1904.] HEWETT — PROXOUXS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. 279 



present tendency in literature is to employ who and which at the 

 expense of the earlier tJiat. 



Every scholar will judge from his own use, or from the environ- 

 ment in which his speech has been formed, in respect to the 

 frequency and naturalness of the use of which and that in his own 

 case. That which we do instinctively is the test of familiar 

 expression. Writers upon the use of language in rhetorics and 

 popular grammars exhibit great diversity of judgment respecting 

 the use of these pronouns. Dean Alford, in his book upon the 

 Queen's English, fourth edition, 1874, in speaking of the use of 

 who and which, remarks : '' Now we do not commonly use either 

 one or the other of these pronouns, but make the more convenient 

 one thai make duty for both. We do not say ' The man who met 

 me, nor the cattle which I saw grazing,' but ' The man that met 

 me, the cattle tJiat I saw grazing.' " 



Bain, in his Higher English Grammar, says that who and 

 which are most commonly preferred for co-ordination, but that they 

 may also be used as restrictives. ''However, that is the proper 

 restrictive, explicative or defining relative. It would be a clear 

 gain to confine who and which to co-ordination and to reserve that 

 for the restrictive use alone. In the sentence ' His conduct sur- 

 prised his English friends who had not known him long,' we mean 

 either that his English friends generally were surprised (the relative 

 being in this case co-ordinating), or that only a portion of them — 

 namely, the particular portion that had not known him long — were 

 surprised. The doubt would be removed by writing thus, * His 

 English friends that had not known him long.' So, also, in the 

 sentence 'The next winter whicii j'Ou will spend in town will give 

 you opportunity to make a more prudent choice; ' this may either 

 mean you will spend next winter in town or the next of the winters 

 when you are to live in town, let that come when it may. In the 

 former case which is the proper relative, and in the latter case 

 that.'' According to my own impression, the ambiguity in the sen- 

 tence " His English friends that bad not known him long" would 

 not be removed, as the author thinks, by the substitution oi that for 

 which in this case. 



Genung, in The Working Principles oj Rhetoric, 1902, says: 

 "Typically, the relatives who and which assume that the ante- 

 cedent is fully defined in sense, their office being to introduce 

 additional information about it. They may accordingly be called 



