III. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD USE. 96. The first question that arises is, what use is Good? who are the best writers and speakers,—those writers and speakers, in other words, whose usage so generally conforms to the laws of thought and speech, that it may be accepted as the proximate Standard of Purity? 97. The answer to this question has been unanimous The best writers and speakers are those who now enjoy a national reputation. In other words, Good Use is (1) Reputable, (2) National, (3) Present. Many writers who have enjoyed such a reputation; many who are now held in local repute; many who, though they live now and are widely read, yet confessedly use a diction not that of reputable writers;-many writers of these classes are models of style in other particulars, but they can not be cited as authorities for Good Use. For example, Bacon's Essays and the Bible of 1611 are to-day as valuable exponents of certain qualities of style as are any modern books, but they are in many cases archaic in diction. Hans Breitmann talks English that makes no pretence to good repute. To be cited as authoritative in Diction, a work must have all three characteristics of Good Use. 98. REPUTABLE USE is the custom in speech of cultivated people, the people "who have had a liberal education, and are therefore presumed to be best acquainted with men and things. Words are but signs of the things they name; and it is only natural "to believe, that those are the best judges of the proper signs, and of the proper application of them, who understand best the things which they represent."" For convenience of 1 Campbell, II. i. 1. reference, however, celebrated authors are taken in place of the whole class of liberally educated people; and reputable use includes, therefore, "whatever modes of speech are authorized as good by the writings of a great number, if not the majority,' of celebrated authors." 2 99. NATIONAL USE is the custom of writers and speakers readily understood by people that use the language anywhere. From the earliest ages to which the existence of human speech can be traced, a tendency to dialecticism, the divergence of language from a common form towards several or many different forms, has been observed. A common dialect has never been maintained except by constant intercourse or (among cultivated peoples) by a literature. Not only do the languages of savage tribes vary to a degree, and change with a rapidity, that seems almost incredible,3 but even literary tongues, now apparently settled beyond the danger of serious modifications, not only have passed through the dialectical stage before attaining uniformity, but show themselves now to be liable at any moment, 1 I. e., a respectable minority may protect a usage. (See ? 321 (e), below.) 2 Campbell, II. i. 1. 3 Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, Vol. I. Lect. II., (pp. 61-65, Am. Ed.) gives the following remarkable cases. (1) “Gabriel Sagard, who was sent as a missionary to the Hurons in 1626, . . . states that . . . hardly one village speaks the same language as another: nay, that two families of the same village do not speak exactly the same language. And he adds . . . that their language is changing every day." (2) Certain "missionaries in Central America... compiled with great care a dictionary of all the words they could lay hold of. Returning to the same tribe after a lapse of only ten years, they found that this dictionary had become antiquated and useless." (3) "Robert Moffat," missionary to Southern Africa, writes "The purity and harmony of language is kept up by . . . pitchos, or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the isolated villagers of the desert it is far otherwise; they have no such meetings; they are compelled to traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village. On such occasions the children are left for weeks at a time to the care of two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny. become habituated to a language of their own. . . . and in the course of one generation the entire character of the language is changed." ... upon the breaking down of a standard of purity among them, to fly off at many different tangents into dialecticism again. Hence, the necessity, if a language is to be widely understood, of its conforming to the national, rather than to a narrower use. 100. The history of the English language and of its immediate predecessor on the island of Britain illustrates both these statements. The speech of the Teutonic tribes who won Britain from the Celts contained as many dialects as there were tribes. In the ninth century, a literature arose; and at once a common dialect was formed, the Anglo-Saxon of the books. Upon the Norman-French invasion, however, this standard was broken down, and a second Babel, which lasted for upwards of two centuries, was the result. In the fourteenth century, the English of Chaucer and Gower again gave the nation a literary tongue, and fixed (in great part) its modern peculiarities. The same story is true of modern French. The Teutonic invaders of the Romanized Gaul settled in at least two camps, one to the north and one to the south of the Loire. In each a literature sprang up; but the political events that finally welded these nations into a single people, at first involved the whole land in dialecticism, until further political changes, combined