idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from the Crown grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the house of Russel were so enormous as not only to outrage economy but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin and covers me all over with the spray-everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favour? 24. The admonition of a true friend should be like the practice of a wise physician, who wrappeth his sharp pills in fine sugar; or the cunning chirurgeon, who, lancing a wound with an iron, immediately applieth to it soft lint; or as mothers deal with their children, who put their bitter seeds into sweet raisins: if this order had been observed, that interlacing sour taunts with sugared counsel, bearing as well a gentle rein as using a hard snaffle, thou mightest have done more with the whisk of a wand than now thou canst with the prick of the spur, and avoid that which now thou mayest notextreme unkindness. But thou art like that kind judge which Propertius noteth, who, condemning his friend, caused him for the more ease to be hanged with a silken twist. And thou like a friend cuttest my throat with a razor, not with a hatchet, for my more honour. LYLY, Euphues. 25. It is indeed much easier to describe what is not humour, than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegoryand by supposing humour to be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications, according to the following genealogy. Truth was the founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of a collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had issue Humour. Humour therefore being the youngest of this illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress; insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge, and as jocular as a merry-andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh. ADDISON, The Spectator. 26. From Goldsmith's reverie on the Coach of Fame, which he saw carrying passengers to the Temple of Fame (The Bee, November 3, 1759). This was a very grave personage, whom at some distance I took for one of the most reserved and even disagreeable figures I had seen; but as he approached his appearance improved, and when I could distinguish him thoroughly, I perceived that in spite of the severity of his brow he had one of the most good-natured countenances that could be imagined. Upon coming to open the stage door, he lifted a parcel of folios into the seat before him, but our inquisitorial coachman shoved them out again. "What! not take in my Dictionary!" exclaimed the other in a rage. "Be patient, sir," replied the coachman, "I have drove a coach, man and boy, these two thousand years; but I do not remember to have carried above one dictionary during the whole time. That little book which I perceive peeping from one of your pockets, may I presume to ask what it contains ?" "A mere trifle,” replied the author, "it is called The Rambler." "The Rambler!" says the coachman, "I beg, sir, you'll take your place; I have heard our ladies in the Court of Apollo frequently mention it with rapture; and Clio, who happens to be a little grave, has been heard to prefer it to The Spectator; though others have observed that the reflections, by being refined, sometimes become minute." 27. The Earl of Chatham's Ministry, 1766. He made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; King's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was indeed a very curious show; but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name?"—"Sir, you have the advantage of me"-"Mr Such-a-one"-"I beg a thousand pardons"-I venture to say, it did so happen that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed. BURKE, Speech on American Taxation. Other prose passages will be found in The Spectator, 3, 35, 460; and The Rambler, 3, 67, 96. CHAPTER XVI THE ELEMENTS AND THE QUALITIES OF STYLE Style is the manner in which ideas are expressed; and it may be viewed from different stand-points. We may consider the words and the way in which they are combined. These are the Elements of Style; and writers are accordingly distinguished as copious, concise, plain, ornate, etc. Again, we may ask what effects the writing produces, and speak of the Qualities of Style -intellectual, as clearness; emotional, as sublimity; aesthetic, as melody. A passage may possess more than one quality, and might, for example, be described as melodious and picturesque. A. ELEMENTS OF STYLE. COPIOUS. If the different words used by two writers are counted, it is often found that one possesses an ampler vocabulary than the other. If we read such a writer carefully, and note the variety of his diction, we get an impression of his large supply of words, and we call him copious. His wide vocabulary enables him to find adequate expressions for the different thoughts he seeks to convey. Writers of special copiousness are Shakespeare, Defoe, Burke, Macaulay, Carlyle, Coleridge. DIFFUSE. A speaker often, a writer sometimes, finds it advantageous to unfold his ideas fully by putting them in various ways and adding illustration after illustration. This need not be a fault if the words and the illustrations are fresh and interesting: carried too far, it may tire readers and cause them to charge the writer with prolixity. Macaulay is frequently diffuse. In the following he fortifies his approval of Boileau's opinion by three illustrations, where a less diffuse writer might have been content with one, or without any. Boileau also thought it probable that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And who can think otherwise? What modern scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar understood Latin better than Frederic the Great understood French? Yet is it not notorious that Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during more than half a century, after unlearning his mother tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly during many years with French associates, could not, to the last, compose in French, without imminent risk of committing some mistake which would have moved a smile in the literary circles of Paris? Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr Robertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English? And are there not in the Dissertation on India, the last of Dr Robertson's works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice would laugh? Essay on Addison. See also the lengthy dissertation beginning with par. 2 of ch. Ix. in his History. The writings of Hooker, Cowley, Adam Smith, and Addison will supply other examples. VERBOSE. See p. 50. The verbose writer employs many unnecessary words, introduces irrelevant details, is fond of circumlocutions. He may incline to wander, and then deserves the epithet garrulous. Dr Johnson's Rambler is an example of verbosity. So at times is Wordsworth's poetry; as Anecdote for Fathers and The Excursion, vi. 1 sqq. BREVITY, CONCISENESS, TERSENESS. When much is said in few words, we have brevity: see p. 48. Conciseness implies a brevity that omits as much as possible, consistent with expressing the meaning forcibly. For example, "Even copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, Here copious is condensed for "copious though he was," and therefore able to blot out inferior passages and replace them by better. See also the opening lines of Tennyson's Enoch Arden. Neat, polished conciseness is terseness; as Pope's couplets, e.g. the passage on Addison, Prologue to the Satires, 193 sqq. Other examples occur in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and in Macaulay's Lays. When terseness is shown in pithy sayings, the style is called sententious or aphoristic; as Thomas Fuller's "A good memory is the best monument," "The shortest, plainest and truest epitaphs are the best"; or Bacon's "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” LATINISED. If a writer departs noticeably from the idiomatic vernacular by using unfamiliar words of Latin origin or Latin constructions, his style is Latinised. Sir Thomas Browne is a striking example, with expressions such as diuturnity, propension, precogitations, manuduction, favaginous, telarly, asperous, exantlation, carnified. Johnson's Rambler, passages in Milton, prose and poetry (e.g. Paradise Lost, III. 7), and in De Quincey, contain Latinisms. ALLUSIVE, PEDANTIC. See pp. 53, 72. Fuller and Cowley are fond of allusions; and other examples will be found in Milton, Paradise Lost, 1. 573 sqq.; Tennyson, The Princess, II. 64 sqq. When, by means of allusions, Latinised expressions, etc., there is an unseasonable show of learning, we have pedantry. COLLOQUIAL. When words peculiar to the vocabulary of common talk are employed in writing, the style is termed colloquial. Note the homely expression in Thackeray's "The King had his backgammon or his evening concert; the equerries yawned themselves to death in the anteroom." See also Latimer's Sermons, Sterne, Defoe and Cobbett. FIGURATIVE, ORNATE, PLAIN. Where many figures of speech (see ch. vi.) are employed, the style is called figurative; and may be distinguished as epigrammatic, antithetic, etc. A style |