Fitzedward Hall is an amazing fellow. “Was”, that is; he’s dead now, of course, as amazing fellows too often are. I recently became acquainted with an old book of his, Recent Exemplifications of False Philology, thanks to Google Books. The book is this blog, only more complete, better written, and a century older. It gives examples of mistaken grammatical beliefs held by various grammaticasters, famous and not, and why they are mistaken. And his writing style! Check this out:
“The criticaster, having looked for a given expression, or sense of an expression, in his dictionary, but without finding it there, or even without this preliminary toil, conceives it to be novel, unauthorized, contrary to analogy, vulgar, superfluous, or what not. Flushed with his precious discovery, he explodes it before the public. Universal shallowness wonders and applauds; and Aristarchus the Little, fired to dare fresh achievements, is certain of new weeds to wreathe with his deciduous bays. […]
Defect of substantial reasons must be compensated somehow; and no compensation for it is more obvious, or is oftener called into play, than an air of impatient contempt towards those who disrelish ipsedixitism.”
I don’t know who Aristarchus the Little is, but I think the righteous condemnation comes through pretty clearly through the years. I don’t really have anything else specific to say about the book, since most of the myths it debunks are long settled by now, but its style and writing certainly make it worth a skim-through, if nothing more than to remind you how far we haven’t come since Hall’s day.
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August 10, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Yvonne
“Aristarchus the Little”! That’s brilliant. Fitzgerald pwns the prescriptivists. And I love the “new weeds to wreathe with his deciduous bays.” Bay wreaths being a spoil to victors, back when grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace was a librarian in Alexandria.
August 10, 2010 at 12:44 pm
George Kulakowski
I believe he’s referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samothrace.
August 10, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Stan
Nice find. I can add a little to Wikipedia’s notes on Fitzedward Hall’s contribution to the original OED. As well as being one of its most helpful volunteers, he was also a very loyal supporter of James Murray, offering a sympathetic ear and arguing the case (Murray’s) for lexicographical quality over haste. In Caught in the Web of Words, K. M. Elisabeth Murray describes Hall’s contribution to the project as indispensable. He spent 4–6 hours a day, from 1881 until his death in 1901, proofreading and adding notes from his library.
In the preface to volume 1, Murray wrote that “there is scarcely a page to which he has not added earlier instances of words or senses”, and that “many rare words and rare senses have been added entirely from his stores.” To Hall himself, Murray called his work “the most generous literary assistance which the annals of literature can show”. They wrote letters to each other almost daily for 20 years, but they never met.
August 10, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Emily Michelle
I think Fitzedward and I would have been friends, had we ever met.
August 10, 2010 at 2:29 pm
mike
>”those who disrelish ipsedixitism.”
That’s us, right? Dang, what a great phrase.
August 15, 2010 at 4:46 am
charles
I love your blog, please continue like that.