STYLE. 341 



to have an obscure style, it is meant that his form obstructs his mat- 

 ter ; that it absorbs an inordinate amount of the reader's attention. 

 If he is tedious, it is because his language, by its monotony or redun- 

 dancy, exhausts our energies, and leaves us correspondingly deficient 

 in the mental vigor to be devoted to what he has to say. 



But Mr. Spencer pushes his theory yet further. He shows, with great 

 ingenuity, how various ornaments of style, at first sight most remote 

 from mere utility, are in reality but devices of language which sub- 

 serve the same purpose of economizing attention. Thus the canon 

 which prefers words of Saxon to words of Latin origin, is justified by 

 the greater familiarity of the former, recalling the associations of 

 childhood, and their comparative brevity, which adds to their force 

 what it diminishes from the effort required to recognize them. On the 

 other hand, the occasional effect of polysyllabic words is attributed to 

 their associated significance ; for the effort involved in deciphering or 

 using them, by hinting at a corresponding weightiness in the things 

 implied, gives a force to an epithet which may do for a sentence. 

 The same principle which explains the rules for choice of words is 

 also found adequate to the solution of the reasons why some one order 

 of words is more effective than another; why certain sequences of 

 sentences are better than others; what are the respective merits of 

 the direct and indirect style, and so forth. Then follows an analysis 

 of the various figures of speech metaphor, simile, and the like in 

 which their amenableness to the same law is established ; and, finally, 

 the applicability of the theory, even to the complex imagery of the 

 poet, is exhibited in a passage which it would be'an injustice to the 

 writer not to quote at length : 



" Passing on to a more complex application of the doctrine with which we 

 set out, it must now be remarked that not only in the structure of sentences, 

 and the use of figures of speech, may economy of the recipient's mental energy 

 be assigned as the cause of force ; but that in the choice and arrangement of 

 the minor images, out of which some large thought is to be built up, we may 

 trace the same condition to effect. To select from the sentiment, scene, or event 

 described, those typical elements which carry many others along with them ; 

 and so, by saying a few things, but suggesting many, to abridge the description, 

 is the secret of producing a vivid impression. An extract from Tennyson's 

 ' Mariana ' will well illustrate this : 



' All day within the dreamy house 

 The door upon the hinges creaked, 

 The blue-fly sung i' the pane, the mouse 

 Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, 

 Or from the crevice peered about.' 



The several circumstances here specified bring with them many appropriate as- 

 sociations. Our attention is rarely drawn by the buzzing of a fly in the window, 

 save when everything is still. "While the inmates are moving about the house, 

 mice usually keep silence; and it is only when extreme quietness reigns that 

 they peep from their retreats. Hence, each of the facts mentioned, presuppos- 



