Note 3 — A SKETCH OF MY CHILDHOOD.

Since those years, it is natural that mere culture of the subject, and long, experience in the arts of composition, should have sharpened my vision, previously too morbidly acute, to defects in the construction of sentences, and generally in the management of language. The result is this: and perhaps it will shock the reader, certainly it will startle him, when I declare solemnly my conviction, that no two consecutive pages can be cited from any one of the very best English authors, which is not disfigured by some gross equivocation or imperfection of structure, such as leaves the meaning open, perhaps, to be inferred from the context, but also so little expressed with verbal rigor, or with conformity to the truth of logic, or to the real purpose, that, supposing the passage to involve a legal interest, and in consequence, to come under a judicial review, it would be set aside for want of internal coherency. Not in arrogance, but under a deep sense of the incalculable injuries done to truth, small and great, by false management of language, I declare my belief that hardly one entire paragraph exists in our language which is impregnable to criticism, even as regards the one capital interest of logical limitation to the main purpose concerned.