The Queen's English vs The Dean's English [pp. 558-585]

558 TIte Queen's ~nglisk vs. [OCTOBER
ART. 11.-A Plea for TIte Queen's ~ngUs1t, Stray Notes on
Speaking and iSp~elling. By RENRY ALFoRD, D. D., Dean
of Canterbury. Alexander Strahan, Publisher. London
and New York. 18(36.
T~e rean's Tnglish: A Criticism on the Dean of Canterbury's
Essays on the Queen's English. By G. Washington Moon,
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Alexander
Straban & Co., Publishers, 139 Grand Street, New York.
~ood English; or Popular Errors in Language. By Edward
S. Gould. New York: W. J. Widdieton, Publisher. 18(3T.
THE English language is spoken by nearly sixty millions of
men, and "appears destined hereafter to prevail with a sway
more extensive even than its present, over all the portions of
the globe." Jacob Grimm, the highest authority in the Gothic
languages, declares that "in wealth, wisdom, and strict
economy, none of the living languages can vie with it," that it
"possesses a veritable power of expression, such as, perhaps,
never stood at the command of any other language of man."
Its simple syntax, the small number of its grammatical forms,
-its nervous power, and its massive strength, point it out as a
"world-language," which has already fulfilled the prophecy of
its earlier days:
"Who knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory may be sent
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in the yet unformed Occident
-May come refined with accents that are ours?``*
A language of such richness and power, the vehicle of more
free thought and earnest truth than any other living language,
is worthy of our most diligent study. And yet it is only
within a few years that the attention of scholars has been
directed to the thorough investigation upon philosophical principles of that language, which, within four centuries from the
time it ~eased to be a mere jargon, produced the greatest poet
of modern times. In fact the means for such a study did not
~ DarneJ, in De Vere's Studies in En~1isk, page 1.