A lesson about writing your language may go deeper than language; for
language (as in a former lecture I tried to preach to you) is your
reason, your [Greek: logos]. So long as you prefer abstract words, which
express other men's summarised concepts of things, to concrete ones which
as near as can be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand
material for your thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at
second-hand. If your language be Jargon, your intellect, if not your
whole character, will almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should
go straight, it will dodge: the difficulties it should approach with a
fair front and grip with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or
circumvent. For the Style is the Man, and where a man's treasure is there
his heart, and his brain, and his writing, will be also.




LECTURE VI.

ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE

Thursday, May 15


To-day, Gentlemen, leaving the Vanity Fair of Jargon behind us, we have
to essay a difficult country; of which, though fairly confident of his
compass-bearings, your guide confesses, that wide tracts lie outside his
knowledge--outside of anything that can properly be called his knowledge.
I feel indeed somewhat as Gideon must have felt when he divided his host
on the slopes of Mount Gilead, warning back all who were afraid. In