less expressive even than signs or gestures. "The strongest effects are produced by interjections, which condense entire sentences into syllables." Direction. - Expand each expression below into a full sentence, and note the loss of strength: 1. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life; another his crown. 2. Miscreant! 3. No minute guns, no flags at half mast, no nation in tears. 4. Well done, good and faithful servant. 5. Cheers for the living, tears for the dead. 6. Off with his head! so much for Buckingham. 7. Beautiful! 8. From me awhile. 9. Apace, Eros, apace. 10. On to Berlin. II. Ecclesiastical establish ments from the White Sea to 12. Down in front! 16. Merry Christmas; happy New-Year. 17. True, the specter is now small. 18. Not at all. 19. If the people do not elect the president, somebody must. 20. No more of that. 21. Liberty first and Union afterwards. 22. Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable. Direction. -- Contract these sentences by omitting the words that can be spared, and note the gain in vigor : Direction. - Bring in as many sentences that may be stripped of adjectives or adverbs or phrases or conjunctions or prepositions or even of the subject or of the verb or of both, and gain in energy by the loss of words. LESSON 62. IDIOMS, EPIGRAMS, PROVERBS, AND QUOTATIONS. Discourse may be made energetic by the use of IV. The Idioms of the Language, Epigrams, Proverbs, and apt Quotations. -Idioms are constructions and expressions peculiar to the language containing them. When we speak of the idiom of a language, we mean its general characteristics the structure, spirit, and genius by which it is known, and by which it is differenced from other languages. But when we speak of an idiom of it, or of its idioms, we Idioms, Epigrams, Proverbs, and Quotations. 169 mean constructions peculiar to it, and expressions which translated literally into any other language, would not make sense in that language, or would not mean there what they mean in the original. These idiomatic expressions, with which every language swarms, are often figurative, and always brief, and pregnant with meaning. In them lies much of the strength of the language, and through them runs its very life-blood. Their use makes discourse fresh, crisp, native, and forcible. Bain says that an epigram rouses the mind (1) by the contradiction between the language and its real meaningWe cannot see the wood for the trees; (2) by the shock of an identical assertion - Bread is bread; (3) by irrelevance Where snow falls, there is freedom; and (4) by an unexpected turn to a familiar saying— Summer has set in with its usual severity. He calls a pun a species of epigram. But the epigram has a wider range than this. An Epigram is a sharp. and terse expression of an important truth. It may or it may not meet any of the conditions above. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, Fear is the mother of safety, Rank is but the guinea's stamp, Remedy worse than the disease, Where law ends tyranny begins - these are illustrations. If often quoted, epigrams become proverbs. They arrest attention by crowding great truths into brief and portable form. Proverbs are pithy and sententious sayings. They are packed with the wit and wisdom of those who originated them and of the generations which have used and approved them. Some of them can be fathered upon great authors, many can be traced to no parentage; but, whether the children of some one or of no one whom we can name, they have been adopted by all, belong to all, and disclose "the interior history, the manners, the opinions, the beliefs, the customs of the people among whom they have had their course." Rolling down the stream of national life and smoothed and rounded by it, they are fit pebbles for use in any David's sling. Other Quotations-thoughts and words borrowed from great writers and speakers-may fitly be used anywhere and by any one. One's discourse should not be a patchwork to which others have contributed as much as he has, but the occasional and happy use of quotations betrays an acquaintance with authors that is grateful to reader or hearer. Arraying behind his thought names greater than his own, these quotations give to what he says an authority which without such re-enforcement it could not have. Direction. We give below a few common idioms, epigrams, and proverbs. Render some of these in words of your own, and note, by comparison how tame and feeble is your translation of them: 3. Goethe set little store by quainted with strange bed-fel lows. 19. We cannot help knowing that skies are blue and grass is growing. 20. Johnson did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. 21. He went about to show his adversary's weakness. 22. There are many obstacles in the way. 23. It is I, he, we, they. 24. Elizabeth played fast and loose with her Alençon lover. 25. Under the circumstances, he did right. Idioms, Epigrams, Proverbs, and Quotations. 171 7. Not to know me argues physics pain. yourself unknown. 8. All men think all men mortal but themselves. 9. Devil take the hindmost. 10. The half greater than the whole. II. 'Tis only noble to be good. 18. Indemnity for the past and security for the future. 19. Verbosity is cured by a wide vocabulary. 20. Vox populi, vox dei. 21. Gravestones tell scarce forty years. 1. A carpenter is known by his chips. truth |