for the adequate expression of that, he begets a
vocabulary faithful to the colouring of his own spirit, and in the
strictest sense original. That living authority which language needs
lies, in truth, in its scholars, who recognising always that every
language possesses a genius, a very fastidious genius, of its own,
expand at once and purify its very elements, which must needs change
along with the changing thoughts of living people. Ninety years ago,
for instance, great mental force, certainly, was needed by Wordsworth,
to break through the consecrated poetic associations of a century, and
speak the language that was his, that was to become in a measure the
language of the next generation. But he did it with the tact of a
scholar also. English, for a quarter of a century past, has been
assimilating the phraseology of pictorial art; for half a century, the
phraseology of the great German metaphysical movement of eighty years
ago; in part also the [16] language of mystical theology: and none but
pedants will regret a great consequent increase of its resources. For
many years to come its enterprise may well lie in the naturalisation of
the vocabulary of science, so only it be under the eye of a sensitive
scholarship--in a liberal naturalisation of the ideas of science too,
for after all the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full,
rich, complex matter to grapple with. The literary artist, therefore,
will be well aware of physical science; science also attaining, in its
turn, its true literary ideal. And then, as the scholar is nothing
without the historic sense, he will be apt to restore not really
obsolete or really worn-out words, but the finer edge of words still in
use: ascertain, communicate, discover--words like these it has been
part of our "business" to misuse. And still, as language was made for
man, he will be no authority for correctnesses which, limiting freedom
of utterance, were yet but accidents in their origin; as if one vowed
not to say "its," which ought to have been in Shakespeare; "his"
"hers," for inanimate objects, being but a barbarous and really
inexpressive survival. Yet we have known many things like this. Racy
Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix
readily with those long, savoursome, Latin words, rich in "second
intention." In this late day certainly, no critical process can be
conducted reasonably without eclecticism. Of [17] such eclecticism