--V**-'*^.' rift.iftitiiffi..iiiiinmaiHiHai«iai«^ B M mi ITM w^- The Gift of Beatrix Farrand to the General Library University of California, Berkeley THE KING'S ENGLISH No leveird malice Infects one comma in the course I hold. Tirnon of Athens ^ I. i, 48. SECOND EDITION OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1906 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK AND TORONTO Add tt) Lib, Farraiid Gift PREFACE /WA//0 The compilers of this book would be wanting in courtesy if they did not expressly say what might otherwise be safely left to the reader's discernment : the frequent appearance in it of any author's or newspaper's name does not mean that that author or newspaper offends more often than others against rules of grammar or style ; it merely shows that they have been among the necessarily limited number chosen to collect instances from. The plan of the book was dictated by the following considerations. It is notorious that English writers seldom look into a grammar or composition book ; the reading of grammars is repellent because, being bound to be exhaustive on a greater or less scale, they must give much space to the obvious or the unnecessary ; and com- position books are often useless because they enforce their warnings only by fabricated blunders against which every tiro feels himself quite safe. The principle adopted here has therefore been (i) to pass by all rules, of whatever absolute importance, that are shown by observation to be seldom or never broken ; and (2) to illustrate by living examples, with the name of a reputable authority attached to each, all blunders that observation shows to be common. The reader, however, who is thus led to suspect that the only method followed has been the rejection of method will find, it is hoped, a practical security against inconvenience in the very full Index. 019 iv PREFACE Further, since the positive literary virtues are not to be taught by brief quotation, nor otherwise attained than by improving the gifts of nature with wide or careful reading, whereas something may really be done for the negative virtues by mere exhibition of what should be avoided, the examples collected have had to be examples of the bad and not of the good. To this it must be added that a considerable proportion of the newspaper extracts are, as is sometimes apparent, not from the editorial, but from the correspondence columns ; the names attached are merely an assurance that the passages have actually appeared in print, and not been now invented to point a moral. The especial thanks of the compilers are offered to Dr. Bradley, joint editor of the Oxford English Dictionary ^ who has been good enough to inspect the proof sheets, and whose many valuable suggestions have led to the removal of some too unqualified statements, some confused exposition, and some positive mistakes. It is due to him, however, to say that his warnings have now and then been disregarded, when it seemed that brevity or some other advantage could be secured without great risk of misunderstanding. The Oxford English Dictionary itself has been of much service. On all questions of vocabulary, even if so slightly handled as in the first chapter of this book, that great work is now indispensable. H. W. F. F. G. F. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In this edition new examples have been added or substituted here and there. CONTENTS PART I CHAPTER I. VOCABULARY, pp. 1-59 PAGE General Principles .... Familiar and far-fetched words 1-8 4 Concrete and abstract expression Circumlocution 5 6 Short and long words 6 Saxon and Romance words 1 Requirements of different styles 1 Malaprops .... Neologisms .... 8 18 Americanisms 23 Foreign words . Formation .... 26 37 Slang ..... Individual .... 47 53 Mutual 56 Unique .... Aggravate .... 58 59 CHAPTER H. SYNTAX, pp. 60-170 Case .... 60 Number .... 65 Comparatives and superlatives Relatives .... 70 75-107 Defining and non-defining relative clauses That and voho or which 75 80 And who, and ivhich 85 Case of the relative 93 Miscellaneous uses of the relative 96 It ... that . 104 VI CONTENTS Participle and gerund Participles The gerund . Distinguishing the gerund Omission of the gerund subject Choice between gerund and infinitive Shall and will The pure system . The coloured-future system The plain-future system Second-person questions Examples of principal sentences Substantival clauses Conditional clauses Indefinite clauses Examples of subordinate clauses Perfect infinitive Conditionals Doubithat . Prepositions PAGE 107 IIO I16-I33 116 129 133-154 134 136 138 139 141 143 149 152 154 156 158 161 CHAPTER III. AIRS AND GRACES, pp. 171-218 Certain types of humour . 171 Elegant variation 175 Inversion • • 180-193 Exclamatory 181 Balance . 182 In syntactic clauses 187 Negative, and false-em phasis 190 Miscellaneous 191 Archaism • 193-200 Occasional 193 Sustained . • • 198 Metaphor 200 Repetition • ■ 209 CONTENTS vn PAGE Miscellaneous . 213-218 Trite phrases 213 Irony 215 Superlatives without the . 216 Cheap originality . 217 CHAPTER IV. PUNCTUATION, pp. 219-290 General difficulties 219 General principles . 224 The spot plague 226 Over-stopping 231 Under-stopping 234 Grammar and punctuation . 235-263 Substantival clauses 235 Subject, &c., and verb 239 Adjectival clauses 242 Adverbial clauses 244 Parenthesis 247 Misplaced commas 248 Enumeration 250 Comma between independent sentences 254 Semicolon with subordinate members 257 Exclamations and statements . 258 Exclamations and questions 259 Internal question and exclamation marks . 261 Unaccountable commas 262 The colon 263 Miscellaneous 264 Dashes . 266-275 General abuse 266 Legitimate uses . 267 Debatable questions 269 Common misuses 274 Hyphens .... 275 Quotation marks . 280-290 Excessive use 280 VIll CONTENTS Quotation marks {continued) Order with stops Single and double Misplaced Half quotation PAGE 282 287 288 289 PART II. p. 291 to the end Euphony, §§ i-io 1. Jingles 2. Alliteration 3. Repeated prepositions 4. Sequence of relatives . 5. Sequence of that, &c. 6. Metrical prose 7. Sentence accent 8. Causal as clauses 9. Wens and hypertrophied members 10. Careless repetition Quotation, &c., §§ 11-19 11. Common misquotations 12. Uncommon misquotations of well-known passages 13. Misquotation of less familiar passages 14. Misapplied and misunderstood quotations and phrases 15. Allusion 16. Incorrect allusion 17. Dovetailed and adapted quotations and phrases 18. Trite quotation 19. Latin abbreviations, &c. Grammar, §§ 20-37 20. Unequal yokefellows and defective double harness 21. Common parts. 22. The wrong turning 23. Ellipse in subordinate clauses 24. Some illegitimate infinitives 291 292 293 293 294 295 295 298 300 303 305 305 306 306 307 308 308 310 311 311 314 316 317 317 CONTENTS IX 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30- 31- 32. 33- 34. 35- 36. 37. Split infinitives Compound passives . Confusion with negatives Omission of as . Other liberties taken with as Brachylogy Between two stools The impersonal one . Between . . . or . A placed between the adjective and its noun Do and be . Fresh starts Vulgarisms and colloquialisms 40 41 42 43 44 Meaning, §§ 38-48 38. Tautology . . « 39. Redundancies . As to whether , , Superfluous dut and though . If and when Maltreated idioms Truisms and contradictions in terms 45. Double emphasis 46. Split auxiliaries 47. Overloading 48. Demonstrative, noun, and participle or adjective Ambiguity, §§ 49-52 49. False scent 50. Misplacement of words 51. Ambiguous position 52. Ambiguous enumeration Style, § 53 to the end 53. Antics 54. Journalese 55. Somewhat, &c. PAGE 319 319 321 324 324 326 327 328 328 329 330 330 331 331 332 333 334 334 336 339 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 348 351 352 X CONTENTS PAGE 56. Clumsy patching . . . 355 57. Omission of the conjunction that . . 356 58. Meaningless while . . . 357 59. Commercialisms . . . 357 60. Pet Phrases .... 359 61. ^/j-(? as conjunction; and 6-^. . . 359 CHAPTER I VOCABULARY General Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid. This general principle may be translated into practical rules in the domain of vocabulary as follows : — Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.^ These rules are given roughly in order of merit ; the last is also the least. It is true that it is often given alone, as a sort of compendium of all the others. In some sense it is that : the writer whose percentage of Saxon words is high will generally be found to have fewer words that are out of the way, long, or abstract, and fewer periphrases, than another ; ^ The Romance languages are those whose grammatical structure, as well as part at least of their vocabulary, is directly descended from Latin — as Italian, French, Spanish. Under Romance words we include all that English has borrowed from Latin either directly or through the Romance languages. And words borrowed from Greek in general use, ranging from alms to 7nete7npsychosis^ may for the purposes of this chapter be considered as Romance. The vast number of purely scientific Greek words, as oxygen^ meningitis^ are on a different footing, since they are usually the only words for what they denote. N.3. B 2 VOCABULARY and conversely. But if, instead of his Saxon percentage's being the natural and undesigned consequence of his brevity (and the rest), those other qualities have been attained by his consciously restricting himself to Saxon, his pains will have been worse than wasted ; the taint of preciosity will be over all he has written. Observing that translate is derived from Latin, and learning that the Elizabethans had another word for it, he will pull us up by cnglisliing his quotations ; he will puzzle the general reader by introducing his book with 2, fore- ivord. Such freaks should be left to the Germans, who have by this time succeeded in expelling as aliens a great many words that were good enough for Goethe. And they, indeed, are very likely right, because their language is a thoroughbred one ; ours is not, and can now never be, anything but a hybrid ; forezuord is (or may be) Saxon ; we can find out in the dictionary whether it is or not ; but preface is English, dic- tionary or no dictionary ; and we want to write English, not Saxon. Add to this that, even if the Saxon criterion were a safe one, more knowledge than most of us have is needed to apply it. Few who were not deep in philology would be prepared to state that no word in the following list (extracted from the preface to the Oxford Dictionary) is English: — battle^ beast, beauty , beef, bill, blue, boimet, border, boss, boimd, bowl, brace, brave, bribe, bruise, brush, butt, butto7i. Dr. Murray observes that these 'are now no less "native", and no less important constituents of our vocabulary, than the Teutonic words '. There are, moreover, innumerable pairs of synonyms about which the Saxon principle gives us no help. The first to hand are ere and before (both Saxon), save and except (both Romance), anent and about (both Saxon again). Here, if the ' Saxon ' rule has nothing to say, the ' familiar ' rule leaves no doubt. The intelligent reader whom our writer has to con- sider will possibly not know the linguistic facts ; indeed he more likely than not takes save for a Saxon word. But GENERAL PRINCIPLES 3 he does know the reflections that the words, if he happens to be reading leisurely enough for reflection, excite in him. As he comes to save, he wonders, Why not except ? At sight of ere he is irresistibly reminded of that sad spectacle, a mechanic wearing his Sunday clothes on a weekday. And atiettt, to continue the simile, is nothing less than a masquerade costume. The Oxford Dictionary says drily of the last word : * Common in Scotch law phraseology, and affected by many English writers ' ; it might have gone further, and said ' " affected " in any English writer ' ; such things are anti- quarian rubbish, Wardour-Street English. Why not (as our imagined intelligent reader asked) — why not before, except^ and about! Bread is the staff of life, and words like these, which are common and are not vulgar, which are good enough for th,e highest and not too good for the lowest, are the staple of literature. The first thing a writer must learn is, that he is not to reject them unless he can show good cause. Before and except, it must be clearly understood, have such a pre- scriptive right that to use other words instead is not merely not to choose these, it is to reject them. It may be done in poetry, and in the sort of prose that is half poetry : to do it elsewhere is to insult before, to injure ere (which is a delicate flower that will lose its quality if much handled), and to make one's sentence both pretentious and frigid. It is now perhaps clear that the Saxon oracle is not in- fallible ; it will sometimes be dumb, and sometimes lie. Nevertheless, it is not without its uses as a test. The words to be chosen are those that the probable reader is sure to understand without waste of time and thought ; a good pro- portion of them will in fact be Saxon, but mainly because it happens that most abstract words — which are by our second rule to be avoided — are Romance. The truth is that all five rules would be often found to give the same answer about the same word or set of words. Scores of illustrations might be produced ; let one suffice : In the contemplated eve?ituality B 2, 4 VOCABULARY (a plirasc no worse tlian what any one can pick for himself out of his paper's leading article for the day) is at once the far-fetched, the abstract, the periphrastic, the long, and the Romance, for if so. It does not very greatly matter by which of the five roads the natural is reached instead of the mon- strosity, so long as it is reached. The five are indicated because (i) they differ in directness, and (2) in any given case only one of them may be possible. We will now proceed to a few examples of how not to write, roughly classified under the five headings, though, after what has been said, it will cause no surprise that most of them might be placed differently. Some sort of correction is suggested for each, but the reader will indulgently remember that to correct a bad sentence satisfactorily is not always possible ; it should never have existed, that is all that can be said. In particular, sentences overloaded with abstract words are, in the nature of things, not curable simply by substituting equivalent concrete words ; there can be no such equivalents ; the struc- ture has to be more or less changed. I. Prefer the familiar word, to the far-fetched. The old Imperial naval policy, which has failed conspicuously because it antagonized the unalterable supremacy of Colonial nationalism. — Times. (stood in the way of that national ambition which must always be uppermost in the Colonial mind) Buttercups made a sunlight of their own, and in the shelter of scattered coppices the pale wind-flowers still dreamed in whiteness. — E. F. Benson. We all know what an anemone is : whether we know what a wind-flower is, unless we happen to be Greek scholars, is quite doubtful. The state of Poland, and the excesses committed by mobilized troops, have been of a far more serious nature than has been allowed to transpire. — Times, (come out) Reform converses with possibilities, perchance with impossibilities ; but here is sacred fact.— Emerson, (perhaps) Tanners and users are strongly of opinion that there is no room for FAR-FETCHED AND ABSTRACT WORDS 5 further enhancement, but on that point there is always room for doubt especially when the ex;port phase is taken into consideration. — Twies. (state of the export trade) Witchcraft has been put a stop to by Act of Parliament ; but the mysterious relations which it evibletned still continue. — Carlyle. (symbolized) It will only have itself to thank if future disaster rewards its nescience of the conditions of successful warfare. — Outlook, (ignorance) Coniinual vigilance is imperative on the public to ensure . . . — Times. (We must be ever on the watch) These manoeuvres are by no means new, and their recrudescence is hardly calculated to influence the develop?nent 0/ events. — Times. (the present use of them is not likely to be effective) ' I have no particular business at L ', said he ; 'I was merely going thither to pass a day or two.' — Borrow, (there) 2. Prefer the concrete word (or rather expression) to the abstract. It may be here remarked that abstract expression and the excessive use of nouns are almost the same thing. The cure consists very much, therefore, in the clearing away of noun rubbish. The general poverty of explanation as to the diction of particular phrases seemed to point in the same di7'ection.— Cambridge University Reporter. (It was perhaps owing to this also that the diction of particular phrases was often so badly explained) An eleffientary condition of a sound discussion is a frank recogtiition of the gulf severing two sets of facts. — Times. (There can be no sound discussion where the gulf severing two sets of facts is not frankly recognized) The signs of the times point to the necessity of the modification of the system of administration. — Times. (It is becoming clear that the administrative system must be modified) No year passes ?iow without evidence of the truth of the staieme7it that the work of government is becoming increasingly difficult. — Spectator, (Every year shows again how true it is that . . .) The first private conference relating to the question of the convocatiott of representatives of the nation took place yesterday. — Times. (on national representation) There seems to have been an absence of attetnpt at conciliation between rival sects. — Daily Telegraph. (The sects seem never even to have tried mutual conciliation) 6 VOCABULARY Zeal, however, must not outrun discretion in changing abstract to concrete. Officer is concrete, and office abstract ; but we do noi promote to officers, as in the following quotation, but to offices — or, with more exactness in this context, to commissions. Over 1,150 cadets of the ATilitary CoUepes were promoted to officers at the Taliice of Tsarskoe Sclo yesterday. — Times. 3. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. As the word case seems to lend itself particularly to abuse, we start with more than one specimen of it. Inaccuracies were /// matiy cases due to cramped methods of writing. — Cambridge University Reporter, (often) The handwriting was on the whole good, with a few examples ot remarkably fine penmanship 171 the case both of\ioys and girls. — Ibid. (by both boys . . .) Few candidates showed a thorough knowledge of the text of i Kings, and in many cases the answers lacked care. — Ibid, (many answers) The matter will remain in abeyance until the Bishop has had time to become more fully acquainted with the diocese, and to ascertain which part of the city will be most desirable for residential purposes.— Tiines. (his residence) M. Witte is taking active measures for the prompt preparation of jnaterial for the study of the question of the executio?i of the Imperial Ukase dealifig with reforms. — Times. (actively collecting all information that may be needed before the Tsar's reform Ukase can be executed) The Russian Government is at last face to face with the greatest crisis of the war, i?i the shape of the fact that the Siberian railway is no longer capable . . . — Spectator, (for) or (:) Mr. J O has been made the recipient of a silver medal.— Guernsey Advertiser, (received) 4. Prefer the short word to the long. One of the most important reforms mentioned in the rescript is the unification of the organisatio7i of the judicial institutions and the guara)itee for all the tribunals of the indepefidence necessary for securittg to all classes of the co7nmunity equality before the law. — Times. (is that of the Courts, which need a uniform system, and the independence without which it is impossible for all men to be equal before the law) I merely desired to point out the principal reason which I believe exists for the great exaggei-aiion which is occasionally to be observed CIRCUMLOCUTION, LONG WORDS 7 in the estimate of the im;portance of the contradiction between current Religion and ctcrrefit Science put forward by thinkers of reputation. — Balfour. (why, in my opinion, some well-known thinkers make out the contradiction between current Religion and current Science to be so much more impor- tant than it is) Sir, — Will you permit me to homologate all you say to-day regarding that selfish minority of motorists who . . . — Times, (agree with) On the Berlin Bourse to-day the prospect of a general strike was cheerfully envisaged. — Tifnes. (faced) 5. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance. Despite the unfavourable climatic conditions. — Guernsey Advertiser. (Bad as the weather has been) By way of general rules for the choice of words, so much must suffice. And these must be qualified by the remark that what is suitable for one sort of composition may be unsuitable for another. The broadest line of this kind is that between poetry and prose ; but with that we are not con- cerned, poetry being quite out of our subject. There are other lines, however, between the scientific and the literary styles, the dignified and the familiar. Our rendering of the passage quoted from Mr. Balfour, for instance, may be con- sidered to fall below the dignity required of a philosophic essay. The same might, with less reason, be said of our simplified newspaper extracts ; a great journal has a tone that must be kept up ; if it had not been for that, we should have dealt with them yet more drastically. But a more candid plea for the journalist, and one not without weight, would be that he has not time to reduce what he wishes to say into a simple and concrete form. It is in fact as much easier for him to produce, as it is harder for his reader to understand, the slipshod abstract stuff that he does rest content with. But it may be suspected that he often thinks the length of his words and his capacity for dealing in the abstract to be signs of a superior mind. As long as that 8 VOCABULARY opinion prevails, improvement is out of the question. But if it could once be established that simplicity was the true ideal, many more writers would be found capable of coming near it than ever make any effort that way now. The fact remains, at any rate, that different kinds of composition require different treatment ; but any attempt to go into details on the question would be too ambitious ; the reader can only be warned that in this fact may be found good reasons for sometimes disregarding any or all of the preceding rules. Moreover, they must not be applied either so unintelligently as to sacrifice any really important shade of meaning, or so invariably as to leave an impression of monotonous and unrelieved emphasis. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to more special and definite points — malaprops, neologisms, Americanisms, foreign words, bad formations, slang, and some particular words. Malaprops Before classifying, we define a malaprop as a word used in the belief that it has the meaning really belonging to another word that resembles it in some particular. I. Words containing the same stem, but necessarily, or at least indisputably, distinguished by termination or prefix. * She writes comprehensively enough when she writes to M. de Bassompierre : he who runs may read.' In fact, Ginevra's epistles to her wealthy kinsman were commonly business documents, unequivocal applications for cash.— C. Bronte. The context proves that comprehensibly is meant. The working of the staff at the agent's disposal was to a great extent voluntary, and, therefore, required all the influence of judicial manage- ment in order to avoid inevitable difficulties. — Times, (judicious) A not uncommon blunder. By all means let us have bright, hearty, and very reverend services. — Daily Telegraph, (reverent) Not uncommon. He chuckled at his own perspicuity, — CORELLI. \ MALAPROPS 9 If the writer had a little more perspicuity he would have known that the Church Congress would do nothing of the Vva^.— Daily Telegraph. Perspicuity is clearness or transparency : insight \s perspicacity, 'Uity of style, -acity of mind. Very common. Selected in the beginning, I know, for your great ability and trustful- ness, — Dickens, (trustworthiness) Wise, firm, faithless ; secret, crafty, passionless ; watchful and inscrut- able ; acute and insensate — withal perfectly decorous— what more could be desired ?— C. Bronte. Apparently for i^isensible in the meaning hardhearted. Though modern usage fluctuates, it seems to tend towards the meaning, stupidly unmoved by prudence or by facts ; at any rate acute and insensate are incompatible. In the meantime the colossal advertisement in the German Press of German aims, of German interests, and of German policy incontinently proceeds. — Times. The idiomatic sense of incontinently is immediately ; it seems here to be used for continually. I was awaiting with real curiosity to hear the way in which M. Loubet would to-day acquit himself. — Times, (waiting) Awaiting is always transitive. But they too will feel the pain just where you feel it now, and they will bethink themselves the only unhappy on the earth. — CROCKETT. There is no sort of authority for bethink — like think — with object and complement. To bethink oneself is to remember, or to hit upon an idea. And Pizarro . . . established the city of Arequipa, since arisen to such commercial celebrity. — Prescott. Arethusa arose ; a difficulty arises ; but to greatness we can only rise — unless, indeed, we wake to find ourselves famous ; then we do arise to greatness. 2. Words like the previous set, except that the differentia- tion may possibly be disputed. The long drought left the torrent of which I am speaking, and such others, in a state peculiarly favourable to observance of their least action on the mountains from which they descend.— RUSKIN. (observation) lo VOCABULARY Observance is obedience, compliance, &c. The Oxford Du- iiotiary recognizes observance in the sense of watching, bat gives no authority for it later than 1 732 except another passage from Ruskin ; the natural conclusion is that he accidentally failed to recognize a valuable differentiation long arrived at. It is physical science, and experience, that man ought to consult in religion, morals, legislature^ as well as in knowledge and the arts. — MoRLEY. (legislation) Legislature is the legislative body — in England, King, Lords, and Commons. To call back the old confusion is an offence. The apposite display of the diamonds usually stopped the tears that began to flow hereabouts ; and she would remain in a complaisant state until . . . — Dickens, (complacent) Our Correspondent adds that he is fully persuaded that Rozhdest- vensky has nothing more to expect from the co7nplacency of the French authorities. — Times, (complaisance) Coviplaisa7it is over polite, flattering, subservient, &c. Com- placent means contented, satisfied. In the spring of that year the privilege was withdrawn from the four associated booksellers, and the continuance of the work strictly prohibited. — MORLEY. Continuation is the noun of continue, go on with : continuance of continue, remain. With continuance the meaning would be that the already published volumes (of Diderot's Encyclopaedia) were to be destroyed ; but the meaning intended is that the promised volumes were not to be gone on with — which requires continuation. Again, the two next extracts, from one page, show Mr. Morley wrongly substituting continuity^ which only means continuousness, for continuance. Having arrived at a certain conclusion with regard to the conti?tuance ... of Mr. Parnell's leadership . . .—Gladstone. The most cynical . . . could not fall a prey to such a hallucination as to suppose . . . that either of these communities could tolerate ... so impeni- tent an affront as the unruffled continuity of the stained leadership. — Morley. The Rev. Dr. Usher said he believed the writer of the first letter to be earnest in his inquiry, and agreed with him that the topic of it was irajiscendentally important. — Daily Telegraph. MALAPROPS II Transceiidently means in a superlative degree : transcendentally is a philosophic term for independently of experience, &c. Until at las-t, gathered altogether again, they find their way down to the turf.— RusKlN. (all together) At such times . . . Jimmie's better angel was always in the ascendency. — Windsor Magazine. Was in the ascendant : had an ascendency over. The inconsistency and evasio?i of the altitude of the Government. — spectator. Evasiveness the quality : evasion a particular act. The requisition for a life of Christianity is ' walk in love '. — Daily Telegraph. Requisite or requirement^ the thing required : requisition^ the act of requiring it. We will here merely chronicle iht procession of events. — Spectator. (progress or succession) I was able to watch the Emperor during all these interviews, and noticed the forcible manner in which he spoke, especially to the Sultan's uncle, who came from Fez especially. — Times, (specially) As it stands, it implies that he came chiefly from Fez, but from other places in a minor degree ; it is meant to imply that he came for this particular interview, and had no other motive. The differentiation of spec- and espec- is by no means complete yet, but some uses of each are already ludicrous. Roughly, spec- means particular as opposed to general, espec- particular as opposed to ordinary ; but usage must be closely watched. That it occurs in violence to police regulations is daily apparent. — Gue7'nsey Advertiser, (violation of) In the field it aims at efforts of unexpected and extreme violence ; the research of hostile masses, their defeat by overwhelming and relentless assault, and their wholesale destruction by rigorous pursuit. — Times. (discovery) The object of research is laws, principles, facts, Sec, not con- crete things or persons. Entomological research, for instance, does not look for insects, but for facts about insects. 3. Give-and-take forms, in which there are two words, with 12 VOCABULARY different constructions, that might properly be used, and one is given the construction of the other. A few companies, com prised m^iinly ^militiamen. — Times. (composed of ? comprising?) The Nin'oc Vremya thinks the Tsar's words will undoubtedly instil the Christians of Macedonia ux puellam shows by its form that it must be the object of the action ; amabant must have for its subject a plural substantive, and which must therefore be, not puellam, hwi pueri. —K. G. White. Wrong. ' A plural substantive ' can yield only the defining clause ' a substantive that is plural '. Now these words contain an inference from a general grammatical principle (that a plural verb must have a plural subject) ; and any supplementary defining clause must also be general, not (like the ' and which ' clause) particular. We might have, for instance, ' Amabant, being plural, and finite, must have for its subject a plural substantive, and which is in the nominative case '. But the * and which ' clause is evidently non-defining ; the inference ends at ' substantive ' ; then comes the application of it to the particular case. He refused to adopt the Restrictive Theory, and impose a numerical limit on the Bank's issues, and which he again protested against in 1833. — H. D. MACLEOD. Wrong. The 'and which' clause is non-defining ; none of the three possible antecedents (* Theory ', ' limit ', ' imposition') will give a non-defining clause. The great obstacle ... is the religion of Europe, and which has unhappily been colonially introduced into America. — Beaconsfield. This illustrates an important point. ' Of Europe ' gives the defining clause ' that prevails in Europe ' ; the coordination therefore requires that the ' and which ' clause should define. Now a defining clause must contain no word that is not meant 92 SYNTAX to contribute to definition ; if, then, the ' and which ' clause defines, the writer wishes to distinguish the religion in question, not only from those European religions that have not been colonially introduced into America,but also from those European relio-ions that have been introduced, but whose introduction is not a matter for regret ; that is the only defining meaning that 'unhappily' can bear, and unless we accept this interpretation the clause is non-defining.— We shall allude to this sentence again in d., where the possibilities of parenthesis in a defining clause are discussed. It may seem strange that this important place should not have been conferred on Vaca de Castro, already on the spot, and who had shown himself so well qualified to fill it.— Prescott. One of our ' few and undesirable exceptions ', in which the clause-equivalent is non-defining ('who was already on the spot ') ; for a person's name can only require a defining clause to distinguish him from others of the same name. The sentence is an ugly one, even if we remove the ' and who ' clause ; but the coordination is right. (iiij Insubordination. The struggler, the poor clerk, mechanic, poorer musician, artist, or actor, feels no right to intrude, and who quickly falls from a first transient resentment . . . — Daily Telegraph. Such a person may reside there with absolute safety, unless it becomes the object of the government to secure his person ; and which purpose, even then, might be disappointed by early intelligence.— Scott. All this when Madame saw, and of which when she took note, her sole observation was : — . . . — C. Bronte. To these we may add examples in which the coordinated relatives have different antecedents. In practice, nothing can justify such coordination : in theory, it is admissible when the antecedents are coordinate, as in the following sentence : We therefore delivered the supplies to those individuals, and at those places, to whom the special grants had been made, and for which they were originally designed. But in the following instances, one antecedent is subordi- nate to another in the same clause, or is in a clause subordinate to that of the other. RELATIVES: CASE 93 They marched into the apartment where the banquet was served ; and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall have the liberty of ordering himself.— Thackeray. A large mineral-water firm in London, whose ordinary shares are a million in value, and which shares always paid a dividend before the imposition of the sugar-tax, have not paid any dividend since. — Times. He very much doubted whether I could find it on his mine, which was located some five miles from St. Austell, Cornwall, and upon whose property I had never h^tn.— Times. But I have besought my mother, who is apprehensive of Mr. Lovelace's visits, and for fear of whom my uncles never stir out without arms, . . .— Richardson. It was of Mr. Lovelace that the uncles were afraid. d. Case of the relative. Special attention was not drawn, in the section on Case, to the gross error committed in the following examples : Instinctively apprehensive of her father, whom she supposed it was, she stopped in the dark. — Dickens. That peculiar air of contempt commonly displayed by insolent menials to those whom they imagine are poor. — CORELLI. It is only those converted by the Gospel whom we pretend are influenced by it. — Daily Telegraph. We found those whom we feared might be interested to withhold the settlement alert and prompt to assist us. — Galt. Mr. Dombey, whom he now began to perceive was as far beyond human recall.— Dickens. Those whom it was originally pronounced would be allowed to go. — spectator. But this looks as if he has included the original 30,000 men whom he desires ' should be in the country now'. — Times. We feed children whom we think are hungry. — Times. The only gentlemen holding this office in the island, whom, he felt sure, would work for the spiritual good of the parish. — Guernsey Advertiser. These writers evidently think that in ' whom we think are hungry' 'whom' is the object of * we think'. The relative is in fact the subject of 'are'; and the object of 'we know' is the clause ' who are hungry ' ; the order of the words is a necessary result of the fact that a relative subject must stand at the beginning of its clause. 94 SYNTAX (The same awkward necessity confronts us in clauses with ' when ', ' though ', &c., in which the subject is a relative. Such clauses are practically recognized as impossible, though Otway, in a courageous moment, wrote : Unblemished honour, and a spotless love ; Which ihd' perhaps now know another flame, Yet I have love and passion for their name.) Some writers, with a consistency worthy of a better cause, carry the blunder into the passive, renouncing the advantages of an ambiguous ' which ' in the active ; for in the active ' which ' of course tells no tales. As to all this, the trend of events has been the reverse of that which was anticipated would be the result of democratic institutions. — Times. ' Which it was anticipated would be '. Similarly, the passive of ' men whom we-know-are-honest ' is the impossible ' men who are-known-are-honest ' : * men who we know are honest ' gives the correct passive * men who it is known are honest '. Nor must it be supposed that 'we know' is parenthetic. In non-defining clauses (Jones, who we know is honest), we can regard the words as parenthetic if we choose, except when the phrase is negative (Jones, who I cannot think is honest) ; but in a defining clause they are anything but parenthetic. When we say ' Choose men who you know are honest ', the words ' you know ' add a new circumstance of limitation : it is not enough that the men should in fact be honest ; you must know them to be honest ; honest men of whose honesty you are not certain are excluded by the words ' you know '. Similarly, in the Guernsey Advertiser quotation above, the writer does not go the length of saying that these are the only gentlemen who would work : he says that they are the only ones of whom he feels sure. The commas of parenthesis ought therefore to go, as well as the comma at ' island ', which is improper before a defining clause. The circumstances under which a parenthesis is admissible in a defining clause may here be noticed. RELATIVES: PARENTHESIS 95 (i) When the clause is too strict in its Hmitation, it may be modified by a parenthesis ; Choose men who, during their time of office, have never been suspected. A whole class, excluded by the defining clause, is made eligible by the parenthesis. (ii) Similarly, a parenthesis may be added to tell us that within the limits of the defining clause we have perfect freedom of choice : Choose men who, at one time or another, have held office. They must have held office, that is all ; it does not matter when. (iii) Words of comment, indicating the writer's authority for his limitation, his recognition of the sentiments that it may arouse, and the like, properly stand outside the defining clause: when they are placed within it, they ought to be marked as parenthetic. There are men who, so I am told, prefer a lie to truth on its own merits. The religion that obtains in Europe, and that, unhappily, has been introduced into America. The latter sentence is an adaptation of one considered above on p. 91. ' Unhappily ' there appeared not as a parenthesis but as an inseparable part of the relative clause, which was there- fore defining or non-defining, according as * unhappily ' could or could not be considered as adding to the limitation. But with the altered punctuation ' unhappily ' is separable from the relative clause, which may now define : ' that obtains in Europe and (I am sorry to have to add) in America,' In sentences of this last type, the parenthesis is inserted in the defining clause only for convenience : in the others, it is an essential, though a negative, part of the definition. But all three types of parenthesis agree in this, that they do not limit the antecedent ; they differ completely from the phrases considered above, which do limit the antecedent, and are not parenthetic. 