Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

And,

first gave a shock to such a tendency, must have been the unwilling and mysterious sense that, in some cases, the matter and the manner were so inextricably interwoven, as not to admit of this coarse bisection. The one was embedded, entangled, and interfused through the other, in a way which bade defiance to such gross mechanical separations. But the tendency to view the two elements as in a separate relation still predominates; and, as a consequence, the tendency to undervalue the accomplishment of style. Do we mean that the English, as a literary nation, are practically less sensible of the effects of a beautiful style? Not at all. Nobody can be insensible to these effects. upon a known fact of history, viz. the exclusive cultivation of popular oratory in England, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, we might presume a peculiar and exalted sense of style amongst ourselves. Until the French Revolution, no nation of Christendom except England had any practical experience of popular rhetoric; any deliberative eloquence, for instance; any forensic eloquence that was made public; any democratic eloquence of the hustings; or any form whatever of public rhetoric beyond that of the pulpit. Through two centuries at least, no nation could have been so constantly reminded of the powers for good and evil which belong to style. Often it must have happened, to the mortification or joy of multitudes, that one man out of windy nothings has contructed an overwhelming appeal to the passions of his hearers, whilst another has thrown away the weightiest cause by his manner of treating it. Neither let it be said, that this might not arise from differences of style, but because the triumphant demagogue made use of fic

tions, and, therefore, that his triumph was still obtained by means of his matter, however hollow that matter might have proved upon investigation. That case, also, is a possible case; but often enough two orators have relied upon the same identical matter. the facts, for instance, of the slave-trade - and one has turned this to such good account by his arrangements, by his modes of vivifying dry statements, by his arts of illustration, by his science of connecting things with human feeling, that he has left his hearers in convulsions of passion; whilst the other shall have used every tittle of the same matter without eliciting one scintillation of sympathy, without leaving behind one distinct impression in the memory, or planting one murmur in the heart.

In proportion, therefore, as the English people have been placed for two centuries and a quarter, (i. e. since the latter decennium of James the First's reign,) under a constant experience of popular eloquence thrown into all channels of social life, they must have had peculiar occasion to feel the effects of style. But to feel is not to feel consciously. Many a man is charmed by one cause who ascribes the effect to another. Many a man is fascinated by the artifices of composition, who fancies that it is the subject which has operated so potently. And even for the subtlest of philosophers who keeps in mind the interpenetration of the style and the matter, it would be as difficult to distribute the true proportion of their joint action, as, with regard to the earliest rays of the dawn, it would be to say how much of the beauty lay in the heavenly light which chased away the darkness - how much in the rosy color which that light entangled.

Easily, therefore, it may have the constant action and

nation may have falid = 1.2 cause. And, besides the Lum lead the judgment of the a.. are other disturbing times vn of the speaker. That is good mon which is bad for a book

of popular eloquence, the are from the general standard

same reason in a never

your meaning: tartal

of the words, with a st

and dilution of the
man who should

densed enunciation of a
a inadman and a fa-co-y
upon that doctrine. Line

sun's rays into the rewar
mirror, you must ut rew
flexions at every po

the popular mind enter mar lectual communication s separate weakness: its sem pensated by peculiar resquena.

[ocr errors]

a

a book, that you can return % me in the present depends upon m possible in the case of a poor lere sentence perista a ta

the hearer become ava

much looser style, and a m

[ocr errors]

the severities of abstract dema

efit of both, that the we

detained before the eye a good deal longer than the chastity of taste or the austerity of logic would toler ate in a book. Time must be given for the intellect to eddy about a truth, and to appropriate its bearings. There is a sort of previous lubrication, such as the boa-constrictor applies to any subject of digestion, which is requisite to familiarize the mind with a startling or a complex novelty. And this is obtained for the intellect by varying the modes of presenting it,now putting it directly before the eye, now obliquely, now in an abstract shape, now in the concrete; all which being the proper technical discipline for dealing with such cases, ought no longer to be viewed as a licentious mode of style, but as the just style in respect of those licentious circumstances. And the true art for such popular display is to contrive the best forms for appearing to say something new, when in reality you are but echoing yourself; to break up massy chords into running variations; and to mask, by slight differences in the manner, a virtual identity in the substance.

We have been illustrating a twofold neutralizing effect applied to the advantages, otherwise enjoyed by the English people, for appreciating the forms of style. What was it that made the populace of Athens and of Rome so sensible to the force of rhetoric and to the magic of language? It was the habit of hearing these two great engines daily worked for purposes interesting to themselves as citizens, and sufficiently intelligible to command their willing attention. The English amongst modern nations have had the same advan tages, allowance being made for the much less intense concentration of the audience. In the ancient repub

lics it was always the same city: and, therefore, the same audience, except in so far as it was spread through many generations. This has been otherwise in England; and yet, by newspaper reports, any grat effect in one assize town, or electoral town, has ben propagated to the rest of the empire, through the eighteenth and the present century. But all t 171 the continual exemplification of style as a

[ocr errors]

for democratic effect, have not availed to wi cient practical respect, in England, for the am. composition as essential to authorship. And in mar is, because, in the first place, from the style and matter, from the importing should affect them otherwise tra the other, it has been natural for an alien on the superior agent what often teutusta This, in the first place; animal modes of style appropriate to p′′ » essentially different from those of, any possible experience of the 1.. senate, would pro tanto temi ra mind for appreciating the m.* elaborate qualities of style feet in w a real advantage of the En been neutralized by two

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]
« PredošláPokračovať »