STYLE 3

STYLE

STYLE

Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are. — WALTER SAVAGE LANDO&

If I am ever obscure inmy expression, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand. —CHARLES KINGSLEY.

If a man has anything to say he will manage to say it; if he has nothing to communicate, there is no reason why he should have a good style, any more than why he should have a good purse without any money, or a good scabbard without any sword. — GEORGE MACDONALD.

Style is a personally characteristic manner of expression. When Buffon declared that style is " the man himself, " he as much as said that a writer without individuality of style had not yet attained to individuality in thought. A distinctive Kiplingism is his personal way of saying a thing, just as a British or a French idiom is a national way of saying a thing — individuality in both cases.

Style argues two things : First a personal view-point consistently maintained (or at least never flightily departed from) ; second, habit — and that means more or less conscious practice. By and by the writer of personality betrays his fondness for certain words, sentenceforms, sentence-groups, themes, view-points, beliefs and

the whole thing. His views of life infuse themselves all through his expressions. Now, when these preferences, these tendencies, become a habit — I do not say a narrow, slavish, one-eyed habit — the habit is his style, as markedly personal as his bow legs, and sometimes just as unlovely.

Here are four paragraphs from as many well-known authors. Are they in any respects alike? Does not each bear the clear impress of a distinct personality? Precisely how they differ not Everyone could say, but that they do differ Everyone would declare. Each possesses all of the essential, and some of the special properties of style, as rhetoricians classify them, yet somehow they are as unlike as four descriptions well might be. This unlikeness proceeds from the individualities back of the descriptions. 1

We know not how to characterize, in any accordant and compatible terms, the Rome that lies before us; its sunless alleys, and streets of palaces; its churches, lined with the gorgeous marbles that were originally polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its thousands of evil smells, mixed up with fragrance of rich incense diffused from as many censers ; its little life, deriving feeble nutriment from what has long been dead. Everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the magnificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a Cross — and nastiness at the foot of it. As the sum of all, there are recollections that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melancholic sentiment that can be elsewhere known. 2

1It is the function of this treatise not to analyze such differences, but to point them out.

2Hawthorne, Marble Faun, I, chap. xii. Observe the general concepts set forth in a contemplative mood.

At last I came within sight of the Pope's City [Avignon]. Saints in heaven! What a beautiful town it was! Going right up two hundred feet above the bank of the river was a bare rock, steep and straight as though cut with a stonemason's chisel, on the very top of which was perched a castle with towers so big and high—twenty, thirty, forty times higher than the towers of our church — that they seemed to go right up out of sight into the clouds! It was the Palace built by the Popes; and around and below it was a piling up of houses — big, little, long, wide, of every size and shape, and all of cut stone —covering a space as big, I might say, as half way from here to Carpentras. When I saw all this I was thunderstruck. And though I still was far away from the city a strange buzzing came from it and sounded in my ears—but whether it were shouts or songs or the roll of drums or the crash of falling houses or the firing of cannon, I could not tell. Then the words of the lame old man with the hoe came back to me, and all of a sudden I felt a heavy weight on my heart. What was I going to see, what was going to happen to me in the midst of those revolutionary city folks? What could I do among them — I, so utterly, utterly alone? 8

That spring the mohwatree, that Baloo was so fond of, never flowered. The greeny, cream-colored, waxy blossoms were heatkilled before they were born, and only a few bad-smelling petals came down when he stood on his hind legs and shook the tree. Then, inch by inch, the untempered heat crept into the heart of the Jungle, turning it yellow, brown, and at last black. The green growths in the sides of the ravines burned up to broken wires and curled films of dead stuff ; the hidden pools sank down and caked over, keeping the least footmark on their edges as if it had been cast in iron; the juicy-stemmed creepers fell away from the trees they clung to and died at their feet; the bamboos withered, clanking when the hot winds blew, and the moss peeled off the rocks deep in the Jungle, till they were as bare and as hot as the quivering blue boulders in the bed of the stream. *

Noble Mansion! There stoodest thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy guardian Hills: of the greenest was their sward, embossed with its darkbrown frets of crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. 5

