The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language by Sherwin Cody (ereader for comics .TXT) 📕

The history of Bacon's essays is another fine example of what simplicity can effect in the way of greatness. These essays were originally nothing more than single sentences jotted down in a notebook, probably as an aid to conversation. How many times they were worked over we have no means of knowing; but we have three printed editions of the essays, each of which is immensely developed from what went before.

In reading the following lines from Franklin, let us reflect that not less than a year went to the writing of every phrase that can be called great; and that if we could spend a year in writing a single sentence, it might be as well worth preserving as these proverbs. Some men have been made famous by one sentence, usually because it somehow expressed the substance of a lifetime.

From “Poor Richard's Almanac.”

Father Abraham stood up and replied, “If you would have my advice, I will give it you in short; for a word to the wise is enough, and essay words won't fill a bushel, as POOR RICHARD says.”

They all joined him and desired him to speak his mind; and gathering them around him, he proceeded as follows:

Friends, says he, and neighbors! The taxes are indeed very heavy; and if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might the more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly; and from these taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing an abatement. However, let us hearken to good advice, and something may be done for us, God helps them that helps themselves, as POOR RICHARD says in his Almanac of 1733. It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part of their time, to be employed in its service. But idleness taxes many of us much more; if we reckon all that is spent in absolute sloth, or doing of nothing; with that which is spent in idle employments or amusements that amounts to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on disease, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like Rust, consumes faster than Labor wean; while the used keg is always bright, as POOR RICHARD says. But dost thou love Life? Then do not squander time! for that's the stuff Life is made of, as POOR RICHARD says.

How much more time than is necessary do we spend in sleep? forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry; and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave, as POOR RICHARD says.

If Time be of all things the most precious, wasting of Time must be (as POOR RICHARD says) the greatest prodigality; and since, as he elsewhere tells us, Lost time is never found again; and what we call Time enough! always proves little enough, let us then up and be doing, and doing to the purpose: so, by diligence, shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but Industry all things easy, as POOR RICHARD says: and He that riseth late, must trot all day; and shall scarce overtake his business at night. While Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon over-takes him, as we read in POOR RICHARD who adds, Drive thy business! Let not that drive thee! and Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

As Franklin extracted these sayings one by one out of the Arabic and other sources, in each case giving the phrases a new turn, and as Bacon jotted down in his notebook every witty word he heard, so we will make reputations for ourselves if we are always picking up the good things of others and using them whenever we can.

By Abraham Lincoln.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we, say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Irving and Hawthorne.

A work of literary art is like a piece of music: one false note makes a discord that spoils the effect of the whole. But it is useless to give rules for writing an harmonious style. When one sits down to write he should give his whole thought and energy to expressing himself forcibly and with the vital glow of an overpowering interest. An interesting thought expressed with force and suggestiveness is worth volumes of commonplaces couched in the most faultless language. The writer should never hesitate in choosing between perfectness of language and vigor. On the first writing verbal perfection should be sacrificed without a moment's hesitation. But when a story or essay has once been written, the writer will turn his attention to those small details of style. He must harmonize his language. He must polish. It is one of the most tedious processes in literature, and to the novice the most difficult on which to make a beginning. Yet there is nothing more surely a matter of labor and not of genius. It is for this that one masters grammar and rhetoric, and studies the individual uses of words. Carried to an extreme it is fatal to vitality of style. But human nature is more often prone to shirk, and this is the thing that is passed over from laziness. If you find one who declaims against the utmost care in verbal polish, you will find a lazy man.

The beginner, however, rarely knows how to set to work, and this chapter is intended to give some practical hints. We assume that the student knows perfectly well what good grammar is, as well as the leading principles of rhetoric, and could easily correct his faults in these if he should see them. There are several distinct classes of errors to look for: faults of grammar, such as the mixing of modes and tenses, and the agreement of verbs and particles in number when collective nouns are referred to; faults of rhetoric, such as the mixing of figures of speech; faults of taste, such as the use of words with a disagreeable or misleading atmosphere about them, though their strict meaning makes their use correct enough; faults of repetition of the same word in differing senses in the same sentence or paragraph; faults of tediousness of phrasing or explanation; faults of lack of clearness in expressing the exact meaning; faults of sentimental use of language, that is, falling into fine phrases which have no distinct meaning—the most discordant fault of all; faults of digression in the structure of the composition.

This list is comprehensive of the chief points to look for in verbal revision. Faults of grammar need no explanation here. But we would say, Beware. The most skilled writers are almost constantly falling into errors of this kind, for they are the most subtle and elusive of all, verbal failings. There is, indeed, but one certain way to be sure that they are all removed, and that is by parsing every word by grammatical formula it is a somewhat tedious method, but by practice one may weigh each word with rapidity, and it is only by considering each word alone that one may be sure that nothing is passed over. In the same way each phrase or sentence, or figure of speech, should be weighed separately, for its rhetorical accuracy.

Faults of taste are detected by a much more delicate process than the application of formulæ, but they almost invariably arise (if ones native sense is keen) from the use of a word in a perfectly legitimate and pure sense, when the public attaches to it an atmosphere (let us call it) which is vulgar or disagreeable. In such cases the word should be sacrificed, for the atmosphere of a word carries a hundred times more weight with the common reader than the strict and logical meaning. For instance, the word mellow is applied to over-ripe fruit, and to light of a peculiarly soft quality, if one is writing for a class of people who are familiar with the poets, it is proper enough to use the word in its poetic sense; but if the majority of the readers of one's work always associate mellow with over-ripe fruit, to use it in its poetic sense would be disastrous.

The repetition of the same word many times in succeeding phrases is a figure of speech much used by certain recognized writers, and is a most valuable one. Nor should one be afraid of repetition whenever clearness makes it necessary. But the repetition of the same word in differing senses in adjoining phrases is a fault to be strictly guarded against. The writer was himself once guilty of perpetrating the following abomination: “The form which represented her, though idealized somewhat, is an actual likeness elevated by the force of the sculptor's love into a form of surpassing beauty. It is her form reclining on a couch, only a soft, thin drapery covering her transparent form, her head slightly raised and turned to one side, and having concentrated in its form and posture the height of the whole figure's beauty.” Careful examination will show that form, used five times in this paragraph, has at least three very slightly differing meanings, a fact which greatly adds to the objectionableness of the recurrence of the sound.

A writer who has a high regard for accuracy and completeness of expression is very liable to fall into tediousness in his explanations, he realizes that he is tedious, but he asks, “How can I say what I have to say without being tedious?” Tediousness means that what is said is not worth saying at all, or that it can be said in fewer words. The best method of condensation is the use of some pregnant phrase or comparison which rapidly suggests the meaning without actually stating it. The art of using suggestive phrases is the secret of condensation.

But in the rapid telling of a story or description of a scene, perhaps no fault is so surely fatal as a momentary lapse into meaningless fine phrases, or sentimentality. In writing a vivid description the author finds his pen moving even after he has finished putting down every significant detail. He is not for the moment sure that he has finished, and thinks that to complete the picture, to