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which, like some rock-strata, extend for many days' journey but a few inches beneath the surface, and then burst abruptly into full view.*

The fact to which I allude is that language is not a dead, unelastic, passive implement, but a POWER, which, like all natural powers, reacts on that which it calls into exercise. It is a psychological law, though we know not upon what ultimate principle it rests, that the mere giving of verbal utterance to any strong emotion or passion, even if the expression be unaccompanied by any other outward act, stimulates and intensifies the excitement of feeling to that degree that when the tongue is once set free, the reason is dethroned, and brute nature becomes the master of the man.† The connection between the apparently insignificant cause and the terrible effect belongs to that portion of the immaterial man, whose workings, in so many fields of moral and intellectual action, lie below our consciousness, and can be detected by no effort of voluntary self-inspection. But it is an undoubted fact, and a fact of whose fearful import most men become adequately aware only when it is almost too late to profit by the knowledge, that the forms in which we clothe the outward expression of the emotions, and even of the speculative opinions, within us, react with mighty force upon the heart and intellect which are the seat of those passions and those thoughts. So long as we have not betrayed by unequivocal words the secret of the emotions that sway the soul, so long as we are uncommitted by formal expressions to particular principles and opinions, so long we are strong to subdue the rising passion, free to modify the theories upon which we aim to fashion our external life. Fiery words are the hot blast that inflames the fuel of our passionate nature, and formulated doctrine a hedge that confines the discursive wandering of the thoughts.

*Thus the iniquity of the slave-trade was suddenly brought home, as a sin, to the conscience of otherwise good men, who had for many years pursued it without one reproachful feeling, one thought of its enormous wickedness. Spenser was not ignorant of this important law.

"But his enemie

Had kindled such coles of displeasure,
That the goodman noulde stay his leasure,
But home him hasted with furious heate,
Encreasing his wrath with many a threate."

The Shepheards Calendar, Februarie, 190-4.'

In a personal altercation, it is most often the stimulus men give themselves by stinging words, that impels them to violent acts, and in argumentative discussions, we find the most convincing support to our conclusions in the internal echo of the dogmas we have ourselves pronounced. Hence extreme circumspection in the use of vituperative language, and in the adoption of set phrases implying particular opinions, is not less a prudential than a moral duty, and it is equally important that we strengthen in ourselves kindly sympathies, generous impulses, noble aims, and lofty aspi rations, by habitual freedom in their expression, and that we confirm ourselves in the great political, social, moral, and religious truths, to which calm investigation has led us as final conclusions, by embodying them in forms of sound words.

Not merely the strongest thinkers, and ablest and most convincing reasoners, but many of the most impressive and persuasive rhetoricians of modern times, have been remarkable rather for moderation than exaggeration in expression. It was a maxim of Webster's, that violence of language was indicative of feebleness of thought and want of reasoning power, and it was his practice rather to understate than overstate the strength of his confidence in the soundness of his own arguments, and the logical necessity of his conclusions. He kept his auditor constantly in advance of him, by suggestion rather than by strong asseveration, by a calm exposition of considerations which ought to excite feeling in the heart of both speaker and hearer, not by an undignified and theatrical exhibition of passion in himself. And this indeed is the sound practical interpretation of the Horatian precept: Si vis me flere, dolendum est

Primum ipsi tibi.

Wouldst thou unseal the fountain of my tears,
Thyself the signs of grief must show.

To the emotion of the hearer, the poet applies a stronger word, flere, to weep, than to that of the speaker or actor, who best accomplishes the aims of his art by a more mitigated display of the passions he would excite in the breast of his auditor.

