THE KING’S ENGLISH

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1799, 29 August 1906, Page 2

THE KING’S ENGLISH

We are told, from America (says “The DPtlook,” criticising a work entitled *The King’s English,” issued from the Clarendon Press), that English is on the way to be the international language, and we should be taking thought against this greater vocation. Of the methods of making it more simple and uniform, some hints are already given. Under the presidency of Mr Carnegie—who began his literary career by calling Homer a barbarian —the .Spelling-Reform Society has opened a new campaign with the rosiest prospects. They report, that in self-respecting educational establishments the pupils are ordered to write “bizness” phonetically, and “grotesq” is to be “spelt” without its head, on the argument that when a flower is easily distinguishable by its stamens it is ■weir to pluck off the petals. Some of the more Republican papers in London, which already drop necessary letters, will no doubt follow the lead. But efforts after reform in English do not tend to uniformity. At the present rate of progress in America two. English languages, differing in form, in sound, in vocabulary and idiom will soon be heard in Babel. Mr Whitelaw Reid’s recent warning follows closely the issue of a book written with the same purpose, and published, with a certain fitness, from Oxford. For Oxford, under special temptatio.ll, has begun, to stray. “Ham-doings with the juniors” has been heard as a synonym for the hardly more classical “Fresher Brekker,” and it is said that the villainous Americanism “rubber neck” is not the Greek it used to be in junior common-rooms. Quis custodiet?

In the absence of an Academy and the languishing knowledge of the Bible, the Press is the principal guardian of the King’s English; and a certain selfconsciousness of its position begins to pervade it. The ‘'split infinitive” has become, through the Press, a standard abhorrence. “Reliable” is barred in several, newspaper offices as an ill-formed •word. Printers’ readers prefer “From” before “to” after “aversion,” so logically must wo fit our prepositions to sense and tlie prefixes of verbs. The extreme precisians have forbidden that old and worthy idiom “under the circumstances” on the philological ground that you cannot stand under a thing that is round you, the not uncommon spectacle of people standing under umbrellas when it rains notwithstanding. A campaign has been undertaken against tags or cliches. We write the French synonym with qualms. Of our two greatest novelists Mr Meredith has dotted his novels with idiomatic alternatives for imported words, and Mr Hardy—who has a native affection for the split infinitive —is remarkable in his avoidance of Gallicisms. It is to be remembered, too, that a popular dramatic author took his critic’s affection for foreign forms as sufficient cause for a public quarrel. But all this petty tinkering, at grammatical commonplaces’ brings us no nearer a canon of English < We do not keep at the Tower or Greenwich any standard measures cut in brass to which our finches and ells, our Saxon monosyllables or - spsquinedaha

verba from abroad may be, when necessary, referred. We have, of course, more than a brass measure, a monumentum aere perennius, in Shakespeare and the Biible, in Milton, Swift, Lamb and fifty more. But still

Who shall arbitrate ? Ten men love what I hate,

Shun what I follow, slight what I receive, cannot read Sir Thomas Browne or Carlyle or Meredith and, if Mr Shaw tells the truth, do not- understand the Elizabethan idiom. No people reaches astandard, such as the French have reached, by avoiding mistakes. A knowledge even of the subtle syntax of “and which” and our old friend “instead of which” does not carry us far; and a. heaven-born writer of the language may use “less” when he should have used “fewer,” or slip into the abominable ill-logic of “tlie two last.” It used to be said in grammar books that “a preposition is a bad word to end a sentence with.” Did ever man hear such stuff—“such stuff as dreams are made of” ? S'ome years ago it was written in a handbook of English, that for style the learner conld find no better model than leaders in the “Times,” and for punctuation Dickens —passim —was the safest of all guides. Yet we have the “Times” terribly pilloried in the Oxford book; and there is the common accusation that the power of enjoying Dickens is witness of a defect m the literary sense. We once heard an author, who has some reputation as a stylist, assert, that he should be unhappy if he thought lie bad ever used “hut” immediately after a full stop. Primers recommend the semi-colon before “but.” The comma is perhaps the most usual stop ; and in the best and clearest writing, where the sense is so logically developed that connecting particles are needless, the effect of “But” at the opening of a paragraph may be tremendous. A man who rightly read aloud Marvell’s poem “To bis Coy Mistress” would make bis most effective pause after the “But” which breaks away from the humorous imaginations of the preface and opens most logically the second great movement —“But . . . at my hack I always hear.” Before such conflict-ion of evidence “whom shall my soul believe ?” Mr Morley, without even a wink to the reader quotes Mr Gladstone as writing of an “irreparable colleague.” and he did not mean that the man had suffered from a motor accident. Yet both men were among the precisians. We once heard Air Morley, in a linguistic pride delightful as it is rare, say that when he and Mr Gladstone sat down to talk they both unconsciously stiffened their backs and looked to their periods. Among the very best writers of English of the lastgeneration was Hfuxley. Yet hie “howlers,” of which several are now exposed, aro enough to set the teeth on edge. Can it be, with such great if awful examples before us, that there is a King’s English: a right spelling, punctuation, idiom, grammar? Negatively this Oxford hook is as near being a standard of English as 1 any in existence, in spite of many omissions and a few mistakes. A raciness is added to if by the number of familiar passages. Mr TO. F. Benson is a mine of awful examples', only rivalled by the “Shall wo believe?” correspondents in the “Daily Telegraph.” But the greatest are not immune* —not even the journalist. In the lower ranks of journalism the principal failing is a yearning for synonym. It were easy to cap the examples quoted. We saw on a press telegram, fortunately edited by the subeditor, the news that so-and-so “landed the windy one in the fishing-tackle”— to! wit, the football in the net. In the “Daily Graphic” some days ago was this paragraph, “Merton wore caught by Lincoln at the Willows. Exeter were bumped by Corpus at the Red Post, Worcester secured Queens’ -at the Willows and Jesus ran into Hertford before reaching the Gut.” A few lines later “Brasencee fell to St. John’s.” All these ludicrous synonyms from the sporting Gradus are used, it- is to be noticed, whore condensation should have been aimed at; Jmt perhaps. they deserve tender treatment as issuing from such a reaching after style ae made Stevenson the writer he was, and forbids the Frenchman a repetition that we should accept or oven like. A blunder found in higher levels than the sporting columns is well illustrated by a .supreme passage from Mies Corelli: —

