Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism

by F. V. N. Painter

(4) Argumentation is the process of establishing the truth or falsity of a thing. The means it uses is called proof or evidence, and will be considered more fully in a subsequent chapter treating of oratory. This proof or evidence may be derived from principles originating in the mind, in which case it is called intuitive; or it may be found in external sources, in which case it is called empirical. The latter includes, among other forms of proof, a statement of facts, a consideration of the nature or circumstances of the case, the testimony of eyewitnesses, and an appeal to authority or generally accepted principles. When the argument is attended with an appeal to the feelings and will, it is known as persuasion. In the following extract, note the three facts adduced by Mark Antony to prove that Cæsar was not ambitious.

"He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

* * * * *

You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?"

41. Generic Differences of Mind. As we have just seen, style is affected in a measure by the species of discourse. It is determined, further, by the mental constitution of the writer, and varies according to the dominance of particular faculties. We may distinguish four generic types of mind, which are reflected in four fundamental differences of style.

(1) When the logical faculties of the mind predominate, the style will be simple, direct, and plain. It is apt to be dry. The following extract from Locke's "Thoughts on Education" will serve for illustration: "I say this, that, when you consider of the breeding of your son, and are looking out for a schoolmaster, or a tutor, you would not have (as is usual) Latin and logic only in your thoughts. Learning must be had, but in the second place, as subservient only to greater qualities. Seek out somebody that may know how discreetly to frame his manners; place him in hands, where you may, as much as possible, secure his innocence, cherish and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed out any bad inclinations, and settle in him good habits. This is the main point; and, this being provided for, learning may be had into the bargain."

(2) Again, the imagination may predominate. In this case the writer is continually leaving the main thought to bring in additional and embellishing ideas, particularly if he is a man of wide experience or great learning. The result is apt to be an elaborate or stately style. Lowell's style is eminently characterized by a play of the imagination. His essay on Spenser begins as follows: "Chaucer had been in his grave one hundred and fifty years ere England had secreted choice material enough for the making of another great poet. The nature of men living together in societies, as of the individual man, seems to have its periodic ebbs and floods, its oscillations between the ideal and the matter-of-fact, so that the doubtful boundary line of shore between them is in one generation a hard sandy actuality strewn only with such remembrances of beauty as a dead sea-moss here and there, and in the next is whelmed with those lacelike curves of ever-gaining, ever-receding foam, and that dance of joyous spray which for a moment catches and holds the sunshine."

When the imagination is ill-governed, and especially in the case of inexperienced writers, the resulting style is apt to be florid or bombastic. The following passage from Headley's "Sacred Mountains," connected with a description of the crucifixion, is imaginative extravagance,—a vain, artificial effort at the sublime: "I know not but all the radiant ranks on high, and even Gabriel himself, turned with the deepest solicitude to the Father's face, to see if He was calm and untroubled amid it all. I know not but His composed brow and serene majesty were all that restrained Heaven from one universal shriek of horror when they heard groans on Calvary—dying groans. I know not but they thought God had given His glory to another, but one thing I do know, that when they saw through the vast design, comprehended the stupendous scene, the hills of God shook to a shout that never before rang over their bright tops, and the crystal sea trembled to a song that had never before stirred its bright depths, and the 'Glory to God in the Highest' was a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies." Thoughtful writers of refined taste are more reserved and reverent in speaking of occurrences in the celestial world.

(3) Again, the sensibilities may be in the ascendant. There is then a quick and full response to the beauties of nature and human life. The style becomes warm, graphic, glowing, pictorial. Unless held in check by intellectual culture, an excess of sensibility is likely to degenerate into sentimentalism. When combined with judgment and imagination, as in the case of Ruskin, an emotional temperament yields admirable results. Take the following splendid passage from "Modern Painters," descriptive of a sunrise in the Alps: "Wait for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against the darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each its tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven—one scarlet canopy—is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels; and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this His message unto men!"