*The preceding lecture was entitled “Of Kings's Treasures.”
There is then, I repeat (and as I want to leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it) only one pure kind of kingship, —an inevitable or eternal kind, crowned or not,—the kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger moral state and truer thoughtful state than that of others, enabling you, therefore, to guide or to raise them. Observe that word “state” we have got into a loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and stability of a thing; and you have the full force of it in the derived word “statue”—“the immovable thing.” A king's majesty or “state,” then, and the right of his kingdom to be called a State, depends on the movelessness of both,—without tremor, without quiver of balance, established and enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing can alter or overthrow.
Believing that all literature and all education are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power,—first over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all around us,—I am now going to ask you to consider with me further, what special portion or kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, may rightly be possessed by women; and how far they also are called to a true queenly power,—not in their households merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by such benignant power would justify us in speaking of the territories over which each of them reigned as ‘Queens' Gardens.’
Here still is the true critical style, with exact definitions; but the whole argument is a metaphor, and the object of the criticism is to rouse feelings that will lead to action.
It will be observed that words which by definition are to be taken in some sort of technical sense are distinguished to the eye in some way. Matthew Arnold used italics. Ruskin first places “state” within quotation marks, and then, when he uses the word in a still different sense, he writes it with a capital letter—State. Capitalization is perhaps the most common way for designating common words when used in a special sense which is defined by the writer—or defined by implication. This is the explanation of the capital letters with which the writings of Carlyle are filled. He constantly endeavors to make words mean more than, or something different from, the meaning they usually have.
The peculiar embellishments of the critical writer are epigram, paradox, and satire. An epigram is a very short phrase or sentence which is so full of implied meaning or suggestion that it catches the attention at once, and remains in the memory easily. The paradox is something of the same sort on a larger scale. It is a statement that we can hardly believe to be true, since it seems at first sight to be self-contradictory, or to contradict well known truths or laws; but on examination we find that in a peculiar sense it is strictly true. Satire is a variation of humor peculiarly adapted to criticism, since it is intended to make the common idea ridiculous when compared with the ideas which the critic is trying to bring out: it is a sort of argument by force of stinging points. We may find an example of satire in its perfection in Swift, especially in his “Gulliver's Travels”—since these are satires the point of which we can appreciate to-day. Oscar Wilde was peculiarly given to epigram, and in his plays especially we may find epigram carried to the same excess that the balanced structure is carried by Macaulay. More moderate epigram may be found in Emerson and Carlyle. Paradox is something that we should use only on special occasion.
CHAPTER IX.
THE STYLE OF FICTION:
Narrative, Description, and Dialogue.
Dickens.