enience. I conceive that words are like money, not the worse
for being common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone that gives
them circulation or value. I am fastidious in this respect, and would
almost as soon coin the currency of the realm as counterfeit the King's
English. I never invented or gave a new and unauthorised meaning to any
word but one single one (the term _impersonal_ applied to feelings),
and that was in an abstruse metaphysical discussion to express a very
difficult distinction. I have been (I know) loudly accused of revelling
in vulgarisms and broken English. I cannot speak to that point; but
so far I plead guilty to the determined use of acknowledged idioms and
common elliptical expressions. I am not sure that the critics in
question know the one from the other, that is, can distinguish any
medium between formal pedantry and the most barbarous solecism. As an
author I endeavour to employ plain words and popular modes of
construction, as, were I a chapman and dealer, I should common weights
and measures.

The proper force of words lies not in the words themselves, but in their
application. A word may be a fine-sounding word, of an unusual length,
and very imposing from its learning and novelty, and yet in the
connection in which it is introduced may be quite pointless and
irrelevant. It is not pomp or pretension, but the adaptation of the
expression to the idea, that clenches a writer's meaning:--as it is not
the size or glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each to
its place, that gives strength to the arch; or as the pegs and nails are
as necessary to the support of the building as the larger timbers, and
more so than the mere showy, unsubstantial ornaments. I hate anything
that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see a load of
bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words
without anything in them. A person who does not deliberately dispose of
all his thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy disguises may
strike out twenty varieties of familiar everyday language, each coming
somewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hit
upon that particular and only one which may be said to be identical
with the exact impression in his mind. This would seem to show that Mr.
Cobbett is hardly right in saying that the first word that occurs is
always the best. It may be a very good one; and yet a better may present
itself on reflec