Chapter 8

"In Mr. Marsh's estimation, _is being built_ illustrates 'corruption of language'; it is 'clumsy and unidiomatic'; it is 'at best but a philological coxcombry'; it 'is an awkward neologism, which neither convenience, intelligibility, nor syntactical congruity demands, and the use of which ought, therefore, to be discountenanced, as an attempt at the artificial improvement of the language in a point which needed no amendment.' Again, 'To reject' _is building_ in favor of the modern phrase 'is to violate the laws of language by an arbitrary change; and, in this particular case, the proposed substitute is at war with the genius of the English tongue.' Mr. Marsh seems to have fancied that, wherever he points out a beauty in _is building_, he points out, inclusively, a blemish in _is being built_.

"The fervor and feeling with which Mr. White advances to the charge are altogether tropical. 'The full absurdity of this phrase, the essence of its nonsense, seems not to have been hitherto pointed out.' It is not 'consistent with reason'; and it is not 'conformed to the normal development of the language.' It is 'a monstrosity, the illogical, confusing, inaccurate, unidiomatic character of which I have at some length, but yet imperfectly, set forth.' Finally, 'In fact, it means nothing, and is the most incongruous combination of words and ideas that ever attained respectable usage in any civilized language.' These be 'prave 'ords'; and it seems a pity that so much sterling vituperative ammunition should be expended in vain. And that it is so expended thinks Mr. White himself; for, though passing sentence in the spirit of a Jeffreys, he is not really on the judgment-seat, but on the lowest hassock of despair. As concerns the mode of expression exemplified by _is being built_, he owns that 'to check its diffusion would be a hopeless undertaking.' If so, why not reserve himself for service against some evil not avowedly beyond remedy?

"Again we read, 'Some precise and feeble-minded soul, having been taught that there is a passive voice in English, and that, for instance, _building_ is an active participle, and _builded_ or _built_ a passive, felt conscientious scruples at saying "the house _is building_." For what could the house build?' As children say at play, Mr. White burns here. If it had occurred to him that the 'conscientious scruples' of his hypothetical, 'precise, and feeble-minded soul' were roused by _been built_, not by _built_, I suspect his chapter on _is being built_ would have been much shorter than it is at present, and very different. 'The fatal absurdity in this phrase consists,' he tells us, 'in the combination of _is_ with _being_; in the making of the verb _to be_ a supplement, or, in grammarians' phrase, an auxiliary to itself--an absurdity so palpable, so monstrous, so ridiculous, that it should need only to be pointed out to be scouted.'[19] Lastly, 'The question is thus narrowed simply to this, Does _to be being_ (_esse ens_) mean anything more or other than _to be_?'

"Having convicted Mr. White of a mistaken analysis, I am not concerned with the observations which he founds on his mistake. However, even if his analysis had been correct, some of his arguments would avail him nothing. For instance, _is being built_, on his understanding of it, that is to say, _is being_ + _built_, he represents by _ens ædificatus est_, as 'the supposed corresponding Latin phrase.'[20] The Latin is illegitimate; and he infers that, therefore, the English is the same. But _ædificans est_, a translation, on the model which he offers, of the active _is building_, is quite as illegitimate as _ens æedificatus est_. By parity of _non-sequitur_, we are, therefore, to surrender the active _is building_. Assume that a phrase in a given language is indefensible unless it has its counterpart in some other language; from the very conception and definition of an idiom every idiom is illegitimate.

