1861.] on the Study of the English Language. 311 



Nominatives in vain search of missing verbs — verbs pursuing nomina- 

 tives witiiout success ; plurals and singulars joined in ungrammatical 

 wedlock ; premises laid down, from which no conclusions were drawn ; 

 many conclusions, with most vehement *• therefores," drawn from ima- 

 ginary premises ! Such speeches owed much to the mercy and the 

 talent of reporters, who could bring order out of chaos, sense out of 

 nonsense, and even eloquence out of the veriest platitudes. And yet 

 these are the results of our training in grammar, which ought, in the 

 famous words of Lindley Murray, to enable us to " read, write, and 

 speak the English language with fluency and propriety ! *' 



Our Universities had not much to boast of as the results of their 

 teaching in this respect. There was sound scholarship — there were 

 profound mathematical attainments — there was a certain amount of 

 theology ; in short, great disciplining of the powers — much storing of 

 the mind — but no direct training in reading, writing, and speaking 

 English' — the daily business of all — the professional duty of the clergy. 

 They might listen to the way in which the Church Service was read in 

 nine cases out of ten as a proof (indistinct utterance, incorrect pro- 

 nunciation, provincial accent, false emphasis, drawling, monotony, &c.) 

 — to the dull, listless style in which sermons were composed and 

 delivered, and to the painful attempts of most clergymen to do what the 

 barrister or the member of Parliament did, — speak without paper. In 

 Parliament, too, matters were not much better. With some dozen 

 exceptions, in neither House were there any really good public 

 speakers. Of the 10,000 speeches made last session, 5000 might 

 have been spared, and the rest given in a tenth of the time, if the 

 speakers had been trained to speak to the jtoint, to say what they had 

 to say in the fewest words. If volunteers must be drilled, public 

 speaking must be taught. Three months under a sound teacher of 

 elocution, of which there were several in London, would enable noble 

 lords and honourable members so to articulate as not to be reported 

 " inaudible in the gallery ;" and three months more under a composi- 

 tion master would teach them the art of constructing an English 

 sentence, warranted not to fall to pieces in the course of delivery. 



In other countries, the native tongue was not neglected. In 

 France, the language of the country was carefully taught through 

 the whole course of a boy's education ; the examination paper for 

 degrees, in 1861, contained five Greek, six Latin, and eight French 

 authors. When would that be matched in Oxford and Cambridge? 

 Nothing could be better than the teaching of the mother-tongue in 

 Germany. And the common objection raised by our exclusively 

 classical men, that the study of English would interfere with Latin 

 and Greek, was met by the facts, that in Germany the very best 

 philologists were to be found ; that from Germany our compilers of 

 grammars and dictionaries were glad to draw their most valuable in- 

 formation ; and that, while Germans were at least our equals in the 

 languages of Greece and Rome, they were unquestionably our superiors 

 in Oriental and European tongues. And there could be no doubt 



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