Venerable Men! you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death; - all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defence.1 All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you! Between the simple speech of Lincoln and the ponderous oratory of Webster there is a marked difference in effect. This difference in effect appears in the two paragraphs just quoted, although the first paragraph is a complete speech and the second a mere extract. Lincoln's 1 The United States Navy Yard at Charlestown is situated at the base of Bunker Hill. words carry to a more exalted height of thought and emotion, and descend to a lower level of language, than Webster's words do. The big words in both paragraphs show that neither Lincoln nor Webster stopped at using a big word when the thought demanded a big word. Though in each paragraph there are many more little words than big words, there are decidedly more big words in Webster's paragraph than in Lincoln's. This last fact, I take it, accounts almost wholly for the difference in effect between the two paragraphs, which difference, at last resort, resolves itself into a difference in character between Webster and Lincoln. It is evident, then, that the difference between big words and little words is not a difference between good and bad, but simply and solely a difference in effect. Big or little, the words in the two paragraphs quoted are there because they were needed to express the thought of the speakers. As always in the best prose or poetry, not a word in either paragraph can be changed without loss. Big words will not do the work of little words, any more than little words can be made to do the work of big words. Knowing the effect you wish to produce, and the kind of words best adapted to produce that effect, you choose your words accordingly. Little words, with an occasional exception, are more vigorous than big words. This is because they imply more than big words ever can imply. The reason for this is that we as children knew little words first. It was through them that we came into our knowledge of language. A child, writes Mr. Spencer,1 says "I have, not I possess I wish, not I desire; he does not reflect, he thinks; he does 1 The Philosophy of Style. not beg for amusement, but for play; he calls things nice or nasty, not pleasant or disagreeable. The synonyms which he learns in after years never become so closely, so organically, connected with the ideas signified, as do these original words used in childhood; and hence the association remains less strong. But in what does a strong association between a word and an idea differ from a weak one? Simply in the greater ease and rapidity of the suggestive action. It can be in nothing else. Both of two words, if they be strictly synonymous,1 eventually call up the same image. The expression - It is acid, must in the end give rise to the same thought as It is sour; but because the term acid was learnt later in life, and has not been so often followed by the thought symbolized, it does not so readily arouse that thought as the term sour. If we remember how slowly and with what labor the appropriate ideas follow unfamiliar words in another language, and how increasing familiarity with such words brings greater rapidity and ease of comprehension; and if we consider that the same process must have gone on with the words of our mother tongue from childhood upwards, we shall clearly see that the earliest learnt and oftenest used words will, other things equal, call up images with less loss of time and energy than their later learnt synonyms." 2 These earliest learnt and oftenest used words will, other 1 But words are never strictly synonymous; if words happen to have the same meaning, they differ more or less in suggestion and application. The latter is true of "sour" and "acid.” 2 Mr. Spencer applies these remarks to non-Latin English, but it seems more accurate to apply them to little words. With a few exceptions, it is the little words which we know best, and which therefore imply most. That is, it is always a question of familiarity, and never a question of origin. See Section 42. things equal, imply more, and therefore be more vigorous, than the big words with which we are not so familiar. Exercise 54 1. Though you should never hesitate to use a big word if the thought demands a big word, you should not deliberately go out of your way to find a big word. In particular, avoid newspaper English, which is notorious for its studied want of simplicity. Study the following list, taken from the introduction to the second series of Lowell's Biglow Papers, and add to it such similar expressions as you find in your daily paper: "A dozen years ago I began a list," writes Lowell, "which I have added to from time to time, of some of the charges which may be fairly laid at his [the newspaper reporter's] door. I give a few of them as showing their tendency, all the more dangerous that their effect, like that of some poisons, is insensibly cumulative, and that they are sure at last of effect among a people whose chief reading is the daily paper. I give in two columns the old style and its modern equivalent. OLD STYLE Was hanged. When the halter was put round his neck. A great crowd came to see. Great fire. The fire spread. House burned. The fire was got under. Man fell. NEW STYLE Was launched into eternity. When the fatal noose was adjusted about the neck of the unfortunate victim of his own unbridled passions. A vast concourse was assembled to witness. Disastrous conflagration. The conflagration extended its devastating career. Edifice consumed. The progress of the devouring ele ment was arrested. Individual was precipitated. A horse and wagon ran against. The frightened horse. The mayor of the city, in a short speech, welcomed. I shall say a few words. Began his answer. He died. A valuable horse attached to a The infuriated animal. Commenced his rejoinder. He deceased, he passed out of 2. Find a newspaper paragraph in the "new style," and turn it into plain English. 3. Make a list of the words in Liberty and Obedience (Exercise 32) which imply most to you. Are they big words or little words? Make the same experiment with some other selection in this book. |