Ward, editor of the New York Independent; Miss Sarah L. Arnold, Dean of Simmons College, and other competent critics have also given personal attention and helpful comments to the manuscript of this book. Finally, to her pupils in English grammar, whose thoughtful questions and interest in the subject have stimulated research, the thanks of the author are due for the invaluable aid thus given. GRAMMAR AND ITS REASONS I PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH GRAMMAR There is an ever increasing class of persons, so heterodox as to advocate that English which hitherto has sat with exceeding humility in the lower seats of the synagogue shall be bidden universally to come up higher.-WELSH. Some superfluities have been expunged, some mistakes have been rectified, and some obstacles have been removed. -GOOLD BROWN. We are freeing ourselves from the tyranny of Latin models and are substituting a grammar which deals simply with the vital facts of the English tongue.-CHUBB. In offering to the public a new presentation of an old subject, one faces two practical questions: Is the subject itself of vital interest to the present age? And does the new treatment really add anything of value to the older writings on the subject? The first question, as applied to English grammar, would be answered by many persons in the negative. The revelations of natural science are giving a new interpretation to the universe. Philosophy, theology, and psychology are changing their points of view and making conquests in hitherto unexplored fields. The development of art in America is opening new vistas to the esthetic imagination. History is re-writing itself upon new basic principles, and social science is grappling complex problems of vital importance to the practical welfare of mankind. How then can such an abstract or unpractical subject as the theories of grammatical relationships gain a hearing from this busy age? Furthermore, is there anything new to be said on the old and hackneyed subject? When Goold Brown's Grammar of Grammars was published at the middle of the nineteenth century it seemed as if all that had ever been thought or that could be thought regarding English grammar had been gathered into that voluminous compilation. But of making many grammar books there has been no end in the years that have passed since then. Yet in spite of all this, we venture to think that English grammar has not been worn threadbare; that it has a sort of perennial value to an important, even if limited, class of the world's thinkers, and that with all the other sciences, it has its new message for the new age. In the famous "Report of the Committee of Fifteen on the Correlation of Studies in Elementary Schools," published in 1895 by the National Educational Association, Dr. W. T. Harris, the author of the report, uses these words: Grammar is the science of language, and as the first of the seven liberal arts, it has long held sway in school as the disciplinary study par excellence. A survey of its educational value, subjective and objective, usually produces the conviction that it is to retain the first place in the future. Its chief objective advantage is that it shows the structure of language and the logical forms of subject, predicate, and modifier, thus revealing the essential nature of thought itself, the most important of all objects because it is self-object." Yet with this high estimate of the value of grammar comes the word of limitation and of caution. The same report well says: "No formal labor on a great objective field is ever wholly lost, but it is easy for any special formal discipline when continued too long, to paralyze or arrest growth at that stage. Grammar, rich as it is in its contents, is only a formal discipline as respects the scientific, historic, or literary contents of language, and is indifferent to them. A training for four or five years in parsing and grammatical analysis, practised on literary works of art (Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Scott), is a training of the pupil into habits of indifference toward, and neglect of, the genius employed in the literary work of art. Your Committee is unanimous in the conviction that formal grammar should not be allowed to usurp the place of a study of the literary work of art in accordance with literary method." Grammar has other deficiencies as a language study which literature alone cannot supply. The habit of mind which grammar induces is critical and this always impedes fluency of expression. Although gram PRO |