CHAPTER XII_A Manual of the Art of Fiction

THE FACTOR OF STYLE

Structure and Style--Style a Matter of Feeling--Style an

Absolute Quality--The Twofold Appeal of Language--Concrete

Examples--Onomatopoetic Words--Memorable Words--The Patterning

of Syllables--Stevenson on Style--The Pattern of Rhythm--The

Pattern of Literation--Style a Fine Art--Style an Important

Aid to Fiction--The Heresy of the Accidental--Style an Intuitive

Quality--Methods and Materials--Content and Form--The Fusion

of Both Elements--The Author's Personality--Recapitulation.

=Structure and Style.=--The element of style, which has just been

touched upon in reference to the short-story, must now be considered

in its broader aspect as a factor of fiction in general. Hitherto, in

examining the methods of fiction, we have confined our attention for

the most part to the study of structural expedients. The reason is

that structure, being a matter merely of the intellect, can be

analyzed clearly and expounded definitely. Like any other intellectual

subject--geometry, for instance--structure may be taught. But style,

although it is in fiction a factor scarcely less important, is not a

matter merely of the intellect. It is not so easily permissible of

clear analysis and definite exposition; and although it is true that,

in a certain sense, it may be learned, it is also true that it cannot

be taught.

=Style a Matter of Feeling.=--The word "style" comes trippingly to the

tongue of every critic; but it has never yet been satisfactorily

defined. Famous phrases have been made about it, to be sure; but most

of these, like that corrupted from Buffon's cursory remark in his

discourse of reception into the Academy--"_Le style est de l'homme

même_,"--are lofty admissions of the impossibility of definition. By

this fact we are fortified in our opinion that style is a matter of

feeling rather than of intellect. Avoiding, therefore, as unwise any

attempt at definition, we may yet succeed in clarifying our ideas

regarding style if we circle round the subject.

=Style an Absolute Quality.=--At the outset, in order to narrow the

compass of the circle, let us admit that the familiar phrase "bad

style" is a contradiction of terms. Basically, there is no such thing

as good style or bad. Either a literary utterance is made with style,

or else it is made without it. This initial distinction is absolute,

not relative. It must, however, be admitted that of two utterances

made with style, the one may be more imbued with that quality than is

the other; but even this secondary distinction is a matter of more and

less, rather than of better and worse. Style, then, is a quality

possessed in a greater or less degree, or else not possessed at all.

This much being granted, we may investigate with clearer minds the

philosophic aspect of the subject.

=The Twofold Appeal of Language.=--Language makes to the mind of the

reader or the listener an appeal which is twofold. First, it conveys

to his intellect a definite meaning through the content of the words

that are employed; and secondly, it conveys to his sensibilities an

indefinite suggestion through their sound. Consciously, he receives a

meaning from the denotation of the words; subconsciously, he receives

a suggestion from their connotation. Now, an utterance has the quality

of style when these two appeals of language--the denotative and the

connotative, the definite and the indefinite, the intellectual and the

sensuous--are so coördinated as to produce upon the reader or the

listener an effect which is, not dual, but indissolubly single. And an

utterance is devoid of the quality of style when, although it conveys

a meaning to the intellect through the content of the words, it does

not reinforce that conveyance of meaning by a cognate and harmonic

appeal to the senses through their sound. In the latter case the

language produces upon the recipient an effect which is, not single,

but dual and divorced.

=Concrete Examples.=--The matter may be made more clear by the

examination of concrete examples. The following sentence, for

instance, is devoid of style: "The square on the hypothenuse of a

right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other

two sides": for, although by its content it conveys to the intellect a

meaning which is entirely clear and absolutely definite, it does not

by its sound convey to the senses a suggestion which is cognate. But,

on the other hand, the following lines from Tennyson's "The Princess"

are rich in style, because the appeals to the intellect and to the ear

are so coördinated as to produce a single simultaneous effect:--

"Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees."

