FORCE.

Southey says, "It is with words as with sunbeams,— the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn." Taking our cue from this apt comparison, we find that one of the principle elements of force in language consists in the use of short words. While the words derived from Latin, or from French and other Latin languages, are usually the more polite, the Saxon words are the more forcible.

The Latin is an inflected language, and hence it is that our words from that source are usually long and rhythmicai. The prefixes and suffixes, each denoting the accretion of ideas thereto, make the resulting word a complex affair, the contemplation of which spreads each mental effort over different lines of thought, and the attention rests on so many different points in the comprehension of that word, that no great impression is made at any point. The Saxon language being largely monosyllabic, each word focusses the whole attention for the moment on that one idea; and the impression made by such words is correspondingly deeper and more vivid; barring, of course, the connectives and other relation words that merely show grammatical dependence. Even when a sentence is composed largely of Greek and Latin derivatives, it is usually dependent upon the Saxon for its bolts, pins and hinges; and so the strength of the joints is yet inherent in the mother tongue.

Early English was a still further condensation of AngloSaxon, as may be seen in such words as to love, bake, beat, slide, swim, bind, blow, brew, and others, which were dissyllables until reduced to English. We have continued this process from generation to generation, until now, in the mad rush for gold, the business world is likely to annihilate all trace

of the origin of many words, so mercilessly do we clip their wings and decapitate them. When an engine was made to pick seeds out of cotton we couldn't think of wasting time to call it a cotton-engine, and as engine would not be sufficiently definite, why, instead of adding some letter or syllable characteristic of use, we take away even that which it seemeth to have," and call it a "gin." So van for carryvan, bus for omnibus, wig for periwig, aid for aid-de-camp, prim for primitive, grog for grogram, tick for (pawnbroker's) ticket, pants for pantaloons, and so on to the end of the chapter.

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In other instances we drop a piece out of the middle, or whack a slice off almost anywhere, as in last for latest, lark for laverock, since for sithence, sent for sended, built for builded, chirp for chirrup or cheer up, fag for fatigue, and so on up till you come to consols for consolidated-annuities-of the-bank-of-England, or concon for the union of two previously consolidated companies.

Now while it is true that most of the polish of a brilliant or flowing style of oratory must be derived from a choice selection of words both adapted and adopted from the Latin, it is also true that to reach the deepest feeling, as in expressing pathos, describing sublimity, portraying passion, or in any phase of address calling for exceeding force of meaning, it is necessary to restrict the language largely to short words of Saxon origin. Witness the passage in Ezekiel, which Coleridge is said to have considered the sublimest in the whole Bible: "And he said unto me, son of man, can these bones live? and I answered, O, Lord God, thou knowest." David's lament over Saul and Jonathan is an instance of pathos not surpassed in the whole range of literature; and yet, nearly all the. words are comprised within one or two syllables. When read in the impressive manner which the subject matter demands, the mind is awed, and the heart is thrilled with their force: "The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how are the mighty fallen! They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions how are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle?"

Shakespeare's strongest word-pictures abound in masterly touches effected by short strokes, thus:

"Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gashed stabs look'd like a breach in Nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance. There the murderers,
Steep'd in the colors of their trade, their daggers
.breech'd with gore."-Macbeth.

To prove that short words are not passionless, read "Thane of Cawdor."

"That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye winks at the hand. Yet, let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."

Milton knew well when to employ words of “learned length and thunderous sound," but was he tame, when in the brief words too oft ignored by lesser artists, he described the journey of the fallen angels, thus:

"Through many a dark and dreary vale

They passed, and many a region dolorous,

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,-
A universe of death."

And so when calling upon hell to receive its new pos

sessor:

"One who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time.

The mind is its own place,

Can make a heaven of hell,

and in itself

a hell of heaven.

What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here, at least,
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for His envy; will not drive us hence;
Here we may reign secure, and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell;
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven."

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Even the flowing style of the anapastic verse is charged with force by the fire of genius, when a Byron portrays the destruction of Sennacherib:

"For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts beat but once, and forever lay still."

We often hear mention of Johnson's fondness for bigswelling words, the dictionary-mastodons; and so marked was his influence upon literature that when any writer shows a decided preference for the leviathans of the lexicon, he is called "Johnsonese." Imagine "Pilgrim's Progress" written in such a style, and you note at once its lack of force.

Dr. William Mathews, in an excellent work entitled "Words, Their Use and Abuse," says: "These Liliputians, -these Tom Thumbs of the dictionary, play as important a part in our literature as their bigger and more magniloquent brothers. Like the infusoria of our globe, so long unnoticed, which are now known to have raised whole continents from the depths of the ocean, these words, once so despised, are now rising in importance, and are admitted by scholars to form an independent class in the family of words. In some kinds of writing their almost exclusive use is indispensable. What would have been the fate of Bunyan's immortal book, if he had told the story of the Pilgrim's journey in the ponderous, elephantine "osities" and "ations" of Johnson, or the gorgeous Latinity of Taylor? It would have been like building a boat out of timbers cut for a ship. It is owing to this grandiose style, as much as to any other cause, that the author of the "Rambler," in spite of his sturdy strength and grasp of mind, "lies like an Egyptian king, buried and forgotten in the pyramid of his fame." When we remember that the Saxon language, the soul of the English, is essentially monosyllabic; that our language contains, of monosyllables formed with the vowel a alone, more than five hundred,-by the vowel e, some four hundred and fifty; by the vowel i, about four hundred; by the vowel o, over four hundred;

and by the vowel u, more than two hundred and fifty; we must admit that these seemingly petty and insignificant words, even the microscopic particles, so far from meriting to be treated as "creepers," are of high importance, and that to know when and how to use them is of no less moment to the speaker or writer than to know when to use the grandiloquent expressions which we have borrowed from the language of Greece and Rome."

To close, we submit a strong presentation of the claims of short words, in the shape of a poem by Dr. Addison Alexander, itself a shining example of the cause for which he pleads:

"Think not that strength lies in the big round word,

Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak,

To whom can this be true who once has heard

The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak,
When want or woe or fear is in the throat,

So that each word gasped out is like a shriek
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note
Sung by some fay or fiend. There is strength
Which dies if stretched too far or spun too fine,

Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length.
Let but this force of thought and speech be mine,

And he that will may take the sleek, fat phrase,

Which glows and burns not, though it gleam and shine,

Nor is it mere strength that the short word boasts;
It serves of more than fight or storm to tell,
The roar of waves that clash on rock-bound coasts,

The crash of tall trees when the wild winds swell,

The roar of guns, the groans of men that die

On blood-stained fields. It has a voice as well

For them that far off on their sick-beds lie;

For them that weep, for them that mourn the dead;
For them that laugh, and dance, and clap the hand;
To joy's quick step, as well as grief's slow tread,
The sweet, plain words we learned at first keep time,
And, though the theme be sad, or gay, or grand,
With each, with all, these may be made to chime,

In thought, or speech, or song, in prose or rhyme."

Force in writing will be treated in subsequent articles as viewed from other stand-points. Thus much as to its dependence upon short words.