Mr. Richard Grant White, in his "Words and Their Uses," expresses his opinion of the locution is being in this wise: "In bad eminence, at the head of those intruders in language which to many persons seem to be of established respectability, but the right of which to be at all is not fully admitted, stands out the form of speech is being done, or rather, is being, which, about seventy or eighty years ago, began to affront the eye, torment the ear, and assault the common sense of the speaker of plain and idiomatic English." Mr. White devotes thirty pages of his book to the discussion of the subject, and adduces evidence that is more than sufficient to convince those who are content with an ex parte examination that "it can hardly be that such an incongruous and ridiculous form of speech as is being done was contrived by a man who, by any stretch of the name, should be included among grammarians."
Mr. George P. Marsh, in his "Lectures on the English Language," says that the deviser of the locution in question was "some grammatical pretender," and that it is "an awkward neologism, which neither convenience, intelligibility, nor syntactical congruity demands."
To these gentlemen, and to those who are of their way of thinking with regard to is being, Dr. Fitzedward Hall replies at some length, in an article published in "Scribner's Monthly" for April, 1872. Dr. Hall writes:
"'All really well educated in the English tongue lament the many innovations introduced into our language from America; and I doubt if more than one of these novelties deserve acceptation. That one is, substituting a compound participle for an active verb used in a neuter signification: for instance, "The house is being built," instead of, "The house is building."' Such is the assertion and such is the opinion of some anonymous luminary,[8] who, for his liberality in welcoming a supposed Americanism, is somewhat in advance of the herd of his countrymen. Almost any popular expression which is considered as a novelty, a Briton is pretty certain to assume, off-hand, to have originated on our side of the Atlantic. Of the assertion I have quoted, no proof is offered; and there is little probability that its author had any to offer. 'Are being,' in the phrase 'are being thrown up,'[9] is spoken of in 'The North American Review'[10] as 'an outrage upon English idiom, "to be detested, abhorred, execrated, and given over to six thousand" penny-paper editors'; and the fact is, that phrases of the form here pointed at have hitherto enjoyed very much less favor with us than with the English.
"As lately as 1860, Dr. Worcester, referring to is being built, etc., while acknowledging that 'this new form has been used by some respectable writers,' speaks of it as having 'been introduced' 'within a few years.' Mr. Richard Grant White, by a most peculiar process of ratiocination, endeavors to prove that what Dr. Worcester calls 'this new form' came into existence just fifty-six years ago. He premises that in Jarvis's translation of 'Don Quixote,' published in 1742, there occurs 'were carrying,' and that this, in the edition of 1818, is sophisticated into 'were being carried.' 'This change,' continues our logician, 'and the appearance of is being with a perfect participle in a very few books published between a. d. 1815 and 1820, indicate the former period as that of the origin of this phraseology, which, although more than half a century old, is still pronounced a novelty as well as a nuisance.'
"Who, in the next place, devised our modern imperfects passive? The question is not, originally, of my asking; but, as the learned are at open feud on the subject, it should not be passed by in silence. Its deviser is, more than likely, as undiscoverable as the name of the valiant antediluvian who first tasted an oyster. But the deductive character of the miscreant is another thing; and hereon there is a war between the philosophers. Mr. G. P. Marsh, as if he had actually spotted the wretched creature, passionately and categorically denounces him as 'some grammatical pretender.' 'But,' replies Mr. White, 'that it is the work of any grammarian is more than doubtful. Grammarians, with all their faults, do not deform language with fantastic solecisms, or even seek to enrich it with new and startling verbal combinations. They rather resist novelty, and devote themselves to formulating that which use has already established.' In the same page with this, Mr. White compliments the great unknown as 'some precise and feeble-minded soul,' and elsewhere calls him 'some pedantic writer of the last generation.' To add even one word toward a solution of the knotty point here indicated transcends, I confess, my utmost competence. It is painful to picture to one's self the agonizing emotions with which certain philologists would contemplate an authentic effigy of the Attila of speech who, by his is being built or is being done, first offered violence to the whole circle of the proprieties. So far as I have observed, the first grammar that exhibits them is that of Mr. R. S. Skillern, M. A., the first edition of which was published at Gloucester in 1802. Robert Southey had not, on the 9th of October, 1795, been out of his minority quite two months when, evidently delivering himself in a way that had already become familiar enough, he wrote of 'a fellow whose uttermost upper grinder is being torn out by the roots by a mutton-fisted barber.'[11] This is in a letter. But repeated instances of the same kind of expression are seen in Southey's graver writings. Thus, in his 'Colloquies,' etc.,[12] we read of 'such [nunneries] as at this time are being reëstablished.'
"'While my hand was being drest by Mr. Young, I spoke for the first time,' wrote Coleridge, in March, 1797.
"Charles Lamb speaks of realities which 'are being acted before us,' and of 'a man who is being strangled.'
"Walter Savage Landor, in an imaginary conversation, represents Pitt as saying: 'The man who possesses them may read Swedenborg and Kant while he is being tossed in a blanket.' Again: 'I have seen nobles, men and women, kneeling in the street before these bishops, when no ceremony of the Catholic Church was being performed.' Also, in a translation from Catullus: 'Some criminal is being tried for murder.'
"Nor does Mr. De Quincey scruple at such English as 'made and being made,' 'the bride that was being married to him,' and 'the shafts of Heaven were even now being forged.' On one occasion he writes, 'Not done, not even (according to modern purism) being done'; as if 'purism' meant exactness, rather than the avoidance of neoterism.