Happily, however, the world knows, quite as well as you and I know, that the thoughts were all originally yours. By what means they came into the possession of those earlier writers is a mystery which they could best explain; but that they should have had the effrontery to publish those thoughts as their own, and never acknowledge themselves, even in the least degree, indebted to you for them, and that you should, moreover, be charged with being the plagiarist is, I can well conceive, enough to rouse your indignation, cause both your ears-I beg pardon, your "auricular appendages "—to tingle, and make even your "shovel hat", of which you speak, ruffle its beaver with anger, and curl up its brim in disdain.

I am, Rev. Sir,

Yours most respectfully,

G. WASHINGTON MOON.

Dis-je quelque chose d'assez belle ?— L'Antiquité, toute en cervelle,

Prétend l'avoir dit avant moi:

C'est une plaisante donzelle !

Que ne venait-elle après moi ?

J'aurais dit la chose avant elle.

Le Chevalier de Cailly.

EXTRACTS FROM

'MODERN ENGLISH',

AN ESSAY IN

'BENTLEY'S QUARTERLY REVIEW', VOL. II. p. 518-542.

LEARNING to read is said to be the hardest of human acquirements. Nothing, indeed, could make us doubt the truth of the saying, except that so many people who succeed in mastering this greatest of difficulties break down in attempting the easier branches of knowledge which follow. To judge by experience, the hardest and rarest of all these later achievements would seem to be that of writing one's mother tongue. In these days, to be sure, everybody writes. But when we have got thus far, a fearful thought comes in,-How do we write? We all write English, but what sort of English? Can our sentences be construed ? Do our words really mean what we wish them to? Of the vast mass of English which is written and printed, how much is really clear and straightforward, free alike from pedantry, from affectation, and from vulgarity ?-Modern English, p. 518. Of the many lines of thought which the prevalent

vices of style open to us, there is one which we wish to work out at rather greater length. It is that which relates to language in the strictest sense-to the choice of words. The good old Macedonian rule of calling a spade a spade finds but few followers among us. The one great rule of the 'high-polite style' is to call a spade anything but a spade.-Modern English, p. 525.

Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual husbandry.-Queen's English, p. 278.

The shrinking from the plain honest speech of our Teutonic forefathers is ludicrous beyond everything. A public officer, from a prime minister to a post-office clerk, would be ashamed to send forth a despatch which a Dane, a German, or a Dutchman would recognize as written in a speech akin to his mother tongue.-Modern English, p. 526.

What are the rules we ought to follow in the choice of words? They seem to us to be very simple. Speak or write plain straightforward English, avoiding the affectation of slang or of technicality on the one hand, and the affectation of purism and archaic diction on the other. The history of our mixed language seems to furnish us with two very sound principles: Never use a Romance word when a Teutonic one will do as well;-Modern English, p. 529.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.—Queen's English, p. 278.*

but on the other hand, Never scruple to use a Romance word when the Teutonic word will not do so well.

* The Dean, with his usual inconsistency, speaks in a recent number of 'The Contemporary Review' [Vol. I, p. 438] of a "chrononhotonthologos" of hymns. Poor wretched, lumbago-stricken beast of a word! Every joint in its long back groans out "01"

As Sir Walter Scott, and so many after him, remarked, we still have to go to the Norman for our dressed meats. -Modern English, p. 531.

We all remember that Gurth and Wamba complain in 'Ivanhoe' that the farm animals, as long as they [? the farm animals] had the toil of tending them [? Gurth and Wamba] were called by the Saxon and British names, ox, sheep, calf, pig; but when they were cooked and brought to table, their invaders [? the invaders of the pigs] enjoyed them under Norman and Latin names.-Queen's English, p. 243.

Our language is one essentially Teutonic; the whole skeleton of it is thoroughly so; all its grammatical forms, all the pronouns, particles, &c., without which a sentence cannot be put together; all the most necessary nouns and verbs, the names of the commonest objects, the expressions of the simplest emotions are still identical with that old mother-tongue whose varying forms lived on the lips of Arminius and of Hengist, &c.-Modern English, p. 529.

Almost all its older and simpler ideas, both for things and acts, are expressed by Saxon words.-Queen's English, p. 242. But the moment you get upon anything in the least degree abstract or technical, you cannot write a sentence without using Romance words in every line.-Modern English, p. 530.

All its vehicles of abstract thought and science were clothed in a Latin garb.-Queen's English, p. 243.

We have the two elements, the original stock and the infusion; we must be content to use both; the only thing is to learn to use each in its proper place.-Modern English, p. 530.