The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language, Sherwin Cody [hardest books to read .TXT] 📗

the two sides into the closest possible relations, so that the contrast reaches its height. The last short paragraph sums up the facts.

This style, though highly artificial, is highly useful when used in moderation. It is unfortunate that Macaulay uses it so constantly. When he cannot find contrasts he sometimes makes them, and to make them he distorts the truth. Besides, he wearies us by keeping us too monotonously on a high dead level. In time we come to feel that he is making contrasts merely because he has a passion for making them, not because they serve any purpose. But for one who wishes to learn this style, no better model can be found in the English language.

DREAM-FUGUE

On the Theme of Sudden Death.*

By Thomas De Quincey.

*“The English Mail-Coach” consists of three sections, “The Glory of Motion,” “vision of Sudden Death,” and “Dream-Fugue.” De Quincey describes riding on the top of a heavy mail-coach. In the dead of night they pass a young couple in a light gig, and the heavy mail-coach just escapes shattering the light gig and perhaps killing the young occupants. De Quincey develops his sensations in witnessing this “vision of sudden death,” and rises step by step to the majestic beauty and poetic passion of the dream-fugue.

                    “Whence the sound
     Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
     Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved
     Their stops and chords, was seen; his volant touch
     Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
     Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.”

Paradise Lost, Book XI.

Tumultuosissimamente.

Passion of sudden death! that once in youth I read and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs!—rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting her selpuchral bonds—of woman's ionic form bending forward from the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes upraised, with clasped, adoring hands—waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from dust forever! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the brink of mighty abysses!—vision that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shivering scroll before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of the wind! Epilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaic of dreams? Fragments of music too passionate, heard once and heard no more, what aileth thee, that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years, have lost no element of horror?

I.

Lo, it is summer—almighty summer! The everlasting gates of life and summer are thrown open wide; and on the ocean tranquil and verdant as a savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I myself are floating—she upon a fairy pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker.

Both of us are wooing gales of festive happiness within the domain of our common country, within that ancient watery park, within that pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace moved! And upon her deck what a bevy of human flowers—young women how lovely, young men bow noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting toward us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst natural carolling, and the echoes of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter,—all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her? Did ruin to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our shadow the shadow of death? I looked over the bow for an answer, and, behold! the pinnace was dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found no more; the glory of the vintage was dust; and the forests with their beauty were left without a witness upon the seas. “But where,” and I turned to our crew— “where are the lovely women that danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering corynibi? Whither have fled the noble young men that danced with them?” Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the masthead, whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out, “Sail on the weather beam! Down she comes upon us; in seventy seconds she also will founder,”

II.

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was rocking, and shaking with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a crossbow, ran a frigate right athwart our course. “Are they mad?” some voice exclaimed from our deck. “Do they woo their ruin?” But in a moment, as she was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock. As she ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The deeps in malice opened ahead to receive her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away she was borne upon the desert spaces of the sea: whilst still by sight I followed her, she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows: still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood, with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tackling—rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying—there for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm; until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was hidden forever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I know not, nor how.

Notes.

De Quincey's “Dream-Fugue” is as luxuriant and extravagant a use of metaphor as Macaulay's “Puritans” is of the use of antithesis and the balanced structure. The whole thing is a metaphor, and every part is a metaphor within a metaphor.

This is much more than mere fine writing. It is a metaphorical representation of the incident he has previously described. In that incident he was particular struck by the actions of the lady. The young man turned his horse out of the path of the coach, but some part of the coach struck one of the wheels of the gig, and as it did so, the lady involuntarily started up, throwing up her arms, and at once sank back as in a faint. De Quincey did not see her face, and hence he speaks in this description of “averted signs?” The “woman bursting her sepulchral bonds” probably refers to a tomb in Westminster Abbey which represents a woman escaping from the door of the tomb, and Death, a skeleton, is just behind her, but too late to catch her “arching foot” as she flies upward—presumably as a spirit.

So every image corresponds to a reality, either in the facts or in De Quincey's emotion at the sight of them. The novice fails in such writing as this because he becomes enamored of his beautiful images and forgets what he is trying to illustrate. The relation between reality and image should be as invariable as mathematics. If such startling images cannot be used with perfect clearness and vivid perception of their usefulness and value, they should not be used at all. De Quincey is so successful because his mind comprehends every detail of the scene, and through the images we see the bottom truth as through a perfect crystal. A clouded diamond is no more ruined by its cloudiness than a clouded metaphor.

As in Ruskin's description of the mountain, we see in this the value of the sounds of words, and how they seem to make music in themselves. A Word lacking in dignity in the very least would have ruined the whole picture, and so would a word whose rotund sound did not correspond to the loftiness of the passage. Perhaps the only word that jars is “English three-decker”—but the language apparently afforded De Quincey no substitute which would make his meaning clear.

CHAPTER VII. RESERVE:

Thackeray.

It has been hinted that the rhetorical, impassioned, and lofty styles are in a measure dangerous. The natural corrective of that danger is artistic reserve.

Reserve is a negative quality, and so it has not been emphasized by writers on composition as it ought to be. But if it is negative, it is none the less real and important, and fortunately we have in Thackeray a masterly example of its positive power.

Originally reserve is to be traced to a natural reticence and modesty in the character of the author who employs it. It may be studied, however, and cultivated as a characteristic of style. As an artistic quality it consists in saying exactly what the facts demand, no more, no less—and to say no more especially on those occasions when most people employ superlatives. Macaulay was not characterized by reserve. He speaks of the Puritans as “the most remarkable body of men the world ever produced.” “Most” is a common word in his vocabulary, since it served so well to round out the phrase and the idea. Thackeray, on the other hand, is almost too modest. He is so afraid of saying too much that sometimes he does not say enough, and that may possibly account for the fact that he was never as popular as the overflowing Dickens. The lack of reserve made Dickens “slop over” occasionally, as indelicate critics have put it; and the presence of reserve did more than any other one thing to give Thackeray the reputation for perfect style which all concede to him.

One of the most famous passages in all of Thackeray's works is the description of the battle of Waterloo in “Vanity Fair,” ch. XXXII:

All that day, from morning till past sunset, the cannon never ceased to roar. It was dark when the cannonading stopped all of a sudden.

All of us have read of what occurred during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its remembrance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so called glory and shame, and to the alternation of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honor.

All our friends took their share, and fought like men in the great field. All day long, while the women were praying ten miles away, the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and repelling the furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which were heard in Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. Towards evening, the attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened in its fury. They had other foes besides the British to engage, or were preparing for a final onset. It came at last; the columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep the English from the height which they had maintained all day and spite of all; unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line,—the dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the