Style, then, runs all the gamut of individuality, having graces or crudities as the possessor may have cultivated or neglected himself and his powers of self-expression. A writer's personality will so temper his use of the general qualities of style, will dictate their use in such combinations, as to produce his own style. To be sure, markedly personal development is to be looked for only in exceptional authors, yet it is interesting to note how such individuality begins to show itself in a young writer. A man of petulant nature will naturally adopt a short and crisp manner of expression ; he who is easygoing and mild will reflect this temper in his utterances ; while the flustry, blustry fellow will lean to a style florid and wordy. It is precisely here that the value of rhetorical training appears, in that it gives the writer command of such variety of expression that he may accomplish his end without either burying his personality or thrusting it into Everyone's face.

Now, by all this I do not mean that the writer of fiction may make his characters speak and act from his personal view-point. That were absurd. Each character must think, and speak, and act, consistently with his or

her own personality. Still, all the issue of a single mintage may bear a subtle unity of impress, even when the coins uttered vary from copper to gold. When the author speaks as the author (Hawthorne, in the preceding examples), he makes no attempt to conceal his individuality; but when the writer puts words into the mouth of a character (Gras, also quoted in the preceding specimens), it is the character who speaks. Underneath it all, the author's personal style will constantly appear to the trained eye. °

It ought now to be plain why it is so futile to study the great stylists merely with a view to imitation. The ass in the lion's skin will eventually bray.

What, then! Shall we not study the literary arts of master story-writers ? Has imitation no place in the development of an individual style? Yes, to both queries ; and particularly if imitation be practised consciously as a study ; but note: study the styles of all masters and imitate their sentence forms only so far as to learn (if possible) the devices by which they secured results, to observe the errors into which they fell, and to master the various forms in which they cast their thought. You must use substantially the same tools as they, but the uncut stone is before you and you need not slavishly follow another's work if there is an original idea in your brain. Style implies a certain amount of distinction, and mere imitation is not the mother of invention.

In his essay on " A College Magazine, " included in

the volume, Memories and Portraits, Stevenson shows how he rose from imitation to originality of style.

" 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 unsuccessful, 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 coordination of parts.

" I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne.

" That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write ; whether I have profited or not, that is the way. It was the way Keats learned, and there never was a finer temperament for literature than Keats'.

" It is the great point of these imitations that there still shines beyond the student's reach, his inimitable model. Let him try as heplease, he is still sure of faillure ; and it is an old and very true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have had some disposition to learn ; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own performances. I liked doing them indeed ; but when they were done, I could see they were rubbish. In consequence I very rarely showed them even to my friends ; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I must

have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain with me. Thrice I put myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned, and I was not surprised or even pained. If they had not been looked at, as (likeall amateurs) I suspected was the case, there was no good in repeating the experiment ; if they had been looked at, well then, I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and living. "

Style is characteristic expression, but impression precedes expression. First be, then speak. The full life is not a cistern; it is a fountain, and it must overflow. If the stream be big and impulsive it will even wash out new channels for itself, but somehow it will gush forth. Great stylists are no more made by the tricks of rhetoric than rivers are created by watering pots.

The first step toward attaining to an individual style is to put good things, vital, picturesque, significant things, into your life. The second step is to be your best self consistently. The third step is so to master the means of expression that the rules of structure are lost sight of and are become a sensitive literary conscience prompt to warn of error and suggest the good. The final step is to express your own self fearlessly and interpret life sincerely. You will then have established your style —a literary habit precisely as worthy and as individual as your own self. What you write will be marked by personality plus attainment.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES FOR CLASS OR INDIVIDUAL STUDY

1. Select from three great story writers passages which you think are quite characteristic of their style.

z Comment on each, noting points of similarity and difference.

3. Macaulay observes that Samuel Johnson was not always pompous. In a personal letter Johnson says, "A dirty fellow bounded out of the bed on which one of us was to lie "; but in a book he describes the same incident thus : " Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge. " Discuss this difference fully.

Non: The instructor may think it wise to assign brief exercises in imitation, such as writing an incident in several different styles, following closely the methods of Kipling, James, " O. Henry, " and others.