This comes out yet more strongly in art. Charles the First had a strong artistic turn in painting, sculpture, and architecture; but as yet painting and sculpture mainly came from abroad. In architecture the mingled taste of the latter part of the sixteenth century still went on; but there was a strong tendency, specially under the court architect Inigo Jones, toward a more strictly Italian taste. On the other hand, there was, especially in ecclesiastical buildings, a considerable return to the older English forms. This specially comes out in many of the college buildings in Oxford. Literature, art, every thing changed greatly after the Restoration. The gap is indeed wide. A flood of licentiousness in every shape, the reaction after the strict religious rule of the Puritan time, broke forth and affected all that came in its way. It was the court rather than the nation that was infected; but the infection of the court was enough to mar the outward look of most things. The greatness of the gap between this and the earlier part of the century is shown by the way in which men who had played any part on either side, seem out of place. They seem far more so in the earlier time now than the elder men of any other time. Clarendon, the Royalist statesman and historian of the Civil War, seems to belong to another age, just as much as the Puritan Milton. Language and taste change a great deal; new words and new fashions come in fact; the foreign influence is now far greater than before, and it is not Italian but French. Style changes; from Charles the Second's time onward, we feel that English writing is coming far nearer to its modern standard. If the statelier blank verse was brought to perfection by Milton, English rhyme was brought to its polished form by Dryden, a man who as distinctly marks this time as Milton does the earlier. And this new time was a time of progress in many ways. Natural science stands out more distinctly than any thing else, and that in various forms. The great name of Newton stands highest of all. In moral and mental philosophy Locke leads the way. In matters of art, painting became more naturalized in England; in architecture the last traces of the elder taste, which had lived on into the first half of the seventeenth, dies out. The fashion is now purely classical, and Gothic architecture is spoken of with contempt. The strongest sign of all is that, when the great church of Saint Paul in London was burned, the new one built by Sir Christopher Wren, the chief architect of the time, no longer followed any ancient English pattern, but that of the church of Saint Peter at Rome. In most things in short we seem to take a new start in the latter part of the seventeenth century; we seem to come to the beginning of a time more like our own. But the unbroken life of the nation goes on; it goes on specially in its political life, notwithstanding the Civil War and its effects. The old spirit of English freedom which had in some sort slept, or rather had only seemed to sleep, during the sixteenth century, awoke to full life in the seventeenth. And it has never even seemed to go to sleep since. The work of the famous Long Parliament was of two kinds. As long as it kept itself to reforming abuses, restraining oppression, preserving ancient liberties, its work has lasted to this day. When in its later stage, it took to novelties, those novelties have not lasted. Then toward the end of the century came what we call the Revolution, though as Lord Macaulay says, when we think of revolutions in other lands, it seems strange to call it so. We changed one king for another; we established the old liberties of the land beyond doubt. The English Constitution now took its final legal shape, pretty much what it had at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The two hundred years that have since passed have made hardly any legal change in it; what they have done has been silently to shape its practical working from time to time. But one great, though incidental, effect of the Revolution must not be left out. Since the fifteenth century England had had comparatively little to do with foreign wars. Elizabeth's struggle with Spain was our only war of any great moment, and save the repulse of the Armada, it was hardly a war on the same scale as the wars of earlier or later times. In the course of the seventeenth century England had wars with Spain, with France, and with the Netherlands, and with the last it had very hard fighting by sea. But there were no wars like those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or like those that began towards the end of the seventeenth. In short, except when Cromwell was at the head, England, through the whole seventeenth century down to the Revolution. held the lowest place in Europe that it had ever held since it became wars between England and France. Since one kingdom. After the Revolution the that time England, and after it Great Britain, choice of the new king, William Prince of has always held, at whatever cost, the rank Orange, led to the first of the great modern of one of the great powers of Europe. PRACTICAL TALKS ON WRITING ENGLISH. PART V. BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM MINTO, M. A. Of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. frock, a red coat; or if implement, such as FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (CONCLUDING RE- pen, sword, trowel, baton, paste and scissors; T MARKS). METONYMIES. O complete our account of the leading kinds of figurative