adulterate and debase it, until not one man in a thousand achieves his
birthright, or claims his second self. The fire of the soul burns all
too feebly, and warms itself by the reflected heat from the society
around it. We give back words of tepid greeting, without improvement.
We talk to our fellows in the phrases we learn from them, which come to
mean less and less as they grow worn with use. Then we exaggerate and
distort, heaping epithet upon epithet in the endeavour to get a little
warmth out of the smouldering pile. The quiet cynicism of our everyday
demeanour is open and shameless, we callously anticipate objections
founded on the well-known vacuity of our seeming emotions, and assure our
friends that we are “truly” grieved or “sincerely” rejoiced at their
hap—as if joy or grief that really exists were some rare and precious
brand of joy or grief. In its trivial conversational uses so simple and
pure a thing as joy becomes a sandwich-man—humanity degraded to an
advertisement. The poor dejected word shuffles along through the mud in
the service of the sleek trader who employs it, and not until it meets
with a poet is it rehabilitated and restored to dignity.
This is no indictment of society, which came into being before
literature, and, in all the distraction of its multifarious concerns, can
hardly keep a school for Style. It is rather a demonstration of the
necessity, amid the wealthy disorder of modern civilisation, for poetic
diction. One of the hardest of a poet’s tasks is the search for his
vocabulary. Perhaps in some idyllic pasture-land of Utopia there may
have flourished a state where division of labour was unknown, where
community of ideas, as well as of property, was absolute, and where the
language of every day ran clear into poetry without the need of a
refining process. They say that Cædmon was a cow-keeper: but the
shepherds of Theocritus and Virgil are figments of a courtly brain, and
Wordsworth himself, in his boldest flights of theory, was forced to allow
of selection. Even by selection from among the chaos of implements that
are in daily use around him, a poet can barely equip himself with a
choice of words sufficient for his needs; he must have recourse to his
predecessors; and so it comes about that the poetry of the modern world
is a store-house of obsolete diction. The most surprising characteristic
of the right poetic diction, whether it draw its vocabulary from near at
hand, or avail itself of the far-fetched inheritance preserved by the
poets, is its matchless sincerity. Something of extravagance there may
be in those brilliant clusters of romantic words that are everywhere
found in the work of Shakespeare, or Spenser, or Keats, but they are the
natural leafage and fruitage of a luxuriant imagination, which, lacking
these, could not attain to its full height. Only by the energy of the
arts can a voice be given to the subtleties and raptures of emotional
experience; ordinary social intercourse affords neither opportunity nor
means for this fervour of self-revelation. And if the highest reach of
poetry is often to be found in the use of common colloquialisms, charged
with the intensity of restrained passion, this is not due to a greater
sincerity of expression, but to the strength derived from dramatic
situation. Where speech spends itself on its subject, drama stands idle;
but where the dramatic stress is at its greatest, three or four words may
enshrine all the passion of the moment. Romeo’s apostrophe from under
the balcony—
O, speak again, bright Angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds,
And sails upon the bosom of the air—
though it breathe the soul of romance, must yield, for sheer effect, to
his later soliloquy, spoken when the news of Juliet’s death is brought to
him,
Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.
And even the constellated glories of _Paradise Lost_ are less moving than
the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his approaching end—
So much I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems
In all her functions weary of herself;
My race of glory run and race of shame,
And I shall shortly be with them that rest.
Here are simple words raised to a higher power and animated with a purer
intention than they carry in ordinary life. It is this unfailing note of
sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that has made poetry the teacher of
prose. Phrases which, to all seeming, might have been hit on by the
first comer, are often cut away from their poetical context and robbed of
their musical value that they may be transferred to the service of prose.
They bring with them, down to the valley, a wafted sense of some region
of higher thought and purer feeling. They bear, perhaps, no marks of
curious diction to know them by. Whence comes the irresistible pathos of
the lines—
I cannot but remember such things were
That were most precious to me?
