s going to visit. "You must not
reckon," he wrote, "on my eating your hors d'oeuvre. I have given them
up entirely. The time has gone by when I can abuse my stomach with your
olives and your Lucanian sausages."[6]

To repeat then, if the student, who is going to be a historian, uses his
acquisitive years in obtaining a thorough knowledge of French and Latin,
he will afterwards be spared useless regrets. He will naturally add
German for the purpose of general culture and, if languages come easy,
perhaps Greek. "Who is not acquainted with another language," said
Goethe, "knows not his own." A thorough knowledge of Latin and French is
a long stride towards an efficient mastery of English. In the matter of
diction, the English writer is rarely in doubt as to words of
Anglo-Saxon origin, for these are deep-rooted in his childhood and his
choice is generally instinctive. The difficulties most persistently
besetting him concern words that come from the Latin or the French; and
here he must use reason or the dictionary or both. The author who has a
thorough knowledge of Latin and French will argue with himself as to the
correct diction, will follow Emerson's advice, "Know words
etymologically; pull them apart; see how they are made; and use them
only where they fit."[7] As it is in action through life, so it is in
writing; the conclusions arrived at by reason are apt to be more
valuable than those which we accept on authority. The reasoned literary
style is more virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment
arrived at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary for
the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke authority, so that the
writer who reasons out the meaning of words may constantly accelerate
his pace, for the doubt and decision of yesterday is to-day a solid
acquirement, ingrained in his mental being. I have lately been reading a
good deal of Gibbon and I cannot imagine his having had frequent
recourse to a dictionary. I do not remember even an allusion either in
his autobiographies or in his private letters to any such aid.
Undoubtedly his thorough knowledge of Latin and French, his vast reading
of Latin, French, and English books, enabled him to dispense with the
thumbing of a dictionary and there was probably a reasoning process at
the back of every important word. It is difficult, if not impossible, to
improve on Gibbon by the substitution of one word for another.

A rather large reading of S