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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:24 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:24 -0700 |
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diff --git a/1038-h/1038-h.htm b/1038-h/1038-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b9d46f --- /dev/null +++ b/1038-h/1038-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3487 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Style, by Walter Raleigh</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Style, by Walter Raleigh + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Style + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: April 14, 2013 [eBook #1038] +[This file was first posted on September 2, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STYLE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1904 Edward Arnold edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>STYLE</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">BY</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">WALTER RALEIGH</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">AUTHOR OF +‘THE ENGLISH NOVEL,’</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">AND ‘ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, A +CRITICAL ESSAY’</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>FIFTH IMPRESSION</i></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +EDWARD ARNOLD<br /> +Publisher to the India Office<br /> +1904</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagev"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. v</span>JOANNI SAMPSON</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">BIBLIOTHECARIO OPTIMO</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">VIRO OMNI +SAPIENTIA ÆGYPTIORUM</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">ERUDITO</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">LABORUM ET +ITINERUM SUORUM</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">SOCIO</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">HUNC +LIBELLUM</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">D · D +· D</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">AUCTOR</span></p> +<h2><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL MATTERS<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">CONTAINED IN THIS ESSAY</span></h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Triumph of Letters</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Problem of Style</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page3">3</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Instrument and the Audience, with a Digression on the +Actor</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page4">4</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Sense-Elements</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page8">8</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Functions of Sense</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page10">10</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Picture</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page11">11</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Melody</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Meaning, Exampled in Negation</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page17">17</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Weapons of Thought</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page21">21</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Analogy from Architecture</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page23">23</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Analogy Rectified. The Law of Change</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page24">24</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Good Slang</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page27">27</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Bad Slang</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page29">29</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Archaism</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page32">32</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Romantic and Classic</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page36">36</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Palsy of Definition</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page39">39</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Distinction</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page43">43</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Assimilation</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page45">45</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Synonyms</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page46">46</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p><a name="pageviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +viii</span>Variety of Expression</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page49">49</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Variety Justified</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page50">50</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Metaphor and Abstraction: Poetry and Science</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page55">55</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Doctrine of the <i>Mot Propre</i></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page61">61</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Instrument</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Audience</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page65">65</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Relation of the Author to his Audience</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Poet and his Audience</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page71">71</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Public Caterers</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page77">77</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Cautelous Man</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page78">78</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sentimentalism and Jocularity</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Tripe-Seller</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page83">83</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Wag</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page85">85</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Social and Rhetorical Corruptions</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page87">87</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sincerity</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page88">88</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Insincerity</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page93">93</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Austerity</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page94">94</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Figurative Style</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page98">98</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Decoration</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page100">100</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Allusiveness</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page102">102</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Simplicity and Strength</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page104">104</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Paradox of Letters</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page107">107</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Drama</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page108">108</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Implicit Drama</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page111">111</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Words Again</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page115">115</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Quotation</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page116">116</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Appropriation</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page119">119</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The World of Words</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page123">123</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Teaching of Style</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page124">124</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Conclusion</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page127">127</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>STYLE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Style</span>, the Latin name for an iron +pen, has come to designate the art that handles, with ever fresh +vitality and wary alacrity, the fluid elements of speech. +By a figure, obvious enough, which yet might serve for an epitome +of literary method, the most rigid and simplest of instruments +has lent its name to the subtlest and most flexible of +arts. Thence the application of the word has been extended +to arts other than literature, to the whole range of the +activities of man. The fact that we use the word +“style” in speaking of architecture and sculpture, +painting and music, dancing, play-acting, and cricket, that we +can apply it to the careful achievements of the housebreaker and +the poisoner, and to the spontaneous animal movements of the +limbs of man or beast, is the noblest of <a +name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 2</span>unconscious +tributes to the faculty of letters. The pen, scratching on +wax or paper, has become the symbol of all that is expressive, +all that is intimate, in human nature; not only arms and arts, +but man himself, has yielded to it. His living voice, with +its undulations and inflexions, assisted by the mobile play of +feature and an infinite variety of bodily gesture, is driven to +borrow dignity from the same metaphor; the orator and the actor +are fain to be judged by style. “It is most +true,” says the author of <i>The Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, +“<i>stylus virum arguit</i>, our style bewrays +us.” Other gestures shift and change and flit, this +is the ultimate and enduring revelation of personality. The +actor and the orator are condemned to work evanescent effects on +transitory material; the dust that they write on is blown about +their graves. The sculptor and the architect deal in less +perishable ware, but the stuff is recalcitrant and stubborn, and +will not take the impress of all states of the soul. +Morals, philosophy, and æsthetic, mood and conviction, +creed and whim, habit, passion, and demonstration—<a +name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>what art but +the art of literature admits the entrance of all these, and +guards them from the suddenness of mortality? What other +art gives scope to natures and dispositions so diverse, and to +tastes so contrarious? Euclid and Shelley, Edmund Spenser +and Herbert Spencer, King David and David Hume, are all followers +of the art of letters.</p> +<p>In the effort to explain the principles of an art so +bewildering in its variety, writers on style have gladly availed +themselves of analogy from the other arts, and have spoken, for +the most part, not without a parable. It is a pleasant +trick they put upon their pupils, whom they gladden with the +delusion of a golden age, and perfection to be sought backwards, +in arts less complex. The teacher of writing, past master +in the juggling craft of language, explains that he is only +carrying into letters the principles of counterpoint, or that it +is all a matter of colour and perspective, or that structure and +ornament are the beginning and end of his intent. Professor +of eloquence and of thieving, his winged shoes remark him as he +skips <a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 4</span>from +metaphor to metaphor, not daring to trust himself to the partial +and frail support of any single figure. He lures the +astonished novice through as many trades as were ever housed in +the central hall of the world’s fair. From his +distracting account of the business it would appear that he is +now building a monument, anon he is painting a picture (with +brushes dipped in a gallipot made of an earthquake); again he +strikes a keynote, weaves a pattern, draws a wire, drives a nail, +treads a measure, sounds a trumpet, or hits a target; or +skirmishes around his subject; or lays it bare with a dissecting +knife; or embalms a thought; or crucifies an enemy. What is +he really doing all the time?</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>Besides the artist two things are to be considered in every +art,—the instrument and the audience; or, to deal in less +figured phrase, the medium and the public. From both of +these the artist, if he would find freedom for the exercise of +all his powers, must sit decently aloof. It is the +misfortune of the actor, the singer, and the dancer, <a +name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>that their +bodies are their sole instruments. On to the stage of their +activities they carry the heart that nourishes them and the lungs +wherewith they breathe, so that the soul, to escape degradation, +must seek a more remote and difficult privacy. That +immemorial right of the soul to make the body its home, a welcome +escape from publicity and a refuge for sincerity, must be largely +foregone by the actor, who has scant liberty to decorate and +administer for his private behoof an apartment that is also a +place of business. His ownership is limited by the +necessities of his trade; when the customers are gone, he eats +and sleeps in the bar-parlour. Nor is the instrument of his +performances a thing of his choice; the poorest skill of the +violinist may exercise itself upon a Stradivarius, but the actor +is reduced to fiddle for the term of his natural life upon the +face and fingers that he got from his mother. The serene +detachment that may be achieved by disciples of greater arts can +hardly be his, applause touches his personal pride too nearly, +the mocking echoes of derision infest the solitude of his retired +imagination. <a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +6</span>In none of the world’s great polities has the +practice of this art been found consistent with noble rank or +honourable estate. Christianity might be expected to spare +some sympathy for a calling that offers prizes to abandonment and +self-immolation, but her eye is fixed on a more distant mark than +the pleasure of the populace, and, as in gladiatorial Rome of +old, her best efforts have been used to stop the games. +Society, on the other hand, preoccupied with the art of life, has +no warmer gift than patronage for those whose skill and energy +exhaust themselves on the mimicry of life. The reward of +social consideration is refused, it is true, to all artists, or +accepted by them at their immediate peril. By a natural +adjustment, in countries where the artist has sought and attained +a certain modest social elevation, the issue has been changed, +and the architect or painter, when his health is proposed, finds +himself, sorely against the grain, returning thanks for the +employer of labour, the genial host, the faithful husband, the +tender father, and other pillars of society. The risk of +too <a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>great +familiarity with an audience which insists on honouring the +artist irrelevantly, at the expense of the art, must be run by +all; a more clinging evil besets the actor, in that he can at no +time wholly escape from his phantasmal second self. On this +creature of his art he has lavished the last doit of human +capacity for expression; with what bearing shall he face the +exacting realities of life? Devotion to his profession has +beggared him of his personality; ague, old age and poverty, love +and death, find in him an entertainer who plies them with a +feeble repetition of the triumphs formerly prepared for a larger +and less imperious audience. The very +journalist—though he, too, when his profession takes him by +the throat, may expound himself to his wife in phrases stolen +from his own leaders—is a miracle of detachment in +comparison; he has not put his laughter to sale. It is well +for the soul’s health of the artist that a definite +boundary should separate his garden from his farm, so that when +he escapes from the conventions that rule his work he may be free +to recreate himself. But <a name="page8"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 8</span>where shall the weary player keep +holiday? Is not all the world a stage?</p> +<p>Whatever the chosen instrument of an art may be, its appeal to +those whose attention it bespeaks must be made through the +senses. Music, which works with the vibrations of a +material substance, makes this appeal through the ear; painting +through the eye; it is of a piece with the complexity of the +literary art that it employs both channels,—as it might +seem to a careless apprehension, indifferently.</p> +<p>For the writer’s pianoforte is the dictionary, words are +the material in which he works, and words may either strike the +ear or be gathered by the eye from the printed page. The +alternative will be called delusive, for, in European literature +at least, there is no word-symbol that does not imply a spoken +sound, and no excellence without euphony. But the other way +is possible, the gulf between mind and mind may be bridged by +something which has a right to the name of literature although it +exacts no aid from the ear. The picture-writing of the +Indians, the hieroglyphs <a name="page9"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 9</span>of Egypt, may be cited as examples of +literary meaning conveyed with no implicit help from the spoken +word. Such an art, were it capable of high development, +would forsake the kinship of melody, and depend for its sensual +elements of delight on the laws of decorative pattern. In a +land of deaf-mutes it might come to a measure of +perfection. But where human intercourse is chiefly by +speech, its connexion with the interests and passions of daily +life would perforce be of the feeblest, it would tend more and +more to cast off the fetters of meaning that it might do freer +service to the jealous god of visible beauty. The +overpowering rivalry of speech would rob it of all its symbolic +intent and leave its bare picture. Literature has favoured +rather the way of the ear and has given itself zealously to the +tuneful ordering of sounds. Let it be repeated, therefore, +that for the traffic of letters the senses are but the +door-keepers of the mind; none of them commands an only way of +access,—the deaf can read by sight, the blind by +touch. It is not amid the bustle of the live senses, but in +<a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>an +under-world of dead impressions that Poetry works her will, +raising that in power which was sown in weakness, quickening a +spiritual body from the ashes of the natural body. The mind +of man is peopled, like some silent city, with a sleeping company +of reminiscences, associations, impressions, attitudes, emotions, +to be awakened into fierce activity at the touch of words. +By one way or another, with a fanfaronnade of the marching +trumpets, or stealthily, by noiseless passages and dark posterns, +the troop of suggesters enters the citadel, to do its work +within. The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem +passes in through the main gate, and forthwith the by-ways +resound to the hurry of ghostly feet, until the small company of +adventurers is well-nigh lost and overwhelmed in that throng of +insurgent spirits.