did. The condensed force of interjections,--their inherent

expressiveness,--entitles them, therefore, to be regarded as the appropriate language, the mother-tongue of passion; and hence the effect of good acting depends largely on the proper introduction and just articulation of this class of words.

Shakespeare’s interjections exact a rare command of modulation, and cannot be rendered with any truth except by one who has mastered the whole play. What a profound insight of the masterpiece of the poet is required of him who would adequately utter the word “indeed” in the following passage of Othello! “It contains in it,” says an English writer, “the gist of the chief action of the play, and it implies all that the plot develops. It ought to be spoken with such an intonation as to suggest the diabolic scheme of Iago’s conduct. There is no thought of the grammatical structure of the compound, consisting of the preposition ‘in’ and the substantive ‘deed,’ which is equivalent to ‘act,’ ‘fact,’ or ‘reality.’ All this vanishes and is lost in the mere iambic dissyllable which is employed as a vehicle for the feigned tones of surprise.”

“_Iago._ I did not think he had been acquainted with her.

_Oth._ O, yes, and went between us very oft.

_Iago._ INDEED!

_Oth._ Indeed? ay, indeed. Discern’st thou aught in that? Is he not honest?

_Iago._ Honest, my lord?

_Oth._ Honest? ay, honest!”

The Greek and Latin languages abound with interjections, which are used by the orators and poets with great effect. To gratify the Athenians, as they behold their once proud enemy humbled to the dust, and draining the cup of affliction to the very last dregs, Æschylus, in his “Persai,” employs almost every form of ejaculation in which abject misery can be expressed.

The English language is preëminently a language of small words. It has more monosyllables than any other modern tongue, a peculiarity which gives it a strikingly direct and straightforward character, equally removed from the indirect French and the intricate, lumbering German. Its fondness for this class of words is even greater than that of the Anglo-Saxon. Not a few of our present monosyllables, such as the verbs “to love,” “bake,” “beat,” “slide,” “swim,” “bind,” “blow,” “brew,” were, in the Anglo-Saxon, dissyllables. The English language, impatient of all superfluities, cuts down its words to the narrowest possible limits,--lopping and condensing, never expanding. Sometimes it cuts off an initial syllable, as in “gin” for “engine,” “van” for “caravan,” “prentice” for “apprentice,” “’bus” for “omnibus,” “wig” for “periwig”; sometimes it cuts off a final syllable or syllables, as in “aid” for “aidedecamp,” “prim” for “primitive,” “cit” for “citizen,” “grog” for “grogram,” “pants” for “pantaloons,” “tick” for (pawnbroker’s) “ticket”; sometimes it strikes out a letter, or letters, from the middle of a word, or otherwise contracts it, as in “last” for “latest,” “lark” for “laverock,” “since” for “sithence,” “fortnight” for “fourteen nights,” “lord” for “hlaford,” “morning” for “morrowning,” “sent” for “sended,” “chirp” for “chirrup” or “cheer up,” “fag” for “fatigue,” “consols” for “consolidated annuities.” The same abbreviating processes are followed, when English words are borrowed from the Latin. Thus we have the monosyllable “strange” from the trisyllable _extraneus_; “spend” from _expendo_; “scour” from _exscorio_; “stop” from _obstipo_; “funnel” from _infundibulum_; “ply” from _plico_; “jetty” from _projectum_; “dean” from _decanus_; “count” from _computo_; “stray” from _extravagus_; “proxy” from _procurator_; “spell” from _syllabare_, etc. Not only are single Latin words thus maimed when converted into English, and their letters changed, transposed, or omitted, but often two English words are clipped and squeezed into one word. Thus from “proud” and “dance” we have “prance”; from “grave” and “rough” we have “gruff”; from “scrip” and “roll” comes “scroll”; from “tread,” or “trot,” and “drudge,” we have “trudge.” Even in the construction of its primitive monosyllables the English language manifests the same economy, and forms words of a totally different meaning by the simple change of a vowel; as, bag, beg, big, bog, bug; bat, bet, bit, bot, but; ball, bell, bill, boll, bull; or, again, by the change of the first letter; as, fight, light, might, night, right, tight,--dash, hash, lash, gash, rash, sash, wash. The final “ed” of our participles is rapidly disappearing, as a distinct syllable. Not content with suppressing half the letters of our syllables, and half the syllables of our words, we clip our vowels, in speaking, shorter than any other people, so that our language threatens to become a kind of stenology, or algebraic condensation of thought,--a pemmican of ideas. Voltaire said that the English gained two hours a day by clipping their words. The same love of brevity has shown itself in rendering the final _e_ in English always mute. In Chaucer the final _e_ must often be sounded as a separate syllable, or the verse will limp. To the same cause we owe such expressions as “ten _o_’clock,” instead of “_of_ the clock,” or “_on_ the clock,” and the hissing _s_, so offensive to foreign ears. The old termination of the verb, _th_, has given way to _s_ in the third person singular, and _en_ to a single letter in the third person plural.

