THE difference between a precious stone and a common stone is not an
essential difference—not a difference of substance, but of arrangement
of the particles—the crystallization. In substance the charcoal and the
diamond are one, but in form and effect how widely they differ. The
pearl contains nothing that is not found in the coarsest oyster-shell.
Two men have the same thoughts; they use about the same words in
expressing them; yet with one the product is real literature, with the
other it is a platitude.
The difference is all in the presentation; a finer and more compendious
process has gone on in the one case than in the other. The elements
are better fused and knitted together; they are in some way heightened
and intensified. Is not here a clew to what we mean by style? Style
transforms common quartz into an Egyptian pebble. We are apt to think
of style as something external, that can be put on, something in and
of itself. But it is not; it is in the inmost texture of the substance
itself. Polish, choice words, faultless rhetoric, are only the
accidents of style. Indeed, perfect workmanship is one thing; style,
as the great writers have it, is quite another. It may, and often
does, go with faulty workmanship. It is the use of words in a fresh
and vital way, so as to give us a vivid sense of a new spiritual force
and personality. In the best work the style is found and hidden in the
matter.
I heard a reader observe, after finishing one of Robert Louis
Stevenson’s books, “How well it is written!” I thought it a doubtful
compliment. It should have been so well written that the reader would
not have been conscious of the writing at all. If we could only get the
writing, the craft, out of our stories and essays and poems, and make
the reader feel he was face to face with the real thing! The complete
identification of the style with the thought; the complete absorption
of the man with his matter, so that the reader shall say, “How good,
how real, how true!” that is the great success. Seek ye the kingdom of
truth first, and all things shall be added. I think we do feel, with
regard to some of Stevenson’s books, like “An Inland Voyage,” “Travels
with a Donkey,” etc., how well they are written. Certainly one would
not have the literary skill any less, but would have one’s attention
kept from it by the richness of the matter. Hence I think a British
critic hits the mark when he says Stevenson lacks homeliness.
Dr. Holmes wrote fine and eloquent poems, yet I think one does not feel
that he is essentially a poet. His work has not the inevitableness of
nature; it is a skilful literary feat; we admire it, but seldom return
to it. His poetry is a stream in an artificial channel; his natural
channel is his prose; here we get his freest and most spontaneous
activity.
One fault that I find with our younger and more promising school of
novelists is that their aim is too literary; we feel that they are
striving mainly for artistic effects. Do we feel this at all in Scott,
Dickens, Hawthorne, or Tolstoi? These men are not thinking about art
but about life; how to reproduce life. In essayists like Pater, Wilde,
Lang, the same thing occurs; we are constantly aware of the literary
artist; they are not in love with life, reality, so much as they are
with words, style, literary effects. Their seriousness is mainly an
artistic seriousness. It is not so much that they have something to
say, as that they are filled with a desire to say something. Nearly all
our magazine poets seem filled with the same desire; what labor, what
art and technique; but what a dearth of feeling and spontaneity! I read
a few lines or stanzas and then stop. I see it is only deft handicraft,
and that the heart and soul are not in it. One day my boy killed what
an old hunter told him was a mock duck. It looked like a duck, it acted
like a duck, it quacked like a duck, but when it came upon the table—it
mocked us. These mock poems of the magazines remind me of it.
Is it not unfair to take any book, certainly any great piece of
literature, and deliberately sit down to pass judgment upon it? Great
books are not addressed to the critical judgment, but to the life, the
soul. They need to slide into one’s life earnestly, and find him with
his guard down, his doors open, his attitude disinterested. The reader
is to give himself to them, as they give themselves to him; there must
be self-sacrifice. We find the great books when we are young, eager,
receptive. After we grow hard and critical we find few great books. A
recent French critic says: “It seems to me works of art are not made to
be judged, but to be loved, to please, to dissipate the cares of real
life. It is precisely by wishing to judge them that one loses sight of
their true significance.”
“How can a man learn to know himself?” inquires Goethe. “Never by
reflection, only by action.” Is not this a half-truth? One can only
learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by
thinking. He can only learn whether or not he has power to command, to
lead, to be an orator or legislator, by actual trial. Has he courage,
self-control, self-denial, fortitude, etc.? In life alone can he find
out. Action tests his moral virtues, reflection his intellectual. If he
would define himself to himself he must think. “We are weak in action,”
says Renan, “by our best qualities; we are strong in action by will and
a certain one-sidedness.” “The moment Byron reflects,” says Goethe, “he
is a child.” Byron had no self-knowledge. We have all known people who
were ready and sure in action who did not know themselves at all. Your
weakness or strength as a person comes out in action; your weakness or
strength as an intellectual force comes out in reflection.