of Virgil, Theocritus, or even of Pindar, and one may venture to affirm he
will be able to trace out but few remains of the graces which charmed him
so much in the original. The natural conclusion from hence is, that in the
classical authors, the expression, the sweetness of the numbers,
occasioned by a musical placing of words, constitute a great part of their
beauties; whereas, in the sacred writings, they consist more in the
greatness of the things themselves than in the words and expressions. The
ideas and conceptions are so great and lofty in their own nature that they
necessarily appear magnificent in the most artless dress. Look but into
the Bible, and we see them shine through the most simple and literal
translations. That glorious description which Moses gives of the creation
of the heavens and the earth, which Longinus … was so greatly taken with,
has not lost the least whit of its intrinsic worth, and though it has
undergone so many translations, yet triumphs over all, and breaks forth
with as much force and vehemence as in the original.… In the history of
Joseph, where Joseph makes himself known, and weeps aloud upon the neck of
his dear brother Benjamin, that all the house of Pharaoh heard him, at
that instant none of his brethren are introduced as uttering aught, either
to express their present joy or palliate their former injuries to him. On
all sides there immediately ensues a deep and solemn silence; a silence
infinitely more eloquent and expressive than anything else that could have
been substituted in its place. Had Thucydides, Herodotus, Livy, or any of
the celebrated classical historians, been employed in writing this
history, when they came to this point they would doubtless have exhausted
all their fund of eloquence in furnishing Joseph’s brethren with laboured
and studied harangues, which, however fine they might have been in
themselves, would nevertheless have been unnatural, and altogether
improper on the occasion.”(34)
This is eloquently written, but it contains, I consider, a mixture of
truth and falsehood, which it will be my business to discriminate from
each other. Far be it from me to deny the unapproachable grandeur and
simplicity of Holy Scripture; but I shall maintain that the classics are,
as human compositions, simple and majestic and natural too. I grant that
Scripture is concerned with things, but I will not grant that classical
literature is simply concerned with words. I grant that human literature
is often elaborate, but I will maintain that elaborate composition is not
unknown to the writers of Scripture. I grant that human literature cannot
easily be translated out of the particular language to which it belongs;
but it is not at all the rule that Scripture can easily be translated
either;—and now I address myself to my task:—
3.
Here, then, in the first place, I observe, Gentlemen, that Literature,
from the derivation of the word, implies writing, not speaking; this,
however, arises from the circumstance of the copiousness, variety, and
public circulation of the matters of which it consists. What is spoken
cannot outrun the range of the speaker’s voice, and perishes in the
uttering. When words are in demand to express a long course of thought,
when they have to be conveyed to the ends of the earth, or perpetuated for
the benefit of posterity, they must be written down, that is, reduced to
the shape of literature; still, properly speaking, the terms, by which we
denote this characteristic gift of man, belong to its exhibition by means
of the voice, not of handwriting. It addresses itself, in its primary
idea, to the ear, not to the eye. We call it the power of speech, we call
it language, that is, the use of the tongue; and, even when we write, we
still keep in mind what was its original instrument, for we use freely
such terms in our books as “saying,” “speaking,” “telling,” “talking,”
“calling;” we use the terms “phraseology” and “diction;” as if we were
still addressing ourselves to the ear.
Now I insist on this, because it shows that speech, and therefore
literature, which is its permanent record, is essentially a personal work.
It is not some production or result, attained by the partnership of
several persons, or by machinery, or by any natural process, but in its
very idea it proceeds, and must proceed, from some one given individual.
Two persons cannot be the authors of the sounds which strike our ear; and,
as they cannot be speaking one and the same speech, neither can they be
writing one and the same lecture or discourse,—which must certainly belong
to some one person or other, and is the expression of that one person’s
ideas and feelings,—ideas and feelings personal to himself, though others
may have parallel and similar ones,—proper to himself, in the same sense
as his voice, his air, his countenance, his carriage, and his action, are
personal. In other words, Literature expresses, not objective truth, as it
is called, but subjective; not things, but thoughts.
