It would generally serve writers in good stead if they would see that,
whilst a man should, if possible, think like a great genius, he should
talk the same language as everyone else. Authors should use common
words to say uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We find
them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe
their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the
most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions. Their
sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. They take so much
pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated,
affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is
Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say
what he had to say _like a man of this world._[1]
[Footnote 1: _King Henry IV_., Part II. Act v. Sc. 3.]
There is no expression in any other language exactly answering to the
French _stile empese_; but the thing itself exists all the more often.
When associated with affectation, it is in literature what assumption
of dignity, grand airs and primeness are in society; and equally
intolerable. Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress; just as
an ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure and formal.
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