We all know the people--for they are the majority, and probably
include our particular selves--who cannot carry on the ordinary
business of everyday talk without the use of phrases containing a part
that is appropriate, and another that is pointless or worse; the two
parts have associated themselves together in their minds as making up
what somebody has said, and what others as well as they will find
familiar, and they have the sort of pleasure in producing the
combination that a child has in airing a newly acquired word. There
is, indeed, a certain charm in the grown man's boyish ebullience, not
to be restrained by thoughts of relevance from letting the exuberant
phrase jet forth. And for that charm we put up with it when a speaker
draws our attention to the methodical by telling us there is a method
in the madness, though method and not madness is all there is to see,
when another's every winter is the winter of his discontent, when a
third cannot complain of the light without calling it religious as
well as dim, when for a fourth nothing can be rotten outside the State
of Denmark, or when a fifth, asked whether he does not owe you 1s. 6d.
for that cab fare, owns the soft impeachment.
A slightly fuller examination of a single example may be useful. The
phrase to _leave severely alone_ has two reasonable uses--one in the
original sense of to leave alone as a method of severe treatment, i.e.
to send to Coventry or show contempt for, and the other in contexts
where _severely_ is to be interpreted by contraries--to leave alone by
way not of punishing the object, but of avoiding consequences for the
subject. The straightforward meaning, and the ironical, are both good;
anything between them, in which the real meaning is merely to leave
alone, and _severely_ is no more than an echo, is pointless and vapid
and in print intolerable. Examples follow: (1, straightforward) _You
must show him, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a
moral Coventry, your detestation of the crime_; (2, ironical) _Fish of
prey do not appear to relish the sharp spines of the stickleback, and
usually seem to leave them severely alone_; (3, pointless) _Austria
forbids children to_ _smoke in public places; and in German schools
and military colleges there are laws upon the subject; France, Spain,
Greece, and Portugal leave the matter severely alone_. It is obvious
at once how horrible the faded jocularity of No. 3 is in print; and,
though things like it come crowding upon one another in most
conversation, they are not very easy to find in newspapers and books
of any merit; a small gleaning of them follows:
_The moral_, as Alice would say, _appeared to be that, despite its
difference in degree, an obvious essential in the right kind of
education had been equally lacking to both these girls_ (as Alice, or
indeed as you or I, might say).
_Resignation_ became a virtue of necessity _for Sweden_ (If you do
what you must with a good grace, you make a virtue of necessity;
without _make_, a virtue of necessity loses its meaning).
_I strongly advise the single working-man who would become a
successful backyard poultry-keeper_ to ignore the advice of Punch,
_and to secure a useful helpmate_.
_The beloved lustige Wien_ [merry Vienna] _of his youth had_ suffered
a sea-change. _The green glacis ... was blocked by ranges of grand new
buildings_ (Ariel must chuckle at the odd places in which his
sea-change turns up).
_Many of the celebrities who in that most frivolous of
watering-places_ do congregate.
_When about to quote Sir Oliver Lodge's tribute to the late leader,
Mr. Law_ drew, not a dial, _but what was obviously a penny memorandum
book_ from his pocket (You want to mention that Mr. Bonar Law took a
notebook out of his pocket. But pockets are humdrum things. How give a
literary touch? Call it a poke? No, we can better that; who was it
drew what from his poke? Why, Touchstone, a dial, to be sure! and
there you are).--H.W.F.