in New York, protesting against the use of _people_ when _persons_
would seem to be the better word, and complacently declaring that
“for twenty-five years or more I have kept my eye on this little word
_people_ and I have yet to find a single American or English author who
does not misuse it.” We are instantly reminded of the Irish juryman who
said, “Eleven more obstinate men I never met in the whole course of my
life.” In this pitiful condition of affairs one cannot discover on what
this purist bases the hope he expresses that “in the course of two or
three hundred years the correct employment of it may possibly become
general.” Rather may it be hoped that in the course of two or three
hundred years a knowledge of the principles which govern English usage
may become general.
What is called the Split Infinitive is also a cause of pain to the
purist, who is greatly grieved when he finds George Lewes in the
‘Life of Goethe’ saying “to completely understand.” This inserting
of an adverb between the _to_ and the rest of the verb strikes the
word-critic as pernicious, and he denounces it instantly as a novelty
to be stamped out before it permanently contaminates our speech. Even
Professor A. S. Hill, in his ‘Foundations of Rhetoric,’ while admitting
its antiquity, since it has been in use constantly from the days of
Wyclif to the days of Herbert Spencer, still declares it to be “a
common fault” not sanctioned or even condoned by good authority.
The fact is, I think, that the Split Infinitive has a most respectable
pedigree, and that it is rather the protest against it which is the
novelty now establishing itself. The Split Infinitive is to be found
in the pages of Shakspere, Massinger, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe, Burke,
Coleridge, Byron, De Quincey, Macaulay, Matthew Arnold, Browning,
Motley, Lowell, and Holmes. But it is a fact also, I think, that
since the protest has been raised there has been a tendency among
careful writers to eschew the Split Infinitive, or at least to employ
it only when there is a gain in lucidity from its use, as there is,
for example, in Professor Lounsbury’s “to more than counterbalance”
(‘Studies in Chaucer,’ i. 447).
A writer who has worked out for himself a theory of style, and who has
made up his mind as to the principles he ought to follow in writing,
often yields to protests the validity of which he refuses to admit. He
gives the protestant the benefit of the doubt and drops the stigmatized
words from his vocabulary and refrains from the stigmatized usages,
reserving always the right to avail himself of them at a pinch. What
such a writer has for his supreme object is to convey his thought
into the minds of his readers with the least friction; and he tries
therefore to avoid all awkwardness of phrase, all incongruous words,
all locutions likely to arouse resistance, since any one of these
things will inevitably lessen the amount of attention which this reader
or that will then have available for the reception of the writer’s
message. This is what Herbert Spencer has called the principle of
Economy of Attention; and a firm grasp of this principle is a condition
precedent to a clear understanding of literary art.
For a good and sufficient reason such a writer stands ready at any
time to break this self-imposed rule. If a solecism, or a vulgarism
even, will serve his purpose better at a given moment than the more
elegant word, he avails himself of it, knowing what he is doing, and
risking the smaller loss for the greater gain. M. Legouvé tells us that
at a rehearsal of a play of Scribe’s he drew the author’s attention
to a bit of bad French at the climax of one of the acts, and Scribe
gratefully accepted the correct form which was suggested. But two or
three rehearsals later Scribe went back unhesitatingly to the earlier
and incorrect phrase, which happened to be swifter, more direct, and
dramatically more expressive than the academically accurate sentence
M. Legouvé had supplied. Shakspere seems often to have been moved by
like motives, and to have been willing at any time to sacrifice strict
grammar to stage-effectiveness.
Two tendencies exist side by side to-day, and are working together
for the improvement of our language. One is the tendency to disregard
all useless distinctions and to abolish all useless exceptions and to
achieve simplicity and regularity. The other is the tendency toward a
more delicate precision which shall help the writer to present his
thought with the utmost clearness.
Of the first of these abundant examples can be cited phrases which the
word-critic would denounce, and which are not easy to defend on any
narrow ground, but which are employed freely even by conscientious
writers, well aware that no utility is served by a pedantic precision.
