The Grammar of English Grammars Part 300

[447] In his explanation of _Ellipsis_, Lindley Murray continually calls it "_the_ ellipsis," and speaks of it as something that is "_used_,"--"_made use of_,"--"_applied_,"--"_contained in_" the examples; which expressions, referring, as they there do, to the mere _absence_ of something, appear to me solecistical. The notion too, which this author and others have entertained of the figure itself, is in many respects erroneous; and nearly all their examples for its ill.u.s.tration are either questionable as to such an application, or obviously inappropriate. The absence of what is _needless_ or _unsuggested_, is _no ellipsis_, though some grave men have not discerned this obvious fact. The nine solecisms here quoted concerning "_the ellipsis_," are all found in many other grammars. See _Fisk's E.

Gram._, p. 144; _Guy's_, 91; _Ingersoll's_, 153; _J. M. Putnam's_, 137; _R.

C. Smith's_, 180; _Weld's_, 190.

[448] Some of these examples do, _in fact_, contain _more_ than two errors; for mistakes in _punctuation_, or in the use of _capitals_, are not here reckoned. This remark may also he applicable to some of the other lessons.

The reader may likewise perceive, that where two, three, or more improprieties occur in one sentence, some one or more of them may happen to be such, as he can, if he choose, correct by some rule or note belonging to a previous chapter. Great labour has been bestowed on the selection and arrangement of these syntactical exercises; but to give to so great a variety of literary faults, a distribution perfectly distinct, and perfectly adapted to all the heads a.s.sumed in this digest, is a work not only of great labour, but of great difficulty. I have come as near to these two points of perfection in the arrangement, as I well could.--G. BROWN.

[449] In Murray's sixth chapter of Punctuation, from which this example, and eleven others that follow it, are taken, there is scarcely a single sentence that does not contain _many errors_; and yet the whole is literally copied in _Ingersoll's Grammar_, p. 293; in _Fisk's_, p. 159; in _Abel Flint's_, 116; and probably in some others. I have not always been careful to subjoin the great number of references which might be given for blunders selected from this hackneyed literature of the schools. For corrections, or improvements, see the Key.

[450] This example, or L. Murray's miserable modification of it, traced through the grammars of Alden, Alger, Bullions, Comly, Cooper, Flint, Hiley, Ingersoll, Jaudon, Merchant, Russell, Smith, and others, will be found to have a dozen different forms--all of them no less faulty than the original--all of them obscure, untrue, inconsistent, and almost incorrigible. It is plain, that "_a_ comma," or _one_ comma, cannot divide more than _two_ "simple members;" and these, surely, cannot be connected by more than _one relative_, or by more than _one_ "comparative;" if it be allowable to call _than, as_, or _so_, by this questionable name. Of the mult.i.tude of errors into which these pretended critics have so blindly fallen, I shall have s.p.a.ce and time to point out only a _very small part_: this text, too justly, may be taken as a pretty fair sample of their scholarship!

[451] The "_idea_" which is here spoken of, Dr. Blair discovers in a pa.s.sage of Addison's Spectator. It is, in fact, as here "_brought out_" by the critic, a bald and downright absurdity. Dr. Campbell has criticised, under the name of _marvellous nonsense_, a different display of the same "_idea_," cited from De Piles's Principles of Painting. The pa.s.sage ends thus: "In this sense it may be a.s.serted, that in Rubens' pieces, Art is above Nature, and Nature only a copy of that great master's works." Of this the critic says: "When the expression is _stript_ of the _absurd meaning_, there remains nothing but balderdash."--_Philosophy of Rhet._, p, 278.

[452] All his rules for the comma, Fisk appears to have taken unjustly from Greenleaf. It is a _double shame_, for a grammarian to _steal_ what is so _badly written_!--G. BROWN.

