To lavage may I think be admitted (on the analogy of 'to manage,' etc.). To lie and to lay: 'He lay (laid) down in his wet clothes,' This notion underlay (underlaid) his speech,' are instances of vulgar errors which still reappear. Traumatism (for 'trauma,' itself a somewhat pedantic word); traumatism is of course the result of the 'trauma' the condition produced by it. Veracity is not truth but the faculty of truthfulness. We speak of a veracious person, but not of a veracious proposition. Verbal (for oral'): e.g. 'a verbal (oral) message'; a written message can hardly avoid being 'verbal.' Without (for 'unless'): e.g. 'I was not to go without (unless) my mother gave me leave.' Without-for 'without taking into consideration,' or 'not to mention is a vexatious use, increasing of late. It is too elliptical. The following sentence from a thoughtful but unskilful writer puzzled me for some minutes: 'It is hard enough for the modern artist to paint a naked body accurately without putting his own dreams and passions into it: Michael Angelo did this.' Michael Angelo painted the body without putting his dreams and passions into it! Gracious! At length it occurred to me that by 'without' the author meant without taking into consideration—' let alone,' as we sometimes say. Thus to paint the body accurately, let alone putting' etc., would read clearly enough. It is no misuse or solecism (as is often alleged) to make a compound word from two languages: such an objection to 'appendicitis,' for example, is not to be sustained; for 'itis' is an affix, as is 'ly' (like) in English which is regularly attached of course to words of Latin or Greek origin, as in 'divinely,' 'grammatically,' etc. Indeed, a contrary rule would eviscerate our language. Cf. e.g. the different meanings of remissness and remission, distinctness and distinction, diffuseness and diffusion, and so forth. The fault of 'relationship' is not hybridity but superfluity; 'tion' and 'ship' being equivalents, or nearly so. Again, 'ism,' a Greek termination, is properly affixed to words of sundry origin. Some specimens of superfine language may be quoted as of too frequent recurrence in our theses: 'Previously to' (for 'before'); as, 'I had not seen him previously,' 'This is his method of procedure ' (said not of a laboratory process, or the like, but for that is his way'); The patient experienced a pain in his side'; 'His strength was reduced to a vast extent.' So 'eventuate' (for 'issue '), and 'literature' (for scientific records' or 'papers '). In a thesis before me the candidate writes, And I should sustain the metabolic processes of the individual'; by which, as the context tells me, he meant no more than I would feed the patient carefully.' I earnestly advise the student to examine technical gibberish suspiciously, and to avoid it if he can. Why 'post-mortem' when no more is meant than 'after death' ? The truth is, when a young writer sets himself to literary work he is often misled by a false notion of composition. That in the first place he shall fill his mind with as much experience as he has been able to gather, and that before taking up his pen he shall dwell in thought upon his matter a while, until his subject projects itself in clear outline, we are all agreed; thus far he does well. But when he takes pen in hand he is apt to search still abroad instead of within. He conceives that to express himself effectively he must fetch words from afar, and weave them into highly complex webs. But if with a single eye he will meditate on his garnered material he will find it building itself without hands in the forms of his own temperament. When we talk of 'objective truth' we talk, of course, of what cannot be. The material must go through the factory, and as our factories are different the produce cannot be all the same. The writer who substitutes products from another factory interests no one; even in science the personal factor is welcome. However young, then, the essayist may be, if write he must, having looked abroad first, let him then look within. Let him not search afield for long and complicated forms and elaborated words, nor for large and decorated vestures; if he can get well home on his ideas the simplest and closest words will do. Let him see not how finely but how plainly and directly he can express himself? If, stripping off all encumbrance, he will look nearer home for his words, and put these together as concisely as he can, the figure of his thought will move more freely, and will animate a lighter drapery. What word-mongery can attain such effects as these, where the words are of the very simplest ? Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let's make medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief. Blasts that blow the poplar white. An ass hath need of all his trappings. How is it these simple words are so telling? Because the thought which informs them is vivid, complete, and concise. By two larger examples-one in prose and one in poetry-I will illustrate more fully the energy, and the poignancy, which may lie in the very simplest words : He lifted up his shining sword and stroke him so main a blow as therewithal his head clave asunder; so that he fell stark to the ground. O he's gane down to yon shore side, As fast as he could fare; He saw fair Annie in the boat, But the wind it tossed her sair. Fine thoughts are not to be caught by fine words. Certain Latin phrases are often dragged into use, and not rarely with erroneous meanings; such as vera causa,'' crux,'' a priori,' etc. A priori' does not mean 'at first sight'; nor does it mean without special knowledge': it signifies a certain method of reasoning which the student is better without. A 'crux' is not a conundrum, nor an impediment, nor a complexity; still less is it an affliction: a sick club may be the cross, but is not the crux' of its physician. A 'crux' is a signpost, and a crucial instance' an arm of it. What Bacon meant by vera causa not even Mr. Spedding could tell us precisely; but he certainly did not mean efficient or proximate cause. So far as philosophers use the phrase, they use it in the sense of a cause capable of producing some such effect, but either not known to have preceded the particular effect or inadequate to the full consequences: treacherous ground even for philosophers. E.g. the rotation of the earth may be called a vera causa of the wash of a river against one of its banks, but this effect is probably inappreciable. Not rarely in our theses it is associated with the phrase 'causa causans,' which, again, is a rag of medieval dialectic, and properly signifies a First Cause. Other instances of such errors are: He is a person of no little locus standi' (said of a person of position); 'per se' (for 'alone'): e.g. 'He was suffering from bronchitis per se'; 'seriatim' (for 'seriously'): e.g. But seriatim, my dear Grove, seriatim !' Other scraps of Latin such as 'fons et origo' are often used grotesquely if not erroneously: e.g. 'the fons et origo was a tape-worm'; or 'this site of infection was the fons et origo of the illness'— the site may have been a fons, but scarcely the origo. We often read, in a metaphorical sense, that missionaries were sent in partibus infidelium (as if to convert the heathen), a prevalent error I have never seen corrected. In this sense 'partibus' would be partes.' But a bishop in partibus infidelium was, I regret to say, by no means an evangelist, but a bishop taking his title from a land so faithless that he might live at his ease in Rome. Tautology.—A notion is prevalent in genteel academies, and is in some favour among authors of essays, that the repetition of a leading word or words in a sentence, or short period, constitutes an offence called 'tautology.' In this false sense of tautology the mathematician might incur censure for the repetition of symbols in an equation. If the word first accepted be precisely the word wanted, to vary it is to vary the sense, to confuse |