But at all events he is the only very popular writer who never writes a sentence which will not construe, who never uses a word except in its proper sense, who never makes a bad joke, and who is never guilty of a foreign word or a foreign idiom. His popularity may either be a happy accident, or it may be a sign of repentance on the part of the general reader. We do not profess to settle the question, but we shall be glad to accept the most charitable interpretation.

Again, newspaper writing and its excessive influence do harm in another way. We have got into a way of making an idol of 'the press,' as if it were an end and not a means. We do not mean here to enter into the political aspect of the question; our business now is with matters purely literary. But it might be worth asking whether, even politically, the press' has not at least an incidental bad side as well as a good one. Sismondi remarks, with great truth and depth, that the invention of printing had a bad immediate effect upon historical truth. The old chroniclers, whose works never got beyond manuscript, might sometimes be prejudiced and sometimes be ill-informed, but they commonly wrote the truth according to the best of their means. But the courtly and rhetorical writers who succeeded them thought of little more than of using their pens to flatter kings and princes. Hence, both in England and France, there is a remarkable break between the old chroniclers and historians of the modern kind, a period in which history for the most part degenerates into mere panegyric. Newspapers are now-a-days used for pretty much the same ends in despotic countries, while in free countries they sometimes seem inclined to set up a despotism of their own. By a large class of people 'the press-and the press' almost always means newspapers and not books-is worshipped as a kind of mysterious oracle. A man very likely reads only one newspaper and believes all it tells him. In the old Athenian democracy a man at least heard both sides; if Kleon talked on one side, he might hear Nikias talk on the other. But the genuine English newspaper reader reads and worships his one paper and never comes across what is to be said on the other side. We have met with people who regularly change their opinions just as their forefathers used to change their religion in the sixteenth century. Now this has a

1 'Histoire des Français,' Chapter XXXII. 'Le délit de publier des vérités offensantes étant devenu bien autrement grave que celui de consigner ces mêmes vérités dans un manuscrit qui ne pouvait circuler; il fut poursuivi par les princes avec beaucoup plus de vigilance. Les historiens devinrent plus timides et plus flatteurs, et s'il y avait une opinion populaire, ils se gardèrent de lui donner aucun essor.'

bad effect in a literary as well as in a political way. The news paper writer gets looked upon as a great authority; he is so great an oracle on the most important subjects that he must be an equal authority upon all. He may write about what he pleases, whether he understands it or not, and his readers give him credit for being master of all branches of knowledge alike. To display a little learning and science, as well as his acknowledged political wisdom, of course wins him extra worship with those who cannot detect him. That anybody can write history seems to be now an admitted truth. It is not like chemistry, which wants special knowledge and an expensive apparatus. It is not like geology, where a mai must go and poke about for himself, hammer in hand. It only needs that he should be able to read and write, and everybody can do that. A literary gentleman' who knows all about the present and something about the future, must surely understand the past by a kind of intuition. To talk about Eschylus and Charlemagne and the Byzantine empire sounds well, and gets a man the character of a scholar. To talk-as a writer in the Times' did-about, the Taoli [sic] of the ancient Greek philosophers' may very likely get him the character of a scholar and a metaphysician in one. But if a man employs schylus, Charlemagne, the Byzantine empire, and the Taoli, only to show the vast superiority of his readers to all four, the sensation is so delighful that we must venture on a quotation of our own fully to express it.

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πρῶτον μὲν ἰοστεφάνους ἐκάλουν· καπειδή τοῦτό τις εἴποι,

εὐθὺς διὰ τοὺς στεφάνους ἐκ' ἄκρων τῶν πυγιδίων ἐκάθησθε. 1

We would again repeat that we do not mean to say one word against popular writing, periodical writing, or newspaper writing in themselves. They are all needs of the age, and we must have all of them. We only point out the temptations both as to style and matter to which this sort of writing is exposed-carelessness as to accuracy, false humour, general false brilliancy. These are temptations which beset every one who tries this sort of writing, but a really good writer will strive against them and overcome them. They have, however, as a matter of fact, deeply infected our whole popular literature; we often see traces of the stain affecting even works of a much higher aim. As it is, setting aside the very small class of really illustrious writers, we are thankful if we find that an article, or even a book, contains nothing worse than ignorance and stupidity, or even than

1 Aristoph. Knights, 612.

fine writing and empty verbiage. Such a one really has a kind of comparative merit, if it be only free from the deeper vices of flippancy, impertinence, and constant straining after forced humour.

Of the many lines of thought which these prevalent vices of style open to us, there is one which we wish to work out at rather greater length. This is that which relates to language in the strictest sense-to the choice of words. In nothing have our popular writers gone more deeply astray; at the same time, the fault is one more easy of correction than many others. A man can hardly of his own will and pleasure cast off a general style of writing which has become natural to him. But he may, by simply stopping to think, learn to do a great deal in the way of using words only in their proper places and their proper meanings. The subject admits of more direct definition and discussion than most questions of style, and it is also intimately connected with the most interesting points in the history of our language.