96 SYNTAX e. Miscellaneous uses and abuses of the relative. (i) A relative clause is sometimes coordinated with an independent sentence ; such coordination is perhaps always awkward, but is not always incorrect. The question arises chiefly when the two have a common subject expressed only in the relative clause ; for when the subject is expressed in both, the independent sentence may be taken to be coordinate, not with the relative clause, but with the main sentence to which the relative clause is attached, as in the following instance : To begin with, he had left no message, which in itself I felt to be a suspicious circumstance, and (I) was at my wits' end how to account plausibly for his departure. Retain * I ', and * I was ' may be coordinate with ' he had left ' : remove it, and the coordination is necessarily between ' I was ' and ' I felt '. In our next examples the writers are committed : These beatitudes are just laws which we have been neglecting, and have been receiving in ourselves the consequences that were meet. — Daily Telegraph. The idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is the suitableness of means to certain ends, and, where this is not the question, very seldom trouble themselves about the effect of different measures of things. — Burke. Fictitious capital, a name of extreme inaccuracy, which too many persons are in the habit of using, from the hasty assumption that what is not real must necessarily be fictitious, and are more led away by a jingling antithesis of words than an accurate perception of ideas. — H. D. MACLEOD. The first two of these are wrongly coordinated: the third, a curiosity in other respects, is in this respect right. The reason is that in the first two we have a defining, in the third a non-defining relative clause. A defining clause is gram- matically equivalent to an adjective ('violated laws', 'the popular idea'), and can be coordinated only with another word or phrase performing the same function ; now the phrase ' we have been receiving ', not being attached to the RELATIVES: COORDINATION 97 antecedent by means of a relative, expressed or understood, is not equivalent to an adjective. We could have had ' and (which we) have been properly punished for neglecting\ or we could have had the * and ' sentence in an adverbial form, 'with the fitting result'; but coordination between the two as they stand is impossible. The Burke sentence is a worse offender. Coordination of this kind is not often attempted when the antecedent of the relative is subject of the main sentence ; and when it is attempted, the two coordinates must of course not be separated by the predicate. If we had had 'the idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, and very seldom trouble themselves about anything further ', the coordination would have been similar to the other, and could have been rectified in the same way (' and beyond which they very seldom . . . ', or ' to the exclusion of any other considerations '). But this alteration we cannot make ; for there is a further and an essential difference. The Daily Telegraph writer evidently meant his second coordinate to do the work of a defining clause ; he has merely failed to make the necessary connexion, which we supply, as above, either by turning the words into a second defining clause, or by embodying them, adverbially, in the first. Burke's inten- tion is different, and would not be represented by our proposed alteration in the order. All that a defining clause can do in his sentence is to tell us what idea is going to be the subject. If we were to give a brief paraphrase of the whole, italicizing the words that represent the second coordinate, it would be, not ' mankind's sole idea of proportion is the adaptation . . . ', but ' mankind's idea of proportion is the adaptation . . . , and very little else' \ for the question answered is, not 'what is mankind's sole idea?' but 'what is mankind's idea?' In other words, the second coordinate belongs in intention not, like the relative clause, to the subject, but to the predicate ; to rectify it, we must either make it part of the predicate NS. H 9'S SYNTAX ( and is not concerned with . . . '), or, by inserting * they ^ coordinate it with the main sentence. Obvious as the latter correction is, the sentence repays close examination, as illustrating the incoherence of thought that may underlie what seems a very trifling grammatical slip. But in our third example, the relative clause is non- defining ; it is grammatically equivalent to, and could be replaced by, an independent sentence : ' Many persons are in the habit of using it '. There is nothing grammatically wrong in this type of coordination ; it is objectionable only because it seems to promise what it does not fulfil. When the common subject of two coordinates is expressed only with the first, it is natural to assume that all words preceding it are also to be applied to both coordinates ; and the viola- tion of this principle, though not of course ungrammatical, is often felt to be undesirable in other than relative clauses. (ii) In the sentences considered above, the antecedent of the relative did not belong to the second coordinate, and could not have been represented in it without the material alterations there proposed. But it may also happen that the antecedent, as in the following examples, belongs equally to both coordinates, being represented in the first by a relative, in the second by some other pronoun. There were two or three whose accuracy was more scrupulous, their judgement more uniformly sober and cautious. — Bryce. He renewed the old proposal, which Pizarro treated as a piece of con- temptible shuffling, and curtly rejected it. Which she has it in her option either to do or to let it alone. — Richardson. In the pair of parallel coordinates from Mr. Bryce, insert the suppressed * was ', and it becomes clear that ' whose ', not ' their ', is the right pronoun. In the ' Pizarro ' sentence, ' it ' is not only superfluous, but disturbing to the reader, who assumes that ' which ' is common to both clauses, and on reaching * it ' has to glance back and RELATIVES: COORDINATION 99 check the sentence. Here, as often, the pronoun seems to be added to restore an ill-balanced sentence ; but that can be done in several other ways. In the Richardson sentence also the * it ' should go. More commonly, the repetition of the antecedent in another form results from the superstitious avoidance of a preposition at the end : A demand by Norway for political separation, to which Sweden will not assent, but will not go to war to prevent it. — Times, * To (which) ' is not common to both coordinates : accordingly the writer finds it necessary to give ' it ' in the second. But, even if we respect our superstition, and exclude ' which Sweden will not assent to, but will not go to war to prevent ', we have still the two possibilities of (1) complete relative coordination, *to . . . , but which . . . *; (2) subordination, ' though she will not go to war to prevent it \ In our next example, Lord Rosebery, again for fear ot a preposition at the end, falls into the trap clumsily avoided by the Times writer : That promised land for which he was to prepare, but scarcely to enter. So perhaps Bagehot, though his verb may be conceive of: English trade is carried on upon borrowed capital to an extent of which few foreigners have an idea, and none of our ancestors could have con- ceived. (iii) When the relative is the subject of both coordinates, or the object of both, its repetition in the second is a matter of choice. But to omit the relative when it is in a different case from the first is a gross, though not uncommon, blunder. The following are instances : A league which their posterity for many ages kept so inviolably, and proved so advantageous for both the kingdoms of Fiance and Scotland.— LOCKHART. Questions which we either do not put to ourselves, or are turned aside with traditional replies. — Mark Rutherford. It is just conceivable that in the last of these the subject of 'are' is * we' : if so, the sentence is to be referred to (i) above H % ICO SYNTAX (wrong coordination of an independent sentence with a defining relative clause). It is not easy to see why the relative more than other words should be mishandled in this way ; few would write (but see p. 6i, s. f.) *This league we kept and has proved advantageous'. The condensed antecedent-relative ' what ' is only an ap- parent exception to this universal rule. In the sentence 'What I hold is mine', 'what' is only object to 'hold', not subject to 'is'; the subject to 'is' is the whole noun-clause * what I hold '. Sentences of this type, so far from being exceptions, often give a double illustration of the rule, and leave a double possibility of error. For just as a single 'what' cannot stand in different relations to two coordinate verbs in its clause, so a single noun-clause cannot stand in different relations to two coordinate main verbs. We can say ' What I have and hold ', where ' what ' is object to both verbs, and ' what is mine and has been fairly earned by me ', where it is subject to both; but we cannot say 'what I have and has been fairly earned by me'. Similarly, we can say ' What I have is mine and shall remain mine ', where the noun-clause 'what I have' is subject to both verbs, and ' What I have I mean to keep, and will surrender to no man ', where it is object to both ; but not * What I have is mine, and I will surrender to no m.an'. Of the various ways of avoiding this error (subordination, adaptation of verbs, insertion of a pronoun, relative or otherwise), that chosen by Miss Bronte below is perhaps the least convenient. Her sentence is, however, correct ; that from the Spectator is not. Not mere empty ideas, but what were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed.— C. Bronte. Whatever we possessed in 1867 the British Empire possesses now, and is part of the Dominion of Canada. — Spectator. * Things that were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed ' ; a pair of defining clauses. The condensed 'what' must of course be distinguished from the 'what' of indirect questions, which is not relative RELATIVE AND INTERROGATIVE ivhat loi but interrogative. In the following example, confusion of the two leads to an improper coordination. What sums he made can only be conjectured, but must have been enormous. — M ACAUL.W. In the first sentence, ' what ' is an interrogative, in the second, a condensed antecedent-relative, standing for ^ the sums that '. It is the sums that were enormous : it is the answer to the question 'What sums did he make?' that can only be conjec- tured. The mistake is possible only because ' can ' and ' must ' do not reveal their number : ' can ' is singular, ' must ' plural. The differentiation between the two ivhats and their equivalents is not, indeed, complete : just as the condensed antecedent-relative resembles in form, though not in treat- ment, the unresolved interrogative, so the interrogative, by resolution into 'the (that) which', not only resembles, but is grammatically identified with, the uncondensed relative and antecedent. The resolution is, no doubt, convenient : it should be noticed, however, that the verbs with which alone it can be employed (verbs that may denote either perception of a fact or other kinds of perception) are precisely those with which ambiguity may result. ' I know the house (that) you mean ' : it may (antecedent and relative) or may not (resolved interrogative) follow that I have ever seen it. ' We must first discover the scoundrel who did it ' ; antecedent and relative? then we must secure the scoundrel's person; resolved interrogative ? then only information is needed. *I can give a good guess at the problem that is puzzling you ' : and the solution ? — I know nothing of the solution ; I was resolving an interrogative. This, however, does not affect sentences like the Macaulay one above : for although the resolved or uncondensed forms (' the . . . which ') are grammatically identified, the condensed or unresolved forms (' what ') are not. (iv) The omission of the relative in isolated clauses (as opposed to coordinates) is a question not of correctness I02 SYNTAX but of taste, so far as there is any question at all. A non- defining relative can never be omitted. The omission of a defining relative subject is often effective in verse, but in prose is either an archaism or a provincialism. It may, moreover, result in obscurity, as in the second of our examples, which may possibly puzzle the reader for a moment : Kow it would be some fresh insect won its way to a temporary fatal new development.— H. G. Wells. No one finds himself planted at last in so terribly foul a morass, as he would fain stand still for ever on dry ground. — Trollope. But when the defining relative is object, or has a preposi- tion, there is no limit to the omission, unless euphony is allowed to be one. We give three instances in which the reader may or may not agree that the relative might have been retained with advantage : We do that in our zeal our calmer moments would be afraid to answer. — SCOTT. But did you ever see anything there you had never seen before? — Bagehot. Th.se ethical judgements we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized. — SPENCER. (v) When a defining relative has the same preposition as its antecedent, it is not uncommon, in the written as well as in the spoken language, to omit the preposition in the relative clause. There is something to be said for a licence that rids us of such cumbrous formulae as ' in the way in which ', ' to the extent to which ', and the like ; in writing, however, it should be used with caution if at all. In the first place, if the preposition is to go, the relative should go too, or if retained should certainly be ' that ', not ' which ' ; and if the verb of the relative clause is the same as in the main sentence, it should be represented by ' do ', or (in a compound tense) by its auxiliary component. Because they found that it touched them in a way which no book in the world could touch them. — Daily Telegraph. The man who cleaned the slate in the manner which Sir E. Satow has done both in Morocco and Japan might surely rank as a reflective diplo- matist.— Spectator. RELATIVES — ' such zvho \ ' suck zuhich '' 103 ' In a way no other book in the world could ' : 'in the way (that) Sir E. Satow has done '. A further limitation is suggested by our next example : The Great Powers, after producing this absolutely certain result, are ending with what they ought to have begun, — coercion.— Spec/a^or. Here, of course, the relative cannot be omitted, since relative and antecedent are one. But that is not the principal fault, as will appear from a resolution of the antecedent-relative: ' they are ending with the very thing (that) they ought to have begun . . . '. We are now at liberty to omit our relative or retain it, as we please ; in either case, the omission of ' with ' is unbearable. The reason is that 'with' does not, like the ' in ' of our former examples, introduce a purely adverbial phrase : it is an inseparable component of the compound verbs * end- with ' and ' begin-with ', of which the antecedent and relative are respectively the objects. Similarly, we cannot say ' He has come to the precise conclusion (that) I thought he would come ', because we should be mutilating the verb to ' come- to ' ; we can, however, say ' to the conclusion (that) I thought he would ', ' come-to ' being then represented by ' would '. Finally, the omission is justifiable only when antecedent and relative have the same preposition. Sentences like the next may pass in conversation, but (except with the one noun zuajf) are intolerable in writing : One of the greatest dangers in London is the pace that the corners in the main streets are turned. — Times. (vi) The use of * such . . . who (which) ', •' such . . . that (defining relative) ', for ' such . . . as ' is sometimes an archaism, sometimes a vulgarism. Till such time when we shall throw aside our earthly garment. — Daily Telegraph, Only such supplies were to be made which it would be inhuman to refuse to ships in distress. — Times. The censorship of literature extends to such absurd prohibitions which it did not reach even during the worst period of the forties. — Times. A God in surh an abstract sense that, as I have pointed out before, does not signify.— Z^i?//y Telegrap/i. I04 SYNTAX They would find such faith, such beHef, that would be a revelation to them, — Daily Tclei^raph. Swift's plan was to offer to fulfil it on conditions so insulting that no one with a grain of self-respect could accept. — L. Stephen. f. *It . . . that.* Two constructions, closely allied, but grammatically dis- tinct, are often confused : (i) Antecedent * it ' followed by a defining relative clause with 'that' (who, which); (ii) 'it' followed by a clause in apposition, introduced by the conjunc- tion ' that '. The various correct possibilities are represented in the set of examples given below. Relative clauses are marked R, conjunction clauses C. One impossible example is added in brackets, to mark the transition from relative to conjunction. (i) It is money that I want. R. (2) It was you that told me. R. (3) It was you that I gave it to (or, to whom I gave it). R. (4) It was to you that I gave it. C. (5) It was the Romans that built this wall. R. (6) It is the Romans that we are indebted to for this. R. (7) It is to the Romans that we are indebted for this. C. (8) It was Jones whose hat I borrowed. R. (9) It was Jones's hat that I borrowed. R. (10) It was a knife that I cut it with. R. (11) It was with a knife that I cut it. C, (12) It was with difficulty that I cut it. C. (13) (It was difficulty that I cut it with.) R. (14) It was provisionally that I made the off"er. C. (15) It was in this spring, too, that the plague broke out. C. (16) Accordingly, it was with much concern that I presently received a note informing me of his departure. C. In the relative construction, the antecedent ' it ' is invariable, whatever the number and gender of the relative. The main verb is also invariable in number, but in tense is usually adapted to past, though not (for euphony's sake) to future circumstances : ' it was you that looked foolish ', but ' it is you that will look foolish '. In both constructions, the ' that ' clause, supplemented or introduced by ' it ', gives us the subject of a predication, the RELATIVE AND CONJUNCTION that 105 relative clause (with it) being equivalent to a pure noun, the conjunction clause to a verbal noun in apposition, partly re- taining its verbal character. In both, also, the predication answers an imaginary question, recorded distinctly in the relative, less distinctly in the conjunction clause. ' What do you want ? ' 'It (the thing) that I want is money.' ' To whom did you give it ? ' * It (the persons) that I gave it to was your friends.' ' As to your cutting it : give particulars.' ' It — that I cut it (my cutting it) — was with a knife.' From the above examples it will be seen that the two con- structions largely overlap. When (as in 1,2, 5, 8) the relative is subject or direct object of the clause-verb, or is in the possessive case, it cannot be replaced by the conjunction ; but when its relation to the clause- verb is marked by a preposi- tion, the conjunction always may take its place, and sometimes must, as in 11 and 13. For the relative clause can only be used when the question reflected in it is calculated to secure the right kind of answer. Now the natural answer to the question ' What did you cut it with ? ' is not ' difficulty ' but ' a knife '. The misleading ' with ' is therefore removed from the relative clause in 13, and placed within the predicate, the definite question 'What did you cut it with?' giving place to the vague demand for particulars. ' With ' being removed, the relative clause falls to pieces, for want of a word to govern the relative, and the conjunction clause takes its place. In the same way, ' it was a cab (but not high indignation) that he drove away in ' ; 'it was a concert (but not c7iriosity) that I was returning from ' ; * it was a beech-tree (but not un- pleasant circumstances) that I found him under'. And, generally, it will be found that a preposition is admissible in the relative clause only when used in the literal or the most obvious sense. The conjunction clause is, as we have said, a verbal noun ; so far a noun that things can be predicated of it, and so far a verb that the things predicated of it are verbal relations and io6 SYNTAX verbal circumstances, indirect object, agent, instrument, means, manner, cause, attendant circumstances ; anything but subject and direct object. ' My giving was to you ' ; * my offering was provisionally ' ; ' my concealing it was because I was ashamed '. The mistakes that constantly occur in careless writers result from hesitation between the two forms where both are possible. The confusion, however, ought not to arise ; for always with a relative clause, and never with a conjunction, the complement of the main predicate (the answer to the suppressed question) is a noun or the grammatical equivalent of a noun. ' A knife ', ' Jones ', ' you ', ' my friend in Chicago ', ' the man who lives next door', are the answers that accompany the relative clause : ' with a knife ', ' with difficulty ', ' to you ', ' occasionally ', ' be- cause I was ashamed ', are those that accompany the con- junction. Examples 15 and 16, though quite recognized types, are really artificial perversions. In 1 5 the true question and answer in the circumstances would be, not, as the sentence falsely implies, ^ When did the plague break out ? ' ' That too happened in this same spring ', but ' Were there any other notable events in this spring ? ' ' Yes : the plague broke out '. Impressiveness is given to the announcement by the fiction that the reader is wondering when the plague broke out ; in fact, he is merely waiting for whatever may turn up in the history of this spring. In 16 we go still further: the implied question, 'What were your feelings on receiving a (not the) note . . . ? ' could not possibly be asked ; the information that alone could prompt it is only given in the ' that ' clause. It has been pointed out in b. that a relative clause with antecedent ' it ' particularly calls for the relative ' that ', in preference to ' which ', and even to ' who '. Even when the relative is in the possessive case, ' that ', which has no possessive, is often retained by transferring to the main predicate the noun on which it depends ; 8 thus gives place to 9, even at the risk RELATIVE AND CONJUNCTION that 107 of ambiguity ; for the relative clause now supplies us with the question (not ' whose hat . . . ? ' but) ' what did you borrow ? ' leaving us theoretically in doubt whether Jones's hat is dis- tinguished from his other property, from other people's hats, or from things in general. On the other hand, the two blunders that are most frequently made almost invariably have the relative ' who' or ' which '. And it is to me, the original promoter of the whole scheme, to whom they would deny my fair share in the profits ! 'To me' implies a conjunction clause: 'to whom . . .' is a relative clause. ' It is to me that . . '. It was to Mrs. Brent, the beetle-browed wife of Mr. Commissary Brent, to whom the General transferred his attentions now.—THACKERAY. It is to you whom I address a history which may perhaps fall into very different hands.— Scott. ' To you that \ or ' you to w^hom '. It is not taste that is plentiful, but courage that is rare.— STEVENSON. Again a common blunder ; not, however, a confusion between the two constructions above, but between one of them (the relative) and a third. The sentence explains why every one seems to prefer Shakespeare to Ouida (they are afraid to say that they like Ouida best). * What is the explanation of this ? ' ' It is not the plentifulness of taste, but the rarity of courage, that explains it.' Or, less clumsily, using the construction that Stevenson doubtless intended : ' It (the inference to be drawn) is not that taste is plentiful, but that courage is rare.' Participle and Gerund It is advisable to make a few remarks on the participle and gerund together before taking them separately. As the word gerund is variously used, we first define it. A gerund is the verbal noun identical in form with any participle, simple or compound, that contains the termination -itig. Thus the verb ivrite has the participles writing, having ivritten, going to write y being about to zvrite, about to write, written, having been written, going to be written, about to be written, being about to io8 SYNTAX be written. Any of these except luritten, about to ivritc, about to be written, may be a gerund also ; but while the participle is an adjective, the gerund is a noun, differing from other nouns in retaining its power (if the active gerund of a transitive verb) of directly governing another noun. Both these are of great importance for our purpose. The participle itself, even when confusion with the other cannot occur, is much abused ; and the slovenly uses of it that were good enough in Burke's time are now recognized solecisms. Again, the identity between the two forms leads to loose and unaccountable gerund constructions that will probably be swept away, as so many other laxities have been, with the advance of grammatical consciousness. We shall have to deal with both these points at some length. It is indeed no wonder that the forms in -ing should require close attention. Exactly how many old English terminations -ing is heir to is a question debated by historical grammarians, which we are not competent to answer. But we may point out that writing may now be (i) participle — I was writing; I saw him writing; writing piously, he acts profanely — , (2) gerund or full verbal noun — I object to your writing that — , (3) hybrid between gerund and participle — I do not mind you writing it — , (4) detached verbal noun — Writing is an acquired art — , (5) concrete noun — This writing is illegible. Moreover, the verbal noun writing has the synonym to tvrite, obligatory instead of it in some connexions, better in some, worse in some, and impossible in others ; compare, for instance : I do not like the trouble of writing ; I shall not take the trouble to write ; the trouble of writing is too much for him ; it is a trouble to write ; writing is a trouble. The grammatical diffi- culties, that is, are complicated by considerations of idiom. In these preliminary remarks, however, it is only with the distinction or want of distinction between participle and gerund that we are concerned. The participle is an adjective, and should be in agreement with a noun or pronoun ; the PARTICIPLE AND GERUND 109 gerund is a noun, of which it should be possible to say clearly whether, and why, it is in the subjective, objective, or pos- sessive case, as we can of other nouns. That the distinction is often obscured, partly in consequence of the history of the language, will be clear from one or two facts and examples. I. The man is building contains what we should all now call, whether it is so or not historicall}^, a participle or verbal adjective : the house is Iniilding (older but still living and correct English for the house is being built) contains, as its remarkable difference of meaning prepares us to believe, a gerund or verbal noun, once governed by a now lost preposition. 1. In He stopped, laughing we have a participle ; in He stopped laughing, a verbal noun governed directly by the verb ; in He burst out laughing, a verbal noun governed by a vanished preposition. 3. Present usage does not bear out the definite modern ideas of the distinction between participle and gerund as respectively adjective and noun. So long as that usage continues, there are various degrees of ambiguity, illustrated by the three following examples. It would be impossible to say, whatever the context, whether the writer of the first intended a gerund or a participle. In the second, a previous sentence would probably have decided the question. In the third, though grammar (again as modified by present usage) leaves the question open, the meaning of the sentence is practically decisive by itself. Can he conceive M atihew Arnold permitting such a book to be written and published about himself? — Times. And no doubt that end will be secured by the Cofnmission sitting in Paris. — Times. Those who know least of them [the virtues] know very well how much they are concerned in other people having them. — MORLEY. In the second of these, if sitting is a participle, the meaning is that the end will be secured by the Commission, which is described by way of identification as the one sitting in no SYNTAX Paris. If sitting is gerund, the end will be secured by the wise choice of Paris and not another place for its scene. If Commissioii s were written, there could be no doubt the latter was the meaning. With Commission, there is, by present usage, absolutely no means of deciding between the two meanings apart from possible light in the context. In the third, com- mon sense is able to tell us, though grammar gives the ques- tion up, that what is interesting is not the other people who have them, but the question whether other people have them. We shall, in the section on the gerund, take up the decided position that all gerunds ought to be made distinguishable from participles. W^e are quite aware, however, that in the first place a language does not remodel itself to suit the gram- marian's fancy for neat classification ; that secondly the confusion is not merely wanton or ignorant, but the result of natural development ; that thirdly the change involves some inconveniences, especially to hurried and careless writers. On the other hand it is certain that the permanent tendency in language is towards the correct and logical, not from it ; it is merely hoped that the considerable number of instances here collected may attract the attention of some writers who have not been aware of the question, and perhaps convince them that the distinction is a useful one, that a writer ought to know and let us know whether he is using a participle or a gerund, and that to abandon the gerund when it cannot be distinguished without clumsiness need cause no difficulty to any but the very unskilful in handling words. Participles The unattached or wrongly attached participle is one of the blunders most common with illiterate or careless writers. But there are degrees of heinousness in the offence ; our examples are arranged from i. to 8. in these degrees, starting with perfect innocence. I. Participles that have passed into prepositions, conjunc- tions, or members of adverbial phrases. PARTICIPLES III Considering the circumstances, you may go. Seeitig that it was involuntary, he can hardly be blamed. Roughly speaking, all me7i are liars. Looking at it in a shortened perspective of time, those years of transition have the quality of a single consecutive occurrence. — H. G. Wells. The Bill . . . will bring about, assuming that it meets with good fortune in the remaining stages of its passage through Parliament, a very useful reform. — Times. Regarded as participles, these are incorrect. It is not yoii that consider, but I ; not he that sees, but we ; not men that roughly speak, but the moralist ; not years that look, but philosophic historians ; not the Bill that assumes, but the newspaper prophet. The development into prepositions, &c., is a natural one, however ; the only question about any par- ticular word of the kind is whether the vox populi has yet declared for it ; when it has, there is no more to be said ; but when it has not, the process should be resisted as long as possible, writers acting as a suspensive House of Lords ; an instance will be found in 4. Three quotations from Burke will show that he, like others of his time, felt himself more at liberty than most good writers would now feel themselves. Founding the appeal on this basis, it was judged proper to lay before Parliament . . .— BURKE. Flattering themselves that their pov/er is become necessary to the support of all order and government, everything which tends to the support of that power is sanctified. — BURKE. Having considered terror as producing an unnatural tension and certain violent emotions of the nerves ; it tdisWy follows. — BuRKE. Similar constructions may be found on almost every page of Smollett. 2. Participles half justified by attachment to a pronoun implied in my, your, his^ their. These are perhaps better avoided. Having thus run through the causes of the sublime with reference to all the senses, my first observation will be found very nearly true.— BURKE. 112 SYNTAX Beino much interesi, the main subject. Not even temperaments, which have no eyes. Write Persons of sensitive temperament experienced this^ &c. But the commercial interests of both Great Britain and the United States were too closely affected by the terms of the Russo-Chinese agreement to let it pass unnoticed. — Times. It is not the interests that cannot let it pass, but the countries. Insert y if occasio7i should arise \ and the should with, second person in the apodosis is not a conditional should at all, but a pure-system should, which would be the same with any person ; it means simply ^^?^ ought, or it ivould be your duty. The result in part of a genuine anxiety lest the Chinese would gradually grow until they monopolized the country. — Titnes. We have purposely refrained until now from invoking the subjunctive, because the word is almost meaningless to Englishmen, the thing having so nearly perished. But on this instance it must be remarked that when conjunctions like lest^ which could once or still can take a subjunctive (as lest he die), use a compound form instead, they use the Sh. forms for all persons. It is a matter of little importance, since hardly any one would go wrong in such a sentence. The Perfect Infinitive This has its right and its wrong uses. The right are obvious, and can be left alone. Even of the wrong some are serviceable, if not strictly logical. / hoped to have succeeded, for instance, means / hoped to succeed, but I did not succeed, and has the advantage of it in brevity ; it is an idiom that it would be a pity to sacrifice on the altar of Reason. So: Philosophy began to congratulate herself upon such a proselyte from the world of business, and hoped to have extended her power under the auspices of such a leader, — Burke. And here he cannot forbear observing, that it was the duty of that SHALL AND WILL, TO HAVE 155 publisher to have rebutted a statement which he knew to be a calumny. —Borrow. I was going to have asked, when . . .— Sladen. But other perfects, while they are still more illogical than these, differ as little in meaning from the present as the deposiiisse, dear to the hearts of elegiac writers ancient and modern, differs from deponere. And whereas there is at least metre, and very useful metre, in deposnisse, there is in our corresponding perfect infinitive neither rhyme nor reason. Thus, With whom on those golden summer evenings I should have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfield. — Thackeray. To have takefi means simply to take ; the implication of non- fulfilment that justified the perfects above is here needless, being already given in / shordd have liked; and the doubled have is ugly in sound. Similar are If my point had not been this, I should not have endeavoured to have shown the connexion. — Times. The author can only wish it had been her province to have raised plants of nobler growth. — S. Ferrier. Had you given your advice in any determined or positive manner, I had been ready to have been concluded by it.— Richardson. Jim Scudamore would have been the first man to have acknowledged the anomaly. — Crockett. Though certainly before she commenced her mystic charms she would have liked to have known who he was. — Beaconsfield. Peggy would have liked to have shown her turban and bird of paradise at the ball.— Thackeray. It might have been thought to be a question of bare alternatives, and to have been susceptible of no compromise. — Bagehot. The less excusable that Bagehot has started with the correct to be. Another very common form, still worse, occurs especially after seem and appear^ and results from the writer's being too lazy to decide whether he means He seems to have been, or He seemed to be. The mistake may be in either verb or both. [Repudiating the report of an interview] I warned him when he spoke to me that I could not speak to him at all if I was to be quoted as an 1 56 SYNTAX authority. He seemed to have taken this as applying only to the first question he asked mc. — Westminster Gazette, (seems) They, as it has been said of Sterne, seemed to have wished, every now and then, to have thrown their wigs into the faces of their auditors. — I. Disraeli, (seem to have wished ... to throw) Lady Austen's fashionable friends occasioned no embarrassment ; they seemed to have preferred some more fashionable place for summering in, for they are not again spoken of.— SoUTHEY. Sometimes have is even transferred from the verb with which it would make sense to the other with which it makes nonsense. On the point of church James was obdurate ... He would like to have insisted on the other grudging items. — Sladen. In the next, the perfect is wanted ; for a child that has been flogged cannot be left unflogged — not, that is, in the past ; and the future is not meant. A child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. — POE. We add, for the reader's refreshment rather than for practical purposes, an illustration of where careless treatment of have may end : Oh, Burgo, hadst thou not have been a very child, thou shouldst have known that now, at this time of day— after all that thy gallant steed had done for thee — it was impossible for thee or him. — Trollope. Conditionals These, which cost the schoolboy at his Latin and Greek some weary hours, need not detain us long. The reader passes lightly and unconsciously in his own language over mixtures that might have caused him searchings of heart in a dead one. But there is one corrupt and meaningless form, apparently gaining ground, that calls for protest. When a clause begins with as if, it must be remembered that there is an ellipse. / treat her as tenderly as if she were my daughter would be in full / treat her as tenderly as I should if she were, &c. If this is forgotten, there is danger in some sentences, though not in this one, of using a present indicative in the place where the verb tvere stands. So : PERFECT INFINITIVE, CONDITIONALS 157 We will not appear like fools in this matter, and as if we have no authority over our own daughter. — Richardson. This may be accounted for, but not justified, as an attempt to express what should be merely imph'cd, our actual possession of authority. As if the fruit or the flower not only depends on a root as one of the conditions among others of its development, but is itself actually the root. — MORLEY. This is absolutely indefensible so far as is is concerned ; depends has the same motive as have in the Richardson. But this looks as if he has included the original 30,000 men. — Times. There have been rumours lately, as if the present state of the nation may seem to this species of agitators a favourable period for recom- mencing their intrigues. — ScOTT. This is a place where as if should not have been used at all. If it is used; the verb should be seemed, not may seem, the full form being as there would be {rinnours). Read suggestijtg that for as if, and seems for may seem. General Linevitch reports that the army is concentrating as if it intends to make a stand. — Times. A mixture between it apparently intends and as if it intended. As if the same end may not, and must not, be compassed, according to its circumstances, by a great diversity of ways. — Burke. May should be might. As if it may not is made to do the work of as if it might not, as of course it may. The same rule applies to as though. The use of true subjunctive forms (if he be, though it happen) in conditional sentences is for various reasons not recommended. These forms, with the single exception of were, are perishing so rapidly that an experienced word- actuary^ puts their expectation of life at one generation. As a matter of style, they should be avoided, being certain to give a pretentious air when handled by any one except the skilful and practised writers who need no advice from us. And as a matter of grammar, the instinct for using subjunc- Dr. Henry Bradley, The Making of English, p. 53. 158 SYNTAX tives rightly is dying with the subjunctive, so that even the still surviving were is often used where it is completely wrong. So It would be advisable to wait for fuller details before making any attempt to appraise the significance of the raid from the military point of view, if, indeed, the whole expedition were not planned with an eye to effect. — Times. Here the last clause means though perhaps it was only planned with an eye to effect {and therefore has no viilitary signifi- cance). But //"followed by ivere not necessarily means that it certainly is. The mistake here results in making the clause look as if it were the protasis to // ivoiild be advisable, with which it has in fact nothing whatever to do ; it is a note on the words military significafice. Write zvas for were. . . . and who, taking my offered hand, bade me * Good morning' — night- fall though it were. — Times. The sentence describes a meeting with a person who knew hardly any English; he said good morning, though it zvas nightfall. A single example may be added of the intrusion of were for was in a sentence that is not conditional. Dr. Chalmers was a believer in an Establishment as he conceived an Establishment should be. Whether such an Establishment were possible or not it is not for me now to discuss.— Lord Rosebery. Were, however, is often right and almost necessary : other subjunctives are never necessary, often dangerous, and in most writers unpleasantly formal. The tiro had much better eschew them. * Doubt that' and 'doubt whether' Instances will be found in Part II of verbs constructed with wrong prepositions or conjunctions. Most mistakes of this kind are self-evident ; but the verb ' doubt ', which is constructed with ' that ' or ' whether ' according to the circumstances under which the doubt is expressed, requires special notice. The broad distinction is between the positive, * I doubt whether (that) ' and the negative, * I do not doubt that (whether) ' ; CONDITIONALS, DOUBT THAT 159 and the rule, in order to include implied as well as expressed negatives, questions as well as statements, will run thus : The word used depends upon the writer's or speaker's opinion as to the reasonableness of the doubt, no matter in whose mind it is said to exist or not to exist. 