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diff --git a/old/style10h.htm b/old/style10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bcc3f4d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/style10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2550 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Style</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Style, by Walter Raleigh</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Style, by Walter Raleigh +(#2 in our series by Walter Raleigh) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Style + +Author: Walter Raleigh + +Release Date: September, 1997 [EBook #1038] +[This file was first posted on September 2, 1997] +[Most recently updated: May 23, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<h1>STYLE</h1> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<p>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 <i>The Anatomy of</i> <i>Melancholy</i>, +“<i>stylus virum arguit</i>, our style bewrays us.” +Other gestures shift and change and flit, this is the ultimate and enduring +revelation of personality. The actor and the orator are condemned +to work evanescent effects on transitory material; the dust that they +write on is blown about their graves. The sculptor and the architect +deal in less perishable ware, but the stuff is recalcitrant and stubborn, +and will not take the impress of all states of the soul. Morals, +philosophy, and aesthetic, 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.</p> +<p>In the effort to explain the principles of an art so bewildering +in its variety, writers on style have gladly availed themselves of analogy +from the other arts, and have spoken, for the most part, not without +a parable. It is a pleasant trick they put upon their pupils, +whom they gladden with the delusion of a golden age, and perfection +to be sought backwards, in arts less complex. The teacher of writing, +past master in the juggling craft of language, explains that he is only +carrying into letters the principles of counterpoint, or that it is +all a matter of colour and perspective, or that structure and ornament +are the beginning and end of his intent. Professor of eloquence +and of thieving, his winged shoes remark him as he skips from metaphor +to metaphor, not daring to trust himself to the partial and frail support +of any single figure. He lures the astonished novice through as +many trades as were ever housed in the central hall of the world’s +fair. From his distracting account of the business it would appear +that he is now building a monument, anon he is painting a picture (with +brushes dipped in a gallipot made of an earthquake); again he strikes +a keynote, weaves a pattern, draws a wire, drives a nail, treads a measure, +sounds a trumpet, or hits a target; or skirmishes around his subject; +or lays it bare with a dissecting knife; or embalms a thought; or crucifies +an enemy. What is he really doing all the time?</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Besides the artist two things are to be considered in every art,—the +instrument and the audience; or, to deal in less figured phrase, the +medium and the public. From both of these the artist, if he would +find freedom for the exercise of all his powers, must sit decently aloof. +It is the misfortune of the actor, the singer, and the dancer, 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?</p> +<p>Whatever the chosen instrument of an art may be, its appeal to those +whose attention it bespeaks must be made through the senses. Music, +which works with the vibrations of a material substance, makes this +appeal through the ear; painting through the eye; it is of a piece with +the complexity of the literary art that it employs both channels,—as +it might seem to a careless apprehension, indifferently.</p> +<p>For the writer’s pianoforte is the dictionary, words are the +material in which he works, and words may either strike the ear or be +gathered by the eye from the printed page. The alternative will +be called delusive, for, in European literature at least, there is no +word-symbol that does not imply a spoken sound, and no excellence without +euphony. But the other way is possible, the gulf between mind +and mind may be bridged by something which has a right to the name of +literature although it exacts no aid from the ear. The picture-writing +of the Indians, the hieroglyphs 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.</p> +<p>To attempt to reduce the art of literature to its component sense-elements +is therefore vain. Memory, “the warder of the brain,” +is a fickle trustee, whimsically lavish to strangers, giving up to the +appeal of a spoken word or unspoken symbol, an odour or a touch, all +that has been garnered by the sensitive capacities of man. It +is the part of the writer to play upon memory, confusing what belongs +to one sense with what belongs to another, extorting images of colour +at a word, raising ideas of harmony without breaking the stillness of +the air. He can lead on the dance of words till their sinuous +movements call forth, as if by mesmerism, the likeness of some adamantine +rigidity, time is converted into space, and music begets sculpture. +To see for the sake of seeing, to hear for the sake of hearing, are +subsidiary exercises of his complex metaphysical art, to be counted +among its rudiments. Picture and music can furnish but the faint +beginnings of a philosophy of letters. Necessary though they be +to a writer, they are transmuted in his service to new forms, and made +to further purposes not their own.</p> +<p>The power of vision—hardly can a writer, least of all if he +be a poet, forego that part of his equipment. In dealing with +the impalpable, dim subjects that lie beyond the border-land of exact +knowledge, the poetic instinct seeks always to bring them into clear +definition and bright concrete imagery, so that it might seem for the +moment as if painting also could deal with them. Every abstract +conception, as it passes into the light of the creative imagination, +acquires structure and firmness and colour, as flowers do in the light +of the sun. Life and Death, Love and Youth, Hope and Time, become +persons in poetry, not that they may wear the tawdry habiliments of +the studio, but because persons are the objects of the most familiar +sympathy and the most intimate knowledge.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart<br />Still a young +child’s with mine, or wilt thou stand<br />Full grown the helpful +daughter of my heart,<br />What time with thee indeed I reach the strand<br />Of +the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,<br />And drink it in the +hollow of thy hand?</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>And as a keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is essential +to all writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so +languor of the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods +of philosophic expatiation. “It cannot be doubted,” +says one whose daily meditations enrich <i>The People’s Post-Bag</i>, +“that Fear is, to a great extent, the mother of Cruelty.” +Alas, by the introduction of that brief proviso, conceived in a spirit +of admirably cautious self-defence, the writer has unwittingly given +himself to the horns of a dilemma whose ferocity nothing can mitigate. +These tempered and conditional truths are not in nature, which decrees, +with uncompromising dogmatism, that either a woman is one’s mother, +or she is not. The writer probably meant merely that “fear +is one of the causes of cruelty,” and had he used a colourless +abstract word the platitude might pass unchallenged. But a vague +desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in +the word “mother,” has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination +to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment +is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no +more than “cause” or “occasion.” Only +for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour +and laden with scent; yet one poor spark of imagination might save them +from this sad descent to sterility and darkness.</p> +<p>Of no less import is the power of melody which chooses, rejects, +and orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly varied return +of sound can give to the ear. Some critics have amused themselves +with the hope that here, in the laws and practices regulating the audible +cadence of words, may be found the first principles of style, the form +which fashions the matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone +can make an art of truth. And it may be admitted that verse, owning, +as it does, a professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes +carries its devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and the +thing said seems a discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful +expression.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>What thing unto mine ear<br />Wouldst thou convey,—what secret +thing,<br />O wandering water ever whispering?<br />Surely thy speech +shall be of her,<br />Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,<br />What +message dost thou bring?