“This account is very different to what I told you.” “I found your affairs had been managed in a different manner than what I advised.” Both these phraseologies are faulty. It should be in each, “different from.” The verb “to differ” is construed with from before the second object of disparity; the adjective therefore should (by Rule xvii.) be construed in the same manner.
“These words have the same sense of those others.” Same should be followed with as, with, or the relatives who, which, that. It ought, therefore, to be, “as those,” or “with those,” or “have the sense of those others.”
“I shall ever depend on your constant friendship, kind memory, and good offices, though I were never to see or hear the effects of them, like the trust we have in benevolent spirits, who, though we never see or hear them, we think are constantly serving and praying for us.”—Pope’s Letters to Atterbury. Like can have no grammatical reference to any word in the sentence but I, and this reference is absurd. He should have said, “as, or just as, we trust in benevolent spirits.”
“This gentleman rallies the best of any man I know.”—Addison. The superlative must be followed by of, the preposition implying out of a plurality, expressed either by a collective noun, or a plural number. But here we have a selection denoted by of, and the selection to be made out of one. This is absurd. It should be, “better than any other”—the best of all men—“I know;” “this gentleman, of all my acquaintance, rallies the best;” or “of all my acquaintance, there is no one, who rallies so well as this gentleman.”
“Besides, those, whose teeth are too rotten to bite, are best, of all others, qualified to revenge that defect with their breath.”—Preface to A Tale of a Tub.
“Here,” says Sheridan, “the disjunction of the word best from the word qualified makes the sentence uncouth, which would run better thus, ‘are, of all others, best qualified.’” So far Mr. Sheridan is right; but he has left uncorrected a very common error. The antecedent subject of comparison is here absurdly referred at once to the same, and to a different aggregate, the word of referring it to others, to which it is opposed, and to which therefore it cannot, without a contradiction, be said to belong. The sentence, therefore, involves an absurdity: either the word others should be expunged, when the sentence would run thus, “Those, whose teeth are too rotten to bite, are, of all, best qualified to revenge that defect;” or, if the word others be retained, the clause should be, “are better qualified than all others.”[141]
The phraseology here censured is admissible in those cases only where a previous comparison has been made. If we say, “To engage a private tutor for a single pupil is, perhaps, of all others, the least eligible mode of giving literary instruction,” (Barrow on Education,) without making that previous discrimination, which the word others implies, we commit an error. But we may say with propriety, “I prefer the mode of education adopted in our public schools; and of all other modes, to engage a private tutor appears to me the least eligible.”
IMPROPRIETY.
“They could easier get them by heart, and retain them in memory.”—Adams’s History of England. Here the adjective is improperly used for the adverb; it ought to be “more easily.” Swift commits a similar error, when he says, “Ned explained his text so full and clear,” for “so fully and clearly.”
“Thus much, I think, is sufficient to serve, by way of address, to my patrons, the true modern critics, and may very well atone for my past silence as well as for that, which I am like to observe for the future.”—Swift. Like, or similar, is here improperly used for likely, a word in signification nearly synonymous with probable. We say, “he is likely to do it,” or “it is probable he will do it.”