Will you not agree with me that here is no writing, here is no prose, here is not even English, but merely a flux of words to the pen?
Here again is a string, a concatenation—say, rather, a tiara—of gems of purest ray serene from the dark unfathomed caves of a Scottish newspaper:—
The Chinese viewpoint, as indicated in this letter, may not be without interest to your readers, because it evidently is suggestive of more than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate in disaster resembling the Chang-Sha riots. It also ventures to illustrate incidents having their inception in recent premature endeavours to accelerate the development of Protestant missions in China; but we would hope for the sake of the interests involved that what my correspondent describes as “the irresponsible ruffian element” may be known by their various religious designations only within very restricted areas.
Well, the Chinese have given it up, poor fellows! and are asking the Christians—as today’s newspapers inform us—to pray for them. Do you wonder? But that is, or was, the Chinese “viewpoint,”—and what a willow-pattern viewpoint! Observe its delicacy. It does not venture to interest or be interesting; merely “to be not without interest.” But it does “venture to illustrate incidents”—which, for a viewpoint, is brave enough: and this illustration “is suggestive of something more than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate.” What materialises? The unpleasant aspect? or the things? Grammar says the “things,” “things which if allowed to materialise.” But things are materialised already, and as a condition of their being things. It must be the aspect, then, that materialises. But, if so, it is also the aspect that culminates, and an aspect, however unpleasant, can hardly do that, or at worst cannot culminate in anything resembling the Chang-Sha riots. … I give it up.
Let us turn to another trick of Jargon: the trick of Elegant Variation, so rampant in the Sporting Press that there, without needing to attend these lectures, the undergraduate detects it for laughter:—
Hayward and C. B. Fry now faced the bowling; which apparently had no terrors for the Surrey crack. The old Oxonian, however, took some time in settling to work. …
Yes, you all recognise it and laugh at it. But why do you practise it in your essays? An undergraduate brings me an essay on Byron. In an essay on Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the second sentence turns into “that great but unequal poet” and thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Halfway down the page he becomes “the gloomy master of Newstead”: overleaf he is reincarnated into “the meteoric darling of society”: and so proceeds through successive avatars—“this arch-rebel,” “the author of Childe Harold,” “the apostle of scorn,” “the ex-Harrovian, proud, but abnormally sensitive of his clubfoot,” “the martyr of Missolonghi,” “the pageant-monger of a bleeding heart.” Now this again is Jargon. It does not, as most Jargon does, come of laziness; but it comes of timidity, which is worse. In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not only calls a spade a spade but has the pluck to double spades and redouble.
For another rule—just as rough and ready, but just as useful: Train your suspicions to bristle up whenever you come upon “as regards,” “with regard to,” “in respect of,” “in connection with,” “according as to whether,” and the like. They are all dodges of Jargon, circumlocutions for evading this or that simple statement: and I say that it is not enough to avoid them nine times out of ten, or nine-and-ninety times out of a hundred. You should never use them. That is positive enough, I hope? Though I cannot admire his style, I admire the man who wrote to me, “Re Tennyson—your remarks anent his In Memoriam make me sick”: for though “re” is not a preposition of the first water, and “anent” has enjoyed its day, the finish crowned the work. But here are a few specimens far, very far, worse:—
The special difficulty in Professor Minocelsi’s case [our old friend “case” again] arose in connection with the view he holds relative to the historical value of the opening pages of Genesis.
That is Jargon. In prose, even taking the miserable sentence as it stands constructed, we should write “the difficulty arose over the views he holds about the historical value,” etc.
From a popular novelist:—
I was entirely indifferent as to the results of the game, caring nothing at all as to whether I had losses or gains—
Cut out the first “as” in “as to,” and the second “as to” altogether, and the sentence begins to be prose—“I was indifferent to the results of the game, caring nothing whether I had losses or gains.”
But why, like Dogberry, have “had losses”? Why not simply “lose.” Let us try again. “I was entirely indifferent to the results of the game, caring nothing at all whether I won or lost.”
Still the sentence remains absurd: for the second clause but repeats the first without adding one jot. For if you care not at all whether you win or lose, you must be entirely indifferent to the results of the game. So why not say “I was careless if I won or lost,” and have done with it?
A man of simple and charming character, he was fitly associated with the distinction of the Order of Merit.
I take this gem with some others from a collection made three
