It is a constant source of amusement to those interested in observing the condition and the development of the language to note the frequency with which the phrases put under taboo by the word-critics occur in the writings of the masters of English. In my own recent reading I have found this despised construction in the pages of Fielding, Johnson, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Henry James, and Professor Jebb in Great Britain, and in pages of Hawthorne, Lowell, Holmes, and Mr. John Fiske in the United States. What is more significant perhaps is its discovery in the works of professed students of language—Trench, Isaac Taylor, Max Müller, and W. D. Whitney.
And yet, in spite of this array of authorities, I am inclined to believe that this usage may perhaps disappear with the increasing attention which the best writers are now giving to the rhythm and balance of their sentences. It is not that the form is wrong—that is a matter not to be decided offhand; it is that the form is awkward and that it jars on the feeling for symmetry—the feeling which leads us to put a candlestick on each side of the clock on the mantelpiece. Professor Whitney began one of his sentences thus: “Castrén, himself a Finn, and whose long and devoted labors have taught us more respecting them than has been brought to light by any other man, ventures,” etc. Would not this sentence have been easier and more elegant if Whitney had either struck out and (which is not needed at all) or else inserted who was after Castrén? In the sentence as Whitney wrote it and whose makes me look back for the who which my feeling for symmetry leads me to suppose must have preceded it somewhere, and in this vain search part of my attention is abstracted. I have been forced to think of the manner of his remarks when my mind ought to have given itself so far as might be to the matter of them. In other words, the real objection to this usage is that it is in violation of the principle of Economy of Attention.
Another usage also under fire from the purists is exemplified in another extract from Whitney: “It is, I am convinced, a mistake to commence at once upon a course of detailed comparative philology with pupils who have only enjoyed the ordinary training in the classical or modern languages.” Obviously his meaning would be more sharply defined if he had put only after instead of before enjoyed. So Froude, writing about ‘English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century,’ says that “the fore-and-aft rig alone would enable a vessel to tack, as it is called, and this could only be used with craft of moderate tonnage”; and here again a transposition after the verb would increase the exactness of the statement.
The proposition of only is really important only when the misplacing of it may cause ambiguity; and Professor F. N. Scott has shown how Webster, always careful in the niceties of style, unhesitatingly put only out of its proper place, if by so doing he could improve the rhythm of his period, as in this sentence from the second Bunker Hill oration: “It did not, indeed, put an end to the war; but, in the then existing hostile state of feeling, the difficulties could only be referred to the arbitration of the sword.” This is as it should be, the small effect promptly sacrificed for the larger. The rule—if rule it really is—must be broken unhesitatingly when there is greater gain than loss.
There is an anecdote in some volume of French theatrical memoirs narrating an experience of Mademoiselle Clairon, the great tragic actress, with a pupil of hers, a girl of fine natural gifts for the histrionic art, but far too frequent and too exuberant in her gesticulation. So when the pupil was once to appear before the public in a recitation, Mademoiselle Clairon bound the girl’s arms to her side by a stiff thread and sent her thus upon the stage. With the first strong feeling she had to express the pupil tried to raise her arms, only to be restrained by the thread. A dozen times in the course of her recitation she was prevented from making the gestures she desired, until at the very end she could stand it no longer, and in the climax of her emotion she broke her bonds and lifted her hands to her head. When she came off the stage she went humbly to where Mademoiselle Clairon was standing in the wings and apologized for having snapped the thread. “But you did quite right!” said the teacher. “That was the time to make the gesture—not before!”
Rules exist to aid in composition; and by wise men composition is not undertaken merely to prove the existence of the rules. Circumstances may alter even codes of manners; in Paris, for instance, it is permissible to sop bread in the sauce, a practice which is bad form in London—since nobody would want any more of a British sauce than could be avoided. This paper, however, has failed of its purpose if it is taken as a plea for license. Rather is it intended as an argument for liberty. It has been written as the result of a belief that a frank protest is needed now and again against the excessive demands of the linguistic dogmatists. That what the linguistic dogmatists write is as widely read as it seems to be is a sign of a healthy interest in the speech which must serve us all, scholars and school-masters and plain people. This interest should be aroused also to shake off the shackles with which pedagogs and pedants seek to restrain not only the full growth of our noble tongue, but even its free use. As Renan pithily put it, every time that “grammarians have tried deliberately to reform a language, they have succeeded only in making it heavy, without expression, and often less logical than the humblest dialect.”
If English is to be kept fit to do the mighty work it bids fair to be called upon to accomplish in the future, it must be allowed to develop along the line of least resistance. It must be encouraged to follow its own bent and to supply its own needs and to shed its worn-out members. It must not be hampered by syntax taken from Latin or by rules evolved out of the inner consciousness of word-critics. It must not be too squeamish or even too particular, since excessive refinement goes only with muscular weakness. It must be allowed to venture on solecisms, on neologisms, on Americanisms, on Briticisms, on Australianisms, if need be, however ugly some of these may seem, for the language uses itself up fast, and has to be replenished that it shall not lose its vigor and its ardor.
To say this is not to say that every one of us who uses English in speaking or in writing should not always choose his words carefully and decide on his forms judiciously. Only by a wise selection can the language be kept at its highest efficiency; only thus can its full powers be revealed to us. And if we decide that we prefer to keep to the very letter of the law as laid down by the grammarians—why, that is our privilege and no one shall say us nay. But let us not think scorn of those who are careless in paying their tithes of mint and anise and cummin, if also they stand upright and speak the truth plainly.
For myself—if a personal confession is not here out of place—I shrink always from profiting by any license I have just claimed for others; I strive always to eschew the Split Infinitive, to avoid and who when there is no preceding who which may balance it, and to put only always in the place where it will do most good. It is ever my aim to avail myself of the phrase which will convey my meaning into the reader’s mind with the least friction; and out of the effort to achieve this approach along the line of least resistance, I get something of the joy an honest craftsman ought always to feel in the handling of his tools. For this is what words are, after all; they are the tools of man, devised to serve his daily needs. As Bagehot once suggested, we may not know how language was first invented and made, “but beyond doubt it was shaped and fashioned into its present state by common, ordinary men and women using it for common and ordinary purposes. They wanted a carving-knife, not a razor or lancet; and those great artists who have to use language for more exquisite purposes, who employ it to describe changing sentiments and momentary fancies and the fluctuating and indefinite inner world, must use curious nicety and hidden but effectual artifice, else they cannot duly punctuate their thoughts and slice the fine edges of their reflections. A hair’s breadth is as important to them as a yard’s breadth to a common workman.”
(1898)