The morning journal-courier., 1908-08-07
L0UNSBURY'S BOOK What Brander Matthews Has to Say of "The Standard of
 Usage in English"
"C0RRECT" SPEAKERS HIT
Henry Cabot Lodge and Andrew Lang Still to Be Heard from,
 However.

tHueT the THTnpaTtS OI tnOse WHO were ignorantly yet valiantly defend- Ing our noble English tongue against 'corruptions' of all sorts Professor Lounsbury has now exploded a bomb which will bring their bastions tum- bling about their ears. Many there be who have entrenched themselves behind a mound of grammars and of other manuals setting forth the secret of correct" English, and who will now find themselves blown up Into the windy spaces of the sky, with no haven of refuge in sight And scores of those rigid reformers who have been hard at work school-mastering" the language, marking out metes and bounds beyond which 1t might not stray, will now discover that their oc- cupation Is gone, and also the sole reason for their existence. The battle breeze brings 10 us fainty the shrieks of the wounded and the groans of the
 dying-with Mir. Andrew Lang and Mir. Henry Cabot Lodge still to hear
 from.
 In this pleasantly written little
 book, as unpedantic and as unpeda-
 goglc as possible, as full of good
 humor as it Is of humor, Professor
 Lounsbury has considered the whole
 question of good English What is
 good English? How do we know
 proper or improper What principles
 ought to govern us in our choice of
 words and phrases and forms of
 speech7 What authority have those
 who fercely denounce the Split-Infni- tive and the Retained Object? Who
 shall decide when doctors disagree?
 Where can we find dry ground for the ark of the covenant to rest on? And
 the answer 10 all these queries is sim
 plicity itself The English language
 has been made. is being made and will be made by those who use it. Constantly is fl growing, changing, ad- justing itself to new uses, fitting itself more exactly 10 Its ever-shifting needs. It Is manufacturing new words: and it Is giving new meanings
 to old words. It Is modifying not only It's grammar, but also its syntax
 ns it finds occasion It Is always In
 transformation, as becomes living II thing, since the only languages that J have ceased to develop are the dead languages. And all these incessant
 notifications are the proof of the vi-
 tality of English and the necessary evidence of its health
 Many of these innovations shock Us
 at first by their novelty Some of II them repel us as overt barbarisms. A II few attract us at once by their felicity.
 But barbarous or felicltous. they all
 serve 10 show that the language is not II dead, that it Is very much alive, that H it is vigorously keeping itself fit for
 service. They may seem like "cor- Il ruptions" to those who are alert to I defend what they suppose to be the | purity" of the language II Is not n from new words or from new turns of phrase that the language fig in danger but from those who wish to impose
 on 1t straitjacket of logical uniform
 ity which would hinder it from its
 full service as an instrument of com
 munication.
 What. then. is the test which will
 ascertain whether word or a phrase l. Is At and proper? It Is no arbitrar,
 standard evolved from the inner con.
 sciousness of self-appointed censors
 It is nothing more than usage--tht g usage of the great writers of the Ian q guage. If a locution can be found /. frequently in the pages of the masters a. of English, then it Is good English, nc l., matter how illogical 1t may seem ol how unwarrantable, no matter wha objections may he raised by purists There can be no other standard thar
 that set up by the practice of thu aa great writers of the language. Wha II they did we are thereby authorized tt
 do. What they rejected we can em T. ploy only at our peril.
 n. es Our own likes and dislikes ma, n, govern us as individuals, and we ma, n. decline ever 10 write "the two first" O B. 'to loan" or "mutual friend" but ou = preferences and prejudices do not giv l. us any warrant for asserting that an, Id one of these is Correct" or "incor rect" Here the advice of Professo i'd Lounsbury Is pertlnent--"as long a
 the propriety of the expression re ar mains usettled it Is well for the peac '' of mind of the writer, who Is sensitiv er 10 criticism, to refrain from employ
 ing 1t; but it Is equally advisable fo W him to refrain from proclamng tn rs employment of 1t by others as some
 thing unpardonable" (p 112).
 T. What Professor Lounsbury has don 'a in this book, as unpretentious as 1t q entertaining, Is first to lay down thi f, sound doctrine, and then to conside ly the history of host of words an
 phrases and forms of speech whic
 have been ignorantly denounced. Fl
 heaps up illustrations to show that tn sL n so-called split-1nhnitive-e. g., "t W clearly prove"-has been employed b
 many of the foremost poets and pros w writers of Great Britain and tn ~" United States We are all of us g
 liberty to avoid 1t If we choose, bt . Macaulay and Tennyson, Matthew Al
 mold and Lowell all used 1t unhes
 tatingly Professor Lounsbury Is pal e. ticularly affective in exploding the al IS surdity of saying would rather" ir an stead of the sturdily idiomatic "ha ITS rather" He takes special pleasure he pointing out that the use of females or for women'--which Is often d' a nounced as special atrocity of Fen ,ia more Cooper's-was very common an the eighteenth century and in the fir gh half of the nineteenth. Jane Auste tn for one. often speaks of herself as an female"
 lip We are already indebted to Profe ,,e,- sor Lounsbury for an admirable life ,nt u, Cooper, for stimulating history he the English language, and for rich to appreciative critical biography me Chauser. But perhaps our lndebte ''. ,,aa. to Li,,, ie a,-ar oraotor fox tl,