BOOKS.
ENGLISH PROSE.* I wave a lively recollection of an interesting conversation which I once had with Nubar Pasha, erstwhile Primo Minister in Egypt, on the relative =rite of the French and English language 3 for all the purposes of diplomatic and official communications. He was a master of French, and had a fair knowledge of English. He expressed a very decided preference for the former of these two languages. The reason he gave for entertaining this opinion was highly characteristic. Ho said that English was admirably adapted for all commercial purposes, but that as a diplomatic instrument it was too blunt, unequivocal, and downright: On the other hand, the elasticity of the French language was such that any one thoroughly skilled in its use might readily throw a halo of ambiguity over his meaning without exciting any serious suspicion that he wished to be ambiguous. Thus, great facilities were offered to a diplomatist or negotiator to leave a back-door open by which he might plausibly escape from such engagements as he was apparently taking. Whatever may be thought of the morality of this view, which savours strongly of diplomatic practices now rapidly becoming obsolete, there can be no doubt that it contains a strong element of truth. A case in point is the famous Declaration of Pillnitz, which set the whole of Europe ablaze. It has been argued, more especially by Stein, that in signing that Declaration the Emperor of Russia never intended his words to convey the meaning which the rest of the world, incited by the heated pleadings and misrepresentations of the French etnigris, assigned to them. There is, indeed, not the least difficulty in being clear and precise in French if the speaker or writer truly aims at clearness and precision. " La beaute de in longue irancaise," Voltaire said, " consisto en sa dada. Tout ce qui n'est pas Clair, n'est pas francais." This is quite true. The supple. ness and subtlety of the language are, however, such as to facilitate obscurity when there is a desire to be obscure. It lends itself readily to the expression of very delicate shades of thought. Probably, in no other language could compliment and criticism be epigrammatically combined to such an extent as in the phrase attributed to Mme. Do Caylus when speaking of another lady—" Elle await un beau teint pour eclairer as laideur."
French writers have recognized that the English vocabulary is richer than that of the French—an advantage which M. Legouis attributes to the fact of its composite character. M. Jusserand, on the authority of Skeat, claims that the number of English words borrowed from the French, Romance, or eassie tongues greatly exceeds those whose source is German or Scandinavian. There can, however, be no doubt that, as Professor Courthope has pointed out, the " most vital and powerful " element in the language is of Teutonic origin. Macaulay made no idle boast, nor was he unduly swayed by the love of that language which he manipulated with surpassing skill, when he said that out of these heterogeneous elements a vehicle of thought was formed which, " though less musical than the languages of the South, was in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone."
Poetry has in every country preceded prose. When Hesiod and Virgil wished to talk of farming, they naturally turned to verse, Lucretius adopted a similar course in order to expound his system of philosophy. He achieved a literary rather than a philosophic success. When, seventeen centuries later, Pope endeavoured to revive the tucretian method, he produced a poem which was a glittering mosaic of sparkling epigram, and at the same time a didactic failure. Tho Lay of Beowulf, though written at a time when modem English was
• The Rise of English Literary Prose. By Professor G. T. Knipp, of Columbia
Unlverelty. Oxford : at the toicereity Press. Gd.
as yet unborn, indicated the latent power which lay dormant in the origins of the language. The magnificent description given by Homer of Poseidon-riding over the waves (II. XIII. 17-30) is not more eloquently graphic than such a passage as the following : " The sea-timber thundered ; the wind over the billows did not hinder the wave.floate in her course ; the sea-goer put forth ; forth over the flood flouted she, foamy-necked, over the sea-streams, with wreathed prow, until they could make out the cliffs of the Goths."
In a very interesting work, which bears ample testimony to profound literary research, Professor Krapp has explained the genesis and growth of English prose. Chaucer wrote some works in prose, notably a text-book for his little son, who had shown symptoms of ability to " lune sciencez touchinge noumbres and propels:limns." But his influence on the development of prose writing was " almost negligible." The real father of English prose was Wycliffe. His object was to teach religious truths to his countrymen in language which all could under- stand. Ho sounded a trumpet which gave the signal for a long religious and literary struggle. On the one hand, the " poor priests " deluged the country with their "sympylle sarmons." Tyndale declared to a clergyman who maintained that it was bettor to be without God's law than that of the Pope : " If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Seripture than thou doost." The Book of Common Prayer, that monument of dignified and simple English prose which struck a happy mean between the stilted literary and the colloquial language of the day, was com- piled shortly after the translation of the Bible. Men of education, of whom Latimer was the most influential, followed in the wake of the " poor priests." Now, he said, speaking of the question as to where the soul of Jaime's daughter was during the time she was dead, " I will make a clerkly answer unto my question, and such an answer that, if the Bishop of Rome would have gone no further, we should have been well enough ; there would not have been such errors and fooleries in religion as there hath been. Now my answer is this : I cannot tell ; but where it pleased God it should be, there it was.' Is not this a good answer to such a clerkly question ? " On the other hand, the monopolists of learning continued to write in Latin or Latinized English, to be followed subsequently by that highly ornamental style, characterized by Professor Krapp, in an expression now obsolete on this side of the Atlantic, as " aureate," which, had it endured, would have crippled the onward march of the majestic language then in process of formation. Hard words were exchanged. In one of the famous and audacious Marprelate tracts, it was said of one dignitary of the Church that his " face is made of seasoned wainscot and will lie as fast as a dog can trot," and of another that his books " seome to proceedo from the brayncs of a woodcocke, as having neyther wit nor learning."