The Anglo-Saxon, the substratum of our modern English, is emphatically monosyllabic; yet many of the grandest passages in our literature are made up almost exclusively of Saxon words. The English Bible abounds in grand, sublime, and tender passages, couched almost entirely in words of one syllable. 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,”--contains seventeen monosyllables to three others. What passage in Holy Writ surpasses in energetic brevity that which describes the death of Sisera,--“At her feet he bowed, he fell; at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; where he bowed, there he fell down dead”? Here are twenty-two monosyllables to one dissyllable thrice repeated, and that a word which is usually pronounced as a monosyllable. The lament of David over Saul and Jonathan is not surpassed in pathos by any similar passage in the whole range of literature; yet a very large proportion of these touching words are of one or two syllables:--“The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how are the mighty fallen!... Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offering.... Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.... They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.... How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” Occasionally a long word is used in the current version, where a more vivid or picturesque short one might have been employed, as where our Saviour exclaims: “Oh, ye generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” In one of the older versions “brood” is used in place of “generation,” with far greater effect.

The early writers, the “pure wells of English undefiled,” abound in small words. Shakespeare employs them in his finest passages, especially when he would paint a scene with a few masterly touches. Hear Macbeth:

“Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash’d 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 Unmannerly breech’d with gore.”

Are monosyllables passionless? Listen, again, to the “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.”

Two dissyllables only among fifty-two words!

Bishop Hall, in one of his most powerful satires, speaking of the vanity of “adding house to house and field to field,” has these beautiful lines:

“Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store, And he that cares for most shall find no more.”

“What harmonious monosyllables!” exclaims the critic, Gifford; yet they may be paralleled by others in the same writer, equally musical and equally expressive.

Was Milton tame? He knew when to use polysyllables of “learned length and thundering sound”; but he knew also when to produce the grandest effects by the small words despised by inferior artists. Read his account of the journey of the fallen angels:

“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.”

In what other language shall we find in the same number of words a more vivid picture of desolation than this? Hear, again, the lost archangel calling upon hell to receive its new possessor:

“One who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, 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.”

Did Collins lack lyric beauty, grace, or power? Read the following exquisite lines, in which the truth of the sentiment that “poetry is the short-hand of thought” is strikingly illustrated:

“How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country’s wishes blest! When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, Returns to deck their hallow’d mould, She there shall dress a sweeter sod Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.

By fairy hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall a while repair, To dwell a weeping hermit there.”

Where, in the whole range of English poetry, shall we find anything more perfect than these lines? What a quantity and variety of thought are here condensed into two verses, like a cluster of rock crystals, sparkling and distinct, yet receiving and reflecting lustre by the combination! Poetry and picture, pathos and fancy, grandeur and simplicity, are combined in verse, the melody of which has never been surpassed. Yet, out of the seventy-nine words in these lines, sixty-two are monosyllables.

Did Byron lack force or fire? His skilful use of monosyllables is often the very secret of his charm. It is true that he too frequently resorts to quaint, obsolete, and outlandish terms, thinking thereby to render his style more gorgeous or grand. But his chief strength lies in his despotic command over the simplest forms of speech. Listen to the words in which he describes 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.”

Here, out of forty-two words, all but four are monosyllables; and yet how exquisitely are all these monosyllables linked into the majestic and animated movement of the anapestic measure! Again, what can be more musical and more melancholy than the opening verse of the lines in which the same poet bids adieu to his native land?

“Adieu! adieu! my native shore Fades o’er the waters blue, The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild sea-mew.

Yon sun that sets upon the sea We follow in his flight; Farewell awhile to him and thee, My native land, good night!

With thee, my bark, I’ll swiftly go Athwart the foaming brine; Nor care what land thou bear’st me to, So not again to mine.

Welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves And when you fail my sight, Welcome, ye deserts and ye caves! My native land, good night!”

