Shakespere and Milton is alto- gether insufficient to express the more cos- 268 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. mopolitan ideas of Smith, or Tomkins, or Jenkins !" 376. "We have before us an article from the pen of a very clever writer, and, as it appears in a magazine which specially pro- fesses to represent the l best society,' it may be taken as a good specimen of the style. It describes a dancing party, and we discover for the first time how much learning is necessary to describe a ' hop ' properly. The reader is informed that all the people at the dance belong to the beau monde, as may be seen at a coup (Toeil ; the demi-monde is scrupulously excluded, and in fact everything about it bespeaks the haut ton of the whole affair. A lady who has been happy in her hair-dresser is said to be coiffee a ravir. Then there is the bold man to describe. Having acquired the savoir faire, he is never afraid of making a faux pas, but no matter what kind of con- versation is started plunges at once in medias res. Following him is the fair debu- tante, who is already on the look-out for un bon parti, but whose nez retrousse is a decided obstacle to her success. She is of course accompanied by mamma en grande toilette, who, entre nous, looks rather ridee even in the gaslight. Then, lest the writer should seem THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH 269 frivolous, he suddenly abandons the descrip- tion of the dances, vis-a-vis and dos-a-dos, to tell us that Homer becomes tiresome when he sings of Bocb-it; izorvca "Hpy twice in a page. The supper calls forth a corresponding amount of learning, and the writer concludes his article after having aired his Greek, his Latin, his French, and, in a subordinate way, his English." 377. ll Of course, this style has admirers and imitators. It is showy and pretentious, and everything that is showy and pretentious has admirers. The admixture of foreign phrases with our plain English produces a kind of Brummagem sparkle which people whose appreciation is limited to the superficial imagine to be brilliance. Those who are deficient in taste and art education not un- frequently prefer a dashing picture by young Daub to a glorious cartoon by Raphael. The bright colouring; of the one far more than counterbalances the lovely but unobtrusive grace of the other. In a similar way, young students are attracted by the false glitter of the French-paste school of composition, and instead of forming their sentences upon the beautiful models of the great English masters, they twist them into all sorts of unnatural 270 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. shapes for no other end than that they may introduce a few inappropriate French or Latin words, the use of which they have learned to think looks smart. Of course, the penny-a- liners are amongst the most enthusiastic followers of the masters of this style. They not only think it brilliant, but they know it to be profitable, inasmuch as it adds consider- ably to their ability to say a great deal about nothing. The public sees a great deal in the newspapers about l recherche dinners ' and ' sumptuous dejeuners ' (sometimes eaten at night), and about the eclat with which a meeting attended by the 6 elite of the county ' invariably passes off; but they get but a trifling specimen of the masses of similar rubbish which daily fall upon the unhappy editors. The consequence of all this is that the public is habituated to a vicious kind of slang utterly unworthy to be called a lan- guage. Even the best educated people find it difficult to resist the contagion of fashion in such a thing as conversation, and if some kind of stand is not made against this inva- sion, pure English will soon only exist in the works of our dead authors."* * A correspondent says, " In your next edition pray THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 271 378: " But it is not only on literary grounds that we think the bespanglernent of our lan- guage with French and other foreign phrases is to be deprecated. Morality has something to say in the matter. It is a fact that things are said under the flimsy veil of foreign diction which could not very well be said in plain English. To talk in the presence of ladies about disreputable women by the plain English names which belong to them is not considered to display a very delicate mind, but anybody may talk about the demi-monde without fearing either a blush or a frown. Yet the idea conveyed is precisely the same in the one case as in the other ; and inasmuch as words can only be indelicate when they convey an indelicate idea, we should think that the French words ought to be under the same disabilities as the English ones. In like manner, things sacred are often made strangely familiar by the intervention of a French die- dispose of those Gallicisms which are becoming too prevalent : ' The king assisted at the ceremony :' ' My