The thought, the diction, the syntax, might all occur in prose. Yet when
once the stamp of poetry has been put upon a cry that is as old as
humanity, prose desists from rivalry, and is content to quote. Some of
the greatest prose-writers have not disdained the help of these borrowed
graces for the crown of their fabric. In this way De Quincey widens the
imaginative range of his prose, and sets back the limits assigned to
prose diction. So too, Charles Lamb, interweaving the stuff of
experience with phrases quoted or altered from the poets, illuminates
both life and poetry, letting his sympathetic humour play now on the warp
of the texture, and now on the woof. The style of Burke furnishes a
still better example, for the spontaneous evolution of his prose might be
thought to forbid the inclusion of borrowed fragments. Yet whenever he
is deeply stirred, memories of Virgil, Milton, or the English Bible rise
to his aid, almost as if strong emotion could express itself in no other
language. Even the poor invectives of political controversy gain a
measure of dignity from the skilful application of some famous line; the
touch of the poet’s sincerity rests on them for a moment, and seems to
lend them an alien splendour. It is like the blessing of a priest,
invoked by the pious, or by the worldly, for the good success of whatever
business they have in hand. Poetry has no temporal ends to serve, no
livelihood to earn, and is under no temptation to cog and lie: wherefore
prose pays respect to that loftier calling, and that more unblemished
sincerity.
Insincerity, on the other hand, is the commonest vice of style. It is
not to be avoided, except in the rarest cases, by those to whom the
written use of language is unfamiliar; so that a shepherd who talks
pithy, terse sense will be unable to express himself in a letter without
having recourse to the _Ready Letter-writer_—“This comes hoping to find
you well, as it also leaves me at present”—and a soldier, without the
excuse of ignorance, will describe a successful advance as having been
made against “a thick hail of bullets.” It permeates ordinary
journalism, and all writing produced under commercial pressure. It
taints the work of the young artist, caught by the romantic fever, who
glories in the wealth of vocabulary discovered to him by the poets, and
seeks often in vain for a thought stalwart enough to wear that glistering
armour. Hence it is that the masters of style have always had to preach
restraint, self-denial, austerity. His style is a man’s own; yet how
hard it is to come by! It is a man’s bride, to be won by labours and
agonies that bespeak a heroic lover. If he prove unable to endure the
trial, there are cheaper beauties, nearer home, easy to be conquered, and
faithless to their conqueror. Taking up with them, he may attain a brief
satisfaction, but he will never redeem his quest.
As a body of practical rules, the negative precepts of asceticism bring
with them a certain chill. The page is dull; it is so easy to lighten it
with some flash of witty irrelevance: the argument is long and tedious,
why not relieve it by wandering into some of those green enclosures that
open alluring doors upon the wayside? To roam at will, spring-heeled,
high-hearted, and catching at all good fortunes, is the ambition of the
youth, ere yet he has subdued himself to a destination. The principle of
self-denial seems at first sight a treason done to genius, which was
always privileged to be wilful. In this view literature is a fortuitous
series of happy thoughts and heaven-sent findings. But the end of that
plan is beggary. Sprightly talk about the first object that meets the
eye and the indulgence of vagabond habits soon degenerate to a
professional garrulity, a forced face of dismal cheer, and a settled
dislike of strenuous exercise. The economies and abstinences of
discipline promise a kinder fate than this. They test and strengthen
purpose, without which no great work comes into being. They save the
expenditure of energy on those pastimes and diversions which lead no
nearer to the goal. To reject the images and arguments that proffer a
casual assistance yet are not to be brought under the perfect control of
the main theme is difficult; how should it be otherwise, for if they were
not already dear to the writer they would not have volunteered their aid.
It is the more difficult, in that to refuse the unfit is no warrant of
better help to come. But to accept them is to fall back for good upon a
makeshift, and to hazard the enterprise in a hubbub of disorderly claims.
No train of thought is strengthened by the addition of those arguments
that, like camp-followers, swell the number and the noise, without
bearing a part in the organisation. The danger that comes in with the
employment of figures of speech, similes, and comparisons is greater
still. The clearest of them may be attended by some element of grotesque
or paltry association, so that while they illumine the subject they
cannot truly be said to illustrate it. The noblest, including those
time-honoured metaphors that draw their patent of nobility from war,
love, religion, or the chase, in proportion as they are strong and of a
vivid presence, are also domineering—apt to assume command of the theme
long after their proper work is done. So great is the headstrong power
of the finest metaphors, that an author may be incommoded by one that
does his business for him handsomely, as a king may suffer the oppression
of a powerful ally. When a lyric begins with the splendid lines,
Love still has something of the sea
From whence his mother rose,
the further development of that song is already fixed and its knell
rung—to the last line there is no escaping from the dazzling influences
that presided over the first. Yet to carry out such a figure in detail,
as Sir Charles Sedley set himself to do, tarnishes the sudden glory of
the opening. The lady whom Burns called Clarinda put herself in a like
quandary by beginning a song with this stanza—
Talk not of Love, it gives me pain,
For Love has been my foe;
He bound me in an iron chain,
And plunged me deep in woe.
