Yet it is not enough for human beauty to possess symmetry of structure, within and without: there must be a beautiful coloring also, wealth of complexion, fineness of texture. So the next element of literary art lies in the choice of words. Style must have richness and felicity. Words in a master's hands seem more than words; he can double or quadruple their power by skill in using; and this is a result so delightful, as to give to certain authors a value out of all proportion to their thought. There are books which are luxuries, livres de luxe, whose pages seem builded of more potent words than those of common life. Keats, for example, in poetry, and Landor in prose, are illustrations of this; and perhaps the representative instance, in all English literature, of the prismatic resources of mere words is the poem of "The Eve of St. Agnes." But thus to be crowned monarch of the sunset, to trust one's self with full daring in these realms of glory, demands such a balance of endowments as no one in English literature save Shakespeare has attained.
In choosing words, it is to be remembered that there is not a really poor one in any language; each had originally some vivid meaning, but most of them have been worn smooth by passing from hand to hand, and hence the infinite care required in their use. "Language," says Max Müller, "is a dictionary of faded metaphors"; and every writer who creates a new image, or even reproduces an old one by passing it through a fresh mind, enlarges this vast treasure-house. And this applies not only to words of beauty, but to words of wit. "All wit," said Mr. Pitt, "is true reasoning "; and Rogers, who preserved this saying, added, that he himself had lived long before making the discovery that wit was truth.
A final condition of literary art is thoroughness, which must be shown both in the preparation and in the revision of one's work. The most brilliant mind yet needs a large accumulated capital of facts and images, before it can safely enter on its business, Coleridge went to Davy's chemical lectures, he said, to get a new stock of metaphors. Addison, before beginning the Spectator, had accumulated three folio volumes of notes. "The greater part of an author's time," said Dr. Johnson, "is spent in reading in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book." Unhappily, with these riches comes the chance of being crushed by them, of which the agreeable Roman Catholic writer, Digby, is a striking recent example. There is no satisfaction in being told, as Charles Lamb told Godwin, that "you have read more books that are not worth reading than any other man"; nor in being described, as was Southey by Shelley, as "a talking album, filled with long extracts from forgotten books on unimportant subjects." One must not have more knowledge than one can keep in subjection; but every literary man needs to accumulate a whole tool-chest in his memory, and another in his study, before he can be more than a journeyman at his trade.
Yet the labor of preparation is not, after all, more important than that of final revision. The feature of literary art which is always least appreciated by the public, and even by young authors, is the amount of toil it costs. But all the standards, all the precedents of every art, show that the greatest gifts do not supersede the necessity of work. The most astonishing development of native genius in any direction, so far as I know, is that of Mozart in music; yet it is he who has left the remark, that, if few equalled him in his vocation, few had studied it with such persevering labor and such unremitting zeal. There is still preserved at Ferrara the piece of paper on which Ariosto wrote in sixteen different ways one of his most famous stanzas. The novel which Hawthorne left unfinished—and whose opening chapters when published proved so admirable—had been begun by him, as it appeared, in five different ways. Yet how many young collegians have at this moment in their desks the manuscript of their first novel, and have considered it a piece of heroic toil if they have once revised it!
It is to rebuke this literary indolence, and to afford a perpetual standard of high art, that the study of Greek ought to be retained in our schools. The whole future of our literature may depend upon it; to abandon it is deliberately to forego the very highest models. There is no other literature which so steadily reproaches a young writer,—nothing else by which he may sustain himself till he forms a high standard of his own. Not that he should attempt direct imitations, which are almost always failures as such, however attractive in other respects; witness Swinburne's "Atalanta." But the true use of Greek literature is perpetually to remind us what a wondrous thing literary art may be,—capable of what range of resources, of what thoroughness in structure, of what perfection in detail. It is a remarkable fact, that the most penetrating and fearless of all our writers, Thoreau,—he who made Nature his sole mistress, and shook himself utterly free from human tradition,—yet clung to Greek literature as the one achievement of man that seemed worthy to take rank with Nature, pronouncing it "as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself."
