| Books by Brander Matthews: |
|---|
| Essays and Criticisms |
| French Dramatists of the 19th Century |
| Pen and Ink, Essays on subjects of moreor less importance |
| Aspects of Fiction, and other Essays |
| The Historical Novel, and other Essays |
| Parts of Speech, Essays on English |
| The Development of the Drama (inpreparation) |
PARTS OF SPEECH
ESSAYS ON ENGLISH
BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS
PROFESSOR IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1901
Copyright, 1901, by
Brander Matthews
Published September, 1901
THE CAXTON PRESS
NEW YORK.
TO MY FRIEND AND COLLEAGUE
GEORGE RICE CARPENTER
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Altho the various essays which are nowbrought together in this book have beenwritten from time to time during the past tenyears, nearly all of them have had their origin ina desire to make plain and to emphasize onefact: that the English language belongs to thepeoples who speak it—that it is their own preciouspossession, to deal with at their pleasureand at their peril. The fact itself ought to beobvious enough to all of us; and yet there wouldbe no difficulty in showing that it is not everywhereaccepted. Perhaps the best way to presentit so clearly that it cannot be rejected is todraw attention to some of its implications; andthis is what has been attempted in one or anotherof these separate papers.
The point of view from which the English languagehas been approached is that of the man ofletters rather than that of the professed expert inlinguistics. But the writer ventures to hope thatthe professed expert, even tho he discovers littlethat is new in these pages, will find also littlethat demands his disapproval. The final essayis frankly more literary than linguistic, for it isan attempt to define not so much a word as athing.
So wise a critic of literature and of language asSainte-Beuve has declared that “orthography islike society: it will never be entirely reformed;but we can at least make it less vicious.” In thissensible saying is the warrant for the simplifiedspellings adopted in the following pages. Aswill be seen by readers of the two papers on ourorthography, the writer is by no means a radical“spelling-reformer,” so called. But he believesthat all of us who wish to keep the English languageup to its topmost efficiency are bound alwaysto do all in our power to aid the tendencytoward simplification—whether of orthographyor of syntax—which has been at work unceasinglyever since the language came into existence.
B. M