worse scholars than the forty-seven) that here, with the old cadences
kept so far as possible, we are given sense in place of nonsense: and I
ask you to come to the Revised Version with a fair mind. I myself came to
it with some prejudice; in complete ignorance of Hebrew, and with no more
than the usual amount of Hellenistic Greek. I grant at once that the
Revised New Testament was a literary fiasco; largely due (if gossip may
be trusted) to trouble with the Greek Aorist, and an unwise decision--in
my opinion the most gratuitously unwise a translator can take--to use one
and the same English word, always and in every connotation, as
representing one and the same Greek word: for in any two languages few
words are precisely equivalent. A fiasco at any rate the Revised New
Testament was, deserving in a dozen ways and in a thousand passages the
scorn which Professor Saintsbury has recently heaped on it. But I protest
against the injustice of treating the two Revisions--of the New Testament
and of the Old--as a single work, and saddling the whole with the sins of
a part. For two years I spent half-an-hour daily in reading the
Authorised and Revised Versions side by side, marking as I went, and in
this way worked through the whole--Old Testament, Apocrypha, New
Testament. I came to it (as I have said) with some prejudice; but I
closed the books on a conviction, which my notes sustain for me, that the
Revisers of the Old Testament performed their task delicately,
scrupulously, on the whole with great good judgment; that the critic does
a wrong who brings them under his indiscriminate censure; that on the
whole they have clarified the sense of the Authorised Version while
respecting its consecrated rhythms; and that--to name an example, that
you may test my words and judge for yourselves--the solemn splendour of
that most wonderful poem, the story of Job, [Greek: dialampei], 'shines
through' the new translation as it never shone through the old.
* * * * *
And now Gentlemen (as George Herbert said on a famous occasion), let us
tune our instruments.
Before discussing with you another and highly important question of style
in writing, I will ask you to look back for a few moments on the road we
have travelled.
We have agreed that our writing should be _appropriate_: that it should
fit the occasion; that it should rise and fall with the subject, be grave
where that is serious, where it is light not afraid of what Stevenson in
"The Wrong Box" calls 'a little judicious levity.' If your writing
observe these precepts, it will be well-mannered writing.
To be sure, much in addition will depend on yourself--on what you are or
have made yourself, since in writing the style can never be separated
from the man. But neither can it in the practice of virtue: yet, though
men differ in character, I do not observe that moralists forbear from
laying down general rules of excellence. Now if you will recall our
further conclusion, that writing to be good must be persuasive (since
persuasion is the only true intellectual process), and will test this by
a passage of Newman's I am presently to quote to you, from his famous
'definition of a gentleman,' I think you will guess pretty accurately the
general law of excellence I would have you, as Cambridge men, tribally
and particularly obey.
Newman says of a gentleman that among other things:
He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair
advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments,
or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.... If he engages in
controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from
the blundering discourtesy of better perhaps, but less educated minds;
who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who
mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles,
misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than
they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too
clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as
brief as he is decisive.
Enough for the moment on this subject: but commit these words to your
hearts, and you will not only triumph in newspaper controversy. You will
do better: you will avoid it.
To proceed.--We found further that our writing should be _accurate_:
because language expresses thought--is, indeed, the only expression of
thought--and if we lack the skill to speak precisely, our thought will
remain confused, ill-defined. The editor of a mining paper in Denver,
U.S.A., boldly the other day laid down this law, that niceties of
language were mere 'frills': all a man needed was to 'get there,' that
is, to say what he wished in his own way. But just here, we found, lies
the mischief. You will not get there by hammering away on your own
untutored impulse. You must first be your own reader, chiselling out the
thought definitely for yourself: and, after that, must carve out the
intaglio yet more sharply and neatly, if you would impress its image
accurately upon the wax of other men's minds. We found that even for Men
of Science this neat clean carving of words was a very necessary
accomplishment. As Sir James Barrie once observed, 'The Man of Science
appears to be the only man who has something to say, just now--and the
only man who does not know how to say it.' But the trouble by no means
ends with Science. Our poets--those gifted strangely prehensile men who,
as I said in my first lecture, seem to be born with filaments by which
they apprehend, and along which they conduct, the half-secrets of life to
us ordinary mortals--our poets would appear to be scamping artistic
labour, neglecting to reduce the vague impressions to the clearly cut
image which is, after all, what helps. It may be a triumph that they have
taught modern French poetry to be suggestive. I think it would be more
profitable could they learn from France--that nation of fine workmen--to
be definite.