</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Besides their chime in the ear, and the images that they put before +the mind’s eye, words have, for their last and greatest possession, +a meaning. They carry messages and suggestions that, in the effect +wrought, elude all the senses equally. For the sake of this, their +prime office, the rest is many times forgotten or scorned, the tune +is disordered and havoc played with the lineaments of the picture, because +without these the word can still do its business. The refutation +of those critics who, in their analysis of the power of literature, +make much of music and picture, is contained in the most moving passages +that have found utterance from man. Consider the intensity of +a saying like that of St. Paul:- “For I am persuaded, that neither +death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things +present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, +shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ +Jesus our Lord.”</p> +<p>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 AEneas and the Sibyl to the shades of the nether world. +Here are amassed all “the images of a tremendous dignity” +that the poet could forge from the sublime of denial. The two +most famous lines are a procession of negatives:-</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram,<br />Perque domos Ditis +vacuas et inania regna.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Through hollow kingdoms, emptied of the day,<br />And dim, deserted +courts where Dis bears sway,<br />Night-foundered, and uncertain of +the path,<br />Darkling they took their solitary way.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The combination of these powers in words, of song and image and meaning, +has given us the supreme passages of our romantic poetry. In Shakespeare’s +work, especially, the union of vivid definite presentment with immense +reach of metaphysical suggestion seems to intertwine the roots of the +universe with the particular fact; tempting the mind to explore that +other side of the idea presented to it, the side turned away from it, +and held by something behind.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>It will have blood; they say blood win have blood:<br />Stones have +been known to move and trees to speak;<br />Augurs and understood relations +have<br />By maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth<br />The +secret’st man of blood.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>This meeting of concrete and abstract, of sense and thought, keeps +the eye travelling along the utmost skyline of speculation, where the +heavens are interfused with the earth. In short, the third and +greatest virtue of words is no other than the virtue that belongs to +the weapons of thought,—a deep, wide, questioning thought that +discovers analogies and pierces behind things to a half-perceived unity +of law and essence. In the employ of keen insight, high feeling, +and deep thinking, language comes by its own; the prettinesses that +may be imposed on a passive material are as nothing to the splendour +and grace that transfigure even the meanest instrument when it is wielded +by the energy of thinking purpose. The contempt that is cast, +by the vulgar phrase, on “mere words” bears witness to the +rarity of this serious consummation. Yet by words the world was +shaped out of chaos, by words the Christian religion was established +among mankind. Are these terrific engines fit play-things for +the idle humours of a sick child?</p> +<p>And now it begins to be apparent that no adequate description of +the art of language can be drawn from the technical terminology of the +other arts, which, like proud debtors, would gladly pledge their substance +to repay an obligation that they cannot disclaim. Let one more +attempt to supply literature with a parallel be quoted from the works +of a writer on style, whose high merit it is that he never loses sight, +either in theory or in practice, of the fundamental conditions proper +to the craft of letters. Robert Louis Stevenson, pondering words +long and lovingly, was impressed by their crabbed individuality, and +sought to elucidate the laws of their arrangement by a reference to +the principles of architecture. “The sister arts,” +he says, “enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like +the modeller’s clay; literature alone is condemned to work in +mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. You have seen those +blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third +a window or a vase. It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size +and figure that the literary architect is condemned to design the palace +of his art. Nor is this all; for since these blocks or words are +the acknowledged currency of our daily affairs, there are here possible +none of those suppressions by which other arts obtain relief, continuity, +and vigour: no hieroglyphic touch, no smoothed impasto, no inscrutable +shadow, as in painting; no blank wall, as in architecture; but every +word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph must move in a logical progression, +and convey a definite conventional import.”</p> +<p>It is an acute comparison, happily indicative of the morose angularity +that words offer to whoso handles them, admirably insistent on the chief +of the incommodities imposed upon the writer, the necessity, at all +times and at all costs, to mean something. The boon of the recurring +monotonous expanse, that an apprentice may fill, the breathing-space +of restful mechanical repetition, are denied to the writer, who must +needs shoulder 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.</p> +<p>To one word, then, there are many meanings, according as it falls +in the sentence, according as its successive ties and associations are +broken or renewed. And here, seeing that the stupidest of all +possible meanings is very commonly the slang meaning, it will be well +to treat briefly of slang. For slang, in the looser acceptation +of the term, is of two kinds, differing, and indeed diametrically opposite, +in origin and worth. Sometimes it is the technical diction that +has perforce been coined to name the operations, incidents, and habits +of some way of life that society despises or deliberately elects to +disregard. This sort of slang, which often invents names for what +would otherwise go nameless, is vivid, accurate, and necessary, an addition +of wealth to the world’s dictionaries and of compass to the world’s +range of thought. Society, mistily conscious of the sympathy that +lightens in any habitual name, seems to have become aware, by one of +those wonderful processes of chary instinct which serve the great, vulnerable, +timid organism in lieu of a brain, that to accept of the pickpocket +his names for the mysteries of his trade is to accept also a new moral +stand-point and outlook on the question of property. For this +reason, and by no special masonic precautions of his own, the pickpocket +is allowed to keep the admirable devices of his nomenclature for the +familiar uses of himself and his mates, until a Villon arrives to prove +that this language, too, was awaiting the advent of its bully and master. +In the meantime, what directness and modest sufficiency of utterance +distinguishes the dock compared with the fumbling prolixity of the old +gentleman on the bench! It is the trite story,—romanticism +forced to plead at the bar of classicism fallen into its dotage, Keats +judged by <i>Blackwood</i>, Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment +of Miss Anna Seward. Accuser and accused alike recognise that +a question of diction is part of the issue between them; hence the picturesque +confession of the culprit, made in proud humility, that he “clicked +a red ’un” must needs be interpreted, to save the good faith +of the court, into the vaguer and more general speech of the classic +convention. Those who dislike to have their watches stolen find +that the poorest language of common life will serve their simple turn, +without the rich technical additions of a vocabulary that has grown +around an art. They can abide no rendering of the fact that does +not harp incessantly on the disapproval of watch-owners. They +carry their point of morals at the cost of foregoing all glitter and +finish in the matter of expression.</p> +<p>This sort of slang, therefore, technical in origin, the natural efflorescence +of highly cultivated agilities of brain, and hand, and eye, is worthy +of all commendation. But there is another kind that goes under +the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental sloth, and current +chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to whom all art is a bugbear +and a puzzle. There is a public for every 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 <i>Paradise Lost</i>, the talkers of slang +are “carried away by custom, to express many things otherwise, +and for the most part worse than else they would have exprest them.” +The poverty of their vocabulary makes appeal to the brotherly sympathy +of a partial and like-minded auditor, who can fill out their paltry +conventional sketches from his own experience of the same events. +Within the limits of a single school, or workshop, or social circle, +slang may serve; just as, between friends, silence may do the work of +talk. There are few families, or groups of familiars, that have +not some small coinage of this token-money, issued and accepted by affection, +passing current only within those narrow and privileged boundaries. +This wealth is of no avail to the travelling mind, save as a memorial +of home, nor is its material such “as, buried once, men want dug +up again.” A few happy words and phrases, promoted, for +some accidental fitness, to the wider world of letters, are all that +reach posterity; the rest pass into oblivion with the other perishables +of the age.