'He said that he wished to take his friend with him,

(1) and also to visit the capital and study medicine,' or (2) 'that his friend might visit the capital and might also study medicine,' or (3) on a visit to the capital, and that he also wished to study medicine.'" If in the above examples we adopt the two aids mentioned, the sentence becomes," He said that he wished to take his friend with him in order to visit the capital and study medicine,” which gives clear sense in one aspect. For other senses it may be necessary to use that for to, or to insert conjunctions.

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II. COLLOCATION.

The English syntax, being devoid of the aid that inflection would give in showing the relation of words, is all the more dependent on order and collocation. It depends on these first of all for clearness; for a qualifying element may have its attachment either in what precedes or in what follows, and often, if carelessly placed, may with equal reason be counted in either direction. A frequent problem, therefore, is, how to remove ambiguity and give the modifier unmistakably the connection intended. The requirements of force, also, have their problems; for the same element may be emphatic in one position and comparatively insignificant in another. And the question how to give an idea force according to its importance is for the most part a question of position.

To secure both clearness and distinction it is imperative that words, phrases, and clauses grammatically connected should be placed as near together as possible, or, if separated, that they should make up in prominence for what they lose in proximity.

Placing of Words. The prevailing problem in the collocation of words is the problem of emphasis how to place a word so that it shall have its proper distinction or lack of distinction, according to its significance.

14. The natural position of the simple adjective is before its noun. This order of collocation is so well established that "marked divergencies arrest the attention, and have, by reason of their exceptional character, a force which may be converted into a useful rhetorical effect." Accordingly, inversion of the natural order may on occasion be "proper to poetry and high style; and it is

one of the traces which early French culture has left on our literature.'

NOTE. The placing of the adjective by inversion after its noun gives it a prominence above the noun; that is, the interest centres in the quality rather than in the thing qualified. This may be seen in examples like the following. "Having been successively subject to all these influences, our language has become as it were a sort of centre to which beauties the most opposite converge." "But at last, and even here, it seemed as if the years of this loyal and eager poet had felicities too many."

Hence we find the adjective following its noun sometimes when, by repetition or otherwise, the noun is already so prominently before the reader's attention as to need no stress, and when the stress is of use in multiplying qualities; as in the following, from Dr. John Brown:

"The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and hands freely upon the men, as so many 'brutes'; it is a crowd annular, compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus."

15. The position of the article, demonstrative pronoun, or possessive, is immediately before the adjective, with at most an adverb between. There is a tendency, however, due to recent German influence, to encumber the adjective with adjuncts of its own, so that we not unfrequently find a second adverb, or an adverbial phrase, or a negative, included in the interval between the article or pronoun and the substantive." This structure is not fully naturalized, and is in itself so cumbrous that the attitude of suspicion toward it is safest.

EXAMPLES. — “The, I believe of Eastern derivation, monosyllable ‘Bosh.' This sentence, from Thackeray, would probably not have been justified by him in any but the most familiar style. — The following is from a book on Brittany : "I have now travelled through nearly every Department in France, and I do not remember ever meeting with a dirty bed: this, I fear, cannot be said of our happily in all other respects cleaner island."

1 Earle, "Philology of the English Tongue," p. 520.

16. The natural unemphatic place of an adverbial word is just before its verb, or between the parts of a compound verb. The placing of an adverb after its verb gives it emphasis.

EXAMPLES.

1. In the following sentence the adverb, while important, is not emphatic: "Each man gains a power of realizing and firmly conceiving those things he habitually deals with, and not other things." Here the real emphasis is on the verb.

2. Compare now the effect of placing the adverb after the verb: "He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he feels vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose," etc. Here the adverb is so strong an element that in one instance ("forcibly") it even stands alone.

17. Of single-word adverbs, the one that requires most care in placing, and that is oftenest misplaced, is only. The difficulty arises from the fact that only may have equal significance before substantives, adjectives, verbs, or adverbs; and so if it is separated from the word it modifies, some word that could usurp its relation is almost sure to intervene. The endeavor should be made, therefore, to place it, if possible, immediately before the word to which it belongs.

EXAMPLES. "For fifty miles, the river could only be distinguished from the ocean by its calmness and discolored water." Strictly speaking, this means, "could be no more than distinguished"; but what is meant, and what should be said, is, "could be distinguished only by," etc. It is undoubtedly a fact, due to the so frequent misplacing of only, that people make the adjustment of sense unconsciously; but this should not be taken as an excuse for the incorrect usage.

