mes colorless: Vaugelas estimates that one-half of the phrases and
terms employed by Amyot are set aside.[3213] With the exception of
La Fontaine, an isolated and spontaneous genius, who reopens the old
sources, and La Bruyere, a bold seeker, who opens a fresh source, and
Voltaire an incarnate demon who, in his anonymous and pseudonymous
writings, gives the rein to the violent, crude expressions of his
inspiration,[3214] the terms which are most appropriate fall into
desuetude. One day, Gresset, in a discourse at the Academy, dares utter
four or five of these,[3215] relating, I believe, to carriages and
head-dresses, whereupon murmurs at once burst forth. During his long
retreat he had become provincial and lost the touch.--By degrees,
discourses are composed of "general expressions" only. These are even
employed, in accordance with Buffon's precept, to designate concrete
objects. They are more in conformity with the polished courtesy which
smoothes over, appeases, and avoids rough or familiar expressions, to
which some views appear gross or rude unless partly hidden by a veil.
This makes it easier for the superficial listener; prevailing terms
alone will immediately arouse current and common ideas; they are
intelligible to every man from the single fact that he belongs to the
drawing-room; special terms, on the contrary, demand an effort of the
memory or of the imagination. Suppose that, in relation to Franks or
to savages, I should mention "a battle-ax," which would be at once
understood; should I mention a "tomahawk," or a "francisque,"[3216]
many would imagine that I was speaking Teuton or Iroquois.[3217] In this
respect the more fashionable and refined the style, the more punctilious
the effort. Every appropriate term is banished from poetry; if one
happens to enter the mind it must be evaded or replaced by a paraphrase.
An eighteenth century poet can hardly permit himself to employ more
than one-third of the dictionary, poetic language at last becomes
so restricted as to compel a man with anything to say not to express
himself in verse.[3218]

On the other hand the more you prune the more you thin out. Reduced to
a select vocabulary the Frenchman deals with fewer subjects, but he
describes them more agreeably and more clearly. "Courtesy, accuracy",
(Urbanite, exactitude!), these two words, born at the same time with the
French Academy, describes in a nutshell the reform of which it is the
tool, and which the drawi