MEMOIR OF THOMAS SAY. XVll. 



who affect to consider the time spent in the acquisition of 

 words as worse than useless, that precisely in proportion to 

 the augmentation of our vocabulary, and our phraseology, 

 do we enlarge our stores of ideas, and acquire a facility in 

 communicating them. 



The aid which language affords, in the developement of 

 ideas, has not been sufficiently attended to by those writers 

 who have made the operations of the human mind the sub- 

 ject of then- meditations. " Rien ne marque mieux un esprit 

 juste et droit," says Voltaire, " que de s'exprimer claire- 

 ment. Les expressions ne sont confuses que quand les idees 

 le sont." The practice of this great writer will convince us, 

 that he who has a store oflanguage must be rich in ideas, 

 and that that thought is seldom confused which can call to 

 its aid a conformity of diction, or a facility of expression. 



There is an opinion prevalent among the gross of readers, 

 that clearness of phraseology demands no extraordinary ef- 

 fort of the intellect ; and that if writers would be satisfied with 

 clothing their thoughts in simple language, the labom'S of 

 authorship would be greatly diminished. It would be a 

 difficult matter to convince such thinkers, that the easy, 

 graceful diction, which appears to flow spontaneously from 

 the mind, is, in effect, one of its hardest attainments ; it is 

 the result of continued application, under the control of taste 

 and judgment : it is one of the noblest triumphs of art. One 

 would suppose that Addison wrote his Spectators currente 

 calamo, and that the Ramblers of Johnson were the purchase 

 of toil and research ; whereas the truth appears to be, that 

 the former owe their perfection to the repeated labour of re- 

 vision, and that the latter were the product of moments 

 which neither admitted of reflection nor delay. 



These observations, apparently out of place, will not be 

 thought irrelevant to our subject when, we state that Mr. 

 Say maintained the opinion above mentioned. That he 

 was self-deceived, would be evident from a glance at his own 

 writings ; for where he fancied his expression to be most 

 clear, there frequently is the greatest obscurity ; and where 



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