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 counterchange, returns 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 re-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 eighteenth 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 spiritualizing and subtilizing 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 or
for the twentieth 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, used loosely, 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?