228 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



We need to pass from the study and collection of words to the study 

 and collection of phrases. Lexicographers deserve all honor. In the 

 Middle English field, to be sure, we are still pretty badly off, but 

 we ought to be thankful for what we have. Yet how little has been 

 done towards the history of idioms and phrases in comparison with 

 the labor that has been devoted to tracing the history of individual 

 words! What I say applies as well to Modern as to Middle English. 

 We need investigations of phraseology. There is no more fascinating 

 pursuit for the linguist, none that will repay him more immediately 

 or more abundantly for his time and trouble. The bearings of the 

 subject are multifarious. Take the purely historical point of view. 

 We know that a certain poem contains twenty per cent, of French 

 and Latin words. Are we to infer that this measures the Romance 

 element in its language? By no means. How far are the phrases 

 French or Latin in their relations, even when the words are Ger- 

 manic? Our habit of translating foreign phrases literally and making 

 them a part of our speech is well known and of very long standing. 

 Many of our commonest idioms are naturalized citizens that have 

 adopted the speech of their new country. It is notorious that the 

 genealogist has much trouble when he gets into a region where 

 immigrants have been in the way of translating their family names. 

 We must remember, too, that there are what may be called literary 

 idioms as well as popular idioms, and in these Middle English writers 

 reveled with all the unrestraint of authors who wished to produce 

 largely and rapidly and who had never conceived that it is a virtue 

 to be original. 



For some time we have been trembling on the verge of another 

 huge group of problems, which I have mentioned two or three times, 

 but without dwelling upon them. I refer, of course, to syntax. 



The study of English syntax is in its infancy. The neglect of this 

 department of philology has, indeed, been often commented on with 

 reference to all the modern languages. It stands in the most startling 

 contrast to the minute and almost passionate attention which has 

 been devoted to the history of sounds and forms. Yet English syntax 

 has the bad eminence of being perhaps more neglected than that of 

 any other great language. A few brilliant scholars have coquetted 

 with the subject. Several heavy and unilluminated persons have 

 made unwieldy collections of material, usually overlooking the vital 

 matters or stopping short as soon as they had reached a point at 

 which they were in sight of something either difficult or significant. 

 There are two or three manuals of substantial worth, and a number of 

 distinguished monographs. But in general it must be admitted that 

 English syntax has hardly been studied at all, except for practical 

 purposes. I have learned, since these sessions began, that a thoroughly 

 equipped and uncommonly keen-sighted scholar has in hand a large 



