But it is sad to see one of the most majestic of our political forms debased into a well-spring of bad English. Few sights are more suggestive than that of a British Sovereign enthroned and addressing the Lords Spiritual and Temporal with the Commons; while the men of 1215 look down from their niches aloft upon their good work. The pageant, one after Burke's own heart, takes us back six hundred years to the days when was laid the ground-plan of our Constitution, much as it still stands; the speech deals with facts upon which hangs the welfare of two hundred millions of men. But the old and pithy style of address, such as Charles I. and Speaker Lenthall employed, is now thought out of place; the Sovereign harangues the lieges in a speech that has become a byword for bad English. We have taken into our heads the odd notion, that long sentences stuffed with Latinized words are more majestic than our forefathers' simplicity of speech; the bad grammar, often put into the Sovereign's mouth, smacks of high treason. The evil example spreads downwards; it is no wonder that official reports are not seldom a cumbrous mass of idle wordiness.[1] A wholesome awe of long sentences would wonderfully improve the Official style, and would save the country many reams of good paper. As it is, too often from the Government scribbler's toil
‘Nonentity, with circumambient wings,
An everlasting Phœnix doth arise.’
- ↑ In the Daily Telegraph, July 18, 1873, will be found a letter from an Official representing the Lord Chamberlain; while rebuking a Manager for bringing the Shah on the stage, he so far forgets himself as to talk of ‘altering the make-up.’ But he at once pulls himself up, after this slip, and goes on to speak of ‘making modifications of the personality of the principal character.’
