202 NOTES ON STYLE 



majesty, the sacrifice of grandeur, which we notice in the 

 French language when it competes with one more sombre 

 and poetical. ' Quelle joie pour Jacob, quelle alle"gresse pour 

 Israel,' in the French version of the Psalms, contrasts but 

 poorly with our own, 'Then shall Jacob rejoice, and Israel 

 shall be glad.' 



VII 



There is little in common between the languages of which 

 we have been thinking and German their Teutonic cousin 

 in the Aryan family. The complicated syntax of German 

 and its extraordinary richness render this language unrivalled 

 for the disengagement and articulation of the minutest shades 

 of thought. If natural resources and capacity for expression 

 were sufficient to constitute style, then German literature 

 ought to rank first among the literatures of Europe ; but the 

 exact opposite is the fact. Like the Roman Commonwealth, 

 in Livy's famous phrase, the German language ' magnitudine 

 laborat sua,' it flounders in its own voluminousness. That it 

 is both difficult and clumsy schwierig und schwerfallig 

 even Germans, if they are candid, admit. Foreigners know, 

 to their cost, that the perusal of an ordinary book of German 

 erudition demands thrice the time and twice the expenditure 

 of brain-force which are required by a French treatise. This 

 is partly due to the genius and history of the language, which, 

 until quite recently, has had no pains bestowed upon its style. 

 But it is even more the fault of German writers, who seem, as 

 a rule, culpably indifferent to propriety and beauty of expres- 

 sion. Abandoning themselves to the facility of their native 

 speech, revelling in its exuberance, abusing its plasticity, 

 inventing neologisms, importing foreign phrases wholesale, 

 they scribble without giving a thought to the art of diction, 

 and apparently without caring for precision in their ideas. 

 Whatever comes to the pen-point is put down on paper. If 

 one cumbrous sentence fails to hit the mark, instead of blot- 

 ting and remodelling, they produce a second and a third to 

 modify the imperfect impression. The result is that serious. 



