On page 232, "Jeremy Taylor is among the best models of long sentences which are both clear and logical." Jeremy Taylor is a clear and logical long sentence?! True, our learned rhetorician says so, but he doesn't mean it. He means, "In Jeremy Taylor we find some of the best examples of long sentences which are at once clear and logical."
Since the foregoing was written, the second volume of Professor Townsend's "Art of Speech" has been published. In the brief preface to this volume we find this characteristic sentence: "The author has felt that clergymen more than those of other professions will study this treatise." The antecedent of the relative those being clergymen, the sentence, it will be perceived, says: "The author has felt that clergymen more than clergymen of other professions will study this treatise." Comment on such "art" as Professor Townsend's is not necessary.
I find several noteworthy examples of bad diction in an article in a recent number of an Australian magazine. The following are some of them: "Large capital always manages to make itself master of the situation; it is the small capitalist and the small landholder that would suffer," etc. Should be, "The large capitalist ... himself," etc. Again: "The small farmer would ... be despoiled ... of the meager profit which strenuous labor had conquered from the reluctant soil." Not only are the epithets in italics superfluous, and consequently weakening in their effect, but idiom does not permit strenuous to be used to qualify labor: hard labor and strenuous effort. Again: "Capital has always the choice of a large field." Should be, "the choice offered by a large field." Again: "Should capital be withdrawn, tenements would soon prove insufficient." Should be, "the number of tenements would," etc. Again: "Men of wealth, therefore, would find their Fifth Avenue mansions and their summer villas a little more burdened with taxes, but with this increase happily balanced by the exemption of their bonds and mortgages, their plate and furniture." The thought here is so simple that we easily divine it; but, if we look at the sentence at all carefully, we find that, though we supply the ellipses in the most charitable manner possible, the sentence really says: "Men would find their mansions more burdened, but would find them with this increased burden happily balanced by the exemption," etc. The sentence should have been framed somewhat in this wise: "Men ... would find their ... mansions ... more burdened with taxes, but this increase in the taxes on their real estate would be happily balanced by the exemption from taxation of their bonds, mortgages, plate, and furniture." Again: "Men generally ... would be inclined to laugh at the idea of intrusting the modern politician with such gigantic opportunities for enriching his favorites." We do not intrust one another with opportunities. To enrich would better the diction. Again: "The value of land that has accrued from labor is not ... a just object for confiscation." Correctly: "The value of land that has resulted from labor is not justly ... an object of confiscation." Accrue is properly used more in the sense of spontaneous growth. Again: "If the state attempts to confiscate this increase by means of taxes, either rentals will increase correspondingly, or such a check will be put upon the growth of each place and all the enterprises connected with it that greater injury would be done than if things had been left untouched." We have here, it will be observed, a confusion of moods; the sentence begins in the indicative and ends in the conditional. The words in italics are worse than superfluous. Rewritten: "If the state should attempt to confiscate this increase by means of taxes, either rentals would increase correspondingly, or such a check would be put upon growth and enterprise that greater injury would," etc. Again: "The theory that land ... is a boon of Nature, to which every person has an inalienable right equal to every other person, is not new." The words theory and boon are here misused. A theory is a system of suppositions. The things man receives from Nature are gifts, not boons: the gift of reason, the gift of speech, etc. The sentence should be: "The declaration (or assertion) that land ... is a gift of Nature, to which every person has an inalienable right equal to that of any other person, is not new." Or, more simply and quite as forcibly: "... to which one person has an inalienable right equal to that of another, is not new." Or, more simply still, and more forcibly: "... to which one man has as good a right as another, is not new." By substituting the word man for person, we have a word of one syllable that expresses, in this connection, all that the longer word expresses. The fewer the syllables, if the thought be fully expressed, the more vigorous the diction. Inalienability being foreign to the discussion, the long word inalienable only encumbers the sentence.
"We have thus1 passed in review2 the changes and improvements3 which the revision contains4 in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. It has5 not, indeed,6 been possible to refer to7 them all; but so many illustrations8 have been given in9 the several classes described that the reader will have10 a satisfactory11 survey of the whole subject. Whatever may be said of other portions12 of the New Testament, we think it will be generally admitted that in this Epistle the changes have improved the old13 translation. They are such as14 make the English version15 conform more completely16 to the Greek original. If this be17 true, the revisers have done a good work for the Church.18 If it be true19 with regard to all the New Testament books, the work which they have done will remain20 a blessing to the readers of those books for21 generations to come. But the blessing will be only in the clearer presentation of the Divine truth, and, therefore, it will be only to the glory of God."
This astonishingly slipshod bit of composition is from the pen of the Rev. Dr. Timothy Dwight. If the learned Professor of Divinity in Yale College deemed it worth while to give a little thought to manner as well as to matter, it is probable that his diction would be very different from what it is; and, if he were to give a few minutes to the making of verbal corrections in the foregoing paragraph, he would, perhaps, do something like this: 1, change thus to now; 2, write some of the changes; 3, strike out and improvements; 4, for contains changes substitute some other form of expression; 5, instead of has been, write was; 6, strike out indeed; 7, instead of refer to, write cite; 8, change illustrations to examples; 9, instead of in, write of; 10, instead of the reader will have, write the reader will be able to get; 11, change satisfactory to tolerable; 12, change portions to parts; 13, not talk of the old translation, as we have no new one; 14, strike out as superfluous the words are such as; 15, change version to text; 16, substitute nearly for completely, which does not admit of comparison; 17, substitute the indicative for the conditional; 18, end sentence with the word work; 19, introduce also after be; 20, instead of remain, in the sense of be, use be; 21, introduce the after for. As for the last sentence, it reminds one of Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words," though here we have, instead of a song and no words, words and no song, or rather no meaning. As is often true of cant, we have here simply a syntactical arrangement of words signifying—nothing.
If Professor Dwight were of those who, in common with the Addisons and Macaulays and Newmans, think it worth while to give some attention to diction, the thought conveyed in the paragraph under consideration would, perhaps, have been expressed somewhat in this wise:
"We have now passed in review some of the changes that, in the revision, have been made in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. It was not possible to cite them all, but a sufficient number of examples of the several classes described have been given to enable the reader to get a tolerable survey of the whole subject. Whatever may be said of the other parts of the New Testament, we think it will be generally admitted that in this Epistle the changes have improved the translation. They make the English text conform more nearly to the Greek. This being true, the revisers have done a good work; and, if it be also true with regard to all the New Testament books, the work which they have done will be a blessing to the readers of these books for the generations to come."
Die with. Man and brute die of, and not with, fevers, consumption, the plague, pneumonia, old age, and so on.
Differ. Writers differ from one another in opinion with regard to the particle we should use with this verb. Some say they differ with, others that they differ from, their neighbors in opinion. The weight of authority is on the side of always using from, though A may differ with C from D in opinion with regard, say, to the size of the fixed stars. "I differ, as to this matter, from Bishop Lowth."—Cobbett. Different to is heard sometimes instead of different from.
Directly. The Britons have a way of using this word in the sense of when, as soon as. This is quite foreign to its true meaning, which is immediately, at once, straightway. They say, for example, "Directly he reached the city, he went to his brother's." "Directly he [the saint] was dead, the Arabs sent his woolen shirt to the sovereign."—"London News." Dr. Hall says of its use in the sense of as soon as: "But, after all, it may simply anticipate on the English of the future."