1. If there is nothing to show that the writer considers the doubt an unreasonable one, the word is always ' whether ', which reminds us that there is a suppressed alternative : I doubt whether this is true (or not). Every one is at liberty to doubt whether ... (or not). To this part of the rule there is no exception. 2. If it is evident that the writer disapproves of the doubt, the words introducing it amount to an affirmation on his part that the thing doubted is undoubtedly true ; the alternative is no longer offered ; ' that ' is therefore the word : I do not doubt that (i. e., I am sure that) . . . Who can doubt that . . . ? This, however, is modified by 3. 3. The ' vivid ' use of ' whether '. When the writer's point is rather the extravagance of the doubt than the truth of the thing doubted, * whether ' is often retained : It is as if a man should doubt whether he has a head on his shoulders. Can we imagine any man seriously doubting whether . . . .? Here, according to 2., we ought to have ' that ', since the writer evidently regards the doubt as absurd. But in the first sentence it is necessary for the force of the illustration that the deplorable condition of the doubter's mind should be vividly portrayed : accordingly, he is represented to us as actually handling the two alternatives. Similarly, in the second, we are invited to picture to ourselves, if we can, a hesitation so ludicrous in the writer's opinion. We shall illustrate this point further by a couple of sentences in which again the state of mind of the doubter, not the truth of the thing doubted, is clearly the point, but in which ' that ' has been improperly substituted for the vivid ' whether ' ; i6o SYNTAX She found herself wondering at the breath she drew, doubting that another would follow.— Meredith. I am afraid that you will become so afraid of men's motives as to doubt that any one can be honest. — Trollope. The mistake commonly made is to use ' that' for 'whether* in violation of i. * Whether ' is seldom used in place of* that ', and apparent violations of 2. often prove to be legitimate ex- ceptions of the ' vivid ' kind. Some of our examples may suggest that when the dependent clause is placed before the verb, * that ' appears because the writer had not decided what verb of doubt or denial to use. This is probably the true explanation of many incorrect t/mfs, but is not a sufficient defence. It supplies, on the contrary, an additional reason for adhering to ' whether ' : the reader is either actually mis- led or at any rate kept in needless suspense as to what is going to be said, because the writer did not make up his mind at the right time how to say it. * Whether ' at the beginning at once proclaims an open question : after * that ' we expect (or ought to expect) ' I have no reason to doubt '. In all the following, * whether ' should have been used. There is nothing for it but to doubt such diseases exist.— H. G. Wells. ' Whether ' is never suppressed. I do not think it would have pleased Mr. Thackeray ; and to doubt that he would have wished to see it carried out determines my view of the matter.— Greenwood. That the movement is as purely industrial as the leaders of the strike claim may be doubted. — Times. And I must be allowed to doubt that there is any class who deliberately omit . . . — Times. He may doubt that his pohcy will be any more popular in England a year or two hence than it is now.— Greenwood. I doubt the correctness of the assertion ... I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of these young men. — Thackeray. But that his army, if it retreats, will carry with it all its guns ... we are inclined to doubt. — Times. It was generally doubted that France would permit the use of her port. — Times* DOUBT THAT, PREPOSITIONS i6i Prepositions In an uninflected language like ours these are ubiquitous, and it is quite impossible to write tolerably without a full knowledge, conscious or unconscious, of their uses. Misuse of them, however, does not often result in what may be called in the fullest sense blunders of syntax, but mostly in offences against idiom. It is often impossible to convince a writer that the preposition he has used is a wrong one, because there is no reason in the nature of things, in logic, or in the principles of universal grammar (whichever way it may be put), why that preposition should not give the desired meaning as clearly as the one that we tell him he should have used. Idioms are special forms of speech that for some reason, often inscrutable, have proved congenial to the instinct of a particular language. To neglect them shows a writer, however good a logician he may be, to be no linguist — condemns him, from that point of view, more clearly than grammatical blunders themselves. But though the subject of prepositions is thus very important, the idioms in which they appear are so multitudinous that it is hopeless to attempt giving more than the scantiest selection ; this may at least put writers on their guard. Usages of this sort cannot be acquired from dictionaries and grammars, still less from a treatise like the present, not pretending to be exhaustive ; good reading with the idiomatic eye open is essential. We give a few examples of what to avoid. I. After adjectives and adverbs. Another stroke of palsy soon rendered Sir Sampson unconscious even to the charms of Grizzy's conversation.— S. Ferrier. Being oblivious to the ill feeling it would be certain to engender. — Cheltenha??i Examiner. To me it is incredible that the British people, who own one-half of the world's sea-going ships, should be so oblivious to the manner in which . . . — Times. Insensible to, but unconscious of; indifferent to, but oblivious of. N.S. M i62 SYNTAX The adjectives different and averse, with their adverbs or nouns, differently, diferenee, aversion^ averseness, call for a few words of comment. There is no essential reason whatever why either set should not be as well followed by to as by from. But different to is regarded by many newspaper editors and others in authority as a solecism, and is therefore better avoided by those to whom the approval of such authorities is important. It is undoubtedly gaining ground, and will probably displace differejit from in no long time ; perhaps, however, the conservatism that still prefers from is not yet to be named pedantry. It is at any rate defensive, and not offensive pedantry, different to (though 'found in writers of all ages' • — Oxford Dictionary) being on the whole the aggressor. With averse, on the other hand, though the Oxford Dictionary gives a long roll of good names on each side, the use of from may perhaps be said to strike most readers as a distinct protest against the more natural to^ so thaty^'^;;^ is here the aggressor, and the pedantry, if it is pedantry, is offensive. Our advice is to write different from and averse to. We shall give a few examples, and add to them two sentences in which the incorrect use of from with other words looks like the result of insisting on the slightly artificial use of it after different and averse. My experience caused me to make quite different conclusions to those of the Coroner for Westminster. — Times. It will be noticed that to is more than usually uncomfortable when it does not come next to differetit. We must feel charitably towards those who think diffej-ently to ourselves. — Daily Telegraph. Why should these profits be employed differejitly to the profits made by capitalists at home t — Lord Goschen. Ah, how different were my feelings as I sat proudly there on the box to those I had the last time I mounted that coach ! — Thackeray. What is the great difference of the one to the other ? — Daily Telegraph. From would in this last be clearly better than to\ but between the two would be better than either. PREPOSITIONS— rt^/^^m^/ to 163 The Queen and the cabinet, however, were entirely averse to meddling with the council.— MORLEY. Perhaps he is not averse from seeing democrats on this, as on railway rates, range themselves with him. — Times. In all democratic circles aversion fro7n the Empire of the Tsar may be intensified by the events of the last few days. — Ti/fies. To no kind of begging are people so averse as to begging pardon. — Guesses at Truth. This averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like absolute government. — Burke. I deeply regret the aversion to 'conscience clauses'. — Gladstone. But she had no sort of aversion for either Puritan or Papist. — J. R. Green. Disagree from (for with), and adverse from (for to)^ seem to have resulted from the superstition against averse and different to. A general proposition, which applies just as much to those who disagree from me as to those who agree with me. — Lord Rosebery. There were politicians in this country who had been very adverse from the Suez Canal scheme altogether. — F. Greenwood. 2. After verbs. I derive an unholy pleasure in noting. — Guernsey Evening Press. We must content ourselves for the moment by observing that from the juridical standpoint the question is a doubtful one. — Times. The petition which now reaches us from Bloemfontein . . . contents itself by begging that the isolation laws may be carried out nearer to the homes of the patients. — Times. I content you by submitting : I content myself with saying. * Doing one's duty ' generally consists of being moral, kind and charitable. — Daily Telegraph. The external world which is dealt with by natural science consisted, according to Berkeley, in ideas. According to Mr. Mill it consists of sensations and permanent possibiHties of sensation. — Balfour. The moon consists of green cheese : virtue consists in being good. Consist of gives a material, consist in a definition. Mr. Balfour's 'elegant variation' (see Airs and Graces) is certainly wrong, though nominalists and realists will perhaps differ about which should have been used in both sentences, M 2 1 64 SYNTAX and no one below the degree of a metaphysician can pretend to decide between them. A scholar endowed by [with] an ample knowledge and persuasive eloquence to cite and instance.— Meredith. I say to you plainly there is no end io [at] which your practical faculty can aim . . . — Emerson. He urged that it was an undesirable thing to be always tinkering with this particular trade. — Times. We tamper with, but tinker at, the thing that is to be operated on. You may hunt the alien from his overcrowded tenement, you may forbid \(\\\\ if you like,/rtfw toiling t^n hours a day for a wage of a few shillings.— Times. His toiling, or hi7n to toil. His readiness, not only at catching a point, but at making the most of \1 on a moments ticiice, was amazing. — Bryce. On the spur of the moment, but at a moment's notice. The motive was, no doubt, to avoid repeating at ; but such devices are sins if they are detected. Nalaly had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice. — Meredith. We acquiesce in, not to, though either phrase is awkward enough with a voice ; to is probably accounted for again by the desire to avoid repeating hi. 3. After nouns. There can be no fault found to her manners or sentiments.— Scott. I find fault ivith : I find a fault in. Write /;/ or witk, as one or the other phrase is meant. The Diet should leave to the Tsar tAe initiative of taking such measures as may be necessary. — Tifnes. M. Delcass^ took the initiative of X\xn\\r\g the conversation to Moroccan affairs. — Times. W^e assume the right of turning, we take the initiative in turning. PREPOSITIONS 165 Those, who are urging with most ardour what are called the greatest beiicjits ^y in an k i n d . — E M E R s O N . Benefits of the benefactor, but to the beneficiary. A power to marshal and adjust particulars, which can only come from an insight ^[into] their whole connection. — Emkrson. Erom its driving energy, its personal weig'U, its invincible oblivion to [of J certain things, there sprang up in Redwood's mind the most grotesque and strange of images.— H. G. Wells. 4. Superfluous prepositions, whether due to ignorance of idiom, negligence, or mistaken zeal for accuracy. As to Mr. Lovelace's approbation of your assumption-scheme, I wonder not cz/.— Richardson. A something ^' which the sense can in no way assist the mind to form a conception of. — Daily Telegraph. The Congress could occupy itseif with no more important question than with this.— Huxley. After than, the writer might have gone on if it occupied itself zuith this ; but if he means that, he must give it in full. 5. Necessary prepositions omitted. The Lady Henrietta . . . ivrote him regularly through his bankers, and once in a while he wrote //^r.— Baroness VON HUTTEN. Write without to will now pass in commercial letters only ; elsewhere, we can say 'I write you a report, a letter', but neither ' I will write you ' simply, nor ' I wrote you that there was danger '. That is, we must only omit the to when you not only is the indirect object, but is unmistakably so at first sight. It may be said that I write you is good old English. So is he was a-doing of it ; / guess is good Chaucerian. But in neither case can the appeal to a dead usage — dead in polite society, or in England — justify what is a modern vulgarism. 6. Compound prepositions and conjunctions. The increasing use of these is much to be regretted. They, and the love for abstract expression with which they are closely allied, are responsible for much of what is flaccid, diffuse, and nerveless, in modern writing. They are generally. 166 SYNTAX no doubt, invented by persons who want to express a more precise shade of meaning than they can find in anything ah'eady existing ; but they are soon caught up by others who not only do not need the new delicate instrument, but do not understand it. Inasimich as, for instance, originally expressed that the truth of its clause gave the exact measure of the truth that belonged to the main sentence. So (from the Oxford Dictionary) : God is only God inasmuch as he is the Moral Governor of the world. — Sir W. Hamilton. ]^ut long before Hamilton's day the word passed, very natu- rally, into the meaning, for which it need never have been invented, of since or because. Consequently most people who need the original idea have not the courage to use inasmuch as for it, like Sir W. Hamilton, but resort to new combinations with/Q2.r(\ for tiic purpose ^examining the arms of the children tuith a view to advising the parents to allow their children to be vaccinated. — spectator. The Sultan . . . will seek to obtain money by contracting loans with private firms in vie^u he is selfish. Well, so is every one. You say he is selfish. Well, so is every one selfish. So is every one is a correct inversion : so is too weak to stand at the end, and at the beginning it is a good enough sign-post to tell us that selfishness is going to be defended. But so is every one selfish is wrong : for if selfish is repeated at all, it is repeated with rhetorical effect, and is strong enough to take care of itself. Our second rule is thus violated ; and so is our fourth — the subject does not come at the end. i86 AIRS AND GRACES All three methods had their charm. So may have Mr. Yeats's notion of . . . — Times. This time, the compound verb is fatal. * So, perhaps, has . . .' would do. The arrival of the Hartmanns created no little excitement in the Falconet family, both among the sons and the daughters. Especially was there no lack of speculation as to the character and appearance of Miss Hartmann. — Beaconsfield. Right or wrong in principle, this does not read comfortably ; but that may seem to be due to the cumbrous phrase ' was there no lack of, which for practical purposes is a compound verb. That difficulty we can remove without disturbing the accentuation of the sentence : * Especially numerous were the speculations as to the character of Miss Hartmann '. This resembles in form our old type * Among the guests were . . . ', but with the important difference that * especially numerous ' is emphatic, and can therefore stand at the end. The in- version is rather explained than justified by the still stronger emphasis on ' Miss Hartmann '. Sentences in which both subject and predicate are independently emphatic should be avoided, quite apart from the question of inversion : italics are more or less necessary to secure the inferior emphasis, and italics are a confession of weakness. Somewhat lightened was the froviiicial panic by this proof that the murderer had not condescended to sneak into the countiy, or to abandon for a moment, under any motion of caution or fear, the great metropolitan castra stativa of gigantic crime seated for ever on the Thames.— De QuiNCEY (the italics are his). Not a happy attempt. We notice, for one thing, that the subject does not come at the end ; the inversion is not com- plete. Let us complete it. To do so, we must convey our huge sign-post to the beginning : ' By this proof . . . Thames, was somewhat lightened the proviiicial panic' Worse than ever ; is the compound verb to blame ? Remove it, and see : ' In consequence of this proof . . . Thames, subsided in some degree "Osx^ pj-ovincial panic '. This is not much better. There is another and a worse flaw: condition number one is not BALANCE INVERSION 187 satisfied ; we want ' an emphatic subject that carries in itself the point of the sentence '. Now we must not assume that because ' provincial ' is italicized, therefore the subject (how- ever emphatic) carries in itself the point of the sentence. What is that point ? what imaginary question docs the sentence answer ? Can it be meant to answer the question ' What limitations were there upon the comfort derived from the intelligence that the murderer was still in London ? ' ? No ; that question could not be asked ; we have not yet been told that any comfort at all was derived. The question it answers is * What effect did this intelligence produce upon the general panic ? '. This question can be asked ; for the reader evidently knows that a panic had prevailed, and that the intelligence had come. If, then, we are to use balance inversion, we must so reconstruct the sentence that the words containing the essential answer to this question become the subject ; we must change ' somewhat lightened ' into ' some alleviation '. * From this proof . . . Thames, resulted some alleviation of the provincial panic' That is the best that inversion will do for us ; it is not quite satisfactory, and the reason is that the sentence is made to do too much. When the essential point is subject to an emphatic limitation (an uncmphatic one like ^ somewhat ' does not matter), the limitation ought to be con- veyed in a separate sentence ; otherwise the sentence is over- worked, and either shirks its work, with the result of obscurity, or protests by means of italics. We ought therefore to have : ' From . . . resulted some alleviation of the general panic ; this, however, was confined to the provinces '. But, except for this incidental fault, the sentence can be mended without inversion : ' By this proof . . . Thames, \.\\^ provincial '^d.mz was somewhat lightened '. c. Inversion in syntactic clauses. In clauses introduced by as, thau^ or a relative (pronoun or adverb), we have only a special case of balance inversion. They differ from the instances considered above in this im- portant respect, that their relation to the preceding words is i88 AIRS AND GRACES no longer paratactic, but syntactic^ with the result that the sign-post indicating this relation is necessarily placed at the beginning. This will be seen from a comparison of the para- tactic and syntactic forms in the following pairs of examples : He was quick-tempered : so are most Irishmen. (Paratactic.) He was quick-tempered, as are most Irishmen. (Syntactic.) Several difficulties now arose : among them was . . . Several difficulties now arose, among which was . . . Now in each of these sentences there are the same induce- ments to inversion in the syntactic form as in the paratactic ; and added to these is the necessity for placing the sign-post at the beginning. We might expect, therefore, that inversion of syntactic clauses would be particularly common. But (i) We have already seen that inversion does not necessarily follow from the fact that the sign-post is placed at the beginning. And (ii) The verb in as and thaji clauses will probably, from the nature of the case, be the same as in the preceding clause. If it is in the same mood and tense, it can usually be omitted, unless effective repetition is required, in which case it will go to the end : a change of mood or tense, on the other hand, will often be marked by an auxiliary (itself perhaps compound), which again will usually preclude inversion. The result is this : i. Relative clauses, uninfluenced by the position of the sign-post, remain subject to precisely the same conditions as the corresponding paratactic sentences. Thus 'Among whom were . . . ' is right, just as 'Among the guests were . . . ' was right ; * Among which would I mention . . . ' is of course im- possible, because the subject does not carry the point ; and ' To which may be attributed . . . ' is right or wrong, accord- ing as the subject is or is not long enough to balance the compound verb. ii. Inversion of an as or iimn clause, having become unusual for the reason mentioned above, is almost certain to look either archaic or clumsy ; clumsy when the reason for it is apparent, archaic when it is not. The practical rule is INVERSION WITH 'AS' OR 'THAN' 189 this : if you cannot omit the verb, put it at the end ; and if you can neither omit it nor put it at the end, reconstruct the sentence. The German government was as anxious to upset M. Delcassd as have been his bitterest opponents in France. — Times. The verb is preserved to avoid ambiguity. But it should go to the end, especially as it is compound. Relishing humour more than does any other people, the Americans could not be seriously angry. — Bryce. Ambiguity cannot fairly be pleaded here ; the verb should be omitted. If France remains as firm as did England at that time, she will probably have as much reason as had England to congratulate herself. — Twies. Either ' as England did ', or, since the parallel is significant, ' as England then remained '. Also, ' as England had '. St. Paul's writings are as full of apparent paradoxes as sometimes seems the Sermon on the Mount. — Spectator. The verb must be retained, for the sake of sometimes \ but it should go to the end. But he has performed as have few, if any, in offices similar to his the larger, benigner functions of an Ambassador. — Tiines. ' As few . . . have performed them.' Her impropriety was no more improper than is the natural instinct of a bird or animal improper. — E. F. Benson. This is like the case considered in b. ^ so is every one selfish '. If improper is repeated with rhetorical effect, there is no need of inversion : if not, it should be left out. There had been from time to time a good deal of interest over Mrs. Emsworth's career, the sort of interest which does more for a time in filling a theatre than would acting of a finer quality than hers have done.— E. F. Benson. Either ' would have done ' at the end, or (perhaps better) no verb at all. All must join with me in the hope you express— that ... as also must all hope that some good will come of . . . — Times. Like the indiscriminate use of ivkiie, this ungainly as con- nexion is popular with slovenly writers, and is always aggra- vated by inversion. 'All, too, must hope . . . ' 190 AIRS AND GRACES d. Negative inversion, and false * emphasis * inversion. The connexion here suggested between certain forms of inversion must be taken to represent, not by any means the historical order of development, with which we are not directly concerned, but the order in which a modern writer may be supposed, more or less unconsciously, to adopt them. Start- ing from an isolated case of necessary inversion, we proceed to extensions of it that seem natural and are sanctioned by modern usage ; and from these to other extensions, based probably on a misunderstanding, and producing in modern writers the effect of archaism. Nor, except when used in conjunction with neither, always stands first; and if the subject appears at all, the sentence is always inverted. This requires no illustration. On the analogy of nor, many other negative words and phrases are thrown to the beginning of the sentence, and again inversion is the result. Never had the Cardinal's policy been more triumphantly vindicated. Nowhere is this so noticeable as in the South of France. In no case can such a course be justified merely by success. Systems, neither of which can be regarded as philosophically established, but neither of which can we consent to surrender. — Balfour. Two sorts of judgments, neither of which can be deduced from the other, and of neither of which can any proof be given. — Balfour. It is at this stage that misconception creeps in. Most of these negative phrases are in themselves emphatic ; and from their being placed first (really on the analogy of nor) comes the mistaken idea that they derive emphasis from their position. This paves the way for wholesale inversion : any words, other than the subject, are placed at the beginning ; and this, not always in order to emphasize the words so placed, but merely to give an impressive effect to the whole. The various steps are marked by the instances that follow. In the first two, inversion may be on the analogy of negatives, or may be designed for emphasis ; in the third, emphasis is clearly the motive ; and in the rest we have mere impressive- ness — not to say mere mannerism. FALSE 'EMPHASIS' INVERSION 191 With difficulty could he be persuaded . . . Disputes were rife in both cases, but in both cases have the disputes been arranged. — Times. Almost unanimously do Americans assume that . . . — Times. They hardly resembled real ships, so twisted and burnt were the funnels and superstructure ; rather did they resemble the ghosts of a long departed squadron . . . Times. His love of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind which only feeds on romantic excitements. Rather was it that of one who was so moulded . . . — Hutton. There is nothing to show that the Asclepiads took any prominent share in the work of founding anatomy, physiology, zoology, and botany. Rather do these seem to have sprung from the early philosophers. — Huxley. His works were ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. Yet was the multitude still true to him. — Macaulay. Henry Fox, or nobody, could weather the storm which was about to burst. Yet was he a person to whom the court, even in that extremity, was unwilling to have recourse. — Macaulay. A book of ' levities and gravities ', it would seem from the author's dedication, is this set of twelve essays, named after the twelve months. — Westminster Gazette. The set epistolary pieces, one might say, were discharged before the day of Elia. Yet is there certainly no general diminution of sparkle or interest . . . — Times. Futile were the endeavor to trace back to Pheidias' varied originals, as we are tempted to do, many of the later statues . . . — L. M. Mitchell. Inevitably critical was the attitude that he adopted towards religion . . . Odious to him were, on the one hand, . . .—Journal of Education. Finely conceived is this poem, and not less admirable in execution. — West??iinster Gazette. 'The Rainbow and the Rose', by E. Nisbet, is a little book that will not disappoint those who know the writer's 'Lays and Legends'. Facile and musical, sincere and spontaneous, are these lyrics. — Westmitister Gazette. Then to the resident Medical Officer at the Brompton Hospital for Consumption for an authoritative opinion on the subject went the enquirer. — Westminster Gazette. In view of the rapidly increasing tendency to causeless inversion of all kinds, it is far from certain that this last is intentional satire. e. Miscellaneous. (i) In narrated dialogue, the demand for variations of ' he 192 AIRS AND GRACES said ', &c., excuse considerable freedom in the matter of in- version. One or two points, however, may be noticed. When the subject is a personal pronoun, say is perhaps the only verb with which inversion is advisable. ' Said I, he, they ', and ' retorted Jones ' : but not * enquired I ', ' rejoined he ', * suggested they '. Compound verbs, as usual, do not lend themselves to inversion : * I won't plot anything extra against Tom,' had said Isaac. — M. Maartens. * At any rate, then,' may rejoin our critic, ' it is clearly useless . . .* — Spencer. ' I am the lover of a queen,* had often sung the steward in his pantry below.— R. Elliot. ' The cook and the steward are always quarrelling, it is quite un- bearable,' had explained Mrs. Tuggy to the chief mate. — R. Elliot. Inverted said at the beginning is one of the first pitfalls that await the novice who affects sprightliness. It is tolerable, if anywhere, only in light playful verse. Said a friend to me the other day, ' I should like to be able to run well across country, but have never taken part in a paper-chase, for I have always been beaten so easily when trying a hundred yards or so against my acquaintances . . .' — S. THOMAS. Mr. Takahira and Count Cassini continue to exchange repartees through friends or through the public press. Said the Japanese Minister yesterday evening: — Times. It is inferred here officially and unofficially that neutral rights are unlikely to suffer from any derangement in Morocco to which England is a consenting party. Said a Minister :—* American interests are not large enough in Morocco to induce us to . . .' — Times. With verbs other than said, this form of inversion is still more decidedly a thing to be left to the poets. 'Appears Verona'; 'Rose a nurse of ninety years'; but not Comes a new translation ... in four neat olive-green volumes. — Journal of Education. (ii) The inverted conditionals shoidd, had, cotdd, would, were, did, being recommended by brevity and a certain neatness, are all more or less licensed by modern usage. It is worth while, however, to name them in what seems to be their order INVERSION 1 93 of merit. Should /, from its frequency, is without taint of archaism ; but could and would, and, in a less degree, had, are apt to betray their archaic character by the addition of but (' would he but consent ') ; and were and did are felt to be sh'ghtly out of date, even without this hint. I should be, therefore, worse than a fool, did I object. — ScoTT. Did space allow, I could give you startling proof of this. — Times. (iii) Always, after performing inversion of any kind, the novice should go his rounds, and see that all is shipshape. For want of this precaution, a writer who was no novice, particularly in the matter of inversion, produces such curiosi- ties as these : Be this a difference of inertia, of bulk or of form, matters not to the argument.— Spencer. It is true that, disagreeing with M. Comte, though I do, in all those fundamental views that are peculiar to him, I agree with him in sundry minor views, — Spencer. We shall venture on removing the comma before ' though ' ; but must leave it to connoisseurs in inversion to decide between the rival attractions of ' disagree with M. Comte though I do ' and ' disagreeing . . . though I am '. ' Though I do ', in spite of the commas, can scarcely be meant to be parenthetic ; that would give (by resolution of the participle) ' though I disagree with M. Comte, though I do, . . .' Archaism a. Occasional. We have implied in former sections, and shall here take it for granted, that occasional archaism is always a fault, conscious or unconscious. There are, indeed, a few writers — Lamb is one of them — whose uncompromising terms, ' Love me, love my archaisms ', are generally accepted ; but they are taking risks that a novice will do well not to take. As to unconscious archaism, it might be thought that such a thing could scarcely exist : to employ unconsciously a word that has been familiar, and is so no longer, can happen to few. N.S. O 194 AIRS AND GRACES Yet charitable readers will believe that in the following sen- tence demiss has slipped unconsciously from a learned pen: He perceived that the Liberal ministry had offended certain influential sections by appearing too demiss or too unenterprising in foreign affairs. — Bryce. The guilt of such peccadilloes as this may be said to vary inversely as the writer's erudition ; for in this matter the learned may plead ignorance, where the novice knows too well what he is doing. It is conscious archaism that offends, above ail the conscious archaisms of the illiterate : the historian's It should seem, even the essayist's Yoti shall find, is less odious, though not less deliberate, than the ere^ oft, aught, thereanent, I wot, I trow, and similar ornaments, with which amateurs are fond of tricking out their sentences. This is only natural. An educated writer's choice falls upon archaisms less hackneyed than the amateur's ; he uses them, too, with more discretion, limiting his favourites to a strict allowance, say, of once in three essays. The amateur indulges us with his whole repertoire in a single newspaper letter of twenty or thirty lines, and — what is worse — cannot live up to the splendours of which he is so lavish : charmed with the discovery of some antique order of words, he selects a modern slang phrase to operate upon ; he begins a sentence with ofttimes, and ends it with a grammatical blunder ; aspires to albeit, and achieves howbeit. Our list begins with the educated specimens, but lower down the reader will find several instances of this fatal incongruity of style ; fatal, because the culprit proves himself unworthy of what is worth- less. For the vilest of trite archaisms has this latent virtue, that it might be worse ; to use it, and by using it to make it worse, is to court derision. A coiner or a smuggler shall get ofif tolerably well. — Lamb. The same circumstance may make one person laugh, which j-//^// render another very serious. — Lamb. You shall hear the same persons say that George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello is very natural. — Lamb, ARCHAISM 195 Don Quixote shall last you a month for breakfast reading. — Spectator. Take them as they come, you shall find in the common people a surly indifference. — Emerson. The worst of making a mannerism of this shall is that, after the first two or three times, the reader is certain to see it coming ; for its function is nearly always the same — to bring in illustrations of a point already laid down. Some of us, like Mr. Andrew Lang for instance, cannot away with a person who does not care for Scott or Dickens. — Spectator. One needs not praise their courage. — EMERSON. What turn things are likely to take if this version be persisted in is a matter for speculation. — Titues. If Mr. Hobhouse's analysis of the vices of popular government be correct, much more would seem to be needed. — Times. Mr. Bowen has been, not recalled, but ordered to Washington, and will be expected to produce proof, if any he have^ of his charges against Mr. Loomis. — Times. It were futile to attempt to deprive it of its real meaning. — Times. It were idle to deny that the revolutionary movement in Russia is nowhere followed with keener interest than in this country. — Times. It %uere idle to deny that coming immediately after the Tangier demonstration it assumes special and unmistakable significance. — Times. He is putting poetic ' frills ', if the phrase be not too mean, on what is better stated in the prose summary of the argument. — Times. Regarded as a counter-irritant to slang, archaism is a failure. Frills is ten times more noticeable for the prim and pom- pous be. Under them the land is being rapidly frivolled away, and, unless immediate action be taken, the country will be so tied that . . . — Times. That will depend a good deal on whether he be shocked by the cynicism of the most veracious of all possible representations . . .— H. Jamp:s. We may not quote the lengthy passage here : it is probably familiar to many readers. — Ti?nes. 'We must not'. Similarly, the modern prose English for if I be, it were, is // / avi^ it ivonld be. ' I have no particular business at L.,' said he ; 'I was merely going thither to pass a day or two.' — BORROW. I am afraid you will hardly be able to ride your horse thither in time to dispose of him. — Borrow. O 2 196 AIRS AND GRACES It will necessitate my recurring thereto in the House of Commons. — spectator. The Scottish Free Church had theretofore prided itself upon the rigidity of its orthodoxy.— Br YCE. The special interests of France in Morocco, whereof \\i^ recognition by Great Britain and Spain forms the basis of the international agreements concluded last year by the French Government. — Times. To what extent has any philosophy or any revelation assured us hereof till now ?— F. W. H. Myers. On the concert I need not dwell ; the reader would not care to have my impressions thcreatient. — C. Bronte. There, not thither, is the modern form ; to it, not thereto ; of zvhich, of this, not 2v hereof, hereof) till theft, or up to that time, not tJicretofore. So, in the following examples, except, perhaps, before, though ; not save, perchance, ere, albeit. Nobody save an individual in no condition to distinguish a hawk from a handsaw . . . — Tiuies. My ignorance as to * figure of merit ' is of no moment save to myself. — Times. This we obtain by allowing imports to go untaxed save only for revenue purposes. — Spectator. Who now reads Barry Cornwall or Talfourd save only in connexion with their memorials of the rusty little man in black? — Times. In my opinion the movements may be attributed to unconscious cerebra- tion, save in those cases in which it is provoked wilfully. — Times. When Mr. Roosevelt was but barely elected Governor of New York, when Mr. Bryan was once and again by mounting majorities excused from service at the White House, perchance neither correctly forecasted the actual result. — Times. Dr. Bretton was a cicerone after my own heart ; he would take me betimes ere the galleries were filled. — C. Bronte. He is certainly not cruising on a trade route, or his presence would long ere this have been reported. — Tijnes. Mr. Shaynor unlocked a drawer, and ere he began to write, took out a meagre bundle of letters. — Kipling. Fortifications are fixed, immobile defences, and, in time of war, must await the coming of an enemy ere they can exercise their powers of offence. — Times. ' It is something in this fashion ', she cried out ere long ; ' the man is too romantic and devoted.'— C. Bronte. Ere departing, however, I determined to stroll about and examine the town. — Borrow. ARCHAISM — ere, aught, anent 197 The use of ere with a gerund is particularly to be avoided. And that she should force me, by the magic of her pen to mentally acknowledge, albeit with wrath and shame, my own inferiority ! — CORELLI. Such things as our modern newspapers chronicle, albeit in different form.— CORELLI. It is thought by experts that there could be no better use of the money, albeit the best American colleges, with perhaps one exception, have very strong staffs of professors at incredibly low salaries. — Tifnes. * Oxoniensis ' approaches them with courage, his thoughts are expressed in plain, unmistakable language, howbeit with the touch of a master hand. — Daily Telegraph. The writer means albeit \ he would have been safer with though. Living in a coterie, he seems to have read the laudations and not to have noticed aught else. — Times. Hence, if higher criticism, or aught besides, compels any man to question, say, the historic accuracy of the fall . . . — Daily Telegraph. Many a true believer owned not up to his faith. — Daily TeL'graph, The controversy now going on in your columns anent ' Do we believe ? ' throws a somewhat strange light upon the religion of to-day. — Daily Telegraph. It is because the world has not accepted the religion of Jesus Christ our Lord, that the world is in the parlous state we see it still. — Daily Telegraph. A discussion in which %uell nigh every trade, profession and calling have been represented. — Daily Telegraph. Why not ? Because we have well-nigh bordering on 300 different interpretations of the message Christ bequeathed us. — Daily Telegraph. It is quite a common thing to see ladies with their hymn-books in their hands, ere returning home from church enter shops and make purchases which might every whit as well have been effected on the Saturday. — Daily Telegraph. How oft do those who train young minds need to urge the necessity of being in earnest . . . — Daily Telegraph. I trow not. — Daily Telegraph. The clerk, as I conjectured him to be from his appearance, was also commoved ; for, sitting opposite to Mr. Morris, that honest gentleman's terror communicated itself to him, though he wotted not why. — ScOTT. I should be right glad if the substance could be made known to clergy and ministers of all denominations. — Daily Telegraph. So sordid are the lives of such natures, who are not only not heroic to their valets and waiting-women, but have neither valets nor waiting- women to be heroic to withal. — Dickens. 