Part 16

The characters of writing have followed the genius of the barbarous ages: they are well or ill formed, in proportion as the sciences have flourished more or less. Antiquaries remark that the medals struck during the consulship of Fabius Pictor, 250 years before Augustus, have the letters better formed than those of the older date. Those of the time of Augustus, and the following age, show characters of perfect beauty. Those of Diocletian and Maximian are worse formed than those of the Antonines; and again, those of the Justins and Justinians degenerate into a Gothic taste. But it is not to medals only that these remarks are applicable: we see the same inferiority of written characters generally following in the train of barbarism and ignorance. During the first race of the French kings, we find no writing which is not a mixture of Roman and other characters. Under the empire of Charlemagne and of Louis le Débonnaire, the characters returned almost to the same point of perfection which distinguished them in the time of Augustus, but in the following age there was a relapse to the former barbarism; so that for four or five centuries we find only the Gothic characters in manuscripts; for it is not worth while making an exception for short periods which were somewhat more polished, and when there was less inelegance in the formation of the letters.

The being _able to write_ has been taken by our statists as the best evidence of the progress of education. Thus, twenty years ago, only 67 in every 100 men who married in England signed their names upon the register, and 51 in every 100 women, and thirteen years later the percentage was but 69·6 of the men and 56·1 of the women; but in the last seven years, a period which probably shows in its marriages the result chiefly of the education of the years 1840-45 or thereabouts, the advance has been much greater, and the Registrar-General reports that in 1860 the proportion of men writing their names had risen to 74·5, and of women to 63·8. In the whole twenty years the proportion of men who write has risen from being only two-thirds to be three-fourths, and of women from being a half to be nearly two-thirds, which may be expressed with tolerable accuracy by saying that where four persons had to “make their mark” then, only three do so now. This is for all England; but the rate of progress has not been the same in every part of the kingdom.

In the reign of George III., when education had become more general, the crosses of those who could not write lost the distinction and artistic character of older times, and the large bold round-hand corresponds in style with the buildings and furniture then in use. This writing, although without much beauty, has, notwithstanding, the merit of distinctness. In these railway times, with the exception of book-keepers in banks and clerks in merchants’ offices, few seem to have time to trim their letters. Few artists write a good hand. Physicians’ prescriptions are often as difficult to decipher as ancient hieroglyphics; and it must be confessed that writers for the press are not generally remarkable for either the distinctness or beauty of their manuscript. As regards artists, the practice of handling the brush and pencil is not favourable to graceful penmanship; and in respect of the literary profession, it is generally difficult for the pen to keep pace with the thoughts, to say nothing of the fact, that time often presses.[84]

Short-Hand is of great antiquity; for Seneca tells us that in his time reporting had been carried to such perfection, that a writer could keep pace in his report with the most rapid speaker.

Footnote 84:

Communicated to _The Builder_.

ENGLISH STYLE.

Style in writing has been well defined by Swift as “proper words in proper places.” However, this is rarely seen.

To the unsettled state of our language, and owing to the want of proper training in composition, may be attributed the general corruption of English Style, which has scarcely ceased since Southey, in his _Colloquies_, wrote the following vigorous condemnation of it:

More lasting effect was produced by translators, who, in later times, have corrupted our idiom as much as, in early ones, they enriched our vocabulary; and to this injury the Scotch have greatly contributed; for, composing in a language which is not their mother tongue, they necessarily acquired an artificial and formal style, which, not so much through the merit of a few, as owing to the perseverance of others, who for half a century seated themselves on the bench of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular English of Addison and Swift. Our journals, indeed, have been the great corrupters of our style, and continue to be so; and not for this reason only. Men who write in newspapers, and magazines, and reviews, write for present effect; in most cases, this is as much their natural and proper aim, as it would be in public speaking; but when it is so, they consider, like public speakers, not so much what is accurate or just, either in matter or manner, as what will be acceptable to those whom they address. Writing also under the excitement of emulation and rivalry, they seek, by all the artifices and efforts of an ambitious style, to dazzle their readers; and they are wise in their generation, experience having shown that common minds are taken by glittering faults, both in prose and verse, as larks are with looking-glasses.

In this school it is that most writers are now trained; and after such training, any thing like an easy and natural movement is as little to be looked for in their compositions as in the step of a dancing-master. To the views of style, which are thus generated, there must be added the inaccuracies inevitably arising from haste, when a certain quantity of matter is to be supplied for a daily or weekly publication, which allows of no delay,—the slovenliness that confidence as well as fatigue and inattention will produce,—and the barbarisms which are the effect of ignorance, or that smattering of knowledge which serves only to render ignorance presumptuous. These are the causes of corruption in our current style; and when these are considered, there would be ground for apprehending that the best writings of the last century might become as obsolete as ours in the like process of time, if we had not in our Liturgy and our Bible a standard from which it will not be possible wholly to depart.

