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APPENDIX Q
GENERAL GRANT'S GRAMMAR
(Written in 1886. Delivered at an Army and Navy Club dinner in New York City)
Lately a great and honored author, Matthew Arnold, has been finding fault with General Grant's English. That would be fair enough, maybe, if the examples of imperfect English averaged more instances to the page in General Grant's book than they do in Arnold's criticism on the book—but they do not. It would be fair enough, maybe, if such instances were commoner in General Grant's book than they are in the works of the average standard author—but they are not. In fact, General Grant's derelictions in the matter of grammar and construction are not more frequent than such derelictions in the works of a majority of the professional authors of our time, and of all previous times—authors as exclusively and painstakingly trained to the literary trade as was General Grant to the trade of war. This is not a random statement: it is a fact, and easily demonstrable. I have a book at home called Modern English Literature: Its Blemishes and Defects, by Henry H. Breen, a countryman of Mr. Arnold. In it I find examples of bad grammar and slovenly English from the pens of Sydney Smith, Sheridan, Hallam, Whately, Carlyle, Disraeli, Allison, Junius, Blair, Macaulay, Shakespeare, Milton, Gibbon, Southey, Lamb, Landor, Smollett, Walpole, Walker (of the dictionary), Christopher North, Kirk White, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Lindley Murray (who made the grammar).
In Mr. Arnold's criticism on General Grant's book we find two grammatical crimes and more than several examples of very crude and slovenly English, enough of them to entitle him to a lofty place in the illustrious list of delinquents just named.
The following passage all by itself ought to elect him:
“Meade suggested to Grant that he might wish to have immediately
under him Sherman, who had been serving with Grant in the West. He
begged him not to hesitate if he thought it for the good of the
service. Grant assured him that he had not thought of moving him,
and in his memoirs, after relating what had passed, he adds, etc.”
To read that passage a couple of times would make a man dizzy; to read it four times would make him drunk.