LESSON XI.—BAD PHRASES.
"He had as good leave his vessel to the direction of the winds."—SOUTH: in Joh. Dict. "Without good nature and gratitude, men had as good live in a wilderness as in society."—L'ESTRANGE: ib. "And for this reason such lines almost never occur together."—Blair's Rhet., p. 385. "His being a great man did not make him a happy man."—Crombie's Treatise, p. 288. "Let that which tends to the making cold your love be judged in all."—S. Crisp. "It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death."—Bacon's Essays, p. 4. "Accent dignifies the syllable on which it is laid, and makes it more distinguished by the ear than the rest."—Sheridan's Lect., p. 80; Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 244. "Before he proceeds to argue either on one side or other."—Blair's Rhet., p. 313. "The change in general of manners throughout all Europe."—Ib., p. 375. "The sweetness and beauty of Virgil's numbers, throughout his whole works."—Ib., p. 440. "The French writers of sermons study neatness and elegance in laying down their heads."—Ib., p. 13. "This almost never fails to prove a refrigerant to passion."—Ib., p. 321. "At least their fathers, brothers, and uncles, cannot, as good relations and good citizens, dispense with their not standing forth to demand vengeance."—Goldsmith's Greece, Vol. i, p. 191. "Alleging, that their crying down the church of Rome, was a joining hand with the Turks."—Barclay's Works, i, 239. "To which is added the Assembly of Divines Catechism."—New-England Primer, p. 1. "This treachery was always present in both their thoughts."—Dr. Robertson. "Thus far both their words agree." ("Convenient adhuo utriusqus verba. Plaut.")—Walker's Particles, p. 125. "Aparithmesis, or Enumeration, is the branching out into several parts of what might be expressed in fewer words."—Gould's Gram, p. 241. "Aparithmesis, or Enumeration, is when what might be expressed in a few words, is branched out into several parts."—Adam's Gram., p. 251. "Which may sit from time to time where you dwell or in the neighbouring vicinity."—Taylor's District School, 1st Ed., p. 281. "Place together a large and a small sized animal of the same species."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 235. "The weight of the swimming body is equal to that of the weight, of the quantity of fluid displaced by it."—Percival's Tales, ii, 213. "The Subjunctive mood, in all its tenses, is similar to that of the Optative."—Gwilt's Saxon Gram., p. 27. "No other feeling of obligation remains, except that of fidelity."—Wayland's Moral Science, 1st Ed., p. 82. "Who asked him, 'What could be the reason, that whole audiences should be moved to tears, at the representation of some story on the stage.'"—Sheridan's Elocution, p. 175. "Art not thou and you ashamed to affirm, that the best works of the Spirit of Christ in his saints are as filthy rags?"—Barclay's Works, i, 174. "A neuter verb becomes active, when followed by a noun of the same signification with its own."—Sanborn's Gram., p. 127. "But he has judged better, in omitting to repeat the article the."—Blair's Rhet., p. 194. "Many objects please us as highly beautiful, which have almost no variety at all."—Ib., p. 46. "Yet notwithstanding, they sometimes follow them."—Emmons's Gram., p. 21. "For I know of nothing more material in all the whole Subject, than this doctrine of Mood and Tense."—Johnson's Gram. Com., p. 292. "It is by no means impossible for an errour to be got rid of or supprest."— Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 642. "These are things of the highest importance to the growing age."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 250. "He had better have omitted the word many."—Blair's Rhet. p. 205. "Which had better have been separated."—Ib., p. 225. "Figures and metaphors, therefore, should, on no occasion be stuck on too profusely."—Ib., p. 144; Jamieson's Rhet., 150. "Metaphors, as well as other figures, should on no occasion, be stuck on too profusely."—Murray's Gram., p. 338; Russell's, 136. "Something like this has been reproached to Tacitus."—BOLINGBROKE: Priestley's Gram., p. 164.
"O thou, whom all mankind in vain withstand,
Each of whose blood must one day stain thy hand!"
—Sheffield's Temple of Death.