Although our inherent or acquired moral and intellectual character and tendencies, and our habitual vocabulary and forms of speech, are influential upon each other, and though both are sub

ject to the control of the will, yet, nevertheless, their reciprocal action is not usually matter of consciousness with us. While therefore we are free in the employment of particular sets of words, yet as the selection of those words depends upon obscure processes unintelligible even to ourselves, we cannot be said, in strict propriety of speech, to choose our dialect, though we are undoubtedly responsible for its moral character, because we are responsible for the moral condition which determines it. So limited is our self-knowledge in this respect, that most men would be unable to produce a good caricature of their own individual speech, and the shibboleth of our personal dialect is generally unknown to ourselves, however ready we may be to remark the characteristic phraseology of others. It is a mark of weakness, of poverty of speech, or at least of bad taste, to continue the use of pet words, or other peculiarities of language, after we have once become conscious of them as such. In dialect as in dress, individuality, founded upon any thing but general harmony and superior propriety, is offensive, and good taste demands that each shall please by its total impression, not by its distinguishable details.

LECTURE XI.

VOCABULARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

IV.

I ENDEAVORED in the last lecture to point out some of the relations between the moral and intellectual character of nations or individuals, and the words of a given language employed, at particular periods, by the people or the man. But speech is affected also by humbler, more transitory, and more superficial influences, and whatever care we may exercise in this respect, it is scarcely possible that our ordinary discourse should not exhibit indelible traces of the associations and accidents of childhood, as well as of the occupations and the cares, the objects and studies, the material or social struggles, the triumphs or defeats, in short, all the external conditions that affect humanity in riper years. Every mode of life, too, has its technical vocabulary,* which we may exclude from our habitual language, its cant, which we cannot; and hence an acute observer, well schooled in men and things, can read, in a brief casual conversation with strangers, much of the history, as well as of the opinions and the principles, of all the interlocutors.

Writers of works of fiction are much inclined to represent their characters as constantly employing the language of their calling, and as prone to apply its technicalities to objects of an entirely diverse nature. Now this may, in the drama, where formal narrative, description, and explanation of all sorts are to be avoided, serve as a convenient conventional mode of escaping the asides, the soliloquies, the confidential disclosures of the actor to his audience respecting his character, position, and purposes, and the

*How are technical words of new arts formed-e. g. of printing? A complete history of words of this class from the beginning would be as instructive as curious.

other awkward devices to which even the expertest histrionic artisans are sometimes obliged to resort, to make the action more intelligible. It is better that a character in a play should use professional phrases, by way of indicating his occupation, than that he should tell the audience in set words, "I am a merchant, a physician, or a lawyer," but after all, considered as a representation of the actual language of life, it is a violation of truth of costume to cram with technical words the conversation of a technical man.* All men, except the veriest, narrowest pedants in their craft, avoid the language of the shop, and a small infusion of native sense of propriety prevents the most ignorant laborer from obtruding the dialect of his art upon those with whom he communicates in reference to matters not pertaining to it. Every man affects to be, if not socially above, yet intellectually independent of, and superior to, his calling, and if in this respect his speech bewray him, it will be by words used in mere joke, or by such peculiarities of speech, as, without properly belonging to the exercise of his profession, have nevertheless been occasioned by it. A sailor will not be likely to interlard his go-ashore talk with clew-lines, main-sheets, and halliards, but if he has occasion to mention the great free port at the head of the Adriatic, he will call it not Trieste, but Tryeast; and if he speaks of our commercial representative at a maritime town, he will be sure to style that official the American counsel, not the American consul. In fact, classes, guilds, professions, borrow their characteristics of speech from the affectations, not the serious interests, of their way of life.

Technical nomenclature rarely extends beyond the sphere to which it more appropriately belongs, and the language of a nation is not perceptibly affected by the phraseology of a class, unless that class is so numerous as to constitute the majority, or unless its interests are of so wide-spread and conspicuous a nature as to be forced upon the familiar observation of the whole people. England has been distinguished above all the nations of the earth

*King James, in his treatise of the Airt of Scottis Poesie, lays down a contrary rule:

And finally, quhatsumeuer be zour subiect, to vse vocabula artis, quhairby ze may the mair vivelie represent that persoun, quhais pairt ze paint out. -Chap. III.

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