How to Speak and Write Correctly Part 16

"Sir Thomas Moore in general so writes it, although not many others so late as _him_." Should be _he_.--Trench's _English Past and Present_.

"What should we gain by it but that we should speedily become as poor as _them_." Should be _they_.--Alison's _Essay on Macaulay_.

"If the king gives us leave you or I may as lawfully preach, as _them_ that do." Should be _they_ or _those_, the latter having persons understood.--Hobbes's _History of Civil Wars_.

"The drift of all his sermons was, to prepare the Jews for the reception of a prophet, mightier than _him_, and whose shoes he was not worthy to bear." Should be than _he_.--Atterbury's _Sermons_.

"Phalaris, who was so much older than _her_." Should be _she_.--Bentley's _Dissertation on Phalaris_.

"King Charles, and more than _him_, the duke and the Popish faction were at liberty to form new schemes." Should be than _he_.--Bolingbroke's _Dissertations on Parties_.

"We contributed a third more than the Dutch, who were obliged to the same proportion more than _us_." Should be than _we_.--Swift's _Conduct of the Allies_.

In all the above examples the objective cases of the p.r.o.nouns have been used while the construction calls for nominative cases.

"Let _thou_ and _I_ the battle try"--_Anon_.

Here _let_ is the governing verb and requires an objective case after it; therefore instead of _thou_ and _I_, the words should be _you_ (_sing_.) and _me_.

"Forever in this humble cell, Let thee and I, my fair one, dwell"

--_Prior_.

Here _thee_ and _I_ should be the objectives _you_ and _me_.

The use of the relative p.r.o.noun trips the greatest number of authors.

Even in the Bible we find the relative wrongly translated:

Whom do men say that I am?--_St. Matthew_.

Whom think ye that I am?--_Acts of the Apostles_.

_Who_ should be written in both cases because the word is not in the objective governed by say or think, but in the nominative dependent on the verb _am_.

"_Who_ should I meet at the coffee house t'other night, but my old friend?"--_Steele_.

"It is another pattern of this answerer's fair dealing, to give us hints that the author is dead, and yet lay the suspicion upon somebody, I know not _who_, in the country."--Swift's _Tale of a Tub_.

"My son is going to be married to I don't know _who_."--Goldsmith's _Good-natured Man_.

The nominative _who_ in the above examples should be the objective _whom_.

The plural nominative _ye_ of the p.r.o.noun _thou_ is very often used for the objective _you_, as in the following:

"His wrath which will one day destroy _ye both_."--_Milton_.

"The more shame for _ye_; holy men I thought _ye_."--_Shakespeare_.

"I feel the gales that from _ye_ blow."--_Gray_.

"Tyrants dread _ye_, lest your just decree Transfer the power and set the people free."--_Prior_.

Many of the great writers have played havoc with the adjective in the indiscriminate use of the degrees of comparison.

"Of two forms of the same word, use the fittest."--_Morell_.

The author here in _trying_ to give good advice sets a bad example.

He should have used the comparative degree, "Fitter."

Adjectives which have a comparative or superlative signification do not admit the addition of the words _more_, _most_, or the terminations, _er_, _est_, hence the following examples break this rule:

"Money is the _most universal_ incitement of human misery."--Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_.

"The _chiefest_ of which was known by the name of Archon among the Grecians."--Dryden's _Life of Plutarch_.

"The _chiefest_ and largest are removed to certain magazines they call libraries."--Swift's _Battle of the Books_.

The two _chiefest_ properties of air, its gravity and elastic force, have been discovered by mechanical experiments.--_Arbuthno_.

"From these various causes, which in greater or _lesser_ degree, affected every individual in the colony, the indignation of the people became general."--Robertson's _History of America_.

"The _extremest_ parts of the earth were meditating a submission."

--Atterbury's _Sermons_.

"The last are indeed _more preferable_ because they are founded on some new knowledge or improvement in the mind of man."--Addison, _Spectator_.

"This was in reality the _easiest_ manner of the two."--Shaftesbury's _Advice to an Author_.

"In every well formed mind this second desire seems to be the _strongest_ of the two."--Smith's _Theory of Moral Sentiments_.

In these examples the superlative is wrongly used for the comparative.

When only two objects are compared the comparative form must be used.

Of impossibility there are no degrees of comparison, yet we find the following:

"As it was impossible they should know the words, thoughts and secret actions of all men, so it was _more impossible_ they should pa.s.s judgment on them according to these things."--Whitby's _Necessity of the Christian Religion_.

A great number of authors employ adjectives for adverbs. Thus we find:

"I shall endeavor to live hereafter _suitable_ to a man in my station."

--_Addison_.

"I can never think so very _mean_ of him."--Bentley's _Dissertation on Phalaris_.

"His expectations run high and the fund to supply them is _extreme_ scanty."--_Lancaster's Essay on Delicacy_.

The commonest error in the use of the verb is the disregard of the concord between the verb and its subject. This occurs most frequently when the subject and the verb are widely separated, especially if some other noun of a different number immediately precedes the verb. False concords occur very often after _either_, _or_, _neither_, _nor_, and _much_, _more_, _many_, _everyone_, _each_.