204 NOTES ON STYLE 



speak of Fleischwerden or Verfleischung. Instead of relation, 

 definition, they use Verhaltniss, Bestimmung ; instead of con- 

 cept, Begriff. Some of their philosophical expressions, such 

 for instance as Weltanschauung, display an inimitable apti- 

 tude. Even the terms of physical science are not remote 

 from common life. Schwefel-saure? explains itself more easily 

 than Acidus Sulphuricus. 



Abstract disquisitions retain a vividness and picturesqueness 

 in German, which they never had in any other literature but 

 the Greek. We have, perhaps, to thank this quality of the 

 language what may be called the mythopoeic energy of its 

 vocabulary for the cloud-castle-realm of German metaphysics. 

 Ideas and distinctions which have no sound basis in fact, and 

 which are incapable of being expressed in a less imaginative 

 speech, obtain a specious aspect of reality and impose upon 

 the mind when clothed with phraseology so vital and so 

 concrete. 



The same verbal privileges render German an admirable 

 vehicle for literal translation. Few turns of phrase and few 

 metrical effects are incapable of imitation in this language. 

 The native genius of the tongue, however, is so alien to classic 

 literature, that its ingenious versions from Greek and Latin 

 have the appearance of rough plaster-casts, rather than of 

 reproductions in some precious material. It is in dealing 

 with the masterpieces of a cognate literature, with Shake- 

 speare's plays, for example, that the inexhaustible riches of the 

 mother speech of Germany are best exhibited. 



Considering the compass of German vocabulary and the 

 plasticity of the language as an instrument of style, it is 

 greatly to be deplored that average German writers are so 

 slovenly in the construction of their sentences, and so indolent 

 in their adoption of foreign and inharmonious elements. 1 



1 I ran through two numbers of a local German newspaper the other 

 day, and noted the following barbarisms : Konstatiren, konveniren, 

 passiren, prosperiren, kompromettiren, blamiren, pramiren, projektiren, 

 reformiren, publiziren, korrigiren, patronisen, kulmirinen, kursiren, prasi- 

 diren, Debatte, Diskussion, Direktion, Hotelier, Instruktor, Keferat, Kon- 

 kurrenz, Aktioniir, Fraktionen, interressant, respektable, Konzessionar, 



