Where Milton's style is fine it is _very_ fine, but it is always liable
to the danger of degenerating into mannerism. Nay, where the imagination
is absent and the artifice remains, as in some of the theological
discussions in "Paradise Lost," it becomes mannerism of the most
wearisome kind. Accordingly, he is easily parodied and easily imitated.
Philips, in his "Splendid Shilling," has caught the trick exactly:
Not blacker tube nor of a shorter size
Smokes Cambrobriton (versed in pedigree,
Sprung from Cadwallader and Arthur, kings
Full famous in romantic tale) when he,
O'er many a craggy hill and barren cliff,
Upon a cargo of famed Cestrian cheese
High overshadowing rides, with a design
To vend his wares or at the Arvonian mart.
Or Maridunum, or the ancient town
Yclept Brechinia, or where Vaga's stream
Encircles Ariconium, fruitful soil.
Philips has caught, I say, Milton's trick; his real secret he could
never divine, for where Milton is best, he is incomparable. But all
authors in whom imagination is a secondary quality, and whose merit lies
less in what they say than in the way they say it, are apt to become
mannerists, and to have imitators, because manner can be easily
imitated. Milton has more or less colored all blank verse since his
time, and, as those who imitate never fail to exaggerate, his influence
has in some respects been mischievous. Thomson was well-nigh ruined by
him. In him a leaf cannot fall without a Latinism, and there is
circumlocution in the crow of a cock. Cowper was only saved by mixing
equal proportions of Dryden in his verse, thus hitting upon a kind of
cross between prose and poetry. In judging Milton, however, we should
not forget that in verse the music makes a part of the meaning, and that
no one before or since has been able to give to simple pentameters the
majesty and compass of the organ. He was as much composer as poet.
How is it with Shakespeare? did he have no style? I think I find the
proof that he had it, and that of the very highest and subtlest kind, in
the fact that I can nowhere put my finger on it, and say it is here or
there.[1]
[Footnote 1: In his essay, "Shakespeare Once More" (_Works_, in, pp.
36-42), published in 1868, Mr. Lowell has treated of Shakespeare's style
in a passage of extraordinary felicity and depth of critical judgment.]
I do not mean that things in themselves artificial may not be highly
agreeable. We learn by degrees to take a pleasure in the mannerism of
Gibbon and Johnson. It is something like reading Latin as a living
language. But in both these cases the man is only present by his
thought. It is the force of that, and only that, which distinguishes
them from their imitators, who easily possess themselves of everything
else. But with Burke, who has true style, we have a very different
experience. If we _go_ along with Johnson or Gibbon, we are _carried_
along by Burke. Take the finest specimen of him, for example, "The
Letter to a Noble Lord." The sentences throb with the very pulse of the
writer. As he kindles, the phrase glows and dilates, and we feel
ourselves sharing in that warmth and expansion. At last we no longer
read, we seem to hear him, so livingly is the whole man in what he
writes; and when the spell is over, we can scarce believe that those
dull types could have held such ravishing discourse. And yet we are told
that when Burke spoke in Parliament he always emptied the house.
I know very well what the charm of mere words is. I know very well that
our nerves of sensation adapt themselves, as the wood of the violin is
said to do, to certain modulations, so that we receive them with a
readier sympathy at every repetition. This is a part of the sweet charm
of the classics. We are pleased with things in Horace which we should
not find especially enlivening in Mr. Tupper. Cowper, in one of his
letters, after turning a clever sentence, says, "There! if that had been
written in Latin seventeen centuries ago by Mr. Flaccus, you would have
thought it rather neat." How fully any particular rhythm gets possession
of us we can convince ourselves by our dissatisfaction with any
emendation made by a contemporary poet in his verses. Posterity may
think he has improved them, but we are jarred by any change in the old
tune. Even without any habitual association, we cannot help recognizing
a certain power over our fancy in mere words. In verse almost every ear
is caught with the sweetness of alliteration. I remember a line in
Thomson's "Castle of Indolence" which owes much of its fascination to
three _m's_, where he speaks of the Hebrid Isles
Far placed amid the melancholy main.
I remember a passage in Prichard's "Races of Man" which had for me all
the moving quality of a poem. It was something about the Arctic regions,
and I could never read it without the same thrill. Dr. Prichard was
certainly far from being an inspired or inspiring author, yet there was
something in those words, or in their collocation, that affected me as
only genius can. It was probably some dimly felt association, something
like that strange power there is in certain odors, which, in themselves
the most evanescent and impalpable of all impressions on the senses,
have yet a wondrous magic in recalling, and making present to us, some
forgotten experience.
Milton understood the secret of memory perfectly well, and his poems are
full of those little pitfalls for the fancy. Whatever you have read,
whether in the classics, or in medieval romance, all is there to stir
you with an emotion not always the less strong because indefinable. Gray
makes use of the same artifice, and with the same success.
There is a charm in the arrangement of words also, and that not only in
verse, but in prose. The finest prose is subject to the laws of metrical
proportion. For example, in the song of Deborah and Barak: "Awake,
awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, utter a song! Arise, Barak, and lead thy
captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam!" Or again, "At her feet he
bowed; he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he
bowed, there he fell down dead."
Setting aside, then, all charm of association, all the influence to
which we are unconsciously subjected by melody, by harmony, or even by
the mere sound of words, we may say that style is distinguished from
manner by the author's power of projecting his own emotion into what he
writes. The stylist is occupied with the impression which certain things
have made upon him; the mannerist is wholly concerned with the
impression he shall make on others.