198 AIRS AND GRACES b. Sustained archaism in narrative and dialogue. A novelist who places his story in some former age may do so for the sake of a purely superficial variety, without any intention of troubling himself or his readers with temporal colour more than is necessary to avoid glaring absurdities ; he is then not concerned with archaism at all. More com- monly, however, it is part of his plan to present a living picture of the time of which he writes. When this is the case, he naturally feels bound to shun anachronism not only in externals, but in thought and the expression of thought. Now with regard to the language of his characters, it would be absurd for him to pretend to anything like consistent realism : he probably has no accurate knowledge of the language as his characters would speak it ; and if he had this knowledge, and used it, he would be unintelligible to most of his readers, and burdensome to the rest. Accordingly, if he is wase, he will content himself with keeping clear of such modes of expression as are essentially modern and have only modern associations, such as would jar upon the reader's sense of fitnessand destroy the time illusion. He will aim, that is to say, at a certain archaic directness and simplicity ; but with the archaic vocabulary, which instead of preserving the illusion only reminds us that there is an illusion to be pre- served, he will have little to do. This we may call negative archaism. Esmond is an admirable example of it, and the ' Dame Gossip ' part of Mr. Meredith's Amazing Marriage is another. It hardly occurs to us in these books that the language is archaic ; it is appropriate, that is all. The same may be said, on the whole, of Treasure Island^ and of one or two novels of Besant's. Only the novelist who is not wise indulges in positive archaism. He is actuated by the determination to have everything in character at all costs. He does not know very much about old English of any period ; very few people do, and those who know most of it would be the last to attempt ARCHAISM IN DIALOGUE 199 to write a narrative in it. He gives us, however, all that he knows, without much reference to particular periods ; it may not be good ancient English, but, come what may, it shall not be good modern. This, it need scarcely be said, is not fair play : the recreation is all on the writer's side. Archaism is, no doubt, very seductive to the archaist. Well done (that is, negatively done), it looks easy ; and to do it badly is perhaps even easier than it looks. No very considerable stock-in-trade is required; the following will do quite well : Prithee — quotha — perchance — peradventure — i' faith — sirrah — beshrew me — look ye — sith that — look to it — leave prating — it shall go hard but — I tell you, but — the more part — fair cold water — to me-ward — I am shrewdly afeared — it is like to go stiff with me — y' are — y' have — it irks me sorely — benison — staunch — gyves — yarely — this same villain — drink me this — you were better go ; to these may be added the indiscriminate use of ' Nay ' and ' Now (by the rood, &c.) ' ; free inversion ; and verb terminations in -st and -th. Our list is largely drawn from Stevenson, who, having tried negative archaism with success in Treasure Island^ chose to give us a positive specimen in TJie Black Arroiv. How vexatious these reach-me-down archaisms can become, even in the hands of an able writer, will be seen from the following examples of a single trick, all taken from The Black Arrozv. An I had not been a thief, I could not have painted me your face. Put 7ne your hand into the corner, and see what ye find there. Bring tne him down like a ripe apple. And keep ever forward, Master Shelton ; turn ?ne not back again, an ye love your life. Selden, take 7He this old shrew softly to the nearest elm, and hang me him tenderly by the neck, where I may see him at my riding. Mark me this old villain on the piebald. * Sirrah, no more words,' said Dick. ' Bend me your back.' 'Here is a piece of forest that 1 know not', Dick remarked. 'Where goeth jne this track ? ' ' I slew him fair. I ran me in upon his bow,' he cried. 'Swallow me a good draught of this,' said the knight. It is like a child with a new toy. 200 AIRS AND GRACES But there is the opposite fault. The judicious archaist, as we have said, will abstain from palpable modernisms, especially from modern slang. The following extracts are taken from an old woman's reminiscences of days in which a ' faultless attire ' included ' half high boots, knee-breeches very tight above the calf (as the fashion was then), a long-tailed cutaway coat, . . . ' : But the Captain, who, of course, lacks bowels of mercy for this kind of thing, says that if he had been Caesar, ' Caius would have got the great chuck. Yes, madam, I would have broke Mister Caius on the spot'. —CROCKET!'. But if you once go in for having a good time (as Miss Anne in her innocence used to remark) you must be prepared to . . . — CROCKETT. ... as all girls love to do when they are content with the way they have put in their /zw(?.— CROCKETT. Metaphor Strictly speaking, metaphor occurs as often as we take a word out of its original sphere and apply it to new circumstances. In this sense almost all words can be shown to be metaphorical when they do not bear a physical meaning ; for the original meaning of almost all words can be traced back to something physical ; in our first sentence above, for instance, there are eight different metaphors. Words had to be found to ex- press mental perceptions^ abstract ideas, and complex relations, for which a primitive vocabulary did not provide; and the obvious course was to convey the new idea by means of the nearest physical parallel. The commonest Latin verb for thijtk is a metaphor from vine-pruning ; ' seeing ' of the mind is borrowed from literal sight ; ' pondering ' is meta- phorical * weighing'. Evidently a metaphor of this kind is quite different in origin from such a phrase as ' smouldering ' discontent ; the former we may call, for want of a better word, 'natural' metaphor, as opposed to the latter, which is artificial. The word metaphor as ordinarily used suggests only the artificial kind : but in deciding on the merits or demerits of a metaphorical phrase we are concerned as much METAPHOR, 'LIVE' AND DEAD" 201 with the one class as the other ; for in all doubtful cases our first questions will be, what was the writer's intention in using the metaphor? is it his own, or is it common property? if the latter, did he use it consciously or unconsciously? This distinction, however, is useful only as leading up to another. We cannot use it directly as a practical test: artificial metaphors, as well as natural ones, often end by becoming a part of ordinary language; when this has happened, there is no telling to which class they belong, and in English the question is complicated by the fact that our metaphorical vocabulary is largely borrowed from Latin in the metaphorical state. Take such a word as explain : its literal meaning is ' spread out flat ' : how are we to say now whether necessity or picturesqueness first prompted its meta- phorical use? And the same doubt might arise centuries hence as to the origin of a phrase so obviously artificial to us as ' glaring inconsistency'. Our practical distinction will therefore be between conscious or 'living' and unconscious or ' dead' metaphor, whether natural or artificial in origin : and again, among living metaphors, we shall distinguish between the intentional, which are designed for effect, and the unintentional, which, though still felt to be metaphors, are used merely as a part of the ordinary vocabulary. It may seem at first sight that this classification leaves us where we were : how can we know whether a writer uses a particular metaphor consciously or unconsciously ? We cannot know for certain : it is enough if we think that he used it consciously, and know that we should have used it consciously ourselves ; experience will tell us how far our perceptions in this respect differ from other people's. Most readers, we think, will agree in the main with our classification of the following instances ; they are taken at random from a couple of pages of the Spectator. These we should call dead : ' his vieics were personal ' ; ' carry out his policy ' ; ' not acceptable to his colleagtics ' ; 202 AIRS AND GRACES 'the ChsinceWor proposed' 'i 'some groiinds for complainV \ 'refrain from talking about them '; 'the remission of the Tea- duty ' ; * sound policy ' ; 'a speech almost entirely composed of extracts ' ; ' reduction of taxation ' ; ' discussion ' ; ' the tow price of Consols'; 'fa/is due'; 'succeeded' ; * will approach their task ' ; ' delivered a speech ' ; 'postponing to a future year'. The next are living, but not intentional metaphor; the writer is aware that his phrase is still picturesque in effect, but has not chosen it for that reason : ' a Protestant atmospJiere' \ 'this would leave a margin of ;^ 122,000' ; 'the loss of elasticity ' in the Fund ; * recasting our whole Fiscal system ' ; * to uphold the unity of the Empire ' ; ' to strengthen the Exchequer balances'; 'all dwelt on the grave injury'; ' his somewhat shattered authority ' ; ' the policy of evasion novj pjirsued' \ ^ throivs new light on the situation'; ' d. gap in our fiscal system '. Intentional metaphors are of course less plentiful : * the home-rule motion designed to " draiv " Sir Henry ' ; * a dissolving view of General Elections ' ; ' this reassuring declaration knocks the bottom out of the plea of urgency ' ; ' the scattered remnants of that party might rally after the disastrous defeat \ One or two general remarks may be made before we proceed to instances. It is scarcely necessary to warn any one against over-indulgence in intentional m.etaphor ; its effects are too apparent. The danger lies rather in the use of live metaphor that is not intentional. The many words and phrases that fall under this class are all convenient ; as often as not they are the first that occur, and it is laborious, sometimes im- possible, to hit upon an equivalent ; the novice will find it worth while, however, to get one whenever he can. We may read a newspaper through without coming upon a single metaphor of this kind that is at all offensive in itself; it is in the aggregate that they offend. ' Cries aloud for', 'drop the curtain on ', ' goes hand in hand with ', ' a note of warning ', ' leaves its impress ', * paves the way for ', ' heralds the advent MIXED METAPHOR 203 of ', ' opens the door to ', are not themselves particularly noisy phrases ; but writers who indulge in them generally end by being noisy. Unintentional metaphor is the source, too, of most actual blunders. Every one is on his guard when his metaphor is in- tentional ; the nonsense that is talked about mixed metaphor, and the celebrity of one or two genuine instances of it that come down to us from the eighteenth century, have had that good effect. There are few obvious faults a novice is more afraid of committing than this of mixed metaphor. His fears are often groundless ; many a sentence that might have stood has been altered from a misconception of what mixed metaphor really is. The following points should be observed. 1. If only one of the metaphors is a live one, the confusion is not a confusion for practical purposes. 2. Confusion can only exist between metaphors that are grammatically inseparable ; parallel metaphors between which there is no grammatical dependence cannot result in con- fusion. The novice must beware, however, of being misled either by punctuation or by a parallelism that does not secure grammatical independence. Thus, no amount of punctuation can save the time-honoured example ' I smell a rat : I see him hovering in the air : ... I will nip him in the bud '. Him is inseparable from the later metaphors, and refers to the rat. But there is no confusion in the following passage ; any one of the metaphors can be removed without affecting the grammar : This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, ... This fortress built by Nature for herself ... This happy breed of men, this httle world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . . This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, . . . 3. Metaphor within metaphor is dangerous. Here there is a grammatical dependence between the metaphors, and if the 204 AIRS AND GRACES combination is unsuitable confusion will result. But combi- nation is one thing, and confusion is another : if the internal metaphor is not inconsistent with the external, there is no confusion, though there may be ugliness. To adapt one of our examples below, * The Empire's butcher (i. e. New Zea- land) has not all his eggs in one basket ' is not a confusion, because a metaphorical butcher can have his eggs in one basket as well as any one else. What does lead to confusion is the choice of an internal metaphor applicable not to the words of the external metaphor, but to the literal words for which it is substituted. In the following example, the confusion is doubtless intended. This pillar of the state Hath swallowed hook and bait. The swallowing is applicable only to the person metaphorically called a pillar. 4. Confusion of metaphor is sometimes alleged against sentences that contain only one metaphor — a manifest ab- surdity. These are really cases of a clash between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical. A striking or original metaphor is apt to appear violent, and a commonplace one impertinent, if not adequately borne out by the rest of the sentence. This we may label ' unsustained metaphor '. It sometimes produces much the same effect as mixed metaphor; but the remedy for it, as well as the cause, is different. Mixed metaphor is the result of negligence, and can generally be put right by a simple adaptation of the language to whichever metaphor is to be retained. Unsustained metaphor is rather an error of judgement: it is unsustained either because it was difficult to sustain, or because it was not worth sustaining ; in either case abandonment is the simplest course. This diverting incident contributed in a high degree to the general merriment. Here we have four different metaphors ; but as they are all dead, there is no real confusion. MIXED METAPHOR 205 This, as you know, was a burning question ; and its unseasonable introduction threw a chill on the spirits of all our party. Burning and chill are both live metaphors, they are gram- matically connected by its, and they are inconsistent ; there is therefore confusion. The uncertainty which hangs over every battle extends in a special degree to battles at sea. — Spectator. Extends is usually dead ; and if in this case it is living, it is also suitable. A centre and nucleus round which the scattered remnants of that party might rally after the disastrous defeat. — Spectator. The main or external metaphor is that of an army. Now any metaphor that is applicable to a literal army is also applicable to a metaphorical one: but 'rally round a nucleus' is a confusion of metaphor, to whichever it is applied ; it requires us to conceive of the army at the same time as animal and vegetable, miclcns being literally the kernel of a nut, and metaphorically a centre about which growth takes place. An army can have a nucleus, but cannot rally round it. Sir W. Laurier had claimed for Canada that she would be the granary and baker of the Empire, and Sir Edmund Barton had claimed for Australia that she would be the Empire's butcher ; but in New Zealand they had not all their eggs in one basket, and they could claim a combina- tion of the three. This is quoted in a newspaper as an example of mixed metaphor. It is nothing of the kind : tJiey in New Zealand are detached from the metaphor. We move slowly and cautiously from old moorings in our English life, that is our laudable constitutional habit ; but my belief is that the great majority of moderate churchmen, to whatever political party they may belong, desirous as they are to lift this question of popular education out of the party rut, . . . * A rut ', says the same newspaper, * is about the very last thing we should expect to find at sea, despite the fact that it is ploughed '. There is no mention of ruts at sea ; the two metaphors are independent. If the speaker had said 2o6 AIRS AND GRACES ' Moderate churchmen, moving at length from their old moor- ings, are beginning to lift this question out of the party rut', we should have had a genuine confusion, the moorings and the rut being then inseparable. Both this sentence and the pre- ceding one, the reader may think, would have been better without the second metaphor ; we agree, but it is a question of taste, not of correctness. . . . the keenest incentive man can feel to remedy ignorance and abolish guilt. It is under the impelling force of this incentive that civilization progresses. — Spectator. This illustrates the danger of deciding hastily on the deadness of a metaphor, however common it may be. Probably any one would have said that the musical idea in incentive had entirely vanished : but the successive attributes keenness and impelling force are too severe a test ; the dead metaphor is resuscitated, and a perceptible confusion results. Her forehand drive — her most trenchant asset. — Daily Mail. Another case of resuscitation. Tre7icha?it turns in its grave ; and assets ready to succumb under the violence of athletic reporters, has yet life enough to resent the imputation of a keen edge. As the critic of ' ruts at sea ' might have observed, the more blunt, the better the assets. And the very fact that the past is beyond recall imposes upon the present generation a continual stimulus to strive for the prevention of such woes. — Spectator. We impose a burden, we apply a stimulus. It looks as if the writer had meant by a short cut to give us both ideas ; if so, his guilt is clear ; and if we call impose a mere slip in idiom, the confusion is none the less apparent. Sword of the devil, running with the blood of saints, poisoned adder, thy work is done. These are independent metaphors ; and, as thy work is done is applicable to each of them, there is no confusion. In the hope that something might be done, even at the eleventh hour, to stave off the brand of failure from the hide of our military administra- tion. — Times. To stave off a brand is not, perhaps, impossible ; but we sus- MIXED METAPHOR 207 pect that it would be a waste of energy. The idea of bulk is inseparable from the process of staving off. The metaphor is usually applied to literal abstract nouns, not to metaphorical concretes : ruin and disaster one can suppose to be of a toler- able size ; but a metaphorical brand does not present itself to the imagination as any larger than a literal one. We assume that by braiidihQ instrument is meant : the eleventh hour is all too early to set about staving off the mark. This is a good example of mixed metaphor of the more pronounced type ; it differs only in degree from some of those considered above. We suggested that impose a stimiihis was perhaps a short cut to the expression of two different meta- phors, and the same might be said of staving off the bj^and. But we shall get a clearer idea of the nature of mixed meta- phor if we regard all these as violations of the following simple rule : When a live metaphor (intentional or uninten- tional) has once been chosen, the words grammatically connected with it must be either (a) recognizable parts of the same metaphorical idea, or one consistent with it, or (b) un- metaphorical, or dead metaphor ; literal abstract nouns, for instance, instead of metaphorical concretes. Thus, we shall impose not the stimulus, but either (a) the burden of re- sistance, or (b) the duty of resistance ; and we shall stave off not the ' brand ' but the * ignominy of failure from our military administration '. But from our remarks in 4 above, it will be clear that (b), though it cannot result in confusion of metaphor, may often leave the metaphor unsustained. Our examples illustrate several common types. Is it not a little difficult to ask for Liberal votes for Unionist Free- traders, if we put party interests in the front of the consideration ? — Spectator. May I be allowed to add a mite of experience of an original Volunteer in a good City regiment ? — Spectator. But also in Italy many ancient edifices have been recently coated with stucco and masked by superfluous repairs. — Spectator, 2o8 AIRS AND GRACES The elementary schools are hardly to be blamed for this failure. Their aim and their achievement have to content themselves chiefly with moral rather than with mental success. — Spectator. The scourge of tyranny had breathrd his last. The means of education at the disposal of the Protestants and Presby- terians of the North were stunted and sterilized. — Balfour. I once heard a Spaniard shake his head over the present Queen of Spain. — (Quoted by Spectator.) But, apart from all that, we see two pinching dilemmas even in this opium case — dilemmas that screw like a vice —which lell powerfully in favour of our Tory views. — De Ouincey. The reader who is uncharitable enough to insist upon the natural history of dilemmas will call this not unsustained metaphor, but a gross confusion ; horns cannot be said to screw. We prefer to believe that De Quincey was not think- ing of the horns at all ; they are a gratuitous metaphorical ornament ; dilemma, in English at any rate, is a literal word, and means an argument that presents two undesirable alter- natives. The circumstances of a dilemma are, indeed, such as to prompt metaphorical language, but the word itself is incorrigibly literal ; we confess as much by clapping horns on its head and making them do the metaphorical work. These remarks have been dictated in order that the importance of recog- nizing the difference and the value of soils may be understood. — J. LONG. This metaphor always requires that the dictator — usually a personified abstract — should be mentioned. ' Dictated by the importance '. The opposite fault of over-conscientiousness must also be noticed. Elaborate poetical metaphor has perhaps gone out of fashion ; but technical metaphor is apt to be overdone, and something of the same tendency appears in the inexorable working-out of popular catchword metaphors : Tost to and fro by the high winds of passionate control, I behold the desired port, the single state, into which I would fain steer ; but am kept off by the foaming billows of a brother's and sister's envy, and by the raging winds of a supposed invaded authority ; while I see in Lovelace, the rocks on the one hand, and in Solmes, the sands on the other ; and CATCHWORD METAPHORS, REPETITION 209 tremble, lest I should split upon the former or strike upon the latter. But you, my better pilot, . . .—Richardson. Such phases of it as we did succeed in mentally kodaking are hardly to be 'developed' in cold print. — Times. We are not photographers enough to hazard a comment on cold print. The leading planks of the Opposition policy are declared to be the proper audit of public accounts, . . . — Times. Repetition ' Rhetorical ' or — to use at once a wider and a more intelli- gible term — ' significant ' repetition is a valuable element in modern style ; used with judgement, it is as truly a good thing as clumsy repetition, the result of negligence, is bad. But there are some writers who^ from the fact that all good repe- tition is intentional, rashly infer that all intentional repetition is good ; and others who may be suspected of making repeti- tions from negligence, and retaining them from a misty idea that to be aware of a thing is to have intended it. Even when the repetition is a part of the writer's original plan, con- sideration is necessary before it can be allowed to pass : it is implied in the terms ' rhetorical ' or significant repetition that the words repeated would ordinarily be either varied or left out ; the repetition, that is to say, is more or less abnormal, and whatever is abnormal may be objectionable in a single instance, and is likely to become so if it occurs frequently. The writers who have most need of repetition, and are most justified in using it, are those whose chief business it is to appeal not to the reader's emotions, but to his understanding ; for, in spite of the term ' rhetorical ', the object ordinarily is not impressiveness for impressiveness* sake, but emphasis for the sake of clearness. It may seem, indeed, that a broad dis- tinction ought to be drawn between the rhetorical and the non-rhetorical : they differ in origin and in aim, one being an ancient rhetorical device to secure impressiveness, the other a modern development, called forth by the requirements of 2IO AIRS AND GRACES popular writers on subjects that demand lucidity ; and there is the further difference, that rhetorical repetition often dic- tates the whole structure of the sentence, whereas the non- rhetorical, in its commonest form, is merely the completion of a sentence that need not have been completed. But in practice the two things become inseparable, and we shall treat them together ; only pointing out to the novice that of the two motives, impressiveness and lucidity, the latter is far the more likely to seem justifiable in the reader's eyes. We shall illustrate both the good and bad points of repeti- tion almost exclusively from a few pages of Bagehot, one of its most successful exponents, in whom nevertheless it de- generates into mannerism. To a writer who has so much to say that is worth hearing, almost anything can be forgiven that makes for clearness ; and in him clearness, vigour, and a certain pleasant rapidity, all result from the free use of repetition. It will be seen that his repetitions are not of the kind properly called rhetorical ; it is the spontaneous fullness of a writer who, having a clear point to make, is determined to make it clearly, elegance or no elegance. Yet the growth of mannerism is easily seen in him ; the justifiable repetitions are too frequent, and he has some that do not seem justifiable. He analysed not a particular government, but what is common to all governments ; not one law, but what is common to all laws ; not political communities in their features of diversity, but political communities in their features of necessary resemblance. He gave politics not an interest- ing aspect, but a new aspect : for by giving men a steady view of what political communities must be, he nipped in the bud many questions as to what they ought to be. As a gymnastic of the intellect, and as a purifier, Mr. Austin's philosophy is to this day admirable — even in its imperfect remains; a young man who will study it will find that he has gained something which he wanted, but something which he did not know that he wanted : he has clarified a part of his mind which he did not know needed clarifying. All these powers were states of some magnitude, and some were states of great magnitude. They would be able to go on as they had always gone on— to shift for themselves as they had ahvays shifted. REPETITION 211 Without Spanish and without French, Walpole would have made a good peace ; Bolingbroke could not do so with both. Cold men may be wild in life and not wild in mind. But warm and eager men, fit to be the favourites of society, and fit to be great orators, will be erratic not only in conduct but in judgement. A man like Walpole, or a man like Louis Napoleon, is protected by an unsensitive nature from intellectual destruction. After a war which everyone was proud of, we concluded a peace which nobody was proud of, in a manner that everyone was ashamed of. He hated the City because they were Whigs, and he hated the Dutch because he had deserted them. But he professed to know nothing of commerce, and did know nothing. The fierce warlike disposition of the English people would not have endured such dishonour. We may doubt if it would have endured any peace. It certainly would not have endured the best peace, unless it were made with dignity and with honesty. Using the press without reluctance and without cessation. He ought to have been able to bear anything, yet he could bear nothing. He prosecuted many more persons than it was usual to prosecute then, and far more than have been prosecuted since . . . He thought that everything should be said for him, and that nothing should be said against him. Between these fluctuated the great mass of the Tory party, who did not like the House of Hanover because it had no hereditary right, who did not like the Pretender because he was a Roman Catholic. He had no popularity ; little wish for popularity ; little respect for popular judgement. Here is a writer who, at any rate, has not the vice of * elegant variation'. Most of the possibilities of repetition, for good and for evil, are here represented. As Bagehot himself might have said, ' we have instances of repetition that are good in themselves ; we have instances of repetition that are bad in themselves; and we have instances of repetition that are neither particularly good nor particularly bad in them- selves, but that offend simply by recurrence'. The ludicrous appearance presented by our collection as a whole necessarily obscures the merit of individual cases ; but if the reader will consider each sentence by itself, he will see that repetition is often a distinct improvement. The point best illustrated here, no doubt, is that it is possible to hav^e too much of P I 212 AIRS AND GRACES a good thing ; but it is a good thing for all that. As instances of unjustifiable mannerism, we may select 'fit to be the favourites . . ., and fit to be great orators ' ; * not political communities . . ., but political communities . . .' ; * something which he wanted, but something which he did not know that he wanted ' ; ' a man like Walpole, or a man like Louis Napoleon'; 'without reluctance and without cessation ' ; ' who did not like . . ., who did not like . . .' ; and ' without Spanish and without French '. We have men- tioned clearness as the ultimate motive for repetition of this kind : in this last sentence, we get not clearness, but obscurity. Any one would suppose that there was some point in the dis- tinction between Spanish and French : there is none ; the point is, simply, that languages do not make a statesman. Again, there is sometimes virtue in half-measures: from ' something which he did not know that he wanted ' remove the first three words, and there remains quite repetition enough. 'Wild in life and not wild in mind ' is a repetition that is clearly called for ; but it is followed by the wholly gratuitous * fit ... and fit . . .', and the result is disastrous. Finally, in 'who did not like . . ., who did not like . . .', mannerism gets the upper hand altogether : instead of the appearance of natural vigour that ordinarily characterizes the writer, we have stifT, lumbering artificiality. Writers like Bagehot do not tend at all to impressive repetition : their motive is always the business-like one of lucidity, though it is sometimes lucidity run mad. Repetition of this kind, not being designed to draw the reader's attention to itself, wears much better in practice than the more pro- nounced types of rhetorical repetition. The latter should be used very sparingly. As the spontaneous expression of strong feeling in the writer, it is sometimes justified by circumstances : employed as a deliberate artifice to impress the reader, it is likely to be frigid, and to fail in its object ; and the term * rhetorical ' should remind us in either case REPETITION 213 that what may be spoken effectively will not always bear the test of writing. Rhetorical repetition, when it is clearly distinguishable from the non-rhetorical, is too obvious to require much illustration. Of the three instances given, the last is an excellent test case for the principle that 'whatever is in- tentional is good '. I have summoned you here to witness your own work. I have sum- moned you here to witness it, because I know it will be gall and worm- wood to you. I have summoned you here to witness it, because I know the sight of everybody here must be a dagger in your mean false heart ! —Dickens. As the lark rose higher, he sank deeper into thought. As the lark poured out her melody clearer and stronger, he fell into a graver and profounder silence. At length, when the lark came headlong down ... he sprang up from his reverie. — Dickens. Russia may split into fragments, or Russia may become a volcano.— Spectator. Miscellaneous a. Some more trite phrases. The worn-out phrases considered in a former section were of a humorous tendency : we may add here some expressions of another kind, all of them calculated in one way or anothei to save the writer trouble ; the trouble of description, or of producing statistics, or of thinking what he means. Such phrases naturally die hard ; even ' more easily imagined than described ' still survives the rough handling it has met with, aud flourishes in writers of a certain class. ' Depend upon it', * you may take my word for it', 'in a vast majority of cases ', ' no thinking man will believe ', ' all candid judges must surely agree ', ' it would be a slaying of the slain ', ' I am old-fashioned enough to think ', are all apt to damage the cause they advocate. The shrill formula * It stands to reason ' is one of the worst offenders. Originally harmless, and still no doubt often used in quite rational contexts, the phrase has somehow got a bad 214 AIRS AND GRACES name for prefacing fallacies and for begging questions; it lacks the delicious candour of its feminine equivalent — 'Kindly allow me to know best'—, but appeals perhaps not less irresistibly to the generosity of an opponent. Apart from this, there is a correct and an incorrect use of the words. It is of course the conclusion drawn from certain premisses that stands to reason ; the premisses do not stand to reason ; they are assumed to be a matter of common knowledge, and ought to be distinguished from the conclusion by if or a causal participle, not co-ordinated with it by and. My dear fellow, it stands to reason that if the square of rt is ^ squared, and the square oi b \s b squared, then the square of a minus b is a squared minus b squared. You may argue till we are both tired, you will never alter that. It stands to reason that a thick tumbler, having a larger body of cold matter for the heat to distribute itself over, is less liable to crack when boiling water is poured into it than a thin one would be. It stands to reason that my men have their own work to attend to, and cannot be running about London all day rectifying other people's mistakes. It stands to reason that Russia, though vast, is a poor country, that the war must cost immense sums, and that there must come a time . . . — Spectator. Just as 'stands to reason' is not an argument, but an invitation to believe, ' the worthy Major ' not amusing, but an invitation to smile, so the sentimental or sensational novelist has his special vocabulary of the impressive, the tender, the tragic, and the horrible. One or two of the more obvious catch-phrases may be quoted. In the 'strong man' of fiction the reader may have observed a growing tendency to ' sob like a child ' ; the right-minded hero to whom tempta- tion comes decides, with archaic rectitude, that he 'will not do this thing' \ the villain, taught by incessant ridicule to abstain from 'muffled curses', finds a vent in 'discordant laughs, that somehow jarred unpleasantly upon my nerves ' ; this laugh, mutatis mutandis (' cruel little laugh, that some- how . . .'), he shares with the heroine, who for her exclusive ELEMENTARY IRONY 215 perquisite has ' this man who had somehow come into her hfe'. Somehow and half-dazed are invaluable for throwing a mysterious glamour over situations and characters that shun the broad daylight of common sense. b. Elementary irony. A well-known novelist speaks of the resentment that children feel against those elders who insist upon addressing them in a jocular tone, as if serious conversation between the two were out of the question. Irony is largely open to the same objec- tion : the writer who uses it is taking our intellectual measure; he forgets our ex officio perfection in wisdom. Theoretically, indeed, the reader is admitted to the author's confidence ; he is not the corpus vile on which experiment is made : that, how- ever, is scarcely more convincing than the two-edged formula * present company excepted '. For minute, detailed illustra- tion of truths that have had the misfortune to become commonplaces without making their due impression, sus- tained irony has its legitimate use : tired of being told, and shown by direct methods, that only the virtuous man is admirable, we are glad enough to go off with Fielding on a brisk reductio ad absiirdjim : ' for if not, let some other kind of man be admirable ; as Jonathan Wild '. But the reductio process should be kept for emergencies, as Euclid kept it, with whom it is a confession that direct methods are not available. The isolated snatches of irony quoted below have no such justification : they are for ornament, not for utility ; and it is a kind of ornament that is peculiarly un-English — a way of shrugging one's shoulders in print. He had also the comfortable reflection that, by the violent quarrel with Lord Dalgarno, he must now forfeit the friendship and good offices of that nobleman's father and sister. — ScOTT. Naturally that reference was received with laughter by the Opposition, who are, or profess to be, convinced that our countrymen in the Transvaal do not intend to keep faith with us. They are very welcome to the monopoly of that unworthy estimate, which must greatly endear them to all our kindred beyond seas. — Times. 2i6 AIRS AND GRACES The whole of these proceedings were so agreeable to Mr. Pecksniff, that he stood with his eyes fixed upon the floor . . ., as if a host of penal sentences were being passed upon him. — Dickens. The time comes when the banker thinks it prudent to contract some of his accounts, and this may be one which he thinks it expedient to reduce: and then perhaps he makes the pleasant discovery, that there are no such persons at all as the acceptors, and that the funds for meeting all these bills have been got from himself! — H. D. MACLEOD. Pleasant is put for unpleasant because the latter seemed dull and unnecessary ; the writer should have taken the hint, and put nothing at all. The climax is reached by those pessimists who, regarding the reader's case as desperate, assist him with punctuation, italics, and the like: And this honourable (?) proposal was actually made in the presence of two at least of the parties to the former transaction ! These so-called gentlernen seem to forget . . . I was content to be snubbed and harassed and worried a hundred times a day by one or other of the ' great ' personages who wandered at will all over my house and grounds, and accepted my lavish hospitality. Many people imagine that it must be an ' honour ' to entertain a select party of aristocrats, but I . . . — Corelli. The much-prated-of ' kindness of heart ' and ' generosity ' possessed by millionaires, generally amounts to this kind of thing. — Corelli. Was I about to discover that the supposed 'woman-hater' had been tamed and caught at last ? — Corelli. That should undoubtedly have been your 'great ' career— you were bom for it— made for it ! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now . . . — Corelli. c. Superlatives without the. The omission of the with superlatives is limited by ordinary prose usage to (i) Superlatives after a possessive: 'Your best plan '. (%) Superlatives with most : * in most distressing circumstances', but not *in saddest circumstances'. (3) Superlatives in apposition, followed hyof\ 'I took refuge with X., kindliest of hosts ' ; * We are now at Weymouth, dingiest of decayed watering-places '. Many writers of the present day affect the omission of the in all cases where SUPERLATIVES, CHEAP ORIGINALITY 217 the superlative only means very. No harm will be done if they eventually have their way : in the meantime, the omission of the with inflected superlatives has the appearance of gross mannerism. Our enveloping movements since some days proved successful, and fiercest battle is now proceeding. — Times. In which, too, so many noblest men have . . . both made and been what will be venerated to all time. — Carlyle. Struggling with objects which, though it cannot master them, are essentially of richest significance. — Carlyle. The request was urged with every kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word. — EMERSON. In Darkest Africa.— Stanley. Delos furnishes, not only quaintest tripods, crude bronze oxen and horses like those found at Olympia, but . . . — L. M. Mitchell. The scene represents in crudest forms the combat of gods and giants, a subject which should attain long afterwards fullest expression in the powerful frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamon.— L. M. Mitchell. A world of highest and noblest thought in dramas of perfect form. — L. M. Mitchell. From earliest times such competitive games had been celebrated. — L. M. Mitchell. When fullest, freest forms had not yet been developed.— L. M. Mitchell. d. Cheap originality. Just as ' elegant variation * is generally a worse fault than monotony, so the avoidance of trite phrases is sometimes worse than triteness itself. Children have been known to satisfy an early thirst for notoriety by merely turning their coats inside out ; and ' distinction ' of style has been secured by some writers on the still easier terms of writing a common expression backwards. By this simplest of all possible expe- dients, 'wear and tear' ceases to be English, and becomes Carlylese, and Emerson acquires an exclusive property (so at least one hopes) in ' nothing or little '. The novice need scarcely be warned against infringing these writers' patents ; it would be as unpardonable as stealing the idea of a machine for converting clean knives into dirty ones. Hackneyed phrases 2i8 AIRS AND GRACES become hackneyed because they are useful, in the first instance; but they derive a new efficiency from the very fact that they are hackne)'ed. Their precise form grows to be an essential part of the idea they convey, and all that a writer effects by turning such a phrase backwards, or otherwise tampering with it, is to give us our triteness at secondhand ; we are put to the trouble of translating * tear and wear ', only to arrive at our old friend ' wear and tear ', hackneyed as ever. How beautiful is noble-sentiment; like gossamer-gauze beautiful and cheap, which will stand no tear and wear. — Carlyle. Bloated promises, which end in nothing or little. — Emerson. The universities also are parcel oix\\t ecclesiastical system. — Emerson. Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever national 7fi an, were by this means sent to Parliament. — Emerson. And the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. — Emerson. The faster the ball falls to the sun, the force to fly off is by so much augmented. — Emerson. The friction in nature is so enormous that we cannot spare any power. It is not question to express our thought, to elect our way, but to overcome resistances. — Emerson. CHAPTER IV PUNCTUATION In this chapter we shall adhere generally to our plan of not giving systematic positive directions^ or attempting to cover all ground familiar and unfamiliar, important or not, but drawing attention only to the most prevalent mistakes. On so technical a subject, however, a few preliminary remarks may be made ; and to those readers who would prefer a care- ful, systematic, and not over-long treatise, Beadnell's Spelling and Punctuation (Wyman, 2/6) is recommended. We shall refer to it occasionally in what follows ; and the examples to which — B. is attached instead of an author's name are taken from it ; these are all given in Beadnell (unless the contrary is stated) as examples of correct punctuation. It should be added that the book is written rather from the compositor's than from the author's point of view, and illustrates the compositor's natural weaknesses ; it is more important to him, for instance, that a page should not be unsightly (the unsightliness being quite imaginary, and the result of profes- sional conservatism) than that quotation marks and stops, or dashes and stops, should be arranged in their true significant order; but, as the right and unsightly is candidly given as well as the wrong and beautiful, this does not matter ; the student can take his choice. We shall begin by explaining how it is that punctuation is a difficult matter, and worth a writer's serious attention. There are only six stops, comma, semicolon, colon, full stop, question mark, exclamation mark ; or, with the dash, seven. The work of tliree of them, full stop, question, exclamation, is 220 PUNCTUATION so clear that mistakes about their use can hardly occur with- out gross carelessness ; and it might be thought that with the four thus left it ought to be a very simple matter to exhaust all possibilities in a brief code of rules. It is not so, however. Apart from temporary disturbing causes — of which two now operative are (i) the gradual disappearance of the colon in its old use with the decay of formal periodic arrangement, and (2) the encroachments of the dash as a saver of trouble and an exponent of emotion — there are also permanent difhculties. Before mentioning these we observe that the four stops in the strictest acceptation of the word (,) (;) (:) (.) — for (!) and (?) are tones rather than stops — form a series (it might be ex- pressed also by i, 2, 3, 4), each member of which directs us to pause for so many units of time before proceeding. There is essentially nothing but a quantitative time relation between them. The first difficulty is that this single distinction has to con- vey to the reader differences of more than one kind, and not commensurable ; it has to do both logical and rhetorical work. Its logical work is helping to make clear the gram- matical relations between parts of a sentence or paragraph and the whole or other parts : its rhetorical work is con- tributing to emphasis, heightening effect, and regulating pace. It is in vain that Beadnell lays it down : * The variation of pause between the words of the same thought is a matter of rhetoric and feeling, but punctuation depends entirely upon the variation of relations — upon logical and grammatical principles '. The difference between these two : The master beat the scholar with a strap. — B. The master beat the scholar, with a strap. is in logic nothing ; but in rhetoric it is the difference between matter-of-fact statement and indignant statement : a strap, we are to understand from the comma, is a barbarous instrument. Again, in the two following examples, so far as logic goes, commas would be used in both, or semicolons in both. But LOGIC AND RHETORIC 221 the writer of the second desires to be slow, staccato, and im- pressive : the writer of the first desires to be rapid and flowing, or rather, perhaps, does not desire to be anything other than natural. Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, philosophers in systems, logicians in subtilties, and metaphysicians in sounds. — B. In the eclogue there must be nothing rude or vulgar ; nothing fanciful or affected ; nothing subtle or abstruse. — B. The difference is rhetorical, not logical. It is true, however, that modern printers make an effort to be guided by logic or grammar alone ; it is impossible for them to succeed entirely ; but any one who will look at an Elizabethan book with the original stopping will see how far they have moved : the old stopping was frankly to guide the voice in reading aloud, while the modern is mainly to guide the mind in seeing through the grammatical construction. A perfect system of punctuation, then, that should be exact and uniform, would require separate rhetorical and logical notations in the first place. Such a system is not to be desired ; the point is only that, without it, usage must fluctuate according as one element is allowed to interfere with the other. But a second difficulty remains, even if we assume that rhetoric could be eliminated altogether. Our stop series, as explained above, provides us with four degrees ; but the degrees of closeness and remoteness between the members of sentence or paragraph are at the least ten times as many. It is easy to show that the comma, even in its purely logical function, has not one, but many tasks to do, which differ greatly in importance. Take the three examples : His method of handling the subject was ornate, learned, and per- spicuous. — B. The removal of the comma after learned makes so little difference that it is an open question among compositors whether it should be used or not. The criminal, who had betrayed his associates, was a prey to remorse. 222 PUNCTUATION With the commas, the criminal is necessarily a certain person already known to us : without them, we can only suppose a past state of society to be described, in which all traitors were ashamed of themselves — a difference of some importance. Colonel Hutchinson, the Governor whom the King had now appointed, having hardened his heart, resolved on sterner measures. Omission of the comma after appointed gives us two persons instead of one, and entirely changes the meaning, making the central words into, what they could not possibly be with the comma, an absolute construction. These commas, that is, have very different values ; many intermediate degrees might be added. Similarly the semi- colon often separates grammatically complete sentences, but often also the mere items of a list, and between these extremes it marks other degrees of separation. A perfect system for the merely logical part of punctuation, then, would require some scores of stops instead of four. This again is not a thing to be desired ; how little, is clear from the fact that one of our scanty supply, the colon, is now practically disused as a member of the series, and turned on to useful work at certain odd jobs that will be mentioned later. A series of stops that should really represent all gradations might perhaps be worked by here and there a writer consistently with himself ; but to persuade all writers to observe the same distinctions would be hopeless. A third difficulty is this: not only must many tasks be performed by one stop; the same task is necessarily per- formed by different stops according to circumstances ; as if polygamy were not bad enough, it is complicated by an admixture of polyandry. We have already given two sen- tences of nearly similar pattern, one of which had its parts separated by commas, the other by semicolons, and we remarked that the difference was there accounted for by the intrusion of rhetoric. But the same thing occurs even when logic or grammar (it should be explained that grammar is LOGIC AND RHETORIC 223 sometimes defined as logic applied to speech, so that for our purposes the two are synonymous) is free from the disturbing influence ; or when that influence acts directly, not on the stop itself that is in question, but only on one of its neigh- bours. To illustrate the first case, when the stops are not affected by rhetoric, but depend on grammar alone, we may take a short sentence as a nucleus, elaborate it by successive additions, and observe how a particular stop has to go on increasing its power, though it continues to serve only the same purpose, because it must keep its predominance. When ambition asserts the monstrous doctrine of millions made for individuals, is not the good man indignant? The function of the comma is to mark the division between the subordinate and the main clauses. When ambition asserts the monstrous doctrine of millions made for individuals, their playthings, to be demolished at their caprice ; is not the good man indignant? The semicolon is doing now exactly what the comma did before ; but, as commas have intruded into the clause to do the humble yet necessary work of marking two appositions, the original comma has to dignify its relatively more impor- tant office by converting itself into a semicolon. When ambition asserts the monstrous doctrine of millions made for individuals, their playthings, to be demolished at their caprice ; sporting wantonly with the rights, the peace, the comforts, the existence, of nations, as if their intoxicated pride would, if possible, make God's earth their football : is not the good man indignant ? — B. The new insertion is also an apposition, like the former ones ; but, as it contains commas within itself, it must be raised above their level by being allowed a semicolon to part it from them. The previous semicolon, still having the same supreme task to do, and challenged by an upstart rival, has nothing for it but to change the regal for the imperial crown, and become a colon. A careful observer will now object that, on these principles, our new insertion ought to have had an internal semicolon, to differentiate the subordinate clause, as 224 PUNCTUATION //. &c., from the mere enumeration commas that precede ; in which case the semi-colon after caprice should be raised to a colon ; and then what is the newly created emperor to do ? there is no papal tiara for him to assume, the full stop being confined to the independent sentence. The objection is quite just, and shows how soon the powers of the four stops are exhausted if relentlessly worked. But we are concerned only to notice that the effect of stops, even logically considered, is relative, not absolute. It is also true that many modern writers, if they put down a sentence like this, would be satis- fied with using commas throughout ; the old-fashioned air of the colon will hardly escape notice. But the whole arrange- ment is according to the compositor's art in its severer form. A specimen of the merely indirect action of rhetoric may be more shortly disposed of. In a sentence already quoted — Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, philosophers in systems, logicians in subtilties, and metaphysicians in sounds — suppose the writer to have preferred for impressive effect, as we said he might have, to use semicolons instead of commas. The immediate result of that would be that what before could be left to the reader to do for himself (i. e., the supply- ing of the words have sought knoivledge in each member) will in presence of the semicolon require to be done to the eye by commas, and the sentence will run : Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures ; philosophers, in systems ; logicians, in subtilties ; and metaphysicians, in sounds. But, lest we should be thought too faithful followers of the logicians, we will now assume that our point has been suffi- ciently proved : the difficulties of punctuation, owing to the interaction of different purposes, and the inadequacy of the instruments, are formidable enough to be worth grappling with. We shall now only make three general remarks before pro- ceeding to details. The first is implied in what has been already said : the work of punctuation is mainly to show, or FULL AND SLIGHT STOPPING 225 hint at, the grammatical relation between words, phrases, clauses, and sentences ; but it must not be forgotten that stops also serve to regulate pace, to throw emphasis on par- ticular words and give them significance, and to indicate tone. These effects are subordinate, and must not be allowed to conflict with the main object ; but as the grammatical relation may often be shown in more than one way, that way can be chosen which serves another purpose best. Secondly, it is a sound principle that as few stops should be used as will do the work. There is a theory that scientific or philosophic matter should be punctuated very fully and exactly, whereas mere literary work can do with a much looser system. This is a mistake, except so far as scientific and philosophic writers may desire to give an impressive effect by retarding the pace ; that is legitimate ; but otherwise, all that is printed should have as many stops as help the reader, and not more. A resolution to put in all the stops that can be correctly used is very apt to result in the appearance of some that can only be used incorrectly ; some of our quota- tions from Huxley and Mr. Balfour may be thought to illus- trate this. And whereas slight stopping may venture on small irregularities, full stopping that is incorrect is also un- pardonable. The objection to full stopping that is correct is the discomfort inflicted upon readers, who are perpetually being checked like a horse with a fidgety driver. Thirdly, every one should make up his mind not to depend on his stops. They are to be regarded as devices, not for saving him the trouble of putting his words into the order that naturally gives the required meaning, but for saving his reader the moment or two that would sometimes, without them, be necessarily spent on reading the sentence twice over, once to catch the general arrangement, and again for the details. It may almost be said that what reads wrongly if the stops are removed is radically bad ; stops are not to alter meaning, but merely to show it up. Those who are learning N.S. Q 226 PUNCTUATION to write should make a practice of putting down all they want to say without stops first. What then, on reading over, naturally arranges itself contrary to the intention should be not punctuated, but altered ; and the stops should be as few as possible, consistently with the recognized rules. At this point those rules should follow; but adequately explained and illustrated, they would require a volume ; and we can only speak of common abuses and transgressions of them. First comes what may be called for short the spot-plague — the tendency to make full-stops do all the work. The comma, most important, if slightest, of all stops, cannot indeed be got rid of. though even for that the full-stop is substituted when possible ; but the semicolon is now as much avoided by many writers as the colon (in its old use) by most. With the semicolon go most of the conjunctions. Now there is something to be said for the change, or the two changes : the old-fashioned period, or long complex sentence, carefully worked out with a view to symmetry, balance, and degrees of subordination, though it has a dignity of its own, is formal, stiff, and sometimes frigid ; the modern newspaper vice of long sentences either rambling or involved (far com- moner in newspapers than the spot-plague) is inexpressibly wearisome and exasperating. Simplification is therefore desirable. But journalists now and then, and writers with more literary ambition than ability generally, overdo the thing till it becomes an affectation ; it is then little different from Victor Hugo's device of making every sentence a paragraph, and our last state is worse than our first. Patronizing arch- ness, sham ingenuousness, spasmodic interruption, scrappy argument, dry monotony, are some of the resulting impres- sions. We shall have to trouble the reader with at least one rather long specimen ; the spot-plague in its less virulent form, that is, when it is caused not by pretentiousness or bad taste, but merely by desire to escape from the period, does not declare itself very rapidly. What follows is a third or so THE SPOT-PLAGUE 227 of a literary review, of which the whole is in exactly the same style, and which might have been quoted entire for the same purpose. It will be seen that it shows twenty full-stops to one semicolon and no colons. Further, between no two of the twenty sentences is there a conjunction. The life of Lord Chatham, which has just appeared in three volumes, by Dr. Albert v. Ruville of the University of Halle deserves special notice. It is much the most complete life which has yet appeared of one of the most commanding figures in English history. It exhibits that thoroughness of method which characterized German historical writings of other days, and which has not lately been conspicuous. It is learned without being dull, and is free from that uncritical spirit of hostility to England which impairs the value of so many recent German histories. That portion which deals with the closing years of George II and with events following the accession of George III is exceptionally interesting. One of the greatest misfortunes that ever happened to England was the resignation of Pitt in 1761. It was caused, as we all know, by difference of opinion with his colleagues on the Spanish question. Ferdinand VI of Spain died in 1759, and was succeeded by King Charles III, one of the most remarkable princes of the House of Bourbon. This sovereign was an enthusiastic adherent of the policy which found expression in the celebrated family compact. On August 15, 1761, a secret convention was concluded between France and Spain, under which Spain engaged to declare war against England in May, 1762. Pitt quite understood the situation. He saw that instant steps should be taken to meet the danger, and proposed at a Cabinet held on October 2 that war should be declared against Spain. Newcastle, Hardwicke, Anson, Bute, and Mansfield combated this proposal, which was rejected, and two days afterwards Pitt resigned. His scheme was neither immature nor ill-considered. He had made his preparations to strike a heavy blow at the enemy, to seize the Isthmus of Panama, thereby securing a port in the Pacific, and separating the Spanish provinces of Mexico and Peru. He had planned an expedition against Havana and the Philippine Islands, where no adequate resistance could have been made ; and, had he remained in office, there is but little doubt that the most precious possessions of Spain in the New World would have been incorporated in the British Empire. When he left the Cabinet all virility seems to have gone out of it with him. As he had foreseen, Spain declared war on England at a suitable moment for herself, and the unfortunate negotiations were opened leading to the Peace of Paris in 1763, which was pregnant with many disastrous results for England. The circumstances which led to the resignation of Pitt are dealt with by Q 2 228 PUNCTUATION Dr. V. Ruvillc much more lucidly than by most historians. This portion of his work is the more interesting because of the pains he takes to clear George HI from the charge of conspiring against his great Minister. — Times. The reader's experience has probably been that the constant fresh starts are at first inspiriting, that about half-way he has had quite enough of the novelty, and that he is intensely grateful, when the solitary semicolon comes into sight, for a momentary lapse into ordinary gentle progress. Writers like this may almost be suspected of taking literally a summary piece of advice that we have lately seen in a book on English composition : Never use a semicoloji when you ean employ a full-stop. Beadnell lays down a law that at first sight seems to amount to the same thing : The notion of parting short independent sentefices other ivise thajt by a full-stop, rests upon 710 rational foundatio7i, and leads to endless perplexities. But his practice clears him of the imputation : he is saved by the ambiguity of the word indepe7ident. There are grammatical dependence, and dependence of thought. Of all those ' little hard round unconnected things ', in the Ti77tes review, that ' seem to come upon one as shot would descend from a shot- making tower ' (Sir Arthur Helps), hardly one is not depen- dent on its neighbours in the more liberal sense, though each is a complete sentence and independent in grammar. Now one important use of stops is to express the degrees of thought dependence. A style that groups several complete sentences together, by the use of semicolons, because they are more closely connected in thought, is far more restful and easy — for the reader, that is — than the style that leaves him to do the grouping for himself ; and yet it is free from the formality of the period, which consists, not of grammatically independent sentences, but of a main sentence with many subordinate clauses. We have not space for a long example of the group system rightly applied ; most good modern writers free from the craving to be up to date will supply THE GROUP SYSTEM 229 them on every page ; but a very short quotation may serve to emphasize the difference between group and spot-plague principles. The essence of the latter is that almost the only stops used are full-stops and commas, that conjunctions are rare, and that when a conjunction does occur the comma is generally used, not the full-stop. What naturally follows is an arrangement of this kind : The shell of Ravensnuik was, for the present at least, at his disposal. The foreman or 'grieve' at the Home Farm was anxious to be friendly, but even if he lost that place, Dan Weir knew that there was plenty of others.— Crockett. (To save trouble, let it be stated that the sheil is a dependency of the Home Farm, and not contrasted with or opposed to it.) Here there are three grammatically independent sentences, between the two latter of which the conjunction btdis inserted. It follows from spot-plague principles that there will be a full- stop at the end of the first, and a comma at the end of the second. With the group system it is not so simple a matter ; before we can place the stops, we have to inquire how the three sentences are connected in thought. It then appears that the friendliness of the grieve is mentioned to account for the shell's being at disposal ; that is, there is a close connexion, though no conjunction, between the first and the second sen- tences. Further, the birds in the bush of the third sentence are contrasted, not with the second sentence's friendliness, but with the first sentence's bird in the hand (which, however, is accounted for by the second sentence's friendliness). To group rightly, then, we must take care, quite reversing the author's punctuation, that the first and second are separated by a stop of less power than that which separates the third from them. Comma, semicolon, would do it, if the former were sufficient between two grammatically independent sen- tences not joined by a conjunction ; it obviously is not sufficient here (though in some such pairs it might be) ; so, instead of comma, semicolon, we must use semicolon, full- 230 PUNCTUATION stop ; and the sentence will run, with its true meaning much more clearly given : The shell of Ravensnuik was, for the present at least, at his disposal; the foreman or 'grieve' at the Home Farm was anxious to be friendly. But even if he lost that place, Dan Weir knew that there was plenty of others. The group system gives more trouble to the writer or com- positor, and Jess to the reader ; the compositor cannot be expected to like it. if the burden falls on him ; inferior writers cannot be expected to choose it either, perhaps; but the good writers who do choose it no doubt find that after a short time the work comes to do itself by instinct. We need now only add two or three short specimens, worse, though from their shortness less remarkable, than the Times extract. They are not specially selected as bad ; but it may be hoped that by their juxtaposition they may have some deterrent effect. So Dan opened the door a little and the dog came out as if nothing had happened. It was now clear. The light was that of late evening. The air hardly more than cool. A gentle fanning breeze came from the North and . . .—CROCKETT. Allies must have common sentiments, a common policy, common interests. Russia's disposition is aggressive. Her p.^licy is the closed door. Her interests lie in monopoly. With our country it is precisely the opposite. Japan may conquer, but she will not aggress. Russia may be defeated, but she will not abandon her aggression. With such a country an alliance is beyond the conception even of a dream. — Times. Upon a hillside, a great swelling hillside, high up near the clouds, lay a herd lad. Little more than a boy he was. He did not know much, but he wanted to know more. He was not very good, but he wanted to be better. He was lonely, but of that he was not aware. On the whole he was content up there on his great hillside. — Crockett. To be popular you have to be interested, or appear to be interested, in other people. And there are so many in this world in whom it is impos- sible to be interested. So many for whom the m.ost skilful hypocrisy cannot help us to maintain a semblance of interest. — Daily Telegraph. Of course a girl so pretty as my Miss Anne could not escape having many suitors, especially as all over the countryside Sir Tempest had the OVER-STOPPING 231 name of being something of a skinflint. And skinflints are always rich, as is well known.— Crockett. The last sentence here is a mere comment on what is itself only an appendage, the clause introduced by especially ; it has therefore no right to the dignity of a separate sentence. But it can hardly be mended without some alteration of words as well as stops ; for instance, put a semicolon after suitors, write moreover for especially as, and put only a comma after skinflint ; the right proportion would then be secured. The spot-plague, as we have shown, sometimes results in illogicality ; it need not do so, however ; when it does, the fault lies with the person who, accepting its principles, does not arrange his sentences to suit them. It is a new-fashioned and, in our opinion, unpleasant system, but quite compatible with correctness. Over-stopping, to which we now proceed, is on the contrary old-fashioned ; but it is equally compatible with correctness. Though old-fashioned, it still lingers obstinately enough to make some slight protest desirable; the superstition that every possible stop should be inserted in scientific and other such writing misleads compositors, and their example affects literary authors who have not much ear. Any one who finds himself putting down several commas close to one another should reflect that he is making himself disagreeable, and question his conscience, as severely as we ought to do about disagreeable conduct in real life, whether it is necessary. He will find that the parenthetic or emphatic effect given to an adverbial phrase by putting a comma at each end of it is often of no value whatever to his meaning ; in other words, that he can make himself agreeable by merely putting off a certain pompous solemnity; erasing a pair of commas may make the difference in writing that is made in conversation by a change of tone from the didactic to the courteous. Sometimes the abundance of commas is not so easily reduced ; a change in the order of words, the omission of a needless 232 PUNCTUATION adverb or conjunction, even the recasting of a sentence, may be necessary. But it is a safe statement that a gathering of commas (except on certain lawful occasions, as in a list) is a suspicious circumstance. The sentence should at least be read aloud, and if it halts or jolts some change or other should be made. The smallest portion possible of curious interest had been awakened within me, and, at last, I asked myself, within my own mind . . . — Borrow. None of the last three commas is wanted ; those round at last are very unpleasant, and they at least should be omitted. In questions of trade and finance, questions which, owing, perhaps, to their increasing intricacy, seem . . . — Bryce. Perhaps can do very well without commas. It is, however, already plain enough that, unless, indeed, some great catastrophe should upset all their calculations, the authorities have very little intention . . .— Times, Indeed can do without commas, if it cannot itself be done without. Jeannie, too, is, just occasionally, like a good girl out of a book by a sentimental lady-novelist.— y'/w^j-. \ijust is omitted, there need be no commas round occasionally. There may be a value in just; but hardly enough to compensate for the cruel jerking at the bit to which the poor reader is subjected by a remorseless driver. Thus, their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modem lights, it may have been, brought them face to face with . . . — Huxley. The comma after t/ius is nothing if not pompous. And another can be got rid of by putting it may have been before judged by modern lights. Lilias suggested the advice which, of all others, seemed most suited to the occasion, that, yielding, namely, to the circumstances of their situation, they should watch . . . — ScOTT. Omit namely and its commas. Shakespeare, it is true, had, as 1 have said, as respects England, the privilege which only first-comers enjoy. — Lowell, OVER-STOPPING 233 A good example of the warning value of commas. None of these can be dispensed with, since there are no less than three parenthetic qualifications to the sentence. But the crowd of commas ought to have told the writer how bad his sentence was ; it is like an obstacle race. It should begin, It is true that. . ., which disposes of one obstacle. As I have said z-axv be given a separate sentence afterwards — So much has been said before. Private banks and capitalists constitute the main bulk of the sub- scribers, and, apparently, they are prepared to go on subscribing indefinitely. — Times. Putting commas round apparently amounts to the insertion of a further clause, such as, Though you would not think they could be such fools. But what the precise contents of the further clause may be is problematic. At any rate, a writer should not invite us to read between the lines unless he is sure of two things : what he wants to be read there ; and that we are likely to be willing and able readers of it. The same is true of many words that are half adverbs and half conjunc- tions, like therefore. We have the right to comma them oft" if we like ; but, unless it is done with a definite purpose, it produces perplexity as well as heaviness. In the first of the next two examples, there is no need whatever for the commas. In the second, the motive is clear : having the choice between commas and no commas, the reporter uses them because he so secures a pause after he, and gives the word that emphasis which in the speech as delivered doubtless made the / that it represents equivalent to I for my part. Both Tom and John knew this ; and, therefore, John— the soft-hearted one— kept out of the way. — Trollope. It would not be possible to sanction an absolutely unlimited expendi- ture on the Volunteers ; the burden on the tax-payers would be too great. He, therefore, wished that those who knew most about the Volunteers would make up their minds as to the direction in which there should be development. — Times. Aii^r for and and beginning a sentence commas are often 234 PUNCTUATION used that are hardly even correct. It may be suspected that writers allow themselves to be deceived by the false analogy of sentences in which the atid ox for is immediately followed by a subordinate clause or phrase that has a right to its two commas. When there is no such interruption, the only possible plea for the comma is that it is not logical but rhetorical, and conveys some archness or other special signifi- cance such as is hardly to be found in our two examples : The lawn, the soft, smooth slope, the . . . bespeak an amount of elegant comfort within, that would serve for a palace. This indication is not without warrant ; for, within it is a house of refinement and luxur)'. — Dickens. And, it is true that these were the days of mental and moral fermenta- tion.— Hutton. We shall class here also, assuming for the present that the rhetorical plea may be allowed even when there is no logical justification for a stop, two sentences in which the copula is, standing between subject and complement, has commas on each side of it. Impressiveness is what is aimed at ; it seems to us a tawdry device for giving one's sentence an ex cathedra air : The reason why the world lacks unity, is, because man is disunited with himself.— Emerson. The charm in Nelson's history, is, the unselfish greatness. — Emerson. Many other kinds of over-stopping might be illustrated ; but we have intentionally confined ourselves here to specimens in which grammatical considerations do not arise, and the sentence is equally correct whether the stops are inserted or not. Sentences in which over-stopping outrages grammar more or less decidedly will be incidentally treated later on. Meanwhile we make the general remark that ungrammatical insertion of stops is a high crime and misdemeanour, whereas ungrammatical om.ission of them is often venial, and in some cases even desirable. Nevertheless the over-stopping that offends against nothing but taste has its counterpart in under- stopping of the same sort. And it must be added that UNDER-STOPPING 235 nothing so easily exposes a writer to the suspicion of being uneducated as omission of commas against nearly universal custom. In the examples that follow, every one will see at the first glance where commas are wanting. When it is remembered that, as we have implied, an author has the right to select the degree of intensity, or scale, of his punctua- tion, it can hardly be said that grammar actually demands any stops in these sentences taken by themselves. Yet the effect, unless we choose to assume misprints, as we naturally do in isolated cases, is horrible. It may be asked can further depreciation be afforded. — Times. I believe you used to live in Warwickshire at Willowsmere Court did you not?— CORELLI. The hills slope gently to the cliffs which overhang the bay of Naples and they seem to bear on their outstretched arms a rich offering of Nature's fairest gifts for the queen city of the south.— F. M. Crawford. * You made a veritable sensation Lucio ! ' ' Did I ? ' He laughed. ' You flatter me Geofifrey.'— CORELLI. I like your swiftness of action Geoffrey.,— CORELLI. Good heavens man, there are no end of lords and ladies who will . . . — CORELLl. Although we are, when we turn from taste to grammar, on slightly firmer ground, it will be seen that there are many debatable questions ; and we shall have to use some technical terms. As usual, only those points will be attended to which our observation has shown to be important. I. The substantival clause. Subordinate clauses are sentences containing a subject and predicate, but serving the purpose in the main sentence (to which they are sometimes joined by a subordinating conjunc- tion or relative pronoun, but sometimes without any separate and visible link) of single words, namely, of noun, adjective, or adverb ; they are called respectively substantival, adjectival, or adverbial clauses. Examples : Substantival. Y[q disktd what I should do. (my plait, noww) Adjectival. The man n'ho acts Jioiicstly is respected, [honest, adjective) Zi6 PUNCTUATION Adverbial. I shall see you ivlien the sun next rises, (to- morroiu, adverb) Now there is no rule that subordinate clauses must be separated from the main sentence by a stop ; that depends on whether they are essential parts of the proposition (when stops are generally wrong), or more or less separable accidents (when commas are more or less required). But what we wish to draw attention to is a distinction in this respect, very generally disregarded, between the substantival clause and the two other kinds. When the others are omitted, though the desired meaning maybe spoilt, the grammar generally remains uninjured ; a complete, though not perhaps valuable sentence is left. The man is respected^ I shall see you, are as much sentences alone as they were with the adjectival and adverbial clauses. With substantival clauses this is seldom true ; they are usually the subjects, objects, or complements, of the verbs, that is, are grammatically essential. He asked is meaningless by itself. (Even if the point is 'that he asked and did not answer, things^ or something, has to be supplied in thought.) Now it is a principle, not without exceptions, but generally sound, that the subject, object, or complement, is not to be separated from its verb even by a comma (though two commas belonging to an inserted parenthetic clause or phrase or word may intervene). It follows that there is no logical or grammatical justification, though there may be a rhetorical one, for the comma so frequently placed before the that of an indirect statement. Our own opinion (which is, however, con- trary to the practice of most compositors) is that this should always be omitted except when the writer has a very distinct reason for producing rhetorical impressiveness by an unusual pause. Some very ugly overstepping would thus be avoided. Yet there, too, we find, that character has its problems to solve. — Meredith. We know, that, in the individual man, consciousness grows. — Huxley. And it is said, that, on a visitor once asking to see his library, Descartes led him . . .—Huxley. SUBSTANTIVAL CLAUSE 237 The general opinion however was, that, if Bute had been early practised in debate, he might have become an impressive speaker. — Mac aula Y. The comma before whether in the next is actually mislead- ing ; it compels us at first sight to take as adverbial what is reallyasubstantival clause, object to the verbal nounindifference-. The book . . . had merits due to the author's indifference, whether he showed bad taste or not, provided he got nearer to the impression he wished to convey. — Speaker. Grammar, however, would afford some justification for distinguishing between the substantival clause as subject, object, or complement, and the substantival clause in apposi- tion with one of these. Though there should decidedly be no comma in He said that . . , it is strictly defensible in It is said^ that , . . The ///^/-clause in the latter is explanatory of, and in apposition with, it; and the ordinary sign of apposition is a comma. Similarly, Afy opinion is that : It is my opi7tion, that. But as there seems to be no value whatever in the distinction, our advice is to do without the comma in all ordinary cases of either kind. A useful and reasonable exception is made in some manuals ; for instance, in Bigelow's Majiual of Ptmctnaiion we read: * Clauses like "It is said", introducing several propositions or quotations, each preceded by the word that, should have a comma before the first that. But if a single proposition or quotation only is given, no comma is necessary. Example : Philosophers assert, that Nature is unlimited in her operations, that she has inexhaustible treasures in reserve, that ... * Anything that shows the reader what he is to expect, and so saves him the trouble of coming back to revise his first impressions, is desirable if there is no strong reason against it. A more important distinction is this : He said, Sac, may have for its object, and // is said, &c., for its (virtual) subject, either the actual words said, or a slight rearrangement of them (not necessarily to the eye, but at least to the mind), which makes them more clearly part of the grammatical construction, and turns them into true subordinate clauses. 