"I now pass to another point. '_To be_ and _to exist_ are,' to Mr. White's apprehension, 'perfect synonyms, or more nearly perfect, perhaps, than any two verbs in the language. In some of their meanings there is a shade of difference, but in others there is none whatever; and the latter are those which serve our present purpose. When we say, "He, _being_ forewarned of danger, fled," we say, "He, _existing_ forewarned of danger, fled." When we say that a thing _is_ done, we say that it _exists_ done.... _Is being done_ is simply _exists existing done_.' But, since _is_ and _exists_ are equipollent, and so _being_ and _existing, is being_ is the same as the unimpeachable _is existing_. Q. _non_ E. D. _Is existing_ ought, of course, to be no less objectionable to Mr. White than _is being_. Just as absurd, too, should he reckon the Italian _sono stato_, _era stato_, _sia stato_, _fossi stato_, _saro stato_, _sarei stato_, _essere stato_, and _essendo stato_. For in Italian both _essere_ and _stare_ are required to make up the verb substantive, as in Latin both _esse_ and the offspring of _fuere_ are required; and _stare_, primarily 'to stand,' is modified into a true auxiliary. The alleged 'full absurdity of this phrase,' to wit, _is being built_, 'the essence of its nonsense,' vanishes thus into thin air. So I was about to comment bluntly, not forgetting to regret that any gentleman's cultivation of logic should fructify in the shape of irrepressible tendencies to suicide. But this would be precipitate. Agreeably to one of Mr. White's judicial placita, which I make no apology for citing twice, 'no man who has preserved all his senses will doubt for a moment that "to exist a mastiff or a mule" is absolutely the same as "to be a mastiff or a mule."' Declining to admit their identity, I have not preserved all my senses; and, accordingly--though it may be in me the very superfetation of lunacy--I would caution the reader to keep a sharp eye on my arguments, hereabouts particularly. The Cretan, who, in declaring all Cretans to be liars, left the question of his veracity doubtful to all eternity, fell into a pit of his own digging. Not unlike the unfortunate Cretan, Mr. White has tumbled headlong into his own snare. It was, for the rest, entirely unavailing that he insisted on the insanity of those who should gainsay his fundamental postulate. Sanity, of a crude sort, may accept it; and sanity may put it to a use other than its propounder's.

"Mr. Marsh, after setting forth the all-sufficiency of _is building_, in the passive sense, goes on to say: 'The reformers who object to the phrase I am defending must, in consistency, employ the proposed substitute with all passive participles, and in other tenses as well as the present. They must say, therefore, "The subscription-paper _is being missed_, but I know that a considerable sum _is being wanted_ to make up the amount"; "the great Victoria Bridge _has been being built_ more than two years"; "when I reach London, the ship Leviathan _will be being built_"; "if my orders had been followed, the coat _would have been being made yesterday_"; "if the house _had_ then _been being built_, the mortar _would have been being mixed_."' We may reply that, while awkward instances of the old form are most abundant in our literature, there is no fear that the repulsive elaborations which have been worked out in ridicule of the new forms will prove to have been anticipations of future usage. There was a time when, as to their adverbs, people compared them, to a large extent, with _-er_ and _-est_, or with _more_ and _most_, just as their ear or pleasure dictated. They wrote _plainlier_ and _plainliest_, or _more plainly_ and _most plainly_; and some adverbs, as _early_, _late_, _often_, _seldom_, and _soon_, we still compare in a way now become anomalous. And as our forefathers treated their adverbs we still treat many adjectives. _Furthermore_, _obligingness_, _preparedness_, and _designedly_ seem quite natural; yet we do not feel that they authorize us to talk of 'the _seeingness_ of the eye,' 'the _understoodness_ of a sentence,' or of 'a statement _acknowledgedly_ correct.' 'The now too notorious fact' is tolerable; but 'the never to be sufficiently execrated monster Bonaparte' is intolerable. The sun may be _shorn_ of his splendor; but we do not allow cloudy weather to _shear_ him of it. How, then, can any one claim that a man who prefers to say _is being built_ should say _has been being built_? Are not awkward instances of the old form, typified by _is building_, as easily to be picked out of extant literature as such instances of the new form, likely ever to be used, are to be invented? And 'the reformers' have not forsworn their ears. Mr. Marsh, at p. 135 of his admirable 'Lectures,' lays down that 'the adjective _reliable_, in the sense of _worthy of confidence_, is altogether unidiomatic'; and yet, at p. 112, he writes '_reliable_ evidence.' Again, at p. 396 of the same work, he rules that _whose_, in 'I passed a house _whose_ windows were open,' is 'by no means yet fully established'; and at p. 145 of his very learned 'Man and Nature' he writes 'a quadrangular pyramid, the perpendicular of _whose_ sides,' etc. Really, if his own judgments sit so very loose on his practical conscience, we may, without being chargeable with exaction, ask of him to relax a little the rigor of his requirements at the hands of his neighbors.