The days of sentences of one word, and of others without a verb, had not then arrived; nor had the spasmodic and sensation style been introduced. Southey’s own style, whether for narrative, for exposition, or for animated argumentation, was perhaps the most effective English style of the time. It combines in a remarkable degree a somewhat lofty dignity with ease and idiomatic vigour. He was the most hard-working writer of his time, and left about 12,000_l._ in money, besides a valuable library.

Sir Thomas Browne satirises the strenuous advocacy of the classical style by saying: “We are now forced to study Latin, in order to understand English.” And Pope ridicules that

Easy Ciceronian style, So Latin, yet so English all the while.

It is no paradox to say that the perfection of style is to have none, but to let the words be suggested by the sentiments, unchecked by the monotony of a manner, and untainted by affectation.

How striking is this short passage in a speech of Edward IV. to his Parliament! “The injuries that I have received are known every where, and the eyes of the world are fixed upon me to see with what countenance I suffer.” If actual events could often be related in this way, there would be more books in circulating libraries than romances and novels.

This lively and graphic style is plainly the best, though now and then the historian’s criticism is wanted to support a startling fact, or to explain a confused transaction. Thus, the learned Rudbeck, in his _Atlantica_, four volumes folio, ascribing an ancient temple in Sweden to one of Noah’s sons, warily adds, “’Twas probably the youngest.”

A more practical definition of style may be gathered from what Fox said of his great antagonist, Pitt,—and therefore the more to be trusted,—that he always used _the_ word; and each word had its own place, not regulated by chance, but by law.

To write a good Letter is a rare accomplishment. It is owing to the want of proper training in the laws of composition that so few persons in England can write even a common letter correctly. We will give a familiar instance of a very frequent solecism which occurs in one of the most common acts of every-day life—the answer to a dinner invitation; and it is one in which, we are sorry to say, well-educated ladies are too often caught tripping. When “Mr. A. and Mrs. A. request the pleasure of Mr. and Mrs. B.’s company at dinner,” the reply usually is, “Mr. and Mrs. B. _will_ have the pleasure of accepting” the invitation. But the acceptance is already _un fait accompli_ by the very act of writing it,—it is a present, not a future event; and the answer of course ought to be either “Mr. and Mrs. B. _have_ the pleasure of accepting,” or “Mr. and Mrs. B. _will have_ the pleasure of _dining_.”[85]

Footnote 85:

_Fraser’s Magazine._

ART OF WRITING.

“He that would write well,” says Roger Ascham, “must follow the advice of Aristotle, to speak as the common people speak, and to think as the wise think.”

Coleridge says: “To write or talk concerning any subject, without having previously taken the pains to understand it, is a breach of the duty which we owe to ourselves, though it may be no offence against the law of the land. The privilege of talking, and even publishing, nonsense, is necessary in a free state; but the more sparingly we make use of it, the better.”[86]

Much reading and good company are supposed to be the best methods of getting at the niceties and elegancies of a language; but this road is long and irksome. The great point is to acquire our most usual Anglicisms; all those phrases and peculiarities which form the characteristics of our language. Nearly eighty years since, Mr. Sharp took upon himself to say that we had no grammar capable of teaching a foreigner to read our authors; adding, “but of this I am sure, that we have none by which he can be enabled to understand our conversation.”

What an annoyance are long speakers, long talkers, and long writers—people who will not take time to think, or are not capable of thinking accurately! Once when Dr. South had preached before Queen Anne, her majesty observed to him, “You have given me a most excellent discourse, Dr. South; but I wish you had had time to make it longer.” “Nay, madam,” replied the doctor, “if I had had time, I should have made it shorter.”

