Chapter III: Airs and Graces (2)

Dr. Bretton was a cicerone after my own heart; he would take me betimes _ere_ the galleries were filled.--C. BRONTË.

He is certainly not cruising on a trade route, or his presence would long _ere_ this have been reported.--_Times._

Mr. Shaynor unlocked a drawer, and _ere_ he began to write, took out a meagre bundle of letters.--KIPLING.

Fortifications are fixed, immobile defences, and, in time of war, must await the coming of an enemy _ere_ they can exercise their powers of offence.--_Times._

‘It is something in this fashion’, she cried out _ere_ long; ‘the man is too romantic and devoted.’--C. BRONTË.

_Ere_ departing, however, I determined to stroll about and examine the town.--BORROW.

The use of _ere_ with a gerund is particularly to be avoided.

And that she should force me, by the magic of her pen to mentally acknowledge, _albeit_ with wrath and shame, my own inferiority!--CORELLI.

Such things as our modern newspapers chronicle, _albeit_ in different form.--CORELLI.

It is thought by experts that there could be no better use of the money, _albeit_ the best American colleges, with perhaps one exception, have very strong staffs of professors at incredibly low salaries.--_Times._

‘Oxoniensis’ approaches them with courage, his thoughts are expressed in plain, unmistakable language, _howbeit_ with the touch of a master hand.--_Daily Telegraph._

The writer means _albeit_; he would have been safer with _though_.

Living in a coterie, he seems to have read the laudations and not to have noticed _aught_ else.--_Times._

Hence, if higher criticism, or _aught_ besides, compels any man to question, say, the historic accuracy of the fall....--_Daily Telegraph._

Many a true believer _owned not up_ to his faith.--_Daily Telegraph._

The controversy now going on in your columns _anent_ ‘Do we believe?’ throws a somewhat strange light upon the religion of to-day.--_Daily Telegraph._

It is because the world has not accepted the religion of Jesus Christ our Lord, that the world is _in the parlous state we see it still_.--_Daily Telegraph._

A discussion in which _well nigh_ every trade, profession and calling have been represented.--_Daily Telegraph._

Why not? Because we have _well-nigh bordering on_ 300 different interpretations of the message Christ bequeathed us.--_Daily Telegraph._

It is quite a common thing to see ladies with their hymn-books in their hands, _ere_ returning home from church enter shops and make purchases which might _every whit_ as well have been effected on the Saturday.--_Daily Telegraph._

How _oft_ do those who train young minds need to urge the necessity of being in earnest....--_Daily Telegraph._

I _trow_ not.--_Daily Telegraph._

The clerk, as I conjectured him to be from his appearance, was also commoved; for, sitting opposite to Mr. Morris, that honest gentleman’s terror communicated itself to him, though he _wotted_ not why.--SCOTT.

I should be _right_ glad if the substance could be made known to clergy and ministers of all denominations.--_Daily Telegraph._

So sordid are the lives of such natures, who are not only not heroic to their valets and waiting-women, but have neither valets nor waiting-women to be heroic to _withal_.--DICKENS.

=b. Sustained archaism in narrative and dialogue.=

A novelist who places his story in some former age may do so for the sake of a purely superficial variety, without any intention of troubling himself or his readers with temporal colour more than is necessary to avoid glaring absurdities; he is then not concerned with archaism at all. More commonly, however, it is part of his plan to present a living picture of the time of which he writes. When this is the case, he naturally feels bound to shun anachronism not only in externals, but in thought and the expression of thought. Now with regard to the language of his characters, it would be absurd for him to pretend to anything like consistent realism: he probably has no accurate knowledge of the language as his characters would speak it; and if he had this knowledge, and used it, he would be unintelligible to most of his readers, and burdensome to the rest. Accordingly, if he is wise, he will content himself with keeping clear of such modes of expression as are essentially modern and have only modern associations, such as would jar upon the reader’s sense of fitness and destroy the time illusion. He will aim, that is to say, at a certain archaic directness and simplicity; but with the archaic vocabulary, which instead of preserving the illusion only reminds us that there is an illusion to be preserved, he will have little to do. This we may call negative archaism. _Esmond_ is an admirable example of it, and the ‘Dame Gossip’ part of Mr. Meredith’s _Amazing Marriage_ is another. It hardly occurs to us in these books that the language is archaic; it is appropriate, that is all. The same may be said, on the whole, of _Treasure Island_, and of one or two novels of Besant’s.