238 PUNCTUATION Thus He told Iici\ Yon are in danger may be kept, but is usually altered to He told her that she was in danger, or to He told her she ivas in danger. In the first, Yon are in danger is not properly a subordinate clause, but a sentence, which may be said to be in apposition with these words understood. In the second and third alike, the altered words are a sub- ordinate substantival clause, the object to told. It follows that when the actual words are given as such (this is some- times only to be known by the tone : compare / tell yon, I ivill come, and / tell yon I will come), a comma should be inserted ; whereas, when they are meant as mere reported or indirect speech, it should be omitted. Actual words given as such should also be begun with a capital letter; and if they consist of a compound sentence, or of several sentences, a comma will not suffice for their introduction ; a colon, a colon and dash, or a full stop, with quotation marks always in the last case, and usually in the others, will be necessary ; but these are distinctions that need not be considered here in detail. Further, it must be remembered that substantival clauses include indirect questions as well as indirect statements, and that the same rules will apply to them. The two following examples are very badly stopped : («) Add to all this that he died in his thirty-seventh year : and then ask, If it be strange that his poems are imperfect ? — Carlyle. Accommodation of the stops to the words would give : and then ask if it be strange that his poems are imperfect. And accommodation of the words to the stops would give: and then ask, Is it strange that his poems are imperfect ? [b) It may be asked can further depreciation be afforded. — Times. The two correct alternatives here are similarly : It may be asked, Can further depreciation be afforded ? It may be asked whether further depreciation can be afforded. As the sentences stood originally, we get in the Carlyle a most theatrical, and in the Times a most slovenly effect. SUBJFXT, &c., AND VERB 239 2. The verb and its subject, object, or complement. Our argument against the common practice of placing a comma before substantival //^^/-clauses and others like them was, in brief: This sort of ///^/-clause is simply equivalent to a noun ; that noun is^ with few exceptions, the subject, object, or complement, to a verb ; and between things so closely and essentially connected as the verb and any of these no stop should intervene (unless for very strong and special rhetorical reasons). This last principle, that the verb and its essential belongings must not be parted, was merely assumed. We think it will be granted by any one who reads the next two examples. It is felt at once that a writer who will break the principle with so little excuse as here will shrink from nothing. So poor Byron was dethroned, as I had prophesied he would be, though 1 had little idea that his humiliation, would be brought about by one, whose sole strength consists in setting people to sleep. — BORROW. He was, moreover, not an unkind man ; but the crew of the Bounty^ mutinied against him, and set him half naked in an open boat. — Borrow. Very little better than these, but each with some perceptible motive, are the next six : Depreciation of him, fetched up at a stroke the glittering armies of her enthusiasm. — Meredith. Opposition to him, was comparable to the stand of blocks of timber before a flame.— Meredith. In each of these the comma acts as an accent upon him, and is purely rhetorical and illogical. Such women as you, are seldom troubled with remorse. — CORELLI. Here the comma guards us from taking you are together. We have already said that this device is illegitimate. Such sentences should be recast ; for instance. Women like you are seldom, &c. The thick foliage of the branching oaks and elms in my grounds afforded grateful shade and repose to the tired body, while the tranquil loveliness of the woodland and meadow scenery, comforted and soothed the equally tired mind.—CoRELLi. With them came young boys and little children, while on either side, 240 PUNCTUATION maidens white-veiled and rose-wreathed, paced demurely, swinging silver censers to and fro. Corelli. Swift's view of human nature, is too black to admit of any hopes of their millennium.— L. Stephen. Loveliness, maidens, view, the strict subjects, have adjectival phrases attached after them. The temptation to insert the comma is comprehensible, but slight, and should have been resisted. In the three that come next, the considerable length of the subject, it must be admitted, makes a comma comforting ; it gives us a sort of assurance that we have kept our hold on the sentence. It is illogical, however, and, owing to the importance of not dividing subject from verb, unpleasantly- illogical. In each case the comfort would be equally effective if it were legitimized by the insertion of a comma before as well as after the clause or phrase at the end of which the present comma stands. The extra commas would be after earthy victims^ ScJileiden. To see so many thousand wretches burdening the earth when such as her die, makes me think God did never intend life for a blessing.— Swift. An order of the day expressing sympathy with the families of the victims and confidence in the Government, was adopted. — Times. The famous researches of Schwann and Schleiden in 1837 ^^^ the following years, founded the modern science of histology. — HuXLEY. It may be said that it is ' fudging ' to find an excuse, as we have proposed to do, for a stop that we mean really to do something different from its ostensible work. But the answer is that with few tools and many tasks to do much fudging is in fact necessary. A special form of this, in protest against which we shall give five examples, each from a different well-known author, is when the subject includes and ends with a defining relative clause, after which an illogical comma is placed. As the relative clause is of the defining kind (a phrase that has been explained ^), it is practically impossible to fudge in these ^ See chapter Syntax, section Relatives, SUBJFXT &c. AND VERB 241 sentences by putting a comma before the relative pronoun. Even in the first sentence the length of the relative clause is no sufficient excuse ; and in all the others we should abolish the comma without hesitation. The same quickness of sympathy which had served him well in his work among the East End poor, enabled him to pour feeling into the figures of a bygone age. — Bryce. One of its agents is our will, but that which expresses itself in our will, is stronger than our will. — Emerson. The very interesting class of objects to which these belong, do not differ from the rest of the material universe. — BALFOUR. And thus, the great men who were identified with the war, began slowly to edge over to the party . . . — L. Stephen. In becoming a merchant-gild the body of citizens who formed the * town ', enlarged their powers of civic legislation. — J. R. Green. In the two sentences that now follow from Mr. Morley, the offending comma of the first parts centre, which is what grammarians call the oblique complement, from its verb made ; the offending comma of the second parts the direct object groups from its verb drew. Every one will allow that the sentences are clumsy ; most people will allow that the commas are illogical. As for us, we do not say that, if the words are to be kept as they are, the commas should be omitted ; but we do say that a good writer, when he found himself reduced to illogical commas, should have taken the trouble to rearrange his words. De Maistre was never more clear-sighted than when he made a vigorous and deliberate onslaught upon Bacon, the centre of his movement against revolutionary principles. — MoRLEY. In saying that the Encyclopaedists began a political work, what is meant is that they drew into the light of new ideas, groups of institutions, usages, and arrangements which affected the well-being of France, as closely as nutrition affected the health and strength of an individual Frenchman. — Morley. It may be added, by way of concluding this section, that the insertion of a comma in the middle of an absolute construc- tion, which is capable, as was shown in the sentence about Colonel Hutchinson and the governor, of having very bad 342 PUNCTUATION results indeed, is only a particular instance and rcductio ad absurdum of inserting a comma between subject and verb. The comma in the absolute construction is so recognized a trap that it might have been thought needless to mention it ; the following instances, however, will show that a warning is even now necessary. Sir E. Seymour, having replied for the Navy, the Duke of Connaught, in replying for the Army, said . . . — Junes. Thus got^ having been by custom poorly substituted for gat, so that we say He got away, instead of He gat away, many persons abbreviate gotten mto got, saying He had got, for He had gotten. — R. G. White. The garrison, having been driven from the outer line of defences on July 30, Admiral Witoft considered it high time to make a sortie. — Times, But that didn't last lonj ; for Dr. Blimber, happening to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots swiftly vanished.— Dickens. 3. The adjectival clause. This, strictly speaking, does the work of an adjective in the sentence. It usually begins with a relative pronoun, but sometimes with a relative adverb. The man zvho does not breathe dies, is equivalent to The unbreathing man dies. The place ivhere ive stand is holy ground, is equivalent to This place is holy ground. But we shall include under the phrase all clauses that begin with a relative, though some relative clauses are not adjectival, because a division of all into defining clauses on the one hand, and non-defining or commenting on the other, is more easily intelligible than the division into adjectival and non-adjectival. This distinction is more fully gone into in the chapter on Syntax, where it is suggested that that^ when possible, is the appropriate relative for defining, and which for non-defining clauses. That, however, is a debatable point, and quite apart from the question of stopping that arises here. Examples of the two types are : (Defining) The river that (which) runs through London is turbid. RELATIVES 243 (Commenting) The Thames, which runs through London, is turbid. It will be seen that in the first the relative clause is an answer to the imaginary question, ' Which river ? ' ; that is, it defines the noun to which it belongs. In the second, such a question as * Which Thames ? ' is hardly conceivable ; the relative clause gives us a piece of extra and non-essential information, an independent comment. The two types are not always so easily distinguished as in these examples constructed for the purpose. What we wish here to say is that it would contribute much to clearness of style if writers would always make up their minds whether they intend a definition or a comment, and would invariably use no commas with a defining clause, and two commas with a non-defining. All the examples that follow are in our opinion wrong. The first three are of defining relative clauses wrongly preceded by commas ; the second three of commenting relative clauses wrongly not preceded by commas. The last of all there may be a doubt about. If the long clause beginning with luJiich is intended merely to show how great the weariness is, and ivJiich is practically equivalent to so great that, it may be called a defining clause, and the omission of the comma is right. But if the ivhich really acts as a mere connexion to introduce a new fact that the correspondent wishes to record, the clause is non- defining, and the comma ought according to our rule to be inserted before it. The man, zuJw thinketh in his heart and hath the power straightway (very straightway) to go and do it, is not so common in any country. — Crockett. Now everyone must do after his kind, be he asp or angel, and these must. The question, which a wise man and a student of modern history will ask, is, what that kind is. — EMERSON. Those, "uuho are urging with most ardour what are called the greatest benefits of mankind, are narrow, self-pleasing, conceited men. — Emerson. A reminder is being sent to all absent members of the Nationalist party that their attendance at Westminster is urgently required next week ivhen the Budget will be taken on Monday. — limes, K 2 244 PUNXTUATION The Marshall Islands will pass from the control of the Jaluit Company under that of the German colonial authorities ivho will bear the cost of administration and will therefore collect all taxes. — Times. The causes of this popularity are, no doubt, in part, the extreme sim- plicity of the reasoning on which the theory rests, in part its extreme plausibility, in part, perhaps, the nature of the result which is commonly thought to be speculatively interesting without being practically incon- venient.— Balfour. Naval critics . . . are showing signs of weariness which even the reported appearance of Admiral Nebogatoff" in the Malacca Strait is unable to remove. — Times. 4. The adverb, adverbial phrase, and adverbial clause. In writing of substantival and adjectival clauses, our appeal was for more logical precision than is usual. We said that the comma habitual before substantival clauses was in most cases unjustifiable, and should be omitted even at the cost of occasional slight discomfort. We said that with one division of adjectival, or rather relative clauses, commas should always be used, and with another they should always be omitted. With the adverbial clauses, phrases, and words, on the other hand, our appeal is on the whole for less precision ; we recommend that less precision should be aimed at, at least, though more attained, than at present. Certain kinds of laxity here are not merely venial, but laudable : certain other kinds are damning evidence of carelessness or bad taste or bad education. It is not here a mere matter of choosing between one right and one wrong way; there are many degrees. Now is an adverb ; in the house is usually an adverbial phrase ; if I know it is an adverbial clause. Logic and grammar never prohibit the separating of any such expres- sions from the rest of their sentence — by two commas if they stand in the middle of it, by one if they begin or end it. But use of the commas tends, especially with a single word, but also with a phrase or clause, though in inverse proportion to its length, to modify the meaning. / cannot do it now means no more than it says : / cannot do it., now conveys a further assurance that the speaker would have been delighted to do ADVERBS AND ADVERBIALS 245 it yesterday or will be quite willing tomorrow. This dis- tinction, generally recognized with the single word, applies also to clauses ; and writers of judgement should take the fullest freedom in such matters, allowing no superstition about 'subordinate clauses' to force upon them commas that they feel to be needless, but inclining always when in doubt to spare readers the jerkincss of overstopping. It is a question for rhetoric alone, not for logic, so long as the proper allow- ance of commas, if any, is given ; what the proper allowance is, has been explained a few lines back. We need not waste time on exemplifying this simple principle; there is so far no real laxity ; the writer is simply free. Laxity comes in when we choose, guided by nothing more authoritative than euphony, to stop an adverbial phrase or adverbial clause, but not to stop it at both ends, though it stands in the middle of its sentence. This is an unmistakable offence against logic, and lays one open to the condemnation of examiners and precisians. But the point we wish to make is that in a very large class of sentences the injury to meaning is so infinitesimal, and the benefit to sound so considerable, that we do well to offend. The class is so large that only one example need be given : But with their triumph over the revolt, Cranmer and his colleagues advanced yet more boldly. — J. R. Green. The adverbial phrase is with their triumph over the revolt. But does not belong to it, but to the whole sentence. The writer has no defence whatever as against the logician ; never- theless, his reader will be grateful to him. The familiar intrusion of a comma after initial And and For where there is no intervening clause to justify it, of which we gave examples when we spoke of overstopping, comes probably by false analogy from the unpleasant pause that rigid punctuation has made common in sentences of this type. Laxity once introduced, however, has to be carefully kept within bounds. It may be first laid down absolutely that 246 PUNCTUATION when an adverbial clause is to be stopped, but incompletely stopped, the omitted stop must always be the one at the beginning, and never the one at the end. Transgression of this is quite intolerable ; we shall give several instances at the end of the section to impress the fact. But it is also true that even the omission of the beginning comma looks more and more slovenly the further we get from the type of our above cited sentence. The quotations immediately following are arranged from the less to the more slovenly. His health gave way, and at the age of fifty -six^ he died prematurely in harness at Quetta. — Times. If mankind was in the condition of believing nothing, and luithout a bias in any particular directio7i, was merely on the look-out for some legitimate creed, it would not, I conceive, be possible . . . — Balfour. The party then^ consisted of a man and his wife, of his mother-in-law and his sister.— F. M. Crawford. These men i7i their honorary capacity^ already have sufficient work to perform. — Guernsey Evening Press. It will be observed that in the sentence from Mr. Balfour the chief objection to omitting the comma between and and zinthciU is that we are taken off on a false scent, it being natural at first to suppose that we are to supply ivas again ; this can only happen when we are in the middle of a sentence, and not at the beginning as in the pattern Cranmer sentence. The gross negligence or ignorance betrayed by giving the first and omitting the second comma will be convincingly shown by this array of sentences from authors of all degrees. It is not strange that the sentiment of loyalty should, /r^w the day of his accessio7i have begun to revive.— Macaulay. Was it possible that having loved she should not so rejoice, or that, rejoicing she should not be proud of her love .''— Trollope. I venture to suggest that, had Lord Hugh himself been better informed ifi the matter he would scarcely have placed himself . . . — Times. The necessary consequence being that the law, to uphold the restraints of which such unusual devices are employed is in practice destitute of the customary sanctions, — Times. The view held ... is that, owing to the constant absence of the Com- mander-in'Chief on tour it is necessary that . . . — Times. PARENTHESIS 247 The master of the house, to whom, as in ditty bound I communicated my intention . . . — BORROW. After this victory, Hunyadi, with his army entered Belgrade, to the great joy of the Magyars.— Borrow. M. Kossuth declares that, until the King calls on the majority to take office with its own programme chaos will prevail. — 7/ Wifj. A love-affair, to be conducted ivith spirit and enterprise should always bristle with opposition and difficulty. — CORELLI. And that she should force me, by the ?nagic of her pen to mentally acknowledge . . ., albeit with wrath and shame, my own inferiority! — CORELLI. She is a hard-working woman dependant on her literary success for a livelihood, and you, rolling in wealth do your best to deprive her of the means of existence. — Corelli. Although three trainings of the local militia have been conducted under the new regime, Alderney, despite the fact that it is a portion of the same military cominand has not as yet been affected. — Guernsey Eve?iing Press. 5. Parenthesis. In one sense, everything that is adverbial is parenthetic : it can be inserted or removed, that is, without damaging the grammar, though not always without damaging the meaning, of the sentence. But the adverbial parenthesis, when once inserted, forms a part of the sentence ; we have sufficiently dealt with the stops it requires in the last section ; the use of commas emphasizes its parenthetic character, and is therefore sometimes desirable, sometimes not ; no more need be said about it. Another kind of parenthesis is that whose meaning prac- tically governs the sentence in the middle of which it is nevertheless inserted as an alien element that does not coalesce in grammar with the rest. The type is — But, you will say, Caesar is not an aristocrat. This kind is important for our purpose because of the muddles often made, chiefly by careless punctuation, between the real parenthesis and words that give the same meaning, but are not, like it, grammatically separable. We shall start with an indisputable example of this muddle : Where, do you imagine, she would lay it ? — Meredith. 348 PUNCTUATION These commas cannot possibly indicate anything but paren- thesis ; but, if the comma'd words were really a parenthesis, we oueht to have luould she instead of she would. The four sentences that now follow are all of one pattern. The bad stopping is probably due to this same confusion between the parenthetic and the non-parenthetic. But it is possible that in each the two commas are independent, the first being one of those that are half rhetorical and half caused by false analogy, which have been mentioned as common after initial A?id and For ; and the second being the comma wrongly used, as we have maintained, before substantival ///rt:/-clauses. Whence, it would appear, that he considers that all deliverances of consciousness are original judgments. — Balfour. Hence, he reflected, that if he could but use his literary instinct to feed some commercial undertaking, he might gain a considerable . . . — HUTTON. But, depend upon it, that no Eastern difficulty needs our intervention so seriously as . . . — HuxLEY. And yet, it has been often said, that the party issues were hopelessly confused. — L. Stephen. A less familiar form of this mistake, and one not likely to occur except in good writers, since inferior ones seldom attempt the construction that leads to it, is sometimes found when a subordinating conjunction is placed late in its clause, after the object or other member. In the Thackeray sentence, it will be observed that the first comma would be right (i) if ihem had stood after discovered instead of where it does, (2) if them had been omitted, and any had served as the common object to both verbs. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. — BURKE. Any of which peccadil.oes, if Miss Sharp discovered, she did not tell them to Lady Crawley.— Thackeray. 6. The misplaced comma. Some authors would seem to have an occasional feeling that here or hereabouts is the place for a comma, just as in PARENTHESIS 249 handwriting some persons are well content if they get a dot in somewhere within measurable distance of its i. The dot is generally over the right word at any rate, and the comma is seldom more than one word off its true place. All true science begins with empiricism — though all true science is such exactly, in so far as it strives to pass out of the empirical stage. — Huxley. Exactly qualifies and belongs to in so far, &c., not stick. The comma should be before it. This, they for the most part, throw away as worthless.— CORELLI. For the most part, alone, is the adverbial parenthesis. But this fault occurs, perhaps nine times out of ten, in combination with the M^^Z-clause comma so often mentioned. It may be said, when our instances have been looked into, that in each of them, apart from the //^^Z-clause comma, which is recognized by many authorities, there is merely the licence that we have ourselves allowed, omission of the first, without omission of the last, comma of an adverbial parenthesis. But we must point out that Huxley, Green, and Mr. Balfour, man of science, historian, and philosopher, all belong to that dignified class of writers which is supposed to, and in most respects does, insist on full logical stopping ; they, in view of their general practice, are not entitled to our slovenly and merely literary licences. And the second is, that for the purpose of attaining culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as . . . — Huxley. But the full discussion which followed over the various claims showed, that while exacting to the full what he believed to be his right, Edward desired to do justice to the country. — J. R. Green. The one difference between these gilds in country and town was, that in the latter case, from their close local neighbourhood, they tended to coalesce.— J. R. Green. It follows directly from this definition, that however restricted the range of possible knowledge may be, philosophy can never be excluded from it.— Balfour. But the difficulty here, as it seems to me. is, that if you start from your idea of evolution, these assumptions are . . . — Balfour. 2^0 PUNCTUATION He begged me to give over all unlawful pursuits, saying, that if persisted in, they were sure of bringing a person to destruction. — Borrow. 7. Enumeration. This name, liberally interpreted, is meant to include several more or less distinct questions. They are difficult, and much debated by authorities on punctuation, but are of no great importance. We shall take the liberty of partly leaving them undecided, and partly giving arbitrary opinions ; to argue them out would take more space than it is worth while to give. But it is worth while to draw attention to them, so that each writer may be aware that they exist, and at least be consistent with himself. Typical sentences (from Beadnell) are : a. Industry, honesty, and temperance, are essential to happiness. — B. b. Let us freely drink in the soul of love and beauty and wisdom, from all nature and art and history. — B. c. Plain honest truth wants no colouring. — B. d. Many states are in alliance with, and under the protection of France. — B. Common variants for {a) are (i) Industry, honesty and temperance are essential ... (2) Industry, honesty and temper- ance, are essential ... (3) Industry, honesty, and temperance are essential . . . We unhesitatingly recommend the original and fully stopped form, which should be used irrespective of style, and not be interfered with by rhetorical considerations; it is the only one to which there is never any objection. Of the examples that follow, the first conforms to the correct type, but no serious harm would be done if it did not. The second also conforms ; and, if this had followed variant (1) or (2), here indistinguishable, we should have been in danger of supposing that Education and Police were one department instead of two. The third, having no comma after interests^ follows variant (3), and, as it happens, with no bad effect on the meaning. All three variants, however, may under different conditions produce ambiguity or worse. ENUMERATION 251 But those that remain, the women, the youths, the children, and the elders, work all the harder. — TzVy/^y. Japanese advisers are now attached to the departments of the House- hold, War, Finance, Education, and Police.— T'/w-fj. An American, whose patience, tact, and ability in reconciling conflict- ing interests have won the praise of all nationalities. — Ti7)ies. Sometimes enumerations are arranged in pairs ; it is then most unpleasant to have the comma after the last pair omitted.. as in: The orange and the lemon, the olive and the walnut elbow each other for a footing in the fat dark earth. — F. M. Crawford. There is a bastard form of enumeration against which warning is seriously needed. It is taken for, but is not really, a legitimate case of type {(i) ; and a quite unnecessary objection to the repetition of and no doubt supplies the motive. Examples are : He kept manoeuvring upon Neipperg, who counter-manoeuvred with vigilance, good judgment, and would not come to action. — Carlyle. Moltke had recruited, trained, and knew by heart all the men under him. — Ti?fies. Hence loss of time, of money, and sore trial of patience. — R. G. White. The principle is this : in an ©numeration given by means of a comma or commas, the last comma being replaced by or combined with and — our type (^), that is — , there must not be anything that is common to two members (as here, counter- inanoeuvred with, had^ loss) without being common to all. We may say, Moltke had recruited and trained and knew, Moltke had recruited, had trained, and knew, or, Moltke had recruited, trained, and known ; but we must not say what the Times says. The third sentence may run. Loss of time and money, and sore trial, or, Loss of time, of money, and of patience ; but not as it does. So much for type {a). Type {b) can be very shortly disposed of. It differs in that the conjunction [and^ or, no7\ &c.) is expressed every time^ instead of being represented except in the last place by a comma. It is logically quite 252 PUNCTUATIOxN unnecessary, but rhetorically quite allowable, to use commas as well as conjunctions. The only caution needed is that, if commas are used at all, and if the enumeration does not end the sentence, and is not concluded by a stronger stop, a comma must be inserted after the last member as well as after the others. In the type sentence, which contains two enumerations, it would be legitimate to use commas as well as auds with one set and not with the other, if it were desired either to avoid monotony or to give one list special emphasis. The three examples now to be added transgress the rule about the final comma. We arrange them from bad to worse ; in the last of them, the apparently needless though not necessarily wrong comma after fall suggests that the writer has really felt a comma to be wanting to the enumeration, but has taken a bad shot with it, as in the examples of section 6 on the misplaced comma. Neither the Court, nor society, nor Parliament, nor the older men in the Army have yet recognized the fundamental truth that . . . — Times. A subordinate whose past conduct in the post he fills, and whose known political sympathies make him wholly unfitted, however loyal his intentions may be, to give that . . . — Ttjnes. But there are uninstructed ears on whom the constant abuse, and imputation of low motives may fall, with a mischievous and misleading effect. — Times. Of type [c) the characteristic is that we have two or more adjectives attached to a following noun ; are there to be commas between the adjectives, or not? The rule usually given is that there should be, unless the last adjective is more intimately connected with the noun, so that the earlier one qualifies, not the noun, but the last adjective and the noun together ; it will be noticed that we strictly have no enumera- tion then at all. This is sometimes useful ; and so is the more practical and less theoretic direction to ask whether and could be inserted, and if so use the comma, but not other- wise. These both sound sufficient in the abstract. But that there are doubts left in practice is shown by the type sentence, ENUMERATION 2^3 which Beadnell gives as correct, though either test would rather require the comma. He gives also as correct, Can flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death ? — which is not very clearly distinguishable from the other. Our advice is to use these tests when in doubt, but with a leaning to the omission of the comma. If it happens that a comma of this particular class is the only stop in a sentence, it has a false appearance of dividing the sentence into two parts that is very unpleasant, and may make the reader go through it twice to make sure that all is right — an inconvenience that should by all means be spared him. Type (d) is one in which the final word or phrase of a sentence has two previous expressions standing in the same grammatical relation to it, but their ending with different prepositions, or the fact that one is to be substituted for the other, or the length of the expressions, or some other cause, obscures this identity of relation. Add to the type sentence the following : His eloquence was the main, one might almost say the sole, source of his influence. — Bryce. To dazzle people more, he learned or pretended to learn, the Spanish language. — Bagehot. . . . apart from philosophical and sometimes from theological, theories. —Balfour. The rules we lay down are: (i) If possible use no stops at all. (2) Never use the second comma and omit the first. (3) Even when the first is necessary, the second may often be dispensed with. (4) Both commas may be necessary if the phrases are long. We should correct all the examples, including the type : the type under rule (i) ; the Bryce (which is strictly correct) under rule (3); the Bagehot under rules (2) and (i); and the Balfour under rules (2) and (3) ; the last two are clearly wrong. The four would then stand as follows : Many states are in alliance with and under the protection of France. 254 PUNCTUATION His eloquence was the main, one might ahnost say the sole source of his influence. To dazzle people more, he learned or pretended to learn the Spanish language. . . . apart from philosophical, and sometimes from theological theories. Learners will be inclined to say : all this is very indefinite ; do give us a clear rule that will apply to all cases. Such was the view with which, on a matter of even greater importance than punctuation, Procrustes identified himself; but it brought him to a bad end. The clear rule, Use all logical commas, would give us : He was born, in, or near, London, on December 24th, 1900. No one would write this who was not suffering from bad hypertrophy of the grammatical conscience. The clear rule. Use no commas in this sort of enumeration, would give: If I have the queer ways you accuse me of, that is because but I should have thought a man of your perspicacity might have been expected to see that it was also why I live in a hermitage all by myself. No one would write this without both commas (after because and ivhy) who was not deeply committed to an anti-comma crusade. Between the two extremes lie cases calling for various treatment ; the ruling principle should be freedom within certain limits. 8. The comma between independent sentences. Among the signs that more particularly betray the unedu- cated writer is inability to see when a comma is not a sufficient stop. Unfortunately little more can be done than to warn beginners that any serious slip here is much worse than they will probably suppose, and recommend them to observe the practice of good writers. It is roughly true that grammatically independent sentences should be parted by at least a semicolon ; but in the first place there are very large exceptions to this ; and secondly, the writer who really knows a grammatically independent sentence when he sees it is hardly in need of instruction ; INDEPENDENT SENTENCES 2^5 this must be our excuse for entering here into what may be thought too elementary an explanation. Let us take the second point first ; it may be of some assistance to remark that a sentence joined to the previous one by a coordinating conjunction is grammatically independent, as well as one not joined to it at all. But the difference between a coordinating and a subordinating conjunction is itself in English rather fine. Every one can see that 'I will not try; it is dangerous ' is two independent sentences — independent in grammar, though not in thought. But it is a harder saying that ' I will not try, for it is dangerous ' is also two sentences, while * I will not try, because it is dangerous ' is one only. The reason is that for coordinates, and because subordinates ; instead of giving lists, which would probably be incomplete, of the two kinds of conjunction, we mention that a subordinating conjunction may be known from the other kind by its being possible to place it and its clause before the previous sentence instead of after, without destroying the sense : we can say ' Because it is dangerous, I will not try ', but not ' For it is dangerous, I will not try'. This test cannot always be applied in complicated sentences ; simple ones must be constructed for testing the conjunction in question. Assuming that it is now understood (i) what a subordinating and what a coordinating conjunction is, (2) that a member joined on by no more than a coordinating conjunction is a grammatically independent sentence, or simply a sentence in the proper meaning of the word, and not a subordinate clause, we return to the first point. This was that, though independent sentences are regularly parted by at least a semi- colon, there are large exceptions to the rule. These we shall only be able to indicate very loosely. There are three conditions that may favour the reduction of the semicolon to a comma: (1) Those coordinating conjunctions which are most common tend in the order of their commonness to be humble, and to recognize a comma as sufficient for their 256 PUNCTUATION dignity. The order may perhaps be given as : afici^ or, but, so, not\ for ; conjunctions less common than these should scarcely ever be used with less than a semicolon ; and many good writers would refuse to put a mere comma before for. (2) Shortness and lightness of the sentence joined on helps to lessen the need for a heavy stop. (3) Intimate connexion in thought with the preceding sentence has the same effect. Before giving our examples, which are all of undesirable commas, w^e point out that in the first two there are indepen- dent signs of the writers' being uneducated ; and such signs will often be discoverable. It will be clear from what we have said why the others are bad — except perhaps the third ; it is particularly disagreeable to have two successive indepen- dent sentences tagged on with commas, as those beginning with nor and for are in that example. No peace at night he enjoys,/<9r he lays ?i\\2i}&.t.—Guer)isey Advertiser. Now accepted, nominal Christendom believes this, and strives to attain unto it, then why the inconsistency of creed and deed? — Daily Telegraph. But who is responsible to Government for the efficiency of the Army? The Commander-in-Chief and no one else, nor has anyone questioned the fact,/;/(?i-. Steam cars is better, by 3, and i. And 16-horsepower engines. We can do this time what the capitals of Americafi and Mark prevented in the previous compounds. Entirely gratuitous hyphens. One had a male-partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque. — Meredith. Gluttony is the least-generous of the vices. — Meredith. A little china-box, bearing the motto ' Though lost to sight, to memory dear,' which Dorcas sent her as a remembrance. — Eliot. This evidently means a box made of china. A box to hold china would have the hyphen properly, and there are many differentiations of this kind, of which black bird, as opposed to black-bird or blackbird^ is the type. Bertie took up a quantity of waste-papers, and thrust them down into the basket.