February 24

[On February 24, 1823, while living as a retired private citizen at Monticello, I drafted this second portion of my correspondence to Edward Everett, a brilliant young Harvard professor and classical scholar. Set against the early nineteenth-century backdrop of shifting academic paradigms, when American intellectuals were eagerly adopting new, highly analytical European methods of linguistic criticism, I utilized my lifelong devotion to classical literature to challenge contemporary philological trends. Defending the traditional six-case grammatical model against modern thinkers who sought to eliminate the Ablative case from ancient Greek, I insisted that over-analyzing syntax reduces language to meaningless atoms and strips prose of its rhetorical power, praising the Roman historian Tacitus for boldly ignoring rigid grammar to achieve unmatched literary strength. I confessed to the young academic that writing had become a slow and painful physical ordeal for me because both of my hands were severely crippled, meaning that my passionate enthusiasm for classical grammar had completely decoyed me into composing a much longer letter than my failing health should have permitted.]

I owe you particular thanks for the copy of your translation of Buttman's Greek Grammar, which you have been so kind as to send me. A cursory view of it promises me a rich mine of valuable criticism. I observe he goes with the herd of grammarians in denying an Ablative case to the Greek language. I cannot concur with him in that, but think with the Messrs. of Port Royal who admit an Ablative. And why exclude it? Is it because the Dative and Ablative in Greek are always of the same form? Then there is no Ablative to the Latin plurals, because in them as in Greek, these cases are always in the same form. The Greeks recognized the Ablative under the appellation of the πτωσις αφαιρετικη, which I have met with and noted from some of the scholiasts, without recollecting where. Stephens, Scapula, Hederic acknowledge it as one of the significations of the word αφαιρεματικος. That the Greeks used it cannot be denied. For one of multiplied examples which maybe produced take the following from the Hippolytus of Euripides: "ειπε τῳ τροπῳ, δικης Επαισεν αυτον ροπτρον," "dic quo modo justitiæ clava percussit eum," "quo modo" are Ablatives, then why not τω τροπῳ? And translating it into English, should we use the Dative or Ablative preposition? It is not perhaps easy to define very critically what constitutes a case in the declension of nouns. All agree as to the Nominative that it is simply the name of the thing. If we admit that a distinct case is constituted by any accident or modification which changes the relation which that bears to the actors or action of the sentence, we must agree to the six cases at least; because, for example, to a thing, and from a thing are very different accidents to the thing. It may be said that if every distinct accident or change of relation constitutes a different case, then there are in every language as many cases as there are prepositions; for this is the peculiar office of the preposition. But because we do not designate by special names all the cases to which a noun is liable, is that a reason why we should throw away half of those we have, as is done by those grammarians who reject all cases, but the Nominative, Genitive, and Accusative, and in a less degree by those also who reject the Ablative alone? as pushing the discrimination of all the possible cases to extremities leads us to nothing useful or practicable, I am contented with the old six cases, familiar to every cultivated language, ancient and modern, and well understood by all. I acknowledge myself at the same time not an adept in the metaphysical speculations of Grammar. By analyzing too minutely we often reduce our subject to atoms, of which the mind loses its hold. Nor am I a friend to a scrupulous purism of style. I readily sacrifice the niceties of syntax to euphony and strength. It is by boldly neglecting the rigorisms of grammar, that Tacitus has made himself the strongest writer in the world. The Hyperesitics call him barbarous; but I should be sorry to exchange his barbarisms for their wise-drawn purisms. Some of his sentences are as strong as language can make them. Had he scrupulously filled up the whole of their syntax, they would have been merely common. To explain my meaning by an English example, I will quote the motto of one, I believe, of the regicides of Charles I., "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Correct its syntax, "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God," it has lost all the strength and beauty of the antithesis. However, dear Sir, I profess again my want of familiarity with these speculations; I hazard them without confidence, and offer them submissively to your consideration and more practised judgment.

Although writing, with both hands crippled, is slow and painful, and therefore nearly laid aside from necessity, I have been decoyed by my subjects into a very long letter. What would therefore have been a good excuse for ending with the first page, cannot be a bad one for concluding in the fourth, with the assurance of my great esteem and respect.