# The King's English/Part 1/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II SYNTAX
Case
There is not much opportunity in English for going wrong here, because we have shed most of our cases. The personal pronouns, and who and its compounds, are the only words that visibly retain three—called subjective, objective, possessive. In nouns the first two are indistinguishable, and are called the common case. One result of this simplicity is that, the sense of case being almost lost, the few mistakes that can be made are made often—some of them so often that they are now almost right by prescription.
1. In apposition.
A pronoun appended to a noun, and in the same relation to the rest of the sentence, should be in the same case. Disregard of this is a bad blunder.
But to behold her mother—she to whom she owed her being!—S. Ferrier.
2. The complement with am, are, is, &c., should be subjective.
I am she, she me, till death and beyond it.—Meredith.
Whom would you rather be?
To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first and sole angel visitant, him Easterns call Azrael.—C. Brontë.
That's him.
In the last but one, him would no doubt have been defended by the writer, since the full form would be he whom, as an attraction to the vanished whom. But such attraction is not right; if he alone is felt to be uncomfortable, whom should not be omitted; or, in this exalted context, it might be he that.
On that's him, see 4, below.
​3. When a verb or preposition governs two pronouns united by and, &c., the second is apt to go wrong—a bad blunder. Between you and I is often heard in talk; and, in literature:
And now, my dear, let you and I say a few words about this unfortunate affair.—Trollope.
It is kept locked up in a marble casket, quite out of reach of you or I.—S. Ferrier.
She found everyone's attention directed to Mary, and she herself entirely overlooked.—S. Ferrier.
4. The interrogative who is often used for whom, as, Who did you see? A distinction should here be made between conversation, written or spoken, and formal writing. Many educated people feel that in saying It is I, Whom do you mean? instead of It's me, Who do you mean? they will be talking like a book, and they justifiably prefer geniality to grammar. But in print, unless it is dialogue, the correct forms are advisable.
5. Even with words that have no visible distinction between subjective and objective case, it is possible to go wrong; for the case can always be inferred, though not seen. Consequently a word should never be so placed that it must be taken twice, once as subject and once as object. This is so common a blunder that it will be well to give a good number of examples. It occurs especially with the relative, from its early position in the sentence; but, as the first two examples show, it may result from the exceptional placing of other words also. The mere repetition of the relative, or insertion of it or other pronoun, generally mends the sentence; in the first example, change should only be to only to be.
The occupation of the mouths of the Yalu, however, his Majesty considered undesirable, and should only be carried out in the last resort.—Times.
This the strong sense of Lady Maclaughlan had long perceived, and was the principal reason of her selecting so weak a woman as her companion.—S. Ferrier.
​Qualities which it would cost me a great deal to acquire, and would lead to nothing.—Morley.
A recorded saying of our Lord which some higher critics of the New Testament regard as of doubtful authenticity, and is certainly of doubtful interpretation.
A weakness which some would miscall gratitude, and is oftentimes the corrupter of a heart not ignoble.—Richardson.
Analogous to these are the next three examples, which will require separate comment:
Knowledge to the certainty of which no authority could add, or take away, one jot or tittle.—Huxley.
To is applicable to add, not to take away. The full form is given by substituting for or 'and from the certainty of which no authority could'. This is clearly too cumbrous. Inserting or from after to is the simplest correction; but the result is rather formal. Better, perhaps, 'the certainty of which could not be increased or diminished one jot by any authority'.
From his conversation I should have pronounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities.
A second in is required. This common slovenliness results from the modern superstition against putting a preposition at the end. The particular sentence may, however, be mended otherwise than by inserting in, if excel is made absolute by a comma placed after it. Even then, the in would perhaps be better at the end of the clause than at the beginning.
Lastly may be mentioned a principle upon which Clausewitz insisted with all his strength, and could never sufficiently impress upon his Royal scholar.—Times.
The italicized upon (we have nothing to do with the other upon) is right with insist, but wrong, though it must necessarily be supplied again, with impress. It is the result of the same superstition. Mend either by writing upon after insisted instead of before which, or by inserting which he after and.
6. After as and than.
These are properly conjunctions, and 'take the same case ​after them as before'. But those words must be rightly understood. (a), I love you more than him, means something different from (b), I love you more than he. It must be borne in mind that the 'case before' is that of the word that is compared with the 'case after', and not necessarily that of the word actually next before in position. In (a) you is compared with him: in (b) I (not you) is compared with he. The correct usage is therefore important, and the tendency illustrated in the following examples to make than and as prepositions should be resisted—though no ambiguity can actually result here.
When such as her die.—Swift.
But there, I think, Lindore would be more eloquent than me.—S. Ferrier.
It must further be noticed that both as and than are conjunctions of the sort that can either, like and, &c., merely join coordinates, or, like when, &c., attach a subordinate clause to what it depends on. This double power sometimes affects case.
It is to him and such men as he that we owe the change.—Huxley.
This example is defensible, as being here a subordinating conjunction, and as he being equivalent to as he is. But it is distinctly felt to need defence, which as him would not; as would be a coordinating conjunction, and simply join the pronoun him to the noun men. So, with than:
Such as have bound me, as well as others much better than me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that time forward.—Burke.
On the other hand, we could not say indifferently, I am as good as he, and I am as good as him; the latter would imply that as was a preposition, which it is not. And it is not always possible to choose between the coordinating and the subordinating use. In the next example only the coordinating will do, no verb being capable of standing after he; but the author has not observed this.
I beheld a man in the dress of a postillion, whom I instantly recognized as he to whom I had rendered assistance.—Borrow.
​A difficult question, however, arises with relatives after than. In the next two examples whom is as manifestly wrong as who is manifestly intolerable:
Dr. Dillon, than whom no Englishman has a profounder acquaintance with...—Times.
It was a pleasure to hear Canon Liddon, than whom, in his day, there was no finer preacher.
The only correct solution is to recast the sentences. For instance,...whose acquaintance with...is unrivalled among Englishmen; and...unsurpassed in his day as a preacher. But perhaps the convenience of than whom is so great that to rule it out amounts to saying that man is made for grammar and not grammar for man.
7. Compound possessives.
This is strictly the proper place for drawing attention to a question that has some importance because it bears on the very common construction discussed at some length in the gerund section. This is the question whether, and to what extent, compound possessives may be recognized. Some people say some one else's, others say some one's else. Our own opinion is that the latter is uncalled for and pedantic. Of the three alternatives, Smith the baker's wife, Smith's wife the baker, the wife of Smith the baker, the last is redolent of Ollendorff, the second thrusts its ambiguity upon us and provokes an involuntary smile, and the first alone is felt to be natural. It must be confessed, however, that it is generally avoided in print, while the form that we have ventured to call pedantic is not uncommon. In the first of the examples that follow, we should be inclined to change to Nanny the maid-of-all-work's, and in the second to the day of Frea, goddess of, &c.
Another mind that was being wrought up to a climax was Nanny's, the maid-of-all-work, who had a warm heart.—Eliot.
Friday is Frea's-day, the goddess of peace and joy and fruitfulness.—J. R. Green.
Number
Very little comment will be needed; we have only to convince readers that mistakes are common, and caution therefore necessary.
I. The copula should always agree with the subject, not with the complement. These are wrong:
The pages which describe how the 34th Osaka Regiment wiped out the tradition that had survived since the Saigo rebellion is a typical piece of description.—Times.
A boy dressed up as a girl and a girl dressed up as a girl is, to the eye at least, the same thing.—Times.
People do not believe now as they did, but the moral inconsistencies of our contemporaries is no proof thereof.—Daily Telegraph.
It must be remembered that in questions the subject often comes after the verb and the complement before it; but the same rule must be kept. E. g., if the last example were put as a question instead of as a negative statement, 'What proof is the inconsistencies?' would be wrong, and 'What proof are &c.?' right.
Some sentences in which the subject contains only, a superlative, &c., have the peculiarity that subject and complement may almost be considered to have changed places; and this defence would probably be put in for the next three examples; but, whether actually wrong or not, they are unpleasant. The noun that stands before the verb should be regarded as the subject, and the verb be adapted to it.
The only thing Siamese about the Consul, except the hatchment and the flag, were his servants.—Sladen.
The only difficulty in Finnish are the changes undergone by the stem.—Sweet.
The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the most bulky works of manual industry, are the pyramids.—Johnson.
The next example is a curious problem; the subject to ​were is in sense plural, but in grammar singular (finding, verbal noun):
Finding Miss Vernon in a place so solitary, engaged in a journey so dangerous, and under the protection of one gentleman only, were circumstances to excite every feeling of jealousy.—Scott.
2. Mistakes in the number of verbs are extremely common when a singular noun intervenes between a plural subject (or a plural noun between a singular subject) and its verb. It is worth while to illustrate the point abundantly; for it appears that real doubt can exist on the subject:—' "No one but schoolmasters and schoolboys knows" is exceedingly poor English, if it is not absolutely bad grammar' (from a review of this book, 1st ed.).
And do we wonder, when the foundation of politics are in the letter only, that many evils should arise?—Jowett.
There is much in these ceremonial accretions and teachings of the Church which tend to confuse and distract, and which hinder us...—Daily Telegraph.
This sentence, strictly taken as it stands, would mean something that the writer by no means intends it to, viz., 'Though the ceremonies are confusing, there is a great deal in them'.
An immense amount of confusion and indifference prevail in these days.—Daily Telegraph.
They produced various medicaments, the lethal power of which were extolled at large.—Times.
The partition which the two ministers made of the powers of government were singularly happy.—Macaulay.
One at least of the qualities which fit it for training ordinary men unfit it for training an extraordinary man.—Bagehot.
I failed to pass in the small amount of classics which are still held to be necessary.—Times.
The Tibetans have engaged to exclude from their country those dangerous influences whose appearance were the chief cause of our action.—Times.
Sundry other reputable persons, I know not whom, whose joint virtue still keep the law in good odour.—Emerson.
The practical results of the recognition of this truth is as follows.–W. H. Mallock.
​The Ordination services of the English Church states this to be a truth.—Daily Telegraph.
All special rights of voting in the election of members was abolished.—J. R. Green.
The separate powers of this great officer of State, who had originally acted only as President of the Council when discharging its judicial functions, seems to have been thoroughly established under Edward I.—J. R. Green.
3. They, them, their, theirs, are often used in referring back to singular pronominals (as each, one, anybody, everybody), or to singular nouns or phrases (as a parent, neither Jack nor Jill), of which the doubtful or double gender causes awkwardness. It is a real deficiency in English that we have no pronoun, like the French soi, son, to stand for him-or-her, his-or-her (for he-or-she French is no better off than English). Our view, though we admit it to be disputable, is clear–that they, their, &c., should never be resorted to, as in the examples presently to be given they are. With a view to avoiding them, it should be observed that (a) the possessive of one (indefinite pronoun) is one's, and that of one (numeral pronoun) is either his, or her, or its (One does not forget one's own name: I saw one of them drop his cigar, her muff, or its leaves); (b) he, his, him, may generally be allowed to stand for the common gender; the particular aversion shown to them by Miss Ferrier in the examples may be referred to her sex; and, ungallant as it may seem, we shall probably persist in refusing women their due here as stubbornly as Englishmen continue to offend the Scots by saying England instead of Britain. (c) Sentences may however easily be constructed (Neither John nor Mary knew his own mind) in which his is undeniably awkward. The solution is then what we so often recommend, to do a little exercise in paraphrase (John and Mary were alike irresolute, for instance). (d) Where legal precision is really necessary, he or she may be written in full. Corrections according to these rules will be appended in brackets to the examples.
​Anybody else who have only themselves in view.—Richardson. (has...himself)
Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte, in novel-writing as in carrying one's head in their hand.—S. Ferrier. (one's...one's)
The feelings' of the parent upon committing the cherished object of their cares and affections to the stormy sea of life.—S. Ferrier. (his)
But he never allowed one to feel their own deficiencies, for he never appeared to be aware of them himself.—S. Ferrier. (one's)
A difference of opinion which leaves each free to act according to their own feelings.—S. Ferrier. (his)
Suppose each of us try our hands at it.—S. Ferrier. (tries his hand; or, if all of us are women, tries her hand)
Everybody is discontented with their lot in life.—Beaconsfield. (his)
4. Other mistakes involving number made with such pro-nominals, or with nouns collective, personified, or abstract.
No man can read Scott without being more of a public man, whereas the ordinary novel tends to make its readers rather less of one than before.—Hutton.
And so each of his portraits are not only a 'piece of history', but...—Stevenson.
Le Roman d'un Spahi, Azidayé and Rarahu each contains the history of a love affair.— H. James.
He manages to interest us in the men, who each in turn wishes to engineer Richard Baldock's future.—Westminster Gazette.
When each is appended in apposition to a plural subject, it should stand after the verb, or auxiliary, which should be plural; read here, contain each, wish each in turn (or, each of whom wishes in turn).
As the leading maritime nation in the world and dependent wholly on the supremacy of our fleet to maintain this position, everyone is virtually bound to accord some measure of aid to an association whose time and talents are devoted to ensuring this important object.—Times.
Every one is indeed a host in himself, if he is the leading maritime nation.
It is not Japan's interests to allow negotiations to drag on once their armies are ready to deliver the final blow.—Times.
The personification of Japan must be kept up by her.
​Many of my notes, I am greatly afraid, will be thought a superfluity.—E. V. Lucas (quoted in Times review).
My notes may be a superfluity; many of my notes may be superfluous, or superfluities; or many a note of mine may be a superfluity; but it will hardly pass as it is.
5. Though nouns of multitude may be freely used with either a singular or a plural verb, or be referred to by pronouns of singular or plural meaning, they should not have both (except for special reasons and upon deliberation) in the same sentence; and words that will rank in one context as nouns of multitude may be very awkward if so used in another.
The public is naturally much impressed by this evidence, and in considering it do not make the necessary allowances.—Times.
The Times Brussels correspondent...tells us that the committee adds these words to their report.—Westminster Gazette.
The Grand Opera Syndicate has also made an important addition to their German tenors.—Westminster Gazette.
The only political party who could take office was that which...had consistently opposed the American war.—Bagehot.
As the race of man, after centuries of civilization, still keeps some traits of their barbarian fathers.—Stevenson.
The battleship Kniaz Potemkin, of which the crew is said to have mutinied and murdered their officers.—Times.
6. Neither, either, as pronouns, should always take a singular verb—a much neglected rule. So also every.
The conception is faulty for two reasons, neither of which are noticed by Plato.—Jowett.
...neither of which are very amiable motives for religious gratitude.—Thackeray.
He asked the gardener whether either of the ladies were at home.—Trollope.
Were, however, may be meant for the subjunctive, when it would be a fault of style, not of grammar.
I think almost every one of the Judges of the High Court are represented here.—Lord Halsbury.
Every Warwick institution, from the corporation to the schools and the almshouses, have joined hands in patriotic fellow-working.–Speaker.
​7. For rhetorical reasons, a verb often precedes its subject; but enthusiasm, even if appropriate, should not be allowed to override the concords.
And of this emotion was born all the gods of antiquity.—Daily Telegraph.
But unfortunately there seems to be spread abroad certain misconceptions.—Times.
But with these suggestions are joined some very good exposition of principles which should underlie education generally.—Spectator.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has received a resolution, to which is appended the names of eight Liberal members and candidates for East London...—Times.
Comparatives and Superlatives
The chief point that requires mention is ill treatment of the more. In this phrase the is not the article, but an adverb, either relative or demonstrative. In the more the merrier it is first relative and then demonstrative: by-how-much we are more, by-so-much we shall be merrier. When the relative the is used, it should always be answered regularly by, or itself answer, the demonstrative the. Attempts to vary the formula are generally unhappy; for instance.
He was leaving his English business in the hands of Bilton, who seemed to him, the more he knew him, extraordinarily efficient.—E. F. Benson.
This should run, perhaps: whose efficiency impressed him the more, the more he knew him—though it must be confessed that the double form is nearly always uncomfortable if it has not the elbowroom of a whole sentence to itself. That, however, is rather a question of style than of syntax; and other examples will accordingly be found in the section of the Chapter Airs and Graces concerned with originality.
The farther we advance into it, we see confusion more and more unfold itself into order.—Carlyle.
Most readers will feel that this is an uncomfortable compromise between The farther we advance the more do we see and As ​we advance we see confusion more and more unfold itself. Similarly,
She had reflection enough to foresee, that the longer she countenanced his passion, her own heart would be more and more irretrievably engaged.—Smollett.
But it is when the demonstrative is used alone with no corresponding relative clause—a use in itself quite legitimate—that real blunders occur. It seems sometimes to be thought that the more is merely a more imposing form of more, and is therefore better suited for a dignified or ambitious style; but it has in fact a perfectly definite meaning, or rather two; and there need never be any doubt whether more or the more is right. One of the meanings is a slight extension of the other. (1) The correlative meaning by so much may be kept, though the relative clause, instead of formally corresponding and containing the (meaning by how much) and a comparative, takes some possibly quite different shape. But it must still be clear from the context what the relative clause might be. Thus, 'We shall be a huge crowd'.—'Well, we shall be the merrier'. Or, 'If he raises his demands, I grant them the more willingly', i.e., The more he asks, the more willingly I give. This instance leads to the other possible meaning, which is wider. (2) The original meaning of the demonstrative the is simply by that; this in the complete double form, and often elsewhere, has the interpretation, limited to quantity, of by so much, or in that proportion; but it may also mean on that account, when the relative clause is not present. Again, however, the context must answer plainly in some form the question On what account? Thus, He has done me many good turns; but I do not like him any the better; i.e., any better on that account; i.e., on account of the good turns.
The function of the, then, is to tell us that there is, just before or after, an answer to one of the questions. More by what amount? More on what account? If there is no such ​answer, we may be sure that the comparative has no right to its the. We start with a sentence that is entitled to its the, but otherwise unidiomatic.
We are not a whit the less depressed in spirits at the sight of all this unrelieved misery on the stage by the reminder that Euripides was moved to depict it by certain occurrences in his own contemporary Athens.—Times.
The less is less on that account, viz., that we are reminded. But the preposition required when the cause is given in this construction by a noun is for, not by. Read for the reminder. The type is shown in None the better for seeing you. Our sentence is in fact a mixture between Our depression is not lessened by the reminder, and We are not the less depressed for the reminder; and the confusion is the worse that depressed by happens to be a common phrase.
The suggestion, as regarded Mr. Sowerby, was certainly true, and was not the less so as regarded some of Mr. Sowerby's friends.—Trollope.
The tells us that we can by looking about us find an answer either to Not less true by what amount? or to Not less true on what account? There is no answer to the first except Not less true about the friends in proportion as it was truer about Mr. Sowerby; and none to the second except Not less true about the friends because it was true about Mr. Sowerby. Both are meaningless, and the the is superfluous and wrong.
Yet as his criticism is more valuable than that of other men, so it is the more rarely met with.—Spectator.
This is such an odd tangle of the two formulae as...so, the more...the more, that the reader is tempted to cut the knot and imagine what is hardly possible, that the is meant for the ordinary article, agreeing with kind of criticism understood between the and more. Otherwise it must be cured either by omitting the, or by writing The more valuable his criticism, the more rarely is it met with. If the latter is done, than that of other men will have to go. Which suggests the further observation that the with a comparative is almost always wrong ​when a than-clause is appended. This is because in the full double clause there is necessarily not a fixed standard of comparison, but a sliding scale. The following example, not complicated by any the, will make the point clear:
My eyes are more and more averse to light than ever.— S. Ferrier.
You can be more averse than ever, or more and more averse, but not more and more averse than ever. Ever can only mean the single point of time in the past, whichever it was, at which you were most averse. But to be more and more averse is to be more averse at each stage than at each previous stage. Just such a sliding scale is essential with the more...the more. And perhaps it becomes so closely associated with the phrase that the expression of a fixed standard of comparison, such as is inevitably set up by a than-clause, is felt to be impossible even when the demonstrative the stands alone. In the next two examples, answers to the question More on what account? can be found, though they are so far disguised that the sentences would be uncomfortable, even if what makes them impossible were absent. That is the addition of the than-clause in each.
But neither is that way open; nor is it any the more open in the case of Canada than Australia.—F. Greenwood.
The the might pass if than Australia were omitted, and there would be no objection to it if we read further (for in the case) if we take the case, and better still, placed that clause first in the sentence: Nor, if we take the case of Canada, is the way any the more open. The then means on that account, viz., because we have substituted Canada.
I would humbly protest against setting up any standard of Christianity by the regularity of people's attendance at church or chapel. I am certain personally that I have a far greater realization of the goodness of God to all creation; I am certain that I can the more acknowledge His unbounded love for all He has made, and our entire dependence on Him, than I could twenty years ago, when I attended church ten times where I now go once.—Daily Telegraph.
​In this, the answer to More on what account? is possibly implied in the last clause; it would perhaps be, if clearly put, Because I go to church seldomer. The right form would be, I can the more acknowledge...for going (or that I go) to church only once where twenty years ago I went ten times. Unless the than-clause is got rid of, we ought to have more without the.
