Note and Comment.

I have called the contrivance known as English grammar absurd, and the study of it a useless study; and I verily and soberly believe both these assertions to be true. I believe that the effect of the study of English grammar, so called, is to cramp the free action of the mind; to bewilder and confuse where it does not enfeeble and formalize; to pervert the perception of the true excellence of English speech; and, in brief, to substitute the sham of a dead form for the reality of a living spirit. Where words have no varying forms indicative of their various relations, a grammar which is dependent upon those relations is obviously impossible. And it is only such a grammar that admits of those requirements of agreement and government and what not which have been imposed upon the English by mistaken scholars. It is such a grammar that has weighed down our poor, be-parsed English speaking people, so that when their freedom was proclaimed a few years ago, and a man in whom some of them put some trust dared to tell them that they might fling off their incubus in the name of great common sense, from every country where English is spoken there came back to him cries of relief and utterances of hearty thanks, which have not yet died away.- Richard Grant White.