5th. When each of two arrangements is equally favourable to perspicuity, and equally consistent with metaphysical propriety, that should be preferred which is the more agreeable to the ear.
6th. Harsh and abrupt cadences should be avoided; and in elevated style, the clauses should swell towards the close of the sentence. This latter rule, however, which requires some limitations, belongs to the province of the rhetorician, rather than to that of the grammarian.
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
CANONS OF CRITICISM.
Having explained and illustrated the etymology and syntax of the English language, as fully as the limits, which I have prescribed to myself, will permit, I would now request the reader’s attention to some additional observations.
The grammar of every language is merely a compilation of those general principles, or rules, agreeably to which that language is spoken. When I say, a compilation of rules, I would not be understood to mean, that the rules are first established, and the language afterwards modelled in conformity to these. The very reverse is the fact: language is antecedent to grammar. Words are framed and combined to express sentiment, before the grammarian can enter on his province. His sole business is, not to dictate forms of speech, or to prescribe law to our modes of expression; but, by observing the modes previously established, by remarking their similarities and dissimilarities, his province is to deduce and explain the general principles, and the particular forms, agreeably to which the speakers of that language express themselves. The philosopher does not determine by what laws the physical and moral world should be governed; but, by the careful observation and accurate comparison of the various phenomena presented to his view, he deduces and ascertains the general principles, by which the system is regulated. The province of the grammarian seems precisely similar. He is a mere digester and compiler, explaining what are the modes of speech, not dictating what they should be. He can neither assign to any word a meaning different from that which custom has annexed to it; nor can he alter a phraseology, to which universal suffrage has given its sanction. Usage is, in this case, law; usage quem penes arbitrium est, et jus et norma loquendi. If it were now the practice to say, “I loves,” instead of “I love,” the former phraseology would rest on the same firm ground, on which the latter now stands; and “I love,” would be as much a violation of the rules of grammar, or, which is the same thing, of established usage, as “I loves” is at present. Regula est, quæ rem, quæ est, breviter enarrat; non ut ex regula jus sumatur, sed ex jure, quod est, regula fiat.—Paul. Leg. 1, de Reg. Jur.
Having said thus much to prevent misconception, and to define the proper province of the grammarian, I proceed to observe, that this usage, which gives law to language, in order to establish its authority, or to entitle its suffrage to our assent, must be, in the first place, reputable.
The vulgar in this, as in every other country, are, from their want of education, necessarily illiterate. Their native language is known to them no farther, than is requisite for the most common purposes of life. Their ideas are few, and consequently their stock of words poor and scanty. Nay, their poverty, in this respect, is not their only evil. Their narrow competence they abuse and pervert. Some words they misapply, others they corrupt; while many are employed by them, which have no sanction, but provincial or local authority. Hence the language of the vulgar, in one province, is sometimes hardly intelligible in another. Add to this, that debarred by their occupations from study, or generally averse to literary pursuits, they are necessarily strangers to the scientific improvements of a cultivated mind; and are therefore entirely unacquainted with that diction, which concerns the higher attainments of life. Ignorant of any general principles respecting language, to which they may appeal; unable to discriminate between right and wrong; prone therefore to adopt whatever usage casual circumstances may present; it is no wonder, if the language of the vulgar be a mixture of incongruity and error, neither perfectly consistent with itself, nor to themselves universally intelligible. Their usage, therefore, is not the standard, to which we must appeal for decisive authority; a usage so discordant and various, that we may justly apply to it the words of a celebrated critic,