December 15th.

--Fortnightly Review.

In the year 1712 Dr. Jonathan Swift, the renowned author of Gulliver's Travels and the Tale of a Tub, one of the literary magnates of an eminently literary age, published a pamphlet, containing a proposal for "correcting, improving and ascerascertaining' the English tongue." The idea excited little attention except among the witlings and petty punsters, who hung on to the skirts of literature, as their successors do now, and who did their best, or their worst, to turn it into ridicule. These people were especially hostile in their own small way to the notion that the Government should give any assistance to the project of establishing an Academy of Letters, similar to that which had not long previously been instituted in France by royal authority. The Academy was the main recommendation of the plan by which Dr. Swift hoped to effect his much-needed reform. The proposal, in spite of the indifference and the opposition with which it was received, had much to recommend it, although the necessity of such a regulation of the literary language of the nation was much less imperative than it has since become. Dean Swift was not sanguine enough to hope that the reformation would

apply to the wild and reckless colloquial speech of the multitudes which then as now was overburdened by vulgar slang unfit for the purposes of literature, and confined his efforts at correction and improvement to the language employed in books, or in the speech of the educated classes, of the bar, of the pulpit and of the senate, and the ordinary conversation of refined and intelligent people. In those days slang was almost wholly confined to the lowest classes, to the tramps, the beggars, and the thieves to whom books and letters were unknown, and whose jargon had not penetrated out of the slums, and the haunts of the dishonest and disreputable, into the ordinary conversation of gentlemen and gentlewomen, or become the stock-in-trade of vulgar and aggressive journalists of the lowest grade, and had not grown into excrescences and deformities on the fair body of literature.

Possibly the project would have had a better chance of acceptance, if it had not been encumbered with the scheme of the Academy on the Paris model, unwelcome to the English people because it was French, if for no other reason; and might have been considered on its merits, as the

Dean of St. Patrick's doubtless hoped that it would be. But in those days everything that was French was unpopular; and literature itself was not much regarded unless its influence was directed to the support of factions and parties which were then, as now, the scandal and misfortune of Great Britain and all free countries, and governments dependent upon mob support. Had the ruling powers of that day understood the importance of literature to a great nation-great because of its literature, as well as on account of its arts, its arms, and its material wealth-and had had sagacity and forethought enough to include a Minister of Education, as well as a Minister of War, of Finance, and of Foreign Affairs, among its high functionaries, the project of the Dean might have fared better at the hands of his contemporaries. This is a consummation, however, to which the nation has not even yet arrived, though some approaches have been made toward it.

In our School Board era-when the new generations are being taught to handle the tools of knowledge, to read, to write, and to cast accounts, and boys and girls think themselves educated because these tools of education are put within their reach, although the skill and the power to use them to advantage are not given them, or are possible to be acquired by them in the fierce competition for bare existence, consequent on the excess of population and the overcrowded state of the labor market in our narrow islands-a revival of the project of Dean Swift might have a more favorable chance of acceptance by the State than it had in his day.

The questions involved are still open for discussion. Our noble speech promises to become the predominant, though not perhaps the only language of the civilization of the coming centuries, and is already heard like the morning drum-beat of British power in every part of the globe. It floats upon the wings of a widely pervading literature, and of a still more pervading commerce to the uttermost ends of the earth, and will inevitably be the speech, more or less preserved in its purity, or corrupted by ignorance, carelessness, or the imitative perversity of the semi-educated multitude of the young and mighty nations, now in their adolescence or early maturity, which have arisen or are arising in North America, South Africa,

Australia, New Zealand, and every country where seed can grow or man can thrive, to take the place of such old grandfathers of civilization as the English, French, Italian, and German languages of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.

The purpose of the present paper, as was that of Dean Swift a hundred and seventy years ago, is to treat of the purity and preservation of literary English, and to leave undiscussed and with slight mention the colloquial parlance of the multitude, which is governed by its own laws or by the absence of laws, and corrupted by the changeful, frivolous, and often base and degraded fashion of the time, and which has no claim to represent the culture of the nation; and to maintain a purity of language which it neither appreciates nor is able to understand. The subject naturally divides itself into three branches; first, the correction of old or new orthographical errors; second, the misuse of words that are still legitimate and necessary parts of the language; and third, the restoration to currency of the words that have been unnecessarily suffered to drop out of the speech of our cultivated ancestors, whose genius created and adorned our literature, and gave it a foremost place in the intellectual history of mankind.

