The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language Part 20

One of the most famous pa.s.sages in all of Thackeray's works is the description of the battle of Waterloo in "Vanity Fair," ch. x.x.xII:

All that day, from morning till past sunset, the cannon never ceased to roar. It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.

All of us have read of what occurred during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its remembrance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so called glory and shame, and to the alternation of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honor.

All our friends took their share, and fought like men in the great field. All day long, while the women were praying ten miles away, the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling the furious charges of the French hors.e.m.e.n. Guns which were heard in Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. Towards evening, the attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury.

They had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a final onset. It came at last; the columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the English from the height which they had maintained all day and spite of all; unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line,?the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill.

It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and falter. Then it stopped, still facing the shot. Then, at last, the English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.

No more firing was heard at Brussels,?the pursuit rolled miles away.

Darkness came down on the field and city; and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart."

Who before ever began the description of a great victory by praising the enemy! And yet when we consider it, there is no more artistically powerful method than this, of showing how very great the enemy was, and then saying simply, "The English defeated them."

But Thackeray wished to do more than this. He was preparing the reader for the awful presence of death in a private affliction, Amelia's loss of her husband George. To do this he lets his heart go out in sympathy for the French, and by that sympathy he seems to rise above all race, to a supreme height where exist the griefs of the human heart and G.o.d alone.

With all this careful preparation, the short, simple closing paragraph?

the barest possible statement of the facts?produces an effect unsurpa.s.sed in literature. The whole situation seems to cry out for superlatives; yet Thackeray uses none, but remains dignified, calm, and therefore grand.

The following selection serves as a sort of preface to the novel "Vanity Fair." It is quite as remarkable for the things it leaves unsaid as for the things it says. Of course its object is to whet the reader's appet.i.te for the story that is to follow; but throughout the author seems to be laughing at himself. In the last paragraph we see one of the few superlatives to be found In Thackeray?he says the show has been "most favorably noticed" by the "conductors of the Public Press, and by the n.o.bility and Gentry." Those capital letters prove the humorous intent of the superlative, which seems to be a burlesque on other authors who praise themselves. One of the criticisms had been that Amelia was no better than a doll; and Thackeray takes the critics at their word and refers to the "Amelia Doll," merely hinting gently that even a doll may find friends.

BEFORE THE CURTAIN.

(Preface to "Vanity Fair.")

By W. M. Thackeray.

As the Manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards, and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quant.i.ty of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing, and fiddling: there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the lookout, quacks (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is Vanity Fair; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas.

The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying, "How are you?"

A man with a reflective turn of mind, walking through an exhibition of this sort, will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humor or kindness touches and amuses him here and there,?a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool, yonder behind the wagon mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home, you sit down, in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books or your business.

I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "Vanity Fair." Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families; very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated with the Author's own candles.

What more has the Manager of the Performance to say??To acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received in all the princ.i.p.al towns of England through which the show has pa.s.sed, and where it has been most favorably noticed by the respected conductors of the Public Press, and by the n.o.bility and Gentry. He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in this empire. The famous little Becky Puppet has been p.r.o.nounced to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire: the Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers, has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist: the Dobbin Figure, though apparently clumsy, yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner: the Little Boy's Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked n.o.bleman, on which no expense has been spared, and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of this singular performance.

And with this, and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires, and the curtain rises.

London, June 28, 1848.

CHAPTER VIII.

CRITICISM:

Matthew Arnold and Ruskin.

The term "criticism" may appropriately be used to designate all writing in which logic predominates over emotion. The style of criticism is the style of argument, exposition, and debate, as well as of literary a.n.a.lysis; and it is the appropriate style to be used in mathematical discussions and all scientific essays.

Of course the strictly critical style may be united with almost any other.

We are presenting pure types; but very seldom does it happen that any composition ordinarily produced belongs to any one pure type. Criticism would be dull without the enlivening effects of some appeal to the emotions. We shall ill.u.s.trate this point in a quotation from Ruskin.

The critical style has just one secret: It depends on a very close definition of work in ordinary use, words do not have a sufficiently definite meaning for scientific purposes. Therefore in scientific writing it is necessary to define them exactly, and so change common words into technical terms. To these may be added the great body of words used in no other way than as technical terms.

Of course our first preparation for criticism is to master the technical terms and technical uses of words peculiar to the subject we are treating.

Then we must make it clear to the reader that we are using words in their technical senses so that he will know how to interpret them.

