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week ' number , condemning the odious word—I must call it so—which is now becoming so generally used as to provoke purists into revolt—the word talented . He makes out a strong case , as you will see : — " Leader mine !—Fervently do I sympathize with your pious abhorrence of sundry offences too commonly committed against the purity of our mother tongue . You and I , not being lawyers or bumbailiffs , would blush to call an offending person a « party . '
If a lady sweetly apologizes for tottering into our manly arms in an omnibus , we do not entreat her « not to name it '; that would be absurd and vulgar to a degree' which you and I would read off from the same scale of proprieties . Continue , I entreat you , to denounce all such barbarisms in your own trenchant style ; but let me say a word in defence of your * favourite aversion , ' the epithet talented , at which you have railed once more this week . Your chief objection to this expression appears to be , that it has no lawful status in the commonwealth of
English speech ; for that it is nothing if not a participle , and there is no verb upon which , as a participle , it can prove its affiliation . In ridicule of the word , you adduce the similar formation a geniused man , ' and this sentence : ? A has just been speaking to me about our friend B ; he talented him to the skies !' Your meaning , then , is clearly this ; that we sin against analogy in using the word talented to signify endowed with talent , because to endow a man with talent is not to talent him . The question , then , at issue between us is one of analogy . ; let us try it by that standard .
•• There are winged creatures , some of which you may wing in this month of September , not by putting wings on them , but by breaking those with which they have been gifted by nature . You may take the measure of a shallow-brained coxcomb , though you would not brain him in the sense of knocking his brains out , and could not do so in the sense of putting brains into him . Jerrold is the most quick-witted man I know ; but who is the quickerwitted man who has witted him ? Black-eyed Susan is black-eyed , and no thanks to anybody for eyeing her . Suppose that , like Herrick , you" ' Do love a girl Ruby lipp'd and tooth'd with pearl , '
you will long to lip her with a difference ; but you are too much the gentleman to think of toothing her , after the manner of that graceless youth Telephus , whose cruelty in that respect to Lydia made Horace a fit subject for blue pill and other depletories of a congested liver . Tell your friend Tom Nokes , that he is long nosed , and hook nosed , and red nosed , and the good fellow will blandly admit the fact ; but hint to him that you nose him , and see how he will fire up . How do you reconcile with your doctrine such phrases as * the rosy-fingered morn , '
beetlebrowed , white-livered , ill-mannered , booted , spurned , &c . &e . ? Do you not begin to perceive that there are many words which have the form of participles , but which are simply adjectives , since either there are no verbs corresponding to them in sound , or none corresponding to them in sense ? A man affected to tears , and an uffected mun in tears , are very different objects , and grammatically the two phrases ure not less different . I remain , with sincere admiration for the Leader , and its tiuehearted and talented conductors , " Your well-intentioned critic , " Walter K . Keuy . "
The position seems stronger than it is . To storm it and sack it , however , might require a greater park of artillery than I have room for here . I will content myself with showing where the breaches may be made . Talented is not a partieiple ; nor do I concede any right to the careless writer to coin an adjective from any substantive he chooses ; otherwise the right must be extended to all substantives , which I am sure friend Kelly would never permit . If the question is put—Why are some substantives suitable to an adjective extension ? or , in other words—Why may you create some adjectives and not others i * I answer that
I do not know . The formation of words is not reduced to scientific principles . Hence it is that Criticism is an Art , not a Science . It rests upon delicacy of perception , not upon ascertained rule . That perception of beauty and of fitness , which is )> urt by certain combinations of sounds , and naturally sock's others more harmonious and more delicately shaded—the quality which makes great writers—cannot be defined , classified ; it is something the law of which escapes us . 1 cannot tell you why it \ h wrong to say a * ' yeniuse . d man" in-Btead of a " man of genius , " or an " idc . aed man , " instcud of a " man of ideas , " though we say " a thoughtful mun , " and not " a man of thoughts . " I cannot tell you why " the American Jopguugc , "
as Disraeli wittily called it , shocks my taste , nor why the common phrases , " handsome permission , handsome offer , handsome compliment /* seem inadmissible , except that the word " handsome " being devoted originally to express beauty of person , ought not to be perverted to another use . Talented seems to me both useless and inaccurate . If a " man of talent" be too circumlocutious , there is the word " clever" to do duty in most cases . Of course , if you choose , you may say talented ; as you may geniused , tacted , memoried , Ueaed . " Licuit , semperque licebit , Signatum prsesente nota procudere nomen . " there is no limit to the power of coining , but the curreney of the coin must depend on the public . Quinctilian commenting on the wordhosce , used in a passage in Cicero , asks : — " Why hosce rather than hos , which has no asperity in it ? - I cannot give you the reason , but I feel that hosce is belter—Rationemfortassenonredda ? n , sentiam esse melius . " I have no better argument against talented : I feel that a delicate taste would never tolerate the word , for the same reasoa that it would not tolerate memoried , ideaed , geniused ; although if full licence is to be given to coiners , talent the substantive has an equal right to an adjective extension with boot , eye , heart , or any of the substantives Kelly enumerates : its right . is only overruled by Taste . Vivian .