"Beckford's Lisbon fortune-teller, before had into court, was '_dragging_ into light,' and, perchance, '_was taking_ to account.' Many moderns would say and write '_being dragged_ into light,' and '_was being taken_ to account.' But, if we are to trust the conservative critics, in comparison with expressions of the former pattern, those of the latter are 'uncouth,' 'clumsy,' 'awkward neologisms,' 'philological coxcombries,' 'formal and pedantic,' 'incongruous and ridiculous forms of speech,' 'illogical, confusing, inaccurate monstrosities.' Moreover, they are neither 'consistent with reason' nor 'conformed to the normal development of the language'; they are 'at war with the genius of the English tongue'; they are 'unidiomatic'; they are 'not English.' In passing, if Mr. Marsh will so define the term _unidiomatic_ as to evince that it has any applicability to the case in hand, or if he will arrest and photograph 'the genius of the English tongue,' so that we may know the original when we meet with it, he will confer a public favor. And now I submit for consideration whether the sole strength of those who decry _is being built_ and its congeners does not consist in their talent for calling hard names. If they have not an uneasy subconsciousness that their cause is weak, they would, at least, do well in eschewing the violence to which, for want of something better, the advocates of weak causes proverbially resort.

"I once had a friend who, for some microscopic penumbra of heresy, was charged, in the words of his accuser, with 'as near an approach to the sin against the Holy Ghost as is practicable to human infirmity.' Similarly, on one view, the feeble potencies of philological turpitude seem to have exhibited their most consummate realization in engendering _is being built_. The supposed enormity perpetrated in its production, provided it had fallen within the sphere of ethics, would, at the least, have ranked, with its denunciators, as a brand-new exemplification of total depravity. But, after all, what incontestable defect in it has any one succeeded in demonstrating? Mr. White, in opposing to the expression objections based on an erroneous analysis, simply lays a phantom of his own evoking; and, so far as I am informed, other impugners of _is being built_ have, absolutely, no argument whatever against it over and beyond their repugnance to novelty. Subjected to a little untroubled contemplation, it would, I am confident, have ceased long ago to be matter of controversy; but the dust of prejudice and passion, which so distempers the intellectual vision of theologians and politicians, is seen to make, with ruthless impartiality, no exception of the perspicacity of philologists.

"Prior to the evolution of _is being built_ and _was being built_, we possessed no discriminate equivalents to _ædificatur_ and _ædificabatur_; _is built_ and _was built_, by which they were rendered, corresponding exactly to _ædificatus est_ and _ædificatus erat_. _Cum ædificaretur_ was to us the same as _ædificabatur_. On the wealth of the Greek in expressions of imperfect passive I need not dwell. With rare exceptions, the Romans were satisfied with the present-imperfect and the past-imperfect; and we, on the comparatively few occasions which present themselves for expressing other imperfects, shall be sure to have recourse to the old forms rather than to the new, or else to use periphrases.[21] The purists may, accordingly, dismiss their apprehensions, especially as the neoterists have, clearly, a keener horror of phraseological ungainliness than themselves. One may have no hesitation about saying 'the house _is being built_,' and may yet recoil from saying that 'it _should have been being built_ last Christmas'; and the same person--just as, provided he did not feel a harshness, inadequacy, and ambiguity in the passive 'the house _is building_,' he would use the expression--will, more likely than not, elect _is in preparation_ preferentially to _is being prepared_. If there are any who, in their zealotry for the congruous, choose to adhere to the new form in its entire range of exchangeability for the old, let it be hoped that they will find, in Mr. Marsh's speculative approbation of consistency, full amends for the discomfort of encountering smiles or frowns. At the same time, let them be mindful of the career of Mr. White, with his black flag and no quarter. The dead Polonius was, in Hamlet's phrase, at supper, 'not where he eats, but where he _is eaten_.' Shakespeare, to Mr. White's thinking, in this wise expressed himself at the best, and deserves not only admiration therefor, but to be imitated. 'While the ark _was built_,' 'while the ark _was prepared_,' writes Mr. White himself.[22] Shakespeare is commended for his ambiguous _is eaten_, though _in eating_ or _an eating_ would have been not only correct in his day, but, where they would have come in his sentence, univocal. With equal reason a man would be entitled to commendation for tearing his mutton-chops with his fingers, when he might cut them up with a knife and fork. '_Is eaten_,' says Mr. White, 'does not mean _has been eaten_.' Very true; but a continuous unfinished passion--Polonius's still undergoing manducation, to speak Johnsonese--was in Shakespeare's mind; and his words describe a passion no longer in generation. The King of Denmark's lord chamberlain had no precedent in Herod, when 'he _was eaten_ of worms'; the original, γενόμενος σκωληκόβρωτος, yielding, but for its participle, 'he became worm-eaten.'