Being faint with hunger I was somewhat in a listless condition bordering on stupor.

A qualifying mania is abroad. “Rather unique,” “somewhat infinitesimal,” “a little well worn” and other subtractions from verbal units are of common occurrence in writers who would shrink from the common vulgarisms, such as the journalistic “transpire.” Vague redundancies, especially the sloshy use of “in connection with” (Murray writes “connexion”), or the abuse of “literally,” or the ill-logic of “there is no question that,” deserve the pillory not less. A map of the little pitfalls 1 about us is an excellent reminder that, whether we learn Greek or no, we should study the grammar of our own tongue, as the French study theirs. But when the instructor passes into the larger questions of style, the eccentricity of our tongue, as of our character, defeats hijn. The better way is to glow in the eccentricity, as the

French glory in the perfecting of idiom. Our tongue is neither Saxon nor Romance. The Germans describe it a® impure; but impure means little more than composite. It has divergent qualities; and whatever we write or speak of we are put under the compulsion oif selecting our vocabulary. “A Reliable mowing machine” is good English: to substitute “trustworthy” would put. a fair word to foul use and risk its ruin. To describe the deeper, simpler things that have touched the hearts of men from the beginning, the Saxon tongue — with its certain but ofen imperceptible adaptation of sound to meaning—must prevail.

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for

teal's—for these wo mostly find either Saxon words or words pared into Saxon simplicity : the monosyllable is the unit of the lyric. But when wc come to imported and secondary things to criticism, or mechanics, or philosophy, or politics, seo how the Greek and Latin come to the front. We may go further than this. Punctuation, capital letters, neologisms, slang, odd formations' fit- character as well as theme. Sterne is less Sterne without his dashes, Carlyle without his hissing superlatives, Lamb without his archaisms, Meredith without his experiments; may wo not add Mr Walkley without his Gallicisms? A peculiar fascination belongs to the detection of other people’s mistakes, and in particular their smaller grammatical blunders. How many guests bavo delighted their hosts by writing that they ‘Vi 11 bo delighted to accept the invitation,” and a mistake in a correspondent’s orthography remains with a curious fragrance in the memory. The world to-day exults in logomachies as much as the old schoolmen in their logical theses; the question how many angels could dance on the of a needle did not stir mediaeval Paris more than the split infinitive has aroused newspaper grammarians. Unfortunately we have no such interest in tho blood and bone of our tongue. It is quite certain, as Mr Shaw says, that the Elizabethan idiom is Greek to most people; they miss the shades of word and clause. The general public does not care for style, does not. indeed, distinguish what is well-written from what, is ill-written. It loves rhetoric and it loves clearness; but marks almost no other quality. We heard a. man the other day tell a neighbour that something or other “'seriously operated against the adequate manipulation of tho apparatus,” and Mr Morley never tasted his words witlpa more appreciative savour. To him and to a. large cl as® that is style, that- is King’s English. The fear is that the most wellmeaning efforts to call attention to more or less finical points of grammar raise the comb of such crowing cocks till they think their periods the music of the spheres. Wo confess that our appreciation of that- admirable book “Elizabeth and her German Garden” was seriously disturbed by the number of adverbs splitting the infinitive. Give importance to a picaninny and it struts. Force grammar on your attention and its examples will stare at you from hallowed. pages: the divinest lyric becomes a .school text and the Bible a repository of blank verses.