Method in treating your subject is of great importance. Southey has well illustrated the absence of this quality. A Quaker, by name Benjamin Lay (who was a little cracked in the head, though sound at the heart), took one of his compositions to Benjamin Franklin, that it might be printed and published. Franklin, having looked over the manuscript, observed that it was deficient in arrangement: “It is no matter,” replied the author; “print any part thou pleaseth first.” Many are the speeches, and the sermons, and the treatises, and the poems, and the volumes, which are like Benjamin Lay’s book: the head might serve for the tail, and the tail for the body, and the body for the head; either end for the middle, and the middle for either end; nay, if you could turn them inside out, like a polypus or a glove, they would be no worse for the operation.[87]

* * * * *

Free Translation is a rare accomplishment. Sir John Denham, who is declared by Johnson “to have been one of the first that understood the necessity of emancipating translation from the drudgery of counting lines and interpreting single words,” gives the same praise to Sir Richard Fanshawe, whom he addresses thus:

That servile path thou nobly dost decline, Of tracing word by word and line by line; A new and nobler way thou dost pursue, To make translations and translators too: They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

Dryden said, all the translations of the old school “want to be translated into English;” and verbal translation he compares to “dancing on ropes with fettered legs.” Education cannot do all that Helvetius supposes, but it can do much. _Elle fait danser l’ours_,—It makes a bear dance. It is said that some insects take the colour of the leaf that they feed upon. “I was common clay till roses were planted in me,” says some aromatic earth, in an eastern fable.

To unlearn is harder than to learn, and the Grecian flute-player was right in requiring double fees from those pupils who had been taught by another master. “I am rubbing their father out of my children as fast as I can,” said a clever widow of rank and fashion.

The Education of princes, or indeed the spoilt children of rich and distinguished parents, must be the _experimentum crucis_ of teaching. “If Fénelon did succeed, as it is recorded he did, in educating the Dauphin, his success was little less than a miracle. How can any man, though of advanced age and of high reputation, perhaps also of a sacred profession and of elevated station, be expected to preserve any useful authority over a child (probably a wayward little animal), if he, the tutor, must always address the pupil by his title, or at least must never forget that he is heir to a throne?”

There is some truth in the following remarks by a writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, upon information overmuch:

We deal largely in general knowledge—an excellent article, no doubt; but one may have too much of it. Sometimes ignorance is really bliss. It has not added to my personal comfort to know to a decimal fraction what proportion of red earth I may expect to find in my cocoa every morning; to have become knowingly conscious that my coffee is mixed with ground liver and litmus, instead of honest chicory; and that bisulphuret of mercury forms the basis of my cayenne. It was once my fate to have a friend staying in my house who was one of these minute philosophers. He used to amuse himself after breakfast by a careful analysis and diagnosis of the contents of the teapot, laid out as a kind of _hortus siccus_ on his plate. “This leaf, now,” he would say, “is fuchsia; observe the serrated edges: that’s no tea-leaf—positively poisonous. This now, again, is blackthorn, or privet—yes, privet; you may know it by the divisions in the panicles: that’s no tea-leaf.” A most uncomfortable guest he was; and though not a bad companion in many respects, I felt my appetite improved the first time I sat down to dinner without him. It won’t do to look into all your meals with a microscope. Of course there is a medium between these over-curious investigations and an implicit faith in every thing that is set before you.

Footnote 86:

One fine morning, a stalwart anti-Newtonian, properly accredited, presented himself to Baron Maseres, in the library of his mansion at Reigate: “I am come to talk over my favourite subject,” he said (it was, to overturn the universe!). “I am happy to see you,” replied the Baron; “but before we commence, I must ask you if you consider yourself proficient in mathematics?” The anti-Newtonian was dumbfounded. “Then,” rejoined the Baron, “it would be unprofitable for us to begin;” and he passed on to a more genial topic.

Footnote 87:

_The Doctor._

Business-Life.

WANT OF A PURSUIT.

Such is the complicated constitution of human nature, that a man without a predominant inclination is not likely to be either useful or happy.

He who is every thing is nothing, is as true of our sensitive as of our intellectual nature. He is rather a bundle of little likings, than a compact and energetic individual. A strong desire soon subdues the weaker, and rules us with the united force of all that it subjugates.

Such being the force of human feelings, it must embitter our daily lives if our employments are unsuited to our talents and our wishes; yet how few, alas, are so fortunate as to be gaining either wealth or fame while gratifying an inclination!

In the best of all arts, the art of living, the greatest skill is not to wait; but, as you run along, snatch at every fruit and every flower growing within your reach; for, after all that can be said, youth, the age of hope and admiration, and manhood, the age of business and of influence, are to be preferred to the period of extinguished passions and languid curiosity. At that season, our hopes and wishes must have been too long dropping, leaf by leaf, away. The last scenes of the fifth act are seldom the most interesting, either in a tragedy or a comedy. Yet many compensations arise as our sensibility decays:

Time steals away the rose, ’tis true; But then the thorn is blunted too.[88]

Life, without some necessity for exertion (says Mr. Walker[89]), must ever lack real interest. That state is capable of the greatest enjoyment where necessity urges, but not painfully; where effort is required, but as much as possible without anxiety; where the spring and summer of life are preparatory to the harvest of autumn and the repose of winter. Then is every season sweet, and, in a well-spent life, the last the best—the season of calm enjoyment, the richest in recollections, the brightest in hope. Good training and a fair start constitute a more desirable patrimony than wealth; and those parents who study their children’s welfare rather than the gratification of their own avarice or vanity, would do well to think of this. Is it better to run a successful race, or to begin and end at the goal?

