Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention,"
American Journal of Philology 25.1 (1904) 104-114 (at 104):
Quite apart from any theoretical questions, the practical handling of the prepositions in any given language is a matter of
exceeding complexity. Read the elaborate articles on prepositions in English that have appeared from time to time in the
'Englische Studien.' Watch the run of prepositions in England, if you are an American; in America, if you are an Englishman.
'At' and 'in ', 'in' and 'on' are as troublesome as ἐπί c. gen. and
ἐπί c. dat. And yet the prepositions are inevitable, the mastery
of them a gnomon of one's familiarity with the language, and
since the appearance of Mommsen's memorable book, since the
founding of Wölfflin's Archiv, the literature of the prepositions
in Greek and Latin has become enormously swollen, and it is
almost impossible to keep pace with the tide of doctoral dissertations that agitate the subject. In most of those that I have
examined the work does not seem to have involved much brain-fag. The categories are taken from the ordinary manuals and
all that is needed is care in counting—a homely virtue. But so
is cleanliness a homely virtue, and the variations in statistics
suffice to show that behind the most seductive array of decimals
there may lurk a gross error. I have known an investigator, of
whom I had reason to expect better things, to strike an average
from the page number of the second volume, oblivious of the
fact that there was a first. I have known another of greater note
to get his columns interchanged. I have known—but if I go on,
I may expose my own shortcomings in the simple matter of
numeration and those who are curious in such matters can find
my confessions elsewhere. But even if the figures are unassailable, even if the averages are so high as to make any possible
error a negligible quantity, one asks: What is the result? What
can be the result of statistical work with prepositions? Occasionally the usage of an author as determined by the statistics
may help in a question of textual criticism, nay, even in a question
of genuineness, but when it comes to prepositional usage as an
index of style, the problem taxes the resources of the grammarian,
of the rhetorician. Whose senses are so keen as to notice a
variation of even ten per cent. in the total use of prepositions?
One goes through the whole mass of statistics—and little abides
except what any attentive reader might have observed without
the statistics. And yet I welcome the statistics, especially those
that deal with entire ranges of literature such as Lutz's work on
the orators, such as the latest addition to the Schanz Beiträge,
Die Präpositionen bei Herodot u. andern Historikern, von Dr.
ROBERT HELBING (Würzburg, Stuber).
Id. 25.2 (1904) 225-234 (at 232):
At the same
time every mistake in statistics is a demand that the work be
done over again.
All they that take statistics shall perish with
statistics; and no one has protested more vigorously than I have
against the misuse of figures in historical syntax.