IXQUESTIONS OF USAGE
If any proof were needed of the fact that an immense number of people take an intense interest in the right and wrong use of the English language, and also of the further fact that their interest is out of all proportion to their knowledge of the history of our speech, such proof could be found in the swift and unceasing eruption of “letters to the editor” which broke out in many of the American newspapers immediately after the publication ofMr.Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Recessional.’ The exciting cause of this rash exhibition was found in the line which told us that
The shouting and the tumult dies.
The gross blunder in this sentence leaped to the eyes of many whose acquaintance with the principles of English construction was confined to what they chanced to remember of the rules learned by heart in their grammar-school days. But there were others whose reading was a little wider, and who were able to cite precedents inMr.Kipling’s favor from Milton and from Shakspere and from the King James translation of the Bible. Yet the argument from the past failed to convince some of the original protestants, one of whom suggested that the erring poet should be sent to a night-school, while another objected to any further discussion of the subject, since “a person who doesn’t know that the plural form of the verb is used when the subject of said verb is two or more nouns in the singular number should receive no mention in a reputable newspaper.” It may be doubted whether the altercation was really bloody enough to demand attention from the disreputable newspapers, altho it was fierce and intolerant while it lasted.
The battle raged for a fortnight, and the foundations of the deep were broken up. Yet it was really a tempest in a teapot, and oil for the troubled waters was ready at hand had any of those in danger of shipwreck thought to make use of it. In Professor Lounsbury’s ‘History of the English Language’—a book from which it is a constant pleasure to quote, since it combines sound scholarship, literary skill, and common sense in an uncommon degree—we are told that “rules have been and still are laid down ... which never had any existence outside of the minds of grammarians and verbal critics. Bythese rules, so far as they are observed, freedom of expression is cramped, idiomatic peculiarity destroyed, and false tests for correctness set up, which give the ignorant opportunity to point out supposed error in others, while the real error lies in their own imperfect acquaintance with the best usage.”
And then Professor Lounsbury cites in illustration the rule which was brought up againstMr.Kipling: “There is a rule of Latin syntax that two or more substantives joined by a copulative require the verb to be in the plural. This has been foisted into the grammar of English, of which it is no more true than it is of modern German.... The grammar of English, as exhibited in the utterances of its best writers and speakers, has from the very earliest period allowed the widest discretion as to the use either of the singular or the plural in such cases. The importation and imposition of rules foreign to its idiom, like the one just mentioned, does more to hinder the free development of the tongue, and to dwarf its freedom of expression, than the widest prevalence of slovenliness of speech, or of affectation of style; for these latter are always temporary in their character, and are sure to be left behind by the advance in popular cultivation, or forgotten through the change in popular taste.”
This is really a declaration of independence forwriters of English. It is the frank assertion that a language is made by those who use it—made by that very use. Language is not an invention of the grammarians and of the word-critics, whose business, indeed, is not to make language or to prescribe rules, but more modestly to record usage and to discover the principles which may underlie the incessant development of our common speech. And here in discussing the syntax Professor Lounsbury is at one withMr.George Meredith discussing the vocabulary of our language, when the British novelist notes his own liking for “our blunt and racy vernacular, which a society nourished upon Norman English and English Latin banishes from print, largely to its impoverishment, some think.”
Those who have tried to impose a Latin syntax on the English language are as arbitrary as those who have insisted on an English pronunciation of the Latin language. Their attitude is as illogical as it is dogmatic; and nowhere is dogmatism less welcome than in the attempt to come to a just conclusion in regard to English usage; and nowhere is the personal equation more carefully to be allowed for. A term is not necessarily acceptable because we ourselves are accustomed to it, nor is it necessarily to be rejected because it reaches us as a novelty. The Americanism which a British journalist glibly denounces may be but theephemeral catchword of a single street-gang, or it may have come over in the ‘Mayflower’ and be able to trace its ancestry back to a forefather that crossed with William the Conqueror. The Briticism which strikes some of us as uncouth and vulgar may be but a chance bit of cockney slang, or it may be warranted by the very genius of our language.
