science, as a history, as a joy, and as a tool. I am concerned with
but one, the mastery of it as a tool. Philology and grammar present
it as a science; the one attempting to follow its words, the other its
sentences, through all the intricacies of their growth, and so to
manifest laws which lie hidden in these airy products no less than in
the moving stars or the myriad flowers of spring. Fascinating and
important as all this is, I do not recommend it here. For I want to
call attention only to that sort of English study which can be
carried on without any large apparatus of books. For a reason similar,
though less cogent, I do not urge historical study. Probably the
current of English literature is more attractive through its continuity
than that of any other nation. Notable works in verse and prose have
appeared in long succession, and without gaps intervening, in a way
that would be hard to parallel in any other language known to man. A
bounteous endowment this for every English speaker, and one which
should stimulate us to trace the marvellous and close-linked progress
from the times of the Saxons to those of Tennyson and Kipling.
Literature too has this advantage over every other species of art study,
that everybody can examine the original masterpieces and not depend
on reproductions, as in the cases of painting, sculpture, and
architecture; or on intermediate interpretation, as in the case of
music. To-day most of these masterpieces can be bought for a trifle, and
even a poor man can follow through centuries the thoughts of his
ancestors. But even so, ready of access as it is, English can be
studied as a history only at the cost of solid time and continuous
attention, much more time than the majority of those for whom I am
writing can afford. By most of us our mighty literature cannot be taken
in its continuous current, the later stretches proving interesting
through relation with the earlier. It must be taken fragmentarily,
if at all, the attention delaying on those parts only which offer the
greatest beauty or promise the best exhilaration. In other words,
English may be possible as a joy where it is not possible as a history.
In the endless wealth which our poetry, story, essay, and drama
afford, every disposition may find its appropriate nutriment,
correction, or solace. He is unwise, however busy, who does not have
his loved authors, veritable friends with whom he takes refuge in the
intervals of work and by whose intimacy he enlarges, refines,
sweetens, and emboldens his own limited existence. Yet the fact
that English as a joy must largely be conditioned by individual taste
prevents me from offering general rules for its pursuit. The road
which leads one man straight to this joy leads another to tedium. In all
literary enjoyment there is something incalculable, something
wayward, eluding the precision of rule, and rendering inexact the
precepts of him who would point out the path to it. While I believe
that many suggestions may be made, useful to the young enjoyer and
promotive of his wise vagrancy, I shall not undertake here the
complicated task of offering them. Let enjoyment go, let history go,
let science go, and still English remains--English as a tool. Every
hour our language is an engine for communicating with others, every
instant for fashioning the thoughts of our own minds. I want to call
attention to the means of mastering this curious and essential tool, and
to lead every one who reads me to become discontented with his
employment of it.
The importance of literary power needs no long argument. Everybody
acknowledges it, and sees that without it all other human faculties are
maimed. Shakespeare says that death-bringing time "insults o'er dull and
speechless tribes." It and all who live in it insult over the speechless
person. So mutually dependent are we that on our swift and full
communication with one another is staked the success of almost every
scheme we form. He who can explain himself may command what he wants.
He who cannot is left to the poverty of individual resource; for men do
what we desire only when persuaded. The persuasive and explanatory
tongue is, therefore, one of the chief levers of life. Its leverage is
felt within us as well as without, for expression and thought are
integrally bound together. We do not first possess completed thoughts
and then express them. The very formation of the outward product
extends, sharpens, enriches the mind which produces, so that he who
gives forth little after a time is likely enough to discover that he has
little to give forth. By expression too we may carry our benefits and
our names to a far generation. This durable character of fragile
language puts a wide difference of worth between it and some of the
other great objects of desire,--health, wealth, and beauty, for example.
These are notoriously liable to accident. We tremble while we have them.
But literary power, once ours, is more likely than any other possession
to be ours always. It perpetuates and enlarges itself by the very fact
of its existence and perishes only with the decay of the man himself.
For this reason, because more than health, wealth, and beauty, literary
style may be called the man, good judges have found in it the final test
of culture and have said that he, and he alone, is a well-educated
person who uses his language with power and beauty. The supreme and
ultimate product of civilization, it has well been said, is two or
three persons talking together in a room. Between ourselves and our
language there accordingly springs up an association peculiarly close.
We are as sensitive to criticism of our speech as of our manners. The
young man looks up with awe to him who has written a book, as already
half divine; and the graceful speaker is a universal object of envy.