</p> +<p>To attempt to reduce the art of literature to its component +sense-elements is therefore vain. Memory, “the warder +of the brain,” is a fickle trustee, whimsically lavish to +strangers, giving up to the appeal of a spoken word or unspoken +<a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>symbol, an +odour or a touch, all that has been garnered by the sensitive +capacities of man. It is the part of the writer to play +upon memory, confusing what belongs to one sense with what +belongs to another, extorting images of colour at a word, raising +ideas of harmony without breaking the stillness of the air. +He can lead on the dance of words till their sinuous movements +call forth, as if by mesmerism, the likeness of some adamantine +rigidity, time is converted into space, and music begets +sculpture. To see for the sake of seeing, to hear for the +sake of hearing, are subsidiary exercises of his complex +metaphysical art, to be counted among its rudiments. +Picture and music can furnish but the faint beginnings of a +philosophy of letters. Necessary though they be to a +writer, they are transmuted in his service to new forms, and made +to further purposes not their own.</p> +<p>The power of vision—hardly can a writer, least of all if +he be a poet, forego that part of his equipment. In dealing +with the impalpable, dim subjects that lie beyond the border-land +of exact <a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>knowledge, the poetic instinct seeks always to bring +them into clear definition and bright concrete imagery, so that +it might seem for the moment as if painting also could deal with +them. Every abstract conception, as it passes into the +light of the creative imagination, acquires structure and +firmness and colour, as flowers do in the light of the sun. +Life and Death, Love and Youth, Hope and Time, become persons in +poetry, not that they may wear the tawdry habiliments of the +studio, but because persons are the objects of the most familiar +sympathy and the most intimate knowledge.</p> +<blockquote><p>How long, O Death? And shall thy feet +depart<br /> + Still a young child’s with mine, or wilt thou +stand<br /> +Full grown the helpful daughter of my heart,<br /> + What time with thee indeed I reach the strand<br /> +Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,<br /> + And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And as a keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is +essential to all writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts +the heart, so languor of the visual faculty can work disaster +even in the calm periods of philosophic expatiation. +“It <a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +13</span>cannot be doubted,” says one whose daily +meditations enrich <i>The People’s Post-Bag</i>, +“that Fear is, to a great extent, the mother of +Cruelty.” Alas, by the introduction of that brief +proviso, conceived in a spirit of admirably cautious +self-defence, the writer has unwittingly given himself to the +horns of a dilemma whose ferocity nothing can mitigate. +These tempered and conditional truths are not in nature, which +decrees, with uncompromising dogmatism, that either a woman is +one’s mother, or she is not. The writer probably +meant merely that “fear is one of the causes of +cruelty,” and had he used a colourless abstract word the +platitude might pass unchallenged. But a vague desire for +the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word +“mother,” has yet failed to set the sluggish +imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid +with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted +usage to mean no more than “cause” or +“occasion.” Only for the poet, perhaps, are +words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden with +scent; yet one poor <a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +14</span>spark of imagination might save them from this sad +descent to sterility and darkness.</p> +<p>Of no less import is the power of melody which chooses, +rejects, and orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly +varied return of sound can give to the ear. Some critics +have amused themselves with the hope that here, in the laws and +practices regulating the audible cadence of words, may be found +the first principles of style, the form which fashions the +matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make an art +of truth. And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it +does, a professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes +carries its devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and +the thing said seems a discovery made by the way in the search +for tuneful expression.</p> +<blockquote><p> What thing +unto mine ear<br /> + Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing,<br /> +O wandering water ever whispering?<br /> + Surely thy speech shall be of her,<br /> +Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,<br /> + What message +dost thou bring?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune <a +name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>is played +upon the syllables that make up the word “wandering,” +even as, in the poem from which it is taken, there is every echo +of the noise of waters laughing in sunny brooks, or moaning in +dumb hidden caverns. Yet even here it would be vain to seek +for reason why each particular sound of every line should be +itself and no other. For melody holds no absolute dominion +over either verse or prose; its laws, never to be disregarded, +prohibit rather than prescribe. Beyond the simple +ordinances that determine the place of the rhyme in verse, and +the average number of syllables, or rhythmical beats, that occur +in the line, where shall laws be found to regulate the sequence +of consonants and vowels from syllable to syllable? Those +few artificial restrictions, which verse invents for itself, once +agreed on, a necessary and perilous license makes up the rest of +the code. Literature can never conform to the dictates of +pure euphony, while grammar, which has been shaped not in the +interests of prosody, but for the service of thought, bars the +way with its clumsy inalterable polysyllables and <a +name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>the +monotonous sing-song of its inflexions. On the other hand, +among a hundred ways of saying a thing, there are more than +ninety that a care for euphony may reasonably forbid. All +who have consciously practised the art of writing know what +endless and painful vigilance is needed for the avoidance of the +unfit or untuneful phrase, how the meaning must be tossed from +expression to expression, mutilated and deceived, ere it can find +rest in words. The stupid accidental recurrence of a single +broad vowel; the cumbrous repetition of a particle; the emphatic +phrase for which no emphatic place can be found without +disorganising the structure of the period; the pert intrusion on +a solemn thought of a flight of short syllables, twittering like +a flock of sparrows; or that vicious trick of sentences whereby +each, unmindful of its position and duties, tends to imitate the +deformities of its predecessor;—these are a select few of +the difficulties that the nature of language and of man conspire +to put upon the writer. He is well served by his mind and +ear if he can win past all <a name="page17"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 17</span>such traps and ambuscades, robbed of +only a little of his treasure, indemnified by the careless +generosity of his spoilers, and still singing.</p> +<p>Besides their chime in the ear, and the images that they put +before the mind’s eye, words have, for their last and +greatest possession, a meaning. They carry messages and +suggestions that, in the effect wrought, elude all the senses +equally. For the sake of this, their prime office, the rest +is many times forgotten or scorned, the tune is disordered and +havoc played with the lineaments of the picture, because without +these the word can still do its business. The refutation of +those critics who, in their analysis of the power of literature, +make much of music and picture, is contained in the most moving +passages that have found utterance from man. Consider the +intensity of a saying like that of St. Paul:—“For I +am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor +principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to +come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be +able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ +Jesus our Lord.”</p> +<p><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>Do +these verses draw their power from a skilful arrangement of vowel +and consonant? But they are quoted from a translation, and +can be translated otherwise, well or ill or indifferently, +without losing more than a little of their virtue. Do they +impress the eye by opening before it a prospect of vast extent, +peopled by vague shapes? On the contrary, the visual +embodiment of the ideas suggested kills the sense of the passage, +by lowering the cope of the starry heavens to the measure of a +poplar-tree. Death and life, height and depth, are +conceived by the apostle, and creation thrown in like a trinket, +only that they may lend emphasis to the denial that is the soul +of his purpose. Other arts can affirm, or seem to affirm, +with all due wealth of circumstance and detail; they can heighten +their affirmation by the modesty of reserve, the surprises of a +studied brevity, and the erasure of all impertinence; literature +alone can deny, and honour the denial with the last resources of +a power that has the universe for its treasury. It is this +negative capability of words, their privative force, whereby <a +name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>they can +impress the minds with a sense of “vacuity, darkness, +solitude, and silence,” that Burke celebrates in the fine +treatise of his younger days. In such a phrase as +“the angel of the Lord” language mocks the positive +rivalry of the pictorial art, which can offer only the poor +pretence of an equivalent in a young man painted with +wings. But the difference between the two arts is even +better marked in the matter of negative suggestion; it is +instanced by Burke from the noble passage where Virgil describes +the descent of Æneas and the Sibyl to the shades of the +nether world. Here are amassed all “the images of a +tremendous dignity” that the poet could forge from the +sublime of denial. The two most famous lines are a +procession of negatives:—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram</i>,<br +/> +<i>Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna</i>.</p> +<p>Through hollow kingdoms, emptied of the day,<br /> +And dim, deserted courts where Dis bears sway,<br /> + Night-foundered, and uncertain of the path,<br /> +Darkling they took their solitary way.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here is the secret of some of the cardinal <a +name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>effects of +literature; strong epithets like “lonely,” +“supreme,” “invisible,” +“eternal,” “inexorable,” with the +substantives that belong to them, borrow their force from the +vastness of what they deny. And not these alone, but many +other words, less indebted to logic for the magnificence of reach +that it can lend, bring before the mind no picture, but a dim +emotional framework. Such words as “ominous,” +“fantastic,” “attenuated,” +“bewildered,” “justification,” are +atmospheric rather than pictorial; they infect the soul with the +passion-laden air that rises from humanity. It is precisely +in his dealings with words like these, “heated originally +by the breath of others,” that a poet’s fine sense +and knowledge most avail him. The company a word has kept, +its history, faculties, and predilections, endear or discommend +it to his instinct. How hardly will poetry consent to +employ such words as “congratulation” or +“philanthropist,”—words of good origin, but +tainted by long immersion in fraudulent rejoicings and pallid, +comfortable, theoretic loves. How eagerly will the poetic +imagination seize on a word <a name="page21"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 21</span>like “control,” which +gives scope by its very vagueness, and is fettered by no +partiality of association. All words, the weak and the +strong, the definite and the vague, have their offices to perform +in language, but the loftiest purposes of poetry are seldom +served by those explicit hard words which, like tiresome +explanatory persons, say all that they mean. Only in the +focus and centre of man’s knowledge is there place for the +hammer-blows of affirmation, the rest is a flickering world of +hints and half-lights, echoes and suggestions, to be come at in +the dusk or not at all.</p> +<p>The combination of these powers in words, of song and image +and meaning, has given us the supreme passages of our romantic +poetry. In Shakespeare’s work, especially, the union +of vivid definite presentment with immense reach of metaphysical +suggestion seems to intertwine the roots of the universe with the +particular fact; tempting the mind to explore that other side of +the idea presented to it, the side turned away from it, and held +by something behind.</p> +<blockquote><p><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>It will have blood; they say blood win have blood:<br /> +Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;<br /> +Augurs and understood relations have<br /> +By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth<br /> +The secret’st man of blood.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This meeting of concrete and abstract, of sense and thought, +keeps the eye travelling along the utmost skyline of speculation, +where the heavens are interfused with the earth. In short, +the third and greatest virtue of words is no other than the +virtue that belongs to the weapons of thought,—a deep, +wide, questioning thought that discovers analogies and pierces +behind things to a half-perceived unity of law and essence. +In the employ of keen insight, high feeling, and deep thinking, +language comes by its own; the prettinesses that may be imposed +on a passive material are as nothing to the splendour and grace +that transfigure even the meanest instrument when it is wielded +by the energy of thinking purpose. The contempt that is +cast, by the vulgar phrase, on “mere words” bears +witness to the rarity of this serious consummation. Yet by +words the world was shaped out of chaos, by words the <a +name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>Christian +religion was established among mankind. Are these terrific +engines fit play-things for the idle humours of a sick child?</p> +<p>And now it begins to be apparent that no adequate description +of the art of language can be drawn from the technical +terminology of the other arts, which, like proud debtors, would +gladly pledge their substance to repay an obligation that they +cannot disclaim. Let one more attempt to supply literature +with a parallel be quoted from the works of a writer on style, +whose high merit it is that he never loses sight, either in +theory or in practice, of the fundamental conditions proper to +the craft of letters. Robert Louis Stevenson, pondering +words long and lovingly, was impressed by their crabbed +individuality, and sought to elucidate the laws of their +arrangement by a reference to the principles of +architecture. “The sister arts,” he says, +“enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like the +modeller’s clay; literature alone is condemned to work in +mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. You have seen +those blocks, dear to the nursery: <a name="page24"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 24</span>this one a pillar, that a pediment, a +third a window or a vase. It is with blocks of just such +arbitrary size and figure that the literary architect is +condemned to design the palace of his art. Nor is this all; +for since these blocks or words are the acknowledged currency of +our daily affairs, there are here possible none of those +suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity, and +vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no +inscrutable shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, as in +architecture; but every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph +must move in a logical progression, and convey a definite +conventional import.”</p> +<p>It is an acute comparison, happily indicative of the morose +angularity that words offer to whoso handles them, admirably +insistent on the chief of the incommodities imposed upon the +writer, the necessity, at all times and at all costs, to mean +something. The boon of the recurring monotonous expanse, +that an apprentice may fill, the breathing-space of restful +mechanical repetition, are denied to the writer, who must needs +shoulder <a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>the hod himself, and lay on the mortar, in ever varying +patterns, with his own trowel. This is indeed the ordeal of +the master, the canker-worm of the penny-a-liner, who, poor +fellow, means nothing, and spends his life in the vain effort to +get words to do the same. But if in this respect +architecture and literature are confessed to differ, there +remains the likeness that Mr. Stevenson detects in the building +materials of the two arts, those blocks of “arbitrary size +and figure; finite and quite rigid.” There is truth +enough in the comparison to make it illuminative, but he would be +a rash dialectician who should attempt to draw from it, by way of +inference, a philosophy of letters. Words are piled on +words, and bricks on bricks, but of the two you are invited to +think words the more intractable. Truly, it was a man of +letters who said it, avenging himself on his profession for the +never-ending toil it imposed, by miscalling it, with grim +pleasantry, the architecture of the nursery. Finite and +quite rigid words are not, in any sense that holds good of +bricks. They move and change, they wax and <a +name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>wane, they +wither and burgeon; from age to age, from place to place, from +mouth to mouth, they are never at a stay. They take on +colour, intensity, and vivacity from the infection of +neighbourhood; the same word is of several shapes and diverse +imports in one and the same sentence; they depend on the building +that they compose for the very chemistry of the stuff that +composes them. The same epithet is used in the phrases +“a fine day” and “fine irony,” in +“fair trade” and “a fair goddess.” +Were different symbols to be invented for these sundry meanings +the art of literature would perish. For words carry with +them all the meanings they have worn, and the writer shall be +judged by those that he selects for prominence in the train of +his thought. A slight technical implication, a faint tinge +of archaism, in the common turn of speech that you employ, and in +a moment you have shaken off the mob that scours the rutted +highway, and are addressing a select audience of ticket-holders +with closed doors. A single natural phrase of peasant +speech, a direct physical sense given to a word that genteel <a +name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>parlance +authorises readily enough in its metaphorical sense, and at a +touch you have blown the roof off the drawing-room of the villa, +and have set its obscure inhabitants wriggling in the +unaccustomed sun. In choosing a sense for your words you +choose also an audience for them.