VIII 
 
 LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANS- 
 FORMATION 
 
 50. IN considering style, we are dealing with form 
 and not subject-matter. For that reason, we may ignore 
 literary invention, which is the development of ideas more 
 or less original, and give attention to such writing as has 
 its chief use and function in the organization and reshaping 
 of material to be found in books and other like sources. 
 In the form in which it is found, such material may be 
 not at all literary. It may be hardly more than a body 
 of facts that need interpretation. The first effort, then, 
 should be to find in the facts some ground for a live personal 
 interest. Any writing that is to have a good literary style 
 must be written from the standpoint of a wish to make a 
 personal interpretation of the subject. Literature is dis- 
 tinguished from writings not literary by the presence of 
 that personal attitude toward the subject on the part of 
 the writer. In one sense, a presentation of facts simply 
 as facts can have no style. The things told by a writer 
 who wishes to give his writing style must be told as 
 felt, viewed, believed, cared for by the author as having 
 a peculiar significance for him, a significance that he is 
 concerned to bring home to his readers. 
 
 The difficulty of taking material from the writings and 
 reports of others and so transforming it that it becomes 
 our own is a very serious one, but it is one that almost 
 everyone has to reckon with. Few will have call to 
 engage in the finer processes of literary creation, but skill 
 
 70 
 
LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANSFORMATION 71 
 
 in this lower form of literary craftsmanship is expected 
 of almost everyone. Let it be borne in mind, then, that 
 the first step in the process is that of making the material 
 that one must consult in books thoroughly one's own, and 
 that the next process is that of establishing in one's own 
 mind an individual understanding, an individual conclu- 
 sion and belief about the subject. For instance, was Napo- 
 leon a great man or a mean man? How does what you 
 have been able to learn about him affect you, and why 
 should someone else feel in that way about him? Let 
 the writer ask himself such questions, and soon the way 
 before him will be clear. Otherwise he may get into the 
 encyclopedia manner or the scientific manner or the chron- 
 icle manner, and then no one will care to read what he 
 has written. 
 
 51. It is one of the great virtues of our college debating 
 societies that they give students vigorous exercise in the 
 business of supporting a point of view. It is sometimes 
 rather remarkable the amount of fairly substantial reasons 
 a comparatively commonplace young man will discover in 
 defense of the proposition that an income tax is or is not 
 a very valuable bit of government machinery. There is a 
 quite simple reason for that resourcefulness. By the terms 
 of the proposition stated as an affirmation and by his ac- 
 ceptance or rejection of that affirmation, the young man 
 has put himself into definite relations to it. That clarifies 
 his thinking and gives his ideas a road to travel. 
 
 It is always a writer's first business to find what is, 
 for him, the strongest interest in a subject. He should 
 ask what in it arouses his sympathies or antipathies, and 
 why. Then he should think not so much of writing as 
 of making others have his interest and his feeling. Achiev- 
 ing that interest for himself and communicating it is, after 
 all, the whole secret of style, when one has freed himself 
 
THE MECHANISM 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 BY 
 
 LEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH 
 
 Professor of English in Drake University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 82ND STREET 
 
 LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY 
 HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 1916 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
Copyright, igi6 
 
 BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 AMERICAN BRANCH 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS book is the result of a conviction that telling students 
 how to write, lecturing at them or to them, giving them 
 rules and principles and counselings will not make writers. 
 Nothing but an intimate acquaintance with the work of 
 those who have in some high degree mastered the problem 
 of literary expression will materially help them to a like 
 command of the resources of style. The problem is one 
 of method. How shall a student be induced to focus his 
 attention long enough and minutely enough upon the 
 intricacies of written speech? How can he be led to turn 
 sentences over and over until the rationale of their form and 
 ordering settles into his consciousness as an almost instinc- 
 tive understanding? 
 
 There may be various satisfactory answers to these ques- 
 tions, but the answer of this volume is embodied primarily 
 in Chapter IX and in the reference of the questions there to 
 specific portions of the texts. This direct application of 
 the questions will be found at the bottom of each page of the 
 extracts. No doubt to many this method will seem some- 
 what mechanical. It has been developed as a system of pre- 
 cision, a system for achieving a degree of scholarly certitude 
 in a subject in which such certitude is unusually difficult. 
 By reason of that difficulty, ease and assurance in reaching 
 this end cannot be expected through a method that is not 
 fairly rigid. It will then inevitably be more or less me- 
 chanical. If the individual instructor feels that he has 
 other and more adequate means of arriving at this result 
 there is no reason for his not employing his own system. 
 
 iii 
 
 345109 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 The selections provided for the study of style are, in the 
 writer's judgment, abundantly various. It is assumed that 
 no one will wish to use them all. Presumably the instructor 
 will make choice of such a body of them as will familiarize 
 the student with a number of styles rather sharply con- 
 trasted. Dealt with in the detailed fashion for which pro- 
 vision is made, and, for that reason, so dealt with only in 
 part, they still give opportunity for some considerable range 
 of selection on the part of the teacher. It will be observed 
 that the method of questioning employed in the book permits 
 of a great deal of clerical economy in use. Should it seem 
 advisable to study anything not found in the book, the work 
 of putting the numbers and letters of the questions into 
 the students' hands need not be serious. Further, by reason 
 of the conciseness of the method, the work provided in the 
 book will be found to be more extensive than may at first 
 appear. 
 
 It will perhaps be worth noting that this way of studying 
 the work of the writers represented in the selections has an 
 organizing tendency. The repetition of the same question 
 is a piling up of material for an increasingly obvious process 
 of inductive reasoning. The conclusion reached is easily 
 verified, as far as the writing presented is sufficient, by a 
 reconsideration of its grounds, the letter itself, or number, 
 furnishing an easy index. Further, it will serve as an index, 
 not to the one selection alone, but to the other selections 
 for comparison. Again, the instructor will find it a simple 
 matter to confine the study of any selection to such phases 
 of the work as he may choose. He need only direct students 
 to ignore all questions, except, for instance, f, m, and s, 
 or such others as he may elect. 
 
 It is believed that while the selections are stylistically 
 various, they are various also in their interest, both his- 
 torically and humanly. They have not been chosen, how- 
 
PREFACE v 
 
 ever, for the purpose of illustrating the growth of English 
 style. Largely they are the work of writers of our own 
 day, and much of the material is copyright. For the possi- 
 bility of including such fresh work, the author is glad to 
 acknowledge his obligations to the generosity of the publish- 
 ers who are specifically named in connection with the writ- 
 ings which, by their pleasant permission, are reprinted here. 
 
 LEWIS WORTH INGTON SMITH. 
 DRAKE UNIVERSITY, 
 Feb. 17, 1916. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE "i 
 
 PART I 
 COMMENT 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. SKILL AS NATURAL OR ACQUIRED ... 3 
 II. THE QUALITIES OF STYLE n 
 
 III. SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS ... 23 
 
 IV. WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNOTA- 
 
 TIONS ... . -35 
 
 V. THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 47 
 
 VI. THE LIVING SPIRIT AND THE DRESS ... 56 
 VII. QUESTIONS OF USAGE 61 
 
 VIII. LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANSFORMA- 
 TION 70 
 
 IX. KNOWING How AND GETTING THE TOUCH . 77 
 
 PART TWO 
 TEXTS 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. The Story of Ar gains and Par- 
 thenia 85 
 
 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Levana and Our Lady of 
 Sorrows 92 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. The Opera . . . . . 101 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. John Bunyan . . 108 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. The Scarlet Letter . . 125 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Gifts 138 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. The Howadji in Syria . 143 
 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. The English Admirals . 156 
 
 AUGUSTINE BIRRELL. Truth-Hunting .... 171 
 
 H. G. WELLS. Adolescence 184 
 
 GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. Tolstoy and the Cult of 
 
 Simplicity 201 
 
 GERALD STANLEY LEE. Is it Wrong for Good People 
 
 to be Efficient? 213 
 
 EMILE VERHAEREN. The Little Villages of Flanders 221 
 
 HENRY JAMES. The Refugees in England . . . 233 
 
 THE NEW YORK EVENING POST. The Great Triumph 246 
 
 THE NEW YORK SUN. John Galsworthy . . . 250 
 
 THE NEW REPUBLIC. The Undergraduate . . . 262 
 
 GRANT SHOWERMAN. The Great Vocation . . . 267 
 JAMES HUNEKER. Was Leschetizky a Greater 
 
 Teacher than Liszt? 276 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 285 
 
 INDEX 287 
 
PART I 
 COMMENT 
 
SKILL AS NATURAL OR ACQUIRED 
 
 i. LEARNING to write is first learning that you must 
 learn. The art of literature is the greatest of the arts, the 
 most complex, the most sophisticated, the most highly intel- 
 lectual, and the most exacting, but those who have made 
 little or no progress in it seem to be very generally of the 
 opinion that it is not a thing to be learned as one learns 
 to paint or to play the piano. In fact, absurd as it seems, 
 this misunderstanding is very common among first-year stu- 
 dents in college. For the instructor, a prime difficulty in 
 dealing with such students is that of bringing them to realize 
 that writing is not a spontaneous and natural activity that 
 happens to succeed better in some cases than in others. 
 Youth has a great deal of faith in its ability to crowd 
 things through by its own sheer energy in defiance of the 
 rules. From its point of view, they are rules, rather than 
 laws, a distinction of some importance. Laws, in the sense 
 in which the term would be used either in literary criticism 
 or in physics, are inherent in the nature of things. Rules 
 are man-imposed. Disregard of rules, even those put on 
 the statute books for the regulation of conduct, may some- 
 times be evaded without penalty. With laws, in the larger 
 sense, that is not true. They may be but imperfectly 
 known. Those who assume to speak with authority in 
 regard to them may state them inadequately or incorrectly. 
 In the case of some individual writer or of a worker in 
 some other of the creative arts, they may seem not to be 
 operative, but a sufficient examination will always reveal 
 
 3 
 
4 . J-ii:E -MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 that appearance as a fallacy. Laws are not to be thought 
 of as commands or prohibitions. They are not restraints, 
 or limitations. Put into words, they are, instead, merely 
 statements of the way things work. As laws of writing or 
 painting or any other art, they are intensely human, because 
 they are laws of our response to words, colors, sounds, and 
 all the varied phenomena of the world that the artist, in 
 his medium, can crowd upon our minds and our senses. 
 Knowledge of these laws and mastery of them is oppor- 
 tunity and power. Giving attention to them is not lessen- 
 ing our own individuality and shutting its activities up 
 within a prescribed channel, but opening doors of pos- 
 sibility to fuller expression of ourselves, surer, freer, and 
 more commanding. 
 
 2. In this matter, nothing can be more instructive than 
 the experience of great writers. Did Shakespeare, Dickens, 
 Hawthorne sit down in a fine frenzy of inspiration and 
 dash off their immortal works, or did they think out some- 
 what patiently what they were to do and how they were 
 to do it, as might any other kind of workman? They 
 have not all been thoughtful enough to make report on the 
 subject for us. Shakespeare is notably incommunicative 
 with regard to this question, as, indeed, with regard to 
 practically every personal question that we might ask. 
 Nevertheless there is one outstanding fact that certainly has 
 some meaning in this connection. Shakespeare's plays are 
 not uniform. The earlier ones are more or less bad. In 
 reading them, perhaps one would be justified in saying now 
 and then that this is downright bad, and that this again is 
 very bad. From such facts there is only one conclusion. 
 The world's greatest artist learned his art. Its laws were 
 not in print for him to weigh and consider comfortably 
 under an electric globe. He could not accept them as 
 formulated by other minds, but he learned them and 
 
SKILL AS NATURAL OR ACQUIRED 5 
 
 through that learning came to better and higher accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 3. There are other writers, however, who have taken us 
 into their workshops and have let us see the chips and 
 shavings tossed from the bench to the floor. Here is what 
 Robert Louis Stevenson has to say about his early appren- 
 ticeship to the literary art. 
 
 " Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly 
 pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered 
 with propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous 
 force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit down 
 at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was unsuc- 
 cessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was again 
 unsuccessful and always unsuccessful ; but at least in these 
 vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in 
 construction and co-ordination of parts. I have thus played 
 the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to 
 Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Mon- 
 taigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann. I remember one 
 of these monkey tricks, which was called The Vanity of 
 Morals: it was to have had a second part, The Vanity of 
 Knowledge; and as I had neither morality nor scholarship, 
 the names were apt; but ; the second part was never 
 attempted, and the first part was written (which is my 
 reason for recalling it, ghostlike, from its ashes) no less 
 than three times : first in the name of Hazlitt, second in 
 the manner of Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, 
 and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne. 
 So with my other works : Cain, an epic, was ( save the 
 mark!) an imitation of Sordello : Robin Hood, a tale in 
 verse, took an eclectic course among the fields of Keats, 
 Chaucer, and Morris : in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined 
 on the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable gouty- 
 footed lyrics I followed many masters ; in the first draft 
 of The King's Pardon, a tragedy, I was on the trail of no 
 lesser man than John Webster; in the second draft of the 
 same piece, with staggering versatility, I had shifted my alle- 
 giance to Congreve, and of course conceived my fable in a 
 less serious vein for it was not Congreve's verse, it was 
 
6 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 his exquisite prose, that I admired and sought to copy. Even 
 at the age of thirteen I had tried to do justice to the 
 inhabitants of the famous city of Peebles in the style of the 
 Book of Snobs. So I might go on forever, through all my 
 abortive novels, and down to my later plays, of which I 
 think more tenderly, for they were not only conceived at 
 first under the bracing influence of old Dumas, but have 
 met with resurrections : one, strangely bettered by another 
 hand, came on the stage itself and was played by bodily 
 actors : the other, originally known as S emir amis: a 
 Tragedy, I have observed on bookstalls under the alias of 
 Prince Otto. But enough has been said to show by what 
 arts of impersonation, and in what purely ventriloquial 
 efforts I first saw my words on paper. 
 
 " That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write ; whether 
 I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats 
 learned, and there was never a finer temperament for liter- 
 ature than Keats's ; it was so, if we could trace it out, that 
 all men have learned ; and that is why a revival of letters 
 is always accompanied or heralded by a cast back, to earlier 
 or fresher models. Perhaps I hear some one cry out: 
 But that is not the way to be original. It is not; nor is 
 there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born 
 original, is there anything in this training that shall clip 
 the wings of your originality. There can be none more 
 original than Montaigne, neither could any be more unlike 
 Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to see how much the 
 one must have tried in his time to imitate the other. 
 Burns is the very type of a prime force in letters : he was 
 of all men the most imitative. Shakespeare himself, the 
 imperial, proceeds directly from a school. It is only from 
 a school that we can have good writers ; it is almost invari- 
 ably from a school that great writers, these lawless excep- 
 tions, issue. Nor is there anything here that should astonish 
 the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly 
 prefers, the student should have tried all that are pos- 
 sible; before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of 
 words, he should long have practiced the literary scales; 
 and it is only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit 
 down at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens 
 
SKILL AS NATURAL OR ACQUIRED 7 
 
 of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, 
 and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within 
 the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it." 
 
 4. There is abundant other evidence to the long discipline 
 that the great writers have given themselves, the patient 
 care with which they have sought for the just word, the 
 happy phrase, the telling turn of a sentence or a clause. 
 Newman's prose style will be the delight of readers for 
 generations, but all his life he is reported to have been 
 compelled to spend a great deal of time upon the careful 
 reshaping of everything he wrote. Poe is read and enjoyed 
 all over the habitable globe, and he has made it amply 
 clear to us that all that he did was the work, not of an 
 uncontrolled genius yielding to the rush of his own imagin- 
 ings, but of a conscious intelligence seeing the end of his 
 work from the beginning and ordering the details toward 
 that end with a finer precision than that of a carpenter put- 
 ting up the scaffolding for a house. 
 
 5. " It is not difficult to construct an outline of the 
 ' formula ' by which thousands of current narratives are 
 being wjiipped into shape." * 
 
 For this formula Poe is in some measure responsible, 
 and it is partly to the existence of a formula that we must 
 credit the enormous body of good literary work that is now 
 being done. A formula is valuable for everybody, but the 
 man of original powers should see to it that he does not 
 reduce his work to the level of the rule of thumb that is 
 employed by all his fellows. A formula is a thing to be 
 used, but he who uses it should always be superior to it. 
 He should use it and not be used by it. He should think 
 of it as an instrumentality by which he may bring his work 
 
 1 Henry Seidel Canby in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1915. 
 
8 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 nearer to its fully effective significance. He should not let 
 it shut up what he does within its own rigidity. It may 
 be very important to stay in the car and keep on the rails 
 from Peoria to Chicago, but at the La Salle Street Station 
 it is even more important to get out of the car and find 
 your way up Michigan Avenue to your friend's home. If 
 you are not safe to go alone when the car of your formula 
 has performed its proper function for you, perhaps you 
 should not try to travel the literary pathway. In that case, 
 perhaps you ought to stay in Peoria, but, at any rate, it is 
 worth remembering that, without any formula, from Peoria 
 to Chicago is a long way to walk. 
 
 Evidently a formula is generally a thing of imitation. It 
 was through imitation, as he tells us, that Stevenson 
 achieved command of his resources. Imitation of the style 
 of any one writer is a dangerous thing. Imitation of a 
 number of writers should increase flexibility and give one 
 power over a fuller medium for the expression of thought. 
 Imitation of a single writer of an alien temper may be 
 cramping to the point of destruction. Imitation of the same 
 writer as a part of a general exercise in the imitation of 
 various styles should make that writer's capabilities more 
 nearly a possession of our own. By so much, then, we have 
 increased our working capital. We have not made ourselves 
 the slaves of any one formula of style, but have found 
 another formula for application at need. That is the road 
 to freedom, the road to control of our speech, and so the 
 road to control over the minds of other men. 
 
 6. In all writing there are three prime things that must 
 receive attention, subject-matter, structure, style. Of these, 
 subject-matter is of first importance, but is not particularly 
 a matter of literary training. As far as it is at all a thing 
 of the schools, it must be borne in mind that we learn 
 to think when we are studying philosophy or physics. If 
 
SKILL AS NATURAL OR ACQUIRED 9 
 
 we cannot write and the trouble is that we have nothing 
 to say, after ourselves, we should hold our professor of 
 social science as much responsible as our professor of Eng- 
 lish and our professor of chemistry responsible in almost 
 as great a degree. Only our professor of mathematics can 
 be somewhat excused here, because his science is a science 
 of form, but for that reason he ought to be held somewhat 
 substantially accountable for our sense for structure. In 
 fact, ;almost all the disciplines to which we have submitted 
 ourselves must bear the reproach, if we cannot put our 
 thoughts in order. Thinking truly and justly is thinking in 
 an orderly fashion. Literary training should go beyond that 
 somewhat, to be sure, because it should teach us to adapt our 
 sort of orderliness to the sort that we may assume in the 
 minds of those whom we address, but after 'all there is not 
 much here that is peculiarly its province. The would-be 
 writer must be a scientist and a historian and a psychologist 
 and an economist and the master of some other kinds of 
 knowledge not in the curriculum, if, in his writing, his 
 thinking is to show that clarity of structure that enables 
 the reader to think it after him with pleasure. 
 
 7. It is in the third of these things, style, that we shall 
 find the especial interest of literary training in the art of 
 writing. How to put the thought into words that shall 
 mean what we want them to mean is one thing. How to 
 put it into words that carry, that give it the proper urge 
 and momentum, that make it alive for other minds as it 
 is alive for our own, is something different and something 
 not by any means so easy. It requires little more than a 
 knowledge of correct grammatical usage to put a plain mat- 
 ter of fact plainly and truthfully to the understanding, but 
 a Gettysburg speech is not composed and delivered by a 
 man insensible to the varying force of words and phrases. 
 We shall not all write even so much as a Fourth-of-July 
 
io THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 thunder of rhodomontade. There are for all of us, however, 
 lesser things in which the ability to express our thoughts 
 justly, with force and fire, with due restraint, and with a 
 sense of fitness for time and place and subject will be 
 expected of us. Then it will add to our confidence and 
 our comfort to know that we have learned something of 
 the right touch from the methods of the masters. 
 
II 
 
 THE QUALITIES OF STYLE 
 
 8. WE are much more conscious of qualities of style in 
 a writer than we are of the specific peculiarities of the 
 phrasing from which those qualities result. Students 
 attempting to analyze a paragraph for its style will observe 
 that it has short sentences or long sentences, perhaps, without 
 being able to interpret that simple fact or others like it in 
 higher terms. The use of any sentence form, short or long, 
 balanced, periodic or loose, is not in itself a quality of style. 
 The character of any writing will certainly be affected by 
 the length of the sentences, but it will not be affected in 
 the same way in all cases. Suitable as these variations in 
 effect are, they are not matters of chance. The laws gov- 
 erning them are not simple or obvious, but they are none 
 the less laws, and as laws of something that we can examine 
 they can be discovered and understood. It is a problem 
 Somewhat difficult of approach, but we can simplify it in 
 a aegree by making some primary. distinctions that will help 
 us to see the relation between the effect of a particular 
 way of writing and the details of that method. 
 
 9. In the first place, one^broad demarcation between dif- 
 ferent styles appears in the distinction between the per- 
 sonal and the impersonal. Writings having literary quality 
 must be written in a style that is more or less personal. On 
 the other hand, writings of a scientific character may be 
 expected to be comparatively impersonal. This differentia- 
 tion may also be thought of as a differentiation between 
 the emotional and the coldly intellectual, between the literary 
 
12 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 and the literal, between the colorful and the colorless. We 
 will use the terms personal and impersonal, keeping it in 
 mind that they are relative and not absolute distinctions, 
 and, with that as a starting-point, we may ask ourselves: 
 What are personal qualities in style ? What are impersonal ? 
 What are both, or what may be found in writings of both 
 characters? How do these exhibit themselves, or how are 
 they achieved as matters of the detailed ordering of words ? 
 It will be convenient, perhaps, to put these things in a table 
 so that we can set one off against another more sharply. 
 
 Impersonal Personal 
 
 Clarity Strength 
 
 Simplicity Animation 
 
 Precision Energy 
 
 Dignity 
 Weight 
 Emphasis 
 Beauty 
 
 Harmony 
 Euphony 
 Heightening 
 through 
 Imagery 
 
 10. The foregoing is not exhaustive. It is meant merely 
 as an aid in starting our investigation of any writer's style 
 and of the means by which its qualities have been attained. 
 In the first place, it will appear that the qualities of an im- 
 personal style are in a large degree foundation qualities 
 for all writing. We should always strive to write clearly, 
 and we should also strive to write as simply as is consistent 
 with writing precisely. If a subject is difficult, it may not 
 be possible to deal with it in a simple manner and yet achieve 
 accuracy. In the degree in which the subject and our inter- 
 est in it permit, however, we should be clear, simple, and 
 
THE QUALITIES OF STYLE 13 
 
 precise in everything we write. Evidently, then, the quali- 
 ties that make a writing personal, that give it literary char- 
 acter, are additions to the simpler qualities whose purpose 
 does not go beyond that of establishing understanding of 
 the author's meaning. When we have found out what these 
 additions are in any case and have determined whether they 
 have or have not affected the clarity, the simplicity, and 
 the unified precision of the treatment, we shall have come 
 to an understanding of the writer's style. We can get 
 at the question best by taking a few paragraphs from some 
 bit of writing having a pronounced style, seeing what its 
 qualities are, and attempting to discover how those qualities 
 have their source in the choice and arrangement of words 
 and sentences. Here is something that may help us from 
 " The Second Coming of the Ideal," an essay in a book en- 
 titled Sleeping Beauty and Other Prose Fancies, by Rich- 
 ard Le Gallienne. 1 
 
 i. " One Sunday morning, a few months ago, I passed 
 along the sumptuous corridors of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 
 New York, on my way to the writing room, and I came 
 to a spacious scarlet hall, set about with plush couches 
 and little writing-desks. 2. Exquisite and imperious 
 women. sat in cozy flirtation with respectful young Ameri- 
 cans, and there was a happy buzz of vanity in the air. 
 
 3. Wealth, luxury, idleness, were all about me, purring 
 and sunning themselves in the electric light; and yet, for 
 some unknown and doubtless trivial reason, I was sad. 
 
 4. As I look back I can only account for my sadness by 
 the fact that I was to sit answering week-old letters, while 
 these happy people flirted. 5. A little reason is always the 
 best to give for a great sadness though, indeed, how 
 could one help being sad in the presence of so much marble 
 and so many millionaires? 
 
 6. " Well, at all events I was sad ; but suddenly, as I 
 
 1 Copyright, 1900, by John Lane. 
 
14 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 looked about for an unoccupied desk, what was this voice 
 of ancient comfort speaking to me from a little group, 
 one reader and two listeners, a gray-haired, rather stern, 
 old man, a gray-haired old lady, a boy, not specially intent, 
 rich people, you would say, to look at them : ' Many waters 
 cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a 
 man would give all the substance of his house for love, it 
 would utterly be contemned.' 
 
 7. " It was a New England father persisting in a private 
 morning service here among the triflers. 
 
 8. " I felt like those of whom one has read in Sunday- 
 school stories, who, passing the door of some little mission- 
 house one rainy night, heard a word or a hymn that seemed 
 miraculously intended for them. 9. Surely that stern old 
 Puritan father had been led to read that particular chap- 
 ter, that particular Sunday morning, more for my sake 
 than, at all events, for the sake of his little boy, who might 
 quite reasonably and respectfully have complained that he 
 was too young as yet to comprehend writing so pro- 
 foundly beautiful and suggestive as the Hebrew scriptures. 
 
 10. " Yes ! it was evidently for the poor idealist in the 
 House of Astor that the message was intended, u. For 
 the boy weariness, for the mother platitude, for the father 
 a text for me a bird singing; and all day long I kept 
 saying to myself, lonely there among the millionaires: 
 ' Many waters shall not quench love, neither shall the floods 
 drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house 
 for love, it would utterly be contemned.' 
 
 12. " If a wild rose had suddenly showered its petals 
 down from the ceiling, or a spring bubbled up through the 
 floor, or a dove passed in flight through the hall, the effect 
 of contrast could hardly have been more unexpected than 
 the surprising sound of those old words thus spoken at 
 that moment, in that place. 13. They had for the ear the 
 same shock of incongruity, of willful transportation out of 
 one world into another quite alien, which Cleopatra's 
 Needle has for the eye amid the hansoms and railway 
 bridges of the Thames' embankment, or the still greater 
 shock of juxtaposition with which one looks upon the 
 Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. 
 
THE QUALITIES OF STYLE 15 
 
 14. " But there was this difference. 15. The obelisks 
 tell of a dead greatness, of a power passed away, whereas 
 those words told of an ever-living truth, and bore witness, 
 even by their very quotation in such a context, to a power 
 no materialism can crush, no pessimism stifle, the deathless 
 idealism of the human spirit. 
 
 16. " That the heart of man can still go on dreaming 
 after all these centuries of pain and superficial disillusion 
 is perhaps the greatest proof of the authenticity of the 
 dreams. 17. How often, indeed, must^uch (words, such 
 promises of the poet and the prophet, (nave rung as with 
 a hollow mockery in the ears of man; in the downfall of 
 despairing peoples, with all their unregarded debris of indi- 
 vidual hopes and dreams; in dark ages of oppression, iron 
 epochs of militarism in which the very flowers might well 
 have feared to blossom, the very birds to sing;, and in the 
 ears of no people so hopelessly as of that whose poet gave 
 us this song of songs; that people which, as if in ironical 
 return for the persecution of ages, has contributed most 
 to the idealism of mankind. 18. Yet, through all, the 
 indomitable dreams arise, and the indestructible words 
 promise on as of old. 19. Though the dream passes into 
 the dust, the dust rises again in the dream." 
 
 n. It will be immediately apparent that this is not imper- 
 sonal, that it has been written with feeling, and that the 
 author has known how to communicate"Kis feeling as well 
 as his ideas. Let us first look at the adjectives running 
 through the first paragraph. They are : sumptuous, spa- 
 cious, scarlet, plush, little, exquisite, imperious, cozy, respect- 
 ful, young, electric, unknown, doubtless, trivial, week-old, 
 happy, little, great. It will be seen that they are almost 
 all words conveying a sense of personal valuation. A 
 thing is sumptuous, not wholly in the fact itself, but in a 
 large measure in our feeling for it. The same can be said 
 of spacious. It is a relative term, and scarlet is less an 
 absolute term than red would have been. It is a red 
 of the most vivid sort, the sort that makes the liveliest 
 
16 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 impression on the retina, to which our feelings must most 
 respond. Little may seem to express a mere fact of size, 
 but, if we look at it here, we shall see that it is size deter- 
 mined by the writer's feeling for the desks as part of the 
 luxurious mode of life to which they are but casual acces- 
 sories. They are not serious, as nothing in the room is 
 serious, and so they are little in the scarlet spaciousness, 
 very little, doubtless, beside the massive solidity of plush 
 couches. 
 
 We should find out much the same thing about the 
 other adjectives, if we were to go on through the list. 
 We will not do that, but will observe merely that these 
 adjectives, together with a considerable number of the 
 nouns, constitute a substantial body of connotative words, 
 that is, words that have some fringe of associated ideas, 
 words that, as they are used, set something stirring in the 
 mind. This contributes to the strength of the writing, 
 gives it a quality not quite so lively as animation, not so 
 active as energy, more delicate and gentle than weight, 
 but still clearly a quality to find a place in the list under 
 strength. Let us call it fervor a subdued and reflective 
 fervor, to be sure, approaching dignity and then we will 
 turn to other considerations. 
 
 12. The mood in which this first paragraph is conceived 
 is that of a gently tragic irony, the futility of human toy- 
 ing with life set off by the splendor and richness of the 
 material circumstance within which it goes forward. This 
 comes to its focus in the conclusion of the fifth sentence, 
 and it is interesting to observe that the author has given 
 this further point in the sound of the words, the explosive 
 alliterative m's of much, marble, many, and millionaires 
 emphasizing the ground for sadness in an unavailing show 
 of wealth. This emphasis is seen in a less degree in the 
 first half of the same sentence, a little reason and a great 
 
THE QUALITIES OF STYLE 17 
 
 sadness. Again in the fourth sentence we have a like 
 antithesis in the doubtful satisfaction of answering week-old 
 letters and the more animated pleasure of happy people 
 flirting. In the third sentence, also, wealth, luxury, and 
 idleness are set off against sadness, and as a matter of the 
 sentence management that is the running order of the para- 
 graph. 
 
 13. Here, then, we have two methods of securing empha- 
 sis, and they happen to exhibit themselves in conjunction. 
 The antithetical emphasis just noted is also emphasis by 
 position. In the second sentence, for instance, the important 
 phrases are at the beginning and at the end, " exquisite 
 and imperious women," and " a happy buzz of vanity in 
 the air." The third sentence also gives the two important 
 positions in the sentence to the important words, " wealth, 
 idleness, luxury," and " sad." In the same way, the im- 
 portant place in the paragraph is reserved for the im- 
 portant words, as we have seen, and yet, calculated as all 
 this seems, it is perfectly easy, natural, and convincing. 
 
 In the beginning of the second paragraph, the tone drops 
 to the colloquial, as in the relaxation of sadness itself, 
 and then at once this plainness becomes the foil for the 
 heightening by figure and image of the beautiful phrase, 
 " this voice of ancient comfort." There is strength in the 
 connotations of the phrase itself. It is made emphatic by 
 being given a background that is a little dull and gray. 
 Then the author heightens that effect again by giving us 
 an actually gray picture, and in the making of the picture 
 he spreads it out and emphasizes it all by putting the details 
 in the form of parallelism, the one reader and the two 
 listeners, the old man and the old lady, the boy and the 
 gathering together again as rich people. He does not stop 
 with this. Perhaps we should say only that what he has 
 done is in method as well as in substance a preparation for 
 
18 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 the words from the Bible. They have the emphasis of 
 parallelism also, and they have the further emphasis of a 
 good word-order reaching its culmination in the word " con- 
 temned." They have strength in the connotations of the 
 words, and the images called up in the mind are images 
 of beauty. 
 
 14. Sentence seven makes one paragraph for emphasis, 
 that it may catch and hold the attention a little longer, 
 and within the sentence there is emphasis again in the 
 arrangement, and also a slight antithesis, " New England 
 father " immediately after the opening words, which are 
 only words of articulation, and " triflers " at the end. 
 
 The fourth paragraph drops a little from the fervor that 
 preceded. It is sobered by the grave music of the Song of 
 Solomon, and the style, therefore, changes. The ninth sen- 
 tence is not so long as the sixth, but it seems longer, be- 
 cause it is not arranged with as much rhythm in its pauses, 
 with as much balance and certitude, with as sharp definition 
 of detail. It particularly gives the sense of greater sus- 
 pense, and it is suspense that adds weight and emphasizes 
 length. 
 
 The tenth sentence quickens and is short for the pur- 
 pose of giving animation to that quickening. Then again 
 the eleventh sentence is like the sixth in the mood of the 
 subject-matter, and the style follows that tone. We have 
 parallelism, with the first three parallel groups set off 
 antithetically against the fourth, " for me a bird singing." 
 Again there is the antithetical play between " lonely " and 
 " millionaires," and then the paragraph comes to the same 
 climax as the second. 
 
 15. We will pass over the sixth and seventh paragraphs. 
 In the seventeenth sentence we have a series of parallelisms 
 more complex and involved than in preceding paragraphs. 
 This greater range and fullness is in keeping with the 
 
THE QUALITIES OF STYLE 19 
 
 wider sweep of the thought. It is a long sentence, but 
 its organization is simplified by the parallelism, and the 
 parallel units are kept at that point of inner variety at 
 which the intensity natural to the form does not result 
 in narrowness. Then in sentence nineteen we come to the 
 beautifully antithetical parallelism of the conclusion, the 
 reversal in the two clauses of dream to dust and dust to 
 dream. This sentence retains the method and manner that 
 have characterized the writing from the beginning and so 
 give it a unity and completeness that is at once its style 
 and the fitting form of its art method and its moving spirit. 
 1 6. Now that we have gone through the selection, per- 
 haps we should tabulate some of our findings. To keep our 
 affairs in order, we will refer these tabulations to the little 
 tabular outline already made out. The numbers refer to 
 the sentences in the excerpt from Le Gallienne. 
 
 STRENGTH resulting from 
 Connotative Words, 1-5. 
 
 The large number of such words in this para- 
 graph should be noted in comparison with the 
 number in paragraph four. 
 
 Nicely Punctuated Movement of Words, Rhythm, 2, 
 6, 7, n, 17, 19. 
 
 This is a consequence likely to be more or less 
 attendant upon parallelism. It may be insistence 
 or animation, as in n or 19, or it may be weight, 
 as from the sense of mass in 17. 
 Unification of Sound, as in the m's at the close of sen- 
 tence five. 
 EMPHASIS resulting from 
 
 Placing of Words in important positions, 2, 3, 5, 7, 
 
 15, 19- 
 Parallelism heightening the sense of 
 
 Unity and Weight of a single impression, 3, 6, 
 
 11, 12, 15. 
 
 Variety and Fullness in things related by a common 
 bond, 17. 
 
2O THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Opposition and Irreconcilability in the thought, as in 
 the antithesis in 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 15, 18. 
 
 Sharpness of a Single Impression through antithetical 
 contrast with something else, n, 19. 
 
 Abruptness or a Contrasting Brevity, 7, 14. 
 BEAUTY resulting from 
 
 Euphony, 2, 5, 6, n, 12, 18, 19. 
 
 Imagery and Figure, i, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, 19. 
 
 Harmony. 
 
 This is not so much to be seen in the individual 
 items as in the relation of part to part. All 
 through it there is the tone of a subdued splendor, 
 the futility of material things in their assuming to 
 be sufficient in themselves, and hovering over them 
 the enduring presence of things that are not ma- 
 terial. At first it is the ideal only as a vague yearn- 
 ing and regret in the presence of the marble and 
 the millionaires, and it closes with the ideal made 
 actual and triumphant in the dust and the dream. 
 The two, however, are carried along together, 
 and the phrasing plays one off against the other 
 harmoniously from the beginning to the close. 
 
 17. There is one sentence concerning which little has 
 been said, the eighth. It is a bit confusing, not being so 
 well ordered as the writing that precedes it. That is partly 
 because of the uncertainty with regard to the antecedent 
 of the pronoun who. This is not clear, and it suggests 
 an important law of style, Herbert Spencer's principle of 
 the economy of attention. It is perhaps best to quote this 
 in his own words from his Philosophy of Style. 
 
 " On seeking for some clew to the law underlying these 
 current maxims, we may see shadowed forth in many of 
 them, the importance of economizing the reader's or hearer's 
 attention. To so present ideas that they may be appre- 
 hended with the least possible mental effort, is the desider- 
 atum toward which most of the rules quoted above point. 
 When we condemn writing that is wordy, or confused, or 
 
THE QUALITIES OF STYLE 21 
 
 intricate when we praise this style as easy, and blame that 
 as fatiguing, we consciously or unconsciously assume this 
 desideratum as our standard of judgment. Regarding lan- 
 guage as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of 
 thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, 
 the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the 
 greater will be the effect produced. In either case, what- 
 ever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from 
 the result. A reader or listener has at each moment but a 
 limited amount of mental power available. To recognize 
 and interpret the symbols presented to him, requires part 
 of this power ; to arrange and combine the images suggested 
 requires a further part; and only that part which remains 
 can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, 
 the more time and attention it takes to receive and under- 
 stand each sentence, the less time and attention can be 
 given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that 
 idea be conceived/' 
 
 1 8. It is worth observing that parallelism is one mode of 
 economy of attention. It is easier to think out an idea 
 in a form in which a preceding idea has just passed through 
 the mind than to see the relations of words in a new order. 
 From that point of view, parallelism is in a degree imper- 
 sonal, but it is personal as reiteration and insistence. That 
 which is insistent kindles attention, and the kindling of atten- 
 tion is for what we have called personal writing the analogue 
 of economy of attention in impersonal writing. It is the 
 kindling of attention, the warming of the mind to a glow, 
 that constitutes the power of such writing as we have just 
 been considering. 
 
 19. " To make therefore our beginning that which to both 
 parts is most acceptable, we agree that pure and unstained 
 religion ought to be the highest of all cares appertaining to 
 public regiment: as well in regard of that and protection 
 which they who faithfully serve God confess they receive 
 at his merciful hands ; as also for the force which religion 
 
22 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 hath to qualify all sorts of men, and to make them in public 
 affairs the more serviceable, governors the apter to rule 
 with conscience, inferiors for conscience' sake the willinger 
 to obey. It is no peculiar conceit, but a matter of sound 
 consequence, that all duties are by so much the better per- 
 formed, by how much the men are more religious from 
 whose abilities the same proceed. For if the course 
 of politic affairs cannot in any good sort go forward with- 
 out fit instruments, and that which fitteth them be their 
 virtues, let Polity acknowledge itself indebted to Religion; 
 godliness being the chiefest top and wellspring of all true 
 virtues, even as God is of all good things." 
 
 This paragraph from the fifth book of Bishop Hooker's 
 The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is as obviously imper- 
 sonal as what we have just read from Le Gallienne is per- 
 sonal. There are very few connotative words. The sen- 
 tence order is determined strictly by grammatical relations 
 and the logic of the thought. There is no heighten- 
 ing by imagery or figure, no movement of pleasurable 
 sound. There is no pulse or rhythm in the movement of 
 the clauses. One little touch of emphasis there is, the 
 parallelism concluding the first sentence, but that is all. 
 Even this is rather addressed argumentatively to the rea- 
 son than to the feelings. From the very fact that it does 
 not kindle attention, it is, in comparison with what we have 
 read from Le Gallienne, hard reading. It is a style of 
 unusual intellectual definiteness and certitude, the style of 
 a clear and cultivated thinker, but it does not take hold. 
 
Ill 
 
 SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS 
 
 20. THERE are a number of ways of perceiving any single 
 group of related facts. You may remember having tried 
 to count the number of persons in a room. If so, you will 
 remember further that you counted them by fours, fives, 
 or sixes, trying by imaginary lines to isolate these smaller 
 groups from the rest not yet counted. Then you went 
 over the counting again, and this time you divided the 
 sixty or seventy persons in the room up into groups as 
 before, but the groups were not the same and the imaginary 
 lines did not mark them off in the same way. Some one 
 else counting the company after you would have a still 
 different arrangement. Some, sort of arrangement there 
 must be, because the counting cannot be done comfortably 
 by taking each person singly. They are to be understood 
 as a body, and the process of thinking them from their 
 isolation as individuals into some form of collective unity 
 is a process of simplification. The smaller grouping that 
 permits us to count them is a part of the simplification 
 from variety into oneness. 
 
 This illustrates in an elementary way what is a funda- 
 mental part of our thinking. Our mental activities are in- 
 volved largely in the establishment of relationships. Just 
 as in counting we try to find something that will enable 
 us to tie the units together into groups of five or six, per- 
 haps, so, in dealing with facts, we try to find bonds of 
 some kind between the facts by which we hold a number 
 of them in the mind at once and make them one. No two 
 
 23 
 
24 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 persons will find the same bonds in this process. Indeed, 
 as the facts increase in variety and complexity, they will 
 be able to do so correspondingly less than in counting. 
 Individual reactions to the separate facts soon color the 
 sense of relationship, and that must be more and more 
 largely so as those facts become more and more humanly 
 significant, less and less a mere matter of numbers. The 
 groupings of the facts, then, and the threads that hold the 
 groups together must be a new thing in each person who 
 surveys them, puts them together, and tries to see what 
 they mean in the mass. 
 
 21. In any piece of writing the writer's feeling for rela- 
 tionships that he discovers between the units of the ma- 
 terial in which he works will show itself in the way in 
 which those units are assembled in words. In this sentence 
 or that, perhaps, the thread is very tenuous, and the mark 
 of its insubstantiality is a semicolon. Then it snaps com- 
 pletely, and the break is shown by a period. In the next 
 sentence it sways and falters with commas and dashes, 
 drawing a great many things together until perhaps you 
 are not quite sure why they belong in one group. Never- 
 theless, the punctuation declares that it was so that the 
 author thought of them, and understanding the author is 
 understanding just that, the way he feels the relationships 
 with which he is dealing. This can best be understood, 
 of course, through examination of some writings in which 
 this tendency to organization by subordinate groupings ex- 
 hibits a distinctive character. 
 
 " But over and above these practical rectitudes, thus de- 
 termined by natural affection or self-love or fear, he may 
 notice that there is a remnant of right conduct what he 
 does, still more what he abstains from doing not so much 
 through his own free election, as from a deference, an 
 ' assent/ entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom to the 
 
SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS 25 
 
 actual habit or fashion of others, from whom he would 
 not endure to break away, any more than he would care 
 to be out of agreement with them in questions of mere 
 manner, or, say, even of dress. Yes! there were the evils, 
 the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a soil. An 
 assent, such as this, to the preferences of others might seem 
 to be the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it could 
 determine the least considerable element in moral life. 
 Yet here, according to Pronto, was in truth the revealing 
 example, albeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the 
 general principle required. Thefe was one great idea 
 (Pronto proceeded to expound the idea of humanity 
 of a universal commonwealth of minds which yet some- 
 how becomes conscious, and as if incarnate, in a select 
 body of just men made perfect) in association with which 
 the determination to conform to precedent was elevated 
 into the weightiest, the fullest, the clearest principle under 
 which one might subsume men's most strenuous efforts 
 after righteousness." 
 
 In this from Marius the Epicurean, by Walter Pater, we 
 shall perceive at once that the first sentence is both a 
 long sentence and a loose sentence. It is so long and so 
 loose, indeed, that the meaning is a bit elusive. In some 
 writers that would be a fault, because it would be the mark 
 of a failure to make themselves clear. In Pater that effect 
 is the very essence of his thought. The mind that he is 
 putting before us in his fiction is in a condition of uncer- 
 tainty and struggle, seeing various implications, various 
 relations and associations of ideas, in what he is presenting, 
 trying to simplify them and bring them to order by a kind 
 of eliminating definition. A sentence of this sort is the 
 natural expression of that feeling. The next sentence is 
 short as marking a decision reached, but that decision is 
 not perfectly straightforward and simple. Evils must be 
 interpreted as vices, not left simply as evils, just as in the 
 preceding sentence deference needed interpretation by a 
 
26 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 number of terms, and the subordinate declaration in the rela- 
 tive clause must be qualified by a phrase, which has itself 
 an adverbial modification. Sentence three is more direct, 
 although longer than sentence two, taking up an idea just 
 developed, maintaining touch with it as part of what has 
 gone before by the phrase " such as this," and putting for- 
 ward a kind of objection to the idea, a qualification like 
 those that we have seen in the preceding sentence, except 
 that here it is given the dignity of greater grammatical 
 independence. In the fourth sentence the thought turns 
 back again, a short sentence opening with definite terms of 
 relation with what precedes. With the current of ideas now 
 turned directly forward on its course, the fifth sentence 
 expands the thought and carries it on in a growing volume. 
 22. Now, counting up the words in the paragraph, we 
 shall find that the sentences have an average length of 
 forty-seven words. That is nearly double the average 
 length of sentences in modern prose. There are two rea- 
 sons for this complicated ordering of words, this enlarge- 
 ment of the primary grouping in sentences. In the first 
 place, it follows that feeling for the indeterminate,, the 
 unsettled, and the conflicting which is part of Pater's charm, 
 the mood of the aesthetic mystic dwelling forever in the 
 light of distant stars that break dimly through an earth 
 haze. The wandering length of the first sentence main- 
 tains this tone. It wavers from phrase to phrase, keep- 
 ing to the theme, but confusing the eyes with different- 
 colored lights. The three succeeding sentences become more 
 decisive, but they do not sharply change the tone, and 
 they are phrased to maintain the connection with the first 
 sentence closely. The fifth sentence is peculiar in that the 
 portion of it within the parenthesis is in the vein of quali- 
 fication seen in the first sentence, while the rest of it is 
 in the way of amplifying intensification of a conclusion 
 
SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS 27 
 
 now definitely reached. Leaving the parenthetical portion 
 of the sentence out, we may see that it illustrates the 
 principle of mass, that is, its length serves to force one 
 thing upon the mind more compellingly simply by reason 
 of its having so much weight of words. The two long 
 sentences of the paragraph, then, produce directly opposite 
 effects by their length, the first one piling up the sense of 
 incertitude even by the terms in parallel order, because 
 these terms are employed, not in the way of emphatic 
 reiteration, but in the opposed fashion of a carefully ap- 
 proximating definition in which one word does not so much 
 reaffirm the preceding as take its place. The last sentence, 
 however, comes up to a sort of climax in the employment 
 of the parallel construction in the cumulative way, one term 
 echoing the preceding and giving it weight. 
 
 It is to be observed here finally that the long sentence, 
 especially when a loose sentence also, as is the first sentence 
 of this paragraph, may produce the effect of vagueness 
 and indecision, perhaps, at times, of weakness. On the 
 other hand, it may produce the effect of strength by its 
 massing of a body of like details. More particularly will 
 this latter effect result when the sentence is also periodic 
 and is therefore more readily adapted to a climactic arrange- 
 ment. From this examination, then, we may say that long 
 sentences have two very diverse offices and must, there- 
 fore, have some intermediate offices also as they change 
 in general structure from the loose to the periodic, from 
 the diffuse to the cumulative, from the heterogeneous and 
 amorphous to the homogeneous and massive. How, now, 
 do short sentences function? We shall have to look after 
 that. 
 
 23. " But what good have the Zeppelin raids done ? Thus 
 far their only purpose seems to have been to tease Eng- 
 
28 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 land. Now, teasing is not war; it is preliminary to war. 
 It is provoking; it maddens the adversary; it makes him 
 more determined, more dangerous. It is quite legitimate 
 to drop bombs on a warship, or a camp, or a fortress, but 
 this is not what the Zeppelins are doing. They drop their 
 bombs miscellaneously on undefended cities, and they maim 
 or kill here and there a dozen men and women and chil- 
 dren. This does not help the war; it is only maddening. 
 It strengthens the enemy. To be sure, it shows that Eng- 
 land's ocean wall and England's supreme navy cannot 
 screen England's coasts against an occasional biting mos- 
 quito; but, again, pestering is not war. Thus far Taubes 
 and other scouting airships have done legitimate military 
 services, but Zeppelins have seemed to be only the minis- 
 ters of spite and hate." The Independent, August 30, 1915. 
 
 It is quite clear at once that in this there is no nebulous 
 mistiness obscuring the writer's idea, as in what has been 
 quoted from Pater. Each sentence, each clause, is sharply 
 defined. The third sentence might have been punctuated 
 as two. The fourth might have been punctuated as three. 
 Their relation is a progressive relation throughout 
 the paragraph. Each sentence is a step in a decisive 
 movement. Qualifications and limitations of an idea are 
 not easily attached to the main idea in a short sentence. 
 Such sentences are consequently less impeded. They carry 
 the thought forward more fluently. Here they give the 
 sense of unquestioning certitude. They give also energy 
 and a sort of rush of conviction and enthusiasm. Two 
 paragraphs could hardly be less alike than this and the 
 one from Pater, and it is not without meaning that the sen- 
 tences here are one-third the length of those in the other 
 paragraph. A different and quite legitimate punctuation 
 would reduce them to an average of one-fourth that length, 
 or about one-half the average length of sentences in mod- 
 ern prose. 
 
SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS 29 
 
 24. It is only when a periodic sentence is long that we 
 are affected by or conscious of its periodic character. Be- 
 cause a periodic sentence is one in which the meaning is 
 withheld until the close, its chief quality or character or 
 effect is that of suspense. A loose sentence goes forward 
 by accretions to a meaning which in its wording and form, 
 that is, grammatically, has reached a definite construc- 
 tion before the close. All of the sentences in the first para- 
 graph of the quotation from Le Gallienne in chapter two 
 are loose sentences. Each one of them might close and 
 give complete sense at the following words, in their order: 
 Hotel, Americans, me, letters, sadness. These sentences 
 are all loose sentences in fact, and they are so in effect 
 also by reason of their length. In the paragraph from 
 the Independent immediately preceding, the short sentences 
 are largely periodic, and the others loose, but the periodic 
 sentences do not have the effect of suspense and the loose 
 sentences do not seem indefinite, because none of the sen- 
 tences are long. In fact the loose sentences here are 
 more or less balanced in structure, phrase or clause set 
 off against phrase or clause, and that serves to sharpen 
 rather than to diffuse or dull the effect of each. The fol- 
 lowing paragraph from Francis Jeffrey's essay on Walter 
 Scott, Edinburgh Review, August, 1810, illustrates the sus- 
 pense that comes from the periodic structure when the sen- 
 tences are of some length. 
 
 i. " Such seem to be the most general and immediate 
 causes of the apparent paradox, of reckoning that which 
 pleases the greatest number as inferior to that which 
 pleases the few; and such the leading grounds for fixing 
 the standard of excellence, in a question of mere feeling 
 and gratification, by a different rule than that of the quan- 
 tity of gratification produced. 2. With regard to some of 
 the fine arts for the distinction between popular and actual 
 
30 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 merit obtains in them all there are no other reasons, per- 
 haps, to be assigned ; and, in Music, for example, when we 
 have said that it is the authority of those who are best quali- 
 fied by nature and study, and the difficulty and rarity of 
 the attainment, that entitles certain exquisite performances 
 to rank higher than others that give far more general de- 
 light, we have probably said all that can be said in explana- 
 tion of this mode of speaking and judging. 3. In poetry, 
 however, and in some other departments, this familiar, 
 though somewhat extraordinary rule of estimation, is justi- 
 fied by other considerations." 
 
 The first sentence is obviously not periodic as a whole, 
 but the two clauses of which it is composed are both long 
 and both periodic. The portion of the second sentence fol- 
 lowing the semicolon is exceptionally long and is periodic. 
 The third sentence is wholly periodic. A reading of the 
 paragraph will probably produce in most minds a sense 
 of dragging weight. An express train stopping at small 
 towns before reaching the terminal in the city is largely 
 engaged in taking on luggage without throwing any off. It 
 requires continually more driving energy the nearer it 
 comes to the end. It is so with the mind when it is taking 
 up the contents of a periodic sentence. Every word must 
 be carried along to the close, and both its meaning and 
 its relationships must be carried along together. If the 
 interest is climactically kindled toward the close, the 
 sense of weight in the periodic form may give energy 
 to the sentence. Otherwise that form may tend to 
 weakness through the burden it puts upon the reader, 
 who must hold too much in his mind at once before com- 
 ing to understanding. In its degree, weakness is the 
 effect of the periodic structure in the paragraph just con- 
 sidered. 
 
 25. What in America is perhaps the best-known piece 
 of prose outside the Bible, Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, 
 
SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS 31 
 
 has come to that distinction very largely because it is a 
 triumph of style and structure. 
 
 " Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought 
 forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, 
 and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
 equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
 whether that nation so conceived and so dedicated, can 
 long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that 
 war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that battle- 
 field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their 
 lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting 
 and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense 
 we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow 
 this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled 
 here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add 
 or detract. The world will little note, nor long remem- 
 ber, what we say here, but it can never forget what they 
 did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated 
 here to the unfinished work which they who fought have 
 thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
 dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from 
 these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause 
 for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, 
 that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have 
 died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a 
 new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, 
 by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the 
 earth." 
 
 26. The last clause of this address, " that government 
 of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth/' is probably more widely known and more 
 widely quoted than any other thing ever written by an 
 American. For this currency, the subject-matter is not so 
 much responsible as the form. An editorial in the New 
 York Times for September iQth, 1915, makes note of the 
 fact that the ideas in this sentence had been given a some- 
 
32 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 what similar expression before by each of three well- 
 known men, Robespierre, Webster, and Theodore Parker. 
 In each case the parallelism is not so firm and sharp and 
 clear as it is in the form given it by Lincoln. He has 
 reduced each phrase to a minimum and given them that 
 close likeness of form that, by establishing a rhythmic roll 
 which is not artificial but the real pulse of the thought, 
 plays upon our emotions, merely by its movement, a sort 
 of drum-beat of ideas. Something of the same method 
 and quality runs through the whole speech. The second 
 sentence and the third and the fourth begin in a like 
 fashion. The clauses of the sixth sentence are parallel 
 likewise, and the eighth sentence is a balanced sentence 
 with a striking and memorable antithesis. The last sentence, 
 again, is a long sweep of parallel clauses, heightened in 
 their cumulative effect, as we have seen, by parallel phrases 
 within the last clause. 
 
 Part of the greatness of this brief speech, a speech care- 
 fully prepared before it was delivered, it should be remem- 
 bered, comes from the moderation of its statements taken 
 in connection with the wonderful effectiveness of its form. 
 Here are true things, enduring things, voiced without 
 undue passion, and yet voiced as strongly as a man may 
 voice things in measured human speech. The whole is 
 dignified and even reserved, because it does not go beyond 
 the truth. It is powerful, because that truth is given a 
 compelling form. It has the strength and moderation of 
 a great occasion, and that balance exhibits itself in the 
 incidental circumstance that the length of the sentences is 
 approximately that of the average in modern prose, be- 
 ing a little more than half that in the paragraph from 
 Pater and almost twice that in the editorial from the 
 Independent. 
 
 27. There is one other thing in this matter of sentences 
 
SENTENCES AND THEIR RELATIONS 33 
 
 and their arrangement in paragraphs that is of some im- 
 portance. How are they held together? The rhetorics 
 abundantly declare that a paragraph should be coherent, 
 but is coherence one thing or several, one form and order 
 of words or a number having varying effects in keeping 
 with varying ways of seizing the attention and holding it 
 to the subject? Looking back at the paragraph from Pater, 
 we shall see that the second sentence makes connection 
 with the preceding in the first two words, the third with 
 the second in words three to five, the fourth with the 
 third in the first two words, and the fifth with the fourth 
 in the words " one great idea/* which are related in thought 
 to " the great principle " at the close of the fourth sen- 
 tence. By this establishment of connection from sentence 
 to sentence the paragraph moves along gently. You feel 
 the ease of the transitions as thought slips lullingly into 
 thought. In the following from William Marion Reedy's 
 "Reflections" in the Mirror for August 27th, 1915, there 
 is a much more abrupt form of sentence connection. 
 
