fearing only lest they be found too few and too weak to cover the
ground effectively. Of this sort are the so-called synonyms of the
Prayer-Book, wherein we "acknowledge and confess" the sins we are
forbidden to "dissemble or cloke;" and the bead-roll of the lawyer,
who huddles together "give, devise, and bequeath," lest the cunning
of litigants should evade any single verb. The works of the poets
yield still better instances. When Milton praises the Virtuous
Young Lady of his sonnet in that the spleen of her detractors moves
her only to "pity and ruth," it is not for the idle filling of the
line that he joins the second of these nouns to the first. Rather
he is careful to enlarge and intensify his meaning by drawing on
the stores of two nations, the one civilised, the other barbarous;
and ruth is a quality as much more instinctive and elemental than
pity as pitilessness is keener, harder, and more deliberate than
the inborn savagery of ruthlessness.

It is not chiefly, however, for the purposes of this accumulated
and varied emphasis that the need of synonyms is felt. There is no
more curious problem in the philosophy of style than that afforded
by the stubborn reluctance of writers, the good as well as the bad,
to repeat a word or phrase. When the thing is, they may be willing
to abide by the old rule and say the word, but when the thing
repeats itself they will seldom allow the word to follow suit. A
kind of interdict, not removed until the memory of the first
occurrence has faded, lies on a once used word. The causes of this
anxiety for a varied expression are manifold. Where there is
merely a column to fill, poverty of thought drives the hackney
author into an illicit fulness, until the trick of verbiage passes
from his practice into his creed, and makes him the dupe of his own
puppets. A commonplace book, a dictionary of synonyms, and another