</p> +<p>To one word, then, there are many meanings, according as it +falls in the sentence, according as its successive ties and +associations are broken or renewed. And here, seeing that +the stupidest of all possible meanings is very commonly the slang +meaning, it will be well to treat briefly of slang. For +slang, in the looser acceptation of the term, is of two kinds, +differing, and indeed diametrically opposite, in origin and +worth. Sometimes it is the technical diction that has +perforce been coined to name the operations, incidents, and +habits of some way of life that society despises or deliberately +elects to disregard. This sort of slang, which often +invents names for what would otherwise go nameless, is vivid, +accurate, and necessary, an addition of wealth to the +world’s dictionaries and of compass to the world’s <a +name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>range of +thought. Society, mistily conscious of the sympathy that +lightens in any habitual name, seems to have become aware, by one +of those wonderful processes of chary instinct which serve the +great, vulnerable, timid organism in lieu of a brain, that to +accept of the pickpocket his names for the mysteries of his trade +is to accept also a new moral stand-point and outlook on the +question of property. For this reason, and by no special +masonic precautions of his own, the pickpocket is allowed to keep +the admirable devices of his nomenclature for the familiar uses +of himself and his mates, until a Villon arrives to prove that +this language, too, was awaiting the advent of its bully and +master. In the meantime, what directness and modest +sufficiency of utterance distinguishes the dock compared with the +fumbling prolixity of the old gentleman on the bench! It is +the trite story,—romanticism forced to plead at the bar of +classicism fallen into its dotage, Keats judged by +<i>Blackwood</i>, Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment of +Miss Anna Seward. Accuser and accused alike recognise that +a question of diction <a name="page29"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 29</span>is part of the issue between them; +hence the picturesque confession of the culprit, made in proud +humility, that he “clicked a red ’un” must +needs be interpreted, to save the good faith of the court, into +the vaguer and more general speech of the classic +convention. Those who dislike to have their watches stolen +find that the poorest language of common life will serve their +simple turn, without the rich technical additions of a vocabulary +that has grown around an art. They can abide no rendering +of the fact that does not harp incessantly on the disapproval of +watch-owners. They carry their point of morals at the cost +of foregoing all glitter and finish in the matter of +expression.</p> +<p>This sort of slang, therefore, technical in origin, the +natural efflorescence of highly cultivated agilities of brain, +and hand, and eye, is worthy of all commendation. But there +is another kind that goes under the name of slang, the offspring +rather of mental sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, +jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. +There is a public for every <a name="page30"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 30</span>one; the pottle-headed lout who in a +moment of exuberance strikes on a new sordid metaphor for any +incident in the beaten round of drunkenness, lubricity, and debt, +can set his fancy rolling through the music-halls, and thence +into the street, secure of applause and a numerous sodden +discipleship. Of the same lazy stamp, albeit more amiable +in effect, are the thought-saying contrivances whereby one word +is retained to do the work of many. For the language of +social intercourse ease is the first requisite; the average +talker, who would be hard put to it if he were called on to +describe or to define, must constantly be furnished with the +materials of emphasis, wherewith to drive home his likes and +dislikes. Why should he alienate himself from the sympathy +of his fellows by affecting a singularity in the expression of +his emotions? What he craves is not accuracy, but immediacy +of expression, lest the tide of talk should flow past him, +leaving him engaged in a belated analysis. Thus the word of +the day is on all lips, and what was “vastly fine” +last century is “awfully jolly” now; the meaning <a +name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>is the same, +the expression equally inappropriate. Oaths have their +brief periods of ascendency, and philology can boast its +fashion-plates. The tyrant Fashion, who wields for whip the +fear of solitude, is shepherd to the flock of common talkers, as +they run hither and thither pursuing, not self-expression, the +prize of letters, but unanimity and self-obliteration, the marks +of good breeding. Like those famous modern poets who are +censured by the author of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, the talkers of +slang are “carried away by custom, to express many things +otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have +exprest them.” The poverty of their vocabulary makes +appeal to the brotherly sympathy of a partial and like-minded +auditor, who can fill out their paltry conventional sketches from +his own experience of the same events. Within the limits of +a single school, or workshop, or social circle, slang may serve; +just as, between friends, silence may do the work of talk. +There are few families, or groups of familiars, that have not +some small coinage of this token-money, issued and accepted <a +name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>by affection, +passing current only within those narrow and privileged +boundaries. This wealth is of no avail to the travelling +mind, save as a memorial of home, nor is its material such +“as, buried once, men want dug up again.” A few +happy words and phrases, promoted, for some accidental fitness, +to the wider world of letters, are all that reach posterity; the +rest pass into oblivion with the other perishables of the +age.</p> +<p>A profusion of words used in an ephemeral slang sense is +evidence, then, that the writer addresses himself merely to the +uneducated and thoughtless of his own day; the revival of bygone +meanings, on the other hand, and an archaic turn given to +language is the mark rather of authors who are ambitious of a +hearing from more than one age. The accretions of time +bring round a word many reputable meanings, of which the oldest +is like to be the deepest in grain. It is a counsel of +perfection—some will say, of vainglorious +pedantry—but that shaft flies furthest which is drawn to +the head, and he who desires to be understood in the +twenty-fourth century will <a name="page33"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 33</span>not be careless of the meanings that +his words inherit from the fourteenth. To know them is of +service, if only for the piquancy of avoiding them. But +many times they cannot wisely be avoided, and the auspices under +which a word began its career when first it was imported from the +French or Latin overshadow it and haunt it to the end.</p> +<p>Popular modern usage will often rob common words, like +“nice,” “quaint,” or “silly,” +of all flavour of their origin, as if it were of no moment to +remember that these three words, at the outset of their history, +bore the older senses of “ignorant,” +“noted,” and “blessed.” It may be +granted that any attempt to return to these older senses, +regardless of later implications, is stark pedantry; but a +delicate writer will play shyly with the primitive significance +in passing, approaching it and circling it, taking it as a point +of reference or departure. The early faith of Christianity, +its beautiful cult of childhood, and its appeal to unlearned +simplicity, have left their mark on the meaning of +“silly”; the history of the word is contained in that +<a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>cry of St. +Augustine, <i>Indocti surgunt et rapiunt coelum</i>, or in the +fervent sentence of the author of the <i>Imitation</i>, +<i>Oportet fieri stultum</i>. And if there is a later +silliness, altogether unblest, the skilful artificer of words, +while accepting this last extension, will show himself conscious +of his paradox. So also he will shun the grossness that +employs the epithet “quaint” to put upon subtlety and +the devices of a studied workmanship an imputation of +eccentricity; or, if he falls in with the populace in this +regard, he will be careful to justify his innuendo. The +slipshod use of “nice” to connote any sort of +pleasurable emotion he will take care, in his writings at least, +utterly to abhor. From the daintiness of elegance to the +arrogant disgust of folly the word carries meanings numerous and +diverse enough; it must not be cruelly burdened with all the +laudatory occasions of an undiscriminating egotism.</p> +<p>It would be easy to cite a hundred other words like these, +saved only by their nobler uses in literature from ultimate +defacement. The higher standard imposed upon the written +word tends to <a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>raise and purify speech also, and since talkers owe the +same debt to writers of prose that these, for their part, owe to +poets, it is the poets who must be accounted chief protectors, in +the last resort, of our common inheritance. Every page of +the works of that great exemplar of diction, Milton, is crowded +with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the +infallible word. Sometimes he accepts the secondary and +more usual meaning of a word only to enrich it by the +interweaving of the primary and etymological meaning. Thus +the seraph Abdiel, in the passage that narrates his offer of +combat to Satan, is said to “explore” his own +undaunted heart, and there is no sense of “explore” +that does not heighten the description and help the +thought. Thus again, when the poet describes those</p> + +<blockquote><p> Eremites +and friars,<br /> +White, Black, and Gray, with all their trumpery,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>who inhabit, or are doomed to inhabit, the Paradise of Fools, +he seems to invite the curious reader to recall the derivation of +“trumpery,” and so supplement the idea of +worthlessness with that other <a name="page36"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 36</span>idea, equally grateful to the author, +of deceit. The strength that extracts this multiplex +resonance of meaning from a single note is matched by the grace +that gives to Latin words like “secure,” +“arrive,” “obsequious,” +“redound,” “infest,” and +“solemn” the fine precision of intent that art can +borrow from scholarship.</p> +<p>Such an exactitude is consistent with vital change; Milton +himself is bold to write “stood praying” for +“continued kneeling in prayer,” and deft to transfer +the application of “schism” from the rent garment of +the Church to those necessary “dissections made in the +quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be +built.” Words may safely veer to every wind that +blows, so they keep within hail of their cardinal meanings, and +drift not beyond the scope of their central employ, but when once +they lose hold of that, then, indeed, the anchor has begun to +drag, and the beach-comber may expect his harvest.</p> +<p>Fixity in the midst of change, fluctuation at the heart of +sameness, such is the estate of language. According as they +endeavour to reduce <a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +37</span>letters to some large haven and abiding-place of +civility, or prefer to throw in their lot with the centrifugal +tendency and ride on the flying crest of change, are writers +dubbed Classic or Romantic. The Romantics are +individualist, anarchic; the strains of their passionate +incantation raise no cities to confront the wilderness in guarded +symmetry, but rather bring the stars shooting from their spheres, +and draw wild things captive to a voice. To them Society +and Law seem dull phantoms, by the light cast from a flaming +soul. They dwell apart, and torture their lives in the +effort to attain to self-expression. All means and modes +offered them by language they seize on greedily, and shape them +to this one end; they ransack the vocabulary of new sciences, and +appropriate or invent strange jargons. They furbish up old +words or weld together new indifferently, that they may possess +the machinery of their speech and not be possessed by it. +They are at odds with the idiom of their country in that it +serves the common need, and hunt it through all its metamorphoses +to subject it to their private will. <a +name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>Heretics by +profession, they are everywhere opposed to the party of the +Classics, who move by slower ways to ends less personal, but in +no wise easier of attainment. The magnanimity of the +Classic ideal has had scant justice done to it by modern +criticism. To make literature the crowning symbol of a +world-wide civilisation; to roof in the ages, and unite the elect +of all time in the courtesy of one shining assembly, paying duty +to one unquestioned code; to undo the work of Babel, and knit +together in a single community the scattered efforts of mankind +towards order and reason;—this was surely an aim worthy of +labour and sacrifice. Both have been freely given, and the +end is yet to seek. The self-assertion of the recusants has +found eulogists in plenty, but who has celebrated the self-denial +that was thrown away on this other task, which is farther from +fulfilment now than it was when the scholars of the Renaissance +gave up their patriotism and the tongue of their childhood in the +name of fellow-citizenship with the ancients and the +œcumenical authority of letters? Scholars, +grammarians, wits, and poets were content to bury <a +name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>the lustre of +their wisdom and the hard-won fruits of their toil in the +winding-sheet of a dead language, that they might be numbered +with the family of Cicero, and added to the pious train of +Virgil. It was a noble illusion, doomed to failure, the +versatile genius of language cried out against the monotony of +their Utopia, and the crowds who were to people the unbuilded +city of their dreams went straying after the feathered chiefs of +the rebels, who, when the fulness of time was come, themselves +received apotheosis and the honours of a new motley +pantheon. The tomb of that great vision bears for epitaph +the ironical inscription which defines a Classic poet as “a +dead Romantic.”</p> +<p>In truth the Romantics are right, and the serenity of the +classic ideal is the serenity of paralysis and death. A +universal agreement in the use of words facilitates +communication, but, so inextricably is expression entangled with +feeling, it leaves nothing to communicate. Inanity dogs the +footsteps of the classic tradition, which is everywhere lackeyed, +through a long decline, by the pallor of reflected glories. +Even the irresistible novelty <a name="page40"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 40</span>of personal experience is dulled by +being cast in the old matrix, and the man who professes to find +the whole of himself in the Bible or in Shakespeare had as good +not be. He is a replica and a shadow, a foolish libel on +his Creator, who, from the beginning of time, was never guilty of +tautology. This is the error of the classical creed, to +imagine that in a fleeting world, where the quickest eye can +never see the same thing twice, and a deed once done can never be +repeated, language alone should be capable of fixity and +finality. Nature avenges herself on those who would thus +make her prisoner, their truths degenerate to truisms, and +feeling dies in the ice-palaces that they build to house +it. In their search for permanence they become unreal, +abstract, didactic, lovers of generalisation, cherishers of the +dry bones of life; their art is transformed into a science, their +expression into an academic terminology. Immutability is +their ideal, and they find it in the arms of death. Words +must change to live, and a word once fixed becomes useless for +the purposes of art. Whosoever <a name="page41"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 41</span>would make acquaintance with the goal +towards which the classic practice tends, should seek it in the +vocabulary of the Sciences. There words are fixed and dead, +a botanical collection of colourless, scentless, dried weeds, a +<i>hortus siccus</i> of proper names, each individual symbol +poorly tethered to some single object or idea. No wind +blows through that garden, and no sun shines on it, to discompose +the melancholy workers at their task of tying Latin labels on to +withered sticks. Definition and division are the watchwords +of science, where art is all for composition and creation. +Not that the exact definable sense of a word is of no value to +the stylist; he profits by it as a painter profits by a study of +anatomy, or an architect by a knowledge of the strains and +stresses that may be put on his material. The exact logical +definition is often necessary for the structure of his thought +and the ordering of his severer argument. But often, too, +it is the merest beginning; when a word is once defined he +overlays it with fresh associations and buries it under new-found +moral significances, which may <a name="page42"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 42</span>belie the definition they +conceal. This is the burden of Jeremy Bentham’s +quarrel with “question-begging appellatives.” A +clear-sighted and scrupulously veracious philosopher, abettor of +the age of reason, apostle of utility, god-father of the +panopticon, and donor to the English dictionary of such +unimpassioned vocables as “codification” and +“international,” Bentham would have been glad to +purify the language by purging it of those “affections of +the soul” wherein Burke had found its highest glory. +Yet in censuring the ordinary political usage of such a word as +“innovation,” it was hardly prejudice in general that +he attacked, but the particular and deep-seated prejudice against +novelty. The surprising vivacity of many of his own +figures,—although he had the courage of his convictions, +and laboured, throughout the course of a long life, to desiccate +his style,—bears witness to a natural skill in the use of +loaded weapons. He will pack his text with grave argument +on matters ecclesiastical, and indulge himself and literature, in +the notes with a pleasant description of the flesh and <a +name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>the spirit +playing leap-frog, now one up, now the other, around the holy +precincts of the Church. Lapses like these show him far +enough from his own ideal of a geometric fixity in the use of +words. The claim of reason and logic to enslave language +has a more modern advocate in the philosopher who denies all +utility to a word while it retains traces of its primary sensuous +employ. The tickling of the senses, the raising of the +passions, these things do indeed interfere with the arid business +of definition. None the less they are the life’s +breath of literature, and he is a poor stylist who cannot beg +half-a-dozen questions in a single epithet, or state the +conclusion he would fain avoid in terms that startle the senses +into clamorous revolt.</p> +<p>The two main processes of change in words are Distinction and +Assimilation. Endless fresh distinction, to match the +infinite complexity of things, is the concern of the writer, who +spends all his skill on the endeavour to cloth the delicacies of +perception and thought with a neatly fitting garment. So +words grow and bifurcate, diverge and dwindle, until one root has +many branches. <a name="page44"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 44</span>Grammarians tell how +“royal” and “regal” grew up by the side +of “kingly,” how “hospital,” +“hospice,” “hostel” and +“hotel” have come by their several offices. The +inventor of the word “sensuous” gave to the English +people an opportunity of reconsidering those headstrong moral +preoccupations which had already ruined the meaning of +“sensual” for the gentler uses of a poet. Not +only the Puritan spirit, but every special bias or interest of +man seizes on words to appropriate them to itself. +Practical men of business transfer such words as +“debenture” or “commodity” from debt or +comfort in general to the palpable concrete symbols of debt or +comfort; and in like manlier doctors, soldiers, lawyers, +shipmen,—all whose interest and knowledge are centred on +some particular craft or profession, drag words from the general +store and adapt them to special uses. Such words are +sometimes reclaimed from their partial applications by the +authority of men of letters, and pass back into their wider +meanings enhanced by a new element of graphic association. +Language never suffers <a name="page45"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 45</span>by answering to an intelligent +demand; it is indebted not only to great authors, but to all whom +any special skill or taste has qualified to handle it. The +good writer may be one who disclaims all literary pretension, but +there he is, at work among words,—binding the vagabond or +liberating the prisoner, exalting the humble or abashing the +presumptuous, incessantly alert to amend their implications, +break their lazy habits, and help them to refinement or scope or +decision. He educates words, for he knows that they are +alive.