Now this doctrine will become clearer by considering another use of words,
which does relate to objective truth, or to things; which relates to
matters, not personal, not subjective to the individual, but which, even
were there no individual man in the whole world to know them or to talk
about them, would exist still. Such objects become the matter of Science,
and words indeed are used to express them, but such words are rather
symbols than language, and however many we use, and however we may
perpetuate them by writing, we never could make any kind of literature out
of them, or call them by that name. Such, for instance, would be Euclid’s
Elements; they relate to truths universal and eternal; they are not mere
thoughts, but things: they exist in themselves, not by virtue of our
understanding them, not in dependence upon our will, but in what is called
the _nature_ of things, or at least on conditions external to us. The
words, then, in which they are set forth are not language, speech,
literature, but rather, as I have said, symbols. And, as a proof of it,
you will recollect that it is possible, nay usual, to set forth the
propositions of Euclid in algebraical notation, which, as all would admit,
has nothing to do with literature. What is true of mathematics is true
also of every study, so far forth as it is scientific; it makes use of
words as the mere vehicle of things, and is thereby withdrawn from the
province of literature. Thus metaphysics, ethics, law, political economy,
chemistry, theology, cease to be literature in the same degree as they are
capable of a severe scientific treatment. And hence it is that Aristotle’s
works on the one hand, though at first sight literature, approach in
character, at least a great number of them, to mere science; for even
though the things which he treats of and exhibits may not always be real
and true, yet he treats them as if they were, not as if they were the
thoughts of his own mind; that is, he treats them scientifically. On the
other hand, Law or Natural History has before now been treated by an
author with so much of colouring derived from his own mind as to become a
sort of literature; this is especially seen in the instance of Theology,
when it takes the shape of Pulpit Eloquence. It is seen too in historical
composition, which becomes a mere specimen of chronology, or a chronicle,
when divested of the philosophy, the skill, or the party and personal
feelings of the particular writer. Science, then, has to do with things,
literature with thoughts; science is universal, literature is personal;
science uses words merely as symbols, but literature uses language in its
full compass, as including phraseology, idiom, style, composition, rhythm,
eloquence, and whatever other properties are included in it.
Let us then put aside the scientific use of words, when we are to speak of
language and literature. Literature is the personal use or exercise of
language. That this is so is further proved from the fact that one author
uses it so differently from another. Language itself in its very
origination would seem to be traceable to individuals. Their peculiarities
have given it its character. We are often able in fact to trace particular
phrases or idioms to individuals; we know the history of their rise. Slang
surely, as it is called, comes of, and breathes of the personal. The
connection between the force of words in particular languages and the
habits and sentiments of the nations speaking them has often been pointed
out. And, while the many use language as they find it, the man of genius
uses it indeed, but subjects it withal to his own purposes, and moulds it
according to his own peculiarities. The throng and succession of ideas,
thoughts, feelings, imaginations, aspirations, which pass within him, the
abstractions, the juxtapositions, the comparisons, the discriminations,
the conceptions, which are so original in him, his views of external
things, his judgments upon life, manners, and history, the exercises of
his wit, of his humour, of his depth, of his sagacity, all these
innumerable and incessant creations, the very pulsation and throbbing of
his intellect, does he image forth, to all does he give utterance, in a
corresponding language, which is as multiform as this inward mental action
itself and analogous to it, the faithful expression of his intense
personality, attending on his own inward world of thought as its very
shadow: so that we might as well say that one man’s shadow is another’s as
that the style of a really gifted mind can belong to any but himself. It
follows him about _as_ a shadow. His thought and feeling are personal, and
so his language is personal.
4.
Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression
are parts of one: style is a thinking out into language. This is what I
have been laying down, and this is literature; not _things_, not the
verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_; but thoughts
expressed in language. Call to mind, Gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek
word which expresses this special prerogative of man over the feeble
intelligence of the inferior animals. It is called Logos: what does Logos
mean? it stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to
say which it means more properly. It means both at once: why? because
really they cannot be divided,—because they are in a true sense one. When
we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and
the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread
speech under foot, and to hope to do without it—then will it be
conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its
own double, its instrument of expression, and the channel of its
speculations and emotions.
Critics should consider this view of the subject before they lay down such
canons of taste as the writer whose pages I have quoted. Such men as he is
consider fine writing to be an _addition from without_ to the matter
treated of,—a sort of ornament superinduced, or a luxury indulged in, by
those who have time and inclination for such vanities. They speak as if
_one_ man could do the thought, and _another_ the style. We read in
Persian travels of the way in which young gentlemen go to work in the
East, when they would engage in correspondence with those who inspire them
with hope or fear. They cannot write one sentence themselves; so they
betake themselves to the professional letter-writer. They confide to him
the object they have in view. They have a point to gain from a superior, a
favour to ask, an evil to deprecate; they have to approach a man in power,
or to make court to some beautiful lady. The professional man manufactures
words for them, as they are wanted, as a stationer sells them paper, or a
schoolmaster might cut their pens. Thought and word are, in their
conception, two things, and thus there is a division of labour. The man of
thought comes to the man of words; and the man of words, duly instructed
in the thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink of devotedness, and
proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the nightingale of
affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze
of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. This is what the Easterns
are said to consider fine writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of
the school of critics to whom I have been referring.