In these lines, fully as much is conveyed to the reader by the mere

melody of m's and r's and l's as by the content, or denotation, of the

words. For instance, the word "innumerable," which denotes to the

intellect merely "incapable of being numbered," is in this connection

made to suggest to the senses the murmuring of bees. That one word,

therefore, accomplishes a dual service, and contributes to the

expression of the general idea in one way through its content and in

another through its sound.

=Onomatopoetic Words.=--This coördination of the two appeals is the

origin and the essence of the quality of style. But the question now

demands to be considered,--_how_ may this coördination be effected?

The first detail we must attend to is the choice of words. Tennyson's

task, in the lines that we have just considered, was comparatively

easy. He was writing about certain sounds; and it was not especially

difficult for him to imitate those sounds with the words that he

selected to denote them. His device was the obvious one which is

called, by rhetoricians, onomatopoeia. In every language those words

which are denotative of sounds are nearly always also imitative of

them. Such words, as, for example, "whisper," "thunder," "rattle," are

in themselves stylistic. Alone, and apart from any context, they

incorporate that cognate appeal of significance and sound which is the

secret of style. Thus far the matter is extremely simple. But there

are also many words which denote other things than sounds and yet

somehow convey subtly to the ear a sensuous suggestion of their

content. Such words, for instance, are "mud," "nevermore," and

"tremulous." Any child could tell you that words like these "sound

just like what they mean"; and yet it would be impossible for the

critical intellect to explain exactly wherein lies the fitness between

sound and sense in such a word as "mud." The fitness, however, is

obviously there. If we select from several languages words which are

identical in denotation, we are likely to find that, because of their

difference in sound, they connote different phases of the idea which

they contain. For example, the English word "death" has a spiritual

sound; whereas the German "_der Tod_" sounds horrible and grim, and

the French "_la mort_" sounds fearsome and bizarre. In content, these

three words are indistinguishable; but in style they differ very

widely. Their diversity of connotation is obviously inherent in their

sound; and yet, though the difference may be heard at once, it seems

inexplicable by the intellect.

=Memorable Words.=--But by far the greatest number of stylistic words

owe their connotation not so much to their sound alone, as to their

capacity for evoking memories. They awake the psychologic process of

association. Such are the words which lie close to the heart of every

one's experience,--words like "home," "sorrow," "mother," "youth," and

"friends." Whenever such a word is used, it conveys to the reader or

the listener not only the specific meaning intended by the momentary

context, but also a subsidiary and subconscious recollection of many

phases of his personal experience. All of the indisputably magic words

possess this associative or _memorable_ quality. Saying one thing

definitely, they evoke a concordant harmony of subconscious and

shadowy suggestion. Expressing a message in the present, they recall

remembered beauty from the past. Thus it is with the words of those

two enchanted lines of Keats,--

"Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."

They say much more than what they say. Conveying one meaning to the

reader, they remind him of many, many others.

=The Patterning of Syllables.=--But the choice of suggestive and

memorable words is only the first step toward mastery of style. The

perfect marriage of significance and sound is dependent not so much

upon the words themselves as upon the way in which they are arranged.

The art of style, like every other art, proceeds by an initial

selection of materials and a subsequent arrangement of them in

accordance with a pattern. In style, the pattern is of prime

importance; and therefore, in order to understand the witchery of

writing, we must next consider technically the patterning of words.

=Stevenson on Style.=--This phase of the subject has been clearly

expounded and deftly illustrated by Robert Louis Stevenson in his

essay "On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature."[9] This

essay is, so far as I know, the only existing treatise on the technic

of style which is of any practical value to the incipient artist. It

should therefore be read many times and mastered thoroughly by every

student of the mystery of writing. Since it is now easily accessible,

it will not be necessary here to do more than summarize its leading

points,--stating them in a slightly different way in order that they

may better fit the present context.

