effective writer or speaker must not only have something worth while saying, but must know how to say it in a worth while way.

It does not follow that the way in question, the manner of one's expression, should be out of the common, or conspicuous; on the contrary, the better the style, the less attention it draws to itself. The art that conceals art is indeed nowhere more necessary than in literary composition. All must appear easy, unlabored, natural. Yet, as Colton judiciously remarks: "Nothing is so difficult as the apparent ease of a clear and flowing style. Those graces which, from their presumed facility, encourage all to attempt to imitate them, are usually the most inimitable." That was a rare compliment paid to Goldsmith by the man in the street, who, after reading "The Vicar of Wakefield,” declared: "Well, I don't see anything remarkable about the style of the book. 'Tis quite simple; in fact, 'tis just the way I'd write, myself, if I were given to that sort of thing." A century before "The Vicar" was published, the French writer, Pascal, told the secret of the pleasure we experience in reading such authors as Goldsmith: "When we meet with a natural style we are surprised and delighted, for we expected to find an author, and have found a man."

It is with the hope of slightly helping an occasional reader of this book to acquire something of this naturalness of style, to disclose in both his sermons and his published compositions less of the author and more of the man, that this chapter is written. It may be well, before going further, to

forestall some of the more or less stereotyped criticisms which the chapter will probably, and not altogether unnaturally, provoke. In the first place, I disclaim unequivocally the arrogant assumption that I am either a critical authority on the English language, or an adept in its use. In the second place, I readily admit that this book as a whole, and even this particular chapter, will afford ample justification for the advice, Medice, cura teipsumwhich same advice, by the way, might quite as justly be proffered to many an occupant of the pulpit: not all clerical sticklers for consistency in others invariably set a personal example of practicing what they preach.

It is perhaps fortunate for many of us that this saying, "Physician, heal thyself," however effective as a smart retort, has after all but little argumentative force or weight. "A more foolish requisition," says Richard Grant White, "was never uttered. That a physician cannot heal himself is no ground for belief that his advice may not profit others; nor is even the fact that he is ailing evidence that he is ignorant of his condition or unable to better it." The fact is that the average man who gives advice about health, or morals, or writing, can probably say with more of truth than did St. Paul: "The good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do." If I am asked why I expose myself to Diderot's jest on Beccaria, "He has written on style a work in which there is no style," the answer is twofold: I have been requested by several clerical correspondents to write some such chapter as this one; and an experience of twenty

five years in teaching grammar and rhetoric has made me passably familiar with the rubrics of our language and with a considerable number of concrete distinctions between good English and bad.

For the encouragement of such younger clerics as have reason to believe that their knowledge of English is superficial rather than thorough or profound, let it be said at once that English grammar is a much more interesting study for men of thirty or forty than for boys of thirteen or fourteen. "Of all the tasks of our school-days," says a philologist of note, "perhaps none was more repugnant to any of us than the study of grammar”; and his statement is probably true of all the boys, old and young, who have wrestled with the rules of “grammar and parsing," from the days of Lindley Murray to those of Thomas W. Harvey. Who that knows his Dickens has not chuckled with enjoyment or roared with laughter over this delicious bit of burlesque parsing, in "Nicholas Nickleby"?— "Ah, it's me," said Mr. Squeers, "and me's the first person singular, nominative case, agreeing with the verb it's, and governed by Squeers understood; as a acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the a only is to be used, as a 'and, a 'art, a 'ighway." Much of our enjoyment of the burlesque probably arises from the resemblance which the Yorkshire schoolmaster's ridiculous jumble bears to almost equally ludicrous instances of parsing, remembered from the days when we wore red-topped, coppered-toed boots, and rode our sleds "bellygutter" down the hill behind the school-house. Grammar, however, is neither so dry nor so use

less a study as we were wont in those day to call it. "The structure of language," says Dr. Blair, "is extremely artificial; and there are few sciences in which a deeper or more refined logic is employed than in grammar. It is apt to be slighted by superficial thinkers, as belonging to those rudiments of knowledge which were inculcated upon us in our earliest youth. But what was then inculcated before we could comprehend its principles would abundantly repay our study in maturer years."

If it be objected to the foregoing quotation that it is taken from an eighteenth century writer whose views may now be considered obsolete, the following passage, from an American philologist who died less than a quarter of a century ago, will perhaps impress the reader as being more authoritative: "That the leading object of the study of English grammar is to teach the correct use of English is, in my view, an error, and one which is gradually becoming removed, giving way to the sounder opinion that grammar is the reflective study of language, for a variety of purposes, of which correctness in writing is only one, and a secondary or subordinate one-by no means unimportant, but best attained when sought indirectly.

It is constant use and practice, under never-failing watch and correction, that makes good writers and speakers; the application of direct authority is the most efficient corrective. Grammar has its part to contribute, but rather in the higher than the lower stages of the work." 1

1 Essentials of English Grammar, by William Dwight Whitney.

Whether or not one agrees with this philologist as to the leading object of grammatical study, one cannot but admit that the views just quoted are in harmony with those of Dr. Blair on the utility and interest of such study for men of mature years. It is true, of course, that these views are apparently dissented from by several authors whose prestige entitles their opinion to some weight. We find Richard Grant White, for instance, speaking of "that absurd and utterly useless 'branch' of education, English grammar"; but as this qualification of the subject is found in a book entitled "EveryDay English," a companion volume to the same Mr. White's "Words and Their Uses," it is clear that he, too, considers the language itself (apart from cut-and-dried grammatical formulas) eminently worth one's attention and study.

Mere nomenclature does not affect the main purpose of the man who wishes to learn how to speak and write good English and to avoid speaking and writing bad English. Whether the directions which he is told to follow are called rules of grammar, precepts of rhetoric, the demands of good usage, or what not, really matters little, provided these directions be faithfully carried out. It is not always easy indeed, nor is it at all necessary, distinctly to limit the respective domains of grammar and rhetoric and build a line-fence between them; and it is practically impossible to enclose within hard and fast boundaries the territory claimed by good usage. Concerning such a sentence as, "Every man can at least speak on one subject with authority, and that is his normal