That ever since in love's embraces met."+ Use, indeed, may be pleaded for such expressions, which, it must be acknowledged, use hath rendered intelligible. But still the general laws of the language. which constitute the most extensive and important use, may be pleaded against them. Now it is one principal method of purifying a language to lay aside such idioms as are inconsistent with its radical principles and constituent rule, or as, when interpreted by such principles and rules, exhibit manifest nonsense. Nor does the least inconvenience result from this conduct, as we can be at no loss to find expressions of our meaning altogether as natural and entirely unexceptionable. Sometimes, indeed, through mere inattention, slips of this kind are committed, as in the following instance: "I do not reckon that we want a genius more than the rest of our neighbours." The impropriety here is corrected by omitting the words in italics. Another oversight, of much the same kind, and by the same author, we have in the following passage: "I had like to have gotten one or two broken heads for my impertinence."§ This unavoidably suggests the question, How many heads was he possessed of? Properly, “I was once or twice like to have gotten my head broken." Another from the same work, being a passage formerly quoted for another purpose, is this: "The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one."|| One thing may be cut into two or more; but it is inconceivable that, by cutting, two or more things should be made one. Another, still from the same hand: "I solemnly declare that I have not wilfully committed the least mistake." The words used here are incompatible. A wrong wilfully committed is no mistake. Addison hath fallen into an inaccuracy of the same kind in the following lines: "So the pure limpid stream, when foul with stains Of rushing torrents and descending rains."** A stream may doubtless be at one time limpid and at another foul, which is all that the author meant; but we cannot properly call it a pure limpid stream when it is foul wuh stains. * Paradise Lost. + Ib., b. iv Swift's Proposal for ascertaining the English Tongue. Remarks on the Barrier Treaty. Voyage to Laputs ** Cato. So much for those improprieties which involve in them some absurdity. I shall next illustrate those by which an author is made to say one thing when he means another. Of this kind I shall produce only one example at present, as I shall have occasion afterward of considering the same fault under the article of perspicuity. "I will instance in one opinion, which I look upon every man obliged in conscience to quit, or ir prudence to conceal; I mean, that whoever argues in de fence of absolute power in a single person, though he offers the old plausible plea that it is his opinion, which he cannot help unless he be convinced, ought, in all free states, to be treated as the common enemy of mankind." From the scope of the discourse, it is evident he means, that whoever hath it for his opinion that a single person is entitled to absolute authority, ought to quit or conceal that opinion; because otherwise he will, in a free state, deserve to be treated as a common enemy; whereas, if he says anything, he says that whoever thinks that the advocates for absolute power ought to be treated as common enemies, is obliged to quit or conceal that opinion; a sentiment very different from the former. The only species of impropriety that remains to be exem plified is that wherein there appears some slight incongruity in the combination of the words, as in the quotations following: "When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is-."† Properly, “fall into conversation with a man." "I wish, sir, you would animadvert frequently on the false taste the town is in with relation to plays as well as operas." Properly," the false taste of the town." "The presence of the Deity, and the care such an august Cause is to be supposed to take about any action." The impropriety here is best corrected by substituting the word Being in the place of cause; for though there be nothing improper in calling the Deity an august Cause, the author hath very improperly connected with this appellative some word totally unsuitable; for who ever heard of a cause taking care about an action? I shall produce but one other instance. "Neither implies that there are virtuous habits and accomplishments already attained by the possessor, but they certainly show an unprejudiced capacity towards them." In the first clause of this sentence there is a gross inconsistency: we are informed of habits and accomplishments that are possessed, but not attained; in the second clause there is a double impropriety: the participial adjective is not suited to the substantive with * Sentiments of a Church of England Man. + Spectator, No. 49 | Guardian, No. 34 which it is construed, nor is the subsequent preposition expressive of the sense. Supposing, then, that the word possessor hath been used inadvertently for person, or some other general term, the sense may be exhibited thus: "Neither implies that there are virtuous habits and accomplishments already attained by this person, but they certainly show that his mind is not prejudiced against them, and that it hath a capacity of attaining them." Under this head I might consider that impropriety which results from the use of metaphors or other tropes, wherein the similitude to the subject, or connexion with it, is too remote; also, that which results from the construction of words with any trope, which are not applicable in the literal sense. The former errs chiefly against vivacity, the latter against elegance. Of the one, therefore, I shall have occasion to speak when I consider the catachresis, of the other when I treat of mixed metaphor. I have now finished what was intended on the subject of grammatical purity; the first, and, in some respect, the most essential of all the virtues of elocution. I have illustrated the three different ways in which it may be violated; the barbarism, when the words employed are not English; the solecism, when the construction is not English; the impro priety, when the meaning in which any English word or phrase is used by a writer or speaker is not the sense which good use hath assigned to it. CHAPTER IV. ME GRAMMATICAL DOUBTS IN REGARD TO ENGLISH CONSTRUCTION STATED AND EXAMINED. BEFORE I dismiss this article altogether, it will not be amiss o consider a little some dubious points in construction, on which our critics appear not to be agreed. One of the most eminent of them makes this remark upon the neuter verbs: "A neuter verb cannot become a passive. In a neuter verb the agent and the object are the same, and cannot be separated even in imagination; as in the examples to sleep, to walk; but when the verb is passive, one thing is acted upon by another, really or by supposition different from it."