So we find Matthew Arnold in his lectures ‘On Translating Homer’
speaking of “the _four first_,” where the purist would prefer to have
said “the _first four_.” So we find Hawthorne in the ‘Blithedale
Romance’ writing “fellow, clown, or bumpkin, to _either_ of these,”
when the purist would have wished him to say “to any one of these,”
holding that “either” can be applied only when there are but two
objects.
In like manner the word-critics object to the use of the superlative
degree when the comparative is all that is needed; yet we find in the
King James translation of Genesis, “her eldest son, Esau,” and she
had but two sons. And they refuse to allow either a comparative or a
superlative to adjectives which indicate completeness; yet we find in
Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall,’ “its success was not more universal.” They
do not like to see a writer say that anything is “more perfect” or
“most complete,” holding that what is universal or perfect or complete
“does not admit of augmentation,” as one of them declared more than a
century ago in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for July, 1797. In all these
cases logic may be on the side of the word-critic. But what of it?
Obedience to logic would here serve no useful purpose, and therefore
logic is boldly disobeyed. However inexact these phrases may be, they
mislead no one and they can be understood without hesitation.
Side by side with this tendency to take the short-cut exists the
other tendency to go the long way round if by so doing the writer’s
purpose is more easily accomplished. There is a common usage which
is frequently objurgated by the word-critics and which may fall into
desuetude, not through their attacks, but because of its conflict
with this second tendency. This is the insertion of an unnecessary
_who_ or _which_ after an _and_ or a _but_, as in this sentence from
Professor Butcher’s admirable discussion of Aristotle’s ‘Theory of
Poetry’: “Nature is an artist capable indeed of mistakes, but _who_ by
slow advances and through many failures realizes her own idea.” So in
Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’ we are told of “a chorus of twenty-seven
youths and as many virgins, of noble family, and _whose_ parents were
both alive.” This locution is proper in French, but it is denounced as
improper in English by the purists, who would strike out the _but_
from Professor Butcher’s and the _and_ from Gibbon’s.
It is a constant source of amusement to those interested in observing
the condition and the development of the language to note the frequency
with which the phrases put under taboo by the word-critics occur in the
writings of the masters of English. In my own recent reading I have
found this despised construction in the pages of Fielding, Johnson,
Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mr. John Morley,
Mr. Henry James, and Professor Jebb in Great Britain, and in pages of
Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, and Mr. John Fiske in the United States.
What is more significant perhaps is its discovery in the works of
professed students of language--Trench, Isaac Taylor, Max Müller, and
W. D. Whitney.
And yet, in spite of this array of authorities, I am inclined to
believe that this usage may perhaps disappear with the increasing
attention which the best writers are now giving to the rhythm and
balance of their sentences. It is not that the form is wrong--that is
a matter not to be decided offhand; it is that the form is awkward
and that it jars on the feeling for symmetry--the feeling which leads
us to put a candlestick on each side of the clock on the mantelpiece.
Professor Whitney began one of his sentences thus: “Castrén, himself a
Finn, and whose long and devoted labors have taught us more respecting
them than has been brought to light by any other man, ventures,” etc.
Would not this sentence have been easier and more elegant if Whitney
had either struck out _and_ (which is not needed at all) or else
inserted _who was_ after Castrén? In the sentence as Whitney wrote
it _and whose_ makes me look back for the _who_ which my feeling for
symmetry leads me to suppose must have preceded it somewhere, and
in this vain search part of my attention is abstracted. I have been
forced to think of the manner of his remarks when my mind ought to have
given itself so far as might be to the matter of them. In other words,
the real objection to this usage is that it is in violation of the
principle of Economy of Attention.
Another usage also under fire from the purists is exemplified in
another extract from Whitney: “It is, I am convinced, a mistake to
commence at once upon a course of detailed comparative philology with
pupils who have _only_ enjoyed the ordinary training in the classical
or modern languages.” Obviously his meaning would be more sharply
defined if he had put _only_ after instead of before _enjoyed_. So
Froude, writing about ‘English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century,’ says
that “the fore-and-aft rig alone would enable a vessel to tack, as
it is called, and this could _only_ be used with craft of moderate
tonnage”; and here again a transposition after the verb would increase
the exactness of the statement.
