PREPOSITIONS [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, —This letter is
intended to be provocative in a good sense. In an editorial: note' to a letter printed in a recent issue you write : " . . . our statement of the backWardiress of commercial flying in England is mild compared to that of experts such as Captain Guest." Should_ you not have written, " compared with " ? An error of this kind grates on- a sensitive ear like a false quantity in prosody or a discord in. music. " Compared with 7 should be written where the objects of comparison are of a like nature : " compare to " when they are of different nature. One compares a brave man to a lion : but one says " compared with his neighbour he is a hero." In the former instance the preposition refers to the " par " signifying resemblance : in the latter it refers. to the " com " and indicates standard.
There is a similar error often found in. connexion with the word " correspond." If it means communicate, it should be followed by the preposition " with "—referring to the " cor " —thus, " Mr. Brown said he had corresponded with Mr. Jones " : but if it alludes to the adaptation of one thing to another, " to " is the proper preposition. " The tale as I heard it from Mr. Brown does not correspond to the facts "- one could never say " respond with," and, in this sense, correspond is really an amplification of the essential idea of the word as used.
-Another frequent error occurring oftener south than north of the Tweed is " different to " instead of " different from "',; and curiously enough more of a Scottish than an English error, I think, is " differed with." " Mr. Black differed with me. in politics " is wrong : " differed -from me " is correct. The Veflf iderof diffekliee is Separation, not uniOn. Very few people put the proper preposition after the word " averse," perhaps because they confuse it with " adverse " : but the one means " to turn from and the other " to turn to." The resultant meaning may be after -all-the same, and that May have- lad to the,confusibn-And consequent error. The 14igliai.Veis'ion of the Bible (both A.V. and •R.V.) is correct- "• men's- averse from war" (Mleaf' u 8), Which, of course, :signifies " Men' adverse-to war." Yet -I" fancy that eighty per cent. of our literary men are in the habit of writing " to instead of " from " after " averse."—I am, Sir, &c., [We would ienifikl'airCOrieipbrid.eiii that n-OleSs an . authority than W. Fowler, in Modern English Usagi, writes : " That different can only be followed by from and and not to is a SUPERSTITION. Not only is to found in writers , p1 all- ages (0-.E.D:) the principle on which it -ii•-rejected,-.. involves. a- hasty and ill-defined generalization."—En., Spectator.]
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