hero: note too how the mass of Odysseus' seafaring adventures is
condensed into a reported speech--a traveller's tale at the court of
Alcinoüs. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear
that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's
pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly--by means
of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note,
again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his
audience knew nothing but surmised that it comprehended a vast deal of
the marvellous, spaced at irregular distances) Homer works in a shipwreck
or a miracle wherever the action threatens to flag. Lessing, as you know,
devoted several pages of the "Laoköon" to the shield of Achilles; to
Homer's craft in depicting it as it grew under Hephaestus' hammer: so
that we are intrigued by the process of manufacture instead of being
wearied by a description of the ready-made article; so also (if one may
presume to add anything to Lessing) that we are cunningly flattered in a
sense that the shield is being made for _us._ Well, that is one artifice
out of many: but if you would gauge at all Homer's resource and subtlety
in technique I recommend you to analyse the first twelve books of
the "Odyssey" and count for yourselves the device by which the
poet--[Greek: polutropos] as was never his hero--evades or hurries over
each flat interval as he happens upon it.
These things, Ulysses,
The wise bards also
Behold and sing.
But O, what labour!
O Prince, what pain!
You may be thinking, Gentlemen, that I take up a disproportionate amount
of your time on such technical matters at these. But literature being an
art (forgive the reiteration!) and therefore to be practised, I want us
to be seeking all the time _how it is done_; to hunt out the principles
on which the great artists wrought; to face, to rationalise, the
difficulties by which they were confronted, and learn how they overcame
the particular obstacle. Surely even for mere criticism, apart from
practice, we shall equip ourselves better by seeking, so far as we may,
how the thing is done than by standing at gaze before this or that
masterpiece and murmuring 'Isn't that beautiful! How in the world, now...!'
I am told that these lectures are criticised as tending to make you
conceited: to encourage in you a belief that you can do things, when it
were better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by
telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced
after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that
the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the
ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the
great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will
realise what is the condescension of the gods.
Next time, then, we will attempt an enquiry into the capital difficulty
of Prose.
LECTURE V.
INTERLUDE: ON JARGON
Thursday, May 1
We parted, Gentlemen, upon a promise to discuss the capital difficulty of
Prose, as we have discussed the capital difficulty of Verse. But,
although we shall come to it, on second thoughts I ask leave to break the
order of my argument and to interpose some words upon a kind of writing
which, from a superficial likeness, commonly passes for prose in these
days, and by lazy folk is commonly written for prose, yet actually is not
prose at all; my excuse being the simple practical one that, by first
clearing this sham prose out of the way, we shall the better deal with
honest prose when we come to it. The proper difficulties of prose will
remain: but we shall be agreed in understanding what it is, or at any
rate what it is not, that we talk about. I remember to have heard
somewhere of a religious body in the United States of America which had
reason to suspect one of its churches of accepting Spiritual consolation
from a coloured preacher--an offence against the laws of the Synod--and
despatched a Disciplinary Committee with power to act; and of the
Committee's returning to report itself unable to take any action under
its terms of reference, for that while a person undoubtedly coloured had
undoubtedly occupied the pulpit and had audibly spoken from it in the
Committee's presence, the performance could be brought within no
definition of preaching known or discoverable. So it is with that
infirmity of speech--that flux, that determination of words to the mouth,
or to the pen--which, though it be familiar to you in parliamentary
debates, in newspapers, and as the staple language of Blue Books,
Committees, Official Reports, I take leave to introduce to you as prose
which is not prose and under its real name of Jargon.
