to express his doubts whether parricidium admittere in p. r.. was good Latin for to commit a parricide on one of royal rank. "Ne quid turpe in se admittere," is the language of Terence; but, "Ne quid turpe in alio admittere," if such a passage could be found, would, I suppose, be generally understood to signify conniving at a crime, not committing it, or indeed suffering under it.

Pœnas reponit Nemesis.

CATUL.

1786, July.

NEMESIUS.

XCIV. On the promiscuous use of the Articles A and AN.

MR. URBAN,

March 1.

As your Miscellany will probably survive as long as the English language itself shall exist, you will not, I presume, receive with indifference any communication which may conduce to its propriety, or tend to its improvement.

There is an inconsistency, frequently practised by our best writers, which deforms our language, and greatly embarrasses foreigners who wish to learn it; and this is the promiscuous use of the particles a and an, before words which begin with the letter h. The confusion arising from: this inaccuracy is the greater, because it is not occasioned solely by different authors varying from each other, but by the same author not unfrequently differing from himself in this matter.

I will beg leave to state a list of examples in proof of what I have just advanced and will request your permission to subjoin to that list some remarks and reflections upon the subject at large.

This list of examples might be extended to an enormous length. Many of them are contradictions of the same author to himself. Those which I will venture to subjoin, shall be wholly such.

Two feet and a half

Only a heap

To want a heart

Like a human creature

Dr. SWIFT.

Sixteen feet and an half

Into an heap

An hearty fit

Resembling an human creature.

A Homer casts them away Giving us an Homer.

Your readers, Mr. Urban, will wish to see the question determined as to the comparative propriety of the two preceding and opposite columns. They cannot both be right: unless it be right that the English nation should use a confused and incongruous jargon, rather than a regular language defined by known and precise rules.

In order to lead to this determination, let it be remarked, that the letter H is in the English, as in other languages, "a note of aspiration, sounded only by a strong emission of the breath, without any conformation of the organs of speech." If this definition be just (and I see no reason to distrust its correctness), it seems that the usage of the particle a (and notan), immediately before words beginning with the letterh, ought universally to prevail in our language. I will beg leave to state two cases, in which it seems absolutely necessary to observe this regulation, viz. (1st) of those who are to read aloud in public, and (2dly) of all public speakers whomsoever.

For first, as to him who is to read aloud in public, in order that he may produce this strong emission of the breath, it seems necessary that he should make a short pause before he pronounces such words as require this aspiration. Now the words which require this aspiration are, according to the definition just stated, those which begin with the letter h. But if the experiment shall be made, it will, I believe, be found much more difficult to afford this strong emission of the breath in reading loud, and of course much less practicable to give due force to this note of aspiration, in cases where an author has placed the particle an immediately before the words in question, than it would be were the other particle a made the prefix to them. In the former case, the

reader slides on the succeeding word without effort, and without impression. In the latter, he finds himself, in some degree, compelled to pause in his enunciation; and the very hiatus, caused by the utterance of the particle, assists the succeeding aspiration.

If, therefore, the quality or characteristic of the letter H be such, as to require the person who reads aloud to aspirate the words to which it is prefixed, and to "sound them with a strong emission of the breath," it seems requisite that every author should prefix to those words the particle a only. The indiscriminate use of these particles by our authors might perhaps be tolerated, were their works never to be read*, save in silence, and in the closet. But he alone can be said to write for the public with correctness, who may be read aloud to the public with propriety.

But if it be thus requisite for an author to adopt this rule, for the sake of his reader, it seems absolutely necessary for the public speaker to confine himself to it for the sake of his hearer. The indiscriminate use, by him, of the particles in question, immediately before such words as begin with the letter H, will render it almost impossible for him to make that momentary pause in speaking, which is requisite for this "note of aspiration." Habituated to slide onwards, in speaking, without aspiration, in the words an airy, an art, an edge, an arm, &c. he will be in the utmost danger, if he shall use the same prefix, of making no distinction in his enunciation between those and such other phrases as a hairy, a hart, a hedge, a harm, &c. which requires a marked dis crimination from the others. In which case his hearers will have no means of ascertaining the scope of that part of his argument, but by retaining in their memory the whole sentence in which those phrases stood, and comparing it with the context of his speech, as he proceeds to unravel it. But this is a drudgery to which few hearers will submit for any Jength of time. Rather than bear a frequent imposition of this task, they will suffer their thoughts to expatiate some other way, and will lose the speaker, and his subject, in equal inattention.

None of the authors, from whom I have selected the foregoing examples, are clear from this error, one alone excepted. It was indeed, the perusal of this treatise,

Where this supposition possible in fact (which it is not) yet the confusions the want of uniformity, the inconsistency, and the embarrassment, of foreigne ers, arising from this promiscuous use, would still remain.

which led me to bestow some thought on the subject. And it seems that there will be no difficulty in effecting a complete reformation of this abuse, (as it appears to be), save in a very few words. A honest, a habitual, and a honour, will* sound a little uncouthly for some time. But practice and perseverance (which have surmounted much greater difficulties than these) will at length reconcile these sounds to the most fastidious ear. And the credit of the speaker, the ease of the hearer, and the accommodatiou of the learner, of our language, as well as the consistency, the uniformity, the beauty, of the language itself, seems to demand the effort to be made without delay, and to be pursued with unceasing resolution.

1787, March.

MR. URBAN,

KUSTER.

June 9.

My old friend and constant companion Kuster has for once stolen the march upon me. I knew not a syllable of his intentions, or should have made him contract his disquisition upon a and an, to make room for less arid strictures. The rogue knew very well that a is used before substantives beginning with a consonant; as, a droll, a slyboots, a circumlocutionist; and that an is applied before such substantives as begin with a vowel, as an idler, an Aristarchus, an oddity; or with the unasperated h, as an heir, an hour; and also before adjectives so circumstanced; as a clever fellow, an ingenious critic; a hearty friend; an honest soul; &c. &c. I do not blame him for his aim, but for shooting at so many errors, where few would have done, from writers like Shakespeare, Johnson, &c. &c. He well knew that such men dash out their ideas currente calamo; and if they ever display a slip of the pen, we can only re-echo Ovid's materiem superabat opus : for men, like these,

From vulgar bounds with wild disorder start,

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.

The fault, therefore, lay with Pick-letter the compositor; and no inference is to be drawn against our language, or those who have visibly thought in it, from such trivial inaccuracies as the superintendents of the press should have attended to. Sua res agitur; and they are to look to accuracy after a good copy is furnished them for publication. Sir, I

* One expression, an hour,' seems to be entitled to a perpetual exception. VOL. II.