Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-06-11

renowned the long tailed Johnsonese most pom
derous and most pedantic of Dialects in which our
fathers delighted only half century ago.
Perhaps this improvement in American style is
due in part to the dsestabshment of the dictionary
as final authority and to the discrowning of the
grammar the sole monarch of all it surveyed.
Perhaps it is due to the growing perception that the
spoken language is franker fresher and freer than
the written The old grammars absurdly
arbitrary and self-sufficent in the rules they laid
down and in the way they sought to shacke the
healthy growth of the language. They were guilty
of the objectionable sin of declaring that Shakes
peare and the transators of the English Bible
had committed faults of grammar if nice Gus
toms did not curtsy to great kings These old
fashioned grammarians arrogated to themselves
the privilege of saying that this usage was right
and that usage wrong instead of contenting them
selves with the humber task of recording the
several usages which they might find in the pages
of the masters of English
A comparison of two American grammarS Lindley
Murray's and the more recent volume by Professor
@. r. Carpenter, will serve to show how far have
advanced for the later author is modest and tenta
tive where the earlier arrogant and domineering
The trouble with these outworn grammars and
rhetorics not merely that they laid interdict
certain locutions but that their tone was always
prohbitive. They kept on declaring that this or
that must not be done Their advice mainly
negative; and thus it tended always to cramp and
to stiffen. They ordered to shun double mega
tives and split infnitves and final propositions
if mere avoidance of error would give sinew
to phrase They set up false standards; and the
result that 'tschoolmasters English became
term of reproach for it described style iuiceess
and nerveless, style unfit for hard work, style
which remote possible from the terse vigor
of actual speech. These false standards are not
yet wholly cast out; and there still sold here in
the United States every year thousands of text
books which lay down rules of real validity
and which tell the student what not to saw instead
of helping him to say what he wants But although
this is unfortunately true it is also that in
department of education has the improvement
been more obvious than in the teaching of English
Attention is rarely called to the grammatical
errors" of Shakespeare; and the callow student is
not pulled up with the conceit that he knows
about the English language than the mighty
masters who made it what it is.
Three centuries ago, Samuel Daniel, the poet-lau-
reate of King James, made prophetic inquiry:
And who in time knows whittier may
The treasures of tongue to what strange shores
The gain of our best glory may be sent
To enrich unknowing nations with stores?
What world in the yet uniformed Occident
May come refined with accents that ours?
Not only in the Uniformed Occident" but on the
strange shores of the Orient also the of
tongue enriching nations unknown when
Daniel rimed these lines. And here it is that
English is favored above all other languages that
it is spoken not merely in single compact country
but by two great peoples with their many outposts
on all the seven There is thus the less danger
that the language may stagnate. There is thus a
far greater variety of of refreshment and
renewal. The English language is the mother tongue
OF the British and of the Americans, of the Canadians
and of the Australians; and words and
meanings being contributed constantly from
OF these of SUNNY