Part 3 (2/2)
with any critic or reviehoh to say of that, it is morally impossible Nor was it necessary for such an author to throw the gauntlet, to prove hi in ”_self-confidence_” He can show his ”_ht
31 In 1829, after his book had gone through ten editions, and the dereat as ”to call forth twenty thousand copies during the year,” the prudent author, intending to veer his course according to the _trade-wind_, thought it expedient to retract his forists,” and to profess himself a modifier of the Great Compiler's code Where then holds the anchor of his praise? Let the reader say, after weighing and co his various pretensions:
”Aware that there is, in the _publick_predilection for the doctrines contained in Mr Murray's graht proper, not merely from motives of policy, but from choice, _to select his principles chiefly from that work_; and, moreover, to adopt, as far as consistent with his own views, _the language of that eist_ In no instance has he varied fro, _soained He hopes, _therefore_, to escape the censure so frequently and so justly awarded to those _unfortunate innovators_ who have not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture the text of that able writer, ure in the world _as authors_, and gain an ephe to themselves _the credit due to another_” [13]--_Kirkham's Gram_, 1829, p
10
32 Now these statements are either true or false; and I know not on which supposition they are rammatist thus profited by the name of Varro or Quintilian, he would have been filled with constant dread of so shade! Surely, a the professed admirers of Murray, no other man, whether innovator or copyist, unfortunate or successful, is at all to be coentleman for the audacity hich he has ”not scrupled to alter, mutilate, and torture, the text of that able writer”
Murray siht descend to posterity; and this just and generous intention goes far to excuse even his errors But Kirkha of posterity, scruples not to disavow and to renounce all care for thee ,
”My pretensions reach not so far To the _present generation only_, I present rant ht of my ambition_ will be attained”--_Advertisen is, therefore, upon the very face of it, a paltry sche his entered classes of boys and girls must soon have done with him, he has doubtless acted wisely, and quite in accordance with his own interest, to haveno rival with hi no personal quarrel with him on any account, I would, for his sake, fain rejoice at his success, and withhold my criticisains, and because he has not, like some others, copied reatly injured and perverted science, constrains me to say, on this occasion, that pretensions less consistent with themselves, or less sustained by taste and scholarshi+p, have seldorammar I have, certainly, no intention to say uided For soenerous and prejudiced the to think uarded as it is by facts and proofs irrefragable, eniously ascribed to an ill raood as an other; because they neither know, nor wish to know, more than may be learned froainst abuses of a literary nature, is little the fashi+on of these tiood people who purchase books upon the recommendations of others, may be slow to believe there is no merit where so much has been attributed
But facts may well be credited, in opposition to courteous flattery, when there are the author's oords and works to vouch for thereat men may have helped a copier's weak copyist to take ”soe” of the world's credulity, it is safe to aver, in the face of dignity still greater, that testimonialsThey did not read his book
34 Notwithstanding the author's change in his professions, the work is now essentially the same as it was at first; except that its errors and contradictions have been greatly multiplied, by the addition of new matter inconsistent with the old He evidently cares not what doctrines he teaches, or whose; but, as various theories are noised abroad, seizes upon different opinions, andto suit all parties ”_A Systeh but an idle speculation, even in his own account, and doubly absurd in hi flatly contradictory to his ht worthy of insertion And what his title-page denoh mostly in the very words of Murray, was next invented to supply a deficiency which he at length discovered To admit these, and soraes, to 228 of the ordinary size And, in this compass, it was finally stereotyped in 1829; so that the ninety-four editions published since, have nothing new for history
35 But the publication of an other work designed for schools, ”_An Essay an Elocution_” shows the progress of the author'scan be more radically opposite, than are soentleely inconsistent, than are some of his declarations and professions For instance: ”A consonant is a letter that cannot be perfectly sounded without the help of a vowel”--_Kirkhaain: ”A consonant is not only capable of being perfectly sounded without the help of a vowel, but, , like a vowel, a separate syllable”--_Kirkham's Elocution_, p 32
