and, as it represents him in a character to which the acting unjustly is peculiarly unsuitable, it serves as an argument in support of the sentiment, and is therefore conducive even to conciseness. In this view we may consider that noted circumlocution employed by Cicero, who, instead of saying simply, Milo's domestics killed Clodius, says, "They did that which every master would have wished his servants to do in such an exigence. 99* It is far from being enough to say of this passage that it is an euphemism, by which the odious word killed is avoided. It contains, also, a powerful vindication of the action, by an appeal to the conscience of every hearer, whether he would not have approved it in his own case. But when none of these ends can be answered by a periphrastical expression, it will inevitably be regarded as injuring the style by flattening it. Of this take the following example from the Spectator: "I won't say we see often, in the next tender things to children, tears shed without much grieving." The phrase here employed appears, besides, affected and far-fetched.

Another source of languor in the style is when such clauses are inserted as to a superficial view appear to suggest something which heightens, but, on reflection, are found to presuppose something which abates the vigour of the sentiment. Of this I shall give a specimen from Swift: "Neither is any condition of life more honourable in the sight of God than another, otherwise he would be a respecter of persons, which he assures us he is not." It is evident that this last clause doth not a little enervate the thought, as it implies but too plainly that without this assurance from God himself we should naturally conclude him to be of a character very dif ferent from that here given him by the preacher.

Akin to this is the juvenile method of loading every proposition with asseverations. As such a practice in conversation more commonly infuseth a suspicion of the speaker's veracity than it engages the belief of the hearer, it hath an effect somewhat similar in writing. In our translation of the Bible, God is represented as saying to Adam, concerning the fruit of the tree of knowledge, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The adverb surely, instead of enforcing, enfeebles the denunciation. My reason is the same as in the former case. A ground of mistrust is insinuated, to which no affirmation is a counterpoise. Are such adverbs, then, never to be used? Not when either the character of the speaker or the evidence of the thing is such as precludes the smallest doubt. In other cases they are pertinent enough. But as taste itself is influenced by custom, and as, for that * "Fecerunt id servi Milonis-quod suos quisque servos in tali re facere voluisset."-Cicero pro Milone. † No. 95. § Gen., ii., 17.

Sermon on Mutual Subjection.

reason, we may not be quick in discerning a fault to which our ears have from our infancy been habituated, let us consider how it would affect us in an act of Parliament, to read that the offender shall for the first offence certainly be liable to such a penalty, and for the second he shall surely incur such another. This style would appear intolerable even to one of ordinary discernment. Why? The answer is obvious. It ill suits the dignity of the British Senate to use a manner which supposes that its authority or power can be called in question. That which hath misled our translators in the passage quoted, as in many others, hath been an attempt to express the import of a Hebraism, which cannot be rendered literally into any European tongue. But it is evident that they have not sufficiently attended to the powers of the language which they wrote. The English hath two futures, no inconsiderable advantage on some occasions, both for perspicuity and for emphasis. The one denotes simply the futurition of the event, the other also makes the veracity and power of the speaker vouchers of its futurition. The former is a bare declaration; the latter is always, in the second person and the third, unless when used imperatively, either a promise or a threatening. No language that I know exactly hits this distinction but our own. In other languages you must infer, not always infallibly, from the tenour of the story, whether the future is of the one import or of the other; in English you find this expressed in the words.*

Farther, it was observed that affirmative adverbs are no less improper when doubt is entirely precluded by the evidence of the fact, than when it is prevented by the authority of the speaker. I have given an example of the latter, and shall now produce one of the former. An Israelite informing David concerning Goliath, is represented in our version as saying, "Surely to defy Israel is he come up." Had the

* This remark needs, perhaps, a farther illustration, and in order to this it will be necessary to recur to some other language. The passage quoted is thus translated into Latin by Castalio: "Si ea vesceris, moriere." He judged right not to add certé or profecto even in Latin. Neither of these adverbs could have rendered the expression more definite, and both are liable to the same exception with the English adverb surely. Yet take the version as it stands, and there is an evident ambiguity in the word moriere. It may be either the declaration of one who knew that there was a poisonous quality in the fruit, and meant only to warn Adam of his danger by representing the natural consequence of eating it, or it may be the denunciation of a legislator against the transgression of his law. Every one who understands English will perceive immediately that, on the first supposition, he must render the words into our language, "If thou eat thereof thou wilt die;" and on the second supposition, he must render them, "If thou eat thereof thou shalt die." If there be anything emphatical in the original idiom, it serves here, in my opinion, to mark the distinctior. between a simple declaration and the sanction of a law, which are perfectly distinguished in our tongue by the two futures. t1 Sam., xvii., 25.

giant shown himself between the camps, and used menacing gestures, or spoken words which nobody understood, this expression would have been natural and proper. But no man

could have talked in this manner who had himself been a witness that every day, for forty days successively, this champion had given an open defiance to Israel in the most explicit terms, and in the audience of all the army. Such adverbs always weaken an assertion that is founded on the evidence of sense, or even of unexceptionable testimony, and are suited only to cases of conjecture or probability at most. It requires a certain justness of taste to know when we have said enough, through want of which, when we attempt to say more, we say less.

