Tribulation, Immortality, the Multitude: what remedy of composure do
these words bring for their own great disquiet! Without the remoteness
of the Latinity the thought would come too close and shake too cruelly.
In order to the sane endurance of the intimate trouble of the soul an
aloofness of language is needful. Johnson feared death. Did his noble
English control and postpone the terror? Did it keep the fear at some
courteous, deferent distance from the centre of that human heart, in the
very act of the leap and lapse of mortality? Doubtless there is in
language such an educative power. Speech is a school. Every language is
a persuasion, an induced habit, an instrument which receives the note
indeed but gives the tone. Every language imposes a quality, teaches a
temper, proposes a way, bestows a tradition: this is the tone--the
voice--of the instrument. Every language, by counter-change, replies to
the writer's touch or breath his own intention, articulate: this is his
note. Much has always been said, many things to the purpose have been
thought, of the power and the responsibility of the note. Of the
legislation and influence of the tone I have been led to think by
comparing the tranquillity of Johnson and the composure of Canning with
the stimulated and close emotion, the interior trouble, of those writers
who have entered as disciples in the school of the more Teutonic English.
For if every language be a school, more significantly and more
educatively is a part of a language a school to him who chooses that
part. Few languages offer the choice. The fact that a choice is made
implies the results and fruits of a decision. The French author is
without these. They are of all the heritages of the English writer the
most important. He receives a language of dual derivation. He may
submit himself to either University, whither he will take his impulse and
his character, where he will leave their influence, and whence he will
accept their education. The Frenchman has certainly a style to develop
within definite limits; but he does not subject himself to suggestions
tending mainly hitherwards or thitherwards, to currents of various race
within one literature. Such a choice of subjection is the singular
opportunity of the Englishman. I do not mean to ignore the necessary
mingling. Happily that mingling has been done once for all for us all.
Nay, one of the most charming things that a master of English can achieve
is the repayment of the united teaching by linking their results so
exquisitely in his own practice, that words of the two schools are made
to meet each other with a surprise and delight that shall prove them at
once gayer strangers, and sweeter companions, than the world knew they
were. Nevertheless there remains the liberty of choice as to which
school of words shall have the place of honour in the great and sensitive
moments of an author's style: which school shall be used for
conspicuousness, and which for multitudinous service. And the choice
being open, the perturbation of the pulses and impulses of so many hearts
quickened in thought and feeling in this day suggests to me a deliberate
return to the recollectedness of the more tranquil language. 'Doubtless
there is a place of peace.'
A place of peace, not of indifference. It is impossible not to charge
some of the moralists of the last century with an indifference into which
they educated their platitudes and into which their platitudes educated
them. Addison thus gave and took, until he was almost incapable of
coming within arm's-length of a real or spiritual emotion. There is no
knowing to what distance the removal of the 'appropriate sentiment' from
the central soul might have attained but for the change and renewal in
language, which came when it was needed. Addison had assuredly removed
eternity far from the apprehension of the soul when his Cato hailed the
'pleasing hope,' the 'fond desire;' and the touch of war was distant from
him who conceived his 'repulsed battalions' and his 'doubtful battle.'
What came afterwards, when simplicity and nearness were restored once
more, was doubtless journeyman's work at times. Men were too eager to go
into the workshop of language. There were unreasonable raptures over the
mere making of common words. 'A hand-shoe! a finger-hat! a foreword!
Beautiful!' they cried; and for the love of German the youngest daughter
of Chrysale herself might have consented to be kissed by a grammarian. It
seemed to be forgotten that a language with all its construction visible
is a language little fitted for the more advanced mental processes; that
its images are material; and that, on the other hand, a certain
spiritualising and subtilising effect of alien derivations is a privilege
and an advantage incalculable--that to possess that half of the language
within which Latin heredities lurk and Romanesque allusions are at play
is to possess the state and security of a dead tongue, without the death.
But now I spoke of words encountering as gay strangers, various in
origin, divided in race, within a master's phrase. The most beautiful
and the most sudden of such meetings are of course in Shakespeare.
'Superfluous kings,' 'A lass unparalleled,' 'Multitudinous seas:' we
needed not to wait for the eighteenth century or for the nineteenth to
learn the splendour of such encounters, of such differences, of such
nuptial unlikeness and union. But it is well that we should learn them
afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic
reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a
reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to quell
the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and the
pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement
expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse might render
us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with a touch a
modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning for his son.
But it should not be attempted without a distinct intention of submission
on the part of the writer. The couplet transgressed against, trespassed
upon, shaken off, is like a law outstripped, defied--to the dignity
neither of the rebel nor of the rule. To Letters do we look now for the
guidance and direction which the very closeness of the emotion taking us
by the heart makes necessary. Shall not the Thing more and more, as we
compose ourselves to literature, assume the honour, the hesitation, the
leisure, the reconciliation of the Word?