But the very fact that literary endowment is immediately recognized
and eagerly envied has induced a strange illusion in regard to it. It
is supposed to be something mysterious, innate in him who possesses it
and quite out of the reach of him who has it not. The very contrary is
the fact. No human employment is more free and calculable than the
winning of language. Undoubtedly there are natural aptitudes for it, as
there are for farming, seamanship, or being a good husband. But nowhere
is straight work more effective. Persistence, care, discriminating
observation, ingenuity, refusal to lose heart,--traits which in every
other occupation tend toward excellence,--tend toward it here with
special security. Whoever goes to his grave with bad English in his
mouth has no one to blame but himself for the disagreeable taste; for
if faulty speech can be inherited, it can be exterminated too. I hope
to point out some of the methods of substituting good English for bad.
And since my space is brief, and I wish to be remembered, I throw
what I have to say into the form of four simple precepts which, if
pertinaciously obeyed, will, I believe, give anybody effective mastery
of English as a tool.
First then, "Look well to your speech." It is commonly supposed that
when a man seeks literary power he goes to his room and plans an article
for the press. But this is to begin literary culture at the wrong end.
We speak a hundred times for every once we write. The busiest writer
produces little more than a volume a year, not so much as his talk would
amount to in a week. Consequently through speech it is usually decided
whether a man is to have command of his language or not. If he is
slovenly in his ninety-nine cases of talking, he can seldom pull himself
up to strength and exactitude in the hundredth case of writing. A person
is made in one piece, and the same being runs through a multitude of
performances. Whether words are uttered on paper or to the air, the
effect on the utterer is the same. Vigor or feebleness results according
as energy or slackness has been in command. I know that certain
adaptations to a new field are often necessary. A good speaker may find
awkwardnesses in himself when he comes to write, a good writer when he
speaks. And certainly cases occur where a man exhibits distinct strength
in one of the two, speaking or writing, and not in the other. But such
cases are rare. As a rule, language once within our control can be
employed for oral or for written purposes. And since the opportunities
for oral practice enormously outbalance those for written, it is the
oral which are chiefly significant in the development of literary power.
We rightly say of the accomplished writer that he shows a mastery of his
own tongue.
This predominant influence of speech marks nearly all great epochs
of literature. The Homeric poems are addressed to the ear, not to the
eye. It is doubtful if Homer knew writing, certain that he knew
profoundly every quality of the tongue,--veracity, vividness,
shortness of sentence, simplicity of thought, obligation to insure
swift apprehension. Writing and rigidity are apt to go together. In
Homer's smooth-slipping verses one catches everywhere the voice. So
too the aphorisms of Hesiod might naturally pass from mouth to mouth,
and the stories of Herodotus be told by an old man at the fireside.
Early Greek literature is plastic and garrulous. Its distinctive
glory is that it contains no literary note; that it gives forth
human feeling not in conventional arrangement, but with apparent
spontaneity--in short, that it is speech literature, not book
literature. And the same tendency continued long among the Greeks. At
the culmination of their power the drama was their chief literary
form,--the drama, which is but speech ennobled, connected, clarified.
Plato too, following the dramatic precedent and the precedent of
his talking master, accepted conversation as his medium for philosophy
and imparted to it the vivacity, ease, waywardness even, which the
best conversation exhibits. Nor was the experience of the Greeks
peculiar. Our literature shows a similar tendency. Its bookish times
are its decadent times, its talking times its glory. Chaucer, like
Herodotus, is a story-teller, and follows the lead of those who on
the Continent entertained courtly circles with pleasant tales.
Shakespeare and his fellows in the spacious times of great Elizabeth did
not concern themselves with publication. Marston in one of his prefaces
thinks it necessary to apologize for putting his piece in print, and
says he would not have done such a thing if unscrupulous persons,
hearing the play at the theatre, had not already printed corrupt
versions of it. Even the Queen Anne's men, far removed though they are
from anything dramatic, still shape their ideals of literature by
demands of speech. The essays of the Spectator, the poems of Pope,
are the remarks of a cultivated gentleman at an evening party. Here
is the brevity, the good taste, the light touch, the neat epigram, the
avoidance of whatever might stir passion, controversy, or laborious
thought, which characterize the conversation of a well-bred man.
Indeed it is hard to see how any literature can be long vital which is
based on the thought of a book and not on that of living utterance.
Unless the speech notion is uppermost, words will not run swiftly to
their mark. They delay in delicate phrasings while naturalness and a
sense of reality disappear. Women are the best talkers. I sometimes
please myself with noticing that three of the greatest periods of
English literature coincide with the reigns of the three English
queens.
Fortunate it is, then, that self-cultivation in the use of English must
chiefly come through speech; because we are always speaking, whatever
else we do. In opportunities for acquiring a mastery of language the
poorest and busiest are at no large disadvantage as compared with the
leisured rich. It is true the strong impulse which comes from the
suggestion and approval of society may in some cases be absent, but this
can be compensated by the sturdy purpose of the learner. A recognition
of the beauty of well-ordered words, a strong desire, patience under
discouragements, and promptness in counting every occasion as of
consequence,--these are the simple agencies which sweep one on to power.
