what ought to be said is at hand; we fetch it from afar, and force our
invention. Eloquence requires a more manly temper, and if its whole
body be sound and vigorous, it is quite regardless of the nicety of
paring the nails and adjusting the hair.


THE DANGER OF VERBIAGE

It often happens, too, that an oration becomes worse by attending to
these niceties, because simplicity, the language of truth, is its
greatest ornament, and affectation the reverse. The expressions that
show care, and would also appear as newly formed, fine, and eloquent,
lose the graces at which they aim, and are far from being striking and
well received, because they obscure the sense by spreading a sort of
shadow about it, or by being too crowded they choke it up, like
thick-sown grain that must run up too spindling. That which may be
spoken in a plain, direct manner we express by paraphrase; and we use
repetitions where to say a thing once is enough; and what is well
signified by one word, we load with many, and most things we choose to
signify rather by circumlocution than by proper and pertinent terms.

A proper word, indeed, now has no charms, nothing appearing to us fine
which might have been said by another word. We borrow metaphors from the
whims and conceits of the most extravagant poets, and we fancy ourselves
exceedingly witty, when others must have a good deal of wit to
understand us. Cicero is explicit in his views in this respect. "The
greatest fault a speech can have," says he, "is when it departs from the
common way of discourse and the custom of common sense." But Cicero
would pass for a harsh and barbarous author, compared to us, who make
little of whatever nature dictates, who seek not ornaments, but