II. CONTROVERSY. PERHAPS the following letter, which was published in "The Round Table" of February 27, 1869, and the reply, which appeared in the next number of the same paper, may interest, or at least amuse, some of the readers of this volume. I may say here without impropriety, I hope, that the articles on Words and their Uses which appeared in "The Galaxy" were, as is customary with me, written in haste and under the pressure of a cry for copy from the printing office. Although the series extended through two years, not one of them was begun before that cry was heard, or was ready one hour before the last minute when the article could be received; and the manuscript was sent off to the printer with the ink damp upon the last page. It was put in type that day, and the next was stereotyped. Throughout the whole series I did not rewrite a single page, or, I believe, a single sentence. I generally saw a proof, which I corrected at my business office within the hour of its receipt; but sometimes I did not. One of those cases in which I did not see a proof was made the occasion of the following communication. I do not offer this confession as an excuse or defence of any essential error. A critic can concern himself only with what is produced: he cannot take into consideration the circumstances of its production, even if he knows them. It would have been well if the articles had been written more deliberately, and corrected more carefully; but had I waited till I could do that, they would, in all probability, not have been written at all; which alternative is doubtless the one that would have been preferred by my censor. In choosing a specimen of the attacks to which these articles subjected me (from all of which I tried to learn something, but to only two or three of which I made any reply), I have taken his, because he was very much the ablest and most learned of my critics: STAND-POINT, ETC. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ROUND TABLE. SIR: I noticed in your issue of January 9 a letter from "J. B." upon the word stand-point, condemning it as an exploded heresy, and moralizing upon the "total depravity of human nature" which after such an explosion could still countenance the heresy. Your correspondent informs the world that “Mr. White recently in the "Galaxy," and Mr. Gould, at greater length, in "Good English," have thoroughly analyzed and exposed" "the literary abortion." Such language, so unlike that of a man of scholarship or culture, led me to think that perhaps your correspondent did not know very much of etymology after all, and that his pitying contempt might be nothing more than a cloak for sciolism or ignorance. So, being somewhat interested in the fate of the word stand-point, I gave "J. B.'s" letter a second reading, and found my suspicions verified. He says, "The two words stand and point cannot be grammatically joined together; the first word must be changed to a participle in order to make them legally united. Standing-point is English.” From this it is evident that "J. B." thinks the former half of the word standing-point to be a participle; so also of turning-point, landing-place, etc. What will he say when it is suggested to him that in each of these compounds the former element is a substantive, and not a participle, and that a participle placed before a noun in English, whether to form a compound or not, always qualifies the noun- becomes, in fact, an adjective? Jumping-jack, dancing-girl, are examples of compounds formed of a qualifying participle and a noun, for dancing-girl means a girl who dances. Stumblingblock, on the contrary, does not mean a block that stumbles, nor does turning-point mean a point that turns, or landing-place a place that lands. The words mean respectively a block which causes stumbling (stumbling is used as a noun 1 John ii. 10), a point at which turning (or a turn) takes place, a place for landing (=disembar kation). On the same analogy is formed the word standing-point, which means not a point which stands, but a point where one takes his stand, standing being a noun, and not a participle. But stand, as the phrase “takes his stand" shows, is as good a noun as standing, and has the additional advantage of not being ambiguous, as the latter is. "J. B.," however, evidently thinks that in the word stand-poiat, stand must necessarily be part of a verb, inasmuch as he talks about turning it into a participle. Now he must know, for he has read Mr. White's remarks in the Galaxy, that stand-point is an Anglicized form of the German Standpunkt. If he were acquainted with German, he would know that in that word the former element, Stand, is a noun; were it a verb, the word would be Stehpunkt, on the analogy of Drehbank, Wohnzimmer, and so forth. This being so, why, if we may say play-ground, bath-room, death-bed, may we not say. stand-point? Even supposing the former half were a verb, why might we not admit the compound on the analogy of go-cart, wash-tub, thresh-old, dye-house? So much for the form of the word. But "J. B." proceeds: 66 Standing-point is English; but the difficulty with that is, that nobody can be fooled into believing that it means 'point of view.' Hence it cannot replace stand-point, which people fool themselves into believing does mean 'point of view.'" Now, it is well to remark that point of view is not an indigenous English expression any more than standpoint is. It is simply a verbal translation of the French point de vue, and cannot plead analogy in justification of its adoption to the same extent as stand-point can. View-point or viewing-point would be more correct. I am aware that we can say point of attack; but that, also, is a translation of the French point d'attaque. So far, then, as the origin and form of the expressions standpoint and point of view are concerned, stand-point has a decided advantage. It is also the more convenient expression, and the only thing, therefore, that remains to be decided with regard to it is, whether it gives any intelligible signification. When I say, "Viewed from a scientific stand-point, it is false" (Vom wissenschaftlichen Standpunkt angesehen, ist es falsch), what do I mean? Simply, "Viewed from the position occupied by science, it is false." Here stand-point has not the meaning of point of view; and, indeed, I doubt whether it ever has precisely. There is no other word in the English language that will exactly express the meaning of stand-point, as any one may convince himself by trying to express otherwise the phrase, "The stand-point of philosophy is different from that of science." "The philosophical point of view is different from the scientific " has quite a different signification. After convincing myself of the inaccuracy of "J. B.'s" remarks on the word stand-point, I thought I should like to know what Mr. White had to say about it. Accordingly, I procured a copy of the number of the Galaxy containing the article in which his remarks on the word occur. These I found very temperate, and I regretted that I could not agree with him. But when I came to read the rest of his article, I found so many indications of want of profound knowledge and scholar-like accuracy, that I bade my regrets farewell. To give an instance or two. In speaking of the word telegram, which he does not seem to know is altogether an incorrect formation, he says, "If engrave (from en and grapho) gives us rightly engraver and engraving, photograph or photograve should give us photographer and photographing, and telegraph, telegrapher, and telegraphing." This would be true if engrave did come from έv and roάow; but it does not, and only a person profoundly ignorant of English etymology could have supposed that it did. In the first place, the existence of the verb grave as a verb (see Chaucer, " Troilus and Creseide," Book II., Proeme, line 47, "Eke some men grave in tre, som in stone wall." Ibid, Book III., line 1468, etc.) and the form of the participle engraven might have sufficed to convince Mr. White that the word engrave was of Saxon origin. A very common verb in Anglo-Saxon is grafan (conj. grafe, grôf, grafen), e. g., Psalm lxxvii. 58 [English version lxxviii. 58]: "Svâ hi his yrre oft âveahtan, and him vohgodu vorhtan and grofan." The forms graue and igrauen occur in Layamon,graue, grauea, grauen (and graued) in Middle-English, and grave,graved, graven (and graved) in Modern English. It is only in comparatively recent times that the compound engrave has replaced the simple verb. It is no doubt true that grave is from the same root as yoάow, but that is quite a different thing from saying that it is derived from γράφω. It is the same as the Moso-Gothic graban (see Ulfilas, Luke vi. 48. Galeiks ïst mann timrjandin razn. saei grob jah gadiupida, etc.), Old Saxon bigraban, Old Frankish greva (whence modern French graver), Swedish gräfva, graf, Danish grave, German graban, Spanish grabar. I hope this is sufficient to show that |