into which
they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes educated
them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost incapable of
coming within arm's-length of a real or spiritual emotion. There is no
knowing to what distance the removal of the 'appropriate sentiment' from
the central soul might have attained but for the change and renewal in
language, which came when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed
eternity far from the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the
'pleasing hope,' the 'fond desire;' and the touch of war was distant from
him who conceived his 'repulsed battalions' and his 'doubtful battle.'
What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored once
more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too eager to go
into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable raptures over the
mere making of common words. 'A hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword!
Beautiful!' they cried; and for the love of German the youngest daughter
of Chrysale herself might have consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It
seemed to be forgotten that a language with all its construction visible
is a language little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; that
its images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain
spiritualising and subtilising effect of alien derivations is a privilege
and an advantage incalculable--that to possess that half of the language
within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque allusions are at play
is to possess the state and security of a dead tongue, without the death.

But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in
origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most beautiful
and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in Shakespeare.
'Superfluous kings,' 'A lass unparalleled,' 'Multitudinous seas:' we
needed not to wait for the eighteenth century or for the nineteenth to
learn the splendour of such encounters, of such differences, of such
nuptial unlikeness and union. But it is well that we should learn them
afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic
reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a
reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to quell
the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and the
pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement
expresses it. And not the phrase onl