 ;< The famous Forty Thieves had nothing on the offi- 
 cers and some of the directors of the Rock Island Rail- 
 road. They seem to have grabbed a bunch of loot at every 
 locomotive ' toot ' on all the lines. Inefficient public owner- 
 ship in days to be will be unable to beat this kind of private 
 ownership in the days that were. And the work of the 
 Rock Island crooks injured not that road alone. It rises 
 up to form the basis of a refusal of rate increase to hon- 
 estly-managed railroads. One wonders if it will be quite 
 safe to admit such men to the benefits of the honor system 
 in one of the humane penitentiaries in which they should 
 be incarcerated. Rock Island is worse than was Erie 
 under Gould and Fisk, and without a Josie Mansfield in 
 the background to give it the touch of picaresque romance." 
 
 The unity of the paragraph is not sacrified here, but the 
 sentences are more independent, they make more positive 
 
34 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 separate impressions, and the general tone of the paragraph 
 is therefore less equable. Probably this way of bringing 
 sentences together, as it has a livelier sense of action and 
 animation, is more stimulant to the reader and more likely 
 to sharpen his attention. Further, this less formal mode 
 of sentence connection is more in agreement with that of 
 ordinary speech. It is more natural and simple, and sim- 
 plicity and naturalness are important things in good writing. 
 
IV 
 
 WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNO- 
 TATIONS 
 
 28. WHEN your friend is talking to you it is not alto- 
 gether what he says, but the light in his eyes, the turn of 
 his head, the toss of his hand that give his words life 
 and make you understand. Should the subject of discus- 
 sion happen to be a mathematical demonstration or a mat- 
 ter-of-fact problem in physics, it is more than likely that 
 there will be very little light in the eyes and very little 
 of anything else to illuminate the bare movement of the 
 thought. Something of the same effect comes to us also 
 from the printed page. The smile and the gesture of the 
 speaker are the marks of the play of personality about the 
 subject, but, as we have seen before, some subjects are 
 almost entirely impersonal. The written word cannot have 
 these same marks of personality, of individual feeling, can- 
 not so evidently show or fail to show the kindling eye, but 
 it has some distinguishing marks in that kind of its 
 own. 
 
 Words and phrases in themselves have a character. Some 
 of them carry, not meaning alone, but a body of experi- 
 ences. There is warmth in those experiences, and color and 
 life, and the reader cannot be unmindful of it. They 
 have been used in connection with things, with activities, 
 with passions to which we have been and must again be 
 responsive. It is a simple matter to speak of green pas- 
 tures, but who that has ever listened to the reading of the 
 
 35 
 
36 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Twenty-third Psalm will hear the phrase and accept it as 
 no more than a reporting of something that has been or 
 is? A line in Milton has made Vallombrosa a name to 
 stir the imagination. Mesopotamia is not simply a place 
 or a country. It is romance and beauty and earth memory. 
 Where in the civilized world to-day is there a man who 
 can read the word kaiser or king or czar without a quiver 
 of execration or loyalty or some other of the many feelings 
 that have set men at variance since the last of July, 
 nineteen hundred and fourteen? An emperor is, by the dic- 
 tionary, merely the ruler of an empire, but while the loyal 
 subjects of an emperor may see him as a symbol of power, 
 of national ideals, and of national security, to many a 
 lover of freedom he is the embodiment of more sin and 
 misery than should ever be realized in human form. 
 These associated ideas and sentiments that accompany the 
 primary meanings of some words, their connotations, as 
 they are called, are so various and so elusive, so depend- 
 ent upon the particular reader's acquaintance with a word's 
 literary and human fellowships, that they may easily be- 
 tray a writer. If the end of any writing is scientific 
 precision, the use of words that are practically without 
 connotation is the safer. A man who is demonstrating 
 that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle 
 is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides 
 must use terms that do not fluctuate. On the other hand, 
 if he were trying to convey an impression of the magnitude 
 of Niagara, he would not do that successfully by report- 
 ing, however accurately, the number of gallons of water 
 that go over the falls every minute. 
 
 29. We must look at a few words a little more closely, 
 see what their connotations are, and learn how writers 
 use them so as to flash to the reader's mind something 
 more than the cold idea. The paragraph below is taken 
 
WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS 37 
 
 from a powerful novel by Frank Norris, Vandover and the 
 Brute* a novel of college life, well worth reading by col- 
 lege students. 
 
 " He took a few turns on the upper deck, smoking his 
 pipe, walking about fast, while his dinner digested. The 
 sun went down behind the horizon in an immense blood- 
 red nebula of mist, the sea turned from gray to dull green 
 and then to a lifeless brown, and the Santa Rosa's lights 
 began to glow at her quarters and at her masthead; in 
 her stern the screw drummed and threshed monotonously, 
 a puff of warm air reeking with the smell of hot oil came 
 from the engine hatch, and in an instant Vandover saw 
 again the curved roof of the immense iron-vaulted depot, 
 the passengers on the platform staring curiously at the 
 group around the invalid's chair, the repair gang in spot- 
 ted blue overalls, and the huge white cat dozing on an 
 empty baggage truck." 
 
 Making up from this paragraph a list of words and 
 phrases that we can safely say are more than ideational, 
 we shall have the following: smoking, pipe, black horizon, 
 immense, blood-red, nebula of mist, sea, gray, dull green, 
 lifeless brown, lights, glow, quarters, masthead, drummed, 
 threshed, puff, warm air, reeking, smell, hot oil, staring, 
 gang, dozing. This list is not exhaustive, and we shall 
 pause to look at the connotative elements in only a few 
 of the words in the list. " Immense," to begin a little 
 way down the list, may seem at first sight a word express- 
 ive of size only, but if you measure its play upon the 
 mind a little more carefully you will see that this is not 
 absolute size, but size in its effect upon the feelings and 
 the imagination. A " nebula of mist " is not a fact, not 
 a certainty, but a mystery. It sets the mind groping into 
 the unknown. Here it is only a screen of clouds in front 
 1 By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co. 
 
38 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 of the setting sun, but it carries the mind out into the 
 infinities of distance where the great lights of the firmament 
 are caught in the net of the Milky Way. 
 
 How powerfully a " puff of warm air reeking " takes 
 hold upon the senses! It is heat touching the face and 
 the movement of air across the cheek and the smell of 
 something not pleasant in the nostrils. All this goes beyond 
 the simple recorded fact, because it does rouse the senses, 
 being in that very circumstance more than ideational. Ex- 
 amination of the other words in the list would in the same 
 way discover connotative values of one sort and another 
 in them all. They touch in various ways some of the 
 things that we have lived and felt. They are not abstrac- 
 tions. They do not simply define for us or put before 
 us forms of thought. There are words that do no more 
 than that, words that shut thought up within their nar- 
 row compass, that offer to the imagination no by-paths 
 into the forest, no broad highways into the peopled world. 
 A paragraph written in such language is very different 
 from this paragraph. Here is one from an editorial en- 
 titled " Our Task in Mexico " in The World's Work for 
 October, 1915, a paragraph that is written in the live fashion 
 of our present day, but that is yet not alive to the same 
 literary end and with the same literary quality as that 
 that we have just read. 
 
 " The military forces which are operating in Mexico at 
 present are not very formidable bodies. They are not 
 nearly as formidable as they were earlier in the revolu- 
 tion. Their equipment and personnel have been wasted. 
 The public support of the various factions has dwindled 
 and arms have been increasingly scarce during the last year. 
 If the worst solution is forced on us we shall have to use 
 our military forces. Their task would be to take and hold 
 the principal railroad lines in the Republic. Without these 
 
WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS 39 
 
 no organized resistance is possible, for rivers and roads are 
 of little use in Mexico. The chief struggles of the revolu- 
 tionists have been for the railroads, and Villa particularly 
 has based his military operations on the rail lines." 
 
 30. A partial list of the words here will be useful for 
 comparison. The following are some of them: military, 
 forces, operating, formidable, bodies, revolution, equipment, 
 personnel, public, support, factions, dwindled. Our lan- 
 guage is almost without absolute synonyms, but if we ask 
 ourselves what is the difference between being military 
 and being warlike, to use an approximately synonymous 
 term, we shall see that the first word has to do with the 
 machinery of war, not with its passions or its human activi- 
 ties as such. It expresses its meaning fully, and there is 
 no fringe of associations and experiences that it carries 
 along with it outside of that meaning. The word does 
 not hint at the struggle and will of personal combat, but 
 its synonym does. In absolute meaning the word warlike 
 may be narrower, but that meaning runs out into the love of 
 country, into the march of the company and the regiment, 
 men of the same blood and the same home ties shoulder 
 to shoulder, into the rattle of musketry and the clash 
 of swords and the rush of horsemen breaking through the 
 lines and filling the air with dust where the cries and 
 the groans of men rise and are smothered back into the 
 last silence. 
 
 Looking through the rest of these we shall see that 
 they are all words without any of this glamour of human 
 experiences enfolding them. They have the clear glow of 
 electric lights when the night is cloudless and the air is 
 pure. They have none of the enchantment of torches in 
 the mist. For such writing as this, which is meant to be 
 an accurate statement of things as they are, words with 
 
4O THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 little, if any, connotation are needed. It is important that 
 there shall come no confusion through varying understand- 
 ing of terms. They must be sharp and unmistakable, but 
 in writing of another sort it may be that fullness, richness, 
 imaginative expansion of the thought will be more im- 
 portant than certitude. Then there will be demanded a 
 more exuberant diction, words that have been born, not 
 in the study, but on the street and in the fields and in the 
 shops and in the talk of friends about the hearth, words 
 that keep the flavor of their origin and are sweet on the 
 tongue. 
 
 31. In this consideration of words there has been no ac- 
 count taken of their various ways of functioning in the 
 sentence. That is primarily a matter for the grammarian, 
 but there is one distinction between words as organically 
 related to other words that has some significance as affect- 
 ing style. That distinction is one between words that bring 
 concepts to the mind and others that merely serve to articu- 
 late the sentence, to bind its parts together. Prepositions 
 and conjunctions are obviously articulating words. Verbs 
 are sometimes no more than that, and in particular 
 we shall find that true of the verb " to be." Too many 
 articulating words obviously weaken a sentence, and they 
 also weaken it if placed in important positions, as at the 
 beginning or the end. In almost any writing there should 
 be no more of them than are necessary. Often a sentence 
 may be strengthened by the substitution of a verb that 
 has meaning and connotation in itself for one that is articu- 
 lating merely. " He hurried to me," for instance, is bet- 
 ter than, " He came to me quickly." 
 
 It is in poetry that faulty use and placing of articulating 
 words displays itself most conspicuously. The following 
 lines are taken disconnectedly from Dryden's " Annus Mira- 
 bilis " : 
 

 WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS 41 
 
 " Such deep designs of empire does he lay 
 
 O'er them whose cause he seems to take in hand; 
 And prudently would make them lords at sea, 
 To whom with ease he can give laws by land." 
 
 5 " Each other's poise and counterbalance are." 
 " It would in richer showers descend again." 
 " For tapers made two glaring comets rise." 
 " He first was killed who first to battle went." 
 
 " Their way-laid wealth to Norway's coast they bring ; 
 10 There first the North's cold bosom spices bore." 
 
 The first line ends in an articulating word, and, indeed, 
 the last three words of the line are either articulating 
 words or words of reference. That is, they are words 
 that do no more than show the relationships of " deep 
 designs of empire." The second line is weak in contain- 
 ing no word having more than the slightest connotation, 
 and the fourth is in about the same case. The fifth ends 
 weakly in an articulating word, and the verb of the sixth 
 is articulating, since showers always descend and we have 1 
 that much in our minds as soon as we think of them at/ 
 all. In the seventh sentence, the final word is again articu- i 
 lating, having no use beyond that of completing a predica- 
 tion grammatically without contributing to the thought. 
 The same thing may be said of the remaining three lines. ^ 
 It needs only a glance over these lines for realization of 
 their weakness and futility, and that futility is consequent 
 upon both the excess of articulating words and the faulty 
 arrangement by which they have been made prominent. 
 That will be more apparent by comparison with the fol- 
 lowing lines from " Lepanto," one of a number of remark- 
 able poems in a volume by Gilbert K. Chesterton, recently 
 published by the John Lane Company. 
 
 ^ 3 f C,-^ 1 -^X 
 
42 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 " They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn, 
 From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; 
 They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea 
 Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be ; 
 On them the sea-valves cluster and the <7r<ry sea-forests curl, 
 Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; 
 They .ra;<?// in sapphire smoke out of the &/? cracks of the ground, 
 They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound." 
 
 Here there is only one word against which serious objec- 
 tion could be raised as being conspicuous beyond its natural 
 function or as unduly weakening the writing, the little word 
 " be " at the end of the fourth line. The number of words 
 embodying concepts is very high, and the lines are conse- 
 quently strong and compelling. The words that give it 
 vitality have been printed in italics in order that their 
 comparative predominance may be the more easily realized. 
 
 32. Whimsicality and humor are no doubt in large 
 measure a thing of the subject-matter of any writing, but 
 in part, at least, they result from modes of phrasing. Evi- 
 dent over-statement or under-statement are often employed 
 to give the sense of incongruity upon which humor depends. 
 Bret Harte's stories are full of the whimsical humor that 
 is so created by the turn of a phrase or a word. The fol- 
 lowing is from Tennessee's Partner: 
 
 " At that place he was attracted by a young person who 
 waited upon table at the hotel where he took his meals. 
 One morning he said something to her which caused her 
 to smile not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a 
 plate of toast over his upturned, serious, simple face, and 
 to retreat to the kitchen. He followed her, and emerged 
 a few moments later, covered with toast and victory." 
 
 Here there is humor, in the first place, in the word 
 " coquettishly," because breaking a plate of toast over a 
 man's head, under the circumstances of life as most of us 
 live, is quite incongruous with coquetry. Again there is 
 
WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS 43 
 
 incongruity in the joining together of toast and victory, the 
 material and the immaterial, the literal and the meta- 
 phorical. There is humor of the same sort in this sen- 
 tence a little farther on in the same story. " The Judge 
 who was also his captor for a moment vaguely regretted 
 that he had not shot him ' on sight ' that morning, but 
 presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of 
 the judicial mind." In this the humor comes from the 
 disagreement between regret for not having shot a man 
 and the labeling of that regret as " human weakness. " 
 This incongruity is more striking still when we realize that 
 it is so labeled by the judge in his judicial character. 
 
 In the Century for November, 1913, Frederick Lewis 
 Allen writes : " Suddenly and without warning the netting 
 gave way completely and fell about my ears. Can you 
 imagine a worse predicament than to be pinned under so 
 much wreckage with a mosquito that you personally dis- 
 like?" Here the humor is in the final phrase, so much 
 out of agreement with the fact, so inadequate, so obviously 
 an under-statement. 
 
 33. There is one heightening of style that has, perhaps, 
 occasioned more analysis and discussion than any other, 
 the heightening that comes from imagery and figure. It is 
 not a matter of any great moment whether a figure is 
 a simile or a metaphor or a transferred epithet, but what 
 is of importance is its character and function as clarifying 
 or intensifying the writer's ideas. These two offices may 
 be combined in one figure, but primarily they are distinct 
 and different. The figure that illustrates a point merely, that 
 helps the reader to understand, that clarifies meaning, bring- 
 ing it home more surely to the intelligence, has its place 
 naturally in impersonal writing. The figure that expands 
 meaning, that makes it more alive, that brings it home to the 
 senses and the feelings as well as to the intelligence, will be 
 
44 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 employed in the other sort of writing, the personal, and 
 not in the impersonal. This difference in the character 
 and use of figures runs through all literature, and it would 
 be quite possible to make a shrewd guess at the school of 
 literary art to which any given work belongs on the show- 
 ing of a sufficient number of figures taken from it. In 
 the list below the figures in the first group are clarifying 
 figures, and those in the second group are intensifying. 
 
 GROUP I. 
 
 " Horace's wit and Virgil's state, 
 He did not steal, but emulate." 
 
 SIR JOHN DENHAM. 
 
 " Syphax, your zeal becomes importunate ; 
 I've hitherto permitted it to rave, 
 And talk at large, but learn to keep it in." 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 " They cry, This is a bad summer! as if we ever had 
 any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle 
 coal." HORACE WALPOLE. 
 
 " And hark, how loud the woods invite you forth in all 
 your gayest trim." JAMES THOMSON. 
 
 GROUP II. 
 
 " If yet he can oppose the mighty torrent 
 That bears down Rome, and all her gods, before it." 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 " The old year's dead hands are full of their dead flowers." 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 
 
 " Dawn skims the sea with flying feet of gold." 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 
 
WORDS, THEIR ASSOCIATIONS AND CONNOTATIONS 45 
 
 " In this moment which, though the violent men that 
 drove the storm could not know it, was the doom of their 
 effort, a spirit that was not wholly human disturbed the 
 nights with Tragedy ; the Terror boiled, and men approached 
 the limits where despair and vision meet. It was the last 
 clutch of the great wrestling, the moment of tottering be- 
 fore the throw. The mind of Paris lost hold of the ground ; 
 Dalua, the oldest of the gods, the spirit of Celtic madness, 
 took a part in this strain of the western fortunes, vengeance 
 and darkness entered with him also. Twisted into the same 
 whirlwind, all the heroisms and the first victories ap- 
 peared/' 
 
 Robespierre, by HILAIRE BELLoc. 1 
 
 The first figure of group one has, no doubt, a touch of 
 intensification. It is more vigorous to steal than to model 
 after or copy, but primarily the figure is a simplification 
 of the meaning. The figure makes that meaning more direct 
 and more unmistakable. The same is true of the second 
 figure. It is simpler, both in form of statement and in 
 mental processes involved in understanding, to say that 
 zeal is importunate than to say that Syphax is importunate 
 in his zeal. This way of being simpler is also a way of 
 being clearer. 
 
 The figures from Addison and Swinburne in group two 
 may be passed over as being obviously unlike those in 
 group one. The paragraph from Hilaire Belloc is more 
 striking in being so crowded with the figurative. The 
 political action that he is discussing becomes the storm 
 in his imagery, and as a storm we feel its violence the 
 more. In the same way the personification of the abstract, 
 personal, human, and social forces of the hour as a spirit 
 makes them more terrible as they " disturb the night with 
 Tragedy." So it is in the change of these struggling forces 
 to the " last clutch of the great wrestling," and so again 
 1 By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
46 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 it is in the introduction of " Dalua, the oldest of the 
 gods." 
 
 34. All through this we have figures employed for 
 intensifying the thought. Through them the writing grips 
 our imagination and our senses. We begin to create over 
 again in our own minds that vortex of human passions 
 and battling forces that was the French Revolution, and 
 it becomes, not a fact, but a fascination. This is an effect 
 of style. It is a consequence of the form given to the 
 subject-matter, and not of that subject-matter itself or its 
 arrangement. In a literary way, happy indeed is the 
 writer who has command of such a style as we have in 
 this paragraph and can use it to such effect. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that it is not always 
 well to write in a style as highly colored as this. Now 
 and then our thoughts should travel abroad in sober gray. 
 However beautiful a richer dress may be, if it is not suited 
 to the occasion, as a dress of words it is in danger of 
 becoming gush or bombast or " fine writing." " Fine 
 writing " was not thought to be in bad taste a half-century 
 ago, and there are still persons in their seventies or late 
 sixties who admire it. Speaking for the taste of the 
 present, Ernest Poole in his novel, The Harbor, tells how 
 his hero as a college freshman, doing his best to make a 
 place on the college paper, put all his " descriptive powers " 
 to use, until a fat senior editor asked sneeringly, " Fresh- 
 man, why these flowers ? " After that he dropped the 
 flowers out of his style. There is a place for flowers 
 and a place for picture hats, and perhaps a place for shoes 
 that catch the eye a block away, but it is not always wise 
 to be a blaze of color. The observer may so be the more 
 surely led to make discovery that the gold thread is only 
 the cheapest tinsel and the silk but cotton with a gloss. 
 
THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 
 
 35. EARNESTNESS, deep feeling, sincerity reveal themselves 
 in more than words. Often I have listened to an impas- 
 sioned speaker and for the moment have wondered how 
 with such sure swiftness he could master and marshal 
 such telling words into their ranks and orders and keep them 
 going on and on as if at the drum-beat of some supreme 
 call to marching hosts. Somehow under the push of strong 
 emotions, the mind works with more certitude, it more 
 readily puts aside the unrelated fact, the inharmonious 
 symbol, the discordant image, achieving a kind of stride 
 and leaving behind it everything that does not fall into 
 the regularity of that movement. Only yesterday I read of 
 some work that needed to be done quickly somewhere on 
 one of the battle-lines in Europe. The man who was direct- 
 ing the work got some pipers to play their pipes that 
 the workers might work in time with their music, and 
 so they did the work more quickly and did it with more 
 ease and pleasure. There seems to be at once an accelera- 
 tion of thought and a simplification of its processes in such 
 regularity of movement, and this at a lower level finds 
 its exemplification as a law of human action in the greater 
 efficiency of workmen doing their work to the pulse of 
 music. 
 
 The rhythms of prose are not easily analyzed. They are 
 not so apparent as in poetry, but they are none the less 
 real. Any writing that pleases must have its breathing 
 places, its pauses, properly ordered, and it must have some 
 
 47 
 
48 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 regularity in the recurrence of its accents and some smooth- 
 ness in the flow of its sounds. Part of the effectiveness 
 of parallelism is in the fact that the likeness of clause 
 to clause, of phrase to phrase, makes these phrases or 
 clauses more or less rhythmical in their succession. In 
 the following paragraph from The Wind in the Wil- 
 lows, 1 by Kenneth Grahame, the rhythmic breaks or 
 pauses, as I should read it, are indicated by slanting lines. 
 
 " ' Yes, but this time it's more serious/ / said the Rat 
 gravely. / ' He's been missing for some days now, / and 
 the Otters have hunted everywhere, high and low, / with- 
 out finding the slightest trace. / And they've asked every 
 animal, too, / for miles around, / and no one knows any- 
 thing about 'him. / 'Otter'-s evidently more anxious than 
 he'll admit. / Fgot .out of him that young Portly / hasn't 
 learnt to swim very well yet, / and I can see he's think- 
 ing of the weir. / There's a lot of water coming down 
 still, / considering the time of the year, / and the place 
 always had a fascination for the child. / And then there 
 are / well, traps and things / you know. / Otter's not 
 the fellow to be nervous / about any son of his before it's 
 time. / And now he is nervous. / When I left, he came 
 out with me / said he wanted some air, / and talked about 
 stretching his legs. / But I could see it wasn't that, / so 
 I drew him out and pumped him, / and got it all from him 
 at last. / He was going to spend the night / watching by 
 the ford. / You know the place where the old ford used 
 to be, / in by-gone days before they built the bridge ? ' " / 
 
 In this the average length of the rhythmic unit in words 
 is a fraction less than seven, and one-fourth of all the 
 units, eight out of the thirty-one, contain seven words. 
 Almost a fourth, seven, are eight words long. These are 
 fairly short units, and they are very little broken within 
 themselves. Their general effect is that of liveliness and 
 1 By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 49 
 
 animated movement. Certainly it is not the rhythmic order- 
 ing alone that gives the paragraph that quality, but that 
 is an important contributory element in the style. Very dif- 
 ferent is the effect of the rhythmic movement in the fol- 
 lowing from the chapter on Marlowe in The Age of Shake- 
 speare by Algernon Charles Swinburne : 1 
 
 11 Of The Massacre at Paris / it is impossible to- 
 judge fairly /from the garbled fragment of its genuine 
 text, / which is all that has come down to us// To Mr. 
 Collier, among numberless other obligations, / we owe the 
 discovery of a striking passage excised in the piratical edi- 
 tion / which gives us the only version extant of this un- 
 lucky play ; / and which, / it must be allowed, / contains 
 nothing of quite equal value. / This is obviously an occa- 
 sional and polemical work, / and being as it is overcharged 
 with the anti-Catholic passion of the time, / has a typical 
 quality which gives it some empirical significance and inter- 
 est. / That anti-papal ardor is indeed the only note of 
 unity in a rough and ragged chronicle / which shambles 
 and stumbles onward from the death of Queen Jeanne of 
 Navarre / to the murder of the last Valois. / It is impos- 
 sible to conjecture what it would be fruitless to affirm, / 
 that it gave a hint in the next century to Nathaniel Lee / 
 for his far superior and really admirable tragedy on the 
 same subject, / issued ninety-seven years after the death 
 of Marlowe."/ 
 
 The rhythmic units are longer in this, and that contrib- 
 utes to a much greater gravity of tone. It is much more 
 slow-moving, and the longer rhythms are themselves much 
 more broken. Its music is also richer, no doubt, richer 
 than it could be if the pauses came at shorter and more 
 uniform intervals. Too great uniformity in the length of 
 phrases in prose soon produces a sense of bareness and of 
 an unnatural aping of verse. 
 
 1 By permission of Harper & Bros. 
 
5o THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 36. " The day of his coming, / the Queen received him in 
 the Long Parlor, / dressed mostly in white, / with a little 
 black here and there. / / She stood about mid-floor, / 
 with her women, pages, and gentlemen of the household, / 
 and tried to control her excitement. / / Those who knew 
 her best, / either by opportunity or keen study, / considered 
 that she had made up her mind already. / / This was a 
 marriage, / this rrieeting of cousins : / / here in her white 
 and faint rose, / shivering like the dawn on the brink of 
 new day, / with fixed eyes and quick breath / here among 
 her maidens stood the bride. / / Appearances favored the 
 guess / which yet remained a guess. / / She had traveled 
 far and awfully ; / but had told no one, / spoken no whis- 
 pers of her journeyings since that day of shame and a 
 burning face, / when she had sent Adam Gordon to Edin- 
 burgh Castle, / heard Melvill's message, / and scared away 
 Chatelard to his dog's death. / / Not a soul knew where 
 her soul had been, / or whither it had now flown for ref- 
 uge : / / but two guessed, / and one other had an inkling / 
 the judging Italian." / / 
 
 The preceding paragraph from Maurice Hewlett's The 
 Queen's Quair* is a very beautiful bit of prose rhythm. 
 It must be borne in mind that rhythm is primarily some 
 regularity in the recurrence of units of thought. In poetry 
 of the nobler sort it is very complex. In the blank verse 
 of Shakespeare's plays we can observe at least four kinds 
 of rhythm carried along together. There is first the rhythm 
 of lines of equal length. Then there is the rhythm of 
 alternate accented syllables and unaccented syllables in each 
 line. The rhythm of the full line is also frequently broken 
 up further by a median pause, the caesura. Then there is 
 the rhythm of the thought units, which are of various 
 lengths, but which should maintain some simple ratio be- 
 tween their length and that of the line. 
 
 37. Now, prose rhythm must not be the rhythm of 
 1 By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 51 
 
 poetry. It must not be as full and pronounced, or we 
 shall feel that it is artificial, strained, false. This from 
 Hewlett is dangerously near that, but the rhythm is justi- 
 fied by the high excitement of the story here and its endur- 
 ing romance. The pauses to which attention is directed 
 by the double bars, it will be seen, are more marked than 
 the others, and they come somewhat regularly, as do the 
 others. At each one of these sharper rhythmic pauses there 
 is a more positive emphasis and falling accentuation. This 
 is particularly noticeable in the group of smaller rhythmic 
 units ending with the clause, " here among her maidens 
 stood the bride." The three phrases preceding this, with 
 their pauses, are all phrases of suspense, the suspense being 
 the more evident by reason of the rhythm, and here that 
 suspense is brought to a climax and closed. It is a prime 
 effect of rhythm that, carrying the idea forward by de- 
 tachments, as it were, it can bring these detachments to 
 a halt together at easy intervals and can let us see them 
 deploy with a show of colors. 
 
 It is a necessity of the mind that it shall have resting 
 places in any current of ideas, and if those resting places 
 come in our reading with some degree of regularity, we 
 feel that our expectation has been satisfied rather than 
 balked, and that adds materially to the pleasure of the 
 reading. At the same time, let it be said again, it must be 
 borne in mind that the rhythm of prose must not be too evi- 
 dent, it must not be too monotonous as if there were no play 
 or spontaneity in the mind of the writer, it must not be inap- 
 propriate to the mood of the particular writing. In ani- 
 mated discourse, the stops may be abrupt, while in that 
 which is more meditative, they should have less interrupt- 
 ing emphasis. In the following from Edward Hyde, Earl 
 of Clarendon, there is a slower and more quiet music, 
 made up of longer rhythmic units and given less accen- 
 
52 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 tual decisiveness in the words with which those units 
 close. 
 
 " He was superior to all those passions and affections 
 which attend vulgar minds, / and was guilty of no other 
 ambition than of knowledge, / and to be reputed a lover of 
 all good men ; / and that made him too much a contemner 
 of those arts, / which must be indulged in the transactions 
 of human affairs. / / In the last short parliament he was 
 a burgess in the house of commons ; / and, from the debates 
 which were then managed with all imaginable gravity and 
 sobriety, / he contracted such a reverence to parliaments, / 
 that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce 
 mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom ; / or that the 
 kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission of 
 them. / / And from the unhappy and unseasonable dis- 
 solution of that convention, / he harbored, it may seem, / 
 some jealousy and prejudice to the court, / to which he 
 was not before immoderately inclined ; / his father having 
 wasted a full fortune there, / in those offices and employ- 
 ments by which other men use to obtain a greater."// 
 
 38. Closely related to rhythm, since it affects our feel- 
 ing for the pause in both sentence and paragraph, is what 
 I shall call cajiencc. In the quotation from Kenneth Gra- 
 hame there is very little cadence. Each sentence comes to 
 a square stop, instead of dropping to a level of rest. 
 Sentences and paragraphs may come to a close without 
 cadence and still be good sentences and good paragraphs. 
 The effect of abruptness and sharpness which such sen- 
 tences produce may be desirable in the particular case, 
 but, for a more equable movement and for a nicer sense 
 of tranquillity and rounded completeness, sentences and 
 paragraphs should close in a cadence. The paragraph from 
 Swinburne closes so in the phrase, " issued ninety-seven 
 years after the death of Marlowe." This is so far subor- 
 dinate to the rest of the sentence that it marks the main 
 
THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 53 
 
 idea as closed, and yet it is so nearly related to what 
 has preceded as not to seem " tacked on." 
 
 In music the term " cadence " is used to indicate a suc- 
 cession of chords, a progression, that brings a musical 
 phrase, a group of phrases, a movement, or the entire 
 composition to a close. The " perfect cadence " is the 
 succession in order of the harmony on the subdominant, 
 the dominant, and the tonic of the scale. The ear recog- 
 nizes this progression as having something of finality, and 
 before the last notes have been reached the hearer knows 
 that they are soon to come. Sentences and paragraphs 
 should more or less end with this effect of having been 
 rounded out. Every moving art form, as distinct from 
 stationary forms such as pictures, statues, and works of 
 architecture, has a rise and fall. The drama goes forward 
 to a climax, and then is brought back to the level of 
 repose. It is so with the short story and the novel, 
 with the poem and the essay, with the song and the sym- 
 phony. In their degrees, it is true of the sentence and the 
 paragraph, and the writer who has not cultivated his feel- t 
 ing for the cadence to which both sentence and paragraph 
 should come, does not achieve an easy and fluent prose. 
 
 We shall not need any further extracts for the elucida- 
 tion of this matter of cadence. What we have already read 
 from Hewlett is excellently illustrative of cadence, both in 
 the sentences and in the paragraph itself. The second 
 sentence, for instance, is simply pictorial, something merely 
 held before our eyes, until the last group of words gives 
 interpretation to the picture and finality to the sentence. 
 The third sentence comes to its climax in " keen study," 
 and finds repose in " made up her mind already." From 
 what has been said of the fourth sentence in the discussion 
 of the rhythm of the paragraph, the cadence with which it 
 closes will be immediately apparent. It is worth observ- 
 
54 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 ing that the author seems to have been peculiarly con- 
 scious of this cadence, because he has marked die break 
 before it with a dash. In the final sentence he has done 
 the same thing. The climax of the paragraph is readied 
 in the last clause of the preceding sentence, " scared away 
 Chitelard to his dog's death/' This sentence has brought 
 to its height the question of the inner motives of Queen 
 Mary, and then the problem is tentatively resolved, be- 
 cause " two guessed, and one other had an inkling/' Then, 
 after the pause, we are told more conclusively who that 
 other was, and the revelation is given the higher certitude, 
 since it is "the judging Italian/' What his judgment is 
 we are not told, but the paragraph drops to a more settled 
 tone, because he does judge and because, through such judg- 
 ment, die problem of the queen's attitude must reach a 
 solution. 
 
 It will pay us to glance for a moment at the extract from 
 Le Gallierme in the second chapter. Sentence two shows 
 a clear cadence in the " happy buzz of vanity in die air," 
 whkh puts the fact of the earlier part of the sentence into 
 place, interpreting it in terms of atmosphere and social 
 tone. The third sentence ends with an obvious cadence, 
 " I was sad" The cadence of the fifth sentence and of 
 die paragraph is, " so much marble and so many million- 
 aires/' This does for the paragraph what the close of the 
 third sentence does for that Interpreting the sentence, 
 this last phrase puts upon it the final label of its ton' 
 reader feels always the need of having the question raised 
 in the sentence or the paragraph dropped to a level of rest 
 and certitude. It is never pleasant to have either sentence 
 or paragraph seem to be left hanging in the air. A 
 is therefore satisfying and generally necessary. 
 
 39. Style in prose is somewhat affected by the sounds 
 of the words, but that is a more important matter in 
 
 
THE RHYTHM OF PROSE 55 
 
 poetry. Probably few writers are conscious of the sounds 
 that mark their writing at any moment, whether liquids 
 or gutturals or explosives. Of the movement of their peri- 
 ods, however, all good writers must be more or less con- 
 scious, and a good style is hardly achieved without the 
 cultivation of some feeling for rhythm and cadence and the 
 symmetries of form that please and satisfy the ear as 
 the thing said pleases and satisfies the mind. 
 
VI 
 
 THE LIVING SPIRIT AND THE DRESS 
 
 40. ONE of the serious problems in any art is that of 
 maintaining a proper relation between form and substance. 
 This is both a matter of judgment and a matter of keep- 
 ing the power of thought and the power of expression up 
 to the same level. No writer can be truly great unless 
 he is a highly original force as a thinker and is also 
 possessed of more than ordinary command of his medium 
 of expression, language. Many men are gifted in ideas 
 and not gifted in words. They may contribute substan- 
 tially to the world's intellectual wealth, but they will not 
 create literature. Many other men are gifted in words 
 and are not gifted in ideas, and they also will not create 
 literature. They may acquire a good style, but, spending 
 themselves on trivialities, they will merely expose the bar- 
 renness of their thought and the poverty of their imagina- 
 tion. The more they heighten their styles and bring the 
 resources of language to crowd the little that they have 
 to say to the appearance of greater importance the more 
 their limitations will be evident to the discerning. Some- ' 
 thing of the mere futility of the multiplication of words 
 is to be seen in the following taken from a recent news- 
 paper : 
 
 " As though to tantalize old Sol as he was dropping 
 from earthly sight, little clouds would come and hover 
 between him and me, but by the penetrating rays which he 
 sent forth, these tormenting clouds were soon dissipated 
 
 56 
 
 
THE LIVING SPIRIT AND THE DRESS 57 
 
 and he went out of sight in all the splendor of his great- 
 ness, throwing back, as it were, a fond adieu to the parting 
 day. As if to require a gentle reverence for the giver 
 of heat and light, the zephyrs compelled ripening grain, 
 each growing stalk of corn and the blossoming meadows 
 to bow their heads in obeisance to his unsurpassed great- 
 ness." 
 
 The personification of the sun in the first sentence is 
 not real, and the fancy that the clouds tantalize " old Sol " 
 is also unreal. In some connections we might think that 
 this unreality had a humorous intention, but that is 
 clearly not the author's mood. Not being humor, it 
 can be called nothing better than fancy of a vicious sort, 
 and not imagination, as the writer presumably thought. 
 Since the sun has not become a person, we are not likely 
 to believe in the fond adieu. The gentle reverence that 
 compels the blossoming meadows to bow the head is, it 
 seems to me, quite absurd, and the whole paragraph is 
 no more than a tissue of words spun into something that 
 might be pretty, if there were any fact back of the figure, 
 if the colors were not so sure to fade as soon as you really 
 look at them. The following paragraph, also found in a 
 recent newspaper, is even worse than the paragraph we 
 have just read : 
 
 " The running of the waters, as they sing their way to 
 the sea, tells us the tale of all the years. The murmur of 
 the river is a song, gentle, sometimes sad, but oftener 
 full of joy and life, if you but listen to the full harmony 
 of its gurgling notes, as they reach the ear at a distance. 
 Lying on its grass-carpeted banks, listening intently, and 
 knowing how to interpret its message, you hear it telling 
 you all the mystery of the passing years, in a language, 
 so sweet and tender, that none but the ear of him who 
 loves the rolling of the waters can ever catch its secret 
 message, or know that it has a story all its own." 
 
58 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 It may be very pleasing to some minds to think of the 
 waters as telling " the story of all the years," but it is 
 unfortunately not true, and we cannot escape recognition 
 of that as we read. Further, the " secret message " of the 
 waters and the " story all its own " are figments of the 
 author's brain that do not find a resting-place in the mind 
 of the reader. The style of both of these paragraphs is 
 pitched so high that the falsity of the figures and the facts 
 is by that much the more distressing. 
 
 " The most miserable man I ever knew was one who 
 married a rich woman, and looked after her thousand acres 
 and made reports of her bonds and stocks. If the stocks 
 failed to pay dividends he was asked, why? And if the 
 acres had a fallow year this married man had to explain 
 to a tearful wife, an irate mother-in-law, and sundry sar- 
 castic next of kin. When he wanted funds for himself 
 he was given dole, and if he wished to invite guests 
 he had to prove them standard bred and freed from fault 
 and blemish. My friend was a Jeffersonian Democrat, and 
 longed for the Life of Simplicity, but at dinner each day 
 an awful butler in solemn black, who saw nothing and 
 everything, kept a death watch until the sweat started on 
 the poor victim's forehead and appetite vanished. If he 
 rode out it was behind horses with docked tails, and a 
 flunkey that flunked without ceasing/' 
 
 The above was also picked up from the casual literature 
 of periodical print. It is the work of a brilliant writer, 
 as the other two selections are not, but, in a different way, 
 it is over-stressed. To be sure, it has a jauntier air, is not 
 so deadly sober, and yet any emphasis beyond that which 
 is just and true creates an impression of insincerity or of 
 mental unbalance. It is important to hold the confidence 
 of readers, and that cannot be done by extravagances either 
 of statement or of form. Here is one more illustration 
 of the same fault, perhaps grosser than any of the others. 
 
THE LIVING SPIRIT AND THE DRESS 59 
 
 " The world is lousy with quacks. 
 
 " There are quacks in all professions, all trades, ^ all 
 classes, all ' movements/ There are quacks in medicine, 
 quacks in education, quacks in religion, quacks in reform, 
 quacks in literature, quacks in politics. 
 
 " And the quacks quack so loud that the honest man is 
 often unheard. 
 
 " Quacks are generally very popular because the people 
 do not know a good man when they see him, and they 
 think the quack is an honest man because he quacks so 
 zealously. Quacks ' get by ' because they advertise ; be- 
 cause they tell us cheap, pleasing lies and flatter us in our 
 weakness, bully us, and take advantage of our ignorance. 
 
 " A quack is a noisy, meddlesome demagogue, an intel- 
 lectual ' scab/ A quack is a little man trying to hold a 
 big man's job, and he fills up the vacant spaces in it with 
 wind. A quack is a public nuisance/' 
 
 The effort to say this strongly has almost turned it into 
 a scream. No quack could quack more loudly. The para- 
 graphing is deliberately planned to make each sentence 
 a separate shout. The welter of parallelism is for a like 
 purpose. The diction is seemingly as loud as the writer 
 could make it. 
 
 41. No doubt there is power of a sort in such a style. 
 It secures a kind of attention, as does the newsboy shout- 
 ing extras on the street, but it is not a way to write if 
 one wishes to retain his own self-respect as an honest man, 
 or that of his fellows. All of the paragraphs quoted in 
 this chapter, whether we call them gush or bombast or 
 " fine writing/' are indefensible in their styles according to 
 any reasonable canons of good taste. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter goes back to the first 
 sentence in the chapter. The form of any writing must 
 have due relation to the subject-matter. That does not mean 
 at all that simple things should be written in a style that 
 is dull and plain. Often the simple thing will be wonder- 
 
60 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 fully significant when it is seen in all its real relations. 
 Then all the genius of the artist may be spent in height- 
 ening the style, in arranging sentences for emphasis, in 
 choosing the most gripping words, in piling phrase upon 
 phrase, in giving it all the animation and vitality of a 
 fitting rhythmic order. Doing that with judgment is but 
 bringing all the implications of the subject out to the light. 
 It is only a simple thing that serves for the beginning 
 of the passage quoted from Le Gallienne in the second 
 chapter, but it has significance enough for the kindling of 
 the style to a remarkable richness that is yet held with 
 wonderful nicety to the mood and weight of the theme. 
 In that balance and poise of mind that keep the heat up but 
 never let it bring the steam to a pressure beyond the needs 
 of the road and the load is to be found one of the im- 
 portant secrets of good writing. 
 
 
VII 
 QUESTIONS OF USAGE 
 
 42. So far, in the discussion of style, emphasis has been 
 put upon the laws of composition as being natural and 
 inherent, rather than arbitrary. Exception must be made, 
 in part, with relation to the laws of usage. It is proper 
 to say " I saw," and grossly improper to say " I seen," 
 because language has so developed, and not because it 
 might not have developed otherwise. From the day when 
 we begin learning to talk, we all spend a great deal of time 
 acquainting ourselves with the laws of usage. It is an in- 
 tricate matter, more intricate and voluminous than we some- 
 times realize, and it is not difficult to understand why 
 some learners are often very impatient during the proc- 
 ess of learning and others refuse to carry it through. 
 Why should we say things in a prescribed fashion? What 
 difference does it make how we say things, if we make our- 
 selves understood? How far are the laws of usage valid, 
 and what is the substantial basis for them? 
 
 43. In the first place, agreeable human relationships are 
 maintained only among those who are willing to yield to 
 some sort of common modus Vivendi. Obviously such a 
 ground for fellowship must establish itself first in those 
 externals of our lives through which we most directly 
 make approach to one another, our dress, our manners, 
 our speech. The social conventions begin here, and it 
 should be borne in mind carefully that the conventions of 
 speech are not so much academic as social. Permit your- 
 self to be careless to a certain degree, and you must not 
 
 61 
 
62 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 expect to be received in society at a certain level. Be- 
 come more careless with regard to the niceties of your 
 native tongue, and, other things being equal, you drop to 
 a still lower social level. Some years ago Maurice Thomp- 
 son, writing in the Independent, said that the pronunciation 
 of the word exquisite with the accent on the second syl- 
 lable instead of on the first was enough to shut one out 
 from the company of the elect to enforced fellowship 
 with the barbarians. That is, perhaps, a somewhat severe 
 pronouncement, but certainly, while such lapses may leave 
 one at home and welcome among the parvenus of culture, 
 any large number of them will close the doors of persons 
 of the better sort against us almost universally. 
 
 No doubt social exclusion of that sort will be a mat- 
 ter of little moment to many, but the college man, or woman, 
 as far as his personal presentation of himself is concerned, 
 ought to be acceptable anywhere. As a matter of fact, 
 however, he is not necessarily so acceptable at all. I have 
 seen a college senior walking in an academic procession on 
 commencement day and chewing gum. Certainly such a col- 
 lege student's chance of being received on equal terms 
 among ladies and gentlemen is negligible. His exclusion, 
 too, is not a matter of the maintenance of artificial and 
 snobbish distinctions. The person who chews gum is offen- 
 sive to all ladies and gentlemen in whose presence he 
 carries forward that jaw-exercising activity. It is natural 
 and quite excusable that they should wish to avoid being 
 irritated by his boorishness. 
 
 As a matter of manners this is merely a somewhat 
 emphatic illustration of the principle at issue. That prin- 
 ciple is more subtly operative, perhaps, in the use of lan- 
 guage, but it is operative no less certainly. A fairly 
 conventional speech is as much a necessity of our accord 
 with social usage, and for educated people, at least, it is quite 
 
 
QUESTIONS OF USAGE 63 
 
 as important that we shall not be offensive in that way 
 as that we shall not offend by the carelessness and dis- 
 courtesy of our personal conduct. 
 
 A friend of mine tells a little story that seems in place 
 here. Starting out for the office in his automobile in the 
 morning, he very often passed a neighbor girl on her way 
 to high school. " How are you, Thekla? " was his general 
 greeting, and her invariable reply was, " Just fine." After 
 the passage of several years during which he had not met 
 her, he was in the car with his wife when he saw the girl 
 on the sidewalk in front of them. " I'll see what she'll 
 say to me now," he told his wife. " It won't be what it 
 used to be," she assured him. " Thekla's been away for 
 two years at - ," naming a New England college for 
 women. He stopped his car at the edge of the walk. 
 " How are you, Thekla? " he said. " Just fine," she drawled 
 in the fashion of her home training unconquered by her 
 college. " Hopeless," was my friend's comment as he rode 
 on in his car. 
 
 44. Whatever should be a young man's reason for going 
 to college, he probably does go either to secure for him- 
 self larger human advantages in the personal relations of 
 life or to increase his working efficiency and its rewards. 
 On the assumption that his purpose is, not the first of these, 
 but the second, it may well be asked why he should expect 
 a prospective employer of his services as a commercial 
 chemist, for instance, to have confidence in his accuracy 
 when he is grossly inaccurate in a thing so much the 
 every-day business of life as talking. Why should he think 
 that anyone might trust his conclusions as an expert in 
 social science, a thing that he has begun to study only 
 in his junior year, when he is shoddily inexpert in the 
 prime means of maintaining social relationships, a thing 
 that he has been trying to master since his second birth- 
 
64 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 day? Back of all this, too, is another question. What 
 are the antecedents of my young man with the new sheep- 
 skin? Were his formative years, the years in the home, 
 such as to encourage faith in the soundness of his intel- 
 lectual processes? Was he brought up to be thorough, 
 careful, exact, to take pride in himself and in his presen- 
 tation of himself in speech? If he is not a high-grade 
 man, he will quite certainly be slovenly in his use of lan- 
 guage, and a discerning interrogator will perhaps need 
 no more than a letter or a brief talk to make that dis- 
 covery. The world is justified in expecting the college 
 man to use language, not only with more than usual ac- 
 curacy, but also with more than usual distinction. 
 
 45. It is for these reasons that there are laws of usage 
 and that they have some binding force. How great that 
 binding force is may properly be the next question. Igno- 
 rance of them or disregard of them is generally held to 
 mark one as provincial, but what is provincialism? There 
 is so good a word on this subject under the head " The 
 Point of View" in Scribner's Magazine for May, 1915, 
 that it may serve as an excellent statement upon which to 
 rest a conclusion. 
 
 " In spite of popular usage provincialism does not con- 
 sist necessarily in living apart from a large city. The 
 name implies less an accident of position than a mental 
 bias : an exclusive satisfaction with some one particular 
 province of the universe. In this sense Broadway is as full 
 of Provincials as Rocky Ford; Regent Street as Barset- 
 shire. Yet, though the census may mark him down as the 
 inhabitant of a metropolis, the Provincial is never con- 
 scious of the variety, the cosmopolitanism which makes 
 the great city to some extent a miniature of the whole 
 world. Though he moves in the very thickest of life, 
 he is always surrounded by a self-built fortification of 
 traditions and prejudices, and nothing short of a French 
 
QUESTIONS OF USAGE 65 
 
 Revolution or a Day of Judgment can make him look over 
 his wall at anything beyond. Hence, no matter what his 
 geographical position, in spirit the Provincial always does 
 live in a village, and it is his conviction that this tiny 
 spot is the center of the universe about which the planets 
 and the constellations revolve, that here are concentrated 
 all the good things of creation, leaving for the other places 
 in the world nothing but the bad." 
 
 Now, the thing that this happily enforces is the fact that 
 there are more ways of being correct than yours or mine. 
 The important thing is that we should evince a reasonable 
 degree of acquaintance with the forms of speech of culti- 
 vated people, should show a courteous desire to conform to 
 the tone of those about us, and should exhibit some taste 
 and discrimination in the exercise of our own judgments. 
 Being tied to hard-and-fast rules beyond that, believing 
 that these rules are hard-and-fast, is being at once provin- 
 cial and absurd. Briefly, it should be said that we should 
 observe the laws of usage, but that we should also not 
 write or talk in " school-ma'am English." 
 
 46. It must be kept in mind always that language is 
 continually changing. The words fine, nice, awful, dandy, 
 for instance, have been degraded so rapidly of late that 
 they are very doubtfully of use for anyone who wishes to 
 be understood. It is almost impossible to oppose our- 
 selves to this change or any other. We can stop using 
 the words. We cannot restore them by using them cor- 
 rectly. It is so with other changes, and consequently 
 the laws of usage are not and cannot be absolute. At 
 any rate, even if they were much less changeable than 
 they are, any usage in any particular case is not neces- 
 sarily the only correct usage. I must be careful that I 
 am not condemning as provincial that which is merely eclec- 
 tic, that I am not myself provincial in my condemnation. 
 
66 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 47. In a way, the whole matter of usage is a matter 
 of form. A keen sense of form is a requisite for every 
 writer who expects to write well, but in the non-creative 
 intelligence form easily falls into formalism. Great construc- 
 tive work, whether in literature or in statesmanship or in 
 anything else worth while, is not achieved by formalists. 
 They can be no more than the echoes of those who created 
 the form to which they blindly adhere, not seeing in it 
 the beauty and the grace that first gave it life, but accept- 
 ing it simply as a thing that is and that so has the 
 authority of the established order. The genuine lover of 
 form, on the contrary, is seldom willing to believe that 
 all beautiful forms have been discovered or created. He 
 wishes always to experiment, hoping to evolve some new 
 charm, some fresh romance, some happier union of various 
 sounds, of shape and color, of thought and word. As 
 a lover of form, however, he recognizes that some things 
 are inherently ugly, that the world's judgment with re- 
 gard to them is final, and that it must be left undisturbed. 
 He feels that to say, " What do you know about that?" 
 at every, or, indeed, any unexpected turn of events is 
 inane as well as ugly, and he is not willing to let a half- 
 dozen words advertise him as lacking at once in taste 
 and intelligence. It is because it is both inane and ugly 
 that sensible people avoid slang. A part of its ugliness and 
 of its inanity is in its being hackneyed. Lord Chester- 
 field's condemnation of common proverbs is rooted in the 
 same reason. It is a social and personal reason solely, 
 not linguistic or academic. If we have nothing to say 
 for ourselves, if we cannot invent phrases of our own, we 
 may make our friends just as happy by saying nothing 
 as by repeating phrases that have become the worn coin 
 of dull and vacant minds. 
 
 Just what shall be the basis for decision in matters of 
 
QUESTIONS OF USAGE 67 
 
 usage cannot be briefly declared. You should be thoroughly 
 familiar with the dictionary, but you should not make it 
 a fetish. The writer who depends upon his knowledge of 
 the lexicon for his knowledge of the language is in a poor 
 way indeed. With that sole guidance, he is liable to all 
 sorts of mishaps. The dictionary is one of the best of 
 guides, to be sure, as far as it goes, but it cannot point 
 out all the language roads. What will you do, for instance, 
 when authorities differ? A case in point is the use of 
 " somebody's else " or " somebody else's." This is an 
 awkward question, because, whichever you use, you will 
 offend someone. Since both forms have substantial rea- 
 sons in their support, there is only one rational course 
 to pursue. Suit your own taste and let the authorities and 
 those who bother their heads about them think what they 
 please. Again, there is the case of the split infinitive. This 
 is different. The use of the infinitive that is not split 
 offends no one. The use of the split infinitive probably 
 offends the majority of cultivated readers. There is no 
 appreciable necessity for or advantage in splitting infinitives. 
 It is the simplest and most natural thing, therefore, not 
 to split infinitives and so to avoid the censure of those 
 who disapprove of them. 
 
 48. If there is any law in the wide field of the unsettled, 
 it is this law of discretion. It has its foundation in the 
 law of economy of attention. Do not let your reader raise 
 the question of your being in the wrong or not, if you can 
 help it. At the same time, do not feel that you must 
 always be correct. It is impossible for anyone to be so, 
 except as he shuts himself up within a little world where 
 he and his kind make all the rules. It will be a very 
 lonely world and an intensely provincial world in due time. 
 By and by, too, it will be a moss-grown and a decaying 
 and a depopulated world, and it will be quite useless to 
 
68 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 write in it or sing in it or make laws in it or do anything 
 else in it, because there will be no one to listen or clap 
 the hands. 
 
 49. It may be interesting to bring to mind a number of 
 forms in which a writer is free to exercise his own taste. 
 Authorities disagree in regard to them, and so it is per- 
 missible to write " first four," logically preferable, or " four 
 first/' " Dickens' " or " Dickens's," and to pronounce 
 " either " with the sound of long e or of long i. There 
 are other variant forms of which one is fairly to be held 
 as having better authority and more established use than 
 the other, although that other is not to be ruled out of court. 
 It is more acceptable to say " hadn't better " than " wouldn't 
 better," because the first has the advantage of a longer 
 usage and is more a part of the idiom of English speech. 
 
 I can remember, in my early college days, a member of 
 my literary society who found frequent occasion to pro- 
 test vigorously against the use of the expression " leave 
 the floor." His condemnation was on grounds of literal in- 
 accuracy, not on grounds of taste. He insisted that of 
 course the speaker in retiring did not take the floor with 
 him, and, as a matter of fact and experience, that seems 
 unquestionable. Nevertheless his reasoning from the fact 
 was not conclusive. Language is and should be flexible. It 
 reflects and should reflect the play of the mind, its give 
 and take, its twists and turns, as well as its arrow flight 
 to the truth. It must not be too much the instrument of 
 a hard logic or the mode of an impeccable grammatical 
 form. In general it is better, no doubt, to follow logic and 
 grammatical form in the ordering of our speech, and so, 
 for instance, it is better to say " appropriations commit- 
 tee," because such a committee has the duty of dealing 
 with appropriations, but the abstract idea involved gives 
 some warrant for the use of " appropriation committee," 
 
QUESTIONS OF USAGE 69 
 
 illogical though it is. It is better to say " It is I " than 
 " It is me," but usage has given some sanction to the 
 second form, in spite of its being ungrammatical. It is 
 better to say " as if " than " as though," because these 
 forms are followed by conditional rather than concessive 
 clauses, but usage has again given some sanction to the 
 second form. 
 
VIII 
 
 LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANS- 
 FORMATION 
 
 50. IN considering style, we are dealing with form 
 and not subject-matter. For that reason, we may ignore 
 literary invention, which is the development of ideas more 
 or less original, and give attention to such writing as has 
 its chief use and function in the organization and reshaping 
 of material to be found in books and other like sources. 
 In the form in which it is found, such material may be 
 not at all literary. It may be hardly more than a body 
 of facts that need interpretation. The first effort, then, 
 should be to find in the facts some ground for a live personal 
 interest. Any writing that is to have a good literary style 
 must be written from the standpoint of a wish to make a 
 personal interpretation of the subject. Literature is dis- 
 tinguished from writings not literary by the presence of 
 that personal attitude toward the subject on the part of 
 the writer. In one sense, a presentation of facts simply 
 as facts can have no style. The things told by a writer 
 who wishes to give his writing style must be told as 
 felt, viewed, believed, cared for by the author as having 
 a peculiar significance for him, a significance that he is 
 concerned to bring home to his readers. 
 
 The difficulty of taking material from the writings and 
 reports of others and so transforming it that it becomes 
 our own is a very serious one, but it is one that almost 
 everyone has to reckon with. Few will have call to 
 engage in the finer processes of literary creation, but skill 
 
 70 
 
LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANSFORMATION 71 
 
 in this lower form of literary craftsmanship is expected 
 of almost everyone. Let it be borne in mind, then, that 
 the first step in the process is that of making the material 
 that one must consult in books thoroughly one's own, and 
 that the next process is that of establishing in one's own 
 mind an individual understanding, an individual conclu- 
 sion and belief about the subject. For instance, was Napo- 
 leon a great man or a mean man? How does what you 
 have been able to learn about him affect you, and why 
 should someone else feel in that way about him? Let 
 the writer ask himself such questions, and soon the way 
 before him will be clear. Otherwise he may get into the 
 encyclopedia manner or the scientific manner or the chron- 
 icle manner, and then no one will care to read what he 
 has written. 
 
