The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 29

With regard to works in all the branches of the fine arts, I may remark that the pleasure arising from novelty must of course be allowed its due place and weight. This pleasure consists in the ident.i.ty of two opposite elements, that is to say--sameness and variety. If in the midst of the variety there be not some fixed object for the attention, the unceasing succession of the variety will prevent the mind from observing the difference of the individual objects; and the only thing remaining will be the succession, which will then produce precisely the same effect as sameness. This we experience when we let the trees or hedges pa.s.s before the fixed eye during a rapid movement in a carriage, or on the other hand, when we suffer a file of soldiers or ranks of men in procession to go on before us without resting the eye on any one in particular. In order to derive pleasure from the occupation of the mind, the principle of unity must always be present, so that in the midst of the multeity the centripetal force be never suspended, nor the sense be fatigued by the predominance of the centrifugal force. This unity in multeity I have elsewhere stated as the principle of beauty. It is equally the source of pleasure in variety, and in fact a higher term including both. What is the seclusive or distinguis.h.i.+ng term between them?

Remember that there is a difference between form as proceeding, and shape as superinduced;--the latter is either the death or the imprisonment of the thing;--the former is its self-witnessing and self-effected sphere of agency. Art would or should be the abridgment of nature. Now the fulness of nature is without character, as water is purest when without taste, smell, or colour; but this is the highest, the apex only,--it is not the whole. The object of art is to give the whole 'ad hominem'; hence each step of nature hath its ideal, and hence the possibility of a climax up to the perfect form of a harmonized chaos.

To the idea of life victory or strife is necessary; as virtue consists not simply in the absence of vices, but in the overcoming of them. So it is in beauty. The sight of what is subordinated and conquered heightens the strength and the pleasure; and this should be exhibited by the artist either inclusively in his figure, or else out of it and beside it to act by way of supplement and contrast. And with a view to this, remark the seeming ident.i.ty of body and mind in infants, and thence the loveliness of the former; the commencing separation in boyhood, and the struggle of equilibrium in youth: thence onward the body is first simply indifferent; then demanding the translucency of the mind not to be worse than indifferent; and finally all that presents the body as body becoming almost of an excremental nature.

LECTURE XIV.

ON STYLE.

I have, I believe, formerly observed with regard to the character of the governments of the East, that their tendency was despotic, that is, towards unity; whilst that of the Greek governments, on the other hand, leaned to the manifold and the popular, the unity in them being purely ideal, namely of all as an identification of the whole. In the northern or Gothic nations the aim and purpose of the government were the preservation of the rights and interests of the individual in conjunction with those of the whole. The individual interest was sacred.

In the character and tendency of the Greek and Gothic languages there is precisely the same relative difference. In Greek the sentences are long, and the structure architectural, so that each part or clause is insignificant when compared with the whole. The result is every thing, the steps and processes nothing. But in the Gothic and, generally, in what we call the modern, languages, the structure is short, simple, and complete in each part, and the connexion of the parts with the sum total of the discourse is maintained by the sequency of the logic, or the community of feelings excited between the writer and his readers. As an instance equally delightful and complete, of what may be called the Gothic structure as contra-distinguished from that of the Greeks, let me cite a part of our famous Chaucer's character of a parish priest as he should be. Can it ever be quoted too often?

A good man ther was of religioun That was a poure Parsone of a toun, But riche he was of holy thought and werk; He was also a lerned man, a clerk, That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche; His parishens [1] devoutly wolde he teche; Benigne he was, and wonder [2] diligent, And in adversite ful patient, And swiche [3] he was ypreved [4] often sithes [5]; Ful loth were him to cursen for his t.i.thes, But rather wolde he yeven [6] out of doute Unto his poure parishens aboute Of his offring, and eke of his substance; He coude in litel thing have suffisance: Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder, But he ne [7] left nought for no rain ne [8] thonder, In sikenesse and in mischief to visite The ferrest [9] in his parish moche and lite [10]

Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf: This n.o.ble ensample to his shepe he yaf, [11]

That first he wrought, and afterward he taught, Out of the gospel he the wordes caught, And this figure he added yet thereto, That if gold ruste, what should iren do.