English prose had to shake itself free from the besetting sin of allitera- tion, of which one example may be given, taken from the works of Pattie, the author of the Petite Palace : " And is my Curiatius slain ? then care come, cut in sunder my corps, then dole deliver me to the dreadful darts of death." The language had also to be purged of the absurdities and extravagances of the Eunhuists and the courtly writers, who were satirized by Shakespeare in Love's Labour's Lost and else- where. One of them (Bacon) spoke of having been trained " in the court of Lady Mnemosyne and her daughters and exercised in the wrestling-place of Apollo." By the beginning of the seventeenth century, a decided reaction in fa7our of a more simple style had set in. Eventually, the goal was reached when Bacon's close reasoning and pregnant sentences set a seal on the composition of English prose which has never been broken. When, somewhat later, Jeremy Collier could write, in a phrase which Gladstone thought " ono of the grandest passages of English prose," that Cranmer " seemed to repel the force of the fire and to overlook the torture by strength of thought," it was clear that English prose could rely on its own original genius, and required no longer to look for foreign models, whether in the dead or the living languages. The " noble and puissant nation," which Milton in splendid poetic prose represented " as an eagle mowing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam," had attained to full literary maturity. From the starting- point of that love of outspoken frankness, which the Greeks called Parrhesia, they had almost unconsciously developed a style which was original, impressive, virile, and highly congenial to national characteristics.
In what, however, does a good prose style consist ? If Buffon was right when he said that " the style was the man," the answer to this question will depend greatly on individual character and temperament. For instance, great diversity of opinion prevails as to the merits of the late Mr. Walter Pater's ornate style. Some hold that, in his own words, it " burnt with a hard, gem-like flame." But Mr. Samuel Butler, the author of Erewhon, records the following withering sarcasm in his Note-Books : "Mr. Walter Pater's style is, to me, like the five of some old woman who has been to Madame Rachel and had herself enamelled. The bloom is nothing but powder and paint and the odour of cherry. blossom." My personal opinion is that the best and most attractive style is that which departs most widely from that of the avowed stylists. M. Anatole France said : " Gardons-noun d'ecrire trop biers, c'est In pire maniere qu'il y ait d'ecrire " ; and Mr. Leslie Stephen, following the Same vein of thought, wrote : To acquire a good style, you should mayor think of style at all. It will be the spontaneous outcome of adequate expression of clear thought."
Obviously, the first and most essential requisite in order to write with lucidity is to think lucidly—Dicere enim bent nemo polest nisi prudenter intelligit. Scarcely less important is it to abjure extravagances of expression introduced with the sole object of producing a sensation. From time immemorial all the greatest authorities on literary compo- sition have characterized this practice as a grave defect. Longinus (On the Sublime, C. v.), in words which are as applicable now as they were in the days of Zenobia, strongly condemned what he termed " corybantizing " ; that is to say, the indulgence in glaring impro- prieties of language in the pursuit of novelty of thought. " It is this," ho said, " that has turned the brain of nearly all the learned world of to-day." Aulus Gellius (Nock Att., I. 10, 4) quotes the following saying of that great soldier and author, Julius Caesar : " Rabe semper in memoria atquo in pectore, ut tamquam scopulum sic fogies inauditum atque insolens verbum."
Prose writers should also constantly bear in mind the admirable advice given by La Bruyere : " Tout ecrivain, pour ecrire nettement, doit se mettre b. In place do sea lecteurs, examiner son propre ouvrage commo quolque chose qui lui est nouveau, gull lit pour la premiere foi, oil ii n'a nullo part, et qua l'autour aurait soumis h sa critique, et so persuader en suite qu'on nest pas entendu seulement k cause qua lion s'entend soi-meme, mais pares qu'on est en effet intelligible." I may perhaps mention that I have personally derived tha utmost benefit from the practice of submitting my manuscript before publica- tion to the judgment of some one not well acquainted with the special subject treated. I have invariably altered the text, although it may have seemed clear to myself, if any question had to be asked as to its meaning.
Condensation is also a point of the utmost importance. It is far easier to indulge in a Ciceronian prolixity than to condense. There was much truth in Pascal's paradoxical apology for writing a long letter to a friend on the ground that he had not time to write with greater brevity. Demetrius, or whoever was the author of De Elocutione, said : " The very first grace of style is that which results from compression." Poets and prose writers alike are apt to ignore this timely warning. Pope, in his Epistle to Augustus, said :—
" E'en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot, Tho last and greatest art—the art to blot."
Finally, it should never be forgotten that the idea which it is intended to convey is in reality more important than the language in which it is clothed. Words, Hobbes emphatically remarked, " are wise men's counters—they do but reckon by them ; but they are the money of
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