Some Books that will Enlarge your Vocabulary
To enlarge your selection of words, you must read books of the essay type rather than fiction, as these usually give the widest range of English. Two authors stand out above all others in this connection—Ruskin and R.L. Stevenson. Both men had an extraordinary instinct for the right word on all occasions—the word that expressed exactly the idea each wished to convey.
Read some of Stevenson's essays slowly and carefully. Don't gobble them! You want to impress the words, and the connection in which they are used, on your mind. It is an effort to most of us to read slowly in these hustling times; yet nothing but deliberate, careful reading will serve to teach the correct use of words and their approximate values. And I need not remind you to look up in a dictionary the meaning of any word that is new to you.
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies you will have read many times, I hope; if not, get it as soon as ever you can. His Poetry of Architecture will make a useful study; also Queen of the Air and Praeterita (his own biography). His larger works, while containing innumerable passages of great beauty, are so often overweighted with technical details and principles of art (some quite out-of-date now) that they become tedious at times. Yet there is so much in all of his writings to enlarge your working-list of words, that you will benefit by reading any of his books.
Among present-day writers I particularly recommend Sir A. Quiller-Couch, Dr. Charles W. Eliot; Dr. A.C. Benson, Dr. Edmund Gosse, Coulson Kernahan, and Augustine Birrell, whose volumes of essays will not only enlarge your vocabulary, but will prove particularly instructive in suggesting the right placing of words, and in giving you a correct feeling for their value.
Of course this does not exhaust the list of authors with commendable vocabularies; but it gives you something to start on.
It is the Value of a Word, not Its Unusuality, that Counts
Notice that the writers I have suggested do not necessarily use extraordinary words, or uncommon words, or very long-syllabled words, or ponderous and learned words. One great charm of their writings lies in the fact that they invariably use the word that is exactly right, the word that conveys better than any other word the thought or sensation they wished to convey. Sometimes it is an unusual word; sometimes it is a familiar word used in an unfamiliar connection; but in most cases you feel that the word used could not have been bettered—it sums up precisely, and conveys to your mind instantly, the thought that was in the author's mind.
Many amateurs fall into the error of thinking that an uncommon word, or a long word, or a word with an imposing sound, gives style to their writings, and they despise the simple words, considering them common-place. I heard an old clergyman in a small country church explain to the congregation, in the course of a sermon, that the words "mixed multitude" meant "an heterogeneous conglomeration"; but I think his rustic audience understood the simple Bible words better than they did his explanatory notes.
I remember seeing an examination paper, wherein a student had paraphrased the line—