nd wrong in style whatever but good

of all good style. how to recognize by a fact that, ises most people matter in quesof which is that ing worth readE the literatures civilized Euron a prolonged classical Latin - Greek letters what makes thoughts and 1 Greek, but akes English ts and emoamely, that agreed what abolize, and e classical odern lanthe life of ction, not all other

lourishes,

Greek passed out of being with the nations whose political and intellectual lives they expressed. So completely are they things of the past, indeed, that so far as I can learn from friends who have given their lives to the classics, nobody to-day on earth has any real knowledge of how Latin or Greek was pronounced. At Harvard College, and elsewhere, to be sure, they have supplanted the unquestionably barbarous English pronunciation by one which they call probably ancient; but whether Pericles or Cicero could understand the most punctiliously learned nineteenth-century professor is a question not to be settled this side of Elysium. In short, though we know pretty accurately what words classical letters symbolize, and what thoughts and emotions are symbolized by classical words, one part of the classical languages the sound, the thing that made them true languages or tongues is as dead as Alexander or Cæsar. And along with the sound has perished the vital principle of the languages, - the constantly changing use which brought them from the rude jargons in which they began into the exquisitely finished forms in which their literatures preserve them. In other words, the classical languages, like other things that have passed out of this world, are complete. Nothing but the occasional discovery of a manuscript or an inscription can add a syllable to them; nothing but the demonstration of a corruption or a forgery can take a syllable away. Nothing, in all human probability, can supply the place of that troublesome caret which used to

bother us so much in the old Latin grammars. Here lies the distinction between the classical languages and the modern, the dead and the living. Latin and Greek are complete; dictionaries and grammars can codify them with final authority. English, on the other hand, like every living tongue, must remain incomplete so long as it retains life enough to be spoken and written by living men; and so dictionaries and grammars can at most be mile-stones in its progress through this world.

Now, of course the unlearned in matters of style look for authority to the learned. And the learned, brought up from childhood on the authority, in matters of classical style, of Latin and Greek dictionaries and grammars, are accustomed to display what little human frailty survives the process of culture by attaching to dictionaries and grammars themselves an importance second only to that which good men attach to Holy Writ. They do not stop to remember, or at all events to remind us, that what makes Latin and Greek books of reference so finally authoritative is not that they are books of reference, but that the languages therein codified have long since ceased to grow; and so that these tongues can be codified with something which approaches perfection.

To be certain of what good use is in a living lan

rammars. Here ssical languages -ing. Latin and grammars can English, on the must remain ingh to be spoken ictionaries and in its progress

atters of style the learned, ority, in matk dictionaries lay what litof culture by s themselves h good men stop to rethat what ce so finally reference, have long se tongues approaches

iving lan

▪ rest our ctionaries

for

and verse for the words or phrases we would defend. There are other tests of good use to which we must turn. The most notable, I think, are that it must be Reputable, National, and Present, Reputable as distinguished from vulgar, slangy, eccentric; National as distinguished from local or technical; Present as distinguished from obsolete or transient. In view of the fact that every question of right or wrong in style must ultimately be referred to good use, these three phases of good use are worth separate attention.

Reputable use is the use of no single writer, however eminent; it is the common consent of the great body of writers whose works, taken together, make up what we mean when we seriously use the term English Literature, - a term which of course includes any literature written in the English language, Scotch, Irish, American, Australian. The fact that Shakspere uses a word, or Sir Walter Scott, or Burke, or Washington Irving, or whoever happens to be writing earnestly in Melbourne or Sidney, does not make it reputable. The fact that all five of these authorities use the word in the same sense would go very far to establish the usage. On the other hand, the fact that any number of newspaper reporters agree in usage does not make the usage reputable. The style of newspaper reporters is not without merit; it is very rarely unreadable; but for all its virtue it is rarely a well of English undefiled. And just here, I may say, lies perhaps the most crying fault of con

temporary style in general. For better or worse, the fact remains that our grandfathers used to read the Bible morning and night, and that we read instead the morning and evening newspapers. Our spontaneous vocabularies differ from theirs accordingly, - not wholly for the better. And when, now and then, somebody raises a feeble voice in protest, the reporters, who as a class are very human beings, grow much excited, forgetting that no known system of logic can warrant the conclusion that because all good style is readable, all readable style is necessarily good.

But an example or two of style that is national and present, but not reputable, and so not good, will make the matter clearer than all the generalization in the world. In Mr. Mallock's "New Republic," you may remember, is a tale of how a fastidious gentleman refrained from offering himself to a pretty girl because she asked him if he was partial to boiled chicken. In any newspaper you may find a comfortable house described as an "elegant residence" or a "costly home;" and so on.

National use is the use of neither England, Ireland, Scotland, America, nor Australia; nor yet of any single body of men, however learned. It is the use which is sanctioned by the common consent of the whole English-speaking world. Whoever uses technical words or foreign or local

sane man may avoid. The use of local terms is often spontaneous; here lies the chief danger of falling into a style not national.

A few examples of style that is reputable and present, but not national, and so not good, will make the matter clear. "Ecteronic appendages," I find in the first book of physiology I open, "not found in man, make their appearance in other animals." " I noticed a dirty gamin," writes a student; and another, using a word now confined at Harvard College to street urchins, describes the same small boy as a mucker.

Present use is best described, I think, in the familiar lines of Pope:

"In words as fashions, the same rule will hold :
Alike fantastic if too new or old.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

These lines mention a very suggestive analogy.
Fashions constantly change, nobody knows exactly
why. But everybody knows that a series of annual
fashion-plates extending over a century would show a
very marked series of changes in the outward aspect
of the human form divine. Every theatre-goer knows
too that these changes are so marked that a play
written a generation ago Bulwer's "Money," for
example, or even Robertson's "School cannot
without a grotesqueness that would nullify its dra-
matic effect be produced with such costumes as were