ENGLISH GRAMMAR
The Atlas.][March 15, 1829.
This is one of those subjects on which the human understanding has played the fool, almost as egregiously, though with less dire consequences, than on many others; or rather one on which it has not chosen to exert itself at all, being hoodwinked and led blindfold by mere precedent and authority. Scholars who have made and taught from English grammars were previously and systematically initiated in the Greek and Latin tongues, so that they have, without deigning to notice the difference, taken the rules of the latter and applied them indiscriminately and dogmatically to the former. As well might they pretend that there is adual numberin the Latin language because there is one in the Greek.
TheDefinitionsalone are able to corrupt a whole generation of ingenuous youth. They seem calculated for no other purpose than tomystifyandstultifythe understanding, and to inoculate it betimes with a due portion of credulity and verbal sophistry. After repeating them by rote, to maintain that two and two makes five is easy, and a thing of course. What appears most extraordinary is that notwithstanding the complete exposure of their fallacy and nonsense by Horne Tooke and others, the same system and method of instruction should be persisted in; and that grammar succeeds grammar and edition edition, re-echoing the same point-blank contradictions and shallow terms. Establishments and endowments of learning (which subsist on a ‘foregone conclusion’) may have something to do with it; independently of which, and for each person’s individual solace, the more senseless the absurdity and the longer kept up, the more reluctant does the mind seem to part with it, whether in the greatest things or mere trifles and technicalities; for in the latter, as the retracting an error could produce no startling sensation, and be accompanied with no redeeming enthusiasm, its detection must be a pure loss and pitiful mortification. One might suppose, that out of so many persons as have their attention directed to this subject, some few would find out their mistake and protest against the common practice; but the greaterthe number of professional labourers in the vineyard, who seek not truth but a livelihood, and canpay with wordsmore currently than with things, the less chance must there be of this, since the majority will always set their faces against it, and insist upon the oldMumpsimusin preference to the newSumpsimus. A schoolmaster who should go so far out of his way as to take the Diversions of Purley for a text-book, would be regarded by his brethren of the rod as ‘a man of Ind,’ and would soon have the dogs of the village bark at him. It is said without blushing, by both masters and ushers who do not chuse to be ‘wise above what is written,’ that a noun is the name of athing,i.e.substance, as iflove,honour,colour, were the names of substances. An adjective is defined to be the name of a quality; and yet in the expressions, agoldsnuff-box, awoodenspoon, anironchest, &c., the wordsgold,wooden,iron, are allowed by all these profound writers, grammarians, and logicians, to be essentially adjectives. A verb is likewise defined to be a word denotingbeing,action, orsuffering; and yet the wordsbeing,action,suffering(or passion), are all substantives; so that these words cannot be supposed to have any reference to the things whose names they bear, if it be the peculiar and sole office of the verb to denote them. If a system were made in burlesque and purposely to call into question and expose its own nakedness, it could not go beyond this, which is gravely taught in all seminaries, and patiently learnt by all school-boys as an exercise and discipline of the intellectual faculties. Again, it is roundly asserted that there aresix cases(why not seven?) in the English language; and a case is defined to be a peculiar termination or inflection added to a noun to show its position in the sentence. Now in the Latin language there are no doubt a number of cases, inasmuch as there are a number of inflections;[56]and for the same reason (if words have a meaning) in the English Language there are none, or only one, the genitive; because if we except this, there is no inflection or variety whatever in the terminations. Thus to instance in the present noun—A case, Of a case, To a case, A case, O case, From a case—they tell you that the wordcaseis here its own nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, and ablative, though the deuce of any case—that is inflection of the noun—is there in the case. Nevertheless, many a pedagogue would swear till he was black in the face that it is so; and would lie awake many a restless night boiling with rage and vexation that any one should be so lost to shame and reason as to suspect that there is here also a distinction without a difference. In strictness, in the Latin word there are only four,casus,casui,casum,casu; and the rest are conceded out ofuniformity with other cases where the terminations are six times varied:[57]but why insist on the full complement, where there is no case in the whole language (but for the arbitrary one already excepted) to bear it out? Again, it is agreed on all hands, that English nouns have genders. Except with a