language, we shall advert next to various ways of describing things not plainly and directly by their own names but allusively or circumstantially or symbolically. Consider, for example, how the following differs from plain speech : or of residence, cottage, villa, palace; in short, any significant part, property, adjunct, or collateral, may be made the basis of an allusive name. All such allusive substitute-names are loosely known as metaphors. There is no reason against this in the etymology of the word; both metaphor and metonym imply the idea of transference of meaning or allusive suggestion. It was only for scientific convenience that the old rhetoricians applied the one word to cases where the suggestion is through a link of likeness, and the other to cases where it is through an accidental connection. Scientifically, the distinction has some value, because a writer may be rich in the dignity of the home without subtracting metaphor and weak in metonym, and confrom the honor of the presidency. If the French army under the great Napoleon was inspired by the belief that a possible marshal's baton was in every soldier's knapsack, so the belief that the child of the log cabin may become the Chief of the White House penetrates the lowliest American homes, and adds to Such expressions as "every soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack," for the plain every soldier may become a marshal; "the child of the log cabin," for a poor man's son; "Chief of the White House," for the President of the United States, are technically known as Metonymies or Metonyms. The word has never, like "metaphor," found its way into the common vocabulary, but some such word is needed in the interest of exact criticism. Metonymic expression is quite as important an instrument of effective style as metaphoric, and it depends upon a different principle. The principle of metaphor is resemblance; the principle of metonym is accidental connection of some sort, accidental but yet distinctive, so that the circumstance named suggests the thing or person intended. It is an accident that the residence of the President is known as the White House; nevertheless, the Chief of the White House is a sufficient description. Similarly, any distinctive peculiarity of dress, such as a white tie, a shovel-hat, a smock versely, wealth in the two means of expression depending upon different faculties, the one upon a keen and quick sense for resemblance, the other upon a strong memory for details and collateral circumstances. Practically, however, the distinction is of less consequence; that is to say, a knowledge of the distinction will not help a writer much in allusive description. He may use either tool or both freely without being able to name them with accurate precision. Some thirty varieties of metonym, as we have defined it, have been distinguished by rhetoricians. The number will not appear at all surprising when you remember that the principle of metonymy is simply to substitute for the plain name of a thing a name or phrase based on something connected with it. Many of the figures classified by rhetoricians are really so common that they can hardly be called figurative; they are part of the common speech. Thus to describe a rich man as a man "with a long purse," or to say that "New York was thrown into a state of great excitement," when we mean the inhabitants of New York, is technically to use the metonym of putting "the container for the thing contained." But such artifices are so common that it takes some thought to see wherein they depart from plain speech. Instead of enumerating the varieties of metonym, it is more to our purpose to distinguish the objects with which they are used. One obvious object is picturesqueness, vividness, animation, color. A "redcoat" is a more picturesque word than a soldier; it calls up a picturesque circumstance to the mind's eye. Whether the intention is contemptuous or respectful it is more effective to indicate a thing by some striking circumstances than by a plain name: an "oil king," a "cotton lord," a "carpet-bagger," a 'quill-driver," "the blind old man of Chios' rocky isle,"*"the seer of Chelsea," "the glorious dreamer of Highgate." + Another object is to make the expression more vague and dignified. The plain name for disagreeable things is apt to become too suggestive, and sometimes cannot be used without harshness or coarseness. Our meaning must then be delicately hinted at, decorously presented under a veil to hide its repulsive features. This is technically called Euphemism. Undoubtedly the most prevailing motive for the use of metonymies, as for all figures of speech, is the mere love of variety. To call a spade a spade is a good enough rule, useful to remember when you are tempted to over-elaborate and superfine allusiveness, but too close an observance of it would result in a very bald and poverty-stricken diction. A newspaper editor who consults the popular taste is obliged to proceed on an opposite principle. You may call a spade a spade once or twice or three times in the course of an article, but if you have to refer to it oftener, you must find some metonym for the humble instrument, even if it is nothing better than "this oblong implement of manual husbandry." An agricultural laborer may be introduced as such, but as the article proceeds the changes are rung on plain synonyms such as husbandman and peasant, and familiar metonyms such as Hodge, son of the To seek to banish such variations in plain language is a foolish