</p> +<p>A profusion of words used in an ephemeral slang sense is evidence, +then, that the writer addresses himself merely to the uneducated and +thoughtless of his own day; the revival of bygone meanings, on the other +hand, and an archaic turn given to language is the mark rather of authors +who are ambitious of a hearing from more than one age. The accretions +of time bring round a word many reputable meanings, of which the oldest +is like to be the deepest in grain. It is a counsel of perfection—some +will say, of vainglorious pedantry—but that shaft flies furthest +which is drawn to the head, and he who desires to be understood in the +twenty-fourth century will not be careless of the meanings that his +words inherit from the fourteenth. To know them is of service, +if only for the piquancy of avoiding them. But many times they +cannot wisely be avoided, and the auspices under which a word began +its career when first it was imported from the French or Latin overshadow +it and haunt it to the end.</p> +<p>Popular modern usage will often rob common words, like “nice,” +“quaint,” or “silly,” of all flavour of their +origin, as if it were of no moment to remember that these three words, +at the outset of their history, bore the older senses of “ignorant,” +“noted,” and “blessed.” It may be granted +that any attempt to return to these older senses, regardless of later +implications, is stark pedantry; but a delicate writer will play shyly +with the primitive significance in passing, approaching it and circling +it, taking it as a point of reference or departure. The early +faith of Christianity, its beautiful cult of childhood, and its appeal +to unlearned simplicity, have left their mark on the meaning of “silly”; +the history of the word is contained in that cry of St. Augustine, <i>Indocti +surgunt et rapiunt</i> <i>coelum</i>, or in the fervent sentence of +the author of the <i>Imitation, Oportet fieri stultum</i>. And +if there is a later silliness, altogether unblest, the skilful artificer +of words, while accepting this last extension, will show himself conscious +of his paradox. So also he will shun the grossness that employs +the epithet “quaint” to put upon subtlety and the devices +of a studied workmanship an imputation of eccentricity; or, if he falls +in with the populace in this regard, he will be careful to justify his +innuendo. The slipshod use of “nice” to connote any +sort of pleasurable emotion he will take care, in his writings at least, +utterly to abhor. From the daintiness of elegance to the arrogant +disgust of folly the word carries meanings numerous and diverse enough; +it must not be cruelly burdened with all the laudatory occasions of +an undiscriminating egotism.</p> +<p>It would be easy to cite a hundred other words like these, saved +only by their nobler uses in literature from ultimate defacement. +The higher standard imposed upon the written word tends to raise and +purify speech also, and since talkers owe the same debt to writers of +prose that these, for their part, owe to poets, it is the poets who +must be accounted chief protectors, in the last resort, of our common +inheritance. Every page of the works of that great exemplar of +diction, Milton, is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite +meaning given to the infallible word. Sometimes he accepts the +secondary and more usual meaning of a word only to enrich it by the +interweaving of the primary and etymological meaning. Thus the +seraph Abdiel, in the passage that narrates his offer of combat to Satan, +is said to “explore” his own undaunted heart, and there +is no sense of “explore” that does not heighten the description +and help the thought. Thus again, when the poet describes those</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Eremites and friars,<br />White, Black, and Gray, with all their +trumpery,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>who inhabit, or are doomed to inhabit, the Paradise of Fools, he +seems to invite the curious reader to recall the derivation of “trumpery,” +and so supplement the idea of worthlessness with that other idea, equally +grateful to the author, of deceit. The strength that extracts +this multiplex resonance of meaning from a single note is matched by +the grace that gives to Latin words like “secure,” “arrive,” +“obsequious,” “redound,” “infest,” +and “solemn” the fine precision of intent that art can borrow +from scholarship.</p> +<p>Such an exactitude is consistent with vital change; Milton himself +is bold to write “stood praying” for “continued kneeling +in prayer,” and deft to transfer the application of “schism” +from the rent garment of the Church to those necessary “dissections +made in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be built.” +Words may safely veer to every wind that blows, so they keep within +hail of their cardinal meanings, and drift not beyond the scope of their +central employ, but when once they lose hold of that, then, indeed, +the anchor has begun to drag, and the beach-comber may expect his harvest.</p> +<p>Fixity in the midst of change, fluctuation at the heart of sameness, +such is the estate of language. According as they endeavour to +reduce 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 oecumenical 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.”</p> +<p>In truth the Romantics are right, and the serenity of the classic +ideal is the serenity of paralysis and death. A universal agreement +in the use of words facilitates communication, but, so inextricably +is expression entangled with feeling, it leaves nothing to communicate. +Inanity dogs the footsteps of the classic tradition, which is everywhere +lackeyed, through a long decline, by the pallor of reflected glories. +Even the irresistible novelty 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 <i>hortus +siccus</i> of proper names, each individual symbol poorly tethered to +some single object or idea. No wind blows through that garden, +and no sun shines on it, to discompose the melancholy workers at their +task of tying Latin labels on to withered sticks. Definition and +division are the watchwords of science, where art is all for composition +and creation. Not that the exact definable sense of a word is +of no value to the stylist; he profits by it as a painter profits by +a study of anatomy, or an architect by a knowledge of the strains and +stresses that may be put on his material. The exact logical definition +is often necessary for the structure of his thought and the ordering +of his severer argument. But often, too, it is the merest beginning; +when a word is once defined he overlays it with fresh associations and +buries it under new-found moral significances, which may 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.</p> +<p>The two main processes of change in words are Distinction and Assimilation. +Endless fresh distinction, to match the infinite complexity of things, +is the concern of the writer, who spends all his skill on the endeavour +to cloth the delicacies of perception and thought with a neatly fitting +garment. So words grow and bifurcate, diverge and dwindle, until +one root has many branches. 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.</p> +<p>Compare now the case of the ruder multitude. In the regard +of literature, as a great critic long ago remarked, “all are the +multitude; only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding,” +and the poorest talkers do not inhabit the slums. Wherever thought +and taste have fallen to be menials, there the vulgar dwell. How +should they gain mastery over language? They are introduced to +a vocabulary of some hundred thousand words, which quiver through a +million of meanings; the wealth is theirs for the taking, and they are +encouraged to be spendthrift by the very excess of what they inherit. +The resources of the tongue they speak are subtler and more various +than ever their ideas can put to use. So begins the process of +assimilation, the edge put upon words by the craftsman is blunted by +the rough treatment of the confident booby, who is well pleased when +out of many highly-tempered swords he has manufactured a single clumsy +coulter. A dozen expressions to serve one slovenly meaning inflate +him with the sense of luxury and pomp. “Vast,” “huge,” +“immense,” “gigantic,” “enormous,” +“tremendous,” “portentous,” and such-like groups +of words, lose all their variety of sense in a barren uniformity of +low employ. The reign of this democracy annuls differences of +status, and insults over differences of ability or disposition. +Thus do synonyms, or many words ill applied to one purpose, begin to +flourish, and, for a last indignity, dictionaries of synonyms.</p> +<p>Let the truth be said outright: there are no synonyms, and the same +statement can never be repeated in a changed form of words. Where +the 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 +<i>Virtuous Young Lady</i> of his sonnet in that the spleen of her detractors +moves her only to “pity and ruth,” it is not for the idle +filling of the line that he joins the second of these nouns to the first. +Rather he is careful to enlarge and intensify his meaning by drawing +on the stores of two nations, the one civilised, the other barbarous; +and ruth is a quality as much more instinctive and elemental than pity +as pitilessness is keener, harder, and more deliberate than the inborn +savagery of ruthlessness.