You must not confuse this Jargon with what is called Journalese. The two
overlap, indeed, and have a knack of assimilating each other's vices. But
Jargon finds, maybe, the most of its votaries among good douce people who
have never written to or for a newspaper in their life, who would never
talk of 'adverse climatic conditions' when they mean 'bad weather'; who
have never trifled with verbs such as 'obsess,' 'recrudesce,' 'envisage,'
'adumbrate,' or with phrases such as 'the psychological moment,' 'the
true inwardness,' 'it gives furiously to think.' It dallies with
Latinity--'sub silentio,' 'de die in diem,' 'cui bono?' (always in the
sense, unsuspected by Cicero, of 'What is the profit?')--but not for the
sake of style. Your journalist at the worst is an artist in his way: he
daubs paint of this kind upon the lily with a professional zeal; the more
flagrant (or, to use his own word, arresting) the pigment, the happier is
his soul. Like the Babu he is trying all the while to embellish our poor
language, to make it more floriferous, more poetical--like the Babu for
example who, reporting his mother's death, wrote, 'Regret to inform you,
the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket.'
_There_ is metaphor: _there_ is ornament: _there_ is a sense of poetry,
though as yet groping in a world unrealised. No such gusto marks--no such
zeal, artistic or professional, animates--the practitioners of Jargon,
who are, most of them (I repeat), douce respectable persons. Caution is
its father: the instinct to save everything and especially trouble: its
mother, Indolence. It looks precise, but it is not. It is, in these
times, _safe_: a thousand men have said it before and not one to your
knowledge had been prosecuted for it. And so, like respectability in
Chicago, Jargon stalks unchecked in our midst. It is becoming the
language of Parliament: it has become the medium through which Boards of
Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms,
express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought and so
voice the reason of their being.
Has a Minister to say 'No' in the House of Commons? Some men are
constitutionally incapable of saying no: but the Minister conveys it
thus--'The answer to the question is in the negative.' That means 'no.'
Can you discover it to mean anything less, or anything more except that
the speaker is a pompous person?--which was no part of the information
demanded.
That is Jargon, and it happens to be accurate. But as a rule Jargon is by
no means accurate, its method being to walk circumspectly around its
target; and its faith, that having done so it has either hit the
bull's-eye or at least achieved something equivalent, and safer.
Thus the Clerk of a Board of Guardians will minute that--
In the case of John Jenkins deceased the coffin provided was of the
usual character.
Now this is not accurate. 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased,' for
whom a coffin was supplied, it is wholly superfluous to tell us that he
is deceased. But actually John Jenkins never had more than one case, and
that was the coffin. The Clerk says he had two,--a coffin in a case: but
I suspect the Clerk to be mistaken, and I am sure he errs in telling us
that the coffin was of the usual character: for coffins have no
character, usual or unusual.
For another example (I shall not tell you whence derived)--
In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class [So you
see the lucky fellow gets a case as well as a first-class. He might be
a stuffed animal: perhaps he is] In the case of every candidate who is
placed in the first class the class-list will show by some convenient
mark (1) the Section or Sections for proficiency in which he is placed
in the first class and (2) the Section or Sections (if any) in which he
has passed with special distinction.
'The Section or Sections (if any)'--But, how, if they are not any, could
they be indicated by a mark however convenient?
The Examiners will have regard to the style and method of the
candidate's answers, and will give credit for excellence _in these
respects_.
Have you begun to detect the two main vices of Jargon? The first is that
it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech. It says 'In the
case of John Jenkins deceased, the coffin' when it means 'John Jenkins's
coffin': and its yea is not yea, neither is its nay nay: but its answer
is in the affirmative or in the negative, as the foolish and superfluous
'case' may be. The second vice is that it habitually chooses vague woolly
abstract nouns rather than concrete ones. I shall have something to say
by-and-by about the concrete noun, and how you should ever be struggling
for it whether in prose or in verse. For the moment I content myself with
advising you, if you would write masculine English, never to forget the
old tag of your Latin Grammar--
Masculine will only be
Things that you can touch and see.
But since these lectures are meant to be a course in First Aid to
writing, I will content myself with one or two extremely rough rules: yet
I shall be disappointed if you do not find them serviceable.
