You wish, then, to increase your vocabulary. Of course you must become
observant of words and inquisitive about them. For words are like people:
they have their own particular characteristics, they do their work well or
ill, they are in good odor or bad, and they yield best service to him who
loves them and tries to understand them. Your curiosity about them must be
burning and insatiable. You must study them when they have withdrawn from
the throng of their fellows into the quiescence of their natural selves.
You must also see them and study them in action, not only as they are
employed in good books and by careful speakers, but likewise as they fall
from the lips of unconventional speakers who through them secure vivid and
telling effects. In brief, you must learn word nature, as you learn human
nature, from a variety of sources.
Now in ordinary speech most of us use words, not as individual things, but
as parts of a whole--as cogs in the machine of utterance by which we
convey our thoughts and feelings. We do not think of them separately at
all. And this instinct is sound. In our expression we are like large-scale
manufacturing plants rather than one-man establishments. We have at our
disposal, not one worker, but a multitude. Hence we are concerned with our
employees collectively and with the total production of which they are
capable. To be sure, our understanding of them as individuals will
increase the worth and magnitude of our output. But clearly we must have
large dealings with them in the aggregate.
This chapter and the following, therefore, are given over to the study of
words in combination. As in all matters, there is a negative as well as a
positive side to be reckoned with. Let us consider the negative side
first.
<Tameness>
Correct diction is too often insipid. There is nothing wrong with it, but
it does not interest us--it lacks character, lacks color, lacks power. It
too closely resembles what we conceive of the angels as having--
impeccability without the warmth of camaraderie. Speech, like a man,
should be alive. It need not, of course, be boisterous. It may be intense
in a quiet, modest way. But if it too sedulously observes all the _Thou
shalt not's_ of the rhetoricians, it will refine the vitality out of
itself and leave its hearers unmoved.
That is why you should become a disciple of the pithy, everyday
conversationalist and of the rough-and-ready master of harangue as well as
of the practitioner of precise and scrupulous discourse. Many a speaker or
writer has thwarted himself by trying to be "literary." Even Burns when he
wrote classic English was somewhat conscious of himself and made, in most
instances, no extraordinary impression. But the pieces he impetuously
dashed off in his native Scotch dialect can never be forgotten. The man
who begins by writing naturally, but as his importance in the publishing
world grows, pays more and more attention to felicities--to "style"--and
so spoils himself, is known to the editor of every magazine. Any editorial
office force can insert missing commas and semicolons, and iron out
blunders in the English; but it has not the time, if indeed the ability,
to instil life into a lifeless manuscript. A living style is rarer than an
inoffensive one, and the road of literary ambition is strewn with failures
due to "correctness."
Cultivate readiness, even daring, of utterance. A single turn of
expression may be so audacious that it plucks an idea from its shroud or
places within us an emotion still quivering and warm. Sustained discourse
may unflaggingly clarify or animate. But such triumphs are beyond the
reach of those, whether speakers or writers, who are constantly pausing to
grope for words. This does not mean that scrutiny of individual words is
wasted effort. Such scrutiny becomes the basis indeed of the more
venturesome and inspired achievement. We must serve our apprenticeship to
language. We must know words as a general knows the men under him--all
their ranks, their capabilities, their shortcomings, the details and
routine of their daily existence. But the end for which we gain our
understanding must be to hurl these words upon the enemy, not as
disconnected units, but as battalions, as brigades, as corps, as armies.
Dr. Johnson, one of the most effective talkers in all history, resolved
early in life that, always, and whatever topic might be broached, he
would on the moment express his thoughts and feelings with as much vigor
and felicity as if he had unlimited leisure to draw on. And Patrick Henry,
one of the few really irresistible orators, was wont to plunge headlong
into a sentence and trust to God Almighty to get him out.