As regards the first branch of the subject. few will deny that the orthography of the English language demands reform. We need not go the length of the fanatics of phoneticism (who would spell wife yf, knee nee, and write eye in the same manner as the personal pronoun I) to desire a change in the spelling of many English words which are a stumbling-block to foreigners as well as to natives. The instances of plough, "though," "enough," "borough," "cough,' "dough," ought, in which seven words the letters ought to have seven different sounds, are more than sufficient to prove that a reformation in spelling is highly desirable, and that plough ought to be written and printed plow; through, thru, or throo; enough, enuf; borough, burrow, or burro; cough, cauf; dough, doe; and ought, aut or ort with the r quiescent. In like manner the verb to do" ought to be written "to du" or to doo, " and the past tense of "to read " ought not to be spelled in exactly the same

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manner as the present tense of the same verb; but I did read (pronounced I redd) should be written phonetically; and I did eat (pronounced I ett, or I ate) should follow the same rule. Why the double I should necessarily be employed in the words spell, well, bell, smell, fell, and many others, while one is considered sufficient in rebel, propel, excel, repel, expel, &c., is not apparent to ordinary intelligence, or explicable by any philological and etymological reasons.

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Why English writers, talkers, and printers should persist in ignoring the past tenses of so many verbs in daily use passes comprehension, so needless and so anomalous is the lazy and incorrect habit into which some good writers as well as the vulgar have permitted themselves to fall. "I bid him do it now" is correct; but "I bid him do it yesterday," in which the present tense is used instead of bade in the past, is an indefensible corruption. Among the verbs which have been deprived of their past tenses and their preterites, may be specified to bet, to beat, to let, to spread, to shed, to cut, to put, and to shut. There are no grammatical or any other reasons why they should not have been among the verbs which have inflections in other languages, but never had in English, though they ought to have had if intelligent grammarians had had the original ordering of the language. Can' and must have not even the infinitive "to can" and "to must. "Can" has a past tense ("could"), but no future, which can only be rendered by the paraphrase "I shall be able," or "It will be in my power." Must has neither a past nor a future-" I must do it to-day" has to be put into the past tense by the roundabout locution, I was obliged to do it," or It was necessary that I should do it" while the future of the verb falloir, which in the corresponding case, in the more precise language of the French, is il faut, becoming il faudra in the future, is in English only to be expressed by a periphrase, expressive both of compulsion and obligation in futurity. The same disability to express the future belongs to the verb may, which, like can, has no infinitive, though it has a past tense might, but no future in will may, and no present participle corresponding with the French pouvant. The French are more precise than the English, and say "il se

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as

peut and il se pourra." But no such niceties of grammatical construction are permissible in the English. These defects are ineradicable and irremediable in the old age of the language, but might have been adopted in its youth if any great authors had given them currency.

The very common substitute of had for would, consequent upon the abbreviation of I'd, which does duty both for I had and I would, stands in a different category, and is easy of correction, if competent and fashionable writers would but take the trouble to understand the language which they employ. "I had rather not," instead of "I would rather not," is a phrase of constant recurrence in the editorial columns of influential journals of the first rank, and in the pages of authors of established reputation. The few following instances may serve to show the prevalence of the error.

People in the responsible position of ministers had better take time. (It would be better for people in the responsible position of ministers to take time.)-Times.

Interesting as is the subject, and eloquent as are the speakers, we had (would) rather_hear them descant upon some other theme.-Times. The preface had better not have been written. (It would have been better if the preface had not been written.)-Morning Post.

A gentleman of such delicate susceptibilities as Mr. Walpole had better not have trusted himself to a personal interview with Mr. Beales.-Saturday Review. (It would have been better if Mr. Walpole had not trusted himself, &c.)

I had rather have lost an arm. (I would

rather have lost an arm.)-Thackeray, “The Virginians.'

The account of it had better be given in his own words. (It would have been better if the account had been given in his own words.)—

Leigh Hunt," The Old Court Suburb."

Reforms in the orthography not affecting the structure of a language, or much, if at all, affecting its grammar, are comparatively easy for any Government, whether free or despotic, to establish. The fact is evident from the attempt successfully made by the German Government in 1880 to purify the German language as spoken in Prussia, from the literal excrescences which it had inherited from the past, or which had been suffered to grow upon it by the careless ignorance of new generations. In that year, the then Minister of Education under Kaiser Wilhelm the First (a monarch who personally cared little or nothing for literature, but was