These are the qualities of style that seem most obviously important,—simplicity, freshness, structure, choice of words, and thoroughness both of preparation and of finish. Yet, in aiming at literary art, it must be remembered that all the cardinal virtues go into a good style, while each of the seven deadly sins tends to vitiate a bad one. What a charm in the merit of humility, for instance, as it is sometimes seen in style, leading to a certain self-restraint and moderation of tone, however weighty the argument! How great the power of an habitual under-statement, on which in due season one strong thought rises like an ocean-crest, and breaks, and sweeps onward, lavishing itself in splendor! What a glorious gift of heaven would have been the style of Ruskin, for instance, could he but have contained himself, and put forth only half his strength, instead of always planting, in the words of old Fuller, "a piece of ordnance to batter down an aspen-leaf"!
It would be hardly safe to illustrate what has been said by any multiplication of examples from our own literature. Yet perhaps there will be no danger in saying that America has as yet produced but two authors of whom we may claim that their style is in all respects adequate to their wants, and the perfect vehicle of their thought. It is not always the greatest writers of whom this is true, for one's demands upon the vehicle of thought are in proportion to his thoughts, and great ideas strain language more than small ones. We cannot say of either Emerson or Thoreau, for instance, that his style is adequate to his needs, because the needs are immense, and Thoreau, at least, sometimes disdains effort. But the only American authors, perhaps, whose style is an elastic garment that fits all the uses of the body, are Irving and Hawthorne.
This has no reference to the quality of their thought, as to which in Irving we feel a slight mediocrity; no matter, there is the agreeable style, and it does him all the service he needs. By its aid he reached his limit of execution, and we can hardly imagine him, with his organization, as accomplishing more. But in Hawthorne we see astonishing power, always answered by the style, and capable of indefinite expansion within certain lateral limits. His early solitude narrowed his affinities, and gave a kind of bloodlessness to his style; clear in hue, fine in texture, it is apt to want the mellow tinge which indicates a robust and copious life. Even such a criticism seems daring, in respect to anything so beautiful; and I can conceive of no other defect in the style of Hawthorne.
Perhaps the conclusion of the whole matter may seem to be that literary art is so lofty a thing as to be beyond the reach of any of us; as the sage in Rasselas, discoursing on poetry, only convinces his hearers that no one ever can be a poet. After so much in the way of discouragement, it should be added,—what the most limited experience may teach us all,—that there is no other pursuit so unceasingly delightful. As some one said of love, "all other pleasures are not worth its pains." But the literary man must love his art, as the painter must love painting, out of all proportion to its rewards; or rather, the delight of the work must be its own reward. Any praise or guerdon hurts him, if it bring any other pleasure to eclipse this. The reward of a good sentence is to have written it; if it bring fame or fortune, very well, so long as this recompense does not intoxicate. The peril is, that all temporary applause is vitiated by uncertainty, and may be leading you right or wrong. Goethe wrote to Schiller, "We make money by our poor books."
The impression is somehow conveyed to the young, that there exists somewhere a circle of cultivated minds, gifted with discernment, who can distinguish at a glance between Shakespeare and Tupper. One may doubt the existence of any such contemporary tribunal. Certainly there is none such in America. Provided an author says something noticeable, and obeys the ordinary rules of grammar and spelling, his immediate public asks little more; and if he attempts more, it is an even chance that it leads him away from favor. Indeed, within the last few years, it has come to be a sign of infinite humor to dispense with even these few rules, and spell as badly as possible. Yet even if you went to London or to Paris in search of this imaginary body of critics, you would not find them; there also you would find the transient and the immortal confounded together, and the transient often uppermost. Even a foreign country is not always, as has been said, a contemporaneous posterity. It is said that no American writer was ever so warmly received in England as Artemus Ward. It is only the slow alembic of the years that finally eliminates from this vast mass of literature its few immortal drops, and leaves the rest to perish.