The collocation of words is so artificial in Shakspeare and Milton, that
you may as well think of pushing a[1] brick out of a wall with your
forefinger, as attempt to remove a word out of any of their finished
passages.[2]
A good lecture upon style might he composed, by taking on the one hand the
slang of L'Estrange, and perhaps, even of Roger North,[3] which became so
fashionable after the Restoration as a mark of loyalty; and on the other,
the Johnsonian magniloquence or the balanced metre of Junius; and then
showing how each extreme is faulty, upon different grounds.
It is quite curious to remark the prevalence of the Cavalier slang style in
the divines of Charles the Second's time. Barrow could not of course adopt
such a mode of writing throughout, because he could not in it have
communicated his elaborate thinkings and lofty rhetoric; but even Barrow
not unfrequently lets slip a phrase here and there in the regular Roger
North way--much to the delight, no doubt, of the largest part of his
audience and contemporary readers. See particularly, for instances of this,
his work on the Pope's supremacy. South is full of it.
The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of
thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of this aphorismic metre into a
sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of
the English. Horne Tooke and a long sentence seem the only two antagonists
that were too much for him. Still the antithesis of Junius is a real
antithesis of images or thought; but the antithesis of Johnson is rarely
more than verbal.
The definition of good prose is--proper words in their proper places;--of
good verse--the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is
in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended
meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in
general, a fault. In the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page
after page, understanding the author perfectly, without once taking notice
of the medium of communication;--it is as if he had been speaking to you
all the while. But in verse you must do more;--there the words, the
_media_, must be beautiful, and ought to attract your notice--yet not so
much and so perpetually as to destroy the unity which ought to result from
the whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, subject to some
modifications, according to the different kinds of prose or verse. Some
prose may approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a more studied
exhibition of the _media_ may be proper; and some verse may border more on
mere narrative, and there the style should be simpler. But the great thing
in poetry is, _quocunque modo_, to effect a unity of impression upon the
whole; and a too great fulness and profusion of point in the parts will
prevent this. Who can read with pleasure more than a hundred lines or so of
Hudibras at one time? Each couplet or quatrain is so whole in itself, that
you can't connect them. There is no fusion,--just as it is in Seneca.
[Footnote 1:
They led me to the sounding shore--
Heavens! as I passed the crowded way,
My bleeding lord before me lay--
I saw--I saw--and wept no more,
Till, as the homeward breezes bore
The bark returning o'er the sea,
My gaze, oh Ilion, turn'd on thee!
Then, frantic, to the midnight air,
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair:--
"They plunge me deep in exile's woe;
They lay my country low:
Their love--no love! but some dark spell,
In vengeance breath'd, by spirit fell.
Rise, hoary sea, in awful tide,
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride;
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall,
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Ilion's fall."