The last two lines deserve praise—even the praise they obtained from a
great lyric poet. But how is the song to be continued? Genius might
answer the question; to Clarinda there came only the notion of a valuable
contrast to be established between love and friendship, and a tribute to
be paid to the kindly offices of the latter. The verses wherein she gave
effect to this idea make a poor sequel; friendship, when it is
personified and set beside the tyrant god, wears very much the air of a
benevolent county magistrate, whose chief duty is to keep the peace.
Figures of this sort are in no sense removable decorations, they are at
one with the substance of the thought to be expressed, and are entitled
to the large control they claim. Imagination, working at white heat, can
fairly subdue the matter of the poem to them, or fuse them with others of
the like temper, striking unity out of the composite mass. One thing
only is forbidden, to treat these substantial and living metaphors as if
they were elegant curiosities, ornamental excrescences, to be passed over
abruptly on the way to more exacting topics. The mystics, and the
mystical poets, knew better than to countenance this frivolity.
Recognising that there is a profound and intimate correspondence between
all physical manifestations and the life of the soul, they flung the
reins on the neck of metaphor in the hope that it might carry them over
that mysterious frontier. Their failures and misadventures, familiarly
despised as “conceits,” left them floundering in absurdity. Yet not
since the time of Donne and Crashaw has the full power and significance
of figurative language been realised in English poetry. These poets,
like some of their late descendants, were tortured by a sense of hidden
meaning, and were often content with analogies that admit of no rigorous
explanation. They were convinced that all intellectual truth is a
parable, though its inner meaning be dark or dubious. The philosophy of
friendship deals with those mathematical and physical conceptions of
distance, likeness, and attraction—what if the law of bodies govern souls
also, and the geometer’s compasses measure more than it has entered into
his heart to conceive? Is the moon a name only for a certain tonnage of
dead matter, and is the law of passion parochial while the law of
gravitation is universal? Mysticism will observe no such partial
boundaries.
O more than Moon!
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea what it may do too soon.
The secret of these sublime intuitions, undivined by many of the greatest
poets, has been left to the keeping of transcendental religion and the
Catholic Church.
Figure and ornament, therefore, are not interchangeable terms; the
loftiest figurative style most conforms to the precepts of gravity and
chastity. None the less there is a decorative use of figure, whereby a
theme is enriched with imaginations and memories that are foreign to the
main purpose. Under this head may be classed most of those allusions to
the world’s literature, especially to classical and Scriptural lore,
which have played so considerable, yet on the whole so idle, a part in
modern poetry. It is here that an inordinate love of decoration finds
its opportunity and its snare. To keep the most elaborate comparison in
harmony with its occasion, so that when it is completed it shall fall
back easily into the emotional key of the narrative, has been the study
of the great epic poets. Milton’s description of the rebel legions
adrift on the flaming sea is a fine instance of the difficulty felt and
conquered:
Angel forms, who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases
And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
The comparison seems to wander away at random, obedient to the slightest
touch of association. Yet in the end it is brought back, its majesty
heightened, and a closer element of likeness introduced by the skilful
turn that substitutes the image of the shattered Egyptian army for the
former images of dead leaves and sea-weed. The incidental pictures, of
the roof of shades, of the watchers from the shore, and the very name
“Red Sea,” fortuitous as they may seem, all lend help to the imagination
in bodying forth the scene described. An earlier figure in the same book
of _Paradise Lost_, because it exhibits a less conspicuous technical
cunning, may even better show a poet’s care for unity of tone and
impression. Where Satan’s prostrate bulk is compared to
that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream,
the picture that follows of the Norse-pilot mooring his boat under the
lee of the monster is completed in a line that attunes the mind once more
to all the pathos and gloom of those infernal deeps:
while night
Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays.