Take a second example He makes ”ADJECTIVE pronOUNS” a _pro of the pronouns proper; defines the term in a manner peculiar to hi; and yet, by the third sentence of the story, the learner is conducted to this just conclusion: ”Hence, such a thing as an _adjective-pronoun_ cannot exist”--_Grammar_, p 105 Once more Upon his own rules, or such as he had borrowed, he comments thus, and comments _truly_, because he had either written them badly or made an ill choice: ”But so, and uniain: ”Rules 10 and 11, rest on a sandy foundation They appear not to be based on the principles of the language”--_Grammar_, p 59 These are but speciainst hie in the is which I quote as his, are not his own[14] These contradictory texts, and scores of others which htfully his own, as any doctrine he has ever yet inculcated But, upon the credulity of ignorance, his high-sounding certificates and unbounded boasting can i They overrule all in favour of cue of the worst grammars extant;--of which he says, ”it is now studied by more than one hundred thousand children and youth; and is rammars_ published in the United States”--_Elocution_, p 347 The booksellers say, he receives from his publishers _ten cents a copy_, on this work, and that he reports the sale of _sixty thousand copies per annum_ Such has of late been his public boast I have once had the story froh I dislike the book Six thousand dollars a year, on this most miserable modification of Lindley Murray's Grammar! Be it so--or double, if he and the public please Murray had so little originality in his work, or so little selfishness in his design, that he would not take any thing; and his ain
36 A man may boast and bless himself as he pleases, his fortune, surely, can never be worthy of an other's envy, so long as he finds it inadequate to his own great rammarian, Kirkham claims to be second only to Lindley Murray; and says, ”Since the days of Lowth, no other work on grammar, Murray's only excepted, has been so favourably received by the _publick_ as his own As a proof of this, he would h _fifty_ editions”--_Preface to Elocution_, p 12 And, at the same time, and in the same preface, he complains, that, ”Of all the labours done under the sun, the labours _of the pen_ meet with the poorest reward”--_Ibid_, p 5 This too clearly favours the report, that his books were not written by himself, but by others whom he hired Possibly, the anony, but a line of his own experience But I choose to ascribe the passage to the professed author, and to hold hi to illustrate by the best and fairest exalad of his present success, which, through this record, shall beco which makes him worthy of the notice here taken of him But I cannot syht any but ”the poorest reward;” and ht, he found In his last ”Address to Teachers,” he says, ”He may doubtless be permitted emphatically to say with Prospero, '_Your breath has filledhas any truth in it, he ought to be satisfied But it is written, ”He that loveth silver, shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance, with increase” Let him remember this[15] He now announces three or four other works as forthco shortly What these will achieve, the world will see But I must confine myself to the Gra is found where it ht be expected
”The author,” as he tells us in his preface, ”has not followed the coement adopted by most of his predecessors;'
_yet he_ has endeavoured to pursue a _'”--_Gra, he is greatly to be pitied A bookin method, more imperfect in distinctness of parts, more deficient in symmetry, or more difficult of reference, shall not easily be found in stereotype Let the reader try to follow us here Bating twelve pages at the beginning, occupied by the title, recommendations, advertisement, contents, preface, hints to teachers, and advice to lecturers; and fifty-four at the end, eraphy, orthoepy, provincialisures of speech, and a Key, all in the sequence here given; the work consists of fourteen chapters of grammar, absurdly called ”Familiar Lectures” The first treats of sundries, under half a dozen titles, but chiefly of Orthography; and the last is three pages and a half, of thetwelve, the Etyled; and an atteed ieries, rules, re, exercises in parsing, two different orders of notes, three different orders of questions, and a variety of other titlesadditional to his main text, are to be connected, in the mind of the learner, with the parts of speech successively, in soeh the chaos He accordingly re alphabetical index Having once attempted in vain to explain the order of his instructions, he actually gave the th, these pretended lectures vary, froht-and-thirty Their subjects run thus: 1 Language, Graraphy; 2 Nouns and Verbs; 3 Articles; 4 Adjectives; 5
Participles; 6 Adverbs; 7 Prepositions; 8 pronouns; 9 Conjunctions; 10
Interjections and Nouns; 11 Moods and Tenses; 12 Irregular Verbs; 13