This question of the is important for lucidity, is rather difficult, and has therefore had to be treated at length. The other points that call for mention are quite simple; they are illogicalities licensed by custom, but perhaps better avoided. Avoidance, however, that proclaims itself is not desirable; to set readers asking 'Who are you, pray, that the things everybody says are not good enough for you?' is bad policy; 'in vitium ducit culpae fuga si caret arte.' But if a way round presents itself that does not at once suggest an assumption of superiority, so much the better.
1. More than I can help.
Without thinking of the corresponding phrase in his native language more than he can help.—H. Sweet.
We don't haul guns through traffic more than we can help.—Kipling.
These really mean, of course, more than he (we) cannot help. To say that, however, is by this time impossible. More than he need, if (when) he can help it, too much, unnecessarily, and other substitutes, will sometimes do.
2. Most of any (singular).
A political despotism, the most unbounded, both in power and principle, of any tyranny that ever existed so long.—Galt.
She has the most comfortable repository of stupid friends to have recourse to of anybody I ever knew.—S. Ferrier.
And they had the readiest ear for a bold, honourable sentiment, of any class of men the world ever produced.—Stevenson.
Latin at any rate should be an essential ingredient in culture as the best instrument of any language for clear and accurate expression of thought.—Times.
The first chapter, which from the lessons it enforces is perhaps the most valuable of any in the present volume...—Sir G. T. Goldie.
​Disraeli said that he had 'the largest parliamentary knowledge of any man he had met'.—Bryce.
Though this is extremely common, as the examples are enough to show, there is seldom any objection to saying either most of all or more than any.
3. Most with words that do not admit of degrees.
Unique has been separately dealt with in the chapter on Vocabulary. Ideal is another word of the same sort. An ideal solution is one that could not possibly be improved upon, and most is nonsense with it. Ideal and most obvious should be read in the example:
That the transformation of the Regular Army into the general service Army and of the Militia into the home service Army is a most ideal and obvious solution admits, I think, of no contradiction.—Times.
Relatives
a. Defining and non-defining relative clauses.
For the purposes of b. and c. below, all relative clauses are divided into defining and non-defining. The exact sense in which we use these terms is illustrated by the following groups, of which (i) contains defining clauses, (ii) non-defining.
(i) The man who called yesterday left no address.
Mr. Lovelace has seen divers apartments at Windsor: but not one, he says, that he thought fit for me.—Richardson.
He secured...her sincere regard, by the feelings which he manifested.—Thackeray.
The Jones who dines with us to-night is not the Jones who was at school with you.
The best novel that Trollope ever wrote was...
Any man that knows three words of Greek could settle that point.
(ii) At the first meeting, which was held yesterday, the chair...
Deputies must be elected by the Zemstvos, which must be extended and popularized, but not on the basis of...—Times.
The Emperor William, who was present..., listened to a loyal address.—Times.
The statue of the Emperor Frederick, which is the work of the sculptor Professor Uphnes, represents the Monarch on horseback.—Times.
Jones, who should know something of the matter, thinks differently.
​The function of a defining relative clause is to limit the application of the antecedent; where that is already precise, a defining clause is not wanted. The limitation can be effected in more than one way, according to the nature of the antecedent. As a rule, the antecedent gives us a class to select from, the defining clause enables us to make the selection. Thus in our first example the antecedent leaves us to select from the general class of 'men', the defining clause fixes the particular man (presumably the only man, or the only man that would occur in the connexion) 'who called yesterday'. Sometimes, however, the functions of the two are reversed. When we have an antecedent with a superlative, or other word of exclusive or comprehensive meaning, such as 'all', 'only ', 'any', we know already how to make our selection, and only wait for the relative clause to tell us from what class to make it. We know that we are to choose 'the best novel': the relative clause limits us to the works of Trollope. We are to choose 'any man' we like, provided (says our relative clause) that he 'knows three words of Greek '. In either case, the work of definition is done by the exclusion (implied in the relative clause) of persons or things that the antecedent by itself might be taken to include.
The point to notice is that, whichever way the defining clause does its work, it is essential to and inseparable from its antecedent. If for any reason we wish to get rid of it, we can only do so by embodying its contents in the antecedent: 'The man in Paris with whom I correspond' must become 'My Paris correspondent'. To remove the clause altogether is to leave the antecedent with either no meaning or a wrong one. Even in such extreme cases as 'the wisest man that ever lived', 'the meanest flower that blows', where the defining clause may seem otiose and therefore detachable, we might claim that future wise men, and past and future flowers, are excluded; but we shall better realize the writer's intention if we admit that these clauses are only a pretence of ​limitation designed to exclude the reality; it is as if the writers, invited to set limits to their statements, had referred us respectively to Time and Space.
This fact, that the removal of a defining clause destroys the meaning of the antecedent, supplies an infallible test for distinguishing between the defining and the non-defining clause: the latter can always, the former never, be detached without disturbing the truth of the main predication. A non-defining clause gives independent comment, description, explanation, anything but limitation of the antecedent; it can always be rewritten either as a parenthesis or as a separate sentence, and this is true, however essential the clause may be to the point of the main statement. 'Jones', in our last example above, is quoted chiefly as one 'who should know something of the matter'; but this need not prevent us from writing: 'Jones thinks differently; and he should know something of the matter'.
To find, then, whether a clause defines or does not define, remove it, and see whether the statement of which it formed a part is unaltered: if not, the clause defines. This test can be applied without difficulty to all the examples given above. It is true that we sometimes get ambiguous cases: after removing the relative clause, we cannot always say whether the sense has been altered or not. That means, however, not that our test has failed, but that the clause is actually capable of performing either function, and that the main sentence can bear two distinct meanings, between which even context may not enable us to decide. The point is illustrated, in different degrees, by the following examples:
Mr. H. Lewis then brought forward an amendment, which had been put down by Mr. Trevelyan and which provided for an extension of the process of income-tax graduation.—Times.
This was held to portend developments that somehow or other have not followed.—Times.
The former of these is quite ambiguous. The bringing ​forward of an amendment (no matter what or whose) may be all that the writer meant to tell us of in the first instance; the relative clauses are then non-defining clauses of description. On the other hand, both clauses may quite well be meant to define; and it is even possible that the second is meant to define, and the first not, though the coordination is then of a kind that we shall show under c. to be improper. Similarly, in the second sentence, 'to portend developments' may possibly be complete in itself; the whole might then be paraphrased thus: 'It was thought that the matter would not stop there: but it has'. More probably the clause is meant to define: 'It was held to portend what have since proved to be unrealized developments'. This view is confirmed, as we shall see, both by the use of 'that' (not 'which') and by the absence of a comma before it.
Punctuation is a test that would not always be applicable even if all writers could be assumed to punctuate correctly; but it is often a guide to the writer's intention. For (1) a non-defining clause should always be separated from the antecedent by a stop; (2) a defining clause should never be so separated unless it is either preceded by a parenthesis indicated by stops, or coordinated with a former defining clause or with adjectives belonging to the antecedent; as in the following examples:
The only circumstance, in fact, that could justify such a course...
It is he only who does this, who follows them into all their force and matchless grace, that does or can feel their full value.—Hazlitt.
Perfect types, that satisfy all these requirements, are not to be looked for.
It will occur to the reader that our last two examples are strictly speaking exceptions to the rule of defining clauses, since they tell us only what is already implied, and could therefore be removed without impairing the sense. That is true to some extent of many parallel defining clauses: they are admissible, however, if, without actually giving any ​limitation themselves, they make more clear a limitation already given or implied; if, in fact, they are offered as alternative versions or as reminders. Our next example is of a defining clause of the same kind:
This estimate which he gives, is the great groundwork of his plan for the national redemption.—Burke.
The limitation given by 'this' is repeated in another form by the relative clause. 'This estimate, the one he gives, is...'
The reader should bear in mind that the distinction between the two kinds of relative is based entirely on the closeness of their relation to the antecedent. The information given by a defining clause must be taken at once, with the antecedent, or both are useless: that given by a non-defining clause will keep indefinitely, the clause being complete in sense without the antecedent, and the antecedent without the clause. This is the only safe test. To ask, for instance, whether the clause conveys comment, explanation, or the like, is not a sufficient test unless the question is rightly understood; for, although we have said that a non-defining clause conveys comment and the like, as opposed to definition of the antecedent, it does not follow that a defining clause may not (while defining its own antecedent) contribute towards comment; on the contrary, it is often open to a writer to throw his comment into such a form as will include a defining clause. It may even appear from a comparison of the two sentences below that this is the origin of the non-defining clause, (2) being an abbreviation of (1):
1. Lewis, a man to whom hard work never came amiss, sifted the question thoroughly.
2. Lewis, to whom hard work never came amiss, sifted the question...
In (1), a comment is introduced by 'a man' in apposition with Lewis; 'a man' is antecedent to a defining relative clause; separate them, and the antecedent is meaningless. But next remove the connecting words 'a man', and the relative changes at once its antecedent and its nature: the antecedent is ​'Lewis'; the relative is non-defining; and the clause is (not merely contributes to) a comment.
b. 'That' and 'who' or 'which'.
'That' is evidently regarded by many writers as nothing more than an ornamental variation for 'who' and 'which', to be used, not indeed immoderately, but quite without discrimination. The opinion is excusable; it is not easy to draw any distinction that is at all consistently supported by usage. There was formerly a tendency to use 'that' for everything: the tendency now is to use 'who' and 'which' for everything. 'That', from disuse, has begun to acquire an archaic flavour, which with some authors is a recommendation. De Quincey, for one, must certainly have held that in exalted prose 'that', in all connexions, was the more dignified relative; his higher flights abound in curious uses of the word, some instances of which are quoted below.
This confusion is to be regretted; for although no distinction can be authoritatively drawn between the two relatives, an obvious one presents itself. The few limitations on 'that' and 'who' about which every one is agreed all point to 'that' as the defining relative, 'who' or 'which' as the non-defining. We cannot say 'My father, that left Berlin last night, will shortly arrive', and an examination of instances would show that we can never use 'that' where the clause is unmistakably non-defining. On the other hand, we cannot say 'All which I can do is useless'; this time, it is true, the generalization will not hold; 'which' can, and sometimes must, be used, and 'who' commonly is used, in defining clauses. But that is explained partly by the obvious inconvenience sometimes attending the use of 'that', and partly by the general tendency to exclude it from regular use, which has already resulted in making it seem archaic when used of persons, except in certain formulae.
The rules given below are a modification of this principle, that 'that' is the defining, 'who' or 'which' the non-defining ​relative; the reason for each modification is given in its place. We must here remind the reader of the distinction drawn in a. between defining and non-defining clauses: a defining clause limits the application of the antecedent, enabling us to select from the whole class to which the antecedent is applicable the particular individual or individuals meant.
1. 'That' should never be used to introduce a non-defining clause; it is therefore improperly used in all the following examples:
But by her side was kneeling her better angel, that hid his face with wings: that wept and pleaded for her: that prayed when she could not: that fought with Heaven by tears for her deliverance.—De Ouincey.
Rendering thanks to God in the highest—that, having hid his face through one generation behind thick clouds of war, once again was ascending.—De Quincey.
And with my own little stock of money besides, that Mrs. Hoggarty's card-parties had lessened by a good five-and-twenty shillings, I calculated...—Thackeray.
How to keep the proper balance between these two testy old wranglers, that rarely pull the right way together, is as much...—Meredith.
Nataly promised amendment, with a steely smile, that his lips mimicked fondly.—Meredith.
It is opposed to our Constitution, that only allows the Crown to remove a Norwegian Civil servant.—Nansen.
I cannot but feel that in my person and over my head you desire to pay an unexampled honour to the great country that I represent, to its Bench and Bar, that daily share your labours and keep step with your progress.—Choate.
'That I represent' is right: 'that daily share' is wrong.
As to dictionaries of the present day, that swell every few years by the thousand items, the presence of a word in one of them shows merely...—R. G. White.
The sandy strip along the coast is fed only by a few scanty streams, that furnish a remarkable contrast to the vast volumes of water which roll down the Eastern sides.—Prescott.
'That' and 'which' should change places.
The social and economic sciences, that now specially interest me, have no considerable place in such a reform.—Times.
If this is a defining clause, excluding 'the social and economic ​sciences that' do not interest the writer, the comma after 'sciences' should be removed.
2. 'Who' or 'which' should not be used in defining clauses except when custom, euphony, or convenience is decidedly against the use of 'that'. The principal exceptions will be noted below; but we shall first give instances in which 'that' is rightly used, and others in which it might have been used with advantage.
In those highly impressionable years that lie between six and ten...—Spectator.
The obstacles that hedge in children from Nature...—Spectator.
The whole producing an effect that is not without a certain poetry.—Times.
He will do anything that he deems convenient.—Borrow.
The well-staffed and well-equipped 'High Schools' that are now at work...had not yet sprung into being.—Times.
Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mischievous, in order to preserve trade laws that are useless.—Burke.
'That' should have been used in both clauses.
The struggle that lay before him.—J. R. Green.
There goes another sort of animal that is differentiating from my species...— H. G. Wells.
There are other powers, too, that could perform this grateful but onerous duty.—Times.
In the following examples, 'that' is to be preferred to 'which'; especially with antecedent 'it', and after a superlative or other word of exclusive or comprehensive meaning, such as 'all', 'only', 'any'.
The opportunities which London has given them.—Times.
The principles which underlay the agreement.—Times.
One cause which surely contributes to this effect has its root in early childhood.—Spectator.
A meeting which was held yesterday, which consisted in the main of a bitter personal attack.—Rosebery.
'Which consisted' is right: but we should have 'that was held'; the clause defines.
The first thing which the person who desires to be amiable must determine to do is...–Spectator.
​The most abominable din and confusion which it is possible for a reasonable person to conceive.—Poe.
Reverential objections, composed of all which his unstained family could protest.—Meredith.
He required all the solace which he could derive from literary success.—Macaulay.
All the evidence which we have ever seen tends to prove...—Macaulay.
A battle more bloody than any which Europe saw in the long interval between Malplaquet and Eylau.—Macaulay.
The only other biography which counts for much is...—Times.
The French Government are anxious to avoid anything which might be regarded as a breach of neutrality.—Times.
It was the ecclesiastical synods which by their example led the way to our national parliaments.—J. R. Green.
It is the little threads of which the inner substance of the nerves is composed which subserve sensation.—Huxley.
'Of which' in a defining clause is one of the recognized exceptions; but we ought to have 'that subserve'.
It is not wages and costs of handling which fall, but profits and rents.—Times.
It has been French ports which have been chosen for the beginning and for the end of his cruise.—Times.
Who is it who talks about moral geography?—E. F. Benson.
3. We come now to the exceptions. The reader will have noticed that of all the instances given in (2) there is only one—the last–in which we recommend the substitution of 'that' for 'who'; in all the others, it is a question between 'that' and 'which'. 'That', used of persons, has in fact come to look archaic: the only cases in which it is now to be preferred to 'who' are those mentioned above as particularly requiring 'that' instead of 'which'; those, namely, in which the antecedent is 'it', or has attached to it a superlative or other word of exclusive meaning. We should not, therefore, in the Spectator instance above, substitute 'the person that desires' for 'who desires'; but we should say
The most impartial critic that could be found.
The only man that I know of.
Any one that knows anything knows this.
It was you that said so.
Who is it that talks about moral geography?
Outside these special types, 'that' used of persons is apt to sound archaic.
4. It will also have been noticed that all the relatives in (2) were either in the subjective case, or in the objective without a preposition. 'That' has no possessive case, and cannot take a preposition before it. Accordingly 'the man that I found the hat of' will of course give place to 'the man whose hat I found'; and 'the house in which this happened' will generally be preferred to 'the house that this happened in'. The latter tendency is modified in the spoken language by the convenient omission of 'that'; for always in a defining clause, though never in a non-defining, a relative in the objective case, with or without a preposition, can be dropped. But few writers like, as a general rule, either to drop their relatives or to put prepositions at the end. 'The friends I was travelling with', 'the book I got it from', 'the place I found it in', will therefore usually appear as
The friends with whom I was travelling.
The book from which I got it.
The place in which I found it.
5. Euphony demands that 'that that' should become 'that which', even when the words are separated; and many writers, from a feeling that 'which' is the natural correlative of the demonstrative 'that', prefer the plural 'those which'; but the first example quoted in (2) seems to show that 'those...that' can be quite unobjectionable.
6. A certain awkwardness seems to attend the use of 'that' when the relative is widely separated from its antecedent. When, for instance, two relative clauses are coordinate, some writers use 'that' in the first, 'which' in the second clause, though both define. This point will be illustrated in c., where we shall notice that inconsistency in this respect sometimes obscures the sense.
​It may seem to the reader that a rule with so many exceptions to it is not worth observing. We would remind him (i) that it is based upon those palpable misuses of the relatives about which every one is agreed; (ii) that of the exceptions the first and last result from, and might disappear with, the encroachment of 'who' and the general vagueness about the relatives; while the other two, being obvious and clearly defined, do not interfere with the remaining uses of 'that'; (iii) that if we are to be at the expense of maintaining two different relatives, we may as well give each of them definite work to do.
In the following subsections we shall not often allude to the distinction here laid down. The reader will find that our rules are quite as often violated as observed; and may perhaps conclude that if the vital difference between a defining and a non-defining clause were consistently marked, wherever it is possible, by a discriminating use of 'that' and 'which', false coordination and other mishandlings of the relatives would be less common than they are.
c. 'And who'; 'and which '.
The various possibilities of relative coordination, right and wrong, may be thus stated: (i) a relative clause may be rightly or wrongly coordinated with another relative clause; this we shall call 'open' coordination; (ii) it may be rightly or wrongly coordinated with words that are equivalent to a relative clause, and for which a relative clause can be substituted; 'latent' coordination; (iii) a clause that has obviously no coordinate, open or latent, may yet be introduced by 'and' or other word implying coordination; for such offenders, which cannot be coordinate and will not be subordinate, 'insubordination' is not too harsh a term.
The following are ordinary types of the three classes:
(i) Men who are ambitious, and whose ambition has never been thwarted,...
Pitt, who was ambitious, but whose ambition was qualified by...
(ii) Ambitious men, and whose ambition has never been thwarted,...
An evil now, alas! beyond our power to remedy, and for which we have to thank the folly of our predecessors.
(iii) Being thus pressed, he grudgingly consented at last to a redistribution, and which, I need not say, it was his duty to have offered in the first instance.
A coordination in which 'and' is the natural conjunction may also be indicated simply by a comma; there is safety in this course, since the clause following the comma may be either coordinate or subordinate. But we have to deal only with clauses that are committed to coordination.
'Insubordination' will not detain us long; it is always due either to negligence or to gross ignorance; we shall illustrate it in its place with a few examples, but shall not discuss it. With regard, however, to open and latent coordination opinions differ; there is an optimist view of open coordination, and a pessimist view of latent, both of which seem to us incorrect. It is held by some that open coordination (provided that the relatives have the same antecedent) is never wrong, and by some—not necessarily others—that latent coordination is never right: we shall endeavour to show that the former is often wrong, and the latter, however ungainly, often right.
The essential to coordination is that the coordinates should be performing the same function in the sentence. It is not necessary, nor is it enough, that they should be in the same grammatical form: things of the same form may have different functions, and things of different forms may have the same function. If we say 'Unambitious men, and who have no experience', 'unambitious' and 'who have no experience' are not in the same form, but they have the same function—that of specifying the class of men referred to. Their grammatical forms (vocabulary permitting) are interchangeable: a defining adjective can always take the form of a relative clause, and a defining relative clause can often take the form of an adjective: 'inexperienced men, and who have no ambition'. 'Unambitious' is therefore the true grammatical ​equivalent of 'who have no ambition', and latent coordination between it and a relative clause is admissible.
On the other hand, among things that have the same grammatical form, but different functions, are the defining and the non-defining relative clause. A non-defining clause, we know, can be removed without disturbing the truth of the predication; it has therefore no essential function; it cannot therefore have the same function as a defining clause, whose function we know to be essential. It follows that open coordination is not admissible between a defining and a non-defining clause; and, generally, coordination, whether open or latent, is admissible between two defining or two non-defining coordinates, but not between a defining and a non-defining.
Our object, however, in pointing out what seems to be the true principle of relative coordination is not by any means to encourage the latent variety. It has seldom any advantage over full coordination; it is perhaps more apt to lead to actual blunders; it is usually awkward; and it does violence—needless violence, as often as not—to a very widespread and not unreasonable prejudice. Many writers may be suspected of using it, against their better judgement, merely for the purpose of asserting a right; it is their natural protest against the wholesale condemnation of ignorant critics, who do not see that latent coordination may be nothing worse than clumsy, and that open coordination may be a gross blunder. For the benefit of such critics it seems worth while to examine the correctness of various examples, both open and latent; on the other merits and demerits of the latent variety the reader will form his own judgement.
(i) Open coordination.
A few minutes brought us to a large and busy bazaar, with the localities of which the stranger appeared well acquainted, and where his original demeanour again became apparent.—Poe.
Mr. Lovelace has seen divers apartments at Windsor; but not one, he says, that he thought fit for me, and which, at the same time, answered my description.—Richardson.
​All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for, are the self-same thing.—Emerson.
All these are correct: in the first both clauses are non-defining, in the others both define.
The hills were so broken and precipitous as to afford no passage except just upon the narrow line of the track which we occupied, and which was overhung with rocks, from which we might have been destroyed merely by rolling down stones.—Scott.