Only the novelist who is not wise indulges in positive archaism. He is actuated by the determination to have everything in character at all costs. He does not know very much about old English of any period; very few people do, and those who know most of it would be the last to attempt to write a narrative in it. He gives us, however, all that he knows, without much reference to particular periods; it may not be good ancient English, but, come what may, it shall not be good modern. This, it need scarcely be said, is not fair play: the recreation is all on the writer’s side. Archaism is, no doubt, very seductive to the archaist. Well done (that is, negatively done), it looks easy; and to do it badly is perhaps even easier than it looks. No very considerable stock-in-trade is required; the following will do quite well: Prithee--quotha--perchance--peradventure--i’ faith--sirrah--beshrew me--look ye--sith that--look to it--leave prating--it shall go hard but--I tell you, but--the more part--fair cold water--to me-ward--I am shrewdly afeared--it is like to go stiff with me--y’ are--y’ have--it irks me sorely--benison--staunch--gyves--yarely--this same villain--drink me this--you were better go; to these may be added the indiscriminate use of ‘Nay’ and ‘Now (by the rood, &c.)’; free inversion; and verb terminations in _-st_ and _-th_. Our list is largely drawn from Stevenson, who, having tried negative archaism with success in _Treasure Island_, chose to give us a positive specimen in _The Black Arrow_. How vexatious these reach-me-down archaisms can become, even in the hands of an able writer, will be seen from the following examples of a single trick, all taken from _The Black Arrow_.

An I had not been a thief, I could not have painted _me_ your face.

Put _me_ your hand into the corner, and see what ye find there.

Bring _me_ him down like a ripe apple. And keep ever forward, Master Shelton; turn _me_ not back again, an ye love your life.

Selden, take _me_ this old shrew softly to the nearest elm, and hang _me_ him tenderly by the neck, where I may see him at my riding.

Mark _me_ this old villain on the piebald.

‘Sirrah, no more words,’ said Dick. ‘Bend _me_ your back.’

‘Here is a piece of forest that I know not’, Dick remarked. ‘Where goeth _me_ this track?’

‘I slew him fair. I ran _me_ in upon his bow,’ he cried.

‘Swallow _me_ a good draught of this,’ said the knight.

It is like a child with a new toy.

But there is the opposite fault. The judicious archaist, as we have said, will abstain from palpable modernisms, especially from modern slang. The following extracts are taken from an old woman’s reminiscences of days in which a ‘faultless attire’ included ‘half high boots, knee-breeches very tight above the calf (as the fashion was then), a long-tailed cutaway coat, ...’:

But the Captain, who, of course, lacks bowels of mercy for this kind of thing, says that if he had been Caesar, ‘Caius would have _got the great chuck_. Yes, madam, I would have broke Mister Caius on the spot’.--CROCKETT.

But if you once go in for _having a good time_ (as Miss Anne in her innocence used to remark) you must be prepared to....--CROCKETT.

... as all girls love to do when they are content with the way they have _put in their time_.--CROCKETT.

METAPHOR

Strictly speaking, metaphor occurs as often as we take a word out of its original sphere and apply it to new circumstances. In this sense almost all words can be shown to be metaphorical when they do not bear a physical meaning; for the original meaning of almost all words can be traced back to something physical; in our first sentence above, for instance, there are eight different metaphors. Words had to be found to express mental perceptions, abstract ideas, and complex relations, for which a primitive vocabulary did not provide; and the obvious course was to convey the new idea by means of the nearest physical parallel. The commonest Latin verb for _think_ is a metaphor from vine-pruning; ‘seeing’ of the mind is borrowed from literal sight; ‘pondering’ is metaphorical ‘weighing’. Evidently these metaphors differ in intention and effect from such a phrase as ‘smouldering’ discontent; the former we may call, for want of a better word, ‘natural’ metaphor, as opposed to the latter, which is artificial. The word metaphor as ordinarily used suggests only the artificial kind: but in deciding on the merits or demerits of a metaphorical phrase we are concerned as much with the one class as the other; for in all doubtful cases our first questions will be, what was the writer’s intention in using the metaphor? is it his own, or is it common property? if the latter, did he use it consciously or unconsciously?

This distinction, however, is useful only as leading up to another. We cannot use it directly as a practical test: artificial metaphors, as well as natural ones, often end by becoming a part of ordinary language; when this has happened, there is no telling to which class they belong, and in English the question is complicated by the fact that our metaphorical vocabulary is largely borrowed from Latin in the metaphorical state. Take such a word as _explain_: its literal meaning is ‘spread out flat’: how are we to say now whether necessity or picturesqueness first prompted its metaphorical use? And the same doubt might arise centuries hence as to the origin of a phrase so obviously artificial to us as ‘glaring inconsistency’.

Our practical distinction will therefore be between conscious or ‘living’ and unconscious or ‘dead’ metaphor, whether natural or artificial in origin: and again, among living metaphors, we shall distinguish between the intentional, which are designed for effect, and the unintentional, which, though still felt to be metaphors, are used merely as a part of the ordinary vocabulary. It may seem at first sight that this classification leaves us where we were: how can we know whether a writer uses a particular metaphor consciously or unconsciously? We cannot know for certain: it is enough if we think that he used it consciously, and know that we should have used it consciously ourselves; experience will tell us how far our perceptions in this respect differ from other people’s. Most readers, we think, will agree in the main with our classification of the following instances; they are taken at random from a couple of pages of the _Spectator_.

