The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language Part 18

Lamb's letter is filled with about every figure of speech known to rhetoricians: It will be a useful exercise to pick them out.

Any person who does not have a well developed sense of humor will hardly see the force of the reference to Thurtell, the murderer. It is a whimsical way of indicating by a specific example how empty the writer's brain was, forcing him to reflect on such a subject in so trivial a manner.

Observe the occasional summing up of the meaning, curiously repeating exactly the same thing?"Did you ever have a very bad cold??" "Did you ever have an obstinate cold??" The very short sentences summarize the very long ones. The repet.i.tion is meant to give the impression of being clumsy and stupid. In describing harshness we use words that are harsh, in describing awkwardness we use words that are awkward, in describing brightness and lightness we use words that are bright and light, in the very words themselves giving a concrete ill.u.s.tration of what we mean.

CHAPTER V.

RIDICULE:

Poe.

I have said that humor is good-natured and winning. This is always true, though the winning of one reader may be at the expense of some other. Humor used to win one at the expense of another is called _satire_ and _sarcasm_. The simplest form of using satire and sarcasm is in direct _ridicule_.

Ridicule, satire, and sarcasm are suitable for use against an open enemy, such as a political opponent, against a public nuisance which ought to be suppressed, or in behalf of higher ideals and standards.

The one thing that makes this style of little effect is anger or morbid intensity. While some thing or some one is attacked, perhaps with ferocity, results are to be obtained by winning the reader. So it comes about that winning, good-natured humor is an essential element in really successful ridicule. If intense or morbid hatred or temper is allowed to dominate, the reader is repulsed and made distrustful, and turns away without being affected in the desired way at all.

The following, which opens a little known essay of Edgar Allan Poe's, is one of the most perfect examples of simple ridicule in the English language. We may have our doubts as to whether Poe was justified in using such withering satire on poor Mr. Channing; but we cannot help feeling that the workmanship is just what it ought to be when ridicule is employed in a proper cause. Perhaps the boosting of books into public regard by the use of great names is a proper and sufficient subject for attack by ridicule.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

By Edgar Allan Poe.

In speaking of Mr. William Ellery Channing, who has just published a very neat little volume of poems, we feel the necessity of employing the indefinite rather than the definite article. He is _a,_ and by no means _the,_ William Ellery Channing. He is only the _son_* of the great essayist deceased... It may be said in his favor that n.o.body ever heard of him. Like an honest woman, he has always succeeded in keeping himself from being made the subject of gossip. His book contains about sixty-three things, which he calls poems, and which he no doubt seriously supposes to be such. They are full of all kinds of mistakes, of which the most important is that of their having been printed at all.

They are not precisely English?nor will we insult a great nation by calling them Kickapoo; perhaps they are Channingese. We may convey some general idea of them by two foreign terms not in common use?the Italian _pavoneggiarsi,_ "to strut like a peac.o.c.k," and the German word for "sky-rocketing," _Schwarmerei_. They are more preposterous, in a word, than any poems except those of the author of "Sam Patch;" for we presume we are right (are we not?) in taking it for granted that the author of "Sam Patch" is the very worst of all the wretched poets that ever existed upon the earth.

In spite, however, of the customary phrase of a man's "making a fool of himself," we doubt if any one was ever a fool of his own free will and accord. A poet, therefore, should not always be taken too strictly to task. He should be treated with leniency, and even when d.a.m.ned, should be d.a.m.ned with respect. n.o.bility of descent, too, should be allowed its privileges not more in social life than in letters. The son of a great author cannot be handled too tenderly by the critical Jack Ketch.

Mr. Channing must be hung, that's true. He must be hung _in terrorem --and_ for this there is no help under the sun; but then we shall do him all manner of justice, and observe every species of decorum, and be especially careful of his feelings, and hang him gingerly and gracefully, with a silken cord, as Spaniards hang their grandees of the blue blood, their n.o.bles of the _sangre azul_.

*Really the _nephew_.

To be serious, then, as we always wish to be, if possible, Mr. Channing (whom we suppose to be a _very_ young man, since we are precluded from supposing him a _very_ old one), appears to have been inoculated at the same moment with _virus_ from Tennyson and from Carlyle, etc.

Notes.

The three paragraphs which we have quoted ill.u.s.trate three different methods of using ridicule. The first is the simple one of contemptuous epithets--"calling names," as we put it in colloquial parlance. So long as it is good-humored and the writer does not show personal malice, it is a good way; but the reader soon tires of it. A sense of fairness prevents him from listening to mere calling of names very long. So in the second paragraph Poe changes his method to one more subtile: he pretends to apologize and find excuses, virtually saying to the reader, "Oh, I'm going to be perfectly fair," while at the same time the excuses are so absurd that the effect is ridicule of a still more intense and biting type. In the third paragraph Poe seems to answer the reader's mental comment to the effect that "you are merely amusing us by your clever wit" by a.s.serting that he means to be extremely serious. He then proceeds about his business with a most solemn face, which is as amusing in literature as it is in comic representations on the stage.

In practising upon this type of writing one must select a subject that he feels to be decidedly in need of suppression. Perhaps the most impersonal and easy subject to select for practice is a popular novel in which one can see absurdities, or certain ridiculous departments in the newspapers, such as the personal-advice column. Taking such a subject, adapt Poe's language to it with as little change as possible.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RHETORICAL, IMPa.s.sIONED AND LOFTY STYLES:

Macaulay and De Quincey. The familiar style of the humorist is almost universal in its availability. It is the style of conversation, to a great extent?at least of the best conversation,?of letter-writing, of essay-writing, and, in large part, of fiction. But there are moments when a different and more, hard and artificial style is required. These moments are few, and many people never have them at all. Some people try to have them and thereby fall into the fault of "fine writing."

