obvious reason, which is sometimes overlooked, that great authors do not write to illustrate grammarians' rules. Literature is not a hortus siccus, or a collection of botanical specimens, to illustrate the resources of language. It is a garden of living flowers, among which the patient inquirer has to construct his own laws of taste. The point to be remembered is that a fixed habit of using uncommon words, however excellent its motive may be, is apt to betray even the greatest writers into forced effects of style.

Carlyle's French Revolution affords us many examples. But first of all let us take this description of the flight of King Louis at daybreak through the slumbering wood of Bondy :

"All slumbers save the multiplex rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an Herb-merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plodding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the great Northeast sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn: from dewy branch, birds here and there, with short deep warble, salute the coming sun. Stars fade out, and Galaxies; street-lamps of the city of God. The universe, O my brother, is flinging wide its portals for the Levee of the Great High King. Thou, poor King Louis, farest nevertheless, as mortals do,

towards Orient lands of Hope: and the Tuileries with its Levees, and France and the Earth itself, is but a larger kind of doghutch, occasionally going rabid."

The words, and phrases, and images, are uncommon enough. Carlyle has revived, invented, borrowed, and employed nearly every device by which literature can be invigorated in order to produce his effects. Take the one magnificent sentence, "Stars fade out, and Galaxies; streetlamps of the City of God." The use of galaxies in its original sense of "clusters of stars" is an instance of that vindication of words by restoring them to their proper meaning which we spoke of as the correction of speech. In vulgar talk a

"galaxy" is used of any cluster or crowd, the commonest expression of all being a "galaxy of beauty" in the sense of a crowd of beautiful people. Carlyle rescues the word from this vulgar mistake; he lifts it straight up into the heaven from which it fell. The use of "street-lamps" is an instance of the enrichment of literature by combining words in a new way. A new phrase has been invented by the combination of the ideas of "street-lamps" and "God." The device is known as a metaphor (Greek μeтapópa, from MeTapéρw, I carry across), and it means the transference of a word, or of words, from one set of

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ideas to another. We shall see later that it must be carefully distinguished from a mere variation of expression, but here we may go on to note that the words are the more appropriate because they bring into play the further devices of contrast and comparison. There is an almost violent contrast between the ideas of the sky and of street-lamps-the one so tranquil and remote, the other so near and throbbing; and yet the splendour of the image is heightened by the comparison implied between the fading lights in the City of God, and the vanishing lights of Paris, from which King Louis is a fugitive. Here, then, in a dozen words, we find more kinds of literary language than we have yet learned to recognise, and we feel that there is an excellent uncommonness in the use that Carlyle makes of the rare word "brindled," and the colloquial " doghutch."

§ 5. Some of their Dangers.—With these feelings upon us, let us take another sentence from the same book of the French Revolution. There occurs, a few pages further on, the following description of sunset :

"Wearied mortals are creeping home from their

field-labour; the village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouth

ful of air and human news. Still summereventide everywhere! The great Sun hangs flaming on the utmost Northwest; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, as all other mills and drudgeries, may furl its canvas, and cease swashing and circling. The swenkt grinders in this Treadmill of an Earth have ground out another Day."

When we look for the elements of style in this passage, what is there to delight us? To "blush Good-night" is a pretty combination of two words, neither of which has much weight or dignity. Their combined effect is as much below the force of the "gray brindled dawn," as the "villageartisan" who "eats with relish his supper of herbs" is inferior in vivid presentment to the "Herbmerchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plodding." The artisan, we feel, is an item in a catalogue; the herb-merchant is a finished picture. "Audibler," the next uncommon word, has no charm that serves to recommend it in preference to "more audible"; and then we come to the

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sentence, "the swenkt grinders in this Treadmill of an Earth have ground out another Day." We recollect our recent delight at Carlyle's treatment of "galaxies." There was a word restored from misuse and forgetfulness to the service of literature. But "swenkt"-why "swenkt"? Carlyle has gone back two centuries or more to find it: and, when he has found it, why and how is it preferable to "weary" or "tired"? It is like a piece of Wardour-street furniture, set down in a modern drawing-room. And then, again, "this Treadmill of an Earth.” We see that it is intended as a metaphor, as a transference of words from one set of ideas to another. But it does not strike us as metaphorical, as the streetlamps of the sky were metaphorical. Indeed, we have an uneasy suspicion that the phrase is very little more than a mere variation of language, on a level, for literary purposes, with "the resurrection of the celestial luminary" as a variant for "sunrise." For let us think what Carlyle wants to say. He has to tell us that the sunset put a close to the labour of another day. He has to tell us, we repeat, that the sunset put a close to the hard labour of another day. He had to tell us, we repeat once more, that the sunset put a close to the Hard Labour of another day. Now, do you see the weakness of the chain-labour, hard