Two Latin words, “native” and “desert”; one French, “adieu”; the rest, English purely. The third and fourth lines paint the scene to the life; yet all the words but one are monosyllables.

How graceful, tender, thoughtful, and melancholy, are the following lines by Moore, of which the monosyllabic music is one of the principal charms:

“Those evening bells! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells, Of youth and home, and that sweet time, When last I heard their soothing chime.

Those joyous hours have passed away; And many a heart, that then was gay, Within the tomb now darkly dwells, And hears no more those evening bells.

And so ’twill be when I am gone; That tuneful peal will still ring on, While other bards shall walk those dells, And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!”

The following brief passage from one of Landor’s poems strikingly illustrates the metrical effect of simple words of one syllable:

“She was sent forth To bring that light which never wintry blast Blows out, nor rain, nor snow extinguishes-- The light that shines from loving eyes upon Eyes that love back, till they can see no more.”

Here, out of thirty different words, but one is a long one; nearly all the rest are monosyllables.

Herbert Spencer, in an able paper on the “Philosophy of Style,” has pointed out the superior forcibleness of Saxon-English to Latin-English, and shown that it is due largely to the comparative brevity of the Saxon. If a thought gains in energy in proportion as it is expressed in fewer words, it must also gain in energy in proportion as the words in which it is expressed have fewer syllables. If surplus articulations fatigue the hearer, distract his attention, and diminish the strength of the impression made upon him, it matters not whether they consist of entire words or of parts of words. “Formerly,” says an able writer, “when armies engaged in battle, they were drawn up in one long line, fighting from flank to flank; but a great general broke up this heavy mass into several files, so that he could bend his front at will, bring any troops he chose into action, and, even after the first onslaught, change the whole order of the field; and though such a broken line might not have pleased an old soldier’s eye, as having a look of weakness about it, still it carried the day, and is everywhere now the arrangement. There will thus be an advantage, the advantage of suppleness, in having the parts of a word to a certain degree kept by themselves; this, indeed, is the way with all languages as they become more refined; and so far are monosyllabic languages from being lame and ungainly, that such are the sweetest and gracefulest, as those of Asia; and the most rough and untamed (those of North America) abound in huge unkempt words,--yardlongtailed, like fiends.”

I have spoken in the previous chapter of Johnson’s fondness for big, swelling words, the leviathans of the lexicon, and also of certain speakers and writers in our own day, who have an equal contempt for small words, and never use one when they can find a pompous polysyllable to take its place. It is evident from the passages I have cited, that these Liliputians,--these Tom Thumbs of the dictionary,--play as important a part in our literature as their bigger and more magniloquent brethren. Horne Tooke admitted their force, when, on his trial for high treason, he said that he was “the miserable victim of two prepositions and a conjunction.” 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 important class in the great family of words.

The class of small words which were once contemptuously called “particles,” are now acknowledged to be the very bolts, pins, and hinges of the structure of language. Their significance increases just in the degree that a nation thinks acutely and expresses its thought accurately. An uncultivated idiom can do without them; but as soon as a people becomes thoughtful, and wishes to connect and modify its ideas,--in short, to pursue metaphysical inquiries, and to reason logically,--the microscopic parts of speech become indispensable. In some kinds of writing the almost exclusive use of small words is necessary. What would have been the fate of Bunyan’s immortal book, had he 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 out 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 a man half understands the subject of which he speaks or writes, he will, like Goldsmith’s schoolmaster, use words of “learned length and thundering sound.” But when he is master of his theme, and when he feels deeply, he will use short, plain words which all can understand. Rage and fear, it has been happily said, strike out their terms like the sharp crack of the rifle when it sends its bullets straight to the point.[12] When, after wearily waiting in Chesterfield’s ante-room, Johnson wrote his indignant letter, he broke away, to a considerable extent, from his usual elephantine style, and used short, sharp, and stinging terms.

In conclusion, when we remember that the Saxon language, the soul of the English, is essentially monosyllabic; that our language contains, of monosyllables formed by 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 every man who has occasion to teach or move his fellow-men by tongue or pen, I would say in the words of Dr. Addison Alexander,--themselves a happy example of the thing he commends:

“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 a 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,-- Light, but no heat--a flash, but not a blaze! 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 their 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.”

FOOTNOTES:

[11] “Lectures on the English Language,” by G. P. Marsh.

[12] “The Use of Short Words,” by Hon. Horatio Seymour.