enterprise on the part of criticism. They are founded on a natural instinct. The critic may pitch out some that have become, in Dr. Johnson's words, "easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting," but others will come in their stead. The merit of a metonym as of other figures lies in its originality, or comparative novelty ; when they have reached a certain pitch of commonness, they are dropped by all writers with any self-respect. You must make your index expurgatorius† for yourself, remembering that the fear of vulgarity is a very cramping sentiment, and that straining after originality has its own dangers. If the coining of new metonyms does not come easy to you, you are better not to attempt it. CONCLUDING REMARKS. I began by quoting the opinion that the best way to acquire a good style is to think as little about it as possible. I do not altogether agree with this, but perhaps some of my readers do, after following me thus far and observing how many contradictory considerations arise when we begin to think on any of the means of expression. Better never begin thinking about expression at all if it is so difficult to hit the right use of the various instruments. The study of rhetorical principles in the abstract, probably does paralyze rather than help the judgment. They should be thought out in connection with the practice of good writers, and then they should help you, if they are sound principles, in deciding for yourself whether what you read is good writing or not. If it impresses you, interests you, enlightens you, it is good writing for you. My object is to help you in analyzing the effect produced on yourself, and studying how it is done as a guide to your own practice. Nothing is to be gained by studying style out of relation to the subject and the persons addressed, if you really wish to use words as a means of communication. Some people say that it is enough to be full of your subject and in earnest about it. They are so far right that this is indispensable; you cannot have effective writing without knowledge and earnestness. The most effective speaker is the man who is in earnest. But what does earnestness mean? It means that the speaker is determined to get a certain conviction home, to pass it from his own mind to another. But is this enough? Are we to suppose that the powerful orator never thought for a moment beforehand what he was going to say and how he was to say it? That there was no premeditation, no previous preparation? If he did pause to think before he spoke, then he thought about style, only it was in the right way, about style in connection with the subject and the persons addressed. I may quote from a great master of popular style, Mr. Spurgeon, some sensible remarks which have a bearing on this : I know a good minister who prepared very elaborately. He told me he got tired of the hard work, and one day preached a simple sermon, such as he would have preached in his shirt sleeves if he had been wakened up in the middle of the night. The people were far more impressed than by his usual discourses. Isaid, "I'd give them some more of that." But I should not say so to you, young man. This was an elderly man, full of matter. Whatever he said in course of conversation was good. The reason why speeches carefully studied and written out are often ineffective is that the writer in his study loses touch with his audience. A practised speaker who has learned by experiment what tells, who knows and is known to his audience, is often more effective off hand than when he has made elaborate preparation, because then he is apt to diverge into more abstruse trains of thought. To keep an audience before the mind's eye and follow its moods as if it were actually present needs a vivid imagination. In writing, the nature of the subject and the audience have to be studied at least as much as the mere expression. They must be taken all together. What rhetoricians call the "intellectual qualities of style," such as impressiveness, simplicity, perspicuity, precision, are really decided from the effect produced on the reader by matter and manner together. It is this joint effect that we judge from when we call a composition impressive or simple or perspicuous. A mistake often made by writers on style is to speak of simplicity as if it were something absolute, as if a particular form of expression were absolutely more simple than another. Simplicity is really a relative term. An expression is simple or abstruse according as it is familiar to the reader or the reverse. We are often told that we should use the Saxon part of our vocabulary rather than the Latin, because it is simpler. The late Dean Alford raised the cry and it is often heard. "Latin," says Mr. Spurgeon, "is turf, Saxon is stone, good to pelt sinners with." But it all depends upon whether the Saxon words are in common use. We have retained in our speech the Saxon words for many common things and primitive feelings, but others have been superseded by Latin words, and a word may be of Saxon origin and yet be far from simple. “Gainsay" is not so simple a word as "contradict.” Yeasay" may be a prettier word than sent," but it is not so readily understood. "Inwit" is a good Saxon word, but we have to explain it by the Latin "conscience." We may, if we like, use "forewords" instead of "preface," to gratify a sentiment or carry out a theory, but it is pedantic or affected and not simple English. The simplicity of a word depends entirely on whether or not it is in common use. as It