The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-02-27

visedly) of superfne critics have long i'm. molate4 themselves all in vain. The English people, with solid sense, will still go on talking correctly about the two 6rSt chapters until the final advent of Macauiay's New Zeaiander. For they don't mean the First Two, as opposed to the Second TWo. and the Third Two, and so forth, ad ip6nitum, as the supesfine critic would make us believe ;,hey haven't mentally divided all the chapters of the book and all the ot cts of the universe into regular pairs, two by two, like tAe unclean animals when they went into the ark; they mean merely to distinguish the Two First from the Third, and Fourth, and Fihh, and all subsequent chapters whatsoever. In the cruclAl instance oi the Two First Norman kings" we get the full absurdity of the superfne princi- pie well displayed. There were alto gether only three Norman kings (ao, dear critic, have not forgotten S,ephsa), therefore the First Two cannot possibly be contrasted with the Second Two i; they can be contrasted with the third alone. "But," says the prying pedant there couldn't conceivabiy bs two Sssss 1; there was one first and one second. !" Nonsense We can have hfty 6Tsts, it tue sovereign people so wiu it. There were two who came first, and a third who came after them. The genius of the lam guage has settled the question for us iong ago, and has settled it a great deal moro accurately, too, than the genius of the national school master could ever hope 10 do
 Bat # is not only national school mas ters who want to impose upon the free and untrammslled Eogllsh language these petty homemade coboler emonda- tions. Great scholars themselves often descend 10 the level of Smelfungus ana Martinus Scriblerus; they try to fosce the infinite energies of a living and active tongue through their own special half. inch ring, like the stones employed for macadamizing the highways. A modern historian-the most phenomenaly bad writer among great authors of the pres ent geperation-has lately given us some strange examples of this super fine crii- cal tendency. He objscts, for example, to the phrase "to dscimate," as applied 10 the ravages of disease or warfare As every English writer and speaker uses this phrase, l, means simply and solely exactly what it says-to reduce by kill ing on the average about every tenth man. Nobody, probably except this good historian, ever employed a word of such transparent etymology in any other than this purely genealogical sense From the very first 1t meant that and nothing else. In its ordinary m litary 'gni6cation, it was applied to the system of selecting every tenth man for punish ment after a general mutiny. Blu, it may just as well moan taking every tenth man iu any other way, as by fever or rAe-shot ; aud it does mean that in ordinary EAg. lish. Ye. about such a very simple and transparent meaning there must needs be hagg ing and myst 6catiop: This mis- use of the word declmate, though 1t has sometimes n ade its way into the pages of really good writers. Is one of the very worst cases of the abuse of the language" Who has abused or misuSed the word Nobody, so tar as ] know, except the critic This Is worse than JedburYh jus tice. Our supeI6ne author first imputes to people that they don't mean wh at they plainly say, and then hnis fault with them for saying what they did without meaning it Especially does his right eous wrath burn bright against the col. location. !" literally decimatcd" plead guilty myself to having hequently sp- piled this peccant phrase, ia newspapex leaders, to armies in acdop, and am per fectly certain that always meant by 1t ist what said, that tho bullets selected for punishment on tho average ono tenth of the ontire body. It never occurred to me that even a microscopic critic could misunderstood so plain an expressioa. Yet eveu wheo one uses to decimate '' metaphoricany, In the rough sense of to punish severely, or to destroy a very large proportion, these is surely nothing very wroag or ou,-ofthe- ~ay in tho us age Siisht exaggsration aad slight me- tonomy arc familiar factors In tho gene sis of vocabulary
 And this leads us on to a second habit of the microscopic critic, which venture to describe as the Psychological FAllacy. Your critic happeas to know yell some some ose particular language, let ss say Greek or LatiA and so far as the words dsr,ved from thst language arc concerned (And 90 far oal,) he insists upon every word being ngidly applied in its strict original etynological meaning. He makes no allowance fer the natural and beautiful growth of metaphor, and the uansscrrace of sigsi6cshon, which must necessarily affect the usage of all words in the course of tune he is aware that the root of mutual" in Latin implies reciprocal action, and 90 be objects to the harmless English expressioa Our Mu- tual FrieAd," which the genius of Dick ems has stamped so indeilbly upon the English language that all the ink of all tAe pedants will never suffice 10 wash out the hall mark. l use tho mixed meta pacr quite intentionally. because it tx- acdy exr resses the utter hopelesDess of the ef>r,s of ba2ded pedastry
 | Just above for example, happened to rem ark that tse historian have in my m nd was the most ~phenomeaally bad writer among aut ors of the present gen. eration. If his eye should ever chance to light upon these humble and defesen- ss Il f .-1