Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-12-28
THE ERRORS OF WRITERS.


There are purists who, in their excess
OF culture, take extraordinary delight in
bouncing upon the errors of everyday
writers Of the press. Certainly the press
should express itself forcibly ,grammatically
and clearly, but it may be pardoned many
an error when it is considered that with
most press writers composition maintains
the form of an exacting task, that takes
small account of the physical or mental
conditions of the writer's. We are always
disposed to condemn the carping critics,
who generally lie in wait. Unless error
is outrageously broad, its commission
fragrant and the offense repeated, we pre-
fer to cloak it with charity and to assume
that the writer's mental part was over
tasked, weary, and probably sent to duty
under whip and spur.
But if those who stumble in press writ
ing wish consolation, they have it in the
examples of hundreds of accomplished
writers whose blunders bristle through
"A
these may be cited to emphasize the posi-
ton that laundering has not been confined
to the "grind" writers, but has character
lied the productions of some of the fore
mos masters of English. Miss Mi tford,
to whose graceful and sympathetic pen
recent writer in Temple Bar pays lofty
trsh OF ri 30
write: at has no literary pretensions en-
cept the total absence of all pretension
may pass for one in these days of abundant
deceit" Anthony Trollope wrote: each
clergyman declares aloud that he believes
it dozen times every year of his life"
He was certainly in mental eclipse wien
he committed to the reader SO inelegant a
sentence. Leslie Stephen must be supposed
to have forgotten, momentarily, the subject
of his sentence when he wrote, "Cowper's
tears are always wrung from him by in
tense anguish of soul, and never, as is oc-
casionally the case with Rousseau, suggests
that the weeper is proud of his excessive
tenderness
NJ. d. Conway, writer of notable pre-
cision, a master hand, sent a sheet to
print in Frdser's Magazine, reading: II
think it must have been to some such
primitive explanation of the whooping-
cough that there has grown up in Austria
the unique custom of treating that dis
oasa ~, tl,o roJ
Hallam, in "The Literature of Europe
wrote: ''No one as yet had exhibited the
structure of the human kidneys. Vesalius
having only examined them in dogs"
Dickens COMPOUNDED vocations and avo-
cations frequently, and Bulwer was guilty
of misuse of the same words; Sir Walter
Scott wrote of "Our Mutual Friend" and
Dickens so entitled novel.
Professor Forbes was guilty of deliber-
ateiy writing, 81 scarcely ever remember
to have had,n etc., and c. j. Mathews fol-
lowed his example by writing, 81 never
remember to have heard"
Perhaps the commonest error of the
newspaper writer is misplacing parts of
sentences; thus that purist, the Manchester
Examiner and Times, wrote, of, following
the example of our neighhors across the
channel, we are not inclined to declare a
republic in political matters, it is refresh
ing to think, etc" OF course this was
precisely the reverse OF what that journal
intended to say. This failure to place
things to be thought of together, in close
conjunction, is not attributable to ignor-
ance in such a case, nor in most cases. The
London Spectator, stickier for good Eng
lish, said: "The House affirmed the pro-
prosal to abolish university tests with
enthusiasm" 1t was keen criticism
Punch made upon such blunderings when
it asked, (which arm is this p after quot
ing the following sentence: zone of the
combatants was unhurt, and the other sus-
tanned wound in the arm of no i'm
portance."
OF course, we are not excusing habitual
blunders and gross errors, nor offering any
apology for sIip-shod and involved COM
position. But We are saying to the East
ern purists who appear to have become
very energetic in criticism of newspaper
work this winter, that hundreds of their
own class are shown by Professor Hodgson,
in his admirable collection, to have COM
mitted graver errors in composition than
the newspaper press is ever guilty Of