So masterly a handling of the figures which usage and taste prescribe to
learned writers is rare indeed. The ordinary small scholar disposes of
his baggage less happily. Having heaped up knowledge as a successful
tradesman heaps up money, he is apt to believe that his wealth makes him
free of the company of letters, and a fellow craftsman of the poets. The
mark of his style is an excessive and pretentious allusiveness. It was
he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, _Scire tuum nihil est nisi
te scire hoc sciat alter_—“My knowledge of thy knowledge is the knowledge
thou covetest.” His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing;
they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort
from baffled ignorance, at which, perhaps, they are more especially
aimed, a foolish admiration. These tricks and vanities, the very
corruption of ornament, will always be found while the power to acquire
knowledge is more general than the strength to carry it or the skill to
wield it. The collector has his proper work to do in the commonwealth of
learning, but the ownership of a museum is a poor qualification for the
name of artist. Knowledge has two good uses; it may be frankly
communicated for the benefit of others, or it may minister matter to
thought; an allusive writer often robs it of both these functions. He
must needs display his possessions and his modesty at one and the same
time, producing his treasures unasked, and huddling them in uncouth
fashion past the gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not
seem to make a rarity of them. The subject to be treated, the groundwork
to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a profitless haphazard
ostentation. This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which
often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a futile air of encyclopædic
grandeur.
Those who are repelled by this redundance of ornament, from which even
great writers are not wholly exempt, have sometimes been driven by the
force of reaction into a singular fallacy. The futility of these
literary quirks and graces has induced them to lay art under the same
interdict with ornament. Style and stylists, one will say, have no
attraction for him, he had rather hear honest men utter their thoughts
directly, clearly, and simply. The choice of words, says another, and
the conscious manipulation of sentences, is literary foppery; the word
that first offers is commonly the best, and the order in which the
thoughts occur is the order to be followed. Be natural, be
straightforward, they urge, and what you have to say will say itself in
the best possible manner. It is a welcome lesson, no doubt, that these
deluded Arcadians teach. A simple and direct style—who would not give
his all to purchase that! But is it in truth so easy to be compassed?
The greatest writers, when they are at the top of happy hours, attain to
it, now and again. Is all this tangled contrariety of things a kind of
fairyland, and does the writer, alone among men, find that a beaten
foot-path opens out before him as he goes, to lead him, straight through
the maze, to the goal of his desires? To think so is to build a childish
dream out of facts imperfectly observed, and worthy of a closer
observation. Sometimes the cry for simplicity is the reverse of what it
seems, and is uttered by those who had rather hear words used in their
habitual vague acceptations than submit to the cutting directness of a
good writer. Habit makes obscurity grateful, and the simple style, in
this view, is the style that allows thought to run automatically into its
old grooves and burrows. The original writers who have combined real
literary power with the heresy of ease and nature are of another kind. A
brutal personality, excellently muscular, snatching at words as the
handiest weapons wherewith to inflict itself, and the whole body of its
thoughts and preferences, on suffering humanity, is likely enough to
deride the daintiness of conscious art. Such a writer is William
Cobbett, who has often been praised for the manly simplicity of his
style, which he raised into a kind of creed. His power is undeniable;
his diction, though he knew it not, both choice and chaste; yet page
after page of his writing suggests only the reflection that here is a
prodigal waste of good English. He bludgeons all he touches, and spends
the same monotonous emphasis on his dislike of tea and on his hatred of
the Government. His is the simplicity of a crude and violent mind,
concerned only with giving forcible expression to its unquestioned
prejudices. Irrelevance, the besetting sin of the ill-educated, he
glories in, so that his very weakness puts on the semblance of strength,
and helps to wield the hammer.
It is not to be denied that there is a native force of temperament which
can make itself felt even through illiterate carelessness. “Literary
gentlemen, editors, and critics,” says Thoreau, himself by no means a
careless writer, “think that they know how to write, because they have
studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The
_art_ of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a
rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind
them.” This true saying introduces us to the hardest problem of
criticism, the paradox of literature, the stumbling-block of
rhetoricians. To analyse the precise method whereby a great personality
can make itself felt in words, even while it neglects and contemns the
study of words, would be to lay bare the secrets of religion and life—it
is beyond human competence. Nevertheless a brief and diffident
consideration of the matter may bring thus much comfort, that the seeming
contradiction is no discredit cast on letters, but takes its origin
rather from too narrow and pedantic a view of the scope of letters.