The proposition of _only_ is really important only when the misplacing
of it may cause ambiguity; and Professor F. N. Scott has shown how
Webster, always careful in the niceties of style, unhesitatingly put
_only_ out of its proper place, if by so doing he could improve the
rhythm of his period, as in this sentence from the second Bunker Hill
oration: “It did not, indeed, put an end to the war; but, in the then
existing hostile state of feeling, the difficulties could only be
referred to the arbitration of the sword.” This is as it should be,
the small effect promptly sacrificed for the larger. The rule--if rule
it really is--must be broken unhesitatingly when there is greater gain
than loss.
There is an anecdote in some volume of French theatrical memoirs
narrating an experience of Mademoiselle Clairon, the great tragic
actress, with a pupil of hers, a girl of fine natural gifts for
the histrionic art, but far too frequent and too exuberant in her
gesticulation. So when the pupil was once to appear before the public
in a recitation, Mademoiselle Clairon bound the girl’s arms to her side
by a stiff thread and sent her thus upon the stage. With the first
strong feeling she had to express the pupil tried to raise her arms,
only to be restrained by the thread. A dozen times in the course of
her recitation she was prevented from making the gestures she desired,
until at the very end she could stand it no longer, and in the climax
of her emotion she broke her bonds and lifted her hands to her head.
When she came off the stage she went humbly to where Mademoiselle
Clairon was standing in the wings and apologized for having snapped the
thread. “But you did quite right!” said the teacher. “That was the time
to make the gesture--not before!”
Rules exist to aid in composition; and by wise men composition is not
undertaken merely to prove the existence of the rules. Circumstances
may alter even codes of manners; in Paris, for instance, it is
permissible to sop bread in the sauce, a practice which is bad form in
London--since nobody would want any more of a British sauce than could
be avoided. This paper, however, has failed of its purpose if it is
taken as a plea for license. Rather is it intended as an argument for
liberty. It has been written as the result of a belief that a frank
protest is needed now and again against the excessive demands of the
linguistic dogmatists. That what the linguistic dogmatists write is
as widely read as it seems to be is a sign of a healthy interest in
the speech which must serve us all, scholars and school-masters and
plain people. This interest should be aroused also to shake off the
shackles with which pedagogs and pedants seek to restrain not only
the full growth of our noble tongue, but even its free use. As Renan
pithily put it, every time that “grammarians have tried deliberately to
reform a language, they have succeeded only in making it heavy, without
expression, and often less logical than the humblest dialect.”
If English is to be kept fit to do the mighty work it bids fair to be
called upon to accomplish in the future, it must be allowed to develop
along the line of least resistance. It must be encouraged to follow its
own bent and to supply its own needs and to shed its worn-out members.
It must not be hampered by syntax taken from Latin or by rules evolved
out of the inner consciousness of word-critics. It must not be too
squeamish or even too particular, since excessive refinement goes only
with muscular weakness. It must be allowed to venture on solecisms, on
neologisms, on Americanisms, on Briticisms, on Australianisms, if need
be, however ugly some of these may seem, for the language uses itself
up fast, and has to be replenished that it shall not lose its vigor and
its ardor.
To say this is not to say that every one of us who uses English in
speaking or in writing should not always choose his words carefully
and decide on his forms judiciously. Only by a wise selection can the
language be kept at its highest efficiency; only thus can its full
powers be revealed to us. And if we decide that we prefer to keep
to the very letter of the law as laid down by the grammarians--why,
that is our privilege and no one shall say us nay. But let us not
think scorn of those who are careless in paying their tithes of mint
and anise and cummin, if also they stand upright and speak the truth
plainly.
