see that a hospital has lately been founded, not for drunkards, but for inebriates, a new-coined substantive of which Bunyan's Mr. Smooth-tongue might have been proud. Shade of Cobbett! we are now forbidden to call a spade a spade; our speech, like Bottom the weaver, is indeed translated.
Let us watch an Englishman of the average type setting to work upon a letter to the Times.[1] The worthy fellow, when at his own fireside, seldom in his talk goes beyond plain simple words and short sentences, such as Mr. Trollope puts into the mouths of his heroes. But our friend would feel himself for ever shamed in the eyes of his neighbours, were he to rush into print in this homely guise. He therefore picks out from his dictionary the most high-sounding words he can find, and he works them up into long-winded sentences, wholly forgetting that it is not every man who can bend the bow of Hooker or Clarendon. The upshot is commonly an odd jumble, with much haziness about who, which, and their antecedents. The writer should look askant at words that come from the Latin; they are too often traps for the unwary.[2] The Lady of the
- ↑ Here is a gem, which occurs in a letter to the Times of May 5, 1873. The writer sets up to be a critic of the English drama; the blind leads the blind. ‘Such representations are artistically as much beneath contempt as morally suggestive of compassion for the performers, not to speak of some indignation that educated and responsible people should sanction such exhibitions.’ He also talks, of ‘partaking an intellectual pleasure.’ Yet the writer of this is most likely no fool in private life.
- ↑ I have seen a begging letter containing the words, ‘I have become so deaf that I cannot articulate what people say to me.’ I once heard a showman say of a baboon: ‘The form of his claws enables him to climb trees with the greatest felicity.’ I know people who talk of diseases being insiduous, confusing the adjective with assiduous.