But about 'getting there'--I ask you to remember Wolfe, with the seal of
his fate on him, stepping into his bateau on the dark St. Lawrence River
and quoting as they tided him over:--
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike th' inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
'I had rather have written those lines,' said Wolfe, 'than conquer
Canada.' That is how our forefathers valued noble writing. The Denver
editor holds that you may write as you please so long as you get there.
Well, Wolfe got there: and so, in Wolfe's opinion, did Gray: but perhaps
to Wolfe and Gray, and to the Denver editor, 'there' happened to mean two
different places. Wolfe got to the Heights of Abraham.
Further, it was against this loose adaptation of words to thought and to
things that we protested in our interpolated lecture on Jargon, which is
not so much bad writing as the avoidance of writing. The man who employs
Jargon does not get 'there' at all, even in a raw rough pioneering
fashion: he just walks around 'there' in the ambient tracks of others.
Let me fly as high as I can and quote you two recent achievements by
Cabinet Ministers, as reported in the Press:--(1) 'Mr McKenna's reasons
for releasing from Holloway Prison Miss Lenton while on remand charged
_in connexion with_ (sweet phrase!) the firing of the tea pavilion in Kew
Gardens are given in a letter which he has _caused to be forwarded_ to a
correspondent who inquired _as to_ the circumstances of the release. The
letter says "I am desired by the Home Secretary to say that Lilian Lenton
was reported by the medical officer at Holloway Prison to be in a state
of collapse and in imminent danger of death _consequent upon_ her refusal
to take food. Three courses were open--(1) To leave her to die; (2) To
attempt to feed her forcibly, which the medical officer advised would
probably entail death in her existing condition: (3) To release her. The
Home Secretary adopted the last course."'
'Would probably entail death in her existing condition'! Will anyone tell
me how Mr McKenna or anyone else could kill, or (as he prefers to put it)
entail death upon, Miss Lenton in a non-existing condition?
(2) Next take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As we know, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer can use incisive speech when he chooses. On May 8th as
reported in next day's "Morning Post," Mr Lloyd George, answering a
question, delivered himself of this to an attentive Senate:--
With regard to Mr Noel Buxton's questions, I cannot answer for an
enquiry which is _of a private and confidential character_, for
although I am associated with it I am not associated with it as a
Minister of the Crown.... Those enquiries are of a very careful
systematic and scientific character, and are being conducted by the
ablest investigators in this country, some of whom have reputations
of international character. I am glad to think that the
investigation is of a most impartial character.
It must be a comforting thought, that an inquiry of a private and
confidential character is also of a very systematic and scientific
character, and besides being of a most impartial character, is conducted
by men of international character--whatever that may happen to mean. What
_is_ an international character, and what would you give for one?
We found that this way of talking, while pretending to be something
pontifical, is really not prose at all, nor reputable speech at all, but
Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it
pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but
quoting from a paper supplied him by some permanent official of the
Treasury: since we select our civil servants among men of decent
education and their salaries warrant our stipulating that they shall be
able, at least, to speak and write their mother tongue.
We laid down certain rules to help us in the way of straight
Prose:--
(1) _Always always prefer the concrete word to the abstract._
(2) _Almost always prefer the direct word to the circumlocution._
(3) _Generally, use transitive verbs, that strike their object; and use
them in the active voice, eschewing the stationary passive, with its
little auxiliary its's and was's, and its participles getting into the
light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by
his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can
tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or
'composition.'_
The authors of that capital handbook "The King's English," which I have
already recommended to you, add two rules:--
(4) _Prefer the short word to the long._
(5) _Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance._
But these two precepts you would have to modify by so long a string of
exceptions that I do not commend them to you. In fact I think them false
in theory and likely to be fatal in practice. For, as my last lecture
tried to show, you no sooner begin to philosophise things instead of
merely telling a tale of them than you must go to the Mediterranean
languages: because in these man first learnt to discuss his 'why' and
'how,' and these languages yet guard the vocabulary.
Lastly, we saw how, by experimenting with rhythm, our prose 'broke its
birth's invidious bar' and learnt to scale the forbidden heights.
Now by attending to the few plain rules given above you may train
yourselves to write sound, straightforward, work-a-day English. But if
you would write melodious English, I fear the gods will require of you
what they ought to have given you at birth--something of an ear. Yet the
most of us have ears, of sorts; and I believe that, though we can only
acquire it by assiduous practice, the most of us can wonderfully improve
our talent of the ear.