[453] Bad definitions may have other faults than to include or exclude what they should not, but this is their great and peculiar vice. For example: "_Person_ is _that property_ of _nouns_ and _p.r.o.nouns_ which distinguishes the speaker, the person or thing addressed, and the person or thing spoken of."--_Wells's School Gram._, 1st Ed., p. 51; 113th Ed., p. 57. See nearly the same words, in _Weld's English Gram._, p. 67; and in his _Abridgement_, p. 49. The three persons of _verbs_ are all improperly excluded from this definition; which absurdly takes "_person_" to be _one property that has all the effect of all the persons_; so that each person, in its turn, since each cannot have all this effect, is seen to be excluded also: that is, it is not such a property as is described! Again: "An _intransitive verb_ is a verb which _does not have_ a noun or p.r.o.noun for its object."--_Wells_, 1st Ed., p. 76. According to Dr. Johnson, "_does not have_," is not a scholarly phrase; but the adoption of a puerile expression is a trifling fault, compared with that of including here all pa.s.sive verbs, and some transitives, which the author meant to exclude; to say nothing of the inconsistency of excluding here the two cla.s.ses of verbs which he absurdly calls "intransitive," though he finds them "followed by objectives depending upon them!"--_Id._, p. 145. Weld imitates these errors too, on pp. 70 and 153.

[454] S. R. Hall thinks it necessary to recognize "_four distinctions_" of "_the distinction_ occasioned by s.e.x." In general, the other authors here quoted, suppose that we have only "_three distinctions_" of "_the distinction_ of s.e.x." And, as no philosopher has yet discovered more than two s.e.xes, some have thence stoutly argued, that it is absurd to speak of more than two genders. Lily makes it out, that in Latin there are _seven_: yet, with no great consistency, he will have _a gender_ to be _a_ or _the_ distinction of _s.e.x_. "GENUS est s.e.xus discretio. Et sunt genera numero septem."--_Lilii Gram._, p. 10. That is, "GENDER is the distinction of _s.e.x_. And _the genders_ are _seven_ in number." Ruddiman says, "GENUS est, discrimen _nominis_ secundum s.e.xum, vel _ejus_ in structura grammatica imitatio. Genera nominum sunt _tria_."--_Ruddimanni Gram._, p. 4. That is, "GENDER is the diversity of the _noun_ according to s.e.x, or [it is] the imitation _of it_ in grammatical structure. The genders of nouns are _three_." These old definitions are no better than the newer ones cited above. All of them are miserable failures, full of faults and absurdities.

Both the nature and the cause of their defects are in some degree explained near the close of the tenth chapter of my Introduction. Their most prominent errors are these: 1. They all a.s.sume, that _gender_, taken as one thing, is in fact two, three, or more, _genders_, 2. Nearly all of them seem to say or imply, that _words_ differ from one an other _in s.e.x_, like animals. 3. Many of them expressly confine _gender_, or _the genders_, to _nouns_ only. 4. Many of them confessedly _exclude the neuter gender_, though their authors afterwards admit this gender. 5. That of Dr. Webster supposes, that words differing in gender never have the same "_termination_." The absurdity of this may be shown by a mult.i.tude of examples: as, _man_ and _woman, male_ and _female, father_ and _mother, brother_ and _sister_. This is better, but still not free from some other faults which I have mentioned. For the correction of all this great batch of errors, I shall simply subst.i.tute in the Key one short definition, which appears to me to be exempt from each of these inaccuracies.

[455] Walker states this differently, and even repeats his remark, thus: "But _y_ preceded by a vowel is _never_ changed: as coy, coyly, gay, gayly."--_Walker's Rhyming Dict._, p.x. "Y preceded by a vowel is _never_ changed, as boy, boys, I cloy, he cloys, etc."--_Ib._, p viii. Walker's twelve "Orthographical Aphorisms," which Murray and others republish as their "Rules for Spelling," and which in stead of amending they merely corrupt, happened through some carelessness to contain _two_ which should have been condensed into _one_. For "words ending with y preceded by a consonant," he has not only the absurd rule or a.s.sertion above recited, but an other which is better, with an exception or remark under each, respecting "_y_ preceded by a vowel." The grammarians follow him in his errors, and add to their number: hence the repet.i.tion, or similarity, in the absurdities here quoted. By the term "_verbal nouns_," Walker meant nouns denoting agents, as _carrier_ from carry; but Kirkham understood him to mean "_participial nouns_," as _the carrying_. Or rather, he so mistook "that able philologist" Murray; for he probably knew nothing of Walker in the matter; and accordingly changed the word "_verbal_" to "_participial_;"

thus teaching, through all his hundred editions, except a few of the first, that participial nouns from verbs ending in _y_ preceded by a consonant, are formed by merely "changing the _y_ into _i_." But he seems to have known, that this is not the way to form the participle; though he did not know, that "_coyless_" is not a proper English word.

