197 

 HARD WORDS. 



" Polonius What do you read, my Lord ? 



" Hamlet. — Words, words, words." 



" Style, — Proper words in proper places." — Swift. 



" Nugis addere pondus." — Epist. xix., Hor. 



We are told that the ancient Pythia poured forth their prophetic 

 rhapsodies in short and abrupt sentences — their words scarcely 

 articulated, and often unintelligible. I have often thought that 

 our language resembles the Latin in its force and character, though 

 more diffuse in its construction : the Roman being rudely engrafted 

 upon our native trunk, produced a hybrid, which thus partakes of 

 qualities of both ; thus our minds have received a sternness and dig- 

 nity, so contradistinguished from the versatile character of praetorian 

 France, and which uniting with the boldness of our barbaric fa- 

 thers, we thus stand out as insular in our character as the land to 

 which we belong. 



Being an inquisitive old man, the reader will not be surprised to 

 find that I am apt to generalize from very small particulars. I have 

 ever been inclined to speculation ; and I think, as " small openings 

 show wide prospects," a trifling^ci may involve high moral truths ; 

 and that an idle speculation may, like the impalpable carbon, be 

 resolvable into discoveries of incalculable worth. I hope, therefore, 

 the reader will excuse the eccentricity of my thoughts, and not set 

 me down as a mere dreamer and enthusiast, since the conduct of 

 either is unbecoming to one of my years. 



Coming back to my first remark on the character of the Pythia, 

 or Grecian divinators, I am bold to think that our language is not 

 the only hybrid which we owe to the ancients, that we also resem- 

 ble them in our ideas and opinions; among which is our na- 

 tional enmity to " hard words :" " insolens verbum tanquam scopu- 

 lum evitare." " Avoid a hard word as you would a rock," said 

 Caesar, and verily we sail so far from Scylla's mouth that we founder 

 on Charybdis, — Dum brevis esse laboro obscurus fio ; for while I 

 labour to be concise I become obscure. It is a self-evident truth of 

 many profound philosophers that words are the images of thoughts, 



