I asked him whether he meant a little deal, or a great deal. The former expression, very strangely, is never used; but the commonness of the latter expression might have taught Mr. Gould that "deal" means merely "a portion or part ". It is the Anglo-Saxon "dal," a portion or part taken from the whole, from "dælan," to divide, and is indefinite as to quantity. "A deal of argument" is "a portion of argument"; it may be little, or it may be much.

"Traced" is a word that is misapplied by Mr. Gould. He says;—

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"Quaintness must not take the place of accuracy in 'language: besides, though the phrase in question "may be traced to the Bible, it cannot be found in "the Bible."

I imagine Mr. Gould to mean that, though the phrase may be imputed to the Bible, it cannot be found there; for if it can be traced-its track be followed-to the Bible, it unquestionably can be found there.

Mr. Gould's use of "relieve" and "knowingly next comes under consideration. On page 116, I read ;

"The author deems it proper to say;

that,

"although from the Dean's statement, passim,

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"in the 'Queen's English, it seems that his book
"has been very frequently criticised in England,
"not a word of such criticism, [better, that criti-
"cism; 'such' means similar, but not identical]
except such as [better, except that which] the
"Dean himself quotes, has ever been seen by the
"present writer;-
;—a statement [tautology—Mr.
"Gould had just spoken of 'the Dean's statement']
"which must relieve [exonerate] him from the
"charge of having knowingly ['wittingly' would
"have been a better word to use here; knowingly
'may mean cunningly] gone over the same ground
as the English critics."

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"A proper estimate of the value of these conflicting 'statements will presently be undertaken.”

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We undertake "to estimate", "to form an esti“mate", "to give an estimate", or "to make an estimate"; but we do not undertake " an "estimate".

The use of "some", for "about", is a very common error. It is found on page 186 of Mr. Gould's work; he there says;

"The individual parts sustained by the actor do not "contain more than some six hundred lines "each."

On page 199, I read ;

"One thing more remains to be said on this subject,— "namely, a suggestion on the injury to the "voice."

A "suggestion" is a thing to be made, not "said".

Lower down on the same page I find the following passage:

"The next point to which I would call your atten"tion is audibleness; a matter, in one respect, more important than any other principle of "elocution."

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Audibleness is an essential of elocution, but it is not a principle.

Concerning a sentence of Archbishop Trench's, Mr. Gould remarks, on page 110, that;-"he "has, in the preceding sentence, so placed the "words 'I think', as to leave the reader in doubt "whether they relate to what immediately pre"cedes [tautology—see 'preceding' just above] or "to what follows them." But, on page 46, Mr. Gould himself has written what is equally ambiguous, and that, too, from the very same cause. He says;

"Our Mutual Friend. This is, so to speak, one of

"the approved vulgarisms of the day; and, not"withstanding the numberless exposures of its "vulgarity, in newspapers, reviews, and elsewhere, "it continues to flourish."

Do the italicized words refer to what precedes them, or what follows them? Is the vulgarity of the vulgarism (I quote Mr. Gould's own words) exposed" in newspapers, reviews, and elsewhere"; or does he say of the vulgarism, that, "in newspapers, reviews, and elsewhere, it continues to "flourish"? I challenge the reader to come to any definite conclusion on the subject.

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One cannot but smile at some of Mr. Gould's errors; they are so ingeniously droll. He says, on page 105;

"There is no short single English word that performs "the duty of lying'."

Again; observe the strange meaning given to the following passage by the use of the pronoun "them", instead of the noun to which it is intended to refer. Mr. Gould says, on page 11;

"Reference was made, in the introductory chapter, to "words fabricated by ignorant people, and after"ward adopted by people of education. There

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'are not many of them [? 'people of education'],
speaking comparatively; but their number is
every day increasing, and if their increase
"cannot be checked, they will soon be 'like the
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"stars for multitude""!

Ambiguity in the use of pronouns cannot always be avoided, and Dr. Campbell justly says in his Philosophy of Rhetoric', Vol. II, page 64;-"Some have imagined, that the pronoun 'ought always regularly to refer to the nearest preceding noun of the same gender and number. "But this notion is founded in a mistake, and "doth not suit the idiom of any language, "ancient or modern." With equal propriety, however, the learned Doctor says, on page 55 ;"As the signification of the pronouns is ascer"tained merely by the antecedent to which they "refer, the greatest care must be taken, if we would "express ourselves perspicuously, that the reference "be unquestionable."

There are, in Mr. Gould's work, many other passages which might be critically examined, with advantage to the English student, but I trust that I have said enough to show that it is extremely difficult for even professors of the English language to write it correctly. Possibly