The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-07-24

over o0U.V0O. Of these many
are rarely obsolete, and many others
are rarely used. Science has added a
vast vocabulary of pollysyllables that
are scientific formulate rather than real
words. They have no place in general
literature. The ordinary English vo-
cabulary may be said to contain from
10000 to $4,000 words, the latter esti-
mate being large"
AS l have before stated, it is under
stood by Shakespearean scholars,
critics and editors of the works of the
greatest poet that he used $4,000 OF
10000 words which is more than
any other writer since has used unless
inartistic Robert Browning be the one
exception and that John Milton, the
most learned as we'll as the greatest
Of all poets who write English, save
the master, used 5000, which was
more than any other writer has used.
[ do not know as to Shakespeare. He
coined many words and used a great
number long ago become obsolete, but
/ doubt if any one ever undertook to
count the precise number he employ
ed. The Republican is far away, /
have no doubt. when it states that the
vocabulary of the illterate has been
set as low as 800 words, but this must
be exceptional. 1t is more likely that
the ordinary working man uses from
1000 to 5000 words, while. of course,
ne is familiar with several thousand
more which he recognizes in print, but
does not himself use. The common
estimate of the average vocabulary of
educated people is from 5000 to s.
co.," l think it altogether probable
that 5000 words is not far from cor
rectneSS as to the number of words
used by Milton. l do not believe that
people of only common education real
ly employ more than 1000 words. L
doubt very much if fairly We'll e5u-'
Gated people use in speech more than
$500 words. Take the average writer's
of respectable English, and it is at
least doubtful if they command more
than 1000 words. The vocabulary of
men is much more limited than many
people suppose. When the great Eng
lsh Dictionary under the edtorship of
DIR. Murray is completed, it will be
Of huge dimensions, far larger than
even the Century Dictionary. 1t will
probably contain more matter than
six volumes the size of Webster's new
International Dictionary. Science and
the professions have mainly caused
the great multiplication of words. The
foremost styliSts of the great Nine
teenth century did not probably use
more than 5000 or $500 words. A
critical examination of Cardinal New
man, Lander, Macaulay, Ruskin, De
Quincy, Thackeray and two or three
others of the highest ranks as to style
would probably reveal that not one
used SO many words as Milton used
long before them. It is recently stated
promises to be of great size. 1t is the
that another English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary of which
w. a. Craigie is editor, 1t is said that
the adjective Red" alone fills q "
columns. 1t is farther stated that the
forthcoming double section has &c.
900 illustrated quotations, or over A.
600 more than any other published
dictionary. This does not include Muir
ray for that has not reached the word
given and by q great deal yet al
though it has been in course of pre-
paration for more than thirty years
DR.. Murray is its third editor, the first
being the gifted Hartley Coleridge, son
OF the incompatible Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, of whom DR.. Thomas Ar
mold, of Rugby, wrote some half CEN
fury ago, that his was the greatest
intellect in Great Britain since Mill
ton.
1t is a good way for writer and read
Ell TO some times lay before the latter
some of the odds and ends the former
has gathered in d long and rich field
OF reading. l purpose by way of va
rlety today to indulge little in this
Kind of cleaning:
Lord Chatham, had no advantage of
either birth or fortune, and yet he rose
TO the top of the ladder of statesman
snip, ana lett name that Will last
through coming ages. Lord Macau-
lay, at the close of his second essay on
Earl, or Chatham, says: And histo-
ry, while, for the warning of yehe-
ment, high and daring natures she
notes his many errors, win yet DELHI
erately pronounce that, among the
eminent men whose bones lie near
his" Gin the Great Abbey in London),
scarcely one has left a more stain
less, and none more spendid name"
BY the way, l was surprised recent
ly in reading that eloquent and most
charming essay on Chatham, to find
that one of the most splendid and
gifted of all essayists, a writer of ex-
traordinary richness, elegance, force
fulness and accuracy, should have
perpetrated two errors in his English,
and within two or three pages. 1
have hardly ever before found him
napping-even in small matters of
English. On page 5S6, volume Ill,
Harper's edition, he writes-"None
None is mot one and. therefore,
was created" is the correct form. AT
page $50, he wrote twenty pair of
lawn sleeves" Should it not be
pairs? | doubt not Prof. Charles
Alphonso Smith, of the South's great
est University, would SO write it, and
correctly.
The most caustic, the most Scathing
the most terrific assault upon charac-
ter | have ever read, is Macaulay's
unique and powerful study of Barere
one of the terrors of the French Re-
volutiOn, and a monster of deepest
dye. So far as / can judge the picture
of this French villain is justly, faith
fully drawn.
/ find a word now used much, that
is useful and forceful, strenuous
was used often by Macaulay, and per-
haps as early as 1925. His elaborate
and mastery dissection of Barere was
published in 1S44-sixty years ago
and he uses the word more than once
in the discussion. Jane Austen, who
wrote in the early years of the Nine
teenth Century, also used it. The
great critic, William Hazlitt, used it
by 1910 or little later. It is strong
word and when not too much abused
II is well to have it in ones small yo-
capulary. The essay on Barere fills 90
pages, and the second one on Chatham