apt to feel that the ordinary language of everyday people is not refined and delicate enough to express his own especial sentiments. One sometimes meets with the characteristic in a prose writer. The affectation is usually for neologisms which may be invented by the author himself or adopted from the usage of somebody else. Here are a number of examples chosen from Robertson: Essays toward a Critical Method.

Dilletantist, 3; stylist, passim; statist (one who states), 13; bellettrist, fictionist, criticable, 71; likeable, 171; connoisseurship, 4; remarkableness, 12; lothness, 41; bodefully, 19; zealotry, 134; artifex, 166; bulking, 84; cultured, 104. I may add such expressions as category-confusing, 84; forward-reaching, 9; style-value, 32.

3. But the commonest reason for the use of Barbarisms comes from ignorance or carelessness, or the two combined. I suppose that most of the newspaper barbarisms which the writers on rhetoric delight to quote arise from this cause. I find in Frink's edition of Phelps this remark, which seems sound: "Journalists are a class of writers of recent origin. They include in their guild very many rudely-educated men. They write much in haste; they write by short-hand; they write often in a somnolent state, in the small hours of the morning. . . . Theirs is not often leisurely and scholarly authorship. Very few of them attain to the first rank in literature" (Rhetoric: Its Theory and Practice, p. 29). In view of these statements, we should infer that the following words, which are extracted from a single number of the Chicago Tribune (May 13, 1895), were mostly used in ignorance of the fact that they are not recognized by good usage, or in carelessness of it, or more probably in some combination of the two. Possibly there may be also a bit of affectation, a desire to be spicy and smart.

Nomenclatural, usable, silverite, pacerdom, spirital, ren

dition, arbitrage, fusionist, fake, bunt, boodle, fad, bilk, squelch, slushy, shutout, firebug, grub, scabs, deal, combine, straddle, joint, plant.1

69. Improprieties. So much for the use of words which, as A. S. Hill puts it, are not words. But a perfectly, good word may be used with a meaning which good usage does not attach to it. Such, strictly speaking, are the verbs used as nouns quoted on page 243 and the last words cited above. Words so used are called Improprieties. We have already done a good deal of work which will help us here. Everything that we have done in the discrimination of synonyms, in studying out the right meanings of words, will be of service in avoiding the wrong meanings. And as I am inclined to think that we should fix our attention upon the right uses rather than upon the wrong, I shall not pursue the topic farther.

70. Solecisms. We come lastly to the so-called Solecism. As a technical term the word denotes errors in Grammar. Strictly speaking, then, it would as such have no place in a narrower conception of Rhetoric. But it is very hard to draw an exact line between rhetoric and grammar, and the study of solecisms has always been considered a part of rhetorical work. The topic, however, cannot well be treated from the constructive standpoint.

To Teachers: No exercises of a critical character for the gaining a pure diction are here given for the reasons pointed out above and on pages vii and viii. It is thought that with well-prepared students the matter will be sufficiently attended to in the correction of the exercises in previous sections. But if the student's preparation is such that he is unable to use words clearly and correctly it may be well to give some practice on the matter. The general opinion of the best teachers at present is opposed to the giving out

1 Perhaps better classed as improprieties.

of incorrect work to be corrected, and various other means have been devised for attaining the same end. The teacher will find in Phelps' Rhetoric: Its Theory and Practice, ed. Frink, pp. 209-247, and Buehler's Practical Exercises in English, a great number of exercises which may be given to the class by dictation or otherwise, if it be deemed necessary.

PART FOUR.

FIGURE AND ILLUSTRATION.

71. Significance of the Topic. I often think that it is in his treatment of Figures of Speech that the writer on Rhetoric is most suspected of pedantry by the cold world, and sometimes, it seems to me, with good reason. It is hard in all cases for the average mind to acquiesce in the idea that rules (for as such are the principles of Rhetoric usually thought of) can in any way be a good thing in writing, except for the satisfaction of critics. And critics, it may be remarked, are commonly regarded as people who prefer to consider the things of literature according to the conventions of a scholastic senselessness rather than with

the eye of common sense. The usual idea is that if a man wants to write well he should have plenty of practice. Then, if the Lord designed him for a writer, he will write well. Otherwise let him turn his attention elsewhere. That any one ever gains any help from Rhetoric is generally regarded as one of the delusions of academic folly.

To a certain extent there is good foundation for such a view in some treatments of Figures of Speech. Such presentations as are strictly scientific in character are not readily made of use by the young writer. The common division into Figures of Similarity, Contiguity, and Contrast, for instance, is useful, perhaps, from the psychological point of view, but I fancy no one was ever better able to use simile or metonymy thereby.

It is certainly difficult to conceive of a wholly satisfactory method. But we are confronted by the fact that many persons express themselves naturally by means of Figure,

and with excellent effect. Indeed one of the most powerful linguistic tendencies is that toward figure. The figurative element in common speech is very great. Take so many everyday expressions: a business house, a football team, chair of English, a man-o'-war, horse and foot, a redcoat, a bluejacket, a bigwig, consider the examples of metaphorical extension on p. 238, consider certain extensions of adjectives: quick as a flash, good as gold, hot as Tophet, cold as Greenland, or the great number of figurative proverbs (see p. 259), or recall some petrified metaphors: "a turn is given to our ways of thinking," " hence it follows" (more examples are given on p. 263), and you will see some of the directions in which the tendency to figure is most felt. Then, whether we like to study the question or not, most of us will be figurative unconsciously in our everyday conversation. The matter is well put by Emerson, whose own leaning in the direction of figurative expression may have led him to a little exaggeration. But on the whole there is much sense in what he says.

"We cannot utter a sentence in sprightly conversation without a similitude. Note our incessant use of the word like,-like fire, like a rock, like thunder, like a bee, like a year without a spring.' Conversation is not permitted without tropes; nothing but great weight in things can afford a quite literal speech."-Poetry and Imagination.

Whether this statement be somewhat exaggerated or not, it is obvious that people in general are in the habit of constantly using metaphors or similes. The phrase “like anything" or "like everything," which is not uncommon in youthful conversation, is evidence of the desire for figure without the necessary inventive capacity. So the common phrase "you never saw anything like it" is indication that ordinary things are well described by comparison. If more evidence of the popular nature of similitude in especial were needed, we should find it in its prevalence in slang,