The Dean has just published an appendix to his Queen's English'. It was said that, if he should ever write again upon language, he would, doubtless, write with greater care. The reviewers were very charitable to attribute his errors to carelessness; but, that those errors sprang from an other source, is now evident beyond dispute:the appendix, although written after four years more study, abounds with errors as gross as any that were found in the Dean's first essay. What does the reader think of there being, in a treatise on the Queen's English, such an error in grammar as the following:-"Abnormal' is one of those "words which has come in to supply a want in "the precise statements of science"-those words which has come! As for the courtesies of literature, the Dean calls those persons who differ with him in the use of certain words, "apes", "asses”, and "idiots". Is this "sound speech, that cannot "be condemned": Titus ii, 8? Is this being "gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in XV "meekness instructing those that oppose them"selves" 2 Timothy ii, 24? But I forbear. Surely, surely, it will be only modest of the Dean to retire from the office of lecturer on the Queen's English; and, if his good sense has not utterly left him, he will wisely reflect on the folly a style of writing of attracting attention to "which", as Junius said of the character of Sir William Draper, "will pass without censure "only when it passes without observation." LONDON, January, 1867. THE VERY REV. HENRY ALFORD, D.D., Dean of Canterbury, was born in London on October 7th, 1810, and was the son of the Rev. Henry Alford, M.A., of Wadham College, Oxford, Vicar of Aston Sandford, near Thame, in Buckinghamshire (the living held by the Bible Commentator, Thomas Scott). Having received his early education in the Grammar School of Ilminster, in Somersetshire, he matriculated, in 1828, at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which Society he was soon afterwards elected a Scholar. In 1831 he obtained two University distinctions, being elected Bell's Scholar and Member's (Latin) Prizeman. In the following year he took the degree of B.A. in double first-class honours, being placed thirty-seventh in the list of Wranglers, and eighth in the first-class in the Classical Tripos. He further graduated M.A. 1835, B.D. 1849, and D.D. 1859. He was ordained Deacon in 1833, by Bishop Philpotts of Exeter, and Priest in 1834, by Bishop Murray of Rochester. His appointments and preferments were: 1833-35, Curate of Ampton, in the county of Suffolk; 1834-35, Fellow of Trinity; 1835-53, Vicar of Wymeswold, in the county of Leicester and diocese of Peterborough, a benefice in the patronage of his College; 1841-42, Hulsean Lecturer in the University of Cambridge; 1842 (for several years), Examiner in Logic and Moral Philosophy in the University of London; 1853-57, Minister of Quebec Chapel, in the parish of St. Marylebone; and from 1857 to his death Dean of Canterbury. He died at Canterbury on January 12th, 1871. CONTENTS. A decided weak point", or A decidedly weak point" 50, 123 Speak not more "The words nearest connected", or "The words most 49 "How nicely she looks", or "How nice she looks "I only bring forward some things ", or "I bring forward "They may be correctly classified", or "They may cor- "We merely speak of numbers", or A paragraph of fewer than ten lines, yet so ambiguously A strange sentence from Dean Swift's writings A witness "intoxicated by the motion of an honourable "Compositors without any mercy" "Compositors without the slightest compunction" "Sometimes the editors fall, from their ignorance" on their backs" 49, 122 |