the proper claims of all. The highest reach of good art is repose, that self-justifying quality wherein everything is obviously right, in place, coloring, and degree. If in any point the work is violent or unfit, there is lack of wise temperament somewhere, some element is forced at expense to others. And the only adequate adjuster of the qualities is something deeper than skill; in the last analysis it is a sound, balanced, masterful character.1

1 Hamlet's advice to the players (Hamlet, Act. iii, Scene 2) is as full of good sense for writers as for speakers: “Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."

BOOK II. DICTION.

Definition of Diction. - The term diction is the name here adopted for that aspect or department of style which has to do with words, primarily with the choice of words, but also, in a general way, and independently of the specific details of composition, with the connection and arrangement of words. The kind of words habitually used, and peculiarities in the management of them, give a coloring or texture to the style by which we may identify it with some type of diction.1 Every author has individualities of diction, and so has every kind of literature. But below these personal and class characteristics there is also a general standard or ideal of diction which every writer owes it to his mother-tongue to regard sacredly. For while from one point of view language is a working-tool, to be used according to our free sense of mastery, from another it is our heritage from an illustrious line of writers and speakers-to be approached, therefore, in the spirit of reverence, and loyally guarded from hurt and loss. Every one who has much to do with language feels the weight of this solemn obligation.

The universal standard of diction is best expressed, perhaps, by the word PURITY: the writer must see to it first of all that he keep his mother-tongue unsullied, inviolate; and this by observing, in all his choice of language, the laws of derivation, formation, good usage, and good taste. Whatever

1 "The culture of diction is the preparatory stage for the formation of style.”— EARLE, English Prose, p. 213.

liberties he takes, and there is all the room he needs for untrammeled expression, he must first move in obedience to these fundamental laws; else his literary deportment, whatever genius may underlie it, will have blemishes exactly analogous to coarseness and bad manners-in conversation.

The ensuing six chapters (iii-viii) traverse the field of diction, beginning with particular considerations relating to the use of words and figures, and going on to more general aspects and types.

CHAPTER III.

CHOICE OF WORDS FOR DENOTATION.

WHAT is meant by the denotation of a word has already been intimated, both directly and by contrast with connotation1; it is what the word literally says, as distinguished from its secondary associations and implications. To get at this, its fundamental note, so to say,2 to make sure of this whatever else is obtained or sacrificed, is the first endeavor in the choice of words; an endeavor that takes more time and pains, probably, than any other procedure in composition. For in this earnest quest for the right word, preeminently, is enlisted that insatiable passion for accuracy, in thinking as well as expression, which is the spring and conscience of literary art, governing alike all moods grave or gay, all styles from the severest to the most colloquial. It is as hard, though hard in another way, to find the unique word in a sketch as in a scientific treatise.

3

To secure the proper denotation of words for one's purpose a variety of considerations may have to be taken into account, reducible, in general, to the following four groups.

I. ACCURATE USE.

This, which answers the endeavor to adjust the word exactly to the meaning had in mind, has been so insisted upon already

1 See above, pp. 9, 29 and footnote 2, and 34.

2 A vitally chosen word is like a bell: in addition to its fundamental note it has overtones, which in various ways enrich its meaning; and these it takes mainly from its setting and associations; see below, p. 93.

8 See above, p. 14; also under Precision, p. 29 sq.- "The first valuable power in a reasonable mind, one would say, was the power of plain statement, or the power to

that farther definition of it may be dismissed here with a single remark. The meaning to which the writer is trying to fit his word may lie in thought alone, or it may carry with it a mood, impassioned or humorous or imaginative; and so the search may be not only for a closely discriminative word, but for a word vigorous or facetious or descriptive. In any case, however, the effort is simply for accurate adjustment to the idea as conceived1; this covers the whole field, and no other use of words, whatever its claim, can interfere with it.

Of the culture of accuracy in the broad sense the following are leading phases:

1. Finding the Right Shade of Meaning. This is done by the habitual weighing of synonyms, a practice more constant with careful writers, probably, than even the study of the dictionary.

Synonyms are words alike in meaning. As, however, no two words cover exactly the same field of meaning, use may be made both of their points of likeness and their points of divergence to secure fine shadings.

NOTE.

- The practical use of synonyms may be illustrated from the ordinary process of choosing a word. Some word comes to mind. It is nearly the word wanted; but perhaps it sounds ill with other words of the sentence, or the writer may have a vague sense that the vocabulary contains a closer fit, if he could but find it. He takes his Dictionary of Synonyms and turns to the word that has already occurred to him. Let it be, for instance, the word judgment, the nearest word he can think of for a particular quality of mind that he wishes to name. Here is the result: "Judgment, ". 1. Discernment, understanding, intelligence, discrimina

-:

receive things as they befall, and to transfer the picture of them to another mind unaltered." EMERSON on The Superlative, Works, Vol. x, p. 164.

1 Of Flaubert's passion for accuracy, which has become typical in literary history, Pater remarks: "All the recognized flowers, the removable ornaments of literature (including harmony and ease in reading aloud, very carefully considered by him) counted certainly; for these too are part of the actual value of what one says. But still, after all, with Flaubert, the search, the unwearied research, was not for the smooth, or winsome, or forcible word, as such, as with false Ciceronians, but quite simply and honestly, for the word's adjustment to its meaning." — Appreciations, p. 28.