MR.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

REVIEWER REVIEWED.

[R. EDITOR-My attention has been recently called to an article on Clark's Grammar, in the June number of your Monthly. The article in question evinces, at the outset, an entire want of self-consistency. It denounces Clark's definitions in unmeasured terms, forgetting that this is the cardinal sin of all the grammars, the immaculate Goold Brown not excepted. It complains that teaching grammar fails to make good prac tical grammarians, forgetting that nine-tenths of the current teaching of grammar is the product of systems and text-books that have been, from time immemorial, utterly oblivious of the analysis it condemns, and that the defect, therefore, is not due to the existence or influence of Clark's Grammar. It laments that pupils do not learn to give thought graceful and proper expression in words, evidently unconscious of the fact, that the evil is the natural result of the prevailing method of dwelling upon the mere parts of speech to the neglect of the inspiring and form-giving thought, an evil which Mr. Clark and his brother analysts are struggling to correct. It assumes that pupils cannot fail to be confused by the mul tiplicity and complexity of the principles and definitions, losing sight of its own previous declaration, that "pupils learn soon enough to take sentences to pieces," that is, to analyze them.

The article complains of Clark's Grammar as crowding distinctions, definitions, and principles in analysis, in unreasonable rapidity of succession, upon the pupil; when nothing is plainer, from a simple inspection of the accompanying exercises, than that if the work of practical application were carried out according to the author's design, the pupil's advancement would be eminently gradual and progressive. It accuses the book of being sadly deficient in providing for the practical work which belongs to a grammar, when the common complaint is that it gives the pupil so much of that work to do in connection with its analysis, that he neglects his "parsing ;" and when every teacher, practically acquainted with its use, finds its demands in the direction of proper grammatical exercise (not rhetorical composition, which, the critic to the contrary notwithstanding, has no practicable or proper place in a grammar) so severe as to require an extension of the time usually devoted to the study of grammar. It represents the work of analyzing in connection with the illustrative diagrams, as the mere mechanical artifice of boxing up the disjointed parts of a machine, when it is altogether the logical work of determining the functional relations of those parts, and demonstrating the fact that they have been thus logically determined. A more gross misrepresentation of the nature of Clark's analysis, and the structure and office of his diagrams, can hardly be conceived. It implies that, in Clark's Grammar, the pupil is required to learn to give thought graceful and proper expression in words by merely looking at sentences presented for his examination and dissection, when a persistent and prevailing stress is laid, by its whole system, upon the actual analysis of the sentences presented, and their systematic and demonstrative presentation. Finally, it asserts that Mr. Clark constructs diagrams like chests of drawers, and then requires the pupil simply to select the sentence following, adapted to the diagram, and

to place it in an exact copy; and that he continues this process to the end, making it the measure of the pupil's skill, when (would your readers believe it?) there is but a single diagram, and a solitary sentence in the whole book, to which any such direction is applied, and when nowhere is any such feat accepted as a test of the pupil's attainments.

But let us look at the matter of its philosophy, and its philosophical acquaintance with Mr. Clark's system. It objects, as will be seen, to Mr. Clark's selection for a first general illustration of the object of analysis, of the figurative passage, "God moves in a mysterious way," etc., as ridiculous, and calculated to give boys absurd ideas of God. Are the boys who study grammar so intrinsically stupid as the critic assumes, or are children, with their lively and ever present imagination, to be excluded from the use of figurative language without careful accompanying "note and comment ?" Let us, then, guard them from the use of David's Psalms, lest they receive irreparable injury from reading "The mountains skipped like rams," and a hundred like highly figurative passages that go largely to make up the beauty of the Sacred Scriptures.

But passing from the matter of selections, the article attacks Mr. Clark's analysis as to its recognition of adjective and adverbial phrases, pronouncing them "logical absurdities." Avoiding his sad choice of highly figurative examples, it selects as its citation of "rich and rare device," the "House that Jack built," failing, either from delicacy or some other cause, to quote even that correctly in its third line. Here, according to Mr. Clark, it finds an adjective within an adjective! Well, why not an adjective within an adjective? Take the word father-in-law, and what is law but a noun within a noun; or whatever, and what is what but a pronoun within a pronoun; or something, and what is some but an adjective within a noun; or notwithstanding, and what have you but an adverb, a participle, and another preposition within a preposition; or more directly, green-house plants, and what is green but an adjective within an adjective? Does the author of that article know any thing of the composite nature of even English words, to say nothing of English sentences? But further, if we are to understand the article from its connection of things, and its use of the correlative term adverbial phrase, Mr. Clark finds adjective phrases throughout the whole passage, when the fact is, according to Clark's analysis, neither does a solitary adjective phrase follow the words house, malt, rat, cat, and dog; nor are the major adjuncts depending on the words cow, maiden, man, and priest, adjective phrases.

