Books: How To Make Them Intelligible
Books: How To Make Them Intelligible [1]
John Keble, the author of 'The Christian Year,' in a letter to Mr. (afterwards Sir) J. T. Coleridge, thus writes:: 'Have you read a little publication of Miller's, which I sent to James Coleridge, and if you have, how do you like it? Lest you should think his style in this new book too obscure for the 'Plain People,' I must tell you that he made Moliere's experiment, for he gave the sermons to his servant, quite a rustic lad, to read before he printed them, and the man said he understood them all except the fifth, which accordingly M. made plainer, till the youth professed himself satisfied with it. And his father, the clerk of the parish, had given the greatest proof of his understanding even of this the obscurest part, for he said to Miller, 'Oh, yes! sir, I see what you mean, you mean such-and-such people (naming them) by the one of your two classes, and such-and-such by the other.' I call this a very satisfactory experiment, quite as much so as most of Sir Humphrey Davy's.' In a letter to another friend on the same subject, Keble further adds:: 'I wonder whether people that write tracts for the poor, generally take this method; it seems mere common sense for them to do so, and yet one can hardly think they do.'