</p> +<p>It is not chiefly, however, for the purposes of this accumulated +and varied emphasis that the need of synonyms is felt. There is +no more curious problem in the philosophy of style than that afforded +by the stubborn reluctance of writers, the good as well as the bad, +to repeat a word or phrase. When the thing is, they may be willing +to abide by the old rule and say the word, but when the thing repeats +itself they will seldom allow the word to follow suit. A kind +of interdict, not removed until the memory of the first occurrence has +faded, lies on a once used word. The causes of this anxiety for +a varied expression are manifold. Where there is merely a column +to fill, poverty of thought drives the hackney author into an illicit +fulness, until the trick of verbiage passes from his practice into his +creed, and makes him the dupe of his own puppets. A commonplace +book, a dictionary of synonyms, and another of phrase and fable equip +him for his task; if he 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 AEsculapius. +Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance their allotted +round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance masquerades in the +garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient epilogue of chastened +hope. When all is said, nothing is said; and Montaigne’s +<i>Que sçais-je</i>, besides being briefer and wittier, was infinitely +more informing.</p> +<p>But we dwell too long with disease; the writer nourished on thought, +whose nerves are braced and his loins girt to struggle with a real meaning, +is not subject to these tympanies. He feels no idolatrous dread +of repetition when the theme requires, it, and is urged by no necessity +of concealing real identity under a show of change. Nevertheless +he, too, is hedged about by conditions that compel him, now and again, +to resort to what seems a synonym. The chief of these is the indispensable +law of euphony, which governs the sequence not only of words, but also +of phrases. In proportion as a phrase is memorable, the words +that compose it become mutually adhesive, losing for a time something +of their individual scope, bringing with them, if they be torn away +too quickly, some cumbrous fragments of their recent association. +That he may avoid this, a sensitive writer is often put to his shifts, +and extorts, if he be fortunate, a triumph from the accident of his +encumbrance. By a slight stress laid on the difference of usage +the unshapeliness may be done away with, and a new grace found where +none was sought. Addison and Landor accuse Milton, with reason, +of too great a fondness for the pun, yet surely there is something to +please the mind, as well as the ear, in the description of the heavenly +judgment,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>That brought into this world a world of woe.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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:-</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear<br />Compels me to disturb +your season due;<br />For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,<br />Young +Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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 modem writers, admiring +the easy power of the device, have indulged themselves with too free +a use of it; Matthew Arnold particularly, in his prose essays, falls +to crying his text like a hawker,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Beating it in upon our weary brains,<br />As tho’ it were the +burden of a song,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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 <i>Paradise Lost</i>, without reference to +the passages in which they occur, would be a foolish labour; with such +reference, the task is made a sovereign lesson in style. At Hell +gates, where he dallies in speech with his leman Sin to gain a passage +from the lower World, Satan is “the subtle Fiend,” in the +garden of Paradise he is “the Tempter” and “the Enemy +of Mankind,” putting his fraud upon Eve he is the “wily +Adder,” leading her in full course to the tree he is “the +dire Snake,” springing to his natural height before the astonished +gaze of the cherubs he is “the grisly King.” Every +fresh designation elaborates his character and history, emphasises the +situation, and saves a sentence. So it is with all variable appellations +of concrete objects; and even in the stricter and more conventional +region of abstract ideas the same law runs. Let a word be changed +or repeated, it brings in either case its contribution of emphasis, +and must be carefully chosen for the part it is to play, lest it should +upset the business of the piece by irrelevant clownage in the midst +of high matter, saying more or less than is set down for it in the author’s +purpose.</p> +<p>The chameleon quality of language may claim yet another illustration. +Of origins we know nothing certainly, nor how words came by their meanings +in the remote beginning, when speech, like the barnacle-goose of the +herbalist, was suspended over an expectant world, ripening on a tree. +But this we know, that language in its 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:-</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>That very law which moulds a tear,<br />And bids it trickle from +its source,<br />That law preserves the earth a sphere,<br />And guides +the planets in their course.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>But a seer like Wordsworth will never be content to write tunes for +a text-book of physics, he boldly confounds the arbitrary limits of +matter and morals in one splendid apostrophe to Duty:-</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;<br />And fragrance in thy +footing treads;<br />Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;<br />And +the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Poets, it is said, anticipate science; here in these four lines is +work for a thousand laboratories for a thousand years. But the +truth has been understated; every writer and every speaker 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 aesthetic 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.</p> +<p>Enough has been said of change; it remains to speak of one more of +those illusions of fixity wherein writers seek exemption from the general +lot. Language, it has been shown, is to be fitted to thought; +and, further, there are no synonyms. What more natural conclusion +could be drawn by the enthusiasm of the artist than that there is some +kind of preordained harmony between words and things, whereby expression +and thought tally exactly, like the halves of a puzzle? This illusion, +called in France the doctrine of the <i>mot</i> <i>propre</i>, is a +will o’ the wisp which has kept many an artist dancing on its +trail. That there is one, and only one way of expressing one thing +has been the belief of other writers besides Gustave Flaubert, inspiriting +them to a desperate and fruitful industry. It is an amiable fancy, +like the dream of Michael Angelo, who loved to imagine that the statue +existed already in the block of marble, and had only to be stripped +of its superfluous wrappings, or like the indolent fallacy of those +economic soothsayers to whom Malthus brought rough awakening, that population +and the means of subsistence move side by side in harmonious progress. +But hunger does not imply food, and there may hover in the restless +heads of poets, as themselves testify -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,<br />Which into +words no virtue can digest.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Matter and form are not so separable as the popular philosophy would +have them; indeed, the very antithesis between them is a cardinal instance +of how language reacts on thought, modifying and fixing a cloudy truth. +The idea pursues form not only that it may be known to others, but that +it may know itself, and the body in which it becomes incarnate is not +to be distinguished from 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.</p> +<p>No art is easy, least of all the art of letters. Apply the +musical analogy once more to the instrument whereon literature performs +its voluntaries. With a living keyboard of notes which are all +incessantly changing in value, so that what rang true under Dr. Johnson’s +hand may sound flat or sharp now, with a range of a myriad strings, +some falling mute and others being added from day to day, with numberless +permutations and combinations, each of which alters the tone and pitch +of the units that compose it, with fluid ideas that never have an outlined +existence until they have found their phrases and the improvisation +is complete, is it to be wondered at that the art of style is eternally +elusive, and that the attempt to reduce it to rule is the forlorn hope +of academic infatuation?</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>These difficulties and complexities of the instrument are, nevertheless, +the least part of the ordeal that is to be undergone by the writer. +The 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 +<i>The</i> <i>Tears of Peace</i>, compares “men’s refuse +ears” to those gates in ancient cities which were opened only +when the bodies of executed malefactors were to be cast away, who elsewhere +gives utterance, in round terms, to his belief that</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>No truth of excellence was ever seen<br />But bore the venom of the +vulgar’s spleen,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>- even the violences of this great and haughty spirit must pale beside +the more desperate violences of the dramatist who commended his play +to the public in the famous line,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>By God, ’tis good, and if you like’t, you may.