It seems to me that
what is really wrong with all modern and highly civilised language is
that it does so largely consist of dead words. Half our speech consists
of similes that remind us of no similarity; of pictorial phrases that
call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we have
forgotten. Take any instance on which the eye happens to alight. I saw
in the paper some days ago that the well-known leader of a certain
religious party wrote to a supporter of his the following curious words:
"I have not forgotten the talented way in which you held up the banner
at Birkenhead." Taking the ordinary vague meaning of the word
"talented," there is no coherency in the picture. The trumpets blow, the
spears shake and glitter, and in the thick of the purple battle there
stands a gentleman holding up a banner in a talented way. And when we
come to the original force of the word "talent" the matter is worse: a
talent is a Greek coin used in the New Testament as a symbol of the
mental capital committed to an individual at birth. If the religious
leader in question had really meant anything by his phrases, he would
have been puzzled to know how a man could use a Greek coin to hold up a
banner.
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