Words and Their Uses, Past and Present. A Study of the English Language

By RICHARD GRANT WHITE. New York: Sheldon & Co.

THE trouble with most writers upon style and the proprieties of language is, that, with a capacity for saying almost anything faultlessly, they have little or nothing to say. It is a great shame, but it is really a fact, that, with all their surprising accuracy and chasteness of expression, they have not even an agreeable style ; and thus we behold the shocking anomaly of men who would never fall into the blunders of Shakespeare, Addison, and Thackeray, — notoriously incorrect writers, — not only destitute of the ideas which have given these careless people their celebrity, but unable to utter what thoughts they have in such a way as to give pleasure to their readers. Take them one after another, what a tiresome company they mostly are ! How heavy and blunt in sarcasm, how thin and watery in humor, in wit how pert ! There is but one race more tedious and absurd on the face of the earth, namely, the writers on etiquette and deportment. Their chief excuse for being is the comfort they afford mankind by the spectacle of their mutual animosity. This is amusing in its sad way, for

afforded no show more exciting than they in their bouts with pronouns, adverbs, and all the parts of speech but the vital parts.

Perhaps the course of our feelings about most writers of this is kind has carried us too far to allow of our making the exception we should like to make of Mr. White. Where nearly all are insufferable and trivial, he is agreeable and instructive. We must confess, however, that we fear his influence upon the language will be small, and that the Englishspeaking world will go on saying, “ Is being done,” long after he is dead. Nevertheless, we salute this reappearance of his wellknown “Galaxy” essays with all favor and respect. Except as an adherent of destiny, a believer that what will he will be, we have no dispute with him, so far as we can remember, upon any of the points he urges. His book will not accomplish much with the abuses which it assails, but we have no doubt of its worth in other ways. Its chief use, we imagine, will be an historical one ; it will remain the best and most intelligent comment upon the English of our time, and scholars shall hereafter resort to it with the interest and pleasure we now feel in that knowledge of all past English which Mr. White shows.

He not only enlarges immensely the slender stock of the virtues of the writers upon words, but he escapes nearly all their faults ; he is neither heavy nor flippant ; he is neither elaborate nor obscure ; his book is thoroughly entertaining. We cherish a daring hope that it will here and there fall into the hands of a young writer of good instincts whom it will save from blundering into some vulgarities of parlance ; but we keep firmly in mind (and shall try always to do so) that when writers make a stand (as Mr. White now and then calls upon them to do) for any obsolescent form or grace of speech, they are doing a very deadly thing for themselves. The English language is primarily in the mouths of living men; it has no transmissible life but what comes thence, and there we must seek it if we would say anything clearly or stoutly to our own generation. Let posterity take care of itself.