A recent writer remarks that ‘the practice of letters is miserably
harassing to the mind. To find the right word is so doubtful a success,
and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in a year
of it.’ A cynical warning, indeed; but there is, we think, no danger
of a scarcity of literary effort in the immediate future, whatever
the appreciable results of it may be. There will always be a host of
aspirants for literary honours, and the reason of this may perhaps lie,
to a certain extent, in that very uncertainty which attends the pursuit
of letters as an avocation; the brilliant rewards which have been
earned and the underlying risk of failure, present together the very
conditions of enterprise most powerfully attractive to many minds. For
it must be remembered that there is no fixedness in the canon either
of public opinion or of criticism in literature; that which fails to
win attention to-day, may attract to-morrow; and success, especially
that form of it which results from passing popularity, is in many cases
very much dependent on the proverbial fickleness of the reading public.
It would be difficult, we think, on other grounds than that of this
attractiveness of the chances and prizes of the literary occupation,
to account for the active competition which is so observable in the
profession. That the pure literary faculty, as a stimulus, does not
form a distinguishing characteristic of all aspirants, is plain enough.
No doubt, a great impetus has been given to literary endeavour by the
periodical press, which, by popularising ephemeral literature among the
masses, and by its own requirements of supply, has thus increased its
production. And the same is true of the newspaper press also, with its
opportunities for the contribution of correspondence, which, though
frequently a humble enough opening for talent, has often sufficed to
originate and foster the habit of more ambitious composition.
The canon of literary criticism is, we have said, not an unvarying one.
But undoubtedly there is, for all perfect, and still more for all
enduring work in the world of letters a certain measure and standard
of excellence in the mode of expression, which even the most brilliant
genius cannot afford wholly to disregard, but which is as incapable of
exact definition as it is difficult of attainment. It is much more,
certainly, than ‘the finding of the right word,’ even granting that the
right idea be behind it. A literary composition may be characterised
by the most perfect accuracy of expression, may be faultless in every
detail, and yet be after all a very mediocre piece of work at the best,
though it may be difficult exactly to indicate in what respect it is
defective. We can only in a case of this kind point to acknowledged
merit as possessing what the attempt in question lacks.
It has also to be noted that excellence in literary workmanship
is properly independent both of the nature of its subject and the
scale on which it is executed. An instance of this may be found
in Thackeray’s _Roundabout Papers_. In these apparently careless
sketches, a designedly trivial subject is chosen; the treatment of it
is everything, and the artistic finish is of the highest; the subject
is dwarfed in the handling, and yet the very handling interests the
reader abnormally in the subject. Perhaps, however, this subordination
of the subject to the treatment—as in the inimitable narrative of
the schoolboy purchasing, from his companion, the pencil-case with
the movable calendar atop—is as a whole inferior to that method by
which the incidents of the subject are brought out in relief, as it
were, by the simplicity of the description, so much so, that the art
of that simplicity is concealed. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his _House
of the Seven Gables_ and several of the _Twice-told Tales_ has some
exquisitely pellucid specimens of this complete literary facility.
In such masterpieces we see the results only, without any indication
of the labour involved in its execution. The statue is there in all
its finished loveliness, but the chips of the marble have been swept
away. ‘How clear and flowing your melody is,’ was once remarked
to an eminent musical composer; ‘how easily you must write!’ ‘Ah!’
replied he, ‘you little know with what hard work that ease you speak
of has been purchased.’ When the late Charles Mathews was playing
in Melbourne, fifteen years ago, he received what he considered the
highest compliment of his professional career. A little girl in the
audience was asked by her friends at the conclusion of the performance
how she was pleased, to which she replied: ‘I didn’t care for Mr
Mathews’ acting a bit; he just walked up and down the stage as papa
walks up and down the dining-room at home.’ It is the fact of this
appearance of perfect spontaneity in the highest art, being really
the outcome of the most assiduous care, that renders it so truly
inimitable, and the counterfeit so easy of detection. The ‘round O of
Giotto’ was only a perfect circle, but it needed the master-hand to
execute it with a simple sweep of the crayon. Ruskin tells us in one
of his treatises on Landscape Painting, that in some of the greatest
works of genius, an effect which is almost magical at the proper focal
distance, is conveyed by what appears, to the uninstructed eye and
viewed close at hand, to be a mere dash of loaded colour, but which in
reality could not be added to or diminished by the smallest particle
without detracting from the effect.
If it be true that literary excellence is only to be attained by the
patient bestowal of ‘infinite pains,’ that there is no easy method
of reaching it, it is no less the fact that, as a general rule, the
time is wasted—perhaps worse than wasted—which is devoted by the young
writer to a laborious imitation of the style of any distinguished
author. Such an imitation is generally an unsuccessful one, and results
in a reproduction of the faults and defects of the original without
its graces. The advice Dr Johnson gave to those ‘desirous of attaining
the English style,’ to ‘give their days and nights to the volumes of
Addison,’ must be taken with reserve. Such a style, though eminently
beautiful in itself, would practically nowadays be out of date, even if
faithfully reproduced, while at the same time it is most likely that
the student would overlook that deficiency of force with which the
manner of Addison is fairly chargeable. The best model for style is not
that of any particular or favourite writer, but rather the excellency
of the best writers generally—the highest qualities of the highest
types.
We have hitherto spoken of that perfect mastery of our language in
writing which has been the possession of those famous in the history
of English letters, and it may be inquired if such a high standard
should in all cases be necessarily aimed at, seeing that for many
purposes of everyday life a lesser degree of cultivation might be
found as practically useful. To this it is sufficient to reply that
much positive good must result from an endeavour to follow the
best examples in the practice of any art, and further, that such an
endeavour will be found the surest way by which to avoid all faulty and
careless work, which can under no possible conditions be praiseworthy
or even tolerable. No young writer can afford to write carelessly,
till such time, at all events, as he has become fully versed in his
art, when he will probably find that to write with the effect of
carelessness is beyond his power. At the same time, young writers
should be careful not to adopt for imitation a style of too great
elevation, for by so doing they may find that they have contracted that
worst of all literary diseases—bombast.
In estimating the amount of labour bestowed on the production of
literary work, care must be taken to include the original mental
processes involved in the conception of the ideas, as well as
the subsequent elaboration of them in detail; the higher sort of
composition includes both; and it is evident that when the question
comes to be one of the labour of origination, we find ourselves in
a region where estimate is all but impossible. ‘The workshop of the
imagination’ will reveal no record of its toil. Edgar Allan Poe,
indeed, in his _Philosophy of Composition_ introduces us to what
he would have us believe to be the very beginnings of invention,
endeavouring to portray the very earliest growth of his marvellous
constructive faculty exemplified in his poem of _The Raven_. But his
explanation reads more like an intellectual pastime than a reality,
even if it were beyond question that the central idea of the poem
was original, and not borrowed from an eastern source. In the case
of Auguste Comte, however, we have an instance of the amount of
intellectual travail which may often precede the birth of a great work,
the mental preparation before the committal of the thoughts to paper.
To quote M. Littré’s account of Comte’s method: ‘Here is the way in
which he composed each of the six volumes of the Positive philosophy.
He thought the subject over without writing a word; from the whole
he passed to the secondary groups, from the secondary groups to the
details. Then, when this elaboration, first total, then partial, was
completed, he said that his volume was done.’