</p> +<p>Compare now the case of the ruder multitude. In the +regard of literature, as a great critic long ago remarked, +“all are the multitude; only they differ in clothes, not in +judgment or understanding,” <a name="page46"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 46</span>and the poorest talkers do not +inhabit the slums. Wherever thought and taste have fallen +to be menials, there the vulgar dwell. How should they gain +mastery over language? They are introduced to a vocabulary +of some hundred thousand words, which quiver through a million of +meanings; the wealth is theirs for the taking, and they are +encouraged to be spendthrift by the very excess of what they +inherit. The resources of the tongue they speak are subtler +and more various than ever their ideas can put to use. So +begins the process of assimilation, the edge put upon words by +the craftsman is blunted by the rough treatment of the confident +booby, who is well pleased when out of many highly-tempered +swords he has manufactured a single clumsy coulter. A dozen +expressions to serve one slovenly meaning inflate him with the +sense of luxury and pomp. “Vast,” +“huge,” “immense,” +“gigantic,” “enormous,” +“tremendous,” “portentous,” and such-like +groups of words, lose all their variety of sense in a barren +uniformity of low employ. The reign of this democracy +annuls differences of status, and insults over differences of +ability or disposition. Thus do synonyms, or many words ill +applied to one purpose, begin to flourish, and, for a last +indignity, dictionaries of synonyms.</p> +<p>Let the truth be said outright: there are no synonyms, and the +same statement can never be repeated in a changed form of +words. Where the <a name="page47"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 47</span>ignorance of one writer has +introduced an unnecessary word into the language, to fill a place +already occupied, the quicker apprehension of others will fasten +upon it, drag it apart from its fellows, and find new work for it +to do. Where a dull eye sees nothing but sameness, the +trained faculty of observation will discern a hundred differences +worthy of scrupulous expression. The old foresters had +different names for a buck during each successive year of its +life, distinguishing the fawn from the pricket, the pricket from +the sore, and so forth, as its age increased. Thus it is +also in that illimitable but not trackless forest of moral +distinctions. Language halts far behind the truth of +things, and only a drowsy perception can fail to devise a use for +some new implement of description. Every strange word that +makes its way into a language spins for itself a web of usage and +circumstance, relating itself from whatsoever centre to fresh +points in the circumference. No two words ever coincide +throughout their whole extent. If sometimes good writers +are found adding epithet to epithet for the same quality, and +name to name <a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +48</span>for the same thing, it is because they despair of +capturing their meaning at a venture, and so practise to get near +it by a maze of approximations. Or, it may be, the generous +breadth of their purpose scorns the minuter differences of +related terms, and includes all of one affinity, fearing only +lest they be found too few and too weak to cover the ground +effectively. Of this sort are the so-called synonyms of the +Prayer-Book, wherein we “acknowledge and confess” the +sins we are forbidden to “dissemble or cloke;” and +the bead-roll of the lawyer, who huddles together “give, +devise, and bequeath,” lest the cunning of litigants should +evade any single verb. The works of the poets yield still +better instances. When Milton praises the <i>Virtuous Young +Lady</i> of his sonnet in that the spleen of her detractors moves +her only to “pity and ruth,” it is not for the idle +filling of the line that he joins the second of these nouns to +the first. Rather he is careful to enlarge and intensify +his meaning by drawing on the stores of two nations, the one +civilised, the other barbarous; and ruth is a quality as much +more <a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +49</span>instinctive and elemental than pity as pitilessness is +keener, harder, and more deliberate than the inborn savagery of +ruthlessness.</p> +<p>It is not chiefly, however, for the purposes of this +accumulated and varied emphasis that the need of synonyms is +felt. There is no more curious problem in the philosophy of +style than that afforded by the stubborn reluctance of writers, +the good as well as the bad, to repeat a word or phrase. +When the thing is, they may be willing to abide by the old rule +and say the word, but when the thing repeats itself they will +seldom allow the word to follow suit. A kind of interdict, +not removed until the memory of the first occurrence has faded, +lies on a once used word. The causes of this anxiety for a +varied expression are manifold. Where there is merely a +column to fill, poverty of thought drives the hackney author into +an illicit fulness, until the trick of verbiage passes from his +practice into his creed, and makes him the dupe of his own +puppets. A commonplace book, a dictionary of synonyms, and +another of phrase and fable equip him for his task; if he <a +name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>be called +upon to marshal his ideas on the question whether oysters breed +typhoid, he will acquit himself voluminously, with only one +allusion (it is a point of pride) to the oyster by name. He +will compare the succulent bivalve to Pandora’s box, and +lament that it should harbour one of the direst of ills that +flesh is heir to. He will find a paradox and an epigram in +the notion that the darling of Apicius should suffer neglect +under the frowns of Æsculapius. Question, hypothesis, +lamentation, and platitude dance their allotted round and fill +the ordained space, while Ignorance masquerades in the garb of +criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient epilogue of chastened +hope. When all is said, nothing is said; and +Montaigne’s <i>Que sçais-je</i>, besides being +briefer and wittier, was infinitely more informing.</p> +<p>But we dwell too long with disease; the writer nourished on +thought, whose nerves are braced and his loins girt to struggle +with a real meaning, is not subject to these tympanies. He +feels no idolatrous dread of repetition when the theme requires, +it, and is urged by no necessity of concealing real <a +name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>identity +under a show of change. Nevertheless he, too, is hedged +about by conditions that compel him, now and again, to resort to +what seems a synonym. The chief of these is the +indispensable law of euphony, which governs the sequence not only +of words, but also of phrases. In proportion as a phrase is +memorable, the words that compose it become mutually adhesive, +losing for a time something of their individual scope, bringing +with them, if they be torn away too quickly, some cumbrous +fragments of their recent association. That he may avoid +this, a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, and extorts, +if he be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of his +encumbrance. By a slight stress laid on the difference of +usage the unshapeliness may be done away with, and a new grace +found where none was sought. Addison and Landor accuse +Milton, with reason, of too great a fondness for the pun, yet +surely there is something to please the mind, as well as the ear, +in the description of the heavenly judgment,</p> +<blockquote><p>That brought into this world a world of woe.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Where words are not fitted with a single hard <a +name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>definition, +rigidly observed, all repetition is a kind of delicate punning, +bringing slight differences of application into clear +relief. The practice has its dangers for the weak-minded +lover of ornament, yet even so it may be preferable to the flat +stupidity of one identical intention for a word or phrase in +twenty several contexts. For the law of incessant change is +not so much a counsel of perfection to be held up before the +apprentice, as a fundamental condition of all writing whatsoever; +if the change be not ordered by art it will order itself in +default of art. The same statement can never be repeated +even in the same form of words, and it is not the old question +that is propounded at the third time of asking. Repetition, +that is to say, is the strongest generator of emphasis known to +language. Take the exquisite repetitions in these few +lines:—</p> +<blockquote><p>Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear<br /> +Compels me to disturb your season due;<br /> +For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,<br /> +Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here the tenderness of affection returns again <a +name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>to the loved +name, and the grief of the mourner repeats the word +“dead.” But this monotony of sorrow is the +least part of the effect, which lies rather in the prominence +given by either repetition to the most moving circumstance of +all—the youthfulness of the dead poet. The attention +of the discursive intellect, impatient of reiteration, is +concentrated on the idea which these repeated and exhausted words +throw into relief. Rhetoric is content to borrow force from +simpler methods; a good orator will often bring his hammer down, +at the end of successive periods, on the same phrase; and the +mirthless refrain of a comic song, or the catchword of a buffoon, +will raise laughter at last by its brazen importunity. Some +modern writers, admiring the easy power of the device, have +indulged themselves with too free a use of it; Matthew Arnold +particularly, in his prose essays, falls to crying his text like +a hawker,</p> +<blockquote><p>Beating it in upon our weary brains,<br /> +As tho’ it were the burden of a song,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>clattering upon the iron of the Philistine giant in the effort +to bring him to reason. These are the <a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>ostentatious +violences of a missionary, who would fain save his enemy alive, +where a grimmer purpose is glad to employ a more silent weapon +and strike but once. The callousness of a thick-witted +auditory lays the need for coarse method on the gentlest soul +resolved to stir them. But he whose message is for minds +attuned and tempered will beware of needless reiteration, as of +the noisiest way of emphasis. Is the same word wanted +again, he will examine carefully whether the altered incidence +does not justify and require an altered term, which the world is +quick to call a synonym. The right dictionary of synonyms +would give the context of each variant in the usage of the best +authors. To enumerate all the names applied by Milton to +the hero of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, without reference to the +passages in which they occur, would be a foolish labour; with +such reference, the task is made a sovereign lesson in +style. At Hell gates, where he dallies in speech with his +leman Sin to gain a passage from the lower World, Satan is +“the subtle Fiend,” in the garden of Paradise he is +“the Tempter” and “the Enemy of Mankind,” +<a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>putting +his fraud upon Eve he is the “wily Adder,” leading +her in full course to the tree he is “the dire +Snake,” springing to his natural height before the +astonished gaze of the cherubs he is “the grisly +King.” Every fresh designation elaborates his +character and history, emphasises the situation, and saves a +sentence. So it is with all variable appellations of +concrete objects; and even in the stricter and more conventional +region of abstract ideas the same law runs. Let a word be +changed or repeated, it brings in either case its contribution of +emphasis, and must be carefully chosen for the part it is to +play, lest it should upset the business of the piece by +irrelevant clownage in the midst of high matter, saying more or +less than is set down for it in the author’s purpose.</p> +<p>The chameleon quality of language may claim yet another +illustration. Of origins we know nothing certainly, nor how +words came by their meanings in the remote beginning, when +speech, like the barnacle-goose of the herbalist, was suspended +over an expectant world, ripening on a tree. But this we +know, that language in its <a name="page56"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 56</span>mature state is fed and fattened on +metaphor. Figure is not a late device of the rhetorician, +but the earliest principle of change in language. The whole +process of speech is a long series of exhilarating discoveries, +whereby words, freed from the swaddling bands of their nativity, +are found capable of new relations and a wider metaphorical +employ. Then, with the growth of exact knowledge, the +straggling associations that attended the word on its travels are +straitened and confined, its meaning is settled, adjusted, and +balanced, that it may bear its part in the scrupulous deposition +of truth. Many are the words that have run this double +course, liberated from their first homely offices and transformed +by poetry, reclaimed in a more abstract sense, and appropriated +to a new set of facts by science. Yet a third chance awaits +them when the poet, thirsty for novelty, passes by the old simple +founts of figure to draw metaphor from the latest technical +applications of specialised terms. Everywhere the intuition +of poetry, impatient of the sturdy philosophic cripple that lags +so <a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>far +behind, is busy in advance to find likenesses not susceptible of +scientific demonstration, to leap to comparisons that satisfy the +heart while they leave the colder intellect only half +convinced. When an elegant dilettante like Samuel Rogers is +confronted with the principle of gravitation he gives voice to +science in verse:—</p> +<blockquote><p>That very law which moulds a tear,<br /> + And bids it trickle from its source,<br /> +That law preserves the earth a sphere,<br /> + And guides the planets in their course.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But a seer like Wordsworth will never be content to write +tunes for a text-book of physics, he boldly confounds the +arbitrary limits of matter and morals in one splendid apostrophe +to Duty:—</p> +<blockquote><p> Flowers laugh before thee on +their beds;<br /> + And fragrance in thy footing treads;<br /> + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;<br /> +And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and +strong.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Poets, it is said, anticipate science; here in these four +lines is work for a thousand laboratories for a thousand +years. But the truth has been understated; every writer and +every speaker <a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +58</span>works ahead of science, expressing analogies and +contrasts, likenesses and differences, that will not abide the +apparatus of proof. The world of perception and will, of +passion and belief, is an uncaptured virgin, airily deriding from +afar the calculated advances and practised modesty of the old +bawd Science; turning again to shower a benediction of unexpected +caresses on the most cavalier of her wooers, Poetry. This +world, the child of Sense and Faith, shy, wild, and provocative, +for ever lures her lovers to the chase, and the record of their +hopes and conquests is contained in the lover’s language, +made up wholly of parable and figure of speech. There is +nothing under the sun nor beyond it that does not concern man, +and it is the unceasing effort of humanity, whether by letters or +by science, to bring “the commerce of the mind and of +things” to terms of nearer correspondence. But +Literature, ambitious to touch life on all its sides, distrusts +the way of abstraction, and can hardly be brought to abandon the +point of view whence things are seen in their immediate relation +to the <a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +59</span>individual soul. This kind of research is the work +of letters; here are facts of human life to be noted that are +never like to be numerically tabulated, changes and developments +that defy all metrical standards to be traced and +described. The greater men of science have been cast in so +generous a mould that they have recognised the partial nature of +their task; they have known how to play with science as a +pastime, and to win and wear her decorations for a holiday +favour. They have not emaciated the fulness of their +faculties in the name of certainty, nor cramped their humanity +for the promise of a future good. They have been the +servants of Nature, not the slaves of method. But the +grammarian of the laboratory is often the victim of his +trade. He staggers forth from his workshop, where prolonged +concentration on a mechanical task, directed to a provisional and +doubtful goal, has dimmed his faculties; the glaring motley of +the world, bathed in sunlight, dazzles him; the questions, moral, +political, and personal, that his method has relegated to some +future of larger <a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>knowledge, crowd upon him, clamorous for solution, not +to be denied, insisting on a settlement to-day. He is +forced to make a choice, and may either forsake the divinity he +serves, falling back, for the practical and æsthetic +conduct of life, on those common instincts of sensuality which +oscillate between the conventicle and the tavern as the poles of +duty and pleasure, or, more pathetically still, he may attempt to +bring the code of the observatory to bear immediately on the +vagaries of the untameable world, and suffer the pedant’s +disaster. A martyr to the good that is to be, he has +voluntarily maimed himself “for the kingdom of +Heaven’s sake”—if, perchance, the kingdom of +Heaven might come by observation. The enthusiasm of his +self-denial shows itself in his unavailing struggle to chain +language also to the bare rock of ascertained fact. +Metaphor, the poet’s right-hand weapon, he despises; all +that is tentative, individual, struck off at the urging of a +mood, he disclaims and suspects. Yet the very rewards that +science promises have their parallel in the domain of +letters. The discovery of likeness <a +name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>in the midst +of difference, and of difference in the midst of likeness, is the +keenest pleasure of the intellect; and literary expression, as +has been said, is one long series of such discoveries, each with +its thrill of incommunicable happiness, all unprecedented, and +perhaps unverifiable by later experiment. The finest +instrument of these discoveries is metaphor, the spectroscope of +letters.