Wrong: the first clause defines, the second not.
From doing this they were prevented by the disgraceful scene which took place, and which the leader of the Opposition took no steps to avert.—Times.
Wrong. The first clause defines, the second is obviously one of comment: the 'scene' is not distinguished from those that the leader did take steps to avert.
They propose that the buildings shall belong... to the communes in which they stand, and which, it is hoped, will not permit their desecration.—Spectator.
Wrong. The communes that 'will not permit' are not meant to be distinguished from those that will. The second clause is comment, the first defines.
The way in which she jockeyed Jos, and which she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to a pitch...—Thackeray.
In the best French which he could muster, and which in sooth was of a very ungrammatical sort...—Thackeray.
Peggy...would have liked to have shown her turban and bird of paradise at the ball, but for the information which her husband had given her, and which made her very grave.—Thackeray.
All these are wrong. Thackeray would probably have been saved from these false coordinations if he had observed the distinction between 'that' and 'which': 'In the best French (that) he could muster, which in sooth was...'.
There goes another sort of animal that is differentiating from my species, and which I would gladly see exterminated.—H. G. Wells.
Probably the second clause, like the first, is meant to define: if so, the coordination is right; if not, it is wrong. We have alluded to the tendency to avoid 'that' when the relative is widely separated from its antecedent; here, the result is ambiguity.
​And here he said in German what he wished to say, and which was of no great importance, and which I translated into English.—Borrow.
Wrong: 'what (that which)' defines, the 'and which' clauses do not.
(ii) Latent coordination, between relative clause and equivalent, is seldom correct when the relative clause is non-defining; for the equivalent, with few and undesirable exceptions, is always a defining adjective or phrase, and can be coordinate only with a defining clause. The equivalent must of course be a true one; capable, that is, of being converted into a relative clause without altering the effect of the sentence. Neglect of this restriction often results in false coordination, especially in one particular type of sentence. Suppose that a historian, after describing some national calamity, proceeds: 'In these distressing circumstances...' Here we might seem to have two possible equivalents, 'these' and 'distressing'. First let us expand 'these' into a relative clause: 'In the distressing circumstances that I have described'. This, in the context, is a fair equivalent, and as often as not would actually appear instead of 'these'. But next expand 'distressing': 'In these circumstances, which were distressing', a non-defining clause. To this expansion no writer would consent; it defeats the object for which 'distressing' was placed before the antecedent. That object was to record his own sensibility without disparaging the reader's by telling him in so many words (as our relative clause does) that the circumstances were distressing; and it is secured by treating 'distressing' not as a separate predication but as an inseparable part of the antecedent. 'Distressing', it will be observed, cannot give us a defining clause; it is obviously meant to be co-extensive with 'these'; we are not to select from 'these' circumstances those only that are 'distressing'. Moreover, as 'these', although capable of appearing as a relative clause, can scarcely require another relative clause to complete the limitation of the antecedent, it follows that in sentences of this form coordination will generally be wrong. We have examples in the ​Cowper quotation below, and in the anonymous one that precedes it.
Juices ready prepared, and which can be absorbed immediately.—Huxley.
A deliberate attempt to frame and to verify general rules as to phenomena of all kinds, and which can, therefore, be propagated by argument or persuasion...—L. Stephen.
'Rules that shall be general, and that can...'
A painful, comprehensive survey of a very complicated matter, and which requires a great variety of considerations, is to be made.—Burke.
The goldsmith to the royal household, and who, if fame spoke true, oftentimes acted as their banker,... was a person of too much importance to...—Scott.
'The man who was goldsmith to...and who'.
It is a compliment due, and which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs.—Burke.
All these are correct, with defining coordinates throughout.
'A junior subaltern, with pronounced military and political views, with no false modesty in expressing them, and who (sic) possesses the ear of the public,...'—(Quoted by the Times.)
'Who has...views, and who...' 'Sic' is the comment of the Times writer. The coordination is correct.
While there, she had ample opportunity afforded her of studying fashionable life in all its varied and capricious moods, and which have been preserved to posterity in her admirable delineations of character.
I am sensible that you cannot in my uncle's present infirm state, and of which it is not possible to expect any considerable amendment, indulge us with a visit.—Cowper.
These are the instances of false expansion alluded to above. The former is based on the non-defining expansion 'in all its moods, which are varied and capricious'; the true expansion being 'in all the varied and capricious moods in which it reveals itself', a defining clause, which will not do with the 'and which'. Similarly, the second is based on the non-defining expansion 'in my uncle's present state, which is an infirm one'; the true expansion is 'in the infirm state in which my uncle now is'. In both, a non-defining clause is coordinated with words that can only yield a defining clause.
​Previous to the innovations introduced by the Tudors, and which had been taken away by the bill against pressing soldiers, the King in himself had no power of calling on his subjects generally to bear arms.—J. R. Green.
If the writer means us to distinguish, among the innovations introduced by the Tudors, those that had also been taken away, the 'and which' clause defines, and the coordination is right. But more probably the clause conveys independent information; the coordination is then wrong.
[The various arrangements of pueri puellam amabant] all have the same meaning—the boys loved the girl. For puellam shows by its form that it must be the object of the action; amabant must have for its subject a plural substantive, and which must therefore be, not puellam, but pueri. —R. G. White.
Wrong. 'A plural substantive' can yield only the defining clause 'a substantive that is plural'. Now these words contain an inference from a general grammatical principle (that a plural verb must have a plural subject); and any supplementary defining clause must also be general, not (like the 'and which' clause) particular. We might have, for instance, 'Amabant, being plural, and finite, must have for its subject a plural substantive, and which is in the nominative case'. But the 'and which' clause is evidently non-defining; the inference ends at 'substantive'; then comes the application of it to the particular case.
He refused to adopt the Restrictive Theory, and impose a numerical limit on the Bank's issues, and which he again protested against in 1833.—H. D. Macleod.
Wrong. The 'and which' clause is non-defining; none of the three possible antecedents ('Theory', 'limit', 'imposition') will give a non-defining clause.
The great obstacle...is the religion of Europe, and which has unhappily been colonially introduced into America.—Beaconsfield.
This illustrates an important point. 'Of Europe' gives the defining clause 'that prevails in Europe'; the coordination therefore requires that the 'and which' clause should define. Now a defining clause must contain no word that is not meant ​to contribute to definition; if, then, the 'and which' clause defines, the writer wishes to distinguish the religion in question, not only from those European religions that have not been colonially introduced into America, but also from those European religions that have been introduced, but whose introduction is not a matter for regret; that is the only defining meaning that 'unhappily' can bear, and unless we accept this interpretation the clause is non-defining.— We shall allude to this sentence again in d., where the possibilities of parenthesis in a defining clause are discussed.
It may seem strange that this important place should not have been conferred on Vaca de Castro, already on the spot, and who had shown himself so well qualified to fill it.—Prescott.
One of our 'few and undesirable exceptions', in which the clause-equivalent is non-defining ('who was already on the spot'); for a person's name can only require a defining clause to distinguish him from others of the same name. The sentence is an ugly one, even if we remove the 'and who' clause; but the coordination is right.
(iii) Insubordination.
The struggler, the poor clerk, mechanic, poorer musician, artist, or actor, feels no right to intrude, and who quickly falls from a first transient resentment...—Daily Telegraph.
Such a person may reside there with absolute safety, unless it becomes the object of the government to secure his person; and which purpose, even then, might be disappointed by early intelligence.—Scott.
All this when Madame saw, and of which when she took note, her sole observation was:—...—C. Brontë.
To these we may add examples in which the coordinated relatives have different antecedents. In practice, nothing can justify such coordination: in theory, it is admissible when the antecedents are coordinate, as in the following sentence:
We therefore delivered the supplies to those individuals, and at those places, to whom the special grants had been made, and for which they were originally designed.
But in the following instances, one antecedent is subordinate to another in the same clause, or is in a clause subordinate to that of the other.
They marched into the apartment where the banquet was served; and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall have the liberty of ordering himself.—Thackeray.
A large mineral-water firm in London, whose ordinary shares are a million in value, and which shares always paid a dividend before the imposition of the sugar-tax, have not paid any dividend since.—Times.
He very much doubted whether I could find it on his mine, which was located some five miles from St. Austell, Cornwall, and upon whose property I had never been.—Times.
But I have besought my mother, who is apprehensive of Mr. Lovelace's visits, and for fear of whom my uncles never stir out without arms,...—Richardson.
It was of Mr. Lovelace that the uncles were afraid.
d. Case of the relative.
Special attention was not drawn, in the section on Case, to the gross error committed in the following examples:
Instinctively apprehensive of her father, whom she supposed it was, she stopped in the dark.—Dickens.
That peculiar air of contempt commonly displayed by insolent menials to those whom they imagine are poor.—Corelli.
It is only those converted by the Gospel whom we pretend are influenced by it.—Daily Telegraph.
We found those whom we feared might be interested to withhold the settlement alert and prompt to assist us.—Galt.
Mr. Dombey, whom he now began to perceive was as far beyond human recall.—Dickens.
Those whom it was originally pronounced would be allowed to go.—Spectator.
But this looks as if he has included the original 30,000 men whom he desires 'should be in the country now'.—Times.
We feed children whom we think are hungry.—Times.
The only gentlemen holding this office in the island, whom, he felt sure, would work for the spiritual good of the parish.—Guernsey Advertiser.
These writers evidently think that in 'whom we think are hungry' 'whom' is the object of 'we think'. The relative is in fact the subject of 'are'; and the object of 'we know' is the clause 'who are hungry'; the order of the words is a necessary result of the fact that a relative subject must stand at the beginning of its clause.
​(The same awkward necessity confronts us in clauses with 'when', 'though', &c., in which the subject is a relative. Such clauses are practically recognized as impossible, though Otway, in a courageous moment, wrote:
Unblemished honour, and a spotless love;
Which tho' perhaps now know another flame,
Yet I have love and passion for their name.)
Some writers, with a consistency worthy of a better cause, carry the blunder into the passive, renouncing the advantages of an ambiguous 'which' in the active; for in the active 'which' of course tells no tales.
As to all this, the trend of events has been the reverse of that which was anticipated would be the result of democratic institutions.—Times.
'Which it was anticipated would be'. Similarly, the passive of 'men whom we-know-are-honest' is the impossible 'men who are-known-are-honest': 'men who we know are honest' gives the correct passive 'men who it is known are honest'.
Nor must it be supposed that 'we know' is parenthetic. In non-defining clauses (Jones, who we know is honest), we can regard the words as parenthetic if we choose, except when the phrase is negative (Jones, who I cannot think is honest); but in a defining clause they are anything but parenthetic. When we say 'Choose men who you know are honest', the words 'you know' add a new circumstance of limitation: it is not enough that the men should in fact be honest; you must know them to be honest; honest men of whose honesty you are not certain are excluded by the words 'you know'. Similarly, in the Guernsey Advertiser quotation above, the writer does not go the length of saying that these are the only gentlemen who would work: he says that they are the only ones of whom he feels sure. The commas of parenthesis ought therefore to go, as well as the comma at 'island', which is improper before a defining clause.
The circumstances under which a parenthesis is admissible in a defining clause may here be noticed.
​(i) When the clause is too strict in its limitation, it may be modified by a parenthesis:
Choose men who, during their time of office, have never been suspected.
A whole class, excluded by the defining clause, is made eligible by the parenthesis.
(ii) Similarly, a parenthesis may be added to tell us that within the limits of the defining clause we have perfect freedom of choice:
Choose men who, at one time or another, have held office.
They must have held office, that is all; it does not matter when.
(iii) Words of comment, indicating the writer's authority for his limitation, his recognition of the sentiments that it may arouse, and the like, properly stand outside the defining clause: when they are placed within it, they ought to be marked as parenthetic.
There are men who, so I am told, prefer a lie to truth on its own merits.
The religion that obtains in Europe, and that, unhappily, has been introduced into America.
The latter sentence is an adaptation of one considered above on p. 91. 'Unhappily' there appeared not as a parenthesis but as an inseparable part of the relative clause, which was therefore defining or non-defining, according as 'unhappily' could or could not be considered as adding to the limitation. But with the altered punctuation 'unhappily' is separable from the relative clause, which may now define: 'that obtains in Europe and (I am sorry to have to add) in America.'
In sentences of this last type, the parenthesis is inserted in the defining clause only for convenience: in the others, it is an essential, though a negative, part of the definition. But all three types of parenthesis agree in this, that they do not limit the antecedent; they differ completely from the phrases considered above, which do limit the antecedent, and are not parenthetic.
​e. Miscellaneous uses and abuses of the relative.
(i) A relative clause is sometimes coordinated with an independent sentence; such coordination is perhaps always awkward, but is not always incorrect. The question arises chiefly when the two have a common subject expressed only in the relative clause; for when the subject is expressed in both, the independent sentence may be taken to be coordinate, not with the relative clause, but with the main sentence to which the relative clause is attached, as in the following instance:
To begin with, he had left no message, which in itself I felt to be a suspicious circumstance, and (I) was at my wits' end how to account plausibly for his departure.
Retain 'I', and 'I was' may be coordinate with 'he had left': remove it, and the coordination is necessarily between 'I was' and 'I felt'. In our next examples the writers are committed:
These beatitudes are just laws which we have been neglecting, and have been receiving in ourselves the consequences that were meet.—Daily Telegraph.
The idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is the suitableness of means to certain ends, and, where this is not the question, very seldom trouble themselves about the effect of different measures of things.—Burke.
Fictitious capital, a name of extreme inaccuracy, which too many persons are in the habit of using, from the hasty assumption that what is not real must necessarily be fictitious, and are more led away by a jingling antithesis of words than an accurate perception of ideas.–H. D. Macleod.
The first two of these are wrongly coordinated: the third, a curiosity in other respects, is in this respect right. The reason is that in the first two we have a defining, in the third a non-defining relative clause. A defining clause is grammatically equivalent to an adjective ('violated laws', 'the popular idea'), and can be coordinated only with another word or phrase performing the same function; now the phrase 'we have been receiving', not being attached to the ​antecedent by means of a relative, expressed or understood, is not equivalent to an adjective. We could have had 'and (which we) have been properly punished for neglecting', or we could have had the 'and' sentence in an adverbial form, 'with the fitting result'; but coordination between the two as they stand is impossible.
The Burke sentence is a worse offender. Coordination of this kind is not often attempted when the antecedent of the relative is subject of the main sentence; and when it is attempted, the two coordinates must of course not be separated by the predicate. If we had had 'the idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, and very seldom trouble themselves about anything further', the coordination would have been similar to the other, and could have been rectified in the same way ('and beyond which they very seldom...', or 'to the exclusion of any other considerations'). But this alteration we cannot make; for there is a further and an essential difference. The Daily Telegraph writer evidently meant his second coordinate to do the work of a defining clause; he has merely failed to make the necessary connexion, which we supply, as above, either by turning the words into a second defining clause, or by embodying them, adverbially, in the first. Burke's intention is different, and would not be represented by our proposed alteration in the order. All that a defining clause can do in his sentence is to tell us what idea is going to be the subject. If we were to give a brief paraphrase of the whole, italicizing the words that represent the second coordinate, it would be, not 'mankind's sole idea of proportion is the adaptation...', but 'mankind's idea of proportion is the adaptation..., and very little else'; for the question answered is, not 'what is mankind's sole idea?' but 'what is mankind's idea?' In other words, the second coordinate belongs in intention not, like the relative clause, to the subject, but to the predicate; to rectify it, we must either make it part of the predicate ​(and is not concerned with...'), or, by inserting 'they', coordinate it with the main sentence. Obvious as the latter correction is, the sentence repays close examination, as illustrating the incoherence of thought that may underlie what seems a very trifling grammatical slip.
But in our third example, the relative clause is nondefining; it is grammatically equivalent to, and could be replaced by, an independent sentence: 'Many persons are in the habit of using it'. There is nothing grammatically wrong in this type of coordination; it is objectionable only because it seems to promise what it does not fulfil. When the common subject of two coordinates is expressed only with the first, it is natural to assume that all words preceding it are also to be applied to both coordinates; and the violation of this principle, though not of course ungrammatical, is often felt to be undesirable in other than relative clauses.
(ii) In the sentences considered above, the antecedent of the relative did not belong to the second coordinate, and could not have been represented in it without the material alterations there proposed. But it may also happen that the antecedent, as in the following examples, belongs equally to both coordinates, being represented in the first by a relative, in the second by some other pronoun.
There were two or three whose accuracy was more scrupulous, their judgement more uniformly sober and cautious.—Bryce.
He renewed the old proposal, which Pizarro treated as a piece of contemptible shuffling, and curtly rejected it.
Which she has it in her option either to do or to let it alone.—Richardson.
In the pair of parallel coordinates from Mr. Bryce, insert the suppressed 'was', and it becomes clear that 'whose', not 'their', is the right pronoun.
In the 'Pizarro' sentence, 'it' is not only superfluous, but disturbing to the reader, who assumes that 'which' is common to both clauses, and on reaching 'it' has to glance back and ​check the sentence. Here, as often, the pronoun seems to be added to restore an ill-balanced sentence; but that can be done in several other ways. In the Richardson sentence also the 'it' should go.
More commonly, the repetition of the antecedent in another form results from the superstitious avoidance of a preposition at the end:
A demand by Norway for political separation, to which Sweden will not assent, but will not go to war to prevent it.—Times.
'To (which)' is not common to both coordinates: accordingly the writer finds it necessary to give 'it' in the second. But, even if we respect our superstition, and exclude 'which Sweden will not assent to, but will not go to war to prevent', we have still the two possibilities of (1) complete relative coordination, 'to..., but which...'; (2) subordination, 'though she will not go to war to prevent it'.
In our next example, Lord Rosebery, again for fear of a preposition at the end, falls into the trap clumsily avoided by the Times writer:
That promised land for which he was to prepare, but scarcely to enter.
So perhaps Bagehot, though his verb may be conceive of:
English trade is carried on upon borrowed capital to an extent of which few foreigners have an idea, and none of our ancestors could have conceived.
(iii) When the relative is the subject of both coordinates, or the object of both, its repetition in the second is a matter of choice. But to omit the relative when it is in a different case from the first is a gross, though not uncommon, blunder. The following are instances:
A league which their posterity for many ages kept so inviolably, and proved so advantageous for both the kingdoms of France and Scotland.—Lockhart.
Questions which we either do not put to ourselves, or are turned aside with traditional replies.—Mark Rutherford.
It is just conceivable that in the last of these the subject of 'are' is 'we': if so, the sentence is to be referred to (i) above ​(wrong coordination of an independent sentence with a defining relative clause).
It is not easy to see why the relative more than other words should be mishandled in this way; few would write (but see p.61, s.f.) 'This league we kept and has proved advantageous'.
The condensed antecedent-relative 'what' is only an apparent exception to this universal rule. In the sentence 'What I hold is mine', 'what' is only object to 'hold', not subject to 'is'; the subject to 'is' is the whole noun-clause 'what I hold'. Sentences of this type, so far from being exceptions, often give a double illustration of the rule, and leave a double possibility of error. For just as a single 'what' cannot stand in different relations to two coordinate verbs in its clause, so a single noun-clause cannot stand in different relations to two coordinate main verbs. We can say 'What I have and hold', where 'what' is object to both verbs, and 'what is mine and has been fairly earned by me', where it is subject to both; but we cannot say 'what I have and has been fairly earned by me'. Similarly, we can say 'What I have is mine and shall remain mine', where the noun-clause 'what I have' is subject to both verbs, and 'What I have I mean to keep, and will surrender to no man', where it is object to both; but not 'What I have is mine, and I will surrender to no m.an'. Of the various ways of avoiding this error (subordination, adaptation of verbs, insertion of a pronoun, relative or otherwise), that chosen by Miss Bronte below is perhaps the least convenient. Her sentence is, however, correct; that from the Spectator is not.
Not mere empty ideas, but what were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed.—C. Brontë.
Whatever we possessed in 1867 the British Empire possesses now, and is part of the Dominion of Canada.—Spectator.
'Things that were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed'; a pair of defining clauses.
The condensed 'what' must of course be distinguished from the 'what' of indirect questions, which is not relative ​but interrogative. In the following example, confusion of the two leads to an improper coordination.
What sums he made can only be conjectured, but must have been enormous.—Macaulay.
In the first sentence, 'what' is an interrogative, in the second, a condensed antecedent-relative, standing for 'the sums that'. It is the sums that were enormous: it is the answer to the question 'What sums did he make?' that can only be conjectured. The mistake is possible only because 'can' and 'must' do not reveal their number: 'can' is singular, 'must' plural.
The differentiation between the two whats and their equivalents is not, indeed, complete: just as the condensed antecedent-relative resembles in form, though not in treatment, the unresolved interrogative, so the interrogative, by resolution into 'the (that) which', not only resembles, but is grammatically identified with, the uncondensed relative and antecedent. The resolution is, no doubt, convenient: it should be noticed, however, that the verbs with which alone it can be employed (verbs that may denote either perception of a fact or other kinds of perception) are precisely those with which ambiguity may result. 'I know the house (that) you mean': it may (antecedent and relative) or may not (resolved interrogative) follow that I have ever seen it. 'We must first discover the scoundrel who did it'; antecedent and relative? then we must secure the scoundrel's person; resolved interrogative? then only information is needed. 'I can give a good guess at the problem that is puzzling you': and the solution?—I know nothing of the solution; I was resolving an interrogative.
