The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language Part 19

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests.

Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects subst.i.tuted for the pure wors.h.i.+p of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless intervals which separated the whole race from him on whom their eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no t.i.tle to superiority but his favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world.

If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of G.o.d. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life.

If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on n.o.bles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, n.o.bles' by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have pa.s.sed away. Events which shortsighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed.

For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the suffering of her expiring G.o.d.

Thus the Puritans were made up of two different men, the one all self-abas.e.m.e.nt, penitence, grat.i.tude, pa.s.sion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears.

He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millienial year. Like Fleetwood he cried in the bitterness of his soul that G.o.d had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous works of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them.

People who saw nothing of the G.o.dly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other.

One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors, and pleasure its charms.

They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar pa.s.sion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crus.h.i.+ng and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by ah barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circ.u.mstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to p.r.o.nounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body.

Notes.

The most casual examination of Macaulay's style shows us that the words, the sentences, and the paragraphs are all arranged in rows, one on this side, one on that, a column here, another just like it over there, a whole row of columns above this window, and a whole row of columns above that window, just as bricks are built up in geometrical design.

Almost every word contains an ant.i.thesis. The whole const.i.tutes what is called the _balanced structure_.

We see also that Macaulay frequently repeats the same word again and again, and the repet.i.tion gives strength. Indeed, repet.i.tion is necessary to make this balanced structure: there must always be so much likeness and so much unlikeness?and the likeness and unlikeness must just balance.

We have shown the utility of variation: Macaulay shows the force there is in monotony, in repet.i.tion. In one sentence after another through an entire paragraph he repeats the same thing over and over and over.

There is no rising by step after step to something higher in Macaulay: everything is on the dead level; but it is a powerful, heroic level.

The first words repeated and contrasted are press and stage. The sentence containing these words is balanced nicely. In the following sentence we have four short sentences united into one, and the first clause contrasts with the second and the third with the fourth. The sentence beginning "The ostentatious simplicity of their dress" gives us a whole series of subjects, all resting on a single short predicate?"were fair game for the laughers." The next sentence catches up the, word "laughers" and plays upon it.

In the second paragraph we have as subject "those" followed by a whole series of relative clauses beginning with "who," and this series again rests on a very short predicate?"were no vulgar fanatics."

And so on through the entire description, we find series after series, contrast after contrast; now it is a dozen words all in the same construction, now a number of sentences all beginning in the same way and ending in the same way.

The first paragraph takes up the subject of the contrast of those who laughed and those who were laughed at. The second paragraph enlarges upon good points in the objects of the examination. The third paragraph describes their minds, and we perceive that Macaulay has all along been leading into this by his series of contrasts. In the fourth paragraph he brings the two sides into the closest possible relations, so that the contrast reaches its height. The last short paragraph sums up the facts.

This style, though highly artificial, is highly useful when used in moderation. It is unfortunate that Macaulay uses it so constantly.

When he cannot find contrasts he sometimes makes them, and to make them he distorts the truth. Besides, he wearies us by keeping us too monotonously on a high dead level. In time we come to feel that he is making contrasts merely because he has a pa.s.sion for making them, not because they serve any purpose. But for one who wishes to learn this style, no better model can be found in the English language.

DREAM-FUGUE

On the Theme of Sudden Death.*

By Thomas De Quincey.

*"The English Mail-Coach" consists of three sections, "The Glory of Motion," "vision of Sudden Death," and "Dream-Fugue." De Quincey describes riding on the top of a heavy mail-coach. In the dead of night they pa.s.s a young couple in a light gig, and the heavy mail-coach just escapes shattering the light gig and perhaps killing the young occupants. De Quincey develops his sensations in witnessing this "vision of sudden death," and rises step by step to the majestic beauty and poetic pa.s.sion of the dream-fugue.

"Whence the sound Of instruments, that made melodious chime, Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved Their stops and chords, was seen; his volant touch Instinct through all proportions, low and high, Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue."

Paradise Lost, Book XI.

_Tumultuosissimamente_.

Pa.s.sion of sudden death! that once in youth I read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs!?rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting her selpuchral bonds?of woman's ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped, adoring hands?waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust forever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of mighty abysses!?vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a s.h.i.+vering scroll before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Pa.s.sing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaic of dreams? Fragments of music too pa.s.sionate, heard once and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years, have lost no element of horror?

