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as owing to the perseverance of others, who for half a century seated themselves on the bench of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular English of Addison and Swift.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 12,000l. 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]]
[85]. Fraser’s Magazine.