omneity

Updated: April 30, 2025

Browne, he says, was 'seduced by a certain obscure romance in the terminology of late Latin writers, he used 'adjectives of classical extraction, which are neither necessary nor natural, he forgot that it is better for a writer 'to consult women and people who have not studied, than those who are too learnedly oppressed by a knowledge of Latin and Greek. He should not have said 'oneiro-criticism, when he meant the interpretation of dreams, nor 'omneity' instead of 'oneness'; and he had 'no excuse for writing about the "pensile" gardens of Babylon, when all that is required is expressed by "hanging." Attacks of this kind attacks upon the elaboration and classicism of Browne's style are difficult to reply to, because they must seem, to anyone who holds a contrary opinion, to betray such a total lack of sympathy with the subject as to make argument all but impossible.

Lytton Strachey - Books and Characters: French and English