206 NOTES ON STYLE 



excrescences. But there is another aspect of the literature. 

 In poetry and in simple narration it is not easy to match its 

 spontaneous and artless beauties. Heine's lyrics, for example, 

 have a lightness of touch, a purity of phrase, an irreproducible 

 grace of rhythm and haunting melody, the exact parallel to 

 which can nowhere else be found. The same qualities are 

 noticeable in the Marchen and in tales which have been 

 written in their manner. Sincere homeliness, deep, true 

 emotion, penetrating to the root and marrow of the human 

 heart, kindliness and honesty combined with shrewdness and 

 a broad calm survey of the world, are the notes of this part of 

 German literature. No other modern idiom has a set of words 

 like Gemiith, Innigkeit, fromm, bieder, hold, expressive of the 

 most lovable qualities of character. Their exact equivalents 

 cannot be found in English, French, Italian. There is some- 

 thing idiosyncratic to German emotion and to German spiritual 

 temperament in their form and sound. 



VIII 



English is the most composite of modern languages, 

 including as it does Teutonic, Celtic, Latin, and French 

 elements in the body of the idiom. It is also reduced to 

 the simplest grammatical form. Nouns are not declined : 

 genders, except for persons, have been discarded ; verbs are 

 conjugated mainly by the help of auxiliaries. To say that 

 English has no grammar would be an exaggeration. But 

 it certainly has less of grammar than any other literary 

 language. 



The variety of its vocabulary and the simplicity of its 

 grammar are two main advantages of English, rendering it 

 full of verbal suggestiveness and manageable as an instru- 

 ment of expression. Among its prominent drawbacks may 

 be reckoned imperfect (though copious) vowel-sounds, the 

 frequency of sibilants, and the wearisome recurrence of little 

 words like the, a, which, that, of. Glad as we may be for 

 many reasons to have abolished the genders of sexless things, 

 we cannot but feel that a certain loss is involved in this 