is a mistake, again, to suppose that simplicity depends entirely on choice of words. It depends at least as much on structure. Take a passage in any old author, and you will find that though the words separately are simple enough you have often to read twice and think, because the syntax, the turn of phrase or sentence, is unfamiliar to you. Mr. Spurgeon's simplicity is due as much to the colloquial form of his sentences as to his homely diction. In a thoroughly simple style the words are familiar, the cast of sentence is familiar, and the illustrations are drawn from familiar sources. It must be added that the ideas also are familiar. It is often impossible to express new ideas in simple language. When Burke was said to be a less simple speaker than Fox and this was charged against him as a defect, De 1 Quincey repelled the charge on the ground that Fox was merely the mouthpiece of an accredited party policy whereas Burke was trying to connect the events of the moment with high general principles. "Who complains of a prophet," he asked, "for being a little darker of speech than a post-office directory?" It would, doubtless, be a hard thing to insist that every thinker on every subject should strive to make himself level with the comprehension of the meanest capacity and the most indolent intelligence. The amount of effort that you require of your reader must be regulated by circumstances. You may purposely choose to address a limited audi ence. A treatise on the Appreciation of Gold or the Philosophical Presuppositions of Experience cannot be made as simple as Hints on Marriage or a story of the adventures of a cat. There are abstruse subjects that have something like a dialect of their own, and nobody can blame you if you write for those who have learned the dialect and shrink from the labor of trying to be intelligible in common speech. The same holds good to a certain extent of feelings; your language may be purposely veiled and mystical, addressed only to the initiated. It would be a waste of words to advise anybody not to adopt the oracular style. Carlyle says somewhere that no great writer was ever understood without difficulty. If a man takes this as an encouragement to be willfully obscure, he does so at his own risk. If he is not a genuine mystic, but a bogus mystificator, he may at least afford some amusement to those who have the patience to read him. One of the things that the beginner is generally advised to aim at is perspicuity or lucidity. This is not quite the same thing as simplicity, which is attained by couching simple ideas in simple language. Perspicuity is more a matter of arrangement, of order and connection, and may be achieved when neither the ideas nor the language are simple. Herbert Spencer, for example, is a remarkably lucid writer. Most of the hints I submitted in connection with sentences and paragraphs have for their aim perspicuity. This virtue can seldom be attained without some sacrifice of simplicity. In order to be lucid you have to keep to a point, and connect your ideas clearly, and as the natural tendency of the simple man is to wonder, he is conscious of a certain effort under this process. 99.66 Precision, exactness, is another of the virtues to which the beginner is generally exhorted. To combine this with extreme simplicity is next to impossible, for a reason that is obvious upon a little consideration. The more simple a word is, that is to say the more frequently it is used, the more vague and inexact it tends to become. A much used word is like a much used coin: the superscription gets worn off. Try to define any common word such as "good," "wicked," "just," "crime," "health," "education," "culture,' progress, ," and you will find that the ideas you attach to such simple words are far from exact. Socrates amused himself by going about among the people of Athens and asking the meaning of such words, professing to be himself a very stupid person who could not understand them. Everybody was ready at first with an answer. "Not know what virtue means! Why, every fool knows that.” But the most confident were brought to confess that though they knew the meaning perfectly well, it was not easy to put in precise words. This is Precision is not a popular quality. Socrates fell a martyr to it. Other great propagators of new ideas have gone on a different plan, taking words in common use, employing them in a sense of their own, and leaving the reader to guess the meaning. often the cause of the difficulty of understanding great writers. It is so in the case of Carlyle himself, and Emerson. One often hears readers of Matthew Arnold ask what he meant by culture. The word is a common one, but he used it in a sense of his own; only it is fair to say that Arnold did attempt to give as exact a definition of his meaning as the subject admitted of. I have not touched on the question of "purity" of style. It is a negative virtue; we say that a style is pure when it is strikingly free from foreign idioms, provincialisms, slang, obsolete words and phrases, new and affected expressions. Generally speaking when a style is such as to win the praise of being classical English, there is a something stiff and old-fashioned about it. There is no point of style about which so much has been written; there is none on which people are so ready to dogmatize as this question of purity. The corruption of the Queen's or the King's English has been a common subject of lament among critics for the last three hundred years. At any time during that |