This, however, does not affect sentences like the Macaulay one above: for although the resolved or uncondensed forms ('the...which') are grammatically identified, the condensed or unresolved forms ('what') are not.
(iv) The omission of the relative in isolated clauses (as opposed to coordinates) is a question not of correctness ​but of taste, so far as there is any question at all. A nondefining relative can never be omitted. The omission of a defining relative subject is often effective in verse, but in prose is either an archaism or a provincialism. It may, moreover, result in obscurity, as in the second of our examples, which may possibly puzzle the reader for a moment:
Now it would be some fresh insect won its way to a temporary fatal new development.—H. G. Wells.
No one finds himself planted at last in so terribly foul a morass, as he would fain stand still for ever on dry ground.—Trollope.
But when the defining relative is object, or has a preposition, there is no limit to the omission, unless euphony is allowed to be one. We give three instances in which the reader may or may not agree that the relative might have been retained with advantage:
We do that in our zeal our calmer moments would be afraid to answer.—Scott.
But did you ever see anything there you had never seen before?—Bagehot.
These ethical judgements we pass on self-regarding acts are ordinarily little emphasized.—Spencer.
(v) When a defining relative has the same preposition as its antecedent, it is not uncommon, in the written as well as in the spoken language, to omit the preposition in the relative clause. There is something to be said for a licence that rids us of such cumbrous formulae as 'in the way in which', 'to the extent to which', and the like; in writing, however, it should be used with caution if at all.
In the first place, if the preposition is to go, the relative should go too, or if retained should certainly be 'that', not 'which'; and if the verb of the relative clause is the same as in the main sentence, it should be represented by 'do', or (in a compound tense) by its auxiliary component.
Because they found that it touched them in a way which no book in the world could touch them.—Daily Telegraph.
The man who cleaned the slate in the manner which Sir E. Satow has done both in Morocco and Japan might surely rank as a reflective diplomatist.—Spectator.
​'In a way no other book in the world could': 'in the way (that) Sir E. Satow has done'.
A further limitation is suggested by our next example:
The Great Powers, after producing this absolutely certain result, are ending with what they ought to have begun,—coercion.—Spectator.
Here, of course, the relative cannot be omitted, since relative and antecedent are one. But that is not the principal fault, as will appear from a resolution of the antecedent-relative: 'they are ending with the very thing (that) they ought to have begun...'. We are now at liberty to omit our relative or retain it, as we please; in either case, the omission of 'with' is unbearable. The reason is that 'with' does not, like the 'in' of our former examples, introduce a purely adverbial phrase: it is an inseparable component of the compound verbs 'end-with' and 'begin-with', of which the antecedent and relative are respectively the objects. Similarly, we cannot say 'He has come to the precise conclusion (that) I thought he would come', because we should be mutilating the verb to 'come-to'; we can, however, say 'to the conclusion (that) I thought he would', 'come-to' being then represented by 'would'.
Finally, the omission is justifiable only when antecedent and relative have the same preposition. Sentences like the next may pass in conversation, but (except with the one noun way) are intolerable in writing:
One of the greatest dangers in London is the pace that the corners in the main streets are turned.—Times.
(vi) The use of 'such...who (which)', 'such...that (defining relative)', for 'such...as' is sometimes an archaism, sometimes a vulgarism.
Till such time when we shall throw aside our earthly garment.—Daily Telegraph.
Only such supplies were to be made which it would be inhuman to refuse to ships in distress.—Times.
The censorship of literature extends to such absurd prohibitions which it did not reach even during the worst period of the forties.—Times.
A God in such an abstract sense that, as I have pointed out before, does not signify.— Daily Telegraph.
They would find such faith, such belief, that would be a revelation to them.—Daily Telegraph.
Swift's plan was to offer to fulfil it on conditions so insulting that no one with a grain of self-respect could accept.—L. Stephen.
f. 'It...that.'
Two constructions, closely allied, but grammatically distinct, are often confused: (i) Antecedent 'it' followed by a defining relative clause with 'that' (who, which); (ii) 'it' followed by a clause in apposition, introduced by the conjunction 'that'. The various correct possibilities are represented in the set of examples given below. Relative clauses are marked R, conjunction clauses C. One impossible example is added in brackets, to mark the transition from relative to conjunction.
(1) It is money that I want. R.
(2) It was you that told me. R.
(3) It was you that I gave it to (or, to whom I gave it). R.
(4) It was to you that I gave it. C.
(5) It was the Romans that built this wall. R.
(6) It is the Romans that we are indebted to for this. R.
(7) It is to the Romans that we are indebted for this. C.
(8) It was Jones whose hat I borrowed. R.
(9) It was Jones's hat that I borrowed. R.
(10) It was a knife that I cut it with. R.
(11) It was with a knife that I cut it. C.
(12) It was with difficulty that I cut it. C.
(13) (It was difficulty that I cut it with.) R.
(14) It was provisionally that I made the offer. C.
(15) It was in this spring, too, that the plague broke out. C.
(16) Accordingly, it was with much concern that I presently received a note informing me of his departure. C.
In the relative construction, the antecedent 'it' is invariable, whatever the number and gender of the relative. The main verb is also invariable in number, but in tense is usually adapted to past, though not (for euphony's sake) to future circumstances: 'it was you that looked foolish', but 'it is you that will look foolish'.
In both constructions, the 'that' clause, supplemented or introduced by 'it', gives us the subject of a predication, the ​relative clause (with it) being equivalent to a pure noun, the conjunction clause to a verbal noun in apposition, partly retaining its verbal character. In both, also, the predication answers an imaginary question, recorded distinctly in the relative, less distinctly in the conjunction clause. 'What do you want?' 'It (the thing) that I want is money.' 'To whom did you give it?' 'It (the persons) that I gave it to was your friends.' 'As to your cutting it: give particulars.' 'It—that I cut it (my cutting it)—was with a knife.'
From the above examples it will be seen that the two constructions largely overlap. When (as in 1,2, 5, 8) the relative is subject or direct object of the clause-verb, or is in the possessive case, it cannot be replaced by the conjunction; but when its relation to the clause-verb is marked by a preposition, the conjunction always may take its place, and sometimes must, as in 12 and 13. For the relative clause can only be used when the question reflected in it is calculated to secure the right kind of answer. Now the natural answer to the question 'What did you cut it with?' is not 'difficulty' but 'a knife'. The misleading 'with' is therefore removed from the relative clause in 13, and placed within the predicate, the definite question 'What did you cut it with?' giving place to the vague demand for particulars. 'With' being removed, the relative clause falls to pieces, for want of a word to govern the relative, and the conjunction clause takes its place. In the same way, 'it was a cab (but not high indignation) that he drove away in'; 'it was a concert (but not curiosity) that I was returning from'; 'it was a beech-tree (but not unpleasant circumstances) that I found him under'. And, generally, it will be found that a preposition is admissible in the relative clause only when used in the literal or the most obvious sense.
The conjunction clause is, as we have said, a verbal noun; so far a noun that things can be predicated of it, and so far a verb that the things predicated of it are verbal relations and ​verbal circumstances, indirect object, agent, instrument, means, manner, cause, attendant circumstances; anything but subject and direct object. 'My giving was to you'; 'my offering was provisionally'; 'my concealing it was because I was ashamed'.
The mistakes that constantly occur in careless writers result from hesitation between the two forms where both are possible. The confusion, however, ought not to arise; for always with a relative clause, and never with a conjunction, the complement of the main predicate (the answer to the suppressed question) is a noun or the grammatical equivalent of a noun. 'A knife', 'Jones', 'you', 'my friend in Chicago', 'the man who lives next door', are the answers that accompany the relative clause: 'with a knife', 'with difficulty', 'to you', 'occasionally', 'because I was ashamed', are those that accompany the conjunction.
Examples 15 and 16, though quite recognized types, are really artificial perversions. In 15 the true question and answer in the circumstances would be, not, as the sentence falsely implies, 'When did the plague break out?' 'That too happened in this same spring', but 'Were there any other notable events in this spring?' 'Yes: the plague broke out'. Impressiveness is given to the announcement by the fiction that the reader is wondering when the plague broke out; in fact, he is merely waiting for whatever may turn up in the history of this spring. In 16 we go still further: the implied question, 'What were your feelings on receiving a (not the) note...?' could not possibly be asked; the information that alone could prompt it is only given in the 'that' clause.
It has been pointed out in b. that a relative clause with antecedent 'it' particularly calls for the relative 'that', in preference to 'which', and even to 'who'. Even when the relative is in the possessive case, 'that', which has no possessive, is often retained by transferring to the main predicate the noun on which it depends; 8 thus gives place to 9, even at the risk ​of ambiguity; for the relative clause now supplies us with the question (not 'whose hat...?' but) 'what did you borrow?' leaving us theoretically in doubt whether Jones's hat is distinguished from his other property, from other people's hats, or from things in general.
On the other hand, the two blunders that are most frequently made almost invariably have the relative 'who' or 'which'.
And it is to me, the original promoter of the whole scheme, to whom they would deny my fair share in the profits!
'To me' implies a conjunction clause: 'to whom...' is a relative clause. 'It is to me that...'
It was to Mrs. Brent, the beetle-browed wife of Mr. Commissary Brent, to whom the General transferred his attentions now.—Thackeray.
It is to you whom I address a history which may perhaps fall into very different hands.—Scott.
'To you that', or 'you to whom'.
It is not taste that is plentiful, but courage that is rare.—Stevenson.
Again a common blunder; not, however, a confusion between the two constructions above, but between one of them (the relative) and a third. The sentence explains why every one seems to prefer Shakespeare to Ouida (they are afraid to say that they like Ouida best). 'What is the explanation of this?' 'It is not the plentifulness of taste, but the rarity of courage, that explains it.' Or, less clumsily, using the construction that Stevenson doubtless intended: 'It (the inference to be drawn) is not that taste is plentiful, but that courage is rare.'
Participle and Gerund
It is advisable to make a few remarks on the participle and gerund together before taking them separately. As the word gerund is variously used, we first define it. A gerund is the verbal noun identical in form with any participle, simple or compound, that contains the termination -ing. Thus the verb write has the participles writing, having written, going to write, being about to write, about to write, written, having been written, going to be written, about to be written, being about to ​be written. Any of these except written, about to write, about to be written, may be a gerund also; but while the participle is an adjective, the gerund is a noun, differing from other nouns in retaining its power (if the active gerund of a transitive verb) of directly governing another noun.
Both these are of great importance for our purpose. The participle itself, even when confusion with the other cannot occur, is much abused; and the slovenly uses of it that were good enough in Burke's time are now recognized solecisms. Again, the identity between the two forms leads to loose and unaccountable gerund constructions that will probably be swept away, as so many other laxities have been, with the advance of grammatical consciousness. We shall have to deal with both these points at some length.
It is indeed no wonder that the forms in -ing should require close attention. Exactly how many old English terminations -ing is heir to is a question debated by historical grammarians, which we are not competent to answer. But we may point out that writing may now be (1) participle—I was writing; I saw him writing; writing piously, he acts profanely—, (2) gerund or full verbal noun—I object to your writing that—, (3) hybrid between gerund and participle—I do not mind you writing it—, (4) detached verbal noun— Writing is an acquired art—, (5) concrete noun—This writing is illegible. Moreover, the verbal noun writing has the synonym to write, obligatory instead of it in some connexions, better in some, worse in some, and impossible in others; compare, for instance: I do not like the trouble of writing; I shall not take the trouble to write; the trouble of writing is too much for him; it is a trouble to write; writing is a trouble. The grammatical difficulties, that is, are complicated by considerations of idiom.
In these preliminary remarks, however, it is only with the distinction or want of distinction between participle and gerund that we are concerned. The participle is an adjective, and should be in agreement with a noun or pronoun; the ​gerund is a noun, of which it should be possible to say clearly whether, and why, it is in the subjective, objective, or possessive case, as we can of other nouns. That the distinction is often obscured, partly in consequence of the history of the language, will be clear from one or two facts and examples.
1. The man is building contains what we should all now call, whether it is so or not historically, a participle or verbal adjective: the house is building (older but still living and correct English for the house is being built) contains, as its remarkable difference of meaning prepares us to believe, a gerund or verbal noun, once governed by a now lost preposition.
2. In He stopped, laughing we have a participle; in He stopped laughing, a verbal noun governed directly by the verb; in He burst out laughing, a verbal noun governed by a vanished preposition.
3. Present usage does not bear out the definite modern ideas of the distinction between participle and gerund as respectively adjective and noun. So long as that usage continues, there are various degrees of ambiguity, illustrated by the three following examples. It would be impossible to say, whatever the context, whether the writer of the first intended a gerund or a participle. In the second, a previous sentence would probably have decided the question. In the third, though grammar (again as modified by present usage) leaves the question open, the meaning of the sentence is practically decisive by itself.
Can he conceive Matthew Arnold permitting such a book to be written and published about himself?—Times.
And no doubt that end will be secured by the Commission sitting in Paris.—Times.
Those who know least of them [the virtues] know very well how much they are concerned in other people having them.—Morley.
In the second of these, if sitting is a participle, the meaning is that the end will be secured by the Commission, which is described by way of identification as the one sitting in ​Paris. If sitting is gerund, the end will be secured by the wise choice of Paris and not another place for its scene. If Commission's were written, there could be no doubt the latter was the meaning. With Commission, there is, by present usage, absolutely no means of deciding between the two meanings apart from possible light in the context. In the third, common sense is able to tell us, though grammar gives the question up, that what is interesting is not the other people who have them, but the question whether other people have them.
We shall, in the section on the gerund, take up the decided position that all gerunds ought to be made distinguishable from participles. We are quite aware, however, that in the first place a language does not remodel itself to suit the grammarian's fancy for neat classification; that secondly the confusion is not merely wanton or ignorant, but the result of natural development; that thirdly the change involves some inconveniences, especially to hurried and careless writers. On the other hand it is certain that the permanent tendency in language is towards the correct and logical, not from it; it is merely hoped that the considerable number of instances here collected may attract the attention of some writers who have not been aware of the question, and perhaps convince them that the distinction is a useful one, that a writer ought to know and let us know whether he is using a participle or a gerund, and that to abandon the gerund when it cannot be distinguished without clumsiness need cause no difficulty to any but the very unskilful in handling words.
Participles
The unattached or wrongly attached participle is one of the blunders most common with illiterate or careless writers. But there are degrees of heinousness in the offence; our examples are arranged from 1. to 8. in these degrees, starting with perfect innocence.
1. Participles that have passed into prepositions, conjunctions, or members of adverbial phrases.
Considering the circumstances, you may go.
Seeing that it was involuntary, he can hardly be blamed.
Roughly speaking, all men are liars.
Looking at it in a shortened perspective of time, those years of transition have the quality of a single consecutive occurrence.—H. G. Wells.
The Bill...will bring about, assuming that it meets with good fortune in the remaining stages of its passage through Parliament, a very useful reform.—Times.
Regarded as participles, these are incorrect. It is not you that consider, but I; not he that sees, but we; not men that roughly speak, but the moralist; not years that look, but philosophic historians; not the Bill that assumes, but the newspaper prophet. The development into prepositions, &c., is a natural one, however; the only question about any particular word of the kind is whether the vox populi has yet declared for it; when it has, there is no more to be said; but when it has not, the process should be resisted as long as possible, writers acting as a suspensive House of Lords; an instance will be found in 4.
Three quotations from Burke will show that he, like others of his time, felt himself more at liberty than most good writers would now feel themselves.
Founding the appeal on this basis, it was judged proper to lay before Parliament...—Burke.
Flattering themselves that their power is become necessary to the support of all order and government, everything which tends to the support of that power is sanctified.—Burke.
Having considered terror as producing an unnatural tension and certain violent emotions of the nerves; it easily follows.—Burke.
Similar constructions may be found on almost every page of Smollett.
2. Participles half justified by attachment to a pronoun implied in my, your, his, their. These are perhaps better avoided.
Having thus run through the causes of the sublime with reference to all the senses, my first observation will be found very nearly true.—Burke.
Being much interested in the correspondence bearing on the question 'Do we believe?', the first difficulty arising in my mind is...—Daily Telegraph.
My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given a hundred pounds for my predecessor's good will.—Goldsmith.
3. Mere unattached participles for which nothing can be said, except that they are sometimes inoffensive if the word to be supplied is very vague.
Doubling the point, and running along the southern shore of the little peninsula, the scene changes.—F. M. Crawford.
The most trying...period was this one of enforced idleness waiting for the day of entry.—Times.
Having acquired so many tropical colonies there is the undoubted duty attached to such possession of...—Times.
4. Participles that may some day become prepositions, &c.
Sr—Referring to your correspondent's (the Bishop of Croydon's) letter in to-day's issue, he quotes at the close of it the following passage.—Daily Telegraph.
He must be the Bishop; for the immediately preceding Sir, marking the beginning of the letter, shows that no one else has been mentioned; but if we had given the sentence without this indication, no one could possibly have believed that this was so; referring is not yet unparticipled.
5. An unwary writer sometimes attaches a participle to the subject of a previous sentence, assuming that it will be the subject of the new sentence also, and then finds (or rather is not awake enough to find) himself mistaken. This is a trap into which good writers sometimes fall, and so dangerous to bad writers that we shall give many examples. It is important for the tiro to realize that he has not satisfied the elementary requirements of grammar until he has attached the participle to a noun in the same sentence as itself, not in another. He must also remember that, for instance, I went and he came, though often spoken of loosely as a sentence, is in fact as fully two sentences as if each half of it were ten lines long, and the two were parted by a full stop and not connected by a conjunction.
They had now reached the airy dwelling where Mrs. Macshake resided, and having rung, the door was at length most deliberately opened.—S. Ferrier.
The lovers sought a shelter, and, mutually charmed with each other, time flew for a while on downy pinions.—S. Ferrier.
A molecular change is propagated to the muscles by which the body is retracted, and causing them to contract, the act of retraction is brought about.—Huxley.
Joseph, as they supposed, by tampering with Will, got all my secrets, and was acquainted with all my motions—; and having also undertaken to watch all those of his young lady, the wise family were secure.—Richardson.
Miss Pinkerton...in vain...tried to overawe her. Attempting once to scold her in public, Rebecca hit upon the...plan of answering her in French, which quite routed the old woman.—Thackeray.
But he thought it derogatory to a brave knight passively to await the assault, and ordering his own men to charge, the hostile squadrons, rapidly advancing against each other, met midway on the plain.—Prescott.
Alvarado, roused by the noise of the attack on this quarter, hastened to the support of his officer, when Almagro, seizing the occasion, pushed across the bridge, dispersed the small body left to defend it, and, falling on Alvarado's rear, that general saw himself hemmed in on all sides.—Prescott.
Murtagh, without a word of reply, went to the door, and shouting into the passage something in Irish, the room was instantly filled with bogtrotters.—Borrow.
But, as before, Anne once more made me smart, and having equipped herself in a gown and bonnet of mine—not of the newest— off we set.—Crockett.
At this I was silent for a little, and then I resolved to speak plainly to Anne. But not being ready with my words, she got in first.—Crockett.
For many years I had to contend with much opposition in the nature of scepticism; but having had hundreds of successful cases and proofs it has become such an established fact in the eastern counties that many landowners, &c., would not think of sinking a well without first seeking the aid of a water diviner.—Times.
6. A more obvious trap, and consequently less fatal, is a change from the active construction that may have been intended to a passive, without corresponding alterations. If the writers of the next two had used we must admit instead of ​it must be admitted, a policy that they put forward, instead of a policy put forward, the participles hesitating and believing would have had owners.
While hesitating to accept this terrible indictment of French infancy, it must be admitted that French literature in all its strength and wealth is a grown-up literature.—Spectator.
He and those with whom he acted were responsible for the policy promulgated—a policy put forward in all seriousness and honesty believing it to be essential to the obtaining of the better government of Ireland.—Times.
7. Participles that seem to belong to a noun, but do not.
Letters on the constant stopping of omnibuses, thus causing considerable suffering to the horses.
Does causing agree with letters? Then the letters annoy the horses. With stopping? Then stopping causes suffering by stopping (thus). With omnibuses? The horses possibly blame those innocents, but we can hardly suppose a human being, even the writer of the sentence, so illogical. The word thus, however, is often considered to have a kind of dispensing power, freeing its participle from all obligations; so:
The Prince was, by the special command of his Majesty the Emperor, made the guardian of H.I.H. the Crown Prince, thus necessitating the Prince's constant presence in the capital of Japan.—Times.
A very wealthy man can never be sure even of friendship,—while the highest, strongest and noblest kind of love is nearly always denied to him, in this way carrying out the fulfilment of those strange but true words:—'How hardly shall he that is a rich man enter the Kingdom of Heaven!'—Corelli.
It is not love that carries out, but the power that denies love, which is not mentioned.
8. Really bad unattached or wrongly attached participles. The reader will generally find no difficulty in seeing what has led to the blunder, and if he will take the trouble to do this, will be less likely to make similar blunders himself.
