eris paribus_, when a Latin and a Saxon word offer themselves
to our choice, we shall generally do best to employ the Saxon, to speak
of 'happiness' rather than 'felicity', 'almighty' rather than
'omnipotent', a 'forerunner' rather than a 'precursor', still these
latter must be regarded as much denizens in the language as the former,
no alien interlopers, but possessing the rights of citizenship as fully
as the most Saxon word of them all. One part of the language is not to
be favoured at the expense of the other; the Saxon at the cost of the
Latin, as little as the Latin at the cost of the Saxon. "Both are
indispensable; and speaking generally without stopping to distinguish as
to subject, both are _equally_ indispensable. Pathos, in situations
which are homely, or at all connected with domestic affections,
naturally moves by Saxon words. Lyrical emotion of every kind, which (to
merit the name of _lyrical_) must be in the state of flux and reflux,
or, generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon element of our
language. And why? Because the Saxon is the aboriginal element; the
basis and not the superstructure: consequently it comprehends all the
ideas which are natural to the heart of man and to the elementary
situations of life. And although the Latin often furnishes us with
duplicates of these ideas, yet the Saxon, or monosyllabic part, has the
advantage of precedency in our use and knowledge; for it is the language
of the nursery whether for rich or poor, in which great philological
academy no toleration is given to words in 'osity' or 'ation'. There is
therefore a great advantage, as regards the consecration to our
feelings, settled by usage and custom upon the Saxon strands in the
mixed yarn of our native tongue. And universally, this may be
remarked--that wherever the passion of a poem is of that sort which
_uses_, _presumes_, or _postulates_ the ideas, without seeking to extend
them, Saxon will be the 'cocoon' (to speak by the language applied to
silk-worms), which the poem spins for itself. But on the other hand,
where the motion of the feeling is _by_ and _through_ the ideas, where
(as in religious or meditative poetry--Young's, for instance, or
Cowper's), the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues of
the thinking, there the Latin will predominate; and so much so that,
whilst the flesh, the blood, and the muscle, will be often almost
exclusively Latin, the articulations only, or hinges of conn