interest his readers, he will beware of using any word that is more general than the object he has in mind. If he is writing about horses, he will not speak of them as quadrupeds; if about a particular horse, he will call him by his name, or will in some other way identify him as the horse he is talking about. He will not call a piano an instrument, a spade an agricultural implement, or a gun a deadly tube. If he tells a story, he will not give his characters general names: e. g., Mr. Miss "" or Mr. A., Miss B.; but he will invent individual names, and thus make his narrative lifelike.

Great poets use specific words with effect. ample,

The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn.

For ex

BYRON.

The day drags through, though storm keeps out the sun.

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder.

BYRON.

He is an evening reveller, who makes

His life an infancy, and sings his fill;
At intervals, some bird from out the brakes
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.

BYRON.
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
KEATS.

Amid yon tuft of hazel-trees

That twinkle to the gusty breeze,
Behold him perch'd in ecstasies

Yet seeming still to hover;

There, where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings

Shadows and sunny glimmerings,

That cover him all over.

WORDSWORTH.

And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October's wood.
WHITTIER

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

BROWNING.

I.

II.

At last her father's prow put out

to sea.

At last her father took a voyage

to sea.

The line under I. is obviously much superior to that under II., which was Byron's first draft, not only in euphony, but also in the superiority of "prow put out" over took a voyage.

I.

Those who could not obtain a plate by right means or wrong filled their hats, baskets, or boxes with clams.

Mrs. Flighty was censured for flirting which had been carried on by Mrs. Prim.

II.

Those who could not obtain a plate by right means or theft filled their hats or anything else available with clams.

Mrs. Flighty was censured for flirting which had been done by Mrs. Prim.

I.

The guards hopped down from the first car, and fell into line along the entire train.

In the long line of pale azure near the horizon you are likely to see a single white ship glimmering through the haze.

II.

The guards hopped down from the first car, and got in line along the entire train.

Near the horizon, in the long line of pale azure, you are likely to see a single white ship visible in the haze.

These sentences as originally written exemplify the common fault of using a very general term where a specific term would be much better.

It is not fruit in general, but a "pear," that the boy is eating. It is not any vessel, but the "sloop Alice," that is leaving the harbor. "Weighed anchor," "set all sail," and "stood out to sea" are preferable to the corresponding expressions given under II., not only because they are more specific, but also because their individuality is strengthened by our associations with them: they smell of the sea.

None of these expressions have, however, the freshness that they had when they first came into the language of landsmen. There is a moment when words that have passed from professional into good use have become intelligible but are not yet stale, a moment in which, being at once definite and alive, they are especially serviceable. That is the moment which a great writer makes his own.

66

Chapter VI.

LITERAL OR FIGURATIVE WORDS

ALL of us, every day of our lives, are unconsciously using figures of speech, or what were such till they were worn out by constant use. We say, for instance, that a man "broods "" over his wrongs, "reflects "" on a plan, "drives " a bargain, "ruminates" on a subject, "digests" an affront, takes a "degree," "eliminates" a figure, "tastes the "sweets" of office. We speak of a "soft" voice, a "sharp" mind, an uneven" temper, a "wild" idea, a "tame" disposition, a "striking" remark. We speak, too, of the 66 voyage "of life, the "ship" of state, the "course" of events, the "flight" of time, "fleecy " clouds. These, and hundreds of expressions like them, are constantly on the lips of men who never dream that they are talking what was once poetry; but even these an imaginative writer may revive.

And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,

Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit,

And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!

LOWELL.

In Lowell's "Washers of the Shroud," the old "Ship of

State" renews its youth.

Methought among the lawns together

We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,

And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds

Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind.

SHELLEY.

With Shelley's picture before our eyes, we forget how

often we have heard of "fleecy clouds."

Writers rarely make a deliberate choice between literal and figurative expressions. The choice is made for each by his temperament, by the habits of his mind, or by circumstances. The thoughts of one man habitually present themselves in plain language, those of another in pictures. The imagination of a third is aroused when he is greatly interested, and only then.

Figures that are not Figures. A writer who knows to which of the classes just named he belongs, and acts accordingly, will not go wrong; but one who thinks that he has imagination when he has none, and acts accordingly, exposes himself to treatment like that which Mr. Merivale receives from Lowell in the introduction to the second series of the "Biglow Papers." One of the passages there quoted from "The History of the Romans under the Empire" is as follows:

The shadowy phantom of the Republic continued to flit before the eyes of the Cæsar. There was still, he apprehended, a germ of sentiment existing, on which a scion of his own house, or even a stranger, might boldly throw himself and raise the standard of patrician independence.

"Now," says Mr. Lowell, "a ghost may haunt a murderer, but hardly, I should think, to scare him with the threat of taking a new lease of its old tenement. And fancy the scion of a house in the act of throwing itself upon a germ of sentiment to raise a standard! I am glad, since we have so much in the same kind to answer for, that this bit of horticultural rhetoric is from beyond sea."

Two other examples of this common fault may be taken from Dr. Johnson's "Life of Addison." The first is quoted from Addison's "Letter from Italy."

Fired with that name,

I bridle in my struggling muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a nobler strain.