For myself--if a personal confession is not here out of place--I shrink
always from profiting by any license I have just claimed for others; I
strive always to eschew the Split Infinitive, to avoid _and who_ when
there is no preceding _who_ which may balance it, and to put _only_
always in the place where it will do most good. It is ever my aim
to avail myself of the phrase which will convey my meaning into the
reader’s mind with the least friction; and out of the effort to achieve
this approach along the line of least resistance, I get something of
the joy an honest craftsman ought always to feel in the handling of
his tools. For this is what words are, after all; they are the tools
of man, devised to serve his daily needs. As Bagehot once suggested,
we may not know how language was first invented and made, “but beyond
doubt it was shaped and fashioned into its present state by common,
ordinary men and women using it for common and ordinary purposes. They
wanted a carving-knife, not a razor or lancet; and those great artists
who have to use language for more exquisite purposes, who employ it to
describe changing sentiments and momentary fancies and the fluctuating
and indefinite inner world, must use curious nicety and hidden but
effectual artifice, else they cannot duly punctuate their thoughts
and slice the fine edges of their reflections. A hair’s breadth is as
important to them as a yard’s breadth to a common workman.”
(1898)
X
AN INQUIRY AS TO RIME
“I have a theory about double rimes for which I shall be attacked by
the critics, but which I could justify perhaps on high authority, or,
at least, analogy,” wrote Mrs. Browning to a friend not long after
the publication of one of her books. “These volumes of mine have
more double rimes than any two books of English poems that ever to
my knowledge were printed; I mean of English poems not comic. Now of
double rimes in use which are perfect rimes you are aware how few there
are; and yet you are also aware of what an admirable effect in making
a rhythm various and vigorous double riming is in English poetry.
Therefore I have used a certain license; and after much thoughtful
study of the Elizabethan writers have ventured it with the public.
And do you tell me--you who object to the use of a different vowel in
a double rime--why you rime (as everybody does, without blame from
everybody) _given_ to _heaven_, when you object to my riming _remember_
to _chamber_? The analogy is all on my side, and I believe that the
spirit of the English language is also.”
Here Mrs. Browning raises a question of interest to all who have paid
any attention to the technic of verse. No doubt double rimes do give
vigor and variety to a poem, altho no modern English lyrist has really
rivaled the magnificent medieval ‘Dies Iræ,’ wherein the double rimes
thrice repeated fall one after the other like the beating of mighty
trip-hammers. There is no doubt also that the English language is not
so fertile in double rimes as the Latin, the German, or the Italian;
and that some of the English poets, clutching for these various and
vigorous effects, have refused to abide by the strict letter of the
law, and have claimed the license of modifying the emphatic vowel from
one line to another. Mrs. Browning defends this revolt, and finds
it easy to retort to her correspondent that he himself has ventured
to link _heaven_ and _given_. Many another poet has coupled these
unwilling words; and not a few have also married _river_ and _ever_,
_meadow_ and _shadow_, _spirit_ and _inherit_.
Mrs. Browning is prepared to justify herself by authority, or at least
by analogy; and yet, in bringing about the espousal of _chamber_ and
_remember_, she is evidently aware that it is no love-match she is
aiding and abetting, but at best a marriage of convenience. She pleads
precedence to excuse her infraction of a statute the general validity
of which she apparently admits. The most that she claims is that the
tying together of _chamber_ and _remember_ is permissible. She seems to
say that these ill-mated pairs are, of course, not the best possible
rimes, but that, since double rimes are scarce in English, the lyrist
may, now and then, avail himself of the second best. An American poet
of my acquaintance is bolder than the British poetess; he has the full
courage of his convictions. He assures me that he takes pleasure in the
tying together of incompatible words like _river_ and _ever_, _meadow_
and _shadow_, finding in these arbitrary matings a capricious and
agreeable relief from the monotony of more regular riming.
This forces us to consider the basis upon which any theory of
“allowable” rimes must rest--any theory, that is, which, after
admitting that certain rimes are exact and absolutely adequate,
asserts also that certain other combinations of terminal words, altho
they do not rime completely and to the satisfaction of all, are still
tolerable. This theory accepts certain rimes as good, and it claims in
addition certain others as “good enough.”