The first is:--Whenever in your reading you come across one of these
words, _case, instance, character, nature, condition, persuasion,
degree_--whenever in writing your pen betrays you to one or another of
them--pull yourself up and take thought. If it be 'case' (I choose it as
Jargon's dearest child--'in Heaven yclept Metonomy') turn to the
dictionary, if you will, and seek out what meaning can be derived from
_casus_, its Latin ancestor: then try how, with a little trouble, you can
extricate yourself from that case. The odds are, you will feel like a
butterfly who has discarded his chrysalis.
Here are some specimens to try your hand on--
(1) All those tears which inundated Lord Hugh Cecil's head were
dry in the case of Mr Harold Cox.
Poor Mr Cox! left gasping in his aquarium!
(2) [From a cigar-merchant] In any case, let us send you a case
on approval.
(3) It is contended that Consols have fallen in consequence:
but such is by no means the case.
'Such,' by the way, is another spoilt child of Jargon, especially in
Committee's Rules--'Co-opted members may be eligible as such; such
members to continue to serve for such time as'--and so on.
(4) Even in the purely Celtic areas, only in two or three cases
do the Bishops bear Celtic names.
For 'cases' read 'dioceses.'
_Instance._ In most instances the players were below their form.
But what were they playing at? Instances?
_Character--Nature._ There can be no doubt that the accident was
caused through the dangerous nature of the spot, the hidden
character of the by-road, and the utter absence of any warning
or danger signal.
Mark the foggy wording of it all! And yet the man hit something and broke
his neck! Contrast that explanation with the verdict of a coroner's jury
in the West of England on a drowned postman--'We find that deceased met
his death by an act of God, caused by sudden overflowing of the river
Walkhan and helped out by the scandalous neglect of the way-wardens.'
The Aintree course is notoriously of a trying nature.
On account of its light character, purity and age, Usher's whiskey
is a whiskey that will agree with you.
_Order._ The mésalliance was of a pronounced order.
_Condition._ He was conveyed to his place of residence in an
intoxicated condition.
'He was carried home drunk.'
_Quality and Section._ Mr ----, exhibiting no less than five works,
all of a superior quality, figures prominently in the oil section.
This was written of an exhibition of pictures.
_Degree._ A singular degree of rarity prevails in the earlier
editions of this romance.
That is Jargon. In prose it runs simply 'The earlier editions of this
romance are rare'--or 'are very rare'--or even (if you believe what I take
leave to doubt), 'are singularly rare'; which should mean that they are
rarer than the editions of any other work in the world.
Now what I ask you to consider about these quotations is that in each the
writer was using Jargon to shirk prose, palming off periphrases upon us
when with a little trouble he could have gone straight to the point. 'A
singular degree of rarity prevails,' 'the accident was caused through the
dangerous nature of the spot,' 'but such is by no means the case.' We may
not be capable of much; but we can all write better than that, if we take
a little trouble. In place of, 'the Aintree course is of a trying nature'
we can surely say 'Aintree is a trying course' or 'the Aintree course is
a trying one'--just that and nothing more.
Next, having trained yourself to keep a look-out for these worst
offenders (and you will be surprised to find how quickly you get into the
way of it), proceed to push your suspicions out among the whole cloudy
host of abstract terms. 'How excellent a thing is sleep,' sighed Sancho
Panza; 'it wraps a man round like a cloak'--an excellent example, by the
way, of how to say a thing concretely: a Jargoneer would have said that
'among the beneficent qualities of sleep its capacity for withdrawing the
human consciousness from the contemplation of immediate circumstances may
perhaps be accounted not the least remarkable.' How vile a thing--shall
we say?--is the abstract noun! It wraps a man's thoughts round like
cotton wool.
Here is a pretty little nest of specimens, found in "The Times" newspaper
by Messrs. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, authors of that capital little book
"The King's English":--
One of the most important reforms mentioned in the rescript is the
unification of the organisation of judicial institutions and the
guarantee for all the tribunals of the independence necessary for
securing to all classes of the community equality before the law.