Watch your speech then. That is all which is needed. Only it is
desirable to know what qualities of speech to watch for. I find
three,--accuracy, audacity, and range,--and I will say a few words about
each.
Obviously, good English is exact English. Our words should fit our
thoughts like a glove and be neither too wide nor too tight. If too
wide, they will include much vacuity beside the intended matter. If too
tight, they will check the strong grasp. Of the two dangers, looseness
is by far the greater. There are people who say what they mean with such
a naked precision that nobody not familiar with the subject can quickly
catch the sense. George Herbert and Emerson strain the attention of
many. But niggardly and angular speakers are rare. Too frequently words
signify nothing in particular. They are merely thrown out in a certain
direction to report a vague and undetermined meaning or even a general
emotion. The first business of every one who would train himself in
language is to articulate his thought, to know definitely what he wishes
to say, and then to pick those words which compel the hearer to think of
this and only this. For such a purpose two words are often better than
three. The fewer the words, the more pungent the impression. Brevity is
the soul, not simply of a jest, but of wit in its finer sense where it
is identical with wisdom. He who can put a great deal into a little is
the master. Since firm texture is what is wanted, not embroidery or
superposed ornament, beauty has been well defined as the purgation of
superfluities. And certainly many a paragraph might have its beauty
brightened by letting quiet words take the place of its loud words,
omitting its "verys," and striking out its purple patches of fine
writing. Here is Ben Jonson's description of Bacon's language: "There
happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his
speech. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or
suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of
his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough
or look aside without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and had his
judges angry or pleased at his discretion." Such are the men who
command, men who speak "neatly and pressly." But to gain such precision
is toilsome business. While we are in training for it, no word must
unpermittedly pass the portal of the teeth. Something like what we mean
must never be counted equivalent to what we mean. And if we are not sure
of our meaning or of our word, we must pause until we are sure. Accuracy
does not come of itself. For persons who can use several languages,
capital practice in acquiring it can be had by translating from one
language to another and seeing that the entire sense is carried over.
Those who have only their native speech will find it profitable often to
attempt definitions of the common words they use. Inaccuracy will not
stand up against the habit of definition. Dante boasted that no rhythmic
exigency had ever made him say what he did not mean. We heedless and
unintending speakers, under no exigency of rhyme or reason, say what we
mean but seldom, and still more seldom mean what we say. To hold our
thoughts and words in significant adjustment requires unceasing
consciousness, a perpetual determination not to tell lies; for of course
every inaccuracy is a bit of untruthfulness. We have something in mind,
yet convey something else to our hearer. And no moral purpose will save
us from this untruthfulness unless that purpose is sufficient to inspire
the daily drill which brings the power to be true. Again and again we
are shut up to evil because we have not acquired the ability of
goodness.
But after all, I hope that nobody who hears me will quite agree. There
is something enervating in conscious care. Necessary as it is in shaping
our purposes, if allowed too direct and exclusive control consciousness
breeds hesitation and feebleness. Action is not excellent, at least,
until spontaneous. In piano-playing we begin by picking out each
separate note; but we do not call the result music until we play our
notes by the handful, heedless how each is formed. And so it is
everywhere. Consciously selective conduct is elementary and inferior.
People distrust it, or rather they distrust him who exhibits it. If
anybody talking to us visibly studies his words, we turn away. What he
says may be well enough as school exercise, but it is not conversation.
Accordingly, if we would have our speech forcible, we shall need to put
into it quite as much of audacity as we do of precision, terseness, or
simplicity. Accuracy alone is not a thing to be sought, but accuracy and
dash. It was said of Fox, the English orator and statesman, that he was
accustomed to throw himself headlong into the middle of a sentence,
trusting to God Almighty to get him out. So must we speak. We must not
before beginning a sentence decide what the end shall be; for if we do,
nobody will care to hear that end. At the beginning, it is the beginning
which claims the attention of both speaker and listener, and trepidation
about going on will mar all. We must give our thought its head, and not
drive it with too tight a rein, nor grow timid when it begins to prance
a bit. Of course we must retain coolness in courage, applying the
results of our previous discipline in accuracy; but we need not move so
slowly as to become formal. Pedantry is worse than blundering. If we
care for grace and flexible beauty of language, we must learn to let our
thought run. Would it, then, be too much of an Irish bull to say that in
acquiring English we need to cultivate spontaneity? The uncultivated
kind is not worth much; it is wild and haphazard stuff, unadjusted to
its uses. On the other hand no speech is of much account, however just,
which lacks the element of courage. Accuracy and dash, then, the
combination of the two, must be our difficult aim; and we must not rest
satisfied so long as either dwells with us alone.