He sette not his benefice to hire, And lette [12] his shepe accombred [13] in the mire, And ran unto London unto Seint Poules, To seken him a chanterie for soules, Or with a brotherhede to be withold, But dwelt at home, and kepte wel his fold, So that the wolf ne made it not miscarie: He was a shepherd and no mercenarie; And though he holy were and vertuous, He was to sinful men not dispitous, [14]

Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne, [15]

But in his teching discrete and benigne, To drawen folk to heven with fairenesse, By good ensample was his besinesse; But it were any persone obstinat, What so he were of high or low estat, Him wolde he snibben [16] sharply for the nones: A better preest I trowe that no wher non is; He waited after no pompe ne reverence, He maked him no spiced conscience, But Cristes love and his apostles' twelve He taught, but first he folwed it himselve. [17]

[Footnote 1: Paris.h.i.+oners.] [Footnote 2: Wondrous.]

[Footnote 3: Such.] [Footnote 4: Proved.]

[Footnote 5: Times.] [Footnote 6: Give or have given.]

[Footnote 7: Not.] [Footnote 8: Nor.]

[Footnote 9: Farthest.] [Footnote 10: Great and small.]

[Footnote 11: Gave.] [Footnote 12: Left.]

[Footnote 13: Enc.u.mbered.] [Footnote 14: Despiteous.]

[Footnote 15: Proud.] [Footnote 16: Reprove.]

[Footnote: Prologue to Canterbury Tales.]

Such change as really took place in the style of our literature after Chaucer's time is with difficulty perceptible, on account of the dearth of writers, during the civil wars of the 15th century. But the transition was not very great; and accordingly we find in Latimer and our other venerable authors about the time of Edward VI. as in Luther, the general characteristics of the earliest manner;--that is, every part popular, and the discourse addressed to all degrees of intellect;--the sentences short, the tone vehement, and the connexion of the whole produced by honesty and singleness of purpose, intensity of pa.s.sion, and pervading importance of the subject.

Another and a very different species of style is that which was derived from, and founded on, the admiration and cultivation of the cla.s.sical writers, and which was more exclusively addressed to the learned cla.s.s in society. I have previously mentioned Boccaccio as the original Italian introducer of this manner, and the great models of it in English are Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and Taylor, although it may be traced in many other authors of that age. In all these the language is dignified but plain, genuine English, although elevated and brightened by superiority of intellect in the writer. Individual words themselves are always used by them in their precise meaning, without either affectation or slipslop. The letters and state papers of Sir Francis Walsingham are remarkable for excellence in style of this description. In Jeremy Taylor the sentences are often extremely long, and yet are generally so perspicuous in consequence of their logical structure, that they require no reperusal to be understood; and it is for the most part the same in Milton and Hooker.

Take the following sentence as a specimen of the sort of style to which I have been alluding:--

Concerning Faith, the princ.i.p.al object whereof is that eternal verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in Christ; concerning Hope, the highest object whereof is that everlasting goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead; concerning Charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible beauty which s.h.i.+neth in the countenance of Christ, the Son of the living G.o.d: concerning these virtues, the first of which beginning here with a weak apprehension of things not seen, endeth with the intuitive vision of G.o.d in the world to come; the second beginning here with a trembling expectation of things far removed, and as yet but only heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition of that which no tongue can express; the third beginning here with a weak inclination of heart towards him unto whom we are not able to approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery whereof is higher than the reach of the thoughts of men; concerning that Faith, Hope, and Charity, without which there can be no salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in that Law which G.o.d himself hath from Heaven revealed? There is not in the world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from the mouth of the eternal G.o.d.

Eccles. 'Pol.' I. s. 11.

The unity in these writers is produced by the unity of the subject, and the perpetual growth and evolution of the thoughts, one generating, and explaining, and justifying, the place of another, not, as it is in Seneca, where the thoughts, striking as they are, are merely strung together like beads, without any causation or progression. The words are selected because they are the most appropriate, regard being had to the dignity of the total impression, and no merely big phrases are used where plain ones would have sufficed, even in the most learned of their works.