These we should call dead: ‘his _views_ were personal’; ‘_carry out_ his policy’; ‘not _acceptable_ to his _colleagues_’; ‘the Chancellor _proposed_’; ‘some _grounds_ for _complaint_’; ‘_refrain_ from talking about them’; ‘the _remission_ of the Tea-duty’; ‘_sound_ policy’; ‘a speech almost entirely _composed_ of _extracts_’; ‘_reduction_ of taxation’; ‘_discussion_’; ‘the _low_ price of Consols’; ‘_falls_ due’; ‘_succeeded_’; ‘will _approach_ their task’; ‘_delivered_ a speech’; ‘_postponing_ to a future year’. The next are living, but not intentional metaphor; the writer is aware that his phrase is still picturesque in effect, but has not chosen it for that reason: ‘a Protestant _atmosphere_’; ‘this would leave a _margin_ of £122,000’; ‘the loss of _elasticity_’ in the Fund; ‘_recasting_ our whole Fiscal system’; ‘to _uphold_ the unity of the Empire’; ‘to _strengthen_ the Exchequer balances’; ‘all _dwelt_ on the grave injury’; ‘his somewhat _shattered_ authority’; ‘the policy of evasion now _pursued_’; ‘_throws_ new _light_ on the situation’; ‘a _gap_ in our fiscal system’. Intentional metaphors are of course less plentiful: ‘the home-rule motion designed to “_draw_” Sir Henry’; ‘a _dissolving view_ of General Elections’; ‘this reassuring declaration _knocks the bottom out of_ the plea of urgency’; ‘the _scattered remnants_ of that party might _rally after the disastrous defeat_’.

One or two general remarks may be made before we proceed to instances. It is scarcely necessary to warn any one against over-indulgence in intentional metaphor; its effects are too apparent. The danger lies rather in the use of live metaphor that is not intentional. The many words and phrases that fall under this class are all convenient; as often as not they are the first that occur, and it is laborious, sometimes impossible, to hit upon an equivalent; the novice will find it worth while, however, to get one whenever he can. We may read a newspaper through without coming upon a single metaphor of this kind that is at all offensive in itself; it is in the aggregate that they offend. ‘Cries aloud for’, ‘drop the curtain on’, ‘goes hand in hand with’, ‘a note of warning’, leaves its impress’, ‘paves the way for’, ‘heralds the advent of’, ‘opens the door to’, are not themselves particularly noisy phrases; but writers who indulge in them generally end by being noisy.

Unintentional metaphor is the source, too, of most actual blunders. Every one is on his guard when his metaphor is intentional; the nonsense that is talked about mixed metaphor, and the celebrity of one or two genuine instances of it that come down to us from the eighteenth century, have had that good effect. There are few obvious faults a novice is more afraid of committing than this of mixed metaphor. His fears are often groundless; many a sentence that might have stood has been altered from a misconception of what mixed metaphor really is. The following points should be observed.

1. If only one of the metaphors is a live one, the confusion is not a confusion for practical purposes.

2. Confusion can only exist between metaphors that are grammatically inseparable; parallel metaphors between which there is no grammatical dependence cannot result in confusion. The novice must beware, however, of being misled either by punctuation or by a parallelism that does not secure grammatical independence. Thus, no amount of punctuation can save the time-honoured example ‘I smell a rat: I see him hovering in the air: ... I will nip him in the bud’. _Him_ is inseparable from the later metaphors, and refers to the rat. But there is no confusion in the following passage; any one of the metaphors can be removed without affecting the grammar:

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, ...
This fortress built by Nature for herself ...
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea, ...
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, ...

3. Metaphor within metaphor is dangerous. Here there is a grammatical dependence between the metaphors, and if the combination is unsuitable confusion will result. But combination is one thing, and confusion is another: if the internal metaphor is not inconsistent with the external, there is no confusion, though there may be ugliness. To adapt one of our examples below, ‘The Empire’s butcher (i. e. New Zealand) has not all his eggs in one basket’ is not a confusion, because a metaphorical butcher can have his eggs in one basket as well as any one else. What does lead to confusion is the choice of an internal metaphor applicable not to the words of the external metaphor, but to the literal words for which it is substituted. In the following example, the confusion is doubtless intended.

This pillar of the state
Hath swallowed hook and bait.

The swallowing is applicable only to the person metaphorically called a pillar.

4. Confusion of metaphor is sometimes alleged against sentences that contain only one metaphor--a manifest absurdity. These are really cases of a clash between the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical. A striking or original metaphor is apt to appear violent, and a commonplace one impertinent, if not adequately borne out by the rest of the sentence. This we may label ‘unsustained metaphor’. It sometimes produces much the same effect as mixed metaphor; but the remedy for it, as well as the cause, is different. Mixed metaphor is the result of negligence, and can generally be put right by a simple adaptation of the language to whichever metaphor is to be retained. Unsustained metaphor is rather an error of judgement: it is unsustained either because it was difficult to sustain, or because it was not worth sustaining; in either case abandonment is the simplest course.

