Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1864-09-22
Grandiloquence.

WITH a certain class Of writer's and
speakers there IS great tendancy with
some it appears to beiresistible ITO use the
. large instead Of the small words of the
language, and those of foreign origin in
preference to pure English. We once
made critical comparison of speech
of Horace Mann's with one of Daniel
Webster's. The former was written in
what might be called Latino English and
the latter in simple English. Mr.. Web
gter scarcely ever Used a word that a
child could not understand, and nearly
, all his words are of one. syllable. =
We have recently been looking over
Washington Irving's writings with this
subject in mind, and have been delighted
with page after page in which scarcely
one word in ten has more than one
syllable. 1t is the charm Of his writings
this perfect simplicity. Some men
cannot come down to the English
language, and as consequence it is an
annoyance to their readers to struggle up
to their jargon. The following sentence,
taken from Carlyle slatest work lisa pref
ty good specimen Of the modern vicious
style:
Let us try and select, and extricate
into conference and visibility out of these
Q historical dust-heaps few of the
symptomatic phenomena or physiogno-
mic procedures of Frederick in his first
weeks ofhis kingship, by way of contri-
button to some protraiture of his then
internal man."
A great deal of this sort of language,
says late writer in the Ecening Post,
is getting into the daily conversation Of
people disposed to be literary, if not
sensible They are the kind of people
who don't begin, but always "com-
mence." They don't live, but "reside."
They don't go to bed, but mysteriously
''retire." They don't'give, but ''donate.
They don't eat or drink, but "partake Of
refreshments" They are never sick,
but are often Extremely indisposed;"
and instead of dying at last, they
"decease." These words are, of 5urse,
occasionally appropriate and almost
indispensable to prevent repetition /; but
when they are used in preference to
their less pretentious synonyms simply
because they are longer, they become
intensely disagreeable to the refined ear.
A story is told Of a lady who was
handling pair of artificial plates in a
dental office, and, admiring the iucncy
with which the dentist described them,
asked him,
''Can body eat with these things p
."My dear madam, mastication can be
performed with them with a facility
scarcely excelled by Nature herself"
responded the dentist.
eyes, know, but can body eat with
'em ?" replied the woman.
Although there are 1861 words in
the English language, it does not follow
by any means, that good writer ought
to use them all. Children before the
age of ten manage to say some of the
most beautiful things we hear through
our lives with probably not more than
two or three hundred words. Max
Muller says:
"A well educated person in England,
who has been at public school and at
the University, who reads the Bible, his
Shakespeare, the Times, and all the books
of Nudes Library, that is, nineteen
twentieths of all the books published in
England, seldom uses more than three
thousand or four thousand words in
conversation. Accurate thinkers and
close reasoners, who avoid vague and
general expressions, and wait till they
find the word that exactly fits their
meaning, employ larger stock; and
eloquent speakers may rise to a command
of ten thousand. Shakespeare, who dis
played greater variety of expression
than probably any writer in any
language, produced all his plays with
about fifteen thousand words. Milton S
works are built up with eight thousand
words and the Old Testament saws all
that it has to say with five thousand six
hundred and forty-two words."-
Sunday School Teachers Journal