I.

Lo, it is summer?almighty summer! The everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating?she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker.

Both of us are wooing gales of festive happiness within the domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within that pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved! And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers?young women how lovely, young men bow n.o.ble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting toward us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows.

But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter,?all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more; the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forests with their beauty were left without a witness upon the seas. "But where," and I turned to our crew?

"where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and cl.u.s.tering corynibi? Whither have fled the n.o.ble young men that danced with _them?_" Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the masthead, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out, "Sail on the weather beam! Down she comes upon us; in seventy seconds she also will founder,"

II.

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was rocking, and shaking with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a crossbow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. "Are they mad?"

some voice exclaimed from our deck. "Do they woo their ruin?"

But in a moment, as she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock. As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps in malice opened ahead to receive her, the billows were fierce to catch her.

But far away she was borne upon the desert s.p.a.ces of the sea: whilst still by sight I followed her, she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows: still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling?rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying?there for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden forever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I know not, nor how.

Notes.

De Quincey's "Dream-Fugue" is as luxuriant and extravagant a use of metaphor as Macaulay's "Puritans" is of the use of ant.i.thesis and the balanced structure. The whole thing is a metaphor, and every part is a metaphor within a metaphor.

This is much more than mere fine writing. It is a metaphorical representation of the incident he has previously described. In that incident he was particular struck by the actions of the lady. The young man turned his horse out of the path of the coach, but some part of the coach struck one of the wheels of the gig, and as it did so, the lady involuntarily started up, throwing up her arms, and at once sank back as in a faint. De Quincey did not see her face, and hence he speaks in this description of "averted signs?" The "woman bursting her sepulchral bonds" probably refers to a tomb in Westminster Abbey which represents a woman escaping from the door of the tomb, and Death, a skeleton, is just behind her, but too late to catch her "arching foot"

as she flies upward?presumably as a spirit.

So every image corresponds to a reality, either in the facts or in De Quincey's emotion at the sight of them. The novice fails in such writing as this because he becomes enamored of his beautiful images and forgets what he is trying to ill.u.s.trate. The relation between reality and image should be as invariable as mathematics. If such startling images cannot be used with perfect clearness and vivid perception of their usefulness and value, they should not be used at all. De Quincey is so successful because his mind comprehends every detail of the scene, and through the images we see the bottom truth as through a perfect crystal. A clouded diamond is no more ruined by its cloudiness than a clouded metaphor.

As in Ruskin's description of the mountain, we see in this the value of the sounds of words, and how they seem to make music in themselves.

A Word lacking in dignity in the very least would have ruined the whole picture, and so would a word whose rotund sound did not correspond to the loftiness of the pa.s.sage. Perhaps the only word that jars is "English three-decker"?but the language apparently afforded De Quincey no subst.i.tute which would make his meaning clear.

CHAPTER VII.

RESERVE:

Thackeray.

It has been hinted that the rhetorical, impa.s.sioned, and lofty styles are in a measure dangerous. The natural corrective of that danger is artistic _reserve_.

Reserve is a negative quality, and so it has not been emphasized by writers on composition as it ought to be. But if it is negative, it is none the less real and important, and fortunately we have in Thackeray a masterly example of its positive power.

Originally reserve is to be traced to a natural reticence and modesty in the character of the author who employs it. It may be studied, however, and cultivated as a characteristic of style. As an artistic quality it consists in saying exactly what the facts demand, no more, no less?and to say no more especially on those occasions when most people employ superlatives. Macaulay was not characterized by reserve.

He speaks of the Puritans as "the most remarkable body of men the world ever produced." "Most" is a common word in his vocabulary, since it served so well to round out the phrase and the idea. Thackeray, on the other hand, is almost too modest. He is so afraid of saying too much that sometimes he does not say enough, and that may possibly account for the fact that he was never as popular as the overflowing d.i.c.kens.

The lack of reserve made d.i.c.kens "slop over" occasionally, as indelicate critics have put it; and the presence of reserve did more than any other one thing to give Thackeray the reputation for perfect style which all concede to him.