figures stand out in the canvas almost as prominently as the male ones. -Lecky. Concrete ideas must precede abstract ones.-Marsh. 4. The One-The Other.-So far as we know, there is no question as to which of two things previously mentioned each of these phrases refers. The one, like the former, points to the first; and the other, like the latter, to the second. David Deans opened his business, and told down the cash; Dumbiedikes steadily inclined his ear to the one, and counted the other with great accuracy.-Scott. It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him; for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely.-Bacon. Turn from Walter Scott to Byron. The one is healthy in feeling and expression, the other is cold, bitter, and satirical.-Hadley. But usage is not quite uniform. From our data we should say that the slips are nearly one in ten. 5. Any One Else's or Any One's Else.—Any, no, and some may combine with one or body and be followed by else. When such combinations are made in the possessive, where shall the 's be placed? We are assured that it is "better grammar and more euphonious to consider else as an adjective;" and are enjoined by the dogmatizing critics, either to avoid the combination or "to form the possessive by adding the apostrophe and s to the word that else quali-·· fies." We have as yet found but four instances of the form recommended. This is as much Sir William Hamilton's opinion as any one's else— J. S. Mill. We have seen it once in Hudson and twice in Miss Cummins's Lamplighter. But over against these four we can array more than forty in which else receives the 's. My happiness is no more desirable than anybody else's.— Martineau. Beyond anybody else's son in Middlemarch.-George Eliot. One of those that just go right on, do their own work and everybody else's.Holmes. The secret was his own and no one else's.-Kingsley. Certainly not! nor any one else's ropes.—Ruskin. Besides these authors we may instance Howells, Black, Thackeray, and many others; and such papers and monthlies as "The Tribune," "The Christian Union," "Harper's Monthly," "The Century," and "The Atlantic." 6. Each and Every.-These pronouns, like the rest, are from the Anglo-Saxon. They are distributive, and call attention to the individuals forming a collection. Mason says, "When each is used, the prominent idea is that of the subdivision of the collection into its component parts; when every is used, the prominent idea is, that the individuals taken together make up some whole." 7. Each Other and One Another.―The critics with one voice cry out that we must use each other only when two things are mentioned, and that with more than two things we must employ one another. We may use each other and one another as they insist. About this there is no dispute, but there is no peremptory must compelling this. The best of authors employ these two phrases interchangeably, especially making each other do duty where these censors prescribe one another. Many use only one of them. We did not, at any rate, find each other in our three hundred pages of Stedman, or of Huxley; we did not find one another in the same number of pages in R. G. White, Hamerton, Warner, Everett, Lowell, or Motley; but each uses his favorite phrase alike when speaking of two and of more than two. Out of possible hundreds of illustrations, here are four. The three modes of shaping a proposition, distinct as they are from each other, follow each other in natural sequence.-Newman. Mankind are gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves.— J. S. Mill. The two races soon came to be distinguished from one another.-J. R. Green. How do the mind and the universe communicate with one another, and what security have we that they find each other out?-Martineau. 8. Either and Neither.-Either and neither, if held to their etymology, could be employed only where two things are spoken of. And we are told, "Either and neither applied to any number more than one of two objects is illegitimate and ungrammatical." "When more than two things are referred to, any and none should be used instead of either and neither." Any and none are proper in such cases; but either and neither have chipped the shell of their etymology, and are also proper where "more than two things are referred to." This extension of their application goes back to the AngloSaxon, and is not, as we are told, "of late introduction." Neither of the three competitors would have a chance against her.— Higginson. Fish, flesh, fowl, and substances that were neither.—Burroughs. The tense employed at the outset was neither past, present, nor future, but all of these combined, doing duty as either.-Whitney. Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth have not scrupled to lay a profane hand on Chaucer, a mightier genius than either.-G. P. Marsh. A man may use it as trustingly and as soberly as he would use either of these [gravitation, light, and electricity].—Phelps. The author of either of the Three Parts of King Hen. VI.-R. G. White. Is it possible that neither of these causes [he had just given six], that not all combined could blast this bud of hope?-Edward Everett. As may be observed in either of his four Pastorals.-Stedman. If all or either of us [myself, wife, and dog] miscarry in the journey.-Ben Jonson. We have found more than thirty sentences like the above. The use of either and neither, as conjunctions, with more than two nouns-as in the above quotation from Whitney, and in this from Huxley, ""I cannot verify it either by touch or taste or smell or hearing or sight "-is exceedingly common. And this employment of either and neither has likewise been put under ban. 9. None. None (Anglo-Saxon ne ān, not one) is not used before a noun. "It differs from no as mine from my." Mason says, “Its substantive use as a singular is becoming obsolete; and Professor Meiklejohn says, "None is always plural." Others claim that none is anchored to its etymology, and so is properly used only in the singular. But if usage furnishes the standard, both of these dicta are misleading. Often the context leaves it questionable whether none is singular or plural; but of our collected instances, in none of which is the number of none in doubt, about four-sevenths are in the singular. None of those who inhabited it are now among the living.- Webster. None of our words in common use are new formations.-Bain. Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel; where none are beaux, 'tis vain to be a belle.-Lyttleton. None are more likely to study the public tranquility.—Irving. None of us will risk his life.-Burke. There was none to which I more frequently gave a meditative hour.-Everett. None hears thy voice right, now he is gone.-Matthew Arnold. There is none like her.-Tennyson. |