And then stooping to take up the key to let myself into the garden, he started and looked as if he heard somebody near the door.–Richardson.
Sir—With reference to this question 'Do we believe?', while recognizing the vastness of the subject, its modern aspect has some definite features.—Daily Telegraph.
Taken in conjunction with the splendid white and brown trout-fishing of the Rosses lakes and rivers, anglers have now the opportunity of fishing one of the best, if not the best, fishery to be obtained in Ireland.—Advt.
Sir—Having read with much interest the letters re 'Believe only' now appearing in the Daily Telegraphy, perhaps some of your readers might be interested to know the following texts which have led some great men to 'believe only'.—Daily Telegraph.
Being pushed unceremoniously to one side—which was precisely what I wished—he usurped my place.—C. Brontë.
The higher forms of speech acquire a secondary strength from association. Having, in actual life, habitually heard them in connexion with mental impressions, and having been accustomed to meet with them in the most powerful writing, they come to have in themselves a species of force.—Spencer.
Standing over one of the sluices of the Aswan dam last January, not only was the vibration evident to the senses...—Times.
The following passage may be commended for use in examination papers. 'Always beloved by the Imperial couple who are to-day the Sovereign lord and lady of Great Britain, their Majesties have, on many occasions since the Devonshire houses rejoiced in a mistress once more, honoured them by visits extending over some days.'—Times.
The last, as the Times reviewer has noticed, will repay analysis in several ways.
9. The absolute construction is not much to be recommended, having generally an alien air in English; but it is sometimes useful. It must be observed, first, that the case used should now invariably be the subjective, though it was otherwise in old English. Secondly, it is very seldom advisable to make an absolute construction and insert a pronoun for the purpose when the participle might simply be attached in ordinary agreement to a noun already to hand. Thirdly, it is very bad to use the construction, but omit to give the participle a noun or pronoun to itself. These three transgressions will be illustrated, in the same order, by the next three examples. But many of the wrong sentences in 5. ​above may be regarded as absolute constructions with the subject omitted.
I, with whom that Impulse was the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of masters (him before me always excepted)...—C. Brontë.
'Special' is a much overworked word, it being loosely used to mean great in degree, also peculiar in kind.—R. G. White.
This is said now because, having been said before, I have been judged as if I had made the pretensions which were then and which are now again disclaimed.—R. G. White.
The Gerund
There are three questions to be considered: whether a writer ought to let us know that he is using a gerund and not a participle; when a gerund may be used without its subject's being expressed; when a gerund with preposition is to be preferred to the infinitive.
1. Is the gerund to be made recognizable? And, in the circumstances that make it possible, that is, when its subject is expressed, is this to be done sometimes, or always?
It is done by putting what we call for shortness' sake the subject of the gerund (i.e., the word me or my in me doing or my doing) in the possessive instead of in the objective or subjective case.
Take the typical sentence: I dislike my best friend ('s) violating my privacy. It cannot be a true account of the matter to say that friend is the object of I dislike, and has a participle violating attached to it. For (a) we can substitute resent, which never takes a personal object, for dislike, without changing the sense. (b) If we substitute a passive construction, also without changing the sense, we find that dislike has quite a different object—privacy.—I dislike my privacy being violated by my friend. (c) Many of us would be willing to adopt the sentiment conveyed who yet would not admit for a moment that they disliked their best friend even when he intruded; they condemn the sin, but not the sinner.
​Violating then is not an ordinary participle. It does not follow yet that it is a gerund. It may be an extraordinary participle, fused into one notion with the noun, so that a friend violating means the-violation-by-a-friend. The Latin scholar here at once puts in the idiom of occisus Caesar, which does not generally mean Caesar after he was killed, as it naturally should, but the killing of Caesar, or the fact that Caesar had been killed. The parallel is close (though the use is practically confined to the passive in Latin), and familiar to all who know any Latin at all. But it shows not so much what the English construction is as how educated people have been able to reconcile themselves to an ambiguous and not very reasonable idiom—not very reasonable, that is, after language has thrown off its early limitations, and got over the first difficulty of accomplishing abstract expression of any kind. The sort of fusion assumed is further illustrated for the Latinist, though not so closely, by the Latin accusative and infinitive. This theory then takes violating for a participle fused into one notion with friend. There are two difficulties.
I. The construction in English is, though in the nature of things not as common, yet as easy in the passive as in the active. Now the passive of violating is either violated or being violated. It is quite natural to say, Privacy violated once is no longer inviolable. Why then should it be most unnatural to say, The worst of privacy violated once is that it is no longer inviolable? No one, not purposely seeking the unusual for some reason or other, would omit being before violated in the second. Yet as participles violated and being violated are equally good—not indeed always, but in this context, as the simpler Privacy sentence shows. The only difference between the two participles (except that in brevity, which tells against being violated) is that the longer form can also be the gerund, and the shorter cannot. The almost invariable choice of it is due to the instinctive feeling that what we are using is or ought to be the gerund. A more ​convincing instance than this mere adaptation of our original example may be added:
Many years ago I became impressed with the necessity for our infantry being taught and practised in the skilful use of their rifle.—Lord Roberts.
The necessity for our infantry taught and practised is absolutely impossible. But why, if being taught is participle, and not gerund?
II. Assuming that the fused-participle theory is satisfactory and recognized, whence comes the general, though not universal impression among those who, without being well versed in grammar, are habitually careful how they speak and write, that constructions like the following are ignorant vulgarisms?—It is no use he (his) doing it; it is no use him (his) doing it; that need not prevent us (our) believing; excuse me (my) interrupting you; a thing (thing's) existing does not prove that it ought to exist; I was annoyed by Tom (Tom's) hesitating; the Tsar (Tsar's) leaving Russia is significant; it failed through the King (King's) refusing his signature; without us (our) hearing the man, the facts cannot be got at; without the man (man's) telling us himself, we can never know. With a single exception for one (not both) of the first two, none of these ought to cause a moment's uneasiness to any one who was consciously or unconsciously in the fused-participle frame of mind; and if they do cause uneasiness it shows that that frame of mind is not effectively present.
The Fused-Participle Theory, having no sufficient answer to these objections, but seeing that the gerund's case is also weak, naturally tries a counter-attack:—If on the other hand the gerund theory is satisfactory and recognized, how is it conceivable that people should leave out the possessive 's in the reckless way they do? To which, however, the Gerund makes reply:—I regret that they do leave it out, but at least we can see how they come to; it is the combined result of a mistake and an inconvenience. The mistake is caused by ​certain types of sentence in which a real, not a fused participle is so used that the noun and its (unfused) participle give a sense hardly distinguishable from a possessive noun and a gerund. Examples are:
This plan has now been abandoned owing to circumstances requiring the convocation of representatives of the people at the earliest possible moment.—Times.
... by imposing as great difficulty as possible on parents and publicans using child messengers.—Times.
Of course no obstacles should be put in the way of charitable people providing free or other meals if they think fit.—Times.
The notion of the Czar being addressed in such terms by the nobility of his capital would have been regarded as an absolute impossibility.—Spectator.
There is of course a difference. For instance, in the example about the Czar, as in a previous one about conceiving Matthew Arnold permitting, the participle has a pictorial effect; it invites us to imagine the physical appearance of these two great men under indignity instead of merely thinking of the abstract indignity, as we should have done if Czar's and Arnold's had shown that we had a gerund; but the difference is very fine; the possessive sign might be inserted without practical effect in all these four, and in hundreds like them. And unlearned people may be excused for deducing that the subject of the gerund can be used at pleasure without the possessive sign, while the learned comfort themselves with the fused-participle theory. That is the mistake. The inconvenience is this: it is easy enough to use the possessive adjectives (my, &c.), and to add the possessive sign to most names and many single nouns; but the subject of a gerund is often a long phrase, after which the sign is intolerable. So the mistake (that the gerund may have a subject not marked by the possessive) is eagerly applied to obviating the inconvenience (that long gerund subjects must be avoided). And that is why people drop their possessive 's, and why you, the Fused Participle, flourish, defrauding both me, the Gerund, ​and the honest participle. Thus answered, the Fused Participle does not continue the argument, but pleads only that there is room for all three forms.
Before giving some examples to help in the decision, we shall summarize our own opinion. (1) It is not a matter to be decided by appeal to historical grammar. All three constructions may have separate legitimate descents, and yet in the interests of clear thought and expression it may be better for one of them to be abandoned. (2) There are two opposite tendencies at present: among careful writers, to avoid the fused participle (this, being negative, can naturally not be illustrated) and to put possessive signs in slightly uncomfortable places by way of compensation; among slovenly writers, to throw off all limits of length for the subject of the fused participle. (3) Long fused-participle phrases are a variety of abstract expression, and as such to be deprecated. Among the resources of civilization is the power of choosing between different ways of saying the same thing; and literary skill is very much a matter of exercising that power; a writer should recognize that if he cannot get round an ugly fused participle there is still much for him to learn. (4) Opportunities for ambiguity are so abundant in English, owing to the number of words whose parsing depends on context, that all aids to precision are valuable; and it is not too much to expect a writer to know and let us know whether he means a participle or a gerund.
a. That the possessive of all pronouns that have the form should be used instead of the objective or subjective is hardly disputed. Correct accordingly:
You may rely upon me doing all in my power.—Sir W. Harcourt.
The confounded fetterlock clapped on my movements by old Griffiths prevents me repairing to England in person.—Scott.
But when it comes to us following his life and example...—Daily Telegraph.
Nothing can prevent it being the main issue at the General Election.—Spectator.
One of them, if you will pardon me reminding you, is that no discussion is to pass between us.—E. F. Benson.
Frederick had already accepted the crown, lest James should object to him doing so.—Times.
...notwithstanding the fact that their suspicions of ease-loving, ear-tickling parsons prevent them supporting the commercial churches of our time.—Daily Telegraph.
b. Examples in which the possessive of nouns might be written without a qualm.
Nearly a week passed over without Mr. Fairford hearing a word directly from his son.—Scott.
Mrs. Downe Wright had not forgiven the indignity oi her son having been refused by Mary.—S. Ferrier.
In no other religion is there a thought of man being saved by grace and not by merit.—Daily Telegraph.
And it is said that, on a visitor once asking to see his library, Descartes led him...—Huxley.
It is true that one of our objects was to prevent children 'sipping' the liquor they were sent for.—Times.
Orders were sometimes issued to prohibit soldiers buying and eating cucumbers.—Times.
Renewed efforts at a settlement in 1891 failed through the Swedish Government leading off with a flippant and offensive suggestion.—Nansen.
Hurried reading results in the learner forgetting half of what he reads, or in his forming vague conceptions.—Sweet.
c. All the last set involved what were either actual or virtual names of persons; there is more difficulty with abstract nouns, compound subjects, and words of which the possessive is ugly. Those that may perhaps bear the possessive mark will be put first, and alterations suggested for the others.
We look forward to much attention being given.—Times.
He affirmed that such increases were the rule in that city on the change being made.—Times.
I live in hopes of this discussion resulting in some modification in our form of belief.—Daily Telegraph. (that this discussion may result)
​The real objection to the possessive here is merely the addition to the crowd of sibilants.
In the event of the passage being found, he will esteem it a favour... (if the passage is found)
Conceive my vexation at being told by Papa this morning that he had not the least objection to Edward and me marrying whenever we pleased.—S. Ferrier. (our)
Or, if the names are essential, did not in the least mind how soon Edward and I married.
It has been replied to the absurd taunt about the French inventing nothing, that at least Descartes invented German philosophy.—Morley. (Frenchmen's)
d. A modern construction called the compound possessive was mentioned at the end of the section on Cases. It is sometimes ugly, sometimes inoffensive; that is a matter of degree and of knowing where to draw the line; there is no objection to it in principle. And the application of it will sometimes help out a gerund. The first quotation gives a compound possessive simply; the second, a gerund construction to which it ought to be applicable; the third and fourth, two to which it can be applied; and the last, one to which it cannot.
A protestation, read at Edinburgh, was followed, on Archibald Johnston of Warriston's suggestion, by...—J. R. Green.
The retirement of Judge Stonor was made the subject of special reference yesterday on the occasion of Sir W. I.. Selfe, his successor, taking his seat in Marylebone County Court.—Times.
The mere fact of such a premier being endured shows...—Bagehot.
There is no possibility of the dissolution of the legislative union becoming a vital question.—Spectator.
If some means could be devised for...insisting upon many English guardians of the poor making themselves more acquainted...—Times.
The only objection to a possessive mark after successor is that the two commas cannot be dispensed with; we must say when...took for on the occasion of...taking. Such a premier's will certainly pass. In the Spectator sentence, we should ourselves allow union's; opinions will differ. But to put the s after poor in the last sentence would be ridiculous; that sentence must be rewritten—insisting that many English ​guardians of the poor should make—or else poor-law Guardians must be used.
e. Sometimes we can get over the difficulty without abandoning the gerund, by some slight change of order.
This incentive can only be supplied by the nation itself taking the matter up seriously.—Lord Roberts.
IF itself's is objected to, omit itself (or shift it to the end), and write nation's.
f. But many types of sentence remain that will have to be completely changed if the gerund is to be recognizable. It will be admitted about most of our examples that the change is not to be regretted. The subject of the gerund is italicized in each, to emphasize its length.
We have to account for the collision of two great fleets, so equal in material strength that the issue was thought doubtful by many careful statisticians, ending in the total destruction of one of them and in the immunity of the other from damage greater than might well be incurred in a mere skirmish.—Times.
For account for...ending write ascertain why...ended. The sentence is radically bad, because the essential construction seems complete at collision—a false scent. That, which is one of the worst literary sins, is the frequent result of long fused participles. It is quite practically possible here for readers to have supposed that they were going to be told why the fleets met, and not why the meeting ended as it did. In the remaining sentences, we shall say when there is false scent, but leave the reader to examine it.
The success of the negotiations depends on the Russian Minister at Tokio being allowed to convince Japan that...—Times.
The compound possessive—Tokio's—is tempting, but perhaps overbold. Insert whether after depends on, and write is for being.
So far from this being the case, the policy...was actually decided upon before...the question...was raised.—Times.
Omit being the case.
We are not without tokens of an openness for this higher truth also, of ​a keen though uncultivated sense for it, having existed in Burns.—Carlyle.
For the first of write that, omit the second of, and omit having. False scent.
There is no apparent evidence of an early peace being necessitated by the pecuniary exigencies of the Russian Government.—Sir Howard Vincent.
For of...being write that...will be, if peace's cannot be endured.
The general effect of his words was to show the absurdity of the Secretary of State for War, and our military authorities generally, denouncing the Militia as useless or redundant.—Spectator.
For the absurdity of...denouncing write how absurd it was for...to denounce. False scent, though less deceptive.
Apparently his mission was decided upon without that of the British and Spanish Ministers having been taken into account, or, at all events, without their having been sufficiently reckoned with.—Times.
Without regard (at all events without sufficient regard) to that of...
...capital seeking employment in foreign protected countries, in consequence of manufacturing business in many branches in which it might be employed at home being rendered unprofitable by our system of free trade.—Lord Goschen.
For in consequence of...being write because...has been. Bad false scent again.
So far from the relief given to agriculture by the State paying one-half of the rates being inequitable, it is but a bare act of justice.—Spectator.
Observe the fused participle within fused participle here; and read thus: So far from its being inequitable that the state should relieve, &c.
After these specimens, chosen not as exceptional ones, but merely as not admitting of simple correction by insertion of the possessive mark, the reader will perhaps agree that the long gerund subject—or rather noun phrase of the fused participle—is a monstrosity, the abolition of which would be a relief to him, and good discipline for the writer.
Two sentences are added to show the chaotic state of ​present practice. Noticing the bold use of the strict gerund in the first, we conclude that the author is a sound gerundite, faithful in spite of all temptations; but a few pages later comes the needless relapse into fused participle.
I remember old Colney's once, in old days, calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus.—Meredith.
She had thought in her heart that Mr. Barmby espousing the girl would smoothe a troubled prospect.—Meredith.
The following looks like a deliberate avoidance of both constructions by a writer who is undecided between the two. Its being is what should have been written.
I do not say that the advice is not sound, or complain that it is given. I do deprecate that it should be taken.—Times.
And perhaps a shyness of something's being shown accounts for the next odd arrangement; it is true that entire recasting is what is called for.
There being shown to be something radically defective in the management of the Bank led to the appointment of a Committee.—H. D. Macleod.
2. When must the subject of the gerund (or infinitive) be expressed, and when omitted?
This is not a controversial matter like the last; the principles are quite simple, and will be accepted; but it is necessary to state and illustrate them because they are often forgotten. As the same mistakes are sometimes made with the infinitive, that is to be considered as included.
Roughly, the subject of the gerund (or infinitive) should be expressed if it is different from, and omitted if it is the same as, the subject of the sentence. To omit it when different is positively wrong, and may produce actual ambiguity or worse, though sometimes there is only a slipshod effect; to insert it when the same is generally clumsy.
No one would say 'I succeeded to his property upon dying', because, I being the subject of the sentence, my is naturally suggested instead of the necessary his as subject of the gerund; the his must be inserted before dying, even though ​the nature of the case obviates ambiguity. To take an instance that will show both sides, the following is correct:
I shut the door and stood with my back to it. Then, instead of his philandering with Bess, I, Clementina MacTaggart, had some plain speech with John Barnaby.—Crockett.
Subject of the sentence, I; subject of the gerund, he; they are different; therefore the he must be expressed, in the shape of his. Now rewrite the main sentence as—John Barnaby heard some plain speech from me, Clementina MacTaggart. The sense is the same; but the his before philandering at once becomes superfluous; it is not yet seriously in the way, because we do not know what is the subject of philandering, the name only coming later. Now rewrite it again as—Then John Barnaby heard some plain speech from...instead of...The his is now so clumsy as to be almost impossible.
The insertion of superfluous subjects is much less common than the omission of necessary ones; but three examples follow. The first is a rare and precious variety; the second has no apparent justification; for the third it may be said that the unusual his has the same effect as the insertion of the parenthetic words as he actually does after limiting would have had.
You took food to him, but instead of he reaching out his hand and taking it, he kept asking for food.—Daily Telegraph.
Harsh facts: sure as she was of her never losing her filial hold of the beloved.—Meredith.
I have said that Mr. Chamberlain has no warrant for his limiting the phrase...to the competitive manufacture of goods.—Lord Goschen.
In giving the rule summarily, we used the phrase subject of the sentence. That phrase is not to be confined to the subject of the main sentence, but to be referred instead, when necessary, to the subject of the subordinate clause in which the gerund may stand. For instance:
The good, the illuminated, sit apart from the rest, censuring their dullness and vices, as if they thought that, by sitting very grand in their ​chairs, the very brokers, attorneys, and congressmen would see the error of their ways, and flock to them.—Emerson.
Here by sitting breaks the rule, though the subject of sitting is the same as that of the main verb sit, because the subject of the clause in which sitting comes is not the good, but brokers, &c. The right way to mend this is not to insert their before sitting—which after all is clumsy, though correct—but to make the good the subject of the clause also, by writing as if they thought that by sitting...they would make the brokers...see the error.
And sometimes subject of the sentence is to be interpreted still more freely as the word grammatically dominant in the part of the sentence that contains the gerund. For instance:
From the Bible alone was she taught the duties of morality, but familiarized to her taste by hearing its stories and precepts from the lips she best loved.—S. Ferrier.
Here the dominant word is Bible, to which familiarized belongs. So, though she does happen to be the main subject, her must be inserted because the familiarized phrase removes the gerund from the reach of the main subject.
After these explanations we add miscellaneous instances. It will be seen that transgression of the rule, though it seldom makes a sentence ambiguous enough to deceive, easily makes it ambiguous enough to amuse the reader at wrong moments, or gives an impression of amateurish work. Mistakes are mended, sometimes by inserting the subject of the gerund (or infinitive), sometimes by changing the main subject to make it the same as that of the gerund, sometimes by other recasting.
...an excellent arrangement for a breeching, which, when released, remains with the carriage, so that lead or centre horses can be put in the wheel without having to affix a new breeching.—Times.
Lucky, reflects the reader, since horses are not good at affixing breechings. Write the drivers can put...horses...without having to affix.
I cultivated a passionless and cold exterior, for I discovered that by ​assuming such a character, certain otherwise crafty persons would talk more readily before me.—Corelli.
Write if I assumed; or else I should induce certain...persons to talk. It will be noticed that the mistake here, and often, is analogous to the most frequent form of wrongly attached participle (participle, 5); the writer does not observe that he has practically passed from the sphere of the sentence whose subject was the word that he still allows to operate.
After following a country Church of England clergyman for a period of half a century, a newly-appointed, youthful vicar, totally unacquainted with rural life, comes into the parish, and at once commences to alter the services of the Church, believed in by the parishioners for generations.—Daily Telegraph.
Grammar gives his, i.e., the new vicar's, as subject of following; it is really either my or the parishioners'. Insert my or our, or write After we (I) have followed.
I am sensible that by conniving at it it will take too deep root ever to be eradicated.—Times.
Insert our, or write if connived at.
This was experienced by certain sensitive temperaments, either by sensations which produced shivering, or by seeing at night a peculiar light in the air.—Times.