But it is certainly very important that when the great moment comes we should be prepared for it. Then a lofty and more or less artificial style is demanded as imperatively as the key-stone of an arch when the arch is completed except for the key-stone. Without the ability to write one lofty sentence, all else that we have said may completely fail of its effect, however excellent in itself.

There are three kinds of prose which may be used on such occasions as we have described. The lowest and most common of these, as it is the most artificial and most easily acquired, is the rhetorical, or oratorical, style, the style of all orators, the style which is called eloquence. Of course we may find specimens of it in actual oratory, but it is best ill.u.s.trated in its use for written compositions in Macaulay.

The next variety, more rarely used, was especially developed if not actually invented by De Quincey and was called by him impa.s.sioned prose.

It would seem at first that language could go no higher; but it does mount a little higher simply by trying to do less, and we have loftiness in its plain simplicity, as when man stands bareheaded and humble in the presence of G.o.d alone.

Macaulay's style is highly artificial, but its rotundity, its movement, its impressive sweep have made it popular. Almost any one can acquire some of its features; but the ease with which it is acquired makes it dangerous in a high degree, for the writer becomes fascinated with it and uses it far too often. It is true that Macaulay used it practically all the time; but it is very doubtful it Macaulay would have succeeded so well with it to-day, when the power of simplicity is so much better understood.

De Quincey's "impa.s.sioned prose" was an attempt on his part to imitate the effects of poetry in prose. Without doubt he succeeded wonderfully; but the art is so difficult that no one else has equalled him and prose of the kind that he wrote is not often written. Still, it is worth while to try to catch some of his skill. He began to write this kind of composition in "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater," but he reached perfection only in some compositions intended as sequels to that book, namely, "Suspiria de Profundis," and "The English Mail Coach," with its "Vision of Sudden Death," and "Dream-Fugue" upon the theme of sudden death.

What we should strive for above all is the mighty effect of simple and bare loftiness of thought. Masters of this style have not been few, and they seem to slip into it with a sudden and easy upward sweep that can be compared to nothing so truly as to the upward flight of an eagle.

They mount because their spirits are lofty. No one who has not a lofty thought has any occasion to write the lofty style; and such a person will usually succeed best by paying very little attention to the manner when he actually comes to write of high ideas. Still, the lofty style should be studied and mastered like any other.

It is to be noted that all these styles are applicable chiefly if not altogether to description. Narration may become intense at times, but its intensity demands no especial alteration of style. Dialogue, too, may be lofty, but only in dramas of pa.s.sion, and very few people are called upon to write these. But it is often necessary to indicate a loftier, a more serious atmosphere, and this is effected by description of surrounding details in an elevated manner.

One of the most natural, simple, and graceful of lofty descriptions may be found in Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," Chapter III, where he pictures the mountain scenery:

It was, indeed, a morning that might have made any one happy, even with no Golden River to seek for. Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of which rose the ma.s.sy mountains,?their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating vapor, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced in long, level rays, through their fringes of spear-like Pine.

Far above, shot up splintered ma.s.ses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and, far beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the eternal snow.

If we ask how this loftiness is attained, the reply must be, first, that the subject is lofty and deserving of lofty description.

Indeed, the description never has a right to be loftier than the subject. Then, examining this pa.s.sage in detail, we find that the words are all dignified, and in their very sound they are lofty, as for instance "ma.s.sy," "myriads," "castellated," "angular crags."

The very sound of the words seems to correspond to the idea. Notice the repet.i.tion of the letter _i_ in "Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along the valley." This repet.i.tion of a letter is called alliteration, and here it serves to suggest in and of itself the idea of the level. The same effect is produced again in "streak of sunlit snow" with the repet.i.tion of _s_. The entire pa.s.sage is filled with _alliteration,_ but it is used so naturally that you would never think of it unless your attention were called to it.

Next, we note that the structure rises gradually but steadily upward.

We never jump to loftiness, and always find it necessary to climb there.

"Jumping to loftiness" is like trying to lift oneself by one's boot-straps: it is very ridiculous to all who behold it. Ruskin begins with a very ordinary sentence. He says it was a fine morning, just as any one might say it. But the next sentence starts suddenly upward from the dead level, and to the end of the paragraph we rise, terrace on terrace, by splendid sweeps and jagged cliffs, till at the end we reach "the eternal snow."

Exercise.

The study of the following selections from Macaulay and De Quincey may be conducted on a plan a trifle different from that heretofore employed.

The present writer spent two hours each day for two weeks reading this pa.s.sage from Macaulay over and over: then he wrote a short essay on "Macaulay as a Model of Style," trying to describe Macaulay's style as forcibly and skillfully as Macaulay describes the Puritans. The resulting paper did not appear to be an imitation of Macaulay, but it had many of the strong features of Macaulay's style which had not appeared in previous work. The same method was followed in the study of De Quincey's "English Mail Coach," with even better results. The great difficulty arose from the fact that these lofty styles were learned only too well and were not counterbalanced by the study of other and more universally useful styles.

It is dangerous to become fascinated with the lofty style, highly useful as it is on occasion.

If the student does not feel that he is able to succeed by the method of study just described, let him confine himself to more direct imitation, following out Franklin's plan.

THE PURITANS.

(From the essay on Milton.)

By T. B. Macaulay.

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal tw.a.n.g, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their destestation of polite amus.e.m.e.nts, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers.

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe has ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics.

Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the dress of the friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Ba.s.sanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.