=The Pattern of Rhythm.=--Every normal sentence, unless it be

extremely brief, contains a knot, or hitch. Up to a certain point, the

thought is progressively complicated; after that, it is resolved. Now,

the art of style demands that this natural implication and explication

of the thought should be attended by a cognate implication and

explication of the movement of the sentence. Unless the hitch in the

rhythm coincides with the hitch in the thought, the two appeals of the

sentence (to the intellect and to the ear) will contest against each

other instead of combining to accomplish a common effect. Therefore

the first necessity in weaving a web of words is to conquer an

accordance between the intellectual progression of the thought and the

sensuous progression of the sound. The appeal of rhythm to the human

ear is basic and elemental; and style depends for its effect more upon

a mastery of rhythmic phrase than upon any other individual detail. In

verse, the technical problem is twofold: first, to suggest to the ear

of the reader a rhythmic pattern of standard regularity; and then, to

vary from the regularity suggested, as deftly and as frequently as may

be possible without ever allowing the reader for a moment to forget

the fundamental pattern. In prose, the writer works with greater

freedom; and his problem is therefore at once more easy and more

difficult. Instead of starting with a standard pattern, he has to

invent a web of rhythm which is suited to the sense he wishes to

convey; and then, without ever disappointing the ear of the reader by

unnecessarily withholding an expected fall of rhythm, he must shatter

every inkling of monotony by continual and tasteful variation.

=The Pattern of Literation.=--But language, by its very nature, offers

to the ear not only a pattern of rhythm but also a pattern of letters. A

mastery of literation is therefore a necessary element of style.

Effects indisputably potent in suggestion may be gained by running a

recurrence of certain letters, deftly for a time withheld,--since

blatancy must always be avoided,--yet triumphant in harmonious return.

The great sentences of literature which echo in our ears because their

sound is married to their meaning will be found upon examination to

incorporate an intricate pattern of tastefully selected letters. Thus it

is with the following sentence of Sir Thomas Browne's, wherein it is

difficult to decide whether the rhythm or the literation contributes

the larger share to its symmetry of sound:--"But the iniquity of

oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men

without distinction to merit of perpetuity." Thus it is, again, with

this sentence from Ruskin's "Seven Lamps of Architecture":--"They are

but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far happier,

far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated

mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker

and quainter than ever filled the depths of midsummer dream; those

vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; those window-labyrinths of

twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses of multitudinous

pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps, that

remain to us of the faith and fear of nations." So it is also with

these sentences from De Quincey's "The English Mail-Coach":--"The sea,

the atmosphere, the light, bore each an orchestral part in this

universal lull. Moonlight, and the first timid tremblings of the dawn,

were by this time blending; and the blendings were brought into a

still more exquisite state of unity by a slight silvery mist,

motionless and dreamy, that covered the woods and fields, but with a

veil of equable transparency."

=Style a Fine Art.=--A more detailed study of style along these lines

would lead us to considerations too minutely technical for the purpose

of the present volume. Style, in its highest development, belongs only

to the finest art of literature; and it must be admitted that

literature is not always, nor even perhaps most frequently, a fine

art. Of the four rhetorical moods, or methods, of discourse,

exposition lends itself the least to the assistance of the quality of

style. Explanations are communicated from intellect to intellect.

Words, in exposition, must be chosen chiefly with a view to definite

denotation. The expository writer must be clear at any cost; he must

aim to be precise rather than to be suggestive. Style is considerably

more important as an adjunct to argumentation; since in order really

to persuade, a writer must not only convince the reader's intellect

but also rouse and conquer his emotions. But it is in narrative and in

description that the quality of style is most contributive to the

maximum effect. To evoke a picture in the reader's mind, or to convey

to his consciousness a sense of movement, it is advisable (I am

tempted to say necessary) to play upon his sensibilities with the

sound of the very sentences that are framed to convey a content to his

intellect.