Any objection to the pairing of _spirit_ and _inherit_, of _remember_
and _chamber_, and the like, cannot be founded upon the fact that in
the accepted orthography of the English language the spelling of the
terminations differs. Rime has to do with pronunciation and not with
orthography; rime is a match between sounds. The symbols that represent
these sounds--or that may misrepresent them more or less violently--are
of little consequence. What is absurdly called a “rime to the eye” is a
flagrant impossibility, or else _hiccough_ may pair off with _enough_,
_clean_ with _ocean_, and _plague_ with _ague_. The eye is not the
judge of sound, any more than the nose is the judge of color. _Height_
is not a rime to _eight_; but it is a rime to _sight_, to _bite_,
to _proselyte_, and to _indict_. So _one_ does not rime with either
_gone_ or _tone_; but it does with _son_ and with _bun_. _Tomb_ and
_comb_, and _rhomb_ and _bomb_ are not rimes; but _tomb_ and _doom_,
and _spume_ and _rheum_ are. The objection to the linking together of
_meadow_ and _shadow_, and of _ever_ and _river_ is far deeper than any
superficial difference of spelling; it is rooted in the difference of
the sounds themselves. In spite of the invention of printing, or even
of writing itself, the final appeal of poetry is still to the ear and
not to the eye.
Probably the first utterances of man were rhythmic, and probably poetry
had advanced far toward perfection long before the alphabet was devised
as an occasional substitute for speech. In the beginning the poet had
to charm the ears of those whom he sought to move, since there was
then no way by which he could reach the eye also. To the rhapsodists
verse was an oral art solely, as it is always for the dramatists,
whose speeches must fall trippingly from the tongue, or fail of
their effect. The work of the lyrist--writer of odes, minnesinger,
troubadour, ballad-minstrel--has always been intended to be said or
sung; that it should be read is an afterthought only. Even to-day, when
the printing-press has us all under its wheels, it is by our tongues
that we possess ourselves of the poetry we truly relish. A poem is not
really ours till we know it by heart and can say it to ourselves, or at
least until we have read it aloud, and until we can quote it freely.
If a poem has actually taken hold on our souls, it rings in our ears,
even if we happen to be visualizers also, and can call up at will the
printed page whereon it is preserved.
This fact, that poetry is primarily meant to be spoken aloud rather
than read silently, altho obvious when plainly stated, has not been
firmly grasped by many of those who have considered the technic of the
art, and therefore there is often obscurity in the current discussions
of rime and rhythm. In the rhetoric of verse there is to-day not a
little of the confusion which existed in the rhetoric of prose before
Herbert Spencer put forth his illuminating and stimulating essay on
the ‘Philosophy of Style.’ Even in that paper he suggested that the
principle of Economy of Attention was as applicable to verse as to
prose; and he remarked that “were there space, it might be worth while
to inquire whether the pleasure we take in rime, and also that which we
take in euphony, are not partly ascribable to the same general cause.”
This principle of Economy of Attention explains why it is that any
style of speaking or writing is more effective than another, by
reminding us that we have, at any given moment, only so much power
of attention, and that, therefore, however much of this power has to
be employed on the form of any message must be subtracted from the
total power, leaving just so much less attention available for the
apprehension of the message itself. To convey a thought from one mind
to another, we must use words the reception of which demands more
or less mental exertion; and therefore that statement is best which
carries the thought with the least verbal friction. Some friction there
must be always; but the less there is, the more power of attention the
recipient has left to master the transmitted thought.
It is greatly to be regretted that Spencer did not spare the space
to apply to verse this principle, which has been so helpful in the
analysis of prose. He did go so far as to suggest that metrical
language is more effective than prose, because when “we habitually
preadjust our perceptions to the measured movement of verse” it is
“probable that by so doing we economize attention.” This suggestion
has been elaborated by one of his disciples, the late Mr. Grant Allen,
in his treatise on ‘Physiological Esthetics,’ and it has been formally
controverted by the late Mr. Gurney, in his essay on the ‘Power of
Sound.’ Perhaps both Spencer and Gurney are right; part of our pleasure
in rhythm is due to the fact that “the mind may economize its energies
by anticipating the attention required for each syllable,” as the
former says, and part of it is “of an entirely positive kind, acting
directly on the sense,” as the latter maintains.