— E. F. Benson. This is probably formed by a mistaken step backwards from ivasie-paper basket^ where the hyphen is correct, as explained in 3. In phrases like wet a?id dry fly fishing, compounded of tvet-fly fishing and dry-fly fishings methods vary. For instance : A low door, leading through a moss and ivy-covered wall. — Scott. HYPHENS 279 A language . . . not yet fetlocked by dictionary and grammar mongers. — Lowell. Those who take human or womankind for their study. — Thackeray. The single phrases would have the hyphen for different reasons {moss-covered^ &c.), all but human kind. The only quite satisfactory plan is the Germans', who would write moss- and ivy-covered. This is imitated in English, as : In old woods and on fern- and gorse-covered hilltops they do no harm whatever. — SPECTATOR. Refreshment-, boarding-, and lodging-house keepers have suffered severely too. — Westmmster Gazette. But imitations of foreign methods are not much to be recommended ; failing that, Lowell's method seems the best — to use no hyphens, and keep the second compound separate. Adverbs that practically form compounds with verbs, but stand after, and not necessarily next after them, need not be hyphened unless they would be ambiguous in the particular sentence if they were not hyphened. This may often happen, since most of them are also prepositions ; but even then, it is better to rearrange the sentence than to hyphen. He gratefully hands-over the establishment to his country. — Meredith. Thoughtful persons, unpledged to shore-up tottering dogmas. — Huxley. It is a much commoner fault to over-hyphen than to under-hyphen. But in the next example malaria-infected must be written, by 3. And in the next again, one of the differentiations we have spoken of is disregarded ; the fifty first means the fifty that come first : the fifty -first is the one after fifty. The ambiguity in the third example is obvious. The demonstration that a malaria infected mosquito, transported a great distance to a non-malarial country, can . . . — Times. ' Nothing serious, I hope ? How do cars break down ? ' * In fifty different ways. Only mine has chosen the fifty first.' — Kipling. The Cockney knew what the Lord of Session knew not, that the British public is gentility crazy. — BORROW. There comes a time when compound words that have long had a hyphen should drop it ; this is when they have become 28o PUNCTUATION quite familiar. It seems absurd to keep any longer the division in to-day and to-morrozv, there are no words in the language that arc more definitely single and not double words ; so much so that the ordinary man can give no explanation of the to. On the other hand, the word italicized in the next example may well puzzle a good many readers without its hyphen ; it has quite lately come into use in this country ( * Chiefly U. S.' says the Oxford Dictionaiy, which prints the hyphen, whereas Webster does not), and is in danger of being taken at first sight for a foreign word and pronounced in strange ways. The soldiers . . . have been \)\v\^\ri% dugouts throughout April. — Times, There is a tendency to write certain familiar combinations irrationally, which may be mentioned here, though it does not necessarily involve the hyphen. With m no wise and at any rate^ the only rational possibilities are to treat them like nevertheless as one word, or like none the less as three words (the right way, by usage), or give them two hyphens. Nowise and anyrate are not nouns that can be governed by i7i and at, Don McTaggart was the only man on his estate whom Sir Tempest could in nowise make afraid. — Crockett. French rules of neutrality are in nowise infringed by the squadron. — Times. At anyrate.— CORELLlj/aj-j/w. Quotation Marks Quotation marks, like hyphens, should be used only when necessary. The degree of necessity will vary slightly with the mental state of the audience for whom a book is intended. To an educated man it is an annoyance to find his author warning him that something written long ago, and quoted every day almost ever since, is not an original remark now first struck out. On the other hand, writers who address the uneducated may find their account in using all the quotation QUOTATION MARKS 281 marks they can ; their readers may be gratified by seeing how well read the author is, or may think quotation marks decora- tive. The following examples start with the least justifiable uses, and stop at the point where quotation marks become more or less necessary. John Smith, Esq., ' Chatsworth ', Melton Road, Leamington. The implication seems to be : living in the house that sensible people call 164 Melton Road, but one fool likes to call Chatsworth. How is it that during the year in v/hich that scheme has been, so to speak, ' in the pillory *, no alternative has, at any rate, been made public.'* — Thnes. Every metaphor ought to be treated as a quotation, if in the pillory is to be. Here, moreover, quotation marks are a practical tautology, after so to speak, Robert Brown and William Marshall, convicted of robbery with violence, were sentenced respectively to five years' penal servitude and eighteen strokes with the 'cat', and seven years' penal servitude. — Times. There is by this time no danger whatever of confusion with the cat of one tail. . . . not forgetful of how soon ' things Japanese ' would be things of the past for her. — Sladen. This may be called the propitiatory use, analogous in print to the tentative air with which, in conversation, the Englishman not sure of his pronunciation offers a French word. So trifling a phrase is not worth using at the cost of quotation marks. If it could pass without, well and good. So that the prince and I were able to avoid that * familiarity that breeds contempt ' by keeping up our own separate establishments. — CORELLI. . . . the Rector, lineal representative of the ancient monarchs of the University, though now, little more than a ' king of shreds and patches'. — Huxley. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as 'with a difference *. — Lamb. 283 PUNCTUATION IVif/i a difference {Ophelia : O, you must wear your rue with a difference) might escape notice as a quotation if attention were not drawn to it. A reader fit to appreciate Lamb, how- ever, could scarcely fail to be sufficiently warned by the odd turn of the preceding words. A question of some importance to writers who trouble themselves about accuracy, though no doubt the average reader is profoundly indifferent, is that of the right order as between quotation marks and stops. Besides the conflict in which we shall again find ourselves with the aesthetic com- positor, it is really difficult to arrive at a completely logical system. Before laying down what seems the best attainable, we must warn the reader that it is not the system now in fashion ; but there are signs that printers are feeling their way towards better things, and this is an attempt to anticipate what they will ultimately come to. We shall make one or two postulates, deduce rules, and give examples. After the examples (in order that readers who are content either to go on with the present compromise or to accept our rules may be able to skip the discussion), we shall consider some possible objections. No stop is ever required at the end of a quotation to separate the quotation, as such, from what follows ; that is sufficiently done by the quotation mark. A stop is required to separate the containing sentence, which may go on beyond the quotation's end, but more com- monly does not, from what follows. An exclamation or question mark — which are not true stops, but tone sj'mbols — may be an essential part of the quotation. When a quotation is broken by such insertions as he said^ any stop or tone symbol may be an essential part of the first fragment of quotation. No stop is needed at either end of such insertions as he said QUOTATIONS AND STOPS 283 to part them from the quotation, that being sufficiently done by the quotation marks. From these considerations we deduce the following rules : 1. The true stops should never stand before the second quotation mark except (a) when, as in dialogue given without framework, complete sentences entirely isolated and independent in grammar are printed as quotations. Even in these, it must be mentioned that the true stops are strictly unnecessary ; but if the full stop (which alone can here be in question) is used in deference to universal custom, it should be before the quotation mark. (d) when a stop is necessary to divide the first fragment of an interrupted quotation from the second. 2. Words that interrupt quotations should never be allowed stops to part them from the quotation. 3. The tone symbols should be placed before or after the second quotation mark according as they belong to the quotation or to the containing sentence. If both quotation and containing sentence need a tone symbol, both should be used, with the quotation mark between them. The bracketed numbers before the examples repeat the numbers of the rules. (i) Views advocated by Dr. Whately in his well-known ' Essays'; It is enough for us to reflect that ' Such shortlived wits do wither as they grow '. We hear that 'whom the gods love die young', and thenceforth we collect the cases that illustrate it. (i 6/) ' You are breaking the rules.' 'Well, the rules are silly.' (l d) ' Certainly not ; ' he exclaimed ' I would have died rather'. (2) ' I cannot guess ' he retorted ' what you mean '. (3) But ' why drag in Velasquez ? ' But what is the use of saying ' Call no man happy till he dies ' ? Is the question ' Where was he ? ' or ' What was he doing ? ' ? How absurd to ask ' Can a thing both be and not be ? ' ! If indignation is excited by the last two monstrosities, we can only say what has been implied many other times in this book, that the right substitute for correct ugliness is not 284 PUNCTUATION incorrect prettiness, but correct prettlness. There is never any difficulty in rewiitinfr sentences like these. (Is the question where he was, &c. ?) (' Can a thing both be and not be ? ' The question is absurd.) But it should be recognized that, if such sentences are to be written, there is only one way to punctuate them. It may be of interest to show how these sentences stand in the books, ist sentence ('Essays;'); 2nd (grow.'); 3rd (young/); 4th, as here ; 5th (not/ he exclaimed ;) (rather.') ; 6th (guess/ he retorted,) (mean.'); 7th (Velasquez *?) ; 8th (saying,) (dies?'). The last two are fabricated. The objections may now be considered. ' The passing crowd ' is a phrase coined in the spirit of indifference. Yet, to a man of what Plato calls * universal sympathies,' and even to the plain, ordinary denizens of this world, what can be more interesting than ' the passing crowd ' 1* — B. After giving this example, Beadnell says: — 'The reason is clear : the words quoted are those of another, but the question is the writer's own. Nevertheless, for the sake of neatness, the ordinary points, such as the comma, semicolon, colon, and full stop, precede the quotation marks in instances analogous to the one quoted ; but the exclamation follows the same rule as the interrogation '. Singularly enough, the stops that are according to this always to precede the quotation mark (for the 'analogous cases ' are the only cases in which the outside position would be so much as considered) are just the ones that by our rules ought hardly ever to do so, whereas the two that are some- times allowed the outside position are the two that we admit to be as often necessary inside as outside. Neatness is the sole consideration ; just as the ears may be regarded as not hear- ing organs, but ' handsome volutes of the human capital ', so quotation marks may be welcomed as giving a good pic- turesque finish to a sentence ; those who are of this way of thinking must feel that, if they allowed outside them anything QUOTATIONS AND STOPS 285 short of fine handsome stops like the exclamation and question marks, they would be countenancing an anticlimax. But they are really mere conservatives, masquerading only as aesthetes ; and their conservatism will soon have to yield. Argument on the subject is impossible ; it is only a question whether the printer's love for the old ways that seem to him so neat, or the writer's and reader's desire to be understood and to under- stand fully, is to prevail. Another objector takes a stronger position. He admits that logic, and not beauty, must decide : ' but before we give up the old, let us be sure we are giving it up for a new that is logical '. He invites our attention to the recent paragraph containing Beadnell's views. ' Why, in the last sentence of that paragraph, is the full stop outside ? " But the exclama- tion follows the same rule as the interrogation " is a complete sentence, quoted ; why should its full stop be separated from it ? ' The answer is that the full stop is not its full stop ; it needs no stop, having its communications forward absolutely cut off by the quotation mark. It is a delusion to suppose that any sentence has proprietary rights in a stop, though it may have in a tone symbol ; a stop is placed after it merely to separate it from what follows, if necessary. — ' And the full stop after every last sentence (not a question or exclamation) of a paragraph, chapter, or book ? ' — Is illogical, and only to be allowed, like those in the isolated quotations mentioned in rule (i ^), in deference to universal custom. Our full stop belongs, not to the last sentence of the quotation, but to the paragraph, which is all one sentence, the whole quotation simply playing the part, helped by the quotation marks, of object to says. — * But says is followed by a colon, and a colon between verb and object breaks your own rules.' — No ; (: — ) is something different from a stop ; it is an extra quotation mark, as much a conventional symbol as the full stop in MA. and other abbreviations. — 'Well, then, instead oi says^ read continues^ to which the quotation clearly cannot be object ; will that affect 286 PUNCTUATION our full stop ? ' — No ; the quotation will still be part of the sentence ; not indeed a noun, as before, and object to the verb ; but an adverb, simply equivalent to thus^ attached to the verb. Satisfied on that point, the objector takes up our statement that the quotation mark cuts communications ; a similar state- ment was made in the Dashes section about brackets and double dashes. He submits a quotation : — Some people 'grunt and sweat under' very easy burdens indeed ; and a pair of brackets : — It is (not a little learning, but) much con- ceit that is a dangerous thing. ' It is surely not true that either quotation mark or bracket cuts the communications there ; under in the quotation, but in the brackets, are in very active communication with biirde7is and conceit^ outside.' The answer is that these are merely convenient misuses of quota- tion marks and brackets. A quotation and a parenthesis should be complete in themselves, and instances that are not so may be neglected in arguing out principles. Special rules might indeed be required in consequence for the abnormal cases ; but in practice this is not so with quotations. — ' A last point. To adapt one of your instances, here are two sets of sentences, stopped as I gather you would stop them :— (i) He asked me " Can a thing both be and not be ? " The question is absurd. (2) He said " A thing cannot both be and not be". I at once agreed. Now, if the full stop is required after the quotation mark in the second, it must be required after that in the first, in each case to part, not the quotation, but the containing sentence, from the next sentence. What right have you to omit the full stop in the first?' — None whatever ; it will not be omitted. — ' So we have an addition of some im- portance to the monstrosities you said we should have to avoid.' — Well, sentences of this type are not common except in a style of affected simplicity. — ' Or real simplicity. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? And is there any particular simplicity, real or affected, QUOTATIONS AND STOPS 287 about this -.—(Richmond looked at him with an odd smile for a moment or two before asking, as if it were the most natural question in the world, ''But is it true?".)?' — In the Bible quotation there is, as you say, real simplicity— or rather there was. That sort of simplicity now would not be real, but artificial. Any one who has good reason to imitate primitive style may imitate primitive punctuation too. But one step forward in precision we have definitely taken from the biblical typography : we should insist on quotation marks in such a sentence. They do not seem pedantic or needless now ; nor will a further step in precision seem so when once it has been taken. And as to your Richmond sentence, and * monstrosities ' in general, it may be confessed here, as we are out of hearing in this discussion of all but those who are really interested, that the word was used for the benefit only of those who are indifferent. A sentence with two stops is not a monstrosity, if it wants them ; and that will be realized, if once sensible punctuation gets the upper hand of neatness. These are the most plausible objections on principle to a system of using quotation marks with stops that would be in the main logical. It may be thought, however, that it was our business to be practical and opportunist, and suggest nothing that could not be acted on at once. But general usage, besides being illogical, is so inconsistent, different writers im- proving upon it in special details that appeal to them, that it seemed simpler to give our idea of what would be the best attainable, and trust to the tiro's adopting any parts of it that may not frighten him by their unaccustomed look. There are single and double quotation marks, and, apart from minor peculiarities, two ways of utilizing the variety. The prevailing one is to use double marks for most purposes, and single ones for quotations within quotations, as : — " Well, so he said to me ' What do you mean by it ? ' and I said * I didn't mean anything ' ". Some of those who follow this 288 PUNCTUATION system also use the single marks for isolated words, short phrases, and an}'thing that can hardly be called a formal quotation ; this avoids giving much emphasis to such expres- sions, which is an advantage. The more logical method is that adopted, for instance, by the Oxford University Press, of reserving the double marks exclusively for quotations within quotations. Besides the loss of the useful degrees in emphasis (sure, however, to be inconsistently utilized), there is a certain lack of full-dress effect about important quotations when given this way ; but that is probably a mere matter of habitua- tion. It should be mentioned that most of the quoted quota- tions in this section had originally the double marks, but have been altered to suit the more logical method ; and the unpleasantness of the needless quotation marks with which we started has so been slightly toned down. A common mistake, of no great importance, but resulting in more or less discomfort or perplexity to the reader, is the placing of the first quotation mark earlier than the place where quotation really begins. The commonest form of it is the including of the quoter s introductory that^ which it is often obvious that the original did not contain. Gener- ally speaking, if that is used the quotation marks may be dispensed with ; not, however, if the exact phraseology is important ; but at least the mark should be in the right place. I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says, ' that the man who lives wholly detached from others, must be either an angel or a devil.' — Burke. As the aphorism descends through Latin from Aristotle (^ 6r]pLov rj O^os), the precise English words are of no importance, and the quotation marks might as well be away ; at least the first should be after that. Then, with ' a sarvant, sir ' to me, he took himself into the kitchen. — Borrow. Clearly a is not included in the quotation. QUOTATION MARKS 289 They make it perfectly clear and plain, he informed the House, that ' Sir Antony MacDonnell was invited by him, rather as a colleague than as a mere Under-Secretary, to register my will.' — Times, The change from him to my would be quite legitimate if the first quotation mark stood before rather instead of where it does ; as it stands, it is absurd. It is long since he partook of the Holy Communion, though there was an Easterday, of which he writes, when ' he might have remained quietly in (his) corner during the office, if . . . '. — Times. The {his) is evidently bracketed to show that it is substituted for the original writer's my. This is very conscientious ; but it follows that either the same should have been done for he, or the quotation mark should be after he. We began this section by saying that quotation marks should be used only when necessary. A question that affects the decision to some extent is the difference between direct, indirect, and half-and-half quotation. We can say (i) He said * I will go '. (2) He said he would go. (3) He said ' he would go '. The first variety is often necessary for the sake of vividness. The third is occasionally justified when, though there is no occasion for vividness, there is some turn of phrase that it is important for the reader to recognize as actually originating, not with the writer, but with the person quoted ; otherwise, that variety is to be carefully avoided ; how dis- agreeable it is will appear in the example below. For ordinary purposes the second variety, which involves no quotation marks, is the best. He then followed my example, declared he never felt more refreshed in his life, and, giving a bound, said, ' he would go and look after his horses.' —Borrow. Further, there may be quotation, not of other people's words, but of one's own thoughts. In this case the method prevailing at present is that exemplified in the Times extract below. Taken by itself, there is no objection to it. We point out, however, that it is irreconcilable with the principles N.S. U 290 PUNCTUATION explained in this section, which demand the addition of a full stop (derived ?.). That woidd be a worse monstrosity than the one in the first of the three legitimate alternatives that we add. We recommend that the Times method should be abandoned, and the first or second of the others used ac- cording to circumstances. The next question is, Whence is this income derived ? — Times. The next question is 'Whence is this income derived?'. (Full direct quotation. Observe the * monstrosity ' stop) The next question is whence this income is derived. (Indirect quotation) The next question is 'Whence this income is derived'. (Indirect quotation with quotation marks, or half-and-half quotation, like the Borrow sentence) In concluding the chapter on Punctuation we may make the general remark that the effect of our recommendations, whether advocating as in the last section more strictness, or as in other parts more liberty, would be, certainly, a con- siderable reduction in the number of diacritical marks cutting up and disfiguring the text ; and, as we think, a practice in most respects more logical and comprehensible. PART II Some less important chapters had been designed on Euphony, Ambiguity, Negligence, and other points. But as the book would with them have run to too great length, some of the examples have been simply grouped here in indepen- dent sections, with what seemed the minimum of comment. I. Jingles To read his tales is a baptzV;;/ of optim/sm. — Times. Sensation is the dir^^r/ efift'r/ of the w^de of w^nion of the sensorium.— Huxley. There have been no periodi^, or qualifies true only after largely has qualified it: it is not the (universal) truth, but the partial truth, of the proposition that is unquestionable. When the traffic in our streets becomes entirely mechanically pro- pelled.— limes. He lived practically exclusively on milk. — E. F. BENSON. Critics would probably decidedly disagree. — HUTTON. The children are functionally mentally defective. — Times. What is practically wholly and entirely the British commerce and trade. — Times. . . . who answered, usually monosyllabically, . . . — E. F. BENSON. The policy of England towards Afghanistan is, as formerly, entirely friendly. — Times. Money spent possibly unwisely, probably illegally, and certainly hastily. Ti?nes. The deer are necessarily closely confined to definite areas. — Times. We find Hobbes's view . . . tolerably effectively combated. — MORLEY. Great mental endowments do not, unhappily, necessarily involve a passion for obscurity.— H. G. WELLS. The proposition of Descartes is unquestionably largely true. — HuXLEY 2. Alliteration Alliteration is not much affected by modern prose writers of any experience ; it is a novice's toy. The antithetic variety has probably seen its best days, and the other instances quoted are doubtless to be attributed to negligence. I must needs trudge at every old beldam's bidding and every young minx's jnaggot. — ScOTT. Onward ^/ided Dame Ursula, now in ^/immer and now in gloova. — Scott. I have seen her in the same day as changeful as a warmozet, and as stubborn as a wule. — Scott. Thus, in ^^^sequence of the ^^^^tinuance of that grievance, the means of education at the disposal of the Protestants and Presbyterians were ^/unted and j/erilized.— BALFOUR. A gaunt well with a shattered pent-house rt'warfed the dwelling. — H. G. Wells. EUPHONY 293 It shall be lawful to picket premises for the /urpose of peacefully persuading any person to . . . — Times. 3. Repeated Prepositions The founders ^/the study ^the origin ian inconvenient needle is and remains insoluble. — Times. But these unsoldierlike recriminations among the Russian officers as well as their luxurious lives and their complete insouciance in the presence of their country's misfortunes, seems to have set back the hand on the dial of Japanese rapprochement. — Times, Is there no spiritual purge to make the eye of the camel easier for a South-African millionaire? — Times. And so it has come to pass that, not only wJiere invalids do congregate^ but in places hitherto reserved for the summer recreation of the tourist or the mountaineer there is a growing influx of winter pleasure-seekers. - Times. Salmasius alone was not unworthy sublimi flagello.— Lahj^or. Even if a change were desirable with Kitchener duceet auspice. — Times. Charged with carrying out the Military Member's orders, but having, pace Sir Edwitt Collen, no authority of his own. — Times, It is not in the interests of the Japanese to close the book of the war, until they have placed themselves in the position of beati possidentes. — Times. [Beati possidentes is a sentence, meaning Blessed are those who are itt possession ; to fit it into another sentence is most awkward) Resignation became a virtue of necessity for Sweden in hopes that abetter understanding might in time grow out of the new order of things. — Tiines. (In the original phrase, of necessity does not depend on virtue^\i\x\. on make; and it is intolerable without the word that gives it its meaning) Many of the celebrities who in that most frivolous of watering-places do congregate.— Baron?:ss von Hutten. If misbehaviour be not checked in an effectual manner before long, there is every prospect that the whips of the existing Motor Act will be transformed into the scorpions of the Motor Act of the future.— Z/Vy/^^'j-, A special protest should be made against the practice of intro- ducing a quotation in two or three instalments of a word or two, each with its separate suit of quotation marks. The only quotations that should be cut up are those that are familiar enough to need no quotation marks, so that the effect is not so jerky. 3IO QUOTATION The • pi^my body' seemed * fretted to decay' by the 'fiery soul' within it.— J. R. (iKEEN. (The original is :— A fiery soul which, working out its w.iy, Fretted the pygmy-body to decay. — Dryden.) 18. Trite Quotation Quotation may be material or formal. With the first, the writer quotes to support himself by the authority (or to impugn the authority) of the person quoted ; this does not concern us. With the second, he quotes to add some charm of striking expression or of association to his own writing. To the reader, those quotations are agreeable that neither strike him as hackneyed, nor rebuke his ignorance by their complete novelty, but rouse dormant memories. Quotation, then, should be adapted to the probable reader's cultivation. To deal in trite quotations and phrases therefore amounts to a confession that the writer either is uncultivated himself, or is addressing the uncultivated. All who would not make this confession are recommended to avoid (unless in some really new or perverted application — notum si callida verbum red- diderit junctura novum) such things as : Chartered libertine ; balm in Gilead ; my prophetic soul ; harmless necessary ; e pur si muove ; there 's the rub ; the curate's egg ; hinc illae lacrimae ; fit audience though few ; a consummation devoutly to be wished ; more in sorrow than in anger ; metal more attractive ; heir of all the ages ; curses not loud but deep ; more sinned against than sinning; the irony of fate; the psychological moment; the man in the street ; the sleep of the just ; a work of supererogation ; the pity of it ; the scenes he loved so well ; in her great sorrow ; all that was mortal of — ; few equals and no superior ; leave severely alone ; suffer a sea-change. The plan partook of the nature of that of those ingenious islanders who lived entirely by taking in each other's washing.— E. F. BENSON. For he was but moderately given to ' the cups that cheer but not inebriate ', and had already finished his tea. — Eliot. Austria forbids children to smoke in public places ; and in German schools and military colleges there are laws upon the subject ; France, Spain, Greece, and Portugal /eave the matter severely alo7ie. — Westminster Gazette. {Severely is much worse than pointless here) They carried compulsoiy subdivision and restriction of all kinds of QUOTATION, &c., GRAMMAR 311 skilled labour down to a degree that would have been laughable enougJt., if it had only been less destructive. — MORLEY. If Diderot had visited . . . Rome, even the mighty painter of the Last Judgment . . . would have found an interpreter worthy of him. But it was not to be. — MORLEY. Mr. de S^lincourt has, of course, the defects of his qualities. — Tifnes. The beloved lustige Wien [Vienna, that is] of his youth had suffe7'ed a sea-change. The green glacis down which Sobieski drove the defeated besieging army of Kara Mustafa was blocked by ranges of grand new buildings. — Westviittster Gazette. 19. Latin Abbreviations, &c. No one should use these who is not sure that he will not expose his ignorance by making mistakes with them. Con- fusion is very common, for instance, between i.e. and e.g. Again, sic should never be used except when a reader might really suppose that there was a misprint or garbhng ; to insert it simply by way of drawing attention and conveying a sneer is a very heavy assumption of superiority. Vide is only in place when a book or dictionary article is being referred to. Shaliapine, first bass at the same opera, has handed in his resignation in consequence of this affair, and also because of affairs in general, vide imprisonment of his great friend Gorki. — Times. The industrialist organ is inclined to regret that the league did not fix some definite date such as the year 1910 (sic) or the year 19 12, for the completion of this programme. — Ti??ies. (This is the true use oi sic \ as the years mentioned are not consecutive, a reader might suppose that something was wrong ; sic tells him that it is not so) The Boersen Courier . . . maintains that 'nothing remains for M. Delcasse but to cry Pater peccavi to Germany and to retrieve as quickly as possible his diplomatic mistake (sic)'. — Times. Let your principal stops be the full stop and comma, with a judicious use of the semicolon and of the other stops where they are absolutely necessary {i. e. you could not dispense with the note of interrogation in asking questions). — Bygott & JONES. [e. g. is wanted, not /. e) 20. Unequal Yokefellows and Defective Double Harness When a word admits of two constructions, to use both may not be positively incorrect, but is generally as ugly as to drive a horse and a mule in double harness. 312 GRAMMAR They did not linger in the long scarlet colonnades of the temple itself, nor gazing at the dancing for which it is famous. — Sladen. This undoubtedly caused prices to rise ; but did it not also cause all Lancashire to work short time, many viills to close, and a great restric- tion in the purchases of all our customers for cotton goods ? — Tijnes. . . . set herself quietly down to the care of her own household, and to assist Benjamin in the concerns of his trade. — ScoTT. This correspondent says that not only did the French Government know that Germany recognized the privileges resulting for France from her position in Algeria, but also her general views on the work of reform which it would be the task of the conference to examine. — Times. Teach them the * character of God ' through the * Son's Life of Love ', that conscience must not be outraged, not because they would be punished if they did, or because they would be handsomely rewarded if they didn't, but simply because they know a thing is right or wrong . . . — Daily Telegraph. And any one who permits himself this incongruity is likely to be betrayed into actual blunders. The popularity of the parlements was surely due to the detestation felt for the absolute Monarchy, and because they seemed to half-informed men to be the champions of . . . — Times. (Here because they seemed does not really fit the popularity . . . was, h\x\. parlements were popular) A difference, this, which was not much considered where and when the end of the war was thought to be two or three years off, and that the last blow would be Russia's. — F. Greenwood. (The last clause does not fit the end of the war was thought, but it was thought) Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them.— Borrow. Save him accordingly she did ; but no sooner is he dismissed, and Faust has made a remark on the multitude of arrows which she is darting forth on all sides, than Lynceus returns. — Carlyle. The short drives at the beginning of the course of instruction were intended gradually to accustom the novice to the speed, and of giving him in the pauses an opportunity to fix well in his mind the principles of the automobile. — Times. The predecessors of Sir Antony MacDonnell . . . were, to use the words of the Prime Minister, 'the aiders, advisers, and suggesters of their official chiefs'. — Times. (Though a chief can have a suggester as well as an adviser, adviser is naturally followed by an objective genitive, but sug- gester can only be followed by a possessive genitive — except of the suggestion made) UNEQUAL YOKEFELLOWS 313 My assiduities expose me rather to her scorn . . . than to the treatment due to a man.— Richardson. One worthy gentleman, who is, perhaps, better known than popidar in City restaurants, is never known to have lavished even the humblest copper coin on a waiter. — Titbits. Its hands require strengthening and its resources increased. — Times. Analogous, but always incorrect, though excusable in various degrees, is the equipping of pairs that should obviously be in double harness with conjunctions or prepositions that do not match — following neitJier by or, both by as well as. and the like. Diderot presented a bouquet which was neither well or ill received. — MORLEV. Like the Persian noble of old, I ask, ' that I may neither command or obey '.—Emerson. She would hear nothing of a declaration of war, or give any judgment on . . .—J. R. Green. It appears, then, that neither the mixed and incomplete empiricism considered in the third chapter, still less the pure empiricism considered in the second chapter, affords us . . . — Balfour. Scarcely was the nice new drain finished than several of the children sickened with diphtheria. — Spectator. Which differs from that and who in being used both as an adjective as well as a noun. — H. SwEET. M. Shipoff in one and the same breath denounces innovations, yet bases the whole electoral system on the greatest innovation in Russian history. — Times. It would be equally absurd to attend to all the other parts of an engine and to neglect the principal source of its energy — the firebox — as it is ridiculous to pay particular attention to the cleanliness of the body and to neglect the mouth and teeth. — Advertisement. The conception of God in their minds was not that of z. Father, but as a dealer out of rewards and punishments.- Z>^7//^ Telegraph. Dr. Dillon, than whom no Englishman has a profounder and more accurate acquaintance with the seamy side — as, indeed, of all aspects of Russian life — assumes . . . — Times. Sir, — In view of the controversy which has arisen concerning the 12 in. Mark VIII guns in the Navy, and* especially to the suggestion which might give rise to some doubt as to the efficiency of the wire system of construction . . . — Times. We add three .sentences, in the first of which double harness should not have been used because it is too cumbrous, in the 314 GRAMAIAR second of which it is not correctly possible, and in the third of which the failure to use it is very slovenly. The odd part of it is that this childish confusion does not only not take from our pleasure, but does not even take from our sense of the author's talent.— H. James, (far from diminishing our pleasure, does not . . .) As to the duration of the Austro-Russian mandate, there seems little disposition here to treat the question in a hard-and-fast spirit, but rather to regard it as . . . — Times. (. . . spirit ; it is rather regarded as . . .) To the student of the history of religious opinions in England few contrasts are more striking when he compares the assurance and com- placency with which men made profession of their beliefs at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the diffidence and hesitation with which the same are recited at the beginning of the twentieth. — Daily Telegraph. (more striking than that between the assurance . . .) 21. Common Parts When two sentences coupled by a conjunction (whether coordinating or subordinating) have one or more parts in common, there are two ways of avoiding the full repetition of the common parts, {a) ' I see through your villany and I detest your villany ' can become ' I see through and detest your villany'; ' I have at least tried to bring about a recon- ciliation, though I may have failed to bring about a reconcilia- tion ' can become ' I have at least tried, though I may have failed, to bring about, &c.' [b) By substitution or ellipse, the sentences become ' I see through your villany, and detest it ' and ' I have at least tried to bring about a reconciliation, though I may have failed (to do so) '. Of these, the (a) form requires careful handling : a word that is not common to both sentences must not be treated as common; and one that is common, and whose position declares that it is meant to do double duty, must not be repeated. Violations of these rules are always more or less unsightly, and are excusable only when the precise {a) form is intolerably stiff and the {b) form not available. In our examples below, the words placed in brackets are the two variants, each of which, when the other is omitted, should, with the common or unbracketed parts, COMMON PARTS 315 form a complete sentence ; the conjunctions being of course ignored for this purpose. What other power (could) or (ever has) produced such changes? — Daily Telegraph. Things temporal (had) and (would) alter. — Daily Telegraph. (It had), as (all houses should), been in tune with the pleasant, mediocre charm of the island.— E. F. Benson. This type will almost always admit of the emphatic repetition of the verb : ' could produce or ever has produced '. Those of us who still believe in Greek as (one of the finest), if not (the finest) instruments . . . — limes. (One of the noblest), if not (the noblest), feelings an Englishman could possess. — Daily Telegraph. Use (b) : ' One of the finest instruments, if not the finest '. The games were looked upon as being (quite as important; or (perhaps more important) than drill. — Times. The railway has done (all) and (more) than was expected of it. — Spectator. Use {b) : ' as important as drill, if not more so ' ; ' all that was expected of it, and more '. All words that precede the first of two correlatives, such as ' not . . . but ', ' both . . . and ', ' neither . . . nor ', are declared by their position to be common ; we bracket accordingly in the next examples : The pamphlet forms (not only a valuable addition to our works on scientific subjects), but (is also of deep interest to German readers). — Times, (not only forms . . . , but is . . .) Forty-five per cent of the old Rossallians... received (either decorations) (or were mentioned in despatches). — Daily Telegraph. (Either received . . . or were) The Senate, howover, has /^either passed) (or will pass) amendments to every clause. — Spectator, (either has passed or will pass) Cloth of gold (neither seems to elate) (nor cloth of frieze to depress) him.— Lamb. A curious extension, not to be mended in the active ; for neither cannot well precede the first of two subjects when they have different verbs. 3i6 GRAMMAR On the other hand, words placed between the two correlatives are declared by their position not to be common : Which neither (suits one purpose) (nor the other). — Times, (suits neither . . . nor) Not only (against my judgment), (but my inclination). — Richardson. Not only (in the matter of malaria), (but also beriberi).— 7 /w^j-. (In the matter not of malaria only, but of . . .) 