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Sometimes only is awkwardly used with an intended backward reference, an office that the word alone would better fulfil. For example: "The first two named only ascended to the summit "; which means strictly "did no more than ascend to the summit," implying that others ascended higher than the summit. The first two named alone," or, "Of the party, two alone went to the summit." In spoken discourse one may sometimes trust to intonation and pause to make only restrict a word before, as in "I only am to blame "; but in written composition it is better to adhere to the strict rule, that only should immediately precede the word to which it belongs.

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Placing of Phrases. In the collocation of phrases the prevailing problem is, how to secure clearness in the reference of the phrase.

18. A genitive, or of-phrase, being the closest of prepositional relations, should be placed if possible immediately after the word it modifies; and especially with no word between, either noun or verb, that can usurp the relation.

EXAMPLES. -"And worst of all, the heavy pall hangs over all the land of Birmingham smoke, which, with a northerly wind, blots all the color out of the country, turns the blue sky to a dull brown, makes dusky shadows under the elm tops, and hides the distance in a thin veil of London fog." The part between the noun and its genitive, italicized above, contains a word (“land”) that produces confusion; it might be read, "land of Birmingham smoke."

"The springs and sources were unsealed of modern ideas, modern systems, and of ideas and systems that are still to be developed." Here the verb comes between the noun and its genitive, and the construction, at best inelegant, is excusable only on the ground that it is not likely to be understood " were unsealed of modern ideas."

19. Phrases adverbial in office are, perhaps of all sentencemembers, most liable to ambiguous placing, and by consequence not infrequently ludicrous in effect. For the avoidance of such ambiguity only the general rule can be given "that what is to be thought of first should be mentioned first, and that things to be thought of together should be placed in close conjunction." The question to be settled by careful study in each individual case is the question of near or remote relation; and collocation is to be managed accordingly.

EXAMPLES. From a leading newspaper: "Base-ball managers must look at this pleasant weather and think of the opportunity they have let slip to fill their coffers to overflowing with anything but pleasure." Here so much intervenes between the phrase and what it modifies that a new word capable of the same modification has inadvertently slipped in.

A few other examples, in which the same disregard of near and remote relations may be discerned, are here quoted from Hodgson: "He blew out his brains after bidding his wife good-by with a gun." "Erected to the memory

1 Hodgson, "Errors in the Use of English," p. 183.

of John Phillips accidentally shot as a mark of affection by his brother." "The Board of Education has resolved to erect a building large enough to accommodate 500 students three stories high." The foregoing seem extreme cases merely because the effect is ludicrous; but the fault is just the same in the following. "Sir Morton Peto spoke of the notion that the national debt might be repudiated with absolute contempt." People have been crying out that Germany never could be an aggressive power a great deal too soon.” “It is curious to see how very little is said on the subject treated in the present essay, by the great writers on jurisprudence.”

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Such adverbs as at least, at all events, probably, perhaps, indeed, are often placed ambiguously between two emphatic elements of the sentence, where their influence may be reckoned either backward or forward. Such a position is therefore to be shunned.

EXAMPLES. "I think you will find my Latin exercise, at all events, as good as my cousin's." Does this mean, "My Latin exercise at all events," or "as good as my cousin's at all events"? Either of these orders would be unambiguous. "Disturbance was not indeed infrequently caused by the summary arrest of fugitive slaves in various parts of the North." Better: "Not infrequently, indeed, disturbance was caused," etc.

Placing of Clauses. The chief error in the placing of clauses arises from the ambiguous mixture of dependent and principal elements of the sentence.

20. Dependent clauses introduced by if, unless, though, that, and the like, should be kept clearly distinct from principal clauses in the same sentence. The fact that the influence of such a conjunction may extend beyond its own clause into the next makes the proper coördination of the second clause a matter of some difficulty; either by changed order or by the use of directive particles, therefore, sentence-members of like rank should be grouped together.

EXAMPLES. "The lesson intended to be taught by these manoeuvres will be lost, if the plan of operations is laid down too definitely beforehand, and the affair degenerates into a mere review." Is the coördination here — “the lesson ...and the affair,” or “if the plan . and [if] the affair"? Corrected by change of order: "If the plan of operations is laid down too defi

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