[456] The _idea of plurality_ is not "_plurality of idea_," any more than the _idea of wickedness_, or the _idea of absurdity_, is absurdity or wickedness of idea; yet, behold, how our grammarians copy the blunder, which Lowth (perhaps) first fell into, of putting the one phrase for the other! Even Professor Fowler, (as well as Murray, Kirkham, and others,) talks of having regard "_to unity or plurality of idea_!"--_Fowler's E.

Gram._, 8vo. 1850, --513,--G. BROWN.

[457] In the Doctor's "New Edition, Revised and Corrected," the text stands thus: "The _Present participle_ of THE ACTIVE VOICE has an active signification; as, James is _building_ the house. _In many of these_, however, _it_ has," &c. Here the first sentence is but an idle truism; and the phrase, "_In many of these_," for lack of an antecedent to _these_, is utter nonsense. What is in "the active voice," ought of course to be _active_ in "signification;" but, in this author's present scheme of the verb, we find "the active voice," in direct violation of his own definition of it, ascribed not only to verbs and participles either neuter or intransitive, but also, as it would seem by this pa.s.sage, to "many" that are _pa.s.sive!_--G. BROWN.

[458] One objection to these pa.s.sage is, that they are _examples_ of the very construction which they describe as a _fault_. The first and second sentences ought to have been separated only by a semicolon. This would have made them _"members"_ of one and the same sentence. Can it be supported that one _"thought"_ is sufficient for two periods, or for what one chooses to point as such, but not for two members of the same period?--G. BROWN.

[459] (1.) "_Accent_ is the _tone_ with which one speaks. For, in speaking, the voice of every man is sometimes _more grave_ in the sound, and at other times _more acute_ or shrill."--_Beattie's Moral Science_, p. 25. "_Accent_ is _the tone_ of the voice with which a syllable is p.r.o.nounced."--_Dr.

Adam's Latin and English Gram._, p. 266.

(2.) "_Accent_ in a peculiar _stress_ of the voice on some syllable in a word to distinguish it from the others."--_Gould's Adam's Lat. Gram._, p.

243.

(3.) "The _tone_ by which one syllable is distinguished from another is the _accent_; which is a greater _stress and elevation_ of voice on that particular syllable."--_Bicknell's Eng. Gram._, Part II, p. 111.

(4.) "_Quant.i.ty_ is the Length or Shortness of Syllables; and the Proportion, generally speaking, betwixt a long and [a] short Syllable, is two to one; as in _Music_, two _Quavers_ to one _Crotchet_.--_Accent_ is the _rising_ and _falling_ of the Voice, above or under its usual Tone, but an Art of which we have little Use, and know less, in the _English_ Tongue; nor are we like to improve our Knowledge in this Particular, unless the Art of _Delivery_ or _Utterance_ were a little more study'd."--_Brightland's Gram._, p. 156.

(5.) "ACCENT, s. m. (_inflexion_ de la voix.) Accent, _tone_, p.r.o.nunciation."--_Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel_, 4to, Tome Premier, sous le mot _Accent_.

"ACCENT, _subst._ (_tone_ or _inflection_ of the voice.) Accent, _ton_ ou _inflexion_ de voix."--_Same Work, Garner's New Universal Dictionary_, 4to, under the word _Accent_.

(6.) "The word _accent_ is derived from the Latin language and signifies _the tone of the voice_."--_Parker and Fox's English Gram._, Part III, p.

32.

(7.) "The unity of the word consists in the _tone or accent_, which binds together the two parts of the composition."--_Fowler's E. Gram._, --360.

(8.) "The accent of the ancients is the opprobrium of modern criticism.

Nothing can show more evidently the fallibility of the human faculties, than the _total ignorance_ we are in at present of the nature of the Latin and Greek accent."--_Walker's Principles_, No. 486; Dict., p. 53.

(9.) "It is not surprising, that the accent and quant.i.ty of the ancients should be so obscure and mysterious, when two such learned men of our own nation as Mr. Foster and Dr. Gaily, differ about the very existence of quant.i.ty in our own language."--_Walker's Observations on Accent_, &c.; Key, p. 311.

(10.) "What these accents are has puzzled the learned so much that they seem neither to understand each other nor themselves."--_Walker's Octavo Dict., w. Barytone_.