brother has come to pass a few days with me :' instead of the English was present and to spend." For the for- mer of these there is, I believe, no excuse. But the latter usage, " passing time," is surely found in all periods of our literature ; and the good English sub- stantive "pastime" is a voucher for it. 2 12 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. tionary. Persons whose reverence for the Deity is properly shown in their English con- versation by a becoming unwillingness to make a light use of His holy Name, have no hesitation in exclaiming Mon Dieu ! in frivol- ous conversation. The English name for the Father of evil is not considered to be a very reputable noun, but its French synonym is to be heard in 'the best society.' Far more telling illustrations than these could easily be found, but we have no inclination to seek them. Ideas which no decent person would ever think of expressing before a mixed com- pany are certainly often spoken and written in French, and in our opinion they do not lose a particle of their coarseness by being dressed up in foreign clothes. We think, therefore, that the interests of morality as well as of pure taste concur in calling upon those who have influence with the public to set their faces against this vicious style." 379. I need not say that with every word of this I heartily concur. It is really quite refreshing to read in a newspaper, and a pro- vincial one too, so able and honest an exposure of one of the worst faults of our daily and weekly press, pietives. 379a. I am tempted to add, in this second THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 273 edition, 'some remarks on the use, in speaking and writing, of terms which either seem to be, or really are, unneeded by the sense. 3796. To prohibit the use of expletives altogether, would perhaps seem hard. In conversation, they seem to help the timid, to give time to the unready, to keep up a plea- sant semblance of familiarity, and, in a word, to grease the wheels of talk ; in writing, we often want them to redress the balance of a halting sentence, when any other way of doing so would mar the sense ; or to give weight to a term otherwise feeble, or to fill out a termination which, without them, would be insignificant in sound. For these reasons, the occasional use of expletives must be tolerated ; and that style of speaking or writing which should abandon them altogether would appear to us harsh and rugged. 379c. I said, the occasional use. Modera- tion ought to be observed : and where it is not, there is just ground for complaint. The man is properly found fault with who inter- lards his talk at every turn with " You see," and " You know." Both these terms have their use, and if that use be disregarded in an indiscriminate profusion of them, they will become vapid and meaningless. They serve, 274 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. when used as quasi-expletives, just to keep the hearer up to the mark of the knowledge you are imparting to him, and should be used only as applying to facts or ideas of which he is, or should be, already in possession. "well, 1 ' 379cZ. There are other expletives which "why." \ % r serve merely to indicate the sequence of the course of talk, or the frame of mind in which it is continued. A simple question is asked ; and your friend's answer begins with " WellP Little as the word means, it just does this service : it puts the respondent en rapport with the questioner : he intends by it to say that he does not absolutely repudiate the inquiry : that, so far, is well, and that we have common ground up to this point. Or the first word of the answer is " Why, — " a par- ticle, of which the meaning is not quite so easy to assign ; but I suppose it gives a kind of du- bitative aspect to what follows : introduces a deliberative and not quite certain reply ; or perhaps slightly rallies the querist on some obvious element in the reply which his ques- tion shows him to have overlooked. "What would you do first, if you were to fall down ?" "Why get up again, of course." So that the use of such prefatory particles is, I con- ceive, by no means to be proscribed. It THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 275 should however in the main be confined to oral communication or dramatic dialogue, and not be admitted in the style of a writer. 