Nay, this my hand would rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.
Here the effect is produced by the contrast between the stately march of the long Latin words of thundrous sound, and the short, sharp English. A labour-saving language has no business with such words as "incarnadine" or "multitudinous." In translating such a passage it will reproduce the sense faithfully and clearly, if necessary by the combination of simple roots; but the bouquet of the original will vanish in the process. This is inevitable, and it is even so far an advantage that it removes all ground from the argument that a universal language will kill scholarly language-learning. It will be just as necessary as ever to read works of fine literature in the original, in order to enjoy their full savour; and the translation into the common tongue will not prejudice such reading of originals more than, or indeed so much as, translations into various mother-tongues.
Again, take the whole question of the imitative use of language. In national literatures many a passage, poetry or prose, is heightened in effect by assonance, alliteration, a certain movement or rhythm of phrase. Subtle suggestion slides in sound through the ear and falls with mellowing cadence into the heart. Soothed senses murmur their own music to the mind; the lullaby lilt of the lay swells full the linked sweetness of the song.
The How plays fostering round the What. Down the liquid stream of lingual melody the dirge drifts dying--dying it echoes back into a ghostly after-life, as the yet throbbing sense wakes the drowsed mind once more. The Swan-song floats double--song and shadow; and in the blend--half sensuous, half of thought--man's nature tastes fruition.
Now, this verbal artistry, whereby the words set themselves in tune to the thoughts, postulates a varied vocabulary, a rich storehouse wherein a man may linger and choose among the gems of sound and sense till he find the fitting stone and fashion it to one of those--
jewels five-words long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.
But the word-store of an international tongue must not be a golden treasury of art, a repository of "bigotry and virtue." On its orderly rows of shelves must be immediately accessible the right word for the right place: no superfluity, no disorder, no circumambient margin for effect. Homocea-like, it "touches the spot," and having deadened the ache of incomprehensibility, has done its task. "No flowers."