As to the question of logical absurdity, how profound the assumption! What makes an adjunct element an adjective? It is not its being a word, for a word may be any of the parts of speech. It is not its being merely added to a noun or pronoun, for, in composition, kind may be added to the noun man, as in mankind, and not be an adjective; or, in relation, lives may be added to the pronoun he, as in he lives, and yet lives is no adjective; and so on indefinitely. What is it, then, that distinctly constitutes a term an adjective? Clearly, its function as modifying or limiting the signification of the noun or pronoun. Take now the expressions, a wise man, a man of wisdom, or a man who is wise, and what is the office of each of the terms wise, of wisdom, and who is wise, other than that of modifying or limiting the signification of the noun man?

Why are they not all, then, substantially adjectives? Oh! but they do not all accord with the phraseology of the definition, "an adjective is a word added," etc. What of that? Definitions are generally framed to suit the simpler and more radical forms of things, and for the sake of simplicity and generality; not at all because they are to exclude from the resultant classification all of the derived complex forms. A beam is "any large piece of timber, long in proportion to its thickness, and squared or hewed for use." Is, then, a "built-beam, which may be solid, consisting of several layers of timber laid in juxtaposition, and firmly connected together by iron bolts or straps," no beam at all, simply because it is not a single stick of timber? The truth is (has the author of that article ever learned it?) elementary definitions must be general and adapted only to the radical forms or species, under which the derived forms or species range themselves as modified subdivisions.

Suppose that the sentence is defined as an assemblage of words so combined as to assert an entire proposition," what is the head and front of Mr. Clark's offending? Simply that as a clear practical thinker, he has given a practicable definition of the radical form or species of sentence, leaving the specific derived forms to be provided for as such. Hence, those derived forms, whether interrogative, conditional, imperative, or exclamatory, containing as they do substantially the same principal elements, and susceptible of reduction to the radical form as they are, are not ruled out of the category of the sentence at all, but are simply set further along in the classification as subordinates. Define a sentence according to the demand of the article in question, and we should have a monstrosity like the following: A sentence is an assemblage of words, or of words and phrases, or of words and sentences, or of words, phrases, and sentences, so combined as to express an affirmation, or an interrogation, or a supposition, or a command, or all five, and each either actual or potential, or positive and negative, and so on through all the possible complications of a periodic thought. But what sort of sense or science would this be?

As to the queries propounded, relative to the adverbial sentence, "before Cæsar had passed the Rubicon," and the relative pronouns in the adjective sentences, "to whom I gave it," and "for which I gave it," they evince an ignorance of analysis and an obliviousness of the necessary principles of substitution and representation, which would be past endurance and beyond explanation, were it not for the knowledge that the exclusive study of grammar according to the current etymological system and method, not only precludes the discovery of these higher truths, but tends also to such a practical paralysis of the logical faculty, as puts the more superficial minds beyond the power of comprehending them when demonstratively presented. It were easy to show that the conclusions reached in these instances, are not even "logical absurdities," but are mere illogical and absurd dicta. My space, however, does not allow me to undertake that work. I am similarly cut off from exposing the ignorance evinced with regard to Clark's diagrams, and the gross misrepresentation to which they are subjected. How much confidence can be reposed in what is urged against them, in the article in question, may be seen from what has already been shown with regard to its self-consistency, candor, and astuteness on these other points. F. S. J.

MORE TROUBLES.

MR.

R. EDITOR-To you, as an instructor of the public, I turn for information, and, I may add, counsel. I am in trouble, and know not where else to look for aid. My mind is so distracted that I can hardly state my case clearly. But bear with me while I " unfold a tale" as perplexing to me, if not as harrowing, as that related to the royal Dane on the midnight watch.