few, where the termination is borrowed from another language, such asEmpress, &c., there is no possibility of generally telling the sex implied from the form of the termination: but men looking at the point with their Latin eyes, see genders wherever they have been accustomed to find them in a foreign tongue. The difference of sex is vernacularly conveyed in English by a different word—man,woman,stag,deer,king,queen, &c.; and there is no such thing as conventional gender in neutral things—house,church,field, and so on. All this might be excusable as a prejudice or oversight; but then why persist in it in the thirty-eighth edition of a standard book published by the great firm in Paternoster-row? We sometimes think mankind have a propensity to lying not more in matters-of-fact than theory. They maintain what they know to be without a shadow of foundation, and in the sheer spirit of contradiction, or because they hate to be convinced. In the same manner as the cases and genders of nouns, the whole ramification of the verb is constructed, and hung up for the admiration of the credulous upon the ideal of the Latin and Greek verb, with all its tenses, persons, moods, and participles, whether there be anything more than a mere skeleton of a resemblance to suspend all this learned patch-work upon or not. ‘Ilove, thoulovestheloves; we, ye, theylove.’ There is a difference in the three first, so that from announcing the verb, you know the prefix; but in the three last, what difference is there, what sign of separation from one another, or from the first person singular? ‘Iloved’ is the past tense doubtless: it is a difference of inflection denoting time: but ‘Ididlove, Ihave loved, Iwill,can,shall,wouldlove,’ are not properly tenses or moods of the verblove, but other verbs with the infinitive or participle of the first verb appended to them. Thus is our irregular verb professionally licked into regularity and shape. When the thing is wanting it is supplied by the name.Empedocles was a cobbler, even when he did not cobble.A conjunction is held to be a part of speech without any meaning in itself, but that serves to connect sentences together, such asthat,and, &c. It is proved by Mr. Horne Tooke, that the conjunctionthatis no other than the pronounthat(with the wordsthingorpropositionunderstood)—asandis the imperative of the old Saxon verbanandad(to add), upon a similar principle—‘I say thisand(or add) that’—and though it is above fifty years since this luminous discovery was published to the world, no hint ofit has crept into any Grammar used in schools, and by authority. It seems to be taken for granted that all sound and useful knowledge is by rote, and that if it ceased to be so, the Church and State might crumble to pieces like the conjunctionsandandthat. There may be some truth in that.
It is strange that Mr. Horne Tooke, with all his logical and etymological acuteness, should have been so bad a metaphysician as to argue that all language was merely a disjointed tissue of names of objects (with certain abbreviations), and that he should have given or attempted no definition of the verb. He barely hints at it in one place,viz.—that the verb isquod loquimur, the nounde quo; that is, the noun expresses the name of any thing or points out the object; the verb signifies the opinion or will of the speaker concerning it. What then becomes of theinfinitive mood, which neither affirms, denies, nor commands any thing, but is left like a log of wood in the high road of grammar, to be picked up by the first jaunting-car of ‘winged words’ that comes that way with its moods, persons, and tenses, flying, and turned to any use that may be wanted? Mr. Tooke was in the habit of putting off his guests at Wimbledon with promising to explain somepuzzlethe following Sunday; and he left the world in the dark as to the definition of the verb, much in the same spirit ofbadinageand mystery. We do not know when the deficiency is likely to be supplied, unless it has been done by Mr. Fearn in his little work called Anti-Tooke. We have not seen the publication, but we know the author to be a most able and ingenious man, and capable of lighting upon nice distinctions which few but himself would ever dream of. An excess of modesty, which doubts every thing, is much more favourable to the discovery of truth than that spirit of dogmatism which presumptuously takes every thing for granted; but at the same time it is not equally qualified to place its conclusions in the most advantageous and imposing light; and we accordingly too often find our quacks and impostors collecting a crowd with their drums, trumpets, andplacardsof themselves at the end of a street, while the ‘still, small’ pipe of truth and simplicity is drowned in the loud din and bray, or forced to retire to a distance to solace itself with its own low tones and fine-drawn distinctions. Having touched upon this subject, we may be allowed to add that some of our most eminent writers, as, for instance, Mr. Maculloch with hisPrinciples of Political Economy, and Mr. Mill with hisElements of Political Economy, remind us of two barrel-organ grinders in the same street, playing the same tune and contending for precedence and mastery. What is Mozart to any of the four?