Auxiliary, Passive, and Defective Verbs; 14 Derivation Which, now, is ”ement which has been common from time immemorial? Who that has any respect for the human intellect, or whose powers of mind deserve any in return, will avouch this ju?” Are the methods of science to be accounted ra of its parts? Or are we lured by the name, ”_Familiar Lectures_,”--a term manifestly adopted as a mere decoy, and, with respect to the work itself, totally inappropriate? If these chapters have ever been actually delivered as a series of lectures, the reader ht or ten ti as on others! ”People,” says Dr Johnson, ”have now-a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by _lectures_ Now, I cannot see that lectures can do soof the books fro that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown Youof shoes by lectures”
--_Boswell's Life of Johnson_
39 With singular ignorance and untruth, this gentleman claims to have invented a better method of analysis than had ever been practised before
Of other grammars, his preface avers, ”They have _all overlooked_ what the author considers a very i_”--_Gra hion, he says: ”By pursuing this system, he can, with less labour, advance a pupil _farther_ in the practical knowledge of this _abstruse science_, in _two ht in the _old way_”--_Grammar_, p 12
What his ”_old way_” was, does not appear Doubtless so sufficiently bad And as to his neay, I shall hereafter have occasion to show that _that_ is sufficiently bad also But to this gasconade the siiven credit--because the author showed certificates that testified to his great success, and called him ”amiable and modest!” But who can look into the book, or into the writer's pretensions in regard to his predecessors, and conceive the merit which has made him--”preeminent by so much odds?” Was Murray less praiseworthy, less amiable, or less modest? In illustration of my topic, and for the sake of literary justice, I have selected that honoured ”_Compiler_” to show the abuses of praise; let the history of this his vaunting _eneral, his aist,” are nottouch upon an eminent dramatist; and here, it is plain, he has lish a beautiful passage, the sentiment of which is worthy of an _author's_ recollection:
”The evil _deed_ or _deeds_ that ood _deed_ or _deeds is_ oft interred with their bones” [16]
_Kirkha is thought so easy a request to a great person as his letter; and yet, if it be not in a good cause, it is so much out of his reputation” It is to this mischievous facility of recoreat names, that the inconvenient diversity of school-books, and the continued use of bad ones, are in a great s to those who understand the subjects of which authors profess to treat, to judge fairly and fully of their works, and then to let the _reasons_ of their judgement be known
For no one will question the fact, that a vast nuiarisms or productions of no co and es; professors, doctors, clergymen, and lawyers; a host of titled connoisseurs; with incredible facility lend their names, not only to works of inferior merit, but to the vilest thefts, and the wildest absurdities, palmed off upon their own and the public credulity, under pretence of improvement The man who thus prefixes his letter of recommendation to an ill-written book, publishes, out of mere courtesy, a direct irity Yet, how often have we seen the honours of a high office, or even of a worthy naive a terace any e, exploded errors are republished as novelties, original writers are plundered by dunces, andwell, profess to teach all sciences!
41 All praise of excellenceitself is so To excel in grarammatical excellence consists Hence there is no fixed point of perfection beyond which such learning may not be carried The limit to improvement is not so much in the nature of the subject, as in the powers of the mind, and in the induce Dr Johnson suggests, in his masterly preface, ”that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etyy, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient” Who then will suppose, in the face of such facts and confessions as have been exhibited, that either in the faulty publications of Murray, or a the various modifications of them by other hands we have any such work as deserves to be rareat sacrifices, both of pleasure and of interest, I have humbly endeavoured to supply this desideratum; and it remains for other men to deteriven to theseIntending to develop not only the principles but also the history of grammar, I could not but speak of its authors The writer who looks broadly at the past and the present, to give sound instruction to the future, e of men by their shadows If the truth, honestly told, di the sight of the beholder Real greatness cannot suffer loss by the dissipating of a vapour If reputation has been raised upon the norance, who but the builder shall lararammatical fame is little in itself, how can the abatement of what is undeserved of it be ht of the critic has been lost by nonuser? If the interests of Science have been sacrificed to Mammon, what rebuke can do injustice to the craft? Nay, let the broad-axe of the critic hew up to the line, till every beaht For, ”certainly, next to co is, to expose the bad, who can only in that way be ras of others, are discreditable alike to thereat must be the intrinsic worth of that study which still maintains its credit in spite of all these abuses!