CHAPTER VIII

ENGLISH GRAMMAR-THE FRAME OF STYLE

Every natural language was in use long before the compiling of its grammar. The earliest grammar known to the modern world is the Sanskrit grammar of Panini (about 300 B.C.), giving in eight books with three thousand sections, the rules for classical Sanskrit. But Panini himself enumerates sixty-four grammatical predecessors, and the oldest Sanskrit literature is conventionally placed at 1500 B.C., though undoubtedly much older. A language, however, must exist in a tolerably complete form before a literature can be composed in it, so that the Sanskrit language reaches beyond the earliest Sanskrit literature far back into a dim antiquity. The language had existed for unknown centuries, and had been the medium of a great literature for probably a thousand years before its grammar began. Greek grammar had an independent and later origin. The Homeric poems were the monuments it most eagerly studied. But those poems are placed at 900-1100 B.C., while the first notable, though disconnected, observations on grammar were made by Plato (427-347 B.C.) and Aristotle (384322 B.C.). It was not until Dionysius Thrax ("The Thracian"), who taught in Rome in the first century B.C., composed his "Art of Grammar," that the grammar of the Greek language had full development. Thus again about a thousand years elapsed after the fulness and power of the Greek language had been revealed in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," before grammatical analy

sis was ready to explain what the language had long since done.

The grammatical work of the Romans was but an imitation of their Greek models. Varro in the first century B.C. produced a work of great value on the Latin language, and Priscian, about the close of the fifth century A.D., published his "Grammatical Commentaries," of which twelve were on inflection and two on syntax. This became the accepted authority on Latin grammar throughout the Middle Ages. But all that was greatest in Latin literature had been written long before.

The record of English grammar is similar, traced back to the "Bref Grammar for English" of William Bullocar, published in 1586, and the "Grammatica Linguæ Anglicana" of John Wallis, published in 1653. The earliest of these works was written five hundred years after the Norman Conquest, and two centuries after Chaucer had shown what the English language by itself could do.

Considered a priori we should at once say that nothing could be more rational, convenient, and desirable than a directory of the combinations of words, showing what words must mean when associated in certain ways, according to the custom, or, as we sometimes say, the "genius," of the language. How is it, then, that in English the word "grammarian" has become almost a term of reproach, and that "grammatical rules" have come to be considered an oppression and an abomination? This is due to the fact, just recorded, that in the early days a foreign grammar was imposed upon English, ready-made from without, and with practically no reference to what had grown up within the language. The fact that Chaucer and Gower had published widely popular tales and poems no more made English schol

arly, in the view of the grammarians, than the popularity of moving pictures to-day would in an artist's view give them a place in classical art. Those famous poets and later English writers in verse and prose had done very well, the scholar would admit, considering the poor material in which they had to work. But English was still in his view an inferior language, "the vulgar tongue," toward which the scholar must exercise such patience as he could. Even Lindley Murray in his English Grammar of 1795, contrasts English with "the learned languages," which for him were notably the Greek and Latin.

The Latin, especially, was the beloved language of English scholars. The work which an Englishman might write in Latin could be read by any scholar in France, Germany, or Italy, Sweden, Denmark or Spain. In that language he was at home in the "Republic of Letters." Bacon in 1620 wrote his "Novum Organum" in Latin, as did Harvey in 1628 his work on the "Circulation of the Blood." When the scholars turned to English they missed almost everything that made Latin grammar a certainty and a delight. As English was evidently determined to live, they agonized to shape it to the Latin model. It must have genders, persons, numbers, cases, and conjugations, wherever the Latin had them, or the want of these must be explained or apologized for, and words or whole clauses must be "understood," to show what the expression would have been in the nobler and more orderly Latin. It was taken for granted that the English had failed of this only because it was unable, as yet, to obtain it. Everything possible must be done to hasten the reshaping of the native speech to the Latin perfection.

In England the very name of "grammar school" sig

nified a school where the chief studies were Greek and Latin, predominantly Latin, as more strictly the language of western Europe. So far as English was thought worthy of any attention whatever, it was with the undeviating purpose of remaking it to fit the Latin scheme. Hence, there was constant strain and friction between the living, vigorous, hustling language and the antique and immobile frame into which it was determined to thrust it. We can hear the language struggle and groan and the joints of the frame-work creak wherever the attempt is persisted in, to this day. Thousands of students gave up the study except as compelled to go through perfunctory recitations, and those who attempted to write or talk according to the book were given up by the rest. At length, in the nineteenth century, and especially in America, teachers awoke to the fact that the results of this system bore no proportion to the time and labor bestowed on the instruction. Then there was a general revolt against grammar as such. Many schools abolished the very name, and substituted "language" lessons, not seeing that they were trying to do without a system the very thing that the discarded English grammar had tried to do by a false system. Then we had "inductive methods," in which the poor callow things of eight to fourteen years of age were to study out and discover in a few hours of their school course the evolution of centuries. Out of all these complicated failures there has grown up in many minds the persuasion that what is called "English grammar" is an outgrown superstition, a fiction, or a joke. Some instructors in English have affirmed that "Grammar is simply good common sense, or that "Good grammar is simply speaking so as to be understood."

Such a solution utterly breaks down under the test

of fact. A recent paper gives the repartee of a colored shopper with a dealer of her own race. "Is dese aigs fresh?" she asks. "I ain't sayin' dey ain't," is the reply. To which she answers, "I ain't askin' you, Is dey ain't; but, is dey is. Is dey?" Here certainly was good sense. The analysis of the subject would do credit to an accomplished debater:-"I am not asking what they are not, but what they are. Are they as specified?" As to "being understood" this dialectic statement is perfectly intelligible. Yet its violations of grammar are too many to enumerate. The prevalence of such a style would hopelessly corrupt and degrade the language.

Now, what is that thing called "grammar," which is thus violated? It is the immemorial usage of the language regarding the connection of words, as established by consensus of its best writers and speakers through all the past. Changes have come from period to period, but yet, on the whole, an essential unity has characterized the English language for five hundred years. Its best writers and speakers have been persons of clear and vigorous thought, and, in the main, of good taste and fine feeling. They have been most competent to decide what constructions should live, and their approval and use have fixed those constructions in the language. Where they have agreed that a plural form of the verb, for instance, should be used, we should do ill to set aside that agreement and employ a singular form. Those masters of style have given elegance and dignity to certain constructions, so that on the edge of the ungrammatical there is always a zone of the inelegant and undignified, which, if not explicitly to be condemned, is yet to be avoided. All these conditions are violated by the dialectical quotation given above, in spite of the fact that it expresses good sense, and can be readily under