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>This stormy passion of arrogant independence disturbs the serenity +of atmosphere necessary for creative art. A greater than Jonson +donned the suppliant’s robes, like Coriolanus, and with the inscrutable +honeyed smile about his lips begged for the “most sweet voices” +of the journeymen and gallants who thronged the Globe Theatre. +Only once does the wail of anguish escape him -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Alas! ’tis true, I have gone here and there,<br />And made +myself a motley to the view,<br />Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap +what is most dear.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>And again -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,<br />And almost thence +my nature is subdued<br />To what it works in, like the dyer’s +hand,<br />Pity me then, and wish I were renewed.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Modern vulgarity, speaking through the mouths of Shakesperian commentators, +is wont to interpret these lines as a protest against the contempt wherewith +Elizabethan society regarded the professions of playwright and actor. +We are asked to conceive that Shakespeare humbly desires the pity of +his bosom friend because he is not put on the same level of social estimation +with a brocaded gull or a prosperous stupid goldsmith of the Cheap. +No, it is a cry, from the depth of his nature, for forgiveness because +he has sacrificed a little on the altar of popularity. Jonson +would have boasted that he never made this sacrifice. But he lost +the calm of his temper and the clearness of his singing voice, he degraded +his magnanimity by allowing it to engage in street-brawls, and he endangered +the sanctuary of the inviolable soul.</p> +<p>At least these great artists of the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries +are agreed upon one thing, that the public, even in its most gracious +mood, makes an ill task-master for the man of letters. It is worth +the pains to ask why, and to attempt to show how much of an author’s +literary quality is involved in his attitude towards his audience. +Such an inquiry will take us, it is true, into bad company, and exhibit +the vicious, the fatuous, and the frivolous posturing to an admiring +crowd. But style is a property of all written and printed matter, +so that to track it to its causes and origins is a task wherein literary +criticism may profit by the humbler aid of anthropological research.</p> +<p>Least of all authors is the poet subject to the tyranny of his audience. +“Poetry and eloquence,” 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 -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p><i>Idiota, insulsus, tristis, turpis, abesto.</i></p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>The poet seems to be soliloquising because he is addressing himself, +with the most entire confidence, to a small company of his friends, +who may even, in unhappy seasons, prove to be the creatures of his imagination. +Real or imaginary, they are taken by him for his equals; he expects +from them a quick intelligence and a perfect sympathy, which may enable +him to despise all concealment. He never preaches to them, nor +scolds, nor enforces the obvious. Content that what he has spoken +he has spoken, he places a magnificent trust on a single expression. +He neither explains, nor falters, nor repents; he introduces his work +with no preface, and cumbers it with no notes. He will not lower +nor raise his voice for the sake of the profane and idle who may chance +to stumble across his entertainment. His living auditors, unsolicited +for the tribute of worship or an alms, find themselves conceived of +in the likeness of what he would have them to be, raised to a companion +pinnacle of friendship, and constituted peers and judges, if they will, +of his achievement. Sometimes they come late.</p> +<p>This blend of dignity and intimacy, of candour and self-respect, +is unintelligible to the vulgar, who understand by intimacy mutual concession +to a base ideal, and who are so accustomed to deal with masks, that +when they see a face they are shocked as by some grotesque. Now +a poet, like Montaigne’s naked philosopher, is all face; and the +bewilderment of his masked and muffled critics 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.</p> +<p>If great and original literary artists—here grouped together +under the title of poets—will not enter into transactions with +their audience, there is no lack of authors who will. These are +not necessarily charlatans; they may have by nature a ready sympathy +with the grossness of the public taste, and thus take pleasure in studying +to gratify it. But man loses not a little of himself in crowds, +and some degradation there must be where the one adapts himself to the +many. The British public is not seen at its best when it is enjoying +a holiday in a foreign country, nor when it is making excursions into +the realm of imaginative literature: those who cater for it in these +matters must either study its tastes or share them. Many readers +bring the worst of themselves to a novel; they want lazy relaxation, +or support for their nonsense, or escape from their creditors, or a +free field for emotions that they dare not indulge in life. The +reward of an author who meets them half-way in these respects, who neither +puzzles nor distresses them, who asks nothing from them, but compliments +them on their great possessions and sends them away rejoicing, is a +full measure of acceptance, and editions unto seventy times seven.</p> +<p>The evils caused by the influence of the audience on the writer are +many. First of all comes a fault far enough removed from the characteristic +vices of the charlatan—to wit, sheer timidity and weakness. +There is a kind of stage-fright that seizes on a man when he takes pen +in hand to address an unknown body of hearers, no less than when he +stands up to deliver himself to a sea of expectant faces. This +is the true panic fear, that walks at mid-day, and 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.</p> +<p>For hardier aspirants, the two main entrances to popular favour are +by the twin gates of laughter and tears. Pathos knits the soul +and braces the nerves, humour purges the eyesight and vivifies the sympathies; +the counterfeits of these qualities work the opposite effects. +It is comparatively easy to appeal to passive emotions, to play upon +the melting mood of a diffuse sensibility, or to encourage the narrow +mind to dispense a patron’s laughter from the vantage-ground of +its own small preconceptions. Our annual crop of sentimentalists +and mirth-makers supplies the reading public with food. Tragedy, +which brings the naked soul face to face with the austere terrors of +Fate, Comedy, which turns the light inward and dissipates the mists +of self-affection and self-esteem, have long since given way on the +public stage to the flattery of Melodrama, under many names. In +the books he reads and in the plays he sees the average man recognises +himself in the hero, and vociferates his approbation.</p> +<p>The sensibility that came into vogue during the eighteenth century +was of a finer grain than its modern counterpart. It studied delicacy, +and sought a cultivated enjoyment in evanescent shades of feeling, and +the fantasies of unsubstantial grief. The real Princess of Hans +Andersen’s story, who passed a miserable night because there was +a small bean concealed beneath the twenty eider-down beds on which she +slept, might stand for a type of the aristocracy of feeling that took +a pride in these ridiculous susceptibilities. The modern sentimentalist +works in a coarser material. That ancient, subtle, and treacherous +affinity among the emotions, whereby religious exaltation has before +now been made the ally of the unpurified passions, is parodied by him +in a simpler and more useful device. By alleging a moral purpose +he is enabled to gratify the prurience of his public and to raise them +in their own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea +serves well with those artless readers who have been accustomed to consider +the moral of a story as something separable from imagination, expression, +and style—a quality, it may be, inherent in the plot, or a kind +of appendix, exercising a retrospective power of jurisdiction and absolution +over the extravagances of the piece to which it is affixed. Let +virtue be rewarded, and they are content though it should never be vitally +imagined or portrayed. If their eyes were opened they might cry +with Brutus—“O miserable Virtue! Thou art but a phrase, +and I have followed thee as though thou wert a reality.”</p> +<p>It is in quite another kind, however, that the modern purveyor of +sentiment exercises his most characteristic talent. There are +certain real and deeply-rooted feelings, common to humanity, concerning +which, in their normal operation, a grave reticence is natural. +They are universal in their appeal, men would be ashamed not to feel +them, and it is no small part of the business of life to keep them under +strict control. Here is the sentimental 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.</p> +<p>A similar degradation of the intellectual elements that are present +in all good literature is practised by those whose single aim is to +provoke laughter. In much of our so-called comic writing a superabundance +of boisterous animal spirits, restrained from more practical expression +by the ordinances of civil society, finds outlet and relief. The +grimaces and caperings of buffoonery, the gymnastics of the punster +and the parodist, the revels of pure nonsense may be, at their best, +a refreshment and delight, but they are not comedy, and have proved +in effect not a little hostile to the existence of comedy. The +prevalence of jokers, moreover, spoils the game of humour; the sputter +and sparkle of their made jokes interferes with that luminous contemplation +of the incongruities 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.