 51. It is one of the great virtues of our college debating 
 societies that they give students vigorous exercise in the 
 business of supporting a point of view. It is sometimes 
 rather remarkable the amount of fairly substantial reasons 
 a comparatively commonplace young man will discover in 
 defense of the proposition that an income tax is or is not 
 a very valuable bit of government machinery. There is a 
 quite simple reason for that resourcefulness. By the terms 
 of the proposition stated as an affirmation and by his ac- 
 ceptance or rejection of that affirmation, the young man 
 has put himself into definite relations to it. That clarifies 
 his thinking and gives his ideas a road to travel. 
 
 It is always a writer's first business to find what is, 
 for him, the strongest interest in a subject. He should 
 ask what in it arouses his sympathies or antipathies, and 
 why. Then he should think not so much of writing as 
 of making others have his interest and his feeling. Achiev- 
 ing that interest for himself and communicating it is, after 
 all, the whole secret of style, when one has freed himself 
 
72 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 from the difficulty of using his instrument, language. A 
 genuine enthusiasm for the subject will lessen that diffi- 
 culty very materially. The student should remember that 
 he is not writing at all when he is copying or imitating 
 the words of someone else. He has no excuse as an intel- 
 ligent human being for thinking just what some one else 
 has thought about any subject not rigorously scientific, and 
 only thinking what someone else has thought justifies the 
 use of the same language in the expression of ideas. 
 
 52. The student theme that follows illustrates very well 
 the strength that comes from concentration on a single 
 point of view. 
 
 " THE CHALLENGE 
 
 " To Florence's cunning intriguers, her thievish rogues 
 and smiling villains, her debauched and vicious revelers 
 gracing the courts of the tyrant Medici, Savonarola issued 
 a challenge a challenge thrilling against despotism, against 
 luxury, against the ' stagnation of godless and thankless 
 acquiescence.' To the very heart of sin he struck for 
 austerity and purification. His revelation of life's simplici- 
 ties to which they had long been blind startled the Floren- 
 tines from their vulgar jests and lewd pictures, their stolen 
 jewels and drugged wines, and their alluring paramours 
 yes, startled even the libertines of Florence. For to them 
 Savonarola preached that clear manliness which is as ' nec- 
 essary for happiness as for holiness/ as necessary for the 
 lover as for the saint. Clearly he called them to the 
 dignity of everyday life." 
 
 This is unified by the writer's feeling for Savonarola, 
 and it drives that feeling home. Clearly, too, it does so, 
 not simply by saying what the writer wishes to say, but 
 by saying it well. That is, it has a fitting style. The 
 following is also a student theme, but it is less suc- 
 cessful. 
 
LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANSFORMATION 73 
 
 " ToUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 
 
 " Is there much wonder that Wendell Phillips should grow 
 famous by the lecture that put this negro among the fore- 
 most of the men we should pride? He was not afraid to 
 argue that in him we find the proof of the equality, if not 
 the superiority, of the black man with the white. He put 
 the black general against the white ; people saw that the 
 negro was not the fiend of cruelty and brutality. They 
 had not known of the beautiful purity of his personal 
 life, his tenderness and kindliness. There were tears for 
 the story of his last miserable days. Perhaps when the 
 lecture was done there was less to be said of the great- 
 ness of Napoleon. Suffice it to say, that we've much thanks 
 for Mr. Phillips and a heart full of admiration for L'Ouver- 
 ture." 
 
 The faults of this paper may be gathered in part from 
 the student criticism below, given without change from 
 the student's paper. 
 
 " This theme talks as much about Phillips' lecture as it 
 does about L'Ouverture. There are many minor mistakes 
 in it. The expression ' men we should pride/ is poor. ' This 
 negro ' has no name to refer back to, L'Ouverture not 
 being mentioned until the last line. * He was not afraid 
 to argue that in him' has indefinite antecedents, but is 
 fairly clear. ' The equality, if not the superiority, of the 
 black with the white,' has a poor preposition, as one that 
 went with superiority would be better. ' Saw that the 
 negro,' has a reference general rather than specific. Fur- 
 thermore, the first half of the second sentence is not in 
 thought connected with the second, while the second part 
 of that third sentence would go pretty well with the third 
 sentence. ' We've,' should be we have, for the tone of 
 the rest of the theme. ' Much thanks/ should be many 
 thanks. ' Heart full of admiration ' would better have been 
 an emotional term following ' heart.' In all these things 
 the writer has been quite careless. The style is jagged. 
 Our wonder about Phillips' getting famous is incongruous 
 
74 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 with the fact that Phillips was not afraid to argue. There 
 is parallelism in thought in this theme, but the form is 
 poor because it does not bring out one thing, it does not 
 bring out different phases of one thing, and it does not 
 progress. The point of the paragraph, that Phillips makes 
 us admire L'Ouverture, is lost throughout the center. The 
 diction is poor in that it does not bring pictures to the 
 mind. It is abstract." 
 
 The general drift of this criticism is in the way of 
 pointing out a lack of unity in the paper. The writer has 
 not sufficiently centered attention on either L'Ouverture or 
 Phillips. One or the other must be subordinated. Either 
 one is interesting enough for a theme. Indeed, the ma- 
 terial offered by one alone is more than abundant for a 
 theme much longer than this, but the writer should not 
 attempt to exalt both of them, except as one of them shares 
 in an entirely subordinate way in the glorification of the 
 other. 
 
 53. If we look at it a little closely we shall see that 
 the question of form is, in this paper, nearly related to 
 the question of what I shall call the writer's objective. 
 In this student's theme the objective is a divided one, and 
 the style consequently is diffuse and scattered. An experi- 
 enced writer feels all the while that he is pushing toward 
 something. He has an end before him just as clearly as 
 the sculptor has before him the imagined figure that will 
 be left when he has cut away the marble. If he is as 
 deeply bent upon this objective as he should be, he is 
 impatient of anything that keeps him back from it. Every 
 word must count. There must be no turning aside, no con- 
 fusion of aims, no change of attitude either in fact or in 
 appearance. There will be complications of the subject 
 through which the discussion must be carried, but the course 
 must not be or seem circuitous. All the relationships of 
 
LITERARY MATERIAL AND ITS TRANSFORMATION 75 
 
 the ideas must be so flashed up into the light that all the 
 minor notions will seem clearly tied to the main thread 
 of thought. 
 
 Now, this mood and this spirit, this feeling for the goal, 
 this urgency toward an objective has an influence upon 
 the structure, the organization of the thought, and also upon 
 the form given it in words. In general literature has been 
 considered as being subject-matter and form. It is more 
 accurate to think of it as subject-matter, structure, and 
 style. When one is in the creative mood, looking at the 
 objective of his writing and trying to focus every word 
 and phrase upon it, these are all seen to be in a very 
 close mutual relationship. Often the thought is a part of 
 the form, either as structure or style or both, because what 
 the writer wishes to communicate is a tone as well as a 
 truth. It is the style of the writing that will be most 
 important in establishing this tone. Thought, then, is 
 itself not complete until it has been given an adequate 
 form, until it has achieved actuality in style. 
 
 54. Evidently style, good style, is not one thing, but 
 many. It must be considered always with relation to 
 thought and structure and must change with them. If the 
 thought is sharp and definite and the structure rigid, 
 the style cannot appropriately be whimsical and capricious. 
 When we are discussing a writer's style or deliberating upon 
 our own, we must not confuse it with structure or art 
 method or subject-matter, and yet we must not think of 
 it as a thing wholly independent. It is not the tissue 
 paper wrapped around the orange, but the deep gold of 
 the orange itself kept moist and sweet by the juice in- 
 side. 
 
 Some study of structure, therefore, cannot be quite omit- 
 ted in the study of style. We shall have to look a little 
 at the rigidity or looseness of structure of what we read. 
 
76 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 We shall have to ask whether the method of approach 
 to the prime idea of the writing is gradual or abrupt, 
 whether the idea is brought forward slowly as the grounds 
 for it appear or is first clearly announced and then 
 substantiated, whether the method is inductive or deductive. 
 It will sometimes be necessary to ask whether the author 
 presents his ideas by implication or by declaration, whether 
 the writing belongs to the literature of suggestion or to 
 that of full statement. It will be well to know what our 
 author's objective is, understanding that as being generally 
 something more than meaning, and to know also how he 
 brings his writing forward to that objective. Then we 
 can see the better how style plays its part in the whole, 
 bringing the reader's passions and will and intellect to 
 one full unity of realization. 
 
IX 
 
 KNOWING HOW AND GETTING THE TOUCH 
 
 55. HOWEVER well we may know how a thing should 
 be done, we can gain facility in the doing only by long 
 and intimate acquaintance of some sort with the actual 
 process of doing. We may see how others have done, 
 going over the ground after them, and we may try the 
 doing for ourselves. Practically, if we wish to carry our 
 practice of the literary art, or any other, as far as we 
 can, we should do both. That was Stevenson's way, as 
 we have seen. It was also the method of so eminently 
 practical a man as .Benjamin Franklin, as he has recorded 
 with quite sufficient clearness. In fact, it seems almost 
 self-evident that the easiest road to achievement in any 
 kind of effort is through acquaintance with the experience 
 of others. There is no doubt a great deal of drudgery 
 in following patiently the details of style in any writer. 
 So there is drudgery in mastering the technique of any 
 art. It is drudgery sitting for hours before a piano- 
 strumming dull exercises. It is drudgery doing a like thing 
 in front of an easel. It is drudgery listening to the click 
 of a telegraph key and learning to turn it into words. 
 It is impossible to do anything well without going through 
 an apprenticeship of drudgery. It is so that we acquire the 
 right touch, that we become at last sure and unfaltering, 
 that we do what we do with ease. 
 
 The writers from whom material has been taken for 
 the following pages are all of them masters of highly 
 
 77 
 
78 THE MECHANIC OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 developed styles. At the same time, ^heir_.styles_arejex- 
 tremely various. There is no such thing as a standard 
 style. There is no law for writing and writing uniformly 
 well. What is uniform and a matter of law is the relation 
 between particular ways of saying things and impres- 
 sions that things so said will convey to readers. We 
 can acquaint ourselves with these things until we work 
 through them with an almost instinctive ease, like that of 
 the player who strikes the rigHt key'witKout stopping to 
 think exactly where it is on the keyboard. Then we can 
 be ourselves in the written word, saying what we please 
 with what effect we please. The comparatively enormous 
 amount of good writing that we have to-day is probably 
 due to the familiarity with models of those trying to write, 
 undoubtedly much greater now than at any other period 
 since men began to put down their thoughts in written 
 symbols. 
 
 56. The following questions are meant to aid in the study 
 of the writings that make up the body of the book. They 
 are to be considered again and again in connection with 
 those lines, sentences, or paragraphs to which they are ap- 
 plied by the numbers that are given at the bottom of each 
 page farther on. How these numbers as so applied are 
 to be understood will readily appear from an example. 
 For instance, 4, 2O-5, 5 : n, g, k would mean that ques- 
 tions lettered n, g, and k should be answered for the lines 
 from twenty on page four to five on page five, inclusive. 
 The number immediately preceding the dash is always the 
 line number. The page number is separated from the line 
 number by a comma. When there is no change of page, the 
 page number is omitted, as also whenever it may seem 
 unnecessary. The letters following the colon indicate the 
 questions to be answered. Following some of the questions 
 there are references to the sections of the text in which 
 
KNOWING How AND GETTING THE TOUCH 79 
 
 there may be found some discussion of the subject with 
 which that question deals. 
 
 STUDY QUESTIONS 
 
 a. What are the connotative words in these sentences ? Are they 
 given positions of emphasis in the sentence? n, 12, 13, 28, 29. 
 
 b. Is there any special reason why this sentence, or paragraph, 
 should be short or long? 22, 23. 
 
 c. Where do you find parallelism? Does it emphasize one thing, 
 set off one thing against another antithetically, increase the im- 
 pression of unity, of variety in unity, or of opposition? 15, 18, 
 25, 26. 
 
 d. Is this analytical, explanatory, or emotional in its general tone ? 
 How is the sentence structure in accord with this character? 
 
 e. What is figurative here, and how is the figure good or not? 
 Is it illustrative and clarifying or intensifying and expansive, that 
 is, does it make meaning clearer, or does it make it more vivid and 
 compelling ? 33, 34. 
 
 /. Do you find climax or the opposite here? For what purpose? 
 
 g. What sentence or paragraph of transition here, or is connec- 
 tion of thought obscure ? 
 
 h. What in the employment of the concrete and particular, the 
 abstract, the simple and familiar, or the strange and suggestive do 
 you notice here? Does it heighten feeling, simplify meaning, in- 
 crease complexity of thought, stimulate attention, or strain it? 
 
 . Is this sentence loose, periodic, or balanced? To what 
 rhetorical end? 24. 
 
 j. Is the thought connection here close or abrupt? If close, does 
 it properly strengthen coherence, or strain attention by too much 
 suspense? If abrupt, does it disorganize the thought, or stimulate 
 attention ? 24, 27. 
 
 k. Has this paragraph a definite topic sentence, and do the other 
 sentences follow in logical order and with logical relation to the 
 topic sentence? 
 
 /. What word is here used in a peculiar way, or what peculiarity 
 of phrasing is there here? Would you justify it? 
 
 m. What words not formally words of connection serve here to 
 establish relation between sentences ? 27. 
 
 n. Does this paragraph, or sentence, have a proper cadence at 
 the close, or not ? 38. 
 
 o. What words are stressed here? Are they wholly connotative 
 words, or are there verbals among them, articulating words, and 
 other words of less importance? 
 
8o THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 p. What do you notice in the predication here? How does the 
 effect justify it or not? 
 
 q. What repetition or apposition, or what multiplication of words 
 do you find here? What is the effect, verbosity, or strength, or 
 emphasis ? 
 
 r. What inversion or transposition is there here, and what is the 
 effect? 
 
 s. What that is either harmonious or inharmonious in idea, 
 sound, or turn of phrase do you find here? What is the effect? 
 
 t. What play upon sound do you find here, and how does it 
 harmonize with or accentuate the meaning? 38. 
 
 u. Indicate the rhythmic breaks through this. Do they give a 
 regular or irregular movement to the writing? How sharply ac- 
 centuated are they, and do they heighten or lessen emphasis? Is 
 the movement slow or rapid? 35, 36, 37. 
 
 v. How is the movement of thought within the sentence here, or 
 from sentence to sentence, logically progressive, formally gram- 
 matical, or emotionally associative and reiterant? Is there in the 
 sentence structure or ordering of the words any management of 
 emphasis in agreement with this? 20-27. 
 
 w. What use of terms or turn of phrase here is whimsical or 
 humorous or indicative of some other spirit not in the direct move- 
 ment of the thought? 32. 
 
 x. What here, in phrasing or ordering of words, gives emphasis 
 and point to the writing, and what is emphasized? Is the emphasis 
 that of animation and movement, of deliberation and weight, or of 
 something between these qualities? Is it cumulative or antithetical? 
 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22. 
 
 The preceding questions are for use in the detailed 
 study of the style of the various writers whose work ap- 
 pears, by example, in the following pages. For the study 
 of the selections as a whole, other questions are provided 
 below. It will be seen that they ask for some conclusions 
 and generalizations regarding the styles of the writers, in 
 addition to the study of the organization of the selections. 
 At the discretion of the instructor, they should be answered, 
 all or part of them, with relation to each of the selections 
 studied, as indicated by the numbers following each selec- 
 tion. 
 
KNOWING How AND GETTING THE TOUCH 81 
 
 GENERAL QUESTIONS ON STRUCTURE 
 
 1. What is the objective in this writing? 53. 
 
 2. At what point does the general idea of the writing first appear? 
 
 3. Are there subordinate ideas upon which the main idea depends ? 
 If so, what are they, and are they brought forward before or after 
 the main statement? 
 
 4. Write sentences expressing the principal thought of each 
 paragraph, one sentence for each, and show, through these sen- 
 tences, how there is or is not a progressive development of the 
 thought. 
 
 5. Determine whether there are any paragraphs or portions of 
 paragraphs that seem in any way not sufficiently related to the 
 main idea, indicating them. 
 
 6. Is the organization of the essay loose and wandering, or firm 
 and rigid? 
 
 7. Would you say that this writing, in general tone and method 
 of treatment, is preponderantly personal or impersonal? 
 
 8. Determine the number of connotative words, of articulating 
 words, and of verbals in the total of words that are important 
 or that are stressed on any given page. (Different pages should 
 be assigned different members of the class and the average of their 
 results taken.) Does the result indicate, as far as it goes, that 
 the style is characterized the more by imaginative appeal, by inten- 
 sity and energy of statement, by movement and action, or by the 
 absence of emotional qualities? Compare with your results for 
 other writers. 
 
 9. How is the style of this writing marked by a close relation 
 of sentences or by abruptness of transitions? How does that affect 
 the movement of thought and its appeal to your interests? 
 
 10. How are your answers to questions eight and nine in agree- 
 ment or disagreement with your answers to questions six and 
 seven ? 
 
 11. What qualities of style do you find in this, and how are they 
 resultant from the diction, the arrangement of sentences, clauses, 
 and phrases, the length and the character of sentences, the degree 
 of independence, subordination, or other connection between sen- 
 tences? For the convenience of the student there is given below 
 a list of terms that may be applied to style, nouns as of qualities 
 that style may possess, and adjectives as of qualities defining it. 
 
 Nouns: strength, energy, force, clearness, animation, harmony, 
 liveliness, emphasis, ease, abandon, rhythm, dignity, euphony. 
 
 Adjectives : graphic, abstract, specific, concrete, exact, imagina- 
 tive, bald, abrupt, fanciful, humorous, whimsical, capricious, mas- 
 sive, heavy, insistent, elegant, artificial, forced, high-flown, clear, 
 
82 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 natural, intimate, cold, hard, gentle, close-knit, sweeping, nervous, 
 equable. 
 
 12. How does this writer's style seem adapted to your own uses 
 and so a style that it would be profitable for you to cultivate or 
 not? Give your reasons. 
 
 13. How is the subject-matter of this, in its first intention, 
 matter-of-fact, analytical, expository, or argumentative, or is it 
 not? If it has this more or less impersonal character, show how 
 the author has, or has not, found a point of view and achieved a 
 literary method and style by which its personal and human char- 
 acter has been heightened. Does the style have distinction or not? 
 If so, how? 
 
 14. Is the style of this selection marked the more by logical 
 coherence, care for accuracy of statement, rapidity of movement, 
 vividness of details, independence in the presentation of those de- 
 tails, or care in subordinating* and correlating them? How is that 
 seen in the length of sentences, the connection between sentences, 
 the use of loose or periodic sentences, or the arrangement of words 
 in the sentence for emphasis? 20-27. 
 
PART II 
 TEXTS 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 1554-1586 
 
 THE STORY OF ARGALUS AND PARTHENIA 
 From "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" 
 
 " MY Lord," said he, " when our good king Basilius, with 
 better success than expectation, took to wife (even in his 
 more than decaying years) the fair young princess Gynecia, 
 there came with her a young lord, cousin german to her- 
 self, named Argalus, led hither partly by the love and 5 
 honor of his noble kinswoman, partly with the humor of 
 youth, which ever thinks that good, whose goodness he sees 
 not. And in this court he received so good an increase of 
 knowledge, that after some years spent, he so manifested 
 a virtuous mind in all his actions, that Arcadia gloried 10 
 such a plant was transported unto them, being a gentleman 
 indeed most rarely accomplished, excellently learned, but 
 without all vain glory; friendly without facetiousness ; 
 valiant, so as for my part I think the earth hath no man 
 that hath done more heroical acts than he. My master's 15 
 son Clitophon being a young gentleman as of great birth 
 so truly of good nature and one that can see good and 
 love it, haunted more the company of this worthy Argalus, 
 than of any other. About two years since, it so fell out 
 that he brought him to a great lady's house,, sister to my 20 
 master, who had with her her only daughter, the fair 
 Parthenia, fair indeed (fame, I think, itself not daring to 
 
 5-8 : c, q. 8-15 : c, i, j. 19-86, 5 : 1, o. 
 85 
 
86 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 call any fairer, if it be not Helena, Queen of Corinth, 
 and the two incomparable sisters of Arcadia) and that 
 which made her fairness much the fairer was, that it was 
 but a fair ambassador of a most fair mind, full of wit, and a 
 5 wit which delighted more to judge itself than to show itself : 
 her speech being as rare, as precious; her silence without 
 fullness ; her modesty without affectation ; her shamefaced- 
 ness without ignorance : in sum, one that to praise well one 
 must first set down with himself what it is to be excellent : 
 
 10 for so she is. 
 
 " I think you think that all these perfections meeting 
 could not choose but find one another, and delight in what 
 they found ; for likeness of manners is likely in reason 
 to draw likeness of affection; men's actions do not always 
 
 15 cross with reason : to be short, it did so indeed. They 
 loved, although for a while the fire thereof (hope's wings 
 being cut off) were blown by the bellows of despair upon 
 this occasion. 
 
 " There had been a good while before, and so continued, 
 
 20 a suitor to this same lady, a great noble man, though of 
 Laconia, yet near neighbor to Parthenia's mother, named 
 Demagoras ; a man mighty in riches and power, and proud 
 thereof, stubbornly stout, loving nobody but himself, and, 
 for his own delight's sake, Parthenia: and pursuing vehe- 
 
 25 mently his desire, his riches had so gilded over his other 
 imperfections that the old lady had given her consent; 
 and using a mother's authority upon her fair daughter had 
 made her yield thereunto, not because she liked her choice, 
 but because her obedient mind had .not yet taken upon it 
 
 30 to make choice. And the day of their assurance drew near, 
 when my young Lord Clitophon brought this noble Argalus, 
 perchance principally to see so rare a sight, as Parthenia 
 by all well- judging eyes was judged. 
 
 6-io:c, i. u-is:e,l. 15-18 : e. 22-24: c. 24-28 : c, i. 29-33:3,0. 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 87 
 
 " But though few days were before the time of assur- 
 ance appointed, yet love, that saw he had a great journey 
 to make in short time, hasted so himself that before her 
 word could tie her to Demagoras, her heart had vowed her 
 to Argalus with so grateful a receipt of mutual affection 5 
 that if she desired above all things to have Argalus, 
 Argalus feared nothing but to miss Parthenia. And now 
 Parthenia had learned both liking and misliking, loving 
 and loathing ; and out of passion began ,to take the authority 
 of judgment; insomuch that when the time came that De- 10 
 magoras (full of proud joy) thought to receive the gift of 
 herself; she, with words of refusal (though with tears 
 showing she was sorry she must refuse) assured her mother 
 that she would first be bedded in her grave than wedded 
 to Demagoras. The change was no more strange than 15 
 unpleasant to the mother, who being determinately (lest 
 I should say of a great lady, willfully) bent to marry her 
 to Demagoras, tried all ways, which a witty and hard- 
 hearted mother could use upon so humble a daughter in 
 whom the only resisting power was love. But the more 20 
 she assaulted, the more she taught Parthenia to defend ; and 
 the more Parthenia defended, the more she made her 
 mother obstinate in the assault: who at length finding that 
 Argalus standing between them, was it that most eclipsed 
 her affection from shining on Demagoras, she sought all 25 
 means to remove him, so much the more as he manifested 
 himself an unremovable suitor to her daughter: first by 
 employing him in as many dangerous enterprises as ever 
 the evil step-mother Juno recommended to the famous 
 Hercules: but the more his virtue was tried, the more 30 
 pure it grew, while all the things she did to overthrow 
 him, did set him up upon the height of honor; enough 
 to have moved her heart, especially to a man every way 
 
 i-3 : i, e. 3-5 : i. 5-7 : i. 7-9 : o. 9-10 : o. 10-15 : i, g. 20-23 : c. 27-32 : e. 
 
88 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 so worthy as Argalus; but struggling against all reason, 
 because she would have her will, and shew her authority 
 in matching her with Demagoras, the more virtuous Argalus 
 was the more she hated him, thinking herself conquered 
 5 in his conquests, and therefore still employing him in more 
 and more dangerous attempts: in the meanwhile she used 
 all the extremities possible upon her fair daughter to make 
 her give over herself to her direction. But it was hard 
 to judge whether he in doing, or she in suffering, shewed 
 
 10 greater constancy of affection : for, as to Argalus the world 
 sooner wanted occasion than he valor to go through them: 
 so to Parthenia malice sooner ceased than her unchanged 
 patience. Lastly, by treason Demagoras and she would 
 have made way with Argalus, but he with providence and 
 
 15 courage so past over all that the mother took such a spite- 
 ful grief at it that her heart brake withal, and she died. 
 " But then Demagoras assuring himself that now Par- 
 thenia was her own she would never be his, and receiving 
 as much by her own determinate answer, not more desiring 
 
 20 his own happiness, than envying Argalus, whom he saw 
 with narrow eyes, even ready to enjoy the perfection of 
 his desires, strengthening his conceit with all the mis- 
 chievous counsels which disdained love and envious pride 
 could give unto him, the wicked wretch (taking a time that 
 
 25 Argalus was gone to his country to fetch some of his prin- 
 cipal friends to honor the marriage which Parthenia had 
 most joyfully consented unto) the wicked Demagoras, I 
 say, desiring to speak with her, with unmerciful force 
 (her weak arms in vain resisting) rubbed all over her face 
 
 30 a most horrible poison : the effect whereof was such, that 
 never leper looked more ugly than she did : which done, 
 having his men and horses ready, departed away in spite 
 of her servants, as ready to revenge as could be, in such 
 
 3-6 : i, o. 10-13:0. 17-22:0. 17-33 : j, i. 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 89 
 
 an unexpected mischief. But the abominableness of this 
 fact being come to my Lord Kalander, he made such means, 
 both by our king's intercession and his own, that by the 
 king and senate of Lacedaemon, Demagoras was, upon 
 pain of death, banished the country : who hating the punish- 5 
 ment, where he should have hated the fault, joined him- 
 self, with all the power he could make, unto the Helots, 
 lately in rebellion against that state : and they (glad to have 
 a man of such authority among them) made him their 
 general, and under him have committed divers the most out- 10 
 rageous villanies that a base multitude (full of desperate 
 revenge) can imagine. 
 
 " But within a while after this pitiful fact committed upon 
 Parthenia, Argalus returned (poor Gentleman) having her 
 fair image in his heart, and already promising his eyes the 15 
 uttermost of his felicity when they (nobody else daring to 
 tell it him) were the first messengers to themselves of their 
 own misfortune. I mean not to move passion with telling 
 you the grief of both, when he knew her, for at first he 
 did not ; nor at first knowledge could possibly have virtue's 20 
 aid so ready, as not even weakly to lament the loss of 
 such a jewel, so much the more, as that skillful men in 
 that art assured it was unrecoverable: but within a while, 
 truth of love (which still held the first face in his memory) 
 a virtuous constancy, and even a delight to be constant, 25 
 faith given, and inward worthiness shining through the 
 foulest mists, took so full hold of the noble Argalus, that 
 not only in such comfort which witty arguments may bestow 
 upon adversity, but even with the most abundant kind- 
 ness that an eye-ravished lover can express, he labored 30 
 both to drive the extremity of sorrow from her, and to 
 hasten the celebration of their marriage: whereunto he 
 shewed himself no less cheerfully earnest than if she had 
 
 5-6 : o. 13-18 : e. 18-90, 5 ' J, v. 
 
90 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 never been disinherited of that goodly portion which nature 
 had so liberally bequeathed unto her, and for that cause 
 deferred his intended revenge upon Demagoras, because he 
 might continually be in her presence, shewing more humble 
 5 serviceableness and joy to content her than ever before. 
 
 " But as she gave this rare example, not to be hoped 
 for of any other, but of another Argalus, so of the other 
 side, she took as strange a course in affection: for where 
 she desired to enjoy him more than to live yet did she over- 
 
 10 throw both her own desire and his, and in no sort would 
 yield to marry him : with a strange encounter of love's 
 affects and effects; that he by an affection sprung from 
 her excessive beauty should delight in horrible foulness; 
 and she of a vehement desire to have him should kindly 
 
 15 build a resolution never to have him; for truth it is, that 
 so in heart she loved him, as she could find in her heart 
 he should be tied to what was unworthy of his presence. 
 
 " Truly, Sir, a very good orator might have a fair 
 field to use eloquence in, if he did but only repeat the 
 
 20 lamentable, and truly affectionate speeches, while he con- 
 jured her by the remembrance of her affection, and true 
 oaths of his own affection, not to make him so unhappy, 
 as to think he had not only lost her face, but her heart; 
 that her face, when it was fairest, had been but a marshal to 
 
 25 lodge the love of her in his mind, which now was so well 
 placed that it needed no further help of any outward har- 
 binger; beseeching her, even with tears, to know that his 
 love was not so superficial as to go no further than the skin, 
 which yet now to him was most fair since it was hers : how 
 
 30 could he be so ungrateful as to love her the less for that 
 
 which she had only received for his sake; that he never 
 
 beheld it, but therein he saw the loveliness of her love 
 
 towards him ; protesting unto her that he would never take 
 
 6-1 1 : u. 11-17:!, v. 18-27 : u, e. 31-91,2:0,!. 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 91 
 
 joy of his life if he might not enjoy her, for whom prin- 
 cipally he was glad he had life. But (as I heard by one 
 that overheard them) she (wringing him by the hand) made 
 no other answer but this : ' My Lord/ said she, ' God 
 knows I love you ; if I were a princess of the whole world, 5 
 and had withal, all the blessings that ever the world brought 
 forth, I should not make delay to lay myself and them 
 under your feet; or if I had continued but as I was, 
 though (I must confess) far unworthy of you, yet would 
 I (with too great a joy for my heart now to think of) 10 
 have accepted your vouchsafing me to be yours, and with 
 faith and obedience would have supplied all other defects. 
 But first let me be much more miserable than I am e'er 
 I match such an Argalus to such a Parthenia. Live 
 happy, dear Argalus, I give you full liberty, and I beseech 15 
 you to take it; and I assure you I shall rejoice (whatso- 
 ever becomes of me) to see you so coupled, as may be both 
 fit for your honor and satisfaction/ With that she burst 
 out crying and weeping, not able longer to control herself 
 from blaming her fortune, and wishing her own death. 20 
 
 " But Argalus, with a most heavy heart still pursuing 
 his desire, she fixed of mind to avoid further entreaty, and 
 to fly all company which (even of him) grew unpleasant 
 to her, one night she stole away; but whither as yet it is 
 unknown or indeed what is become of her." 25 
 
 2-4:!. 13, 14:!. 21-25 :c. 
 
 7,9, n, 12, 13, I4. 1 
 1 See pages 80-82. 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 
 1785-1859 
 
 LEVANA AND OUR LADY OF SORROWS 
 
 OFTENTIMES at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. 
 I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? 
 Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very much 
 scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. 
 
 5 Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the 
 newborn infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness 
 typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which belongs to 
 man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible, 
 which even in Pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain 
 
 10 it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted 
 for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, 
 it was laid on the ground. That might bear different inter- 
 pretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should 
 grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal 
 
 15 hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kins- 
 man, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look 
 erect as the king of all this world, and presented its 
 forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart " Be- 
 hold what is greater than yourselves ! " This symbolic act 
 
 20 represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious 
 lady, who never revealed her face (except to me in dreams), 
 but always acted by delegation, had her name from the 
 Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, to raise 
 aloft. 
 
 i-io:e, g. 12-24:11, h, i. 
 92 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 93 
 
 This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has 
 arisen that some people have understood by Levana the 
 tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. 
 She, that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative 
 or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could 5 
 be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the 
 non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over 
 human education. Now, the word educo, with the penulti- 
 mate short, was derived (by a process often exemplified 
 in the crystallization of languages) from the word educo, 10 
 with the penultimate long. Whatsoever educes or develops 
 educates. By the education of Levana, therefore, is meant 
 not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books 
 and grammars, but that mighty system of central forces 
 hidden in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion, 15 
 by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance, 
 works for ever upon children resting not day or night, 
 any more than the mighty wheel of day and night them- 
 selves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are glimmer- 
 ing for ever as they revolve. 20 
 
 If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana works, 
 how profoundly must she reverence the agencies of grief! 
 But you, reader, think that children generally are not 
 liable to grief such as mine. There are two senses in the 
 word generally the sense of Euclid where it means uni- 25 
 versally (or in the whole extent of the genus), and a foolish 
 sense of this world where it means usually. Now I am 
 far from saying that children universally are capable of 
 grief like mine. But there are more than you ever heard 
 of, who die of grief in this island of ours. I will tell 30 
 you a common case. The rules of Eton require that a 
 boy on the Foundation should be there twelve years : he 
 is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come 
 
 1-12 : u, h, i. 12-20 : c, h. 
 
94 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at 
 that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. 
 The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; 
 but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has 
 
 5 killed more than ever have been counted amongst its 
 martyrs. 
 
 Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the 
 powers that shake man's heart: therefore it is that she 
 dotes upon grief. " These ladies," said I softly to myself, 
 
 10 on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing, 
 " these are the Sorrows ; and they are three in number, 
 as the Graces are three, who dress man's life with beauty; 
 the Parcae are three, who weave the dark arras of man's 
 life in their mysterious loom always with colors sad in 
 
 15 part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black ; 
 the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called 
 from the other side of the grave offenses that walk upon 
 this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit 
 the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens 
 
 20 of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, 
 all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; 
 but in Oxford I said " one of whom I know, and the 
 others too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent 
 youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background 
 
 25 of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful 
 
 sisters. These sisters by what name shall we call them? 
 
 If I say simply " The Sorrows," there will be a chance 
 
 of mistaking the term ; it might be understood of individual 
 
 sorrow separate cases of sorrow, whereas I want a term 
 
 30 expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves 
 
 in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I wish 
 
 to have these abstractions presented as impersonations, 
 
 that is, as clothed with human attributes of life, and with 
 
 7-26 : c, h, f, u. 27-95, 3 : hi bi e. 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 95 
 
 functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore, 
 Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have 
 walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, 
 of one mysterious household; and their paths are wide 
 apart; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I 5 
 saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about 
 myself. Do they talk, then ? Oh, no ! Mighty phantoms 
 like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may 
 utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell 
 in human hearts, but amongst themselves is no voice nor 10 
 sound eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They 
 spoke not as they talked with Levana. They whispered 
 not. They sang not. Though oftentimes methought they 
 might have sung; for I upon earth had heard their mys- 
 teries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel, by dul- 15 
 cimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they are, 
 they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or 
 by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven by changes 
 on earth by pulses in secret rivers heraldries painted 
 on darkness and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of 20 
 the brain. They wheeled in mazes; / spelled the steps. 
 They telegraphed from afar; / read the signals. They 
 conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my 
 eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols, mine are 
 the words. 25 
 
 What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do? 
 Let me describe their form, and their presence; if form 
 it were that still fluctuated in its outline ; or presence it 
 were that for ever advanced to the front, or for ever 
 receded amongst shades. 30 
 
 The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, 
 Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves 
 and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in 
 3-16 : c, o, r. 16-25 : c, o. 31-96, 7 : c, f, n. 
 
96 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Rama, when a voice was heard of lamentation Rachel 
 weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. 
 She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when 
 Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the 
 
 5 little feet were stiffened for ever, which, heard at times 
 as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love 
 in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. 
 
 Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy by turns ; 
 oftentimes rising to the clouds; oftentimes challenging the 
 
 10 heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I 
 knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon 
 the winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the 
 thundering of organs and when she beheld the mustering 
 of summer clouds. This sister, the elder, it is that car- 
 
 15 ries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every 
 cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sate all 
 last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that 
 so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, 
 eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the 
 
 20 temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day 
 long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this 
 did God send her a great reward. In the spring-time of 
 the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, 
 He recalled her to Himself. But her blind father mourns 
 
 25 for ever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little 
 guiding hand is locked within his own ; and still he wakens 
 to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper 
 darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting 
 all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the 
 
 30 Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) 
 that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind 
 her a darkness not less profound. By the power of her 
 keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly in- 
 
 8- 1 6 : h, u. 16-24 : b, r. 24-97, 5 : c, o. 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 97 
 
 truder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, 
 sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to 
 Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her 
 house, and has the widest empire, let us honor with the title 
 of " Madonna." 5 
 
 The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our 
 Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks 
 abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her 
 eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor 
 subtle; no man could read their story; they would be 10 
 found rilled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of 
 forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes ; her head, 
 on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever; for 
 ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. 
 But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, 15 
 is oftentimes stormy and frantic; raging in the highest 
 against heaven; and demanding back her darlings. But 
 Our Lady of Sighs never clamors, never defies, dreams 
 not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abject- 
 ness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hope- 20 
 less. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper 
 she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she 
 does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate 
 as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has 
 gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the 25 
 Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in Medi- 
 terranean galleys, of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, 
 blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far- 
 off England, of the baffled penitent reverting his eye for 
 ever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar 30 
 overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which 
 altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards par- 
 don that he might implore, or towards reparation that he 
 
 6-20 : c, b, m. 20-98, i : c, h, m. 
 
98 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to 
 the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one 
 hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a step- 
 mother, as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our 
 5 general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered; 
 every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shelter 
 her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the 
 heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy 
 affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, 
 
 10 having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly 
 to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients; 
 every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by 
 wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive 
 in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all that are 
 
 15 rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of 
 hereditary disgrace all these walk with Our Lady of 
 Sighs. .She also carries a key ; but she needs it little. For 
 her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the 
 houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest 
 
 20 ranks of man she finds chapels of her own ; and even in 
 glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry 
 their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly 
 have received her mark upon their foreheads. 
 
 But the third sister, who is also the youngest Hush! 
 
 25 whisper, whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not 
 large, or else no flesh should live ; but within that king- 
 dom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of 
 Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops 
 not; and her eyes rising so high, might be hidden by dis- 
 
 30 tance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden ; 
 
 through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the 
 
 fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins 
 
 or for vespers for noon of day or noon of night for 
 
 1-17:0, h,e (cf. 86, 11-18). 30-99, 15:6, h,v. 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 99 
 
 ebbing or for flowing tide may be read from the very 
 ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother 
 of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the 
 roots of her power ; but narrow is the nation that she rules. 
 For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature 5 
 has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the 
 heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of 
 tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna 
 moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with 
 tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and 10 
 stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable 
 motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries 
 no key ; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms 
 all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And 
 her name is Mater Tenebrarum Our Lady of Darkness. 15 
 
 These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime Goddesses 
 these were the Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies (so called 
 by antiquity in shuddering propitiation) of my Oxford 
 dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious 
 hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our Lady 20 
 of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated out of the signs 
 which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this: 
 
 " Lo ! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my 
 altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him 
 I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I 'stole away 25 
 his young heart to mine. Through me did he become 
 idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, 
 that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy 
 grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its dark- 
 ness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I 30 
 have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs ! Do 
 thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our 
 dreadful sister. And thou " turning to the Mater Tene- 
 23-100, 13:0, e, h,v. 
 
ioo THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 brarum, she said " wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, 
 do thou take him from her. See that thy scepter lie heavy 
 on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit 
 near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope 
 
 5 wither the relentings of love scorch the fountains of tears : 
 curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be ac- 
 complished in the furnace so shall he see the things that 
 ought not to be seen sights that are abominable, and 
 secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, 
 
 10 sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise 
 again before he dies. And so shall our commission be 
 accomplished which from God we had to plague his heart 
 until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." 
 
 1,6,7,8,9, ii, 12, 13, 14. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 1795-1881 
 
 THE OPERA * 
 
 (Dear P., Not having anything of my own which I could con- 
 tribute (as is my wish and duty) to this pious Adventure of yours, 
 and not being able in these busy days to get anything ready, I 
 decide to offer you a bit of an Excerpt from that singular Con- 
 spectus of England, lately written, not yet printed, by Professor 
 Ezechiel Peasemeal, a distinguished American friend of mine. Dr. 
 Peasemeal will excuse my printing it here. His Conspectus, a 
 work of some extent, has already been crowned by the Phi Beta 
 Kappa Society of Buncombe, which includes, as you know, the 
 chief thinkers of the New World; and it will probably be printed 
 entire in their " Transactions " one day. Meanwhile let your 
 readers have the first taste of it; and much good may it do them 
 and you! T. C.) 
 
 Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, 
 nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be 
 so divine. It brings us near to the Infinite; we look for 
 moments, across the cloudy elements, into the eternal Sea 
 of Light, when song leads and inspires us. Serious nations, 5 
 all nations that can still listen to the mandate of Nature, 
 have prized song and music as the highest; as a vehicle 
 for worship, for prophecy, and for whatsoever in them was 
 divine. Their singer was a vales, admitted to the council 
 of the universe, friend of the gods, and choicest benefactor 10 
 to man. 
 
 1 Keepsake for 1852. The " dear P." there, I recollect, was 
 my old friend Procter (Barry Cornwall); and his "pious Adven- 
 ture" had reference to that same publication, under touching 
 human circumstances which had lately arisen. 
 
 i-n : q, f, n. 
 101 
 
IO2 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 % ir was actually so in Greek, in Roman, in Mos- 
 lem, Christian, most of all in Old-Hebrew times : and if 
 you look how it now is, you will find a change that should 
 astonish you. Good Heavens, from a Psalm of Asaph to 
 5 a seat at the London Opera in the Haymarket, what a 
 road have men traveled ! The waste that is made in music 
 is probably among the saddest of all our squanderings 
 of God's gifts. Music has, for a long time past, been 
 avowedly mad, divorced from sense and the reality of things ; 
 
 10 and runs about now as an open Bedlamite, for a good 
 many generations back, bragging that she has nothing to 
 do with sense and reality, but with fiction and delirium 
 only; and stares with unaffected amazement, not able to 
 suppress an elegant burst of witty laughter, at my sug- 
 
 15 gesting the old fact to her. 
 
 Fact nevertheless it is, forgotten, and fallen ridiculous 
 as it may be. Tyrtaeus, who had a little music, did not 
 sing Barbers of Seville, but the need of beating back one's 
 country's enemies; a most true song, to which the hearts 
 
 20 of men did burst responsive into fiery melody, followed 
 by fiery strokes before long. Sophocles also sang, and 
 showed in grand dramatic rhythm and melody, not a fable 
 but a fact, the best he could interpret it; the judgments 
 of Eternal Destiny upon the erring sons of men. Aeschy- 
 
 25 lus, Sophocles, all noble poets were priests as well ; and 
 sang the truest (which was also tjie divinest) they had 
 been privileged to discover here below. To " sing the praise 
 of God," that, you will find, if you can interpret old words, 
 and see what new things they mean, was always, and will 
 
 30 always be, the business of the singer. He who forsakes 
 that business, and, wasting our divinest gifts, sings the praise 
 of Chaos, what shall we say of him! 
 
 David, King of Judah, a soul inspired by divine music 
 1-9 : a, o. 10-15 : c, r. 16-24 : q, r, o. 24-32 : o, q. 33-103, 12 : c, q, r, o. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 103 
 
 and much other heroism, was wont to pour himself in 
 song; he, with seer's eye and heart, discerned the God- 
 like amid the Human; struck tones that were an echo 
 of the sphere-harmonies, and are still felt to be such. 
 Reader, art thou one of a thousand, able still to read 5 
 a Psalm of David, and catch some echo of it through the 
 old dim centuries; feeling far off, in thy own heart, 
 what it once was to other hearts made as thine? To 
 sing it attempt not, for it is impossible in this late time; 
 only know that it once was sung. Then go to the opera, 10 
 and hear, with unspeakable reflections, what things men 
 now sing! 
 
 Of the Haymarket Opera, my account, in fine, is this. 
 Lusters, candelabras, painting, gilding at discretion; a hall 15 
 as of the Caliph Alraschid, or him that commanded the 
 slaves of the Lamp; a hall as if fitted-up by the genii, re- 
 gardless of expense. Upholstery, and the outlay of human 
 capital, could do no more. Artists, too, as they are called, 
 have been got together from the ends of the world, re- 20 
 gardless likewise of expense, to do dancing and singing, 
 some of them even geniuses in their craft. One singer 
 in particular, called Coletti or some such name, seemed 
 to me, by the cast of his face, by the tones of his voice, 
 by his general bearing, so far as I could read it, to be 25 
 a man of deep and ardent sensibilities, of delicate intui- 
 tions, just sympathies; originally an almost poetic soul, 
 or man of genius, as we term it ; stamped by Nature as 
 capable of far other work than squalling here, like a blind 
 Samson, to make the Philistines sport! 30 
 
 Nay, all of them had aptitudes, perhaps of a distinguished 
 kind; and must, by their own and other people's labor, 
 have got a training equal or superior in toilsomeness, 
 14-22 : q, r. 22-30 : c, f, n. 31-104, 25 : , v (cf. 96, 8-97, 5). 
 
IO4 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 earnest assiduity, and patient travail, to what breeds men 
 to the most arduous trades. I speak not of kings, grandees, 
 or the like show-figures; but few soldiers, judges, men of 
 letters, can have had such pains taken with them. The 
 5 very ballet-girls, with their muslin saucers round them, 
 were perhaps little short of miraculous; whirling and 
 spinning there in strange mad vortexes, and then suddenly 
 fixing themselves motionless, each upon her left or right 
 great toe, with the other leg stretched out at an angle of 
 
 10 ninety degrees, as if you had suddenly pricked into the 
 floor, by one of their points, a pair, or rather a multitudinous 
 cohort, of mad, restlessly jumping and clipping scissors, 
 and so bidden them rest, with opened blades, and stand still, 
 in the Devil's name! A truly notable motion; marvelous, 
 
 15 almost miraculous, were not the people there so used to it. 
 Motion peculiar to the Opera; perhaps the ugliest, and 
 surely one of the most difficult, ever taught a female crea- 
 ture in this world. Nature abhors it; but art does at least 
 admit it to border on the impossible. One little Cerito, or 
 
 20 Taglioni the Second, that night when I was there, went 
 bounding from the floor as if she had been made of Indian- 
 rubber, or filled with hydrogen gas, and inclined by posi- 
 tive levity to bolt through the ceiling; perhaps neither 
 Semiramis nor Catherine the Second had bred herself so 
 
 25 carefully. 
 
 Such talent, and such martyrdom of training, gathered 
 from the four winds, was now here, to do its feat and be 
 paid for it. Regardless of expense, indeed! The purse of 
 Fortunatus seemed to have opened itself, and the divine art 
 
 30 of Musical Sound and Rhythmic Motion was welcomed with 
 
 an explosion of all the magnificences which the other arts, 
 
 fine and coarse, could achieve. For you are to think of 
 
 some Rossini or Bellini in the rear of it, too ; to say nothing 
 
 4-14 : i. 26-28 : e. 28-105, 4 c > *> * 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 105 
 
 of the Stanfields, and hosts of scene-painters, machinists, 
 engineers, enterprisers ; fit to have taken Gibraltar, written 
 the History of England, or reduced Ireland into Industrial 
 Regiments, had they so set their minds to it! 
 
 Alas, and of all these notable or noticeable human tal- 5 
 ents, and excellent perseverances and energies, backed by 
 mountains of wealth, and led by the divine art of Music and 
 Rhythm vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to 
 be the issue here this evening? An hour's amusement, not 
 amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to a high-dizened 10 
 select populace of male and female persons, who seemed to 
 me not much worth amusing! Could anyone have pealed 
 into their hearts once, one true thought, and glimpse of Self- 
 vision : " High-dizened, most expensive persons, Aristocracy 
 so-called, or Best of the World, beware, beware what proofs 15 
 you are giving here of betterness and bestness ! " And then 
 the salutary pang of conscience in reply : " A select populace, 
 with money in its purse, and drilled a little by the posture- 
 master : good Heavens ! if that were what, here and every- 
 where in God's Creation, I am? And a world all dying 20 
 because I am, and show myself to be, and to have long 
 been, even that? John, the carriage, the carriage; swift! 
 Let me go home in silence, to reflection, perhaps to sack- 
 cloth and ashes ! " This, and not amusement, would have 
 profited those high-dizened persons. 25 
 
 Amusement, at any rate, they did not get from Euterpe 
 and Melpomene. These two Muses, sent for regardless of 
 expense, I could see, were but the vehicle of a kind of service 
 which I judged to be Paphian rather. Young beauties of 
 both sexes used their opera glasses, you could notice, not 30 
 entirely for looking at the stage. And, it must be owned, 
 the light, in this explosion of all the upholsteries, and the 
 human fine arts and coarse, was magical ; and made your 
 5-16 : 1. 16-25 : o (cf. 85, 19-86, 5). 26-31 : w. 
 
io6 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 fair one an Armida, if you liked her better so. Nay, cer- 
 tain old Improper- Females (of quality), in their rouge and 
 jewels, even these looked some reminiscence of enchant- 
 ment; and I saw this and the other lean domestic Dandy, 
 5 with icy smile on his old worn face ; this and the other 
 Marquis Chatabagues, Prince Mahogany, or the like foreign 
 Dignitary, tripping into the boxes of said females, grinning 
 there awhile, with dyed mustachios and macassar-oil graci- 
 osity, and then tripping out again; and, in fact, I per- 
 
 10 ceived that Coletti and Cerito and the Rhythmic Arts were 
 a mere accompaniment here. 
 
 Wonderful to see; and sad, if you had eyes! Do but 
 think of it. Cleopatra threw pearls into her drink, in mere 
 waste; which was reckoned foolish of her. But here had 
 
 15 the Modern Aristocracy of men brought the divinest of its 
 Arts, heavenly Music itself ; and, piling all the upholsteries 
 and ingenuities that other human art could do, had lighted 
 them into a bonfire to illuminate an hour's flirtation of 
 Chatabagues, Mahogany, and these improper persons! 
 
 20 Never in Nature had I seen such waste before. O Coletti, 
 you whose inborn melody, once of kindred, as I judged, to 
 " the Melodies Eternal," might have valiantly weeded-out 
 this and the other false thing from the ways of men, and 
 made a bit of God's Creation more melodious they have 
 
 25 purchased you away from that ; chained you to the wheel of 
 Prince Mahogany's chariot, and here you make sport for a 
 macassar Chatabagues and his improper-females past the 
 prime of life! Wretched spiritual Nigger, oh, if you had 
 some genius, and were not a born Nigger with mere appe- 
 
 30 tite for pumpkin, should you have endured such a lot ? I 
 
 lament for you beyond all other expenses. Other expenses 
 
 are light ; you are the Cleopatra's pearl that should not have 
 
 been flung into Mahogany's claret-cup. And Rossini, too, 
 
 i-n:I, c, q. 12-20: q. 20-33 : q, o. 33~IO7, 9 : h, o, q. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 107 
 
 and Mozart and Bellini Oh, Heavens ! when I think that 
 Music too is condemned to be mad, and to burn herself, to 
 this end, on such a funeral pile your celestial Opera-house 
 grows dark and infernal to me ! Behind its glitter stalks the 
 shadow of Eternal Death ; through it too, I look not " up into 5 
 the divine eye," as Richter has it, " but down into the bot- 
 tomless eye-socket not up towards God, Heaven, and the 
 Throne of Truth, but too truly down towards Falsity, Va- 
 cuity, and the dwelling-place of Everlasting Despair. ..." 
 
 Good sirs, surely I by no means expect the Opera will 10 
 abolish itself this year or the next. But if you ask me, Why 
 heroes are not born now, why heroisms are not done now? 
 I will answer you : It is a world all calculated for strangling 
 of heroisms. At every ingress into life, the genius of the 
 world lies in wait for heroisms, and by seduction or com- 15 
 pulsion unweariedly does its utmost to pervert them or ex- 
 tinguish them. Yes; to its Hells of sweating tailors, dis- 
 tressed needlewomen and the like, this Opera of yours is the 
 appropriate Heaven ! Of a truth, if you will read a Psalm 
 of Asaph till you understand it, and then come hither and 20 
 hear the Rossini-and-Coletti Psalm, you will find the ages 
 have altered a good deal. . . . 
 
 Nor do I wish all men to become Psalmist Asaphs and 
 fanatic Hebrews. Far other is my wish; far other, and 
 wider, is now my notion of this Universe. Populations of 25 
 stern faces, stern as any Hebrew, but capable withal of 
 bursting into inextinguishable laughter on occasion : do 
 you understand that new and better form of character? 
 Laughter also, if it come from the heart, is a heavenly thing. 
 But, at least and lowest, I would have you a Population ab- 30 
 horring phantasms ; abhorring unveracity in all things ; and 
 in your " amusements," which are voluntary and not com- 
 pulsory things, abhorring it most impatiently of all. 
 
 10-22: q. 23-33 :q. 
 i 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, n, 12, 13, 14. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 1800-1859 
 
 JOHN BUN VAN l 
 
 THIS is an eminently beautiful and splendid edition of 
 a book which well deserves all that the printer and the en- 
 graver can do for it. The Life of Bunyan is, of course, not 
 a performance which can add much to the literary reputa- 
 5 tion of such a writer as Mr. Southey. But it is written in 
 excellent English, and, for the most part, in an excellent 
 spirit. Mr. Southey propounds, we need not say, many 
 opinions from which we altogether dissent ; and his attempts 
 to excuse the odious persecution to which Bunyan was sub- 
 
 10 jected have sometimes moved our indignation. But we will 
 avoid this topic. We are at present much more inclined to 
 join in paying homage to the genius of a great man than to 
 engage in a controversy concerning Church-government and 
 toleration. 
 
 15 We must not pass without notice the engravings with 
 which this volume is decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's 
 woodcuts are admirably designed and executed. Mr. Mar- 
 tin's illustrations do not please us quite so well. His Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death is not that Valley of the Shadow of 
 
 20 Death which Bunyan imagined. At all events, it is not that 
 dark and horrible glen which has from childhood been in 
 our mind's eye. The valley is a cavern : the quagmire is a 
 
 J "The Pilgrim's Progress, with a Life of John Bunyan." By 
 ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq., LL.D., Poet-Laureate. 8vo. London, 1830. 
 
 1 5-22: a. 20-22 : e. 22-109, 2 : h. 
 
 108 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 109 
 
 lake : the straight path runs zigzag : and Christian appears 
 like a speck in the darkness of the immense vault. We 
 miss, too, those hideous forms which make so striking a 
 part of the description of Bunyan, and which Salvator Rosa 
 would have loved to draw. It is with unfeigned diffidence 5 
 that we pronounce judgment on any question relating to 
 the art of painting. But it appears to us that Mr. Martin 
 has not of late been fortunate in his choice of subjects. He 
 should never have attempted to illustrate the " Paradise 
 Lost." There can be no two manners more directly opposed 10 
 to each other than the manner of his painting and the 
 manner of Milton's poetry. Those things which are mere 
 accessories in the descriptions become the principal objects 
 in the pictures ; and those figures which are most prominent 
 in the descriptions can be detected in the pictures only by 15 
 a very close scrutiny. Mr. Martin has succeeded perfectly 
 in representing the pillars and candelabras of Pandae- 
 monium. But he has forgotten that Milton's Pandae- 
 monium is merely the background to Satan. In the picture, 
 the Archangel is scarcely visible amidst the endless colon- 20 
 nades of his infernal palace. Milton's Paradise, again, is 
 merely the background to his Adam and Eve. But in Mr. 
 Martin's picture the landscape is everything. Adam, Eve, 
 and Raphael, attract much less notice than the lake and the 
 mountains, the gigantic flowers, and the giraffes which feed 25 
 upon them. We read that James II sat to Verelst, the 
 great flower-painter. When the performance was finished, 
 his majesty appeared in the midst of a bower of sun- 
 flowers and tulips, which completely drew away all atten- 
 tion from the central figure. All who looked at the portrait 30 
 took it for a flower-piece. Mr. Martin, we think, intro- 
 duces his immeasurable spaces, his innumerable multitudes, 
 his gorgeous prodigies of architecture and landscape, almost 
 
 2-19 : c. 19-110, 2 : c, h (cf. 97, 21-98, 17). 
 
no THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 as unseasonably as Verelst introduced his flower-pots and 
 nosegays. If Mr. Martin were to paint Lear in the storm, 
 we suspect that the blazing sky, the sheets of rain, the 
 swollen torrents, and the tossing forest would draw away 
 
 5 all attention from the agonies of the insulted king and 
 father. If he were to paint the death of Lear, the old man 
 asking the by-standers to undo his button, would be thrown 
 into the shade by a vast blaze of pavilions, standards, 
 armor, and heralds' coats. Mr. Martin would illustrate 
 
 10 the " Orlando Furioso " well, the " Orlando Innamorato " 
 still better, the " Arabian Nights " best of all. Fairy palaces 
 and gardens, porticoes of agate, and groves flowering with 
 emeralds and rubies, inhabited by people for whom nobody 
 cares, these are his proper domain. He would succeed 
 
 15 admirably in the enchanted ground of Alcina, or the man- 
 sion of Aladdin. But he should avoid Milton and Bunyan. 
 The characteristic peculiarity of " The Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress " is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses 
 a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the 
 
 20 fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many 
 thousands with tears. There are some good allegories in 
 Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit by Addison. 
 In these performances there is, perhaps, as much wit and 
 ingenuity as in " The Pilgrim's Progress." But the pleasure 
 
 25 which is produced by the Vision of Mirza, the Vision of 
 Theodore, the genealogy of Wit, or the contest between Rest 
 and Labor, is exactly similar to the pleasure which we 
 derive from one of Cowley's odes or from a canto of 
 " Hudibras." It is a pleasure which belongs wholly to the 
 
 30 understanding, and in which the feelings have no part 
 
 whatever. Nay, even Spenser himself, though assuredly 
 
 one of the greatest poets that ever lived, could not succeed 
 
 in the attempt to make allegory interesting. It was in 
 
 2-16 : c, h, f, n. 108, 15-110, 16 : b. 17-22 : o, c. 23-111, 6 : c, d, f. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY in 
 
 vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House 
 of Pride and the House of Temperance. One unpardon- 
 able fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of 
 the " Fairy Queen." We become sick of Cardinal Virtues 
 and Deadly Sins, and long for the society of plain men and 5 
 women. Of the persons who read the first canto, not one in 
 ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a 
 hundred perseveres to the end of the poem. Very few and 
 very weary are those who are in at the death of the Blatant 
 Beast. If the last six books, which are said to have been 10 
 destroyed in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether 
 any heart less stout than that of a commentator would 
 have held out to the end. 
 
