The work will be painful at first—you will sacrifice with a sigh so many flourishes of fancy, so many figures of speech, of whose birth you were proud. Nay, at the beginning, and for a long time afterwards, your courage will fail you, and many a cherished phrase will be spared by your relenting pen. But be persistent, and you will triumph at last. Be not content with one act of erasure. Read the manuscript again, and, seeing how much it is improved, you will be inclined to blot a little more. Lay it aside for a month, and then read again, and blot again as before. Be severe toward yourself.
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.