Awkwardness, or inelegance of expression, is a reprehensible defect in style, whether it violate any of the common rules of syntax or not.
CRITICAL NOTE XIV.—OF IGNORANCE.
Any use of words that implies ignorance of their meaning, or of their proper orthography, is particularly unscholarlike; and, in proportion to the author's pretensions to learning, disgraceful.
CRITICAL NOTE XV.—OF SILLINESS. Silly remarks and idle truisms are traits of a feeble style, and, when their weakness is positive, or inherent, they ought to be entirely omitted. CRITICAL NOTE XVI.—OF THE INCORRIGIBLE.
Passages too erroneous for correction, may be criticised, orally or otherwise, and then passed over without any attempt to amend them.[445]
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE SYNTAX.
OBS. 1.—In the foregoing code of syntax, the author has taken the parts of speech in their order, and comprised all the general principles of relation, agreement, and government, in twenty-four leading Rules. Of these rules, eight—(namely, the 1st, of Articles; the 4th, of Possessives; the 9th, of Adjectives; the 20th, of Participles; the 21st, of Adverbs; the 22d, of Conjunctions; the 23d, of Prepositions; and the 24th, of Interjections—) are used only in parsing. The remaining sixteen, because they embrace principles that are sometimes violated in practice, answer the double purpose of parsing and correcting. The Exceptions, of which there are thirty-two, (all occasionally applicable in parsing,) belong to nine different rules, and refer to all the parts of speech, except nouns and interjections. The Notes, of which there are one hundred and fifty-two, are subordinate rules of syntax, not designed to be used in parsing, but formed for the exposition and correction of so many different forms of false grammar. The Observations, of which there are, in this part of the work, without the present series, four hundred and ninety-seven, are designed not only to defend and confirm the doctrines adopted by the author, but to explain the arrangement of words, and whatever is difficult or peculiar in construction.
OBS. 2.—The rules in a system of syntax may be more or less comprehensive, as well as more or less simple or complex; consequently they may, without deficiency or redundance, be more or less numerous. But either complexity or vagueness, as well as redundance or deficiency, is a fault; and, when all these faults are properly avoided, and the two great ends of methodical syntax, parsing and correcting, are duly answered, perhaps the requisite number of syntactical rules, or grammatical canons, will no longer appear very indeterminate. In the preceding chapters, the essential principles of English syntax are supposed to be pretty fully developed; but there are yet to be exhibited some forms of error, which must be corrected under other heads or maxims, and for the treatment of which the several dogmas of this chapter are added. Completeness in the system, however, does not imply that it must have shown the pupil how to correct every form of language that is amiss: for there may be in composition many errors of such a nature that no rule of grammar can show, either what should be substituted for the faulty expression, or what fashion of amendment may be the most eligible. The inaccuracy may be gross and obvious, but the correction difficult or impossible. Because the sentence may require a change throughout; and a total change is not properly a correction; it is a substitution of something new, for what was, perhaps, in itself incorrigible.
OBS. 3.—The notes which are above denominated Critical or General, are not all of them obviously different in kind from the other notes; but they all are such as could not well have been placed in any of the earlier chapters of the book. The General Rule of Syntax, since it is not a canon to be used in parsing, but one that is to be applied only in the correcting of false syntax, might seem perhaps to belong rather to this order of notes; but I have chosen to treat it with some peculiar distinction, because it is not only more comprehensive than any other rule or note, but is in one respect more important; it is the rule which will be cited for the correction of the greatest number and variety of errors. Being designed to meet every possible form of inaccuracy in the mere construction of sentences,—or, at least, every corrigible solecism by which any principle of syntax can be violated,—it necessarily includes almost all the other rules and notes. It is too broad to convey very definite instruction, and therefore ought not in general to be applied where a more particular rule or note is clearly applicable. A few examples, not properly fitting under any other head, will serve to show its use and application: such examples are given, in great abundance, in the false syntax below. If, in some of the instances selected, this rule is applied to faults that might as well have been corrected by some other, the choice, in such cases, is deemed of little or no importance.
OBS. 4.—The imperfection of ancient writing, especially in regard to division and punctuation, has left the syntactical relation of words, and also the sense of passages, in no few instances, uncertain; and has consequently made, where the text has been thought worthy of it, an abundance of difficult work for translators, critics, and commentators. Rules of grammar, now made and observed, as they ought to be, may free the compositions of this, or a future age, from similar embarrassments; and it is both just and useful, to test our authors by them, criticising or correcting their known blunders according to the present rules of accurate writing. But the readers and expounders of what has come to us from remote time, can be rightly guided only by such principles and facts as have the stamp of creditable antiquity. Hence there are, undoubtedly, in books, some errors and defects which have outlived the time in which, and the authority b which, they might have been corrected. As we have no right to make a man say that which he himself never said or intended to say, so we have in fact none to fix a positive meaning upon his language, without knowing for a certainty what he meant by it. Reason, or good sense, which, as I have suggested, is the foundation of grammar and of all good writing, is indeed a perpetual as well as a universal principle; but, since the exercises of our reason must, from the very nature of the faculty, be limited to what we know and understand, we are not competent to the positive correction, or to the sure translation, of what is obscure and disputable in the standard books of antiquity.