But beyond that we must make technical terms as we go along, by defining common words very strictly. This is nicely ill.u.s.trated by Matthew Arnold, one of the most accomplished of pure critics. The opening paragraphs of the first chapter of "Culture and Anarchy"?the chapter ent.i.tled "Sweetness and Light"?will serve for ill.u.s.tration, and the student is referred to the complete work for material for further study and imitation.

From "Sweetness and Light."

The disparagers of culture, [says Mr. Arnold], make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and cla.s.s distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or t.i.tle, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this _culture,_ or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very different estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a motive the word _curiosity_ gives us.

I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense.

A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity.

In the _Quarterly Review,_ some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense really involved in the word _curiosity,_ thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity,?a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are,?which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says: 'The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent.'

This is the true ground to a.s.sign for the genuine scientific pa.s.sion, however manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this pa.s.sion; and it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term _curiosity_ stand to describe it.

Starting with exact definitions of words, it is easy to pa.s.s to exact definitions of ideas, which is the thing we should be aiming at all the time. The logical accuracy of our language, however, is apparent throughout.

Matthew Arnold does not embellish his criticism, nor does he make any special appeal to the feelings or emotions of his readers. Not so Ruskin.

He discovers intellectual emotions, and makes pleasant appeals to those emotions. Consequently his criticism has been more popular than Matthew Arnold's. As an example of this freer, more varied critical style, let us cite the opening paragraphs of the lecture "Of Queens' Gardens"--in "Sesame and Lilies":

From "Sesame and Lilies."

It will be well ... that I should shortly state to you my general intention... The questions specially proposed to you in my former lecture, namely How and What to Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to Read I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advantage we possess in the present day in the diffusion of education and of literature, can only be rightly used by any of us when we have apprehended clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to see that both well directed moral training and well chosen reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest sense kingly;*

conferring indeed the purest kingship that can exist among men. Too many other kingships (however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) being either spectral, or tyrannous; spectral?that is to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, and which only the "likeness of a kingly crown have on;" or else tyrannous?that is to say, subst.i.tuting their own will for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule.

*The preceding lecture was ent.i.tled "Of Kings's Treasures."

There is then, I repeat (and as I want to leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it) only one pure kind of kingship, ?an inevitable or eternal kind, crowned or not,?the kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral state and truer thoughtful state than that of others, enabling you, therefore, to guide or to raise them.

Observe that word "state" we have got into a loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and stability of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived word "statue"?"the immovable thing."

A king's majesty or "state," then, and the right of his kingdom to be called a State, depends on the movelessness of both,?without tremor, without quiver of balance, established and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing can alter or overthrow.

Believing that all literature and all education are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power,?first over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all around us,?I am now going to ask you to consider with me further, what special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising out of n.o.ble education, may rightly be possessed by women; and how far they also are called to a true queenly power,?not in their households merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by such benignant power would justify us in speaking of the territories over which each of them reigned as 'Queens' Gardens.'

Here still is the true critical style, with exact definitions; but the whole argument is a metaphor, and the object of the criticism is to rouse feelings that will lead to action.

It will be observed that words which by definition are to be taken in some sort of technical sense are distinguished to the eye in some way.

Matthew Arnold used italics. Ruskin first places "state" within quotation marks, and then, when he uses the word in a still different sense, he writes it with a capital letter?State. Capitalization is perhaps the most common way for designating common words when used in a special sense which is defined by the writer?or defined by implication. This is the explanation of the capital letters with which the writings of Carlyle are filled. He constantly endeavors to make words mean more than, or something different from, the meaning they usually have.

The peculiar embellishments of the critical writer are epigram, paradox, and satire. An _epigram_ is a very short phrase or sentence which is so full of implied meaning or suggestion that it catches the attention at once, and remains in the memory easily. The _paradox_ is something of the same sort on a larger scale. It is a statement that we can hardly believe to be true, since it seems at first sight to be self-contradictory, or to contradict well known truths or laws; but on examination we find that in a peculiar sense it is strictly true.

_Satire_ is a variation of humor peculiarly adapted to criticism, since it is intended to make the common idea ridiculous when compared with the ideas which the critic is trying to bring out: it is a sort of argument by force of stinging points. We may find an example of satire in its perfection in Swift, especially in his "Gulliver's Travels"?since these are satires the point of which we can appreciate to-day. Oscar Wilde was peculiarly given to epigram, and in his plays especially we may find epigram carried to the same excess that the balanced structure is carried by Macaulay. More moderate epigram may be found in Emerson and Carlyle.

Paradox is something that we should use only on special occasion.