Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/435

 10* s. ii. OCT. 29, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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student may be confused by the very abundance of notes and cautions set before him. If the field had been narrowed, he would have had less to learn, and he would not have missed much. His very correctness of idiom, which might appear strange to unthinking Englishmen, would win from the competent a tribute of praise and regard which would be worth having ; and he would easily learn without book some of the inelegancies which are seriously treated here, as if they were necessary parts of English speech. Our own view on the difficult question, What is English ? may, of course, be challenged, but we may be allowed to say that it is the fruit of a love of the subject in which we yield to none, and which we have fortified for many years by close study of style both among the living and the dead, of the deficiencies and advantages of our own tongue in comparison with modern and ancient languages.

This book is indeed a wonderful storehouse of notes and rules, and almost every subject which we have looked for we have found mentioned with references to such authorities as Dr. Sweet and the 'New English Dictionary.' The English gerund, the wealth of German adverbs which have no English equivalent in a single word, the use of the word "gentleman," English forms of foreign towns (to which Genf might have been added), are a few instances of subjects excellently treated. We notice, too, that on the delicate question of implied comedy or depreciation in English words, Dr. Kriiger shows generally remarkable discrimina- tion.

We proceed to mention a few points which have struck us in going through the book. We do not think that a serious work should record as an instance of sex applied to things, "Say, Bill, got a yaller ticket?" "Yes." "What '11 you take for her ? " from ' Tom Sawyer ' (vol. i. p. 5). u Ship " and "boat "are feminine always for seaf oik, adds Dr. Kriiger, and we might add, for everybody. The motor, too, will be generally taken as a lady, we think, when it gets into popular speech. We do not regard " infirmaress," "monkess," and " regentress ' as decent English at all (p. 2). " Mit Zittern und Zagen " may be rendered by the Biblical "with fear and trembling" (p. 75). On p. 102 we read, "he looked ascance (read "askance"), askew at the new comer." "Askew" is hardly natural English to-day in this connexion.

Section 2,063 points out that English "folk- speech " and various sorts of slang shorten words. Then follows a list of words which hold very different places in the regard of speakers and writers. Thus "cab" and "mob" are exemplary English, but we have never seen "coll." for "col- lege" anywhere except on an envelope as a shortened form of address. The university man does not use it in his daily talk. " Pub " is decidedly vulgar, while "curio" is not. "Bike" is familiar, but displeasing to the present reviewer, who has not heard " trike " for tricycle ventured often. *' Com " for commission is unfamiliar. We talked of " comp " (= composition in Greek and Latin) in schoolboy days, before we realized its use as the abbreviation of the expert body who are concerned in giving this present article to the world of print. To put all these words together on the same footing without further explanation seems a misleading process.

We do not say "She was married firstly secondly"

(p. 220), but "first secondly," "firstly" being

only current in formal documents. We do not

think that the so-called " split infinitive " deserves to be treated with regard ; in any case a reference to a notice in the bedrooms of the Charing Cross Hotel is not a fair example of English. Our own collections offer proof that the two leading novelists- of the English world, Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy, both tolerate this usage. Americans say (p. 195> " real nice," but we have never heard common people, "das Volk," say "I am right glad, proper glad." Such usages are distinctly dialectal, or con- scious reminiscences respectively of elevated and slangy language. Many further points suggest themselves in this complete record of the two- tongues ; but we have already shown sufficiently the lines on which Dr. Kriiger's book is open to- criticism. It contains the material for at least three separate books which we should like to see, with abundant German parallels and annotations :. one on spoken English, including the English of authors who have a claim to respect as writers-;, another on current slang, in which we should neglect the comic distortions of particular authors ; and a, third on the English which may be called elevated, the style of the best prose writers and of most poets. All these books, to be thoroughly trust- worthy, would need the close attention of English experts. Dr. Kriiger has, as we have hinted, a very good idea of the nuances of our language for a foreigner, and he has found some English folk to criticize his equivalents ; but more such aid, we think, would have been advisable. Unfortunately competent persons of the sort are rare, and we do- not know that we should choose those who would occur to the average man as judges.

Book-Prices Current. Vol. XVIII. (Stock.) THE appearance of successive volumes of ' Book- Prices Current' is to the collector and the book- seller one of the pleasantest features of the recurring autumn. Seldom has an idea happier than that which led to the establishment of the series occurred to the mind of a bibliographer, and seldom has a worthy scheme been better carried out. The issue of the first two or three volumes was, to a certain extent, tentative. A very short time sufficed for Mr. Slater to get into his full stride, and the- work now seems incapable of alteration or of im- provement. Once more, for the eighteenth year, it appears in a volume of between seven and eight hundred pages, to be contentedly ranged with its fellows in the rapidly extending row. This time its contents beget in the mind of the book-lover contending feelings. To the collector busily engaged in establishing a library its appearance is neces- sarily welcome, since it proves that books gener- ally, with the exception of the rarest and most valuable, are lower in price than they have been for some years, and that the modern investor is likely to obtain exceptional value for his money. The man, on the other hand, whose collection \ virtually complete, will see with some regret the value, for sale purposes, of his library sadly depre- ciated. Mr. Slater holds that the falling - off in> what may be called established books amounts to from thirty to forty per cent, compared with the amount they used to bring in days when commercial and other surroundings were less unsettled. In the case of works of less value or repute the decline is so great that comparison is almost out of the question. Against these things must be ranged one or two facts : first of all, that whole classes of works that a score years ago were in no estimation are