Most of the little manuals which pretend to regulate our use of our own language and to declare what is and what is not good English are grotesque in their ignorance; and the best of them are of small value, because they are prepared on the assumption that the English language is dead, like the Latin, and that, like Latin again, its usage is fixed finally. Of course this assumption is as far as possible from the fact. The English language is alive now—very much alive. And because it is alive it is in a constant state of growth. It is developing daily according to its needs. It is casting aside words and usages that are no longer satisfactory; it is adding new terms as new things are brought forward; and it is making new usages, as convenience suggests, short-cuts across lots, and to the neglect of the five-barred gates rigidly set up by our ancestors. It is throwing away as worn out words which were once very fashionable; and it is giving up grammatical forms which seem to be no longer useful. It iscontinually trying to keep itself in the highest state of efficiency for work it has to do. It is ever urging ahead in the direction of increased utility; and if any of the so-called “rules” happens to stand in the path of its progress—so much the worse for the rule! As Stephenson said, “It will be bad for the coo!”
The English language is the tool of the peoples who speak English and who have made it to fit their hands. They have fashioned it to suit their own needs, and it is quite as characteristic as anything else these same peoples have made—quite as characteristic as the common law and as parliamentary government. A language cannot but be a most important witness when we wish to inquire into the special peculiarities of a race. The French, for instance, are dominated by the social instinct, and they are prone to rely on logic a little too much, and their language is therefore a marvel of transparency and precision. In like manner we might deduce from an analysis of the German language an opinion as to the slowness of the individual Teuton, as to his occasional cloudiness, as to his willingness to take trouble, and as to his ultimate thoroughness.
The peoples who speak English are very practical and very direct; they are impatient of needless detail; and they are intolerant of mere theory. These are some of the reasons why English isless embarrassed with niceties of inflection than other languages, why it has cut its syntax to the bone, why it has got rid of most of its declensions and conjugations—why, in short, it has almost justified the critic who called it a grammarless tongue. In every language there is a constant tendency toward uniformity and an unceasing effort to get rid of abnormal exceptions to the general rule; but in no language are these endeavors more effective than in English. In the past they have succeeded in simplifying the rules of our speech; and they are at work now in the present on the same task of making English a more efficient instrument for those who use it.
This effort of the language to do its duty as best it can is partly conscious and partly unconscious; and where the word-critic can be of service is in watching for the result of the unconscious endeavor, so that it can be made plain, and so that it can be aided thereafter by conscious endeavor. The tendency toward uniformity is irresistible; and one of its results just now to be observed is an impending disappearance of the subjunctive mood. Those who may have supposed that the subjunctive was as firmly established in English as the indicative can discover easily enough by paying a little attention to their own daily speech and to the speech of their educated neighbors that “if Ibenot too late,” forinstance, is a form now rarely heard even in cultivated society.
And the same tendency is to be observed also in the written language. Letters in the LondonAuthorin June and July, 1897, showed that in a few less than a million words chosen from the works of recent authors of good repute there were only 284 instances of the subjunctive mood, and that of these all but fifteen were in the verb “to be.” This reveals to us that the value of this variation of form is no longer evident, not merely to careless speakers, but even to careful writers; and it makes it probable that it is only a question of time how soon the subjunctive shall be no longer differentiated from the indicative. Where our grandfathers would have taken pains to say “if Iwereto go away,” and “if Ibenot misinformed,” our grandchildren will unhesitatingly write, “if Iwasto go away,” and “if Iamnot misinformed.” And so posterity will not need to clog its memory with any rule for the employment of the subjunctive; and the English language will have cleansed itself of a barnacle.
It is this same irresistible desire for the simplest form and for the shortest which is responsible for the increasing tendency to say “he don’t” and “she don’t,” on the analogy of “we don’t,” “you don’t,” and “they don’t,” instead of the more obviously grammatical “he does n’t” and “shedoes n’t.” A brave attempt has been made to maintain that “he don’t” is older than “he does n’t,” and that it has at least the sanction of antiquity. However this may be, “he don’t” is certain to sustain itself in the future because it calls for less effort and because any willingness to satisfy the purist will seem less and less worth while as time goes on. It is well that the purist should fight for his own hand; but it is well also to know that he is fighting a losing battle.
The purist used to insist that we should not say “the house isbeing built,” but rather “the house isbuilding.” So far as one can judge from a survey of recent writing the purist has abandoned this combat; and nobody nowadays hesitates to ask, “What is being done?” The purist still objects to what he calls the Retained Object in such a sentence as “he was given a new suit of clothes.” Here again the struggle is vain, for this usage is very old; it is well established in English; and whatever may be urged against it theoretically, it has the final advantage of convenience. The purist also tells us that we should say “come to see me” and “try to do it,” and not “come and see me” and “try and do it.” Here once more the purist is setting up a personal standard without any warrant. He may use whichever of these forms he likes best, and we on our part have the same permission, witha strong preference for the older and more idiomatic of them.