 It is not so with " The Pilgrim's Progress." That won- 
 derful book, while it obtains admiration from the most TS 
 fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to 
 admire it. Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, 
 and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an 
 exception in favor of " The Pilgrim's Progress." That work 
 was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. 20 
 It was by no common merit that the illiterate sectary ex- 
 tracted praise like this from the most pedantic of critics 
 and the most bigoted of Tories. In the wildest parts of 
 Scotland "The Pilgrim's Progress" is the delight of the 
 peasantry. In every nursery " The Pilgrim's Progress " is 25 
 a greater favorite than " Jack the Giant-killer." Every 
 reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he 
 knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward 
 a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, 
 that things which are not should be as though they were, 30 
 that the imaginations of one mind should become the per- 
 sonal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker 
 has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting- 
 6-13 : n. 14-26 : c, b. 29-33 : o, r. 33-114* *7 : c, h (cf. 107, i- 9 ). 
 
H2 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 place, no turn-stile, with which we are not perfectly ac- 
 quainted. The wicket gate, and the desolate swamp which 
 separates it from the City of Destruction, the long line of 
 road, as straight as a rule can make it, the Interpreter's 
 5 house, and all its fair shows, the prisoner in the iron cage, 
 the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, 
 and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all 
 in gold, the cross and the sepulcher, the steep hill and the 
 pleasant arbor, the stately front of the House Beautiful by 
 
 10 the wayside, the chained lions crouching in the porch, the 
 low, green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and cov- 
 ered with flocks, all are as well known to us as the sights 
 of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place 
 where Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of 
 
 15 the way, to stop the journey of Christian, and where after- 
 wards the pillar was set up to testify how bravely the pil- 
 grim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley 
 becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipices 
 on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather 
 
 20 overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, and the 
 rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the 
 darkness. The way, hardly discernible in gloom, runs close 
 by the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its 
 flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes, to terrify 
 
 25 the adventurer. Thence he goes on, amidst the snares and 
 pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have per- 
 ished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long 
 dark valley he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt, 
 amidst the bones of those whom they had slain. 
 
 30 Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, 
 
 till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the 
 
 traveler; and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable 
 
 multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and 
 
 17-20 : b. 22-29 : i, n. m, 14-112, 29 : b. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 113 
 
 the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are 
 Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and 
 Britain Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and 
 loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth. 
 
 Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and 5 
 through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant 
 river which is bordered on both sides by fruit-trees. On 
 the left side branches off the path leading to the horrible 
 castle, the court-yard of which is paved with the skulls of 
 pilgrims ; and right onward are the sheepfolds and orchards 10 
 of the Delectable Mountains. 
 
 From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through 
 the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here 
 and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green 
 arbor. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the 15 
 flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, 
 and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are 
 plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on 
 the other side of that black and cold river over which there 
 is no bridge. 20 
 
 All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross 
 or overtake the pilgrims, giants, and hobgoblins, ill-favored 
 ones and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy Madam 
 Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers 
 playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, 25 
 Mr. Worldly Wiseman and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talk- 
 ative and Mrs. Timorous, all are actually existing beings 
 to us. We follow the travelers through their allegorical 
 progress with interest not inferior to that with which we 
 follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans 30 
 from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only 
 writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the 
 concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors, men 
 5-1 1 :b. 12-20 :i,c. 21-28 : c, a. 31-114, 7: c,b,j. 
 
H4 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 are mere personifications. We have not a jealous man, 
 but jealousy, not a traitor, but perfidy, not a patriot, but 
 patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was 
 so imaginative that personifications, when he dealt with 
 5 them, became men. A dialogue between two qualities, in 
 his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue be- 
 tween two human beings in most plays. In this respect 
 the genius of Bunyan bore a great resemblance to that of 
 a man who had very little else in common with him, Percy 
 
 10 Bysshe Shelley. The strong imagination of Shelley made 
 him an idolater in his own despite. Out of the most indefi- 
 nite terms of a hard, cold, dark, metaphysical system, he 
 made a gorgeous Pantheon, full of beautiful, majestic, and 
 life-like forms. He turned atheism itself into a mythology, 
 
 15 rich with visions as glorious as the gods that live in the 
 marble of Phidias, or the virgin saints that smile on us 
 from the canvas of Murillo. The Spirit of Beauty, the 
 Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, when he treated 
 of them, ceased to be abstractions. They took shape and 
 
 20 color. They were no longer mere words ; but " intelligible 
 forms"; "fair humanities"; objects of love, of adoration, 
 or of fear. As there can be no stronger sign of a mind 
 destitute of the poetical faculty than that tendency which 
 was so common among the writers of the French school to 
 
 25 turn images into abstractions, Venus, for example, into 
 Love, Minerva into Wisdom, Mars into War, and Bacchus 
 into Festivity, so there can be no stronger sign of a mind 
 truly poetical than a disposition to reverse this abstracting 
 process, and to make individuals out of generalities. Some 
 
 30 of the metaphysical and ethical theories of Shelley were 
 
 certainly most absurd and pernicious. But we doubt 
 
 whether any modern poet has possessed in an equal degree 
 
 some of the highest qualities of the great ancient masters, 
 
 7-10 : x. 10, n:b. 11-22:), c. 22-29 : i. 
 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 115 
 
 The words bard and inspiration, which seem so cold and 
 affected when applied to other modern writers, have a per- 
 fect propriety when applied to him. He was not an author, 
 but a bard. His poetry seems not to have been an art, but 
 an inspiration. Had he lived to the full age of man, he 5 
 might not improbably have given to the world some great 
 work of the very highest rank in design and execution. But, 
 alas! 
 
 6 &6jvi( efta j)6ov lithvae diva 
 rbv Mwacuf 0t/lov avdpa, rbv ov JXvpQaiaiv arrexQij. IO 
 
 But we must return to Bunyan. " The Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress " undoubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types 
 are often inconsistent with each other; and sometimes the 
 allegorical disguise is altogether thrown off. The river, for 
 example, is emblematic of death ; and we are told that every 15 
 human being must pass through the river. But Faithful 
 does not pass through it. He is martyred, not in shadow, 
 but in reality, at Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian 
 about Esau's birthright and about his own convictions of 
 sin as Bunyan might have talked with one of his own con- 20 
 gregation. The damsels at the House Beautiful catechize 
 Christiana's boys, as any good ladies might catechize any 
 boys at a Sunday School. But we do not believe that any 
 man, whatever might be his genius, and whatever his good 
 luck, could long continue a figurative history without falling 25 
 into many inconsistencies. We are sure that inconsistencies, 
 scarcely less gross than the worst into which Bunyan has 
 fallen, may be found in the shortest and most elaborate 
 allegories of the Spectator and the Rambler. The " Tale of 
 a Tub " and the " History of John Bull " swarm with similar 30 
 errors, if the name of error can be properly applied to that 
 which is unavoidable. It is not easy to make a simile go on 
 all-fours. But we believe that no human ingenuity could 
 3-5: c,b. 11-23 :b,j. 29-116,4:0. 
 
n6 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 produce such a centipede as a long allegory in which the 
 correspondence between the outward sign and the thing sig- 
 nified should be exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, 
 ancient or modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The 
 5 best thing, on the whole, that an allegorist can do, is to 
 present to his readers a succession of analogies, each of 
 which may separately be striking and happy, without looking 
 very nicely to see whether they harmonize with each other. 
 This Bunyan has done ; and, though a minute scrutiny may 
 
 10 detect inconsistencies in every page of his Tale, the general 
 effect which the Tale produces on all persons, learned and 
 unlearned, proves that he has done well. The passages 
 which it is most difficult to defend are those in which he 
 altogether drops the allegory, and puts in the mouth of 
 
 15 his pilgrims religious ejaculations and disquisitions, better 
 suited to his own pulpit at Bedford or Reading than to the 
 Enchanted Ground or to the Interpreter's Garden. Yet even 
 these passages, though we will not undertake to defend 
 them against the objections of critics, we feel that we could 
 
 20 ill spare. We feel that the story owes much of its charm 
 to these occasional glimpses of solemn and affecting sub- 
 jects, which will not be hidden, which force themselves 
 through the veil, and appear before us in their native aspect. 
 The effect is not unlike that which is said to have been pro- 
 
 25 duced on the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were 
 seen flaming through his mask, and giving life and expres- 
 sion to what would else have been an inanimate and unin- 
 teresting disguise. 
 
 It is very amusing and very instructive to compare " The 
 
 30 Pilgrim's Progress " with the " Grace Abounding." The 
 latter work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces of 
 autobiography in the world. It is a full and open con- 
 fession of the fancies which passed through the mind of 
 
 17-28 : r, n, o (cf. 106, 20-107, 9 ) 29-117, 6 : c, g. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 117 
 
 an illiterate man, whose affections were warm, whose 
 nerves were irritable, whose imagination was ungovernable, 
 and who was under the influence of the strongest religious 
 excitement. In whatever age Bunyan had lived, the history 
 of his feelings would, in all probability, have been very 5 
 curious. But the time in which his lot was cast was the time 
 of a great stirring of the human mind. A tremendous burst 
 of public feeling, produced by the tyranny of the hierarchy, 
 menaced the old ecclesiastical institutions with destruction. 
 To the gloomy regularity of one intolerant Church had sue- 10 
 ceeded the license of innumerable sects, drunk with the 
 sweet and heady must of their new liberty. Fanaticism, 
 engendered by persecution, and destined to engender per- 
 secution in turn, spread rapidly through society. Even the 
 strongest and most commanding minds were not proof 15 
 against this strange taint. Any time might have produced 
 George Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone 
 belong the frantic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, 
 and the hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell. 
 
 The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excitable 20 
 mind in an age of excitement. By most of his biographers 
 he has been treated with gross injustice. They have under- 
 stood in a popular sense all those strong terms of self- 
 condemnation which he employed in a theological sense. 
 They have, therefore, represented him as an abandoned 25 
 wretch, reclaimed by means almost miraculous, or, to use 
 their favorite metaphor, " as a brand plucked from the 
 burning." Mr. Ivimey calls him the depraved Bunyan and 
 the wicked Tinker of Elstow. Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to 
 have been too familiar with the bitter accusations which the 30 
 most pious people are in the habit of bringing against them- 
 selves, to understand literally all the strong expressions 
 which are to be found in the " Grace Abounding." It is quite 
 6-19 : f, n, c. 20-28 : d. 
 
n8 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 clear, as Mr. Southey most justly remarks, that Bunyan 
 never was a vicious man. He married very early; and 
 he solemnly declares that he was strictly faithful to his wife. 
 He does not appear to have been a drunkard. He owns, 
 5 indeed, that, when a boy, he never spoke without an oath. 
 But a single admonition cured him of this bad habit for 
 life; and the cure must have been wrought early; for at 
 eighteen he was in the army of the Parliament ; and, if he 
 had carried the vice of profaneness into that service, he 
 
 10 would doubtless have received something more than an ad- 
 monition from Sergeant Bind-their-kings-in-chains, or Cap- 
 tain Hew-Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord. Bell-ringing and 
 playing at hockey on Sundays seem to have been the worst 
 vices of this depraved tinker. They would have passed for 
 
 15 virtues with Archbishop Laud. It is quite clear that, from 
 a very early age, Bunyan was a man of strict life and of 
 a tender conscience. " He had been/' says Mr. Southey, 
 " a blackguard." Even this we think too hard a censure. 
 Bunyan was not, we admit, so fine a gentleman as Lord 
 
 20 Digby ; but he was a blackguard no otherwise than as every 
 laboring man that ever lived has been a blackguard. In- 
 deed, Mr. Southey acknowledges this. " Such he might 
 have been expected to be by his birth, breeding, and voca- 
 tion. Scarcely, indeed, by possibility, could he have been 
 
 25 otherwise." A man whose manners and sentiments are de- 
 cidedly below those of his class deserves to be called a 
 blackguard. But it is surely unfair to apply so strong a 
 word of reproach to one who is only what the great mass 
 of every community must inevitably be. 
 
 30 Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has de- 
 scribed with so much power of language prove, not that he 
 was a worse man than his neighbors, but that his mind was 
 constantly occupied by religious considerations, that his 
 
 2-12 : c. 117, 20-118, 29 : k, j, f, n. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 119 
 
 fervor exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagination ex- 
 ercised despotic power over his body and mind. He heard 
 voices from heaven. He saw strange visions of distant hills, 
 pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable Mountains. From 
 those abodes he was shut out, and placed in a dark and hor- 5 
 rible wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, 
 striving to make his way into the happy region of light. At 
 one time he was seized with an inclination to work miracles. 
 At another time he thought himself actually possessed by 
 the devil. He could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. 10 
 He felt his infernal enemy pulling at his clothes behind 
 him. He spurned with his feet and struck with his hands 
 at the destroyer. Sometimes he was tempted to sell his part 
 in the salvation of mankind. Sometimes a violent impulse 
 urged him to start up from his food, to fall on his knees, 15 
 and to break forth into prayer. At length he fancied that 
 he had committed the unpardonable sin. His agony con- 
 vulsed his robust frame. He was, he says, as if his breast- 
 bone would split; and this he took for a sign that he was 
 destined to burst asunder like Judas. The agitation of his 20 
 nerves made all his movements tremulous; and this trem- 
 bling, he supposed, was a visible mark of his reprobation, 
 like that which had been set on Cain. At one time, indeed, 
 an encouraging voice seemed to rush in at the window, like 
 the noise of wind, but very pleasant, and commanded, as he 25 
 says, a great calm in his soul. At another time, a word of 
 comfort " was spoke loud unto him ; it showed a great word ; 
 it seemed to be writ in great letters/' But these intervals 
 of ease were short. His state, during two years and a half, 
 was generally the most horrible that the human mind can 30 
 imagine. " I walked," says he, with his own peculiar elo- 
 quence, " to a neighboring town ; and sat down upon a settle 
 in the street, and fell into a very deep pause about the most 
 118, 30-119, 20: c, b. 
 
120 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 fearful state my sin had brought me to; and, after long 
 musing, I lifted up my head ; but methought I saw as if the 
 sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light ; 
 and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the 
 5 houses, did band themselves against me. Methought that 
 they all combined together to banish me out of the world. 
 I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, 
 because I had sinned against the Saviour. Oh, how happy 
 now was every creature over I ! for they stood fast, and kept 
 
 10 their station. But I was gone and lost." Scarcely any mad- 
 house could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or 
 of misery so acute. 
 
 It was through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, over- 
 hung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding with blas- 
 
 15 phemy and lamentation, and passing amidst quagmires, 
 snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth of hell, that 
 Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruitful land of 
 Beulah, in which he sojourned during the latter period of 
 his pilgrimage. The only trace which his cruel sufferings 
 
 20 and temptations seem to have left behind them was an affec- 
 tionate compassion for those who were still in the state in 
 which he had once been. Religion has scarcely ever worn a 
 form so calm and soothing as in his allegory. The feeling 
 which predominates through the whole book is a feeling 
 
 25 of tenderness for weak, timid, and harassed minds. The 
 character of Mr. Fearing, of Mr. Feeblemind, of Mr. De- 
 spondency and his daughter Miss Much-afraid, the account 
 of poor Littlefaith who was robbed by the three thieves 
 of his spending money, the description of Christian's terror 
 
 30 in the dungeons of Giant Despair and in his passage through 
 the river, all clearly show how strong a sympathy Bunyan 
 felt, after his own mind had become clear and cheerful, for 
 persons afflicted with religious melancholy. 
 
 13-23 : a, c, o. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 121 
 
 Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, admits 
 that, if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appearance than 
 in Bunyan's works, it would never have become a term of 
 reproach. In fact, those works of Bunyan with which we 
 are acquainted are by no means more Calvinistic than the 5 
 articles and homilies of the Church of England. The mod- 
 eration of his opinions on the subject of predestination gave 
 offense to some zealous persons. We have seen an absurd 
 allegory, the heroine of which is named Hephzibah, written 
 by some raving supralapsarian preacher who was dissatis- 10 
 fied with the mild theology of " The Pilgrim's Progress." 
 In this foolish book, if we recollect rightly, the Interpreter 
 is called the Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle 
 Strength. Mr. Southey tells us that the Catholics had also 
 their " Pilgrim's Progress," without a Giant Pope, in which 15 
 the Interpreter is the Director, and the House Beautiful 
 Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof of the power 
 of Bunyan's genius, that two religious parties, both of which 
 regarded his opinions as heterodox, should have had re- 
 course to him for assistance. 20 
 
 There are, we think, some characters and scenes in " The 
 Pilgrim's Progress," which can be fully comprehended and 
 enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the 
 times through which Bunyan lived. The character of Mr. 
 Greatheart, the guide, is an example. His fighting is, of 25 
 course, allegorical ; but the allegory is not strictly preserved. 
 He delivers a sermon on imputed righteousness to his com- 
 panions; and, soon after, he gives battle to Giant Grim, 
 who had taken upon him to back the lions. He expounds 
 the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the household and 30 
 guests of Gaius ; and then he sallies out to attack Slaygood, 
 who was of the nature of flesh-eaters, in his den. These 
 are inconsistencies ; but they are inconsistencies which add, 
 1-20 : j. 27-122, 8 : c, n. 
 
122 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 we think, to the interest of the narrative. We have not 
 the least doubt that Bunyan had in view some stout old 
 Greatheart of Naseby and Worcester, who prayed with his 
 men before he drilled them, who knew the spiritual state 
 
 5 of every dragoon in his troop, and who, with the praises of 
 God in his mouth, and a two-edged sword in his hand, 
 had turned to flight, on many fields of battle, the swearing, 
 drunken bravoes of Rupert and Lunsford. 
 
 Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the 
 
 10 middle of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific of 
 such men. Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was aimed at 
 some particular individual ; and this seems by no means 
 improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have known many 
 of those hypocrites who followed religion only when re- 
 
 15 ligion walked in silver slippers, when the sun shone, and 
 when the people applauded. Indeed, he might have easily 
 found all the kindred of By-ends among the public men of 
 his time. He might have found among the peers my Lord 
 Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, and my Lord Fair- 
 
 20 speech; in the House of Commons, Mr. Smoothman, Mr. 
 Anything, and Mr. Facing-both-ways ; nor would " the par- 
 son of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues," have been wanting. 
 The town of Bedford probably contained more than one 
 politician who, after contriving to raise an estate by seek- 
 
 25 ing the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to 
 keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the 
 reign of the strumpets and more than one priest who, 
 during repeated changes in the discipline and doctrines of 
 the Church, had remained constant to nothing but his 
 
 30 benefice. 
 
 One of the most remarkable passages in " The Pilgrim's 
 Progress " is that in which the proceedings against Faithful 
 are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan in- 
 
 18-30 :c. 31-123, 9: c, f, n. 
 
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 123 
 
 tended to satirize the mode in which state trials were con- 
 ducted under Charles II. The license given to the witnesses 
 for the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious 
 insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancor 
 of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, 5 
 from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms 
 preliminary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord 
 Hategood performs the office of counsel for the prisoners 
 as well as Scroggs himself could have performed it. 
 
 Judge. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou 10 
 heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against 
 thee? 
 
 Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defense? 
 
 Judge. Sirrah, sirrah! thou deservest to live no longer, 
 but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all 15 
 men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, 
 vile runagate, hast to say. 
 
 No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss 
 for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the 
 baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times " sinned 20 
 up to it still," and even went beyond it. The imaginary 
 trial of Faithful, before a jury composed of personified 
 vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the real 
 trial of Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the vices 
 sat in the person of Jeffreys. 25 
 
 The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and 
 invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain 
 a wide command over the English language. The vocabu- 
 lary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not 
 an expression, if we except a few technical terms of the- 30 
 ology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have 
 observed several pages which do not contain a single word 
 of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more 
 
 18-25 : c. 
 
124 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for 
 pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, 
 for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, 
 this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was 
 
 5 perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on 
 which we would so readily stake the fame of the old un- 
 polluted English language, no book which shows so well 
 how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and 
 how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed. 
 
 10 Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not 
 name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. 
 To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's 
 " Essay on Translated Verse," and the Duke of Bucking- 
 hamshire's " Essay on Poetry," appeared to be compositions 
 
 15 infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. 
 We live in better times ; and we are not afraid to say, that, 
 though there were many clever men in England during the 
 latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two 
 minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very 
 
 20 eminent degree. One of those minds produced " Paradise 
 Lost," the other " The Pilgrim's Progress." 
 1-9 : c, a. 12-21 : n. 
 
 7, 8, 9, n, 12, 13, 14. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 1804-1864 
 
 " THE SCARLET LETTER " 
 I 
 
 THE PRISON-DOOR 
 
 A THRONG of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and 
 gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some 
 wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in 
 front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily 
 timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. 5 
 
 The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human 
 virtue and happiness they might originally project, have 
 invariably recognized it among their earliest practical neces- 
 sities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and 
 another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with 10 
 this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of 
 Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the 
 vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked 
 out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and 
 round about his grave, which subsequently became the 15 
 nucleus of all the congregated sepulchers in the old church- 
 yard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or 
 twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden 
 jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indi- 
 cations of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle- 20 
 browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron- 
 work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything 
 else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, 
 
 1-5: b. 10-17:1, d. 17-21 :v. 23-126,6:1. 
 
 125 
 
126 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this 
 ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the 
 street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig- 
 weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evi- 
 
 5 dently found something congenial in the soil that had so 
 early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. 
 But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the 
 threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month 
 of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined 
 
 10 to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner 
 as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came 
 forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature 
 could pity and be kind to him. 
 
 This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive 
 
 15 in history ; but whether it had merely survived out of the 
 stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic 
 pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or 
 whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had 
 sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchin- 
 
 20 son, as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon 
 us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of 
 our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inaus- 
 picious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one 
 of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, 
 
 25 let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that 
 may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening 
 close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. 
 
 II 
 
 THE MARKET-PLACE 
 
 THE grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a cer- 
 tain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was 
 7-13 : i, n. 21-27 : e, n. 28-127, 32 : d, m, v (cf. 103. 31-104, 25). 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 127 
 
 occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of 
 Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron- 
 clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or 
 at a later period in the history of New England, the grim 
 rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these 5 
 good people would have augured some awful business in 
 hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the antici- 
 pated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sen- 
 tence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of 
 public sentiment. But, in that early seventy of the Puritan 10 
 character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably 
 be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an 
 undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the 
 civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. 
 It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other 15 
 heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the town, or 
 an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire- 
 water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven 
 with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, 
 that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered 20 
 widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In 
 either case, there was very much the same solemnity of 
 demeanor on the part of the spectators ; as befitted a people 
 amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and 
 in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that 25 
 the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were 
 alike made venerable and awful. Meager, indeed, and cold 
 was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for from 
 such by-standers, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a 
 penalty, which, in our days, would infer a degree of mock- 30 
 ing infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost 
 as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself. 
 
 It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morn- 
 29-32 : i. 
 
128 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 ing when our story begins its course, that the women, of 
 whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take 
 a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be 
 expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, 
 
 5 that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of 
 petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public 
 ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occa- 
 sion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an 
 execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a 
 
 10 coarser fiber in those wives and maidens of old English 
 birth and breeding, than in their fair descendants, separated 
 from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, 
 throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother 
 has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate 
 
 15 and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not 
 a character of less force and solidity, than her own. The 
 women who were now standing about the prison-door stood 
 within less than half a century of the period when the man- 
 like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable repre- 
 
 2osentative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; and 
 the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not 
 a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. 
 The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoul- 
 ders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy 
 
 25 cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had 
 hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of 
 New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and 
 rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them 
 seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, 
 
 30 whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone. 
 
 " Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, " I'll 
 tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the 
 public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and 
 
 4-9 : i, w. 9-12 : t. 9-16 : i, c. 23-27 : t, e. 27-30 : i. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 129 
 
 church-members in good repute, should have the handling 
 of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think 
 ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us 
 five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come 
 off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have 5 
 awarded ? Marry, I trow not ! " 1 
 
 " Mercy on us, goodwife," exclaimed a man in the crowd, 
 " is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a 
 wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest word 
 yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the lock is turning in the 10 
 prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne herself." 
 
 The door of the jail being flung open from within, there 
 appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging 
 into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town- 
 beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in 15 
 his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his 
 aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of 
 law, which it was his business to administer in its final and 
 closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the of- 
 ficial staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the 20 
 shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward ; 
 until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, 
 by an action marked with natural dignity and force of 
 character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own 
 free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some 25 
 three months old, who winked and turned aside its little 
 face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, 
 heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray 
 twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the 
 prison. 30 
 
 1 Dialogue is omitted as not being representative of the author's 
 own style. 
 
 i2-i6:t. 19-30 : a, j. 
 
130 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 When the young woman the mother of this child 
 stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her 
 first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not 
 so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she 
 5 might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought 
 or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely 
 judging that one token of her shame would but poorly 
 serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, 
 with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance 
 
 10 that would not be abashed, looked around at her towns- 
 people and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine 
 red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and 
 fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It 
 was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and 
 
 *5 gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of 
 a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore ; 
 and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste 
 of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the 
 sumptuary regulations of the colony. 
 
 20 The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect ele- 
 gance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, 
 so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a 
 face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of fea- 
 ture and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness be- 
 
 25 longing to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was 
 lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of 
 those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, 
 rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable 
 grace, which is now recognized as its indication. And never 
 
 30 had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the antique 
 interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the 
 prison. Those who had before known her, and had ex- 
 pected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous 
 
 1-19 :d. 20-29 :d. 29-131, 17: v. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 131 
 
 cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how 
 her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune 
 and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true, 
 that, to a sensitive observer, there was something ex- 
 quisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had 5 
 wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modeled much 
 after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her 
 spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild 
 and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all 
 eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer, so that both 10 
 men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with 
 Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her 
 for the first time, was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantas- 
 tically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It 
 had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary 15 
 relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by 
 herself. 
 
 The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. 
 " Make way, good people, make way, in the King's 
 name ! " cried he. 20 
 
 A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spec- 
 tators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregu- 
 lar procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged 
 women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place ap- 
 pointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious 25 
 school-boys, understanding little of the matter in hand, 
 except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her 
 progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her 
 face, and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the 
 ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, 30 
 in those days, from the prison-door to the market-place. 
 Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might 
 21 : b. 25-30 : b (cf. 22). 30, 31 : b. 32-132, 13 : m. 
 
132 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 be reckoned a journey of some length ; for, haughty as her 
 demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from 
 every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her 
 heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn 
 5 and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a pro- 
 vision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer 
 should never know the intensity of what he endures by its 
 present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after 
 it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester 
 
 10 Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came 
 to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market- 
 place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest 
 church, and appeared to be a fixture there. 
 
 In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal 
 
 15 machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has 
 been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was 
 held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, in the 
 promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine 
 among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the plat- 
 
 20 form of the pillory ; and above it rose the framework of 
 that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the 
 human head in its tight grasp, and thus holding it up to the 
 public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied 
 and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. 
 
 25 There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common 
 nature, whatever be the delinquencies of the individual, 
 no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide 
 his face for shame ; as it was the essence of this punishment 
 to do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not infre- 
 
 30 quently in other cases, her sentence bore, that she should 
 stand a certain time upon the platform, but without under- 
 going that gripe about the neck and confinement of the 
 head, the proneness to which was the most devilish char- 
 
 14-19 : w (cf. 105, 26-31). 29-133, 4 : n. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 133 
 
 acteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she 
 ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed 
 to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's 
 shoulders above the street. 
 
 Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, 5 
 he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque 
 in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, 
 an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, 
 which so many illustrious painters have vied with one an- 
 other to represent; something which should remind him, 10 
 indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless 
 motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, 
 there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality 
 of human life, working such effect, that the world was only 
 the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for 15 
 the infant that she had borne. 
 
 The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as 
 must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a 
 fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt 
 enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The wit- 20 
 nesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed be- 
 yond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look 
 upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a 
 murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness 
 of another social state, which would find only a theme for 25 
 jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there been 
 a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have 
 been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of 
 men no less dignified than the Governor, and several of 
 his counselors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the 30 
 town ; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting- 
 house, looking down upon the platform. When such per- 
 sonages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without 
 5-16 : f, c, n. 22-134, 3 : d. 
 
134 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 risking the majesty or reverence of rank and office, it was 
 safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence 
 would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accord- 
 ingly, the crowd was somber and grave. The unhappy 
 5 culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the 
 heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened 
 upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost 
 intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate 
 nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and 
 
 10 venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in 
 every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much 
 more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that 
 she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances 
 contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. 
 
 15 Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude, each 
 man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contribut- 
 ing their individual parts, Hester Prynne might have 
 repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, 
 under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, 
 
 20 she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with 
 the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaf- 
 fold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once. 
 
 Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which 
 she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from 
 
 25 her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, 
 like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her 
 mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally 
 active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly 
 hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the Western 
 
 30 wilderness ; other faces than were lowering upon her from 
 beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminis- 
 cences the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy 
 and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little do- 
 
 3,4:b. 7, 8:b. 15-18:0. 26-135,5:0^. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 135 
 
 mestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back 
 upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was 
 gravest in her subsequent life ; one picture precisely as vivid 
 as another ; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike 
 a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, 5 
 to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric 
 forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality. 
 
 Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point 
 of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track 
 along which she had been treading since her happy infancy. 10 
 Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her 
 native village, in Old England, and her paternal home; a 
 decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, 
 but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over the 
 portal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father's 15 
 face, with its bald brow, and reverend white beard, that 
 flowed over the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her 
 mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love 
 which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even 
 since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle 20 
 remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own 
 face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the 
 interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont 
 to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of 
 a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, 25 
 with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight that had served 
 them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same 
 bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it 
 was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This 
 figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's 30 
 womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, 
 with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next 
 rose before her, in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate 
 
 5-7 : d, n. 11-24 : v. 32-136, 12 : o, e, a (cf. 120, 13-33). 
 
136 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, gray houses, the huge 
 cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and 
 quaint in architecture, of a Continental city; where a new 
 life had awaited her, still in connection with the misshapen 
 
 5 scholar ; a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn ma- 
 terials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. 
 Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude 
 market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all the towns- 
 people assembled and leveling their stern regards at Hester 
 
 10 Prynne, yes, at herself, who stood on the scaffold of the 
 
 pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, 
 
 fantastically embroidered with gold-thread, upon her bosom ! 
 
 Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to 
 
 her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes 
 
 15 downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with 
 her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame 
 were real. Yes! these were her realities, all else had 
 vanished ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE RECOGNITION 
 
 FROM this intense consciousness of being the object of 
 20 severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet 
 letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts 
 of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of 
 her thoughts. An Indian, in his native garb, was standing 
 there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of 
 25 the English settlements, that one of them would have at- 
 tracted any notice from Hester Prynne at such a time; 
 much less would he have excluded all other objects and 
 ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently 
 sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, 
 30 clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume. 
 
 13-18: n. 19-28: h. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 137 
 
 He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, 
 as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarka- 
 ble intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so 
 cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mold the 
 physical to itself, and become manifest by unmistakable 5 
 tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of 
 his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavored to conceal or 
 abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Hester 
 Prynne that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than 
 the other. Again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin 10 
 visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed 
 her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the 
 poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did 
 not seem to hear it. 
 
 At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before 15 
 she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on Hester 
 Prynne. It was carelessly, at first, like a man chiefly accus- 
 tomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of 
 little value and import, unless they bear relation to some- 
 thing within his mind. Very soon, however, his look be- 20 
 came keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself 
 across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, 
 and making one little pause, with all its wreathed inter- 
 volutions in open sight. His face darkened with some 
 powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantane- 25 
 ously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a 
 single moment, its expression might have passed for calm- 
 ness. After a brief space, the convulsion grew almost im- 
 perceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his 
 nature. When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fas- 30 
 tened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize 
 him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture 
 with it in the air, and laid it on his lips. 
 
 1-14 :h. 13, 14 :b. 17-20:!. 21-24:6. 
 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, n, 12, 13, 14. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 1803-1882 
 
 GIFTS 
 
 Gifts of one who loved me, 
 'Twas high time they came : 
 When he ceased to love me, 
 Time they stopped for shame. 
 
 IT is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, 
 that the world owes the world more than the world can 
 pay, and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I do not 
 think this general insolvency, which involves in some sort 
 
 5 all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experi- 
 enced at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in be- 
 stowing gifts ; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, 
 though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment 
 lies in the choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head, 
 
 10 that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled 
 what to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and 
 fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a 
 proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utili- 
 ties of the world. These gay natures contrast with the 
 
 15 somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are 
 like music heard out of a workhouse. Nature does not 
 cocker us : we are children, not pets : she is not fond : every- 
 thing is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe uni- 
 versal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic 
 
 20 and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us 
 that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by 
 
 n-i6:q. 16-19:1. 19-139* 9 : v, k. 
 138 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 139 
 
 it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be 
 courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us : 
 what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? 
 Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of 
 commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached 5 
 to them. If a man should send to me to come a hundred 
 miles to visit him, and should set before me a basket of fine 
 summer-fruit, I should think there was some proportion 
 between the labor and the reward. 
 
 For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty 10 
 every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him 
 no option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, you 
 have not to consider whether you could procure him a 
 paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat 
 bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it 15 
 is always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. 
 Necessity does everything well. In our condition of uni- 
 versal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be 
 the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, 
 though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, 20 
 it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. I 
 can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of 
 the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, 
 which one of my friends prescribed, is that we might convey 
 to some person that which properly belonged to his char- 25 
 acter, and was easily associated with him in thought. But 
 our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part 
 barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apolo- 
 gies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou 
 must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; 30 
 the shepherd, his lamb ; the farmer, corn ; the miner, a gem ; 
 the sailor, coral and shells ; the painter, his picture ; the girl, 
 a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleas- 
 
 10-28 : b, v, j. 28-33 : b. 28-140, 9 : a (cf. 125-137). 
 
140 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 ing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, 
 when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every 
 man's wealth is an index of his merit. But it is a cold, 
 lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me some- 
 
 5 thing, which does not represent your life and talent, but a 
 goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who repre- 
 sent kings and a false state of property, to make presents 
 of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin- 
 offering, or payment of blackmail. 
 
 10 The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires 
 careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man 
 to receive gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to 
 be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The 
 hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We 
 
 15 can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiv- 
 ing it from ourselves; but not from anyone who assumes 
 to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, 
 because there seems something of degrading dependence in 
 living by it. 
 
 20 " Brother, if Jove to thee a present make, 
 
 Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take." 
 
 We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We ar- 
 raign society, if it do not give us besides earth, and fire, and 
 water, opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of venera- 
 
 25 tion. 
 
 He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are 
 either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbe- 
 coming. Some violence, I think, is done, some degradation 
 borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when 
 
 30 my independence is invaded, or when a gift conies from 
 such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not sup- 
 ported ; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be 
 10-19:6, k. 26-141, 23: J. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 141 
 
 ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I 
 love his commodity and not him. The gift to be true, must 
 be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my 
 flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my 
 goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine 5 
 his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, 
 or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, 
 which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the 
 fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving 
 is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is un- 10 
 grateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all con- 
 sidering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater 
 store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the bene- 
 ficiary, than with the anger of my lord Timon. For, the 
 expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished 15 
 by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great 
 happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, from 
 one who has had the ill luck to be served by you. It is a 
 very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor 
 naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for 20 
 these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, 
 who never thanks, and who says, " Do not flatter your bene- 
 factors/' 
 
 The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there 
 is no commensurability between a man and any gift. You 25 
 cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you 
 have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his mag- 
 nanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial 
 and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend 
 stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to 30 
 serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good- 
 will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render 
 him seems small. Besides, our action on each other, good 
 
 24-142, 8 : k. 
 
142 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can 
 seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would 
 thank us for a benefit without some shame and humiliation. 
 We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content 
 
 5 with an oblique one ; we seldom have the satisfaction of 
 yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received. But 
 rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, 
 and receives with wonder the thanks of all people. 
 
 I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, 
 
 10 which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must 
 not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower- 
 leaves indifferently. There are persons from whom we 
 always expect fairy tokens ; let us not cease to expect them. 
 This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal 
 
 15 rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought 
 and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also 
 not in the will but in fate. I find that I am not much to 
 you : you do not need me ; you do not feel me ; then am I 
 thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. 
 
 20 No services are of any value, but only likeness. When I 
 have attempted to join myself to others by services, it 
 proved an intellectual trick, no more. They eat your 
 service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and 
 they feel you, and delight in you all the time. 
 
 9-24 : j, n. 
 1,4, 5, 6, n, 12. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 1824-1892 
 
 " THE HOWADJI IN SYRIA " 
 VIII 
 
 AMONG THE BEDOUEEN 
 
 THE pleasant tales of Sultans' pilgrimages are only the 
 mirage of memory. 
 
 The poor and pious Muslim, which is not the title of 
 Caliphs, when he undertakes a long desert journey, does 
 not carry nine hundred camels for his wardrobe, but he 5 
 carries his grave-linen with him. 
 
 Stricken by fatigue, or privation, or disease, when his 
 companions cannot tarry for his recovery or death, he per- 
 forms the ablution with sand, and digging a trench in the 
 ground, wraps himself in his grave-clothes, and covering his 10 
 body with sand lies alone in the desert to die, trusting that 
 the wind will complete his burial. 
 
 In the Arabs around you, you will mark a kindred so- 
 briety. Their eyes are luminous and lambent, but it is a 
 melancholy light. They do not laugh. They move with 15 
 easy dignity, and their habitual expression is musing and 
 introverted, as that of men whose minds are stored with 
 the solemn imagery of the desert. 
 
 You will understand that your own party of Arabs is not 
 of the genuine desert breed. They are dwellers in cities, not 20 
 dwellers in tents. They are mongrel, like the population of 
 
 7-12: i. 13-18: t, b. 
 
144 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 a seaport. They pass from Palestine to Egypt with cara- 
 vans of produce, like coast-traders, and are not pure 
 Bedoueen. 
 
 But they do not dishonor their ancestry. When a true 
 
 5 Bedoueen passes upon his solitary camel, and with a low- 
 spoken salaam, looks abstractedly and incuriously upon the 
 procession of great American Moguls, it is easy to see that 
 his expression is the same as that of the men around you, 
 but intensified by the desert. 
 
 10 Burckhardt says that all Orientals, and especially the 
 Arabs, are little sensible of the beauty of nature. But the 
 Bedoueen is mild and peaceable. He seems to you a dreamy 
 savage. There is a softness and languor, almost an ef- 
 feminacy of impression, the seal of the sun's child. He does 
 
 15 not eat flesh or rarely. He loves the white camel with a 
 passion. He fights for defense, or for necessity; and the 
 children of the Shereefs, or descendants of the Prophet, 
 are sent into the desert to be made heroes. They remain 
 there eight or ten years, rarely visiting their families. 
 
 20 The simple landscape of the desert is the symbol of the 
 Bedoueen's character; and he has little knowledge of more 
 than his eye beholds. In some of the interior provinces of 
 China, there is no name for the ocean, and when in the 
 time of Shekh Daheir, a party of Bedoueen came to Acre 
 
 25 upon the sea, they asked what was that desert of water. 
 
 A Bedoueen after a foray upon a caravan, discovered 
 among his booty several bags of fine pearls. He thought 
 them Dourra, a kind of grain. But as they did not soften 
 in boiling, he was about throwing them disdainfully away, 
 
 30 when a Gaza trader offered him a red Tarboosh in exchange, 
 which he delightedly accepted. 
 
 Without love of natural scenery, he listens forever to the 
 fascinating romances of the poets, for beautiful expressions 
 
 4 : b. 4-9 : b. 12-19 : v. 20-25 : k, j. 26-31 : k, j. 32-145, 4 : a, k, j. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 145 
 
 naturally clothe the simple and beautiful images he every- 
 where beholds. The palms, the fountains, the gazelles, the 
 stars, and sun, and moon, the horse, and camel, these are 
 the large illustration and suggestion of his poetry. 
 
 Sitting around the evening fire and watching its flickering 5 
 with moveless melancholy, his heart thrills at the prowess 
 of El-Gundubah, although he shall never be a hero, and he 
 rejoices when Kattalet-esh-Shugan says to Gundubah, 
 " Come let us marry forthwith," although he shall never 
 behold her beauty, nor tread the stately palaces. 10 
 
 He loves the moon which shows him the way over the 
 desert that the sun would not let him take by day, and the 
 moon looking into his eyes, sees her own melancholy there. 
 In the pauses of the story by the fire, while the sympathetic 
 spirits of the desert sigh in the rustling wind, he says to his 15 
 fellow, " Also in all true poems there should be palm-trees 
 and running water." 
 
 For him in the lonely desert the best genius of Arabia 
 has carefully recorded upon parchment its romantic visions, 
 for him Haroun El Rashid lived his romantic life, for him 20 
 the angel spoke to Mohammed in the cave, and God re- 
 ceived the Prophet into the seventh heaven. 
 
 Some early morning a cry rings through the group of 
 black square tents. He springs from his dreams of green 
 gardens and flowing waters, and stands sternly against the 25 
 hostile tribe which has surprised his own. The remorseless 
 morning secretes in desert silence the clash of swords, the 
 ring of musketry, the battle-cry. At sunset the black square 
 tents are gone, the desolation of silence fills the air that was 
 musical with the recited loves of Zul-Himmeh, and the light 30 
 sand drifts in the evening wind over the corpse of a 
 Bedoueen. 
 
 So the grim Genius of the desert touches every stop of 
 
 144, 20-145, IO b> v - 5" 10 : a c > l > I4 -I 7 : h. 18-22 : c, h. 23-32 : a, h, n. 
 
146 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 romance and of life in you as you traverse his realm and 
 meditate his children. Yet warm and fascinating as is his 
 breath, it does not warp your loyalty to your native West, 
 and to the time in which you were born. Springing from 
 5 your hard bed upon the desert, and with wild morning en- 
 thusiasm pushing aside the door of your tent, and stepping 
 out to stand among the stars, you hail the desert and hate 
 the city, and glancing toward the tent of the Armenian 
 Khadra, you shout aloud to astonished MacWhirter, 
 
 10 " I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race." 
 
 But as the day draws forward, and you see the same 
 forms and the same life that Abraham saw, and know that 
 Joseph leading Mary into Egypt might pass you to-day, 
 nor be aware of more than a single sunset since he passed 
 
 15 before, then you feel that this germ, changeless at home, 
 is only developed elsewhere, that the boundless desert free- 
 dom is only a resultless romance. 
 
 The sun sets and the camp is pitched. The shadows are 
 grateful to your eye, as the dry air to your lungs. 
 
 20 But as you sit quietly in the tent door, watching the 
 Armenian camp and the camels, your cheek pales suddenly 
 as you remember Abraham, and that " he sat in the tent 
 door in the heat of the day." Saving yourself, what of the 
 scene is changed since then? The desert, the camels, the 
 
 25 tents, the turbaned Arabs, they were what Abraham saw 
 when " he lifted up his eyes and looked, and lo ! three men 
 stood by him." 
 
 You are contemporary with the eldest history. Your 
 companions are the dusky figures of vaguest tradition. The 
 
 30 " long result of Time " is not for you. 
 
 In that moment you have lost your birthright. You are 
 Ishmael's brother. You have your morning's wish. A 
 
 1-4 : e. 4-9 : a, c, e. 11-15 : a, i. 18-25 : h. 27-29 : b. 31-147, 5 : b, c. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 147 
 
 child of the desert, not for you are Art, and Poetry, and 
 Science, and the glowing roll of History shrivels away. 
 
 The dream passes as the day dies, and to the same stars 
 which heard your morning shout of desert praise, you 
 whisper as you close the tent door at evening, 5 
 
 " Better fifty years of Europe, than a cycle of Cathay." 
 
 IX 
 
 INTO THE DESERT 
 
 IT was not until the fourth day from Cairo that we 
 stretched fairly away from the green land into the open 
 desert. 
 
 At one point which, like a cape, extended into the sand, 10 
 we had crossed the cultivation of the Nile valley, and had 
 rested under the palms and, O woe! in a treacherous 
 spot of that green way, whether it was angry that we 
 should again return after so fair a start, or whether it was 
 too enamored of Khadra to suffer her to depart, yet at high 15 
 noon, in crossing a little stream over which the other 
 camels gallantly passed, the beasts that bore her palanquin 
 tottered and stumbled, then fell mired upon the marge of 
 the stream, and the bulky palanquin rolling like a founder- 
 ing ship, gradually subsided into the mud and water, and 20 
 the fair Armenian was rescued and drawn ashore by her 
 camel-driver. 
 
 The Howadji who were sauntering leisurely behind, per- 
 ceiving the catastrophe, crossed the stream rapidly, and 
 gaining the spot poured out profuse offers of aid and ex- 25 
 pressions of sympathy, while Khadra looked furiously at 
 them with her large, dreamy eyes, and smiled at the strange 
 sound of their voices. 
 
 146, 18-147, S : v, n. 8-22 : b, i. 23-148, 5 : v (cf. 144, 10-147, 6 )' 
 
148 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 We halted for a few moments in the wretched little vil- 
 lage, and stood out into the desert again in the early after- 
 noon. Pausing at a little canal of Nile water to refill bar- 
 rels and bottles, the camels were allowed to drink their 
 
 5 last draught, until we should reach El Harish. 
 
 The desert was a limitless level of smooth, graveled 
 sand, stretching on all sides among the tufted shrubs, like 
 spacious, well-rolled garden-walks. It had the air of a 
 boundless garden carefully kept. " And now," said the 
 
 10 Pacha, " begins the true desert." 
 
 Farther and farther fell the palms behind us, and at 
 length the green earth was but a vague western belt a 
 darkish hedge of our garden. Upon the hard sand the 
 camel-paths were faintly indicated, like cattle-paths upon 
 
 15 a sandy field. They went straight away to the horizon, 
 and vanished like a railway track. 
 
 The sun lay warm upon my back, and with sudden sus- 
 picion I turned to look at him, as a child upon an ogre 
 who is gently urging him on. Forward and forward upon 
 
 20 those faint, narrow desert tracks should we pass into the 
 very region of his wrath ! Here would he smite us terribly 
 with the splendor of his scorn, and wither and consume 
 these audacious citizens who had come out against him 
 with blue cotton umbrellas! 
 
 25 In that moment, excited as I was by the consciousness 
 of being out of sight of land upon the desert, I laughed 
 a feeble laugh at my own feebleness, and all the tales of 
 exposure and peril in the wilderness that I had ever read 
 returned with direful distinctness, flooding my mind with 
 
 30 awe. 
 
 As we advanced, the surface of the desert was somewhat 
 broken, and the ridges of sand were enchanted by the sun 
 and shadow into the semblance of rose-hued cliffs, based 
 
 n-i6:e, q. 19-24:0, w. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 149 
 
 with cool, green slopes. It was a simple effect, but of the 
 extremest beauty ; and my heart, moved by the sun's pleas- 
 ant pictures, deemed him no more an ogre. 
 
 " Do you see the mirage ? " asked the Pacha, turning 
 upon El Shiraz, and pointing to a seeming reach of water. 5 
 
 " Yes ; but I admit no mirage which is not perfect decep- 
 tion. That's clearly sand." 
 
 " True," returned the Pacha ; " but yet it is a very good 
 mirage." 
 
 We jogged on until we reached it, and found a fair little 10 
 lake. 
 
 " Yes," said the Pacha, without turning, " that's clearly 
 sand." 
 
 At every tuft of shrub the camels tried to browse, and 
 sometimes permitting MacWhirter to tarry and dally with 15 
 the dry green, I fell far behind the caravan, that held its 
 steady way toward the horizon. 
 
 Then returned the sense of solitude, and all the more 
 deeply because the sky was of that dark, dense blue from 
 the contrast with the shining sand which I had only 20 
 seen among the highest peaks of Switzerland, contrasted 
 with the snow, as on the glacier of the Aar beneath the 
 Finster Aarhorn. In that Arabian day, remembering 
 Switzerland, I lifted my eyes, and seconded by the sun, 
 I saw the drifts of pure sand, like drifts of Alpine snow. 25 
 The lines and sweeps were as sharp and delicate, and the 
 dark shadows whose play is glorious upon this wide race- 
 course of the winds, made the farther ridges like green 
 hills. Then, because the shrubs pushed up so frequently, 
 the desert was but a cultivated country, overdrifted with 30 
 sand. 
 
 At sunset we reached a solitary palm grove, an oasis in 
 the waste, and the camp was pitched beneath the trees. 
 
 18-31 :a, s, k. 32-150,5: n. 
 
150 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 The Germans were not far away, but they, like the Cairene 
 merchant, concluded that we were Ingleez Howadji, but, 
 unlike him, did not expose themselves to our civilities. 
 Strangers are now as little likely to make social overtures 
 
 5 to John Bull as he is to receive them. 
 
 The palms were shrubby and scant. But the stars were 
 bright among their boughs as we looked from the tent door 
 and as the Pacha wrapped himself in his capote and lay 
 down to sleep, I asked him what the Prophet said of palms. 
 
 10 In reply the Pacha said disagreeable things of the 
 Prophet. But the learned say, that his favorite fruits were 
 fresh dates and watermelons. Honor, said he, your pa- 
 ternal aunt the Date Palm, for she was created of the 
 earth of which Adam was formed. Whoso eateth, said the 
 
 15 Prophet, a mouthful of watermelon, God writeth for him 
 
 a thousand good works and cancelleth a thousand evil 
 
 works, and raiseth him a thousand degrees, for it came 
 
 from Paradise. 
 
 " Golden Sleeve," said the Pacha, with slumberous 
 
 20 vagueness " watermelons for breakfast." 
 
 MIRAGE 
 
 HENRY MAUNDRELL having been shut out all night from 
 a Shekh's house in Syria, during a pelting rain, revenged 
 himself the next morning by recording that the three great 
 virtues of the Mohammedan religion are a long beard, 
 25 prayers of the same standard, and a kind of Pharisaical 
 superciliousness. 
 
 Our uninvited guest, the Shekh's father, possessed those 
 virtues in perfection. Enjoying our escort, eating our food, 
 warming himself at our fire, the testy old gentleman evi- 
 6-20: w. 27-151, 8: w. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 151 
 
 dently thought that our infidel presences cumbered the earth, 
 and soiled by contact his own Muslim orthodoxy. He was 
 therefore perpetually flinging himself upon his little donkey 
 and shambling toward the horizon, with a sniff of disgust, 
 to air his virtue from further contagion in the pure desert 5 
 atmosphere. We were as continually overhauling him 
 turned up against a wind-sheltered sand bank and, in 
 meditative solitude, smoking our choice Latakia. 
 
 It was our daily amusement to watch the old Ishmael, 
 whose mind and life were like the desert around us, put- 10 
 ting contemptuously away from us upon his tottering 
 donkey, his withered ankles and clumsy shoes dangling 
 along over the sand away from us, stately travelers upon 
 MacWhirter and El Shiraz, for whom Shakespeare sang, 
 and Plato thought, and Raphael painted, and to whom the 15 
 old Ishmael's country, its faith and its history, were but 
 incidents in the luxury of Life. 
 
 Yet Ishmael maintained the balance well, and never re- 
 laxed his sniffing contempt for the Howadji, who, in turn, 
 mused upon the old man, and figured the strange aspect of 20 
 his mind. 
 
 Like a bold bare landscape it must have been, or rather 
 like the skeleton of a landscape. For Ishmael was not true 
 Bedoueen enough to have clothed the naked lines and cliffs 
 of his mind with the verdure of romantic reverie. At 25 
 evening he did not listen to the droning talk of the other 
 Arabs over the fire, but curled himself up in his blankets, 
 and went to sleep. By day he sought solitude and dozed in 
 his own smoke, and whenever he spoke it was in the queru- 
 lous tone of soured old age. 30 
 
 His whole life had been a monotonous tale endlessly re- 
 peated. From Cairo to Gaza, from Gaza to Cairo. As 
 a boy, tugging the caravan along, with the halter drawn 
 
 9-17: w,h (cf. 97, 21-98, 17)- 20 :1. 22-30 :e. 31-152,3:0. 
 
152 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 over his shoulder. As a man, in supreme command, super- 
 intending the whole. As a grandsire, cantering away from 
 infidel dogs to smoke their tobacco tranquilly in the sun. 
 Life must have been a mystery to Ishmael could he have 
 
 5 ever meditated it, and the existence of a western world, 
 Christians, and civilization, only explained by some vague 
 theory of gratuitous tobacco for the Faithful. 
 
 As I watched his bright young grandson Hamed, leading 
 the train, I could not but ruefully reflect that the child is 
 
 10 father of the man, and foresee that he would only ripen 
 into an Ishmael, and smoke the ungrown Latakia of Ho- 
 wadji yet unborn. 
 
 But through all speculations and dreams and jokes and 
 intermittent conversation for you are naturally silent 
 
 15 upon the desert your way is still onward over the sand, 
 and Jerusalem and Damascus approach slowly, slowly, two 
 and a half miles an hour. 
 
 In the midst of your going, a sense of intense weariness 
 and tedium seizes your soul. Rock, rock jerk, jerk upon 
 
 20 the camel. You are sick of the thin withered slip of a tail 
 in front, and the gaunt, stiff movement of the shapeless, 
 tawny legs before you, and you vainly turn in your seat 
 for relief from the eyes of Khadra: vainly, for the cur- 
 tains of the palanquin are drawn; the warm morning sun- 
 
 25 light has been Mandragora to her, and she is sleeping. 
 
 The horizon is no longer limitless, and of an ocean 
 grandeur. The sluggish path trails through a defile of 
 glaring sand, whose sides just contemptuously obstruct your 
 view, and exasperate you because they are low, and of no 
 
 30 fine outline. Switzerland has vanished to-day, and the 
 Arabia that chokes your eye is Arabia Felix no longer. 
 Your brow flushes and your tongue is parched, and leering 
 over the rim of the monotonous defile, Fever points at you, 
 
 4-7 : w. 13-17 : q. 18-25 : h. 26-153, 7 : f, n. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 153 
 
 mockingly, its long, lank finger, and scornfully, as to a 
 victim not worth the wooing. Suffocated in the thick, hot 
 air, the sun smites you, and its keen arrows dart upward, 
 keener, from the ground. The drear silence, like a voice 
 in Nightmare, whispers " You dared to tempt me ; " and 5 
 with fresh fury of shining, and a more stifling heat, the 
 horrors of the mid-desert encompass you. 
 
 But in the midst of your weariness and despair, more 
 alluring than the mirage of cool lakes and green valleys to 
 the eye of the dying Bedoueen, a voice of running water 10 
 sings through your memory, the sound of streams gurgling 
 under the village bridge at evening, and the laughter of 
 boys bathing there, yourself a boy, yourself plunging in 
 the deep, dark coolness, and so, weary and fevered in the 
 desert of Arabia, you are overflowed by the memory of 15 
 your youth, and to you, as to Khadra, the sun has been 
 Mandragora and you are sleeping. 
 