I do not dwell on the cacophony; but, to convey a straightforward piece
of news, might not the Editor of "The Times" as well employ a man to
write:--
One of the most important reforms is that of the Courts, which need
a uniform system and to be made independent. In this way only can
men be assured that all are equal before the law.
I think he might.
A day or two ago the musical critic of the "Standard" wrote this:--
MR LAMOND IN BEETHOVEN
Mr Frederick Lamond, the Scottish pianist, as an interpreter of
Beethoven has few rivals. At his second recital of the composer's works
at Bechstein Hall on Saturday afternoon he again displayed a complete
sympathy and understanding of his material that extracted the very
essence of aesthetic and musical value from each selection he
undertook. The delightful intimacy of his playing and his unusual force
of individual expression are invaluable assets, which, allied to his
technical brilliancy, enable him to achieve an artistic triumph. The
two lengthy Variations in E flat major (Op. 35) and in D major, the
latter on the Turkish March from 'The Ruins of Athens,' when included
in the same programme, require a master hand to provide continuity of
interest. _To say that Mr Lamond successfully avoided moments that
might at times, in these works, have inclined to comparative
disinterestedness, would be but a moderate way of expressing the
remarkable fascination with which his versatile playing endowed them_,
but _at the same time_ two of the sonatas given included a similar form
of composition, and no matter how intellectually brilliant may be the
interpretation, the extravagant use of a certain mode is bound in time
to become somewhat ineffective. In the Three Sonatas, the E major (Op.
109), the A major (Op. 2), No. 2, and the C minor (Op. 111), Mr Lamond
signalised his perfect insight into the composer's varying moods.
Will you not agree with me that here is no writing, here is no prose,
here is not even English, but merely a flux of words to the pen?
Here again is a string, a concatenation--say, rather, a tiara--of gems of
purest ray serene from the dark unfathomed caves of a Scottish
newspaper:--
The Chinese viewpoint, as indicated in this letter, may not be without
interest to your readers, because it evidently is suggestive of more
than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things
which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate in disaster
resembling the Chang-Sha riots. It also ventures to illustrate
incidents having their inception in recent premature endeavours to
accelerate the development of Protestant missions in China; but we
would hope for the sake of the interests involved that what my
correspondent describes as 'the irresponsible ruffian element' may be
known by their various religious designations only within very
restricted areas.
Well, the Chinese have given it up, poor fellows! and are asking the
Christians--as to-day's newspapers inform us--to pray for them. Do you
wonder? But that is, or was, the Chinese 'viewpoint,'--and what a
willow-pattern viewpoint! Observe its delicacy. It does not venture to
interest or be interesting; merely 'to be not without interest.' But it
does 'venture to illustrate incidents'--which, for a viewpoint, is brave
enough: and this illustration 'is suggestive of something more than an
academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if
allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate.' What materialises? The
unpleasant aspect? or the things? Grammar says the 'things,' 'things
which if allowed to materialise.' But things are materialised already,
and as a condition of their being things. It must be the aspect, then,
that materialises. But, if so, it is also the aspect that culminates, and
an aspect, however unpleasant, can hardly do that, or at worst cannot
culminate in anything resembling the Chang-Sha riots.... I give it up.
Let us turn to another trick of Jargon: the trick of Elegant Variation,
so rampant in the Sporting Press that there, without needing to attend
these lectures, the Undergraduate detects it for laughter:--
Hayward and C. B. Fry now faced the bowling; which apparently had
no terrors for the Surrey crack. The old Oxonian, however,
took some time in settling to work....
