United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Polly's mind, and quite beyond his control, the insubordinate phrasemaker would be proffering such combinations as "Chubby Chops," or "Chubby Charmer," as suitable for the gentleman, very much as a hat salesman proffers hats. "I don't think you'd find much slackness about me, sir," said Mr. Polly brightly, trying to disregard his deeper self. "I want a young man who means getting on."
Images, we know, are not convictions; aspirations will not do the work; grand speeches will not solve the problems. The poet is a "phrasemaker"; true; but show us the man in these days who is more than a phrasemaker! Where is he who has positive ideas beyond the small circle of his speciality? In rejecting the guidance of the Poet to whom shall we apply? To the Priest?
Phrasemaker for phrasemaker, we prefer the poet to the politician; Victor Hugo to Léon Faucher; Lamartine to Odilon Barrot; Lamennais to Baroche.
In no department can phrasemaking prosper where positive ideas have once been attained. Metaphors are powerless in astronomy; epithets are useless as alembics; images, be they never so beautiful, will fail to convince the physiologist. Language may adorn, it cannot create science. Here the phrasemaker is king; as the one-eyed is king in the empire of the blind.
This inactive position he has kept as long as public sentiment permitted. He seems no longer to regard himself nor to speak as a leader only as the mouthpiece of public opinion after opinion has run over him. He has not breathed a spirit into the people: he has encouraged them to supineness. He is not a leader, but rather a stubborn phrasemaker.
Once when her school desk was ransacked in her absence one of the many forms of espionage she refused to rearrange its tumbled contents, and when she was given a bad mark for disorder, she cried defiantly, "It is Madame Rosaline who deserves that bad mark." And the pleasure of seeing herself as rebel and phrasemaker was no less keen than the pleasure of goodness.
He mumbles the litany of an ancient time which falls on unbelieving ears. To the Lawyer? He is a metaphysician with precedents for data. To the Litterateur? He is a phrasemaker by profession. To the Politician? He cannot rise above the conception of a "bill." One and all are copious in phrases, empty of positive ideas as drums.
"German suggested ideas to me," she said, "and that is why I paid less attention to the construction of the language, I think. But I am afraid you will find no elegancies in any tongue I use, for language has always been to me a vehicle of thought, and not a part of art to be employed with striking effect. Now, here is Carlyle, the arch phrasemaker.
Word Of The Day