Chapter III · AIRS AND GRACES (continued 2)

These so-called gentlemen seem to forget....

I was content to be snubbed and harassed and worried a hundred times a day by one or other of the ‘great’ personages who wandered at will all over my house and grounds, and accepted my lavish hospitality. Many people imagine that it must be an ‘honour’ to entertain a select party of aristocrats, but I....—Corelli.

The much-prated-of ‘kindness of heart’ and ‘generosity’ possessed by millionaires, generally amounts to this kind of thing.—Corelli.

Was I about to discover that the supposed ‘woman-hater’ had been tamed and caught at last?—Corelli.

That should undoubtedly have been your ‘great’ career—you were born for it—made for it! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now....—Corelli.

c. Superlatives without the.

The omission of the with superlatives is limited by ordinary prose usage to (1) Superlatives after a possessive: ‘Your best plan’. (2) Superlatives with most: ‘in most distressing circumstances’, but not ‘in saddest circumstances’. (3) Superlatives in apposition, followed by of: ‘I took refuge with X., kindliest of hosts’; ‘We are now at Weymouth, dingiest of decayed watering-places’. Many writers of the present day affect the omission of the in all cases where the superlative only means very. No harm will be done if they eventually have their way: in the meantime, the omission of the with inflected superlatives has the appearance of gross mannerism.

Our enveloping movements since some days proved successful, and fiercest battle is now proceeding.—Times.

In which, too, so many noblest men have ... both made and been what will be venerated to all time.—Carlyle.

Struggling with objects which, though it cannot master them, are essentially of richest significance.—Carlyle.

The request was urged with every kind suggestion, and every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel, amply redeemed their word.—Emerson.

In Darkest Africa.—Stanley.

Delos furnishes, not only quaintest tripods, crude bronze oxen and horses like those found at Olympia, but....—L. M. Mitchell.

The scene represents in crudest forms the combat of gods and giants, a subject which should attain long afterwards fullest expression in the powerful frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamon.—L. M. Mitchell.

A world of highest and noblest thought in dramas of perfect form.—L. M. Mitchell.

From earliest times such competitive games had been celebrated.—L. M. Mitchell.

When fullest, freest forms had not yet been developed.—L. M. Mitchell.

d. Cheap originality.

Just as ‘elegant variation’ is generally a worse fault than monotony, so the avoidance of trite phrases is sometimes worse than triteness itself. Children have been known to satisfy an early thirst for notoriety by merely turning their coats inside out; and ‘distinction’ of style has been secured by some writers on the still easier terms of writing a common expression backwards. By this simplest of all possible expedients, ‘wear and tear’ ceases to be English, and becomes Carlylese, and Emerson acquires an exclusive property (so at least one hopes) in ‘nothing or little’. The novice need scarcely be warned against infringing these writers’ patents; it would be as unpardonable as stealing the idea of a machine for converting clean knives into dirty ones. Hackneyed phrases become hackneyed because they are useful, in the first instance; but they derive a new efficiency from the very fact that they are hackneyed. Their precise form grows to be an essential part of the idea they convey, and all that a writer effects by turning such a phrase backwards, or otherwise tampering with it, is to give us our triteness at secondhand; we are put to the trouble of translating ‘tear and wear’, only to arrive at our old friend ‘wear and tear’, hackneyed as ever.

How beautiful is noble-sentiment; like gossamer-gauze beautiful and cheap, which will stand no tear and wear.—Carlyle.

Bloated promises, which end in nothing or little.—Emerson.

The universities also are parcel of the ecclesiastical system.—Emerson.

Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever national man, were by this means sent to Parliament.—Emerson.

And the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker.—Emerson.

The faster the ball falls to the sun, the force to fly off is by so much augmented.—Emerson.

The friction in nature is so enormous that we cannot spare any power. It is not question to express our thought, to elect our way, but to overcome resistances.—Emerson.