made the English language your study! All that you know about it is what you have picked up by "ordinary observa"tion"; and the result is, that you

*

He is

"He is wiser than me'

"A decided

point".

tell us it is correct to say,
"wiser than me";t and that you speak
of "
a decided weak point" in a man's weak
character! You must have a decidedly
weak point in your own character, to set
up yourself as a teacher of the English
language, when the only credentials of
qualification that you can produce are
such sentences as these.

You sneer at " Americanisms", but you
would never find an educated American
who would venture to say,
"It is me",
for "It is I"; or, "It is him", for "It
"is he"; or, "different to", for "different.

66

from ". And nowhere are the use and the

"It is notorious that at our public schools, every boy has been left to pick up his English "where and how he could."-Harrison On the

English Language', preface, p. v.

This subject was ably commented on by a writer

in the English Churchman', and by a writer in the 'Glasgow Christian News'. See Appendix.

"The one rule of all others".

omission of the "h", as an aspirate, so clearly distinguished as in the United States.*

With regard to the purport of your second essay on the Queen's English, it is, as I expected it would be, chiefly a condemnation of my former letter; but you very carefully avoid those particular errors which I exposed; such as, "Some"times the editors of our papers fall, from "their ignorance, into absurd mistakes" and, "A man does not lose his mother now "in the papers". There are, however, in your second essay, some very strange specimens of Queen's English. You say, “The "one rule, of all others, which he cites". Now as, in defence of your particular views, you appeal so largely to common sense, let me ask, in the name of that common sense, How can one thing be another thing? How can one rule be of all other rules the one which I cite? If this be Queen's English, you may well say of the authorities I quoted, "There are more

by

See 'Lectures on the English Language', George P. Marsh, Minister of the United States at the court of the King of Italy.

things in the English language than "6 seem to have been dreamt of in their

philosophy"; for I am quite sure that they never dreamt of any such absurdities.

coarser than

In my former letter I drew attention "Speak no to your misplacing of adverbs; and now usual." you appear to be trying, in some instances, to get over the difficulty by altogether omitting the adverbs, and supplying their places by adjectives; and this is not a new error with you. You had previously said, "If with your inferiors, speak no "coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer." We may correctly say, "a "certain person speaks coarsely"; but it is absurdly ungrammatical to say, "he

speaks coarse"! In your second essay, you say, "the words nearest connected", instead of, "the words most nearly con"nected"; but this will never do; the former error, that of position, was bad enough, it was one of syntax; the latter error, that of substituting one part of speech for another, is still worse. I have Adjectives spoken of your "decided weak point"; I verbs.

and ad

will now give another example, a very remarkable one, for it is an example of using an adjective instead of an adverb, in a sentence in which you are speaking of using an adverb instead of an adjective. You say, "The fact seems to be, that in "this case I was using the verb 'read' in "a colloquial and scarcely legitimate sense, "and that the adverb seems necessary, "because the verb is not a strict neuter"substantive." We may properly speak of a word being not strictly a neuter-substantive; but we cannot properly speak of a substantive being "strict". So much for the grammar of the sentence; now for its meaning. Your sentence is an explanation of your use of the word "oddly", in the phrase, “would read rather oddly"; and oddly enough you have explained it; "would read" is the conditional form of the verb; and how can that ever be either a neuter-substantive, or a substantive of any other kind?

In your former essay you prepared us to expect many strange things; I suppose we are to receive this as one of them.

You told us, "Plenty more might be said
"about grammar; plenty that would
"astonish some teachers of it.
I may
"say something of this another time."
Take all the credit you like; you have
well earned it; for you have more than
redeemed your promise; you have aston-
ished other people besides teachers of
grammar.

Again, you say, "The whole number is 'divided into two classes: the first class "and the last class. To the former of "these belong three: to the latter, one". That is, "To the former of these belong

three; to the latter [belong] one"; one belong! When, in the latter part of a compound sentence, we change the nominative, we must likewise change the verb, that it may agree with its nominative. The error is repeated in the very next sentence. You say, "There are three that are

ranged under the description 'first': and "one that is ranged under the description "last"." That is, "There are three that

are ranged under the description 'first'; "and [there are] one that is ranged under

"There are

One".