There is some truth in a remark, which I believe was made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation, and that the next greatest is he who corrupts it. The true cla.s.sical style of Hooker and his fellows was easily open to corruption; and Sir Thomas Brown it was, who, though a writer of great genius, first effectually injured the literary taste of the nation by his introduction of learned words, merely because they were learned. It would be difficult to describe Brown adequately; exuberant in conception and conceit, dignified, hyperlatinistic, a quiet and sublime enthusiast; yet a fantast, a humourist, a brain with a twist; egotistic like Montaigne, yet with a feeling heart and an active curiosity, which, however, too often degenerates into a hunting after oddities. In his 'Hydriotaphia' and, indeed, almost all his works the entireness of his mental action is very observable; he metamorphoses every thing, be it what it may, into the subject under consideration. But Sir Thomas Brown with all his faults had a genuine idiom; and it is the existence of an individual idiom in each, that makes the princ.i.p.al writers before the Restoration the great patterns or integers of English style. In them the precise intended meaning of a word can never be mistaken; whereas in the later writers, as especially in Pope, the use of words is for the most part purely arbitrary, so that the context will rarely show the true specific sense, but only that something of the sort is designed. A perusal of the authorities cited by Johnson in his dictionary under any leading word, will give you a lively sense of this declension in etymological truth of expression in the writers after the Restoration, or perhaps, strictly, after the middle of the reign of Charles II.

The general characteristic of the style of our literature down to the period which I have just mentioned, was gravity, and in Milton and some other writers of his day there are perceptible traces of the sternness of republicanism. Soon after the Restoration a material change took place, and the cause of royalism was graced, sometimes disgraced, by every shade of lightness of manner. A free and easy style was considered as a test of loyalty, or at all events, as a badge of the cavalier party; you may detect it occasionally even in Barrow, who is, however, in general remarkable for dignity and logical sequency of expression; but in L'Estrange, Collyer, and the writers of that cla.s.s, this easy manner was carried out to the utmost extreme of slang and ribaldry. Yet still the works, even of these last authors, have considerable merit in one point of view; their language is level to the understandings of all men; it is an actual transcript of the colloquialism of the day, and is accordingly full of life and reality. Roger North's life of his brother the Lord Keeper, is the most valuable specimen of this cla.s.s of our literature; it is delightful, and much beyond any other of the writings of his contemporaries.

From the common opinion that the English style attained its greatest perfection in and about Queen Ann's reign I altogether dissent; not only because it is in one species alone in which it can be pretended that the writers of that age excelled their predecessors, but also because the specimens themselves are not equal, upon sound principles of judgment, to much that had been produced before. The cla.s.sical structure of Hooker--the impetuous, thought-agglomerating, flood of Taylor--to these there is no pretence of a parallel; and for mere ease and grace, is Cowley inferior to Addison, being as he is so much more thoughtful and full of fancy? Cowley, with the omission of a quaintness here and there, is probably the best model of style for modern imitation in general.

Taylor's periods have been frequently attempted by his admirers; you may, perhaps, just catch the turn of a simile or single image, but to write in the real manner of Jeremy Taylor would require as mighty a mind as his. Many parts of Algernon Sidney's treatises afford excellent exemplars of a good modern practical style; and Dryden in his prose works, is a still better model, if you add a stricter and purer grammar.

It is, indeed, worthy of remark that all our great poets have been good prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton; and this probably arose from their just sense of metre. For a true poet will never confound verse and prose; whereas it is almost characteristic of indifferent prose writers that they should be constantly slipping into sc.r.a.ps of metre. Swift's style is, in its line, perfect; the manner is a complete expression of the matter, the terms appropriate, and the artifice concealed. It is simplicity in the true sense of the word.

After the Revolution, the spirit of the nation became much more commercial, than it had been before; a learned body, or clerisy, as such, gradually disappeared, and literature in general began to be addressed to the common miscellaneous public. That public had become accustomed to, and required, a strong stimulus; and to meet the requisitions of the public taste, a style was produced which by combining triteness of thought with singularity and excess of manner of expression, was calculated at once to soothe ignorance and to flatter vanity. The thought was carefully kept down to the immediate apprehension of the commonest understanding, and the dress was as anxiously arranged for the purpose of making the thought appear something very profound. The essence of this style consisted in a mock ant.i.thesis, that is, an opposition of mere sounds, in a rage for personification, the abstract made animate, far-fetched metaphors, strange phrases, metrical sc.r.a.ps, in every thing, in short, but genuine prose. Style is, of course, nothing else but the art of conveying the meaning appropriately and with perspicuity, whatever that meaning may be, and one criterion of style is that it shall not be translateable without injury to the meaning. Johnson's style has pleased many from the very fault of being perpetually translateable; he creates an impression of cleverness by never saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen of this manner is in Junius, because his ant.i.thesis is less merely verbal than Johnson's. Gibbon's manner is the worst of all; it has every fault of which this peculiar style is capable. Tacitus is an example of it in Latin; in coming from Cicero you feel the 'falsetto' immediately.

