words against which there is no objection except on the score of ungenuineness and affectation. It may be laid down as a rule that when a manner of speaking becomes a fad, a mannerism, it should be discarded.1

IV. SCHOLARLY USE.

While, as has been noted above,2 the reader must be recognized and worked for as a person of average culture, it is more than average culture that must be involved in what the writer brings him. By the very fact of his venturing to write, the writer sets up as a scholar, that is, as a model and authority in his subject, and, no less, as a standard in the way of presenting it. This has its application not only to invention but to choice of words as well; his work should evince a sound and refined estimate of his resources of language, individual skill of choice, and good taste.

II. Native and Added Elements of the Vocabulary. In the primal duty to "be completely in touch with the English vocabulary," one of the first things is to know not merely the philological history, but more especially the feeling and savor of the different ground-elements of the language. For this general purpose these strata, or elements, may be regarded as two: the Saxon and Romanic, comprising the everyday words used by the Saxon pioneers and added to afterwards by the Norman conquerors; and the Latin, comprising the more learned words introduced since the Revival of Letters and the Reformation. Each of these elements has its place and its practical uses; the writer's duty is to employ each for what it is worth, and be not anxious, on the score of a mere vogue or wave of taste, to discard either.3

1 The affected use of any device of speech incurs the reproach of the third fault in art; see above, p. 6. - Poetic archaisms will come up for discussion later; see below, 2 See above, p. 52. p. 144. 8" Especially do not indulge any fantastic preference for either Latin or AngloSaxon, the two great wings on which our magnificent English soars and sings; we can spare neither. The combination gives us an affluence of synonymes and a deli

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NOTE. It will be useful here to give a passage illustrating each source; one made up of words predominantly Saxon, the other freely using words of classical (Latin and Greek) origin.

I. In the first, from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the almost pure Saxon character is like the natural, unstudied, conversational language of common intercourse :

"Now they had not gone far, but a great mist and a darkness fell upon them all, so that they could scarce for a great while see the one the other. Wherefore they were forced for some time to feel for one another by words, for they walked not by sight. But any one must think that here was but sorry going for the best of them all, but how much worse for the women and children, who both of feet and heart were but tender. Yet so it was, that through the encouraging words of him that led in the front, and of him that brought them up behind, they made a pretty good shift to wag along. The way also was here very wearisome through dirt and slabbiness. Nor was there on all this ground so much as one inn or victualing-house, therein to refresh the feebler sort. Here therefore was grunting and puffing and sighing. While one tumbleth over a bush, another sticks fast in the dirt; and the children, some of them, lost their shoes in the mire. While one cries out, I am down; and another, Ho, where are you? and a third, The bushes have got such fast hold on me, I think I cannot get away. from them." 1

2. In the second, from De Quincey, while the body of the passage must still be Saxon, words of Latin and Greek origin are freely chosen for the sake of a more accurate discrimination in thought, and these give to the style, whether designedly or not, a certain formal and erudite flavor: —

"Every process of Nature unfolds itself through a succession of phenomena. Now, if it be granted of the artist generally, that of all this moving series he can arrest as it were but so much as fills one instant of time, and with regard to the painter in particular, that even this insulated moment he can exhibit only under one single aspect or phasis, it then becomes evident that, in the selection of this single instant and of this single aspect,

cacy of discrimination such as no unmixed idiom can show.". Essays, p. 81.

HIGGINSON, Atlantic

"Racy Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix readily with those long, savoursome, Latin words, rich in second intention.' In this late day certainly, no critical process can be conducted reasonably without eclecticism." -PATER, Appreciations, p. 13.

In Earle's English Prose, Chap. i, from which this classification is adapted, is a very valuable list of equivalent words from these different sources.

1 BUNYAN, Pilgrim's Progress, Pt. ii.

too much care cannot be taken that each shall be in the highest possible degree pregnant in its meaning; that is, shall yield the utmost range to the activities of the imagination." "1

What these two classes of words are good for, respectively, is deducible from the relative places they fill in the history of the language.