This diverting incident contributed in a high degree to the general merriment.

Here we have four different metaphors; but as they are all dead, there is no real confusion.

This, as you know, was a burning question; and its unseasonable introduction threw a chill on the spirits of all our party.

_Burning_ and _chill_ are both live metaphors, they are grammatically connected by _its_, and they are inconsistent; there is therefore confusion.

The uncertainty which hangs over every battle extends in a special degree to battles at sea.--_Spectator._

_Extends_ is usually dead; and if in this case it is living, it is also suitable.

A centre and nucleus round which the scattered remnants of that party might rally after the disastrous defeat.--_Spectator._

The main or external metaphor is that of an army. Now any metaphor that is applicable to a literal army is also applicable to a metaphorical one: but ‘rally round a nucleus’ is a confusion of metaphor, to whichever it is applied; it requires us to conceive of the army at the same time as animal and vegetable, _nucleus_ being literally the kernel of a nut, and metaphorically a centre about which growth takes place. An army can have a nucleus, but cannot rally round it.

Sir W. Laurier had claimed for Canada that she would be the granary and baker of the Empire, and Sir Edmund Barton had claimed for Australia that she would be the Empire’s butcher; but in New Zealand they had not all their eggs in one basket, and they could claim a combination of the three.

This is quoted in a newspaper as an example of mixed metaphor. It is nothing of the kind: _they_ in New Zealand are detached from the metaphor.

We move slowly and cautiously from old moorings in our English life, that is our laudable constitutional habit; but my belief is that the great majority of moderate churchmen, to whatever political party they may belong, desirous as they are to lift this question of popular education out of the party rut, ....

‘A rut’, says the same newspaper, ‘is about the very last thing we should expect to find at sea, despite the fact that it is ploughed’. There is no mention of ruts at sea; the two metaphors are independent. If the speaker had said ‘Moderate churchmen, moving at length from their old moorings, are beginning to lift this question out of the party rut’, we should have had a genuine confusion, the _moorings_ and the _rut_ being then inseparable. Both this sentence and the preceding one, the reader may think, would have been better without the second metaphor; we agree, but it is a question of taste, not of correctness.

... the keenest incentive man can feel to remedy ignorance and abolish guilt. It is under the impelling force of this incentive that civilization progresses.--_Spectator._

This illustrates the danger of deciding hastily on the deadness of a metaphor, however common it may be. Probably any one would have said that the musical idea in _incentive_ had entirely vanished: but the successive attributes _keenness_ and _impelling force_ are too severe a test; the dead metaphor is resuscitated, and a perceptible confusion results.

Her forehand drive--her most trenchant asset.--_Daily Mail._

Another case of resuscitation. _Trenchant_ turns in its grave; and _asset_, ready to succumb under the violence of athletic reporters, has yet life enough to resent the imputation of a keen edge. As the critic of ‘ruts at sea’ might have observed, the more blunt, the better the assets.

And the very fact that the past is beyond recall imposes upon the present generation a continual stimulus to strive for the prevention of such woes.--_Spectator._

We _impose_ a burden, we apply a _stimulus_. It looks as if the writer had meant by a short cut to give us both ideas; if so, his guilt is clear; and if we call _impose_ a mere slip in idiom, the confusion is none the less apparent.

Sword of the devil, running with the blood of saints, poisoned adder, thy work is done.

These are independent metaphors; and, as _thy work is done_ is applicable to each of them, there is no confusion.

In the hope that something might be done, even at the eleventh hour, to stave off the brand of failure from the hide of our military administration.--_Times._

To _stave off a brand_ is not, perhaps, impossible; but we suspect that it would be a waste of energy. The idea of bulk is inseparable from the process of staving off. The metaphor is usually applied to literal abstract nouns, not to metaphorical concretes: ruin and disaster one can suppose to be of a tolerable size; but a metaphorical brand does not present itself to the imagination as any larger than a literal one. We assume that by _brand_ the instrument is meant: the eleventh hour is all too early to set about staving off the mark.

This is a good example of mixed metaphor of the more pronounced type; it differs only in degree from some of those considered above. We suggested that _impose a stimulus_ was perhaps a short cut to the expression of two different metaphors, and the same might be said of _staving off the brand_. But we shall get a clearer idea of the nature of mixed metaphor if we regard all these as violations of the following simple rule: When a live metaphor (intentional or unintentional) has once been chosen, the words grammatically connected with it must be either (a) recognizable parts of the same metaphorical idea, or one consistent with it, or (b) unmetaphorical, or dead metaphor; literal abstract nouns, for instance, instead of metaphorical concretes. Thus, we shall impose not the stimulus, but either (a) the burden of resistance, or (b) the duty of resistance; and we shall stave off not the ‘brand’ but the ‘ignominy of failure from our military administration’.