</p> +<p>Enough has been said of change; it remains to speak of one +more of those illusions of fixity wherein writers seek exemption +from the general lot. Language, it has been shown, is to be +fitted to thought; and, further, there are no synonyms. +What more natural conclusion could be drawn by the enthusiasm of +the artist than that there is some kind of preordained harmony +between words and things, whereby expression and thought tally +exactly, like the halves of a puzzle? This illusion, called +in France the doctrine of the <i>mot propre</i>, is a will +o’ the wisp which has kept many an artist dancing on its +trail. That there is one, and only one way of expressing +one thing has <a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>been the belief of other writers besides Gustave +Flaubert, inspiriting them to a desperate and fruitful +industry. It is an amiable fancy, like the dream of Michael +Angelo, who loved to imagine that the statue existed already in +the block of marble, and had only to be stripped of its +superfluous wrappings, or like the indolent fallacy of those +economic soothsayers to whom Malthus brought rough awakening, +that population and the means of subsistence move side by side in +harmonious progress. But hunger does not imply food, and +there may hover in the restless heads of poets, as themselves +testify—</p> +<blockquote><p>One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the +least,<br /> +Which into words no virtue can digest.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Matter and form are not so separable as the popular philosophy +would have them; indeed, the very antithesis between them is a +cardinal instance of how language reacts on thought, modifying +and fixing a cloudy truth. The idea pursues form not only +that it may be known to others, but that it may know itself, and +the body in which it becomes incarnate is not to be distinguished +from <a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>the +informing soul. It is recorded of a famous Latin historian +how he declared that he would have made Pompey win the battle of +Pharsalia had the effective turn of the sentence required +it. He may stand for the true type of the literary +artist. The business of letters, howsoever simple it may +seem to those who think truth-telling a gift of nature, is in +reality two-fold, to find words for a meaning, and to find a +meaning for words. Now it is the words that refuse to +yield, and now the meaning, so that he who attempts to wed them +is at the same time altering his words to suit his meaning, and +modifying and shaping his meaning to satisfy the requirements of +his words. The humblest processes of thought have had their +first education from language long before they took shape in +literature. So subtle is the connexion between the two that +it is equally possible to call language the form given to the +matter of thought, or, inverting the application of the figure, +to speak of thought as the formal principle that shapes the raw +material of language. It is not until the two become one +that they can be <a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>known for two. The idea to be expressed is a kind +of mutual recognition between thought and language, which here +meet and claim each other for the first time, just as in the +first glance exchanged by lovers, the unborn child opens its eyes +on the world, and pleads for life. But thought, although it +may indulge itself with the fancy of a predestined affiance, is +not confined to one mate, but roves free and is the father of +many children. A belief in the inevitable word is the last +refuge of that stubborn mechanical theory of the universe which +has been slowly driven from science, politics, and history. +Amidst so much that is undulating, it has pleased writers to +imagine that truth persists and is provided by heavenly +munificence with an imperishable garb of language. But this +also is vanity, there is one end appointed alike to all, fact +goes the way of fiction, and what is known is no more perdurable +than what is made. Not words nor works, but only that which +is formless endures, the vitality that is another name for +change, the breath that fills and shatters the bubbles of good +and <a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>evil, +of beauty and deformity, of truth and untruth.</p> +<p>No art is easy, least of all the art of letters. Apply +the musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon +literature performs its voluntaries. With a living keyboard +of notes which are all incessantly changing in value, so that +what rang true under Dr. Johnson’s hand may sound flat or +sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, some falling mute +and others being added from day to day, with numberless +permutations and combinations, each of which alters the tone and +pitch of the units that compose it, with fluid ideas that never +have an outlined existence until they have found their phrases +and the improvisation is complete, is it to be wondered at that +the art of style is eternally elusive, and that the attempt to +reduce it to rule is the forlorn hope of academic +infatuation?</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>These difficulties and complexities of the instrument are, +nevertheless, the least part of the ordeal that is to be +undergone by the writer. The <a name="page66"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 66</span>same musical note or phrase affects +different ears in much the same way; not so the word or group of +words. The pure idea, let us say, is translated into +language by the literary composer; who is to be responsible for +the retranslation of the language into idea? Here begins +the story of the troubles and weaknesses that are imposed upon +literature by the necessity it lies under of addressing itself to +an audience, by its liability to anticipate the corruptions that +mar the understanding of the spoken or written word. A word +is the operative symbol of a relation between two minds, and is +chosen by the one not without regard to the quality of the effect +actually produced upon the other. Men must be spoken to in +their accustomed tongue, and persuaded that the unknown God +proclaimed by the poet is one whom aforetime they ignorantly +worshipped. The relation of great authors to the public may +be compared to the war of the sexes, a quiet watchful antagonism +between two parties mutually indispensable to each other, at one +time veiling itself in endearments, at another breaking out into +open <a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +67</span>defiance. He who has a message to deliver must +wrestle with his fellows before he shall be permitted to ply them +with uncomfortable or unfamiliar truths. The public, like +the delicate Greek Narcissus, is sleepily enamoured of itself; +and the name of its only other perfect lover is Echo. Yet +even great authors must lay their account with the public, and it +is instructive to observe how different are the attitudes they +have adopted, how uniform the disappointment they have +felt. Some, like Browning and Mr. Meredith in our own day, +trouble themselves little about the reception given to their +work, but are content to say on, until the few who care to listen +have expounded them to the many, and they are applauded, in the +end, by a generation whom they have trained to appreciate +them. Yet this noble and persevering indifference is none +of their choice, and long years of absolution from criticism must +needs be paid for in faults of style. “Writing for +the stage,” Mr. Meredith himself has remarked, “would +be a corrective of a too-incrusted scholarly style into which +some great ones fall at times.” Denied such a +corrective, the <a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>great one is apt to sit alone and tease his meditations +into strange shapes, fortifying himself against obscurity and +neglect with the reflection that most of the words he uses are to +be found, after all, in the dictionary. It is not, however, +from the secluded scholar that the sharpest cry of pain is wrung +by the indignities of his position, but rather from genius in the +act of earning a full meed of popular applause. Both +Shakespeare and Ben Jonson wrote for the stage, both were blown +by the favouring breath of their plebeian patrons into reputation +and a competence. Each of them passed through the thick of +the fight, and well knew that ugly corner where the artist is +exposed to cross fires, his own idea of masterly work on the one +hand and the necessity for pleasing the rabble on the +other. When any man is awake to the fact that the public is +a vile patron, when he is conscious also that his bread and his +fame are in their gift—it is a stern passage for his soul, +a touchstone for the strength and gentleness of his spirit. +Jonson, whose splendid scorn took to itself lyric wings in the +two great Odes to Himself, sang <a name="page69"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 69</span>high and aloof for a while, then the +frenzy caught him, and he flung away his lyre to gird himself for +deeds of mischief among nameless and noteless antagonists. +Even Chapman, who, in <i>The Tears of Peace</i>, compares +“men’s refuse ears” to those gates in ancient +cities which were opened only when the bodies of executed +malefactors were to be cast away, who elsewhere gives utterance, +in round terms, to his belief that</p> +<blockquote><p>No truth of excellence was ever seen<br /> +But bore the venom of the vulgar’s spleen,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>—even the violences of this great and haughty spirit +must pale beside the more desperate violences of the dramatist +who commended his play to the public in the famous line,</p> +<blockquote><p>By God, ’tis good, and if you like’t, +you may.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This stormy passion of arrogant independence disturbs the +serenity of atmosphere necessary for creative art. A +greater than Jonson donned the suppliant’s robes, like +Coriolanus, and with the inscrutable honeyed smile about his lips +begged for the “most sweet voices” of the journeymen +<a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>and +gallants who thronged the Globe Theatre. Only once does the +wail of anguish escape him—</p> +<blockquote><p>Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and +there,<br /> + And made myself a motley to the view,<br /> +Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And again—</p> +<blockquote><p>Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,<br +/> + And almost thence my nature is subdued<br /> +To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand,<br /> + Pity me then, and wish I were renewed.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Modern vulgarity, speaking through the mouths of Shakesperian +commentators, is wont to interpret these lines as a protest +against the contempt wherewith Elizabethan society regarded the +professions of playwright and actor. We are asked to +conceive that Shakespeare humbly desires the pity of his bosom +friend because he is not put on the same level of social +estimation with a brocaded gull or a prosperous stupid goldsmith +of the Cheap. No, it is a cry, from the depth of his +nature, for forgiveness because he has sacrificed a little on the +altar of popularity. Jonson would <a +name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>have boasted +that he never made this sacrifice. But he lost the calm of +his temper and the clearness of his singing voice, he degraded +his magnanimity by allowing it to engage in street-brawls, and he +endangered the sanctuary of the inviolable soul.</p> +<p>At least these great artists of the sixteenth and nineteenth +centuries are agreed upon one thing, that the public, even in its +most gracious mood, makes an ill task-master for the man of +letters. It is worth the pains to ask why, and to attempt +to show how much of an author’s literary quality is +involved in his attitude towards his audience. Such an +inquiry will take us, it is true, into bad company, and exhibit +the vicious, the fatuous, and the frivolous posturing to an +admiring crowd. But style is a property of all written and +printed matter, so that to track it to its causes and origins is +a task wherein literary criticism may profit by the humbler aid +of anthropological research.</p> +<p>Least of all authors is the poet subject to the tyranny of his +audience. “Poetry and eloquence,” <a +name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>says John +Stuart Mill, “are both alike the expression or utterance of +feeling. But if we may be excused the antithesis, we should +say that eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard. Eloquence +supposes an audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to +lie in the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a +listener.” Poetry, according to this discerning +criticism, is an inspired soliloquy; the thoughts rise unforced +and unchecked, taking musical form in obedience only to the law +of their being, giving pleasure to an audience only as the +mountain spring may chance to assuage the thirst of a passing +traveller. In lyric poetry, language, from being a utensil, +or a medium of traffic and barter, passes back to its place among +natural sounds; its affinity is with the wind among the trees and +the stream among the rocks; it is the cry of the heart, as simple +as the breath we draw, and as little ordered with a view to +applause. Yet speech grew up in society, and even in the +most ecstatic of its uses may flag for lack of understanding and +response. It were rash to say that the poets need no +audience; the loneliest have <a name="page73"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 73</span>promised themselves a tardy +recognition, and some among the greatest came to their maturity +in the warm atmosphere of a congenial society. Indeed the +ratification set upon merit by a living audience, fit though few, +is necessary for the development of the most humane and +sympathetic genius; and the memorable ages of literature, in +Greece or Rome, in France or England, have been the ages of a +literary society. The nursery of our greatest dramatists +must be looked for, not, it is true, in the transfigured +bear-gardens of the Bankside, but in those enchanted taverns, +islanded and bastioned by the protective decree—</p> +<blockquote><p><i>Idiota</i>, <i>insulsus</i>, <i>tristis</i>, +<i>turpis</i>, <i>abesto</i>.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The poet seems to be soliloquising because he is addressing +himself, with the most entire confidence, to a small company of +his friends, who may even, in unhappy seasons, prove to be the +creatures of his imagination. Real or imaginary, they are +taken by him for his equals; he expects from them a quick +intelligence and a perfect sympathy, which may enable him to +despise all <a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>concealment. He never preaches to them, nor +scolds, nor enforces the obvious. Content that what he has +spoken he has spoken, he places a magnificent trust on a single +expression. He neither explains, nor falters, nor repents; +he introduces his work with no preface, and cumbers it with no +notes. He will not lower nor raise his voice for the sake +of the profane and idle who may chance to stumble across his +entertainment. His living auditors, unsolicited for the +tribute of worship or an alms, find themselves conceived of in +the likeness of what he would have them to be, raised to a +companion pinnacle of friendship, and constituted peers and +judges, if they will, of his achievement. Sometimes they +come late.</p> +<p>This blend of dignity and intimacy, of candour and +self-respect, is unintelligible to the vulgar, who understand by +intimacy mutual concession to a base ideal, and who are so +accustomed to deal with masks, that when they see a face they are +shocked as by some grotesque. Now a poet, like +Montaigne’s naked philosopher, is all face; and the +bewilderment of his masked and muffled critics <a +name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>is the +greater. Wherever he attracts general attention he cannot +but be misunderstood. The generality of modern men and +women who pretend to literature are not hypocrites, or they might +go near to divine him,—for hypocrisy, though rooted in +cowardice, demands for its flourishing a clear intellectual +atmosphere, a definite aim, and a certain detachment of the +directing mind. But they are habituated to trim themselves +by the cloudy mirror of opinion, and will mince and temporise, as +if for an invisible audience, even in their bedrooms. Their +masks have, for the most part, grown to their faces, so that, +except in some rare animal paroxysm of emotion, it is hardly +themselves that they express. The apparition of a poet +disquiets them, for he clothes himself with the elements, and +apologises to no idols. His candour frightens them: they +avert their eyes from it; or they treat it as a licensed whim; +or, with a sudden gleam of insight, and apprehension of what this +means for them and theirs, they scream aloud for fear. A +modern instance may be found in the angry protestations launched +<a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>against +Rossetti’s Sonnets, at the time of their first appearance, +by a writer who has since matched himself very exactly with an +audience of his own kind. A stranger freak of burgess +criticism is everyday fare in the odd world peopled by the +biographers of Robert Burns. The nature of Burns, one would +think, was simplicity itself; it could hardly puzzle a ploughman, +and two sailors out of three would call him brother. But he +lit up the whole of that nature by his marvellous genius for +expression, and grave personages have been occupied ever since in +discussing the dualism of his character, and professing to find +some dark mystery in the existence of this, that, or the other +trait—a love of pleasure, a hatred of shams, a deep sense +of religion. It is common human nature, after all, that is +the mystery, but they seem never to have met with it, and treat +it as if it were the poet’s eccentricity. They are +all agog to worship him, and when they have made an image of him +in their own likeness, and given it a tin-pot head that exactly +hits their taste, they break into noisy lamentation over the +discovery <a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>that the original was human, and had feet of clay. +They deem “Mary in Heaven” so admirable that they +could find it in their hearts to regret that she was ever on +earth. This sort of admirers constantly refuses to bear a +part in any human relationship; they ask to be fawned on, or +trodden on, by the poet while he is in life; when he is dead they +make of him a candidate for godship, and heckle him. It is +a misfortune not wholly without its compensations that most great +poets are dead before they are popular.</p> +<p>If great and original literary artists—here grouped +together under the title of poets—will not enter into +transactions with their audience, there is no lack of authors who +will. These are not necessarily charlatans; they may have +by nature a ready sympathy with the grossness of the public +taste, and thus take pleasure in studying to gratify it. +But man loses not a little of himself in crowds, and some +degradation there must be where the one adapts himself to the +many. The British public is not seen at its best when it is +enjoying a holiday in a foreign country, nor when <a +name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>it is making +excursions into the realm of imaginative literature: those who +cater for it in these matters must either study its tastes or +share them. Many readers bring the worst of themselves to a +novel; they want lazy relaxation, or support for their nonsense, +or escape from their creditors, or a free field for emotions that +they dare not indulge in life. The reward of an author who +meets them half-way in these respects, who neither puzzles nor +distresses them, who asks nothing from them, but compliments them +on their great possessions and sends them away rejoicing, is a +full measure of acceptance, and editions unto seventy times +seven.