Yes, you all recognise it and laugh at it. But why do you practise it in
your Essays? An undergraduate brings me an essay on Byron. In an essay on
Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay
exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my
undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one
page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the
second sentence turns into 'that great but unequal poet' and
thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with
Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Half-way down the
page he becomes 'the gloomy master of Newstead': overleaf he is
reincarnated into 'the meteoric darling of society': and so proceeds
through successive avatars--'this arch-rebel,' 'the author of Childe
Harold,' 'the apostle of scorn,' 'the ex-Harrovian, proud, but abnormally
sensitive of his club-foot,' 'the martyr of Missolonghi,' 'the
pageant-monger of a bleeding heart.' Now this again is Jargon. It does
not, as most Jargon does, come of laziness; but it comes of timidity,
which is worse. In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not
only calls a spade a spade but has the pluck to double spades and
re-double.
For another rule--just as rough and ready, but just as useful: Train your
suspicions to bristle up whenever you come upon 'as regards,' 'with
regard to,' 'in respect of,' 'in connection with,' 'according as to
whether,' and the like. They are all dodges of Jargon, circumlocutions
for evading this or that simple statement: and I say that it is not
enough to avoid them nine times out of ten, or nine-and-ninety times out
of a hundred. You should never use them. That is positive enough, I hope?
Though I cannot admire his style, I admire the man who wrote to me, 'Re
Tennyson--your remarks anent his "In Memoriam" make me sick': for though
re is not a preposition of the first water, and 'anent' has enjoyed its
day, the finish crowned the work. But here are a few specimens far, very
far, worse:--
The special difficulty in Professor Minocelsi's case [our old friend
'case' again] arose _in connexion with_ the view he holds _relative
to_ the historical value of the opening pages of Genesis.
That is Jargon. In prose, even taking the miserable sentence as it stands
constructed, we should write 'the difficulty arose over the views he
holds about the historical value,' etc.
From a popular novelist:--
I was entirely indifferent _as to_ the results of the game, caring
nothing at all _as to_ whether _I had losses or gains_--
Cut out the first 'as' in 'as to,' and the second 'as to' altogether, and
the sentence begins to be prose--'I was indifferent to the results of the
game, caring nothing whether I had losses or gains.'
But why, like Dogberry, have 'had losses'? Why not simply 'lose.' Let us
try again. 'I was entirely indifferent to the results of the game, caring
nothing at all whether I won or lost.'
Still the sentence remains absurd: for the second clause but repeats the
first without adding one jot. For if you care not at all whether you win
or lose, you must be entirely indifferent to the results of the game. So
why not say 'I was careless if I won or lost,' and have done with it?
A man of simple and charming character, he was fitly _associated
with_ the distinction of the Order of Merit.
I take this gem with some others from a collection made three years ago,
by the "Oxford Magazine"; and I hope you admire it as one beyond price.
'He was associated with the distinction of the Order of Merit' means 'he
was given the Order of Merit.' If the members of that Order make a
society then he was associated with them; but you cannot associate a man
with a distinction. The inventor of such fine writing would doubtless
have answered Canning's Needy Knife-grinder with:--
I associate thee with sixpence! I will see thee in another
association first!
But let us close our _florilegium_ and attempt to illustrate Jargon by
the converse method of taking a famous piece of English (say Hamlet's
soliloquy) and remoulding a few lines of it in this fashion:--
To be, or the contrary? Whether the former or the latter be preferable
would seem to admit of some difference of opinion; the answer in the
present case being of an affirmative or of a negative character
according as to whether one elects on the one hand to mentally suffer
the disfavour of fortune, albeit in an extreme degree, or on the other
to boldly envisage adverse conditions in the prospect of eventually
bringing them to a conclusion. The condition of sleep is similar to, if
not indistinguishable from, that of death; and with the addition of
finality the former might be considered identical with the latter: so
that in this connection it might be argued with regard to sleep that,
could the addition be effected, a termination would be put to the
endurance of a multiplicity of inconveniences, not to mention a number
of downright evils incidental to our fallen humanity, and thus a
consummation achieved of a most gratifying nature.