=Style an Important Aid to Fiction.=--Since narrative is the natural

mood of fiction, and since description is more often introduced than

either argument or exposition, it follows that the writer of fiction

must always reckon with the factor of style. It is true that stories

may be written without style; it is even true that many of the

greatest stories have been devoid of this indefinable quality: but it

is not therefore logical to argue that the factor of style may be

neglected. How much it may be made to contribute to the attainment of

the aim of fiction will be recognized instinctively upon examination

of any wonderfully written passage. Let us consider, for example, the

following paragraphs from "Markheim." After Markheim has killed the

dealer, and gone upstairs to ransack the belongings of the murdered

man, he suffers an interval of quietude amid alarms.--

"With the tail of his eye he saw the door--even glanced at it from

time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the

good estate of his defenses. But in truth he was at peace. The rain

falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the

other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn,

and the voices of many children took up the air and words. How

stately, how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful

voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys;

and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images;

church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; children

afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common,

kite-fliers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another

cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of

summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he

smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim

lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.

"And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his

feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went

over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted

the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the

knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened."

Anybody who has ears to hear will immediately appreciate how much the

effect of this passage is enhanced by the masterly employment of every

phase of style which we have hitherto discussed. If, instead of

writing, "Presently the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of

a hymn," Stevenson had written, "Soon a piano began to play a hymn,"

he would have suggested to the ear a jangle like the banging of tin

pans, instead of the measured melody he had in mind. And let it be

particularly noted that the phrase suggested for comparison is, _in

intellectual content alone_, scarcely distinct from the original. How

little is the difference in denotation, how great the difference in

suggestion! The brief phrase, "Kite-fliers in the windy and

cloud-navigated sky," seems to blow us bodily upward into the

air:--here is mastery of rhythm. "The somnolence of summer Sundays,"

is whispery and murmurous with s's, m's, and n's:--here (more

obviously) is mastery of literation. In the second paragraph, notice

how the rhythm suddenly hurries when Markheim is startled to his feet;

and in the last sentence, consider the monotonous and measured

slowness of the movement, ominous with pauses.

=The Heresy of the Accidental.=--Every now and then a critic steps

forward with the statement that style in fiction is not a deliberate

and conscious conquest, that the sound of sentences is accidental and

may therefore not be marshaled to contribute to the sense, and that

preoccupation with details of rhythm and of literation is an evidence

of a finical and narrow mind. To such a statement no answer is

necessary but the wholesome advice to re-read, aloud and carefully,

several passages on a par with that from "Markheim" which we have just

examined. Very evidently Stevenson knew intuitively what he was about

when he planned his rhythmic patterns and his literate orchestral

harmonies.

=Style An Intuitive Quality.=--I say "intuitively," because, as I

admitted at the outset, style is, with the author, a matter of feeling

rather than of intellect. But matters may be planned with sensibility

as well as with intelligence. The writer with the gift of style

forehears a rhythmic pattern into which he weaves such words as may be

denotative of his thought; and all the while that he is striving to be

definite and clear, he carries in his mind a subtle sense of the

harmonic accompaniment of consonants, the melodious eloquence of

vowels.

By what means a writer may attain to mastery of style is a question

not to be answered by the intellect. Matters of sensibility are

personal, and every man must solve them for himself. The author of

"Markheim," as he tells us in his essay on "A College Magazine,"

taught himself to write by playing the sedulous ape to many masters;

and this method may be recommended to aspirants with an imitative ear.

But there can be no general rule; because, although in the process of

pure reason all men rightly minded think alike, each man differs from

every other in the process of emotion.

This is the reason why style, besides being (as we asserted at the

outset) an absolute quality, possessed or not possessed by any

literary utterance, is also in every case a quality personal to

the author who attains it. In this regard, Buffon was right in

stating that style is a phase of the man himself. Any work that is

accomplished by the intellect alone belongs to man in general rather

than to one man in particular; but any work that is accomplished by

the sensibilities incorporates those profounder qualities by virtue

of which each man stands distinct from every other. By studying the

structure of an author's work, we can estimate his intellect: by

studying the style, we can estimate that subtler entity which is the

man himself.