LESSON XII.—TWO ERRORS.[448]
"Pronouns are sometimes made to precede the things which they represent."—Murray's Gram., p. 160. "Most prepositions originally denote the relation of place."—Lowth's Gram., p. 65. "Which is applied to inferior animals and things without life."—Bullions, E. Gram., p. 24; Pract. Lessons, 30. "What noun do they describe or tell the kind?"—Infant School Gram., p. 41. "Iron cannon, as well as brass, is now universally cast solid."—Jamieson's Dict. "We have philosophers, eminent and conspicuous, perhaps, beyond any nation."—Blair's Rhet., p. 251. "This is a question about words alone, and which common sense easily determines."—Ib., p. 320. "The low [pitch of the voice] is, when he approaches to a whisper."—Ib., p. 328. "Which, as to the effect, is just the same with using no such distinctions at all."—Ib., p. 33. "These two systems, therefore, differ in reality very little from one another."—Ib., p. 23. "It were needless to give many instances, as they occur so often."—Ib., p. 109. "There are many occasions when this is neither requisite nor would be proper."—Ib., p. 311. "Dramatic poetry divides itself into the two forms, of comedy or tragedy."—Ib., p. 452. "No man ever rhymed truer and evener than he."—Pref. to Waller, p. 5. "The Doctor did not reap a profit from his poetical labours equal to those of his prose."—Johnson's Life of Goldsmith. "We will follow that which we found our fathers practice."—Sale's Koran, i, 28. "And I would deeply regret having published them."—Infant School Gram., p. vii. "Figures exhibit ideas in a manner more vivid and impressive, than could be done by plain language."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 222. "The allegory is finely drawn, only the heads various."—Spect., No. 540. "I should not have thought it worthy a place here."—Crombie's Treatise, p. 219. "In this style, Tacitus excels all writers, ancient and modern."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 261. "No author, ancient or modern, possesses the art of dialogue equal to Shakspeare."—Ib., ii, 294. "The names of every thing we hear, see, smell, taste, and feel, are nouns."—Infant School Gram., p. 16. "What number are these boys? these pictures? &c."—Ib., p. 23. "This sentence is faulty, somewhat in the same manner with the last."—Blair's Rhet., p. 230. "Besides perspicuity, he pursues propriety, purity, and precision, in his language; which forms one degree, and no inconsiderable one, of beauty."—Ib., p. 181. "Many critical terms have unfortunately been employed in a sense too loose and vague; none more so, than that of the sublime."—Ib., p. 35. "Hence, no word in the language is used in a more vague signification than beauty."—Ib., p. 45. "But, still, he made use only of general terms in speech."—Ib., p. 73. "These give life, body, and colouring to the recital of facts, and enable us to behold them as present, and passing before our eyes."—Ib., p. 360. "Which carried an ideal chivalry to a still more extravagant height than it had risen in fact."—Ib., p. 374. "We write much more supinely, and at our ease, than the ancients."—Ib., p. 351. "This appears indeed to form the characteristical difference between the ancient poets, orators, and historians, compared with the modern."—Ib., p. 350. "To violate this rule, as is too often done by the English, shews great incorrectness."— Ib., p. 463. "It is impossible, by means of any study to avoid their appearing stiff and forced."—Ib., p. 335. "Besides its giving the speaker the disagreeable appearance of one who endeavours to compel assent."—Ib., p. 328. "And, on occasions where a light or ludicrous anecdote is proper to be recorded, it is generally better to throw it into a note, than to hazard becoming too familiar."—Ib., p. 359. "The great business of this life is to prepare, and qualify us, for the enjoyment of a better."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 373. "In some dictionaries, accordingly, it was omitted; and in others stigmatized as a barbarism."— Crombie's Treatise, p. 322. "You cannot see, or think of, a thing, unless it be a noun."—Mack's Gram., p. 65. "The fleet are all arrived and moored in safety."—Murray's Key, ii, 185.
LESSON XIII.—TWO ERRORS.
