The Treasure of German Prose.—Apart from Goethe's writings and especially Goethe's conversations with Eckermann (the best German book in existence), what German prose literature remains that is worth reading over and over again? Lichtenberg's Aphorisms, the first book of Jung-Stilling's Story of My Life, Adalbert Stifter's St. Martin's Summer and Gottfried Keller's People of Seldwyla—and there, for the time being, it comes to an end.
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Literary and Colloquial Style.—The art of writing demands, first and foremost, substitutions for the means of expression which speech alone possesses—in other words, for gestures, accent, intonation, and look. Hence literary style is quite different from colloquial style, and far more difficult, because it has to make itself as intelligible as the latter with fewer accessaries. Demosthenes delivered his speeches differently from what we read; he [pg 251] worked them up for reading purposes.—Cicero's speeches ought to be “demosthenised” with the same object, for at present they contain more of the Roman Forum than we can endure.
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Caution in Quotation.—Young authors do not know that a good expression or idea only looks well among its peers; that an excellent quotation may spoil whole pages, nay the whole book; for it seems to cry warningly to the reader, “Mark you, I am the precious stone, and round about me is lead—pale, worthless lead!” Every word, every idea only desires to live in its own company—that is the moral of a choice style.
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How should Errors be Enunciated?—We may dispute whether it be more injurious for errors to be enunciated badly or as well as the best truths. It is certain that in the former case they are doubly harmful to the brain and are less easily removed from it. But, on the other hand, they are not so certain of effect as in the latter case. They are, in fact, less contagious.
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Limiting and Widening.—Homer limited and diminished the horizon of his subject, but allowed individual scenes to expand and blossom out. Later, the tragedians are constantly renewing this process. Each takes his material in ever smaller and smaller fragments than his predecessor did, but [pg 252] each attains a greater wealth of blooms within the narrow hedges of these sequestered garden enclosures.