In order to form a good style, the primary rule and condition is, not to attempt to express ourselves in language before we thoroughly know our own meaning;--when a man perfectly understands himself, appropriate diction will generally be at his command either in writing or speaking.

In such cases the thoughts and the words are a.s.sociated. In the next place preciseness in the use of terms is required, and the test is whether you can translate the phrase adequately into simpler terms, regard being had to the feeling of the whole pa.s.sage. Try this upon Shakspeare, or Milton, and see if you can subst.i.tute other simpler words in any given pa.s.sage without a violation of the meaning or tone. The source of bad writing is the desire to be something more than a man of sense,--the straining to be thought a genius; and it is just the same in speech making. If men would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be! Another rule is to avoid converting mere abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the dependent case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of the watch.' The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined to persons, or at least to animated subjects. And I cannot conclude this Lecture without insisting on the importance of accuracy of style as being near akin to veracity and truthful habits of mind; he who thinks loosely will write loosely, and, perhaps, there is some moral inconvenience in the common forms of our grammars which give children so many obscure terms for material distinctions. Let me also exhort you to careful examination of what you read, if it be worth any perusal at all; such examination will be a safeguard from fanaticism, the universal origin of which is in the contemplation of phenomena without investigation into their causes.

NOTES ON SIR THOMAS BROWN'S 'RELIGIO MEDICI'. 1802. [1]

Strong feeling and an active intellect conjoined, lead almost necessarily, in the first stage of philosophising, to Spinosism. Sir T.

Brown was a Spinosist without knowing it.

If I have not quite all the faith that the author of the 'Religio Medici'

possessed, I have all the inclination to it; it gives me pleasure to believe.

The postscript at the very end of the book is well worth reading. Sir K.

Digby's observations, however, are those of a pedant in his own system and opinion. He ought to have considered the R. M. in a dramatic, and not in a metaphysical, view, as a sweet exhibition of character and pa.s.sion, and not as an expression, or investigation, of positive truth.

The R. M. is a fine portrait of a handsome man in his best clothes; it is much of what he was at all times, a good deal of what he was only in his best moments. I have never read a book in which I felt greater similarity to my own make of mind--active in inquiry, and yet with an appet.i.te to believe--in short an affectionate visionary! But then I should tell a different tale of my own heart; for I would not only endeavour to tell the truth, (which I doubt not Sir T. B. has done), but likewise to tell the whole truth, which most a.s.suredly he has not done.

However, it is a most delicious book. His own character was a fine mixture of humourist, genius, and pedant. A library was a living world to him, and every book a man, absolute flesh and blood! and the gravity with which he records contradictory opinions is exquisite.

(Part 1. sect. 9.) Now contrarily, I bless myself, and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his disciples, &c.

So say I.

(S. 15.) I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature; which without further travel I can do in the cosmography of myself; we carry with us the wonders we seek without us. There is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns in a 'compendium' what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

This is the true characteristic of genius; our destiny and instinct is to unriddle the world, and he is the man of genius who feels this instinct fresh and strong in his nature; who perceiving the riddle and the mystery of all things even the commonest, needs no strange and out-of-the-way tales or images to stimulate him into wonder and a deep interest.

(S. 16, 17.) All this is very fine philosophy, and the best and most ingenious defence of revelation. Moreover, I do hold and believe that a toad is a comely animal; but nevertheless a toad is called ugly by almost all men, and it is the business of a philosopher to explain the reason of this.

S. 19. This is exceedingly striking. Had Sir T. B. lived now-a-days, he would probably have been a very ingenious and bold infidel in his real opinions, though the kindness of his nature would have kept him aloof from vulgar prating obtrusive infidelity.

S. 35. An excellent burlesque on parts of the Schoolmen, though I believe an unintentional one.

S. 36. Truly sublime--and in Sir T. B.'s very best manner.