On the Art of Writing Part 12

(3) _Generally, use transitive verbs, that strike their object; and use them in the active voice, eschewing the stationary pa.s.sive, with its little auxiliary its's and was's, and its participles getting into the light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or 'composition.'_

The authors of that capital handbook "The King's English," which I have already recommended to you, add two rules:--

(4) _Prefer the short word to the long._ (5) _Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance._

But these two precepts you would have to modify by so long a string of exceptions that I do not commend them to you. In fact I think them false in theory and likely to be fatal in practice. For, as my last lecture tried to show, you no sooner begin to philosophise things instead of merely telling a tale of them than you must go to the Mediterranean languages: because in these man first learnt to discuss his 'why' and 'how,' and these languages yet guard the vocabulary.

Lastly, we saw how, by experimenting with rhythm, our prose 'broke its birth's invidious bar' and learnt to scale the forbidden heights.

Now by attending to the few plain rules given above you may train yourselves to write sound, straightforward, work-a-day English. But if you would write melodious English, I fear the G.o.ds will require of you what they ought to have given you at birth--something of an ear. Yet the most of us have ears, of sorts; and I believe that, though we can only acquire it by a.s.siduous practice, the most of us can wonderfully improve our talent of the ear.

If you will possess yourselves of a copy of Quintilian or borrow one from any library (Bohn's translation will do) and turn to his 9th book, you will find a hundred ways indicated, ill.u.s.trated, cla.s.sified, in which a writer or speaker can vary his Style, modulate it, lift or depress it, regulate its balance.

All these rules, separately worth studying, if taken together may easily bewilder and dishearten you. Let me choose just two, and try to hearten you by showing that, even with these two only, you can go a long way.

Take the use of right emphasis. What Quintilian says of right emphasis--or the most important thing he says--is this:--

There is sometimes an extraordinary force in some particular word, which, if it be placed in no very conspicuous position in the middle part of a sentence, is likely to escape the attention of the hearer and to be obscured by the words surrounding it; but if it be put at the end of the sentence is urged upon the reader's sense and imprinted on his mind.

That seems obvious enough, for English use as well as for Latin. 'The wages of sin is Death'--anyone can see how much more emphatic that is than 'Death is the wages of sin.' But let your minds work on this matter of emphasis, and discover how emphasis has always its right point somewhere, though it be not at all necessarily at the end of the sentence. Take a sentence in which the strong words actually repeat themselves for emphasis:--

Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.

Our first impulse would be to place the emphasis at the end:--

Babylon, that great city, is fallen, is fallen.

The Latin puts it at the beginning:--

Cecidit, cecidit, Babylonia illa magna.

Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city.

The forty-seven preserved the 'falling close' so exquisite in the Latin; the emphasis, already secured by repet.i.tion, they accentuated by lengthening the pause. I would urge on you that in every sentence there is just a right point of emphasis which you must train your ears to detect. So your writing will acquire not only emphasis, but balance, and you will instinctively avoid such an ill-emphasised sentence as this, which, not naming the author, I will quote for your delectation:--

'Are j.a.panese Aprils always as lovely as this?' asked the man in the light tweed suit of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits round their broad Terai hats.

Explore, next, what (though critics have strangely neglected it) to my mind stands the first, or almost the first, secret of beautiful writing in English, whether in prose or in verse; I mean that inter-play of vowel-sounds in which no language can match us. We have so many vowel sounds indeed, and so few vowels to express them, that the foreigner, mistaking our modesty, complains against G.o.d's plenty. We alone, for example, sound by a natural vowel that n.o.ble _I_, which other nations can only compa.s.s by diphthongs. Let us consider that vowel for a moment or two and mark how it leads off the dance of the Graces, its sisters:--

Arise, s.h.i.+ne; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

Mark how expressively it drops to the solemn vowel 'O,' and anon how expressively it rea.s.serts itself to express rearisen delight:--

Arise, s.h.i.+ne, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising.

Take another pa.s.sage in which the first lift of this _I_ vowel yields to its graver sisters as though the sound sank into the very heart of the sense.

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.'

'And am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Mark the deep O's. 'For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' 'O my son, my son Absalom'--observe the I and O how they interchime, until the O of sorrow tolls the lighter note down:--

O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would G.o.d I had died for thee, O Absolom, my son, my son!

Or take this lyric, by admission one of the loveliest written in this present age, and mark here too how the vowels play and ring and chime and toll.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.[2]

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake-water lapping, with low sounds by the sh.o.r.e; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

I think if you will but open your ears to this beautiful vowel-play which runs through all the best of our prose and poetry, whether you ever learn to master it or not, you will have acquired a new delight, and one various enough to last you though you live to a very old age.