(11.) "The ancients designated the _pitch_ of vocal sounds by the term _accent_; making three kinds of accents, the acute (e), the grave (e), and the circ.u.mflex (e), which signified severally the rise, the fall, and the turn of the voice, or union of acute and grave on the same syllable."--_Sargent's Standard Speaker_, p. 18.

[460] "Interrogatio, Graece _Erotema_, Accentum quoque transfert; ut, Ter.

_Siccine ais Parmeno?_ Voss. Susenbr."--_Prat's Latin Grammar_, 8vo, Part II, p. 190.

[461] In regard to the admission of a comma before the verb, by the foregoing exception, neither the practice of authors nor the doctrine of punctuators is entirely uniform; but, where a considerable pause is, and must be, made in the reading, I judge it not only allowable, but necessary, to mark it in writing. In W. Day's "Punctuation Reduced to a System," a work of no inconsiderable merit, this principle is disallowed; and even when the adjunct of the nominative is a _relative clause_, which, by Rule 2d below and its first exception, requires a comma after it but none before it, this author excludes both, putting no comma before the princ.i.p.al verb.

The following is an example: "But it frequently happens, that punctuation is not made a prominent exercise in schools; and the brief _manner_ in which the subject is there dismissed _has proved_ insufficient to impress upon the minds of youth a due sense of its importance."--_Day's Punctuation_, p. 32. A pupil of mine would here have put a comma after the word _dismissed_. So, in the following examples, after _sake_, and after _dispenses_: "The _vanity_ that would accept power for its own sake _is_ the pettiest of human pa.s.sions."--_Ib._, p. 75. "The generous _delight_ of beholding the happiness he dispenses _is_ the highest enjoyment of man."--_Ib._, p, 100.

[462] When several nominatives are connected, some authors and printers put the comma only where the conjunction is omitted. W. Day separates them all, one from an other; but after the last, when this is singular before a plural verb, he inserts no point. Example: "Imagination is one of the princ.i.p.al ingredients which enter into the complex idea of genius; but _judgment, memory, understanding, enthusiasm_, and _sensibility_ are also included."--_Day's Punctuation_, p. 52. If the points are to be put where the pauses naturally occur, here should be a comma after _sensibility_; and, if I mistake not, it would be more consonant with current usage to set one there. John Wilson, however, in a later work, which is for the most part a very good one, prefers the doctrine of Day, as in the following instance: "_Reputation, virtue_, and _happiness_ depend greatly on the choice of companions."--_Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation_, p. 30.

[463] Some printers, and likewise some authors, suppose a series of words to require the comma, only where the conjunction is suppressed. This is certainly a great error. It gives us such punctuation as comports neither with the _sense_ of three or more words in the same construction, nor with the _pauses_ which they require in reading. "John, James and Thomas are here," is a sentence which plainly tells John that James and Thomas are here; and which, if read according to this pointing, cannot possibly have any other meaning. Yet this is the way in which the rules of _Cooper, Felton, Frost, Webster_, and perhaps others, teach us to point it, when we mean to tell somebody else that all three are here! In his pretended "Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar," (a work abounding in small thefts from Brown's Inst.i.tutes,) Cooper has the following example: "John, James or Joseph intends to accompany me."--Page 120. Here, John being addressed, the punctuation is right; but, to make this noun a nominative to the verb, a comma must be put after _each of the others_. In Cooper's "Plain and Practical Grammar," the pa.s.sage is found in this form: "John, James, or Joseph intends to accompany us."--Page 132. This pointing is doubly wrong; because it is adapted to neither sense. If the three nouns have the same construction, the princ.i.p.al pause will be immediately before the verb; and surely a comma is as much required by that pause, as by the second. See the Note on Rule 3d, above.

[464] In punctuation, the grammar here cited is unaccountably defective.

This is the more strange, because many of its errors are mere perversions of what was accurately pointed by an other hand. On the page above referred to, Dr. Bullions, in copying from Lennie's syntactical exercises _a dozen consecutive lines_, has omitted _nine needful commas_, which Lennie had been careful to insert!

[465] Needless abbreviations, like most that occur in this example, are in _bad taste_, and _ought to be avoided_. The great faultiness of this text as a model for learners, compels me to vary the words considerably in suggesting the correction. See the _Key_.--G. B.