We have an instance in literary history of this very proceeding nearer
home, in a great University, in the latter years of the last century. I
have referred to it before now in a public lecture elsewhere;(35) but it
is too much in point here to be omitted. A learned Arabic scholar had to
deliver a set of lectures before its doctors and professors on an
historical subject in which his reading had lain. A linguist is conversant
with science rather than with literature; but this gentleman felt that his
lectures must not be without a style. Being of the opinion of the
Orientals, with whose writings he was familiar, he determined to buy a
style. He took the step of engaging a person, at a price, to turn the
matter which he had got together into ornamental English. Observe, he did
not wish for mere grammatical English, but for an elaborate, pretentious
style. An artist was found in the person of a country curate, and the job
was carried out. His lectures remain to this day, in their own place in
the protracted series of annual Discourses to which they belong,
distinguished amid a number of heavyish compositions by the rhetorical and
ambitious diction for which he went into the market. This learned divine,
indeed, and the author I have quoted, differ from each other in the
estimate they respectively form of literary composition; but they agree
together in this,—in considering such composition a trick and a trade;
they put it on a par with the gold plate and the flowers and the music of
a banquet, which do not make the viands better, but the entertainment more
pleasurable; as if language were the hired servant, the mere mistress of
the reason, and not the lawful wife in her own house.
But can they really think that Homer, or Pindar, or Shakespeare, or
Dryden, or Walter Scott, were accustomed to aim at diction for its own
sake, instead of being inspired with their subject, and pouring forth
beautiful words because they had beautiful thoughts? this is surely too
great a paradox to be borne. Rather, it is the fire within the author’s
breast which overflows in the torrent of his burning, irresistible
eloquence; it is the poetry of his inner soul, which relieves itself in
the Ode or the Elegy; and his mental attitude and bearing, the beauty of
his moral countenance, the force and keenness of his logic, are imaged in
the tenderness, or energy, or richness of his language. Nay, according to
the well-known line, “facit indignatio _versus_;” not the words alone, but
even the rhythm, the metre, the verse, will be the contemporaneous
offspring of the emotion or imagination which possesses him. “Poeta
nascitur, non fit,” says the proverb; and this is in numerous instances
true of his poems, as well as of himself. They are born, not framed; they
are a strain rather than a composition; and their perfection is the
monument, not so much of his skill as of his power. And this is true of
prose as well as of verse in its degree: who will not recognize in the
vision of Mirza a delicacy and beauty of style which is very difficult to
describe, but which is felt to be in exact correspondence to the ideas of
which it is the expression?
5.
And, since the thoughts and reasonings of an author have, as I have said,
a personal character, no wonder that his style is not only the image of
his subject, but of his mind. That pomp of language, that full and tuneful
diction, that felicitousness in the choice and exquisiteness in the
collocation of words, which to prosaic writers seem artificial, is nothing
else but the mere habit and way of a lofty intellect. Aristotle, in his
sketch of the magnanimous man, tells us that his voice is deep, his
motions slow, and his stature commanding. In like manner, the elocution of
a great intellect is great. His language expresses, not only his great
thoughts, but his great self. Certainly he might use fewer words than he
uses; but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germinates into a
multitude of details, and prolongs the march of his sentences, and sweeps
round to the full diapason of his harmony, as if κύδεϊ γαίων, rejoicing in
his own vigour and richness of resource. I say, a narrow critic will call
it verbiage, when really it is a sort of fulness of heart, parallel to
that which makes the merry boy whistle as he walks, or the strong man,
like the smith in the novel, flourish his club when there is no one to
fight with.
Shakespeare furnishes us with frequent instances of this peculiarity, and
all so beautiful, that it is difficult to select for quotation. For
instance, in Macbeth:—
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart?”
Here a simple idea, by a process which belongs to the orator rather than
to the poet, but still comes from the native vigour of genius, is expanded
into a many-membered period.
