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diff --git a/1038-0.txt b/1038-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b07591a --- /dev/null +++ b/1038-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2690 @@ +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: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STYLE*** + + +Transcribed from the 1904 Edward Arnold edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + STYLE + + + * * * * * + + BY + + WALTER RALEIGH + + AUTHOR OF ‘THE ENGLISH NOVEL,’ + AND ‘ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, A CRITICAL ESSAY’ + + * * * * * + + _FIFTH IMPRESSION_ + + * * * * * + + LONDON + EDWARD ARNOLD + Publisher to the India Office + 1904 + + * * * * * + + JOANNI SAMPSON + + BIBLIOTHECARIO OPTIMO + + VIRO OMNI SAPIENTIA ÆGYPTIORUM + + ERUDITO + + LABORUM ET ITINERUM SUORUM + + SOCIO + + HUNC LIBELLUM + + D · D · D + + AUCTOR + + + + +TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL MATTERS +CONTAINED IN THIS ESSAY + + PAGE +The Triumph of Letters 1 +The Problem of Style 3 +The Instrument and the Audience, with a Digression on the 4 +Actor +The Sense-Elements 8 +The Functions of Sense 10 +Picture 11 +Melody 14 +Meaning, Exampled in Negation 17 +The Weapons of Thought 21 +The Analogy from Architecture 23 +The Analogy Rectified. The Law of Change 24 +The Good Slang 27 +The Bad Slang 29 +Archaism 32 +Romantic and Classic 36 +The Palsy of Definition 39 +Distinction 43 +Assimilation 45 +Synonyms 46 +Variety of Expression 49 +Variety Justified 50 +Metaphor and Abstraction: Poetry and Science 55 +The Doctrine of the _Mot Propre_ 61 +The Instrument 65 +The Audience 65 +The Relation of the Author to his Audience 71 +The Poet and his Audience 71 +Public Caterers 77 +The Cautelous Man 78 +Sentimentalism and Jocularity 81 +The Tripe-Seller 83 +The Wag 85 +Social and Rhetorical Corruptions 87 +Sincerity 88 +Insincerity 93 +Austerity 94 +The Figurative Style 98 +Decoration 100 +Allusiveness 102 +Simplicity and Strength 104 +The Paradox of Letters 107 +Drama 108 +Implicit Drama 111 +Words Again 115 +Quotation 116 +Appropriation 119 +The World of Words 123 +The Teaching of Style 124 +The Conclusion 127 + + + + +STYLE + + +STYLE, 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 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 _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, “_stylus +virum arguit_, 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—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. + +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 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? + + * * * * * + +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, 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. 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 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 where shall the weary player keep holiday? Is not +all the world a stage? + +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. + +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 +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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + + How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart + Still a young child’s with mine, or wilt thou stand + Full grown the helpful daughter of my heart, + What time with thee indeed I reach the strand + Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, + And drink it in the hollow of thy hand? + +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 cannot be doubted,” says one whose daily +meditations enrich _The People’s Post-Bag_, “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 spark of +imagination might save them from this sad descent to sterility and +darkness. + +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. + + What thing unto mine ear + Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing, + O wandering water ever whispering? + Surely thy speech shall be of her, + Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer, + What message dost thou bring? + +In this stanza an exquisitely modulated tune 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 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 such traps and +ambuscades, robbed of only a little of his treasure, indemnified by the +careless generosity of his spoilers, and still singing. + +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.” + +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 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:— + + _Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram_, + _Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna_. + + Through hollow kingdoms, emptied of the day, + And dim, deserted courts where Dis bears sway, + Night-foundered, and uncertain of the path, + Darkling they took their solitary way. + +Here is the secret of some of the cardinal 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 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. + +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. + + It will have blood; they say blood win have blood: + Stones have been known to move and trees to speak; + Augurs and understood relations have + By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth + The secret’st man of blood. + +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 Christian religion +was established among mankind. Are these terrific engines fit +play-things for the idle humours of a sick child? + +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: 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.” + +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 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 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 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. + +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 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 _Blackwood_, +Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment of Miss Anna Seward. Accuser +and accused alike recognise that a question of diction 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. + +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 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 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 _Paradise Lost_, +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 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. + +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 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. + +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 cry of St. Augustine, _Indocti +surgunt et rapiunt coelum_, or in the fervent sentence of the author of +the _Imitation_, _Oportet fieri stultum_. 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. + +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 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 + + Eremites and friars, + White, Black, and Gray, with all their trumpery, + +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 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. + +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. + +Fixity in the midst of change, fluctuation at the heart of sameness, such +is the estate of language. According as they endeavour to reduce 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. 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 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.” + +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 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 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 +_hortus siccus_ 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 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 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. + +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. 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 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. + +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,” 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. + +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 +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 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 _Virtuous Young Lady_ 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 +instinctive and elemental than pity as pitilessness is keener, harder, +and more deliberate than the inborn savagery of ruthlessness. + +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 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 _Que sçais-je_, besides being briefer and wittier, was +infinitely more informing. + +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 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, + + That brought into this world a world of woe. + +Where words are not fitted with a single hard 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:— + + Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear + Compels me to disturb your season due; + For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, + Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. + +Here the tenderness of affection returns again 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, + + Beating it in upon our weary brains, + As tho’ it were the burden of a song, + +clattering upon the iron of the Philistine giant in the effort to bring +him to reason. These are the 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 _Paradise Lost_, 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,” 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. + +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 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 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:— + + That very law which moulds a tear, + And bids it trickle from its source, + That law preserves the earth a sphere, + And guides the planets in their course. + +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:— + + Flowers laugh before thee on their beds; + And fragrance in thy footing treads; + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; + And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. + +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 