In a late English magazine, there is an elaborate attempt to prove the inferiority in manliness of the French mind as compared with the English. "Frenchmen are less manly, and Frenchwomen less womanly, than English men and women." And one of the illustrations seriously offered is this: "In literature they think much of the method, style, and what they themselves call the art of making a book."
The charge is true. In France alone among living nations is literature habitually pursued as an art; and, in consequence of this, despite the seeds of all decay which imperialism sows, French prose-writing has no rival in contemporary literature. We cannot fully recognize this fact through translations, because only the most sensational French books appear to be translated. But as French painters and actors now habitually surpass all others even in what are claimed as the English qualities,—simplicity and truth,—so do French prose-writers excel. To be set against the brutality of Carlyle and the shrill screams of Ruskin, there is to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and, in short, throughout literature. What is there in any other language, for instance, to be compared with the voluminous writings of Sainte-Beuve, ranging over all history and literature, and carrying into all that incomparable style, so delicate, so brilliant, so equable, so strong,—touching all themes, not with the blacksmith's hand of iron, but with the surgeon's hand of steel?
In the average type of French novels, one feels the superiority to the English in quiet power, in the absence of the sensational and exaggerated, and in keeping close to the level of real human life. They rely for success upon perfection of style and the most subtile analysis of human character; and therefore they are often painful,—just as Thackeray is painful,—because they look at artificial society, and paint what they see. Thus they dwell often on unhappy marriages, because such things grow naturally from the false social system in France. On the other hand, in France there is very little house-breaking, and bigamy is almost impossible, so that we hear delightfully little about them; whereas, if you subtract these from the current English novels, what is there left?
Germany furnishes at present no models of prose style; and all her past models, except perhaps Goethe and Heine, seem to be already losing their charm. Yet for knowledge we still go to Germany, and there is a certain exuberant wealth that can even impart fascination to a bad style, as to that of Jean Paul. Such an author may therefore be very useful to a student who can withstand him, which poor Carlyle could not. There was a time, it is said, when English and American literature seemed to be expiring of conventionalism. Carlyle was the Jenner who inoculated and saved us all by this virus from Germany, and then died of his own disease. It now seems a privilege, perhaps, to be able to remember the time when all literature was in the inflammatory stage of this superinduced disorder; but does any one now read Carlyle's French Revolution? Every year now shows that the whole trick of style with which it was written was false from beginning to end. For surely no style can be permanently attractive that is not simple.
Simplicity must be the first element of literary art. This assertion will no doubt run counter to the common belief. Most persons have an impression of something called style in writing,—as they have an impression of something called architecture in building,—as if it were external, superadded, whereas it is in truth the very basis and law of the whole. There is the house, they think, and, if you can afford it, you put on some architecture; there is the writing, and a college-bred man is expected to put on some style. The assumption is, that he is less likely to write simply. This shows our school-boy notions of culture. A really cultivated person is less likely to waste words on mere ornamentation, just as he is less likely to have gingerbread-work on his house. Good taste simplifies. Men whose early culture was deficient are far more apt to be permanently sophomoric than those who lived through the sophomore at the proper time and place. The reason is, that the habit of expression, in a cultivated person, matures as his life and thought mature; but when a man has had much life and very little expression, he is confused by his own thoughts, and does not know how much to attempt or how to discriminate. When such a person falls on honest slang, it is usually a relief, for then he uses language which is fresh and real to him; whereas such phrases in a cultivated person usually indicate mere laziness and mental undress. Indeed, almost all slang is like parched corn, and should be served up hot, or else not at all.
But it is evident that mere simplicity of style is not enough, for there is a manner of writing which does not satisfy us, though it may be simple and also carefully done. Such, for instance, is the prose style of Southey, which was apparently the model for all American writing in its day. We see the result in the early volumes of the North American Review, whose traditions of rather tame correctness were what enabled us to live through the Carlyle epoch with safety. The aim of this style was to avoid all impulse, brilliancy, or surprise,—to be perfectly colorless; it was a highly polished smoothness, on which the thoughts slid like balls. But style is capable of something more than smoothness and clearness; you see this something more when you turn from Prescott to Motley, for instance; there is a new quality in the page,—it has become alive. Freshness is perhaps the best word to describe this additional element; it is a style that has blood in it. This may come from various sources,—good health, animal spirits, outdoor habits, or simply an ardent nature. It is hard to describe this quality, or to give rules for it; the most obvious way to acquire it is to keep one's life fresh and vigorous, to write only what presses to be said, and to utter that as if the world waited for the saying. Where lies the extraordinary power of "Jane Eyre," for instance? In the intense earnestness which vitalizes every line; each atom of the author's life appears to come throbbing and surging through it; every sentence seems endowed with a soul of its own, and looks up at you with human eyes.
The next element of literary art may be said to be structure. So strong in the American mind is the demand for system and completeness, that the logical element of style, which is its skeleton, is not rare among us. But this is only the basis; besides the philosophical structure of a statement which comes by thought, there is an artistic structure which implies the education of the taste. So, in the human body, there is a symmetry of the bony frame, and there is a further symmetry of the rounded flesh which should cover it; and in literature it is not enough to have a perfectly framed logical skeleton,—there should be also a well-proportioned beauty of utterance, which is the flesh. Unless this inward and outward structure exist, although a book may be never so valuable, it hardly comes within the domain of literary art.
These different types of structure may perhaps be illustrated by three different books, all belonging to the intermediate ground between science and art. I should say that Buckle's "History of Civilization," with all its wealth and vigor, is exceedingly loose-jointed in all its logical structure, and also very defective in its literary structure, although it happens to have an element of freshness which is rare in such a work, and carries the reader along. Darwin's "Origin of Species" is better; that has at the bottom a strong logic, whether conclusive or otherwise, but is so rambling and confused in its merely literary statement, that it does itself no justice. A third book, Huxley's "Lectures," combines with its logic a power of clear and symmetrical statement that gives it a rare charm, and makes it a contribution, not to science alone, but to literature.
In what is called poetry, belles-lettres or pure literature, the osseous structure is of course hidden; and the symmetry suggested is always that of taste rather than of logic, though logic must be always implied, or at least never violated. In some of the greatest modern authors, however, there are limitations or drawbacks to this symmetry. Margaret Fuller said admirably of her favorite Goethe, that he had the artist's hand, but not the artist's love of structure; and in all his prose writings one sees a certain divergent and centrifugal habit, which completely overpowers him before the end of "Wilhelm Meister," and shows itself even in the "Elective Affinities," which is, so far as I know, his most perfect prose work.
In Emerson, again, one observes a similar defect; his unit of structure is the sentence, and the periods seem combined merely by the accident of juxtaposition; each sentence is a pearl, and the whole essay is so much clipped from the necklace; but it is fastened at neither end, and the beads roll off.