The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1893-01-20
COON USAGE INIANGuAaE.

GOOD USAGE IN ANGUAGE.
Considerable uncertainty is sometimes
shown by people who are fain to make
correct use of their mother tongue as to
the authority which shall settle the
question. Most often, perhaps, the die
tionary is appealed to; and if it be re-
liable one, it will generally help us out of
the quandary. 1t is, too, the most con-
venient court of settlement, being ready
to hand and not given to talking back
and wandering from the point, as with
some learned folk cleo ed as judges. The
trouble with the dictionary is, however,
that it is likely to fail us if not a word
but an idiOm be in question. In such a
case, what is somewhat vaguely called
good usage" is invoked, meaning there
by the consensus of the opinion of the
most acceptable and authoritative writ
crs and speakers. Indeed, this may be
called the supreme court, for the dictiOn-
airy is, or should be, only the registration
of this good usage. People in general
and many critics assume that the sane
ton of the best writers and speakers is
quite enough to make work, an idiom
or pronunciation good and proper; and
we are very willing to allow that where
the sanction is general, that is fair cri-
terion.
But the principle is pushed further and
it is assured and even urged that if one
H,..t ala fri,r
lOcution, this makes it ring true and es-
tablishes it com of the realm. And
herein lies mischief and misconception,
it seems to us. For there is another
great law working in our speech besides
this practical one of good usage. 1t may
be called the law of genius of the tongue.
There are certain grammatical require
ments, certain idiomatic requirements,
Which the language, as seen in its hstor-
ical development and as it exists to-day,
is sensitive to and which no man, what
ever his standing may violate with i'm
punity. Shakespeare himself, along with
other Elizabethan writer's, not seldom
mixed the lenses of his verbs and the
cases of his nouns; but the rules he
broke are still more hOnored in the OBJ
servance than in the breach. Some of
the strongest literary men of the last
CONTEMPLATION and his confreres of
the Spectator among them-were very
careless and inaccurate in some idoms;
but the main currents of good usage still
insist on different course. The great
novelist Fielding wrote repeatedly you
was" for you were;" yet the former is
a vulgar error to-day.
Some current writers in England of
very fair standing use the holrid idiom
different to- instead of different
FROM" but it is perfectly proper to say
that this will always strike the Majority of
informed and trained users of words as a
barbarism. Indeed, then, good usage
should be decided by a consideration of
the habit of Il large number of those who
at the present day have proved them
selves natural leaders and masters; and,
as a corrective to their possible and &C.
casional eccentricities and mistakes, by
a knowledge of the historic laws un ier-
lying every tongue, and, unconsciously
to the wielders of it themselves, keeping
within definite bounds. And five haven't
time to study past sp ech and present
pathological technicalities, we must let
scholars who have pronounce upon the
question and listen respectively to their
CUWHnt.