AUTHORS' FAVOURITE WORDS.
(To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Of lute it has been a fad of mine (I hope a harmless one) to try to find out what word or words certain authors habitually affect, and from this to arrive at some conclusions touching the authors themselves. For truly words are indicative of much. Gibbon, for example, has a predilection. for " elegant," "salutary," "artful "; they constantly crop up in his pages. One might perhaps guess, even if one did not know, that these words smacked of the eighteenth century; but do they not also east a slender beam of light on the intellectual outlook of the historian? How glorious old Milton loves to ring the changes on " far," " light," " darkness," " high," " mightily "—words so suggestive of his thoughts as they ranged among the infini- tudes! Ruskin, in his later writings, made frequent use of " stern," "sternly "—words rarely to be found in the Modern Painters period (1843-1860). Herbert Spencer loved two words in quite special degree—" manifest " (with its adverb " mani- festly ") and " contrariwise." Do they not, in a measure, indicate that eminent thinker's positiveness and combativeness? To take a living author, Mr. Chesterton (if I mistake not) has a fondness for the adjectives " important," " uproarious ": which thing is an allegory. I could readily enlarge this list : sed haec haitenus. It would be worth while ascertaining whether other readers of the Spectator have amused their leisure in this probing for the characteristic word; the results would be curious and might perhaps prove interesting.-1 am, Sir, he.,
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