Extracts from Reviews. This work is well worthy of the careful study of all who aspire to write English elegantly and accurately.'- The London Quarterly Review. "The English language is a noble inheritance; and we may well be thankful to those who, like Mr. Moon, jealously guard its purity. There are, indeed, but few either readers or writers of the English language who do not need to profit by his very instructive criticisms.'-The Quarterly Journal of Education. 'There is something very inviting in the work of a man who, having fairly unhorsed the Dean of Canterbury in his own chosen lists, has now the audacity to attack the great arbiter of such contests, Lindley Murray himself. We confess our obligation to Mr. Moon, not only for an instructive but for an entertaining book; and we believe that there are few who do not often fall into errors which he condemns, or who cannot learn from him, in a very pleasant way, to write and to speak English more elegantly.' The New York Church Record. 'We welcome as a benefactor every man who sets himself conscientiously to prune out of our language those unsightly excrescences of style, violations of syntax, and inaccuracies of expression, which disfigure so much of the literature of the day. This is the task which Mr. Washington Moon has imposed upon himself, and we wish him well accordingly. It would be unjust to him not to acknowledge that his two little books, "The Dean's English" and "Bad English Exposed", are a useful contribution to the art of writing the English language with accuracy.'-The Times. 'The name of Mr. Washington Moon is well known in this country and in America as an able writer and critic on the English language; and we are constrained to look upon his contributions to a more correct criticism and a fuller knowledge of the English language as the most valuable additions to this part of our literature which we have seen for very many years. Mr. Moon has brought to his difficult task rare powers of analysis and discrimination, and a highly cultivated appreciation of all that is most beautiful, vigorous, and correct in our language; and it is almost impossible for any sound English scholar to read Mr. Moon's "Dean's English" and "Bad English Exposed without learning very much from their pages. Why does not Mr. Moon write a grammar of the English language- -a task for which he clearly is eminently qualified?'- The School-Board Chronicle. BAD ENGLISH EXPOSED: A SERIES OF CRITICISMS ON THE ERRORS AND INCONSISTENCIES OF Lindley Murray and other Grammarians. "The rules of our language should breathe the same spirit as the laws LONDON: HATCHARDS, PICCADILLY. 1876. 09-28-29de18 PREFACE. My former work, "The Dean's English", to which this is the companion volume, is a series of criticisms on the language employed by the Dean of Canterbury in his treatise on the Queen's English; and demonstrates that while the Dean undertook to instruct others he was himself but a castaway in matters of grammar. The present work is a similar series of criticisms, but is on the English of certain Americans; namely, Lindley Murray, the Hon. G. P. Marsh, Mr. S. of Trinity College, and Mr. E. S. Gould of New York. |