"I now pass to another point. 'To be and to exist are,' to Mr. White's apprehension, 'perfect synonyms, or more nearly perfect, perhaps, than any two verbs in the language. In some of their meanings there is a shade of difference, but in others there is none whatever; and the latter are those which serve our present purpose. When we say, "He, being forewarned of danger, fled," we say, "He, existing forewarned of danger, fled." When we say that a thing is done, we say that it exists done.... Is being done is simply exists existing done.' But, since is and exists are equipollent, and so being and existing, is being is the same as the unimpeachable is existing. Q. non E. D. Is existing ought, of course, to be no less objectionable to Mr. White than is being. Just as absurd, too, should he reckon the Italian sono stato, era stato, sia stato, fossi stato, saro stato, sarei stato, essere stato, and essendo stato. For in Italian both essere and stare are required to make up the verb substantive, as in Latin both esse and the offspring of fuere are required; and stare, primarily 'to stand,' is modified into a true auxiliary. The alleged 'full absurdity of this phrase,' to wit, is being built, 'the essence of its nonsense,' vanishes thus into thin air. So I was about to comment bluntly, not forgetting to regret that any gentleman's cultivation of logic should fructify in the shape of irrepressible tendencies to suicide. But this would be precipitate. Agreeably to one of Mr. White's judicial placita, which I make no apology for citing twice, 'no man who has preserved all his senses will doubt for a moment that "to exist a mastiff or a mule" is absolutely the same as "to be a mastiff or a mule."' Declining to admit their identity, I have not preserved all my senses; and, accordingly—though it may be in me the very superfetation of lunacy—I would caution the reader to keep a sharp eye on my arguments, hereabouts particularly. The Cretan, who, in declaring all Cretans to be liars, left the question of his veracity doubtful to all eternity, fell into a pit of his own digging. Not unlike the unfortunate Cretan, Mr. White has tumbled headlong into his own snare. It was, for the rest, entirely unavailing that he insisted on the insanity of those who should gainsay his fundamental postulate. Sanity, of a crude sort, may accept it; and sanity may put it to a use other than its propounder's.
"Mr. Marsh, after setting forth the all-sufficiency of is building, in the passive sense, goes on to say: 'The reformers who object to the phrase I am defending must, in consistency, employ the proposed substitute with all passive participles, and in other tenses as well as the present. They must say, therefore, "The subscription-paper is being missed, but I know that a considerable sum is being wanted to make up the amount"; "the great Victoria Bridge has been being built more than two years"; "when I reach London, the ship Leviathan will be being built"; "if my orders had been followed, the coat would have been being made yesterday"; "if the house had then been being built, the mortar would have been being mixed."' We may reply that, while awkward instances of the old form are most abundant in our literature, there is no fear that the repulsive elaborations which have been worked out in ridicule of the new forms will prove to have been anticipations of future usage. There was a time when, as to their adverbs, people compared them, to a large extent, with -er and -est, or with more and most, just as their ear or pleasure dictated. They wrote plainlier and plainliest, or more plainly and most plainly; and some adverbs, as early, late, often, seldom, and soon, we still compare in a way now become anomalous. And as our forefathers treated their adverbs we still treat many adjectives. Furthermore, obligingness, preparedness, and designedly seem quite natural; yet we do not feel that they authorize us to talk of 'the seeingness of the eye,' 'the understoodness of a sentence,' or of 'a statement acknowledgedly correct.' 'The now too notorious fact' is tolerable; but 'the never to be sufficiently execrated monster Bonaparte' is intolerable. The sun may be shorn of his splendor; but we do not allow cloudy weather to shear him of it. How, then, can any one claim that a man who prefers to say is being built should say has been being built? Are not awkward instances of the old form, typified by is building, as easily to be picked out of extant literature as such instances of the new form, likely ever to be used, are to be invented? And 'the reformers' have not forsworn their ears. Mr. Marsh, at p. 135 of his admirable 'Lectures,' lays down that 'the adjective reliable, in the sense of worthy of confidence, is altogether unidiomatic'; and yet, at p. 112, he writes 'reliable evidence.' Again, at p. 396 of the same work, he rules that whose, in 'I passed a house whose windows were open,' is 'by no means yet fully established'; and at p. 145 of his very learned 'Man and Nature' he writes 'a quadrangular pyramid, the perpendicular of whose sides,' etc. Really, if his own judgments sit so very loose on his practical conscience, we may, without being chargeable with exaction, ask of him to relax a little the rigor of his requirements at the hands of his neighbors.
