and a sudden burst of tears is thus described :

:

"And from his eyen ran the water down."

and the shortness of life is mentioned in the Bible with the

quiet words :

"The wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof knoweth it no more."

But the great value of plainness will appear most clearly by looking at examples of its opposite. A writer wishes to state that vegetable life is more luxuriant in the tropics than in the temperate zone; and he does it in the following remarkable and stilted language:

"The course of the existence of plants, in the torrid zone, seems much more rapid and energetic, and the conditions under which it advances far more conducive of success, than in our distance from the equator."

Another speaks about the feeling of hope in this fashion:

"The benignant influence exercised by the passion of hope over the soul of man, in soothing and sustaining him under the numerous afflictions of life, and in giving birth to an infinite variety of pleasing emotions," etc., etc.

Another begins the fable of "The Bears and the Bees," in this way :

"Two young bears setting out on one occasion from the covert of a forest, chanced, in what seemed to them a lucky moment, to light upon a bee-hive laden with the rich and inviting store of the laborious race of honey-makers.”

And a well-known novelist writes of Rome:

"A winding and turbid river divided the city in (sic) unequal parts, in one of which there rose a vast and glorious temple crowned with a dome of almost superhuman size and skill, on which the favoured sign of heaven flashed with triumphant truth."

It is to be observed, in the first place, that no writer of any sense and no thoughtful person whatever could or would write such stuff as the first three sentences, or such phrases as "the laborious race of honey-makers," "an infinite

our

variety of pleasing emotions," or call our latitude distance from the equator." But the worst effect of allowing oneself to write in this mouthing and garrulous fashion is that our minds get gradually so degraded that they mistake mere words and phrases for thoughts.

"Words are like leaves; and, where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.”

But there is a method of turning the thought in one's mind on every side, and looking at it from many different points of view. This is not wordiness, but a most useful rhetorical art.

Same statement in three forms.

Same statement

in seven varieties,

with slightly different concomitants.

Now in the mind of Mr. Southey, reason has no place at all, as either leader or follower, as either sovereign or slave. He does not seem to know what an argument is.-He never uses arguments himself. He never troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents.

It has never occurred to him that a man ought to be able to give some better account of the way in which he has arrived at his opinions, than merely that it is his will and pleasure to hold them.--It has never occurred to him that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration,that a rumour does not always prove a fact,—that a single fact, when proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory, -that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it,— or that, when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than "scoundrel" and "blockhead."

The too great use of Latinized expressions often makes a sentence very clumsy. Dr. Chalmers, who was much given to them, has this lumbering sentence:

"The man who considers the poor will give his chief anxiety to the wants of their eternity."

The following sentence seems to abound in tautologies;

but a careful examination of it will show that the expressions are not superfluous. Addison is speaking of beauty, and says:

"The very first discovery of it strikes the mind with inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties."-Spect., No. 412. The Law of Plainness, with reference to language and the choice of words, may be stated in this way :--

Use ENGLISH-ENGLISH (or "Saxon-English ") words and phrases wherever you can, without injustice either to your meaning or to your feeling, and NOT FRENCH-ENGLISH or LATIN-ENGLISH.

The reason for this rule is evident. Pure English words are those which we have been speaking and hearing all our lives, from our infancy; and they are steeped in all the best and strongest associations of our minds. They are our own mother-tongue, and not a foreign language. The words home, father, mother, hearth, garden, strike us as in themselves pleasant and friendly; but the Latin adjectives which correspond to them-domestic, paternal, maternal, and horticultural-are as destitute of kindly association as the words triangle, rhomboid, segment, or parallelogram.

But there are subjects in which it is absolutely necessary to employ Latinized words, or Norman-French words; for we could not write about the subject without them. In writing about the British constitution, for example, we could not advance a step without the terms chancellor, parliament, peer, member, court, baron, and government, all of which are Norman-French. But in these cases we are obliged to use such terms; and the rule only goes so far as to tell us that we should use French words only where none other will serve our purpose.

The writer who imposed a Latin vocabulary upon English style in the highest and most cramping degree, was Dr. Johnson. Through his influence the use of Latin instead of English words became the mark, in the latter half of the 18th century, of what was then believed to be superior culture; and, even in private letters, ladies and gentlemen bow-wowed to each other in all kinds of "long-tailed words in osity and ation." A lady ends a letter in this way: "Mutual friendships are built on mutual wants; imperfection wants and needs assistance. I am, etc."

We have now come back to a more natural way of expressing ourselves; which is as much as to say, that we speak and write in our own mother-tongue, and not in Latin or in French.

It must not, however, be forgotten that there is not and cannot be a hard and fast line between the two kinds of English, and that there is no final or absolute rule for the employment of the one or of the other. But the tendency of honest and strong feeling, and of sound and vigorous mother-wit, is to use the mother-tongue, and to employ words that the child and the common sailor and the ploughboy can understand-always provided, that is to say, that the subject itself is not beyond the reach of such persons.

It is all the more needful to guard against a highly Latinised style, that there are still many people who cultivate it, and who think (or feel) that it gives additional importance to what they have to say, to put it into the biggest and most high-sounding words they can think of. This style is also, unfortunately, the style used by her Majesty's ministers in the Queen's speeches, and affected also by those Members of Parliament who are addicted to bowwow. A member of a Committee, for example, will ask a witness, "Will you have the goodness to state, for the in

formation of the Committee, what is the ordinary beverage of the industrial population in your locality?" He meant to say: "What do working-men in your part of the country usually drink?" The following vicious examples will give us a stronger feeling against English of this character:

“The animal of the canine species has returned to the rejected substance, and the porcine pachyderm after ablution to volution in lutulent matter." -PUNCH, April 6th, 1872.

A magistrate, in examining a witness, remarked, " And I suppose you had your dinner in the interim ?" "No, your worship," was the reply; "I had it in the kitchen."

To sum up, we may say that it is always our duty to write our mother-tongue, and not Latin or French; and that our greatest writers-those who have the strongest hold of the head and heart of the English nation-have been those who wrote in the homeliest and plainest English. "The use of homely language," says Minto, "is one of the most remarkable features in Defoe's style. It is one of the secrets of the continued popularity of Robinson Crusoe."

"In one of my early interviews with Mr. Hall," says Dr. Gregory, “I used the word felicity three or four times in rather quick succession. He asked-Why do you say felicity, sir? Happiness is a better word more musical, and genuine English, coming from the Saxon.'* 'Not more musical, I think, sir.' 'Yes, more musical, and so are words derived from the Saxon generally. Listen, sir: " My heart is smitten and withered like grass; "there's plaintive music. Listen again, sir: "Under the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice "—there's cheerful music.' 'Yes, but rejoice is French!' True, but all the rest is Saxon, and rejoice is almost out of tune with the other words. Listen, again: "Thou hast delivered my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling :" all Saxon, sir, except delivered. I could think of the word tear, sir, till I wept. Then again, for another noble specimen, and almost all good old Saxon-English; "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for

ever.

*

Happiness is, however, not an English (" Saxon ") word; it is Celtic.