Who or what sees? Certainly not this, the main subject. Not even temperaments, which have no eyes. Write Persons of sensitive temperament experienced this, &c.
But the commercial interests of both Great Britain and the United States were too closely affected by the terms of the Russo-Chinese agreement to let it pass unnoticed.—Times.
It is not the interests that cannot let it pass, but the countries. Insert for those countries before to let; or write Both Great Britain and the United States were too closely affected in their interests to let...
And it would be well for all concerned, for motor drivers and the public alike, if this were made law, instead of fixing a maximum speed.—Times.
Write if the law required this...
​And in order to bring her to a right understanding, she underwent a system of persecution.—S. Ferrier.
Write they subjected her to for she underwent.
Her friendship is too precious to me, not to doubt my own merits on the one hand, and not to be anxious for the preservation of it on the other.—Richardson.
Write I value her friendship too highly not to...
One cannot do good to a man whose mouth has been gagged in order not to hear what he desires for his welfare.—Times.
Grammar suggests that his mouth—or, if indulgent, that he—is not to hear; but the person meant is one. Write one has gagged for has been gagged.
Germany has, alas ! victories enough not to add one of the kind which would have been implied in the retirement of M. Delcassé.—Times.
It is France, not Germany, that should not add. Write without France's adding.
In order to obtain peace, ordinary battles followed by ordinary victories and ordinary results will only lead to a useless prolongation of the struggle.—Times.
This is a triumph of inconsequence. Write If peace is the object, it should be remembered that ordinary...
It will have occurred to the reader that, while most of the sentences quoted are to be condemned, objection to a few of them might be called pedantic. The fact is that every writer probably breaks the rule often, and escapes notice, other people's, his own, or both. Different readers, however, will be critical in different degrees; and whoever breaks the rule does so at his own risk; if his offence is noticed, that is hanging evidence against him by itself; if it is not noticed, it is not an offence. Of saying on page 127 Mistakes are mended sometimes by inserting the subject, we plead Guilty if we were caught in the act, but otherwise Not Guilty.
3. Choice between the gerund with preposition and the infinitive.
It was said in the preliminary section on the Participle and Gerund that writing—the verbal noun or gerund—and to ​write—the infinitive—are in some sense synonyms; but phrases were given showing that it is by no means always indifferent which of the two is used. It is a matter of idiom rather than of grammar; but this seems the most convenient place for drawing attention to it. To give satisfactory rules would require many more examples and much more space than can be afforded. But something will be gained if students are convinced (1) that many of the mistakes made give sentences the appearance of having been written by a foreigner or one who is not at home with the literary language; (2) that the mistakes are nearly always on one side, the infinitive being the form that should only be used with caution; (3) that a slight change in arrangement may require a change from infinitive to gerund or vice versa.
a. When the infinitive or gerund is attached to a noun, defining or answering the question what (hope, &c.) about it, it is almost always better to use the gerund with of; not quite always, however; for instance, an intention to return, usually, and a tendency to think always.
The vain hope to be understood by everybody possessed of a ballot makes us in the United States perhaps guiltier than public men in Great Britain in the use of that monstrous muddled dichotomy 'capital and labour'.—Times.
What hope?—That of being understood. Write it so, and treat all the following similarly:
The habitual necessity to amass [of amassing] matter for the weekly sermon, set him noting...—Meredith.
We wish to be among the first to felicitate Mr. Whitelaw Reid upon his opportunity to exercise [of exercising] again the distinguished talents which...—Times.
Men lie twenty times in as many hours in the hope to propitiate [of propitiating] you.—Corelli.
We left the mound in the twilight, with the design to return [of returning] the next morning.—Emerson.
The main duties of government were omitted—the duty to instruct [of instructing] the ignorant, to supply [of supplying] the poor with work and good guidance.—Emerson.
Mr. Hay's purpose to preserve or restore [of preserving or restoring] the integrity of the administrative entity of China has never been abandoned.—Times.
My custom to be dressed [of being dressed] for the day, as soon as breakfast is over,...will make such a step less suspected.—Richardson.
He points out that if Russia accepted the agreement, she would not attain her object to clear [of clearing] the situation, inasmuch as...—Times.
What accounts for these mistakes is the analogy of forms like: Our design was to return; it is a duty to instruct; man has power to interpret (but the power of interpreting); it is my custom to be dressed.
When, however, the noun thus defined is more or less closely fused into a single idea with the verb that governs it, the infinitive becomes legitimate, though seldom necessary.
The menace to have secreted Solmes, and that other, that I had thoughts to run away with her foolish brother,...so much terrified the dear creature...—Richardson.
I passed my childhood here, and had a weakness here to close my life.—Beaconsfield.
Before ten o'clock in the evening, Gasca had the satisfaction to see the bridge so well secured that...—Prescott.
Almagro's followers made as little scruple to appropriate to their own use such horses and arms as they could find.—Prescott.
Had thoughts means was planning; had a weakness means desired; had the satisfaction, was pleased; made as little scruple, scrupled as little.
Again, an interval between the noun defined and the infinitive or gerund makes the former more tolerable.
The necessity which has confronted the Tokio War Office, to enlarge their views of the requirements of the situation.—Times.
Or the infinitive is used to avoid a multiplication of of.
He had as much as any man ever had that gift of a great preacher to make the oratorical fervour which persuades himself while it lasts into the abiding conviction of his hearers.—Lowell.
The pastures of Tartary were still remembered by the tenacious practice of the Norsemen to eat horseflesh at religious feasts.—Emerson.
If the noun has the indefinite article the infinitive is better sometimes.
​But our recognition of it implies a corresponding duty to make the most of such advantages.—Times.
A duty to make: the duty of making. Compare power and the power above.
The following is probably an adaptation (not to be commended) of it is necessary for Russia to secure–for Russia to secure being regarded as a fused infinitive like the Latin accusative and infinitive.
His views on the necessity for Russia to secure the command of the sea...—Times.
b. Though the gerund with of is the usual construction after nouns, they sometimes prefer the gerund with other prepositions also to the infinitive. The gerund with in should be used, for instance, in the following. But euphony operates again in the first.
...the extraordinary remissness of the English commanders to utilize their preponderating strength against the Boers.—Times.
Lord Kenyon reminded the House of the resistance met with to vaccination, to [of?] the possible effect of the proposal to increase that resistance. ...—Times.
I think sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us manners and abolish hurry.—Emerson.
Such a capitulation would be inconsistent with the position of any Great Power, independently of the humiliation there would be for England and France to submit their agreement for approval and perhaps modification to Germany.—Times.
The humiliation there would be in submitting; or the humiliation it would be to submit.
c. After verbs and adjectives the infinitive is much more common; but no one will use a gerund where an infinitive is required, while many will do the reverse.
But history accords with the Japanese practice to show [in showing] that...—Times.
We must necessarily appeal to the intuition, and aim much more to suggest than to describe [at suggesting than at describing].—Emerson.
But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create [at drilling, but at creating].—Emerson.
​So far from aiming to be mistress of Europe, she was rapidly sinking into the almost helpless prey of France.—J. R. Green.
This is to avoid aiming at being; compare the avoidance of double of above.
Lose no time, I pray you, to advise.—Richardson.
In advising may have been avoided as ambiguous.
Egotism has its root in the cardinal necessity by which each individual persists to be [in being] what he is.—Emerson.
I do not despair to see [of seeing] a motor public service.—Guernsey Advertiser.
Their journeymen are far too declamatory, and too much addicted to substitute [substituting] vague and puerile dissertations for solid instruction.—Morley.
In the common phrase addicted to drink, drink is a noun, not a verb.
His blackguard countrymen, always averse, as their descendants are, to give [giving] credit to anybody, for any valuable quality.—Borrow.
Is he to be blamed, if he thinks a person would make a wife worth having, to endeavour [for endeavouring] to obtain her?—Richardson.
d. If a deferred subject, anticipated by it, is to be verbal, it must of course be either the infinitive or a gerund without preposition.
Fortune, who has generally been ready to gratify my inclinations, provided it cost her very little by so doing...—Borrow.
Shall and Will
It is unfortunate that the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen (who will find most of this section superfluous), is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it; and for them the section is in danger of being useless. In apology for the length of these remarks it must be said that the short and simple directions often given are worse than useless. The observant reader soon loses faith in them from their constant failure to take him right; and the unobservant is the victim of false security.
Roughly speaking, should follows the same rules as shall, ​and would as will; in what follows, Sh. may be taken as an abbreviation for shall, should, and should have, and W. for will, would, and would have.
In our usage of the Sh. and W. forms, as seen in principal sentences, there are elements belonging to three systems. The first of these, in which each form retains its full original meaning, and the two are not used to give different persons of the same tense, we shall call the pure system: the other two, both hybrids, will be called, one the coloured-future, the other the plain-future system. In Old English there was no separate future; present and future were one. Shall and will were the presents of two verbs, to which belong also the pasts should and would, the conditionals should and would, and the past conditionals should have and would have. Shall had the meaning of command or obligation, and will of wish. But as commands and wishes are concerned mainly with the future, it was natural that a future tense auxiliary should be developed out of these two verbs. The coloured future results from the application to future time of those forms that were practically useful in the pure system; they consequently retain in the coloured future, with some modifications, the ideas of command and wish proper to the original verbs. The plain future results from the taking of those forms that were practically out of work in the pure system to make what had not before existed, a simple future tense; these have accordingly not retained the ideas of command and wish Which were the practically useful and which the superfluous forms in the pure system must now be explained.
Thou shalt not steal is the type of shall in the pure system. We do not ordinarily issue commands to ourselves; consequently I shall is hardly required; but we often ask for orders, and therefore shall I? is required. The form of the shall present in the pure system is accordingly:
Shall I? You shall. He shall. Shall we? They shall.
As to the past tense, orders cannot be given, but may be asked ​about, so that, for instance, What should I do? (i.e., What was I to do?) can be done all through interrogatively.
In the conditionals, both statement and question can be done all through. I can give orders to my imaginary, though not to my actual self. I cannot say (as a command) I shall do it; but I can say, as a conditional command, I should do it.
I shall and we shall are accordingly the superfluous forms of the present shall in the pure system.
Again, with will, I will meaning it is my will, it is obvious that we can generally state this only of ourselves; we do not know the inside of other people's minds, but we can ask about it. The present runs, then,
I will. Will you? Will he? We will. Will they?
The past tense can here be done all through, both positively and interrogatively. For though we cannot tell other people's present will, we can often infer their past will from their actions. So (I was asked, but) I would not, and Why would I do it? all through. And similarly in the conditionals, I would not (if I could), &c.
The spare forms supplied by the present will, then, are you will, he will, they will; and these, with I shall, we shall, are ready, when the simple future is required, to construct it out of. We can now give
Rule 1. The Pure System
When Sh. and W. retain the full original meanings of command and wish, each of them is used in all three persons, so far as it is required.
The following examples show most of what we inherit directly from the pure system.
Thou shalt not steal. Not required in first person.
Shall I open the door? Not required in second.
You should not say such things. In all persons.
And shall Trelawny die? Hardly required in second.
Whom should he meet but Jones? (...was it his fate...) In all.
Why should you suspect me? In all.
It should seem so. (It would apparently be incumbent on us to believe) Isolated idiom with third.
I will have my way. Not required in second and third; but see below.
I (he) asked him (me) to do it, but he (I) would not. In all.
I would not have done it for the world. In all.
I would be told to wait a while (Habitual). In all.
Will you come with me? Not required in first.
I would I were dead. Not required in second and third.
He will bite his nails, whatever I say. In all.
He will often stand on his head. In all.
You will still be talking (i.e., you always are). Not required in first.
A coat will last two years with care.
It will be noticed that the last four forms are among those that were omitted as not required by the pure system. Will would rarely be required in second and third person statements, but would of course be possible in favourable circumstances, as in describing habitual action, where the will of another may be inferred from past experience. The last of all is a natural extension of the idiom even to things that have no will. All these 'habitual' uses are quite different from I will have my way; and though you will have your way is possible, it always has the 'habitual' meaning, which I will have my way is usually without.
All the forms in the above list, and others like them, have three peculiarities—that they are not practically futures as distinguished from presents; that they use Sh. for all persons, or W. for all persons, if the idea is appropriate to all persons; and that the ideas are simply, or with very little extension, those of command or obligation and wish.
The coloured-future system is so called because, while the future sense is more distinct, it is still coloured with the speaker's mood; command and wish receive extensions and include promise, permission, menace, consent, assurance, intention, refusal, offer, &c.; and the forms used are invariably those—from both Sh. and W.—that we called the practically useful ones in the pure system. That is, we have always
​I will, shall I? You shall, will you? He shall, will he? We will, shall we? They shall, will they?
And the conditionals, should and would, should have and would have, are used with exactly the same variations. It will be borne in mind, however, that no clear line of division can be drawn between the pure system and the coloured-future system, since the latter is developed naturally (whereas the plain-future system is rather developed artificially) out of the former. And especially the questions of the coloured future are simply those of the pure system without any sort of modification.
Rule 2. The Coloured-Future System
In future and conditional statements that include (without the use of special words for the purpose) an expression of the speaker's (not necessarily of the subject's) wish, intention, menace, assurance, consent, refusal, promise, offer, permission, command, &c.—in such sentences the first person has W., the second and third persons Sh.
I will tell you presently. My promise.
You shall repent it before long. My menace.
He shall not have any. My refusal.
We would go if we could. Our conditional intention.
You should do it if we could make you. Our conditional command.
They should have had it if they had asked. My conditional consent.
The only questions possible here are the asking for orders and the requests already disposed of under Rule 1.
Observe that I would like (which is not English) is not justified by this rule, because the speaker's mood is expressed by like, and does not need double expression; it ought to be I should like, under Rule 3.
Observe also that I sha'n't, You will go to your room and stay there, are only apparent exceptions, which will be explained under Rule 3.
The archaic literary forms You shall find, A rogue shall often pass for an honest man, though now affected and pretentious, ​are grammatically defensible. The speaker asks us to take the fact on his personal assurance.
The forms little required in the pure system, and therefore ready to hand for making the new plain future, were I, and we, shall; you, he, and they, will. These accordingly constitute the plain future, and the corresponding forms of the plain conditional are used analogously. Questions follow the same rule, with one very important exception, which will be given a separate rule (4). We now give
Rule 3. The Plain-Future System
In plain statements about the future, and in the principal clause, result, or apodosis of plain conditional sentences (whether the subordinate clause, condition, or if-clause is expressed or not), the first person has Sh., the second and third persons W. Questions conform, except those of the second person, for which see Rule 4.
I shall, you will, die some day.
Shall I, will they, be here to-morrow?
We should, he would, have consented if you had asked.
Should we, would he, have missed you if you had been there?
I should, you would, like a bathe.
Should I, would he, like it myself, himself?
Some apparent exceptions, already anticipated, must here be explained. It may be said that I shall execute your orders being the speaker's promise, You will go to your room being the speaker's command, and Sha'n't (the nursery abbreviation for I shall not do it) being the speaker's refusal, these are all coloured futures, so that Sh. and W. should be reversed in each. They are such in effect, but they are not in form. In each, the other form would be possible and correct. The first is a promise only so far as the hearer chooses to take as a promise the plain future or impersonal prophecy; but the speaker emphasizes his obedience by implying that of course, since the order has been given, it will be executed; the matter is settled without his unimportant consent. The other two gain force by the opposite assumption that the speaker's will ​and the future are absolutely identical, so that what he intends may be confidently stated as a future fact. In the first example the desired submissiveness, in the other two the desired imperiousness, supercilious or passionate, are attained by the same impersonality.
Before giving the rule for second-person questions, we observe that questions generally follow the rule of the class of statement they correspond to. This was shown in the pure system (Rule 1). There are no questions (apart from those already accounted for by the pure system) belonging to the coloured future (Rule 2). In the plain future (Rule 3), first and third person questions are like the plain-future statements. But second-person questions under the plain future invariably use Sh. or W. according as the answer for which the speaker is prepared has Sh. or W. Care is necessary, however, in deciding what that answer is. In Should (would) you like a bathe? should is almost always right, because the answer expected is almost always either Yes, I should, or No, I should not, the question being asked for real information. It is true that Would you like? is very commonly used, like the equally wrong I would like; but it is only correct when the answer is intended to be given by the asker:—No, of course you would not. A clearer illustration of this is the following sentence, which requires Sh. or W. according to circumstances: Will (shall) you, now so fresh and fair, be in a hundred years nothing but moiddering dust? This might possibly be asked in expectation of an answer from the person apostrophized—Yes, I shall. Much more probably it would be asked in expectation of the answer from the speaker himself to his own question—Alas! yes, you will. And shall ought to be used for the question only in the first case, will in the second case. Similarly, Ah, yes, that is all very well; but will (shall) you be able to do it? Use will if the answer is meant to be No, of course you will not; shall, if the answer expected is Yes, I shall, or No, I shall not.
In practice, Sh. is more commonly required, because ​questions asked for information are commoner than rhetorical ones. But observe the common Would you believe it? Answer, No, of course you would not. Should you believe it? also possible, would indicate real curiosity about the other person's state of mind, which is hardly ever felt. Would you believe it? however, might also be accounted for on the ground that the answer would be No, I would not, which would be a coloured-future form, meaning I should never consent to believe.
Rule 4. Second-person Questions
Second-person questions invariably have Sh. or W. by assimilation to the answer expected.
It may be added, since it makes the application of the rule easier, that the second-person questions belonging not to the plain future but to the pure system are also, though not because of assimilation, the same in regard to Sh. and W. as their answers. Thus Will you come? Yes, I will (each on its merits), as well as Shall you be there? Yes, I shall (assimilation). Should you not have known? Yes, I should (each on its merits; should means ought), as well as What should you think? I should think you were right (assimilation). The true form for all second-person questions, then, can be ascertained by deciding what the expected answer is.
This completes what need be said about principal sentences, with the exception of one important usage that might cause perplexity. If some one says to me 'You would think so yourself if you were in my position', I may either answer 'No, I should not' regularly, or may catch up his word, and retain the W., though the alteration of person requires Sh. Thus—'Would I, though? No, I wouldn't'. Accordingly,
Rule 5. Echoes
A speaker repeating and adapting another's words may neglect to make the alteration from Sh. to W., or from W. to Sh., that an alteration of the person strictly requires.
​We have now all the necessary rules for principal sentences, and can put down a few examples of the right usage, noteworthy for various reasons, and some blunders, the latter being illustrated in proportion to their commonness. The number of the rule observed or broken will be added in brackets for reference. The passage from Johnson with which the correct examples begin is instructive.
Right.
I would (2) injure no man, and should (3) provoke no resentment; I would (2) relieve every distress, and should (3) enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would (2) choose my friends among the wise, and my wife among the virtuous; and therefore should (3) be in no danger from treachery or unkindness. My children should (2) by my care be learned and pious, and would (3) repay to my age what their childhood had received.—Johnson.
Chatham, it should (1) seem, ought to have taken the same side.—Macaulay.
For instance, when we allege, that it is against reason to tax a people under so many restraints in trade as the Americans, the noble lord in the blue riband shall (2) tell you...—Burke.
The 'critic fly', if it do but alight on any plinth or single cornice of a brave stately building, shall (2) be able to declare, with its half-inch vision, that here is a speck, and there an inequality.—Carlyle.
John, why should you waste yourself (1) upon those ugly giggling girls?—R. G. White.
It wouldn't be quite proper to take her alone, would it? What should (4) you say?— R. G. White.
Whether I have attained this, the future shall decide (2. I consent to accept the verdict of the future).—Times.
Wrong.
We give first many examples of the mistake that is out of all proportion the commonest—using the coloured future when the speaker's mood is sufficiently given by a separate word. In the second example, for instance, I would ask the favour would be quite right, and would mean I should like to ask. As it stands, it means I should like to like to ask. The same applies to the other instances, which are only multiplied to show how dangerous this particular form is.
Among these...I would be inclined to place (3) those who acquiesce in the phenomenalism of Mr. Herbert Spencer.—Daily Telegraph.
As one of the founders of the Navy League, I would like (3) to ask the favour of your well-known courtesy...—Times.
I would be glad (3) to have some account of his behaviour.—Richardson.
I would like (3) also to talk with you about the thing which has come to pass.—Jowett.
But give your definition of romance. I would like to hear it (3).—F. M. Crawford.
These are typical of thousands of paragraphs in the newspaper....We would (3) wish for brighter news.—Westminster Gazette.
I have already had some offers of assistance, and I would be glad (3) to receive any amount towards the object.—Times.
Some examples follow that have not this excuse; and the first two deserve comment—the first because it results in serious ambiguity, the second because it is possibly not wrong.
The two fleets present seven Russian battleships against four Japanese—less than two to one; two Russian armoured cruisers against eight, and seven Russian torpedo-boat destroyers against an indefinite number of the enemy. Here we will (3) not exaggerate in attributing to the Japanese three or four to one.–Mahan.
With will, the meaning must be: We won't call them three or four to one, because that would be exaggeration. But the meaning is intended to be: We will call them that, and it will be no exaggeration. Shall is absolutely necessary, however, to make it bear that interpretation.