"Having now done with Mr. White, I am anxious, before taking leave of him, to record, with all emphasis, that it would be the grossest injustice to write of his elegant 'Life and Genius of Shakespeare,' a book which does credit to American literature, in the tone which I have found unavoidable in dealing with his 'Words and their Uses.'"

The student of English who has honestly weighed the arguments on both sides of the question, must, I believe, be of opinion that our language is the richer for having two forms for expressing the Progressive Passive. Further, he must, I believe, be of opinion that in very many cases he conforms to the most approved usage of our time by employing the old form; that, however, if he were to employ the old form in all cases, his meaning would sometimes be uncertain.

IT. Cobbett discourses of this little neuter pronoun in this wise: "The word _it_ is the greatest troubler that I know of in language. It is so small and so convenient that few are careful enough in using it. Writers seldom spare this word. Whenever they are at a loss for either a nominative or an objective to their sentence, they, without any kind of ceremony, clap in an _it_. A very remarkable instance of this pressing of poor _it_ into actual service, contrary to the laws of grammar and of sense, occurs in a piece of composition, where we might, with justice, insist on correctness. This piece is on the subject of grammar; it is a piece written by a _Doctor of Divinity_ and read by him to students in grammar and language in an academy; and the very sentence that I am now about to quote is selected by the author of a grammar as testimony of high authority in favor of the excellence of his work. Surely, if correctness be ever to be expected, it must be in a case like this. I allude to two sentences in the 'Charge of the Reverend Doctor Abercrombie to the Senior Class of the Philadelphia Academy,' published in 1806; which sentences have been selected and published by Mr. Lindley Murray as a testimonial of the _merits_ of his grammar; and which sentences are by Mr. Murray given to us in the following words: 'The unwearied exertions of this gentleman _have_ done more toward elucidating the obscurities and embellishing the structure of our language than any _other writer_ on the subject. _Such a work_ has long been wanted, and from the success with which _it_ is executed, can not be too highly appreciated.'