=Methods and Materials.=--At the close of our study of the materials

and methods of fiction, it is advisable that we should consider in

general the relation between form and content,--the respective value

of methods and materials. Primarily, there are two groups of worthy

fiction,--that which is great mainly on account of its content, and

that which is great mainly on account of its form. It would be unwise,

of course, to overestimate the single and inherent value of either

material or method. Some comparison, however, may be made between the

merits of the one group and the other.

=Content and Form.=--In the first place, it must be noted that, as far

as the general reader is concerned, the appeal of any work of fiction

depends far more upon its content than upon its form. The average

reader knows little and cares less about the technical methods of the

art. What he demands above all is interesting subject-matter. He

seeks, in the popular phrase, "a good story"; he wishes to be told

interesting things about interesting people; and he does not feel

especially concerned about the question whether or not these things

are told him in an interesting way. The matter, rather than the

manner, is the element that most allures him.

There are many reasons that tempt the critic to accept without

reservation the general reader's view. For instance, many of the

most important works of fiction have been inefficient in mere art. The

"Don Quixote" of Cervantes is indubitably one of the very greatest

novels in all literature, for the reason that it contains so vast

a world. Yet it is very faulty both in structure and in style. The

author seems to have built it little by little, as he went along;

and he changed his plan so often during the process of construction

that the resultant edifice, like the cathedral of St. Peter's, is

architecturally incoherent. He showed so little regard for unity that

he did not hesitate to halt his novel for half a hundred pages

while he set before the reader the totally extraneous novelette of

"The Curious Impertinent," which he happened to find lying idle in his

desk. How little he was a master of mere style may be felt at once by

comparing his plays with those of Calderon. Yet these technical

considerations do not count against the value of his masterpiece. All

of Spain is there resumed and uttered, all pains that the idealist in

any age must suffer, all the pity and the glory of aspiration

misapplied.

Scott has no style, and Thackeray has no structure; but these

technical defects go down before their magnitude of message. Scott

teaches us the glory and the greatness of being healthy, young,

adventurous, and happy; and Thackeray, with tears in his eyes that

humanize the sneer upon his lips, teaches us that the thing we call

Society, with a capital S, is but a vanity of vanities. If we turn

from the novel to the short-story, we shall notice that certain themes

are in themselves so interesting that the resultant story could not

fail to be effective even were it badly told. It is perhaps unfair to

take as an example Mr. F. J. Stimson's tale called "Mrs. Knollys,"

because his story is both correctly constructed and beautifully

written; but merely in theme this tale is so effective that it could

have endured a less accomplished handling. The story runs as

follows:[10]--A girl and her husband, both of whom are very young, go

to the Alps for their honeymoon. The husband, in crossing a glacier,

falls into a crevasse. His body cannot immediately be recovered; but

Mrs. Knollys learns from a German scientist who is making a study of

the movement of the ice that in forty-five years the body will be

carried to the end of the glacier. Thereafter she regards her husband

as absent but not lost, and lives her life in continuous imagined

communion with him. At the end of the allotted time, she returns and

finds his body. She is then a woman in her sixties; but her husband

is, in aspect, still a boy of twenty-one. She has dreamt of him as

growing old beside her: she finds him sundered from her by half a

century of change.--Even in a bald and ineffective summary the

interest of this narrative effect must be apparent. The story scarcely

needed to be told so well as Mr. Stimson told it.

We must admit, then, that, from the standpoint of the author as well

as from that of the general reader, material may often be regarded as

more important than method. But the critic is not therefore justified

in stating that style and structure may be neglected with impunity.

Other things being equal, the books that have lived the longest are

those which have been executed with admirable art. The decline in the

fame of Fenimore Cooper is a case in point. Merely in subject-matter,

his books are more important now than they were at the time of their

original publication; for the conditions of life in the forest

primeval must necessarily assume a more especial interest to a world

that, in its immediate experience, is rapidly forgetting them. But

Cooper wrote very carelessly and very badly; and as we advance to a

finer appreciation of the art of fiction, we grow more and more

distracted from the contemplation of his message by his preposterous

inequalities of craftsmanship.