Another example, of a nature pretty similar, and arising from a similar cause, is the manner wherein our interpreters have attempted, in the New Testament, to strengthen the negation, wherever the double negative* occurs in the Greek, even in the most authoritative threatenings, by rendering it sometimes in no case, sometimes in no wise. It is evident that, in such instances, neither of these phrases expresseth more than the single adverb not, and as they partake of the nature of circumlocution, and betray an unsuccessful aim at saying more, they in effect debilitate the expression. The words "Ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven," as they have more simplicity, have also, from the mouth of a legislator, more dignity and weight than "Ye shall in no case" or "in no wise enter into it," as though there were various ways and means of getting thither. The two negatives of the Greek are precisely on the same footing with the two negatives of the French;† our single particle not is a full equivalent for both. For should a translator from the French attempt to render every double negative by such a pheriphrasis in English, his version would be justly accounted ridiculous. It may be thought a consequence of this doctrine, that the solemn protestation, " Verily, verily, I say unto you," so often adopted by our Lord, would rather weaken than enforce the sentiment. But the case is different. As these words enter not into the body of the proposition, but are employed solely to introduce it, they are to be considered purely as a call to attention, serving not so much to affirm the reality, as the importance of what is to be said. Or if they are to be understood as affirming the reality, it is from this single consideration, because said by him.

* ου μη.

Ne pas or non point. Sometimes the French use even three negatives where we can properly employ but one in English, as in this sentence: "Je ne nie pas que je ne l'aye dit"-"I do not deny that I said it." I believe no man who understands both languages will pretend that the negation here is expressed more strongly by them than by us.

I add, as another cause of a languid verbosity, the loading of the style with epithets, when almost every verb hath its 'attendant adverb, which may be called its epithet, and every substantive its attendant adjective, and when both adjectives and adverbs are often raised to the superlative degree. Epithets used sparingly and with judgment have a great effect in enlivening the expression, but nothing has more of an opposite tendency than a profusion of them. That such profusion has this tendency may be deduced partly from a principle already mentioned, partly from a principle which I am going to observe. That already mentioned is, that they lengthen the sentence without adding proportionable strength. The other principle is, that the crowding of epithets into a discourse betrays a violent effort to say something extraordinary; and nothing is a clearer evidence of weakness than such an effort when the effect is not correspondent. I would not, however, be understood to signify, that adjectives and adverbs are always to be regarded as mere epithets. (Whatever is necessary for ascertaining the import of either noun or verb, whether by adding to the sense or by confining it, is something more than an epithet, in the common acceptation of that term. Thus, when I say "the glorious sun," the word glorious is an epithet, because it expresses a quality which, being conceived always to belong to the object, is, like all its other qualities, comprehended in the name; but when I say "the meridian sun," the word meridian is not barely an epithet, because it makes a real addition to the signification, denoting the sun in that situation wherein he appears at noon. The like may be said of "the rising" or "the setting sun." Again, when I say "the towering eagle," I use an epithet, because the quality towering may justly be attributed to all the kind; not so when I say "the golden eagle," because the adjective golden serves to limit the sense of the word eagle to one species only, and is, therefore, in effect, a part of the name.) Let it not be imagined, hence, that mere epithets are always useless. Though all the essential qualities of a genus are included in the name, the scope of a discourse often renders it important, if not necessary, that some particular qualities should be specially attended to by the hearer; and these, by consequence, require to be specified by the speaker. On the contrary, a redundancy of these never fails to give a tiresome sameness to the composition, where substantives and adjectives, verbs and adverbs, almost invariably strung together, offend not more against vivacity than against harmony and elegance.* This vicious quality of style is some

* I cannot help thinking that the following passage, which Rollin has quoted from Mascaron as an example of style elevated and adorned by means of circumlocution and epithet, is justly exceptionable in this way: "Le roi, pour donner une marque immortelle de l'estime et de l'amitié dont

316

times denominated juvenility, as denoting immaturity of judg ment, or an inexperience like that which would make a man mistake corpulency for the criterion of health and vigour. Besides, in young writers, a certain luxuriance in words is both more frequent and more pardonable.

There is one kind of composition, the paraphrase, of whose style verbosity is the proper character. The professed design of the paraphrast is to say in many words what his text expresseth in few: accordingly, all the writers of this class must be at pains to provide themselves in sufficient stock of synonymas, epithets, expletives, circumlocution, and tautol ogies, which are, in fact, the necessary implements of their craft. I took notice, when treating of the influence which the choice of proper terms might have on vivacity, of one method of depressing their subject very common with these men, by generalizing as much as possible the terms used in the text. The particulars just now recited are not only common with them, but essential to their work. I shall produce an example from an author who is far from deserving to be accounted either the most verbose or the least judicious of the tribe. But, first, let us hear his text, the words of Jesus Christ: Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him to a vise man, who built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.”* Now let us hear the paraphrast : "Wherefore he that shall not only hear and receive these my instructions, but also remember, and consider, and practise, and live according to them, such a man may be compared to one that builds his house upon a rock; for as a house founded upon a rock stands unshaken and firm against all the assaults of rains, and floods, and storms, so the man who, in his life and conversation, actually practises and obeys my instructions, will firmly resist all the temptations of the devil, the allurements of pleasure, and the terrors of persecution, and shall be able to stand in the day of judgment, and be rewarded of God." It would be difficult to point out a single advantage which this wordy, not to say flatulent, interpretation hath of

il honoroit ce grand capitaine (M. de Turenne), donne une place illustre à ses glorieuses cendres, parmi ces maitres de la terre, qui conservent encore dans la magnificence de leurs tombeaux une image de celle de leurs trônes." The king, that he may give an immortal mark of the esteem and friendship wherewith he honoured this great captain, gives an illustrious place to his glorious ashes among those masters of the earth who still preserve, in the magnificence of their tombs, an image of that of their thrones.-Bel. Let., liv. iii., chap. iii., art. ii., 5. In the quick succession of such yokemates as these, immortal mark, great captain, illustrious place, glorious ashes, magnificent tombs, there appears a strong attempt towards the grand manner, which, after all, terminates in the tumid.

* Matt., vii., 24 and 25.

+ Dr. Clarke.