Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we, say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
CHAPTER XII.
HARMONY OF STYLE:
Irving and Hawthorne.
A work of literary art is like a piece of music: one false note makes a discord that spoils the effect of the whole. But it is useless to give rules for writing an harmonious style. When one sits down to write he should give his whole thought and energy to expressing himself forcibly and with the vital glow of an overpowering interest. An interesting thought expressed with force and suggestiveness is worth volumes of commonplaces couched in the most faultless language. The writer should never hesitate in choosing between perfectness of language and vigor. On the first writing verbal perfection should be sacrificed without a moment's hesitation. But when a story or essay has once been written, the writer will turn his attention to those small details of style. He must harmonize his language. He must polish. It is one of the most tedious processes in literature, and to the novice the most difficult on which to make a beginning. Yet there is nothing more surely a matter of labor and not of genius. It is for this that one masters grammar and rhetoric, and studies the individual uses of words. Carried to an extreme it is fatal to vitality of style. But human nature is more often prone to shirk, and this is the thing that is passed over from laziness. If you find one who declaims against the utmost care in verbal polish, you will find a lazy man.
The beginner, however, rarely knows how to set to work, and this chapter is intended to give some practical hints. We assume that the student knows perfectly well what good grammar is, as well as the leading principles of rhetoric, and could easily correct his faults in these if he should see them. There are several distinct classes of errors to look for: faults of grammar, such as the mixing of modes and tenses, and the agreement of verbs and particles in number when collective nouns are referred to; faults of rhetoric, such as the mixing of figures of speech; faults of taste, such as the use of words with a disagreeable or misleading atmosphere about them, though their strict meaning makes their use correct enough; faults of repetition of the same word in differing senses in the same sentence or paragraph; faults of tediousness of phrasing or explanation; faults of lack of clearness in expressing the exact meaning; faults of sentimental use of language, that is, falling into fine phrases which have no distinct meaning—the most discordant fault of all; faults of digression in the structure of the composition.
This list is comprehensive of the chief points to look for in verbal revision. Faults of grammar need no explanation here. But we would say, Beware. The most skilled writers are almost constantly falling into errors of this kind, for they are the most subtle and elusive of all, verbal failings. There is, indeed, but one certain way to be sure that they are all removed, and that is by parsing every word by grammatical formula it is a somewhat tedious method, but by practice one may weigh each word with rapidity, and it is only by considering each word alone that one may be sure that nothing is passed over. In the same way each phrase or sentence, or figure of speech, should be weighed separately, for its rhetorical accuracy.
Faults of taste are detected by a much more delicate process than the application of formulæ, but they almost invariably arise (if ones native sense is keen) from the use of a word in a perfectly legitimate and pure sense, when the public attaches to it an atmosphere (let us call it) which is vulgar or disagreeable. In such cases the word should be sacrificed, for the atmosphere of a word carries a hundred times more weight with the common reader than the strict and logical meaning. For instance, the word mellow is applied to over-ripe fruit, and to light of a peculiarly soft quality, if one is writing for a class of people who are familiar with the poets, it is proper enough to use the word in its poetic sense; but if the majority of the readers of one's work always associate mellow with over-ripe fruit, to use it in its poetic sense would be disastrous.
The repetition of the same word many times in succeeding phrases is a figure of speech much used by certain recognized writers, and is a most valuable one. Nor should one be afraid of repetition whenever clearness makes it necessary. But the repetition of the same word in differing senses in adjoining phrases is a fault to be strictly guarded against. The writer was himself once guilty of perpetrating the following abomination: “The form which represented her, though idealized somewhat, is an actual likeness elevated by the force of the sculptor's love into a form of surpassing beauty. It is her form reclining on a couch, only a soft, thin drapery covering her transparent form, her head slightly raised and turned to one side, and having concentrated in its form and posture the height of the whole figure's beauty.” Careful examination will show that form, used five times in this paragraph, has at least three very slightly differing meanings, a fact which greatly adds to the objectionableness of the recurrence of the sound.