If you will possess yourselves of a copy of Quintilian or borrow one from
any library (Bohn's translation will do) and turn to his 9th book, you
will find a hundred ways indicated, illustrated, classified, in which a
writer or speaker can vary his Style, modulate it, lift or depress it,
regulate its balance.
All these rules, separately worth studying, if taken together may easily
bewilder and dishearten you. Let me choose just two, and try to hearten
you by showing that, even with these two only, you can go a long way.
Take the use of right emphasis. What Quintilian says of right
emphasis--or the most important thing he says--is this:--
There is sometimes an extraordinary force in some particular word,
which, if it be placed in no very conspicuous position in the middle
part of a sentence, is likely to escape the attention of the hearer
and to be obscured by the words surrounding it; but if it be put at
the end of the sentence is urged upon the reader's sense and
imprinted on his mind.
That seems obvious enough, for English use as well as for Latin. 'The
wages of sin is Death'--anyone can see how much more emphatic that is
than 'Death is the wages of sin.' But let your minds work on this matter
of emphasis, and discover how emphasis has always its right point
somewhere, though it be not at all necessarily at the end of the
sentence. Take a sentence in which the strong words actually repeat
themselves for emphasis:--
Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.
Our first impulse would be to place the emphasis at the end:--
Babylon, that great city, is fallen, is fallen.
The Latin puts it at the beginning:--
Cecidit, cecidit, Babylonia illa magna.
Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city.
The forty-seven preserved the 'falling close' so exquisite in the Latin;
the emphasis, already secured by repetition, they accentuated by
lengthening the pause. I would urge on you that in every sentence there
is just a right point of emphasis which you must train your ears to
detect. So your writing will acquire not only emphasis, but balance, and
you will instinctively avoid such an ill-emphasised sentence as this,
which, not naming the author, I will quote for your delectation:--
'Are Japanese Aprils always as lovely as this?' asked the man in the
light tweed suit of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson
sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits
round their broad Terai hats.
Explore, next, what (though critics have strangely neglected it) to my
mind stands the first, or almost the first, secret of beautiful writing
in English, whether in prose or in verse; I mean that inter-play of
vowel-sounds in which no language can match us. We have so many vowel
sounds indeed, and so few vowels to express them, that the foreigner,
mistaking our modesty, complains against God's plenty. We alone, for
example, sound by a natural vowel that noble _I_, which other nations can
only compass by diphthongs. Let us consider that vowel for a moment or
two and mark how it leads off the dance of the Graces, its sisters:--
Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the
Lord is risen upon thee.
Mark how expressively it drops to the solemn vowel 'O,' and
anon how expressively it reasserts itself to express rearisen
delight:--
Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is
risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and
gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and
his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to
thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Take another passage in which the first lift of this _I_ vowel yields to
its graver sisters as though the sound sank into the very heart of the
sense.
I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father,
I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more
worthy to be called thy son.'
'And am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Mark the deep O's. 'For
this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' 'O my
son, my son Absalom'--observe the I and O how they interchime, until the O
of sorrow tolls the lighter note down:--
O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died
for thee, O Absolom, my son, my son!
Or take this lyric, by admission one of the loveliest written in this
present age, and mark here too how the vowels play and ring and chime and
toll.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.[2]
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping
slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket
sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake-water lapping, with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
I think if you will but open your ears to this beautiful vowel-play which
runs through all the best of our prose and poetry, whether you ever learn
to master it or not, you will have acquired a new delight, and one
various enough to last you though you live to a very old age.
All this of which I am speaking is Art: and Literature being an Art, do
you not see how personal a thing it is--how it cannot escape being
personal? No two men (unless they talk Jargon) say the same thing in the
same way. As is a man's imagination, as is his character, as is the
harmony in himself, as is his ear, as is his skill, so and not otherwise
he will speak, so and not otherwise than they can respond to that
imagination, that character, that order of his intellect, that harmony of
his soul, his hearers will hear him. Let me conclude with this great
passage from Newman which I beg you, having heard it, to ponder:--
If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named,
--if the origin of language is by many philosophers considered
nothing short of divine--if by means of words the secrets of the
heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief
is carried off, sympathy conveyed, experience recorded, and wisdom
perpetuated,--if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity,
national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the
future, the East and the West are brought into communication with
each other,--if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and the
prophets of the human family--it will not answer to make light of
Literature or to neglect its study: rather we may be sure that, in
proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its
spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers
of like benefits to others--be they many or few, be they in the
obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life--who are united to
us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal
influence.
