BLUNDERS.

AMONG the many blemishes that disfigure English prose, not the least noticeable is a want of perspicuity. Of this defect I have cited some examples in the chapter on "Composition." It occurs, however, so frequently in the more offensive shape of contradictions, incongruities, and blunders, that I have taken the trouble to collect some samples for the instruction and entertainment of the reader. In accounting for the existence of such things, we are accustomed to assign them to that intellectual "drowsiness," from which even honest Homer was not exempt; but we do not perceive that this infirmity is daily assuming a more widespread and contagious character; and that the drowsiness which was merely occasional among the ancients, has degenerated in our time into habitual torpor.

Now for our samples :

"The robber was confined in an empty garret, three stories high, from which it seemed impossible for him to escape."SMOLLETT. Roderick Random.

"A garret three stories high," is a contradiction in terms. It was the house, and not the garret, that was three stories high.

"The back front of the academy is handsome, but, like the other to the street, one cannot stand back enough to see it in any proportion, unless in a barge moored in the middle of the Thames."-H. WALPOLE. Letter to Mason.

The incongruity here consists in coupling such terms as "back" and "front."

"If a young writer should ask, after all, what is the best way of knowing good poets from bad, the best poets from the next best, and so on? The answer is, the only and twofold way. First, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention; and second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are."-LEIGH HUNT. Imagination and Fancy.

In this passage the contradiction and absurdity are quite amusing. Hunt tells us there is but one way of knowing good poets from bad, and that that one way is two ways! He then informs us that this only and twofold way is no way at all. To tell a young writer that the way to know good poets from bad, is "to peruse the good," is to suppose him already possessed of the very knowledge he is in search of.

"A working man is more worthy of honour than a titled plunderer who lives in idleness." COBBETT. English

Grammar.

In his anxiety to disparage the aristocracy and bespatter them on all occasions, Cobbett is often betrayed into the use of epithets which his cooler

judgment would have rejected. In the example before us he talks of a plunderer who lives in idleness, without perceiving that his words express a glaring contradiction. True, a man may plunder by means of his agents, as well as in his own person; but with that we have nothing to do here. The terms used are what we must consider; and it is no more consistent with sense to talk of an "idle plunderer," than of an "idle libeller," or an "idle highway robber." One of the expressions implies a state of being which excludes the other.

"There is a certain tune in every language, to which the ear of a native is set, and which often decides on the preferable pronunciation, though entirely ignorant of the reasons for it."—WALKER. Preface to Dictionary.

In this phrase the writer describes a tune, as being ignorant of the reasons for its decision.

"It is certain Warburton's infidelity was greatly suspected." -D'ISRAELI. Quarrels of Authors.

Here, as is usual with this writer, we have the contrary of what he means. He intended to say that Warburton's belief in Christianity was suspected; or that he was suspected of infidelity.

"No one as yet had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having only examined them in dogs."— HALLAM. Literature of Europe.

Human kidneys in dogs! Talk of Irish bulls after that.