'
A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to charge
some of the moralists of the last century with an indifference into which
they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes educated
them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost incapable of
coming within arm's-length of a real or spiritual emotion. There is no
knowing to what distance the removal of the 'appropriate sentiment' from
the central soul might have attained but for the change and renewal in
language, which came when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed
eternity far from the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the
'pleasing hope,' the 'fond desire;' and the touch of war was distant from
him who conceived his 'repulsed battalions' and his 'doubtful battle.'
What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored once
more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too eager to go
into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable raptures over the
mere making of common words. 'A hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword!
Beautiful!' they cried; and for the love of German the youngest daughter
of Chrysale herself might have consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It
seemed to be forgotten that a language with all its construction visible
is a language little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; that
its images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain
spiritualising and subtilising effect of alien derivations is a privilege
and an advantage incalculable--that to possess that half of the language
within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque allusions are at play
is to possess the state and security of a dead tongue, without the death.
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