[Footnote 1: I append the following specimen translations of the famous
passage in St Paul's "First Epistle to the Corinthians" xv. 51 sqq. I
choose this because (1) it is an important passage; (2) it touches a high
moment of philosophising; (3) the comparison seems to me to represent
with great fairness to Tyndale the extent of the forty-seven's debt to
him; (4) it shows that they meant exactly what they said in their
Preface; and (5) it illustrates, towards the close, their genius for
improvement. From the Greek, Wyclif translates:--
Lo, I seie to you pryvyte of holi thingis | and alle we schulen rise
agen | but not alle we schuln be chaungid | in a moment in the
twynkelynge of an yë, in the last trumpe | for the trumpe schal
sowne: and deed men schulen rise agen with out corrupcion, and we
schuln be changid | for it bihoveth this corruptible thing to clothe
uncorropcion and this deedly thing to putte aweye undeedlynesse. But
whanne this deedli thing schal clothe undeedlynesse | thanne schal
the word be don that is written | deeth is sopun up in victorie |
deeth, where is thi victorie? deeth, where is thi pricke?
Tyndale:--
Beholde I shewe you a mystery. We shall not all slepe: but we shall
all be chaunged | and that in a moment | and in the twinclinge of an
eye | at the sounde of the last trompe. For the trompe shall blowe,
and the deed shall ryse incorruptible and we shalbe chaunged. For
this corruptible must put on incorruptibilite: and this mortall must
put on immortalite. When this corruptible hath put on
incorruptibilite | and this mortall hath put on immortalite: than
shalbe brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Deeth is
consumed in to victory.' Deeth, where is thy stynge? Hell, where is
thy victory?
The Authorised Version:--
Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleepe, but wee shall
all be changed, in a moment, in the twinckling of an eye, at the
last trumpe, (for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be
raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed). For this corruptible
must put on incorruption, and this mortall must put on immortalitie.
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this
mortall shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to
passe the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in
victory.' O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy
victory?]
[Footnote 2: I E O : I O E
I O : E OU A
'As musing slow, I hail ('as m_u_sing sl_o_w _I_ ha_i_l)
Thy genial loved return.' (Th_y_ g_e_nial l_o_ved ret_u_rn.')
COLLINS, "Ode to Evening."]
LECTURE VIII.
ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I)
Wednesday, October 22
You may think it strange, Gentlemen, that of a course of ten lectures
which aim to treat English Literature as an affair of practice, I should
propose to spend two in discussing our literary lineage: a man's lineage
and geniture being reckoned, as a rule, among the things he cannot be
reasonably asked to amend. But since of high breeding is begotten (as
most of us believe) a disposition to high thoughts, high deeds; since to
have it and be modestly conscious of it is to carry within us a faithful
monitor persuading us to whatsoever in conduct is gentle, honourable, of
good repute, and so silently dissuading us from base thoughts, low ends,
ignoble gains; seeing, moreover, that a man will often do more to match
his father's virtue than he would to improve himself; I shall endeavour,
in this and my next lecture, to scour that spur of ancestry and present
it to you as so bright and sharp an incentive that you, who read English
Literature and practise writing here in Cambridge, shall not pass out
from her insensible of the dignity of your studies, or without pride or
remorse according as you have interpreted in practice the motto,
_Noblesse oblige_.
'Tis wisdom, and that high,
For men to use their fortune reverently
Even in youth.
Let me add that, just as a knowledge of his family failings will help one
man in economising his estate, or warn another to shun for his health the
pleasures of the table, so some knowledge of our lineage in letters may
put us, as Englishmen, on the watch for certain national defects (for
such we have), on our guard against certain sins which too easily beset
us. Nay, this watchfulness may well reach down from matters of great
moment to seeming trifles. It is good for us to recognise with Wordsworth
that
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.
But, though less important, it is good also to recognise that, as sons of
Cambridge, we equally offend against her breeding when in our scientific
writings we allow ourselves to talk of a microbe as an 'antibody.'
Now, because a great deal of what I have to say this morning, if not
heretical, will yet run contrary to the vogue and practice of the Schools
for these thirty years, I will take the leap into my subject over a
greater man's back and ask you to listen with particular attention to the
following long passage from a writer whose opinion you may challenge, but
whose authority to speak as a master of English prose no one in this room
will deny.