Novels like the "Leatherstocking Tales" may be most enjoyed (I had

almost said appreciated best) by readers with an undeveloped sense of

art. This would seem a very strange admission at the close of a study

devoted to the art of fiction, were it not for the existence of that

other group of stories whose importance lies in method even more than

in material. A lesser thing done perfectly is often more significant

than a bigger thing done badly. Jane Austen is likely to live longer

than George Eliot, because she conveyed her message, less momentous

though it were, with a finer and a firmer art. Jane Austen's subjects

seem, at the first glance, to be of very small account. From English

middle-class society she selects a group of people who are in no

regard remarkable, and thereafter concerns herself chiefly with the

simple question of who will ultimately marry whom. But by sedulously

dwelling on the non-essentials of life, she contrives to remind the

reader of its vast essentials. By talking to us skilfully about the

many things that do not matter, she suggests to us, inversely and with

unobtrusive irony, the few things that really do. Her very message,

therefore, is immediately dependent upon her faultless art. If she had

done her work less well, the result would have been non-significant

and wearisome.

Poe and de Maupassant are shining examples of the class of authors who

are destined to live by their art alone. Poe, in his short-stories,

said nothing of importance to the world; and de Maupassant said many

matters which might more decorously have remained untalked of. But the

thing they meant to do, they did unfalteringly; and perfect

workmanship is in itself a virtue in this world of shoddy compromise

and ragged effort. Long after people have ceased to care for battle,

murder, and sudden death, the thrill and urge of buoyant adventure,

they will re-read the boyish tales of Stevenson for the sake of their

swiftness of propulsion and exultant eloquence of style.

And fully to appreciate this class of fiction, some technical

knowledge of the art is necessary. Washington Irving's efforts must,

to a great extent, be lost on readers who are lacking in the ear for

style. He had very little to say,--merely that the Hudson is

beautiful, that the greatest sadness upon earth arises from the early

death of one we love, that laughter and tears are at their deepest

indistinguishable, and that it is very pleasant to sit before the fire

of an old baronial hall and remember musingly; but he said this little

like a gentleman,--with a charm, a grace, an easy urbanity of

demeanor, that set his work forever in the class of what has been well

done by good and faithful servants.

There is a very fine pleasure in watching with awareness the doing of

things that are done well. Hence, even for the casual reader, it is

advisable to study the methods of fiction in order to develop a more

refined delight in reading. It would seem that a detective story, in

which the interest is centred mainly in the long withholding of a

mystery, would lose its charm for a reader to whom its secret has been

once revealed. But the reader with a developed consciousness of method

finds an interest evermore renewed in returning again and again to

Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." After his first surprise has been

abated, he can enjoy more fully the deftness of the author's art.

After he has viewed the play from a stall in the orchestra, he may

derive another and a different interest by watching it from the wings.

To use a familiar form of words, Jane Austen is the novelist's

novelist, Stevenson the writer's writer, Poe the builder's builder;

and in order fully to appreciate the work of artists such as these, it

is necessary (in Poe's words) to "contemplate it with a kindred art."

=The Fusion of Both Elements.=--But the critic should not therefore be

allured into setting method higher than material and overestimating

form at the expense of content. The ideal to be striven for in fiction

is such an intimate interrelation between the thing said and the way

of saying it that neither may be contemplated apart from the other. We

are touching now upon a third and smaller group of fiction, which

combines the special merits of the two groups already noted. Such a

novel as "The Scarlet Letter," such a short-story as "The Brushwood

Boy," belong in this third and more extraordinary class. What

Hawthorne has to say is searching and profound, and he says it with an

equal mastery of structure and of style. "The Scarlet Letter" would be

great because of its material alone, even had its author been a

bungler; it would be great because of its art alone, even had he been

less humanly endowed with understanding. But it is greater as we know

it, in its absolute commingling of the two great merits of important

subject and commensurate art.