1. The Saxon or native element comprises, to begin with, all the words and forms that determine the framework of the language: its particles, its pronouns, its inflections, in general, its symbolic element. This element, and in almost equal degree the immediately superinduced Romanic, come from a pioneer age when men's thoughts were absorbed with plain matters of the home and the soil, of labor and warfare, of neighborhood and common traffic. It ranges, therefore, over the vocabulary of everyday life, wherein the work of the hand and ordinary activity and suffering are more concerned than the subtilties of the brain.

In the Saxon element, therefore, are to be found the terms that come closest to universal experience: words of the family and the home and the plain relations of life. They are, therefore, the natural terms for common intercourse, for simple and direct emotions, for strong and hearty sentiments. Saxon, with its short words and sturdy sounds, and by its very limitation to the large and rudimentary emotions, is especially the language of strength.3

2. The Latin, and in later years the Greek element, came in as men began to study and discriminate, came in as scholarship and literature claimed men's interests. By advancing and refining thought, therefore, a want was created for new terms; the vocabulary must be enlarged in the direction of greater discrimination, particularization, precision. Delicacies and

1 De Quincey, Essay on Lessing, Works (Riverside edition), Vol. ix, p. 390. 2 For the symbolic and presentive elements, see below, p. 117. 3 For the relation of such words to force, see above, p. 34.

subtilties of thought must be named as well as sentiments in the gross and lump. To do this, and in a time when Latin was the recognized language of learning, men had recourse more to the Latin than to the native Saxon resources; hence the strong classical coloring and body given to our composite tongue.

In the Latin element, therefore, are to be found the more erudite and precise terms of the language, terms that deal with abstruse ideas and with the close discriminations of scholarship. This same scholarly quality lends dignity and formalism to the words of Latin origin. Being also, on the average, longer and more euphonious, these derivatives have greater flow and volume, are more readily graduated to a climax; and thus from their value on the score of sound they frequently serve well the higher requirements of poetry and oratory.1

If the requirements of precision, fineness, and sonority are not especially present, it is best to keep as near as possible to the Saxon basis of the language, because that, as the speech of common people and common events, is less studied and artificial. And further, if one's style is predominantly Saxon, the more unusual words occasionally employed are more distinguished and effective, having the power of beaconwords.2

12. The False Garnish of "Fine Writing." "Fine writing," what journalists call "flub," is the name given to the use of pretentious words for trivial ideas, or the attempt by highsounding language to dress up something whose real importance is not great enough to bear it. Under the same head comes also the habit of interlarding one's language with scraps of trite quotation and outworn phrases for the sake of smartness and display.

1 See below, under coloring of words and figures, p. 94, 3.

2 For beacon-words, see above, pp. 60, 64.

EXAMPLE.

- Dickens makes his character of Micawber a representative of this pretentious kind of style; the following paragraph will exemplify his manner of saying a commonplace thing in a very big way:

666

Under the impression,' said Mr. Micawber, 'that your peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road-in short,' said Mr. Micawber, in another burst of confidence, that you might lose yourself — I shall be happy to call this evening, and instal you in the knowledge of the nearest way.'

Since Lowell, in the, introduction to The Biglow Papers, Pt. ii, has shown up this kind of style, its real character and lack of taste have been more generally recognized, and as a consequence the newspapers and popular literature have been less infested with it. The copious list of words that he there gives illustrates this vice of "fine writing" very fully.

As words and phrases are continually becoming worn, and as novelty in expression is a perennial claim, there is a constant effort on the part of writers to put familiar thoughts and facts in fresh and striking ways. Beyond this, too, there is the unceasing quest after an ever-refining ideal of expression, the desire, as Landor puts it, for "finer bread than can be made of wheat." These objects are natural and legitimate; but they need to be tempered and kept sane by good taste. The requirements, or at least the susceptibilities of the thought must furnish the justification. Governed by good taste, the use of words a little more pretentious than the literal subject warrants is one of the acknowledged instruments of humor. Attempted by a coarse or inexperienced hand, it is a case of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread; and the result, while it may happen to be felicitous, may be, and often is, such as to make the judicious grieve.

EXAMPLE OF HUMOROUS EXAGGERATION. The good taste of the following from Hawthorne, if we grant him the initial privilege of writing about so trivial a matter at all, will not be impeached :—

"The child, staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience of cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk

1 DICKENS, David Copperfield, Chap. xi.