A Little Learning..
THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.
AT the present day, when the accurate study of our own language is so greatly extolled, it is amusing to see the blunders into which some would-be purists fall, not from ignorance exactly, but from that little learning which we have known for two hundred years to be so dangerous. The trouble generally arises from people’s eagerness to be schoolmasters in English when they should content themselves with being scholars. The result is that the amateur schoolmaster is abroad, — very much abroad, — and is most dogmatic when farthest from real knowledge. Some of these half-learned blunderers deserve to have their achievements specially noted.
What, for instance, induces a large number of popular writers not only in newspapers and magazines, but in books, to make all their men, when talking to a woman, call her “ madame ” ? None of the parties are French, nor is the scene laid in France. Why not “ madam ” ? That word has the sanction of the very first writers for three hundred years. There is no more reason for writing “ madame ” in English prose, nor in poetry when the word has its ordinary accent, than for “ ruine ” or “ charme.”
Why do “ society ” magazines and newspaper advertisements always print " crêpe ” ? The word has been thoroughly English for years upon years. Pope told us nearly two centuries ago
Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit makes most effective use of black crape in the delirious ravings of poor Lewsome. But there is no need to quote such authorities. The adopting of the French form instead of the English is entirely a fancy of milliners, and of society writers who take their inspiration from milliners, of the last few years.
Why have Americans such a passion for the form “ around,” almost wholly rejecting “ round ” as an adverb or preposition, and when they introduce it in writing — usually as a bit of dialect or a vulgarism — printing it “ ’round ” ? “ Round ” and “ around ” are in all respects equal in the very best writers. The first book of Paradise Lost shows this sufficiently. There is no reason for avoiding the shorter form ; and most certainly no reason, if it is used, for prefixing an apostrophe in print.
All such fads come from imperfect knowledge of the best literature, an imperfection which is pretty certain to peep out elsewhere in the writings of those who follow them. One magazine which regularly treats its readers to “ madame ” and “ crêpe ” exhibits, in the pages of a really eminent literary man, an Englishman with an estate in “ Norfolkshire.” Why not “ New Yorktown ” or “ Chicagoville ” ? Norfolk is not one of the “ shires,” as any Englishman will tell you. Oh that men — and women — would read more before they wrote ! Perhaps then they would not write so much.