But from our remarks in 4 above, it will be clear that (b), though it cannot result in confusion of metaphor, may often leave the metaphor unsustained. Our examples illustrate several common types.

Is it not a little difficult to ask for Liberal votes for Unionist Free-traders, if we put party interests in the front of the consideration?--_Spectator._

May I be allowed to add a mite of experience of an original Volunteer in a good City regiment?--_Spectator._

But also in Italy many ancient edifices have been recently coated with stucco and masked by superfluous repairs.--_Spectator._

The elementary schools are hardly to be blamed for this failure. Their aim and their achievement have to content themselves chiefly with moral rather than with mental success.--_Spectator._

The scourge of tyranny had breathed his last.

The means of education at the disposal of the Protestants and Presbyterians of the North were stunted and sterilized.--BALFOUR.

I once heard a Spaniard shake his head over the present Queen of Spain.--(Quoted by _Spectator_.)

But, apart from all that, we see two pinching dilemmas even in this opium case--dilemmas that screw like a vice--which tell powerfully in favour of our Tory views.--DE QUINCEY.

The reader who is uncharitable enough to insist upon the natural history of dilemmas will call this not unsustained metaphor, but a gross confusion; horns cannot be said to _screw_. We prefer to believe that De Quincey was not thinking of the horns at all; they are a gratuitous metaphorical ornament; _dilemma_, in English at any rate, is a literal word, and means an argument that presents two undesirable alternatives. The circumstances of a dilemma are, indeed, such as to prompt metaphorical language, but the word itself is incorrigibly literal; we confess as much by clapping horns on its head and making them do the metaphorical work.

These remarks have been dictated in order that the importance of recognizing the difference and the value of soils may be understood.--J. LONG.

This metaphor always requires that the dictator--usually a personified abstract--should be mentioned. ‘Dictated by the importance’.

The opposite fault of over-conscientiousness must also be noticed. Elaborate poetical metaphor has perhaps gone out of fashion; but technical metaphor is apt to be overdone, and something of the same tendency appears in the inexorable working-out of popular catchword metaphors:

Tost to and fro by the high winds of passionate control, I behold the desired port, the single state, into which I would fain steer; but am kept off by the foaming billows of a brother’s and sister’s envy, and by the raging winds of a supposed invaded authority; while I see in Lovelace, the rocks on the one hand, and in Solmes, the sands on the other; and tremble, lest I should split upon the former or strike upon the latter. But you, my better pilot,...--RICHARDSON.

Such phases of it as we did succeed in mentally kodaking are hardly to be ‘developed’ in cold print.--_Times._

We are not photographers enough to hazard a comment on _cold_ print.

The leading planks of the Opposition policy are declared to be the proper audit of public accounts,...--_Times._

REPETITION

‘Rhetorical’ or--to use at once a wider and a more intelligible term--‘significant’ repetition is a valuable element in modern style; used with judgement, it is as truly a good thing as clumsy repetition, the result of negligence, is bad. But there are some writers who, from the fact that all good repetition is intentional, rashly infer that all intentional repetition is good; and others who may be suspected of making repetitions from negligence, and retaining them from a misty idea that to be aware of a thing is to have intended it. Even when the repetition is a part of the writer’s original plan, consideration is necessary before it can be allowed to pass: it is implied in the terms ‘rhetorical’ or significant repetition that the words repeated would ordinarily be either varied or left out; the repetition, that is to say, is more or less abnormal, and whatever is abnormal may be objectionable in a single instance, and is likely to become so if it occurs frequently.

The writers who have most need of repetition, and are most justified in using it, are those whose chief business it is to appeal not to the reader’s emotions, but to his understanding; for, in spite of the term ‘rhetorical’, the object ordinarily is not impressiveness for impressiveness’ sake, but emphasis for the sake of clearness. It may seem, indeed, that a broad distinction ought to be drawn between the rhetorical and the non-rhetorical: they differ in origin and in aim, one being an ancient rhetorical device to secure impressiveness, the other a modern development, called forth by the requirements of popular writers on subjects that demand lucidity; and there is the further difference, that rhetorical repetition often dictates the whole structure of the sentence, whereas the non-rhetorical, in its commonest form, is merely the completion of a sentence that need not have been completed. But in practice the two things become inseparable, and we shall treat them together; only pointing out to the novice that of the two motives, impressiveness and lucidity, the latter is far the more likely to seem justifiable in the reader’s eyes.

