LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18147, 9 August 1924, Page 11

LITERARY GOSSIP

A London Magistrate, writes Filson Young, to the New York ''Times," has been making some sound remarks on the nse of long words in ordinary verbal transactions. 3e was apparently addressing himself to the police, who love to say, "Ho was then conducted to his residence in a condition of advanced intoxication," when they mean, "He was taken home drunk." But the vice to which he alluded, is of much wider application. To do writers of English justice, it is not a fault that is much found in the contemporary literature either of England or America. But it is a fault, and a very bad fault, of what I may call tho half-educated wor-ld—the people who know enough to be impressed by .i word of four syllables, but not enough to realise that "the nobility of the English language rests largely upon itj Saxon foundations, and that the fewer Latin words one can use the better. The reason is that English words founded on Latin roots are almost . always polysyllabic, while words derived from Saxon roots axe nearly- always monosyllabic. This is a rough and inexact classification,- but it is enough for my immediate purpose.

The business world, both in England and America, is a great offender in this matter. Nothing more dreadful can be imagined from the literary point of view than the ordinary business letter. Here is an example which contains a gross offence in almost every line: '' Concerning your esteemed enquiries re above, we suggest it would be advisable if. you could call at your now showing, and which we consider cannot fail to include.. some specimen which would meet with your approval. Awaiting, the favour of a reply, w« are," etc. This is the kind of thing in which men in offices all over England who are in a position to dictate letters seem to revel. The truth is that "business" conversation and correspondence consist almost entirely of cliches; when you have heard the first words of 'a sentence you know how it is going to continue and end. In a community which is now largely commercial, educated in such slipshod habits, it is difficult to foresee any other result than the gradual deterioration and degradation of the language. It is quite certain that the average of style in the journalism used in England to-day is very much lower than it was. Tho endeavour to import "snap" from America without having the .necessary slang vocabulary to give it expression has resulted here in a kind of writing that has most of the faults of American journalism and none of its merits.

Romanticism is on the rise in Germany, says a Berlin correspondent, because the true poetic nature always feels opposed to its environment. As long as the poets lived in comfort and were able to make pleasure trips to Italy, while they were beside the blue sea and on flower-carpeted meadows, they occupied themselves with the misery of those who dwell in the cellars of Berlin. To-day, when they, have their full share of wretchedness, they spread the wings of their fancy and escape into the world of fairy tales and legends. Never before have poets and would-be poets, male and female, composed so many fairy tales for old and young. Never before has the public been offered s o many new land splendid editions of beautiful old folk lore and of the legend treasures of primitive peoples. There are being published, bought, and studied, new editions of the animal literature of.the romantic school—Brentano, Noyalis, K T A Hoffmann—a literature that a cultural force in. the first half of the nineteenth century, .was- f° r ." ridiculed in the second half. _ Worlds of beauty and. profundity of thought are being discovered m these.formless, fantastic novels and philosophic.dissertations. In the musically billows of their emotional gushmgs our youth is washing itself-clean of the hard materialistic drpss that threatened to freeze the: German heart.

Discussing the possibility of standard ' sizes for books, the "Manchester Guardian" saysthat a great variety of hVghts and thicknesses certainly does not make for the easy arrangement of library shelves, and "when publishers bind books by the-same author and on the same eubject in different sizes the anarchy has gone beyond which can ; be considered an am able one" The ."Guardian" thinks, however, that it. would be rather straitlaced to insist that book sizes should be limited to three .or four recognised lengths and breadths. "It was complained about 3>r. Johnson that if he had written a fable he womd have made all the little fishes talk like whales; it would. be unfortunate to suggest to a publisher of lyrics that he must somehow swell each volume oflt to the size of an historical tome. ±or domestic bookshelves many people, too, find a certain decorative effect in a broken line of covers and colours—a "sweet disorder in the dress may be for some as effective with books as Herrick thought that it was m woman's attire.