=The Author's Personality.=--But in studying "The Scarlet Letter" we

are conscious of yet another element of interest,--an interest derived

from the personality of the author. The same story told with equal art

by some one else would interest us very differently. And now we are

touching on still another group of worthy fiction. Many stories endure

more because of the personality of the men who wrote them than because

of any inherent merit of material or method. Charles Lamb's

"Dream-Children; A Revery," which, although it is numbered among the

"Essays of Elia," may be regarded as a short-story, is important

mainly because of the nature of the man who penned it,--a man who, in

an age infected with the fever of growing up, remained at heart a

little child, looking upon the memorable world with eyes of wonder.

=Recapitulation.=--These, then, are the three merits to be striven for

in equal measure by aspirants to the art of fiction: momentous

material, masterly method, and important personality. To discover

certain truths of human life that are eminently worth the telling, to

embody them in imagined facts with a mastery both of structure and of

style, and, behind and beyond the work itself, to be all the time a

person worthy of being listened to: this is, for the fiction-writer,

the ultimate ideal. Seldom, very seldom, have these three contrarious

conditions revealed themselves in a single author; seldom, therefore,

have works of fiction been created that are absolutely great. It would

be difficult for the critic to select off-hand a single novel which

may be accepted in all ways as a standard of the highest excellence.

But if the term _fiction_ be regarded in its broadest significance, it

may be considered to include the one greatest work of art ever

fashioned by the mind of man. The "Divine Comedy" is supreme in

subject-matter. The facts of its cosmogony have been disproved by

modern science, the religion of which it is the monument has fallen

into disbelief, the nation and the epoch that it summarizes have been

trampled under the progress of the centuries; but in central and

inherent truth, in its exposition of the struggle of the beleaguered

human soul to win its way to light and life, it remains perennial and

new. It is supreme in art. With unfaltering and undejected effort the

master-builder upreared in symmetry its century of cantos; with

faultless eloquence he translated into song all moods the human heart

has ever known. And it is supreme in personality; because in every

line of it we feel ourselves in contact with the vastest individual

mind that ever yet inhabited the body of a man. We know (to quote the

Poet's most appreciative translator)--

"from what agonies of heart and brain,

What exultations trampling on despair,

What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,

What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,

Uprose this poem of the earth and air,

This medieval miracle of song."

His labor kept him lean for twenty years; and many a time he learned

how salt his food who fares upon another's bread,--how steep his path

who treadeth up and down another's stairs. But Dante saw and

conquered,--realizing what he had to do, knowing how to do it, being

worthy of his work. Therefore, singly among authors, he deserves the

epithet his countrymen apply to him,--divine.

"The Divine Comedy" is the supreme epic of the world. The supreme

novel remains to be written. It is doubtful if human literary art may

attain completeness more than once. But as our authors labor to embody

truths of human life in arranged imagined facts, they should

constantly be guided and inspired by the allurement of the ultimate

ideal. The noblest work is evermore accomplished by followers of the

gleam. Let us, in parting company, paraphrase the sense of a remark

made centuries ago by Sir Philip Sidney,--that model of a scholar and

a gentleman:--It is well to shoot our arrows at the moon; for though

they may miss their mark, they will yet fly higher than if we had

flung them into a bush.

[9] First published in the _Contemporary Review_ for April, 1885; and

now included in Volume XXII of the "Thistle Edition": Charles

Scribner's Sons.

[10] "Mrs. Knollys" is now easily accessible in "The Short Story:

Specimens Illustrating Its Development." Edited by Brander

Matthews. American Book Company, 1908.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. What is meant by style in literature?

2. Make three patterns of words,--the first notable for sheer

selection, the second notable for rhythm, and the third notable for

literation.

3. Write a theme, containing approximately three hundred words, that

shall be judged for its quality of style.