THE DON. I WAS reading Mathematics I. Our fellows' grounds are fresh and fair, Than reading for the May. And as I passed through fair St. John's Beneath the turrets high, A Freshman envying the Dons, Was sighing dolefully: "Our fellows' grounds are fresh and fair, And college rooms are dreary; I'd rather roam an idler there, II. "If Freshman, thou of those wouldst be Who drink our college wine; Thou first must guess what life lead we, And when you've told the riddle o'er, That this is your first May." "Yet, sighed he, college grounds are fair, And college rooms are dreary, I'd rather roam an idler there, Than study Lunar Theory. III. I read you by your chin smooth shorn, IV. I read you by your limbs so large, V. Freshman, a mateless lot is mine, And mateless shall I die; The gyp who serves you when you dine, Has happier life than I; And when together we are met, And the port is getting low; What might have been we all forget, "Yet are the gardens fresh and fair, I'd rather be an idler there, T. R. THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH.* DEAN Alford and Mr. Moon represent two classes who are just now doing much to mar the purity of our English. The former is a type of the school, who set up custom as their paramount guide in matters of language; the latter of the followers of Blair and Kames, who would cramp all energy and nervousness of style by precise rules, such as none but a dead language will allow. That the Dean has done good by calling attention to common mistakes and vulgarisms is evident from the thoughtful letters which have furnished much of the material for his later papers, but this only makes his advocacy of custom versus grammar the more dangerous. I am not going to uphold grammar in Mr. Moon's sense of the word as applied to the writing of English: the language is too elastic, its power of assimilation too great, for its growth to be thus limited. But there are general and universal laws of grammar, to which the language of civilized men is everywhere subject, laws equally binding upon the speech of Demosthenes, and the dialogue of Shakespeare. These laws are not arbitrary, but are founded on the common sense of mankind. Indeed it is this appeal to common sense which seems to have misled the Dean of Canterbury: though the common sense of mankind is surely better shown by the principles which men have acknowledged for centuries, than by the changing fashion of an age of beaver hats and crinolines. In defence of these principles, and by consequence of pure English, I propose in this paper to examine some of the points discussed by Dr. Alford, and to touch upon some other questions which arise out of the subject. I simply view the matter as one of common sense grammar; I have • A Plea for the Queen's English, by the Dean of Canterbury in Good Words for March, June, and November, 1863. VOL. IV. C no knowledge of the sources of the English language which would justify me in taking any higher ground. In his first paper the Dean says: "The 'to' of the infinitive mood is precisely the same preposition as the 'to' of motion towards a place. Were you going to do it?' simply means 'Were you in your mental intention approaching the doing of it?' And the proper conversational answer to such a question is, I was going to, or I was not going to,' as the case may be; not I was going,' or 'I was not going,' inasmuch as the mere verb 'to go' does not express any mental intention. This kind of colloquial abbreviation of the infinitive comprehends several more phrases in common use, and often similarly objected to, as e.g. ought to,' and 'ought not to,' neglect to,' &c., some of them not very elegant, but all quite unobjectionable on the score of grammar." I will return to the first-mentioned case by and bye. Let me say a few words on the general question. The infinitive mood may be called the noun form of the verb; it expresses, that is, the idea of the verb abstracted from the ideas of time and modality. This is the true key to its use. A noun can stand in a sentence either as subject or object, and under these heads most of the uses of the infinitive can be classed. Now the English infinitive has two separate forms, but no inflexions. The form to have' comes, it is true, from an inflexional form of the Anglo-Saxon (Latham's Handbook of the English Language, p. 397), but examples will show that in the written language it is such no longer. Each of the forms is used, now as subject, now as object. Take the following: To err is human, to forgive divine. To be or not to be, that is the question: (where the position of the negative shows that the 'to' is an integral part of the noun form.) And have is have, however men do catch. K. John, Act 1., Sc. 1. The use of this form, however, as subject is rare. Which, though I will not practise to deceive, K. John, ibid. • Good Words, March, 1862, p. 194, a. † In English, that is, and in fact in most modern languages: in the ancient the infinitive has an inflexion of time. Since that thy sight which should Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts, The infinitive also occupies the place of the object in such phrases as "I will come," "I dare say," or "I dare to say," as I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest. Othello, Act IV., Sc. 2.* The uses of the two forms thus run almost parallel, 'to deceive,' 'to learn,' being objects in the first passage, 'flow,' 'dance,' 'weep,' 'shake,' in the second. The second form is only, it will be noticed, used with transitive verbs as a secondary object. Now it follows from this meaning of the infinitive, that in the case of ordinary. transitive verbs the proper substitute for the infinitive standing as sole object is the same as it would be for a noun in the same place, namely, the neuter demonstrative 'it.' 'Do you wish to see this collection?' 'I do wish it.' 'Neglect to,' 'ought to,' and the like are consequently vulgarisms.† But besides these uses, there is another class which can scarcely be included in either of the former, as representative of which we will take the Dean's going to do.' The verb 'to go' is essentially an intransitive verb, and the infinitive 'to do' cannot therefore stand as its object. The explanation of this class is to be sought not in the general laws of the infinitive, but in the special origin of the form 'to do.' 'To' being, as the Dean remarks, the same as the ordinary preposition, expresses when combined with the noun form of the verb, the direction, object, tendency of an action. It is to this that we owe the use of the infinitive to denote purpose: "I come to bury Cæsar not to praise him," or consequence, as is the case after some adjectives and phrases like such as,' &c. or even absolutely * Other instances of the so-called gerundial form of the infinitive in early English following verbs, which generally take the objective form, may be seen in Dr. Latham's book. † If the Dean is not satisfied with 'I ought,' let him follow Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act III., Sc. 3. SIC. Answer to us. COR. Say, then; 'tis true, I ought so. |