Should let itself be snuffed out by an article!”
Though he was afterward informed of the untruth of these lines, Byron, plethoric as he was with poetic wealth and wit, could not willingly let them die; and so the witticism yet remains to mislead and provoke the laughter of his readers.
Again, there are authors who, to meet the necessities of rhyme, or to give music to a period, will pad out their sentences with meaningless expletives. They employ words as carpenters put false windows into houses; not to let in light upon their meaning, but for symmetry. Or, perhaps, they imagine that a certain degree of distension of the intellectual stomach is required to enable it to act with its full powers,—just as some of the Russian peasantry mix sawdust with the train oil they drink, or as hay and straw, as well as corn, are given to horses, to supply the necessary bulk. Thus Dr. Johnson, imitating Juvenal, says:
“Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru.”
This, a lynx-eyed critic contended, was equivalent to saying: “Let observation, with extensive observation, observe mankind extensively.” If the Spartans, as we are told, fined a citizen because he used three words where two would have done as well, how would they have punished such prodigality of language?
It is an impressive truth which has often been noticed by moralists, that indulgence in verbal vice speedily leads to corresponding vices in conduct. If a man talk of any mean, sensual, or criminal practice in a familiar or flippant tone, the delicacy of his moral sense is almost sure to be lessened, he loses his horror of the vice, and, when tempted to do the deed, he is far more likely to yield. Many a man, without dreaming of such a result, has thus talked himself into vice, into sensuality, and even into ruin. The apostle James was so impressed with the significance of speech that he regarded it as an unerring sign of character. “If any man offend not in word,” he declares, “the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.” Again he declares that “the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison”; commenting upon which, Rev. F. W. Robertson observes: “The deadliest poisons are those for which no test is known; there are poisons so destructive that a single drop insinuated into the veins produces death in three seconds.... In that drop of venom which distils from the sting of the smallest insect, or the spikes of the nettle-leaf, there is concentrated the quintessence of a poison so subtle that the microscope cannot distinguish it, and yet so virulent that it can inflame the blood, irritate the whole constitution, and convert night and day into restless misery.” So, he adds, there are words of calumny and slander, apparently insignificant, yet so venomous and deadly that they not only inflame hearts and fever human existence, but poison human society at the very fountain springs of life. It was said with the deepest feeling of the utterers of such words, by one who had smarted under their sting: “Adders’ poison is under their lips.”
Who can estimate the amount of misery which has been produced in society by merely idle words, uttered without malice, and by words uttered in jest? A poet, whose name is unknown to us, has vividly painted the effects of such utterances:
“A frivolous word, a sharp retort,
A flash from a passing cloud,