 You cannot tell how long you sleep and doze. You fancy, 
 when your eyes at length open, that you are more deeply 
 dreaming. 20 
 
 For the pomp of a wintry landscape dazzles your awak- 
 ing. The sweeps and drifts of the sand hills among which 
 you are winding, have the sculpturesque grace of snow. 
 They descend in strange corrugations to a long level lake 
 a reach of water frozen into transparent blue ice, streaked 25 
 with the white sifted snow that has overblown it. The 
 seeming lake is circled with low, melancholy hills. They 
 are bare, like the rock-setting of solitary mountain tarns. 
 The death of wintry silence broods over the whole, but the 
 sky is cloudless, and the sun sits supreme over the miracu- 30 
 lous landscape. Vainly you rally your thoughts, and smile 
 at the perfect mirage. Its lines do not melt in your smiles, 
 and the spectacle becomes more solemn in the degree that you 
 
 8-17 :b, i, h. 18-20 : b. 21-22-23, 26-28, 29-31-32 : b. 21-154,3:5,11. 
 
154 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 are conscious of the delusion. Never, upon its eternal Alpine 
 throne, never, through the brief, brilliant days of New 
 England December, was winter more evident and entire. 
 
 And when you hear behind you, sole sound in the desert, 
 5 the shrill tenor of the Armenian's camel-driver, chanting 
 in monotonous refrain songs whose meaning you can only 
 imagine, because Khadra draws aside the curtains to listen, 
 and because you have seen that the tall, swarthy Syrian 
 is enamored of Khadra, then it is not Arabia, nor Switzer- 
 
 10 land, nor New England, but a wintry glade of Lapland, 
 and a solitary singing to his reindeer. 
 
 This is not a dream, nor has leering Fever touched you 
 with his finger, but it is a mystery of the desert. You have 
 eaten an apple of the Hesperides. For the Bedoueen poets 
 
 15 have not alone the shifting cloud-scenery to garnish their 
 romances, but thus, unconsciously to them, the forms of 
 another landscape and of another life than theirs, are mar- 
 shaled before their eyes, and their minds are touched with 
 the beauty of an unknown experience. 
 
 20 In this variety of aspect, in endless calm, the desert sur- 
 passes the sea. It is seldom an unbroken l&vel, and from 
 the quantity of its atmosphere, slight objects are magnified, 
 and a range of mounds will often mask as a group of goodly 
 hills. Even in the most interrupted reaches, the horizon is 
 
 25 rarely a firm line, but the mirage breaks it, so that the edge 
 of the landscape is always quivering and uncertain. 
 
 Pleasant, after the wild romance of such a desert day 
 romance, which the sun in setting, closes to reach the 
 camping-ground, to gurgle in MacWhirter's ear with the 
 
 30 guttural harshness that he understands as the welcome 
 signal of rest, and to feel him, not without a growl of ill- 
 humor, quaking and rolling beneath you, and finally, with 
 a half sudden start, sinking to the ground. 
 12-19 : e. 27-33 : i. 
 
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 155 
 
 You tie his bent fore-knee together, with the halter which 
 goes around his head; and you turn to see that the tent is 
 not spread over stones, which would not stuff your pillow 
 softly. Then, returning, you observe that MacWhirter 
 with his foreleg still bent and bound to his head, is limping 5 
 upon the three serviceable legs to browse upon chance 
 shrubs, and to assert his total independence of you, and 
 contempt of your precautions. 
 
 Meanwhile, Khadra steps out of her palanquin, and while 
 her father's camp is pitched, she shakes out the silken full- 10 
 ness of her shintyan, and strolls off upon the desert. The 
 old Armenian slips the pad from the back of his white 
 mare, for he does not ride in a saddle, and stands in every- 
 body's way, in his long, blue broadcloth kaftan, taking 
 huge pinches of snuff. 15 
 
 The Commander, relieved of his arsenal, bustles among 
 our Arabs, swearing at them lustily whenever he approaches 
 the Howadji, apparently convinced that everything is going 
 well, so long as he makes noise enough. 
 
 " Therein not peculiar," murmurs the Pacha, rolled up 20 
 in his huge woolen capote, and smoking a contemplative 
 chibouque. 
 
 The tents are pitched, the smoke curls to the sky, and 
 the howling wilderness is tamed by the domestic prepara- 
 tions of getting tea. 25 
 
 The sun also is tamed, our great romancer, our fervent 
 poet, our glorious Painter, who has made the day a poem 
 and a picture, who has peopled memory with sweet and sad 
 imagery, who, like Jesus, brought a sword, yet like him has 
 given us rest. He, too, is tamed, and his fervor is failing. 30 
 Yet as he retires through the splendor of the vapory archi- 
 tecture in the West, he looks at us once more like a king 
 from his palace windows. 
 
 9-15 : h. 16-25 :w. 26-33:0,6. 
 6, 7, 8, 9, u, 12, 13, 14. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 18501894 
 
 THE ENGLISH ADMIRALS 
 
 "Whether it be wise in men to do such actions or not, I am 
 sure it is so in States to honor them." SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 
 
 THERE is one story of the wars of Rome which I have 
 always very much envied for England. Germanicus was 
 going down at the head of the legions into a dangerous 
 river on the opposite bank the woods were full of Ger- 
 5 mans when there flew out seven great eagles which 
 seemed to marshal the Romans on their way; they did not 
 pause or waver, but disappeared into the forest where the 
 enemy lay concealed. " Forward ! " cried Germanicus with 
 a fine rhetorical inspiration, " Forward ! and follow the 
 
 10 Roman birds." It would be a very heavy spirit that did not 
 give a leap at such a signal, and a very timorous one that 
 continued to have any doubt of success. To appropriate 
 the eagles as fellow countrymen was to make imaginary 
 allies of the forces of nature; the Roman Empire and its 
 
 15 military fortunes, and along with these the prospects of 
 those individual Roman legionaries now fording a river in 
 Germany, looked altogether greater and more hopeful. It 
 is a kind of illusion easy to produce. A particular shape of 
 cloud, the appearance of a particular star, the holiday of 
 
 20 some particular saint, anything in short to remind the com- 
 batants of patriotic legends or old successes, may be 
 
 10-157, 3 : c, q, n. 
 156 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 157 
 
 enough to change the issue of a pitched battle; for it gives 
 to the one party a feeling that Right and the larger interests 
 are with him. 
 
 If an Englishman wishes to have such a feeling, it must 
 be about the sea. The lion is nothing to us; he has not 5 
 been taken to the hearts of the people, and naturalized as 
 an English emblem. We know right well that a lion would 
 fall foul of us as grimly as he would of a Frenchman or a 
 Moldavian Jew, and we do not carry him before us in the 
 smoke of battle. But the sea is our approach and bulwark ; 10 
 it has been the scene of our greatest triumphs and dan- 
 gers; and we are accustomed in lyrical strains to claim it 
 as our own. The prostrating experiences of foreigners be- 
 tween Calais and Dover have always an agreeable side to 
 English prepossessions. A man from Bedfordshire, who 15 
 does not know one end of the ship from the other until 
 she begins to move, swaggers among such persons with a 
 sense of hereditary nautical experience. To suppose your- 
 self endowed with natural parts for the sea because you 
 are the countryman of Blake and mighty Nelson, is per- 20 
 haps just as unwarrantable as to imagine Scotch extraction 
 a sufficient guarantee that you will look well in a kilt. But 
 the feeling is there, and seated beyond the reach of argu- 
 ment. We should consider ourselves unworthy of our 
 descent if we did not share the arrogance of our pro- 25 
 genitors, and please ourselves with the pretension that the 
 sea is English. Even where it is looked upon by the guns 
 and battlements of another nation we regard it as a kind of 
 English cemetery, where the bones of our seafaring fathers 
 take their rest until the last trumpet ; for I suppose no other 30 
 nation has lost as many ships, or sent as many brave fellows 
 to the bottom. 
 
 There is nowhere such a background for heroism as the 
 
 4-22 : a, j. 22-32 : n. 33-158,10:111, 
 
158 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 noble, terrifying, and picturesque conditions of some of our 
 sea fights. Hawke's battle in the tempest, and Aboukir at 
 the moment when the French Admiral blew up, reach the 
 limit of what is imposing to the imagination. And our 
 
 5 naval annals owe some of their interest to the fantastic and 
 beautiful appearance of old warships and the romance that 
 invests the sea and everything seagoing in the eyes of Eng- 
 lish lads on a half-holiday at the coast. Nay, and what we 
 know of the misery between decks enhances the bravery of 
 
 10 what was done by giving it something for contrast. We 
 like to know that these bold and honest fellows contrived 
 to live, and to keep bold and honest, among absurd and 
 vile surroundings. No reader can forget the description of 
 the Thunder in " Roderick Random " : the disorderly 
 
 15 tyranny ; the cruelty and dirt of officers and men ; deck after 
 deck, each with some new object of offense; the hospital, 
 where the hammocks were huddled together with but four- 
 teen inches space for each; the cockpit, far under water, 
 where, " in an intolerable stench/' the spectacled steward 
 
 20 kept the accounts of the different messes; and the canvas 
 inclosure, six feet square, in which Morgan made flip and 
 salmagundi, smoked his pipe, sang his Welsh songs, and 
 swore his queer Welsh imprecations. There are portions 
 of this business on board the Thunder over which the 
 
 25 reader passes lightly and hurriedly, like a traveler in a ma- 
 larious country. It is easy enough to understand the opinion 
 of Dr. Johnson : " Why, sir," he said, " no man will be a 
 sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail." 
 You would fancy anyone's spirit would die out under such 
 
 30 an accumulation of darkness, noisomeness, and injustice, 
 above all when he had not come there of his own free 
 will, but under the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press- 
 gang. But perhaps a watch on deck in the sharp sea air 
 
 10-28 : c, a, o (cf. 102, 1-15)- 28-159, IO c< 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 159 
 
 put a man on his mettle again; a battle must have been 
 a capital relief; and prize-money, bloodily earned and 
 grossly squandered, opened the doors of the prison for a 
 twinkling. Somehow or other, at least, this worst of possi- 
 ble lives could not overlie the spirit and gayety of our 5 
 sailors ; they did their duty as though they had some interest 
 in the fortune of that country which so cruelly oppressed 
 them, they served their guns merrily when it came to fight- 
 ing, and they had the readiest ear for a bold, honorable 
 sentiment, of any class of men the world ever produced. 10 
 
 Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. 
 Pym and Habakkuk may do pretty well, but they must not 
 think to cope with the Cromwells and Isaiahs. And you 
 could not find a better case in point than that of the English 
 Admirals. Drake and Rooke and Hawke are picked names 15 
 for men of execution. Frobisher, Rodney, Boscawen, Foul- 
 Weather, Jack Byron, are all good to catch the eye in a page 
 of a naval history. Cloudesley Shovel is a mouthful of 
 quaint and sounding syllables. Benbow has a bull-dog 
 quality that suits the man's character, and it takes us back 20 
 to those English archers who were his true comrades for 
 plainness, tenacity, and pluck. Raleigh is spirited and mar- 
 tial, and signifies an act of bold conduct in the field. It is 
 impossible to judge of Blake or Nelson, no names current 
 among men being worthy of such heroes. But still it is 25 
 odd enough, and very appropriate in this connection, that 
 the latter was greatly taken with his Sicilian title. " The 
 signification, perhaps, pleased him/' says Southey ; " Duke 
 of Thunder was what in Dahomey would have been called 
 a strong name; it was to a sailor's taste, and certainly to no 30 
 man could it be more applicable." Admiral in itself is one 
 of the most satisfactory of distinctions; it has a noble 
 sound and a very proud history; and Columbus thought so 
 
 11-160, 2: h. 
 
160 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 highly of it, that he enjoined his heirs to sign themselves 
 by that title as long as the house should last. 
 
 But it is the spirit of the men, and not their names, that 
 I wish to speak about in this paper. That spirit is truly 
 5 English; they, and not Tennyson's cotton-spinners or Mr. 
 D'Arcy Thompson's Abstract Bagman, are the true and 
 typical Englishmen. There may be more head of bagmen 
 in the country, but human beings are reckoned by number 
 only in political constitutions. And the Admirals are 
 
 10 typical in the full force of the word. They are splendid 
 examples of virtue, indeed, but of a virtue in which most 
 Englishmen can claim a moderate share; and what we ad- 
 mire in their lives is a sort of apotheosis of ourselves. Al- 
 most everybody in our land, except humanitarians and a 
 
 15 few persons whose youth has been depressed by exception- 
 ally aesthetic surroundings, can understand and sympathize 
 with an Admiral or a prize-fighter. I do not wish to 
 bracket Benbow and Tom Cribb; but, depend upon it, they 
 are practically bracketed for admiration in the minds of 
 
 20 many frequenters of ale-houses. If you told them about 
 Germanicus and the eagles, or Regulus going back to Car- 
 thage, they would very likely fall asleep ; but tell them about 
 Harry Pearce and Jem Belcher, or about Nelson and the 
 Nile, and they put down their pipes to listen. I have by 
 
 25 me a copy of " Boxiana," on the fly-leaves of which a 
 youthful member of the fancy kept a chronicle of remarka- 
 ble events and an obituary of great men. Here we find 
 piously chronicled the demise of jockeys, watermen, and 
 pugilists Johnny Moore, of the Liverpool Prize Ring; 
 
 30 Tom Spring, aged fifty-six; " Pierce Egan, senior, writer of 
 ' Boxiana ' and other sporting works " and among all 
 these, the Duke of Wellington! If Benbow had lived in 
 the time of this annalist, do you suppose his name would 
 
 3-17 : o, j. 17-161, i : c, h (cf. 112, 2-17). 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 161 
 
 not have been added to the glorious roll? In short, we do 
 not all feel warmly towards Wesley or Laud, we cannot all 
 take pleasure in " Paradise Lost " ; but there are certain 
 common sentiments and touches of nature by which the 
 whole nation is made to feel kinship. A little while ago 5 
 everybody, from Hazlitt and John Wilson down to the im- 
 becile creature who scribbled his register on the fly-leaves 
 of " Boxiana," felt a more or less shamefaced satisfaction 
 in the exploits of prize-fighters. And the exploits of the 
 Admirals are popular to the same degree, and tell in all 10 
 ranks of society. Their sayings and doings stir English 
 blood like the sound of a trumpet; and if the Indian Em- 
 pire, the trade of London, and all the outward and visible 
 ensigns of our greatness should pass away, we should still 
 leave behind us a durable monument of what we were in 15 
 these sayings and doings of the English Admirals. 
 
 Duncan, lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the 
 Venerable, and only one other vessel, heard that the whole 
 Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain Hotham 
 to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest part of the 20 
 channel, and fight his vessel till she sank. " I have taken 
 the depth of the water," added he, " and when the Venera- 
 ble goes down, my flag will still fly." And you observe 
 this is no naked Viking in a prehistoric period ; but a Scotch 
 member of Parliament, with a smattering of the classics, 25 
 a telescope, a cocked hat of great size, and flannel under- 
 clothing. In the same spirit, Nelson went into Aboukir 
 with six colors flying; so that even if five were shot 
 away, it should not be imagined he had struck. He too 
 must needs wear his four stars outside his Admiral's frock, 30 
 to be a butt for sharpshooters. " In honor I gained them," 
 he said to objectors, adding with sublime illogicality, " in 
 honor I will die with them." Captain Douglas of the 
 
 S-i6:c, n. 17-27 : f . 17-162,8:)'. 
 
1 62 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Royal Oak, when the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, 
 sent his men ashore, but was burned along with her himself 
 rather than desert his post without orders. Just then, per- 
 haps the Merry Monarch was* chasing a moth round the 
 5 supper-table with the ladies of his court. When Raleigh 
 sailed into Cadiz, and all the forts and ships opened fire 
 on him at once, he scorned to shoot a gun, and made answer 
 with a flourish of insulting trumpets. I like this bravado 
 better than the wisest dispositions to insure victory; it 
 
 10 comes from the heart and goes to it. God has made nobler 
 heroes, but He never made a finer gentleman than Walter 
 Raleigh. And as our Admirals were full of heroic supersti- 
 tions, and had a strutting and vainglorious style of fight, so 
 they discovered a startling eagerness for battle, and courted 
 
 15 war like a mistress. When the news came to Essex before 
 Cadiz that the attack had been decided, he threw his hat 
 into the sea. It is in this way that a schoolboy hears of a 
 half-holiday; but this was a bearded man of great posses- 
 sions who had just been allowed to risk his life. Benbow 
 
 20 could not lie still in his bunk after he had lost his leg ; 
 he must be on deck in a basket to direct and animate the 
 fight. I said they loved war like a mistress; yet I think 
 there are not many mistresses we should continue to woo 
 under similar circumstances. Trowbridge went ashore with 
 
 25 the Culloden, and was able to take no part in the battle of 
 the Nile. " The merits of that ship and her gallant cap- 
 tain," wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, " are too well known 
 to benefit by anything I could say. Her misfortune was 
 great in getting aground, while her more -fortunate com- 
 
 30 panions were in the full tide of happiness." This is a nota- 
 ble expression, and depicts the whole great-hearted, big- 
 spoken stock of the English Admirals to a hair. It was to 
 be " in the full tide of happiness " for Nelson to destroy 
 
 8-24 : j, a. 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 163 
 
 five thousand five hundred and twenty-five of his fellow 
 creatures, and have his own scalp torn open by a piece of 
 langridge shot. Hear him again at Copenhagen : " A shot 
 through the mainmast knocked the splinters about; and he 
 observed to one of his officers with a smile, ' It is warm 5 
 work, and this may be the last to any of us at any moment ' ; 
 and then, stopping short at the gangway, added, with emo- 
 tion, ' But, mark you / would not be elsewhere for thou- 
 sands."' 
 
 I must tell one more story, which has lately been made 10 
 familiar to us all, and that in one of the noblest ballads in 
 the English language. I had written my tame prose ab- 
 stract, I shall beg the reader to believe, when I had no 
 notion that the sacred bard designed an immortality for 
 Grenville. Sir Richard Grenville was Vice- Admiral to 15 
 Lord Thomas Howard, and lay off the Azores with the 
 English squadron in 1591. He was a noted tyrant to his 
 crew : a dark, bullying fellow apparently ; and it is related of 
 him that he would chew and swallow wine-glasses, by way 
 of convivial levity, till the blood ran out of his mouth. 20 
 When the Spanish fleet of fifty sail came within sight of the 
 English, his ship, the Revenge, was the last to weigh 
 anchor, and was so far circumvented by the Spaniards, 
 that there were but two courses open either to turn her 
 back upon the enemy or sail through one of his squadrons. 25 
 The first alternative Grenville dismissed as dishonorable 
 to himself, his country, and her Majesty's ship. Accord- 
 ingly, he chose the latter, and steered into the Spanish 
 armament. Several vessels he forced to luff and fall under 
 his lee; until, about three o'clock of the afternoon, a great 30 
 ship of three decks of ordnance took the wind out of his 
 sails, and immediately boarded. Thenceforward, and all 
 night long, the Revenge held her own single-handed against 
 
 10-20 : q. 10-164, 2 9 * J> f> n< 
 
164 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 the Spaniards. As one ship was beaten off, another took 
 its place. She endured, according to Raleigh's computa- 
 tion, " eight hundred shot of great artillery, besides many 
 assaults and entries." By morning the powder was spent, 
 5 the pikes all broken, not a stick was standing, " nothing 
 left overhead either for flight or defense " ; six feet of 
 water in the hold; almost all the men hurt; and Grenville 
 himself in a dying condition. To bring them to this pass, 
 a fleet of fifty sail had been mauling them for fifteen hours, 
 
 10 the Admiral of the Hulks and the Ascension of Seville had 
 both gone down alongside, and two other vessels had taken 
 refuge on shore in a sinking state. In Hawke's words, they 
 had " taken a great deal of drubbing." The captain and 
 crew thought they had done about enough; but Grenville 
 
 15 was not of this opinion ; he gave orders to the master gunner, 
 whom he knew to be a fellow after his own stamp, to 
 scuttle the Revenge where she lay. The others, who were 
 not mortally wounded like the Admiral, interfered with 
 some decision, locked the master gunner in his cabin, after 
 
 20 having deprived him of his sword, for he manifested an 
 intention to kill himself if he were not to sink the ship ; and 
 sent to the Spaniards to demand terms. These were 
 granted. The second or third day after, Grenville died of 
 his wounds aboard the Spanish flagship, leaving his con- 
 
 25 tempt upon the " traitors and dogs " who had not chosen to 
 do as he did, and engage fifty vessels, well found and fully 
 manned, with six inferior craft ravaged by sickness and 
 short of stores. He at least, he said, had done his duty as 
 he was bound to do, and looked for everlasting fame. 
 
 30 Someone said to me the other day that they considered 
 
 this story to be of a pestilent example. I am not inclined 
 
 to imagine we shall ever be put into any practical difficulty 
 
 from a superfluity of Grenvilles. And besides, I demur to 
 
 30-165, 19 : j, h (cf. 155, 9-15)- 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 165 
 
 the opinion. The worth of such actions is not a thing to be 
 decided in a quaver of sensibility or a flush of righteous 
 common sense. The man who wished to make the ballads 
 of his country, coveted a small matter compared to what 
 Richard Grenville accomplished. I wonder how many 5 
 people have been inspired by this mad story, and how many 
 battles have been actually won for England in the spirit 
 thus engendered. It is only with a measure of habitual 
 foolhardiness that you can be sure, in the common run of 
 men, of courage on a reasonable occasion. An army or a 10 
 fleet, if it is not led by quixotic fancies, will not be led 
 far by terror of the Provost-Marshal. Even German war- 
 fare, in addition to maps and telegraphs, is not above em- 
 ploying the " Wacht am Rhein." Nor is it only in the pro- 
 fession of arms that such stories may do good to a man. 15 
 In this desperate and gleeful fighting, whether it is Gren- 
 ville or Benbow, Hawke or Nelson, who flies his colors in 
 the ship, we see men brought to the test and giving proof 
 of what we call heroic feeling. Prosperous humanitarians 
 tell me, in my club smoking-room, that they are a prey to 20 
 prodigious heroic feelings, and that it costs them more no- 
 bility of soul to do nothing in particular, than would carry 
 on all the wars, by sea or land, of bellicose humanity. It 
 may very well be so, and yet not touch the point in question. 
 For what I desire is to see some of this nobility brought 25 
 face to face with me in an inspiriting achievement. A man 
 may talk smoothly over a cigar in my club smoking-room 
 from now to the Day of Judgment, without adding anything 
 to mankind's treasury of illustrious and encouraging exam- 
 ples. It is not over the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party 30 
 novel, that people are abashed into high resolutions. It 
 may be because their hearts are crass, but to stir them prop- 
 erly they must have men entering into glory with some 
 19-166, 5 : s, t. 
 
166 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of 
 our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full 
 of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England 
 than any material benefit in all the books of political econ- 
 5 omy between Westminster and Birmingham. Grenville 
 chewing wine-glasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, 
 any more than a thousand other artists when they are 
 viewed in the body, or met in private life ; but his work of 
 art, his finished tragedy, is an eloquent performance; and 
 
 10 1 contend it ought not only to enliven men of the sword as 
 they go into battle, but send back merchant clerks with more 
 heart and spirit to their bookkeeping by double entry. 
 
 There is another question which seems bound up in this ; 
 and that is Temple's problem: whether it was wise of 
 
 15 Douglas to burn with the Royal Oak? and by implication, 
 what it was that made him do so? Many will tell you it 
 was the desire of fame. 
 
 " To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite 
 grandeur of their renown, but to fortune? How many 
 
 20 men has she extinguished in the beginning of their prog- 
 ress, of whom we have no knowledge; who brought as 
 much courage to the work as they, if their adverse hap had 
 not cut them off in the first sally of their arms ? Amongst 
 so many and so great dangers, I do not remember to have 
 
 25 anywhere read that Caesar was ever wounded ; a thousand 
 have fallen in less dangers than the least of these he went 
 through. A great many brave actions must be expected to 
 be performed without witness, for one that comes to some 
 notice. A man is not always at the top of a breach, or at 
 
 30 the head of an army in the sight of his general, as upon 
 
 a platform. He is often surprised between the hedge and 
 
 the ditch ; he must run the hazard of his life against a hen 
 
 roost; he must dislodge four rascally musketeers out of a 
 
 5-12 : c, t. 23-167, 2 : t, c. 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 167 
 
 barn ; he must prick out single from his party, as necessity 
 arises, and meet adventures alone." 
 
 Thus far Montaigne, in a characteristic essay on " Glory." 
 Where death is certain, as in the cases of Douglas or Gren- 
 ville, it seems all one from a personal point of view. The 5 
 man who lost his life against a hen roost is in the same 
 pickle with him who lost his life against a fortified place of 
 the first order. Whether he has missed a peerage or only 
 the corporal's stripes, it is all one if he has missed them and 
 is quietly in the grave. It was by a hazard that we learned 10 
 the conduct of the four marines of the Wager. There was 
 no room for these brave fellows in the boat, and they were 
 left behind upon the island to a certain death. They were 
 soldiers, they said, and knew well enough it was their busi- 
 ness to die; and as their comrades pulled away they stood 15 
 upon the beach, gave three cheers, and cried " God bless 
 the king ! " Now, one or two of those who were in the boat 
 escaped, against all likelihood, to tell the story. That was 
 a great thing for us; but surely it cannot, by any possible 
 twisting of human speech, be construed into anything great 20 
 for the marines. You may suppose, if you like, that they 
 died hoping their behavior would not be forgotten ; or you 
 may suppose they thought nothing on the subject, which is 
 much more likely. What can be the signification of the word 
 " fame " to a private of marines, who cannot read and 25 
 knows nothing of past history beyond the reminiscences of 
 his grandmother? But whichever supposition you make, 
 the fact is unchanged. They died while the question still 
 hung in the balance; and I suppose their bones were al- 
 ready white, before the winds and the waves and the humor 30 
 of Indian chiefs and Spanish governors had decided whether 
 they were to be unknown and useless martyrs or honored 
 heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the lesson: if it is for 
 3-21 : c. 27-168, 2 : b, n. 
 
168 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly fellows 
 after all. 
 
 It is at best but a pettifogging, pickthank business to 
 decompose actions into little personal motives, and explain 
 
 5 heroism away. The Abstract Bagman will grow like an 
 Admiral at heart, not by ungrateful carping, but in a heat 
 of admiration. But there is another theory of the per- 
 sonal motive in these fine sayings and doings, which I be- 
 lieve to be true and wholesome. People usually do things, 
 
 10 and suffer martyrdoms, because they have an inclination 
 that way. The best artist is not the man who fixes his eye 
 on posterity, but the one who loves the practice of his art. 
 And instead of having a taste for being successful mer- 
 chants and retiring at thirty, some people have a taste for 
 
 15 high and what we call heroic forms of excitement. If the 
 Admirals courted war like a mistress ; if, as the drum beat 
 to quarters, the sailors came gayly out of the forecastle, 
 it is because a fight is a period of multiplied and intense 
 experiences, and, by Nelson's computation, worth " thou- 
 
 20 sands " to anyone who has a heart under his jacket. If 
 the marines of the Wager gave three cheers and cried " God 
 bless the king," it was because they liked to do things nobly 
 for their own satisfaction. They were giving their lives, 
 there was no help for that; and they made it a point of 
 
 25 self-respect to give them handsomely. And there were 
 never four happier marines in God's world than these four 
 at that moment. If it was worth thousands to be at the 
 Baltic, I wish a Benthamite arithmetician would calculate 
 how much it was worth to be one of these four marines; 
 
 30 or how much their story is worth to each of us who read 
 it. And mark you, undemonstrative men would have spoiled 
 the situation. The finest action is the better for a piece of 
 purple. If the soldiers of the Birkenhead had not gone 
 
 3-9 : h. 11-23:0, h. 23-31:1,0. 31-169, io:h. 
 
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 169 
 
 down in line, or these marines of the Wager had walked 
 away simply into the island, like plenty of other brave 
 fellows in the like circumstances, my Benthamite arith- 
 metician would assign a far lower value to the two stories. 
 We have to desire a grand air in our heroes; and such a 5 
 knowledge of the human stage as shall make them put 
 the dots on their own i's, and leave us in no suspense as 
 to when they mean to be heroic. And hence, we should 
 congratulate ourselves upon the fact that our Admirals were 
 not only great-hearted but big-spoken. 10 
 
 The heroes themselves say, as often as not, that fame is 
 their object; but I do not think that is much to the pur- 
 pose. People generally say what they have been taught to 
 say; that was the catchword they were given in youth to 
 express the aims of their way of life; and men who are 15 
 gaining great battles are not likely to take much trouble in 
 reviewing their sentiments and the words in which they 
 were told to express them. Almost every person, if you 
 will believe himself, holds a quite different theory of life 
 from the one on which he is patently acting. And the fact 20 
 is, fame may be a forethought and an afterthought, but it 
 is too abstract an idea to move people greatly in moments 
 of swift and momentous decision. It is from something 
 more immediate, some determination of blood to the head, 
 some trick of the fancy, that the breach is stormed or the 25 
 bold word spoken. I am sure a fellow shooting an ugly 
 weir in a canoe has exactly as much thought about fame 
 as most commanders going into. battle; and yet the action, 
 fall out how it will, is not one of those the muse delights 
 to celebrate. Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow 30 
 does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, 
 unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why ; 
 and I suspect it is at least ten per cent of why Lord Bea- 
 
 11-170,4: k, j,n. 
 
170 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 consfield and Mr. Gladstone have debated so much in the 
 House of Commons, and why Burnaby rode to Khiva the 
 other day, and why the Admirals courted war like a 
 mistress. 
 
 6, 7, 8, 9, n, 12. 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 
 1850- 
 
 TRUTH-HUNTING 
 From " Obiter Dicta," first series. 
 
 IT is common knowledge that the distinguishing char- 
 acteristic of the day is the zeal displayed by us in hunting 
 after truth. A really not inconsiderable portion of what- 
 ever time we are able to spare from making or losing 
 money or reputation is devoted to this sport, whilst both 5 
 reading and conversation are largely impressed into the 
 same service. 
 
 Nor are there wanting those who avow themselves anx- 
 ious to see this, their favorite pursuit, raised to the dignity 
 of a national institution. They would have Truth-hunting 10 
 established and endowed. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle has somewhere described with great humor 
 the " dreadfully painful " manner in which Kepler made his 
 celebrated calculations and discoveries ; but our young men 
 of talent fail to see the joke, and take no pleasure in such 15 
 anecdotes. Truth, they feel, is not to be had from them 
 on any such terms. And why should it be ? Is it not notori- 
 ous that all who are lucky enough to supply wants grow 
 rapidly and enormously rich ; and is not truth a now recog- 
 nized want in ten thousand homes wherever, indeed, per- 20 
 sons are to be found wealthy enough to pay Mr. Mudie a 
 guinea and so far literate as to be able to read? What, 
 save the modesty, is there surprising in the demand now 
 made on behalf of some young people, whose means are 
 
 1-17 : w. 8-1 1 : w. 12-172, 13 : a, j, k. 
 171 
 
172 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE' 
 
 commensurate with their talents, that they should be al- 
 lowed, as a reward for doling out monthly or quarterly 
 portions of truth, to live in houses rent-free, have their 
 meals for nothing, and a trifle of money besides? Would 
 5 Bass consent to supply us with beer in return for board 
 and lodging, we of course defraying the actual cost of his 
 brewery, and allowing him some 300 a year for himself? 
 Who, as he read about " Sun-spots," or " Fresh Facts for 
 Darwin," or the " True History of Modesty or Veracity," 
 10 showing how it came about that these high-sounding vir- 
 tues are held in their present somewhat general esteem, 
 would find it in his heart to grudge the admirable authors 
 their freedom from petty cares? 
 
 But whether Truth-hunting be ever established or not, 
 15 no one can doubt that it is a most fashionable pastime, and 
 one which is being pursued with great vigor. 
 
 All hunting is so far alike as to lead one to believe that 
 
 there must sometimes occur in Truth-hunting, just as much 
 
 as in fox-hunting, long pauses whilst the covers are being 
 
 20 drawn in search of the game, and when thoughts are free 
 
 to range at will in pursuit of far other objects than those 
 
 giving their name to the sport. If it should chance to any 
 
 Truth-hunter, during some " lull in his 'hot chase," whilst, 
 
 for example, he is waiting for the second volume of an 
 
 25 " Analysis of Religion," or for the last thing out on the 
 
 Fourth Gospel, to take up this book, and open it at this 
 
 page, we should like to press him for an answer to the 
 
 following question : " Are you sure that it is a good thing 
 
 for you to spend so much time in speculating about matters 
 
 30 outside your daily life and walk ? " 
 
 Curiosity is no doubt an excellent quality. In a critic 
 it is especially excellent. To want to know all about a 
 thing, and not merely one man's account or version of it; 
 14-16 :w,b. 22-30:1. 31-173. 3^ b. 31 :b. 31-173. *3 : f n * 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 173 
 
 to see all round it, or, at any rate, as far round it as possi- 
 ble; not to be lazy or indifferent, or easily put off, or 
 scared away all this is really very excellent. Sir Fitz 
 James Stephens professes very great regret that we have 
 not got Pilate's account of the events immediately preced- 5 
 ing the Crucifixion. He thinks it would throw great light 
 upon the subject; and no doubt, if it had occurred to the 
 Evangelists to adopt in their narratives the method which 
 long afterwards recommended itself to the author of " The 
 Ring and the Book," we should now be in possession of 10 
 a mass of very curious information. But, excellent as all 
 this is in the realm of criticism, the question remains, How 
 does a restless habit of mind tell upon conduct? 
 
 John Mill was not one from whose lips the advice " Stare 
 super antiquas vias," was often heard to proceed, and he 15 
 was by profession a speculator, yet in that significant book, 
 the " Autobiography," he describes this age of Truth- 
 hunters as one " of weak convictions, paralyzed intel- 
 lects, and growing laxity of opinions." 
 
 Is Truth-hunting one of those active mental habits which, 20 
 as Bishop Butler tells us, intensify their effects by constant 
 use; and are weak convictions, paralyzed intellects, and 
 laxity of opinions amongst the effects of Truth-hunting on 
 the majority of minds? These are not unimportant ques- 
 tions. 25 
 
 Let us consider briefly the probable effects of speculative 
 habits on conduct. 
 
 The discussion of a question of conduct has the great 
 charm of justifying, if indeed not requiring, personal illus- 
 tration; and this particular question is well illustrated by 30 
 instituting a comparison between the life and character of 
 Charles Lamb and those of some of his distinguished 
 friends. 
 
 26, 27 : b, 
 
174 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Personal illustration, especially when it proceeds by way 
 of comparison, is always dangerous, and the dangers are 
 doubled when the subjects illustrated and compared are 
 favorite authors. It behooves us to proceed warily in 
 
 5 this matter. A dispute as to the respective merits of Gray 
 and Collins has been known to result in a visit to an at- 
 torney and the revocation of a will. An avowed inability 
 to see anything in Miss Austen's novels is reported to have 
 proved destructive of an otherwise good chance of an Indian 
 
 10 judgeship. I believe, however, I run no great risk in assert- 
 ing that, of all English authors, Charles Lamb is the one 
 loved most warmly and emotionally by his admirers, 
 amongst whom I reckon only those who are as familiar with 
 the four volumes of his " Life and Letters " as with " Elia." 
 
 15 But how does he illustrate the particular question now 
 engaging our attention ? 
 
 Speaking of his sister Mary, who, as everyone knows, 
 throughout " Elia " is called his Cousin Bridget, he says : 
 
 " It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener, perhaps, than 
 20 I could have wished, to have had for her associates and 
 mine freethinkers, leaders and disciples of novel philoso- 
 phies and systems, but she neither wrangles with nor ac- 
 cepts their opinions." 
 
 Nor did her brother. He lived his life cracking his little 
 25 jokes and reading his great folios, neither wrangling nor 
 accepting the opinions of the friends he loved to see about 
 him. To a contemporary stranger it might well have ap- 
 peared as if his life were a frivolous and useless one as 
 compared with those of these philosophers and thinkers. 
 30 They discussed their great schemes and affected to probe 
 deep mysteries, and were constantly asking, " What is 
 Truth ? " He sipped his glass, shuffled his cards, and was 
 
 i-i6:d, v. 15, i6:b. 24-27 : w. 27-175, 4 : x, o. 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 175 
 
 content with the humbler inquiry, " What is trumps ? " But 
 to us, looking back upon that little group, and knowing 
 what we now do about each member of it, no such mistake 
 is possible. To us it is plain beyond all question, judged 
 by whatever standard of excellence it is possible for any 5 
 reasonable human being to take, Lamb stands head and 
 shoulders a better man than any of them. No need to 
 stop to compare him with Godwin, or Hazlitt, or Lloyd; 
 let us boldly put him in the scale with one whose fame 
 is in all the churches with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 10 
 " logician, metaphysician, bard." 
 
 There are some men whom to abuse is pleasant. Coleridge 
 is not one of them. How gladly we would love the author 
 of " Christabel " if we could ! But the thing is flatly im- 
 possible. His was an unlovely character. The sentence 15 
 passed upon him by Mr. Matthew Arnold (parenthetically, 
 in one of the " Essays in Criticism ") " Coleridge had no 
 morals " is no less just than pitiless. As we gather in- 
 formation about him from numerous quarters, we find it 
 impossible to resist the conclusion that he was a man neglect- 20 
 ful of restraint, irresponsive to the claims of those who 
 had every claim upon him, willing to receive, slow to 
 give. 
 
 In early manhood Coleridge planned a Pantisocracy 
 where all the virtues were to thrive. Lamb did something 25 
 far more difficult: he played cribbage every night with his 
 imbecile father, whose constant stream of querulous talk 
 and fault-finding might well have goaded a far stronger man 
 into practicing and justifying neglect. 
 
 That Lamb, with all his admiration for Coleridge, was 30 
 well aware of dangerous tendencies in his character, is 
 made apparent by many letters, notably by one written in 
 1796, in which he says: 
 
 4-1 1 : q. 12,23: j, v. 24-29 : x. 
 
176 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 " O my friend, cultivate the filial feelings ! and let no 
 man think himself released from the kind charities of rela- 
 tionship: these are the best foundation for every species of 
 benevolence. I rejoice to hear that you are reconciled with 
 5 all your relations." 
 
 This surely is as valuable an " aid to reflection " as any 
 supplied by the Highgate seer. 
 
 Lamb gave but little thought to the wonderful difference 
 between the " reason " and the " understanding." He pre- 
 
 10 ferred old plays an odd diet, some may think on which 
 to feed the virtues; but, however that may be, the noble 
 fact remains, that he, poor, frail boy ! ( for he was no more 
 when trouble first assailed him) stooped down and, without 
 sigh or sign, took upon his own shoulders the whole burden 
 
 15 of a life-long sorrow. 
 
 Coleridge married. Lamb, at the bidding of duty, re- 
 mained single, wedding himself to the sad fortunes of his 
 father and sister. Shall we pity him? No; he had his 
 reward the surpassing reward that is only within the 
 
 20 power of literature to bestow. It was Lamb, and not 
 Coleridge, who wrote " Dream-Children : a Reverie " : 
 
 " Then I told how for seven long years, in hope some- 
 times, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted 
 the fair Alice W n ; and as much as children could un- 
 
 25 derstand, I explained to them what coyness and difficulty 
 and denial meant in maidens when, suddenly turning to 
 Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes 
 with such a reality of representment that I became in doubt 
 which of them stood before me, or whose that bright hair 
 
 30 was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually 
 grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding, till 
 nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the 
 uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely im- 
 pressed upon me the effects of speech. * We are not of 
 
 6-7 :b. 8-1 5 : x. 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 177 
 
 Alice nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children 
 of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing, less than 
 nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been.' '' 
 
 Godwin ! Hazlitt ! Coleridge ! Where now are their 
 " novel philosophies and systems " ? Bottled moonshine, 5 
 which does not improve by keeping. 
 
 " Only the actions of the just 
 Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 
 
 Were we disposed to admit that Lamb would in all prob- 
 ability have been as good a man as everyone agrees he was 10 
 as kind to his father, as full of self-sacrifice for the sake 
 of his sister, as loving and ready a friend even though 
 he had paid more heed to current speculations, it is yet 
 not without use in a time like this, when so much stress is 
 laid upon anxious inquiry into the mysteries of soul and 15 
 body, to point out how this man attained to a moral ex- 
 cellence denied to his speculative contemporaries; per- 
 formed duties from which they, good men as they were, 
 would one and all have shrunk; how, in short, he con- 
 trived to achieve what no one of his friends, not even the 20 
 immaculate Wordsworth or the precise Southey, achieved 
 the living of a life, the records of which are inspiring 
 to read, and are indeed " the presence of a good diffused ; " 
 and managed to do it all without either " wrangling with or 
 accepting " the opinions that " hurtled in the air " about 25 
 him. 
 
 But was there no relation between his unspeculative 
 habit of mind and his honest, unwavering service of duty, 
 whose voice he ever obeyed as the ship the rudder? It 
 would be difficult to name anyone more unlike Lamb, in 30 
 many aspects of character, than Dr. Johnson, for whom 
 he had (mistakenly) no warm regard; but they closely 
 
 4-6 : x, o. 9-29 ; b, i, c, j. 27-178, 5 : o, c. 
 
178 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 resemble one another in their indifference to mere specula- 
 tion about things if things they can be called outside our 
 human walk; in their hearty love of honest earthly life, 
 in their devotion to their friends, their kindness to de- 
 5 pendents, and in their obedience to duty. What caused 
 each of them the most pain was the recollection of a past 
 unkindness. The poignancy of Dr. Johnson's grief on one 
 such recollection is historical; and amongst Lamb's letters 
 are to be found several in which, with vast depths of feeling, 
 
 10 he bitterly upbraids himself for neglect of old friends. 
 
 Nothing so much tends to blur moral distinctions, and 
 to obliterate plain duties, as the free indulgence of specu- 
 lative habits. We must all know many a sorry scrub who 
 has fairly talked himself into the belief that nothing but 
 
 15 his intellectual difficulties prevents him from being another 
 St. Francis. We think we could suggest a few score of 
 other obstacles. 
 
 Would it not be better for most people, if, instead of 
 stuffing their heads with controversy, they were to devote 
 
 20 their scanty leisure to reading books, such as, to name 
 one only, Kaye's " History of the Sepoy War," which is 
 crammed full of activities and heroisms, and which force 
 upon the reader's mind the healthy conviction that, after 
 all, whatever mysteries may appertain to mind and matter, 
 
 25 and notwithstanding grave doubts as to the authenticity of 
 the Fourth Gospel, it is bravery, truth and honor, loyalty 
 and hard work, each man at his post, which make this 
 planet inhabitable. 
 
 In these days of champagne and shoddy, of display of 
 
 30 teacups and rotten foundations especially, too, now that 
 the " nexus " of " cash payment," which was to bind man 
 to man in the bonds of a common pecuniary interest, is 
 hopelessly broken it becomes plain that the real wants of 
 
 1 1-17 : c, x, u. 18-28 : b, x, u. 29-179, 3 : w, x. 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 179 
 
 the age are not analyses of religious belief, nor discussions 
 as to whether " Person " or " Stream of Tendency " are 
 the apter words to describe God by ; but a steady supply of 
 honest, plain-sailing men who can be safely trusted with 
 small sums, and to do what in them lies to maintain the 5 
 honor of the various professions, and to restore the credit 
 of English workmanship. We want Lambs, not Cole- 
 ridges. The verdict to be striven for is not " Well guessed," 
 but " Well done." 
 
 All our remarks are confined to the realm of opinion. 10 
 Faith may be well left alone, for she is, to give her her 
 due, our largest manufacturer of good works, and when- 
 ever her furnaces are blown out morality suffers. 
 
 But speculation has nothing to do with faith. The region 
 of speculation is the region of opinion, and a hazy, lazy, 15 
 delightful region it is; good to talk in, good to smoke in, 
 peopled with pleasant fancies and charming ideas, strange 
 analogies and killing jests. How quickly the time passes 
 there! how well it seems spent! The Philistines are all 
 outside; everyone is reasonable and tolerant and good- 20 
 tempered ; you think and scheme and talk, and look at every- 
 thing in a hundred ways and from all possible points of 
 view ; and it is not till the company breaks up and the lights 
 are blown out, and you are left alone with silence, that the 
 doubt occurs to you, What is the good of it all? 25 
 
 Where is the actuary who can appraise the value of a 
 man's opinions ? " When we speak of a man's opinions," 
 says Dr. Newman, " what do we mean but the collection 
 of notions he happens to have ? " Happens to have ? How 
 did he come by them ? It is the knowledge we all possess of 30 
 the sorts of ways in which men get their opinions that 
 makes us so little affected in our own minds by those of 
 men for whose characters and intellects we may have great 
 
 3-9 : x. 10-13 : e. 14 : b. 14-25 : c, x, u. 26-30 : x. 26-180. n : j, k. 
 
i8o THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 admiration. A sturdy Nonconformist minister, who thinks 
 Mr. Gladstone the ablest and ripest scholar within the 
 three kingdoms, is no whit shaken in his Nonconformity 
 by knowing that his idol has written in defense of the 
 5 Apostolical Succession, and believes in special sacramental 
 graces. Mr. Gladstone may have been a great student of 
 church history, whilst Nonconformist reading under that 
 head usually begins with Luther's Theses but what of 
 that ? Is it not all explained by the fact that Mr. Gladstone 
 
 10 was at Oxford in 1831 ? So at least the Nonconformist 
 minister will think. 
 
 The admission frankly made, that these remarks are 
 confined to the realms of opinion, prevents me from urging 
 on everyone my prescription, but, with two exceptions to 
 
 15 be immediately named, I believe it would be found generally 
 useful. It may be made up thus : " As much reticence as is 
 consistent with good breeding upon, and a wisely tempered 
 indifference to, the various speculative questions now agi- 
 tated in our midst." 
 
 20 This prescription will be found to liberate the mind from 
 all kinds of cloudy vapors which obscure the mental vision 
 and conceal from men their real position, and would also 
 set free a great deal of time which might be profitably 
 spent in quite other directions. 
 
 25 The first of these two exceptions I have alluded to is of 
 those who possess whether honestly come by or not we 
 cannot stop to inquire strong convictions upon these very 
 questions. These convictions they must be allowed to 
 iterate and reiterate, and to proclaim that in them is to be 
 
 30 found the secret of all this (otherwise) unintelligible world. 
 
 The second exception is that of those who pursue Truth 
 
 as of a divine compulsion, and who can be likened only to 
 
 the nympholepts of old; those unfortunates who, whilst 
 
 31-181, 5 : 1, d, . 
 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 181 
 
 carelessly strolling amidst sylvan shades, caught a hasty 
 glimpse of the flowing robe or even of the gracious counte- 
 nance of some spiritual inmate of the woods, in whose 
 pursuit their whole lives were ever afterwards fruitlessly 
 spent. 5 
 
 The nympholepts of Truth are profoundly interesting 
 figures in the world's history, but their lives are melancholy 
 reading, and seldom fail to raise a crop of gloomy thoughts. 
 Their finely touched spirits are not indeed liable to succumb 
 to the ordinary temptations of life, and they thus escape 10 
 the evils which usually follow in the wake of speculation; 
 but what is their labor's reward? 
 
 Readers of Dr. Newman will remember, and will thank 
 me for calling it to mind, an exquisite passage, too long to 
 be quoted, in which, speaking as a Catholic to his late 15 
 Anglican associates, he reminds them how he once par- 
 ticipated in their pleasures and shared their hopes, and 
 thus concludes : 
 
 " When, too, shall I not feel the soothing recollection of 
 those dear years which I spent in retirement, in preparation 20 
 for my deliverance from Egypt, asking for light, and by 
 degrees getting it, with less of temptation in my heart and 
 sin on my conscience than ever before ? " 
 
 But the passage is sad as well as exquisite, showing to 
 us, as it does, one who from his earliest days has rejoiced 25 
 in a faith in God, intense, unwavering, constant; harassed 
 by distressing doubts, he carries them all, in the devotion 
 of his faith, the warmth of his heart, and the purity of 
 his life, to the throne where Truth sits in state; living 
 he tells us, in retirement, and spending great portions of 30 
 every day on his knees ; and yet we ask the question with 
 all reverence what did Dr. Newman get in exchange for 
 his prayers? 
 
 6-12 : e, x, n. 24-33 ' x > n . 
 
182 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 " I think it impossible to withstand the evidence for the 
 liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius at Naples, or for 
 the motion of the eyes of the pictures of the Madonna in 
 the Roman States. I see no reason to doubt the material 
 
 5 of the Lombard Cross at Monza, and I do not see why the 
 Holy Coat at Treves may not have been what it professes 
 to be. I firmly believe that portions of the True Cross are 
 at Rome and elsewhere, that the Crib of Bethlehem is at 
 Rome, and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul; also I 
 
 10 firmly believe that the relics of the Saints are doing in- 
 numerable miracles and graces daily. I firmly believe that 
 before now Saints have raised the dead to life, crossed the 
 sea without vessels, multiplied grain and bread, cured incu- 
 rable diseases, and stopped the operations of the laws of 
 
 15 the universe in a multitude of ways." 
 
 So writes Dr. Newman, with that candor, that love of 
 putting the case most strongly against himself, which is 
 only one of the lovely characteristics of the man whose 
 long life has been a miracle of beauty and grace, and who 
 
 20 has contrived to instil into his very controversies more of 
 the spirit of Christ than most men can find room for in 
 their prayers. But the dilemma is an awkward one. Does 
 the Madonna wink, or is Heaven deaf? 
 
 Oh, spirit of Truth, where wert thou, when the remorse- 
 
 25 less deep of superstition closed over the head of John 
 Henry Newman, who surely deserved to be thy best-loved 
 son? 
 
 But this is a digression. With the nympholepts of Truth 
 we have nought to do. They must be allowed to pursue 
 
 30 their lonely and devious paths, and though the records of 
 their wanderings, their conflicting conclusions, and their 
 widely-parted resting-places may fill us with despair, still 
 they are witnesses whose testimony we could ill afford to 
 lose. 
 
 35 But there are not many nympholepts. The symptoms of 
 
 16-22 : b, i. 22, 23 : b, w. 24-27 : b. 28-34 : c, n. 
 
AUGUSTINE BIRRELL 183 
 
 the great majority of our modern Truth-hunters are very 
 different, as they will, with their frank candor, be the first 
 to admit. They are free " to drop their swords and dag- 
 gers " whenever so commanded, and it is high time they did. 
 
 With these two exceptions I think my prescription will 5 
 be found of general utility, and likely to promote a healthy 
 flow of good works. 
 
 I had intended to say something as to the effect of specu- 
 lative habits upon the intellect, but cannot now do so. The 
 following shrewd remark of Mr. Latham's in his interesting 10 
 book on the " Action of Examinations " may, however, be 
 quoted; its bearing will be at once seen, and its truth 
 recognized by many : 
 
 " A man who has been thus provided with views and 
 acute observations may have destroyed in himself the germs 15 
 of that power which he simulates. He might have had a 
 thought or two now and then if he had been let alone, but 
 if he is made first to aim at a standard of thought above 
 his years, and then finds he can get the sort of thoughts 
 he wants without thinking, he is in fair way to be spoiled." 20 
 
 5-7 ' w. 
 x 2, 3, 6, 7. 9. n, 12, 14. 
 
H. G. WELLS 
 1866- 
 
 ADOLESCENCE 
 Part of Chapter IV of "The New Machiavelli " 
 
 1 
 
 I FIND it very difficult to trace how form was added to 
 form and interpretation followed interpretation in my ever- 
 spreading, ever-deepening, ever-multiplying, and enriching 
 vision of this world into which I had been born. Every 
 
 5 day added its impressions, its hints, its subtle explications 
 to the growing understanding. Day after day the living 
 interlacing threads of a mind weave together. Every morn- 
 ing now for three weeks and more (for to-day is Thursday 
 and I started on a Tuesday) I have been trying to convey 
 
 io some idea of the factors and early influences by which my 
 particular scrap of subjective tapestry was shaped, to show 
 the child playing on the nursery floor, the son perplexed 
 by his mother, gazing aghast at his dead father, exploring 
 interminable suburbs, touched by the first intimations of 
 
 15 the sexual mystery, coming in with a sort of confused 
 avidity toward the centers of the life of London. It is 
 only by such an effort to write it down that one realizes 
 how marvelously crowded, how marvelously analytical and 
 synthetic those ears must be. One begins with the little 
 
 20 child to whom the sky is a roof of blue, the world a screen 
 1 Copyright, 1911, by Duffield & Company, New York. 
 1-6 : c, x. 6-16 : e, a, x. 19-185, 8 : a, c, e, h. 
 184 
 
H. G. WELLS 185 
 
 of opaque and disconnected facts, the home a thing eternal, 
 and " being good " just simple obedience to unquestioned 
 authority; and one comes at last to the vast world of one's 
 adult perception, pierced deep by flaring searchlights of par- 
 tial understanding, here massed by mists, here refracted 5 
 and distorted through half-translucent veils, here showing 
 broad prospects and limitless vistas, and here impenetrably 
 dark. 
 
 I recall phases of deep speculation, doubts, and even 
 prayers by night, and strange occasions when by a sort of 10 
 hypnotic contemplation of nothingness I sought to pierce 
 the web of appearances about me. It is hard to measure 
 these things in receding perspective, and now I cannot 
 trace, so closely has mood succeeded and overlaid and 
 obliterated mood, the phases by which an utter horror of 15 
 death was replaced by the growing realization of its neces- 
 sity and dignity. Difficulty of the imagination with infinite 
 space, infinite time, entangled my mind ; and moral distress 
 for the pain and suffering of bygone ages that made all 
 thought of reformation in the future seem but the grim- 20 
 mest irony upon now irreparable wrongs. Many an intri- 
 cate perplexity of these broadening years did not so much 
 get settled as cease to matter. Life crowded me away 
 from it. 
 
 I have confessed myself a temerarious theologian, and 25 
 in that passage from boyhood to manhood I ranged widely 
 in my search for some permanently satisfying Truth. That, 
 too, ceased after a time to be urgently interesting. I came 
 at last into a phase that endures to this day, of absolute 
 tranquillity, of absolute confidence in whatever that Incom- 30 
 prehensible Comprehensive which must needs be the sub- 
 stratum of all things, may be. Feeling of It, feeling by it, 
 I cannot feel afraid of it. I think I had got quite clearly 
 
 12-24 : v. 23, 24 : b. 28-186, 7 : c, q. 
 
i86 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 and finally to that adjustment long before my Cambridge 
 days were done. I am sure that the evil in life is transi- 
 tory and finite like an accident or distress in the nursery; 
 that God is my Father and that I may trust Him, even 
 5 though life hurts so that one must needs cry out at it, 
 even though it shows no consequence but failure, no prom- 
 ise but pain. . . . 
 
 But while I was fearless of theology I must confess it 
 was comparatively late before I faced and dared to probe 
 
 10 the secrecies of sex. I had an instinctive perception that 
 it would be a large and difficult thing in my life, but my 
 early training was all in the direction of regarding it as 
 an irrelevant thing, as something disconnected from all the 
 broad significances of life, as hostile and disgraceful in its 
 
 15 quality. The world was never so emasculated in thought, 
 I suppose, as it was in the Victorian time. . . . 
 
 I was afraid to think either of sex or (what I have always 
 found inseparable from a kind of sexual emotion) beauty. 
 Even as a boy I knew the thing as a haunting and alluring 
 
 20 mystery that I tried to keep away from. Its dim presence 
 obsessed me none the less for all the extravagant decency, 
 the stimulating silences of my upbringing. . . . 
 
 The plaster Venuses and Apollos that used to adorn the 
 vast aisle and huge gray terraces of the Crystal Palace 
 
 25 were the first intimations of the beauty of the body that 
 ever came into my life. As I write of it I feel again the 
 shameful attraction of those gracious forms. I used to 
 look at them not simply, but curiously and askance. Once 
 at least in my later days at Penge, I spent a shilling in 
 
 30 admission chiefly for the sake of them. . . . 
 
 The strangest thing of all my odd and solitary upbring- 
 ing seems to me now that swathing up of all the splendors 
 of the flesh, that strange combination of fanatical terror- 
 
 8-16 : x, m. 31-187, 6 : c, a, h. 
 