Footnote 88:

Richard Sharp.

Footnote 89:

In _The Original_, a series of Periodical Papers, published in 1835, by Thomas Walker, M.A., one of the Police Magistrates of the Metropolis.

THE ENGLISH CHARACTER.

Four and thirty years since, Sir Humphry Davy wrote:“The English as a nation are preëminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and die, before they have attained the period naturally marked out for the end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets, and even philosophers, offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion: whatever burns, consumes; ashes remain. Before the period of youth is passed, gray hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the men of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.” If these characteristics were applicable to English life a third of a century since, how much has their fitness been strengthened by the rapidity of action, the excitement, and want of repose adding to the wear and tear of existence, since that period.

That the Englishman is one of the most noble species of the genus to which he belongs, seems to be generally conceded. The poet Southey expressed the opinion of more thinkers than himself when he said that the Englishman is the model or pattern man, at least of all the species at present existing. But even those who are most thoroughly convinced of this must admit that he has his peculiarities—foremost among which is his nationality; and one of the most striking peculiarities of that nationality is pride. Another potent element in the English character is its practical worth,—this word “practical” being the shibboleth by which we love to recognise ourselves; as the Greeks delighted to picture themselves as more wise, the French as more polite, than other nations.

Our genius has a most real, concrete, and altogether terrestrial tendency: there seems to be a considerable majority of Sadducees among us, or, as Plato calls them, “uninitiated persons, who believe in nothing but what they can lay hold of with their hands. These men will make railways, telegraphs, and tunnels, and build crystal palaces, and collect mechanical products from the ends of the earth, and exhibit in every possible shape and variety the sublime of what is mechanical and material; but for the supersensual ideas, they will have none of them.”[90]

Nevertheless, if we look through the history of the world’s genius, we shall find its greatest successes to lie in the practical. Homer begged; Tasso begged in a different way; Galileo was racked; De Witt assassinated,—and all for wishing to improve their species. At the same time, Raffaelle, Michel Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, Shakspeare, were rich and happy. Why? because with their genius they combined practical prudence. This is the grand secret of success.

Footnote 90:

Professor Blackie; _Edinburgh Essays_, 1856.

WORTH OF ENERGY.

A man with knowledge but without energy is a home furnished but not inhabited; a man with energy but no knowledge, a house dwelt in but unfurnished.

Mr. Sharp[91] counsels us: “Prefer a life of energy to a life of inaction. There are always kind friends enough ready to preach up caution and delay, &c. Yet it is impossible to lay down any general rule of a prudential kind. Every one must be judged of after a careful review of all its circumstances; for if one, only one, be overlooked, the decision may be injurious or fatal. Thus, there will ever be many conflicting reasons for and against a spirit of enterprise and a habit of caution.

“Those who advise others to withstand the temptations of hope will always appear to be wiser than they really are, for how often can it be made certain that the rejected and untried hazard would have been successful? Besides, those who dissuade us from action have corrupt but powerful allies in our indolence, irresolution, and cowardice. To despond is very easy, but it requires works as well as faith to engage successfully in a difficult undertaking.

“There are, however, few difficulties that hold out against real attacks: they fly, like the visible horizon, before those who advance. A passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities, or what seem to be so to the cold and the feeble. If we do but go on, some unseen path will open among the hills.

“We must not allow ourselves to be discouraged by the apparent disproportion between the result of single efforts and the magnitude of the obstacles to be encountered. Nothing great or good is to be obtained without courage and industry; but courage and industry must have sunk in despair, and the world must have remained unornamented and unimproved, if men had nicely compared the effect of a single stroke of the chisel with the pyramid to be raised, or of a single impression of the spade with the mountain to be levelled.

* * * * *

“Efforts, it must not be forgotten, are as indispensable as desires. The globe is not to be circumnavigated by one wind. ‘It is better to wear out than to rust,’ says Bishop Cumberland. ‘There will be time enough for repose in the grave,’ said Nicole to Pascal. In truth, the proper rest for man is change of occupation.