We shall illustrate both the good and bad points of repetition almost exclusively from a few pages of Bagehot, one of its most successful exponents, in whom nevertheless it degenerates into mannerism. To a writer who has so much to say that is worth hearing, almost anything can be forgiven that makes for clearness; and in him clearness, vigour, and a certain pleasant rapidity, all result from the free use of repetition. It will be seen that his repetitions are not of the kind properly called rhetorical; it is the spontaneous fullness of a writer who, having a clear point to make, is determined to make it clearly, elegance or no elegance. Yet the growth of mannerism is easily seen in him; the justifiable repetitions are too frequent, and he has some that do not seem justifiable.

He analysed not a particular government, but what is common to all governments; not one law, but what is common to all laws; not political communities in their features of diversity, but political communities in their features of necessary resemblance. He gave politics not an interesting aspect, but a new aspect: for by giving men a steady view of what political communities must be, he nipped in the bud many questions as to what they ought to be. As a gymnastic of the intellect, and as a purifier, Mr. Austin’s philosophy is to this day admirable--even in its imperfect remains; a young man who will study it will find that he has gained something which he wanted, but something which he did not know that he wanted: he has clarified a part of his mind which he did not know needed clarifying.

All these powers were states of some magnitude, and some were states of great magnitude. They would be able to go on as they had always gone on--to shift for themselves as they had always shifted.

Without Spanish and without French, Walpole would have made a good peace; Bolingbroke could not do so with both.

Cold men may be wild in life and not wild in mind. But warm and eager men, fit to be the favourites of society, and fit to be great orators, will be erratic not only in conduct but in judgement.

A man like Walpole, or a man like Louis Napoleon, is protected by an unsensitive nature from intellectual destruction.

After a war which everyone was proud of, we concluded a peace which nobody was proud of, in a manner that everyone was ashamed of.

He hated the City because they were Whigs, and he hated the Dutch because he had deserted them.

But he professed to know nothing of commerce, and did know nothing.

The fierce warlike disposition of the English people would not have endured such dishonour. We may doubt if it would have endured any peace. It certainly would not have endured the best peace, unless it were made with dignity and with honesty.

Using the press without reluctance and without cessation.

He ought to have been able to bear anything, yet he could bear nothing. He prosecuted many more persons than it was usual to prosecute then, and far more than have been prosecuted since.... He thought that everything should be said for him, and that nothing should be said against him.

Between these fluctuated the great mass of the Tory party, who did not like the House of Hanover because it had no hereditary right, who did not like the Pretender because he was a Roman Catholic.

He had no popularity; little wish for popularity; little respect for popular judgement.

Here is a writer who, at any rate, has not the vice of ‘elegant variation’. Most of the possibilities of repetition, for good and for evil, are here represented. As Bagehot himself might have said, ‘we have instances of repetition that are good in themselves; we have instances of repetition that are bad in themselves; and we have instances of repetition that are neither particularly good nor particularly bad in themselves, but that offend simply by recurrence’. The ludicrous appearance presented by our collection as a whole necessarily obscures the merit of individual cases; but if the reader will consider each sentence by itself, he will see that repetition is often a distinct improvement. The point best illustrated here, no doubt, is that it impossible to have too much of a good thing; but it is a good thing for all that. As instances of unjustifiable mannerism, we may select ‘fit to be the favourites ..., and fit to be great orators’; ‘not political communities ..., but political communities ...’; ‘something which he wanted, but something which he did not know that he wanted’; ‘a man like Walpole, or a man like Louis Napoleon’; ‘without reluctance and without cessation’; ‘who did not like ..., who did not like ...’; and ‘without Spanish and without French’. We have mentioned clearness as the ultimate motive for repetition of this kind: in this last sentence, we get not clearness, but obscurity. Any one would suppose that there was some point in the distinction between Spanish and French: there is none; the point is, simply, that languages do not make a statesman. Again, there is sometimes virtue in half-measures: from ‘something which he did not know that he wanted’ remove the first three words, and there remains quite repetition enough. ‘Wild in life and not wild in mind’ is a repetition that is clearly called for; but it is followed by the wholly gratuitous ‘fit ... and fit ...’, and the result is disastrous. Finally, in ‘who did not like ..., who did not like ...’, mannerism gets the upper hand altogether: instead of the appearance of natural vigour that ordinarily characterizes the writer, we have stiff, lumbering artificiality.

Writers like Bagehot do not tend at all to impressive repetition: their motive is always the business-like one of lucidity, though it is sometimes lucidity run mad. Repetition of this kind, not being designed to draw the reader’s attention to itself, wears much better in practice than the more pronounced types of rhetorical repetition. The latter should be used very sparingly. As the spontaneous expression of strong feeling in the writer, it is sometimes justified by circumstances: employed as a deliberate artifice to impress the reader, it is likely to be frigid, and to fail in its object; and the term ‘rhetorical’ should remind us in either case that what may be spoken effectively will not always bear the test of writing.

Rhetorical repetition, when it is clearly distinguishable from the non-rhetorical, is too obvious to require much illustration. Of the three instances given, the last is an excellent test case for the principle that ‘whatever is intentional is good’.