</p> +<p>The evils caused by the influence of the audience on the +writer are many. First of all comes a fault far enough +removed from the characteristic vices of the charlatan—to +wit, sheer timidity and weakness. There is a kind of +stage-fright that seizes on a man when he takes pen in hand to +address an unknown body of hearers, no less than when he stands +up to deliver himself to a sea of expectant faces. This is +the true panic fear, that walks at mid-day, and <a +name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>unmans those +whom it visits. Hence come reservations, qualifications, +verbosity, and the see-saw of a wavering courage, which apes +progress and purpose, as soldiers mark time with their +feet. The writing produced under these auspices is of no +greater moment than the incoherent loquacity of a nervous +patient. All self-expression is a challenge thrown down to +the world, to be taken up by whoso will; and the spirit of +timidity, when it touches a man, suborns him with the reminder +that he holds his life and goods by the sufferance of his +fellows. Thereupon he begins to doubt whether it is worth +while to court a verdict of so grave possibilities, or to risk +offending a judge—whose customary geniality is merely the +outcome of a fixed habit of inattention. In doubt whether +to speak or keep silence, he takes a middle course, and while +purporting to speak for himself, is careful to lay stress only on +the points whereon all are agreed, to enlarge eloquently on the +doubtfulness of things, and to give to words the very least +meaning that they will carry. Such a procedure, which +glides over essentials, and handles truisms <a +name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 80</span>or +trivialities with a fervour of conviction, has its functions in +practice. It will win for a politician the coveted and +deserved repute of a “safe” man—safe, even +though the cause perish. Pleaders and advocates are +sometimes driven into it, because to use vigorous, clean, crisp +English in addressing an ordinary jury or committee is like +flourishing a sword in a drawing-room: it will lose the +case. Where the weakest are to be convinced speech must +stoop: a full consideration of the velleities and uncertainties, +a little bombast to elevate the feelings without committing the +judgment, some vague effusion of sentiment, an inapposite +blandness, a meaningless rodomontade—these are the by-ways +to be travelled by the style that is a willing slave to its +audience. The like is true of those +documents—petitions, resolutions, congratulatory addresses, +and so forth—that are written to be signed by a multitude +of names. Public occasions of this kind, where all and +sundry are to be satisfied, have given rise to a new +parliamentary dialect, which has nothing of the freshness of +individual emotion, is powerless to deal with <a +name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>realities, +and lacks all resonance, vitality, and nerve. There is no +cure for this, where the feelings and opinions of a crowd are to +be expressed. But where indecision is the ruling passion of +the individual, he may cease to write. Popularity was never +yet the prize of those whose only care is to avoid offence.</p> +<p>For hardier aspirants, the two main entrances to popular +favour are by the twin gates of laughter and tears. Pathos +knits the soul and braces the nerves, humour purges the eyesight +and vivifies the sympathies; the counterfeits of these qualities +work the opposite effects. It is comparatively easy to +appeal to passive emotions, to play upon the melting mood of a +diffuse sensibility, or to encourage the narrow mind to dispense +a patron’s laughter from the vantage-ground of its own +small preconceptions. Our annual crop of sentimentalists +and mirth-makers supplies the reading public with food. +Tragedy, which brings the naked soul face to face with the +austere terrors of Fate, Comedy, which turns the light inward and +dissipates the mists of self-affection and self-esteem, <a +name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>have long +since given way on the public stage to the flattery of Melodrama, +under many names. In the books he reads and in the plays he +sees the average man recognises himself in the hero, and +vociferates his approbation.</p> +<p>The sensibility that came into vogue during the eighteenth +century was of a finer grain than its modern counterpart. +It studied delicacy, and sought a cultivated enjoyment in +evanescent shades of feeling, and the fantasies of unsubstantial +grief. The real Princess of Hans Andersen’s story, +who passed a miserable night because there was a small bean +concealed beneath the twenty eider-down beds on which she slept, +might stand for a type of the aristocracy of feeling that took a +pride in these ridiculous susceptibilities. The modern +sentimentalist works in a coarser material. That ancient, +subtle, and treacherous affinity among the emotions, whereby +religious exaltation has before now been made the ally of the +unpurified passions, is parodied by him in a simpler and more +useful device. By alleging a moral purpose he is enabled to +gratify the prurience of his public and to raise <a +name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>them in their +own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea serves +well with those artless readers who have been accustomed to +consider the moral of a story as something separable from +imagination, expression, and style—a quality, it may be, +inherent in the plot, or a kind of appendix, exercising a +retrospective power of jurisdiction and absolution over the +extravagances of the piece to which it is affixed. Let +virtue be rewarded, and they are content though it should never +be vitally imagined or portrayed. If their eyes were opened +they might cry with Brutus—“O miserable Virtue! +Thou art but a phrase, and I have followed thee as though thou +wert a reality.”</p> +<p>It is in quite another kind, however, that the modern purveyor +of sentiment exercises his most characteristic talent. +There are certain real and deeply-rooted feelings, common to +humanity, concerning which, in their normal operation, a grave +reticence is natural. They are universal in their appeal, +men would be ashamed not to feel them, and it is no small part of +the business of life to keep them under strict control. +Here is the sentimental <a name="page84"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 84</span>hucksters most valued +opportunity. He tears these primary instincts from the +wholesome privacy that shelters them in life, and cries them up +from his booth in the market-place. The elemental forces of +human life, which beget shyness in children, and touch the +spirits of the wise to solemn acquiescence, awaken him to noisier +declamation. He patronises the stern laws of love and pity, +hawking them like indulgences, cheapening and commanding them +like the medicines of a mountebank. The censure of his +critics he impudently meets by pointing to his wares: are not +some of the most sacred properties of humanity—sympathy +with suffering, family affection, filial devotion, and the +rest—displayed upon his stall? Not thus shall he +evade the charges brought against him. It is the sensual +side of the tender emotions that he exploits for the comfort of +the million. All the intricacies which life offers to the +will and the intellect he lards and obliterates by the timely +effusion of tearful sentiment. His humanitarianism is a +more popular, as it is an easier, ideal than humanity—it +asks no expense <a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>of thought. There is a scanty public in England +for tragedy or for comedy: the characters and situations handled +by the sentimentalist might perchance furnish comedy with a +theme; but he stilts them for a tragic performance, and they +tumble into watery bathos, where a numerous public awaits +them.</p> +<p>A similar degradation of the intellectual elements that are +present in all good literature is practised by those whose single +aim is to provoke laughter. In much of our so-called comic +writing a superabundance of boisterous animal spirits, restrained +from more practical expression by the ordinances of civil +society, finds outlet and relief. The grimaces and +caperings of buffoonery, the gymnastics of the punster and the +parodist, the revels of pure nonsense may be, at their best, a +refreshment and delight, but they are not comedy, and have proved +in effect not a little hostile to the existence of comedy. +The prevalence of jokers, moreover, spoils the game of humour; +the sputter and sparkle of their made jokes interferes with that +luminous contemplation of the incongruities <a +name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>of life and +the universe which is humour’s essence. All that is +ludicrous depends on some disproportion: Comedy judges the actual +world by contrasting it with an ideal of sound sense, Humour +reveals it in its true dimensions by turning on it the light of +imagination and poetry. The perception of these +incongruities, which are eternal, demands some expense of +intellect; a cheaper amusement may be enjoyed by him who is +content to take his stand on his own habits and prejudices and to +laugh at all that does not square with them. This was the +method of the age which, in the abysmal profound of waggery, +engendered that portentous birth, the comic paper. +Foreigners, it is said, do not laugh at the wit of these +journals, and no wonder, for only a minute study of the customs +and preoccupations of certain sections of English society could +enable them to understand the point of view. From time to +time one or another of the writers who are called upon for their +weekly tale of jokes seems struggling upward to the free domain +of Comedy; but in vain, his public holds him down, and compels +him to laugh <a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +87</span>in chains. Some day, perchance, a literary +historian, filled with the spirit of Cervantes or of +Molière, will give account of the Victorian era, and, not +disdaining small things, will draw a picture of the society which +inspired and controlled so resolute a jocularity. Then, at +last, will the spirit of Comedy recognise that these were indeed +what they claimed to be—comic papers.</p> +<p>“The style is the man;” but the social and +rhetorical influences adulterate and debase it, until not one man +in a thousand achieves his birthright, or claims his second +self. The fire of the soul burns all too feebly, and warms +itself by the reflected heat from the society around it. We +give back words of tepid greeting, without improvement. We +talk to our fellows in the phrases we learn from them, which come +to mean less and less as they grow worn with use. Then we +exaggerate and distort, heaping epithet upon epithet in the +endeavour to get a little warmth out of the smouldering +pile. The quiet cynicism of our everyday demeanour is open +and shameless, we callously anticipate objections founded on the +<a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>well-known +vacuity of our seeming emotions, and assure our friends that we +are “truly” grieved or “sincerely” +rejoiced at their hap—as if joy or grief that really exists +were some rare and precious brand of joy or grief. In its +trivial conversational uses so simple and pure a thing as joy +becomes a sandwich-man—humanity degraded to an +advertisement. The poor dejected word shuffles along +through the mud in the service of the sleek trader who employs +it, and not until it meets with a poet is it rehabilitated and +restored to dignity.</p> +<p>This is no indictment of society, which came into being before +literature, and, in all the distraction of its multifarious +concerns, can hardly keep a school for Style. It is rather +a demonstration of the necessity, amid the wealthy disorder of +modern civilisation, for poetic diction. One of the hardest +of a poet’s tasks is the search for his vocabulary. +Perhaps in some idyllic pasture-land of Utopia there may have +flourished a state where division of labour was unknown, where +community of ideas, as well as of property, was absolute, and +where the language of every day ran <a name="page89"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 89</span>clear into poetry without the need of +a refining process. They say that Cædmon was a +cow-keeper: but the shepherds of Theocritus and Virgil are +figments of a courtly brain, and Wordsworth himself, in his +boldest flights of theory, was forced to allow of +selection. Even by selection from among the chaos of +implements that are in daily use around him, a poet can barely +equip himself with a choice of words sufficient for his needs; he +must have recourse to his predecessors; and so it comes about +that the poetry of the modern world is a store-house of obsolete +diction. The most surprising characteristic of the right +poetic diction, whether it draw its vocabulary from near at hand, +or avail itself of the far-fetched inheritance preserved by the +poets, is its matchless sincerity. Something of +extravagance there may be in those brilliant clusters of romantic +words that are everywhere found in the work of Shakespeare, or +Spenser, or Keats, but they are the natural leafage and fruitage +of a luxuriant imagination, which, lacking these, could not +attain to its full height. Only by the <a +name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>energy of the +arts can a voice be given to the subtleties and raptures of +emotional experience; ordinary social intercourse affords neither +opportunity nor means for this fervour of self-revelation. +And if the highest reach of poetry is often to be found in the +use of common colloquialisms, charged with the intensity of +restrained passion, this is not due to a greater sincerity of +expression, but to the strength derived from dramatic +situation. Where speech spends itself on its subject, drama +stands idle; but where the dramatic stress is at its greatest, +three or four words may enshrine all the passion of the +moment. Romeo’s apostrophe from under the +balcony—</p> +<blockquote><p>O, speak again, bright Angel! for thou art<br /> +As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,<br /> +As is a winged messenger of heaven<br /> +Unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes<br /> +Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him,<br /> +When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,<br /> +And sails upon the bosom of the air—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>though it breathe the soul of romance, must yield, for sheer +effect, to his later soliloquy, spoken when the news of +Juliet’s death is brought to him,</p> +<blockquote><p><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +91</span>Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And even the constellated glories of <i>Paradise Lost</i> are +less moving than the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his +approaching end—</p> +<blockquote><p>So much I feel my genial spirits droop,<br /> +My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems<br /> +In all her functions weary of herself;<br /> +My race of glory run and race of shame,<br /> +And I shall shortly be with them that rest.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Here are simple words raised to a higher power and animated +with a purer intention than they carry in ordinary life. It +is this unfailing note of sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that +has made poetry the teacher of prose. Phrases which, to all +seeming, might have been hit on by the first comer, are often cut +away from their poetical context and robbed of their musical +value that they may be transferred to the service of prose. +They bring with them, down to the valley, a wafted sense of some +region of higher thought and purer feeling. They bear, +perhaps, no marks of curious diction to know them by. +Whence comes the irresistible pathos of the lines—</p> +<blockquote><p><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>I cannot but remember such things were<br /> +That were most precious to me?</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The thought, the diction, the syntax, might all occur in +prose. Yet when once the stamp of poetry has been put upon +a cry that is as old as humanity, prose desists from rivalry, and +is content to quote. Some of the greatest prose-writers +have not disdained the help of these borrowed graces for the +crown of their fabric. In this way De Quincey widens the +imaginative range of his prose, and sets back the limits assigned +to prose diction. So too, Charles Lamb, interweaving the +stuff of experience with phrases quoted or altered from the +poets, illuminates both life and poetry, letting his sympathetic +humour play now on the warp of the texture, and now on the +woof. The style of Burke furnishes a still better example, +for the spontaneous evolution of his prose might be thought to +forbid the inclusion of borrowed fragments. Yet whenever he +is deeply stirred, memories of Virgil, Milton, or the English +Bible rise to his aid, almost as if strong emotion could express +itself in no other <a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +93</span>language. Even the poor invectives of political +controversy gain a measure of dignity from the skilful +application of some famous line; the touch of the poet’s +sincerity rests on them for a moment, and seems to lend them an +alien splendour. It is like the blessing of a priest, +invoked by the pious, or by the worldly, for the good success of +whatever business they have in hand. Poetry has no temporal +ends to serve, no livelihood to earn, and is under no temptation +to cog and lie: wherefore prose pays respect to that loftier +calling, and that more unblemished sincerity.</p> +<p>Insincerity, on the other hand, is the commonest vice of +style. It is not to be avoided, except in the rarest cases, +by those to whom the written use of language is unfamiliar; so +that a shepherd who talks pithy, terse sense will be unable to +express himself in a letter without having recourse to the +<i>Ready Letter-writer</i>—“This comes hoping to find +you well, as it also leaves me at present”—and a +soldier, without the excuse of ignorance, will describe a +successful advance as having been made against “a thick +hail of bullets.” It permeates <a +name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>ordinary +journalism, and all writing produced under commercial +pressure. It taints the work of the young artist, caught by +the romantic fever, who glories in the wealth of vocabulary +discovered to him by the poets, and seeks often in vain for a +thought stalwart enough to wear that glistering armour. +Hence it is that the masters of style have always had to preach +restraint, self-denial, austerity. His style is a +man’s own; yet how hard it is to come by! It is a +man’s bride, to be won by labours and agonies that bespeak +a heroic lover. If he prove unable to endure the trial, +there are cheaper beauties, nearer home, easy to be conquered, +and faithless to their conqueror. Taking up with them, he +may attain a brief satisfaction, but he will never redeem his +quest.</p> +<p>As a body of practical rules, the negative precepts of +asceticism bring with them a certain chill. The page is +dull; it is so easy to lighten it with some flash of witty +irrelevance: the argument is long and tedious, why not relieve it +by wandering into some of those green enclosures that open +alluring doors upon the wayside? To roam <a +name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>at will, +spring-heeled, high-hearted, and catching at all good fortunes, +is the ambition of the youth, ere yet he has subdued himself to a +destination. The principle of self-denial seems at first +sight a treason done to genius, which was always privileged to be +wilful. In this view literature is a fortuitous series of +happy thoughts and heaven-sent findings. But the end of +that plan is beggary. Sprightly talk about the first object +that meets the eye and the indulgence of vagabond habits soon +degenerate to a professional garrulity, a forced face of dismal +cheer, and a settled dislike of strenuous exercise. The +economies and abstinences of discipline promise a kinder fate +than this. They test and strengthen purpose, without which +no great work comes into being. They save the expenditure +of energy on those pastimes and diversions which lead no nearer +to the goal. To reject the images and arguments that +proffer a casual assistance yet are not to be brought under the +perfect control of the main theme is difficult; how should it be +otherwise, for if they were not already dear to the writer they +would not have volunteered their aid.