</p> +<p>“The style is the man;” but the social and rhetorical +influences adulterate and debase it, until not one man in a thousand +achieves his birthright, or claims his second self. The fire of +the soul burns all too feebly, and warms itself by the reflected heat +from the society around it. We give back words of tepid greeting, +without improvement. We talk to our fellows in the phrases we +learn from them, which come to mean less and less as they grow worn +with use. Then we exaggerate and distort, heaping epithet upon +epithet in the endeavour to get a little warmth out of the smouldering +pile. The quiet cynicism of our everyday demeanour is open and +shameless, we callously anticipate objections founded on the well-known +vacuity of our seeming emotions, and assure our friends that we are +“truly” grieved or “sincerely” rejoiced at their +hap—as if joy or grief that really exists were some rare and precious +brand of joy or grief. In its trivial conversational uses so simple +and pure a thing as joy becomes a sandwich-man—humanity degraded +to an advertisement. The poor dejected word shuffles along through +the mud in the service of the sleek trader who employs it, and not until +it meets with a poet is it rehabilitated and restored to dignity.</p> +<p>This is no indictment of society, which came into being before literature, +and, in all the distraction of its multifarious concerns, can hardly +keep a school for Style. It is rather a demonstration of the necessity, +amid the wealthy disorder of modern civilisation, for poetic diction. +One of the hardest of a poet’s tasks is the search for his vocabulary. +Perhaps in some idyllic pasture-land of Utopia there may have flourished +a state where division of labour was unknown, where community of ideas, +as well as of property, was absolute, and where the language of every +day ran clear into poetry without the need of a refining process. +They say that Caedmon 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 -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>O, speak again, bright Angel! for thou art<br />As glorious to this +night, being o’er my head,<br />As is a winged messenger of heaven<br />Unto +the white-upturned wond’ring eyes<br />Of mortals that fall back +to gaze on him,<br />When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,<br />And +sails upon the bosom of the air -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>though it breathe the soul of romance, must yield, for sheer effect, +to his later soliloquy, spoken when the news of Juliet’s death +is brought to him,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>And even the constellated glories of <i>Paradise</i> <i>Lost</i> +are less moving than the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his approaching +end -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>So much I feel my genial spirits droop,<br />My hopes all flat; Nature +within me seems<br />In all her functions weary of herself;<br />My +race of glory run and race of shame,<br />And I shall shortly be with +them that rest.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Here are simple words raised to a higher power and animated with +a purer intention than they carry in ordinary life. It is this +unfailing note of sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that has made poetry +the teacher of prose. Phrases which, to all seeming, might have +been hit on by the first comer, are often cut away from their poetical +context and robbed of their musical value that they may be transferred +to the service of prose. They bring with them, down to the valley, +a wafted sense of some region of higher thought and purer feeling. +They bear, perhaps, no marks of curious diction to know them by. +Whence comes the irresistible pathos of the lines -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>I cannot but remember such things were<br />That were most precious +to me?</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>The thought, the diction, the syntax, might all occur in prose. +Yet when once the stamp of poetry has been put upon a cry that is as +old as humanity, prose desists from rivalry, and is content to quote. +Some of the greatest prose-writers have not disdained the help of these +borrowed graces for the crown of their fabric. In this way De +Quincey widens the imaginative range of his prose, and sets back the +limits assigned to prose diction. So too, Charles Lamb, interweaving +the stuff of experience with phrases quoted or altered from the poets, +illuminates both life and poetry, letting his sympathetic humour play +now on the warp of the texture, and now on the woof. The style +of Burke furnishes a still better example, for the spontaneous evolution +of his prose might be thought to forbid the inclusion of borrowed fragments. +Yet whenever he is deeply stirred, memories of Virgil, Milton, or the +English Bible rise to his aid, almost as if strong emotion could express +itself in no other language. Even the poor invectives of political +controversy gain a measure of dignity from the skilful application of +some famous line; the touch of the poet’s sincerity rests on them +for a moment, and seems to lend them an alien splendour. It is +like the blessing of a priest, invoked by the pious, or by the worldly, +for the good success of whatever business they have in hand. Poetry +has no temporal ends to serve, no livelihood to earn, and is under no +temptation to cog and lie: wherefore prose pays respect to that loftier +calling, and that more unblemished sincerity.</p> +<p>Insincerity, on the other hand, is the commonest vice of style. +It is not to be avoided, except in the rarest cases, by those to whom +the written use of language is unfamiliar; so that a shepherd who talks +pithy, terse sense will be unable to express himself in a letter without +having recourse to the <i>Ready Letter-writer</i>—“This +comes hoping to find you well, as it also leaves me at present”—and +a soldier, without the excuse of ignorance, will describe a successful +advance as having been made against “a thick hail of bullets.” +It permeates ordinary journalism, and all writing produced under commercial +pressure. It taints the work of the young artist, caught by the +romantic fever, who glories in the wealth of vocabulary discovered to +him by the poets, and seeks often in vain for a thought stalwart enough +to wear that glistering armour. Hence it is that the masters of +style have always had to preach restraint, self-denial, austerity. +His style is a man’s own; yet how hard it is to come by! +It is a man’s bride, to be won by labours and agonies that bespeak +a heroic lover. If he prove unable to endure the trial, there +are cheaper beauties, nearer home, easy to be conquered, and faithless +to their conqueror. Taking up with them, he may attain a brief +satisfaction, but he will never redeem his quest.</p> +<p>As a body of practical rules, the negative precepts of asceticism +bring with them a certain chill. The page is dull; it is so easy +to lighten it with some flash of witty irrelevance: the argument is +long and tedious, why not relieve it by wandering into some of those +green enclosures that open alluring doors upon the wayside? To +roam at will, spring-heeled, high-hearted, and catching at all good +fortunes, is the ambition of the youth, ere yet he has subdued himself +to a destination. The principle of self-denial seems at first +sight a treason done to genius, which was always privileged to be wilful. +In this view literature is a fortuitous series of happy thoughts and +heaven-sent findings. But the end of that plan is beggary. +Sprightly talk about the first object that meets the eye and the indulgence +of vagabond habits soon degenerate to a professional garrulity, a forced +face of dismal cheer, and a settled dislike of strenuous exercise. +The economies and abstinences of discipline promise a kinder fate than +this. They test and strengthen purpose, without which no great +work comes into being. They save the expenditure of energy on +those pastimes and diversions which lead no nearer to the goal. +To reject the images and arguments that proffer a casual assistance +yet are not to be brought under the perfect control of the main theme +is difficult; how should it be otherwise, for if they were not already +dear to the writer they would not have volunteered their aid.</p> +<p>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,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Love still has something of the sea<br />From whence his mother rose,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>the further development of that song is already fixed and its knell +rung—to the last line there is no escaping from the dazzling influences +that presided over the first. Yet to carry out such a figure in +detail, as Sir Charles Sedley set himself to do, tarnishes the sudden +glory of the opening. The lady whom Burns called Clarinda put +herself in a like quandary by beginning a song with this stanza -</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Talk not of Love, it gives me pain,<br />For Love has been my foe;<br />He +bound me in an iron chain,<br />And plunged me deep in woe.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>The last two lines deserve praise—even the praise they obtained +from a great lyric poet. But how is the song to be continued? +Genius might answer the question; to Clarinda there came only the notion +of a valuable contrast to be established between love and friendship, +and a tribute to be paid to the kindly offices of the latter. +The verses wherein she gave effect to this idea make a poor sequel; +friendship, when it is personified and set beside the tyrant god, wears +very much the air of a benevolent county magistrate, whose chief duty +is to keep the peace.