Theory is all very well, but to be of any value it must be founded on the solid rock of fact; and even when it is so established it has to yield to convenience. This is what the purist cannot be induced to understand. He seems to think that the language was made once for all, and that any deviation from the theory acted on in the past is intolerable in the present. He is often wholly at sea in regard to his theories and to his facts—more often than not; but no doubt as to his own infallibility ever discourages him. He just knows that he is right and that everybody else is wrong; and he has no sense of humor to save him from himself. And he makes up in violence what he lacks in wisdom. He accepts himself as a prophet verbally inspired, and he holds that this gives him the right to call down fire from heaven on all who do not accept his message.
It was a purist of this sort who once wrote to a little literary weekly in New York, protesting against the use ofpeoplewhenpersonswould seem to be the better word, and complacently declaring that “for twenty-five years or more I have kept my eye on this little wordpeopleand I have yet to find a single American or English author who does not misuse it.” We are instantly reminded of the Irish juryman who said,“Eleven more obstinate men I never met in the whole course of my life.” In this pitiful condition of affairs one cannot discover on what this purist bases the hope he expresses that “in the course of two or three hundred years the correct employment of it may possibly become general.” Rather may it be hoped that in the course of two or three hundred years a knowledge of the principles which govern English usage may become general.
What is called the Split Infinitive is also a cause of pain to the purist, who is greatly grieved when he finds George Lewes in the ‘Life of Goethe’ saying “to completely understand.” This inserting of an adverb between thetoand the rest of the verb strikes the word-critic as pernicious, and he denounces it instantly as a novelty to be stamped out before it permanently contaminates our speech. Even Professor A. S. Hill, in his ‘Foundations of Rhetoric,’ while admitting its antiquity, since it has been in use constantly from the days of Wyclif to the days of Herbert Spencer, still declares it to be “a common fault” not sanctioned or even condoned by good authority.
The fact is, I think, that the Split Infinitive has a most respectable pedigree, and that it is rather the protest against it which is the novelty now establishing itself. The Split Infinitive is to befound in the pages of Shakspere, Massinger, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe, Burke, Coleridge, Byron, De Quincey, Macaulay, Matthew Arnold, Browning, Motley, Lowell, and Holmes. But it is a fact also, I think, that since the protest has been raised there has been a tendency among careful writers to eschew the Split Infinitive, or at least to employ it only when there is a gain in lucidity from its use, as there is, for example, in Professor Lounsbury’s “to more than counterbalance” (‘Studies in Chaucer,’ i. 447).
A writer who has worked out for himself a theory of style, and who has made up his mind as to the principles he ought to follow in writing, often yields to protests the validity of which he refuses to admit. He gives the protestant the benefit of the doubt and drops the stigmatized words from his vocabulary and refrains from the stigmatized usages, reserving always the right to avail himself of them at a pinch. What such a writer has for his supreme object is to convey his thought into the minds of his readers with the least friction; and he tries therefore to avoid all awkwardness of phrase, all incongruous words, all locutions likely to arouse resistance, since any one of these things will inevitably lessen the amount of attention which this reader or that will then have available for the reception of the writer’s message. This is what Herbert Spencer has calledthe principle of Economy of Attention; and a firm grasp of this principle is a condition precedent to a clear understanding of literary art.
For a good and sufficient reason such a writer stands ready at any time to break this self-imposed rule. If a solecism, or a vulgarism even, will serve his purpose better at a given moment than the more elegant word, he avails himself of it, knowing what he is doing, and risking the smaller loss for the greater gain. M. Legouvé tells us that at a rehearsal of a play of Scribe’s he drew the author’s attention to a bit of bad French at the climax of one of the acts, and Scribe gratefully accepted the correct form which was suggested. But two or three rehearsals later Scribe went back unhesitatingly to the earlier and incorrect phrase, which happened to be swifter, more direct, and dramatically more expressive than the academically accurate sentence M. Legouvé had supplied. Shakspere seems often to have been moved by like motives, and to have been willing at any time to sacrifice strict grammar to stage-effectiveness.
Two tendencies exist side by side to-day, and are working together for the improvement of our language. One is the tendency to disregard all useless distinctions and to abolish all useless exceptions and to achieve simplicity and regularity. The other is the tendency toward a more delicateprecision which shall help the writer to present his thought with the utmost clearness.