</p> +<p><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>It is +the more difficult, in that to refuse the unfit is no warrant of +better help to come. But to accept them is to fall back for +good upon a makeshift, and to hazard the enterprise in a hubbub +of disorderly claims. No train of thought is strengthened +by the addition of those arguments that, like camp-followers, +swell the number and the noise, without bearing a part in the +organisation. The danger that comes in with the employment +of figures of speech, similes, and comparisons is greater +still. The clearest of them may be attended by some element +of grotesque or paltry association, so that while they illumine +the subject they cannot truly be said to illustrate it. The +noblest, including those time-honoured metaphors that draw their +patent of nobility from war, love, religion, or the chase, in +proportion as they are strong and of a vivid presence, are also +domineering—apt to assume command of the theme long after +their proper work is done. So great is the headstrong power +of the finest metaphors, that an author may be incommoded by one +that does his business for him handsomely, as a <a +name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>king may +suffer the oppression of a powerful ally. When a lyric +begins with the splendid lines,</p> +<blockquote><p>Love still has something of the sea<br /> +From whence his mother rose,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the further development of that song is already fixed and its +knell rung—to the last line there is no escaping from the +dazzling influences that presided over the first. Yet to +carry out such a figure in detail, as Sir Charles Sedley set +himself to do, tarnishes the sudden glory of the opening. +The lady whom Burns called Clarinda put herself in a like +quandary by beginning a song with this stanza—</p> +<blockquote><p>Talk not of Love, it gives me pain,<br /> + For Love has been my foe;<br /> +He bound me in an iron chain,<br /> + And plunged me deep in woe.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The last two lines deserve praise—even the praise they +obtained from a great lyric poet. But how is the song to be +continued? Genius might answer the question; to Clarinda +there came only the notion of a valuable contrast to be +established between love and friendship, and a tribute to be paid +to the kindly offices of the latter. The <a +name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>verses +wherein she gave effect to this idea make a poor sequel; +friendship, when it is personified and set beside the tyrant god, +wears very much the air of a benevolent county magistrate, whose +chief duty is to keep the peace.</p> +<p>Figures of this sort are in no sense removable decorations, +they are at one with the substance of the thought to be +expressed, and are entitled to the large control they +claim. Imagination, working at white heat, can fairly +subdue the matter of the poem to them, or fuse them with others +of the like temper, striking unity out of the composite +mass. One thing only is forbidden, to treat these +substantial and living metaphors as if they were elegant +curiosities, ornamental excrescences, to be passed over abruptly +on the way to more exacting topics. The mystics, and the +mystical poets, knew better than to countenance this +frivolity. Recognising that there is a profound and +intimate correspondence between all physical manifestations and +the life of the soul, they flung the reins on the neck of +metaphor in the hope that it might carry them over that +mysterious frontier. Their <a name="page99"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 99</span>failures and misadventures, +familiarly despised as “conceits,” left them +floundering in absurdity. Yet not since the time of Donne +and Crashaw has the full power and significance of figurative +language been realised in English poetry. These poets, like +some of their late descendants, were tortured by a sense of +hidden meaning, and were often content with analogies that admit +of no rigorous explanation. They were convinced that all +intellectual truth is a parable, though its inner meaning be dark +or dubious. The philosophy of friendship deals with those +mathematical and physical conceptions of distance, likeness, and +attraction—what if the law of bodies govern souls also, and +the geometer’s compasses measure more than it has entered +into his heart to conceive? Is the moon a name only for a +certain tonnage of dead matter, and is the law of passion +parochial while the law of gravitation is universal? +Mysticism will observe no such partial boundaries.</p> +<blockquote><p>O more than Moon!<br /> +Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,<br /> +Weep me not dead in thine arms, but forbear<br /> +To teach the sea what it may do too soon.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>The +secret of these sublime intuitions, undivined by many of the +greatest poets, has been left to the keeping of transcendental +religion and the Catholic Church.</p> +<p>Figure and ornament, therefore, are not interchangeable terms; +the loftiest figurative style most conforms to the precepts of +gravity and chastity. None the less there is a decorative +use of figure, whereby a theme is enriched with imaginations and +memories that are foreign to the main purpose. Under this +head may be classed most of those allusions to the world’s +literature, especially to classical and Scriptural lore, which +have played so considerable, yet on the whole so idle, a part in +modern poetry. It is here that an inordinate love of +decoration finds its opportunity and its snare. To keep the +most elaborate comparison in harmony with its occasion, so that +when it is completed it shall fall back easily into the emotional +key of the narrative, has been the study of the great epic +poets. Milton’s description of the rebel legions +adrift on the flaming sea <a name="page101"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 101</span>is a fine instance of the difficulty +felt and conquered:</p> + +<blockquote><p> Angel +forms, who lay entranced<br /> +Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks<br /> +In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades<br /> +High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge<br /> +Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed<br /> +Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew<br /> +Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,<br /> +While with perfidious hatred they pursued<br /> +The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld<br /> +From the safe shore their floating carcases<br /> +And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,<br /> +Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,<br /> +Under amazement of their hideous change.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The comparison seems to wander away at random, obedient to the +slightest touch of association. Yet in the end it is +brought back, its majesty heightened, and a closer element of +likeness introduced by the skilful turn that substitutes the +image of the shattered Egyptian army for the former images of +dead leaves and sea-weed. The incidental pictures, of the +roof of shades, of the watchers from the shore, and the very name +“Red Sea,” fortuitous as they may seem, all lend help +to the imagination in bodying forth <a name="page102"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 102</span>the scene described. An +earlier figure in the same book of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, because +it exhibits a less conspicuous technical cunning, may even better +show a poet’s care for unity of tone and impression. +Where Satan’s prostrate bulk is compared to</p> + +<blockquote><p> that +sea-beast<br /> +Leviathan, which God of all his works<br /> +Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream,</p> +</blockquote> +<p>the picture that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat +under the lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes +the mind once more to all the pathos and gloom of those infernal +deeps:</p> + +<blockquote><p> while +night<br /> +Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So masterly a handling of the figures which usage and taste +prescribe to learned writers is rare indeed. The ordinary +small scholar disposes of his baggage less happily. Having +heaped up knowledge as a successful tradesman heaps up money, he +is apt to believe that his wealth makes him free of the company +of letters, and a fellow craftsman of the poets. The mark +of his style <a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +103</span>is an excessive and pretentious allusiveness. It +was he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, <i>Scire tuum +nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter</i>—“My +knowledge of thy knowledge is the knowledge thou +covetest.” His allusions and learned periphrases +elucidate nothing; they put an idle labour on the reader who +understands them, and extort from baffled ignorance, at which, +perhaps, they are more especially aimed, a foolish +admiration. These tricks and vanities, the very corruption +of ornament, will always be found while the power to acquire +knowledge is more general than the strength to carry it or the +skill to wield it. The collector has his proper work to do +in the commonwealth of learning, but the ownership of a museum is +a poor qualification for the name of artist. Knowledge has +two good uses; it may be frankly communicated for the benefit of +others, or it may minister matter to thought; an allusive writer +often robs it of both these functions. He must needs +display his possessions and his modesty at one and the same time, +producing his treasures unasked, and huddling them in uncouth <a +name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>fashion +past the gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not +seem to make a rarity of them. The subject to be treated, +the groundwork to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a +profitless haphazard ostentation. This fault is very +incident to the scholarly style, which often sacrifices emphasis +and conviction to a futile air of encyclopædic +grandeur.</p> +<p>Those who are repelled by this redundance of ornament, from +which even great writers are not wholly exempt, have sometimes +been driven by the force of reaction into a singular +fallacy. The futility of these literary quirks and graces +has induced them to lay art under the same interdict with +ornament. Style and stylists, one will say, have no +attraction for him, he had rather hear honest men utter their +thoughts directly, clearly, and simply. The choice of +words, says another, and the conscious manipulation of sentences, +is literary foppery; the word that first offers is commonly the +best, and the order in which the thoughts occur is the order to +be followed. Be natural, be straightforward, they urge, and +what <a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>you +have to say will say itself in the best possible manner. It +is a welcome lesson, no doubt, that these deluded Arcadians +teach. A simple and direct style—who would not give +his all to purchase that! But is it in truth so easy to be +compassed? The greatest writers, when they are at the top +of happy hours, attain to it, now and again. Is all this +tangled contrariety of things a kind of fairyland, and does the +writer, alone among men, find that a beaten foot-path opens out +before him as he goes, to lead him, straight through the maze, to +the goal of his desires? To think so is to build a childish +dream out of facts imperfectly observed, and worthy of a closer +observation. Sometimes the cry for simplicity is the +reverse of what it seems, and is uttered by those who had rather +hear words used in their habitual vague acceptations than submit +to the cutting directness of a good writer. Habit makes +obscurity grateful, and the simple style, in this view, is the +style that allows thought to run automatically into its old +grooves and burrows. The original writers who have combined +real <a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +106</span>literary power with the heresy of ease and nature are +of another kind. A brutal personality, excellently +muscular, snatching at words as the handiest weapons wherewith to +inflict itself, and the whole body of its thoughts and +preferences, on suffering humanity, is likely enough to deride +the daintiness of conscious art. Such a writer is William +Cobbett, who has often been praised for the manly simplicity of +his style, which he raised into a kind of creed. His power +is undeniable; his diction, though he knew it not, both choice +and chaste; yet page after page of his writing suggests only the +reflection that here is a prodigal waste of good English. +He bludgeons all he touches, and spends the same monotonous +emphasis on his dislike of tea and on his hatred of the +Government. His is the simplicity of a crude and violent +mind, concerned only with giving forcible expression to its +unquestioned prejudices. Irrelevance, the besetting sin of +the ill-educated, he glories in, so that his very weakness puts +on the semblance of strength, and helps to wield the hammer.</p> +<p><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>It is +not to be denied that there is a native force of temperament +which can make itself felt even through illiterate +carelessness. “Literary gentlemen, editors, and +critics,” says Thoreau, himself by no means a careless +writer, “think that they know how to write, because they +have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously +mistaken. The <i>art</i> of composition is as simple as the +discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an +infinitely greater force behind them.” This true +saying introduces us to the hardest problem of criticism, the +paradox of literature, the stumbling-block of rhetoricians. +To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality can +make itself felt in words, even while it neglects and contemns +the study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion +and life—it is beyond human competence. Nevertheless +a brief and diffident consideration of the matter may bring thus +much comfort, that the seeming contradiction is no discredit cast +on letters, but takes its origin rather from too narrow and +pedantic a view of the scope of letters.</p> +<p><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>Words +are things: it is useless to try to set them in a world +apart. They exist in books only by accident, and for one +written there are a thousand, infinitely more powerful, +spoken. They are deeds: the man who brings word of a lost +battle can work no comparable effect with the muscles of his arm; +Iago’s breath is as truly laden with poison and murder as +the fangs of the cobra and the drugs of the assassin. Hence +the sternest education in the use of words is least of all to be +gained in the schools, which cultivate verbiage in a highly +artificial state of seclusion. A soldier cares little for +poetry, because it is the exercise of power that he loves, and he +is accustomed to do more with his words than give pleasure. +To keep language in immediate touch with reality, to lade it with +action and passion, to utter it hot from the heart of +determination, is to exhibit it in the plenitude of power. +All this may be achieved without the smallest study of literary +models, and is consistent with a perfect neglect of literary +canons. It is not the logical content of the word, but the +whole mesh of its conditions, <a name="page109"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 109</span>including the character, +circumstances, and attitude of the speaker, that is its true +strength. “Damn” is often the feeblest of +expletives, and “as you please” may be the dirge of +an empire. Hence it is useless to look to the grammarian, +or the critic, for a lesson in strength of style; the laws that +he has framed, good enough in themselves, are current only in his +own abstract world. A breath of hesitancy will sometimes +make trash of a powerful piece of eloquence; and even in writing, +a thing three times said, and each time said badly, may be of +more effect than that terse, full, and final expression which the +doctors rightly commend. The art of language, regarded as a +question of pattern and cadence, or even as a question of logic +and thought-sequence, is a highly abstract study; for although, +as has been said, you can do almost anything with words, with +words alone you can do next to nothing. The realm where +speech holds sway is a narrow shoal or reef, shaken, contorted, +and upheaved by volcanic action, beaten upon, bounded, and +invaded by the ocean of silence: whoso would be lord of <a +name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>the earth +must first tame the fire and the sea. Dramatic and +narrative writing are happy in this, that action and silence are +a part of their material; the story-teller or the playwright can +make of words a background and definition for deeds, a framework +for those silences that are more telling than any speech. +Here lies an escape from the poverty of content and method to +which self-portraiture and self-expression are liable; and +therefore are epic and drama rated above all other kinds of +poetry. The greater force of the objective treatment is +witnessed by many essayists and lyrical poets, whose ambition has +led them, sooner or later, to attempt the novel or the +play. There are weaknesses inherent in all direct +self-revelation; the thing, perhaps, is greatly said, yet there +is no great occasion for the saying of it; a fine reticence is +observed, but it is, after all, an easy reticence, with none of +the dramatic splendours of reticence on the rack. In the +midst of his pleasant confidences the essayist is brought up +short by the question, “Why must you still be +talking?” Even the passionate lyric feels the need of +external <a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span>authorisation, and some of the finest of lyrical poems, +like the Willow Song of Desdemona, or Wordsworth’s +<i>Solitary Reaper</i>, are cast in a dramatic mould, that beauty +of diction may be vitalised by an imagined situation. More +than others the dramatic art is an enemy to the desultory and the +superfluous, sooner than others it will cast away all formal +grace of expression that it may come home more directly to the +business and bosoms of men. Its great power and scope are +shown well in this, that it can find high uses for the commonest +stuff of daily speech and the emptiest phrases of daily +intercourse.