"Beckford's Lisbon fortune-teller, before had into court, was 'dragging into light,' and, perchance, 'was taking to account.' Many moderns would say and write 'being dragged into light,' and 'was being taken to account.' But, if we are to trust the conservative critics, in comparison with expressions of the former pattern, those of the latter are 'uncouth,' 'clumsy,' 'awkward neologisms,' 'philological coxcombries,' 'formal and pedantic,' 'incongruous and ridiculous forms of speech,' 'illogical, confusing, inaccurate monstrosities.' Moreover, they are neither 'consistent with reason' nor 'conformed to the normal development of the language'; they are 'at war with the genius of the English tongue'; they are 'unidiomatic'; they are 'not English.' In passing, if Mr. Marsh will so define the term unidiomatic as to evince that it has any applicability to the case in hand, or if he will arrest and photograph 'the genius of the English tongue,' so that we may know the original when we meet with it, he will confer a public favor. And now I submit for consideration whether the sole strength of those who decry is being built and its congeners does not consist in their talent for calling hard names. If they have not an uneasy subconsciousness that their cause is weak, they would, at least, do well in eschewing the violence to which, for want of something better, the advocates of weak causes proverbially resort.
"I once had a friend who, for some microscopic penumbra of heresy, was charged, in the words of his accuser, with 'as near an approach to the sin against the Holy Ghost as is practicable to human infirmity.' Similarly, on one view, the feeble potencies of philological turpitude seem to have exhibited their most consummate realization in engendering is being built. The supposed enormity perpetrated in its production, provided it had fallen within the sphere of ethics, would, at the least, have ranked, with its denunciators, as a brand-new exemplification of total depravity. But, after all, what incontestable defect in it has any one succeeded in demonstrating? Mr. White, in opposing to the expression objections based on an erroneous analysis, simply lays a phantom of his own evoking; and, so far as I am informed, other impugners of is being built have, absolutely, no argument whatever against it over and beyond their repugnance to novelty. Subjected to a little untroubled contemplation, it would, I am confident, have ceased long ago to be matter of controversy; but the dust of prejudice and passion, which so distempers the intellectual vision of theologians and politicians, is seen to make, with ruthless impartiality, no exception of the perspicacity of philologists.
"Prior to the evolution of is being built and was being built, we possessed no discriminate equivalents to ædificatur and ædificabatur; is built and was built, by which they were rendered, corresponding exactly to ædificatus est and ædificatus erat. Cum ædificaretur was to us the same as ædificabatur. On the wealth of the Greek in expressions of imperfect passive I need not dwell. With rare exceptions, the Romans were satisfied with the present-imperfect and the past-imperfect; and we, on the comparatively few occasions which present themselves for expressing other imperfects, shall be sure to have recourse to the old forms rather than to the new, or else to use periphrases.[21] The purists may, accordingly, dismiss their apprehensions, especially as the neoterists have, clearly, a keener horror of phraseological ungainliness than themselves. One may have no hesitation about saying 'the house is being built,' and may yet recoil from saying that 'it should have been being built last Christmas'; and the same person—just as, provided he did not feel a harshness, inadequacy, and ambiguity in the passive 'the house is building,' he would use the expression—will, more likely than not, elect is in preparation preferentially to is being prepared. If there are any who, in their zealotry for the congruous, choose to adhere to the new form in its entire range of exchangeability for the old, let it be hoped that they will find, in Mr. Marsh's speculative approbation of consistency, full amends for the discomfort of encountering smiles or frowns. At the same time, let them be mindful of the career of Mr. White, with his black flag and no quarter. The dead Polonius was, in Hamlet's phrase, at supper, 'not where he eats, but where he is eaten.' Shakespeare, to Mr. White's thinking, in this wise expressed himself at the best, and deserves not only admiration therefor, but to be imitated. 'While the ark was built,' 'while the ark was prepared,' writes Mr. White himself.[22] Shakespeare is commended for his ambiguous is eaten, though in eating or an eating would have been not only correct in his day, but, where they would have come in his sentence, univocal. With equal reason a man would be entitled to commendation for tearing his mutton-chops with his fingers, when he might cut them up with a knife and fork. 'Is eaten,' says Mr. White, 'does not mean has been eaten.' Very true; but a continuous unfinished passion—Polonius's still undergoing manducation, to speak Johnsonese—was in Shakespeare's mind; and his words describe a passion no longer in generation. The King of Denmark's lord chamberlain had no precedent in Herod, when 'he was eaten of worms'; the original, γενόμενος σκωληκόβρωτος, yielding, but for its participle, 'he became worm-eaten.'