Of the first of these abundant examples can be cited phrases which the word-critic would denounce, and which are not easy to defend on any narrow ground, but which are employed freely even by conscientious writers, well aware that no utility is served by a pedantic precision. So we find Matthew Arnold in his lectures ‘On Translating Homer’ speaking of “thefour first,” where the purist would prefer to have said “thefirst four.” So we find Hawthorne in the ‘Blithedale Romance’ writing “fellow, clown, or bumpkin, toeitherof these,” when the purist would have wished him to say “to any one of these,” holding that “either” can be applied only when there are but two objects.
In like manner the word-critics object to the use of the superlative degree when the comparative is all that is needed; yet we find in the King James translation of Genesis, “her eldest son, Esau,” and she had but two sons. And they refuse to allow either a comparative or a superlative to adjectives which indicate completeness; yet we find in Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall,’ “its success was not more universal.” They do not like to see a writer say that anything is “more perfect” or “most complete,” holding that what is universal or perfect or complete “does notadmit of augmentation,” as one of them declared more than a century ago in theGentleman’s Magazinefor July, 1797. In all these cases logic may be on the side of the word-critic. But what of it? Obedience to logic would here serve no useful purpose, and therefore logic is boldly disobeyed. However inexact these phrases may be, they mislead no one and they can be understood without hesitation.
Side by side with this tendency to take the short-cut exists the other tendency to go the long way round if by so doing the writer’s purpose is more easily accomplished. There is a common usage which is frequently objurgated by the word-critics and which may fall into desuetude, not through their attacks, but because of its conflict with this second tendency. This is the insertion of an unnecessarywhoorwhichafter anandor abut, as in this sentence from Professor Butcher’s admirable discussion of Aristotle’s ‘Theory of Poetry’: “Nature is an artist capable indeed of mistakes, butwhoby slow advances and through many failures realizes her own idea.” So in Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’ we are told of “a chorus of twenty-seven youths and as many virgins, of noble family, andwhoseparents were both alive.” This locution is proper in French, but it is denounced as improper in English by the purists, who would strike outthebutfrom Professor Butcher’s and theandfrom Gibbon’s.
It is a constant source of amusement to those interested in observing the condition and the development of the language to note the frequency with which the phrases put under taboo by the word-critics occur in the writings of the masters of English. In my own recent reading I have found this despised construction in the pages of Fielding, Johnson, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson,Mr.John Morley,Mr.Henry James, and Professor Jebb in Great Britain, and in pages of Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, andMr.John Fiske in the United States. What is more significant perhaps is its discovery in the works of professed students of language—Trench, Isaac Taylor, Max Müller, and W. D. Whitney.
And yet, in spite of this array of authorities, I am inclined to believe that this usage may perhaps disappear with the increasing attention which the best writers are now giving to the rhythm and balance of their sentences. It is not that the form is wrong—that is a matter not to be decided offhand; it is that the form is awkward and that it jars on the feeling for symmetry—the feeling which leads us to put a candlestick on each side of the clock on the mantelpiece. Professor Whitney began one of his sentencesthus: “Castrén, himself a Finn, and whose long and devoted labors have taught us more respecting them than has been brought to light by any other man, ventures,” etc. Would not this sentence have been easier and more elegant if Whitney had either struck outand(which is not needed at all) or else insertedwho wasafter Castrén? In the sentence as Whitney wrote itand whosemakes me look back for thewhowhich my feeling for symmetry leads me to suppose must have preceded it somewhere, and in this vain search part of my attention is abstracted. I have been forced to think of the manner of his remarks when my mind ought to have given itself so far as might be to the matter of them. In other words, the real objection to this usage is that it is in violation of the principle of Economy of Attention.
Another usage also under fire from the purists is exemplified in another extract from Whitney: “It is, I am convinced, a mistake to commence at once upon a course of detailed comparative philology with pupils who haveonlyenjoyed the ordinary training in the classical or modern languages.” Obviously his meaning would be more sharply defined if he had putonlyafter instead of beforeenjoyed. So Froude, writing about ‘English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century,’ says that “the fore-and-aft rig alone would enable a vesselto tack, as it is called, and this couldonlybe used with craft of moderate tonnage”; and here again a transposition after the verb would increase the exactness of the statement.
