Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 37.2 (1916) 232-243 (at 240):

Take μέν and δέ. Can we be certain that the people felt them as μήν and δή, which science tells us they were originally? μήν belongs to the sphere of ὄμνυμι and δή to the sphere of δῆλον. δὲ δή is a manner of δηλαδή. μέν when it stands alone, is evidently a vicegerent of μήν. Now μέν and δέ are found from the beginning of our record used consciously with antithetical force as μήν and δή are not used. It is an old story. Oath against fact, personal conviction against the evidence of things, the inner man against the outer world, then like 'on the right hand and on the left' used antithetically just as ἀνά and κατά are used without reference to perpendicularity. Of course, if we use metaphysical jargon and call one 'subjective confirmation' and the other 'objective attestation' or rather 'subjective attestation' and 'objective confirmation', we may expect the cry of 'over-refinement'. The sophists spell the thing out for us with their λόγῳ μὲν ἔργῳ δέ of which one grows heartily sick, but one cannot get rid of the polarity of the Greek mind (A.J.P. XXXIII 240). Imagine a Greek writing a letter as long as the Epistle of St. James without a μέν-δέ (A.J.P. XVI 526).

Id., "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 16.4 (1915) 525-528 (at 526):

In the preface to the Letters of James the Just in eight forms (Boston, Ginn & Co.), President STRYKER speaks of this epistle as 'a piece of pure and elegant Greek.' He ought to have weighed his words more carefully, especially as his 'eight forms'—that is, the original and seven versions—seem to show that the edition was intended primarily for the comparative study of varying idioms. 'Purity and elegance' are not consistent with unclassic words, unclassic syntax, foreign phrases and a remarkable paucity of particles. The epistle may be 'thrilled with a passionate truthfulness and a commanding zeal that makes the rhetoric alive,' and it is doubtless an excellent textbook for Christian socialism, but the rhetoric is not Greek rhetoric, and the Grecian refuses to be comforted for the absence of μέν and for the scarcity of ἀλλά. μὴ οἰέσθω ὅτι and δοκεῖτε ὅτι strike one unpleasantly even if defensible at a pinch. ἀπὸ θεοῦ πειράζεται has, it is true, Ionic and Thukydidean warrant, but γλῶσσαν αὐτοῦ and καρδίαν αὐτοῦ, and the rest of the αὐτοῦ's, and προσωπολημψία and εἰσελήλυθαν and προσευχή προσηύξατο τοῦ μὴ βρέξαι can hardly be called, according to any standard, 'pure and elegant Greek.' And in fact nothing is gained by such extravagant claims. The divine message needs no such praise, and would only have been open to suspicion if it had been delivered by a mincing rhetorician in the best Attic the period afforded.