"Having now done with Mr. White, I am anxious, before taking leave of him, to record, with all emphasis, that it would be the grossest injustice to write of his elegant 'Life and Genius of Shakespeare,' a book which does credit to American literature, in the tone which I have found unavoidable in dealing with his 'Words and their Uses.'"
The student of English who has honestly weighed the arguments on both sides of the question, must, I believe, be of opinion that our language is the richer for having two forms for expressing the Progressive Passive. Further, he must, I believe, be of opinion that in very many cases he conforms to the most approved usage of our time by employing the old form; that, however, if he were to employ the old form in all cases, his meaning would sometimes be uncertain.
It. Cobbett discourses of this little neuter pronoun in this wise: "The word it is the greatest troubler that I know of in language. It is so small and so convenient that few are careful enough in using it. Writers seldom spare this word. Whenever they are at a loss for either a nominative or an objective to their sentence, they, without any kind of ceremony, clap in an it. A very remarkable instance of this pressing of poor it into actual service, contrary to the laws of grammar and of sense, occurs in a piece of composition, where we might, with justice, insist on correctness. This piece is on the subject of grammar; it is a piece written by a Doctor of Divinity and read by him to students in grammar and language in an academy; and the very sentence that I am now about to quote is selected by the author of a grammar as testimony of high authority in favor of the excellence of his work. Surely, if correctness be ever to be expected, it must be in a case like this. I allude to two sentences in the 'Charge of the Reverend Doctor Abercrombie to the Senior Class of the Philadelphia Academy,' published in 1806; which sentences have been selected and published by Mr. Lindley Murray as a testimonial of the merits of his grammar; and which sentences are by Mr. Murray given to us in the following words: 'The unwearied exertions of this gentleman have done more toward elucidating the obscurities and embellishing the structure of our language than any other writer on the subject. Such a work has long been wanted, and from the success with which it is executed, can not be too highly appreciated.'
"As in the learned Doctor's opinion obscurities can be elucidated, and as in the same opinion Mr. Murray is an able hand at this kind of work, it would not be amiss were the grammarian to try his skill upon this article from the hand of his dignified eulogist; for here is, if one may use the expression, a constellation of obscurities. Our poor oppressed it, which we find forced into the Doctor's service in the second sentence, relates to 'such a work,' though this work is nothing that has an existence, notwithstanding it is said to be 'executed.' In the first sentence, the 'exertions' become, all of a sudden, a 'writer': the exertions have done more than 'any other writer'; for, mind you, it is not the gentleman that has done anything; it is 'the exertions' that have done what is said to be done. The word gentleman is in the possessive case, and has nothing to do with the action of the sentence. Let us give the sentence a turn, and the Doctor and the grammarian will hear how it will sound. 'This gentleman's exertions have done more than any other writer.' This is on a level with 'This gentleman's dog has killed more hares than any other sportsman.' No doubt Doctor Abercrombie meant to say, 'The exertions of this gentleman have done more than those of any other writer. Such a work as this gentleman's has long been wanted; his work, seeing the successful manner of its execution, can not be too highly commended.' Meant! No doubt at all of that! And when we hear a Hampshire ploughboy say, 'Poll Cherrycheek have giv'd a thick handkecher,' we know very well that he means to say, 'Poll Cherrycheek has given me this handkerchief'; and yet we are too apt to laugh at him and to call him ignorant; which is wrong, because he has no pretensions to a knowledge of grammar, and he may be very skillful as a ploughboy. However, we will not laugh at Doctor Abercrombie, whom I knew, many years ago, for a very kind and worthy man. But, if we may, in any case, be allowed to laugh at the ignorance of our fellow-creatures, that case certainly does arise when we see a professed grammarian, the author of voluminous precepts and examples on the subject of grammar, producing, in imitation of the possessors of valuable medical secrets, testimonials vouching for the efficacy of his literary panacea, and when, in those testimonials, we find most flagrant instances of bad grammar.
"However, my dear James, let this strong and striking instance of the misuse of the word it serve you in the way of caution. Never put an it upon paper without thinking well of what you are about. When I see many its in a page, I always tremble for the writer."