st things in three ways,
according as we draw on one or another of the three main sources of our
speech. Thus, you can Begin, or Commence, or Initiate an undertaking,
with Boldness, or Courage, or Resolution. If you are a Workman, or
Labourer, or Operative, you can Ask, or Bequest, or Solicit your
employer to Yield, or Grant, or Concede, an increase in the Earnings, or
Wages, or Remuneration which fall to the lot of your Fellow, or
Companion, or Associate. Your employer is perhaps Old, or Veteran, or
Superannuated, which may Hinder, or Delay, or Retard the success of your
application. But if you Foretell, or Prophesy, or Predict that the War
will have an End, or Close, or Termination that shall not only be
Speedy, or Rapid, or Accelerated, but also Great, or Grand, or
Magnificent, you may perhaps Stir, or Move, or Actuate him to have Ruth,
or Pity, or Compassion on your Mate, or Colleague, or Collaborator. The
English language, then, is a language of great wealth--much greater
wealth than can be illustrated by any brief example. But wealth is
nothing unless you can use it. The real strength of English lies in the
inspired freedom and variety of its syntax. There is no grammar of the
English speech which is not comic in its stiffness and inadequacy. An
English grammar does not explain all that we can do with our speech; it
merely explains what shackles and restraints we must put upon our speech
if we would bring it within the comprehension of a school-bred
grammarian. But the speech itself is like the sea, and soon breaks down
the dykes built by the inland engineer. It was the fashion, in the
eighteenth century, to speak of the divine Shakespeare. The reach and
catholicity of his imagination was what earned him that extravagant
praise; but his syntax has no less title to be called divine. It is not
cast or wrought, like metal; it leaps like fire, and moves like air. So
is every one that is born of the spirit. Our speech is our great
charter. Far better than in the long constitutional process whereby we
subjected our kings to law, and gave dignity and strength to our
Commons, the meaning of English freedom is to be seen in the illimitable
freedom of our English speech.

Our literature is almost as rich as our language. Modern German
literature begins in the eighteenth century. Modern English literature
began with Chaucer, in the fourteenth century, and has been full of
great names and great books ever since. Nothing has b