is necessarily of what is most venerated, while if applied to solemn thought it runs the risk of being either artificial -- which defeats its end, or goody-goody.
“Note: The peril of an assumed diction of a past period arises from the fact that a very small slip will betray the manufacture and destroy the illusion. It will be remembered how Lowell pointed out to Thackeray the modern provincialism “different to” in Henry Esmond; and how Ignatius Donnelly’s Baconian cipher was discredited by the occurrence therein of the modern split infinite.10
“Do not, out of mere affectation, indulge a fancy for quaint or archaic terms.
“There is little tendency to use words too old to be cuffent or, that have a quaint effect, except from affectation:- but from this cause, in some stages of the writer’s culture the tendency is considerable.
“There is at present a strong effort on the part of scholarly authors to revive some of the hearty old Saxon expressions that have passed out of current use and this is commendable for many of these terms are too good to die. Study of the early English from an earnest desire to enlarge and diversify the resources of expression is certainly very valuable. But fondness for old words may also be, like fondness for old China, a fashion, a craze and when writers adopt them as mere affectation their style becomes artificial and fanciful and loses its earnestness and power.” John Franklin Genung, Practical Elements of Rhetoric, pp 38 - 39).
MODERN USAGE
“Language is constantly changing. Yet it changes so gradually that it may be regarded as fixed for the lifetime of any one writer. The usage to which we must conform therefore is that of our own time. We cannot justify a violation of modern usage by
1364 Minute of Dissent