The following from Hamlet is of the same kind:—
“’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly.”
Now, if such declamation, for declamation it is, however noble, be
allowable in a poet, whose genius is so far removed from pompousness or
pretence, much more is it allowable in an orator, whose very province it
is to put forth words to the best advantage he can. Cicero has nothing
more redundant in any part of his writings than these passages from
Shakespeare. No lover then at least of Shakespeare may fairly accuse
Cicero of gorgeousness of phraseology or diffuseness of style. Nor will
any sound critic be tempted to do so. As a certain unaffected neatness and
propriety and grace of diction may be required of any author who lays
claim to be a classic, for the same reason that a certain attention to
dress is expected of every gentleman, so to Cicero may be allowed the
privilege of the “os magna sonaturum,” of which the ancient critic speaks.
His copious, majestic, musical flow of language, even if sometimes beyond
what the subject-matter demands, is never out of keeping with the occasion
or with the speaker. It is the expression of lofty sentiments in lofty
sentences, the “mens magna in corpore magno.” It is the development of the
inner man. Cicero vividly realised the _status_ of a Roman senator and
statesman, and the “pride of place” of Rome, in all the grace and grandeur
which attached to her; and he imbibed, and became, what he admired. As the
exploits of Scipio or Pompey are the expression of this greatness in deed,
so the language of Cicero is the expression of it in word. And, as the
acts of the Roman ruler or soldier represent to us, in a manner special to
themselves, the characteristic magnanimity of the lords of the earth, so
do the speeches or treatises of her accomplished orator bring it home to
our imaginations as no other writing could do. Neither Livy, nor Tacitus,
nor Terence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor Quintilian, is an adequate
spokesman for the Imperial City. They write Latin; Cicero writes Roman.
6.
You will say that Cicero’s language is undeniably studied, but that
Shakespeare’s is as undeniably natural and spontaneous; and that this is
what is meant, when the Classics are accused of being mere artists of
words. Here we are introduced to a further large question, which gives me
the opportunity of anticipating a misapprehension of my meaning. I
observe, then, that, not only is that lavish richness of style, which I
have noticed in Shakespeare, justifiable on the principles which I have
been laying down, but, what is less easy to receive, even elaborateness in
composition is no mark of trick or artifice in an author. Undoubtedly the
works of the Classics, particularly the Latin, _are_ elaborate; they have
cost a great deal of time, care, and trouble. They have had many rough
copies; I grant it. I grant also that there are writers of name, ancient
and modern, who really are guilty of the absurdity of making sentences, as
the very end of their literary labour. Such was Isocrates; such were some
of the sophists; they were set on words, to the neglect of thoughts or
things; I cannot defend them. If I must give an English instance of this
fault, much as I love and revere the personal character and intellectual
vigour of Dr. Johnson, I cannot deny that his style often outruns the
sense and the occasion, and is wanting in that simplicity which is the
attribute of genius. Still, granting all this, I cannot grant,
notwithstanding, that genius never need take pains,—that genius may not
improve by practice,—that it never incurs failures, and succeeds the
second time,—that it never finishes off at leisure what it has thrown off
in the outline at a stroke.
Take the instance of the painter or the sculptor; he has a conception in
his mind which he wishes to represent in the medium of his art;—the
Madonna and Child, or Innocence, or Fortitude, or some historical
character or event. Do you mean to say he does not study his subject? does
he not make sketches? does he not even call them “studies”? does he not
call his workroom a _studio_? is he not ever designing, rejecting,
adopting, correcting, perfecting? Are not the first attempts of Michael
Angelo and Raffaelle extant, in the case of some of their most celebrated
compositions? Will any one say that the Apollo Belvidere is not a
conception patiently elaborated into its proper perfection? These
departments of taste are, according to the received notions of the world,
the very province of genius, and yet we call them _arts_; they are the
“Fine Arts.” Why may not that be true of literary composition which is
true of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music? Why may not language
be wrought as well as the clay of the modeller? why may not words be
worked up as well as colours? why should not skill in diction be simply
subservient and instrumental to the great prototypal ideas which are the
contemplation of a Plato or a Virgil? Our greatest poet tells us,
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
Now, is it wonderful that that pen of his should sometimes be at fault for
a while,—that it should pause, write, erase, re-write, amend, complete,
before he satisfies himself that his language has done justice to the
conceptions which his mind’s eye contemplated?