VI
The standard of style of the last century was more aristocratic than is the standard of to-day. The important words with Hume, Blair, Johnson, Bolingbroke, as applied to style, were elegance, harmony, ornament; and the chief of these was elegance: the composition must make the impression of elegance, as to-day we demand the impression of the vital and the real. Even the homely is more suited to the genius of democracy than is the elegant. Perhaps the word is distasteful to modern ears from its conventional associations or its appropriation by milliners and dressmakers. One would not care to write inelegantly, but would rather his page did not suggest the word at all, as he would have his home or his dress suggest the quieter, humbler, more serviceable virtues. In the old story of Bruce’s saying, the style may be said to be homely. “I doubt I have killed the comyn.” “Ye doubt?” replies Kirkpatrick; “I mak siccar.” Hume puts this into elegant language in this wise: “Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, one of Bruce’s friends, asking him soon after if the traitor was slain, ‘I believe so,’ replied Bruce. ‘And is that a matter,’ cried Kirkpatrick, ‘to be left to conjecture? I will secure him.’” This is polite prose, dressed-up prose, but its charm for us is gone.
VII
There are as many styles as there are moods and tempers in men. Words may be used so as to give us a sense of vigor, a sense of freshness, a sense of the choice and scholarly, or of the dainty and exclusive, or of the polished and elaborate, or of heat or cold, or of any other quality known to life. Every work of genius has its own physiognomy—sad, cheerful, frowning, yearning, determined, meditative. This book has the face of a saint; that of a scholar or a seer. Here is the feminine, there the masculine face. One has the clerical face, one the judicial. Each appeals to us according to our temperaments and mental predilections. Who shall say which style is the best? What can be better than the style of Huxley for his purpose,—sentences level and straight like a hurled lance; or than Emerson’s for his purpose,—electric sparks, the sudden, unexpected epithet or tense, audacious phrase, that gives the mind a wholesome shock; or than Gibbon’s for his purpose,—a style like solid masonry, every sentence cut four square, and his work, as Carlyle said to Emerson, a splendid bridge, connecting the ancient world with the modern; or than De Quincey’s for his purpose,—a discursive, roundabout style, herding his thoughts as a collie dog herds sheep; or than Arnold’s for his academic spirit,—a style like cut glass; or than Whitman’s for his continental spirit,—the processional, panoramic style that gives the sense of mass and multitude? Certain things we may demand of every man’s style,—that it shall do its work, that it shall touch the quick. To be colorless like Arnold is good, and to have color like Ruskin is good; to be lofty and austere like the old Latin and Greek authors is good, and to be playful and discursive like Dr. Holmes is good; to be condensed and epigrammatic like Bacon pleases, and to be flowing and copious like Macaulay pleases. Within certain limits the manner that is native to the man, the style that is a part of himself, is what wears best. What we do not want in any style is hardness, glitter, tumidity, superfetation, unreality.
In treating of nature or outdoor themes, let the style have limpidness, sweetness, freshness; in criticism let it have dignity, lucidity, penetration; in history let it have mass, sweep, comprehension; in all things let it have vitality, sincerity, and genuineness.
IV
CRITICISM AND THE MAN
I
IT looks as though we were never to get to the end of the discussion about criticism—its scope, aims, functions, any more than we are likely to get to the end of the discussion of any real question in philosophy, ethics, or religion.
Is the aim of literary criticism judgment, or interpretation, or analysis, or description? May it not have all these aims? For myself, I am disposed to answer in the affirmative.