Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Elements of Style

Jan. 2, 1859

            When I hear the hypercritical quarrelling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs, -- Mr. Webster, perhaps, not having spoken according to Mr. Kirkham’s rule, -- I see that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue.  Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.

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