This character who delights us may commit murder like Macbeth, or fly the battle for his sweetheart as did Antony, or betray his country like Coriolanus, and yet we will rejoice (3) in every happiness that comes to him.—W. B. Yeats.
It is possible that this is the use of will described as the 'habitual' use—he will often stand on his head—under Rule 1. But this is very rare, though admissible, in the first person of the present. We shall rejoice, or simply we rejoice, would be the plain way of saying it.
If this passion was simply painful, we would (3) shun with the greatest care all persons and places that could excite such a passion.—Burke.
What would (3) we be without our appetites?—S. Ferrier.
If I was ever to be detected, I would (3) have nothing for it but to drown myself.—S. Ferrier.
I will (3) never forget, in the year 1858, one notorious revivalist.—Daily Telegraph.
As long as I am free from all resentment, hardness, and scorn, I would (3) be able to face the life with much more calm and confidence than I would...—Wilde.
In the next two, if 'I think', and the if-clause, were removed, the shall and will would stand, expressing resolve according to Rule 2. But with those additions it is clear that prophecy or pure future is meant; and shall and will should be will and shall.
Nothing, I think, shall ever make me (3) forgive him.—Richardson.
We were victorious in 1812, and we will (3) be victorious now at any cost, if we are strong in an alliance between the governing class and the governed.—Times.
We now proceed to Subordinate Clauses, and first to the Substantival. The word 'reported' will mean 'made indirect' or 'subordinated substantivally', not always actually reported.
Reported statement is quite simple when it is of the pure system or the coloured future; the Sh. or W. of the original statement is retained in the reported form, unaffected by any change of person that the reporting involves. Thus: (Pure system) He forgave me (you, or her), though he said I (you, or she) should not have left him in the lurch like that. (Coloured future) You said I (or he) should repent it; either of these is a report of either You shall repent it or He shall repent it. (Coloured future) You said you (or I said I) would apologize; both are reports of I will apologize.
But with the plain-future system there is difficulty and some inconsistency. The change of person sometimes required by reported speech has almost always the effect here of introducing Sh. if I or we appears in the words as reported, and usually the effect of introducing W. if you, he, or they, appears. The ​following are all the types in which doubt can arise, except that each of these may occur in either number, and in past or present. The form that would be required by analogy (keeping the original Sh. or W.) is given first, and the one generally used instead is added in brackets. Reporting I shall never succeed, we get
You said you should (would) never succeed.
He says he shall (will) never succeed.
Reporting you will (or he will) never succeed, we get
You say I will (shall) never succeed.
He said I would (should) never succeed.
Even those persons who have generally a just confidence in their own correctness about Sh. and W. will allow that they have some doubt about the first pair; and nearly every one will find W. in the second pair, however reasonable and consistent, intolerable.
If the reader will now go through the four sentences again, and substitute for succeed the phrase do it (which may or may not mean succeed), he will see that the orthodox should and shall of the first pair become actually more natural than the commoner would and will; and that even in the second pair will and would are now tolerable. The reason is that with do it there is risk of confusion with the reported forms of I will never do it and you shall never do it, which are not plain futures, but coloured futures meaning something quite different.
Reported questions present the same difficulties. Again those only are doubtful that belong to the plain future. There, for instance, reporting Shall you do it? we can say by the correct analogy I asked him whether he should; and we generally do so if the verb, as here, lends itself to ambiguity: I asked him whether he would do it is liable to be mistaken for the report of Will you do it?—a request. If on the other hand (as in reporting Shall you be there?) there is little risk of misunderstanding, I asked him whether he would is commoner. And again it is only in extreme cases, ​if even then, that the original W. can be kept when the report introduces I in place of the original question's you or he. For instance, the original question being How will he be treated? it may be just possible to say You had made up your mind how I would be treated, because You had made up your mind how I should be treated almost inevitably suggests (assisted by the ambiguity of making up your mind, which may imply either resolve or inference) that the original question was How shall he be treated?
It would be well, perhaps, if writers who take their responsibilities seriously would stretch a point sometimes to keep the more consistent and less ambiguous usage alive; but for practical purposes the rule must run:
Rule 6. Substantival Clauses.
In these (whether 'reported' strictly or otherwise subordinated) pure-system or coloured-future forms invariably keep the Sh. or W. of the original statement or question, unaffected by any change of person. Reports of plain-future forms do this also, if there would be serious danger of ambiguity, but almost always have Sh. in the first person, and usually W. in the second and third persons.
As the division of substantival clauses into indirect (or reported or subordinate or oblique) statements, questions, and commands, is familiar, it may be well to explain that in English the reported command strictly so called hardly exists. In what has the force of a reported command it is in fact a statement that is reported. For instance, He said I was to go, though used as the indirect form of Go, is really the indirect of the statement You are to go. He ordered that they should be released (though the actual words were Be they, or Let them be, released) is formed on the coloured-future statement, They shall be released. It is therefore unnecessary to give special rules for reported command. But there are one or two types of apparent indirect command about which, though there is no danger of error, the reader may feel curious.
​a. I stipulate that I shall, you shall, he shall, do it. Why shall in all persons? because the original form is: I (you, he) shall do it, I stipulate that, where shall means am to, are to, is to; that is, it is a pure-system form.
b. I beg that you (or he) will do it. He begs that I will do it. Again the original is pure-system: You (or he) will (i.e., you consent to) do it: that is what I beg. I will (i.e., I consent to) do it: that is what he begs.
c. I beg that I (or he) shall not suffer for it. You beggedthat I should not suffer for it. Observe that b. has will and a. and c. shall, because it is only in b. that the volition of the subject of shall or will is concerned.
d. I wish you would not sneeze. Before subordination this is: You will not sneeze: that is what I wish. W. remains, but will becomes would to give the remoteness always connected with wish, which is seen also, for instance, in I wish I were instead of I wish I be.
Before going on to examples of substantival clauses, we also register, again rather for the curious than for the practical reader, the peculiar but common use of should contained in the following:
It is not strange that his admiration for those writers should have been unbounded.—Macaulay.
In this use should goes through all persons and is equivalent to a gerund with possessive: that a man should be is the same as a man's being. We can only guess at its origin; our guess is that (1) should is the remote form for shall, as would for will in d. above, substituted in order to give an effect of generality; and (2) the use of shall is the archaic one seen in You shall find, &c. So: a man shall be afraid of his shadow; that a man should be afraid (as a generally observed fact) is strange.
After each of the substantival clauses, of which examples now follow, we shall say whether it is a reported (subordinated) statement, or question, and give what we taketo be ​the original form of the essential words, even when further comment is unnecessary.
Examples of Sh. and W. in Substantival clauses.
Right.
You, my dear, believe you shall be unhappy, if you have Mr. Solmes: your parents think the contrary; and that you will be undoubtedly so, were you to have Mr. Lovelace.—Richardson.
Statement. The original of the first is I shall be; of the second, she will be. In this and the next three the strictly analogical form that we recommended is kept.
I have heard the Princess declare that she should not willingly die in a crowd.—Johnson.
Statement. I should not.
People imagine they should be happy in circumstances which they would find insupportably burthensome in less than a week.—Cowper.
Statement. We should. They would is not 'reported'.
Do you really fancy you should be more beholden to your correspondent, if he had been damning you all the time for your importunity?—Stevenson.
Statement. I should be.
The nation had settled the question that it would not have conscription.—Times.
Statement. We will not. The blundering insertion of the question—perhaps due to some hazy notion of 'putting the question'—may be disregarded.
When the war will end still depends on Japan.—Times.
Question. When will it end?
Shaftesbury's anger vented itself in threats that the advisers of this dissolution should pay for it with their heads.—J. R. Green.
Statement. You shall pay.
He [i. e., James II] regarded his ecclesiastical supremacy as a weapon. ...Under Henry and Elizabeth it had been used to turn the Church of England from Catholic to Protestant. Under James it should be used to turn it back again.—J. R. Green.
Statement. Under me it shall be. The reporting word not expressed.
​She could not bear the sight of all these things that reminded her of Anthony and of her sin. Perhaps she should die soon; she felt very feeble.—Eliot.
Statement. I shall. Again the reporting word absent.
There will never perhaps be a time when every question between London and Washington shall be laid at rest.—Times.
This is not properly speaking reported speech. But the shall is accounted for by a sort of allusion to a supposed prophecy—every question shall one day be laid at rest. In that prophecy, shall would convey that the prophet gave his personal guarantee for it, and would come under Rule 2. This is not to be confused with the use of shall in indefinite clauses that will be noticed later.
Wrong.
The four began their descent, not knowing at what step they should meet death nor which of them should reach the shore alive.—F. M. Crawford.
Questions. At what step shall we meet? Which of us will reach? The first is accordingly right, the second wrong. The modern writer—who has been at the pains to use the strictly correct should in the first place rather than the now common would—has not seen, as Richardson did in the first of the right examples, that his two clauses are dissimilar.
I hope that our sympathy shall survive these little revolutions undiminished.—Stevenson.
Statement. Will survive. It is possible, however, that the original was thought of, or rather felt, as Our sympathy shall survive. But as the effect of that is to give the speaker's personal guarantee for the truth of the thing, it is clearly not a proper statement to make dependent on the doubtful word hope.
After mentioning the advance made in reforms of the military force of the country he [Lord Lansdowne] announced that the Government should not oppose the motion, readily availing themselves of Lord Wemyss's suggestion that...–Times.
Statement. We shall not, or the Government will not. Probably Lord Lansdowne said we, and that accounts for ​should. But if The Times chooses to represent we by the Government, it must also represent shall by would.
It came with a strange stunning effect upon us all—the consciousness that never again would we hear the grind of those positive boot-heels on the gravel.—Crockett.
Statement. We shall never.
I think that if the matter were handed over to the parish councils...we would within a twelvemonth have exactly such a network of rifle clubs as is needed.—Conan Doyle.
Statement. We should. Of these two instances it may be thought that the writers would have made the mistake in the original unsubordinated sentence, instead of its arising in the process of subordination; our experience is, however, that many people do in fact go wrong in subordinate clauses who are alive to the danger in simple sentences.
The Prime Minister...would at once have asked the Opposition if they could suggest any further means for making the inquiry more drastic and complete, with the assurance that if they could suggest any such means, they would at once be incorporated in the Government scheme.—Spectator.
Statement. They shall be incorporated. We have classed this as wrong on the assumption, supported by the word assurance, that the Prime Minister gave a promise, and therefore used the coloured future, and did not state a fact and use the plain future.
Another type of subordinate clause important for Sh. and W. is the conditional protasis or if-clause. It is not necessary, nor with modern writers usual, to mark the future or conditional force of this separately, since it is sufficiently indicated by the apodosls. For instance, If you come I shall be glad; if you came I should be glad; if you had come I should have been glad. But in formal style or with a slight difference of meaning, it is often superfluously done in the protasis too. Sh. is then used for all persons, as, If he should come, you would learn how the matter stands. So
Japan will adhere to her pledge of neutralily unless Russia shall first violate hers.—Times.
​But to the rule that the protasis takes shall there are three exceptions, real or apparent; W. is found under the following circumstances:
(1.) An original pure-system or coloured-future W. is not changed to Sh. by being used in subordination to if (or unless). It is retained with its full original force instead of some verb like wish or choose. In If we would believe we might move mountains, the meaning is If we chose to believe, different from that of If we believed or should believe. So
It would be much better if you would not be so hypocritical, Captain Wybrow.—Eliot.
If you consented not to be, or did not insist on being.
It would be valuable if he would somewhat expand his ideas regarding local defence by Volunteers.—Times.
If he consented to.
(2.) When the if-clause (though a genuine condition) is incorrectly expressed for the sake of brevity and compresses two verbs into one, the W. proper to the retained verb is sometimes necessarily used instead of the Sh. proper to the verb that, though it contains in strict logic the essential protasis, has been crushed out. Thus: If it will be useless I shall prefer not to do it. It is not the uselessness that is the condition of the preference; for the use or uselessness is subsequent to the decision; it is my conviction of the uselessness; so that the full form would be If I shall be (or am in ordinary speech) convinced that it will be useless, I shall prefer, &c. The following example can be defended on this ground, if never again will he standing for if he shall realize that he will never; the feebleness that decides his not wishing is subsequent to it, and can only condition it if taken in the sense of his anticipation of feebleness.
And if there is to be no recoveiy, if never again will he be young and strong and passionate, if the actual present shall be to him always like a thing read in a book or remembered out of the far-away past; he will not greatly wish for the continuance of a twilight that...—Stevenson.
​The next is more difficult only because, besides the compression, the if-clause is protasis not to the expressed main sentence, but to another that is suppressed.
I shall wait for fine weather, if that will ever come. — R. G. White.
Given fully, this would run: I shall wait for fine weather (at least I should say so) if (I were sure that) that will ever come.
(3.) When an if-clause is not a condition at all, as for instance where it expresses contrast, and is almost equivalent to although, the ordinary plain-future use prevails. Thus: If annihilation will end our joys it will also end our griefs. Contrast with this the real condition, in: If annihilation shall end (or ends) our joys, we shall never regret the loss of them.
Indefinite clauses, relative or other, bearing the same relation to a conditional or future principal sentence that a conditional protasis bears to its apodosis follow the same rules. Thus Whoever compares the two will find is equivalent to If any one compares; When we have won the battle we can decide that question is equivalent to If ever we have won. Accordingly we can if we choose write Whoever shall compare, and When we shall have won; but we cannot write When we will have won, and must only write Whoever will compare if we distinctly mean Whoever chooses to compare. As there is sometimes difficulty in analysing indefinite clauses of this sort, one or two instances had better be considered.
The candidate who should have distinguished himself most was to be chosen.
This is clear enough; it is equivalent to if any one should have... he was...
We must ask ourselves what victory will cost the Russian people when at length it will become possible to conclude the peace so ardently desired.— Times.
Equivalent to If ever it at length becomes. Will is therefore wrong; either becomes, or shall become.
Nothing can now prevent it from continuing to distil upwards until there shall be no member of the legislature who shall not know...—Huxley.
​This is a complicated example. The shalls will be right if it appears that each shall-clause is equivalent to a conditional protasis. We may show it by starting at the end as with the house that Jack built and constructing the sentence backwards, subordinating by stages, and changing will to shall as the protases come in; it will be allowed that until means to the time when, and that when may be resolved into if ever. Thus we get: a. One will know. b. None will be a member of the legislature unless one shall know. c. It will distil to the time if ever none shall be a member unless one shall know.
Think what I will about them, I must take them for politeness' sake.—R. G. White.
Although think what I will is an indefinite relative clause, meaning practically whatever I think, will here is right, the strict sense being whatever I choose to think. Indeed the time of think is probably not, at any rate need not be, future at all; compare Think what I will, I do not tell my thoughts.
We now give
Rule 7. Conditional protasis and Indefinite Clauses
In the protasis or if-clause of conditional sentences Sh. may be used with all persons. Generally neither Sh. nor W. is used. W. is only used (1) when the full meaning of wish is intended; it may then be used with all persons; (2) when the protasis is elliptically expressed; W. may then be necessary with the second and third persons; (3) when the if-clause is not a real conditional protasis; there is then no reason for Sh. with second and third persons. Indefinite clauses of similar character follow the same rules.
A few right but exceptional, and some wrong subordinate clauses may now be added.
Examples of Sh. and W. in Subordinate Clauses.
Right.
As an opiate, or spirituous liquors, shall suspend the operation of grief...—Burke.
We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wiseman accosting such an one, and the conversation that should thereupon ensue.—Stevenson.
She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady—such a pew of a woman—that you should find as many individual sympathies in a chip.—Dickens.
In these three we have the archaic shall of personal assurance that comes under Rule 2, and its corresponding conditional, appearing in subordinate clauses. There is no objection to it except that, in modern writers, its context must be such as to exonerate it from the charge of affectation.
The longing of the army for a fresh struggle which should restore its glory.—J. R. Green.
This use of Sh. after final relatives is seen, if the compound sentence is resolved, to point to an original coloured future: We long for a fresh struggle; a fresh struggle shall restore (that is, we intend it to restore) our glory.
He was tormented by that restless jealousy which should seem to belong only to minds burning with the desire of fame.—Macaulay.
This is the should seem explained under Rule 1 appearing also as subordinate.
Wrong.
It should never be, but often is, forgotten that when the apodosis of a conditional sentence (with or without expressed protasis) is subordinate it is nevertheless still an apodosis, and has still Sh. in the first, W. in the second and third persons.
In 'he struck him a blow', we do not feel the first object to be datival, as we would in 'he gave him a blow'.—H. Sweet.
I cannot let the moment pass at which I would have been enjoying a visit to you after your severe illness without one word of sympathy.—Gladstone.
It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace.—Wilde.
But though I would not willingly part with such scraps of science, I do not set the same store by them.—Stevenson.
We must reconcile what we would like to do with what we can do.–Times.
All these are wrong; in the last two the mistake is perhaps accounted for by the presence of willingly and like. I would not willingly can indeed be defended at the cost of admitting ​that willingly is mere tautology, and saying that I would not means I should not consent to, according to Rule 2.
It may be worth while to add that the subordinate apodosis still follows the rule even if it is subordinated to if, so that it is part of the protasis of another conditional sentence. The following, which is of course quite correct, seems, but only seems, to break the rules both for protasis and apodosis: If you would be patient for yourself, you should be patient for me. But we have W. with second person in the protasis because would be patient is also apodosis to the implied protasis if occasion should arise; and the should with second person in the apodosis is not a conditional should at all, but a pure-system should, which would be the same with any person; it means simply you ought, or it would be your duty.
The result in part of a genuine anxiety lest the Chinese would gradually grow until they monopolized the country.—Times.
We have purposely refrained until now from invoking the subjunctive, because the word is almost meaningless to Englishmen, the thing having so nearly perished. But on this instance it must be remarked that when conjunctions like lest, which could once or still can take a subjunctive (as lest he die), use a compound form instead, they use the Sh. forms for all persons. It is a matter of little importance, since hardly any one would go wrong in such a sentence.
The Perfect Infinitive
This has its right and its wrong uses. The right are obvious, and can be left alone. Even of the wrong some are serviceable, if not strictly logical. I hoped to have succeeded, for instance, means I hoped to succeed, but I did not succeed, and has the advantage of it in brevity; it is an idiom that it would be a pity to sacrifice on the altar of Reason. So:
Philosophy began to congratulate herself upon such a proselyte from the world of business, and hoped to have extended her power under the auspices of such a leader.—Burke.
And here he cannot forbear observing, that it was the duty of that
publisher to have rebutted a statement which he knew to be a calumny.—Borrow.
I was going to have asked, when...—Sladen.
But other perfects, while they are still more illogical than these, differ as little in meaning from the present as the deposuisse, dear to the hearts of elegiac writers ancient and modern, differs from deponere. And whereas there is at least metre, and very useful metre, in deposuisse, there is in our corresponding perfect infinitive neither rhyme nor reason. Thus,
With whom on those golden summer evenings I should have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfield.—Thackeray.
To have taken means simply to take; the implication of non-fulfilment that justified the perfects above is here needless, being already given in I should have liked; and the doubled have is ugly in sound. Similar are
If my point had not been this, I should not have endeavoured to have shown the connexion.—Times.
The author can only wish it had been her province to have raised plants of nobler growth.—S. Ferrier.
Had you given your advice in any determined or positive manner, I had been ready to have been concluded by it.—Richardson.
Jim Scudamore would have been the first man to have acknowledged the anomaly.—Crockett.
Though certainly before she commenced her mystic charms she would have liked to have known who he was.—Beaconsfield.
Peggy would have liked to have shown her turban and bird of paradise at the ball.—Thackeray.
It might have been thought to be a question of bare alternatives, and to have been susceptible of no compromise.—Bagehot.
The less excusable that Bagehot has started with the correct to be.
Another very common form, still worse, occurs especially after seem and appear, and results from the writer's being too lazy to decide whether he means He seems to have been, or He seemed to be. The mistake may be in either verb or both.
authority. He seemed to have taken this as applying only to the first question he asked me.—Westminster Gazette. (seems)
They, as it has been said of Sterne, seemed to have wished, every now and then, to have thrown their wigs into the faces of their auditors.—I. Disraeli. (seem to have wished...to throw)
Lady Austen's fashionable friends occasioned no embarrassment; they seemed to have preferred some more fashionable place for summering in, for they are not again spoken of.—Southey.
Sometimes have is even transferred from the verb with which it would make sense to the other with which it makes nonsense.
On the point of church James was obdurate...He would like to have insisted on the other grudging items.—Sladen.
In the next, the perfect is wanted; for a child that has been flogged cannot be left unflogged—not, that is, in the past; and the future is not meant.
A child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged.—Poe.
We add, for the reader's refreshment rather than for practical purposes, an illustration of where careless treatment of have may end:
Oh, Burgo, hadst thou not have been a very child, thou shouldst have known that now, at this time of day—after all that thy gallant steed had done for thee—it was impossible for thee or him.—Trollope.
Conditionals
These, which cost the schoolboy at his Latin and Greek some weary hours, need not detain us long. The reader passes lightly and unconsciously in his own language over mixtures that might have caused him searchings of heart in a dead one.