379e. Yet even in written composition ;; at all." there are certain expressions more or less nearly approaching to expletives, the use of which cannot well be prohibited. I am challenged by one of my correspondents, who gives a list of sentences in which I have used the expression " at all" to say what difference in the meaning of any of them there would be if the words were struck out. My answer must be, in accordance with the foregoing remarks, that the difference in meaning would perhaps not be great, but it would be quite enough to justify the use of the words, as any intelligent reader may at once perceive. " Thou hast not delivered thy people at all " (Exod. v. 23), is surely very distinct, at all events in the feeling of utter desolation ex- pressed, from "Thou hast not delivered thy people." " If thou do at all forget the Lord " (Deut. viii. 19), makes the hypothesis much more complete than it would be without the qualifying words. Or, to take another notable example, where the difference would seem to be less than in the others, " God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 J6hn i. 5), t2 276 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. who does not see that by the words "at all" every possibility of even the least shade of darkness existing in Him is altogether ex- cluded ? So that, when my correspondent designates these words as a feeble expletive, which adds nothing to the meaning of the sentence to which it is attached, I cannot agree with his opinion, nor do I think that the majority of my readers will. 379/. If the origin of the phrase is to be sought for, I know not any other than may be found in the requirements of speech itself. What the Apostle, in the original Greek of 1 John i. 5, expressed by the strong double negation, axoria h aura) ovx egtw oode/ua, we could not in English render by " there is not in Him no darkness," because in our language the doubling of a negation destroys instead of strengthening it : we had recourse to another way of expressing total exclusion, "there is in Him no darkness at all'" "at all," i. e., taking the assertion even up to the measure of all, — " altogether" — providing for, and taking into consideration, every sup- posable exception, every qualifying circum- stance. The preposition " at" in this phrase, has the same sense as in " at least" " at best" and the like. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 277 379#. "And the like" This is also desig- ii and the like. 11 nated by my correspondent as a feeble expletive, and indeed as an "Irishism." No doubt it may be so used as to become an expletive ; but I am not conscious of having so used it : at least, in every one of the sen- tences which he quotes, it does^full service, as shortly comprehending other examples of the same kind as those already cited. 3 79 h. Let me say a word on expletives of Cnmeaning exclama- another kind : exclamations of surprise, or of tions. any other feeling, which taken by themselves carry no meaning. It is perhaps impossible to avoid them altogether : speech will break out when emotion is excited: and "You don't say so" or "Indeed/", or "Dear me!" is sometimes heard even from persons best able to give an account of what they say. Yet it may not be amiss to remember, that idle words are seldom quite harmless ; and to impress on ourselves, that the fewer we use of such expletives the better. This was strikingly brought before me during intercourse with Italians last winter in Rome. I had observed that my Italian friends often in their talk uttered some sounds very like our " dear, dear!" and at first I thought that my ear must have deceived me. But I soon found 218 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. that it was so : and that sometimes the excla- mation even took the form of " dear me IV- The explanation of course is obvious. The Italians were exclaiming "Dio, Dio /" and the fuller form was "Dio mio !" And the re- flection arising from it was as obvious : viz., that it thus seems probable that our unmean- ing words, "dear, dear!" and "dear me!" are, in fact, nothing but a form of taking the sacred Name in vain, borrowed from the use of a people with whom we were once in much closer intercourse than we now are. Thus it would seem that the idle word is not quite free from blame. Concluding 380. But it is time that this little volume advice. drew to an end. And if I must conclude it with some advice to my readers, it shall be that which may be inferred from these exam- ples, and from the way in which I have been dealing with them. Be simple, be unaffected, be honest in your speaking and writing. Never use a long: word where a short one will do. Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual industry ; let home be home, not a residence; a place a place, not a locality ; and so of the rest. Where a short word will do, you always lose by using a long one. You lose in clearness; TEE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 279 you lose in honest expression of your meaning ; and, in the estimation of all men who are qualified to judge, you lose in reputation for ability. The only true way to shine, even in this false world, is to be modest and unas- suming. Falsehood may be a very thick crust, but in the course of time, truth will find a place to break through. Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us ; but simplicity and straightforwardness are. Write much as you would speak ; speak as you think. If with your inferiors, speak no coarser than usual ; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say ; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are. 381. Avoid all oddity of expression. No one ever was a gainer by singularity in words, or in pronunciation. The truly wise man will so speak, that no one may observe how he speaks. A man may show great knowledge of chemistry by carrying about bladders of strange gases to breathe; but he will enjoy better health, and find more time for busi- ness, who lives on the common air. When I hear a person use a queer expression, or pro- nounce a name in reading differently from his neighbours, the habit always goes down, in my estimate of him, with a minus sign 280 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. before it ; stands on the side of deficit, not of credit. 382. Avoid likewise all slang words. There is no greater nuisance in society than a talker of slang. It is only fit (when innocent, which it seldom is) for raw schoolboys, and one-term freshmen, to astonish their sisters with. Talk as sensible men talk ; use the easiest words in their commonest meaning. Let the sense conveyed, not the vehicle in which it is con- veyed, be your object of attention. 383. Once more, avoid in conversation all singularity of accuracy. One of the bores of society is the talker who is always setting you right ; who, when you report from the paper that 10,000 men fell in some battle, tells you it was 9,970 ; who, when you describe your walk as two miles out and back, assures you it wanted half a furlong of it. Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression; and there are vague ways of speaking, that are truer than strict fact would be. When the Psalmist said, a Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because men keep not thy law," he did not state the fact, but he stated a truth deeper than fact, and truer. 384. Talk to please, not yourself, but your THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 281 neighbour to his edification. What a real pleasure it is to sit by a cheerful, unas- suming, sensible talker; one who gives you an even share in the conversation and in his attention; one who leaves on your memory his facts and his opinions, not himself who uttered them, not the words in which they were uttered. 385. All are not gentlemen by birth ; but all may be gentlemen in openness, in modesty of language, in attracting no man's attention by singularities, and giving no man offence by forwardness ; for it is this, in matter of speech and style, which is the sure mark of good taste and good breeding. 386. These stray notes on spelling and Conclusion, speaking have been written more as contri- butions to discussion, than as attempts to decide in doubtful cases. The decision of matters such as those which I have treated is not made by any one man or set of men ; cannot be brought about by strong writing, or vehement assertion : but depends on influ- ences wider than any one man's view, and taking longer to operate than the life of any one generation. It depends on the direction and deviations of the currents of a nation's thoughts, and the influence exercised on 282 THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH. words by events beyond man's control. Gram- marians and rhetoricians may set bounds to language : but usage will break over in spite of them. And I have ventured to think that he may do some service who, instead of standing and protesting where this has been the case, observes, and points out to others, the existing phenomena, and the probable account to be given of them. KOTES NOTE A. Mr. Serjeant Manning has published a very interest- ing and learned pamphlet on " the Character and Origin of the Possessive Augment in English and its Cognate Dialects." Without pronouncing any opin- ion as to the theory which the learned Serjeant adopts, I may say that the reader will find in his pamphlet a yery full and instructive discussion of all points relating to the question, coupled with an extraordi- nary amount of information and erudition. He de- scribes himself as " annum agens octogesimum tertium ;" a circumstance which does not render the book less remarkable. NOTE B. These paragraphs have provoked a somewhat vehe- ment rejoinder in a late number of a nonconformist newspaper, in which they are characterised as "a sufficiently ill-intentioned, if not very powerful, as- sault" on that journal. Two remarks may be perti- nent in reply. The first, that no assault on any paper, as such, was ever contemplated by me, but as strong a protest as I could make against the most objection- able principle laid down in the critique, and an endea- vour, by exposure of the blunder, to show how much the opinion was worth. The blunder is now rather amusingly defended thus : ." We accidentally substi- tuted for the less known Epsenetus what is to the 284 NOTES. classical scholar the more familiar and