346 



Ainei'ican English, 



mule on which Mohammed is said to have rode from Jerusalem to 

 heaven ! " If an American lexicographer were caught using laid for 

 lain, or rode for ridden, what a text it would furnish for a dissertation 

 on the process of depraving our mother tongue which is advancing 

 with such alarming rapidity in the United States I 



And tliere arc certain higlily incorrect constructions, like "differ- 

 ent to," which are notoriously British, and of which it is almost safe 

 to say that no xVmerican is ever guilty. Spencer's " immediately this 

 is recognized" (Study of Sociology, chap, ii), meaning ^.9 soon as this 

 IS recognized, and Buckle's ^'directly they came " (letter to Mrs. G-rey, 

 quoted in Huth's Life, chap. 2) meaning directly after they had come, 

 are other instances. Buckle, it should be remembered, was anything, 

 but a careless writer, having devoted great labor for a long time to the 

 acquisition of a correct and polished style of composition. One would 

 think he need not have spent many hours in this sort of study before 

 discovering that such a sentence as I put them away directly they 

 came" is not English. (Since writing the last sentence, I have noticed, 

 with disgust, an instance of exactly the same error in one of Gr. W. 

 Smalley's letters from London to the Xew York Tribune, published 

 April 24, 18S2 : "' Directly he heard of the intended demonstration, 

 Mr. Parnell left the train." But Mr. Smalley, like the lady in " The 

 Mighty Dollar," has " lived so much abroad, you know," that 

 some absorption of British blunders might well be expected of him ; 

 and I think one might spend a good deal of time in searching Ameri- 

 can literature, periodical or book, before he would find another.case.) 



Mr. Fitzedward Hall, as already quoted, is of opinion that educated 

 people in this country have lost the ability to write our language as 

 did the author of ''Edgar Huntly " eighty years ago. But •what 

 must we think of the improvement that has been made on the other 

 side of the sea when he turns the pages of Endymion and notices the 

 following, among other phrases of similar correctness and beauty ? 



Everybody says what they like " (chap. 20) ; " I would never leave 

 him for a moment, only T know he would get wearied of me " (chap. 

 39); "I have never been back the old place" (chap. 63) ; Every- 

 body can do exactly what they like" (chap. 98). Speaking in all 

 seriousness, were it not on the whole preferable that the art of writing 

 English should decline everywhere even faster than it has declined in 

 this country since the close of the last century, rather than that it 

 should develop into such perfection as is illustrated by the last 

 literary production of an ex-prime- minister of Great Britain ? 