* To this is subjoined in the margin the following note: "That some neuter verbs take a passive form, but without a passive signification, has been observed above. Here we speak of their becoming both in form and signification pas* Short Introduction, &c. Sentences. sive, and shall endeavour farther to illustrate the rule by example. To split, like many other English verbs, hath both an active and a neuter signification; according to the former we say, The force of gunpowder split the rock; according to the latter, the ship split upon the rock; and converting the verb active into a passive, we may say, The rock was split by the force of gunpowder, or the ship was split upon the rock. But we cannot say with any propriety, turning the verb neuter into a passive, The rock was split upon by the ship." This author's reasoning, so far as concerns verbs properly neuter, is so manifestly just, that it commands a full assent from every one that understands it. I differ from him only in regard to the application. In my apprehension, what may grammatically be named the neuter verbs are not near so numerous in our tongue as he imagines. I do not enter into the difference between verbs absolutely neuter and intransitively active. I concur with him in thinking that this distinction holds more of metaphysics than of grammar. But by verbs grammatically neuter I mean such as are not followed either by an accusative, or by a preposition and a noun; for I take this to be the only grammatical criterion with us. Of this kind is the simple and primitive verb to laugh; accordingly, to say he was laughed would be repugnant alike to grammar and to sense. But give this verb a regimen, and say To laugh at, and you alter its nature by adding to its signification. It were an abuse of words to call this a neuter, being as truly a compound active verb in English as deridere is in Latin, to which it exactly corresponds in meaning. Nor doth it make any odds that the preposition in the one language precedes the verb, and is conjoined with it, and in the other follows it, and is detached from it. The real union is the same in both. Accordingly, he was laughed at is as evidently good English as derisus fuit is good Latin. Let us hear this author himself, who, speaking of verbs compounded with a preposition, says expressly, “In English the preposition is more frequently placed after the verb, and separate from it, like an adverb; in which situation it is no less apt to affect the sense of it, and to give it a new meaning; and may still be considered as belonging to the verb, and a part of it. As, to cast is to throw; but to cast up, or to compute an account, is quite a different thing: thus, to fall on, to bear out, to give over," &c. Innumerable examples might be produced to show that such verbs have been always used as active or transitive compounds, call them which you please, and therefore as properly susceptible of the passive voice. I shall produce only one authority, which, I am persuaded, the intelligent reader will admit to be a good one. It is no other than this ingenious critic himself, and the pas sage of his which I have in view will be found in the very quotation above made. "When the verb is passive, one thing is acted upon by another." Here the verb to act upon is undoubtedly neuter, if the verb to split upon be neuter in the expression censured; and conversely, the verb to split upon is undoubtedly active, if the verb to act upon be active in the passage quoted. Nor can anything be more similar than the construction: "One thing is acted upon by another." The rock is split upon by the ship. After all, I am sensible that the latter expression is liable to an exception which cannot be made against the former. I therefore agree with the author in condemning it, but not in the reason of pronouncing this sentence. The only reason that weighs with me in this: The active sense of the simple verb to split, and the sense of the compound to split upon, are, in such a phrase as that above mentioned, apt to be confounded. Nay, what is more, the false sense is that which is first suggested to the mind, as if the rock, and not the ship, had been split; and though the subsequent words remove the ambiguity, yet the very hesitancy which it occasions renders the expression justly chargeable, though not with solecism, with what is perhaps worse, obscurity and inelegance. That we may be satisfied that this and no other is the genuine cause of censure, let us borrow an example from some verb, which in the simple form is properly univocal. To smile is such a verb, being a neuter, which, in its primitive and uncompounded state, never receives an active signification; but to smile on is with us, according to the definition given above, a compound active verb, just as arridere* (to which it corresponds alike in etymology and meaning) is in Latin. Accordingly, we cannot say he was smiled in any But to say he was smiled on, as in the following example, "He was smiled on by fortune in every stage of life," is entirely unexceptionable. Yet the only difference between this and the phrase above criticised ariseth hence, that there is something ambiguous in the first appearance of the one which is not to be found in the other; and, indeed, when the simple and primitive verb has both an active signification and a neuter (as is the case with the verb split), such an ambiguous appearance of the compound in the passive is an invariable consequence. sense. I shall observe farther, in order to prevent mistakes on this subject, that there are also in our language compound I know that the verb arideo is accounted neuter by Latin lexicogra phers. The reason lies not in the signification of the word, but purely in the circumstance that it governs the dative, and not the accusative. But with this distinction we have no concern. That it is active in its import is evi dent from this, that it is used by good authors in the passive. U |