But are the two so hostile as they at first appear? Or can, indeed,
the first be obtained without the aid of the second? Supposing we
are convinced that words possess no value in themselves, and are
correct or incorrect only as they truly report experience, we shall
feel ourselves impelled in the mere interest of accuracy to choose
them freshly and to put them together in ways in which they never
cooperated before, so as to set forth with distinctness that which
just we, not other people, have seen or felt. The reason why we do
not naturally have this daring exactitude is probably twofold. We
let our experiences be blurred, not observing sharply, nor knowing
with any minuteness what we are thinking about; and so there is no
individuality in our language. And then, besides, we are terrorized by
custom and inclined to adjust what we would say to what others have
said before. The cure for the first of these troubles is to keep our
eye on our object, instead of on our listener or ourselves; and for the
second, to learn to rate the expressiveness of language more highly
than its correctness. The opposite of this, the disposition to set
correctness above expressiveness, produces that peculiarly vulgar
diction known as "school-ma'am English," in which for the sake of a
dull accord with usage all the picturesque, imaginative and forceful
employment of words is sacrificed. Of course we must use words so
that people can understand them, and understand them too with ease;
but this once granted, let our language be our own, obedient to our
special needs. "Whenever," says Thomas Jefferson, "by small grammatical
negligences the energy of an idea can be condensed, or a word be made to
stand for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt." "Young
man," said Henry Ward Beecher to one who was pointing out grammatical
errors in a sermon of his, "when the English language gets in my way, it
doesn't stand a chance." No man can be convincing, writer or speaker,
who is afraid to send his words wherever they may best follow his
meaning, and this with but little regard to whether any other person's
words have ever been there before. In assessing merit let us not
stupefy ourselves with using negative standards. What stamps a man as
great is not freedom from faults, but abundance of powers.
Such audacious accuracy, however, distinguishing as it does noble speech
from commonplace speech, can be practised only by him who has a wide
range of words. Our ordinary range is absurdly narrow. It is important,
therefore, for anybody who would cultivate himself in English to make
strenuous and systematic efforts to enlarge his vocabulary. Our
dictionaries contain more than a hundred thousand words. The average
speaker employs about three thousand. Is this because ordinary people
have only three or four thousand things to say? Not at all. It is
simply due to dulness. Listen to the average schoolboy. He has a dozen
or two nouns, half a dozen verbs, three or four adjectives, and enough
conjunctions and prepositions to stick the conglomerate together. This
ordinary speech deserves the description which Hobbes gave to his "State
of Nature," that "it is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The
fact is, we fall into the way of thinking that the wealthy words are for
others and that they do not belong to us. We are like those who have
received a vast inheritance, but who persist in the inconveniences of
hard beds, scanty food, rude clothing, who never travel, and who limit
their purchases to the bleak necessities of life. Ask such people why
they endure niggardly living while wealth in plenty is lying in the
bank, and they can only answer that they have never learned how to
spend. But this is worth learning. Milton used eight thousand words,
Shakespeare fifteen thousand. We have all the subjects to talk about
that these early speakers had; and in addition we have bicycles and
sciences and strikes and political combinations and all the complicated
living of the modern world.
Why then do we hesitate to swell our words to meet our needs? It is a
nonsense question. There is no reason. We are simply lazy, too lazy to
make ourselves comfortable. We let our vocabularies be limited and get
along rawly without the refinements of human intercourse, without
refinements in our own thoughts; for thoughts are almost as dependent on
words as words on thoughts. For example, all exasperations we lump
together as "aggravating," not considering whether they may not rather
be displeasing, annoying, offensive, disgusting, irritating, or even
maddening; and without observing too that in our reckless usage we have
burned up a word which might be convenient when we should need to mark
some shading of the word "increase." Like the bad cook, we seize the
frying-pan whenever we need to fry, broil, roast, or stew, and then we
wonder why all our dishes taste alike while in the next house the food
is appetizing. It is all unnecessary. Enlarge the vocabulary. Let any
one who wants to see himself grow resolve to adopt two new words each
week. It will not be long before the endless and enchanting variety of
the world will begin to reflect itself in his speech, and in his mind as
well. I know that when we use a word for the first time we are startled,
as if a fire-cracker went off in our neighborhood. We look about hastily
to see if any one has noticed. But finding that no one has, we may be
emboldened. A word used three times slips off the tongue with entire
naturalness. Then it is ours forever, and with it some phase of life
which had been lacking hitherto. For each word presents its own point of
view, discloses a special aspect of things, reports some little
importance not otherwise conveyed, and so contributes its small
emancipation to our tied-up minds and tongues.