The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-14
CORRUPT ENGLISH.
Some Playful Remarks by Master or
 the Language.

Some Playful Remarks by Master of
 the Language.
 "The subject of the rapid corruption of English is one full of melancholy ln- terest" So MT. Edward Lytteitoh writes in a contemporary serial. am firmly convinced that if anybody tres 1 to show another person how thlis 1 should be done-from skating upward the instructor will succeed in falling lo 1 do the thing right. Is ME. Lyttieto!l sentence I ght? What does he want Wltn ''one"? The subject is one full or melancholy interest" Perhaps we are intended to remember that the supJect ! is only one in crowd, all full of melan- choly interest. MT. LytteIton casts the eve of the mind over the sad pageant of mems miseries,' and selects for mournful contemplation the rapid cor
 ruption of English If this is not the exact sense-a fine large sense, 1 lhlilk then it should have been easier to write, ''the rapid corruption ol Ehsils is full of melancholy interest lhueeu' I conceive that this is the more excel lent way: the readers CONSCIOUSNESS is
 not tempted to cherish unaValllng re-
 grets for all the evils in Pandora's poH'
 of which the rapid corruption or Eflg
 fish is one, and not perhaps the most deplorable
 tHighly educated people, MT, Lyt- telton thinks, may stoop to folly II ms is not so sad as it would be if hlghly educated people were large and lrns nortant class of the community. Their
 conomonest error in English is the use
 of calculated to" in the sense ot llkely
 to-" This, to be sure, is an unfortunate phrase. Though educated, as It were
 within an inch of my life thank
 whatever gods there be- that do not
 write. Tt is calculated to rain when | mean sIt is likely to rain The phrase
 Tt is calculated to rain," seems to ln-
 sist, gratuitously, on the Argument
 from Design. as if Ahriman, or some
 other uptoward power had nicely pre-
 established atmospheric effects, rom the very beginning of things, so as 10 l snoil the wicket for batsmen ana lm-
 nrove it for bowlers. This is depior- ably anthropomorphc theory of things,
 so for one. prefer Tt is likely to rain" to "It is calculated to rain. |
 nrobably do not often err by saying Tt
 is calculated to rain' They use cal
 culatad" in another way, with reference
 to things controlled by human agency
 and with an ironical significance Such
 or such a novel lis calculated to acl as
 q soporific." You see the irony! The
 author did not really calculate on pro-
 ducing slumbrous effect but the crltlc
 archly insinuates that he did, and that
 he has succeeded. This original witu- cisn is lost if the highly educated critic
 writes. "this novel is likely to act as a
 soporific." So he writes is calculated
 or. if is very fond of conventional
 phrase, he says, is eminently calculat-
 ed as Mir. Lyttelton justly observes.
 Rut still there is a nuance shade Of
 difference of meaning, between is likely to" and 'is calculated to-" The latter
 nhrase, especially plus 'eminently,' IS . so hackneyed, so smooth worn, that 1t
 offers the line of least resistance to the Ahuman mind.
 Indeed. much of the corruption Of our
 English is due to mental indolence. we t do not pick our phrases. we do not se-
 lect a clean expression fresh from the mint We throw down the old smooth obliterated phrase, such as IS t eminently calculated to- or curious tc : say" or, if we are novelists, mere
 strange thing occurred" They all use < that cliche; one would be grateful to a 7 novelist who. if he can invent nothine = fresher would leave the old strange 6 | thing" alone. Another bore IS a slauct ] at the map will show" Nothing snort - of torture shall force me to write thai r a glance at the map will show anything , | But what else are you to say h' l student who consults the chart will dis Q cover" "the map when consulted, VII {; | reveal" eff you have q map, and car : | find the place on it, you will observe !, None of these is satisfactOry-We mus f not write none of these are satlstac y tory"-but I cannot endure "a glance q at the map" Perhaps we are not SC 1, lmuch worse than our ancestors. Thack ., | cray and Scott both abound in th' 5, abuse of "and which" and l think tha s. I once found five "whiches" in one sen r. tence of Sir Walters. Moreover, we d' l, not sneak of a member of the sex as q female" any longer; "an elegant fe = male." for example. Nobody even thei |, would have written Henry Y was t. male of military genius" but Scot s does write of Jeanne d'Arc as "an un 7, fortunate female" The words "ele IS gantn and "genteel" were overworket = in the early nineteenth century as lin d genious" was in the eighteenth "Th z, ingenious MT. Milton," critics used t s, say but we never write about the in l. genious MT. Swinburne." The adVer r. vastly" was also overdone, people en l. loved themselves vastly or quizze r, somebody vastly. Perhaps "eminentl d calculated to" will follow elegant an s. "genteel" and the vastly ingenious fe Ls male. into the limbo of the obsolete A d present I think ''virie' and passion
 ate" and powerful" show signs of dis