But If We
Would Appreciate The Flow That Is In These Books, We Must Expect
To Feel It Rise From The Page Like An Exhalation, And Wash Away
Our Critical Brains Like Burr Millstones, Flowing To Higher
Levels Above And Behind Ourselves.
There is many a book which
ripples on like a freshet, and flows as glibly as a mill-stream
sucking under a causeway; and when their authors are in the full
tide of their discourse, Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt
beside them.
Their long, stringy, slimy sentences are of that
consistency that they naturally flow and run together. They read
as if written for military men, for men of business, there is
such a despatch in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers
and philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling-clothes
off; they are slower than a Roman army in its march, the rear
camping to-night where the van camped last night. The wise
Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough.
"How many thousands never heard the name
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books?
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame,
And seem to bear down all the world with looks."
The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts, Forward! Alamo and
Fanning! and after rolls the tide of war. The very walls and
fences seem to travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow after
all; and thither, reader, you and I, at least, will not follow.
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For
the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if
we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening
without their colors, or the heavens without their azure. The
most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the
surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively, as
if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise,
they have at least been well learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might
well be studied if only for the excellence of his style, for he
is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a
natural emphasis in his style, like a man's tread, and a
breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern
writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks,
or say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth
keeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through
the openings. All the distinguished writers of that period
possess a greater vigor and naturalness than the more
modern, - for it is allowed to slander our own time, - and when we
read a quotation from one of them in the midst of a modern
author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener ground, a
greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a green bough
were laid across the page, and we are refreshed as by the sight
of fresh grass in midwinter or early spring. You have constantly
the warrant of life and experience in what you read. The little
that is said is eked out by implication of the much that was
done. The sentences are verdurous and blooming as evergreen and
flowers, because they are rooted in fact and experience, but our
false and florid sentence have only the tints of flowers without
their sap or roots. All men are really most attracted by the
beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in
imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than
to come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the
epistolary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta,
because of "the difficulty of understanding it; there was," he
said, "but one person at Jidda, who was capable of understanding
and explaining the Pasha's correspondence." A man's whole life is
taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.
Every sentence is the result of a long probation. Where shall we
look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?
The word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at
all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could have
better done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed
by some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the
truest writer will be some captive knight, after all. And
perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh
so richly with the substance of life and experience, they made
him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his
deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity
of his action.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to read
how Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks with which the royal
family and nobility were to be entertained should be "grounded
upon antiquity and solid learning." Can there be any greater
reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things,
to the scholar is rarely well remembered; steady labor with the
hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the
best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's
style, both of speaking and writing. If he has worked hard from
morning till night, though he may have grieved that he could not
be watching the train of his thoughts during that time, yet the
few hasty lines which at evening record his day's experience will
be more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy could
have furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of
laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline. He will
not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before
nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be
husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the
strokes of that scholar's pen, which at evening record the story
of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader,
long after the echoes of his axe have died away.
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