</p> +<p>Simplicity and strength, then, the vigorous realistic quality +of impromptu utterance, and an immediate relation with the +elementary facts of life, are literary excellences best known in +the drama, and in its modern fellow and rival, the novel. +The dramatist and novelist create their own characters, set their +own scenes, lay their own plots, and when all has been thus +prepared, the right word is born in the purple, an inheritor of +great opportunities, all its virtues magnified by <a +name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 112</span>the glamour +of its high estate. Writers on philosophy, morals, or +æsthetics, critics, essayists, and dealers in soliloquy +generally, cannot hope, with their slighter means, to attain to +comparable effects. They work at two removes from life; the +terms that they handle are surrounded by the vapours of +discussion, and are rewarded by no instinctive response. +Simplicity, in its most regarded sense, is often beyond their +reach; the matter of their discourse is intricate, and the most +they can do is to employ patience, care, and economy of labour; +the meaning of their words is not obvious, and they must go aside +to define it. The strength of their writing has limits set +for it by the nature of the chosen task, and any transgression of +these limits is punished by a fall into sheer violence. All +writing partakes of the quality of the drama, there is always a +situation involved, the relation, namely, between the speaker and +the hearer. A gentleman in black, expounding his views, or +narrating his autobiography to the first comer, can expect no +such warmth of response as greets the dying speech of the baffled +patriot; yet he <a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +113</span>too may take account of the reasons that prompt speech, +may display sympathy and tact, and avoid the faults of +senility. The only character that can lend strength to his +words is his own, and he sketches it while he states his +opinions; the only attitude that can ennoble his sayings is +implied in the very arguments he uses. Who does not know +the curious blank effect of eloquence overstrained or out of +place? The phrasing may be exquisite, the thought +well-knit, the emotion genuine, yet all is, as it were, dumb-show +where no community of feeling exists between the speaker and his +audience. A similar false note is struck by any speaker or +writer who misapprehends his position or forgets his +disqualifications, by newspaper writers using language that is +seemly only in one who stakes his life on his words, by preachers +exceeding the license of fallibility, by moralists condemning +frailty, by speculative traders deprecating frank ways of hazard, +by Satan rebuking sin.</p> +<p>“How many things are there,” exclaims the wise +Verulam, “which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, +say or do himself! A man’s <a +name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>person hath +many proper relations which he cannot put off. A man cannot +speak to his son but as a father; to his wife, but as a husband; +to his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak as the +case requires, and not as it sorteth with the +person.” The like “proper relations” +govern writers, even where their audience is unknown to +them. It has often been remarked how few are the +story-tellers who can introduce themselves, so much as by a +passing reflection or sentiment, without a discordant +effect. The friend who saves the situation is found in one +and another of the creatures of their art.</p> +<p>For those who must play their own part the effort to conceal +themselves is of no avail. The implicit attitude of a +writer makes itself felt; an undue swelling of his subject to +heroic dimensions, an unwarrantable assumption of sympathy, a +tendency to truck with friends or with enemies by the way, are +all possible indications of weakness, which move even the least +skilled of readers to discount what is said, as they catch here +and there a glimpse of the old pot-companion, or the young <a +name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>dandy, +behind the imposing literary mask. Strong writers are those +who, with every reserve of power, seek no exhibition of +strength. It is as if language could not come by its full +meaning save on the lips of those who regard it as an evil +necessity. Every word is torn from them, as from a +reluctant witness. They come to speech as to a last resort, +when all other ways have failed. The bane of a literary +education is that it induces talkativeness, and an overweening +confidence in words. But those whose words are stark and +terrible seem almost to despise words.</p> +<p>With words literature begins, and to words it must +return. Coloured by the neighbourhood of silence, +solemnised by thought or steeled by action, words are still its +only means of rising above words. “<i>Accedat verbum +ad elementum</i>,” said St. Ambrose, “<i>et fiat +sacramentum</i>.” So the elementary passions, pity +and love, wrath and terror, are not in themselves poetical; they +must be wrought upon by the word to become poetry. In no +other way can suffering be transformed to pathos, or horror reach +its apotheosis in tragedy.</p> +<p><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>When +all has been said, there remains a residue capable of no formal +explanation. Language, this array of conventional symbols +loosely strung together, and blown about by every wandering +breath, is miraculously vital and expressive, justifying not a +few of the myriad superstitions that have always attached to its +use. The same words are free to all, yet no wealth or +distinction of vocabulary is needed for a group of words to take +the stamp of an individual mind and character. “As a +quality of style” says Mr. Pater, “soul is a +fact.” To resolve how words, like bodies, become +transparent when they are inhabited by that luminous reality, is +a higher pitch than metaphysic wit can fly. Ardent +persuasion and deep feeling enkindle words, so that the weakest +take on glory. The humblest and most despised of common +phrases may be the chosen vessel for the next avatar of the +spirit. It is the old problem, to be met only by the old +solution of the Platonist, that</p> +<blockquote><p>Soul is form, and doth the body make.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The soul is able to inform language by some <a +name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>strange +means other than the choice and arrangement of words and +phrases. Real novelty of vocabulary is impossible; in the +matter of language we lead a parasitical existence, and are +always quoting. Quotations, conscious or unconscious, vary +in kind according as the mind is active to work upon them and +make them its own. In its grossest and most servile form +quotation is a lazy folly; a thought has received some signal or +notorious expression, and as often as the old sense, or something +like it, recurs, the old phrase rises to the lips. This +degenerates to simple phrase-mongering, and those who practise it +are not vigilantly jealous of their meaning. Such an +expression as “fine by degrees and beautifully less” +is often no more than a bloated equivalent for a single +word—say “diminishing” or +“shrinking.” Quotations like this are the warts +and excremental parts of language; the borrowings of good writers +are never thus superfluous, their quotations are +appropriations. Whether it be by some witty turn given to a +well-known line, by an original setting for an old saw, or by a +new and <a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +118</span>unlooked-for analogy, the stamp of the borrower is put +upon the goods he borrows, and he becomes part owner. +Plagiarism is a crime only where writing is a trade; expression +need never be bound by the law of copyright while it follows +thought, for thought, as some great thinker has observed, is +free. The words were once Shakespeare’s; if only you +can feel them as he did, they are yours now no less than +his. The best quotations, the best translations, the best +thefts, are all equally new and original works. From +quotation, at least, there is no escape, inasmuch as we learn +language from others. All common phrases that do the dirty +work of the world are quotations—poor things, and not our +own. Who first said that a book would “repay +perusal,” or that any gay scene was “bright with all +the colours of the rainbow”? There is no need to +condemn these phrases, for language has a vast deal of inferior +work to do. The expression of thought, temperament, +attitude, is not the whole of its business. It is only a +literary fop or doctrinaire who will attempt to remint all the +small defaced coinage <a name="page119"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 119</span>that passes through his hands, only +a lisping young fantastico who will refuse all conventional +garments and all conventional speech. At a modern wedding +the frock-coat is worn, the presents are “numerous and +costly,” and there is an “ovation accorded to the +happy pair.” These things are part of our public +civilisation, a decorous and accessible uniform, not to be +lightly set aside. But let it be a friend of your own who +is to marry, a friend of your own who dies, and you are to +express yourself—the problem is changed, you feel all the +difficulties of the art of style, and fathom something of the +depth of your unskill. Forbidden silence, we should be in a +poor way indeed.</p> +<p>Single words too we plagiarise when we use them without +realisation and mastery of their meaning. The best argument +for a succinct style is this, that if you use words you do not +need, or do not understand, you cannot use them well. It is +not what a word means, but what it means to you, that is of the +deepest import. Let it be a weak word, with a poor history +behind it, if you <a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +120</span>have done good thinking with it, you may yet use it to +surprising advantage. But if, on the other hand, it be a +strong word that has never aroused more than a misty idea and a +flickering emotion in your mind, here lies your danger. You +may use it, for there is none to hinder; and it will betray +you. The commonest Saxon words prove explosive machines in +the hands of rash impotence. It is perhaps a certain uneasy +consciousness of danger, a suspicion that weakness of soul cannot +wield these strong words, that makes debility avoid them, +committing itself rather, as if by some pre-established affinity, +to the vaguer Latinised vocabulary. Yet they are not all to +be avoided, and their quality in practice will depend on some +occult ability in their employer. For every living person, +if the material were obtainable, a separate historical dictionary +might be compiled, recording where each word was first heard or +seen, where and how it was first used. The references are +utterly beyond recovery; but such a register would throw a +strange light on individual styles. The eloquent trifler, +whose stock of words <a name="page121"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 121</span>has been accumulated by a pair of +light fingers, would stand denuded of his plausible pretences as +soon as it were seen how roguishly he came by his +eloquence. There may be literary quality, it is well to +remember, in the words of a parrot, if only its cage has been +happily placed; meaning and soul there cannot be. Yet the +voice will sometimes be mistaken, by the carelessness of chance +listeners, for a genuine utterance of humanity; and the like is +true in literature. But writing cannot be luminous and +great save in the hands of those whose words are their own by the +indefeasible title of conquest. Life is spent in learning +the meaning of great words, so that some idle proverb, known for +years and accepted perhaps as a truism, comes home, on a day, +like a blow. “If there were not a God,” said +Voltaire, “it would be necessary to invent +him.” Voltaire had therefore a right to use the word, +but some of those who use it most, if they would be perfectly +sincere, should enclose it in quotation marks. Whole +nations go for centuries without coining names for certain +virtues; is it credible <a name="page122"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 122</span>that among other peoples, where the +names exists the need for them is epidemic? The author of +the <i>Ecclesiastial Polity</i> puts a bolder and truer face on +the matter. “Concerning that Faith, Hope, and +Charity,” he writes, “without which there can be no +salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in that +Law which God himself hath from Heaven revealed? There is +not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth +concerning any of these three, more than hath been supernaturally +received from the mouth of the eternal God.” +Howsoever they came to us, we have the words; they, and many +other terms of tremendous import, are bandied about from mouth to +mouth and alternately enriched or impoverished in meaning. +Is the “Charity” of St. Paul’s Epistle one with +the charity of “charity-blankets”? Are the +“crusades” of Godfrey and of the great St. Louis, +where knightly achievement did homage to the religious temper, +essentially the same as that process of harrying the wretched and +the outcast for which the muddle-headed, greasy citizen of <a +name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>to-day +invokes the same high name? Of a truth, some kingly words +fall to a lower estate than Nebuchadnezzar.</p> +<p>Here, among words, our lot is cast, to make or mar. It +is in this obscure thicket, overgrown with weeds, set with +thorns, and haunted by shadows, this World of Words, as the +Elizabethans finely called it, that we wander, eternal pioneers, +during the course of our mortal lives. To be overtaken by a +master, one who comes along with the gaiety of assured skill and +courage, with the gravity of unflinching purpose, to make the +crooked ways straight and the rough places plain, is to gain +fresh confidence from despair. He twines wreaths of the +entangling ivy, and builds ramparts of the thorns. He +blazes his mark upon the secular oaks, as a guidance to later +travellers, and coaxes flame from heaps of mouldering +rubbish. There is no sense of cheer like this. +Sincerity, clarity, candour, power, seem real once more, real and +easy. In the light of great literary achievement, straight +and wonderful, like the roads of the ancient Romans, barbarism +torments <a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +124</span>the mind like a riddle. Yet there are the dusky +barbarians!—fleeing from the harmonious tread of the +ordered legions, running to hide themselves in the morass of +vulgar sentiment, to ambush their nakedness in the sand-pits of +low thought.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>It is a venerable custom to knit up the speculative +consideration of any subject with the counsels of practical +wisdom. The words of this essay have been vain indeed if +the idea that style may be imparted by tuition has eluded them, +and survived. There is a useful art of Grammar, which takes +for its province the right and the wrong in speech. Style +deals only with what is permissible to all, and even revokes, on +occasion, the rigid laws of Grammar or countenances offences +against them. Yet no one is a better judge of equity for +ignorance of the law, and grammatical practice offers a fair +field wherein to acquire ease, accuracy and versatility. +The formation of sentences, the sequence of verbs, the +marshalling of the ranks of auxiliaries are all, in a sense, to +be learned. There <a name="page125"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 125</span>is a kind of inarticulate disorder +to which writers are liable, quite distinct from a bad style, and +caused chiefly by lack of exercise. An unpractised writer +will sometimes send a beautiful and powerful phrase jostling +along in the midst of a clumsy sentence—like a crowned king +escorted by a mob.</p> +<p>But Style cannot be taught. Imitation of the masters, or +of some one chosen master, and the constant purging of language +by a severe criticism, have their uses, not to be belittled; they +have also their dangers. The greater part of what is called +the teaching of style must always be negative, bad habits may be +broken down, old malpractices prohibited. The pillory and +the stocks are hardly educational agents, but they make it easier +for honest men to enjoy their own. If style could really be +taught, it is a question whether its teachers should not be +regarded as mischief-makers and enemies of mankind. The +Rosicrucians professed to have found the philosopher’s +stone, and the shadowy sages of modern Thibet are said, by those +who speak for them, to have compassed the <a +name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +126</span>instantaneous transference of bodies from place to +place. In either case, the holders of these secrets have +laudably refused to publish them, lest avarice and malice should +run amuck in human society. A similar fear might well visit +the conscience of one who should dream that he had divulged to +the world at large what can be done with language. Of this +there is no danger; rhetoric, it is true, does put fluency, +emphasis, and other warlike equipments at the disposal of evil +forces, but style, like the Christian religion, is one of those +open secrets which are most easily and most effectively kept by +the initiate from age to age. Divination is the only means +of access to these mysteries. The formal attempt to impart +a good style is like the melancholy task of the teacher of +gesture and oratory; some palpable faults are soon corrected; +and, for the rest, a few conspicuous mannerisms, a few theatrical +postures, not truly expressive, and a high tragical strut, are +all that can be imparted. The truth of the old Roman +teachers of rhetoric is here witnessed afresh, to be a good +orator it is first of all necessary to be a good man. Good +<a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>style is +the greatest of revealers,—it lays bare the soul. The +soul of the cheat shuns nothing so much. “Always be +ready to speak your minds” said Blake, “and a base +man will avoid you.” But to insist that he also shall +speak his mind is to go a step further, it is to take from the +impostor his wooden leg, to prohibit his lucrative whine, his +mumping and his canting, to force the poor silly soul to stand +erect among its fellows and declare itself. His occupation +is gone, and he does not love the censor who deprives him of the +weapons of his mendicity.</p> +<p>All style is gesture, the gesture of the mind and of the +soul. Mind we have in common, inasmuch as the laws of right +reason are not different for different minds. Therefore +clearness and arrangement can be taught, sheer incompetence in +the art of expression can be partly remedied. But who shall +impose laws upon the soul? It is thus of common note that +one may dislike or even hate a particular style while admiring +its facility, its strength, its skilful adaptation to the matter +set forth. Milton, a chaster and more unerring <a +name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>master of +the art than Shakespeare, reveals no such lovable +personality. While persons count for much, style, the index +to persons, can never count for little. +“Speak,” it has been said, “that I may know +you”—voice-gesture is more than feature. Write, +and after you have attained to some control over the instrument, +you write yourself down whether you will or no. There is no +vice, however unconscious, no virtue, however shy, no touch of +meanness or of generosity in your character, that will not pass +on to the paper. You anticipate the Day of Judgment and +furnish the recording angel with material. The Art of +Criticism in literature, so often decried and given a subordinate +place among the arts, is none other than the art of reading and +interpreting these written evidences. Criticism has been +popularly opposed to creation, perhaps because the kind of +creation that it attempts is rarely achieved, and so the world +forgets that the main business of Criticism, after all, is not to +legislate, nor to classify, but to raise the dead. Graves, +at its command, have waked their sleepers, oped, and <a +name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>let them +forth. It is by the creative power of this art that the +living man is reconstructed from the litter of blurred and +fragmentary paper documents that he has left to posterity.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE +END</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed by</i> R. & R. <span +class="smcap">Clark</span>, <span class="smcap">Limited</span>, +<i>Edinburgh</i></p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STYLE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1038-h.htm or 1038-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1038 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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