H. G. WELLS 187 
 
 ism and shyness that fenced me about with prohibitions. 
 It caused me to grow up, I will not say blankly ignorant, 
 but with an ignorance blurred and dishonored by shame, 
 by enigmatical warnings, by cultivated aversions, an ig- 
 norance in which a fascinated curiosity and desire struggled 5 
 like a thing in a net. I knew so little and I felt so much. 
 There was indeed no Aphrodite at all in my youthful 
 Pantheon, but instead there was a mysterious and minatory 
 gap. I have told how at last a new Venus was born in 
 my imagination out of gas lamps and the twilight, a Venus 10 
 with a cockney accent and dark eyes shining out of the dusk, 
 a Venus who was a warm, passions-stirring atmosphere 
 rather than incarnation in a body. And I have told, too, 
 how I bought a picture. 
 
 All this was a thing apart from the rest of my life, a 15 
 locked avoided chamber. . . . 
 
 It was not until my last year at Trinity that I really 
 broke down the barriers of this unwholesome silence and 
 brought my secret broodings to the light of day. Then a 
 little set of us plunged suddenly into what we called at first 20 
 sociological discussion. I can still recall even the physical 
 feeling of those first tentative talks. I remember them 
 mostly as occurring in the rooms of Ted Hatherleigh, who 
 kept at the corner by the Trinity great gate, but we also 
 used to talk a great deal at a man's in King's, a man named, 25 
 if I remember rightly, Redmayne. The atmosphere at 
 Hatherleigh's rooms was a haze of tobacco smoke against 
 a background brown and deep. He professed himself a 
 socialist with anarchistic leanings he had suffered the mar- 
 tyrdom of ducking for it and a huge French May-day 30 
 poster displaying a splendid proletarian in red and black 
 on a barricade against a flaring orange sky, dominated his 
 decorations. Hatherleigh affected a fine untidiness, and all 
 6:b. 7-14:6, h. 15, i6:b. 21-33:!. 
 
i88 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 the place, even the floor, was littered with books, for the 
 most part open and face downward; deeper darknesses 
 were supplied by a discarded gown and our caps, all con- 
 scientiously battered, Hatherleigh's flopped like an ele- 
 5 phant's ear and inserted quill pens supported the corner 
 of mine; the high lights of the picture came chiefly as 
 reflections from his checkered blue mugs full of audit ale. 
 We sat on oak chairs, except the four or five who crowded 
 on a capacious settle, we drank a lot of beer and were 
 
 10 often fuddled, and occasionally quite drunk, and we all 
 smoked reckless-looking pipes, there was a transient 
 fashion among us for corn cobs for which Mark Twain, I 
 think, was responsible. Our little excesses with liquor were 
 due far more to conscience than appetite, indicated chiefly 
 
 15 a resolve to break away from restraints that we suspected 
 were keeping us off the instructive knife-edges of life. 
 Hatherleigh was a good Englishman of the premature type, 
 with a red face, a lot of hair, a deep voice, and an explosive 
 plunging manner, and it was he who said one evening 
 
 20 Heaven knows how we got to it " Look here, you know, 
 it's all Rot, this Shutting Up about Women. We ought to 
 talk about them. What are we going to do about them? 
 It's got to come. We're all festering inside about it. Let's 
 out with it. There's too much Decency altogether about 
 
 25 this Infernal University ! " 
 
 We rose to this challenge a little awkwardly and our first 
 talk was clumsy, there were flushed faces and red ears, 
 and I remember Hatherleigh broke out into a monologue 
 on decency. " Modesty and Decency," said Hatherleigh, 
 
 30 " are Oriental vices. The Jews brought them to Europe. 
 They're Semitic, just like our monasticism here and the se- 
 clusion of women and mutilating the dead on a battlefield. 
 And all that sort of thing." 
 
 1-13: w. 13-25: e, x, n. 
 
H. G. WELLS 189 
 
 Hatherleigh's mind progressed by huge leaps, leaps that 
 were usually wildly inaccurate, and for a time we engaged 
 hotly upon the topic of those alleged mutilations and the 
 Semitic responsibility for decency. Hatherleigh tried hard 
 to saddle the Semitic race with the less elegant war cus- 5 
 toms of the Soudan and the northwest frontier of India, 
 and quoted Doughty, at that time a little-known author, and 
 Cunninghame Graham to show that the Arab was worse 
 than a county-town spinster in his regard for respectability. 
 But his case was too preposterous, and Esmeer, with his 10 
 shrill penetrating voice and his way of pointing with all 
 four long ringers flat together, carried the point against 
 him. He quoted Cato and Roman law and the monasteries 
 of Thibet. 
 
 " Well, anyway," said Hatherleigh, escaping from our 15 
 hands like an intellectual frog, " Semitic or not, I've got no 
 use for decency." l 
 
 A small fresh-colored man in gray objected. 
 
 " Well," exploded Hatherleigh, " if that isn't so what the 
 deuce are we up here for? Instead of working in mines? 20 
 If some things aren't going to be thought about ever! 
 We've got the privilege of all these extra years for getting 
 things straight in our heads, and then we won't use 'em. 
 Good God ! what do you think a university's for ? " 
 
 Esmeer's idea came with an effect of real emancipation 25 
 to several of us. We were not going to be afraid of ideas 
 any longer, we were going to throw down every barrier of 
 prohibition and take them in and see what came of it. We 
 became for a time even intemperately experimental, and 
 one of us, at the bare suggestion of an eminent investigator, 30 
 
 1 Dialogue is omitted as not being representative of the writer's 
 own style. 
 
 1-14 : w. 25-190, 2 : v, w. 
 
190 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 took hashish and very nearly died of it within a fortnight 
 of our great elucidation. 
 
 The chief matter of our interchanges was of course the 
 discussion of sex. Once the theme had been opened it be- 
 5 came a sore place in our intercourse ; none of us seemed to 
 be able to keep away from it. Our imaginations got astir 
 with it. We made up for lost time and went round and 
 through it and over it exhaustively. I recall prolonged dis- 
 cussion of polygamy on the way to Royston, muddy No- 
 
 10 vember tramps to Madingley, when amidst much profanity 
 from Hatherleigh at the serious treatment of so obsolete a 
 matter, we weighed the reasons, if any, for the institution 
 of marriage. The fine dim nighttime spaces of the Great 
 Court are bound up with the inconclusive finales of mighty 
 
 15 hot-eared wrangles; the narrows of Trinity Street and 
 Petty Cury and Market Hill have their particular associa- 
 tions for me with that spate of confession and free speech, 
 that almost painful gaol delivery of long-pent and crappled 
 and sometimes crippled ideas. 
 
 20 And we went on a reading party that Easter to a place 
 called Pulborough in Sussex, where there is a fishing inn 
 and a river that goes under a bridge. It was a late Easter 
 and a blazing one, and we boated and bathed and talked of 
 being Hellenic and the beauty of the body until at moments 
 
 25 it seemed to us that we were destined to restore the Golden 
 Age, by the simple abolition of tailors and outfitters. 
 
 Those undergraduate talks! how rich and glorious they 
 seemed, how splendidly new the ideas that grew and multi- 
 plied in our seething minds ! We made long afternoon and 
 
 30 evening raids over the Downs toward Arundel, and would 
 come tramping back through the still keen moonlight singing 
 and shouting. We formed romantic friendships with one 
 another, and grieved more or less convincingly that there 
 
 3-19 : v, w, 1. 20-26 : v, w. 22-191, 5 : v. 
 
H. G. WELLS 191 
 
 were no splendid women fit to be our companions in the 
 world. But Hatherleigh, it seemed, had once known a 
 girl whose hair was gloriously red. " My God ! " said 
 Hatherleigh to convey the quality of her; just simply and 
 with projectile violence : " My God ! " 5 
 
 Benton had heard of a woman who had lived with a 
 man, refusing to be married to him we thought that 
 splendid beyond measure, I cannot now imagine why. She 
 was " like a tender goddess/' Benton said. A sort of shame 
 came upon us in the dark in spite of our liberal intentions 10 
 when Benton committed himself to that. And after such 
 talk we would fall upon great pauses of emotional dream- 
 ing, and if by chance we passed a girl in a governess cart, 
 or some farmer's daughter walking to the station, we be- 
 came alertly silent or obstreperously indifferent to her. 15 
 For might she not be just that one exception to the banal 
 decency, the sickly pointless conventionality, the sham mod- 
 esty of the times in which we lived ? 
 
 We felt we stood for a new movement, not realizing how 
 perenially this same emancipation returns to those ancient 20 
 courts beside the Cam. We were the anti-decency party, 
 we discovered a catch phrase that we flourished about in 
 the Union and made our watchword, namely " stark fact." 
 We hung nude pictures in our rooms much as if they had 
 been flags, to the earnest concern of our bedders, and I 25 
 disinterred my long-kept engraving and had it framed in 
 fumed oak, and found for it a completer and less restrained 
 companion, a companion I never cared for in the slightest 
 degree. . . . 
 
 This efflorescence did not prevent, I think indeed it rather 30 
 helped, our more formal university work, for most of us 
 took our firsts and three of us got Fellowships in one year 
 or another. There was Benton, who had a Research Fel- 
 6-18 : w, x, c. 19-29 : v, w. 
 
192 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 lowship and went to Tubingen, there was Esmeer and 
 myself, who both became Residential Fellows. I had taken 
 the Mental and Moral Science Tripos (as it was then), 
 and three years later I got a lectureship in political science. 
 5 In those days it was disguised in the cloak of Political 
 Economy. 
 
 2 
 
 It was our affectation to be a little detached from the 
 main stream of undergraduate life. We worked pretty 
 hard, but by virtue of our beer, our socialism, and such- 
 
 10 like heterodoxy, held ourselves to be differentiated from 
 the swatting reading man. None of us, except Baxter, 
 who was a rowing blue, a rather abnormal blue with an 
 appetite for ideas, took games seriously enough to train, 
 and on the other hand we intimated contempt for the rather 
 
 15 mediocre, deliberately humorous, consciously gentlemanly 
 and consciously wild undergraduate men who made up the 
 mass of Cambridge life. After the manner of youth we 
 were altogether too hard on our contemporaries. We bat- 
 tered our caps and tore our gowns lest they should seem 
 
 20 new, and we despised these others extremely for doing ex- 
 actly the same things; we had an idea of ourselves and 
 resented beyond measure a similar weakness in these our 
 brothers. 
 
 There was a type, or at least there seemed to us to be 
 
 25 a type I'm a little doubtful at times now whether after 
 all we didn't create it for which Hatherleigh invented 
 the nickname the " Pinky Dinkys," intending thereby both 
 contempt and abhorrence in almost equal measure. The 
 Pinky Dinky summarized all that we particularly did not 
 
 30 want to be, and also, I now perceive, much that we were 
 and all that we secretly dreaded becoming. 
 
 S, 6 : e. 7-23 : c, v. 
 
H. G. WELLS 193 
 
 But it is hard to convey the Pinky Dinky idea, for all 
 that it meant so much to us. We spent one evening at least 
 during that reading party upon the Pinky Dinky; and we 
 sat about our one fire after a walk in the rain it was our 
 only wet day smoked our excessively virile pipes, and 5 
 celebrated the natural history of the Pinky Dinky. We im- 
 provised a sort of Pinky Dinky litany, and Hatherleigh 
 supplied deep notes for the responses. 
 
 " All his little jokes and things," said Esmeer, regarding 
 his feet on the fender, " it's just a nervous sniggering be- 10 
 cause he's afraid. . . . Oxford's no better." 
 
 " What's he afraid of ? " said I. 
 
 " God knows ! " exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the 
 fire. 
 
 "Life!" said Esmeer. "And so in a way are we," he 15 
 added, and made a thoughtful silence for a time. 
 
 " I say," began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science 
 Tripos, " what is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky ? " 
 
 But there we were checked by our ignorance of the 
 world. 20 
 
 " What is the adult form of any of us ? " asked Benton, 
 voicing the thought that had arrested our flow. 
 
 3 
 
 I do not remember that we ever lifted our criticism to 
 the dons and the organization of the University. I think 
 we took them for granted. When I look back at my youth 25 
 I am always astonished by the multitude of things that we 
 took for granted. It seemed to us that Cambridge was 
 in the order of things, for all the world like having eye- 
 brows or a vermiform appendix. Now with the larger 
 scepticism of middle age I can entertain very fundamental 30 
 1-8 : w. 27-194, 2 : w. 
 
194 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 doubts about these old universities. Indeed I had a 
 
 scheme 
 
 I do not see what harm I can do now by laying bare the 
 purpose of the political combinations I was trying to effect. 
 5 My educational scheme was indeed the starting-point of 
 all the big project of conscious public reconstruction at 
 which I aimed. I wanted to build up a new educational 
 machine altogether for the governing class out of a consoli- 
 dated system of special public service schools. I meant to 
 
 10 get to work upon this, whatever office I was given in the 
 new government. I could have begun my plan from the 
 Admiralty or the War Office quite as easily as from the 
 Education Office. I am firmly convinced it is hopeless to 
 think of reforming the old public schools and universities 
 
 15 to meet the needs of a modern state, they send their roots 
 too deep and far, the cost would exceed any good that could 
 possibly be effected, and so I have sought a way round 
 this invincible obstacle. I do think it would be quite prac- 
 ticable to side-track, as the Americans say, the whole system 
 
 20 by creating hard-working, hard-living, modern, and scien- 
 tific boys' schools, first for the Royal Navy and then for 
 the public service generally, and as they grew, opening 
 them to the public without any absolute obligation to sub- 
 sequent service. Simultaneously with this it would not be 
 
 25 impossible to develop a new college system with strong 
 faculties in modern philosophy, modern history, European 
 literature and criticism, physical and biological science, edu- 
 cation and sociology. 
 
 We could in fact create a new liberal education in this 
 
 30 way, and cut the umbilicus of the classical languages for 
 good and all. I should have set this going, and trusted it 
 to correct or kill the old public schools and the Oxford and 
 Cambridge tradition altogether. I had men in my mind to 
 
 5-28 : v. 29-195, 16 : v,x (cf. 157, 33-159- IO )- 
 
H. G. WELLS 195 
 
 begin the work, and I should have found others. I should 
 have aimed at making a hard-trained, capable, intellectually 
 active, proud type of man. Everything else would have 
 been made subservient to that. I should have kept my grip 
 on the men through their vacation, and somehow or other 5 
 I would have contrived a young woman to match them. 
 I think I could have seen to it effectually enough that they 
 didn't get at croquet and tennis with the vicarage daughters 
 and discover sex in the Peeping Tom fashion I did, and 
 that they realized quite early in life that it isn't really virile 10 
 to reek of tobacco. I should have had military maneuvers, 
 training ships, aeroplane work, mountaineering, and so 
 forth, in the place of the solemn trivialities of games, and 
 I should have fed and housed my men clean and very hard 
 where there wasn't any audit ale, no credit tradesmen, 15 
 and plenty of high-pressure douches. . . . 
 
 I have revisited Cambridge and Oxford time after time 
 since I came down, and so far as the Empire goes, I want 
 to get clear of those two places. . . . 
 
 Always I renew my old feelings, a physical oppression, 20 
 a sense of lowness and dampness almost exactly like the 
 feeling of an underground room where paper molders and 
 leaves the wall, a feeling of ineradicable contagion in the 
 Gothic buildings, in the narrow ditch-like rivers, in those 
 roads and roads of stuffy little villas. Those little villas 25 
 have destroyed all the good of the old monastic system and 
 none of its evil. . . . 
 
 Some of the most charming people in the world live in 
 them, but their collective effect is below the quality of any 
 individual among them. Cambridge is a world of subdued 30 
 tones, of excessively subtle humors, of prim conduct and 
 free thinking; it fears the Parent, but it has no fear of 
 God; it offers amidst surroundings that vary between dis- 
 
 6-1 1 : w. 17-19 : b. 20-27 : a. 30-196, 8 : w, c. 
 
196 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 guises and antiquarian charm the inflammation of litera- 
 ture's purple draught ; one hears there a peculiar thin 
 scandal like no other scandal in the world a covetous scan- 
 dal so that I am always reminded of Ibsen in Cambridge. 
 5 In Cambridge and the plays of Ibsen alone does it seem 
 appropriate for the heroine before the crisis of life to 
 " enter, take off her overshoes, and put her wet umbrella 
 upon the writing desk." . . . 
 
 We have to make a new Academic mind for modern 
 
 10 needs, and the last thing to make it out of, I am convinced, 
 is the old Academic mind. One might as soon try to fake 
 the old Victory at Portsmouth into a line of battle ship 
 again. Besides which the old Academic mind, like those old 
 bathless, damp Gothic colleges, is much too delightful in its 
 
 15 peculiar and distinctive way to damage by futile patching. 
 My heart warms to a sense of affectionate absurdity as 
 I recall dear old Codger, surely the most " unleaderly " 
 of men. No more than from the old Schoolmen, his kin- 
 dred, could one get from him a School for Princes. Yet 
 
 20 apart from his teaching he was as curious and adorable as 
 a good Netsuke. Until quite recently he was a power in 
 Cambridge, he could make and bar and destroy, and in a 
 way he has become the quintessence of Cambridge in my 
 thoughts. 
 
 25 I see him on his way to the morning's lecture, with his 
 plump childish face, his round innocent eyes, his absurdly 
 non-prehensile fat hand carrying his cap, his gray trousers 
 braced up much too high, his feet a trifle inturned, and 
 going across the great court with a queer tripping pace 
 
 30 that seemed cultivated even to my na'ive undergraduate eye. 
 Or I see him lecturing. He talked in a fluting rapid voice, 
 and with the utmost lucidity. His mind and voice had 
 precisely the fluid quality of some clear subtle liquid; one 
 
 25-197. 6:a } w,h (cf. 103, 31-104, 25)- 
 
H. G. WELLS 197 
 
 felt it could flow round anything and overcome nothing. 
 And its nimble eddies were wonderful! Or again I recall 
 him drinking port with little muscular movements in his 
 neck and cheek and chin and his brows knit very judicial, 
 very concentrated, preparing to say the apt just thing; it 5 
 was the last thing he would have told a lie about. 
 
 When I think of Codger I am reminded of an inscription 
 I saw on some occasion in Regent's Park above two eyes 
 scarcely more limpidly innocent than his " Born in the 
 Menagerie." Never once since Codger began to display 10 
 the early promise of scholarship at the age of eight or 
 more had he been outside the bars. His utmost travel had 
 been to lecture here and lecture there. His student phase 
 had culminated in papers of quite exceptional brilliance, 
 and he had gone on to lecture with a cheerful combination 15 
 of wit and mannerism that had made him a success from 
 the beginning. He has lectured ever since. He lectures 
 still. Year by year he has become plumper, more rubicund, 
 and more and more of an item for the intelligent visitor to 
 see. Even in my time he was pointed out to people as 20 
 part of our innumerable enrichments, and obviously he 
 knew it. He has become now almost the leading Character 
 in a little donnish world of much too intensely appreciated 
 Characters. 
 
 He boasted he took no exercise, and also of his knowl- 25 
 edge of port wine. Of other wines he confessed quite 
 frankly he had no " special knowledge." Beyond these 
 things he had little pride except that he claimed to have 
 read every novel by a woman writer that had ever entered 
 the Union Library. This, however, he held to be remarka- 30 
 ble rather than ennobling, and such boasts as he made of 
 it were tinged with playfulness. Certainly he had a 
 scholar's knowledge of the works of Miss Marie Corelli, 
 
 7-24 : w, n. 25-32 : w, 1. 
 
198 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Miss Braddon, Miss Elizabeth Glyn, and Madame Sarah 
 Grand that would have astonished and flattered those ladies 
 enormously, and he loved nothing so much in his hours of 
 relaxation as to propound and answer difficult questions 
 5 upon their books. Tusher of King's was his ineffectual 
 rival in this field, their bouts were memorable and rarely 
 other than glorious for Codger; but then Tusher spread 
 himself too much, he also undertook to rehearse whole 
 pages out of Bradshaw, and tell you with all the changes 
 
 10 how to get from any station to any station in Great Britain 
 by the nearest and cheapest routes. . . . 
 
 Codger lodged with a little deaf innocent old lady, Mrs. 
 Araminta Mergle, who was understood to be herself a 
 very redoubtable Character in the Gyp-Bedder class ; about 
 
 15 her he related quietly absurd anecdotes. He displayed a 
 marvelous invention in ascribing to her plausible expressions 
 of opinion entirely identical in import with those of the 
 Oxford and Harvard Pragmatists, against whom he waged 
 a fierce obscure war. . . . 
 
 20 It was Codger's function to teach me philosophy, philoso- 
 phy ! the intimate wisdom of things. He dealt in a variety 
 of Hegelian stuff like nothing else in the world, but mar- 
 velously consistent with itself. It was a wonderful web 
 he spun out of that big active childish brain that had never 
 
 25 lusted nor hated nor grieved nor feared nor passionately 
 loved, a we b of iridescent threads. He had luminous 
 final theories about Love and Death and Immortality, odd 
 matters they seemed for him to think about! and all his' 
 woven thoughts lay across my perceptions of the realities 
 
 30 of things, as flimsy and irrelevant and clever and beautiful, 
 oh! as a dew-wet spider's web slung in the morning sun- 
 shine across the black mouth of a gun. . . . 
 
 12-19 : w. 20-32 : e, n, h. 
 
H. G. WELLS 199 
 
 4 
 
 All through these years of development I perceived now 
 there must have been growing in me, slowly, irregularly, as- 
 similating to itself all the phrases and forms of patriotism, 
 diverting my religious impulses, utilizing my aesthetic tend- 
 encies, my dominating idea, the statesman's idea, that idea 5 
 of social service which is the real protagonist of my story, 
 that real though complex passion for Making, making 
 widely and greatly, cities, national order, civilization, whose 
 interplay with all those other factors in life I have set out 
 to present. It was growing in me as one's bones grow, 10 
 no man intending it. 
 
 I have tried to show how, quite early in my life, the 
 fact of disorderliness, the conception of social life as being 
 a multitudinous confusion out of hand, came to me. One 
 always of course simplifies these things in the telling, but 15 
 I do not think I ever saw the world at large in any other 
 terms. I never at any stage entertained the idea which 
 sustained my mother, and which sustains so many people 
 in the world, the idea that the universe, whatever super- 
 ficial discords it may present, is as a matter of fact " all 20 
 right," is being steered to definite ends by a serene and 
 unquestionable God. My mother thought that Order pre- 
 vailed, and that disorder was just incidental and fore- 
 doomed rebellion; I feel and have always felt that order 
 rebels against and struggles against disorder, that order 25 
 has an uphill job, in gardens, experiments, suburbs, every- 
 thing alike; from the beginning of my experience I dis- 
 covered hostility to order, a constant escaping from control. 
 
 The current of living and contemporary ideas in which 
 my mind was presently swimming made all in the same 30 
 direction; in place of my mother's attentive, meticulous 
 
 i-n : c, x. 12-28 : v. 29-200, 3 : w. 
 
2OO THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 but occasionally extremely irascible Providence, the talk 
 
 was all of the Struggle for Existence and the survival not 
 
 of the Best that was nonsense, but of the fittest to survive. 
 
 The attempts to rehabilitate Faith in the form of the In- 
 
 5 dividualist's laissez faire never won upon me. I disliked 
 
 Herbert Spencer all my life until I read his autobiography, 
 
 and then I laughed a little and loved him. I remember as 
 
 early as the City Merchants' days how Britten and I scoffed 
 
 at that pompous question-begging word " Evolution," hav- 
 
 10 ing, so to speak, found it out. Evolution, some illuminating 
 talker had remarked at the Britten lunch table, had led 
 not only to man, but to the liver-fluke and skunk, obvi- 
 ously it might lead anywhere ; order came into things 
 only through the struggling mind of man. That lit things 
 
 15 wonderfully for us. When I went up to Cambridge I was 
 perfectly clear that life was a various and splendid dis- 
 order of forces that the spirit of man sets itself to tame. 
 I have never since fallen away from that persuasion. 
 
 4-18: w, n. 18 :b. 
 i, 6, 8, ii, 12, 14. 
 
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 
 1874- 
 
 TOLSTOY AND THE CULT OF SIMPLICITY 
 From "Varied Types" 1 
 
 THE whole world is certainly heading for a great sim- 
 plicity, not deliberately, but rather inevitably. It is not 
 a mere fashion of false innocence, like that of the French 
 aristocrats before the Revolution, who built an altar to 
 Pan, and who taxed the peasantry for the enormous ex- 5 
 penditure which is needed in order to live the simple life 
 of peasants. The simplicity toward which the world is 
 driving is the necessany outcome of all our systems and 
 speculations and of our deep and continuous contemplation 
 of things. For the universe is like everything in it; we ic 
 have to look at it repeatedly and habitually before we see 
 it. It is only when we have seen it for the hundredth time 
 that we see it for the first time. The more consistently 
 things are contemplated, the more they tend to unify them- 
 selves and therefore to simplify themselves. The simplifica- 15 
 tion of anything is always sensational. Thus monotheism 
 is the most sensational of things: it is as if we gazed long 
 at a design full of disconnected objects, and, suddenly, 
 with a stunning thrill, they came together into a huge and 
 staring face. 20 
 
 Few people will dispute that all the typical movements 
 of our time are upon this road towards simplification. Each 
 * By permission of Dodd, Mead and Company. 
 10-20 : v, x. 
 
 201 
 
2O2 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each 
 seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. In art, 
 for example, the old conception of man, classic as the 
 Apollo Belvidere, has first been attacked by the realist, 
 5 who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a 
 creature with colorless hair and a freckled face. Then 
 comes the Impressionist, going yet deeper, who asserts that 
 to his physical eye, which alone is certain, man is .a crea- 
 ture with purple hair and a gray face. Then comes the 
 
 10 Symbolist, and says that to his soul, which alone is cer- 
 tain, man is a creature with green hair and a blue face. 
 And all the great writers of our time represent in one 
 form or another this attempt to re-establish communication 
 with the elemental, or, as it is sometimes more roughly 
 
 15 and fallaciously expressed, to return to nature. Some think 
 that the return to nature consists in drinking no wine; 
 some think that it consists in drinking a great deal more 
 than is good for them. Some think that the return to 
 nature is achieved by beating swords into plowshares; 
 
 20 some think it is achieved by turning plowshares into very 
 ineffectual British War Office bayonets. It is natural, 
 according to the Jingo, for a man to kill other people with 
 gunpowder and himself with gin. It is natural, according 
 to the humanitarian revolutionist, to kill other people with 
 
 25 dynamite and himself with vegetarianism. It would be 
 too obviously Philistine a sentiment, perhaps, to suggest 
 that the claim of either of these persons to be obeying 
 the voice of nature is interesting when we consider that they 
 require huge volumes of paradoxical argument to persuade 
 
 30 themselves or anyone else of the truth of their conclusions. 
 But the giants of our time are undoubtedly alike in that 
 they approach by very different roads this conception of 
 the return to simplicity. Ibsen returns to nature by the 
 
 2-15 :c,w,h (cf. 128, 1-30). 15-30 :w,h,c (cf. 128. 2-30). 31-203. 4 : c, n. 
 
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 203 
 
 angular exterior of fact, Maeterlinck by the eternal tend- 
 encies of fable. Whitman returns to nature by seeing how 
 much he can accept, Tolstoy by seeing how much he can 
 reject. 
 
 Now, this heroic desire to return to nature is, of course, 5 
 in some respects, rather like the heroic desire of a kitten 
 to return to its own tail. A tail is a simple and beautiful 
 object, rhythmic in curve and soothing in texture; but it 
 is certainly one of the minor but characteristic qualities of 
 a tail that it should hang behind. It is impossible to deny 10 
 that it would in some degree lose its character if attached 
 to any other part of the anatomy. Now, nature is like a 
 tail in the sense that it is vitally important, if it is to dis- 
 charge its real duty, that it should be always behind. To 
 imagine that we can see nature, especially our own nature, 15 
 face to face, is a folly; it is even a blasphemy. It is like 
 the conduct of a cat in some mad fairy-tale, who should set 
 out on his travels with the firm conviction that he would 
 find his tail growing like a tree in the meadows at the end 
 of the world. And the actual effect of the travels of the 20 
 philosopher in search of nature, when seen from the out- 
 side, looks very like the gyrations of the tail-pursuing 
 kitten, exhibiting much enthusiasm, but little dignity, much 
 cry and very little tail. The grandeur of nature is that 
 she is omnipotent and unseen, that she is perhaps ruling 25 
 us most when we think that she is heeding us least. " Thou 
 art a God that hidest Thyself," said the Hebrew poet. It 
 may be said with all reverence that it is behind a man's 
 back that the spirit of nature hides. 
 
 It is this consideration that lends a certain air of futility 30 
 even to all the inspired simplicities and thunderous veraci- 
 ties of Tolstoy. We feel that a man cannot make himself 
 simple merely by warring on complexity; we feel, indeed, 
 
 201, 21-203, 4 : v - 5~ X 4 : w > a > x - l6 ~ 2 9 : w, c, n. 30-204, 7 : v. 
 
204 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 in our saner moments, that a man cannot make himself 
 simple at all. A self-conscious simplicity may well be far 
 more intrinsically ornate than luxury itself. Indeed, a great 
 deal of the pomp and sumptuousness of the world's history 
 5 was simple in the truest sense. It was born of an almost 
 babyish receptiveness ; and it was the work of men who 
 had eyes to wonder and men who had ears to hear. 
 
 " King Solomon brought merchant men 
 
 Because of his desire 
 
 10 With peacocks, apes, and ivory, 
 
 From Tarshish unto Tyre." 
 
 But this proceeding was not a part of the wisdom of Solo- 
 mon; it was a part of his folly I had almost said of his 
 innocence. Tolstoy, we feel, would not be content with hurl- 
 
 15 ing satire and denunciation at " Solomon in all his glory." 
 With fierce and unimpeachable logic he would go a step 
 further. He would spend days and nights in the meadows 
 stripping the shameless crimson coronals off the lilies of 
 the field. 
 
 20 The new collection of " Tales from Tolstoy," translated 
 and edited by Mr. R. Nisbet Bain, is calculated to draw 
 particular attention to this ethical and ascetic side of 
 Tolstoy's work. In one sense, and that the deepest sense, 
 the work of Tolstoy is, of course, a genuine and noble 
 
 25 appeal to simplicity. The narrow notion that an artist may 
 not teach is pretty well exploded by now. But the truth of 
 the matter is, that an artist teaches far more by his mere 
 background and properties, his landscape, his costume, his 
 idiom and technique all the part of his work, in short, 
 
 30 of which he is probably entirely unconscious, than by the 
 elaborate and pompous moral dicta which he fondly im- 
 agines to be his opinions. The real distinction between the 
 
 25-205, 8 : o. 
 
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 205 
 
 ethics of high art and the ethics of manufactured and 
 didactic art lies in the simple fact that the bad fable has 
 a moral, while the good fable is a moral. And the real 
 moral of Tolstoy comes out constantly in these stories, 
 the great moral which lies at the heart of all his 5 
 work, of which he is probably unconscious, and of 
 which it is quite likely that he would vehemently dis- 
 approve. The curious cold white light of morning that 
 shines over all the tales, the folklore simplicity with which 
 " a man or a woman " are spoken of without further identifi- 10 
 cation, the love one might almost say the lust for the 
 qualities of brute materials, the hardness of wood, and the 
 softness of mud, the ingrained belief in a certain ancient 
 kindliness sitting beside the very cradle of the race of man 
 these influences are truly moral. When we put beside 15 
 them the trumpeting and tearing nonsense of the didactic 
 Tolstoy, screaming for an obscene purity, shouting for an 
 inhuman peace, hacking up human life into small sins with 
 a chopper, sneering at men, women, and children out of 
 respect to humanity, combining in one chaos of contradic- 20 
 tions an unmanly Puritan and an uncivilized prig, then, 
 indeed, we scarcely know whither Tolstoy has vanished. 
 We know not what to do with this small and noisy moralist 
 who is inhabiting one corner of a great and good man. 
 
 It is difficult in every case to reconcile Tolstoy the great 25 
 artist with Tolstoy the almost venomous reformer. It is 
 difficult to believe that a man who draws in such noble 
 outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards 
 as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity 
 is renewed from age to age. It is difficult to believe that a 30 
 man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the 
 heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really 
 grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures, from 
 
 8-24 : m, 1, e, c, x (cf. 145, 18-146, i?). 25-206, 9 : c, h. 
 
206 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 courtship to tobacco. It is difficult to believe that a poet 
 in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born 
 air of man, the essential kinship of a human being, with 
 the landscape in which he lives, can deny so elemental a 
 
 5 virtue as that which attaches a man to his own ancestors 
 and his own land. It is difficult to believe that the man 
 who feels so poignantly the detestable insolence of oppres- 
 sion would not actually, if he had the chance, lay the op- 
 pressor flat with his fist. All, however, arises from the 
 
 10 search after a false simplicity, the aim of being, if I may so 
 express it, more natural than it is natural to be. It would 
 not only be more human, it would be more humble of us 
 to be content to be more complex. The truest kinship with 
 humanity would lie in doing as humanity has always done, 
 
 15 accepting with a sportsmanlike relish the estate to which 
 we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes 
 of our land and birth. 
 
 The work of Tolstoy has another and more special sig- 
 nificance. It represents the reassertion of a certain awful 
 
 20 common sense which characterized the most extreme utter- 
 ances of Christ. It is true that we cannot turn our cheek 
 to the smiter; it is true that we cannot give our cloak to 
 the robber ; civilization is too complicated, too vain-glorious, 
 too emotional. The robber would brag, and we should 
 
 25 blush ; in other words, the robber and we are alike senti- 
 mentalists. The command of Christ is impossible, but it 
 is not insane; it is rather sanity preached to a planet of 
 lunatics. If the whole world was suddenly stricken with 
 a sense of humor it would find itself mechanically fulfilling 
 
 30 the Sermon on the Mount. It is not the plain facts of 
 the world which stand in the way of that consummation, 
 but its passions of vanity and self-advertisement and morbid 
 sensibility. It is true that we cannot turn the cheek to the 
 
 13-17:!. i8:b. 18-26 : c. 18-207, 25 : k, v. 
 
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 207 
 
 smiter, and the sole and sufficient reason is that we have 
 not the pluck. Tolstoy and his followers have shown that 
 they have the pluck, and even if we think they are mis- 
 taken, by this sign they conquer. Their theory has the 
 strength of an utterly consistent thing. It represents that 5 
 doctrine of mildness and non-resistance which is the last 
 and most audacious of all the forms of resistance to every 
 existing authority. It is the great strike of the Quakers 
 which is more formidable than many sanguinary revolu- 
 tions. If human beings could only succeed in achieving 10 
 a real passive resistance they would be strong with the 
 appalling strength of inanimate things, they would be calm 
 with the maddening calm of oak and iron, which conquer 
 without vengeance and are conquered without humiliation. 
 The theory of Christian duty enunciated by them is that 15 
 we 'should never conquer by force, but always, if we can, 
 conquer by persuasion. In their mythology St. George did 
 not conquer the dragon; he tied a pink ribbon round its 
 neck and gave it a saucer of milk. According to them, a 
 course of consistent kindness to Nero would have turned 20 
 him into something only faintly representing Alfred the 
 Great. In fact, the policy recommended by this school for 
 dealing with the bovine stupidity and bovine fury of this 
 world is accurately summed up in the celebrated verse of 
 Mr. Edward Lear: 25 
 
 " There was an old man who said, ' How 
 Shall I flee from this terrible cow? 
 I will sit on a stile and continue to smile 
 Till I soften the heart of this cow.' " 
 
 Their confidence in human nature is really honorable 30 
 and magnificent; it takes the form of refusing to believe 
 the overwhelming majority of mankind, even when they 
 set out to explain their own motives. But although most 
 
 4-14 : c. 15-29 : c, w. 30-208, 9 : k, f, x. 
 
2o8 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 of us would in all probability tend at first sight to consider 
 this new sect of Christians as little less outrageous than 
 some brawling and absurd sect in the Reformation, yet 
 we should fall into a singular error in doing so. The Chris- 
 5 tianity of Tolstoy is, when we come to consider it, one 
 of the most thrilling and dramatic incidents in our modern 
 civilization. It represents a tribute to the Christian re- 
 ligion more sensational than the breaking of seals or the 
 falling of stars. 
 
 10 From the point of view of a rationalist, the whole world 
 is rendered almost irrational by the single phenomenon 
 of Christian Socialism. It turns the scientific universe 
 topsy-turvy, and makes it essentially possible that the key 
 of all social evolution may be found in the dusty casket of 
 
 15 some discredited creed. It cannot be amiss to consider 
 this phenomenon as it really is. 
 
 The religion of Christ has, like so many true things, 
 been disproved an extraordinary number of times. It was 
 disproved by the Neo-Platonist philosophers at the very 
 
 20 moment when it was first starting forth upon its startling 
 and universal career. It was disproved again by many of 
 the skeptics of the Renaissance only a few years before its 
 second and supremely striking embodiment, the religion 
 of Puritanism, was about to triumph over many kings and 
 
 25 civilize many continents. We all agree that these schools 
 of negation were only interludes in its history; but we all 
 believe naturally and inevitably that the negation of our 
 own day is really a breaking up of the theological cosmos, 
 an Armageddon, a Ragnarok, a twilight of the gods. The 
 
 30 man of the nineteenth century, like a schoolboy of sixteen, 
 
 believes that his doubt and depression are symbols of the 
 
 end of the world. In our day the great irreligionists who 
 
 did nothing but dethrone God and drive angels before them 
 
 io-i6:e, h, t. 17-29:0, x. 
 
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 209 
 
 have been outstripped, distanced, and made to look orthodox 
 and humdrum. A newer race of skeptics has found some- 
 thing infinitely more exciting to do than nailing down the 
 lids upon a million coffins, and the body upon a single 
 cross. They have disputed not only the elementary creeds, 5 
 but the elementary laws of mankind, property, patriotism, 
 civil obedience. They have arraigned civilization as openly 
 as the materialists have arraigned theology; they have 
 damned all the philosophers even lower than they have 
 damned the saints. Thousands of modern men move 10 
 quietly and conventionally among their fellows while hold- 
 ing views of national limitation or landed property that 
 would have made Voltaire shudder like a nun listening to 
 blasphemies. And the last and wildest phase of this 
 saturnalia of skepticism, the school that goes furthest 15 
 among thousands who go so far, the school that denies the 
 moral validity of those ideals of courage or obedience 
 which are recognized even among pirates, this school bases 
 itself upon the literal words of Christ, like Dr. Watts or 
 Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Never in the whole history 20 
 of the world was such a tremendous tribute paid to the 
 vitality of an ancient creed. Compared with this, it would 
 be a small thing if the Red Sea were cloven asunder, or 
 the sun did stand at midday. We are faced with the 
 phenomenon that a set of revolutionists whose contempt 25 
 for all the ideals of family and nation would evoke horror 
 in a thieves' kitchen, who can rid themselves of those ele- 
 mentary instincts of the man and the gentleman which 
 cling to the very bones of our civilization, cannot rid them- 
 selves of the influence of two or three remote Oriental 30 
 anecdotes written in corrupt Greek. The fact, when real- 
 ized, has about it something stunning and hypnotic. The 
 most convinced rationalist is in its presence suddenly 
 2-20 :c,e,h (cf. 94, 7-95, 3). 14-20 : b. 24-31 : b. 31, 32 : b. 32-210, 6 : b. 
 
2io THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees the immense 
 skeptical cosmogonies of this age as dreams going the way 
 of a thousand forgotten heresies, and believes for a moment 
 that the dark sayings handed down through eighteen cen- 
 5 turies may, indeed, contain in themselves the revolutions 
 of which we have only begun to dream. 
 
 This value which we have above suggested unquestion- 
 ably belongs to the Tolstoians, who may roughly be de- 
 scribed as the new Quakers. With their strange optimism, 
 
 10 and their most appalling logical courage, they offer a tribute 
 to Christianity which no orthodoxies could offer. It cannot 
 but be remarkable to watch a revolution in which both the 
 rulers and the rebels march under the same symbol. But 
 the actual theory of non-resistance itself, with all its kindred 
 
 15 theories, is not, I think, characterized by that intellectual 
 obviousness and necessity which its supporters claim for 
 it. A pamphlet before us shows us an extraordinary num- 
 ber of statements about the New Testament, of which the 
 accuracy is by no means so striking as the confidence. To 
 
 20 begin with, we must protest against a habit of quoting and 
 paraphrasing at the same time. When a man is discussing 
 what Jesus meant, let him state first of all what Pie said, 
 not what the man thinks He would have said if He had 
 expressed Himself more clearly. Here is an instance of 
 
 25 question and answer : 
 
 Q. " How did our Master Himself sum up the law in a 
 few words ? " 
 
 A. " Be ye merciful, be ye perfect, even as your Father ; 
 your Father in the spirit world is merciful, is perfect." 
 
 30 There is nothing in this, perhaps, which Christ might not 
 have said except the abominable modernism of " the spirit 
 world " ; but to say that it is recorded that He did say it, 
 209, 24-210, 6 : h, n. 208, 17-210, 6 : v, u, f. 7-25 : d (cf. 208* 7-210, 6). 
 
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 211 
 
 is like saying it is recorded that He preferred palm trees 
 to sycamores. It is a simple and unadulterated untruth. 
 The author should know that these words have meant a 
 thousand things to a thousand people, and that if more 
 ancient sects had paraphrased them as cheerfully as he, he 5 
 would never have had the texts upon which he founds his 
 theory. In a pamphlet in which plain printed words cannot 
 be left alone, it is not surprising if there are mis-statements 
 upon larger matters. Here is a statement clearly and 
 philosophically laid down which we can only content our- 10 
 selves with flatly denying : " The fifth rule of our Lord 
 is that we should take special pains to cultivate the same 
 kind of regard for people of foreign countries, and for 
 those generally who do not belong to us, or even have an 
 antipathy to us, which we already entertain towards our 15 
 own people, and those who are in sympathy with us." I 
 should very much like to know where in the whole of the 
 New Testament the author finds this violent, unnatural, 
 and immoral proposition. Christ did not have the same 
 kind of regard for one person as for another. We are 20 
 specifically told that there were certain persons whom He 
 specially loved. It is most improbable that He thought of 
 other nations as He thought of His own. The sight of 
 His national city moved Him to tears, and the highest 
 compliment He paid was, " Behold an Israelite indeed." 25 
 The author has simply confused two entirely distinct things. 
 Christ commanded us to have love for all men, but even if 
 we had equal love for all men, to speak of having the same 
 love for all men is merely bewildering nonsense. If we 
 love a man at all, the impression he produces on us must 30 
 be vitally different to the impression produced by another 
 man whom we love. To speak of having the same kind 
 of regard for both is about as sensible as asking a man 
 
 2:b. 3-9: o. 19-26: b. 
 
212 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. Christ 
 did not love humanity ; He never said He loved Humanity ; 
 He loved men. Neither He nor anyone else can love hu- 
 manity : it is like loving a giant centipede. And the reason 
 5 that the Tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally 
 distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a 
 logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their 
 own theories, a love which would be an insult to a tom-cat. 
 But the greatest error of all lies in the mere act of cut- 
 
 10 ting up the teaching of the New Testament into five rules. 
 It precisely and ingeniously misses the most dominant char- 
 acteristic of the teaching its absolute spontaneity. The 
 abyss between Christ and all His modern interpreters is 
 that we have no record that He ever wrote a word, except 
 
 15 with His finger in the sand. The whole is the history of 
 one continuous and sublime conversation. Thousands of 
 rules have been deduced from it before these Tolstoian 
 rules were made, and thousands will be deduced afterwards. 
 It was not for any pompous proclamation, it was not for 
 
 20 any elaborate output of printed volumes ; it was for a few 
 splendid and idle words that the cross was set up on 
 Calvary, and the earth gaped, and the sun was darkened at 
 noonday. 
 
 1-4 : b (cf. 209, 14-210, 6). 9-23 * c, x, n. 
 i, 6, 7, 9, ii, 13, 14- 
 
GERALD STANLEY LEE 
 1862- 
 
 Is IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT? 
 Chapter II of Book II of " Crowds " ' 
 
 PERHAPS it will seem a pity to spoil a book one that 
 might have been really rather interesting by putting the 
 word " goodness " down flatly in this way in the middle 
 of it. 
 
 And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with 5 
 business. 
 
 I would not yield first place to anyone in being tired of 
 the word. I think, for one, that unless there is something 
 we can do to it and something we can do to it now, it had 
 better be dropped. 10 
 
 But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I 
 was tired of a word, that what I was really tired of was 
 somebody who was using it. 
 
 I do not mind it when my plumber uses it. I have heard 
 him use it (and swearing softly, I regret to say) when it 15 
 affected me like a Hymn Tune. 
 
 And there is Non, too. 
 
 I first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out 
 of New York, and we found ourselves going down together 
 
 on Friday afternoon to spend Sunday with M in North 20 
 
 Carolina. The first thing he said was, when we were 
 
 1 By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co. 
 
 5, 6:b. 14-16:!. 17 :b. 18-214, 20 : v, n, w. 
 
 213 
 
214 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still 
 world under glass roll by outside, that he had broken an 
 engagement with his wife to come. She was giving a Tea, 
 he said, that afternoon, and he had faithfully promised to 
 
 5 be there. But a week-end in North Carolina appealed to 
 him, and afternoon tea well, he explained to me, crossing 
 his legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole 
 genial, successful afternoon tea all by himself afternoon 
 tea did not appeal to him. 
 
 10 He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person. 
 As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked 
 with sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregarious- 
 ness every minute all the way to Wilmington (even when 
 he was asleep we heard from him), we called him the Non- 
 
 15 Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one more 
 story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We 
 called him Non-Gregarious all the way after that Non for 
 short. 
 
 This is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has 
 
 20 been Non ever since. 
 
 I found in the course of the next three days that when 
 Non was not being the life of the party or the party did 
 not need any more life for a while, and we had gone off 
 by ourselves, he became, like most people who let them- 
 
 25 selves go, a very serious person. When he talked about 
 his business, he was even religious. Not that he had any 
 particular vocabulary for being religious, but there was 
 something about him when he spoke of business his own 
 business that almost startled me at first. He always 
 
 30 seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it 
 as being, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion 
 by itself. 
 
 21-29 : w. 
 
GERALD STANLEY LEE 215 
 
 Now Non is a builder or contractor. 
 
 For many years now the best way to make a pessimist 
 or a confirmed infidel out of anybody has been to get him 
 to build a house. No better arrangement for not believing 
 in more people, and for not believing in more kinds of 5 
 people at once and for life, has ever been invented probably 
 than building a house. No man has been educated, or has 
 been really tested in this world, until he has built a house. 
 I submit this proposition to anybody who has tried it, or 
 to anyone who is going to try it. There is not a single kind 10 
 or type of man who sooner or later will not build himself, 
 and nearly everything that is the matter with him, into 
 your house. The house becomes a kind of miniature model 
 (such as they have in expositions) of what is the matter 
 with people. You enter the door, you walk inside and 15 
 brood over them. Everything you come upon, from the 
 white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head on 
 in the roof, reminds you of something or of rows of people 
 and of what is the matter with them. It is the new houses 
 that are haunted now. Any man who is sensitive to houses 20 
 and to people and who would sit down in his house when 
 it is finished and look about in it seriously, and think of all 
 the people that have been built, in solid wood and stone, 
 into it, would get up softly and steal out of it, out of the 
 front door, and never enter that house again. 25 
 
 This is what Non saw. He saw how people felt about 
 their houses, and how they lived in them helplessly and 
 angrily year after year, and felt hateful about the world. 
 
 I gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it. I 
 found he was not as good as some people are at talking 30 
 about himself, but the subject was interesting. He began 
 his career building houses for people, as nearly everyone 
 
 i : b. 2-28 : w, a (cf. 201, 21-203, 4)- 29-216, 29 : v, k. 
 
216 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 does. The general idea is that everybody is expected to 
 exact commissions from everybody else, and the owner is 
 expected to pay each man his own commission and then 
 pay all the commissions that each man has charged the 
 5 other man. Every house that got built in this way seemed 
 to be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you 
 would be done by. Non did not see any way out at first, 
 just for one man. He merely noticed how things were 
 going, and he noticed that nearly every person that he had 
 
 10 dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house, 
 seemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, 
 or ought to be, a grafter. He could not so much as look 
 at a house he had built, through the trees when he was 
 going by, without wishing he could be a better man, and 
 
 15 studying on how it could be managed. His own first houses 
 made him see things. They proved to be the making of 
 him, and if similar houses have not made similar men, it 
 is their fault. It might not be reassuring to the men who 
 are now living in these first houses to dwell too much on 
 
 20 this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but it 
 seems necessary to bring out the most striking thing about 
 Non in his first stage as a business man, vis.: He hated his 
 business. He made up his mind he either would make the 
 business the kind of business he liked or get out of it. I 
 
 25 did not gather from the way he talked about it that he had 
 any idea of being an uplifter. He merely had, apparently, 
 an obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and 
 about what a thing would have to be, in this world, if he 
 was connected with it. He proposed to enjoy his business. 
 
 30 He was spending most of his time at it. 
 
 Other people have had this same happy thought, but they 
 seem to manage to keep on being patient. Non could not 
 fall back on being patient, and it made him think harder. 
 
 29, 30: b. 26-217, 6: & 
 
GERALD STANLEY LEE 217 
 
 The first thing he thought of was that doing his business 
 as he thought he ought to, if he once worked his idea out, 
 and worked it down through and organized it, might pay. 
 He almost had the belief that people might pay a man 
 a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business. It cannot 5 
 be said that he believed this immediately. He merely 
 wanted to, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first 
 of being able to afford it. Gradually he began to notice that 
 the more he enjoyed his business, the more he enjoyed it 
 with his whole soul and body, enjoyed it down to the very 10 
 toes of his conscience, the more people there were who 
 stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his business 
 on their houses. It was what they had been looking for 
 for years for some builder who was really enjoying his 
 business. And the more he enjoyed his business in his 15 
 own particular way that of building a house for a man in 
 less time than he said he would, and for less money, not 
 infrequently sending him a check at the end of it the more 
 his business grew. 
 
 I do not know that there would be any special harm in 20 
 speaking of Non's idea of just doing as you would be done 
 by in more moral or religious language, but it is not neces- 
 sary. And I find I take an almost religious joy in looking 
 at the Golden Rule at last as a plain business proposition. 
 All that happened was that Non was original, saw some- 25 
 thing that everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it 
 were so. Theoretically one would not have said that it 
 would be original to take an old platitudinous law like the 
 law of supply and demand, and act as if it were so ; but 
 it was. At the time Non was beginning his career there 30 
 was nothing in the building-market people found harder to 
 buy than honesty. Here was something, he saw at last, 
 that thousands of busy and important men who did not have 
 1-19 : m, o, q (cf. 97, 6-33). 25-27 1. 23-32 : w. 32-218, 12 : o. 
 
218 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 time to be detectives, wanted. There did not seem to be 
 anyone very actively supplying the demand. A big market, 
 a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped 
 in and proposed to represent a man's interest who is build- 
 5 ing a house as literally as the man would represent himself, 
 if he knew all about houses. Everything has followed from 
 this. What Non's business is now, when a man is building 
 a house, is to step quietly into the man's shoes, let him 
 put on another pair, and go quietly about his business. It 
 
 10 is not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who 
 has ever built a house knows the details. Just take them 
 and turn them around. 
 
 What those of us who know Non best liked about him 
 is that he is a plain business man, and that he has acted 
 
 15 in this particular matter without any fine moral frills or 
 remarks. He has done the thing because he liked it and 
 believed in it. 
 
 But the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the 
 way he is making money out of saving money for other 
 
 20 people, but the way the fact that he can do it makes people 
 feel about the world. Whenever I have a little space of 
 discouragement or of impatience about the world because 
 it does not hurry more, I fall to thinking of Non. " Per- 
 haps next week " I say to myself cheerfully " I can go 
 
 25 down to New York and slip into Non's office and get the 
 latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or he will 
 take me out to lunch, and I will stop scolding or idealizing, 
 and we will get down to business, and I will take a good 
 look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while 
 
 30 he tells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for 
 
 three hours how shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it 
 
 works. Sometime when I have just been in New York, 
 
 and have come home and am sitting in my still study, with 
 
 13-17 : 1. 32-219, 12 : b, i, h. 
 
GERALD STANLEY LEE 219 
 
 the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow 
 and all the world, like some great, calm, gentle spirit or 
 picture of itself, lying out there about me, and I fall to 
 thinking of Non, and of how he is working in wood and 
 stone inside of people's houses, and inside their lives day 5 
 after day, and of how he is touching people at a thousand 
 points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and 
 shadows and little visions of words fall together just so, 
 seems, suddenly a very trivial occupation like amusing 
 one's self with a pretty little safe kaleidoscope, holding it 10 
 up, aiming it, and shaking softly one's colored bits of 
 phrases at a world! Of course it need not be so. But 
 there are moments when I think of Non when it seems so. 
 
 In our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be 
 quite at our best just now. 15 
 
 At least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am 
 not. 
 
 Being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, 
 modest, informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes 
 one more hopeful about religion. Perhaps people who once 20 
 get the habit, and who are being good all the week, can 
 even be good on Sunday. 
 
 There are many ways of resting or leaning back upon 
 one's instincts and getting over to one's religion or per- 
 spective about the world. Mount Tom (which is my front 25 
 yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes with a single 
 look. 
 
 When I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan 
 Tower, the Pennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, 
 and at Non. 30 
 
 If I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to 
 get him to work in Non's office, or work with anybody 
 who ever worked with him, or who ever saw him; or I 
 12, 13 : b. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18-22, 23-27, 28-30 : b. 
 
22O THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a bill 
 made out by him. 
 
 It has seemed to me that his succeeding and making 
 himself succeed in this way is a great spiritual adventure, 
 5 a pure religion, a difficult, fresh, and stupendous religion. 
 
 Now these many days have I watched him going up 
 and down through all the empty reputations, the unmean- 
 ing noises of the world, living his life like some low, old- 
 fashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling and I 
 10 have seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being 
 shrewder and shrewder for God, now grimly, now radi- 
 antly, hour by hour, day by day getting rich with the Holy 
 Ghost ! 
 
 219, 10-220, 5 : g- 3-i3 : o, h, n. 
 i, 6, 7, 8, n, 12. 
 
EMILE VERHAEREN 
 1855- 
 
 THE LITTLE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS * 
 
 ENGLAND is a vast meadow, sprinkled here and there with 
 spaces of tillage. Flanders is like a chess-board, the various 
 squares of which are covered with rye, wheat, oats, flax, 
 and clover. From scattered farms, little red-roofed, white- 
 gabled buildings, with their green doors and shutters, their 5 
 clean, warm stables, comes the cheerful noise of flails 
 threshing the wheat, of wheels ginning the flax. 
 
 Life is a simple and peaceful thing in these villages. The 
 church is, as it were, the palace of God. Many colored 
 statues of the saints, gold, silken banners, are lavished on 10 
 its beautifying. The organ plays daily for those who wish 
 to hear. On great festivals the altars are loaded with silver 
 candlesticks, the finest vestments adorn the shoulders of 
 the priests, the best voices of the district thunder the Christ- 
 mas hymn or the Easter Alleluia. A quiet reverence rules 15 
 over all. Every ceremony has its beauty, and their joyful 
 dignity affects the life of the tiniest hamlet. 
 
 The beauty of Flanders is the mellow beauty of many 
 centuries. Everywhere may be found firmly established 
 traditions or historical masterpieces. In every little church 20 
 a picture, either Gothic or Renaissance, recalls the age of 
 Van Eyck or of Rubens. The subject may be the corona- 
 tion of a fair virgin, or the ascent to heaven, surrounded 
 1 Copyright, 1915, by the Boston Transcript. 
 1-7 : h, e. 8-17 : a, c, n. 18-222, 4 : h, d. 
 221 
 
222 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 by angels, of a splendid Christ. The saints are represented, 
 garlanded with roses. The holy families are Flemish fami- 
 lies, living quietly prosperous lives in cool, white rooms, 
 with their bird in its cage or their parrot on its perch. 
 
