' We cannot wish better to any such agitated mind than that it may
listen to those potent and majestic words: 'Peace--be still!' uttered
by the voice of Him who so suddenly hushed the billows of the Galilean
lake.
But we are at the same time fully convinced that in our day there are
thousands of youths who are falling into the same errors and perils
from sheer vanity and affectation; who admire most what they least
understand, and adopt all the obscurities and paradoxes they stumble
upon, as a cheap path to a reputation for profundity; who awkwardly
imitate the manner and retail the phrases of the writers they
study; and, as usual, exaggerate to caricature their least agreeable
eccentricities. We should think that some of these more powerful
minds must be by this time ashamed of that ragged regiment of shallow
thinkers, and obscure writers and talkers who at present infest our
literature, and whose parrot-like repetition of their own stereotyped
phraseology, mingled with some barbarous infusion of half Anglicised
German, threatens to form as odious a cant as ever polluted the stream
of thought or disfigured the purity of language. Happily it is not
likely to be more than a passing fashion; but still it is a very
unpleasant fashion while it lasts.
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