</p> +<p>Figures of this sort are in no sense removable decorations, they +are at one with the substance of the thought to be expressed, and are +entitled to the large control they claim. Imagination, working +at white heat, can fairly subdue the matter of the poem to them, or +fuse them with others of the like temper, striking unity out of the +composite mass. One thing only is forbidden, to treat these substantial +and living metaphors as if they were elegant curiosities, ornamental +excrescences, to be passed over abruptly on the way to more exacting +topics. The mystics, and the mystical poets, knew better than +to countenance this frivolity. Recognising that there is a profound +and intimate correspondence between all physical manifestations and +the life of the soul, they flung the reins on the neck of metaphor in +the hope that it might carry them over that mysterious frontier. +Their failures and misadventures, familiarly despised as “conceits,” +left them floundering in absurdity. Yet not since the time of +Donne and Crashaw has the full power and significance of figurative +language been realised in English poetry. These poets, like some +of their late descendants, were tortured by a sense of hidden meaning, +and were often content with analogies that admit of no rigorous explanation. +They were convinced that all intellectual truth is a parable, though +its inner meaning be dark or dubious. The philosophy of friendship +deals with those mathematical and physical conceptions of distance, +likeness, and attraction—what if the law of bodies govern souls +also, and the geometer’s compasses measure more than it has entered +into his heart to conceive? Is the moon a name only for a certain +tonnage of dead matter, and is the law of passion parochial while the +law of gravitation is universal? Mysticism will observe no such +partial boundaries.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>O more than Moon!<br />Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,<br />Weep +me not dead in thine arms, but forbear<br />To teach the sea what it +may do too soon.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>The secret of these sublime intuitions, undivined by many of the +greatest poets, has been left to the keeping of transcendental religion +and the Catholic Church.</p> +<p>Figure and ornament, therefore, are not interchangeable terms; the +loftiest figurative style most conforms to the precepts of gravity and +chastity. None the less there is a decorative use of figure, whereby +a theme is enriched with imaginations and memories that are foreign +to the main purpose. Under this head may be classed most of those +allusions to the world’s literature, especially to classical and +Scriptural lore, which have played so considerable, yet on the whole +so idle, a part in modern poetry. It is here that an inordinate +love of decoration finds its opportunity and its snare. To keep +the most elaborate comparison in harmony with its occasion, so that +when it is completed it shall fall back easily into the emotional key +of the narrative, has been the study of the great epic poets. +Milton’s description of the rebel legions adrift on the flaming +sea is a fine instance of the difficulty felt and conquered:</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Angel forms, who lay entranced<br />Thick as autumnal leaves that +strow the brooks<br />In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades<br />High +over-arched embower; or scattered sedge<br />Afloat, when with fierce +winds Orion armed<br />Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew<br />Busiris +and his Memphian chivalry,<br />While with perfidious hatred they pursued<br />The +sojourners of Goshen, who beheld<br />From the safe shore their floating +carcases<br />And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,<br />Abject +and lost, lay these, covering the flood,<br />Under amazement of their +hideous change.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>The comparison seems to wander away at random, obedient to the slightest +touch of association. Yet in the end it is brought back, its majesty +heightened, and a closer element of likeness introduced by the skilful +turn that substitutes the image of the shattered Egyptian army for the +former images of dead leaves and sea-weed. The incidental pictures, +of the roof of shades, of the watchers from the shore, and the very +name “Red Sea,” fortuitous as they may seem, all lend help +to the imagination in bodying forth the scene described. An earlier +figure in the same book of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, because it exhibits +a less conspicuous technical cunning, may even better show a poet’s +care for unity of tone and impression. Where Satan’s prostrate +bulk is compared to</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>that sea-beast<br />Leviathan, which God of all his works<br />Created +hugest that swim the ocean-stream,</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>the picture that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat under +the lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes the mind +once more to all the pathos and gloom of those infernal deeps:</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>while night<br />Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>So masterly a handling of the figures which usage and taste prescribe +to learned writers is rare indeed. The ordinary small scholar +disposes of his baggage less happily. Having heaped up knowledge +as a successful tradesman heaps up money, he is apt to believe that +his wealth makes him free of the company of letters, and a fellow craftsman +of the poets. The mark of his style is an excessive and pretentious +allusiveness. It was he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, +<i>Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter—</i>“My +knowledge of thy knowledge is the knowledge thou covetest.” +His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; they put an +idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort from baffled +ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially aimed, a foolish +admiration. These tricks and vanities, the very corruption of +ornament, will always be found while the power to acquire knowledge +is more general than the strength to carry it or the skill to wield +it. The collector has his proper work to do in the commonwealth +of learning, but the ownership of a museum is a poor qualification for +the name of artist. Knowledge has two good uses; it may be frankly +communicated for the benefit of others, or it may minister matter to +thought; an allusive writer often robs it of both these functions. +He must needs display his possessions and his modesty at one and the +same time, producing his treasures unasked, and huddling them in uncouth +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 encyclopaedic grandeur.</p> +<p>Those who are repelled by this redundance of ornament, from which +even great writers are not wholly exempt, have sometimes been driven +by the force of reaction into a singular fallacy. The futility +of these literary quirks and graces has induced them to lay art under +the same interdict with ornament. Style and stylists, one will +say, have no attraction for him, he had rather hear honest men utter +their thoughts directly, clearly, and simply. The choice of words, +says another, and the conscious manipulation of sentences, is literary +foppery; the word that first offers is commonly the best, and the order +in which the thoughts occur is the order to be followed. Be natural, +be straightforward, they urge, and what 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.</p> +<p>It is not to be denied that there is a native force of temperament +which can make itself felt even through illiterate carelessness. +“Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics,” says Thoreau, +himself by no means a careless writer, “think that they know how +to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are +egregiously mistaken. The <i>art</i> of composition is as simple +as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply +an infinitely greater force behind them.” This true saying +introduces us to the hardest problem of criticism, the paradox of literature, +the stumbling-block of rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method +whereby a great personality can make itself felt in words, even while +it neglects and contemns the study of words, would be to lay bare the +secrets of religion and life—it is beyond human competence. +Nevertheless a brief and diffident consideration of the matter may bring +thus much comfort, that the seeming contradiction is no discredit cast +on letters, but takes its origin rather from too narrow and pedantic +a view of the scope of letters.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Solitary Reaper</i>, are cast in a dramatic mould, that beauty of +diction may be vitalised by an imagined situation. More than others +the dramatic art is an enemy to the desultory and the superfluous, sooner +than others it will cast away all formal grace of expression that it +may come home more directly to the business and bosoms of men. +Its great power and scope are shown well in this, that it can find high +uses for the commonest stuff of daily speech and the emptiest phrases +of daily intercourse.