 5 Such is the decorative side of the Flemish village. In 
 actual plan it consists probably of a single principal street, 
 in which live the lawyer, the doctor, and the brewer; and 
 a few smaller roads which branch off from the main street 
 as from the trunk of a tree. Wherever such a side-road 
 10 joins the main street, a statue of the Virgin Mother of 
 Jesus stands in a niche of the wall, and it is the constant 
 care of the ladies of the village, the wives of the lawyer, 
 the doctor, and the brewer, to keep each shrine in spring 
 well adorned with fresh flowers. 
 
 15 Once a week the market is held in the square or round 
 about the church. The farmers come to sell their milk 
 and butter; their boys bring in young pigs, and sometimes 
 sheep; the vendors of cloth display their little stocks. The 
 business done is small enough, no doubt, and its basis nar- 
 
 20 row, but the markets at least create a certain weekly excite- 
 ment and keenness of rivalry. 
 
 But at the Kermesses this excitement and keenness be- 
 comes a kind of madness. In every cabaret is the sound 
 of music. Dancing halls open on every side. Harsh and 
 
 25 violent orchestras a cornet, a violin, a clarinet, a trumpet 
 flog into swirling motion a hundred sturdy couples. 
 Quadrilles follow polkas or waltzes, and the dancers stamp 
 with their heels so violently that often the tiles of the floor 
 are split in two. Drunkenness and anger play their part at 
 
 30 these times of wild pleasure. Knives flash out in quarrel, 
 and often bloody work is done. The farm-lads fighting for 
 wenches' favors; the lovers quarreling, the old men, fever- 
 
 5-14 : d. 15-21 : d, c. 22-29 : c, e. 29-223, 2 : c, n. 
 
EMILE VERHAEREN 223 
 
 ish with drink, present, almost unchanged, the violent orgies 
 painted so long ago by Brouwer and Craesbeke. 
 
 Such is, or rather such was before the Germans came, 
 the life of the little villages of Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, 
 and Liege. But anyone who might see these districts now 5 
 would find it hard to believe in such a past. 
 
 The newspapers keep the world informed of the fate of. 
 the towns, but they do not trouble themselves about the 
 tiny villages, hidden away in the heart of the country. I 
 know secret corners in the Ardennes, in la Hesbaye, in la 10 
 Famenne, in le Borinage, in Flanders, in Brabant, where 
 the peasants are literally starving to death. In time of 
 peace they live, these poor folks, on the produce of their 
 little farms. They kill their pig, cure it, and eat it slowly, 
 week by week, throughout the winter. They have their 15 
 little store of potatoes in their cellar and their twenty sacks 
 of corn in their barn. For years and years they have al- 
 ways lived thus. Their whole world is their little house, 
 tucked away over there in the distant country. It represents 
 all their treasure, all their livelihood. They toil all the 20 
 summer so that bread and meat shall not be wanting in the 
 hard times of winter. They are, as it were, a Providence 
 to themselves. They hope and are confident. They cannot 
 conceive any law, divine or human, depriving them of what 
 they have reaped and garnered, of the living they have 25 
 amassed, lawfully and by their own toil, for their wives 
 and children. 
 
 When the war began little groups of uhlans began ap- 
 pearing in the villages. They would stop and ask a few 
 questions and then go on somewhere else. At present they 30 
 behaved mildly enough. Well aware of the danger of am- 
 bushes, they were gentle and genial. They seemed to 
 
 3-6 :n. 7-15 : g, q. 15-22:3. 22-27:^3. 28-224, 2 : b. 
 
224 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 regard the people almost as their friends. Fear bred in 
 them excellent manners. 
 
 But later on, when whole regiments passed the way that 
 hitherto only scattered uhlans had trod, the true German 
 5 arrogance made its terrible appearance. There was looting 
 and worse; there was massacre. Conciliatory fear gave 
 way to savagery. The world knows now how much blood 
 must be shed, how many ruins must be piled one on another, 
 before German anger can be assuaged. 
 
 10 And now that the fires have smoldered out, now that 
 the little villages are once more left lonely, and those of 
 their inhabitants who have escaped flame and sword are 
 left there to exist as best they may, it is for us to think 
 for a moment of the sinister silence of those abandoned 
 
 15 lives, lingering on in the little towns and, more tragic still, 
 lost in the depths of the countryside. 
 
 Here, in the fog of London, I sit and picture to myself 
 the agony of one of those little villages of Campine or of 
 the Ardennes, over there, hidden among the valleys or lost 
 
 20 in the marshes. Every one of those sources of livelihood 
 of the poor peasants which I have described has been 
 requisitioned or frankly stolen. Their few poor cows have 
 been killed. Their sow, who once like some prolific savage 
 beast dawdled among the manure and filth of the farmyard 
 
 25 with her squealing turbulent litter, has been snatched away 
 these three months. In payment was given a ticket, a ticket 
 of exchange valid in a distant land. But this is not all. 
 Their sacks of corn have been brought from their barns, 
 their turnips have been taken away from the pits in which 
 
 30 they were kept. Their straw and hay have become the prop- 
 erty of the invading cavalry, who, no sooner had they taken 
 what they needed, hastened away. The farmsteads are 
 
 3-9 : a, c. io-i6:b, c. 17-20 : q. 27 : b. 28-32 : c, d. 
 
EMILE VERHAEREN 225 
 
 stripped bare; only their inhabitants remain, deprived of 
 everything. Even their bed-coverings, their poor mat- 
 tresses, their bedsteads, have been seized. And they remain, 
 with no possessions in the world but the four walls of their 
 cottage and the tiles of their roof. 5 
 
 How are they to live henceforth? They have never 
 learnt to seek a livelihood elsewhere or otherhow than in 
 their homes and on their farms. The towns are far away, 
 and even the roads to them are often strange. While finally, 
 did they but know it, little help can come to them out of the 10 
 towns, themselves looted and even sacked, and their shops 
 and houses deserted and shuttered. 
 
 At least for the towns there is hope. In them remains 
 such authority as still survives. Some organization is 
 slowly emerging. Neighboring communes help each other. 15 
 Such provisions as are sent in from abroad come to the 
 towns. Whenever there is concerted effort there is some 
 chance of being heard and helped. Even in the little towns 
 men will receive some succor, will hearten each other. Per- 
 haps a stump of railway line still connects them with the 20 
 world. At least, carts pass through their streets. Some 
 energetic citizen contrives to form a tiny store of precious 
 food, and its existence sends a gleam of hope through even 
 the darkest gloom. At least everything is not dead and 
 desolate. 25 
 
 But the villages. They have no initiative. To them no 
 help comes. Their cry is solitary, and dies away unechoed. 
 The cottages are scattered about the country, barely in com- 
 munication with one another. They are to me like little 
 islands of starvation and distress looming faintly through 30 
 the mist. 
 
 Should not those of us who have a real pity for the un- 
 13-19 ' b, j, d, k. 18-25 : d. 28-31 : e. 32-226, 7 : / (cf. 223, 15-22). 
 
226 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 precedented disasters which have overtaken Belgium bear 
 in mind especially the despair of the peasant? His silence 
 covers the greatest misery of all ; for, despite his desolation, 
 he does not complain. And yet he has given his three or 
 5 four sons to his country, and they are far away from him, 
 in the midst of the horrors, but where and whether dead or 
 alive, he does not know. 
 
 This Christmas night I can see him, sitting as usual 
 before the hearth, but this year a hearth that is cold and 
 
 10 black. Because his arms are forbidden to toil, it is his 
 thought which blunders to and fro, seeking hope in his 
 disaster. This toil-worn, silent man, who was a hero at 
 the moment when his country needed heroism, is faced now 
 with an inevitable death, here in his house, here in the house 
 
 15 in which his father lived before him. He is utterly lonely, 
 utterly helpless. Lost in the distant plains, he feels him- 
 self lost in the utter distance of the world. 
 
 Oh is human pity so narrow, so hampered, that it cannot 
 reach its hand over there into Flanders or La Wallonie, 
 
 20 and bring some succor to that silent, uncomplaining man 
 who, to-morrow, perhaps, may be no more? 
 
 One mourns, of course, to see ruins piled one on another 
 with such hate and fury; but the sorrow is soon passed. 
 Even the humblest peasants seem to treasure in their hearts 
 
 25 a somber reserve of energy. They go about their work 
 methodically, as though the war was only an evil dream, 
 and the real importance lay in the waking. 
 
 From the ashes of these towns and villages a new and 
 splendid life will arise. The library of Louvain will be 
 
 30 rebuilt, the church of St. Pierre, the Market Hall of Ypres, 
 the towers of Dixmude and Nieuport, and each stone will 
 be set in its place with mortar as hard and as solid as is 
 the hatred which now we feel for Germany. 
 
 12-17:0, q. i8-2i:b, o, f. 22-27 : a. 28-33:0. 
 
EMILE VERHAEREN 227 
 
 Those who have died at Ypres, at Dixmude, and at 
 Nieuport, will be forever glorious in our history. Their 
 tombs will be sacred. The smallest village of the Flem- 
 ish coast will have in its little cemetery a kind of under- 
 ground school, from which children may learn the tradi- 5 
 tions of a race as unchanging as water, and as tenacious 
 as fire. 
 
 Only from afar could I see them, these little towns of 
 my beloved Flanders, Dixmude, Nieuport, Ypres, as in the 
 wind and rain of last autumn I made my way toward the 10 
 allied front. From England, through Boulogne, Calais, 
 Gravelines, Dunkirk, I traveled to reach that tiny corner of 
 land which was all that remained of my native country. 
 With an emotion compounded of joy, grief, determination, 
 and pride was my heart stirred as I saw that little strip of 15 
 Flemish coast. I wept and laughed in one moment; never 
 before had I felt so keenly the nearness of my race. I 
 longed, if only for a moment, to evoke within myself the 
 spirit of all my ancestors, so that I might love Flanders 
 with a hundred hearts instead of one. This desire to in- 20 
 crease my personality became positively a suffering, until 
 during a few moments of silence I felt myself exalted, com- 
 forted, almost sublime. 
 
 When first I saw the shells they were falling on Nieu- 
 port Bains. As they struck the ground, a dense column 25 
 of black smoke bellied upwards and outwards. At night 
 they flashed about the sky like lightning. It was at once 
 horrible and beautiful. 
 
 Nieuport Bains is merely a row of modern houses, pretty 
 enough in their way, built along a breakwater of stone and 30 
 brick. Nieuport town, however, is a place of silence and 
 loveliness; a place of little houses, their windows shyly 
 
 1-7 : n. 8-23 : q, r, a, c, f. 24-28 : j, f, n (cf. 8-23). 29-228, 6 : s. 
 
228 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 curtained ; where now and again, as a step passes along the 
 street, a hand pushes the curtains aside, discreetly curious. 
 The pavements are uneven, their stones framed in grass or 
 moss. The old church in the charming little square is sur- 
 
 5 rounded with great trees which throw their solid circular 
 shadows on the ground. Finally, right on the edge of the 
 town, the huge Templar's tower rears its enormous head 
 above the countryside. It is like a great monolith, or even 
 some fragment of an Egyptian temple. I know of no 
 
 10 stranger or more unexpected sight than this square colossus 
 which towers over the roads and fields of Flanders, like a 
 monument of all the grandeur and nobility of the heroic 
 past. It stands for strength and endurance, as though by 
 its example it would raise the present to the level of the 
 
 15 times gone by. Firm in the accomplishment of this tre- 
 mendous mission, it defies all attacks. In vain have the 
 German guns thundered against it. They have failed to 
 throw it down because the ideal for which it stands shall 
 outlast, in its nobility, the machine-made terror of their 
 
 20 rage. 
 
 The jewel of Dixmude, besides the great square dom- 
 inated by an old and splendid church, is the Beguinage, a 
 tiny cloistered thing where one lives as at the end of the 
 earth. Indescribable is the air of isolation in. this place. 
 
 25 The old almswomen, not more than three or four in the 
 morning, perhaps five or six in the afternoon, move slowly 
 across the paths of the central inclosure, each one at her 
 appointed and unvarying hour. Their white caps accentuate 
 the gentleness of their faces like a peaceful halo. Behind 
 
 30 the little windows other tired and aged women busy them- 
 selves with the work of their tiny households. In the 
 summer they take the air, sitting at their doorways. In 
 
 6-20 : o, e, f, n (cf. 227, 29-228, 6). 21-28 : r, q. 28-229, 4 : d, s. 
 
EMILE VERHAEREN 229 
 
 winter they sit, seemingly without moving, in their chairs 
 before their little fires, their only companion an ancient book 
 of prayers. They have their treasure and their happiness in 
 the regular monotony of their lives. A stretch of white wall, 
 a crucifix above the mirror, a statuette of some saint upon 5 
 the mantelshelf, a few straw-seated chairs, each with its 
 rush mat in front of it, these make up the modest idea of 
 cleanliness and comfort proper to the place. Surely, if 
 the Blessed Virgin came back to earth, it is in some such 
 place as this that she would choose to dwell, some such com- 10 
 munity as this of quiet and holy thoughts, in which to pass 
 her life now that her son is dead. . . . 
 
 Ypres has a past quite different from that of Nieuport or 
 Dixmude, a past of war and magnificence. Her main 
 square, next to that of Brussels, is the most beautiful in 15 
 the world. Her town hall, her cathedral, her market hall, 
 combine all the splendors. The town hall and cathedral are 
 assuredly beautiful, but the market hall is more than that, 
 for it is unique. Its severity, its length, the symmetry of 
 its lines, its roofs like great wings feathered with slates, 20 
 its soaring and massive walls, suggest a giant triumphal 
 arch. It is so large that in times of peril the whole town 
 could gather there for shelter. Inside, an artist (but for his 
 modesty his name should now be one of glory) has spent a 
 lifetime over twenty frescoes, each one alive with the spirit 25 
 of the town's history. His name is Delbeck. In no dic- 
 tionary of the celebrities of his time is there mention either 
 of his birth or his death. He lived his humble life, passing 
 year after year inside a famous building, with no ambition 
 except to avoid dishonoring by his art the great walls that 30 
 had been intrusted to his care. And he achieved his wish, 
 for, so far from dishonoring the walls, he has made them 
 more precious and more tragic by his graciously colored 
 4-12 : h, c, f, n. 13-22 : a, h, c (cf. 184, 19-185, 8). 26 : b. 31-230, 2 : b, n. 
 
230 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 pictures of famous citizens, of noble counts, of grave and 
 learned judges. 
 
 The Market Hall of Ypres has always been a communal 
 building. In the Middle Ages it was the business center of 
 
 5 the cloth makers, the weavers, the fullers. It has seen 
 popular revolts and rioting. It has known agony and pas- 
 sion, joy and pride. For centuries it has stood there, the 
 wonder of Ypres. 
 
 Unlike Bruges, Ypres has never decked herself out as 
 
 10 a museum. Bruges, in the same way as Nuremberg, is a 
 trap for tourists. She erects modern reproductions of old 
 buildings, so that the unwary visitor may take them for 
 real antiquities. At Ypres there is no deceit. The town 
 makes no archaeological toilette to tempt the innocent 
 
 15 stranger. The present grows out of the past, and the marks 
 of the grafting are left unconcealed. In that is honesty 
 and loyalty. 
 
 Such were, before the war, these three beautiful little 
 towns of Flanders by the sea. They were a calm and glori- 
 
 20 ous trinity. To say the name of one of them immediately 
 brought to the mind those of the other two. The sea 
 loved them. She swept towards them with a murmur of 
 waves; the tremendous booming song of her equinoctial 
 winds was their lullaby. Their towers gazed out over the 
 
 25 sandhills to where the great ships were passing by in the 
 open sea. They dominated a fertile land rescued long ago 
 by our Flemish ancestors from the very waves themselves. 
 Fine roads, bordered with willows, lead from Ypres to 
 Dixmude, from Dixmude to Nieuport. The three towns 
 
 30 asked only to live at peace in the sunshine. But they have 
 been chosen to endure the noise and the terror of great 
 guns. 
 
 3-8 : c, d. 13 : b. 9-17 : e, d. 21, 22 : b. 22-27 : d, e, h. 28-32 : a, n. 
 
EMILE VERHAEREN 231 
 
 To-day they are heaps of ruins. Photographs taken dur- 
 ing the many bombardments show the Market Hall of 
 Ypres in flames. Between the slates a curl of smoke, then 
 the ragged tongues of flame, and the whole building is 
 a blaze. The belfry still stands, a kind of Hercules pre- 5 
 siding at the funeral pyre. But before long it also will 
 totter and remain only a huge stone skeleton, never more to 
 hold the great clock, which was its soul. 
 
 At Dixmude, in the principal church, a masterpiece of 
 Jordaens stood over the altar. It showed the Adoration of 10 
 the Magi. In the background of the picture, humbly 
 bowed, appeared the good St. Joseph. Flemish peasants, 
 mockingly irreverent, taunt his humility, while in the fore- 
 ground is displayed all the splendor of the Orient. Strik- 
 ingly typical of the Flemish spirit, at once mystic and 15 
 sensual, is the blend of buffoonery and reverence in one 
 picture. Who knows whether the painting still exists? It 
 has succumbed, perhaps, to the German shells. Or is it 
 now on its way to Berlin, where a place is prepared for 
 it on the walls of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum ? 20 
 
 Ypres, Nieuport, and Dixmude should be able to claim a 
 right to special consideration among the towns of Belgium 
 when the time of reconstruction arrives. They have been 
 grievously proved; their torture has been the crudest. 
 They were undefended ; it seems incredible that they should 25 
 have been sought out by fate, in their distant corner of 
 Flanders, to meet a fiery martyrdom. 
 
 Far more than Ghent or Bruges or Antwerp, they had 
 remained purely Flemish. Each had its dialect, clear and 
 sonorous, expressive of the Flemish soul in a way that the 30 
 toneless and official culture of a great town's dialect can 
 never be. War has dragged them brutally from the silence 
 
 3-8 : p. 9-20 : f, n. 21-232, 2 : f, n. 
 
232 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 that they loved. They ask no better than to go back thither, 
 into a silence that is not the dead abandonment of a German 
 domination, but the gentle silence of the real Flanders that 
 has lain upon them through the ages. 
 
 i 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, n, 1.2, 13. 
 
HENRY JAMES 
 1843-1916 
 
 THE REFUGEES IN ENGLAND * 
 
 THIS is not a report on our so interesting and inspiring 
 Chelsea work since November last, in aid of the Belgians 
 driven hither from their country by a violence of unpro- 
 voked invasion and ravage more appalling than has ever 
 before overtaken a peaceful and industrious people ; it is 5 
 the simple statement of a neighbor and an observer deeply 
 affected by the most tragic exhibition of national and civil 
 prosperity and felicity suddenly subjected to more bewilder- 
 ing outrage than it would have been possible to conceive. 
 The case, as the generous American communities have shown 10 
 they well understand, has had no analogue in the experience 
 of our modern generations, no matter how far back we go ; 
 it has been recognized, in surpassing practical ways, as vir- 
 tually the greatest public horror of our age, or of all the 
 preceding, and one gratefully feels, in presence of so much 15 
 done in direct mitigation of it, that its appeal to the pity 
 and the indignation of the civilized world anticipated and 
 transcended from the first all superfluity of argument. We 
 live into, that is we learn to cultivate, possibilities of sym- 
 pathy and reaches of beneficence very much as the stricken 20 
 and the suffering themselves live into their dreadful history 
 and explore and reveal its extent; and this admirable truth 
 it is that unceasingly pleads with the intelligent, the for- 
 tunate, and the exempt not to consent in advance to any 
 1 New York Times, October 17, 1915. 
 1-9 :b. 10-18:1. 1-234, 7 : d. 
 233 
 
234 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 dull limitation of the helpful idea. The American people 
 have surely a genius, of the most eminent kind, for with- 
 holding any such consent and despising all such limits; 
 and there is doubtless no remarked connection in which 
 
 5 they have so shown the sympathetic imagination in free 
 and fearless activity, that is, in high originality, as under 
 the suggestion of the tragedy of Belgium. 
 
 The happy fact in this order is that the genius commits 
 itself, always does so, by the mere act of self-betrayal; so 
 
 10 that just to assume its infinite exercise is but to see how 
 it must live above all on happy terms with itself. That is 
 the impulse and the need which operate most fully, to our 
 recognition, in any form of the American overflow of the 
 excited social instinct ; which circumstance, as I make these 
 
 15 remarks, seems to place under my feet a great firmness of 
 confidence. That confidence rests on this clear suggesti- 
 bility, to the American apprehension of any and every 
 aspect of the particular moving truth; when these aspects 
 are really presented, the response becomes but a matter of 
 
 20 calculable spiritual health. Very wonderful, I think, that 
 with a real presentation, as I call it, inevitably affected by 
 the obstructive element of distance, of so considerable a 
 social and personal disconnection, of the very violence done, 
 for that matter, to credibility as well, the sense of related- 
 
 25 ness to the awful story should so have emerged and so 
 lucidly insisted on its rights. To make that reflection in- 
 deed might well be to feel even here on our most con- 
 gested ground no great apparatus of demonstration or 
 evocation called for; in spite of which, however, I remind 
 
 30 myself that as Reports and Tables are of the essence of 
 our anxious duty, so they are rather more than less efficient 
 when not altogether denuded of the atmosphere and the 
 human motive that have conduced to their birth. 
 
 1-7 : b. 8-1 1 : 1. 16-20, 20-26, 26-33 : a. 8-33 : h. 
 
HENRY JAMES 235 
 
 I have small warrant perhaps to say that atmospheres 
 are communicable, but I can testify at least that they are 
 breathable on the spot, to whatever effect of depression or 
 of cljeer, and I should go far, I feel, were I to attempt to 
 register the full bittersweet taste, by our Chelsea waterside, 5 
 all these months, of the refugee element in our vital 
 medium. (The sweet, as I strain a point perhaps to call it, 
 inheres, to whatever distinguishability, in our hope of hav- 
 ing really done something, verily done much: the bitter 
 ineradicably seasons the consciousness, hopes, and demon- 10 
 strations and fond presumptions and all.) I need go no fur- 
 ther, none the less, than the makeshift provisional gates of 
 Crosby Hall, marvelous monument transplanted a few 
 years since from the Bishopgate quarter of the city to a part 
 of the ancient suburban site of the garden of Sir Thomas 15 
 More, and now serving with extraordinary beneficence as 
 the most splendid of shelters for the homeless. This great 
 private structure, though of the grandest civic character, 
 dating from the fifteenth century and one of the noblest 
 relics of the past that London could show, was held a few 20 
 years back so to cumber the precious acre or more on which 
 it stood that it was taken to pieces in the candid com- 
 mercial interest and in order that the site it had so long 
 sanctified should be converted to such uses as would stuff 
 out still further the ideal number of private pockets. Dis- 25 
 may and disgust were unable to save it : the most that could 
 be done was to gather in with tenderness of care its in- 
 numerable constituent parts and convey them into safer 
 conditions, where a sad defeated piety has been able to re- 
 edify them into some semblance of the original majesty. 30 
 
 Strange withal some of the turns of the whirligig of 
 time; the priceless structure came down to the sound of 
 lamentation, not to say of execration, and of the gnashing 
 
 1-25 : h. 25-30 : d, n. 31-236, 9 : e, r, v. 
 
236 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 of teeth, and went up again before cold and disbelieving, 
 quite despairing eyes; in spite of which history appears 
 to have decided once more to cherish it and give a new 
 consecration. It is in truth still magnificent; it lives again 
 
 5 for our gratitude in its noblest particulars and the almost 
 incomparable roof has arched all this Winter and Spring 
 over a scene probably more interesting and certainly more 
 pathetic than any that have ever drawn down its ancient 
 far-off blessing. 
 
 10 The place has formed then the headquarters of the 
 Chelsea circle of hospitality to the exiled, the broken, and 
 the bewildered, and if I may speak of having taken home 
 the lesson of their state and the sense of their story it is 
 by meeting them in the finest club conditions conceivable 
 
 15 that I have been able to do so. Hither, month after month 
 and day after day the unfortunates have flocked, each after- 
 noon, and here the comparatively exempt, almost ashamed 
 of their exemption in presence of so much woe, have made 
 them welcome to every form of succor and reassurance. 
 
 20 Certain afternoons, each week, have worn the character of 
 the huge comprehensive tea party, a fresh well-wisher dis- 
 charging the social and financial cost of the fresh occasion 
 which has always festally profited, in addition, by the ex- 
 traordinary command of musical accomplishment, the high 
 
 25 standard of execution, that is the mark of the Belgian 
 people. This exhibition of our splendid local resource has 
 rested, of course, on a multitude of other resources, still 
 local, but of a more intimate hospitality, little by little 
 worked out and applied, and into the detail of which I 
 
 30 may not here pretend to go beyond noting that they have 
 been accountable for the large house and fed and clothed 
 and generally protected and administered numbers, all pro- 
 vided for in Chelsea and its outer fringe, on which our 
 
 15-26 : c, h. 26-237, 2 : d, 1. 235, 1-237, 8 : b > h > x ( cf - 218, 18-220, 13). 
 
HENRY JAMES 237 
 
 scheme of sociability at Crosby Hall itself has up to now 
 been able to draw. To have seen this scheme so long in 
 operation has been to find it suggest many reflections, all of 
 the most poignant and moving order ; the foremost of which 
 has, perhaps, had for its subject that never before can the 5 
 wanton hand of history have descended upon a group of 
 communities less expectant of public violence from without 
 or less prepared for it and attuned to it. 
 
 The bewildered and amazed passivity of the Flemish civil 
 population, the state as of people surprised by sudden ruf- 10 
 nans, murderers, and thieves in the dead of night and hurled 
 out, terrified and half clad, snatching at the few scant house- 
 hold goods nearest at hand, into a darkness mitigated but 
 by flaring incendiary torches, this has been the experience 
 stamped on our scores and scores of thousands, whose testi- 15 
 mony to suffered dismay and despoilment, silence alone, the 
 silence of vain uncontributive wonderment, has for the most 
 part been able to express. Never was such a revelation of 
 a deeply domestic, a rootedly domiciled and instinctively 
 and separately clustered people, a mass of communities for 20 
 which the sight of the home violated, the objects helping to 
 form it profaned, and the cohesive family, the Belgian ideal 
 of the constituted life, dismembered, disemboweled, and 
 shattered, had so supremely to represent the crack of doom 
 and the end of everything. There have been days and days 25 
 when under this particular impression the mere aspect and 
 manner of our serried recipients of relief, something vague, 
 and inarticulate as in persons who have given up every- 
 thing but patience and are living, from hour to hour, but 
 in the immediate and the unexplained, has put on such a 30 
 pathos as to make the heart sick. One has had just to 
 translate any seated row of figures, thankful for warmth 
 and light and covering, for sustenance and human words 
 9-18 : i, c, h. 18-25 : c. 25-31 : i. 31-238, 5 : c, n. 
 
238 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 and human looks, into terms that would exemplify some 
 like exiled and huddled and charity-fed predicament for our 
 superior selves, to feel our exposure to such a fate, our 
 submission to it, our holding in the least together under it, 
 
 5 darkly unthinkable. 
 
 Dim imaginations would at such moments interpose, a 
 confused theory that even at the worst our adventurous 
 habits, our imperial traditions, our general defiance of the 
 superstition of domesticity would dash from our lips the 
 
 10 cup of bitterness ; from these it was at all events impossible 
 not to come back to the consciousness that almost every 
 creature there collected was indebted to our good offices for 
 the means to come at all. I thought of our parents and 
 children, our brothers and sisters, aligned in borrowed gar- 
 
 15 ments and settled to an as yet undetermined future of 
 eleemosynary tea and buns, and I ask myself, doubtless to 
 little purpose, either what grace of resignation or what 
 clamor of protest we should, beneath the same star, be noted 
 as substituting for the inveterate Belgian decency. 
 
 20 I can only profess at once that the sense of this last, 
 round about one, was at certain hours, when the music 
 and the chant of consolation rose in the stillness from our 
 improvised stage at the end of the great hall, a thing to 
 cloud with tears any pair of eyes lifted to our sublime saved 
 
 25 roof in thanks for its vast comprehension. Questions of 
 exhibited type, questions as to a range of form and tradi- 
 tion, a measure of sensibility and activity, not our own, 
 dwindled and died before the gross fact of our having here 
 an example of such a world tragedy as we supposed Europe 
 
 30 had outlived, and that nothing at all therefore mattered but 
 that we should bravely and handsomely hold up our quite 
 heavy enough end of it. 
 
 It is because we have responded in this degree to the 
 
 6-13:0. 13-19 : w. 20-32:!, h. 
 
HENRY JAMES 239 
 
 call unprecedented that we are, in common with a vast 
 number of organizations scattered through these islands, 
 qualified to claim that no small part of the inspiration to 
 our enormous act of welcome resides in the moral interest 
 it yields. One can indeed be certain of such a source of 5 
 profit but in the degree in which one has found one's self 
 personally drawing upon it; yet it is obvious that we are 
 not treated every day to the disclosure of a national char- 
 acter, a national temperament and type, confined for the 
 time to their plainest and stoutest features and set, on a 10 
 prodigious scale, in all the relief that the strongest alien 
 air and alien conditions can give them. Great salience, in 
 such a case, do all collective idiosyncrasies acquire upon 
 the fullest enumeration of which, however, as the Belgian 
 instance and the British atmosphere combine to represent 15 
 them, I may not now embark, prepossessed wholly as I am 
 with the more generally significant social stamp and human 
 aspect so revealed, and with the quality derived from these 
 things by the multiplied examples that help us to take them 
 in. This feeling that our visitors illustrate above all the 20 
 close and comfortable household life, with every implica- 
 tion of a seated and saturated practice of it, practice of the 
 intimate and private and personal, the securely sensual and 
 genial arts that flow from it, has been by itself the key to 
 a plenitude of observation and in particular to as much 25 
 friendly searching insight as one could desire to enjoy. 
 
 The moving, the lacerating thing is the fashion after 
 which such a reading of the native elements, once adopted, 
 has been as a light flaring into every obscurest retreat, as 
 well as upon any puzzling ambiguity, of the state of shock 30 
 of the rational character under the infamy of the outrage 
 put upon it. That they of all people the most given over to 
 local and patriarchal beatitude among the admirable and 
 
 5-20 : x. 20-26 : d. 27-240, 9 : x. 
 
240 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 the cherished objects handed down to them by their so 
 interesting history on every spot where its action has been 
 thickest that is on every inch, so to speak, of their teem- 
 ing territory should find themselves identified with the 
 5 most shamelessly cynical public act of which the civilized 
 world at this hour retains the memory, is a fact truly repre- 
 senting the exquisite in the horrible ; so peculiarly addressed 
 has been their fate to the desecration of ideals that had 
 fairly become breath of their lungs and flesh of their flesh. 
 
 10 Oh ! The installed and ensconced, the immemorially edified 
 and arranged, the thoroughly furnished and provided and 
 nourished people! not in the least besotted or relaxed in 
 their security and density, like the self-smothered society 
 of the ancient world upon which the earlier Huns and 
 
 15 Vandals poured down, but candidly complacent and ad- 
 mirably intelligent in their care for their living tradition, 
 and only so off their guard as to have consciously set the 
 example of this care to all such as had once smoked with 
 them their wondrous pipe of peace. Almost any posture 
 
 20 of stupefaction would have been conceivable in the shaken 
 victims of this delusion ; I can speak best, however, but of 
 what I have already glanced at, that temperamental weight 
 of their fall which has again and again, at sight of many 
 of them gathered together, made the considering heart 
 
 25 as heavy for them as if it too had for the time been 
 worsted. 
 
 However, it would take me far to tell of half the pene- 
 trating admonitions, whether of the dazed or of the roused 
 appearance, that have for so long almost in like degree 
 
 30 made our attention ache ; I think of particular faces, in the 
 whole connection, when I want most to remember since to 
 remember always, and never, never to forget, is a pre- 
 scription shining before us like a possible light of dawn; 
 10-26 : c, x, n, p. 238, 6-240, 26 : c, h, x, b (cf. 108, 15-111, 13). 
 
HENRY JAMES 241 
 
 faces saying such things in their silence, or in their speech 
 of quite different matters, as to make the only thinkable 
 comment or response some word or some gesture of re- 
 prieve to dumb or to dissimulated anguish. Blessed be the 
 power that has given to civilized men the appreciation of 5 
 the face such an immeasurable sphere of exercise for it 
 has this monstrous trial of the peoples come to supply. 
 Such histories, such a record of moral experience, of emo- 
 tion convulsively suppressed, as one meets in some of them, 
 and this even if on the whole one has been able to think 10 
 of these special allies, all sustainingly, much rather as the 
 sturdiest than as the most demonstrative of sufferers. I 
 have in these rapid remarks to reduce my many impressions 
 to the fewest, but must even thus spare one of them for 
 commemoration of the admirable cast of working counte- 15 
 nance we are rewarded by the sight of wherever we turn 
 amid the quantity of helpful service and all the fruitful in- 
 dustries that we have been able to start and that keep them- 
 selves going. 
 
 These are the lights in the picture, and who indeed 20 
 would wish that the lights themselves should be anything 
 less than tragic? The strong young men (no young men 
 are familiarly stronger,) mutilated, amputated, dismem- 
 bered in penalty for their defense of their soil against the 
 horde and now engaged at Crosby Hall in the making of 25 
 handloom socks, to whom I pay an occasional visit much 
 more for my own cheer, I apprehend, than for theirs, 
 express so in their honest concentration under difficulties 
 the actual and general value of their people that just to be 
 in their presence is a blest renewal of faith. Excellent, 30 
 exemplary, is this manly, homely, handy type, grave in its 
 somewhat strained attention, but at once lighted to the 
 briefest, sincerest humor of protest by any direct reference 
 8-19: j,h, 22-30: c, i. 
 
242 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 to the general cruelty of its misfortune. Anything but 
 unsuggestive, the range of the " quiet " physiognomy when 
 one feels the consciousness behind it not to have run thin. 
 Thick and strong is the good Flemish sense of life and all 
 
 5 its functions which fact is responsible for no empty and 
 really unmodeled " mug." 
 
 I am afraid at the same time that if the various ways 
 of being bad are beyond our reckoning, the condition and 
 the action of exemplary goodness tend rather to reduce to 
 
 10 a certain rich unity of appearance those marked by them, 
 however dissociated from each other such persons may have 
 been by race and education. Otherwise what tribute 
 shouldn't I be moved to pay to the gentleman of Flanders 
 to whom, the specially improvised craftsmen I have just 
 
 15 mentioned owe their training and their inspiration ? 
 through his having, in his proscribed and denuded state, 
 mastered the craft in order to recruit them to it and, in 
 fine, so far as my observation has been concerned, exhibit 
 clear human virtue, courage and patience, and the humility 
 
 20 of sought fellowship in privation, with an unconscious 
 beauty that I should be ashamed in this connection not to 
 have noted publicly. I scarce know what such a " person- 
 ality " as his suggests to me if not that we had all, on our 
 good Chelsea ground, best take up and cherish as directly 
 
 25 and intimately as possible every scrap of our community 
 with our gentlemen of Flanders. I make such a point as 
 this, at the same time, only to remember how, almost 
 wherever I have tried to turn, my imagination and my 
 intelligence have been quickened, and to recognize in 
 
 30 particular, for that matter, that this couldn't possibly be 
 
 more the case for them than in visiting a certain hostel in 
 
 one of our comparatively contracted but amply decent local 
 
 Squares riverside Chelsea having, of course, its own urban 
 
 7-243, 9 : o (cf. 106, 11-107, 12 )- 
 
HENRY JAMES 243 
 
 identity in the multitudinous County of London; which, 
 in itself as happy an example, doubtless, of the hostel 
 smoothly working as one need cite, placed me in grateful 
 relation with a lady, one of the victims of her country's 
 convulsion and in charge of the establishment I allude to, 5 
 whom simply to " meet," as we say, is to learn how sin- 
 gular a dignity, how clear a distinction, may shine in active 
 fortitude and economic self-effacement under an all but 
 crushing catastrophe. 
 
 'Talk about' faces !" I could but privately ejaculate 10 
 as I gathered the senses of all that this one represented in 
 the way of natural nobleness and sweetness, a whole past 
 acquaintance with letters and art and taste, insisting on their 
 present restrictedness to bare sisterly service. 
 
 The proud rigor of association with pressing service 15 
 alone, with absolutely nothing else, the bare commodious 
 house, so otherwise known to me of old and now, like most 
 of our hostels if I am not mistaken, the most unconditioned 
 of loans from its relinquishing owner; the lingering look of 
 ancient peace in the precincts, an element I had already as 20 
 I passed and repassed, at the afternoon hour, found some- 
 how not at all dispelled by the presence in the central green 
 garden itself of sundry maimed and hobbling and smiling 
 convalescents from an extemporized small hospital close at 
 hand, their battered khaki replaced by a like uniformity of 25 
 the loose light blue, and friendly talk with them through the 
 rails of their inclosure as blessed to one participant at least 
 as friendly talk with them always and everywhere is ; such 
 were the hovering elements of an impression in which the 
 mind had yet mainly to yield to that haunting force on the 30 
 part of our waiting prescripts which never consent to be 
 long denied. The proof of which universally recognized 
 power of their spell amid us is indeed that they have led 
 
 i5-32:b, c. 
 
244 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 me so far with a whole side of my plea for them still 
 unspoken. 
 
 This, however, I hope on another occasion to come back 
 to, and I am caught meanwhile by my memory of how the 
 
 5 note of this conviction was struck for me, with extraordi- 
 nary force, many months ago and in the first flush of rec- 
 ognition of what the fate that had overtaken our earliest 
 tides of arrival and appeal really meant meant so that 
 all fuller acquaintance, since pursued, has but piled one 
 
 10 congruous reality after another upon the horror. It was 
 in September, in a tiny Sussex town which I had not quitted 
 since the outbreak of the war, and here the advent of our 
 first handful of fugitives before the warning of Louvain 
 and Aerschott and Termonde and Dinant had just been an- 
 
 15 nounced. Our small hilltop city, covering the steep sides 
 of the compact pedestal crowned by its great church, had 
 reserved a refuge at its highest point, and we had waited 
 all day, from occasional train to train, for the moment at 
 which we should attest our hospitality. It came at last, 
 
 20 but late in the evening, when a vague outside rumor called 
 me to my doorstep, where the unforgettable impression at 
 once assaulted me. Up the precipitous little street that led 
 from the station, over the old grass-grown cobbles, where 
 vehicles rarely pass, came the panting procession of the 
 
 25 homeless and their comforting, their almost clinging enter- 
 tainers, who seemed to hurry them on as in a sort of over- 
 flow of expression or fever of charity. It was swift and 
 eager, in the Autumn darkness and under the flare of a 
 single lamp with no vociferation and but for a woman's 
 
 30 voice scarce a sound save the shuffle of mounting feet 
 and the thick-drawn breath of emotion. 
 
 The note I except, however, was that of a young mother 
 carrying her small child and surrounded by those who 
 
 3-3i:v,h. 
 
HENRY JAMES 245 
 
 bore her on and on, almost lifting her as they went together. 
 The resonance through our immemorial old street of her 
 sobbing and sobbing cry was the voice itself of history; it 
 brought home to me more things than I could then quite 
 take the measure of, and these just because it expressed 5 
 for her not direct anguish, but the incredibility, as we 
 should say, of honest assured protection. Months have 
 elapsed, and from having been then one of a few hundred 
 she is now one of scores and scores of thousands; yet her 
 cry is still in my ears, whether to speak most of what she 1 
 had lately or what she actually felt, and it plays to my own 
 sense, as a great fitful tragic light over the dark exposure 
 of her people. 
 
 2-13 :h,n. 
 6, 8, 9, n, 12, 13, 14. 
 
THE GREAT TRIUMPH * 
 
 WERE the public and our city officials truly alive to the 
 significance of the tremendous moral victory won by the 
 President of the United States yesterday, flags would be 
 flying from every building and bells would be pealing from 
 
 5 every church tower in this city to-day. Because it is a 
 victory of peace, and for peace, and not one purchased at 
 the cost of thousands of human lives on a bloody battlefield, 
 these external signs of thankfulness and of glorification are 
 lacking. Within the hearts of all Americans who have 
 
 10 understood the meaning of what has been going on and the 
 gravity of the crisis through which the Republic has passed, 
 there is, however, a devout thankfulness and a profound 
 gratitude to President Wilson which needs no outward ex- 
 pression to render it complete. They know that it has been 
 
 15 given to the President to achieve a moral victory for his 
 country and for all humanity, which forever insures him 
 a foremost place in the pages of American history, and has 
 mightily enhanced the power and prestige of the United 
 States. Without mobilizing a regiment or assembling a 
 
 20 fleet, by sheer dogged, unswerving persistence in advocating 
 the right, he has compelled the surrender of the proudest, 
 the most arrogant, the best armed of nations, and he has 
 done it in completest self-abnegation, but in fullest, most 
 patriotic devotion to American ideals. 
 
 25 No error could be more serious than that of looking upon 
 
 this splendid success of our diplomacy as a victory on a 
 
 1 Editorial in The New York Evening Post, August 2, 1915. 
 
 1-9:0. 1-24 : v. 19-24 : x. 25-247, 29: k, j. 
 
 246 
 
THE GREAT TRIUMPH 247 
 
 mere punctilio, a satisfaction like that of the duelist upon 
 a " point of honor." The principle for which we were con- 
 tending, though it happened to be embodied in a form 
 which, in the concrete, might be made to appear as of 
 trifling character, was a principle than which nothing could 5 
 be more vital. The carrying on of commerce upon the high 
 seas even commerce in contraband without peril to the 
 lives either of crew or of passengers, is one of the few privi- 
 leges of international intercourse in time of war which have 
 been held intact and unchallenged for generations. In set- 10 
 ting at naught this simple and unmistakable principle, Ger- 
 many justly earned the title of "an outlaw nation"; and 
 it was to vindicate and reestablish the law of nations in a 
 vital point that we interposed our veto. The crime of the 
 Lusitania massacre did not consist in the fact that there 15 
 were Americans among the murdered; but it was owing 
 to that fact that we had specific ground for intervening on 
 our own account intervening without making ourselves 
 the judges of other nations in their relation to each other. 
 Had the matter, however, concerned merely the slight ad- 20 
 vantages or opportunities immediately at risk for Amer- 
 icans, we could not have nerved ourselves to the point of 
 insisting on our rights at the peril of the bare possibility 
 of war with a nation with which ours desired to be at peace. 
 Our case was impregnable in law and justice; but what 25 
 made it great and momentous was that it was in principle 
 the case of international right, the case of civilized warfare 
 against unshackled terrorism in a word, the case of civil- 
 ization itself. 
 
 It is because of these facts that President Wilson's tri- 30 
 umph goes far beyond the bounds of our country. If it 
 constitutes a chapter in our history of which Americans 
 always will be proud, it is an achievement that serves the 
 
 20, 21 : 1. 20-29 : c, f, n. 
 
248 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 whole world, because, as Mr. Wilson said, he pleaded the 
 cause not merely of America, but of humanity. But to our 
 mind the greatest lesson of it all is the unconquerable 
 power of moral ideals which is thus once more demon- 
 
 5 strated. In a year to try men's souls, when nations are 
 being drenched with their own blood and that of their 
 neighbors, when many of our solidest citizens have been 
 completely thrown off their balance and have cried out that 
 we, too, must become as wild beasts and make ready to 
 
 10 destroy fellow-men, Woodrow Wilson set his face like 
 flint against anything of the kind. Knowing well the critics 
 whose abuse he thereby courted ; perfectly aware that he 
 would be charged with failure adequately to prepare for 
 possibilities, he rigidly refused to give one single order to 
 
 15 army or navy that would have inflamed public sentiment 
 or called forth counter-threats from Germany. In his every 
 personal act he set a splendid example of absolute self- 
 repression, of faith, of courage in the darkest hour. 
 
 We know well what the critics will say now : that the 
 
 20 story would have been different had Germany not had her 
 hands full, had she been free to strike us as well as to deal 
 simultaneously with France, Russia, Servia, and Great 
 Britain. There will be the writers in Sunday magazines to 
 say that we have merely postponed the evil day; that Ger- 
 
 25 many will never forget this humiliation, and will only wait 
 to recover from the terrible costs of the present struggle 
 to strike at us. This, and much more stuff of the same 
 kind, we shall doubtless hear from our patriots for pub- 
 licity. We say without equivocation that it all demonstrates 
 
 30 anew the moral power of this republic, which is infinitely 
 
 superior to any power of arms that it could possibly acquire. 
 
 We insist that the whole world must learn again that the 
 
 time has come to substitute for the horrible waste and 
 
 2-5 : 1. 5-i i : x. 1 1-18 : c, n. 19-29 : q, 1. 19-249, 4 : k, v. 
 
THE GREAT TRIUMPH 249 
 
 slaughter of Europe some better means of settling disputes 
 than that which writes us down a universe of cutthroats 
 and barbarians, and that the United States has once more 
 pointed the way. 
 
 And so we look to Woodrow Wilson to perform still 5 
 another service to the Republic by saving us from those 
 who would rob the poor, starve every movement for en- 
 lightened social development, and transplant to our soil 
 every evil of European militarism by squandering vast sums 
 upon training men to kill, to maim, to burn, and to destroy, i: 
 But whether that is in his purview or not, however far he 
 may seek to go to arm the country, we of the Evening Post 
 acknowledge to him to-day the colossal debt that his country 
 and humanity owe him. No one can overestimate it; no 
 one can even foresee how far-reaching its effects may be. 15 
 It may result in the ending of the war of the nations; it 
 may bear fruit of greater significance for humanity than 
 that. To-day we would merely set down the gratitude of 
 a nation and solemnly record our belief that, more than 
 ever, Americans may be proud of their country as that 20 
 which more than any other is " an example and a guiding 
 star to all mankind." 
 
 5-10 : x, o. 14-18 : c. 5-22 : k, n. 
 i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 1 
 
 A NOVEL from the pen of John Galsworthy is an event 
 of particular moment just now; it is no wonder that readers 
 were alert when "The Freelands " (Scribners) began to 
 run in an American magazine. There was a time when a 
 5 novel from Wells or from Bennett awakened the same 
 interest. When Wells had just published " Tono-Bungay " 
 and " The New Machiavelli," when Arnold Bennett had 
 just published " Old Wives' Tales " and " Clay-hanger," 
 readers tingled to their finger tips. Were these men great 
 10 enough to hold the standard they themselves had set ? 
 " Ann Veronica," " Marriage," " Passionate Friends," and 
 last and least " Sir Isaac Harmon's Wife " were a pro- 
 gressive deterioration. As to Arnold Bennett, " Hilda Less- 
 ways," "The Card," "The Regent," and "The Price of 
 15 Love " showed plainly enough that he had reached high- 
 water mark in his art and the rest was what he had left 
 over. 
 
 Of the same generation and almost the same age, John 
 Galsworthy had his annus mirabilis in 1913. ''' The Inn 
 20 of Tranquillity " gave hope of a sense of beauty to equal 
 Pater's gift ; and " The Dark Flower," an entirely new type 
 of novel, was held almost throughout at point of lyric rap- 
 ture. Could he go on? If he could go on, which turn would 
 he take? For John Galsworthy's work from the beginning 
 25 has been twofold. On the one hand, he was a stern moralist 
 concerned with the injustices and cruelties of life, as all his 
 1 The New York Sun, August 5, 1915. 
 18, 19 : b, 1. 23, 24 : b. 25-251, 5 : 1. 
 250 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 251 
 
 plays, excepting that soul adventure " The Little Dream," 
 would prove. On the other hand he was a pure aesthetic 
 impressionist, culling the flush of beauty from the fleeting 
 moments ; staying them in a form as lovely as their original 
 essence. Which was to survive, John Galsworthy a member 5 
 of the great band of modern reformers, or John Galsworthy 
 the greatest literary impressionist since Pater? 
 
 " The Little Man and Other Satires " were clever but 
 rather obvious characterizations. " A Bit o' Love " was 
 charming but slight. Our eyes were fixed for the next 10 
 major work to show the nature of the third period. 
 
 It was especially important in the case of John Gals- 
 worthy because he is a writer whom no external destiny 
 threatens. Born in Surrey of a father whose people had 
 been established in Devon since the Saxon invasion; with 15 
 a moor still bearing his name, " Gaulzery " ; of a mother 
 whose ancestors had been landowners in Worcestershire 
 at least since the fifteenth century, the three loveliest shires 
 of England contributed to his aesthetic perceptions. More- 
 over, John Galsworthy entered the world with all the ma- 20 
 terial circumstances of life prearranged. He had good 
 blood, family, position, ample means. He went through 
 the usual educational mill. He was all but head boy at 
 Harrow and progressed to Christ Church, Oxford, after 
 the usual manner, where he interested himself in horses, 25 
 sport, fine raiment, and doubtless his fellow-man. His 
 sensitive perceptions of social distinctions, his understand- 
 ing of the fundamental fineness of the patrician class, were 
 doubtless sharpened in these years. Whether to please him- 
 self or others, or merely to show that he was one of those 30 
 rare beings who do as they please with themselves, he 
 dropped these university preoccupations neatly and de- 
 cisively in his third year at Oxford and he took an honors 
 5-7: i. 8-1 1 :b. 14-19 : x. 21-29 :x,w. 12-252, 14 : k, n. 
 
252 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 degree in law. He had chambers in the Temple and dis- 
 covered that he hated his profession. Such was his parents' 
 confidence in him and his judgment that when he decided 
 that he would rather travel than be a barrister no obstacles 
 5 were put in his way and he proceeded to survey mankind 
 in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Russia, 
 France, Germany, Austria, the United States, and else- 
 where. Destiny dowered him with the thing Stevenson 
 yearned for, an income : " An income that will come in ; 
 
 10 instead of having to go to fish for It with the immortal 
 mind of man. I mean an income that would come in all 
 of itself while all Fd have to do would be to exist and 
 blossom and sit around on chairs. Then Fd write some 
 works that would make your hair curl." 
 
 15 This income that left the author free to sit on chairs 
 and blossom Galsworthy's ancestors, like those of Swin- 
 burne and Shelley, attended to before his birth, and it is 
 a profound lesson to those intending to beget geniuses. 
 Geniuses lose three-fourths of their vitality in dull dealings 
 
 20 with impervious editors, publishers, and the public. The 
 only possible way to arrange to get the best out of a genius 
 is for the prospective one's grandfather to prearrange an 
 income that will " come in of itself." 
 
 Whether it was during his term in the Temple or later, 
 
 25 it is quite evident that some time in his career John Gals- 
 worthy frequented police courts, and hence we have not 
 only " The Silver Box " and " Justice," but innumerable 
 sketches in " A Motley " and " A Commentary." Like 
 Bernard Shaw and like Wells, he was totally dissatisfied 
 
 30 with the rough-and-ready justice of this world. Unlike 
 
 Shaw, he did not meet it with ridicule and scathing satire; 
 
 like Wells, he did not moralize on theories; but he pointed 
 
 out all the terrible waste and pity of it. He is more versatile 
 
 1-8 : 1. 15-23 : w. 28-253, 5 : u, o, n. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 253 
 
 than any of his contemporaries, for while he ranks with 
 Wells and Bennett as a novelist he surpasses both of them 
 as a playwright; and if not so brilliant a playwright or so 
 mordant an essayist as Bernard Shaw, he adds to both 
 these vocations that of being also a poet. 5 
 
 John Galsworthy is barely middle-aged. He is midway 
 in the forties, although he looks about thirty, and he has 
 given us seven novels (or eight, if one choose to count in 
 that lyric interlude "The Dark Flower"), four volumes 
 of essays, one of them a volume of supreme beauty; ten 10 
 plays, and a volume of lyric verse. 
 
 It has been said of Arnold . Bennett that with all his 
 genius, industry, and efficiency, one feels in reading him 
 that his upright spirit has yet been " inadequately tempered 
 to fine issues." This is precisely what is not to be said 15 
 of John Galsworthy; for wherever he touches upon life, 
 whether it be the fleeting aspects of nature, a chance en- 
 counter with a tiny beggar maid in a red petticoat, an 
 antiquated and cast-aside butler, a Dutch-French adven- 
 turer and philosopher with his nose askew, or an oppressed 20 
 and honest charwoman, he catches some half-hidden gleam 
 of loveliness. He sees in pictures and in visions rather than 
 in things and details. He can never be wholly condemna- 
 tory of a world and a human nature which have offered 
 his sensitive eyes so many exquisite gleams of pure loveli- 25 
 ness. 
 
 There is one point in which he undoubtedly surpasses 
 his fellow-craftsmen. He has a sense for diction. This 
 is a matter as unarguable as the existence of the soul. 
 Either you do or you do not like writers who " sense " and 30 
 " glimpse " and " enthuse." Either you shudder or you do 
 not at a writer who makes every abstract noun out of an 
 adjective by adding " ness " to it. It is sheer instinct 
 
 6-1 1 : b. 12-26 : k, h (cf. in, 14-112, 29), n. 31-254, 2 : x. 
 
254 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 with some readers when they see the word " stableness " 
 to correct it and say " stability." In these matters Gals- 
 worthy's days at Harrow and Oxford stand him in good 
 stead. He is one of those lucky mortals who have an 
 5 instinctive feeling for the associational value of words and 
 he never makes your flesh crawl suddenly in the middle of 
 a beautiful description. Neither Wells nor Bennett is free 
 of sin in this particular. Shaw says : " Your men who 
 really can write, your Dickenses, Ruskins, and Carlyles, 
 
 10 and their like, are vernacular above all things : they cling 
 to the locutions which everyday use has made a part of 
 our common life." But Shaw has not quite hit the mark 
 here. These writers, like William and Henry James, first 
 served an apprenticeship to fine writing and well-tempered 
 
 15 purple patches and then with adroit art they vivified the 
 page by a cunning introduction of colloquialism which 
 brought the reader surprised to his feet saying : " Here I 
 am at home on the ground after all, just as I thought I 
 was soaring. Earth and air seem one connected whole." 
 
 20 To be " vernacular " and yet an artist requires the most 
 adroit skill and cunning. In the main John Galsworthy is 
 not colloquial. Rather he is a poet with a poet's sense for 
 the connotations of words. 
 
 In matter he has covered a wide field of English life. 
 
 25 " Villa Rubein," his earliest real novel, is set in a foreign 
 field. It is incoherent at times and the characters fall short 
 of actuality. It was most tenderly treated by the critics 
 and more praised than it deserved to be. :< The Island 
 Pharisees " made a great stride forward. Here enters that 
 
 30 inimitable character Ferrand, who appears in sketches and 
 in " The Pigeon " and serves Mr. Galsworthy so faithfully 
 as a mouthpiece of the creator's philosophy of life. The 
 country place, its breakfast table, its garden, its gardener 
 
 4-19 : w. 253, 27-254, 23 : k, n. 24-32 : x. 32-255, 6 : x. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 255 
 
 who mourned too long for his dead wife to suit his mis- 
 tress, that lady of the house herself, who had breathed in 
 the sense of superiority of her class in her cradle; her 
 daughter who lived so securely and beautifully on the sur- 
 faces of life; it is all done to an extraordinary pitch of 5 
 perfection. There are few instances in literature of so 
 great a gap between a first and a second book. Hardy 
 compassed as great a gulf between " Desperate Remedies," 
 an awkward attempt, and " Under the Greenwood Tree/' a 
 rural classic. Galsworthy knew his art, his field of observa- 10 
 tion, and had the mastery of characterization in " Island 
 Pharisees." After that he tried various circles of society. 
 In " The Man of Property " he handled that solid, material, 
 moneyed class, good at a bargain, with an exact sense of 
 the value of real estate and ownership, which plays so 15 
 large a part in England's prosperity. They are all people 
 of limited perception and emotions, and yet somehow with 
 all their hidebound limitations they are rather lovable, the 
 sort of people that it is no good arguing with since they 
 have never once conceived of revising their grandfathers' 20 
 morals and one knows that there is no opening where one 
 could insert the wedge of a new idea. 
 
 :< The Country House " was one of Mr. Galsworthy's 
 greatest successes. In parts it is incomparable. Neither 
 Hardy nor George Meredith has done anything to excel in 25 
 exquisite veracity and delightful lightness of touch the 
 chapter entitled " Sabbath at Worsted Skeins." Moreover, 
 Mrs. Pendyce is one of the most appealing women Gals- 
 worthy has ever drawn, " a woman of silk and steel," as 
 someone has called her. Reserved, self-contained, abhor- 30 
 ring self-pity; bearing with smiling fortitude the fugitive 
 hopes and the emptiness of her earthly life, and reliving 
 all its lost youth and missed romance in her son George. 
 
 6, 7 : b. 12-22 : d, e. 23-27 : a. 30-256, 4 : c, x, p. 
 