[466] "To be, or not to be?--that's the question."--_Hallock's Gram._, p.

220. "To be, or not to be, that is the question."--_Singer's Shak._, ii.

488. "To be, or not to be; that is the Question."--_Ward's Gram._, p 160.

"To be, or not to be, that is the Question."--_Brightland's Gram._, p 209.

"To be, or not to be?"--_Mandeville's Course of Reading_, p. 141. "To be or not to be! That is the question."--_Pinneo's Gram._, p. 176. "To _be_--or _not_ to be--_that_ is the question--"--_Burgh's Speaker_, p. 179.

[467] In the works of some of our older poets, the apostrophe is sometimes irregularly inserted, and perhaps needlessly, to mark a prosodial synsaeresis, or synalepha, where no letter is cut off or left out; as,

"Retire, or taste thy _folly'_, and learn by proof, h.e.l.l-born, not to contend with _spir'its_ of Heaven."

--_Milton, P. L._, ii, 686.

In the following example, it seems to denote nothing more than the open or long sound of the preceding vowel _e_:

"That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, Even till a _lethe'd_ dulness."

--_Singer's Shakspeare_, Vol. ii, p. 280.

[468] The breve is properly a mark of _short quant.i.ty_, only when it is set over an unaccented syllable or an unemphatic monosyllable, as it often is in the scanning of verses. In the examples above, it marks the close or short power of the _vowels_; but, _under the accent_, even this power may become part of a _long syllable_; as it does in the word _rav'en_, where the syllable _rav_, having twice the length of that which follows, must be reckoned _long_. In poetry, _r=av-en_ and _r=a-ven_ are both _trochees_, the former syllable in each being long, and the latter short.

[469] 1. The signs of long and short sounds, and especially of the former, have been singularly slow in acquiring _appropriate names_--or any appellatives suited to their nature, or such as could obtain the sanction of general use. The name _breve_, from the French _breve_, (which latter word came, doubtless, originally from the neuter of the Latin adjective _brevis_, short,) is now pretty generally applied to the one; and the Greek term _macron_, long, (also originally a neuter adjective,) is perhaps as common as any name for the other. But these are not quite so well adapted to each other, and to the things named, as are the subst.i.tutes added above.

2. These signs are explained in our grammars under various names, and often very unfit ones, to say the least; and, in many instances, their use is, in some way, awkwardly stated, without any attempt to name them, or more than one, if either. The Rev. T. Smith names them "Long (=), and Short (~)."--_Smith's Murray_, p. 72. Churchill calls them "The _long_ = and the _short_ ~."--_New Gram._, p. 170. Gould calls them "a horizontal line" and "a curved line."--_Gould's Adam's Gram._, p. 3. Coar says, "Quant.i.ty is distinguished by the characters of - long, and ~ short."--_Eng. Gram._, p.

197. But, in speaking of the _signs_, he calls them, "_A long syllable_ =,"

and "_A short syllable_ ~."--_Gram._, pp. 222 and 228. S. S. Greene calls them "the _long sound_," and "the _breve_ or _short sound_."--_Gram._, p.

257. W. Allen says, "The _long-syllable mark_, (=) and the _breve_, or _short-syllable mark_, (~) denote the quant.i.ty of _words_ poetically employed."--_Gram._, p. 215. Some call them "the _Long Accent_," and "the _Short Accent_;" as does _Guy's Gram._, p. 95. This naming seems to confound accent with quant.i.ty. By some, the _Macron_ is improperly called "a _Dash_;" as by _Lennie_, p. 137; by _Bullions_, p. 157; by _Hiley_, p.

123; by _Butler_, p. 215. Some call it "a _small dash_;" as does _Well's_, p. 183; so _Hiley_, p. 117. By some it is absurdly named "_Hyphen_;" as by _Buchanan_, p. 162; by _Alden_, p. 165; by _Chandler_, 183; by _Parker and Fox_, iii, 36; by _Jaudon_, 193. Sanborn calls it "the _hyphen_, or _macron_."--_a.n.a.lyt. Gr._, p. 279. Many, who name it not, introduce it to their readers by a "_this_ =," or "_thus_ ~;" as do _Alger, Blair, Dr.

Adam, Comly, Cooper, Ingersoll, L. Murray, Sanders, Wright_, and others!