THE CHOICE OF LANGUAGE.
Simplicity is the crowning achievement of judgment and good taste. It is of very slow growth in the greatest minds; by the multitude it is never acquired. The gradual progress towards it can be curiously traced in the works of the great masters of English composition, wheresoever the injudicious zeal of admirers has given to the world the juvenile writings which their own better taste had suffered to pass into oblivion. Lord Macaulay was an instance of this. Compare his latest with his earliest compositions, as collected in the posthumous volume of his “Remains,” and the growth of improvement will be manifest.
Yet, at first thought, nothing appears to be easier to remember, and to act upon, than the rule, “Say what you want to say in the fewest words that will express your meaning clearly; and let those words be the plainest, the most common (not vulgar), and the most intelligible to the greatest number of persons.” It is certain that a beginner will adopt the very reverse of this. He will say what he has to say in the greatest number of words he can devise, and those words will be the most artificial and uncommon his memory can recall. As he advances, he will learn to drop these long phrases and big words; he will gradually contract his language to the limit of his thoughts, and he will discover, after long experience, that he was never so feeble as when he flattered himself that he was most forcible.
Faults in Writing.
I have dwelt upon this subject with repetitions that may be deemed almost wearisome, because affectations and conceits are the besetting sin of modern composition, and the vice is growing and spreading. The literature of our periodicals teems with it; the magazines are infected by it almost as much as the newspapers, which have been always famous for it.
Instead of an endeavor to write plainly, the express purpose of the writers in the periodicals is to write as obscurely as possible; they make it a rule never to call anything by its proper name, never to say anything directly in plain English, never to express their true meaning. They delight to say something quite different in appearance from that which they purpose to say, requiring the reader to translate it, if he can, and, if he cannot, leaving him in a state of bewilderment, or wholly uninformed.
Worse models you could not find than those presented to you by the newspapers and periodicals; yet are you so beset by them that it is extremely difficult not to catch the infection. Reading day by day compositions teeming with bad taste, and especially where the style floods you with its conceits and affectations, you unconsciously fall into the same vile habit, and incessant vigilance is required to restore you to sound, vigorous, manly, and wholesome English. I cannot recommend to you a better plan for counteracting the inevitable mischief than the daily reading of portions of some of our best writers of English, specimens of which you will find near the close of the First Part of this volume. We learn more by example than in any other way, and a careful perusal of these choice specimens of writing from the works of the most celebrated authors will greatly aid you.
You will soon learn to appreciate the power and beauty of those simple sentences compared with the forcible feebleness of some, and the spasmodic efforts and mountebank contortions of others, that meet your eye when you turn over the pages of magazine or newspaper. I do not say that you will at once become reconciled to plain English, after being accustomed to the tinsel and tin trumpets of too many modern writers; but you will gradually come to like it more and more; you will return to it with greater zest year by year; and, having thoroughly learned to love it, you will strive to follow the example of the authors who have written it.
Read Great Authors.
And this practice of daily reading the writings of one of the great masters of the English tongue should never be abandoned. So long as you have occasion to write or speak, let it be held by you almost as a duty. And here I would suggest that you should read them aloud; for there is no doubt that the words, entering at once by the eye and the ear, are more sharply impressed upon the mind than when perused silently.
Moreover, when reading aloud you read more slowly; the full meaning of each word must be understood, that you may give the right expression to it, and the ear catches the general structure of the sentences more perfectly. Nor will this occupy much time. There is no need to devote to it more than a few minutes every day. Two or three pages thus read daily will suffice to preserve the purity of your taste.
Your first care in composition will be, of course, to express yourself grammatically. This is partly habit, partly teaching. If those with whom a child is brought up talk grammatically, he will do likewise, from mere imitation; but he will learn quite as readily anything ungrammatical to which his ears may be accustomed; and, as the most fortunate of us mingle in childhood with servants and other persons not always observant of number, gender, mood, and tense, and as even they who have enjoyed the best education lapse, in familiar talk, into occasional defiance of grammar, which could not be avoided without pedantry, you will find the study of grammar necessary to you under any circumstances. Your ear will teach you a great deal, and you may usually trust to it as a guide; but sometimes occasions arise when you are puzzled to determine which is the correct form of expression, and in such cases there is safety only in reference to the rule.
Fortunately our public schools and academies give much attention to the study of grammar. The very first evidence that a person is well educated is the ability to speak correctly. If you were to say, “I paid big prices for them pictures,” or, “Her photographs always flatters her,” or, “His fund of jokes and stories make him a pleasant companion,” or, “He buys the paper for you and I”—if you were guilty of committing such gross errors against good grammar, or scores of others that might be mentioned, your chances for obtaining a standing in polite society would be very slim. Educated persons would at once rank you as an ignorant boor, and their treatment of you would be suggestive of weather below zero. Do not “murder the King’s English.”