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 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 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 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. + +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 _mot propre_, 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 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— + + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue can digest. + +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 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 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 evil, of beauty and deformity, of truth and untruth. + +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? + + * * * * * + +These difficulties and complexities of the instrument are, nevertheless, +the least part of the ordeal that is to be undergone by the writer. The +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 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 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 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 _The Tears of Peace_, 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 + + No truth of excellence was ever seen + But bore the venom of the vulgar’s spleen, + +—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, + + By God, ’tis good, and if you like’t, you may. + +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 +and gallants who thronged the Globe Theatre. Only once does the wail of +anguish escape him— + + Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there, + And made myself a motley to the view, + Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear. + +And again— + + Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, + And almost thence my nature is subdued + To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand, + Pity me then, and wish I were renewed. + +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 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. + +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. + +Least of all authors is the poet subject to the tyranny of his audience. +“Poetry and eloquence,” 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 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— + + _Idiota_, _insulsus_, _tristis_, _turpis_, _abesto_. + +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 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. + +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 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 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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 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 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. + +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, 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. + +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 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.” + +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 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 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. + +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 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 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. + +“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 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. + +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 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 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— + + O, speak again, bright Angel! for thou art + As glorious to this night, being o’er my head, + As is a winged messenger of heaven + Unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes + Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him, + When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds, + And sails upon the bosom of the air— + +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, + + Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. + +And even the constellated glories of _Paradise Lost_ are less moving than +the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his approaching end— + + So much I feel my genial spirits droop, + My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems + In all her functions weary of herself; + My race of glory run and race of shame, + And I shall shortly be with them that rest. + +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— + + I cannot but remember such things were + That were most precious to me? + +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 +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. + +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 _Ready Letter-writer_—“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 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. + +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 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. + +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 king may suffer the oppression +of a powerful ally. When a lyric begins with the splendid lines, + + Love still has something of the sea + From whence his mother rose, + +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— + + Talk not of Love, it gives me pain, + For Love has been my foe; + He bound me in an iron chain, + And plunged me deep in woe. + +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 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. + +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 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. + + O more than Moon! + Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, + Weep me not dead in thine arms, but forbear + To teach the sea what it may do too soon. + +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. + +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 is a fine instance of the difficulty felt and +conquered: + + Angel forms, who lay entranced + Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks + In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades + High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge + Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed + Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew + Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, + While with perfidious hatred they pursued + The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld + From the safe shore their floating carcases + And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, + Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, + Under amazement of their hideous change. + +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 the scene described. An earlier figure in the same book +of _Paradise Lost_, 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 + + that sea-beast + Leviathan, which God of all his works + Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream, + +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: + + while night + Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays. + +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 is an excessive and pretentious allusiveness. It was +he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, _Scire tuum nihil est nisi +te scire hoc sciat alter_—“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 +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. + +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 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 +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. + +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 +_art_ 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. + +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, +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 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 authorisation, and some of the finest of +lyrical poems, like the Willow Song of Desdemona, or Wordsworth’s +_Solitary Reaper_, 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. + +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 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 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. + +“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 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. + +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 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. + +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. “_Accedat verbum +ad elementum_,” said St. Ambrose, “_et fiat sacramentum_.” 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. + +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 + + Soul is form, and doth the body make. + +The soul is able to inform language by some 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 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 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. + +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 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 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 that among other +peoples, where the names exists the need for them is epidemic? The +author of the _Ecclesiastial Polity_ 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 to-day invokes the +same high name? Of a truth, some kingly words fall to a lower estate +than Nebuchadnezzar. + +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 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. + + * * * * * + +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 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. + +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 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 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. + +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 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 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. + + * * * * * + + THE END + + * * * * * + + _Printed by_ R. & R. 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