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DOYLE'S OVERLAND JOURNEY TO THE EXHIBITION . Eichard Doyle had a Fairy for his Godmother This is not a myth , but a grave biographical fact , which you must accept if you study the charming and fanciful productions of his pencil ; otherwise , I will thank you to explain where he , and he alone , learned those secrets of fairy land which he , indiscreetly perhaps , suffers to escape in his "illustrations ; "—where he , and he alone , learned
that trick of fancy rioting into humour never seen before in any artist . We have known fanciful painters and humourous painters ; but for the subtle combination , interpenetration , fusion of grace , fancy , and fun , no one has approached Richard Doyle . His gaiety is unlike the gaiety of other men—it is airy , elegant , graceful , even in its loudest laugh ; and sometimes his fancy withdraws into the background ( never wholly withdraws ) , giving place to an imagination grand , terrible , sublime—as in that evcrrnemorable illustration of
the sea serpent in Punch ( the huge monster " floating many a rood " rising out of the perturbed depths of the ocean , its face a human face , wan , sad , beautiful , terrible , on its head the cap of liberty , by its side the kings and kaisers in a little cockboat , as contemptible as Liberty was sublime ); or in that Giant sitting on the pine mountain in his pictorial edition of Jack the Giant Killer . But it in these drawings he has given evidence of possessing an imagination rarely equalled , the predominant characteristic of his works is fanciful humour , graceful fun . His imitators do but make his excellence apparent , and show how inimitable he is .
In this Ins latest publication he has sketched , in his favourite panoramic style , the types of various nations , all hurrying to the Crystal Palace . It is very amusing , though not equal to many other things he has done . The prodigality of lorni and expression for which he is famous ( circumscribed as it is by the Doyle mannerism ) finds scope here ; and curious it is to notice how well the national characteristics are preserved throughout each group . lie does not give one typical French face , one German , one Scotchman , one Yankee ; hut groups of them , all diverse , all pervaded with the
same nationality . The Genius of America , with her cap of Liberty , and her slaves crouching behind , is a study of cruel , conceited , go-a-head , ' cute expression ; it is more than caricature j it is moral indignation restraining itself within the lines of truth ; it is " so like " as to be unmistakeable , so satirical us to " give pause . " The form of the book is inconvenient , and it would have been far better to have printed the tableaux in successive pages ; but the drawing-room table which is without it , will be without one of the most amusing «• picture booka" that has been published of lute , Vivian
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This page is accorded to an authentic Exposition of the Opinions and Acts of the Democracy of Eurone as such we do not impose any restraint on the utterance of opinion , and , therefore , limit our own responsibility- to the authenticity of the statement . ' J
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We have received the following Protests , which sufficiently dispose of the official allegations of the Schwarzenberg-Faucher police : — In the name of the Central Democratic Eurof-e a ^ Committee , we declare it to be utterly false that any papers emanating from this Committee have been seized . We add , with perfect certainty , that if ~ th ~ e police of Paris are in possession of any documents of a compromising nature , they are the work of men who have never belonged , directly or indirectl y , to this Committee . We defy the French Government to publish any document which can in any way connect the Central European Committee with the pretended French- German Plot of Paris . For the Committee , ( Signed ) D . Bkatiano . GERMAN AGITATION UNION OF LONDON . The Journal des De'bats , with the whole reactionary Press of Paris , in reciting the terms of the manifesto recently published by the German Agitation Union of London , endeavours to connect it with the pretended plot which has recently involved the arrest of a great number of German citizens resident at Paris . The German Agitation Union of London protests against these and all similar insinuations . However acute may be political justice in France , it will assuredly be unable to establish the existence of this chimerical complicity-.
It is elsewhere than at Paris that the German Agitatiox Union conducts its action and propoganda . Respecting the German citizens arrested at Paris on the occasion of the pretended plot , they are , witfc the exception of two only , unknown , even by name , to the undersigned , who have never h id any correspondence with any of them . As to Citizen Meyer ,
for instance , who is designated as the principal agent of this imaginary conspiracy , his name was revealed to this society for the first time by the journals which enjoy the confidence of the French police . In the face of this present declaration , which facts will not fail to substantiate , the German Agitation Union can no longer be made to bear the responsibility with which it has been charged , and which it most peremptorily rejects .
In the name of the German Agitation Unzon of London . ( Signed ) Charles Tau&enau .
THE VOIX DU l'ROSCHIT . Among the recent arrests at Paris are the director of the Voix du Proscrit , the only one of its editors at present in Fiance , and a citizen who was accidentally present at the office . The list of subscribers , the strong box , and the commercial correspondence , were seized , on the pretext that the Voix du Proscrit was the soul and the instrument of a pretended plot . Whilst these savage seizures were being prosecuted
at Paris , the provisional director of the Voix du Proscrit wan arrested at St . Amand and conducted handcuffed and in irons to Paris . A sinter of Citizen Chotteau , former manager of the Voix du Proscrit , and now imprisoned at Douai for an offence against the press law , was herself taken to the prison of Valenciennes for having endeavoured to preserve her dignity and her modesty from the gendarmes who assaulted under pretence of searching her .
We , the undersigned editors of the Voix du Proscrit , owe it to ourselves to declare , that this pretended plot can be , und in fact is nothing more than an odious manoeuvre of the police : seeing that the political conduct of the journal which it is now vainly attempted to crush , in our hand * has ever been broad and open as the day ; that especially we have never hud the leuat reltition with the German Committee of Paris , which tho police aflinri to be one of the wheels in the machinery of this pretended plot . We defy the Government to produce any document emanating from us , beyond or beside the articles appearing in our columns , which can in any way inerimiuute ud .
However , public opinion begins already to appreciate ho correctly this hallucination , that tho jouriuiIh of the reaction arc compelled themselves toilony the falsehoods they had invented . Venterd / iy thoro was a . letter which gruvely compromised Citizen Ledru Uollin , fluid to be written by him to Citi / . cu Anthoino who wa « arrested in consequents . This rccklesH uftHt'rtioii i « now silenced by the discovery that these citizens have never hud any correspondence . An honourable magistrate , of tho Court of Appeal of 1 ' ariH , was accused of huving attracted this document , and now before hi « frank und natural cxplanationa tho uouudaloua invention vanishca ; leaving tQ
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Sept . 13 , 1851 . J ® f > e fLfHiltV , 879
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1851, page 879, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1900/page/19/
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