The proposition ofonlyis really important only when the misplacing of it may cause ambiguity; and Professor F. N. Scott has shown how Webster, always careful in the niceties of style, unhesitatingly putonlyout of its proper place, if by so doing he could improve the rhythm of his period, as in this sentence from the second Bunker Hill oration: “It did not, indeed, put an end to the war; but, in the then existing hostile state of feeling, the difficulties could only be referred to the arbitration of the sword.” This is as it should be, the small effect promptly sacrificed for the larger. The rule—if rule it really is—must be broken unhesitatingly when there is greater gain than loss.
There is an anecdote in some volume of French theatrical memoirs narrating an experience of Mademoiselle Clairon, the great tragic actress, with a pupil of hers, a girl of fine natural gifts for the histrionic art, but far too frequent and too exuberant in her gesticulation. So when the pupil was once to appear before the public in a recitation, Mademoiselle Clairon bound the girl’s arms to her side by a stiff thread and sent her thus upon the stage. With the first strong feelingshe had to express the pupil tried to raise her arms, only to be restrained by the thread. A dozen times in the course of her recitation she was prevented from making the gestures she desired, until at the very end she could stand it no longer, and in the climax of her emotion she broke her bonds and lifted her hands to her head. When she came off the stage she went humbly to where Mademoiselle Clairon was standing in the wings and apologized for having snapped the thread. “But you did quite right!” said the teacher. “That was the time to make the gesture—not before!”
Rules exist to aid in composition; and by wise men composition is not undertaken merely to prove the existence of the rules. Circumstances may alter even codes of manners; in Paris, for instance, it is permissible to sop bread in the sauce, a practice which is bad form in London—since nobody would want any more of a British sauce than could be avoided. This paper, however, has failed of its purpose if it is taken as a plea for license. Rather is it intended as an argument for liberty. It has been written as the result of a belief that a frank protest is needed now and again against the excessive demands of the linguistic dogmatists. That what the linguistic dogmatists write is as widely read as it seems to be is a sign of a healthy interest in the speechwhich must serve us all, scholars and school-masters and plain people. This interest should be aroused also to shake off the shackles with which pedagogs and pedants seek to restrain not only the full growth of our noble tongue, but even its free use. As Renan pithily put it, every time that “grammarians have tried deliberately to reform a language, they have succeeded only in making it heavy, without expression, and often less logical than the humblest dialect.”
If English is to be kept fit to do the mighty work it bids fair to be called upon to accomplish in the future, it must be allowed to develop along the line of least resistance. It must be encouraged to follow its own bent and to supply its own needs and to shed its worn-out members. It must not be hampered by syntax taken from Latin or by rules evolved out of the inner consciousness of word-critics. It must not be too squeamish or even too particular, since excessive refinement goes only with muscular weakness. It must be allowed to venture on solecisms, on neologisms, on Americanisms, on Briticisms, on Australianisms, if need be, however ugly some of these may seem, for the language uses itself up fast, and has to be replenished that it shall not lose its vigor and its ardor.
To say this is not to say that every one of us who uses English in speaking or in writing shouldnot always choose his words carefully and decide on his forms judiciously. Only by a wise selection can the language be kept at its highest efficiency; only thus can its full powers be revealed to us. And if we decide that we prefer to keep to the very letter of the law as laid down by the grammarians—why, that is our privilege and no one shall say us nay. But let us not think scorn of those who are careless in paying their tithes of mint and anise and cummin, if also they stand upright and speak the truth plainly.
For myself—if a personal confession is not here out of place—I shrink always from profiting by any license I have just claimed for others; I strive always to eschew the Split Infinitive, to avoidand whowhen there is no precedingwhowhich may balance it, and to putonlyalways in the place where it will do most good. It is ever my aim to avail myself of the phrase which will convey my meaning into the reader’s mind with the least friction; and out of the effort to achieve this approach along the line of least resistance, I get something of the joy an honest craftsman ought always to feel in the handling of his tools. For this is what words are, after all; they are the tools of man, devised to serve his daily needs. As Bagehot once suggested, we may not know how language was first invented and made, “but beyond doubt it was shaped and fashioned intoits present state by common, ordinary men and women using it for common and ordinary purposes. They wanted a carving-knife, not a razor or lancet; and those great artists who have to use language for more exquisite purposes, who employ it to describe changing sentiments and momentary fancies and the fluctuating and indefinite inner world, must use curious nicety and hidden but effectual artifice, else they cannot duly punctuate their thoughts and slice the fine edges of their reflections. A hair’s breadth is as important to them as a yard’s breadth to a common workman.”
(1898)
(1898)