"They have each their distinct and exactly-limited relation to gravity."—Hasler's Astronomy, p 219. "But in cases which would give too much of the hissing sound, the omission takes place even in prose."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 175. "After o it [the w] is sometimes not sounded at all; sometimes like a single u."—Lowth's Gram., p. 3. "It is situation chiefly which decides of the fortunes and characters of men."—HUME: Priestley's Gram., p. 159. "It is situation chiefly which decides the fortune (or, concerning the fortune) and characters of men."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 201. "The vice of covetousness is what enters deeper into the soul than any other."—Ib., p. 167; Ingersoll's, 193; Fisk's, 103; Campbell's Rhet., 205. "Covetousness, of all vices, enters the deepest into the soul."—Murray, 167; and others. "Covetousness is what of all vices enters the deepest into the soul."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 205. "The vice of covetousness is what enters deepest into the soul of any other."—Guardian, No. 19. "Would primarily denotes inclination of will; and should, obligation; but they both vary their import, and are often used to express simple event."—Lowth's Gram., p. 43; Murray's, 89; Fisk's, 78; Greenleaf's, 27. "But they both vary their import, and are often used to express simple events."—Comly's Gram., p. 39; Ingersoll's, 137. "But they vary their import, and are often used to express simple event."—Abel Flint's Gram., p 42. "A double conjunctive, in two correspondent clauses of a sentence, is sometimes made use of: as, 'Had he done this, he had escaped.'"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 213; Ingersoll's, 269. "The pleasures of the understanding are preferable to those of the imagination, or of sense."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 191. "Claudian, in a fragment upon the wars of the giants, has contrived to render this idea of their throwing the mountains, which is in itself so grand, burlesque, and ridiculous."—Blair's Rhet., p. 42. "To which not only no other writings are to be preferred, but even in divers respects not comparable."— Barclay's Works, i, 53. "To distinguish them in the understanding, and treat of their several natures, in the same cool manner as we do with regard to other ideas."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. 137. "For it has nothing to do with parsing, or analyzing, language."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 19. Or: "For it has nothing to do with parsing, or analyzing, language."—Ib., Second Edition, p. 16. "Neither was that language [the Latin] ever so vulgar in Britain."—SWIFT: see Blair's Rhet., p. 228. "All that I propose is to give some openings into the pleasures of taste."—Ib., p. 28. "But it would have been better omitted in the following sentences."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 210. "But I think it had better be omitted in the following sentence."—Priestley's Gram., p. 162. "They appear, in this case, like excrescences jutting out from the body, which had better have been wanted."—Blair's Rhet., p. 326. "And therefore, the fable of the Harpies, in the third book of the Æneid, and the allegory of Sin and Death, in the second book of Paradise Lost, had been better omitted in these celebrated poems."—Ib., p. 430. "Ellipsis is an elegant Suppression (or the leaving out) of a Word, or Words in a Sentence."—British Gram., p. 234; Buchanan's, p. 131. "The article a or an had better be omitted in this construction."—Blair's Gram., p. 67. "Now suppose the articles had not been left out in these passages."—Burke's Gram., p. 27. "To give separate names to every one of those trees, would have been an endless and impracticable undertaking."—Blair's Rhet., p. 72. "Ei, in general, sounds the same as long and slender a."—Murray's Gram., p. 12. "When a conjunction is used apparently redundant it is called Polysyndeton."—Adam's Gram., p. 236; Gould's, 229. "Each, every, either, neither, denote the persons or things which make up a number, as taken separately or distributively."— M'Culloch's Gram., p. 31. "The Principal Sentence must be expressed by verbs in the Indicative, Imperative, or Potential Modes."—Clark's Pract. Gram., p. 133. "Hence he is diffuse, where he ought to have been pressing."—Blair's Rhet., p. 246. "All manner of subjects admit of explaining comparisons."—Ib., p. 164; Jamieson's Rhet., 161. "The present or imperfect participle denotes action or being continued, but not perfected."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 78. "What are verbs? Those words which express what the nouns do"—Fowle's True Eng. Gram., p. 29.
"Of all those arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."
—J. Sheffield, Duke of Buck.
"Such was that muse whose rules and practice tell
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well."
—Pope, on Criticism.