"As in the learned Doctor's opinion obscurities can be elucidated, and as in the same opinion Mr. Murray is an able hand at this kind of work, it would not be amiss were the grammarian to try his skill upon this article from the hand of his dignified eulogist; for here is, if one may use the expression, a constellation of obscurities. Our poor oppressed _it_, which we find forced into the Doctor's service in the second sentence, relates to '_such a work_,' though this work is nothing that has an existence, notwithstanding it is said to be '_executed_.' In the first sentence, the 'exertions' become, all of a sudden, a '_writer_': the _exertions_ have done more than 'any _other_ writer'; for, mind you, it is not the _gentleman_ that has done anything; it is 'the _exertions_' that _have_ done what is said to be done. The word _gentleman_ is in the possessive case, and has nothing to do with the action of the sentence. Let us give the sentence a turn, and the Doctor and the grammarian will hear how it will sound. 'This gentleman's _exertions_ have done more than any _other writer_.' This is on a level with 'This gentleman's _dog_ has killed more hares than any _other sportsman_.' No doubt Doctor Abercrombie _meant_ to say, 'The exertions of this gentleman have done more _than those_ of any other writer. Such a work as this gentleman's has long been wanted; his work, seeing the successful manner of its execution, can not be too highly commended.' _Meant!_ No doubt at all of that! And when we hear a Hampshire ploughboy say, 'Poll Cherrycheek have giv'd a thick handkecher,' we know very well that he _means_ to say, 'Poll Cherrycheek has given me this handkerchief'; and yet we are too apt to _laugh at him_ and to call him _ignorant_; which is wrong, because he has no pretensions to a knowledge of grammar, and he may be very skillful as a ploughboy. However, we will not laugh at Doctor Abercrombie, whom I knew, many years ago, for a very kind and worthy man. But, if we may, in any case, be allowed to laugh at the ignorance of our fellow-creatures, that case certainly does arise when we see a professed grammarian, the author of voluminous precepts and examples on the subject of grammar, producing, in imitation of the possessors of valuable medical secrets, testimonials vouching for the efficacy of his literary panacea, and when, in those testimonials, we find most flagrant instances of bad grammar.

"However, my dear James, let this strong and striking instance of the misuse of the word _it_ serve you in the way of caution. Never put an _it_ upon paper without thinking well of what you are about. When I see many _its_ in a page, I always tremble for the writer."

JEOPARDIZE. This is a modern word which we could easily do without, as it means neither more nor less than its venerable progenitor _to jeopard_, which is greatly preferred by all careful writers.

JUST GOING TO. Instead of "I am _just going to_ go," it is better to say, "I am just _about_ to go."

KIDS. "This is another vile contraction. Habit blinds people to the unseemliness of a term like this. How would it sound if one should speak of silk gloves as _silks_?"

KIND. See POLITE.

KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. The name of this ancient body has been adopted by a branch of the Masonic fraternity, but in a perverted form--_Knights Templar_; and this form is commonly seen in print, whether referring to the old knights or to their modern imitators. This doubtless is due to the erroneous impression that _Templar_ is an adjective, and so can not take the plural form; while in fact it is a case of two nouns in apposition--a double designation--meaning Knights of the order of Templars. Hence the plural should be _Knights Templars_, and not _Knights Templar_. Members of the contemporaneous order of St. John of Jerusalem were commonly called Knights Hospitallers.

LADY. To use the term _lady_, whether in the singular or in the plural, simply to designate the sex, is in the worst possible taste. There is a kind of pin-feather gentility which seems to have a settled aversion to using the terms _man_ and _woman_. Gentlemen and ladies establish their claims to being called such by their bearing, and not by arrogating to themselves, _even indirectly_, the titles. In England, the title _lady_ is properly correlative to _lord_; but there, as in this country, it is used as a term of complaisance, and is appropriately applied to women whose lives are exemplary, and who have received that school and home education which enables them to appear to advantage in the better circles of society. Such expressions as "She is a fine _lady_, a clever _lady_, a well-dressed _lady_, a good _lady_, a modest _lady_, a charitable _lady_, an amiable _lady_, a handsome _lady_, a fascinating _lady_," and the like, are studiously avoided by persons of refinement. _Ladies_ say, "we _women_, the _women_ of America, _women's_ apparel," and so on; _vulgar_ women talk about "us _ladies_, the _ladies_ of America, _ladies'_ apparel," and so on. If a woman of culture and refinement--in short, a lady--is compelled from any cause soever to work in a store, she is quite content to be called a sales-_woman_; not so, however, with your young woman who, being in a store, is in a better position than ever before. She, Heaven bless her! boils with indignation if she is not denominated a sales-_lady_. Lady is often the proper term to use, and then it would be very improper to use any other; but it is very certain that the terms _lady_ and _gentleman_ are least used by those persons who are most worthy of being designated by them. With a nice discrimination worthy of special notice, one of our daily papers recently said: "Miss Jennie Halstead, daughter of the proprietor of the 'Cincinnati Commercial,' is one of the most brilliant young _women_ in Ohio."