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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. lOApr'5.1111 7 'in'58TSX * * IN STACKS OCT 81953 DEC 10 J JUNU1959 JUH 15 t959 LD 21-10001-9/48(3399816)476 22M)G'62DT REC'D LD AUG 24 1962 . a - 02237 345102 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY