"The structure of language is extremely artificial; and there 66 are few sciences in which a deeper or more refined logic is employed, than in grammar. It is apt to be slighted by 66 superficial thinkers, as belonging to those rudiments of know"ledge, which were inculcated upon us in our earliest youth. "But what was then inculcated before we could comprehend its "principles, would abundantly repay our study in maturer "years." DR. HUGH BLAIR'S 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres,' THE BAD ENGLISH OF Lindley Murray and other Writers ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: A SERIES OF CRITICISMS BY G. WASHINGTON MOON, F.R.S.L., AUTHOR OF 'THE DEAN'S ENGLISH'. Third Edition. "The rules of our language should breathe the same spirit as the laws "of our country. They should be bars against licentiousness, without "being checks to liberty."-Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric'. LONDON: HATCHARDS, 187, PICCADILLY. 1869. 302.9.57. 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. |