The nature and use of verbal criticism, with its principal canons.

As such idioms, therefore, err alike against purity, simplicity, perspicuity, and elegance. they are entitled to no quarter from the critic. A few of these in the writings of good authors, I shall have occasion to point out, when I come to speak of the solecism and the impropriety.

So much for the canons of verbal criticism, which properly succeed the characters of good use, proposed in the preceding chapter for the detection of the most flagrant errors in the choice, the construction, and the application of words. The first five of these canons are intended to suggest the principles by which our choice ought to be directed, in cases wherein use itself is wavering, and the four last to point out those farther improvements which the critical art, without exceeding her legal powers, may assist in producing. There are, indeed, who seem disposed to extend her authority much further. But we ought always to remember, that as the principal mode of improving a language, which she is empowered to employ, is by condemning and exploding, there is a considerable danger, lest she carry her improvements this way too far. Our mother-tongue, by being too much impaired, may be impoverished, and so more injured in copiousness and nerves, than all our refinements will ever be able to compensate. For this reason there ought, in support of every sentence of proscription, to be an evident plea from the principles of perspicuity, elegance, or harmony.

Sect. II. Every thing favoured by good use, not worthy to be retained....Can. IX.

If so, the want of etymology, whatever be the opinion of some grammarians, cannot be reckoned a sufficient ground for the suppression of a significant term, which hath come into good use. For my part, I should think it as unreasonable to reject, on this account, the assistance of an expressive word, which opportunely offers its service, when perhaps no other could so exactly answer my purpose, as to refuse the needful aid of a proper person, because he could give no account of his family or pedigree. Though what is called cant is generally, not necessarily, nor always, without etymology, it is not this defect, but the baseness of the use, which fixeth on it that disgraceful appellation. No absolute monarch hath it more in his power to nobilitate a person of obscure birth, than it is in the power of good use to ennoble words of low or dubious extraction; such, for instance, as have either arisen, nobody knows how, like fib, banter, bigot, fop, flippant, among the rabble, or like flimsy, sprung from the cant of manufacturers. It is never from an attention to etymology, which would frequently mislead us, but from custom, the only infallible guide in this matter, that the meanings of words in present use must be learnt. And, indeed, if the want in question were material, it would equally affect all those words, no inconsiderable part of our language, whose descent is doubtful or unknown. Besides, in no case can the line of derivation be traced backwards to infinity,

The nature and use of verbal criticism, with its principal canons.

We must always terminate in some words of whose genealogy no account can be given *.

It ought, at the same time, to be observed, that what hath been said on this topic, relates only to such words as bear no distinguishable traces of the baseness of their source; the case is quite different in regard to those terms, which may be said to proclaim their vile and despicable origin, and that either by associating disagreeable and unsuitable ideas, as bellytimber, thorowstitch, dumbfound; or by betraying some frivolous humour in the formation of them, as transmogrify, bamboozle, topsyturvy, pellmell, helterskelter, burlyburly. These may all find a place in burlesque, but ought never to show themselves in any serious performance. A person of no birth, as the phrase is, may be raised to the rank of nobility, and, which is

*Dr Johnson, who, notwithstending his acknowledged learning, penetration, and ingenuity, appears sometimes, if I may adopt his own expression, "lost in lexicography," hath declared the name punch, which signifies a certain mixt liquor very well known, a cant word, because, being to appearance without etymology, it hath probably arisen from some silly conceit among the people. The name sherbet, which signifies another known mixture, he allows to be good, because it is Arabic; though, for aught we know, its origin among the Arabs, hath been equally ignoble or uncertain. By this way of reckoning, if the word punch, in the sense wherein we use it, should by any accident be imported into Arabia, and come into use there, it would make good Arabic, though it be but cant English; as their sherbet, though in all likelihood but cant Arabic, makes good English. This, I own, appears to me very capti.

tions.

Of grammatical purity.

moré, may become it; but nothing can add dignity to that man, or fit him for the company of gentlemen, who bears indelible marks of the clown in his look, gait, and whole behaviour.

CHAP. III.

Of grammatical purity.

Ir was remarked formerly *, that though the grammatical art bears much the same relation to the rhetorical, which the art of the mason bears to that of the architect, there is one very memorable difference between the two cases. In architecture it is not necessary that he who designs should execute his own plans; he may therefore be an excellent artist in this way, who has neither skill nor practice in masonry: on the contrary, it is equally incumbent on the orator to design and to execute, He ought therefore to be master of the language which he speaks or writes, and to be capable of adding to grammatical purity, those higher qualities of elocution, which will give grace and energy to his discourse. I propose, then, in the first place, by way of laying the foundation +, to con

* Chap. II.

Solum quidem et quasi fundamentum oratoris, vides locutio

Of grammatical purity.

sider that purity which he hath in common with the grammarian, and then proceed to consider those qualities of speech which are peculiarly oratorical.

It was also observed before *, that the art of the logician is universal, the art of the grammarian particular. By consequence. my present subject being language, it is necessary to make choice of some particular tongue, to which the observations to be made will be adapted, and from which the illustrations to be produced, will be taken. Let English be that tongue. This is a preference to which it is surely entitled from those who write in it. Pure English then, implies three things; first, that the words be English; secondly, that their construction, under which, in our tongue, arrangement also is comprehended, be in the English idiom; thirdly, that the words and phrases be employed to express the precise meaning which custom hath affixed to them.

FROM the definition now given, it will be evident on reflection, that this is one of those qualities, of which, though the want exposes a writer to much censure, the possession hardly entitles him to any praise. The truth is, it is a kind of negative quality, as the name imports, consisting more in an exemption

tionem emendatam et Latinam. Cic. De clar. Orat. The same holds equally of any language which the orator is obliged to use. *Book I. Chap. iv.