4425. LANGUAGE, Purists and.—[continued].
I am not a friend to a
scrupulous purism of style. I readily sacrifice
the niceties of syntax to euphony and strength.
It is by boldly neglecting the rigorisms of
grammar that Tacitus has made himself the
strongest writer in the world. The hyperesthetics
call him barbarous; but I should be sorry
to exchange his barbarisms for their wire-drawn
purisms. Some of his sentences are as strong
as language can make them. Had he scrupulously
filled up the whole of their syntax, they
would have been merely common. To explain
my meaning by an English example, I will quote
the motto of one, I believe, of the regicides of
Charles I., “Rebellion
to tyrants is obedience
to God”. Correct its syntax, “Rebellion
against tyrants is obedience to God”, it has
lost all the strength and beauty of the antithesis.—
To Edward Everett. Washington ed. vii, 273.
(M.
1823)
