We may also take a modern writer like Kipling and translate his style
into simple, yet attractive and good prose; and the same process may be
applied to any of the selections in this book, simply trying to find
equivalent and if possible equally good words to express the same ideas,
or slight variations of the same ideas. Robinson Crusoe, Bacon's
Essays, and Pilgrim's Progress are excellent books to translate into
modern prose. The chief thing is to do the work slowly and thoughtfully.
CHAPTER II.
FIGURES OF SPEECH.
It is not an easy thing to pass from the logical precision of grammar
to the vague suggestiveness of words that call up whole troops of ideas
not contained in the simple idea for which a word stands.
Specific idioms are themselves at variance with grammar and logic,
and the grammarians are forever fighting them; but when we go into the
vague realm of poetic style, the logical mind is lost at once.
And yet it is more important to use words pregnant with meaning than to
be strictly grammatical. We must reduce grammar to an instinct that
will guard us against being contradictory or crude in our construction
of sentences, and then we shall make that instinct harmonize with all
the other instincts which a successful writer must have.
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