All this of which I am speaking is Art: and Literature being an Art, do you not see how personal a thing it is--how it cannot escape being personal? No two men (unless they talk Jargon) say the same thing in the same way. As is a man's imagination, as is his character, as is the harmony in himself, as is his ear, as is his skill, so and not otherwise he will speak, so and not otherwise than they can respond to that imagination, that character, that order of his intellect, that harmony of his soul, his hearers will hear him. Let me conclude with this great pa.s.sage from Newman which I beg you, having heard it, to ponder:--

If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named, --if the origin of language is by many philosophers considered nothing short of divine--if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated,--if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,--if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and the prophets of the human family--it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study: rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others--be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life--who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence.

[Footnote 1: I append the following specimen translations of the famous pa.s.sage in St Paul's "First Epistle to the Corinthians" xv. 51 sqq. I choose this because (1) it is an important pa.s.sage; (2) it touches a high moment of philosophising; (3) the comparison seems to me to represent with great fairness to Tyndale the extent of the forty-seven's debt to him; (4) it shows that they meant exactly what they said in their Preface; and (5) it ill.u.s.trates, towards the close, their genius for improvement. From the Greek, Wyclif translates:--

Lo, I seie to you pryvyte of holi thingis | and alle we schulen rise agen | but not alle we schuln be chaungid | in a moment in the twynkelynge of an ye, in the last trumpe | for the trumpe schal sowne: and deed men schulen rise agen with out corrupcion, and we schuln be changid | for it bihoveth this corruptible thing to clothe uncorropcion and this deedly thing to putte aweye undeedlynesse. But whanne this deedli thing schal clothe undeedlynesse | thanne schal the word be don that is written | deeth is sopun up in victorie | deeth, where is thi victorie? deeth, where is thi p.r.i.c.ke?

Tyndale:--

Beholde I shewe you a mystery. We shall not all slepe: but we shall all be chaunged | and that in a moment | and in the twinclinge of an eye | at the sounde of the last trompe. For the trompe shall blowe, and the deed shall ryse incorruptible and we shalbe chaunged. For this corruptible must put on incorruptibilite: and this mortall must put on immortalite. When this corruptible hath put on incorruptibilite | and this mortall hath put on immortalite: than shalbe brought to pa.s.s the saying that is written, 'Deeth is consumed in to victory.' Deeth, where is thy stynge? h.e.l.l, where is thy victory?

The Authorised Version:--

Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleepe, but wee shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinckling of an eye, at the last trumpe, (for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed). For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortall must put on immortalitie.

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortall shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pa.s.se the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?]

[Footnote 2: I E O : I O E I O : E OU A 'As musing slow, I hail ('as m_u_sing sl_o_w _I_ ha_i_l) Thy genial loved return.' (Th_y_ g_e_nial l_o_ved ret_u_rn.') COLLINS, "Ode to Evening."]

LECTURE VIII.

ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I)

Wednesday, October 22

You may think it strange, Gentlemen, that of a course of ten lectures which aim to treat English Literature as an affair of practice, I should propose to spend two in discussing our literary lineage: a man's lineage and geniture being reckoned, as a rule, among the things he cannot be reasonably asked to amend. But since of high breeding is begotten (as most of us believe) a disposition to high thoughts, high deeds; since to have it and be modestly conscious of it is to carry within us a faithful monitor persuading us to whatsoever in conduct is gentle, honourable, of good repute, and so silently dissuading us from base thoughts, low ends, ign.o.ble gains; seeing, moreover, that a man will often do more to match his father's virtue than he would to improve himself; I shall endeavour, in this and my next lecture, to scour that spur of ancestry and present it to you as so bright and sharp an incentive that you, who read English Literature and practise writing here in Cambridge, shall not pa.s.s out from her insensible of the dignity of your studies, or without pride or remorse according as you have interpreted in practice the motto, _n.o.blesse oblige_.

'Tis wisdom, and that high, For men to use their fortune reverently Even in youth.

Let me add that, just as a knowledge of his family failings will help one man in economising his estate, or warn another to shun for his health the pleasures of the table, so some knowledge of our lineage in letters may put us, as Englishmen, on the watch for certain national defects (for such we have), on our guard against certain sins which too easily beset us. Nay, this watchfulness may well reach down from matters of great moment to seeming trifles. It is good for us to recognise with Wordsworth that