vain look for one who represents a more interesting subject of history."

What a muddle of thoughts and words is here! Talleyrand figured in the French revolution, not in the history of that event. It may be correctly said of him that he figures in the history of the French revolution; but whether this is what Brougham meant to say, the latter clause of the sentence makes it impossible to discover. For there "scene," which refers to the event itself, and "annals," which refers to the record of events, are confounded; and we are finally told that a man who figured in an eventful history represents an interesting subject of history! Within a few lines of this sentence we have the one here following:

66

He sided with the revolution, and continued to act with them, joining those patriotic members of the clerical body who gave up their revenues to the demand of the country, and sacrificed their exclusive privileges to the rights of the community."

With whom did Talleyrand continue to act? What is the antecedent of "them"? It has none. It refers to what is not expressed, and, except in the mind of the writer, not understood the revo

lutionary clergy; and I have quoted the whole of the sentence, that this might appear from its second clause. And yet Henry Brougham was one of the men who achieved the splendid early reputation of the "Edinburgh Review."

But to what conclusion are we tending? If not only Brougham's but Addison's sentences thus break down under such criticism as we apply to the exercises of a school-boy, - Addison, of whose style we are told by Johnson, in Johnsonian phrase, that

it is "pure without scrupulosity and exact without apparent elaboration,"-to whom shall we look as a model writer of prose, who can be our standard and authority as to a pure English style? Clearly not to the principal writer of "The Spectator." For, although he may have been without either scrupulosity or elaboration, he was also quite as plainly often without both purity and exactness. Such faults of style as those which are above pointed out in the writings of Addison are not to be found, I believe, in Shakespeare's prose, in Bacon's, or in Milton's; but they do appear in Dryden's. They will be looked for in vain, if I may trust my memory, in the works of Goldsmith, Johnson, Hume, Gibbon, Hallam, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Irving, Prescott, Ruskin, Motley, and Hawthorne. Addison, appearing at a time when English literature was at a very low ebb, made an impression which his writings would not now produce, and won a reputation which was then his due, but which has long survived his comparative excellence. Charmed by the gentle flow of his thought, which, neither deep nor strong, neither subtle nor struggling with the obstacles of argument, might well flow easily,— by his lambent humor, his playful fancy (he was very slenderly endowed with imagination), and the healthy tone of his mind, the writers of his own. generation and those of the succeeding half century placed him upon a pedestal, in his right to which there has since been almost unquestioning acquiescence. He certainly did much for English literature, and more for English morals and manners, which, in his day, were sadly in need of elevation

and refinement. But, as a writer of English, he is not to be compared, except with great peril to his reputation, to at least a score of men who have flourished in the present century, and some of whom are now living. And from this slight examination of the writings of him whom the world has for so long accepted as the acknowledged master of English prose, and who attained his eminence more by the beauty of his style than the value of the thought of which it was the vehicle, we may learn the true worth and place of such criticisms as those which have preceded these remarks. Their value is in their fitness for mental discipline. Their place is the class-room.

* CHAPTER V.

MISUSED WORDS.

THE

HE right use of words is not a matter to be left to pedants and pedagogues. It belongs to the daily life of every man. The misuse of words confuses ideas, and impairs the value of language as a medium of communication. Hence loss. of time, of money, and sore trial of patience. It is significant that we call a quarrel a misunderstanding. How many lawsuits have ruined both plaintiff and defendant, how many business connections have been severed, how many friendships broken, because two men gave to one word different meanings! The power of language to convey one man's thoughts and purposes to another, is in direct proportion to a common consent as to the meaning of words. The moment divergence begins, the value. of language is impaired; and it is impaired just in proportion to the divergence, or to the uncertainty of consent. It has been told, as evidence of the richness of certain Eastern languages, that they have one thousand words, more or less, for the sword, and at least one hundred for the horse. But this, unless the people who use these languages have a thousand kinds of swords and a hundred kinds of horses, is no proof of wealth in that which makes

the real worth of of language. A highly civilized and cultivated people having a language adequate to their wants will be rich in words, because they will need names for many thoughts, and many acts, and many things. Parsimony in this respect is a sign, not of prudence, but of poverty. Juliana, passing her honeymoon in the cottage to which her ducal bridegroom leads her, flouts his assurance that the furniture is useful, with the reply, conveying a sneer at his supposed poverty, "Yes, very useful; there's not a piece of it but serves a hundred uses." So, when we find in a language one word serving many needs, we may be sure that that language is the mental furniture of an intellectually rude and poverty-stricken people. The Feejee islanders ate usually pig, but they much preferred man, both for his flavor and his rarity; and as we call pig prepared for table pork, and deer in a like condition venison, so those poor people called their loin or ham "short pig," and their daintier human haunch or saddle "long pig." Archbishop Trench, assuming that there was in the latter name an attempt at a humorous concealment of the nature of the viand to which it was applied, finds in this attempt evidence of a consciousness of the revolting character of cannibalism. But this seems to be one of those pieces of fanciful and oversubtle moral reflection which, coming gracefully enough from a clergyman, have added to the popularity of Trench's books, although hardly to their real value. The poor Feejeeans called all meat pig, distinguishing two sorts only by the form of the animal from which it was taken, merely because of