in Arabia have I seen a Phoenix!'
I confess my illustrations are of a more homely and humble nature.

(4) I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a specimen of
the mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to do with any real facts
or feelings.

(5) Pliny's _Natural History,_ Book 36.

ESSAY VIII. ON FAMILIAR STYLE

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar
for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to
write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more
precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I
am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all
low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, _slipshod_ allusions. It is
not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use;
it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to
follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write
a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as any one would
speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of
words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting
aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. Or, to give another
illustration, to write naturally is the same thing in regard to common
conversation as to read naturally is in regard to common speech. It
does not follow that it is an easy thing to give the true accent and
inflection to the words you utter, because you do not attempt to rise
above the level of ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do
not assume, indeed, the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of
stage-declamation; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture,
without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or
clownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You are tied
down to a given and appropriate articulation, which is determined by the
habitual associations between sense and sound, and which you can only
hit by entering into the author's meaning, as you must find the proper
words and style to express yourself by fixing your thoughts on the
subject you have to write about. Any one may mouth out a passage with
a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to
write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task.
Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as
the thing you wa