American English. 



345 



but only that of present possession. The general American dislike 

 of this ugly word, and our practice, where the past participle of the 

 verb get must be used, of adopting tiie old and softer form gotten 

 (which is now scarcely ever used in England)* are not exactly what 

 would be expected of a people who are ruining the language. 



V. 



I think moreover, though the opinion is of course only an opinion, 

 and hardly susceptible of positive proof or absolute negation, that 

 good English authors in general are less particular about many points 

 of grammar than are Americans of the same class. Dean Alford is 

 authority for the statement that ^^our best writers [meaning the best 

 British writers] have the popular expression these kind, those sort"\ 

 where this hind or that sort is intended; and I have noticed instances 

 of this solecism in Bagehot (Physics and Politics, N^o. II, section 3 — 

 ^' Nations with these sort of maxims"), and in Miss Muloch (Agatha's 

 Husband, chap. 1 — " The lansons were those sort of religious people 

 who think any Biblical allusions irreverent.") In a story called 

 "The Ladies Lindores," published serially in Blackwood (Part II, 

 chap. 4, No. 790 of the magazine. May, 1882) we find the following : 

 " There are some happy writers whose mission it is to expound the 

 manners and customs of the great. * * And yet, alas ! to these 

 writers when they have done all, yet must we add that they fail to 

 satisfy their models. * * " As if these sort of people knew anything 

 about society!' Lady Adeliza says." Lady Adeliza, or her reporter, 

 would do well to study a certain very elementary rule of grammar. 



Worse than this, perhaps, is Charles Reade's occasional blundering 

 withHhe nominative and objective cases, as where he makes the high- 

 born and elegant Edward Fountain, Esq., of Font Abbey, inform his 

 niece that " there will be only us two at dinner! " (Love me Little, 

 Love me Long, chap. 1.) Woi-se still is the confusing of the verbs lie 

 and lay, an error very rarely to be observed in respectable American 

 society, but one to which Alford says Eton graduates are especially 

 prone — and of which a striking instance may be found in an extraor- 

 dinary place for a grammatical error, Stormonth*s English Word- 

 Book, where laid is actually given as the participle of lie ! After 

 noting this, one need hardly be surprised to find the same writer de- 

 fining ^/^or«^ (in the supplement to his dictionary) as **the white 



*See "English and American English," by R. A. Proctor, in the Gentleman's Maga- 

 zine, copied into Appletons' Journal for October, 1881, and the New York Tribune of Aug. 

 14, 1881. 



+The Queen's English, 11th thousand, H 98. 



44 