But there is one corrupt and meaningless form, apparently gaining ground, that calls for protest. When a clause begins with as if, it must be remembered that there is an ellipse. I treat her as tenderly as if she were my daughter would be in full I treat her as tenderly as I should if she were, &c. If this is forgotten, there is danger in some sentences, though not in this one, of using a present indicative in the place where the verb were stands. So:
​We will not appear like fools in this matter, and as if we have no authority over our own daughter.—Richardson.
This may be accounted for, but not justified, as an attempt to express what should be merely imph'cd, our actual possession of authority.
As if the fruit or the flower not only depends on a root as one of the conditions among others of its development, but is itself actually the root.—Morley.
This is absolutely indefensible so far as is is concerned; depends has the same motive as have in the Richardson.
But this looks as if he has included the original 30,000 men.—Times.
There have been rumours lately, as if the present state of the nation may seem to this species of agitators a favourable period for recommencing their intrigues.—Scott.
This is a place where as if should not have been used at all. If it is used; the verb should be seemed, not may seem, the full form being as there would be (rumours). Read suggesting that for as if, and seems for may seem.
General Linevitch reports that the army is concentrating as if it intends to make a stand.—Times.
A mixture between it apparently intends and as if it intended.
As if the same end may not, and must not, be compassed, according to its circumstances, by a great diversity of ways.—Burke.
May should be might. As if it may not is made to do the work of as if it might not, as of course it may.
The same rule applies to as though.
The use of true subjunctive forms (if he be, though it happen) in conditional sentences is for various reasons not recommended. These forms, with the single exception of were, are perishing so rapidly that an experienced word-actuary puts their expectation of life at one generation. As a matter of style, they should be avoided, being certain to give a pretentious air when handled by any one except the skilful and practised writers who need no advice from us. And as a matter of grammar, the instinct for using ​subjunctives rightly is dying with the subjunctive, so that even the still surviving were is often used where it is completely wrong. So
It would be advisable to wait for fuller details before making any attempt to appraise the significance of the raid from the military point of view, if, indeed, the whole expedition were not planned with an eye to effect.—Times.
Here the last clause means though perhaps it was only planned with an eye to effect (and therefore has no military significance). But if followed by were not necessarily means that it certainly is. The mistake here results in making the clause look as if it were the protasis to It would be advisable, with which it has in fact nothing whatever to do; it is a note on the words military significance. Write was for were.
...and who, taking my offered hand, bade me 'Good morning'—nightfall though it were.—Times.
The sentence describes a meeting with a person who knew hardly any English; he said good morning, though it was nightfall. A single example may be added of the intrusion of were for was in a sentence that is not conditional.
Dr. Chalmers was a believer in an Establishment as he conceived an Establishment should be. Whether such an Establishment were possible or not it is not for me now to discuss.—Lord Rosebery.
Were, however, is often right and almost necessary: other subjunctives are never necessary, often dangerous, and in most writers unpleasantly formal. The tiro had much better eschew them.
'Doubt that' and 'doubt whether'
Instances will be found in Part II of verbs constructed with wrong prepositions or conjunctions. Most mistakes of this kind are self-evident; but the verb 'doubt', which is constructed with 'that' or 'whether' according to the circumstances under which the doubt is expressed, requires special notice. The broad distinction is between the positive, 'I doubt whether (that)' and the negative, 'I do not doubt that (whether)'; ​and the rule, in order to include implied as well as expressed negatives, questions as well as statements, will run thus:
The word used depends upon the writer's or speaker's opinion as to the reasonableness of the doubt, no matter in whose mind it is said to exist or not to exist.
1. If there is nothing to show that the writer considers the doubt an unreasonable one, the word is always 'whether', which reminds us that there is a suppressed alternative:
I doubt whether this is true (or not).
Every one is at liberty to doubt whether...(or not).
To this part of the rule there is no exception.
2. If it is evident that the writer disapproves of the doubt, the words introducing it amount to an affirmation on his part that the thing doubted is undoubtedly true; the alternative is no longer offered; 'that' is therefore the word:
I do not doubt that (i.e., I am sure that)...
Who can doubt that...?
This, however, is modified by 3.
3. The 'vivid' use of 'whether'. When the writer's point is rather the extravagance of the doubt than the truth of the thing doubted, 'whether' is often retained:
It is as if a man should doubt whether he has a head on his shoulders.
Can we imagine any man seriously doubting whether...?
Here, according to 2., we ought to have 'that', since the writer evidently regards the doubt as absurd. But in the first sentence it is necessary for the force of the illustration that the deplorable condition of the doubter's mind should be vividly portrayed: accordingly, he is represented to us as actually handling the two alternatives. Similarly, in the second, we are invited to picture to ourselves, if we can, a hesitation so ludicrous in the writer's opinion. We shall illustrate this point further by a couple of sentences in which again the state of mind of the doubter, not the truth of the thing doubted, is clearly the point, but in which 'that' has been improperly substituted for the vivid 'whether':
She found herself wondering at the breath she drew, doubting that another would follow.—Meredith.
I am afraid that you will become so afraid of men's motives as to doubt that any one can be honest.—Trollope.
The mistake commonly made is to use 'that' for 'whether' in violation of 1. 'Whether' is seldom used in place of 'that', and apparent violations of 2. often prove to be legitimate exceptions of the 'vivid' kind. Some of our examples may suggest that when the dependent clause is placed before the verb, 'that' appears because the writer had not decided what verb of doubt or denial to use. This is probably the true explanation of many incorrect thats, but is not a sufficient defence. It supplies, on the contrary, an additional reason for adhering to 'whether': the reader is either actually misled or at any rate kept in needless suspense as to what is going to be said, because the writer did not make up his mind at the right time how to say it. 'Whether' at the beginning at once proclaims an open question: after 'that' we expect (or ought to expect) 'I have no reason to doubt'.
In all the following, 'whether' should have been used.
There is nothing for it but to doubt such diseases exist.—H. G. Wells.
'Whether' is never suppressed.
I do not think it would have pleased Mr. Thackeray; and to doubt that he would have wished to see it carried out determines my view of the matter.—Greenwood.
That the movement is as purely industrial as the leaders of the strike claim may be doubted.—Times.
And I must be allowed to doubt that there is any class who deliberately omit...—Times.
He may doubt that his policy will be any more popular in England a year or two hence than it is now.—Greenwood.
I doubt the correctness of the assertion...I doubt, I say, that Becky would have selected either of these young men.—Thackeray.
But that his army, if it retreats, will carry with it all its guns...we are inclined to doubt.—Times.
It was generally doubted that France would permit the use of her port.—Times.
Prepositions
In an uninflected language like ours these are ubiquitous, and it is quite impossible to write tolerably without a full knowledge, conscious or unconscious, of their uses. Misuse of them, however, does not often result in what may be called in the fullest sense blunders of syntax, but mostly in offences against idiom. It is often impossible to convince a writer that the preposition he has used is a wrong one, because there is no reason in the nature of things, in logic, or in the principles of universal grammar (whichever way it may be put), why that preposition should not give the desired meaning as clearly as the one that we tell him he should have used. Idioms are special forms of speech that for some reason, often inscrutable, have proved congenial to the instinct of a particular language. To neglect them shows a writer, however good a logician he may be, to be no linguist—condemns him, from that point of view, more clearly than grammatical blunders themselves. But though the subject of prepositions is thus very important, the idioms in which they appear are so multitudinous that it is hopeless to attempt giving more than the scantiest selection; this may at least put writers on their guard. Usages of this sort cannot be acquired from dictionaries and grammars, still less from a treatise like the present, not pretending to be exhaustive; good reading with the idiomatic eye open is essential. We give a few examples of what to avoid.
1. After adjectives and adverbs.
Another stroke of palsy soon rendered Sir Sampson unconscious even to the charms of Grizzy's conversation.—S. Ferrier.
Being oblivious to the ill feeling it would be certain to engender.—Cheltenham Examiner.
To me it is incredible that the British people, who own one-half of the world's sea-going ships, should be so oblivious to the manner in which...—Times.
Insensible to, but unconscious of; indifferent to, but oblivious of.
​The adjectives different and averse, with their adverbs or nouns, differently, difference, aversion, averseness, call for a few words of comment. There is no essential reason whatever why either set should not be as well followed by to as by from. But different to is regarded by many newspaper editors and others in authority as a solecism, and is therefore better avoided by those to whom the approval of such authorities is important. It is undoubtedly gaining ground, and will probably displace different from in no long time; perhaps, however, the conservatism that still prefers from is not yet to be named pedantry. It is at any rate defensive, and not offensive pedantry, different to (though 'found in writers of all ages'—Oxford Dictionary) being on the whole the aggressor. With averse, on the other hand, though the Oxford Dictionary gives a long roll of good names on each side, the use of from may perhaps be said to strike most readers as a distinct protest against the more natural to, so that from is here the aggressor, and the pedantry, if it is pedantry, is offensive. Our advice is to write different from and averse to. We shall give a few examples, and add to them two sentences in which the incorrect use of from with other words looks like the result of insisting on the slightly artificial use of it after different and averse.
My experience caused me to make quite different conclusions to those of the Coroner for Westminster.—Times.
It will be noticed that to is more than usually uncomfortable when it does not come next to different.
We must feel charitably towards those who think differently to ourselves.—Daily Telegraph.
Why should these profits be employed differently to the profits made by capitalists at home?—Lord Goschen.
Ah, how different were my feelings as I sat proudly there on the box to those I had the last time I mounted that coach!—Thackeray.
What is the great difference of the one to the other?—Daily Telegraph.
From would in this last be clearly better than to; but between the two would be better than either.
The Queen and the cabinet, however, were entirely averse to meddling with the council.—Morley.
Perhaps he is not averse from seeing democrats on this, as on railway rates, range themselves with him.—Times.
In all democratic circles aversion from the Empire of the Tsar may be intensified by the events of the last few days.—Times.
To no kind of begging are people so averse as to begging pardon.—Guesses at Truth.
This averseness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like absolute government.—Burke.
I deeply regret the aversion to 'conscience clauses'.—Gladstone.
But she had no sort of aversion for either Puritan or Papist.—J. R. Green.
Disagree from (for with), and adverse from (for to), seem to have resulted from the superstition against averse and different to.
A general proposition, which applies just as much to those who disagree from me as to those who agree with me.—Lord Rosebery.
There were politicians in this country who had been very adverse from the Suez Canal scheme altogether.—F. Greenwood.
2. After verbs.
I derive an unholy pleasure in noting.—Guernsey Evening Press.
We must content ourselves for the moment by observing that from the juridical standpoint the question is a doubtful one.—Times.
The petition which now reaches us from Bloemfontein...contents itself by begging that the isolation laws may be carried out nearer to the homes of the patients.—Times.
I content you by submitting: I content myself with saying.
'Doing one's duty' generally consists of being moral, kind and charitable.–Daily Telegraph.
The external world which is dealt with by natural science consisted, according to Berkeley, in ideas. According to Mr. Mill it consists of sensations and permanent possibilities of sensation.–Balfour.
The moon consists of green cheese: virtue consists in being good. Consist of gives a material, consist in a definition. Mr. Balfour's 'elegant variation' (see Airs and Graces) is certainly wrong, though nominalists and realists will perhaps differ about which should have been used in both sentences, ​and no one below the degree of a metaphysician can pretend to decide between them.
A scholar endowed by [with] an ample knowledge and persuasive eloquence to cite and instance.—Meredith.
I say to you plainly there is no end to [at] which your practical faculty can aim...—Emerson.
He urged that it was an undesirable thing to be always tinkering with this particular trade.—Times.
We tamper with, but tinker at, the thing that is to be operated on.
You may hunt the alien from his overcrowded tenement, you may forbid him, if you like, from toiling ten hours a day for a wage of a few shillings.—Times.
His toiling, or him to toil.
His readiness, not only at catching a point, but at making the most of it on a moment's notice, was amazing.—Bryce.
On the spur of the moment, but at a moment's notice. The motive was, no doubt, to avoid repeating at; but such devices are sins if they are detected.
Nataly had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice.—Meredith.
We acquiesce in, not to, though either phrase is awkward enough with a voice; to is probably accounted for again by the desire to avoid repeating in.
3. After nouns.
There can be no fault found to her manners or sentiments.—Scott.
I find fault with: I find a fault in. Write in or with, as one or the other phrase is meant.
The Diet should leave to the Tsar the initiative of taking such measures as may be necessary.—Times.
M. Delcassé took the initiative of turning the conversation to Moroccan affairs.—Times.
We assume the right of turning, we take the initiative in turning.
​Those, who are urging with most ardour what are called the greatest benefits of mankind.—Emerson.
Benefits of the benefactor, but to the beneficiary.
A power to marshal and adjust particulars, which can only come from an insight of [into] their whole connection.—Emerson.
From its driving energy, its personal weight, its invincible oblivion to [of] certain things, there sprang up in Redwood's mind the most grotesque and strange of images.—H. G. Wells.
4. Superfluous prepositions, whether due to ignorance of idiom, negligence, or mistaken zeal for accuracy.
As to Mr. Lovelace's approbation of your assumption-scheme, I wonder not at.—Richardson.
A something of which the sense can in no way assist the mind to form a conception of.—Daily Telegraph.
The Congress could occupy itself with no more important question than with this.—Huxley.
After than, the writer might have gone on if it occupied itself with this; but if he means that, he must give it in full.
5. Necessary prepositions omitted.
The Lady Henrietta...wrote him regularly through his bankers, and once in a while he wrote her.—Baroness von Hutten.
Write without to will now pass in commercial letters only; elsewhere, we can say 'I write you a report, a letter', but neither 'I will write you' simply, nor 'I wrote you that there was danger'. That is, we must only omit the to when you not only is the indirect object, but is unmistakably so at first sight. It may be said that I write you is good old English. So is he was a-doing of it; I guess is good Chaucerian. But in neither case can the appeal to a dead usage—dead in polite society, or in England—justify what is a modern vulgarism.
6. Compound prepositions and conjunctions.
The increasing use of these is much to be regretted. They, and the love for abstract expression with which they are closely allied, are responsible for much of what is flaccid, diffuse, and nerveless, in modern writing. They are generally, ​no doubt, invented by persons who want to express a more precise shade of meaning than they can find in anything already existing; but they are soon caught up by others who not only do not need the new delicate instrument, but do not understand it. Inasmuch as, for instance, originally expressed that the truth of its clause gave the exact measure of the truth that belonged to the main sentence. So (from the Oxford Dictionary):
God is only God inasmuch as he is the Moral Governor of the world.—Sir W. Hamilton.
But long before Hamilton's day the word passed, very naturally, into the meaning, for which it need never have been invented, of since or because. Consequently most people who need the original idea have not the courage to use inasmuch as for it, like Sir W. Hamilton, but resort to new combinations with far. Those new combinations, however, as will be shown, fluctuate and are confused with one another. The best thing we can now do with inasmuch as is to get it decently buried; when it means since, since is better; when it means what it once meant, no one understands it. The moral we wish to draw is that these compounds should be left altogether alone except in passages where great precision is wanted. Just as a word like save (except) is ruined for the poet by being used on every page of ordinary prose (which it disfigures in revenge for its own degradation), so inasmuch as is spoilt for the logician.
We shall first illustrate the absurd prevailing abuse of the compound preposition as to. In each of the following sentences, if as to is simply left out, no difference whatever is made in the meaning. It is only familiarity with unnecessary circumlocution that makes such a state of things tolerable to any one with a glimmering of literary discernment. As to flows from the pen now at every possible opportunity, till many writers seem quite unaware that such words as question or doubt can bear the weight of a whether-clause without help from this offensive parasite.
With the idea of endeavouring to ascertain as to this, I invited...—Times.
Confronted with the simple question as to in what way other people's sisters, wives and daughters differ from theirs...—Daily Telegraph.
It is not quite clear as to what happened.—Westminster Gazette.
Doubt is expressed as to whether the fall of Port Arthur will materially affect the situation.—Times.
I feel tempted to narrate one that occurred to me, leaving it to your judgment as to whether it is worthy of notice in your paper.—Spectator.
I was entirely indifferent as to the results of the game, caring nothing at all as to whether I had losses or gains.—Corelli.
The first as to in this may pass, though plain to is better.
German anticipations with regard to the future are apparently based upon the question as to how far the Sultan will...—Times.
But you are dying to know what brings me here, and even if you find nothing new in it you will perhaps think it makes some difference as to who says a thing.—Greenwood.
This is the worst of all. The subject of makes (anticipated in the ordinary way by it) is who says a thing; but the construction is obscured by the insertion of as to. We are forced to suppose, wrongly, that it means what brings me here. Worse than the worst, however, at least more aggressively wrong, is an instance that we find while correcting this sheet for the press:
...Although it is open to doubt as to what extent individual saving through more than one provident institution prevails.—Westminster Gazette.
Another objection to the compound prepositions and conjunctions is that they are frequently confused with one another or miswritten. We illustrate from two sets. (a) The word view is common in the forms in view of, with a view to, with the view of. The first expresses external circumstances, existing or likely to occur, that must be taken into account; as, In view of these doubts about the next dividend, we do not recommend... The other two both express the object aimed at, but must not have the correspondence, a view to, the view of, upset.
of the board for the purpose of examining the arms of the children with a view to advising the parents to allow their children to be vaccinated.—Spectator.
The Sultan...will seek to obtain money by contracting loans with private firms in view of beginning for himself the preliminary reforms.—Times.
If Germany has anything to propose in view of the safeguarding of her own interests, it will certainly meet with that courteous consideration which is traditional in French diplomacy.—Times.
Its execution is being carefully prepared with a view of avoiding any collision with the natives.—Times.
My company has been approached by several firms with a view of overcoming the difficulty.—Times.
Of these the first is correct; but the sentence it comes in is so typical of the compound-prepositional style that no one who reads it will be surprised that its patrons should sometimes get mixed; how should people who write like that keep their ideas clear? The second should have with a view to. Still more should the third, which is ambiguous as well as unidiomatic; the words used ought to mean seeing that her interests are safeguarded already. The fourth and fifth should again have with a view to (or with the view of).
(b) The combinations with far—as far as, so far as, so far that, in so far as, in so far that, of which the last is certainly, and the last but one probably needless—have some distinctions and limitations often neglected. For instance, as far as must not be followed by a mere noun except in the literal sense, as far as London. So far as and so far that are distinguished by good writers in being applied, the first to clauses that contain a doubtful or varying fact, the other to clauses containing an ascertained or positive fact. So far as (and in so far as), that is, means to whatever extent, and so far that means to this extent, namely that.
The question of the Capitulations and of the Mixed Tribunals is not in any way essentially British, save in so far as the position of Great Britain in Egypt makes her primarily responsible.–Times.
Correct; but except that would be much better than save in so far as.
​Previous to 1895, when a separate constitution existed for the Bombay and Madras armies, possibly a military department and a military member were necessary in order to focus at the seat of government the general military situation in India, but in the judgment of many officers well qualified to form an opinion, no such department under present conditions is really requisite, in so far as the action of the Commander-in-Chief is thwarted in cases where he should be the best judge of what is necessary.—Times.
Entirely wrong. It is confused with inasmuch as, and since should be written.
The officials have done their utmost to enforce neutrality, and have in so far succeeded as the Baltic fleet keeps outside the three-mile limit.—Times.
Should be so far succeeded that; we are meant to understand that the fleet does keep outside, though it does not go right away as might be wished.
The previous appeal made by M. Delcassé was so far successful as the Tsar himself sent orders to Admiral Rozhdestvensky to comply with the injunctions of the French colonial authorities.—Times.
As should be that. It is not doubtful to what extent or whether the Tsar sent. He did send; that is the only point.
They are exceptional in character, in so far as they do not appear to be modifications of the epidermis.—Huxley.
Should probably be so far exceptional that. The point is that there is this amount of the exceptional in them, not that their irregularity depends on the doubtful fact of their not being modifications; the word appear ought otherwise to have been parenthetically arranged.
This influence was so far indirect in that it was greatly furthered by Le Sage, who borrowed the form of his Spanish contemporaries.—Times.
A mixture of was so far indirect that and was indirect in that.
He seemed quickly to give up first-hand observation and to be content to reproduce and re-reproduce his early impressions, always trusting to his own invention, and the reading public's inveterate preference for symmetry and satisfaction, to pull him through. They have pulled him through in so far as they have made his name popular; but an artist and a realist—possibly even a humourist—have been lost.—Times.
​In so far as leaves the popularity and the pulling through doubtful, which they are clearly not meant to be. It should be so far that.
A man can get help from above to do what as far as human possibility has proved out of his power.—Daily Telegraph.
This is a whole sentence, not a fragment, as might be supposed. But as far as (except in the local sense) must have a verb, finite or infinite. Supply goes.
The large majority would reply in the affirmative, in so far as to admit that there is a God.—Daily Telegraph.
So far as to admit, or in so far as they would admit; not the mixture. And this distinction is perhaps the only justification for the existence of in so far as by the side of so far as; the first is only conjunction, the second can be preposition as well.
* ↑ The reason why many who as a rule use the possessive are willing to do without it after verbs like prevent is perhaps this: in I prevented him going they consciously or unconsciously regard both him and going as nouns, one the indirect, one the direct object, as in I refused him leave.
* ↑ Dr. Henry Bradley, The Making of English, p. 53.