Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1De Quincey, Thomas
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Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1
De Quincey, Thomas
English essays
I affirm, therefore, that Lord Brougham's counsel to the Glasgow
students is not only bad counsel,--and bad counsel for the result, as
well as for the grounds, which are either capricious or nugatory,--but
also that, in the exact proportion in which the range of thought
expands, it is an impossible counsel, an impracticable counsel--a
counsel having for its purpose to embarrass and lay the mind in fetters,
where even its utmost freedom and its largest resources will be
found all too little for the growing necessities of the intellect.
"Long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_!" What does _that_ describe?
Exactly the Latin part of our language. Now, those very terminations
speak for themselves:--All high abstractions end in _ation_; that is,
they are Latin; and, just in proportion as the abstracting power extends
and widens, do the circles of thought widen, and the horizon or boundary
(contradicting its own Grecian name) melts into the infinite. On this
account it was that Coleridge (_Biographia Literaria_) remarks on
Wordsworth's philosophical poetry, that, in proportion as it goes into
the profound of passion and of thought, do the words increase which
are vulgarly called "_dictionary_ words." Now, these words, these
"dictionary" words, what are they? Simply words of Latin or Greek
origin: no other words, no Saxon words, are ever called by illiterate
persons dictionary words. And these dictionary words are indispensable
to a writer, not only in the proportion by which he transcends other
writers as to extent and as to subtility of thinking, but also as to
elevation and sublimity. Milton was not an extensive or discursive
thinker, as Shakspeare was; for the motions of his mind were
slow, solemn, sequacious, like those of the planets; not agile and
assimilative; not attracting all things within its own sphere; not
multiform: repulsion was the law of his intellect--he moved in solitary
grandeur. Yet, merely from this quality of grandeur, unapproachable
grandeur, his intellect demanded a larger infusion of Latinity into his
diction.
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