Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-06-11

fresh and terse and significant The adroit writer
cannot do better than accept the advice profered
by of the sagest of Molieres characters-Ariste
in the School for Husbands'-who declares that
it is best to follow the fashion slowly in language
as well as in clothes.
And another comic dramatist, Ben Jonson, who
rivals Moliere in his nonsense, puts the
pithly was his wont, when he asserted that
custom is the most certain mistress of language
the public stamp makes the current money
But we must not be too frequent with the mint
every day coming, nor fetch words from the ex
IRENE and uttermost ages, since the chief virtue of
style is perspicuity and nothing so vicious in 1t
as to need interpreter. Words borrowed of
antiquity do lend kind of majesty to style, and
are not without their delight sometimes. For they
have the authority of years, and out of their inter
mission do win themselves a kind of grace-like
newness But the eldest of the present, and newest
of the past language, is the best"
The French who have less initiative than the
twin-peoples that speak English, have yielded
thority to the French Academy, founded by
Richelieu to act as the guardian and trustee of
the language. Whenever word or phrase has
been passed upon by the Academy and admitted
to citizenship, then its validity is placed beyond
all question But there is French dictionary,
even if it is edited by member of the Academy,
which does not include thousands of locutions not
yet warranted by the approval of the Academy as
a whole. And there are few of the individual men,
berS OF the Academy who do not use unheS1tat1ngly
a host of words which they have not yet sanctioned
collectively. Thus it is that the Academy 1ags far
behind the best usage established by its
members. Thus also see how futile Rich
eieus effort to confde the of the language to
any body of men, however competent or however
distinguished. No bikes can be set to the over
flowing forces which ever are broadening the COM
speech; at least no artificial entertainments
effective for long The sole restraint must be sought
in the the tact and the taste in which
Ben Jonson and Molere wisely put their trust.
There is significance in the fact that not few
of the members of the French Academy employ
freely many phrases not approved by the august
tribunal to which they belong. Many authors of
the most scholarly distinction have delighted to
keep their talk vigorous, even if their writing
ultrarefned. Tennyson had a relish for the homely
vernacular, and used the painest words, occasion
finding keen delight in their unadorned directness.
He told Carlyle once that if any man horseback
any masterful Duke William should appear in
England to curb personal liberty, he'd soon feel
my knife in his CUTS" And in Professor Peck's
recent and most admirable biography of Prescott
told of the fondness of that stately and
sonorous historian for the frank colloqualisms of
his section and of his time. No doubt Prescott
found in these snatches of slang wholesome
receive for that Johnsonian grandiloquence toward
which he was tempted by his early training.
Professor Peck points out that in his first book,
the History of Ferdinand and Isabella, published
in 1887, Prescott had not yet emancipated himself
from that Journalism which had been inherited from
the eghteenth-century writers, and which Ameri-
cans, with the wonted conservatism of provincials,
retained long after Englshrnen had begun to write
with naturaness and simplicity" And in the
preface to the second series of the Bigeow Papers,
written thirty years after Prescott's first history
I ,ryn1 :