Page:The Pacific Monthly volume 17.djvu/361

Rh it is, Rich Men's Children is rather remote from Marius the Epicurean, for example.

It would be well if she would eliminate such a footless locution as "every now and then," an error of which Mrs. Austin is also guilty. It would be better, also, if she would not say restive when she means restless, nor speak of a "red glow" that "painted her serious, down-bent face with a hectic color," nor of a "hectic prospect" that "looked gray" nor of a hectic sunset. Miss Bonner evidently has a hectic tendency to use the word hectic improperly. And what are we to say of "The steady sweep (of the wind) would not be inaugurated till early in the afternoon"?

While dealing in molecular criticism it might not be out of place to point out some blunders, a pastime in which Ambrose Bierce has himself often indulged, in that supremely clever author's last work, The Cynic's Word Book (Doubleday, Page & Company). A fiddle, he says, is "an instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat." As a matter of fact fiddle-strings are not made of the entrails of a cat. In the invention of such a name as Sir Sycophas Aureolater, Bierce displays a better knowledge of Latin than of Greek. But Bierce's classical scholarship is most grievously at fault in his corrupt and un- authorized spelling of orang-utan, which he writes (in common with many others, be it said) "orang-outang." In the Malayan orang-utan, or more properly orang-hutan. is derived from orang, man, and hutan, the woods, of the woods, hence wild. The proper use of these two words will be found in the following sentence: Orang mengarang kitab pulang de-pergi nia ka-hutan — "the author went back to the woods."

In spite of these distressing blemishes The Cynic's Word Book is prodiguously illuminating and adroit. Bierce as a writter of short stories and as a master of literary expression in its best sense is unquestionably in the forefront of present-day writers, and the prophesy, often made by his admirers, that his work will live, is not perhaps so foolish as such prophesies commonly are. As a satirist he stands alone among moderns and we must go back to Juvenal and Martial to find his mate. This of Bierce as a satirist in epigram; in philosophy he is surpassed by Rochefoucauld and in wit by Oscar Wilde. The "Word Book" is pregnant with cynical wisdom and admirably contrived anecdotes. Here is one for example:

Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

"An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured upon his lips to revive him. 'Pauillac, 1873,' he murmured, and died."

It is with pain that we find Bierce indulging in puns and note such a false touch as his derivation of pterodactyl from an Irish name Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl. This article cannot be better closed than by another excerpt. It is:

Critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody has ever tried to please him.