analogously formed name Sophsenetus." Now as regards the clas- sical scholar, — Epsenetus, the writer on cookery, is about as often mentioned in Athenseus, as Sophsene- tus in Xenophon : and the matter in question being St. PauPs lists of salutations, I do not see why the critic should have gone to Xenophon for his example, unless he had believed that the name occurred in St. Paul also. The second remark shall be an extract from a letter written by one of the first nonconformist biblical scholars of the day: — "I felt rather vexed, that so respectable a newspaper should have inserted the in- excusably stupid and grossly ignorant remarks of one of its correspondents, in reference to your articles on the Queen's English." NOTE C. There is an especial reason for stating that this sen- tence is printed verbatim as delivered in St. George's Hall, at Canterbury. NOTE D. I have been favoured with some notices from a dis- tinguished correspondent, which have caused me to alter what was in the first edition the tone of these paragraphs as regarded the phrases in question. There seems every reason to believe that kind and sort have been regarded by our best writers as nouns of number, and as such joined with the pronoun in the plural. Thus we have in Shakespeare, "King Lear," Act II., Scene 2 : " These kind of knaves I know." NOTES, 285 " Twelfth Night," Act L, Scene 5 : M That crow so at these kind of fools." " Othello," Act III., Scene 3 : " There are a kind of men so loose in soul." In Pope : " The next objection is, that these sort of authors are poor." Examples are also stated to occur in Lord Bacon, Swift, and Addison. NOTE E. It has been suggested that the "of" in " the city of Canterbury" may be territorial: that as it is rendered in Latin by " de" this " de " maybe the same that we find in " Henricus de Estria." But I cannot quite agree with this view : because though it might seem to be justified in the case of a town, it clearly would not be in that of a book, or in any other in which the ter- ritorial connexion is out of the question. NOTE F. I venture to reprint here, as of great interest, Mr. Ellis's letter to the Header, of May 7, 1864: "'IT'S ME. " To the Editor of The Reader. " Colney Hatch Park, 30 April, 1864. " Sir, — In reference to your remarks on ifs me in your notice of Dean Alford's ' Plea for the Queen's English,' I consider that the phrase it is 7 is a modern- ism, or rather a gram maticism— that is, it was never in 286 NOTES. popular use, but was introduced solely on some gram- matical hypothesis as to having the same case before and after the verb is. It does not appear to have been consonant with the feelings of Teutonic tribes to use the nominative of the personal pronouns as a predicate. To them — and therefore to English people — it is J is just as strange as est ego, earl eyw, would be to Latin or Greek. These last languages require ego sum, eyco el^v (Matt. xiv. 27 ; Mark vi. 50; John vi. 20). The predi- cate was here simply omitted. In Gothic we have pre- cisely the same construction, ik im (John vi. 20). The English Wyclimte 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; lit- erally, / am it ; namely, that which you see. The Heli- and paraphrase is very explicit (Schmeller's ed., p. 90, line 2), l Ik Hum that barn Godes* ('I am the Son of God '). The Welsh and Gaelic try to be emphatic, the first saying myji ydyw (q. d. myself am), and the second, is misea 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 Da- nish, Jeg, mig (I, me) ; Du, dig (thou, thee) ; Han, ham (he, him). We find the following rule laid down in Tobiesen's Ddnische Sprachlehre (Sternhagen's ed., 1828, p 215) : — l After the impersonal verbs, det er and del bliver (it is), the personal pronouns jeg, du, han are not used in the nominative, but in the dative, as der er mig der har gjort det (it's me that did it) ; det er dig, som har vceret mester derfor (it's thee who was its mas- ter) ; 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 simi- larly in the plural: det er os, jer, dem (it's us, you, them'). This is perfectly explicit, and shows the NOTES. . 287 same, construction as the English ; but, in the Testa- ment, the wish to he uncolloquial 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 — sdgcle : — det erjeg, — men Peder — sagde : Herre, der- som det er dig, ba byd mig,' &c. (' Jesus said, It is I ; but Peter said, Lord, if it is thee, bid me,' &c.) The con- clusion seems to be that iVs me is good English, and Ws 7 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 thafs him, although the Danes still say l denne er han* (* that's he '). ¥e are therefore in the same condition as the French with their ' c'est moi,' though we have not quite reached their ' lui rtosait pas y ('■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, equiva- lent to the English " clever." THE END. <$£b& f ijk-y.h? m !■< CJC CCCCCc CC<~ CCYc * : r -• c<^c " c