Sir James Mackintosh, who has sometimes been unfairly characterised as a
writer of drawing-room essays, has left the following able view of what
may be termed “the True Tone of Polite Writing,”—a rare accomplishment
even in these days of assumed facility and literary pretension:
When a woman of feeling, fancy, and accomplishment has learned to
converse with ease and grace, from long intercourse with the most
polished society, and when she writes as she speaks, she must write
letters as they ought to be written, if she has acquired just as
much habitual correctness as is reconcilable with the air of
negligence. A moment of enthusiasm, a burst of feeling, a flash of
eloquence, may be allowed; but the intercourse of society, either in
conversation or in letters, allows no more. Though interdicted from
the long-continued use of elevated language, they are not without a
resource. There is a part of language which is disdained by the
pedant or the declaimer, and which both, if they knew its
difficulty, would approach with dread; it is formed of the most
familiar phrases and turns in daily use by the generality of men,
and is full of energy and vivacity, bearing upon it the marks of
those keen feelings and strong passions from which it springs. It is
the employment of such phrases which produces what may be called
colloquial eloquence. Conversation and letters may be thus raised to
any degree of animation, without departing from their character. Any
thing may be said, if it be spoken in the tone of society. The
highest guests are welcome if they come in the easy undress of the
club: the strongest metaphor appears without violence, if it is
_familiarly_ expressed; and we the more easily catch the warmest
feeling, if we perceive that it is intentionally lowered in
expression, out of condescension to our calmer temper. It is thus
that harangues and declamations, the last proof of bad taste and bad
manners in conversation, are avoided, while the fancy and the heart
find the means of pouring forth all their stores. To meet this
despised part of language in a polished dress, and producing all the
effects of wit and eloquence, is a constant source of agreeable
surprise. This is increased, when a few bolder and higher words are
happily wrought into the texture of this familiar eloquence. To find
what seems so unlike author-craft in a book raises the pleasing
astonishment to its highest degree. I once thought of illustrating
my notions by numerous examples from “La Sevigné.” And I must, some
day or other, do so; though I think it the resource of a bungler who
is not enough master of language to convey his conceptions into the
minds of others. The style of Madame de Sevigné is evidently copied,
not only by her worshiper, Walpole, but even by Gray; who,
notwithstanding the extraordinary merits of his matter, has the
double stiffness of an imitator and of a college recluse.
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