The smallest inattention or error in manners, the minutest inelegance of diction, the least awkwardness in your dress and carriage, will not escape my observation, nor pass without amicable correction.
And as long as meanings are clear, good Logic is compatible with false concords and inelegance of style.
Awkwardness, or inelegance of expression, is a reprehensible defect in style, whether it violate any of the common rules of syntax or not.
Spenser and his queen neither of them scrupled to write afore, and the former feels no inelegance even in chaw and idee.
But I do not find the dropping of final consonants disagreeable in Allan Ramsay or Burns, nor do I believe that our literary ancestors were sensible of that inelegance in the fusing them together of which we are conscious.
It may be here noted that this principle (the ending of a word in the middle of a foot) applies generally to the verse, it being an inelegance to construct lines of words of which each constitutes a foot.
It is the inelegance of these lines which more properly belonging to inanimate bodies, and being seen where lines of more beauty and taste are expected, that renders the face silly and ridiculous.
Intolerant of inelegance and bombast, the Athenians required not only graceful speech, but speech to the point.