</p> +<p>Simplicity and strength, then, the vigorous realistic quality of +impromptu utterance, and an immediate relation with the elementary facts +of life, are literary excellences best known in the drama, and in its +modern fellow and rival, the novel. The dramatist and novelist +create their own characters, set their own scenes, lay their own plots, +and when all has been thus prepared, the right word is born in the purple, +an inheritor of great opportunities, all its virtues magnified by the +glamour of its high estate. Writers on philosophy, morals, or +aesthetics, 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.</p> +<p>“How many things are there,” exclaims the wise Verulam, +“which a man cannot, with any face or comeliness, say or do himself! +A man’s person hath many proper relations which he cannot put +off. A man cannot speak to his son but as a father; to his wife, +but as a husband; to his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may +speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the person.” +The like “proper relations” govern writers, even where their +audience is unknown to them. It has often been remarked how few +are the story-tellers who can introduce themselves, so much as by a +passing reflection or sentiment, without a discordant effect. +The friend who saves the situation is found in one and another of the +creatures of their art.</p> +<p>For those who must play their own part the effort to conceal themselves +is of no avail. The implicit attitude of a writer makes itself +felt; an undue swelling of his subject to heroic dimensions, an unwarrantable +assumption of sympathy, a tendency to truck with friends or with enemies +by the way, are all possible indications of weakness, which move even +the least skilled of readers to discount what is said, as they catch +here and there a glimpse of the old pot-companion, or the young dandy, +behind the imposing literary mask. Strong writers are those who, +with every reserve of power, seek no exhibition of strength. It +is as if language could not come by its full meaning save on the lips +of those who regard it as an evil necessity. Every word is torn +from them, as from a reluctant witness. They come to speech as +to a last resort, when all other ways have failed. The bane of +a literary education is that it induces talkativeness, and an overweening +confidence in words. But those whose words are stark and terrible +seem almost to despise words.</p> +<p>With words literature begins, and to words it must return. +Coloured by the neighbourhood of silence, solemnised by thought or steeled +by action, words are still its only means of rising above words. +“<i>Accedat verbum ad elementum</i>,” said St. Ambrose, +“<i>et fiat sacramentum</i>.” So the elementary passions, +pity and love, wrath and terror, are not in themselves poetical; they +must be wrought upon by the word to become poetry. In no other +way can suffering be transformed to pathos, or horror reach its apotheosis +in tragedy.</p> +<p>When all has been said, there remains a residue capable of no formal +explanation. Language, this array of conventional symbols loosely +strung together, and blown about by every wandering breath, is miraculously +vital and expressive, justifying not a few of the myriad superstitions +that have always attached to its use. The same words are free +to all, yet no wealth or distinction of vocabulary is needed for a group +of words to take the stamp of an individual mind and character. +“As a quality of style” says Mr. Pater, “soul is a +fact.” To resolve how words, like bodies, become transparent +when they are inhabited by that luminous reality, is a higher pitch +than metaphysic wit can fly. Ardent persuasion and deep feeling +enkindle words, so that the weakest take on glory. The humblest +and most despised of common phrases may be the chosen vessel for the +next avatar of the spirit. It is the old problem, to be met only +by the old solution of the Platonist, that</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>Soul is form, and doth the body make.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Single words too we plagiarise when we use them without realisation +and mastery of their meaning. The best argument for a succinct +style is this, that if you use words you do not need, or do not understand, +you cannot se 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 <i>Ecclesiastial +Polity</i> puts a bolder and truer face on the matter. “Concerning +that Faith, Hope, and Charity,” he writes, “without which +there can be no salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only +in that Law which God himself hath from Heaven revealed? There +is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning +any of these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from +the mouth of the eternal God.” Howsoever they came to us, +we have the words; they, and many other terms of tremendous import, +are bandied about from mouth to mouth and alternately enriched or impoverished +in meaning. Is the “Charity” of St. Paul’s Epistle +one with the charity of “charity-blankets”? Are the +“crusades” of Godfrey and of the great St. Louis, where +knightly achievement did homage to the religious temper, essentially +the same as that process of harrying the wretched and the outcast for +which the muddle-headed, greasy citizen of to-day invokes the same high +name? Of a truth, some kingly words fall to a lower estate than +Nebuchadnezzar.</p> +<p>Here, among words, our lot is cast, to make or mar. It is in +this obscure thicket, overgrown with weeds, set with thorns, and haunted +by shadows, this World of Words, as the Elizabethans finely called it, +that we wander, eternal pioneers, during the course of our mortal lives. +To be overtaken by a master, one who comes along with the gaiety of +assured skill and courage, with the gravity of unflinching purpose, +to make the crooked ways straight and the rough places plain, is to +gain fresh confidence from despair. He twines wreaths of the entangling +ivy, and builds ramparts of the thorns. He blazes his mark upon +the secular oaks, as a guidance to later travellers, and coaxes flame +from heaps of mouldering rubbish. There is no sense of cheer like +this. Sincerity, clarity, candour, power, seem real once more, +real and easy. In the light of great literary achievement, straight +and wonderful, like the roads of the ancient Romans, barbarism torments +the mind like a riddle. Yet there are the dusky barbarians!—fleeing +from the harmonious tread of the ordered legions, running to hide themselves +in the morass of vulgar sentiment, to ambush their nakedness in the +sand-pits of low thought.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div> +<p>It is a venerable custom to knit up the speculative consideration +of any subject with the counsels of practical wisdom. The words +of this essay have been vain indeed if the idea that style may be imparted +by tuition has eluded them, and survived. There is a useful art +of Grammar, which takes for its province the right and the wrong in +speech. Style deals only with what is permissible to all, and +even revokes, on occasion, the rigid laws of Grammar or countenances +offences against them. Yet no one is a better judge of equity +for ignorance of the law, and grammatical practice offers a fair field +wherein to acquire ease, accuracy and versatility. The formation +of sentences, the sequence of verbs, the marshalling of the ranks of +auxiliaries are all, in a sense, to be learned. There is a kind +of inarticulate disorder to which writers are liable, quite distinct +from a bad style, and caused chiefly by lack of exercise. An unpractised +writer will sometimes send a beautiful and powerful phrase jostling +along in the midst of a clumsy sentence—like a crowned king escorted +by a mob.</p> +<p>But Style cannot be taught. Imitation of the masters, or of +some one chosen master, and the constant purging of language by a severe +criticism, have their uses, not to be belittled; they have also their +dangers. The greater part of what is called the teaching of style +must always be negative, bad habits may be broken down, old malpractices +prohibited. The pillory and the stocks are hardly educational +agents, but they make it easier for honest men to enjoy their own. +If style could really be taught, it is a question whether its teachers +should not be regarded as mischief-makers and enemies of mankind. +The Rosicrucians professed to have found the philosopher’s stone, +and the shadowy sages of modern Thibet are said, by those who speak +for them, to have compassed the 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.</p> +<p>All style is gesture, the gesture of the mind and of the soul. +Mind we have in common, inasmuch as the laws of right reason are not +different for different minds. Therefore clearness and arrangement +can be taught, sheer incompetence in the art of expression can be partly +remedied. But who shall impose laws upon the soul? It is +thus of common note that one may dislike or even hate a particular style +while admiring its facility, its strength, its skilful adaptation to +the matter set forth. Milton, a chaster and more unerring 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.</p> +<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div> +<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, STYLE ***</p> +<pre> + +******This file should be named style10h.htm or style10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, style11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, style10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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