JixE 19, 1SS5.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



525 



OX CERTAIX CORRUPTIONS OF 



ENGLISH. 



By "Hallyauds." 



I. "THAN WHOM." 



PROBABLY no one ever wrote " than who." Why 1 

 " Thau " is a conjunction, and the rule is that con- 

 junctions join like cases. If, therefore, a nominativs pre- 

 cedes " than," a nominative should follow it, and " whom " 

 is an accusative. 



In Latin and Greek comparison is made either by the 

 conjunction, as in modem tongues, or by an oblique case, 

 ablative (L), or genitive (G). But in the case of the 

 relative pronoun the method with the conjunction alone 

 can be used ; and it is probably this which has led us into 

 a muddle. In French, A-c, the expression "than whom" 

 cannot occur ; no clause could begin " que que," or " que 

 qui " ; no more than in Latin, where we can say " quern 

 quam," but not " quam quern " ; or, to put it " putide," we 

 may say " quem quam " in two senses, but not in a third — 

 a comparative sense. 



In the earlier standards of style " than " is not made to 

 govern an accusative. But for nearly two centuries (1G50- 

 1850) " than " and " as " were treated as prepositions. For 

 the former examples can be found in Swift, Bolingbroke, 

 Atterbury, and Prior; for the latter in Hobbes, Alison, 

 and TrencL 



If I held a brief for " than whom," I would urge that 

 there is something to be said for it ; as thus, when we say 

 " quo nil est majus," the oblique case contains in itself the 

 idea of a preposition, since all oblique cases are originally 

 formed by tacking a preposition on to the word. Then, as 

 we can translate " quo " only by " than," the latter takes 

 the guise of a preposition ; and prepositions in English 

 govern the accusative, hence " than whom," <tc. But if 

 this pleading prevail, then " than " must be reckoned as a 

 preposition, or a preposition as well as a conjunction, or as 

 a preposition-conjunction. If not, the only logical thing to 

 do is to proscribe " than whom " altogether, and rigidly to 

 write " than who," whenever we feel bound to begin our 

 phrase with those words. 



If it were not by the sense of the latent preposition iu 

 " quo," &.C., that " than whom," &c., established themselves, 

 it was probably from their use in cases where the accusative 

 would be correct; e.f/., "than whom I honour none more." 

 To account for the use of " as " governing the accusative, I 

 can only suggest that the comparison of inequality attracted 

 that of equality into its own predicament, like so many 

 usages of attraction in Greek, which seem flagrant violations 

 of common sense at first sight, and from which Latin is 

 absolutely free. 



II. "HAVE 



. . TO HAVE . . . ." 



"Sir, Mr. C. called." "Ah, I should have liked 'to have' 

 seen him." This odious nonsense is now the very flower 

 and essence of superior style. (No doubt it can be backed 

 by examples in classical English; but so can any mon- 

 strosity. Even in Shakespeare we find " Return it back." 

 And the Greek classics are full of similar laches, as the 

 Latin are of ridiculous bad Latin — i.e., " Grsecisms, ' even 

 as the Gallicisms now creeping like microzymes of evil 

 portent across the " silver streak," which we still fondly 

 call the English Channel. " Have you ever been across 

 the ' American Channel,' Sir ! " I heard a woman say to 

 the steward on board a night-boat from Folkestone. This 

 struck me as a neat alias for the Atlantic.) " I should have 

 liked to ' have seen him," should be, " I should have liked 



(had I been in) ' to -see him ' (' then ')." " I should have 

 liked to have seen him " is also a perfectly correct phrase, 

 but in another souse — i.e., "to have- seen hitn ('pre- 

 viously')." "J'aurais desire I'avoir vu." " Voluissem 

 cum 'vidissi.'" These blunder.i would call down severe 

 animadversion from any teacher of Latin or French ; why 

 should illogical French or Latin bo logical English ? The 

 coupling of these two " haves " always sounds to my ear 

 like the step made liy a hobbled beast when he has browzed 

 all within reach of his mouth. 



III.- 



-POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS PKECEniNG THEIR 



NOUNS. 



A pestilent practice, growing more and more common 

 both in English and French, giviug always a feeling like 

 a bad smell, and not unfrequently bewildering the sense. 

 I take one recent example from the Saturday Review on 

 the Laureate's " Becket " :— " The King and Becket are 

 discovered playing a game at chess, and the future is some- 

 what obviously foreshadowed by the conquest [this, too, is 

 incorrect ; he means victory] of Becket, who mates the 

 King with his Bishop. Although he has been so engaged 



with his thoughts as to take no interest in the game ." 



Now, "who" had been, kc.l, By all laws of grammar 

 and common sense, the pronoun " he " should refer to the 

 noun and pronouns immediately preceding, " Becket," and 

 "who," and "his." So I thought in reading. But not 

 so at all ; it goes on : — " ' Henry ' somewhat incon- 

 sistently," kc. 



In this instance it is a personal pronoun that is put 

 before the noun, whose "pro" it is, or through, we should 

 say, " the pro-proctors and proctors " ; but the more usual 

 offence is to write a possessive one, and then its personal, 

 or its noun, afterwards. This is done, it would seem, 

 chiefly in order to avoid the trouble of constructing a lucid, 

 logical sentence. It is never iu any way necessary. 



Certainly, in Latin and Greek it is sometimes a great 

 elegance to put the possessive first, or in such a phrase as 

 " Sua enim mole suit tyrannis," where the pronoun is 

 rightly foremost, in order to mark as prominently as 

 possible the sense of our. But each language has its own 

 proper order of words, and we cannot borrow at will from 

 the foreigner in this re.spect. 



IV.—" I NEVER REMEMBER TO HAVE SEEN." 



This phrase is used by the best writers. Should it not 

 be, " I do not remember ever to have seen 1 " A com- 

 parison will help. "Jene me rappelle jamais d'avoirvu" 

 is the French equivalent of the form I ol)ject to. It 

 states a fact, but not the fact required, which is " Je ne 

 me rappelle d'avoir jamais vu." I suppose, indeed, that 

 all who use the " I never," &c., would agree on a moment's 

 thought that it is incorrect ; but it is astonishing how very 

 general it is, in spite of that. 



V.—" A CERTAIN ." 



Scores of English writers now say, <?.cj., "a certain 

 dignity," meaning " une certaine dignite," which means 

 not "such a dignity as may be named — some honour or 

 preferment " — but " a certain amount of digiiity in the 

 behaviour." The purer English would be " some amount 

 or degree of dignity." The phrase is very illogical, either 

 in French or Euglish ; for it is always used precisely where 

 the quantity is uncertain ; much or " a certain age " said 

 of a lady, which may mean any age from thirty to fifty. 

 Certainly, we all translate "n'c "and "quidam" a "certain 

 one," " a certain person." But that means " one whom I, 

 the speaker, know, or choose to pretend I know." Then 