I have summoned you here to witness your own work. I have summoned you here to witness it, because I know it will be gall and wormwood to you. I have summoned you here to witness it, because I know the sight of everybody here must be a dagger in your mean false heart!--DICKENS.

As the lark rose higher, he sank deeper into thought. As the lark poured out her melody clearer and stronger, he fell into a graver and profounder silence. At length, when the lark came headlong down ... he sprang up from his reverie.--DICKENS.

Russia may split into fragments, or Russia may become a volcano.--_Spectator._

MISCELLANEOUS

a. Some more trite phrases.

The worn-out phrases considered in a former section were of a humorous tendency: we may add here some expressions of another kind, all of them calculated in one way or another to save the writer trouble; the trouble of description, or of producing statistics, or of thinking what he means. Such phrases naturally die hard; even ‘more easily imagined than described’ still survives the rough handling it has met with, and flourishes in writers of a certain class. ‘Depend upon it’, ‘you may take my word for it’, ‘in a vast majority of cases’, ‘no thinking man will believe’, ‘all candid judges must surely agree’, ‘it would be a slaying of the slain’, ‘I am old-fashioned enough to think’, are all apt to damage the cause they advocate.

The shrill formula ‘It stands to reason’ is one of the worst offenders. Originally harmless, and still no doubt often used in quite rational contexts, the phrase has somehow got a bad name for prefacing fallacies and for begging questions; it lacks the delicious candour of its feminine equivalent--‘Kindly allow me to know best’--, but appeals perhaps not less irresistibly to the generosity of an opponent. Apart from this, there is a correct and an incorrect use of the words. It is of course the conclusion drawn from certain premisses that stands to reason; the premisses do not stand to reason; they are assumed to be a matter of common knowledge, and ought to be distinguished from the conclusion by _if_ or a causal participle, not co-ordinated with it by _and_.

My dear fellow, it stands to reason that if the square of _a_ is _a_ squared, and the square of _b_ is _b_ squared, then the square of _a_ minus _b_ is _a_ squared minus _b_ squared. You may argue till we are both tired, you will never alter that.

It stands to reason that a thick tumbler, having a larger body of cold matter for the heat to distribute itself over, is less liable to crack when boiling water is poured into it than a thin one would be.

It stands to reason that my men have their own work to attend to, and cannot be running about London all day rectifying other people’s mistakes.

It stands to reason that Russia, though vast, is a poor country, that the war must cost immense sums, and that there must come a time....--_Spectator._

Just as ‘stands to reason’ is not an argument, but an invitation to believe, ‘the worthy Major’ not amusing, but an invitation to smile, so the sentimental or sensational novelist has his special vocabulary of the impressive, the tender, the tragic, and the horrible. One or two of the more obvious catch-phrases may be quoted. In the ‘strong man’ of fiction the reader may have observed a growing tendency to ‘sob like a child’; the right-minded hero to whom temptation comes decides, with archaic rectitude, that he ‘will not do _this thing_’; the villain, taught by incessant ridicule to abstain from ‘muffled curses’, finds a vent in ‘discordant laughs, that somehow jarred unpleasantly upon my nerves’; this laugh, _mutatis mutandis_ (‘cruel little laugh, that somehow ...’), he shares with the heroine, who for her exclusive perquisite has ‘this man who had somehow come into her life’. _Somehow_ and _half-dazed_ are invaluable for throwing a mysterious glamour over situations and characters that shun the broad daylight of common sense.

b. Elementary irony.

A well-known novelist speaks of the resentment that children feel against those elders who insist upon addressing them in a jocular tone, as if serious conversation between the two were out of the question. Irony is largely open to the same objection: the writer who uses it is taking our intellectual measure; he forgets our _ex officio_ perfection in wisdom. Theoretically, indeed, the reader is admitted to the author’s confidence; _he_ is not the _corpus vile_ on which experiment is made: that, however, is scarcely more convincing than the two-edged formula ‘present company excepted’. For minute, detailed illustration of truths that have had the misfortune to become commonplaces without making their due impression, sustained irony has its legitimate use: tired of being told, and shown by direct methods, that only the virtuous man is admirable, we are glad enough to go off with Fielding on a brisk _reductio ad absurdum_: ‘for if not, let some other kind of man be admirable; as Jonathan Wild’. But the _reductio_ process should be kept for emergencies, as Euclid kept it, with whom it is a confession that direct methods are not available. The isolated snatches of irony quoted below have no such justification: they are for ornament, not for utility; and it is a kind of ornament that is peculiarly un-English--a way of shrugging one’s shoulders in print.

He had also the comfortable reflection that, by the violent quarrel with Lord Dalgarno, he must now forfeit the friendship and good offices of that nobleman’s father and sister.--SCOTT.

