t; 'to insure a man of misapprehension;' 'talented,' a mere
newspaper and hustings word, invented, I believe, by O'Connell.

"I must also mention the constant recurrence of some words in a quaint
and queer connection, which gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive
mannerism to many sentences. Of these the commonest offender is 'quite;'
which appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of
emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,' 'manifold,' 'cunning enough
significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational or moral _power_),
'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if in some uneasy dream
which does not rise to the dignity of nightmare. Some of these strange
mannerisms fall under the general head of a singularity peculiar, so far
as I know, to Teufelsdrockh. For instance, that of the incessant use of
a sort of odd superfluous qualification of his assertions; which seems
to give the character of deliberateness and caution to the style, but
in time sounds like mere trick or involuntary habit. 'Almost' does more
than yeoman's, _almost_ slave's service in this way. Something similar
may be remarked of the use of the double negative by way of affirmation.

"Under this head, of language, may be mentioned, though not with strict
grammatical accuracy, two standing characteristics of the Professor's
style,--at least as rendered into English: _First_, the composition
of words, such as 'snow-and-rosebloom maiden:' an attractive damsel
doubtless in Germany, but, with all her charms, somewhat uncouth here.
'Life-vision' is another example; and many more might be found. To
say nothing of the innumerable cases in which the words are only
intelligible as a compound term, though not distinguished by hyphens. Of
course the composition of words is sometimes allowable even in English:
but the habit of dealing with German seems to have produced, in the
pages before us, a prodigious superabundance of this form of expression;
which gives harshness and strangeness, where the matter would at all
events have been surprising enough. _Secondly_, I object, with the
same qualification, to the frequent use of _inversion_; which generally
appears as a transposition of the two members of a clause, in a way
which would not have been practiced in conversation. It certainly gives
emphasis and force, and often serves to point the meaning. But a style
may be fatiguing and faulty precisely by being too emphatic, forcible
and pointed