It remains to say a few words about the methods by which philology might cause any efforts in behalf of the improvement of language to produce practical results. In the first place public discussion of usage must not be left, as has been largely done heretofore, to the amateur-purists, but philologists should take the initiative whenever there seems to be a real need of regulation or change. Abuses in language gain headway very rapidly and interference is of little avail unless it comes promptly. Then further, the hold which we in general have on the growing generation in school and college should enable us to give impetus to many a useful reform. But it is not sufficient that we should teach what in our opinion is best in language, for that is done now; but at least in college the fundamental principles that determine what is right and what is wrong should be taught, and that is not at present done as generally as might be. A knowledge of the fundamental facts of language might seem to be a necessary part of the intellectual outfit of an educated person, but many of the public discussions on usage show what crude notions prevail in this regard. That the weather clerk really makes the weather probably none but infants believe, but that language is made by the compilers of dictionaries and grammars is a conception not confined to the young or ignorant. That we all have a hand in making language, that we are all responsible for it to the same extent as for other social institutions, and that the greatest responsibility rests with those best able to bear it, is a fact that is not fully understood even by the educated. A story is told of a proof-reader in a great printing office who had the reputation of being a great authority on the English language; he was in the intellectual make-up of the several nations. But their languages are not on that account necessarily more or less perfect. It should also not be overlooked that by simply ruling out the longer form, we preclude the possibility of a later differentiation between the two forms and of a consequent real gain to the vocabulary. Originally kennen, bekennen and erkennen were practically synonymous; if two of them had been dropped, we should have lost the means of a very necessary distinction.

"That

pen

he

said to know the Dictionary by heart. One day a compositor came to him with the Dictionary and pointed out to him with great satisfaction that he had been in error in making a certain correction in the compositor's proof, that the word had been spelled exactly as the Dictionary gave it. is so," admitted the proof-reader, and then taking his coolly changed the spelling of the Dictionary and returned the book with the words "Now it is all right." Of course the most amusing thing about this story is not that the proof-reader should have dared to correct the Dictionary, but that so many educated people should laugh at him for doing The ordinary popular dictionaries may be fair authorities on orthography, because that is comparatively stable, but in regard to other matters they generally fall far short of representing the actual state of the language, and if one of them really contained the whole speech-material properly classified, the work would be incomplete soon after its appearance. It is, therefore, all the more necessary that the permanent forces underlying all linguistic activity should be correctly understood.

So.

Finally, it is hardly necessary to add, philologists themselves should endeavor, in writing and speaking, to apply the principles for which they wish to win recognition. It is clear that any one giving such advice treads on dangerous ground, but it is hoped that the doctrine will not be condemned merely because the preacher has not lived up to it.

H. C. G. VON JAGEMANN.

IV.-INTERPRETATIVE SYNTAX.1

I am well aware that the expression interpretative syntax has not the prestige of previous usage. Indeed no one at all familiar with the modern trend of syntactical studies could say that they serve in the slightest degree as aids in the interpretation of literature. It seems to be assumed that syntax has nothing to do with literary criticism or with stylistic effects. And as the study of English syntax is now conducted, one can hardly imagine two persons more alien in their aims and methods than the literary critic and the writer on syntax.

It does not avail to cite beautiful definitions of philology, definitions that assert the philologian's equal right to all the slopes of Parnassus; this alienation exists in practice, and it has proved hurtful both to the student of literature and to the student of syntax. Literary criticism, lacking the solid basis of language study, has lost the note of authority and become mincing and arbitrary; while studies in syntax, divorced from the vitalizing influence of literature, have become mechanical in method and statistical in result.

Of the two, syntax has lost the more heavily; for in the study of syntax counting has so taken the place of weighing that it may fairly be questioned whether the majority of monographs devoted to English syntax make any appeal whatsoever to the real feeling for syntax latent in the reader, or latent even in the investigator himself. There is such a thing as a feeling for syntax, a syntactic sense,-though we are in danger of losing it,-a sense that is as necessary for appreciating the range and import of syntactical distinctions as

1 Address of the President of the Central Division of the Modern Language Association of America, at its Annual Meeting held at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., December, 1899.

taste is necessary in the realm of æsthetics or conscience in the realm of morals.

Not only is the study of syntax divorced from the study of literature, not only has the feeling for syntactical distinctions been blunted by the mania for statistics, but the old line of cleavage is still run between syntax and inflections. The grammars and special monographs continue to treat inflections and syntax as two separate and unrelated subjects. But a moment's consideration will show that inflectional forms are the product of syntactical relations. They are the deposit of syntactical forces. One might as well try to explain the rounded forms of pebbles in a streamlet, without considering the agency of the water, as to explain inflectional changes apart from the syntactical agencies that shaped them.

Syntax has thus become narrowed and isolate. No longer looked upon as an integral and organic part of language and literature, it is viewed as something external, a mere scaffolding, a series of separate ladders, on which Germans are ascending and descending. Now syntax is not something external; its problems are not separate at all. It is a vast network with countless radiations and interweavings. The best investigator is not one who is quick at figures or dead to literature. He is rather one who in his alertness and susceptibility should suggest old Sir John Davies's idea of the soul,-being

"Much like a subtle spider which doth sit

In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side."

There are poetic effects both subtle and far-reaching that find expression in none of the traditional canons of rhetoric or literary criticism, but in the phenomena of syntax and of syntax alone. Take, for example, canto XI of Tennyson's In Memoriam, in which the omission of the verb in the principal clause adds an element of calm that could not otherwise be secured :

"Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,

And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze,
And all the silvery gossamers

That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain

That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,

To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,

If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,

And waves that sway themselves in rest,

And dead calm in that noble breast

Which heaves but with the heaving deep."

Compare now the brooding quietude of those stanzas with the jerkiness of these lines, so filled with verbs:

"I hear the noise about thy keel;

I hear the bell struck in the night:

I see the cabin-window bright;

I see the sailor at the wheel."

Verbs denote activity and change: they are bustling and fussy. Their presence in certain reaches of lyric poetry would be as nullifying as the creaking of organ pedals during a dirge. When thought gives way to feeling, when the emotion of the poet no longer soars but poises and hovers, the absence of the verb,-a purely syntactical phenomenon, becomes a most marked characteristic of the sentence structure. Note the effect in these lines:

The only verb of a principal clause in these five stanzas is the second word of the first line, is. Note how well the colon after each stanza indicates the uniformity of mood maintained.