In the innocence of my heart I advertised to open a private school for mathematics and the higher English branches. I specified those studies to which particular attention would be paid, and announced in the plainest terms that my object was to give my pupils simply a thorough, practical English training. Instantly I was thronged; in the expressive language of Scripture, I was "beset behind and before" by applicants as teachers of all the things I did not intend should be taught in my school. The courteous but firm reply, "Mine is to be an English school," was of little avail. I have rejected a host of professors of French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin, though it almost broke my heart to do so. Not that I wanted their services, but they were all such excellent teachers. Each had a system very much superior to any other. Some had so perfected their plans that no time was necessary, except the hour devoted to the lesson, to enable pupils to speak a language fluently and correctly; and to prove the truth of their assertions, the applicants would at once begin to talk most glibly in the particular language they desired to teach. Such knowledge was too wonderful for me. Like Gough, I understand one Latin word, and that is "ignoramus." "On ici parle Français" is tolerably familiar to me, as I have so often seen it in windows of fancy stores; though for a long time, having heard so much of the superior comprehensiveness of the French, I supposed its meaning to be "Here no one parleys about price. We sell much lower than our neighbors. On! on to the French store and get a bargain." In Italian I had learned to pronounce "Divina Comedia" and having in childhood found in the geography that "Rio de la Plata" means "River of Silver," and "Terra del Fuego" "Land of Fire," I felt competent to give necessary instruction in these languages myself.

But the drawing and painting teachers talked so eloquently! I was sorry Rosa Bonheur could not hear them. To my unitiated ear, their terms-with all respect be it said—were something of a jargon. But I looked wise and tried to commend, when they were trying to explain to me the superiority of their new methods.

Then the books that are sent me for examination! The postman comes with a market-basket on his arm. The express-man said to me the other day, as he leaned back, squinted one eye, and dexterously snapped a fly from the left ear of his horse, "Pretty good customer, ma'am. Them horses of mine stop here as regular's if I was a milkman."

I tremble at the ringing of the door-bell, and actually ran up to the attic as a peddler of vases and plaster images stopped at the door, fearing that he might be a teacher of a new system of drawing, with models for my inspection. I am getting restless and losing my appetite. What if I am wrong in thinking an English education the best thing for an Ameri

can girl-in believing that the language of Shakespeare, and Milton, and Prescott, and Irving, has richness enough to require years of research, and more than enough to compensate for any labor bestowed upon its study? Is it better that a young lady should sing Italian and translate into execrable English-that she read the Vision of Dante in the original, and be ignorant of the fate of Ophelia, and unmoved by the touching lament of Lear?

If I am right, will the public sentiment sustain me? Or, what troubles me far more, shall I be permitted to conduct my English school after my own plan? If Mrs. Boffin chooses "to go in for fashion," I am perfectly willing; but let her leave the good old ways to those who differ. I think of adding to my advertisement a postscript in capitals, with the largestsized N. B. before it, "English is the language of this school."

Now, if you have any counsel for me in my emergency, you will confer an inestimable favor by giving it as soon as you can, and thus oblige and perhaps save from insanity Yours, distractedly,

E. A. C.

A QUESTION IN PARSING.

FLUSHING, L. I., Oct. 9th, 1866.

[R. EDITOR-I observe that, in your notice of Welch's Analysis in

interrogative pronoun in the sentence, "I know who troubles you." He is not alone in this. Quackenbos, Eng. Gr., p. 68, calls it an "interrogative." Kerl, Com. Sch. Gr., p. 79, says it may, "in such cases, be called a responsive pronoun, or an indirect interrogative pronoun." Greene, Elements Eng. Gr., p. 49, Rem. 2, also calls it "an indefinite interrogative pronoun." Bullions, too, Lat. Gr., p. 79, Obs. 1, says, "All interrogative pronouns used in a dependent clause, and without a question, are indefinites." As an example he gives, "Qui sit aperit [qui, euphonic for quis (?)], he shows who he is." The word is certainly not a "relative" pronoun, as you suppose. It is not equivalent to who in the sentence, "I know not the man who troubles you ;" where who evidently relates to man and serves to connect the two clauses. In the sentence you quote from Welch, who introduces the interrogative clause "who troubles you?" embodied in another sentence in such a way as to form the object of a transitive verb.

Hart, Eng. Gr., p. 58, and Bullions, Eng. Gr., p. 25, Obs. 4, call who in such a sentence 66 a responsive" (as indeed Mr. Welch does on p. 55), as though it was used thus only in answering a question. But it may be used as well in asking a question; as, "Do you know who speaks tonight?" "Do you know who he is ?" For this reason, I think "indirect interrogative" the preferable name of the two, if not the correct one.

What is thus said of who may, of course, with equal propriety be said. of the other interrogatives-what and which-in sentences like the following: "I know not what thou sayest;" "Have you any idea what became of it?" "I told him which of the books to get ""He soon found which was the best." What in such instances ean not be replaced