The author remarks exultingly, in his Introduction, that his is
comparatively an uncultivated mind, We can only say, we should think so!
Ignorance is plentiful everywhere, but it really seems as if it were
reserved for some of our American writers to display in its finest
specimens ignorance vaunting its own deficiencies. There is a great deal of
nonsense talked about "uncultivated minds": some men are eminent in spite
of being uncultivated; but no man was ever eminent because he was
uncultivated. Some instances of a lamentable misuse of language in "Hester"
we give below.
Page 16,--
"They would have won implicit sway."
Page 53,--
"By the nonce!"
Evidently thinking of the phrase, "for the nonce,"--meaning, for the
occasion. In the text, "by the nonce" is an oath!
Page 71,--
"And he some squire of low behest."
Page 221,--
"and when is won
At last the longed-for rubicon."
Page 256,--the use of the word "denizens."
Page 262,--
"None may their evil doing shirk!
That wrong, in any shape, will bring,
Or soon or late, its _meted sting_."
Page 313,--
"as gnats, which sometimes sting
Their life away when rankled."
Another fault is the senseless use of certain words and phrases, which a
good writer uses only when he must, Mr. Beckett always when he can. We give
without comment a mere list of these:--maugre, 'sdeath, eke, erst, deft,
romaunt, pleasaunce, certes, whilom, distraught, quotha, good lack,
well-a-day, vermeil, perchance, hight, wight, lea, wist, list, sheen, anon,
gliff, astrolt, what boots it? malfortunes, ween, God wot, I trow, emprise,
duress, donjon, puissant, sooth, rock, bruit, ken, eld, o'ersprent, etc.
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