22. The Wrong Turning It is not very uncommon, on regaining the high road after a divergent clause or phrase, to get confused between the two, and continue quite wrongly the subordinate construction instead of that actually required. I feel, however, that there never was a time when the people of this country were more ready to believe than they are today, and would openly believe if Christianity, with ' doctrine ' subordinated, were presented to them in the most convincing of all forms, viz. . . . — Daily Telegraph. {Would believe is made parallel to Ikey are today ; it is really parallel to there never was a time ; and we should read and that they would openly believe) In the face of this statement either proofs should be adduced to show that Coroner Troutbeck has stated facts ' soberly judged ', and that they contain * warrant for the accusation of wholesale ' ignorance on the part of a trusted and eminently useful class of the community, or failing this, that the offensive and unjust charge should be withdrawn. — Times. {The charge should be zu it h drawn is made parallel to Coro?ier Troutbeck has stated a.nd they contain ; it is really parallel io proofs should be adduced] and we should omit that, and read or f, riling this, the offensive . . .) We cannot part from Prof. Bury's work without expressing our unfeigned admiration for his complete control of the original authorities on which his narrative is based, and of the sound critical judgment he exhibits . . . — Spectator. (The judgment is admired, not controlled) Sometimes the confusion is not merely of the pen, but is in the writer's thought ; and it is then almost incurable. . . . the privilege by which the mind, like the lamps of a mailcoach, moving rapidly through the midnight woods, illuminate, for one instant, the foliage or sleeping umbrage of the thickets, and, in the next instant, have quitted them, to carry their radiance forward upon endless suc- cessions of objects. — De Quincey. GRAMMAR 317 23. Ellipse in Subordinate Clauses The missing subject and (with one exception) the missing verb of a subordinate clause can be supplied only from the sentence to which it is subordinate. The exception is the verb 'to be'. We can say 'The balls, when wet, do not bounce ', ' When in doubt, play trumps ', because the verb to be supplied is are, and the subject is that of the principal sen- tence. Other violations of the rule occur, but are scarcely tolerable even in the spoken language. The following are undesirable instances : For, though summer, I knew . . . Mr. Rochester would like to see a cheerful hearth.— C. Bronte. We can supply was, but not it\ the natural subject is /. I have now seen him, and though not for long, he is a man who speaks with Bismarckian frankness. — Times. ' Though I did not see him for long ', we are meant to under- stand. But the though clause is not subordinate to the sentence containing that subject and verb : aftd always joins coordinates and announces the transition from one coordinate to another. Consequently, the thotigh clause must be a part (a subordinate part) of the second coordinate, and must draw from that its subject and verb : ' though he is not a man of Bismarckian frankness for long, . . . '. Even if we could supply I saw with the clause in its present place, we should still have the absurd implication that the man's habitual frankness (not the writer's perception of it) depended on the duration of the interview. We offer three conjectural emen- dations : ' I have now seen him, though not for long ; and he is a man who . . . '; 'I have now seen him, and though I did not see him for long, I perceived that he was a man who . . . ' ; * I have now seen him, and though I did not see him for long, I found out what he thought ; for he is a man who . . . '. 24. Some Illegitimate Infinitives Claim is not followed by an infinitive except when the subject oi claim is also that of the infinitive. Thus, I claim to 3i8 GRAMMAR be honesty but not / claijn this to be honest. The Oxford Dictionary (1^93) does not mention the latter use even to condemn it, but it is now becoming very common, and calls for strong protest. The corresponding passive use is equally wrong. The same applies to pretend. ' This entirely new experiment ' which you claim to have ' solved the problem of combining . . .' — Times. Usage, therefore, is not, as it is often claimed to be, the absolute law of language.— R. G. White. The gun which made its first public appearance on Saturday is claimed to be the most serviceable weapon of its kind in use in any army. — Times. The constant failure to live up to what we claim to be our most serious convictions proves that we do not hold them at all. — Daily Telegraph. The anonymous and masked delators whose creation the Opposition pretends to be an abuse of power on the part of M. Combes. — Times. Possible diV^d probable are not to be completed by an infinitive. For are possible to read cafi ; and for probable read likely. But no such questions are possible, as it seems to me, to arise between your nation and ours. — Choate. Should Germany meditate anything of the kind it would look un- commonly like a deliberate provocation of France, and for that reason it seems scarcely probable to be borne out by events. — Times. Prefer has two constructions : I prefer this (living) to that (dying), and I prefer to do this rather than that. The infini- tive construction must not be used without rather (unless, of course, the second alternative is suppressed altogether). Other things being equal, I should prefer to marry a rich man than a poor one. — E. F. Benson. The following infinitives are perhaps by false analogy from those that might follow forbade^ seen, ask. It may be noticed generally that slovenly and hurried writers find the infinitive a great resource. Marshal Oyama siuoXXy prohibited his troops to take quarter within the walls. — Times. The Chinese held a chou-chou, during which the devil was exorcised and duly witnessed by several believers to take his flight in divers guises. — Times. Third, they might demand from Germany, all flushed as she was with military pride, to tell us plainly whether . . . — Morley. INFINITIVES 319 25. * Split' Infinitives The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the con- sciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the differ- ence between a good and a bad writer. The split infinitive is an ugly thing, as will be seen from our examples below ; but it is one among several hundred ugly things, and the novice should not allow it to occupy his mind exclusively. Even that myster- ious quality, ' distinction ' of style, may in modest measure be attained by a splitter of infinitives : ' The book is written with a distinction (save in the matter of split infinitives) unusual in such works.' — Times. The time has come to once again voice the general discontent.— Times. It should be authorized to immediately put in hand such work. — Times. Important negotiations are even now proceeding to further cement trade relations. — Times. We were not as yet strong enough in numbers to seriously influence the poll. — Times, Keep competition with you unless you wish to once more see a similar state of things to those prevalent prior to the inauguration . . . — Guernsey Evening Press. And that she should force me, by the magic of her pen to mentally acknowledge, albeit with wrath and shame, my own inferiority. — CORELLI. The oil lamp my landlady was good enough to still allow me the use of. — CORELLI. The ' persistent agitation ' ... is to so arouse public opinion on the subject as to . . . — Times. In order to slightly extend that duration in the case of a (tvf.— Tifnes. To thus prevent a constant accretion to the Jewish population of Russia from this country would be nobler work . . . — Times. 26. Compound Passives Corresponding to the active construction ' . . . have at- tempted to justify this step ', we get two passive constructions : (1) * This step has been attempted to be justified ', (2) • It has been attempted to justify this step'. Of these (1), although licensed by usage, is an incorrect and slovenly makeshift : 3ao GRAMMAR ' this step ' is not the object of * have attempted ', and cannot be the subject of the corresponding passive. The true object of ' have attempted ' is the whole phrase * to justify this step ', which in (2) rightly appears as the subject, in apposition to an introductory ' it '. — In point of clumsiness, there is perhaps not much to choose between the two passive constructions, neither of which should be used when it can be avoided. When the subject of the active verb ' have attempted ' is definite, and can conveniently be stated, the active form should always be retained ; to write ' it had been attempted by the founders of the study to supply ' instead of ' the founders had attempted to supply ' is mere perversity. When, as in some of our examples below, the subject of the active verb ' have attempted ' is indefinite, the passive turn is some- times difficult to avoid ; but unless the object of ' justify ' is a relative, and therefore necessarily placed at the beginning, * an attempt has been made ' can often be substituted for ' it has been attempted ', and is less stiff and ugly. The cutting down of ' saying lessons ', by which it had been attempted by the founders of the study to supply the place of speech in the learning of Greek. — Times. But when it was attempted to give practical effect to the popular exasperation, serious obstacles arose. — Times, (When an attempt was made to . . .) He and his friends would make the government of Ireland a sheer impossibility, and it would be the duty of the Irish party to make it so if it was attempted to be run on the lines of . . . — Ti^nes. (if an attempt was made to run it on the . . .) It is not however attempted to be denied. — Hazlitt. (No one attempts to deny) As to the audience, we imagine that a large part of it, certainly all that part of it whose sympathies it was desired to enlist, . . . — Times, (whose sympathies were to be enlisted) He will see the alterations that were proposed to be made, but rejected. — Times, (proposed, but rejected) The argument by which this difficulty is sought to be evaded. — Balfour. This and the following instances are not easily mended, COMPOUND PASSIVES 321 unless we may supply the subject of ' seek ', &c. (' some writers '). The arguments by which the abolition was attempted to be supported were founded on the rights of man. — Times. Some mystery in regard to her birth, which, she was well in- formed, was assiduously, though vainly, endeavoured to be discovered. — Fanny Burney. The close darkness of the shut-up house (forgotten to be opened, though it was long since day) yielded to the unexpected glare. — Dickens. Those whose hours of employment are proposed to be limited. — Times. The insignificant duties proposed to be placed on food. — Times. The anti-liberal principles which it was long ago attempted to embody in the Holy Alliance. — Times. Considerable support was managed to be raised for Waldemar. — Carlyle. We may notice here a curious blunder that is sometimes made with the reflexive verb ' I avail myself of. The passive of this is never used, because there is no occasion for it : * I was availed of this by myself would mean exactly the same as the active, and would be intolerably clumsy. The impossible passives quoted below imply that it and staff would be the direct objects of the active verb. Watt and Fulton bethought themselves that, where was power was not devil, but was God ; that it must be availed of, and not by any means let off and wasted.— Emerson. Used or employed, and so in the next : No salvage appliances or staff could have been availed of in time to save the lives of the men. — Times. 27. Confusion with Negatives This is extraordinarily common. The instances are ar- ranged in order of obviousness. Yezd is not only the refuge of the most ancient of Persian religions, but it is one of the headquarters of the modern Babi propaganda, the far- reaching effects of which it is probably difficult to underestimate. — spectator. Not a whit undeterred by the disaster which overtook them at Cavendish-square last week ... the suffragettes again made themselves prominent. — Daily Mail. N.s. y 332 GRAMMAR So far as medicine is concerned, I am not sure that physiology, such as it was down to the time of Harvey, might as well not have existed. — Huxley. The generality of his countrymen are far more careful not to transgress the customs of what they call gentility, than to violate the laws of honour or morality. — BORROW. France and Russia are allies, as are England and Japan. Is it impossible to imagine that, in consequence of the growing friendship between the two great peoples on both sides of the Channel, an agreement might not one day be realized between the four Powers ? — Times. I do not of course deny that in this, as in all moral principles, there may not be found, here and there, exceptional cases which may amuse a casuist. — L. Stephen. In view of the doubts among professed theologians regarding the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels in whole or in part, he is unable to say how much of the portraiture of Christ may not be due to the idealization of His life and character. — Daily Telegraph. Is it quite inconceivable that if the smitten had always turned the other cheek the smiters would not long since have become so ashamed that their practice would have ceased ? — Daily Telegraph. I do not think it is possible that the traditions and doctrines of these two institutions should not fail to create rival, and perhaps warring, schools. — Times. Any man— runs this terrible statute— denying the doctrine of the Trinity or of the Divinity of Christ, or that the books of Scripture are not the 'Word of God', or ... , 'shall suffer the pain of death'.— J. R. Green. But it would not be at all surprising if, by attempting too much, and, it must be added, by indulging too much in a style the strained preciosity of which occasionally verges on rant and even hysteria, Mr. Sichel has not to some extent defeated his own object. — Spectator, No one scarcely really believes. — Daily Telegraph. Let them agree to differ ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?— Stevenson. Lastly, how can Mr. Balfour tell but that two years hence he may not be too tired of official life to begin any new conflict ? — F. Greenwood. What sort of impression would it be likely to make upon the Boers ? They could hardly fail to regard it as anything but an expression of want of confidence in our whole South-African policy. — Times. My friend Mr. Bounderby could never see any difference between leaving the Coketown ' hands ' exactly as they were and requiring them to be fed with turtle soup and venison out of gold spoons.— Dickens. CONFUSION WITH NEGATIVES 323 But it is one thing to establish these conditions [the Chinese Ordinance], and another to remove them suddenly. — Westminster Gazette. What economy of life and money would not have been spared the empire of the Tsars had it not rendered war certain. — 7iV;/^i-. (// is the empire. The instance is not quoted for tiot, though that too is wrong, but for the confusion between loss and economy) The question of * raids ' is one which necessarily comes home to every human being living within at least thirty miles of our enormously long coast line. — Lonsdale Hale. (An odd puzzle. Within thirty means less than thirty ; at least thirty means not less than thirty. The meaning is clear enough, however, and perhaps the expression is defensible ; but it would have been better to say : within a strip at least thirty miles broad along our enormous coast line) The fact that a negative idea can often be either included in a word or kept separate from it leads to a special form of con- fusion, the construction proper to the resolved form being used with the compound and vice versa. My feelings, Sir, are moderately unspeakable, and that is a fact.— American, (not moderately speakable : 7noderately belongs only to half of unspeakable) . . . who did not aim, like the Presbyterians, at a change in Church government, but rejected the notion of a national Church at all.^ J. R. Green. {Reject is equivalent to will ttot have. I reject altogether : I will not have at all) And your correspondent does not seem to know, or not to realize, the conditions of the problem. — Times. {Seejns, not does not seem, has to be supplied in the second clause) I confess myself altogether unable to formulate such a principle, much less to prove it. — Balfour. {Less does not suit unable, but able ; but the usage of much less and much more is hopelessly chaotic) War between these two great nations would be an inexplicable impossi- bility. — Choate. {Inexplicable does not qualify the whole oi impossibility ; to make sense we must divide i)npossibility into impossible event, and take inexplicable only with event) And the cry has this justification, — that no age can see itself in a proper perspective, and is therefore incapable of giving its virtues and vices their relative places. — Spectator. {No age is equivalent to not any age, and out of this we have to take any age as subject to the last sentence ; this is a common, but untidy and blameworthy device) Y 2 324 GRAMMAR 28. Omission of ' as ' This is very common, but quite contrary to good modern usage, after the verb regard, and others like it. In the first three instances the motive of the omission is obvious, but does not justify it ; all that was necessary was to choose another verb, as consider^ that does not require as. In the later instances the omission is gratuitous. I regard it as important as anything. Lord Bombie had run away with Lady Rombie 'in her sark'. This I could not help regarding both a most improper as well as a most uncomfortable proceeding. — CROCKETT. So vital is this suggestion regarded. Rare early editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems— editions which had long been regarded among the national heirlooms.— S. Lee. The latter may now be expected to regard himself absolved from such obligation as he previously felt. — Times. A memoir which was justly regarded of so much merit and importance that . . .—Huxley. . . . what might be classed a ' horizontal' European triplice. — Times. You would look upon yourself amply revenged if you knew what they have cost me.— RiCHARDSON. He also alluded to the bayonet, and observed that its main use was no longer a defence against cavalry, but it was for the final charge. — Ti?nes. ... I was rewarded with such a conception of the God-like majesty and infinite divinity which everywhere loomed up behind and shone through the humanity of the Son of Man that no false teaching or any power on earth or in hell itself will ever shake my firm faith in the combined divinity and humanity in the person of the Son of God, and as sure a?n /that I eat and drink and live to-day, so certain am I that this mysterious Divine Redeemer is in living . . . — Daily Telegraph. The last example is of a different kind. Read as sure as I am for as sure am I as the least possible correction. Unprac- tised writers should beware of correlative clauses except in their very simplest forms. 29. Other Liberties taken with 'as' As must not be expected to do by itself the work of such as. There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this abode, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged innocence imprisoned. — Dickens. The specialist is naturally best for his particular job ; but if the particular speciahst required is not on the spot, as must often be the case, the best substitute for him is not another specialist but the man trained to act for himself in all circumstances, as it has been the glory of our nation to produce both in the Army and elsewhere. — Times. We question if throughout the French Revolution there was a single case of six or seven thousand insurgents blasted away by cannon shot, as is believed to have happened in Odessa. — Spectator. (This is much more defensible than the previous two ; but when a definite noun — as here case — can be naturally supplied for the verb introduced by as, such as is better). The decision of the French Government to send a special mission to represent France at the marriage of the German Crown Prince is not intended as anything more than a mere act of international courtesy, as is customary on such occasions.— ZVw^j-. Neither as nor such as should be made to do the work of the relative pronoun where there would be no awkwardness in using the pronoun itself. With a speed of eight knots, as [which] has been found practicable in the case of the Suez Canal, the passage would occupy five days. — Times. The West Indian atmosphere is not of the limpid brightness and transparent purity such as [that] are found in the sketch entitled 'A Street in Kingston '. — Times. The ideal statues and groups in this room and the next are scarcely so interesting as we have sometimes seen. — Times. {As is clearly here a relative adverb, answering to so ; nevertheless the construction can be theoretically justified, the full form being as we have sometimes seen groups interesting. But it is very ugly ; why not say instead as so?!ie that lue have seen ?) The idiom as ivJio should say must not be used unless the sentence to which it is appended has for subject a person to whom the person implied in who is compared. This seems reasonable, and is borne out, for instance, by all the Shakespeare instances — a dozen — that we have looked at. The type is : The cloudy messenger turns me his back, and hums, as who should say: — &c. ^26 GRAMMAR To think of the campaign without the scene is as who should read a play by candle-light among the ghosts of an empty theatre. — MORLEY. 30. Brachylogy 1. Omission of a dependent noun in the second of two parallel series : * The brim of my hat is wider than yours '. For this there is some justification : an ugly string of words is avoided, and the missing word is easily supplied from the first series ; it has usually the effect, however, of attaching a preposition to the wrong noun : 1 should be proud to lay an obligation upon my charmer to the amount of half, nay, to the whole of my estate.— Richardson. There is as much of the pure gospel in their teachings as in any other community of Christians in our land. There cannot be the same reason for a prohibition of correspondence with me, as there was of mine with Mr. Lovelace. — Richardson. Here the right preposition is retained. A man holding such a responsible position as Minister of the United States.— D. Sladen. 2. A preposition is sometimes left out, quite unwarrant- ably, from a mistaken idea of euphony : Without troubling myself as to what such self-absorption might /ead in the future.— CoRELLi. (lead to) He chose to fancy that she was not suspicious of what all his acquaint- ance were perfectly aware— namely, that . . . — Thackeray, (aware of) 3. Impossible compromises between two possible alter- natives. To be a Christian means to us one who has been regenerated. — Daily Telegraph. (* A Christian means one who has ' : ' to be a Christian means to have been ') To do what as far as human possibility has proved out of his power. — Daily Telegraph. (* As a matter of human possibility ' : 'as far as human possibility goes ') One compromise of this kind has come to be generally recognized : So far from being annoyed, he agreed at once. ('So far was he from being annoyed that . . .' : ' far from being annoyed, he agreed ') GRAMMAR 3V 31. Between two Stools The commonest form of indecision is that between state- ment and question. But the examples of this are followed by a few miscellaneous ones. May I ask t/tat if care should be taken of remains of buildings a thousand years old, oug-/U not care to be taken of ancient British earth- works several thousand years old? — Titnes. Can I not make you understand that you are ruining yourself and me, and that if you don't get reconciled to your father what is to become of you ?— S. Ferrier. We will only say that if it was undesirable for a private member to induce the Commons to pass a vote against Colonial Preference, why was it not undesirable for a private member . . . — Spectator. Surely^ then, if I am not claiming too much for our efforts at that time to maintain the Union, am I exaggerating our present ability to render him effectual aid in the contest that will be fought at the next election if I say that prudence alone should dictate to him the necessity for doing everything in his power to revive the spirit which the policy of Sir Antony MacDonnell, Lord Dudley, and Mr. Wyndham has done so much to weaken? — Times. I then further observed that China having observed the laws of neutrality, how could he believe in the possibility of an alliance with Russia ? — Times. The next two use both the relative and the participle con- struction, instead of choosing between them. Thus it befell that our high and low labour vote, which (if one might say so in the hearing of M. Jaur^s and Herr Bebel) bei7tg vertical rather than horizontal, and quite unhindered in the United States, of course by an overwhelming majority elected President Roosevelt. — Times. He replied to Mr. Chamberlain's Limehouse speech, the only part of which that he could endorse being, he said, the suggestion that the electorate should go to the root of the question at the next general election. — Times. "Who, in Europe, at least, y^ctxAdi forego the delights of kissing, — (which the Japanese by-the-by consider a disgusting habit), — without embraces, — and all those other endearments which are supposed to dignify the progress of true love ! — Corelli. Poor, bamboozled, patient public! — no wonder it is beginning to think that a halfpenny spent on a newspaper which is purchased to be thrown away, enough and more than enough. — Corelli. But hurriedly dismissing wJiatever shadow of earnestness, or faint 328 GRAMMAR confession of a purpose, laudable or wicked, that her face, or voice, or manner, had, for the moment betrayed, she lounged . . . — Dickens. At the Epee Team Competition for Dr. Savage's Challenge Cup, held on the 25th and 27th February last, was won by the Inns of Court team, consisting of . . .— 14/"/; Middlesex Battalion Orders. 32. The Impersonal 'one' This should never be mixed up with other pronouns. Its possessive is ones, not hisy and one should be repeated, if necessary, not be replaced by hiniy &c. Those who doubt their ability to handle it skilfully under these restrictions should only use it where no repetition or substitute is needed. The older experimental usage, which has now been practically decided against, is shown in the Lowell examples. That inequality and incongruousness in his writing which makes one revise his judgment at every tenth page. — Lowell. As one grows older, one loses many idols, perhaps comes at last to have none at all, although he may honestly enough uncover in deference to the worshippers at any shrine. — Lowell. There are many passages which one is rather inclined to like than sure he would be right in liking. — Lowell. He is a man who speaks with Bismarckian frankness, and who directly impresses one with the impression that you are speaking to a man and not to an incarnate bluebook. — Times. The merit of the book, and it is not a small one, is that it discusses every problem with fairness, with no perilous hankering after originality, and with a disposition to avail oneself o{ what has been done by his pre- decessors. — Times. li one has an opinion on any subject, it is of little use to read books or papers which tell you what you know already. — Times. . . . are all creations which make one laugh inwardly as 7ve read. — HUTTON. One's, on the other hand, is not the right possessive for the generic man ; man's or his \s required according to circum- stances ; his in the following example : There is a natural desire in the mind of man to sit for one^s picture. — Hazlitt. 33. Between ... or This is a confusion between two ways of giving alternatives — betiveen . . . and, and either . . . or. It is always wrong. GRAMMAR 329 The choice Russia has is between payment for damages in money or in kind. — Times. Forced to choose between the sacrifice of important interests on the one hand 'wfj-. 33^ MEANING The Peresviet lost both her fighting-tops and (in appearance) looked the most damaged of all the ships. — Tivies. They would, however, strengthen their position if they returned the (tem- porary) loan of Sir A. MacDonnell to his owners with thanks. — Times. The score was taken to 136 when Mr. MacLaren, who had (evidently) seemed bent on hitting Mr. Armstrong off, was bowled. — Times. . . . cannot prevent the diplomacy of the two countries irom lending each other (mutual) support. — Times. However, I judged that they would soon (mutually) find each other out.— Crockett. Notwithstanding which, (however,) poor Polly embraced them all round. —Dickens. If any real remedy is to be found, we must first diagnose the true nature of the disease; (but) that, however, is not hard. — Times. M. Delcassd contemplated an identical answer for France, Great Britain, and Spain, refusing, of course, the proposed conference, but his colleagues of the Cabinet were (, however,) opposed to identical replies. — Times. The strong currents frequently shifted the mines, to the equal danger (both) of friend and foe. — Times. And persecution on the part of the Bishops and the Presbyterians, to (both of) whom their opinions were equally hateful, drove flocks of refugees over sea.— J. R. Green. But to the ordinary English Protestant (both) Latitudinarian and High Churchmen were equally hateful.— J. R. Green. Seriously, (and apart from jesting,) this is no light matter. — Bagehot. To go back to your own country . . . with (the consciousness that you go back with) the sense of duty done.— Lord Halsbury. No doubt my efforts were clumsy enough, but Togo had a capacity for taking pains, by which (said) quality genius is apt to triumph over early obstacles. — Times. ... as having created a (joint) partnership between the two Powers in the Morocco question. — Times. Sir — As a working man it appears to me that to the question * Do we believe ? ' the only sensible position (there seems to be) is to frankly acknowledge our ignorance of what lies beyond. — Daily Telegraph. 39. Redundancies Dr. Redmond told his constituents that by reducing the National vote in the House of Commons they would not thereby get rid of obstruction. — Times. It is not a thousand years ago since municipalities in Scotland were by no means free from the suspicion of corruption. — LORD ROSEBERY. Some substance equally as yielding. ~Z>rt//y Mail. MEANING 333 Had another expedition reached the Solomon Islands, who knows but that the Spaniards might 7iot have gone on to colonize Australia and so turned the current of history ? — Spectator. As one being able to give full consent ... I am yours faithfully . . . — Daily Telegraph. But to where shall I look for some small ray of light that will illumine the darkness surrounding the mystery of my being ? — Daily Telegraph. It is qw\\.Q possible that if they do that it 77iay h& possible to amend it in certain particulars. — Westminster Gazette. Men and women who professed to call themselves Christians. — Daily Telegraph. (An echo, no doubt, of 'profess and call them- selves Christians ') The correspondence that you have published abundantly throws out into bold relief the false position assumed . . . — Daily Telegraph. In the course of the day^ yestet'day^ M. Rouvier was able to assure M. Delcasse . . . — Times. Moreover, too, do we not all feel . . . ?— J. C. Collins. The doing nothing for a length of days after the first shock he sustained was the reason of how it came that Nesta knitted closer her acquaintance . . .—Meredith. When the public adopt new inventions wholesale, . . . some obligation is due to lessen, so far as is possible, the hardships in which . . . — West- minster Gazette, 40. 'As TO whether' This is a form that is seldom necessary, and should be reserved for sentences in which it is really difficult to find a substitute. Abstract nouns that cannot be followed imme- diately by whether should if possible be replaced by the corresponding verbs. Many writers seem to delight in this hideous combination, and employ it not only with abstracts that can be followed by whether, but even with verbs. The Court declined to express any opinion as to whether the Russian Ambassador was justified in giving the assurances in question and as to whether the offences with which the accused were charged were punish- able by German law. — Titnes. (Perhaps 'declined to say whether in their opinion ' ; but this is less easily mended than most) The difficulties of this task were so great that I was in doubt as to whether it was possible. — Times. His whole interest is concentrated on the question as to how his mission will affect his own fortunes. — Times. A final decision has not yet been arrived at as to whether or not the 334 MEANING proceedings shall be public— 7"/;;/ . Inwardness 50, 52. Irony 215-6. Irony 15. Irreparable 12. Italics 186. Italics and irony 216. It should seem 194. It's me 61. // . . . that 104-7. // were 195. fehic 174. Jingles 291-2. Jonathan Wild 215. 366 INDEX Journalese 351-2. Journalese 7, 352, 357. Jtiiiicial 8. Just 25. K Kipling 24-5, 175. Knock out 5 1 . L Lamb, Charles 193. Lapsus calami 21. Latin Abbreviations, (Sic. 311. Laughable 43. Laxity, disappearance of 108, iio-i. Laxity in punctuation 235, 244-7. Laze 51-2. I^eadbig question 306-7. Legislature 10. Lie and lay 40. Like 331. -like 278. Literary critics' words 38-9. Logic and Punctuation 220-5. Logic and rhetoric in punctuation 252. Log-rolling 51. Long and Short Derivatives 44-6. Long sentences 226, 300. Long words 349-50. Loquently 20. -/j/47, 219. M Macaulay 350. Malaprops 8-18. Malnutrition 5. Maltreated Idioms 336-8. Mannerism 47, 190, 195, 210, 212, 217. Meaning 331-45. Meaningless while 357-8. Me, ethic 199. Mercury 174. Meredith 198. Metaphor 200-9. Metaphor, live and dead 201-9. MetcLphysical 16. Meticulous 38-9, 349. Metrical Prose 295. Misplacement of Words 346-7. Misquotation 305-7. Mixed metaphor 203-9. Mob 49. Monstrosity stops 259, 283, 286-7. Morale 34. More and more than ever 73. More easily imagined than described 213. More honoured in the breach 306-7. More than I can help 74. Most 75. Most 0/ any 74-5. Mutual 56-8. My and mi?te 40-1. N Naivete' 'iJ-^, Naivety 38. Native words 2, 37. Negative Confusion 321-3. Negative Inversion 190-1. Negatives, resolved and compound 323. Neglige 26, 37. Negotiate 51-2. Neither 69. Neither ... ^r 313. Neologisms 18-23. Neologisms, scientific 23. Newspaper style 162, 178, 180, 226, 262, 266, 351-2. Nice 49. No and none 41. Noisiness 202-3. No7n de guerre 34. Nom de plume 34. Nonce-words 19-20. Non-defining Relatives 75-85 Non est 33. Nothing if not critical 213. Nouns and abstract expression 35. Nouns of Multitude 69. Nouns used adjectively 42, 276. Number 65-70. Number of Copula 65-7. O Oblivion to 165. Oblivious to 161. Observaftce 9. INDEX ^^1 CEiivre 27-8. Of sorts 51. Oft 194. Oft-times 194. Ohne Hast ohne Rast "i^^}' Old-fashioned enough to 21^. Olfactory organ 171. Omission of as 324. Omission of Relatives 101-2. Omission of relatives 84. Omission of that^ conj. 356-7. On a momenfs notice 164. One 67. One^ Impersonal 328. One's and his 328. Otis' s or his 67. On your ow?i 51. Oppositely 44. Orient, vb. 31. Originality, Cheap 217-8. Ornament 35, 215. Orphanage il. Ostentation 27, 31, 349. Our and oiirs 40-1. Overloading 343-4. Over-stopping 231-4. Over-stopping 245, 262-3. Parenthesis 269, 270. Parenthesis 247-50. Parenthesis in Relative Clauses 94-5. Partially 45-6. Participle and Gerund 107-10, 119. Participles 110-6. Participles Absolute 115-6. Participles Unattached 112-5. Participles with mv, Slc. 111-2. Passive monstrosities 43. Passives, Compound 319-21. Patching, Clumsy 355-6. Paulo-post future 17. Pedantry 34, 42, 64, 129, 162. Pencha?tt 27. Perchance 4, 196. Perfect Infinitive 154-6. Perfection, vb. 44-5. Period 226. Perseverant 21-2. Personification 68. Perspictcity 8-9. Peter out 48. Pet Phrases 359-60. P hantasmc.goria 35. Phase 5. Phenomenal 50. Philistine 50. Picturesque 350. Picturesquitics 20. Placate 24, 26. Playful Repetition 172-3. Play the game 5 1 . Pleonasm, v. Redundancies. Poetic words 3, 349. Polysyllabic humour 51, 54. Polysyllabic Humour 17 1-2. Pontificalibics 33. Possessive, absolute 40-1. Possessive and Gerund 116-25. Possessive, Compound 64. Possessive, compound 122-3. Possible 318. Preciosity 2. Predicatio7i 13. Prediction 13. Preface 2. Prefer 318. Preposition at end of clause 62, 84, 99. Prepositions 161-70. Prepositions, Compound 165-70; Omitted 165 ; Repeated 293 ; Superfluous 165-7. Pretend "^iZ. Prevetitative 46. Probable 318. Procession II. Promote 6. Pronominal variation 175. Proportion 300-3. Provided 13-4. Prudential Af'i). Psychological moment 50. 52. Punctuation, Cap. IV. Punctuation and ambiguity 264-5. Punctuation and neatness 284. Punctuation and relatives 78, 242-4. Punctuation, Difficulties 219- 24. Punctuation, full and slight 225. 368 INDEX Punctuation, group system 228-31. Punctuation in scientific and philo- sophic work 225, 231. Punctuation, Logic, and Rhe- toric 220-5. Punctuation, Spot Plague 226- 31. Q Qua 29. QiKind mime 27. Question and Exclamation 259-61. Question-mark, Internal 261- 62. Quieten 45 Quotation 305-11. Quotation, half-and-half, 237-8, 289. Quotation marks 280-90. Quotation marks and irony 216. Quotation marks and slang 48, 49, 50. Quotation marks and Stops 282-8. Quotation marks misplaced 288-9. Quotation marks, Single and Double 287-8. Quotation marks, superfluous 280- 82. Quotation, Trite 310-1. Quotations cut up 309-10. R Racial 22-3, 42. Railway names 276-7. Raison d'etre 26. Reader 2-3, 7, 36, 98, 210, 225, 228, 230, 231-3, 253, 268, 269, 280-1, 310, 347-8, 355. Reading aloud 296, 300. Recasting 64, 67, 120, 125, 177-8, 185, 226, 231, 232-3, 239, 241, 257, 284, 330,355-6,357- Rechner 20. Record^ adj. 51-2. Recrudescence 5, 15-6. Rectitudinous 21. Redaction 27. Redouble 32. Redundancies 332-3. Regard 324. Re gene sis 20. Regime 36. Relative and participle 327. Relative clauses and inversion 188. Relative Coordination 85-103. Relative, Miscellaneous Uses and Abuses 96-107. Relative, Omission of Prepo- sition 102-3. Relative omitted 101-2. Relatives 75-107. Relatives and punctuation78, 242-4. Relatives, Case 93-4, 99-100. Relatives Defining and Non- Defining 75-85. Relatives, Parenthesis 94-5. Relatives, Sequence of 293-4. Reliable 42-3. Remindful 21. Repetition 209-13. Repetition, Careless 303-4. Repetition, Playful 172-3.' Requisition 11. Research il. Resource 13. Reverend 8. Rhetoric 234, 236. Rhetorical repetition 209, 213. Rhetoric and Punctuation 220-5. Right along 25. Romance Words i.. 3. Royal pronoun 178. Run the show 51. Said-mX^ti inversion, 192. Same, the 358. Sans 27. Save 2-3, 196. Saxon Words i, 2-3, 7. Scandalum magnatum 34. Schadenfreude 27-8. Scott 174. Seasonable 43. Self-consciousness 351. Semicolon and independent sen- tences 255. Semicolon and Subordinate Clauses 257-8. INDEX 3^9 Semicolon, distinct functions of 222. Sense and sound 296. Sensibleness 44-5. Sentence 112, 254-5. Sentence Accent 296-8. Shall and will 133-54. Shall, archaic and literary 137, 153, 194-5. Short and Long Words 6-7. Shrimp-pink 25. Sic 311. Signpost connexion 183, 184. Sitice several days 32. Skilled 17. Slang 47-53. Slang and idiom 53. Slang, Various Origins 49-51. Slang with quotation marks 48. Slating 5 1 . Smartness 351. Smollett III. So far as^ that 168-70. Somewhat, &c. 352-5. Sordor 43. Sound and sense 296. So up (^071 27. special 11. Spencer 193. Spirit of the staircase yi. Split Auxiliaries 342-3. Split Infinitive 319. Spot-Plague 226-31. Standpoittt 25. Stands to reason 213-4. Status quo 26. Stave off 10^-"]. Steep (slang) 48. Sterne 266. Stevenson 198-9. Stops and tone symbols 220, 285. Street names 276-7. Stronger, adv. 40. Stiiniped 5 1 . Style 348-end. Styles, various 7-8. Subject, &c., and Verb in Punc- tuation 239-42. Subjunctive 154, 157-8. Subjunctive conditionals 195. Substantival Clause in Punc- tuation 235-8, 265. Such 358-9. Siich who, which, and that 103-4. Summerly 20. Superfluous but and though 334. Superlatives 74-5. Superlatives, Carlylese 349. Superlatives without the 216- 17. Super-sensitized 20. Superstitions 62, 99, 245, 266, 273, 319. Surprisedly 47. Syntax, Cap. II. Tache 28. Tackle 51. Take a back seat 51. Take it lying down 51. Take my word for it 213. Tautology 331-2. Tautology 56. Tear and wear 217-8. Telegram 19, 23. Tell-tale errors 21, 53, 56, 235, 254, 261, 308. Tete-a-tete 26. Thackeray 88, t 98. Than, Case 62-4. Than whom 64. That and which 242-3. 7'hat aud which {who) 80-5. That (conjunction), Omission OF 356-7. THA /'(relative) of PERSONS83-4. Tliat resumptive 330-1. That, Sequence of 294-5. T fiat's him 6 1. The exception proves, tScc. 306. Their 67. The more 70-4. The more 2 1 S. Thereanent 29, 194. Therefore 265. Thereto 196. Theretofore 196. The same 358. The . . . that (resolved interroga- tive) lOI. Thither 5, 196. iib 370 INDEX Those interested 344-5. Those sort 331. Though superfluous 334. Thrasonical 50, 52. Tinker with 164. Today 280. To have . . . 1 54-6. Toviorrow 280, Tone symbols and stops 285. To the foot 0/ the letter 32. Transcetidentally 10- 1 1 . Translate 2. Translation OF Foreign Words 30-3. T?an spire 4, 16, 24. Trite Phrases 213-5. Trite Quotation 310-1. Trow 194. Truisms 339-41. Trustedly 47. Trustfulness 9. Types of Humour 171-5. U -ude 21. Unconscious to 161. Under dog 51. Under-stopping 234. Unequal Yokefi llows, &c 311- 14. Unique 58-9, 339. Unquiet^ n. 21. Up to date 51. Verbal noun 108. Verberant 20. Vexedly 47. Vide 311. Vieille escrime 28. Vieilles perruques 28. Vieux jeu 28. Violence 11. Vividity 46-7. Vocabulary, Cap. I. Vocabulary, General Rules 1-4. Vocabulary, prose and poetry 3. Vulgarism 103, 118. Vulgarisms 331. W Waddle 25. Walking stick I'jd. War-fa?}ious 20. Wens AND HypertrophiedMem- bers 3C0-3. Were 1 57-8. J^>^