Naturally that reference was received with laughter by the Opposition, who are, or profess to be, convinced that our countrymen in the Transvaal do not intend to keep faith with us. They are very welcome to the monopoly of that unworthy estimate, which must greatly endear them to all our kindred beyond seas.--_Times._

The whole of these proceedings were so agreeable to Mr. Pecksniff, that he stood with his eyes fixed upon the floor ..., as if a host of penal sentences were being passed upon him.--DICKENS.

The time comes when the banker thinks it prudent to contract some of his accounts, and this may be one which he thinks it expedient to reduce: and then perhaps he makes the pleasant discovery, that there are no such persons at all as the acceptors, and that the funds for meeting all these bills have been got from himself!--H. D. MACLEOD.

_Pleasant_ is put for _unpleasant_ because the latter seemed dull and unnecessary; the writer should have taken the hint, and put nothing at all.

The climax is reached by those pessimists who, regarding the reader’s case as desperate, assist him with punctuation, italics, and the like:

And this honourable (?) proposal was actually made in the presence of two at least of the parties to the former transaction!

These so-called _gentlemen_ seem to forget....

I was content to be snubbed and harassed and worried a hundred times a day by one or other of the ‘great’ personages who wandered at will all over my house and grounds, and accepted my lavish hospitality. Many people imagine that it must be an ‘honour’ to entertain a select party of aristocrats, but I....--CORELLI.

The much-prated-of ‘kindness of heart’ and ‘generosity’ possessed by millionaires, generally amounts to this kind of thing.--CORELLI.

Was I about to discover that the supposed ‘woman-hater’ had been tamed and caught at last?--CORELLI.

That should undoubtedly have been your ‘great’ career--you were born for it--made for it! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now....--CORELLI.

c. Superlatives without _the_.

The omission of _the_ with superlatives is limited by ordinary prose usage to (1) Superlatives after a possessive: ‘Your best plan’. (2) Superlatives with _most_: ‘in most distressing circumstances’, but not ‘in saddest circumstances’. (3) Superlatives in apposition, followed by _of_: ‘I took refuge with X., kindliest of hosts’; ‘We are now at Weymouth, dingiest of decayed watering-places’. Many writers of the present day affect the omission of _the_ in all cases where the superlative only means _very_. No harm will be done if they eventually have their way: in the meantime, the omission of _the_ with inflected superlatives has the appearance of gross mannerism.

Our enveloping movements since some days proved successful, and fiercest battle is now proceeding.--_Times._

In which, too, so many noblest men have ... both made and been what will be venerated to all time.--CARLYLE.

Struggling with objects which, though it cannot master them, are essentially of richest significance.--CARLYLE.

The request was urged with every kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word.--EMERSON.

In Darkest Africa.--STANLEY.

Delos furnishes, not only quaintest tripods, crude bronze oxen and horses like those found at Olympia, but....--L. M. MITCHELL.

The scene represents in crudest forms the combat of gods and giants, a subject which should attain long afterwards fullest expression in the powerful frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamon.--L. M. MITCHELL.

A world of highest and noblest thought in dramas of perfect form.--L. M. MITCHELL.

From earliest times such competitive games had been celebrated.--L. M. MITCHELL.

When fullest, freest forms had not yet been developed.--L. M. MITCHELL.

d. Cheap originality.

Just as ‘elegant variation’ is generally a worse fault than monotony, so the avoidance of trite phrases is sometimes worse than triteness itself. Children have been known to satisfy an early thirst for notoriety by merely turning their coats inside out; and ‘distinction’ of style has been secured by some writers on the still easier terms of writing a common expression backwards. By this simplest of all possible expedients, ‘wear and tear’ ceases to be English, and becomes Carlylese, and Emerson acquires an exclusive property (so at least one hopes) in ‘nothing or little’. The novice need scarcely be warned against infringing these writers’ patents; it would be as unpardonable as stealing the idea of a machine for converting clean knives into dirty ones. Hackneyed phrases become hackneyed because they are useful, in the first instance; but they derive a new efficiency from the very fact that they are hackneyed. Their precise form grows to be an essential part of the idea they convey, and all that a writer effects by turning such a phrase backwards, or otherwise tampering with it, is to give us our triteness at secondhand; we are put to the trouble of translating ‘tear and wear’, only to arrive at our old friend ‘wear and tear’, hackneyed as ever.

How beautiful is noble-sentiment; like gossamer-gauze beautiful and cheap, which will stand no _tear and wear_.--CARLYLE.

Bloated promises, which end in _nothing or little_.--EMERSON.

The universities also are _parcel_ of the ecclesiastical system.--EMERSON.

Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, Romilly, or _whatever national man_, were by this means sent to Parliament.--EMERSON.

And the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker.--EMERSON.

The faster the ball falls to the sun, the force to fly off is by so much augmented.--EMERSON.

The friction in nature is so enormous that we cannot spare any power. _It is not question_ to express our thought, to elect our way, but to overcome resistances.--EMERSON.