The great crowning vice with regard to the use of words is, that so few people will condescend to use the common and natural names of things; in a word, that so few people write plain straightforward English. The good old Macedonian rule of calling a spade a spade finds but few followers among us. The one great rule of the high-polite style' is to call a spade anything but a spade. A good plain Teutonic word will not do: it is neither refined nor facetious. Refinement leads to the use of long, outlandish, commonly would-be Latin words; while the necessity of facetiousness leads to queer, roundabout circumlocutions, which are thought to carry with them something of the nature of a surprise or a joke. or a joke. The shrinking from the plain honest speech of our Teutonic forefathers is ludicrous beyond everything. Of course, the lower the nature of the composition the more fully developed is this bastard Latinism. The days are past when learned men despised the Teutonic element, and made our language as classical' as they could. And even their Latinism differed from that of the penny-a-liners. Sir Thomas Browne could not bring himself to talk of a 'skull,' he chose rather to say a 'crany,' but he at least gave his queer bantling an English termination. In our times, as a general rule, the better Greek and Latin scholar a man is, the more purely Teutonic is his speech. Or if there are some exceptions, they are generally to be found among those who go off into another sort of slang, quite distinct from, though quite as odious as, the slang of the penny-a-liner. We mean the slang of modern metaphysics. We have no doubt that 'objectivity and

'subjectivity,' the absolute' and the unconditioned,' mean something or other in their own science, just as much as the technical phrases of chemistry, geology, architecture, politics, or any other science. But we think the metaphysicians are the only people who insist upon driving their technicalities down other people's throats as parts of their everyday speech. We do indeed remember an historical lecturer telling his hearers that Gaul was like a dermoskeleton, and Ragnar Lodbrog like a cephalopod. The audience had of course to picture to themselves what a dermoskeleton might be from what little they knew of the state of Gaul, and to think whether any saga recorded of Ragnar Lodbrog any such feats as Herodotus tells us of Hippokleides. But we do not think the votaries of dermoskeletons, cephalopods, or other special objects of study generally play such pranks. We do not believe that Professor Owen, talking to a non-zoological class, would compare a kingdom to a deinotherion, or that Professor Willis would liken a hero to a res sant-lorimer moulding. But the metaphysical jargon has formed a school of its own; its followers not only write it themselves, but expect it in other people. We thought it hard enough a little time back when we saw Homer himself charged with either objectivity or subjectivity-we forget which. But it was harder still when we saw in a book of criticisms by one Mr. Gilfillan, a grave objection brought against Lord Macaulay, that the words objective' and 'subjective' never occur in his writings. Now this is really too bad; it approaches too much to the proceedings of Sharp and Claverhouse: there should be a Toleration Act, declaring that no man shall be forced to talk metaphysics against his will. Till then, the metaphysicians must not complain if people who make some pretensions to learning in other ways sometimes go away with no clearer notion of their science than that it is something about 'the objectionable' and the ill-conditioned.'

But we will, for the present at least, leave the metaphysical slang-with a single glance at the mathematical slang word 'eliminate' mostly used in the newspapers as if it were synony mous with elicit and betake ourselves to the vulgar slang. Not indeed that it remains wholly vulgar; it is gradually working itself upward; the style of the penny-a-liner is fast making its way into grave octavos, and is spoken forth with great unction alike in pulpits and in senates. Over all official writings, great and small, it has gained undisturbed sovereignty. A public officer, from a prime minister to a post-office clerk, would be ashamed to send forth a despatch which a Dane, a German, or a Dutchman would recognize as written in a speech akin to his mother

tongue. The whole literature of notices, advertisements, and handbills-no small portion of our reading in these days-seems to have declared war to the knife against every trace of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. To be sure, there are a few words which will obstinately stick to their places: of' and 'and,' 'in' and out,' 'you,' 'I,' and 'they,' 'is' and 'was,' and 'shall,' and a few more of the like kind, seem to have made up their minds not to move. But 'man,' woman,' 'child,' and 'house' have already become something like archaisms. To be sure, what ens rationis of any spirit would put up with being called 'a man,' when he can add four more syllables to his account of himself, and be spoken of as an individual?' The 'man' is clean gone, quite wiped out; his place is filled up by individuals,' 'gentlemen,' characters,' and 'parties.' The woman,' who in times past was the 'man's' wife, has vanished still more completely. In all high polite writing, it is a case of 'Oh no, we never mention her." The law of euphemisms is somewhat capricious; one cannot always tell which words are decent and which are not. The 'cow' may be spoken of with perfect propriety in the most refined circles: in this case it is the male animal who is not fit to be mentioned; at least we learn from one of the books at the head of this article, that American delicacy requires that he should be spoken of as a 'gentleman cow.' But the female of horse' is doubtful, that of 'dog' is wholly proscribed. When the existence of such a creature must be hinted at, lady dog' supplies a parallel formula to 'gentleman cow.' And it really seems as if the old-fashioned feminine of 'man' were fast getting proscribed in like manner. We, undiscerning male creatures that we are, might have thought that woman was a more elegant and more distinctive title than female.' We read only the other day a report of a lecture on the poet Crabbe, in which she who was afterwards Mrs. Crabbe was spoken of as a female to whom he had formed an attachment.' To us, indeed, it seems that a man's wife should be spoken of in some way which is not equally applicable to a ewe lamb or a favourite mare. But it was a 'female' who delivered the lecture, and we suppose the females know best about their own affairs. To be sure, 'female' is not our only choice: there are also ladies' in abundance, and a still more remarkable class of 'young persons.' Why a 'young person' invariably means a young woman is a great mystery, especially as we believe an old person' may be of either sex. Men and women being no more, it is only natural that 'children' should follow them. There are no longer any 'boys' and girls; there are instead young gentlemen,' young

VOL. II. N. IV.

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