256 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 A very delicately penciled portrait, but a very true and 
 lovely one, this of Mrs. Horace Pendyce. Horace himself 
 is a fine drawing, faintly reminiscent of Sir Willoughby 
 Patterne, not quite so comic and rather more pathetic. 
 5 In " Fraternity " Mr. Galsworthy turned to the well-to- 
 do professional classes and gave us a picture of 
 
 " The loves that doubted, the loves that dissembled, 
 That still mistrusted themselves and trembled, 
 That drew back their hands and would not touch." 
 
 10 For some reason this volume seems to have less vitality, 
 less actual humanity than any other volume Mr. Galsworthy 
 has written. The fantastic figure of old Mr. Stone, and the 
 sordid, common little model, hardly serve to vivify the 
 pages. Then came " The Patrician," probably the finest 
 
 15 novel Mr. Galsworthy has yet published. It is understood 
 that Mr. Galsworthy feels himself that his most biting 
 satire, most stern arraignment of modern society is con- 
 tained in this volume. What the critic feels is that in this 
 volume he has drawn some of the most masterly portraits 
 
 20 in English fiction. If anything could justify the security of 
 the secure classes, the splendid, self-disciplined, tolerant, 
 high-minded aristocrats who walk through the pages* of 
 " The Patrician " would do so. To be sure they have not 
 " starved, feasted, despaired, been happy " ; they have never 
 
 25 thrown themselves out upon the breast of life unstayed 
 by its physical accessories and securities, but at least they 
 have accepted a tradition and lived by it; they have felt 
 the obligations of their security and have played the game 
 according to the rules as they understand them. " The 
 
 30 Patrician " will bear as many readings as " One of Our 
 Conquerors " to extract all its subtle 'essences. 
 
 " The Inn of Tranquillity " is fairly steeped in beauty 
 
 18-31 : w, e, c>x, n. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 257 
 
 and profound reflection. These essays will serve and rank 
 high in English literature. " The Novelist's Allegory/' 
 the "Vague Thoughts on Art," "Wind in the Rocks," 
 " Memories," and " Three Gleams " are jewels of thought 
 and form. One must point out here Mr. Galsworthy's 5 
 noteworthy love of animals. " Memories " is a eulogy of 
 a dead dog, exquisitely written. Nor should one forget 
 the " dear dogs " and the spaniel John in " The Country 
 House " ; or certain horses so vividly seen and described in 
 " The Patrician " and " Island Pharisees " that they claim 10 
 almost the attention of a human character. 
 
 ' The Dark Flower " was, in the first place, a new 
 genre, and in the second place it unfortunately roused a 
 stupid question as to morality. It is difficult to understand 
 how the question arose. Perhaps it was a mere question 15 
 of the book's fitness for children and foolish women, or 
 more likely the half-educated classes still cannot distinguish 
 between the letter and the spirit of the law of love. Baldly, 
 the book consists of three sketches in a man's life: one, 
 entitled " Spring," describes very beautifully the half- 20 
 conscious, somnolent awakening to love of a lad of nineteen, 
 who is adored by an older woman of foreign birth. She 
 is no conscienceless schemer, and seeing the boy's senses 
 inclined really to awaken by means of a perfectly normal 
 affection for his little cousin, she escapes. The second part, 25 
 and incomparably the most beautiful, describes the first 
 full-blown passion of a man's maturity. It is a wonder- 
 fully delicate handling of passion. 
 
 The third sketch, " Autumn," sees the same hero, middle- 
 aged, successful, a great sculptor; somewhat deadened by 30 
 the peaceful, uninterrupted domesticity of his home life, 
 and almost but not quite his youth is revived by the adoring 
 worship of a beautiful girl. This time he escapes, first by 
 
 12-28 : w, j, m. 29-258, 10 : j, m. 
 
258 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 confessing his danger to his wife and then also by fleeing 
 temptation. There is not a single gross word or concep- 
 tion. The whole discussion of morality in connection with 
 the book was beside the mark. The one question is, whether 
 
 5 a prose form can afford to hold so exalted a level through 
 an entire book. Keats might do this in " Hyperion," or 
 Shelley in " Alastor " ; but was it a legitimate proceeding 
 in prose ? This is the only question as to " The Dark 
 Flower." The entire spirit is so exalted that no question 
 
 10 of morals enters in. 
 
 " The Freelands " is the first major work of Mr. Gals- 
 worthy since the two beautiful volumes of 1913. The story 
 baldly stated is that of a working man, Bob Tryst, on a 
 large English estate. His wife is dead and he is left with 
 
 15 three little children. His deceased wife's sister lives with 
 him and takes care of the little ones. Tryst and his sister- 
 in-law are to be married, when the owner of the estate, 
 Malloring, and his wife, who are of the High Church " per- 
 suasion," decide that they must prevent the marriage on 
 
 20 account of the church's attitude toward the marriage of a 
 deceased wife's sister. In the near neighborhood of the 
 Mallorings lives Morton Freeland, one of the five well-to-do 
 and influential brothers representing the professional and 
 property-holding classes. Morton Freeland has married a 
 
 25 woman who is a social revolutionist, and both his son and 
 daughter are implicated in movements of social reform. 
 The whole wide social fabric of the book is interwoven 
 with Bob Tryst's tragedy. Bob, in revenge for being turned 
 off the estate and out of the cottage where he had spent 
 
 30 his life, fires the Mallorings' hayricks. He is imprisoned, 
 
 tried, sentenced to three years penal servitude. Bob had 
 
 lived his whole life in the open under the stretch of sky. 
 
 The outlook was too much for him and he committed sui- 
 
 11-259, 4 = 5, v. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 259 
 
 cide. Into this little human tragedy in a Worcestershire 
 estate are drawn innumerable people, young lovers, profes- 
 sional men, justices, landowners, the entire organization 
 of a capitalistic society : 
 
 " In reality the issue involved in that tiny episode con- 5 
 cerned human existence to its depths, for what was it but 
 the simple, all-important question of human freedom? The 
 simple, all-important issue of how far men and women 
 should try to rule the lives of others instead of trying only 
 to rule their own, and how far those others should allow 10 
 their lives to be so ruled? This it was which gave that 
 episode its power of attracting and affecting the thoughts, 
 feelings, actions of so many people otherwise remote. . . . 
 The mess was caused by the fight best of all worth fighting, 
 of democracy against autocracy, of a man's right to do as 15 
 he likes with his life if he harms not others ; of ' the Land * 
 against the fetters of ' the Land/ ' ; 
 
 This is the economic crux round which the novel turns. 
 The canvas of " The Freelands " is a broad one. Char- 
 acters from all levels of life, the peasant, the professions, 20 
 the capitalists, are all living and moving in the picture. 
 There is the very beautiful and exquisite young love story 
 of Derek and Nedda. Among the portraits in the book that 
 of Frances Freeland, the mother of five grown sons and 
 grandmother of Nedda, stands out for its detailed and loving 25 
 observation. She first appears on the lawn of her son's 
 house : 
 
 " Under the shade of a copper beech, just where the drive 
 cut through into its circle before the house, an old lady was 
 sitting that afternoon on a camp stool. She was dressed 30 
 in gray alpaca, light and cool, and on her iron-gray hair a 
 piece of black lace. A number of Hearth and Home and 
 a little pair of scissors, suspended by an inexpensive chain 
 from her waist, rested on her knee, for she had been mean- 
 
 18-27 : a, h, o. 
 
260 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 ing to cut out for dear Felix a certain recipe for keeping 
 the head cool ; but as a fact she sat without doing so, very 
 still, save that now and then she compressed her pale, fine 
 lips and continually moved her pale, fine hands. She was 
 5 evidently waiting for something that promised excitement, 
 even pleasure, for a little rose-leaf flush had quavered up 
 into a face that was colored like parchment; and her gray 
 eyes under regular, still dark brows, very far apart, between 
 which there was no semblance of a wrinkle, seemed noting 
 10 little definite things about her almost unwillingly, as an 
 Arab's or a Red Indian's eyes will continue to note things 
 in the present, however much their minds may be set on 
 the future." 
 
 The portrait of Frances Freeland, with her Victorian 
 
 15 talent for shutting her eyes tight and ignoring whatever 
 might be puzzling or painful in life, is touchingly tender 
 and sadly truthful. For it is to be feared that a great 
 many of our grandmothers coped with this world's evil 
 by ignoring it. Her philosophy of life was made up largely 
 
 20 of a fine fortitude which accepted as the chief obligations 
 of life the making the best of a hopelessly bad job and the 
 submission to authority. She had implicitly obeyed her 
 husband while he lived and she now counseled her family 
 to obey her eldest son, John. 
 
 25 " I don't understand very well," she would say, for our 
 grandmothers did not concern themselves much with social 
 problems, " but I am sure that whatever dear John says 
 will be wise and right. You must remember that he is the 
 eldest and has had a great deal of experience." And again 
 
 30 she sums up life and all its problems by saying : " It's always 
 best to smile and try to look on the bright side of things 
 and not be grumbly-grumbly." 
 
 Frances Freeland is a lovely memorial to the loveliest 
 kind of mid- Victorian woman whose virtues will no more 
 14-24 : v. 14-19 : x. 32-261, 2 : 1. 260, 33-261, 7 : *, w. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 261 
 
 answer for a world that demands of its women intellect, 
 courage, wide outlook, and independence. " Tempora 
 mutantur," and the old type with all its loveliness and gen- 
 tleness must pass and a virtue more vigorous take its place. 
 Young Nedda in " The Freelands " is a good instance of 5 
 the transition type. The Victorian inheritance makes her 
 lovely, but life and love make her brave. 
 
 In this novel John Galsworthy has lost none of his cun- 
 ning. The book is full of fleeting glimpses of the passing 
 loveliness of life; pictures of man, silent, dumb, puzzled, 10 
 set in his beautiful earth; the shifting mystery of sky and 
 cloud shadow above him ; the endless mystery of earth green 
 carpeted and tree bedecked about him; this is as wonder- 
 fully placed before us as in " The Dark Flower." But in 
 this book Mr. Galsworthy has married to his natural magic 15 
 all the seriousness and chivalry of his social purposes. The 
 book ends on the note of hope. The world is changing! 
 There shall not be a lost good. Each man who rights for 
 freedom and for the loosening of the shackles of the op- 
 pressed does something toward that change. 20 
 
 Like Heine of old, like his living confreres Hardy and 
 Shaw and Wells, Galsworthy is a brave soldier in the libera- 
 tion war of humanity. 
 
 8-20 : c, a, h, n. 21-23 ' n. 
 7,9, n, 12, 13, 14. 
 
THE UNDERGRADUATE * 
 
 IN these days of academic self-analysis, the intellectual 
 caliber of the American undergraduate finds few admirers 
 or defenders. Professors speak resignedly of the poverty 
 of his background and imagination. Even the under- 
 5 graduate himself in college editorials confesses that the 
 student soul vibrates reluctantly to the larger intellectual 
 and social issues of the day. The absorption in petty gossip, 
 sports, class politics, fraternity life, suggests that too many 
 undergraduates regard their college in the light of a glorified 
 10 preparatory school where the activities of their boyhood 
 may be worked out on a grandiose scale. They do not act 
 as if they thought of the college as a new intellectual society 
 in which one acquired certain rather definite scientific and 
 professional attitudes, and learned new interpretations 
 15 which threw experience and information into new terms 
 and new lights. The average undergraduate tends to meet 
 studies like philosophy, psychology, economics, general his- 
 tory, with a frankly puzzled wonder. A whole new world 
 seems to dawn upon him, in its setting and vocabulary alien 
 20 to anything in his previous life. Every teacher knows this 
 baffling resistance of the undergraduate mind. 
 
 It is not so much that the student resists facts and details. 
 He will absorb trusts and labor unions, municipal gov- 
 ernment and direct primaries, the poems of Matthew 
 25 Arnold, and James's theory of the emotions. There is no 
 unkindliness of his mind towards fairly concrete material. 
 1 Editorial in The New Republic, September 25, 1915. 
 1-4 : b. 7-16 : b. 18-21 : b (cf. 1-4). 1-21 : k. 22-263, 12 : v,j. 
 262 
 
THE UNDERGRADUATE 263 
 
 What he is more or less impervious to is points-of-view, 
 interpretations. He seems to lack philosophy. The college 
 has to let too many undergraduates pass out into profes- 
 sional and business life, not only without the germ of a 
 philosophy, but without any desire for an interpretative 5 
 clew through the maze. In this respect the American un- 
 dergraduate presents a distinct contrast to the European. 
 For the latter does seem to get a certain intellectual setting 
 for his ideas which makes him intelligible, and gives jour- 
 nalism and the ordinary expression of life a certain tang 10 
 which we lack here. Few of our undergraduates get from 
 the college any such intellectual impress. 
 
 The explanation is probably not that the student has no 
 philosophy, but that he comes to college with an uncon- 
 scious philosophy so tenacious that the four years of the 15 
 college in its present technique can do little to disintegrate 
 it. The cultural background of the well-to-do American 
 home with its " nice " people, its sentimental fiction and 
 popular music, its amiable religiosity and vague moral op- 
 timism, is far more alien to the stern secular realism of 20 
 modern university teaching than most people are willing 
 to admit. The college world would find itself less frus- 
 trated by the undergraduate's secret hostility if it would 
 more frankly recognize what a challenge its own attitudes 
 are to our homely American ways of thinking and feeling. 25 
 Since the college has not felt this dramatic contrast, or 
 at least has not felt a holy mission to assail our American 
 mushiness of thought through the undergraduate, it has 
 rather let the latter run away with the college. 
 
 It is a trite complaint that the undergraduate takes his 30 
 
 extra-curricular activities more seriously than his studies. 
 
 But he does this because his homely latent philosophy is 
 
 essentially a sporting philosophy, the good old Anglo- 
 
 2 : b. 13-29 : k, j, w. 30-264, 20 : k, d. 
 
264 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 Saxon conviction that life is essentially a game whose sig- 
 nificance lies in terms of winning or losing. The passion 
 of the American undergraduate for intercollegiate athletics 
 is merely a symbol of a general interpretation for all the 
 5 activities that come to his attention. If he is interested in 
 politics, it is in election campaigns, in the contests of par- 
 ties and personalities. His parades and cheerings are the 
 encouragement of a racer for the goal. After election, his 
 enthusiasm collapses. His spiritual energy goes into class 
 
 10 politics, fraternity and club emulation, athletics, every activ- 
 ity which is translatable into terms of winning and losing. 
 In Continental universities this energy would go rather into 
 a turbulence for causes and ideas, a militant radicalism or 
 even a more militant conservatism that would send Paris 
 
 15 students out into the streets with a " Cail-laux as-sas-sin ! " 
 or tie up an Italian town for the sake of Italia Irredenta. 
 Even the war, though it has called out a fund of anti- 
 militarist sentiment in the American colleges, still tends to 
 be spoken of in terms of an international sporting event. 
 
 20 " Who will win ? " is the question here. 
 
 Now this sporting philosophy by which the American 
 undergraduate lives, and which he seems to bring with him 
 from his home, may be a very good philosophy for an 
 American. It is of the same stuff with our good- 
 
 25 humored contempt for introspection, our dread of the 
 " morbid," our dislike of conflicting issues and insoluble 
 problems. The sporting attitude is a grateful and easy one. 
 Issues are decided cleanly. No irritating fringes are left 
 over. The game is won or lost. Analysis and speculation 
 
 30 seem superfluous. The point is that such a philosophy is 
 as different as possible from that which motivates the intel- 
 lectual world of the modern college, with its .searchings, 
 its hypotheses and interpretations and revisions, its flexi- 
 8, 9 : b. 9-16 : h. 20 : b. 24-30 : b, c. 31 : 1. 
 
THE UNDERGRADUATE 265 
 
 bility and openness of mind. In the scientific world of the 
 instructor, things are not won or lost. His attitude is not 
 a sporting one. 
 
 Yet the college has allowed some of these sporting atti- 
 tudes to be imposed upon it. The undergraduates' gladi- 5 
 atorial contests proceed under faculty supervision and pat- 
 ronage. Alumni contribute their support to screwing up 
 athletic competition to the highest semi-professional pitch. 
 They lend their hallowing patronage to fraternity life and 
 other college institutions which tend to emphasize social 10 
 distinction. And the college administration, in contrast to 
 the European scheme, has turned the college course into a 
 sort of race with a prize at the goal. The degree has be- 
 come a sort of honorific badge for all classes of society, 
 and the colleges have been forced to give it this quasi- 15 
 athletic setting and fix the elaborate rules of the game by 
 which it may be won rules which shall be easy enough 
 to get all classes competing for it, and hard enough to 
 make it a sufficient prize to keep them all in the race. An 
 intricate system of points and courses and examinations 20 
 sets the student working for marks and the completion of 
 schedules rather than for a new orientation in important 
 fields of human interest. 
 
 The undergraduate can scarcely be blamed for responding 
 to a system which so strongly resembles his sports, or for 25 
 bending his energies to playing the game right, rather than 
 assimilating the intellectual background of his teachers. So 
 strongly has this sporting technique been acquired by the 
 college that even when the undergraduate lacks the sport- 
 ing instinct and does become interested in ideas, he is apt 30 
 to find that he has only drawn attention to his own pre- 
 cocity and won amused notice rather than respect. In spite 
 of the desire of instructors to get themselves over to their 
 
 4-23 : k, a, n. 24-266, 13 : d, v. 
 
266 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 students, in spite of a real effort to break down the " class- 
 consciousness " of teacher and student, the gulf between 
 their attitudes is too fundamental to be easily bridged. 
 Unless it is bridged, however, the undergraduate is left 
 
 5 in a sort of Peter Pan condition, looking back to his school- 
 boy life and carrying along his schoolboy interests with 
 him, instead of anticipating his graduate or professional 
 study or his active life. What should be an introduction 
 to professional or business life in a world of urgent political 
 
 10 and social issues, and the acquiring of intellectual tools 
 with which to meet their demands, becomes a sort of se- 
 questered retreat out of which to jump from boyhood into 
 a badly-prepared middle age. 
 
 The college will not really get the undergraduate until it 
 
 15 becomes more conscious of the contrast of its own phi- 
 losophy with his sporting philosophy, and tackles his boyish 
 Americanisms less mercifully, or until it makes college life 
 less like that of an undergraduate country club, and more 
 of an intellectual workshop where men and women in the 
 
 20 fire of their youth, with conflicts and idealisms, questions 
 and ambitions and desire for expression, come to serve an 
 apprenticeship under the masters of the time. 
 
 14-22 : d, c, x, n. 
 i, 2, 3, 4, S, 6. 
 
GRANT SHOWERMAN 
 
 1870- 
 TH E GREAT VOCATION x 
 
 INSISTENCE on the practical in education is one of the 
 no new things under the sun. 
 
 " When went there by an age, since the great flood," 
 
 without its wiseacres of the cross-roads and the market 
 unable to see the good in this or that study, without its 5 
 self-made men to point with pride to their own manu- 
 facture as a satisfactory proof that book-learning was futile, 
 without its half-educated prophets to encourage the unen- 
 lightened discontent of pupil and parent? 
 
 Fortunately for both the intellectual and practical affairs 10 
 of the world, however, educational matters have never 
 been for any length of time wholly in the control of either 
 the wiseacres or the self-made man or the educational 
 demagogue. At really crucial moments, these personages 
 have usually been inspired with the good sense, if not 15 
 to leave educational policy to intellectual experts, at least 
 themselves to act under expert guidance. Society on the 
 whole has submitted itself, in intellectual matters, to intel- 
 lectual leadership. 
 
 With the advance of democracy, there has been in this 20 
 respect a tendency to change. The emphasis upon the peo- 
 ple's right to be educated, and upon government's duty and 
 1 Editorial in The Dial, September 30, 1915. 
 10-19 : d. 20-268, 23 : k, c, e. 
 267 
 
268 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 privilege to educate them, has had effects both bad and 
 
 good. Among the good, especially in the United States, 
 
 have been the dissemination of educational opportunity 
 
 . and the elevation of the popular level of intelligence. 
 
 5 Among the bad has been the tendency toward popular con- 
 trol of educational ideals and educational policy. Govern- 
 ment has been of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people; and education, too, the gift and the instrument of 
 government, has tended to be of the people, by the people, 
 
 10 and for the people. The dissemination of popular educa- 
 tional opportunity and the elevation of the level of popular 
 intelligence have been accompanied by a restriction of ex- 
 pert opportunity and a lowering of the level of expert intelli- 
 gence. Great numbers of the people are ambitious to 
 
 15 acquire the knowledge so easily accessible, but only because 
 knowledge is a useful instrument in practical affairs. Com- 
 paratively few conceive of it as a source of growth into 
 full stature rather than an instrument. Fewer still are 
 born again, into the Kingdom of the Intellectual, to realize 
 
 20 the significance of the higher life of the mind both to the 
 individual and to society. The majority principle is pre- 
 vailing in educational sentiment as well as at the polls, and 
 the great numbers are having their way. 
 
 Among the manifestations of this popular control of 
 
 25 ideals and policy, none is more noticeable than the recent 
 and growing demand for vocational training. This, too, 
 is no new thing under the sun. There has always been a 
 demand for vocational training a just and necessary de- 
 mand; and the demand has usually met with some manner 
 
 30 f response. Expert professional men and craftsmen pro- 
 mote the general welfare, and it is the interest as well as 
 the duty of society to encourage expertness in some sub- 
 stantial way. In major degree, the response is to be seen 
 
 16-269, I 5'-S- 
 
GRANT SHOWERMAN 269 
 
 in the elaborate European systems of technical schools. In 
 minor degree, it is to be seen in the much less extensive and 
 effective provison of America. 
 
 There is, nevertheless, something new in regard to voca- 
 tional training. It is to be observed especially in the United 5 
 States. This new thing is, not the establishment of voca- 
 tional courses or schools, but the establishment of them at 
 the expense of the general intellectual ideal. If the Euro- 
 pean countries are allowing the " vocationalizing " of 
 gymnasium, lycee, or college, it is at most in very slight 10 
 degree. Europe has met the demand for technical instruc- 
 tion by reaching down into its pocket and equipping real 
 technical schools, separate and efficient, preserving intact 
 the institutions that have so long stood for the higher intel- 
 lectual life. The United States, realizing the need, but 15 
 lacking the Old World's courage and enlightenment, is rob- 
 bing her high schools and colleges to satisfy the popular 
 demand for the vocational, with the result that not only 
 is vocational training provided only in form, but that 
 higher education is preserved only in form. The college 20 
 of liberal arts in the university is already in great 
 part professionalized, and the high school is fast becoming 
 vocationalized, in spirit if not in actual fact. Liberal edu- 
 cation in the college, except as it is accidental to professional 
 preparation, is threatened with extinction; and liberal edu- 25 
 cation in the State institutions in general, both secondary 
 and higher, is in so serious a condition of discouragement 
 that its friends are already looking for salvation to the rise 
 of institutions unprejudiced by popular control. 
 
 To be more concrete : we have heard a great deal of late 30 
 about the high school as the " people's college," and of its 
 duty to prepare the people's sons and daughters for " life." 
 Those who are of this mind are thinking of " life " in vo- 
 
 4, S:b. 4-29 :k, v. 30-270, 20 : g. 
 
270 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 cational terms, as the earning of a livelihood in some trade, 
 business, or profession. If a girl wishes to be a stenog- 
 rapher or bookkeeper, if a boy intends to follow a clerical 
 or mechanical calling, the public school, according to the 
 5 vocational enthusiast, should prepare them to make an easy 
 and more or less direct transition from the school-room to 
 their chosen occupations. Literature, music, language, 
 algebra, history, and all studies and parts of studies which 
 do not contribute directly and immediately to this purpose, 
 
 10 are not " vital," and are to be regarded as mere accomplish- 
 ments, if not as a pure waste of the pupil's time and the 
 people's money. 
 
 This is easy logic, as is all logic based on imperfect un- 
 derstanding. The friends of liberal education, or general 
 
 15 culture, or pure learning, or whatever we choose to call the 
 education that is accused of not preparing for " life," are 
 able to see the vocational argument, but their vision does 
 not find there the limit of its range. 
 
 In the first place, vocational training worthy of the name 
 
 20 in the high school is practically impossible. Actual count 
 would demonstrate that the number of vocational subjects 
 in which courses could be devised is so great that provision 
 for school instruction in even a fraction of them would 
 require an outlay in buildings, apparatus, and teachers far 
 
 25 greater than that more or less grudgingly furnished for the 
 present comparatively simple programme. 
 
 Further, with the most generous provision, some voca- 
 tions considered important by many a pupil and parent 
 would still remain unrepresented. Why the privilege of 
 
 30 free instruction in carpentering and accounting, and not 
 in barbering and shoemaking, plumbing and manicuring? 
 Logically and practically, complete satisfaction would be 
 impossible. 
 
 19-33 : k, v. 269, 4-270, 33 : k, v (cf. 215, 27-216, 29). 
 
GRANT SHOWERMAN 271 
 
 Until, therefore, the State shall have secured the moral 
 and financial support necessary to the institution of large 
 numbers of technical courses and schools, it will have to 
 limit its instruction to such vocations as come the nearest 
 to being common to all the pupils and to the State itself. 5 
 
 Of the absolutely universal vocation, there is one exam- 
 ple, and only one. This is the GREAT VOCATION the voca- 
 tion Of ENLIGHTENED CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 The phrase may not be in common use, and the idea 
 may not be clearly formulated in the citizen mind, but the 10 
 educational policy of the State has nevertheless always 
 been based on the principle. Nine-tenths of what is taught 
 in both grades and high school is not really necessary to 
 the earning of a livelihood. The great mass of instruction 
 in the college of liberal arts has always been of the same 15 
 sort. When the State has felt itself able, it has established 
 technical and professional schools for training in such voca- 
 tions as it regarded most important to itself the highly 
 specialized instruments of the general welfare : law, medi- 
 cine, teaching, agriculture, engineering. Yet it has never 20 
 until recently substituted the narrowly vocational for the 
 broad and fundamental. It has only added it. It has recog- 
 nized that the non-vocational is the great foundation that 
 the best lawyers, the best physicians, the best teachers, the 
 best agriculturists, the best engineers, are those whose first 25 
 vocation is enlightened citizenship. It would have done the 
 same by religion, but for the conviction that other means 
 were better. 
 
 The training that leads to enlightened citizenship is not 
 vocational in the narrow sense. What the vocational en- 30 
 thusiast is mainly and frankly thinking of, the preparation 
 of the pupil for the earning of a living, is more or less 
 narrow, selfish, and uncivic. It is in spirit an insistence 
 1-8 : b. 9-28 : v (cf. 146, 18-147, 6 ) 
 
272 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 upon the rights of the individual at the expense of the 
 State. The training for the vocation of enlightened citizen- 
 ship, on the contrary, is in spirit an insistence on the rights 
 of the State. Under ideal conditions, too, the pleasure of 
 
 5 the individual, despite the time cost of liberal education, 
 coincides with the pleasure of the State; though under 
 actual conditions no small number of pupils, anxious for 
 quick and showy returns and a speedy entrance upon " life," 
 regard themselves as victims to a perverse educational re- 
 
 10 quirement if they are compelled to study anything which 
 in their judgment is not " vital.'* 
 
 The immediate design of liberal education is not skill of 
 hand or knowledge of technical detail, but the cultivation 
 of mental power, the broadening of vision, the deepening of 
 
 15 perception, the refinement of intellectual and spiritual 
 temper. Its ultimate end is the production of the ideal 
 citizen and of the ideal State. 
 
 Compared with the vocation of enlightened citizenship, 
 all other vocations are special. They are not separate from 
 
 20 it, however. Unless founded upon it, they are comparatively 
 unprofitable, whether to the individual or the community, 
 and may indeed easily become a source of harm. Enlight- 
 ened citizenship is the broad and firm foundation, the 
 special vocation is the superstructure. Narrow and infirm 
 
 25 foundations will not support strong and useful buildings. 
 We have too many typewriters and printers and proof- 
 readers who cannot be trusted with spelling, punctuation, 
 and composition, to say nothing of other matters involving 
 ordinary intellectual expertness. We have too many re- 
 
 30 porters, editors, magazine contributors, and authors of 
 
 books, who write ignorant and slipshod English, and think 
 
 as loosely and unprofitably as they write. The press goes 
 
 a long way toward undoing the work of the school. We 
 
 18-273, J 3 : c > f> n > k (cf- 223, 5-27). 
 
GRANT SHOWERMAN 273 
 
 have too many teachers of thin and narrow quality; too 
 many preachers whose intellectual deficiencies are such as 
 to neutralize the effect of earnest and self-sacrificing char- 
 acter; too many lawyers who took the short cut to a pro- 
 fessional career, and are uncultivated and slovenly in 5 
 thought, speech, and intellectual habit ; too many physicians 
 whose growth is stunted because their intellectual roots 
 were not set deep enough. In all these and other profes- 
 sions, the fullness of power that marks the master- 
 personality has not been attainable because* of deficiency 10 
 in general cultivation. The immediate object of the indi- 
 vidual has been realized, but at the expense of the potential 
 total ; the good enough has been the enemy of the best. 
 
 The same is true of less professional walks of life. 
 There are too many culture club people and platform lee- 15 
 turers with superficial and catchy accomplishments instead 
 of real depth ; too many playwrights, actors, managers, and 
 theater-goers who are not only untouched by the great 
 dramatic ideals of past and present, but are barbarians, and 
 worse than barbarians, in taste. There are too many of the 20 
 rich who neither possess nor know the value of intellectual 
 and spiritual wealth, and are unable even to recognize it 
 when it is placed before them. There are too many of the 
 leisured who are unacquainted with the most gratifying and 
 profitable means of pleasure, as well as the most inoffensive 25 
 and noble. We have too many voters who know only how 
 to mark a ballot, who cannot estimate the worth of men 
 and measures, who cannot think without the giant head- 
 line and the screaming editorial. We have too many social 
 and political reformers whose chief qualification is a " heart 30 
 in the right place," who read loosely, think loosely, write 
 loosely, and legislate as if the making of law were an inven- 
 tion of the day before yesterday. 
 
 14-33:0, x,h (cf. 159, 11-160,2). 14-274, 26: g. 
 
274 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 In every one of these cases, and in all other cases where, 
 through ignorance, haste, or false ideas of economy, the 
 vocation of enlightened citizenship has been left out of ac- 
 count, the individual suffers much, but the State suffers 
 5 more. Whether the citizen does the best of which he is 
 capable, or the second best, is a matter of concern not only 
 to himself, but to the community and the nation. Whether 
 from the individual point of view or the social, enlightened 
 citizenship is the first and the greatest vocation. 
 
 10 The vocation of enlightened citizenship does not look to 
 the holding of a position as the prime object; it looks rather 
 to excellence in the holding of it. The ideal of the great 
 vocation is not immediate success in the earning of a living, 
 but the capacity to earn it with the greatest intelligence 
 
 15 and the greatest measure of success. It looks forward to 
 the professional man or the mechanic developed to the full 
 capacity of his powers. Its aim is not the exploitation of 
 talent, but the development of personal excellence and total 
 usefulness. It looks ahead, not four years, but forty years. 
 
 20 It looks to a substantial and enduring edifice, not a tem- 
 porary and makeshift shelter. It does not ask, " How 
 much are you going to earn ? " or even " How much are you 
 going to know ? " but " Are you going to make of yourself 
 all that is possible ? " and " Are you going to be a leader ? " 
 
 25 Its ambition is not the production of the average, but of 
 leadership. 
 
 Progress is only secondarily a matter of the crowd. The 
 religious or civic ideals of an age or a community are not 
 determined by the common man. It is the exceptional man, 
 
 30 the reformer, the enthusiast, the personality in which the 
 age or the community, so to speak, flowers out, that deter- 
 mines the ideal. The supreme concern of the army is its 
 general, of the church its prophet, of the world of knowl- 
 
 10-26 : c, x. 27-275, 5 : c, q, x. 
 
GRANT SHOWERMAN 275 
 
 edge the scholar, of mechanics the inventor. Progress is a 
 matter of dynamics. Without leadership without men who 
 think enough more, feel enough more, see enough farther 
 than the ordinary to give them authority there are no 
 dynamics, and there will be no progress. 5 
 
 Vocational training in the ordinary sense is, within limits, 
 desirable and necessary; but its place is in the technical 
 school, not in the school of liberal arts. The high school is 
 the people's college, but not the people's business college. 
 If it is a business college at all, it is the business college of 10 
 the State at large, not that of the comparatively few sons 
 and daughters of the people whose first ambition is a liveli- 
 hood. The prime business of State education is a universal 
 business, and Big Business is the business of enlightened 
 citizenship. Every displacement of a liberal study by a voca- 15 
 tional study is prejudicial to the ideal interests of the com- 
 monwealth. Livelihoods can be trusted to take care of 
 themselves, if we must choose; but enlightened citizenship 
 cannot. 
 
 6-19 : x, n. 
 
 i>2, 3, 4, 5, 6,8, n, 12. 
 
JAMES HUNEKER 
 1860- 
 
 WAS LESCHETIZKY A GREATER TEACHER THAN LISZT P 1 
 
 THE first piano artist to make known in America the 
 name of the late Theodor Leschetizky was Fannie Bloom- 
 field-Zeisler. This was in July, 1885, at the Academy of 
 Music, where the slender, black-haired, big-eyed girl from 
 5 Chicago played Rubinstein's D minor piano concerto with 
 a briliancy of style and dramatic delivery that fairly daz- 
 zled her audience. To be sure, she took the bit between 
 her teeth in the last movement and ended in a magnificent 
 display of rhythmic recklessness, though happily the Thomas 
 10 Orchestra and the pianist passed the winning stakes neck 
 by neck. The occasion was the annual meeting of the Music 
 Teachers' National Association, so the pianists present were 
 as plentiful as blackberries in season. 
 
 Who was her master? was the universal question. Here 
 15 was a girl in her teens who, granting her natural musical 
 endowments, had been well schooled. Thus the name of 
 Leschetizky became a household one, and about six years 
 later his fame was established with the advent of Ignace 
 Jan Paderewski. Of course the piano-playing world had 
 20 heard of Leschetizky as the first great teacher since Liszt ; 
 rather pedagogue, for Liszt often and disdainfully dis- 
 claimed being a " piano teacher." Evidently a man who 
 could turn out two such widely disparate talents as 
 1 The New York Times, November 28, 1915. 
 1-13 : e, n. 
 276 
 
JAMES HUNEKER 277 
 
 Bloomfield-Zeisler and Paderewski temperamentally and 
 technically poles asunder must be a rare master, and thus 
 with Fannie Bloomfield's return to her native land prac- 
 tically began the Leschetizky vogue here, a vogue that grew 
 rapidly and still promises to continue. 5 
 
 Not so many years ago, four or five, I saw a gay, slender 
 old gentleman, with white beard and hair, gracefully 
 dancing in the Kur-Saal at Carlsbad. Few pretty girls 
 escaped his invitation. Light on his toes, his eyes ablaze 
 with the intoxication of the music, this young-old chap 10 
 danced with diabolical vivacity. It was Theodor Lesche- 
 tizky, fourscore in years, with a youthful heart and rhythmic 
 heels. No wonder his pupils play with such rhythmic 
 spirit; rhythm was in the very marrow of his bones. A 
 Pole, his great span of years had enabled him to study with 15 
 the master-pedagogue of the piano; good, old industrious 
 Carl Czerny (a name abominated by many generations of 
 child students) and theory, with Sechter. He was born 
 in 1830, a few years after Beethoven's death, and might 
 have heard Chopin play if he had been in Paris. Pade- 20 
 rewski paid a beautiful tribute to his memory a few days 
 ago for the benefit of the readers of The Times, 
 and told us ,of SchulhofFs influence upon the playing of 
 Leschetizky. He could have added, and also upon his 
 style in composition. Julius Schulhoff was a Bohemian 25 
 (1825-1898) and interested Chopin so much that he 
 advised him to give a concert in Paris, which he did 
 in 1845. He was essentially a drawing-room virtuoso 
 with a fine singing touch and a style of extreme polish. To 
 the past generation he was chiefly known as the composer 30 
 of " Souvenir de Kiew." Leschetizky, himself a lyric com- 
 poser, also indulged in the elegant, if somewhat shallow, 
 pieces beloved of his epoch. 
 
 6-18 : w. 6-33 : v, n. 
 
278 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 It was in 1839 that Franz Liszt gave his first piano re- 
 cital, and possessing a striking profile he boldly presented it 
 to his audience; before that time pianists either faced or 
 sat with their backs to the public. No matter what avenue 
 5 of music the piano student travels he is sure to fetch up 
 before the figure of Liszt. However, artistic piano playing 
 is no longer rare. The once jealously guarded secrets of the 
 masters have become the property of the conservatories. 
 Now self-playing instruments perform technical miracles, 
 
 10 and are valuable inasmuch as they stimulate the interest 
 of a number of persons who otherwise would avoid music 
 as an insoluble mystery. Furthermore, the unerring ease 
 with which these machines dispatch the most appalling dif- 
 ficulties has turned the attention toward what is most sig- 
 
 15 nificant in a musical performance : touch and tone, phrasing 
 and interpretation. While a child's hand may set spinning 
 the Don Juan Fantasie of Liszt, no machine contrived can 
 play a Chopin Ballade, say, or a Schumann Concerto as 
 they should be played. I mention these cunning inventions 
 
 20 because I believe they send many persons to piano recitals. 
 Never before has the standard of execution and interpre- 
 tation been so high. But now technique is no longer the 
 controlling factor. Whether one is a Rosenthal, a De Pach- 
 mann, or a Godowsky (and the last is not least!) he cannot 
 
 25 escape comparisons with the mechanical piano-players. It 
 is their astounding accuracy that extorted from Eugen 
 d'Albert the remark that " a great pianist should no longer 
 bother himself about technique. Any machine can beat him 
 at the game. What he must excel in is interpretation/' 
 
 30 Which is a commonplace of criticism. Leschetizky's posi- 
 tion in this matter will be presently elucidated. 
 
 The giant wave of pianistic virtuosity that broke over 
 Europe in the middle of the last century has not receded, 
 
 1-31 : k (cf. 126, 28-127, 32). 
 
JAMES HUNEKER 279 
 
 though Paderewski is right in saying that brilliancy for 
 the sheer sake of brilliancy is no longer cultivated. Liszt 
 was the greatest of all pianists. He had head, heart, and 
 hand that triune perfection of which Carl V. Lachmund 
 wrote when he apportioned to Tausig the hand, to Anton 5 
 Rubinstein the heart, to Von Biilow the head. Liszt alone 
 boasted all three. When Von Biilow visited America in 
 1876 he told Albert Ross Parsons, a distinguished peda- 
 gogue and pupil of Tausig, that as a pianist he did not 
 pretend to compete with such men as Liszt and Tausig; 10 
 and, oddly enough, Rubinstein said the same thing to Mr. 
 Parsons, complaining that as he gave so many concerts he 
 had no time for such exhaustive study as Karl Tausig. 
 Now during the same season, 1876, that the cerebral Von 
 Biilow patrolled the keyboard in New York, pecking with 15 
 that irritatingly dry touch of his at the Beethoven sonatas, 
 a certain attractive-looking Russian woman named Annette 
 Essipoff (in Russian, Essipowa) played not only technically 
 better than Von Biilow, but thrice as beautifully. Her first 
 master had been Wielhorski, her second Leschetizky, whose 20 
 wife she became in 1880. But her successful appearance did 
 not bring to public notice here the name of Leschetizky. 
 
 The very muscular power of Liszt set piano manu- 
 facturers to experimenting. A new instrument was literally 
 made for him, an instrument that could thunder like an 25 
 orchestra, sing like the human voice, and whisper like a 
 harp. Liszt proudly boasted : " le piano, c'est moi ! " With 
 it he needed no orchestra, no singers, no scenery; it was 
 his stage, and upon its wires he told the stories of the 
 operas, sang the novel lieder of Schubert and Schumann, 30 
 revealed the mighty music of Beethoven, the poetry of 
 Chopin, and Bach's magical mathematics. He set musical , 
 Europe ablaze; even Paganini was forgotten, while Thal- 
 2-22 : j, w, e. 23-280, 16 : c. 
 
280 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 berg and his gentlemanly playing suddenly became insipid 
 to true music lovers. Liszt was sometimes called a 
 charlatan, he often played for effect, for the sake of daz- 
 zling the groundlings. His tone was massive, his touch 
 5 colored by a thousand shades of emotion, his fire and fury 
 overwhelming. Nevertheless, the late William Mason, cer- 
 tainly a competent authority, asserted more than once that 
 Liszt's touch was hard because he had so long played in 
 the broad orchestral manner. The truth is that Liszt's touch 
 
 10 was anything he chose to make of it. As to his technique, 
 he seemed to the youthful Maurice Rosenthal a trifle old- 
 fashioned. Speed, endurance, and power he had not when 
 Rosenthal heard him in the early eighties, but in his prime 
 he was an impeccable artist. His pupils, Tausig and Von 
 
 15 Biilow, were totally different as to styles (Anton Rubin- 
 stein was never an accredited pupil, though he profited by 
 Liszt's advice and regarded him as a model). 
 
 Tausig, the greatest virtuoso after Liszt and his equal at 
 many points, died prematurely. Never had the world heard 
 
 20 such plastic, objective interpretations. His iron will had 
 so drilled his Slavic temperament (he was born of Jewish 
 parents in Warsaw, Poland) that his playing was, as the 
 late Rafael Joseffy said, " a series of perfectly painted pic- 
 tures." His technique perfection. He was the one pianist 
 
 25 " sans peur et sans reproche." All schools were at his call. 
 Chopin was revived when Tausig played him. And he was 
 the first to hail the rising star of Brahms not critically, 
 as did Schumann, but practically, by putting his name on 
 his eclectic programmes. Mr. Parsons says that Tausig's 
 
 30 playing evoked the image of a glorious mountain. " And 
 Joseffy ? " I queried for Joseffy was Tausig's favorite 
 pupil. " The lovely mist that envelops the mountain at 
 dusk," was the happy reply. Of the heaven-storming Ru- 
 
 2-17 : j, n. 24-26 : b. 18-281, 14: v (cf. 244, 3-31)- 
 
JAMES HUNEKER 281 
 
 binstein Joseffy once said to me that his tone was as golden 
 as a French horn. Von Biilow was an ideal pedagogue. 
 He had Teutonic thoroughness, his brain was compartment- 
 ized, if I may employ a fabricated word, and from it at 
 command popped any composer demanded. Truly a monu- 5 
 mental memory, his. Yet the three most beautiful piano 
 touches of the nineteenth century were not those of Liszt, 
 Tausig, or Von Biilow, but were possessed by Chopin, 
 Thalberg, and Henselt ; touches that sang and melted in the 
 memory, ravished the ears. Finer in a vocal sense was 10 
 the touch of Thalberg than the touch of Liszt, finer Hen- 
 selt's than Thalberg's, because more euphonious, and nobler 
 in tonal texture; and more poetic than either of these was 
 the ethereal touch of Chopin, genius of the piano. 
 
 This brief glance at his forerunners as virtuosi and peda- 15 
 gogues (naturally I don't mean Joseffy or the men of his 
 generation) brings us to the unique position in art occu- 
 pied by Theodor Leschetizky. His was an eclectic tem- 
 perament. He mastered the Liszt, Tausig, Von Biilow, 
 Rubinstein gambits in the chess play of piano interpreta- 20 
 tion. A very Daniel come to judgment on all schools. His 
 pupils tell us that his playing was superb. His touch and 
 tone have been praised by Paderewski, than whom no one 
 is better qualified as a critic. He spied upon using the 
 word in its better estate the styles of all pianists. He 25 
 knew the secrets of tone production from the vigorous 
 fortissimo of Rubinstein to the evanescent pianissimo of 
 De Pachmann. Phrasing and interpretation were at his 
 command. Madame Teresa Carreno once saw him listen- 
 ing when she first played the Grieg concerto in Vienna. 30 
 He absorbed from every source. Nothing escaped his om- 
 nivorous, may I say, ear ! He knew why Chopin com- 
 plained of a pain in the back near the neck after he had 
 2-14 : p, r. 21 : e, b. 31-282, 8 : e, w. 
 
282 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 played much, and not in his wrist or fingers the action of 
 the triceps muscles, then a secret to most pedagogues. He 
 studied each individual hand as he studied each tempera- 
 ment. That was the secret of his success. You might 
 
 5 stand yourself on your head in Liszt's presence, so little did 
 he care about piano technique he took it for granted 
 but not so with Leschetizky. All his pupils have a firm 
 seat in the saddle, if I may employ again a sporting phrase. 
 Strictly speaking, he had no method; rather, his method 
 
 10 varied with the idiosyncrasies of each pupil. Paderewski 
 has told us this, and in a very valuable book for students, 
 " Great Pianists on Piano Playing," by James Francis 
 Cooke, we find Madame Zeisler declaring that " during the 
 five years I was with Leschetizky he made it very plain 
 
 15 that he had no fixed method in the ordinary sense of the 
 word. ... It might almost be said that he had a different 
 method for each pupil, and I have often said that Lesche- 
 tizky's method is to have no fixed method. Of course, 
 there are certain preparatory exercises which, with slight 
 
 20 variations, he wishes all his pupils to go through. . . . 
 Leschetizky, without any particular method, is a great force 
 by virtue of his tremendously interesting personality and 
 his great qualities as an artist. . . . He laughs when one 
 speaks of his ' method ' or ' system.' ); In the same volume 
 
 25 Josef Hofmann, a pupil of Rubinstein, writes : " I have 
 always been opposed to definite ' methods ' . . . methods 
 are a kind of musical stencil." Ossip Gabrilowitsch, a 
 pupil of Leschetizky, says : " I have never been in favor 
 of the many automatic and mechanical methods of pro- 
 
 30 ducing touch," and in the preceding page he says : " One 
 never could forget Leschetizky's touch." Mr. Finck right- 
 fully alludes to his solicitude in the matter of the pedals, 
 which produce atmospheric effects. 
 
 281, 15-282, 33 : k- 
 
JAMES HUNEKER 283 
 
 All the great pianists of the day were not pupils of 
 Leschetizky, and I am far from attempting to minimize 
 his influence, which was, and still is, profound. For ex- 
 ample, we have with us the ever poetic Paderewski, (his 
 pupils, Felix Schelling and Antoinette Szumowska- 5 
 Adamowski,) the many-sided and charming Gabrilowitsch, 
 Mark Hambourg whose playing is more in the demoniacal 
 style of Rubinstein than the refined manner of Leschetizky 
 (a tribute to that pedagogue's versatility) brilliant Fannie 
 Bloomfield-Zeisler, Katherine Goodson, and Helen Hope- 10 
 kirk. There are others, here and abroad, but the few men- 
 tioned are splendid specimens of Leschetizky's discrimina- 
 tion as a teaching artist. But New York also harbors such 
 remarkable pianists as Feruccio Busoni, Josef Hofmann, 
 Leopold Godowsky, Harold Bauer, Leonard Berwick, 15 
 Percy Grainger, and Arthur Friedheim to mention some 
 names. None of these studied with Leschetizky. All of 
 which proves anything or nothing. 
 
 There were great piano teachers before Leschetizky 
 who, after all, originated nothing, but he had a marvelous 20 
 flair for talent, and its free development. Mr. Henderson 
 has recently written that " the true Leschetizky touch is 
 hard, that it produces a glassy, brittle tone from the piano." 
 Who dare contradict this? It simply means that Lesche- 
 tizky was not so fortunate in his pupils as Liszt, (and we 25 
 have heard some terrifying " pet pupils " of the Merlin of 
 Weimar, have we not?) Once, while playing billiards at 
 a club, Paderewski declared to me that the only thing he 
 ever had learned from his master was to handle a cue. (If 
 so, then Leschetizky deserves another brevet of pedagogic 30 
 excellence, for in those days the Polish virtuoso with the 
 golden nimbus was expert at the game.) 
 
 I fancy that the statement was intended as a delicate 
 
 1-18 : g. 19-27 : 1, w. 33-284, 24 : m, w. 
 
284 THE MECHANISM OF ENGLISH STYLE 
 
 rebuke for my rather futile question, and if he meant any- 
 thing at all it was that Leschetizky had many methods, not 
 a hard and fast procrustean bed of a method like the 
 Plaidy, the Stuttgart, (Lebert and Stark,) and so many 
 
 5 other conservatory methods for maiming the ringers and 
 extirpating the intelligence with numberless ringer exer- 
 cises. Whatever else it may be, Leschetizky's method is 
 human. He was a supreme psychologist. Paderewski also 
 told me that he had learned much from the playing of that 
 
 10 supersubtle Slav, Annette Essipowa. As to Paderewski's 
 assertion that the influence of Liszt and Rubinstein in 
 " forming a tradition to be carried on by pupils could not 
 be compared to that of Leschetizky," it may be set down to 
 his loyalty, an admirable trait, indeed, yet hardly supported 
 
 15 by facts. Merely to sound the roll call of Liszt's pupils 
 disproves this belief. Liszt had luck in his pupils, but luck 
 or no, the Liszt tradition o'ertops the Leschetizky, and 
 will do so till the end of musical history. So it seems that 
 the famous Leschetizky " method " is no method at all. 
 
 20 Perhaps the real Leschetizky method was his penchant for 
 marrying his pupils, and on this pleasing intimate note let 
 us salute his august shade, which we hope is now dancing 
 in a musical paradise where divorce and piano-playing 
 are no longer tolerated by the eternal powers. 
 1,4,5,9, 11,12,13,14. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 BALDWIN, C. S. " How to Write. A Handbook based on the Eng- 
 lish Bible." New York, Macmillan, 1905. 
 BALDWIN, C. S. "A College Manual of Rhetoric." New York, 
 
 Longmans, 1906. 
 BATES, ARLO. "Talks on Writing English." Boston, Houghton, 
 
 1898. 
 BREWSTER, W. T. " Representative Essays on the Theory of Style." 
 
 New York, Macmillan, 1905. 
 BREWSTER, W. T., and CARPENTER, G. R. " Studies in Structure and 
 
 Style." New York, Macmillan, 1899. 
 COOPER, LANE. " Theories of Style." New York, Macmillan, 1907. 
 
 (This contains a full and valuable bibliography.) 
 FOWLER, (H. W. and F. G.). "The King's English." London and 
 
 New York, Oxford, second edition, 1908. 
 GENUNG, JOHN FRANKLIN. " The Working Principles of Rhetoric." 
 
 Boston, Ginn, 1901. 
 GENUNG, J. F. "The Practical Elements of Rhetoric." Boston, 
 
 Ginn, 1902. 
 LAMONT, HAMMOND. " English Composition." New York, Scribner, 
 
 1906. 
 LEWES, G. H. " The Principles of Success in Literature." Ed. F. N. 
 
 Scott. Boston, Allyn & Bacon, 1892. 
 
 LONG, PERCY W. " Studies in the Technique of Prose Style." Cam- 
 bridge, privately printed, 1915. 
 
 MINTO, W. " A Manual of Prose Literature." Boston, Ginn, 1901. 
 SHERMAN, L. A. "Analytics of Literature." Boston, Ginn, 1893. 
 SMITH, LEWIS WORTHINGTON, and THOMAS, JAMES E. " Modern 
 
 Composition and Rhetoric." Boston, Sanborn, 1901. 
 WENDELL, BARRETT. "English Composition." New York, Scribner, 
 
 1908. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Addison, Joseph, 44 
 
 " Adolescence," H. G. Wells, 184 
 
 Antithesis, 18 
 
 "Arcadia," story from, Sir 
 
 Philip Sidney, 85 
 Articulating words, 20 
 Attention, economy of, 41 
 
 B 
 
 Beauty, 20 
 
 Belloc, Hilaire, 45 
 
 Birrell, Augustine, " Truth- 
 Hunting," 171 
 
 "Bunyan, John," T. B. Macau- 
 lay, 108 
 
 Cadence, 52, 53 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, "The Opera," 
 
 101 
 
 Century, The, 43 
 Chesterton, G. K, "Tolstoi," 
 
 201 
 
 Coherence, 32 
 Connotation, 18, 35, 36 
 Connotative words, 16, 19 
 Curtis, G. W., "The Howadji 
 in Syria," 143 
 
 Denham, Sir John, 44 
 De Quincey, Thomas, "Levana 
 and Our Lady of Sorrows," 92 
 Dryden, John, 40 
 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, Laws 
 of," 20 
 
 Economy of attention, 20 
 "Efficient, Is it Wrong for 
 
 Good People to Be?", G. S. 
 
 Lee, 213 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 
 
 "Gifts," 138 
 Emphasis, 17, 18, 20 
 "English Admirals, The," R.L. 
 
 Stevenson, 156 
 Euphony, 20 
 Evening Post, New York, 246 
 
 F 
 
 Fancy and imagination, 57 
 
 Figures, 43 
 
 "Flanders, The Little Villages 
 
 of," . Verhaeren, 221 
 Franklin, 77 
 
 "Galsworthy, John," review in 
 
 New York Sun, 250 
 Gettysburg Speech, 30 
 " Gifts," R. W. Emerson, 138 
 Grahame, Kenneth, 48 
 
 H 
 
 Harte, Bret, 42 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, extract 
 
 from "The Scarlet Letter," 
 
 125 
 
 Hewlett, Maurice, 50 
 Hooker, Bishop, 20 
 " Howadji in Syria, The," G. 
 
 W. Curtis, 143 
 Humor, 42 
 Huneker, James, "Was Le- 
 
 schetizky a Greater Teacher 
 
 than Liszt?", 276 
 
 289 
 
2QO 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Claren- 
 don, 51 
 
 Questions for study, 79, 81 
 
 Imagery, 20 
 Independent, The, 28 
 
 James, Henry, " The Refugees 
 
 in England," 233 
 Jeffrey, Francis, 30 
 
 Laws of writing, 3 
 
 Lee, Gerald Stanley, "Efficient, 
 Is it Wrong for Good People 
 to Be?", 213 
 
 Le Gallienne, Richard, 13 
 
 " Leschetizky a Greater Teacher 
 than Liszt, Was?", J. Hu- 
 neker, 276 
 
 " Levana and Our Lady of Sor- 
 rows," T. De Quincey, 92 
 
 Lincoln, A., 30 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., "John Bun- 
 yan," 108 
 
 " Marius the Epicurean," Wal- 
 ter Pater, 25 
 
 Mass, the principle of, 27 
 
 Mirror, The, 33 
 
 N 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 7 
 New Republic, The, 262 
 Norris, Frank, 37 
 
 "Opera, The," T. Carlyle, 101 
 
 P 
 
 Parallelism, 18, 19 
 Parker, Theodore, 31 
 Pater, Walter, 25 
 Poe, E. A., 7 
 
 " Refugees in England, The/ 
 
 Henry James, 233 
 Reedy, William Marion, 33 
 Rhythm, 47 
 Robespierre, 31 
 
 " Scarlet Letter," extract from, 
 N. Hawthorne, 125 
 
 " School-ma'am " English, 65 
 
 Scribner's Magazine, 64 
 
 Sentences, 23; length of, 26; 
 periodic, 27, 29, 30; loose, 29 
 
 Shakespeare, 4 
 
 Showerman, Grant, " The Great 
 Vocation," 267 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, story from 
 "Arcadia," 85 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 20 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., 5; "The Eng- 
 lish Admirals," 156 
 
 Structure, 76 
 
 Student themes, 72 
 
 Style, qualities of, u; personal, 
 12; impersonal, 12; philoso- 
 phy, 20; good style, 75 
 
 Sun, New York, "John Gals- 
 worthy," 250 
 
 Swinburne, A. C, 44, 49 
 
 Thompson, Maurice, 62 
 Thomson, James, 44 
 Times, New York, 31, 276 
 "Tolstoi," G. K. Chesterton, 201 
 Transcript, Boston, 221 
 "Triumph, The Great," New 
 
 York Evening Post, 246 
 " Truth-Hunting," Augustine 
 
 Birrell, 171 
 
 U 
 
 Undergraduate, The," 
 New Republic, 262 
 
 The 
 
INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 Unity, 74 
 Usage, 61 
 
 "Vandover and the Brute," 
 
 Frank Norris, 37 
 Verhaeren, Emile, "The Little 
 
 Villages of Flanders," 221 
 "Vocation, The Great," Grant 
 
 Showerman, 267 
 
 W 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 44 
 
 Webster, 31 
 
 Wells, H. G., "Adolescence/ 
 
 184 
 
 Whimsicality, 42 
 Words, 35; articulating, 38 
 World's Work, The. 38 
 
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