with other causes, produced a new standard speech about the second half of the seventeenth century. IOI. The choice of a common dialect is generally made unconsciously. One or more great writers appear; and the form of speech they adopt is followed by all subsequent writers that aim at more than a local reputation. For example, in an era of unquestionable dialecticism in each land, Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales and so settled the literary form of modern English; Dante, The Divine Comedy, and fixed modern Italian; Luther, his Translation of the Bible, and determined modern High German. When a non-literary dialect is used for literary purposes, (as in Mr. Charles Leland's Hans Breitmann and the Rev. William Barnes's Poems in the Dorset Dialect,) or when several forms of the same language become literary together, (as in ancient Greece and mediæval Gaul,) the rule is not affected. Such writers as Mr. Leland and Mr. Barnes do not pretend (in works like those just named) to write the literary dialect; and the several forms of Greek, like Provençal and French, were really the national tongues of independent states.1 102. PRESENT USE is not so easily defined. To say exactly when a word has passed out of current into archaic diction, or how long a new word must wait for recognition, is impossible; since, if there were no other difficulty in the way, there would be the fact that a language is commonly spoken by several generations at once, and that words still fresh in the memory of a Longfellow, may be obsolescent in the view of a Howells, or even obsolete in that of a Miss Woolson. Besides, words are in current speech as men in society: they come and go almost without observation; they disappear for a while, as if gone on a journey, and then, as suddenly as returned travellers, take their places again in Good Use. So, too, one word springs almost unheralded into full reputation; for example, telegram, which was deliberately proposed in the Albany Evening Journal, April 6, 1852, as a substitute for telegraph or telegraphic dispatch or message, and was soon unanimously accepted as a valuable addition. Others wait long for recognition; as, standpoint and scientist, still (perhaps) unused by the most conservative writers. Others again, though long since cast out of the literary language, survive in the natural speech of both educated and uneducated alike. For example, the double negative, used for emphasis, in our older literature, driven out by the philosophizing grammarians, and utterly indefensible to-day, is nevertheless still heard, as a slip, in the hurried speech of many people 1 See Goodwin's Greek Grammar, pp. xix., xx.; Freeman's General Sketch of History, chap's ii. 11, v. 8, 9, vii. 6, xi. 6, xii. 6; Craik's English Literature, I. pp. 121 ff.; Miss H. W. Preston's translation of Frédéric Mistral's Miréio, Introduction. 2 Webster's Dict. (1864), s. v. Cf. anagram, monogram, etc. That is, speech, not so much unguarded or ignorant, as instinctive, untrammelled by present use or the philosophizings of the men who have (and often successfully) put their own ideas of right and wrong in language in place of the broad, general laws of the human mind and human speech. who not only know better but would not think of justifying themselves in the blunder. Two principles of judgment, however, are clearly applicable, -(1) intelligibility, (2) moderation. If a word has ceased to be generally understood, -especially, if a newer word has largely replaced it,—a careful writer will doubtless not use it, or, if at all, only in cases in which he feels sure of making his meaning clear he will commonly prefer the newer word. On the other hand, accepting Polonius's advice, though he be "familiar," he will not be "vulgar :"his maxim will be, "Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Or, in the form long ago used by Quintilian, “As of new words the best are the very oldest, so of old words the best are the very newest." 103. Examples illustrative of these characteristics of Good Use would be but hindrances to the student, unless they were whole works, or (at least) lengthy excerpts from the works of many celebrated authors. One who would know with certainty what pure English is, who would cultivate his taste-acquire the literary sense-should read consecutively a series of good English writers and criticize them minutely. This work can be done best, after the study of Rhetoric has been completed; and it forms then, as does the writing of compositions, an important part of Rhetorical Praxis.2 Meanwhile the most that can be done is to classify the offences against Purity and give examples of them. These examples will at least serve to warn the student against making similar errors, and so will enhance his appreciation of a really good diction. 1 Such constructions, by way of emphasis,-the double comparative and the double superlative are other examples common enough in older English literature, are justifiable upon many grounds, and have been sacrificed in English at the dictation of men usually least competent to judge. 2 A valuable guide to such criticism is Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature, a detailed study of the style of De Quincey, Macaulay and Carlyle, with a less extended summary and criticism of the works of English prose writers from Mandeville to Landor and Lamb and Hazlitt. |